This article reassesses Willy Brandt's Neue Ostpolitik of the 1970s. It does so by linking Brandt's policy initiative to earlier German Social Democratic plans to integrate Europe that had existed since the 1920s. The analysis suggests that Brandt's attempt to mediate between the West and the East in the 1970s revived earlier SPD policies to integrate Central European societies that had been divided after the world wars. Continuities between Social Democratic thought and practice are therefore highlighted – continuities that are usually overlooked in narratives that have stressed how dramatically German Social Democracy shifted from the interwar to the Cold War eras.
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