March 25 -
French PresidentCharles De Gaulle opened his first presidential press conference with a statement that France supported German reunification "as the aim and normal destiny of the German people. provided that [they] do not question their present frontiers to the west, east, north or south." "Germany today is not a danger to us," said De Gaulle as he announced a new relationship with his World War II adversary[1]
May
May 5 – The
United States signed an agreement with West Germany, to share classified information about American nuclear weapons and to train German personnel in the operation of those weapons.[2]
May 27 -
Nikita Khrushchev's ultimatum for action on
Berlin expired. The Soviet premier had notified the Western powers on November 27, 1958, that if occupying armies were not withdrawn from West Berlin within six months, access through East Germany to the city would be closed off. The Geneva talks that began on May 11 halted action on the ultimatum. The late
U.S. Secretary of StateJohn Foster Dulles, who had said in 1958, "We are not afraid of May 27, 1959", was buried on that date, and the participants in the Geneva talks, including Soviet Foreign Minister
Andrei Gromyko, attended the ceremonies at Arlington.[3]
June
June 10 – A month after withdrawing a six-month ultimatum for the Western powers to withdraw from Berlin, Soviet Premier
Nikita Khrushchev issued a new deadline when talks broke down in Geneva. Khrushchev demanded that the U.S., Britain, and France withdraw their armies from West Berlin by June 10, 1960. The ultimatum was withdrawn on September 27 when Khrushchev met with President Eisenhower at Camp David.[4]
October
October 15 – Ukrainian nationalist
Stepan Bandera was murdered by a KGB agent
Bogdan Stashinsky in
Munich. The weapon was a gun that fired
hydrogen cyanide gas into Bandera's face. Stashinsky, who had killed newspaperman
Lev Rebet in the same manner in 1957, swallowed an antidote, and escaped.[5]
November
November 11 –
Werner Heyde, a psychiatrist who had guided the euthanizing of more than 100,000 handicapped persons in
Nazi Germany, surrendered to police in
Frankfurt after 13 years as a fugitive. As director of the Reich Association of Hospitals, Dr. Heyde had carried out "
Action T4". Men, women and children who were mentally or physically handicapped were the victims of Heyde's "mercy killing" from 1939 to 1942, usually by lethal injection. Sentenced in absentia to death, Heyde had been practicing in
Flensburg as "Dr. Fritz Sawade". On February 13, 1964, five days before his trial was to start, Dr. Heyde hanged himself at the prison in
Butzbach.[6]
November 25 – The first
Bilateral Investment Treaty in history was signed between West Germany and
Pakistan. BITs govern the terms of private investment between companies in the two nations, including provisions for arbitration of disputes.[7]
December
December 13 – Two apartment houses in a suburb of
Dortmund were levelled by an explosion at 3:12 a.m.. Of 34 people in the
Aplerbeck buildings, 26 were killed.[8]