Following the death of Stalin a (cautious) political thaw emerged in the Soviet Union. The new First Party Secretary, Nikita Khrushchev, was keen to reach out to foreign governments so as to try and improve the Soviet Union's international standing. In September 1955, following several months of "behind the scenes diplomacy", Chancellor Adenauer visited Moscow in order to agree the return home of the surviving German detainees still being held in the Soviet Union. Negotiations involved slightly under 10,000 prisoners of war who had arrived as members of Hitler's invading armies during the early 1940s and approximately 20,000 German civilians, many of whom had arrived as political refugees and fallen foul of Stalin's purges or been imprisoned in the atmosphere of intensified paranoia that took hold in the Soviet Union following the German invasion of 1941. As a result of the agreement concluded during Adenauer's 1955 visit to Moscow the detainees were permitted to return to Germany with effect from 7 October 1955. Leo Bauer was included.