Post Wall, Post Square

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.

One worry was the French announcement on 22 November that Mitterrand would visit the GDR on 20 December. Why now? Ostensibly his trip was simply to reciprocate Honecker’s visit to Paris in January 1988 but Kohl was aggrieved that he – the most interested party – was being upstaged. At a deeper level, he felt that the French president was being two-faced – professing support for Kohl and the drive for unity yet apparently cultivating a failing state for France’s own benefit. Moreover, on 6 December Mitterrand had met Gorbachev in Kiev to talk over Germany and Eastern Europe. Getting to the GDR ahead of Mitterrand was therefore the main reason for fixing the Kohl–Modrow meeting for the day before.[140]

On 8 December, there was another bombshell. Kohl learned that the ambassadors of the Four Powers were going to meet in Berlin to discuss the current situation. And not merely in Berlin but in the Allied Kommandatura – notorious to Germans as the centre of the occupation regime of the 1940s and a venue not used since 1971 when the Quadripartite Agreement on access to the city had been signed. The Soviets, apparently taking advantage of the EC summit, called for the discussion to be held on 11 December, just three days later. Asked if Bonn would be displeased about the meeting, a senior French official retorted: ‘That is the point of holding it.’ The Kohl government was indeed furious; its anger subsided only when the Americans promised to make sure that the agenda was limited to Berlin rather than straddling the German question as a whole. On the day itself, robust diplomacy by the Americans was required to kill off this rather crude Russian ploy to give the Four Powers a formalised role in deciding the German question.[141]

Coming just a few days after Gorbachev’s explosion to Genscher, the Soviet powerplay at the Kommandatura persuaded the chancellor that he had to make a determined effort to explain his Ten Points to Gorbachev and disarm Soviet criticism. He instructed Teltschik to draft a personal letter to the Soviet leader, eventually running to eleven typescript pages laying out a very carefully constructed argument.

In it Kohl explained that his motivation for the Ten Points had been to stop reacting and running after events, and instead to begin shaping future policies. But he also insisted that his speech was couched, and must be understood, within the wider international context. He referred specifically to the ‘parallel and mutually reinforcing’ process of East–West rapprochement as evidenced at Malta, closer EC integration as agreed in Strasbourg, and the likely shifts of the existing military alliances into more political forms and what he hoped would be the evolution of the CSCE process via a follow-up conference (Helsinki II). In these various processes, the chancellor emphasised, his pathway to unity would be embedded. He added that there was no ‘strict timetable’, nor had he set out any preconditions – as Gorbachev wrongly alleged. Rather the speech gave the GDR options and presented a gradual, step-by-step approach that offered a way to weave together a multitude of political processes. Kohl then summarised the ten points in detail before stating at the end of the letter that he sought to overcome the division of both Germany and Europe ‘organically’. There was no reason, he insisted, for Gorbachev to fear any German attempts at ‘going it alone’ (Alleingänge) or ‘special paths’ (Sonderwege), nor any ‘backward-looking nationalism’. In sum, declared Kohl, ‘the future of all Germans is Europe’. He argued that they were now at a ‘historical turning point for Europe and the whole world in which political leaders would be tested as to whether and how they had cooperatively addressed the problems’. In this spirit, he proposed that the two of them should discuss the situation face-to-face, and offered to meet Gorbachev wherever he wanted.[142]

This weighty letter, however, appeared to have no effect. On 18 December, the evening before his visit to Dresden, the chancellor received a letter from Gorbachev. Kohl assumed this would be a reply but Gorbachev addressed other issues.[143] In a brusque two pages the Soviet leader referred only to the Genscher visit and reiterated the USSR’s view that the Ten Points were virtually an ‘ultimatum’. Like the GDR, he said, the Soviets viewed this approach as ‘unacceptable’ and a violation of the Helsinki accords and also of agreements made in the current year. Finally, referring to his speech to the Central Committee on 9 December, Gorbachev highlighted the GDR’s Warsaw Pact membership and East Berlin’s status as a ‘strategic ally’ of the USSR, and he asserted that the Soviet Union would do anything to ‘neutralise’ all interference in East German affairs.[144]

Having heard much of this already via Genscher, Kohl was not seriously put out. What the letter seemed to show, he felt, was that Gorbachev was under the spell of Hans Modrow’s visit to Moscow on 4–5 December. Having not himself visited East Germany since the 7 October celebrations, the Soviet leader had no first-hand feeling of the situation or the popular mood. Taking his cue from Modrow – with his talk of reformed communism, continued East German independence, and a treaty community with the FRG – perhaps the Soviet leader was anxious to demonstrate his commitment to the GDR. That, at any rate, was the most positive reading of Gorbachev’s letter. A more pessimistic take was to focus on the Kremlin leadership’s rejection of the ‘tempo and finality’ of the German–German march toward unity and Gorbachev’s evident concern for ‘the geopolitical and strategic repercussions of this process for the Soviet Union itself’.[145]

The battle of the letters strengthened Kohl’s determination to exploit the window of opportunity before Christmas – to take the measure of Modrow and, at last, to immerse himself in East Germany’s revolution. Ironically, the West German chancellor had since the fall of the Wall travelled to West Berlin, Poland, France and most recently Hungary – but not to the GDR itself. This omission was finally rectified on the morning of 19 December when Kohl, Teltschik and a small entourage from the Chancellery landed in Dresden. Foreign Minister Genscher was not on board.

Kohl was a tactile politician, with keen antennae for public moods. He may have talked with passion about German unity to the Bundestag in Bonn but – as he admitted in his memoirs – it was when he encountered the cheering crowd at Dresden airport on that icy Tuesday morning that he really got the point. ‘There were thousands of people waiting amid a sea of black, red, and gold flags,’ Kohl recalled. ‘It suddenly became clear to me: this regime is finished. Unification is coming!’ As they descended the stairs onto the tarmac, there was another telltale sign: an ashen-faced Modrow gazing up at them with a ‘strained’ expression. Kohl turned round and murmured: ‘That’s it. It’s in the bag.’[146]

The leaders of the two Germanies sat next to each other in the car as they were driven at a snail’s pace into the city. They made small talk about their upbringing: Modrow, unmoving and self-conscious, went on about his working-class background and how he had risen from being a trained locksmith to completing an economics degree at the Humboldt University in Berlin. But Kohl was not really listening. His eyes were on the crowd lining the streets. He could barely believe what he saw. Nor could Teltschik, who captured the scenes in his diary: ‘whole workforces had come out of their factories – still wearing their blue overalls, women, children, entire school classes, amazingly many young people. They were clapping, waving big white cloths, laughing, thoroughly enjoying themselves. Some were simply standing there, crying. Joy, hope, expectation radiated from their faces – but also worry, uncertainty, doubt.’ In front of the Hotel Bellevue, where the formal talks were to take place, thousands more young people had congregated shouting ‘Helmut! Helmut!’ Some held banners proclaiming ‘Keine Gewalt’ (‘No violence’).[147]

Kohl and his aides felt exhilarated. During a brief pit stop in the hotel everyone had to unburden their feelings. They knew it was a ‘great day’, a ‘historical day’, an ‘experience that cannot be repeated’. After all that, the formal meetings were something of an anticlimax. The East German premier – stressed out, eyes down – went through his party piece about the need for economic aid and the reality of two German states – none of which particularly moved Kohl. When Modrow proposed that the Germanies first create a ‘community of treaties’ and then talk about what to do next ‘in about one or two years’, Kohl was incredulous. Demanding a frank and realistic talk about cooperation, he told Modrow there was no way he was coming up with DM 15 billion, nor would he allow any money, of whatever sum, to be designated by the historically loaded term ‘Lastenausgleich’ (‘compensation’).

By the end of the forty-five minutes a shaken Modrow realised that he had to operate on Kohl’s terms. That meant dropping his demand that the Joint Declaration they were going to sign should refer to a ‘treaty community originated by two sovereign states’. The chancellor totally rejected the language of ‘two states’ because that risked cementing the status quo and propping up the mere shell of an East German state. Instead, he focused on the German people and their exercise of the right to self-determination. By now Kohl was quite clear in his mind about what East Germans wanted: a single, unified Deutschland.[148]

Who’s boss? Kohl with Modrow in Dresden

After a rather stiff lunch and a press conference with journalists, the chancellor walked to the ruins of the Frauenkirche – destroyed in the Allied firebombing in 1945. In his memoirs Kohl claimed he had spoken to the crowd spontaneously, but in fact a speech had been prepared very carefully with Teltschik the night before. Amid the blackened stones of the eighteenth-century church – which had become a ‘memorial against war’ and a prime site in 1989 for anti-regime protests – Kohl climbed on a temporary wooden podium in the darkening winter evening. He looked out at a crowd of some 10,000. Many were waving banners and placards proclaiming such slogans as ‘Kohl, Kanzler der Deutschen’ (‘Kohl, Chancellor of the Germans’), ‘Wir sind ein Volk’ (‘We are one people’) and ‘Einheit jetzt’ (‘Unity now’).[149] But, presumably, blending into the mass of people were operatives of the Stasi and the Soviet security services – maybe even the KGB’s special agent in Dresden, Vladimir Putin.

His throat tight with emotion, the chancellor began slowly, feeling the weight of expectation. He conveyed warm regards to the people of Dresden from their fellow citizens in the Federal Republic. Exultant cheers. He gestured to show he had more to say. It got very quiet. Kohl then talked about peace, self-determination and free elections. He said a bit about his meeting with Modrow and talked of future economic cooperation and the development of confederative structures, and then moved to his climax. ‘Let me also say on this square, which is so rich in history, that my goal – should the historical hour permit it – remains the unity of our nation.’ Thunderous applause. ‘And, dear friends, I know that we can achieve this goal and that the hour will come when we will work together towards it, provided that we do it with reason and sound judgement and a sense for what is possible.’

Trying to calm the surging emotions, Kohl proceeded to speak matter-of-factly about the long and difficult path to this common future, echoing lines he had used in West Berlin the day after the fall of the Wall. ‘We, the Germans, do not live alone in Europe and in the world. One look at a map will show that everything that changes here will have an effect on all of our neighbours, those in the East and those in the West … The house of Germany, our house, must be built under a European roof. That must be the goal of our policies.’ He concluded: ‘Christmas is the festival of the family and friends. Particularly now, in these days, we are beginning to see ourselves again as a German family … From here in Dresden, I send my greetings to all our compatriots in the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany … God bless our German fatherland!’

By the time Kohl ended, the people felt serene – mesmerised by the moment. No one made any move to leave the square. Then an elderly woman climbed onto the podium, embraced him and, starting to cry, said quietly: ‘We all thank you!’[150]

That night and next morning Kohl talked with Protestant and Catholic clergy from the GDR and leaders of the newly formed opposition parties.[151] All his meetings in Dresden simply proved to Kohl that the GDR elites were in denial about the desires of the broader public. The crowds in Dresden did not want a modernised GDR standing alone, as touted by the opposition, or an update of the old regime, led by Modrow and the renamed communists (PDS) in some kind of confederation with the FRG. Twenty-four hours amid the people of Dresden convinced the West German chancellor that his Ten-Point Plan was already becoming out of date. In what was now a race against time, those ‘new confederative structures’ he had been advocating were too ponderous and would take too long. The chancellor no longer had any inclination to support the Modrow government – clearly a flimsy, transitional operation that lacked any kind of democratic legitimacy and was merely trying to save a sinking ship from going under fast.[152]

Kohl could suddenly see a window of opportunity opening up in the midst of crisis. The cheers of the East German crowds spurred him on and served as the justification for dramatic action. As would-be driver of the unification train, he was now ready to move the acceleration lever up several notches. And he was also energised by the overwhelmingly positive reception in the media for his Dresden visit – both at home and abroad. The common theme next day was that a West German chancellor had laid the foundation for unification, and had done so on East German soil.[153]

Dresden was the beginning of a veritable sea change in public perceptions of Kohl. He had bonded with the people. He had addressed the East Germans repeatedly as ‘dear friends’. He had clearly relished being bathed in the adulation of the masses. The chants of ‘Helmut! Helmut!’ revealed the familiarity East Germans had suddenly come to feel for the West German leader. With all this shown live on TV in both Germanies, the chancellor and this mood of exuberant patriotism flooded into German living rooms from Berlin to Cologne, from Rostock to Munich.[154]

There were, of course, similar cheers for Willy Brandt at an SDP rally in the GDR city of Magdeburg on the same day. Hans-Dietrich Genscher was also greeted enthusiastically when he returned to East Germany to speak in his home town, Halle, and in Leipzig on 17 December.[155] But Kohl in Dresden outshone both of them by miles. Rarely had the chancellor – often the butt of ridicule as a clumsy provincial – experienced such an ecstatic reaction in his own West Germany. With national elections in the FRG now less than a year away and German unity looming as the dominant issue, Dresden was the best public-relations coup that the chancellor could have dreamed of.

Nor was there much international competition. On 19 December, the same day Kohl spoke in Dresden, Eduard Shevardnadze became the first Soviet foreign minister to enter the precincts of NATO[156] – another symbolic occasion in the endgame of the Cold War. On the 20th François Mitterrand became the first leader of the Western allies to pay an official state visit to the East German capital – another bridging moment across the crumbling Wall.[157] But both of these were almost noises off compared with Kohl’s big bang. What’s more, these initiatives were striking mainly by reference to the past, whereas the chancellor was looking to the future and everyone now knew it.[158]