The Luxembourg Agreement of 1952 provided (West) German Holocaust reparations to Israel and international Jewish groups, but it did not lead to full diplomatic relations between Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany. Israeli authorities did not desire such ties. Some years later, the situation was reversed, and the Israeli government wanted diplomatic relations, which West Germany was reluctant to grant, fearing a backlash from Arab states, which might then recognize the German Democratic Republic.

Conventional wisdom holds that Ludwig Erhard's government finally offered Israel full relations in 1965 chiefly as a reaction to increasing East German ties with Egypt. Electoral concerns played an additional, secondary role. In this intriguing, but not fully convincing book, Hannfried von Hindenburg argues that West German public opinion regarding engagement with the Nazi past and the Holocaust changed significantly during the early 1960s. Furthermore, as part of that historical shift, the German people advocated a foreign policy that prioritized moral confrontation with the Nazi past over the drive for German unity, and this reorientation included reconciliation with Israel. Pressure from “policy entrepreneurs”—particularly academics, trade unionists, writers, and religious leaders—was, in Hindenburg's view, the key factor that finally induced the federal government to establish diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.

In trying to explain West German policy makers' ongoing fixation on reunification, Hindenburg turns to German historiography. He situates pro-unification policy in a Rankean and Hegelian tradition that promoted the cult of the state and “historicism.” Not only is such a claim not proven, but also it would have been extraordinary if the federal government had not prioritized the goal of German unification, regardless of nineteenth-century statist philosophy. Hindenburg's seeming bewilderment that efforts for reunification formed the focus of West German foreign policy (alongside confirmation of the western orientation of the country) is misplaced. Such an orientation was natural and popular, and Hindenburg overstates the extent of public disinterest in pro-unification policy in the 1960s.

Hindenburg is much more successful in charting the expanding public discourse about the Holocaust and increasing interest in Israel. As is generally known, events such as the staging of Rolf Hochhuth's Der Stellvertreter, the publication of The Diary of Anne Frank, and the trial of Adolf Eichmann fostered public dialogue in West Germany about the Holocaust. More groups engaged with the German past, and more West Germans became interested in Jewish and Israeli affairs, as Hindenburg demonstrates. Some formed or joined clubs devoted to Israeli issues or to interconfessional dialogue. But increased public discussion of Germany's past did not necessarily lead to closer ties to the state of Israel, and the chancellor and foreign ministry did not initiate formal relations before 1965. Erhard is shown to have taken such a step only when boxed in by the limitations of the Hallstein Doctrine and facing the prospect of a federal election.

Hindenburg's exposition is interesting, but evidentiary absences limit the effectiveness of his argument. He seeks to depict a renaissance of civil society in the post-Adenauer era and the emergence of a widespread, progressive popular discourse on German foreign policy, particularly concerning Israel. He then largely credits this popular discourse with Erhard's decision to offer diplomatic relations to Israel. The connection between civil society and the chancellor is not persuasively made, however. Erhard was influenced chiefly by high-ranking Christian Democratic politicians behind closed doors, not discourses in the public sphere. Moreover, in Hindenburg's account, vociferous and influential voices of dissent are largely and curiously absent, even among Christian Democrats and Free Democrats (erroneously called Liberal Democrats). At the same time, some conservatives may have supported ties with Israel not because they wished to make amends for the Nazi years, but rather because they saw Israel as a genuine Cold War ally of the west in the Middle East or because they were concerned about American Jewry. Bundestag deputies are significant in Hindenburg's analysis, but here, too, the author has been too selective. Nearly absent are conservative backbenchers from the governing parties and internal party debates. Aside from cabinet members and parliamentary group chairmen, Bundestag president Eugen Gerstenmaier of the CDU's more liberal wing figures prominently. Among SPD members, Herbert Wehner and Carlo Schmid appear in the narrative; and Christian Democrats Franz Böhm and Ferdinand Friedensburg—both long-standing friends of Israel and/or the Jewish community—make very brief appearances. It is far from certain that these men were highly representative, however. Presumably, a wide spectrum of opinion existed even within the parties represented in Erhard's governing coalition. Moreover, if pressure from below was so influential on Erhard, did the political parties and individual politicians also feel compelled to change their stances before the September 1965 election? Did the Israel question figure into CDU and FDP campaign strategy?

Additionally, the organization of Demonstrating Reconciliation is tedious and potentially undermines the author's own argument. He divides each chronological chapter into several thematic subsections that are consistently divided into sub-subsections entitled “The Governmental Level,” “The Domestic Level,” and “The International Level.” Such structure prioritizes analysis over narrative. The weakest of the three sections is the one most central to the originality of Hindenburg's argument: the domestic level. Even in that section, the strongest evidence points to political party concerns rather than widespread pressure from the masses. Repeatedly, diplomacy and high politics have the greater impact.

Hindenburg's stated goal is to explain “Germany's Israel policy in the late 1950s and early 1960s neither primarily by patterns of government interaction in the international system nor by the immediate impact of the Third Reich legacy.” He wishes “to factor the domestic level into the analytical equation” (p. 5). Though he presents the domestic level as a factor—and certainly illustrates the spread of reconciliatory sentiment among some politically aware segments of the West German population—he never convinces that popular pressure from below and a new, progressive paradigm were the critical elements that ultimately led to diplomatic relations between Bonn and Jerusalem in 1965. Diplomatic and political expediency remain primary.