During the Cold War, the Federal Republic of Germany, a divided nation on the front line of the East-West confrontation, was buffeted by the actions and decisions of the superpowers and forced to redefine itself with each development in global relations. In Cold War Politics in Postwar Germany, David F. Patton develops links between Cold War international pressures and German domestic coalitions.

The book examines politics in uncertain times, focusing on three major shifts in Cold War relations that disrupted politics as usual in the Federal Republic. In the early 1950s, external pressures led to a wrenching internal debate over rearmament. Twenty years later, the thaw in Cold War tensions set the stage for a fierce domestic showdown over detente with Eastern Europe. In the early 1990s, Chancellor Helmut Kohl took full advantage of the end of the Cold War to implement his controversial unification policy.

At each juncture, the Federal Republic experienced intense debates over national unity, the increased stature of the chancellor in the policy-making process, the emergence of new domestic alliances, and a sudden foreign policy reversal. Patton's examination of the remarkable parallels of these three periods reveals how the Federal Republic has changed in the postwar era, yet stayed the same.