Treaties of Moscow and Warsaw (1970)
모스크바·바르샤바 조약
The two treaties underpinning West German Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik, concluded with the Soviet Union in Moscow in August 1970 and with Poland in Warsaw in December of the same year. In both, West Germany renounced the use of force and de facto accepted the postwar borders, above all the Oder–Neisse line, thereby recognizing East Germany. These concessions, symbolized by Brandt's Warsaw genuflection, were ratified by the Bundestag in May 1972 and became the stepping stone that let the West finally answer the call for a pan-European security conference at Helsinki.
In depth
The Moscow Treaty was signed on 12 August 1970 in the Kremlin by Alexei Kosygin and Andrei Gromyko for the USSR and Willy Brandt and Walter Scheel for West Germany; the Warsaw Treaty followed on 7 December 1970, signed by Brandt and Polish premier Józef Cyrankiewicz. Both treaties declared the postwar borders inviolable, with Article 3 of the Moscow Treaty fixing the Oder–Neisse line as Poland's western border alongside the inner-German boundary. Moscow effectively tied the treaties to normalizing relations with the GDR and to convening a pan-European security conference, and the Bundestag ratified both on the same day in May 1972. Conservative opponents (CDU/CSU) denounced them as a betrayal of national interests, yet without ratification the West would have had little ground to join the Helsinki talks that opened in 1973. The renunciation-of-force wording of the Moscow Treaty was carried almost verbatim into the Helsinki Final Act.
Sources
- Wikipedia (EN) signatories (Kosygin/Gromyko, Brandt/Scheel), renunciation of force, Oder–Neisse recognition, Bundestag ratification 17 May 1972
- Wikipedia (EN) signed 7 Dec 1970 by Brandt and Cyrankiewicz, Oder–Neisse line accepted, CDU/CSU criticism, ratification 1972
- Wikipedia (RU) signed in Kremlin 12 Aug 1970 in presence of Brezhnev, Bundestag ratification 17 May 1972, USSR ratification 31 May 1972, economic/security-conference context
- germanhistorydocs.org full treaty text (German History in Documents and Images, GHDI): Article 3 border inviolability including Oder–Neisse line and inner-German border
- ghi-dc.org German Historical Institute bulletin: Moscow/Warsaw/Prague treaties and Berlin/Basic Treaty completed the bilateral phase of Ostpolitik and opened the multilateral phase culminating in the 1975 Helsinki Final Act