 In his opinion this search was crucial because West Germany was "now once more a focal point in the global civil war waged against democracy by the Soviet Union".Because of the "loss of orientation", he argued that West Germans were not standing up well to the "campaign of fear and hate carried into the Federal Republic from the East and welcomed within like a drug".He claimed that Konrad Adenauer's policy in the 1950s of not prosecuting those responsible for crimes against humanity and war crimes during the Third Reich was a wise one and that it was a huge mistake to begin prosecutions in the 1970s as it destroyed any prospect of positive feelings about the German past.