Post Wall, Post Square: Rebuilding the World after 1989

The mood was much less positive in Moscow. Kohl was moving too fast and planning Europe’s future ‘without taking the view of the other Germany at all into account’, declared Vadim Zagladin, one of Gorbachev’s advisers. The Soviet leader – on a state visit in Rome – told Italian premier Giulio Andreotti bluntly that ‘two Germanies remained the reality’ and that ‘the reunification of FRG and GDR was no topical issue’. Kohl, he said, was ‘playing the revanchist tune for the forthcoming elections’. Later in the press conference, Gorbachev added, ‘Let history decide. It is not necessary to initiate something or push forward half-baked processes.’[113] There was also a backlash in West European capitals. Thatcher let Kohl know in no uncertain terms that unification was ‘not on the agenda’ and French diplomats publicly expressed strong reservations about the chancellor’s ‘precipitate’ action.[114]

Kohl, it seemed, had unleashed a firestorm and the man who had to do the firefighting was Genscher. The foreign minister had been totally blindsided just a few days before when the chancellor dropped his ‘Ten Point’ bombshell. Obliged to grin and bear it, Genscher congratulated Kohl through gritted teeth in the Bundestag and then told the world that the policy laid out in the Ten Points represented nothing less than ‘the continuity of our foreign, security and Deutschland policies’. Of course, Genscher resented that he had been sidelined as Kohl’s coalition partner.[115] Yet he had done the same to Kohl on the Prague balcony a few months before. And they had different instincts about how unification should be achieved – Kohl favouring the Adenauer line of Westbindung, drawing East Germany into the Federal Republic and into the Western alliance, whereas Genscher was more inclined to extending Ostpolitik into a full pan-European architecture. But despite their rivalry, despite their differences on means, the two men fundamentally agreed on ends, namely German unity. For Genscher, this was a matter of both head and heart. That’s why, swallowing his pride, he was willing to play firefighter and try to bring London, Paris and Moscow onside.

Technically, of course, the foreign minister did not have responsibility for Deutschlandpolitik because inner-German relations did not constitute ‘foreign’ policy. Nevertheless, Genscher was now drawn fully into the unification issue because of the external complications it engendered – relations with the FRG’s neighbours, Four Powers’ rights, the prerogatives of the superpowers, the domain of international organisations as well as questions of territory and security. As Genscher saw things, it was his duty to build international consensus and pave the way to unity.

Moscow would obviously be the most problematic obstacle, requiring the greatest amount of persuasion. What’s more, the Soviets held strong cards: they were a nuclear superpower, one of the Four Powers and had more than half a million troops and dependants stationed in the GDR. This gave the Kremlin several options. It could press for a pan-European structure. Or offer Germany unity for neutrality, as Stalin tried in 1952. It could simply say nyet to unity, or decide to use force to hold the GDR in place. But were things really secure in the Kremlin? Would perestroika be reversed? What about the deteriorating economy? Could secessionist demands from the republics be contained? Might there even be a coup?

And so, a week later, on 5 December Genscher flew into the Soviet capital – on a dark, gloomy afternoon in the middle of a snowstorm. As his motorcade crawled into the city, it passed another heading in the opposite direction towards the airport. This was Krenz, Modrow and other SED dignitaries who had just finished their own business in the Kremlin. Genscher speculated wryly that the Soviets had orchestrated events so as to avoid an awkward German–German encounter in the airport.[116]

Tension was therefore already in the air. And what followed proved to be the ‘most disagreeable encounter’ with the Soviets that Genscher could ever remember. So ill-tempered was his meeting with Gorbachev that he later asked the German notetaker to write up the meeting in a somewhat more emollient tone.[117] ‘Never before and never afterwards have I experienced Gorbachev so upset and so bitter,’ Genscher remarked in his memoirs. The Soviet leader was unable to restrain his anger at Kohl’s lack of consultation. According to Chernyaev he had been fuming for days, though this may have been due to pressures at home as well as the worsening situation in Eastern Europe at large. Whatever was going on in Gorbachev’s mind, Genscher was a convenient target for his wrath. In fact, Genscher felt, at times Gorbachev was so furious that it was simply impossible to discuss important issues with any seriousness.[118]

Genscher, however, was not flustered and loyally defended the chancellor’s policies. He underlined that Germany would never ‘go it alone’, that the Federal Republic was firmly tied into the EC and CSCE (i.e. the Helsinki Final Act), and that the ‘growing together of the two German states’ would have to be fitted into these frameworks. He also affirmed Bonn’s Politik der Verantwortung (‘politics of responsibility’) and that the FRG adhered to its treaty commitments, not least on the Polish border. This, he said, was important to stress in the light of Germany’s ‘history, its geopolitical position and the size of its population’. Gorbachev let him say his piece but then retorted angrily that Kohl’s Ten Points were wholly ‘irresponsible’ and a grave ‘political mistake’ which presented an ‘ultimatum’ to the East German government; Kohl was trying to prescribe a particular ‘internal order’ for the GDR, a sovereign state. ‘Even Hitler didn’t allow himself anything like that!’ Shevardnadze piped up.

By now seething, Gorbachev denounced Kohl’s programme as ‘genuine revanchism’, delivered as an ‘address to subjects’ and nothing less than a ‘funeral’ of the European process. He was getting into his stride. The Ten Points were ‘irresponsible’. German policy was in a total ‘mess’ (Wirrwarr). ‘The Germans are such an emotional people.’ Don’t forget, he added, ‘where headless politics had led in the past’.

Genscher cut in: ‘We know our historic mistakes and have no intention of repeating them.’

‘You,’ said Gorbachev, ‘had a direct role in developing Ostpolitik. Now you are endangering all this,’ just for the sake of ‘election battles’. He kept criticising Kohl for ‘running around’ and ‘taking hasty actions’ which ‘undermined the pan-European process that had been laboriously developed’.

Gorbachev also tried to drive a wedge between Genscher and Kohl. ‘By the way, Herr Genscher, it seems to me that you only found out about the Ten Points in the Bundestag speech.’

Genscher admitted that this was true but added ‘It’s our internal affair. We resolve this ourselves.’

Well, said Gorbachev drily, ‘you can see for yourself that your “internal affairs” has annoyed everybody else’.

The Soviet leader ended with something like an olive branch. ‘Don’t take everything I said personally, Herr Genscher. You know that we have a different relationship to you than to others.’ The implication seemed clear: Genscher was not Kohl. The foreign minister was getting it in the neck because the chancellor was not present. Gorbachev felt frankly betrayed by Kohl. It was a far cry from their balmy June evening on the banks of the Rhine. Relations would clearly take time and effort to repair.[119]

Although Gorbachev and the Soviet Union were the main problem, Kohl and Genscher faced problems on their Western front as well. And in London there was a leader as fiery as Gorbachev and at least as critical of any moves towards German unification – not least because Margaret Thatcher was hung up on history. Born in 1925 and raised in the provincial Lincolnshire town of Grantham, she had come of age during Hitler’s war, amid the mythology of Britain’s ‘finest hour’. This permanently coloured her view of post-war Germany. Trained first as a research chemist and as a barrister, she had entered Parliament as a Tory MP in 1959 at the height of the Cold War and became prime minister twenty years later, just as détente was freezing over. Since then, her decade in power had been marked by a radical programme of economic liberalisation and a forceful nationalism for which she gained (and relished) the nickname ‘Iron Lady’.

Her foreign policy was traditional, built around ideas of a balance of power. Thatcher was passionate about the ‘special relationship’, assiduously cultivating Ronald Reagan. She was equally ardent about nuclear deterrence, advocating the modernisation of NATO’s theatre nuclear forces and pushing through the deployment of cruise missiles despite fierce opposition from the left. She was as convinced as Reagan that communism was an ideology of the past and therefore endorsed Gorbachev’s reform policies, though keeping a wary eye on their consequences for Soviet power. Within Europe she was a ferocious critic of deeper economic and political integration, especially the Delors Plan, although she did sign up enthusiastically to the single market in 1986. And as the Soviet bloc crumbled in 1989, her biggest fear was that a new German hegemon could destroy the European equilibrium, painfully constructed over four decades. The combination of a single currency and a unified, sovereign Germany in the centre of Europe would be simply ‘intolerable’, she told Mitterrand on 1 September. She had, she said, ‘read much on the history of Germany during her vacation and was very disturbed’.[120] Three weeks later, in similar vein, she informed Gorbachev that ‘although NATO traditionally made statements supporting Germany’s aspirations to be reunited, in practice we would not welcome it at all’.[121] In other words, even before the Wall had fallen, she was clearly ‘on the warpath’ against German unity.[122]

Thatcher seemed to object to pretty much everything, and didn’t hide it. Yet she had little to offer in the way of practical alternatives. She longed to see the end of communism but dreaded the effect this might have on the European power balance. When Genscher visited her on the day after Kohl’s speech, she worried about Gorbachev’s fate. If Germany unified, the Soviet leader fell and the Warsaw Pact disintegrated, what then? It was imperative, she lectured Genscher, to first develop democratic structures in Eastern Europe. She insisted that political freedom in Eastern Europe would only be sustainable if economic liberalisation were properly implemented, and blamed Gorbachev for being too fixated with repairing socialism rather than ditching it. The changes now under way in Eastern Europe, geared towards freedom and democracy, must take place against a ‘stable background’. In other words, she said, ‘one should leave the other things as they are’. History had shown that Central Europe’s problems always started with minority issues; if one tinkered with borders, everything would unravel. That was how the First World War had broken out. Ten days ago in Paris, she asserted, unification and borders had not been on the table; now Kohl’s speech had shaken all the foundations.

Genscher tried to calm her down by refocusing on the topic of conventional arms-reduction talks to stabilise the heart of Europe. He, of course, wanted to persuade the Soviets to withdraw their troops from eastern Germany. But Thatcher jumped on that. She didn’t want Soviet troop withdrawals if that meant the Americans would pull out as well. For her, it was not just a question of strategic balance or European security, the troop question was also about keeping the Germans under control.[123]

Britain’s Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd sat in on the whole meeting, but hardly said a word. He had little opportunity whenever Thatcher went on the rampage. But the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) was genuinely concerned about the line Thatcher was taking.[124] An internal FCO memo on the day of Genscher’s visit acknowledged that Germans ‘see our position as being outside the mainstream’. As indeed did Washington: the president was ‘taking his distance from us on the Warsaw Pact and on German reunification’. As for Thatcher’s obsession with Gorbachev’s political fragility, the FCO considered this greatly exaggerated because Gorbachev himself was ‘not intervening to stop communism being swept away in Eastern Europe’. So there was a real danger that ‘we are being plus royaliste que le roi’. And they warned against a status quo policy and being left behind by not being seen to share Bush’s vision of a Europe ‘whole and free’. If, in extremis, the PM decided to block German unification by asserting Britain’s position as one of the four victor powers, ‘we should not count on carrying anyone else with us’.[125]

Thatcher was simply not on the same page as her diplomats. Not only was she blunt with Genscher, she did not hesitate to speak out against Kohl, whom she disliked personally – a fat, sausage-munching, Teutonic stereotype – as well as resenting him as the embodiment of the colossus of Europe.[126]

The British prime minister was the most outspoken Western critic of the Ten Points but Genscher also had difficulties with the French president. Mitterrand was shocked at being left in the dark by Kohl – especially after their intense discussions throughout November, in Bonn, Paris and Strasbourg. Kohl had even written to him at length on the 27th about the future of economic and monetary union without dropping a hint of what he would announce next day about unification. Nevertheless, biting his tongue, Mitterrand told the press in Athens where he was on a state visit, that although he expected the Four Powers to be kept in the loop by Bonn, the German desire for unity was ‘legitimate’ and that he had no intention of opposing their aspirations. What’s more, he said, he trusted the Germans to make sure that the other European peoples would not be confronted by German faits accomplis made in secret.[127]

When Mitterrand met Genscher in the Elysée Palace, their forty-five-minute encounter was polite but rather distant. Invited to speak first, Genscher highlighted his credentials as a European. He insisted that the FRG was fully committed to EC integration and willing to engage with the East. He believed that the destiny of Germany must be tied to the destiny of Europe. European reunification could not happen without German reunification. Nor did he want the dynamism of the EC’s integration process to be left behind because of the energy devoted to reshaping East–West relations. And NATO, too, should get engaged – not least because America’s presence in Europe and on German soil was an ‘existential necessity’.[128]

Mitterrand heard him out but then delivered his own lecture, expressed with mounting intensity, as he reflected on his personal odyssey through two world wars. Born in 1916 – the year of the Franco-German slaughterhouse at Verdun – Mitterrand was himself a veteran of 1940. Like any patriotic Frenchman, he had historical obsessions about Germany. But, like most of France’s post-war leadership, especially since the Adenauer–de Gaulle entente of 1963, he was deeply committed to Franco-German reconciliation, to fostering the ‘special relationship’ between Paris and Bonn and to the leading role of their two countries in European integration.[129] Although a socialist and therefore ideologically at odds with the Christian Democrat chancellor, he and Kohl had become good friends – famously standing hand in hand in 1984 at the Verdun memorial. Despite such public displays of friendship, however, Mitterrand remained ambivalent about the German state.[130]

German unity looked fine as long as it remained a distant prospect. Mitterrand had told Thatcher in September that he was less alarmed than she, not only because he believed that the EC, and specifically the single currency, would act as a restraint, but also because he did not envisage German unification happening quickly. Gorbachev, he told her confidently, would never accept a united Germany in NATO and Washington would never tolerate the FRG leaving the Alliance: ‘Alors, ne nous inquiétons pas: disons qu’elle se fera quand les Allemands le décideront, mais en sachant que les deux Grands nous en protégeront’ (‘So let’s not worry: let’s say it will happen when the Germans decide, but in the knowledge that the two superpowers will protect us from them’).[131]

But now, Mitterrand told Genscher, things had clearly moved on. With Europe in flux, old territorial questions had been awakened. One could not even rule out a return to 1913, and a world on the brink of war. It was imperative that unification, whenever it occurred, should be caught in the safety net of an even more consolidated European Community. If that integration process was disrupted he feared that the continent might return to days of alliance politics. And he made clear to Genscher that he saw Kohl as being disruptive, acting as the ‘brake’ on EMU. Up to now, he added, the Federal Republic had always been a motor in the European unification project. Now it was stalling. And if Germany and France did not see eye to eye at the Strasbourg summit in December, others would profit. Thatcher would not only block any progress on Europe but would also gang up with others against German unity.

Unlike Thatcher, Mitterrand accepted that German unity was unstoppable and, indeed, justifiable. But he insisted that this unstoppable process must be properly integrated within the EC project. ‘Europe’ not only helped absorb his ingrained suspicions of the Germans, he also felt it gave him leverage over Bonn: that was the benefit of subsuming the Deutschmark in the single currency. Whereas Thatcher, who was far more Germanophobe, had no such weapons in her armoury: she loathed the European project and abhorred a single currency. Indeed she was increasingly on the margins of European politics. Not that this worried the British prime minister. Indeed she seemed to love it when she was in a minority, convinced of her own rectitude.[132]

‘Helmut! Can we start?’ – ‘I’m coming, I’m coming!’: Priorities at the European Council in Strasbourg

This was the atmosphere in which the EC leaders gathered in Strasbourg on 8–9 December. Now Kohl, not Genscher, had to face the music – and he didn’t enjoy it. As he wrote later in his memoirs, he could not remember such a ‘tense’ and ‘unfriendly’ meeting. It was like being in court.[133] Unification was on everyone’s mind. Long-standing colleagues who had appeared so trusting of the FRG’s European-ness, now seemed terrified that Bonn would go its own way – like a train that was suddenly moving faster and faster and might go in a totally different direction from what anyone had expected. Kohl felt that the room was full of questions: was he still trustworthy? Was the FRG still a reliable partner? Would the Germans remain loyal to the West? Only the leaders of Spain and Ireland embraced the idea of German unification wholeheartedly. Kohl felt Belgium and Luxembourg would not cause problems. But everyone else had their fears and did not conceal them. Giulio Andreotti of Italy openly warned of ‘pan-Germanism’; even Kohl’s fellow Christian Democrat, Ruud Lubbers of the Netherlands, could not hide his distaste for Germany’s unification ambitions.[134]

But it was Thatcher who really got under Kohl’s skin. Her hobby horse throughout the two days was ‘inviolability of borders’. She brought it up in the first working meeting, and Kohl was greatly irritated because he sensed that her target was not Poland’s western border but the divide between East and West Germany. Over dinner that evening, haggling over the wording of the summit communiqué, Thatcher even threatened to veto the whole thing if the CSCE principle of ‘inviolability of borders’ was not explicitly spelled out. Kohl again lost his temper, angrily reminding her that EC heads of government had on numerous occasions affirmed what she was now questioning: German unification through self-determination according to the Helsinki Final Act. Thatcher erupted: ‘We have beaten the Germans twice! And now they’re back again!’ Kohl bit his lip. He knew she was saying blatantly what many others around the table thought.[135]

He was particularly sensitive because he knew Thatcher and Mitterrand had held their own tête-à-tête earlier in the day. What he did not know was that during the meeting, she pulled out of her famous handbag two maps showing Germany’s borders in 1937 and 1945. She pointed to Silesia, Pomerania and East Prussia: ‘They will take all of this, and Czechoslovakia.’ Mitterrand played along with her at times – for instance saying that ‘we must create special relations between France and Great Britain just as in 1913 and 1938’ – but he also stated calmly that unification could not be prevented, adding ‘we must discuss with the Germans and respect the treaties’ that had affirmed the principle of unification. But Thatcher would have none of it: ‘If Germany controls events, she will get Eastern Europe in her power, just as Japan has done in the Pacific, and that will be unacceptable from our point of view. The others must join together to avoid it.’[136]

But they didn’t. When the communiqué was published it was clear that France and Germany had stuck together, firmly committed to both monetary union and German unification. What’s more, the others who had griped were all now on board.

On monetary union, the EC 12 ignored vehement objections from Thatcher, and took a new and important step towards creating a central bank and a common currency. They agreed to call a special intergovernmental conference in December 1990 – after completing closer coordination of economic policies under the Delors Report’s stage 1, scheduled for July, and getting through the FRG elections (to satisfy Kohl). Clearly the recent upheavals in Eastern Europe had added impetus to economic integration. Mitterrand argued that the Community needed to be strengthened to face the challenge of helping the ‘emerging democracies of Eastern Europe as they move toward greater freedom and to handle the growing prospect of German reunification’. This French-led consensus left Thatcher in her familiar position as the sole opponent of accelerated integration, extending also to her refusal to sign a Community Charter of Social Rights that everyone else happily approved. Its broad endorsement of labour, welfare and other workers’ rights was supported as an important counterweight to the strongly pro-business orientation of much of the integration agenda.[137]

In a separate statement, EC leaders also formally endorsed the idea of a single German state, but they attached some conditions which were intended to ensure that German unity did not cause European instability. ‘We seek the strengthening of the state of peace in Europe in which the German people will regain its unity through free self-determination. This process should take place peacefully and democratically, in full respect of the relevant agreements and treaties and of all the principles defined by the Helsinki Final Act, in a context of dialogue and East–West cooperation. It also has to be placed in the perspective of European integration.’ In other words, Western integration and pan-European security, underwritten by the United States, were integral to any process of German unification.

The EC statement did not ignore their ‘common responsibility’ for closer cooperation with the USSR and Eastern Europe in what was called ‘this decisive phase in the history of Europe’. In particular, it stressed the EC’s determination to support economic reform in these countries. There was also an affirmation of the European Community’s future role: ‘It remains the cornerstone of a new European architecture and, in its will to openness, a mooring for a future European equilibrium.’[138]

Kohl was enormously relieved. Despite all the arguments, his Ten Point gamble had paid off. With Europe and America fully behind him,[139] it seemed that he was now free to develop Deutschlandpolitik in the way he wanted.

*

As soon as he got back to Bonn, Kohl started planning the details of his meeting with Hans Modrow in Dresden, which was scheduled for 19 December. But no West German chancellor could take anything for granted. That seemed to be the lesson of forty years of history – with the FRG always beholden to the occupying powers, always bearing the burden of the Hitler era, always edgy about its lack of sovereignty.