Monday 3 October 2011

Was East Germany For Sale?


Photo: Ludwig Erhard

West Germany Wanted To Buy The East From USSR -- The Telegraph

The West German government considered buying East Germany from the Soviet Union in the 1960s, declassified documents have revealed.

The American files show that chancellor Ludwig Erhard, despite being credited as one of the men behind West Germany's post-war economic miracle, was prepared to hand over a huge sum of money to Moscow for the prize of reunification.

A document seen by the German news magazine Der Spiegel records a conversation between a German government official and George McGhee, the US ambassador to Bonn, in October 1963. The American was told Germany was prepared to pay over $2 billion a year for a decade to Moscow in return for East Germany: a sum which then amounted to about a quarter of West Germany's GDP.

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