Cold War Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===German rearmament=== {{Main|West German rearmament}} The rearmament of West Germany was achieved in the early 1950s. Its main promoter was [[Konrad Adenauer]], the chancellor of West Germany, with France the main opponent. Washington had the decisive voice. It was strongly supported by the Pentagon (the US military leadership), and weakly opposed by President Truman; the State Department was ambivalent. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 changed the calculations and Washington now gave full support. That also involved naming [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] in charge of NATO forces and sending more American troops to West Germany. There was a strong promise that West Germany would not develop nuclear weapons.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Beisner |first1=Robert L. |title=Dean Acheson : a life in the Cold War |date=2006 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |isbn=9780195045789 |url=https://archive.org/details/deanachesonlifei00beis|pages=356β374}}</ref> Widespread fears of another rise of [[Militarism#Germany|German militarism]] necessitated the new military to operate within an alliance framework, under [[NATO]] command.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Snyder |first1=David R. |title=Arming the "Bundesmarine": The United States and the Build-Up of the German Federal Navy, 1950β1960 |journal=The Journal of Military History |date=April 2002 |volume=66 |issue=2 |pages=477β500 |doi=10.2307/3093068|jstor=3093068 }}</ref> In 1955, Washington secured full German membership of NATO.{{sfn|Byrd|2003}} In May 1953, [[Lavrentiy Beria]], by then in a government post, had made an unsuccessful proposal to allow the reunification of a neutral Germany to prevent West Germany's incorporation into NATO, but his attempts were cut short after he was [[Lavrentiy Beria#Arrest, trial and execution|executed several months later]] during a Soviet power struggle.{{sfn|Gaddis|2005|p=105}} The events led to the establishment of the ''[[Bundeswehr]]'', the West German military, in 1955.<ref>David K. Large, ''Germans to the Front: West German Rearmament in the Adenauer Era'' (U of North Carolina Press, 1996).</ref><ref>James G. Hershberg, "'Explosion in the Offing: German Rearmament and American Diplomacy, 1953β1955." ''Diplomatic History'' 16.4 (1992): 511β550.</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page