During the 1950s, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), at the instigation of its Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, refuses the Soviet offer to make Germany a reunified but neutral State. Wilhelm Grewe, then Director of the Policy Division of the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Erich Mende, former President of the Parliamentary Group of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) in the Bundestag, and Franz-Josef Strauss, Prime Minister of Bavaria and former Defence Minister, comment in retrospect on Adenauer’s position.