World: Europe: The End of World War II

AS the blue-and-gold Lufthansa jetliner rolled to a stop at Cologne airport late last week, the waiting crowd broke into a cheer. Out stepped Foreign Minister Walter Scheel. He brought home from Moscow two red-bound leather volumes containing a renunciation-of-force treaty between West Germany and the Soviet Union that he and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko had initialed only a few hours earlier. Perhaps unconsciously, Scheel spoke of accord in a phrase reminiscent of Bismarck's famed injunction to keep the line open to St. Petersburg, then Imperial Russia's capital. Said Scheel: "We have opened a gate to the East."

Actually, the West...