the country was denied admission to the European Economic Community in
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Yet it was a time of resurgence for the left in Western Europe, in the form of democratic socialist parties. Conservatives feared-unfairly, for the most part-that the socialist successes might lead to a softening of resistance to Moscow's siren calls. A case in point was the Ostpolitik of Social Democrat Willy Brandt, the dynamic former mayor of West Berlin who became West Germany's Chancellor in 1969. In fact, the goal of Brandt's opening to the East was not appeasement but the lifting of East-West tensions. Ironically, for all the conservative concerns in the West, Ostpolitik was seen in Moscow and other East bloc capitals as a subtle form of Western aggression. Nonetheless, there were a few promising signs that East-West detente could be made to work. In 1963 Britain, the U.S. and the Soviet Union signed the nuclear test-ban treaty. Also that year, emergency hot lines were installed in the White House and the Kremlin, thereby measurably reducing the possibility of an accidental nuclear holocaust. That likelihood was further reduced in 1964 when the Soviet leadership ousted the impulsive, belligerent Nikita Khrushchev in favor of the equally tough-minded but more phlegmatic Leonid Brezhnev. It was during Brezhnev's reign, however, that the Soviets began a massive military buildup that would ultimately lead to the regime's undoing.  2 of 5
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Politically, Europe faced years of troubling uncertainty and continuing cold war jitters. The erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961 had reminded the West that Moscow would use whatever means it took to keep the East bloc satellites under key and lock. Proof came in 1968, when the Soviets and their allies invaded Czechoslovakia to oust the reform-minded regime of Alexander Dubcek. A chilling frost ended what had been heralded as the "Prague spring," an experiment in humanized communism. 