> For the advocates of Ostpolitik – the new “eastern policy” of rapprochement towards the Soviet Union and its allies including East Germany, launched the previous year under chancellor Willy Brandt – this was a moment of supreme political consequence. Schiller, an economist by training, was to describe it as part of an effort at “political and human normalisation with our Eastern neighbours”.

The West German bureaucrats of the time were dangerously naïve hippies in pinstripe suits. They believed that by drawing Russia into trade with the West, it would inevitably become democratic and liberal. (They were warned, repeatedly, both at the time and throughout the following decades.)

That was the "we". I hope "we" know better now.