West Germany And The Cold War 1960S — страница 3

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the chancellorship in order to implement the policies that he deemed necessary for West Germany. In the 1969 election he was given his chance, leading West Germany into the third decade of the Cold War. Yet another interesting twist on West German policy was its attitude towards the Westernization of German society. When “rock and roll” music began to leak into Germany in the 1950s along with a new fashion of girls in ponytails and “James Dean jackets,” the country was outraged. They charged the music as disrupting a society that balanced on men as the providers and dominant figure and women as the homemakers and docile personalities. They saw figures such as Elvis Presley a challenge to male machismo and female sexuality. “In the mid-1960s West German sociologists

confirmed that consumer culture was not threatening the stability of the state. According to Walter Jaide, adolescents made use of the offerings of consumer culture, without rejecting ‘timeless bourgeois conditions’ in politics, religion, lifestyle, or attitudes toward work, family, and leisure time.” (Poiger, Page 213.) This showed an increasing toleration to Western ideas and a less fearful approach toward them. “And by the mid-1960s the notion of a youth rebellion had all but disappeared.” (Poiger, Page 608.) However, the youth movement was important to West Germany for it gave females a bit more freedom in expressing themselves, heightened a small-scale sexual revolution, and opened young peoples minds to important issues relating to both West Germany itself and the

world at large. Thus, as not much happened in the world during the 1960s after the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, the 1960s were important years for West Germany in which it was forced to come to terms with itself as a nation. Faced with important issues regarding how it would place itself in foreign policy, West Germany continued to fight for an eventual reunification of the East and the West. Its economy was flourishing and people were generally happy with the course things were taking. It wasn’t until the 1970s that West Germany began to slip downward a bit. The 1960s were a period of growth and transformation. They were the bridge between the first decade and the third of the Cold War. Banchoff, Thomas, The German Problem Transformed. The University of

Michigan Press, Ann Arbor: 1999. Hanreider, Wolfram F., “The Foreign Policies of the Federal Republic of Germany,” German Studies Review. Volume XII, Number 1,1989. Patton, David F., Cold War Politics in Postwar Germany. St. Martin’s Press, New York: 1999. Perkins, John, “Restoration and Renewal? West Germany since 1945,” Contemporary European History. Volume 8, 1999. Poiger, Uta G., Jazz, Rock, and Rebels. University of California Press. Los Angeles: 2000. Poiger, Uta G., “Rock ‘n’ Roll, Female Sexuality, and the Cold War Battle over German Identities,” Journal of Modern History. Volume 68, 1996. Smyser, W.R., From Yalta to Berlin. St. Martin’s Press, New York: 1999.