colloquium lecture
18:15 pm, IW3 0330 / hybrid
Introduction for students.
Muriel Nägler (FSO)
colloquium lecture
18:15 pm, IW3 0330 / hybrid
Introduction for students.
Muriel Nägler (FSO)
colloquium lecture
18:15 pm, IW3 0330 / hybrid
Introduction for students.
Muriel Nägler (FSO)
colloquium lecture
18:15 pm, IW3 0330 / hybrid
Introduction for students.
Muriel Nägler (FSO)
colloquium lecture
18:15 pm, IW3 0330 / hybrid
Introduction for students.
Muriel Nägler (FSO)
colloquium lecture
18:15 pm, IW3 0330 / hybrid
Introduction for students.
Muriel Nägler (FSO)
How Soviet Gas Came to Germany: Between Dependency and Ostpolitik (1966ff.)
Research project by Prof. Dr. Susanne Schattenberg
Today, one might rub one's eyes in amazement at how Germany, but also other European states, could become so dependent on Russian gas. In the project I investigated the question of what the motives were for the first gas deals on the part of the Soviet Union on the one hand and on the part of West Germany on the other. In West Germany, it was Bavaria that urgently needed cheap energy and wanted to break the monopoly of both the Ruhr area and the Anglo-American multinationals. This request by the then Economics Minister Otto Schedl (CSU) had nothing to do with Brandt's Ostpolitik, but was also based on a strategy paper from the White House. In the Soviet Union, ministers had realised that they needed both Western technologies and valuta to develop their vast energy resources and pacify the population. Nevertheless, it took a long time before the Politburo in Moscow got round to also courting the former arch-enemy FRG with gas. At no time was there any intention of making the FRG dependent. Rather, there was great concern that a renewed embargo would cut it off from further West German pipe deliveries. The mistrust that the partner might not be reliable was much greater on the Soviet side than on the West German side.