In its time, Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik was extremely contentious; German politics was polarized over the issue, and the chancellor was nearly ousted in April 1972. In the 1990s, journalists and scholars sparred over whether Ostpolitik had slowed or accelerated the collapse of communism. The rancor has subsided, but interpretations of Brandt's policies still vary widely. Some stress Brandt's pragmatism in adjusting to the hard realities of a divided continent. Others treat Ostpolitik as a visionary strategy for overcoming barriers between East and West Germans. Political scientist Lily Gardner Feldman highlights the moral dimensions of German policy—before, during, and after Brandt's time in office from 1969 till 1974 (Germany's Foreign Policy of Reconciliation: From Enmity to Amity [2012]). Benedikt Schoenborn also takes reconciliation as his central motif, but grounds it in a focused analysis of Brandt's motives and career. The result is an incisive and highly original reading of German diplomacy.

Schoenborn's bold stroke is to treat Ostpolitik as a form of conflict resolution. Drawing on the work of numerous political theorists, he enumerates four stages of successful reconciliation: (1) acknowledging coexistence; (2) establishing a framework for reconciliation; (3) undertaking social and political changes to achieve reconciliation; and (4) full mutual acceptance. Schoenborn does not claim that Ostpolitik hit every milestone or that Brandt was consciously pursuing a long-term road map; he points to the chancellor's reliance on empathy and intuition to feel his way. Nevertheless, the theoretical concepts Schoenborn borrows from political science—the distinction between “thin” and “thick” reconciliation, for example—supply a useful vocabulary for evaluating Ostpolitik.

The author rightly notes that the German terms for reconciliation (Versöhnung or Aussöhnung) were commonplace in the postwar decades; many West Germans surely did favor reconciliation with their communist neighbors. But it is hard to be certain what they meant by this, since the concept is decidedly agnostic about the origins of a conflict. Did reconciliation mean overcoming the Cold War tensions that had torn Europe in two? Or did it entail moral introspection and an earnest engagement with the historical wrongs inflicted by Germans in East Europe? The religious overtones of Versöhnung might imply a reckoning with the past, but could just as easily involve pressuring the other side to forgive and forget prematurely. Schoenborn makes the case that Brandt personally acknowledged the weight of German crimes—as demonstrated in numerous speeches and his comportment at the Warsaw Ghetto monument. Yet the actual content of the 1970 Moscow and Warsaw Treaties addressed only present-day concerns such as borders, and West German officials repeatedly stressed their intention to look forward and not backward.

The inherent vagueness of Versöhnung is not a significant problem for Schoenborn's argument. Stabilizing European peace in the 1970s was no small feat; and if it was not tantamount to full East–West reconciliation, it was a step in that direction. What mattered about the Eastern Treaties, he explains, was their function as “icebreakers” (92). German diplomacy made a difference—first by recognizing the Soviet Bloc regimes as conversation partners (stage one of reconciliation), and then by crafting top-level treaty frameworks with Moscow, Warsaw, East Berlin, and Prague (stage two). The path was now clear, in theory, for deeper civil society conversations about past wrongs and for haggling over the specific terms of normalization (stage three). Schoenborn concedes that the promise of Ostpolitik went unfulfilled in the 1970s and 1980s. But it may well be that communist regimes were ill-prepared for “deep” reconciliation in the first place, given their tight control of civil society. After all, the Soviet Bloc regimes cynically papered over the restitution claims of their own citizens by demanding import credits from the Federal Republic in place of compensation.

Schoenborn's writing is concise and uncluttered; the thrust of the book is interpretive rather than expository, and the narrative chapters make ongoing use of theoretical insights outlined at the book's outset. The author may be trying too hard to shoehorn every East–West interaction (such as the ill-fated Kassel summit) into the reconciliation model. He also gives short shrift to Protestant and Catholic initiatives toward Poland in the years 1965–1967, prior to Brandt's Eastern Treaties, perhaps because they work against the model's insistence on the priority of political “icebreaking.” (For a recent study of these well-known German-Polish exchanges, see Annika Frieberg, Peace at all Costs: Intellectuals, Journalists, and Media in Postwar Polish-German Reconciliation [2019]). Nevertheless, Schoenborn's insightful account is alive to the complexity and ambiguity of German policy. In examining Brandt's efforts to salvage the remnants of Ostpolitik during his later years as SPD chair (1974–1987), Schoenborn observes that the ex-chancellor himself worried that he may have “dealt with Eastern grassroots movements too cautiously” (174). This is an admirably balanced account, highlighting the significant achievements of Brandt's chancellorship without overselling the point.

Diplomatic history is sometimes misconstrued as an inherently positivist genre, a mere recitation of telegrams sent back and forth between national capitals. Those familiar with the field of U.S. foreign relations know better, given the tremendous range of creative methodologies employed by its practitioners. Schoenborn's book provides a welcome reminder of how much a well-researched account of high politics—drawing on personal papers, parliamentary records, and the documents of multiple foreign ministries—can contribute to an understanding of postwar West German values and aspirations. With its distinctive theoretical toolkit and well-crafted arguments, Reconciliation Road amply illustrates why it is time to reinvigorate the study of German foreign relations.