When Allied armies overran Hitler's Third Reich in 1945, it appeared unlikely that Germany would ever again play a major role in European security. Yet, within a few years, the onset of the Cold War, by producing sharp friction and deepening divisions between East and West, had changed this outlook. The result by 1950 was a wholly different European security system than anyone had envisioned just five years earlier. All the more remarkable was the emergence of two competing German states: a communist-dominated satellite of the Soviet Union in the East and a liberal democracy in the West aligned with France, Britain, and the United States. Although both seemed to experience a steady recovery of power and influence, the government in the West, the Federal Republic, by virtue of its population and resources, appeared destined to have the most impact on European security.

That a German state should do so represented a wholesale reversal of Allied expectations as World War II drew to a close. Among the members of the victorious Allied coalition, it was practically an article of faith that postwar Germany should undergo sweeping reforms and be subjected to radical reductions in its power and territory. A leading advocate of this approach was U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., whose name became almost synonymous with imposing a draconian peace settlement through deindustrialization.