Favorite Son or Stepchild? West Germany within the Atlantic Nuclear "Family"

After the Federal Republic of Germany gained sovereignty and NATO membership in 1955, the alliance struggled with the practical and symbolic issue of German access to nuclear weapons. Then as now, nuclear power was an expression of national sovereignty, which was why European states with great power pretensions, Great Britain and France, had insisted on their own national nuclear forces, even over American objections. Their decisions forced other NATO members to consider the relationship between nuclear capability and alliance unity. The Federal Republic was the economically and strategically most important non-nuclear state in NATO, and debates on nuclear sharing with the Germans raised controversial strategic as well as moral questions. As the likely battlefield in any future war, and a state still living in the shadow of a genocidal past, the Federal Republic had to balance a desire to be involved in nuclear strategy with broadly shared public revulsion at the very existence of such weapons. None of the Federal Republic’s neighbors favored the idea of direct German control of nuclear forces. Indeed, West German membership in NATO had been made possible by Konrad Adenauer’s spontaneous 1954 promise that the Federal Republic would not develop atomic, biological, or chemical (ABC) weapons. As nuclear weapons played an increasing role in NATO strategy after 1957, however, Adenauer and subsequent Chancellors sought to remain true to that pledge while avoiding permanent inferiority within the alliance. Discussions of German access to nuclear weapons also had implications for the recognition of German division, adding a further level of political complexity. The resulting debates, culminating in the NPT, produced enormous international and domestic controversy, marked by mutual suspicion and recrimination, that extended into the détente era of the 1970s and require deeper historical analysis.