4 - West Germany

Summary

West Germany finally realized the energy project Italy had begun and Austria had advanced. West Germany made material, through the capitalization of a durable infrastructure, the relationship the Soviets had sought with Western Europe for so long. In 1962 the United States had vetoed a series of oil-for-pipes contracts that would have brought Soviet energy to the heart of Europe. This chapter recounts how half a decade later, with the groundwork having been laid by its two southern neighbors, West German business, local governments, and finance assembled the technopolitical coalition that would redraw East–West politics and labor relations throughout Europe. With the vast, capital intensive construction that West German industrial and financial power made possible, the Soviets could draw on further reserves of capital backstopped by a nigh-irrevocable, material infrastructure.