Until 1945, Germans had only lived in a shared country for 74 years. Perhaps that was why it was so easy for the western part of the nation to abandon the idea of unity. Konrad Adenauer (CDU), the first West German chancellor, believed that the Western powers represented the salvation of his federal republic. He didn't take the Stalin Note seriously, which held out the prospect of German unity for the price of neutrality in the early 1950s. As a result, the eastern Germans were left high and dry.
West Germany took the westward path, and by the 1970s, most people were using the concept of "brothers and sisters" in the two Germanys in an ironic sense. A sense of foreignness did exist, but it was also manufactured. Many West Germans wanted to see themselves as Europeans first and Germans second, primarily out of shame for the Nazi past. Many West Germans were fond of nonchalantly saying that they felt closer to a Briton or a Frenchman than to an East German.