For the United States, “the German question” between 1949 and 1968 was actually a cluster of interrelated problems. First and foremost, American policymakers worked to integrate the newly created Federal Republic of Germany into a Western European community and, more loosely, into a world community of democratic, market-oriented nations. Economic integration was quickly followed up with an urgent push to include a rearmed Germany into an undermanned Western alliance system. “Double containment,” as this intricate multipronged approach has since been called, was designed both to stave off the Soviet threat and to clip the wings of German nationalism. It was, however, more complicated than that. Despite its essentially supranational and international thrust, this policy of integration also sought to make use of nationalist sentiment by dangling the lure of unity before the German people.

Policymakers in Washington played to nationalist feeling even though they approached German questions from a global perspective in which the Soviet Union had assumed Germany's former role as the chief threat to the integrity of an open world system. With global issues uppermost in American minds, reunification was not high on Washington's list of priorities. In contrast, Germans tended to focus more narrowly on local problems, oscillating between a desire to become part of the West and a conflicting urge to see their nation reunified. Although Americans thought this preoccupation with national identity was neurotic, they also felt they had to address it in some way lest a deeply rooted German nationalism once again unleash the furies of particularism throughout Europe.