The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945-1990. Vol. 2, 1968-1990: A Handbook (Publications of the German Historical Institute)

the united states and germany in the era of the cold war, 1945–1990 The close association between the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany was a key element in the international order of the Cold War era. No country had as wide-reaching or as profound an impact on the western portion of divided Germany as the United States. No country better exemplified the East– West conflict in American thinking than Germany. The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War examines all facets of German-American relations and interactions in the decades from the defeat of the Third Reich to Germany’s reunification in 1990. In addition to its comprehensive treatment of U.S.–West German political, economic, social, and cultural ties, The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War provides an overview of the more limited dealings between the United States and the communist German Democratic Republic. Detlef Junker, Curt-Engelhorn Chair in American History at the University of Heidelberg, received his PhD from the University of Kiel. He has also been affiliated with Yale University, the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and University of Stuttgart. From 1994 to 1999, he was director of the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. In 2003, he became the founding director of the interdisciplinary Heidelberg Center for American Studies. Junker’s research has focused on German politics in the interwar period, American foreign policy in the twentieth century, German-American relations, and the history of the Cold War. He is author and editor of numerous books and articles, among them Die Deutsche Zentrumspartei und Hitler 1932–33. Ein Beitrag zur Problematik des politischen Katholizismus in Deutschland (1969), Der unteilbare Weltmarkt. Das o¨konomische Interesse in der Auβenpolitik der USA, 1933–1941 (1975), Von der Weltmacht zur Supermacht. Amerikanische Aussenpolitik im 20. Jahrhundert (1995), and Power and Mission. Was Amerika antreibt (2003).

publications of the german historical institute Edited by Christof Mauch with the assistance of David Lazar The German Historical Institute is a center for advanced study and research whose purpose is to provide a permanent basis for scholarly cooperation among historians from the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States. The Institute conducts, promotes, and supports research into both American and German political, social, economic, and cultural history; into transatlantic migration, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and into the history of international relations, with special emphasis on the roles played by the United States and Germany. Recent books in the series: Gerd Althoff, Johannes Fried, and Patrick J. Geary, editors, Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography Manfred Berg and Martin H. Geyer, editors, Two Cultures of Rights: The Quest for Inclusion and Participation in Modern America and Germany Elizabeth Glaser and Hermann Wellenreuther, editors, Bridging the Atlantic: The Question of American Exceptionalism in Perspective J¨urgen Heideking and James A. Henretta, editors, Republicanism and Liberalism in America and the German States, 1750–1850 Hubert Zimmermann, Money and Security: Troops, Monetary Policy, and West Germany’s Relations with the United States and Britain, 1950–1971 Roger Chickering and Stig F¨orster, editors, The Shadows of Total War: Europe, East Asia, and the United States, 1919–1939 Richard J. Bessel and Dirk Schumann, editors, Life After Death: Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe During the 1940s and 1950s Marc Flandreau, Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich, and Harold James, editors, International Financial History in the Twentieth Century: System and Anarchy Andreas W. Daum, Lloyd C. Gardner, and Wilfried Mausbach, editors, America, The Vietnam War and the World: International and Comparative Perspectives

The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945–1990 a handbook Volume 2: 1968–1990

Edited by DETLEF JUNKER University of Heidelberg

Associate Editors

Philipp Gassert, Wilfried Mausbach, and David B. Morris

german historical institute Washington, D.C. and

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521834209 © The German Historical Institute 2004 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2004 isbn-13 isbn-10

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Contents

Volume 2 The United States and Germany, 1968–1990 List of Contributors for Volumes 1 and 2

page xiii

POLITICS D´etente and Multipolarity: The Cold War and German-American Relations, 1968–1990 Klaus Schwabe 1 The United States and the German Question Christian Hacke 2 The Federal Republic of Germany Between the American and Russian Superpowers: “Old Friend” and “New Partner” Gottfried Niedhart 3 Ostpolitik: D´etente German-Style and Adapting to America Werner Link

1 18

26 33

4 Creative Tension: The United States and the Federal Republic in the CSCE Michael R. Lucas

40

5 The United States, Germany, and the Multilateralization of International Relations H. W. Brands

47

6 Expectations of Dominance and Partnership Rhetoric: The Federal Republic of Germany in the Crossfire of American and French Policy, 1945–1990 Eckart Conze 7 West Germany and European Unity in U.S. Foreign Policy Klaus Larres vii

54 62

viii

Contents

8 Cooperation and Conflict in German and American Policies toward Regions Outside Europe Helmut Hubel

69

9 Two States, One Nation: The International Legal Basis of German-American Relations from Ostpolitik to Unification Richard Wiggers

76

10 The U.S. Congress and German-American Relations Steven J. Brady

82

11 The German Political Parties and the USA Matthias Zimmer

89

12 The Role of East Germany in American Policy Christian F. Ostermann

96

13 The United States and German Unification Stephen F. Szabo

104

SECURITY German-American Security Relations, 1968–1990 Wolfgang Krieger 1 A Limit to Solidarity: Germany, the United States, and the Vietnam War T. Michael Ruddy

111

126

2 NATO Strategy and the German-American Relationship Kori N. Schake

133

3 Differences on Arms Control in German-American Relations Matthias Dembinski

140

4 The NATO Double-Track Decision, the INF Treaty, and the SNF Controversy: German-American Relations between Consensus and Conflict Michael Broer

148

5 The Shifting Military Balance in Central Europe Frederick Zilian Jr.

155

6 The Transfer of American Military Technology to Germany Joachim Rohde

163

7 German-American Intelligence Relations: An Ambivalent Partnership Loch K. Johnson and Annette Freyberg

171

8 No Unity Without Security: The Security Features of German Unification Karl Kaiser

178

Contents

ix

ECONOMICS Cooperation, Competition, and Conflict: Economic Relations Between the United States and Germany, 1968–1990 Harold James

187

1 Trojan Horse or Loyal Partner? West Germany as a Trading Power, Between the United States and the EC Monika Medick-Krakau

203

2 Emancipation, Regionalization, and Globalization: German-American Trade Relations Welf Werner

211

3 American and German Trade Policy: Between Liberal Multilateralism, Neoprotectionism, and Regional Integration Andreas Falke

220

4 The Deutsche Mark and the Dollar: Domestic Price Stability and International Currencies Harold James

228

5 Globalization of Entrepreneurial Prospects: The Integration of Capital, Direct and Portfolio Investment, and Multinational Companies in Germany and the United States Christine Borrmann and Hans-Eckart Scharrer

235

6 The United States, Germany, and Aid for Developing Countries Maarten L. Pereboom

242

7 The World Economic Summits: A Difficult Learning Process Bernhard May

249

CULTURE Culture as an Arena of Transatlantic Conflict Frank Trommler 1 American Cultural Policy Toward Germany Hans N. Tuch 2 The Third Pillar of Foreign Policy: West German Cultural Policy in the United States Wulf K¨opke

257 274

280

3 The Study of Germany in the United States John A. McCarthy

287

4 American Studies in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945–1990 Willi Paul Adams

294

5 In the Shadow of the Federal Republic: Cultural Relations Between the GDR and the United States Heinrich Bortfeldt 6 American Literature in Germany Martin Meyer

305 312

x

Contents

7 The American Reception of Contemporary German Literature Sigrid Bauschinger

319

8 The Americanization of the German Language Heidrun K¨amper

326

9 Between Blight and Blessing: The Influence of American Popular Culture on the Federal Republic Michael Ermarth 10 Popular Music in Germany: Experimentation and Emancipation from Anglo-American Models Edward Larkey

334

341

11 Hollywood in Germany Thomas Koebner

349

12 New German Cinema as National Cinema Anton Kaes

356

13 Transatlantic Reflections: German and American Television Michael Geisler

365

14 Performance Theater in the Age of Post-Drama David Bathrick

373

15 Beyond Painting and Sculpture: German-American Exchange in the Visual Arts Stefan Germer and Julia Bernard

379

16 The Rediscovery of the City and Postmodern Architecture Werner Durth

387

17 Modernity and Postmodernity in a Transatlantic Perspective Klaus J. Milich

394

18 Confrontations with the Holocaust in the Era of the Cold War: German and American Perspectives Jeffrey Peck

402

SOCIETY German-American Societal Relations in Three Dimensions, 1968–1990 Lily Gardner Feldman 1 “1968”: A Transatlantic Event and Its Consequences Claus Leggewie 2 Social Movements in Germany and the United States: The Peace Movement and the Environmental Movement Carl Lankowski 3 Women and the New Women’s Movement Hanna Schissler

409 421

430 437

Contents

4 Transatlantic Networks: Elites in German-American Relations Felix Philipp Lutz

xi

445

5 Bridging Constituencies: German Political Foundations in German-American Relations Ann L. Phillips

452

6 Normalizing German-American Labor Relationships in a Changing International Environment Michael Fichter

460

7 German and American Churches: Changes in Actors, Priorities, and Power Relations Robert F. Goeckel

466

8 The Twisted Road Toward Rapprochement: American Jewry and Germany Until Reunification Shlomo Shafir

474

9 Difference and Convergence: Immigration Policy in the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany Ulrike Fischer-Inverardi

482

10 Urban Planning, Transportation, and Suburban Development: Striking a Balance Brian Ladd

489

11 Relations Between Right-Wing Extremists in Germany and the United States, 1945–1990 Thomas Grumke

495

12 With America Against America: Anti-Americanism in West Germany Philipp Gassert

502

13 The Maturation of a Relationship: The Image of America in West German Public Opinion David B. Morris

510

14 Between Private Opinion and Official Pronouncement: Images of America in the German Democratic Republic, 1971–1990 Rainer Schnoor

519

15 The American Image of Germany, 1968–1991 Thomas Reuther

527

OUTLOOK America, Germany, and the Atlantic Community After the Cold War Hans-Peter Schwarz

535

Index

567

List of Contributors for Volumes 1 and 2

willi paul adams (†), Abteilung f¨ur Geschichte Nordamerikas, John F. Kennedy-Institut f¨ur Nordamerikastudien, Freie Universit¨at, Berlin mitchell g. ash, Institut f¨ur Geschichte der Universit¨at Wien david bathrick, Department of Theater, Film, and Dance, Cornell University sigrid bauschinger, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Massachusetts, Amherst volker r. berghahn, Department of History, Columbia University, New York julia bernard, Kunstgeschichtliches Institut, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universit¨at, Frankfurt am Main rainer a. blasius, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung rebecca boehling, Department of History, University of Maryland Baltimore County christine borrmann, Hamburgisches Welt-Wirtschafts-Archiv heinrich bortfeldt, Berlin steven j. brady, Department of History, University of Notre Dame h. w. brands, Department of History, Texas A&M University michael broer, Institut f¨ur Internationale Politik, Universit¨at der Bundeswehr, Hamburg suzanne brown-fleming, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies christoph buchheim, Seminar f¨ur Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte, Phillipps-Universit¨at Mannheim ¨ werner buhrer, Institut f¨ur Sozialwissenschaften, Technische Universit¨at, M¨unchen eckart conze, Seminar f¨ur Zeitgeschichte, Eberhard-Karls-Universit¨at, T¨ubingen xiii

xiv

List of Contributors

matthias dembinski, Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, Frankfurt am Main monika dickhaus, Historisches Institut der Deutschen Bank AG, Frankfurt jeffry m. diefendorf, Department of History, University of New Hampshire, Durham werner durth, Fachbereich Architektur, Technische Universit¨a, Darmstadt michael ermarth, Department of History, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire barbara fait, Historisches Seminar der Universit¨at zu K¨oln andreas falke, Economics Section, U.S. Embassy, Berlin michael fichter, Arbeitsstelle Nationale und Internationale Gewerkschaftspolitik, Otto-Suhr-Institut f¨ur Politikwissenschaft, Freie Universit¨at, Berlin ¨ fisch, Historisches Seminar der Universit¨at, Z¨urich jorg ulrike fischer-inverardi, Brussels, Belgium erhard forndran, Institut f¨ur Politikwissenschaft, Otto-von-Guericke-Universit¨at, Magdeburg annette freyberg, Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Bucharest ¨ lutz fruhbrodt, Wirtschaftsredaktion, Die Welt, Berlin ¨ karl-heinz fussl, Abteilung Historische Erziehungswissenschaft, Philosophische Fakult¨at IV, Humboldt-Universit¨at zu Berlin lily gardner feldman, American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, Washington, D.C. philipp gassert, Historisches Seminar, Ruprecht-Karls-Universit¨at, Heidelberg michael e. geisler, German Department, Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont stefan germer(†), Kunstgeschichtliches Institut, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universit¨at, Frankfurt am Main jessica c. e. gienow-hecht, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universit¨at, Frankfurt am Main petra goedde, Department of History, Princeton University, New Jersey robert f. goeckel, Department of Political Science, State University of New York at Geneseo ¨ manfred gortemaker, Historisches Institut, Universit¨at Potsdam regina ursula gramer, Department of History, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania ronald j. granieri, Department of History, Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina thomas grumke, Bereich Politik der Bertelsmann Stiftung, G¨utersloh

List of Contributors

christian hacke, Seminar f¨ur Politische Wissenschaft der Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universit¨at Bonn harald hagemann, Institut f¨ur Volkswirtschaftslehre, Universit¨at Hohenheim-Stuttgart gerd hardach, Fachbereich Geschichte und Kulturwissenschaften, Universit¨at Marburg klaus-dietmar henke, Hannah-Arendt-Institut f¨ur Totalitarismusforschung an der Technischen Universit¨at, Dresden dietrich herrmann, Sonderforschungsbereich 537: “Institutionalit¨at und Geschichtlichkeit,” Technische Universit¨at, Dresden ¨ andreas hofele, Institut f¨ur Englische Philologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit¨at, M¨unchen helmut hubel, Institut f¨ur Politikwissenschaft, Friedrich-Schiller-Universit¨at, Jena harold james, Department of History, Princeton University, New Jersey loch k. johnson, Department of Political Science, University of Georgia at Athens detlef junker, Historisches Seminar, Ruprecht-Karls-Universit¨at, Heidelberg anton kaes, German Department and Program in Film Studies, University of California at Berkeley karl kaiser, Prof. Emeritus, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universit¨at, Bonn, and Otto-Wolff-Direktor, Forschungsinstitut der Deutschen Gesellschaft f¨ur Ausw¨artige Politik, Berlin heidrun k¨amper, Abteilung Historische Lexikographie und Lexikologie, Institut f¨ur deutsche Sprache, Mannheim manfred knapp, Institut f¨ur Internationale Politik, Universit¨at der Bundeswehr, Hamburg thomas koebner, Fachbereich Filmwissenschaft, Universit¨at Mainz ¨ wulf kopke, Prof. Emeritus, Texas A&M University knud krakau, Abteilung f¨ur Geschichte, John F. Kennedy-Institut f¨ur Nordamerikastudien, Freie Universit¨at, Berlin wolfgang krieger, Historisches Seminar der Philipps-Universit¨at, Marburg claus-dieter krohn, Fachbereich Kulturwissenschaften, Universit¨at L¨uneburg brian ladd, Department of History and Department of Geography and Planning, State University of New York at Albany raimund lammersdorf, German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C. carl lankowski, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Institute, Arlington, Virginia david clay large, Department of History and Philosophy, Montana State University, Bozeman

xv

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List of Contributors

edward larkey, Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, University of Maryland Baltimore County klaus larres, School of Politics, Department of Social and Political Science, Royal Holloway, University of London daniel j. leab, Department of History, Seton Hall University, New Jersey claus leggewie, Institut f¨ur Politikwissenschaft, Justus-Liebig-Universit¨at, Giessen werner link, Prof. Emeritus, Forschungsinstitut f¨ur Politische Wissenschaft und Europ¨aische Fragen, Universit¨at zu K¨oln michael r. lucas, World Policy Institute, New School University, New York felix philipp lutz, Prognos AG, Basel gunther mai, Historisches Institut, P¨adagogische Hochschule, Erfurt wilfried mausbach, Historisches Seminar, Ruprecht-Karls-Universit¨at, Heidelberg bernhard may, Forschungsinstitut der Deutschen Gesellschaft f¨ur Ausw¨artige Politik, Berlin john a. mccarthy, Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee monika medick-krakau, Institut f¨ur Politikwissenschaft, Technische Universit¨at, Dresden martin meyer, Giessen klaus j. milich, Institut f¨ur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Philosophische Fakult¨at II, Humboldt-Universit¨at zu Berlin david b. morris, European Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. ¨ kerstin muller-neuhof, Hamburgisches Welt-Wirtschafts-Archiv michael j. neufeld, Department of Space History, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. gottfried niedhart, Historisches Institut der Universit¨at, Mannheim frank a. ninkovich, Department of History, St. John’s University, New York christian f. ostermann, Director, Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, D.C. jeffrey peck, Canadian Centre for German and European Studies, York University, Toronto, and Department of German, University of Montreal maarten l. pereboom, Department of History, Salisbury State University, Maryland ann l. phillips, Department of Political Science, American University, Washington, D.C. werner plumpe, Historisches Seminar der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universit¨at, Frankfurt am Main uta g. poiger, Department of History, University of Washington, Seattle

List of Contributors

david braden posner, History Department, Choate Rosemary Hall School, Connecticut pamela m. potter, School of Music and Department of German, University of Wisconsin at Madison diethelm prowe, Department of History, Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota ¨ cornelia rauh-kuhne, Historisches Seminar, Eberhard-Karls-Universit¨at, T¨ubingen steven l. rearden, Joint History Office, U.S. Department of Defense thomas reuther, Rektorat, Universit¨at Dortmund joachim rohde, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Forschungsinstitut f¨ur Internationale Politik und Sicherheit, Ebenhausen sigrid ruby, Institut f¨ur Kunstgeschichte, Justus-Liebig-Universit¨at, Giessen t. michael ruddy, Department of History, St. Louis University, Missouri mark e. ruff, Department of Humanities, Concordia University, Portland, Oregon hermann-josef rupieper, Institut f¨ur Geschichte, Martin-Luther-Universit¨at, Halle-Wittenberg kori n. schake, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, Washington, D.C. hans-eckart scharrer, Hamburgisches Welt-Wirtschafts-Archiv ingrid schenk, Atlanta, Georgia axel schildt, Forschungsstelle f¨ur Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg und Historisches Seminar der Universit¨at, Hamburg hanna schissler, Georg Eckert Institut Braunschweig und Historisches Seminar der Universit¨at, Hannover rainer schnoor, Institut f¨ur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universit¨at Potsdam frank schumacher, Lehrstuhl f¨ur Nordamerikanische Geschichte, Universit¨at Erfurt klaus schwabe, Prof. Emeritus, Historisches Institut, Rheinisch-Westf¨alische Technische Hochschule, Aachen thomas a. schwartz, Department of History, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee hans-peter schwarz, Prof. Emeritus, Seminar f¨ur Politikwissenschaft, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universit¨at, Bonn shlomo shafir, Ramat Hasharon, Israel edmund spevack(†), German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C. alan e. steinweis, History and Judaic Studies, University of Nebraska, Lincoln raymond g. stokes, Department of Economic and Social History, University of Glasgow

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List of Contributors

¨ bernd stover, Historisches Institut, Universit¨at Potsdam stephen f. szabo, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, Washington, D.C. james f. tent, Department of History, University of Alabama at Birmingham frank trommler, Department of German, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia hans n. tuch, U.S. Foreign Service (retired) ruud van dijk, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee bryan t. van sveringen, United States European Command, Stuttgart michael wala, Amerika Institut, Ludwig-Maximillians-Universit¨at Munich wesley k. wark, Department of History, University of Toronto welf werner, Abteilung f¨ur Wirtschaft, John F. Kennedy-Institut f¨ur Nordamerikastudien, Freie Universit¨at, Berlin godehard weyerer, Bremen Journalisten-Etage, Bremen s. jonathan wiesen, Department of History, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale richard wiggers, University of New Brunswick, Canada frederick zilian jr., Department of History, Portsmouth Abbey School, Rhode Island matthias zimmer, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada hubert zimmermann, Department of Government, Cornell University, New York

POLITICS D´etente and Multipolarity The Cold War and German-American Relations, 1968–1990 Klaus Schwabe Translated by Richard Sharp

global d´e tente and german ostpolitik

chancellorship in late October 1969. American efforts to achieve d´etente posed a more direct challenge to West Germany’s previous foreign policy principles. Because the Federal Republic insisted that progress toward d´etente must depend on progress toward German reunification, it was in danger of becoming isolated from its main ally, for the Americans attached higher priority to d´etente in Europe than to the German question.2 The new West German chancellor, Willy Brandt, pursued Ostpolitik in part to prevent this isolation. With de facto recognition of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as a second German state, the offer to Russia to renounce force in their mutual relations, and the signing of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Brandt paved the way for the negotiations that resulted in the Moscow and Warsaw treaties of 1970. Although this brought the country back into step with America’s policy of d´etente, the question of whether the long-term goals of West Germany’s new Ostpolitik could be reconciled with America’s policy toward Europe remained unanswered. There was a contradiction between the Brandt government’s immediate “operative” Ostpolitik, for which, if only because of the Berlin question, American cooperation was essential, and its long-term political strategy visa` -vis the East, which was moving away from the American line.

The period covered here began with the postwar era’s first major turning point, symbolized by the year 1968. On the surface, this new era was ushered in by changes in leadership: In Washington the administration of Richard Nixon replaced that of Lyndon Johnson, while in Bonn the “Grand Coalition” of the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats gave way to a new alliance between the Social Democrats and Liberals. The overshadowing development, however, was the crisis of U.S. policy in Vietnam along with the nuclear stalemate between the superpowers. To ease that stalemate, the United States had to reorient its foreign policy in Europe fundamentally toward the goal of a comprehensive easing of East-West tensions. This new orientation achieved its first critical success with the treaty negotiated with the Soviet Union on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons ratified by the United Nations on July 7, 1968. The Vietnam War and its repercussions also had an indirect effect on the Federal Republic’s foreign policy position by mobilizing a “New Left”1 that adopted the American protest against the war as its own cause. The influence of this new, in extreme cases fanatically anti-American “movement” extended into the Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD), the party that took over the 1

See the chapter by T. Michael Ruddy, vol. 2, Secu2

rity.

1

See the chapter by Werner Link in this section.

2

Klaus Schwabe

The German question itself made clear that if the new Ostpolitik were to remain acceptable domestically, it could not sanction the permanent division of the German nation. At the same time, it acquiesced to lasting Soviet hegemony beyond the Iron Curtain. Conversely, the U.S. government had internally come to terms with a divided Germany and with the Oder-Neisse border, and it never contemplated endorsing the objections raised by the Christian Democratic (CDU/CSU) opposition to the Moscow and Warsaw treaties.3 On the other hand, however, the United States had not reconciled itself to the subjugation of Eastern Europe to the same extent as the German proponents of Ostpolitik. In a sense, the Americans actually viewed the concessions made by the West German government in the policy on Germany (vis-`a-vis Poland, for example) as an opportunity for gradual liberalization within the Eastern bloc and the Soviet Union. More important still were the differences between Washington and Bonn on the long-term aims of d´etente in Europe. Brandt was unsure of how long the American presence in Europe would last. The question arose whether Europe might not have to make its own security arrangements. The true intellectual architect of Ostpolitik, Brandt’s trusted adviser Egon Bahr, aimed at that very possibility. Even before 1969, he advocated a Central European security system – an alliance of the non-nuclear states on both sides of the Iron Curtain – as a long-term optimal goal; such a security system would, he hoped, also faciliate German reunification. His somewhat optimistic expectation was that the United States would still retain a sufficient interest in a free and independent Europe to guarantee this system from outside. A further argument in favor of such a European security system, as he saw it, was the clear strategic consensus between the two superpowers that they would spare each other in the event of a nuclear war and make Europe their atomic battleground if necessary.4 Bahr suggested that it would therefore be in Germany’s long-term interest to avoid this 3 4

See the chapter by Christian Hacke in this section. Egon Bahr, Zu meiner Zeit (Munich, 1996), 411.

risk by breaking away from involvement in the East-West conflict and, instead, becoming part of a neutral security zone in Central Europe (in which it would be the most important partner). Central Europe instead of NATO: This sentiment, which would have marginalized America’s role in Europe, was widespread in the ranks of the German Left. In later years it would become apparent how much the SPD as a party was forced to yield to this pressure. The United States and its leading analyst of international relations, Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s national security adviser, initially judged Germany’s Ostpolitik not by its immediate, pro-American and pro-d´etente orientation, but by the long-term ulterior motives that they suspected – not unjustly, as previously shown – lay behind it. Kissinger mistrusted the spokesmen of the new Ostpolitik such as Brandt and Bahr – the latter, in his view, was an oldfashioned left-wing nationalist – because he thought that, in the end, they were not proAmerican.5 Ostpolitik revived old fears that the Federal Republic might revert to Germany’s traditional policy of swinging between East and West. The Western alliance had just weathered the Gaullist variation of this policy. As Kissinger put it, the prospect that the Federal Republic might seek a similar nationalistic “breaking out on its own” could only fill Washington with trepidation.6 The real danger in Kissinger’s view lay, however, in a selective d´etente in Europe, with NATO powers competing for Moscow’s favor, that would loosen the cohesion of the Atlantic alliance and undermine American leadership in Europe. What he feared was that the global multipolarization of powers might eventually extend to Europe, a process that he himself was energetically pushing in the Far East with his policy of rapprochement with the People’s Republic of China.7 In Europe, Charles de 5 Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston, 1982), 147; Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston, 1979), 410–11. 6 Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York, 1994), 735. 7 William Burr, ed., The Kissinger Transcripts: The Top Secret Talks with Beijing and Moscow (New York, 1999).

D´etente and Multipolarity

Gaulle had become the spokesman of this multipolarization. It seemed that the long-term goals of the new German Ostpolitik lay in the same direction. Realization of these goals could have resulted in a loss of American say on the German question. At first such long-term concerns were of secondary importance to U.S. policy. For the time being, the U.S. government could only welcome the fact that the Federal Republic had distanced itself from insisting on the maximum goals of its policy on the German question and had temporarily recognized the status quo in Central Europe.8 If the Soviet Union at the same time made concessions over the issue of Berlin, this, too, was in the direct interest of the American protector power and corresponded with the desire of both West Germany and the United States to preserve peace in Europe. For the purposes of avoiding a selective d´etente, therefore, it seemed better to play an active part in shaping West Germany’s Ostpolitik in order to control it. Kissinger in fact succeeded in dovetailing Brandt’s Ostpolitik with U.S. d´etente policy. In retrospect, this was almost a rehearsal of the highly successful division of labor between the United States and Germany that, twenty years later, brought about German unification. One consequence that Brandt and his advisers hoped would flow from Ostpolitik was greater independence from Germany’s American ally, whose assistance in the Berlin question would henceforth be needed only in exceptional cases. This new West German independence had its limits, as became apparent during the final months of the Brandt government. The period of U.S. intervention in Vietnam had provided considerable potential for conflict between Western Europe and the United States: The Europeans complained of American unilateralism in the arms-control talks with the Soviet Union and felt that America’s nuclear guarantee for Western Europe had lost its credibility. Attempts in Congress to reduce the number of American troops stationed in Europe increased

8

See the chapter by Christian Hacke in this section.

3

these doubts. The Americans for their part condemned the West Europeans’ plans to exclude them from the foreign policy discussions under the newly established European Political Cooperation (EPC) system and their reluctance to help shoulder the global burdens imposed by America’s superpower status. In particular, the United States insinuated that the Brandt government had breached transatlantic solidarity with its energetic pursuit of Ostpolitik and its failure to support America in the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War. In the context of the “Year of Europe” that he had proclaimed (1973), Kissinger succeeded in obtaining endorsement of an “Atlantic declaration” at the NATO conference in Brussels on June 26, 1974. This came, with the help of German mediation, after heated opposition, especially from the French representatives. In the declaration, the United States confirmed its nuclear guarantee for Europe, while the Europeans committed themselves to the principle of Atlantic “burden sharing” and solidarity on all fronts – not just the military one – both inside and outside the territory of the North Atlantic Treaty.9 Recognition and institutionalization of the United States’ right to a say in matters of joint European and American interest had preceded this agreement. Despite its economic weakness brought on by the oil crisis, the United States thereby frustrated from the outset the attempt to make Western Europe an independent factor within the bipolar Soviet-American system. Contrary to its hopes, the Brandt government found its room for maneuver narrowed.

america and the european security system That a multilateral structure of peace for the whole of Europe, envisaged by Bahr as an alternative to NATO and the Warsaw Pact, remained a subject of discussion was due to the Soviet Union’s long-standing call for a European security conference. The Russians hoped that such

9

See the chapter by Klaus Larres in this section.

4

Klaus Schwabe

a conference, in the absence of the Americans, would definitively sanction Europe’s post-World War II frontiers and thus the Soviet’s predominance in Eastern Europe (what later became known as the “Brezhnev Doctrine”). Brandt had already supported the Soviet project, albeit with American participation, while he was foreign minister. As chancellor, he saw it as an opportunity to provide multilateral footing for securing his Ostpolitik and to tie the United States, independently of NATO, to both parts of Europe. In America, the security conference idea remained controversial and had merely served as a bargaining chip as Kissinger sought concessions from the Soviets in the negotiation of the Moscow and Warsaw treaties. Subsequently, however, the negotiations that began in 1973 showed that the West could also introduce its own ideas – on protecting human rights in Eastern Europe, for example – into the Soviet plan. Once again, American and German negotiators worked together closely.10 Neither party had any interest in outright legal recognition of the East European status quo, the Federal Republic being particularly reluctant to sanction the division of Germany. By presenting a united front, they were able to persuade the Soviets to accept a language that made it clear that the new security system would be equivalent not to a peace treaty, but rather to an interim agreement. This would keep open legal options that the West regarded as desirable. Existing treaty rights, such as the Allies’ rights in Berlin, were confirmed and frontier changes undertaken through military force were ruled out. But the possibility of peaceful change – by application of the right of self-determination, for example – was kept open. The Germans’ intention, as Brandt’s successor Helmut Schmidt emphasized in Helsinki, was to preserve the possibility of reunification and closer ties with the European Community (EC). The United States championed the German “reunification proviso” despite the reservations expressed by some West European representatives. The Americans also regarded

10

See the chapter by Michael R. Lucas in this section.

the commitment to human rights as one way of backing Germany’s policy of softening the blow of division by gaining humanitarian concessions. These concessions were made palatable to the Soviet Union by the prospect of closer economic cooperation between East and West (the so-called Basket II). The Final Act concluded at the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) on July 30, 1975, was an ultimate triumph for d´etente and Ostpolitik, one with which both the Bonn government and President Gerald Ford’s new administration could equally identify. At the follow-up conferences to Helsinki, this consensus between Germans and Americans soon broke apart. This reflected the new d´etente tactics developed by the U.S. government under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Together with Britain and France, the United States regarded the Helsinki follow-up negotiations as a means of securing Soviet cooperation in the d´etente process as a whole. For the West German government, by contrast, “Helsinki” had been an end in itself: The Germans felt that further consultations on the implementation of the Final Act should take place without regard to Soviet actions elsewhere in the world. This reflected Germany’s national interest in securing further multilateral support for the policy of making constant incremental progress toward the gradual opening-up of the GDR and, at the same time, encouraging the Eastern bloc governments in their efforts to gain greater independence from Moscow. “Helsinki,” in Bonn’s view, should be left untouched as an alternative to the Cold War and as an option for a multilateral European security system supported by both superpowers. This was not without consequences for the events of 1989–90.

the federal republic and the end of american d´e tente policy Like Brandt, his successor Helmut Schmidt attached great importance to the multilateralization of West German foreign policy. The aims of that policy were not only to adapt to the

D´etente and Multipolarity

global trend toward a multipolar power structure but also to find a way out of the crippling bilateral Soviet-American confrontation over the German question. Schmidt, as a former defense minister, was more of an Atlanticist than his predecessor. In his later years in office, he moved closer and closer to France, especially in economic and monetary matters. NATO, however, remained the primary anchor of his security policy, and neither the European Community nor the Franco-German entente offered a substitute to it. This basic stance was confirmed during President Gerald Ford’s term of office. Close harmony between West Germany and the United States marked this period, as the Helsinki Final Act had demonstrated. The personal factor was all-important: Schmidt and Henry Kissinger, now promoted to secretary of state, thought in similar terms on foreign policy. As pragmatists and political realists, they shared the same model of a stable international order based on the principles of universal and controlled balance of power, calculability in foreign policy conduct, and maintenance of a credible deterrent as the essential conditions for preserving peace. In his policy on Germany, too, Schmidt’s aims were in line with American priorities. The objective of a security structure embracing the whole of Europe and retaining only loose ties with the United States had considerably less hold over him than over his visionary predecessor. Although he also kept open the option of German unification, he seems to have had less faith in the medium-term efficacy of the “change through rapprochement” formula than Bahr or Brandt. Most of all, however, he attached clear priority to the Federal Republic’s alignment with the West in both the medium and longer term. Even so, relations between the Schmidt government and the United States soon became more difficult as support for the policy of d´etente in American domestic politics began to weaken appreciably. To the Democrats in Congress, Kissinger’s seemingly nonideological realism in foreign policy was suspect. Influenced by Senator Henry Jackson, the party began to advocate a policy that made American eco-

5

nomic favors to the Soviet Union conditional upon Soviet concessions on human rights issues, especially the emigration of Soviet Jews. Out of deep personal conviction, though certainly with one eye on the electorate, the new president, Jimmy Carter, took up the cause of this morally inspired form of foreign policy. His plan was to remind the Soviet leadership, by granting or withdrawing trade concessions, of the humanitarian commitments it had entered into with the Helsinki Final Act. From Carter’s standpoint – a na¨ıve one, as we know today – this policy was in no way incompatible with the aims of disarmament and d´etente. Indeed, he saw himself as representing a true d´etente based on reciprocity; he ruled out any attempt to obtain strategic preponderance and called for restraint by both sides in crisis regions of the Third World. The Schmidt government took a skeptical view of Carter’s principles of ethical conduct. It feared that the Soviet leadership would feel challenged with regard to its sincerity in dealing with human rights and would react with even harsher suppression of its population. Schmidt’s prediction that escalating demands for arms limitation would merely embarrass the Soviet leadership internally, and therefore be rejected, would shortly be confirmed. The U.S.-Soviet negotiations on the limitation of strategic nuclear weapons (SALT II) also gave reason to doubt the reliability of America’s nuclear guarantee for Western Europe; the negotiations dealt exclusively with longrange weapons and disregarded the mediumrange missiles with which the Soviet Union was threatening Western Europe in general and the Federal Republic in particular.11 The United States possessed no equivalent to meet this challenge. In the event of war, Europe would be selectively threatened by mediumrange missiles, whose numbers the Russians rapidly increased; in the event of a crisis, this weakness exposed Western Europe to Soviet blackmail. Schmidt was able to persuade Ford

11 See the chapter by Matthias Dembinski, vol. 2, Security.

6

Klaus Schwabe

but not Carter to take medium-range weapons into account in the SALT talks. He encountered decisive resistance from the president’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who mistrusted Germany’s ideas about d´etente, with their echoes of Ostpolitik, in general and Schmidt in particular. “Carter’s idea of the superiority of his moral position,” Schmidt wrote in retrospect, and his overestimation of the ease with which international politics could be manipulated, combined with Brzezinski’s inclination, as the representative of a world power, quite simply to ignore the interests of America’s German allies – there had been nothing like it in German-American relations since the days of Johnson’s dealings with Ludwig Erhard.12

In fall 1977, therefore, Schmidt went public in support of deploying medium-range missiles in Western Europe. This initiative led to what became known as NATO’s “double-track decision” of December 12, 1979, which was to play a key role in subsequent relations between the United States and West Germany. Drawing on NATO’s Harmel Report of 1967, it provided both for arms-control negotiations and for stepped-up rearmament measures. However, because new American medium-range missiles could not be deployed in Europe before 1983, the United States would in the meantime attempt to broach the issue of limiting the “Eurostrategic” weapons with the Soviets at the SALT talks. This was a concession on the part of Carter, who evidently hoped – as Reagan did later – to prevent the appearance of a decoupling of the United States and Federal Republic in security policy and to not encourage West German multilateralism. The NATO double-track decision marked the end of a series of awkward clashes between Carter and Schmidt, in which each had accused the other of letting down the alliance. Carter obviously underestimated the domestic difficulties that Schmidt would have to face in the event of the implementation of the decision to deploy 12 Helmut Schmidt, Men and Powers: A Political Retrospective (New York, 1989), 187.

medium-range missiles. Schmidt was irked by the vacillation of the American president, who, after obtaining Schmidt’s consent on the development of the neutron bomb, reversed his own decision against the recommendations of his closest advisers. In its desire to prevent the proliferation of atomic weapons, the U.S. government was also trying to prevent its German ally from supplying nuclear installations for peaceful purposes to Brazil, which was not a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Carter eventually had to withdraw his government’s objections. Behind these disagreements lay Carter’s ambitious hopes for worldwide d´etente, while Schmidt remained committed to the “balance of fear” in Europe. Just how much the United States’ standing as the leading power within NATO had suffered from Carter’s inconsistent security policy became apparent at a moment of international crisis when the Western allies should have presented a united front. In the final days of 1979, the Soviet Union sent troops into Afghanistan. As Carter saw it, this was the end of d´etente: As in Angola and Ethiopia, the Soviet Union had once again violated the principle of d´etente, namely, that the superpowers refrain from military intervention in Third World conflicts. The American government became convinced that an unstoppable Soviet-supported offensive in the Third World was underway that ulimately threatened the global balance between the superpowers. To embarass the Soviets in the eyes of the world, Carter pressed for nonmilitary sanctions to “punish” the USSR. He also took steps for a dramatic increase in American arms spending. The German chancellor thought little of what he regarded as a noisy punitive policy shaped largely by electoral considerations. It would, he believed, certainly fail in the critical aim of persuading the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan without loss of face and, at worst, might even lead to Soviet reprisals in Berlin. Schmidt was not prepared to support the proposed sanctions and thereby jeopardize the d´etente dialogue with the Soviet leadership in the German and European context.

D´etente and Multipolarity

This, of course, was the selective d´etente that Nixon had feared: In West Germany, there was talk of the “divisibility of d´etente.”13 Schmidt, however, did take specific steps to raise NATO’s defense capability, because he felt concern about global equilibrium on account of the obvious weakness of the Carter administration. The most important thing, he believed, was to stand by the NATO double-track decision unreservedly despite threatening gestures from the Soviets. In Washington, he was able to persuade Carter to continue the arms-control negotiations. Taking account of those in the SPD critical of his loyalty to NATO, Schmidt had to perform a precarious balancing act between the United States and the Soviet Union that sometimes gave rise to American doubts about his loyalty to the alliance. Even so, Carter accepted a Soviet offer negotiated by Schmidt for talks on medium-range missiles. In his clashes with the Carter administration, Schmidt banked more and more on solidarity from the rest of Europe, especially France. This was particularly true for the broad field of international economic policy, which in the second half of the 1970s could often be no more than a policy of crisis management. Because of the repercussions of the Vietnam War and the oil crisis, high unemployment and inflation beset the American economy. If a basic consensus on economic and trade policy nevertheless still prevailed within the community of Atlantic states, and the world economic crisis did not swing entirely out of control, it was largely due to the ongoing cooperation between Schmidt and the French president, Val´ery Giscard d’Estaing, often within the context of the European Community. The Federal Republic thus became considerably more important both within the Western alliance and vis-`a-vis with the United States, which could now claim to be no more than one among equals among the major economic powers. Because of its newly gained position, West Germany could now afford to demonstrate more independence from the United States in its policy of d´etente. 13

tion.

See the chapter by Gottfried Niedhart in this sec-

7

The loss of prestige that America had also suffered elsewhere – in Iran, for example – cost Carter his chance for reelection in November 1980. The victorious Ronald Reagan had put himself forward as a stern critic of Carter’s weak foreign policy. A second change of course for U.S. foreign policy was imminent, while elections in West Germany had recently endorsed the Schmidt government and its foreign policy.

the “good empire” and the“second cold war”: the crisis of the american-german consensus on d´e tente policies The new American president pursued with all ideological consistency what had already become a reality under Carter: the temporary suspension of d´etente. More resolutely than any of his predecessors since the 1950s, Reagan interpreted the confrontation between the United States and the “evil empire”14 embodied by the Soviet Union as a struggle of principle. After the legacy of self-doubt and moral dejection left behind by the Vietnam protest movement, he intended to embark on an ideological crusade against Soviet power, full of pride in what America stood for politically as a free democracy. He predicted the fall of the Soviet system. For all that, Reagan ruled out a military conflict with the Soviet Union; indeed, he thought such a conflict ultimately superfluous and counted on the eventual conversion of the Russian people to the American ideals of democracy, human rights, and the free market. One prerequisite, however, was that America should aim higher than mere equality in armaments with the Soviet Union and should demonstrate its resolution to preserve its superiority in military technology. This would give the West the critical trump card in the disarmament negotiations that would 14

Christian Hacke, Zur Weltmacht verdammt: Die amerikanische Aussenpolitik von Kennedy bis Clinton (Berlin, 1997), 300; Detlef Junker, Von der Weltmacht zur Supermacht: Amerikanische Aussenpolitik im 20. Jahrhundert (Mannheim, 1995), 102.

8

Klaus Schwabe

ultimately force the USSR to abandon the arms race and accept an effective policy of d´etente. Reagan therefore stepped up the process of rearmament begun by Carter. A second prerequisite – the core of what became known as the Reagan Doctrine – was that the United States fight the Soviets’ interventions in the Third World with their own weapons, in particular by formenting counterrevolutions. Remarkably, Reagan combined his militantly anticommunist ideology with far-reaching proposals for disarmament agreements between the superpowers: a reduction (rather than mere limitation) of strategic weapons (START) and the “zero option” for medium-range missiles; in other words, the United States would abandon the deployment of such arms in Europe once the Soviets had dismantled their existing equivalent systems (SS-20). That his rhetorical outbursts against the Soviet Union did not exactly enhance the credibility of these proposals among many of his contemporaries apparently did not make an impression on the president. The West German peace movement took Reagan’s militant anticommunism at its face value and saw him as the potential instigator of a third world war. This movement – in large part an outgrowth of the protest movements of 1968 that extended the political spectrum from the newly formed Green Party to the terrorist fringe and that was encouraged by East Germany – made it increasingly difficult for the chancellor to defend the NATO double-track decision. On the basis of what the chancellor called “ecological-anarchist-pacifist principles,” but on account of an understandable sense of threat as well, the peace movement rejected not only any upgrading of the American nuclear force in Europe but also demanded the total withdrawal of America’s nuclear arsenal from West Germany. Because the Soviets skillfully parried Reagan’s proposals for disarmament, the suspicion arose within the peace movement that the danger of war in Europe sprang from the United States alone. The Reagan administration created the same effect with semipublic considerations of a successful nuclear war confined to European soil. For Schmidt, the publicity generated by the protest movement,

with what he himself regarded as its clearly anti-American thrust, became a central domestic concern as this movement extended its influence to the left wing of the SPD leadership around Oskar Lafontaine. Even the head of the SPD, Brandt, now associated NATO arms modernization with the Vietnam War.15 Schmidt’s adherence to the NATO double-track decision thus contributed fundamentally to the erosion of his domestic power base. Even in the chancellery itself, some officials spoke in favor of a policy of confronting Reagan’s America. Unlike many in his party, Schmidt realized from the outset that Reagan’s campaign against the Soviet Union was populist and intended mainly for domestic consumption. The chancellor admired Reagan’s talent for a telegenic articulation of the political views shared by the majority of his fellow citizens, and he soon came to value the new president as being more steady and predictable than his predecessor and at the same time more open to discussion.16 By warning Reagan that the West German government might withdraw its full support from him, he persuaded the president to adhere loyally to the double-track decision and to continue the arms limitation talks with the Soviet Union. The Schmidt and Reagan governments nonetheless eventually came into conflict. The occasion was the crisis the trade union Solidarity caused for Poland’s communist regime in 1981. Reagan saw this as a first sign of the predicted collapse of the Soviet system. Under pressure from Russia, the Polish head of state proclaimed martial law in order to suppress Solidarity. Reagan reacted to this the same way Carter had when the Soviets intervened in Afghanistan. To embarrass the communist leadership in Poland and the Soviet Union, the United States imposed a trade embargo on both countries (wheat was excluded in deference to American farmers). 15 According to Wolfgang J¨ager, “Die Innenpolitik der sozial-liberalen Koalition 1974–1982,” in Karl Dietrich Bracher et al., eds., Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 5 vols. (Stuttgart, 1987), 5(2): 212. 16 Barbara Heep, Helmut Schmidt und Amerika: Eine schwierige Partnerschaft (Bonn, 1990), 207.

D´etente and Multipolarity

Like Carter before him, Reagan expected the West European members of NATO to stand squarely behind America. In particular, he expected that the Federal Republic would cancel a natural gas pipeline deal with the Soviets that had been negotiated by a European consortium. Schmidt rejected such symbolic acts as ineffective. As the guardian of Brandt’s Ostpolitik, he felt a commitment to preserving stability and thereby peace in both halves of Europe. Solidarity, a grassroots movement, seemed to him to be a destabilizing factor that threatened to undermine both German-German and GermanSoviet relations, which in turn could jeopardize what d´etente had so far achieved and perhaps even the security of Berlin. Clearly distancing himself from the Reagan government, Schmidt thus embarked on a damage-control campaign to salvage the European process of d´etente. He continued his policy of cooperation with East Germany and, in practice, with Poland’s communist leadership.17 Economic interests were thus of only secondary importance when he and his European partners declined to support the American trade sanctions against the USSR. Increased pressure exerted by the Reagan government actually strengthened the solidarity of the Western Europeans, including the British, so that eventually the Americans had to give way. Schmidt’s efforts to pursue d´etente in Europe, especially between the two Germanies, brought him no relief on the domestic political front. The rejection of NATO’s rearmament decision by many in his party undermined his credibility abroad and his ability to preserve his governing coalition at home. Although the collapse of the social democratic-liberal coalition came about mainly because of disputes over economic policy, a contributing factor was undoubtedly the lack of backing for Schmidt’s security policy within his own party. When the new government under Helmut Kohl took office on October 1, 1982, the United States could assume there would be no change in West German foreign policy. 17

Werner Link, “Aussen- und Deutschlandpolitik in ¨ Schmidt 1974–1982,” in Bracher et al., eds., der Ara Geschichte der Bundesrepublik, 5(2): 370–4.

9

Once again, the Free Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei, or FDP) provided the foreign minister in the person of Hans-Dietrich Genscher. The new government had the parliamentary support its predecessor had lacked. And above all, the CDU had presented itself to the public during the last years of the Schmidt government as being America’s more reliable partner in West Germany. The new chancellor’s more unambiguous commitment to the longterm goal of German reunification also fit in better with Reagan’s anticommunist rhetoric. A paradoxical situation arose, and indeed still existed at the time of the great turning point of 1989–90: Although a closer relationship with the American superpower added emphasis to the West German government’s call for reunification, the left-wing protest against Reagan’s America largely meant a renunciation of this national objective. The new government’s main foreign policy aim was to implement NATO’s double-track decision. In the context of the time, that meant adhering to the decision to modernize NATO’s nuclear armaments, thereby either forcing the Soviets to yield in the disarmament negotiations or to restore the nuclear balance of power in Europe. For Kohl, the issue here was whether the Federal Republic was still a “reliable partner” of the West and of the United States in particular.18 In the SPD opposition, however, some – clearly overestimating the weight carried by the Federal Republic in international relations – recommended that the West German government threaten to reject modernization in order to force the United States to show more flexiblity toward the Soviet Union – a tactic that, perhaps intentionally, would have risked the disruption of NATO. The Kohl government finally had its way on November 23, 1983, when a majority of the German Bundestag voted in favor of the deployment of American medium-range missiles on West German soil. Kohl’s political prestige in the United States instantly soared. It was secured 18

Helmut Kohl, Ich wollte Deutschlands Einheit, with Kai Diekmann und Ralf Georg Reuth (Berlin, 1996), 27.

10

Klaus Schwabe

in the eyes of the Reagan administration by his willingness to contribute to the technological development of a space-based missile system (the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI) although doing so would entail political difficulties at home. This relationship of growing trust could not be damaged by the fact that the Kohl-Genscher government continued to work toward d´etente with the German Democratic Republic and to participate actively in the follow-up conferences to Helsinki even though the CDU had rejected the Final Act when it was in the opposition. The continuing progress toward d´etente between West and East Germany actually enhanced the GDR’s standing in American eyes, for it indicated greater independence from the Soviet Union. This proved, however, to be but a brief interlude, not sufficient to influence general American reservations about the GDR, particularly because the latter refused the responsibility for restitution it had, in American eyes, as one of the successor states to the Third Reich.19 An indication of the importance Reagan attached to the Federal Republic and the Kohl government was his willingness to meet the German chancellor at the Bitburg German military cemetery on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the German surrender in 1945 as a symbol of the final reconciliation between the United States and the new Germany. Reagan made the visit at the express request of the German chancellor even though many of the soldiers buried at Bitburg had been members of the Waffen-SS. The American public, especially representatives of Jewish organizations, protested vociferously.20 Caught between coming to terms with the past and serving the interests of the Western alliance, the American government gave precedence, as it had on previous occasions, to backing its proven German ally. The American government saw itself justified in backing the Kohl government, which was subject to increasingly sharp criticism 19

See the chapter by Christian F. Ostermann in this section. 20 See the chapter by Jeffrey Peck, vol. 2, Culture.

from Germany’s opposition parties. Egon Bahr, having given up hope of reunification, was now praising the Soviet Union as the country that could be most helpful in bringing about a rapprochement between the two German states. Critics of NATO gained fresh arguments with the radical change that occurred in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev. Now that the Soviet Union no longer posed a threat, had the Atlantic alliance not also outlived its usefulness? After Moscow called for East-West interdependence instead of confrontation and gave cred´ıbility to its announced interest in easing tensions by withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan, even the American president was persuaded in fall 1987 that the Soviet leadership’s new foreign policy ideas and goals were genuine. As Gorbachev spoke of a “common European house,” the final proof of Moscow’s honesty would be, in American eyes, the opening up of Eastern Europe. With this in mind, Reagan, visiting Berlin in 1987, appealed to the Soviet leadership to tear down the wall that divided the city. The treaties on controlled arms reduction concluded between the United States and the Soviet Union during the period that followed produced mixed feelings in Western Europe. The INF Treaty of December 8, 1987, in which the United States and Soviet Union agreed to reciprocal reductions in intermediate-range weapons without consulting their European allies, was a cause of uncertainty in the governing coalition in Bonn. The familiar complaint that the United States was disregarding German security interests was voiced once again, particularly by the CDU’s right wing.21 Efforts by the chancellor to counter apparent American unilateralism by reinforcing the European pillar of NATO produced no significant success because France, under President Franc¸ ois Mitterrand, was insisting on its problematic special status within the alliance.22 The United States, in any event, continued to reject separate European disarmament initiatives as selective d´etente. 21

See the chapters by Matthias Zimmer in this section, and Michael Broer, vol. 2, Security. 22 See the chapter by Eckart Conze in this section.

D´etente and Multipolarity

Given this situation, the Kohl government initially endorsed the demand for NATO to be armed with short-range missiles (with a range of less than 500 kilometers). In accordance with the logic of the Cold War and the double-track decision, it would in fact have been necessary to restore the balance in this area because the Soviet Union greatly outstripped the West here. The United States therefore pressed for the rapid deployment of its Lance short-range missile system. But the military logic of the Cold War no longer held for the West German government, least of all in the eyes of Foreign Minister Genscher. He was increasingly impressed by Gorbachev’s interest in d´etente. At this historic turning point, when the possibility of a security structure for the whole of Europe had come within reach, he regarded NATO’s proposed upgrade of its nuclear arsenal as anachronistic and detrimental to d´etente.23 He called instead for more intensive multilateral negotiations over a balanced conventional disarmament and trustbuilding measures within the framework of the CSCE. This idea was initially very controversial even among Genscher’s CDU-CSU coalition partners. Both parties realized, however, that they could not afford a second public debate on NATO’s nuclear rearmament. An election was imminent. Kohl adopted Genscher’s rejection of an upgrade of short-range weapons and by doing so triggered a grave crisis within NATO. The West German government itself was now suspected of having neutralist leanings (“Genscherism”). Serious clashes took place between Kohl and his British and American NATO allies. Finally, on May 30, 1989, a NATO resolution made further decisions over the deployment of modernized short-range missiles conditional on the progress of East-West negotiations on conventional disarmament, which postponed the problem for two years. Kohl apparently secured this decisive concession from the new Bush administration not least by warning that a defeat for him in the upcoming Bundestag election 23

Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Rebuilding a House Divided: A Memoir by the Architect of Germany’s Reunification (New York, 1998), 232–4.

11

would bring a less NATO-friendly SPD government to office. Memory of this was to affect the atmosphere in which German unification was discussed shortly thereafter. Only a few weeks after the end of this controversy, signs of the new era in Eastern Europe began to appear. The secret fear of a neutral Germany revived by this controversy no doubt played its part in shaping American policy toward Germany in the period that followed. In these circumstances, the reputation of the chancellor as the most reliable exponent of Germany’s commitment to the West could only be enhanced. This fact was particularly influential in determining what stance the new U.S. president would adopt over the German question. At the high point of the West German nuclear arms debate, Bush, then vice president, had come to appreciate Kohl as a trustworthy ally of America. What influenced him in considering the key role that Germany would play in the changes in Eastern Europe was not the burden of the German past, but the capital of trust accumulated by the West German present. In mid-September 1989, he declared publicly that he did not share the fear of a united Germany expressed by others.24 Instead, with an eye to the prestige of the chancellor, he referred to Germans and Americans as “partners in leadership.”25 Bush, less of a visionary in world politics than his predecessor but an experienced hand at international negotiations who possessed a sure sense of the feasible, was in Kohl’s words a “Gl¨ucksfall,” a stroke of luck, for the Germans.26 Two points here must not be overlooked. First, Bush’s positive attitude toward the prospect of a reconstituted German nation state was in line with a basic orientation of American policy on Europe that went back to the latter part of the nineteenth century. 24

Philip Zelikow and Condolezza Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 81. 25 Remarks to the Citizens of Mainz, Federal Republic of Germany, May 31, 1989, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, George Bush, 1989 (Washington, D.C., 1990), 1:651. 26 Horst Teltschik, 329 Tage: Innenansichten der Einigung (Berlin, 1991), 237.

12

Klaus Schwabe

It had been revived after 1945 in the context of the Cold War and the need to mobilize forces against the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. Second, “leadership” was more than just a word to Bush: It expressed the determination of his administration to play a vital part in shaping the changes coming in Central and Eastern Europe in order to preserve America’s interests as a “European power.” This was the background to the unique form of German-American cooperation that was evident during the negotiations on German reunification.

perestroika, the new d´e tente, and german unification Bush had already indicated to Kohl in early September 1989 that Germany could count on U.S. backing if the issue of German unification came to the fore. After the fall of the Wall, and even more so after the collapse of the East German regime in December 1989, the American government was pressing for swift action. Neither Americans nor Germans were in any doubt that much was at stake. From the U.S. standpoint, the Federal Republic’s alignment with the West in security policy and hence the continuation of NATO and the presence of American troops in Europe 27 – in other words, the continuation of dual containment – hung in the balance. For its part, the coalition government in Bonn faced the challenge not only of demonstrating the credibility of its reunification policy and the consistency of that policy with the aims of Germany’s Western orientation, but also of preserving its ties to the West and thereby retaining the American nuclear shield over Germany through the impending upheavals in Europe. If Germany were to fail in these aims, a number of dangers would arise for both sides. The possibility of neutrality for Germany might become more attractive as the Soviet Union came to be seen as less of a military threat. The protest movement in the GDR might run out of 27

See the chapter by Karl Kaiser, vol. 2, Security.

control and resort to violence against the Red Army. The Soviets might intervene militarily. The movement toward independence in Eastern Europe might come to an end, and opponents of reform might return to power in the Kremlin, as in 1953. The “victory” of the West in the Cold War would turn into defeat. A final risk, less obvious, was that a community of interest might develop between the two major Western European powers and the Soviet Union on the issue of Germany, which would create a fault line within the Western alliance. These possibilities explain the growing urgency with which the Bush administration pressed for speedier negotiations on German unification. Its pressure went hand in hand with efforts to spare the new Soviet leadership under Gorbachev any loss of face.28 The essential American contribution to unification thus lay in the selection and application of a process that made it as simple as possible for the international community to sanction unification. This meant that the domestic and external aspects of German unification were treated as separate issues to block Soviet influence on the process of unification between the two German states. It meant as well that a peace settlement imposed by the former Allied powers would be avoided because it would have discriminated against the Germans. Most important of all, however, the choice of two-plus-four formula for the negotiations excluded all of Germany’s other wartime enemies as well as the CSCE from the unification talks. The nightmare of a cumbersome multilateral peace conference, which might not have achieved the desired aim and which certainly would have reopened issues such as the question of German reparations, was thus averted. The United States had to resort to pressure in persuading Poland in particular to accept this process. As Washington realized, that pressure could be effective only if the Warsaw government could count on a definitive German 28

See the literature cited previously, and also the chapter by Stephen F. Szabo in this section, and Werner Weidenfeld, with Peter M. Wagner and Elke Bruck, Aussenpolitik f¨ur die deutsche Einheit: die Entscheidungsjahre 1989/90 (Stuttgart, 1998).

D´etente and Multipolarity

guarantee of the Oder-Neisse border. Although West German governments up to that time had endeavored to deal with the German question in a multilateral frame, both Germany and the United States now had to aim for an essentially bilateral agreement between the superpowers. The two leading West European allies also had to be won over to the simplified procedure for bringing about German unification. Their misgivings about the resurgence of Germany as a major power were successfully allayed by the Bush administration, which made the United States the guarantor of peace in the new Europe in various ways. The United States insisted that a united Germany remain in the Atlantic alliance. It committed itself to the continued stationing of American troops in Western Europe and, as a nuclear power, took on ultimate control over German security policy while guaranteeing the security of a non-nuclear Germany. In addition, the United States insisted on Germany’s continued incorporation within a progressively more integrated Europe. In order not to forfeit American support for unification, the Federal Republic had to prove itself a reliable member of NATO and the driving force behind European integration. For Kohl this meant that there could be no doubt about united Germany’s membership in NATO and Germany’s determination to hold to this demand. Similarly, Kohl recognized that in deference to American convictions, there was no alternative to accepting the Oder-Neisse border once and for all, and he did not hesitate to commit himself to the American president in this question. On the other hand, Kohl was able to get the United States to commit itself to the continuation of arms reductions talks with the Soviet Union in which the final renunciation of NATO’s controversial plans for an upgrade of its short-range nuclear weapons would be on the agenda. It was only by following this route and by reformulating NATO’s strategy – together with economic and financial concessions on the part of the Federal Republic – that the essential conditions were created that enabled Gorbachev to accept the Western vision of German unification. The triumph of the West on the German

13

question and in Eastern Europe coincided with a triumph for the policy of d´etente.

conclusion Looking back at the two decades that separated the great turning points of 1968 and 1989, one is struck by the critical role played by security issues in German-American relations during those years. It was not by chance that uncircumscribed German membership of NATO became the cornerstone on which achievement of German unification ultimately depended. The partnership between America and Germany was always primarily a security partnership, which guaranteed the Federal Republic an existence independent of the Soviet Union, the United States its position of leadership in Western Europe, and, as long as the deterrent retained credibility, the Old World the preservation of peace. On this issue a clear community of interest existed between West Germany and the United States, and it is not surprising that whenever the German question appeared on the international agenda – as during the time of Brandt’s Ostpolitik, on the occasion of the Helsinki negotiations, and in the case of reunification – the diplomatic cooperation between the two states was as close as possible. It proved impossible to achieve an equally harmonious collaboration between America and Germany in d´etente policy. Their geostrategic positions were too different. The United States took a global view of the process of d´etente, while the West Germans saw it purely in the European context, where the signing of the Moscow and Warsaw treaties of 1970 had made coexistence with the communist states easier than in other regions of the world. Because the United States always saw d´etente in light of its own fundamental security interests, American diplomacy leaned toward bilateral negotiations with the other superpower. The Federal Republic, in the interest of d´etente between the two German states, preferred multilateral links, seeing them as a way to avoid being involved in the global confrontation between the superpowers. Although the Washington and

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Klaus Schwabe

Bonn governments often differed greatly in their views of the possibility of d´etente and its immediate and long-term aims, both sides were nevertheless convinced that the Germans and Americans depended on each other. Washington never forgot that the key to Europe’s future was held by the Soviets as well as by the Germans; Bonn was always aware that the United States provided the guarantee of the Federal Republic’s continued existence and of German unification at some point, perhaps, in the future. Not until bilateral d´etente between the superpowers achieved tangible and lasting successes did the multilateral involvement of the Federal Republic lose its significance for West German foreign policy. That policy now could, and indeed had to, opt for a bilateral d´etente framework allowing German unification with the decisive consent of the two superpowers. Ultimately, it was the community of interests and values that arose between Germans and Americans in the 1950s that survived all the crises of the years that followed and made such a vital contribution to the successful ending of the Cold War.

suggestions for further reading For a bibliographical guide to GermanAmerican relations in the context of the East-West conflict, see Wolfgang Michalka, ed., Ost-West-Konflikt und Friedenssicherung (Stuttgart, 1985); Herbert Dittgen, “Deutschamerikanische Sicherheitsbeziehungen und die Krisen in der atlantischen Allianz,” Neue Politische Literatur 32 (1987): 386–407; Robert J. McMahon, “Making Sense of American Foreign Policy During the Reagan Years,” Diplomatic History 19 (1995): 367–84; Werner Link, “Die Entwicklung des Ost-West-Konfliktes,” in Manfred Knapp and Gert Krell, eds., Einf¨uhrung in die internationale Politik, 3d ed. (Munich, 1996), 243–74 (a “realistic” as opposed to “idealistic” interpretation of the Cold War as it drew to a close); see also Ernst-Otto Czempiel, “Die USA und Westeuropa: Asymmetrie, Interdependenz, Kooperation,” in ibid., 147– 203.

Because the material covered here is still subject to the thirty-year rule, few relevant archival sources have yet been published. Those that have include Documents on British Policy Overseas, series 3, vol. 2: The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe 1972–1975 (London, 1997), and Hanns-J¨urgen K¨usters and Daniel Hofmann, eds., Deutsche Einheit: Sonderedition aus den Akten des Bundeskanzleramtes 1989/90 (Munich, 1998). However, a number of memoirs have already been published. Particularly important on the American side are the memoirs of Henry Kissinger: White House Years (Boston and Toronto, 1979); Years of Upheaval (Boston and Toronto, 1982); and Years of Renewal (New York, 1999), which are as informative on the present subject as they are analytically brilliant. Kissinger’s self-portrayal is critically reappraised by William Bundy, A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency (New York, 1998). Also instructive are the recollections of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977–1981, 2d ed. (New York, 1985); Paul H. Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost: At the Center of Decision: A Memoir (New York, 1989); and James A. Baker and Thomas M. DeFrank, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace, 1989–1992 (New York, 1995). Besides Baker, the secretaries of state in other U.S. administrations covered here have also left memoirs (varying in their degree of informativeness): George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York, 1993); Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices: Critical Years in America’s Foreign Policy (New York, 1983); and Alexander Haig, Caveat: Realism, Reagan, and Foreign Policy (New York, 1984). Moreover, a few U.S. ambassadors to Germany have published their reminiscences: Martin J. Hillenbrand, Fragments of Our Time: Memoirs of a Diplomat (Athens, Ga., 1998); the memoir of the U.S. ambassador in Bonn during the collapse of communism delivers only part of what its title promises: Vernon A. Walters, Die Vereinigung war voraussehbar. Hinter den Kulissen eines entscheidenden Jahres: Die Aufzeichnungen des amerikanischen Botschafters (Berlin, 1994). German-American relations ordinarily play only a marginal part in the memoirs of the

D´etente and Multipolarity

U.S. presidents who held office during the period discussed here, so these works need not be listed here. On the events of 1989–90, however, see George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York, 1998); the memoirs of the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (New York, 1993); as well as the published works of Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (New York, 1996) and the extremely selective Gipfelgespr¨ache: Geheime Protokolle aus meiner Amtszeit (Berlin, 1993). On the German side, equally informative autobiographical works from the leading politicians of the period exist: Willy Brandt, People and Politics: The Years, 1960–1975 (Boston, 1978) and My Life in Politics (New York, 1992); Helmut Schmidt, Men and Powers: A Political Retrospective (New York, 1989); Helmut Kohl, Ich wollte Deutschlands Einheit, with Kai Diekmann und Ralf Georg Reuth (Berlin, 1996), an authorized memoir concerned almost exclusively with the end of communism in East Germany. Important works by less prominent politicians include: Rainer Barzel, Auf dem Drahtseil (Munich, 1978); Egon Bahr, Zu meiner Zeit (Munich, 1996); Franz Josef Strauss, Die Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1989); and Horst Teltschik, 329 Tage: Innenansichten der Einigung (Berlin, 1991), a highly informative source for German activities during the unification negotiations. Despite their abundance of quotations and discursive style, the memoirs of the German foreign minister are also indispensable: Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Rebuilding a House Divided: A Memoir by the Architect of Germany’s Reunification (New York, 1998). In the absence of comprehensive studies of the issues covered here, a number of recently published general collections offer useful articles on individual themes discussed below: Wolfgang-Uwe Friedrich, ed., Die USA und die deutsche Frage 1945–1990 (Frankfurt am Main, 1991); Gustav Schmidt, ed., Ost-West Beziehungen: Konfrontation und D´etente 1945–1989 (Bochum, 1993); Helga Haftendorn and Christian Tuschhoff, eds., America and Europe in an Era of Change (Boulder, Colo., 1993); Manfred Knapp, ed., Transatlantische Beziehungen: Die USA und Europa zwischen gemeinsamen Inte-

15

ressen und Konflikten (Stuttgart, 1990); Gottfried Niedhart, Detlef Junker and Michael Richter, eds., Deutschland in Europa: Nationale Interessen und internationale Ordnung im 20. Jahrhundert (Mannheim, 1997); and Klaus Larres and Torsten Oppelland, eds., Deutschland und die USA im 20. Jahrhundert. Geschichte der politischen Beziehungen (Darmstadt, 1997), which has excellent bibliographical notes. A number of monographs also deal competently with the topic covered here. Noteworthy above all is the work of Werner Link, one of the leading experts on German-American relations up to the very recent past; see the summary he provides in his essay “Historical Continuity and Discontinuity in Transatlantic Relations: Consequences for the Future,” in Miles Kahler and Werner Link, eds., Europe and America: A Return to History (New York, 1996), 29–126. See also his sections devoted to West German foreign policy in Karl Dietrich Bracher et al., eds., Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Werner Link, “Aussen- und Deutschlandpoli¨ Brandt,” in Karl Dietrich Bracher, tik in der Ara Wolfgang J¨ager, and Werner Link, Republik im ¨ Brandt (Stuttgart, Wandel 1969–1974: Die Ara 1986), 163–282, and “Aussen- und Deutsch¨ Schmidt, 1974–1982,” landpolitik in der Ara in Wolfgang J¨ager and Werner Link, Republik ¨ Schmidt (Stuttgart im Wandel 1974–1982: Die Ara and Mannheim, 1987), 275–432. Also relevant are parts of Christian Hacke, Die Aussenpolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Weltmacht wider Willen? (Frankfurt am Main, 1997) and Zur Weltmacht verdammt: Die amerikanische Aussenpolitik von Kennedy bis Clinton (Berlin, 1997); Gregor Sch¨ollgen, Geschichte der Weltpolitik von Hitler bis Gorbatschow 1941–1991 (Munich, 1996); Alfred Grosser, The Western Alliance: EuropeanAmerican Relations Since 1945 (New York, 1980); Erhard Forndran, Die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika und Europa: Erfahrungen und Perspektiven transatlantischer Beziehungen seit dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Baden-Baden, 1991); Geir Lundestad, “Empire” by Integration: The United States and European Integration, 1945–1997 (Oxford, 1998); Wolfram F. Hanrieder, Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of German Foreign Policy (New Haven, 1989); and Frank A. Ninkovich,

16

Klaus Schwabe

Germany and the United States: The Transformation of the German Question Since 1945, 2d ed. (New York, 1995). Touching briefly on our subject is Warren I. Cohen, America in the Age of Soviet Power 1945–1991 (Cambridge, 1993). ¨ BrandtArnulf Baring, Machtwechsel: Die Ara Scheel (Munich, 1984) remains an important study of Ostpolitik. General overviews of d´etente can be found in Manfred G¨ortemaker, Die unheilige Allianz: Die Geschichte der Entspannungspolitik 1943–1979 (Munich, 1979); and Hans-Peter Schwarz, ed., Entspannungspolitik in Ost und West (Cologne, 1979). Keith L. Nelson, The Making of D´etente: Soviet-American Relations in the Shadow of Vietnam (Baltimore, 1995) stresses the importance of smaller and mediumsized powers in d´etente between the superpowers. Gebhard Schweigler, Von Kissinger zu Carter: Entspannung im Widerstreit von Innen- und Aussenpolitik 1969–1981 (Munich, 1982) describes the debates over d´etente in the United States against the background of its political system. Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (New York, 1993), is a brilliantly written critical stocktaking of the Social Democrats’ d´etente policy. Drawing on recently released American and Soviet documents, the essays in Odd Arne Westad, ed., The Fall of D´etente: Soviet-American Relations During the Carter Years (Oslo, 1997) describe how the combination of conflicts over armscontrol issues and intervention in the Third World put an end to d´etente in the late 1970s. Georges-Henri Soutou, L’Alliance incertaine: les rapports politico-strat´egiques franco-allemands, 1954– 1996 (Paris, 1996) uses archival material that is not yet generally accessible for an analysis of the repeated failure to create a Franco-German security community; at the same time, his book deals with the triangular relationship with the United States. Josef Joffe, The Limited Partnership: Europe, the United States, and the Burdens of Alliance (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), shows how the divisibility of d´etente postulated by the Europeans and the growing rejection of nuclear weapons during the 1980s shifted the foundations of the alliance. A growing number of studies scrutinize the foreign and security policies of

the social democratic-liberal governments, in which the relationship with the United States inevitably played a central role: Stefan A. Heinlein, Gemeinsame Sicherheit: Egon Bahrs sicherheitspolitische Konzeption und die Kontinuit¨at sozialdemokratischer Entspannungsvorstellungen (M¨unster, 1993); Andreas Vogtmeier, Egon Bahr und die deutsche Frage: Zur Entwicklung der sozialdemokratischen Ost- und Deutschlandpolitik vom Kriegsende bis zur Vereinigung (Bonn, 1996); Herbert Dittgen, Deutsch¨ amerikanische Sicherheitsbeziehungen in der Ara Helmut Schmidt: Vorgeschichte und Folgen des NATO-Doppelbeschlusses (Munich, 1991); Barbara D. Heep, Helmut Schmidt und Amerika: Eine schwierige Partnerschaft (Bonn, 1990); and Thomas Enders, Die SPD und die a¨ ussere Sicherheit: Zum Wandel der sicherheitspolitischen Konzeption der Partei in der Zeit der Regierungsverantwortung (Melle, 1987). For more on the subject of security, which was naturally of central importance for the political relations, more narrowly understood, between the two countries, see the narrative bibliography in the article by Wolfgang Krieger, vol. 2, Security. Knowledge of the background of U.S. relations with the Soviet Union is essential for an understanding of German-American relations. The literature on this is immense, especially on the American side. Besides the aforementioned works by Henry Kissinger, the most important is Raymond L. Garthoff, D´etente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington, D.C., 1985), in which the author endeavors with a wealth of detail to invalidate the argument, fashionable in the United States, that d´etente was a one-way street that benefited only the Soviet Union. In The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War (Washington, D.C., 1994), the same author analyzes bilateral relations under Presidents Reagan and Bush and the Soviet general secretaries from Brezhnev to Gorbachev. Neither book includes a bibliography. On the German side, Ernst-Otto Czempiel, Machtprobe: Die USA und die Sowjetunion in den achtziger Jahren (Munich, 1989) focuses on the “societal,” that is, the domestic background to U.S. foreign policy in the Reagan era.

D´etente and Multipolarity

An extensive body of monographs already exists on German unification. Two outstanding studies based on confidential documents are: Werner Weidenfeld, with Peter M. Wagner and Elke Bruck, Aussenpolitik f¨ur die deutsche Einheit: Die Entscheidungsjahre 1989/90 (Stuttgart, 1998); and Philip Zelikow and Condolezza Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (Cambridge, Mass., 1995). Like Zelikow and Rice, Robert L. Hutchings, American Diplomacy and the End of the Cold War: An Insider’s Account of U.S. Policy in Europe, 1989– 1992 (Washington, D.C., 1997) relies on personal experience. For further reading, see A. James McAdams, Germany Divided: From the Wall to Reunification (Princeton, 1993); Stephen F. Szabo, The Diplomacy of German Unification (New York, 1992); and Elizabeth Pond, Beyond the Wall: Germany’s Road to Unification (Washington, D.C., 1993). Occupying a position between history and belles lettres is Michael R. Beschloss

17

and Strobe Talbott, At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War (Boston, 1993). Of the German accounts, Karl Kaiser, Deutschlands Vereiningung: Die internationalen Aspekte (Bergisch Gladbach, 1991) contains the most important documents, and Heinrich Bortfeldt, Washington-Berlin- Bonn: Die USA und die deutsche Einheit (Bonn, 1993) incorporates the perspective from East Berlin. There is information on the U.S. role in the German unification process in the records of the Bundestag’s inquiry into the background of unification: see “Handlungsspielr¨aume deutscher und internationaler Akteure im Vereinigungsprozess,” in ¨ Materialien der Enquete-Kommission ‘Uberwindung der Folgen der SED-Diktatur im Prozess der deutschen Einheit’ (13. Wahlperiode des Deutschen Bundestages), ed., Deutscher Bundestag (Baden-Baden, 1999), vol. 8, 121– 302.

chapter one

The United States and the German Question Christian Hacke Translated by Richard Sharp

Washington and Bonn both believed until the late 1950s that the German question could be resolved only by the German people exercising their right to self-determination through free elections and that only then would conditions for European d´etente exist. During the 1960s, however, the views of the two governments increasingly diverged. The fact that the Federal Republic of Germany was acting to some extent as a “gatekeeper” obstructed American work for d´etente because the German insistence on the primacy of reunification ran counter to Washington’s demand for at least temporary recognition of the status quo in Europe. In a complex process of bilateral readjustment, it became evident to the governments in Washington and Bonn that European d´etente was the top priority. As a result, the German question ceased to be so acute. By the early 1970s, the overall situation surrounding d´etente policy had undergone surprising changes: The treaty sought with the East by the West German government under Willy Brandt and Walter Scheel clearly went too far for Richard Nixon’s administration. The Nixon government stopped short of open criticism but, behind closed doors, expressed fears that the new Ostpolitik being pursued by the Federal Republic was too accommodating toward the Soviet Union. As a result, Washington initially greeted

Bonn’s renewed initiatives in the field of d´etente policy with suspicion.1 the attitude of the nixon and ford administrations toward the german question The Nixon Administration initially harbored grave reservations about what Brandt called Ostpolitik. With each German state seeking to seduce the other, they might finally come together on some nationalist, neutral program, as Adenauer and de Gaulle had feared. . . . Above all, the Nixon Administration feared for the unity of the West . . . Washington viewed the specter of West Germany breaking out on its own with trepidation.2

That was how Henry Kissinger retrospectively described American mistrust of Bonn’s efforts in creating d´etente. But Washington was wrong. Chancellor Willy Brandt and his foreign minister, Walter Scheel, had no intention of breaking up the alliance. All the Federal Republic wanted was to break out of an isolation – an isolation of its own making – and negotiate directly with its eastern neighbors and the Soviet 1 Frank A. Ninkovich, Germany and the United States: The Transformation of the German Question Since 1945, 2d ed. (New York, 1995), 138–43; Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston, 1979), 408–10; see also the chapter by Werner Link in this section. 2 Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York, 1994), 735.

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The United States and the German Question

Union.3 This was boldly ambitious because there had previously been doubts in the United States whether the Federal Republic would be ready to undertake diplomatic initiatives toward the Soviet Union. Until Brandt took office, Washington had actually feared that its partner in Bonn would pursue its own interests and in the process undermine American and Soviet attempts to normalize the situation in Germany and the rest of Europe.4 As a result, the few pronouncements issued by the Nixon administration were often cryptic. Nixon stated in January 1971 that the successes achieved by the Bonn government in Moscow and Warsaw had been prepared through mutual consultations and had only been possible because of the strength of the Western alliance. Yet mistrust toward Bonn remained, for Washington feared that the United States might lose control over East-West relations. Western d´etente policy should, in the view of the Nixon administration, thus be better coordinated. In plain language, that meant that the United States, as the dominant power, wanted to determine the direction and scope of Western d´etente policy in the heart of Europe. Washington did not want to see Germany going it alone. An additional factor was that in 1972 Nixon, unlike Brandt, could not look back on any major successes in foreign policy. Soviet support for mobilization of troops in Jordan, the Cienfuegos incident, the Vietcong offenses in South Vietnam, the Soviet threats in the Middle Eastern conflict, and, finally, the socialist Salvador Allende’s seizure of power in Chile all seemed to signal precisely what the Nixon adminstration no longer wanted to believe: the continuation of communism’s global strategy of confrontation. Unlike Nixon, who was also under pressure for his domestic and economic policies, Brandt and Scheel had been able to initiate their diplomatic effort in the East almost effortlessly. 3

Wolfram F. Hanrieder, Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of German Foreign Policy (New Haven, Conn., 1989), 196–7. 4 ¨ Nixon-Kissinger 1969–1974: Christian Hacke, Die Ara Konservative Reform der Weltpolitik (Stuttgart, 1983), 146.

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In the wake of the decisive successes of the treaties with Moscow and Warsaw, the Brandt government was riding a crest of popularity in the early 1970s. Richard Nixon, therefore, regarded his junior partner in Bonn with suspicion and even some envy. Willy Brandt had accomplished something that the president himself had hoped to achieve: new treaties with former enemies and a consensus, even enthusiasm, in domestic policy. Nixon had no objections in principle to the West German initiative toward Moscow, but he was not overly pleased that the Federal Republic, in addition to its increased economic importance, had also become the pacesetter of d´etente policy. However, the charge leveled by Nixon and Kissinger that a new form of nationalism, paired with anti-West European and antiAmerican tendencies, might arise in the Federal Republic objectively proved to be the product of their competitiveness and differing interests.5 The United States thus tried to regain control over East-West d´etente through the Four-Power Agreement on Berlin of 1971. the importance of the 1971 berlin agreement to american interests The negotiations on a Berlin settlement were not intended to resolve the question of German reunification. The Nixon administration had more interest in implementing the d´etente element of the Nixon doctrine through a Western policy toward Eastern Europe that was steered and coordinated by America. His call for greater regional autonomy and a greater willingness on the part of his allies to bear their share of the costs sought to ease the political and economic burden on Washington. In substance, Brandt’s Ostpolitik was not at odds with Nixon’s foreign policy, but supplemented and even reinforced it. Both Nixon and Brandt were also seeking greater security for Berlin. During the 1960s the Soviet Union and East Germany had repeatedly obstructed transit to and from West Berlin. With access often 5

Ibid., 162–3.

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Christian Hacke

arbitrarily cut off for hours at a time, the Western Allies, especially the United States, were sympathetic toward the West German government’s desire for a Four-Power agreement to settle the Berlin question. “Restrictions on access and obstruction of transit facilities to Berlin, and Soviet protests against the Bundesversammlung [the assembly that elects the president of the Federal Republic] had in 1968 and 1969, again drawn attention to the city’s unsatisfactory situation.”6 During his visit to Germany, President Nixon gave the signal on February 27, 1969, in an address to the Siemens workforce in Berlin: “The men of the past thought in terms of blockades and walls; the men of the future will think in terms of open channels. . . . The question now is how best to end the challenge and clear the way for a peaceful solution to the problem of a divided Germany. . . . Nobody benefits from a stalemate.”7 It was only the new Ostpolitik of the social democratic-liberal coalition government that would open the way for the Four Powers to negotiate a treaty improving Berlin’s situation. For West Berliners, this brought greater freedom of action and movement; for the United States, it offered an opportunity to monitor the dynamic of German Ostpolitik.8 Internationally, the Berlin Agreement marked a new point of intersection between American and German policies on d´etente. Brandt had pressed forward with his Ostpolitik through treaties with the Soviet Union and Poland, but the Four-Power Agreement once again established closer links between the American and German desire for d´etente. The effect of the Berlin Agreement was to expedite American d´etente policy toward the Soviet Union, but at the same time to Europeanize it through cooperation with the other Western powers and the Federal Republic. Conversely, West Germany’s Ostpolitik

gained new substance from the Berlin Agreement: It became an integral part of the Atlantic alliance’s efforts at d´etente.9 For the Germans, the Berlin Agreement also became a precondition for ratifying the Moscow and Warsaw treaties. This arrangement bracketed West Germany’s East bloc treaties with the Allied agreement on Berlin, and at the same time provided the Soviet Union with an important incentive to conclude the latter agreement. When Willy Brandt and, above all, Defense Minister Helmut Schmidt also assured their NATO partners that continuity within the alliance took precedence over West German policy shifts toward the East bloc,10 the Nixon administration acknowledged that Brandt and Scheel’s Ostpolitik in no way undermined the American approach to d´etente. Indeed, Washington paid tribute to Bonn’s contribution to d´etente. In turn, Bonn had acknowledged the realities of postwar Europe and also facilitated the arms-control talks running between Washington and Moscow. Nixon now treated the German question as an issue separate from American-Soviet relations: Finding an answer for that question, he said, was a matter for the Germans.11 This decoupling of American interests from the German question was only superficial, however. Kissinger understood the importance of the Moscow and Warsaw treaties for East-West d´etente. Moscow signed the Berlin agreement with a view to having the Bundestag ratify the Moscow and Warsaw treaties. The Soviets were particularly anxious to secure Bonn’s support for their special project of setting up a European security conference, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). After Brandt turned this new deal on Berlin around the other way – insisting that a Berlin agreement had to be signed before agreeing to the 9

6

Helga Haftendorn, Sicherheit und Entspannung: Zur Aussenpolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1955–1982 (Baden-Baden, 1983), 351. 7 Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard Nixon, 1969 (Washington, D.C., 1971), 158. 8 Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York, 1992), 322–7.

Dieter Mahncke, Berlin im geteilten Deutschland (Munich, 1973), 245–53; Dennis L. Bark, Agreement on Berlin: A Study of the 1970–72 Quadripartite Negotiations (Washington, D.C., 1974), 57–62. 10 Barbara D. Heep, Helmut Schmidt und Amerika: Eine schwierige Partnerschaft (Bonn, 1990), 25–6. 11 Rainer Barzel, Auf dem Drahtseil (Munich, 1978), 113; Willy Brandt, Begegnungen und Einsichten: Die Jahre 1960–1975 (Hamburg, 1976), 400–1.

The United States and the German Question

CSCE – during his talks with Leonid Brezhnev in the Crimea, Moscow showed greater willingness to cooperate on Berlin, partly not to jeopardize ratification of the Moscow and Warsaw treaties. The “preliminaries of Ostpolitik” in Germany created new options in foreign policy for the Nixon administration. Kissinger established a link between Vietnam and the Moscow and Warsaw treaties on his secret mission to Moscow in April 1972: After the United States forces had mined North Vietnam’s ports, Kissinger raised the subject of the outstanding ratification of the Moscow and Warsaw treaties in Bonn as a lever to persuade the Soviets to exercise restraint in the Far East. Neither Nixon nor Kissinger wished to sabotage West Germany’s Moscow and Warsaw treaties. On the contrary, the treaties had become an indispensable foundation of American d´etente policy. It was in vain, therefore, that the Christian Democratic opposition in the Bundestag hoped for U.S. support in its opposition to the Moscow and Warsaw treaties. American criticism may have affected the tempo of Brandt’s Ostpolitik but had no impact on its substance. These disagreements demonstrated that the status of the Federal Republic within the alliance had been enhanced and had expanded the room for maneuver in Western d´etente policy as a whole. Nixon was able to sign the hoped-for Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) agreement in Moscow in May, and in June the FourPower Agreement on Berlin came into force. The fact that Chancellor Brandt was working toward a treaty with East Germany as the final stage of his diplomatic efforts in the Eastern bloc surprised no one in the United States; in the wake of the Moscow and Warsaw treaties, such a step was only logical. In view of his own resounding victory in the November 1972 elections – an implicit endorsement of his Ostpolitik – Nixon took a more relaxed view of German policy. But neither German nor American d´etente policy had any direct impact on solving the German question. No one in either the East or the West expected or feared that Germany would be reunified through the

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new Ostpolitik. In contrast to the 1950s, European d´etente and the division of Germany indeed now seemed to be a given. From 1973 onward, the Watergate scandal increasingly limited the Nixon administration’s foreign policy options, while the Federal Republic came to occupy a key position in efforts to achieve East-West d´etente. The CSCE, the new multilateral fulcrum of East-West relations, was welcomed by West Germany because it pressed for greater freedom of movement and sought improvements in relations between West and East Germany. Washington, by contrast, took a skeptical view of the CSCE.12 The United States was evidently more interested in bilateral d´etente between the superpowers than within the CSCE. This reluctance on Washington’s part caused irritation, not only in Western Europe, but in Eastern Europe as well. With the full political backing of the United States, the West might possibly have been able to achieve more advantageous and lasting results through the CSCE. Instead, Nixon and Kissinger preferred to retain exclusive control of policy toward the Soviet Union by way of a “d´etente Americana.” In this situation, Brezhnev’s main contact became Willy Brandt, not Richard Nixon. Brandt offered Brezhnev his assistance in speeding up the CSCE negotiations in the hope of encouraging the Communist Party secretary to reach a satisfactory settlement on Berlin in exchange. When Schmidt replaced Brandt at the head of the government in 1974, Washington’s mistrust of West German Ostpolitik diminished markedly, for Helmut Schmidt once again made loyalty to the alliance and German security considerations a central factor in his policies. Accordingly, disagreements over d´etente with Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, were less frequent.13 At the same time, the importance of the Federal Republic within the complex network of East-West relations increased at the expense of the United States, and the more confrontational 12 Robert D. Schulzinger, Henry Kissinger: Doctor of Diplomacy (New York, 1989), 212–3. See also the chapter by Michael R. Lucas in this section. 13 Kissinger, Diplomacy, 759–60.

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Christian Hacke

relations between the superpowers became, the more West Germany’s importance grew. President Ford, too, had to recognize that there was no alternative to the Schmidt government’s policies on Eastern Europe and the German question. Ford thus used Bonn’s Ostpolitik as a means of bringing pressure on the Soviet Union to force the pace of the arms-control dialogue. From this standpoint, the American government “deflected” the German question, using it to advance America’s own interests in the superpower dialogue. The German question remained unresolved during the 1970s, although the division of Germany became more tolerable as a result of the agreements on the issues surrounding Berlin and on humanitarian measures. The Federal Republic had kept the German question open, both legally and politically, and at the same time codified it by means of the Moscow and Warsaw treaties. Moreover, the Federal Republic was decisively involved in East-West d´etente and had become an active shaper of European d´etente policy, not merely a passive figure in its development.14 Washington acknowledged this reluctantly at first, but eventually accorded the German role due respect.

the carter administration’s position on the german question During the Carter presidency the question of reunification remained only a secondary issue. It seemed to have been superseded by the needs of European d´etente. Even so, repeated disagreements between President Carter and Chancellor Schmidt emerged on key d´etente issues. At the heart of the matter was whether d´etente in Europe should be pursued as in the past given tensions outside Europe, such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Tensions also arose between Carter and Schmidt over economic rivalries between their two countries in the world market. This occurred, for instance, when 14

Christian Hacke, Die Aussenpolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Weltmacht Wieder Willen? (Frankfurt am Main, 1997), 335–7.

Carter attempted to block delivery of German nuclear reactors to Brazil.15 In the military strategy sector, too, Carter’s position as a leader within the alliance was weakened.16 His actions after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan were hard to predict, and he seemed unable to act during the crisis in Iran, especially after the failed attempt to free the American hostages. Schmidt and French President Val´ery Giscard d’Estaing meanwhile gained influence within the alliance in friendly tandem. They partially decoupled European d´etente policy from the global “d´etente Americana,” determined not to allow European and German d´etente policy to be frozen by the plunging temperature of American-Soviet relations. Indeed, both tried to act as intermediaries between the United States and the Soviet Union in Moscow, which stirred up suspicions in Washington that they were becoming too close to the Soviet Union. Tensions increased as a result, particularly between Schmidt and Carter. The West German chancellor, always a political realist, had no great use for the American president’s human-rights rhetoric. However much Schmidt, too, might have welcomed Carter’s SALT negotiations in principle, he still regarded the president’s policy as unbalanced and feared that Carter would disregard German security interests in his arms-control talks with Brezhnev.17 In view of these problems, it was not surprising that the German question took a back seat. In the context of American foreign policy and relations with the Federal Republic, the German questions in the conventional sense – the questions of reunification and selfdetermination – were of completely secondary importance. Indeed, the division of Germany seemed to have become a basic precondition and permanent element of East-West d´etente.

15

Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1995), 403–4. 16 See the chapter by Matthias Dembinski, vol. 2, Security. 17 Christian Hacke, Zur Weltmacht verdammt: Die amerikanische Aussenpolitik von Kennedy bis Clinton (Berlin, 1997), 266–77.

The United States and the German Question

Differences between the Germans and Americans arose from their differing assessments of policy on security and d´etente. The issue was not so much the German question as the repercussions of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Europe. As Carter saw it, the invasion had dealt the deathblow to European d´etente. The Schmidt-Genscher government, by contrast, was unwilling to abandon d´etente in principle. The reason was obvious: Although the Federal Republic remained firmly rooted in the West, the d´etente based on West Germany’s new Ostpolitik had created additional interests and broadened the country’s room for maneuver. On the one hand, its standing and role in the Western alliance had been enhanced; on the other, the new dynamic of policy on Eastern Europe and Germany had made the Federal Republic more dependent on cooperation with the East, especially the Soviet Union and East Germany. To expand relations between West and East Germany, intensify Ostpolitik, and, not least, keep the German question open, an understanding with Moscow was necessary above all. In the 1970s the Federal Republic was still able to perform this tightrope act more or less satisfactorily. At the beginning of the 1980s, however, conflicts between the United States and the Federal Republic increased; the two most important partners in the alliance were heading in opposite directions.

Responding to the logic of great-power rivalry, the United States quite naturally proclaimed the “indivisibility of d´etente” while calling for resistance on a global scale. Following the logic of its national and regional mission, the Federal Republic acted as if d´etente could (and should) be compartmentalized while denigrating the wider implications of the Polish putsch and the Soviet foray in Southwest Asia.18

18 Josef Joffe, “Squaring Many Circles: West German Security Policy between Deterrence, D´etente and Alliance,” in James A. Cooney et al., eds., The Federal Republic of Germany and the United States: Changing Political, Social, and Economic Relations (Boulder, Colo., 1984), 176.

23

While the Germans were trying keep European d´etente separate from the global confrontation between the superpowers, the new U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, was trying to recruit the West Europeans – including the Germans – for an anti-Soviet confrontation.

the reagan administration’s approach The German question was at first completely insignificant for Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy. Indeed, he initially even seemed to jeopardize the pragmatic successes achieved by European d´etente. “According to his way of thinking, dedication to ending the Cold War did not require creating a ‘favorable’ atmosphere. . . .Reagan was the first postwar president to take the offensive both ideologically and geostrategically.”19 Under these circumstances, Reagan had a particular fear that the Soviet Union might weaken German commitment to NATO through deployment of SS-20 missiles and the resulting controversy over the deployment of American medium-range missiles in Europe.20 When the new government in Bonn under Helmut Kohl and Hans-Dietrich Genscher eventually did force through the deployment of intermediaterange missiles, it was a particularly impressive success because it frustrated the Kremlin’s attempt to intimidate Germany and Western Europe. The chancellor drew fire within the Federal Republic for seeming too soft in his dealings with the Reagan administration, whose militant anti-Soviet rhetoric caused deep concern. Yet the fact is that Helmut Kohl was more interested in improving German-American relations through flexibility and adaptation than in demonstrative criticism. As a consequence of this policy, German and American pronouncements on the Soviet leadership during the 1980s became more consistent with one another. Kohl’s main interest lay in maintaining the strength of the alliance. Washington, in 19 20

Kissinger Diplomacy, 772. See the chapter by Michael Broer, vol. 2, Security.

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Christian Hacke

turn, paid greater attention to German arguments. Reagan came to value Kohl as his most important partner in Europe. Behind closed doors, Kohl and Genscher tried to persuade the American leadership that economic sanctions against the Soviet Union would not advance the cause of East-West d´etente. They pressed hard for a stronger American commitment to d´etente policy, although the American president had distanced himself from this by the mid-1980s. Differences over security policy again became apparent in connection with Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), though even on this occasion the West German government stopped short of public criticism. German reunification and all the issues associated with it became fixed as a form of political and rhetorical ritual during the 1980s. Hardly anyone believed, in either Washington or Bonn, that reunification was a practical possibility any time in the foreseeable future. All eyes on both sides of the Atlantic were on security policy and d´etente in Europe. It was only beginning in March 1985, when the new Soviet leadership came to power under General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, that the horizons again broadened. Reagan knew that Gorbachev was under pressure to introduce reforms, and the American president himself hoped to increase that pressure from outside. In this context, the German question became interesting to Ronald Reagan. He even called upon Gorbachev to do something previously unthinkable: to put the German question on the political agenda once again. This was a sensational development. Ronald Reagan’s visit to Berlin during the German capital’s 750th jubilee celebrations became the emotional high point of German-American relations in the 1980s. Every American president had a duty to speak of freedom here, declared Reagan on June 12, 1987. His appeal to the Soviet leadership has entered into legend since the reunification of Germany. “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev,

open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”21 Ronald Reagan may have frightened some Germans in 1987 and perhaps amused others, but, in retrospect, he has put many Germans to shame. Reagan was the courageous personification of American commitment to German unity within a free Europe, for that aim corresponded to American interests and American values. The attitude adopted by the United States toward German unity was more generous and more committed than that of any other country. This was apparent at the end of World War I, at the end of World War II, and again at the end of the global Cold War. Ronald Reagan did not end the Cold War, but he hastened its end. His actions were not without risk, but history has proven him right. He did not gallop backward into the 1950s, as his critics charged, but was the first man to glimpse the vision of the 1990s and to hammer on the gate for a united Germany within a united Europe. conclusion Looking back, the importance of the German question to relations between the United States and the Federal Republic in the years 1969–90 fluctuated, but as far as the Americans were concerned, the basic premises remained unchanged until the fall of the Wall: The security of the alliance and American-Soviet d´etente, consistently pursued from Nixon through to Reagan, took priority. There was nothing urgent about the German question for successive American administrations. America’s West German partner gave regular and credible assurances that it had no intention of pursuing its national interest outside of NATO. Anti-American leanings in the German public represented only a dwindling minority opinion and in no way affected the more general approval for the alliance with the United States. 21 Remarks on East-West Relations at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, June 12, 1987, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan, 1987 (Washington, D.C., 1989), 1:635.

The United States and the German Question

It would be futile to speculate about what would have happened if the German question had occupied a different, much more important position in the context of American foreign policy than it actually did. Successive U.S. presidents did after all provide necessary backing within the alliance for Bonn’s policies on Eastern Europe and Germany. Still, the Moscow and Warsaw treaties were in fact based on the firmly established position of the Federal Republic within the alliance, with the German question encapsulated within the treaties. At the same time, the Moscow and Warsaw treaties had created the conditions for d´etente that first enabled the East Europeans – and especially the Russians – not to oppose reunification when

25

it eventually became a tangible reality with the fall of the Wall. The deep significance of U.S. policy for reunification lay in the fact that although Washington had kept a low profile on the German question in the 1970s and 1980s, it immediately reintroduced the issue when President Reagan recognized the changes in the international situation resulting from Gorbachev’s accession to power. The United States then showed more courage than all the other Western allies in declaring and acting upon its commitment to German reunification.22

22 See the chapter by Stephen F. Szabo in this section and the chapter by Karl Kaiser, vol. 2, Security.

chapter two

The Federal Republic of Germany Between the American and Russian Superpowers: “Old Friend” and “New Partner” Gottfried Niedhart Translated by Richard Sharp

Republic no longer had to confine itself to a passive role in the shadows of the relations between the two superpowers. It successfully brought about normalization in its reciprocal relations with both of them. In its dealings with the Soviet Union, normalization meant leaving behind a deep-seated hostility. This was replaced by the renunciation of force and the opening of cooperative relations. In German-American relations, which were the vital foundation of the Federal Republic’s foreign policy, normalization meant carrying through, as earlier envisioned, with the turn away from the model of symbiotic friendship. The Federal Republic sought not separation but emancipation from the dominant Western power in order to express its own specific interests in its policies toward both West and East and, further, in its dealings with the Third World. The “friend or foe” orientation of the early Cold War that had shaped Bonn’s foreign policy from the outset faded in the late 1960s and early 1970s during the second formative phase of the Federal Republic. It came to be replaced by a policy of rational self-interest vis-`a-vis the two superpowers in terms of both West Germany’s interests and those of the divided German nation as a whole. In the case of the United States, differing assessments and conflicts of interest arising from this policy change had no effect on the underlying foundations of the bilateral relationship. German-American relations expanded in a growing number of areas and within the framework of interests that, although

The 1970s and 1980s were decades of change and transition that saw the importance and influence of the Federal Republic in international politics increase markedly. This development was linked to three political changes: the policy of d´etente between East and West in the late 1960s and early 1970s; the emergence of multipolar tendencies alongside the bipolar structure of postwar world politics; and the resolution and ultimate end of the East-West conflict in the second half of the 1980s. The Federal Republic itself also began to place greater emphasis in its view of its own role on gaining room for maneuver and on protecting its own interests. The Federal Republic was dependent on trends in international politics that the victors of World War II had determined. Yet, it was not condemned merely to adapt reactively to the changing climate of international affairs; it could exert influence in this realm, even if with only the limited capacity of a medium-sized power. For not only security and economic reasons but also for national reasons, it lay in the Federal Republic’s interest to press for an easing of tensions in the East-West conflict. Doing so served its most important goals: security, prosperity, and unity.

structural asymmetry As it ascended to become a joint leader among the Western European powers and took on a central place in the Atlantic alliance, the Federal 26

The Federal Republic of Germany Between the American and Russian Superpowers

not completely identical, were certainly compatible. Fundamental areas of agreement coexisted with differences over economic and monetary policy and military strategy. In the case of the Soviet Union, by contrast, relations took the form of a conflict of interest whose long-term aim was the peaceful transformation of the status quo. German policy aimed at preserving the stabilizing power of the United States within the alliance, weakening the hegemonial position of the Soviet Union, and persuading Moscow to accept peaceful change. All West German governments of the period followed this basic pattern: the social democratic–liberal coalitions under Willy Brandt and Walter Scheel (1969–74) and Helmut Schmidt and Hans-Dietrich Genscher (1974–82) as well as the Christian democraticliberal coalition of Helmut Kohl and Genscher after 1982.1 Efforts to secure continuity were prompted both by an assessment of the constellation of international power, which defined the perimeters of any future action, and by the definition of national interests, which were articulated relatively autonomously. West Germany was a medium-sized power in the ascendant. But it could not disregard the fact that as a regional power its relations with the two world powers – the United States and the Soviet Union – were structurally asymmetrical. This was the case not only because its dependency in security matters or its military inferiority, but also because its sovereignty remained restricted2 until 1990 as a result of the rights of the Allied victors of World War II. A further limitation on the growing international influence of the Federal Republic was that Bonn could never pursue a policy “between” the superpowers in the sense of a third way and found it more necessary than other Western states to take its European and transatlantic ties into account. To end the division of Europe, which could only be achieved with the acquiescence of the Soviet superpower, Bonn 1 On this point and for a general overview of the evolution of the Federal Republic as a rising force on the international stage, see Christian Hacke, Die Aussenpolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Weltmacht wider Willen? (Frankfurt am Main, 1997). 2 See the chapter by Richard Wiggers in this section.

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and Washington needed to present a united front. Put another way, each West German government accepted that it was the junior partner in the German-American partnership. A mirror image of this situation existed in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), which to a lesser degree faced a comparable situation to that in the Federal Republic; it, too, broadened its room to maneuver within and outside of its own alliance system. Both German states were tied to “their” superpowers, although the effects were very different in the two cases. This was particularly true for the German question. When it became an issue in international politics during the 1970s and 1980s – quietly and almost implicitly at first, but then carrying increasing weight – the West German government had to make sure that its integration in the Western alliance was not affected.

independence with american backing The way in which the superpowers were perceived in Bonn at the end of 1969 and the way in which the German government went about determining its own position were revealed clearly by a paper written by Egon Bahr in September 1969 that was to serve as the foundation of social democratic–liberal foreign policy under Chancellor Willy Brandt and Foreign Minister Walter Scheel. The Soviet Union would remain a “power of the first rank,” but the basis of its power would be jeopardized by its economic inefficiency and technological backwardness, and by problems within the Warsaw Pact and the conflict with China. “Ultimately, all the Soviets can hope to do is to delay the erosion of their dominant position as far as possible.”3 ¨ “Uberlegungen zur Aussenpolitik einer k¨unftigen Bundesregierung,” Memorandum des Planungsstabs, Sept. 18, 1969, Archiv der sozialen Demokratie der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Bonn (hereafter AsD), Bahr Dep. 425/2. It is now also available in Hans-Peter Schwarz, ed., in cooperation with the German Foreign Office and the Institut f¨ur Zeitgeschichte, Akten zur Ausw¨artigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1969 (Munich, 2000), 2:1049–57. 3

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Gottfried Niedhart

The pressure for change on the United States, which also faced the risk of overextending its empire, seemed less dramatic but nonetheless real. The United States’ increased concern with “its own internal affairs” and the “trend toward reducing the American presence” in Europe would continue. This, however, would not lead toward increased isolationism in American politics. From Bonn’s point of view, it was of absolutely critical importance that Washington should go on believing that vital American interests were still at stake in Western Europe, for the United States was regarded as “our most important partner.” Bahr believed that West German security ultimately depended on the United States. There were signs that relations with the Soviet Union were improving. This also seemed to be in the interests of the Soviet leadership, with its reliance on d´etente. But the “basis of our policy” had to remain “the Atlantic alliance and our close relations with the United States.”4 As an ally of the United States – and clearly leaning more closely to that superpower than the Soviet Union – Bonn wanted to initiate its new Ostpolitik. The United States would retain its “old friend” status, while the Soviet Union was to be recruited as a “new partner.”5 At the same time, the d´etente-oriented Ostpolitik would be not merely a reflection of Americanstyle d´etente, as it had been seen since the days of Kennedy, but a demonstration of the Federal Republic’s increased power to negotiate in the foreign policy arena. Brandt aimed for the Federal Republic to be seen as “‘more equal’ than before.”6 The desire for equal status, which had had a lasting influence on the foreign policy of the Federal Republic since the Adenauer era, reflected the Federal Republic’s own perception that it had, to quote a frequently used image, “grown up” and begun “to define its own interests, to analyze its capabilities and its role, and to implement them in the form of practical pol-

4 5

Ibid. Egon Bahr, Zu meiner Zeit (Munich, 1996),

333. 6

Willy Brandt, Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1989), 189.

icy.”7 While still foreign minister in the CDUSPD “Grand Coalition,” Brandt had viewed a policy of mere “passivity always conforming to the framework of a Western alliance policy” as obsolete and inadequate. The Federal Republic, he said, must behave as befit its increased “responsibility in world politics.”8 In other words, Bonn thought that a basic feature of America’s European policy after World War II – the dual containment of the Soviet Union and the Federal Republic – needed to be revised.9 The United States was, on the one hand, still West Germany’s most important backer but, on the other, the Federal Republic’s government was claiming a more independent role. These two factors became apparent immediately after the social democratic–liberal electoral victory. Even before he was formally elected chancellor by the Bundestag, Brandt dispatched Bahr, his closest foreign policy adviser and comradein-arms, to Washington, not to seek American consent to his political initiatives in Eastern Europe (which had already been planned and worked out in detail) but simply to provide accurate advance information. The West German government owed it to the leading Western power that the United States should be “kept informed earlier than anyone else, including the Bundestag and the German public.”10 In the 7 Bahr in a note to Brandt dated Jan. 30, 1967, AsD, Bahr Dep. 299/3. See also Gottfried Niedhart, “Deutschland in Europa: Interessenperzeption und Rollendefinition,” in Gottfried Niedhart, Detlef Junker, and Michael W. Richter, eds., Deutschland in Europa: Nationale Interessen und internationale Ordnung im 20. Jahrhundert (Mannheim, 1997), 375–89. 8 Minutes of the SPD executive meeting of Nov. 1 and 2, 1968, AsD. 9 Wolfram F. Hanrieder, Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of German Foreign Policy (New Haven, Conn., ¨ 1989); and, more recently, Herbert Dittgen, “Die Ara der Ost-West-Verhandlungen und der Wirtschafts- und W¨ahrungskrisen (1969–1981),” in Klaus Larres and Torsten Oppelland, eds., Deutschland und die USA im 20. Jahrhundert: Geschichte der politischen Beziehungen (Darmstadt, 1997), 178–203; Michael Jochum, “Der Zerfall des sicherheitspolitischen Konsenses und die Versch¨arfung der Wirtschafts- und W¨ahrungskrisen (1981–1989),” in Larres and Oppelland, eds., Deutschland und die USA, 204–29. 10 Bahr, Zu meiner Zeit, 271.

The Federal Republic of Germany Between the American and Russian Superpowers

period that followed, both superpowers came to regard the policy adopted by Bonn as important for East-West relations that began to develop at the superpower level (arms limitation), at the level of European security (the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe), and on the German question (relations between East and West Germany and the Berlin problem). In the initial phase of d´etente policy, the West German government’s increased leverage in foreign policy brought it into difficulty. There was no mistaking Washington’s disquiet. “I’ll tell you this,” said Henry Kissinger to a German visitor in June 1970, “if anyone is going to engage in d´etente policy with the Soviet Union, we will be the ones.”11 Warning notes such as this stemmed from Kissinger’s fear of resurgent German nationalism and the risk that Germany might go it alone, forsaking its loyalty to the Western alliance. Similarly, Moscow had also had many occasions since 1970 to remind the East German leadership of the need for East bloc discipline.12 In addition, the West German government had to deal with the Rapallo trauma of its Western allies and avoid anything that might suggest vacillating attachments to East and West. It ought not overestimate its importance as an international player “in the broad East-West context,” but should also not “underestimate” itself “as a partner of the Soviet Union.”13 The new era in

11 Kissinger to Paul Frank, Staatssekret¨ar im Ausw¨artigen Amt, quoted in Paul Frank, Entschl¨usselte Botschaft: Ein Diplomat macht Inventur (Munich, 1985), 287. 12 Hannes Adomeit,“Russland und Deutschland: Perzeptionen, Paradigmen und politische Beziehungen 1945–1995,” in Niedhart, Junker, and Richter, eds., Deutschland in Europa, 341, 345. 13 Foreign minister Brandt on March 4, 1969, to the SPD group in the Bundestag, Mar. 4, 1969 (AsD, SPD group, 5th electoral period, 119). Regarding policy toward the Soviet Union, see Andreas Vogtmeier, Egon Bahr und die deutsche Frage: Zur Entwicklung der sozialdemokratischen Ost- und Deutschlandpolitik vom Kriegsende bis zur Vereinigung (Bonn, 1996); Avril Pittman, From Ostpolitik to Reunification: West GermanSoviet Political Relations Since 1974 (New York, 1992); H´el`ene Seppain, Contrasting U.S. and German Attitudes to Soviet Trade 1917–91: Politics by Economic Means (London, 1992).

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German-Soviet relations came in the wake of the Moscow treaty (1970) and the Four-Power Agreement on Berlin (1971), and was above all reflected in an informal exchange of views between Brandt and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev at Oreanda in Crimea in September 1971. In practice this new turn, however, went hand in hand with a steady and punctual flow of information to the Western allies.14 Accordingly, it was made clear to the Soviets that Bonn could develop East-West relations only in “in complete loyalty” to its Western allies.15 On this basis, Brandt promised his support for the Soviet Union’s long-standing desire for a European security conference, and he subsequently attempted to persuade the Americans to abandon their coolness toward this plan. The Soviet Union finally had to abandon its longcherished dream that the role of the Federal Republic in the West and the cohesion of NATO as a whole could be changed to the advantage of the Soviet Union. Even the Soviet Union had to recognize postwar realities, including the lasting presence of the United States in Europe, the integration of Western Europe, and West Berlin’s ties to the Federal Republic. As a member of NATO and the European Community (EC), the Federal Republic remained an integral part of the West. But it made successful efforts to defuse the confrontation between the two blocs and develop some form of cooperation with Warsaw Pact states. In fall 1973, Helmut Schmidt, then finance minister, expressed the view to his American counterpart George Shultz that the “traditional classifications of ‘East’ and ‘West’ ” were of “less significance” than they used to be.16 14 For details, see the chapter by Werner Link elsewhere in this section. See also Gottfried Niedhart, “The Federal Republic’s Ostpolitik and the United States: Initiatives and Constraints,” in Kathleen Burk and Melvyn Stokes, eds., The United States and the European Alliance since 1945 (Oxford, 1999), 289–311. 15 Note by Brandt after his discussion with Brezhnev on Sept. 18, 1971, in the Willy Brandt Archive, AsD, Federal Chancellors’ records, 92. 16 Welcome address for Shultz at the Deutsche Gesellschaft f¨ur Ausw¨artige Politik in Bonn on Oct. 5, 1973, AsD, Schmidt Dep., 5990.

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Gottfried Niedhart

divisible d´e tente, indivisible deterrence Helmut Schmidt, soon to become Brandt’s successor as chancellor, was not implying that the East-West conflict and the bipolarity of world politics it created had already been consigned to history and thereby made irrelevant. What he meant was that the world had become more complex. The emergence of new centers of power (Europe, Japan, and China) had resulted in an increasingly multipolar world. At the same time, however, Schmidt repeatedly emphasized that the two superpowers and their nuclear capacities were still the decisive factors shaping world politics. From the standpoint of West Germany, a NATO member without equal military rights, it was desirable that the economic version of power politics should take on more significance than the military version. That would allow West Germany the trading power to pursue its interests more effectively. In reality, of course, the policy of d´etente did not result in a scaling-down of armament levels or a devaluation of military power. As a major economic power, the Federal Republic was playing an increasingly important part, making it, in Schmidt’s view, “the second world power of the West.” Its security policy, however, was dependent on the United States. Although NATO, in Schmidt’s judgment, was “an essentially American-German alliance,”17 – perhaps precisely for that reason – the Federal Republic’s status as an economic great power had no parallel in security policy or power politics. This was the most important of the limitations imposed on the Federal Republic as an international player. The economic problems created since 1973 by the increase in oil prices were another limiting factor. Apart from security policy questions, financial and economic issues exercised the greatest influence on GermanAmerican relations, often controversially. The main issues in the 1970s in relations with the Soviet Union were developing economic ties,

pressing ahead with negotiations on disarmament, and preserving the status of d´etente in Europe although a central expectation of Ostpolitik – that the Soviet Union would scale back its armaments – had not been fulfilled. West Germany continued to seek rapprochement with the Soviet Union in its own best interests, even after the fall of the social democratic– liberal government in 1982. In the United States, however, d´etente became increasingly discredited during the second half of the 1970s. Differences over financial, economic, and security policy as well as over how to respond to Soviet policies resulted in what were probably the most difficult German-American disagreements during the postwar era and in extreme personal animosity between Schmidt and President Jimmy Carter. Of primary interest here are the issues that also affected West German relations with the other superpower. Even under the Nixon and Ford administrations, there had been no mistaking the United States’ “discomfort over d´etente policy.”18 America, as a world power, viewed the Soviet Union as a global competitor. From the American perspective, Soviet good conduct in Europe – a major issue for Europeans – was offset by Russia’s deployment of new arms, especially naval weaponry, and by increasing Soviet influence in Third World countries. The West European and especially West German interest in the consolidation of d´etente was at odds with American perceptions of a global competition between the rival superpowers. Referring to “Basket III” of the Helsinki Final Act, Carter confronted the Soviet Union with the human-rights issue in a way that Schmidt and his foreign minister, Genscher, regarded as contrary to a rational calculation of interests and d´etente. These differences of opinion peaked after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in December 1979. However much Schmidt might have disapproved of the invasion – he even said so openly in discussions with the Soviet leadership – he had an equally deep interest in avoiding a reaction along the

17 Note by Schmidt dated December 1976, “Erw¨agungen f¨ur 1977,” AsD, Schmidt Dep., 6567.

18 Henry A. Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York, 1994), 733–61.

The Federal Republic of Germany Between the American and Russian Superpowers

lines of American sanctions policy and in doing nothing to jeopardize the advancement of economic relations. Unlike the U.S. government, the West German government took the view that in practical political terms, d´etente must be divisible. The position of the Federal Republic of Germany as a regional power differed radically from that of the United States as a superpower. A “regional view of d´etente” guided Bonn.19 Even during the critical deterioration of the situation in Poland, which culminated in the declaration of martial law in late 1981, Schmidt endeavored “to keep the lines of communication open between the superpowers, and more generally between East and West.”20 He regarded it as one of his “principal tasks to create understanding on one side for the other and vice-versa.” In the interests of “easing tensions,” Schmidt urged that the two German states should use their influence for restraint in Washington and Moscow respectively. In his own view, his achievement was “that virtually no state at the time exercised a stronger influence over the American president than the Federal Republic.” Of course, he added, even that influence was limited, since Schmidt was only the “head of government” of a “mediumsized state.”21 Situated on the European front line of the East-West conflict, the Federal Republic was, however, not merely interested in continuing d´etente or preventing a relapse into the Cold War; it was also concerned to ensure that the West adequately countered Soviet armaments and that the security policy of West Germany and Europe was not divorced from that of the United States. Carter’s plans to build the neutron bomb or arms limitation confined to strate19

Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1995), 474. 20 Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (New York, 1993), 95. 21 Schmidt to Erich Honecker in a telephone call on Oct. 30, 1981; Schmidt to Honecker at the summit discussion of Dec. 11 and the delegation discussion of Dec. 12, 1981. Heinrich Potthoff, Bonn und Ost-Berlin 1969– 1982: Dialog auf h¨ochster Ebene und vertrauliche Kan¨ale: Darstellung und Dokumente (Bonn, 1997), 623, 660, 661, 673.

31

gic systems served German security interests inadequately.22 Schmidt criticized the United States because its arrangements with the Soviet Union amounted to “equal security” for the superpowers, but “unequal security for their partners.”23 Whereas d´etente policy seemed to Bonn to be divisible and indeed had to be divisible for good political reasons, security policy and the deterrence of Soviet military power had to be indivisible. This was what Helmut Schmidt was trying to emphasize in October 1977 when he drew attention to the disruption of the Eurostrategic equilibrium posed by Soviet intermediate-range weapons and pointed out the need for corrective action. That action would preferably take the form of arms-control measures, but might if necessary involve the deployment of Western intermediate-range missiles, which in 1979 led to the NATO double-track resolution24 and, subsequently, to charged mass protests by the peace movement in West Germany. continuity in politics and perceptions The implementation of the NATO doubletrack decision of 1979 again highlighted how little influence the West German government could ultimately exercise to ensure that Washington preserved a balance between arms reductions and arms-control measures in its negotiations with Moscow. Much of the criticism leveled by what was otherwise a heterogeneous peace movement was directed at this very issue, and it was also one of the causes behind the 1982 political shift in the Federal Republic that resulted in the formation of the Kohl-Genscher government. The new government emphasized continuity. It demonstrated its loyalty to NATO with a resolution on the deployment of the Pershing II missiles and allayed the suspicion, refueled during the missile debate, that the Federal 22 See the chapter by Matthias Dembinski, vol. 2, Security. 23 Helga Haftendorn, Sicherheit und Stabilit¨at: Aussen¨ beziehungen der Bundesrepublik zwischen Olkrise und NATO-Doppelbeschluss (Munich, 1986), 12. 24 See the chapter by Michael Broer, vol. 2, Security.

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Republic might be planning to follow a course of its own between the superpowers or to pursue closer rapprochement with the Soviet Union. At the same time, however, West Germany demonstrated an interest in the continuity of East-West d´etente, as did the East German government. The East German argument for “damage control” was also carefully noted in Washington, before the GDR fell once again into a shadow existence because of its criticism of perestroika.25 The Federal Republic, however, had no thought of going along with President Ronald Reagan’s suggestion and reducing its economic ties to the Soviet Union. The natural gas pipeline business, in particular, remained unaffected. What the Federal Republic, other EC countries, and the EC as a whole26 saw as a matter of practical politics, the United States viewed as dependence on the Soviet Union and a stabilization of the “evil empire” that ran counter to Western interests. At the same time, Bonn discovered that it could not dictate relations with the Eastern superpower to suit its own wishes. Moscow initially treated the Federal Republic with coolness after the missile deployment. Not until the second half of the 1980s did West Germany again become the Soviet Union’s most important contact in Europe. This was connected with the Federal Republic’s international standing, achieved back in the 1970s, but was also helped by the fact that Foreign Minister Genscher had since summer 1986 been firmly convinced that Gorbachev was “ready for a fundamental change in the direction of Soviet policy.” He pressed for negotiations with the East. Once again, Bonn seemed desirous of playing a leading role in East-West relations. Skeptics in the West called this “Genscherism.” Against the background of the zero option for intermediate-range missiles achieved in 1987 and the modernization of 25 Christian F. Ostermann, “Im Schatten der Bundesrepublik: Die DDR im Kalk¨ul der amerikanischen Deutschlandpolitik (1949–1989/90),” in Larres and Oppelland, eds., Deutschland und die USA, 247–8. 26 Erhard Forndran, “Tendenzen zu gr¨osserer Eigenst¨andigkeit Westeuropas,” in Wolfgang Wagner et al., eds., Die Internationale Politik 1981–1982 (Munich, 1984), 57–75.

the Lance short-range missiles – favored by the United States since 1988 and always rejected by Genscher – the old fears resurfaced about how the Germans would use their new scope for action to approach the German question. Genscher noted “fears that the Federal Republic would drift toward the East.” In the West, “the neutralization of the Federal Republic” was repeatedly “conjured up as a bad dream.”27 The actual continuity of West Germany’s loyalty to the West contrasted with the external perception of the Federal Republic, in which the specter of Germany taking a third way perpetually resurfaced. Supported by Chancellor Kohl, Genscher had to work to prevent every manifestation of West German independence from being seen as a test case of the country’s loyalty to the West. The old Federal Republic had to live with such suspicions in the forty years of its existence.28 In reality, it was a Western state that had been speaking out in favor of East-West d´etente since the late 1960s. Just as it had been a product of the Cold War as a ward of the United States, so it now worked as an increasingly valuable ally of the United States to put an end to the Cold War. It had evolved from being a unilaterally dependent state on the front line into the partner of choice for both the United States and the Soviet Union. President George Bush, speaking in Mainz in late May 1989, referred to the Federal Republic as a “partner in leadership.”29 Visiting the Federal Republic two weeks later, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declared that the postwar period was over. On the threshold of the unification of the two German states, the Federal Republic had “come to occupy a key position in East-West relations.”30 27

Genscher, Erinnerungen, 501, 582, 585. See Klaus Larres, “Germany and the West: The ‘Rapallo Factor’ in German Foreign Policy from the 1950s to the 1990s,” in Klaus Larres and Panikos Panayi, eds., The Federal Republic of Germany Since 1949: Politics, Society, and Economy Before and After Reunification (London, 1996), 278–326. 29 Remarks to the Citizens of Mainz, Federal Republic of Germany, May 31, 1989, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George Bush, 1989 (Washington, D.C., 1990), 1:650–4, esp. 651. 30 Genscher, Erinnerungen, 617. 28

chapter three

Ostpolitik: D´etente German-Style and Adapting to America Werner Link Translated by Richard Sharp

actively adapting to american d´e tente policy

the existing policy of exerting pressure and counterpressure has merely led to the rigidity of the status quo. Confidence in the fact that our world is the better world, a world stronger (in a peaceful sense of the word), and a world that will prevail, makes it possible to contemplate an attempt to open our own minds and those of our opponents, and to set aside previous notions of liberation.1

Germany’s new Ostpolitik and its most important concrete expression, the Moscow and Warsaw treaties, were and still are seen as evidence of an independent policy of an economically and politically strengthened Federal Republic. At first glance, and up to a point, this view is accurate. On closer inspection, however, it is apparent that the new Ostpolitik was equally a reflection of dependence on Western policy, particularly the policy of the United States. Ostpolitik was in effect American d´etente policy translated into German. Even the initial concepts underlying West Germany’s new Ostpolitik and Deutschlandpolitik (policy on the German question) reflected American Ostpolitik, President John F. Kennedy’s “strategy of peace.” In a programmatic address to Evangelical Academy in Tutzing on July 15, 1963, Egon Bahr, the intellectual progenitor and later the chief architect of West German Ostpolitik, argued that the new concept of “change through rapprochement” would “fit seamlessly into the Western concept of the strategy of peace,” and represented the “transfer of [Kennedy’s] strategy of peace to Germany”:

Posing the question of whether “a special German task within this conception” existed, Bahr answered in the affirmative, for German policy would otherwise be excluded from the continuing development of East-West relations. Within that framework, he said, there were indeed tasks “that only the Germans can perform, because we find ourselves in the unique position of being a divided nation in Europe.”2 This was not just an attempt to use the policy of the United States for legitimizing a new policy on Eastern Europe and the German question. It was much more a matter of adapting German policy, as the United States had repeatedly insisted, to the policy of the Federal Republic’s hegemonic protector – an active 1 Lecture by Egon Bahr, head of Berlin’s Press and Information Office, to Tutzing Evangelical Academy, July 15, 1963, in Bundesministerium f¨ur innerdeutsche Beziehungen, ed., Dokumente zur Deutschlandpolitik, ser. 4, vol. 9, no. 2 (Frankfurt am Main, 1978), 572–5; see also Andreas Vogtmeier, Egon Bahr und die deutsche Frage: Zur Entwicklung der sozialdemokratischen Ost- und Deutschlandpolitik vom Kriegsende bis zur Wiedervereinigung (Bonn, 1996). 2 Ibid.

The change in East-West relations that the United States hopes to bring about serves the purpose of surmounting the status quo, by leaving the status quo unchanged for the time being. This may sound paradoxical, but it does open up future prospects, whereas 33

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Werner Link

adaptation, in Germany’s interest and with a German accent, that led to differences of opinion in German-American relations despite general satisfaction with the Germans’ change of course. The characteristic feature of the new German Ostpolitik – that it was a policy of active, participatory, and constructive adaptation – explains the different dynamics that developed in the various phases of the East-West conflict. During the phase of reduced international tensions, there was a dynamic between American d´etente policy and the Federal Republic’s own efforts to reduce tensions; during the phase of renewed confrontation on the global stage, there was a dynamic between adaptation to the American policy of a balance of power against the East and a continuation of cooperation with the East; and finally, in the phase of comprehensive global d´etente, this dynamic eventually dissolved, developing into that unprecedented concord and cooperation between Germany and the United States that led to Germany’s reunification. the policy shift of the “grand coalition” As the formerly sealed files of the German Foreign Office have been opened and published, it has become increasingly clear that the real shift in West German policy toward the East bloc and on the German question took place at the time of the Christian Democratic-Social Democratic Grand Coalition, after years of resistance to the new trend in American policy.3 Konrad Adenauer’s government had vehemently rejected America’s status quo–oriented policy. That rejection was expressed through a combination of sharp criticism (Adenauer even directed a threat to resign at the United States) 3 See Hans-Peter Schwarz, ed., in cooperation with the German Foreign Office and the Institut f¨ur Zeitgeschichte, Akten zur Ausw¨artigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1964 (Munich, 1994–9). The volumes covering the years 1963 through 1968 have been published so far; see also Dirk Kroegel, Einen Anfang finden! Kurt Georg Kiesinger in der Aussen- und Deutschlandpolitik der Grossen Koalition (Munich, 1997).

and resignation (“We are the victims of American d´etente policy!”).4 Gaullist policy, by contrast, appeared in a more favorable light because it aimed at changing the status quo. The government under Ludwig Erhard had tried in vain to revive the old policy on the German question, despite American misgivings, while at the same time partially adapting to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s policy on Eastern Europe, the “policy of bridge building.” Foreign Minister Gerhard Schr¨oder’s “policy of movement” toward the states of Central and Eastern Europe was, however, slowed down by a double avoidance – of the Soviet Union and East Germany – and resulted in a tendency on the part of the Federal Republic to isolate itself from its main allies. This was the central point made in a blunt analysis presented to the cabinet by Undersecretary of State Karl Carstens on October 14, 1966 (and that later, with slight revisions, became the basis for a memorandum on foreign policy and the German question presented to the Grand Coalition government).5 Federal Minister Heinrich Krone summarized Carstens’s arguments with the succinct phrase “the days of actively seeking reunification are over.”6 And Free Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei, or FDP) leader and Federal Minister for all-German affairs Erich Mende concluded, “The coordinates of policy on Germany and of foreign policy are no longer valid. The foundations of Bonn’s conception have to be adapted to the new international political situation to restore the Federal Republic’s ability to act.”7 Conceptually, the Grand Coalition did make the necessary adjustment by drafting its “grand 4 Entry in the diary of Heinrich Krone, Aug. 5, 1963, quoted in the article edited by Klaus Gotto, AdenauerStudien 3 (1974): 178. 5 Karl Carstens: Erinnerungen und Erfahrungen, ed. Kai von Jenu and Reinhard Schmoecker (Boppard, 1993), 762. 6 Quoted in Klaus Hildebrand, “Von Erhard zur Grossen Koalition 1963–1969,” in Karl Dietrich Bracher et al., eds., Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 5 vols. (Stuttgart, 1984), 4:199. 7 “Wiedervereinigung – Schweigen Ehrensache,” Der Spiegel 20 (Oct. 24, 1966): 27–8.

Ostpolitik

design for a future European order for peace.” This was the shibboleth of the new Ostpolitik and policy on the German question in the years that followed. Initially, a treaty renouncing the use of force was to be concluded with the Soviet superpower on the basis of existing borders. A treaty would subsequently be concluded with the German Democratic Republic on “regulated coexistence” (geregeltes Nebeneinander) for what was expected to be a long transition period, whereby the West German government would concede something along the lines of “short-term competence” (befristete Gesch¨aftsf¨ahigkeit) to the East German government (pending reunification). It seemed German unification would be realizable only after the gradual and procedural development of a European peace order, with a system of arms-control policy as an intermediate step: Germany, a reunited Germany, has critical mass. It is too big to play no part in the balance of power, and too small to hold the balance among the powers around it by itself. In fact, therefore, it is hard to imagine how a united Germany could align itself directly with either side if the present political structure in Europe were to continue. That is precisely why the coming together of the divided parts of Germany can only form part of a process of overcoming the EastWest conflict in Europe.8

It was the Soviet refusal, not dissension within the coalition, that initially blocked the implementation of the new concept of Ostpolitik, the entry into the first stage. Only after the power question in its own area of rule and hegemonic influence had been clarified (by, for instance, the suppression of the “Prague Spring” in 1968) was the Soviet Union ready to talk. And only when the new American administration under Richard Nixon had opened the “era of negotiations” in summer 1969 could operational implementation of the new concept of German 8 Speech by Federal Chancellor Kiesinger on the occasion of the formal celebration of the “Day of German Unity” on June 17, 1967, in Bonn, in Kurt Georg Kiesinger, Die Grosse Koalition 1966–1969: Reden und Erkl¨arungen des Bundeskanzlers, ed. Dieter Obernd¨orfer (Stuttgart, 1979), 77–83.

35

Ostpolitik begin, with the opening of GermanSoviet talks on an expanded renunciation-offorce treaty. It was left to this new government to continue the process. In October 1969 the German Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD) and the FDP formed a new German government against the most powerful caucus in the Bundestag, the joint caucus of the Christian Democratic Union (Christliche Demokratische Union, or CDU) and the Christian Social Union (Christliche Soziale Union, or CSU). As a result, Ostpolitik would fall victim to the bitter conflicts between the government and the opposition.

ambivalent american backing The Erhard government had reacted defensively and the Grand Coalition government offensively to the international, especially American, pressure to fall into line. The new SPD-FDP government of Chancellor Willy Brandt could take action. The government was fully aware of the critical part played by the United States, as is clearly evident from Bahr’s memorandum “On the foreign policy of a future federal government,” dated October 1, 1969 (which formed the basis for the coalition agreement). The memorandum states: “The United States remains our most important partner; our security ultimately depends on our relations with the United States. . . . The Atlantic alliance and our close links with the United States must remain the foundation of our policy.”9 In line with this principle, the new West German chancellor – two weeks before his first address before the Bundestag – dispatched Bahr to Washington and thereby opened up a “back channel” to Nixon’s security adviser, Henry Kissinger. (At the same time, a direct channel to Brezhnev and his security adviser was also established, albeit by way of the intelligence service.) The United States, though ambivalent, gave support that was of decisive importance to the new, active Ostpolitik.

9

Copy in the author’s possession.

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Werner Link

The bilateral d´etente policy pursued by Germany and the Soviet Union led within a few months to the conclusion of the Moscow Treaty (August 12, 1970), which was supplemented by the Warsaw Treaty (December 7, 1970). Not until 1973 did West Germany succeed in concluding a treaty with Czechoslovakia. These treaties created a modus vivendi based on the territorial status quo and fit organically in America’s d´etente policy. Meanwhile, the semi-Gaullist, seemingly more independent style of the social democratic–liberal government and the possible long-term effects of the new Ostpolitik greatly irritated the American government. Although the Germans kept the leading Western power informed, they tended to inform rather than consult; instead of asking for advice, they requested cooperation in pursuit of a political course whose basic outline they had determined independently. Kissinger perceived the bilateral German-Soviet efforts at d´etente as a disruptive factor in the orchestration of his own d´etente policy.10 The more the West German government pushed its Ostpolitik beyond mere factual recognition of the status quo, however, the more clearly it had to realize that its room for maneuver was very constricted. Although the American government could thus regard its misgivings about Germans’ policy as obsolete, the longterm effects of the new German Ostpolitik still caused concern. Henry Kissinger had no doubts about the basic pro-Western orientation of the leading Social Democratic politicians. However, the problem as he saw it was “to control a process which, if it results in failure, could jeopardize their political lives and if it succeeds could create a momentum that may shake Germany’s domestic stability and unhinge its international position.”11 In a memorandum to the president dated February 16, 1970, Kissinger declared that the greatest danger seemed to him to be that the favorable effects that the Germans hoped to

see after “normalization” would not in fact occur. The Federal Republic of Germany might consequently drift away from the Western alliance, returning to the old concept of being a “bridge” between East and West in an attempt to gain something for Germany as a whole from its investment in Ostpolitik.12 What the national security adviser suggested privately to the president was discussed publicly two months later by the U.S. ambassador in Bonn, Kenneth Rush. He feared that “the political dynamic in the German situation” might – in the event of American disengagement in Europe – result in a loss of confidence in America on the part of Germany’s political leaders. Those leaders might become more receptive toward Soviet influence, with fateful consequences for German policy: It would perforce be aimed at a gradual adjustment with a neighboring power whose strength would be so great one could only hope to accommodate to it. An important characteristic of such German policy might be abstention from actions which German leaders would believe might annoy or aggravate the Soviet Union. . . . The end result of this gradual, undramatic process of shifting balance through a slow shift of the German position could well be the extension of Soviet influence and control over Western Europe.13

This marked the beginning of a theory that later emerged: that the Federal Republic of Germany was in danger of (self-) Finlandization. This trend was so dangerous, Ambassador Rush’s central argument ran, because the Federal Republic of Germany was “the fulcrum of the European balance of power.” Germany’s new Ostpolitik, which was welcomed for adapting to U.S. d´etente policy, threatened to turn into a gradual adaptation to Soviet policy. 12

10

Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (New York, 1983), 415–22. 11 Henry A. Kissinger, White House Years (Boston, 1979), 408–9.

Ibid., 529–30. Rush’s remarks in U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Europe of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, 91st Cong., 2d sess. (Apr. 8, 1970), 390. 13

Ostpolitik

the united states as the “critical element” American power and the dependence of the Federal Republic of Germany and – especially West Berlin – on the United States for security were sufficiently great to restrict Bonn’s bilateral dealings with the Soviet Union for the time being. In his memoirs, Kissinger described with pleasure how the American government became the critical element as a result of the Four-Power negotiations over Berlin and so regained control.14 The settlement of the Berlin question was linked in many ways both to the Moscow and Warsaw treaties and to American d´etente policy. In its negotiations in Moscow and its public statements, the West German government had made it unmistakably clear that the treaties could not be ratified unless the close ties between the Federal Republic of Germany and West Berlin were preserved and access to and from Berlin was unobstructed. The United States sought to link a satisfactory agreement on Berlin to the U.S.-Soviet arms-control negotiations and the planned summit between Nixon and Brezhnev, as well as to the agreement to a Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and troop withdrawals from Central Europe. This strengthened the American position, but it also made the U.S. government “responsible for the ultimate success of Brandt’s policy.”15 The West German government was not formally a party to the Four-Power negotiations, which took place between ambassadors in Berlin. In addition to negotiating with the East German government on a transit agreement regulating free access to and from Berlin, the West German government was also involved in the secret negotiations between the principal parties, the United States and the Soviet Union. These negotiations took place separately from the Berlin negotiations and brought about a breakthrough on the decisive issues – secret talks between U.S. Ambassador Rush, Soviet

Ambassador Falin, and State Secretary Bahr in Bonn.16 The result of the negotiations, the Quadripartite Agreement on Berlin signed on September 3, 1971, was based – like the Moscow and Warsaw treaties – on the status quo without affecting the conflicting legal positions. West Berlin continued to be neither a “constituent part” of the Federal Republic nor directly governed by it. The Soviet Union not only guaranteed transport access to West Berlin, but also accepted the principle that “the ties between the western sectors of Berlin and the Federal Republic of Germany will be maintained and developed.”17 The survival of West Berlin was thus ensured and a dynamic element was introduced. As would soon become apparent, however, one problem was that West Berlin’s representation abroad by the Federal Republic of Germany and the extension of the Federal Republic’s international law treaties to include West Berlin was worded as a possibility and therefore had to be expressly agreed upon in each case. It also remained unclear whether and to what extent the ties between West Berlin and the Federal Republic could be “developed” by the addition of new elements without violating the restrictions on Berlin’s status. When the Soviet Union reacted to the building of the Federal Office for the Environment in West Berlin in 1974 with reprisals (obstructions to transit traffic), it became clear that what was ultimately preserving the freedom of West Berlin was neither the Four-Power Agreement nor the new Ostpolitik, but American protection. Brandt had further developed the bilateral GermanSoviet relations – in spectacular style in the case of his meeting with Brezhnev in Oreanda in September 1971, but, after unsuccessful representations in Moscow, he was forced to ask President Nixon, in an official but secret letter of January 28, 1974, to use his influence on the Soviet government. He hoped that the United 16

Egon Bahr, Zu meiner Zeit (Munich, 1996), 344–71. Four-Power Agreement on Berlin of Sept. 3, 1971, and the supporting documents, Europa-Archiv 19 (1971), D 444. 17

14 15

Kissinger, White House Years, 823–33. Ibid., 824.

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Werner Link

States would persuade the Soviet Union to guarantee unimpeded transit access to West Berlin through East Germany.18 This incident revealed the true distribution of power and proved that West Germany’s Ostpolitik and German policy ultimately depended on U.S. backing.

double stagnation and new readjustment The Basic Treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic of December 21, 1972, recognized the existence of the two separate states, but at the same time placed on record their disagreement over the national issue. It created the framework for difficult, long-term negotiations between West and East Germany on a great many practical questions,19 negotiations that gradually came to obscure the prospect of reunification. At the same time, the vision of Ostpolitik – of a new security order for Europe as a whole – faded. The critical factor here was the gradual change in the overall climate of East-West relations. The new Ostpolitik stagnated before it attained a second stage because American d´etente policy stagnated: a case of double stagnation. The Helsinki Final Act (1975), which brought the first CSCE in Europe to a relatively successful conclusion,20 marked both the high point and the turning point of d´etente in Europe. The West German government could again thank direct bilateral negotiations conducted by U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger outside the conference for the fact that the Final Act included what was known as the German option, the possibility of a peaceful change of borders. Also useful from the West German point of view was the fact that the principles of humanitarian and human-rights policy 18

Werner Link, “Aussen- und Deutschlandpolitik in ¨ Brandt 1969–1974,” in Bracher et al., eds., der Ara Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 5(1): 280. 19 Peter Bender, Die “Neue Ostpolitik” und ihre Folgen: Vom Mauerbau bis zur Vereinigung, 3d rev. and enl. ed. (Munich, 1995), 248–54. 20 See the chapter by Michael R. Lucas in this section.

were included in the Final Act and could be exploited to remind the East German government to behave accordingly. But the “tough” security issues had been excluded from the Helsinki process. Separate negotiations on “mutual balanced force reductions” (MBFR) stagnated and produced no results. The Schmidt-Genscher government tried to pursue a pragmatic Ostpolitik on the basis of the Moscow and Warsaw treaties, to develop “interdependencies” between Western and Eastern Europe through economic and personal networks, and so to create a general European infrastructure. This was compatible with American policy, provided that negotiations on strategic arms limitation (SALT: Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) were successful; however, the exclusion of medium-range weapons was a cause of considerable irritation.21 When the Soviet Union’s active rearmament policy, Soviet or Soviet-supported interventions in the Third World, and the invasion of Afghanistan brought about a new confrontation between the superpowers, the Federal Republic of Germany came under new pressure to adapt to U.S. policy. The former “new Ostpolitik” was now running counter to American policy. The SchmidtGenscher government adopted stalling tactics to resist U.S. sanctions policy to rescue anything that could be rescued from the results of d´etente policy, especially the laboriously developed relations between West and East Germans (through tourism, telephone links, sports, and other means). As Schmidt explained to Carter on March 5, 1980, he (Schmidt) “believed in the reality of the [German] nation.”22 In the controversial process of implementing the NATO “double-track” decision of December 1979, Schmidt, under pressure from the extremely compromise-oriented SPD and the “peace movement,” risked clashing with the United States. There was even talk in the chancellery of rescuing d´etente policy by leaving “politics in mid-convoy” to the alliance and 21 See the chapter by Matthias Dembinski, vol. 2, Security. 22 Cf. Werner Link, “Aussen- und Deutschlandpoli¨ Schmidt 1974–1982,” 5(2): 327. tik in der Ara

Ostpolitik

risking a strategy of conflict with the Reagan administration. The fears Kissinger and Rush voiced in 1970 now seemed to be well-founded. Not until the CDU/CSU-led government of Kohl and Genscher took office did German policy come back into line with that of the United States, ensuring – after the failure of the arms limitation talks – that the new INF deployment would go ahead. The SPD could then pursue its “second Ostpolitik” only as the parliamentary opposition (in dubious cooperation with East Germany’s Socialist Unity Party); in other words, it no longer had the power to determine policy.23 The Kohl-Genscher government, operating on an unambiguous commitment to the alliance and unequivocal adherence to the principle of reunification, sought to pursue a pragmatic policy on Eastern Europe and the German question, and in fact it enjoyed success as far as the unfavorable international political climate allowed.24

german and american policy on eastern europe and germany in harmony As Reagan’s strategy of strength and dialog coincided with Gorbachev’s domestic and foreign policy reforms, opening the way for a new, allembracing policy of d´etente and reconciliation between East and West, German Ostpolitik under Kohl’s leadership seized the opportunity. The West German government did so in harmony with U.S. policy, after initial American misgivings about optimistic “Genscherism.” The INF Treaty and the CFE Treaty25 meant more than an arms-control regime, as had initially been envisaged as an intermediate step

23 Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (New York, 1993), 312–42. 24 Karl-Rudolf Korte, Deutschlandpolitik in Helmut Kohls Kanzlerschaft: Regierungsstil und Entscheidungen 1982–1989 (Stuttgart, 1998). 25 See the chapter by Michael Broer, vol. 2, Security.

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toward a new all-European peace order. An asymmetrical reduction in nuclear and conventional arms and in troop levels in Europe was agreed upon, along with on-site inspections, and thereby was the Soviet Union’s ability to attack Western Europe eliminated. The revolutionary changes in the East bloc created new conditions for German policy toward Eastern Europe and on the German question. The give-and-take policy, whereby West Germany granted credits and East Germany eased travel restrictions, could now be replaced by an active policy of reunification, in collaboration between West Germany and the United States, with critical American support, and through direct negotiations with Gorbachev. The economic and financial potential of the Federal Republic was now used not only to create “interdependencies,” but also to make reunification politically possible. The fact that both the West German and U.S. governments thought it crucial and in their mutual interest that a united Germany should be a member of NATO was decisive for the positive outcome of the negotiations. Contrary to Kissinger’s expectations, the whole of Germany could join the West. The creation of a new European peace order had not been a precondition for reunification, but it could now be addressed as the result of reunification. The new German Ostpolitik launched at the end of the 1960s certainly helped to bring about favorable circumstances for peacefully resolving the division of Germany and Europe. However, German reunification had been brought about not so much by “change through rapprochement” as by “rapprochement through change.” Change through rapprochement had been minimal for twenty years, and it had proceeded slowly; the rapprochement that led to reunification took place in a peaceful revolution over the course of a few months in 1989–90. The German chancellor and the American president, Kohl and Bush, made courageous and skillful use of what the Ancient Greeks had called kairos, the advantage of the hour, the favorable moment in history.

chapter four

Creative Tension: The United States and the Federal Republic in the CSCE Michael R. Lucas

introduction

The CSCE was a series of roving, “followup” diplomatic conferences of thirty-five states4 in which a gradual, uneven thawing of the Cold War helped prepare the ground for the revolutions of 1989 and the peaceful closure of the East-West conflict. The extraordinary and underrecognized role of the CSCE as a forum of European and global d´etente cannot be separated from the partnership of the United States and the Federal Republic. By turns they confronted each other in the Helsinki process in serious disagreement, only to reforge their common positions and reestablish consensus among the NATO allies. The differences between the United States and the Federal Republic produced a creative tension and an unintended division of labor: The United States brandished a stick of Cold War confrontation and radical change, while West Germany, with support from the majority of other West European states, strove to sustain a process of incremental change in the framework of European d´etente. This combination pressured the Soviets to accept radical, systemic changes but at the same time cultivated a framework in which Moscow, under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, could design and implement such monumental change peacefully and in cooperation with the West.

In a speech commemorating Abraham Lincoln’s 150th birthday in February 1959, the governing mayor of West Berlin, Willy Brandt, cautioned his audience that there would be “neither an isolated nor sudden solution” to Germany’s division. He therefore called for a new policy based on “gradual changes.”1 Brandt’s sober vision led to the d´etente policy of “small steps” of cooperation between the two German states and anticipated Ostpolitik and the Eastern treaties of the early 1970s under Brandt’s chancellorship.2 The inter-German modus vivendi was in tandem with the Soviet-American d´etente that had tentatively begun shortly after President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in January 1961. Although Ostpolitik followed the American global lead, it also laid the foundation for European d´etente by making possible the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and its inaugural document, the Helsinki Final Act of 1975.3

1

Cited in Manfred G¨ortemaker, Unifying Germany, 1989–1990 (New York, 1994), 24. See also Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (New York, 1994), chap. 2. 2 See the chapter by Werner Link in this section. 3 The Final Act of Helsinki, reprinted in Arie Bloed, ed., The Conference on Security and Co-operation: Analysis and Basic Documents, 1972–1993 (Dordrecht, 1993), 141– 217.

4

At the Budapest Meeting of the CSCE, its name was changed to the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), marking its transformation from a series of conferences to an international organization with a permanent secretariat in Vienna.

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Creative Tension

What follows is an attempt to briefly sketch the role of the Federal Republic, GermanGerman relations, and the United States in the CSCE to illuminate the basic consensus between Bonn and Washington on the major goals of Western policy and the differences behind this consensus in dealing with the Warsaw Pact states. the western consensus on the role of human rights The Helsinki Final Act establishes a link between the promotion of d´etente and security in Europe and the implementation by member states of CSCE human-rights obligations. Principle 7 in the Decalogue of the first chapter (Basket 1) of the Final Act makes this linkage explicit: The participating nations recognize the universal significance of human rights and fundamental freedoms, the respect for which is an essential factor for the peace, justice and well-being necessary to ensure the development of friendly relations and co-operation among themselves as among all states.5

The Soviets at first strongly resisted allowing human rights to become an issue in East-West relations; they considered them an internal affair and therefore not subject to interference by other states or international bodies.6 Western states staunchly defended human-rights goals as the foundation of the CSCE’s credibility in international relations. The Madrid CSCE follow-up meeting (November 11, 1980–September 9, 1983) opened in a period of marked deterioration of EastWest d´etente caused by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on December 28, 1979, the deployment of Soviet intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Eastern Europe, and the escalating conflict between the Solidarity movement and

the Polish government following the declaration of martial law.7 These events marked a return to heightened East-West tension and triggered disagreement among the Western and the Neutral and Nonaligned (NN) states within the CSCE on how to respond to the Soviet Union. At the preparatory meeting prior to the official conference opening, the United States, France, and Denmark called for a postponement of the conference, a motion opposed by the Federal Republic and the NN states. After considerable hesitation, President Jimmy Carter gave way on postponement but made it clear that the United States would use the Madrid conference to spotlight Soviet and Eastern European violations of the Final Act and to insist that the Soviets meet their international human-rights commitments. The United States was supported by Britain, the Netherlands, and several other states. In response to the confrontational style of the Americans, the Federal Republic, with support from France and several other delegations, argued that the conference should not merely criticize the Soviet record, but also contribute to preserving and deepening East-West cooperation. In the official opening speeches at Madrid, all Western delegations criticized the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan as a gross violation of d´etente and spotlighted human-rights violations in the Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe. In the ongoing internal Western discussion, held separately in preparation for the East-West plenary sessions, the Federal Republic opposed allowing Eastern human-rights violations or the war in Afghanistan to block progress at Madrid. The West German position was a response to both the aggressive criticism of the Soviet Union by the United States and also to President Carter’s earlier public statements that the continuation of the Madrid meeting would be contingent on the withdrawal of 7

5

Final Act of Helsinki, reprinted in Bloed, Conference on Security and Co-operation. The number of participating states in the OSCE has increased to fifty-five. 6 John J. Maresca, To Helsinki: The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1973–1975 (Durham, N.C., 1985), 154.

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On the Madrid Meeting, see Peter Schlotter, Entspanungspolitik f¨ur die 80er Jahre: Modelle und Strategien (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), 60–90; Victor-Yves Gh´ebali, La Diplomatie de la D´etente: CSCE, d’Helsinki a` Vienne (1973–1989) (Brussels, 1989), 26–32; William Korey, The Promise We Keep: Human Rights, the Helsinki Process, and American Foreign Policy (New York, 1993), 131–62.

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Soviet troops from Afghanistan, a demand that was generally perceived as having little chance of being fulfilled. In the course of the internal Western debate, which aimed at achieving a common stance, the United States retreated from its position, much to the relief of the Europeans. the internal western debate on poland In attacking the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in statements outside the immediate context of the Madrid meeting, the Carter and Reagan administrations sent clear signals to the Moscow leadership that progress in d´etente was linked to the Polish government’s recognition of Solidarity and acceptance of reform. The United States left little doubt in the minds of Moscow’s leadership that the Western states would stage a walkout in Madrid if Soviet troops were used to suppress the Polish reform movement. Although a common Western position emerged and most probably was a factor in the Soviet decision not to intervene militarily in Poland, important differences among Western and NN states came to the fore in February 1982. The United States and Canada, along with members of the European Community, took the position that they would only be ready to underwrite a substantial concluding document – and thus bring the conference to a successful conclusion – if the Polish government suspended martial law, released all political prisoners, and resumed talks with opposition groups. The United States joined this consensus with the explicitly stated intention of demonstrating to the Soviet Union that the working basis of d´etente had been shattered by events in Afghanistan and Poland.8 West Germany rejected the American view that d´etente had collapsed and maintained that the Madrid conference should be continued and not be used solely to criticize Soviet domestic and foreign policy but also to negotiate further steps in d´etente. 8 Schlotter, Entspannungspolitik, 78–9; Gh´ebali, Diplomatie de la D´etente, 28.

The NN states rejected the German proposal and, led by Switzerland, called for postponing the resumption of the debate in order to give both the United States and the Soviet Union a cooling-off period to reconsider their positions. A compromise was finally worked out: The conference would take a break, but its resumption would not be fixed before recessing. The United States agreed to this arrangement but reiterated that it would not be a party to a concluding agreement as long as martial law in Poland continued. In working out a common Western negotiating position in preparation for the final phase of the Madrid meeting, the United States, still holding to its linkage policy, faced united opposition and was finally pressured into relinquishing its demand on lifting martial law in Poland as a condition for cooperation. When the concluding phase of the Madrid conference opened in March 1983, the NN states presented a final, revised draft for the concluding document. West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher strongly supported it, but the United States thought it disappointing and unacceptable. Only as a result of considerable effort by West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl during his visit to the United States was President Ronald Reagan finally amenable to accepting the compromise draft. The Soviet Union agreed to sign the document on condition that no further amendments be added. The majority of European states, particularly West Germany, stressed the importance of preserving European d´etente and thereby sustaining the lines of communication and EastWest compromise despite, or precisely because of, martial law in Poland and the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. For this group of European states, d´etente had to be divisible: Neither the Afghanistan nor the Poland crisis, nor the brutal and politically reprehensible treatment of Soviet dissidents by the Soviet government, could be allowed to precipitate the breakdown or termination of the CSCE process. The United States, by contrast, viewed d´etente as part of an indivisible global conflict. In this view, the basis of the CSCE had collapsed

Creative Tension

as a result of martial law in Poland, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Moscow’s flagrant human-rights violations. For the Carter and Reagan administrations, Soviet actions were sufficient cause to consider scuttling the CSCE. These policy differences stemmed from the different views the United States and Europe had of the proper function and purpose of the CSCE. For the United States, the CSCE was a reward for Soviet good behavior at home and in the Third World; it therefore was to be continued only as long as the Soviet Union met American and Western demands on humanrights and political liberalization. In this view, the CSCE was an arena to prosecute the Cold War with the aim of bringing about destabilization and revolutionary change in the Soviet political and social system, including breaking the monopoly of the Communist Party in all spheres of life. Similarly, the United States also saw the CSCE as a framework to support the grassroots human- and civil-rights movements in the Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe, including the Helsinki Watch Committees, opposition groups, and dissidents, many of whom were victims of flagrant Soviet humanrights violations. The dominant European conception, which was most actively defended by West Germany, both overlapped and differed with the American view: The purpose of d´etente and the CSCE was not to challenge the Soviet system as such aggressively but to ease tensions between the two systems in Europe in those spheres where progress was thought to be attainable. In this view, the American tendency to instrumentalize the CSCE to weaken and destabilize the Soviet system with a human-rights club was dangerous abuse of the international body.

basket 3: human rights, human contacts, and culture An important innovation in the Concluding Document of the Vienna follow-up meeting (November 4, 1986–January 15, 1989) was the introduction of the term “human dimension”

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to refer to both the human-rights issues of Basket 1 and the rights of free travel and cultural expression contained in Basket 3.9 The Vienna resolutions on the human dimension improved upon the Helsinki Final Act and the Madrid Concluding Document by spelling out in much greater detail the responsibilities of member states. For the first time, the freedom of movement was explicitly mentioned as a fundamental right in a concluding document of a CSCE follow-up conference, and remedies for proven violations of commitments on human rights and fundamental freedoms were specified.10 Political groups and minorities in the East used Basket 3 and Principle 7 to justify their demands, particularly for emigration rights and political liberalization. The large number of East-West agreements that materialized in the second half of the 1970s between youth organizations, sports clubs, scientific associations, towns, churches, trade unions, and cultural groups, as well as the general increase in EastWest tourism, are linked to the principles of Basket 3 and their implementation.11 The sustained public criticism by Western and NN states of their communist counterparts in the CSCE for their gross human-rights violations helped shield opposition groups against violent repression by Eastern regimes that were eager for greater recognition and cooperation from the West. The international attention and 9 Concluding Document of the Follow-up Meeting of Vienna, reprinted in Bloed, Conference on Security and Co-operation, 327–411. 10 Final Act of Helsinki. The introduction to Basket 3 in the Final Act states that “increased cultural and educational exchanges, broader dissemination of information, contacts between people and the solution of humanitarian problems fosters peace and understanding in Europe.” The Concluding Document of the Follow-up Meeting of Madrid (1983) is reprinted in Bloed, Conference on Security and Co-operation, 257–87. On the Vienna meeting, see Vojtech Mastny, ed., The Helsinki Process and the Reintegration of Europe (New York, 1992), 85–144. 11 Gh´ebali, La Diplomatie de la D´etente, chap. 4; Mathias Jopp et al., Ten Years of the CSCE Process: Appraisal of, and Prospects for, All-European D´etente and Co-operation (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), 71.

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growing sensitivity of Eastern governments to the potentially adverse economic and political effects of international public opinion helped discredit and dampen the role of state violence. Although incidents of official violence to quell opposition were still frequent throughout the East bloc up to the late 1980s, they took a somewhat milder form than in previous decades. This is partly attributable to CSCE agreements on human rights, visa policy, cross-border travel, and rights of journalists, which gave the international media greater opportunity to observe, and expose, the internal affairs of the communist states. Increased international media coverage also increased the pressure from the international community to create more favorable conditions for the emergence of peaceful popular reform movements. This development was encouraged by the influence of nonviolent peace movements in the West, particularly in the Federal Republic, and helped legitimize the practice and culture of nonviolence within the opposition and, more subtly, within government circles. The small steps in this direction partly explain why the mass demonstrations in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) that led to the opening of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the legalization of opposition groups, and the scheduling of free elections unfolded nonviolently.12 The CSCE process played a crucial role in making nonviolence one of the historical hallmarks of the revolutions of 1985–90 in Central and Eastern Europe (with the exception of Romania) and the Soviet Union. Basket 3 commits CSCE members to promote a high degree of cooperation and exchange in all areas of art and culture, such as bilateral and multilateral agreements for exchange programs, conferences, exhibitions, and collaboration in the arts and sciences.13 In the 12 Another essential factor was the refusal of Moscow to allow Soviet troops in the GDR to intervene to stop the mass demonstrations. 13 For more detailed discussion of Basket 3 and a historical overview of the Federal Republic’s policy on cultural exchange, see Barthold C. Witte, “Europe – A

mid- and late 1980s, the “culture basket” became a powerful catalyst of cooperation in all areas of culture in the widest sense of the term. With the spread of Gorbachev’s policies of perestroika and glasnost to Eastern Europe, combined with the advancing globalization of new information technologies, East-West cultural communication and cooperation experienced an unprecedented boom. In the GDR, the years of greater exposure to Western media, especially West German television, helped pave the road that led to the collapse of the communist regime and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Throughout the 1980s, this window to Western political culture contributed to the formation and proliferation of peace, civil-rights, and environmental groups. The East German regime believed it could suppress these developments while allowing largely cosmetic changes designed to retain the Marxist-Leninist status quo and avert Gorbachev’s more radical reforms. This flawed strategy merely hastened the regime’s demise. In addition to culture and information exchange, Basket 3 also covers humanitarian issues related to cross-border human contacts. Like the CSCE process in general, Basket 3 embodies the tension between the systemic antagonism of the Cold War and the system-bridging aims of d´etente. The goal of the NATO and NN states, to guarantee broad contacts between peoples, confronted the Russian Communist tradition of ubiquitous, totalitarian state control over citizens and their interaction with foreigners. Within the West, differences existed over the proper balance between d´etente and attempts to alter Soviet behavior. The United States emphasized the Soviet failure to implement fundamental freedoms, whereas the West Europeans were primarily interested in practical progress toward facilitating cross-border human contacts. The latter position was strongly defended by West Germany, which had a vested interest in German-German contacts and a special concern Cultural Identity,” in Michael Lucas, ed., The CSCE in the 1990s: Constructing European Security and Cooperation in Europe (Baden-Baden, 1993), 309–18.

Creative Tension

for ethnic German communities in Eastern and Central Europe. In contrasting the European and the American position, the Polish CSCE expert Adam Daniel Rotfeld has focused on the CSCE’s broad mandate in virtually all areas of international life – politics, the economy, military affairs, humanitarian cooperation, the environment, and scientific and educational exchange.14 Equilibrium and progress between East and West was only possible by trading compromises by one side in some of these areas for compromises by the other side in other areas. Such “package deals” could be achieved only if both sides were careful not to overemphasize one aspect – such as fundamental rights – at the expense of others. Like the Europeans, the United States also stressed the relationship among different baskets and the need for balance. But in contrast to most Western and NN states, the United States maintained that all the baskets were connected by all member states’ implementation of all CSCE human-rights provisions. At the Vienna follow-up meeting, the United States argued that the CSCE process “cannot be implemented selectively,” which in the context of Vienna meant that there could be no progress in any other basket without progress on basic human rights.15 basket 2: economic cooperation The position of the United States on human rights had implications for its policy in all other areas of potential East-West cooperation in the CSCE framework, including deepening economic and scientific cooperation with the Soviet Union and its European satellite states. The Eastern command economies signed the Final Act in 1975 and accepted the economic 14 Adam Daniel Rotfeld, “The CSCE Process and European Security,” in Kari M¨ott¨olla, ed., Ten Years After Helsinki (Boulder, Colo., 1986), 17–30. 15 “Opening Statement Basket II Subsidiary Working Body,” in U.S. House, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, The Vienna Review Meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Compilation of Speeches, 99th Cong., 2d sess., 1987.

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resolutions in Basket 2 largely to increase their foreign trade with the West, obtain mostfavored-nation (MFN) status from the United States, and improve their access to Western markets and goods.16 The United States justified its continued denial of concessions to Eastern states by pointing to the human-rights abuses of the Soviet Union and the members of the Warsaw Pact. In the American view, concessions might have contravened NATO’s anticommunist policy of military and political containment and its export control policy of withholding goods that could directly or indirectly support Soviet military activities. The United States was one of the strongest proponents of this approach, which derived from its policy of maintaining technological superiority to counter the Warsaw Pact’s numerical superiority in troops and certain classes of weapons. Fundamental Western concessions on East-West trade and economic and scientific cooperation were also specifically blocked by COCOM (Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls), American economic embargoes, and the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the Trade Act of 1974. This highly controversial amendment made the awarding of MFN status to communist countries contingent on a liberalization of their emigration restrictions. Against the background of d´etente in the 1970s, the highly restrictive approach to EastWest trade, though accepted by the United States’ allies, met with mounting criticism. European governments rejected what they considered to be Washington’s punitive linkage of human-rights implementation with expanding economic cooperation and its use of economic sanctions as an instrument of foreign policy toward the East. The European position, exemplified by West Germany, which traditionally had the largest stake in East-West nonagricultural trade and coproduction arrangements, stressed the tension-reducing aspects of economic cooperation and Europe’s greater stake in such cooperation. With the exception of Britain, 16

Michael R. Lucas, The Western Alliance After INF: Redefining U.S. Policy Toward Europe and the Soviet Union (Boulder, Colo., 1990), chap. 8, 145–76.

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Michael R. Lucas

the West European countries took the position that economic interaction could help stabilize East-West relations, thereby encouraging political and economic liberalization in the East and, ultimately, advances in human rights.

conclusion Although Western CSCE member states sustained a minimum consensus on human rights, the West European and NN positions existed in a state of fluctuating public or private tension with the American approach. These differences did not involve first principles and ultimate goals as formulated in CSCE agreements, but rather the proper means of their realization: either confrontation and maximalist demands, or a cooperative modus vivendi with Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union based on gradual advances in a long-term process. The European approach can be traced back to the German-German policy of “change through rapprochement” in the framework of Ostpolitik that the Federal Republic together with its CSCE partners had developed as a model for European d´etente. European moderation at the Madrid followup conference averted the collapse of the CSCE process and ensured the meeting’s successful conclusion. However, the United States also contributed to a positive outcome. Without its unrelenting insistence that the Soviet Union meet its human-rights commitments and that the CSCE catalogue of rights be qualitatively

broadened, the Vienna Concluding Document of 1989 would not have been so far-reaching as a human-rights codex and the debate in Vienna so effective as a driving force of the humanrights revolutions in Eastern and Central Europe and the Soviet Union.17 European and American policy, although they often appeared to clash, were in the end complementary, creating an international political space in which the peaceful revolutions of 1985–90 became possible. Had the Soviet Union not been able to look to the CSCE process as a regime and method of peaceful change, the Eastern revolutions likely would have unfolded under much greater danger of sliding into political instability, which in turn would have heightened the risk of an EastWest military confrontation. By demonstrating that peaceful change through negotiation was possible, the CSCE became an important vehicle for both reform and revolution. Underlying these two dimensions of the CSCE was the partnership of the United States and the Federal Republic. The two states pursued two different tactical approaches to their common Cold War adversaries but also mustered the patience and fortitude to weld them together in common positions that ultimately produced the conditions for dismantling the doomsday machine that was the Cold War. 17 On the Vienna meeting, see Michael R. Lucas, “The Conference on Security and Cooperation and the Post-Cold War Era,” Hamburger Beitr¨age 48 (Sept. 1990): 1–143, 124–43.

chapter five

The United States, Germany, and the Multilateralization of International Relations H. W. Brands

In its simplest form, multilateralism is a method of diplomacy that considers diplomatic partners several at a time. Bilateralism, by contrast, deals with other countries one by one. Multilateralism can be formal, involving treaty organizations and other multinational institutions; it can also be informal, based simply on an appreciation of how particular events affect several nations simultaneously. In practice the formal and informal entwine; a network of explicit commitments and implicit understandings knit together the participating nations and constrain their actions. Relations between the United States and Germany since World War II provide a good example of the formal and informal aspects of multilateralism. Formal elements took precedence first, but as the memories of the war faded and the two sides gained confidence in each other, informal multilateralism grew more important. At the same time, the purposes of multilateralism for the two governments changed along with the relative strength of the military, political, economic, and cultural aspects of their relationship. For Washington, multilateralism was initially a method of tying Germany down and binding Bonn to the West; later it became a way of encouraging the Germans to contribute to European security. For Bonn, multilateralism at first served as an alternative to indefinite occupation; later it became an avenue for

Germany’s reemergence as the leading power in Europe.1

the roots of multilateralism Because World War II was the most multilateral major conflict in history, the postwar peace had to be multilateral as well. Indeed, the multilateralism of the Allied war effort – especially the quadripartite final offensive by the armies of the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France – led directly to the four-way partition of Germany and the establishment of a fourpower condominium over the defeated Reich. The multilateralism that characterized relations between Germany and the Four Powers, especially the relations between the United States and the Federal Republic, followed inescapably from this climactic stage of the war.

1 Recent studies of multilateralism include John Gerard Ruggie, ed., Multilateralism Matters: The Theory and Praxis of an Institutional Form (New York, 1993); Michael Brenner, ed., Multilateralism and Western Strategy (New York, 1995); Robert Z. Lawrence, Regionalism, Multilateralism, and Deeper Integration (Washington, D.C., 1996); Stephen Gill, ed., Globalization, Democratization, and Multilateralism (New York, 1997); and Robert W. Cox, The New Realism: Perspectives on Multilateralism and World Order (New York, 1997).

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If German-American multilateralism had military origins, its longevity also reflected prevailing political and psychological realities. Between the wars, the foreign policies of the United States and Germany were characterized by bilateralism. The United States conspicuously rejected membership in the League of Nations, chiefly on grounds that it would diminish American freedom of action internationally. During the 1930s, as the likelihood of a second major war appeared to increase, the U.S. Congress passed neutrality legislation designed to insulate America even further from what most Americans agreed was the folly of foreigners. Isolationist sentiments were not shared uniformly within the American government: Secretary of State Cordell Hull worked tirelessly to restore American trade through the lowering of tariffs. However, Hull’s primary instrument in this effort was the Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act of 1934, which authorized the reduction of tariffs on a bilateral basis with America’s trading partners. German policy also revealed bilateral tendencies during this period. The multilateral Versailles system initially offered nothing to Germany but disgrace and debt; not surprisingly, German leaders sought their country’s security by other means, such as the bilateral Rapallo pact of 1922 with the Soviet Union. After a brief and often uneasy period of German membership in the League of Nations, Hitler determined that the League and other such multilateral groups as the Disarmament Conference stood in the way of German rearmament and the achievement of his larger goals; once again, Germany opted for bilateralism, exemplified by the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement. As a result, Germany, like the United States, entered the postwar period with little historical experience with the principle of multilateralism. Yet, precisely this absence of a multilateral past became a powerful argument for multilateralism after 1945. The policies of the interwar period had been disastrous failures. Some Americans learned from the Munich experience – others were not convinced until Pearl Harbor – that the United States could not ignore aggression overseas, even aggression that

did not directly impinge on American interests. In addition, the experience of fighting the war in concert with Britain, the Soviet Union, and eventually (if, in many cases, only nominally) some two dozen other nations went far toward alleviating American fears of falling afoul of the machinations of foreign governments. By war’s end, it was clear that American military and economic power would guarantee American leadership, if not outright American dominance, of any multinational group to which the United States belonged. The experience of the world wars demonstrated to Americans, to most of Germany’s neighbors, and even to many Germans themselves that Germany could not be trusted with unfettered sovereignty. Perhaps something in the German character prevented peaceful relations with the other countries of Europe; perhaps the German political economy was simply too powerful for the Central European region. Whatever the root causes, something had to be done to prevent Germany from destabilizing Europe again. In theory, an Allied occupation, perhaps enforcing a Carthaginian peace along the lines of the Morgenthau Plan, might have kept Germany under control. But a similar, if less drastic, scheme had failed after 1919 and, in any case, the Americans had no stomach for an extended occupation. More importantly, World War II and its aftermath – not least the publication of the Atlantic Charter and the Declaration of the United Nations – had enshrined the principle of self-determination in international affairs. This presumably would include Germany once it had been cleansed of its Nazi leadership. To American officials, caught between the strategic necessity to restrain German power and the ideological imperative of selfdetermination, multilateralism offered a convenient compromise. After a suitable period, Germany would reenter the community of sovereign states, but the bonds of that community – of politics, economics, defense, and culture – would be so numerous and strong that the Germans would be neither able nor inclined to engage in the kind of misguided adventurism that had led to World War II.

The United States, Germany, and the Multilateralization of International Relations

Americans, ever sensitive to charges of double standards, might have felt uneasy imposing multilateralism on Germany had they not so fully embraced the concept for themselves as well. American membership in the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and diverse other multilateral organizations served as the model for what Americans expected of Germany. For their part, Germans initially had little alternative but to accept the American design for reintegration into the international system. It was either multilateralism as imposed by the occupying victors, or continued occupation. But many Germans, chastened by World War II, found the logic of multilateralism as compelling as the Americans did, and in time it sat scarcely more heavily on German shoulders than on American.

cold war multilateralism In the immediate aftermath of the war, military power formed the strongest link in the multilateral relationship among the United States, the other wartime allies, and Germany. For all the victors, however, military power was a wasting asset. Voters in the United States, Britain, and France demanded demobilization and a return to civilian priorities; similar pressures, though from different quarters, existed in the Soviet Union. Consequently, U.S. leaders began to supplant military power with other forms of influence. Initially they hoped to devise a political settlement that would anchor Germany evenly into Central Europe and use it as a factor of stability between the Eastern and Western halves of the continent. But differences with the Soviet Union caused a breakdown in the wartime alliance and prevented both an all-German settlement and a balanced reintegration of Germany into European affairs.2 Multilateralism persisted

in Allied planning for Germany, but within the overarching bilateralism of the evolving Cold War. With military influence diminishing and political planning at least temporarily stymied by the deepening East-West divide, the United States concentrated on economic reconstruction. The Marshall Plan had three aims: to restore Western Europe to economic health, to cement transatlantic ties, and to establish and strengthen intra-European connections.3 Without the second and third objectives – which is to say, without the multilateral element – most Americans would have had grave reservations about pursuing the first objective. This held especially true regarding Germany, which no one wanted to revive without guarantees that it would not become unhinged again. Moreover, the multilateral aspects of the plan would complement the strictly reconstructive aspects: Through cooperative planning and the reduction of tariffs and other barriers, the Europeans could ensure that American aid achieved maximum impact. The economic multilateralism promoted by the Marshall Plan proved such a success that it became the basis for more than fifty years of West European economic integration. But even as it tied the countries of the Continent’s Western half together, and those countries to the United States, it exacerbated the estrangement between the Eastern and Western halves of Europe. Stalin rejected Washington’s pro forma offer of Marshall Plan aid to Eastern Europe – a rejection that was crucial in allowing this unprecedented assistance package to survive the scrutiny of a Congress that still had doubts about both the principle and practice of multilateralism.4 Stalin gave American multilateralism another boost in 1948 by blockading Berlin and acting in a manner that seemed to confirm the theories of the “red-fascist” school of international affairs, which contended that communism was simply the contemporary face of aggressive 3

2

See the chapters by Edmund Spevack and Manfred G¨ortemaker, vol. 1, Politics.

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See the chapter by Gerd Hardach, vol. 1, Economics. 4 See the chapter by Steven J. Brady, vol. 1, Politics.

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totalitarianism. Most Americans took alarm at the Berlin crisis, and while a minority of conservatives argued for a reversion to the isolationist policies of the interwar years, a majority opted for a multilateral military response: the North Atlantic alliance of 1949. American membership in NATO marked the coming-of-age of American multilateralism.5 Washington possessed a formal or informal veto in the United Nations, in the Bretton Woods system, and in the GATT. Although American leaders tried not to flaunt it, all parties understood its existence and significance. But the North Atlantic Treaty – especially Article 5, which declared that an attack against any member state would be considered an attack against all – treated the United States as simply one among equals. The events that produced the Atlantic alliance also led to the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany. Indeed, the two events cannot be understood except in relation to each other, for the same desire to strengthen the West that yielded the alliance also caused Western leaders to look to Germany, or their zones of Germany, for assistance in the endeavor. Equally important, NATO provided a structure into which a Germany restored to sovereignty would fit – informally at first, formally within a few years. The quip by Lord Ismay as to the purpose of NATO, “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down,” reflected multilateralism as it applied to NATO and Germany. The multilateral imperative applied even more strongly when the Western powers determined to rearm Germany. It was one thing to pledge to defend the Germans; it was another to arm the Germans to defend themselves. German rearmament practically necessitated the Federal Republic’s admission to NATO, which by 1955, when West Germany joined the alliance, included an integrated military command. Germany’s armed forces, the bane of Europe only

ten years earlier, would now be carefully contained within the framework of Western multilateralism.6 The question of German rearmament led directly to one of the more quixotic, but ultimately revealing, instances of multilateral effort during the Cold War years. By the mid1950s, the nuclear club comprised three members: the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain. France, partly because Britain had the bomb, partly because it did not want to depend forever on the Americans, decided to develop its own bomb. Washington and London (and, with less impact, Moscow) objected, arguing that a proliferation of nuclear weapons would destabilize Europe. American leaders feared in particular that the Germans would want a bomb – a prospect that almost certainly would provoke the Soviets and unnerve even some NATO allies. To head off an independent German nuclear arsenal, the United States promoted something called the multilateral force (MLF). As initially conceived, the MLF would consist of a fleet of submarines armed with nuclear missiles and manned by crews drawn from NATO member states and under combined NATO control. The attraction of the scheme was the attraction of multilateralism generally: It would allow the continued evolution of German power, but within carefully circumscribed limits. The drawbacks of the MLF were likewise the drawbacks of multilateralism generally, in particular the need to coordinate policy among several governments. This difficulty would be particularly acute in an actual military engagement, when war might be a matter of mere minutes or hours. Simply consulting all the states with a stake in the MLF might be prohibitively slow; gaining a consensus on the use of the jointly controlled weapons would take even longer. As the recognition of this deficiency set in, enthusiasm for the MLF waned, and in the mid-1960s it was allowed to expire without ever having left the planning stage.7

5

See Lawrence S. Kaplan, The Long Entanglement: NATO’s First Fifty Years (Westport, Conn., 1999); Steve Weber, Multilateralism in NATO: Shaping the Postwar Balance of Power, 1945–1961 (Berkeley, Calif., 1991).

6

See the chapter by David Clay Large, vol. 1, Secu-

rity. 7

rity.

See the chapter by Erhard Forndran, vol. 1, Secu-

The United States, Germany, and the Multilateralization of International Relations

Two developments contributed to the failure of interest in the MLF. One was a decision by NATO to make nuclear planning, if not nuclear ownership, a multilateral affair: In 1966 the alliance formally established a Nuclear Planning Group. The second development was even more broadly multilateral: the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968. With this pact, the non-nuclear signatories agreed to forgo the acquisition of nuclear weapons, and the nuclear signatories pledged to work toward disarmament. Many Germans had questioned the value of nuclear weapons from the start; now, as one of the non-nuclear signatories, the Federal Republic declared definitively that nuclear weapons did not serve German interests. Although the NPT fell short in certain areas – it failed to restrain the nuclear activities of such states as India, South Africa, and Israel – it solved the German question in NATO nuclear policy once and for all.

a multilateral division of labor Under other circumstances, the Federal Republic might have been less willing to accept permanent secondary status on the nuclear issue, but by the mid-1960s it was becoming apparent that Germany had found an alternate route to power. The economic multilateralism of the Marshall Plan had been institutionalized successively in the Organization for European Economic Cooperation, the European Coal and Steel Community, and the European Economic Community. Each successive stage of economic integration contributed to the Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) that, more quickly than almost anyone had anticipated, restored Germany to a position of economic preeminence among the European states. This development suggested that economic power might serve as a substitute for the military power that previously had been the arbiter among nations, especially in an era when nuclear weapons had made the actual exercise of military power on any serious scale practically suicidal. Of course, one reason Germans could take this view was that the ultimate guarantor of the security of the Federal

51

Republic was the American nuclear arsenal – a fact that disposed Germans who might otherwise have tended toward neutralism to remain firmly attached to NATO. In other words, the multilateralism of the postwar period allowed a kind of division of labor within the Western alliance. The Germans (and the Japanese) would concentrate on economic development; the United States would do the heavy military lifting. Although this arrangement occasioned complaints – among Americans who thought the Europeans ought to carry more of the burden of their defense, among Germans who chafed under what they saw as infringements on German independence – it suited both sides well enough to survive into the mid-1960s relatively unaltered. At that time, however, the financial strains engendered by American budget deficits and German trade surpluses precipitated a minor crisis between Bonn and Washington. Although Washington could not plausibly argue that the budgetary demands of the Great Society programs were justified by their contribution to the Western alliance, it did use such a linkage to justify another major cause of the deficit: the Vietnam War. Moreover, a sizable part of the balance-of-payments deficit with Germany resulted from American spending to support the hundreds of thousands of American troops stationed there. American leaders therefore felt justified in asking the Germans to take measures to trim their trade surplus, which was putting pressure on the dollar and thereby exacerbating Washington’s economic troubles. They pointed out that unless a suitable agreement were reached, demands in Congress for retrenchment might become irresistible. Until about 1965 Washington and Bonn had managed to finesse their financial problems through so-called offset payments. Under this arrangement, Bonn agreed to reduce its surplus with the United States by purchasing American military equipment.8 But the government of Ludwig Erhard ran into economic difficulties of its own; in looking for ways to cut costs, 8 See the chapter by Hubert Zimmermann, vol. 1, Economics.

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H. W. Brands

it sought to reduce its purchases of American arms – purchases that had never sat well with German arms manufacturers anyway. Britain brought the situation to a head in 1966 when, in response to pressures similar to those affecting Washington, it declared that it would drastically reduce its military presence in Germany unless Bonn completely offset the cost of keeping its troops there. The British declaration prompted a series of trilateral talks that lasted into spring 1967 and resulted in an even clearer division of labor between Bonn and Washington. In an illustration of the growing economic importance of the Federal Republic, Bonn agreed, in essence, to bankroll part of the American budget deficit in exchange for an American decision to make no more than cosmetic reductions in military strength in Germany. Bonn also agreed to purchase U.S. bonds and refrain from converting its dollar holdings into gold. At a time when inflation rates were beginning to rise and thereby erode the purchasing power of the dollar, this pledge amounted to a substantial concession. The outcome of the trilateral talks offered the clearest indication to date of the changing nature of the German-American relationship. In the immediate postwar years, while under joint Allied occupation, the Germans had hardly any control over their own fate: Now they came to the table as nearly equal, but still not quite equal, partners of the Americans.

multilateralism and d´e tente Several factors pushed the Atlantic alliance in the direction of d´etente with the Soviet bloc during the 1960s. President Charles de Gaulle of France spoke repeatedly of a single Europe “from the Atlantic to the Urals,” and although Washington considered this sort of rhetoric mischievous, it had to admit that de Gaulle had tapped into some deep European emotions. The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 caused many people to conclude that the very survival of civilization depended on a reduction in tensions between East and West. For Germans of the Federal Republic, d´etente, especially in the

form of Ostpolitik, offered the hope of political and commercial relations with the GDR and, not least, personal relations with family and friends there. Finally, by the late 1960s, d´etente offered the United States a way out of the morass of Vietnam: By cultivating the Soviet Union (and China), Washington intended to increase the pressure on Hanoi for an acceptable settlement. In the hands of the U.S. administration under President Richard Nixon, d´etente was bilateral in form but multilateral in spirit. The agreements signed in Moscow in 1972 bound only the United States and the Soviet Union, but they were made possible by fundamental changes in Chinese-American relations. They also had a profound impact on the United States’ relations with nearly all of its allies, from Japan to South Vietnam to West Germany. D´etente was somewhat more formally multilateral for the Germans. Bonn’s Ostpolitik created a network of treaties with Czechoslovakia, the GDR, Poland, and the Soviet Union, as well as a Four-Power accord normalizing the status of Berlin.9 American and German conceptions of d´etente came together during the late 1970s in the activities of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). Established at Helsinki in 1975, the CSCE originally consisted of thirty-five nations that pledged to respect the human rights of their citizens. Although for some years the communist members of the CSCE fell short of fulfilling their pledges, the conference provided a continuing forum that eventually helped open the East to greater freedom of speech, thought, and religion; in the process, it demonstrated the potential of multilateralism in a cultural-political context.10 a new multilateralism One of the principal purposes of multilateralism is to guard against abrupt changes in diplomatic direction. Although a government 9 10

See the chapter by Werner Link in this section. See the chapter by Michael R. Lucas in this section.

The United States, Germany, and the Multilateralization of International Relations

might sever or alter ties with a single government, to drastically change relations with several governments at once is far more complicated. This institutional inertia became evident in the early 1980s when the Reagan administration sought to undo d´etente. In Britain, Germany, and elsewhere, demonstrators protested against American plans to upgrade NATO’s intermediate-range nuclear forces.11 The governments of Helmut Kohl and Margaret Thatcher managed to overcome the protests, but the resistance acted as a brake on the retreat from such substantive accomplishments of d´etente as the SALT I and the unratified, unloved, but nonetheless unviolated SALT II accords. In part as a consequence, when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in Moscow in 1985 and unveiled his twin initiatives of glasnost and perestroika, constructive rapprochement with the West was easier than it might well have been. And just as the creation of the Cold War framework in the late 1940s had been a multilateral affair, so was the dismantling of that framework in the late 1980s. For the first time, the Western allies – including the Federal Republic –

11

See the chapter by Carl Lankowski, vol. 2, Society.

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confronted the prospect of their wishes (if only rhetorical, in some cases) of German reunification coming true. Many Americans, British, French, Poles, Russians, and not a few Germans were nervous about what this might entail. But forty years of multilateralism12 paid off in the form of the Two-Plus-Four talks on German reunification,13 and the nervousness subsided with the recognition that the new German state was more firmly woven into the fabric of European and world affairs than its predecessors had been.14 12 For perspectives on multilateralism in the twentyfirst century, see Michael G. Schechter, ed., Future Multilateralism: The Political and Social Framework (New York, 1999); Klaus-Dieter Schwarz, Weltmacht USA: Zum Verh¨altnis von Macht und Strategie nach dem Kalten Krieg (Baden-Baden, 1999); John Gerard Ruggie, “Third Try at World Order? America and Multilateralism After the Cold War,” Political Science Quarterly 109 (1994): 553–70. 13 See the chapter by Stephen F. Szabo in this section. 14 On the continuing multilateralism of German foreign policy see the discussion by Wilfried von Bredow in the symposium “America and the Emerging Europe,” Partisan Review 62 (1995): 630–59; Helga Haftendorn, “Gulliver in der Mitte Europas: Internationale Verflechtung und nationale Handlungsm¨oglichkeiten,” in Karl Kaiser and Hans W. Maull, eds., Deutschlands neue Aussenpolitik, 4 vols. (Munich, 1994–8), 1:129–52.

chapter six

Expectations of Dominance and Partnership Rhetoric: The Federal Republic of Germany in the Crossfire of American and French Policy, 1945–1990 Eckart Conze Translated by Richard Sharp

Tension between the Federal Republic’s transatlantic policy and its relations with its neighbor across the Rhine was a constant during the forty-one years between its founding and German unification.1 Against the background of the East-West conflict, the Federal Republic’s foreign policy had to combine a constructive policy toward the Atlantic alliance centered on German-American relations and a constructive policy on European integration focused on Franco-German relations.2 Overarching American hegemony did, indeed, guarantee a comparatively stable and predictable framework for the Western alliance and defined the foreign policy options open to its individual members. But there was scarcely a time when that hegemony went unchallenged. Indeed, the dynamic

between the American claim to dominance and the efforts of the Western European states to escape from that dominance – or at least to weaken it – resulted in continual conflict among the Western nations after 1945. The Federal Republic and France, like the other Western European states, had no choice but to enter into alliance with the United States and submit to American dominance. This relationship offered the West German state the opportunity to improve its status and reestablish itself internationally. France, a defeated victor, saw the German-American relationship as detrimental to its own political importance, an impression reinforced by the rapid revival of its neighbor to the east.3 French reservations about Germany’s revival and, in particular, German rearmament created problems for the Federal Republic’s U.S.-oriented policy of Western integration as well as for U.S. policy on Europe. Particularly after 1958, France attempted to use West Germany’s importance for its own interests, hoping to create a “Third Force Europe” under French leadership to counter the United States.4 During the 1970s and 1980s, Paris gradually

1

Previous research has focused primarily on the development of bilateral relations between Bonn and Washington or between Bonn and Paris, often merely touching on the links between these two bilateral structures. Among recent works, see Frank A. Ninkovich, Germany and the United States: The Transformation of the German Question Since 1945, 2d ed. (New York, 1995); Klaus Larres and Torsten Oppelland, eds., Deutschland und die USA im 20. Jahrhundert: Geschichte der politischen Beziehungen (Darmstadt, 1997); Wilfried Loth and Robert Picht, eds., De Gaulle, Deutschland und Europa (Opladen, 1991); Georges-Henri Soutou, L’alliance incertaine: Les rapports politico-strat´egiques franco-allemands, 1954– 1996 (Paris, 1996). An exception is Wolfram F. Hanrieder, Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of German Foreign Policy (New Haven, Conn., 1989). 2 See Werner Link, “Adenauer, Amerika und die deutsche Nachwelt,” in Klaus Schwabe, ed., Adenauer und die USA (Bonn, 1994), 142.

3

Michel Tatu, “Aussenpolitik zwischen Ost und West,” in Robert Picht, ed., Das B¨undnis im B¨undnis: Deutsch-franz¨osische Beziehungen im internationalen Spannungsfeld (Berlin, 1983), 71. 4 Eckart Conze, Die gaullistische Herausforderung: Die deutsch-franz¨osichen Beziehungen in der amerikanischen Europapolitik 1958–1963 (Munich, 1995); Frank Costigliola, “The Failed Design: Kennedy, De Gaulle, and the Struggle for Europe,” Diplomatic History 8 (1984): 227–51.

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Expectations of Dominance and Partnership Rhetoric

came to accept the Federal Republic’s close transatlantic ties but hoped to supplement them with Franco-German relations that would ideally be at least as close. Even though the increasingly close entente between West Germany and France – the core of an attempted European counterweight to the United States – created new tensions within the transatlantic structure, West German still abided by what Werner Link has called the principle of “Sowohlals-auch” or double compatibility.5 The central problem facing the U.S.-France-Germany triangle, the three bilateral relationships at the center of European-American relations as a whole, lay in the Franco-American competition for hegemony in continental Europe.

hegemony through integration More strongly than in 1918, the United States was determined after 1945 to use its economic and political power to pursue its interests and to prevent Europe from sliding back into the crises and problems that had characterized the interwar years. America’s willingness to lead, even dominate, was matched by a general readiness on the part of the weakened European states to accept American predominance. Two political factors reinforced this tendency to rely on or become subordinate to the United States: the policy pursued by the Soviet Union, especially in Eastern Europe and, second, the fear of a revived the German threat. As much, though, as the Americans and Europeans agreed in their assessments of Soviet policy, they differed in their views on Germany. France in particular pursued a policy toward Germany that ran counter to American aims. While Washington wanted to reconstruct a Europe that would include Germany and thereby stabilize the continent,6 France aimed to keep Germany as weak as possible under an occupying force, to boost 5

Link, “Adenauer, Amerika,” 147. Wilfried Mausbach, Zwischen Morgenthau und Marshall: Das wirtschaftspolitische Deutschlandkonzept der USA 1944–1947 (D¨usseldorf, 1996). 6

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its own economic revival with the help of German resources, and to achieve lasting superiority over its neighbor. This policy disagreement over Germany between Washington and Paris was deepened by France’s insistence on its great-power status, an illusory policy in view of a global political situation dominated by the increasingly acute East-West conflict. Disputes between France and the United States – for example, in the Allied Control Council over the question of centralized administrative institutions in Germany or, later, over merging the three Western occupation zones – stemmed from France’s policy on Germany and its efforts to assert its status.7 The United States was caught between having to prevent West Germany from turning eastward and France’s democratic, pro-Western government from falling. It found a minor and a major solution to this dilemma. The minor, short-term solution came about when the Americans and French reached agreement in informal talks on a joint approach to occupation policy: The United States did not exert overt pressure on Paris, and French policy shifted, although not publicly, into line with U.S. policy.8 The major, long-term solution to Washington’s dilemma was the Marshall Plan.9 The United States’ hegemonic position after 1945 enabled it to implement a “creative peace” in Europe, in the form of the Marshall Plan,10 that prevented a repetition of the crisis of the 1920s by promoting European integration. For this concept of “hegemony through integration,” the Franco-German conflict had to be resolved as a precondition for and starting point of

7

See the chapters by Gunther Mai and HermannJosef Rupieper, vol. 1, Politics. 8 Heike Bungert, “A New Perspective on FrenchAmerican Relations During the Occupation of Germany, 1945–1948: Behind-the-Scenes Diplomatic Bargaining and the Zonal Merger,” Diplomatic History 18 (1994): 351. 9 See the chapters by Michael Wala, vol. 1, Politics and Gerd Hardach, vol. 1, Economics. 10 Michael J. Hogan, “The Search for a ‘Creative Peace’: The United States, European Unity and the Origins of the Marshall Plan,” Diplomatic History 6 (1982): 267–85.

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the process of European unification.11 Britain, because of its Commonwealth ties and its special relationship with the United States, refused to take on a leading role in Europe. Washington thus had to rely on Paris to realize its plans for integration. France became Europe’s “junior federator” under the aegis of America. This role, which France played for the first time in the context of the European Coal and Steel Community,12 reconciled the Fourth Republic for the time being to its relative loss of international prestige and Germany’s gains in sovereignty. For France, the Schuman Plan of 1950 was a desperate attempt to help control the no longer stoppable U.S.-backed rise of West Germany. “To this extent, the French policy of integration was a reaction to America’s policy on Europe and Germany, a reaction that was productive, but also aimed at preserving France’s own position of power.”13 France wanted not only to prevent the creation of an autonomous center of economic power on the other side of the Rhine but also to consolidate its own position vis-`a-vis the United States, to preserve its leading role in Western Europe, and to defuse the danger it saw in the special relationship developing between Washington and Bonn.14 Precisely the same intentions underlay the Pleven Plan of October 1950. The plan was aimed at delaying the by then unavoidable West German rearmament and then relegating the Federal Republic to secondary status in the long run through the integration and control of its 11

Eckart Conze, “Hegemonie durch Integration? Die amerikanische Europapolitik und ihre Herausforderung durch de Gaulle,” Vierteljahrshefte f¨ur Zeitgeschichte 43 (1995): 305–11. 12 John Gillingham, Coal, Steel, and the Rebirth of Europe, 1945–1955: The Germans and French from Ruhr Conflict to Economic Community (Cambridge, 1991), 97–177. 13 Werner Link, “Historische Kontinuit¨aten und Diskontinuit¨aten im transatlantischen Verh¨altnis: Folgerungen f¨ur die Zukunft,” in Miles Kahler and Werner Link, Europa und Amerika nach der Zeitenwende: Die Wiederkehr der Geschichte (G¨utersloh, 1995), 109. 14 Thomas A. Schwartz, “European Integration and the ‘Special Relationship’: Implementing the Marshall Plan in the Federal Republic,” in Charles S. Maier and G¨unter Bischof, eds., The Marshall Plan and Germany (New York, 1991), 201.

armed forces.15 Because it was dependent on French cooperation in other policy areas, especially in European economic integration, Washington could not compel Paris to accept the NATO plan it initially favored. It had no alternative but to go along with the concept of a European Defense Community (EDC), and the West German government, initially irritated, also quickly fell into line with the French initiative. After the failure of the EDC in 1954, Paris finally had to accept the Federal Republic’s joining NATO. But France’s recognition of its secondary status and dependence on the United States prompted it to seek new ways to strengthen Western Europe as a power center – to offset an eventual U.S. withdrawal from Europe and to establish a counterweight to balance the hegemonic power on the other side of the Atlantic.16 Both aims required German cooperation. The French EDC debacle, the effects of which were further exacerbated two years later by the Suez crisis, resulted in a rapprochement between West Germany and France that made possible the relance europ´eenne – that is, the founding of the European Economic Community (EEC) and Euratom. The political success of the United States in 1954–5 thus carried in it the seeds of later Franco-American disagreement, and it pointed to the central role that the Federal Republic would play in the outcome of the Franco-American struggle for hegemony. “grand design” versus “grand dessein” Charles de Gaulle’s return to power in 1958 gave clear shape to this conflict.17 As factors in the 15

This was the view of U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson in a first assessment of the Pleven Plan; see David Clay Large, “Grand Illusions: The United States, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the European Defense Community, 1950–1954,” in Jeffry M. Diefendorf, Axel Frohn, and Hermann-Josef Rupieper, eds., American Policy and the Reconstruction of West Germany, 1945–1955 (New York, 1993), 378. 16 See Gunther Mai, “American Policy Toward Germany and the Integration of Europe,” in ibid., 106–7. 17 For details of what follows, see Conze, Gaullistische Herausforderung; see also Pascaline Winand, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the United States of Europe (New York, 1993).

Expectations of Dominance and Partnership Rhetoric

rivalry between the United States and France in Europe, French policy on Germany and Franco-German relations had increasing impact upon U.S. policy on Germany and GermanAmerican relations. In keeping with its policy on Europe, the United States encouraged the dialogue between Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and de Gaulle and welcomed the general’s accession to power as a contribution to strengthening and stabilizing France. However, Washington was soon forced to recognize that the new closing of ranks by West Germany and France – a result in part of the American rejection of France’s 1958 proposal for an American-British-French NATO directorate – was also directed against American dominance within the Western alliance.18 Against the background of pro-d´etente tendencies in Washington in connection with Khruschev’s ultimatum on Berlin, German-American relations underwent a crisis. Adenauer’s government looked for new backing and found it in de Gaulle’s France. The understanding with Paris enabled Bonn to maintain an uncompromising position in the Western states’ policy conflict over Berlin and Germany. Even if one of the main reasons for France’s hard line over Berlin was to underline its status as a victorious power, it also found support from Bonn, as a quid pro quo, in its pursuit of other aims: on the Algerian question and on its policy on Europe, which the United States still basically supported at that time. But when France’s policy on Europe came into open conflict with the U.S. policy, Washington had to take a different view of the changing relations between Germany and France. By the end of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency, skepticism was rife, and general approval for close relations between West Germany and France was accompanied by a negative assessment of de Gaulle’s European policy.

18 On the correlations between French policy on NATO and on Germany, especially between 1958 and 1966, see Reiner Pommerin, “La France, l’Allemagne et l’OTAN,” in Maurice Va¨ısse, Pierre M´elandri, and Fr´ed´eric Bozo, La France et l’OTAN 1949–1996 (Paris, 1997), 267–84.

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As the crisis in German-American relations deepened following the start of John F. Kennedy’s presidency as a result of the shift in U.S. d´etente policy, Franco-German bilateralism became all the more prominent. While Bonn had been regarded as a generally reliable supporter of Washington during the 1950s, it now threw its increased political and economic weight behind de Gaulle’s anti-American aims, not least in connection with the rejection of Britain’s 1963 application to join the EEC.19 Behind Adenauer’s Gaullist turn lay long-standing fears. For him, it was a question of Germany’s relationship to and integration within the West. In the later years of his chancellorship, Adenauer had growing doubts about America’s commitment to Europe and worried that Washington might eventually accept the idea of a neutralized Germany. This fear prompted Adenauer to seek a permanent tie to France: The Franco-German Treaty of 1963 was intended to seal this relationship. Washington understood these motivations behind Adenauer’s policy toward France. Although the Franco-German entente removed the basis for Kennedy’s ambitious “grand design,” the Kennedy administration still regarded ´ ee Treaty as yet another success for the Elys´ U.S. policy. As Washington saw it, though, the Franco-German pact ought not be allowed to become the basis for an exclusive relationship or to jeopardize the Federal Republic’s close transatlantic ties. Washington therefore put strong pressure on Bonn to make a clear commitment to NATO, to West Germany’s transatlantic ties, and to British accession to the EEC. ´ ee Treaty represented The preamble to the Elys´ the success of the American hegemon vis-`avis French ambitions for predominance on the Continent. The United States was aware of the central political, economic, and strategic importance of the Federal Republic as well as its threefold transatlantic dependence. Therefore, the main thrust of Washington’s efforts to derail 19

Gustav Schmidt, “‘Master-minding’ a New Western Europe: The Key Actors at Brussels in the Superpower Conflict,” in George Wilkes, ed., Britain’s Failure to Enter the European Community, 1961–1963 (London, 1997), 70–90.

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de Gaulle’s vision of Europe was directed not at Paris itself, but at Bonn. In 1963, U.S. policy toward West Germany became more of a European policy than it had been. The preamble to the Franco-German Treaty and the arrival of Ludwig Erhard in the West German chancellery confirmed America’s political calculations.20 As Western Europe gew increasingly independent and economically powerful after the 1950s, Washington attached increasing importance to its bilateral relations with the Federal Republic. In the developing dual, tension-prone structure of a transatlantic security community and a European economic community, Bonn was more than ever the decisive point of reference in a relationship of “hegemonic cooperation.”21 John F. Kennedy’s triumphal visit to Germany in June 1963 renewed and strengthened the emotional ties between Germany and the United States that had been forged during the Berlin blockade in 1948–9. Although Erhard, who became chancellor in October 1963, was a convinced “Atlanticist,” it was hardly the case that the years of crisis were now followed by “the most harmonious phase of German-American relations since the end of the war.”22 The virtually unconditional Atlanticism of Chancellor Erhard and his foreign minister, Gerhard Schr¨oder, the undermining of the Franco-German Treaty, and the extensive, albeit nonmilitary support for the American involvement in Vietnam deprived the Federal Republic of its bargaining power in negotiations with Washington. President Lyndon Johnson’s administration proved uncompromisingly tough on the issue of a postponement of the schedule 20 Reiner Marcowitz, Option f¨ur Paris? Unionsparteien, SPD und Charles de Gaulle 1958–1969 (Munich, 1996); Hans-J¨urgen Grabbe, Unionsparteien, Sozialdemokratie und Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika (D¨usseldorf, 1983). 21 On this term, see Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, 1984), chap. 8. 22 See Joachim Arenth “Die Bew¨ahrungsprobe der Special Relationship: Washington and Bonn (1961– 1969),” in Larres and Oppelland, eds., Deutschland und die USA, 159.

for German foreign exchange offset payments.23 Erhard was snubbed on his visit to the United States in September 1966, which exacerbated the conflict with his liberal coalition partners and contributed directly to his fall.24

europeanization of europe? The “Grand Coalition” under Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger (CDU) and Foreign Minister Willy Brandt (SPD), more assured and emphatic in defending German interests, proved to be a more difficult partner for Washington. There was no longer any question of Germany choosing between Washington or Paris. The Kiesinger government considered close ties to the United States of vital importance, but at the same time it also saw the Franco-German relationship more strongly than ever at the core of European integration. But given France’s withdrawal from NATO’s military command and its simultaneous backpedaling policy within the EEC, the dual imperative of West German foreign policy became problematic. Bonn did not join in the ever more clearly anti-American stance adopted by Paris, particularly as France would never have been able to replace the United States as the guarantor of West German security. The force de frappe could not replace the American nuclear umbrella. Bonn nevertheless pressed for the reform of NATO in order to escape a discriminatory isolation within the alliance. The looser the cohesion of NATO became – the more Britain banked on its special relationship with the United States and France turned away from NATO – the more insecure the Federal Republic became. It proved possible in 1966–7 to alter the alliance’s strategy and the relations between the United States and the European members. The Federal Republic played 23

See the chapter by Hubert Zimmermann, vol. 1, Economics. 24 Ernst-Otto Czempiel, “Auf der Suche nach neuen Wegen: Die deutsch-amerikanischen Beziehungen 1961–1969,” in Wolfgang-Uwe Friedrich, ed., Die USA und die deutsche Frage 1945–1990 (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), 185.

Expectations of Dominance and Partnership Rhetoric

a critical role by helping to shape and implement this change rather than support the French alternative. It was “the ‘feather that tipped the scale,’ not just in East-West relations, but also in the structuring of the transatlantic relationship” (Kenneth Rush).25 The Harmel Report of 1967 brought the Federal Republic and the United States into agreement once again on d´etente policy and provided the basis for the social democratic–liberal coalition’s Ostpolitik. Ostpolitik rested on West Germany’s integration within the U.S.-led North Atlantic alliance and its active accommodation to U.S. d´etente policy.26 Another precondition for success of Ostpolitik, however, was that West Germany be anchored in the structures of West European integration. For Brandt, pursuing West Germany’s political interests in Eastern Europe meant a constant balancing act in relations with the United States and France, in its Atlantic and European policies. For the same reasons, Bonn had to prevent growing differences between Europe and America, above all on economic, trade, and monetary policy, from harming GermanAmerican relations,27 which might, in turn, have jeopardized West German Ostpolitik or the American military presence in Western Europe. American economic weakness, signaled by the collapse of the Bretton Woods system,28 gave close relations with the Federal Republic new meaning for Washington. West Germany had become the world’s biggest exporter of capital in 1968 and was undoubtedly a major economic power. When Washington referred to a dual West German-U.S. economic hegemony, its intention was to detach Bonn from the united European front led by France and so foil any attempt by the Europeans to gang up on the United States. European efforts at policy coordination had been spurred in part by America’s

pursuit of its own line on monetary policy as a result of the war in Vietnam. However much Bonn and Paris might have been pursuing different interests – with each trying to influence the economic and political development of the European Community (EC) to suit its own ideas – they were nevertheless united in believing, for example, that a European monetary community or agreement should also shield them from U.S. monetary policy. Henry Kissinger’s “Year of Europe” in 1973, by contrast, was intended to maintain transatlantic roles as they had been up to that point.29 France, pursuing a policy of modified Gaullism under Georges Pompidou, tried to counter this formalization of America’s dominance and Europe’s secondary status. This new mobilization of Europe served to further the integration of the Federal Republic. As had previously been the case in the 1960s, Washington again took up the challenge from Europe and France. The Federal Republic’s fundamental dependence on the United States, especially in security matters, contributed to the success of the United States in asserting its claim to leadership. Bonn was the chief architect of the compromise “Gymnich formula” of 1974, which, against the will of France, secured a role for the United States in European decision making. Once again, Washington was able to use the Federal Republic, thanks to its security dependence, as a strategic partner in preventing the formation of an anti-American bloc on France’s initiative.30 Although U.S. hegemony was confirmed in 1973–4, it was also weakened at the same time. The Europeanization of Europe moved forward under the umbrella of American hegemony. Central to that process was the intensification of Franco-German relations under Helmut Schmidt and Val´ery Giscard d’Estaing.

29

25

Link, “Historische Kontinuit¨aten,” 114. 26 See the chapters by Gottfried Niedhart and Werner Link in this section. 27 See the chapter by Monika Medick-Krakau, vol. 2, Economics. 28 See the chapter by Harold James, “The Deutsche Mark and the Dollar,” vol. 2, Economics.

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See the chapter by Klaus Larres in this section. The EC foreign ministers negotiated a gentlemen’s agreement at the castle of Gymnich in 1974 that enabled the United States de facto to participate in the European decision-making process before the adoption of a resolution within the European Political Cooperation (EPC), or indeed to block that decision process, whenever its interests were affected. 30

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One contributing factor to this was the weak leadership, in European eyes, provided by the U.S. government under President Jimmy Carter.31 Two responses to this perceived weakness were the establishment of the European Monetary System on Franco-German initiative in 1978–9 and the formulation of a new FrancoGerman defense policy (within the framework of NATO). In the late 1970s, fundamental changes in the close German-American consensus on security matters, arms control, and d´etente policy also resulted in severe tensions in relations between the two countries.32 This strain led Bonn to attach increased importance to European integration and the FrancoGerman. On the occasion of Giscard’s visit to Bonn in 1980, Die Welt commented ironically that Adenauer’s plans for German-French cooperation had never been implemented so well, “not even in the days of the Adenauer-de Gaulle era.”33

the double compatibility imperative Helmut Kohl’s government came closer to attaining the ultimately unachievable aim of complete compatibility in German-French and in German-American relations than the Schmidt government or indeed any previous West German government. One important factor was that “France, its nationalism satisfied, [had] largely overcome its complexes and pro-Soviet illusions” and that its left-wing government was seeking “friendly dialogue with America.”34 This situation allowed the Federal Republic to go through with INF rearmament on a basis of both transatlantic agreement and French support. President Franc¸ ois Mitterrand’s speech to the Bundestag in January 1983, on the twentieth ´ ee Treaty, demonstrated anniversary of the Elys´ how close Germany had come to achieving the 31

See the chapter by Christian Hacke in this section. See the chapter by Matthias Dembinski, vol. 2, Security. 33 Quoted in Link, “Adenauer, Amerika,” 146. 34 Tatu, “Aussenpolitik zwischen Ost und West,” 77–8. 32

aims of the double compatibility (“Sowohl-alsauch”) principle. Much like the weakness of American leadership in the late 1970s, President Ronald Reagan’s attempt to restore American hegemony and leadership encouraged more intensive Franco-German and European cooperation. The Reagan administration’s efforts were responsible for the revitalization of the Western European Union (WEU) as the security policy arm of the EC, for the end of the “eurosclerosis” of the mid-1980s, and for the expansion of Franco-German cooperation. Given the East-West conflict, however, neither German nor French interests would have been served by pursuing bilateralism to the point of weakening the Atlantic alliance. Only a strong Atlantic alliance allowed France to maintain its independent foreign policy and offered the Federal Republic security.35 Friction between Bonn and Paris clearly did exist. The Federal Republic’s continued dependence on the United States repeatedly caused tension. Bonn and Paris had barely agreed to closer cooperation in the security and defense sectors when the Federal Republic had to endorse the American SDI program, which Paris could reject. Under pressure from the United States, Bonn had no option but to turn toward Paris, as it had in the final stages of the Adenauer era. This was the case, for example, over the issue of the withdrawal of the Pershing Ia missiles in 1987 or AmericanSoviet bilateral ambitions in d´etente policy, the possibilities of which were very clearly demonstrated by the December 1987 INF Treaty after Mikhail Gorbachev’s accession to power.36 It came as anything but chance, then, that just one month after the INF Treaty (on the twenty´ ee Treaty) a protocol fifth anniversary of the Elys´ was issued on the creation of a Franco-German defense and security council. And still: Just as the 35 Urs Leimbacher, “Deutsch-franz¨osische Zusammenarbeit und nationale Interessen seit Anfang der 1980er Jahre,” in Gottfried Niedhart, Detlef Junker, and Michael W. Richter, eds., Deutschland in Europa: Nationale Interessen und internationale Ordnung im 20. Jahrhundert (Mannheim, 1997), 186. 36 See the chapter by Michael Broer, vol. 2, Security.

Expectations of Dominance and Partnership Rhetoric

dynamics of Franco-German relations had had marked repercussions on German-American relations since the early 1950s, there could be equally little doubt in the late 1980s of the continuing and crucial importance of the United States to the Federal Republic: Without Washington, NATO would have barely been as effective. . . . The Federal Republic remained dependent on the United States in matters of security policy; the dollar remained the global currency vital for Germany’s export prospects; and America still provided institutions, rules, and structures in the field of world politics that could not have been provided by any other power in the Western world.37

Yet, it was precisely this clear hierarchy and Bonn’s recognition of it that made the United States support German unification unconditionally in 1989–90. German unity did not threaten American hegemony, nor would Europe develop quickly into a rival to that hegemony. American pressure – and the force of developments in Germany after November 9, 1989 – prompted France to follow the American line relatively quickly (sooner than Britain) despite the initial reservations voiced during Mitterrand’s visits to the Soviet Union and East Germany. The reduction of France’s importance as a result of German unification spurred Paris to push for a deeper union within Europe. Its aim was to integrate the expanded Germany more strongly within Europe and to create a European counterweight to the United States – to attempt, once again, to escape American hegemony. Although Washington welcomed the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, it sharply opposed the 37 Michael Jochum, “Der Zerfall des sicherheitspolitischen Konsenses und die Versch¨arfung der Wirtschaftsund W¨ahrungskrisen (1981–1989),” in Larres and Oppelland, eds., Deutschland und die USA, 219.

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Franco-German initiatives to turn the WEU into the security policy arm of the European Union (EU) and to make the Franco-German “Eurocorps” the nucleus of an independent European military body. The friction was laid to rest, and even the French neo-Gaullists today accept a European defense identity within the North Atlantic alliance. A future course leading to political union via monetary union would ultimately provide a European solution to the French problem in German-American relations. This would follow the logic of the past fifty years and, indeed, of the period since 1918. It was ultimately France’s claims to dominance over Germany, in conjunction with its ambitions of hegemony in continental Europe, that had repeatedly made French policy a problem for German-American relations and for U.S. policy on Germany or Germany’s policy on America. A purely bilateral FrancoGerman strategic community, which has not and could not be established in the last fifty years, will not exist in the future either.38 The restructuring of equilibrium and hegemony in transatlantic and internal European relations39 offers the opportunity to solve this problem. It does so not through a fundamental change in French interests and aspirations but through the reduced importance of the nation-state paradigm and, hence, of classical nation-state bilateralisms.

38

Georges-Henri Soutou views the foreign and security policy relations between the Federal Republic and France – despite all their successes – with a hint of regret, as a story of missed opportunities: Soutou, L’alliance incertaine, esp. 413–42. 39 Werner Link, “Gleichgewicht und Hegemonie: Die Politik der Staaten folgt immer noch dem alten Muster,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Sept. 19, 1997, 13.

chapter seven

West Germany and European Unity in U.S. Foreign Policy Klaus Larres

The late 1960s and early 1970s proved to be a decisive turning point in America’s strategy toward Europe. American support for the further integration of the European continent, including German unification, deteriorated considerably. The international economic difficulties of the period produced a climate of severe trade competition that began to dominate America’s relations with the European Community (EC). To the economic problems were added serious European-American differences over security issues and NATO’s policy toward the Soviet Union. Trade and security disputes became closely intertwined and contributed to the bitterness of transatlantic conflicts. During the last two decades of the Cold War, these conflicts were strongly influenced by the gradual emancipation of Western Europe from American tutelage.1 Despite its support for European reconstruction and integration after World War II, the United States had never intended to nourish an independent “third force” on the European continent. Although there was something unique about the way the American “empire” developed, the United States closely resembled a traditional great power in its desire to remain the undisputed leader of the Atlantic system.2

In the 1970s and 1980s, transatlantic mistrust and America’s growing preoccupation with its own economic competitiveness and global standing pushed the leading EC member states into ever closer cooperation with each other. As Washington grew increasingly suspicious of this development, the policy of benign neglect of European integration – pursued by the Nixon and the Carter administrations – gave way to a strategy of arrogant neglect during the administration of Ronald Reagan. Only in the course of German unification and the other dramatic events of 1989–90 did Reagan’s successor, George Bush, manage to realign the United States with the process of European integration. the reevaluation of america’s european policy in the early 1970 s Throughout the global recessions of the 1970s, the world’s leading economies had to grapple with the often contradictory forces of “global interdependence, regional integration, and national self-assertion.”3 In the case of the United States, its relative economic decline undermined its commitment to Europe.4 Washington 3

Wolfram F. Hanrieder, “The German-American Connection in the 1970s and 1980s: The Maturing of a Relationship,” in Carl C. Hodge and Cathal J. Nolan, eds., Shepherd of Democracy? America and Germany in the Twentieth Century (Westport, Conn., 1992), 116. 4 J. Robert Schaetzel, The Unhinged Alliance: America in the European Community (New York, 1975); Argyris G. Andrianopoulos, Western Europe in Kissinger’s Global Strategy (Basingstoke, 1988).

1 Klaus Larres and Torsten Oppelland, eds., Deutschland und die USA im 20. Jahrhundert: Geschichte der politischen Beziehungen (Darmstadt, 1997), 178–229. 2 Geir Lundestad, The American “Empire” and Other Studies of U.S. Foreign Policy in Comparative Perspective (Oxford, 1990), 31–3.

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resented the growing competitiveness and exclusionary trade habits of the EC as a challenge to its leadership position. President Richard Nixon demanded that the Europeans lower their tariffs and allow more American goods to enter the EC common market. In particular, he blamed the EC’s protectionist Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for America’s trade deficit.5 Then, in August 1971 Nixon suddenly announced the suspension of the dollar’s convertibility into gold. This resulted in the free floating of international currencies and an effective devaluation of the dollar. The president also imposed a 10 percent tariff on imported goods. These decisions terminated the 1944 Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates. Moreover, they were dictated solely by American domestic economic requirements and without regard for the consequences for America’s allies.6 In the era of d´etente Congress also grew increasingly skeptical about the benefits of America’s involvement in Europe and made various proposals to reduce the number of troops stationed there.7 Within the administration, it was above all National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger who insisted on conducting relations with the West European allies on a purely bilateral basis within the Atlantic framework. The administration therefore ignored the European Commission and the fledging European institutions almost entirely.8 Any further steps toward a more united continent would be left to the Europeans. Nixon and Kissinger were convinced 5 In fact, one of the main reasons for Washington’s problems was the relative overvaluation of the dollar, which helped European (particularly West German) and Japanese exports. See John Killick, The United States and European Reconstruction, 1945–1960 (Edinburgh, 1997), 173. 6 John Peterson, Europe and America in the 1990s: The Prospects for Partnership (Aldershot, 1993), 41. See the chapter by Harold James, “The Deutsche Mark and the Dollar,” vol. 2, Economics. 7 Raymond Garthoff, D´etente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan, 2d ed. (Washington, D.C., 1994); Robert S. Litwak, D´etente and the Nixon Doctrine: American Foreign Policy and the Pursuit of Stability, 1969–1976 (Cambridge, 1984). See also the chapter by Steven J. Brady in this section. 8 Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston, 1982), 131–2. See the chapter by Werner Link in this section.

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that America was a declining power with only a limited degree of influence on the EC. Despite these views, which might also appear to indicate a willingness to accept the realities of a more pluralistic and interdependent world, the Nixon administration clung to the notion of a largely docile Europe. Especially in East-West relations and NATO issues, Washington wished to be in full control. Ostpolitik was therefore only grudgingly accepted by the Nixon administration.9 Although, the de facto recognition of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) had been urged on West Germany since the Kennedy era, Nixon and Kissinger viewed Bonn’s new “Rapallo” policy with suspicion.10 Above all, in a climate of American mistrust of Europe’s growing independence, Washington disliked the self-confidence with which the Federal Republic was competing with America’s own strategy of superpower d´etente. By 1973 Kissinger realized that transatlantic relations were in urgent need of repair; to the anger of the EC countries, who had not been consulted, he grandly announced the “Year of Europe.”11 This was Kissinger’s attempt to improve EC-American relations while safeguarding Washington’s leadership role. Above all, he insisted on a greater degree of military burden-sharing as only Europe’s financial contribution would guarantee the further functioning of America’s security umbrella. In spite of the displeasure this linkage between economic and security concerns provoked in Europe, the American conception of the transatlantic relationship largely prevailed in the Atlantic Declaration of June 1974.12 Allied relations therefore 9 Klaus Larres, “Germany and the West: The ‘Rapallo Factor’ in German Foreign Policy from the 1950s to the 1990s,” in Klaus Larres and Panikos Panayi, eds., The Federal Republic of Germany Since 1949: Politics, Society and Economy Before and After Unification (London, 1996), 303– 18. 10 Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston, 1979), 409, 529–30. 11 Willy Brandt, My Life in Politics (London, 1992), 177–8. 12 William C. Cromwell, The United States and the European Pillar: The Strained Alliance (Basingstoke, 1992).

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remained tense; severe strains were generated by the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, when Washington wholeheartedly backed Israel while many European states, including the Federal Republic, hesitated to do so. The EC was much more dependent on Middle Eastern oil than the United States, and many countries – like France, Great Britain, but also the Federal Republic – had strong economic links with the Arab countries in the region. The war thus tested the transatlantic relationship by confronting it with sensitive issues of energy, security, and economic policy. The American-European differences over the “Year of Europe” and the Yom Kippur War pushed the EC into developing more sophisticated processes of cooperation, not least in order to resist pressure to comply with American wishes. The 1973 Declaration on European Identity contributed to the development of a common European foreign policy by encouraging EC members to use the instrument of European Political Cooperation (EPC), created in 1970, to coordinate their foreign policy positions. Still, the 1970s are generally considered to be a “dark age” or a “stagnant decade” for European integration.13 The oil price shocks of 1973 and 1979, the accompanying economic recession, and the expansion of the EC from six to nine members with the addition of the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Denmark in 1973 caused a long crisis of adaptation within the EC. This “disarray of Europe” worked to the benefit of the United States. Washington was able to insist on the importance of the Atlantic framework and regain its leadership position among the Western allies, who seemed to be “unified only when under its direction.”14 However, an important reevaluation of ECAmerican relations had taken place. Washington’s leadership was now accompanied by much more self-centered attention to its own economic and political interests. 13 Peterson, Europe and America, 42; Keith Middlemas, quoted in Geir Lundestad, “Empire” by Integration: The United States and European Integration, 1945–1997 (Oxford, 1998), 109. 14 Alfred Grosser, The Western Alliance: EuropeanAmerican Relations Since 1945 (London, 1980), 281.

the new limits of american power Jimmy Carter professed a pro-European attitude and was intent on establishing more cooperative and constructive trilateral relations with Western Europe and Japan. However, although he was the first American president to visit and acknowledge the importance of the European Commission, growing domestic and international difficulties left him little time for European integration issues. In the mid- to late 1970s it was mostly the EC countries, not so much the United States, that attempted to coordinate the Western world’s economic and financial policies during the various Western economic summits that had become established practice since 1975.15 The EC did its best to put Western exchange rates on a new and stable footing, first with the Smithsonian Agreement, then the socalled currency snake, and finally by creating the European Monetary System (EMS) in 1978, the forerunner of European Monetary Union (EMU). The main aim of the EMS was the establishment of a zone of stable exchange rates floating in tandem against the dollar. This would offer the European currencies a degree of protection from the volatility of international trade associated with the unstable American currency. The EMS benefited above all from the position of the Deutsche Mark, which grew increasingly important not only as the EC’s leading currency but also as a global reserve currency.16 This growth in economic status enhanced the political influence of the Federal Republic within the EC, adding to the rivalry between Bonn and Washington. Persistent problems in the American economy during Carter’s presidency led to Washington’s unpopular suggestion that in order to diminish the American trade deficit with the EC, the West German and American economies should form an economic “axis.” At the Bonn summit in 1978, the Federal Republic was asked to act as a “locomotive” for Western economic growth by ending its restrictive monetary policy 15

See thechapter byBernhard May,vol.2, Economics. See the chapter by Harold James, “The Deutsche Mark and the Dollar,” vol. 2, Economics. 16

West Germany and European Unity in U.S. Foreign Policy

and adopting an expansionist economic strategy. West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, however, believed this would jeopardize his policy of controlling inflation and stabilizing the Deutsche Mark. A trained economist and former finance minister, Schmidt increasingly took on the role of economic spokesman for the EC and expected Washington to coordinate its own expansionary economic policies with it. Carter refused to do so.17 Instead Washington resorted to protectionist measures to defend the competitiveness of American goods, provoking resentment among the EC member states. The summit meeting in Venice in the summer of 1980 must be regarded as one of the low points of transatlantic and in particular West German-American relations.18 However, in the course of its last two years, the Carter administration did eventually adopt more restrained macroeconomic and trade policies, with greater emphasis on cooperation with the EC. It also made important concessions during the Tokyo round of multilateral trade negotiations in April 1979. The president seemed to have realized that America’s relative weakness and the EC’s growing strength made transatlantic accommodation imperative. Washington’s global limits also became apparent in security policy. Differences over armscontrol negotiations and rearmament issues, including Carter’s unilateral decisions first to develop and then to cancel the so-called neutron bomb, as well as disputes over the divisibility of d´etente characterized the dire state of transatlantic relations during the Carter era.19 Largely for domestic reasons, in 1978–9 Carter underwent a transformation from apostle of d´etente to rigid Cold Warrior. In Europe, however, especially in West Germany, inter17 See Helmut Schmidt, Men and Powers: A Political Retrospective (New York, 1989), 265–6; Helga Haftendorn, Sicherheit und Stabilit¨at: Aussenbeziehungen der Bun¨ desrepublik zwischen Olkrise und NATO-Doppelbeschluss (Munich, 1986). 18 See Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (Toronto, 1982), 536, 538. 19 Sherri Wasserman, The Neutron Bomb Controversy: A Study in Alliance Politics (New York, 1983). See also the chapter by Matthias Dembinski, vol. 2, Security.

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est in the continuation of d´etente remained strong; Carter’s imposition of trade sanctions on the USSR and the American boycott of the Olympic Games in Moscow were regarded as exaggerated reactions to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. In general, most EC countries viewed American politics under Carter as ambiguous and unpredictable, while the president regarded the EC as unhelpful and unsympathetic toward Washington’s global predicaments. Despite Carter’s approval, in principle, of further progress toward a united Europe, the constant crisis atmosphere of his presidency did not give him the chance to play an active role in realizing this goal. While transatlantic and, particularly, German-American relations severely suffered, American policymakers benignly neglected European integration during Carter’s spell in office.

the politics of arrogant neglect Ronald Reagan entered the White House in January 1981 intent on reimposing America’s leadership on transatlantic relations. He ignored the EC’s stronger economic position, greater political confidence, and the era of d´etente with the Soviet Union as if these developments had never occurred. Under Reagan, even more so than under Carter, economics, security issues, and severely differing perceptions of the East-West conflict affected the transatlantic alliance. Reagan had no interest in the idea of a supranational Europe; his new policy of strength toward Moscow precluded a reassessment of Washington’s relations with its allies.20 Although Reagan adopted a more conciliatory approach toward the USSR after 1984–5, which helped to improve Washington’s relations with its allies, he still expected the Europeans to follow America’s hegemonic lead without questioning its policies. Reagan’s election as president 20

Geir Lundestad, “The United States and Western Europe Under Ronald Reagan,” in David E. Kyvig, ed., Reagan and the World (New York, 1990), 47–62.

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can therefore be seen as a shift from benign neglect to arrogant neglect in America’s relations with its European allies. Early in his presidency, for example, Reagan talked casually of developing nuclear war-fighting capabilities and the possibility of entering into tactical nuclear exchanges with the Soviet Union. The same apparent readiness to distance himself from European security concerns was reflected in the president’s enthusiasm for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). His unwillingness to consult the Europeans about his negotiations with Soviet Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik in 1986 and about the “double-zero” agreement of 1987–8 led to severe difficulties in transatlantic relations.21 The Kohl government was particularly annoyed that Washington had not consulted it about Reagan’s 1988 proposal to modernize NATO’s short-range nuclear Lance missiles, most of which were deployed in West Germany and could only reach German territory.22 Reagan realized, however, that the EC would be ready to compromise on security and political issues as long as the Soviet threat continued. Indeed, despite formidable peace movements throughout Western Europe,23 all EC member states accepted NATO’s decision to deploy new intermediate-range missiles (INF) after the Geneva arms-control talks broke down in 1983.24 The EC also compromised over SDI and agreed to the imposition of sanctions (though largely symbolic ones) on Moscow after the Polish crisis of late 1981. During the Reagan presidency the EC’s and in particular West Germany’s flourishing trade relations with the GDR, the Soviet Union, the developing world, and certain Arab nations were viewed with a combination of suspicion and envy in Washington. In attempting to restrain the competition of the EC countries, Reagan 21

Coral Bell, The Reagan Paradox: US Foreign Policy in the 1980s (New Brunswick, N.J., 1989). 22 Michael Broer, Die nuklearen Kurzstreckenwaffen in Europa: Eine Analyse des deutsch-amerikanischen Streits u¨ ber die Einbeziehung der SRINF in der INF-Vertag und der SNF-Kontroverse (Frankfurt am Main, 1993). See also the chapter by Matthias Dembinski, vol. 2, Security. 23 See the chapter by Carl Lankowski, vol. 2, Society. 24 See the chapter by Michael Broer, vol. 2, Security.

did not hesitate to use transatlantic security as a tool to convince the Europeans of the rationale of American trade policy.25 This linkage produced severe economic conflicts, as in the European gas pipeline agreement with Moscow, Bonn’s intention to export a nuclear power plant to Brazil, or its plan to sell sophisticated Leopard tanks to Saudi Arabia. The pipeline dispute, however, demonstrated that the EC generally was not prepared to compromise on important economic issues; Reagan had no option but to quietly give in with the help of a face-saving argument.26 Most European governments viewed Reagan’s entire economic strategy with suspicion. “Reaganomics” seemed to rely on a mixture of laissez-faire, supply-side economics, tight money, and total governmental passivity (apart from support for the defense industries), and trusted the forces of the market to kick-start the economy. This ideology led to renewed monetary difficulties between Washington and the EC. Reagan’s tax cuts and huge, debt-financed investments in the defense industry created a large American budget deficit. As the value of the dollar increased and interest rates were kept artificially high to allow the government to borrow cheaply abroad, European countries also had to maintain high interest rates to staunch the flow of capital from the EC to the United States, thereby slowing their economic expansion.27 Reagan’s economic and financial policies showed once again that the EC member states were helpless in the face of unilateral American policies and gave them yet another incentive to cooperate more closely with each other. The EC under Commission president Jacques 25 Manfred Knapp, “Das Dilemma der europ¨aischen NATO-Staaten zwischen o¨ konomischen Machtzuwachs und sicherheitspolitischer Abh¨angigkeit,” in Christian Hacke and Manfred Knapp, eds., Friedenssicherung und R¨ustungskontrolle in Europa (Cologne, 1989), 95–111. 26 Anthony J. Blinken, Ally Versus Ally: America, Europe, and the Siberian Pipeline Crisis (New York, 1987). See also the chapter by Monika Medick-Krakau, vol. 2, Economics. 27 See the chapter by Harold James, “The Deutsche Mark and the Dollar,” and the chapters by Welf Werner and Monika Medick-Krakau, vol. 2, Economics.

West Germany and European Unity in U.S. Foreign Policy

Delors began developing plans for a Single European Market (SEM). Ignoring criticism from Washington of a “Fortress Europe,”28 the Commission intended to develop a fully free and integrated internal European market by 1992 and design a common European currency system shortly thereafter. Moreover, the French-led, though rather short-lived, revival of the West European Union (WEU) in 1984 helped generate new ideas for the creation of a genuine common European foreign and defense policy, as later articulated in the Maastricht Treaty of 1992. After all, America’s economic and financial predicament, made worse by a rapid decline in the value of the dollar in the second half of the 1980s, seemed to increase the likelihood that it would withdraw troops from Europe. The winding down of the Cold War also appeared to make this a distinct possibility. By the end of Ronald Reagan’s presidency it appeared that not much was left of America’s pro-European strategy of the late 1940s and 1950s. Adapting America’s once predominant and unchallenged economic and financial position to the interdependent realities of the 1980s proved difficult, especially in the case of an increasingly independent Europe emancipating itself from American guidance. Although the Reagan administration undertook a thorough and extremely successful review of its Cold War strategy after 1984–5, it made no such effort in its approach toward transatlantic relations.

a new transatlantic vision for the post-cold war world American-European relations improved considerably during George Bush’s presidency. Bush became less involved than Reagan in transatlantic economic and military squabbles. He

concentrated on the larger picture and recognized the importance of adjusting transatlantic relations. After some initial hesitation, in 1989–90 Bush realized that further European integration, growing transatlantic interdependence, and German unification were inevitable. The Bush administration embarked on a course to respond to these developments and shape events.29 In November 1990 a new Transatlantic Declaration was signed to strengthen AmericanEC relations. Above all, by late 1990 it appeared that the United States had succeeded in superimposing a more interdependent Atlantic framework on the process of European integration. This would hardly have been possible if Washington had not begun to support the EC’s increasingly successful endeavors to unite its members economically. Washington also had begun to look with favor on the development of a common European foreign and security policy. This change in attitude was perhaps most apparent in the relationship between the Federal Republic and the United States, which Bush described as “partners in leadership.”30 President Bush realized that the answer to the question of how to overcome the difficulties and uncertainties of the post–Cold War world might well be similar to the solution found in the late 1940s. In view of the uneasiness of France, Poland, Britain, the Soviet Union, and others regarding the unification of Germany, the stabilization of the European continent seemed again to require the subtle containment of Germany by means of voluntary integration into an ever closer Europe and a firm Atlantic system. Once again the Western Europeans, including the Germans, were happy to oblige. After all, German unification and European integration were, in Chancellor Kohl’s words, “two sides

29

28

See Manfred Knapp, “EG 1992 und die USA: Transatlantische Beziehungen zwischen Wirtschaftskonkurrenz und Sicherheitspartnerschaft,” in Manfred Knapp, ed., Transatlantische Beziehungen: Die USA und Europa zwischen gemeinsamen Interessen und Konflikt (Stuttgart, 1990), 119–50.

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See Philip Zelikow and Condoleeza Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (Cambridge, Mass., 1995); Peter H. Merkl, German Unification in the European Context (University Park, Pa., 1993); see also the chapter by Stephen F. Szabo in this section. 30 Ronald D. Asmus, “Germany and America: Partners in Leadership?” Survival 33 (1991): 546–66.

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of the same coin.”31 The successful integration of a unified Germany into a broadening and 31 Quoted in Klaus Schwabe, “The United States and European Integration, 1947–1957,” in Clemens Wurm, ed., Western Europe and Germany: The Beginnings of European Integration, 1945–1960 (Oxford, 1995), 115.

deepening EC and in the NATO alliance reflects this fact. However, it is also clear that EuropeanAmerican relations in the post–Cold War world will have to be conducted much more on the basis of interdependence and equality than they were during the Cold War.

chapter eight

Cooperation and Conflict in German and American Policies toward Regions outside Europe Helmut Hubel Translated by Robert and Rita Kimber

The impact that issues outside of Europe had on the relationship between the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States has not yet been studied in a comprehensive or systematic way. One reason for this omission is the very complexity of the subject. Another is that these questions normally did not play a major role in shaping West Germany’s foreign policy and its relationship with the United States. Only at times of crisis did Third World issues suddenly take center stage in German-American1 relations and, in certain cases, create serious problems for Bonn’s foreign policy. However, the most important reason for limited German attention to these questions is that the United States and the “old” Federal Republic played qualitatively very different roles in the international arena until 1990. Since the beginning of the Cold War, the leading Western power saw itself in a global conflict with the Soviet Union and its communist system. The policies of the Federal Republic, founded in 1949, were by contrast dominated by the division of Germany and the East-West conflict as it played out in Europe.

Third World from the time of the crises in Iran and the Turkish straits (1946–7) and the Czechoslovak crisis (1948). From the American perspective, this challenge was global in nature. In the context of the East-West conflict, the United States felt a need to block, on a worldwide basis, the Soviet Union’s efforts to expand and its ideological influence.2 The Korean War (1950–3) reinforced this impulse. And in the 1960s the United States saw the Vietnam War in the same light, until the Nixon administration finally decided to withdraw from that conflict in the 1970s.The high point – and turning point – of America’s global containment strategy against the Soviet Union came in the years 1980 to 1984, when the United States, while President Jimmy Carter was still in office, declared the policy of d´etente a failure and developed a new policy of containment toward the Soviet Union in reaction to the crises in Iran and Afghanistan in the Indian Ocean region. The U.S. Congress and President Ronald Reagan, in implementing the doctrine that bears Reagan’s name, stepped up this policy with the intent of actively rolling back Soviet positions of power in the Third World, whether in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Angola, or Nicaragua.3

the united states, the federal republic, and the cold war in the third world The United States saw itself challenged by the Soviet Union in both Europe and the so-called

2

Bruce R. Kuniholm, The Origins of the Cold War in the Near East: Great Power Conflict and Diplomacy in Iran, Turkey, and Greece, 2d ed. (Princeton, N.J., 1994). 3 On the policy of rollback in Central Europe, see the contribution by Bernd St¨over, vol. 1, Politics.

1

Throughout this chapter, these adjectives always refer to the United States and the “old” Federal Republic of Germany.

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The “orderly withdrawal” from the Third World that the Soviet Union undertook in the late 1980s under its last party leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, was a reaction to this American policy as well as a result of the Soviet leadership’s domestic reform efforts. The understanding reached between the United States and the Soviet Union on conflicts in the Third World ultimately contributed significantly to the peaceful conclusion of the East-West conflict.4 Until German unification on October 3, 1990, West Germany’s existence was shaped in large measure by the East-West conflict in Europe. Located on the front line between the Western alliance and the Eastern sphere of influence and threatened both by superior conventional forces and by the political pressures that the Soviet Union could bring to bear on West Berlin and the East German population, the Federal Republic focused its energies on this central European theater of the East-West conflict. The German perspective was thus shaped almost exclusively by regional European concerns. Not until the oil crisis of the 1970s and West Germany’s assumption of a larger role in the world economy did the Federal Republic begin to take on nonmilitary responsibilities in the arena of world politics, notably in addressing international economic issues within the framework of the G7.5 However, the military protection and political backing of the United States always remained a vital necessity. The old Federal Republic was – as Hans-Peter Schwarz so succinctly put it – to a great extent the “victim of the Soviet Union and the vassal of the United States.” 6 4 Raymond L. Garthoff, The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War (Washington, D.C., 1994); Helmut Hubel, Das Ende des Kalten Kriegs im Orient: Die USA, die Sowjetunion und die Konflikte in Afghanistan, am Golf und im Nahen Osten 1979–1991 (Munich, 1995). 5 See the contribution by Bernhard May, vol. 2, Economics. 6 Hans-Peter Schwarz, “Die Rollen der Bundesrepublik in der Staatengesellschaft,” in Karl Kaiser and Roger Morgan, eds., Strukturwandlungen der Aussenpolitik in Grossbritannien und der Bundesrepublik (Munich, 1970), 238.

middle east trouble spot Significant as the European theater of the East-West conflict was for the United States, America’s global interests hardly allowed it to focus exclusively on this region. The situation in Western Europe was, after all, relatively stable. But regional conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, the Middle East, and around the Persian Gulf at times threatened to escalate to the point of military confrontation with the Soviet Union. In response, successive U.S. administrations tended to stress the interconnectedness of these various theaters in the East-West controversy. This tendency was evident not only in the Nixon administration’s linkage policy – especially in National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger’s positions – but also in the policies of the Carter and Reagan administrations. Uncomfortable as the United States found the Soviet presence in Latin America (and especially so in Cuba up to the crisis of 1962) and costly as the conflicts in Southeast Asia (Korea and Vietnam) had been, the Middle East was potentially the most dangerous point in the EastWest confrontation. Three reasons stand out: the Soviet Union’s proximity appeared to threaten America’s partners there (Turkey, Iran under Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, and Israel); repeated crises in the Mediterranean threatened military positions that the United States wanted to maintain as a deterrent to Soviet expansion; and, finally, the petroleum reserves of the Middle East were and remain of crucial importance to Western economies and to the stability of the world economy. As we shall see later, conflicts in this region contributed significantly to the divergence of German and American interests from the 1970s on.7

7 In view of the double crisis in Iran and Afghanistan (1979–80), a report by the directors of four Western foreign policy institutes sought – despite some differing American and European views – to arrive at a shared overall assessment of the situation and shared recommendations for action. See Karl Kaiser et al., Die Sicherheit des Westens: Neue Dimensionen und Aufgaben (Bonn, 1981).

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german policy caught between obligations, damage control, and detachment For the Federal Republic, the problems of the Third World did not become an ongoing political concern until the 1960s. Previously, Bonn’s diplomatic work outside of Europe, in keeping with the “Hallstein doctrine,” had limited itself to dissuading nonaligned countries from recognizing the GDR8 and cultivating the Federal Republic’s relationship with Israel because of the special burden the German past imposed on that relationship.9 These two courses collided when Bonn initiated diplomatic relations with Israel, which resulted in one of the major crises of the Federal Republic’s foreign policy. Most of the Arab states responded by breaking off their diplomatic ties with the Federal Republic. For the most part, however, German foreign policy steered clear of crises outside Europe and focused on the German question and East-West relationships. Regional conflicts in the Third World in the mid-1970s – in Angola, on the Horn of Africa, and in Central America, especially Nicaragua – prompted the United States to stress the interconnectedness of all facets of East-West relations. When the United States responded to Soviet intervention in Afghanistan by declaring d´etente dead, Bonn argued for the “divisibility of d´etente” and contined to maintain this position through its ongoing relations with the other Germany and through its policies toward Europe. Despite this divergence of interests, the Federal Republic and the United States found themselves facing similar dilemmas in the Middle East, the key region of the Third World. For geostrategic and economic reasons, the United States, too, wanted to maintain close ties with the oil-rich Arabic and Islamic countries. But at the same time, cultural and political ties and a pro-Israel lobby active in the United States since 8

Heinrich End, Zweimal deutsche Aussenpolitik: Internationale Dimensionen des innerdeutschen Konflikts, 1949– 1972 (Cologne, 1973). 9 Lily Gardner Feldman, The Special Relationship Between West Germany and Israel (Boston, 1984).

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the mid-1960s spoke for close ties to the Jewish state as well. These parallel interests and dependencies had already led to a cooperative effort in the late 1950s – kept secret at the time – among the United States, the Federal Republic, and Israel in the area of weapons procurement. Because the United States, for the reasons just noted, could not openly provide Israel with military support, the Federal Republic took on the task of secretly supplying Israel with weapons produced in the United States and Germany.10 Despite the later oil crises of 1973–4 and 1979– 80 and differences in European and Israeli perspectives on principles and strategies for solving the Arab-Israeli conflict, the United States has remained Israel’s most important partner. And, beginning no later than German unification, Germany has been the Jewish state’s second most important partner. Germany’s increased significance in this context derives above all from the fact that the European Union has become Israel’s most important economic partner and that German governments have repeatedly succeeded in persuading the European Community/European Union to grant advantageous economic terms to the Jewish state.11 A few selected examples will serve to illustrate the divergent interests and points of cooperation that typically emerged in German-American relations. the war of 1973 The war between Israel and an alliance of the Arab states in October 1973 represented a serious threat to the military and economic security of the West because of the two superpowers’ intervention in the form of diplomatic initiatives and military supplies for their respective partners 10 The “American connection” is clearly evident in Hans-Peter Schwarz, ed., in cooperation with the Foreign Office and the Institut f¨ur Zeitgeschichte, Akten zur Ausw¨artigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1964 (Munich, 1995), 1:151; 2:1164–7. 11 Alfred Tovias and Ephraim Ahiram, eds., Whither EU-Israeli Relations? Common and Divergent Interests (Frankfurt am Main, 1995).

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and because of the first oil supply crisis that followed on it. Thanks to decisive action initiated by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the United States was able to bring about a ceasefire between Israel and its opponents, Egypt and Syria. During the hostilities, the United States had deemed it necessary to put its armed forces on Defense Condition III alert in order to block direct intervention by the Soviet Union. In the first phase of the war, when defeat for Israel was a real possibility, the United States established an airlift to provide Israel with military supplies and prevent its possible use of atomic weapons.12 The United States also used its facilities in Europe, its bases in the Federal Republic in particular, to ship munitions to Israel by sea.13 Reactions to the war were divided in the Federal Republic. Public sympathy was largely on Israel’s side, but at the same time, tensions around the oil market and the chance of confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union – with dangerous repercussions for Europe – prompted political restraint. The government therefore declared its strict neutrality in this conflict and protested to the U.S. ambassador in Bonn that, without its knowledge, Israeli ships had been loaded with American military supplies in Bremerhaven.14 Interestingly enough, however, Bonn lodged this protest only after the cease-fire in the Middle East had gone into effect. The protest thus had no practical significance but served as a conciliatory political gesture toward the Arab states. In view of the fuel shortage and increase in the price of oil, the Federal Republic and its partners in the European Community were obliged to steer a middle course between Israel and the Arab states.15 Members of the European 12

Shlomo Aronson and Oded Brosh, The Politics and Strategy of Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East (Albany, N.Y., 1992), 143–5. 13 On the facilities of U.S. forces in the Federal Republic, see the contribution by Bryan T. van Sweringen, vol. 1, Security. 14 Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung, Pressemitteilung, Oct. 25, 1993. 15 Karl Kaiser and Udo Steinbach, eds., Deutscharabische Beziehungen: Bestimmungsfaktoren und Probleme einer Neuorientierung (Munich, 1981).

Community therefore tried to respond to pressure from the oil-producing states primarily with active Middle East diplomacy. Some major points of this peacemaking effort either went beyond American and Israeli views or actually contradicted them. Israel and the United States were particularly critical of the European Community’s Venice declaration of June 13, 1980, in which the Europeans called for participation of the PLO in peace negotiations. The Federal Republic was party to the European Political Cooperation body (EPC) and therefore involved in preparing this declaration; however, it was always intent on seeing that no unbridgeable differences arose between itself and either the United States or Israel. It therefore worked to weaken the pro-Arab position in Venice, which France in particular was advocating at the time.16

the second gulf war of 1990–1 As the East-West conflict was coming to a close, a war in the Middle East again had a major impact on German-American relations. The IraqKuwait crisis made evident once more the fundamental factors that determined American and German reactions to crises in the Third World. Only after the conclusion of this war did Bonn’s position on out-of-area military deployments of the Bundeswehr change, in large measure because of the experience Bonn gained through the conflict. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, took place at a time when the East-West conflict was about to come to a formal end. The Soviet Union did not in fact lend its unstinting support to its long-standing partner in Baghdad, but tried instead, together with the United States, to resolve the conflict within the framework of the United Nations. On November 29, 1990, in Resolution 678, the UN authorized the American-led alliance against Iraq to use all necessary means to drive the aggressor 16 David Allen and Alfred Pijpers, eds., European Foreign Policy-Making and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (The Hague, 1984), and interviews that the author conducted with European diplomats involved in these discussions.

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out of Kuwait. Without the logistical support of its European NATO partners, the United States could not have realized its military deployment in the Gulf in summer and fall 1990. The Federal Republic, for example, was intensely involved in moving the Seventh U.S. Army Corps from Germany to Saudi Arabia.17 Germany, caught up in unification, complied with the UN resolution without any great public protest. It also adhered to the economic sanctions against Iraq, contributed to the financial relief of states indirectly affected by those sanctions, and strongly supported allied troop deployment in the Gulf region materially and financially. Yet the impression arose around the world that the Germans were determined to stay out of this war at all costs. And indeed the German government had decided, with broad public support, not to use its own military forces to implement the UN sanctions or, later, to fight in the war to liberate Kuwait. The government based this decision on a restrictive interpretation of German Basic Law that several governments had adhered to since 1982. In this interpretation, Art. 87a(2) was understood to place such strict limitations on the use of Germany’s armed forces that they could not participate in a military engagement of this kind. However, on July 12, 1994, the Federal Constitutional Court rejected this politically motivated interpretation by citing the Federal Republic’s membership in collective security systems – such as NATO, the Western European Union (WEU) and the UN – in accordance with Art. 24(2).18 Given this clarification by the Federal Constitutional Court and the disappearance of the special burdens arising from the division of Germany, German armed forces could now, in the framework of NATO and the WEU, take part in military operations outside of NATO’s treaty territory in order to enforce resolutions of the UN Security Council. 17 Helmut Hubel, Der zweite Golfkrieg in der internationalen Politik (Bonn, 1991), 59. 18 Andrei S. Markovits and Simon Reich, The German Predicament: Memory and Power in the New Europe (Ithaca, N.Y., 1997), 141–2; Winrich K¨uhne, “Multinationale Friedensmissionen und nationale Interessen,” in Karl Kaiser and Hans W. Maull, eds., Deutschlands neue Aussenpolitik, 4 vols. (Munich, 1994–8), 3:15–28.

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economic sanctions and export controls The crises in the Middle East sometimes introduced still other strains into German-American relations. These derived primarily from the Federal Republic’s role as a leading export country beginning in the 1970s. As a rule, successive U.S. governments have viewed the export activities of American firms as subordinate to the nation’s political and strategic interests and regulated those activities accordingly. The United States therefore often tended to employ economic sanctions as a political weapon, not only against the Soviet Union and its allies, but also against Third World governments that America regarded as dangerous. Early on, the United States sought to impose the most strict and comprehensive control measures possible on the export of certain critical good in areas, for example, such as nuclear technology.19 By contrast, the government and parliament in Bonn did not want to place excessive limitations on export opportunities for German enterprises, particularly those involved in technologies with promising futures. However, it became apparent in the early 1990s that German control over goods with so-called dual uses (that is, with both military and civilian applications) had not been strict or comprehensive enough to detect and prevent certain illegal transactions with a few critical countries in the Third World. In the late 1980s, the construction of a poison gas factory in Rabta, Libya, caused particular consternation. Despite American warnings, German authorities did not act decisively enough to prevent German firms from cooperating in the Libyan poison gas program. Not until the 1990s did German courts hand down convictions in individual cases, such as that of the Hippenstiehl-Immhausen company’s owner. German technicians and firms also came 19 The efforts of the United States, the Soviet Union, and the other “official” nuclear powers working together to limit nuclear exports bore early fruit in the NonProliferation treaty of 1968. On this, see the chapters by Erhard Forndran, vol. 1, Security, and Matthias Dembinski, vol. 2, Security.

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under suspicion of having illegally sold critical information and important material components to Iraq’s poison gas and missile programs.20 During the Iraq-Kuwait crisis of 1990–1, when allied troops under U.S. leadership faced the threat of Iraqi poison gas attacks, alleged – and in several cases proven – German connections spurred the U.S. government to lodge confidential diplomatic protests and resulted in some decidedly critical commentaries in the American media. Following this crisis, the German government enacted considerably stricter controls over the export of dual-use goods.21 A third example of controversy between the United States and Germany over exports to the Third World was the sale of two nuclear facilities to Iran while the Shah was still in power. These facilities were destroyed during the Iraq-Iran war before construction was completed and they could begin operating. When the war was over in 1988, the Iranian government tried to obtain German aid in rehabilitating these facilities. But in the light of past experience with Iraq’s secret nuclear program and emphatic warnings from the United States and Israel, the West German government saw to it that no German firms had any further connection with this project. The debate over imposing economic sanctions to achieve political goals, such as combating international terrorism, has also led to repeated German-American disagreements. In the cases of Cuba, Nicaragua, Libya, and Iran, the United States repeatedly advocated demonstrating the West’s political determination either by limiting imports and exports or by cutting them off altogether. Germany, however, like most of its West European partners, usually preferred not to compromise long-term economic interests for the sake of relatively short-term 20 It was alleged, for example, that two German technicians (Bruno Stemmler and Walter Busse, formerly employed by MAN-Technology GmbH) had made significant contributions to the development of Iraqi gas centrifuges. See Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Dec. 27, 1990, and David Albright, “Engineer for Hire,” in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 49, no. 10 (1993): 28–36. 21 “14. Verordnung der Bundesregierung zur ¨ Anderung der Aussenwirtschaftsverordnung vom 11.3.1991,” Bundesanzeiger 43, no. 50 (1991): 1725.

political goals. Because neither the United States nor its West European allies wanted to let these points of disagreement interfere with the pursuit of shared goals of greater importance, they were usually able to work out compromises that both sides could accept. vietnam The war in Vietnam during the 1960s put German-American relations to a particularly trying test.22 Because the two countries shared larger, overarching interests, their bilateral political relations remained relatively unaffected by the war; however, tensions and criticism in the broader public were all the more intense. U.S. attempts to win a military victory by escalating the war and thereby inflicting ever greater civilian casualties unleashed violent student protests, especially in West Berlin. Continuing American support for the Shah of Iran’s ambitious development program likewise drew harsh criticism because of the Shah’s repressive treatment of his own people. German foreign policy in the late 1960s and in the 1970s, focused primarily on reaching agreements with the Soviet Union and its East European allies, still needed the backing of the United States.23 Therefore, despite protests from its own population, the Federal Republic could not afford to distance itself publicly from American policy in the Third World.

worldwide cooperation Despite occasional disagreements, it is clear that Germany always aimed for close agreement with the United States in its policy toward the Third World. In questions of international economic cooperation – for instance, the controversy over free trade versus protective tariffs – the German position was normally closer to the American stance than to the views of France or other former European colonial powers. Furthermore,

22

See the chapters by T. Michael Ruddy, vol. 2, Security. 23 See the chapters by Werner Link in this section.

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the desire to stabilize partners in regions of crisis often led to intensive and in some cases littlepublicized German-American cooperation in the Middle East, in Central America, and in southern Africa. In the Middle East, this cooperation was particularly notable in the case of Egypt after its conclusion of a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. Through generous contributions made within the framework of its development aid policy, the Federal Republic vigorously supported the United States in its policy of “structural pacification.” Egypt has since that time remained one of the major recipients of German development aid. In the 1980s, Bonn and Washington took quite different views of the situation in Central America. This became particularly clear in the Reagan administration’s policy toward the civil war in Nicaragua. While the U.S. administration, in the face of considerable protest from the public and from Democrats in Congress, provided military support to the bourgeois opposition movement against the Sandinista government, Europeans advocated a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Nonetheless, the Federal Republic and most of its partners in the European Community were careful not to clash with their ally in Washington. Diplomatic mediation and offers of economic aid from the Federal Republic and the European Community would help to bring about a peaceful resolution to the conflict between the Sandinistas and the bourgeois opposition. Particularly noteworthy was the mediating role played by the former German Minister for Economic Cooperation, Hans-J¨urgen Wischnewski.24 When the white minority in South Africa peacefully handed political control over to the black majority in the early 1990s, Washington and Bonn, after some disagreement, ultimately pursued similar goals and developed coordinated policies.25 24

Hans J¨urgen Wischnewski, Mit Leidenschaft und Augenmass: In Mogadischu und anderswo: Politische Memoiren, 2d ed. (Munich, 1989), 314–50. 25 Boli Nicodeme Yonkpo, Les relations entre la R´epublique F´ed´erale d’Allemagne et l’Afrique du Sud,

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In international environmental policy, as, for instance, in the question of reducing air pollution or protecting South American rain forests, the Federal Republic has taken largely independent positions that have sometimes gone beyond those of the United States.26 Common to both countries, however, was the conflict between the goals of protecting the environment and preserving jobs, a conflict that presented similar dilemmas in forging domestic, economic, and administrative policy and ultimately led both countries to take similar positions. Despite the controversies over certain cases outlined here and despite German insistence on independent positions in some instances, the Federal Republic seemed intent throughout the East-West conflict on maintaining as close an alliance with the leading Western power as possible. Major differences in the perception of problems in the Third World and in policy for dealing with those problems resulted from the different roles that the two nations played on the international stage: the United States as a world power, the Federal Republic as a midrange power largely preoccupied with European questions. In view of the German past, the Federal Republic also always preferred to pursue its policy goals by “civilian,” that is nonmilitary, means. The United States, by contrast, saw its political, economic, and military actions as closely linked aspects of a single overall policy and acted accordingly.

1949–1982 (Frankfurt am Main, 1986); Benjamin Kline, Profit, Principle and Apartheid, 1948–1994: The Conflict of Economic and Moral Issues in United States-South African Relations (Lewiston, N.Y., 1997); Kenneth Mokoena, ed., South Africa and the United States: The Declassified History (New York, 1993). 26 Karl Kaiser et al., eds., Internationale Klimapolitik: Eine Zwischenbilanz und ein Vorschlag zum Abschluss einer Klimakonvention (Bonn, 1991); Daniel C. Esty, Greening the GATT: Trade, Environment, and the Future (Washington, D.C., 1994); Eberhard Feess and Ulrich Steger, “Umweltpolitik als aussenpolitische und globale Gestaltungsaufgabe,” in Kaiser and Krause, eds., Deutschlands neue Aussenpolitik, 241–8. OECD, Climate Change: Mobilising Global Effort (Paris, 1997); Stephen Hopgood, American Foreign Environmental Policy and the Power of the State (Oxford, 1998).

chapter nine

Two States, One Nation: The International Legal Basis of German-American Relations from Ostpolitik to Unification Richard Wiggers

Germany’s partition in 1949 and its unification in 1990 provided the international community with one of the most interesting case studies of state succession and accession in the twentieth century. Important precedents were established for the legal status of divided states and their constituent parts, as well as for related issues of nationality and bilateral relations.1

between representatives of the Four Powers and the governments of the two German states, West Berlin, and several states in Eastern Europe. During the first phase of Ostpolitik, the Federal Republic laid the political foundations for the negotiations to follow by signing a series of bilateral treaties with states in Eastern Europe. First, to encourage Soviet cooperation, Bonn signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a major gas pipeline agreement. Then, in contractual agreements with the Soviet Union (August 12, 1970), Poland (September 7, 1970), and eventually Czechoslovakia (July 19, 1974), the Federal Republic renounced the use of force and accepted, though it did not formally recognize, the territorial status quo in Eastern Europe and the postwar transfer of Germany’s eastern territories.3 The signing of the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 further guaranteed the territorial status quo, this time within a multilateral framework that added the sanction of the United States and other neighbors and allies of the Federal Republic.4 These agreements did not absolutely exclude the possibility of future territorial revisions. The citizens of a unified Germany, in exercising the right of self-determination, might still seek to restore some of their lost lands. When the

quadripartite agreement Few could possibly have foreseen the sudden achievement of German unification in 1990. More than two decades earlier, in 1969, the social-liberal coalition government under Chancellor Willy Brandt had launched a new Eastern policy that seemed to perpetuate the status quo. Working in parallel with the d´etente between the Soviet Union and the United States, Bonn’s Ostpolitik sought to normalize and improve relations in the heart of Europe.2 One of the most important outcomes of this policy was the Quadripartite Agreement, a complex web of multilateral and bilateral undertakings, notes, treaties, and statements negotiated 1

The German experience may also provide valuable lessons for other divided nations like China, Cyprus, Ireland, Korea, and Palestine. Most of these states and their peoples continue to endure many of the diplomatic and legal problems associated with incomplete unification or secession processes. 2 See the chapter by Werner Link in this section.

3

The relevant documents are reprinted in U.S. Department of State, Documents on Germany, 1944–1985 (hereafter DG ) (Washington, D.C., 1985), 1103–5, 1125– 7. 4 See the chapter by Michael R. Lucas in this section.

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Bundestag ratified the Polish treaty in 1972, it appended a parliamentary resolution stating that recognition of the Oder-Neisse line and other postwar frontiers did not preclude an eventual peace settlement with a unified Germany or provide a legal basis for the territorial changes themselves.5 The Federal Constitutional Court also ruled that the agreement with Poland was purely political in nature, and had no legal or constitutional impact. The same could be said of the treaties with the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, all these agreements formed part of the impetus and foundation for the next stage of diplomacy, the Quadripartite Agreement. In early 1969, President Richard Nixon made his first trip abroad. Although he and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, wanted to demonstrate their country’s continued commitment to Berlin, they also sought to encourage renewed negotiations to reduce tensions there. One year later, representatives of the Four Powers resumed discussions in the Allied Control Council building in Berlin, and on September 3, 1971, they initialed an agreement of principles and guidelines. Although the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic were consulted throughout the talks by their respective allies, this first phase of the Quadripartite Agreement process was yet another reminder that the Four Powers continued to control both the substance and duration of all intra-German agreements. It was now left to German officials to negotiate the technical aspects of the accords. The Four Powers empowered authorities of the GDR, the Federal Republic, and West Berlin to negotiate and conclude a series of parallel agreements that secured road, rail, and water transit rights across GDR territory to the Western sectors of Greater Berlin in exchange for payment of various tolls. This eventually formed Annex I of the Quadripartite Agreement. Concerning the city itself, permission was granted for increased intersectoral visits, and various outstanding enclave issues were finally resolved.6 5 6

Text in DG, 1188–90. For the texts, see DG, 1169–79, 1179–87, 1215–31.

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Although Bonn was still barred from treating West Berlin as a “constituent part” of the Federal Republic, it was granted permission to represent the diplomatic interests of the Western sectors of the city abroad and to maintain and develop political ties with them. These agreements formed Annex II. All of these intra-German agreements were then approved by the Four Powers, and the Quadripartite Agreement – as well as the bilateral treaties with Poland and the Soviet Union – entered into force on June 3, 1972. The Quadripartite Agreement accomplished a number of important goals. Within its clauses, the Soviet Union and the GDR confirmed the remaining vestiges of Four-Power rights and responsibilities in Germany and Greater Berlin7 in exchange for NATO participation in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). Admittedly, the agreement did not resolve the Berlin issue, and at numerous points the various parties to the negotiations simply agreed to disagree. But the main goal was achieved: securing the status quo in the heart of Europe and making practical improvements in the lives of Germans residing in Greater Berlin and attempting to transit GDR territory. two states, one nation The Quadripartite Agreement set the stage for the two rival German states to conclude a treaty governing their relations. Since the founding of the GDR, and particularly after 1952, its leaders had promoted a “dual-state theory” that postulated that their state was neither identical with Germany as a whole, nor legally linked with 7

The relevant documents are reprinted in DG, 1144– 53, 1204–6, 1213; Friedrich Freiherr Waitz von Eschen, Die v¨olkerrechtliche Kompetenz der Vier M¨achte zur Gestaltung der Rechtslage Deutschlands nach dem Abschluss der Ostvertragspolitik (Frankfurt am Main, 1988); Georg Ress, Die Rechtslage Deutschlands nach dem Grundlagenvertrag vom 21. Dezember 1972 (Berlin, 1978); Hartmut Schiedermair, Der v¨olkerrechtliche Status Berlins nach dem Vierm¨achte-Abkommen vom 3. September 1971 (Berlin, 1975); Gottfried Zieger, Vier-M¨achte-Verantwortung f¨ur Deutschland als Ganzes als Grundlage der staatlichen Einheit Deutschlands und Basis seiner Reorganisation (Berlin, 1990).

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the Federal Republic of Germany. GDR officials argued that Germany had ceased to exist – either in 1945 or at least after the emergence of the two successor states, one capitalist and one socialist, in 1949. To reinforce their dual-state theory and challenge the idea of a surviving common nationality, the East German leadership established a separate GDR citizenship in 1967. The following year, the GDR adopted a new constitution identifying it as a “socialist state of the German nation,” and in 1974 all remaining references to an overarching “nation” were eliminated. Most legal experts and politicians in the Federal Republic, meanwhile, believed that Germany continued to exist as a character of international law even though it lacked normal state organs or the capacity to act on its own. Indeed, only a restored unitary state comprising the territories of 1937 and able to exercise self-determination through free elections would possess the legal jurisdiction to formally recognize the boundary changes of 1945 and conclude a final peace settlement to end World War II. Most of the Western powers agreed with this prevailing legal opinion. But many in the Federal Republic went a step further. They believed that their republic was the core and sole legitimate successor to the German Reich of 1871 and 1945, and that the GDR was engaged in an only partially successful bid to secede. The founding constitution of the Federal Republic, the Basic Law of 1949, lent support to this interpretation by assuming succession over the debts, nationality, and most of the territory of Germany. The Federal Republic undertook a similar expansion of its extraterritorial jurisdiction when it established a “central record authority” of the state law enforcement agencies in response to the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. This center recorded human-rights violations committed on the inter-German border by GDR soldiers, in effect applying Federal German domestic law to the rival state’s territory. A third legal concept that won broad acceptance, especially outside the Federal Republic, has been variously referred to as the “roof,” “umbrella,” or “partial-state theory.” In this

scenario, a sheltering roof or umbrella composed of Four-Power rights and responsibilities, the continued existence of Germany, and a common nationality continued to link the semisovereign, “partial” states beneath. This appeared to be the legal position taken when Willy Brandt launched his Ostpolitik in the Bundestag in 1969: The Germans are not only connected by reason of their language and their history with all its splendor and its misery, we are all at home in Germany. . . .Twenty years after the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany and of the GDR we must prevent any further alienation of the two parts of the German nation. . . . . . . Even if two states exist in Germany, they are not foreign countries to each other, their relations with each other can only be of a special nature.8

As a by-product of Ostpolitik and the Quadripartite Agreement, the Basic Treaty of December 21, 1972, was supposed to normalize relations between the two successor states. For the first time, the Federal Republic recognized the GDR as a sovereign, though still not foreign, state,9 declining to establish full diplomatic relations and dispatching a permanent representative instead of an ambassador to East Berlin. Bonn also insisted that GDR diplomacy be handled by a ministry for all-German affairs rather than the foreign office. Finally, both sides agreed that the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations would be applied to their bilateral relations, but only by analogy, meaning that it would not be fully applicable.10 Following Bonn’s lead, the Western powers and others in the international community also accepted the GDR as having the same full authority of a sovereign state as the Federal Republic. Because the Federal Republic no longer claimed to be the only legitimate successor state 8 Statement by Chancellor Brandt Before the Bundestag on the Goals of the New West German Government Respecting Germany and European Security (extract), Oct. 28, 1969, DG, 1049–50. 9 Text in DG, 1215–31; Ernest D. Plock, The Basic Treaty and the Evolution of East-West German Relations (Boulder, Colo., 1986). 10 See DG, 1265–7.

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in international law, both states were permitted to field national Olympic teams and take up membership in the United Nations. But the Basic Treaty also exacerbated some lingering debates about the status of Germany, common nationality, and inter-German relations.11 The parties to the accord had diametrically opposed aims: East German leaders hoped international recognition would lend diplomatic legitimacy to their state, whereas West German leaders sought to use this and other accompanying agreements to increase contacts between the two successor states, preserve and even reinforce a common national consciousness, and forestall full separation or dismemberment. West Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court, though it accepted the constitutionality of the Basic Treaty, confirmed that Germany still existed, that there was only one German citizenship, and that the inter-German border was not international. The contradictory aims that lay at root of the Basic Treaty produced a number of unusual situations. Normally, states with their own sovereign territory and state authority also possess distinct and exclusive nationalities. But the Federal Republic always claimed the right to exercise diplomatic protection over all Germans, including citizens of the GDR. The nationality issue was deftly sidestepped in the Basic Treaty: Claimants, if they could manage to make their way to the Federal Republic or West Berlin, were still provided with resettlement aid and other benefits on request. The status of inter-German trade also symbolized the continued existence of Germany and the special nature of the bilateral relationship between the successor states. As formalized in the Berlin Agreement of 195112 and confirmed when the Federal Republic signed the Treaty of Rome in 1958, Article 7 of the Basic Treaty treated economic transactions across the inter-German border as trade within the 11

Ryszard W. Piotrowicz, “The Status of Germany in International Law: Deutschland u¨ ber Deutschland ?” International and Comparative Law Quarterly 38 (1989): 609– 35. 12 Text in DG, 351–5.

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overarching territory of Germany and, therefore, exempt from customs. This made the GDR a de facto silent member of the European Community (EC).

unification The normalization of inter-German relations produced by Ostpolitik endured despite the change in government to a Christian Democratic–Liberal coalition in 1982 and the renewed Cold War tensions of the early 1980s. It was partly for that reason that German unification was so unexpected when it did occur. In 1989–90, the internal collapse of the GDR suddenly made possible, for the first time since 1945, the restoration of Germany as a fully unified and sovereign state, a formal end to the state of war and the last vestiges of Four-Power occupation, and final and unequivocal recognition of the postwar changes to Germany’s 1937 frontiers.13 In the Unification Treaty of August 1990, forty-five years of division and rivalry between the two states were ended in about as many paragraphs and appendices that outlined the terms of integration.14 On October 3, 1990, the territories of the GDR became L¨ander (federal states) of the Federal Republic through Article 23 of the Basic Law, first used in 1956 for the accession of the Saarland. Simultaneously, the Eastern sector of Greater Berlin was incorporated into the existing Land of West Berlin, and the special status of the city was terminated.

13 See the special issue of Zeitschrift f¨ur ausl¨andisches o¨ffentliches Recht und V¨olkerrecht 51, no. 2 (1991); Kay Hailbronner, “Legal Aspects of the Unification of the Two German States,” European Journal of International Law 2 (1991): 18–41; Dietrich Rauschning, “Die nationalen und die internationalen Prozeduren zur Herstellung der Staatseinheit,” in Josef Isensee and Paul Kirchhof, eds., Handbuch des Staatsrechts der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, vol. 8: Die Einheit Deutschlands – Entwicklung und Grundlagen (Heidelberg, 1995), 131–98. 14 Text in G¨unther Doeker and Lukas H. Meyer, eds., The Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic in International Relations, 2d ser.: From Cooperation to Unification (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., 1992), 3:42–85.

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Richard Wiggers

Absorption of the territory, population, assets, and liabilities of the GDR was the decisive constitutional and international act that finally restored Germany. When the Unification Treaty took effect, the GDR disappeared from the international stage, its legal personality became extinct, and its existing treaties with other states were subsequently declared expired by the Federal Republic. The multilateral treaty boundaries of both NATO and the EC were simply extended to include the territories of the former GDR. This, too, repeated steps taken during the reincorporation of the Saarland. Although any one of the Four Powers could have vetoed unification by asserting its remaining occupation rights and responsibilities over Germany, this would have denied selfdetermination to the German people, contravening a widely accepted principle of public international law. It would also have violated the Western Powers’ long-standing political and contractual commitments to Bonn to consent to unification under the very circumstances that prevailed in 1990. President George Bush and American diplomats played an important role in ensuring acceptance of rapid unification by the Western powers.15 The first priority was to avert a formal peace conference in which the victors of World War II imposed unilateral territorial and unification terms. Such a settlement would have been humiliating and unacceptable to a newly unified and popularly elected German government. It also promised to be a convoluted diplomatic exercise involving far too many actors. Soviet proposals that the peace settlement be negotiated within the CSCE were rejected for the same reasons. The best solution was to detach the negotiations regarding domestic aspects of unification from the international aspects of formally ending the state of war with Germany. Even with Four-Power approval, the diplomatic and legal formula of unification was

15 See the chapter by Stephen F. Szabo in this section and the chapter by Karl Kaiser, vol. 2, Security.

complicated. Any final peace settlement had to resolve issues concerning the military status of a restored Germany, arms control, and the final settlement of frontiers. The Two-Plus-Four negotiations, which were conducted among the foreign ministers of the Federal Republic, GDR, and the Four Powers, began in February 1990 and resulted in the signing of the Treaty on the Final Settlement in Moscow on September 12.16 This was followed by ratification of the long-delayed peace settlement by the newly united Germany (October 13), the United States (October 25), Great Britain (November 16), and the French Republic (February 4, 1991). Although the treaty did not enter into force officially until the Soviet Union deposited its instrument of ratification on March 15, 1991, the Four Powers issued a joint declaration on October 1, 1990, confirming the end of the state of war and the unilateral suspension and abandonment of their remaining reserved rights and responsibilities.17 Subsequent negotiations with Germany dealt with outstanding issues such as the rights of the Western powers in protecting the airspace over former West German territory and intelligence – gathering and basing privileges. The postwar revisions to the 1937 frontiers of Germany, including the adjustments in the West and the annexations of the eastern territories, were also confirmed once and for all in Article 1 of the Treaty on the Final Settlement. This was further reinforced by a bilateral treaty with Poland signed on November 14, 1990, and ratified unanimously by the Bundestag in early 1992.18 conclusion The assumption of Allied supreme authority in 1945 and the emergence of Cold War tensions between the occupying powers resulted in the 16 Text in Doeker and Meyer, eds., Federal Republic 3:142–8. 17 Text in Karl Kaiser, Deutschlands Vereinigung: Die internationalen Aspekte: Mit den wichtigen Dokumenten, ed. Klaus Becker (Bergisch Gladbach, 1991), 310–11. 18 Text in ibid., 358–60.

Two States, One Nation

de facto partition of Germany and the emergence of two successor states under the common roof of Four-Power rights. The termination of this awkward situation through unification in 1990 restored Germany as a fully sovereign state, no longer in a state of war or under Four-Power control. The very process through which German unification was achieved seemed to provide justification for those who had argued all along that the Bonn government was the legitimate successor to and identical with the legal personality of Germany as a whole. Certainly, the international legal identity of the Federal Republic was not affected by the Unification Treaty, nor did the accession of GDR territories fundamentally alter its constitutional character. Diplomatic recognition of the

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newly expanded Federal Republic was therefore unnecessary. The international legal status of Germany was inextricably linked to the Cold War. The joint Four-Power occupation of Germany that began in 1945 grew out of diplomatic cooperation between the Western powers and the Soviet Union. The subsequent division of Germany into two successor states was a by-product of the decay of that wartime alliance. Since the establishment of supreme authority in 1945, the United States had constructed an elaborate multilateral framework for the retention of its reserved rights and responsibilities in Germany. In helping to dismantle this same framework as the Cold War ended in 1989, the United States contributed decisively to the reunification of Germany.

chapter ten

The U.S. Congress and German-American Relations Steven J. Brady

“In all candor, I just don’t think much about Europe except in connection with a cut in our troop strength there.” So a “Senate leader” confessed to the New York Times in September 1969.1 His admission comes as no surprise to the student of Congress’s role in shaping America’s European policy from 1969 to 1990. In those years congressional opinion on Europe was marked by division and uncertainty; the unity of purpose that led Congress to play a decisive role in extricating America from Vietnam was nowhere to be seen. Many legislators did agree that a substantial reduction of American forces in Europe would benefit the American economy, and perhaps the NATO alliance as well. Yet even when strong sentiment prevailed, as on this issue, Congress was not able to unite on a statement expressing the body’s will, let alone on legislation to see that will carried out. Legislators tended, in addition, to give very little attention to specifically German issues, and then only in the broader context of Western Europe and NATO. This disinterest stemmed largely from Congress’s inability, from the late 1960s on, to discern what precisely the issues that affected Germany were. After Chancellor Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik relieved the atmosphere of crisis that had surrounded the German question, American legislators devoted less attention to Germany. Faced with this apparent indifference, Bonn stepped up its efforts to

1

influence congressional opinion, particularly on the question of force levels. The efficacy of these attempts can be debated. Far more certain is the fact that the discrepancy between Bonn’s prescriptions for America’s German policy and those of Capitol Hill contributed to the souring of relations between the two allies in the second half of the Cold War. There is good reason to view the formation of the coalition between the Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD) and the Free Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei, or FDP) in October 1969 as “the first serious indication that the East-West impasse might be ended.”2 Yet in Washington the promise that diplomatic initiatives from Bonn might significantly alter the contours of East-West relations was not universally hailed as a good thing. The Nixon administration had serious concerns during the early days of Ostpolitik,3 as did certain members of Congress. Representative of those who questioned Ostpolitik was Congressman Edward Derwinski (R-Ill.), who in May 1971 suggested that Brandt was naively making “concessions to Warsaw and Moscow” by deciding to pursue the Moscow 2 A. James McAdams, “The New Diplomacy of the West German Ostpolitik,” in Gordon A. Craig and Francis L. Lowenheim, eds., The Diplomats, 1939–1979 (Princeton, N.J., 1994), 548. 3 See the chapters by Gottfried Niedhart and Werner Link in this section.

New York Times, Sept. 20, 1969, 2.

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and Warsaw treaties.4 A number of Republican senators shared Derwinski’s worries. Certain Senate Republicans made no attempt to hide their sympathy for the West German opposition Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU, or Union) when the Eastern treaties were presented to the Bundestag for ratification. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) thought that ratification of the treaties would make it “extremely difficult for West Germany not to slip into the Eastern Communist bloc orbit.”5 Whereas Konrad Adenauer had received strong support from the American legislature in the early years of his government, Brandt could count on no such blessing. But in the early 1970s Brandt’s troubles came, ironically, from those American legislators who thought his policies productive – those advocates of troop reductions who, in Union Bundestag member Kurt Birrenbach’s words, “could feel themselves strengthened in their assessment of the situation” if the treaties were approved.6 Many in Congress recognized that those exotic foreign words “Ostpolitik” and “d´etente” translated into a chance to cut defense expenditures and to reverse the outflow of dollars to Europe. Thus the issue of American troop deployments in Europe resurfaced after having been knocked from the Senate agenda by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Memories of that event dissolved quickly in the warmth of the East-West thaw. Congress now expressed more concern over the balance of payments than the balance of power. From fall 1970 to the middle of the decade, congressional thinking concerning Germany was dominated by the debate over a cut in American forces stationed in Europe. The issue was not new. Montana Democrat Mike Mansfield had first introduced his resolution calling for troop withdrawals in 1966. The resolution’s

4

Congressional Record (hereafter Cong. Rec.), 92d Cong., 1st sess., 117, pt. 13:16530–1. 5 Cong. Rec., 92d Cong., 2d sess., 118, pt. 11:13449– 50, and remarks by John Tower (R-Tex.), 13780–1. 6 Kurt Birrenbach, Meine Sondermissionen: R¨uckblick auf zwei Jahrzehnte bundesdeutscher Aussenpolitik (D¨usseldorf, 1984), 317–18.

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supporters pointed to the high costs of America’s military commitment to allies who seemed under little threat, and asked why approximately 300,000 American troops were needed to defend Europe. In fall 1969, troop-withdrawal advocates raised those issues once again. Now, however, American economic stagnation and an unfavorable balance of payments gave added appeal to their arguments. In November, Mansfield reintroduced his resolution (Senate Resolution 292). Emphasizing the economic strains caused by America’s defense efforts, Mansfield found a new keynote: American forces in Europe were contributing to a significant balanceof-payments deficit. “Offset agreements” with West Germany – by which German purchases in, and loans to, the United States were to counterbalance dollars spent in Germany – did not solve this problem.7 However, “a substantial reduction of our forces in Europe” would help to do so. It would also give the Europeans an incentive to raise the forces necessary for their own defense. Mansfield noted Bonn’s recent dealings with the East bloc and asserted that America’s European allies “now tell us they are getting along well with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.”8 So now was a fine time to reduce forces. This was the conundrum Brandt faced: Bonn did not want American troops to go home, yet Ostpolitik undermined the rationale for their presence in Europe. The reappearance of the resolution brought a strong response from the Nixon administration. Its spokesman on the issue, Undersecretary of State Elliot Richardson, rebutted Mansfield’s claims that America’s European forces had outlived their usefulness. Richardson pointed to NATO’s “flexible response” doctrine: The alliance had to retain the capacity to respond to aggression on any level. A “sudden or dramatic reduction” in American troop levels would have grave psychological consequences, in part because it would leave NATO with no means of response to aggression short of nuclear weapons. 7 On the issue of offset, see the chapter by Hubert Zimmermann, vol. 1, Economics. 8 Cong. Rec., 91st Cong., 1st sess., 115, pt. 27:36147–9, 36151.

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Regarding Mansfield’s suggestion that the Europeans make up for the departing Americans by enlarging their own armies, Richardson observed that the bulk of this buildup would have to come from West Germany. This was a development that would “give pause even to some of Germany’s allies.” A massive German military buildup might, moreover, “destroy” Brandt’s Ostpolitik.9 Mansfield’s opponents returned again and again to the points raised by Richardson. In testimony before a House subcommittee on Europe, NATO Supreme Commander General Andrew Goodpaster emphasized the “psychological” impact of even minor troop reductions, while George Kennan asserted that unilateral cuts would “weaken Mr. Brandt’s hand” in negotiations with the East, thus jeopardizing the opportunity to reduce tensions in Europe.10 The subcommittee’s chairman, New York Democrat Leonard Farbstein, reflected the House’s ambivalence on the issue. Farbstein suggested, in his questioning of Kennan, that Brandt’s Ostpolitik provided an argument for troop reductions.11 Yet, two weeks later, Farbstein published a report in which he expressed considerable sympathy for the “psychological” arguments against precipitous troop reductions. In his report, he granted that for “many Europeans. . .any reduction in the U.S. military commitment to NATO would have serious military and psychological consequences.”12 Although Farbstein and his colleagues in the House of Representatives were concerned about the balance-of-payments deficit, they were far more apprehensive about troop reductions than their colleagues in the Senate. 9

Elliot Richardson, “The United States and Western European Security,” Department of State Bulletin (Feb. 9, 1970): 156. 10 U.S. House, Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Europe of the Committee on Foreign Relations (Washington, D.C., 1970), 8, 165–6. 11 Ibid., 169. 12 See U.S. House, Report of Special Study Mission to Europe (Washington, D.C., 1970), 10–11. See also U.S. House, United States Troop Levels in Europe (Washington, D.C., 1970), 7.

Still, Brandt and Nixon had trouble enough with the Senate, where even some influential Republicans were decrying the “outrageous” cost of defending Europe.13 This, then, was the state of congressional opinion in April 1970, when Brandt traveled to the United States and sought to lobby Congress himself. On April 10, Brandt had tea with leading senators – though not Mansfield – during which he argued for maintaining current force levels. Seeking to influence American public opinion, the chancellor appeared on national television news programs and addressed a press luncheon. He emphasized that now was the wrong time to undercut the West’s negotiating position; the climate of improved relations between East and West made it more imperative than ever that America stand by its commitments to Europe. “The American commitment,” he told reporters, was “the prerequisite for future successful negotiations with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact” on mutual and balanced force reductions (MBFR) and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT).14 D´etente and Ostpolitik, in Brandt’s thinking, apparently rested upon what Adenauer would have called “negotiation from strength.” It was a surprising argument, but one that Brandt, responding to pressure from Congress, felt compelled to make. Brandt’s words had limited effect. When it came to the administration, he was preaching to the choir and, as for Mansfield, Brandt had failed to convince.15 Days after Brandt’s visit, Mansfield warned Nixon not to let foreign governments dictate American defense policy. He dismissed Brandt’s claim that unilateral troop reductions would undermine MBFR negotiations. The Soviets had shown no sign of interest 13

See remarks by Senator Charles Percy (R-Ill.), Cong. Rec., 92d Cong., 2d sess., 116, pt. 4:4255. 14 New York Times, Apr. 11, 1970, 1, 8. 15 Nixon did give Brandt credit, nevertheless, for efforts taken by the Brandt government to strengthen the European component of NATO defense. Nixon told Brandt that these efforts had helped defeat the Mansfield Resolution. See Werner Link, “Aussen- und Deutsch¨ Brandt-Scheel,” in Karl Dietrich landpolitik in der Ara Bracher et al., eds., Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1986), 5:234.

The U.S. Congress and German-American Relations

in a mutual reduction, so “the prospects for its realization are extremely remote and for all practical purposes irrelevant” to the discussion of troop levels.16 Mansfield’s amendment, nevertheless, was once again rejected by the Senate. The Senator now changed tactics: No longer would he pursue a nonbinding “sense of the Senate” resolution. When the Senate took up the Military Selective Service Act of 1971 (House Resolution 6531), Mansfield attached an amendment that would cut NATO forces by 50 percent (Section 401) and compel a massive unilateral troop cut. Mansfield vented his frustrations with an administration that had allowed a serious monetary crisis to develop. The troop cut offered a way to ameliorate the monetary crisis; if Nixon would not take this step, the Senate must now deny him funds to do otherwise. Mansfield’s action provoked a major counteroffensive from the White House and its allies on Capitol Hill. Nixon personally called senators, urging them to vote “no” on Mansfield’s amendment.17 Senators Hugh Scott (R-Penn.) and John Stennis (D-Miss.) echoed Brandt’s arguments: The Senate should not undercut the president’s ability to negotiate with the Soviets on SALT and MBFR. In any event, said Mansfield’s detractors, the balance-of-payments deficit was of little consequence and certainly did not warrant a crisis within NATO. Henry Kissinger helped coordinate the administration’s response to Mansfield in 1971. Mansfield’s amendment was, Kissinger later hyperbolized, “a serious threat to our entire foreign policy.”18 The administration thus fought this attempted usurpation with all the forces at hand. In the Senate, Charles Mathias (RMd.) had introduced a compromise resolution that did not compel automatic cuts. But Nixon and Kissinger wanted nothing short of complete victory; the White House sought to cobble together a group of VIPs to speak against 16

New York Times, Apr. 20, 1970, 2. See, for example, Joan Hoff, Nixon Reconsidered (New York, 1994), 191. 18 Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston, 1979), 939–41. 17

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withdrawals. Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, not one given to hand-wringing, led the charge, urging Kissinger to engage in “volley firing and not just a splattering of musketry.”19 Acheson helped Kissinger assemble an impressive firing line. As the group’s spokesman, he denounced unilateral troop cuts as “asinine” and “sheer nonsense.”20 From Bonn, the federal government weighed in with a statement warning of the dangers to European security of a troop cut.21 Again, Bonn sought to exert influence in an American debate whose outcome would significantly affect West Germany. Mansfield’s opponents pressed the case for MBFR: If the United States made unilateral cuts, the Soviets would have no incentive to make cuts of their own. This approach has been described as cynical,22 but there is no question that America’s European allies thought an American withdrawal without corresponding pledges from the East ran the risk of seriously destabilizing the military situation in Europe. Mansfield and his supporters retorted that West Germany would have to take on a greater share of the burden of NATO’s defense. This generated concerns in Moscow about the “unpredictable consequences of a sudden massive American military withdrawal.”23 To the surprise of all, only days before the Senate vote on the Mansfield amendment, Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev proclaimed his country’s willingness to negotiate mutual force reductions in Europe. Brezhnev’s statement undermined Mansfield’s claim that there was no point in giving MBFR a chance because the Soviets had no interest in reductions. Kissinger attributed what seemed an ill-timed statement by Brezhnev to the ossification of Soviet policymaking.24 19

Ibid., 944. New York Times, May 14, 1971, 4; Kissinger, White House Years, 945. 21 New York Times, May 15, 1971, 9. 22 Hoff, Nixon Reconsidered, 192. 23 Raymond L. Garthoff, D´etente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington, D.C., 1985) 115. 24 Kissinger, White House Years, 946–7; Garthoff, D´etente and Confrontation, 116, disagrees, describing Moscow’s acting as “deliberate.” 20

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At any rate it was successful: The amendment failed by a vote of 61 to 36.25 This was not the end of congressional attempts to draw down forces in Europe via legislation. In September 1973 the Senate voted with Mansfield to cut troop levels, only to reverse itself in the House-Senate conference the following month.26 Congress simply could not unite on a formula for troop-withdrawal legislation. Advocates of some level of withdrawal disagreed on the appropriate steps to take, leading the New York Times to comment on the Senate’s “bewildering display of indecision.”27 The socalled Jackson-Nunn amendment to the 1973 and 1974 Defense Appropriations Acts – advanced by Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-Wash.) and Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) – proposed a withdrawal of American forces commensurate with allied failure to rectify the American balance-ofpayments deficit. But despite continuing pressure from Nunn, the Senate remained “a house divided.” In June 1974 the Mansfield resolution failed to gain passage by the largest margin yet, while the House continued to oppose reductions.28 By the mid-1970s, the issues that had given impetus to calls for troop cuts – the balance-of-payments deficit, the war in Vietnam – were becoming things of the past.29 Congress is renowned for having asserted its foreign policy prerogatives in the early 1970s. Yet at the very time when Jackson was waging legislative war against d´etente, Congress was losing interest in matters affecting the Atlantic alliance in general and the Federal Republic in particular. Ostpolitik and d´etente had helped take Germany, especially Berlin, from the Cold War’s front burner. Once the question of support costs subsided, therefore, legislators found it hard to concentrate on West Germany. 25 James Chace, Acheson: The Secretary of State Who Created the American World (New York, 1998), 436. 26 See Willy Brandt, Begegnungen und Einsichten: Die Jahre 1960–1975 (Hamburg, 1976), 412. 27 New York Times, Sept. 29, 1973, 30. 28 See esp. U.S. House, Report of the Special Subcommittee on North Atlantic Treaty Organization Commitments (Washington, D.C., 1972). 29 On this point, see editorial, “Defeating Troop Cuts,” New York Times, June 9, 1974, sec. 4, 16.

The major issue in West German-American relations during the late 1970s and early 1980s was the deployment of new weapons systems in Europe. But aside from criticizing the president – Jimmy Carter for failing to deploy the neutron bomb, Ronald Reagan for deploying intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) – Congress was for the most part uninvolved in the formulation of policy toward Germany. Numerous Republicans indicated satisfaction when West Germans elected Christian Democrat Helmut Kohl chancellor in 1983, and legislators in both houses predicted that Kohl’s election would improve German-American relations.30 Absent from these assessments, however, was the candid admission that Washington, including Congress, bore some responsibility for tensions between the allies. As if to emphasize that point, the issue of troop cuts resurfaced in June 1984. The “Nunn amendment” to the fiscal 1985 defense authorization bill (Senate 2723) sought to pressure America’s allies on the matter of “burden sharing.” The amendment would have compelled the withdrawal of 30,000 American troops each year for 3 years beginning in 1987. The allies could avoid triggering these reductions, however, by taking steps toward improving the combat effectiveness of NATO’s conventional forces. The Senator insisted that only if the Europeans took certain measures – that is, stockpiling conventional munitions – could the credibility of conventional defense be maintained. Nunn thus sought to pressure the Europeans to increase their defense efforts. “If we do not have allies that are going to do their part, there is no need for the American taxpayer to spend billions and billions of dollars” on conventional forces, he declared.31 Nunn was considered by all to be “strong” on defense, and thus his concerns carried more weight with many colleagues than had those of the more dovish Mansfield. In addition, opponents of troop cuts had to reckon 30

See U.S. Senate, Delegation to Europe (Washington, D.C., 1983), 12. 31 “Nunn Loses Round in Burden Sharing. . . . But Starts Serious Debate on the Issue,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, June 23, 1984, 1480.

The U.S. Congress and German-American Relations

with general congressional frustration with allies who seemed not to be doing their fair share for the common defense. As one anonymous representative put it, “everybody, in theory, wants to find a way to put pressure on the Europeans.”32 However, neither the administration nor Senate Republicans agreed with the means by which Nunn proposed to exert that pressure. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) worried that the amendment would be counterproductive, provoking a backlash in Europe that could hinder precisely the conventional buildup Nunn sought. Armed Services Committee Chairman John Tower (R-Texas) took the lead in tabling the amendment and gained the vote of nearly every Republican, as well as a handful of Democrats. The Senate then went on to pass a “compromise” amendment to the Nunn amendment, which excised the automatic troop cuts. Although some claimed that Nunn had set an important debate in motion, it is unclear that this revival of the troop-reduction issue brought any propitious results. Europeans were distressed to see the Congress again voting on unilateral troop reductions. The West Germans had just gone through a trying domestic battle over the deployment of INF, and they rejected claims that they were derelict in their contribution to common defense. To help combat congressional sentiment, Defense Minister Manfred W¨orner went to Washington in July to lobby the Reagan administration, the press, and other influential figures. W¨orner forcefully and forthrightly summed up the reasons for German frustration with the Nunn episode: “Threatening is not a method with which you can treat an ally.” America was not the only nation that bore heavy burdens – “political and psychological,” as well as financial – in order to maintain the West’s defense policies.33 Bonn was clearly tiring of the whole business of troop cuts, and the periodic resurfacing of the issue was doing nothing to help repair the strained German-American relationship.

That strain was exacerbated in the coming year by the Bitburg affair, which marked a departure from Congress’s general disinterest in questions of German-American relations. Not since the Berlin crisis of the early 1960s had so many legislators had so much to say about Germany. And although Congress was not primarily responsible for the debacle, its actions during the controversy helped worsen its negative impact. The episode began, ironically, as a result of Reagan’s interest in a symbolic show of reconciliation between the American and German peoples. Kohl suggested to Reagan in late 1984 that the president participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at a military cemetery when he came to Germany in May. Reagan agreed to visit Kolmesh¨ohe cemetery at Bitburg. The choice provoked an enormous outcry after it was revealed that members of the infamous Waffen-SS were also buried at Bitburg. Denunciations of Reagan’s decision flowed freely from Congress, as did attempts to convince the president to rethink his decision. In mid-April, fifty-three Senators sent a letter to Reagan, “strongly urging” him to take Bitburg off of his itinerary.34 The Republican leader in the Senate, Bob Dole of Kansas, also publicly urged cancellation. The House of Representatives kept up the drumbeat, passing by a vote of 325 to 1 a resolution calling on the president to “reconsider” his decision to visit Bitburg.35 Congress also sought to bypass the president, who stubbornly insisted upon keeping his commitment to Kohl. In a letter to the chancellor, 257 members of Congress appealed to Kohl to withdraw his invitation. Meanwhile, West German legislators engaged in some direct lobbying of their own. Bundestag representatives from the governing coalition wrote their American counterparts, urging them to support Reagan’s decision. Bundestag majority leader Alfred Dregger himself wrote to all the

34

See New York Times, Apr. 18, 1985, 11. Cong. Rec., 99th Cong., 1st sess., 131, pt. 7:9707. The Senate had already passed a similar resolution (Senate Resolution 143). 35

32 33

New York Times, Aug. 4, 1984, sec. 2, 10. Ibid.

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fifty-three Senators who had signed the letter to Reagan.36 But Congress’ efforts to sway Reagan failed because they failed to sway Kohl, without whose agreement Reagan would never have canceled the visit. Americans met with “Kohl’s unbending iron will,” against which not even large majorities in both houses could prevail. Reagan’s hoped-for gesture of reconciliation was transformed into a cause of recrimination. Kohl looked inflexible and arrogant, Reagan insensitive to the victims of Nazism, and Congress indifferent to the interests of the Kohl government. Bitburg, as Shultz confided to Reagan, was “a disaster.”37 Unfortunately, it was only in times of crisis or disaster that Congress paid much attention to Germany. Finally, in the most significant event in German history since the Potsdam Agreement, Congress’s role was also quite minor. One could write a comprehensive history of German unification at the end of the Cold War without making much mention of the American legislature. German reunification, so long the proclaimed goal of American foreign policy, came more quickly than either the Bush administration or Congress expected. While reunification was becoming an unavoidable reality on the ground in Germany, American lawmakers became anxious over the Polish border question. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.) admitted that in spring 1990 he “grew concerned that a unified Germany might revive territorial ambitions long held in check by superpower occupation.”38 The fact that Congress’s ex officio most important spokesman on foreign affairs harbored such worries about the Germans thirty-five years after West Germany and America became allies 36

See George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York, 1993), 551. 37 Ibid., 548. See also the chapter by Jeffrey Peck, vol. 2, Culture. 38 Cong. Rec., 101st Cong., 2d sess., 136, pt. 20, 28197.

reveals the distrust of the Germans that continued to influence congressional thinking. It was small wonder, then, that the relationship between Congress and successive Federal German governments over the previous two decades had often been marked by mutual suspicion and occasional recrimination. Despite the reservations of certain Senators, however, German reunification went ahead. Congress had little to say about when or how reunification was accomplished. On September 25, President George Bush transmitted the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (Treaty Document 101–20) to the Senate. The Senate was now called upon to perform its most important constitutionally mandated duty in the area of foreign affairs: to ratify a treaty negotiated by the executive. Yet the appearance of legislative puissance was largely illusory: Reunification had, for all practical purposes, already occurred before the Senate unanimously affixed its imprimatur to the treaty in early October. As Congressional Quarterly suggested at the time, the Senate’s action was “little more than a legislative footnote” to German reunification.39 Congress ratified what had already occurred. Congress’s role as a bystander during this most important of events corresponds to its role in German-American relations generally. Congress had, in the years 1969–90, sought on a number of occasions to influence, even determine, executive policy on questions affecting Germany; it met with little success. Now, in the twilight of the Cold War, the legislature was reduced to rubber-stamping the dictate of history. Although Congress had played a significant role in a number of foreign policy debates during this period, it remained a bit player in policy toward Germany.

39 Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, Oct. 6, 1990, 3244.

chapter eleven

The German Political Parties and the USA Matthias Zimmer Translated by Eric Weinberger

The East-West conflict defined the terms of German-American relations until 1990, considerable fluctuations in the intensity of that conflict notwithstanding. West Germany’s dependence on American protection determined where the country stood politically in the later decades of the Cold War, as it had before 1968, and colored the views the West German parties held of the relationship between their country and the United States. The Harmel Report issued by NATO in 1967 had called for equal weight to be given to defense and d´etente in the interests of European security. West Germany’s political parties differed on security policy in large part because they placed different weight on defense and d´etente and, consequently, placed different value on relations with the United States. Moreover, positive attitudes toward the United States began to fade in the mid-1960s, when America became the focus of criticism – especially from the younger generation – for its methods of warfare in Indochina. The loss of faith in American politics, aggravated by the Watergate scandal, cast increasing doubt on taking America as a role model.1

Beginning in the late 1970s, skepticism about the motives and goals of American policy began to spread within the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and among the Greens. The Reagan administration’s distinctive combination of a focus on American interests, Manichaean worldview, and sense of political mission helped spur the SPD and the Greens to question the wisdom of West Germany’s security dependence on the United States. Their unease would persist throughout the Reagan era. However, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) functioned as a domestic counterbalance to those critical of the United States. The mid-1980s saw another shift in the political landscape. Some within the ranks of the CDU and CSU voiced misgivings about the implications of American-Soviet d´etente for German security, while the gap between SPD and U.S. government positions narrowed. The upheavals in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the unification of Germany, and the end of the East-West conflict fundamentally changed the views of the different parties on GermanAmerican relations and opened up different perspectives within the framework of a “new world order.”

1 See Gebhard Schweigler, Die Grundlagen der aussenpolitischen Orientierung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Rahmenbedingungen, Motive, Einstellungen (BadenBaden, 1985), 94–113; Harald M¨uller and Thomas Risse-Kappen, “Origins of Estrangement: The Peace

Movement and the Changed Image of America in West Germany,” International Security 12, no. 1 (1987): 52–88.

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new structures in the party system The 1970s marked the beginning of a period of fundamental change for the West German political parties. The transition to a postindustrial society was accompanied by the rise of social protest movements and the arrival of the Greens as a political force, which led the established parties to redefine their positions within the political spectrum. Internal restructuring of the parties also had a significant effect on German-American relations. During this decade, both of the major parties, the CDU and SPD, set up professional central party organizations in order to facilitate better information processing, political coordination, and strategic planning. As a result, the parties’ head offices became counterweights to their parliamentary caucuses and sometimes developed political identities of their own, even on foreign policy. Because of the structural differences between the West German and American party systems, the CDU and SPD did not establish the same sort of official, institutional cooperation with American parties as they did with, respectively, Christian democratic and social democratic parties elsewhere in the world. German political foundations have, however, been of great importance both to the parties and to GermanAmerican relations since the mid-1970s. The Washington offices of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, which is affiliated with the SPD, and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which is affiliated with the CDU, established lines of communication with groups in the United States and have helped coordinate political discussions below the official level.2 The same holds for the Friedrich Naumann and Hanns Seidel Foundations, which are affiliated with the FDP and CSU respectively. These foundations have been instrumental in bringing about the formation of a transatlantic elite and in multiplying contacts between America and Germany. However, this dimension of international ties and their significance for German-American relations have not as yet been analyzed in detail.

2

See the chapter by Ann Phillips, vol. 2, Society.

the union: guardian of german-american relations? Within the Union (the CDU and CSU), the debate between Atlanticists and Gaullists subsided in the late 1960s, but the fundamental dilemma of whether an Atlantic or European orientation should be the guiding principle of German foreign policy remained. The Union had more pressing problems to deal with after 1969 as it found itself in the parliamentary opposition for the first time. During this period, power shifted to a younger generation, represented by Helmut Kohl, who was elected head of the CDU in 1973. This new generation’s outlook had been shaped to a large degree by West Germany’s positive postwar experiences with the United States. The upper echelons of the CDU’s expanding headquarters in Bonn were taken over to a large extent by the younger, pro-American generation that looked to the United States for ideas about modern party management and campaigning. Despite occasional differences between the party and its parliamentary caucus in the 1970s, above all over East Germany and Eastern Europe, the Union as a whole took it for granted that German-American relations were the undisputed “second Basic Law”3 (zweites Grundgesetz) of the Federal Republic. Firm commitment to America made it easier for the Union to gradually abandon its opposition to the Ostpolitik of the SPD and FDP. America’s willingness to endorse Ostpolitik despite reservations about its long-term objectives,4 the reality of worldwide d´etente, and the urging of the U.S. government eventually moved the Union to accept the new political realities.5 Nevertheless, the Union repeatedly made a point of emphasizing the linkage between the unresolved German question and German-American relations, noting that West Germany’s aims concerning Germany as a whole and America’s 3

Walther Leisler Kiep, A New Challenge for Western Europe: A View from Bonn (New York, 1974), 111. 4 See the chapters by Klaus Schwabe and Werner Link in this section. 5 Clay Clemens, Reluctant Realists: The Christian Democrats and the West German Ostpolitik (Durham, N.C., 1989).

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commitment to the security of Berlin were key reference points for those relations. When the United States later supported German unification, the Union felt vindicated for having taken this stand. Unmoved for the most part by the rising tide of conflict in the late 1970s, the Union voted in favor of NATO’s double-track resolution.6 It refused to allow either the vehement domestic opposition to West Germany’s security policy or criticism of the American government to deflect it from its pro-American line even though Ronald Reagan’s accession to the presidency power led to a stronger accentuation of the policy differences between the Union and the Republicans in Washington.7 In contrast to the SPD – which the Union accused of being increasingly anti-American – the CDU and CSU presented themselves as the true defenders of the substance of the German-American relationship.8 That, however, by no means implied that the Union considered German-American relations to be free of conflict. West German criticism of U.S. policy took aim at West German participation in President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), U.S. policy toward Central America, the American air strikes against Libya in 1986, and the intention of the American government in the same year to break with SALT II ceilings by putting new strategic bombers into service. The Union saw these policies as manifestations of a divergence between German and American interests. However, the differences on these relatively isolated 6

See the chapter by Michael Broer, vol. 2, Security. Hans R¨uhle, Hans-Joachim Veen, and Walter F. Hahn, eds., Der Neokonservatismus in den Vereinigten Staaten und seine Auswirkungen auf die Atlantische Allianz (Melle, 1982). 8 On the charge of anti-Americanism, see the documentation, Der aussenpolitische Kurswechsel der SPD in der Opposition, CDU Central Office, Political Division, Aug. 13, 1985. On the significance of German-American relations, see inter alia “Deutsch-amerikanische Partnerschaft: Das Fundament unserer Aussenpolitik,” CDU Dokumentation, Apr. 16, 1981; Michaela Geiger, “Deutschland, Europa und die Vereinigten Staaten,” in Volker R¨uhe, ed., Herausforderung Aussenpolitik: Die neue Generation der CDU/CSU meldet sich zu Wort (Herford, 1988), 43–60. 7

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issues were nothing compared to the cracks that appeared during the 1980s under the surface of the rather ritualized professions of loyalty toward America. These cracks were a reflection of fundamentally different attitudes toward German-American relations. If reservations had been expressed within the Union about the possibility that SDI could lead to a decoupling of European and American security, the debate on the double zero option brought the opposing views fully into open.9 The question whether the double zero option would create zones of variable security became the focus of the concern of conservative and Gaullist-minded politicians such as Alfred Dregger and Franz-Josef Strauss. These concerns were the result of deepseated, but unexpressed doubt about the reliability of the American guarantee of protection for Germany and Europe; this doubt seemed to be justified when, at the Reykjavik summit in October 1986, President Reagan unilaterally agreed to nuclear disarmament without consulting the allies. This doubt was clearly expressed in the call for a strengthening of FrancoGerman relations and the European component of transatlantic defense system as well as for the creation of a distinct European identity in security policy. A second level of disagreement over German-American relations resulted from tension between national and transatlantic perspectives within the Union. It may have been possible to interpret the arguments over Reagan’s 1985 visit to the military cemetery in Bitburg as a rear-guard action by the war generation. However, the national-neutralist ideas discussed in the Union after that incident reflected a new dimension in the search for German identity, one that sought to escape not only from the shadows of the past, but also from a commitment to the West.10 The 1980s ended 9 Thomas Risse-Kappen, The Zero-Option: INF, West Germany, and Arms Control (Boulder, Colo., 1988), 124– 43. 10 On Bitburg, see Ilya Levkov, ed., Bitburg and Beyond: Encounters in American, German, and Jewish History (New York, 1987) and the chapter by Jeffrey Peck, vol. 2, Society. On national and Gaullist arguments within the Union, see Arnulf Baring, Unser neuer Gr¨ossenwahn: Deutschland zwischen Ost und West (Stuttgart, 1988), 179– 82.

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as the 1960s had, with the Union divided over the consequences of a European, Atlantic, or national orientation for German policy.

the spd: farewell to atlanticism? The priority the SPD placed on d´etente and Ostpolitik made for a certain parallelism between the party’s views and American d´etente policy in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This congruence of interests made it difficult for a time to recognize that a younger generation was active in the SPD that – partly because of the war in Vietnam and partly because of fundamental, ideological objections to the American capitalist system – was more critical of the United States than the older generation.11 The differences within the party became more visible in the late 1970s as a result, above all, of disagreements between the SPD-led German government and the U.S. government over the future of d´etente. Egon Bahr’s criticism of the neutron bomb as a “perversion of thought” and NATO’s double-track decision in 1979 brought the different standpoints within the SPD on security policy out into the open.12 Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, despite political disagreements with the American government, continued to give top priority to transatlantic relations and held fast to the double-track decision.13 Among the critics of security policy within the SPD, however, mistrust of the Reagan administration and rejection of the rearmament portion of the double-track resolution came together into 11

This was especially true among the Young Socialists ( Jungsozialisten), who introduced the debate to the SPD. See, for example, the discussions at the SPD party conferences in 1970 and 1973. 12 Thomas Enders, Die SPD und die a¨ ussere Sicherheit: Zum Wandel der sicherheitspolitischen Konzeption der Partei in der Zeit der Regierungsverantwortung (Melle, 1987); Stefan A. Heinlein, Gemeinsame Sicherheit: Egon Bahrs sicherheitspolitische Konzeption und die Kontinuit¨at sozialdemokratischer Entspannungsvorstellungen (M¨unster, 1993); Egon Bahr, Zu meiner Zeit (Munich, 1996). 13 Barbara D. Hepp, Helmut Schmidt und Amerika. Eine schwierige Partnerschaft (Bonn, 1990); Helmut Schmidt, Men and Powers: A Political Retrospective (New York, 1989), 119–284.

“fear of our friends”14 and a demand for the fundamental redefinition of West German interests within the Atlantic alliance. Immediately after the party lost power in 1982, the scale of the shift on security issues within the SPD became clear. At the Cologne party conference in 1983, only a small minority continued to endorse the original policy of support for the double-track decision. The defeated faction under Helmut Schmidt suffered a dramatic loss of influence in formulating the party’s foreign policy after the change of government. The social democratic idea of a security partnership with the East and the formulation of alternative strategies at the party conferences in Essen (1984) and Nuremberg (1986) only served to widen the gap between the SPD and the United States.15 While acknowledging the need for NATO in principle, the SPD came out in favor of an independent role for the Europeans in the alliance as a means for more effectively asserting European (and German) interests in the face of American demands. The negative experiences with the United States during the Reagan presidency continued to shape the discussions on the SPD’s party platform until the late 1980s.16 Even the demand by the SPD for a “more European Europe” was ultimately an outgrowth of the perception that the U.S. government was no longer taking the interests of its European allies into consideration. The Atlantic orientation of the Social Democrats during the 1960s had given way to a Western or Central European focus, and the temporary unity of interest between the SPD and the United States during the debate on the double zero option had failed to lead to a lasting, less tense relationship. However, the 1987 signing of the IntermediateRange Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and, to an even greater degree, the process of unification

14 Oskar Lafontaine, Angst vor den Freunden: Die Atomwaffen-Strategie der Superm¨achte zerst¨ort die B¨undnisse (Reinbek, 1983). 15 Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (London, 1993), chap. 6. 16 Dietrich Stobbe, “Grundsatzprogramm und das Verh¨altnis zu den USA,” Perspektiven des demokratischen Sozialismus 4, nos. 2–3 (1987): 156–64.

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would bring about yet another reconsideration of old positions. the greens: fundamentalist criticism without realism? The Greens emerged from the union of several protest movements in the early 1980s and began to upset the prevailing political consensus on many issues, including relations with the United States.17 Two main factors shaped the Greens’ perception of America and German-American relations: identification with the interests of the Third World, including the countries of Latin America, where American policy (particularly in Nicaragua) was seen by some as imperialistic; and, second, rejection of the security structure of NATO on moral grounds. The Greens initially demanded dissolution of both military blocs in Europe, but later concentrated on demanding West Germany’s withdrawal from NATO. In their 1987 election platform, for example, they called for the Federal Republic to extricate itself from the “militarized foreign policy of NATO and the USA” and to leave NATO. The main reason the party gave for this demand was a deep-seated mistrust of the policies of the American government. The United States was said to be pursuing an aggressive policy of preparation for war, a policy of might that was not only contrary to the interests of Germany, but actually envisaged turning Germany into a nuclear battleground.18 This argument was a mixture of borrowings from nationalneutralist thinking on both the right and the left that saw West Germany as a vassal state of the Americans or an occupied country and demanded that Germany as a whole pursue peace by defying the unreasonable demands of military alliances. 17 Joachim Raschke, Die Gr¨unen: Wie sie wurden, was sie sind (Cologne, 1993); Thomas Poguntke, Alternative Politics: The German Green Party (Edinburgh, 1993). 18 Robert L. Pfaltzgraff Jr. et al., The Greens of West Germany: Origins, Strategies and Transatlantic Implications (Cambridge, Mass., 1983); William E. Griffith et al., Security Perspectives of the West German Left: The SPD and the Greens in Opposition (Washington, D.C., 1989).

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The Greens did not, however, have a consistent foreign policy platform. Pacifist and national-neutralist ideas were often simply thrown together. Differing views of the United States also coexisted. Although some members of the party felt that capitalism and American culture were of a piece and should be criticized, others lauded the long communitarian tradition of civil disobedience in the United States – the Civil Rights Movement, for example – as a model for Greens to follow. The conflict within the party between Realos (pragmatists) and Fundamentalisten (purists) in the 1980s made it difficult for the Greens to define where they stood on foreign and security policy. Toward the end of the decade, the Realos reconsidered their positions, notably on the question of German NATO membership. At the Oldenburg party conference in 1987 the two factions engaged in a bitter debate over the demand for West Germany to leave NATO, without coming to any agreement. The “pragmatist” faction was in favor of maintaining the Federal Republic’s close ties with the West on grounds similar to those propounded by the philosopher J¨urgen Habermas, who stressed the importance of the country being open to Western political culture. A policy statement commissioned by the pragmatists recommended the expansion of German-American relations on a political and a cultural level, “as [American] political culture exhibits a large number of radical-democratic, tolerant, and nonauthoritarian social relationships.”19 However, neither before nor during the unification of Germany have the Greens ever taken a definitive stand on their relationship with the United States and NATO.

fdp: foreign policy party without a foreign policy? The FDP is the odd man out among the West German political parties. It was the junior 19 Quoted from Wolfgang Bruckmann and J¨urgen Schnappertz, “Wie die Realos ihren Frieden mit der NATO machen wollen,” Frankfurter Rundschau, Apr. 20, 1989.

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partner in the governments from 1969 until unification (and, indeed beyond) and supplied the foreign ministers, Walter Scheel (1969–74) and Hans-Dietrich Genscher (1974–92). Still, the party’s foreign policy seems to have been more or less a reflection of positions taken by the Foreign Office, which under Scheel and Genscher became relatively independent of the chancellery. As a counterbalance to deviating currents on foreign policy within whatever coalition happened to be in power, the FDP nevertheless performed an important domestic function and helped to maintain continuity in German foreign policy. In its Nuremberg electoral platform of 1969, the FDP had demanded a reorientation of policy on Germany as a whole and called for West Germany to free itself from any one-sided dependence on its allies.20 More European-minded than Atlantic-minded, the FDP laid emphasis above all on the need for European integration and a pan-European security order transcending East and West. As a partner in the social democratic–liberal coalition (1969–82), it helped to implement the reorientation in policy toward Eastern Europe and East Germany, but insisted at the same time on a “realistic policy of d´etente” that was firmly anchored in the Western alliance. It was this demand that was to determine where the SPD-FDP coalition would split on foreign policy, which it did in the middle of the debate on NATO’s doubletrack decision in the early 1980s. Although the FDP claimed that its switch in loyalties in 1982 was due to differences of opinion on economic policy, its move had just as much to do with the party leaders’ realization that they would no longer be able to achieve the main objectives of West German security policy as long as the SPD remained in power.21 In the Christianliberal coalition that came to power in 1982, the FDP saw itself as the protector of the tradition of Ostpolitik in the face of opposition from the 20

Reprinted in Heino Kaack, Zur Geschichte und Programmatik der Freien Demokratischen Partei: Grundriss und Materialien (Meisenheim am Glan, 1976), 108–17. 21 See Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1995), 445–53.

CSU and conservative groups within the CDU. In 1987, this attitude became a source of friction with the United States as well when Foreign Minister Genscher’s appeal to take Mikhail Gorbachev at his word was criticized in the United States as “appeasement” and “Genscherism.” As was the case during the SDI debate, Genscher and the FDP were opposed to the U.S. government and some in the Union when it came to a discussion of the double zero option.22 Scheel stood for change and innovation in the early 1970s, while Genscher came to symbolize the continuity of West German foreign policy during the 1980s. In both cases, the FDP benefited. It became the party of foreign policymaking, without developing a foreign policy identity of its own. The foreign minister himself personified the party’s foreign policy program.

conclusion and outlook The positions of the parties on GermanAmerican relations reflected West Germany’s dependence on the United States for protection in the East-West conflict. However, these positions were often colored by differing perceptions of America as well. The concern that the United States could not be completely relied upon to meet its obligations within the Atlantic alliance and the supposition that American policies would lead to a war in Europe marked the two extremes of a continuum of hopes, fears, and convictions that were based on differing assessments of the United States and were often interchangeable. For example, conservatives and left-wing politicians were equally able to call for Europe to take more responsibility for its own security, the former basing its demand on a lack of faith in American guarantees, the latter on suspicion toward the military policy of horizontal escalation. This appeal for more European responsibility was flanked by a variety of strategies for dealing with the East-West conflict, with some parties seeking a pan-European security order and others calling for a partial 22

Ibid., 526–34, 581–621.

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solution consisting of the departure of the two German states from the structures involved in the conflict. At the same time, all parties in the 1980s showed signs of a growing self-confidence vis-`a-vis the United States, which reflected the growing importance of West Germany in transatlantic relations and the increased discussions of German identity. This phenomenon was (and is) partly due to the passing of a generation in German politics.

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The process of unification has once again brought out the varying perspectives of the parties on German-American relations, particularly on the question of whether a united Germany should be a member of NATO. Since the unification of Germany, German-American relations have moved beyond the framework of the EastWest conflict, which for forty years determined the way the West German parties viewed the United States and German-American relations.

chapter twelve

The Role of East Germany in American Policy Christian F. Ostermann Translated by Eric Weinberger

by the United States.1 In September 1974, the United States became one of the last NATO members to enter into diplomatic relations with the GDR. However, initial official contacts had been made at the United Nations in New York in January 1973, followed up in East Berlin in August 1973 and March 1974. East Germany’s obstruction of transit traffic and its persistent refusal to acknowledge Jewish compensation claims stemming from the Holocaust delayed an agreement to exchange ambassadors until September 4, 1974.2 This agreement remained largely a matter of form, however: A normalization of the bilateral relationship was prevented

America’s relationship with the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from 1968 to 1990 was largely overshadowed by its relations with the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the Soviet Union. The United States generally dealt with the GDR only when American interests in Germany and Eastern Europe overlapped. Bonn and Moscow were the major orientation points. The United States regarded the GDR as the Soviet Union’s staunchest ally; thus, America’s relations with the second German state remained very much a function of the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. For a long time, America was so absorbed with its West German ally that it hardly noticed the other Germany’s existence. Washington respected the Bonn government’s claim to be the sole representative of the German people and avoided any recognition of the GDR for two decades. In many arenas, America gave West Germany free rein to lead the way in developing relations with East Germany.

1 In 1972, the United States was still opposed to admitting East Germany to the United Nations. Egon Bahr told Erich Honecker that the Americans were “more rigidly opposed” to East German membership than any of the other NATO states. See the text of the discussion between Honecker and Bahr on Sept. 7, 1972, in East Berlin, in Heinrich Potthoff, Bonn und Ost-Berlin 1969–1982: Dialog auf h¨ochster Ebene und vertrauliche Kan¨ale, Darstellung und Dokumente (Bonn, 1997), 239. 2 On the initial talks between the East German permanent observer at the United Nations, Horst Grunert, and the U.S. ambassador to the UN, George Bush, see Horst Grunert, F¨ur Honecker auf glattem Parkett (Berlin, 1995), 16–26. The ensuing negotiations are described by Burton C. Gaida, USA-DDR: Politische, kulturelle und wirtschaftliche Beziehungen seit 1974 (Bochum, 1989), 35– 43. On the compensation issue, see Stefan Meining, “Im Schatten der Vergangenheit,” in Heiner Timmermann, eds., Diktaturen in Europa im 20. Jahrhundert: Der Fall DDR (Berlin, 1996), 695–720.

the establishment of diplomatic relations The Quadripartite Agreement on Berlin, the Basic Treaty establishing relations between East and West Germany, and the admission of the two German states to the United Nations paved the way for diplomatic recognition of the GDR 96

The Role of East Germany in American Policy

by factors such as differing views on GermanGerman relations and fundamental political issues, notably human rights, as well as by America’s close relationship with West Germany and East Germany’s ties to the Soviet Union. In addition, East Germany refused to compensate American citizens for confiscated property or to make payments to survivors of Nazi persecution who lived in the United States. Although Washington repeatedly reminded the East German government that “no concessions would be made until the issue of property had been resolved,”3 East Berlin stubbornly insisted that it had discharged all its responsibilities under the Potsdam Agreement and was thus “no longer [under] any legal or moral obligation to provide any kind of compensation.” The leadership of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, or SED) also seemed to have little interest in even a symbolic expansion of relations. “Any claims for compensation or a corresponding gesture of compensation for the benefit of racially persecuted foreign nationals should be turned down,” the East German Council of Ministers resolved in March 1975.4 In order to avoid giving the impression that establishment of diplomatic relations would compromise Berlin’s Four-Power status or imply a recognition of Berlin as the capital of East Germany, the United States referred to its embassy in East Berlin as its “embassy in the German Democratic Republic.” Even after diplomatic relations had been established, the GDR continued to play a subordinate role in American policy in Eastern Europe as a whole. Since the 1960s the United States had based its treatment of East European countries on the “differentiation principle,” making its

3 Quoted from Meining, “Im Schatten der Vergangenheit,” 704. 4 Ibid., 705. In late 1976 East Germany finally offered “to make a one-time-only payment of $1 million to support American citizens of the Jewish faith who were persecuted by the Nazis.” The Jewish Claims Conference rejected this offer, which was ridiculed in West Germany as a “world-class pittance” (ibid., 708–9).

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bilateral relations with each country contingent on the degree to which it demonstrated independence of Moscow in its foreign policy and demonstrated progress on human-rights questions.5 At the rare meetings between representatives of the United States and the GDR before the 1980s, the Americans almost invariably raised questions of human rights and unresolved bilateral issues. Although the U.S. ambassador, John S. Cooper, had been accredited in December 1974, he was not received by SED General Secretary Erich Honecker for an exchange of views until February 1975, almost six months after the treaty of recognition had been signed.6 On the occasion of the signing of the Final Act of the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) at Helsinki in 1975, brief conversations finally took place between Honecker and President Gerald Ford and between the East German Foreign Minister Oskar Fischer and his American counterpart, Henry Kissinger. Fischer met with Kissinger’s successor, Cyrus Vance, in 1977 and again in June 1978. However, this second meeting would be the last encounter between foreign ministers until 1984. Only East German Deputy Foreign Minister Kurt Nier was able to meet with his U.S. counterparts in October 1978, May 1979, and October 1981.7 In the eyes of the American public, East Germany – if it registered at all – continued to have a negative image, symbolized above all by the Berlin Wall.8 5 Lincoln Gordon, “Interests and Policies in Eastern Europe: The View from Washington,” in Lincoln Gordon, ed., Eroding Empire: Western Relations with Eastern Europe (Washington, D.C., 1987), 67–128. 6 Cooper was ambassador in East Berlin from Dec. 1974 to Sept. 1976. 7 David Hamilton, “Ferne Sterne: Die Beziehungen der USA zur DDR 1974–1990,” in Wolfgang-Uwe Friedrich, ed., Die USA und die deutsche Frage 1945– 1990 (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), 265; Axel Bachmann, “Die Beziehungen der DDR zu den angels¨achsischen L¨andern,” in Hans-Joachim Veen and Peter R. Weilemann, eds., Die Westpolitik der DDR (Melle, 1989), 74. 8 Hamilton, “Ferne Sterne,” 261–4. See also the chapter by Heinrich Bortfeldt, vol. 2, Culture.

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east-west chill and american–east german thaw The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, the subsequent decision by President Jimmy Carter to suspend the ratification process of the SALT II agreement in the Senate, and the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games all led to a further deterioration in relations between Washington and East Berlin, and to increasing paranoia on the part of the East German leadership about the Western superpower’s intentions. In a confidential conversation with the West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, G¨unter Mittag, a member of the politburo, complained that Carter was “totally unpredictable.”9 In the months thereafter, East German politicians never tired of informing West German government representatives that “the United States has abandoned d´etente and is now seeking to gain military supremacy.”10 The new government under President Ronald Reagan was quick to realize that the East German leadership was much less interested in another confrontation with the West than the Soviet Union and that East Berlin was not totally committed to following Moscow’s path. With the collapse of the Geneva disarmament talks between the United States and the Soviet Union (1983), the deployment of new SS 21 and SS 23 missiles in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, and NATO’s double-track decision, the GDR became a little more politically attractive to the U.S. government. With its appeals for “damage control” and a “coalition of reason,” the East German leadership seemed to at least be intent on preserving d´etente with West Germany and – on a limited scale – on pursuing security interests without reference to the Soviet Union. Furthermore, the removal of the sensor-triggered guns along the GermanGerman border (1983–4), a more generous 9 On this point, the Germans in East and West were in agreement. See the text of the discussion between Schmidt and Mittag on Apr. 17, 1980, in Potthoff, Bonn und Ostberlin, 508. 10 Discussion between Bahr and Honecker on Sept. 4, 1980, ibid., 600.

policy on travel, and a more relaxed relationship with the churches (Luther Year 1983) seemed to indicate a certain liberalization in the GDR’s domestic policies.11 True to the principle of differentiation, the Reagan administration made a point of rewarding the SED leadership with more political contacts and worked for an improved tone in relations between the United States and the GDR. In autumn 1983, a U.S. congressional delegation visited East Berlin. The visit by Assistant Secretary of State Richard Burt to East Berlin in February 1984 caused a stir. Burt held meetings with Hermann Axen, the SED politburo member responsible for foreign affairs, Oskar Fischer, the East German foreign minister, and Kurt Nier, Fischer’s deputy.12 These three officials stressed that the GDR was “ready to make a constructive contribution to improving the international climate by means such as expansion of relations with the United States.” In their view, “the current situation on either side” did not “correspond to the possibilities or the needs of either side.” Burt pointed to problems that were putting a strain on relations between the two countries, such as human-rights problems in the GDR and the issue of East-West German visits. He noted, however, that progress was being made in other areas and indicated that the American side remained willing to engage in further dialogue. “The United States was on the whole ready for a more active bilateral relationship,” the East German record of the discussion noted.13 In October 1984, a conversation took place between Fischer and U.S. Secretary of State

11

A. James McAdams, East Germany and D´etente: Building Authority After the Wall (Cambridge, 1985). 12 Transcript of discussions between Hermann Axen, politburo member and SED Central Committee secretary, and Richard Burt, assistant secretary at the U.S. State Department, on Feb. 21 and 22, 1984, Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv (hereafter SAPMO/BArch), DY 30, 2/2.035/113. 13 Note on a discussion held on Feb. 21, 1984, at the German Foreign Office between the deputy of the minister for foreign affairs, Comrade Kurt Nier, and Richard R. Burt, SAPMO/BArch, DY 30,2/2.0315/113.

The Role of East Germany in American Policy

George Schultz at a United Nations session in New York. The following April, Nier was able to meet with his counterpart, Michael Armacost, and State Department bureau chief Thomas Niles. In a clear political gesture, the Reagan administration sent representatives of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency to East Berlin, in 1981 and 1985, to inform the SED leadership directly of the status of the disarmament negotiations. Talks between arms experts on both sides in January and December 1985, as well as in March and November 1986, indicated that the U.S. government did for a time regard East Berlin as a significant factor in East-West relations. This development was due in large measure to the efforts of the American ambassador in East Berlin, Rozanne L. Ridgway, who would later become assistant secretary of state.14 She pleaded that the GDR be given more weight in EastWest relations so that the SED-led government would have more room to maneuver.15 Ridgway succeeded in standing up to forces in the Reagan administration who opposed any expansion of relations with the GDR. For example, in spring 1986, she ensured that East Germany was included in consultations on terrorism, despite “major arguments, even within the State Department.” Yet, she consistently confronted East German officials with the central question of “whether East Germany, given its increasing cooperation with the Soviet Union,” would have “any leeway for expanding relations with countries in the West.”16 The Reagan administration’s strategy of generating goodwill by means of visits culminated in trips by Deputy Secretary of State John C. Whitehead to East Germany in November 1987 and June and October 1988. At the same time, the first state visit by an East German head of

government to the Federal Republic – Erich Honecker – in September 1987 appeared to open up the prospect of the East German leadership being received at the White House. Thus, when Axen traveled to New York and Washington in May 1988, he was widely thought to be making arrangements for a state visit by Honecker to the United States.17 During his U.S. stay, Axen was received by Secretary of State George Shultz, Whitehead, Ridgway, World Bank President Robert McNamara, Secretary of Commerce William Verity, and prominent members of Congress. However, American goodwill and interest were not only reflected by the itinerary for Axen’s visit: In his talks with Schultz, Whitehead, and Verity, Axen found the Americans willing to agree to the “package solution” sought by East Germany. This solution linked American claims for compensation and property restitution to an improvement in trade relations – most-favorednation status – sought by East Germany. Axen reported that to the politburo, “We established the principle that payment of amounts yet to be agreed upon would be made from East German export revenues resulting from normalization of trade relations.” And so the “previous package deal,” which had made any improvement in trading relations contingent upon compensation and restitution payments, “was toned down.”18 According to Axen, Schultz had “categorically” confirmed the package-solution deal worked out with Whitehead.19 After talks with Honecker in October 1988, even the chairman of the influential Jewish World Congress, Edgar M. Bronfman, announced that the compensation issue was no longer an impediment to a visit by Honecker or to most-favored-nation status.20 17

14

Ridgway was ambassador from Sept. 1982 to July 1985. 15 Heinrich Bortfeldt, Washington-Bonn-Berlin: Die USA und die deutsche Einheit (Bonn, 1993), 24. 16 Gerhard Herder (East German ambassador to the United States), note on discussions with Assistant Secretary of State Ridgway at the State Department on May 23, 1986, and June 10, 1986, SAPMO/BArch, DY 30, 2/2.035/113.

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Bortfeldt, Washington-Bonn-Berlin, 28. Hermann Axen, report to the politburo, May 9, 1988. SAPMO/BArch, DY 30, 2/2.035/114. 19 Rush telegram from Axen to Erich Honecker on May 4, 1988, ibid. See also in the same place the transcript of the discussion between Comrade Hermann Axen and the American secretary of state, George P. Schultz, at the State Department in Washington on May 3, 1988 (from 4:00 to 4:45 p.m.). 20 Bortfeldt, Washington-Bonn-Berlin, 26. 18

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out of favor again Major changes on the world scene at this point led the Americans to reassess their position toward the GDR. When Mikhail Gorbachev rose to the leadership in the Soviet Union and launched the reforms known as perestroika and glasnost, support for those reforms became the touchstone of U.S. goodwill. This became clear when Whitehead, in a speech given in spring 1988 at the Conference for East-West Security Studies in Potsdam, called for political reform and a relaxation of restrictions on free-market activities.21 Honecker’s increasingly skeptical and critical stance toward the Soviet reforms in the late 1980s led to a rapid cooling in relations with the United States. Several developments reinforced this trend: incidents at the Wall and other violations of human rights, renewed acts of domestic repression in East Germany after Honecker’s visit to Bonn, continued failure to resolve the compensation issue, and the SED’s refusal to consider systemic political reform. In autumn 1988, the Bush administration thus distanced itself from the “package solution” negotiated with Hermann Axen the previous May. Ridgway had to inform the American ambassador, Francis Meehan,22 that the United States “rescinds the so-called ‘package proposal’ and is not willing to enter into any further discussion on trade issues with the GDR until the claims for restitution for confiscated property and the so-called Jewish claims have been dealt with.”23 “Unhappy at the turn of events on this issue,” Meehan spoke to Axen of a “setback” to relations between the two countries. Meehan, who according to Axen’s notes felt that “the desired package solution would have been a feasible route to take,” explained to the East German negotiator in September 1988 that Ridgway was not having an easy time in Washington. In the Policy Review Group, the National 21

Ibid., 25. Meehan was named American ambassador to East Berlin on August 1, 1985. 23 Quoted from Meining, Im Schatten der Vergangenheit, 714. 22

Security Council committee responsible for these matters, the State Department had “stood alone” and been unable to defeat the arguments put forward by Michael Smith, the presidential adviser on trade issues. Meehan apparently saw no possibility of the package solution being revived.24 In a report to Honecker, Axen summed up the situation by saying that “in view of the complications in a number of socialist countries. . .members of the U.S. administration consider it opportune to exploit the situation and step up the pressure on the GDR.”25 In line with this mode of thinking, the SED saw the visit by President George Bush to Poland in July 1989 as a “massive frontal attack by imperialism on socialism as a whole.”26 Although the East German government [gave Whitehead to understand] during his October 1988 visit that it was still interested in normalizing relations with the United States, the stagnation continued. In July 1989, Axen complained to the new U.S. ambassador, Richard Barkley, about the “regrettable lack of any major activity” in relations between East Germany and the United States. He expressed interest in “making a new start and finding a modus vivendi” and argued in favor of “finding a fair balance between economic and political concerns.” Axen reminded the ambassador that the German Democratic Republic “was and remained a reality that no one could ignore.”27 For all its indifference toward the GDR, the Bush administration continued to some degree to subscribe to this point of view, which became clear in the weeks after the opening of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. The possibility

24 Note on discussions between Comrade Hermann Axen, Member of the Politburo and Secretary of the Central Committee of the SED, and the American ambassador to the GDR, Meehan, on Sept. 21 and 22, 1988, SAPMO/BArch, DY 30, 2/2.035/113. See also Hermann Axen, Ich war ein Diener der Partei (Berlin, 1996), 404. 25 Axen to Honecker, Sept. 22, 1988. SAPMO/ BArch, DY 30, 2/2.035/113. 26 On Bush’s visit to Poland, see SAPMO/BArch, DY 30, 2/2.035/115. 27 Ibid.

The Role of East Germany in American Policy

of unification only gradually sank in.28 The delayed awareness of this possibility was due not only to the correct perception that a considerable part of the East German opposition was in favor of a third way – a socialist and democratic East Germany – but even more to an underestimation of East Germany’s economic crisis. The American administration still saw no advantage in a destabilization of East Germany, which might have had fatal consequences for Gorbachev’s position. In the days after the opening of the Wall, the administration proceeded on the assumption that, although unification was a probable solution, it was by no means the only one.29 However, within a few weeks, Bush and his advisers came out more firmly in favor of German unification than the British and French as it had became clear that it was a genuine political option. When Helmut Kohl launched the process in late November with his ten-point plan for a “contractual relationship” and “confederation,” Bush was unequivocal in standing up for the German chancellor, whose pressing ahead had become a source of concern among Germany’s neighbors. In the months that followed, the Americans sought to shield Kohl from international criticism and to gain the support of the French and British as well as the Soviets for the idea of the so-called Two-Plus-Four negotiations over the international framework in which German unification was to take place. For a few months, the East German government was one last time a “negotiating partner.” In December 1989, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker met in Potsdam with the head of the East German government, Hans Modrow, and in June 1990 the East German prime minister, Lothar de Maizi`ere, visited Washington. From the American point of view, however, the main task facing

28 By his own account, Washington’s ambassador to Bonn was an exception. See Vernon Walters, Die Vereinigung war voraussehbar: Hinter den Kulissen eines entscheidenden Jahres – Die Aufzeichnungen des amerikanischen Botschafters (Berlin, 1994). 29 Robert L. Hutchings, American Diplomacy and the End of the Cold War: An Insider’s Account of U.S. Policy in Europe 1989–1992 (Washington, D.C., 1997), 97.

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the East German government was in fact to negotiate itself out of existence.30 trade relations In the period from 1974 to 1990, East Germany ranked low as a U.S. trading partner. This was a great disappointment for East Berlin, which had entertained high hopes that diplomatic recognition would lead to improved trade relations. Commerce between the two countries was described as “inconsistent, discontinuous, structurally dissatisfying, and hitherto highly passive for the GDR.”31 For this reason, from the East German leadership’s point of view, a considerable expansion of commerce with the United States was needed. This desire found concrete expression in the period shortly before and after the establishment of diplomatic relations when the East German economics expert and subsequent foreign trade minister Gerhard Beil visited America. Several economic delegations were also dispatched to the United States.32 It came as no surprise that an economist, Rolf Sieber, was chosen at an early stage to be the East 30 Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York, 1996), 483–4. See Philip Zelikow and Condolezza Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (Cambridge, Mass., 1995). See also the chapters by Stephen Szabo in this section, and Karl Kaiser, vol. 2, Security. 31 Minutes of the meeting of the GDR Council of Ministers on July 29, 1970, Bundesarchiv Potsdam, section C-20-I/4–2275. 32 On Beil’s trip to America in Nov. 1972, see Theodore Eliot’s memorandum of Nov. 10, 1972, to Henry Kissinger. According to this document, Beil was “the highest-ranking East German official ever to visit the United States.” The memorandum also notes the following: “We have agreed to issue Beil a visa in the interest of promoting trade with the GDR. It has been made clear that the visit is to be entirely private in nature. . . . U.S. sponsors of Beil have been told that it would not be appropriate at this time for Beil to meet with U.S. Government officials, and we are recommending to the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, and Agriculture, the Export-Import Bank, and to USIA that their officers avoid official contacts with Beil or his party.” National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials Project, White House Central Files, box 31.

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German ambassador to the United States. However, several major obstacles stood in the way of expanded trade: America’s consistent refusal to grant East Germany most-favored-nation status on account of the GDR’s position on the issue of Holocaust compensation; the tighteningup of U.S. export regulations (COCOM) in the early 1980s; the American government’s increasingly restrictive lending policy; antidumping provisions in U.S. commercial law; and East Germany’s lack of hard currency. American companies had participated in the Leipzig trade fair since 1975,33 and in 1976 a relatively large U.S. economic delegation had traveled to East Germany. However, establishment of an official East German-American trade board and the interest shown in an expansion of trade with East Germany by one or two business leaders, such as Robert C. Gunness, president of Standard Oil of Indiana, and David Rockefeller, president of the Chase Manhattan Bank, cannot obscure the fact that American exports to East Germany were of negligible value to the United States. It is possible that the SED leadership was unaware of just how insignificant they were. For example, with his vision distorted by ideology and inflated self-confidence, Hermann Axen reported optimistically to the politburo in May 1988 that “growing technological and market interests of leading American conglomerates” would lead to “an expansion of relations with the GDR.”34 East German interest in the products of American steel, chemical, mineral oil, mechanical engineering, and high-tech industries was much greater. In 1976, the United States became East Germany’s third largest trading partner in the West, but in the 1980s, after the postrecognition boom had peaked, the trade volume receded to the level of 1974. It would not rise again until 1987, but the abandonment of the “package solution” in autumn 1988 prevented any real breakthrough.35

cultural relations The establishment of diplomatic relations in the mid-1970s did nothing to remedy the almost complete ignorance of most Americans about the GDR. Despite all efforts by those responsible for familiarizing the world with East German culture, the second German state never succeeded in escaping from the “shadow of West Germany,” in the American consciousness.36 The clearest expression of this lack of interest in East Germany was the absence of an official cultural agreement between the two countries.37 The most that could be achieved was an agreement on a semiofficial level, between the International Research and Exchange Board (IREX) in Washington and the GDR’s Ministry for Higher and Technical Education. This agreement, which was concluded in October 1983, revolved around collaboration and exchanges between academic and scientific institutions. In the late 1980s, the East German delegates to the Subcommittee on Bilateral Relations Between East Germany and the United States, which met at regular intervals, were not only constantly accused of human-rights violations and their country’s failure to satisfy claims for restitution claims, but also reminded of the improved openness and respect for human rights in the Soviet Union. They would be asked, “If the USSR can do something like that, why can’t you?” Among themselves, the East German officials noted that “the Americans are [watching] the effects of glasnost and perestroika on the GDR very carefully.”38 After recognition, the main area in which the Americans developed closer contacts was with East German church circles. The American government and ecclesiastical social welfare organizations in the United States had been supporting the East German churches since the 1950s, viewing them as a source of opposition

33

The European subsidiaries of a few American companies had occasionally participated in the Leipzig fair as far back as 1953. 34 Hermann Axen, Report to the Politburo, May 9, 1988, SAPMO/BArch, DY 30, 2/2.035/114. 35 For the statistics, see Gaida, USA-DDR, 276–400; Bachmann, “Beziehungen der DDR,” 82–92; Hamilton, Ferne Sterne, 267–8.

36

See the chapter by Heinrich Bortfeldt, vol. 2, Cul-

ture. 37

Bachmann, “Beziehungen der DDR,” 93. Rolf Sieber, report on the fourth meeting of the subcommittee on “Bilateral Relations Between the GDR and the United States,” June 22, 1988, SAPMO/BArch, DY 30, 2/2.035/113. 38

The Role of East Germany in American Policy

to the regime and as the champions of humanitarian concerns. Within a few months of the exchange of ambassadors, a church delegation led by the bishop of Greifswald, Horst Gienke, visited the United States for discussions with the National Council of Churches and the United Churches of Christ. This was followed in 1976 by a high-ranking delegation led by Bishop Albrecht Sch¨onherr, the head of the Union of Protestant Churches (Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen) in East Germany. That the American government was not indifferent to these contacts became evident in early 1980, when Vice President Walter Mondale personally received a delegation from the GDR’s Lutheran churches. Even when tensions rose in the early 1980s, these contacts were maintained. In fact, partly because of growing interest on the East

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German side, they were expanded to include government representatives, as indicated by the visits to America of Klaus Gysi, the GDR’s assistant secretary for ecclesiastical affairs.39 At the same time, an increasing number of Americans visited East Germany, especially in connection with the 1983 celebrations marking the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s birth and the accompanying relaxation of restrictions on churches in the GDR. Nevertheless, the political, social, and cultural contacts between East Germany and the United States remained generally insignificant compared to those running between America and West Germany.

39

Bachmann, “Beziehungen der DDR,” 81.

chapter thirteen

The United States and German Unification Stephen F. Szabo

an american success

The American role was central in three ways. First, American support for Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s swift approach to unification shielded him against domestic opponents and from those allies, especially Britain and France, who would have or actually tried to block it. Second, the Americans shaped the Two-Plus-Four framework, which secured the authority of the Four Powers in the external aspects of unification while reassuring the Federal Republic that neither they nor other powers would interfere in its internal aspects. Third, American diplomacy was central to creating the compromise that limited the destabilizing potential for European security by keeping a united Germany within the NATO framework.3 The U.S. administration under President George Bush saw clearly that American interests and those of a stable European security system were best served by supporting the Kohl government’s policies while guiding them in desired directions and providing the strategic

The consensus of historians, government leaders, and the public on American diplomacy toward German unification is that it was both masterful and crucial to the right outcome. Detlef Junker’s assessment, that “Seven years after the unification of Germany, it is a certain historical judgment that the Germans would not have won their unity without the determined and consequential support of the United States,”1 is characteristic of this consensus. All the contemporary accounts of German unification, by insiders, academics, or journalists, tend to portray the story as “one of unblemished American achievement.”2 1 Detlef Junker, “Einheit, Eind¨ammung, Integration: Amerika und deutsche Vereinigung 1989/90 in historischer Perspektive,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Mar. 13, 1997, 10. 2 Tony Judt, “New Germany, Old NATO,” New York Review of Books, May 29, 1997, 38. It is an American story in another sense, namely, that most of the accounts of the diplomacy of German unification have been by American or British authors: Philip Zelikow and Condolezza Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), which Josef Joffe has described as “the definitive treatise on German unification.” Josef Joffe, “Putting Germany Back Together: The Fabulous Bush and Baker Boys,” Foreign Affairs 75, no. 1 (1996): 164. See also Elizabeth Pond, Beyond the Wall: Germany’s Road to Unification (Washington, D.C., 1993); Michael R. Beschloss and Strobe Talbott, At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War (Boston, 1993); Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (New York, 1993). More

recently, memoirs of the major German participants and definitive accounts by German authors have appeared: Helmut Kohl, Ich wollte Deutschlands Einheit (Berlin, 1996); Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Rebuilding a House Divided: A Memoir by the Architect of Germany’s Reunification (New York, 1998); Karl Rudolf Korte, Deutschlandpolitik in Helmut Kohls Kanzlerschaft: Regierungsstil und Entscheidungen 1982–1989 (Stuttgart, 1998); Werner Weidenfeld, Aussenpolitik f¨ur die deutsche Einheit: Die Entscheidungsjahre 1989/90 (Stuttgart, 1998). 3 See Alexander Moens, “American Diplomacy and German Unification,” Survival 33 (1990): 531–45.

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weight Germany needed to counterbalance the still formidable power of the Soviet Union.

major concerns and objectives of the bush policies American policy toward unification had to operate within limits defined largely by the interests of the major countries involved, especially the Soviet Union and the Federal Republic. Robert Hutchings, who was intimately involved in policymaking on the Bush National Security Council (NSC), and Secretary of State James Baker have pointed to the danger of a separate Soviet-German agreement as a compelling reason not to join the British and French in opposing reunification.4 Bush, Robert Blackwill, and others on the NSC, as well as Baker and his key aides, Robert Zoellick and Dennis Ross, were also conscious of the need to avoid creating a situation in Europe similar to the one that followed World War I and the Treaty of Versailles, in which a resentful revisionist power might overturn the new European order. This meant including the Soviet Union as a recognized power while meeting the legitimate desire of Germany to be unified without “singularization.” Another lesson of Versailles was that the United States had to remain a European power. Without such a presence Soviet (later Russian) power would threaten European stability and leave Germany vulnerable. With these overriding objectives clearly in mind, James Baker and his team at the State Department developed the Two-Plus-Four process. For the Americans, the Two-Plus-Four framework was preferable to a large panEuropean peace conference or to the exclusive Four-Power arrangement favored by the Soviets, British, and French, which would have been inconsistent with American support for the principle of self-determination and ignored 4

Robert L. Hutchings, American Diplomacy and the End of the Cold War: An Insider’s Account of U.S. Policy in Europe, 1989–1992 (Baltimore, 1997); James A. Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace, 1989–1992 (New York, 1995), 198–9.

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the democratization of Germany and its commitment to the West. The administration set four key objectives to achieve its strategic goals. First, the Soviet Union had to be reassured that German unification would not constitute a strategic loss if properly managed; indeed, Soviet security could benefit from a more cooperative European security system in which German power would be anchored in larger context. This broadening of European security implied a strengthened role for the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) as well as adjustments to NATO’s role. It also gave the Federal Republic and the Soviet Union the opportunity to work out financial and trade arrangements to minimize the damage to the Soviet economy caused by the disappearance of East Germany, one of the Soviet Union’s most important trading partners. Second, NATO was vital to American interests. By keeping the United States engaged as a European power in post–Cold War Europe, the Alliance would maintain a necessary counterweight to the Soviet/Russian power while reassuring everyone that Germany remained integrated in a multilateral security system.5 Third, American policy had to respect the sensibilities and sovereignty of both German states; they had to be completely free to resolve the internal questions of unification. Thereafter, the external issues should be limited to the restoration of full German sovereignty, and the new German state should decide on its own security status in fora other than Two Plus Four. Fourth, American diplomacy toward unification proceeded under the assumption that the new German state’s eastern border with Poland was inviolable. This was important not only because of American domestic political considerations but also because the stability of borders in Europe was believed to be essential to the future European order.6 5

See the chapter by Karl Kaiser, vol. 2, Security. Administration policymakers were not overly concerned about this issue, having accepted Kohl’s assurances that it had to be settled in a manner that would protect him from the pressures of refugee and expellee 6

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phases of the process The United States’ approach to the diplomacy of German unification went through three distinct phases: the recognition phase, during which policymakers became aware of a new situation and the need to respond to it (spring 1989–November 9, 1989); the blueprint phase, when the response to the new situation was shaped (late November 1989–February 1990); and finally the implementation phase, in which negotiations secured the consent of the Soviet Union and other key players to German unification (February–September 1990). In the recognition phase, administration policymakers began to craft a new grand strategy for what they saw as a radically new environment for German-American and EuropeanAmerican relations. As an NSC memo to the president stated on March 20, 1989, “the top priority for American foreign policy in Europe should be the fate of the Federal Republic of Germany.”7 Key administration leaders concluded that Germany had to be treated as America’s privileged partner in shaping a new Europe. Furthermore, German national aspirations, if they were to emerge in the new, fluid European situation, should be fulfilled in a way that sustained the role of the United States in Europe. The key points in the recognition phase include the compromise on the issue of short-range nuclear forces at the NATO summit in Brussels in May 1989, followed by President Bush’s “partners in leadership” speech in Mainz the same month and the opening of the Berlin Wall in November. In this phase the Bush administration concluded that unification was imminent and that the United States should support it as consistent with its new partnership with Germany and its long-term interests in Europe. groups in Germany. One State Department lawyer involved in the legal aspects of the negotiations referred to the Polish border issue as “small potatoes.” See Stephen F. Szabo, The Diplomacy of German Unification (New York, 1992), 74. 7 Cited in Zelikow and Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed, 28; and in Hutchings, American Diplomacy, 31.

The blueprint phase opened with the administration’s reaction to Chancellor Kohl’s TenPoint Plan of November 28. This was followed by intensive American negotiations and consultations, beginning with the Malta summit between Bush and Gorbachev and the NATO summit in Brussels. Another series of intensive discussions began in early February, first between Baker and West German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, then between Baker, Gorbachev, and Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze in Moscow. These meetings culminated in the Ottawa Open Skies conference, where the Two-Plus-Four mechanism was agreed upon. Finally, meeting in late February at Camp David, Kohl, Genscher, Bush, and Baker established the final German-American position on NATO membership for a united Germany. By the end of this blueprint phase, the administration had developed a policy to respond to German unification and shape its final form. The United States had firmly committed itself to support the Kohl government’s policies and prevent fissures from developing within the West that could be exploited by the USSR. It created a German-American consensus that a united Germany would remain a member of NATO and that an international framework (Two Plus Four) would be established to channel negotiations on reunification. In the implementation phase, American officials realized their blueprint through trilateral, German-American-Soviet negotiations that established the final terms of German unification. Here American policymakers sought to facilitate negotiations between Germany and the Soviet Union and convince the Soviets that agreement to united German membership in NATO lay in their long-term interests. Partly overlapping with the blueprint phase, the implementation phase had begun with Secretary Baker’s discussions with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze in Moscow on February 8. It centered on the formal Two-Plus-Four negotiations in Bonn, Berlin, and Paris, the Soviet-American summit at the end of May, the London NATO summit in July, and the final breakthrough meeting of the German and Soviet leadership in the Caucasus. Following an intensive last-minute

The United States and German Unification

round of negotiations in Moscow in September, the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany was signed and the legal union of Germany entered force on October 3, 1990. The Paris CSCE summit in November and the signing of the Transatlantic Charter marked the symbolic conclusion of the American diplomatic effort.

strategy and tactics The main obstacle the United States faced in pursuing its objectives was the resistance of the Soviet leadership to accepting unified German membership in NATO. This resistance had to be overcome in a way that would prevent a separate Soviet-German understanding and safeguard American interests. Unification also met with little enthusiasm among the NATO allies, especially Britain and France. France shifted toward support of German unification after Genscher provided assurances that a unified Germany would intensify its support for European integration. Thereafter the French government began to see German unification as a pretext for building up a Europe more independent of American influence; it therefore devoted its energies to further development of the European Community while remaining a marginal player in Two Plus Four. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain was more determined to slow the unification of the two German states but realized after the Brussels NATO summit of December 4, 1989, that Bush’s stance precluded any American support for her efforts; French cooperation was also highly unlikely in view of the persistent differences between the two countries over the future of European integration. The Soviet leadership, for its part, did not follow up on French suggestions that something be done to slow or stop the process of German unification. In short, all three governments “seemed to have an attitude without apolicy.”8 8 Zelikow and Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed, 138, see also 113–8 and 134 for details on American discussions with the British and French leaders.

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In the event, the chances for organizing any coalition to slow down or prevent unification grew slimmer by the day as the German Democratic Republic (GDR) rapidly disintegrated in January 1990 and pressures on Gorbachev intensified in the Soviet Union. Despite initial misgivings about the pace of unification, the American team concluded that a policy of “the faster the better” was in its interests and used the implosion of East Germany to its benefit. By insisting that the German-German negotiations on internal unity precede the diplomatic settlement, the United States allowed facts to be created on the ground that the Soviets could ignore only at great cost to their interests. The results of the East German elections in March, followed by the agreement of the two German states to begin monetary union in July and Kohl’s call in May for all-German elections by December, placed great pressure on the Soviet leadership. The American administration made it clear to the Soviets that continued delay risked isolating and alienating united Germany, a country whose assistance would be crucial to Gorbachev’s strategy of modernization and integration into the West. Although the administration had a strong incentive to reach an agreement soon, while Gorbachev and Shevardnadze were still in power, it knew that Gorbachev had the weaker hand because events in the GDR were now beyond his control. It also knew that any attempt to use force or keep Soviet troops in Germany would undermine Gorbachev’s reform policies at home. By skillful use of these pressures, the United States was able to convince Gorbachev that a united Germany, still anchored in NATO, corresponded to and indeed enhanced Soviet security interests. This effort at persuasion was aided by Gorbachev’s surprising statement, made to Bush in Malta, that the USSR wanted the United States to remain in Europe. The administration could then argue that anchoring a united Germany in NATO would give the United States ample reason to do so. American policymakers, however, were worried that the West German leadership, under pressure to obtain a settlement on unification prior to the December Bundestag elections,

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would settle for terms less favorable to U.S. interests than the administration desired, especially with regard to NATO.9 This concern first arose when Kohl announced his Ten-Point Plan, which included no mention of NATO. The next day, Secretary Baker delineated the administration’s four principles of policy toward German unification. The president stressed them in both the Malta summit with Gorbachev and the Brussels NATO summit immediately thereafter. Unlike Kohl’s ten points, these principles included NATO membership for Germany and respect for existing borders, which effectively promoted an American agenda beyond the points the chancellor had outlined. Even as late as the Camp David summit between Bush and Kohl in late February 1990, the chancellor was still floating what his national security adviser, Horst Teltschik, described as “Genscher’s line without any modifications”; that is, the idea that NATO troops (including German NATO units) were not to be deployed on the territory of the former East Germany.10

the united states and the german question One of the striking characteristics of American policy toward German unification in 1990 was the early and unwavering support of the Bush administration for the policies of the Kohl government. Unlike the other Western powers, notably Britain and France, the United States supported German unification from the beginning. Although there were differences within the administration on tactics and speed, there 9 See Hutchings, American Diplomacy, 131, who states that the National Security Council was worried as late as May 1990 that the West Germans might be tempted by a Soviet offer for unification in return for the withdrawal of American troops, removal of all nuclear weapons, and the demilitarization of eastern Germany. 10 Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, 223. Compare Teltschik’s account in 329 Tage: Innenansichten der Einigung (Berlin, 1991) 160, which is slightly different, reporting that the chancellor saw the necessity for transition arrangements for the period during which Soviet forces remained in East Germany.

was never any doubt about the necessity and desirability of supporting the Kohl government. Support in fact went beyond the administration and was bipartisan. The Senate approved the final treaty by a vote of ninety-eight to zero, and although a few in the press expressed opposition, the American public and elites alike supported German unity by wide margins.11 This broad consensus provided the administration with a great deal of flexibility and allowed it to act quickly without consulting extensively with Congress. The reasons for America’s pro-unity consensus were based on geography, political culture, and strategic interests. Whereas France and Britain were both closer and more equal in power terms, the United States “had much to gain from the prospect of a strong, democratic and united Germany, whose security would no longer require such a massive investment of American resources.”12 History also played a role America’s positive view of German unity. Although the memory of Hitler, the Wehrmacht, and the Holocaust remained vivid, the German image in America remained a generally positive one. Unlike its European allies, the United States had not been invaded or suffered severe damage to its homeland at the hands of Germany. Rather, Americans had been twice victorious in the wars of the twentieth century against Germany. Since then, West Germany had been reshaped in the American image; four decades of cooperation and partnership had tempered the memories of twelve years of Hitler. More than twelve million American service personnel and their dependents had served and lived in postwar Germany, enjoying exceptionally good relations with the local communities. Berlin had been transformed from a symbol of the Third Reich to the brave outpost of the West and of freedom.13 As President Bush’s deputy national security adviser during German unification, Robert Gates, recalls, “Alone among the leaders of the Western alliance and the Soviet 11 12 13

See the chapter by Thomas Reuther, vol. 2, Society. Hutchings, American Diplomacy, 97. See the chapter by Thomas Reuther, vol. 2, Society.

The United States and German Unification

Union, George Bush believed in his heart that the Germans had changed, and he was prepared to gamble a very great deal on that faith.”14 The president’s attitudes reflected those of the vast majority of the American public, which had come to view Germany as a stable democracy and one of the best allies of the United States.15 Support for national self-determination was also a strong element in the American approach. When the prospect of a democratic reunified Germany appeared in 1989–90, U.S. policymakers did not face the dilemma of choosing between a democratic but divided Germany and a unified but undemocratic one. As Secretary Baker later put it, “Now that the East German people were voting with their feet, George Bush did not want diplomats to get in their way.”16 Finally, strategic factors made support of German unification the best option for U.S. security policy. In the immediate postwar period, leading American policymakers worried that the division of Germany would play into Soviet hands; knowledge that the key to German unity lay in Moscow, combined with fears of a new Rapallo, still played a role in the Bush policies. Yet, by 1989, the administration had come to the conclusion that Germany had become the most important partner for the United States in Europe, replacing even Great Britain. The president formally acknowledged this in his “partners in leadership” speech in Mainz in May 1989.

conclusion Historians will surely regard German unification as one of the most prominent examples of 14

Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York, 1996), 484. 15 See John E. Rielly, ed., American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1991 (Chicago, 1991), 18–23. A New York Times poll published in December 1989 found that 67 percent of the sample believed the two German states should be unified and only 16 percent believed a unified Germany would try to dominate the world. New York Times, Dec. 1, 1989, A21. 16 Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, 197.

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masterful diplomacy in American history. The experience and good judgment of the small group of policymakers involved in this effort were “a fortunate case of statecraft”17 and essential to the outcome. This verdict is not unanimous; Margaret Thatcher, as well as many former East Germans, wanted to slow the process in order to allow either the East Germans or the European states to adjust to the traumatic changes brought on by German unification. Most contemporary students of this period, however, whether participants or analysts, agree that speed was essential to a favorable if imperfect outcome. Whether the Bush administration will also be vindicated in the primacy it gave NATO is likely to be a more contentious issue. Its decision was similar to the one German leaders made regarding the best path for internal unification. Rather than creating a new German republic with elements from both West and East, they chose simply to transfer the institutions of the West to the East. Similarly, American leaders did not see German unification as the beginning of a fundamentally new security order in Europe but as a decisive victory for Western strength. For them, the lesson of German unification was that Western structures should be moved eastward, albeit on the basis of a muted bipolarity in which NATO would adapt to the new milieu. The question remains as to which general policy approach contributed most to ending the Cold War: d´etente or Western strength. One account attributes Kohl’s success to his jettisoning of Ostpolitik and his return to the policy of strength of the Adenauer years. This “subversion of Ostpolitik” pressured the GDR into abandoning socialism and accepting democracy.18 17

Karl Kaiser, Deutschlands Vereinigung: Die internationalen Aspekte (Bergisch Gladbach, 1991), 21. 18 See Zelikow and Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed, 9, 92–4. In his review of the volume by Zelikow and Rice, Jacob Heilbrunn, “Together Again,” New York Times Book Review, Mar. 31, 1996, 21, argues that Kohl never abandoned Ostpolitik, “and indeed, Germany has embarked on a new Ostpolitik, in which it has the closest relations with Moscow of any Western power by far, and views itself as the broker between East and West.”

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The next step, although not one foreseen clearly during the Bush years, was the enlargement of NATO to the East. Such questions are likely to remain open for some time. However they are finally answered, they cannot diminish the accomplishments of

the Bush administration during the Two-PlusFour talks and settlement. Two Plus Four will stand, in contrast to Versailles, Yalta, and Potsdam, as America’s greatest diplomatic contribution to a stable and just European order in the twentieth century.

SECUR ITY German-American Security Relations, 1968–1990 Wolfgang Krieger Translated by Tradukas

A second historical break came in 1977. It marked the beginning of the public debate about the deployment of American mediumrange nuclear missiles (INF) in Western Europe, the Federal Republic included. A third break came with the initiation of reforms in the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev, beginning in 1985–6. That opened the way to the 1987 INF Treaty, which brought about an important breakthrough in East-West relations generally. This phase ended with German unification on October 3, 1990, which was completed, in terms of security policy, with the departure of the last Russian troops from Germany in August 1994. Two closely related questions need to be addressed here. First, what role did security policy play in relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States? And second, what did those two countries understand by “security policy” and how, if at all, did that understanding change during the second half of the Cold War? The answer to the first question is relatively straightforward for the 1950s and early 1960s. In those years, security issues undoubtedly dominated German-American relations, the importance of new or revived economic, social, and cultural ties notwithstanding. The same cannot be said for the period that followed. Although security policy remained the guiding element in bilateral relations, it increasingly receded from public awareness on both sides of the Atlantic. The central importance of security policy for

three historical breaks A historical break occurred in roughly 1968 that is important in understanding GermanAmerican security relations. It was not as widereaching a turning point as the Korean War (1950–3). Nonetheless, a largely new understanding of security policy developed in both Germany and the United States during the 1960s. This new perspective would remain decisive until the end of the Cold War, and it still influences many aspects of security policy today. The conceptual change in security policy is linked to three developments. First, following the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, both superpowers developed arms-control policies that played a central role in security policy in the second half of the Cold War and, at the same time, caused considerable friction between Bonn and Washington. In particular, the U.S.backed Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 initially faced strong disapproval in the Federal Republic. Second, France’s withdrawal from NATO’s military command structure in 1966 presented an opportunity to reform the Western alliance, which improved Bonn’s overall position in NATO’s structures. The Federal Republic became the leading power in Western Europe in terms of conventional forces and could now claim a greater share of senior NATO posts. And third, the Federal Republic’s new Ostpolitik gave Bonn greater independence in foreign policy. 111

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the internal and external fate of the Federal Republic during the INF debate and the negotiations on German unification was thus all the more surprising. In the INF debate that began in 1977, many people apparently realized for the first time that thousands of American nuclear weapons were stored in West Germany and had been since the 1950s. In the negotiations on unification, the insistence by the Western allies, the United States included, on Germany’s NATO membership as an absolutely essential condition for unification provoked great surprise: It meant nothing less than that the Western powers would continue to keep a tight control over the united German nation-state’s security policy. This brings us to the second general question, the changing understanding of what security policy encompassed. A wide range of economic as well as social and cultural factors became part of the understanding of security policy. These included not only restrictions on trade with the Eastern bloc (especially in hightechnology goods) enforced by COCOM (Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls).1 Moscow’s access to important raw materials – crude oil from the Middle East, for example, and grain from North America – also became a security question; the oil crises of the 1970s and the controversy over American grain deliveries under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan made this clear. The reach of security policy extended beyond economic policy and international trade. It also encompassed the debate over “Eurocommunism” and the blossoming of neo-Marxism in the late 1960s, which stood at the meeting point of culture and politics. No one seriously thought that Italy, France, or even the Federal Republic would drift into the Soviet sphere of influence, as had been feared in Washington and Western Europe between 1944 and 1950. But there was worry on both sides of the Atlantic about the possibility of an internal weakening of NATO and perhaps even the withdrawal from NATO or “self-Finlandization” of some of the

1

See the chapter by Welf Werner, vol. 2, Economics.

West European states. While neo-Marxism only gained a foothold in the universities and outside the structures of political and economic power in the United States, it advanced into the institutions of power in Western Europe. In the 1970s, left-wing terrorist organizations grew out of certain marginal Western European neo-Marxist groups. The main group in the Federal Republic was the Red Army Faction (RAF), which – together with smaller splinter groups – for the first time presented a direct physical threat to U.S. forces stationed in the Federal Republic. This threat created a completely new form of conflict for the GermanAmerican security partnership, which had until then only faced local resentment of the GI presence, graffiti (along the lines of “Yankee Go Home!”) and occasional physical attacks on individuals. This shift makes it clear that the dividing line between security policy in the strict sense of the word and other areas of public life became increasingly fluid in the period after 1968. Worries about the internal stability of the Federal Republic decreased in the 1980s despite lingering concerns. In the context of German-American relations as a whole, this transformation in the understanding of security policy is hard to pin down because of the difficulty of fitting it into a satisfactory chronological framework. Until 1989, changes were not usually initiated by major events comparable to the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 or the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The changes between 1968 and 1977 occurred much more gradually and were discernable only in long-term perspective. Two characteristic feature are, in any event, clear. First, the superpowers’ arms-control policies strongly influenced German-American security relations, and second, in the 1970s and 1980s security matters occupied a less dominant place in the German-American relationship as a whole as the Federal Republic’s political and economic power grew. But this reduced importance of security policy was largely a matter of public perception, from which one cannot draw hasty conclusions about the actual military situation.

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Three factors determined this gradual transformation in international security policy: modern technologies, the Soviet threat, and international structures, especially international law and international institutions. the technology factor Among the “modern” technologies, nuclear weapons certainly represented the most radical innovation. They called into question all military and political thinking fundamentally. Their development forced a distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons, and the relationship between these two kinds of weapons – their relative importance for future wars and for deterrence – became the subject of endless debates, rekindled by each new generation of weapons.2 It would be wrong to see nuclear weapons as a static factor that suddenly appeared on the map and remained unchanged thereafter. Nuclear strategy and nuclear policy had to be developed from scratch after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.3 It took at least two decades, until well into the 1960s, before any degree of certainty existed about the real significance of nuclear weapons. This required a process of “nuclear learning,” including learning from dramatic mistakes such as the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The United States set the tone in this process because it was the first country to face the political and military problems posed by nuclear weapons, possessed a lively intellectual culture, and, not least, had a great array of public and private institutions involved in the foreign and security policy decision-making process. The nuclear question also presented an important area in which Americans had to come to terms with their new role as a world power.4 Document MC 14/3 (“Overall Strategic Concept for the Defense of the NATO Area”), 2

See also the chapter by Joachim Rohde in this section. 3 Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, 2d ed. (London, 1989). 4 For the reactions to these ideas in Germany, see Carl Friedrich von Weiz¨acker, Der bedrohte Friede: Politische Aufs¨atze 1945–1981 (Munich, 1984).

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the “Provisional Political Guidelines for the Initial Defensive Tactical Use of Nuclear Weapons” (1969), and the “General Political Guidelines for the Employment of Nuclear Weapons in the Defense of NATO” (1986) were important steps in NATO strategy after 1967.5 From the perspective of the Federal Republic – and the other West European states as well – the new doctrine contained a very disquieting element. From a purely logical standpoint, the strategy of flexible response implied that situations could arise in Europe where the United States would not apply its full military might, but would seek a political compromise to avoid war with the Soviet Union. The question of whether a limited nuclear war was indeed possible in densely populated Central Europe, whether such a war would inevitably mean the physical annihilation of Germany, remained unresolved for decades and was hotly debated between Bonn and Washington. A further question was whether the combination of “limited war” and arms control might lead to a reduction in NATO’s military and thereby its political options in Western Europe.6 the soviet factor The assessment of the Soviet Union’s policies formed a second important factor in the conception of international security. What were Moscow’s intentions? What threat did it pose? Western politicians held differing views subject to change over time. This led to significant political conflicts within NATO and also between the United States and the Federal 5

Text of MC 14/3 now in Gregory W. Pedlow, ed., NATO Strategy Documents 1949–1969 (Brussels, 1997). On this point, see also J. Michael Legge, Theatre Nuclear Weapons and the NATO Strategy of Flexible Response (Santa Monica, Calif., 1983); Holger Mey, NATO Strategie vor der Wende: Die Entwicklung des Verst¨andnisses von nuklearer Macht im B¨undnis zwischen 1967 und 1990 (Baden-Baden, 1992). See also the chapter by Kori N. Schake in this section. 6 On this point, see the contributions by Uwe Nerlich in the collection edited by him, Sowjetische Macht und westliche Verhandlungspolitik im Wandel milit¨arischer Kr¨afteverh¨altnisse (Baden-Baden, 1982).

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Republic.7 Although the material that has emerged from Soviet archives answers some questions or at least allows us to assess them more clearly, the dominant and overriding question – the nature and extent of the Soviet threat – has not yet been answered in full.8 Internally the Soviet Union was undoubtedly a totalitarian state. But could one draw the Kantian conclusion that only a state in which internal peace reigns is capable of maintaining peace with other states? In their practical policy decisions, Washington and Bonn certainly did not follow this line. The theory of totalitarianism, which had the political function of equating National Socialism with Soviet Communism analytically and morally, was treated as nothing more than rhetoric in political practice. Kremlin leaders were treated as rationally calculating, rather cautious politicians capable of making agreement. During the 1970s and 1980s, increasingly more members of the German and American peace movements argued that the Soviet Union’s security policy was essentially as a reaction to Western provocation and superior arms technology. The arms race – qualitatively and quantitatively – had come about, moreover, through an internal dynamic of the ideology of progress: It was not a deliberate expression of Soviet aspirations to supremacy or world domination.9 Gorbachev’s reform policies discredited such theories, and subsequent research largely disproved them. There has been only limited research so far on Soviet security policy. A wealth of newly released documents proves that the Soviet threat was not just an imaginary specter,

7 On intelligence issues, see the chapter by Loch K. Johnson and Annette Freyberg in this section. 8 John L. Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford, 1997). For ongoing information, see Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Bulletin of the Cold War International History Project (Washington, D.C., 1991–). 9 Matthew Evangelista, Innovation and the Arms Race: How the United States and the Soviet Union Developed Military Technologies (Ithaca, N.Y., 1988); Andrew Cockburn, The Threat: Inside the Soviet Military Machine (New York, 1984).

as was assumed in a large number of memoirs and reports about Soviet foreign policy.10 To discuss security policy in the Cold War, we thus have to start with the full scope of the Soviet situation. That also applies to the investigation of German-American relations during the second half of the Cold War. Even if there were grounds enough to consider Germany itself a European security problem after 1945, the main reason for the primacy of security policy in German-American relations nonetheless lay in the policies of the Soviet Union. The geographical position of East Germany gave the Kremlin the opportunity to threaten Central Europe – as well as France, the Benelux states, and Denmark – from very close by.

transformation of international structures Beyond the technological and Soviet dimensions, international structures transformed the concept of security. Only gradually did the easing of political tension become a priority and were the arms potentials of both sides in the Cold War understood as a source of potential conflict in their own right. Policymakers began to seek ways to restrict the development and proliferation of at least some of the most problematic types of weapons. Terms such as d´etente, arms-control policy, and international stability became current in thinking on security policy and represented a new paradigm.11 What was new in this paradigm and in international structures was the greatly expanded role and institutionalization of international law after 1945. The United Nations Charter and the United Nations itself, with a larger and more heterogeneous membership than the League 10 See Hannes Adomeit, Imperial Overstretch: Germany in Soviet Policy from Stalin to Gorbachev (Baden-Baden, 1998); Christopher Andrew and O. Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (London, 1990); Oleg Gordievsky, Next Stop Execution (London, 1995). 11 See the chapter by Matthias Dembinski in this section.

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of Nations, exemplify this development. In an ideologically polarized world, individual treaties on particular weapons types or arrangements for stationing weapons appeared to be a promising way not only to delimit particular dangers but also to set a process in motion whereby the world powers would voluntarily reduce their weapons capability overall. After the failure of the Baruch Plan for a complete ban of nuclear weapons under UN control in 1946, with agreement on a general test ban apparently unattainable, a Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed in 1963. It permitted only underground tests, which were further restricted by a 1974 treaty to a yield of 150 kilotons.12 The American-Soviet ABM Treaty banning antimissile systems was signed in 1972, followed by the two SALT treaties, limiting numbers of intercontinental nuclear weapons delivery systems, concluded in 1972 and 1979. At the same time the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), founded in 1956 through the UN, developed a monitoring system for nuclear fuels. The IAEA was also charged with monitoring observance of the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968. Mention should also be made of the convention banning biological weapons (1972) and the long effort to abolish chemical weapons, which was not concluded until the Soviet-American production stop in 1987 and the signing of an international chemical weapons convention in 1993. The Mutual Balanced Force Reductions (MBFR) negotiations on reducing conventional forces in Europe began in 1973 in Vienna; they were broken off in February 1989, but resumed a few weeks later with the participation of all the NATO and Warsaw Pact states. The result was the Conventional Military Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty in November 1990. The treaty took up older regional concepts of disarmament, which had been raised repeatedly in the UN General Assembly since 1978 and had led to the abolishment of medium-range missiles in the Washington INF Treaty (1987).

12 Jozef Goldblat, Arms Control: A Guide to Negotiations and Agreements (London, 1994).

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What were the effects of the arms-control policies outlined herein on German-American relations? The disarmament and arms-control policies contained many diplomatic pitfalls, sometimes even security risks, that aroused skepticism and sometimes even opposition in Bonn. The whole process was largely dominated by the major powers and, from the 1970s on, by the two superpowers. Possessing no atomic, biological, or chemical (ABC) weapons, Bonn was either not included in negotiations or exercised only limited influence on them. The Federal Republic was not even a member of the UN until 1973, and thereafter it was much too dependent on the goodwill of the major Western powers to pursue its own interests consistently and independently. On the whole, Bonn never completely lost its fear that the United States – be it out of weakness (during the Vietnam War), misguided idealism (during the Carter administration), or excessive anticommunism (during the Reagan administration) – might pursue arms-control policies that would endanger German security and the goal of reunification. This assessment must be qualified, though, by the fact that in Germany arms-control also claimed growing numbers of firm supporters who saw it as a means to reduce tension and who believed that reunification was a completely unrealistic prospect.13

structures of military cooperation and military conflicts Tension between Bonn and Washington arose repeatedly not only on questions of armscontrol, but also in efforts to reach concrete agreements on military cooperation. The problems were manifold and rooted not least in the different approaches to military thinking. The main issues concerned questions of American and NATO strategy, the presence of U.S. troops 13 Jens Hacker, Deutsche Irrt¨umer: Sch¨onf¨arber und Helfershelfer der SED- Diktatur im Westen (Berlin, 1992); Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (New York, 1993).

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and how they were financed, and the out-ofarea problem. Not until the painful experience of the Vietnam War did the United States overcome its fixation on military solutions that had grown out of World War II. A new relationship between politics and military force had to be found. Reagan’s secretary of defense, Caspar Weinberger, drafted a formula (the “Weinberger Doctrine”) that was intended to overcome the grim mood of the post-Vietnam era and to lay down conditions under which U.S. forces could be deployed in military interventions or wars. These required an unquestionable consensus in Congress and public opinion, realistic military and political aims, and immediate provision of all necessary arms and supplies.14 It is not hard to see the revisionist interpretation of history left by the Vietnam War in these conditions; the debate over the Vietnam War in the military and in civil society had a significant effect on the transformation of U.S. security policy.15 Although these debates went almost unnoticed in Germany, they were of great importance for German-American security relations. A related controversy over NATO’s defense strategy broke out again in the early 1980s, initiated in part by a greatly increased mobility of the Warsaw Pact forces, in part because of the vigor of a new generation of American leaders who were unwilling to accept certain shortcomings in the NATO position. In 1982–3, the U.S. army introduced the Air-Land Battle Strategy, which put the idea of a NATO counteroffensive in the foreground. Through improved mobility, American “light divisions” in West Germany gained the ability to penetrate far into enemy territory in the East. But this posed sensitive political questions. Was the intent actually to capture East European territories? Should there be provisions to join ranks with rebellious 14 Caspar W. Weinberger, Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years at the Pentagon (New York, 1990); Colin L. Powell, My American Journey (New York, 1995). 15 One of the earliest and best books is Harry G. Summers, On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (Novato, Calif., 1982).

Polish, Czech, and Hungarian troops and for a joint advance on Soviet territory? Military strikes against the “second line” of attacking Eastern forces and against command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3 I) facilities were in fact part of the existing NATO doctrine (Follow-On Forces Attack, or FOFA). But the timing and extent of such operations were a matter of controversy in discussions on security policy. The question of whether “limited nuclear options” were justified in this context was equally sensitive.16 For the members of the German peace movement, such arguments appeared to demonstrate yet again that the United States was out to destroy d´etente and provoke the Soviet Union. But even supporters of the Bundeswehr and NATO deterrence felt uneasy. It was perhaps an embarrassing reminder that the head of the Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD), Kurt Schumacher, had formulated the problem of a purely defensive strategy toward NATO’s eastern border in the German Bundestag back in 1950: In the opinion of the Social Democrats, only if the democratic military forces here in Germany are so strong that they have the might to meet an attack from the East with an immediate counterattack – one that pushes the decisive battles outside Germany’s borders – will the German people be able to make its military contribution to the defense of freedom in the world.17

American initiatives thirty years later were essentially based on the same considerations. Why should NATO, after an attack from the East, conduct a war with a self-imposed politicomilitary restriction that kept clear of Soviet territory and declared it off limits? Would it really be better to make German or Polish territory the main theater of war? Bundeswehr generals were not allowed to express such opinions publicly, still less senior politicians. Nuclear weapons 16

See the chapter by Frederick Zilian Jr.in this section. Klaus von Schubert, ed., Sicherheitspolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1945–1977, 2 vols. (Cologne, 1978–9), 1:110. In the Bundestag debate of Nov. 8, 1950, Schumacher used this argument to reject a German military contribution as proposed by Adenauer. 17

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certainly had created a largely new reality since Schumacher’s day. But what would be done if deterrence really failed some day? Not thinking about this issue had virtually become a West German dogma. At the same time, the Federal Republic was undeniably in an awkward military position. The West Germans pressed for the presence of the greatest possible numbers of U.S. troops and nuclear weapons to increase deterrence. But these same forces would inevitably increase the risk of Germany becoming a battlefield should war break out and of being annihilated, even in the event of a NATO victory. It was impossible to prove with any certainty that a stronger emphasis on conventional forces would mitigate this dilemma, but it had been a shared principle for Bonn and Washington since the Kennedy administration. What form were conventional reinforcements to take, given that alliance policy restricted the Bundeswehr to an overall strength of 500,000 men and that, starting in the mid1960s, the United States was sending increasing numbers of troops to Vietnam? The fast growing number of reservists produced by the Bundeswehr’s system of compulsory military service offered a partial solution. But it was not enough. Two other solutions were found, but neither was entirely satisfactory. One was for Bonn to make significant financial contributions to the cost of stationing American forces. The “Offset Agreements” enacted from 1961 to 1976 provided for German weapons purchases in the United States, foreign exchange support, and payments toward the costs of U.S. military bases in the Federal Republic.18 From the West German government’s point of view, this was basically a mistaken policy, suggesting as it did that the United States was providing a kind of security

18 See the chapter by Hubert Zimmermann, vol. 1, Economics; by the same author, “Franz Josef Strauss und der deutsch-amerikanische W¨ahrungskonflikt in den sechziger Jahren,” Vierteljahrshefte f¨ur Zeitgeschichte 47 (1999): 57–85; Harald Rosenbach, “Der Preis der Freiheit: Die deutsch-amerikanische Verhandlungen u¨ ber den Devisenausgleich (1961–1967),” Vierteljahrshefte f¨ur Zeitgeschichte 46 (1998): 709–46.

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service for Germany; in reality, the U.S. presence was a matter of common defense of the whole NATO territory, which was not for the benefit of West Germans alone. But this uneasy compromise was unquestionably preferable to the withdrawal of large numbers of U.S. troops.19 A second means to maintain the American troop presence at the highest possible level was to store the equipment of the troops temporarily withdrawn during the Vietnam War (Prepositioned Organized Material Configured to Unit Sets or POMCUS) in Germany. This occurred from 1968 on and was reinforced by the annual REFORGER maneuvers (Return of Forces to Germany), which continued to be held long after the end of the Vietnam War (with 17,000 men, for example, in 1987). The Wartime Host Nation Support Treaty of 1982 stipulated that in the event of a crisis, the Federal Republic would keep 17 airfields and 93,000 trained reservists ready to supply additional American troops that would be flown in. Political disagreements occasionally arose when Washington used troops, weapons, and command facilities in the Federal Republic for purposes not covered by NATO policy. Such out-of-area operations occurred more than once in connection with wars and crises in the Middle East, for example during the Arab-Israeli War of 1973 and the U.S. retaliatory attacks on Libya in April 1986. Such missions presented a risk for the Federal Republic because a basic tenet of international law, reaffirmed in December 1974 by the UN General Assembly, declared that a state that makes its territory or other resources available to an aggressor is itself guilty of aggression. The Federal Republic could thus be an accomplice to the violation of international law; a violation might have occurred in the case of the attack on Libya, nor could others be ruled out in principle or in practice. The Libyan incident was particularly problematic for Bonn because France 19 The congressional resolutions tabled repeatedly from 1966 by Senator Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.) contained such threats. See Phil Williams, The Senate and U.S. Troops in Europe (New York, 1985).

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and other NATO members expressly refused their cooperation. France denied permission for American bombers to fly over its territory on their way from British bases to North Africa. It was impossible for the Federal Republic to dodge such dilemmas completely if for no other reason than that not all of the U.S. military facilities in Germany were under NATO command. An American officer had always held the post of NATO supreme commander (Supreme Allied Commander Europe or SACEUR) since it was created in 1951. This was advantageous from the West European point of view: first, because it reinforced the U.S. commitment to the defense of Europe (the large American units stationed there did not have to be under foreign command); and, second, it created a direct command link to the American nuclear weapons stationed in Europe, which U.S. law stipulated could only be used if authorized by the president. The SACEUR, headquartered in Casteau (Belgium), was at the same time the commander-in-chief of all U.S. forces in Europe, whose headquarters was in Stuttgart. In this capacity, his area of command covered the entire Mediterranean region, including areas – North Africa, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria – outside NATO territory. The Libyan mission was led by General Bernard Rogers through Stuttgart while Rogers, as SACEUR, was actually sitting in his NATO headquarters in Belgium.20

deterrence versus arms control The recurring tensions between Bonn and Washington resulted largely from the Soviet Union’s contradictory policy and military strategy. Despite its turn toward arms control in the 20

Jost Delbruck, “International Law and Military Forces Abroad: U.S. Military Presence in Europe, 1945– 1965,” in Simon W. Duke and Wolfgang Krieger, eds., U.S. Military Forces in Europe: The Early Years, 1945–1970 (Boulder, Colo., 1993); Knut Ipsen, Rechtsgrundlagen und Institutionalisierung der atlantisch-westeurop¨aischen Verteidigung (Hamburg, 1967).

mid-1960s, the Kremlin stuck to military plans that raised questions about its goodwill. Even after Gorbachev came to power, Soviet maneuvers continued to practice the military conquest of Western Europe, although the Helsinki Agreement of 1975 had declared European borders and the political systems within them inviolable. Soviet nuclear strategy into the 1980s seemed to rest upon the old plan that called for immediate use of nuclear weapons in massive numbers at the beginning of a European conflict – or possibly even if such a conflict only appeared imminent. The United States and NATO, by contrast, adopted the doctrine of “flexible response” in 1962 and 1967, respectively, and reconfigured their military resources accordingly. Flexible response entailed relatively late, gradual use of an initially limited number of nuclear weapons. In a crisis, this could have had tragic consequences. While the Western side would have been pressing for renewed negotiations even after the outbreak of war, their opponents would probably have interpreted almost any act of war as justifying an all-or-nothing nuclear response.21 Overall, arms control probably had a positive effect for peace by revealing the dangerous consequences of military confrontation. More importantly, it offered the basis for almost uninterrupted dialogue between Washington and Moscow, which did not exist in any other area of policy. But it also involved dangers because it reduced the public perception of the Soviet threat. Serious controversy arose in this connection with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The treaty prohibited most states from owning nuclear weapons while legitimizing their possession by a few states. Among the latter was the Soviet Union, a totalitarian state with a clearly aggressive foreign policy; in August 1968, just weeks after the NPT was signed, the Soviet Union put a violent end to the “Prague Spring.” It was little consolation to Bonn that it had signed the treaty “voluntarily” and that 21

Harald Nielsen, Die DDR und die Kernwaffen: Die nukleare Rolle der Nationalen Volksarmee im Warschauer Pakt (Baden-Baden, 1998).

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the inequality in international law the treaty created was to last only until the final abolition of all nuclear weapons. The possibility remained that Washington would one day reduce or even take away its nuclear shield. A German nuclear deterrent might have been conceivable in such a case but it could never have been as “national” as the French nuclear force and would not be possible if the NATO allies objected.22 There were, however, also disadvantages for Moscow in the long run because Bonn’s security policy was now tied even more closely to the United States and the other NATO powers. Germans forged additional bonds to NATO, which in 1990 made integrating the unified Germany one of its long-term tasks. This became an important argument for retaining NATO after the end of the Cold War, and maintaining NATO, in turn, raised the issue of eastern expansion – an uncomfortable subject for Moscow.23 As long as a withdrawal of the American nuclear deterrent was not imminent, the question of an independent German or West European nuclear weapons policy remained hypothetical.24 But the preferential treatment in international law that the Non-Proliferation Treaty gave the Soviet Union had more direct practical significance. In day-to-day politics, it was difficult to convincingly portray the Soviet Union as a massive threat to the existence of the Federal Republic and the rest of Western Europe. This political balancing act could really only work 22 For the background, see Wolfgang Krieger, The Germans and the Nuclear Question, German Historical Institute, Occasional Paper 14 (Washington D.C., 1995). 23 Strictly according to international law, the Paris treaty of 1954 was decisive for the Western powers, and it did not include continuation of NATO membership among the conditions for unification. This was a new element in the Two-Plus-Four Treaty of 1990. See the chapter by Karl Kaiser in this section. 24 The German Gaullists and the ardent supporters of a federal European state harbored hopes of creating a West European nuclear power, which would eventually turn the Multilateral Force (MLF) proposed by the Americans into an additional vehicle for integration. Such a “European option” was promised – albeit very vaguely – before German ratification of the NPT.

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by touting one of two explanations. Either the Soviet threat had greatly receded, a view that growing numbers of American and Germans appear to have held since the mid-1960s; this, however, called into question the high level of NATO defense spending, especially the presence of some 250,000 U.S. troops in Germany; or the greatly increased risk of nuclear war bore emphasis, in which case the bitter pill of the NPT had to be swallowed. This increased the West’s vulnerability to political and psychological pressure from Moscow, as the INF modernization crisis was to demonstrate nearly a decade later. At the same time, it fostered “national neutralism,” the goal of which was to detach the Federal Republic from the deterrence offered by NATO and, in particular, to dissolve the German-American security partnership.

domestic effects of a changing security policy The Vietnam War was the driving force behind the transformation of political parties and political culture on both sides of the Atlantic from the mid-1960s on.25 With the Tet Offensive in 1968 and the My Lai massacre, the leading Western power suffered a dramatic loss of military, political, and moral prestige in the eyes of the Europeans. The quality and discipline of the American troops in Germany deteriorated. Against the backdrop of this war, visible every day on television, a new political generation grew up in the Federal Republic. This generation did not take its political orientation from the fundamentally pro-American Westpolitik of Chancellors Adenauer and Erhard. In its eyes, the burst of Kennedy euphoria in 1963 and accompanying enthusiasm for the United States had become an ideological caricature. In the United States, a new political generation came to the fore when President John F. Kennedy took office in 1961. This change proved to be a difficult process because the Vietnam fiasco stemmed in large part from the 25

See the chapter by T. Michael Ruddy in this section.

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overconfidence of the new generation. There were several consequences. Many members of the governing elite – especially the “liberals,” in the American use of the term – were politically finished by the 1970s. The mass movement against the Vietnam War quickly brought another political generation into the limelight: students and conscientious objectors. For the political elite of the Federal Republic, the Vietnam trauma meant the end of the American model. The uncertainty that resulted was an important factor behind the change of government that occurred in 1969. The Christian Democrats thereupon experienced a crisis over which direction they should head, and it was played out in public as a series of leadership battles to succeed Adenauer. This crisis really did not end until Helmut Kohl became chancellor in October 1982. One cause behind the crisis was the loss of certainty that the anticommunist policy of “peace through strength” that Germany had supported in unison with the United States during the Adenauer era. Kohl, elected as party head of the Christian Democratic Union (Christlich Demokratische Union, or CDU) in 1973, succeeded only gradually in rebuilding the party, recruiting younger personnel, and freeing it from its dogmatic opposition to Ostpolitik and d´etente policies advanced not only by the SPD but also by the United States.26 In the political confusion of the Vietnam War, it was of all people Richard Nixon – the onetime communist-hunter Republican president from 1969 to 1974 – who pushed this new policy toward the Eastern bloc in order to protect his withdrawal from Vietnam geostrategically. For the conservatives in the Federal Republic, this meant the end of the old equation of anticommunism with Atlanticism. It was certainly advantageous for Kohl that the German Social Democrats ran into trouble over the issue of transatlantic security policy, albeit eight years later than the CDU/CSU. The immediate cause was SPD Chancellor Helmut Schmidt’s demand in 1977 for a clear

26

See the chapter by Werner Link, vol. 2, Politics.

Western response to Soviet armaments policy in Europe.27 Each new Soviet SS-20 missile heightened the threat to Western Europe. At the same time, however, the Americans were negotiating a second SALT treaty with Moscow that only included intercontinental missiles and thus might reduce the threat to the United States but not to Western Europe. The SS-20 had a range of 5,000 km, while the SALT treaties dealt with weapons with ranges of 5,500 km and over. Washington finally met Schmidt’s demand with the December 1979 NATO double-track decision. The Soviet Union was given four years to dismantle the SS-20s; if it refused, it would face the deployment of intermediate-range missiles in NATO’s Western European territory. The debate that followed marked a historical break both for East-West relationships and for German-American security relations. Having overcome the Vietnam disaster, the United States returned to the stage of European security policy to find a Federal Republic that had become self-confident and was practicing a new style of politics in German-American security relations. Whereas Adenauer had pointed to the Federal Republic’s internal weakness to assert himself in Washington, Schmidt denied American claims to hegemony by pointing to the Federal Republic’s economic and foreign policy achievements and stability. This change in security relations between Washington and Bonn did not occur without reason. With Schmidt’s economic policies, the Federal Republic had handled the decline in the dollar exchange rate resulting from the Vietnam disaster and with the post-1973 oil crises comparatively well. The chancellor had, moreover, established a close relationship with post-Gaullist France under President Val´ery Giscard d’Estaing, thereby shifting the transatlantic balance of power in Western Europe’s favor. But from the perspective of military deterrence, the Federal Republic had hardly grown in importance, even if the buildup of the Bundeswehr had been completed, its weaponry improved enormously, and its public

27

See the chapter by Michael Broer in this section.

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acceptance in Germany enhanced appreciably. Even a Bundeswehr that had outgrown its modest beginnings could only make up for part of NATO’s remaining weaknesses and the significantly increased strength of the Warsaw Pact forces. Thus there was still no alternative – German, French, or Western European – to American nuclear deterrence. It became increasingly difficult to persuade the German public of this fact during the 1970s. Public understanding of security policy in the Federal Republic was marked by a growing mood of opposition. It was expressed in a political vocabulary and with information about Western military strength that was drawn primarily from critics of the military and from peace activists in the United States. There was nonetheless a consensus strongly in favor of maintaining the German-American security partnership and preserving NATO. The SPD underestimated this consensus during the campaign for the national elections of March 1983. Opinion polls repeatedly found approval for the presence of American forces in Germany; approval had in fact grown strongly since the 1950s. Even at the height of the missiles crisis in the early 1980s, well over 70 percent of West Germans were in favor of the U.S. troop presence; a similar proportion opposed the presence of American nuclear weapons, however. It was convenient to ignore the connection between the presence of U.S. troops and the deployment of nuclear weapons in the Federal Republic. Compared to the United States, there was relatively little support for security “hawks” in Germany. This was a fundamental difference between the United States under President Ronald Reagan and the Federal Republic under Helmut Kohl. Reagan’s armaments policy did indeed find a handful of supporters in West Germany among the press, in foreign policy think tanks, and on the far right of the political spectrum. But “Reaganism” lacked any real following among CDU party officials or CDU voters. The strength of the hawks in the United States is central to any understanding of why President George Bush waited so long in

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1988–9 before he continued and intensified the course of cooperation that Reagan had initiated with the reform-minded Gorbachev. Many conservative Sovietologists at that time saw in Gorbachev nothing more than a younger, more presentable Brezhnev. And Bush was concerned to avoid the fate of Carter, who had seen Leonid Brezhnev as a partner for d´etente. The party system in the Federal Republic proved to be much more robust than many people believed. The transformation of political culture did not lead the “Bonn Republic” to abandon its basic foreign policy principles, as many on the left, in the peace movement, and, above all, in the East bloc’s leadership had expected. Instead, the Federal Republic demonstrated that it could show determination not only in trade and currency policy, but also in security policy. Neither the left-wing terrorism of the 1970s (which the East bloc supported in part) nor the Soviet deployment of SS-20s was able to destabilize West German democracy. This was a major and probably very unexpected political setback for the Soviet leadership. That setback, in turn, gave a real impetus to the political opposition groups in the smaller Warsaw Pact states and thereby laid the ground for the political changes that began in 1985–6.

a european alternative to washington? Kohl’s success in the question of INF deployment strengthened the German side in the debate over the best combination of d´etente, ideological confrontation, and deterrence that grew more intense when the Reagan administration assumed office. The international background to this neoconservative turn must not be forgotten, however. The Portuguese revolution of April 1974 caused the sudden collapse of the anticommunist front in the colonial wars in Angola and Mozambique. This allowed Moscow, with the help of Cuban and East German troops, to gain a foothold in southern Africa. One year later, South Vietnam fell to the North Vietnamese communists. The Soviets supplied arms to participants in the civil wars in Ethiopia,

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Nicaragua, and elsewhere. Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan at the end of 1979. This was their first foray outside the borders of the area of direct Soviet control accepted by the West as the legacy of World War II. The suspicion that Moscow was using d´etente and arms-control to expand its political and territorial influence could hardly be dismissed. For Reagan and his backers, it was not a question of suspicion but rather a certainty that called for a far-reaching reorientation of Western security policy. These political developments were seen very differently in the Federal Republic. Bonn considered d´etente central to German national interests, while in the United States it was regarded as only one of a number of conceivable responses to the Soviet challenge. In 1973 – the year in which the West German government concluded treaties with Moscow, Warsaw, East Berlin, and Prague – two negotiating processes for a new European security system began that, from Bonn’s perspective, held considerable promise. The Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) aimed to bring about an orderly coexistence of all East and West European states on the basis of existing borders.28 The Final Act of the CSCE’s 1975 Helsinki conference established a permanent role for the United States and Canada in European security; the Soviet Union, as a signatory, abandoned its long-standing goal of ending at least the U.S. military presence, if not American political and economic influence, in Europe. Shortly after the Helsinki Final Act, the two military alliances started negotiations on force reductions in Europe (MBFR). To safeguard those two diplomatic processes and further develop Bonn’s “normalized” relationship with the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the Schmidt government was unwilling to stop the global d´etente process despite the Soviet Union’s new activities in the Third World. It agreed, though, to boycott the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the invasion of Afghanistan. The left and the

28

See the chapter by Michael Lukas, vol. 2, Politics.

peace movement spoke of a new Cold War provoked and aggravated by Washington. The social democratic–liberal coalition’s policy of d´etente continued under Kohl and was even intensified in September 1987 with the state visit to the Federal Republic by Erich Honecker, head of the East German Council of State. This second major phase of German Ostpolitik coexisted in tension with Reagan’s armament policies. Greater political damage was avoided largely due to Kohl, who had earned political credit for pushing through the deployment of the new medium-range missiles in West Germany. The German public was, for the most part, critical of the massive American rearmament program. Reagan’s announcement in March 1983 of an initiative for a satellite-based antimissile system (Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI) – which would jeopardize the ABM treaty of 1972 – caused considerable nervousness among the leadership in Bonn. Reagan actually wanted to pursue armscontrol further. At the Geneva summit in November 1985, Reagan and the new Soviet general secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev, proposed halving strategic nuclear weaponry on both sides and resuming negotiations on mediumrange missiles – albeit with Gorbachev’s provision that the United States abandon its SDI plans and that British and French nuclear forces also be reduced. At the Reykjavik summit eleven months later, Reagan even offered to withdraw all American nuclear weapons from Europe. For West German defense efforts, such a move was a nightmare because it would increase both the threat posed by the Warsaw Pact’s massive dominance in conventional forces and the possibility of an American military withdrawal from Europe. The announcement of the formation of a German-French military brigade the following July can be seen as a reaction to the new superpower bilateralism. Bonn was seriously seeking to build up a European alternative within NATO to the existing GermanAmerican security relationship, at least in some areas. Washington saw a danger here – and

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would continue to do so into the presidency of Bill Clinton – of a Franco-German alliance that would undermine NATO and, with it, the position of the United States in Europe. Could Bonn really play the “European card” against Washington? It certainly attempted to do so at least to some degree. The Western European Union (WEU) was revived in June 1984 after many years of lying dormant. At the same time, the process of European integration intensified with, among other measures, the Single European Act of 1987 and other steps. This act was supposed to create a political and economic counterweight to the United States. The European Community (EC) summit in Hanover (1985) even initiated a technology offensive in the defense sector that was understood to be a response to the SDI program. The end of the Cold War shortly thereafter meant that the full consequences of this anti-Reagan course will never be known. But it seemed obvious that the German-American security partnership would soon become less important. When Reagan and Gorbachev signed the INF treaty banning medium-range missiles in December 1987, the Federal Republic saw itself back in the situation that Helmut Schmidt had complained about in 1977. The United States appeared once again to be pursuing arms control at the expense of Western Europe, the Federal Republic in particular. But the assumptions underlying the comparison would soon change. The Soviet Union under Gorbachev was in the process of developing a completely new security policy. The Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan between May 1988 and February 1989. At the UN General Assembly in December 1988, Gorbachev announced unilateral reductions in conventional forces. Bonn had a special interest in the negotiations on banning chemical weapons that began in January 1989 in Paris because of the large and politically controversial stockpiles of American chemical weapons in Germany. The period of 1987–8 can thus be regarded as a major historical break: It was the beginning of the end of the Cold War military confrontation.

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perspectives on the upheavals of 1989–1991 Friction between Bonn and Washington arose again in 1989–90 during the political conclusion of the Cold War.29 The greatest factor of uncertainty was the reaction of the GDR leadership to the rapid opening and democratization of East bloc states, especially Hungary and Poland. Hungary began opening its border to Austria in May of 1989, while a noncommunist prime minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, took office in Poland in August 1989. Honecker’s GDR defiantly congratulated the Chinese Communists on their bloody repression of the democracy movement in Beijing at the beginning of June 1989. Gorbachev-style reforms were unnecessary in the GDR, the East German leadership declared. But how would the growing citizens’ movement in the GDR react to this refusal to introduce reforms? Would the GDR put down the unrest with force? Would Soviet troops stationed there intervene or become otherwise involved in the use of force? In this delicate situation Bonn urgently needed Washington’s full support in security matters. Fortunately the Soviet leadership did not get involved and accepted the peaceful collapse of the SED’s rule in East Germany. There remained the diplomatic negotiations to complete German unification, which can be described as the key moment in GermanAmerican security relations. Skilled cooperation between Washington and Bonn succeeded in clearing up British, French, and, above all, Soviet misgivings. The two major goals of West German foreign and security policy were quickly achieved. Germany was unified, although not with the borders of 1937. Full sovereignty was restored through a formal renunciation by the four Allied powers of their reserve powers, even if important security restrictions were incorporated in the TwoPlus-Four Treaty and implicit in the Maastricht Treaty (1992) and the process of European integration. 29

See the chapter by Karl Kaiser in this section.

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From the American point of view, success lay in the preservation of NATO as an organization still dominated by Washington and one from which Germany, for a number of reasons, cannot detach itself. The restrictions on self-defense measures laid down in 1990 make Germany dependent on NATO indefinitely. The “Berlin Republic” cannot join in building up the WEU as a full replacement for NATO, a project supported in particular by France. At least it cannot do so as long as a politically and economically unstable Russia poses a nuclear threat. Here the United States continues to have an important security role. The presence of about six million American GIs in Germany between 1946 and 1990 deserves at least passing mention.30 This form of face-to-face contact with Germany – open to millions of Americans from all classes, ethnic groups, and regions – represented a unique cultural encounter in the broadest sense of the word. But it was also politically significant. By 1990, almost all high-ranking officers in the U.S. Army and many U.S. Air Force officers had become personally acquainted with the Bonn Republic. They may have been the best representatives of German security interests in Washington.31 The Berlin Republic will no longer be able to call on this privileged influence.

suggestions for further readings In considering post-1968 German-American relations, it is difficult to discuss foreign and security policy separately or to look at only one of these country’s relations with NATO. For this reason, books are listed here that include neither German nor American security policy in their title. Of particular importance is the comprehensive study by Helga Haftendorn, Sicherheit und Entspannung: Zur Aussenpolitik 30

Charles Moskos, “An Era Ends for GIs in Germany,” Chicago Tribune, Oct. 12, 1992. 31 Very little research has been carried out on the importance of this factor. The same applies to repercussions on the U.S. military.

der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1955–1982, 2d ed. (Baden-Baden, 1986) and the volumes of the yearbook established by Wilhelm Cornides and continued under the guidance of Karl Kaiser, Jahrbuch Internationale Politik; the Jahrbuch has appeared since 1955 under the aegis of the Deutsche Gesellschaft f¨ur ausw¨artige Politik (Bonn) and contains important ongoing analyses of German-American security policy. A synopsis appears in Wolfram F. Hanrieder, Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of German Foreign Policy (New Haven, Conn., 1989) and in the relevant chapters of the five-volume Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1983–87), edited by Karl Dietrich Bracher. The two-volume edition Sicherheitspolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1945–1977 (Cologne, 1978–9), edited by Klaus von Schubert, provides a useful collection of documents. There is no in-depth history of the Bundeswehr and West German armaments policy. The official work Verteidigung im B¨undnis: Planung, Aufbau und Bew¨ahrung der Bundeswehr 1950– 1972, published by the Milit¨argeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Munich, 1975), provides an introduction. The shifts in the SPD’s defense policy during its time are analyzed in Thomas Enders, Die SPD und die a¨ ussere Sicherheit 1966– 1982 (Melle, 1987). No standard work exists for the security policy of the United States toward Europe or Germany. Various aspects are discussed in John L. Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (New York, 1982); John L. Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (New York, 1987); McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (New York, 1988); James Fallows, National Defense (New York, 1981); Caspar W. Weinberger, Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years at the Pentagon (New York, 1990); Allan R. Millett and Peter Maslowski, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America, rev. ed. (New York, 1994); Barry M. Blechman and Cathleen S. Fischer, The Silent Partner: West Germany and Arms Control (Cambridge, Mass., 1988); Josef Joffe, The Limited Partnership: Europe, the United States and the Burdens of Alliance (Cambridge, Mass., 1987); Richard L. Kugler,

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Commitment to Purpose: How the Alliance Partnership Won the Cold War (Santa Monica, Calif., 1993); Barry M. Blechman, Force Without War: The US Armed Forces as a Political Instrument (Washington, D.C., 1978); Edward N. Luttwak, The Pentagon and the Art of War (New York, 1985); Gebhard Schweigler, Von Kissinger zu Carter: Entspannung im Widerstreit von Innen- und Aussenpolitik 1969–1981 (Munich, 1982); ErnstOtto Czempiel and Carl-Christoph Schweitzer, Weltpolitik der USA nach 1945 (Bonn, 1989); Karl Kaiser and Hans-Peter Schwarz, eds., America and Western Europe: Problems and Prospects (Lexington, Mass., 1978); Karl Kaiser and HansPeter Schwarz, eds., Sicherheitspolitik vor neuen Aufgaben (Bonn, 1979); Dieter S. Lutz, ed., Sicherheitspolitik am Scheideweg? (Baden-Baden, 1982); Lawrence S. Kaplan, The Long Entanglement: NATO’s First Fifty Years (Westport, Conn., 1999); Lloyd J. Matthews, ed., The Future of the American Military Presence in Europe (Carlisle, Penn., 2000). On nuclear issues, see Matthias K¨untzel, Bonn und die Bombe: Deutsche Atomwaffenpolitik von Adenauer bis Brandt (Frankfurt am Main, 1992); Lothar Ruehl, Mittelstreckenwaffen in Europa: Ihre Bedeutung in Strategie, R¨ustungskontrolle und B¨undnispolitik (Baden-Baden,

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1987); Jeffrey D. Boutwell, The German Nuclear Dilemma (Ithaca, N.Y., 1990); Christian Tuschhoff, Einstellung und Entscheidung: Perzeptionen im sicherheitspolitischen Entscheidungsprozess der Reagan-Administration 1981–1984 (BadenBaden, 1990); Uwe Nerlich and Trutz Rendtorff, eds., Nukleare Abschreckung: Politische und ethische Interpretationen einer neuen Realit¨at (Baden-Baden, 1989); Michael Ploetz, Wie die Sowjetunion den Kalten Krieg verlor: Von der Nachr¨ustung zum Mauerfall (Berlin, 2000). For alternative ideas on security policy, primarily a critique of U.S. defense policy, see Carl Friedrich von Weiz¨acker, Der bedrohte Friede: politische Aufs¨atze 1945–1981 (Munich, 1984); Carl Friedrich von Weiz¨acker and Horst Afheldt, eds., Kriegsfolgen und Kriegsverh¨utung (Munich, 1971); and the threevolume work edited by Egon Bahr, Gemeinsame Sicherheit (Baden-Baden, 1986–1988). The collection edited by Alfred Mechtersheimer, Militarisierungsatlas der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Streitkr¨afte, Waffen und Standorte, Kosten und Risiken (Darmstadt, 1986), which has taken much of its information from congressional publications, is exemplary for its account of the militant peace movement of the 1980s.

chapter one

A Limit to Solidarity Germany, the United States, and the Vietnam War T. Michael Ruddy

When President Lyndon Johnson made the ominous decision to commit combat troops to Vietnam in 1965, he and his foreign policy advisers could not anticipate the deleterious effects this move would have on the United States. At home, the war brought social unrest and economic decline. Overseas, it weakened America’s global leadership and strained relations with its allies. One of America’s European allies most directly affected by the war was Germany. Germany’s close relationship with the United States survived the pressures of the war; still, the conflict forced both parties to reassess certain facets of that relationship.1 Publicly, Germany

resolutely backed America’s efforts in Vietnam, but expressions of solidarity never translated into military assistance of any kind. As the war wore on, it compelled Washington to reevaluate its military commitments in Europe and revived long-standing demands that Germany contribute more to its own defenses or accept a reduced American presence. This struck at the very heart of Germany’s, and Europe’s, security. The war, furthermore, fed political and social tensions within German society, resulting in anti-American feelings that undermined America’s stature as the moral leader of the free world.

1 Relatively little work has been done that focuses specifically on Vietnam’s impact on German-American relations. Topics ripe for examination include the effect of the military changes on Germany’s and Europe’s security, the shifting attitude toward America’s global leadership, and the interrelationship between the German student movement and the student movements in the United States and elsewhere. The Foreign Relations of the United States series, published by the U.S. State Department, contains some primary documentation up to 1968 (Washington, D.C., 1996), and Akten zur Ausw¨artigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1963–, published by the Institut f¨ur Zeitgeschichte (Munich, 1994–), has published material up to 1969. Joachim Arenth, Johnson, Vietnam und der Westen: Transatlantische Belastungen 1963–1969 (Munich, 1994), examines the Johnson years. Several studies of postwar relations devote significant segments to the topic. Notable examples are: Wolfram F. Hanreider, Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of German Foreign Policy (New Haven, Conn., 1989); Hans W. Gatzke, Germany and the United States: A “Special Relationship”? (Cambridge, 1980); and Richard J. Barnett,

german support for the war The Korean War, distinguished by an international coalition under the leadership of the United States, served as a paradigm for American policymakers as they tried to galvanize allied support for intervention in Vietnam. They hoped to create once again a democratic coalition against communism, but the European response proved tepid at best. President Charles de Gaulle of France was an outspoken critic from the beginning; Prime Minister Harold Wilson of Great Britain only muted his misgivings under pressure from Washington. Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, however, influenced by The Alliance: America, Europe, Japan: Makers of the Postwar World (New York, 1983).

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his close personal relationship with President Johnson and convinced that American intervention was consistent with German security interests, did not hesitate to align his country with the American camp. “Although not everybody [in Germany] was concerned with it,” he told Johnson in the spring of 1965, “Viet-Nam [sic] was important to most Germans because they regarded it as a kind of testing ground as to how firmly the U.S. honors its commitments. In that respect there existed a parallel between Saigon and Berlin.” Erhard went on to stress “that the Federal Republic would always work closely together with the U.S. and stand by it on these problems.”2 Some in Washington suspected that the chancellor was merely saying what the president wanted to hear. Undersecretary of State George Ball predicted that “the confidence of West Berliners will depend more on what they see on the spot than on news of events half way around the world.”3 Later events would prove Ball correct. Yet Erhard’s statement is revealing. Few Germans at the time doubted the capacity of the United States to prevail in Southeast Asia. In fact, the intervention reassured them, for if the Americans were so forthcoming in defense of Saigon, there could be little doubt that they would likewise fulfill their promises to defend Berlin from communist aggression. Still, Washington wanted more from Bonn. It wanted a contribution, however small, to the military effort. As early as 1964, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara pressed Erhard to assign a military unit to Vietnam as an expression of solidarity.4 But the chancellor stubbornly refused, citing legal prohibitions against deploying German forces outside Germany. After realizing that further attempts to change Erhard’s mind would be futile, Washington shifted its efforts 2 Memorandum of Conversation, June 4, 1965, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, 2:718. 3 George Ball, Probable Reaction to the Cutting of Our Losses in Vietnam, undated, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, 3:112. 4 George McGhee, At the Creation of a New Germany: From Adenauer to Brandt, an Ambassador’s Account (New Haven, Conn., 1989), 143.

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to securing humanitarian and economic aid for the South Vietnamese government. Bonn responded with assistance averaging $7.5 million annually between 1967 and 1973. The most visible contribution was the hospital ship S.S. Helgoland with a full contingent of support personnel to minister to Vietnam’s civilian population. Aid also included credits to Saigon for the purchase of German products and technicians to educate its people.5 As this aid flowed to South Vietnam, Germany’s unqualified moral support for the American cause fell victim to the erosive effects of the protracted conflict, and rifts developed in the German-American relationship. Erhard’s government fell at the end of 1966, and Willy Brandt emerged as the architect of German foreign policy, first as foreign minister and vice chancellor in Kurt Kiesinger’s “Grand Coalition” government and then as chancellor in his own right. Germany’s confidence in America’s actions had begun to dissipate during the Kiesinger years. Within the coalition, Brandt’s party, the Social Democrats, openly opposed both direct and indirect military assistance to Vietnam. In contrast to Erhard’s SaigonBerlin analogy, the Social Democrats argued that Germany’s faith in America’s commitment to the NATO alliance would not be diminished if the United States extricated itself from the war. On the contrary, America’s continued involvement in the war was detrimental to German security interests. Mirroring his party’s position, Brandt wrote in 1968 that, “were the United States to forgo a military solution, it would not affect [Germany’s] faith in the U.S. guarantee, without which there can be no security for Europe, the Federal Republic and Berlin. The undeclared war in South-East Asia is impeding the further reduction of tensions between East and West. It harbours the risk of extension. For that reason, peace in Vietnam is also in the immediate interests of Europe and Germany.”6 5 Stanley R. Nelson and James L. Collins, Allied Participation in Vietnam (Washington, D.C., 1975), 164–5. 6 Willy Brandt, People and Politics: The Years 1960–1975 (Boston, 1978), 322.

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Guided by this judgment, Brandt followed an increasingly independent course. Although he still refrained from publicly criticizing the United States, he no longer offered his country’s unqualified support. Privately, he lobbied for a diplomatic solution. At the same time, he determinedly moved forward with his Ostpolitik, which was both helped and hindered by the international climate created by the war.

d´e tente, ostpolitik, and vietnam The European diplomatic landscape changed dramatically during the 1960s as both Germany and the United States, for different reasons, abandoned their hard-line stance against the Soviet bloc and embraced d´etente. Washington, chastened by the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, initially envisioned d´etente as a means of curbing the escalating nuclear arms race. In the 1970s, President Richard Nixon, along with his national security adviser and later secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, made d´etente the cornerstone of American policy. For Germany, d´etente offered a means to achieve eventual national reunification. Early openings to the East during Erhard’s tenure continued under Kiesinger and paved the way for Brandt’s momentous agreements with the Soviet Union, Poland, and finally East Germany between 1970 and 1972. As d´etente unfolded in Europe, the Vietnam War intruded, encouraging and complicating the process. The war created an international environment that facilitated Brandt’s Ostpolitik. Europeans grew skeptical of America’s intentions as the nation became more deeply mired in the conflict. As a result, America’s role as moral leader in the struggle against communism suffered. At the same time, America’s geopolitical focus necessarily shifted from Europe to Asia. Washington’s preoccupation with the war afforded Brandt greater freedom to pursue his policy than he otherwise would have had. Even when the United States had doubts about some of Brandt’s initiatives, it often refrained from pressing its case because, in the

long run, Ostpolitik fostered improved relations with the Soviets and thus served the interests of both countries. The United States believed that d´etente might dissuade the USSR from increasing support for its ally, North Vietnam, and from 1969 hoped it would prompt Moscow to encourage Hanoi to be more flexible at the negotiating table. Therefore, even though Nixon and Kissinger – both of whom preferred to pursue d´etente at the superpower level – suspected the Kremlin of employing the tactic of selective d´etente, offering Germany concessions to weaken NATO and perhaps create a neutralized Germany, they refrained from intervening to deter Brandt. In some respects, however, Vietnam had a negative impact on German foreign policy. To encourage progress on a nuclear NonProliferation Treaty and deter the USSR from increased support for Hanoi, President Johnson in 1965 abandoned the Multilateral Force (MLF) proposal, which Germany had embraced as a means of entering the nuclear club. Johnson’s decision was a blow to German prestige. Although Washington proposed alternatives to the MLF, none was forthcoming. This deprived Brandt of a valuable bargaining chip in his negotiations with the Soviet Union that he believed might have compelled it and its allies to be more forthcoming in negotiations.

united states troops and offset payments The Vietnam War may have had a mixed legacy for German diplomacy, but it had a decidedly negative impact on America’s military presence in Germany. That presence was both symbolic and real evidence of America’s determination to defend Europe’s security. The United States had willingly accepted this responsibility in spite of critics who complained that Germany paid nothing toward the cost of American troops stationed on German soil. In 1961, as the United States faced a ballooning balance-of-payments deficit due in part to these military obligations, the two countries reached an agreement

A Limit to Solidarity

that Germany would offset part of this cost through annual purchases of U.S. military equipment.7 Germany fulfilled its offset payments until 1964, when its economy slipped into recession. Erhard reduced his budget by 10 percent in 1965 and appealed unsuccessfully to Washington for relief from the offset burden. Johnson wanted good relations with Germany, but the burgeoning cost of Vietnam and his Great Society social programs strained the budget and limited his options. For two years, the United States adamantly insisted that Germany honor its obligations. Frustrated by stalemated offset negotiations, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara even threatened to remove American troops during one heated discussion with the chancellor. Chancellor Kiesinger finally signed a compromise in 1967 whereby Germany assented to resume military purchases. These would be at lower levels determined by military need. To compensate for the anticipated shortfall, Germany’s Bundesbank agreed to make quarterly purchases of $125 million in U.S. treasury bonds for one year and further affirmed its intention to refrain from converting dollars into gold. In an important development, Germany also acquiesced in Washington’s plan to redeploy 35,000 troops in the United States, with American assurance that their readiness would be maintained and that they could be rapidly mobilized in case of crisis.8 This temporarily eased the situation, but these economic differences continued to strain relations between the two countries into the 1970s.

7

Memorandum by Joseph Aschheim, 1968 Economic Report of the President, Hearings before Joint Economic Committee, 90th Cong., 2d sess., The Dollar Deficit and German Offsetting (Washington, D.C., 1968), 928–9. 8 Horst Mendershausen, Troop Stationing in Germany: Value and Cost (Santa Monica, Calif., 1968), 96–105. This agreement was actually part of a tripartite arrangement that also addressed similar issues between Great Britain and Germany. For a consideration of this and other issues of troop deployment discussed in subsequent paragraphs, see Daniel J. Nelson, A History of U.S. Military Forces in Germany (Boulder, Colo., 1987), 82–103.

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Closely related to offsets were disagreements about the size of the American force. Strong sentiment for troop reductions had long existed in the U.S. Congress, particularly in the Senate, where Senator Mike Mansfield became the perennial spokesman for reducing America’s obligations. He argued that improved relations with the Soviet Union made a large force unnecessary and, along with others, advocated dual-basing as a cost-effective alternative. It was cheaper, he contended, to place forces on the ready in the United States rather than station them in Germany. This would not compromise Germany’s security because the United States now had the capacity to deploy forces rapidly around the globe. The Vietnam War gave Mansfield and his allies added ammunition. With the war consuming America’s resources, it seemed logical that America should reduce its European presence. Furthermore, military personnel in Europe provided a potential pool of experienced and trained troops needed in Vietnam. In 1966, Mansfield introduced the first of a series of Senate resolutions calling for substantial troop reductions. His resolution failed, but it influenced the previously mentioned 1967 agreement to remove 35,000 troops from Germany. Secretary of Defense McNamara, who was determined to make America’s military presence in Europe more economical and more efficient, aligned himself with Mansfield in the hope that troops brought home would be a source of manpower for Vietnam. But this was not to be. According to the dual-basing agreement, the troops were stationed in the United States but remained under European command. Mansfield’s resolutions became a regular part of Senate business throughout the war, garnering support but always failing. He redoubled his effort after the 1969 Nixon Doctrine demanded that South Vietnam shoulder a greater responsibility for its own defense (“Vietnamization”), and signaled a determination on the part of the American government to reduce its commitments worldwide. Sensing an opportunity, Mansfield attached an amendment to a 1970 military appropriations bill calling for American forces in Europe to be reduced by 50 percent. This and similar amendments in 1971 and 1972

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suffered the same fate as his earlier resolutions, but the issue was raised to the top of the Senate’s agenda and attracted media attention both in the United States and in Germany. German officials and American policymakers were concerned. The war and the dual-basing scheme inevitably had a noticeable effect. Troop strength in Germany stood at 263,000 in 1964, then fell to a low of 210,000 by 1968 when, in the aftermath of the Tet offensive, Richard Nixon was elected president and began the agonizing process of withdrawing American forces from Indochina. As Washington tried to negotiate an end to the conflict, numbers rebounded slowly, rising to 213,000 by 1970 and 228,000 in 1973, when the peace accords were signed. The numbers, however, never returned to prewar levels; 9 at their low point, American strength had declined by 50,000. Despite concern that this compromised Germany’s security, there was evidence that dual-basing, with the capacity to airlift troops rapidly in a crisis, could work. But the actual numbers were less significant than the quality and preparedness of the troops themselves. Here, Vietnam had a profoundly debilitating effect. The expanding cost of the conflict siphoned economic as well as human resources from Europe. Military facilities deteriorated. Equipment was not replaced and fell into disrepair. Maneuvers and training exercises were curtailed. Even more troubling, experienced officers and enlisted men left Germany for service in Vietnam and were replaced by quickly trained conscripts. From the beginning, the Germans feared that the United States would reduce the readiness of its forces by transferring experienced soldiers from Germany to Vietnam. In 1966, McNamara bristled at such suggestions. He declared to a reporter for the Stuttgarter Zeitung that he was “sick and tired of hearing the implication that we’ve drawn down the readiness of forces in Europe.” Nevertheless, a few weeks later, 9

James R. Golden, The Dynamics of Change in NATO: A Burden-Sharing Perspective (New York, 1983), 126; Gregory Treverton, The “Dollar Drain” and American Forces in Germany: Managing the Political Economies of Alliance (Athens, Ohio, 1978), 4.

the Pentagon announced that 15,000 “specialists” would be withdrawn for temporary duty in Vietnam. Most were career soldiers; 30 percent were officers. Despite McNamara’s denials, military experts even then suspected that this compromised military readiness.10 The normal rotation of personnel exacerbated this trend. As officers and veteran enlisted personnel completed their tours in Germany, they were transferred, usually to Vietnam, and replaced by young conscripts. Drafted against their wishes, many opposed the war. Some had already served a tour in Vietnam and had returned disillusioned. They brought into the military the problems that plagued American society as a whole – drugs, gangs, racism, and crime.11 Discipline and morale suffered. These problems spilled over into German society. Especially in areas contiguous to military facilities, there was an increase in crimes perpetrated by American soldiers against German civilians, ranging from peace disturbances to murder and rape. The drug culture spread within the German population, and the growing number of African Americans among the U. S. troops contributed to tense race relations. “In Germany,” one military historian observed, “the problems of black soldiers were magnified by expressions of racism in German society and by the phenomenon of being a member of a tiny minority group in a society over 98% white.”12 These social tensions combined with a growing revulsion of the war to aggravate antiAmerican feelings among the German public. Media coverage of the war was just as extensive in Germany as in the United States and likewise seemed to expose the brutality and incompetence of American forces. Not only were 10

New York Times, Apr. 8, 1966. In 1971, investigative reporters Haynes Johnson and George C. Wilson published a series of nine articles documenting the current travails of the United States military. The first three parts of this series focused on Germany: “Army in Anguish,” Washington Post, Sept. 12–20, 1971. 12 Nelson, Military Forces in Germany, 112. Nelson details the problems of American soldiers in Germany on pages 104–27. 11

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Germans worried about the war’s impact on America’s commitment to their security, but they increasingly perceived the war as a futile venture and, particularly after the Tet offensive, felt the Americans should get out.

student protest and terrorism This anti-Americanism was most apparent in the student protest movement of the 1960s.13 With its roots at the Free University of Berlin, the movement originated as an expression of discontent at the antiquated hierarchical university system, which, in the students’ view, failed to provide a forum for the free expression of ideas and was inadequate for the growing student population. As with similar movements in the United States and elsewhere in Europe, student grievances were diverse. Neo-Marxist philosophical ideas enjoyed increasing popularity. Students condemned the injustices of German society, the inequities and materialism of the capitalist system, and the oppressive militarism of the major powers. As Vietnam undermined America’s role as the free world’s moral leader, the war, a prime example of the injustices and militarism that the students abhorred, became the focal point of protest. The United States was the epitome of an imperialist power, and the German government was an accomplice. Protest peaked in 1967 and 1968. In 1967, a peaceful demonstration against the Shah of Iran’s visit to Berlin turned violent when a police officer shot and killed a student. Rioting spread to other universities. In October, crowds in Berlin and other cities joined in a show of solidarity with American students who were marching on the Pentagon to protest the war. Students publicly demonstrated near U. S. military facilities. 13

Frank Werkmeister, Die Protestbewegung gegen den Vietnamkrieg 1965–1973 (Marburg an der Lahn, 1975), is an early study of the student protests. For a comparative study of the American and German student movements, see Ingo Juchler, Die Studentenbewegungen in den Vereinigten Staaten und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland der sechziger Jahre (Berlin, 1996).

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Riots erupted again in 1968 after a student leader, Rudi Dutschke, was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt. When Vice President Hubert Humphrey visited Berlin that same year, students pelted his entourage with eggs. By 1969, Brandt’s support for educational reform and President Nixon’s decision to negotiate an end to the war and withdraw American forces from Vietnam co-opted the protesters, and the movement declined. Yet, Nixon’s strategy to extricate the United States from the war by short-term escalation, such as the 1970 incursion into Cambodia and massive bombing of North Vietnam, fueled a more virulent leftist response. American military facilities endured a series of terrorist attacks. In May 1972, three bombs exploded at Fifth Army headquarters in Frankfurt, killing one American officer and wounding thirteen others. Less than two weeks later, a bomb detonated at the U. S. Army facilities in Heidelberg, killing three Americans. German officials launched an intensive investigation, arrested members of the communist Baader-Meinhof Gang, and restored a degree of stability.

conclusion Despite the damage inflicted by the Vietnam War, German-American relations remained close. But that relationship had changed by the mid-1970s. Germany, which now played a more prominent role in European affairs, no longer assumed that all interests of the United States corresponded to those of Germany. Allied solidarity was no longer a given. Germany could no longer be automatically counted on to align with every American cause. A case in point was the Yom Kippur War, which erupted a few months after the Vietnam peace settlement. The United States rushed substantial aid to Israel and lobbied its European allies for support. Bonn not only refused to endorse Washington’s actions, as did the other European nations dependent on Middle East oil, but it also publicly protested when the United States funneled supplies to Israel through the German port of

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Bremerhaven.14 Erhard’s unflinching solidarity with the American cause was no more. The end of the war also led to uncertainty about the future. Germany had become a more important member of NATO after France’s withdrawal from the alliance, but Germany still depended on the United States for protection. America’s continued commitment to Europe’s defense at the same level as in the past was no longer a given. The war had taught the United States that its resources were finite and that it could no longer unilaterally undertake everexpanding worldwide obligations. The Nixon Doctrine had signaled to America’s allies that they would have to shoulder more of the burden for their own defense. What this meant for 14

Gatzke, Germany and the United States, 229.

NATO and for Germany was uncertain. The United States never abandoned Germany, but it expected Germany to assume more responsibility. The disputes over troop deployments and their accompanying costs had been magnified during the war. Attempts to find a satisfactory solution had been elusive. Nixon’s determination to disengage the United States from some of its global commitments gained momentum with the signing of the peace agreements. In 1973, in fact, one of Mansfield’s amendments to reduce American forces in Europe passed in the Senate, an ominous symptom of the mood in Washington. Although the amendment was ultimately defeated in the House of Representatives, this was unsettling evidence of widespread opposition within the United States to the status quo in Europe.

chapter two

NATO Strategy and the German-American Relationship Kori N. Schake

Compared to the turmoil of the 1950s and early 1960s, intra-alliance debate over NATO strategy in the period from 1968 through the end of the Cold War was more acrimonious but less substantive. The Military Committee’s formula of using nuclear weapons “as early as necessary and as late as possible” and the Harmel Report’s validation of both defense and d´etente as NATO tasks established the basic compromises needed for consensus on alliance strategy.1 Although strategy did not materially change after 1968, its constituent arms control and deployment decisions became the areas in which the Federal Republic and the United States disputed policy toward the Soviet Union. The central debate of 1968–89 was over the balance in Western strategy between ensuring security and furthering d´etente. The American focus on preparedness to fight the Soviet Union came increasingly into conflict with the Federal Republic’s desire to foster prospects for d´etente as a means to prevent a war in which Germany would be the main battlefield. These divergent priorities caused recurrent disputes over the deployment of nuclear weapons and even “out-of-area” issues like Vietnam and the Arab-Israeli wars. That NATO did not dissolve despite regular predictions to the contrary is a testament to the seriousness with which its members continued to view the Soviet threat. By the mid-1980s European-American tensions

1

in NATO were so great that the alliance could well have ruptured had Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev not moved so quickly to reform the Soviet Union, free the Warsaw Pact states, and negotiate the unification of Germany. For nearly the entire 1968–89 period, governments in Bonn considered American security policy erratic, dangerous, and far too unilateral, while administrations in Washington grew increasingly frustrated that nothing seemed to satisfy the European allies, especially the Federal Republic. German-American relations are unlikely to be remembered in such divisive terms, however, because of the close cooperation between Bonn and Washington in the Two-Plus-Four talks leading to German unification. At that critical juncture, the United States alone pressed for rapid unification on terms favorable to the Federal Republic.2 Because of this solidarity, the Cold War ended with Germany and America returning to the shared strategic posture and close and confidential partnership that had characterized their relationship during the 1950s.

the legacy of flexible response In 1967, the NATO allies finally agreed to adopt “the concept of flexibility in response to aggression, with provision for a variety of response

2

See the chapter by Kori N. Schake, vol. 1, Security.

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See the chapter by Stephen F. Szabo, vol. 2, Politics.

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options depending upon the size and scope of the aggression” in Military Committee (MC) 14/3.3 The new strategy was different in degree, not in kind, from its predecessors. NATO strategy documents had incorporated the concept of flexible response in strategy for conventional forces since 1956.4 The allies, however, were highly reluctant to adopt MC 14/3. To them, flexible response represented “a redistribution of military risk” that would reduce the United States’ commitment to the defense of Europe and increase the damage to Europe by extending the conventional phase of war.5 The allies also saw any suggestion that the United States was unwilling to fight a nuclear war as an encouragement to Soviet aggression. Finally, the allies rightly believed that the United States was inattentive to their concerns about flexible response.6 France rejected defense cooperation rather than adopt the new strategy. American advocacy of flexible response only strengthened President Charles de Gaulle’s belief (and Adenauer, Strauss, and Erhard’s suspicion) that America could not be relied upon.7 The French withdrawal forced NATO to move its military headquarters, American bases, and all American troops out of France within twelve months. Because French forces were no longer available to NATO, all NATO war plans had to be revised. NATO’s entire logistics train was reoriented from West-East to North-South, including rail lines, port facilities, and staging points. NATO consolidated its political headquarters by moving the North Atlantic Council, the 3

Military Committee (hereafter MC) 14/3, cited in MC 48/3, Measures to Implement the Strategic Concept for the Defense of the NATO Area, Dec. 8, 1969, in North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO Strategy Documents (hereafter NSD) (Brussels, 1997), 252. 4 C-M(56)138 (final), Directive to the NATO Military Authorities from the North Atlantic Council, Dec. 13, 1956, NSD, 193. 5 Helga Haftendorn, NATO and the Nuclear Revolution: A Crisis of Credibility, 1966–1967 (Oxford, 1996), 387. 6 A detailed account of the debate is in Jane Stromseth, The Origins of Flexible Response (New York, 1988). 7 David N. Schwartz, NATO’s Nuclear Dilemmas (Washington, D.C., 1983), 154–6.

office of the secretary general, and the Military Committee to Brussels. A Defense Planning Committee was created to direct military affairs, and an International Military Staff replaced the Standing Group to expand participation and support the chairman of the Military Committee and the secretary general. In connection with the move, NATO streamlined staffing and decision making, which increased the influence of the European allies, especially the smaller ones. Cooperation in moving NATO and U.S. operations out of France demonstrated the solidarity and capabilities of the allies remaining in NATO’s integrated military command and reassured the United States that others, especially the Federal Republic, would not follow France’s lead. The French withdrawal directly strengthened the role of the Federal Republic in NATO by making room for an institutionalized German role commensurate with the Federal Republic’s political and military contributions to Western defense.8 The Federal Republic absorbed many of the bases and was given many of the command billets vacated by the French, including NATO’s powerful Central Region Command, which oversees planning, training, and deployment of NATO’s main body of forces for the defense of Germany. The Federal Republic’s heightened status within NATO, combined with the continuing close Franco-German relationship, made the Federal Republic NATO’s main interlocutor with France. This added to the Federal Republic’s importance to both the United States and the alliance. Nowhere was German influence more apparent than in the establishment of NATO guidelines for the use of nuclear weapons. America’s effort to provide a “software” solution to the endemic problem of nuclear sharing as it constricted “hardware” options in the new strategy led in 1967 to the creation of NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group. Shrewd diplomacy and a willingness to work within alliance structures made the Federal Republic more influential

8 Stanley R. Sloan, NATO’s Future: Toward a New Transatlantic Bargain (Washington, D.C., 1985), 38.

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than any other ally – even the United States – in establishing policies governing nuclear use. The 1969 Healey-Schroeder Report (developed in conjunction with the United Kingdom) established NATO’s basic approach: Nuclear weapons should be used to send an unmistakable political (as opposed to military) signal of NATO’s intent and should be combined with efforts to control escalation, limit damage, and allow for allied consultations.9 This approach was adopted in 1969 and provided the political guidelines for NATO’s use of nuclear weapons. Facing pressure from the Federal Republic to increase nuclear consultations and acknowledging the greater burden borne by the “battlefield” countries where weapons were stationed, NATO agreed in 1968 that “special weight be given to the country on or from whose territory the weapons would be employed.”10 The Federal Republic was able to restrict the range of potential uses of nuclear weapons by establishing the rules governing NATO nuclear use and gaining allied agreement that German concerns deserved special consideration in NATO decision making. future tasks of the alliance The Federal Republic also played an important role in minimizing disagreement between Europe and the United States over d´etente with the Soviet Union. By the mid-1960s, the American effort to stabilize the global balance and negotiate arms-control treaties with the Soviet Union, the French effort to reduce tensions by loosening the stark dichotomies of the bipolar system, and the German effort to reduce the risk of war by expanding dialogue and improving the lives of Germans beyond the Wall – all these efforts moved the West toward d´etente with the Soviet Union, but they were not entirely compatible.11

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D´etente raised particular problems for the Federal Republic. American conduct during the 1961 Berlin Crisis and in the debate over flexible response convinced German leaders – both in the government led by the Christian Democrats and in the Social Democratic opposition – that the German-American relationship and a strong defense were not enough to ensure the Federal Republic’s security. A more cooperative relationship with Moscow and its East European allies would be needed to stabilize Europe and improve long-term prospects for unification. By the time the Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD) became the senior government party in 1969, the Hallstein Doctrine – that unification is the prerequisite to improved relations with the East – had produced neither good relations nor unification. However, unilateral moves by the government toward d´etente with the Soviet Union could provoke concerns in the West that Bonn was undertaking either an adventurous policy between East and West (Schaukelpolitik) or outright appeasement. The Federal Republic’s position was further complicated by the fact that the Soviet Union would insist on some form of recognition of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in return for improved relations, which would deal a major blow to the foreign policy of the Federal Republic. NATO’s Harmel Report gave Bonn the political cover to pursue Ostpolitik with a minimum of Western suspicion by including d´etente as a major alliance function. The Federal Republic’s acceptance of the status quo in Europe – that is, the long-term division of Germany – in the 1970 treaties with the Soviet Union and Poland and negotiations with the GDR to accept Germany’s existing borders helped reduce tensions with the Soviet Union and facilitated strategic arms-control negotiations between the superpowers.12

9

J. Michael Legge, Tactical Nuclear Weapons and the NATO Strategy of Flexible Response (Santa Monica, Calif., 1983), 19. 10 Ibid., 22. 11 Klaus Ritter, “The Evolution of East-West Relations: The European Context,” in Karl Kaiser and Hans-Peter Schwarz, eds., America and Western Europe:

Problems and Prospects (Lexington, Mass., 1977), 237; Frederic Bozo, “France,” in Michael Brenner, ed., NATO and Collective Security (London, 1992), 40. 12 See Hans-Peter Schwarz, “Atlantic Security in an Era Without Great Alternatives,” in Karl Kaiser and Hans-Peter Schwarz, eds., America and Western Europe:

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The Harmel Report called for a concerted effort both to defend NATO and develop a more stable East-West relationship in which the underlying political issues could be resolved. In addition to legitimizing d´etente, the Harmel Report served the important function of solidifying NATO after the withdrawal of France from the integrated military command. Although it refused to adopt the new strategy or participate in NATO’s military structures, France acceded to the Harmel formula. This tacit support created a sense of reassurance that NATO had agreed on its future tasks, even if not on its strategy for prosecuting a war. Perhaps the most important of those tasks was multilateral arms control, which set a continuing agenda for the alliance and reduced European concern about American unilateralism in East-West negotiations.13 The administration of Richard M. Nixon emphasized multipolarity and increased attention to Europe. Far from benefiting from this approach, however, the relationship between the United States and Europe had become so rancorous by 1969 that the European allies suspected that the United States sought to retain its leadership while reducing the defense commitments on which that leadership was based.14 European endorsement of the Arab attack on Israel in 1973 and the denial of overflight and transit rights to American forces reflected concern that American military actions disregarded Europe’s greater reliance on Middle Eastern oil and endangered its security.

arms control In 1968, NATO leaders advocated mutual and balanced force reductions (MBFR) to equalize conventional forces between the two military

Problems and Prospects (Lexington, Mass., 1977), 193; Karl Kaiser, Europe and the United States: The Future of the Relationship (Washington, D.C., 1973), 80. 13 Haftendorn, NATO and the Nuclear Revolution, 398. 14 Richard C. Eichenberg, ed., Drifting Together or Apart? (Lanham, Md., 1986), 13.

blocs. The Soviets initially resisted parallel force capabilities as a threat to their considerable advantage in large, well-equipped, and easily reinforced conventional forces, but consented to negotiate in 1973. The MBFR negotiations produced no real progress in force reductions in fifteen years. However, the negotiations provided the Soviet Union with frequent opportunities to divide the NATO allies over issues such as whether the United States must participate in the negotiations, whether to continue negotiations while the Soviet Union substantially increased its conventional forces, and what weight to attach to modernized equipment that improved combat capability. In the 1970s, the United States was more concerned than its European allies about the buildup of Soviet forces and the threat of Soviet influence. A 1977 congressional report estimated that Soviet capabilities bordered on “a decisive conventional military superiority over NATO.”15 The administration of Jimmy Carter tried to have NATO allies commit 3 percent of their annual gross domestic product to defense spending. This was met with outright hostility, both because it suggested that the European allies were not doing their share and because the campaign could jeopardize arms-control efforts. Although the Federal Republic and the rest of NATO Europe strongly supported SovietAmerican arms-control efforts, this support was always tinged with fear of a superpower “condominium” – a bilateral deal that would improve the security of the United States and the Soviet Union at the expense of Europe. European dependence on American military power, especially on American strategic nuclear forces, had always created anxiety about extended deterrence. That anxiety grew more intense in the 1970s and 1980s as Europeans observed what they considered to be wild fluctuations in U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union – namely, undue concessions in the Strategic Arms Limitation 15 U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, NATO and the New Soviet Threat: Report of Senator Sam Nunn and Senator Dewey Bartlett, 95th Cong., 1st sess., Jan. 24, 1977, 1.

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Talks (SALT) and undue hostility in response to the invasion of Afghanistan.16 Paradoxically, the most contentious debate over strategy centered on what would become NATO’s greatest feat of defense solidarity in the 1968–89 period: the 1979 “double-track” decision. This NATO decision stated that the alliance would deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe if superpower armscontrol negotiations failed to induce the Soviet Union to remove the SS-20 missiles it had recently begun to deploy.17 In late 1977, German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt had argued forcefully for tying reductions in strategic arms to reductions in conventional disparities between NATO and the Warsaw Pact and deploying a nuclear missile in Europe to counter the Soviet SS-20.18 Concurrent with this campaign, the United States had developed, and NATO defense ministers had agreed to deploy, low-yield nuclear weapons that could minimize blast effects and long-term radiation, the fear of which had long bedeviled support within NATO for the use of nuclear weapons on the territory of its members. Although European leaders, including Schmidt, supported the so-called neutron bomb in NATO councils, they refused to do so publicly or to offer deployment sites for the short-range Lance missiles that would carry the weapons.19 Lacking this support, Carter canceled the neutron bomb in 1978, only to have Schmidt berate the United States as an unreliable partner. The divisive neutron bomb cancellation and continued Soviet deployment of the SS-20 missile challenged NATO to demonstrate its resolve

16

Michael Howard, “Reassurance and Deterrence: Western Defense in the 1980s,” Foreign Affairs 61 (1982–3): 309–24; see also Stanley R. Sloan, “Differing Perspectives on East-West Relations,” in Stanley R. Sloan, NATO’s Future: Toward a New Transatlantic Bargain (Washington, D.C., 1985). 17 See the chapter by Michael Broer in this section. 18 Helmut Schmidt, “The Alistair Buchan Memorial Lecture,” Survival 20 (1978): 4. 19 Ivo Daalder, The Nature and Practice of Flexible Response (New York, 1991), 146–7; “Schmidt Declares He Hasn’t Wavered on Neutron Position,” New York Times, Apr. 14, 1978.

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and reinforce deterrence by giving NATO the ability to strike Soviet territory from Europe. In view of the state of transatlantic relations in 1979, it was no small achievement that NATO was able to accept its own public as well as Soviet opposition and deploy the intermediaterange nuclear forces (INF) that it determined essential to carry out the double-track decision. Nowhere was public opposition and leadership support greater than in the Federal Republic; its commitment, under Schmidt and later under Helmut Kohl, to deploy the INF missiles was essential to preserving the NATO alliance. Without this concerted effort by Bonn’s leaders to counter Soviet nuclear forces, the divergence between American concerns about retaining the ability to fight and win a European war and European concerns about preserving a cooperative relationship with the Soviet Union could well have destroyed the alliance.

technology as deus ex machina While NATO’s nuclear dilemmas dominated public discussion of strategy in the 1970s and 1980s, dramatic advances in the capabilities of high-technology weapons were challenging the nature of deterrence. This debate affected plans for the battlefield conduct of warfare and the doctrine of extended deterrence that had been the basis of NATO strategy since 1949. Technological advances in the 1970s created for the first time a real prospect that NATO could neutralize Soviet numerical advantages by improving the lethality, precision, and range of its non-nuclear weapons, such as antitankguided missiles and precision-guided munitions. With their ability to inflict damage equivalent to a nuclear weapon while remaining below the nuclear threshold, these new weapons could conceivably mitigate the most divisive aspect of NATO strategy. The United States began procuring these new weapons and developing innovative doctrines intended to shift the battlefield to Warsaw Pact territory. America expected the Air-Land Battle and Follow-On Forces Attack doctrines to be warmly welcomed by European allies

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concerned about first use, the use of nuclear weapons on their territory, and the risks to their economies and to d´etente of raising conventional forces equivalent to those of the Warsaw Pact. The defense ministries of several European countries supported the American doctrines and advocated national purchases of the weapons, but their governments were concerned about the cost of the weapons, American advances that reduced the interoperability of NATO forces, and the destabilizing political effects of targeting beyond NATO territory. Left-wing defense analysts in the Federal Republic advocated alternative defense strategies like entanglement instead.20 Technological advances also generated renewed interest in strategic defenses in the 1980s.21 The administration of Ronald Reagan announced in 1983 that the United States was developing space-based lasers able to target incoming ballistic missiles, which would make nuclear weapons obsolete by preventing them from arriving at their targets. This Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was envisioned as a way to return the United States to the haven of invulnerability. With America no longer hostage to Soviet nuclear attack, extended deterrence would be strengthened, since the United States would not have to trade New York for Paris in order to defend Europe. SDI was the paramount example of how Europe and America began to diverge over strategy in the 1968–89 period. The virulent anti-Soviet rhetoric of the Reagan administration, refusal to abide by the unratified SALT II restrictions, “unreasonable” arms-control proposals (many of which, like the “double-zero” proposal, the Soviet Union under Gorbachev accepted), and the dramatic increase in U.S. defense

20 Andreas von Buelow, “Defensive Entanglement: An Alternative Strategy for NATO,” in Andrew J. Pierre, ed., The Conventional Defense of Europe: New Technologies and New Strategies (New York, 1986). 21 For a thorough discussion of both the technical and political aspects of the issue, see Ashton B. Carter and David N. Schwartz, eds., Ballistic Missile Defense (Washington, D.C., 1984).

spending had already alarmed European leaders and publics. They viewed the United States as reckless, and SDI confirmed their worst fears. It was a unilateral American proposal that could escalate the arms race, damage arms-control negotiations, leave the Europeans technologically behind and militarily exposed, and eliminate the mutual vulnerability on which stable deterrence was based.22

denouement Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union in 1985. In addition to his domestic campaigns to restructure the Soviet economy and open the political system to dissent, he moved quickly to improve relations with Western states, conclude arms-control agreements, and release Eastern Europe from Soviet domination. In 1986, the Stockholm Conference approved mandatory notification and observation of all military exercises in Western and Eastern Europe and on-site inspections of military sites; in 1987, the INF treaty eliminated all nuclear missiles with ranges from 500 to 5,000 miles, including the Soviet SS-20s and the forces NATO had deployed as part of the double-track decision to counter them; in 1988, Gorbachev made unilateral Soviet force reductions. The following year, elections were held in much of Eastern Europe, Hungary opened its border to allow East German emigration, and the Berlin Wall was peacefully breached to mark the end of the Cold War. Although NATO had survived nearly forty years when Gorbachev came to power, it had been struggling to reach consensus for the previous twenty, and debates over strategy had threatened to separate America from its European allies. The pace at which Gorbachev dismantled the Soviet threat to Western security saved NATO from the need to reach agreement on the two major issues that dominated strategic discourse in 1968–89: the extent to which limits 22

Steven K. Smith and Douglas A. Wertman, U.S.West European Relations During the Reagan Years (New York, 1992), 42.

NATO Strategy and the German-American Relationship

on NATO war fighting capabilities should be constrained by arms control, and the extent to which NATO should pursue d´etente. Had the Soviet leader moved more slowly, requiring choices by the West rather than predominantly

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accepting progress on Western terms, the disagreement between the United States and its European allies – especially Germany, which had the most to gain from Soviet initiatives in Europe – could have fractured the alliance.

chapter three

Differences on Arms Control in German-American Relations Matthias Dembinski Translated by Eric Weinberger

In the early 1960s, the close alignment of the Federal Republic of Germany’s foreign and security policy interests with the United States’ collapsed. With the development of the Soviet Union’s capacity for nuclear retaliation, the foundations of the Federal Republic’s security policy seemed to be at risk, and thus a rift in security and strategic interests opened between the Federal Republic and the United States. Arms-control policy was affected by this divergence and became an area of transatlantic conflict in the years that followed. For both sides, disagreement revolved around the nature of the Atlantic alliance as well as the meaning and extent of mutual obligations. Contrary to the oft-sketched picture of a Federal Republic fully integrated into the West and unaware of its own national interests, West Germany’s foreign policy elite confidently put forward its particular views. Although U.S.German differences frequently led to heated arguments, they never posed a serious threat to the existence of the alliance or its ability to act. Surprisingly, Germany often got its way. The reasons for this remain in dispute. One view holds that the United States regarded the Federal Republic not only as an important ally, but also as an indecisive partner who could easily succumb to Soviet pressure or fall for the French concept of a multipolar concert of powers. Special favors were thus needed to keep the Germans in line. Another explanation is that

the American political system is simply open to lobbying by other democracies. German-American disagreements on arms control were due partly to differing political views, but also partly to different underlying interests. From the German vantage point, it made sense to reduce one’s dependence and vulnerability by ensuring that German and American security were intertwined. The emphasis placed on the principles of forward defense, the threat of early use of nuclear weapons, and the deployment of long-range delivery systems in Germany was intended to convince the Soviet Union that any armed conflict on the German-German border could easily escalate into a nuclear war that would wreak universal destruction – that war, in short, was no longer a political option. America’s structural interests, by contrast, called for a strengthening of conventional forces as a means of creating alternatives to an early use of nuclear weapons as well as for the development of limited nuclear options that would not necessarily lead to geographical escalation. This dichotomy was the reason why the American intermediate-range missiles deployed in Europe came to occupy center stage in German-American arms-control disagreements. Structural differences of interest also hampered the development of a coordinated policy of d´etente. Major changes on the American side led, through complex alliance dynamics, to a shift in the German position. When the 140

Differences on Arms Control in German-American Relations

United States entered into a dialogue with the Soviet Union on d´etente and arms control in the 1960s, the conservative majority in the German foreign policy elite sensed that American-Soviet condominium was looming and shuddered to think that Washington might sacrifice German interests on the altar of arms control.1 At the beginning of the 1980s, when America switched to a more confrontational course, Germans began expressing fears of being drawn against their will into a military exchange between the superpowers. The differences in the positions taken by the two countries and the surprising shifts in their stances cannot be explained fully by their structural interests. This explanation is not entirely adequate because national interests are no longer defined by objective conditions in the nuclear age. The external world and the implications of the “nuclear revolution” have to be interpreted. Different worldviews developed on the two sides of the Atlantic that increasingly affected perceptions of structural interests. In the United States, for example, positions critical of d´etente and arms control gained the upper hand during Jimmy Carter’s presidency and seemed shortly afterward to find visible expression in the person of Ronald Reagan. In Germany, by contrast, attitudes favorable to d´etente and arms control had been gaining ground since 1969. They finally became dominant during the long years of Helmut Kohl’s chancellorship, when they were personified by Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. Germany became a confirmed non-nuclear power.2 It seems plausible to assume that these worldviews are still in effect today even though the East-West conflict is now over, and that they have a major influence on the way other conflicts are perceived and handled.

1 Kurt J. Lauk, Die nuklearen Optionen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Berlin 1979); Richard L¨owenthal, “Vom Kalten Krieg zur Ostpolitik,” in Richard L¨owenthal and Hans-Peter Schwarz, eds., Die zweite Republik: 25 Jahre Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Eine Bilanz (Stuttgart, 1974), 604–99. 2 Hanns Maull, “Zivilmacht Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” Europa Archiv 47 (1992): 603–10.

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controversy over accession to the non-proliferation treaty As the United States and the Soviet Union began in 1967 to draft a treaty reflecting their common interest in limiting the number of states with nuclear weapons, the reactions from German politicians ranged from skepticism to rejection. Convinced supporters of the NonProliferation Treaty (NPT) were hard to find. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the “Atlantic” faction of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), led by Defense Minister Gerhard Schr¨oder, approved of accession, but with reservations and without enthusiasm. The “Gaullists” in the CDU, led by Konrad Adenauer, and the Christian Social Union (CSU) came out firmly against the treaty. Brandishing slogans such as “Versailles on a cosmic scale” and drawing comparisons with Yalta and the Morgenthau Plan, Adenauer and CSU leader Franz Josef Strauss even went so far as to launch a campaign against German accession to the treaty.3 The agitation and extreme tone of the debate seem incomprehensible today, given that there was never any possibility of Germany possessing or sharing nuclear weapons and that discussions with the United States in 1968 took care of Germany’s major objections.4 A European nuclear weapons option was kept open, at least in a formal sense.5 The 3 Erwin H¨ackel, Die Bundesrepublik und der Atomwaffensperrvertrag (Bonn, 1989); Matthias K¨unzel, Bonn und die Bombe: Deutsche Atomwaffenpolitik von Adenauer bis Brandt (Frankfurt am Main, 1992); Helga Haftendorn, NATO and the Nuclear Revolution: A Crisis of Credibility, 1966–1967 (Oxford, 1996). 4 Wolfgang D. M¨uller, Geschichte der Kernenergie in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 4 vols. (Stuttgart, 1996), vol. 2: Auf der Suche nach dem Erfolg: Die Sechziger Jahre; see also the chapter by Erhard Forndran, vol. 1, Security. 5 According to a declaration that the Soviet Union noted without comment, “[The treaty] does not deal with the problem of European unity, and would bar no succession by a new federated European state to the nuclear status of one of its former components (of which the U.K. and France are nuclear powers).” Report by Secretary of State Rusk to President Johnson on the Non-Proliferation Treaty, July 2, 1968, in U.S.

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discriminatory distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear status was toned down by Article VI, which required the nuclear powers to engage in disarmament talks, as well as by the provision that the treaty would initially remain in force for only twenty-five years. Equally significant were the concessions Germany was able to negotiate to protect its atomic industry. Article IV asserted the inalienable right of the signatory parties to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, and the monitoring system chosen was based on controls of fissile material flows, a procedure developed at a nuclear research center in Karlsruhe that keeps disturbances to industrial processes to a minimum.6 The only explanation that can be given for the fundamental opposition of the conservatives in West Germany’s foreign policy elite to the NPT is that they regarded accession as tantamount to a double betrayal: a betrayal by their most important ally and a betrayal of their own principles and objectives. From Adenauer’s point of view, nuclear weapons were of paramount importance militarily and diplomatically. He thus considered the possession or nonpossession of nuclear weapons a decisive difference. His 1954 renunciation of nuclear weapons on West Germany’s behalf had by no means been offered voluntarily. Rather, he saw renunciation as a necessary evil, an inexorable prerequisite for shaking off the Occupation Statute. Once the statute had been repealed, his concern was to eliminate differences in power and status.7 For this reason, he insisted that renunciation was merely Arms Control and Disarment Agency, Documents on Disarmament 1968 (Washington, D.C., 1969), 477; Dieter Deiseroth, “Atomwaffenverzicht der Bundesrepublik: Reichweite und Grenzen der Kontrollsysteme,” Archiv des V¨olkerrechts 28 (1990): 123–6. 6 Lawrence Scheinman, The International Atomic Energy Agency and World Nuclear Order (Washington, D.C., 1987). 7 Hans-Peter Schwarz, “Adenauer und die Kernwaffen,” in Vierteljahreshefte f¨ur Zeitgeschichte 37 (1989): 567–93; see Hanns J¨urgen K¨usters, “Souver¨anit¨at und ABC-Waffen-Verzicht,” Vierteljahreshefte f¨ur Zeitgeschichte 42 (1994): 449–536. Adenauer claimed that at the Paris conference he had explicitly tied renunciation to the condition of circumstances remaining the way they were (rebus sic stantibus). Others disagree with

provisional, and subsequent German policy was directed at gaining the maximum integration of the German armed forces into NATO’s nuclear strategy.8 From this point of view, the NPT could not but come across as a diktat by the nuclear powers that would relegate Germany to second-class status for good. This vision was particularly disturbing to the German Gaullists, who from the outset had put little faith in the U.S. nuclear umbrella.9 The SPD and the Atlantic faction in the CDU attached less importance to nuclear weapons. In the 1950s, the SPD had been among the sponsors of the “Kampf dem Atomtod” (“Fight Nuclear Death”) campaign against atomic weapons, and its strong left-wing remained opposed to nuclear weapons. That made it easier for the CDU-SPD “Grand Coalition” under Kurt Georg Kiesinger to go along with the change of strategy initiated by the Kennedy administration.10

from indifference to leadership: west german nonproliferation policy in the 1970s and 1980s Although the controversy surrounding the NPT flared up once again during the ratification debate in 1973–4, with practically every CSU member of the German parliament voting against accession, the Federal Republic had already come to terms with the treaty well before this time. The feared disadvantages had failed to materialize. In fact, the treaty could be used to demonstrate to West Germany’s suspicious neighbors that the country’s extremely Adenauer’s version of what happened, but the sources available are not conclusive one way or the other. 8 Catherine McArdle Kelleher, Germany and the Politics of Nuclear Weapons (New York, 1975); Helga Haftendorn, Abr¨ustungs- und Entspannungspolitik zwischen Sicherheitsbefriedigung und Friedenssicherung: Zur Aussenpolitik der BRD 1955–1973 (D¨usseldorf, 1974). 9 Beatrice Heuser, NATO, Britain, France, and the FRG: Nuclear Strategies and Forces for Europe, 1949–2000 (Houndsmill, 1997). 10 Helmut Schmidt, Verteidigung oder Vergeltung (Stuttgart, 1961).

Differences on Arms Control in German-American Relations

ambitious nuclear plans were entirely nonmilitary. Nevertheless, Germany’s attitude toward the NPT and the principle of nonpossession remained ambivalent for some time. The Federal Republic made extensive use of the latitude incorporated in the treaty to assert its right to export nuclear equipment with minimum interference.11 The risk that the ability to build nuclear weapons might be spread by the export of civilian nuclear technology was scrupulously ignored. This behavior aroused increasing displeasure in the United States as, in response to India’s test explosion, the American government began to expand the nonproliferation regime and tighten up export controls after 1974. The planned delivery by Germany of a complete fuel cycle to Brazil, a country suspected of military nuclear ambitions, provoked particularly strong U.S. criticism. Bonn reluctantly yielded to America’s demands and promised in 1977 not to issue any more export permits for reprocessing technology until further notice. Controls on exports remained deficient, nevertheless. In addition, West Germany, in concert with its European partners, resisted American pressure to renounce the use of the bomb material plutonium in its nuclear industry and took exception to the demand that it should only permit nuclear exports to countries that had signed agreements on comprehensive safeguards with the Internatinal Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). A dramatic change in German nonproliferation policy began in the mid-1980s in response to export control scandals. Controls were tightened up once and for all, and Germany finally came around to endorsing the principle of comprehensive IAEA safeguards. This policy change culminated in the unanimous vote by the German Bundestag in 1995 in favor of permanent extension of the NPT. If there was very little support for renunciation of nuclear weapons in the Federal Republic in 1967–8, hardly anyone in today’s united Germany seems to question the idea, let alone oppose it. 11

Alexander Kelle, Deutsche NV- Politik in den 80er Jahren: Zwischen Regimezw¨angen und Wirtschaftsinteressen (M¨unster, 1992).

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Although Bonn sharply criticized the NPT for its discriminatory character and had insisted on disarmament by the nuclear powers, West Germany’s own security depended on the existence of the American nuclear deterrent. Faced with this dilemma, the Federal Republic of the 1970s and early 1980s tended to lean in favor of deterrence as if it had never demanded disarmament to end discrimination. When the superpowers negotiated the SALT treaties, the West German government focused its efforts on ensuring that arms control did not undermine deterrence. For this reason it was suspicious of any plans for a comprehensive test ban treaty.12 Thus, when four American leaders on the liberal end of the foreign policy spectrum recommended renouncing first use of nuclear weapons, they received an immediate response from four German security experts demanding retention of the threat.13 Not even this stance changed fundamentally until the second half of the 1980s.

the strategic arms limitation treaty (salt) No sooner had the high emotions in the German-American dispute over the NPT subsided than another argument broke out, this time over the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT, later known as SALT I). SALT I originated in an initiative undertaken by the Johnson administration. When the Soviet Union had achieved nuclear parity and the American modernization program (i.e., Minuteman and Polaris) was nearing completion, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara set his sights on a treaty to place a ceiling on strategic weapons. He sought to prevent the Soviet Union from taking 12 Wolfgang K¨otter and Harald M¨uller, Deutschland und die Kernwaffen: Die Nichtverbreitungspolitik der beiden deutschen Staaten und des vereinten Deutschlands (Frankfurt am Main, 1990), 27. 13 McGeorge Bundy et al., “Nuclear Weapons and the Atlantic Alliance,” Foreign Affairs 60 (1982): 753–68; Karl Kaiser et al., “Nuclear Weapons and the Preservation of Peace: A Response to an American Proposal for Renouncing the First Use of Nuclear Weapons,” Foreign Affairs 60 (1982): 1157–70.

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the lead and to ward off demands for potentially destabilizing antiballistic missiles (ABM). The Nixon administration took over where the previous administration had left off, but embedded its arms-control efforts in the broader context of the d´etente policy formulated by Henry Kissinger. This policy was designed to cushion the partial American disengagement from Southeast Asia and other parts of the world (i.e., the Nixon Doctrine).14 The conservative security policy elite in West Germany suspected the United States and the Soviet Union of colluding to erect a system that would enable them to exercise joint control of world affairs.15 It feared that the SALT negotiations might prove so interesting to Washington that they could lead to a nuclear bilateralism that would diminish the value of the Atlantic alliance to America.16 The social democratic– liberal government under Willy Brandt was less critical because American d´etente policy provided it with room for maneuver in its own efforts to bring about an easing of tensions. The alarm was sounded in Bonn, however, when the Soviet Union demanded inclusion of the so-called Forward Based Systems (FBS) – American nuclear weapons that could reach the USSR from Europe – into the negotiations.17 In the eyes of American arms experts, this was an entirely reasonable request, since it was possible that these weapon systems might increase the

14 Robert S. Litwak, D´etente and the Nixon Doctrine: American Foreign Policy and the Pursuit of Stability, 1969–1976 (Cambridge, Mass., 1984); Lawrence Kaplan, “NATO and the Nixon Doctrine: Ten Years Later,” Orbis 24 (1980): 149–66. 15 See Lothar R¨uhl, “Die Begrenzung der strategischen R¨ustung: SALT,” in Erhard Forndran and Paul J. Friedrichs, eds., R¨ustungskontrolle und Sicherheit in Europa (Bonn, 1979), 161–91. 16 “SALT is thus a key tool with which the superpowers stake out and structure their global condominium in the area of security,” writes Heinrich Buch, “Die Rolle der Bundesrepublik bei SALT: Mitspieler oder Zuschauer,” in Helga Haftendorn et al., eds., Verwaltete Aussenpolitik: Sicherheits- und entspannungspolitische Entscheidungsprozesse in Bonn (Cologne, 1978), 119. 17 John Newhouse, Cold Dawn: The Inside Story of SALT (New York, 1974), 175.

possibility of escalation in the event of a crisis.18 However, German strategy experts regarded the FBS as an essential feature of the whole architecture of deterrence precisely because of that possibility.19 Leading officers and politicians feared that NATO’s very raison d’ˆetre would be at stake were the FBS to be included in any arms control arrangements.20 German suspicions proved to be unfounded, at least at first. In 1971, after substantial progress had been made at the negotiating table, the Soviet Union withdrew its demand for inclusion of the FBS. Nevertheless, the question of American nuclear weapons in Europe remained a sensitive issue whenever arms control was discussed. When the SALT follow-up negotiations began on September 25, 1973, disagreements between Germany and America arose immediately, and until the Vladivostok agreement on a framework for SALT II was reached in November 1974, Bonn did all it could to prevent the FBS from being included in any accord. Later, the Federal Republic campaigned against the limitation of modern cruise missiles, which was being considered by liberal arms-control experts in the United States.

interlude: mbfr and the neutron bomb Even though the differences between German and American positions on SALT I can be explained in terms of the different underlying interests of the two countries, the consensus on arms and security policy was now in a state of dissolution on both sides of the Atlantic. In the years that followed, the lines were no longer 18 See Anthony Cordesman, “Deterrence in the 1980s, Part 1: American Strategic Forces and Extended Deterrence” (Adelphi Paper 175 [International Institute for Strategic Studies, London], 1982); Lothar R¨uhl, “The Gray Area Problem” (Adelphi Paper 141, 1978), 25–35. 19 Uwe Nerlich, “Westeuropa und die Entwicklung des amerikanisch-sowjetischen Bilateralismus,” Europa Archiv 20 (1972): 687–702. 20 Uwe Nerlich, “The Alliance and Europe, Part 5: Nuclear Weapons and East-West Negotiations” (Adelphi Paper 120, 1975–76), 10–11.

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drawn between Germany and America, but between conservatives and liberals within the two countries. A first potential area of conflict emerged in connection with the negotiations on Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions (MBFR), which involved conventional forces. A major sticking point was the implementation of the so-called Option III. This option, which the United States proposed to the Soviet Union in an effort to break the deadlock caused by disagreements in the data discussion, would have led to the removal of one thousand U.S. nuclear warheads in return for withdrawal of a Soviet tank division. In Germany, this idea was welcomed by the SPD-FDP government, but considered too risky by the conservative security establishment. Similar disagreements existed in the United States. If they did not break out into the open, it was because the Soviet Union failed to take advantage of the tactical opportunities presented in the negotiations by the proposal.21 A rift became clearly visible in the debate on the neutron bomb. In June 1977, American newspapers reported that the U.S. government was contemplating production of a recently developed high-radiation tactical nuclear warhead for deployment in Germany. President Jimmy Carter, by no means convinced of the need for the new weapon, was willing to give the go-ahead only if the German government publicly indicated it would agree to deployment. The SPD’s left wing, disappointed with the results of the arms-control negotiations, protested vigorously against the idea. And so Chancellor Helmut Schmidt suddenly found himself being pulled in opposite directions by his party and by Carter. In this situation, the SPD leadership decided to consent to deployment on the condition that it was preceded by arms-control efforts designed to render actual deployment unnecessary. Carter, interpreting this two-pronged response as a sign of German vacillation, deferred production just a few days before the NATO Council was due to come to a final decision on

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the issue. This surprising move caused considerable irritation in European capitals and ruined the personal relationship between Schmidt and Carter once and for all.22

start and sdi The context for German-American conflicts underwent a fundamental change when Ronald Reagan became president. As far as Washington was concerned, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had destroyed d´etente. Arms control remained up in the air ever since Carter had withdrawn the SALT II treaty from consideration by the Senate. A significant shift in American attitudes had already occurred long before the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. The strengthening of trade relations with the USSR that Kissinger had sought was prevented by the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment. Since the mid-1970s, groups like the Committee on the Present Danger – which disputed the Soviet Union’s ability to live in peace with other countries and denounced d´etente and arms control as a disastrous selfdeception – had been gaining in influence. They claimed that negotiations on nuclear arms control merely created a false sense of security in America, while the USSR was single-mindedly building up its forces with a view to exploiting its strategic superiority for political blackmail. With his references to the Soviet Union as the “evil empire” and his remarks on the possibility of waging and winning a nuclear war, President Reagan seemed to personify this paradigm shift in the American perception of security and arms control. Indeed, his administration decided to put arms control on the back burner and give priority to a comprehensive program of strategic modernization instead. The centerpiece of this program was the introduction of the MX missile, which was equipped with ten warheads. However, the question of how such a huge missile could be stationed securely had already

21

Lothar R¨uhl, “Probleme des Truppenabbaus in Europa,” in Klaus-Dieter Schwarz, ed., Sicherheitspolitik, 3d ed. (Bad Honnef, 1978), 287–314.

22 Thomas Risse-Kappen, Cooperation Among Democracies (Princeton, N.J., 1995), 187–8.

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baffled the Carter administration. One option much discussed by the Reagan government in 1981–2 envisaged keeping the MX in silos and defending these with antiballistic missiles. However, the plan was unanimously rejected by the U.S. military as technically dubious, financially burdensome, and disadvantageous in the arms race. In other words, the Soviet Union would have been able, at a lower cost, to compensate for any improvements in the American defense systems by investing in their offensive capabilities.23 Given this background, Reagan’s “Star Wars” speech of March 23, 1983, was all the more astonishing.24 He described a defense system based in space that would protect the United States from a ballistic missile attack. It would thus be possible – so Reagan hoped – to render nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete” and to end the system of mutual deterrence by means of technical innovation and against the will of the Soviet Union. This time, although the generals discreetly refrained from public criticism of the president, leading scientists were quick to point out that if the protection of a handful of missile sites did not even seem feasible, the defense of the whole continent could never be assured.25 In retrospect Reagan’s SDI plan does seem pure fantasy even though, ironically, it did have some effect politically. The Soviet leadership, in a good socialist spirit, was deluded by a naive belief in technological progress and vastly overestimated the potential of such a defense system. Some German politicians reacted with reserve, others were openly critical of Reagan’s

23

U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations, MX Missile Basing Mode Alternatives, Hearings, 97th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C., 1981); U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, Strategic Force Modernization Programs, Hearings, 97th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C., 1981). 24 “Address to the Nation on Defense and National Security,” Mar. 23, 1983, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan, 1983 (Washington, D.C., 1984), 1:437–43. 25 “Science and Technology of Directed Energy Weapons: Report of the American Physical Society Study Group,” Reviews of Modern Physics 59, no. 3, pt. II (1987).

aggressive rhetoric and his shifting of the center of gravity of security policy. To what extent Reagan actually influenced the Moscow leadership’s assessment of risk remains an open question. In any event, NATO’s decision to deploy more sophisticated intermediate-range missiles in Europe26 and America’s repudiation of d´etente had the combined effect of giving impetus to the nascent peace movement in Germany and making it a politically relevant mass phenomenon. The government in Bonn became a resolute champion for continuing d´etente and arms control. The SDI speech served to deepen the rift between the United States and the Federal Republic. Not only Germany’s security policy elite, but even government spokespeople reacted disapprovingly to Reagan’s proposal.27 It was not until it became apparent – with the founding of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) – that SDI was going to be a long-term, generously funded program, that the German government made a tactical about-face. In 1986, Bonn entered into a framework agreement to maximize the participation of German scientists and companies in the SDI program. At the same time, it sought to maintain alliance strategy and to keep Reagan’s project fenced in by arms-control considerations.

arms control as a focus of transatlantic discord: past developments and present outlook President Reagan quickly returned to d´etente after 1984, albeit a redefined d´etente, and resumed the arms-control dialogue. Nonetheless, Americans became convinced that their country had succeeded in inducing the Soviet Union 26

See the particle by Michael Broer in this section. See, for example, the criticism expressed by Minister of Defense Manfred W¨orner, to the effect that the change in strategy threatened by SDI would jeopardize the cohesion of NATO and could turn the organization into a two-class alliance: S¨uddeutsche Zeitung, Mar. 29, 1984. For a summary of the reactions, see Bernd W. Kubbig, ed., Die milit¨arische Eroberung des Weltraums, 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1990). 27

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to exercise moderation and accept compromises by negotiating from a position of strength. Military might seemed to have proved its worth in the nuclear age. The German foreign policy elite, and the German public at large drew other conclusions. The social democratic–liberal coalition government had already taken the view that d´etente and arms control were a necessary counterpart to deterrence but, by the 1980s, a majority of Germans went even further and argued in favor of nuclear disarmament and a purely defensive use of military force. The transfer of power from the social democratic–liberal to the Christianliberal coalition did not slow down this change of attitude. To the contrary: While the German position up to the mid-1980s could be interpreted as a reaction to the confrontational policy of the United States and explained in terms of Germany’s underlying structures, two later decisions marked a fundamental shift in German political orientation. In 1987, West Germany voted against the proposed modernization of short-range missiles that the traditional interpretation of the country’s structural interests would have recommended and conservative security experts categorically demanded.28 In 1995, virtually all political groups came out in favor of the permanent extension of the NPT even though America’s commitment to long-term involvement in European security had by this time become more of an open question than ever, now that the East-West conflict was over. These decisions reflect a radical change in German political debate. Policymakers and members of the general public alike have 28

Matthias Dembinski et al., No End to Modernization? Short-Range Missile “Modernization” and the Deficiencies in the NATO Security Debate, Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, Report 6–7 (1989).

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attached less and less importance to the possession of nuclear weapons. They have also come out against giving Germany partial control of such weapons and have developed an increasingly critical attitude toward nuclear deterrence.29 Strong neutral and antinuclear attitudes have existed on the left since the 1950s; the resurgence of the German peace movement in response to the crisis of d´etente can thus hardly be considered surprising.30 What is amazing, rather, is the fact that the political center has also embraced the new antinuclear consensus. The process of evolution received its initial impetus from the NPT, which barred the way to the positions of Adenauer and Strauss. And it received a solid theoretical foundation in the form of specialized knowledge on arms control accumulated in the 1970s at universities and research institutes in response to and parallel with d´etente. The result was that the traditional, more conservative security policy elite gradually lost its hold on public opinion. The policy of abstaining from nuclear weapons became generally accepted both because it was proving successful and because freedom from such weapons offered a new source of identity for Germans. Abstention from nuclear weapons became part of and reinforced a new self-image in which Germans took pride in their country’s economic success, its diplomatic influence, and its role as an arbitrator in conflicts.

29

By 1989, fewer than 20 percent of Germans thought that atomic weapons were absolutely necessary for deterrence and thus needed to remain deployed in Germany. See Josef Joffe, “Felsen im Meinungsfluss,” in the S¨uddeutsche Zeitung, Feb. 28, 1989, 6. 30 Ulrike C. Wasmuht, Friedensbewegungen der 80er Jahre (Giessen, 1987); see also the chapter by Carl Lankowski, vol. 2, Society.

chapter four

The NATO Double-Track Decision, the INF Treaty, and the SNF Controversy German-American Relations between Consensus and Conflict Michael Broer Translated by Richard Sharp the u.s. nuclear protection guarantee for the federal republic: the tension between common and divergent interests

exchange.1 Limiting the scope of nuclear warfare resulted in making German territory the main nuclear battleground, which unavoidably raised the threat for America’s nuclear protectorate. The geostrategic context and the dilemma of having to shift the risk in nuclear deterrence to Europe and the Federal Republic’s detriment created an area of conflict between shared and divergent interests. The changing constellation of German and American interests shaped the two countries’ policies on intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF).

The United States’ nuclear protection guarantee for the Federal Republic of Germany served the interests of both sides throughout the East-West conflict. Because of the limitations on its sovereignty and its military, the Federal Republic was dependent on collective defense through the alliance and on the U.S. nuclear shield. Western Germany was the geostrategic key to the United States’ strategic interest in preventing Europe’s domination by the Soviet Union, the new hostile superpower. Protecting West Germany was thus a strategic American interest. It was increasingly difficult, however, for the United States to give credibility to this strategic imperative – to include the Federal Republic within its deterrent – as a consequence of Soviet arms competition. If the threat to use nuclear weapons in defense of an ally is to be effective, a nation must itself be prepared to be a target of nuclear attack. The credibility of the threat of American retaliation suffered when the United States became vulnerable in the late 1950s. To counteract doubts after the introduction of flexible response strategy, the United States not only had to strengthen Europe’s conventional defenses, but also needed the possibility of a nuclear response that would not lead automatically to escalation and thus to a U.S.-Soviet nuclear

the nato double-track decision: a viable response to a complex problem of political and military strategy At a special joint meeting in Brussels on December 12, 1979, the foreign and defense ministers of NATO’s member states adopted a resolution “to modernize NATO’s LRTNF [Long-Range Theater Nuclear Forces] by the deployment in Europe of U.S. ground-launched systems.”2 The aim was to boost the credibility 1

See the chapter by Kori Schake, vol. 1, Security, and Ivo H. Daalder, The Nature and Practice of Flexible Response: NATO Strategy and Theater Nuclear Forces Since 1967 (New York, 1991). 2 NATO Ministerial Communiqu´e of the Special Meeting of Foreign and Defence Ministers in Brussels on Dec. 12, 1979, www.nato.int/docu/comm/49– 95/c791212a.htm, no. 7. See also James A. Thomson,

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of deterrence and to strengthen NATO’s own defense capability in response to the Soviet arms buildup. To this end, 108 Pershing II missiles and 464 ground-launched cruise missiles were to be deployed. The double-track decision also envisioned that the United States would propose negotiations to the Soviet Union on the limitation of intermediate-range weapons in Europe based on equal ceilings and equal rights. Contrary to the widespread impression created by the public debate, the deployment of new intermediate-range weapons in Europe was not solely a response to the deployment of the Soviet SS-20 missiles. The decision could be traced back to a number of parallel developments that took effect simultaneously in December 1979. First, deployment of longer-range nuclear missiles was seen as a way to modernize the nuclear weapons in Europe and thereby bring Western nuclear capabilities into line with the new principles of engagement. The ideas developed by Europeans and Americans jointly in the Nuclear Planning Group were more closely focused on the political signals sent by strike options than before. The new options were militarily more effective, more limited in damage they caused, and wider ranging. The political objective was to end a war with a reestablished deterrent. The structure, scope, and justification of the nuclear weapons stationed in Europe were increasingly ill-suited to these requirements. The purpose of INF modernization was to reduce these shortcomings. Second, with the deployment of longer-range missiles, important principles of German nuclear weapons policy were realized. That, in turn, resulted in a significant convergence between German and American preferences in nuclear strategy. The Federal Republic contributed two essential principles in particular to alliance

discussions on modernization, principles that reflected German nuclear strategy interests. One was that modernization of nuclear weapons in Europe would not to lead to any increase in the number of short-range nuclear battleground options. The other was that the credibility of the deterrent also required, in the German view, the maximum possible range of options and, in particular, longer-range options and weapons that could also strike against Soviet territory.3 Until the INF decision, the United States had been more inclined than the Federal Republic to see the role of nuclear weapons in Europe in terms of militarily effective options and to see geographical limitations as a means of curbing escalation (that is, using shorter-range systems at the lowest possible level of escalation). The Germans, on the other hand, saw deployment of nuclear forces in Europe primarily as an instrument for linking U.S. strategic nuclear weapons to European security. Accordingly, the actual purpose of nuclear weapons, from the German point of view, lay not so much in providing militarily effective options as in creating a deterrent to an escalation at the strategic systems level. Long-range systems that could also strike at Soviet territory were much better suited for countering the one-sided geographical limitation of the nuclear battleground to Germany and for establishing the credibility of the deterrent by linking it to the U.S. strategic systems. The readiness of the United States to expand the escalation spectrum in Europe was an important change in the American nuclear presence and reflected a very important rapprochement between American nuclear strategy and German strategic ideas.4 Third, the NATO double-track decision also served as a response to European calls for confirmation of the American guarantee of protection. The Europeans had increasing

“The LRTNF Decision: Evolution of US Theatre Nuclear Policy, 1975–9,” International Affairs 60 (1984): 601–14; Thomas Risse-Kappen, The Zero Option: INF, West Germany, and Arms Control (Boulder, Colo., 1988). Long-Range Theater Nuclear Forces (LRTNF) means longer-range nuclear forces in Europe, now commonly referred to as intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF).

3 Lothar R¨uhl, Mittelstreckenwaffen in Europa: Ihre Bedeutung in Strategie, R¨ustungskontrolle und B¨undnispolitik (Baden-Baden, 1987), 158–9. 4 Michael Broer, Die nuklearen Kurzstreckenwaffen in Europa: Eine Analyse des deutsch-amerikanischen Streits u¨ ber die Einbeziehung der SRINF in den INF-Vertrag und der SNF-Kontroverse (Frankfurt am Main, 1993), 53–8.

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doubts about the credibility of the American nuclear guarantee because the balance of power changed at various levels during the 1970s. When the Soviet Union increased its nuclear capabilities by deploying the SS-20, a long-range intermediate weapon not covered by the negotiations on strategic systems (i.e., Strategic Arms Limitation Talks or SALT), Chancellor Helmut Schmidt sounded a warning note. In a speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in October 1977, he expressed the fear that the new strategic imbalance in Europe – combined with simultaneous strategic parity – would lead to a decoupling of Europe from the United States. Because the strategic nuclear potentials of the United States and USSR would be neutralized by the provisions for parity in the SALT II Treaty, the disparities in tactical nuclear and conventional weapons would become more significant. Without declaring himself in favor of the deployment of new nuclear weapons, Schmidt invited his audience “to draw the necessary practical conclusions” from the reciprocal relationship between different armaments sectors.5 Because there was little realistic chance of either negotiating a reduction of the Soviet Union’s superiority in conventional arms or of including the Soviet intermediate-range missiles in the SALT process until the United States had comparable systems, deployment of U.S. intermediate-range missiles quickly became the strategic and political imperative in the alliance’s discussions. The deployment of long-range nuclear systems that could threaten Soviet territory was intended to produce deterrent more visible to the Soviet Union and, at the same time, to emphasize the reliability of the American nuclear shield to America’s allies. Fourth, INF modernization was intended to send a signal to the Soviet leadership: The West was no longer prepared to accept Moscow’s

5

Helmut Schmidt, “The 1977 Alastair Buchan Memorial Lecture, International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, Oct. 28, 1977,” Survival 20 (1978), 2–10. See also Helga Haftendorn, “Das doppelte Missverst¨andnis: Zur Vorgeschichte des NATO Doppelbeschlusses von 1979,” Vierteljahrshefte f¨ur Zeitgeschichte 33 (1985): 244–87.

exploitation of d´etente to expand its one-sided advantages – to build upon its superiority in conventional forces, for example, or to improve its nuclear capabilities in Europe with the SS20 – in order to undermine NATO’s credibility. Negotiation of a link between “a modernization decision, including a commitment to deployments” and the offer “to achieve a more stable overall nuclear balance at lower levels of nuclear weapons” through arms control and based on equal ceilings would, it was hoped, sway the Soviet leadership to change its foreign and security policy.6 This objective received little attention in the debate on INF deployment. Nearly ten years would pass before the dialectic between defense capability and d´etente envisioned in the Harmel Report produced its full effect with Mikhail Gorbachev’s moves to realign Soviet foreign and security policy. In retrospect, this was by far the most important and, ultimately, the most successful objective of the double-track decision. Both parts of the double-track decision, deliberately designed as “parallel and complementary approaches,”7 served to further these four complex objectives. The linkage between military planning and arms control reflected the fact that the deployment was necessary to modernize nuclear weapons in Europe in accordance with the changed military-strategic circumstances, to strengthen the deterrent, in both European and Soviet eyes, and to lay the groundwork for serious INF negotiations. the zero option: the end of complementarity between modernization and arms control The complex logic of the INF decision and the agreement reached between Bonn and Washington on nuclear strategy did not survive for long. In the first half of the 1980s, the United States’ unilateralism in arms-control policy under Ronald Reagan undermined the connection between modernization and arms control, 6 7

NATO Ministerial Communiqu´e, nos. 11 and 9. Ibid., no. 11.

The NATO Double-Track Decision, the INF Treaty, and the SNF Controversy

and widened the gap between German and American interests. Leading members of the Reagan administration were not convinced by the military and strategic logic of INF modernization. They did not back the objective, which Bonn had played an essential part in formulating, of increasing deterrence with accurate nuclear weapons in Europe that would cause limited damage and could also target the territory of the Soviet Union. They preferred a looser strategic link and regarded the deployment of new nuclear weapons as superfluous. In fact, they saw deployment exclusively as “rearmament” to counter the Soviet SS-20s. Their arms policy did not take into account that the INF decision saw modernization and arms control as complementary, not as substitutes for one another. In any case, most members of the Reagan administration were not really interested in seriously pursuing the arms-control aspect of the decision. Reagan had been elected partly with the objective of restoring U.S. strength vis-`a-vis the Soviet Union. He wanted to negotiate, after comprehensive rearmament, only from a position of strength. In spring 1981, the European allies (especially West Germany) and the State Department persuaded Reagan, with great difficulty, to negotiate. The State Department and the Department of Defense thereupon fought a bitter battle over the U.S. negotiating position that lasted until the negotiations began in November 1981.8 Although the State Department was prepared to support a zero option as an opening to negotiations, it also assumed that it would only be possible to agree on equal ceilings. This was in line with the complementary approach of the double-track decision, since an agreement on upper limits would make it possible to achieve both equilibrium in intermediate-range forces and their modernization. However, the declared opponents of arms control in the Department of Defense carried the day: They proposed the elimination of all Soviet and American intermediate-range mis8

Strobe Talbott, Deadly Gambits: The Reagan Administration and the Stalemate in Nuclear Arms Control (New York, 1984).

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siles as an opening position and as the only goal of the negotiations, correctly assuming that this would torpedo the INF negotiations from the outset. The Reagan administration, too, had abandoned the complementarity of deployment (and hence modernization) and arms control after Helmut Schmidt had already secured the support of the SPD for the double-track decision only by offering the prospect of a zero option. Both sides had thus decided that modernization, originally regarded as an unconditional necessity, was optional and changed their thinking: Arms control now took precedence over modernization, reversing the priorities of the INF resolution.

the inf treaty and disregard for german interests The INF negotiations, interrupted from time to time after deployment began, brought no rapprochement until January 1986. At that point, Gorbachev was in principle prepared to dismantle the already deployed SS-20s, and Reagan, contending with an unfavorable budgetary and economic situation and some setbacks in foreign policy, wanted to conclude an arms-control agreement at all costs in his second term of office. In the decisive phase of the INF negotiations, the inclusion of short-range intermediate nuclear forces (SRINF) in the treaty was a point of contention between Bonn and Washington. Washington had since the start of negotiations demanded additional “collateral restrictions” on SRINF (with a bottom range limit of 500 km); the Americans wanted to prevent a circumvention of the rules on long-range intermediate forces, but did not want the INF treaty to include a definitive settlement on these weapons. The West German government, too, was eager to prevent new imbalances from arising in unregulated areas. Bonn’s greatest concern was the limited range of the remaining nuclear weapons, which would pose a particular threat to the Federal Republic. The West German government would have preferred the

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INF Treaty to contain a definitive settlement for all weapons systems with a range greater than 150 km, but it was unable to achieve this. Therefore, when an interim agreement on the elimination of long-range intermediate-range nuclear forces (LRINF; 1,800–5,500 km) seemed likely in September 1986, Bonn supported a zero option for LRINF in principle. However, it made that support conditional on the inclusion in the INF interim agreement of a firm commitment to an immediate resumption of negotiations aimed at reducing shorter-range systems (150–500 km) to the lowest possible common ceiling. This clause on further negotiation did form part of the American negotiating position. But the United States – which had no interest in negotiations on short-range nuclear weapons – tied it only to SRINF with ranges in excess of 500 km. Gorbachev proposed a second zero option in March–April 1987 for systems with ranges of between 500 and 1,800 km that was very much in Soviet interests. A second zero option for SRINF also served U.S. interests better than the collateral restrictions and equal ceilings that had been called for. Because deployment of new nuclear weapons of that range in the Federal Republic was politically impossible, equal ceilings would have actually made Soviet superiority permanent. Rejecting Gorbachev’s proposal to address Bonn’s misgivings might have made it impossible to conclude an INF agreement before the end of Reagan’s presidency. Securing an agreement was, however, the president’s most important foreign policy aim in spring 1987. In agreeing to the second zero option, the United States assumed that the West German government’s demand for further negotiations would become redundant. This assumption failed to take into account the fact that Bonn had also wanted systems with ranges below 500 km to be included. Washington also expected that the remaining systems would be modernized under the resolution adopted by the Nuclear Planning Group at Montebello in 1983. These two assumptions were blatantly at odds with the interests of the West German government and later led to disagreement over short-range nuclear weapons.

Although the West German government had an interest in an INF agreement, and although Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher agreed to it quickly and unreservedly, as did Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the CDU/ CSU after considerable hesitation and resistance, the treaty as negotiated ran counter to a number of important German interests. The zero option for LRINF had reversed the military strategic objective of modernization (i.e., limited, selective options capable of reaching the territory of the Soviet Union), which amounted to a reversal of the whole of nuclear strategy as it had evolved. The second zero option for SRINF (with ranges between 500 and 1,800 km) was even less in accord with German interests because it did not include weapons with ranges below 500 km. The Soviet Union enjoyed great superiority in this range. In addition, it resulted in a concentration of the threat on German territory. Bonn had argued vigorously but in vain for the inclusion of SRINF with ranges below 500 km. It proposed collateral measures as a first step to be followed by a reduction of the lower range limit to 150 km and, finally, follow-up negotiations on SRINF in the range from 150 to 500 km. The Reagan administration simply ignored Bonn’s repeatedly stated interests.

the snf controversy: seizing the opportunity to shape policy on eastern europe The effects of the INF treaty further widened the gap between German and American interests and led, as a direct consequence of the treaty, to a fight over the modernization of short-range nuclear forces (SNF) and the opening of SNF negotiations. This disagreement came to a head in early 1989, before the late May NATO summit in Brussels and caused a dramatic crisis in German-American relations.9 The elimination of the LRINF amounted to a reversal of the nuclear strategy. It canceled 9 For details, see Broer, Die nuklearen Kurzstreckenwaffen, 209–98.

The NATO Double-Track Decision, the INF Treaty, and the SNF Controversy

out the alignment between deployment plans and weapons disposition that that would have been brought about through the INF modernization and development of the “General Political Guidelines” for the deployment of nuclear forces. If the strategy of flexible response and the plans for a calculated nuclear escalation were to be credibly implemented, nuclear weapons with ranges below 500 km, which were not covered by the INF treaty, had to be modernized. The United States, supported by Britain, therefore called for implementation of the modernization measures agreed upon in 1983 at Montebello under entirely different strategic and political conditions. The United States gave notice of an impending decision by NATO to modernize the obsolete Lance systems by introducing a follow-up model (follow-on-to-Lance or FOTL) to exploit in full the range below the INF Treaty. At the same time, concerned about a progressive denuclearization, Washington categorically rejected SNF negotiations. From the standpoint of the West German government, the strategic and political conditions governing the Montebello resolution had changed once the United States insisted on the second zero option with a lower range limit of 500 km, contrary to Bonn’s explicit request that systems between 150 and 500 km also be included in arms-control policy. Instead of modernization, Bonn called for the elimination of these weapons systems through SNF negotiations. Shortly before the NATO summit, Washington seemed willing to accept a vaguely worded agreement from Bonn on the FOTL issue. Bonn would consent to modernization, but the type and number of weapons to be deployed was to be left undecided. In return, the West German government would stop pressing for SNF negotiations. The disagreement over Lance modernization was thus to be temporarily set aside. Instead, the dispute between Bonn and Washington became far more acute. Genscher was unwilling to jeopardize equilibrium with the Soviet Union and thus pushed the West German government into confrontation with the United States. Kohl was prepared to accept

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the compromise. Genscher, however, rejected any compromise and followed up at once with a call for the immediate opening of SNF negotiations when the United States showed itself willing to forego a decision on FOTL. After strenuous debates within the governing coalition, Genscher had his more extensive demand accepted as the West German government’s position. Washington and London were disconcerted by the uncompromising demand for an early start to SNF negotiations. Genscher was determined not to jeopardize West Germany’s constructive dialogue with Gorbachev by sending a wrong signal about the FOTL decision, even at the price of open conflict with the United States at the NATO summit. He wanted the United States to open follow-up SNF negotiations as soon as possible to determine the prospects for an elimination of the particular threat to Germany. By arguing over these two issues, Genscher was challenging President Bush’s measured and cautious policy toward the Soviet Union. That policy, defined at the start of Bush’s presidency as “containment plus” and “status quo plus,” ran the risk, in Genscher’s view, of missing the opportunity for change in Europe. Resolving these questions became possible when Bush moved closer to Genscher’s policy line on the East bloc, seen as an opportunity for fundamental change, and proposed to expedite negotiations on conventional forces in Europe (CFE). Unlike Genscher, the Americans had not initially expected any radical reduction of the Soviet conventional superiority that would make maintenance of effective nuclear forces in Europe superfluous. But while visiting Moscow in May 1989, Secretary of State James A. Baker became convinced that the Kremlin was genuinely prepared to sign a treaty agreeing on a comprehensive reduction in conventional forces. The new Soviet CFE proposals Gorbachev put forward corresponded in all essential points to NATO’s negotiating position. Bush, more confident there might be a chance for structural change, abandoned his hesitant wait-and-see policy toward the Soviet Union and resolutely seized the leading role in directing the course of East-West relations.

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At the NATO summit in late May 1989, Bush put forward far-reaching disarmament proposals and called on both alliances to accelerate the CFE negotiations and conclude an agreement within a year. This initiative successfully resolved the SNF dispute. The prospect of a CFE agreement within six to twelve months was compatible both with the German foreign minister’s call for early SNF negotiations and with the American view that negotiations on such weapons could not begin until the Soviet Union’s conventional superiority had been reduced. The German-American dispute over the decision to introduce the FOTL and the conditions and timing for SNF negotiations had a political significance that extended far beyond the concrete matters at issue. The SNF controversy reflected sharp differences of opinion between Bonn and Washington on the role of nuclear forces in a changing Europe; on the relationship between arms control, planning around armed forces, and security (or grand strategy); on the reliability of the Federal Republic and its position in the alliance; and, above all, on policy toward the Eastern bloc. The SNF controversy was ultimately a dispute about the priorities set out in the Harmel formula, about whether d´etente or security should take precedence. The settlement of the German-American dispute over short-range nuclear weapons provided an important boost to the process of ending the Cold War. In the course of the dispute, the Bush administration moved closer to the Federal Republic’s standpoint in its policy toward the Soviet Union and was prepared to act more resolutely and boldly in seizing the opportunity to influence the course of change in Europe.

the 1980s was marked by shared interests and objectives, but also by differences that from time to time strained relations between the two countries considerably. But the successful efforts to limit differences of opinion and the shared objective of reinforcing the security of the West – and thereby establishing a precondition for shift in Soviet foreign policy – meant that the deployment of new nuclear weapons decided upon in 1979 and the INF policy as a whole became a major success for the Western alliance, the United States, and the Federal Republic of Germany. First, the deployment of new intermediate-range weapons, carried out in 1983 against strong political resistance from the Soviet Union and domestic opponents, achieved the intended effects of increasing security for the West and strengthening European confidence in the American nuclear guarantee. Second, the deployment of new nuclear weapons brought about a change in the attitude of the Soviet leadership. The Soviets rejected the offer to negotiate contained in the double-track decision in the early 1980s – despite the threat of deployment – because they occasionally had reason to hope that protests in the Federal Republic would obstruct NATO’s armament efforts. But Gorbachev and others have since testified that the determination of the West to safeguard its security (as evidenced by the deployment) and the expectation of relapsing into a more acute phase of the arms race (thereby torpedoing the prospects of affordable modernization) brought about a change of opinion in Moscow.10 The successful INF policy can today be seen as an important factor in triggering the reorientation of Soviet foreign and security policy and thus the collapse of communism in Europe.

inf and the collapse of communism in europe 10

Cooperation on nuclear policy between the Federal Republic and the United States during

Wjatscheslaw Daschitschew, “Wie das Umdenken in der sowjetischen Aussenpolitik begann,” Osteuropa 43 (1993): 480–90.

chapter five

The Shifting Military Balance in Central Europe Frederick Zilian Jr.

The period 1968–90 began with several political and military events that were significant for the balance of forces in Central Europe and for American-German relations. In November 1968 Richard Nixon was elected president of the United States. Under his administration, American policy returned to a more European focus. The following year in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Social Democrats began a thirteen-year tenure. Most important, the entire nuclear strategic environment changed when the Soviet Union attained nuclear parity with the United States somewhere between 1968 and the early 1970s.1 From this time on the touchstone of the American-German security relationship was the vitality of the U.S. security guarantee to Germany’s defense, including the seamless connection of the U.S. strategic nuclear force to the other forces defending Germany – something for which the Germans wanted continuous reassurance.2 For the better part of the next two decades, Central Europe witnessed increased nuclear and conventional militarization on both sides of the inter-German border.

The lines previously drawn between “strategic” and “theater” forces grew increasingly blurred, complicating any assessment of the balance of forces. The relations between the United States and Germany had two distinct phases in this period that were separated by the arrival of conservative governments in both countries in the early 1980s. Ronald Reagan was elected president in November 1980, and in Germany Helmut Kohl assumed the chancellorship in October 1982. Whereas the former period was characterized by America’s entanglement in Vietnam at the expense of Europe,3 a drift by the United States away from a Eurocentric strategic focus, and often chilly relations between the two countries, the latter period generally saw more compatible visions and more coordinated policy. the central region By the late 1960s the central region was defined by NATO as following roughly the eastern border of the Federal Republic of Germany, some 885 kilometers. The majority of the region was protected by Allied Forces Central Europe (AFCENT), one of three major regional commands of Allied Command Europe, the initial military organization of the alliance established in 1951. AFCENT, commanded by a German general, had two subordinate commands. The

1 John Erickson considers 1968 the year in which the Soviets achieved rough ICBM nuclear parity. Soviet Military Power (London, 1971), 44; David M. Glantz asserts that strategic nuclear parity was achieved in the 1970s. See David M. Glantz, The Military Strategy of the Soviet Union: A History (London, 1992), 198. 2 On the concept of “reassurance,” see Michael Howard, “Reassurance and Deterrence: Western Defense for the 1980s,” Foreign Affairs 61 (1982–83): 309– 43.

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See the chapter by T. Michael Ruddy in this section.

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Allied Forces Northern Europe Allied Forces Central Europe I Dutch Corps I West German Corps

Berlin

I British Corps Northern Army Group

I Belgian Corps

III West German Corps

Bonn Central Army Group

V United States Corps

Prague

VII United States Corps

II West German Corps

Figure 1. Corps Sectors of Military Responsibility on NATO’s Central Front. Sources: Congressional Budget Office, U.S. Ground Forces: Design and Cost Alternatives for NATO and Non-NATO Contingencies, prepared by Pat Hillier and Nora Slatkin (CBO, 1980), p. 11; and Aviation Week and Space Technology, June 7, 1982, p. 57.

Northern Army Group, commanded by a British general, included eleven divisions comprising four corps: British, Belgian, Dutch, and West German. The second, the Central Army Group, commanded by an American general, also included four corps: two American and two German. The two American corps were located along the major avenues of approach from the East toward Frankfurt and Nuremberg. The thirteen and two-thirds divisions in AFCENT in the early 1970s included two French divisions and the equivalent of one-third of a Canadian division, both in reserve positions. Thus, the active forces of six allied states were stationed on West German soil, five deployed on the border in a “layer-cake defense”4 (see Figure 1). 4

Richard D. Lawrence and Jeffrey Record, U.S. Force Structure in NATO: An Alternative (Washington, D.C., 1974), 27–8; William P. Mako, U.S. Ground Forces and

the intractable problem of assessing the military balance Throughout the time period but especially in the 1980s, Western analysts wrestled with the many quantitative and qualitative aspects of the military balance in the central region. As indicated by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in 1974, “the military balance inherently resists analysis.” Any compressed comparison of numbers did not allow for the “dynamic conditions of conflict.”5 Beyond the obvious indices of tangible military power, including military manpower, formations (principally divisions), conventional

the Defense of Central Europe (Washington, D.C., 1983), 31–5. 5 International Institute for Strategic Studies (hereafter IISS), Strategic Survey, 1975 (London, 1974), 62.

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and nuclear weapons systems, and aircraft, a comprehensive analysis had to embrace numerous less tangible political, economic, and military factors relevant to one or both alliances. These factors included the following: warning time; the political will of the NATO alliance; the speed and efficiency of mobilization and reinforcement; the political reliability of the Soviets’ East European allies; the full availability of American forces to counter a Warsaw Pact attack; the commitment of French forces (in 1966 France withdrew its forces from NATO’s integrated military structure); the quality of the weapons systems and equipment; the relative flexibility of the Warsaw Pact’s logistical systems; the technical competence and initiative of the military personnel, especially officers and pilots; the lack of depth in the central area; the standardized equipment enjoyed by the Pact but not by NATO; and the shortage of spare parts and ammunition in some NATO countries.6 For the NATO alliance, reinforcement was a pivotal factor. Reinforcements from the United States had to travel 6,000 km, whereas those from the western borders of the USSR had to travel a mere 650.7 Another factor was the differing and in some cases fluctuating manpower and mat´eriel of Western and Pact divisions. For example, in 1964 a Soviet motorized rifle division had 11,000 men, a U.S. infantry or tank division had 16,000; a German division also had about 16,000. In 1974 a Soviet mechanized division had 12,000 men, an American 16,300, and a German 15,500. In 1980 a Soviet mechanized division had 14,000 men with 226 tanks, an American 18,500 with 216, and a German 17,500 with 250.8 Furthermore, it is doubtful that any meaningful, comprehensive analysis could be accom-

plished by looking at the central front in isolation from the strategic context because “strategic” weapons could be employed in a theater role. This applied especially to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), but also intermediaterange ballistic missiles (IRBMs, range of up to 5,000 km), long-range bombers, and cruise missiles (range of 2,500 km).9 The relentless buildup of Soviet military conventional and nuclear power for all but the last few years of the period placed a high premium on authoritative analysis of the military balance. However, the complicated nature of assessing it invited much disagreement. Military and civilian leaders and specialists ranged from the optimistic to the pessimistic in their views on the conventional balance. An example of the latter was provided by General Bernard Rogers, the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, in 1982: “Alliance conventional capabilities today are clearly inadequate to meet the growing Warsaw Pact conventional threat. NATO’s continuing failure to fulfill its conventional needs means that we now must depend upon the use of theater nuclear weapons to accomplish our missions of deterrence and defense.”10

the evolving military balance By the mid-1970s the military balance in the central region reflected the many large quantitative advantages that the Warsaw Pact, especially the Soviet Union, had won through its persistent efforts to multiply its conventional capabilities while striving to redress the NATO advantage in tactical nuclear weapons. In the central and northern regions NATO had twenty-five combat divisions (armored, 9

6

IISS, The Military Balance, 1974–1975 (London, 1975), 95–7; Thomas F. Wolfe, Soviet Power and Europe, 1945–1970 (Baltimore, 1970), 170–2; NATO, NATO and the Warsaw Pact: Force Comparisons (Brussels, 1984), 3–4; Mako, U.S. Ground Forces, 58. 7 NATO, Force Comparisons, 5. 8 Wolfe, Soviet Power and Europe, 172n48; IISS, Military Balance, 1974–1975, vii; IISS, The Military Balance, 1980–1981 (London, 1980), vii.

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IISS, Strategic Survey, 1975, 63. Bernard Rogers, “The Atlantic Alliance: Prescriptions for a Difficult Decade,” Foreign Affairs 60 (1982): 1152. For an optimistic view, see John J. Mearsheimer, “Why the Soviets Can’t Win Quickly in Central Europe,” International Security 7, no. 2 (1982): 3–39. For a critique of the optimistic view, see Eliot A. Cohen, “Toward Better Net Assessment: Rethinking the European Conventional Balance,” International Security 13, no. 1 (1988): 50–89. 10

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mechanized, infantry, and airborne) available in peacetime, not including the five French divisions.11 This compared to the Warsaw Pact’s seventy divisions, forty-three of which were Soviet. Overall NATO combat and directsupport manpower in the combined regions was 620,000 against 910,000 for the Warsaw Pact, 610,000 of which were Soviet. The main battle-tank fleet of the Warsaw Pact numbered 20,000, including 12,400 Soviet tanks, whereas NATO’s amounted to only 7,000. In conventional artillery the Pact outnumbered NATO approximately two to one.12 Concerning tactical aircraft in operational service, NATO had approximately 2,040 light bombers, groundattack fighters, interceptors, and reconnaissance aircraft, whereas the Warsaw Pact had 4,350, including 2,750 Soviet aircraft. The greatest disparity was in interceptors designed to meet an incoming bomber threat: NATO had a mere 350, whereas the Pact had 2,100, reflecting the contrasting doctrines. In the theater-nuclear dimension NATO possessed about 7,000 nuclear warheads with about 2,000 delivery systems, including aircraft, missiles, and artillery, whereas the Soviets controlled some 3,500 warheads.13 The backbone of NATO’s conventional ground force in Germany was formed by German and American forces. The U.S. Seventh Army comprised two armored divisions, two mechanized infantry divisions, one mechanized infantry brigade, and two armored cavalry regiments, manned by 190,000 men and armed with 2,100 tanks. The Bundeswehr had 340,000 men in twelve divisions, made up of about equal numbers of armored brigades and armored infantry brigades.14 Arrayed against this was the 11 The northern region is included because the most authoritative source of data for this period, The Military Balance, published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, combined the two regions. The preponderance of forces were stationed in and would have been employed in the central region. 12 IISS, Military Balance, 1974–1975, 95–9. 13 Ibid., 100. 14 Ibid., 6, 22. The French had two mechanized divisions in Germany and three more in support in France with a total of 55,000 men. The British Army of the Rhine consisted of a corps headquarters, three division

Group of Soviet Forces Germany, comprising twenty divisions, ten of which were mechanized. Elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe the Soviets had two tank divisions in Poland, five divisions (two tank) in Czechoslovakia, and four divisions (two tank) in Hungary, for a total of thirty-one Soviet divisions, up from twentysix divisions in 1967. These were backed up by sixty-three divisions of lesser readiness in the western Soviet Union.15 By the mid-1970s many voices in the West acknowledged the continued superior quality of NATO but were increasingly concerned with the continuing shift of the balance in favor of the East. No doubt these concerns were aggravated by the lack of progress in the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction (MBFR) talks, which began in 1973, and the more aggressive foreign policy the Soviet Union had undertaken since its projections into Africa in the 1970s. An authoritative source sounded a note of warning: “The balance has moved against the West over the years,” and NATO’s qualitative edge could be eroded if defense spending was not maintained. The Warsaw Pact was introducing armored personnel carriers better than NATO’s, replacing towed artillery with self-propelled, introducing the new T-64 tank, designing new strategic systems with a theater role (such as the Backfire), and developing a new IRBM, the SS-20.16 The Vietnam War had an especially pernicious effect on the readiness of American forces in Germany during the period 1968–73.17 In 1967 Congress had decided to reduce U.S. forces in Germany, which amounted to 35,000 men, or two-thirds of a division. Thereafter the number of American military personnel in Europe, about three-fourths of whom served in Germany, continued to decline – from 307,000 in 1966 to a low of 247,000 in 1970. During this headquarters, five armored brigades, one mechanized brigade, two artillery brigades, and two armored reconnaissance regiments totaling 55,000 men. Ibid., 18, 21. See also Lawrence and Record, U.S. Force Structure, chap. 3. 15 IISS, Military Balance, 1974–1975, 9, 101. See also Lawrence and Record, U.S. Force Structure, chap. 2. 16 IISS, Strategic Survey, 1975, 3, 6, 62. 17 See the chapter by T. Michael Ruddy in this section.

The Shifting Military Balance in Central Europe

period the U.S. Army in Europe was plagued by shortages of experienced officers and noncommissioned officers; rising drug use, crime, and violent incidents; and declining morale, with devastating effects on combat readiness. General Michael S. Davison, commander of the Seventh Army, Europe, indicated in fall 1971 that “the Seventh Army in Europe was destroyed” by the demand for personnel in Vietnam. “The result was total chaos in morale, discipline, and readiness.” The Germans were unsettled not only by these developments, but also by the implications of the U.S. Army’s transition from a conscript to a volunteer force, which they feared would lead to further force reductions and a deterioration of the U.S. security guarantee.18 Several key events took place in the last half of the 1970s that showed the West’s determination to redress its military deficiencies in the central region on both the conventional and nuclear level. Because of continuing deficiencies in NATO’s force posture against the Warsaw Pact, NATO members committed themselves in 1977 to seek 3 percent annual increases in their defense budgets. Second, the alliance undertook a thorough review of its defense policy, resulting in the presentation to the NATO heads of state in 1978 of the Long Term Defense Program, which detailed numerous problem areas and corrective measures. Finally, after two years of discussion and debate following Chancellor Helmut Schmidt’s speech addressing the growing Soviet theater nuclear threat, NATO made its momentous double-track decision in December 1979 to negotiate an agreement with the Soviets on these weapons and, failing in this, to deploy a total of 464 American cruise missiles and 108 American Pershing 2 missiles in five NATO countries.19 Continuing to reverse the negative trends apparent during the Vietnam War, the United

18

Daniel J. Nelson, History of U.S. Forces in Germany (Boulder, Colo., 1987), 107. The author, as a young officer stationed in Mainz, Germany, in the early 1970s, can bear witness to these observations. See also “Wir mussten die 7. Armee ruinieren,” Der Spiegel 26, no. 17 (1972), 62–81. 19 See the chapter by Michael Broer in this section.

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States in late 1974 announced plans to reduce support troops in Europe by 18,000 but also to deploy two new combat brigades in the next two years. These were the Third Brigade, Second Armored Division in 1975 and the Fourth Brigade, Fourth Infantry Division in 1976. The Pentagon announced in fall 1976 that the United States would increase its fighter strength in Western Europe the following year by seventy-seven aircraft, the most significant of which were F-15 Eagle fighters, stationed in Germany for the first time and considered to be superior to the Soviet MiG-23 and -21 fighters. In early 1978 the Army, expressing concern about the marked advantage the Soviets had in artillery, announced that several battalions of heavy and medium artillery, capable of firing atomic shells, were to be sent to Europe in the coming months.20 Also during this period the United States decided to increase dramatically its goals relating to the reinforcement of the central front in case of war. Plans had originally called for the reinforcement of Europe during the first ten days with one division and forty squadrons of aircraft. Now a much more ambitious goal was established: the reinforcement of Europe with five divisions from the United States and sixty squadrons, making for a total of ten American divisions on the ground within ten days of an alert.21

into the 1980s The military balance in 1980 continued to reflect the great disparity in forces between the Warsaw Pact and NATO in the northern and central regions and, more ominously, revealed persistent negative trends. NATO counted a total of twenty-seven divisions available without mobilization, whereas the Pact possessed fortysix, twenty-six of which were Soviet divisions. The Pact held its marked advantage from 1974 in main battle tanks, with 19,500 compared to NATO’s 7,000. NATO tanks were considered 20

Nelson, History of U.S. Forces in Germany, 6, 51, 63,

147. 21

IISS, Military Balance, 1980–1981, 115.

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to be generally superior, but that soon changed with the deployment of the new T-72 tank. In conventional artillery the Pact continued to widen the gap with NATO forces, increasing its advantage from 2 to 1 in 1974 to nearly 4 to 1 in 1980. The Soviet logistical system had been greatly improved, suggesting that the former NATO superiority in forward-area logistics had evaporated. In tactical aircraft, both sides had made improvements to their forces. The Soviets were producing new fighters specifically designed for deep strike and interdiction, whereas the West had introduced the airborne warning and control system (AWACS) and the Nimrod (airborne early warning) aircraft. Although NATO forces had the advantage in groundattack fighters, the Pact maintained its dramatic dominance in interceptors as well as reconnaissance aircraft, with 3,950 total tactical aircraft to NATO’s 2,251.22 On the theater-nuclear level, NATO forces continued to hold their large advantage in warheads; however, because of the Warsaw Pact’s tremendous emphasis on the development of IRBMs in the 1970s, it enjoyed a marked advantage at the intermediate level. By 1980 it had deployed some 160 SS-20s (range of 5,000 km) in the European theater – fielding about one system every five days – with a total of 285 warheads (150 kilotons). These were counted in addition to its older missiles: sixty SS-5s with a range of 4,100 km and 380 SS-4s with a range of 1,000 km. The nuclear-capable Backfire bomber force had been growing by about twenty-five annually. Including air-delivered systems, the Pact had 5,330 intermediate-range systems with a total of 1,995 warheads. Moreover, the Soviets also were introducing at a vigorous rate new and more accurate shortrange nuclear missiles (SS-21, SS-22, SS-23). The meager NATO forces at this level hardly compared. They comprised a total of 196 older French and American missiles (not including sea-based Poseidon systems), most of which had ranges of 720 km. Clearly NATO’s landbased systems were becoming vulnerable to a

22

Ibid., 110–3.

Soviet preemptive strike, an alarming development given NATO’s conventional inferiority and its no-first-use nuclear doctrine.23 the peak and denouement of military forces The first half of the 1980s brought three changes of government that would prove to be important factors in the momentous events that closed the decade. In both the United States and West Germany liberal governments were replaced by more conservative ones. In the United States Ronald Reagan was elected president in November 1980 with the avowed commitment to renew America’s confidence, direction, and military strength, which in the eyes of many had eroded shamefully during the Carter administration. In Germany, Schmidt and the Social Democrats surrendered power to Helmut Kohl and his center-right coalition in October 1982. Finally, in March 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev was elected general secretary of the Communist Party, bringing with him ideas and flexibility of mind that ultimately helped catalyze the revolutions within Eastern Europe and his own country. It was these men, and in Reagan’s case also his successor George Bush, who ultimately bled the venom from the central region during the latter part of the decade. On the military level, the United States and Germany signed the Wartime Host Nation Support Agreement in April 1982. Its main purpose was to enable American forces to more rapidly reinforce ground and air forces in Germany to more than twice their strength and implement the goal of a ten-division American force on the ground in ten days. Under the agreement the Federal Republic would train 93,000 reservists to provide support to American forces in such 23 Ibid., 118; IISS, Strategic Survey, 1980–1981 (London, 1981), 81. See also John M. Collins, U.S.–Soviet Military Balance: Concepts and Capabilities, 1960–80 (Boston, 1980), 301–30. Another set of sources on the military balance (1980–90) from the perspective of the United States is the series Soviet Military Power, published annually from 1981 to 1991 by the United States Department of Defense.

The Shifting Military Balance in Central Europe

areas as transportation, supply, airfield repair, logistics, and security of American Army facilities. The United States was thus able to provide more combat troops. Political leaders from both countries were pleased with the compromises formulated during the negotiations.24 Also in this year, the U.S. Army developed and articulated a new doctrine, AirLand Battle, which emphasized mobility, maneuver, and deep counterstrikes after an initial enemy attack. Whereas older doctrine stressed defensive firepower, AirLand battle sought to disrupt the enemy’s command and control and its timetable for reinforcing with second- and third-echelon forces. Instead of focusing on the forward defense line, the new doctrine called for a counteroffensive some 75 to 100 miles deep behind the enemy front line. One implied goal of AirLand battle was to raise the nuclear threshold.25 Coupled with the strong statements of General Rogers calling for continued efforts to enhance Western conventional defense capabilities, the new doctrine provoked a lively debate between American and European military leaders and security specialists.26 A number of Europeans, concerned about the implications for the central front, questioned the need for changes to the army’s traditional doctrine. There was a similar European reaction when Reagan made his dramatic speech in March 1983 inaugurating the Strategic Defense Initiative, which abruptly called into question NATO’s nuclear strategic doctrine. Two major developments took place in the first half of the decade that had a direct bearing on the military balance in the central region. First, despite tremendous pressure from the Soviet Union – including a walkout from the Geneva arms-control talks in November 24

Nelson, History of U.S. Forces in Germany, 186–7. U.S. Department of the Army, Field Manual 100–5, Operations (Washington, D.C., 1982). For NATO’s related concept, the Follow-On Forces Attack (FOFA), see Bernard W. Rogers, “Greater Flexibility for NATO’s Flexible Response,” Strategic Review 11 (spring 1983): 11– 19; and Bernard W. Rogers, “Follow-On Forces Attack: Myths and Reality,” Parameters 15, no. 2 (1985): 75–9. 26 Nelson, History of U.S. Forces in Germany, 188–90; IISS, Military Balance, 1984–1985 (London, 1984), 29. 25

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1983 – and massive demonstrations from uneasy European publics, the first Pershing 2 missiles (range of 1,800 km) were deployed in Germany and the first ground-launched cruise missiles (range of 2,500 km) were deployed in the United Kingdom in December 1983. Deployment in Italy followed in March 1984 and in Belgium in March 1985.27 Second, NATO decided at Montebello, Canada, in 1983 to reduce the number of its warheads in Europe by 1,400 over the following six years, in addition to the withdrawal of 1,000 warheads completed in 1980, independently of arms-control agreements. These programs pointed to the reduction of the NATO nuclear stockpile to its lowest point in twenty years.28 Despite the efforts of the West to bolster the conventional defense, at mid-decade the balance still did not inspire confidence. NATO had twenty-eight divisions deployed in northern and Central Europe compared to the Pact’s sixty-one. The West had thirty-five divisions manned and available for immediate reinforcement to those regions, whereas the Pact had sixteen. NATO possessed 13,716 main battle tanks and 5,525 artillery pieces and multiple rocket launchers against the Pact’s 32,100 tanks and 10,500 artillery pieces and launchers. Concerning fixed-wing aircraft, the West held a total of 3,029 bombers, fighters, and interceptors compared to the Pact’s 7,400. NATO also was at a disadvantage in armed helicopters, having 935 against the Pact’s 3,150.29 The U.S. Army in Germany had increased its manpower by more than 25,000 men after 1980 and had continued to increase its stockpile of equipment in Europe. Equipment was stored in Germany for two divisions and an armored cavalry regiment, and storage facilities for two more divisions were being built. The rising Soviet inventory of modern fighter-bombers posed a growing long-range threat. Also, by the 27

IISS, Strategic Survey, 1984–1985 (London, 1985), 19. NATO, Force Comparisons, 25. 29 IISS, Military Balance, 1984–1985, 150–3. See also Anthony H. Cordesman, NATO’s Central Region Forces (London, 1988); Leon V. Sigal, Nuclear Forces in Europe (Washington, D.C., 1984). 28

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mid-1980s it was reasonably clear that NATO forces had lost their technological edge in conventional equipment. On the theater-nuclear level NATO’s initial deployment of intermediate-range weapons helped redress the stark imbalance of the previous years. However, unsettling disparities persisted. As of July 1984, NATO had 98 French and American ballistic and cruise missiles, compared with 467 Soviet SS-4 and SS-20 missiles. NATO possessed 268 short-range ballistic missiles, compared with 1,370 held by the Pact. The West controlled 2,622 nuclear-capable artillery pieces, whereas the East had 3,500.30 One other significant military development further complicated the balance in the central region: In 1984 the United States deployed sea-launched cruise missiles, which, with a range of 2,500 km, were capable of reaching the central front.31 From December 1987 through summer 1989, when the revolutions throughout Eastern Europe began, international political events rendered the question of dominance in the central region obsolete. In December 1987 the United States and the Soviet Union signed the INF Agreement, eliminating two classes of intermediate-range nuclear forces. In December 1988 Gorbachev announced plans to reduce total Soviet military forces by 500,000 men and reduce Soviet forces in Europe by 10,000 tanks, 8,500 artillery pieces, and 800 combat

30

IISS, Military Balance, 1984–1985, 136. These came in three versions: nuclear land attack, conventional land attack, and anti-ship. IISS, Strategic Survey, 1984–1985, 19. 31

aircraft, adding that Soviet military doctrine would be transformed to a defensive orientation. In March 1989 the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) talks began with Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze offering deep cuts in Soviet forces. Soviet leaders continued to announce unilateral cuts in both conventional and nuclear forces. Finally, in July 1990, as part of an agreement on a range of issues relating to German unification, Gorbachev agreed to withdraw all Soviet forces from East Germany by the end of 1994.32 Ironically, as the military balance moved inexorably in favor of the East during these two decades, it was the East that in the end collapsed. Amid revolutions throughout Eastern Europe and the unification of Germany, both the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. These momentous political developments happily made the question of the military balance largely irrelevant, confined now, it is hoped, to a chapter in the history of the Cold War.

32

See the chapter by Karl Kaiser in this section. For an analysis of the joining of the National People’s and West German Armies, see Frederik Zilian Jr., From Confrontation to Cooperation: The Takeover of the National People’s (East German) Army by the Bundeswehr (Westport, Conn., 1999). See also Volker Koop, “Die Nationale Volksarmee: Probleme der Integration in die Bundeswehr,” in Deutscher Bundestag, ed., Materialien ¨ der Enquete-Kommission: Uberwindung der Folgen der SEDDiktatur im Prozess der deutschen Einheit, 13. Wahlperiode der Deutschen Bundestages, 8 vols. (Baden-Baden, 1999), 2:508–43.

chapter six

The Transfer of American Military Technology to Germany Joachim Rohde Translated by Tradukas

introduction

duced to provide an incentive for the development of new technologies. Patent owners thus have rights over the transfer of “their” technology. Secrecy is another tool to exclude others from exploiting new knowledge. In this article, “technology transfer” is primarily used to denote the purchase or sale of technology or rights of utilization across national borders. Transfer of technology or knowledge can take place through many different means. The most important is probably the international trade in patents and licenses, followed by the transfer of knowledge that companies, or state institutions, attempt to keep secret and that is often not protected by patents. Direct investments probably rank in third place regardless of whether they include open or concealed technology transfers; a company might, for example, transfer a license to a foreign subsidiary. Emigration and reassignment of scientists and engineers have also brought transfers of knowledge. Statistics record the number of patents that have been requested and granted nationally and internationally. They do not document technology transfers, but merely applicants’ interest in securing protection abroad for the rights of utilization for the technologies they have developed. All the same, the statistics do reflect a potential interest in making technologies available. Beyond this, neither the type nor extent of the transfer of technological knowledge appears on record or is announced. Only the international payments that result from such transactions are recorded in international

The exchange of technical knowledge was a prerequisite for reviving the West European economies and establishing a military counterweight to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The economic stabilization of Western Europe reduced its susceptibility to communist overtures; making qualitatively superior weaponry available helped to contain the Soviet Union militarily by compensating for the Warsaw Pact’s greater number of forces. Political and military containment of Soviet power nonetheless gave rise to contradictory demands on technology transfer policy and transfer control policy. The economy would have profited most from unrestricted technology transfer. But the qualitative superiority of Western weaponry could only be maintained in the long run by restricting technology transfer so that the Warsaw Pact would not be able to utilize Western knowhow for its own weapons programs, for example by importing Western high-technology civilian goods. The development of U.S.-German technology transfer reflected these varied and sometimes conflicting political and military requirements. Technology is defined here as knowledge about scientifically based processes, mainly technical, for the manufacture of goods. It is assumed that property rights can be exerted over technologies – that technologies are goods like any other. Patent protection, which bestows property rights for a limited period, was intro163

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balance-of-payments statistics. While technology transfer in the form of the sale of patents or licenses is thus at least partly measurable, the other, nonfinancial forms of technology transfer largely elude analysis. This is especially true for the transfer of military technology because of the secrecy involved and the fact that balance-of-payments statistics do not distinguish between civilian and military technologies. In many cases, application of expertise imported from abroad demands the presence of a certain degree of innovative talent on arrival. In other cases, the import of foreign technology lays the groundwork for recipients’ own research efforts or increases their productivity. Seen in this light, a high volume of technology imports do not necessarily reflect serious technological deficiencies, but can actually serve as proof of concentrated and innovative native research activity. These methodological problems and the resulting sparseness of the academic literature mean that the following article is necessarily based on the limited information publicly available and on analysis of political circumstances and concepts.1 Only general conclusions can be inferred about the development of technology transfer between the United States and West Germany and its importance.

german and american interests in reciprocal technology transfers The transfer of American military technology to U.S. allies during the Cold War primarily served the security aim of safeguarding the qualitative lead enjoyed by Western weaponry. The first requirement was to develop and expand the allies’ defense industry. Once the West European defense industry had managed to meet U.S. industry’s technological standards, attained with the assistance of many production licenses for American weapons systems, the Americans were concerned to make optimal use of joint 1

H. Norman Abramson et al., Technology Transfer Systems in the United States and Germany: Lessons and Perspectives (Washington, D.C., 1997).

technological potential to modernize their own forces while at the same time denying the Soviets access to Western know-how. This, however, entailed intensified controls on technology transfer and restrictions on the civilian use of jointly developed technologies. As a result, the West Europeans increasingly began to replace technology imports from the United States with their own developments, thereby skirting American control. On account of its fiscal and economic policies, the West German government initially took an extremely critical view of the Americans’ wish for the establishment of German military forces and the development of a German defense industry. The resulting delays caused a further loss of technological knowledge on the German side, for example, when large numbers of engineers emigrated to the United States. This brain drain, which continued until the late 1950s, and limited spending on research and development (R&D) presented a serious obstacle to German industry’s attempts to catch up in the field of weapons technology. A politically motivated renunciation of autonomy or autarchy in weapons production hindered Germany from the outset in developing its own capacity in all militarily relevant technologies. Particularly in complex cost-intensive technologies, the main goal was to participate as an equal partner in collaborative programs. To accomplish this, it sufficed for German experts to demonstrate superior expertise in certain selected technologies. The goal of German defense industry policy was thus to regain system integration capability and to raise German know-how to world levels in certain key technologies. Technology imports and reliance on foreign allies were thus an ongoing part of German defense industry policy.

the german defense industry’s continuing decline in the 1950s Important decisions made in the fifteen years after World War II were to have a decisive influence on the extent and form of later transfers of American military technology to Germany.

The Transfer of American Military Technology to Germany

During this phase the Federal Republic was transformed from a territory occupied by a former enemy state to an ally whose defense industry potential was indispensable for the United States in the East-West conflict. But the conditions for rebuilding the German defense industry after the end of the war were extremely unfavorable. Production facilities in militaryrelated industries had been almost entirely dismantled. In the aviation industry, for example, employment dropped from 750,000 in 1945 to just a few thousand in 1955. Furthermore, development and production were largely forbidden for a decade after the war, and about 100,000 German foreign patents became public property and could no longer be used by their former German owners. The complete lack of property rights for innovations until 1950 was bound to cause lasting damage to the innovative capacity of German companies. There was thus probably a significant but hard to quantify net technology transfer to the United States and other states in the postwar period.2 Not surprisingly, then, after the loosening of restrictions on industrial production in Germany, technology transfer from the United States occurred in all the fields where German technological development had previously been forbidden, restricted, or delayed by the dismantling of plants and emigration of skilled employees.3 In addition to these externally imposed conditions, which also affected the civilian domain, domestic political factors significantly delayed rearmament and caused a further loss of expertise in armaments technology.4 The willing-

2

See the chapter by Michael Neufeld, vol. 1, Security. The transfer of German experts abroad nonetheless also offered possibilities for keeping together German development teams, which were able to contribute their know-how to German industry again after 1955. Even before 1955 some German development work was also carried out abroad, for example, in Spain, by the aviation companies Messerschmidt and Dornier. See Peter Schlotter, R¨ustungspolitik in der Bundesrepublik: Die Beispiele Starfighter und Phantom (Frankfurt am Main, 1975), 17. 4 Werner Abelhauser, “Wirtschaft und R¨ustung in den f¨unfziger Jahren,” in Milit¨argeschichtliches 3

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ness of German industry to become involved in armaments production fell drastically just at the moment when the Federal Republic was becoming more closely integrated into the alliance and gaining acceptance as a partner. In the second half of the 1950s, the majority of companies were opposed to defense procurement contracts.5 In light of the high short-term and long-term profit margins in the export markets for civilian goods, German industry had little incentive to become involved in the uncertainties of the arms business. Industry was largely working to capacity at the end of the 1950s and arms production would have required additional investments, whose profitability seemed questionable. Although employers’ organizations shared this assessment, they felt obliged to give consideration to the role that armaments should play in the Federal Republic’s industrial structure – how their research, development, and manufacturing potential could best be used for technological development of West German industry more generally, and how defense spending could be managed in order to have a stabilizing effect on the economic cycle. When confronted with the alternatives of either procuring most arms abroad for supporting the balance of payments or using defense orders to bring West German industry up to international technological standards – in aircraft construction, for example – prominent industry representatives tended to favor instrumentalizing rearmament for industrial policy. But under the reigning conditions of rapid growth and full employment in the second half of the 1950s, these Keynesian ideas in the defense sector necessarily meant that the arms budget was regarded as a “contingency budget” for an interventionist policy that could be tapped should the postwar Forschungsamt, ed., Anf¨ange westdeutscher Sicherheitspolitik 1945–1956, vol. 4: Wirtschaft und R¨ustung, Souver¨anit¨at und Sicherheit (Munich, 1997), 1–185. 5 This is illustrated by the retrospective complaint by Franz Josef Strauss, the defense minister at the time, who had also wanted to use the creation of a defense industry for structural reforms in the economy of his home region of Bavaria. Franz Josef Strauss, Die Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1989), 542–3.

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boom collapse. However, because this crisis was a long time coming and rapid economic growth was at the same time leading to increasing bottlenecks, these considerations necessarily led to significant delays in rearmament and the building of defense industrial capacity. The sluggishness of rearmament was evidence that the problems of economic reconstruction, the reentry into the world market, stability of the currency and the economic cycle, and promotion of foreign trade took clear priority over considerations of armaments policy. This was true within companies, too. British complaints that the West German economy could only export so successfully because it was free of the burden of arms production expressed a view also widely, if covertly, held in Germany. On no account would the financial burden of rearmament be allowed to weaken the Federal Republic’s economic dynamism. The bans on production and losses of patents, the systematic poaching and emigration of scientists and engineers (and with them, special military technology expertise), and, above all, the significant delays in developing German defense industry capacity all led to a considerable loss of expertise in military technology in West Germany during the 1950s. This would later lead to an immense demand for know-how from abroad when the German defense industry was rebuilt and brought up to the technological standards of the Allies.

transfer of american military technology and the reconstruction of german capacity in the 1960s and 1970s The sale or provision of American arms for the initial outfitting of the Bundeswehr allowed German companies to become familiar with newer technologies through maintenance work, although it was usually not the most up-to-date equipment. A large number of licenses were in turn issued for German production of American-designed weapons systems and other military equipment beginning in the

late 1950s, most notably the Starfighter (1958).6 This fighter-bomber was manufactured under license with the goal of increasing the knowhow of the West German aviation industry, which had been reestablished in 1955, so it could catch up with the dominant U.S. aviation industry. License production orders had been placed in 1956–7 for French airplane designs (112 Noratlas transporters and 244 Fouga Magister jet trainers). The Starfighter was selected principally because it offered the most state-of-the-art technology. Licensed production of this system served as a vehicle to bring the electronic components industry in particular up to world standards.7 In the Starfighter program, the industry could above all gain expertise in the miniaturization of electronic components and integrated circuits. This knowledge would be decisive for developing German telecommunications, control devices, and the whole field of data processing. The knowledge gained through licensed production of aircraft engines had far-reaching consequences as well. The German aircraft engine industry could now develop components suitable for high thermal and dynamic loads. It gained experience that was applied directly in developing motor vehicle engines, generators, and compressor drives. Through the Starfighter program, the airframe industry, which had already been extensively rebuilt around production projects based on French licenses, gained insight into new materials, particularly special metals such as molybdenum – which gives alloys exceptional tensile strength, hardness, and resistance to corrosion – titanium, and tungsten. Here, too, many of the findings flowed directly into civilian production projects, including, for example, the automobile industry. 6

During the 1960s other American aircraft were also produced under license, such as 352 Bell UH-1D light transport helicopters and 135 CH-53 medium-sized transport helicopters. See Schlotter, R¨ustungspolitik in der Bundesrepublik, 28–42. 7 The following comments are based largely on Kurt Johannson, Vom Starfighter zum Phantom (Frankfurt am Main, 1969), 57–61; see also Christopher M. Andrews, Die bundesdeutsche Luft- und Raumfahrtindustrie 1945–1970: Ein Industriebereich im Spannungsfeld von Politik, Wirtschaft und Milit¨ar (Frankfurt am Main, 1996).

The Transfer of American Military Technology to Germany

Apart from enhancing individual technologies, the Starfighter program also led to the construction of state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities, thereby disseminating American production expertise. The program gave insight into modern business planning methods, which entered West German industry through the Starfighter license program. Other license production programs offered similar experience, although probably not so broad or far-reaching. The technological competence developed or acquired in these programs allowed German companies in turn to become suppliers to American industries and left its mark, particularly during the 1960s, on the first independent German developments (the vertical takeoff aircraft program starting in 1963) and collaborative programs (for example, the Transall transport plane). The first collaborative weapons production projects between German companies – which were already technologically competitive in some fields – and their American partners helped round off German industry’s know-how through the mutual exchange of technology. The German-American AVS fighter project (Advanced V/STOL) in 1965 was particularly important in this respect. Although the American interest in this program was to acquire knowledge and control of German vertical takeoff technology, German industry in fact also profited from the exchange. German companies gained extensive experience in the development, planning, and implementation of a major military project. Yet in this case the technology studies undertaken jointly remained restricted exclusively to the fields where German companies had made advances. The German side was blocked from gaining useable insights into aircraft engine technology and avionics.8 The United States was already systematically protecting its newest technologies. Nonetheless, the AVS project constituted an important step for German industry on the way to regaining systems capability. These new capabilities could be applied directly in the new national 8

See Alfred Mechtersheimer, R¨ustung und Politik in der Bundesrepublik: MRCA Tornado (Bad Honnef, 1977), 33.

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fighter plane program (neues Kampfflugzeug, or NKF). New technological knowledge probably also reached German projects through reimmigration of German scientists and engineers from the United States.9 In the land systems industry, collaborative programs had already begun in the 1950s. This included, for example, a project undertaken in France in 1957 to build a new tank. This project continued after 1959 as a national development program and led to the production of the Leopard 1 tank. Thus, by the beginning of the 1960s the German land systems industry was already on the way to achieving systems capability and had become an attractive partner for collaborative German-American programs such as the MBT 70 tank.10 The German defense industry succeeded in regaining systems capability: the German land systems industry for the most part during the 1960s, the others in the 1970s. Moreover, it had become an attractive supplier and technology partner for collaborative European programs. Both these national and European projects abstained from developing all components themselves. To minimize costs and reduce risks for development projects, they chose in many cases to import proven American technology at the component and subsystem levels. This would not change until the 1980s. The emergence of a revived German defense industry, even if not the equal of its American counterpart, corresponded to the general convergence in the technological capabilities of the two countries. The trend in R&D spending and patenting shows that by the mid-1970s Germany had nearly reached the same overall technological level as the United States. In the 1960s, 9

Although no statistics on this exist for Germany, it is well known that, for example, technicians and engineers who emigrated from the United States after cuts in the NASA program returned to Europe and found employment in the European aviation and aerospace industry. See Ole B¨ornsen, Hans H. Glismann, and Ernst-J¨urgen Horn, Der Technologietransfer zwischen den USA und der Bundesrepublik (T¨ubingen, 1985), 60. 10 Thomas L. Naugher, “Problems of Collaborative Weapons Development: The MBT-70,” Armed Forces and Society 10, no. 1 (fall 1983): 126.

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by contrast, Germany had still clearly lagged behind. The German technological catchingup process probably also led to growing equality in the reciprocal exchange of technology. Despite this convergence in the overall statistics, considerable differences between the two countries remained in particular industries and technology sectors. Electrical engineering as a whole and data processing played a very prominent role in U.S.-German technology transfer. These sectors accounted for more than half of all German spending on patents and licenses, of which 90 percent went for purchases in the United States.11 However, the most important transfer payments were by subsidiaries of U.S. companies, for example, IBM and ITT/SEL, to their parent companies. After 1963 at the latest the electrical engineering and data processing sectors were the biggest net importers of American technology, importing increasingly more technology than they exported.

the transfer of american military technology after germany regained systems capability in the 1980s By the 1980s at the latest, the German defense industry had regained a leading international position measured in terms of patent applications. The Federal Republic took second place in the world military technology rankings, with an 18 percent share of inventions with patent applications in at least two countries, behind the United States, with a 30 percent share. However, German patent applications accounted for only 8.7 percent in the American market, whereas American patent applications claimed 24.9 percent of the German market.12 This meant that the American position in Germany was stronger for military engineering patents than for patents as a whole, where the American share at the 11

B¨ornsen, Glismann, and Horn, Der Technologietransfer, 40. 12 Manfred Berger et al., Produktion von Wehrg¨utern in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Munich, 1991), 218–9.

beginning of the 1980s was only 16 percent.13 German companies were particularly strong in weapons and ammunition. Here their share of worldwide inventions was 32 percent, double the American share. The German military engineering industry could also hold its own in the aviation and aerospace sector and in explosives: its share for the former stood at 20.4 percent (United States, 31.8 percent) and 20.8 percent for the latter (United States, 25.3 percent). Only in the field of military electronics was the U.S. share double that of West Germany (15.2 percent). A look at the rankings of companies claiming the most inventions reveals a similar picture. In weapons and ammunition three German companies held a clear lead and another held a similar lead in the aviation and aerospace industry. Yet although German companies could be found in the leading group in military electronics, they clearly lagged behind the market leaders.14 In international competition in the 1980s the German defense industry held a very strong position in guns and ammunition, a very good position in the aviation and aerospace industry and explosives, and it was weak only in military electronics. As suggested in my introduction, however, this picture does not mean that the decline in transfer of American military technology to Germany came about automatically. Rather, political developments were responsible for declining technology transfers from the United States to West Germany during the 1980s. The Reagan administration became increasingly concerned about maintaining the qualitative superiority of Western forces. It not only undertook enormous efforts to modernize its own military potential, but at the same time attempted to prevent the Warsaw Pact from gaining access to Western technology.15 For this 13

B¨ornsen, Glismann, and Horn, Der Technologietransfer, 25. 14 Berger et al., Produktion von Wehrg¨utern, 221, 223. 15 U.S. Senate, Transfer of United States High Technology to the Soviet Union and Soviet Bloc Nations. Hearings Before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Governmental Affairs, 97th Cong., 2d sess., May 4–6, 1982 and May 11–12, 1982, Washington, D.C., 1982; U.S. House of

The Transfer of American Military Technology to Germany

reason, secrecy and restrictions on technology transfer intensified.16 The Soviet Union had two primary indirect means for obtaining militarily useful Western know-how. It secured Western weapons technology through exports from third countries and obtained nonmilitary hightech goods from the West. U.S. efforts sought to block both of these routes, and for this reason Washington restricted the rights to reexport American technology that had been transferred to Western partner states. In this way, the United States gained a de facto veto over the export of West European defense goods containing American technologies. The United States also tried at least to delay the civilian use of jointly developed defense technologies, to prevent the innovations involved from being disseminated quickly. The West European allies had no interest in subjecting themselves to restrictions on the exploitation of the weapons systems they developed and produced themselves, even if they used American components. Furthermore, the restraint in commercial use of advanced technologies demanded by the United States harmed the competitiveness of European industry. The more the United States used technology transfer to exert influence on the Europeans’ commercial activities, the more skeptical the Europeans became about American technology initiatives such as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program. The West Germans had signed the SDI agreement expecting to gain precisely in those fields where they lagged behind (for instance, microelectronics, computer design, and Representatives, Scientific Communications and National Security. Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight of the Committee on Science and Technology, 98th Cong., 2d sess., May 24, 1984, Washington, D.C., 1984; Stephen A. Merill, ed., Securing Technological Advantage: Balancing Export Controls and Innovation (Washington, D.C.), 1985. 16 For more detail see Ren´e Herrmann, R¨ustungskooperation, Technologietransfer und Exportkontrolle: Zur Problemlage der amerikanischen Verb¨undeten, 3 vols. (Cologne, 1986); Mark E. Schaffer, Technology Transfer and East-West Relations (New York, 1985); Gary K. Bertsch and John R. McIntyre, eds, National Security and Technology Transfer: The Strategic Dimensions of East-West Trade (Boulder, Colo., 1983).

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software development), but they soon saw their hopes dashed. The commercial expectations that the Europeans associated with such programs were frustrated by the American attempts to impose restrictions.17 This strengthened the European tendency to replace American technology imports through their own development efforts. The Eurofighter, for example, contains significantly less American technology than the Tornado. The drive to restructure the West European defense industries also served to strengthen them against competition from the United States. U.S. exports of military technology to West Germany presumably fell overall in the 1980s for this reason.

conclusion Security policy was the primary motivation underlying technology transfer from the United States to the Federal Republic. It served to strengthen Western defense capability and to raise the technical level of the German defense industry. The exchange of civilian and military technology between West Germany and the United States was exceptionally intensive right from the start. By the end of the 1960s, each country was the major foreign holder of patent rights for technology in the other country. According to a generally accepted assessment, West Germany has, since its founding, imported more technology from the United States than it exported there. Thus into the 1970s West Germany’s economic recovery still appears to be a process of catching up with the American technological leader, a recovery that could not have occurred in that form without major technology imports from the United States. According to a widely held view, this applies particularly strongly to the reconstruction of German defense industry capability. The first collaborative 17 The United States attempted, for example, to register all R&D activities of the British SDI contractors and include them in the Military Critical Technology List, which would have curbed commercial exploitation by British industry. See Herrmann, R¨ustungskooperation, Technologietransfer und Exportkontrolle, 2:54–5.

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defense industry programs between the United States and West Germany were initiated in the 1960s, which suggests a high level of West German technological development, at least in some areas. But within military engineering West Germany does not appear to have made itself into a technologically capable partner in a broad range of areas until the end of the 1970s. Although this capability would have allowed West Germany to absorb American high technology on large scale, that did not occur. The intensification of American transfer conditions and restrictions and the negative consequences for

the exploitation of jointly developed technologies led in the 1980s to an increasing substitution of imported American technologies with European equivalents. This trend was to intensify so strongly in the 1990s that transatlantic arms cooperation had to be reinitiated in order to strengthen alliance cohesion.18 18 Center for Strategic and International Studies, From Shadows to Substance: An Action Plan for Transatlantic Defense Cooperation (Washington, D.C., 1995); Shaazka M. Beyerle, ed., The Transatlantic Technology Agenda: New Policy Dimensions (Washington, D.C., 1995).

chapter seven

German-American Intelligence Relations An Ambivalent Partnership Loch K. Johnson and Annette Freyberg

introduction

incentives for intelligence cooperation

Nations exist in a world of threats and opportunities. Their leaders, if they are responsible, seek knowledge – and, ideally, foreknowledge – of these conditions, because the more accurate their understanding of global affairs is, the more they will be able to protect and advance their vital national interests. The goal of global awareness can be achieved only through the painstaking collection (from open and concealed sources) and thorough assessment of information about key events, circumstances, and personalities across the globe. This collection and “analysis” is the essence of “intelligence,” as that term applies to affairs of state.1 For the United States and West Germany during the Cold War, the primary focus of their separate and occasionally joint intelligence activities was the Soviet Union – the one adversary with the capacity to annihilate their respective societies in a hailstorm of nuclear missiles.2 This article explores the tensions and problems involved in the efforts by officials in Bonn and Washington to carry out operations against this and other common targets by sharing intelligence responsibilities. The period examined extends from the opening of German Ostpolitik in 1969 until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990.

This planet is vast, and nations, even wealthy ones, that try to achieve global awareness are bound by finite resources. With respect to intelligence, these resources consist of classical espionage agents (human intelligence), along with a wide range of technology designed to eavesdrop on and watch for national security threats and opportunities (technical intelligence). Human intelligence includes such activities as the placement of “moles” in the adversary’s secret services and the clandestine recruitment of “media agents” employed by foreign newspapers; the technical side features surveillance satellites launched into a range of orbits in outer space, reconnaissance airplanes flying at high altitudes over enemy territory, giant antennae constructed along the enemy’s periphery, telephone taps, and the concealment of tiny microphones and cameras in places of particular interest. The development of a human and technical spy network is expensive, especially if the host nation is a world power or aspires to be one. Even when a nation’s efforts focus on a single adversary, resource investments can be high when the target is vast and well protected, as was the USSR. A nation’s ability to fashion an elaborate intelligence network also is limited by the requirement of skills that can take decades to refine. As a result of the long-time isolation of the United States from the rest of the world,

1 See Loch K. Johnson, Secret Agencies: The United States in a Hostile World (New Haven, Conn., 1996). 2 See Wolfgang-Uwe Friedrich, ed., Die USA und die deutsche Frage 1945–1990 (Frankfurt am Main, 1991).

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American intelligence remains in its infancy, with a modern organization dating only to 1947 when the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was created. However, even nations with a long history of intelligence involvement will not have all the requisite resources – money, experience, scientific skills – for perfect or even nearperfect global coverage; thus, every nation has some interest in working with allies to share the burden of intelligence costs and to compensate for gaps in its own coverage. Indeed, “intelligence burden sharing” is the phrase often used in the United States to describe its cooperation with foreign intelligence services.3 More officially, these ties are referred to as “intelligence liaison.” America’s intelligence activities include the cultivation of “an immense network of multiple liaison relationships,” including information sharing and analytic assessment, cooperation in training and support, access to facilities, and even collaborative operations.4 The most common and important form of cooperation is information sharing. During the Cold War the United States and Germany had much to offer each other in this regard. On the American side the comparative advantage lay in the technical domain. From its constellation of space satellites that engaged in both photography (imagery intelligence) and electronic listening (signals intelligence), the United States knew the location of Soviet armies, tanks, warships, and missiles, along with their state of readiness – the most important military information one could desire as a member of the Western alliance. By contrast, West Germany had no spy satellites of its own.5 Instead, Bonn’s advantages lay 3 See Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community, Preparing for the 21st Century: An Appraisal of U.S. Intelligence (Washington, D.C, 1996), chap. 12. This Presidential/Congressional Commission concluded that “in general . . . the United States is deriving great benefit from these cooperative relationships” (128). 4 See H. Bradford Westerfield, “America and the World of Intelligence Liaison,” Intelligence and National Security 11 (1996): 523–60. 5 “Dieser Dilettanten-Verein,” Der Spiegel 38 (Mar. 19, 1984): 38–52. Bonn did authorize some forms of

preeminently in the domain of human intelligence. The German foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), boasted a number of agents in East Germany and elsewhere throughout the Soviet sphere of influence.6 These could sometimes serve as helpful complements to the efforts of the CIA, which prowled the same turf in search of spy recruits but with fewer advantages of language proficiency and European cultural understanding. The West Germans also contributed significantly to more technical intelligence collection and analysis, especially with respect to signals intelligence. As a senior CIA official once noted: “In particular, West German and the Nationalist Chinese efforts, exploiting native language abilities and regional expertise, have greatly assisted the success of the U.S. signals processing machine and thus created a solid fund of knowledge on which analysts could draw in making their all-source studies of defense and foreign policy issues.”7 A former BND president, Eberhard Blum, believes that the best intelligence cooperation between West Germany and the United States occurred in operations related to halting technology transfer – keeping sophisticated Western technologies out of the hands of adversaries. 8 Geography was a special advantage offered by the West Germans. As James Bamford has noted

technical intelligence collection, however, reportedly purchasing some $700 million worth of advanced electronic listening devices from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) between 1972 and 1977. An important condition of these sales was that the West Germans would share the acquired information with the NSA. 6 Interviews with former CIA intelligence analysts with responsibilities for German and East European portfolios during the Cold War, Washington, D.C., Feb. 1995. 7 Ray S. Cline, Secrets, Spies, and Scholars: The Essential CIA (Washington, D.C., 1976), 126. James Bamford notes that “the U.S. SIGINT [signal intelligence] effort throughout Europe” was consolidated in a building located in Frankfurt, West Germany: The Puzzle Palace (Boston, 1982), 217. 8 Eberhard Blum, “Covert Action: Discussion,” in Roy Godson, ed., Intelligence Requirements for the 1990s: Collection, Analysis, Counterintelligence, and Covert Action (Lexington, Mass., 1989), 227.

German-American Intelligence Relations

in reference to signals intelligence, “Like Japan, Germany switched from cryptological worry [during World War II] to cryptological window, serving as an excellent base for American eavesdropping on European Russia and the Eastern bloc countries.”9 The Federal Republic of Germany provided an ideal staging area for American intelligence operations directed against the Soviet bˆete noire. Its eastern border stood as the longest contiguous boundary between the Western alliance and the Warsaw Pact – a perfect launch pad for America’s U-2 and other aerial reconnaissance flights over Eastern Europe and the USSR and for the eastward infiltration of spy teams and propaganda. Moreover, Berlin and Bonn were both important centers of diplomatic activity and therefore were infested with spies. What better place for the CIA (with the help of the BND) to seek the recruitment of disaffected or avaricious officials from the Soviet Union and its allies on duty in West Germany? It is little wonder that West Germany served as “the CIA’s largest site for operations.”10 A former CIA official notes that, during the Cold War, from Frankfurt alone “countless efforts were mounted to penetrate the Iron Curtain.”11 Other incentives for cooperation existed. West Germany had selected aerial reconnaissance capabilities and was willing to share its “catch,” along with information derived from wiretaps and other ground-based technical systems. Germans also provided assistance in breaking foreign diplomatic and spy codes, a science heavily dependent on advanced mathematical and computer skills. The CIA, in turn, had some well-placed agents of its own in the Soviet bloc whose information was of continuing interest to Bonn. As a source of espionage information – on Soviet weapons systems based in East Germany, for instance – and as a base for operations, West Germany brought crucial resources to the intelligence bargaining table. At the strategic level it could not offer much that the CIA did not 9

Bamford, Puzzle Palace, 210. Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York, 1980), 62. 11 Cline, Secrets, Spies, and Scholars, 168.

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already know from more powerful surveillance platforms in space; but on such matters as the details of Soviet conventional weaponry throughout Eastern Europe, BND agents could add much of value to CIA intelligence estimates. Bonn had every reason to seek continuing cooperation after the end of the forced “partnership” following Germany’s defeat in World War II.12 In addition to the vital satellite data that the United States could share (most notably strategic “warning intelligence” of a tank or missile attack from the East), Washington officials were in a pivotal position to assist West German leaders in the pursuit of their broader political and economic objectives. The political quid from Washington for the intelligence quo from Bonn would be, above all, assistance in further legitimizing the rise of West German political and economic power in the European Community. Intelligence cooperation, then, was yet another means used by Bonn to ingratiate itself with the United States (and other Western powers with whom it carried out liaison relationships), in return for its growing integration into the Western alliance. Intelligence goodwill would beget political goodwill, or so Bonn hoped. The wooing was reciprocal. The United States stood to benefit from winning the allegiance of West Germany to the West in the tugof-war with the communist powers. Intelligence enticements became part of the wine and flowers in this courtship. In this sense, intelligence was an instrument for the expansion of American power and influence abroad – what some might be tempted to label American imperialism. Others view the use of liaison as simply a smart way to compensate for one’s own intelligence weaknesses while building friendly ties within the pro-democracy Atlantic alliance. The sharing of information and a base of operations were only two of many opportunities for German-American intelligence liaison. Important as well was counterintelligence, that is, the task of thwarting hostile operations of the Soviet bloc secret services against the West. At the end of World War II, Western intelligence

10

12 See the chapters by Michael J. Neufeld and Wesley K. Wark, vol. 1, Security.

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agencies aggressively sought to obtain the espionage records of the Third Reich – a mother lode of information about potential agents in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Even former Nazi intelligence officers with despicable records of war crimes were quietly eased out of postwar Germany and absorbed into the ranks of the CIA and other Allied agencies as a way to tap expertise that would be useful for counterintelligence in the new Cold War.13 Even into the later stages of the Cold War this old knowledge – coupled with new BND information on Eastern Europe and the USSR – was occasionally useful to the CIA. Covert action was yet another intelligence discipline in which the CIA and the BND found an opportunity to cooperate. Covert action is the secret attempt to influence the affairs of other countries. This may include propaganda, political, economic, and, at the extreme, paramilitary activities. An illustration of CIABND cooperation was the infiltration of propaganda into the Soviet camp by way of smugglers, balloons lofted over the USSR, and, most important, the radio airwaves.14 Based in Munich, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were two main channels of propaganda; when the CIA connection was exposed in 1971 Congress began funding the broadcasts openly and created a small agency called the Board for International Broadcasting to supervise the radio stations.15 In thwarting technology transfer, liaison was, according to Blum, “very successful indeed because of West Germany’s cooperation.” On the whole, however, the degree of covertaction cooperation between West Germany and the United States remained somewhat limited. Blum also states: “It has struck me, through years of close and trusted association with American friends, that the idea of using our decades-old

13 See Christopher Simpson, Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War (New Haven, Conn., 1985) and the article by Wesley K. Wark, vol. 1, Security. 14 See Marchetti and Marks, CIA and the Cult, 137, 48. 15 See Kim Andrew Elliott, “Too Many Voices of America,” Foreign Policy 77 (winter 1989): 113–31.

tradition of sharing secrets for policy matters – discreet and subtle – has never been fully discussed. Nor has our expertise or advice been asked for in [covert-action] operations concerning propaganda, influencing certain people, or deception.”16 A final – and unspoken – reason for intelligence liaison is that it may provide an opportunity to spy on one’s own partner in espionage. While rubbing elbows with BND officials, CIA liaison officers could possibly glean some idea of West Germany’s foreign policy and intelligence objectives. Here was another source of information about the direction of German and European affairs that the CIA could fold into its reports for Washington policymakers. The same was true for BND liaison officers, who visited the CIA and no doubt kept their eyes and ears open to absorb any additional information.

the risks of liaison However useful in some respects, intelligence liaison inevitably generates an ambivalent attitude in both parties. The foreign policy objectives of West Germany and the United States were often similar during the Cold War, but they were never precisely congruent. This lack of congruence led occasionally to tensions. In the German view, the United States was biased toward Israel in the Middle East; unreliable as a trading partner; too wedded to global human rights; and fickle over selected defense issues such as the Multilateral Force (MLF)17 and intermediaterange nuclear forces (INF).18 A particular intelligence grievance in Bonn was the penchant of CIA officers to debrief Eastern European defectors in safe houses on West German soil without including BND agents. So although “liaising,” both sides were never fully on the same team; both had a double agenda: some cooperation, combined with a constant eye out for an opportunity to “learn” more about the partner’s global intentions. 16 17 18

Blum, “Covert Action,” 227. See the chapter by Erhard Forndran, vol. 1, Security. See the chapter by Michael Broer in this section.

German-American Intelligence Relations

Ambivalence characterizes liaison relationships for another reason: concern that the partner intelligence service may have been penetrated by a common adversary. During the 1960s the CIA’s chief of counterintelligence, James Angleton, shared with British liaison officer Harold “Kim” Philby CIA views on how best to battle the KGB and the GRU (the Soviet civilian and military intelligence agencies) – only to discover later that Philby had been in the service of the KGB since his student days at Cambridge University. This embarrassing revelation taught a memorable lesson, and the CIA became more circumspect about the limits of liaison. In the 1980s, Israel’s recruitment of a U.S. Navy civilian intelligence analyst, Jonathan Pollard, rekindled America’s uneasiness about intelligence burden sharing in the 1980s. Like every other nation, West Germany was also vulnerable to penetration by communist agents, and some moles were discovered during the Cold War before and after the watershed year of 1969.19 Where traitors have been found, others may well linger undiscovered. Mindful of this possibility, a liaison team will never reveal its most sensitive secrets to another service, even that of a close ally. If the CIA had fully shared intelligence during the Cold War, a penetration of the BND by Moscow would have been tantamount to a CIA penetration of the KBG.20 America’s intelligence agencies suffered their own Soviet penetrations during the Cold War, reminding the BND of the risks to its agents involved in full cooperation with the CIA. Every liaison relationship is laced with such suspicion.21 19 See, for example, Abram N. Shulsky, Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence, 2d ed. (New York, 1993), 208–9n12. See also the article by Werner Link, vol. 2, Politics. 20 In fact, one Soviet spymaster once called the Federal Republic “our gateway to the West.” See Christopher Andrews, “Nachrichtendienste im Kalten Krieg: Probleme und Perspektiven,” in Wolfgang Krieger and J¨urgen Weber, eds., Spionage f¨ur den Frieden? Nachrichtendienste in Deutschland w¨ahrend des Kalten Krieges (Munich, 1997). 21 See “Dieser Dilettanten-Verein,” on the CIA’s reluctance to share fully with the BND for fear of a Soviet penetration.

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Tradecraft secrets – the methods of spying – also induce liaison ambivalence. Again, while understanding and enjoying the fruits of a sharing relationship, both sides are careful to protect the specifics of their most advanced espionage techniques. This is particularly true of America’s desire to maintain an edge in the realm of technical surveillance.

threat as a cohesive force in liaison relationships Support for liaison has many sources; the most important, however, is the sense of the sharing partners that they are threatened by a common adversary. Even if both parties assess the threat differently, they can combine resources to gain a more detailed understanding of the dangers they face together. The fear of a Soviet attack against the West gave birth to the NATO alliance and nurtured intelligence liaison relationships among its members. Nothing is more important than this fact in understanding CIABND burden sharing during the Cold War. Threats, and the perception of their imminence, change with time. By 1969 EastWest relations had altered significantly. Under the leadership of Chancellor Willy Brandt (1969–74) and a coalition government composed of the Social Democratic Party and the Free Democratic Party, West Germany reached tentatively toward the East in hope of improved relations.22 The new Ostpolitik both reflected and helped prod broader efforts in the West to pursue d´etente and relax tensions with the Soviet Union. The United States and Europe began to focus more on political and economic threats rather than remaining fixated on Kremlin military machinations.23 22 On the foreign policy of the Brandt administration, see Paul Noack, Deutsche Aussenpolitik seit 1945 (Stuttgart, 1972); see the article by Werner Link, vol. 2, Politics. 23 Wolfram F. Hanrieder, “The German-American Connection in the 1970s and 1980s: The Maturing of a Relationship,” in Carl C. Hodge and Cathal J. Nolan, eds., Shepherd of Democracy? America and Germany in the 20th Century (Westport, Conn., 1992), 105–21.

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West Germany began to display increased selfconfidence and assertiveness in economic and political affairs, buoyed by a robust economy and a new sense of influence gained from its role in helping to make d´etente a reality.24 Moreover, the preoccupation of the United States with the Vietnam War gave credence to the notion in Bonn that Europe would have to look out for itself more as American forces struggled in Asia.25 Even after this war had come to an end, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (1974–82) felt uncomfortable with the moralistic approach to world affairs espoused by President Jimmy Carter and sought some further detachment from Washington foreign policy edicts. Skeptical about his own intelligence officers, Schmidt was reportedly even less willing to base his political decisions on information provided by the United States.26 Schmidt’s successor, Helmut Kohl (1982–98), felt a closer kinship with the foreign policies of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, and relations between Bonn and Washington improved during the 1980s.27 The ups and downs of foreign policy priorities on both sides of the Atlantic seemed to have only minimal effects on CIA-BND liaison. Despite Ostpolitik and d´etente, West Germany remained firmly rooted in the Western alliance and closely attuned to leadership from Washington on most security, if not political and economic, policies. Even with the Soviet threat in decline, Bonn and Washington found other threats in common that encouraged a continuation of liaison relationships. Chief among these threats was the specter of terrorism, which ripped through West Germany during the 1970s in the form of the Baader-Meinhof gang and other violence-prone rebellions against the 24 See Manfred Knapp et al., Die USA und Deutschland 1918–1975: Deutsch-amerikanische Beziehungen zwischen Rivalit¨at und Partnerschaft (Munich, 1978). 25 See the chapter by T. Michael Ruddy in this section. 26 See “Dieser Dilettanten-Verein” and “Still in der Ackerfurche,” Der Spiegel 48 (Dec. 19, 1994): 25–7. 27 See Johannes Fischer, “Kontrolle, Konsens und Konflikt,” in Oswald Hauser, ed., Das geteilte Deutschland in seinen internationalen Verflechtungen: 15 Vortr¨age (G¨ottingen, 1987), 176–209.

established order. Here was a target that the CIA and the BND could readily agree was a peril to both nations, and consequently the sharing of information in this domain was rich between the two intelligence services, especially after 1985.28 Beyond intelligence sharing, West Germany’s counterterrorism units also gained a reputation for considerable skill and courage. The CIA and other NATO intelligence services frequently turned to them for short-notice paramilitary operations against skyjackers and other terrorists. Other threats encouraged liaison. Because much of the illegal drug trade in West Germany and the United States originated in Latin America, the United States had useful information to share with the BND about Colombian and other drug czars. In return, the BND had data to share on heroin originating from Turkey and elsewhere in the Middle East and destined for the United States. Bonn and Washington had further common interests in halting illegal weapons proliferation and technology transfer. Near the end of the Cold War, the activities of unpredictable “rogue states” also concerned both nations – especially the aggressiveness of Iraq and the unsettling civil war in BosniaHerzegovina, with its potential for expansion. Even with the dramatic collapse of the Warsaw Pact in 1989–90 and the unification of Germany, CIA-BND cooperation continued. “New” threats – terrorism, narcotics, weapons proliferation, rogue states – became the focus of liaison sharing; but events and personalities in Russia also remained a common concern for their effect on the future of democracy in that country, where Washington and, even more, Bonn had invested large sums of money. Thus, despite the waning of the Cold War, the Soviet threat remained potent enough during the period studied here to maintain CIABND ties. These ties were augmented by the rise, or at least the belated recognition, of the “new” threats. Bureaucratic inertia no doubt 28 Kurt Schelter, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, address, “Symposium on International Terrorism: Are We Cooperating Enough?” New York, Oct. 23, 1996, 2.

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played a role as well. As Westerfield observed, “[Intelligence] interdependencies become habitual and systemic, for good and for ill.”29 Liaison had been assiduously developed between the CIA and the BND and was unlikely to disappear overnight, reinforced as it was by friendships, institutional connections, and continuing concerns about KGB and GRU operations in the West, which persisted in spite of d´etente. conclusion By 1991, the Cold War had come to an end. When the definitive history of this era is written, it will have to take into account the significance of intelligence liaison among the NATO victors. An important part of this story will be the burden sharing undertaken by the CIA and the BND. At first, liaison was established because Washington insisted that the BND play the role of a CIA outpost on the frontier of the Cold War. Later, as Bonn’s sense of sovereignty 29 Westerfield, “America and the World of Intelligence Liaison,” 530.

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matured, the liaison relationship rested more on a perception that both nations could realize mutual benefits from intelligence burden sharing. In light of the Cold War’s end, Robert Blackwill argued that “it will be an uphill struggle to keep this bilateral security relationship intact and of central importance to the two countries.”30 However, despite occasional discord over political and economic issues, cooperation is likely to continue. Not only is there an extensive overlap between the current worldviews of Bonn and Washington, but also over the years a rich matrix of trade and cultural ties has evolved between the two nations. The relationship will remain ambivalent, though, constrained as always by the limits imposed by sovereignty, a fear of espionage penetration, divergent policy interests and perspectives, and the need for secrecy – in short, by the existential distrust inherent in the current system of nationstates. 30 Robert D. Blackwill, “Patterns of Partnership,” in Steven Muller and Gebhard Schweigler, eds., From Occupation to Cooperation: The United States and United Germany in a Changing World Order (New York, 1992), 145.

chapter eight

No Unity Without Security The Security Features of German Unification Karl Kaiser Translated by Tradukas

carried coresponsibility for or triggered off a catastrophe. Thus the problem of German unity and a democratic structure became a question of European significance and a central problem for European security. The unification of 1990 resolved the German question created in 1871 by establishing a united state with a secure democracy under conditions that at the same time firmly eliminated the old latent threat from Germany and made unification an integral part of a new system of security in Europe. The range of factors that conditioned the unification process – from the international context to the basic dependability of German democracy – suggests that its ramifications for security policy be evaluated through a modern and broadly conceived notion of security – one that extends far beyond a purely military dimension. Yet the second unification differed from the first in further respects, for it represented the most significant building block of a peace settlement that ended the East-West conflict. This conflict had divided Europe and Germany, on whose soil two world-encompassing alliance systems had confronted one another with the greatest concentration of military might ever amassed in peacetime. Germany was the focal point of conflict, especially the enclave of Berlin. Changes in the political or military status at this most critical point of contact of the two alliance systems would have had far-reaching effects on European security. Ending the East-West conflict presupposed a solution for the problems

Germany’s second unification in the modern age proceeded in a completely different way from the first, particularly in terms of security policy. The creation of the German Reich under Prussian leadership in 1871 was the result of three wars. Establishment of the Reich was pushed through unilaterally, that is, without the agreement and to some extent against the will of the other members of the European system of states. The second German unification proved truly different. It was peaceful through and through, and even the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) did not cost a single human life. Unification took place not against the will of the members of the European system of states most affected by the change, but with their active participation and consent. It was the result of what was probably the most intensive process of bilateral and multilateral diplomacy of this century. More significantly, the two unifications differed vastly in terms of their consequences for security in Europe. The foundation of the Reich laid the basis for what would become known as the “German question.” It created a state that had a larger population than any other state in Europe with the exception of Russia and posed a problem for the stability of the European system of states because of its particular social and industrial dynamics. Its internal structure represented the other side of the German question. For the surrounding world, a united Germany with an authoritarian or nondemocratic regime represented a threat and, indeed, twice either 178

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linked to the division of Germany and Europe. Thus German unification became part of the peace settlement that ended the Cold War after half a century.

the western strategy for unification The security issue was of necessity central to the Western strategy for German unification. On the one hand, it was necessary to persuade the Soviet Union, its long-standing opponent in the Cold War, not just to withdraw from the most significant outpost of its imperial rule by surrendering the GDR; the Soviets also had to agree to endorse the reconstitution of a country whose aggression and subsequent suppression had caused enormous losses. At the same time the Federal Republic’s other partners had to be convinced that accepting a bigger and stronger united Germany would not restrict or threaten their security. In the face of an expanded Germany the temptation existed to seek security through recourse to control and discrimination, but it was only a short-lived impulse. Memory of such approaches – already employed once with the Treaty of Versailles – and of the catastrophe they set in motion remained too strong, and clear changes on the part of Germany that had already become a Western partner were too far-reaching to revert to such measures. Instead, concepts that had been the foundation of Western policy under American leadership already in the 1940s and 1950s took precedent: the reintegration of Germany on the basis of nondiscrimination and its integration into European and Atlantic structures, that at once implied a reciprocal commitment of all those involved. At the time this was not only the U.S. understanding of NATO, but also its fundamental precondition for a possible unification of Germany: that it would have to take place within a safe receiving European framework. Maintaining NATO and the European Community (EC) as structures of Western cooperation was about much more than simply integrating a newly empowered Germany. Rather, it was also about holding together a community

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of states that had been built up over four decades, which – in a historically unprecedented way and on a multilateral basis – had developed their cooperation into a new form of interstate relations and reliably eliminated war as a means of conducting politics. To renounce this cooperation after the end of the East-West conflict would have caused a relapse into national approaches, with incalculable negative consequences for Europe’s stability. Maintaining NATO while at the same time further transforming the EC into the European Union (EU) thus sustained the Atlantic-European structure that had guaranteed peaceful relations, protected democracy, promoted economic prosperity, and that would now also face the task of integrating an expanded Germany. It was clear from the very beginning that cooperation with the Soviet Union could only be achieved on two conditions: first, the old established security structures of the West had to be reformed. Second, a comprehensive policy was needed involving appropriate disarmament and arms-control measures, as well as strengthening existing institutions and creating new ones in order to alter the security landscape to such an extent that the Soviet Union would be able to withdraw from its established position of power without feeling it was putting itself at risk. This presupposed an Ostpolitik based on an intensified building of trust rather than a return to Adenauer’s “policy of strength.”1 It is true that the Western strategy had its roots in the arrangements and points of reference of the late 1940s and the 1950s, but in the course of 1989–90 it evolved in stages into a negotiation strategy as the result of exceedingly different roles played by and contributions made by the individual Western partners. The decisive force and prime mover was always the United States, operating closely with the Federal Republic to structure key elements. France, after initial reluctance, also became a strategic partner of the Federal Republic in building up the European 1 This is the view of Philip Zelikow and Condolezza Rice, Sternstunden der Diplomatie: Die deutsche Einheit und das Ende der Spaltung Europas (Berlin, 1997), 141–5. See also the chapter by Stephen F. Szabo, vol. 2, Politics.

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framework. Finally, Britain, which initially opposed this and put on the brakes, ultimately became a reliable partner in implementing the necessary steps for a new German role.2 unification in nato, but not the old one Membership of a united Germany in NATO was for the aforementioned reasons both the most difficult and significant question. It therefore lay at the heart of the security agreements accompanying German unification and the conclusion of the East-West conflict. Basic consensus on this question existed among the Western allies, even if some differences of opinion remained about the concessions that would have to be made to Gorbachev, in particular with regard to the status of GDR territory. All four allies wanted to maintain the tried and tested cooperative order, to bind Germany into an integrated system and to prevent a renationalization of security policy. The French President Franc¸ ois Mitterrand also feared that making Germany neutral would allow Soviet influence to extend right into the center of Europe.3 What was ultimately decisive for carrying through an all-German NATO membership was the propagation of this goal by the United States from the very outset and continued through to the end of the negotiations without faltering. After the fall of the Wall, the White House and State Department saw the possibility and necessity of German unification earlier than all others, and NATO was from the very beginning a central part of their subsequent considerations. After German Chancellor Helmut Kohl introduced a ten-point plan for unification on November 28, 1989, that did not contain the cue “NATO,” Secretary of State James Baker declared the next day that unifi2

See in particular Werner Weidenfeld, with Peter M. Wagner and Elke Bruck, Aussenpolitik f¨ur die deutsche Einheit: Die Entscheidungsjahre 1989/90 (Stuttgart, 1998). 3 Helmut Kohl, Ich wollte Deutschlands Einheit, with Kai Dieckmann & Ralf Georg Reuth (Berlin, 1996), 236; Hubert V´edrine, Les mondes de Franc¸ois Mitterand: ´ ee 1981–1995 (Paris, 1996), 423–6. a` l’Elys´

cation within NATO was one of the fundamental goals of the United States.4 In his report to the NATO Summit of December 4, 1989, about his meeting with General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in Malta, President Bush announced four principles for German unification that he had also communicated to his Soviet counterpart, the first and foremost of which was unification for Germany with continued membership in NATO. In Bonn the German chancellor and foreign minister were of the same opinion. Kohl explained retrospectively why he had failed to mention NATO on November 28: “It was clear to me that a withdrawal from NATO could never have been the price for reunification. But at that moment it would have been foolish to make too much of the issue. That might have caused the Kremlin to pull the emergency brake.”5 The chancellor was haunted by the idea that a Soviet offer of German unification under the condition of neutrality could call into question everything that had been achieved. Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher was of the same opinion. His aim was to use the diplomatic apparatus of the Foreign Ministry, employ appropriate tactics, and make calculated concessions in an effort to persuade the Soviets to accept a NATO solution.6 Releasing the German Democratic Republic to join NATO was naturally a concession that was exceedingly difficult for the Soviet Union to make and that initially seemed ¨ “Zehn-Punkte-Programm zur Uberwindung der Teilung Deutschlands und Europas, vorgelegt von Bundeskanzler Helmut Kohl in der Haushaltsdebatte des Deutschen Bundestags am 28.11.1989,” in Karl Kaiser, Deutschlands Vereinigung: Die internationalen Aspekte. Mit den wichtigen Dokumenten, revised and ed. by Klaus Becher (Bergisch-Gladbach, 1991), 158–68. On the genesis of the program and its reception in Washington, see Weidenfeld, Aussenpolitik f¨ur die deutsche Einheit, 97– 110, 126–31; James A. Baker and Thomas M. DeFrank, Drei Jahre, die die Welt ver¨anderten: Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1996); George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, Die neue Welt: Amerikanische Aussenpolitik in Zeiten des Umbruchs (Berlin, 1999). 5 Kohl, Deutschlands Einheit, 166. 6 Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1995), 709–15. 4

No Unity Without Security

barely acceptable. For over four decades the message had been drilled into the elites and the population that NATO was an aggressive alliance directed against the Soviet Union, one in which the United States and the “revanchist” forces of Germany had joined together. Along with the withdrawal from its old imperial positions of the postwar era, which alone was hard enough to take, the content and symbolism of cutting loose the GDR would have been particularly difficult to swallow. Discussing the individual phases in the Soviets’ change of attitude would go beyond the scope of this article.7 Moscow had long insisted on German neutrality, but at the same time the Soviet Union also reiterated its adherence to the principle of freedom to choose one’s alliance, to which it had agreed in the Final Act of the CSCE. At this point the West was able to use persuasive force. This principle finally allowed for membership of a united Germany in NATO to be achieved, although – on the express wish of Gorbachev – NATO was not specifically mentioned in the concluding agreement in the Caucasus or in the “Two-Plus-Four Treaty.”8 To the planners in Washington and Bonn it was clear from the start that Soviet consent for unification within NATO would only be given – if at all – if the Soviet perception of NATO fundamentally changed. This was only conceivable if substantial changes were under7 In addition to the studies already mentioned, see Raffael Biermann, Zwischen Kreml und Kanzleramt: Wie Moskau mit der Deutschen Einheit rang (Paderborn, 1997); Richard Kiessler and Frank Elbe, Ein runder Tisch mit scharfen Ecken: Der diplomatische Weg zur Deutschen Einheit (Baden-Baden, 1993); Horst Teltschik, 329 Tage: Innenansichten der Einigung (Berlin, 1991); Stephen F. Szabo, The Diplomacy of German Unification (New York, 1992); Elizabeth Pond, Beyond the Wall: Germany’s Road to Unification (Washington, D.C., 1993); Charles S. Maier, Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany (Princeton, N.J., 1997), 216–27. 8 “Die deutsch-sowjetischen Verhandlungen im Kaukasus im Juli 1990” and “Der Vertrag zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, Frankreich, Grossbritannien, der Sowjetunion und den Vereinigten Staaten u¨ ber die abschliessende Regelung der Deutschland-Frage, unterzeichnet in Moskau am 12.11.1990,” Europa-Archiv 45 (1990): D 479–90 and D 509–14.

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taken in the alliance. After the fall of the Wall, the Americans demonstrated their resolve not to view the ever more apparent collapse of Soviet positions in the traditional East-West way of thinking: Bush gave his assurances that the West would not exploit the Soviets’ weakness in its own interest, and that in their mutual interest he would make sure that the dynamic development in Europe did not lead to destabilization. Bush also promised the Soviet side some fundamental changes: substantial progress in strategic arms reductions, a decision not to modernize short-range nuclear weapons, progress in conventional disarmament, a fundamentally new NATO strategy (that would strengthen its political and defensive character), and – in consultation with Kohl – a continued German renunciation of ABC weapons and a substantial German contribution to the reduction of conventional forces in Europe. Reaching agreement on the security status of the territory of the GDR proved to be a particularly difficult matter. It triggered off several controversies within the coalition in Bonn, in domestic German politics, between the Western allies, and of course with the Soviet Union. In an effort, on the one hand, to secure membership of a united Germany in NATO and, on the other hand, to persuade Moscow to give its consent, Genscher in January 1990 proposed a special military status for the GDR, which has gone down in history as the “Genscher Plan”: It is NATO’s aim to clearly state: Whatever happens in the Warsaw Pact, there will be no extension of NATO territory eastward, in other words, closer to the borders of the Soviet Union. . . . The idea that the part of Germany that today constitutes the GDR, should be included in the structures of NATO, would block the rapprochement of the two Germanies.9

Genscher found an open ear for these considerations with U.S. Secretary of State Baker, who conveyed them to Gorbachev in February without the prior consent of the White House. 9

“Rede des Bundesministers des Ausw¨artigen, HansDietrich Genscher, zum Thema ‘zur Deutschen Einheit im europ¨aischen Rahmen’ bei einer Tagung der Evangelischen Akademie Tutzing am 31.1.1990 in Tutzing,” in Kaiser, Deutschlands Vereinigung, 191.

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Accordingly, NATO’s “jurisdiction” would not be extended any further toward the East. Although in the Western interpretation this meant the territory of the GDR (Baker’s suggestion was not repeated in this form), the Soviet – or later the Russian – side interpreted it to mean the GDR and beyond.10 Much argument took place within the coalition government in Bonn, as in the alliance, to arrive at a clear definition of this status and to formulate a position for the Two-Plus-Four talks. Here, the main focus fell on the question of whether the NATO pledge of mutual assistance in case of aggression would extend to the territory of the GDR and to what restrictions the military status of that area would be subjected.11 The final results that were negotiated became the core of the agreement on the security status of a united Germany. The NATO pledge of mutual assistance in case of aggression would, upon unification, instantly be extended to the OderNeisse border in the East. The area constituting the GDR would be made forever a nuclear-free zone – that is, kept free of nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Until the withdrawal of Soviet troops scheduled for the end of 1994, only such German troops would be stationed there that were not assigned to any “military alliance structures,” and foreign armed forces would be neither stationed nor deployed there. On the eve 10

It was the American and German remarks made in the context of further pursuing the “Genscher Plan” that were cited in 1996 and 1997 by various Soviet speakers, among them Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Primakov, as proof that in the context of German unification, the West had decided to renounce any further eastward expansion of NATO. Because, however, they could not produce any evidence of a formal commitment on this point, the Russian claim had little effect. It is important to note that the first eastward expansion of NATO to be signed by the Soviets, namely German unification, took place under conditions that created a precedent for the NATO expansion decided on in 1997 and carried out in 1999: renunciation of the stationing of nuclear weapons and large foreign units. See the press conference by Yevgeny Primakov on Jan. 22, 1997, in Fernseh- und H¨orfunkspiegel des Bundespresse- und Informationsamts vom 23.1.1997 and Primakov’s interview in the Neue Z¨urcher Zeitung, Sept. 6, 1997, 5. 11 Weidenfeld, Aussenpolitik f¨ur die deutsche Einheit, 510–28, 551–6, 590–602.

of the signing, a protocol note allowing smallscale maneuvers was agreed upon, following a British objection. This objection almost prevented signing of the agreement on September 12, 1990,12 much to the annoyance of the other partners. Ironically, however, this provision created the prerequisite for later maneuvers in the federal states of eastern Germany under the aegis of the NATO Partnership for Peace Program with the involvement of East European troops and the German army. The entire set of issues surrounding the special status of the GDR would remain key right up to the end. This was borne out by the fact that even at the last meeting between Gorbachev and Kohl on July 15, 1990, in Moscow – the day before the breakthrough in the Caucasus – Gorbachev made unacceptable demands that the territory of the GDR not be integrated into NATO, and Kohl had to play his ace in the hole and threaten to fly straight home in order to change Gorbachev’s mind.13

german unification only in a new europe Consent of the Soviet Union to the unification of Germany within NATO was inconceivable without credible prospects that the conditions that had once led to the formation of the two hostile alliances would now change. This could only be achieved through agreeing on the steps to be taken toward a new Europeanwide security structure. Comments to this effect came from the Soviets very soon after the fall of the Wall. Foreign Minister Genscher informed Gorbachev of the chancellor’s ten-point plan in Moscow on December 5, 1989, and met with such scathing criticism that he called it his “most unpleasant encounter” with the general secretary. It ended, nevertheless, with Gorbachev giving a piece of advice to the German politician: “If the pan-European process and relations between the Soviet Union and 12

Genscher, Erinnerungen, 865–74; text in Kaiser, Deutschlands Vereinigung, 267–8. 13 See Kohl, Deutschlands Einheit, 424–6.

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the federal government develop positively, new developments will be possible in the German Question as well.”14 And the speech by Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in Brussels on October 19, 1989,15 also referred to the overall European context, in particular to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). In reforming NATO, Western policy could pursue the new direction outlined by the Harmel Report of 1967, the new American policy under President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, and in particular, the new Ostpolitik of the social democratic–liberal coalition government as of 1969 that was continued in a multilateral phase within the CSCE. The ideas developed in this context were to be further developed under the new conditions, now that the East-West conflict had been brought to an end. One step toward this goal was the “Joint Declaration of 22 States” issued on the sidelines of the CSCE summit on November 19, 1990.16 This document focused on security commitments: “The signatory states solemnly declare that in the dawning new age of European relations they are no longer opponents, but intend to build up new partnerships and offer each other the hand of friendship. . . . None of their weapons will ever be used, except in self-defense.” New mechanisms were to be developed within the CSCE to serve the peaceful resolution of conflicts and to increase security. The contours of a new political order were defined in the “Charter of Paris for a New Europe,” issued by the CSCE states on November 21, 1990, with which the member states committed themselves to upholding democracy as the only form of government, to free elections, human rights, a social market economy, and a “new quality in our security relations.”17 In particular, the negotiations over conventional forces in Europe (CFE), which had already been under way among the CSCE states for some time, were given such strong impetus 14 15 16 17

Genscher, Erinnerungen, 687. Text in Kaiser, Deutschlands Vereinigung, 181–5. Text in ibid., 360–3. Text in ibid., 368–75.

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by the developments linked with German unification that they led to what was probably the most fundamental change in security arrangements for conventional military power in Europe. The CFE treaty included agreements between East and West that for years had been inconceivable during the Mutual Balanced Force Reductions (MBFR) negotiations: reduction in offensive weapon systems and troop numbers, supervised destruction of weapons, agreed upper limits on both sides, the division of Europe into military zones to prevent too large a concentration of offensive potential, as well as a system of mutual transparency and inspection of unprecedented intensity. The CFE treaty assisted the Soviet Union domestically by embedding the withdrawal from untenable positions and the acceptance of a Germany united within NATO in an internationally negotiated framework of concessions and counterconcessions; one such important concession was the agreement on a drastic reduction in German troops.

germany’s contribution None of Germany’s contributions to creating the security preconditions for German unification within NATO was as significant as the reshaping of German-Soviet relations. Soviet consent to unification, particularly within NATO, was only conceivable if the legacy of World War II and the Cold War could be overcome and relations placed on a new, bilateral basis. The fact that such a possibility arose at all was a consequence of the new Ostpolitik initiated by the social democratic–liberal coalition government and, despite the initial vehement resistance of the CDU/CSU (Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union), later nevertheless continued and developed further by the Kohl-Genscher government. Certainly the aforementioned change in U.S. policy toward the leading power of the now disintegrating communist camp created the framework and constituted the decisive factor behind this development. But without the German efforts, Soviet consent to Germany unification under NATO would not have been possible.

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From a very early stage the endeavors of the government in Bonn were oriented toward accommodating the Soviets’ reservations and making special agreements to satisfy particular Soviet needs. Therefore, the Two-Plus-Four Treaty, which dealt with the central elements of unification, was linked politically with a range of German-Soviet agreements. First and foremost was the “Treaty on Good Neighborly Relations, Partnership and Cooperation” that was initialed immediately after the signing of the Two-PlusFour Treaty in Moscow.18 In this document, both partners also committed themselves to pursuing a new relationship in the arena of security. Apart from restating both parties’ renunciation of violence, the treaty also contained a kind of neutrality clause in which both committed themselves – in the case of aggression against the other party – not to provide any military or other aid to the aggressor. Despite some grumbling in the Western media about an alleged violation of NATO obligations, this provision did not cause any problems for the German side, for they could rightly assume that NATO would never become the aggressor against the Soviet Union. Two further German-Soviet treaties19 committed the Federal Republic to make payments totaling DM 13.5 billion for the stationing and withdrawal of Soviet troops, and to grant the Soviet Union longer-term loans and other aid toward an overhaul of its economy. The treaties also touched on difficult questions of particular psychological importance for the Soviet Union, such as the status of troops on the territory of the former GDR or care of monuments dedicated to the Soviet war dead. Although the Soviet armed forces in the GDR had for many 18

Text in ibid., 334–42. “Abkommen zwischen der Regierung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Regierung der Union der Sozialistischen Sowjetrepubliken u¨ ber einige u¨ berleitende Massnahmen vom 9.10.1990” and “Vertrag zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Union der Sozialistischen Sowjetrepubliken u¨ ber die Bedingungen der befristeten Aufenthalts und die Modalit¨aten des planm¨assigen Abzugs der sowjetischen Truppen aus dem Gebiet der Bundesrepublik Deutschland vom 12.10.1990,” in ibid., 318–24 and 325–33. 19

years safeguarded the powerbase of the repressive regime of the Socialist Unity Party, these agreements now aimed to create the conditions for a dignified withdrawal. Another central contribution of the German side to agreements on security aspects of unification was the recognition of its eastern borders as permanent. It was clear to all responsible politicians in Bonn that even the hint of an attempt to question the territorial status quo would have prevented unification. However, Chancellor Kohl assumed that on this issue the government had to show consideration for his party’s partner, the CSU, as well as lobbies of former ethnic German expellees in Germany. Although in direct contacts with his foreign partners he left no doubt that the OderNeisse border would be recognized as permanent, his Ten-Point Plan of November 28, 1989, did not include a point to this effect. In the period immediately following this pronouncement, ambiguity still reigned, although both the foreign minister and the Bundestag emphasized the border’s finality. The discussion triggered by this ambiguity may have led to the special attention given to this issue in the final settlements. The finality of the border was therefore taken up not only in the amendments to the German Basic Law – mentioned in the Two-Plus-Four Treaty and subsequently carried out – but also set down in a bilateral border recognition treaty with Poland. 20 The other German contributions included reconfirmation of its renunciation of the “manufacture and possession of and control over nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons” laid down in Article 3 of the Two-Plus-Four Treaty. Little doubt existed that this renunciation, already expressed in the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, would be reaffirmed. Nonetheless, it was of great significance for the other states in view of the increased power of a united Germany and the lifting of the remaining restrictions on Germany’s sovereignty. 20 “Vertrag zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Republik Polen u¨ ber die Best¨atigung der zwischen ihnen bestehenden Grenze vom 14.11.1990,” in ibid., 358–60.

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Laying down the upper limits for the armed forces of unified Germany proved more difficult. The disagreement involved not just troop numbers, over which considerable differences existed between the original Soviet wishes and the opposing German (and Western) view, but also revolved around the form of the stipulation. The Federal Republic, supported by its Western partners, insisted that no unilateral prior concessions should be made but, rather, that German troop size should be laid down as an integral part of the multilateral negotiations on conventional forces taking place in Vienna. The agreement on the upper limit of 370,000 soldiers was thus recorded in the Two-Plus-Four Treaty as a reference to the declaration made by both German states in the negotiations on conventional forces in Europe.

unification: not by coincidence Things could have gone differently, through the use of violence against the protest movement in the GDR, or recourse to the Soviet troops stationed in Germany to force a different solution. The fact that developments did turn out for the better had much to do with Mikhail Gorbachev. A personality who combined readiness for reform and change with the necessary power, he opened a historical window of opportunity. Before it closed again with his departure from the political stage, it was used by determined Western statesmen with a clear goal in mind. Although the security agreements were decisive in making the unification of Germany within NATO possible, a stroke of historical

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luck also contributed: The politicians involved were experienced powerbrokers. They had established a relationship of trust over the course of previous cooperation, and this decisively simplified the resolution of the tremendously complex issues connected with unification. This was true to an outstanding degree for the GermanAmerican relationship. Thanks to the exceptionally close personal cooperation between the leading politicians George Bush, James Baker, Helmut Kohl, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, and their main advisers, these two countries constituted the driving force behind the creation of the international prerequisites for German unification. Ultimately it was the policies of the United States that proved decisive. They gave German unification unlimited support, and with the sure instinct of the one superpower to have survived the Cold War, it made German unification part of a comprehensive concept. Americans sought, on one hand, to give a new shape to European security relations; on the other hand, unification served future American interests, treating cooperation with the most powerful up-and-coming West European partner with a self-serving agenda very much in mind. Following the tireless engagement of leading American politicians and the diplomatic apparatus, it was finally possible to win over initially reluctant Great Britain under Margaret Thatcher, France under Franc¸ ois Mitterrand, which was quick to recognize its true interests, and above all, the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev, which had the biggest leap to make. Agreement on the unification of Germany occurred under conditions that served the security of all involved or affected powers.

ECONOMICS Cooperation, Competition, and Conflict Economic Relations Between the United States and Germany, 1968–1990 Harold James

Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) meant a break with many German social and organizational traditions and the acceptance of reform imposed from the outside, largely from the United States.1 After the 1960s Germany still saw a need to remold itself in response to a challenge from the outside world. But the pressure was quite different from the external controls of the occupying powers in the immediate aftermath of the World War II. Germany now was much less vulnerable to direct pressure from the United States than it had been before; the collapse of the fixed exchange–rate system in the early 1970s added a new dimension of policy autonomy. Instead of restructuring by means of foreign examples, Germany responded to an external challenge by drawing on past models of behavior and organization. Particularly because the global environment of the 1970s and 1980s was much more turbulent than the preceding era of high growth, Germany looked for new defensive cooperation between “social partners.” Germany’s search for a response to global turbulence became increasingly difficult as increased world economic integration began to touch core areas of the German political and social consensus. At different times, in part depending on different stages of the business cycle, perceptions of what was happening abroad helped to condition

Germany and the United States were closely linked in the Cold War era through the strategic alliance, but also through many economic ties. The depth of the ties is visible in the close correlation of German and American business cycles. Their economic policy orientation followed a broadly similar path, from applied Keynesianism in the late 1960s and the first half of the 1970s to a sustained anti-inflationary policy in the 1980s and 1990s. The new orientation toward stability marked the beginning of a return to traditional economic liberalism – deregulation and privatization – but to a markedly different extent in the two national settings. These countries were political and economic systems that viewed themselves in different ways. Domestically, each at different points saw itself as a model: Germany of managed corporatism or organized capitalism, the United States of the free market. Internationally, the United States persistently believed that it could and even should mold the rest of the world politically and economically. In consequence, there was no pressing need, from both the public and also from the government point of view, to make internal adjustments; it was the rest of the world that should do the adjusting. It often appeared that the evolution of the Federal Republic since 1949, together with the Japanese recovery, had been the most striking testimony to the success of American internationalism. Christoph Buchheim’s article has demonstrated the extent to which the institutional restructuring that enabled the postwar

1 See the chapter by Christoph Buchheim, vol. 1, Economics.

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the national policy response. Both the United States and Germany at various moments were eager to believe that their economic order held the unique key to economic success. Indeed, quite radical swings in sentiment occurred. In the Bundestag elections of 1976 the victorious Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD) presented the success story of a Modell Deutschland, whereas the United States was mired in the depressing aftermath of the Vietnam War. By contrast, in the mid-1980s, the rhetoric was completely different. Europeans – especially Germans – were obsessed with the malady of “Eurosclerosis,” whereas voters enthusiastically endorsed President Ronald Reagan’s message of “morning in America.” It then was widely assumed that accelerated European integration, including the completion of the single market and a move toward European monetary union, was needed in order for Europe to act as threateningly and effectively on the international economic stage as America had done. With an earlier turn to recession in America than in Europe at the end of the 1980s, and with the enthusiasm generated by the 1992 program of trade liberalization, commentators soon came back to a new Euro-enthusiasm and spoke of American decline faced by the challenge of the apparently more organized capitalism of Europe and Japan. Thus the distinctive German and European order was sometimes presented as the solution and sometimes as the problem. The alternation of the popularity of these conflicting ways of analyzing relative economic performance, along with the robustness of the caricatured views of different economic organization, has had an effect on economic policy discussions. Very often that effect has been to turn debate into a dialog of the deaf. In addition, with the gradual waning of the Cold War, the members of the Western alliance were now much less tightly linked by security and economic policies. It might appear paradoxical that debates over national policies and appropriate adjustment measures consequently became less rather than more easy to resolve in an era of globalization and increasingly integrated goods and capital markets.

The paradox that is explored here is that a defensive German attempt to come to terms with global trends actually resulted in poor and inadequate restructuring, whereas an increasingly noninterventionist approach by the United States to problems of the domestic economy stimulated very rapid economic change. From the German perspective, it is ironic that the adaptation to the international economy in the 1950s and 1960s was so strikingly more successful than in the subsequent period, when German decision makers had much greater room for maneuver. This introduction examines how different patterns of growth resulted from the different encounters with globalization of two contrasting approaches to the organizational and political management of economic problems.

different patterns of growth In both Germany and the United States the period between the breakdown of the par-value system and the end of the Cold War (that is, 1971–1990) overlaps with two complete business cycles (see Graph 1). They were closely synchronized, with peak growth in 1973 and 1984 and two major troughs: the inflationary recession of 1974–5 and the long recession of 1980–2, which was followed by a decade-long recovery, tailing off in the United States at the end of the 1980s but kept alive in Germany by the impetus of German unification in 1989–90. For Germany the period represents a decisive break with the fast growth of the 1950s (the period of postwar recovery) and the 1960s. From the 1960s onward, growth rates fell off sharply. In addition, after the 1960s each recession was marked by a substantial rise in unemployment, with losses falling almost entirely in the manufacturing sector. In the subsequent recovery period many of the lost jobs were not regenerated (see Graph 2). By contrast, for much of this period the United States had faster growth than Germany. This came as a surprise to the advocates of the popular theory that held that other countries would inevitably catch up with

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Graph 1. Real GDP Growth in the United States and Germany, 1970–90

the society that, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, had held the preponderant position in the world economy. Unemployment rates in the United States, unlike in the European economies, were lower in the 1980s than in the 1970s and, after the mid-1980s, American unemployment fell below European levels

for the first time since the 1950s. The most stunning contrast between the two countries, however, was in employment statistics: Employment rose steadily in the United States and fell consistently in Germany, rising only slightly at the end of the 1980s boom (see Graph 3). American manufacturing unemployment fell only slightly,

Source: Datastream.

Graph 2. Unemployment in Germany and the United States, 1970–90

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U.S.A Germany

Source: Datastream.

Graph 3. Employment in Germany and the United States (1990 = 100)

despite the damage created by the strong dollar of the mid-1980s. Growth in Germany thus was poor compared both to its own spectacular past and to the American experience. Explanations of the relatively weak German performance in this period frequently relied on an account of German anti-inflationary policy, which depressed investment. Particularly in the United States, it was often claimed that “the West Germans wanted to grow slowly”2 because of a Teutonic obsession with monetary stability or because of a fear that the labor market would otherwise have to absorb too many politically unpopular Gastarbeiter (guest workers). This debate had more than a purely academic interest. At some points American policymakers felt that the external effects of slow German growth were depressing economic activity elsewhere, including in their own country, and the demand for stimulation played a major part in negotiations at the 1978 2 Lester Thurow, Head to Head: The Coming Economic Battle Among Japan, Europe, and America (New York, 1992), 73. For an academic version, see David Soskice, “Wage Determination: The Changing Role of Institutions in Advanced Industrial Countries,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy 6, no. 4 (1990): 36–61.

Bonn summit and again in the mid-1980s in the discussions at the Plaza and the Louvre.3 This view of German developments exaggerates the long-term economic consequences of monetary policy and overestimates the ability of any macropolicy to influence long-term growth trends. Investment rates in Germany and the United States were in fact relatively similar, except that there was a sharp fall in Germany at the beginning of this period, in the early 1970s, and a partial recovery in the later 1980s. But between 1973 and 1987 the German and American rates were similar (see Graph 4). The outcome of higher growth in the United States suggests that American investment was directed more effectively. A more realistic approach thus requires an examination of the structural rigidities that dogged German performance. These included an inflexible labor market; powerful trade unions able to use strikes to resist technical change (as in the case of the print workers in 1978) and impose costly reductions in the hours worked (as in the aftermath of the major metalworkers’ dispute of 1984); high social costs (social security

3

See the chapter by Harold James in this section.

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Source: Datastream.

Graph 4. Investment as a Share of GDP in Germany and the United States, 1970–90

taxes, which had been less than 10 percent of gross domestic product in the 1950s rose to over 17 percent in the 1980s); and state subsidization, which inevitably went to politically powerful lobbies often associated with sunset industries (iron, steel, and shipbuilding) and the aircraft industry. Subsidies to industry in Germany increased from 7 percent in 1973 to 9.7 percent in 1984.4 This phenomenon, which was not restricted to Germany, was dubbed “Eurosclerosis” by the economist Herbert Giersch.5 These structural rigidities increased over time and marked the response of the German system to the challenge of very rapid worldwide economic change.

different models The German model has sometimes been called “Rhineland capitalism” to distinguish it from the “Anglo-Saxon model.” Many of the insti4 Herbert Giersch, Karl-Heinz Paqu´e, and Holger Schmieding, The Fading Miracle: Four Decades of Market Economy in Germany (Cambridge, 1992), 227–9. 5 Herbert Giersch, “Gegen Euro-Sklerose,” Die Wirtschaftswoche, Aug. 12, 1983.

tutions of this form of capitalism evolved in imperial Germany: They thus long antedated the restructuring of German institutions after 1945. Shaken in the occupation period, a new organized capitalism emerged. According to this interpretation, the German economy involved a heavy degree of organization or corporatism with powerful trade unions and employers’ organizations, along with state intervention in labor disputes. Labor relations were largely consensual. Vocational training, through the dual or parallel system of apprenticeships in firms with vocational schools, ensured a high level of human capital. In addition, the organized economy was managed through a carefully protected and indeed somewhat clannish financial sector. The tradition of bank-dominated investment, in which banks continued to hold large shares in some strategic enterprises, a pattern that dated back to the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century, still prevailed. The banks then had a long-term commitment to a particular enterprise and often also to its current management. Thus, the German industrial landscape experienced little organizational change. Eight of the ten largest industrial companies at the end of the 1980s had been founded in the nineteenth

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century; whereas in the United States the figure was only four of ten.6 Germany appeared to be the best example of the Chandlerian effect of existing enterprises being able to capture economies of scale and scope.7 If there was corporate restructuring, it came as a result of bank initiatives. There were almost no hostile takeovers. Parallel to the world of the big corporations, but closely tied to it, was an economy of smaller, medium-sized firms – in German known as the Mittelstand. Such enterprises often were the creations of the men and women who had made the Wirtschaftswunder of the 1950s possible. Large firms depended on a substantial number of smaller suppliers, to whom they were tied much more loosely than in the case of Japanese keiretsu networks. High-technology Mittelstand firms were the beneficiaries of a high level of state encouragement and subsidization, often from regional governments. The southern states Baden-W¨urttemberg and Bavaria were particularly active in this regard, and the result helped to shift the economic balance of the Federal Republic southward. The Mittelstand economy only really began to show signs of major difficulties in the 1990s, coinciding with the retirement and deaths of the founders, the high economic costs of reunification, and intensified exposure to the global marketplace. In the changing environment, many of the major companies began to put increased cost pressure on their Mittelstand suppliers. This brief description of the “Rhineland model” is a caricature, and much scholarship has been devoted to debunking or modifying parts of it. By 1988, for instance, banks owned only 8.1 percent of the shares issued by German companies.8 Vocational training was often criticized as inflexible and outdated. Labor relations were not entirely harmonious. Indeed, the two most bitter years of postwar German labor re6 David Marsh, The Germans: Rich, Bothered and Divided (London, 1989), 102. 7 Alfred D. Chandler Jr., Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1994). 8 Jeremy Edwards and Klaus Fischer, Banks, Finance and Investments in Germany (New York, 1994), 180.

lations, 1978 and 1984, occurred in the period covered by this article. The model also appears rosier in retrospect, after the bitter experience of the pains of unification, when an understandable nostalgia for the stability and certainty of the Bonn Republic developed. Still, neither the academic criticism nor the recent nostalgia should conceal the fact that the Rhineland model contains an element of truth that is becoming rather uncomfortable for Germany. During the 1970s and 1980s evidence accumulated showing that, with some exceptions, German firms were competing less effectively in the global economy. One influential study demonstrated how, between 1975 and 1985, far more German firms lost international market share, and only a small number were able to post gains.9 For Germans, it was particularly striking and indeed frightening that this was true even in clusters of industry such as chemicals and machinery that had historically been at the heart of German industrial performance. German firms made only a poor showing in some of the most dynamic areas, in consumer products and service industries. The reasons are quite diverse and range from a historical commitment to product development rather than fast product cycles; legislation and public opinion, which in some areas had an antitechnology bias (with the result that, for instance, such international leaders as BASF, Hoechst, and Schering located their biotechnology research in the United States rather than in Germany); high domestic costs; and a static financial system that lacked risk-capital markets. Banks were particularly ineffective – as they had incidentally also been in the interwar years – at identifying growth areas. State policymakers were not any better. The financial system and the state regulatory apparatus were less disadvantageous to established businesses, well insulated in the secure cocoon of German corporatism; the main cost was paid through the absence of new, dynamic small firms that might have emerged in a more entrepreneurial and less sheltered environment.

9 Michael Porter, The Competitive Advantage of Nations (New York, 1990), 540.

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Rhineland capitalism turned out to be far from the idealized picture of the socially harmonious and skillfully coordinated and managed economy. There is sometimes an analogous stereotype or caricature of the structure and organization of the U.S. economy. In contrast to German “organized capital,” the American experience is frequently described as “free enterprise” or “Anglo-Saxon capitalism.” Historically, it was dominated by large corporations, which then developed into the bases of many transnational corporations. Government spending on defense was high, unionization low. The dramatic restructuring of corporate America since the 1970s has, in large part, been stockexchange driven, prompted by waves of hostile takeovers and the fears of remaining enterprises that they would have to boost productivity and profits in order to avoid a similar fate. In fact, the picture of the U.S. economy changed rather radically in the period discussed here. At the outset, the United States was heavily regulated, and it looked as if such regulation was increasing.10 The number of pages of regulations in the Federal Register, which totaled 2,599 in 1936, rose to 65,603 by 1977. The momentum appeared particularly strong in the early 1970s after the collapse of the par-value system. In 1965, 8.5 percent of gross national product (GNP) was produced in regulated industries, whereas only ten years later that share was 23.7 percent.11 But in the later 1970s, beginning with the administration of President Jimmy Carter, a substantial push to deregulate began. The crucial legislation was the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act, which set a precedent for other industries and later for other countries. Entry restrictions in air transport were lifted after 1981, rate controls were phased out in 1982, and in 1985 the regulatory agency, the Civil Aviation Board, was simply shut down. The 1980 Motor Carrier Act

10

Indeed this was the basis on which Mancur Olson propounded an influential thesis. Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, Mass., 1965). 11 Stephen Breyer, Regulation and Its Reform (Cambridge, Mass., 1982); David B. Audretsch, The Market and the State: Government Policy Towards Business in Europe, Japan, and the United States (New York, 1989).

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reduced price and entry restrictions in trucking. An antitrust lawsuit filed against American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) in 1974 was resolved in 1982 when the monopolist divested itself of local companies. (Germany, by contrast, did little to deregulate in the 1980s apart from some privatizations of the state holding companies VEBA and VIAG, and of Volkswagen.) As in Germany, the story of American industry cannot be told simply with reference to large corporations. One consequence of the speed of industrial and entrepreneurial change has been the development of a very large number of small firms – that is, an imitation of the German Mittelstand precisely at the moment when it was widely believed to be in a state of crisis. It is often pointed out that it was these firms, rather than the traditional large corporations, that allowed such a rapid pace of employment creation. This was especially true in the high-technology sector, where very large corporations – Apple, Intel, Microsoft – developed from what had originally been microenterprises. A crucial enabling factor was the much better American access to investment funds and venture capital for new firms.

the globalized economy Although there are contrasts in the development of the two national economies, some aspects of the behavior of firms started to shed purely national aspects. More and more, global corporations, transcending traditional national styles of management or behavior, dominated international trade. By the end of the 1980s, it was genuinely difficult to say whether Honda was not an American company and Kodak a Japanese one. This development is, in large measure, the consequence simply of the rise and dominance of the large transnational corporation. Both the United States and Germany have been tied into the global economy through capital exports. The counterpart of current-account surpluses for the United States in the 1950s was the outflow of capital, frequently in the form of direct investment by American transnational

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corporations. By the 1960s a great deal of attention, frequently hostile, focused on American multinationals in Europe: They constituted what Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber called “the American challenge.” Foreign, largely American corporations continued to play an increasingly important role in the German economy: In 1967 their investment accounted for only 1.9 percent of German GDP, but by 1988 this figure had risen to 6.9 percent.12 In some sectors the government had intervened to prevent an allegedly excessive foreign presence. As late as the 1970s German authorities blocked an attempt by General Motors to control DaimlerBenz, whereas only a few years later they accepted Iranian and Kuwaiti ownership in the firm.13 In the 1970s and 1980s some of the account surpluses in Germany corresponded to German investment abroad. The United States became the subject of inward investment, including by some German corporations, which themselves developed into multinationals. The traditional clothing firm Hugo Boss moved into the U.S. market by buying American producers; Hoechst bought Celanese; Bertelsmann became the world’s largest publishing group through purchasing, among others, Doubleday and RCA. (Larger investments in the United States originated in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.) Overall, Germany, which in 1967 had only accounted for 2.7 percent of the world’s stock of foreign direct investment, by 1988 held 9.1 percent, making it the world’s fourth-largest holder of foreign assets after the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan.14 These flows represent not only a consequence of the increased economic strength and technological sophistication of the European economies but also a reaction to the threats of

12

John H. Dunning, Multinational Enterprises and the Global Economy (Wokingham, 1993), 20. 13 David Bailey, George Harte, and Roger Sugden, Transnationals and Governments: Recent Policies in Japan, France, Germany, the United States, and Britain (London, 1994), 88–90. 14 Dunning, Multinational Enterprises, 17.

trade protection (which might close off markets), and above all to the new uncertainties about exchange rates after 1971. In these conditions local production seemed a logical means of maintaining markets that would otherwise be vulnerable: The fall of the dollar in the 1970s made European products much more expensive in the United States. Shifting production abroad in this manner was often controversial. The post–Bretton Woods decision of Volkswagen to build a plant in the United States was made at the outset of the new era of currency instability, but its implementation was delayed by the operation of the German system of labor codetermination and the fear of German workers that such a move would precipitate loss of German jobs. 15 The multinational corporation provided a demonstration effect for national companies, part of which involved the specification and development of a new managerial science. Internationalization of corporate life was often treated in Germany as a simple continuation of 1950s Americanization. The most important aspects of this development were the systematic application of management ideas, from the “Organization and Management Model” of the 1970s to the “Total Quality Management” concept of the 1980s and computerization. Sometimes there were complaints that Germany was lagging: Not one of the three most prestigious European business schools, for instance, was sited in Germany. A popular book described German business as managed by “zeroes in pinstripes.”16 Deutsche Bank, Germany’s leading bank, which had already experimented with punch cards in 1957, only systematically networked all its business interests via computer terminals in 1983. But there was no doubt that the character of management

15 See David McClain, “Foreign Direct Investment in the United States: Old Currents, ‘New Waves,’ and the Theory of Direct Investment,” in Charles P. Kindleberger and David B. Audretsch, eds., The Multinational Corporation in the 1980s (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), 278– 333. 16 Gunter Ogger, Nieten in Nadelstreifen: Deutschlands Manager im Zwielicht (Munich, 1992).

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and the technology of organization changed more fundamentally over this period than at any other time in this century. The 1950s and 1960s had been an era of dramatic growth; they were followed by an age of adjustment and restructuring. Professional management in both the United States and Germany dates back to the end of the nineteenth century; but after the 1960s management practices became much more internationalized. A new stereotype of the German manager now emerged: No longer a haughty and austere patriarchal figure, he (for German managers remained predominantly male) was fluent in English, adept at the phraseology of managerial science, and perpetually tanned. Managers now shifted jobs more frequently, and international corporations became widely regarded as the sources of best practice. A study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has shown how much more rapidly multinational enterprises in Europe adjusted to the major economic shocks of the 1970s.17 Another indication of the effects of internationalization in Germany is the extent to which IBM Deutschland came to be a supplier of managerial talent to critical positions: Reiner Gohlke, for instance, who in 1982 moved from IBM to become chairman of Deutsche Bundesbahn with the mission of developing a more service-oriented approach; or Hans-Olaf Henkel, who in 1995 became the general manager of the Federation of German Industries (Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie, or BDI). The new global businesses could and did react to changing markets and conditions by shifting production. Although many of the new German multinationals were less purely international than their American counterparts – for instance, they still had a largely German senior management – they contributed to the hollowing out of German industry as they relocated production elsewhere, both within and outside the European Community (EC).

17 OECD, Structural Adjustment and Multinational Enterprises (Paris, 1985).

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the military and the economy One special case of government action in the economy demands special consideration: the effect of military expenditure. The American economy was more highly militarized than that of Germany. Although military spending fell after the United States disengaged from Vietnam in 1975, it rose sharply in the 1980s as a result of the increase in conventional weaponry and high-technology research on the Strategic Defense Initiative during the Reagan era. By contrast, German military expenditure in relation to national income fell during this period. The Federal Republic spent 3.7 percent of GDP on defense in 1975, 3.2 percent in 1985, and 2.0 percent in 1995. The comparable statistics for the United States are 5.9 percent (1975), 6.5 percent (1985), and 3.8 percent (1995).18 By 1987, according to the U.S. Labor Department’s Office of Projections and the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 3.9 million American workers directly dependent on defense contracts, excluding military personnel and civilians employed by the Defense Department. The effects of militarization were most visible in the allocation of money to research and development. Between two-thirds and one-half of all R&D in the postwar system came from federal funds. Federal spending reached a high in the 1960s, when it accounted for almost 3 percent of GNP; the overwhelming portion of federal R&D was military.19 The economic consequences of U.S. military expenditure are controversial. For instance, Europeans sometimes treated the heavy subsidization of the European aerospace industry as an equivalent of the implicit subsidy American defense contracts provided for large American producers. They felt that the secrecy surrounding American military programs might be a way of freezing competitors out of frontier technologies. 18

International Institute of Strategic Studies, The Military Balance, various issues. 19 David C. Mowery and Nathan Rosenberg, Technology and the Pursuit of Economic Growth (New York, 1989), 125–37.

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Conversely, most analysts saw the “militaryindustrial complex” simply as a costly burden that precluded investment in more productive areas. Looking back on the relatively poor performance of the United States compared to continental Europe and Japan in the 1960s and early 1970s, some commentators argued that this was an inevitable consequence of an economy in which too many resources were channeled into military research and investment. Mary Kaldor, for instance, identified a paradox: “American preeminence in aircraft and electronics is due, in part, to the sheer volume of military resources. And yet the military orientation of these industries – and indeed the military market as a whole – impedes current and future commercial developments which provide the economic basis for military spending.”20 Even in 1987 Paul Kennedy could conclude that it is “likely that its [America’s] economic growth rates will be slower than in those countries dedicated to the marketplace and less eager to channel resources into defense.”21 The core of the problem lay in the difficulty of gauging the spillover effects of military expenditure. The benefits for civilian industries can be seen most clearly in the early postwar period, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the jet engine, satellite technology, and microelectronics all eventually produced very obvious benefits for the civilian economy. From the 1970s onward, however, there was an increasing gulf between civilian and military applications, with the consequence that most commentators concluded that spillover effects were declining.22 The high performance specifications required by the military were of little use in civilian applications. With the benefit of hindsight, it might be argued that the higher levels of military spending in the United States did indeed produce lower growth. The full potential could only be realized once more with the end of the Cold War. 20

Mary Kaldor, The Baroque Arsenal (London, 1982),

95. 21 Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York, 1987), 532. 22 Mowery and Rosenberg, Technology, 147–50.

But the implication of this reasoning is that the gigantic U.S. military machine actually did little to reduce long-term growth potential (as opposed to constituting a drag on performance for the 1970s or 1980s). The economics of military spending played a part in the discussions of the 1980s about the costs of differing social and political orders on both sides of the Atlantic. Europeans complained about the irresponsible fiscal policies of the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. They viewed military-induced deficit politics as a cause of the world scarcity of savings. And on the other side of the Atlantic, economists and politicians alike argued that Europeans (especially Germans) constituted a deflationary drag on the world economy by not paying their fair share for the defense of the West. attempts at political influence In this era the linkages of security with economic-policy disputes were much more tenuous than in the 1950s and 1960s, when the defense of Europe had frequently been explicitly tied to economic considerations, as in the case of the Bundesbank’s promise not to convert dollars into gold. One consequence was that Germany was much less vulnerable to direct American pressure than it had been in the heyday of the Bretton Woods order. The United States had been the keystone of that order, which was destroyed primarily because of U.S. policy during the presidency of Richard Nixon. But after this the initiative passed across the Atlantic, and the major institutional shift of economic diplomacy during the 1970s took place as a consequence of Franco-German, not American, thinking. Germany’s development of trade with the Soviet bloc and the extension of credits ran into bitter opposition, particularly from the Reagan administration.23 The 1982 G7 summit at Versailles thus was acrimonious and painful;24 American pressure only irritated the Germans 23 24

See the chapter by Welf Werner in this section. See the chapter by Bernhard May in this section.

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but did not dissuade them, as it might have done fifteen years earlier. In particular, Germany went ahead with financing and construction of the gas pipeline project (the Jamal project), which produced many jobs in Germany but which Washington feared would create an energy dependence on the Soviet Union, not just in Eastern but also in Western Europe. After Versailles, the only way to rescue the summit was by leaving out the substantial discussion of economic affairs at the next meetings, even though they continued to be known as “economic summits.” Later, in the 1980s, the United States had a powerful interest in economic expansion in Germany and was not at all hesitant in pressing its case; but it never presented this demand in the context of a security debate as, for example, American and British ministers had done in 1968 at the time of the G10 meeting in Bonn. There even were some attempts at making linkages the other way around, when German policymakers tried to tell the American authorities that their economics were undermining the security relationship. Helmut Schmidt presented this kind of case to both Carter and Reagan. At the Versailles summit, for instance, Schmidt said: “At the outset of the negotiations, we have told you that we think this business of East/West commerce appears secondary to us. It is much more important to strengthen the cohesion of the West, and in order to do this, you need to modify your monetary policy.”25 It is not surprising that this largely rhetorical maneuver did nothing to affect the course of monetary developments in the United States. Does this mean that the Cold War ceased to be an integrative framework for the Western community of nations? In economic relations, at least, the transatlantic decoupling of the 1970s and 1980s was the direct result of two developments. First, after the collapse of the rule-based Bretton Woods system, a great deal more influence was left to discretionary management. It was impossible for anyone simply to point

to the existence of binding constraints. Discretion brought a new prominence to central banks. Both the Federal Reserve System and the Bundesbank pride themselves on their high degree of independence from their respective governments: The task of exercising influence thus became much harder. A great deal of the macroeconomic framework of this era was set by exceptionally powerful and charismatic central bankers – Otmar Emminger, Karl Otto P¨ohl, and Helmut Schlesinger in Germany, Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan in the United States – in a way that would not have been possible in the Bretton Woods regime. The Bundesbank in particular resisted attempts by the G5 and then G7 finance ministers to shift the burden of international adjustment onto monetary policy, because this would threaten Germany’s historically anti-inflationary stance. Second, many of the greatest controversies focused on trade relations. For much of this time postwar multilateralism in trade seemed genuinely threatened by a “new protectionism.” Most commentators believed that the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was dead. In dealing with trade issues, however, the United States had to negotiate not with Germany but with the EC.26 This made it much harder to instrumentalize the security connection in order to open European markets to American products. Germany could effectively use its strong regional position as well as its powerful and independent central bank as a defense against the direct application of economic pressure by the United States. The advantages of regional multilateralism for Germany’s economic relations with the United States become especially apparent when contrasted to the case of Japan. Japan was of course not a member of a generalized regional alliance system such as NATO, nor of an integrated economic and customs area such as the EC. In trying to reach exchange-rate agreements in the mid-1980s as a response to the large U.S. trade deficit, American negotiators regularly

25 Quoted in Jacques Attali, Verbatim, 3 vols. (Paris, 1993), 1:241.

26 See the chapter by Monika Medick-Krakau in this section.

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consulted and pressured their Japanese counterparts, because this was easier in such a bilateral context. If this “G2” reached an agreement, the joint American-Japanese power could then be brought to bear on Europe.27

the differing context of economic adaptation The economies of both the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States have had to deal with the ending of a golden era, with distortions produced by high levels of inflation, by dislocations resulting from painful deflation in the 1980s, and in general with change that appeared to be imposed by the outside and was increasingly referred to as “globalization.” It is inevitable that both developed their own protective mechanisms. The difference from the earlier period (1950–71) lies in the character of the challenge confronting these economies. Whereas in the first era there was the problem of managing growth and affluence, in the second phase of postwar history, at the end of the “golden years,” businessmen, trade unionists, and politicians had to respond to crises and shocks: Most visibly, these came in the form of the two oil price hikes that apparently directly triggered the major recessions described previously. In the German case, it was clear that a medium-sized power such as Germany could not alter world economic circumstances. In addition, Germany was locked into a network of agreements that limited the room for an independent foreign economic policy. The Federal Republic was a founding member of the European Economic Community (EEC) and was also bound by commitments under the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) (later OECD), and especially under GATT. Germany made multilateralism a central part of economic diplomacy, indeed of its foreign policy as a whole. It realized national 27

This dynamic is very clearly set out in Yoichi Funabashi, Managing the Dollar: From the Plaza to the Louvre, 2d ed. (Washington, D.C., 1988).

interest by enmeshing itself in international institutions.28 On the whole, it found it difficult in consequence to respond directly to what public opinion or political parties regarded as the “unfair” trade policies of other countries. It was less susceptible than the United States to the “new protectionism” of the 1970s, although the EC organized some “voluntary export regulation” agreements with Asian producers.29 An important example of how Germany reacted to a major external shock is provided by the experience of the oil shocks of the 1970s. German policymakers had little faith in initial American plans to smash the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) either by direct political pressure or by encouraging OPEC countries to spend and recycle their petroleum dollars so as to weaken their overall bargaining position. Instead, because Germany felt caught, the response was internal. Germany took domestic measures of adjustment, cutting back aggregate demand more quickly in 1975 than in most other industrial countries but also embarking on an ambitious energy conservation program. Germany then devised an explicit anti-inflation strategy, depending on monetary targeting by the Bundesbank, earlier than any other major industrial nation. At summits and in multilateral discussions, Germany’s representatives inevitably emphasized the importance of an international strategy to defeat inflation. The most characteristic German domestic response to a general crisis was to mobilize the “social partners” in a concerted defensive effort to mitigate the effects of the crisis: to press the government to subsidize problematic branches of industry, notably the politically influential steel industry, and to create more jobs out of the available work by cutting work hours and increasing vacation. This was, in fact, a common European position. Dani Rodrik has recently noted the close relationship between a high share of international trade and high spending on transfer payments. It has been the small and open European economies, such as Denmark, 28

Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (New York, 1993). 29 See the chapter by Andreas Falke in this section.

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the Netherlands, and Sweden, that historically have spent the most on social programs. Social spending is consequently often perceived as a necessary cushion once an economy is subjected to the lowering of trade barriers.30 The historical peculiarities of Rhineland capitalism in this context were widely interpreted as responsible for Germany’s successful adaptation of the Modell Deutschland to changes in the world economy.31 Indeed, such a view also appears in the academic literature as a direct challenge to the diagnosis of “Eurosclerosis.” Case studies attempt to show that in sectors as diverse as motor vehicles, machine tools, mechanical engineering, and textiles, the high human-capital endowment enabled by cooperative social arrangements and security of employment allowed rapid and successful innovation. Firms in this view were able continually to upgrade their labor skills and their output in a “diversified quality production.”32 But such microstudies of enterprise do not assess the question of the adaptability of the economy as a whole. The costs of such a response made the longterm process of adaptation to technical and market changes in the global economy harder than it might have been – and was a major element in provoking the worsening employment situation of the 1970s. In Germany (and more generally in continental Europe) increasing criticism of the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism set in. It was sometimes termed “the fear of the two Scotsmen,” that is, McKinsey (the management consultants who were supposed

30 Dani Rodrik, Why Do More Open Economies Have Bigger Governments? National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 5537 (Washington, D.C., 1996); Dani Rodrik, Has Globalization Gone Too Far? (Washington, D.C., 1997). 31 Michel Albert, Capitalism Against Capitalism (London, 1993). 32 See Peter Katzenstein, ed., Industry and Politics in West Germany (Ithaca, N.Y., 1989); Kathleen Thelen, “Beyond Corporatism,” Comparative Politics 27 (1994): 17–24; Wendy Carlin, “West German Growth and Institutions 1945–90,” in Nicholas Crafts and Gianni Toniolo, eds., Economic Growth in Europe Since 1945 (New York, 1996), 455–97.

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to demand the rationalization or abolition of jobs) and McDonald’s, the provider of cheap hamburgers and low-wage jobs flipping them (McJobs). Regulation – of work hours, health and safety, opening hours, standards – was seen as the answer, one that conformed with a long European tradition, and not as a problem. The United States dealt with the threat of a “global” economy in a different way, with greater self-confidence – perhaps because of the character of American institutions, but also at least in part because it had more political instruments available that obviated the need for domestic social protectionism. In particular, the United States, which had established the postwar order, was never afraid of unilateralism in trade policies (notably in the retaliatory clauses of the 1974 Trade Act, Section 301, devised to provide a unilateral remedy against “unfair trade,” and the Super 301 of the 1988 Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act). Rather than seeing itself as bound by international agreements and organizations, American policymakers tried to use them, often quite aggressively, in the pursuit of national interest. This difference in approach on many occasions generated considerable resentment among Germans toward American practices: “The Americans,” they said, “have the power, the French get the top jobs [in the international institutions], and the Germans and Japanese come up with the money.”33 The different responses on either side of the Atlantic also reflect in part a contrast in the extent of economic relations with the outside world. Germany was traditionally highly dependent on exports: Exports of goods and services as a share of GDP rose from 22.6 percent in 1970 to 35.9 percent in 1990. The U.S. export quota was always much lower, although it too has risen dramatically, reflecting the startling growth of trade in the second half of the twentieth century. The analogous figures on export share for the United States are 5.6 percent (1970) and 10.1 33 Klaus Engelen, “Comment,” in Peter B. Kenen, ed., Managing the World Economy: Fifty Years after Bretton Woods (Washington, D.C., 1994), 79. See also the chapter by Monika Medick-Krakau in this section.

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percent (1990).34 Less vulnerable to other countries’ protectionist reactions, the United States finds it much easier to wield the threat of protectionism as a weapon of economic warfare. There is an additional factor that protects the United States from other countries’ protectionism: the scale of activity of American corporations abroad. A leading motive in the further expansion of United States–based transnational corporations in the 1970s was the search for ways to subvert foreign trade barriers by relocating production and for defenses against currency instability. The large corporation figured increasingly in trade. By 1989, 42 percent of exports of goods and services from the United States were actually transactions between American firms and their foreign affiliates.35 Faced with a crisis, the immediate official response of the United States was to press the other side to take action: to dismantle OPEC in the mid-1970s; to press countries with current account surpluses in the 1970s and 1980s to engage in greater economic expansion; and to negotiate bilaterally with Japan over the trade imbalance and the removal of “structural impediments” to the absorption of more Japanese imports. In addition, the United States made use of dollar politics as an instrument both of foreign and of trade policy. However, German policymakers, concerned primarily with currency stability, were unwilling to instrumentalize the Deutsche Mark in a similar way. Thus, in the later 1970s and again in the mid-1980s, at the time of the Plaza Group of Five meeting, “talking down the dollar” was used as a way of forcing open markets. The parallel response of American corporations was to diversify internationally. The Germans’ governmental and business strategies were quite different. As a result of the availability of these instruments of foreign economic policy, the aggressive stance on trade, the willingness to talk 34

IMF, International Financial Statistics, various years. Dunning, Multinational Enterprises, 386; C. Fred Bergsten, Thomas Horst, and Theodore H. Moran, American Multinationals and American Interests (Washington, D.C., 1978). 35

down the dollar, and the worldwide involvement of transnational corporations, the United States had less need to adopt costly domestic measures to remedy the consequences of change in world markets. In addition, in a very large and diverse country such as the United States, such measures would have distributional effects that could make them more difficult to push through Congress. Deregulation, rather than more regulation, thus appeared highly attractive for both foreign and domestic policy reasons. German and American views on who should adapt and how the outcome would look therefore became completely opposed. The United States believed that it could and should shape the rest of the world in the image of a perhaps idealized vision of a free-market society. Germany, however, generally saw a need to cushion itself in response to a challenge from the outside world by strengthening rather traditional features in its social order. Both beliefs contain a large measure of illusion. On the one hand, the American hope was bound to encounter obstacles and frustrations. Countries cannot and do not simply reform under external pressure if there is no domestic rationale and no internal political momentum. On the other hand, the German response became ever more costly and restrictive. Protecting against change by trying to offset the cost and compensate the victims generated an escalating fiscal drain. In addition, it created a politicaleconomic problem as powerful domestic interests crystallized around the ability to generate compensation. In this sense, reactions on both sides of the Atlantic were irrelevant as strategies to the basic issue of responding to an integrated and technically dynamic world economy. But the American version, which tried to make other countries adapt (by opening their trading systems, restricting low-price exports, changing pricing strategies) did less long-term harm to the domestic economy. Pressure to open to trade was largely beneficial to the recipient of such demands, as well as to the world at large. The reactive German response contributed to what became widely known as “reform blockage” (Reformstau).

Cooperation, Competition, and Conflict

suggestions for further readings On the overall development of the German economy, see Herbert Giersch, Karl-Heinz Paqu´e, and Holger Schmieding, The Fading Miracle: Four Decades of Market Economy in Germany, 2d ed. (Cambridge and New York, 1994), which puts strong emphasis on international elements and offers a rather gloomy assessment. Wendy Carlin, “West German Growth and Institutions 1945–90,” in Nicholas Crafts and Gianni Toniolo, eds., Economic Growth in Europe Since 1945 (Cambridge and New York, 1996), 455–97, sees more virtues in the German model. For the United States, Martin Feldstein, The United States in the World Economy (Chicago, 1988), is realistic and illuminating; Henry Nau, The Myth of America’s Decline: Leading the World Economy into the 1990s (New York, 1990), is, despite its polemical title, an exceptionally perceptive reading of the problems confronting U.S. policy; and Joseph S. Nye, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York, 1990) reflects on the political problems posed by economic maturity. The classic work on summitry is Robert D. Putnam and Nicholas Bayne, Hanging Together: Cooperation and Conflict in the Seven-Power Summits, 2d ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1987). Putnam also produced an American view of the controversial 1978 Bonn summit together with C. Randall Henning, “The Bonn Summit of 1978: A Case Study in Coordination,” in the deliciously titled collection by Richard Cooper, Can Nations Agree? Issues in International Economic Cooperation (Washington, D.C., 1989). The best source for what went on in the summits of the 1980s are the delightfully indiscrete memoirs of Jacques Attali, Verbatim, 3 vols. (Paris, 1993–5). The best recent comparative survey of government relations with business is David B. Audretsch, The Market and the State: Government Policy Towards Business in Europe, Japan, and the United States (New York, 1989). On the specific problems of multi- or transnationals, see also David Bailey, George Harte, and Roger Sugden, Transnationals and Governments: Recent Policies in Japan, France, Germany, the United States, and Britain (London and New York, 1994). But

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above all, see the magisterial and comprehensive survey by John Dunning, Multinational Enterprises and the Global Economy (Wokingham, 1993). Some illuminating reflections on whether there is a specifically German model of capitalism are provided by Gary Herrigel, Industrial Construction: The Sources of German Industrial Power (Cambridge and New York, 1996); and Hermann Simon, Hidden Champions: Lessons from 500 of the World’s Best Unknown Companies (Boston, 1996), gives an interesting assessment of the Mittelstand economy. On banking, see Jeremy Edwards and Klaus Fischer, Banks, Finance and Investment in Germany (Cambridge and New York, 1994). The development of technology is best viewed through David C. Mowery and Nathan Rosenberg (the pioneering author on the history of technology), Technology and the Pursuit of Economic Growth (Cambridge and New York, 1989). A fine account of trade diplomacy, written before it was clear that there would be a successful conclusion of the Uruguay Round, is Patrick Low, Trading Free: The GATT and U.S. Trade Policy (New York, 1993). On U.S. trade policy specifically, see I. M. Destler, American Trade Politics: A System Under Stress (Washington, D.C., 1987); Thomas Bayard and Kimberley Elliott, Reciprocity and Retaliation in U.S. Trade Policy (Washington, D.C., 1994); and Monika Medick-Krakau, Amerikanische Aussenhandelspolitik im Wandel: Handelsgesetzgebung und GATT-Politik 1945–1988 (Berlin, 1995). Osthandel is really a subject all to itself: An important work is Hans-Dieter Jacobsen, Ost-West-Wirtschaftsbeziehungen als deutschamerikanisches Problem (Baden-Baden, 1986). On the diplomacy of currencies, the classic accounts are Yoichi Funabashi, Managing the Dollar: From the Plaza to the Louvre, 2d ed. (Washington, D.C., 1989); and I. M. Destler and C. Randall Henning, Dollar Politics: Exchange Rate Policymaking in the United States (Washington, D.C., 1989). For a more recent account, see Harold James, International Monetary Cooperation Since Bretton Woods (New York, 1996); and the comparative study by

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C. Randall Henning, Currencies and Politics in the United States, Germany and Japan (Washington, D.C., 1994). Funabashi’s account pays relatively little attention to the German side of negotiations, and indeed misstates what happened at the Louvre (at least as viewed from the perspective of Bonn and Frankfurt). On the other hand, the existing German accounts are rather inadequate, especially Otmar Emminger’s misleading and error-filled D-Mark, Dollar, W¨ahrungskrisen: Erinnerungen eines ehemaligen Bundesbankpr¨asidenten (Stuttgart, 1986). Up to date, but appearing too late to be used in the

present account, is Deutsche Bundesbank, Fifty Years of the Deutsche Mark: Central Bank and Currency Since 1948 (Oxford, 1999). Three valuable recent books dealing with international dimensions of monetary policy are: Andrew Moravcsik, The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht (Ithaca, 1998); Peter A. Johnson, The Government of Money: Monetarism in Germany and the United States (Ithaca, 1998); and Kathleen McNamara, The Currency of Ideas: Politics in the European Union (Ithaca, 1998).

chapter one

Trojan Horse or Loyal Partner? West Germany as a Trading Power Between the United States and the EC Monika Medick-Krakau Translated by Tradukas

Both common and unique patterns were intricately interwoven in German-American relations during the postwar era. Unique historical points of departure and configurations of interests created the defining features of the relationship between the United States and West Germany. Bilateral relations were, however, also part of a more comprehensive network of relations that was determined, on the one hand, by the transatlantic security alliance and, on the other, by the progressive integration of Western Europe. West European integration became particularly significant for foreign trade policy: German- American foreign trade relations have fallen under the Common Foreign Trade Policy of the European Community (EC) since the 1970s. Foreign trade policy relations between Europe and the United States as well as between Germany and the United States underwent significant changes between the 1950s and the 1970s. Contributing factors included the leveling of differences in economic power between the United States and Western Europe, and an increasing level of global economic integration, in particular between the western industrial nations. The crises in the world economy of the 1970s increased mutual dependency and the need for cooperation, but also heightened the problems associated with cooperation under the conditions of “complex interdependency.”1

Finally, the defusing of the East-West conflict through the policy of d´etente and arms control contributed to a weakening of the primacy of security policy, which had dominated transatlantic economic relations in the early postwar years. All of these developments influenced the mix of cooperation, competition, and conflict in German-American trade relations.

basic political and economic conditions It is more difficult to separate GermanAmerican relations from the multilateral transatlantic context when considering trade policy than when dealing with currency issues.2 The economic effects of West European integration both in creating and in diverting trade have had considerable influence on bilateral trade. The basic conditions of trade policy are equally important. Since 1974, foreign trade policy has been one of the EC’s common policies; the mandate for negotiations with outside countries thus lies with the European Commission. Three factors explain why special foreign trade policy conditions exist for the Washington-Bonn axis within this multilateral terrain. These are, first, the exceptional proximity of the United States and West

1 Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston, 1977), 9.

2 See the chapter by Harold James, “The Deutsche Mark and the Dollar,” in this section.

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Germany in fundamental questions of economic policy; second, the economic significance each country had for the other; and finally, the imbalance in German-American relations stemming from security policy. The strongest economic partner of the United States in Western Europe was also the most vulnerable and dependent in security terms.3 The United States and West Germany were in broad agreement in their fundamental assumptions about foreign trade policy: Each was committed to liberal, multilateral, and free-market principles.4 This was the case at least until the mid-1970s, when domestic policy pressures began to influence liberal foreign trade policy in the United States and most West European states. Nonetheless, foreign trade policy principles tied Bonn and Washington more closely together than they did West Germany and France or Italy, both of which tended to advocate neomercantile strategies of dividing up the market in keeping with their traditions of state control. Unusually tight economic ties further characterized German-American relations. In trade relations the United States and West Germany have been among each other’s most significant import and export partners.5 At first glance German-American trade appears to be balanced; by 1970 they accounted for roughly the same share of one another’s total foreign trade. However, a qualitative imbalance did exist: West Germany’s exports to the United States were far more important for the West German economy as a whole than was the case for the United 3

Manfred Knapp, ed., Die deutsch-amerikanischen Beziehungen nach 1945 (Frankfurt am Main, 1975); ErnstOtto Czempiel, “Die USA und Westeuropa: Asymmetrie, Interdependenz, Kooperation,” in Manfred Knapp and Gert Krell, eds., Einf¨uhrung in die Internationale Politik, 3d ed. (Munich, 1996), 85–108. 4 Manfred Knapp, “Politische und wirtschaftliche Interdependenzen im Verh¨altnis USA-Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” in Manfred Knapp et al., Die USA und Deutschland 1918–1975 (Munich, 1978), 191; Peter Schaal, “Die Wirtschaftsbeziehungen zwischen den USA und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte B 13/83, (1983): 22–41. 5 For details see the chapter by Welf Werner in this section.

States and its exports to Germany. Beyond dependency in security matters, this imbalance represented a further temptation for the United States to use the Federal Republic as a means of influencing EC economic and, in particular, foreign trade policies. The Federal Republic, inevitably caught between its transatlantic and European orientations, was expected to serve as an intermediary, an often thankless role. It met with reservations on the part of its European neighbors and was even accused of being a Trojan horse sent in by the United States.6 In the course of the 1970s and 1980s this imbalance largely disappeared as the level of West German technological development and specialization caught up. Since that time industrial sector goods have been the dominant source of trade between the two countries. This balanced out German dependency, but on both sides of the Atlantic it has also increased pressure on the two economies to compete.

the new agenda in foreign trade policy Changes in the structure of world trade that became visible in the early 1970s had already been anticipated some years earlier with the conclusion of the Kennedy Round of multilateral trade negotiations (1964–7) in the context of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Fresh demands for trade restrictions and protection for domestic markets followed this highly successful round of tariff reductions. Economic as well as new political and social developments underlay these demands. The agenda for tackling problems in foreign trade policy now changed. Up to the 1960s, liberalization of trade largely meant the removal of tariffs. When GATT was founded in 1947, tariff rates in the group of nine leading industrial countries were on average 35 percent. But three decades later, at a weighted average of less than 9 percent, they no longer represented a serious 6 Roger Morgan, Washington und Bonn: Deutschamerikanische Beziehungen seit dem II. Weltkrieg (Munich, 1975), 234.

Trojan Horse or Loyal Partner?

trade barrier – except, of course, in the agricultural sector. Nontariff trade barriers (NTBs) now became crucial to trade policy problems.7 NTBs included provisions for specific foreign trade protection such as quotas as well as numerous measures for economic intervention and regulation (e.g., safety rules, public procurement guidelines, regional and sectoral economic subsidies) that, intentionally or not, influenced the competitiveness of foreign suppliers of goods and services. The new and explosive significance of NTBs was not just a result of the reduction in tariff, but also a reflection of the increasing intensity and breadth of economic integration between the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. NTBs resulted in a blurring of the borders between domestic economic policy and foreign trade policy. Nearly every political intervention involving price formation and market structures now became a possible source of foreign trade policy conflicts. In the United States, development of the balance of trade and payments was a visible expression of the new level of integration of the world economy, of shifting patterns of foreign trade, and tougher competition in domestic and world markets. The first deficit in trade in goods arose in 1971; the deficit increased from $2 billion in 1971 to $128 billion in 1988. Because of surpluses in the services sector, however, the current account balance went deep into the red only from 1982 on. This was, above all, the result of a shift in exchange rates: between 1980 and 1985, the rate for the dollar against the Deutsche Mark rose from a yearly average of 1.82 DM to 3.40 DM. The increased value of the dollar had an adverse effect on U.S. exports, whereas imports became cheaper.8 The new level of economic integration changed the U.S. and Western European domestic economies and the social conditions that influenced decisions about foreign trade policy.

Import substitution and intensified competition in world markets brought about an increase in the number of foreign trade “losers” who increasingly and vociferously demanded protectionist measures. The most important importsensitive industrial sectors on both sides of the Atlantic were the textile, steel, and auto industries; due to their importance for the labor market and their regional concentration, these industries had potentially great political influence. Their demands became more urgent, and public opinion also became increasingly receptive toward them. In the 1950s and 1960s, the model of an open world-trade order had been virtually unchallenged by elites, at least in the United States and West Germany, if not in all West European countries. But now vulnerability – the downside of openness and interdependency – became a major public concern. In the first two postwar decades, foreign trade issues had been discussed primarily among elites. But now – with the threat of job losses through the internationalization of production and through import substitution in domestic markets – they suddenly became a topic of general interest. Whereas the organization of special interests was similar in the United States and West Germany, the political processes shaping trade policy were extremely different. Congress’s autonomy provided the protectionist lobby with privileged access to the political process, and the White House, dependent on periodic extensions of foreign trade laws and congressional approval for renewal of the mandate to participate in GATT negotiations, found itself under considerable domestic pressure from the early 1970s on.9 This pressure was manifested less in enacted trade laws, which were based on compromise and remained largely moderate, than in the countless protectionist draft bills that members of Congress used, with an eye to

9

7

Robert E. Baldwin, Nontariff Distortions of International Trade (Washington, D.C., 1970); see also the chapter by Andreas Falke in this section. 8 William R. Cline, United States External Adjustment and the World Economy (Washington, D.C., 1989).

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Andreas F¨urst, “The Interaction Mechanism Between Congress and the President in Making U.S. Foreign Trade Policy,” in Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich, ed., Economic and Strategic Issues in U.S. Foreign Policy (Berlin, 1989), 67–85; Alfred E. Eckes Jr., Opening America’s Market: U.S. Foreign Trade Policy Since 1776 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1995), 209–16.

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the electorate, to exert pressure on the administration or the country’s trading partners. These initiatives show a departure from the model of rules-based multilateral trade liberalization that had been anchored in the GATT principles of nondiscrimination and most-favored-nation status. The emphasis shifted from freer trade to fair trade, from equal access to markets to fair market shares (from the point of view of the United States).10 In West Germany, by contrast, pressure groups’ access to the political process was filtered in two ways: by the structure of the parliamentary system of government, which allows the executive a relatively broad freedom to maneuver, and by the communalization of foreign trade policy in the EC. The gateway for protectionist demands under these conditions proved to be the federal structure of German politics. State governments lobbied in the Bundesrat (the upper house of parliament) and in the EC Commission in Brussels as advocates for troubled local industries. In addition, protectionism found an outlet in the intergovernmental European Council of Ministers, where the need to compromise gave additional leverage to member states who favored regulating world trade. the 1970s: trade conflicts in diverse sectors and common efforts toward control During Richard Nixon’s presidency, U.S. foreign economic policy was directed at resolving the tension between interdependency and autonomy11 in favor of retaining American freedom to maneuver. In monetary policy, the Nixon administration took the drastic and unilateral step in 1971 of revoking the basis of the Bretton Woods system, namely the convertibility of official dollar reserves into gold.12 10 Monika Medick-Krakau, Amerikanische Aussenhandelspolitik im Wandel: Handelsgesetzgebung und GATTPolitik 1945–1988 (Berlin, 1995), 146–63. 11 Thomas L. Ilgen, Autonomy and Interdependence: U.S.-Western European Monetary and Trade Relations, 1958– 1984 (Totowa, N.J., 1985). 12 Diane B. Kunz, Butter and Guns: America’s Cold War Economic Diplomacy (New York, 1997), 192–222.

This pattern of externalizing adjustment costs remained dominant throughout the 1970s. The favored means was the (artificial) bilateralism of “voluntary” agreements on export restraint (VER) or negotiated quotas according to the orderly market agreement (OMA). Such measures made for an artificial bilateralism because the agreements were accepted under pressure and to fend off a greater evil. The United States, which signed a great many agreements of this sort in the 1970s and 1980s in sectors such as steel, textiles, automobiles, agricultural products, semiconductors, shoes, and machine parts, has not been alone in using these instruments. EC countries have also drawn upon them.13 The most important country from which the United States demanded export restraints was Japan. Automobiles are the most spectacular example. In relations with Western Europe one highly contentious sector also existed, in which the Americans demanded and finally achieved “voluntary” export restraints: the steel industry. The increasing penetration of the U.S. domestic market by imported steel resulted in a number of U.S. firms demanding “antidumping” protective measures in 1966 against unfair trading practices.14 The firms protested against the allegedly excessive subsidies provided by foreign governments. A first round of agreements (1969–73) was followed after 1975 by a new wave of protectionist demands from U.S. producers precipitated by a drop in demand caused by the energy crisis. Negotiations with the EC over the next three years produced no results. President Jimmy Carter and his administration reacted with a minimum price import ruling in 1978. This stipulated that an automatic antidumping procedure applied to all imports below a certain price, which was calculated on the basis of estimated production costs for the most efficient producer (Japan) plus shipment costs. This system broke down in the early 1980s because of the rise of the dollar against other currencies and a fall in demand. 13 Jan Tumlir, Protectionism: Trade Policy in Democratic Societies (Washington, D.C., 1985). 14 Patrick Low, Trading Free: The GATT and U.S. Trade Policy (New York, 1993), 102–7.

Trojan Horse or Loyal Partner?

Before the conflict over steel escalated, trade conflicts between the United States and the EC had centered on the agriculture sector. The Common Agricultural Market – a highly protectionist market regulation system with interventionist pricing, monetary compensation payments, and export subsidies introduced in response to increasing surplus production – had been high on the list of American grievances with the EC states since the “chicken war” of the 1960s, and this remained the sector that provoked the most conflict in the next two decades. Particular difficulties arose from the fact that the agricultural market had become an indispensable political bond within the EC, having been a decisive factor in the compromise between the Federal Republic of Germany and France at the founding of the EC.15 The Common Agricultural Policy became a particularly tough challenge for the United States, however, as the world’s largest exporter of agricultural products. In the second half of the 1970s agricultural products represented on average one-fifth of U.S. exports. The Tokyo round of multilateral GATT negotiations toward the end of the 1970s failed to reach agreement on the liberalization of agricultural markets, which enjoyed a high degree of protection and subsidies throughout the world, including in the United States.16 The United States demanded that tariff-like elements be introduced into the agricultural market structure of the EC, as well as a commitment to a gradual decrease in levels of protection. The EC persisted in demanding agreements for particular products and for a prearranged division of markets, and thus finally refused any further liberalization. The negotiating positions adopted by the United States and the EC at the Tokyo round were not, however, based on strategies of refusing all concessions or protecting vested interests on the basis of the smallest common de15 Thomas W. Zeiler, American Trade and Power in the 1960s (New York, 1992); Guido Thiemeyer, Vom “Pool Vert” zur Europ¨aischen Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft: Europ¨aische Integration, kalter Krieg und die Anf¨ange der gemeinsamen europ¨aischen Agrarpolitik 1950–1957 (Munich, 1957). 16 See the chapter by Andreas Falke in this section.

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nominator. Rather, the Carter administration contributed to the successful conclusion of the negotiations by making substantial concessions, above all in the fields of compensatory tariffs and customs valuation. This represents a contrast to the unilateralism of the settlement on the steel market and shows that the players had learned to work for multilateral coordination. This learning process was also evident in questions of macroeconomic control after several initial attempts at unilateralism. The economic summits were the main forums for this multilateral coordination.17 The imbalance between transatlantic security and economic relations had a marked influence on trade policy in both the United States and the EC. It served American interests to pursue a strategy of linking security and economic policy; the U.S. sought foreign trade concessions from the Europeans as compensation for its contributions to European security. The West European states hoped, on the other hand, to keep these two facets of relations with the United States separate.18 American success in linking these two areas was limited on account of the EC’s economic power and the disappearance of clear hierarchies between economic and political power as the two became complexly interdependent. In addition, security policy itself became a subject of increasing dispute within the Western alliance, especially from the late 1970s on. the 1980s: transatlantic conflicts in a new key? In the first half of the 1980s, observers perceived a new nadir in German-American 17

Benjamin J. Cohen, “An Explosion in the Kitchen? Economic Relations with Other Advanced Industrial States,” in Kenneth A. Oye, Robert J. Lieber, and Donald Rothchild, eds., Eagle Defiant: United States Foreign Policy in the 1980s (Boston, 1983), 110–13. See also the chapter by Bernhard May in this section. 18 Knapp, Politische und wirtschaftliche Interdependenzen, 211–19; Hubert Zimmermann, Money and Securtiy: Troops, Monetary Policy, and West Germany’s Relations with the United States and Britain, 1950–1971 (Cambridge and Washington, D.C., 2002).

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postwar relations, a “significant erosion of . . . the partnership.”19 It was difficult to say whether this was just another phase in an old family argument or a crisis of a new order. The foundation on which security relations rested, NATO, was never in serious danger. But economic matters had become the most significant challenge to and the most conflict-laden dimension of European-American and German-American relations in the course of the 1970s, and these conflicts escalated during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Moreover, the East-West conflict no longer offered a source of unity in relations between the United States and Western Europe, West Germany in particular. Potential for disagreement had arisen here, too, as interpretations of the East-West conflict drifted apart. This meant that the basis for West Germany’s special role, which derived from its dependency in security matters, became less certain. In the years between the NATO double-track decision (1979) and the INF Treaty (1987), disputes about the nature of relations with the Soviet Union reached hitherto unknown degrees of acrimony.20 This conflict had considerable impact on trade policy as a whole on account of the issue of trade with Eastern Europe. In the 1980s, transatlantic relations on trade policy developed under conditions that were influenced on the U.S. side by both the economic and political consequences of Reaganomics and the general conception behind U.S. foreign policy. Reaganomics resulted in a severe worsening of the current account balance, an increase in the budget deficit, and a very high value for 19

Wolfram F. Hanrieder, Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of German Foreign Policy (New Haven, Conn., 1989), 306. 20 ¨ Herbert Dittgen, “Die Ara der OstWest-Verhandlungen und der Wirtschafts- und W¨ahrungskrisen (1969–1981),” in Klaus Larres and Torsten Oppelland, eds., Deutschland und die USA im 20. Jahrhundert: Geschichte der politischen Beziehungen (Darmstadt, 1997), 178–203; Michael Jochum, “Der Zerfall des sicherheitspolitischen Konsensus und die Versch¨arfung der Wirtschafts- und W¨ahrungskrisen (1981–1989),” in Larres and Oppelland, eds., Deutschland und die USA, 204–25. On NATO’s double-track decision and the INF Treaty, see the chapter by Michael Broer, vol. 2, Security.

the dollar. These factors represented a danger to the international competitiveness of the U.S. economy, leading not only to a new round of demands for more fairness and a “fair share” for the United States in world trade, but also to increased influence, particularly in Congress, for advocates of unilateral, aggressive open-market policies. Threats of retaliation finally took form in the “Super 310” paragraph of the Foreign Trade Act of 1988. Reagan’s foreign policy attempted to undo the measures his predecessors since Richard Nixon had taken in response to the now visible limits to U.S. power. Reagan sought to regain room for maneuver and leadership by rebuilding military and economic might.21 He succeeded only to a very limited degree, and the costs in terms of transatlantic relations were high. By refusing to consult and cooperate with its partners and by unilaterally insisting on loyalty, the United States contributed decisively to a worsening of the conflicts in the traditional problem areas of steel and agriculture. After a series of partly successful antidumping proceedings, the U.S. Department of Commerce first threatened and then, in June 1982, put into place “preliminary levels” of punitive tariffs in the steel sector. The EC Commission in Brussels reacted bitterly to this unilateral step with a list of U.S. contraventions of agreements; under massive American pressure, the EC agreed to a formal export restraints agreement in October 1982.22 Conflicts over the Common Agricultural Market also intensified in 1981 when the United States instigated a GATT complaint against subsidized EC agricultural exports. In this case both sides threatened to introduce punitive tariffs and new limits to the volume of exports.23 Agricultural trade was one of the problems that the

21 Helga Haftendorn and Jakob Schissler, eds., Rekonstruktion amerikanischer St¨arke: Sicherheits- und R¨ustungskontrollpolitik der USA w¨ahrend der ReaganAdministration (Berlin, 1988); William Niskanen, Reagonomics: An Insider’s Account of the Policies and the People (New York, 1988). 22 Low, Trading Free, 103–4. 23 Cohen, “Explosion in the Kitchen,” 126–7.

Trojan Horse or Loyal Partner?

Tokyo Round had not solved, and it landed on the agenda of a new round of multilateral trade negotiations in 1982.24 Disagreements over trade with Eastern European, in particular European natural gas pipeline deals with the Soviet Union, represent a special case in the history of transatlantic trade conflicts.25 They transcended the familiar pattern of embedding economic competition and economic policy differences in a security framework that, although not entirely tension-free, was fundamentally cooperative. Conflicts over Eastern European trade were essentially political. They revolved around divergent interpretations of the East-West conflict and the merits of strategies based on providing incentives or, alternatively, refusing cooperation. The reason the conflict proved so intense was not just that it had security policy at its core. There was also a subtext. West European states sought to resist the style and substance of American unilateralism, refused to be subjugated to it, and demanded that their own European interests be considered in decisions on the common affairs of the alliance. Even in this period of economic turbulence and intensified transatlantic “family arguments,” however, cooperation was still possible. The trade negotiations of the Uruguay Round in 1986 saw the beginning of the most comprehensive and ambitious attempt to institute a multilateral framework in the history of GATT.26 The fact that the Reagan administration demonstrated more openness to the new GATT negotiations in 1985 indicated a greater 24

Robert E. Baldwin, Carl B. Hamilton, and Andre Sapir, eds., Issues in US-EC Trade Relations (Chicago, 1988). 25 U.S. Congress, Joint Economic Committee, Soviet Pipeline Sanctions. The European Perspective. Hearing Before the Joint Economic Committee, 97th Cong., 2nd sess., Sept. 22, 1982 (Washington, D.C., 1983); Claudia W¨ormann, Osthandel als Problem der Atlantischen Allianz: Erfahrungen aus dem Erdgas-R¨ohren-Gesch¨aft mit der UdSSR (Bonn, 1986). 26 Heinz Hauser and Kai-Uwe Schanz, Das neue GATT: Die Welthandelsorganisation nach Ablauf der Uruguay-Runde (Munich, 1995); Susan M. Collins and Barry P. Bosworth, eds., The New GATT: Implications for the United States (Washington, D.C., 1994).

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willingness to focus on questions of international economic policy. But this did not mean that the United States had revoked the trade policy goals formulated by the president during his first term in office. The Uruguay Round came close to failing on a number of occasions and could only be completed after eight years of protracted negotiations. The most divisive point was the running conflict between the United States and the EC over agriculture. A complex combination of factors lay behind this. Both initial positions and negotiating tactics diverged widely. Although the United States demanded that import restraints and subsidies be abolished – an attempt to separate price formation on the agricultural markets from incomes policy – the EC merely offered to reduce aid to agriculture, but emphasized that the goals and mechanisms of the Common Agricultural Market were not open to discussion. Finding a compromise was complicated by the fact that the anticipated political costs on the European side prevented what domestic politics in the United States urgently demanded: some curtailment of agricultural subsidies as a precondition for congressional approval. One factor in the EC’s inflexibility, which almost undermined the GATT negotiations in 1990–1, was the necessity of consensus in Community decision making. That gave France a de facto veto and weakened West Germany’s traditional role as an advocate of free trade. It was not until summer 1993 that an agreement on agriculture could be reached as part of a larger compromise package put together at the highest levels during a world economic summit, thus saving the ambitious Uruguay Round of negotiations.

conclusion Bilateral trade and trade policy were of great importance in relations between the United States and West Germany in the postwar period. Although these relations formed an integral part of a multilateral transatlantic context, special conditions always adhered to German-American relations: the exceptional density of economic and

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political ties and the special asymmetry caused by security matters. In the 1970s, economic issues posed the most important challenge to transatlantic relations. The mix of shared and diverging interests, of cooperation and conflict, was changing. Developments in the international economy, problems of interdependence and global economic governance, and new domestic political circumstances also resulted in increasing conflicts within bilateral German-American relations. These conflicts became more intense in the 1980s. Contributing factors included unilateralism and the Reagan administration’s refusal to cooperate as well as fundamental transformations in U.S.-European relations. The imperative of mutual security, which had reliably contributed to smoothing out differences in the group of Western industrial nations, lost its unifying function. Diverging interpretations of the East-West conflict allowed economic disputes to worsen or opened new arenas for controversy, as in the case of East-West trade relations. The postwar era was drawing to a close.

There is good reason to assume that the upheaval of 1989–90 was no more significant to transatlantic and, in particular, German-American economic relations than the change that occurred around 1970. A more fundamental reshaping of relations will require the completion of the European Union (EU). Without political union, the imbalance in relations between the United States and Germany – even the enlarged post-unification Federal Republic – cannot be overcome. And even the introduction of a common currency, the euro, cannot disguise that without political union, the EU will remain what it has been since the 1970s: a frustrated power, often strong enough to refuse America’s hegemonic designs, but still too weak and divided to supplant them.27

27 David P. Calleo, “The Postwar Atlantic System and Its Future,” in Ernst-Otto Czempiel and Dankwart A. Rustow, eds., The Euro-American System (Frankfurt am Main, 1976), 23.

chapter two

Emancipation, Regionalization, and Globalization German-American Trade Relations Welf Werner Translated by Tradukas

International trade transactions are as varied as the conditions of supply and demand in the countries in which they are conducted. Examination of the positions of the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States in international trade inevitably points to the multilateral aspects of each state’s foreign relations. The foreign trade of both the United States and West Germany was so diverse – in terms of geography as well as goods – that individual trading partners could affect the overall picture only in exceptional cases. Although close economic ties between the United States and West Germany developed in many areas during the Cold War era, trade was of limited importance to their bilateral relations. Since the 1970s there has, moreover, been a relative decline in German-American trade. By contrast, regional trade within Western Europe and North America has grown, and both regions have substantially expanded their trade with Asian countries.

By 1970, West Germany’s 10.9 percent share of total world exports closely approached the world market share of the United States, which stood at 13.8 percent. Britain, Japan, France, and Canada lagged far behind Germany and the United States, with market shares of between only 5.1 and 6.2 percent. The gap between the United States and Germany narrowed further after 1970. In the second half of the 1980s, the Federal Republic managed to replace the United States temporarily as the world’s export leader. Regardless of the two countries’ shifting positions, the most important feature of the 1970s and 1980s was that the United States and West Germany began to experience difficulties in maintaining their world market shares. The exceptional conditions created by World War II had come to an end, and the world of international trade was largely determined by the rapid economic development of the Asian region, especially Japan and the four “tigers”: Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Japan’s world-market share increased by half, from 6.1 to 9.0 percent, between 1970 and 1990. It thereby ranked third among the leading trading nations, not far behind the United States and West Germany. A look at the size of both countries’ economies reveals that although the United States and West Germany shared a comparable position in world markets, foreign trade had a completely different impact on the domestic economy of each. American and German

transatlantic partners in a multilateral trade world In 1970, the United States and West Germany were the world’s leading trading nations. The United States had already emerged from World War II as the world’s export champion. In the 1950s and 1960s, West Germany was able to catch up astonishingly quickly.1 1 See the chapter by Lutz Fr¨uhbrodt, vol. 1, Economics.

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export volume was comparable, but the United States’ gross domestic product (GDP) was some three times larger than West Germany’s. In 1990 the export quota – that is, the export share of the GDP – amounted to 26.5 percent in the Federal Republic, whereas it stood at only 7.1 percent in the United States. Similar differences had existed in the past. One reason was the particular geographical situation of the two nations: Germany is located in close proximity to many other important West European trading nations, whereas the United States remains largely geographically isolated, with long trade routes stretching over the North Atlantic and North Pacific. More importantly, the immense size of the American economy led to such diverse productive activities within the United States that it had less need of international trade than smaller economies. Export quota figures can also be employed to look at the extent to which Germany and the United States were affected by the muchdiscussed globalization trend. At the beginning of the 1970s, the German and American export quotas were only 18.6 and 4.3 percent, respectively. Both countries’ integration with the world economy has since considerably increased. In 1990 the respective expert quotas of the Federal Republic and the United States had reached 26.5 and 7.1 percent. At that time one of every two jobs in the Federal Republic was either directly or indirectly linked to export industries. Factors such as the economic situation abroad or the external value of the Deutsche Mark exerted considerable influence on Germany’s economy. The geographical composition of both countries’ foreign trade indicates that the majority of their international trade was conducted among a limited number of industrialized countries. Between 70 and 85 percent of U.S. and West German exports went to industrialized countries in three regions: North America, Western Europe, and Asia. A substantial amount of West European foreign trade was conducted within the region itself. More than two-thirds of the Federal Republic’s exports were sold in Western Europe. By contrast, only one-fourth of American exports remained in North America on average (see Table 1).

Regional trade in both North America and Western Europe has increased considerably. Economic cooperation within the European Community (EC) contributed to this trend in Western Europe. The portion of the Federal Republic’s overall exports going to West European countries rose from 64.3 percent in 1970 to 73.2 percent in 1990. Regional trade in North America increased without the aid of a regional trade agreement: The first such agreement was not signed until 1989. Between 1970 and 1990 U.S. exports to the rest of North America (Mexico and Canada) rose by approximately four percentage points (from 24.9 to 28.4 percent). This increase can be attributed solely to the expansion of relations with Mexico. Trade relations with Canada, which have been traditionally close, remained largely unchanged. Since the 1950s the United States has compensated for its comparatively low regional trade volume by trade with Asia. In 1970 this region absorbed 23.3 percent of all American exports. Asia had much less significance for the Federal Republic: The region accounted for only 7.0 percent of West German exports in 1970. But both countries’ trade with Asia increased markedly. In the Federal Republic, the share of these exports rose from 7.0 to 9.8 percent, whereas in the United States it increased even more significantly, from 23.2 to 30.1 percent. In 1990 Asia was thus a more important export market for the United States than was Western Europe. The regionalization of international trade within North America and Western Europe and the intensification of both regions’ trade relations with Asia made trade between the United States and the Federal Republic increasingly less important. The share of West German exports going to the United States fell from 9.1 percent in 1970 to 7.3 percent in 1990, whereas the share of American exports going to the Federal Republic decreased from 6.3 to 4.8 percent. The period when political measures such as the Marshall Plan stimulated trade relations between both countries2 was long gone.

2 See the chapter by Gerd Hardach, vol. 1, Economics.

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Table 1. Trade Indicators: Exports USA

Exports (in billion dollars) at current prices Export quota (by percent) World market share (by percent)

1970

1980

1990

43.2 4.3 13.8

220.8 8.2 11.3

394.1 7.1 11.5

33.4 19.4 6.3 5.9 24.9 21.0 3.9 23.2 10.8 4.2 0.8 9.2

30.6 26.6 5.0 5.7 22.9 16.0 6.9 27.3 9.4 6.7 1.7 9.5

28.6 26.3 4.8 6.0 28.4 21.2 7.2 30.1 12.3 10.3 1.1 5.3

1970

1980

1990

125.3 18.6 10.9

350.3 23.8 9.7

642.7 26.5 11.6

69.4 49.1 13.3 9.5 8.5 6.5 7.4 6.1 9.0 1.1 1.2 4.9

73.2 54.5 13.0 8.4 9.3 8.5 8,5 7.3 9.8 2.7 2.3 3.7

Regional Distribution of Exports (by Percent) Western Europe EC1 Federal Republic of Germany Great Britain North America Canada Mexico Asia Japan 4 Tigers2 Central and Eastern Europe Central and South America Federal Republic of Germany

Exports (in billion Deutsche Marks) at current prices Export quota (by percent) World market share (by percent)

Regional Distribution of Exports (by Percent) Western Europe EC1 France Netherlands Italy Great Britain North America United States Asia Japan 4 Tigers2 Central and Eastern Europe3 1

64.3 40.1 12.4 10.6 8.9 3.6 10.6 9.1 7.0 1.6 0.9 3.8

1970: EEC (6 members); 1980: EC (10); 1990: EC (12). Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan. 3 Eastern bloc countries, not including the GDR. Sources: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States; Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft K¨oln, Internationale Wirtschaftszahlen; Statistisches Bundesamt, Fachserie 7, Rh. 1. 2

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Welf Werner Table 2. Trade Indicators: Imports USA

Imports (in billion dollars) at current prices

1970

1980

1990

40.0

244.9

495.3

28.0 16.5 7.8 5.3 30.8 27.8 3.0 24.0 14.8 5.0 0.5 9.0

19.0 15.5 4.8 4.0 22.0 16.9 5.1 32.8 12.5 7.2 0.6 7.1

21.8 18.7 5.7 4.1 24.5 18.5 6.1 41.2 18.1 12.2 0.5 6.2

1970

1980

1990

109.6

341.4

550.6

59.4 44.2 12.7 12.1 9.9 3.9 12.9 11.0 7.3 1.8 1.0 3.6

61.4 46.9 10.7 11.5 7.9 6.7 8.8 7.5 13.6 3.0 2.5 4.6

68.0 52.1 11.8 10.2 9.4 6.7 7.7 6.7 14.1 6.0 3.4 4.0

Origin (by Percent) Western Europe EC1 Federal Republic of Germany Great Britain North America Canada Mexico Asia Japan 4 Tigers2 Central and Eastern Europe Central and South America Federal Republic of Germany

Imports (in billion Deutsche Marks) at current prices Origin (by Percent) Western Europe EC1 France Netherlands Italy Great Britain North America United States Asia Japan 4 Tigers2 Central and Eastern Europe3 1

1970: EEC (6 members); 1980: EC (10); 1990: EC (12). Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan. 3 Eastern bloc countries, not including the GDR. Sources: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States; Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft K¨oln, Internationale Wirtschaftszahlen; Statistisches Bundesamt, Fachserie 7, Rh. 1. 2

Moreover, trade between the Federal Republic and the United States could never reach the level of direct investment between the two countries.3 Rankings of the two countries’ most im3 See the chapter by Christine Borrmann and HansEckart Scharrer in this section.

portant trading partners show that the Federal Republic and the United States each came in at fifth place for the other. In 1990 the United States exported more to Canada, Japan, Mexico, and Great Britain than to West Germany. For the Federal Republic, the European trading

Emancipation, Regionalization, and Globalization

nations of France, Italy, Britain, and the Netherlands headed the list.4 The two countries exported similar, mainly manufactured goods. Within the trade in manufactured goods, both countries showed a large amount of intra-industrial trade, that is, products of the same type were both imported and exported. Intra-industrial trade became a phenomenon dominating trade relations after World War II not only between Germany and the United States but also among most industrial countries. The most important consequence of these new trade structures was a considerable increase in competitive pressures in the traditional export sectors. In the Federal Republic, industries with high export levels were the chemical and automobile industries, mechanical and precision engineering, and the optical industry. In the United States, leading export industries included office machinery (mainly computers), telecommunications goods, and transportation equipment (excluding automobiles). Beyond its trade in manufactured goods, the United States had an especially high volume of exports of raw materials and agricultural products. Finally, crude oil imports were particularly important for both countries. Like numerous other industrialized countries, the United States and the Federal Republic became heavily dependent upon this energy source after World War II. Three oil price shocks – two negative ones in 1973 and 1979 as well as a positive one in 1986 – had lasting effects on economic trends in both countries.5 International trade surpluses and deficits attract considerable public interest and here the

4

For the significance of the bilateral trade relations between the United States and the Federal Republic, see also David P. Calleo, “Wie deutsche Sch¨uler und Studenten zu einem Grundverst¨andnis der amerikanischen Wirtschaftspolitik kommen k¨onnen,” in KarlErnst Jeismann, ed., Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland und die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika: Aspekte der politischen Kultur, der Wirtschaftsbeziehungen und der Sicherheitspolitik (Braunschweig, 1984), 80–1. 5 Diane B. Kunz, Butter and Guns: America’s Cold War Economic Diplomacy (New York, 1997), 223–52; Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power (New York, 1991).

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United States and the Federal Republic took remarkably different courses. Both countries were long accustomed to comfortable trade surpluses. The Federal Republic’s balance of trade yielded surpluses from 1952 onward, and the United States had recorded surpluses, except for a few years, since 1874. But while the Federal Republic’s trade surpluses increased considerably after 1970, the U.S. balance of trade closed with its first deficit in 1971, opening a new chapter in America’s international trade relations. The American trade deficit increased only slightly during the 1970s but then increased rapidly in the early 1980s, reaching a record high of $160 billion, 3.5 percent of GDP, in 1987. A similar trend developed in the current account, which in addition to commodity trade also includes trade in services and unilateral transfers. In 1987 the current account reached a deficit of $163.5 billion, or 3.6 percent of GDP. The deficits in the American trade and current accounts closely approached the levels of West Germany’s surpluses in these accounts. Measured against the GDP, the surplus in the Federal Republic’s balance of trade amounted to 3–4 percent each year with few exceptions, compared to 1–2 percent in the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s. In the course of the 1980s, the current account balance surplus reached up to DM 104 billion or 4.6 percent of the GDP (see Table 2). The dramatic deterioration of its current account balance had numerous consequences for the United States. The deficits in international trade corresponded to large capital imports, which in the mid-1980s transformed the United States from the world’s largest creditor into its greatest debtor nation. Together with stagnating real incomes, the trade deficits led to public debates about the erosion of America’s international economic competitiveness. These debates gave new impetus to those members of Congress who blamed the trade deficit on unfair trading practices overseas and demanded a tougher stance in American trade policy.6 However, the real reason for the accelerated increase 6

John W. Suomela, Free Trade Versus Fair Trade: The Making of American Trade Policy in a Political Environment (Turkn, 1993).

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of trade deficits lay in America’s macroeconomic policy mix. While Europe and Japan were pursuing a restrictive fiscal policy with a comparatively less restrictive monetary policy in the first half of the 1980s, the United States was doing exactly the opposite. Despite the Reagan administration’s statements to the contrary, the United States adopted an expansive fiscal policy that produced huge budget deficits. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve chose to pursue an extraordinarily tight monetary policy, which sent the American economy into its worst recession since the Great Depression. The resulting gap in interest rates pushed up the dollar’s external value. The most important reason for the fastgrowing current account deficit in the first half of the 1980s was the dollar’s spectacular rise from a yearly average of DM 1.82 in 1980 to DM 3.48 in February 1985. The increase in the external value of the dollar raised the price of American goods abroad considerably.7 High American interest rates attracted the foreign capital that was needed to finance the trade deficit. The differing economic policies in Western Europe and the United States during the first half of the 1980s naturally had an impact on German-American economic relations. In bilateral trade between the two countries, America amassed deficits that were surpassed only by the United States’ trade deficits with Japan and Canada. In 1986 the trade deficit with the Federal Republic amounted to $14.6 million (DM 28.2 million). In the same year the current account deficit reached a record level. The all-time high of $25.2 million (DM 48.5 million) can in part be attributed to the traditional deficit in the balance of unilateral transfers. In addition, two items in the balance of services contributed to the deficit: first, interest and dividend payments, and second, “troop dollars,” the expenditures of the U.S. military stationed in the Federal Republic.8 7 Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich, “Reaganomics und Weltwirtschaft,” in Manfred Knapp, ed., Transatlantische Beziehungen: Die USA und Europa zwischen gemeinsamen Interessen und Konflikt (Stuttgart, 1990), 37–61, esp. 52–8. 8 See the chapter by Hubert Zimmermann, vol. 1, Economics.

east-west trade Because of its small volume, the Eastern bloc’s foreign trade did not play a significant role in world markets. The world market share of the member countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) reached a mere 5.5 percent in 1975, when East-West trade reached its peak. By 1985 it had dropped again to 4.0 percent. The insignificance of East-West trade can be attributed to two factors in particular. First, the Eastern bloc’s economic power was much more limited than was widely assumed on the basis of Cold War perceptions of its military power. Second, East-West trade was subject to various political influences that reduced trade below the level that would have been possible under free trade conditions. Restrictions were imposed on both imports and exports in both the West and the East. In import industries it was essential not to become dependent on raw material and energy purchases from the other side. The range of exports was limited due to the fact that each side was determined not to support the other in the technology race. Political guidelines dealt primarily but not exclusively with armaments. In addition to obvious military items, NATO’s well-known export control system, the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM) founded in 1950, published an extensive catalog of dualtechnology goods that could be used in both the civilian and military sectors.9 The volume of East-West trade shifted with the vicissitudes of the Cold War.10 Political d´etente between the blocs beginning in the early 1970s led to an exceptional boom in East-West trade that lasted until the mid-1970s. In the second half of the decade, trade between both sides entered a consolidation phase before eventually stagnating and then declining because of the general cooling in East-West relations in the 1980s. 9

See the chapter by Raymond G. Stokes, vol. 1, Economics. 10 Gary Bertsch and Steven Elliot-Gower, eds., The Impact of Government on East-West Economic Relations (New York, 1991).

Emancipation, Regionalization, and Globalization

The East-West trade of both the United States and the Federal Republic reflected the political cycles of East-West trade with remarkable precision. At the beginning of the 1970s, the expansion of U.S. trade relations was closely connected to the strategy developed by Nixon and Kissinger.11 Although the initiatives proposed by the Nixon administration to intensify East-West economic cooperation had been toned down by Congress, America’s foreign trade relations with the CMEA underwent an impressive transformation. In only six years, from 1970 to 1976, the share of exports to this area rose almost fourfold from 0.8 to 3.1 percent of total exports. The social democratic–liberal coalition was the driving force behind d´etente in the Federal Republic.12 East-West trade reached its zenith there around the same time as in the United States. Between 1970 and 1975, the CMEA’s share of the Federal Republic’s exports rose from 3.8 to 7.2 percent. The volume of both countries’ foreign trade with the Eastern nations stabilized in the second half of the 1970s before declining notably in the 1980s. The CMEA’s share in the Federal Republic’s exports fell back to an average of 4.1 percent during the 1980s. This was close to the 1970 starting level. In the United States, the CMEA’s share fell back to an average level of 1.5 percent. Export figures show that East-West trade was far more important to the Federal Republic than to the United States throughout all political shifts. The lowest level of West Germany’s trade with the East (3.8 percent) was close to the United States’ highest level (3.1 percent). East-West trade was certainly much more important for the CMEA states. This was above all because of the enormous differences in the size of the capitalist and socialist economies. Exports to the CMEA, which even during the heyday of East-West trade reached only a meager 4.6 percent of the OECD’s overall exports, accounted for as much as 35 percent of the CMEA’s overall imports. In view of these proportions, the widespread concern in the West

11 12

See the chapter by Klaus Schwabe, vol. 2, Politics. See the chapter by Werner Link, vol. 2, Politics.

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that it might have become too closely involved with or even dependent on the CMEA seems unjustified, even for individual categories of goods.13 That East-West trade consistently produced deficits for the East and surpluses for the West is also significant. During the stormy development of East-West trade during the first half of the 1970s, the CMEA increased the volume of its imports much more quickly than the volume of its exports. The resulting deficits increased the CMEA’s debts to the West, which contributed to the decline in East-West trade independently of changes in the political climate. Because of its limited export possibilities, the CMEA was only able to even out the imbalance of trade by reducing its imports. This development was already influencing foreign trade balances by the end of the 1970s. With respect to the types of goods traded, West Germany’s and America’s trade relations with the Eastern bloc were only comparable in terms of imports. The United States purchased primarily raw materials from the CMEA, whereas the Federal Republic acquired both raw materials and semifinished goods. Remarkable differences existed in exports. The United States mainly exported foodstuffs to the Eastern bloc. Deliveries of grain played a very important role; in certain years they accounted for up to 70 percent of the USSR’s imports from the United States. Large annual fluctuations gave these shipments a boom-and-bust character. The fluctuations were caused not only by the USSR’s increased demand in some years because of crop failures, but also by political decisions in the United States such as the trade embargo imposed in retaliation for the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1980. Trade relations between West Germany and the CMEA remained much more consistent. The Federal Republic exported mainly industrial finished goods to the CMEA. Abrupt changes in the value of exports, as in American trade with the East, would have endangered these business relations,

13 Stephan Woolcock, Western Policies on East-West Trade (London, 1982), 17–9.

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Welf Werner Table 3. Indicators of East-West Trade

1

CMEA’s exports (in billions of transfer roubles)

1975

1985

22.5

35.5

OECD’s share of CMEA’s foreign trade CMEA exports CMEA imports

24.9 35.2

23.9 24.2

5.5

4.0

4.6 3.1

2.7 2.8

2.6 0.8

1.5 0.6

7.2 4.3

4.0 5.1

CMEA’s share of world trade of OECD’s foreign trade OECD exports OECD imports of United States’ foreign trade United States exports United States imports of West German foreign trade West German exports West German imports 1

CMEA: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, GDR, Poland, Rumania, Hungary, USSR. Sources: Statistisches Bundesamt, Fachserie 7, Rh. 1; U.S. Department of Commerce, Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States; Deutsches Institute f¨ur Wirtschaftsforschung, Wochenbericht 44 (1988).

since the export of industrial goods generally requires long-term planning.14 The export of technological goods was one of the key issues in trade policy toward the CMEA.15 As the makeup of their trade suggests, the transatlantic partners differed greatly in this crucial area. Although West German and American shares of high-technology exports to the rest of the world was approximately identical – 14.7 percent for the Federal Republic and 16.5 percent for the United States in 1985 – this share proved very different in the two countries’ exports to the CMEA. Only 2.3 percent of the United States’ exports to the CMEA consisted of technological goods, a considerably smaller share than the Federal Republic’s 30.3 percent.16 14 Manfred Knapp, “Grundz¨uge der Wirtschaftsbeziehungen zwischen den USA und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” in Jeismann, ed., Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland und die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, 105. 15 Gary K. Bertsch, ed., Controlling East-West Trade and Technology Transfer: Power, Politics, and Policies (Durham, N.C., 1988). 16 Gerhard Fink, “Die Wirtschaftsbeziehungen mit Staatshandelsl¨andern” in Willi P. Adams, ed., L¨anderbericht USA, 2 vols. (Bonn, 1992), 1:780.

Among the CMEA’s individual member countries it was the USSR that primarily determined East-West trade relationships.17 West Germany’s exports to the USSR averaged 44 percent of its entire exports to the CMEA. For the United States the figure stood at 64 percent. The ranking of trading partners among the remaining member countries of the CMEA changed frequently for the two nations. In view of the relatively low total volume of American exports to Central and Eastern Europe, these trade contacts were of marginal importance to the United States. Trade relations with East Germany naturally had a completely different status for West Germany and the United States. The extent of American trade with the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was just as insignificant as it was with other CMEA member countries. The United States sold less than 0.1 percent of its exports to the GDR. Even during the hey17 H´el`ene Seppain, Contrasting US and German Attitudes to Soviet Trade, 1917–91: Politics by Economic Means (New York, 1992); Philip J. Fumigiello, American-Soviet Trade in the Cold War (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1988).

Emancipation, Regionalization, and Globalization

day of East-West trade, the figure only reached 0.2 percent. In the Federal Republic, where trade with East Germany – the so-called intraGerman trade – was an important political issue in the Cold War period, this figure went as high as 2.0 percent. For West Germany, trade with East Germany represented more than one-third of the overall trade with the CMEA. Even in comparison to trade with West European countries, the trade volume with the other German state was very large, given that the population of East Germany was only 17 million. However, German-German trade had an even greater importance for the GDR. As in East-West trade generally, the differences in economic power between West and East meant that exports from West Germany to East Germany played an extraordinarily important role for the latter. In the 1970s imports from West Germany accounted at times for more than 10 percent of East Germany’s overall imports. They accounted in fact for more than 60 percent of all of East Germany’s purchases from the West. The official economic statistics of the two German countries provide interesting insights into the unique Cold War atmosphere in which German-German trade was conducted. By purposefully manipulating its trade statistics, the GDR systematically underreported the volume of German-German trade by up to 50 percent.18 The intense business relations with the Federal Republic simply did not fit in with the selfimage of the socialist state whose propaganda focused on friendship with its “socialist brother countries.”

18 Ulf Marwege, Neuorientierung im Westhandel der DDR? Die Wirtschaftsbeziehungen mit der Bundesrepub¨ lik Deutschland, Frankreich, Japan und Osterreich (Bonn, 1984), 71.

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In West Germany, too, the statistical recording of German-German trade was by no means carried out in the usual manner. No information can be found on German-German trade in official statistics on the Federal Republic’s foreign trade.19 Instead, trade with the GDR was recorded separately.20 The reason for this special treatment lies in the status issue raised by the 1972 Basic Treaty.21 Although the Federal Republic acknowledged the GDR’s independence and autonomy in this treaty, a ruling by the West German Federal Constitutional Court expressly stated that this did not mean that East Germany was a foreign country. Thus, the Federal Republic did not see trade with the GDR as international trade. In the wake of German unification, the often bitter disputes over the status issue appear in a new light. In retrospect, it is fair to ask whether German-German trade should not in fact be seen as foreign trade. At least from an economic point of view, there should be no doubt that trade between East Germany and the Federal Republic was typical of East-West trade in general. Trade between the two German countries was trade between a market economy and a centrally planned one. As such, it possessed the typical characteristics of this trade: an immense political influence on the volume and range of goods involved, a particular deficit pattern, and – last but not least – different significance for the East and the West.

19 Statistisches Bundesamt, Fachserie 7 (Aussenhan¨ del), ser. 1 (Zusammenfassende Ubersichten f¨ur den Aussenhandel). 20 Statistisches Bundesamt, Fachserie 6 (Handel, Gastgewerbe, Reiseverkehr), ser. 6 (Warenverkehr mit der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik und Berlin [Ost]). 21 See the chapter by Richard Wiggers, vol. 2, Politics.

chapter three

American and German Trade Policy Between Liberal Multilateralism, Neoprotectionism, and Regional Integration Andreas Falke Translated by Tradukas

in this area.3 Furthermore, German farmers resisted liberalization of agricultural trade.4 But fundamental agreement existed between the United States and Germany over future development of the multilateral system. Particularly in the 1970s the two states cooperated to persuade the EC to conclude the Tokyo Round. The real conflicts between them lay in monetary policy and macroeconomic coordination after the two oil crises.5 An important background factor to both trade rounds was the relative decline of American hegemony in the Western international economic order. In the 1950s and 1960s the United States had been the leading trade power, with a volume of trade about double that of its nearest competitor. At the beginning of the 1970s the American lead was down to 20 percent, and in 1973, when the Tokyo Round began, the volume of exports from the EC was a third higher than that of the United States.6 Loss of American hegemony was reflected during the 1980s in a debate over the decline of America

Between the end of the 1960s and 1990, trade relations between the United States and West Germany, as well as the relationship of both countries to the multilateral world trading system, were largely governed by two multilateral negotiating rounds of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT): the Tokyo Round (1973–9) and the Uruguay Round (1985–93). Both of these trade rounds were affected by turbulence in the international monetary system.1 During the 1970s the dollar’s weakness had a moderating effect on American trade policy and made it easier to adhere to multilateral principles. In the 1980s, however, overvaluation of the dollar led to a significant surge of imports and created serious problems for American exporters, which strengthened protectionist trends and led to aggressive strategies for opening new markets.2 Initiating a new multilateral trade round was supposed to alleviate the situation, but on its own it could not contain political pressures. Multilateralism was suddenly confronted with competing approaches. The Federal Republic had always been one of the first states to call for multilateral trade liberalization. But West Germany was restricted when it was integrated into the European Community’s (EC) common foreign trade policy, and it was always forced to compromise with France

3

See the chapter by Monika Medick-Krakau in this section. 4 J¨urgen Bellers, Die Aussenwirtschaftspolitik der Bundesrepublik (M¨unster, 1990), 203–4. 5 Robert D. Putnam and C. Randall Henning, “The Bonn Summit of 1978: A Case Study in Coordination,” in Richard N. Cooper et al., Can Nations Agree? Issues in International Economic Cooperation (Washington, D.C., 1989), 12–140. 6 Stephen Krasner, “State Power and the Structure of International Trade,” World Politics 28 (1976): 317–47.

1 Peter Kenen, The International Economy, 3d ed. (New York, 1994), 498–550. 2 C. Fred Bergsten, America in the World Economy: A Strategy for the 1990s (Washington, D.C., 1988), 125–50.

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and the competitive weakness of the American economy. Discussion of America’s decline was mirrored in the EC with the diagnosis of “Eurosclerosis,” to which the EC responded with the single-market program; this tied the Federal Republic even more closely to its European partners. 7 the tokyo round The Tokyo Round originated in the negotiations to end the 1971 monetary crisis, during which the Europeans agreed to a new round of multilateral negotiations in exchange for the Americans’ abolishing their 10 percent import tax and renouncing any further balance-ofpayments adjustments.8 The United States acted as the moving force and the strongest proponent of multilateralism, but depended on the Federal Republic to win the agreement of the French, who wished to link any new negotiating round to a return to fixed exchange rates.9 Both the United States and West Germany saw the Tokyo Round as an effective way to counter rising protectionist tendencies after the first oil crisis. Both West Germany and the United States agreed, unlike in earlier negotiating rounds, that nontariff trade barriers (NTBs)10 should be the main subject of the Tokyo negotiations.11 Abolishing NTBs while simultaneously reducing tariffs further was especially attractive to the United States because NTBs played a much more important role in Japan and many EC member states. Dismantling NTBs would allow reductions in tariffs to

take their full effect.12 West Germany was certainly sympathetic to this goal. However, a second objective of American trade diplomacy was to use the multilateral framework to overcome European protectionism in agriculture. This was problematic for the German agricultural sector and generated conflict within the EC over the elaborately balanced Common Agricultural Policy. Liberal multilateralism largely served American and German interests, and both states promoted it as a principle of the international trading system. Both countries aimed to extend part of their own internal liberal economic constitution to their most important trade partners and, at the same time, to further a rule-based world trade system. But this was hardly easy to achieve. The EC had become a trade power to equal the United States with interests significantly more heterogeneous than those of the Federal Republic alone. Fundamental change was only possible by working with the Europeans, not against them. A bipolar structure replaced the unipolar structure of the world trade system, and the American-European axis became the decisive factor within GATT.13 Furthermore, this balance of power also made it easier for the Europeans to act against American practices that violated GATT rules, such as the American Selling Price System (ASP),14 the rejection of the injury test in compensating tariff cases against subsidized products, and refusal to adopt multilateral antidumping

12

7

Elke Thiel, Die Europ¨aische Union: Von der Integration der M¨arkte zu gemeinsamen Politiken (Opladen, 1998), 125–9. 8 Gilbert R. Winham, International Trade and the Tokyo Round Negotiation (Princeton, N.J., 1986), 25. 9 Interview with Helga Steeg, then head of the foreign trade department of the Federal Ministry of Economics, Bonn, on Jan. 10, 1999. 10 In the 1970s, these were primarily customs valuation, import licenses, product standards, subventions and compensating tariffs, public contracts, and the antidumping and compensating tariffs regime. 11 Helga Steeg, “Die Tokio-Runde,” Europa Archiv 17 (1979): 524–5.

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Gerard Curzon, “Crisis in the Trading System,” in Hugh Corbet and Robert Jackson, eds., In Search of a New World Economic Order (New York, 1974), 37. 13 Winham, International Trade, 70, 84; Reinhard Rode, Amerikanische Handelspolitik gegen¨uber Westeuropa: Von der Handelsreform zur Tokio-Runde (Frankfurt am Main, 1980), 163. 14 The product reference price for calculating customs duty, especially for chemical products, was the market price of the corresponding or similar American product, not the import price of the foreign product. This normally raised the assessment basis for customs duties and had a de facto protectionist character. This practice clearly violated Article 7 of GATT. See Winham, International Trade, 67–8, 107–9.

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rules.15 This gave the Europeans leverage to counteract growing resistance to multilateral discipline in the U.S. Congress, which the Germans also saw as a problem.16 The United States could not avoid involving Congress in dealing with nontariff trade barriers, so it had to ensure that any internationally binding results of negotiations would also be enacted into U.S. law. This was accomplished by the so-called fast-track procedure in the 1974 Trade Act, which created the legal basis for American participation in the negotiations and gave multilateralism its domestic political anchor.17 Multilateralism had become impossible without the intensive involvement of Congress. Disagreement between the United States and the EC over agriculture proved to be a fundamental stumbling block to conclusion of the Tokyo Round. Where tariff reductions and control of subsidies were concerned, the United States wanted to treat agricultural and industrial products identically. With German support, the EC resisted this attack on a central component of its integration program. To avoid destabilizing the alliance, the United States finally agreed

15 Article 6 of GATT requires an injury test for compensating tariffs. John Jackson, The World Trading System: Law and Policy of International Economic Relations (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 257. 16 I. M. Destler, American Trade Politics: A System Under Stress (Washington, D.C., 1986), 63–4. Monika MedickKrakau, Amerikanische Aussenhandelspolitik im Wandel: Handelsgesetzgebung und GATT-Politik 1945–1988 (Berlin, 1995), 147. 17 Congress agreed to accelerate legislative handling of the results of negotiations, not to introduce riders, and to accept or reject the bill without amendments. Because it could be assumed that Congress would not fail to ratify after hard negotiations between more than 100 nations, agreement to fast-track negotiations meant – under certain conditions – advance approval of their results. In return the administration agreed to a broad system of consultation and participation mechanisms for the affected committees and interest groups. See Sharyn O’Halloran, Politics, Process, and American Trade Policy (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1994), 96–101; Andreas Falke, “Abkehr vom Multilateralismus? Der Kongress, die amerikanische Handelspolitik und das Welthandelssystem: Von der Reagan-Administration bis zum Abschluss der Uruguay-Runde,” Habil. diss., University of G¨ottingen, 1995.

to special treatment for agricultural trade, thus sparing the European Community’s agricultural regime.18 In the end, only a few quantitative restrictions were abolished and two product agreements concluded (on beef and dairy products). Under the adroit chairmanship of U.S. Trade Representative Robert S. Strauss, the agricultural sector was set aside, smoothing the way for the round to be concluded.19 This meant that West Germany avoided the conflict of having to choose between European integration and liberalization of world trade. A different apportioning of roles was apparent when the EC, largely at the behest of France and Britain, attempted to restrict imports from particular countries, especially developing countries, through selective safeguards. In this case the United States and West Germany took the side of the developing countries. Working in tandem, they were able to bring the EC around. However, in the question of abolishing of socalled voluntary export restraints (VERs), West Germany was unable to win the argument with its liberal trade ideas. In the 1970s, VERs were applied primarily to textiles, but they were to become a central element of U.S. and European judicial protectionism in the 1980s.20 The German-American axis proved to be decisive for concluding the Tokyo Round at the 1978 Bonn world economic summit. In a complex package of negotiations, West Germany and the United States persuaded reluctant countries such as France and Italy to agree to conclude the GATT negotiations by the end of the year in return for stimulation of the German domestic market and American deregulation of oil prices.21 It was thanks to West Germany and the United States that the Tokyo Round achieved 18 Ren´e Schwok, U.S.-EC Relations in the PostCold War Era: Conflict or Partnership? (Boulder, Colo., 1991), 9. 19 H. Wayne Moyer and Timothy E. Josling, Agricultural Policy Reform: Politics and Process in the EC and the USA (Ames, Iowa, 1991), 182–3; Winham, International Trade, 146–58, 165–7. 20 Destler, American Trade Politics, 26, 118, 172; Winham, International Trade, 243–4. 21 See the chapter by Bernhard May in this section.

American and German Trade Policy

significant reductions in tariffs – by 35 percent on average – and dismantling of high tariffs. Participants agreed to six special codes in the field of nontariff trade barriers that covered customs valuation, import licensing, technical product standards, subsidies and countervailing duties, government contracts, and antidumping measures. In the most controversial code, on subsidies, the United States finally accepted an injury test, gaining in return a vague definition of disallowed subsidies. This measure failed to check the substantially higher level of subsidies in Europe. Congressional approval for the negotiated package went unexpectedly smoothly, principally because of the contribution of Trade Representative Strauss. The agreement also passed through the EC Council of Ministers without any great difficulties, clear proof that liberal multilateralism remained at the center of American and European trade policy. But in many respects the Tokyo Round was merely an exercise in damage control, for a number of fundamental problems (e.g., agriculture, the role of voluntary restraint agreements) remained unresolved – with serious consequences for the future. Yet in the turbulent world economic environment of the 1970s – especially with the stagflation in major industrial states – even damage control was seen as a success. And GermanAmerican cooperation had stood its test. multilateralism with reservations In the 1980s, world trade policy moved into much more troubled waters. Multilateralism came under particular pressure in the United States: from unilateral demands for opening markets, from preferential regionalism (as in the free trade agreement with Canada and later, with the inclusion of Mexico, the North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA]), and from a flood of neoprotectionist initiatives.22 22

Andreas Falke, “Auf dem Weg zu einer neuen Handelspolitik,” in Matthias Dembinski, Peter Rudolf and J¨urgen Wilzewski, eds., Amerikanische Weltpolitik nach dem Ost-West-Konflikt (Baden-Baden, 1996), 265–305; Andreas Falke, “American Trade Policy After the End

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A decisive factor in this change was the emergence of Congress as an equal player in the decision-making process on trade policy. The executive branch – in this period, the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush – paid ideological and rhetorical lip service to liberal multilateralism, but in practice was forced to make important concessions as a result of Congress’s influence.23 New economic conditions, above all macroeconomic conditions, were responsible for the transformation of attitudes toward trade policy in the Oval Office and Congress. The rapid rise of the U.S. dollar in the first half of the 1980s – from DM 1.80 to DM 3.40, a tradeweighted rise of 67 percent24 – caused an outright flood of imports into the United States and unprecedented trade deficits. Between 1980 and 1987, the American trade deficit rose from $25 billion to a historic high of $160 billion. Imports rose from $249 to $409 billion.25 By 1985, Germany’s balance-of-trade surplus with the United States was over DM 23 billion. Industry and Congress demanded not only a devaluation of the dollar, but also defensive Protectionist measures, especially against Japan. In addition, the trade deficit was seen as an

of the Cold War,” in Michael Minkenberg and Herbert Dittgen, eds., The American Impasse: U.S. Domestic and Foreign Policy After the Cold War (Pittsburgh, 1996), 264–97; David J. Richardson, “U.S. Trade Policy in the 1980s: Turns – and Roads Not Taken,” in Martin Feldstein, ed., American Economic Policy in the 1980s (Chicago, 1994), 627–58. 23 For details, see Falke, Abkehr vom Multilateralismus? See also Alfred E. Eckes Jr., Opening America’s Market: U.S. Foreign Trade Policy Since 1776 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1995), 257–77. 24 I. M. Destler and C. Randall Henning, Dollar Politics: Exchange Rate Policymaking in the United States (Washington, D.C., 1989), 22–5; C. Randall Henning, Currencies and Politics in the United States, Germany, and Japan (Washington, D.C., 1994), 264; Bundesministerium f¨ur Wirtschaft, Wirtschaft in Zahlen 97 (Bonn, 1998), 92. See also the chapter by Harold James, “The Deutsche Mark and the Dollar,” in this section. 25 Council of Economic Advisers, Economic Report of the President (Washington, D.C., 1994), Tab. B-103, 374. Calculated as a proportion of GDP, this is still the alltime high, although the nominal value was exceeded in 1995.

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expression of inherent American competitive weakness, a view that spurred on the broad discussion on the decline of America that had been initiated by a study by the historian Paul Kennedy.26 The strong dollar also revealed competitive weaknesses in American industry. These led to the collapse of whole sectors, such as consumer electronics, machine construction, and the textile industry, and to sharp slumps in the automobile industry. Even in the field of high technology – for example, electronic chip production – American firms were no longer the unchallenged market leaders. Japan and other Asian producers had drawn even as rivals.27 The problems were exacerbated by the way these new competitors followed systematic policies oriented toward high technology and exports and protected their own markets with a wide range of structural and informal access restrictions. These strategies of aggressive export promotion and state-backed or tolerated market protectionism had particularly negative effects on the high-technology sector of the American economy.28 Because multilateral strategies involving GATT had done little to remedy this problem, technologically advanced multinational companies – which had traditionally been among the decisive supporters of multilateralism – saw multilateral strategies becoming less useful and began to favor other instruments for opening markets. In the first half of the 1980s, the United States tried to use protectionist measures to counteract the pressure of imports caused by the strong dollar. It increasingly used methods that 26 Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York, 1987). 27 Michael Dertouzos, Richard K. Lester, and Robert L. Solow, Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge (Cambridge, Mass., 1989); B. R. Inman and Daniel F. Burton, “Technology and Competitiveness: The New Policy Frontier,” Foreign Affairs 69 (fall 1990): 116–34. 28 Peter F. Cowhey and Jonathan Aronson, Managing the World Economy: The Consequences of Corporate Alliances (New York, 1993), 48–56; David B. Yoffie, “American Trade Policy – An Obsolete Bargain?” in John E. Chubb and Paul E. Peterson, eds., Can the Government Govern? (Washington, D.C., 1989), 100–38.

were designed to combat “unfair” trade practices (antidumping measures and compensatory tariffs).29 VERs served as another protectionist tool: Under pressure from Congress, the executive branch negotiated VERs for automobiles, steel, electronic chips, machine tools, and timber with countries that exported particularly large quantities of these goods to the United States. The distinction between an economically liberal executive branch and protectionist Congress became especially blurred during the Reagan presidency.30 Similar instruments were also applied in the EC, and even the Federal Republic quietly negotiated an informal limit on Japanese automobile exports to Germany. Nevertheless, protectionism was still not the overriding feature of U.S. trade policy even after it had lost its fixation on multilateral instruments. The most conspicuous change was the pursuit of aggressive unilateral strategies for opening new markets. These were directed predominantly against structural impediments to market access in Japan and newly industrialized countries in Asia and Latin America (Korea, Taiwan, India, Brazil). The targets were always those rules restricting trade and competition that took effect not at the border, but within the country and thus largely out of the reach of GATT. Sectoral and country-specific reciprocity increasingly came to be regarded as the central precondition for fair-trade relations.31 Neither Germany nor the European 29 Until the 1979 trade bill, the Treasury Department was responsible for ascertainment of the facts, the International Trade Commission for the injury test. Under pressure from Congress, responsibility for ascertainment of the facts was passed in 1979 to the Commerce Department, which was expected to be more protectionist in its decision-making processes. The number of successful complaints rose from 48 in the 1970s to 214 in the 1980s; the main countries affected were Japan and China. See I. M. Destler, American Trade Politics, 2d ed. (Washington, D.C., 1992), 116–8, 155; General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), Trade Policy Review: United States 1992 (Geneva, 1992), 99–106. 30 Pietro Nivola, Regulating Unfair Trade (Washington, D.C., 1993), 109–28; William Niskanen, Reaganomics: An Insider’s Account of the Policies and the People (New York, 1988), 137–57. 31 Falke, “American Trade Policy,” 276.

American and German Trade Policy

Community followed such intensive strategies for opening markets. The main instrument for opening foreign markets was Section 301, which had entered American trade law in 1974. It allowed American firms and the U.S. trade representative to take unilateral action against trade practices that were deemed unfair. Here, too, Congress was the driving force. Strategies for opening markets were to be applied especially to “new areas” not yet subject to multilateral discipline: services, intellectual property rights, trade-related investment measures, and aspects of the trade in high technology. The American desire to define unfair market access conditions was problematic, as was the implicit threat of reprisal and closure of the American market should negotiations fail. The situation became critical during the debate on the 1988 trade bill. Influential members of Congress under the leadership of House Democratic Majority Leader Richard Gephardt demanded that strategies for opening markets be intensified, especially against Japan, to reduce the trade deficit. Although they failed, the debate led to the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, which forced the executive branch to name priority countries with unfair trade practices and then to undertake negotiations with them.32 According to the principle of strict reciprocity, market access was to match exactly the market access conditions in the United States and no longer follow the most-favorednation principle.33 The Super Section 301 procedure was used against Japan, Brazil, and India, and to threaten Korea and Taiwan.34 In the case

32

Judith Hippler Bello and Alan F. Holmer, “The Heart of the 1988 Trade Act: A Legislative History of the Amendments to Section 301,” in Jagdish Bhagwati and Hugh T. Patrick, eds., Aggressive Unilateralism: America’s 301 Trade Policy and the World Trading System (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1990), 49–89. 33 Raymond J. Ahearn and Alfred Reifman, “Trade Legislation in 1987: Congress Takes Charge,” in Robert Baldwin and J. David Richardson, eds., Issues in the Uruguay Round (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), 52. 34 Jagdish Bhagwati, “Aggressive Unilateralism: An Overview,” in Bhagwati and Patrick, eds., Aggressive Unilateralism, 1–45, esp. 3–5.

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of Japan, the Section 301 threat led to permanent trade rounds (i.e., the Market-Oriented SectorSpecific Initiative under Ronald Reagan and the Structural Impediment Initiative under George Bush).35 Trade policy toward Japan took place outside the multilateral framework. American unilateral use of Section 301 created a dilemma for the Federal Republic. On the one hand, it compromised the principles of multilateral trade relations in a troublesome way. For this reason, the Federal Republic rejected Section 301 and also resisted – unsuccessfully – all EC attempts to introduce a similar instrument.36 Although the Federal Republic and the EC were not directly affected, application of Section 301 to transatlantic economic relations always remained a possibility, especially for agricultural products. Bonn did not challenge its ally directly, but urged the United States to subject future bilateral trade disputes to a reformed and strengthened GATT arbitration procedure. On the other hand, German trade policy experts had some sympathy for a moderate American unilateralism against Asia if it opened Asian markets for other competitors as well and gave impetus to discussion of the new issues in the GATT round.37 In principle, the two countries’ views of trade policy remained largely compatible with each other. The elites and governments of both countries advocated a liberal world trade order and wanted the new issues integrated in the GATT system. The United States played a decisive role in initiating the Uruguay Round and defining the agenda for negotiations. West Germany accepted and even welcomed this initiative. The low number of bilateral trade disputes between the two underpinned the consensus. Germany’s 35 Thomas O. Bayard and Kimberly Ann Elliott, Reciprocity and Retaliation in U.S. Trade Policy (Washington, D.C., 1994), 40. 36 Thomas R. Howell and Gregory Hume, “Germany,” in Thomas R. Howell and Alan W. Wolff, eds., Conflict Among Nations: Trade Policies in the 1990s (Boulder, Colo., 1992), 171–2. 37 Personal communication from Herwig Schl¨ogl, until 1998 head of subdepartment in the German Ministry of Economics.

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trade surplus in the 1980s, unlike Japan’s, did not become a point of conflict. The German market was held to be basically open, and structural impediments did not seem to affect trade.38 Moreover, final jurisdiction in trade policy had been delegated to Brussels. In this respect, the United States attached great importance to the Federal Republic. The United States hoped that the German government would act as a lever to win support for liberal trade policies in Brussels. These expectations were, however, only partially fulfilled. West German preference for liberalization of transatlantic trade conflicted with obligations and loyalties within the EC, especially to France. In the bilateral trade disputes of the 1980s between the United States and the EC – over compensation for the southern expansion of the EC, oilseed, beef, and other agricultural matters – West Germany was unable to persuade the EC to act in conformity with GATT rules or to dissuade it from its confrontational course.39 The third trend in American trade policy in the 1980s, the conclusion of free trade agreements, hardly affected relations with the Federal Republic. The United States joined the global trend toward regional economic integration based on preferential market access, which represented – at least in theory – a counterweight to multilateralism. However, as the driving force behind regional economic integration in Europe, West Germany could hardly accuse the United States of distracting from multilateralism with free trade agreements. For the United States, the regional integration strategy brought the tactical advantage that obstreperous GATT negotiating partners could be shown that the United States also had other avenues for liberalization.40 Furthermore, the European Community reacted to its own weaknesses in competitiveness and growth with the

38

Howell and Hume, “Germany,” 179. 39 Knut Kirste, Internationale Wirtschafts- und Handelsbeziehungen Japans, der USA und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Trier, 1996). 40 Jeffrey J. Schott, “More Free Trade Areas?,” in Jeffrey J. Schott, ed., Free Trade Areas and U.S. Trade Policy (Washington, D.C., 1989), 1–58.

single market program. This intensification of European regional integration triggered American fears that liberalization of the internal market would lead to increased outward protectionism – to the creation of a “Fortress Europe.” It was not only in the United States that liberal multilateralism came under pressure. At the beginning of the 1980s neither the EC (with the exception of West Germany) nor Japan showed much interest in a new GATT round. The Europeans were reluctant because of the French demand to leave the agricultural sector untouched. General discord within the EC left little room for active trade policy strategies. The GATT system stagnated from the end of the Tokyo Round until 1985. The United States provided the initiative for a new round that would devote particular attention to new issues such as services, intellectual property, and investments. The German-American axis was successful once again and able to persuade the French-led southern states of the EC of the necessity for a new negotiating round to include agriculture. American expectations that the Federal Republic would work for a GATTfriendly liberal trade policy were fulfilled in the inauguration of the Uruguay Round.41 However, the Federal Republic was not prepared to take the side of the Americans in the concluding negotiations of this round, which began in 1990. The Bush administration hoped that Germany, in gratitude for American support for German unification,42 would force the French to compromise. This was not to be. Germany gave priority to EC solidarity, and Chancellor Helmut Kohl gave instructions not to oppose France on agricultural issues. Only when budgetary pressure forced the EC to cut internal subsidies and the Americans threatened sanctions over the oilseed dispute was a

41 Andreas Falke, “Die Einstellung und Strategie der USA in der Uruguay-Runde,” in Benno Engels, ed., Weiterentwicklung des GATT durch die UruguayRunde? Zielsetzungen und Probleme der Verhandlungen zu den ‘neuen’ Themen sowie zum Agrar- und Textilbereich (Hamburg, 1992), 63–78. 42 See the chapters by Stephen F. Szabo, vol. 2, Politics, and Karl Kaiser, vol. 2, Security.

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compromise found (the Blair House Agreement), that made conclusion of the Uruguay Round possible.43 The 1980s represent a transitional phase in American trade policy, during which rival approaches seriously challenged multilateralism. One reason for this, besides domestic policy changes, was certainly the long phase of stagnation before the Uruguay Round was concluded. But the multilateral approach did not go under and instead maintained its leading position through the end of the 1980s, even in the face of strong pressure. In Germany, on the other hand, trade policy underwent much less dramatic change than in the United States. Germany unreservedly

held fast to multilateralism and was one of the most important partners for American multilateral liberalization initiatives. But whenever these policies posed a serious threat to relations with France or to the European integration process, the Federal Republic gave higher priority to EC solidarity. European integration was more important than the role of junior partner to the United States in world trade policy. At the same time, concentration on European integration did not mean abandoning the openness of German trade policy. Germany ensured that the single market project did not turn into a “Fortress Europe” as the Americans had feared, but instead had a liberalizing effect on European Community trade policy.44 .

43 Bernhard May, Die Uruguay-Runde: Verhandlungsmarathon verhindert trilateralen Handelskrieg (Bonn, 1994). A detailed overview also appears in Kirste, Internationale Wirtschafts- und Handelsbeziehungen, sec. 6.2.3.2.

44 Brian T. Hanson, “What Happened to Fortress Europe? External Trade Policy Liberalization in the European Union,” International Organization 52, no. 1 (1998): 55–85.

chapter four

The Deutsche Mark and the Dollar Domestic Price Stability and International Currencies Harold James

National currencies often become projections of national power. They are also the focus of historically based myths that help to shape policy. The currency’s value of course depends foremost on market evaluations of monetary and fiscal behavior, but a certain “vision” of the currency will play an important part not only in forming current policies, but also in guiding market assessments of likely future developments and thus of the current price. Currency movements thus reflect a whole range of deep-seated attitudes and expectations about monetary and fiscal policy. In postwar history, the Deutsche Mark and the United States dollar are two of the most striking instances of currencies that are much more than mere units of account. Each is associated with a different creation story or myth, and the two have therefore behaved in quite contrasting ways. The introduction of the Deutsche Mark is popularly (and fundamentally correctly) credited as the beginning of the postwar German economic miracle, and the strength of the mark on currency markets came to be widely seen in divided Germany as a testament to the economic power of a politically constrained state. After the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the end of the Cold War, worried commentators warned Germans against what J¨urgen Habermas termed a new “DM-Nationalismus.”1 But these worriers

missed the critical point that the history of the Deutsche Mark had produced the political idea, or myth, of stability and that the goal of stability precludes the use of a currency for political pressure. A stable currency is attractive because it is not subject to depreciation as a result of political pressures. The solidity of the Deutsche Mark precisely symbolized a limitation on German politics: It is stable because it limits and circumscribes politically seductive opportunities for fiscal and monetary expansionism. In short, stability involves the limitation of political choices. The dollar had a quite different history. “Dollar imperialism” has an important and obvious meaning: the ability of the United States to obtain by financial pressure goals that would be impossible or too costly if viewed in military terms. For the United States, the national currency is not just a symbol but also a weapon in international diplomacy. The dollar thus stood for what could be obtained by politics rather than for limitations on political choice. In the pre-1971 world it was the only currency not constrained by a rule of convertibility (into dollars). To use a popular American phrase, the dollar is a “can-do” currency. During the whole of the Cold War era, the United States frequently used its currency to achieve national advantages, whereas Germany was on the whole reluctant to do so because it felt that the requirement of domestic stability prohibited such an instrumentalization of the currency. Paradoxically, however, despite the consequent repeated weaknesses of the dollar, it

1 J¨urgen Habermas, “Der DM-Nationalismus,” Die Zeit, Mar. 30, 1990.

228

The Deutsche Mark and the Dollar

229

Source: Datastream.

Graph 1. Deutsche Mark/Dollar Exchange Rate 1970–99

retained its role as the prime international reserve currency to an extent few had predicted in 1971, when the dollar’s link to gold was severed. The relationship between the Deutsche Mark and the dollar (and between two different philosophies of monetary management) has been one of the two central and critical prices in international monetary arrangements since the collapse of the fixed exchange rate regime, the so-called Bretton Woods system, in the early 1970s (see Graph 1). The other is the yen-dollar rate. And at some critical moments for international financial diplomacy, these two prices also entered into high-level political calculations. The Deutsche Mark played an important part in the breakup of the Bretton Woods order largely because of the German concern with stability. Some Germans believed that the obligation to hold the Deutsche Mark at a steady par value was leading to higher levels of inflation in a country whose historical experience after the two world wars had produced a popular fear of inflation. The par value certainly meant a loss of monetary control by the German central bank, the Bundesbank: Any tightening of interest rates

to restrain credit growth attracted foreign (dollar) funds seeking a higher rate of return and thus swelled the monetary base. In the late 1960s the alternative of a second Deutsche Mark revaluation (the first had been in 1961) was highly controversial politically. Internationally, the United States and the United Kingdom were facing increasing strains on their currencies and blamed the major countries running current account surpluses, Germany and Japan, for failing to undertake the necessary adjustments. At the Bonn meeting of the Group of Ten finance ministers in November 1968, the United States and the United Kingdom had unsuccessfully tried to press for a mark revaluation and had even attempted to establish a political linkage between the currency question and military and strategic policy. The British prime minister complained that the problems of sterling meant difficulties in maintaining the Rhine army in Germany and called the inflexible German stance “irresponsible” and “intolerable.”2 2 Harold James, International Monetary Cooperation Since Bretton Woods (New York, 1996), 195.

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Domestically, the issue of revaluation produced strains within the then governing Christian Democratic–Social Democratic Grand Coalition. Federal Economics Minister Karl Schiller of the Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD) argued in favor, whereas Finance Minister Franz Josef Strauss of the Christian Social Union (Christlich-Soziale Union, or CSU), supported by a large part of the export industry and the banking world, was firmly opposed on the grounds that a revaluation would worsen the competitive position of German business. The ministerial disagreement ensured that the Germans refused to act at the Bonn meeting. Only after the September 1969 election and the formation of a new government without the Christian Democrats could the mark be floated and then a new par value established: DM 3.66 to the dollar, amounting to a revaluation of 9.3 percent. But this measure failed to deal with the fundamental problem of American monetary policy. The problem in the United States was rather different and reflected a fundamental peculiarity of the postwar monetary order. The Bretton Woods system made the United States peculiarly helpless, in that it alone of all countries could not change the exchange value of its currency. A dollar devaluation was impossible because other countries defined their own par values in terms of dollars; and it was widely believed that a simple devaluation against gold would also be followed precisely by every other participant in the international monetary system. In this world of rules, the American administration thus had no choice but to follow a policy of “benign neglect” of the dollar in which the situation would become so intolerable for other countries that they would be forced to act. Benign neglect meant ignoring the buildup of claims against the United States as other countries held more and more dollars as reserves. Germany was the first to respond to American benign neglect because the inflationary consequences of the pileup of dollars were least acceptable in that country. At first the German government had looked to international pressure, exerted through international institutions, to force the United States to abandon its monetary laxity; then Germany

tried to push for greater European monetary integration (the ambitious target of monetary union was set by the Werner Commission in 1970). Neither of these approaches bore much fruit, and so in May 1971, faced by continuing large capital inflows, the German government authorized a unilateral float of the Deutsche Mark. The combination of an effective German revaluation (with exchange-rate uncertainty limiting the capital flows after May 1971) and the lack of a Japanese revaluation increased the economic pressure on the United States. This culminated in President Richard Nixon’s decision, announced on August 15, 1971, to “close the gold window” – to end the convertibility of dollars into gold at $35 an ounce – that had been the keystone of the postwar international currency order. At a new Group of Ten conference held at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington in December 1971, a new parity structure was agreed to, with an effective 13.57 percent revaluation of the Deutsche Mark against the dollar from the rate of May 1971, before the dollar float. These new par values reflected a good guess as to the values needed to obtain currentaccount balance in the circumstances of 1971 but, in practice, they did not last long because the United States showed no sign of trying to moderate the growth of its money supply. The par-value system finally and decisively disintegrated in 1973. New capital movements reflected the very lax U.S. monetary policy of 1972 – a presidential election year, in which the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Arthur Burns, had done his best to help Nixon’s reelection through a permissive attitude toward monetary growth.3 Major international movements of funds started again in February 1973 with the release of U.S. figures showing a record balance-of-payments deficit for 1972. Attempts to save the system by pushing for a large Japanese revaluation and the introduction of capital controls by Finance Minister Helmut Schmidt (who was and remained a convinced adherent of fixed exchange–rate regimes) failed. The

3 Charles P. Kindleberger, Keynesianism vs. Monetarism and Other Essays in Financial History (London, 1985), 151.

The Deutsche Mark and the Dollar

American administration instead announced that it would end capital controls, and Treasury Secretary George Shultz even neglected to return Schmidt’s anxious telephone calls. Frenetic trading occurred, obliging the Bundesbank to issue DM 8 billion, or 16 percent of the currency in circulation, on one day alone (March 1, 1973) in order to meet the demand for Deutsche Marks. Bundesbank vice president Otmar Emminger, a longtime advocate of the flexible exchange rate approach, declared that the foreign-exchange markets now sounded “the death knell for the Bretton Woods parity system.”4 On March 2 the Bundesbank announced that it could no longer undertake to keep the dollar rate steady, and an attempt by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to push central banks into massive new interventions on the foreign exchange markets failed. Belatedly, after an attempt to organize a joint European float, the Group of Ten accepted the principle of floating rates while recognizing the need for currency intervention by central banks for the “maintenance of orderly conditions.” The clearest intellectual learning from the Bretton Woods debacle occurred in the Bundesbank. The fixed exchange rate system had endangered domestic monetary control, and the institution now searched for a superior rule-based approach to monetary management. From 1975 it used a monetary target (for the growth of so-called central bank money or, after 1988, M3) rather than an exchange rate rule as the key guide to monetary policy. Monetary targeting has, the Bundesbank says, “virtually become the symbol of German ‘stability culture.’ ”5 The Bundesbank remained willing to cooperate with other central banks in official interventions on foreign exchange markets, but tried to avoid any official commitment to intervene. The most dramatic consequence of this attitude was expressed in the so-called Schmidt letter written by the German chancellor in 1979. It represented the Bundesbank’s 4 Otmar Emminger, D-Mark, Dollar, W¨ahrungskrisen: Erinnerungen eines ehemaligen Bundesbankpr¨asidenten (Stuttgart, 1986), 240. 5 Deutsche Bundesbank, annual report, 1995, 75.

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price for its agreement to participate in the new European Monetary System (EMS). If, Schmidt then promised the Bundesbank directors, a conflict would ever arise between the intervention requirements of the EMS and the Bundesbank’s duty, imposed by the Bundesbank law, of maintaining monetary control, the German government would support the bank. The full consequences of this agreement between Bundesbank and government became clear only with the EMS crisis of September 1992, in which the Bundesbank made clear that it did not believe it had an unlimited obligation to support the Italian lira or the British pound or the Spanish peseta. In the second half of the 1970s the United States, under President Jimmy Carter, saw German commitment to stability as a drag on the world economy that was politically dangerous internationally as well as politically uncomfortable for the American administration at home. Mathematical models of the world economy showed how domestic growth could be increased by monetary stimulus elsewhere. The United States consequently treated the dollar with what was officially still termed “benign neglect” (or also “talking the dollar down”) but often also referred to abroad as “malign neglect”: The fall of the dollar would make life uncomfortable for exporters in the surplus countries, Germany and Japan, and would constitute a penalty for their stubborn unwillingness to reflate. In a number of instances, most conspicuously at the Bonn Group of Seven summit meeting in 1978, the United States also tried, successfully, to obtain a German commitment to fiscal expansion by linkage with other issues, in this case American energy policy, and by more general political pressure. Neglect of the international position of the dollar reached a high point in the first Reagan administration. The Treasury systematically set itself against foreign exchange interventions, the Federal Reserve tightened interest rates, and the dollar rose dramatically on the markets during the first half of the 1980s. James Baker’s appointment as treasury secretary in the second Reagan administration ( January 1985) and the general attempt to deal with the protectionist pressure

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that followed from the strong dollar led to a change of position and a commitment to greater activism in international negotiations. First came central bank interventions in 1985 to drive the dollar down. Then the Group of Five finance ministers’ meeting in New York’s Plaza Hotel officially declared that the dollar was overvalued and that the central banks of the industrial countries would engage in concerted interventions in the market. The Plaza appeared to be a success in that the dollar then declined. Thereafter Baker would play the game of the Carter years over again, apparently forcing down the dollar as an instrument to press Germany and Japan for greater monetary and fiscal expansion and to open up Japanese markets. Pushed by the United States to relax monetary policy, the Bundesbank for three years (1986 to 1988) failed to achieve its target. U.S. dollar policy dominated another international finance ministers’ agreement, this time in Paris at the Finance Ministry offices in the Louvre (February 1987). Some of the French and Americans thought they had reached an accord to stabilize the dollar and establish the then fashionable system of “target zones.”6 The Bundesbank never believed that it had agreed to such a scheme, despite all the talk at dinner among the finance ministers. Later in the year, as part of his campaign to make the Germans relax monetary policy, Baker attacked the “clique of monetarists” in the Bundesbank who worried about their failure to achieve their monetary targets. The obvious disagreement between the large industrial countries over monetary policy precipitated the dramatic fall (22.6 percent) on Wall Street on October 19, 1987, the largest single-day decline since 1929. After the great publicity attached to the Plaza and Louvre agreements of the mid-1980s and in the wake of the Wall Street crash, a new skepticism about monetary policy coordination set in. Most of the participants in the discussions of

6 Yoichi Funabashi, Managing the Dollar: From the Plaza to the Louvre, 2d ed. (Washington, D.C., 1989).

the mid-1980s became disillusioned. However, monetary cooperation continued throughout the meetings of the G7 finance ministers and in other institutional settings, and concerted central bank interventions achieved some major successes, notably the halt in the long downward slide of the dollar in 1995. From the beginning of the currency turbulence of 1971 to August 1996, the dollar lost 60 percent of its value against the mark. It is therefore rather surprising that it is still the world’s most important reserve currency. In the early 1970s, many believed that the role of the dollar as a reserve currency was over. In 1975 Jean Peyrelevade and Jean-Antoine KosciuskoMorizet, in their book The Death of the Dollar, compared the currency to the worthless assignat of the French revolution. “The United States, irresponsible banker and corrupt goldsmith, is seriously bankrupt,” they concluded. More soberly, Kindleberger in 1976 concluded that “the dollar is finished as an international money, but there is no clear successor.”7 But what would succeed the dollar? European – especially French – participants in the discussions of reform of the international monetary system urged replacement of the dollar by gold (the French favorite) or by a multi-currency system. But the IMF’s “Special Drawing Rights” (SDR), which after 1974 were based on a basket of currencies, never played the role in the world economy that the authors of the SDR had anticipated. In 1978, the IMF proposed a “Substitution Account” in which dollar reserves would be bought up; but the scheme never really tackled the problem posed by the declining value of the proposed account’s assets – the dollars bought from member countries – so the proposal was quietly abandoned. Dollars had amounted to 76.1 percent of international reserves in 1973 and fell to 50.3 percent in 1990 (although they then rose to 7

Jean Peyrelevade and Jean-Antoine KosciuskoMorizet, La Mort du Dollar (Paris, 1975), 142; Charles Kindleberger, “Systems of International Economic Organization,” in Charles Kindleberger, International Money: A Collection of Essays (London, 1981), 314.

The Deutsche Mark and the Dollar

56.4 percent at the end of 1995). The Deutsche Mark became by far the most significant reserve currency after the dollar, but was clearly still much less widely used than the American currency.8 The surprising but continued predominance of the dollar as a reserve unit is in part the consequence of the universal use of dollars for the expression of prices in international commerce. Not only commodities but also complex manufactured products such as aircraft are conventionally priced in dollars. The ascendancy of the dollar has also been a consequence of the very slow liberalization of the domestic financial market in Germany. This reflects not just an inherent traditionalism but also the outcome of policy choices.9 Until recently, a number of important financial instruments were absent from the German market. The German government, for instance, only began to supply the market with large numbers of short-dated Treasury bills (the benchmark of the American market) in 1995. The hesitance of the German government and the Bundesbank derived precisely from the desire to avoid the uncomfortable role of a reserve currency. Large and uncontrollable movements of funds clearly affect domestic money arrangements and price stability. The Bundesbank thus chose to make the Deutsche Mark less attractive as an international currency in order to achieve its overriding domestic objective. For most of the postwar era Germany placed a higher value on price stability than on an international role for its national currency. The United States took the contrary stance and saw the international role of the dollar as one of the tools in the arsenal of economic diplomacy, primarily for forcing open the markets of other countries. It is not surprising that Germans grew hostile at those moments when this use of the 8 The Deutsche Mark’s share of world reserves was 7.1 percent in 1973, 17.4 percent in 1990, and 13.7 percent in 1995. Figures from IMF, annual reports (various issues). 9 See George S. Tavlas, On the International Use of Currencies: The Case of the Deutsche Mark (Princeton, N.J., 1991).

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dollar was most obvious: in the late 1960s during the crisis of the par-value system, in 1978 at the Bonn summit, and in the heyday of the Plaza and Louvre agreements. In the early 1990s, coinciding with the end of the Cold War, the basis for these calculations of national interest and advantage began to change. The following considerations altered the role of the German currency. First, the transition of Central Europe and the former Soviet Union to a market order gave rise to new central banks with a preference for stability-oriented policy. The countries of these banks also had geographic proximity to Germany and enjoyed substantial trading relations with it. Some of them (e.g., Estonia and BosniaHerzegovina) explicitly pegged their currencies to the Deutsche Mark and consequently held large Deutsche Mark reserves. The Czech Republic, Hungary, and the Slovak Republic pegged their currencies to a basket in which the mark had a substantial weight. Others (e.g., Croatia, Slovenia) had a managed float, in which the mark rate was a crucial price. The Deutsche Mark’s history of maintaining value made it an attractive base on which a new currency could establish a stock of credibility. Second, realizing that sluggish liberalization might threaten Germany’s status as a financial center (Finanzplatz Deutschland), the German banking community pushed for deregulation and the creation of new financial instruments. Third, the European Monetary System and later the timetable for the European Monetary Union provided a way to distribute some of the strain of being a reserve currency across an economic and political area even larger than the United States, whose size had always facilitated the reserve role. Fourth, the success of the stability-oriented policies of the 1980s did contribute to a fall in worldwide inflation rates in the 1990s, but this also meant there was now less demand for the complete primacy of domestic price stability. These changes in the first half of the 1990s did not result in the greater use of the Deutsche Mark in reserves or international transactions in general; however, since 1999, the euro has played a much greater role, as a reserve currency,

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and as a currency for bond issues. It is likely that this development will increase the temptation to use the currency in the American style, for trade and other political purposes. The exclusive focus on domestic price stability was already coming to an end in the mid-1990s as the Bundesbank’s

monetary policy began to shape itself to the political and economic realities of the move to a European currency union. After the introduction of the euro, many people indeed began to see deflation as a danger that was as threatening as inflation.

chapter five

Globalization of Entrepreneurial Prospects The Integration of Capital, Direct and Portfolio Investment, and Multinational Companies in Germany and the United States Christine Borrmann and Hans-Eckart Scharrer Translated by Tradukas of directly influencing the business operations of the targets of capital expenditures abroad.1 The choice of these targets and the countries involved is related to the objectives of the investor, and generating income can rate behind other objectives in the short term. Compared with other countries, the United States presented numerous advantages for German investors between 1968 and 1990. The United States is a country with a large and dynamic market, one that quantitatively and qualitatively offers good production conditions. It has an excellent infrastructure and is at a high level of technological development. It represents by far the largest market in the world, has the greatest purchasing power, and, furthermore, is relatively homogeneous. The opportunities that this market offers cannot be exploited solely by exports, and greater geographical proximity is soon needed to retain market share.2 The United States is characterized by a high degree of economic and political stability, which is less usually the case with developing countries. When foreign firms invest there, their competitors at home often follow suit.3

Entrepreneurial prospects have expanded considerably since the 1970s. While companies traditionally came into contact with other countries through exports, they have increasingly established production facilities abroad. The worldwide liberalization of the flow of goods and services as well as capital transactions has led to increased business in hitherto protected markets. Accompanied by progress in communications and transport technology, this permitted and at the same time demanded exploitation of cost advantages in production and procurement available abroad. Furthermore, companies have increasingly needed to have a presence on foreign markets in order to increase their sales of advanced, high-value technological goods. Direct investments have been the most powerful motor in this process of globalization; they developed much more dynamically than international trade as a whole. As a result of globalization, multinational companies have pushed to the fore, bringing changes to the structure of international trade and creating new sources of economic power. This trend toward globalization has had a decisive influence both on the scope and the structure of the integration of capital between German and American companies.

1

Dietmar Haubold, Direktinvestitionen und Zahlungsbilanz (Hamburg, 1972), 13; Stefan Schreyger, “Direktinvestitionen deutscher Unternehmen im Ausland von 1952 bis 1980” (Ph.D. diss., University of Cologne, 1994), 26. 2 Rolf Jungnickel, “Auf dem Wege zur Normalisierung,” Wirtschaftsdienst 5 (1978): 227. 3 Enzio von Pfeil, German Direct Investment in the United States (Greenwich, Conn., 1985), 24–6, 94–6.

reasons for investment Direct investments are a form of long-term capital export. They are made with the intention 235

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Beyond this stability, the conditions for investment in the United States are favorable. The United States offers an open climate for investment and, with few exceptions, foreign investors are treated in the same way as domestic companies (the national treatment principle).4 Even the reciprocity increasingly demanded by the United States in particular sectors has not caused any perceptible handicap for German companies. The cost of outlays offers an additional incentive. In the 1970s the profitability of capital invested in the United States was generally higher than that, for example, in the Federal Republic. This was partially due to the relatively low costs of raw materials and energy in the United States. It was not until the 1970s that many German companies reached the size that made it possible for them to set up their own production facilities and distribution networks of the size necessary for operating in the United States. They had previously focused on “easier” markets.5 Companies’ competitiveness had also increased: in the early 1970s many European and Japanese firms acquired a competitive edge, while in the 1970s and 1980s American companies began to lose their leading position. 6 Although the United States was of central importance as an investment country for German investors, German direct investments were only of very limited importance in the American market. In 1978 – despite high growth rates during the 1970s – only about 7 percent of foreign investments in the United States came from Germany. This corresponded roughly to the share of Swiss investments, whereas the biggest investors (Canada, the Netherlands, and Britain) each accounted for about 20 percent.7

4 OECD, United States: OECD Reviews of Foreign Direct Investment (Paris, 1995), 31–3. 5 Jungnickel, “Auf dem Wege zur Normalisierung,” 229. 6 OECD, United States: OECD Reviews of Foreign Direct Investment, 17. 7 Jungnickel, “Auf dem Wege zur Normalisierung,” 227. Europe’s share of all foreign direct investment in the United States remained relatively constant from 1950 through 1977, varying between 65 and 75 percent: William Branson, “Trends in United States International Trade and Investment since World War II,” in Martin

The German share remained relatively constant into the 1990s. It increased temporarily, but fell again when Japanese direct investments (8.3 percent in 1983; 23.1 percent in 1992) made in part to circumvent American import restrictions and “voluntary restraint” won ground against European investors in the 1980s.8 Germany was much less attractive to American investors than the United States was to German investors. U.S. direct investments flowed primarily to Canada and Britain and at a much higher level than can be explained by the size of those countries’ markets or rates of economic growth.9 Cultural and linguistic similarities apparently have a role in this phenomenon, as do similarities in basic economic conditions.10 These facilitate not only direct investments; they allow for expansion of production capacity, and hence savings, without the burden of large adaptation costs that less familiar settings would require. Firms with little international experience in particular tend to expand initially into markets that are closer, more familiar, and similar.11 U.S. direct investments in Germany and Western Europe in the 1960s and 1970s can be explained in part by the theory of the international cycle of production.12 In the early postwar years, American companies used their technological lead and the favorable market conditions in the United States to introduce new products at home and abroad. Due to their lead, they were generally able to generate high profits.

Feldstein, ed., The American Economy in Transition (Chicago, 1980), 247, table 3.42. However, in subsequent years Europe’s share dropped to 64.8 percent in 1989 and 59.2 percent in 1992: OECD, United States: OECD Reviews of Foreign Direct Investment, 18. 8 OECD, United States: OECD Reviews of Foreign Direct Investment, 19. 9 William H. Davidson, “The Location of Foreign Direct Investment Activity: Country Characteristics and Experience Effects,” Journal of International Business Studies 11, no. 2 (1980): 9. 10 In the case of Canada one can even speak of a high level of integration similar to that of a domestic market. Henry Kr¨agenau, Internationale Direktinvestitionen: Erg¨anzungsband 1982 (Hamburg, 1982), 47. 11 Davidson, “Location of Foreign Direct Investment.” 12 Raymond Vernon, Sovereignty at Bay (Harmondsworth, 1971), 109–12.

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Table 1. German-American Direct Investments 1970–90 (in Millions of U.S. Dollars and Percent) U.S. Direct Investments in Germany (Net)

German Direct Investments in the United States (Net)

Year

Millions of U.S. Dollars

Average Growth Rate (Percent p.a.)

Millions of U.S. Dollars

Average Growth Rate (Percent p.a.)

1970 1975 1980 1985 1990

4597 8726 15393 16764 27480

— 17.9 15.3 1.8 12.8

680 1408 7596 14417 28386

— 41.4 107.8 37.9 39.4

Source: Survey of Current Business: Foreign Direct Investment in the United States, various years. In order to guarantee the comparability of the data in view of the different delimitation of direct investments in American and German statistics, American sources were also consulted for the German figures.

Following this new product stage, price competition from local and foreign competitors increased. In the subsequent mature product stage the incentive grew to meet the foreign demand not through exports, but through investment and production abroad and taking advantage of lower wage costs. According to this pattern, Germany, as an industrialized country, was initially still a desirable country to investors because its high level of demand permitted efficient company sizes. Not until the last phase, the standardized product stage, have companies shifted production to developing countries in order to reexport the products to the domestic market and the markets of other industrialized countries. Accordingly, American investments in the Federal Republic in this phase also declined. A bandwagon effect can also be observed in industries that are dominated by just a few large companies (oligopolies). A company’s direct investments in a particular country make its competitors fear that the investor could attain a lasting competitive edge. These competitors then undertake the same step so as not to fall behind.13 When oligopolies exist in different countries, this frequently leads to mutual direct investments (cross investments), which are common between the United States and Western Europe. 13

F. T. Knickerbocker, Oligopolistic Reaction and Multinational Enterprise (Boston, 1973); Schreyger, “Direktinvestitionen deutscher Unternehmen,” 200–5.

Finally, the strict antitrust policy of the United States, which has hampered the external and internal growth of companies, encouraged American direct investments abroad.14 It was not until the early 1980s that, under the influence of the Chicago School, there were signs of a more lenient attitude toward corporate mergers.

the course of investments Thedirect investments of U.S. companies in Germany and German companies in the United States increased throughout the period examined here, if not always at a steady rate. Table 1 shows clearly that German direct investment in the United States developed much more dynamically than the growth of American investment in Germany. In 1990 German direct investment in the United States surpassed the level of American investment in the Federal Republic; 20 years earlier they had amounted to just under 15 percent of American investments. The growth rate of investments varied because of strong fluctuations in net capital flows from both countries (see Graph 1). The main cause of these fluctuations was, in turn, the 14

The U.S. antitrust law also allowed for the breakup of existing companies into separate corporations; German financial law did not.

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Federal Republic

Graph 1. Net Capital Outflow from Germany and the United States, 1968–90 (in Billions of Deutsche Mark): United States and Federal Republic Source: Deutsche Bundesbank, balance-of-payment statistics, various years.

development of the exchange rate in both nominal and real terms. There were unprecedented fluctuations in the value of the dollar following the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s and the decision to float the exchange rate of the dollar. 15 Devaluation of the dollar makes the acquisition of companies or equity participation in companies in the United States cheaper for German investors and at the same time makes similar investments in Germany more expensive for Americans. The increase in the cost of German exports also increases the incentive for German business to make direct investments in the United States. However, a direct temporal correlation between foreign investment and exchange rates is not uniformly discernible in the statistics and is more evident for German investments than American ones. This points to the role of other cost factors: For example, a sharp increase in unit labor costs in the first half of the 1970s further strengthened the nominal rate of revaluation of the Deutsche Mark against the dollar.16 In the 1980s, however, especially in the second half of the decade, the inflation rate in the United States clearly outstripped that in the Federal Republic, which partially compensated for the nominal revalu-

15

See the chapter by Harold James, “The Deutsche Mark and the Dollar,” in this section. 16 The nominal rate of revaluation of 43 percent corresponded to a real revaluation of 73 percent. See Jungnickel, “Auf dem Wege zur Normalisierung,” 229.

ation of the Deutsche Mark upward.17 Along with these other cost factors, which did not always manifest themselves at the same time, it is also important to remember that on average some two years pass between the planning and the eventual undertaking of direct investment. And finally, a sustained statistical effect exists for net capital flows if guidelines for recording data are altered or data is adjusted on the basis of new census results.18 It is open to question whether the steady slide into a deficit of the Federal Republic’s direct investment in relation to those of the United States – both in terms of absolute amounts and rates of flow – can be explained solely on the basis of the factors presented here. Rather, the situation in the 1990s suggests that other cost and locational factors also played a role and detracted from Germany’s competitiveness in comparison with other investment countries.

portfolio capital flows Portfolio capital flows are defined as the acquisition and issuing of securities (i.e., debenture 17 Christian Hermann, “Realer Wechselkurs und gesamtwirtschaftliche Entwicklung in Deutschland,” Wirtschaftsdienst 9 (1996): 472–80. 18 The sharp drop in American direct investments worldwide, from U.S. $4.8 billion in 1973 to $0.9 billion in 1974 and their subsequent climb back to U.S. $6.2 billion in 1975, can thus above all be traced back to extraneous statistical influences of this kind.

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German portfolio investments in the United States (net) U.S. portfolio investments in Germany (net)

Graph 2. Net Portfolio Investments between Germany and the United States, 1966–90 (in millions of deutschemarks) German portfolio investments in the United States (net) U.S. portfolio investments in Germany (net) Source: Deutsche Bundesbank.

bonds, stocks, convertible bonds, and bonds with warrants attached) where economic subjects based in different territories are involved. In contrast to direct investments, no rights of control are gained over the company whose stock is purchased. Access to foreign financial resources means a broadening of the financial base for the company that draws investments. The motives for making portfolio investments differ fundamentally from the objectives of direct investments: An investor is not pursuing entrepreneurial goals, but rather investment and return. Despite the long-term nature of the securities, the investor is interested in a short-term investment of liquid resources while exploiting the interest rate advantages and the margin between interest rates at home and abroad.19 Although the long-term interest rates in Germany were higher on average, American portfolio investments in Germany were by far lower and developed less constantly into the late 1970s than German investments in securities in the United States. Many reasons lie be-

hind this. Since the end of the 1960s, the United States was generally – and later continuously – a net debtor to foreign countries in portfolio investments. In 1989 the proportion of American investments in securities abroad accounted for 0.1 percent of the gross domestic product, a figure that was lower than for all other significant investor countries. American investors evidently prefer direct investments to portfolio investments. That the market for shareholding in West European countries was smaller and less diversified than in the United States also played a role. In addition, capital transactions were partially hindered into the 1980s by U.S. restrictions on capital exports and, at the same time, by European countries’ restrictions on capital imports.20 The comparatively moderate fluctuations can be interpreted as “waves of speculation” at a time when markets were still unable to judge how the currency system would develop once the fixed exchange rates had been abandoned.21 20

Deutsche Bundesbank, Monatsbericht, July 1985, 17. R¨udiger Pohl, Kapitalexporte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland – Bestandsaufnahme, Ursachen – wirtschaftspolitische Perspektiven (Hamburg, 1989), 11–17. 21

19 Hans-Eckart Scharrer, Portfolio-Kapitalexport und Zahlungsbilanz (Hamburg, 1970), 29.

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In the 1980s both the scope and the volatility of portfolio investment increased not just between the United States and Germany, but also on the international capital market in general. Their dramatic increase in volume can be traced back to numerous factors. First, deregulation and new technologies reduced the costs of international capital transactions.22 With the aid of swap technologies it was possible to take fuller advantage of arbitrage options and to secure investments more effectively against interest and currency risks. Second, the increasing significance of institutional investors (i.e., insurance companies, pension funds, financial investment management companies) enlarged the volume of the market. These investors had greater financial resources at their disposal because of increasing financial assets and shifting patterns of saving in the private sector. They also broadened the geographical diversification of their funds through a professional management strategy, with the result that the proportion of foreign securities in their portfolios rose.23 Third, the rapid expansion of company profits in the most significant industrialized countries allowed a sharp increase in the formation of assets abroad as well. Fourth, the trend toward securitization of credit relations expanded the volume of the market and increasingly allowed smaller investors to become active on the international capital market. The pronounced fluctuations in German and American portfolio investment in the 1980s resulted from the ability of capital flows to react much more quickly to new information and negative factors as well as from the increasing domination of short-term over middleand long-term yield expectations. However, it is hardly possible to identify the exact causes of the swings. Annual statistics obscure the dynamic development that occurs in the course of a year. Stock markets, for example, had recovered from the spectacular drop in share prices on “Black Monday” (October 1987) by

22

Ibid., 37. Philip Turner, Capital Flows in the 1980s: A Survey of Major Trends (Basel, 1991), 66–72. 23

May 1988. Moreover, the motives and expectations of individual investors are often hard to comprehend. The margin between interest rates doubtlessly played a major role. Bolstered by continuous U.S. budget deficits, the long-term interest rate (both nominal and real, and adjusted to take account of exchange-rate variations) was higher in the United States than in Germany from 1976 to 1990. American securities thus became more attractive, and this interest rate advantage can to a good extent account for the constantly positive German net portfolio investment in the United States at the time. Administrative factors also had a noticeable effect. Both the lifting of the German coupon tax on interest income in 1984–5, which nonresidents gained on domestic bonds, and approval of new types of foreign loans24 in marks led to a considerable expansion of capital imports from the United States. The income tax reform in the United States, which cut tax rates on both retained and distributed profits in several steps between 1986 and 1989, also led to an increase in U.S. investment in securities in the Federal Republic. 25 Political developments influenced both countries’ portfolio investments as well. For example, the end of the East-West conflict in 1989–90 saw the role of the dollar as a safe haven decline in favor of other currencies, thus weakening American capital imports. The prospect of German reunification led to an initial euphoria about the East26 and, during this time considerable foreign capital flowed to the German stock market. This capital was withdrawn again, however, when plans for monetary union with East Germany were announced. This analysis has shown that the bilateral integration of capital between Germany and the United States follows an asymmetrical pattern. The United States is of central importance for German companies for direct 24 These were, for example, obligations yielding variable interest, zero bonds, loans connected with swaps, and dual-currency bonds. 25 Alfred Boss, Kapitaleinkommensbesteuerung und internationale Kapitalbewegungen (Kiel, 1990), 11–13. 26 Deutsche Bundesbank, Gesch¨aftsbericht 1990, 36.

Globalization of Entrepreneurial Prospects

investment. For American companies, Germany is just one among several Western European countries for investment. During the 1970s and 1980s, the gradual opening of Japan and the emergence of further powerful competitors in Asia increasingly broadened the spectrum of capital investment options for U.S. companies

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beyond Europe, whereas German companies did not even begin to enter Asian markets until later, and then only with hesitation. The portfolio capital transactions of the American capital market, which in terms of its breadth and depth surpasses any in Europe, have been a strong magnet for German and other capital.

chapter six

The United States, Germany, and Aid for Developing Countries Maarten L. Pereboom

Between 1968 and 1990, the United States shed a considerable measure of the “burden” of assistance to developing countries and pressed such rich allies as the Federal Republic of Germany and Japan to assume a larger share. These two countries emerged as leading benefactors to the international development community, with Japan assuming second place behind the United States and the Federal Republic and France in third and fourth places, respectively.1 Although development issues occasionally provoked disagreements between the United States and the Federal Republic, they could not affect the relationship fundamentally one way or another. Neither their basic policies nor their lists of primary beneficiaries differed significantly. German officials did resent what they perceived to be American dominance of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and they privately grumbled that these international agencies in fact served the national interests of the United States, allowing Germany to “foot the bill” for development “without gaining equivalent political clout.”2 Meanwhile, Germany’s growing presence in the develop-

ing world, both as entrepreneur and benefactor, increased rivalry between the allies. Disagreement over the primacy of “North-South” versus “East-West” relations during the last decades of the Cold War likewise provoked disagreements between Germans and Americans, but this debate also took place within each country. The Cold War’s role in development politics declined during this period but it remained fundamental to German-American relations. U.S. officials had led efforts toward the end of World War II to establish a new world order in which a global economy based on free markets would provide the foundation for lasting peace. The United Nations (UN), the World Bank, and the IMF were to become instruments of the international political and economic cooperation with which that foundation could be built. During the Cold War, the United States also began to provide direct aid to such strategically important countries as Egypt, India, Iran, and Pakistan.3 The Kennedy administration consolidated American development efforts in the Agency for International Development (USAID), endowing it with the aura of youthful, romantic idealism that also launched the Peace Corps and the pan-American “Alliance for Progress.”4

1 Rankings based on exclusion of French assistance to its own overseas departments and territories, which, if included, put France ahead of Germany by about $2 billion in 1987–8. OECD, Development Cooperation (Paris, 1989), 204. 2 Klaus Engelen, “Comment,” in Peter B. Kenen, ed., Managing the World Economy: Fifty Years after Bretton Woods (Washington, DC, 1994), 76.

3

Diane B. Kunz, Butter and Guns: America’s Cold War Economic Diplomacy (New York, 1997), 261. 4 See Vernon W. Ruttan, United States Development Assistance Policy: The Domestic Politics of Foreign Economic Aid (Baltimore, 1996), xix–xxii; Elizabeth Cobbs

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The United States, Germany, and Aid for Developing Countries

U.S. development aid often funded large, expensive infrastructure projects, such as dams and hydroelectric plants, that aimed to shock primitive economies into the modern age. Although such projects remained popular through the 1960s, they would prove difficult for countries to maintain, and they contributed to the proliferation of meddlesome government agencies that further hindered economic development.5 They did little to alleviate poverty in newly independent countries, where most people merely subsisted while a few became wealthy either from exports of cash crops and natural resources or from misappropriated development assistance. Countries heavily dependent on income from single crops or commodities for foreign exchange were particularly vulnerable to fluctuations in the world market, and they blamed this problem on the developed countries. Developing countries found a common voice in the UN, where they formed a majority in the General Assembly. In the 1960s the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) encouraged industrialized countries to increase their assistance to a suggested level of 0.7 percent of gross national product (GNP). The United States never accepted this goal, and its spending as a percentage of GNP would decline from less than half of the recommended figure.6 Between 1970 and 1990, United States overseas development assistance (ODA, in 1987 dollars) increased from $8 billion in 1970–1 to $9.4 billion in 1987–8; however, ODA dropped as a percentage of GNP from 0.31 to 0.20 percent in the same period. Meanwhile, the Federal Republic’s total ODA increased from $2.6 billion to $4.5 billion, rising from 0.33 percent of its GNP to 0.39 perHoffman, All You Need Is Love: The Peace Corps and the Spirit of the 1960s (Cambridge, Mass., 1998); Michael E. Latham, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and “Nation Building” in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2000). 5 See Paul Blustein, “Missionary Work,” Washington Post Magazine, Nov. 10, 1996, 11–12; Der Spiegel 30 (Jan. 5, 1976): 23. 6 Richard Barnet, The Alliance: America-Europe-Japan, Makers of the Postwar World (New York, 1983), 397.

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cent.7 The Federal Republic’s greater generosity in percentage-of-GNP terms carried over into more sympathetic development rhetoric and more generous credit terms for developing countries. The United States, less dependent on resources from the developing world than its European and Japanese allies, more openly opposed the demands of developing countries and, increasingly during the 1980s, saddled its grants and loans with conditions and restrictions.8 For the Federal Republic the question of assistance to the world’s developing nations initially presented itself as a relatively abstract component of the Cold War political equation. Responding positively to American demands for increased burden sharing, the Federal Republic joined the effort to preserve the developing world from the clutches of communism.9 Over time, however, domestic politics and the dynamics of Germany’s own East-West relationship gave development policy a more German character, reflecting the emergence of a new global vision for a country still haunted by the ghosts of its militant nationalist past. Having lost their colonies three regimes and two world wars earlier, Germans could present themselves as leading patrons of the all-new global development establishment, especially through the European Community (EC) and the Parisbased Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Development assistance first became a budget line item for the Federal Republic in the mid-1950s, and a development policy “community” developed in the years that followed. Bonn’s Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (Bundesministerium f¨ur wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung, or BMZ), founded in fall 1961, coordinated policy that was carried out by a vast complex of government and international

7

OECD, Development Cooperation, 204. James C. Clad and Roger D. Stone, “New Mission for Foreign Aid,” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 1 (1992–3): 197. 9 Brigitte Schulz, “The ‘New’ Germany and the Third World: Aspects of a Changing Relationship,” in William D. Graf, ed., The Internationalization of the German Political Economy: Evolution of a Hegemonic Project (New York, 1992), 226. 8

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agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and private foundations and companies.10 West Germans did not submerge their nationalist sentiments completely, however. With the 1955 “Hallstein Doctrine,” the Federal Republic had threatened to sever diplomatic ties with any country other than the Soviet Union that recognized the “Soviet-occupied zone of Germany” as a sovereign state. For developing countries the implications of recognizing the German Democratic Republic (GDR) were clear, and none save a very few ideologically committed governments did so. Bonn officials denied that they attached political conditions to economic assistance, but as Hans-J¨urgen Wischnewski, the minister of economic cooperation, pointed out in 1966: “He who takes something from another puts himself under the moral obligation at least not to stab the man he takes it from in the back.”11 The Ostpolitik treaties with the Soviet Union and other East bloc states negotiated by the social democratic-liberal coalition government of Willy Brandt (elected in 1969)12 produced a realignment of development policies for both German states. For the Federal Republic they opened Eastern Europe for investment and commerce; the GDR, which had dominated the Soviet satellites with its technological and industrial prowess, now found itself upstaged by its Western rival and faced with an intensified crisis of domestic and international legitimacy.13 The government of Erich Honecker, who had replaced the obdurate Walter Ulbricht as the Soviets pushed the GDR 10

Hans-Joachim Spanger and Lothar Brock, Die beiden deutschen Staaten in der Dritten Welt: Die Entwicklungspolitik der DDR – eine Herausforderung f¨ur die Bundesrepublik Deutschland? (Opladen, 1987), 280. 11 Quoted in Karel Holbik and Henry Allen Myers, West German Foreign Aid, 1956–1966 (Boston, 1968), 39. 12 See the chapter by Werner Link, vol. 2, Politics. 13 Thomas P. M. Barnett, Romanian and East German Policies in the Third World: Comparing the Strategies of Ceausescu and Honecker (Westport, Conn., 1992), 2–7. See also Brigitte H. Schulz, Development Policy in the Cold War Era: The Two Germanies and Subsaharan Africa, 1960–1985 (M¨unster, 1995), 67–9; Hans Siegfried Lamm and Siegfried Kupper, DDR und Dritte Welt (Munich, 1976), 50–80.

toward d´etente, aimed to carve a niche for itself in the developing world. The Honecker regime had little choice but to focus its efforts on countries of “socialist orientation” such as Angola, Ethiopia, and Mozambique – linking technological and financial assistance with the elements of an ideological crusade.14 But as socialist countries fell further behind the West technologically, and with the GDR itself ideologically compromised by its financial ties to the Federal Republic, the Honecker regime’s attempt to boost the GDR’s status through development failed. Complaints from developing countries about shabby work even pushed Warsaw Pact countries to seek assistance from West European corporations for their external development projects.15 In any event, the GDR had very little to offer. In 1988 it provided only $180 million in development assistance, compared to West Germany’s $4.7 billion. Even the Soviet Union, with development assistance valued at $4.2 billion in 1988, could not match the Federal Republic.16 For Bonn development assistance had another European dimension as well. During the 1970s Turkey became the top recipient of development assistance and remained in that position throughout the 1980s.17 Although Turkey’s strategic importance to the NATO alliance also placed it high among recipients of American aid, the presence of hundreds of thousands of Turkish Gastarbeiter (guest workers) in Germany produced tensions in a society unaccustomed to ethnic diversity. Rising unemployment after 1973 tended to focus attention on the 2.5 million foreign workers, the majority from Mediterranean countries, who had taken mostly menial jobs in Germany’s booming economy during the 1960s. Many Germans resented the extension of their country’s generous welfare benefits to these workers and their children.18

14

Barnett, Romanian and East German Policies, 97. Der Spiegel 30 (Sept. 19, 1976): 54. 16 Figures from The Economist Book of Vital World Statistics (New York, 1990), 189. 17 OECD, Development Cooperation, 250. 18 Hans W. Gatzke, Germany and the United States: “A Special Relationship?” (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), 250–1. 15

The United States, Germany, and Aid for Developing Countries

Many of the latter had been born in Germany but had no right to citizenship. Development assistance to Turkey, therefore, would help to create the economic opportunities necessary to draw Gastarbeiter back home. Within the global development community, meanwhile, West Germany developed a reputation for conservatism comparable to that of the United States, stressing trade rather than government direction of emerging economies as the key to progress.19 Germany faced criticism for development policies that openly aimed to benefit the benefactor, but such “strategic” aid would increasingly become the norm as the extraordinary economic growth of the postwar decades slowed and massive government expenditures in both developed and underdeveloped countries came under increasing scrutiny. Both in the public and private sectors altruistic conceptions of philanthropy yielded to demands for development policies beneficial to donor and recipient alike. The oil crisis of 1973–4 underscored the relevance of development policy to the national security of industrialized countries. The actions of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) suggested that poor countries could band together to demand higher prices for the resources vital to the prosperity of the industrialized world. In November 1974, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the “Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States,” demanding a “new international economic order”; more specifically, it asked rich countries to stabilize prices for resources, to relax credit terms, and to show preference for goods produced in fledgling industries. The United States took an openly hostile position against the “G-77” bloc of poor countries pushing the charter, but Europeans, who shared this hostility but depended on the resources of G-77 countries more than the Americans, adopted a more conciliatory line. The West 19

Louis Ortmayer, “West Germany and the Third World: Virtues of the Market or a New Political Role?” in Phillip Taylor and Gregory Raymond, eds., Third World Policies of Industrialized Nations (Westport, Conn., 1982), 68.

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German economics minister, Hans Friderichs, argued that the proposed changes implied a dismantling of the market-based international economic system.20 A Conference on International Cooperation met in Paris in 1975 to launch “North-South d´etente” and established commissions that were to meet monthly to discuss issues related to development. At a meeting of UNCTAD in Nairobi in 1976, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, attending reluctantly, gave a speech offering new concessions on resources, technology transfers, and debt.21 But the sense of crisis was waning, and the meetings did not stimulate major policy changes on the part of either the United States or Germany. Nevertheless, an Independent Commission on International Development Issues, chaired by Willy Brandt, examined the North-South debate further and in 1980 published a 300page report.22 The Brandt Report, as it came to be known, argued that more generous policies toward the developing world – for example, a “Marshall Plan” for promising candidates like Taiwan and South Korea – would generate the growth necessary to reinvigorate the stagnant world economy. It addressed four specific areas requiring immediate attention: a world food program to stimulate production and end hunger; a global energy strategy to meet the security needs of producers and consumers alike; financial assistance for countries imperiled by mounting debt; and improved access to international financial institutions and more balanced conditions for trade.23 Brandt himself wrote that the report argued for a new way of thinking about the world community “to enable ordinary people to see more clearly how their jobs and their daily lives are interlocked with those of communities at the other end of the world.”24 20

Barnet, Romanian and East German Policies, 397. Kunz, Butter and Guns, 265–7. 22 Independent Commission on International Development Issues, North-South: A Programme for Survival (Cambridge, Mass., 1980). 23 From Willy Brandt’s foreword to GJW Government Relations, ed., Handbook of World Development: The Guide to the Brandt Report (London, 1981), vii. 24 Ibid., v. For a recent stocktaking of the Brandt Report’s legacy, see Franz Nuscheler, ed., Entwicklung 21

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The Federal Republic took the North-South debate more seriously than did the United States, with leaders of the governing Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD) going so far as to label development policy “the social question of the twentieth century.”25 In September 1977, Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) addressed the United Nations General Assembly on the need to “overcome this gap that divides the world today more deeply than any ideological antagonism – that is, the gap between rich and poor.”26 But the SPD’s earlier insistence on altruism had merged with the opposition Christian Democratic Union’s (CDU) insistence on domestic returns for development assistance. The fear that developing countries could withhold their goods drove Chancellor Helmut Schmidt’s SPD-led government to regard development policy as an important means of securing vital resources. At the same time, Germany did make a point of helping “the poorest of the poor,” countries with relatively little to offer in the way of political or economic payoff.27 As European powers increasingly aimed to define North-South issues separately from the East-West conflict, the United States under the administration of Ronald Reagan resumed the Cold War struggle in earnest. In 1981 Germany’s development minister, Rainer Offergeld, suggested that Europeans were prepared to pursue an independent development policy and refused to exclude socialist regimes such as those in Angola and Ethiopia.28 Neither of these countries figured among the top twenty-five recipients of German aid in 1980–1, however.29 To the extent that a split did emerge between the United States and the European countries over

und Frieden im 21.Jahrhundert: Zur Wirkungsgeschichte des Brandt-Berichts (Bonn, 2000). 25 Der Spiegel 31 (Nov. 21, 1977): 49. 26 Ibid., 49. 27 OECD, Development Cooperation (Paris, 1982), 144–5. 28 Der Spiegel 35 (June 8, 1981): 27–9. 29 OECD, Development Cooperation (Paris, 1989), 250.

development, the United States tolerated the human-rights abuses of right-wing dictatorships it supported, whereas Europeans overlooked similar abuses by socialist dictatorships.30 In any case, the stakes were never so high as to threaten the alliance, and European leaders profited among their constituents by distancing themselves from the alarming rhetoric of the new American President. When Helmut Kohl and the CDU came to power in 1982, however, the German rhetoric of development again took a turn to the right and began to echo American views. The new development minister, J¨urgen Warnke, stressed the importance of the private sector in development work and singled out for praise those developing countries that pursued free-market policies.31 Meanwhile, the international financial marketplace had been excessively generous with loans. In the 1970s, OPEC countries, flush with money from increased oil prices, had not been eager to invest in developing countries, but much of their money had ended up in American, German, and Japanese banks that were.32 Investors thought the developing world in the 1970s was a better investment than such decaying entities as the Chrysler Corporation or New York City; countries, they reasoned, could not go out of business.33 High inflation rates made it relatively easy for loan recipients to manage their growing debt loads. But attempts by the United States toward the end of the decade to curb inflation through higher interest rates had a disastrous effect, especially in Latin America, a favorite market for lending: Higher interest rates made new borrowing difficult, whereas the brake on inflation meant that borrowers no longer could count on repaying dollars worth much less than the ones they had borrowed. Beginning in August 1982 with Mexico, most

30

See Schulz, “The ‘New’ Germany and the Third World,” 229–40. 31 Der Spiegel 36 (Dec. 13, 1982): 31–2. 32 Robert E. Wood, From Marshall Plan to Debt Crisis: Foreign Aid and Development Choices in the World Economy (Berkeley, Calif., 1986), 242. 33 Kunz, Butter and Guns, 267–74.

The United States, Germany, and Aid for Developing Countries

Latin American countries announced that they no longer could meet their obligations. The resulting debt crisis of the 1980s did not lead to world financial collapse, as initially feared, but it did force bankers and lending governments to see more clearly how jobs and daily lives in their countries were interlocked with those of communities at the other end of the world. Averting disaster would be costly. German bankers took the lead in calling for debt relief, which was implemented during the decade with contributions from individual countries, the World Bank, and the IMF.34 The crisis revealed that borrowers were not completely powerless against their creditors; if a country such as Argentina, Brazil, or Mexico had chosen to default, the economic effects would have been global.35 Bankers, therefore, had to become more responsible in their lending practices. Whereas German bankers had long been more susceptible to government pressure than their American counterparts, congressional passage of the International Lending Supervision Act in November 1983 suggested that Americans at least would rather accept greater regulation of banks than be asked to bail out debtor nations.36 The recipients of future loans, in turn, increasingly would have to demonstrate commitment to structural reform of their economies: They would have to reduce government spending, privatize state-run enterprises, and open their economies to foreign investment and trade.37 Nevertheless, the emerging consensus on how to achieve development did not save the developing world from stagnation during the 1980s. Miserable economic conditions prevailed in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, and a mood of deep pessimism overtook the development community, not for the 34

Harold James, International Monetary Cooperation Since Bretton Woods (Washington, D.C., 1996), 399–404. 35 Benjamin J. Cohen, Developing-Country Debt: A Middle Way (Princeton, N.J., 1989), 12–17. 36 James, International Monetary Cooperation, 405–6. 37 Karin Lissakers, Banks, Borrowers and the Establishment: A Revisionist Account of the International Debt Crisis (New York, 1991), 262.

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first time.38 Donors agreed that their efforts had yielded meager results, with much of the assistance having gone to waste or into private fortunes banked abroad. Brigitte Erler, an SPD policy planner who had worked for the BMZ from 1974 to 1983, wrote a memoir titled Deadly Help in which she described a number of projects she had seen on a recent trip to Bangladesh, some of which had proven dangerous to people and the environment.39 Her “insider’s” opinion reflected a growing sentiment that development projects often did more harm than good, and that disparities between the world’s rich and poor were growing. By the late 1980s, this gloom reached the highest ranks of the BMZ; speaking of Mali in particular, Hans Klein, the minister of development, said, “Thus far little has been achieved [since the early 1960s] toward the improvement of living standards of the people. . . . In most cases loans and consultations have achieved no lasting solutions.”40 The same grim assessment held true in much of the Third World, many of whose countries ranked high among those Germany assisted in 1987 and 1988.41 Traditional foreign assistance would become an even tougher sell to legislators in the 1990s as Germany faced the cost of reunification – a major development project in itself – and the United States tried to reduce deficit spending. The most disillusioned of observers, an American, would describe international development “as industry, as religion, as a self-serving system that sacrifices its own practitioners and intended beneficiaries in order that it may survive and grow.”42 Although the sincere efforts and dedication of many people in the development community make such a judgment seem harsh, it is true that development often has been

38

Economist, Sept. 23, 1989, 3. Brigitte Erler, T¨odliche Hilfe: Bericht von meiner letzten Dienstreise in Sachen Entwicklungshilfe (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1985). 40 Der Spiegel 42 (Sept. 19, 1988): 50. 41 OECD, Development Cooperation, 250. 42 Michael Maren, The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity (New York, 1997), 11. 39

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more about “us” than about “them” and that aid programs, despite good intentions, have often been paternalistic and even detrimental to growth. Yet in the post–Cold War world the path to development and prosperity seemed clearer than ever, if no less difficult: Freemarket reforms, responsible borrowing, and a stable, well-governed, entrepreneurial society

appeared to be the keys. Not every country had to choose this path, defined largely by the United States and other Western countries; “development” might not be for everyone. But for the United States and Germany the lure of profits to be made in the developing global marketplace would only intensify the allies’ economic rivalry.

chapter seven

The World Economic Summits A Difficult Learning Process Bernhard May Translated by Tradukas

D´etente reached its peak in the mid-1970s. A visible sign of this easing of the East-West conflict was the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which thirty-five heads of state and government signed in Helsinki in July 1975.1 On July 31, 1975, the government leaders and foreign ministers of the United States, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Britain met for lunch and discussed the French suggestion of holding a joint summit with Japan later that year to discuss economic and monetary problems. This gathering launched the world economic summits that have taken place annually since 1975.2 In the 1970s, the world economic summits served primarily to coordinate economic and monetary policy between the leading industrial nations. The East-West conflict did not show up on summit agendas until the early 1980s. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union fundamentally transformed

the role of the world economic summits, and Russia was gradually integrated into the summit process.

multilateral summits or american unilateralism By the beginning of the 1970s, several leading American politicians had repeatedly suggested the idea of a multilateral summit of major countries to discuss international economic and monetary questions, but always without success. In 1971, President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, had proposed such a meeting to overcome the world monetary crisis, and the high point of the “year of Europe” proclaimed by Kissinger in 1973 was to be a summit meeting between Nixon and the heads of government of the European Community (EC).3 The institutionalization of the world economic summit resulted, on the one hand, from the crises that developed in the first half of the 1970s and, on the other, from the realization by summit organizers that structural changes in international relations made new forms of cooperation between the major industrial states necessary. Three main factors were decisive.

1

See the chapter by Michael Lucas, vol. 2, Politics. The primary study of the history of the world economic summits is Robert D. Putnam and Nicholas Bayne, Hanging Together: Cooperation and Conflict in the Seven-Power Summits, 2d ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1987). See also Rainer Hellmann, Weltwirtschaftsgipfel wozu? (Baden-Baden, 1982); Cesare Merlini, ed., Western Summits and Europe: Rivalry, Cooperation, and Partnership (London, 1984). On the summit declarations, see George M. von Furstenberg and Joseph P. Daniels, Economic Summit Declarations, 1975–1989: Examining the Written Record of International Cooperation (Princeton, N.J., 1992). 2

3 Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston, 1979); Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston, 1982), 181–6. See also the chapter by Klaus Larres, vol. 2, Politics.

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First, advancing economic interdependence had intensified the linkage between foreign and domestic policy. Growing interdependence restricts national sovereignty and can lead to conflicts for governments and politicians, particularly when citizens hold them responsible for economic developments caused by international factors that they cannot influence.4 The second argument for intensifying international economic cooperation arose from the weakening of the American hegemony that had guaranteed the economic rise of Western Europe and Japan in the postwar decades. Europe and Japan had grown into economic – and to some extent political – rivals to the United States, and both were increasingly unwilling to accept American dominance. At the same time, the United States grew increasingly reluctant to actively pursue its costly and unpopular leadership role.5 The monetary crisis of 1971 and the first oil crisis of 1973 forced the major industrial states to face up to these fundamental changes. Taking steps to replace American dominance in world politics with a system of global management shared by the leading industrial states was thus necessary. The summit meetings were intended to organize these steps. Third, the meetings also represented an attempt to counter the bureaucratization of international relations. The existing mechanisms for securing economic and monetary cooperation – the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the International Energy Agency, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) –

4

Richard N. Cooper, The Economics of Interdependence: Economic Policy in the Atlantic Community (New York, 1968); Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye Jr., Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston, 1977); Karl Kaiser, “Transnational Relations as a Threat to the Democratic Process,” in Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye Jr., eds., Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), 356–70. 5 Robert O. Keohane, Beyond Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, N.J., 1984); Richard Rosecrance, ed., America as an Ordinary Country: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Future (Ithaca, N.Y., 1976).

seemed too bureaucratic. They had failed to respond to the unfolding crises of the early 1970s with appropriate political initiatives, and the participants in the consultations were far below the level of the heads of state and government. French President Val´ery Giscard d’Estaing and West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in particular regarded this a serious shortcoming. One aim of the world economic summits was thus to rectify the deficiencies of multilateral economic cooperation at the highest political level. a franco-german initiative In 1975, Val´ery Giscard d’Estaing and Helmut Schmidt worked closely to organize an informal summit meeting at Rambouillet, near Paris, to discuss economic and monetary problems. They took as their model the “Library Group”: In 1973, while serving as their countries finance ministers, Schmidt and Giscard had met with their British and American counterparts informally and in secret in the library of the White House.6 When Giscard became president of France and Schmidt chancellor of the Federal Republic in 1974, it seemed appropriate to raise the Library Group meetings to the level of heads of state and government while retaining both their informal status and the focus of discussion. Neither Giscard nor Schmidt initially had regular meetings in mind. Their idea was for heads of state and government to gather when necessary for discussions of strategic aspects of important problems. Thus, the main features of the summits were defined from the outset: an informal and exclusive circle of decision makers from powerful, influential nations.7 6 Helmut Schmidt, Men and Powers: A Political Retrospective (New York, 1989), 156–9. George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York, 1993), 148, quotes President Nixon suggesting the meeting be held in the White House: “Why don’t you give your meeting a touch of class and hold it in the White House?” 7 George de Menil, “Der Prozess der Wirtschaftsgipfeldiplomatie,” in George de Menil and Anthony M. Solomon, Weltwirtschaftsgipfel (Bonn, 1983), 86–99.

The World Economic Summits

The new U.S. government under President Gerald Ford distrusted the Franco-German summit proposal. Treasury Secretary William Simon feared that Schmidt and Giscard wanted to use the summit to reintroduce fixed exchange rates.8 President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were also skeptical about the two Europeans’ underlying goals. They therefore authorized George Shultz – in a sense, the founder of the Library Group and a friend of French and German leaders – to hold preparatory discussions with the Europeans. In September 1975, Schultz first met Schmidt in Bonn, then Prime Minister Harold Wilson in London, and finally, Giscard in Paris. In his memoirs he later described his recommendation to President Ford, recalling: “My instructions had been to be ‘neutral’ on this new summit idea, but my message to President Ford was that we should take a positive attitude.”9 From the outset the United States and Germany held fundamentally different views on three central political challenges facing the new body. At issue was, first, the question whether economic growth or price stability should have priority; second, the division of the responsibility for economic policy between countries with a trade deficit and those with a trade surplus; and third, the extent to which nations participating in the summit should assume regional or global responsibility.10 The discussion of these issues may have changed over time, but they remained part of the summit process for many years.

growth or stability? The economic policy efforts at the summits have often been likened to an attempt to square the macroeconomic circle. Economic growth was to be stimulated and unemployment cut 8

Harold James, International Monetary Cooperation since Bretton Woods (New York, 1996), 267. 9 Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 352. See also Henry Kissinger, Years of Renewal (New York, 1999), 692–7. 10 C. Fred Bergsten and C. Randall Henning, Global Economic Leadership and the Group of Seven (Washington, D.C., 1996).

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while, at the same time, inflation was to be held in check and foreign trade imbalances reduced. The United States usually pleaded for increased economic growth, whereas Germany gave higher priority to price stability. This basic conflict became particularly prominent at the Bonn summit in 1978.11 The Bonn summit needed to be a success. At the four previous meetings the participants had acknowledged the connection between economic recovery on the one hand, and trade, monetary, and energy policy on the other. But Bonn was the first and only time that participants managed to agree on a coordinated package of measures. This summit was unique in that all leaders agreed on measures that they would not have been able to carry out unilaterally or that required external pressure to have them accepted domestically. This applied to Germany as well. Chancellor Schmidt firmly refused American demands that Germany foster economic growth regardless of the dangers entailed for price stability. Moreover, he and State Secretary Karl Otto P¨ohl won foreign backing for their domestic policies by convincing the American and British governments of the importance of policies designed to produce stability. The declaration of the May 1977 summit in London had already included the statement, “Inflation does not reduce unemployment. On the contrary, it is one of its major causes.”12 By spring 1978, Schmidt had also become convinced of the need to implement a limited financial program to stimulate economic activity. However, for tactical and domestic political reasons, he wanted to give the impression that Germany was acceding to political pressure from the other summit states. His strategy essentially 11 Robert D. Putnam and C. Randall Henning, “The Bonn Summit of 1978: A Case Study in Coordination,” in Richard N. Cooper et al., Can Nations Agree? Issues in International Economic Cooperation (Washington, D.C., 1989), 12–140. 12 “The Downing Street Economic Summit, London, May 7–8, 1977: Joint Declaration and Appendix Issued at the Conclusion of the Meeting, in Council on Foreign Relations,” American Foreign Relations (hereafter AFR) (1977): 414.

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came down to: “Let’s wait a while, until after the summit. Make them force me to do it, so that in the end I can.”13 Schmidt himself claimed that he had resisted the idea of using the German and Japanese economies as pacesetters, which became the basis of the Bonn package, “in order, in the end, to give in to foreign pressure only to the extent that I believed was economically sensible.”14 Preparations for the Bonn summit package proved long and difficult. The summit produced several political commitments. U.S. President Jimmy Carter promised energy-saving measures and a reduction in oil imports. France, Britain, and Italy announced programs to stimulate economic activity and renounced the use of protectionist measures. Japan agreed to aim for a higher growth rate and to open up Japanese markets to foreign products. Speaking for Germany, Schmidt promised fiscal stimulus measures up to 1 percent of GDP, designed “to achieve a significant strengthening of demand and a higher rate of growth.”15 Hindsight suggests that the Bonn summit was overtaken by changes in the economic situation, and the fall of the Shah in Iran and the second oil crisis prevented the summit package from being put into practice effectively.16 The multilateral action program agreed upon in Bonn was the greatest success of the summit process, but its results in practice remain a matter of debate. Wendy Dobson has concluded: “The Bonn Summit was not a failure of coordination. Indeed coordination worked pretty well. The problem was the poor timing of the agreed-upon policies, together with the totally unexpected oil shock that intervened in 1979.”17 13

Putnam and Bayne, Hanging Together, 81. In a letter to the author dated July 4, 1997. 15 “The Bonn Economic Summit, London, July 16–17, 1978: Declaration Issued at the Conclusion of the Conference,” AFR (1978): 453. 16 For the different views of the Bonn summit, see Gerald Holtham, “German Macroeconomic Policy and the 1978 Bonn Economic Summit,” in Richard N. Cooper et al., Can Nations Agree?, 141–77. 17 Wendy Dobson, Economic Policy Coordination: Requiem or Prologue? (Washington, D.C., 1991), 15. 14

the conflict over trade deficits and surpluses The question of division of responsibility for economic policy between countries with trade deficits and those with trade surpluses presented a second conflict. While the United States had registered a current account deficit in almost every year since 1975, Germany and Japan had almost always recorded surpluses.18 Disagreement centered on which countries would have to make adjustments. Since the beginning of the Carter administration, American efforts to generate a coordinated growth program had followed the locomotive model. This required countries with trade surpluses to increase their growth rates in order to set the whole “train of industrial countries” in motion – in other words, to act as the locomotive. The United States sought the support of Germany and Japan for the domestically oriented American economic growth program, hoping to improve the international economic climate. The Carter administration, which took office in January 1977, consisted of trilateralists who sought to intensify cooperation between the United States, Europe, and Japan. Their economic credo was coordinated Keynesian demand management in the three strongest economies – the United States, Japan, and Germany – to bring about a global upturn.19 In their view, the three most powerful locomotives, working in unison, would be able to get the train of the world economy rolling again.

18 The United States only had current account surpluses in 1980 and 1981, whereas Germany only had current account deficits in 1979–81 and again from 1991 on. Japan had current account deficits only in 1979 and 1980. 19 Not only President Jimmy Carter but also Vice President Walter Mondale, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, Secretary of the Treasury Michael Blumenthal, Undersecretary of State Richard Cooper, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury C. Fred Bergsten, and five further senior officials of the new government were members of the Trilateral Commission.

The World Economic Summits

Sixteen economists from the United States, Japan, and Europe developed the locomotive theory at a conference of the Brookings Institution in Washington in November 1976. Immediately after taking office, President Carter sent Vice President Walter Mondale, Richard Cooper from the State Department, and C. Fred Bergsten from the Treasury Department to explain the Keynesian economic program and the locomotive theory to allied governments and to urge them to meet their international responsibilities. The discussions in Bonn proved hard going. Schmidt “disparaged the Americans’ advice as an ill-considered economics lesson from inexperienced academics.”20 Although he vehemently rejected the locomotive theory in 1977–8, he gave a binding commitment at the Bonn summit for a significant German contribution to promoting world economic growth.21 A DM 13 billion package combining tax cuts, social spending, and incentives for private investment was thus earmarked for strengthening demand and stimulating growth. But the actual results fell far short of expectations. Harold James succinctly describes one of the political consequences of the Bonn summit package: “After 1978, ‘locomotive’ became a very dirty word, especially in Germany and Japan. . . . Only in 1990, as they tried to explain the positive effects of German unification on their neighbors, would Germans use the term ‘locomotive’ again.”22 From 1978 until the end of President Ronald Reagan’s first term, German and U.S. economic policies drifted apart. If it was exaggerated expectations of the locomotive theory and a deliberately weak dollar

that troubled transatlantic relations under Carter, the sources of conflict under Reagan were the Europeans’ rejection of “Reaganomics,” problematic budget and current account deficits, high interest rates, and a deliberately strong dollar. Indeed, Helmut Schmidt said that similar problems were associated “with the introduction of Carter’s form of Keynesianism” and, “at the beginning of the 1980s, with Reagan’s form of Keynesianism, which became known as supply side economics.”23 The Carter administration had “talk[ed] the dollar down” to strengthen the deutschmark and the yen and to reduce the German and Japanese current account surpluses in keeping with the locomotive theory. But the problem in the 1980s was that Reaganomics resulted in rapidly mounting budget deficits and, consequently, high interest rates and an overvalued dollar. The dollar crises of the 1970s and 1980s caused almost permanent conflict at the summits, especially in German-American relations.24 Not until Reagan’s second term, with James Baker as the new secretary of the Treasury, was the American government willing to combat the dollar’s problems in cooperation with its partners. However, finance ministers increasingly dealt with currency problems in the G5/G7 meetings. Between 1985 and 1987, they actually did manage to adjust the overvalued dollar downward with the assistance of the Plaza agreement of September 1985 and the Louvre agreement of February 1987.25 This exchangerate adjustment can be regarded as the second great success of the summits because coordination by the finance ministers and central banks are an important subdomain of the summit process.

20

Putnam and Bayne, Hanging Together, 65. Five years later, Schmidt, no longer chancellor, even recommended the “Bonn model” for the Williamsburg summit. See his foreword in George de Menil and Anthony M. Solomon, Weltwirtschaftsgipfel, iii. The “Bonn model” was also proposed for the 1992 summit in Munich. See Bernhard May, “Welthandel und der Gipfel in M¨unchen: Die Uruguay-Runde,” in Klaus Becher et al., Der Gipfel in M¨unchen: Analysen aus dem Forschungsinstitut der Deutschen Gesellschaft f¨ur Ausw¨artige Politik (Bonn, 1992), 15–28. 22 James, International Monetary Cooperation, 295.

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regional or global responsibility?

21

Should the nations participating in the annual summits assume regional or global 23

Schmidt, Men and Powers, 266. For details on the dollar crises, see James, International Monetary Cooperation, 303–8, 446–50. 25 Yoichi Funabashi, Managing the Dollar: From the Plaza to the Louvre, 2d ed. (Washington, D.C., 1989). 24

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responsibility? That was the third major conflict in the summit process. The United States always acted as a global power with worldwide interests, whereas the other participants concentrated on their own regions and on mutual interests. This applied particularly to Germany, which only gradually began to assume global political responsibility after unification in 1990. In their early years the world economic summits concentrated on economic matters: coordination of economic and monetary policy, steady liberalization of trade, the difficult problems of energy supplies, and the combination of growing indebtedness and lagging development among the poorer nations. The focus of the summits shifted to questions of foreign and security policy in the 1980s. This shift was in part intentional but also forced upon the participating states by challenges that needed to be addressed. These challenges included growing tensions in East-West relations set off by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the stationing of Soviet SS-20 missiles in Warsaw Pact states and NATO’s subsequent deployment of intermediate range nuclear weapons.26 They also encompassed the long drawn-out Iran-Iraq war and new forms of threats, such as international drug trade and terrorism.27 The end of East-West d´etente at the beginning of the 1980s heightened the dispute between the European summit participants and the United States over the extent of their obli-

gations. The near failure of the 1982 Versailles summit was due less to the very general summit decisions on economic and monetary policy cooperation than to the irreconcilable differences of opinion between the Europeans (especially France and Germany) and the Reagan administration over relations with the Soviet Union. The disagreement concerned how the Western industrial states should react to expansionist Soviet interventions in Africa, Afghanistan, and Poland. Martial law had been declared in Poland in December 1981. The Reagan administration responded with an embargo on all equipment for the Siberian natural gas pipeline. While the European governments continued to support the project and wanted to fulfill their existing contracts for supplying gas pipes. European preferential loans to East-bloc countries were a second source of controversy. Drawing on the lessons of Versailles, organizers made changes in the preparation and organization of the next summit, which was held in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1983. The procedural changes helped to make the Williamsburg summit a success.28 But the most astonishing result of the Williamsburg summit was a political declaration that reiterated familiar Western positions on defense, arms control, and mediumrange missiles, but was supported by France and Japan.29 This put political and security issues firmly on the summit agenda.

the summit process participants: continuity and discord

26

See the chapter by Michael Broer, vol. 2, Security. The end of the Cold War, the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the 1990 Gulf War would eventually pose new strategic challenges for the summit states, which they have attempted to meet since 1990 by, for example, gradually integrating the Soviet Union (later Russia) in the summit process. The first “Summit of the Eight” was held in Denver in June 1997 and had a primarily political agenda. See Bernhard May, Kuwait-Krise und Energiesicherheit: Wirtschaftliche Abh¨angigkeit der USA und des Westens vom Mittleren Osten (Bonn, 1991); “Primat des Politischen am Gipfel der Acht: Neudefinition der Zielsetzungen der Siebenerrunde in Denver,” Neue Z¨urcher Zeitung, June 24, 1997; Brian Knowlton, “Summit Closes in Discord: ‘Weak’ U.S. Environment Policy Annoys Partners,” International Herald Tribune, June 23, 1997. See also the concluding chapter by Hans-Peter Schwarz, vol. 2. 27

The personalities involved in these meetings had a decisive influence on individual summits and the summit process as a whole. In the 1970s the Franco-German partnership of Giscard and Schmidt was especially important. They had initiated the meetings, had both served as finance ministers and participated in the Library Group meetings. They understood the difficult 28

Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 352–7. For the role of Japan at the summits, see Shiro Saito, Japan at the Summit: Its Role in the Western Alliance and in Asian Pacific Co-operation (London, 1990). 29

The World Economic Summits

economic and monetary problems of the 1970s, were able to build on a solid foundation of Franco-German relations, and – not least – had a very good personal relationship. From the outset, one of the important goals of the summit process was to build mutual trust between heads of state in a situation free of the constraints of protocol inherent in official state visits. The summit participants and their closest staff have often named the building of personal relationships as the most important result of the summits. This was normally the case, but direct contact at the summits did not always improve relationships, and sometimes tensions increased rather than diminished. Personal conflicts dominated a good number of summits, such as those between President Carter and Chancellor Schmidt in the 1970s and between President Reagan and President Franc¸ ois Mitterand in the 1980s. Describing the antipathy between Jimmy Carter and Helmut Schmidt that had dominated the London and Bonn summits, Putnam and Bayne write, “The antagonism between these two proud men seemed visceral and persisted throughout their terms of office and beyond. It proved a debilitating source of tension in transatlantic relations and a jarring note of discord in four successive summits.”30 A major change of the leaders involved in the summits took place at the start of the 1980s. The election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 marked the inauguration of the second generation of summit participants. But the most significant change came with the election of Ronald Reagan in November 1980. Franc¸ ois Mitterand was elected president of France in May 1981, and Helmut Kohl replaced Helmut Schmidt as chancellor in fall 1982. The second generation of summit participants were, with the exception

30

Putnam and Bayne, Hanging Together, 68.

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of Mitterand, conservatives (i.e., Reagan, Thatcher, and Kohl) who supported freemarket solutions and opposed state intervention. None of them had served as finance minister; at the 1977 and 1978 summits, by contrast, six of the eight heads of state and government had once held this position. This new generation would probably never have initiated the world economic summits on their own. The summit process was marked by a great long-term continuity of the participating leaders. Helmut Schmidt took part in the first eight summits. Reagan also took part in eight. Mitterand participated in no less than fourteen summit meetings, and Kohl sixteen.

the summit process failures and successes The history of the world economic summits reflects a difficult learning process with painful setbacks, but also a process that has achieved some notable successes. One of the most important long-term results is Japan’s lasting integration into the Western community of nations. A significant development was the recognition by the summit participants that the transition from a bilateral to a multilateral system required intense consultations and that this transition entailed new problems and risks. The experience of many years of summit diplomacy and the personal relationships cultivated between heads of state proved important factors when the Cold War came to an end and the tumultuous events in some of the Eastern bloc nations forced several summit governments to act very quickly. In sum, for all their lamentable shortcomings and painful setbacks, the annual meetings have done more good than harm. To this day no substitute has been found for the top-level discussions between heads of state that take place at the summits.

CULTURE Culture as an Arena of Transatlantic Conflict Frank Trommler Translated by Tradukas

Sputnik shock persisted, however, through the period of d´etente in the 1960s and 1970s. The Moscow and Warsaw treaties, which gave the West German government greater room for maneuver within the Western alliance, underscored the strength of communist power. The 1980s showed how swiftly the nuclear threat could again enter into public consciousness, as nuclear confrontation between the two blocs headed toward a new climax under President Ronald Reagan. There was even talk of a second phase of the Cold War.1 This spurred artists and intellectuals to move well beyond their normal cultural activities and gave rise to a form of opposition that led to solidarity across the Iron Curtain. In the 1960s, the significance of the Cold War in the cultural sphere was transformed less as a result of the Berlin Wall than on account of general political, technological, and intellectual shifts. The rebuilding of Europe had long meant that politics had priority over culture. The dependency of doctrines about art in each system – the contrast between (Western) modernism and (Eastern) socialist realism – seemed to offer proof for this. Not only did concepts of “art” and “culture” change in the 1960s, however, but the ways they referred to systemic politics

culture and cultural policy during the cold war The collapse of communist rule in Eastern and Central Europe and the globalization energetically pursued by the United States have revealed clearly how strongly the Cold War influenced and, to a certain degree, privileged the cultural sphere. The unquestioning way in which over several decades cultural activity had not only been considered, but also supported financially and politically, was praised retrospectively in the 1990s, often with nostalgic undertones. West German debates about public cultural institutions had already begun to entertain the possibility of introducing privatization and market forces in the 1980s, but a real transformation only came about after Germany’s political unification in 1990. The decline in political backing for subsidizing cultural activities became especially apparent in Berlin despite expectations about its responsibilities as the new capital city. The Cold War had created conditions under which art and culture enjoyed considerable public support and monies not only in the communist countries, but also in the West. The Cold War took on its most ominous expression with the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Paradoxically, intellectual interest in the Cold War declined with this event, for the negative symbolism of the Wall took away the urgency of ideological competition between East and West. The fear of long-term threat to the Western way of life prompted by the

1

For an example of the literature on the psychological effects of this phase of the Cold War, see Daniel J. Christie and C. Patricia Hanley, “Some Psychological Effects of Nuclear War Education on Adolescents During Cold War II,” Political Psychology 15 (1994): 177–99.

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and to politics in general also shifted. A new generation of artists, intellectuals, and organizers found ways to free themselves from the “primacy” of politics and demonstrated the transformative power of culture on society. This new culture, experienced by the younger generation, was nonhierarchical and free of the restraints of representation. Culture liberated itself from its aesthetically internalized labels that, in the case of modernism, were supposed to prove the freedom of the Western individual or, in the case of socialist realism, the superiority of the communist social order. But culture remained tied to the international confrontation, which intensified with the Vietnam War, because it understood itself as an alternative to politics, as an expression of human values set against the deadly manipulation of political hierarchies and monopolies. Without the Cold War, the emphatic way in which the power of culture to transform society in the 1970s and 1980s was pitted against the inflexibility of politics would have been inconceivable. It is not surprising that the newly gained “primacy” of culture over politics entered into the process of d´etente itself. UNESCO’s International Conference on Cultural Policy in Europe in Helsinki (1972) helped pave the way for the founding of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). The intensity of the transformations initiated by the younger generation was confirmed by the use of the diffuse term “culture” by an international group of politicians to show that they understood the necessity of overcoming ideological and military confrontation with a new form of politics. As Hans Schwab-Felisch writes, The Helsinki conference was characterized by an exceptional, almost otherworldly emphasis on culture, which was also a sign of the times. It was as if Europe had paused in shock to reflect on its role in modern history, in the face of the threats to the environment and civilization, which the world was beginning to notice. The call for the savior “culture” was heard on all sides.2

Should writers have taken part in this instrumentalization of culture? Although they hesitated and looked inward again in the 1970s, many became active in the face of NATO’s modernization of its intermediate range nuclear weapons (INF) at the beginning of the 1980s. When the official representatives of the CSCE states met at a large cultural forum in Budapest in 1986, Gy¨orgy Konrad, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Susan Sontag, and others organized a well-publicized “anti-forum.” West and East German authors, among them G¨unter Grass and Hermann Kant, assured each other of their solidarity in opposition to the renewed escalation of the Cold War. These humanist aims gave the concept of culture an unusually activist significance. Culture liberated itself decisively from a fixation on the dichotomy between high and mass culture that had predominated in the 1950s. The aesthetic and political potential of this concept of culture was without doubt closely linked to traditional European public culture, which was not dependent on market forces in the East and only partially so in the West. Beyond being defined as aesthetic entertainment, beyond producing self-reassurance, recognition, and representation, the concept of culture remained very diffuse. The political establishment in the United States viewed it with mistrust, even incomprehension. The use of cultural expressions, especially rock and pop music, by the American protest movements in the 1960s contributed to that distrust. Rejecting the difference between Western (high) culture and the market-oriented culture of light entertainment that was traditionally seen as inferior, the student movement in America, with the rise of the counterculture, developed a cultural consciousness; it saw itself as an active way of life organized through a great variety of forms of aesthetic and emotional involvement. This became a worldwide model for opposition to established lifestyles and power relations. It provided inspiration for new tactics in the struggle for minority rights and the equality of women.3

2

Hans Schwab-Felisch, “Die Bedeutung der Kultur f¨ur die Politik w¨achst: R¨uckblick auf das Europ¨aische Kulturforum in Budapest,” Merkur 40 (1986): 321.

3

See the chapter by Claus Leggewie, vol. 2, Society.

Culture as an Arena of Transatlantic Conflict

Many factors contributed to giving culture a key role in the debates during the 1970s on democratizing societies fossilized by decades of war and the Cold War. In the United States, the debate was strongly linked to the repudiation of politics and the military-industrial complex during the Vietnam conflict. Interest in culture in the United States was more intense among those pursuing oppositional lifestyles, particularly in the younger generation, who had begun seeking contact with Europe through film, travel, cuisine, and enthusiasm for art. In West Germany, the reform policies of the social democratic–liberal coalition elected in 1969 provided significant impetus in democratizing culture. Here, the interest in culture was more strongly channeled through exchanges on the state and community level and through new social groups. Despite talk of an “extended concept of culture,” culture in the European context more firmly retained its traditional representational function. In this respect, common ground existed with the countries behind the Iron Curtain even if the program of cultural democratization – not to mention countercultural lifestyles – was seen there as subversive.

german-american cultural relations To speak of the primacy of culture over politics is problematic, however, in light of the cool reaction from the U.S. leadership in the 1970s and the 1980s. Traditionally, the American understanding of culture has been dominated by a broad anthropological definition that encompasses almost everything that characterizes the behavior of individuals and groups. State and public representation was rarely part of this concept until the Cold War, and even then public authorities who promoted cultural policy and funded art were suspected of trying to control the freedom of art and expression in a totalitarian way. The very promotion of “high” art and culture that was typical in Europe was seen as the domain of private finance in the United States. When the National Endowment of the Arts was founded by Congress as a central organization for the public support of the arts in 1965, artists

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themselves objected and voiced mistrust of state control, a position that they later reversed when conservative budget cuts threatened to end the program. The contrast between the German and U.S. systems of public culture can be seen in their differing financial structures. In the Federal Republic, more than 90 percent is financed by public and the rest by private funds, while the proportion is exactly the reverse in the United States. The idea of national representation through culture, long accepted in Europe, did not go beyond Cold War competition in the United States until the presidency of John F. Kennedy. But expenditure on cultural relations with Germany and Europe, mainly for artistic and academic exchange programs, declined rapidly again during the Vietnam War. By the mid1970s, funding for official cultural ties had reached its lowest level, and both the German and U.S. governments made some attempt to revitalize them, particularly with academic exchanges.4 The United States Information Agency (USIA) was restructured under President Jimmy Carter’s administration, and cultural outreach abroad was redefined as public diplomacy.5 Meanwhile, the West German government decided to increase its presence in the United States, which led to expansion of the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutsher Akademischer Austauschdienst, or DAAD) programs and the opening of new Goethe Institutes in addition to those that already existed in New York, Boston, and San Francisco.6 Diplomatic recognition of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) by the United States occurred in 1974, but this did not result in a systematic intensification of cultural relations.7 East Germany lay too much in the shadow of West Germany. When it was included in cultural programs, the Americans counted it as part of their work in “Eastern Europe.” 4

Ulrich Littmann, Partners, Distant and Close: Notes and Footnotes on Academic Mobility Between Germany and the United States of America (1923–1993) (Bonn, 1997), 166–7. 5 See the chapter by Hans N. Tuch in this section. 6 See the chapter by Wulf K¨opke in this section. 7 See the chapter by Heinrich Bortfeldt in this section.

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This form of international cultural policy constantly faced the threat of budget cuts and was fundamentally different from American initiatives in occupied Germany after 1945. Its legitimacy in Congress rested primarily on the desire to counter the anti-American mood that had found expression in the student revolts and demonstrations against the Vietnam War since the late 1960s. Because Washington’s interest in Germany and Europe appeared to be waning, the West German government thought it advisable to bolster its long-neglected cultural presence in America. When NATO’s INF modernization prompted a new wave of anti-American demonstrations throughout West Germany and Western Europe, and as American interest in Asia intensified under President Ronald Reagan, both governments decided to participate in new exchange programs such as the Parliamentary Partnership Program and the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange Program.8 While the most prominent scholarly exchange program, the Fulbright Program, continued in the 1990s, the end of the Cold War led to further cuts in official cultural policy offerings. Amerika-H¨auser in Stuttgart and Hanover were closed, and only one new Amerika-Haus was opened, in the eastern city of Leipzig. To promote interest in Germany, the DAAD took up the initiative from Helmut Kohl and his coordinator for German-American relations, Werner Weidenfeld, and established three Centers of Excellence in 1990. These elite institutes for German and European studies were set up at Harvard, the University of California at Berkeley, and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.9 The German side, noting a dwindling interest in Germany among Americans, also engineered institutional guarantees for the study of Germany. It was also aware that enrollment in courses in German and other European languages at American schools and universities was declining. The Cold War had

accelerated the expansion of the U.S. university system from the 1960s through the 1980s and as the ideological threat receded, the universities lost important lobbies among policymakers.10 Support for foreign languages and area studies, which Congress had made law with the National Defense Education Act of 1958 and later continued as the Title VI Program, was drastically curtailed. This strengthened the general trend away from academic engagement with the countries and cultures of Europe, which had been a central component of U.S. universities’ mission since the nineteenth century. With the reprivatization of universities, the public mission of these initiatives – to conduct research on other parts of the globe for benefit of the United States as a world power and to make the results of that research broadly available – moved to the background. Initiatives for investigating other societies came more than ever from the business sector, whose interest was more specific and also more narrow.

the transatlantic cultural network Official American cultural policy influenced relations between the two countries into the 1950s, but thereafter played only a minor role. Two developments had come to dominate cultural contacts by the end of the 1960s at the latest. First, liberalized transatlantic business contacts ensured that exchanges were orchestrated primarily through privately organized cultural and academic contacts. Second, the American entertainment industry succeeded in anchoring the American presence in everyday culture in Germany, especially in the spheres of music, film, and television. This meant that official intervention, which was mainly directed toward securing recognition of American “high” culture, represented only one factor in the cultural encounter. In the United States, the question of whether popular culture should be 10

8 9

See the chapter by Hans N. Tuch in this section. See the chapter by John A. McCarthy in this section.

Noam Chomsky, The Cold War and the University: Toward an Intellectual History of the Postwar Years (New York, 1997).

Culture as an Arena of Transatlantic Conflict

permitted to represent American culture abroad so exclusively flared up time and again.11 In the domain of private contacts, academic exchange provides a good illustration of the enormous growth that began in this period. Direct cooperation between German and American universities and research institutions became so extensive that it was hard by the 1970s and 1980s to get an accurate overview. In addition, research was becoming much more international. The natural and social sciences were oriented toward the United States and turned increasingly to English for communication and terminology. Because of the generous financing of American academic institutions, the “brain drain” of European academics to the United States that had begun in the 1950s continued, albeit on a lesser scale. The United States became the critical world authority for many experiments, inventions, and innovations. A comparable network of private and professional contacts also developed in art, architecture, music, theater, and literature, as well as in film, television, and all branches of the newly expanded entertainment sector. Whereas the United States had generally lagged behind the European art world previously, American artists now set the standard. At the same time the increasing integration of political and economic conditions in Europe made national structures for artistic production increasingly porous. In the domain of culture, which generally defines itself as a source of identification in a national context, this has led to new tensions, however. Internationalism now means, above all, the U.S.-driven integration of television and new electronic media. National traditions and identities have more strongly remained terms of reference in the sphere of high culture even though this sector – especially the visual arts, music, and dance – had always been internationally oriented. But it is hardly possible to grasp these traditions in terms of the old idea of the coexistence of two distinct national cultures. As 11 The situation in the 1990s is described by John Rockwell, “The New Colossus: American Culture as Power Export,” New York Times, Jan. 30, 1994, sec. H, 30–1.

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already suggested in the first volume of this book, the notions of “American” and “German” culture need to be understood as projection screens for many diverse and contradictory currents. Many American observers still doubt whether such a thing as American culture exists; they are nonetheless largely convinced that New York represents an enormous catalyst for whatever is understood by American culture. Since the 1960s, the pivotal cultural attraction of this city for German artists has increased to such a degree that many of the extant contacts in German-American cultural relations are in fact contacts running through New York.

new york, the magnet New York, both myth and brutal reality, has always played a disproportionate role in the European conception of America. For artists in a country such as Germany, which had lost its metropolitan center, this city – simply through its physical presence – became a stimulus for a continuous engagement with modern forms of expression, particularly in theater, music, and dance. In the 1960s, thanks to direct media contact and cheap travel opportunities, New York gained an exciting proximity and replaced Paris as the focal point of experimentation in the arts. The Broadway musical had long been seen as the epitome of American entertainment culture. After 1960, a plethora of Off-Broadway and countercultural productions – along with New York’s mere existence as a gigantic urban spectacle – led to the city becoming a catalyst for a “performance culture” that broke down artistic hierarchies. This was clearly one inspiration behind the renaissance of European theater in the 1970s that brought a new generation of directors broad public recognition. Germany’s broad spectrum of subsidized culture and the country’s large number of theaters and operas in turn provided rich opportunities for innovative American singers, directors, and performers such as Laurie Anderson and Robert Wilson. In modern dance, New York stimulated the rebirth of the innovative German dance of the 1920s. By the 1980s, the leading German

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choreographer, Pina Bausch, had even begun to challenge the American dance world.12 The New York Film Festival also proved critical in promoting the international reputation of “New German Cinema” after 1970.13 American film critics such as Vincent Canby and Amos Vogel enthusiastically and critically followed the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Alexander Kluge, Volker Schl¨ondorff, Margarethe von Trotta, Wim Wenders, and Hans-J¨urgen Syberberg. With their often dark, brooding atmosphere and disconcerting plots, the works of German directors provided an alternative to American popular film and enjoyed a considerable following among American students and intellectuals up through the early 1980s.14 In the period of post-Vietnam depression, audiences were prepared to follow German filmmakers along the complicated paths on which the German present came face to face with the guilt of the past and the loss of confidence in a “normal” life. This success would have been impossible without state subsidies. And by pointing to success, especially in France and the United States, and marshalling the aid of the Goethe Institutes, it was possible to secure support to expand the “cultural” rather than the “commercial” orientation of German cinematic offerings abroad.15 This led to public interest in the reworking of Germany’s visual image, but these efforts failed to achieve real success on the international film market. Hollywood, having systematically expanded its influence in Germany since 1945, had become the dominant force in the German film market by this 12

See the chapter by David Bathrick in this section; also Andrzej Wirth, “Artistic Interaction and Cultural Influence in the Performing Arts – The USA and Europe,” Amerikastudien 32 (1987): 19–24. 13 A comprehensive overview is given by Eric Rentschler, “American Friends and New German Cinema: Patterns of Reception,” New German Critique, nos. 24–25 (1981–2): 7–35. 14 See the chapter by Anton Kaes in this section. 15 Reinhard Hauff and Peter Lilienthal, “Die Leute sind fasziniert vom amerikanischen Leben, vom amerikanischen Denken usw. Das ist Kasse. Diese ¨ Uberzeugung wird nicht von allen geteilt, von uns schon gar nicht,” in Alexander Kluge, ed., Bestandsaufnahme: Utopie Film (Frankfurt am Main, 1983), 269–77.

time. It owed its dominance not least to having taken account of how its public had changed – above all, that its public had become younger.16 Whereas the French film industry was able to retain a considerable market share at home into the 1980s, Hollywood’s spectacularly costly blockbusters became market leaders that were almost impossible to beat in West Germany. A number of visual artists from Germany also received great acclaim in the United States in the 1980s through New York channels. The breakthrough came in 1979 with Joseph Beuys, sculptor, organizer of happenings, political moralist, and dreamer. He practiced the aestheticization of everyday life in such a captivating way that he was able to provoke a sensational interest in art even among a broad public.17 He was followed by the so-called neoexpressionist painters Georg Baselitz, Markus L¨upertz, Gerhard Richter, and A. R. Penck. In the second half of the 1980s, Anselm Kiefer achieved fame overnight with exhibitions in Philadelphia and Chicago that had an impact far beyond the art world. Figurative painting was undergoing a revival after the minimalism that dominated the 1970s, and Kiefer enriched the form by adding historical emblems to his enormous paintings. His art powerfully conjured up the Nazi past and thereby once again made painting, against a backdrop of guilt and mourning, a medium of historical understanding. Kiefer’s pictures attracted attention at a time of intensive debates in America on the appropriate forms for remembrance of the mass murder of Jews in Nazi concentration camps. Even more strongly than Syberberg, Kiefer unmasked Nazism as an object of fascination while exploiting it at the same time.18 The (limited) success of German artists and directors in America was helped by longstanding stereotypes about the artistic rebirth of a country that – after Hitler’s regime obliterated the cultural flowering of the Weimar 16

See the chapter by Thomas Koebner in this section. See the chapter by Stefan Germer and Julia Bernard in this section. 18 Frank Trommler, “Germany’s Past as an Artifact,” Journal of Modern History 61 (1989): 724–35. 17

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Republic – had only recovered from National Socialist barbarism with difficulty. The other side of the coin was the recognition of American art, which first made broad inroads in public consciousness through pop art, the “return of reality to art.” This recognition drew its energies from the attitude of a new generation that hoped to pave the way for a new world through aesthetics. Playful references to the superficial stimuli of modernism, to consumer objects, advertising campaigns, comics, and film images allied pop art to performance culture in a movement challenging the icons of high culture. The American flood of images bolstered an aesthetic anarchy that alternated gestures of total refusal with explosive public displays and a violent appropriation of everyday life by art. Andy Warhol proved the most provocative when it came to showing the reduction of everyday culture to visual clich´es. His collages revealed the complete artificiality of modern life, the appropriation of reality by a pre-formed hyperaesthetic civilization. The great acclaim that Warhol drew in Europe rested not least upon from his artful enhancement of the visual clich´e because it confirmed the European image of America in the crude and simultaneously banal images of a modern consumer society. While somewhat older artists such as Jasper Johns or Roy Lichtenstein still paid attention to the European art establishment, Warhol was “wholly in America.”19 Finally, New York’s role as an intermediary for the German art market deserves scrutiny. The rise of this market, centered in Cologne, was strongly indebted to an energetic engagement with American art. Supported by an economic expansion under Reagan, New York became the center of an unprecedented boom in the art trade, which largely ignored any aesthetic criteria. It was, in the harsh words of the art critic Robert Hughes, “a bullring of deranged fetishism.”20 Around 1990 American 19 Michael Brenson, “Beuys and Warhol Still Set the Tone – Even After Death,” New York Times, Jan. 15, 1989, sec. H, 33, 38. 20 Robert Hughes, The Schock of the New: The Hundred-Year History of Modern Art. Its Rise, Its Dazzling Achievement, Its Fall, 2d ed. (New York, 1991), 410.

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observers noted with some disquiet that German art dealers and collectors such as Peter Ludwig were deeply involved in this booming art market. Cologne’s new significance was seen as a kind of provocation. The New York Times Sunday supplement ran a cover story entitled “The Cologne Challenge: Is New York’s Art Monopoly Kaput?”21

from counterculture to postmodernism In literature, New York was an important gateway to America for German-language works,22 while new American impulses challenging the hierarchies of “high” literature reached Germany through a range of publishing and academic channels. The Princeton meeting of the Gruppe 47 (Group 47) in 1966 brought one member of the younger generation – Peter Handke – into the literary limelight. But this event did not result in any noteworthy intercultural contacts.23 These came about, rather, as a result of the discussion that same year of Susan Sontag’s essay on the new immediacy of literary criticism, “Against Interpretation.” Together with Sontag, the American literary critic Leslie Fiedler inspired the younger generation to challenge established literature, of which the Gruppe 47 was a part. In his much-discussed Freiburg lecture of 1968, “F¨ur und wider die zeitgen¨ossische Literatur in Europa und Amerika,”24 Fiedler insisted that a new “postmodern” literature should aim for a hitherto unknown degree of immediacy in its presentation of contemporary, media-saturated 21 Deborah Salomon, “The Cologne Challenge: Is New York’s Art Monopoly Kaput?” New York Times Magazine, Sept. 6, 1992, 20–3, 30, 45, 49. 22 See the chapter by Sigrid Bauschinger in this section. 23 See the correspondence on the conference in Hans Werner Richter, Briefe, ed. Sabina Sofalla (Munich, 1997), 600–18. 24 Leslie A. Fiedler, “Das Zeitalter der neuen Literatur: Die Wiedergeburt der Kritik,” Christ und Welt 37 (Sept. 13, 1968): 9–10; Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation,” in Against Interpretation and other Essays (New York, 1966), xx–xx.

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reality. Two premises lay behind this concept of immediacy. “Postmodern literature is already in our midst. It is anti-art, magical, frivolous, and it loves the marketplace,” Fiedler argued. “The highest goal of literature in the future will be to finally close the gap between elite and mass culture, and to create what is essentially a classless society of literature.”25 Fiedler saw art and literature as aesthetically oriented toward consumer values, drawing on popular culture and closing the gap between elite and mass culture. These were core features of what would soon come to be called postmodernism or postmodernity in architecture, literature, and art. The label “pop art” had clearly been proven too narrow. The result was a new idea of immediacy based on experience of the mass media and that offered a counterbalance to the distancing and rational forms of “modernism,” which American critics had construed as a uniform movement. Here, too, German emigrants, especially Herbert Marcuse, were influential. Marcuse emphasized the revolutionary potential of an emotion-laden culture against a society defined as “one-dimensional.” In An Essay on Liberation (Boston, 1969), he saw modernism, counterculture, and aspects of Afro-American culture as the basis of a revolutionary culture of liberation. He provided theoretical justification for the many expressions of a new countercultural sensibility, and his work was often taken as a programmatic statement. Marcuse, speaking with a heavy German accent, epitomized the exiled European professor to his large following of American students. Younger writers who spoke with a “postmodern” voice tended, on the other hand, to associate Marcuse with the European academic establishment they wished to leave behind. Despite the protests against America’s involvement in Vietnam, many young German writers still experienced the “New American Scene” as a liberation from an aesthetically, politically, and sexually repressive bourgeois 25 Leslie A. Fiedler, “Das Zeitalter der neuen Literatur: Indianer, Science Fiction und Pornographie. Die Zukunft des Romans hat schon begonnen,” Christ und Welt 38 (Sept. 20, 1968): 14.

culture.26 The poet Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, for instance, made his name as pivotal figure in the German encounter with America. Along with Ralf-Rainer Rygulla, he edited two anthologies, Silver Screen: Neue Amerikanische Lyrik and ACID: Neue Amerikanische Szene, that became cult hits.27 In his own poetry, Brinkmann concentrated on evoking immediacy and banal surface appearances. He gave voice to the new myths of America as brutal media images were sweeping the world, a world torn between fascination and repulsion. The American counterculture became the model for a German alternative culture in West Germany. Many viewed the model as a means to leave behind bankrupt European traditions.28 Critics of this movement – Martin Walser called it “the newest mood in the West”29 – dismissed the “secondhand experience” underlying the apparent immediacy. Nothing, they argued, remained free of the market; the media-saturated aesthetic had in fact long been absorbed by the capitalist political establishment.30 Leftist activists were unable to develop a counterstrategy that could productively exploit the social and political potential of the media and their symbolic reality to create a new culture. Drawing on the arguments that Theodor Adorno and Marx Horkheimer had formulated in their Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), literary and academic intellectuals built on an older tradition of cultural pessimism in their rejection of the commercialization of high culture and the manipulative effects of mass culture. Hans Magnus Enzensberger was an exception. In his 1970

26 See the chapter by Michael Ermarth in this section. 27 See the chapter by Martin Meyer in this section. 28 Peter Laemmle, “Geheimnis und Amerika liegen dicht nebeneinander: Zur Amerika-Sehnsucht in der j¨ungsten deutschen Literatur,” Akzente 23 (1976): 418– 27. For a summary, see Thomas Daum, ed., Die 2. Kultur: Alternativliteratur in der Bundesrepublik (Mainz, 1981). 29 ¨ Martin Walser, “Uber die neueste Stimmung im Westen,” Kursbuch 20 (1970): 19–41. 30 Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” New Left Review 146 (1984): 53–92.

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essay “Building Blocks for a Theory of the Media,” he accused the Marxist Left of blocking off its own access to the “consciousness industry” and thereby missing the opportunity to use the mass media for social liberation.31 Enzensberger also sharply criticized Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian creator of the slogan “the medium is the message.” According to Enzensberger, McLuhan’s gospel of the media age was naive and lacked a theoretical basis. McLuhan’s view that print culture would be replaced by tele-participation nonetheless unleashed a powerful oppositional energy in a large part of the younger generation. McLuhan’s observations were initially understood as an analysis of a world obsessed with television, and they pushed aside traditional categories of cultural criticism in both America and Europe. McLuhan contributed to a new definition of reality, made his own debt to the media transparent, and promoted a notion of a “global village” created by television that offered an experience of a perpetual present that transcended national boundaries. American intellectuals appreciated McLuhan as an intellectual catalyst. Susan Sontag, Leslie Fiedler, Buckminster Fuller, Norman O. Brown, Tom Wolfe – all of whom saw themselves as “intellectual catalysts”32 rather than theorists – incorporated McLuhan’s arguments into their rejection of the culture of “classical” modernism, although they often did so with a measure of ironic detachment. Another important influence on cultural analysis in these decades was the willingness, even eagerness, of intellectuals to take academic positions. Whether this was a form of retreat from the harsh winds of politics, a form of protection from the new supremacy of the mass media, or the academic appropriation of the

31 Hans Magnus Enzensberger, “Baukasten zu einer Theorie des Medien,” Kursbuch 20 (1970): 159–80; translated by Stuart Hood as “Constituents of a Theory of the Media,” in Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Critical Essays, ed. by Reinhold Grimm and Bruce Armstrong (New York, 1982): 46–76. 32 Andrew Ross, No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture (New York, 1989), 114–31.

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European avant-garde spirit, American intellectuals increasingly defined themselves within the discourses of academic institutions. French poststructuralism became an important influence when Americans began to theorize the much-discussed transformation of perception, which the pop artists of the 1960s had demanded as a precondition for a new culture. The concept of postmodernism, influenced by Jean-Franc¸ ois Lyotard’s La Condition Postmoderne (1979), became a central point of reference in countless debates.33 The only German contributor who was taken into account in these discussions in America was J¨urgen Habermas, whose lecture “Modernity – An Unfinished Project” gently ridiculed postmodernism’s proximity to neoconservatism. With his insistence on the Enlightenment project, as set out in his Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas came to represent the antithesis to French poststructuralism.34 In architecture, the rationalistic goal of modernism of defining the appearance of buildings according to their function fell into disrepute with the uninspiring cubes and boxes found in many cities.35 Postmodernism called for the rejection of the functionalism of the Bauhaus, resulting, first, in historically stylized facades and, later, in more imaginative forms of architecture. In Europe it was not so much specific American architectural solutions that had an effect as the “American” feel of the shrill forms of consumption and advertising. The works of the American architect Robert Venturi were considered particularly original. Venturi was not dazzled by historicism; he was inspired by the popular, banal, and even tasteless forms he encountered in “the most American of cities,” Las Vegas, which he described in his influential book Learning from Las Vegas (1979).

33

See the chapter by Klaus Milich in this section. Habermas gave his lecture in English in New York: “Modernity Versus Postmodernity,” New German Critique, no. 22 (1981): 3–14. On the response in America, see Richard Bernstein, ed., Habermas and Modernity (Cambridge, Mass., 1985). 35 See the chapter by Werner Durth in this section. 34

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the media, morality, and holocaust remembrance Thanks to electronic technologies of reproduction, the trade in images, stereotypes, fictions, myths, and fantasy became a more significant economic factor than ever before. At the same time, concentration on the superficial stimuli of television and entertainment electronics meant that cultural discourse had become a form of stocktaking of image production and semiotic strategies. Notions of national identity, which had for so long been based on education, representations of state power, and everyday rituals, began to lose their power to persuade. Belief in the moral legitimacy of art and literature had given a voice to a new generation in Germany after the experience of National Socialism and war; in America, it had allowed popular culture to become a rousing political force and form of opposition in the era of the Vietnam War. This belief lost its historical sense of purpose, however, and disintegrated into arbitrariness. This sense of moral and aesthetic arbitrariness was itself taken as a sign of the times and achieved the status of a cultural movement that had developed both out of and in opposition to modernism. It is impossible to understand this phenomenon without taking into account the processes that turned everyday life into images and virtual realities from the 1960s onward. Even in the 1990s, no convincing analysis has appeared of what was at stake here and of how technological innovation produced the sense that a new historical epoch had arrived. It is now possible to ascertain only that attempts to comprehend this new sense of epoch under the rubric of postmodernism have achieved little more than to produce a critical reflection on technical modernity since the beginning of the twentieth century. It is easier to provide concrete analysis of the ways in which these developments influenced encounters between America and Germany. In the United States, this influence was particularly strong in the field of moral self-definition: Germany had played the role of a potential adversary since World War I and had become an integral part of American consciousness after World War II through the media’s fixation on the Nazi pe-

riod. In Germany, American influence was important above all in the sphere of national identity; German cultural independence seemed to be under threat from the massive dominance of American media and popular culture. That threat has not been limited to Germany or even to Europe, thanks to the United States’ economic might. The deeper problems in GermanAmerican interaction stem, however, from the American media’s fixation on the Nazi era. It has long been recognized that Hollywood’s recourse to the stereotypes of Nazism once propagated by Adolf Hitler and Josef Goebbels had an enormous effect on the political imagination.36 At the same time, that official policy was demonstrating its commitment to contemporary Germany – the Federal Republic that the United States had helped to found – film and television focused public attention on pre-1945 Germany. Unlike the Germans, many Americans did not see a contradiction here. Rather, the concentration on pre-1945 Germany confirmed their ambivalent Cold War view of the Germans. Media representations of contemporary Germany and the country’s postwar revival could not compete with the tense drama of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. Especially during the Vietnam War, Germany gained a prominent role in American political and intellectual debates through references to the cultural creativity of the politically doomed Weimar Republic and, even more strongly, references to the obsession with technology and power embedded in Hitler’s military policies. In 1972, the popular film Cabaret provided musical and visual expression to an ongoing fascination with Weimar culture. Associated with Bauhaus design and the avant-garde theater and film of 1920s Berlin, Weimar culture exemplified the modernism that was part of American self-identity. Film and television had an even stronger influence on public opinion by creating the image of the typical Nazi as a counterpoint to the typical American. Images such as these produced a degree of familiarity with Nazi 36

Paul Monaco, “Stereotypes of Germans in American Culture: Observations from an Interdisciplinary Perspective,” Amerikastudien 31 (1986): 403–11.

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Germany; media representations of contemporary Germany could not compete.37 This model persisted for decades, not least because it provided an important reference point in the search for American identity. In his successful novel How German Is It? Walter Abish borrowed an epigram from Jean-Luc Godard that aptly expressed what was at stake: “It is really a question of the image one has of oneself.”38 By offering an American perspective on contemporary Germany in his novel, Abish considered the inseparable complex of authenticity and clich´es that is inescapable in engagement with another country. He brought to life the processes through which stereotypes are created as an enlightening, but also depressing reality. Encouraged by this self-critical view of clich´es of Germany, the novelist William Gass entitled a short memoir of his German-American father How German Are We? and was not afraid to answer: very.39 Yet Germans were less scrupulous when it came to asking: “How American are we?” This question, however provocative it might have seemed in cultural terms, represented a form of self-assertion. Here, too, artists and intellectuals pointed out the ambivalent function of the media, whose power to influence the way people think was associated with the American claim to hegemony. It was particularly ironic that it was Wim Wenders, the most pro-American of all German film directors, who allowed the hero of his film Im Lauf der Zeit (In the Course of Time) to say: “The Yanks have colonized our subconscious.”40 A few years later the remarkable

37

See the chapter by Thomas Reuther, vol. 2, Society. Walter Abish, How German Is It = Wie Deutsch Ist Es: A Novel (New York, 1980). See also Joseph C. Sch¨opp, “Das Bilderbuch-Deutschland des Walter Abish: Oder vom Beunruhigungswert literarischer Stereotypen,” Amerikastudien 31 (1986): 441–52; Peter Freese, ed., Germany and German Thought in American Literature and Cultural Criticism (Essen, 1990); Klaus Milich, “Walter Abishs Literarisierung der Wahrnehmung,” Amerikastudien 38 (1993): 181–202. 39 William H. Gass, “How German Are We?” German Politics and Society 13 (1995): 171. 40 Cited from Reinhold Rauh, Wim Wenders und seine Filme (Munich, 1990), 66. The phrase occurred earlier 38

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success of the American television series Holocaust (1979) forced German public opinion to acknowledge that it was Hollywood that had first been able to instigate a debate on the murder of the Jews in which a broad spectrum of the population could participate. Younger leftwing critics argued that the American film and media industry was expropriating the German past. Edgar Reitz in turn presented his version of recent German history in his highly successful television series Heimat (1984). America plays a major role in the series, Auschwitz a minor one.41 American television and film directors aimed to make the crimes of the past in Germany a subject of broad public debate, just as Steven Spielberg did later with his film Schindler’s List (1993). Their success certainly confirmed that entertainment media had a decisive influence on debates on the most terrible crimes of the twentieth century and remembrance of the victims. It was characteristic of the fixation of the American image of Germany on the Nazi period that even the increased interest in Germany during the 1980s remained to some degree a function of that fixation; Americans judged contemporary Germany by how the country was publicly speaking about the role of the Germans in the terrible crimes perpetuated against the Jews. The reconciliatory visit President Ronald Reagan and Chancellor Helmut Kohl planned to make to the Bitburg military cemetery in 1985 became a source of scandal; although critics argued that the presence of members of the Waffen SS in Bitburg would invalidate the gesture of reconciliation, the governments went ahead with the event. Bitburg revealed the vulnerability of a public policy of reconciliation between the two countries and, at in John R. Seeley’s The Americanization of the Unconscious (New York, 1967). 41 See the chapter by Michael Geisler in this section. On the debates on the television film Holocaust, see Bruce A. Murray, “NBC’s Docudrama, Holocaust, and Concepts of National Socialism in the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany,” in Roger Rollin, ed., The Americanization of the Global Village: Essays in Comparative Popular Culture (Bowling Green, Ohio, 1989), 87–106.

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the same time, confirmed legitimate American criticism on behalf of Jewish victims.42 Since the 1980s remembrance of Auschwitz has become an active factor in cultural relations between the two countries.43

media imperialism and cultural identity At the end of the 1970s the increasing dominance of the American media and communications industry grew to be seen as both politically and economically problematic. The common denominator of international reactions, which were voiced above all in UNESCO, was rejection of American mass culture. Resistance in West Germany reflected this trend and became more intense at the beginning of the 1980 as opposition to NATO’s INF modernization and the SDI grew louder. The result was a new wave of anti-Americanism. Reagan was seen as the epitome, indeed product of the power of the American media. Although the Vietnam War, sometimes designated the first “television war,” revealed the overextension of the United States as a global power, it did not diminish the American media industry’s dominance of the world market. On the contrary, it resulted in an even stronger political will to use every possible means to ensure America’s media presence.44 The aim was to guarantee the “free flow of information” through an internationally ratified information agreement that would allow the American communications and media industry access to all national domestic markets.45 American businesses controlled more than 80 percent of distribution and production in the 42 Geoffrey Hartman, ed., Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective (Bloomington, Ind., 1986). 43 See the chapter by Jeffrey Peck in this section. 44 Anthony Smith, The Geopolitics of Information: How Western Culture Dominates the World (New York, 1980), 58. 45 Emily S. Rosenberg, “Cultural Interactions,” in Stanley I. Kutler et al., eds., Encyclopedia of the United States in the Twentieth Century, 4 vols. (New York, 1996), 2:710.

world telecommunications market, as Zbigniew Brzezinski noted in his pioneering book Between Two Ages(1970).46 This fact led to heated debates within UNESCO, with Third World countries and some European countries such as France taking particularly active part. In 1974, the Finnish President Urho Kekkonen summed up the mood of the time: “Might it not be the case that the prophets who preach the unimpeded flow of information are not at all interested in equality between nations, but are simply on the side of power and wealth?”47 While the American debate on multiculturalism, which promotes greater sensitivity toward other cultures, was relegated to the sphere of education, the U.S. government made use of Cold War rhetoric to push through the opening up of the media markets of other nations for the American communications industry. Washington argued that the state or the media in these countries were practicing a form of antidemocratic control. The great significance of these critiques of cultural or communications policy in the United States was revealed by the reaction of the U.S. government in 1984 to UNESCO’s refusal to comply to American demands. The United States promptly left the most important international cultural body. Resistance to American “cultural imperialism”48 in France was developed mainly over the question of economic control over film and television. Under President Franc¸ ois Mitterand, it culminated in France’s attempt to take a lead in Europe in the defense of national traditions of media culture and high culture. The central concept was the idea France’s “cultural identity.” While Minister for Culture Jack Lang linked this concept to the idea of “cultural democracy” at an international conference at the Sorbonne in 1983, Mitterand emphasized the economic dimension of promoting culture: “Investing in 46 Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era (New York, 1970). 47 Cited from J¨org Becker et al., eds., Informationstechnologie und internationale Politik (Bonn, 1983), 13. 48 John Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction (Baltimore, 1991).

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culture means investing in [the] economy. It frees the future and thus contributes to giving back to life its whole meaning.”49 The core of the conflict over cultural identity with America was without doubt economic. By 1989 the states of the European Community (EC) alone were paying more than $1 billion in licensing fees to American television companies. In the same year, the American film industry had an export surplus of $2.5 billion and ranked second only to the aerospace industry as an exporter.50 Unlike France, the Federal Republic did not play a prominent or official role in this conflict: because the L¨ander (federal states) have the upper hand in cultural matters, uniform strategies are adopted only on an exceptional basis.51 Scholarly debates were still influenced by Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s concept of the “culture industry,” but rarely had influence on the actual workings of the industry – on the competition between records, books, films, radio, television, the press, photography, artistic reproduction, advertising, audiovisual products, and services and the international trends shaping them. The realization was slow in coming that it was no longer possible to view this problem in terms of the contrast between high and mass culture and thus to reduce the cultural presence of America to its dominance of the mass market. Those who worked in the industry knew that true access to the international communications market could only be gained by renouncing cultural sovereignty. “It was in the 1980s, that the recentering on culture acquired its legitimacy, as centralized models of the management of culture in the welfare states entered into a crisis and as the world market became a space of transnational 49

Cited from Chantal Cinquin, “President Mitterand Also Watches Dallas: American Mass Media and French National Policy,” in Rollin, ed., Americanization of the Global Village, 21. 50 Marie-Luise Hauch-Fleck, “Die Rollen werden neu verteilt: Europ¨aische Produzenten wehren sich gegen die Vormachtstellung der Amerikaner,” Die Zeit, overseas ed., May 25, 1990, 10. 51 Klaus von Bismarck et al., Industrialisierung des Bewusstseins: Eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit den “neuen” Medien (Munich, 1985), esp. 189–90.

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regulation of the relations between nations and peoples.”52 Public opinion ran against the European governments and parliaments in the 1980s when they decided to deregulate the media and communications markets; critics argued that media policy also amounted to cultural policy. The public responded to the increase in American television shows with increased viewerships, but also by criticizing the cultural colonialism the shows represented. The Europeans attempted to meet the call for free access to information with the help of public service broadcasting; in the United States, by contrast, decision makers wanted to extend commercial dominance of the international media market to include the information sector. The function of the media as vehicles for advertising was accepted entirely in the United States, but met with resistance in Germany, France, and other European countries.53 This defensive stance was in part an expression of the European skepticism that had accompanied Americans’ enthusiastic embrace of the media age in the second half of the twentieth century. This skepticism became more intense in the 1980s as Ronald Reagan’s presidency seemed to exemplify the subordination of politics to television to a degree beyond what had previously been considered possible. This “primacy” of the media over politics was worrisome to many Europeans as well as to many Americans. With his thesis on politics becoming show business, the New York media studies expert Neil Postman won a large audience in Germany.54 In his book on Reagan’s television presidency, The Power Game, Hedrick Smith, a New York Times journalist, showed that the staging of politics had long been more important than any substance. Although Reagan had his imitators in Europe, he became a symbol

52 Armand Mattelart, Mapping World Communication: War, Progress, Culture (Minneapolis, 1993), xv. 53 Winfried Schulz, “Medienwirklichkeit und Medienwirkung: Aktuelle Entwicklungen der Massenkommunikation und ihre Folgen,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte B 40/93 (1993): 17. 54 Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York, 1985).

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of an America beyond comprehension. With Hollywood’s so-called triumph over politics, a new form of political leadership had become (un)real.55 Criticized in the Federal Republic, the transformation of cultural practices through the influence of the media was resisted in East Germany because the regime there drew a significant part of its legitimacy from fostering traditional culture. Given the developments detailed here, the Iron Curtain may be seen as a barrier behind which traditional high culture was given a unique breathing space in the twentieth century, party control notwithstanding. Only on account of these circumstances and through UNESCO as an intermediary was the West able to use culture to help ease the political stagnation in the Eastern bloc. The cultural sphere represented a form of European reintegration long before the final collapse of the communist regimes. When the barriers came down and Western media and communications culture were able to enter the East more or less unhindered, traditional reading, theater, and musical culture lost its partly oppositional and partly affirmative function for communication. Any picture of the Cold War would be incomplete without acknowledgment of the important role that Western popular culture – and especially rock music – played in the communist countries before 1989. U.S. domination of youth culture – fashion, music, attitudes – soon extended into Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The primary channel for this cultural information in East Germany was West German television, which could be received throughout the GDR except in the Dresden region. As the enormous popularity of the rock singer Udo Lindenberg in the GDR shows, American and West German elements had combined into a popular culture that was no longer exclusively socialist.56

55 See Eric J. Schmertz, Natalie Datlof, and Alexej Ugrinsky, eds., Ronald Reagan’s America (Westport, Conn., 1997), vol. 2. 56 See the chapter by Edward Larkey in this section.

multiculturalism on two continents Only a few comparative studies have been done on how the transformations of the 1960s affected cultural developments in America and Europe in the long term.57 It is sometimes assumed that the counterculture had declined and become a mere lifestyle that consumer ideology and the neoconservatism of the 1970s rapidly stripped of its political energy. But such assumptions fail on closer analysis of the social and political emancipation of minorities, for instance, and the rise of the women’s movement, both of which the counterculture had inspired.58 The awakening of these cultural identities was accompanied by the expression of a political fundamentalism deeply rooted in American democracy, in which ethnicity, gender, morality, class, and race were incorporated into the process of democratization in new ways. This transformation of the political into the cultural had its counterpart in Europe, particularly in feminism, but the regeneration of the democratic sense of mission remains specifically American. Any comparison of this with the contemporary social culture that emerged from reformist urges to democratize West German culture is problematic; German and American concepts of culture are too far apart, notwithstanding the “extended concept of culture” in Germany that sought to weaken the predominance of high culture. This difference between the American and German understanding of culture sheds light on the different ways multiculturalism has been defined in the United States and Europe.59 The definition of multiculturalism that became 57 A new comprehensive attempt can be found in Carole Fink, Philipp Gassert, and Detlef Junker, eds., 1968: The World Transformed (New York, 1998). 58 See the chapters by Hanna Schissler and Claus Leggewie, vol. 2, Society. 59 Important arguments for this case are offered by Gisela Welz, “Multikulturelle Diskurse: Topoi der Differenzierung in Deutschland und den Vereinigten Staaten,” Amerikastudien/American Studies 38 (1993): 265–72; Klaus J. Milich and Jeffrey M. Peck, eds., Multiculturalism in Transit: A German-American Exchange (New York, 1998).

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dominant in the United States during the 1980s activated democratic impulses with cultural arguments. Use of such arguments is uncommon in Europe – especially in Germany – where the concept of culture has a stronger holistic and institutional sense. In the United States, the integration of various “cultures” is seen taking place in the same democratic system held together by one language. In Europe, integrative factors are traditionally directed toward coexistence with the linguistic and cultural Other, whereby the balance of interests creates a political, but not necessarily cultural consensus. Multiculturalism’s democratic mission did not go unchallenged in the United States, as the outbreak of the much publicized “culture wars” over the literary canon and the unity of American culture and identity made clear. In The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, Daniel Bell had described the political potential of the counterculture as “exhausted.”60 But the counterculture had not simply lost its way in a hedonistic lifestyle. It had updated the demands for “self-fulfillment” in a socially and politically relevant manner, and thus declared war on the validity of the traditional European culture of the “dead white male.” A coalition of conservatives and liberals who saw the unity of the nation endangered by multiculturalism rallied to the counterattack,. They sought to restore this threatened unity by upholding the literary canon, reforming the universities, and strengthening modernism as authoritative (high) art.61 Insofar as this entailed renewed interest in the European roots of American culture, European languages and literatures gained attention in the short term. But in general this did little to prevent the waning of traditional interest in European culture during Reagan’s presidency. Competition with Japan had become the central 60

Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York, 1976), 81. 61 Exemplary texts are: Hilton Kramer, “Modernism and Its Enemies,” The New Criterion 4, no. 7 (1986): 1– 7; Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New York, 1987); and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (New York, 1992).

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concern. It was not European culture that was important here, but the global expansion of the media and communications industry.

suggestions for further readings No overview of cultural relations between the United States and Germany between 1968 and 1990 exists. No consensus in fact exists in the two countries about which activities belong to “cultural relations.” Not only are American and German ideas of what encompasses culture very different, but their views on the ways in which culture helps to determine relations across the Atlantic are even more divergent. This problem has been exposed in my discussion above. This article has attempted to lay out German-American relations in the cultural sphere in terms of the underlying historical tensions that once again became highly influential in the period from 1945 to 1968. I have above all attempted to understand the dynamic that developed during the intellectual and political transformations of the 1960s and the new media of the decades that followed. The years from 1968 to 1990 lend themselves even less than the first decades following the war to the kind of unbroken, coherent narrative favored by many historians. If my article has made the dynamic of rejection and attraction transparent in various domains – from literature to the media to entertainment culture and the search for cultural identity – then this attempt at a synthesis will have fulfilled its purpose. No survey exists on official cultural relations organized by government, except for the postwar period. Personal reminiscences by some of the figures involved are available, however. On the American side, Hans Tuch has provided an important account of his experiences in Communicating with the World: U.S. Public Diplomacy Overseas (New York, 1990). On the German side, Ulrich Littmann has done the same with Partners, Distant and Close: Notes and Footnotes on Academic Mobility Between Germany and the United States of America (1923–1993) (Bonn, 1997). Littmann provides a good bibliography for German cultural policy toward

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the United States, a subject that the informative reports of the coordinator for GermanAmerican cooperation, Werner Weidenfeld at the German Foreign Ministry, also address. The volume edited by Dieter Gutzen, Winfried Herget, and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Transatlantische Partnerschaft: Kulturelle Aspekte der deutschamerikanischen Beziehungen (Bonn, 1992), is a more general work on the same issue, while Volker R. Berghahn, in his American and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe: Shephard Stone Between Philanthropy, Academy, and Diplomacy (Princeton, 2001), illuminates an important chapter in the shaping of American cultural politics in the hot phase of the Cold War. A useful overview of the U.S. cultural policy abroad is provided by Emily S. Rosenberg in her article, “Cultural Interactions,” in Stanley I. Kutler, ed., Encyclopedia of the United States in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1996), vol. 2: 695–717. A similar encyclopedic source of information on U.S. culture, society, and politics is given on the German side by Willi Paul Adams, Ernst-Otto Czempiel, Berndt Ostendorf, Kurt L. Shell, P. Bernd Spahn, and Michael Z¨oller, eds., Die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, 2 vols. (Bonn, 1992). The chapter edited by Ostendorf and Paul Levine, “Kultur – Religion – Erziehung,” contains much information on cultural relations. The extensive cultural networking that took place on a private and nongovernmental level between the two societies is only gradually becoming a subject for scholarly study. Cultural relations may have received little attention, but research has dealt in some detail and with predictably diminishing returns with the various opinions and stereotypes each country forms of the other. The significance of such stereotypes has probably increased with the rise of new visual mass media. Important essay collections include Lothar Bredella and Dietmar Haack, eds., Perceptions and Misperceptions: The United States and Germany (T¨ubingen, 1988); Frank Krampikowski, ed., Amerikanisches Deutschlandbild und deutsches Amerikabild in Medien und Erziehung (Baltmannsweiler, 1990); Peter Freese, ed., Germany and German Thought in American Literature and Cultural Criticism:

Proceedings of the German-American Conference in Paderborn. May 16–19, 1990 (Essen, 1990); David E. Barclay and Elisabeth Glaser-Schmidt, eds., Transatlantic Images and Perceptions: Germany and America Since 1776 (New York, 1997); Ragnhild Fiebig-von Hase and Ursula Lehmkuhl, eds., Enemy Images in American History (Providence, R.I., 1997). These works generally take a historical approach and do not devote much attention to the 1970s and 1980s. Contemporary perceptions have been given most attention by media studies, and a good example of this is Lothar Bredella, ed., Mediating a Foreign Culture: The United States and Germany; Studies in Intercultural Understanding (T¨ubingen, 1991). The most comprehensive analysis of the image of America in the former GDR is Daisy Wessel’s Bild und Gegenbild: Die USA in der Belletristik der SBZ und der DDR (bis 1987) (Opladen, 1989), which concentrates on literature. General surveys of cultural aspects of German-American relations can be found in the context of the jubilees of 1976 (200 years of American independence) and 1983 (300 years of organized German emigration). A representative example of the latter is Frank Trommler and Joseph McVeigh, eds., America and the Germans: An Assessment of a Three-Hundred-Year History (Philadelphia, 1985). The volume, The German-American Encounter: Conflict and Cooperation Between Two Cultures, 1800–2000, edited by Frank Trommler and Elliott Shore (New York, 2001), updates the broad historical assessment with a closer look at the American impact on postwar Germany and the increasing alienation between Europe and the United States since the end of the Cold War. Investigations of aesthetic interaction and influence are standard fare in the study of literary and art and also, to some degree, in American studies in Germany and German studies in the United States. A notable example for the study of art is the volume edited by Monique Beudert, German and American Art from Beuys and Warhol (London, 1996), which is based on an exhibition. For literature, Paul Neubauer’s Die Rezeption der US-amerikanischen Literatur der Postmoderne im deutschsprachigen Raum (Frankfurt am Main, 1991) is noteworthy. In the fields of art and literature, active promotion and

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documentation are closely related, at least as far as the 1970s and 1980s are concerned. The most intensive investigation of the different cultural terms of reference was a by-product of the postmodernity or postmodernism debates, conducted in a consciously transnational manner by American studies experts in the Netherlands such as Hans Bertens, The Idea of the Postmodern: A History (London, 1995), and Theo D’haen and Douwe Fokkema. The methods they employed were similar to those American studies experts in Germany, such as Gerhard Hoffmann and Alfred Hornung. For information on the international discussion, see the volume edited by Hans Bertens and Douwe Fokkema, International Postmodernism: Theory and Literary Practice (Amsterdam, 1997). The volume edited by Andreas Huyssen and Klaus R. Scherpe, Postmoderne: Zeichen eines kulturellen Wandels (Reinbek, 1986), is exemplary for its informed presentation of German and American viewpoints. The effects of American entertainment and mass and media culture have also been the subject of international analysis for some time and have been investigated in Europe. Some of the most inspiring investigations have been produced in this field and, again, Holland – specifically the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Science (NIAS) in Amsterdam – has provided important impetus for this work. Exemplary works are Rob Kroes, R. W. Rydell, and D. F. J. Bosscher, eds., Cultural Transmissions and Receptions: American Mass Culture in Europe (Amsterdam, 1993); and John Dean and Jean-Paul Gabilliet, eds., European Readings of American Popular Culture (Westport, Conn., 1996). American studies in Germany (whose institutional rise is described by Willi Paul Adams in the present volume) have been scrutinizing the specifically German

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perspective within a European framework for some time; for example, in the journal Amerikastudien. Insights gained from anthropology and cultural studies – through which American studies in the United States were able to incorporate multiculturalism into their methodology – have also ensured that a German perspective has gained influence outside Germany. A pioneering work in this project is the volume edited by G¨unter H. Lenz and Klaus J. Milich, American Studies in Germany: European Contexts and Intercultural Relations (Frankfurt am Main, 1995). The Belgian-French media studies expert Armand Mattelart, in Mapping World Communication: War, Progress, Culture (Minneapolis, 1994), has provided a critical overview of EuropeanAmerican confrontations in media and communications culture. Comparative studies of different countries appear in Alfred L. Thimm, America’s Stake in European Telecommunication Policies (Westport, Conn., 1992); and Christian W. Thomsen, ed., Cultural Transfer or Electronic Imperialism? The Impact of American Television Programs on European Television (Heidelberg, 1989). Analyses specifically devoted to Germany are Peter Ludes, Kulturtransfer und transkulturelle Prozesse: Amerikanisierung und Europ¨aisierung des Fernsehprogramms in der Bundesrepublik (Heidelberg, 1991); and Irmela Schneider, ed., Amerikanische Einstellung: Deutsches Fernsehen und USamerikanische Produktionen (Heidelberg, 1992). The European dimension takes a central place in the broad survey by Richard Pells, Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture Since World War II (New York, 1997). American participation in the culture of the Cold War has received virtually encyclopedic attention in the volume by Richard Schwartz, Cold War Culture: Media and the Arts, 1945–1990 (New York, 1998).

chapter one

American Cultural Policy Toward Germany Hans N. Tuch

By the late 1960s, German-American cultural relations reached the nadir of their post– World War II renaissance. To some of those who had been involved in the construction of this relationship, the precipitous fall had come abruptly – too abruptly. But by then the rosetinted view of America as the “Camelot” of the Western world, a view held by many in the postwar generation of young Germans in the 1950s and 1960s, had also become outdated. The German-American bond of the late 1940s and 1950s had to a large degree been created by the network of human relationships linking the two countries after World War II. The network had included many of the e´ migr´es of the 1930s, half a million German prisoners of war who had spent years in the United States, tens of thousands of American and German officials who cooperated in rebuilding Germany, and the many German participants in the large educational exchange programs in the early postwar years.1 The generation of the mid-1960s had no similar formative experiences and, consequently, no comparable commitment to the GermanAmerican relationship. The younger they were the less they remembered or even knew about the Marshall Plan, the origins of the Cold War and the NATO alliance, the Berlin Airlift, or the rebuilding of West Germany as a demo-

cratic, economically and socially stable society. Other factors contributing to disillusionment with America among young Germans were the opposition to America’s war in Vietnam; the violence in America typified by the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy; and the upheavals in the United States caused by the civil rights revolution. Just as Germany’s affection for America in the 1950s was probably exaggerated, the abrupt turnaround that occurred in the mid- and late 1960s was too radical for rational explanation. The result, however, was devastating, especially to those Americans and Germans who had been partners in the earlier relationship and were suddenly cast out as right-wing reactionaries. Acute anti-Americanism, often expressed in violence, began during Easter 1968 with the Berlin demonstrations that resulted in the shooting of Rudi Dutschke. From then on, large, often violent demonstrations by young German sympathizers with the radical movement occurred regularly throughout Germany.2 It was difficult for the United States to conduct a cultural and information program in the Federal Republic under these circumstances. It was often impossible to maintain a dialog that could address some of the legitimate societal, political, and cultural issues that divided the two countries. Discussions at either the American

1 See the chapters by Rebecca Boehling, Karl-Heinz F¨ussl, and Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, vol. 1, Culture.

2

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See the chapter by Philipp Gassert, vol. 2, Society.

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cultural centers or in German settings were often disrupted by demonstrators, sometimes violently. It was not conducive to an open and frank exposition of issues when a police presence was necessary to protect the participants in a discussion and participants had to be searched before being permitted to enter the hall. Although anti-Americanism subsided during the 1970s, the diminution of interest and involvement on the part of young people in both countries raised new concerns about the German-American social relationship. The perception of a rise in ignorance and misinformation about the United States was heightened by tendentious television and radio reporting. Younger journalists and high school teachers who had been part of the radical left in the 1960s were particularly outspoken in their criticism of America. Concurrently in the United States, many of the younger generation turned inward, alienated by such events as the debacle of the Vietnam War, the assassinations of political leaders, the Watergate scandal, and the first resignation of a sitting president. This turn inward led to lessening interest in the rest of the world, as exemplified in schools and universities. Foreign languages often no longer were requirements for high school graduation and college entrance. Geography and world history took a back seat. Whatever interest in other countries existed shifted to some extent to Latin America and Asia as American involvement with those continents grew and as an influx of refugees from those troubled lands was accepted. At the same time, the American government reduced its commitment to cultural and exchange activities in Germany as a consequence of its increasing commitments elsewhere, especially in Southeast Asia.3 These reductions included the Fulbright exchange program in the Federal Republic, which initially had been funded exclusively by the U.S. government. The German government gradually began sharing the financial burden and, by the late 1960s, the 3 Fully 10 percent of USIA’s resources were engaged in Vietnam during the late 1960s and early 1970s. See Hans N. Tuch, Communicating with the World: U.S. Public Diplomacy Overseas (New York, 1990), 30.

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Federal Republic had assumed 75 percent of the cost of the program. The Germans were convinced that the program served German interests as much as those of the United States and should be maintained.4 Also during this period, several Amerika-H¨auser closed or were converted to German-American institutes;5 performing-arts groups and large exhibitions were curtailed;6 grants to organizations that had nurtured the German-American relationship for decades were cut back or eliminated; and both American and German personnel were drastically reduced.

the u.s. conduct of public diplomacy To place the conduct of German-American cultural relations in the 1970s and 1980s in its proper context, it is useful to explain how the United States determines its foreign cultural policy and organizes its cultural and informational activities. It clearly differs from the German concept of “foreign cultural policy” (Ausw¨artige Kulturpolitik). First, the United States traditionally eschews formal cultural treaties with other countries. It has held the conviction that cultural relations flow from normal, cordial bilateral relationships and need no governmental imprimatur for their existence. Furthermore, from the American point of view, cultural relations historically have needed little if any governmental involvement because they are 4

Not until the mid-1980s did the U.S. government bring its share back to about 45 percent of the multimillion-dollar budget. 5 Among those were Essen, Heidelberg, Nuremberg, Freiburg, T¨ubingen, Saarbr¨ucken, Darmstadt, and Regensburg. 6 The exception to these reductions was in Berlin, where for political reasons cultural events such as symphony concerts and arts exhibitions continued to be featured in support of Berlin’s isolated position as an outpost of democracy. But even in Berlin major cutbacks took place: in 1968, the Bonn government assumed the main financial responsibility for RIAS, the American radio network broadcasting to Berliners on both sides of the Wall and to East Germany. Also, a graphic arts studio at the Amerika-Haus, which had been associated with the Hochschule f¨ur Bildende K¨unste, was closed.

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conducted almost entirely by private entities – educational, social-religious, intellectual, and arts organizations.7 More significant in the context of GermanAmerican cultural relations is the organization and conduct of U.S. public diplomacy. As generally defined in the United States, public diplomacy is the government’s practice of communicating with foreign publics in order to bring about understanding of American ideas and ideals, its institutions and culture, as well as America’s national goals and current policies.8 Most major countries conduct public diplomacy, though only the United States calls it that. Most refer to “cultural relations” and “information programs.”9 American public diplomacy combines cultural exchange and information programs in an integrated process of mutually reinforcing long- and short-range activities. The premise is that foreign publics cannot be expected to understand a country’s policies and goals without a profound understanding of the history, traditions, culture, and psychology that lie behind them. In this way long-range cultural programs serve shorter-range goals. In 1953, the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower created the United States Information Agency (USIA) – known abroad as the United States Information Service (USIS) – to conduct the nation’s public diplomacy in close 7

The only exception to this practice was the American-Soviet Cultural Exchange Agreement of January 1958, when the U.S. government became convinced that the only way it would be able to penetrate the Iron Curtain with ideas and information from the free world was to conclude a pact based on strict reciprocity of programs and activities. See Tuch, Communicating with the World, 125. 8 Public diplomacy differs from traditional diplomacy in that the latter is the relationship between governments, usually conducted through foreign ministries. Traditional diplomacy often requires confidentiality and privacy, whereas public diplomacy is almost always, by definition, an open process. Publicity is its purpose; the appeal is to the foreign public. See ibid., 3. 9 The Federal Republic of Germany considers foreign cultural policy to be one of the three pillars on which German foreign policy rests. See the remarks by Hilmar Hoffmann at his inauguration as President of the Goethe Institut on July 2, 1993, Deutschland Nachrichten, July 9, 1993.

cooperation with the Department of State.10 In 1978, the administration of Jimmy Carter redefined USIA’s public-diplomacy mission.11 In practice, the USIA sets the parameters concerning the major goals and themes of U.S. public diplomacy to be carried out by the USIS missions at American embassies throughout the world. On the local level, the USIS mission delineates and solicits Washington’s approval for public diplomacy priorities, objectives, issues, programs, and target audiences that should govern the operations in a given country.12

bridging the gap By 1980, policymakers in the United States and the Federal Republic had become alarmed over the increased mutual misunderstandings and misconceptions about each other’s beliefs, ideas, and goals, especially among the successor generation. This gap of knowledge and understanding was perceived as a danger to the future cohesion of the German-American partnership, and it was aggravated by the fact that the younger 10

Exchanges of students and professionals, and cultural presentation programs (including the Fulbright Program) were not integrated within USIA until 1978. Tuch, Communicating with the World, 18–20. 11 The USIA’s public diplomacy mission, as defined by President Carter in 1978, was: “1. to encourage, aid and sponsor the broadest possible exchange of people and ideas between our country and other nations; 2. to give foreign peoples the best possible understanding of our policies and our intentions, and sufficient information about American society and culture to comprehend why we have chosen certain policies over others; 3. to help insure that our government adequately understands foreign public opinion and culture for policy-making purposes, and to assist individual Americans and institutions in learning about other nations and their cultures” (ibid., 33). 12 Ibid., 44–9. See also Thomas Kl¨ockner, Public Diplomacy: Ausw¨artige Informations- und Kulturpolitik der USA: Strukturanalyse der Organisation und Strategien der United States Information Agency and des United States Information Service in Deutschland (Baden-Baden, 1993); Allen C. Hansen, USIA: Public Diplomacy in the Computer Age (New York, 1984); Ulrich Littmann, Partners, Distant and Close: Notes and Footnotes on Academic Mobility Between Germany and the United States of America (1923–1993) (Bonn, 1997).

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generations in both countries felt estranged from their elders. Both American and German policymakers saw a need to intensify efforts to increase and improve intellectual contact between their young people, to rekindle the appreciation of their respective values and historical experiences, and to bring about better understanding of their spiritual, cultural, economic, and political interdependence. Those concerned with public diplomacy at the American embassy in Bonn asked: How does one go about rebuilding cultural and sociological bridges, not only between societies but also between generations, where structural differences exist, and where tradition, history, national interests, and current economic and security questions persist in complicating mutual efforts? In addressing these questions, American and German collaborators agreed that when they spoke about the so-called successor generation, they were dealing with what was essentially the postsuccessor or, perhaps, the successorsuccessor generation – those young people attending high school or entering the trades and professions as apprentices. They were the offspring of those who had their formative experiences in the 1960s. The Americans encountered in German high schools and universities a paucity of courses in contemporary history and political science. They learned that many young Germans seemed unable to differentiate between the moral and political order of the West and the oppressive totalitarianism of the communist world. The American public diplomats determined that they had to concentrate on influencing the attitudes and prejudices of the youth in Germany, even though they knew they could not ignore the views of American young people. Consequently, they focused their attention on two objectives: better education about the United States in German high schools and universities, and educational and cultural exchanges of young Americans and Germans. On the basis of this analysis, the USIS staff at the American embassy under Ambassador Arthur Burns, who served from 1981 to 1985, proposed to launch a program to provide accurate, comprehensive, and up-to-date information about the United States and its society

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to those who would lead the Federal Republic in the coming twenty-five years. The program that USIS Bonn devised included a number of projects involving the teaching of American studies in German high schools and universities. The targets were the teachers in teacher-training institutions and instructors in German schools teaching English, history, and social studies. In 1983, USIS Bonn founded the quarterly American Studies Newsletter, with a circulation of about 20,000, which was directed at secondaryschool teachers throughout the Federal Republic who taught about America.13 In addition, USIS Bonn began to offer financial and program assistance to regional specialist conferences organized each year by the German Association of American Studies (GAAS) as well as to the association’s annual general conference. The GAAS, whose membership included secondary-school teachers, also invited to its conferences graduate students in American studies who were preparing for teaching careers. That these efforts had a long way to go was evidenced in April 1989 when a number of eminent German Americanists complained that American history “is dangerously neglected at German universities. . . . This situation is politically and academically irresponsible. Common ideological, economic, and security interests will not suffice in times of crisis to safeguard the German-American connection as a centerpiece of transatlantic relations. There is need for patient learning about the special history of the American people.”14 During the period 1980–5, USIS Bonn organized approximately fifteen national and regional conferences each year for teachers of American studies and educators charged with teacher training. The USIS also cooperated with the Bavarian Ministry of Culture in organizing training conferences and consultations designed 13 The American Studies Newsletter also referred readers to the materials available in the six Pedagogical Research Centers in Dortmund, Freiburg, Giessen, Hamburg, Regensburg, and W¨urzburg (established with U.S. funds) and in Amerika-Haus libraries, for high school teachers in search of teaching materials about America. 14 Quoted from a letter dated April 10, 1989, from Professor Reinhard Doerries of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg to the author.

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to improve the teaching of American studies in the high schools of that state. In Hamburg the regional USIS office worked with the senator of education to establish teaching modules in American studies for use in the state’s preparatory high schools, or Gymnasien. At the same time USIS Bonn invited German high school teachers and faculty heads to visit the United States for a month – not as teachers but as important German “gatekeepers.” This exchange program complemented those conducted contemporaneously by the German Marshall Fund, the American Council on Germany, the state of Bavaria, and the AtlantikBr¨ucke. In addition, the Fulbright Commission, the P¨adagogische Austauschdienst, and the USIA in Washington cooperated in sponsoring a yearly exchange of about twenty-five high school teachers from each country who instructed at each other’s schools for one year. During this period the German and American governments also sponsored a joint textbook revision project, intended to bring high school textbooks in the respective countries up to date and to correct errors, outdated information, or misleading statements. A second major effort undertaken to tighten the bonds between the two societies was youth exchanges. Much had been accomplished over the years through bilateral academic exchange programs – sponsored by the Fulbright Commission,15 the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, or DAAD), and thousands of privately organized exchanges. At this particular juncture of German-American relations, however, both governments decided to give even higher priority to official and private support of bilateral exchanges of teenage students (fourteen to seventeen years old), those in the critically formative years before university studies or working careers begin. The Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange Program (Parlamentarisches Partner-

schaftsprogramm, as it is known in Germany) was thus born in 1983.16 Both governments made a long-term commitment – more than $2 million dollars each per year – to this program. Such an extensive exchange program could not be conducted by the two governments alone. It also required the participation of private nongovernmental organizations experienced in conducting international youth exchange. The four nonprofit institutions first selected in 1983 by the two governments to administer the program were Youth for Understanding (YFU), AFS International, Experiment in International Living (EIL), and the Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft. These organizations, all with extensive experience in German-American student exchanges, had the infrastructure essential for the selection and follow-up counseling of students and host families in both countries. Without the commitment and participation of these institutions and their indispensable network of thousands of volunteers in both countries, the Congress-Bundestag Program could have never worked.

from the 1980s to the 1990s Among the objectives of the USIS Country Plan for Germany – which spelled out the U.S. public-diplomacy program in the Federal Republic17 – one important goal was “to strengthen a perception among all Germans, but especially among the younger generation, that the United States remains a dynamic and creative society with a strong commitment to providing equality of opportunity for each of our individual citizens, and a compassionate society whose social and welfare systems do take care of the unfortunate; [and, further, to] develop an understanding by broad German publics 16

15

In 1985, the U.S. contribution to the GermanAmerican Academic Exchange (Fulbright) Program was increased to about 45 percent of the budget, bringing it back to near parity for the first time in almost twenty years.

For a history of and details on the U.S. CongressGerman Bundestag Youth Exchange Program, see Hans N. Tuch, Arthur Burns and the Successor Generation (New York, 1988), 61–5. 17 For a detailed description of the Country Plan process, see Tuch, Communicating with the World, 47–9.

American Cultural Policy Toward Germany

of the bases of American culture and social institutions.”18 This objective was addressed primarily through personal contact work by the USIS staff and by speakers invited from the United States (known as American Participants – AmParts) to meet with selected audiences.19 It was further promoted through transatlantic video dialogs (between German and American policymakers and specialists), known as Worldnet;20 and through the International Visitors Program, whereby selected German citizens – leaders and potential leaders – were invited to spend from three to six weeks traveling as individuals or groups pursuing their particular interests and becoming acquainted with the United States and its people.21 Ambassador Burns was instrumental to the success of this new initiative in public diplomacy. He took a personal interest in the implementation of the youth-exchange programs and became a discussion partner for German political leaders and potential leaders – including Petra Kelly, one of the leaders of the Green Party – as well as students, labor leaders, and businessmen.22 He went out of his way to reach German audiences through public speeches, extensive television interviews, and press conferences. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and Germany’s unification in 1990 drastically changed the USIS’s objectives. Priorities and resources 18 For the complete 1986 USIS Country Plan for the Federal Republic, see ibid., 178–87. 19 Ibid., 72. 20 Ibid., 99–105. 21 Ibid., 78–80. 22 For an account of the students’ reaction, see Stephan-Goetz Richter, “Arthur Burns and the Germans,” in Tuch, Arthur Burns, 43–59.

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shifted toward a new communication process with the sixteen million Germans who had been isolated from direct contact with the West for many decades. This necessitated closing some Amerika-H¨auser in West Germany (Stuttgart and Hannover) in order to open up an AmerikaHaus in Leipzig and extend American influence to other population centers. It meant extending Fulbright, Congress-Bundestag, and other educational and cultural programs to the five new Bundesl¨ander and building personal contacts there. Some suggested that the U.S. government should respond in a massive way and develop programs similar to those of the late 1940s. However, whereas after World War II available resources and policy considerations had permitted huge efforts in education, press reform, and cultural and exchange activities, the policy priorities and prevailing domestic concerns after 1990 did not allow such an investment in worldwide cultural programs. Most policymakers also were convinced that only the Germans themselves would be able to bring together what had become two separate societies. What has remained at the center of the U.S. cultural agenda is the intention to maintain and strengthen the bonds of close and friendly relationships that were forged through the many programs and institutions nurtured and financed by both sides over the years. Yet these bonds are not viable without the privately organized and financed cultural and educational programs that many Americans believe should form the essence of future German-American cultural relations, and the many private foundations and organizations that are committed to strengthening the bonds of friendship between the two countries.

chapter two

The Third Pillar of Foreign Policy West German Cultural Policy in the United States Wulf K¨opke Translated by Tradukas

preconditions

(“room to live”), by contrast, reverted to the idea of geopolitical expansion.2 After 1945, both a new institutional structure and a new framework seemed necessary. The Federal Republic’s cultural policy abroad had its inception in Washington. In line with the concept of “reeducation,” the United States developed “a cultural Marshall plan”3 long before the Federal Republic had been included in the Marshall Plan and the Fulbright Program. The best way of convincing Germans of the value of democracy and the “American way of life” was for them to study in or at least visit America. In Germany, too, this form of cultural propaganda gave rise to the desire to showcase the new democratic Germany for American politicians, journalists, professors, and students. The programs led to numerous personal and professional contacts that to this day have had a longer-lasting effect on cultural relations between the United States and Germany than other kinds of official initiatives.

Cultural policy abroad is the cultural dimension of a country’s foreign policy. German policy toward the United States since 1949 has sought to cultivate partnership with the hope of cultivating friendship. This policy corresponded to the general principle behind West Germany’s cultural policy outside its borders, which was always directed at “cultural exchange.” Traditionally, governments did not take the initiative in German cultural policy abroad; rather, it was left to nongovernmental organizations and individuals. Whereas the main aim before World War I had been to preserve the German language and culture among Germans living abroad and to maintain the significance of German as a language of international standing, “cultural propaganda” after World War I sought to change Germany’s negative image abroad. Establishment of the cultural department of the Foreign Ministry signaled an increasing commitment to this goal on the part of the government. In the Stresemann era, cultural policy abroad began to be conceived of in terms of “reciprocity.”1 National Socialism’s Volkstumpolitik and its ideology of Lebensraum

2

See Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, “Ausw¨artige Kulturpolitik als ‘geistige Waffe’: Karl Haushofer und die Deutsche Akademie,” in Kurt D¨uwell and Werner Link, eds., Deutsche ausw¨artige Kulturpolitik seit 1871: Geschichte und Struktur. Referate und Diskussionen eines interdisziplin¨aren Symposiums (Cologne, 1981), 218–61. 3 Henry J. Kellermann, “The Human Factor,” in Dieter Gutzen, Winfried Herget, and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, eds., Transatlantische Partnerschaft: Kulturelle Aspekte der deutsch-amerikanischen Beziehungen (Bonn, 1992), 154.

1 See Kurt D¨uwell, Deutschlands ausw¨artige Kulturpolitik 1918–1932: Grundlinien und Dokumente (Cologne, 1976).

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Important cultural mediating institutions founded or founded anew in the early 1950s include the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst ( DAAD, German Academic Exchange Service), which organizes exchange programs for university teachers and students; the Goethe Institute, which runs German language courses for foreigners, continuing education programs for German teachers, and cultural programs abroad; the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which supports advanced scholarly and scientific research; the Carl Duisberg Society, which supports vocational training and internship programs; the Educational Exchange Service, which runs teacher exchanges; INTER NATIONES, the Institute for Foreign Relations, which publishes the Zeitschrift f¨ur Kulturaustausch; and organizations that focus on German-American relations such as AtlantikBr¨ucke and the German Fulbright Commission. Although the principle of delegating cultural policy initiatives to nongovernmental organizations, which often depended on public funding, met with wide approval, there were repeated conflicts over how the Federal Republic should present itself. West German diplomatic missions thought first and foremost of maintaining good public relations, but intermediary organizations were often interested in including critical scrutiny of their own exchange programs and critical reappraisal of the German past. In addition, the large number of organizations participating in these activities meant coordination problems, which led in the 1960s to a debate on cultural policy abroad.4 At that time the Foreign Ministry handed over responsibility for the administration of all cultural institutes abroad to the Goethe Institute. In 1970 the Bundestag formulated “Guidelines for Cultural Policy Abroad” and set up a commission of inquiry, whose report has served as a basis for cultural policy since 1975.5 Since that point,

cultural policy has been designated as the “third pillar” of foreign policy alongside politics and economic policies. This resulted in more generous government subsidies, but also in more political control and fighting between the political parties, above all in the period of the Social Democratic-Liberal coalition. The Federal Republic’s cultural policy activities in the United States between 1968 and 1990 reflected this political background. Only a few important developments can be discussed here, notably the expansion of the cultural institutes, support for German studies, the commemorative year 1983 (“Three Hundred Years of German Immigration to the United States”), and the integration of Europe as a component of German self-representation. Moreover, it is important to note that after 1970 the heavy influence of the “pioneers” of German-American understanding receded and the question arose whether the German-American friendship of the immediate postwar years could be continued in later generations.

4 See Dieter Braun, ed., Deutsche Kulturpolitik im Ausland: 1955 bis heute. Dokumente, Kommentare, Tendenzen (Munich, 1966). 5 See Barthold C. Witte, “Die Enquete-Kommission des Bundestags: Anmerkungen zu ihrem Bericht u¨ ber ausw¨artige Kulturpolitik,” in D¨uwell and Link, eds.,

Deutsche ausw¨artige Kulturpolitik, 295–359, with a transcript of the report and a commentary. See also the preface by Hans-Dietrich Genscher in Barthold C. Witte, Dialog u¨ ber Grenzen: Beitr¨age zur ausw¨artigen Kulturpolitik (Pfullingen, 1988), 9–10. 6 See the chapter by Ann L. Phillips, vol. 2, Society.

expansion of the cultural institutes The Foreign Ministry considered the German image in the United States a matter of great political significance and thus wished to retain control over it which had the unintended consequence of delaying the establishment of German cultural institutes in the United States. Understandably, the image of America held by politicians and journalists was largely determined from New York and Washington. Newspaper and television reporters made their base there, and the foundations of different political parties also had their offices there.6 The German Information Center of the German government’s Press and Information Service was founded in New York. The New York

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Goethe-Haus opened in 1957 in New York opposite the Metropolitan Museum of Art; it was intended to fulfill a representative function and, above all, to establish contacts with German Jewish emigrants.7 A network of Goethe Institutes was established in the 1970s and 1980s, reaching a total number of eleven institutes and branches at American universities. This was taken as evidence for the “normalization” of relations.8 At the same time it became evident that travel and exchange programs as well as public relations work had all become routine,9 while German language instruction and cultural information were gaining new importance. The artificial boom in foreign language study spurred by the Sputnik shock came to an abrupt end in the late 1960s. This decline of interest seriously affected the demand for German language instruction. Although politicians emphasized that cultural policy had a long-term effect, cultural initiatives were still frequently introduced as solutions to current political problems. Cultural measures were seen as a measure to allay American insecurity in the period of the “reestablishment of the German-American alliance.”10 Although an “expanded concept of culture” was seen in the Federal Republic as the basis of cultural policy abroad, the work of the Goethe Institutes concentrated largely on culture in a narrower sense. The institutes often operated with considerable flexibility as conduits 7 Manuela Aguilar, Cultural Diplomacy and Foreign Policy: German-American Relations, 1955–1968 (New York, 1996), 144–52. 8 Fritz Stern, “U.S.-German Relations: An Alliance Turned Normal,” in Frank Trommler and Joseph McVeigh, eds., America and the Germans: An Assessment of a Three-Hundred-Year History, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1985), 2:133–44. 9 The extent to which political representation makes cultural policy work in Washington difficult is revealed in the critical report by Amy Schwartz, “Weniger w¨are mehr,” in Hilmar Hoffmann and Karl-J¨urgen Maass, eds., Freund oder Fratze? Das Bild von Deutschland in der Welt und die Aufgaben der Kulturpolitik (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), 187–93. 10 Manfred G¨ortemaker, Deutschland und die USA: 300 Jahre deutsch-amerikanische Beziehungen. Landeszentrale f¨ur politische Bildungsarbeit (Berlin, 1983), 51–3.

for and sponsors of events that took place outside their walls. There was, moreover, no cultural competition between the two German states in America even after the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and the German Democratic Republic. Spectacular events such as the tours by Leipzig’s Gewandhaus Orchestra (1974, 1984) did not change this situation.11 Because the West German diplomatic missions were not interested in politicizing their cultural work, tensions between German institutions and diplomats were infrequent. But the question of whether cultural exchange should be an instrument of the “work for peace” or even a “peace policy” was certainly controversial.12 Of necessity, the targets of the German cultural institutes in the United States were the cultural “multipliers,” especially in academic institutions. The institutes concentrated first on immigrants from the Nazi period, as did German cultural policy in general. This also facilitated reestablishment of scientific and scholarly contacts across the Atlantic.13 At the same time, regional or local differences in the programs became clearly visible.14 Los Angeles emphasized the work of German immigrants in Hollywood, and the film programs of all the institutes concentrated on this heritage and on new German cinema. The hundredth birthday of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1986 was the focus of programs in Chicago. In 1975, San Francisco commemorated the centenary of Thomas Mann’s birth, and his son Michael Mann, professor at the University 11

See the chapter by Heinrich Bortfeldt in this sec-

tion. 12 See, for example, Werner K. Ruf, “Ausw¨artige Kulturpolitik als Mittel einer Friedenspolitik,” Zeitschrift f¨ur Kulturaustausch 23 (1973): 16–23; H. J. Koelrutter, “Austausch und kulturelle Zusammenarbeit: Ein Beitrag zur F¨orderung des Friedens,” Zeitschrift f¨ur Kulturaustausch 23 (1973): 28–33. 13 See, for example, Kurt D¨uwell, “Die deutschamerikanischen Wissenschaftsbeziehungen im Spiegel der Kaiser-Wilhelm- und der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft,” in Rudolf Vierhaus and Bernhard von Brocke, eds., Forschung im Spannungsfeld von Politik und Gesellschaft (Stuttgart, 1990), 772–7. 14 The annual reports of the Goethe Institute document the programs.

The Third Pillar of Foreign Policy

of California at Berkeley, held a lecture on this occasion. New York profited the most from the presence of prominent German writers, journalists, and scholars. In general, the presence of German authors has been an important element in institute programs and an important factor in transatlantic cultural exchange, as the examples of Martin Walser, Uwe Johnson, Gabriele Wohmann, and G¨unter Grass demonstrate.15 Assisting American teachers of German has become an important aspect of the institutes’ work, although the political expectations have not been fulfilled and the number of German language students has not increased. The work of the cultural institutes and the stronger presence of the German Academic Exchange Service has led, in sum, to a wide network of personal and institutional contacts in all parts of the United States.

german studies Supporting German Studies in the United States has been an important cultural policy initiative of the Federal Republic. On the American side the impetus came from institutional problems at universities and the need for a reorientation in this field, whereas the Germans’ main interest was to provide a deeper understanding of Germany for the “next generation.” Attempts to incorporate cultural components more intensively into language teaching, which were particularly strongly supported by the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG), led to closer cooperation between Germanists, historians, and political scientists. In 1976, the Western Association for German Studies (WAGS) was founded; it became the German Studies Association (GSA) in 1983. The GSA’s annual conferences have proven to be a significant forum for fostering both German-American cooperation and interdisciplinary work for experts on Germany. Beyond supporting the participation of individual German academics at the 15 See Heinz D. Osterle, Bilder von Amerika: Gespr¨ache mit deutschen Schriftstellern (M¨unster, 1987).

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annual conference through the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, or DFG), the Federal Republic also made it possible to send German editors to the United States through the German Academic Exchange Service and established three “Centers of Excellence for German and European Studies” at Harvard, Georgetown, and the University of California at Berkeley. On the American side, Johns Hopkins University established the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) in Washington, D.C. in 1983.16 Finally, the West German government founded the German Historical Institute in Washington in 1987, thus symbolizing the political will for intensifying mutual cultural relations over the long term.17 Conceptually, these initiatives represented a continuation of the concerns of the 1950s: on the one hand, to satisfy the Germans’ exceptional interest in the United States, and on the other hand, to stimulate Americans’ interest in Germany. Although the financing of cultural exchange was initially carried almost exclusively by the Americans, the tables have turned. With some consternation, German politicians now register the fact that German allocations are considerably higher than the American.18

1983: three hundred years of german immigration Wheareas the American celebration of the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence in 1976 received only limited attention

16

See Steven M¨uller, “After Three Hundred Years: A Keynote Address in 1983,” in Trommler and McVeigh, eds., America and the Germans, 1:xxiii–xxxii, esp. xxxi. 17 Detlef Junker, ed., with Thomas Goebel and Edmund Spevack, The German Historical Institute, 1987–1997: A Ten-Year Report, Reference Guide series, no. 10 (Washington, D.C., 1998). 18 See, for example, Barthold C. Witte, “Der transatlantische Dialog im Wandel der Generationen: Eine Festrede,” in Barthold C. Witte, ed., Der Dialog u¨ ber Grenzen, 136.

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in Germany,19 the tricentenary of the beginning German immigration in 1983 was marked across the United States. Cultural institutes in the United States organized numerous events, including “The Image of America in German Literature of the Twentieth Century” and “Three Hundred Years of German Immigration” in New York; a German-American week and a conference on German Jews in Atlanta; a conference on German immigration to Texas in Houston; “German and Austrian Exile” in Los Angeles; and “German-American Cultural Relations” in St. Louis. A comparison with the Martin Luther jubilee in the same year shows how seriously these celebrations were taken; Luther’s birthday celebrations went almost unnoticed.20 Vice President George Bush and West German President Karl Carstens attended the official government ceremony for German immigration tricentennial in Philadelphia. It celebrated the arrival of the ship Concord with thirteen families from Krefeld on October 6, 1683, and the founding of Germantown, Pennsylvania. The celebrations took place during a period when considerable criticism of American security policy had emerged in the Federal Republic, and the new West German government under Helmut Kohl wished to improve German-American relations. During the celebrations, a new initiative for German and American youth exchange was concretized, which now allows 10,000 German and 5,000 American young people to cross the Atlantic each year. A parliamentary program was later created that provides for 400 American interns in the Bundestag and 400 Germans in the U.S. Congress. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan and Chancellor Kohl decided to set up a council for German-American youth exchange, the Deutsch-Amerikanischer Rat f¨ur den Jugendaustausch, on the model of the FrancoGerman Youth Office. Chancellor Kohl also 19 See, for example, Thomas Piltz, ed., Die Deutschen und die Amerikaner. The Americans and the Germans (Munich, 1977). 20 See Hartmut Lehmann, Alte und neue Welt in wechselseitiger Sicht: Studien zu den transatlantischen Beziehungen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (G¨ottingen, 1995), 19–105.

invited prominent American university presidents to Germany to discuss ideas such as the creation of a German-American academy of the humanities and social sciences; the political goal was to interest the younger generation of Americans in Germany by strengthening the field of German studies. The year 1983 was also meant to signal the end of the discrimination against GermanAmericans that had existed since 1917. Although Americans of German descent are the largest ethnic group in the United States,21 they seldom appear as a discrete group in public life, unlike the Irish and Italians. “GermanAmerican Day” on October 6 has given this group a new status even if the celebrations do not make the headlines.22 This once again poses the question for German cultural policy of whether Germans living abroad merit special attention beyond financial support for German language classes and German clubs and societies. For historical reasons, German studies in the United States has also tended to neglect German-American studies and has only hesitantly opened up to questions of German immigration and cultural integration.23 The celebrations of 1983 offered the opportunity to thoroughly reassess German-American relations, and the American image of Germany and the German image of America.24 This gave rise to new initiatives, although the long-term

21

Some doubt exists on the exact numbers, however; see Hartmut Lehmann, “Sechzig Millionen Amerikaner deutscher Herkunft: Zur Entstehung und Bedeutung eines politischen Slogans,” in Lehmann, Alte und neue Welt, 166–82. 22 The report of the coordinator for GermanAmerican cooperation gives “German-American Day” great importance; see Werner Weidenfeld, Br¨ucken u¨ ber den Atlantik 1988 (Bonn, 1988), 39–42. 23 The gradual shift from a narrow focus on GermanAmerican local history to broader areas of cultural and political relations is apparent in the volumes of the Yearbook of German-American Studies. On the missing link between exile studies and German-American studies, see Wulf K¨opke, “German-American and Exile Studies: Still a Divided Stream,” Monatshefte 86 (1994): 361–6. 24 See Trommler and McVeigh, America and the Germans; James F. Harris, ed., German-American Interrelations: Heritage and Challenge (T¨ubingen, 1985).

The Third Pillar of Foreign Policy

consequences for cultural relations cannot yet be assessed. The cultural policy goal of increasing support for language teaching announced by the West German government in 1984 had a negligible effect in comparison to exchange programs, partnerships, and networks of semiofficial and private contacts.25 These contacts are necessary, not so much to eliminate the shadow of the past, but to promote understanding for the two distinct ways of life.

the tasks of cultural policy and related research Despite the numerous initiatives and activities that currently exist, there are additional areas where cultual policy programs would be of value. It is astounding that the idea of “partner cities” was not promoted more enthusiastically in German-American dialogue. This would have involved sectors of the population that cultural institutes and exchange programs do not normally reach. Furthermore, despite many well-meaning individual projects, there was no systematic plan for introducing American troops stationed in Germany and their families to the German way of life. Many left the country with largely positive, but still very superficial impressions of the culture.26 Millions of Germans and Americans have also become acquainted with each other’s countries as tourists, business travelers, exchange partners, and students. Their impressions have differed according to the length and intensity of their stays: Beyond an exotic environment and relaxation, tourists generally only look for comfort and familiarity. Yet very little is known about the image that these tourists carry home with them. Given the current state of affairs, cultural relations need above all to be deepened. An 25

Witte, Dialog u¨ ber Grenzen, 215–30. Weidenfeld, Br¨ucken u¨ ber den Atlantik 1988, 17–20. Weidenfeld describes the work with the American soldiers and their families stationed in Germany as one of the four main tasks of the coordinator, along with youth exchange, academic cooperation, and public relations in the United States. 26

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important task is follow-up work involving scholarship recipients, exchange students, and students in U.S. schools, similar to the exemplary work performed by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the German Academic Exchange Service. These programs should be extended and coordinated. Use of a large number of cultural outreach organizations has proven to be a good choice for the Federal Republic’s cultural policy abroad. Demands for coordination through a German Council27 are no longer made, as they were in the 1970s. The cooperation of American and German organizations has proven its value in German-American relations. Whereas in the 1980s the Bundestag urged more control over existing outreach organizations,28 especially the Goethe Institutes, the call for private sponsors has grown louder because of financial constraints. This corresponds with traditional American attitudes. For a short time the fall of the Berlin Wall was the cause of special American interest in Germany and some insecurity about the future role of Germany in Europe.29 But it does not seem to be necessary to shift the course of German cultural policy in the United States, certain critical voices in Germany notwithstanding.30 Within the Federal Republic, the relationship between public relations and cultural policy has long been a central issue in discussions on cultural policy abroad. Cultural interlocutors and diplomats were confronted with the fact that their partners abroad had a nuanced and quite up-to-date image of Germany, while the mass media continued to reproduce the negative stereotypes created by Hollywood during World War II and the American public was especially 27

Hans Arnold, “Brauchen wir ein ‘German Council’?” Zeitschrift f¨ur Kulturaustausch 25 (1975): 49–54. 28 Barthold C. Witte, “Kulturpolitik im Spannungsfeld zwischen Politik und Kultur,” in Witte, Dialog u¨ ber Grenzen, 45–55. 29 See Steven Miller and Gebhard Schweigler, eds., From Occupation to Cooperation: The United States and United Germany in a Changing World Order (New York, 1992). 30 See the introduction in Hoffmann and Maass, Freund oder Fratze, 7.

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sensitive to right-wing extremism in the Federal Republic.31 This discrepancy cannot be overcome in a pluralistic society, certainly not by using official channels.32 The European dimension represents a further dimension for both research and practical work. Since the 1960s, the Europeans have no longer seen themselves as competitors, but rather as partners in cultural policy abroad. Still, they have no intentions of replacing a Goethe Institute or Maison Franc¸ aise with a “European House,” at least not in the United States.33 This raises the question of whether a European culture exists that can transcend national cultures. How could the idea of a “European House” do justice to this in the United States? At the same time, exchange would have to be intensified: For any cultural institute, the story of American influence in Europe is just as important as that of European influence in America.

31 See the chapters by Thomas Reuther, vol. 1, Society, and vol. 2, Society. 32 See the critical investigation by Eckhard Marten, Das Deutschlandbild in der amerikanischen Auslandsberichterstattung: Ein kommunikationswissenschaftlicher Beitrag zur Nationenbildforschung (Wiesbaden, 1989) and the article by David B. Morris, vol. 2, Society. 33 Dieter W. Benecke, “Zuk¨unftige Herausforderungen und Chancen deutscher Kulturarbeit im Ausland,” in Margarita Mathiopoulos, ed., Das neue Europa: Ein europ¨aisch-amerikanischer Dialog an der Humboldt-Universit¨at (Bonn, 1992), 333.

It is primarily Germans in the natural sciences who are interested in working in the United States, and American humanities scholars and social scientists who show interest in Germany. This is an imbalance that is probably also typical of other European countries. European integration is also expected to lead to a “Europeanization” of cultural exchange programs. Moreover a great need exists in the United States for information on the possibilities and problems of European integration, particularly insofar as it may relate to America. Common transatlantic values, which are often spoken about by politicians, doubtlessly do exist on the level of basic political principles, and yet German foreign relations remain in a difficult position.34 We owe the “normality” of German-American cultural relations to the untiring personal and political efforts of the cultural intermediaries of the first generation.35 The main emphasis of future cultural policy activity should be to strengthen interpersonal relationships and to intensify research on mutual cultural ties. 34 ¨ Karl-Dietrich Bracher, “Uber historisch-politische Probleme in den deutsch-amerikanischen Beziehungen,” in Gutzen, Herget, and Jacobsen, eds., Transatlantische Partnerschaft, 53. 35 See the retrospective of one of these pioneers: Ulrich Littmann, Partners, Distant and Close: Notes and Footnotes on Academic Mobility Between Germany and the United States of America (1923–1993) (Bonn, 1997).

chapter three

The Study of Germany in the United States John A. McCarthy

societal “claims” on higher education have influenced the defining moments in the evolution of the study of Germany in the United States. The defining moments of an epoch are often succinctly captured by distinct images. The opening frame of the study of Germany in the United States from 1968 to 1990 is dramatically defined by such images as: (1) politically active students protesting at Berkeley; (2) the My Lai massacre in March 1968; (3) police aggression against war protestors during the National Democratic Convention in Chicago in summer 1968; and (4) images of rain-soaked revellers at Woodstock (1969) suffused with feelings of love and peace. These are the dominant images for defining the broader social and political context of the formalized study of Germany at American universities and colleges in the late 1960s.1 In 1989, the closing frame of this overview, the dominant image of Germany in the United States, was the opening of the Berlin Wall. Ordinary Germans, celebrating brotherhood, democracy, freedom, and peaceful resolution, entered the homes of millions of Americans who were otherwise only exposed to the bumbling Germans of the long-running sitcom Hogan’s Heroes or of Hitler’s black-clad hordes in the TV miniseries event Holocaust (1978).2 The sight of ordinary Germans standing on the Berlin Wall, dismantling it, and celebrating the

defining moments The study of Germany in North America is relegated largely to campuses and scholarly journals. Yet the “ivory-tower” mentality does not entirely isolate academic activity from wider societal concerns that can encourage interest in German-speaking nations or sometimes detract from that interest. Defining moments in the evolution of German studies in North America are framed, on the one hand, by the politics and the policies of departments of German, history, and political science and the institutions that house them. On the other hand, the parameters are set by the whims and wonts of the society the departments seek to serve. The study of German literature and culture (Germanistik, Germanics, German, German Studies) also has different objectives than that of history or political science. The scholarly output of historians and political scientists is more easily influenced by and integrated into the political, economic, and diplomatic discourses of their colleagues with a different national focus. With the gradual disappearance of a broad and active community of German-heritage speakers, the study of German literature and culture has today less immediate relevance in the public mind. Another factor is the transformation of higher education in the past thirty years. Elite colleges, former havens for the select few, became accessible to a broad demographic mix of students, and public institutions grew rapidly. Thus, departmental structures, changing institutional missions, and

1 2

287

See the chapter by Carl Lankowski, vol. 2, Society. See the chapter by Michael Geisler in this section.

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act of physical reunification resonated with the generation of “flower children” who had rallied on campuses across the United States in the late 1960s against tyranny and injustice, for peace and brotherly love.

history and political science In Germany, the continuity of history faculty from before and after the Nazi period prevented any radical and sudden turn in the discipline. History departments in the United States also remained rather orthodox by emphasizing political, diplomatic, and constitutional history. Here too there was continuity of faculty. The dominant textbook rendition of German history in English, for example, A. J. P. Taylor’s The Course of German History (1945), averred that “nothing is normal in German history except violent oscillations.” Taylor even argued that Hitler was the logical outcome of previous events.3 Adding new perspectives drawn from intellectual and socioeconomic history, George L. Mosse, Ralph Flenley, Hans Rosenberg, Marshall Dill, Fritz Stern, Gordon Craig, and Hajo Holborn elaborated upon the center-periphery paradigm. By applying strategies of economic and sociohistorical analysis to questions identified by intellectual history, they successfully opposed “Taylorism” in the classroom. During the thirty-four years that he taught at Yale University (1934–68), Hajo Holborn was especially influential, directing no less than fiftyfive doctoral theses and placing their authors throughout the United States. His three-volume A History of Modern Germany (1959–69) had a broad impact well into the 1970s and 1980s. Together with the University of Chicago, Harvard, and Columbia, Yale provided a high profile for the study of Germany in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The appearance in 1969 of the third volume of Holborn’s history of modern Germany 3

Cited by Volker Berghahn, “Deutschlandbilder 1945–1965: Angloamerikanische Historiker und moderne deutsche Geschichte,” in Ernst Schulin, ed., Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (1945–1965) (Munich, 1989), 247.

can serve as a marker for the growing awareness in history departments that “Taylorism” did not tell the whole story, that an analysis of “the Germans” must be based on a detailing of their material living conditions and their religious and intellectual traditions. Gordon Craig’s well-received The Germans (1982) is an example of the new turn.4 Hans Rosenberg’s emphasis on institutional and social history in Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy: The Prussian Experience (1966) and Grosse Depression und Bismarckzeit (1967) lent weight to the innovations in the late 1960s. The antitotalitarian sentiment expressed in these works resonated with many disaffected youths on American campuses. George Mosse and Fritz Stern advocated cultural history as a complement to intellectual history, drawing inspiration from cultural anthropology and the social sciences. Mosse’s early work during the 1950s culminated in such widely read studies as The Crisis of German Ideology (1964), the documentary volume Nazi Culture (1966), and the analysis of mass culture, The Nationalization of the Masses (1975). Mosse was fascinated by the dynamics of mass ideological movements, seeing in them modern parallels to rituals of earlier religious fanaticism. Fritz Stern placed more weight on the initiators and popularizers of ideologies in his popular The Politics of Cultural Despair (1961). Peter Gay, whose Weimar Culture (1968) became a staple in the German history curriculum, preferred Freudian psychology of pathology to mass psychological and anthropological categories in explaining how National Socialism could succeed in orchestrating millions of dissatisfied Germans into a mass movement. A younger generation of historians picked up on these impulses, adopted them with new emphases on socioeconomic history, the history of labor, capitalism, and ordinary Germans. These approaches examined the causes and effects of Nazism but also traced traditions of German liberalism in the nineteenth century along with military history and broader questions of

4 See Fritz Stern, “German History in America, 1884–1984,” Central European History 19 (1986): 158–9.

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German identity. Others reacted to the theoretical and neo-Marxist impulses from the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse, Habermas), cultural anthropology (Clifford Geertz, James Clifford), and critical theory in the evolution of New Historicism (Stephen Greenblatt, Dominick La Capra). Influential within this next generation of historians, who came into their own during the 1970s and 1980s, were Konrad Jarausch, Gerald Feldman, James Sheehan, Martin Jay, Jane Caplan, Geoff Eley, and David Blackbourn. Military history and the history of the resistance was a major focus into the 1980s, as, for example, in the work of Feldman and Michael Geyer. But historians also devoted attention to cultural phenomena such as theater, film, and cabaret (for example, Peter Jelavich) during the 1980s. Of course, their renditions of Germany were also presented within the framework of comparative European studies and not simply in courses on Germany. The questions posed by historians grew to resemble those posed by political scientists and Germanists. Continuity and innovation also characterize the study of Germany among political scientists. Given the Cold War mentality and the immediacy of its subject matter, political science seemed to be of much greater practical use than German studies or even history; it was more integrated in intellectual and political discussions both inside and outside the academy. Dominant issues in the 1960s and 1970s were political violence, the resistance against Hitler, and the establishment of the two sovereign German states. These concerns were captured in such works as The Origin of the West German Republic (1963) and Political Violence Under the Swastika (1975) by Peter Merkl, and Harold Deutsch’s The Conspiracy Against Hitler (1968). The growing self-awareness among political scientists was reflected in the establishment of the Conference Group of German Politics (CGGP) by George Romoser and Charles R. Foster in 1968. The continuity within the discipline is represented by the popularity of David Conradt’s study of political culture, legitimacy, and participation in The German Polity (1978). The work of Wolfram Hanrieder is also significant for its unwavering

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attention to German foreign policy. His West German Foreign Policy, 1949–63 (1967) and Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of West German Foreign Policy (1989) correspond exactly to the time frame of this present analysis. Because of the nature of their discipline, political scientists gravitate to twentieth-century matters: foreign policy, electoral patterns, the party system, the federal system, denazification, social movements, industry and labor, the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In his standard Germany Transformed (1981), Russell Dalton examined political transformations, as did George Romoser in West German Politics in the Mid-Eighties: Crisis and Continuity (1986). Arthur Gunlicks directed his attention to relationships among local, state, and federal governments in Local Government in German Federalism (1986). Each of these studies underscores the fascination with questions about continuity and crisis in postwar German politics. Joyce Mushaben’s work of the 1980s represents the opening of political science research to feminist issues, youth movements, and the dynamics of German identity in the GDR and the Federal Republic and culminated in From PostWar to Post-Wall Generations (1996) and From Ossi to Wossi? (1997). Economic factors, trade unions, and Germany’s reintegration into Europe are the subject of M. Donald Hancock’s West Germany: The Politics of Democratic Corporatism (1989) and Andrei S. Markovits’ The Politics of the West German Trade Unions (1986). A critical forum for political scientists is provided by the CGGP that organizes conferences, sponsors panels, and publishes a newsletter. In 1987, the CGGP published a research directory (revised in 1995).

germanics North American private and state universities dramatically expanded in the 1960s, creating a need for academics that could not be met by graduate schools. Especially in the field of Germanics, this stimulated a new wave of intellectual e´ migr´es from German-speaking countries that helped shape German departments

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and the profession of Germanics throughout the following two decades. Unlike their colleagues in history and political science, they neither had to teach in English nor were forced to become integrated in heterogeneous departments. Sigrid Bauschinger, Ernst Behler, Klaus Berghahn, Reinhold Grimm, Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Andreas Huyssen, Wulf Koepke, Katharina Mommsen, and Frank Trommler were just a few of the more notable newcomers in the 1960s. Jost Hermand Karl S. Guthke had preceded them in the 1950s. Their presence shaped Germanics significantly until a liberalization of the profession set in, beginning in the mid-1970s and gaining steam in the 1980s. Part of that liberalization was to teach more and more in English, as was the influence of other e´ migr´es who took their advanced degrees in the United States such as Dagmar Barnouw and Barbara Becker-Cantarino (although as women they did not have the same ease of access to academe). Whether the liberalization and democratization of departments of German were more hindered than helped by the influx of new e´ migr´es, whether it was because of the coming-of-age of the 68ers in academic professions, or whether factors external to the discipline of German brought about its transformation – these all are issues waiting to be explored. Among the determining factors are the entrance of greater numbers of women into academic professions, the civil rights movement, the widespread loss of language requirements, the expansion of college curricula in the social and natural sciences to meet the demands of an ever more practically minded student body, assaults on the relevance of literary studies, the fading of the humanities as the centerpiece of the collegiate experience, and the displacement of eurocentric studies by multiculturalism. Given the fact that German departments have unusually small faculties and student bodies – 250 of the 350 departments included in the DAAD/Monatshefte Directory (1995) have only 1 to 5 faculty members, while a mere 34 have more than 10 – the loss of their distinctive identity presents a danger. From a high of 216,263 registrations in 1968, the number of students taking German in postsecondary in-

stitutions fell to 121,022 in 1986, rose slightly to 133,348 in 1990 as a positive response to the fall of the Berlin Wall, then resumed its downward spiral to 96,263 in 1995.5 Recognizing the dwindling attention toward the study of Germany in the United States, the German federal government began in the 1980s to fund “centers of excellence” at the University of California at Berkeley, Georgetown University, Harvard University, and most recently at Montr´eal and York University in Canada. In general, the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, or DAAD) has taken a proactive role, enhancing its presence on a dozen North American campuses by establishing longer-term visiting professorships, sponsoring symposia, and providing scholarships. The Max Kade Foundation has also been highly influential in funding visits by scholars and writers, providing fellowship support, supporting conferences, and investing in capital improvements at local universities. The year 1984 saw the establishment of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) by then president of Johns Hopkins University, Steven Muller, under the direction of R. Gerald Livingston. That investment in the study of Germany in the United States continued into the 1990s with the establishment by the German Fulbright Commission of a distinguished chair for German Studies at Vanderbilt University in 1994. Two opposing tendencies were important for the study of modern Germany in literature departments from the 1950s into the 1970s: blithe acceptance of the cultural status quo and the emphasis of text-based (werkimmanente) criticism. Germanics gravitated to “safe” topics such as Goethe, Romanticism, Realism, Expressionism, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and Kafka but without an effort to politicize them. The other opposing trend opened up space for a radically adversarial critique and was already evident 5

Richard Brod and Bettina J. Huber, “Foreign Language Enrollments in United States Institutions of Higher Education, Fall 1995,” ADFL [Association of Departments of Foreign Languages] Bulletin 28, no. 2 (1997): 59.

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in Hannah Arendt’s insistence in the 1950s that one could not simply seek to continue all that was good in the German cultural tradition while rejecting and forgetting all that was evil. One had to come to terms with the fact of Nazism, the Holocaust, the complicity of intellectuals, and the “failure” of the Enlightenment project in order to prevent any recurrence. The volume of essays published by Leonard Krieger and Fritz Stern in honor of Hajo Holborn in 1967, The Responsibility of Power, saliently captures that new mood. It was also the key tenet of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno’s Dialektik der Aufkl¨arung (1947), which struck a nerve upon its republication in 1969. In a sense these two models of interpreting German culture came together in reception theory (Hans Robert Jauss, Wolfgang Iser), which rose to dominance in the late 1970s. Mirroring the efforts of the influential Gruppe 47 to reestablish the role of literature as a public medium for reconstructing the moral fiber of Germans, North American Germanists used literature as a kind of moral institution for reclaiming order and reinvesting value in culture. Thomas Mann figured prominently in that effort. Noteworthy in this context is the fact that Gruppe 47 held its final session on American soil, meeting in Princeton, New Jersey (where Mann had sought refuge), in 1967 at the invitation of Victor Lange, a long-time leader in the profession. Stuart Atkins (Harvard, then University of California at Santa Barbara) also stood out with his life-long study of Goethe, and Harold Jantz (Bryan Mawr, then Johns Hopkins) included the Baroque along with Goethe in his portrayal of “Germany.” Walter Sokel at Virginia proved to be the major force in shaping the study of Expressionism and Kafka, generally educating a generation of students during the 1960s and 1970s of the arcana of existentialism, the absurd, and Nietzschean relativity. His early studies, The Writer in Extremis: Expressionism in Twentieth-Century German Literature (1959) and Franz Kafka: Tragik und Ironie (1964), retained their appeal for decades. Henry Remak combined German and comparative literature, providing a model of representing Germany in a broader context throughout the postwar pe-

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riod, whereas Helmut Rehder introduced contemporary German culture in its social setting to the curriculum beginning in the late 1960s. Peter Demetz succeeded in transmitting the study of Germany beyond the lecture halls by writing for a larger, nonacademic audience, as in his German Postwar Literature (1970), thereby following in the footsteps of Henry Hatfield’s Modern German Literature (1966). Egon Schwarz and Oskar Seidlin also enjoyed longevity with their work on Hesse, the turn of the century, and classical topics.

german studies The enormous expansion in higher education during the 1960s and the simultaneous introduction of methodological pluralism (Methodenpluralismus) represented an opportunity for German studies to become a viable and forceful presence on North American campuses. Germanists, however, remained mostly invisible, generally choosing well into the 1970s not to become involved in campus politics and not to participate in American academic discourses in other departments, which ranged from semiotics to psychoanalysis, from social history to print culture, from gender studies to postmodernism. This lack of immediate responsiveness to innovation has complex causes. Many recent e´ migr´es remained closely attuned to the disciplinary culture they left behind or were assigned advanced undergraduate literature and graduate courses that hindered their full integration into campus life. Many waited years before they began to write for an American audience. Although the likes of Jost Hermand, Reinhold Grimm, Andreas Huyssen, and Frank Trommler cannot be accused of being staid traditionalists, their impact was felt initially within the narrow confines of Germanistik in Germany; in North America, they moved primarily within German circles. They understandably felt a common bond as Europeans and interacted intensely among themselves and with other native speakers who had taken their advanced degrees in North America during the 1960s.

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By the mid-1970s, this had begun to change. Perhaps because of the steep decline in registrations in German courses, Germanists were forced to adopt more vigorous and interactive language-teaching methodologies, to seek intellectual contact with colleagues in other disciplines, and to master the contemporary and more “authentic” academic discourses of philosophy, cultural anthropology, and critical theory. Only then did it begin to dawn on the majority of Germanists working in North America that they existed in a “no-man’s land.”6 It was time to break with the dominant model of the profession as it had emerged in the nineteenth century and as it had developed, as a discipline of e´ migr´es, in the twentieth.7 A more authentic approach was to situate Germanics squarely within North American intellectual and cultural discourses and not simply to react with exasperation when an Allan Bloom came along to “misappropriate” the study of German intellectuals.8 Non-native speakers such as David Bathrick, Russell Berman, Sander Gilman, Robert Holub, Sara Lennox, Biddy Martin, Jeffrey Peck, and Henry J. Schmidt furthered the course. An important moment in redefining Germanics in North America was the establishment of Die Unterrichtspraxis in 1968 by the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG). Its purpose was to provide a forum for its 7,000 members to disseminate and discuss innovative techniques in the language and literature classroom. Moreover, Central European History, a seminal journal devoted to the culture and history of the German-speaking peoples of Central Europe, began to appear in 1968. In 1976, the Western Association of German Studies (WAGS) was formed, renaming itself in 1983 the German Studies Association (GSA). It

6 Jeffrey Sammons, “Germanistik in Niemandsland,” in Frank Trommler, ed., Germanistik in den USA: Neue Entwicklungen und Methoden (Opladen, 1989), 115. 7 Wulf K¨opke, “Germanistik als eine deutschamerikanische Wissenschaft,” in ibid., 61. 8 Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New York, 1987).

sought to create a platform for the integration of Germanists, historians, and political scientists in the study of Germany. Under the leadership of its executive director, Gerald Kleinfeld, it grew from three dozen members in the early years to more than 1,500 in the late 1990s. Its annual conference has evolved into a main draw from both sides of the Atlantic, and its journal, German Studies Review, provides an interdisciplinary forum for its members. Another defining moment in the study of German culture was the founding of the New German Critique (1973), which encouraged the interdisciplinary research favored by the earlier Frankfurt School and Marxist criticism, publishing all articles in English to reach a wider audience. Moreover, it responded to its North American context on a theoretical level by highlighting the phenomenon of mass culture and its emphasis on visual representation and commercialization. In addition, graduate students and assistant professors of German organized themselves into a loose association called Women in German (WIG) in 1974 and began to hold annual meetings designed to nurture and expand the work of women and aid in their professionalization. The society and its journal have evolved into a major voice for women and gender issues, not just in the field of German studies,9 and have done much to integrate German into the college curriculum. Conferences and symposia added to the sense of vitality and change. Among the earliest and most influential were the workshops at the University of Wisconsin throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Symptomatic of Wisconsin’s revisionist tactics was its early focus on the “legend of Classical Weimar” (Klassik-Legende). Other symposia important for shaping the study of German literature and culture were held at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the State University of New York at Albany, the University of Texas at Austin, and Washington University in St. Louis. 9

Sara Lennox, “Feminismus und German Studies in den USA,” Zeitschrift f¨ur Germanistik, n.s. 6, no. 3 (1996): 561, 572–4.

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In the late 1980s, in both Germanics and history departments, a reconfiguration of the study of Germany took place that reflected the transformations in the methods of these disciplines. In Germanics, three publications in the late 1980s took stock as the profession prepared itself for the next millennium: Teaching German in America: Prolegomena to a History, edited by David Benseler, Walter Lohnes, and Valters Nollendorfs (1988), Frank Trommler’s Germanistik in den USA (1989), and a special issue of the German Quarterly (spring 1989), edited by Paul Michael L¨utzeler and Jeffrey Peck. Along with a retrospective look at the history of the profession, new perspectives were offered, derived from thinking on identity formation, feminism, anthropology, cultural studies, New Historicism, and multiculturalism. The process of reassessment in the field of history is aptly described by Konrad Jarausch and Michael Geyer in a special issue of Central European History (1989): “Within academe, North American scholars, working in polyhistory departments, will gravitate increasingly to multiple narratives, comparative or otherwise, and will prove more sensitive to issues of subordination and alterity, if only to teach an extremely diverse student body. They are much more affected by the collapse of high cultural pretensions and canonic certainties, exemplified in the advance of visual forms of representation and the privatization of the past.”10

10 Konrad Jarausch and Michael Geyer, eds., German Histories: Challenges in Theory, Practice, Technique (special issue of Central European History 22, nos. 3–4 [1989]), 258.

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Tellingly, the individual contributions in support of their prediction are written by a new generation of historians: Jane Caplan (postmodernism), Isabel Hull (gender studies), Peter Jelavich (literature and history), Thomas Childers (political sociology), and David Crew (“history of everyday life,” or Alltagsgeschichte). Collectively, the essays in these various volumes formulate the defining moments in the study of Germany in the United States in 1989 and beyond, and constitute a summary of important work on the remapping of the disciplinary terrain in the period 1968–90. The rise of multiculturalism and the concurrent move away from a canonical focus on Europe underscore the importance of ethnography in determining the search for individual and collective (German) identity. Gender studies, cultural relativism, the centrality of the Holocaust, reception theory, postmodernist debates, and New Historicism have all emerged in the wake of the “death of the author” as characteristics of the disciplines of Germanics, history, and – to a more limited extent – political science. In view of the marked increase in the number of courses, even in small departments, on exile writers, the GDR, the Holocaust, ordinary Germans, women, minorities writing in German, and Jews in Germany, what used to be considered marginal is now central. Whereas the traditional framework for the study of Germany in the immediate postwar years was isolated in both the academy and society at large, the study of things German is now networked across disciplinary and departmental boundaries. Clearly, the study of Germany has become a different enterprise, more in tune with the intellectual currents of American scholarship and in greater distance to the disciplines in Germany.

chapter four

American Studies in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945–1990 Willi Paul Adams Translated by Robert Kimber and Rita Kimber

a new beginning and continuity

surprise to many, for America had traditionally been regarded as an intellectual colony of Europe. The resentment of a defeated and occupied nation also came into play.3 Given this situation, the Amerika-H¨auser established in the American zone of occupation shortly after the war ended played an important role.4 The exchange programs instituted by the United States would have far-ranging consequences. In 1948, German secondary-school and university students, academics, and journalists began streaming into the United States, and at the same time hundreds of American scholars in the humanities and social sciences came to Germany as guest professors. Assisted by the program that Senator J. William Fulbright initiated in 1946, 12,824 Fulbright scholars – Germans and Americans, students and professors – crossed the Atlantic between 1952 and 1988.5 The new institutional beginning of American studies at West German universities was not accompanied by soul-searching about the Nazi past, as the case of Friedrich Sch¨onemann illustrates. Sch¨onemann, Germany’s leading academic America specialist before 1945, had been

The year 1945 offered German scholarship on the United States a chance to start over. The era of anti-American propaganda, the “Aryanization” of cultural studies and the social sciences, and the expulsion of Jewish and other scholars and intellectuals from the academy was now past.1 The few emigrants who returned to take up permanent residence in West Germany and to teach and conduct research at West German universities played a key role in furthering scholarly discussion of American culture, society, economics, and politics. The majority of the scholars who had been forced to flee Germany, however, remained a lost resource for both West and East Germany after 1945.2 Only a few West Germans in 1950 saw American culture and scholarship as a model for German reconstruction. The majority looked to pre-1933 German academic traditions. Indeed, America’s “cultural independence” came as a 1 On American studies in Germany before 1945, see Philipp Gassert, Amerika im Dritten Reich: Ideologie, Propaganda und Volksmeinung 1933–1945 (Stuttgart, 1997); on expulsion, Ulrich Littmann, Gute Partner – Schwierige Partner: Anmerkungen zur akademischen Mobilit¨at zwischen Deutschland und den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika 1923– 1993 (Bonn, 1996), 39–57. I would like to thank my colleague Knud Krakau for his critical comments on this manuscript and Hans-J¨urgen Grabbe for helpful information on the German Association of American Studies. 2 See the chapter by Claus-Dieter Krohn, vol. 1, Society.

3

Compare Heinrich Stammler, in Paul Hartig, ed., Amerikakunde (Frankfurt am Main, 1958), 435. 4 See the chapter by Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, vol. 1, Culture. 5 See the chapter by Karl-Heinz F¨ussl, vol. 1, Culture. The history of academic exchange and its long-range consequences for the scholarly landscape in Germany and the United States have not yet been adequately researched.

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the director of the America Institute of the Foreign Studies Faculty established by the National Socialists in Berlin. When the Red Army occupied Berlin, Sch¨onemann lost his professorship, but in 1951 he attempted a comeback. At the Munich conference held to prepare the founding of the German Association for American Studies (Deutsche Gesellschaft f¨ur Amerikastudien, or DGfA), he gave the keynote speech, “American Studies in Germany Yesterday and Today.” Sch¨onemann’s conscience seemed not to trouble him. He seemed completely at ease, reporting on phenomena that seemed to outlast passing regimes and demanding more university positions for American studies.6 In an obituary for Sch¨onemann published in the 1957 Jahrbuch f¨ur Amerikastudien, Erwin H¨olzle made the exculpatory remark that “in the years of the Hitler regime some spirited statements that nowadays have to be regarded as products of their times” had passed Sch¨onemann’s lips.7 The Jahrbuch f¨ur Amerikastudien never published an article on how German Americanists active in the years 1933–45 later came to terms with the past.

local beginnings: the first america institutes In the field of academic research on America, intellectual reconstruction proceeded slowly and in a decentralized fashion, as it did in other fields. No large, dominant center emerged. Literature scholars, linguists, historians, political scientists, and sociologists eager for innovation 6 Friedrich Sch¨onemann, “Amerikanisten-Tagung in M¨unchen,” Die lebenden Fremdsprachen 3 (1951): 217– 8. For Sch¨onemann’s representation of American history – written with a Nazi slant – see Friedrich Sch¨onemann, Geschichte der Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika (Leipzig, 1942). On Friedrich Sch¨onemann (1886–1956), see Willi Paul Adams, “Geschichte Nordamerikas in Berlin,” in Reimer Hansen and Wolfgang Ribbe, eds., Geschichtswissenschaft in Berlin im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1992), 626–8; Earl R. Beck, “Friedrich Sch¨onemann: German Americanist,” The Historian 26 (1964): 381–404. 7 Erwin H¨olzle, “Friedrich Sch¨onemann,” Jahrbuch f¨ur Amerikastudien 2 (1957): 284–5.

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had to fight to carve out niches for American studies in the humanities and social science faculties. The American occupation government operated with more restraint in the realm of cultural policy than its Soviet zone counterpart and did not try to influence the school curriculum directly.8 As late as 1951, the state requirements throughout the entire Federal Republic of Germany for students preparing to teach English in schools still did not mandate any American studies content. This in turn weakened the position of America specialists at universities. Some universities founded innovative new “America Institutes” that consolidated personnel and facilities devoted to the study of and research in American literature, culture, history, politics, and society. The universities of Frankfurt and Munich, as well as the Free University of Berlin, led the way. In Frankfurt, seat of the U.S. military government in Germany, a professorship for American literature was established as early as 1946 in the university’s English department. In 1950, this chair was expanded into an “America Institute,” whose offerings soon included courses in American intellectual and social history, as well as American literature. The founding phase in Frankfurt was completed in 1954, when the America Institute and the English department moved into a new building together. Between 1972 and 1977, the Institute’s course offerings expanded with the addition of a professorship for social and intellectual history. In 1979, the Center for North American Research (Zentrum f¨ur Nordamerika-Forschung, or ZENAF) was founded at the University of Frankfurt to coordinate the available knowledge and resources that various disciplines could contribute to the field of North American studies.9 And even before this, Martin Christadler, a professor of literature in Frankfurt, had been using a

8 On East Germany, see the chapter by Rainer Schnoor, vol. 2, Society. 9 Karin Meissenburg, “Interdisziplinarit¨at und die Verbindung zwischen Theorie und Praxis: Das Zentrum f¨ur Nordamerika-Forschung (ZENAF) an der Universit¨at Frankfurt,” in Franz Gress and Hans Vorl¨ander, eds., Liberale Demokratie in Europa und den USA (Frankfurt am Main, 1990), 341–55.

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multidisciplinary approach for teaching American culture and literature in keeping with the American studies model.10 At the largest university in the American zone of occupation, the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Heinz Friedrich Peters, an emigrant and U.S. government employee, had worked since 1948 to found an institute for American culture defined as “American life and letters.” In 1949, the Rockefeller Foundation began supporting guest professorships and the library of the America Institute. But it was not until the spring semester of 1953 that Helmut Kuhn, a philosopher with experience in America, was appointed to the first full professorship for American cultural history and philosophy. Although the philosophical faculty at Munich had no choice but to agree (at least rhetorically) to this innovation, it nonetheless adopted a resolution on June 15, 1949, that expressed serious reservations about establishing an interdisciplinary America institute. The majority of the faculty supported the idea of an institute only outside the university proper. The “size and furnishing” of the America Institute, the resolution said, “far oversteps the framework” of the university and aroused “the suspicion of injustice and political manipulation behind the scenes.”11 Even the occupation government proved powerless against the envy evinced by established departments, which presumably prevented the creation of multidisciplinary America institutes at other universities as well. Only in 1968 did the Ludwig Maximilian University establish a full professorship for American literature, to which Klaus Poenicke was appointed. Neither the history department nor the department of political science created professorships for America specialists. 10 Martin Christadler, “Blindness and Fortune. Becoming an Americanist in Postwar Germany,” in G¨unter H. Lenz and Klaus J. Milich, eds., American Studies in Germany: European Contexts and Intercultural Relations (Frankfurt am Main, 1995), 26–36. 11 Ursula Huber, “Von der Amerika-Kunde zum Amerika-Institut der Universit¨at M¨unchen,” in Amerika-Institut 1949–1989: 40 Jahre Amerika-Studien an der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit¨at in M¨unchen. Eine Institutsgeschichte (Munich, 1989), 16, 27.

Two emigrants who had been driven out of Germany and returned after the war fought to establish American studies at the University of Cologne: the Germanist Richard Alewyn, who had again been offered a professorship in 1947, and the historian Dietrich Gerhard. In 1953, an Institute for American Studies was set up in Cologne under the direction of the political scientist Arnold Bergstraesser, who had also returned from emigration in the United States. The historian Erich Angermann, who was appointed in 1962, managed to have the existing professorship with the nonscholarly designation “Amerikawissenschaft” renamed the “Professorship for Anglo-American History” and built up the Anglo-American section of the history department and its library. The English department also offered courses in American studies, but Cologne did not establish an interdisciplinary America institute. Berlin would have been the natural place to establish an American university, but a proposal to this effect offered by the officer responsible for reopening universities in the American occupation zone in 1945–6 drew no response.12 The suggestion of a military adviser in 1946 to establish a research center in Dahlem on the model of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton also appeared to be premature.13 The founding of the Free University in 1948 was not the result of an American initiative and was not based on an American model. The decisive impulse came from German students who opposed the repressive measures practiced by the old Berlin University under the Soviet military government and the German communists. Beginning in 1952, American guest professors supported by the Ford Foundation taught in the American section of the English department, and in 1954 that division became an independent America Institute. Two American literary scholars in a row were appointed to the professorship for American literature (John McCormick, 12

James F. Tent, ed., Academic Proconsul: Harvard Sociologist Edward Y. Hartshorne and the Reopening of the German Universities, 1945–46. His Personal Account (Trier, 1998). 13 James F. Tent, Freie Universit¨at Berlin 1948–1988 (Berlin, 1988), 82–3.

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followed by Charles Nichols). In 1962, a lectureship for American culture was added, and then a professorship (Ursula Brumm). In 1963, the Berlin Senate acted on the suggestion of Ernst Fraenkel, a political scientist who had returned from the United States, to make the America Institute truly multidisciplinary by adding full professorships for political science (Ernst Fraenkel), history (Gerald Stourzh), geography (Karl Lenz), and economics and society (Rudolph Braun). The final step in the expansion of the institute came in 1974 with the addition of four more tenured professorships. The library of the Free University’s America center, named the John F. Kennedy-Institut f¨ur Nordamerikastudien since 1963, had been conceived of as a national research library at its inception and received generous support from the Ford Foundation. It improved working conditions for all America experts in Central Europe.14

organizing the german association for american studies The founding of the Deutsche Gesellschaft f¨ur Amerikastudien between 1951 and 1953 served the interests of both American cultural policy and West Germany’s pioneering America specialists. After a preliminary meeting in April 1951 at Munich’s America Institute, Professor J. J. Oppenheimer, the cultural affairs officer for the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany, proceeded to assemble a Committee for American Studies at German Universities (Ausschuss f¨ur Amerikastudien an deutschen Universit¨aten), which convened in June 1952 in Boppard. The DGfA was founded in Marburg in June 1953.15

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The size and makeup of the DGfA’s membership attests to its success. The DGfA publishes its own journal and holds an annual conference for its entire membership as well as separate annual conferences for literature and culture, history, and political science. Asked to identify their fields of special interest (up to two specialties), the 723 members (as of April 1998) named literature (445 times), culture (253), history (207), political science and sociology (85), pedagogy (41), and linguistics (28).16 The Jahrbuch f¨ur Amerikastudien, which began publication under the auspices of the association in 1956, became the leading professional journal for German-speaking America specialists. The conversion of this annual publication to a biannual format in 1974 and its continuation as the bilingual quarterly Amerikastudien/American Studies are further proof of the professionalization and expansion of German-language American studies.17 The association also issues a series of publications that includes monographs and essay collections. From its inception in 1956, the Jahrbuch f¨ur Amerikastudien received generous financial support from the American Embassy in Bonn. However, the journal’s more frequent appearance as a quarterly did not markedly increase its readership among teachers, much less the general reading public. Rather than pursue those goals, the editors realistically chose in 1980 to professionalize the journal further by publishing more English-language articles. The language barrier continued to present problems for the founding generation. But for those who entered the field after 1970, extended stays in the United States have all but removed that barrier. Since 1970, every German-language article in Amerikastudien has been accompanied by an English abstract. It has also become accepted wisdom in the DGfA that the use of

14

On the generally good availability of resources for German experts on the United States, see Hans Kolligs, “United States History Resources in Libraries of the Federal Republic of Germany,” in Lewis Hanke, ed., Guide to the Study of United States History Outside the U.S., 1945–1980, 5 vols. (White Plains, N.Y., 1985), vol. 2. 15 Walther Fischer, “Zur Einf¨uhrung,” Jahrbuch f¨ur Amerikastudien 1 (1956): 5.

16

Deutsche Gesellschaft f¨ur Amerikastudien e.V. (DGfA), Mitteilungsblatt, no. 45 (Dresden, 1998): 5. 17 Smaller competing journals that have also appeared include Zeitschrift f¨ur Anglistik und Amerikanistik (Munich), Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik (T¨ubingen), and Gulliver: Deutsch-englische Jahrb¨ucher (Hamburg).

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English is essential not only for communication with American colleagues, but also for increasing cooperation and collaboration with colleagues throughout Europe and the rest of the world. All the members of the DGfA are also members of the European Association of American Studies, the umbrella organization for the national associations, and receive its newsletter, which provides information about conferences throughout Europe, recent publications, and so forth. The DGfA has been and remains the unrivaled professional association for American studies scholars in all disciplines. Other organizations such as the Association of German Historians (Verband der Historiker Deutschlands), the German Society for Political Science (Deutsche Vereinigung f¨ur Politische Wissenschaft), the German Association for Political Science (Deutsche Gesellschaft f¨ur Politikwissenschaft), and the Association of Sociologists (Soziologenverband) of course also discuss subjects bearing on the United States at their conferences and publish articles related to the field in their journals.

support for research Creating favorable working conditions for research in American studies in Germany required considerable financial resources above and beyond what university budgets could supply. In the early years, American foundations, above all the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, played a crucial role and were vital for the creation of the America institutes in Frankfurt, Munich, and Berlin mentioned previously. How much private donors contributed in total between 1945 and 1965 remains unclear. Support for West German American studies began with guest professorships and small donations of books and evolved into massive investments in libraries. Outside funding from German sources also became increasingly available. A noteworthy example here is the Volkswagen Foundation’s “North American Studies” program from 1977 to 1987. More than a hundred projects received funding totaling DM 18.2 million. A major project of exceptional scale – one that has also benefited American research on

Germany – was the Volkswagen Foundation’s purchase of a building in Washington to house the German Historical Institute. A significant portion of this institute’s work focuses on the United States and its transatlantic ties.18 Large public and private foundations in the Federal Republic of Germany have also supported research on America, chief among them the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), which in its annual report for 1997 described scholarly ties with the United States as “unique in their number and diversity.”19 Until today, German Americanists of any discipline have not succeeded in organizing one of the large-scale prestigious research projects funded by the German Research Council, a Sonderforschungsbereich. The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, reestablished in 1953, also sent 947 fellowship recipients to the United States from 1979 to 1996, among them a small number of scholars from the humanities.20 And, finally, along with numerous private sources of support such as the Henkel, Krupp, and Thyssen Foundations, the German Marshall Fund of the United States has supported Germans’ American studies since 1974, primarily by financing research trips to the United States.

major subjects for research and publication The wide variety of interests and methodologies represented in German-language American studies is reflected in its diverse publications. In contrast to the prewar period, there has not been 18

Detlef Junker, ed., with the assistance of Thomas Goebel and Edmund Spevack, The German Historical Institute, 1987–1997: A Ten-Year Report, Reference Guide series, no. 10 (Washington, D.C., 1998), 10. 19 Jahresbericht der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft 1997, vol. 1, 312. The annual reports of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft have also been providing detailed information on regional developments since 1950. 20 Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, Programm und Profil (Bonn, 1997), 25. The statistics do not indicate how many of these scholars went to the United States to work on America-related subjects; the number was probably small.

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a dominant school of interpretation or interdisciplinary reference work in postwar West German American studies.21 As a result, this chapter can only touch on a few of the research interests of those active in the field. Earlier assessments have stressed the variety of subjects and the breadth of the critical discussion that was oriented in the first postwar years to the cultural sections in the newspapers and to the public’s interest in translations of American novels and plays. Over the years, however, Germanlanguage literary scholars have freed themselves from current literary fashion and developed a grasp of the entire spectrum of the American national literary canon instead.22 The overarching topics set for the annual meetings of the DGfA can serve as a rough indicator of its membership’s interests. At its 1956 meeting, the association asked the basic question: “Can American and English culture and literature be regarded as one unit?” The 1973 meeting revisited this same question, but under a different title: “American Studies as a Problem of the Theory of Knowledge.” Incorporation of the English phrase “American Studies” into the title indicates that the debate took place in the context of an American theoretical discussion. The theme of the 1976 meeting was oriented more toward practice than theory, focusing on “Curricular Questions in American Studies.” In 1983, the DGfA took a programmatic approach once again: “American Studies as Cultural Studies: Shifting Models and Paradigms.” The 1995 theme – presumably untranslatable into German – was “Engendering American Studies.”23 Relations between West Germany and the United States appeared more often as annual conference topics, however, than did questions of methodology. This issue came to the fore for the first time in 1960 with “Germany’s Image of America.” The topic in 1962 was “The

21

Compare the standard work of the prewar period, Handbuch der Amerikakunde (Frankfurt am Main, 1931). 22 See the chapter by Martin Meyer, vol. 2, Culture. 23 The conference subjects generated a number of articles in the Jahrbuch f¨ur Amerikastudien in 1957 and 1958 and in Amerikastudien/American Studies in 1973, 1983, and 1984.

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So-Called Americanization of Germany.” Not until 1964 did the subject of exile occupy the conference: “German Emigration after 1933: Its Influence on American Intellectual Life.” In 1966, the discussion focused on “American Universities and the Reform of German Higher Education” and then, in 1978, on “GermanAmerican Interdependency since 1945.” To date, however, this potentially productive key issue in American studies in Germany did not produce any particularly noteworthy or innovative articles or monographs. Most of the annual conferences dealt with standard topics that could also have been found on the programs of annual conferences held by the American Studies Association in the United States and by American historians’ and political scientists’ organizations: the major cultural regions (the Midwest, the South, “regionalism” more generally); concepts and ideas (democracy, constitution, historical consciousness, values, or culture and technology, stereotypes, religion); epochs (the American Revolution, Jacksonian democracy, modernism, the 1960s or 1970s); problems, conflicts, and movements (Native Americans, social mobility, protest movements, populism, progressivism, multiculturalism); and new research fields (women’s studies, the study of daily life, media).24 The contents of the Jahrbuch f¨ur Amerikastudien and the overarching themes set for the DGfA’s annual conferences indicate that there was little demand for programmatic, methodological clarification of the interdisciplinary nature of American studies. The development and consolidation of American studies in West Germany benefited from the fact that in American schools and universities as late as the 1940s, American literature had had to struggle for recognition as an independent subject. American Quarterly, which is published in cooperation with the American Studies Association in the United States and became the leading professional journal in the field soon after its inception, began publication only in 1949. This

24 DGfA Mitteilungsblatt, no. 45 (1998), list of conference topics, 15–17.

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pioneering effort among American academics, launched in the context of the Cold War, made it easier to find financing in Washington for comparable programs in Europe; it also lent encouragement to German academics who, often with the aid of American contributions, had to break down the resistance of established English philologists in hard-fought battles for teaching positions and funding. The first ten volumes of the Jahrbuch did not carry any reflections on American studies as a scholarly discipline. However, at the founding conference of the DGfA on June 13, 1953, in Marburg, the Freiburg political scientist Arnold Bergstraesser initiated discussion of this topic in a programmatic speech that then appeared as the lead article in the first volume of the Jahrbuch.25 Bergstraesser suggested making use of a model that he and Ernst Robert Curtius had applied in their joint program in French studies.26 Bergstraesser did not think it possible to institute a new discipline called Amerikakunde at German universities. At the same time he felt that merely expanding English philology to include some American texts was too modest a step. He urged instead that “American studies be conducted as a cooperative effort shared by various scholarly disciplines”; the concept was that of “area studies.”27 In his obituary for Bergstraesser, Ernst Fraenkel, the founding director of the John F. Kennedy-Institut f¨ur Nordamerikastudien, characterized the institute in Berlin as composed of faculty from six of the classical disciplines in which each professor also had a joint apppointment.28 The articles published in the first ten volumes of the Jahrbuch (1956–65) make clear the broad spectrum of interests that occupied the first gen25

Arnold Bergstraesser, “Amerikastudien als Problem der Forschung und Lehre,” Jahrbuch f¨ur Amerikastudien 1 (1956): 8–14; Heinz Peters, Ziele und Methoden der Amerikanistik (Munich, 1950). 26 Ernst Robert Curtius and Arnold Bergstraesser, Frankreich, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1950). Bergstraesser addressed governmental and economic systems in volume 2. 27 Bergstraesser, “Amerikastudien als Problem,” 8–9. 28 Ernst Fraenkel, “Arnold Bergstraesser, 14. Juli 1896–24. Februar 1964,” Jahrbuch f¨ur Amerikastudien 10 (1965): 13.

eration of West German scholars in American studies and the parallels to the interests of their American colleagues. Some examples can illustrate this point: Ursula Brumm wrote about Puritanism and religious typology (1965); Hans Galinsky on the writing of American literary history in Germany (1964); Heinz Kosok on Herman Melville (1965); Hans-Joachim Lang on Henry James (1959); and Teut Andreas Riese on Whitman (1958). American literary scholars who held guest professorships or long-term teaching positions in Germany contributed articles in English; for example, George Creeger on Melville’s symbolism (1960), John Hagopian on William S. Faulkner (1961), and Charles Nichols on racism in literary criticism (1961). The more than 300 reviews that appeared in the Jahrbuch from 1956 to 1965, most of them in German, dealt primarily with Germanlanguage works and with a seemingly random selection of American ones. Of particular and lasting value are the annual bibliographies that attempted to list all publications in the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic, Austria, and the German-speaking part of Switzerland that dealt with the United States and Canada. Entries are listed under “Language and Literature,” “History, State, and Society,” “Justice, Law, and Administration,” “Economics, Commerce, Industry, Labor, and Transportation,” “Geography and Anthropology,” “Education,” “The Arts,” and “Philosophy, Psychology, and Religion.” Fewer publications by historians than literary scholars have appeared because, as of 1990, there were only ten tenured professors in the history departments of the Federal Republic whose terms of employment required them and their assistants to devote a significant amount of their research and teaching to American history.29 A sampling of historical articles that the Jahrbuch f¨ur Amerikastudien published in its first decade reveal that Golo Mann wrote about Tocqueville (1960); Erich Angermann on the 29 For a detailed survey, see Wolfgang J. Helbich, “United States History in the Federal Republic of Germany: Teaching and Research,” in Hanke, ed., Guide to Study of United States History, 2:39–153, esp. 44–60.

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Venezuela crisis of 1902 (1958); Eberhard Kessel on Ranke and Tocqueville (1956, 1962); G¨unter Moltmann on Roosevelt’s policy of neutrality (1964); and Hans-Ulrich Wehler on John W. Burgess and, later, Hawaii policy (1963, 1965). Among the political scientists, Arnold Bergstraesser published on the methodology of American studies (1956); Waldemar Besson on the New Deal (1960); and Ernst Fraenkel on Germany’s image of Woodrow Wilson and on the American system of government (1960, 1962). The jurist Heinz Guradze reported on the Supreme Court and the racial question (1961); the geographer Burkhard Hofmeister on Wisconsin’s cultural geography (1959); the sociologist Friedrich H. Tenbruck on David Riesman (1957); and the Swiss historian Max Silberschmidt on American capitalism in the twentieth century (1957). Theodor W. Adorno filled seventy pages with a research report in English on modern irrationalism that drew on his analysis of horoscopes in the Los Angeles Times (1957). It would be futile to claim that one common thread unified this wealth of subject matter, which testifies to the wide-ranging interests of West German historians and social scientists. The Bundeszentrale f¨ur Politische Bildung (Federal Office for Political Education) played a special role in disseminating research findings on the United States by providing its publications at no cost to students and teachers of international politics and history, including American politics and history. The supplement to the weekly newspaper Das Parlament published by the Bundeszentrale has developed into a widely read scholarly journal containing solidly researched articles on current issues. Given the importance of the United States for German politics, it is only natural that the supplement often publishes articles on American topics, treating them from both comparative and historical perspectives. An interdisciplinary committee also provided a handbook of American studies in Germany, the two-volume L¨anderbericht USA published by the Bundeszentrale in 1990. Leading America experts in Germany contributed to this report, which, in more than 1,600 pages, summarizes research on the geography, history, poli-

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tics, economy, society, and culture of the United States. Because this publication is used in advanced courses in secondary schools and undergraduate seminars at the university level, its influence has extended far beyond specialists in American studies.30 instruction: a comparison of course offerings in 1960 and 1990 What choice of courses did a student preparing for state examinations in English and history with a minor in social studies or political science have in the fall semester of 1959–60? Where in the Federal Republic could he or she have studied if he or she had wanted a choice between at least two graduate seminars? And how did things look thirty years later when a son or daughter faced the same question?31 In fall 1959–60, eleven West German universities offered courses covering at least some aspects of American cultural and social studies. Only four of them met the needs of advanced students. First, at the America Institute of the Free University of Berlin, a German professor offered a classic type of seminar based on a single author: Ezra Pound. The newly appointed chair in American literature taught “Foundations of American Literary Criticism” in English. In history and political science, however, the Free University had no advanced seminars for students interested in American topics. Second, in Hamburg, the professor for American literature in the department for English language and culture offered an advanced seminar on “The Modern American Drama.” Students could study American drama since 1900 with a Fulbright professor, or Mark Twain, Howells, 30 Willi Paul Adams et al., eds., L¨anderbericht USA, 2 vols. (Bonn, 1990); updated ed., 1992; new onevolume rev. ed., Willi Paul Adams and Peter L¨oschek, eds., L¨anderbericht USA: Geschichte, Politik, Geographie, Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft, Kultur (Bonn, 1998). 31 The information that follows is taken from the newsletters of the Deutsche Gesellschaft f¨ur Amerikastudien. The newsletter did not check to see if all the U.S.-related course offerings of all the institutes of a university were in fact announced. But for the purpose of comparison between the two fall semesters, the data collected are reliable enough.

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and Henry James with another guest professor from the United States. Third, in Mainz, the American studies division of the department of English philology offered “Tragedy and Comedy in the Dramatic Work of O’Neill.” Concurrently, the State Theater of RhinelandPalatinate was performing “Mourning Becomes Electra.” The subject of the advanced graduate seminar was “Germany’s Image of Present-day America: Golo Mann’s Vom Geist Amerikas.” Fourth, at the America Institute at the University of Munich, American guest professors were offering courses on Faulkner’s novels and on social reforms from the Progressive Era to the New Deal. The courses offered regularly in Bonn, Frankfurt, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Kiel, Cologne, M¨unster, and T¨ubingen were even more limited. The situtation had changed dramatically one generation later. In winter 1989–90, a total of forty-three institutions – that is, almost all the West German universities – had regular American studies offerings, with courses in American literature and the American language predominating.32 Twenty-five West German universities met the criterion of two graduate seminars. The Free University of Berlin and the universities of Frankfurt, G¨ottingen, Mainz, Munich, M¨unster, Oldenburg, and T¨ubingen even offered four or more graduate seminars in some aspect of American studies. Literature seminars focused overwhelmingly on three broad thematic categories: canonical authors, genres, and periods. Specific topics included early classic authors such as James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Mark Twain to the voices of modernism and postmodernism, authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, and William Faulkner. A large number of seminars dealt with American novels, plays, and poetry in various combinations of authors and periods, with Eugene O’Neill as its featured 32

The newsletter of the DGfA also listed the offerings at four Austrian universities (Graz, Innsbruck, Salzburg, and Vienna), as well as those at the universities of Basel and Zurich, which also belong to the world of Germanlanguage American studies.

playwright and Walt Whitman, Edgar Lee Masters, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost, and Carl Sandburg as the male poets who received the most attention. Seminars with a regional focus dealt with the literatures of the South and of New England. Two seminars following a particular theme over an extended period of time included “The American Religious Experience in American Fiction” and “Forms of Madness in Literature.” German scholars of both sexes also turned their attention to American literature by and about women, offering seminars such as “Harriet Beecher Stowe, Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, and Willa Cather: Classics of Modernity,” “Modern American Women Poets,” “The Poetry of Sylvia Plath,” and “Radical Feminist Thought in Contemporary American Fiction.” Several seminars dealt with racial issues and ethnic diversity as well, with a particular emphasis on African American literature from slave narratives to James Baldwin. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries received less attention; however, some seminars studied texts by Puritan authors, Benjamin Franklin, Hector Saint John de Cr`evecoeur, and Thomas Paine. Topics of particular interest in linguistics were the acquisition of a second language and language and ethnicity. In the field of popular culture, two seminars on film studied Westerns: “Men Who Die with Their Boots On” and “Gold, Cowboys, and the Wild West.” Questions of theory and method in American studies that had been so popular in the 1970s were rarely addressed in 1989–90, and comparative studies on the English-language literature of Canada remained as rare in Germany as they were in publications by American literary scholars. An occasional seminar moved into the territory of general and comparative literature with topics such as “The Theory of the Novel” and “The Emotional Experience of Reading.” In history and political science, the increase in course offerings since 1960 was less dramatic but nonetheless important. Advanced seminars in history and political science on American topics differed the most from courses traditionally offered in these fields at American universities. Given the dominance of historical writing

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about Germany in Germany, it was only natural for the few German scholars specializing in American history and politics to choose topics with a connection to German history and politics. Migration history provided one such link, for example, a course entitled “Patterns of Migration in Europe and America: Migration and Acculturation.” Other courses offered opportunities to compare German and American experiences systematically, including “The American Presidential System of Government and the Parliamentary System: A Comparison of the German Bundestag and the American Congress” and “Armament and Politics in the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany.” The few German historians and political scientists included in this brief survey also taught a selection of the standard topics that their American counterparts offered in greater number and in greater detail: constitutional history, the system of government, chapters in domestic and foreign policy, and the history of political ideas. Some examples include “The Political Theory of the Federalists,” “Social Reform and Social Critique, from Populism to the New Left,” “The United States and Latin America, 1880–1914,” “Nationalism – Manifest Destiny – Imperialism,” and “The United States and the War in Vietnam.” Unique were a political science seminar entitled “The Other North America: Canada and Western Europe,” a historiographical and methodological inventory of results obtained from many “Community Studies in North America,” and “The Sociology of Talcott Parsons.”33 Only the Free University of Berlin and Nuremberg offered regular courses in economics with such titles as “The Economy and the State, 1920–1940” and “The International Economic Policy of the United States Since 1945.” The lack of methodological and historiographical topics or a focus on Canada reflects the interests of America specialists in the United States. Only two truly interdisciplinary advanced seminars taught by two faculty mem33

If the departments had maintained better contact, more topics in sociology would probably have been listed.

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bers from different fields were offered: “Slavery in America: History and Culture” and “The Situation of Black Americans in the 1980s.”

conclusion The history of research and teaching in American studies in the German-speaking world after 1945 has not yet been written. The evolution of this scholarly field has resulted in some spectacular successes, and further studies of that process remain to be done in the future. This brief retrospective survey can only offer a few tentative conclusions: 1. Intellectual reconstruction after 1945 turned first to conditions before 1933 as a point of departure. No consideration was given at the time to organize higher education and research both inside and outside the universities on the American, British, or French model. 2. Research on the United States remained decentralized in all disciplines, and individual universities were responsible for any further development in this arena. The American occupation government did not promote the idea of centralization of higher education at an American university in Germany or at a major research institution along the lines of the Max Planck Institutes. No institute comparable to Johns Hopkins University’s American Institute for Contemporary German Studies located in Washington was created in Germany to promote scholarly and journalistic investigations of contemporary political and social issues in the United States.34 3. The field of English literature, established at German universities since the nineteenth century, provided the institutional foundation for expanding research and teaching in Amerikanistik. This new field drew on cultural studies, social studies, and intellectual history to form a new multidisciplinary field of American studies. 34 However, the research institute of the privately organized Deutsche Gesellschaft f¨ur Ausw¨artige Politik under the direction of the America expert Karl Kaiser partially fulfills this function.

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4. Not all of the research fields touching upon the United States have been incorporated within the field of American studies. The interests of individual scholars and the organization of universities have worked against integration. 5. The demand for information after 1945 did not produce a German Tocqueville or a dominant school of interpretation that permanently captured the attention of German public opinion. Instead, many different voices spoke up, and German interest in American literature, culture, history, politics, and society has not developed only one specific focus. Professionalization required American studies experts in Germany to shape their discipline along the lines largely defined in the United States and to adopt the constantly evolving American canon of topics in their research and teaching. There is no specifically German version of American studies. 6. Among historians and political scientists, the choice of subject matter also reflected professional integration into the agenda set by colleagues in the United States. The exception was, however, work on the history of GermanAmerican relations and comparisons of governmental systems. 7. If the simultaneous availability at a German university of four advanced seminars in the humanities and social sciences on topics related to the United States is a good indicator for a very active teaching commitment to American studies, then eight West German universities met this criterion in 1990: the Free University of Berlin, Frankfurt, G¨ottingen, Mainz, Munich, M¨unster, Oldenburg, and T¨ubingen. A comparison of the offerings of advanced seminars in 1960 and 1990 makes clear the advances made by American studies at West German

universities and reflects change of the first magnitude. The expansion phase in American studies ended when the expansion of West German universities ended in about 1980. When the East German university system was reorganized on the West German model after 1990, there was no change in the basic pattern outlined here. New institutes offering American studies courses in different departments were established in Leipzig, Dresden, and HalleWittenberg along the lines of the familiar West German model. Most active America specialists in all fields work together every bit as closely with American and English colleagues as with their German ones. For scholars, national borders hardly create barriers to communication; for the wider public, however, language barriers remain. This close international cooperation has led to a growing skepticism among American studies scholars in the United States as well about the “uniqueness” or exceptionalism of America’s history and, consequently, to the demand for making the content of American studies more international. The teaching experience these scholars have had in Europe seems to have accelerated the spread of this perception. Academic study of American society in all its aspects had definitely become an article for import as well as export.35 35

Richard P. Horwitz, ed., Exporting America: Essays on American Studies Abroad (New York, 1993). When the Journal of American History internationalized its editorial scope in 1992, it appointed international contributing editors who report on America-related research happening in thirty-one countries for the journal’s “recent scholarship” listings.

chapter five

In the Shadow of the Federal Republic Cultural Relations Between the GDR and the United States Heinrich Bortfeldt Translated by Tradukas

to East German foreign policy to project a positive image and to gain international recognition, especially after the building of the Berlin Wall. Cultural policy was given both of these tasks. Two possible ways of gaining influence were essentially blocked, however: The Communist Party of the United States was too insignificant to be able to promote East German cultural policy in any decisive manner, and Americans of German origin were skeptical of the East German regime. The GDR had no lobby in the United States. In spring 1966, a group of American intellectuals visited East Germany on invitation from the Peace Council of the GDR. They were treated like an official American delegation and received by the Chairman of the Council of State, Walter Ulbricht, Minister President Willi Stoph, Erich Honecker, and Foreign Minister Otto Winzer. During this visit, the idea of founding a society in the United States dedicated to improving the image of the GDR was apparently discussed; in any event, the American Society for the Study of the German Democratic Republic (ASSGDR) was founded in the same year. The society began with eight members and had about sixty within a year. Its membership later reached a peak of 300. Among the founding members were Paul Wohl, chief editor for Eastern Europe at the Christian Science Monitor; Carl Soule, General Secretary of the Methodist Office for the United States; and a pastor of German descent, W. Christoph Schmauch. The society viewed the GDR as an

cultural relations before diplomatic recognition Cultural contacts between the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the United States did not exist until the 1960s. The ideological rifts between them were too deep, and the GDR was too insignificant in the eyes of the United States. In addition, the GDR had to compete with the Federal Republic of Germany. East Germany was and remained the second German state in the shadow of its economically more powerful and politically more influential western neighbor, which still claimed in the 1960s to speak for all Germans. The Federal Republic staked out a de facto monopoly position in the United States that also applied to the representation of German culture abroad. East German cultural policy abroad must be seen as a means of compensating for the lack of internal legitimacy through external acceptance. The GDR attempted to present itself as an antifascist and humanist German alternative to the Federal Republic. But it was not until the normalization of Soviet-American and German-German relations in the early 1970s that East German foreign policy gained room for maneuver in the Western world. The GDR’s cultural foreign policy was an important instrument of East German foreign policy, in particular when political and economic contacts were blocked for the most part. Cultural contacts with the United States began in the second half of the 1960s. It was important 305

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independent and sovereign state of increasing significance.1 The society received a boost when the GDR joined the United Nations in 1973. Not long after, the ASSGDR held a two-day conference in New York to promote cultural exchange and bilateral trade.2 Representatives of the society also took part in an American Association of Teachers of German conference in 1974 that focused exclusively on the GDR. Participants discussed the East German educational system as well as cultural and religious life in the GDR. Between January 1, 1973, and April 30, 1974, the society provided literature, LPs, films, and guest speakers to forty-four academic institutions in the United States. Differences arose within the ASSGDR in the mid-1970s that led to the departure of most members by 1975. Although the ASSGDR remained insignificant on the whole, the first East German diplomats arriving in Washington in fall 1974 could in fact make use of the network it had created.3 In the second half of the 1960s, American scholars and journalists began to publish work on the GDR.4 Up to that point the GDR had genuinely been terra incognita. The GDR was not a subject of research at American universities. It was difficult to find a place for the GDR in the curriculum. East European Studies neglected it and West European Studies had no room for it. Moreover, it was neither possible to establish a career nor to make money 1

On the ASSGDR, see Anita M. Mallinckrodt, Die Selbstdarstellung der beiden deutschen Staaten im Ausland: “Image-Bildung” als Instrument der Aussenpolitik (Cologne, 1980), 228–31. 2 See Burton C. Gaida, USA-DDR: Politische, kulturelle und wirtschaftliche Beziehungen seit 1974 (Bochum, 1989), 199. 3 Mallinckrodt, Die Selbstdarstellung, 231. 4 The first studies were Melvin Croan, “Bonn and Pankow: Intra-German Politics,” Survey (Apr. 1968); Melvin Croan, “Czechoslovakia, Ulbricht, and the German Problem,” Problems of Communism ( Jan.–Feb. 1969); Arthur M. Hanhardt Jr., The German Democratic Republic (Baltimore, 1968); John Dornberg, The Other Germany (Garden City, N.Y., 1968); Jean E. Smith, Germany Beyond the Wall: People, Politics . . . and Prosperity (Boston, 1969).

with the subject of the GDR. Some of the first presentations of the GDR were unsystematic, thematically narrow, and, in some cases, too uncritical ( John Dornberg spoke of the GDR as a “sovereign nation,” for example, and Jean E. Smith refused to apply the concept of Stalinism to the GDR).5 Still, American academic institutions now increasingly had access to English-language publications that expressed some intellectual curiosity about “red Prussia.” Although their opinions on the GDR differed, the authors seemed to agree that a new social order was beginning to emerge in the GDR that could no longer be ignored. Interest in East German literature in German studies was relatively rare. This meant that East German literature continued to be largely ignored, even in seminars on German literature.6 At the same time, East German scholars and artists began to visit the United States. One of the first visitors was the renowned East German political scholar Claus Montag of the Academy of State and Legal Sciences in Potsdam-Babelsberg, who traveled to New York in 1966 to speak before the ASSGDR. Montag subsequently held a position at the embassy in Washington – from 1975 to 1978 – and worked mainly on cultural and academic relations between the two countries. In the GDR, he was one of a group of academics who established the “U.S. Domestic and Foreign Policy” working group in Potsdam-Babelsberg. One of the first GDR artists to visit the United States was the author G¨unter Kunert, who taught at the University of Texas at Austin for five months as a visiting writer. In 1974, he presented his impressions of America to the East German public in his book Der andere Planet: Ansichten von Amerika. In spring 1974, the writers Christa and Gerhard Wolf were guests of Oberlin College in Ohio.

5

Dornberg, Other Germany, 18; Smith, Germany Beyond the Wall, 71. 6 Only a few works had been translated; for example, Bruno Apitz, Naked Among Wolves; Anna Seghers, Die Entscheidung; Hermann Kant, Die Aula; Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T. See Gaida, USA-DDR, 204.

In the Shadow of the Federal Republic

Gisela May, a singer known for her Brecht repertoire, performed in the United States for the first time in 1972. The renowned Dresden concert artist Theo Adam also performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in the same year. And, in 1974, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra gave twenty-two concerts during a five-week guest tour.7 Before the United States accorded diplomatic recognition to the GDR, cultural contacts between the two countries were sporadic and dependent to a large degree on the initiatives of individuals. Some liberal-left circles “discovered” the GDR. Indeed, some intellectual curiosity toward the second German state had been awakened, but not much more.

cultural relations following diplomatic recognition On September 18, 1973, the GDR was admitted into the United Nations, and on September 4, 1974, the United States became the 111th country to enter into diplomatic relations with the new member state. Cultural relations expanded, but no real breakthrough took place. After the GDR had achieved its short-term goal of diplomatic recognition by the West, it became more self-confident and attempted to present a cosmopolitan image of itself to the rest of the world. As a state behind a wall, the GDR would nevertheless remain in the shadow of its West German rival. Cultivating a positive image was still important, but presenting East Germany as the successful, socialist German alternative became the more central concern for its cultural policy abroad. Despite diplomatic recognition, neither side brought a cultural agreement to the table. At the beginning of the 1980s, the GDR suggested such an agreement and presented a paper with various proposals to the U.S. State Department. However, the American ambassador at the time, David Bohlen, recommended that 7

See Daisy Wessel, Bild und Gegenbild: Die USA in der Belletristik der SBZ und der DDR (Opladen, 1989), 47.

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some experience with such programs first be developed before a formal cultural agreement come under consideration. No further progress was made. The GDR hoped that a cultural agreement would further enhance its international reputation. Still, it was clearly more important that the country exert influence on the type of American culture imported into East Germany to keep out undesirable “Western culture.” Serious obstacles also arose around academic exchanges: The American side suspected that East Berlin wished to use the exchange to gain scientific and technical information from the United States. Ultimately, the American system of private, in part commercial foreign cultural relations and East Germany’s statecontrolled cultural system were not able to come to terms. East German scientists and scholars were rarely able to visit the United States after the construction of the Berlin Wall. In response to East Germany’s prohibition of private visits to the West beginning on August 13, 1961, the Allies’ office in West Berlin responsible for issuing visas severely restricted visas for persons who wished to enter NATO member states under the auspices of the GDR government. This policy was not relaxed until the end of the 1960s.8 The most important institution involved in academic exchange was the International Research Exchange Board (IREX). Its coordinating office in New York was responsible for organizing academic exchanges with East European countries and the Soviet Union, and the GDR participated in this program as well. In 1975, an agreement with the East German Ministry for Higher Education was reached that provided for an exchange program for ten academics. A total of twenty exchange months, which could be taken according to need, was allotted to each side. The host country was expected to carry all the costs of the visitors except their flights. In 1977–8, the quota was doubled, and the number of exchange months available 8 See Hans Lindemann, “Nordamerika (USA und Kanada) und Kuba,” in Hans-Adolf Jacobsen et al., eds., Drei Jahrzehnte Aussenpolitik der DDR: Bestimmungsfaktoren, Instrumente, Aktionsfelder (Munich, 1979), 623–40.

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to each side reached sixty by 1984. A joint commission for improved coordination was formed in March 1982, and it regularly extended the IREX program, which represented tremendous progress for both sides. 9 In 1978, the Academy of Sciences of the GDR reached an agreement with the National Academy of Science that allowed for the exchange of specialists in the natural and social sciences for up to twelve months and was automatically extended each year. Universities also set up links, beginning with Kent State University in Ohio and the Karl Marx University in Leipzig. In 1979, they agreed to exchange fifteen to twenty East German scholars and the same number of American academics from all subject areas. Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and Wilhelm Pieck University in Rostock followed suit the same year, as did the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Ernst Moritz Arndt University in Greifswald one year later, with this latter exchange concentrating above all on medical research. In 1982, the Humboldt University, Berlin, agreed on an extensive exchange program with Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The initiative was instigated by Steven Muller, president of Johns Hopkins, who had put great efforts into making contact with East German scholars. Exchange programs were thus set up, albeit they remained limited to only a few academics (particularly privileged ones in East Germany) and only a few students. Following diplomatic recognition, East German cultural policy attempted to accommodate the demands and requirements of the American cultural market more efficiently. The U.S. Committee for Friendship with the GDR, a spin-off of the ASSGDR, was founded in New York in 1975. The committee was one of many of its kind throughout the world supported and promoted by the state-controlled Liga f¨ur V¨olkerfreundschaft in Berlin. The black communist and human rights activist Angela Davis was one of the most prominent American founding members of this new friendship commit-

9

See Gaida, USA-DDR, 209–11.

tee. Davis had visited the GDR and was seen as a courageous pioneer of the “other America.” Max Kurz, a trade union activist and refugee from Nazi Germany, became general secretary. The committee attempted to capitalize on antifascist sentiment and the memories of American immigrants and to instrumentalize them for the GDR’s cultural policy abroad. Its first public event, held in New York on May 29, 1975, was devoted to the thirtieth anniversary of the defeat of “Hitler fascism.” The committee attempted to reach target groups through such topics as trade unions, social affairs, and the arts and sciences. The committee publicized itself by loaning out films, organizing photography exhibitions, and distributing East German newspapers and magazines. The political orientation of the committee was too obvious, so its influence remained limited.10 Since 1974, symposia on the GDR have been held every June in the World Fellowship Center in Conway, New Hampshire. Christoph Schmauch, former president of the ASSGDR, was the first director of the center and began the tradition of the GDR conferences. The symposia, with clear emphasis on East German literature, started as events for teachers and researchers in German studies. Over the years, the forum developed to become interdisciplinary and came to include sociologists, political scientists, and historians. Margy Gerber, who taught German studies at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, organized these meetings since their inception in 1974, each involving about sixty participants. Since 1980, Gerber has been the editor of essay collections published in Studies in GDR Culture and Society. During the years of East-West conflict, these seminars represented a special forum for discussion, where scholars from the Federal Republic and the GDR could meet “on neutral ground.” In 1976, a group of American scholars founded the Western Association of German Studies. This group soon acquired a national constituency and became the German Studies

10 See Mallinckrodt, Selbstdarstellung der beiden deutschen Staaten, 237–9.

In the Shadow of the Federal Republic

Association (GSA) in 1983. The largest specialist association of experts (mainly American) on Germany, the GSA now has 1,500 members worldwide. It holds annual conferences that draw about 600 participants. The spectrum of fields represented ranges from politics to German literary studies. Research topics cover the entire German-speaking world, including the GDR. In the late 1980s, East German scholars also began taking part in the GSA annual conferences.11 In 1983–4, the GDR became an issue in U.S. policy on Europe; the GDR leadership wished to limit any damage to German-German relations that might come about as a result of the stationing of Soviet and U.S. mediumrange missiles in Europe. Washington interpreted Honecker’s call for a “coalition of reason” and his efforts toward d´etente between East Berlin and Bonn as an attempt by the GDR to pursue its own interests, as far as possible. German-German rapprochement in the form of a “community of responsibility” led to extensive speculation about the “German question” in Washington. This attention undoubtedly gave a boost to the GDR, which could now say that it was a partner in dialogue with the United States. This may have also contributed to the considerable increase in interest in the GDR in academic institutions. Research on the GDR gained noticeable impetus. In April 1983, the GDR Studies Association of the USA was founded following the first social sciences conference on the GDR at the Wingspread Conference Center in Racine, Wisconsin. This conference, focusing on “The German Democratic Republic in Comparative Perspective,” had political scientists, sociologists, and historians from the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Israel, and both German states in attendance. The board members of the new association included Michael J. Sodaro (George Washington University), Erwin Collier (The University of Houston), Marilyn Rueschemeyer (Brown University), and An-

gela Stent (Georgetown University). Thomas A. Baylis of the University of Texas at San Antonio became the association’s long-serving president. In recent years, Henry Kirsch, specialist for political culture at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, has held this office. The society has published a newsletter since 1985 and holds a conference every three years. But with the demise of the GDR, the focus of the association became less clear; it now acts under the name Eastern German Studies Group. One of the most important American institutions that addresses the history, politics, and economies of both German states (and now of reunited Germany) is the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, founded on October 5, 1983. The founding of the institute reflected the increasingly important role played by both German states in European politics. Emphasis was placed on the Federal Republic, but the GDR received due consideration. This private institute is based in Washington, D.C., and is affiliated with Johns Hopkins University. Jackson James replaced its long-serving director, R. Gerald Livingston, in 1995. The institute’s most prominent guest was Hermann Axen, a member of the politburo invited by the institute to visit the United States in a semiofficial capacity in May 1988. Axen was not able to relate well to an American public, however, and he continued to put forward dogmatic positions with no sign of willingness to consider reform initiatives.12 A series of conferences in 1984–5 clearly demonstrated the increased political and academic interest in the GDR during the 1980s. Probably the most important, focusing on “GDR Politics and Society,” took place in May 1984 at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University. More than seventy scholars, including several from the GDR, took part in this conference. As the reformer Mikhail Gorbachev gained influence, interest in the GDR – with its inflexible stance – began to wane again. Interest increased dramatically with the peaceful 12

11

tion.

See the chapter by John A. McCarthy in this sec-

309

Johannes L. Kuppe, “Erkundung eines schwierigen Terrains. Hermann Axen in den USA,” DeutschlandArchiv 6 (1988): 577–9.

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Heinrich Bortfeldt

revolution during autumn 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The advantages of American research on the GDR were, above all, its interdisciplinary approach, its global view of the world, and its impartiality and distance vis-`a-vis GermanGerman affairs. Undifferentiated anticommunism was largely unknown in American research on the GDR, although some American scholars were attacked for being too uncritical toward official self-portrayals of the GDR. Despite the geographical isolation of American scholars, the lack of institutional support and limited possibilities for publication, and the restrictions imposed on conducting research inside East Germany, it remains remarkable just how much intellectual attention the GDR received, especially in the 1980s. Research on the United States in the GDR was divided between Amerikanistik, a primarily literary discipline, and Amerikastudien, a branch of the politically influenced field of imperialism research. American literature and language studies, of relatively long-standing, were concentrated in the universities in East Berlin, Leipzig, Jena, and Halle. The official journal devoted to these studies was the Zeitschrift f¨ur Anglistik/Amerikanistik, and prominent American literature scholars in the GDR included such figures as Karl-Heinz Wirzberger in East Berlin, Karl-Heinz Sch¨onfelder in Jena, Eberhard Br¨uning in Leipzig, and Robert Weimann at the Academy of Sciences in East Berlin. Research on American politics was concentrated at the Institut f¨ur Internationale Politik und Wirtschaft (IPW) in Berlin, which was closely connected to the Council of Ministers of the GDR, as well as at the Institut f¨ur Internationale Beziehungen (IIB) in the GDR Academy of State and Legal Sciences in Potsdam-Babelsberg. The IIB was responsible to the GDR Foreign Ministry and trained diplomats. The most prominent scholars in the field were Gerhard Basler (IPW) and Claus Montag (IIB). In 1986, political research on the United States became more closely coordinated through creation of a council for research on the United States, with Claus Montag at its head.

From June 1978 to June 1979, the exhibition “The Splendor of Dresden: Five Centuries of Art Collections; An Exhibition from the German Democratic Republic” could be admired at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco. Approximately 1.5 million American art lovers visited the exhibition, and several television stations also featured it in their special reports. In this exhibition, the GDR showed the very best it had to offer. This cultural event was probably the most important contribution made by the GDR to public outreach in the United States.13 Displaying the cultural heritage of East Germany aimed to overcome certain anticommunist clich´es and to lift the veil on the state behind the Wall. The emphasis on the “German Democratic Republic” in the exhibition’s title was chosen to draw attention to the existence and sovereignty of the second German state and to distinguish it from the Federal Republic. This goal was only partially met because many visitors automatically assumed that the exhibition came from West Germany. Even the ambassador of the GDR in the United States at the time, Horst Grunert, had to acknowledge this confusion. Nonetheless, the exhibition was a great public relations success for the GDR. The impetus behind this exhibition had come from the banker and art collector David Rockefeller, who maintained good contacts with important public figures in the GDR. The display of 700 objects was also unique inasmuch as the GDR was never again able to achieve anything comparable in the United States. In the realm of music the GDR also provided Americans with the taste of the very best that it had to offer: the opera singers Peter Schreier and Theo Adam, the Brecht chanteuse Gisela May, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under renowned conductor Kurt Masur. The Gewandhaus Orchestra regularly gave guest performances in the United States from 1974 on, and Masur was appointed first guest conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 1976. The

13

See Gaida, USA-DDR, 232.

In the Shadow of the Federal Republic

concerts offered mainly classical music, which was not generally associated with East Germany. The United States was not able to offer anything comparable to the GDR. The first official American art exhibition – a photo exhibition entitled “Industrial Design from the USA” – did not take place until March 1978. The first official musical representative of the United States was the Composers String Quartet in October 1978, which performed American chamber music in six East German cities. In 1982, East Berlin’s National Gallery hosted an exhibition of American expressionists; it consisted of eighty paintings and watercolors by thirteen significant artists. More commercial concerts included appearances by the Duke Ellington Orchestra in Dresden in 1977, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 1981, and the New York Philharmonic.14 conclusion East Germany and the United States were too different and too ideologically opposed to develop normal cultural relations with one another. For a leading Western power with global

14

Ibid., 239.

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ambitions, East Germany – as a satellite of the USSR – could play only a marginal role. The GDR largely instrumentalized its cultural contacts to the United States for political ends: first, to promote international recognition of itself; and, second, to improve its image. This resulted in a permanent conflict between aims and means. Ideologically, the “imperialist USA” was condemned. But politically the GDR hoped for recognition and respect from the leading Western power, and economically, for the concession of “most-favored-nation” status. Despite some transient successes, the GDR never did manage to emerge from the shadow of the Federal Republic. Official Washington circles remained largely indifferent to the GDR. An independent GDR policy did not really exist. This policy was always coordinated with the considerations of Bonn’s Deutschlandpolitik. Despite unfavorable preconditions, intellectual circles eventually “discovered” the GDR as the second German state. The field of German studies and interest in GDR literature played a pioneering role. When the GDR appeared to have established a permanent existence, social scientists became more curious. The subject of their research disappeared with the end of the GDR, but there is continued interest in the new federal states.

chapter six

American Literature in Germany Martin Meyer Translated by Sally E. Robertson

Just as Rainer Maria Gerhardt (1927–54) became fascinated by American poetry in the late 1940s, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann (1940–75) fell under the spell of American culture and literature twenty years later. In 1969, the anthologies Brinkmann edited on his own and in collaboration with Ralf-Rainer Rygulla served as a clarion call for a generation eager to depart from the conventions of the Adenauer era.1 The contents of the two volumes reflected this, particularly the composition of Acid. Prose texts by Charles Bukowski were juxtaposed with essays by recognized scholars, such as Leslie Fiedler and Marshall McLuhan, and interviews with pop idols, such as Frank Zappa and Andy Warhol; poetry by everyone from Ted Berrigan to Michael McClure was interspersed with comics and photos that often focused on sex and violence. The intention, wrote the editors, was to create an “overall climate” to convey “the big picture of a coherent sensitivity,” a picture comprised of “both the trivial and high culture . . . for which such terms as pop or subculture [were] inadequate.”2 In retrospect, Acid’s politics anticipated the new complexity of the times; aesthetically it anticipated the Internet era, in which the

boundaries between serious and popular culture seem to have disappeared. Characteristically, the editors began their book with a quotation from Rimbaud fan Jim Morrison of the American rock group The Doors, thus emphasizing that they sought to question traditional ideas of culture and propagate new heroes.

focus on universities in the federal republic The two anthologies proved unusually successful: Acid had a print run of 20,000 in 1969 alone and Silverscreen was reprinted and distributed by a book club. Brinkmann and Rygulla’s audience proved to be West Germans in their own age group, primarily university students. Those studying American literature were already acquainted with what universities considered to be respectable American literature. Some two dozen collections of interpretive essays published in the two decades following 1968 illustrate the discipline’s points of emphasis. On the genre of the short story, these collections included detailed studies of the works of classic American writers of short prose, including Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Henry James, Bret Harte, and Stephen Crane as representatives of the nineteenth century. The list of representative twentieth-century short story writers had a similar cast: Sherwood Anderson, F. Scott

1

Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, ed., Silverscreen: Neue amerikanische Lyrik (Cologne, 1969); Rolf Dieter Brinkmann and Ralf-Rainer Rygulla, eds., Acid: Neue amerikanische Szene (Darmstadt, 1969). 2 Rolf Dieter Brinkmann and Ralf-Rainer Rygulla, eds., Acid: Neue amerikanische Szene, 14th ed. (Frankfurt am Main, 1981), 417.

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Fitzgerald, Katherine Anne Porter, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Eudora Welty, J. D. Salinger, Truman Capote, John Cheever, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Bernard Malamud, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike, Shirley Jackson, Philip Roth, Robert Coover, Ronald Sukenick, and John Barth. This curriculum could be used to trace the development of the short story from its originators to their postmodern descendants.3 A similar development can be traced for the history of the American novel. Critical studies extended from early-nineteenth-century works (James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pioneers and Leather-stocking Tales) to extraordinarily popular novels (Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin), all the way to innovations signaling a tradition of independent novel writing in the United States (such as Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn). Variations on realism (Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage), naturalism (Frank Norris, McTeague, and Theodore Dreiser, Jennie Gerhardt), and psychological realism (Henry James, The Golden Bowl) give important insights into the developments that produced masterpieces of American prose over the course of the twentieth century (F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!). Outstanding critical works also elevated Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye above the masses of novels that appeared after World War II.4 Exemplary interpretive work on American drama also emerged during this period. Classics of the American stage such as Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra and The Iceman Cometh received detailed analysis, as did Elmer Rice’s 3 Among the relevant collections of critical essays are Peter Freese, ed., Die amerikanische Short Story der Gegenwart: Interpretationen (Berlin, 1976); and Karl Heinz Goller and Gerhard Hoffmann, eds., Die amerikanische Kurzgeschichte (D¨usseldorf, 1972). 4 The works on the American novel include HansJoachim Lang, ed., Der amerikanische Roman: Von den Anf¨angen bis zur Gegenwart (D¨usseldorf, 1972); Edgar Lohner, ed., Der amerikanische Roman im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert: Interpretationen (Berlin, 1974).

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The Adding Machine, Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, and dramas from the postwar period, notably Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Detailed discussions also focused on theater pieces by other authors, including plays by Lillian Hellman, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Le Roi Jones, and Arthur Kopit. Many scholars wrote on new developments in American theater, European influences on American productions, and, in turn, American influences on postwar theater in Europe.5 German scholars also produced critical essays on American poetry. Without singling out individual poems, the long list of names demonstrates that American poets from the colonial era to the present found a positive reception. Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor stood out among the colonial poets, Philip Freneau among those of the Revolutionary period. The nineteenth century offered up names that are symbolic of the growing literary self-confidence of the young republic: William Cullen Bryant, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Sidney Lanier. Particularly numerous were analyses of twentieth-century poetry, including that of Carl Sandburg, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Robinson Jeffers, John Crowe Ransom, Archibald MacLeish, Langston Hughes, Richard Eberhart, Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, and Allen Ginsberg.6 This overview shows that detailed academic analyses extended to all genres and nearly all epochs of American literary history. The field of American studies had less fear of approaching modern literature than other branches of philology in Germany. Nevertheless, these interpretive works were based on the values that had traditionally been applied to American literature 5

Examples of drama criticism can be found in Paul Goetsch, ed., Das amerikanische Drama (D¨usseldorf, 1974), and Herbert Grabes, ed., Das amerikanische Drama der Gegenwart (Kronberg, 1976). 6 Interpretive works on poetry include Martin Christadler, ed., Die amerikanische Lyrik von Edgar Allan Poe bis Wallace Stevens (Darmstadt, 1972); Klaus Lubbers, ed., Die amerikanische Lyrik von der Kolonialzeit bis zur Gegenwart (D¨usseldorf, 1974).

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in universities on both sides of the Atlantic. Brinkmann and Rygulla, in contrast, revealed a “new American scene” and presented a very lively American subculture that questioned authority, that seemed to have forgotten the prudery inherited from the Puritans, and that sought to solve problems by expanding consciousness. This impulse challenged conventions in Germany and had a provocative effect on the study of literature there.

the market in the west It was scholars who long defined what qualified as “literature” in Germany. The mere fact that the publication of best-seller lists generated disapproval provides some inkling of the authority that professors and certain critics claimed to exercise. We must remember that as late as the 1950s the German academy expressed reservations about distributing academic findings widely.7 In fall 1961, Der Spiegel began to print booklists showing actual sales figures. In the minds of many observers, this changed the character of the book from a repository of culture to commercial object. Many opponents of the best-seller list criticized the beginning of reporting on sales “as a sign that even the book business is now being ‘Americanized.’”8 Statistics from the B¨orsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, West Germany’s publisher’s association, suggest the dimensions of the book trade. Annual book production in West Germany nearly doubled between 1968 and 1990, from 32,352 titles to 61,015. The 1990 total in7

The publisher Gottfried Bermann Fischer indicates in his autobiography how attempts were made to withhold scholarly knowledge from the greater public: “There was fierce resistance in the press to our academic paperbacks: . . . against ‘profaning lofty intellectual material by mass distribution.’ Respect for intellectual values was destroyed by the easy accessibility, one believed. The insights and knowledge that we threw so casually on to the market were not meant for everyone” (Gottfried Bermann Fischer, Wanderer durch ein Jahrhundert [Frankfurt am Main, 1994], 214–5). 8 “35 Jahre Spiegel-Bestsellerliste,” Buchreport 4 (Jan. 23, 1997): 59.

cluded 8,321 titles of works in translation, of which 5,648 appeared originally in the world’s dominant language, English. If we assume that the portion of U.S. books has not changed,9 then at least one out of every three newly translated books on the German market came from the United States. Belles lettres offered a similar picture: Of the total of 3,811 literary translations in 1990, 2,617 were of works in English. Well over a thousand new literary titles from the United States have appeared every year on the German market. In the view of a publisher who was active from 1969 to 1993, “the bulk of the translations [was made up] not of thrillers, nor kitschy, lavish family sagas, nor a continuation of typical light novels, but instead of the serious works being written today by American authors.”10 On the Spiegel list of the “highest-ranking novelists 1961–1996,” one out of every five was an American. The corresponding table for the highest-ranking belles lettres titles for the period from 1968 to 1990 shows Thornton Wilder’s The Eighth Day (1967; German edition 1968), winner of the National Book Award, as the most successful work by an American author, ranking even higher than the novels Love Story (1970; German 1971) by classical philologist Erich Segal and Kramer versus Kramer (1977) by Avery Corman, both of which were well known as a result of their popular movie versions. Other successful American titles that landed in first place in Spiegel during this period were James Clavell’s Noble House: A Novel of Contemporary Hong Kong (1981; German 1982) and Shogun (1975; German 1976); Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying (1973; German 1976); Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers (1987; German Das Monstrum, 1988); Alex Haley’s Roots (1976; German 1977); and John Updike’s Couples (1968; German 1969).

9 Until 1974, the association’s statistics distinguished between “American” (or “English from the United States”) and “English”; thereafter, no distinction was made. 10 Reinhold Neven Du Mont, “‘Such a Wonderful Writer’: Der transatlantische Dialog – Aspekte, Erfahrungen, offene W¨unsche,” in Uwe Baumann, ed., Literaturimport transatlantisch (T¨ubingen, 1997), 18.

American Literature in Germany

The continued German interest in American literature since the end of World War II can be explained by its “openness to the world” (G¨unter Kunert) and the talent of American authors “for telling a story in an exciting, entertaining, and evocative manner” with a seemingly “inexhaustible reservoir of subject matter, settings, and characters.”11 There is also an openness in the United States’ multicultural society to new voices, which find outlet in literature at the latest when successful immigrants’ children graduate from college. In this way, innovation and tradition unite on a foundation of ability. Artistic ambition alone is generally not sufficient to clear the hurdles of the publishing industry, which “does not [view] craftsmanship and artistry in writing . . . as opposites.”12 If a book is a success, then foreign rights are negotiated and translations are prepared that often appear in German bookstores within just a few months of publication in the United States.

the situation in the gdr The rules of the marketplace largely dictate the titles from which the public may choose in the West. By contrast, a certain pride existed in East Germany that publications were assessed not on the basis of their prospects for success in the commercial market, but because they had ideological virtue. It fell to the American studies scholars in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) – who viewed their field as a social science discipline anchored in the study of philology – to encourage translation of an original foreign-language work inaccessible to the public at large and to provide an acceptable interpretive framework in a forward or postscript. In the mid-1970s, there were American studies specialists in the GDR who practiced literary criticism “under the constant guidance and care of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany” 11

Ibid., 15. ¨ Thomas Uberhoff, “‘Bonfire of the Vanities?’: Randbemerkungen zur amerikanischen Literatur der 1980er Jahre,” in Baumann, ed., Literaturimport transatlantisch, 23. 12

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(Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, or SED). That description should not be misinterpreted as a complaint, as the author who wrote it endorsed the idea that “the academic study of literature should develop into literary propaganda and make its social contribution to Marxist-Leninist cultural policy, for example, by bringing publishing programs to fruition.”13 Ideological vigilance was apparently required in dealing with literature from the United States. The “Marxist-Leninist English and American studies field in the German Democratic Republic” saw its task as filtering a cultural legacy that was worthy of preservation out of Anglo-American cultural material, “liberating this legacy from both distortion and abuse by imperialist reactionaries, and cleansing it of poor interpretive traditions.”14 Although rhetorical obeisance to the founding fathers of MarxismLeninism was part of the academic ritual in the Eastern bloc, these requirements illustrate the functionalist role of literature: It was subordinated to political objectives.15 American studies scholars in the GDR regularly wrote articles on how American literature was received in East Germany. This may have been because of the necessity of repeatedly legitimizing their involvement with the literature of the class enemy. Eberhard Br¨uning reminds us that the study of American literature and culture relaxed somewhat after the United States established diplomatic relations with the GDR in 1974. The Cold War was not yet over, but the thaw had positive effects for American literature in the GDR. In the mid-1960s, Thornton Wilder was still considered a crafty seducer of innocent people. A little over ten years later, his works were being presented on East German 13

Joachim Krehayn, “Weltliteratur als Mass-Stab: Zur Rezeption der Belletristik Grossbritanniens und der USA in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik” (Ph.D. diss., University of Greifswald, 1976), 76, 194. 14 Ibid., 200–1. 15 “Works aimed at academic promotion (especially Ph.D. dissertations) would not pass without servile references to Marx and Engels or belittling criticisms of the bourgeois ideologists” (Gy¨orgy E. Sz¨onyi, “The Politics of Literary Theory in Post-Communist Scholarship,” The European English Messenger 6, no. 1 [1997]: 40).

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stages without causing a sensation in the public, and, as Br¨uning notes, Wilder had become part of the “ensemble of prominent American writers between the two world wars . . . who, in translation, have enriched the GDR book market since the second half of the 1960s.”16 Br¨uning also counted Nathanael West, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Katherine Anne Porter, and Henry Miller among this group. These authors joined American storytellers who were already established in the GDR, from James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry James to William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. Among contemporary American storytellers who won audiences in the GDR since the mid-1960s, Br¨uning included John Cheever, John Hersey, Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow, Carson McCullers, J. D. Salinger, Jack Kerouac, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, James Dickey, Joseph Heller, Truman Capote, John Updike, Reynolds Price, Philip Roth, Ken Kesey, and Richard Yates.17 Jack Conroy and lesser-known working-class authors who hearkened back to American socialist authors such as John Reed were published for ideological reasons. Br¨uning placed African American literature in this tradition as well; in 1970, he described it as standing “in direct succession to the 16

See Eberhard Br¨uning, “US-amerikanische Literatur in der DDR seit 1965,” Zeitschrift f¨ur Anglistik und Amerikanistik 28 (1980): 293–319, 299; Eberhard Br¨uning, “Probleme der Rezeption amerikanischer Literatur in der DDR,” Weimarer Beitr¨age: Zeitschrift f¨ur ¨ Literaturwissenschaft, Asthetik und Kulturtheorie 16, no. 4 (1970): 175–86. 17 Writing about new publications on contemporary American literature by GDR American studies scholars, Karl-Heinz Sch¨onfelder felt that many of the new titles were “still largely unknown in the GDR”: Karl-Heinz Sch¨onfelder, “Str¨omungen der neueren USamerikanischen Literatur im Urteil von Amerikanisten in der DDR,” Zeitschrift f¨ur Anglistik und Amerikanistik 32 (1984): 256. However, short prose by these and other authors had already appeared in 1970, including short stories by the authors mentioned above, as well as Nelson Algren, James Baldwin, R. V. Cassill, Robert Creeley, William Faulkner, Arthur Miller, Henry Miller, William Motley, Flannery O’Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, James Purdy, Jean Stafford, Harvey Swados, Tennessee Williams, and Richard Wright. See Hans Petersen, ed., Moderne amerikanische Prosa, 3d ed. (Berlin, 1970).

proletarian revolutionary legacy of the 1930s.”18 He was more cautious, though, in 1980, when he called it “literature of social protest,”19 thus no longer unreservedly claiming it for the leftist cause. Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Thurber, John O’Hara, William Saroyan, and Ray Bradbury were considered to be authors of high-quality light fiction. Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) belongs to the tradition of antitotalitarian literature. Its publication in the GDR in 1974 may well be viewed as a by-product of d´etente, although it was classified as a work of science fiction. A study of literary policy during the SED regime based on the publishing history of this title might reveal why books were or were not published in the GDR. If marketability was not the decisive criterion, then what characteristics were decisive, and who defined them? It would also be interesting to investigate the interplay between editors, translators, governmental publishing supervisors, the party apparatus, and publishing houses. A look at East German theater productions shows numerous American playwrights on the playbill. Dramas by Eugene O’Neill, Thornton Wilder, Thomas Wolfe, John Patrick, Clifford Odets, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Arthur Miller, James Baldwin, Neil Simon, and Edward Albee were produced in East Germany, often in Leipzig or Rostock. Dramas also appeared in published anthologies.20 American poetry found itself in a more difficult position in the GDR than any other literary genre. Not until the mid-1960s did bilingual volumes of poetry appear, with pieces by Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, and Robert Lowell. One probably unique and thoroughly original development in the GDR was poetry albums, a series of small booklets of around thirty pages that were printed in large editions and sold at newspaper kiosks. Langston Hughes, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and Allen Ginsberg were among the American authors whose work reached an East German public through this route.

18 19 20

Br¨uning, “Probleme der Rezeption,” 182. Br¨uning, “US-amerikanische Literatur,” 307. Ibid., 313–8.

American Literature in Germany

transatlantic models? What effect did America and American literature have on German writers? If “America” has been a vanishing point in both geography and imagination, it served some writers as a warning and others as a model to be emulated, and aided both groups in determining their own positions. Those who, like Bernt Engelmann, had reason to be thankful to American troops for liberation from the Dachau concentration camp harbored a different perception of the rapid rehabilitation of former Nazis soon after the end of the war than did Ernst von Salomon or Ernst J¨unger. German rearmament in the 1950s appeared to some as a remilitarization and to others as a pragmatic act of self-assertion. Each new East-West political crisis (Berlin 1948, Korea 1950, Berlin 1953, Hungary 1956, Berlin 1961, Prague 1968) made the alternatives clear. The greater the hope that America offered as a model to be emulated, the deeper the disappointment over American policy in Vietnam and the resistance put up to the civil-rights movement in the United States. “We took many things at face value back then, for example, the whole tradition of democratic rhetoric, prompted by the Bill of Rights, instead of analyzing what interests were really behind American foreign policy,”21 commented Hans Magnus Enzensberger aptly as he described this development in a 1983 interview. In the 1970s, this disillusionment gave way to domestic political crises (such as Watergate) and near catastrophes (such as Three-Mile Island), which even shook German confidence in the many technical advances that had come out of the United States since the end of the war. Finally, the stationing of new weapons systems in Germany in the 1980s led to mass protests. Against this backdrop, German-language authors wrote essays, poetry, dramas, and prose works dealing with America. These included Max Frisch (“Unsere Arroganz gegen¨uber Amerika,” 1952; Stiller, 1954); Stefan Heym 21 Hans Magnus Enzensberger, “Politische Brosamen,” in Heinz D. Osterle, ed., Bilder von Amerika: Gespr¨ache mit deutschen Schriftstellern (M¨unster, 1987), 43.

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(Goldsborough, 1953); Wolfgang Koeppen (Amerikafahrt, 1959); Erich Fried (und Vietnam und, 1966); Peter Handke (Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied, 1972); Rolf Dieter Brinkmann (Westw¨arts 1 & 2, 1975); G¨unter Kunert (Der andere Planet: Ansichten von Amerika, 1975); Uwe Johnson (Jahrestage: Aus dem Leben von Gesine Cresspahl, 1970–83); and Martin Walser (“Versuch, ein Gef¨uhl zu verstehen,” 1975; Brandung, 1985). Many authors gathered experiences of their own in the United States and drew from them in their subsequent work. In some cases, America is the subject; for others, it was a paradigmatic foreign territory through which one had to trek in order to find oneself (like the character Philip Winter in the 1974 movie Alice in the Cities by Wim Wenders). G¨unter Grass found inspiration for his political activities in Walt Whitman; G¨unter Kunert found a model in Carl Sandburg. When we look for the influence of the works of American writers on German literature since 1945, we find a considerable number of postwar German authors with an international orientation. Many authors writing in German today – including Hans Bender, Klas Ewert Everwyn, Durs Gr¨unbein, Gert Heidenreich, G¨unter Herburger, Franz Hohler, Hermann Kinder, J¨urg Laederach, Hermann Peter Piwitt, Michael Rutschky, Gerold Sp¨ath, and Gabriele Wohmann – have said that Englishlanguage works were more important to them than German models.22 It is unclear whether J¨urg Laederach’s statement that “the new German nationalism consists of not liking our own authors”23 referred to the public or to his colleagues.

conclusion Between 1968 and 1990, American literature played a dominant role in the Federal Republic. It accounted for a third of all translations 22 See Heinz Ludwig Arnold, ed., “Ansichten und Ausk¨unfte zur deutschen Literatur nach 1945,” Text + Kritik 9 (special issue, 1995). 23 Ibid., 41.

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published there. Promising titles were quickly translated and bookstores offered a broad selection of contemporary new releases and timehonored classics. The latter were also available in the East. Trends traveled across the Atlantic as well. Some lost their status of being fashionable once they gained recognition, as was the case with literature on women. The literary production of a multicultural American society caught on in Germany after some time, with the literature of native, African, Hispanic, and Jewish Americans24 attracting increasing interest among German readers. Publishers and scholars in the Federal Republic seem to have been watching events in the United States, whereas the GDR took is cue on American literature

24

See Sepp L. Tiefenthaler, “American-Jewish Fiction: The Germanic Reception,” in Lewis Fried, ed., Handbook of American-Jewish Literature: An Analytical Guide to Topics, Themes, and Sources (Westport, Conn., 1988), 471–504.

from the publishing industry in the Federal Republic. Research into the actual reception of American literature in Germany may unfortunately remain a piecemeal operation because no central academic institution devoted to this task currently exists. Hans Galinsky pointed out this deficiency in the early 1980s.25 Unification in 1990 created better arguments than ever before for finally creating a research institution to focus on the varied but always successful history of American literature in Germany in the twentieth century. The field of American literary studies in Germany should set this as a goal.

25 See Hans Galinsky, “The Current State of German-American Studies in Germany: Resources and Research,” in Leland R. Phelps, ed., The Harold Jantz Collection: Proceedings of a Conference to Introduce the Collection to Specialists in German-American Literary Relations (Durham, N.C., 1981), 73.

chapter seven

The American Reception of Contemporary German Literature Sigrid Bauschinger Translated by Sally E. Robertson

the “hesse craze” and its roots

volume of the ten-volume Hesse edition produced by the renowned publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux, appeared. Other Hesse novels, from Siddhartha to Magister Ludi (Das Glasperlenspiel), were issued in new editions or as paperbacks. Interestingly, popular acclaim for Hesse ran largely parallel to scholarly interest in his work. The central figure in this story was Princeton German scholar Theodore Ziolkowski. He not only wrote the most widely read book on Hesse and edited numerous volumes of his collected works, but he also took the liberty of “speaking for” the late writer by answering letters about Hesse from young readers with quotations from Hesse’s letters.2 Hermann Hesse became a cult figure in hippie culture and this inevitably provoked critical scrutiny of the author. D. J. Enright described Hesse’s dualism as the superficial repetition of the old theme of two souls in the German breast and suggested that Hesse’s books were suffused with a vague whiff of metaphysical Lederhosen.3 Stephen Koch reacted even more sharply in the New Republic, writing that a cultural reinvigoration of America could only come through the graces of a mind of Nietzsche’s caliber, not through Hermann Hesse.4

American readers’ interest in German literature in the first two decades after World War II fixed largely on the question of the German dictatorship and its legacy. In the books of exiled authors such as Thomas Mann and numerous postwar writers ranging from Ernst Wiechert to Heinrich B¨oll and G¨unter Grass, Americans sought answers to questions about the Germany of the past thirty-five years and what had become of the country in the years following the war. By the mid-1960s, however, Americans were preoccupied with themselves. The war in Vietnam and the riots in urban ghettos shook the nation. American youth were in rebellion. This manifested itself both in political activism and the essentially apolitical hippie and flower child movement. The latter made possible the sudden enthusiastic revival of an author who had been dead since 1962 and some of whose works had been written sixty years earlier: Hermann Hesse. His novels had begun to appear in America in the 1920s without attracting particular attention. As late as 1947, one critic was convinced that a new edition of Steppenwolf would not achieve a very large circulation.1 Twenty years later, however, a wave of Hesse works began to flood the American market. In 1969, Journey to the East (Die Morgenlandfahrt), the first

2 Theodore Ziolkowski, “Die Kultivierung Hermann ¨ Hermann Hesse, 2 Hesses,” in Volker Michels, ed., Uber vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1982), 2:148–65. 3 New York Review of Books, Sept. 9, 1968, 10. 4 The New Republic, July 13, 1968, 23.

1

New York Times Book Review (hereafter NYTBR), Mar. 16, 1947, 5.

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the unacknowledged competition ¨ and between heinrich b oll ¨ g unter grass The Americans who demonstrated against the war in Vietnam might have found a spokesman in Heinrich B¨oll, but they in fact failed to discover him. New English-language translations of his wartime stories, Adam and The Train (Wo warst du, Adam? and Der Zug war p¨unktlich), appeared in 1970. Children Are Civilians Too (Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa . . . ) was published in the United States in 1971. The book’s title story related closely to the Vietnam War, and critics seized on a connection between these books and the political situation in America. “With episode and understatement,” wrote the reviewer in the Saturday Review, “B¨oll says what today’s generation screams: that war is the credit card for extinction.”5 After B¨oll received the Nobel Prize in 1972, his popularity reached its high point with Group Portrait with Lady (Gruppenbild mit Dame) and The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum). These books also satisfied American readers’ strong interest in contemporary Germany history. B¨oll’s great humanity again won praise. One critic wrote that the author had created a character in the heroine of Group Portrait, who, unbeknownst to herself, walked in “moral beauty” through the sinful world, like the blacks in Faulkner’s novels.6 B¨oll’s ability to capture a city’s history and society across several generations in one novel also impressed American critics, who compared B¨oll in this regard to James Joyce. Critics found his language to be a skillfully simplified form of everyday speech reminiscent of Hemingway and Graham Greene. The subject of Lost Honor, the delicate balance between the protection of privacy and freedom of the press, proved of great interest to American readers. The Safety Net (F¨ursorgliche Belagerung), published in 1982, was the last novel by B¨oll to

appear in the United States during his lifetime. It received more negative reviews than any of his earlier novels. As Walter Clemons wrote in his review of Group Portrait for Newsweek, people read B¨oll out of respect for his moral authority, but they really preferred to read G¨unter Grass.7 G¨unter Grass was already the victor of the informal competition between Grass and B¨oll for American readers’ hearts by the time Dog Years (Hundejahre) appeared in the United States in 1965, completing Grass’s Danziger Trilogie. Two years before B¨oll received the Nobel Prize, Anatol Broyard symbolically awarded it to G¨unter Grass in the New York Times on the occasion ¨ of the publication of Local Anaesthetic (Ortlich bet¨aubt). “Finally,” wrote Broyard, “we are getting around to giving G¨unter Grass his Nobel Prize.” Broyard praised the author’s sense of humor, demonic imagination, human compassion, and dazzling wordplay. Anyone who had read the German reviews half a year earlier would have thought they were for a different book. The discussion of the novel in the New York Times Book Review appeared on the first page, a distinction that, among German writers, only Rolf Hochhuth and Heinrich B¨oll had previously enjoyed.8 It was again the similarity between German and American contemporary problems that made Local Anaesthetic so attractive in the United States. “Is it a mark of German progress or American decline that Grass’s anguished study . . . seems as American and as unsettling, as the latest home-made bomb scare?”9 From the Diary of a Snail (Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke) drew less attention in 1973 because its subject matter spoke more exclusively to the German situation. The novel dealt with the story of the 1969 German election campaign, in which G¨unter Grass had been very actively involved in the campaign for the Social Democrats and Willy Brandt. Grass regained the American reading public’s enthusiasm with the novel The Flounder (Der Butt) in 1977. Critics 7

5 6

Saturday Review, Sept. 12, 1970, 32. NYTBR, May 6, 1973, 1.

8 9

Newsweek, May 14, 1973, 118. NYTBR, Mar. 29, 1970, 1. Time, Apr. 13, 1970, 68.

The American Reception of Contemporary German Literature

felt that he had again reached the peak of his abilities, and they compared the novel to the Danziger Trilogie. In this “counterpoint” to traditional representations of the history of relations between men and women from the Stone Age to the present, Grass showed himself anew to be a great storyteller. The novel could be read as a feminist tract or an antifeminist attack, a question hotly debated in America as well. Within two years, 450,000 copies had been sold.10 The Flounder proved to be Grass’s last great success in America. “As his prophet’s beard grows longer,” wrote Richard Gilman about Headbirths, or, The Germans Are Dying Out (Kopfgeburten: oder, Die Deutschen sterben aus), the “duller, quirkier, more self-indulgent [he becomes].”11 In short, this book did not travel well from a German to an American context despite the fact that Grass had chosen a truly global subject: the discrepancy between the industrialized nations and the Third World, albeit from an entirely German perspective. The Rat (Die R¨attin) in 1987 and Show Your Tongue (Zunge zeigen) in 1989 again took on global problems, with little success among U.S. readers. Time saw two conflicting methods simultaneously at work in The Rat, a playful artistic one and a serious scholarly one. The loser in this conflict was art, claimed the review.12 Even Grass the essayist and orator, whose second collection of speeches and essays appeared in 1986 under the title On Writing and Politics, 1967–1983, was accused of emotionalism and irrationality, a far cry from the reaction to his Speak Out!, published in 1969. The writer who appeared to have learned the most from the behavior of German authors of the past was now beginning to imitate them, Timothy Garton Ash admonished in the New Republic.13

10

On the reception of the novel, see Siegfried Mews, ed., The Fisherman and His Wife: G¨unter Grass’s “The Flounder” in Critical Perspective (New York, 1983). 11 The Nation, Apr. 24, 1982, 502. 12 Time, July 20, 1987, 73. 13 The New Republic, Aug. 12, 1986, 31.

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impressions of a divided germany and the success of christa wolf American authors have long expressed their opinions on current events in the mass media. They go on lecture tours, give interviews, and, in response to apparently insatiable demand, engage in debates at colleges and universities. Among the authors in exile, Thomas Mann made great sacrifices to do this. Peter Schneider has thus far been the most successful of contemporary German writers in carving out a public presence in the United States. Since the publication of his book on the divided Berlin, The Wall Jumper (Der Mauerspringer) in 1984, he has been a much-sought-after speaker, guest professor, and contributor to publications such as the New York Times. His American publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, even suggested the idea for his 1991 commentary on German reunification, The German Comedy: Scenes of Life After the Wall (Extreme Mittellage: Reise durch das deutsche Nationalgef¨uhl ). Well-informed and able to illustrate his theses with intriguing examples, Schneider has contributed more in recent years to American understanding of contemporary Germany than any other German author. Schneider was praised for his analytical gift and “mythic images” in the New York Times by Salman Rushdie, who played an important part in introducing much German literature in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s (and who stressed how influential G¨unter Grass had been for him).14 American readers knew little of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and its literature until the 1970s. Writers who were loyal to the system were not in demand. Readers wanted authors who could write about their country with some degree of independence, such as Manfred Bieler and Stefan Heym. In his “Letter from East Germany” in the New York Times Magazine, Heym offered a rather original interpretation of the situation in divided Germany.15 Heiner M¨uller played an important role in progressive

14 15

NYTBR, Jan. 22, 1984, 13. New York Times Magazine, Mar. 23, 1975, 34.

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American theater, particularly through his collaboration with Robert Wilson. Like Bertolt Brecht, however, his work was seen more often than it was read.16 True dissidents such as Reiner Kunze were, by contrast, recognized first and foremost as dissidents. Kunze’s The Wonderful Years (Die wunderbaren Jahre) testified to the tragedy and absurdity of life in a totalitarian state. The New York Times compared him to Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn while trying to avoid overestimating him as a writer.17 No East German writer gained as large a readership in the United States or achieved a position of as much authority in America – at least for time with a certain audience – as Christa Wolf. There is also no female West German writer whose audience could match Wolf’s. Der geteilte Himmel was published in 1965 under the title Divided Heaven by Seven Seas Publications, which was financed by the GDR government. The voice that penetrated the Iron Curtain in 1971 in The Quest for Christa T. (Nachdenken u¨ ber Christa T.) was very different from that of Wolf’s first novel. It created a character who was both remarkable and completely plausible for American readers, according to Ernst Pawel in the New York Times, and who offered no exemplary model for the “petit-Ulbrichts” in the back offices of the bureaucracy. Rather, Pawel wrote, the novel was about individual freedom and self-actualization. Wolf, therefore, was a thoroughly subversive author who disturbed the official peace of mind.18 Christa Wolf began to find an audience in the United States at the same time that a feminist discussion was making its way into literature. Beginning in academic circles – initially, German studies departments – her books soon entered the women’s studies canon. Her themes were equally relevant to (East) German and American women, as the feminist Marilyn French maintained in her review of No Place on Earth (Kein Ort, Nirgends) in 1983. According to French, these themes included the difficulty of 16 17 18

See the chapter by David Bathrick in this section. NYTBR, Apr. 24, 1977, 15. NYTBR, Jan. 31, 1971, 7.

retaining individuality in a world of conformity, living with those who are different from oneself, seeking solitude while avoiding isolation, and maintaining a balance between dependence and independence.19 Wolf’s unmistakable prejudices against the West and the United States in particular, which surfaced in her A Model Childhood (Kindheitsmuster) and elsewhere, were never held against her by the many American women who read her books. They shared her critique of American power politics, nuclear armaments, and the Vietnam War. Wolf’s criticism of patriarchy, set out in the extremely successful Cassandra (1985), led to the high point of her popularity in the United States. The Christian Science Monitor said that “feminists should hail Wolf’s accomplishment as nothing less than a revision of one of the cornerstones of Western civilization . . . [war] is not the place where Western heroes are made. Books are.”20 Opinions of Christa Wolf tended to be more critical in the absence of feminist goodwill. In the New York Times, Mary Lefkowitz argued that Cassandra presented only the historical facts that served the political goals of the author and elegantly avoided important issues. She felt that readers were encouraged to react emotionally rather than to reflect, and “to imagine that Mrs. Wolf’s random thoughts about life and literature constitute informative discourse, while in reality they represent only the mental anguish of a woman trying to understand the world about her but lacking the knowledge and mental discipline to offer persuasive and practical solutions.”21 Feminists eventually gained the upper hand in the debate over Christa Wolf. When Accident: A Day’s News (St¨orfall: Nachrichten eines Tages), a book about the consequences of the reactor accident at Chernobyl, appeared in 1989, it offered its American women readers a kind of aid for living and survival. Mary Gordon wrote in the New York Times that Wolf was demonstrating how difficult it was to live life completely and 19 20 21

NYTBR, Oct. 10, 1983, 11. Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 10, 1984, 27. NYTBR, Sept. 9, 1984, 20.

The American Reception of Contemporary German Literature

well. She called Wolf’s book difficult, “like certain kinds of prayer.”22 In the Women’s Review of Books, Celia Gilbert asserted that she would return again and again to the beauty and perfect meditation that this book presented.23 Other East German authors published in the United States include Jurek Becker, whose Sleepless Days (Schlaflose Tage) appeared in 1980 and Bronstein’s Children (Bronsteins Kinder) in 1988, and Monika Maron, whose Flight of Ashes (Flugasche) was also published in 1988. In contrast to Christa Wolf, however, they made no lasting impression. When Bertolt Brecht’s Poems, 1913–1956 was published in 1976, he was finally discovered as a significant lyrical poet, a status that he shared with Paul Celan, whose Speech-Grille, and Selected Poems (Sprachgitter) had appeared in 1971 in a translation by Joachim Neugroeschel. Michael Hamburger, the masterful translator of German lyrical poetry, brought out an important anthology that included the newest generation of German poets (German Poetry, 1910–1975). Critics found the pessimism and occasional cynicism of German poets understandable after two world wars.24

diverse translations, ephemeral books The Swiss and Austrian authors who met success in the United States included Max Frisch, Friedrich D¨urrenmatt (as a playwright), Ingeborg Bachmann, Thomas Bernhard, and Peter Handke. The word “Teutonic,” which appears in so many reviews of German books, has never been applied to Frisch. Because the author set some of his books in America, including the novel Montauk (1976), American critics determined, with relief, that Frisch was entirely free of European arrogance.25 Ingeborg Bachmann, like Bernhard and Handke, found an audience in America. Her poetic genius was recognized when her first 22 23 24 25

NYTBR, Apr. 23, 1989, 3. Women’s Review of Books, July 1989, 20. Choice, May 1977, 381. Choice, Oct. 1976, 987.

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short stories appeared in 1964. However, it was not until 1994 that her collected lyrical work came out in a translation by Peter Filkins. In one of the first American reactions to Thomas Bernhard, Betty Falkenberg, writing in Partisan Review, drew a parallel between the fascination with him and with Kafka.26 By 1986, five of his novels had appeared in the United States. Peter Handke was a presence on Off-Broadway and avant-garde stages in the 1970s and his poetry and novels were also translated. Since 1986, when his book about his mother, Slow Homecoming (Langsame Heimkehr), appeared, he has been considered the epitome of the postmodern author. Between 1968 and 1990, a rich array of books by German writers appeared in the United States, but most of them did not register with the reading public. After The Tin Drum, only one other German novel found its way to the bestseller list, Patrick S¨uskind’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Parf¨um: Die Geschichte eines M¨orders), which appeared in 1986. Uwe Johnson, whose Anniversaries: From the Life of Gesine Cresspahl ( Jahrestage: Aus dem Leben von Gesine Cresspahl), the first volume of which appeared in 1975, achieved great success among critics, but not among readers, not even educated readers. Peter Weiss’s drama The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat, as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton, Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (Die Verfolgung und Ermordung des Jean Paul Marat dargestellt durch die Schauspielergruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade) found a wide audience under the abbreviated title Marat/Sade, primarily because of the English film version directed by Peter Brook. Two of Weiss’s early prose works also appeared in the United States: Exile in 1968 and Bodies and Shadows (Der Schatten des K¨orpers des Kutschers) in 1970. Esoteric works such as Arno Schmidt’s Scenes from the Life of a Faun (Aus dem Leben eines Fauns) (1983) were also published, but read by only a select few. Even the many short stories and novels by Siegfried Lenz and Martin Walser that appeared in the

26

Partisan Review 47 (1980): 269–77.

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United States and received a positive response soon disappeared from the American market. Why did the supply of German books in America long outstrip the demand for them? A comprehensive study by Volkmar Sander yielded at least a partial answer.27 German literature in America, he found, had survived through a kind of artificial respiration. Sander reported that in 1990, for example, only 3.5 percent of all books published in Germany, including nonfiction, were translated into other languages. In order to help correct this gap, the German agency Inter Nationes frequently reimbursed American publishers for translating German literature. This has guaranteed a printing of about 2,000 copies of each work. If the book is reviewed in the New York Times, which is decisive for sales, the printing can be sold within three years. If not, Inter Nationes may buy the remaining copies and distribute them to high school and university students as book prizes. Otherwise, they are remaindered. The first printing is thus usually also the last.28 There is one poet, however, to whom this somewhat depressing trajectory does not apply and whose popularity began long before the Hesse craze and long outlived it. Rainer Maria Rilke is now the most translated and most read German-language author on the American market. Some of his books have been available continuously for decades, and his most difficult works, such as the Duineser Elegien and Sonette an Orpheus, have attracted intrepid translators again and again. Rilke’s poems have been set to music, quoted in films by Woody Allen, recited at weddings, and read by rock musicians.29 Why the neglect of German literature by American readers? Is it because, as Volkmar Sander suggests, so few readers at American publishing houses read German? (The equally

27 Volkmar Sander, “The Economics of Literature: More Thoughts on the Reception of German Literature in the New York Times,” in Wolfgang Elfe, James Hardin, and Gunther Holst, eds., The Fortunes of German Writers in America (Columbia, S.C., 1992), 287–99. 28 Ibid., 296–7. 29 See Sigrid Bauschinger and Susan L. Cocalis, eds., Rilke Rezeptionen/Rilke Reconsidered (T¨ubingen, 1996).

important book scouts and agents clearly do so.) Or is it because the great publishers in exile, such as Kurt and Helen Wolff, are no longer alive? Helen Wolff at Pantheon made G¨unter Grass accessible to American readers in meticulous editions that included glossaries. Sander cites the complaint about the “isolation of American culture,” which results in this lack of receptiveness to foreign literatures.30 Might not the primary reason be the fact that America itself has produced a literature of unparalleled diversity? With the Nobel laureates Saul Bellow, Toni Morrison, and Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Jewish, African American, and exile strands of this literature have been honored. The New York Review of Books, established in 1963, can be regarded as a barometer for how German literature is received in America. Extremely detailed articles appeared in its pages on Walter Benjamin, Heinrich B¨oll, Hermann Broch, G¨unter Grass, Rolf Hochhuth, Alexander Kluge, Peter Weiss, and Christa Wolf during the first ten years. With its strong interest in contemporary history, the New York Review has also reported regularly on books that had not yet appeared in English translation. In 1981, for example, an article appeared on excerpts from the three-volume French edition of the diaries of Ernst J¨unger, Routes et jardins.31 J¨unger had been watched closely in America since 1945, and his controversial books ignited discussions similar to those in Germany. When the radical right Republikaner scored a surprising electoral victory in Berlin in 1989, Gordon Craig, the doyen of German history in the United States, analyzed four books by party founder Franz Sch¨onhuber, including Macht: Roman eines Freistaats.32 A year later, the same publication carried an overview of the works of Christa Wolf by Ian Buruma, which also addressed the events that led to German unification.33 The essay serves as an example of how German literature and the infighting in the German literary scene were 30

Sander, “Economics of Literature,” 297. New York Review of Books, Mar. 5, 1981. 32 New York Review of Books, June 15, 1989, 22. 33 Ian Buruma, “There’s No Place Like Heimat,” New York Review of Books, Dec. 20, 1990, 34–43. 31

The American Reception of Contemporary German Literature

calmly judged from the distance of American shores. Buruma essentially stretched the expanse of German literature between two poles: HansJ¨urgen Syberberg and Christa Wolf. According to Buruma – quoting Ernst Bloch – these two vastly different authors held fast to their illusionary political ideals even in the aftermath of catastrophes. Syberberg, Buruma wrote, finds his home in a utopia made of kitsch and a “blood and soil” ideology (minus Nazism), while Wolf’s utopia is the ideal socialist state. Christa Wolf’s success in both West and East amazed Buruma. She offered something to readers on all sides, he said, but she did so unintentionally and without cynicism. She honestly believed that America was corrupt and that the GDR had been the better state. In Buruma’s view, Wolf, an interesting though humorless

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writer, had made the search for identity and home her primary subject. Buruma drew the obvious comparison to the writers of the Nazi epoch who either went into exile or stayed in Germany and adapted in different ways to life under the dictatorship. This led to controversies after the war similar to those that arose after 1989. Nevertheless, he did not compare the GDR to the Third Reich, nor did he describe Christa Wolf’s books as propaganda. He added, however, “[in] the melancholy context of modern history, especially in Germany, art and politics cannot be cleanly separated without doing damage to the very thing Christa Wolf considers the central theme of her work: our memory.”34

34

Ibid.

chapter eight

The Americanization of the German Language Heidrun K¨amper Translated by Sally E. Robertson

When cultures come in contact, languages come in contact. Describing the Americanization of the German language therefore means demonstrating linguistic traces of America’s cultural, economic, and political influence on Germany. Identifying these traces as Americanisms and distinguishing them unambiguously from Britishisms is a linguistic problem. The origins of many terms are clear, so extralinguistic circumstances have to be taken into consideration – with no guarantee of absolute certainty. Wolfgang Viereck suggests that “[t]he political, economic, technological, and scientific dominance of the United States today indicates a considerably greater influence of American English on German than of British English.”1 We can therefore speak confidently of an Americanization of Anglicisms. Because Germany has oriented itself toward the United States, the dominant world power, we can assume “the portion of the English language in use in German today that is not clearly counted as AE (American English) or BE (British English) must be regarded as lying under the influence of the United States.”2 The Americanization of the German language

presents the postwar variant of a gradual Anglicization of German that began in the eighteenth century.3

research At the turn of the century it was still possible to prepare comprehensive lists of English words used in German, and until some time in the 1960s it was possible to specify major areas of communication in which the influence of English was particularly strong. Yet today hardly an area of life exists in which Germans can get by without Americanisms. This point is confirmed by the scholarly literature on the subject. Whereas early research into Anglicisms produced such titles as Amerikanismen der deutschen Gegenwartssprache or Englische Einfl¨usse auf die deutsche Sprache nach 1945, research now concentrates increasingly on more narrowly delineated topics.4 Moreover, it takes a full 3 Hans Galinsky, “Amerikanisch-englische und gesamtenglische Interferenzen mit dem Deutschen und anderen Sprachen der Gegenwart,” in Herbert Kolb and Hartmut Lauffer, eds., Sprachliche Interferenz: Festschrift f¨ur Werner Betz zum 65. Geburtstag (T¨ubingen, 1977), 463–517. 4 See, for example, Barbara Engels, Gebrauchsanstieg der lexikalischen und semantischen Amerikanismen in zwei Jahrg¨angen der Welt (1954 und 1964): Eine computerlinguistische Studie (Frankfurt am Main, 1976); Peter A. Schmitt, Anglizismen in den Fachsprachen: Eine pragmatische Studie am Beispiel der Kerntechnik (Heidelberg,

1 Wolfgang Viereck, “Britisches Englisch und Amerikanisches Englisch/Deutsch,” in Werner Besch, Oskar Reichmann, and Stefan Sonderegger, eds., Sprachgeschichte: Ein Handbuch zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und ihrer Erforschung, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1984), 2:940. 2 Broder Carstensen and Hans Galinsky, Amerikanismen der deutschen Gegenwartssprache (Heidelberg, 1963), 13.

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The Americanization of the German Language

three-volume dictionary of Anglicisms5 to document the advances in Anglicization or Americanization of the German language. In practical terms, this research falls into the domain of the study of foreign words. Unlike loan-words, that is, assimilated words of foreign origin that have been integrated into the orthographic, phonetic, and grammatical system of the German language – such as the word Schal (from the English “shawl”) – foreign words are nonassimilated borrowed terms whose foreign origins are obvious. The main pattern is the simultaneous adoption of a new object and the word to describe it. This is the most common mode of adoption today and an increasing trend. These are also called direct borrowings. In addition, professional research into foreign words distinguishes between so-called loan translations, loan transferrals, and pseudoloan-words. Loan translations are element-for-element translations of foreign words; that is, their semantic content is reflected in words of the receiving language (for instance, Schwarzmarkt for black market, Flutlicht for floodlight, Familienplanung for family planning). Loan transferrals are less strict replicas of a foreign-language expression and not precisely literal (for instance, Wolkenkratzer for ¨ skyscraper, Uberschallgeschwindigkeit for supersonic speed, Datenverarbeitung for data process¨ ing, or Offentlichkeitsarbeit for public relations). Thus, German words can also be identified as Americanisms based on their morphology or American semantics. Finally, pseudoloan-words involve the integration of English words into German that do not exist at all or have a different meaning in the donor language. Examples include Twens (twenty-somethings), Dressman 1985); Horst-Ralf Steinbach, Englisches im deutschen Werbefernsehen: Interlinguale Interferenzen in einer werbesprachlichen Textsorte (Paderborn, 1984); Karin Viereck, Englisches Wortgut, seine H¨aufigkeit und Integration in der o¨sterreichischen und bundesdeutschen Pressesprache (Frankfurt am Main, 1980); Wenliang Yang, Anglizismen im Deutschen: Am Beispiel des Nachrichtenmagazins “Der Spiegel” (T¨ubingen, 1990). 5 Broder Carstensen and Ulrich Busse, eds., Anglizismen-W¨orterbuch: Der Einfluss des Englischen auf den deutschen Wortschatz nach 1945, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1993–6).

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(male model), Heim-/Hometrainer (home exercise equipment), Handy (cellular telephone), Showmaster (master of ceremonies on television variety shows), Callboy (male prostitute), and Bordcase (carry-on luggage).6 Pseudoloan-words are more symptomatic of cultural overlap than any other form of borrowing; they leave no doubt about the intensity and influence of the donor language and its culture.7

domains of linguistic americanization The influence of American English on German began after World War I. During the interwar years, one observer concerned about the purity of the German language already disparagingly noted an “America craze.”8 This American influence intensified after 1945. The text of the capitulation decree for a defeated Germany reflected the political and resulting linguistic reality: “This Act is drawn up in the English, Russian, and German languages. The English and Russian are the only authentic texts.”9 The United States was the dominant Western occupying power, its presence in important realms of public life thus paving the way for the Americanization of the German language. Many factors contributed to this process: 6

See Broder Carstensen, “Semantische Scheinentlehnungen des Deutschen aus dem Englischen,” in Wolfgang Viereck, ed., Studien zum Einfluss der englischen Sprache auf das Deutsche (T¨ubingen, 1980), 77–100. 7 The dates of the following examples do not necessarily indicate their first documented use. Rather, in some cases, they reflect an increasing usage at the time indicated. Thus, Americanization in reference to individual words means not only their first appearance in German, but also a politically or socially dictated increase in their frequency of use at a later point in time. For example, individual occurrences of Cocktailparty were documented as early in 1929, but the term was used much more frequently as prosperity increased in the 1950s. 8 A. J. F. Ziegelschmid, “Englisch-amerikanischer Einfluss auf den Wortschatz der deutschen Sprache der Nachkriegszeit,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 34, no. 1 (1935): 25. 9 Act of Surrender by Germany, Signed at Berlin, May 8, 1945, in U.S. Department of State, Documents on Germany, 1944–1985, 14.

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Heidrun K¨amper

[T]he presence of large numbers of American soldiers and civilians on German soil; the publication by Americans of a nationwide newspaper (Die Neue Zeitung) for several years after the war; the spread of American movies, songs, periodicals, paperbacks and plays . . . the imitation of comic strips and comic books; the existence of AFN (American Forces Network); the presence of unilingual or bilingual streetsigns in German traffic; the return of German emigrants after long years of residence in an American or bilingual setting .10

This political influence is most clearly seen in the realms of politics11 and the military.12 Eiserner Vorhang (Iron Curtain) and schwarzer Markt (black market) were among the first English borrowings of the early postwar period. They are Americanisms that describe essentially German situations that were at the same time essentially American in the early postwar period. The other political and military borrowings reflect the stabilization of Germany’s integration into the West, but also the development of the political climate from the Cold War to d´etente. The decisive factor underlying the affinity of Germans for Americanisms in the early postwar period was a conscious political – and therefore also linguistic – orientation toward the United 10 Galinsky, “Amerikanisch-englische und gesamtenglische Interferenzen,” 463–517. 11 1946 Eiserner Vorhang, schwarzer Markt; 1947 Bananenrepublik, Displaced Person; 1948 Kalter Krieg; 1951 Containment, Goodwill; 1954 Erdrutsch, friedliche Koexistenz, multilateral, atlantisch; 1956 Lobby; 1957 Entwicklungsland, Geburtenkontrolle; 1958 Gipfelkonferenz; 1959 Entwicklungshilfe, Filibuster; 1961 Eskalation; 1962 First Lady; 1963 Votum, multilateral; 1966 Bev¨olkerungsexplosion; 1967 Wechselw¨ahler; 1968 blockfrei, Neue Linke; 1969 Balance of power, law and order, Vietnamisierung; 1974 Watergate; 1976 Vierte Welt; 1977 Nord-S¨ud-Dialog; 1978 Viererbande; 1979 Hardliner, Linkage, Checks and balances; 1981 Null¨osung; 1983 Bermuda-Dreieck. 12 1947 Wasserstoffbombe; 1948 GI, Luftbr¨ucke; 1949 Aggression; 1950 A-Bombe; 1955 ABC-; 1956 nuklear; 1957 Abschreckungstheorie; 1959 atomar, einfrieren; 1961 flexible response; 1963 Minuteman, Overkill, Vorw¨artsverteidigung, Atomversuchsstop; 1964 Abfangj¨ager; 1966 De-Eskalation, Starfighter; 1967 Vorneverteidigung; 1969 Supermacht; 1977 Cruise Missile, Marschflugk¨orper, Zweitschlag; 1979 BackfireBomber, Fr¨uhwarnsystem, Pershing; 1981 Erstschlag; 1984 Krieg der Sterne, Star Wars, Strategische Verteidigungsinitiative; 1985 SDI.

States.13 The desire to connect with the West was the reason for German adaption to the language of the American news agencies; it was not simply an involuntary orientation, forced on them because the occupation forces had added American journalism to the reeducation curriculum. The press and publishing industry were the most important areas for linguistic Americanization, only second to the political and military arenas. The print media were the most important conduits for German borrowings from American English, and Der Spiegel played a decisive role in this process. In 1965, this weekly was described as the “primary port by which Americanisms entered the German language after 1945,”14 and it remained so until 1990. The ten most commonly used Anglicisms in Der Spiegel between 1950 and 1980 were Konzern (concern, as in company), Partner, Computer (beginning in 1970), Manager, Video (beginning in 1970), Export, Service (beginning in 1960), Club/Klub, Star, and Parlament. The most recent Anglicisms documented in Der Spiegel since 1980 have been Popper (the rough equivalent of preppies), Cruise Missile, Mokick (a small motorbike with a kickstarter), Synthesizer, Recycling, Fixer, and Timer. When we look at five different areas of communication separately, the distribution of the most commonly used Anglicisms is as follows: foreign and domestic policy (23 percent): Partner, Parlament, Streik (strike), parlamentarisch, Reporter, Konzern, Boss, Club/Klub, Job, Boykott; culture and education (22.4 percent): Video, Sex, TV, Rock, Reporter, Konzern, Partner, Bestseller, Manager, Star; economics and finance (13.4 percent): Konzern, Manager, Export, Partner, Investment, Computer, Boss, Import, Start, Koks (slang for money); sports (7.1 percent): Trainer, Star, Training, Club/Klub, Boxer, boxen, Rekord,

13

“This linguistic interference phenomenon is an actively receptive linguistic attitude on the part of postwar Germans of all social classes, in which as many as possible of the small, external objects associated with newness, freedom, and modernity were labeled with English words” (Peter von Polenz, Geschichte der deutschen Sprache [Berlin, 1978], 141). 14 Broder Carstensen, Englische Einfl¨usse auf die deutsche Sprache nach 1945 (Heidelberg, 1965), 22.

The Americanization of the German Language

Bob (bobsled), Kicker, Manager; and science and technology (5.8 percent): City, Konzern, Text, Video, Manager, Computer, TV.15 In science and technology, the twelve-year gap of National Socialism is especially evident.16 Germans have sought connection to the outside through adoption of terms from the outside, and the economic upswing was accompanied by an increase in the influence of American advertising language,17 which was in turn intensified by the trend toward economic internationalization. Labeling a product with borrowed British or American English names guaranteed its international recognizability. Although English or American origins were not always apparent, it seems to be true that “certain English morphological patterns have caused and continue to stimulate an increase in the frequency of corresponding German morphology.”18 An above-average incidence of Americanisms has surfaced in advertising language for the media, leisure, photography and optics, transportation, and tourism, particularly when American companies have been on display. Examining mail-order advertising, Hermann Fink used the Quelle catalog of fall–winter 1974–5 to show the relationship between culture and language, between cultural and linguistic interference:

15

Yang, Anglizismen im Deutschen, 30–7. 1946 Radar; 1947 Atommeiler, Pipeline, Plastik, Reaktor, Transistor; 1949 Netzwerk, Spike; 1952 Know-how; 1955 Off-shore-; 1956 Automation; 1959 Flutlicht, Hardtop; 1960 Laser; 1961 Aircondition; 1962 vollklimatisiert, Zoom, Defroster; 1963 Senkrechtstarter, vollautomatisch, Technologie; 1964 Supertanker; 1966 schneller Br¨uter; 1967 Kick-down, Sensor, Spider; 1968 Dimmer, Fisheye, Sandwich-, Ticker; 1969 Aquaplaning, Solar-, technologisch, waterproof; 1970 Choke; 1971 Shredder; 1974 Airbag, Spoiler; 1977 Tacker, Technologietransfer, CB-Funk; 1981 High Technology; 1984 High-Tech, Hochtechnologie, Technologie-Park. 17 1949 Color; 1951 Public Relations; 1954 Layout; 1956 ¨ Automatic; 1959 Offentlichkeitsarbeit; 1961 Product-, Visualizer; 1962 Lady-, -sicher; 1963 Display, Merchandising, PR; 1966 Eyecatcher; 1967 Werbespot; 1968 Commercial, Instant-, ready-made; 1969 Renner, Testimonial-Anzeige; 1971 Direct Mail; 1972 Jumbo-; 1975 Jingle; 1977 Atomizer, Quartzuhr; 1979 No-name-, Pocket-; 1984 light; 1985 Product-Placement; 1988 Logo. 18 Steinbach, Englisches im deutschen Werbefernsehen, 240. 16

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“The mail-order business was created in the United States, and the German mail-order catalog is probably largely an imitation of the American model.” Fink showed that the highest incidence of Americanisms appeared in the areas of textiles and clothing or fashion, sports, games, and cosmetics.19 The Americanization of the German language quickly spread to nearly all spheres of life. Music20 ; the stock market, economics, banking, and finance21 ; fashion, clothing, and textiles22 ; cosmetics23 ; sports and fitness24 ; airlines,

19 Hermann Fink, “Ein ‘Starangebot’: Englisches im Versandhauskatalog,” Muttersprache 5 (1976): 342. 20 1947 Band, Hitparade, Swing; 1949 Jam Session, Song; 1953 Background, Bebop, Big Band, Boogie, Discjockey, Drummer, hot, Sound, Vibraphon, Vokalist; 1954 Jukebox; 1956 Musical, Musikbox, Rock ’n’ Roll; 1957 Jazzfestival, Rhythm ’n’ Blues; 1959 Bandleader, heiss, Skiffle; 1962 Sample; 1963 Hitliste, Single; 1964 Label, Popmusik; 1966 Album, Soul; 1967 Cover, Pop, Psychedelic; 1969 Hardrock; 1970 Openair-Festival; 1973 Charts, DJ, Funk, Roadie; 1974 Easy listening; 1976 Top Ten; 1977 Punk, Soundcheck; 1978 Discofieber; 1979 Heavy Metal; 1983 Breakdance; 1985 sampeln. 21 1949 Unterbesch¨aftigung; 1954 Boom, Rezession, Swing; 1957 fixen; 1962 Investment, Swap; 1963 Investor; 1968 Joint venture; 1970 Stagflation; 1971 Realignment; 1973 Float; 1974 Nullwachstum; 1977 Kreditkarte; 1984 Venture-Capital. 22 1947 New Look; 1950 Blue Jeans, Sweater; 1954 Petticoat; 1962 Synthetic, fully fashioned; 1963 Stretch, Bermudas, College-; 1965 Panty; 1966 Minirock, Outfit; 1967 Coordinate, Mini; 1968 T-Shirt, Cotton, Parka; 1969 Unisex, Afro-Look, Bodystocking, Lumber, Pants; 1970 Partnerlook; 1971 Shirt, Bodysuit, Clog, heisse H¨oschen, Hot Pants; 1973 Sportswear; 1974 Sweatshirt; 1982 stone-washed; 1983 Legwarmer; 1984 oversized; 1986 Body; 1990 Leggings. 23 1947 Make-up; 1957 Lotion; 1962 Deodorant; 1963 After Shave, Pre Shave, Sch¨onheitsfarm; 1966 Skin-; 1967 Liquid, Cleanser, Lidschatten, liften; 1968 -Cream, Curler, Eyeliner, Eyeshadow; 1969 Facelifting, -Fluid; 1970 Deo; 1972 Lip Gloss, Milk; 1980 Hair-Stylist. 24 1947 Doping; 1952 Squash; 1954 Basketball, Foul, Rallye, Volleyball; 1962 Bodybuilder; 1963 Bowling, Minigolf; 1966 Circuit-Training; 1967 Sparringspartner; 1969 Fitness, Schneemobil, Snowmobil; 1970 Skateboard, trimmen; 1972 Frisbee, Hometrainer, Wellenreiten; 1973 Heimtrainer; 1974 Windsurfer; 1978 joggen, Jogging; 1979 Roller-Skate; 1980 Aerobic; 1982 Funboard; 1983 Stretching, Snowboard; 1986 Mountain-Bike; 1987 Zirkeltraining; 1988 Workout; 1989 Skater; 1990 Rafting; 1991 BungeeJumping.

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tourism, and travel25 ; records, video, and TV 26 ; entertainment27 ; and film28 are realms of linguistic reference that reveal a particularly high incidence of Americanisms, especially in the first two postwar decades. Their significance as collection points for Americanisms has continued to the present day. Americanisms can be found as designations for dining facilities29 and for food and beverages,30 as well as for terms of the business and professional world. Among the latter, we can differentiate between valuefree, neutral technical terms,31 and concepts for 25 1949 Charterflug; 1950 trampen; 1953 Camping, Motel; 1956 Sightseeing; 1957 Autostopp; 1959 Jet; 1960 Gangway; 1961 Cockpit; 1962 globetrotten; 1963 Wohnmobil, Airline; 1964 Airport; 1966 Bordcase, Fly and Drive; 1967 Taxfree-Shop, Airbus; 1968 Counter; 1969 Mobilheim, Packagetour, Reisemobil, Terminal; 1974 Duty-freeShop, Voucher; 1977 Standby; 1978 ABC; 1979 BusinessClass, Trekking; 1982 Sex-Tourismus; 1985 Bordkarte; 1988 Last minute. 26 1947 Kanal; 1949 Seifenoper, Soap Opera; 1957 Hifi, High Fidelity, Television; 1961 TV; 1963 Tuner; 1965 Portable; 1967 Cassetten-Recorder; 1968 Tape, Videorecorder; 1969 Insert, LP; 1971 Warm-up, Videothek; 1972 Serial; 1974 Kabelfernsehen; 1976 Special; 1977 Tapedeck, Videotext, Videoclip, Receiver; 1978 Frontlader; 1981 Videokamera, Compact-Disc; 1982 Videofilm, Videokassette, Videospiel, – Player; 1983 CD, Fr¨uhst¨ucksfernsehen; 1984 Zapping; 1985 Prime time, Teleshopping; 1986 Camcorder; 1993 Reality-TV, Satellitensch¨ussel. 27 1947 Comeback, Quiz; 1949 Thriller; 1953 Starlet; 1954 live; 1956 Fan, Quizmaster, Showbusiness, Sponsor, sponsoren; 1960 Grusical; 1961 Oscar; 1962 Entertainer, Live-, Newcomer; 1967 Stern; 1968 Light-Show, Promoter; 1969 One-Man-Show; 1970 Personality-Show; 1971 Talk; 1973 Talkmaster, Talkshow; 1978 Ein-Mann-Show; 1982 Standing Ovation; 1987 Sponsoring; 1989 Infotainment; 1990 Gameshow. 28 1952 Skript; 1954 Science-fiction, Koproduktion; 1956 Breitwand, Cinemascope, Cutterin, Remake; 1959 Western; 1961 Producer; 1962 Horrorfilm; 1963 Actionfilm; 1964 Slapstick; 1965 Treatment; 1967 Action, cutten, Filmfestival; 1968 Stuntman; 1971 Suspense; 1973 Stunt; 1978 Trailer; 1979 Stuntfrau, Road Movie; 1981 Quickie. 29 1947 Nachtklub; 1959 Cafeteria; 1963 American bar, Coffeeshop; 1967 Nightclub. 30 1949 Coca-Cola; 1959 Softdrink; 1961 Kartoffelchips, Long Drink, Tonic Water; 1963 Cocktail, Softeis; 1964 Hot Dog; 1966 Appetizer, Dip; 1967 Flips, Convenience Food, Dressing, Snack; 1970 Bitter Lemon; 1979 Cracker. 31 1949 Management, Marktforschung; 1952 Marketing; 1955 Off-shore-; 1956 -Engineer, Unternehmensforschung; 1957 Verkaufstrainer; 1959 Holding; 1961 Designer; 1962

business behavior that frequently carry a negative connotation,32 names for work relationships that are viewed positively,33 and jargon.34 The language of the recent environmental movement, which grew out of the American student movement, also contains numerous Americanisms. Umweltschutz (environmental protection) has become a political buzzword, even in the vocabulary of the conservative political parties.35 The terminology of these fields shows that linguistic Americanization is primarily pragmatic. Words have been imported along with objects or ideas. Their adoption therefore documents stances, attitudes, and mental states. They reveal a German affinity for the American lifestyle. Use of the term American way of life in German can be traced back as far as 1957. Names for particular social activities also suggest this affinity.36 In addition to Outdoor Activities (1974),37 Germans have forms of domesticity38 such as Cocooning (1990), which appears to be the most recent stop on the retreat into private life. Social change is also reflected in the Americanization of that area of German vocabulary that concerns the postwar “sexual revolution.” The prudery of the 1950s gave rise to terms such as Sex in 1954, sexy in 1956, Sexbombe and Leasing; 1963 Trainee, Consulting, Industrial-Design; 1965 Brainstorming; 1970 Teamer; 1972 leasen; 1978 Franchise; 1990 electronic cash. 32 1949 Dumping; 1961 Dumpingpreis; 1962 feuern; 1969 hire and fire. 33 1954 Teamwork; 1961 Teamarbeit; 1977 Teamgeist. 34 1949 Boss; 1962 Moneymaker, (Big) Business, Clan; 1965 Tycoon; 1972 Deal, Headhunter; 1973 Mafia; 1975 Crash; 1977 Job-Killer; 1969 ausd¨unnen; 1981 Peanuts; 1986 Geldw¨ascher(ei), Plastikgeld. 35 1962 Fallout; 1963 Wegwerf-; 1969 Recycling; 1970 Umwelt-, Umweltschutz, Umweltverschmutzung; 1971 umweltbewusst; 1977 recyclen; 1982 saurer Regen; 1988 Treibhauseffekt. 36 1949 Bottle-Party; 1957 Cocktailparty (isolated occurrences as early as 1929; Cocktail documented as early as 1864); 1959 Dinner; 1964 Candlelight-Dinner; 1967 Barbecue, Sonntagsbrunch; 1968 Dinnerparty. 37 1956 Autokino, Drive-in; 1963 Shopping; 1967 Holiday; 1980 Window-Shopping. 38 1947 Hobby; 1957 Swimmingpool; 1963 Living room; 1969 Homedress, open house; 1972 Hollywood-Schaukel; 1974 Pool; 1976 Partyservice.

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Striptease in 1957. A sexual “liberation” followed that lasted until the beginning of the 1980s,39 when a more restrictive atmosphere took over due to the spread of the AIDS virus. The adoption of Safe Sex in German (1986) is one example of this development. Youth groups and their chosen forms of expression have dominated the pluralistic, Western-oriented society of the Federal Republic. Not until the end of the 1970s did terms such as Oldie and Graue Panther (gray panther) appear, indicating a change in self-perception and increased self-confidence on the part of the older generation. Society today is highly differentiated according to age and associated lifestyles, income, music preferences, and degree of politicization.40 At the same time, the Streetworkers who entered the language in 1977 were linguistic evidence of the social problems created by modern consumer society. The youth movement of the 1960s had perhaps the most lasting effect. Its social criticism has continued to influence public discussion with many of its own terms.41 Those include above all expressions criticizing relationships produced by power politics and traditional worldviews.42 In contrast, other terms were adopted to describe behaviors and protest forms with a positive connotation.43 The hippie movement also influenced the drug jargon that emerged from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, and is one of the most developed

American semantic fields in German.44 Adoption of American vocabulary for describing human qualities has been particularly informative, especially numerous positive expressions, many of which had their origins in contemporary youth language.45 Descriptions of human characteristics with negative connotations, on the other hand, often originate outside the language popular among youth.46 Until the end of the 1950s, Americanization of German vocabulary reflected the specific postwar political situation and the efforts of the United States to integrate the Federal Republic into the West. Beginning in the early 1960s, however, another linguistic borrowing phase referring to other areas of life became evident. The sharp increase in borrowings from American English in the 1960s underscores the Western orientation of German society. German vocabulary of course continued to reflect American political and military dominance, but some forms of economic and cultural adoption were also evident. Research into Anglicisms in Germany also began around 1963. While Americanization in Germany was at first spread by elites, particularly the middle class, the most important vehicles for Americanization of the German language in the 1960s were youth language and a subculture that stretched across the Atlantic.

39 1962 Playboy, Playmate, Stripper; 1963 Strip, strippen; 1964 Stripperin; 1966 Latin Lover; 1974 Sexshop; 1976 Peep-Show. 40 1950 Teenager; 1957 angry young man, zorniger junger Mann, Teen; 1958 Twen; 1962 Beat Generation, Beatnik; 1963 Rocker, Outcast; 1966 Underdog; 1967 Blumenkind, Hippie; 1968 Yippie, Youngster; 1973 Kids, Single; 1975 Skinhead; 1977 Oldie; 1979 Gay, Graue Panther; 1980 Popper; 1983 Skin, Streetfighter; 1984 Yuppie; 1987 Dinks. 41 1962 Establishment, White-Collar-; 1963 Jet Set; 1964 ¨ Uberflussgesellschaft; 1967 Snobiety; 1968 Weisse Kragen; 1971 Wegwerfgesellschaft. 42 1954 Wunschdenken; 1968 Einweg-, Traum-; 1969 Grosser Bruder; 1970 schweigende Mehrheit; 1971 amerikanischer Traum; 1979 Big Brother, Traumfabrik. 43 1962 human touch; 1963 Happening; 1966 Sit-in; 1967 Go-in, Love-in, Flower Power; 1969 ziviler Ungehorsam; 1972 Women’s Lib; 1974 alternativ; 1981 Die-in.

English had a differing impact on the the variants of German spoken in the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). It was not uncommon for Americanisms used in

americanization as a reflection of east-west integration

44 1966 Trip; 1967 Pot; 1968 Joint, Junkie; 1969 Droge, high, Shit; 1970 fixen, Fixer, Grass, User; 1972 ant¨ornen, ausflippen, kiffen; 1973 Dope, Horrortrip; 1974 Dealer, stoned; 1975 dealen, Kick; 1977 clean, Flash, Schuss, sniffen; 1979 Schnee, Speed; 1982 Cold turkey, Sniff; 1985 Crack, Designer-Droge; 1987 Ecstasy. 45 1954 Allroundman, clever; 1961 ambitioniert, kreativ; 1963 hip, tough; 1964 happy; 1967 cool, in, Sunnyboy; 1968 popig; 1969 Number one, Senkrechtstarter; 1976 Softie; 1978 flippig, softig, taff; 1979 Power; 1983 Crack; 1987 freakig. 46 1957 Highbrow-; 1962 Babitt, Snobismus; 1963 Papiertiger; 1976 Looser.

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the Federal Republic – such as Trend, Hobby, or Job – to find their way into the everyday speech of the GDR.47 Thus, by 1980, one East German linguist determined that one can “hardly still argue that the spread of Anglo-American vocabulary into the everyday speech of the GDR has been minimal.”48 Unlike the Federal Republic, the GDR did not feel Anglo-American influences until the late 1960s. There was usually a one- to two-year delay in the adoption of Americanisms in the GDR, as a comparison of the East and West German editions of Duden, the authoritative reference book on German usage, reveals.49 The East German daily press frequently explained expressions that were to be formally adopted into contemporary vocabulary.50 Expressions such as Business, Boss, Publicity, High Society, Job, Sexappeal, Shakehands, Boom, Investment, Leasing, Lobby, Manager, Marketing, Styling, Callgirl, Kid, Tiebreak, Layouter (layout personnel in publishing), Single, Dealer, and Discountgesch¨aft (discount store) were adopted in the GDR’s language through ideological critiques of the manifestations and institutions of the capitalist world. Anticapitalist rhetoric was, therefore, an “important source for the penetration of Anglo-American linguistic material into the socialist world.”51 Such expressions often bore 47 Hugo Moser, “Die Entwicklung der deutschen Sprache seit 1945,” in Besch, Reichmann, and Sonderegger, eds., Sprachgeschichte, 1691. 48 Helmut Langner, “Zum Einfluss des Angloamerikanischen auf die deutsche Sprache der Gegenwart,” Sprachpflege 29 (1980): 73. 49 See Ulrich Busse, Anglizismen im Duden: Eine Untersuchung zur Darstellung englischen Wortguts in den Ausgaben des Rechtschreibdudens von 1880–1986 (T¨ubingen, 1993). For the 1986 (East German) edition, Lehnert lists Allroundman, Bit, Black box, Blackout, Caravan, Countrymusic, Decoder, Diskjockey, Drummer, floaten, Holocaust, Input, Jogging, Spiritual, Oldie, Public Relations, Surfer, TalkShow, Terminal, T-Shirt, Understatement, Zoom; see Martin Lehnert, Anglo-Amerikanisches im Sprachgebrauch der DDR (Berlin, 1990), 61. 50 Roll-on-roll-off-Schiffe, Swing, Country-music, BlackPower-Bewegung, Freeze-Bewegung, Patchwork, Roomingin, Remake, Shredder, Engineering, Consulting, Pluralismus, Informatik, Schl¨usseltechnologie. 51 Lehnert, Anglo-Amerikanisches im Sprachgebrauch der DDR, 59.

negative associations.52 However, some Anglicisms that were typical of the GDR but not in common use in the Federal Republic reflected the socialist reality of the GDR, including such terms as Broiler, Kombine (combine harvester), Dispatcher, Meeting, Disco-Sprecher, PopGymnastik (aerobics performed to popular music), Parken und Reisen (park and ride), Inter-Shop, Inter-Hotel, and Plaste (plastics). the relationship between americanisms and internationalisms Americanization of national languages has been a worldwide phenomenon that received an unusually strong impetus in Germany because of the particular conditions of the postwar period. The Americanization of German language today can thus hardly still be described as an effect of the occupation. “Linguistic borrowing results from the abundance of international relationships, from cooperation and contacts in economics, military affairs, politics, culture, tourism, and sports.”53 This has been true above all for borrowing in the field of computers.54 It is the field that most strongly influences our 52

“When using these words, one should take care to prevent elements of meaning that are foreign to the socialist lifestyle from invading our language and thereby our consciousness” (Langner, “Einfluss des Angloamerikanischen,” 69). 53 Heidemarie C. Langner, Die Schreibung englischer Entlehnungen im Deutschen: Eine Untersuchung zur Orthographie von Anglizismen in den letzten hundert Jahren, dargestellt anhand des Dudens (Frankfurt am Main, 1995), 35. 54 1947 Programm; 1959 digital; 1962 Daten, Datenverarbeitung, Elektronengehirn, Computer, Disc, Hotline, Operator, Programmierer; 1964 f¨uttern; 1967 Datenbank, Halbleiter, Modul, Software; 1968 Terminal; 1969 EDV, Operating, programmieren, Scanner, Data-; 1971 Display; 1974 Anwender, Compiler, Composer, Hardware; 1976 Mikroprozessor; 1977 Code, Floppy disk; 1978 Bit, Modem, Password, RAM, ROM, User; 1979 Network; 1980 Diskette, Heimcomputer; 1981 CAD, CAE, CAM, computerunterst¨utzt, intelligent, Interface; 1982 Programmiersprache; 1983 hacken, Homecomputer, Joystick, Personalcomputer; 1984 Cracker, Hacker, k¨unstliche Intelligenz, Maus, PC; 1985 Mailbox; 1987 CD-ROM, Strichcode, Men¨u; 1988 Laptop, Touchscreen, 1989 Computervirus, 1990 Notebook.

The Americanization of the German Language

lives today, and its vocabulary contains the highest proportion of Americanisms because of U.S. dominance in this technology sector. Scientific terminology, conferences, and technical publications are the transmission routes for English in this era of increasing international cooperation.55 Computer vocabulary has become increasingly well-established since the 1960s and, especially, 1970s. In a narrow sense, it is a technical vocabulary, but it illustrates a general trend in present-day language; namely, that there are no longer clear boundaries between technical and general language. As the computer field demonstrates, borrowing in a specific technical field is later spread within everyday speech as a whole. At the same time, English has become the lingua franca in the second half of the twentieth century. The spread of American English is a manifestation of this trend toward globalization. Research will have to deal with this linguistic globalization by viewing foreign expressions increasingly as internationalisms, as lexemes and word groups that are semantically identical or similar in form in several world languages because 55

See Schmitt, Anglizismen in den Fachsprachen.

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“differentiation and integration are sub-trends in the internationalization process.”56 Many of these internationalisms are of Greco-Roman origin, such as Mikroelektronik and Television, or contain Greco-Roman morphological elements, such as anti-, auto-, bi-, co-, ex-, inter-, iso-, makro-, mikro-, pro-, and super-, which are simultaneously also Americanisms. To speak of an Americanization of the German language thus does not capture the whole picture. The Germans still speak German. American expressions are used as needed. This presents no “danger” to national languages.57 Rather, it is a sign of growing internationalism.

56 Karl-Ernst Sommerfeldt, ed., Entwicklungstendenzen in der deutschen Gegenwartssprache (Leipzig, 1988), 159. 57 Busse traces the linguistic consequences of this development, which certainly is not a threat to the German language when viewed from the perspective of the German vocabulary as a whole. He describes the increase in Anglicisms/Americanisms in Duden from 1880 to 1986. The bottom line was an increase from 1.36 percent (1880) to 3.46 percent in the West (1986) and 2.77 percent in the East (1986); see Busse, Anglizismen im Duden.

chapter nine

Between Blight and Blessing The Influence of American Popular Culture on the Federal Republic Michael Ermarth

Along with Europe and much of the rest of the world, Germany has absorbed abundant amounts of American popular culture while fretting anxiously about its effects. Although there has been a realignment of the formerly hard-bitten, Manichean distinction between spiritual Kultur and practical Zivilisation, German regard for American popular culture has remained ambivalent and highly charged. Many Germans continue to find it appealing or refreshingly fun, whereas hostile critics view it as the relentless onslaught of commercialized vulgarity and meretricious mindlessness, sweeping away distinctively German (and European) culture and character. Aggravating the chronic “wound” of German identity and long-standing qualms about modernity (now, perhaps, postmodernity), American influence in this teeming area is likely to remain a contentious issue, especially when regarded as cultural imperialism or as hegemonic “superculture,” engulfing the world in numbness, dumbness, and selfalienation.1

The West German experience with American popular culture has been marked by a contrast between wide (although not necessarily deep) receptivity among many “ordinary” and less-educated Germans – especially youth – and suspicion or hostility from more-educated, opinion-setting sectors, including intellectuals, artists, religious authorities, and custodians of high culture. For many reasons, the German encounter with American popular culture has been especially intense, and the debate about its impact has remained vehement. But it must also be said that abiding, agonized ambivalence toward American influence in this area hardly constitutes a unique German Sonderweg (special path) – as evident in the comparable cases of Canada and Mexico. Indeed, this very ambivalence, suspended between “common” acceptance and “elite” refusal, may be regarded as yet another sign of German “normalization” within the freely contesting premises of liberal modernity. Whether American-style popular culture constitutes a crucial component in modern society remains a moot issue.2

1 See C. W. E. Bigsby, ed., Superculture: American Popular Culture and Europe (London, 1975); Bernd Polster, ed., Westwind: Die Amerikanisierung Europas (Cologne, 1995); Alf L¨udtke, Inge Marssolek, and Adelheid von Saldern, eds., Amerikanisierung: Traum und Alptraum im Deutschland des 20. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1996); Ralph Willet, The Americanization of Germany, 1945–1949 (London, 1989). For a brisk, discerning analysis of the whole question, see Rob Kroes, “‘Americanization’: What Are We Talking About?” in Rob Kroes, ed., High Brow

Meets Low Brow: American Culture as an Intellectual Concern (Amsterdam, 1988), 303–17; Dan Diner, America in the Eyes of the Germans: An Essay on Anti-Americanism, trans. Allison Brown (Princeton, N.J., 1996). 2 See the chapters by Raimund Lammersdorf and Axel Schildt, vol. 1, Society.

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culture as self-conscious idea versus unconscious hegemony Popular or “mass” culture has come to mean the sum of leisure activities, entertainment, and commodity consumption (“consumer culture”); it may also refer to the tacit mores and patterns of everyday life or demotic “ways of life.” An elastic notion evolving with new forms of technological propagation, popular culture is usually distinguished from traditional folk culture and established high culture, as well as from political culture. Indeed, some recent observers have insisted that American popular culture is inimical not only to German cultural vitality and identity but also to a genuinely participatory or “civic” political culture, thereby driving a fatal wedge into the core of modern civilization. Judged by the German distinction between “UK” (for Unterhaltungskultur, or entertainment culture), and “EK” (for ernste Kultur, or serious culture), American popular culture has often been declared trivial or vacuous in content but at the same time hegemonic and uncannily seductive to the common or “mass” mind. Notions of “mass mind” and “mass man” – of individuals helplessly molded by the inscrutable powers of technology – have constituted part of the German EK interpretation of the amorphous, burgeoning domain of popular culture. Culture – whether highbrow or lowbrow, “mass” or “folk” – does not lend itself to clear analytic determinations: Matters of definition, origin, transmission, reception, and long-term impact remain shadowy or plastic. All culture at whatever level transforms itself through adaptation, mediation, and transfer, so that fixed meanings and definite, lasting effects are difficult to ascertain and profile. Moreover, there exists an additional difficulty of conceptualization: German cultural interpreters have held that high culture achieves lasting, creative meaning through transmission by trained, reflective custodians like themselves, whereas “sensate” popular culture is said to work more reflexively or “instinctively” in a thoughtless twilight zone of semiconsciousness or even unconsciousness. A

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pithy line in Wim Wender’s 1976 film Kings of the Road (Im Lauf der Zeit) expresses this common view of the hegemony of Americanized mass culture: “They [the Americans] have colonized our unconscious.” The exponential expansion of media and communications technology in recent times, along with attendant notions about the calculated “programming” of passive, inert receptors (as in computing, cybernetics, and robotics) has provided new fuel for heated debates about the conscious and unconscious effects of such popular culture.

uneasy “little america” For more than a century and a half the tandem epithets of “Americanism” and “Americanization” have circulated in Germany, signifying the ever-breaking waves of the future, conceived as dream or nightmare, utopia or dystopia, disenchantment or reenchantment of the world. On the positive side, the terms have connoted an e´ lan of adventurous dynamism and practical activism, robust individualism and youthfulness, boundless possibility, progress, and technical mastery (all, by the way, closely akin to the wonted German self-image of “Faustian” will and undaunted striving).3 On the negative side, these terms have stood for “alien” materialism and predatory profitseeking, crass worship of success, banausic functionalism and philistine superficiality, the cult of sheer quantity, conformity to the “lowest common denominator,” narcissistic image-consciousness and sheer cosmetic fakery. The whole issue of American civilizational influence in Germany remains suffused with elements of projection, emulation, competition, opposition, and dialectical oneupmanship. From its inception a half-century ago, the Federal Republic has been widely characterized by Germans and non-Germans alike (including many American commentators) as 3

See, in a somewhat hackneyed exposition, Bernard Nuss, Das Faustsyndrom: Ein Essay u¨ ber die Mentalit¨at der Deutschen (Bonn, 1992).

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thoroughly “Americanized” – most especially in the sphere of popular culture, where it has been dubbed a “little America.”4 Both scholarly and journalistic treatments have routinely emphasized West Germany’s supposedly selfevident Americanization.5 After insisting that “America is geographically distant but is present daily in the everyday world (Lebenswelt) of Germans,” Stern journalist Sebastian Knauer underscored this ubiquity by invoking the multiplier effect of high-technology and multimedia: “America has been everywhere at the push of a button.”6 American influence in the 1970s and 1980s remained most visible in high-technology, leisure, and entertainment areas – glaringly apparent in film, telecommunications, cable and satellite television, videotext, personal computers, and, most recently, on the Internet. The relation between EK and UK cultures was transformed by the new private media landscape of the 1980s, and these developments have been very unsettling to previous assumptions about the public-service nature of broadcasting. Of 311 new films shown in the Federal Republic in 1982, 122 were produced in the United States and 70 in West Germany. American films constituted about one-third and German films less than one-sixth of feature-length films broadcast by the public channel ZDF in 1985. The commercial channel RTL devoted roughly 25 percent of its broadcast time to American programming in 1988, in contrast to about 10 percent for public-service channels ARD and ZDF

4

Most recently and caustically by Rolf Winter, Little America: Die Amerikanisierung der deutschen Republik (Hamburg, 1995). 5 See Hermann Glaser, Kulturgeschichte der Bundesrepublik, 3 vols. (Munich, 1985); Jost Hermand, Kultur im Wiederaufbau: Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1945–1965 (Munich, 1986), 239, and Die Kultur der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1965–1985 (Frankfurt am Main, 1990), 235– 77; Wolfgang Benz, ed., Die Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 4 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1989), vol. 4: Kultur. See also the chapters by Axel Schildt, vol. 1, Society, and Stephen Kalberg, vol. 2, Society. 6 Sebastian Knauer, Lieben wir die USA? Was die Deutschen u¨ ber die Amerikaner denken (Hamburg, 1987), 26, 137.

combined.7 Because lower costs made American productions increasingly attractive to European media networks, U.S. companies were accused of “dumping” practices intended to knock out indigenous programming. Moreover, the relentlessly formulaic format of Rambo, Terminator, Rocky, and other action films and their sequels added to the impression of prepackaged or “cloned” uniformity. The media scholar Wolfgang Michal in 1983 characterized the influence of American media with the loaded phrase “colonization of consciousness.”8 Predictions of the total “McDonaldization” of the media have reinforced the long-standing dread of the loss of intellectual depth, spiritual transcendence, personal meaning, and national identity.9 Critics have reviled such lurid popular culture as high-tech brainwashing by a “telecracy” or “consciousness industry,” imprinting passive recipients with insatiable appetites and automatic, zombie-like behavior. Wenders warned gravely of West Germany’s impending “Americanization by mediatization” in Der Spiegel of October 1987: The Federal Republic has only one wish, to belong entirely to this huge, awful America, so that it finally becomes the fifty-first state. . . . That has economic grounds. I am convinced that the most important 7 See Klaus von Bismarck et al., Industrialisierung des Bewusstseins: eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit den ‘neuen’ Medien (Munich, 1985), 17–9; Kraft Wetzel, “Wird Europa eine Film- und Fernseh-Kolonie der USA?” EG Magazin 3, no. 15 (Apr. 1985): 15–8; Udo Michael Kr¨uger, “U.S. Productions on West German Commercial Television,” in Christian Thomsen, ed., Cultural Transfer on Electronic Imperialism? The Impact of American Television Programs on European Television (Heidelberg, 1989), 77–87. 8 Wolfgang Michal, “Die Kolonisierung des Bewusstseins. Amerikanische Medien-Multis erobern Europa,” L’80 25 (1983): 29–35. See also the chapters by Michael Geisler, Anton Kaes, and Thomas Koebner in this section. Long-lasting media effects have been called “the great bluff” by a skeptical Rolf Degen in “Medienwirkung: Der grosse Bluff,” Psychologie heute 3 (1988): 20–7. 9 See Hermann Meyn, “Die Medienlandschaft der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Eine Bestandsaufnahme,” Der B¨urger im Staat 36, no. 3 (1986): 164–74; Gerhard Maletzke, Kulturverfall durch Fernsehen? (Berlin, 1988).

Between Blight and Blessing industry of mankind – more even than the weapons industry – will sooner or later be the entertainment industry; and that every culture and every identity – every chance for self-determination – will be beaten down by this infernal sort of production. One can see this best in American towns where the people live a completely mindless existence, as in a science fiction novel about people who are completely drugged and can be managed like zombies. But that is not just the case with Americans. It is spreading. One cannot stop it, either by warnings or by actions.10

The oracular writer Botho Strauss likewise railed against the insidious technoid trend of the times: “The regime of telecratic publicity is the most bloodless but at the same time the most comprehensive totalitarianism in all history.”11 A question worth asking in a modern liberal society aware of its grounds and freedoms is whether these objectionable forms of popular culture allegedly at the “on” position of the button cannot also be moderated with the individual’s choice of the “off” button. Assertions about the wholesale Americanization of West German popular culture and everyday life are now being revised in light of more careful empirical study of actual patterns of behavior and opinion.12 Actual concrete choices (as distinct from projected images), including reading and viewing habits, home furnishings, dress, recreation, musical tastes, and patterns of “motorization,” retained identifiably German preferences. And who can say whether the modern mode of “expressive individualism” is really more German or American in inspiration or in its unfolding evolution? As early as 1967, Klaus Mehnert in Der deutsche Standort took exception to intellectual opinions about Americanized “mass culture” and “mass man” by observing: “Mass man is not happening.”13 Indeed, attention to the syncretistic or recombinant character of American and 10

Der Spiegel 41 (Oct. 19, 1987): 235. Botho Strauss, “Anschwellender Bocksgesang,” Der Spiegel 47 (Feb. 2, 1993): 207. 12 See the chapter by Axel Schildt, vol. 1, Society. 13 Klaus Mehnert, Der deutsche Standort (Stuttgart, 1967), 28. For background, see Norbert Krenzlin, ed., Zwischen Angstmetapher und Terminus: Theorien der Massenkultur seit Nietzsche (Berlin, 1992). 11

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German popular culture as actual developing, historical spheres rather than static, atemporal, and “total” templates, shines a different light on overheated charges of unilateral colonization, cultural cloning, unconditional surrender, and self-alienation. Areas often regarded as especially marked by American influence – technological innovation, organizational practices, business acumen and ambition, grassroots political participation, self-improvement, physical fitness, ecological awareness, defiant youth culture, and outspoken feminism – all these specific areas reflect indigenous German traditions that adapted American practices rather than adopted wholesale models. The ethos of nonauthoritarian, demonstrative, and sometimes indulgent individualism that arose early on as the “loose” youth culture of West Germany has remained conspicuously oriented toward American trends and influences.14 This orientation spread to other age groups and social cohorts in the 1970s and 1980s, giving rise to German variants of the yuppie, the urban singles scene, and related patterns of brand-name consumption. American movies and television programming, including blockbuster movies and long-running serial productions such as Columbo, Dynasty, Dallas, and Miami Vice, reinforced the influence of American images and trends. Those years also saw widespread German rejection of aspects of American society, including official U.S. policies, as well as mounting doubts about the economic, ecological, and cultural effects of the so-called American way of life. Calls for a new German cultural and political identity, sometimes resoundingly anti-American, precipitated reassessments of American civilizational influence, including allegations of a crypto-totalitarian or fascistic Amerika. The mounting enthusiasm for “cultural revolution,” the leftist Green and “alternative” protest movements, as well as pacifist, anarchist, and neutral-nationalist currents, all served to challenge American prestige.15 Disillusionment

14 15

See the chapter by Uta G. Poiger, vol. 1, Culture. See the chapter by Carl Lankowski, vol. 2, Society.

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with the United States and its world role accompanied the loss of American moral standing in the wake of Vietnam, Watergate, NATO rearmament, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and German sympathy for Third World causes.16 For West Germans awash in Hollywood icons and hero figures, former American “good guys” turned rather quickly into a sinister, twisted team of malicious manipulators, profiteers, oppressive “supercops,” and blundering dupes. Although radical-left critics damned the American way of life as a “daily fascism” and reviled the “consumer terror” and mindless conformity of “hegemonic” Western lifestyles, they also lampooned West Germany as a servile, provincial offshoot of the United States or “ColaHinterland.”17

popular culture as counterculture But if American culture became for some West Germans the epitome of consumer capitalism, unbridled anthropocentrism, and global superpower arrogance, it also provided the alternative vision of a counterculture opposed to the “establishment” that it also represented. Even as their wrath vented itself on American policies and institutions, West German protesters borrowed much from American movements of civil disobedience and war protest. A young German writer pointed out that even at a time of deep German disillusionment with the United States in the 1970s, America still offered the basic repertory of alternatives to itself.18 It therefore remains questionable whether the cultural revolution of this “postmaterialist” protest generation can be characterized summarily as “a renunciation of the American dream and the 16 See the chapters by Philipp Gassert and David B. Morris, vol. 2, Society. 17 Reinhard Lettau, T¨aglicher Faschismus: Amerikanische Evidenz aus 6 Monaten (Reinbek, 1971); J¨urgen Ploog, Cola-Hinterland (Darmstadt, 1969). 18 This point was made by Dieter Baacke, “Der amerikanische Untergrund: Eine Alternative?” Deutsche Jugend 20, no. 2 (1972): 61–72.

American way of life.”19 It can be seen more broadly as enlisting the self-critical potential of that same “open society” and civic culture in the name of values that are neither specifically German nor American. If partially signifying protest and defiance through the late 1960s and 1970s, American popular culture by the early 1980s had become somewhat rote and stale, even as it tried to reinvent itself with new stars, new special effects, and new gestures of rebelliousness and freedom seeking. As the conservative cultural tendencies of the mid-1970s turned into the outright conservative political Wende (turnaround) of 1982, earlier currents of rebellion and solidarity seemed to shift toward the brazenly competitive individualism of the “elbow society.” Indeed, many forms of expressive or acquisitive individualism seemed to be readily co-opted into ploys for marketing commodities and alluring self-images for the “me generation.” Even blue jeans, long a potent symbol of youthful individuality, became more image- and class-conscious as “designer jeans.” Paralleling similar changes in the United States under President Ronald Reagan, the privatization and state-shrinking measures of the conservative-liberal governments of Helmut Kohl in the 1980s and 1990s gave rise to charges of a new sort of “Americanization,” now suspected to be the dismantling of the socialwelfare state, the erosion of social conscience and cohesion, and the high-pressure promotion of a privatistic, even narcissistic “kitsch culture” of distraction at the cost of an adequately supported EK culture of public enlightenment and edification. Some thoughtful West Germans were beset by fears that although there had been real virtues and rewards in shifting away from earlier illiberal values of state-sponsored “productionism” toward more free-market-oriented consumerism, the corrective trend may have gone too far in fostering a slackening work ethic

19 Hermann Glaser, “Kultur und Kulturpolitik in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” in Werner Weidenfeld and Hartmut Zimmermann, eds., Deutschland-Handbuch: Eine doppelte Bilanz 1949–1989 (Munich, 1989), 424.

Between Blight and Blessing

and a “weekend society” of egotistical selfindulgence and asocial, sharp elbows. The poet Rolf-Dieter Brinkmann, once a follower of the Beats and “pop-guru” Andy Warhol, became disenchanted with popular culture in the early 1970s, decrying “the exhaustion, the emptying of the West by Americanism, by alienation, by frenzy.”20 A few years later, the journalist Joachim Fernau concluded a blistering work on America’s influence by insisting: “If Americanism triumphs, it will cast all humanity into ruin within 150 years, and the earth will cycle through the cosmos like a dead Mars.”21 In a comprehensive work on the culture of modernism, the sociologist Richard M¨unch has insisted: The ideology of Americanism hampers a discerning understanding of the special problems of individual countries. Above all, what is ignored is the fact that the bestowal of the American way of life on other countries does not necessarily result in a free and democratic society but often in a combination of elitist social structure, exploitative capitalism, and dictatorial regimes.22

It was probably inevitable that German reunification under the auspices of the dominant West German “model” would be attacked by disgruntled elements on the left and right as the consummate German act of selfinflicted Americanization. Writers as diverse as Karlheinz Deschner, Stefan Heym, Erich Kuby, Alfred Mechtersheimer, Heiner M¨uller, Botho Strauss, Hans-J¨urgen Syberberg, Joseph von Westphalen, and Rolf Winter joined in the chorus against this crowning instance of cultural alienation.23 G¨unther Nenning epitomized 20 Rolf-Dieter Brinkmann, Rom: Blicke (Reinbek, 1979), 164. 21 Joachim Fernau, Halleluja: Die Geschichte der USA (Munich, 1977), 319. 22 Richard M¨unch, Die Kultur der Moderne, 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), 1:315–6. 23 Much as Briton William T. Stead saw it in his The Americanization of the World, or, The Trend of the Twentieth Century (London, 1901) at the beginning of the century, the German Karlheinz Deschner sees at its end the “Americanization of the world” as the “moloch megatrend” of the future; see Karlheinz Deschner, Der Moloch:

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these postunification doubts and resentments in a totalizing, fin-de-si´ecle vision of monolithic mass mediocrity, expressed in the unending, untranslatable apocalypse of “das perfekte Oneworldunisexmedibl¨odikonsumidummi – Mythos 2000.”24 In a less alarmist vein, the perceptive media commentator Christian Thomsen observed: “Americanization still exists and it may expand in the nineties, although no longer in a monocausal, one-sided, one-level way of influence as was thought and argued ten to fifteen years ago.”25 In the widening wake of European integration, the jazz, rock, publishing, and MTV “scenes” in Germany, including major festivals and showcase events, are becoming more discernibly European and “global” than “American” in flavor, as evident in the annual European Song Festival, ERASMUS, and other regular events. The lines between Americanization, Westernization, Europeanization, and globalization are blurring. The reception of certain features of American popular culture has contributed not only to greater “looseness” and pluralistic openness but also to what Hartmut von Hentig has aptly called “the new German common sense” – a view of life that tends to be more balanced, tolerant, sober, and modest than those of the past while remaining robustly skeptical of visionary exhortations and apocalyptic scenarios.26 Some features of popular culture, such as fan clubs, Internet “chat groups,” and local-access community channels, may be seen in the longer view

Zur Amerikansierung der Welt (Stuttgart, 1992). See also Rolf Winter, Nein, so hat diese Republik nicht werden sollen: Die politische Kultur der Bundesrepublik (Hamburg, 1994), 203. 24 G¨unther Nenning, “Grenzlos Deutsch,” in Stefan Ulbrich, ed., Gedanken zu Grossdeutschland (Vilsbiburg, 1990), 53. 25 Christian Thomsen, “Cultural Message and Transnational Commercialization,” in Christian Thomsen, ed., Cultural Transfer or Electronic Imperialism: The Impact of American Television Programs on European Television (Heidelberg, 1989), 10. 26 Harmut von Hentig, “Das Aufr¨aumen des Hauses, oder: Eine Kultur der Bescheidung,” in American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS), ed., Der deutsche Geist der Gegenwart (Bonn, 1990), 45–73, 53.

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as promoting a democratic and pluralist political culture.27 J¨urgen Habermas has argued that the Westernization of German cultural values and the overcoming of “special consciousness” (Sonderbewusstsein) have been the deepest defining trends in West Germany since World War II.28 Even the radical poet-anarchist Ernst

J¨unger seems to have recognized this crucial transformation: “Extending ‘Zarathustra’ – the Superman too is something that must be overcome.”29 Such salutary “overcoming of overcoming” means that Germany continues to move beyond its congenital Americanization complex, gaining truer self-understanding and self-possession.

27 Kaspar Maase, BRAVO Amerika: Erkundungen zur Jugendkultur der Bundesrepublik in den f¨unfziger Jahren (Hamburg, 1992), esp. 199–240. 28 J¨urgen Habermas, “Zur Stellung der Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaften,” in AICGS, ed., Der deutsche Geist der Gegenwart, 14–15.

29 Ernst J¨unger, Siebzig verweht (Stuttgart, 1998), 2:408.

chapter ten

Popular Music in Germany Experimentation and Emancipation from Anglo-American Models Edward Larkey

vocalist Udo Lindenberg (Hamburg) became emblematic stars for West German rock music, particularly in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These musicians were involved in controversies with the East German authorities while East German bands embarked on West German tours throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Some West German bands and vocalists, such as Kraftwerk, Nena, Nina Hagen, and the Scorpions, released hit recordings in the United States and established themselves beyond the regional market, even if only for short periods. Kraut Rock, political rock music, punk and Neue Deutsche Welle, dialect rock, and the German Schlager responded to specific conditions within youth cultures and society in the Federal Republic of Germany and signified a unique appropriation of internationally transmitted popular-music styles while constructively incorporating these into domestic traditions. Bands and vocal artists like Herbert Gr¨onemeyer, Tangerine Dream, and Marius M¨uller-Westernhagen embodied the regional and musical diversity of the German rock-music scene in the 1970s and 1980s, with identities creatively diverging from Anglo-American models. The electronic pop group Kraftwerk – a product of the 1960s fascination with electronics and studio dance-music production – is considered the father of 1990s techno music, which has traveled around the world to the United States, Asia, and Latin America. One of the most important markers of German identity in popular music is the language

the german contribution to a global popular-music language In the period 1968 to 1990, German popular music came of age, progressing beyond the phase of imitation of the 1960s and becoming less Anglicized. The German-language market developed into the second largest in the world (after the English-language market), accompanied by the increasingly global activities of multinational corporations in the entertainment industries, whose ownership was shared jointly by European (Philips/PolyGram, EMI, Bertelsmann) or Japanese (Matsushita, Sony) conglomerates. The so-called dual-broadcasting system was finally established in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1987, creating opportunities for private broadcasters to compete with public networks for advertising revenue and audience ratings, and providing impetus to broadcast to specifically segmented popularmusic audiences. Many important centers for popular-music production emerged in cities like Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, Hannover, and Munich. Television established shows catering to a wide variety of different popular-music audiences. Musikantenstadl, for example, was coproduced by the major German and Austrian networks (ARD and ORF) and featured folk music; the ZDF Hitparade, produced by the second major German network, was devoted to German Schlager, and shows like Formel I or Beat Club focused on Anglo-American rock and pop. Groups like BAP (Cologne) and 341

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of the lyrics. Genres like the Schlager and commercial Volksmusik, with long traditions in folk music and dance, popular film songs, and operettas, are therefore ahistorically constructed as inherently “German” because they utilize German lyrics. Music employing English lyrics is thought largely to derive from American and British models and to signify the influence of “Americanism.” German popular music from 1968 to 1990 helped construct multilayered and ambiguous cultural identities, using a variety of musical styles appropriated from the United States and Great Britain that could be both socially affirmative and oppositional. English lyrics themselves do not signify Americanization as much as the fact that English had become incorporated into the musical structure and experience of particular circles of rock-influenced musicians and audiences, with profound effects on the communicative role of German lyrics in the different genres of popular song.

kraut or deutsch rock Kraut Rock was a term originally applied by British rock critics to German rock groups of the late 1960s and early 1970s representing the “psychedelic underground” and avantgarde type of music reminiscent of Pink Floyd. The newly developed synthesizer was to provide the foundation for the tendency of Kraut Rock toward “cosmic” sounds and “space music” – cultivated by groups such as Tangerine Dream, Andreas Vollenweider (from Switzerland), and Klaus Schulze – that diverged from the usual Anglo-American pop-song and German Schlager formats. The two prototypical bands signifying “the birth of German rock music” in the early 1970s were the commune of Amon D¨uu¨ l from Munich and the Colognebased band Can. Both groups developed highly improvisational and eclectic musical styles. The well-trained musicians of Can utilized all types of musical styles – blues, classical, electronic music, jazz, and rock ’n’ roll – to “dissolve the sound streams that congeal and disperse and form unstable sound figures.” Can influenced a wide range of British pop artists in later years,

such as David Bowie, Simple Minds, and Ultravox. Amon D¨uu¨ l was conceived in 1967 originally as “a commune that also makes music.” It subordinated music to a countercultural worldview modeled along the lines of the American band The Grateful Dead, whom the band had experienced live in 1972 during a European tour.1 Can, like many other West German rock bands of the early and mid-1970s, went on tour in England and France in 1973 and 1974 and in other European countries in the following years. Early successes of Amon D¨uu¨ l II in 1970, which split from Amon D¨uu¨ l I in 1968, prompted German and international record companies like Ariola/Pan, BASF, EMI/Harvest, Metronome, Phonogram/Philips, Polydor/Zebra, United Artists/Liberty, and WEA to support other German rock bands in the 1970s. Many bands were featured acts at the rock and pop festivals the record companies sponsored, such as the Essen Song Days (Essener Song Tage 1968, 1969), the Euro-Music Festival in Aachen (1971), the Deutsch-Rock Festival in Krefeld (1973), or the German Super Rock Concert in Frankfurt (1973). New record labels emerged for German bands, like “Ohr” and “Pilz” (both founded by the controversial promoter of the Essener Song Days, Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser), “Brain” (Metronome), and “Spiegelei” (Intercord). At first the German bands in the late 1960s and early 1970s were amateurs with no experience in recording studios, negotiations with festival managers and booking agents, songwriting, or dealing with their audiences. By 1972, however, they had developed into routinized performers who successfully experimented with the new sound possibilities of the synthesizer.2 In the process they emerged from the counterculture into the mainstream, moved further away from improvisation toward practiced and well-engineered song productions, and focused on producing recordings at the expense of live productions. Some West German 1

Hermann Haring, Rock aus Deutschland-West (Reinbek, 1984), 27, 36. 2 Ibid., 33–4.

Popular Music in Germany

bands – Atlantis, Kraftwerk, Lake, Lucifer’s Friend, Passport, Scorpions, and Triumvirat – were able to exploit an economic and creative downturn in the Anglo-American pop industry in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. A drastic rise in oil prices and a glut of recordings in the major markets prompted the major American and British recording companies to search for untapped talent in their German subsidiaries, enabling these bands to successfully tour the United States, gain exposure on the new FM college radio stations, and sell substantial numbers of recordings.3 D¨usseldorf-based Kraftwerk, for example, made its first hit on the American market in 1975 with its single “Autobahn.” Their 1980s tune “Musique NonStop,” although it did not climb the charts in the United States, pushed them to the forefront of the American dance-music scene.4 The early 1970s were a period of experimentation and emancipation from the Anglo-American models, leading to the “deAnglicization” of German pop music.5 German lyrics were used sporadically from 1965 onward with only intermittent success; until the 1970s, rock musicians were reluctant to employ German lyrics because they had been considered a domain of the dominant and apolitical Schlager tradition of the German recording industry, and thus anathema to the countercultural rock musicians. Performers who wrote songs with primarily German lyrics included the folkrock group H¨olderlin, Udo Lindenberg (whose popularity blossomed during this period), and political rock groups like Floh de Cologne (Cologne), Lokomotive Kreuzberg, and Ton, Steine, Scherben (Berlin). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, middle-class German youths appropriated African American styles like blues, soul, reggae, rap, and hip-hop, which became vehicles for protest, countercultural identification,

3

Ibid., 106. Pascal Bussy, Kraftwerk (Munich, 1995), 190. 5 Edward Larkey, Pungent Sounds: Constructing Identity with Popular Music in Austria (New York, 1993), 149–71. Although this term was used to describe Austrian popular music, similar processes have occurred almost simultaneously in other countries, particularly West Germany. 4

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and social critique. Particularly members of ethnic minorities identified with rap, hip-hop, and reggae music.

political rock music The political rock groups – with impetus from the political student movements in various cities and universities like Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich, and Cologne – coupled lyrics involving the daily experiences of youths with political agitation, which helped overcome reservations about the unsuitability of German lyrics for popular songs among students and adherents of Anglo-American and German folk music. They earned countercultural credentials by embracing left-wing political organizations like the (West) German Communist Party (Floh de Cologne, Lokomotive Kreuzberg), the trade unions (Lokomotive Kreuzberg), and anarchist movements (Ton, Steine, Scherben) and first appeared on alternative record labels like Ohr (Floh de Cologne), Pl¨ane (Lokomotive Kreuzberg), and David Volksmund (Ton, Steine, Scherben). Contrary to American folk/protest singers like Pete Seeger, who were marginalized, or Bob Dylan, who was incorporated into the commercial recording industry, the German political folk/protest singers could draw on audiences organized either in the left-wing parties like the Social Democratic Party or the German Communist Party, or the Greens, who were a part of the “new social movements” that emerged around environmental and peace issues.6 udo lindenberg Udo Lindenberg was a professional drummer for a variety of different jazz and rock bands throughout the 1960s. His popularity skyrocketed with the release of his third LP, “Alles Klar auf der Andrea Doria,” in 1973, and thereafter he brought together various musicians to form his band, the Panik-Orchester. He became one 6

See the chapter by Carl Lankowski, vol. 2, Society.

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of the first and most influential West German rock stars in the 1970s, promoting the careers of other colleagues, particularly women, by letting them perform on his tours. He was just as adept at promoting himself through extensive public-relations campaigns. His fame made Hamburg synonymous with the German rockmusic scene throughout the decade. Contrary to the long, drawn out, “cosmic,” and unintelligible tunes of many of the Kraut Rock bands, Lindenberg’s compositions were musically dense and rhythmically straightforward rock tunes lasting only two or three minutes.7 His most significant contribution to German rock music, however, was his use of the German language, which found “a slang that smoothly fit into a rock rhythm.”8 Lindenberg’s lyrics could be disarmingly open and honest about intimate feelings or employ ironic fantasy to break through social and political stereotypes. His ironic exaggeration of episodes from daily life demonstrated his closer acquaintance with ordinary people and their needs compared to the Kraut Rockers. He evolved a signature nasal singing style suitable for his weak voice, whose “phrasing and emphasis were appropriate for rock rhythms,” and avoided the musical and lyric clich´es of the Schlager vocalists.9 Lindenberg gained particular notoriety for his irreverent but ironic treatment of topics in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). By far the most notorious of his songs was one directly addressed to Erich Honecker, head of the government and ruling party, publicly asking his permission to perform in the GDR. Sung to the tune of the old American jazz number “Chattanooga Choo Choo” – subsequently proscribed in the electronic media of the GDR – this song called on Honecker, the Oberindianer (Indian chief), to let Lindenberg, who “has a lot of friends in the GDR,” “sing in the Workers’ and Peasants’ State.” The most irreverent part of the song declared that “Honey” (Honecker) was probably a “pretty easy-going guy” who most 7 Albrecht Koch, Angriff aufs Schlaraffenland: 20 Jahre deutschsprachige Popmusik (Berlin, 1987), 65. 8 Haring, Rock aus Deutschland-West, 78. 9 Koch, Angriff aufs Schlaraffenland, 67.

likely deep within himself was a rocker who “secretly gets dressed up in a leather jacket” and locks himself in the bathroom to “listen to Western radio stations.”

nina hagen Nina Hagen, daughter of East German actress Eva-Maria Hagen and stepdaughter of singer Wolf Biermann, originally achieved fame in the GDR with the success of the satirical song “Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen” (“You Forgot the Color Film”). With the expulsion of Wolf Biermann from the GDR in 1976, Hagen was able to go to the West, where she restarted her career after a short stint in London with the help of Biermann’s connections to the American Columbia Broadcasting Corporation (CBS). Hagen introduced a number of innovations to the West German music scene through her highly dexterous vocal style, ranging from operatic coloratura to the “dirtiest” rock voice and anticipating the punk-rock vocal and music style in German rock. She also introduced the punk behavior of shocking audiences with brutally direct, emotionally expressive behavior onstage and off. The lyrics of her songs were disarmingly frank about the difficulties of female sexuality and male-female relationships, and “irritated the system of social convention by satirical overexaggeration and violation of taboos.”10 The secret of her success has been attributed to her ability to sing about what people only thought but would never dare talk about or act upon. She had a trademark impudence, independence, and self-confidence in dealing with the media and symbolized a new type of sexually active and erotically emancipated modern German woman. Hagen’s band consisted of members of the former Lokomotive Kreuzberg and was assembled by photographer/manager Jim Rakete. It accompanied her on tour through the Netherlands, France, and Germany, and was her backup band on her recordings until 1979, 10 Haring, Rock aus Deutschland-West, 126; see also 96–104.

Popular Music in Germany

when she split from the group before recording her second album, “Unbehagen.” Hagen first went to Holland and then settled in New York City, immersing herself in studies of “cosmicspiritual matters.”11 None of her albums after “Unbehagen” were as successful as those recorded between 1977 and 1979. After the split, her band reorganized and negotiated a contract with CBS to perform under the name “Spliff Radio Show.” It went on to become one of the most commercially successful new-wave groups in Germany.

punk and new wave Punk in the German-speaking countries emerged after encounters with British punkrock groups like the Sex Pistols and The Clash and was influenced by such American bands as The Dead Kennedys and The Ramones. It became the music of some of the countercultural scenes, like the “autonomous” youth centers in Z¨urich, the Squatters movement in West Berlin, and the youth-cultural underground in the GDR. Punk was both a sociocultural movement as well as a musical phenomenon whose expansion was influenced by unemployed youths in British cities. The evolution of punk from a subcultural protest movement to a musical style prompted the growth of the New German Wave in music, the Neue Deutsche Welle. Punk and new wave are important musical and cultural movements that persist up to the present, forming the substrate for the so-called hard-core and avant-garde sectors of German popular-music culture such as Die ¨ Toten Hosen, Die Artze, and the Einst¨urzende Neubauten. As a sociocultural movement in Germany, punk encompassed small groups of core adherents from all social classes, including both young intellectuals and teenagers as well as unemployed and working-class youths.12 Their 11

Koch, Angriff aufs Schlaraffenland, 103. Dieter Baacke, Jugend und Jugendkulturen: Darstellung und Deutung (Weinheim, 1987), 63, quotes an article in the German weekly Die Zeit according to which 12

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specific lifestyle and behavior were at odds with the hippie and psychedelic movements of the past. Instead of seeking a political or cultural alternative to existing capitalist society, the punk attitude was dystopically oriented, rejecting the established political parties, authorities, and cooptation by social and political institutions.13 Punk protest against society included a postmodern bricolage of the “aesthetic of the ugly,” with which punks “performed their negation of culture.” This was also manifested in the refusal to work, excessive drinking, begging, wearing shredded cast-off clothing, piercing their body parts and clothing with conspicuous safety pins, and outlandishly colored and styled hairdos.14 The punk look was complemented by the music and by slam dancing, in which dancers deliberately slam into each other on the dance floor. Several centers of punk music and culture emerged in West Germany, with their own scenes, magazines, clubs, record labels, and music groups.15 The most important of these were Berlin, D¨usseldorf, Hamburg, and Hannover.16 The punk-music movement spun off the new-wave genre after adherents of its two main components, street punk, with its roots in the Hamburg and Berlin scenes, and art punk, which predominated in D¨usseldorf, began to use more electronic equipment and synthesizers and became more musically experimental. New wave was more closely rooted in middleclass rebellion than the political alternative scene in Berlin.17 Hannover, otherwise a provincial city, grew into a center for punk culture after only 2 percent of youths questioned in a survey consider themselves to be punks, with another 15 percent sympathetic to them: Die Zeit, Feb. 6, 1981. 13 Benno Hafeneger, Gerd St¨uwe, and Georg Weigel, Punks in der Grossstadt-Punks in der Provinz (Opladen, 1993), 17. 14 Klaus Dewes, Punks (Munich, 1987). This is a series of interviews with a group of punk youths in Cologne. 15 Winfried Longerich mentioned several in his book “Da da da”: zur Standortbestimmung der Neuen Deutschen Welle (Pfaffenweiler, 1988), 69–70: Zick-Zack mit dem Rip-Off Vertrieb (Hamburg); No-Fun (Hannover); Der Zenzor (West Berlin); Eigelstein (Cologne); Ata Tak, Pure Freude, and Welt Rektor (D¨usseldorf). 16 Haring, Rock in Deutschland-West, 148–9. 17 Ibid., 150–4.

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one of the musicians from a leading punk group (Hans-A-Plast), calling himself Hollow Skai, started a fanzine called No Fun and organized the “No-Fun-Festival” in November 1978. A record sampler of the festival was made on the newly established “No-Fun” label and became the first major success of the young punk scene.18 Although many of the early punk bands sang in English, German was the favored language of the influential Hannover groups on the sampler, and German predominated in the lyrics of most of the punk bands by 1979. The regional punk-music scenes were largely boycotted or ignored by the established print and electronic mass media in Germany. new german pop music The German Schlager, which had been on the defensive ever since the popularity of AngloAmerican rock music in the mid-1960s, experienced a rejuvenation in the wake of the Neue Deutsche Welle, influenced by its simplified musical aesthetics and its ironic use of lyrics. This rejuvenation paralleled not only the acquisition of Anglo-American popular-music rhythms and sounds, but also the aging of the so-called 68er generation, who became the arbiters of the new musical taste. Singer-songwriter Peter Maffay, like Udo J¨urgens, Roland Kaiser, and others who were primarily Schlager vocalists, represented this new style of melodic pop music. Maffay broke new ground by changing both his musical and his visual image while scoring a success with a song first recorded by the popu¨ lar East German group Karat. This song, “Uber sieben Br¨ucken musst du gehn,” epitomized East German pop music with its melodically emphasized song structure and its metaphorically phrased social criticism, but it appealed to broad audiences in West Germany as well. The development of lyrics after punk and new wave also contributed to dissolving the preexisting borders between the old-style German Schlager, with its trivialized topics of love and pain, and the new-style pop music 18

Koch, Angriff aufs Schlaraffenland, 116.

preferred by younger audiences. This helped to broaden the range of musical styles in German popular music to include those that German rock and pop musicians had avoided but that the Schlager producers had continued to cultivate as part of the German popular-music heritage. These trends coexisted with the work of more serious vocal artists like Herbert Gr¨onemeyer, Klaus Lage, Wolf Maahn, and bands like the Cologne-based group BAP, whose musical heritage was rooted in Anglo-American rock but whose lyrics retained the stamp of the German singer-songwriter tradition. This also held true for a new generation of female recording and performing artists such as Ina Deter, Ulla Meinecke, and Anne Haigis.

the skinhead scene Most of the musical and countercultural influences transmitted into Germany from the United States or Great Britain from the 1960s onward were left-leaning and socially critical. However, some punk-music influences took a turn to the right after meeting with ska and reggae in Britain in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Early skinhead groups emerged in Germany in 1980–1 and emulated the behavior and clothing styles of their British models in the soccer hooligan culture. Their songs were characterized by nationalist lyrics and glorified the skinhead way of life, albeit sometimes with large doses of irony. As the skinhead scene became more politicized, however, this irony all but disappeared. Skinheads reacted against the middle-class “fashion punks” with their long hair and boring leftist ideology. The right “promised unforeseen opportunities for provocation (with Nazi symbols), camaraderie (clearly superior to the unconvincing offer of ‘solidarity’), unabashed machismo, drinking and vandalism without conscience, pure fun, and no politics.”19 German bands like the B¨ohse Onkelz (Evil Uncles), who started 19 Klaus Farin and Eberhard Seidel-Pielen, Skinheads (Munich, 1993), 99–101.

Popular Music in Germany

as a punk band in the city of Aschaffenburg in 1979, Endstufe, and St¨orkraft seemed to signal such a radical change in the attitudes of German youths, even though the total number of skinheads was tiny. The B¨ohse Onkelz eventually developed into a “normal” commercial rock band and distanced themselves from politically active Nazis who wanted to recruit them. But other bands, like Savage Army and Kraft durch Froide, responded positively to the overtures of neo-Nazi political groups. This politicization of the skinhead movement split it into different fractions, such as the Sharps (skinheads against racism) or the so-called boneheads. In the process, both music and lyrics were transformed. rap and hip-hop African American music always found small but dedicated groups of enthusiasts in Germany. African American performers like Champion Jack Dupree and B. B. King, in addition to British blues musicians like Alexis Korner, John Mayall, and Roger Chapman, regularly gave concerts in major West German cities. Soul singers like James Brown and Ray Charles still undertake tours in Germany at regular intervals. In the GDR, city blues and rhythm and blues became vehicles of protest against the lifestyle monopoly of the East German communist regime. East German blues bands like Monokel, Jonathan, and Freygang induced pilgrimages of fans from concert to concert, irritating the authorities, who feared the “decadence” and rebelliousness of the hundreds of unkempt, long-haired, and drunk youths at such gatherings. Break dancing and rap were popular on both sides of the Wall. In West Germany, both German and foreign youths embraced the first wave as it swept into the country with such DJs/rappers as Grandmaster Flash, Run DMC, and the Beastie Boys, who used disco beats, “scratching,” sampling, and mixing to create their own music with prerecorded material.20 20 David Dufresne, Rap Revolution: Geschichte – Gruppen – Bewegung (Zurich, 1992), 274.

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East German youths started break dancing in special clubs, but without “scratching” and mixing the records, which were usually expensive, rare, and imported. Although the first wave of hip-hop and rap used primarily English, a second wave in which German youths started to use German lyrics became popular in Germany in the second half of the 1980s. Examples are Die Fantastischen Vier, Fresh Familee, Fettes Brot; a rap sampler was released in 1991 under the title “Krauts with an Attitude.” Non-German immigrant youths living in Germany felt a special attraction to rap and hip-hop styles because of their minority status. Fresh Familee, an ethnically mixed group, combined different languages in their lyrics, as did Turkish rappers like Karakan (Nuremberg), who became very popular in Turkey, and Aziza-A. Several female rap artists from multiethnic backgrounds (Schwester S, Aziza-A, Cora E) emerged in Germany, modeled along the lines of American rappers like Salt ’n’ Pepa or Queen Latifah. Whereas the German rap groups are generally apolitical, rappers and hip-hop groups from non-German backgrounds espouse ethnic pride and protest against racism or, in the case of Aziza-A, sexism.

conclusion In the period between 1968 and the late 1980s, Anglo-American influences on German rock music paradoxically helped promote the German language – in both dialect and standard forms. German lyrics became an accepted means of communication and lost their stigma of belonging to the Schlager genre. However, although German lyrics have become a firmly entrenched component of German rock and popular music, the music itself is still of the Anglo-American variety. It has evolved from Schlager roots – with few references to concrete problems of society – into a hybrid, African American–influenced, rock-based music whose lyrics deal with acute social and generational problems in German society and that can compete on the international market. Commercial successes of vocalists like Nena and Nina Hagen, or of bands like the Scorpions or even

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Kraftwerk in the United States and Britain, attest to the international competitiveness of German popular music. The Scorpions maintained a broad and enthusiastic following in the United States throughout the 1980s and early 1990s while singing in English and shedding their German image among their American fans.21 Germany has long been an important 21 For a summary of the band’s remarkable success in Germany, Europe, Japan, and the United States, see Rainer M. Schr¨oder and Edgar Kl¨usener, Scorpions: Winds of Change (St. Andr¨a, 1992), 54, 151, where the authors describe their first two, almost back-to-back concert tours in the United States.

tour stop for American artists like Michael Jackson, Prince, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen, and for British acts like the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, and Peter Gabriel. Profoundly influenced by Anglo-American models, German popular music has become part of a global means of communicating ambivalent and contradictory political attitudes, intimate feelings, as well as the simple but global desire for fun. In this sense, the epic production of The Wall by Roger Waters at the site of the former Berlin Wall in July 1990, which demonstrated all these traits, was a fitting tribute to the end of the Cold War.

chapter eleven

Hollywood in Germany Thomas Koebner Translated by Sally E. Robertson

The tastes of German film audiences also did not change radically after 1945. After the establishment of the Motion Picture Export Agency (MPEA), Hollywood – unrestrained by quotas – sent large numbers of films to Germany for dubbing and release. German productions nonetheless remained more popular until the early 1960s. At that point, the German film industry began to die, and the period was decried as one of decay by the so-called Oberhausen Manifesto, which proclaimed the end of “Papa’s movies.”1

The Third Reich forced a third of the German film industry to emigrate – producers and theater owners, directors and actors – most of them Jews who, given the racial ideology of Hitler’s regime, had no future in Germany. Already in the 1920s, noted directors such as Ernst Lubitsch and F. W. Murnau had made their way from Berlin to Hollywood. Neither before nor since have the major American studios experienced a qualitatively or quantitatively more significant infusion of talent. German immigration clearly gave American film an indisputable artistic shot in the arm in areas from comedy and film noir to drama and the biopic (or biographical picture). The ranks of those who emigrated included directors Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, Wilhelm Dieterle, Henry Koster, Detlef Sirk, Curtis Bernhardt, and Max Oph¨uls; cinematographers Curt Courant, Karl Freund, Franz Planer, and Eugen Sch¨ufftan; and actors Marlene Dietrich, Alexander Granach, Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt, Albert Bassermann, Curt Bois, Felix Bressart, Reinhold Sch¨unzel, and others. Few of them returned from their film exile after the end of World War II. The most prominent of those who did so was probably Erich Pommer, who, as an American film officer, helped to rebuild production in the Western occupation zones. Authors, producers, directors, and actors who had worked in the industry before 1945 were active in the industry after the war, and it is clear that it was not only Nazis who worked in the film industry of the Third Reich.

the postwar period Many American films did not appeal to German audiences. One measure of success was cinema owners’ top-ten list for each season.2 According 1 Quoted in Hans Helmut Prinzler and Eric Rentschler, eds., Augenzeugen: 100 Texte neuer deutscher Filmemacher, 2d rev. ed. (Frankfurt am Main, 1988), 27– 8; see also Heide Fehrenbach, Cinema in Democratizing Germany: Reconstructing National Identity After Hitler (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1995). 2 All statistical data are taken from the following sources: Filmstatistische Jahrb¨ucher der Spitzenorganisation der deutschen Filmwirtschaft (SPIO), Wiesbaden; Martin Loiperdinger, “Amerikanisierung im Kino? Hollywood und das westdeutsche Publikum der 1950er Jahre,” TheaterZeitSchrift 28 (1989): 50–60; Irmela Schneider, Film, Fernsehen u. Co.: Zur Entwicklung des Spielfilms im Kino und Fernsehen (Heidelberg, 1990); Joseph Garncarz, “Hollywood in Germany: Die Rolle des amerikanischen Films in Deutschland 1925–1990,” in Uli Jung, ed., Der

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to these statistics, American films accounted for only 14.7 percent of those on the top-ten list in the 1950s, whereas German and Austrian films made up 75.4 percent. The first American film to climb toward the top of the list was the wartime melodrama From Here to Eternity (Verdammt in alle Ewigkeit) directed by German immigrant Fred Zinnemann, which reached second place in 1953–4. It was another seven years before another American film, William Wyler’s Ben Hur, attained similar success; Irma La Douce, directed by Billy Wilder, followed in 1963–4. The British-made Doctor Zhivago, directed by David Lean, topped the list in 1966–7 and was the first American-financed film to do so. In 1969–70, a truely American-made production took first place for the first time, but its main character was a German automobile, The Love Bug (Ein toller K¨afer). Easy Rider finished third that year. In the 1970s and 1980s, numerous American films reached the top ten, and several took first place: The Godfather (Der Pate) in 1972, Young Frankenstein (Frankenstein Junior) in 1975, The Rescuers (Bernard und Bianca) in 1974, The Jungle Book (Das Dschungelbuch) in 1980, The Fox and the Hound (Cap und Capper) in 1982, and E.T. in 1983. Family films, films for children in particular, proved especially successful during these years. Commercial television, with its broad spectrum of offerings for young children and youth, had not yet begun broadcasting. As soon as television began entertaining the majority of young viewers, films intended for children and their chaperones did not have much of a chance. Beginning in the 1970s, audiences in their teens and twenties would outpace all other groups of moviegoers. In the late 1980s, films produced for this target group topped the box office top-ten list. Dirty Dancing (1988), Rain Man (1989), and Pretty Woman (1990) touched on subjects appealing to this age group, such as the transition to adulthood, relationships between siblings, and romance between socially mismatched partners. deutsche Film: Aspekte seiner Geschichte von den Anf¨angen bis zur Gegenwart (Trier, 1993), 167–214; Hans Helmut Prinzler, Chronik des deutschen Films 1895–1994 (Stuttgart, 1995).

Other statistics make it clear that although American films constituted the majority of the total film offerings in West Germany during the 1950s, audiences preferred German and Austrian films, which enjoyed longer runs and greater popularity both in urban and rural areas. Three genres in particular contributed to this amazing success: Heimat films (sentimental stories with regional settings), period films, and musicals based on operettas or filled with pop music. From Here to Eternity did not draw even a fifth of the crowds that rushed to see Schwarzwaldm¨adel. In 1951–2, 226 American films competed on the German film market against 65 newly produced German films and 42 revivals of films produced during the Third Reich, but apparently classified as unproblematic entertainment. In 1959–60, nearly twice as many American films were in distribution in the Federal Republic as German films (195 as opposed to 106). In 1965, the worst year for the German film industry, 56 German and 111 American films ran in West German movie theaters. The wave of sex and sex-education films that swept through German cinemas at the end of the 1960s nearly ruined – if only temporarily – the cultural and political reputation of film in Germany, at least in the eyes of audiences with more formal education. That was the one time, however, when the relationship between German and American films was reversed: 110 German films as opposed to 99 American films. In the 1970s, the proportion of American films on view again increased considerably, a development that continued into the 1980s. Only at this point did Hollywood “take possession” of a majority share of German audiences. Viewers forty years of age and older only rarely went to the movies except, for instance, when Woody Allen pictures were playing. In 1990, only 48 German films competed with 155 American productions for viewers; domestic offerings had shrunk to about a third of American imports. This ratio was subject to significant fluctuation in the 1990s. The theater landscape came to be shaped by theater chains. The 1950s division of theaters into first-run houses in city centers and second-run

Hollywood in Germany

theaters in outlying areas ceased to exist. Many copies of a film might now be sent simultaneously to many different theaters, after which it could disappear from circulation completely. Large American distributors, whose subsidiaries now dominate the German market, contributed significantly to introducing and implementing this “monoculture” policy in the film repertoire. A look at statistical tables of the German film assessment board shows that – at least in the 1950s – American films satisfied the “official” quality control criteria, as specific to the period as these criteria may have been, at a proportionally far lower rate than did their German competition. Although it had already received honors at the Venice Film Festival, Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront (Die Faust im Nacken) was granted a “valuable” (“wertvoll”) rating only in response to protests. In the period 1951–9, a total of 105 German films received a “valuable” and 17 a “particularly valuable” rating. Of the American films released in Germany in the same period, 98 were rated “valuable” and 32 “particularly valuable” (“besonders wertvoll”). A review of the first prizes awarded at the international film festival in Berlin, the Berlinale, reveals a similar picture. In 1956, the jury awarded the Golden Bear to Gene Kelly’s Invitation to Dance; in 1957, this honor went to Sidney Lumet’s Twelve Angry Men (Die Zw¨olf Geschworenen). Another twenty years would pass before another American film would win this award: Robert Altman’s Buffalo Bill and the Indians. The nationality of the jury members is not necessarily responsible for these selections; it is noteworthy how many American directors presided over the jury – for example, Frank Capra in 1957, Robert Aldrich in 1959, Harold Lloyd in 1960, and King Vidor in 1962. Were these negative results due to the genius loci? Did the “leftist” city of Berlin reject the fruits of American film? From the American perspective one might draw this conclusion. When the 1969 Berlinale failed to recognize John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy, the infuriated United Artists distributor decided to boycott the festival for ten years. Not until

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the 1980s and 1990s did the Berlin jury again select American-made films with increasing frequency for their highest honor, such as Rain Man (directed by Barry Levinson) in 1989, Music Box (directed by Costa-Gavras) in 1990, and Grand Canyon (directed by Lawrence Kasdan) in 1992. Nevertheless, one can speculate that the Berlinale’s judges were oriented primarily toward European film.

“men with guns”: american films’ vision of society from a german perspective Statistics, particularly from the 1950s, point to the preferences of the German movie audience, which drew its members from all age groups and levels of society. Postwar critics, particularly those who defended film as art, had an even more negative attitude than most viewers toward “Hollywood,” scorning it as a dream factory that propagated the values and lifestyles of the West’s victorious world power. For example, Gunther Groll, who wrote for the S¨uddeutsche Zeitung in Munich, included only a few reviews of American films in his essay collections Magie des Films (1953) and Lichter und Schatten (1956). Something that did not come to the surface in Groll’s work is evident in other authors’: the traditional contempt, exacerbated by Germany’s defeat in World War II, for American “civilization,” which some educated Germans felt lacked a mature culture. No one expected Hollywood to offer up art films. In the 1950s, only films that qualified as what were known in Germany as “problem films” could overcome this prejudice. These included High Noon, From Here to Eternity, and, above all, Twelve Angry Men. The intellectually self-confident assessments dispensed in the magazine Filmkritik, founded by Enno Patalas and Wilfried Berghahn in 1957, show the same prejudices, albeit in more stringent tones. The pages of this magazine would doubtlessly reveal that its often politically motivated criticism of American film primarily as the product of a profit-oriented industry and as the reflection of an “alien” mentality focused on power.

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In a revealing study of the image of society in American films, Wilfried Berghahn3 investigated the alienation of their German and European audiences. Following an introduction in which he discussed the standardized components of American dramaturgy (echoing the concept of film as a factory product), he asserted that men with guns were central to what he viewed as the typical American genres: gangster films and westerns. Weapons were an obvious instrument of self-assertion for the sometimes isolated outsider who was determined not to be dependent on anyone and was distrustful of life in a complacent community. They also indicated that taking the law into one’s own hands ranked higher than waiting for the government to intervene. American society, Berghahn concluded, was apparently so conformist that these rugged individualists, idols of the romanticized pioneer era, functioned as foils for present-day America. Berghahn emphasized the significance of border crossings in American film, which sent the message that overcoming obstacles was possible. These feats were rarely entrusted to weak-willed intellectuals, but rather to men of action. While these men proved themselves in the wild, in seamier settings, on adventurous voyages, or in war, women controlled everday life. For Berghahn, this was the realm of matriarchy, which he found just as exotic as the nearly lawless zone in which American heroes operated. Others in this period – for example, Walter Schmieding4 – also noted the unsettling fact that many American films treated violence as the final and most effective means of resolving almost any conflict. The fledgling West German democracy spent more than ten years looking up to American hegemonic power in tacit, unquestioning belief – almost as its satellite – before it grew willing to criticize the American value system.

Little changed at first in the 1960s in the intellectuals’ stance of resistance to Hollywood. The magazine Film, which addresses a wider audience than Filmkritik, published an annual issue subtitled Chronik und Bilanz des internationalen Films. During this period, the survey essentially ignored contemporary American films almost entirely; the exceptions to this rule tended to be historical rediscoveries, such as Marx brothers films. Still, the 1960s also saw a genuinely American genre, the western, become a preferred playground of the imagination among students. In 1965, Enno Patalas reported with astonishment in Filmkritik that even art film houses were running westerns and that the Oberhausen Festival of short films, once highly respected as a reform-minded forum, was planning a retrospective of westerns.5 Patalas was not the first to ponder the moral ambiguity of the western’s heroes. Uwe Nettelbeck6 also registered a protest against the genre that year. The accusations he made were fairly common at the time, but they apparently did little to influence the actual viewing patterns of Germans in their twenties. Nettelbeck pointed out that the western idealized the American pioneer period in two respects: it constructed and simplified its heroes simultaneously. Nettelbeck was thinking of John Wayne, a popular target of leftist intellectuals in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. Wayne, said Nettelbeck, embodied what Richard Hofstadter had called the “ugly American” during the Vietnam War, a man who is eager for action, uses rough and ready language, grossly generalizes about complicated situations, and believes he can use brute force to solve complex problems. According to Nettelbeck, Wayne had campaigned twice for Dwight D. Eisenhower and once for Richard Nixon, and was now coming out for the rightwing populist candidate Barry Goldwater. It was not the actor’s political activism that bothered 5

3

Wilfried Berghahn, “Das Gesellschaftsbild des amerikanischen Films,” Filmkritik 6 (1982): 99–107. 4 ¨ Walter Schmieding, Kunst oder Kasse: Der Arger mit dem deutschen Film (Hamburg, 1961).

Enno Patalas, “Der Western und seine Regisseure,” Filmkritik 9 (1965): 62–6. 6 Uwe Nettelbeck, “Der Western und die amerikanische Rechte,” Filmkritik 9, no. 5 (1965): 250–8, 298–9.

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Nettelbeck. Rather, he despised the unreflective gung-ho patriotism that seemed to be embodied by John Wayne. The true influence of westerns remains unknown. One suspects that the lone wolf defending himself with violence against the evils of this world was by no means unattractive to the young people of 1968. The leaflets circulated at German universities between 1967 and 1973 suggest a curious contrast between the heated debate over the canon of required reading – which presumed knowledge of relevant works from Karl Marx to Herbert Marcuse – and allusions to westerns. Of course, American westerns were shown in German theaters during the 1950s, too, though hardly ever in large first-run theaters. They played almost exclusively in the small secondrun and suburban theaters, which ran the romantic action serials like the Zorro films in serial format. In order to gain a new, broad-based appeal, the western had to be adapted to German and European circumstances and audiences. In the early 1960s, Karl May films flooded the movie theaters of West Germany. These, in turn, were succeeded by the hybrid spaghetti western, and astute cultural commentary at the end of the 1960s suggested this genre had merged the Hollywood model with Japanese samurai films, Italian fantasy hero spectacles set in ancient times, and highly dramatic operas. In the shadow of the spaghetti western, a few American westerns attracted attention, particularly the films of Sam Peckinpah. Their aesthetic sensibility and their radicalism, which rejected easy solutions, left an impression on intellectually exacting German audiences. The 1960s also gave American film a foothold in another way. Art film theaters, as well as the authors of Filmkritik and Joe Hembus in his widely read attack on the decrepit state of domestic film production,7 began looking to French film for renewal. The French Nouvelle Vague reinforced this hope. The same doors opened to the artists associated with

7 Joe Hembus, Der deutsche Film kann gar nicht besser sein (Bremen, 1961).

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New American Cinema, including Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, and others. Their avant-garde aesthetics had at least a passing influence on the authors and directors of new German films. Of demonstrably greater significance, however, were the “classical” American films made between 1930 and 1960, which were becoming more accessible, in part because of television. However, even the passion of the “new German cinema” directors of the 1970s for certain American models such as John Ford, Nicholas Ray, and Douglas Sirk was ignited in no small part by their French predecessors. As authors of the Cahiers du Cin´ema, Franc¸ ois Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, and Eric Rohmer had built up a virtual cult around American models, as did Jean Renoir, Carl Theodor Dreyer, and Fritz Lang, along with Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, and Howard Hawks. The French were also definitive for two generations of German filmmakers not only in terms of cinematic style, but also for images of the self and art; French reverence for U.S. models became a channel for offering respectable models to “fatherless” young Germans. One manifestation of this amazing reverence of son for surrogate father was Wim Wenders’ penetrating story of the death and dying of Nicholas Ray in Nick’s Film: Lightning over Water (1980).

succeeding with younger audiences The noticeable drop in the average age of moviegoers and the acceptance of youthful tastes even among adult viewers in the 1980s and 1990s explain some of the new openness to the products of Hollywood. It is clear that especially young people and “eternal adolescents” were attracted to films by the so-called New Hollywood directors – Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorcese, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas – however much those directors might differ in narrative technique and choice of subject. They produced an increasing number of dramatic action-oriented films that relied on carefully crafted techniques for heightening tension and creating a shock effect, often far more masterly

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than even Hitchcock’s late work; these nuances transported predominantly youthful male viewers into a world of adventure unavailable to them on television at home, where parents usually dictated their choice of programs. A generation that grew up with Spielberg and with cartoons or video clips that charge forward to a thrilling climax has clearly become comfortable with spectacular fantasies of violence and destruction, the multiple special effects and extreme horror story elements of the Hollywood productions that have been tailored for the international market. As long as old authorities and the postwar “Christian-Occidental” uprightness still inspired respect, the problem of teenage rowdies could be portrayed as an American import and rock ’n’ roll as the embodiment of an anarchy that could disrupt all of society’s values, a craze that seized young people who had abandoned all reason. In the 1980s, the domestic film industry claimed to be catering to youth, but it did so with undeniable clumsiness and stubbornness. It produced German problem films in new wrappers, avoiding – with near-puritanical zeal – anything that smacked of entertainment. The melancholy, rainy gray genre of the Berlin film – brimming with social criticism and populated by outsiders and drug addicts, lost souls of consumer society, and desperate protest figures – may have satisfied the political conscience but not, apparently, the desire for sensationalism among the rest of the moviegoing public. German film did not offer any real counterweight to American offerings until the arrival in the early 1990s of light German comedies whose protagonists were generally under thirty. These followed the cue of director Doris D¨orrie’s romantic comedy M¨anner, which gained a surprisingly wide popular audience. Hollywood did not enjoy an uninterrupted period of “cultural imperialism” in Germany in the 1950s and 1960s. However, since the late 1970s, the major studios increasingly captured the imagination of a maturing generation that saw its transnational identity confirmed through films such as Flash Dance, Rambo, Gremlins, Police Academy, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Beverly Hills Cop, and Back to the Future. At the same time

that Edgar Reitz – who, when Holocaust (1979) was broadcast, had insisted that Germans should not let the Americans “take [our] history away”8 and then attempted to come to terms with that history himself in the eleven-part family saga Heimat (1984) – was urging German film professionals to remain in Germany, a second emigration to Hollywood was underway. Wim Wenders, who had used the American “road movie” genre as a model for his own work, hoped to establish himself in the United States with the support of Francis Ford Coppola. At Cannes in 1975, Coppola had been so impressed with Werner Herzog’s version of the Kaspar Hauser story, Jeder f¨ur sich und Gott gegen alle, that he bought the U.S. rights to the film. Wenders’s attempt to get a foothold in Hollywood failed. His film Paris, Texas won acclaim mainly in Europe, and he returned to Berlin temporarily. Wenders would make a second attempt in America at a later date. Werner Herzog and Volker Schl¨ondorff have filmed movies in the United States as well. Following the aboveaverage success of his films Das Boot and Die unendliche Geschichte, Wolfgang Petersen likewise braved the move across the Atlantic. He fit in so perfectly with films such as In the Line of Fire and Air Force One that uninformed viewers would never dream that Petersen was a filmmaker with a German past. The same was true in the 1990s of Roland Emmerich, director of Independence Day. In addition to these directors, several German cinematographers – including Michael Ballhaus and Jost Vacano – are now among the busiest and most acclaimed masters of their art in Hollywood. The major U.S. studios have remained attractive employers for European emigrants at a time when German film professionals are eager to escape from the cramped quarters and modest film production budgets of the Federal Republic and to make a bigger splash with greater resources. This desire continued to motivate 8 Edgar Reitz, “Unabh¨angiger Film nach Holocaust? (1979),” in Edgar Reitz, Liebe zum Kino: Utopien und Gedanken zum Autorenfilm 1962–1983 (Cologne, 1984), 202; see also the chapter by Anton Kaes in this section.

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students in the German professional film schools at Berlin and Munich in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In the 1990s, the Hollywood model apparently fell out of favor again with German filmmakers. British film’s rebellion against Thatcherism as well as its virtual creative explosion in the 1980s, thanks to Channel Four

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and the British Film Institute, and new momentum from Italy and France promoted a new consciousness in each country, even as Europe was drawings closer together. Each country was more aware of “national” possibilities and more willing to accept those national limitations, or even to regard those restraints as a source of creativity and inspiration.

chapter twelve

New German Cinema as National Cinema Anton Kaes

West German filmmakers wished to demonstrate to foreign audiences – and to American audiences in particular – their commitment to extirpating traces of Germany’s past and to reconstituting its national identity along new lines. Although feature films produced in West Germany rarely represented more than a 10 percent market share of the films shown in theaters at home, they often sparked debates about German identity and German history within the press and occasionally even the German parliament. The fictional world of cinema allowed the filmmakers to articulate controversial issues and radically criticize the system in ways that would have been impossible in a nonfictional context. Cinema thus provided a much-needed public sphere that enabled free discussions (mainly among intellectuals) about the past and future of their country. Young German Film not only addressed taboo questions about German history; it also provided formal alternatives to the cinema of the Third Reich. “Never before and in no other country have images and language been abused so unscrupulously as here, never before and nowhere else have they been debased so deeply as vehicles to transmit lies,” Wim Wenders wrote in 1977.1 From the perspective of the generation born at the end of World War II, West German film of the 1950s had merely

If it is true that film and television have become the primary means to help a nation grasp its history and identity, then a look at West German cinema during the 1960s and 1970s might prove productive. This was the time when a group of filmmakers, loosely defined as Der junge deutsche Film (Young German Film), later renamed Das neue deutsche Kino (New German Cinema), took it upon itself to remind West Germans of the continued presence of their tarnished past. These filmmakers translated political and social commentary into fictional stories and circulated images that were meant to signify Germanness. As they tried to bring national identity and national history into representation, they created a view of Germany as a nation that did not live up to its radically democratic ideals. In this way, Young German Film continued the critical tradition generally associated with the Gruppe 47, whose influence began to decline by the mid-1960s, around the time when a new German cinema emerged. Like the venerated group of intellectuals and writers of the Gruppe 47, the young filmmakers, too, wanted to be “conscience of the nation.” Although less unified than their critical forebears, the group of young filmmakers had more in common than a strong dissatisfaction with the cinema of the 1950s. Fueled by the student protest movement and a general mood of transition in the wake of Konrad Adenauer’s resignation in 1963, they saw themselves as intellectuals who wanted to use cinema as a forum for a fundamentally new vision of Germany. In addition, the rebellious

1 Wim Wenders, “That’s Entertainment,” Die Zeit, Aug. 5, 1977.

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perpetuated the entertainment industry of the Third Reich. And, indeed, most of the directors of Heimatfilme (popular films about the German homeland and domestic life) had been active members of the Nazi Party.2 Not surprisingly, Young German Film made a conscious attempt to distance itself from the film language employed in the popular movies of the previous three decades. Its models were instead alternative film productions from Eastern Europe and, most importantly, in the early 1960s, films of the French nouvelle vague by such directors as Jean Luc Godard, Franc¸ ois Truffaut, and Claude Chabrol. German cinema’s relationship to Hollywood – which claimed an ever-increasing share of the German film market in the 1960s, sometimes controlling as much as 90 percent – was particularly complicated. Wenders’s famous remark about the Americans having colonized the German subconscious articulated a widespread feeling at the time.3 And yet, despite their almost unanimous critical stance toward Hollywood’s commercialism and cultural imperialism, these young German filmmakers were spellbound by American film. Wenders had schooled himself in John Ford’s film aesthetics; Rainer Werner Fassbinder drew from Douglas Sirk’s critical melodrama; and American Independent Cinema (Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas, Kenneth Anger) inspired German filmmakers to experiment with form. In return, it was American enthusiasm for the New German Cinema of the 1970s that boosted its prestige worldwide; the stamp of U.S. approval also helped it to gain recognition in its own country. from young german film to new german cinema The story of the rise and fall of New German Cinema has a moment of birth (the Oberhausen 2 See Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley, Calif., 2001). 3 ¨ Bernd Greiner, “‘Test the West’: Uber die ‘Amerikanisierung’ in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” Mittelweg 36, no. 6 (1997): 4.

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Manifesto, issued February 28, 1962), a high point (Time calling it “the liveliest cinema in Europe” in 1978), and an abrupt ending (Fassbinder’s death on June 10, 1982). This story also has a dominant trajectory: a national cinema involved in coming to terms with the history and identity of the country it represents. The break with the provincial cinema of the Adenauer era came in 1962, at the eighth West German Short Film Festival at Oberhausen. Twenty-six young filmmakers and journalists – among them the attorney Dr. Alexander Kluge and Edgar Reitz – issued a manifesto declaring: “We have concrete intellectual, formal, and economic conceptions about the production of the new German film. We are as a collective prepared to take economic risks. The old film is dead. We believe in the new film.”4 Despite this collective appeal, Young German Film was radically auteurist. It was neither a movement nor a school; what unified the directors was their opposition to the “old cinema” and their critical interest in contemporary political and social issues concerning West Germany. Most West German filmmakers also espoused a modernist aesthetics that broke with the realistic and linear narratives of the cinema of the 1950s and instead experimented with non-narrative cinema that was essayist, fragmentary, self-reflective. Several political events at the time had ruptured the tranquil atmosphere of the Adenauer period: the Berlin Wall (1961) and the Cuban crisis (1962) threatened another world war, while the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem (1961–2) and the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt (1963–5) exposed to the world the atrocities committed in the concentration camps and triggered a public discussion about German intellectuals’ complicity in the success of the Nazi regime. These events, which lent a general sense of urgency to cultural production at the time, formed the historical matrix within which Young German Cinema emerged. Alexander Kluge’s debut film, programmatically titled Abschied von gestern (literally translated

4 Anton Kaes, From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 15–23.

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Farewell to Yesterday, but released as Yesterday Girl, 1966), was the first film of the group to win an international film prize. It told the story of a young Jewish woman from East Germany unable to put down roots in the Federal Republic because her past continually encroached on her present. The film demonstrated the impossibility of forgetting. Although Volker Schl¨ondorff’s first film, Der junge T¨orless (Young T¨orless, 1966), was an adaptation of a 1906 novella by Robert Musil, it still resonated with the experience of the Third Reich. Through the story of a schoolboy who watches with both fascination and revulsion as two of his schoolmates torture a Jewish schoolmate, the film recalls the history of many intellectual collaborators who passively observed Nazi atrocities. As different as Kluge and Schl¨ondorff’’s films were in their formal treatment of the subject matter, they shared an abiding interest in the causes and consequences of National Socialism. The directors also shared literary and high-cultural aspirations in their experimental film language and thus became serious players in a cultural revolution that also changed the German novel (with G¨unter Grass’s 1959 Die Blechtrommel ) and German theater (with Peter Weiss’s 1964 Marat/Sade and 1968 Viet-Nam Diskurs). Although less overtly agit-prop than theater, Young German Cinema did intervene in current debates. For instance, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s second film, Katzelmacher (1969), addressed the treatment of foreign guest workers by German society, distilling from the social problematic a modernist reflection on practices of exclusion and “othering.” Young German film achieved its international breakthrough at the New York Film Festivals of 1974 and 1975, when films by Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Hans J¨urgen Syberberg, Wim Wenders, and others won the praise of both critics and the moviegoing public. American newspapers and magazines raved about New German Cinema, calling it the most innovative cinema in Europe. These films offered a new and different view of Germany to an American public whose image of the country had been shaped primarily by semidocumentary films such as Stanley Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg or the TV series Hogan’s Heroes, which portrayed Germans

as either sadistic or bumbling Nazis. These new films showed contemporary Germany in a critical light and encouraged a new understanding of Germany as a “difficult fatherland.”5 German institutions such as the Goethe Institute and Inter Nationes successfully promoted these new films abroad, and before long, New German Cinema (as Young German Film was called in the United States) became the focus of numerous scholarly books, university courses, and conferences. Critical observers in Germany were astonished by this overwhelmingly positive response and even called New German Cinema merely an invention of American film critics.

national past, national identity American interest in German cinema was heightened, too, by the unstable political situation in Germany. American moviegoers hoped to gain through these films a clearer understanding of the events that rocked the foundations of West German democracy. The news was not heartening. The government had violated human rights to battle terrorist violence perpetrated by a disillusioned radical left that had split off from the student movement. The kidnapping and murder of the prominent businessman Hanns Martin Schleyer by terrorists, a spectacular airplane hijacking, the mysterious suicides of imprisoned political activists, and the relentless persecution of dissidents and their “sympathizers” – reminiscent of similar campaigns under fascism – caused an unprecedented crisis in Germany’s democracy in fall 1977. It was the most serious political emergency the country had faced up to that point and drew worldwide attention from the press. New German Cinema intervened in the heated debates with a collective film, Deutschland im Herbst (Germany in Autumn), which tried to capture the events of the “German” autumn of 1977 against the background of Germany’s disastrous history. Its 5 For a general discussion of the confrontation with the National Socialist past, see the chapters by Alan E. Steinweis, vol. 1, Culture, and Jeffrey Peck, vol. 2, Culture.

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declared purpose was to initiate a new examination of German national identity and to relate the outbursts of irrational violence to its violent history: “We want to confront the images of our country.”6 The film, produced without government subsidy, consisted of a series of scenes, part documentary and part fiction, by nine filmmakers, all responding in their own widely divergent styles and ideologies to the crisis of fall 1977. It was no accident that Germany in Autumn inspired several spin-off projects that also focused on the “images of our country.” In his essay film Die Patriotin (The Patriot, 1979), Alexander Kluge expanded on his brief episode from Germany in Autumn about a Hessian history teacher, Gabi Teichert, who keeps digging deep into the roots of Germany’s past. Fassbinder used his contribution to this film – a staged conversation with his mother about free speech and the public sphere in the Federal Republic as compared to the Third Reich – as a point of departure for several historical films about the early days of the Federal Republic: The Marriage of Maria Braun, Lola, and Veronika Voss. In 1979, Volker Schl¨ondorff embarked on a filmic adaptation of G¨unter Grass’s historical novel The Tin Drum, which brought him an Oscar the following year. In 1979, Edgar Reitz also began his fifteen-hour film chronicle Heimat – Eine deutsche Chronik (Heimat: A German Chronicle); aired in 1984, it was one of the most popular television series ever. The impact of Germany in Autumn, deliberately conceived as an intervention intended to combat the political amnesia of the times, lies in the inspiration it provided for almost a dozen feature films that followed in close succession. However, its public success was limited on account of its experimental film language. Harsh juxtapositions (in the tradition of S. M. Eisenstein’s dialectical montage) fragmented any linear narrative, and the lack of coherent characters disallowed viewer identification. Only a year after Germany in Autumn, an American television series with the title Holocaust would turn out to be the popular film about 6

Alexander Kluge et al., “Deutschland im Herbst: ¨ Worin liegt die Parteilichkeit des Films?” Asthetik und Kommunikation 32, no. 6 (1978): 124.

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German history that New German Cinema was not willing or able to deliver. As the first major commercial attempt to portray in a fictionalized account the persecution and the industrialized genocide of millions of European Jews, Holocaust could not fail to evoke a particularly strong response in the Federal Republic. Yet the reaction to the series exceeded all expectations. Initially the film’s melodramatic and often sentimental style drew harsh criticism. But the tone in the press shifted rapidly when, during February 1979, the series became a kind of psychoanalytical “talking cure” for the nation. Questions of morality, guilt, and conscience became more important than aesthetic quibbles. Despite Eli Wiesel’s admonition not to trivialize the Holocaust by reducing it to Holocaust, a simulated film spectacle, the American television series literally brought home the destruction of the Jews; what was once considered to be unrepresentable and beyond imagination invaded millions of German living rooms and was eagerly consumed. Although feature films had for years alluded to the subject matter, and documentaries had shown concentration camp footage, Holocaust marked the first attempt to present the genocide to a mass audience in emotional terms. It forced Germans to relive their repressed past from the perspective of the victims. The series opened the floodgates of confessions and recollections of a repressed history. It seemed as if an entire nation now dared, for the first time, to remember and to confront its own past. The collective unease of the German people in the Federal Republic became a spectacle in itself, one played out, consciously or unconsciously, before the eyes of the world that had waited in suspense to see how Germany would respond to this American version of German history. (The same air of suspense was palpable later, in 1994, when Schindler’s List appeared in German movie theaters and again in 1996, with the German translation of Daniel Goldhagen’s book Hitler’s Willing Executioners.) From this international perspective, Holocaust appeared as a challenge to Germans to recognize themselves in a mirror that Hollywood held up to them. A “correct” response also offered the Germans

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an opportunity to prove to the world that they had learned from the past, that they were now a people to be trusted again. The Holocaust was revisited in the “safe” form of a TV drama that could be turned on or off at any time by merely pushing a remote control button. However short-lived and problematic the West German impact of Holocaust was, the unprecedented response signaled a new awareness in the Federal Republic of the persistent presence of the past. German filmmakers were challenged to confront and engage with the darkest sides of German history. In aesthetic terms, new German filmmakers were not only opposed to the fantasy productions of the Third Reich, but also against Hollywood’s genre cinema (such as the Holocaust film), which managed to narrativize and, in their view, grossly simplify and commercialize even the Shoah. They unanimously condemned the American production. But they were also pushed to develop a cinematic counterlanguage associated with the avant-garde to address the German past. Although Syberberg’s seven-hour film essay Hitler, ein Film aus Deutschland (Our Hitler, 1977) was completed before Holocaust became a hit, it was discussed because of its delayed reception as a radical nonmimetic countermodel to the realistic television series. In a film that is part lecture, part performance art, lacing Wagnerian spectacle with Brechtian epic theater, Syberberg tries to approach the elusive persona of Hitler as a screen for a myriad of projections. Oscillating between pathos and postmodern irony (accomplished by compulsively citing from the most diverse sources), the film has nothing in common with a regular feature film. Instead, it is an intellectually and visually provocative filmic performance piece that repeatedly, in ever new approaches, tries to come to grips with the collective wishes and anxieties that created and shaped Hitler. Helma Sanders-Brahms’s Deutschland bleiche Mutter (Germany, Pale Mother, 1980), Jutta Br¨uckner’s Hungerjahre (Hunger Years, 1980), and Margarethe von Trotta’s Die bleierne Zeit (Marianne and Juliane, 1981) likewise addressed German history from the Hitler period through the 1950s, and up to the present. These last three

films had a strong autobiographical element and specifically inflected German history in gendered terms. Characteristic of Sanders-Brahms’ and Br¨uckner’s films was their nonlinear form, as well as the device of an autobiographical voice-over that addresses the viewer directly. Wolfgang Petersen’s commercially very successful 1981 thriller Das Boot, one of the very few German historical films readily available in U.S. video stores, recounted the heroic struggles of a submarine crew to survive after its boat was hit. After the men are saved and finally on land again, they are killed from Allied bombs in the air. The film divides Germans conveniently into two groups: criminal Nazis or innocent victims suffering from their military superiors’ incompetence and cynicism. The title character in Fassbinder’s 1980 film Lili Marleen is also cast as a victim of the Nazis, despite her popularity in the Third Reich. Many of these films tell stories of private lives thwarted by the intervention of history. Alexander Kluge’s essay film Die Patriotin is a meditation on historiographical questions, explored through interviews, old film clips, documentary shots, found footage, excerpts from feature films, intertitles, photographs, performances, and musical phrases. History for Kluge cannot be reduced to one story that is simply given to the historian; instead he shows the work of a history teacher who searches for splinters and shards from the past in order to understand the roots of the present malaise. The film is experimental, essayistic, full of visual and verbal allusions from the last two thousand years of human history, wittily demonstrating the mutual illumination of past and present. Edgar Reitz’s fifteen-hour chronicle Heimat was without a doubt New German Cinema’s most ambitious attempt at capturing German history. In production for five years and broadcast in eleven installments on German television after its screen premiere in fall 1984, the film presented itself as an epic about the inhabitants of a rural German village between 1918 and 1982; it only mentioned the Holocaust as an aside. The focus was instead on simple German folks, who once again are represented as the victims of the Nazi regime and the war. By emphasizing Alltagsgeschichte, the history of

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everyday life, Reitz allowed political history to recede. Political events seemed far away; daily work on the farm needed to go on, no matter who was in power in Berlin. Heimat was deliberately conceived of as a polemical response to the American television series Holocaust, which, according to Reitz, had robbed Germans of their own history.7 (The original title of the film was Made in Germany.) Reitz’s insistence on claiming one’s own past, however inhumane that past may be, introduced a new, revisionist tone in the history of Germany’s reassessment of its past, a refrain impossible to ignore a few years later in the controversy unleashed by Ronald Reagan’s visit to the military cemetery at Bitburg (which contained graves of SS soldiers) in May 1985 and in the 1986 Historikerstreit, or historians’ debate (which equated Auschwitz with Stalingrad). When Philipp Jenninger, the speaker of the parliament, made ambiguous remarks (not unlike those heard in Heimat) about the dynamic spirit of the Third Reich, the furor was so fierce that he was forced to resign. What was possible in the fictional realm was not (yet) possible in the political. Nevertheless, the immense popularity of Heimat suggests that the parameters of Germany’s attitude toward its past were changing. on the margins: the division of germany The division of Germany was a subject that, with few exceptions, held little interest for German filmmakers. In Helke Sander’s feminist film Die allseitig reduzierte Pers¨onlichkeit: Redupers (The All-Around Reduced Personality, 1978), the divided city of Berlin stands as an emblem for a society riven by divisions, not only of East and West, but of man and woman, work and leisure, old age and youth, poverty and affluence. The film follows a professional photographer going about her mundane work documenting the 7 Edgar Reitz, “Unabh¨angiger Film nach Holocaust?” in Edgar Reitz, Liebe zum Kino: Utopien und Gedanken zum Autorenfilm 1962–1983 (Cologne, 1984), 1028. On the significance of Hollywood in the German film market, see the chapter by Thomas Koebner in this section.

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divided city. Her style is deliberately undramatic, unglamorous, and realistic (often using a handheld camera and long tracking shots through her car window). A feminist work in the tradition of Chantal Akerman’s 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, Redupers succeeds in linking the plight of a “reduced female personality” to the reduced potential of the divided city. The Berlin Wall is a constant presence in this film, reinforcing the sense of division, boundary, and constriction. Niklaus Schilling’s satirical Der Willi-Busch-Report (The Willi Busch Report, 1979) focuses on the East-West conflict as experienced in the provinces along the border between East and West Germany. In a different, more poetic vein, Wim Wender’s Der Himmel u¨ ber Berlin (Wings of Desire, 1987), based on a script by Peter Handke, sent two angels to Earth to wander about in the divided city. From their perspective, no East-West division exists. The emergence of New German Cinema from the leftist period of the 1960s may explain its ideological reluctance to attack openly the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the communist half of Germany. Criticizing it as a police state would have aligned the filmmakers with the reactionary Bild-Zeitung, a fiercely anticommunist tabloid. But at the same time East Germany had no advocates either; no West German film celebrated the East. As a result, New German Cinema left untouched a major chapter in postwar German history and the history of the Cold War. It seems as if the dark shadow of the Nazi past had fallen over the present, obscuring contemporary concerns over the division of Germany. The fall of the Berlin Wall in October 1989 also marked the end of cinema produced by the GDR. Despite stifling state controls and censorship, DEFA (Deutsche Filmaktiengesellschaft) had in its forty years of existence produced many films of lasting significance. Konrad Wolf’s filmic adaptation of Christa Wolf’s novel Der geteilte Himmel (Divided Heaven, 1964) deals with the temptation of escaping to West Germany, a provocative, even incendiary subject to air publicly only three years after the construction of the Wall. Although the female protagonist decides in the end not to follow her fianc´ee who

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leaves the GDR for the West, the film clearly critiques the communist regime; it also employs a modernist aesthetic in opposition to the usual social realism prescribed by the state-run film industry. In the style of Alain Resnais’s art film Last Year in Marienbad (1961), Wolf created an asynchronically structured interior monologue to accompany the events recalled in the film, an experimental narrative structure behind which the GDR’s cultural overseers suspected the bourgeois decadence of surrealism. In this same period other films critical of the GDR, for example, Spur der Steine (Trace of Stones, 1966), were produced but immediately banned. This film, the censors claimed, painted a distorted picture of socialist reality, the working class, as well as the Communist Party. The most interesting of the GDR films were those about German history, in particular Konrad Wolf’s Ich war Neunzehn (I Was Nineteen, 1968), an autobiographical film about Wolf’s experiences when he returned home from the war in 1945, and Mama ich lebe (Mama, I’m Alive, 1976). This latter film told the story of four German soldiers as Soviet POWs and made the question of German identity a central theme. Socially critical films, such as Heiner Carow’s Die Legende von Paul und Paula (The Legend of Paul and Paula, 1972), Wolfgang Kohlhaase and Konrad Wolf’s Solo Sunny (1978–79), and Herrmann Zschoche’s B¨urgschaft f¨ur ein Jahr (On Probation, 1981), made use of realistic detail to focus on concrete social problems (such as alcoholism or adolescent rebellion) and to criticize the sacrifice of individual freedom and happiness for the good of the socialist collective. None offered up any radical solutions for audiences because such efforts would not have passed the censors. And yet looking at these films today, we are often taken by surprise at how much implied criticism of the regime these well-constructed narratives were allowed to carry.

new internationalization and hollywood Where does German film stand today? With Fassbinder’s death in 1982, the New German

Cinema began to drift apart. Among those of the first generation, Alexander Kluge has been devoting more attention to his weekly television interview program than to feature films. Volker Schl¨ondorff returned to French-American financed films of literary works by such authors as Proust and Arthur Miller. Edgar Reitz tried unsuccessfully to repeat his phenomenal success of Heimat with his Zweite Heimat: Die Chronik einer Jugend (The Second Heimat, 1992), a twenty-sixhour television series, aired in thirteen episodes and covering the 1960s in Munich. It provided, among many other things, a nostalgic look back at the beginnings of New German Cinema. Visually no less accomplished than his first Heimat, its narrow focus and its often indulgent autobiographical bent made this a much less widely popular event. Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog have increasingly engaged in transnational coproductions that are invariably filmed abroad in English with multilingual teams and shown primarily at foreign film festivals and art houses. Several prominent German filmmakers have emigrated to Hollywood, finding the German market too small and the application process for (relatively) small subsidies on the federal, state, and even local level too laborious. Employed by major American studios and focusing on allAmerican subjects, they have made films with astonishing commercial success. Wolfgang Petersen’s In the Line of Fire, Air Force One, and The Perfect Storm, as well as Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day and The Patriot, number among the most popular American films of recent years, to no small degree because of their unabashedly patriotic tone. It is ironic that at present a growing number of German directors, actors, and even producers are relocating to Hollywood although Germany still provides a subsidy heaven for alternative filmmakers, including American ones. In recent years, a new generation of German filmmakers has come into its own for whom German history and identity are of marginal interest at best. Most of them are graduates of film schools in Munich and Berlin, where they learned to make films Hollywood style. Their goal has been to produce entertaining and well-made comedies or action films for the

New German Cinema as National Cinema

international market. Genre movies have replaced the auteur film. Following the astonishing success of Dorris D¨orrie’s M¨anner (Men, 1985), comedies have become particularly popular. The majority of these have been ironic or tragicomic stories about marital crises, sexual orientation, and lifestyle issues. A film such as S¨onke Wortmann’s Der bewegte Mann (Maybe, Maybe Not, 1994) managed to pull in an audience of seven million, a feat that New German Cinema could rarely match. Slapstick and comedies with titles such as Go Trabi Go (1991), Wir k¨onnen auch anders (No More Mr. Nice Guy, 1993), and Werner – Das muss kesseln (Werner – Eat My Dust, 1995), as well as thrillers and road movies (Knocking on Heaven’s Door, 1997), have raised the German market share to occasionally more than 20 percent in recent years. Til Schweiger, the coproducer and lead actor of Knocking on Heaven’s Door, has openly declared his allegiance to the American action movie in the style of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. With very few exceptions, for instance, Tom Twyker’s Lola rennt (Run, Lola, Run, 1999), none of these German films has been successful abroad. The popular audience that existed for alternative German cinema in America or Europe for the brief period from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s is gone. Those few films that are popular in Germany seem to be popular precisely (and ironically) because they resemble American genre cinema; however, on the world market they cannot compete with Hollywood’s production values and marketing budgets. A new type of multicultural cinema seems to be gaining strength in the unified Germany. In the tradition of Fassbinder’s pioneering films about guest workers – Katzelmacher (1969) and Angst essen Seele auf (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, 1973) – a host of films made by German and Turkish filmmakers have tried over the last decade to call into question facile oppositions between insider and outsider, native and foreign, dominant and marginal. Jeanine Meerapfel’s Die K¨ummelt¨urkin geht (1984), Hark Bohm’s Yasemin (1987), and Doris D¨orrie’s Happy Birthday, T¨urke! (1991) are some examples of feature films that were meant to confront Germans with different, invariably uncomfortable perspectives on their own

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country. In particular, films by foreign-born filmmakers – Sohrab Shahid Saless, In der Fremde (1975) and Tevfik Baser’s Abschied vom falschen Paradies (1988) and Lebewohl, Fremde (1991) – present Germany as a multicultural society in which ethnic minorities have their own internal conflicts – such as the patriarchal treatment of women in a Turkish family living in Berlin, which Baser critically examines in 40 Quadratmeter Deutschland (1986). More recent films – for instance, Hussi Kutlucan’s comedy Ich Chef, du Turnschuh (Me Boss, You Sneakers, 1998) – present ethnic identity itself as performance. Some of the most interesting German films at the 1999 Berlin Film Festival came from young Turkish filmmakers. The contemporary German film landscape is more varied than it was in the 1960s and 1970s, when the New German Cinema was identified as an internationally recognized art cinema that dealt with German history and identity. It had a center then, Fassbinder, and at least a dozen auteurs with strong signatures, all haunted by the question of what is German. There is no center now; instead, an astounding panoply of different styles and sensibilities can be found, ranging from revisionist Heimat and war pictures (Joseph Vilsmaier’s Herbstmilch, 1991; Stalingrad, 1992) to Christoph Schlingensief ’s violently aggressive anti-German satires about reunification: Das deutsche Kettens¨agenmassaker (1990) and Terror 2000 – Intensivstation Deutschland (1992); from highly intellectual, political essay films (Harun Farocki’s Videogramme einer Revolution, 1993) to lowbrow comedies; from the gay and feminist underground film culture of Berlin to a new ethnographic cinema fascinated with otherness (Schr¨oter, Ottinger, Herzog). As the memory of the Nazi period fades – a memory that defined and unified much of the German cinema in the 1960s and 1970s – other issues, such as questions of sexual and ethnic identity, are coming to the fore. Seen in retrospect, New German Cinema was a cinema of crisis, rising out of the student unrest of the 1960s, the political instability created by terrorism in the mid-1970s, the deterioration of a socialist alternative, and the general dissatisfaction with the smug, affluent, and

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history-shy German society. These frustrations and aggressions, the open conflicts and hidden double binds forced their way into film and necessitated a new film idiom, an idiom whose fragmented and hybrid nature could express inconsistencies and contradictions, ironies and paradoxes. The open, essayistic form of much of New German Cinema underscored the openness of questions and the uncertainty of answers, especially when it came to questions of the German nation. In their thematic diversity and willingness to experiment with form, these films are also documents of a period in which West Germans passionately struggled with their past, their collective memories, and the identity of their republic. To the extent that Germany has become politically “normalized” and “mainstreamed” since the end of the Cold War, its cinema has also become less idiosyncratic and venturesome. Much of German film production nowadays tries to emulate Hollywood formulas for wellmade genre films, and some recent German films have, in fact, managed to lower Hollywood’s market share in Germany from 90 to 80 percent. But is a film such as Jacques Annand’s Stalingrad film Enemy at the Gates still a German film? It was shot in Neubabelsberg (at the historical studios of UFA and DEFA) and opened the 2001 Berlin film festival. But its director is French, the actors mostly American, and its producers and financial backers from several European countries and the United States. This transnational film was not primarily intended for German viewers; its target audience was a worldwide, Englishspeaking audience. When it was denounced by critics as one of the worst war films ever, the

director and producers excused the film’s witless clich´es and commercialism as necessary concessions to the American market. (Ironically, the film also flopped in the United States.) Given Hollywood’s overwhelming dominance in Germany and in Europe, it seems increasingly more important to save and promote a new national cinema that has a sense of place and time. This new cinema would articulate local issues inevitably ignored by a Hollywood that needs to cater to global audiences to amortize its hundred-million-dollar production costs. This new national cinema would not be provincial, but would emphasize ethnic and cultural difference and diversity where it matters most: at the specific national and local level. It would not ignore the global or try to sever it from the national, but would examine the tensions and manifold negotiations between them. No cinema is purely national. Such a cinema would also be free to foster visual and narrative alternatives to Hollywood’s hegemony and thus preserve independent local inflections of film language. Such a cinema would give public expression to popular memory (however divided and fragmented), which is necessary for the self-fashioning of a community or nation. Because nations are cultural constructs, movies play a major part in understanding our nation and other nations. We learn how a nation wants to see itself and how it wants to be seen, but most importantly, we realize how unstable the notion of a unified national identity has become. In this light, New German Cinema still speaks to us because it interrogated the very concept of what it means to have a nation and a national cinema.

chapter thirteen

Transatlantic Reflections German and American Television Michael Geisler

nazis forever? germans on american television

shopping street in the proper ideological framework:

Paradoxically, the period between the end of the Nuremberg trials and the late 1950s saw, by and large, the most positive portrayals of Germans on American television in the half-century after World War II – positive, that is, to the point of distorting recent realities. West Germans figured as model capitalists and brave defenders on the frontline of the Western alliance, whereas East Germans were cast in the part of victims of communist oppression. In a 1953 See It Now special on West Berlin,1 journalist Edward R. Murrow visited both parts of the divided city, though filming in the East was possible only by using a concealed camera. The report emphasized the heroic struggle of West Berliners, embodied by Mayor Ernst Reuter, who was interviewed and quoted at length. Although there are numerous allusions to Germany’s past, the primary frame of reference is World War II, not the Holocaust. Similarly, a 1961 two-part ABC close-up titled Germany West of the Wall and Behind the Wall contains no reference to the Third Reich, except for a mention of “the last World War, started by Hitler,” made by a spokesman for the German foreign office. The narration introducing the first part of the documentary places the images of shoppers on a busy Cologne

West Germany is more prosperous than either France or England, the nations that helped to defeat it. West Germany is threatened by the communists, it is prodded by its allies. And in its prosperity, it can never forget either the nearness of the communists or its separate island, Berlin.

This bracketing of the Holocaust also holds true for the entire World War II action genre, such as Combat (ABC, 1962–7)2 or even the comedy series that has practically become synonymous with American World War II television narrative, Hogan’s Heroes (CBS, 1965–71). The depiction of Germans in Hogan’s Heroes (the dumb but gem¨utlich Sergeant Schultz and his superior officer, the monocled, arrogant, but ultimately not inhuman Colonel Klink) harks back to stereotypes of Germany’s imperial army of World War I rather than the SS concentration-camp guards or SA storm troopers of the Third Reich.3 There is no better testimony to the distance that separates Hogan’s 2 Broadcasting dates for this section are based on Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows (New York, 1988). 3 For an excellent one-year survey of the portrayal of Germany and the Germans on American television, see Lothar Bredella, Wolfgang Gast, and Siegfried Quandt, Deutschlandbilder im amerikanischen Fernsehen (T¨ubingen, 1994). See also John Nelson, “Das Bild des Deutschen im amerikanischen Fernsehen,” in Wolfgang Paulsen, ed., Die USA und Deutschland (Bern, 1976), 174–85.

1

I would like to thank the Museum of Television and Radio in New York City for giving me access to a number of texts not generally available elsewhere.

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Heroes from the historical reality of the Nazi era than their appearance, in character, in a Bing Crosby Christmas special (CBS, 1965), during which Schultz arrests Hogan and his men “in the name of the Vienna Boys Choir.” The 1978 miniseries Holocaust (NBC) shattered the taboo surrounding the depiction of the Nazi genocide in the mass media. By focusing on the lives of two families, the Jewish Weisses and the non-Jewish Dorfs, writer Gerald Green and director Marvin Chomsky created a straightforward yet effective narrative that offered viewers personal, emotional access to the historical event without shying away from a depiction of its drastic brutality. Whatever the historical or dramaturgical objections to this and similar television dramas and miniseries (including Playing for Time, CBS, 1980; The Wall, CBS, 1982; Inside the Third Reich, NBC, 1986; War and Remembrance, ABC, 1988; Escape from Sobibor, CBS, 1987),4 they are all united by their common desire to preserve the historical facts of the Holocaust. They are based on reasonably careful historical research, even when set within a fictional framework. Whereas Holocaust depicted Germans as Nazis against the backdrop of history – that is, within a specific factual context – both Nazis and Germans in general appear in later television productions as dehistoricized, allegorical figures of evil. Other historical signifiers of fascism and the Holocaust, identified by Anton Kaes as “the iconography of the Nazi Era,”5 are stripped of their historical contexts and inserted into entirely different settings. In such shows, the historical horror of the Holocaust has been lifted from its foundation in reality. The images associated with the mass murders have been turned into floating, disposable signifiers of evil. Ironically, Germany and the Germans have thus been more closely identified with fascism

4

For critical histories of the portrayal of the Holocaust on film and television, see, among others, Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Imagining Hitler (Bloomington, Ind., 1985); Judith E. Doneson, The Holocaust in American Film (Philadelphia, 1987); and esp. Annette Insdorf, Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust (New York, 1989). 5 Anton Kaes, Deutschlandbilder (Munich, 1987), 29.

and the Holocaust the farther we move away in time from the end of World War II. Whereas the generation of the perpetrators enjoyed the double bonus of being cast either as the victims of communist oppression or the defenders of Western values, their sons and daughters grew up in an era in which the long-suppressed memories of mass murder finally resurfaced, resulting in productions like Holocaust and, later, the portrayal of Germans on American television screens as decontextualized allegories of evil – Nazis forever. This shift inversely reflects the Cold War narrative itself: As the threat of communism and the attendant stereotypes of communist conspirators and warmongers diminished, Nazis were left as the only remaining historically validated villains of stories told around the “electronic hearth.” “cultural imperialism” or “cultural transfer”? america on german television Generally speaking, the rich body of television productions representing America on German6 television screens falls into two categories: German programs about America and American programs imported into Germany. In the 1950s and early 1960s, before the introduction of magnetic tape, German television produced a large number of German versions of successful American television dramas,7 but as video storage facilitated the transfer of original material, dubbing of original American productions became the norm. This appears to have reduced the need for original German television dramas about American issues. As a result, the typical German television text about the United States tends to take one of four forms: (1) documentaries taking their cue from German concerns about America’s role in Europe; (2) 6

Because a history of GDR media is still in its infancy, this chapter addresses television in West Germany only. 7 One of the most successful of these is Rolf H¨adrich’s adaptation of a television drama by Rod Serling, Der neue Mann (ARD, 1965). For a more detailed account of these adaptations, see Knut Hickethier, Das Fernsehspiel der Bundesrepublik (Stuttgart, 1980), 243ff.

Transatlantic Reflections

documentaries, video essays, features on literature or the other arts, or on-location research into the material or geographical context of major works of modern literature; (3) features that draw on Germans’ fascination with American popular culture8 ; and (4) documentary or fictional travelogues like Dieter Wedel’s 1988 tongue-in-cheek miniseries Wilder Westen inklusive (ARD), in which America’s grandiose landscapes serve as a scenic backdrop for a satire lampooning German tourists abroad. In most instances “America,” even when presented in its original context, is reduced to a cipher, a largerthan-life catalyst for the never-ending quest for German identity. Dwarfing these comparatively infrequent German forays into documentary or fictional reportage on the United States is America’s omnipresent self-representation on foreign television screens, mostly through crime/spy or adventure series, but also through westerns in the 1950s and 1960s. Despite the constant complaints by German intellectuals that “Kojak & Co” were doing permanent damage to Germany’s cultural identity, the lion’s share of these American imports consisted of cinematic releases not television series. As late as 1989 the First German Television Network (ARD) reserved only one prime-time programming hour per week for an American series.9 However, in the afternoon children’s programming, American series like Rin-Tin-Tin, Lassie, and Fury enjoyed great popularity, and the Vorabendprogramm (early-evening programming) between 6:00 and 8:00 p.m. also had a heavy concentration of American-produced programming – usually family series like The Donna Reed Show (Mutter ist die Allerbeste) or mysteries like Hart to Hart (Hart aber herzlich). Combined with the 8 Examples are Dagobert Lindlau’s Perry Mason lebt (Perry Mason Is Alive, ARD, 1971); Wilhelm Bittorf’s Wer hat Marilyn Monroe umgebracht? (Who Killed Marilyn Monroe? ARD, 1972), and Roald Koller’s Johnny West, (ARD, 1979). 9 Dietrich Schwarzkopf, “Dynasty, Dallas u¨ ber alles: The American Share in European TV-Programmes,” in Christian W. Thomsen, ed., Cultural Transfer or Electronic Imperialism? The Impact of American Television Programs on European Television (Heidelberg, 1989), 22.

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occasional miniseries, all this added up to a substantial programming share for American television, although it was not until the deregulation of the German broadcasting industry in the mid-1980s that American programs achieved the dominant market penetration they have today. The origins of this boom are both political and economic: Reeducation after World War II and the Marshall Plan had socialized a generation of Germans into perceiving both American high and popular culture as the gospel on modernism and democracy.10 Bonanza and Gunsmoke (Rauchende Colts) exported American myths like “the open frontier” across most of the noncommunist world. Waging his anticommunist propaganda war through the Voice of America, the USIA, and clandestine government support of “right-minded” independent media (for example, the Fox Movietone and Hearst-MGM newsreels), Secretary of State John Foster Dulles created an atmosphere where the aggressive export of American film and television products was seen as not only a good marketing strategy but also a patriotic service.11 Apart from its arguably high quality, a more important reason for the success of American programming was economic: By the time American productions had been broadcast and rerun in syndication, they had already amortized their original production costs through advertising revenues. This gave American television executives the ability to undercut any indigenous production in foreign countries by offering their shows for as little as $1,000 per programming hour.12 Prices have risen steadily since then, as the American entertainment industry continued to respond to a growing demand for programming in West Germany, the largest television market in the world after the United States. However, even in 1989, when an average hour of prime-time programming bought from American distributors cost about $50,000, 10

See the chapter by Rebecca Boehling, vol. 1, Cul-

ture. 11

Erik Barnouw, Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television, 3d ed. (New York, 1990), 227ff. 12 Ibid., 234.

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original German programming could not compete at that price. Further, decades of reliance on American programming as a schedule filler and audience attraction generated charges of “electronic imperialism,” a polemical term that hides the underlying fear of a loss of national and cultural identity in a postmodern world. This problem, perceived on the European side as one of cultural identity, on the American side as a smokescreen for import quotas, is at the heart of numerous trade conflicts between the United States and much of Western Europe. There have been several attempts at either copying the most successful American serial formulas or creating German “responses” to them – programs that wrapped quintessentially German subject matter in what producers hoped would be universal (i.e., Hollywood’s) conventions. It also was hoped that some of these programs could contribute to a more bidirectional flow in the cross-cultural exchange between Germany and the United States. The series that came closest to realizing this goal was Schwarzwaldklinik (Black Forest Hospital, ZDF, 1985), a cross between the American hospital series, the German Heimatfilm, and the family drama. Besides the paternalistic tradition of featuring an allpowerful and all-knowing chief of surgery as its protagonist, the central distinguishing feature of Schwarzwaldklinik compared to similar American shows is its location in a picture-postcard Black Forest, an area that still connotes mythic qualities of shelter and refuge to most Germans. The series was an attempt to evoke the semiotics of place for Germans as Dallas had done so successfully with its Texas location for Americans. Although a critical flop, Schwarzwaldklinik was a huge popular hit in Germany, which prompted Paramount to pay DM 5 million for distribution rights to the American, Asian, and Arab markets, even though the series was ultimately broadcast only on a very limited scale in the United States.13 Another such challenge was Lindenstrasse (Linden Street, ARD, first broadcast in 1985 and 13

Alessandro Silj et al., East of Dallas: The European Challenge to American Television (London, 1988), 144ff. Schwarzwaldklinik was also shown widely in Europe.

still on the air). This was German television’s first attempt at a long-running serial and is often cited as Germany’s answer to the American soap opera – even though producer Hans W. Geissend¨orffer’s reference texts were British serials like Coronation Street and East Enders.14 There is, however, at the very least a contrastive relationship to American soaps in the producers’ decision to focus more on the social and political background of their characters’ trials and tribulations than simply on individual success and failure. Transporting different aesthetic and stylistic traditions across national lines has also posed challenges. That has been the case with dramatic devices, such as chase scenes, as well as genres, such as talk shows15 and game shows.16 When these forms were of interest to German audiences, their content often proved too contextualized to be understood outside the United States. They were thus “Germanized” – remade to fit the German cultural context and the German market. The overwhelming majority of American films and television series broadcast over the German airwaves was dubbed into German; German audiences received the programs as a kind of “third-culture,” in which foreign images were domesticated by linguistic familiarity. As Irmela Schneider points out, German viewers lacked the intertextual framework on which the generic traditions of most American series were based (year-round continuity, referential knowledge of American culture as well as the serial conventions of American television).17 Consequently, they superimposed their own 14

Ibid., 148–9. Early German attempts at imitating the American talk show flopped. It was not until 1975, when producer Dieter Ertel came up with a much more hard-hitting, spontaneous, and controversial formula – III nach neun (ARD, various Third Programs) – that the genre was successfully transplanted to Germany. 16 Some German versions of American game show formulas are Gl¨ucksrad (Sat 1), modeled after Wheel of Fortune, or Der Preis ist heiss (RTL), an adaptation of The Price is Right. 17 Irmela Schneider, “Vom Sunset Strip zur Southfork Ranch: Wege der amerikanischen Serie zum deutschen Publikum,” in Irmela Schneider, ed., Amerikanische 15

Transatlantic Reflections

cultural references and generic experiences derived from German analogs. Germans were thus exposed to American culture as a peculiar mixture of the exotic and the commonplace, something intimately familiar – yet geographically and culturally distant. This has had serious consequences for Germans’ views of contemporary American culture. Whereas American viewers routinely use their knowledge of everyday American culture to filter out stylistic hyperbole, Germans have greater difficulty in reading the American series’ everyday subtext behind the stylistic idiosyncrasies of, for instance, Miami Vice or Dallas because they do not fully share in the cultural discourse that underlies the iconography of the American texts. This has encouraged a tendency among Germans to read American culture in terms of the extremes suggested by many of the mysteries, westerns, and especially the prime-time soaps imported from the United States (for instance, Dallas, Dynasty, or – more recently – Melrose Place). What they saw was a culture of greed, violence, lawlessness, and moral decay. Such a reading of contemporary American culture easily led viewers to focus on the traumatic aspects of contemporary American society and to underestimate America’s economic and political resilience and cultural vitality. Although we have a fairly complete list of American films and television series broadcast by the two German networks between 1953 and 1985 (the phase during which the public service programs enjoyed a broadcasting monopoly),18 a comprehensive survey tracing the negotiation of mutual German-American perceptions through media images does not exist.19 Nevertheless, a selective account of the defining moments may Einstellung: Deutsches Fernsehen undUS-Amerikanische Produktionen (Heidelberg, 1992), 96ff. 18 Irmela Schneider, Christian Thomsen, and Andreas Nowak, Lexikon der britischen und amerikanischen Serien, Fernsehfilme und Mehrteiler in den Fernsehprogrammen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1953–1985, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1991). 19 As Peter Ludes has shown, any attempt at quantifying the impact of this ongoing cultural transfer would almost certainly face insurmountable methodological obstacles. Peter Ludes, Kulturtransfer und transkulturelle

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provide a preliminary map to the way this narrative unfolded on German television screens. Between the mid-1950s and early 1960s, German interest in having regular reportage on American political, social, and cultural life was high. A number of factors accounted for this interest. For one, the postwar paradigm of democratization through “reeducation” had created a sense of cultural inferiority, of having to emulate the model of the United States in everything, from politics to lifestyle issues. This sense of inadequacy was reinforced by America’s economic success during the postwar boom years, which suggested to war-ravaged Europe that modernization was coterminous with Americanization. Finally, the American support and, indeed, rescue of West Germany through CARE packages, the Marshall Plan, and the Berlin Airlift was still fresh in people’s minds, as was the threat of communism as demonstrated in the abortive uprisings in East Germany (1953) and Hungary (1956). Against this backdrop, early German television reportage about the United States tended to extol the accomplishments of American culture and technology. This proved the case with programs such as Bilder aus der Neuer Welt, Weltb¨uhne Amerika (shown on ARD beginning in 1960), or Treffpunkt New York (from 1961 onward) and New York, New York (starting in 1967). German reportage also underlined the country’s military brawn.20 Auf der Suche nach Frieden und Sicherheit (In Search of Peace and Security) and Pazifisches Tagebuch (Pacific Diary), broadcast by ARD in 1957, provided German viewers with sensational footage shot at American military installations around the globe. What would later come to be known as the iconography of nuclear terror (long-range missiles tilting skyward, B-52 bombers being refueled in midair, the Prozesse: Amerikanisierung und Europ¨aisierung des Fernsehprogramms in der Bundesrepublik (Heidelberg, 1991). 20 See Peter Zimmermann, “Geschichte von Doku¨ bis mentarfilm und Reportage von der Adenauer-Ara zur Gegenwart,” in Helmut Kreuzer and Christian W. Thomsen, eds., Geschichte des Fernsehens in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 5 vols. (Munich, 1993–6), 3:213–324. See also the chapter by David Braden Posner, vol. 1, Society.

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mushroom clouds of nuclear test explosions) was presented within a completely different semiotic register: Most German viewers viewed the images as evidence of America’s military resolve and ability to make good on its promise to defend Western Europe in case of an attack from the East. It is within this context that John F. Kennedy’s triumphant June 1963 visit to West Germany and Berlin must be seen.21 Yet Kennedy’s visit was also the peak of West Germany’s uncritical absorption of American culture and society; the emotional nature of this event and its television coverage was followed by equally excessive criticism of the United States in the wake of the president’s assassination. This disillusionment would last well into the 1980s. If the television coverage of Kennedy’s funeral had been one of the defining moments of American television, reuniting a nation in mourning, these same pictures, also carried live on German television, carried a different message in another cultural context. To Germans they not only showed that America was not as invincible as it had seemed; they also established new connotations of violence and, in the subsequent murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, racial strife. At about the same time, the first pictures from Vietnam reached German television screens and seemed to confirm that Americans did not practice the ethics they preached. The disillusionment, especially among German youths and students, was as traumatic as the previous naive idolatry had been exuberant.22 In 1979, a year after it had appeared in the United States, the NBC series Holocaust was broadcast on German television. Though transmitted over the less popular regional ARD stations (“Dritte Programme”), it managed to shock nearly the entire German nation. Many people stayed up late into the night to watch the discussions following the broadcasts. Universities and night schools offered companion programs, in which groups of viewers would watch the program together and discuss their reactions. Teachers put the series on the syl21

See the chapter by Diethelm Prowe, vol. 1, Politics. See the chapters by Philipp Gassert and David B. Morris, vol. 2, Society. 22

labus, making it the centerpiece of a discussion of fascism and the Third Reich. Contrary to popular perception, Holocaust was by no means the first time German television had tackled the traumatic issue of the country’s Nazi past, but it did persuade German intellectuals to modify their long-held views of television and regard it as a potential catalyst for social and political debate.23 The controversy surrounding Holocaust in Germany increased latent anti-American sentiments among parts of the German left who had considered themselves, until 1979, to be the guardians of Vergangenheitsbew¨altigung (coming to terms with the past). To suddenly have this issue wrenched from their authority by “a bunch of market-wise Americans”24 through a medium over which most intellectuals felt Americans had too much control already, seemed not only to drag the memory of the Holocaust down to the level of commercialization, but also to be an expropriation of German history by the American film industry. Those are exactly the terms chosen by German filmmaker Edgar Reitz to describe the original impetus for his fifteen-and-a-half-hour miniseries Heimat (ARD, 1984), whose effect on the German collective imagination has frequently been compared to the impact that Roots had in the United States. In fact Heimat’s original title, Made in Germany, is a reminder of the series’ underlying agenda: to restore to Germans some control over the articulation of their own national narrative. Although most of the eleventh episodes, watched by as many as 54 percent of German viewers, dealt with the lives of the central character, Maria Simon, her children, and extended family and friends in a small village amid picturesque hills in western

23

On the controversy surrounding the broadcast of Holocaust, see Anton Kaes, From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film (Cambridge, Mass., 1989); see also M. Geisler, “The Disposal of Memory: Fascism and the Holocaust on German Television,” in Bruce A. Murray and Christopher J. Wickham, eds., Framing the Past (Carbondale, Ill., 1992), 220–60. 24 Siegfried Zielinski and Friedrich Knilli, Holocaust zur Unterhaltung (Berlin, 1982), 115.

Transatlantic Reflections

Germany, the driving “enigma” of the first twothirds of the narrative is that, at the end of the first episode, Maria’s husband Paul leaves his wife and two young children for America. When he eventually returns for a visit in episode eight, titled “Der Amerikaner,” he no longer is considered a German, but part of the forces occupying Germany after the end of World War II. Paul is the only major character to remain an outsider to the village community, a community flexible enough even to include the village Nazis but not “The American.” Indeed, the very fact that Paul Simon, with his American money, subsidizes the experimental music of Hermann (a fledgling composer and the director’s alter ego) is an allusion to German filmmakers’ fears of being co-opted by the generic conventions of mainstream American cinema: “American aesthetics,” Reitz said, articulating the sentiments of most German intellectuals at the time, “are the real terror.”25 Reitz’ Heimat, then, steeped in the tradition of German regionalism, with the barely accessible Hunsr¨uck dialect and its meticulous research in the area’s regional history,26 is a kind of cultural guerrilla warfare against the leveling of cultural identity by the “universal” language of American film and television. The entire narrative, which sparked a nationwide obsession with identity formation, works to exclude and resist the presence of America and Americans in Germany.27 In the wake of Kennedy’s assassination and the cultural watershed of 1968, “official” German reporting on the United States became increasingly critical. In the late 1960s and early 1970s,

25

Edgar Reitz, Liebe zum Kino (Cologne, 1984), 141. Much of this research was carried out by Reitz’s coscreenwriter, historian Peter Steinbach. 27 Reitz himself makes an explicit connection between Heimat and the resistance against the deployment of NATO missiles in an interview in Medium 2, no. 3 (1983). It was thus only fitting that when the German news magazine Report produced a segment on the antinuclear resistance, they called it “Heimat, Part 12: Schabbach Resists NATO-Missiles.” See also Michael E. Geisler, “‘Heimat’ and the German Left: The Anamnesis of a Trauma,” New German Critique, special issue on Heimat, no. 36 (fall 1985): 25–66.

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the conduct of American troops in Vietnam came under heavy criticism. As early as 1963–4, the television news magazine Weltspiegel (ARD) devoted no less than fifteen segments over two years to this topic;28 in the following years, documentaries like Hans Dieter Grabe’s Nur leichte K¨ampfe im Raum Da Nang (Light Skirmishes in the Da Nang Region, ZDF, 1970) brought with drastic images the war’s “collateral damage” into German living rooms.29 The new discourse on America now featured “the fall of the American empire” – metaphors of military brutality, imperial arrogance (for example, Wilhelm Bittorf ’s Im Schatten des Pentagon [In the Shadow of the Pentagon] ARD, 1972), and internal social problems that promulgated an extremely negative image of America. The 1990 ZDF series Trilogie der vergangenen Tr¨aume (Trilogy of Bygone Dreams), for example, featured interviews with a federal agent fighting a losing war against crime in Los Angeles and scenes of drunken revelers at Daytona Beach during spring break. NATO’s deployment of Pershing 2 intermediate-range missiles on German soil in 1983 rekindled traditional German anxieties about being turned into the battlefield of a nuclear exchange and, ultimately, led to the venting of more or less open anti-American sentiments. Peter Staisch’s 1984 Vom CARE Paket zur Pershing (From CARE Packages to Pershings, ARD) provided in its opening sequence an example of the very problem it purported to redress: “the history of German-American misunderstandings.” Against imagery of a restaurant sign advertising the Cowboy Family Restaurant, then rapidly cutting to a montage of images of New York – the Pan Am Building, a McDonald’s restaurant, joggers, a police

26

28 ¨ Heidemarie Schumacher, “Asthetik, Funktion und Geschichte der Magazine im Fernsehprogramm der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” in Helmut Kreuzer and Christian W. Thomsen, eds., Geschichte des Fernsehens in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Munich, 1993–96), 128. 29 Besides confronting viewers with a boy whose testicles have been shot off and whose body is oozing urine, the film shows victims of Napalm bombing, a practice also criticized in many other news segments and documentaries (e.g., Panorama, ARD, Mar. 10, 1969).

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cruiser, a man begging in the streets, a fried chicken franchise – Staisch intones the litany of German cultural criticism of the United States: America – we have learned the art of eating a fast Hamburger here. We now say “jogging” when we mean a good old German Dauerlauf. And we have gotten used to saying “jeans” instead of Nietenhosen. . . . Broadway and the fascination of the musical, Coca-Cola-Imperialism – all of that is America. And this America is in our language, in our everyday life. We Germans have absorbed it, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously.30

This assortment of cultural clich´es eventually leads up to the documentary’s climax: As heavy trucks lumber past the camera in the middle of the night, the voice-over narrator explains that nearly forty years after Americans sent CARE packages to the Germans, “on a cold December night in the Swabian town of Mutlangen, the first Pershing 2 intermediate-range missiles are being deployed on German soil. One has elected to accomplish this by night – for good reasons.” The highly charged visual and rhetorical stereotypes that make up television reporting like From CARE Packages to Pershings link controversial political and military decisions to trite 30

Vom CARE Panet zur Pershing, ARD, 1984.

assumptions about American culture, implying that one is the inseparable complement of the other. Although it is easy to debunk such shallow journalism, in the hall of mirrors formed by the cross-cultural transfer of electronic images a critique of such cultural stereotypes immediately raises the question of where they came from. Would this glib montage of crude generalizations about contemporary American culture work at all if these same images had not been reinforced, on a twenty-four-hour basis, by programs exported by American television itself? And yet Germans have persisted in their enjoyment of American popular culture, McDonald’s and all. Even as the “American Empire” appears to be crumbling on German television screens, the Germans’ love affair with U.S. films and television series has continued unabated, even increased. Hollywood, the West, the glitter of Broadway, and the trendsetting American lifestyle have lost none of their appeal, and a number of documentary and fictional television productions have paid homage to this continuing German fascination with American popular culture. However “guilty” these pleasures may be, they serve as a constant reminder that, if there ever was such a thing as an American “electronic imperialism,” it did not occur without the enthusiastic cooperation of the “victims.”

chapter fourteen

Performance Theater in the Age of Post-Drama David Bathrick

artistic paradigm shift might be seen as perplexing. Although these two major industrial powers have continued to enjoy a very intense exchange in a number of areas of mass and high culture, the dramatic arts remain an exception. In spite of a brief fascination for theater groups such as The Living Theater or The Bread and Puppet Theater in the late 1960s and early 1970s, or, more recently, for a theatrical spectacle on the scale of Tony Kuschner’s Angels in America, the post-1968 German stage has shown precious little sustained interest in the works of such established playwrights as Beth Henley, David Mamet, Marsha Norman, David Rabe, Sam Shephard, Wendy Wasserstein, or August Wilson. Similarly, aside from isolated productions of Bertolt Brecht, Peter Handke, Franz Xaver Kroetz, and Heiner M¨uller, contemporary German-speaking playwrights or German production techniques (such as the work of Peter Stein at the Schaub¨uhne in Berlin) have had only minimal impact on the mainstream American theater scene since the 1970s. To be sure, Brecht and Brechtian notions of epic theater and estrangement influenced experimental groups such as The San Francisco Mime Troupe and The Living Theater in the late 1960s or, more recently and much more obliquely, Theater X in Milwaukee, Stage Left in Chicago, Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater, and Richard Schechner’s The Performance Group and its successor, The Wooster Group, in New York City.

Interaction between European and American performance theater after 1968 has increasingly provoked the very institutions and languages of established theater practice on both sides of the Atlantic. In earlier periods of the twentieth century such interaction was defined above all by the arrival of one or another renowned playwright whose work or style would, in turn, open up new possibilities for theatrical modernism within what was still understood primarily as a dramatic form of expression. The New York productions of Bertolt Brecht’s The Mother in 1935 and The Three Penny Opera in 1954 challenged political avant-garde theater in the United States, just as Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in the 1950s stunned and fascinated an American theater ensconced in the realism of a Tennessee Williams or the theatrical style of Stanislavski-dominated method acting. The emergence in the 1970s of what has variously been called performance or postmodern theater, both in the United States and Europe, has destabilized the historically generic boundaries of traditional drama just as it has threatened the very notion of representation itself. One particularly interesting example of such theater is the work of American director Robert Wilson, East German dramatist Heiner M¨uller, and West German choreographer Pina Bausch, all of whom performed or were produced in both the United States and Germany, in both mutual cooperation and as separate productions. That this American-German cultural connection came to occupy an important and active 373

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There are important institutional differences between German and American theatrical developments that help explain the general lack of mutual interest between the two national traditions. In Germany, a state-subsidized theater system evolved at the end of the nineteenth century that provided support for the maintenance of classical theatrical traditions (Goethe, Hebbel, Lessing, and Schiller) as well as a space for radical experimentation. The emergence of German expressionist drama (Kaiser, Kokoschka, and Sternheim) and the political avant-garde (Brecht, Piscator, Wangenheim, and Wolf) before and during the Weimar period were two significant results of such subsidization. By contrast, within the mostly private, boxoffice-driven theater unique to the American system there was a much more clearly delineated split between mainstream theater (Broadway musicals, boulevard comedies) on the one hand, and the more esoteric experimental plays found in the Off-Off Broadway and university theater circuit on the other. For the most part, only the Broadway musical proved to be of interest to German theatergoers, whereas in the United States the German avant-garde, because of its lack of broad box-office appeal, remained very much on the margins of the theater establishment. It is significant in this regard that the world premiere of Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle in 1948 was held on the campus of tiny Carlton College in Northfield, Minnesota. But taking up the heritage of someone like Brecht (or Artaud, Beckett, Grotowski, or Wagner) even within the “environmental theater” scene of the 1970s or the emerging performance theater of the 1980s no longer can be understood simply as the appropriation of a particular author, text, or system of ideas for the purpose of realizing a coherent aesthetic or political strategy. Rather, what we see in postmodern theater is an act of de- and recomposition of the very meaning of authorship, textuality, genre, or even aesthetic representation. At one level, such reconfiguration means the loss of a particular kind of authority associated with traditional theater: The dramatic text no longer is viewed as a sacred, cohering “work” emanating from the unique creativity of an author-genius; the

performance itself no longer subscribes to the dictates of unity, necessity, narrative, and genre, which since the writings of Aristotle continue to haunt even the most audacious modernist efforts to abandon or undermine them. Politically, this recomposition and reconfiguration also spell the end of an avant-garde theater typical of the 1960s (or for that matter the 1920s) that held to a participatory and communitarian reality of events and swept away the deadening repetition of a traditional theater bound to the repressiveness of a dominant political order. This is not to argue that the new performancecentered theater was apolitical or that it had no “author.” It only means that with the relocation of meaning and audience, the terms of the debate were seriously altered and rethought. Although some have been quick to define this development as the emergence of a postmodern theater, it will be more helpful at this point to describe specifically and within an historical framework the work of a few individual theater artists and performance groups in relation to their reception in Germany and the United States. In so doing, I suggest reasons why the interaction within conventional institutions of drama has remained relatively inactive and why the area of performance theater has become such an avenue of exchange. Robert Wilson’s production of Death, Destruction & Detroit at the Theater am Halleschen Ufer in West Berlin in fall 1979 marked an important watershed for his career as well as for West German theater. Despite having clearly made a mark on the fringes of the American performance avant-garde with productions such as Deafman Glance (1971), The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin (1972), A Letter to Queen Victoria (1974), and Einstein on the Beach (1976), Wilson had to face the fact that he was not having much of an artistic impact beyond New York City and the Brooklyn Academy of the Arts (BAM). Although recognized as a virtuoso of style and gesture, of beautiful images and stunning mise-en-sc`ene, the imbedded traditions of performative and textual realism at the heart of American drama and theater criticism had helped keep Wilson in a state of aesthetic limbo vis-`a-vis the established theater world.

Performance Theater in the Age of Post-Drama

As many American avant-garde artists had done over the years (Lionel Feininger, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein), Wilson looked to Europe for the recognition and acceptance he had been denied at home. The Paris performances of Deafman Glance in 1971 received critical acclaim, as did his production of Network in Munich and Amsterdam in 1977–8. Thus it was with much anticipation that Wilson turned to Berlin and the Schaub¨uhne with a work that he had written especially for that location. Neither he nor the theater would be disappointed. Although the production generated considerable controversy because of its perceived political implications, Wilson was most impressed by the willingness of German audiences and critics to engage seriously (sometimes too seriously, he thought) with what was offered to them. Death, Destruction & Detroit contained many of the ingredients of the now “classical” Wilsonian style. Central to his aesthetic is an intent to place “found objects” in the foreground; the “separation of the elements” is the starting point for all his work. Where others begin with a story or a philosophical premise as the basic building block of their theatrical intentions, Wilson organized his productions around “visual” and “acoustic” scores that were initially developed independently of each other and then brought together in the process of rehearsal. These visual and aural systems were themselves constructed from seemingly unrelated or at least separate elements: The acoustic text was often composed of disconnected fragments of music, speech, and assorted noises or tone sequences, which were organized rhythmically rather than discursively or dialogically. Similarly, the visual score was a montage of fragments of minimal happenings, movements, strewn objects (as opposed to “props”), images, or simply people (as opposed to “characters”) arranged in relationship to one another according to spatial and rhythmic patterns. The aim of these configurations was to bring into question the audience’s expectations regarding narrative and spatial and temporal perception in order to “explode” older modes of knowing or experiencing. In The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud (1970), for instance, the only “action” to be noted at one point was that of a

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giant papier-mˆach´e tortoise taking more than an hour to inch its way across the stage. In Wilson’s twelve-hour production of The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin, the cast simply went to sleep for a while. Often accused of not writing theater pieces, Wilson readily admitted that what he did were “not plays because they do not have plots, they are architectural constructions in time and space.”1 However, his aversion to the drama as a closed, coherent “work” and his preference for “patterns as they evolve in rehearsal” must not be seen as mere formalist experimentation but as an epistemological belief that audiences lost a primary ability to see and hear. Thus Wilson tried to alienate viewers from their presuppositions, not to have them “think critically” as Brecht would have wanted, but rather to free them to see the “architectural rhythms” and hear the “optical music.” If Brecht’s ideal spectator is ultimately asked to participate cognitively in producing the “meaning” of the theatrical text, the starting point for a Wilsonian audience is a willingness to abandon the search for referentiality and accept the “materiality” and “visuality” of the performance as a value in and of itself. Death, Destruction & Detroit was a “family love story” that incorporated a series of “found” images revolving around love, war, politics, and popular culture. Some but by no means all of these images were related to the Third Reich. It turned out that a few of the sixteen “objects” (scenes) were based on a snapshot of Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess, that Wilson had found in a flea market one day. This eventually generated a controversy. If Wilson was fascinated by the picture itself, using it to free associate about the life and times of the 1930s and 1940s, the public revelation that the prologue included the character Rudolf Hess (there is no textual mention of Hess either on stage or in the program) opened up a torrent of discussion and interpretation as to the meaning of the play as a whole. Many of the other scenes were based on cinematic borrowings from American mass 1

Quoted in Katherine Arens, “Robert Wilson: Is Postmodern Performance Possible?” Theatre Journal 43 (Mar. 1991): 29.

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culture (Busby Berkeley, Disney’s Fantasia, Flash Gordon–style science fiction, car races in the desert). But this did not deter critics and audiences from dismissing the entire show as an artsy, overly stylized treatment of the Holocaust and Nazi rule. Herein lies the Wilsonian provocation, both in Germany and the United States. Destabilized by their inability to immediately find a moral, a narrative, or a single, unifying principle to explain Wilson’s plurality of “meanings,” audiences and critics either celebrated what they saw on aesthetic grounds as a modernist triumph or, from a more “political” perspective, dismissed it as a “retreat to pure enjoyment of the arranged.”2 This antireferential, anti-ideological provocation drew the East German playwright Heiner M¨uller to Wilson in the late 1970s. “What I find interesting about Wilson after working with him,” M¨uller said, is that he permits the individual parts, the elements of theater their own freedom. Wilson never interprets, a text is simply there and it is served up, but not tainted in any way and not interpreted. It is there. And in a very similar way an image is there, and the image is also not interpreted, it is simply there. And then there is a noise, and it is there and it also is not interpreted. I find this important. It is a very democratic concept of theater.3

One might think that the highly cerebral textual writing of the East German would have repelled Wilson’s “pre-linguist” sensibilities, but as we learn from Laurence Shyer, the latter had remarkably similar things to say about the role of images in M¨uller’s texts: In M¨uller he found for the first time a writer who seemed to share the same visual impulse, someone whose language translates not into rhetoric or narrative but pictures of the mind. If Wilson was unwilling to wrestle with the contradictions and complexities of M¨uller’s texts, he could respond immediately to 2

Peter Iden, “Death of a Thief: Ein Nachruf anl¨asslich Robert Wilson’s ‘DD&D,’” Theater heute 20 (Apr. 1979): 15. 3 Heiner M¨uller, Gesammelte Irrt¨umer I: Interviews und Gespr¨ache (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), 153.

the barrage of pictorial metaphors and the often hallucinatory scenes suggested by the stage directions.4

M¨uller and Wilson came from very different social and aesthetic worlds: the one a Marxist dialectician from Saxony who emerged from the rubble of World War II to immerse himself in the cultural politics of a major communist state; the other a politically naive and dedicated individualist from Waco, Texas, of the 1950s, committed to the commercial success of his art and career. What drew them together was a profound disdain of any predetermined aesthetic utterance where an author knows more than the metaphors he or she employs and where the audience is always expected to search for referential meaning. To be sure, M¨uller’s plea for interpretive autonomy derived from a system of discursive censorship and political control very different from the aesthetic dictates of theatrical realism and the “oppressive” time slots of the television industry against which Wilson waged his struggle. Their views of history also cannot be neatly combined into a postmodernist rejection of all “metanarratives,” regardless of context or cause. M¨uller’s resistance to the strictures of Marxist-Leninism, where the individual is subordinated merely to a moment in the inexorable dialectical process, called for a historical model that would insist on the inclusion of human agency as a necessary component of political development. This notion of history is completely absent from the glacial, transcendent purity of Wilson’s texts, at least in their intention. Yet despite – or perhaps because of – their differences, M¨uller and Wilson collaborated on a number of projects during the 1980s that would become models for postmodernist performance theater. In 1983, Wilson invited M¨uller to write part of the Cologne section for his the CIVIL warS, a twelve-hour opera on civil conflict throughout history that Wilson was preparing for the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Rather than create an original script, M¨uller 4 Laurence Shyer, Robert Wilson and His Collaborators (New York, 1989), 119–20.

Performance Theater in the Age of Post-Drama

constructed a collage of fragments, including elements from his own work as well as other texts and text fragments dealing with family conflicts. In keeping with Wilson’s predilections, M¨uller did not structure his collage to complement or illustrate Wilson’s architectural images or acoustic patterns but rather to “affiliate” with whatever was present on the stage. As it turned out, the American organizers withdrew the funding for the project as a whole at the last minute, so the Cologne section was eventually performed separately in Germany and Boston. Other collaborations between Wilson and M¨uller included a prologue entitled “Description of a Picture/Explosion of a Memory,” which M¨uller wrote for Wilson’s production of Alcestis at the ART in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1985, and Wilson’s production of M¨uller’s Hamletmachine, staged first with students from New York University in spring 1986 and then by Hamburg’s Thalia theater in the fall of the same year. In the process of these three productions, a pattern of interchange emerged that was to change both men irrevocably and result in an extraordinary theatrical achievement. Whereas Wilson had previously eschewed any written textual theater, fearing always the tendency of staging to relate too much to written text, the highly imagistic, non-narrative, severely dense and enigmatic nature of M¨uller’s texts provided at once a thematic anchor and a freedom of association vital to his own work. Conversely, M¨uller called Wilson’s production of Hamletmachine “the best production ever” of one of his plays, praising it for its “lightness” and absence of interpretive staging.5 As John Rouse aptly noted in his analysis of the production, “Wilson’s visual text is not a desemanticized field of signifiers; on the contrary, Wilson’s text parallels M¨uller’s central European obsessions with a definite range of associations from American culture.”6 Rather than dehistoricizing M¨uller’s vision, as some critics have 5

Ibid., 131. John Rouse, “Textuality and Authority in Theater and Drama: Some Contemporary Possibilities,” in Janelle G. Reinelt and Joseph R. Roach, eds., Critical Theory and Performance (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1992), 154.

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argued, Wilson’s stunning mise-en-sc`ene countered, “lightened,” and thereby interpretively opened up the linguistic density of the East German’s text. If the collaboration between M¨uller and Wilson represented the productive confrontation of differing as well as shared stylistic and cultural histories within the area of performance theater, the arrival of Pina Bausch’s Wuppertaler Tanztheater on American shores in 1984 represented much the same for modern dance. The performances of Cafe M¨uller (1978) and Bluebeard (1977), first in New York at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and then at the Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles, were provocations on a number of levels. As in Wilson’s, there is no time or place in Bausch’s work, no observance of the classical unities such as narrative, no progression of moments building to a climax, and no unfolding revelation of character or philosophical meaning. Unlike the Wilsonian materiality of mise-en-sc`ene and the spatial and acoustic rhythms constructed from it, or the explosive “rewriting of myth and history in Heiner M¨uller’s ‘synthetic fragments,’” the starting point in Bausch’s work is the vulnerable, often brutalized female body.7 Her pieces deal with love and fear, longing and loneliness, frustration and terror, tenderness and sexual victimization. Their visual rhythms are constantly repetitive: extreme and circular enactments of violence and self-degradation, unending cycles of physical exertion or collective labor, unbearable confrontations between the dancers and the intractable world of matter and sociality. One work that particularly outraged American audiences was Bluebeard, a piece about an obsessive male sadist who kills the woman he loves. Some saw the images as gratuitous violence or even as an example of “feminist paranoia.” Clearly challenged by material not often seen in the hallowed halls of modern dance, many critics translated Bausch’s socially suggestive images into political allegories, accusing her of filling theaters with “projections of her

6

7 Johannes H. Birringer, Theatre, Theory, Postmodernism (Bloomington, Ind., 1991), 45.

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self-pity.” Another reaction was simply to rail against the ugliness of it all. The perceived lack of beauty and physical perfection in Bausch’s dance troupe proved just as provocative as the seemingly abject thematic representations of physical and mental stress. Critics referred to the dancers as “little fat girls” with “pendant breasts and stringy hair,” faulting them for their lack of conventional allure and for violating norms of female sensuality.8 It was partly because of this that the fall 1985 program of the BAM’s Next Wave Festival witnessed a confrontation between the proponents of German Tanztheater (Bausch, Reinhild Hoffmann, and Susanne Linke) and some of the post-Cunningham choreographers (Laura Dean, Margaret Jenkins, and Nina Wiener) who represented the respective merits of the formalist, movement-oriented concerns of American modern dance. If the latter saw in Bausch a return to the emotionality and narrative of Martha Graham–style modern dance, the Tanztheater insisted that their attempt to take up and reritualize the anguished gestures of the every-

8 Anita Finkel, “Gunsmoke: Pina Bausch Sends the Walls Tumbling Down,” New Dance Review 1 (Oct.-Dec. 1991): 8.

day did not simply rise from a political credo, nor could it be interpretively reduced to psychic or social representation. Instead, they sought to question the aesthetic and institutional conventions of performance itself: how they communicate, what they communicate, and what they exclude. M¨uller once said of Bausch’s theater that “the image is a thorn in one’s eye; the bodies write the text, which withholds itself from the audience, the prison of meaning.”9 By that he meant that her works were too uncompromising to be domesticated within a system of simple referentiality or cultural compliance. The same can be said of Wilson as well as of M¨uller himself. All three of these artists are “difficult,” uncompromising, and enigmatic, not first and foremost because of the issues or doctrines that inform the interpretation of their works but because of the very impossibility of incorporating them into an artistic status quo. Performance theater is defined most aptly by what it refuses to be. It is this refusal to stay within the boundaries of nation, poetic genre, and representation that has made the work of Wilson, M¨uller, and Bausch provocative and important in Germany and the United States. 9

Heiner M¨uller, Rotwelsch (Berlin, 1982), 103.

chapter fifteen

Beyond Painting and Sculpture German-American Exchange in the Visual Arts Stefan Germer and Julia Bernard

This chapter views artistic production from a sociological standpoint and interprets relations between Germany and the United States in the visual arts since the mid-1960s as one means by which national identities were constructed.1 This artistic exchange was crucial in dialogically formulating a national self-conception.2 In contrast to the arts exchange of the preceding phase, one dominated by the wholesale export of American art into West Germany, the period stretching from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s was characterized by a sequentially evolving dialogue with shifting parameters.3 To capture the unique character of these years, we have divided them into three overlapping phases and focused on the diverse agents and mechanisms that determined this artistic exchange. Rather than resorting to an anachronistic interpretation of artistic activity as ideology – one either representing “interests” (the United States) or coping

with “strain” (West Germany) – we investigate how cultural artifacts themselves embodied or constituted that interaction.4 The institutionalization of American Pop art took place in West Germany during the late 1960s. The showcasing of this movement at documenta 4, as well as German collectors’ extensive purchases of works and a series of museum exhibitions initiated that year can all be seen as symptomatic of this process.5 Such developments mark a change in Pop art’s status, from being appreciated only within a restricted circle of artists and individual collectors6 – predominantly in Cologne and D¨usseldorf – to becoming a phenomenon with a wider public. This transformation expressed a structural shift in the West German art world involving changed attitudes and consequently institutions, creating the conditions for an extensive, albeit not altogether positive engagement with

1 For a theoretical orientation, see Louis Althusser, “Id´eologie et appareils id´eologique de l’´etat (Notes pour un recherche),” Positions 1964–1975 (Paris, 1976), 81–8; Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, trans. and ed. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis, 1984), chap. 5, esp. 251ff. 2 German-American cultural exchange is in this sense describable as having “reflective” and “projective” aspects because on the one hand a national Other can function to provide a contrasting element in the process of formulating an identity or self-image while, on the other, in being exported, a constructed national persona can actually provide a basis for self-definition. 3 See Sigrid Ruby’s chapter vol. 1, Culture.

4 Clifford Geertz, “Ideology as a Cultural System,” in Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York, 1973), 193–233. 5 See Lucius Grisebach, “Stationen amerikanischer Kunst in Europa nach 1945,” in Dieter Honisch and Jens C. Jensen, eds., Amerikanische Kunst von 1945 bis heute (Cologne, 1976), 9–23. 6 Wulf Herzogenrath and Gabriele Lueg, eds., Die 60er Jahre: K¨olns Weg zur Kunstmetropole: Vom Happening zum Kunstmarkt (Cologne, 1986), 232–61; “Wie die Pop-art nach Deutschland kam: Interview mit dem Galeristen Rudolf Zwirner,” in Bernd Polster, ed., Westwind: Die Amerikanisierung Europas (Cologne, 1976), 114–8.

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American art.7 The uncommonly broad representation of contemporary art in German museums, further strengthened by loans from and exhibitions of the holdings of private collectors,8 worked to expose a wider viewership to Pop art.9 The movement’s characteristics also encouraged this reception, for Pop artists’ inclusion of figurative motifs drawn from everyday life or the consumer world and their use of a distinctly “American” popular visual language doubtless increased these works’ accessibility. Because West German public reception of this artistic movement coincided with the height of the student rebellion, the left developed its own interpretation of Pop art. Drawing upon a critical stance influenced by Frankfurt School cultural theorists, the German Left sought to expose the subversive subcultural function of such art, which had been lost in its popularized transfer to West Germany.10 These interpretations generally understood Pop art as either a critique of the capitalist economy, by contribut7 This transformation was achieved, on the one hand, by young art dealers who had just begun their careers, often with Pop art (e.g., Rudolf Zwirner, Rolf Ricke, and Heiner Friedrich) and, on the other, by a new type of art collector whose holdings were made accessible to the public almost immediately following purchase, most notably the entrepreneurs Karl Str¨oher in Darmstadt and Peter Ludwig in Aachen. 8 In the same year as he purchased it, Str¨oher sent his Pop collection – supplemented with his holdings of work by Joseph Beuys and a younger generation of German artists – on a traveling exhibition to German and Swiss museums and then placed it on long-term loan in the Hessisches Landesmuseum; in the same period Ludwig consigned 140 pieces of contemporary art to the WallrafRichartz Museum in Cologne as a loan. See Christmut Pr¨ager, “Das Museum f¨ur Moderne Kunst und die Sammlung Str¨oher,” in Christmut Pr¨ager and J. C. Ammann, eds., Museum f¨ur Moderne Kunst und Sammlung Str¨oher (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), 61–91; Gert von der Osten, “Der Sammler geht voran,” in Gert von der Osten and Horst Keller, eds., Kunst der sechziger Jahre: Sammlung Ludwig im Wallraf-Richartz Museum (Cologne, 1969). 9 Wibke von Bonin, “Die Gunst der fr¨uhen Jahre,” in Herzogenrath and Lueg, eds., Die 60er Jahre, 222–31; and von Bonin, “US-Kunst auf Sender: Fernsehen aus dem Atelier,” in Polster, ed., Westwind, 119–25. 10 Jennifer Doyle, Jonathan Flatley, and Jos´e Munoz, eds., PopOut: Queer Warhol (Durham, N.C., 1996).

ing to the destruction of traditional notions of artistic authorship (something that Walter Benjamin had already sketched in his essays11 ). Or, taking a cue from Herbert Marcuse, they saw it as involving a freeing of sensory pleasure in the quotidian, ultimately democratizing fine art.12 More skeptical voices on the left pointed out that this wholesale embrace of American art in West Germany took hold just at the point when, in contrast to art objects’ dematerialization in “happenings” and performance art of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Pop artists had returned to producing saleable canvases and objects, in essence restituting categories that had ostensibly been left behind. 13 Nevertheless, this broader embrace of contemporary art, as well as its rapid integration into museum collections, altered both the nature of the public and those institutions’ character. German museums were transformed from being elitist establishments assuming that visitors possessed an extensive cultural background into institutions that paid homage to the art of their own time and thus won greater popularity.14 The creation of two institutions consolidated such shifts over the long term: first, the founding of the Cologne “Kunstmarkt” art fair in 1967; and second, establishment of the D¨usseldorf “Prospekt” exhibitions.15 The collective impact of integrating contemporary art into museum holdings, creation of a private

11 Rainer Crone and Wilfried Wiegand, Die revolu¨ tion¨are Asthetik Andy Warhols (Darmstadt, 1972). 12 Andreas Huyssen, “The Cultural Politics of Pop,” in Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Bloomington, Ind., 1986), 141–59. 13 Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, “Avant-Propos zu Re(tro)spekt,” in J¨urgen Harten et al., eds., Prospekt/ Retrospekt: Europa 1946–76 (Cologne, 1976), 7. 14 Beyond this, a concentration of commercial galleries developed in the Rhineland in particular, giving participants the impression of belonging to a common “scene.” See Hein St¨unke, “Bemerkungen zur Vorgeschichte und Geschichte des K¨olner Kunstmarktes,” in Herzogenrath and Lueg, eds., Die 60er Jahre, 342– 6. 15 Documented in Harten et al., eds., Prospekt/ Retrospekt.

Beyond Painting and Sculpture

gallery and art dealer network,16 and the emergence of German collectors on the international art market was that American journalists, dealers, and artists came to perceive West Germany as a competitor.17 This set the stage for artistic exchange in the following decades. During an initial phase stretching from the mid-1960s through the early 1970s, Germany functioned as an important collaborative site as well as exhibition venue for Minimalism, Conceptual art, and Earthworks – overlapping international artistic movements that had largely originated in the United States. Private galleries and art dealers, art academies, institutions such as art associations (Kunstvereine), and to a lesser extent, individual artists were the most important agents involved in importing these contemporary developments into Germany. What distinguished this phase from the previous, partly overlapping period of Pop art’s institutionalization was Germany’s shift from being a place where American contemporary art was collected and exhibited to the public to a place where such art was produced and interpreted.18 The private dealers who were crucial to this process included Heiner Friedrich in Munich, Konrad Fischer in D¨usseldorf, Rolf Ricke in Cologne, and later Alexander von BerswordtWallrabe (of Galerie m) in Bochum. This trend indicates the significance of Pop art as an “American” phenomenon entering the cultural mainstream; it served as the backdrop against which these newer movements could be received by an exclusive, selfconsciously “avant-garde” German audience. 16

They established their own connections with the United States, bypassing the previous monopoly exercised by Ileana Sonnabend’s Paris gallery; they also operated as adviser-agents for private collections whose character and emphases they thus helped to shape. See dealer Rolf Ricke’s account in Honisch and Jensen, eds., Amerikanische Kunst, 143–6. 17 Phyllis Tuchman, “American Art in Germany: The History of a Phenomenon,” Artforum 9 (Nov. 1970): 58– 69. 18 Stefan Germer, “Intersecting Visions, Shifting Perspectives: An Overview of German-American Artistic Relations,” in Monique Beudert, ed., The Froehlich Foundation: German and American Art from Beuys and Warhol (London, 1996), 23–6.

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The importance of this foreign context for the American artists of these major tendencies is demonstrated by the fact that many of them received some of their earliest exhibition exposure in Germany. The prominent Minimalists shown included Carl Andre (1967), Richard Serra (1968), Donald Judd (1969), Dan Flavin (1966), Sol LeWitt (1968), and Robert Morris (1964), as well as Conceptual, Process, and Performance artists Keith Sonnier and Bruce Nauman (1968), Dan Graham (1973), and Lawrence Weiner and Mel Bochner (1969). Major Earth art figures were also present, often through pieces commissioned in Germany (Michael Heizer, “The Munich Depression,” Heiner Friedrich, 1969), their inclusion in survey exhibitions (Robert Smithson, “Prospekt 1969,” Kunsthalle D¨usseldorf), or their creation of installations (Walter de Maria, “The Land Show,” Galerie Heiner Friedrich, 1968), as well as through photographs of their other works. What distinguished this new type of German art dealer was not only involvement in the production and interpretation of works via their presentation.19 Their collaborative role extended to virtual patronage; dealers such as Ricke essentially commissioned installations of often unsaleable pieces by buying plane tickets for the artists he wanted to show and having them create work in his gallery.20 The D¨usseldorf Kunstakademie (where a receptive artworld “scene” had formed around Joseph Beuys) provided a further setting in which German artists and public could see Minimalist, Conceptual, and Process art and Earthworks by Americans21 ; art associations in Krefeld (together with the city’s Kaiser Wilhelm Museum), Cologne, and D¨usseldorf also played an important role. The response of German artists to American phenomena, or parallel developments in their

19

Gerd de Vries, ed., Paul Maenz K¨oln 1970–1880– 1990: eine Avantgarde-Galerie und die Kunst unserer Zeit (Cologne, 1991). 20 Marianne Stockebrand, ed., Rolf Ricke (Cologne, 1990). 21 Stephan von Wiese et al., Brennpunkt D¨usseldorf 1962–87 (D¨usseldorf, 1987), 10–8.

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work at this time, is a complex topic that has not yet been fully researched.22 On the one hand, figures such as Bernd and Hilla Becher had in their black-and-white photographs of industrial buildings independently arrived at a seriality that reminded American Minimalists of their own work,23 and Ulrich R¨uckriem, whose sculptures consisted of hand-hewn slabs or blocks of granite, was already producing work that related to these new artistic tendencies. On the other hand, it is equally clear that individuals such as Blinky Palermo or Gerhard Richter (especially in his monochrome gray and color-sample paintings) reflected the influence of parallel American movements during this period. Contemporary German commentary on these phenomena24 as well as retrospective analyses by foreign observers25 have attempted to explain Minimalism in terms of its national origins. Both in effect argue that despite these artists’ disavowal of any “content” in their reductive works, their very conception of sculpture nonetheless privileged technology and drew analogies between art and commercially produced appliances in ways that could be seen as typically “American.” Their antiillusionistic and anti-iconographic approach to art, mass production techniques and use of industrial materials, serial repetition of simple geometric structures, and engagement of viewers’ sensory perception in a direct way – all might understandably be identified as “American.” Within a European context, this interpretation could have had as much to do with audiences’

22 Models were first proposed by B. H. D. Buchloh, “Formalism and Historicity: Changing Concepts in American and European Art Since 1945,” in Europe in the Seventies: Aspects of Recent Art, Comp. Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, 1977), 82–111 (on the Bechers and Richter). 23 Carl Andre, “A Note on Bernd and Hilla Becher,” Artforum (Dec. 1972): 59. 24 Jutta Held, “Minimal Art – eine amerikanische Ideologie” (1972), in Gregor Stemmrich, ed., Minimal Art: Eine kritische Retrospektive (Dresden, 1995), 444–70. 25 Charles Reeve, “Cold Metal: Donald Judd’s Hidden Historicity,” Art History 15, no. 1 (Dec. 1992): 486– 504.

preconceptions as it did with these artists’ selfconsciously constructed personas.26 Despite the purported internationalism of these movements emanating from the United States and from the German scene in which they partly evolved, the enthusiastic response to Minimalism (as well as to Conceptual, Process, and Land or Earth art) by that foreign avantgarde arguably had to do with both its country of origin and this German national setting.27 The artist and dealer Konrad Fischer-Lueg may have expressed the opinion that “It does not matter to me at all whether an artist lives in New York or D¨usseldorf. . . . I can identify nothing that is typically American among them . . . this generation transcends national boundaries in its collective commitment to its art and its ideas.”28 Still, his statement also suggests that for these postwar artists the opportunity to belong to an artistic vanguard that transcended national boundaries was most welcome, allowing them to detach themselves from a problematic historical past and categorization as German. Participating in and identifying with the tendencies of Minimalism and Conceptual art – projected as the offspring of a “land of new beginnings” – permitted a German avant-garde to create a new international identity for itself. For a growing number of German artists, development of parallel artistic modes on both sides of the Atlantic from the end of the 1960s through the mid-1970s made an American sojourn a crucial component of their artistic careers. New York City and to a lesser degree California became the most important magnets. A distinction must be drawn between German artists working in America who emigrated or moved to the United States for long periods, and artists who only remained for short phases, 26 Another work from this period beyond Heizer’s 1969 “Munich Depression” that played on such national roles is described by Uwe Schneede, “Un am´erican en allemagne: Walter de Maria,” Cahiers du Mus´ee nationale d’art moderne 32 (summer 1990): 53–63. 27 Julia Bernard, “Re-siting Minimalism: Americana Abroad” (Talk given at CAA Annual Meeting, New York, Feb. 12–15, 1997). 28 Quoted in Honisch and Jensen, eds., Amerikanische Kunst, 147–8.

Beyond Painting and Sculpture

either on their own initiative or because of exchange programs and grants. Hans Haacke belonged to the former group. By 1961, he had begun attending the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, and from 1962 on he lived primarily in New York. His artistic work was informed by those American tendencies that had as their goal the art object’s dematerialization in the interest of a process-related engagement with real-time systems. In its politicization of that approach through its application to sociological contexts, his art in turn strongly influenced subsequent generations of American artists.29 Otto Piene (one of the cofounders of the D¨usseldorf Gruppe Zero) also emigrated to the United States by the mid-1960s because it offered the possibility of realizing a technologyassisted art intervening in urban settings, above all at the Massachusetts Institute of Technnology, where he taught starting in 1968 and directed the Center of Advanced Visual Studies from 1974 onward.30 The Conceptual artist Hanne Darboven created similarly close-knit working relations with American colleagues; during her 1966–8 stay she integrated herself into a circle of representative Minimalist and Conceptual figures, including Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, and Lawrence Weiner. Others spent few, yet formative, years in the United States, including Franz Erhard Walther (1967–71 in New York), an artist whose work reflects on material and bodily experience; the sculptor and filmmaker Rebecca Horn (1972–8 in New York); and the video artist Ulrike Rosenbach. Horn and Rosenbach also both taught at the California Institute of Art in Valencia in the mid-1970s.31 The acceptance of foreign artists in the United States at this time was fostered by the fact that its artistic scene was not ruled by a few dominant currents, in contrast to the

1950s and early 1960s. It embraced a multiplicity of concurrent movements that were in turn reinforced and encouraged by European influences. Parallel interests and commonalities among these artistic strategies were a prerequisite for German integration into the American artworld, even if they did not guarantee acceptance. Blinky Palermo (Peter Heisterkamp), who was an Americanophile down to his nickname and whose work demonstrated parallels with that of American painters Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Tuttle, and Robert Ryman, remained an unknown figure for the American public and art critics from the time of his 1973 emigration to New York until his death in 1977.32 Aside from artists, who constituted the most important transnational “agents” during this phase, West German exchange with the United States was intensified on the institutional level through funding programs that made it possible for Germans to attend art schools or pursue their artistic work in an American context. Updating the now outmoded tradition of travel grants to Rome or Paris, the cities of Berlin, Cologne, D¨usseldorf, and Munich rented studios in so-called P.S. 1 (Project Studios 1), and made them available to their own artists and art students during a short period from 1978 into the early 1980s.33 An American counterpart of the Berliner K¨unstlerprogramm for artists was thus established. Created as a Cold War weapon by the Ford Foundation in 1963 and taken over by DAAD starting in 1966, it brought a number of foreign artists to Berlin every year; participants included the “happening” artist Alan Kaprow, dancer-filmmaker Yvonne Rainer, and the constructor of environments Edward Kienholz. This heightened presence of German artists in the United States fostered the hope among several of their dealers – including Reinhard 32

29

Brian Wallis, ed., Hans Haacke: Unfinished Business (New York, 1986). 30 Hannah Weitemeier, “Otto Piene: Licht im Zentrum,” in Stephan von Wiese and Susanne Rennert, eds., Otto Piene: Retrospektive 1952–1996 (K¨oln, 1996), 15–22. 31 See Honisch et al., Kunst in der Bundesrepublik, 1945– 1985 (Berlin, 1985), 389ff., 423, 444.

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Bernhard Schwenk, “‘ Who knows the beginning and who knows the end’: Studien zum Werk des Malers Blinky Palermo/Peter Heisterkamp, 1943–77” (Ph.D. diss., University of Bonn, 1991); Benjamin Buchloh, “Einheimisch, unheimlich, fremd: wider das Deutsche in der Kunst,” Von hier aus (Cologne, 1984) (exhibition catalog), 170ff. 33 Wolf Sch¨on, “Deutsche K¨unstler im P.S. 1,” Kunstforum International 60 (Apr. 1983): 132–5.

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Onnasch (from 1969 on), Ren´e Block (starting in 1974), and Heiner Friedrich – that they might exploit the American market by opening up New York branches. But because the success of German art in that context would have to wait until the early 1980s, the dealers were forced to diversify their offerings. Friedrich internationalized and Bloch and Onnasch returned to earlier work associated with the Fluxus movement by artists who had been active in West Germany in the early 1960s but were largely unknown in the United States.34 As an extension of his art-dealing activities, Friedrich became philanthropically involved through the DIA Foundation, which he founded together with his wife Philippa de Menil in 1974. The foundation’s goal was to assist the artists associated with his gallery35 by making New York studios available to them and supporting realization of large-scale noncommercial projects.36 In the course of the 1970s, alongside this transatlantic artistic cooperation, a form of rivalry that would impact upon artistic production into the 1980s appeared. One protagonist adopting this attitude was Joseph Beuys. After he had distanced himself in the 1960s from the international Fluxus movement by adopting narrative and symbolic elements into his art, he purposefully advanced this strategy in a series of U.S. appearances. Like his German colleagues, Beuys understood the importance of American recognition for establishing oneself internationally; but unlike them, he sought to achieve it not by emphasizing German-American commonalities but, rather, through a consciously “foreign” self-presentation that tapped into the mythological ideas and clich´ed preconceptions associated with Germany. This strategy culminated in the performance “I Like America and 34 Anonymous, “Cultural Imperialism, Provincialism, and the New Internationalism,” Art Rite 8 (1975): 4–6. 35 Among them were Dan Flavin, Walter de Maria, Blinky Palermo, and James Turrell. 36 Walter de Marias’ Lightning Field in New Mexico and his Erdkilometer in Kassel for documenta 6 (1977) were the most prominent examples. See “Es gibt zu viel Kunst auf der Welt (interview with DIA director Michael Govan),” Kunstforum International 133 (Feb.– Apr. 1996): 441–5.

America Likes Me,” in which Beuys enacted a symbolic reconciliation of emotion and reason by discoursing with a live coyote, the embodiment of an America-associated lost wilderness. In contrast to other German artists, Beuys fascinated his American public not by offering them the European version of artistic methods practiced in the United States, but rather by radically stylizing himself into an Other with no American equivalent.37 This self-presentation formed the basis for the Beuys retrospective – the first devoted to a German artist – at the Guggenheim Museum in 1979, which influenced the subsequent conception of German art promoted by U.S. art critics and museums in the early 1980s. In the course of the next decade, the tide turned, and German contemporary art – in particular, the figurative painting dubbed “NeoExpressionism” – invaded the American art market and was hyped by the media.38 This development might either be considered a result and extension of a previous “advance guard” of individual German artists who had already entered the United States in the 1970s or, alternatively, viewed as a reaction against the preceding several decades of American artistic dominance in Germany. Both interpretations are valid in part, depending on which “agents” are focused on. In the former case, it would have been the artists who were actively involved in conducting a German-American exchange; in the latter, the art critics and museums or galleries orchestrating Neo-Expressionist painting’s arrival on the American scene would have been central.39

37 On Beuys in America, see Caroline Tisdall, Joseph Beuys (New York, 1979); Benjamin Buchloh, “Twilight of the Idol,” Artforum (Jan. 1980): 35–43; and Carin Kuoni, ed., Energy Plan for the Western Man: Joseph Beuys in America, Writings and Interviews (New York, 1990). 38 See, for example, Wolfgang Max Faust et al., “Deutsche Kunst, hier, heute,” Kunstforum International (Dec. 1981/Jan. 1982): 25–40. 39 Primary purveyors of Neo-Expressionist painting were the galleries Paul Maenz and Michael Werner (Cologne) and Mary Boone (New York); among the most important exhibitions was “New Figuration: Contemporary Art from Germany” (UCLA’s Wight Art Gallery, 1983).

Beyond Painting and Sculpture

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Neo-Expressionism was linked with the contemporary Italian Trans-Avantgardia or Arte Cifra movement40 and self-consciously coded as “foreign” despite the preexistence of similar developments (such as “New Image” painting) in the United States.41 This movement’s institutional “arrival” was signalled by the 1983 survey exhibition “Expressions: New Art from Germany” shown in St. Louis,42 while the major Anselm Kiefer retrospective in Chicago and Philadelphia in 1987 marked its zenith as well as endpoint.43 Characteristic of these so-called Neo-Expressionist pictures were large-scale and heavy impasto, a return to figurative representation, recourse to traditional genre categories, and employment of off-key, psychologically troubling, politically risqu´e, or sexually suggestive imagery. The significance of this phenomenon for German-American artistic exchange and the extent to which it was a construct apparently fueled by needs on both sides of the Atlantic can best be grasped via awareness of three determinant facts. First, it is important to emphasize that socalled Neo-Expressionist painting had really appeared some ten or fifteen years earlier in West Germany and had its initial significance in several regional contexts. Furthermore, the group of artists whose works were seen as a unified entity on the American scene was actually composed of two different generations. An older cohort, including painters Georg Baselitz, Markus L¨upertz, A. R. Penck, J¨org Immendorf, Sigmar Polke, and Anselm Kiefer, was combined with a Berlin-centered subgroup consisting of K. H. H¨odicke, Salom´e, Helmut Middendorf, Rainer Fetting, Bernd Zimmer, and others, some members of a younger generation. That more recent wave of related artistic work also included artists working in Cologne and Hamburg; the

former was home to the “Mulheimer Freiheit” group (including Walter Dahn, Georg Jiri Dokoupil, and Peter B¨ommels), and the latter where Werner B¨uttner, Martin Kippenberger, and Albert Oehlen lived. Thus the Neo-Expressionism exported to the United States had already become a retrospective phenomenon and was interpreted as a unified entity, as determined by the needs of an American market and audience. In this fashion, artistic production initially conceived of as subversive worked to conservative effect when exported at a later phase in its development – because it appeared to represent a return to easel-painting, especially following upon a 1970s American “dematerialization” of the art object. The second relevant aspect of this “new” artistic phenomenon is its having been instrumentalized by art critics in the United States, who used their stance on Neo-Expressionism to comment on the preceding decade of artistic activity in America. This was most clearly demonstrated by the major critical figures Donald Kuspit and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, whose adamant “pro” and “con” evaluations of this movement suggested that they were using the opportunity to oppose one another in a territorial struggle over the U.S. art world. Their interpretations not only involved opposing psychological against political interpretations of Neo-Expressionism, and favoring respectively art’s figurative rematerialization as opposed to its conceptual dematerialization. But these critics also had opposing responses to Neo-Expressionist painting’s “Germanness,” with Kuspit expressing titillated attraction and Buchloh distrustful abhorrence.44 That this art can simultaneously be “about” repositing natural authenticity and an inauthentically faked involvement with the artists’ national past

40 On this term, see Achille Bonito-Oliva, “The Bewildered Image,” Flash Art, nos. 96–7 (Apr. 1980): 35ff. 41 This referred to the work of such artists as Susan Rothenburg, David Salle, Eric Fischl, and Malcolm Morley. 42 Jack Cowart, ed., Expressions: New Art from Germany (St. Louis, Mo., 1983). 43 Mark Rosenthal, Anselm Kiefer (Chicago, 1987).

44 Donald Kuspit, “Flak from the Radicals: The American Case Against Current German Painting,” in Cowart, ed., Expressions, 46. Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, “Figures of Authority, Ciphers of Regression: Notes on the Return of Representation in European Painting,” October 16 (spring 1981); “Postscript,” reprinted in Brian Wallis, ed., Art After Modernism (New York, 1984), 133–4.

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demonstrates that it was functioning as a projection screen for observers’ preconceptions or concerns about Germany.45 Thus the third crucial aspect of this movement was that it was coded as “foreign”: The term “Expressionism,” freighted with Germanic associations and perceived as entering the American art world by force, called up memories of World War II.46 As Buchloh pointed out, Neo-Expressionist art in this sense functioned like American postwar Abstract Expressionism in that both movements were loaded with attributes ascribed to their “national character”

45

Kiefer retrospective curator Mark Rosenthal or museum directors Nicholas Serota (Tate) and Rudi Fuchs (Stedelijk) are examples of this process taking place. 46 See esp. Donald Kuspit, “Acts of Aggression: German Painting Today,” Art in America 70 (Sept. 1982): 140–51 (I); and 71 (Jan. 1983): 90–101, 131–5 (II).

and both were made representative of that purported character within the other country. German Neo-Expressionist painting demonstrates both aspects of the reflective/projective identity-formation model proposed here. During the development of this movement, the formulating of a self-image on the part of German artists took place vis-`a-vis a contrasting national Other (or in response to a previous generation’s American Abstract Expressionist art’s prevalence) and thus reflectively. And following Neo-Expressionism’s 1980s arrival on the American scene, it seems that construction of a national persona projectively provided a selfdefinitional base in being exported to the other country (“I could be what you think I am,” instead of the previous, “I am what you are not”). A more convincing embodiment of the dialogic nature of German-American artistic interchange, functioning in the formation of national identities, is difficult to imagine.

chapter sixteen

The Rediscovery of the City and Postmodern Architecture Werner Durth Translated by Tradukas

After two decades of surprisingly successful reconstruction, the Federal Republic of Germany experienced an economic, political, and cultural crisis in the years 1966–7 that was manifested in the rise of the student protest movements. Critics also cited the poor conditions in big cities, which had spread to outlying areas as a consequence of unbridled growth in the 1950s. While a multitude of impressive individual buildings had brought modern German architecture worldwide recognition, construction in urban areas had become somewhat chaotic, thereby discrediting reconstruction that followed the principles of modern city planning. In 1969, the news weekly Der Spiegel ran a series of articles under the title “Mit dem Latein am Ende” that scrutinized the “crisis and future” of German higher education in the wake of recent student protests. Turning to architecture, the series offered up a dramatic contrast between the latest examples of stellar individual buildings – such as Egon Eiermann’s embassy in Washington and Sep Ruf’s Chancellery Pavilion – and the dilapidated condition of inner cities and monotony of large suburban housing projects.1 The Spiegel report gave vivid expression to the already widespread dissatisfaction with urban living conditions. With growing prosperity

and the pervasive commercialization of downtown areas, an increasing number of retail and service businesses had cropped up; ever wider sections of the local population in urban areas were subjected to the pressure of the expanding “tertiary sector” and chose to leave the city for houses in surrounding areas.2 The relentless expansion of suburban development had already led to calls for a “renewal of our cities” in the 1960s.3 This vision foresaw a higher density of buildings in the inner cities, allowing for a concentration of jobs and a simultaneous reorganization of traffic and transportation. In August 1960, Rudolf Hillebrecht, the influential head of municipal planning in Hanover, delivered a widely noted speech to the Deutscher St¨adtetag, the German association of towns and cities, in which he ascertained that the “organic growth” in cities had ended. He called for “coordinated planning” that went beyond the scope of existing administrative provisions.4 Surveys carried out in a number of cities called for a comprehensive rebuilding of central areas.5 Under the motto “urbanity 2

Wolfgang Pehnt, ed., Die Stadt in der Bundesrepublik (Stuttgart, 1974). 3 Deutscher St¨adtetag, ed., Erneuerung unserer St¨adte: Vortr¨age, Aussprachen und Ergebnisse der 11. Hauptversammlung des Deutschen St¨adtetages in Augsburg 1960 (Stuttgart, 1960). 4 Rudolf Hillebrecht, “Koordinierte Planung,” in ibid. 5 See, for example, Klaus M¨uller-Ibold, St¨adte ver¨andern ihr Gesicht: Strukturwandel einer Grossstadt und ihrer Region am Beispiel Hannover (Stuttgart, 1962).

1

Der Spiegel 37 (Sept. 8, 1969): 74–89; on the “crisis of the architect,” see Klaus Brake et al., Architektur und Kapitalverwertung (Frankfurt am Main, 1973); Hilmar Hoffmann and Heinrich Klotz, eds., Die 1960er (D¨usseldorf, 1987).

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through density” (Urbanit¨at durch Dichte), a new model of a “urban landscape” incorporating green spaces was put forward that fundamentally challenged the governing principles of urban development.6 The planning of concentrated suburban settlements that began in the late 1950s took on new dimensions in the 1960s. From the M¨arkisches Viertel in West Berlin to Munich-Neuperlach, Nuremberg-Langwasser, the Nordwest-Stadt near Frankfurt am Main, and the Steilshoop suburb outside Hamburg, the late 1960s saw the planning and construction of a series of large subdivisions that were meant to create space for the people migrating in continuous streams from rural areas as well as to absorb those who were moving out of city centers. In many cities, it was anticipated that housing districts adjacent to the central business districts (CBDs), neighborhoods that had survived wartime bombing and subsequent reconstruction, would be razed. Authorities often spoke of the need for “wholesale demolition” to allow for structural modernization in cities and construction of new roads, even if this meant deliberately sacrificing long-established urban structures and social milieus. Cities were in fact subjected to extensive restructuring in the course of just a few years. Major traffic arteries were created to meet the growing volume of traffic on roads, and subway and suburban railway networks were expanded. Construction was to be concentrated around major junctions in the public transportation networks. Banks and insurance companies began to define city skylines with ever-higher office towers. The Thyssen building in D¨usseldorf 7 and the Z¨urcher Versicherung building in Frankfurt, next to the ruins of the opera house, provided skylines with early signs of economic prosperity before they were overshadowed by other skyscrapers. Once celebrated as signals of

6

Gerhard Boeddinghaus, ed., Gesellschaft durch Dichte: Kritische Initiativen zu einem neuen Leitbild f¨ur Planung und St¨adtebau 1963/1964 (Braunschweig, 1995). 7 Martin Mittag, Thyssenhaus: Ph¨onix-Rheinrohr-AG D¨usseldorf (Essen, 1962).

modernity, skyscrapers gradually sank into banal uniformity. In 1965, a group of experts commissioned by the Bundestag submitted a report to the German St¨adtetag in which Rudolf Hillebrecht held up American cities as a warning for the future of Germany: “A phenomenon closely linked with the increasing pace of urbanization is the danger that city centers will collapse. It is disturbing to see downtown areas in the United States, which in places resemble our inner cities immediately after the war.”8 Hillebrecht gave a graphic portrayal of the “increasing urbanization that results from economic concentration,” which was accompanied by “severe traffic congestion and the subsequent danger of the heart of cities dying out.” Hillebrecht’s speeches and writings drew not only on his own observations, but also on Jane Jacobs’s work on the experience of New York. Her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), pointed to multipurpose urban spaces and the social stability provided by intact neighborhoods as essentials for a vibrant urban culture. It was these elements that burgeoning urban building projects were threatening to destroy in contemporary Germany.9 It was also in 1965 that Alexander Mitscherlich, director of the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt am Main since 1960 and a critical observer of urban development, published a pamphlet on the “uninhabitableness” (Unwirtlichkeit) of German cities, which he called an “incitement to conflict” in his subtitle. With biting sarcasm, he pointed to the discrepancy between pompous demands for a humane architecture and an urban reality dominated by speculators and unregulated market forces that were pushing the people out of cities into monotonous suburban housing projects. Mitscherlich’s vitriolic attack on the physical consequences of the Federal Republic’s “economic miracle” was so vivid that his book joined Jacobs’s for decades as

8

Rudolf Hillebrecht, “Erfahrungen aus Amerika,” in Deutscher St¨adtetag, ed., Strassen f¨ur die St¨adte: Jetzt muss gehandelt werden! (Stuttgart, 1965), 36–7. 9 Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York, 1961).

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a standard text of a growing protest movement against “uninhabitable” development.10 The calm of German cities was shaken over the space of just a few years by a series of “house battles” that – not coincidentally – originated in Frankfurt am Main. Office buildings began to take over the area near the central train station and the villa colony of the Westend district in the early 1960s. In 1968, planners sought to expand the downtown area with high-rise office towers in the Westend, and they secured approval from the local authority’s soonto-become notorious “Finger Plan.”11 Fueled by fierce anger, the tenants facing eviction from their townhouses set up a vigil outside their homes before they were demolished. Soon afterward, the first cases of squatting and rent strikes occurred in buildings threatened with demolition. As a wave of public protests against property speculation and new housing shortages swept across West Germany and West Berlin, the emerging student movement took up the cause of the worsening urban situation; in their selforganized seminars on real estate law and local politics, in urban redevelopment and housing projects, the students called for wide-ranging democratization and a public participation in planning. Against the background of the cities’ desperate problems, these demands won the support of the general public and, ultimately, of influential politicians, as vividly illustrated by Willy Brandt’s injunction to “risk more democracy!” But it was not just the politically motivated protest against attempts to tear down inner-city residential areas or the increasing division of urban areas according to function into ever-further dispersed residential, work, and shopping areas that led to a rediscovery of the qualities of historic urban structures at the beginning of the

1970s. Against the background of stagnant population growth, there was also increasing competition between cities for new residents who, as employees and consumers, would give local economies a boost. Cities began to promote themselves with advertisements and publicity events. Local politicians and marketing experts worked on finding ways of giving individual cities a more distinctive “image” as residential, leisure, and cultural centers.12 The threat posed by easily auto-accessible suburban shopping centers soon led to a major upgrading of city centers with the creation of car-free pedestrian zones; in marked contrast to developments in the United States, traditional cultural institutions and cities’ historical, mosaic-like layouts were given promimence in these pedestrian zones. To judge the shopping center from the European perspective, a German business group sent a team of experts to the United States on a study trip in 1963.13 As cities tried to establish their own distinctive – and thus commercially advantageous – images, the functionalist International Style in architecture was soon made obsolete by the interchangeability of its buildings. Consciously giving a new place to a city’s historically unique symbols and landmarks in the everyday consciousness of its residents added a new dimension to urban planning, which had previously been oriented to more objective data and functional questions. Urban planners, building on methods and concepts from the United States, began to cultivate cityscapes that were oriented toward the needs and expectations of residents.14 Originally published in 1960, Kevin Lynch’s The Image of the City was widely read in the 1970s by German architects and urban planners when it appeared in translation under the title Das Bild der Stadt. It featured the first systematic

10 Alexander Mitscherlich, Die Unwirtlichkeit unserer St¨adte: Anstiftung zum Unfrieden (Frankfurt am Main, 1965). 11 Hans Kampffmeyer, the planner responsible, gives a retrospective report on Frankfurt planning in an interview in Stadtbauwelt 88 (1985): 326–38; on the other consequences, see the interview with Hanns Adrian in Stadtbauwelt 80 (1983): 314–33.

12 Werner Durth, Die Inszenierung der Alltagswelt: Zur Kritik der Stadtgestaltung (Braunschweig, 1977). 13 Erwin Thomas et al., Einzelhandel im St¨adtebau: Shopping Centers in den USA/Europ¨aische Konsequenzen (Frankfurt am Main, 1963). 14 On the methodological approaches, see Michael Trieb, Stadtgestaltung in Theorie und Praxis (Braunschweig, 1977).

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study of mental maps and everyday urban experiences of residents, from which it drew usable insights for planners.15 The memories, impressions, and needs of people in cities became measurable variables and data for rethinking urban space; with this information, planners increasingly took into account typical tastes and aesthetic preferences of different population groups. They began to move away from the once unquestioned norms and interchangeable buildings associated with a rigid functionalism.16 Long before there was talk of “postmodernism” in architecture,17 a trend toward a popular eclecticism became evident in the historicizing renovation of inner cities. Even new buildings were decorated with familiar bay windows, decorative details, and regional elements. In contrast to the demand for the “true form” prized at the time and morally grounded “material justness,” construction in a large number of places spoke to the desire for a staged historicness; in some places, this even included reconstruction of streets to their prewar appearance. The economic crisis precipitated by the oil price explosion in the winter of 1973–4 had in the meanwhile temporarily stopped the cycle of demolition and new construction. The building boom of the early 1970s led to unprecedented vacancy rates for residential and office space. Recently completed large-scale housing developments were especially hard hit, and some went from being local government model projects to social problem zones. At the same time, previously neglected inner-city residential areas were now being gradually transformed into attractive locations, thanks to cautious renovation measures.18 The oil price increases and ensuing economic crisis called into question the coupling of growth and modernization strategies that had gone unchallenged since the 1950s. Even German government experts recommended shift15

Kevin Lynch, Das Bild der Stadt (Berlin, 1965). See Durth, Die Inszenierung der Alltagswelt, 33–51. 17 Charles Jencks, Die Sprache der postmodernen Architektur: Die Entstehung einer alternativen Tradition (Stuttgart, 1978). 18 Hartmut H¨aussermann and Walter Siebel, Neue Urbanit¨at (Frankfurt am Main, 1987). 16

ing strategies and going from expanding to maintaining existing housing stock.19 This change in orientation in building policy, which had a broad cultural impact, was reinforced in 1975 by a number of events held in conjunction with a European campaign for historic preservation. Under the slogan, “A Future for Our Past,” the campaign sought to ensure careful treatment of existing buildings and cautious additions of new buildings that fit well into their environs.20 The political, economic, and cultural changes of the early 1970s led to a fundamental turn away from the prevailing dogmas of modern architecture. This sea change was expressed in a variety of trends that ranged from new construction in historical styles to experiments involving future users of a site in the planning process and the rediscovery of regional traditions. The attempt to identify and take into consideration the needs and wishes of future building users was a crucial innovation. At the same time, the demand for “complexity and contradiction in architecture” – the title of an influential book by Robert Venturi published a decade earlier – was taken up enthusiastically in Germany.21 This quite provocative liberation of forms from the corset of conventional aesthetic norms led to discovery of both the garish world of advertising and the creative diversity of handmade houses in rural America as sources of inspiration. Coffee-table books on vernacular architecture were suddenly in great demand,22 as were the 19 Bundesministerium f¨ur Raumordnung, Bauwesen und St¨adtebau, ed., Beirat f¨ur Raumordnung: Empfehlungen vom 6. Juni 1976 (Bonn, 1976). 20 Aktion Gemainsinn e.V., ed., Unser Lebensraum braucht Schutz: Denkmalschutz (Bonn, 1975). 21 Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York, 1966); the German edition appeared under the title Komplexit¨at und Widerspruch in der Architektur (Braunschweig, 1978); Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Lernen von Las Vegas: Zur Ikonographie und Architektursymbolik der Gesch¨aftsstadt (Braunschweig, 1978). Published in the United States as a shorter version under the title, “Art and the Vegas Strip: A Guide to the Commercial Vernacular, from Roman Piazza to Caesar’s Palace,” Architectural Forum 128, no. 2 (1968): 36–43. 22 For example, Bernard Rudofsky, Architecture Without Architects (New York, 1964).

The Rediscovery of the City and Postmodern Architecture

works of R. Buckminster Fuller. The ecological insights of Fuller’s Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth23 were related directly to the theses of The Limits to Growth, which appeared in Germany at the same time.24 In the United States, none other than famed architect Philip Johnson – friend and pupil of Mies van der Rohe and coauthor (with Henry R. Hitchcock) of the revolutionary catalog to the exhibition “The International Style” – had already called in the 1950s for a return to a natural eclecticism to replace rigid functionalism.25 New York’s Lincoln Center, designed by Johnson and fellow architects Harrison, Abramovitz, and Saarinen in the 1960s, became an internationally renowned and controversial symbol of a new, aesthetically freer architectural approach. In Germany, which had been caught in an EastWest contrast between tradition and modernity for three decades, the time had arrived for a more open use of the premodern repertoire of forms and, simultaneously, for satisfying the demand of an affluent new generation and discriminating international clients. In the 1970s, the first examples of what is now called “postmodern” architecture in Europe and the United States were sometimes greeted with loathing, sometimes with enthusiasm, but never with indifference. The Piazza Italia complex, built in New Orleans beginning in 1976 and based on a design by Charles Moore, elicited strong reactions with its unconventional assemblage of pillars, arcades, and Palladian motifs. Robert Venturi’s buildings awakened a yearning for more narrative architecture; Thomas Gordon Smith’s historical escapades

23

R. Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (Carbondale, Ill., 1969); the German translation appeared under the title Bedienungsanleitung f¨ur das Raumschiff Erde (Reinbek, 1973). 24 Donella H. Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind (New York, 1972); the findings of the Club of Rome report and the limits-to-growth thesis gained notoriety in Germany through Dennis L. Meadows et al., Die Grenzen des Wachstums (Stuttgart, 1972). 25 See Heinrich Klotz, Moderne und Postmoderne: Architektur der Gegenwart 1960–1980 (Braunschweig, 1984), 48.

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incited indignation and reflection. With the New York Five group gaining increasing recognition in Europe, the sparkling white villas produced by its members Peter Eisenmann and Richard Meier expressed the unconventional possibilities of a completely uninhibited progression from the principles of classical modern architecture. Philip Johnson, a doyen of modernism, took the architectural community by surprise with his AT&T building in New York, a skyscraper in the form of a Chippendale tallboy that featured a golden vault in its foyer. A 1981 polemic against the Bauhaus and its “white gods” hit European achitectural debates like a bomb. Tom Wolfe provacatively argued that Bauhaus teaching in the United States had led to aesthetic impoverishment.26 Breaking away from the convention of interpreting the effect of functionalism imported from Europe as a liberation from dry historicism, he depicted the triumphal march of European-style modernism as a form of cultural colonialism that had pushed aside indigenous American architectural traditions – the tradition of Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, for instance – alleged to be outmoded. With his sharp insight into architectural disputes in the United States – the dispute between the new camps of architects grouped around Robert Venturi on the one side and Peter Eisenmann on the other – Wolfe provided Europe with the key terms for a debate on the revaluation of distinctive national and regional elements. In Europe, too, faith in the ubiquitous modernism of the International Style had been seriously shaken; Europeans were astonsished by the new generation of buildings in the United States that challenged functionalist dogma, now considered outmoded, with their uninhibited use of forms. Construction sites in the United States again became a mecca for German architects eager to find ideas that would help them to break out of tradition. The new star architects of a loudly heralded postmodernism also became welcome 26

Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our House (New York, 1981); published in German as Mit dem Bauhaus leben (K¨onigstein i.Ts., 1981).

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guests at German universities. They participated in competitions and within a few years achieved some astonishing successes, while others were rewarded with well-financed direct commissions. Toward the end of the 1970s, Frankfurt am Main, one of the world’s leading financial centers and already the Federal Republic’s business capital, took on a leading role in the reorientation of architectural and urban planning. Exactly ten years after the radical changes of 1968, the city council decided to refrain from modern development of the city’s historical center. This decision was also a critical response to competition entries that envisioned further expansion of functionalist modernism in this central area.27 To provide a contrast to the surrounding ring of modern office high-rises, the council decided to reconstruct medieval half-timbered houses on the historical R¨omerberg site, which had been largely disused since its destruction during the Second World War. Contemporary architecture would supplement and frame these half-timbered buildings. The Ostzeile or eastern row of half-timbered houses destroyed in the war was rebuilt in just a few years after the jury announced its decision in summer 1980. Its picturesque mosaic-like structure faced the severe single line offered by the Schirn Cultural Center, whose monumental rotunda and uninterrupted row of stone pillars gave the R¨omerberg a new profile in urban development. The opposite to this “mixed pairing” was found across the river on the southern bank of the Main in a group of distinctive townhouses, among which a strikingly colorful building by Charles Moore set the tone. The heterogeneous ensemble in the R¨omerberg offered a panorama of current trends in postmodern architecture and could have served as an open-air display in the 1984 exhibition “The Revision of Modernism: Postmodern Architecture, 1960–1980.” The exhibition employed numerous examples of buildings in the United States to promote the 27

Deutsches Architekturmuseum Frankfurt am Main, ed., Jahrbuch f¨ur Architektur 1984: Das Neue Frankfurt (1) (Braunschweig, 1984).

narrative potential of a “new” New Architecture that went beyond functionalism.28 Housed in the German Architectural Museum designed by Oswald Mathias Ungers, this programmatic exhibition also provided a visual illustration of the concept of the Frankfurt Museumsufer (museum embankment): the banking center often referred to as “Mainhattan” was juxtaposed here with a row of new buildings on the south bank of the river Main that underscored the city’s international cultural ambitions. There was particular praise for the Museum for Decorative Arts (1979–85) designed by Richard Meier. Although it was an obvious throwback to the “white” modernism of the 1920s, the Museum for Decorative Arts provided an elegant and subtle response to the riverscape, both to existing buildings and to the topography of its setting.29 As further buildings were added to the museum embankment and the grounds of the trade fair on the other side of the Main were supplemented by the vivid designs of Ungers’s high-rise tower and the exhibition tower designed by German-American architect Helmut Jahn, Frankfurt evolved into a showcase for the diverse possibilities of postmodern architecture. Elsewhere these possibilities only received exposure in isolated examples, such as the extension to the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart designed by British architect James Stirling. Taking its lead from the renowned 1957 International Building Exhibition (Internationale Bauausstellung, or IBA) that had provided striking illustrations during the Cold War of the plurality of architectural visions in postwar modernism, Berlin again hosted an IBA that incorporated trends of the 1970s and expanded on them in a diverse range of projects. A number of innovative projects were submitted to the “Strategies for Kreuzberg” competition 28 Heinrich Klotz, ed., Die Revision der Moderne: Postmoderne Architektur 1960–1980 (Munich, 1984); Klotz, Moderne und Postmoderne. 29 On the close succession of museum buildings constructed in the 1980s that reflected the cultural ambitions of local authorities, see Heinrich Klotz and Waltraud Krase, Neue Museumsbauten in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1985).

The Rediscovery of the City and Postmodern Architecture

responded to the call for more cautious urban renewal that avoided wholesale demolition and resident displacement. These projects envisaged the maintenance and improvement of the quality of the existing urban and social structures through close cooperation between architects, social workers, and local residents. After the militant squatter movement and street battles that shook the city in 1981, steps were taken toward creating a new urban culture, including easing of traffic congestion, enhancement of the residential environment, and gradual modernization of prewar buildings. The basic principles for “behutsamen Stadterneuerung” (cautious urban renewal) also emphasized the democratization of the planning process and served as a model for many other cities.30 Besides effectively demonstrating how to handle urban problem areas through a revaluation of prewar housing stock, the IBA also presented a number of projects for new housing. The new leitmotif of “critical reconstruction” of the city, which challenged the earlier model of a spatially dispersed cityscape, again highlighted the traditional contours of urban development. The rediscovery of the spatial qualities of the corridor street, housing block, and rear courtyard, harking-back to the urban typology of the nineteenth century, carried with it a rejection of the principles of modern urban planning. With the new residential block on Ritterstrasse, the townhouses in the former diplomatic quarter on the edge of the Tiergarten, and the new residential district in Tegel designed by Charles Moore, the contributions of renowned international architects reflected a new cosmopolitan openness across the divided city. The buildings, often built at great expense, displayed an unusual degree of decorative touches and color that, in retrospect, offered a vivid testament to the economic prosperity of late pre-unification West Germany.31

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The period after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Germany’s unification saw an exacerbation of economic problems and cultural division between East and West. At the same time, the extravagant diversity of forms of the new postmodern buildings took on excessive proportions, eventually leading to calls for a “new simplicity” that would take into account the drastic changes that had occurred in political, economic, and social reality.32 However, the ambiguity of the envisaged simplicity soon became evident in disputes over the reshaping of Berlin as the new capital. Influential officials demanded a shift away from the playful pluralism of postmodernism and a resurrection of a distinctly “Berlinesque” architecture along classical lines that mirrored a disciplined “Prussian style.” While Berlin experienced intense debates on the architectural profile of the new capital, the new construction of the plenary chamber of the Bundestag in Bonn marked the end of that city’s era as provisional capital. Bonn had attempted during the decades of division to make a virtue of the understated aesthetic of its government buildings. The plenary chamber was the work of G¨unter Behnisch, who had gained renown for his designs for Munich’s Olympic Games. With large-scale light-filled rooms, lavish stairways and galleries, the building concluded a development that marked another side of modernist architecture – one stretching from the ebullient expressionism of 1919 to the polygonal buildings of Hugo H¨aring or Hans Scharoun – but reduced to a rigid dictatorship of the right angle in the postwar years. The end of the Bonn Republic was thus accompanied by a visible expression of the spectrum of the possibilities of new architecture, in which the functionalism canonized in the United States and later influential across the world will remain no more than a faint trace on the paths of many future architectural designs.

30

See S.T.E.R.N., Gesellschaft der behutsamen Stadterneuerung, ed., Schritt f¨ur Schritt: Behutsame Stadterneuerung in Kreuzberg (exhibition catalog) (Berlin, 1990). 31 See Internationale Bauausstellung Berlin, ed., Internationale Bauausstellung Berlin 1987: Projekt¨ubersicht (Berlin, 1987).

32

See the programmatic approach adopted by Vittorio Lampugnani, “Die neue Einfachheit: Mutmassungen u¨ ber die Architektur der Jahrtausendwende,” in German Architecture Museum Frankfurt a. M., ed., Architektur Jahrbuch 1993 (Munich, 1993).

chapter seventeen

Modernity and Postmodernity in a Transatlantic Perspective Klaus J. Milich Translated by Tradukas

shows that it cannot be postmodernity itself that is responsible for this arbitrariness and lack of clarity. Postmodernity’s critique of the modernist objectivity myth merely names the problem of competing interpretations by accepting that empirical reality cannot be grasped conceptually with conclusive validity. This means that historical periodizations do not themselves derive from empirical events and are therefore not objectifiable in any essential sense. It is not “given,” apparently natural features that determine the definitions and content of a historical period, but the different interpretive discourses available. The first question arsing from this basic assumption is: How should we understand the relationship between modernity and postmodernity if all the disciplines that are part of this discourse employ their own understandings of discontinuity, change, and periodization based upon their own histories and methods of investigation?

the concept of postmodernity Attempts to define the present epoch have identified the symptoms of a shift from modernity to postmodernity in the most varied phenomena. These range from urban planning and architecture to various stylistic features in literature, theater, film, music, dance, and painting, to MTV, CNN, and the Internet. Computers, microtechnology, cyberspace, and cyborg fantasies are deemed to be just as postmodern as the threat of nuclear and ecological self-destruction, the morbid projections of Generation X, or a hedonistic yuppie lifestyle. Neoliberal economic concepts such as globalization and deregulation have also been called postmodern. So, too, have the revisionist philosophies deriving from the crisis of reason and dialectics from the passing of historical metanarratives and the concept of the autonomous subject. A growing skepticism toward systematic thought and binary oppositions has led to the rejection of concepts and terms of reference such as origin, center, structure, and causality, which are seen as “arbitrary acts of modernity.” But traditional historical periodizations – romanticism, realism, modernism, the avant-garde, and postmodernism itself – have also been called into question on account of their elusive and blurred parameters. Given the plurality of possible interpretations, it is hardly surprising that the new zeitgeist is often accused of being arbitrary and confused. But the simple fact that it is possible to use modernist categories to explain these phenomena clearly

to which modernity does postmodernity refer? It has repeatedly been argued that to avoid confusion and arbitrariness in definition, clarity about the concept of modernism is a prerequisite for understanding postmodernism. But a brief look at the history of the concept of modernity leads immediately to the question: Which modernity should be taken as a point of reference for postmodernity? Since the fifth century, 394

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J¨urgen Habermas argues, “modernity” has, with changing content, expressed “again and again the consciousness of an epoch, which relates itself to the past of antiquity, in order to see itself as the result of a transition from the old to the new.” Only in the eighteenth century did modernity gain a new quality by freeing itself from the hold of antiquity. With the emancipatory ideals of the Enlightenment, modernity created its own ethical and moral frame of reference. Habermas sees filling this framework as a still unfinished project that should be defended against the postmodernists.1 For Jean-Franc¸ ois Lyotard, probably Habermas’s most prominent opponent, a number of different concepts of modernity form the point of reference for postmodernity. For one, Lyotard sees modernity as the modern age, by which he means the period since the European Renaissance around 1500. His programmatic work The Postmodern Condition,2 on the other hand, asserts that it is the great metanarratives of eighteenth-century modernity that are the backdrop to postmodernity. Lyotard sees this grand r´ecit as including the Enlightenment assertion of the emancipation of mankind through science, the teleology of the spirit and the hermeneutics of meaning in idealism, the liberation of mankind by the proletarian revolutions of Marxism, and capitalism’s ubiquitous promise of happiness through wealth and prosperity. If the varied history of the concept of modernity thus hardly provides a stable point of reference for postmodernity, Andreas Huyssen and Daniel Bell go a step further and shed light on still another aspect. They suggest that it is scarcely meaningful to consider even literary modernism alone a homogeneous movement given the political differences among its practitioners. Authors such as Bertolt Brecht, Hein-

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rich Mann, and Henry Roth, or Thomas Mann, William Faulkner, and T. S. Eliot represent a range of political views that, however diverse, cannot be connected with the openly fascist and anti-Semitic sympathies of Ezra Pound, William Butler Yeats, Wyndham Lewis, Knut Hamsun, Gottfried Benn, and Ernst J¨unger.3 Thus, distinguishing postmodernity from modernity on the basis of a “right-left” opposition – as many German defenders of modernity do – is questionable in that it applies to modernity itself. A further divide between the two categories derives from the differing views of the relationship between modernism and the avant-garde. Whereas these terms are often used synonymously in the United States for progressive or experimental literature and painting of the twentieth century as a whole, the German understanding of the avant-garde is basically restricted to expressionism, Dadaism, surrealism, Russian constructivism, futurism, and agitprop. For Peter B¨urger, these historical movements are not primarily characterized by their formal devices, such as the interruption of linear narrative, and the use of interior monologue, symbolism, or irony. Rather, they represent an immanent critique of modernity, whose aesthetic and cultural realm – in the concept of “art for art’s sake,” for example – no longer refers critically to the social and technical processes of modernization, but only to itself.4 B¨urger considers the temporally limited avant-garde as part of a longer period of modernity that begins with the Enlightenment and includes such varied forms of expression as the romantic, impressionist, realist, or expressionist styles. The American understanding of modernity, by contrast, sees it as a singular stylistic period limited to the decades following World War I that evolved in opposition to romanticism and realism. In this American understanding, modernity holds the

1

J¨urgen Habermas, “Modernity Versus Postmodernity,” New German Critique, no. 22 (winter 1981); first pub. as “Modernity – An Incomplete Project,” in Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (Port Townsend, Wash., 1983). 2 Franc¸ ois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Brian Massumi, foreword by Fredric Jameson (Minneapolis, Minn., 1984).

3

Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Bloomington, Ind., 1986), 163; Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York, 1976), 51. 4 Peter B¨urger, Theory of the Avant-garde (1974), foreword by Jochen Schulte-Sasse (Minneapolis, Minn., 1984).

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position that the historical avant-garde movements have in Germany. By failing to differentiate clearly between these terms, it becomes impossible to make a stylistic distinction between, for instance, Thomas Mann or William Faulkner, on the one hand and, on the other, Dadaism. Moreover, because the avant-garde is in the American understanding of the concept a transhistorical style that, however defined, is linked to degrees of progress, the confusion is exacerbated by the use of the term not only for modernity, but also for postmodernity. Gertrude Stein’s modernist and Thomas Pynchon’s postmodernist writing strategies, for example, would thus no longer be distinguishable in terms of a period or epoch. Reducing modernism, the avant-garde, and postmodernism to stylistic phenomena is imprecise because the aesthetic innovations ascribed to postmodernity already belong to the stylistic canon of modernism and the avante-garde: the thematization of writing strategies, the limits of verbal representation, and the authorial function within the literary text itself (metafiction), for example, or the use of playful references to other texts (intertextuality). Moreover, eclecticism and pastiche are neither modern nor postmodern innovations. The history of architecture and art contains many examples of these, as the Renaissance, baroque, neoclassical, and neo-Gothic styles were either entirely or partially replicates of earlier stylistic periods. geopolitical factors It is clear, in short, that the front does not simply run between modernity and postmodernity, but between various modernities. However, it would not suffice to differentiate between chronological, content-based, or functional parameters in order to arrive at a definition in which modernity is the basis of postmodernity.5 This question would merely shift the necessity of explanation and definition back into modernity and then pose the same question anew. In 5 Wolfgang Welsch, Unsere postmoderne Moderne (Weinheim, 1988).

discerning the question that interpretations of modernity form the basis for postmodernity, it is necessary to consider the hitherto often neglected national conditions, cultural-historical contexts, and traditions in the history of ideas through which the two concepts developed. Taking these geopolitical determinants into account would provide an answer for why the concept of postmodernity has led to a shift in the concept of culture only in the United States and not in Europe despite similar developments in literature and art as well as the technical and economic spheres. In the United States, postmodernity is a cultural-historical term, whereas in Europe, when used at all, it is only a stylistic term with no far-reaching social connotations. The transatlantic differences in understanding modernity and postmodernity result in part from the lack of differentiation of the concept of modernity in the United States along the lines developed by Max Weber and the Frankfurt School, with its critical theory of culture and society. In the course of the demystification process set in motion by the Enlightenment, modernity set free a secular culture from disintegrating religious images of the world. One manifestation was the growing autonomy gained by literature and art. Both profited from rationalization in the same way as the technical, economic, social, and administrative spheres. Nonetheless, this common process of rationalization did not prevent an increasing rivalry between cultural modernism and sociotechnical modernization when it came to putting Enlightenment ideals into practice. This antagonism, Herbert Marcuse wrote in 1965, is expressed in the distinction between culture and civilization, “according to which ‘culture’ refers to some higher dimension of human autonomy and fulfillment, while ‘civilization’ designates the realm of necessity, of socially necessary work and behavior, where man is not really himself and in his own element but is subject to heteronomy, to external conditions and needs.”6

6 Herbert Marcuse, “Remarks on a Redefinition of Culture,” Daedalus 94 (1965): 192, 193.

Modernity and Postmodernity in a Transatlantic Perspective

The reason why an antagonistic concept of modernity is lacking in the United States probably lies in the largely neglected difference between German and American interpretations of the Enlightenment that Louis Hartz described in 1955 in The Liberal Tradition in America. In reiterating Alexis de Tocqueville’s famous phrase that Americans “have arrived at a state of democracy without having to endure a democratic revolution; and that they are born equal, instead of becoming so,” Hartz writes that in America no equivalent existed to the dynamic of the conflict between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie that brought about the Enlightenment in Europe. The freedoms sought in Europe, particularly John Locke’s liberalism, were presupposed in America as a genuine doctrine. In the American concept of culture, accordingly, the higher dimensions and utopian visions of human autonomy and fulfillment – which were expressed in Germany as a cultural leitmotif in art and literature – were parts of a dream that had already come true.7

american postmodernity and the discussion of “two cultures” Apart from occasional references from the late nineteenth century on, the concept of postmodernity did not attain paradigmatic significance until the early 1960s. Contradictions within modernity were becoming increasingly obvious: the contrast between the advantages of an affluent society and the negative aspects of mass consumerism and mass culture, for example, or the preservation of Enlightenment ideals and democracy in the face of fascism and Stalinism. Although European cultural critics long believed that these contradictions could be resolved or explained within modernity itself, there was debate on postmodernity in America during the 1950s. In 1959, the literary critic Irving Howe published his essay, “Mass Society and Post-Modern Fiction,” and the English writer 7

Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution, 2d ed. (New York, 1991; 1st ed., 1955).

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and physicist Charles Percy Snow his lecture, “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.”8 Although Snow, unlike Howe, did not mention postmodernity, his polemical description of the rivalry between scientific-technical thought and literary-intellectual thought created the terms of reference for the first phase of the debate on postmodernity. It was above all German and American intellectuals who were to play a decisive role in the discussions of the crisis of modernity and the transition to postmodernity, who took part in the worldwide debate on the “two cultures.” Irving Howe, Susan Sontag, Leslie Fiedler, Lionel Trilling, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and J¨urgen Habermas are frequently mentioned in this context. But what is not usually mentioned is that with these critics, the debate on modernitypostmodernity was initially limited to Marxist theories of literature and culture among New York intellectuals and the Frankfurt School. In this context, it was less the universal, formal, and aesthetic features of the literary text – which the New Critics had placed at the center of their international concept of modernity – that were at issue than the function of literature, art, and the humanities, and their relationship to processes of modernization in society, economics, technology, and associated disciplines. Frankfurt and New York intellectuals had been making similar criticisms of the myth of technical and economic progress and of the denunciations of literary and cultural modernism since the 1930s. The new crisis discussion took a different direction in Germany than in the United States. The historical avant-garde movements had failed to make art relate directly to life again, and the Nazi and Stalinist periods had clearly shown that the proletariat, as the designated subject of historical progress, was by no means the only focus of theories of emancipation. Nonetheless, the Frankfurt School, taking into account reason’s capacity for self-criticism 8 Irving Howe, “Mass Society and Post-Modern Fiction,” Partisan Review 26 (1959): 420–36; Charles Percy Snow, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (New York, 1959).

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and revision, still held that modernity was an unfinished Enlightenment project. As long as the realm of civilization has not emancipated itself from the remnants of feudalism, capitalism and facism, they argued, the autonomy of the cultural sphere was a necessary prerequisite for a critique of the status quo and the anticipation of a better future. While Nietzsche’s and Heidegger’s critiques of rational, causal, and metaphysical thinking ultimately remained peripheral, critical theory’s dialectical and materialist concept of modernity derived from Karl Marx and Max Weber became firmly anchored in West German thought in the 1960s. In the United States, by contrast, the question whether the European model of a dualistic modernity was the appropriate concept to describe and analyze American cultural and social experience had been under discussion among the New York intellectuals and within the pages of their journal, Partisan Review, since the early 1950s.9 Daniel Bell, for example, in his collection of essays tellingly entitled The End of Ideology, suggested that the inadequacy of many social theories in the United States was largely due to an uncritical application of European sociology to the very different experience of American life. This was particularly noticeable in the theories on mass society expounded by critics who were, in the main, aristocratic, Catholic, and existentialist. Jos´e Ortega y Gasset, Paul Tillich, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, Emil Lederer, Hannah Arendt, and others were more concerned with the general conditions of emancipation and the freedom of a select few than with the freedom of the individual.10 In a similar way, though with different political emphasis, younger New York intellectuals such as Susan Sontag and Leslie Fiedler took issue with criticisms of popular culture that rested upon the dichotomy between art and technology, between aesthetic and everyday experience, and, ultimately, between modernism and modernization. Intellectuals of the preceding gener9 See the chapters in “Our Country and Our Culture: A Symposium,” Partisan Review 19 (1952): 282–326. 10 Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (Glencoe, Ill., 1960), 13, 21.

ation, above all Irving Howe and Lionel Trilling, had defended the autonomy of the high cultural sphere as the last refuge for critique of the results of modernization and for utopian visions of a better world. For Sontag and Fiedler, drawing boundaries between high art and mass culture was, in light of social reality, idealizing and dysfunctional. They were convinced neither by the critical distance and autonomy of art nor by C. P. Snow’s one-sided championing of technical progress. In place of a distancing, rational interpretation and hermeneutics, Susan Sontag demanded an “erotics of art,” a “new sensibility” in the mediation between art and everyday life, an art that should be as practical and direct as pop art and happenings. Leslie Fiedler defended the resistance of the beat generation (Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and others) as well as the flourishing counterculture of the 1960s against Howe’s and Trilling’s criticism of passive and irrational political amnesia. Fiedler demanded that the borders between high and popular culture be overcome and that the gap dividing science fiction and western novels from so-called serious literature be bridged.11 It is hardly surprising that critical theory saw this questioning of the autonomy of art and literature in American postmodernity as a false dissolution and a false return to everyday life. Sontag and Fiedler called for literature and art to turn to the immediate and the everyday – to what is instead of what should be. From a German point of view, this call seemed a utilitarian and materialist contamination of the ideal artistic world, as weakening of critical reflection by operational thought that would lead to the loss of utopia and reason. Whereas the process of modernization was often understood in Germany as an obstacle on the way to a life freed from alienation, American postmodernity

11

See the essays by Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation,” “On Camp,” and “One Culture and the New Sensibility,” in Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation (London, 1987); see the essays by Leslie Fiedler, “The Death of Avant-Garde Literature,” “The New Mutants,” and “Cross the Border – Close the Gap,” in The Collected Essays of Leslie Fiedler, 2 vols. (New York, 1971), vol. 2.

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insisted on making precisely the process the source of a culture of experience. poststructuralist thought enters postmodernity Under the influence of poststructuralism, the interpretative patterns of postmodernity began to change in the early 1970s. Strategies of modernism that aimed at homogeneity, closure, and the production of meaning moved to the center of discussion. Jacques Derrida’s deconstructionist critique of modernist epistemology was decisive for this second phase of postmodernity. His radical questioning of language as a representation of reality was accompanied by Roland Barthes’s provocative thesis on the “death of the author.” Derrida and Barthes no longer saw the text as a closed space, but as a multidimensional one in which a large number of texts – none of them original – come together, “a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.”12 If there is any realism left, the American critic Fredric Jameson emphasized, it is the understanding of the confinement of language and representation “and of slowly becoming aware of a new and original historical situation in which we are condemned to seek History by way of our own pop images and simulacra of that history, which itself remains forever out of reach.”13 This understanding of the text has had its counterpart since the 1960s in the works of John Barth, Donald Barthelme, Thomas Pynchon, E. L. Doctorow, Ishmael Reed, Walter Abish, Raymond Federman, Robert Coover, Ronald Sukenik, and many others. For these writers, literature becomes its own subject; their novels thematize their manifold intertextual references, the lack of an original text and thus also of an original author, as well as the problematic nature of writing as the mediation of experience. These strategies have parallels in the playfulness of architecture and painting. 12

Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author” (1968), in Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text (New York, 1977), 146. 13 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, N.C., 1991), 25.

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Besides Fredric Jameson, it was above all the American literary critic Ihab Hassan who made a decisive contribution to disseminating this deconstructivist postmodernism. Hassan did not understand postmodernism in a chronological sense, but as a style that transcends epochs and periods. According to Hassan, not only modernist authors such as Franz Kafka, James Joyce, Henry Miller, Jean Genet, and Samuel Beckett but also Lawrence Sterne and Miguel de Cervantes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had rocked the foundation of the literary imitation of reality (mimesis) by reflecting on the limits to linguistic representation.14 While Hassan’s “postmodern spirit” resisted traditional periodization, the Marxist view of identifiable, epoch-shaping events in Frederic Jameson’s concept of postmodernism had not lost any of its validity. Using Ernest Mandel’s three-phase model of capitalism, Jameson saw realism and modernism as the cultural representations of early mercantile capitalism and imperialist monopoly capitalism, while multinational late capitalism – the expansion of capital into areas hitherto not affected by the market – had its cultural logic in postmodernism. This logic was manifested in image-oriented and standardized consumer behavior, in fashion and styling, in advertising and television, and in architecture and the suburban expansion of cities. According to Jameson, it was characterized by two features. The first is the spread of pastiche, which, as “pure parody,” had renounced the original motif of satire and laughter, the hope that something “normal” existed beyond the parody. The second feature Jameson, drawing on the poststructuralist psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan, discerns in postmodern logic is a collective schizophrenia expressed in the isolation of the word or the name from its referent or concept and thus in the breakdown of the chain of signification. Applied to the cultural logic of late capitalism, postmodernism is, in Jameson’s understanding, a transformation of reality into images and the fragmentation of time

14 Ihab Hassan, The Postmodern Turn: Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture (Columbus, Ohio, 1987).

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into a series of continuous presents. Jameson’s totalizing perspective on the cultural logic of international capitalism was too global, however, for it to be able to combine recognition of cultural differences within American society – as demanded by the civil-rights and women’s movements – with the postmodern critique of the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, male, heterosexual cast prevailing in modernism. Leslie Fiedler had emphasized the iconoclasm of counterculture as a postmodern offensive against this claim to hegemony as early as the 1960s, but it was not until two decades later that the theoretical implications and concrete effects of this realization – on, for example, the European concept of the nation state and the myth of an ethnically homogeneous national culture – became evident.

the politicization of postmodernity The concept of postmodernity thus became allied in the 1980s with the developing interdisciplinary field of cultural studies. In the postmodern emphasis on heterogeneity, feminist scholars and theoreticians of multiculturalism and postcolonialism discovered the possibility of breaking out of traditional literary, artistic, and historical canons by investigating cultural experiences and forms of representation that modernity had largely marginalized. This was not just a case of paying attention to groups that had been written out of history. The canon debates of the 1980s centered far more on the political, social, and epistemological foundations of power relations that had “neutralized” social categories such as ethnicity, gender, and class in favor of a white, male, Christian understanding of culture. Alongside deconstruction, Michel Foucault’s poststructuralist revision of the modern concepts of power and the subject was of decisive importance in this third phase of postmodernity. The production of knowledge, Foucault had shown, is by no means objective and neutral, but inextricably linked to social constellations and institutions of power. Foucault’s discourse analysis showed that the broad networks

of power cannot be reduced to just a few institutions. Using this insight as a starting point, feminist theory, gender, gay, and lesbian studies, African, Asian, Native, and Latino American studies, and postmodern anthropology and historiography all began to lay bare the strategies of power and representation that are written into public and scholarly discourses. With this shift in cultural self-understanding from a consensus-oriented, homogenizing soical discourse toward a discourse that recognizes cultural differences, the United States has created a cultural model that stands in contrast to European concepts of culture, in particular the Germany myth of the correpondence between cultural and national identity. While the German discussion of the experience of cultural and ethnic difference is still primarily based on an internal-external or us-and-them matrix of the jus sanguinis, attention in the United States is directed to the many differences that exist within American culture. These differences make it necessary to consider intercultural and transcultural aspects that transcend political borders. Thus the compatibility of poststructuralist deconstruction and the social reality of American society can be explained in terms of the collective consciousness of cultural difference, which is anchored in historical identity and has now reached a provisional climax in the postmodern discourse. Whereas poststructuralism is still stigmatized in Europe as the “gravedigger” of the Enlightenment, it found a social base and concrete form of cultural difference in America, in the discovery of a genuinely multicultural society. This was first given a theoretical foundation by poststructuralism. While feminist theory, for example, participates in the experience of difference and tolerance toward the cultural other, and can therefore be understood as a form of multicultural critique, the multiculturalism debate in Germany has a cumulative and not a culturally transformative function. It centers only on the praxis of state and social policy “toward foreigners” and therefore leaves so-called German culture basically unaffected. Thus the multicultural debate includes neither critical interest in marginalized groups within German culture

Modernity and Postmodernity in a Transatlantic Perspective

nor a politically differentiated East and West German perspective on the supposed common cultural heritage. This comparison shows the necessity of locating postmodernity historically in the United States’ cultural self-understanding, not least because this allows us to understand transatlantic differences in the discussions on postmodernity, poststructuralism, feminism, and multiculturalism. Beyond the different ways in which the

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ideals of the Enlightenment are made concrete and put into practice, a common impetus is evident in all three versions and phases of American postmodernity: the search for a concept of culture that corresponds to the social and historical conditions as well as the specific interpretation of the Enlightenment in the United States. In this search, postmodernity is a continuation of the long tradition of America’s striving for cultural independence from Europe.

chapter eighteen

Confrontations with the Holocaust in the Era of the Cold War German and American Perspectives Jeffrey Peck

Understanding German and American confrontations with the Holocaust from 1968 to 1990 demands more than chronicling the significant historical markers – names, places, dates, and events. In the highly charged political climate of these years, remembering the Holocaust became intertwined not only with the interests of the two German states vying for legitimacy, but also with the emotions of succeeding generations who were differently invested in understanding the horrors of the Nazi regime.1 The period 1968–90 began little more than twenty years after the Holocaust and covered at least three generations. The first generation participated in the war – as victims, perpetrators, bystanders, soldiers – the second remembered and challenged silence and ignorance, and the third, the children and young adults of today, are the first to forget. Each of these generations struggled to interpret the events of the Holocaust according to its own collective and individual memory, spawning a process known in Germany as Vergangenheitsbew¨altigung or “mastering the past.” The 1990s saw the rise of revisionists and deniers as well as the discovery of fresh archival sources that produced revelations about guilt and complicity. More concretely, in unified Germany, the Jewish community continued to grow (to approximately 88,000 by 2000), swelled by immigrants from the former

Soviet Union. Combined with continuing media attention on Jewish life and the Holocaust, this larger Jewish presence heightened the visibility of Jewish issues. In America, the Holocaust continued to grip the attention of all its citizens, whether Jewish or not. For the Jews, however, the tragedy of the Holocaust and the joy in the state of Israel are the two defining moments for Jewish identity; indeed, many interpret the birth of the Jewish state as a redemption for the Shoah. The triangular relationship of Germany, America, and world Jewry, particularly Israel, sets the parameters for the discussion about how public instantiations of the Holocaust and Holocaust memory shape German, American, and Jewish identities from 1968 to 1990. By the late 1960s, a new generation of Germans born during and directly after the war was coming to terms with an inexplicable past and a contentious present, both of which demanded that they question the authority and legitimacy of their elders. The student movement, Vietnam protests, and antiestablishment fervor in Germany reflected a disillusionment with the older generation and a sharp critique of social and moral assumptions that contributed to opening up discussion of the Holocaust.2 Despite these important societal developments, 2

See the chapters by Claus Leggewie and Carl Lankowski, vol. 2, Society. Also see Anson Rabinbach, “Introduction,” in Anson Rabinbach and Jack Zipes, eds., Germans and Jews Since the Holocaust: The Changing Situation in West Germany (New York, 1986).

1 See Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanies (Cambridge, Mass., 1997).

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however, the Holocaust did not receive the attention it demanded, in Germany or the United States, until after the 1967 Six Day War. The war not only mobilized support for Israel in Germany and America, but brought back the threat of annihilation of the Jewish people reminiscent of the Holocaust. After Israel’s victory, Jews could “celebrate a different ending to a potential Holocaust.”3 The emergence of Holocaust memory in the United States was also linked to the Vietnam War. The imagery of the antiwar movement, for example, used the Holocaust as the standard by which to judge and oppose American actions in Vietnam: “After the disorientation of Vietnam, . . . they [American college students] wanted to know the difference between good and evil. The Holocaust is a benchmark, the defining moment in the drama of good and evil. . . . Against this single occurrence, one would assess all other deeds. And so, memorialization began in earnest, that is to say it became organized.”4 In the United States, no better example of this institutionalization of memory was President Jimmy Carter’s decision in 1978 to form a Holocaust commission responsible for making “recommendations with respect to the establishment and maintenance of an appropriate memorial to those who perished in the Holocaust.”5 In the same year, on April 16–19, the miniseries Holocaust was broadcast in the United States; it was shown a year later in Germany. The program played an important role in educating a broad public about the events in Germany and Europe that had led to the genocide of European Jewry. In both countries, critics debated 3

Edward T. Linenthal, Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust Museum (New York, 1995), 9. 4 Interview with Raul Hilberg, Aug. 30, 1992, as quoted in ibid., 11. See also Rochelle G. Saidel, Never Too Late to Remember: The Politics Behind New York City’s Holocaust Museum (New York, 1996). For a broader look at American attitudes toward Germany, including the Holocaust, see the chapters in German Politics and Society 13, no. 3 (fall 1995). 5 President’s Commission on the Holocaust, Report to the President (Washington, D.C., 1979) as quoted in Linenthal, Preserving Memory, 23.

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the aesthetic merits of a commercial television drama that was crudely interrupted, at least in the United States, by advertisements for deodorant and household cleansers, but also discussed the pedagogical and informational value of such a nationally televised program. In Germany especially, Holocaust was a watershed in educating the public to the deeds of their own leaders and countrymen, and it spurred the younger generation to confront their parents as potential perpetrators. Discussions were held after each installment to large public response. The year 1978 also marked the fortieth anniversary of Kristallnacht. This was a significant moment not only in West Germany, but also in the German Democratic Republic (GDR).6 Only a small Jewish community existed in the GDR, and the reactions to the Holocaust on the part of the communist regime were largely a measure of its allegiance to Cold War “antifascist” ideologies promoted by the Soviet Union. Although 1979 brought the thirtieth anniversary of the GDR and a chance for GDR Jews to affirm their dual identities, as Jews and as (East) Germans, they continued to struggle with the hostile policies of their regime toward Israel as an imperialist Zionist state allied with the United States. The GDR’s Jews, for their part, tried whenever they could to acknowledge their commitment to the GDR as Jewish citizens. In 1982, however, even after many other commemorations offering public recognition and confirmation of how secure they felt in the GDR, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon fully exposed the GDR’s Jews to the schizophrenia of being Jews and loyal GDR citizens. The event that demonstrated most clearly the interconnectedness of the Holocaust and the Cold War in the German-American relationship was President Ronald Reagan’s visit to the military cemetery at Bitburg in 1985. The idea for the visit grew partly out of Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s disappointment at being excluded from the D-Day commemoration ceremonies 6 For further discussion of the East German reaction to the Holocaust, see Jeffrey M. Peck, “East Germany,” in David S. Wyman, ed., The World Reacts to the Holocaust (Baltimore, 1996), 447–72.

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at Normandy the previous year. It was also intended as a gesture of reconciliation similar to that between Kohl and President Franc¸ ois Mitterrand of France over the graves of Verdun. For Kohl, such a gesture by the American president would demonstrate Germany’s acceptance into the Atlantic alliance and the power of Germany’s postwar transformation to counterbalance memories of Nazi Germany’s horrible deeds. In short, it seemed to be time to look to the future and not the past. As Reagan said when he decided to cancel a proposed visit to a concentration camp: “I don’t think we ought to focus on the past. I want to focus on the future. I want to put that history behind me.”7 Were not solid German-American relations forty years after the end of the war just cause to celebrate symbolically even at the graves of Waffen SS officers who, in Reagan’s mind, were also “victims of nazism . . . just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps”?8 Such comparisons were sharply condemned not only by Jewish groups but also by other religious and ethnic organizations. Bitburg, however, did not succeed in drawing a line at 1945. Instead it became a terrible moment, a reminder that history as well as historical understanding were still needed, especially by the Americans and the president himself. What J¨urgen Habermas called the “forced reconciliation”9 orchestrated in the name of state powers was not to be trusted. Ironically, however, it was German President Richard von Weizs¨acker who spoke forcefully against what Bitburg had come to symbolize. On May 8 – three days after Bitburg – in a speech to the Bundestag commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the end of the war, Weizs¨acker delicately but decisively reminded his fellow Germans that May 8 commemorated “the end of a tortuous path in

German history” and a “day of liberation.” Yet he differentiated between guilt and responsibility when he addressed the generation of Germans born after the war who “cannot profess a guilt for crimes they did not commit” yet still “must accept the past.”10 Bitburg symbolized not only the complexity of German-American relations regarding the Holocaust but also the ways that Cold War imperatives continued to be colored by the historical past. Bitburg proved that the past would simply not disappear and that Americans, not only American Jews, would not allow Reagan to forget the Holocaust. Although not directly related to responses to the Holocaust, another complicated event emerged in Germany in 1985 that illustrated the necessity for the public to speak up, this time not toward politicians but toward the artistic community. What came to be known at the “Fassbinder Affair” was to affect the political culture of the Federal Republic. The play Garbage, the City, and Death (Der M¨ull, die Stadt und der Tod) by avant-garde filmmaker, sometime playwright, and general enfant terrible of the German cultural scene Rainer Werner Fassbinder, was to be produced in Frankfurt. In particular, the character of the “rich Jew” drew criticisms of anti-Semitism; on opening night members of the Frankfurt Jewish community protested on stage and stopped the performance, engaging instead with the audience in a heated discussion not only about anti-Semitism but also about artistic freedom. The play was canceled and, according to Andrei Markovits, “for the first time in the Federal Republic, Jews had participated in a protest qua Jews.”11 The response was likened to the one prompted twenty-two years earlier by Rolf Hochhuth’s controversial Der Stellvertreter (The Deputy) (1963) about the Vatican’s unwillingness to denounce Nazi persecution of the Jews, which in both its German

7

As quoted in Geoffrey Hartman, “Chronology,” in Geoffrey Hartman, ed., Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective (Bloomington, Ind., 1986), xiii. 8 As quoted in George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York, 1993), 546. 9 J¨urgen Habermas, “Defusing the Past: A PoliticoCultural Tract,” in Geoffrey Hartman, ed., Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective (Bloomington, Ind., 1986), 45.

10

Weizs¨acker’s speech reprinted in “Gedenkstunde des Deutschen Bundestages zum 40. Jahrestag der Beendigung des Zweiten Weltkrieges,” Europa Archiv 10 (1985): D 265, 267. 11 Andrei S. Markovits and Beth Simone Novek, “West Germany,” in David S. Wyman, ed., The World Reacts to the Holocaust (Baltimore, 1996), 435.

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and American presentations stirred controversy and debate. Theater about the Holocaust was again being recognized as a potent vehicle for education and publicity, whether it was actually performed or not, and provoked viewers to question the past as it was being rediscovered and replayed at the time. A less fortunate “reinterpretation” of the historical past occurred a year later in Germany when the so-called Historikerstreit (historians’ debate) generated heated discussion about “normalization” or “relativization” of the Jewish genocide in the course of German history and historiography.12 Spawned by the writings of two respected German historians, Andreas Hillgruber and Ernst Nolte, and the response by social philosopher and critic J¨urgen Habermas, the debate quickly moved beyond methodology to more profound questions about German identity after Auschwitz. Historian Charles Maier linked the Historikerstreit to developments in the Cold War: “It may just be fortuitous that a bitter controversy over the legacy of the national past has erupted at the very moment when a SovietAmerican agreement to eliminate intermediate missiles and the advent of a Reformist leader are changing the variables of the East-West balance.” Questioning the centrality of the Holocaust for German self-understanding, Maier argued, means that “the debate over the national past will have served to have licensed a debate over the German future.”13 The fiftieth anniversary of Kristallnacht on November 9, 1988, would be the last during the Cold War; a year later to the day the Berlin Wall would fall, opening a future for Germany that could scarcely have been imagined.14 The 12 See Historikerstreit: Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung, comp. Rudolf Augstein (Munich, 1987); James Knowlton and Truett Cates, trans., Forever in the Shadow of Hitler? Original Documents of the Historikerstreit, the Controversy Concerning the Singularity of the Holocaust (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1993). 13 Charles Maier, The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), 3. 14 The coincidence of the fall of the Berlin Wall with the anniversary of Kristallnacht was of course ironic, esp.

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commemorations of 1988 marked a move forward for relations between the Jewish community and the GDR regime. The president of the World Jewish Congress, Edgar Bronfman, visited the GDR; special sessions of the GDR People’s Chamber in which Erich Honecker spoke about Jewish suffering under Nazism, and other meetings were convened with foreign Jewish dignitaries, including Heinz Galinski, the president of the West German Council of Jews in Germany. Honecker bestowed gifts on the Jewish community and announced the reconstruction of the synagogue in the Oranienburgerstrasse as well as the founding of the Centrum Judaicum, which would become a center for memorialization as well as research. In 1988, many commemorations were held in East Berlin and throughout East Germany recognizing not only Jewish persecution but also Jewish accomplishments and contributions to German life. Publications about the Holocaust by GDR historians multiplied, and the Jewish community issued a small booklet titled “Beware Lest the Nightmare Recur.” The fall of the Wall and German reunification in 1990 marked the end of the Cold War, but Jews in both the United States and the two Germanies were perhaps the most fearful about what this political transformation would mean for them. Many thought the calls in East Germany of “Wir sind das Volk” (We are the people) quickly melting into “Wir sind ein Volk” (We are one people) smacked of a resurgent German nationalism that could lead to renewed anti-Semitism. Neo-Nazi demonstrations and skinhead attacks on innocent people were to multiply in the years directly following unification, making cities like Hoyerswerda and for the GDR. See Y. Michal Bodemann, “Reconstructions of History: From Jewish Memory to Nationalized Commemoration of Kristallnacht in Germany,” in Y. Michal Bodemann, ed., Jews, Germans, Memory: Reconstructions of Jewish Life in Germany (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1996), 179–226; Y. Michal Bodemann, Ged¨achtnistheater: Die j¨udische Gemeinschaft und ihre deutsche Erfindung (Hamburg, 1996); Elisabeth Domansky, “Kristallnacht, the Holocaust and German Unity: The Meaning of November 9 as an Anniversary in Germany,” History and Memory 4, no. 1 (1992): 60–94.

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Rostock in the East and M¨olln and Solingen in the West synonyms for xenophobia, racism, and anti-Semitism. Jews around the world feared what unification might mean for future security for Jews in the new Germany. Since 1990, the differences between American and German confrontations with the Holocaust have become even more distinct. In the United States, the opening of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. and many other museums and monuments around the country focus attention on representations of Holocaust memory. The popularity of these public institutions has exceeded all expectations. Controversies around the return of property in Europe to Jews, the payment of pensions to survivors living in Eastern Europe, the return of stolen art works, and, more dramatically, the much publicized revelations about Switzerland’s collaboration by receiving “Nazi gold” all drew Americans’ attention to the Holocaust and the ways in which its legacy still affects the lives of Jews today. Such attention leaves little doubt that there are significant individuals and institutions that are trying to keep memory alive, but critics argue that although universalization of the Jewish genocide makes the Holocaust more “relevant” to late-twentieth-century America, it also enhances the “erosion of [ Jewish] identity and specificity.”15 Germany, however, continues to be preoccupied with more basic questions and concerns: not only how it should remember, but also who should be remembered and if at all. In 1989, Lea Rosh, a German television personality, started an initiative to build a Holocaust monument in Berlin.16 After proposals and debates in which even the chancellor participated, the ceremonial groundbreaking finally took place in January 2000. Plans for a German Holocaust museum or for a Jewish museum addition to the famous City of Berlin Museum also

15

Anson Rabinbach, “From Explosion to Erosion: Holocaust Memorialization in America Since Bitburg,” History and Memory 9, nos. 1–2 (1997): 238. See also Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Boston, 1999). 16 See Jane Kramer, “The Politics of Memory,” in Jane Kramer, The Politics of Memory: Looking for Germany in the New Germany (New York, 1996), 255–93.

remained stalled in debate. These controversies, however, seem now to have been superseded by the building of architect Daniel Liebeskind’s dramatic Jewish Museum in Berlin. The building is so architecturally powerful that many ask whether it needs to be filled with exhibitions or should remain an empty edifice, relying on its sheer aesthetic and symbolic force to make its point. Perhaps it is easier for films such as Claus Lanzmann’s nine-and-a-half hour Shoah (1985) or Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993) to move audiences to confront the past. In fact, many critics such as Alvin Rosenfeld have claimed that most people (read: Americans) get their information about the Holocaust not from historians but “from novelists, filmmakers, playwrights, TV program writers and producers, popular newspapers and magazines, political figures, and other public personalities.”17 The popularization and “Americanization of the Holocaust”18 raises some fundamental questions about the status of the Holocaust in contemporary American and German life. For example, could the aggressive marketing of Daniel Goldhagen’s controversial book and the sensation it caused in both Germany and the United States reflect merely the prurient interests of a popular audience?19 Rosenfeld warns that “Images of mass suffering may awaken conscience, but they also have the power to perversely excite the imagination. A pornography of the Holocaust, in other words, may undercut a didactics of the Holocaust.”20 His admonition reminds us that how we confront the Holocaust will require us to recognize the limits of (popular) cultural as well as political and academic approaches. This 17 Alvin Rosenfeld, “Another Revisionism: Popular Culture and the Changing Image of the Holocaust,” in Geoffrey Hartman, ed., Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective (Bloomington, Ind., 1986), 90. 18 Michael Berenbaum, “The Americanization of the Holocaust,” in Ilya Levkov, ed., Bitburg and Beyond: Encounters in American, German, and Jewish History (New York, 1987). 19 Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York, 1996). 20 Rosenfeld, “Another Revisionism,” 91.

Confrontations with the Holocaust in the Era of the Cold War

awareness is especially important in view of the accessibility of images and information that can be used to document (and deny) the Holocaust through computer technologies that transcend international boundaries. In the United States, the success of the Holocaust Museum and similar institutions has fixed Holocaust memory in the American consciousness to such an extent that Jewish educators worry that the Holocaust may too strongly define American Jewish identity in terms of “victimology.” This is not the case in Germany, where the growing Jewish community is still struggling to establish itself and its legitimacy within Germany and the Jewish world. Certainly for the emigrants from the former Soviet Union, their relationship to a Germany that has encouraged them to live there is not negatively colored by the Holocaust. Internecine battles between political factions in the communities, or renewed struggles between German Jewish and Eastern European or Russian immigrant Jews, may be a sign of a peculiar coming-of-age in which survival can be taken for granted. Grappling with how the past is to be remembered and the political vicissitudes of who will control that memory continues to be profoundly more difficult for the Germans than the Americans.

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However, both Germans and Americans in the new century will share basic questions about how the Holocaust should be understood. Will this be “the old rituals” of guilty Germans and Jewish victims,21 or a perfunctory acceptance of Jews (or foreigners as well) in the growth industry of philosemitism – a kind of “backward salvation”?22 The commodification of Auschwitz as the “Shoah business” is a charge no longer leveled only by the most cynical critics, and many question the fixation of Jewish American identity on the Holocaust as the number of survivors continues to decline. When memory overtakes the actual event, when discourses and representations compete for our attention in lieu of firsthand experience, both sides of the Atlantic will need to confront the Holocaust with even greater responsibility than before.

21 Fred Kempe, “Die alten Rituale m¨ussen enden,” Tagespiegel, Mar. 3, 1997, 6. 22 As quoted in Karen Remmler, “Reclaiming Space: Jewish Women in Germany Today,” in Gisela BrinkerGabler and Sidonie Smith, eds., Writing New Identities: Gender, Nation, and Immigration in Contemporary Europe (Minneapolis, 1997), 190–3.

SOCIETY German-American Societal Relations in Three Dimensions, 1968–1990 Lily Gardner Feldman

introduction

Foreign Affairs, have accorded a similar priority to societal factors in analyses of post-unification international relations.3 Whereas the first assumption about the primacy of security during the Cold War is clearly correct, the second assumption about the relative absence or quiescence of societal connections between Germany and the United States appears false. Although societal links never received the fanfare or scrutiny given to those in areas of security, politics, and economics, they were important and extensive in the period 1968–90 in three ways: as a backdrop to official ties, as a significant influence on official relations, and as an autonomous element of German-American partnership. Analytically, one can discern three dimensions of societal connections, varying in degrees of directness: (1) comparisons of the nature of German and American societies; (2) bilateral, societal interactions; and (3) public opinion and images in each country vis-`a-vis the other. Each conception of the societal dimension in German-American relations raises a set of questions. At the comparative level, do differences lead to estrangement, or are they a

Since 1990, the societal aspect of GermanAmerican relations has emerged as a central focus of the partnership, providing potentially the new “glue” to replace the security connection that bound the two states inextricably during the Cold War. President Bill Clinton, for example, emphasized in July 1994 that: For fifty years, Americans and Berliners have forged the bonds of friendship. Even though our American military will soon leave Berlin, America’s ties will continue – through the rest of our troops in Germany; through thousands of American civilians, businessmen, students and artists who will remain and who will contribute to your life and prosperity.1

Chancellor Helmut Kohl spoke the same language: “For decades we talked about the transatlantic bridge ensuring our security. We know today that we have to add a couple of components to that bridge. We have to add the components of economic cooperation, cooperation in the cultural area and cooperation in the area of bringing our young people close together.”2 Think tanks in both Germany and the United States, including the Carnegie Endowment, the Atlantic Council, and the German Society for

3 Daniel S. Hamilton, Beyond Bonn: America and the Berlin Republic (Washington, D.C., 1994); Atlantic Council of the United States, The United States and Germany: Task Force on German Unification (Washington, D.C., Oct. 31, 1990); Walter L. B¨uhl, “Gesellschaftliche Grundlagen der deutschen Aussenpolitik,” in Karl Kaiser and Hanns W. Maull, eds., Deutschlands neue Aussen politik, vol. 1, Grundlagen (Munich, 1994).

1 Remarks by the President upon Arrival in Berlin, Tegel Airport, Berlin, July 11, 1994, Office of the Press Secretary, The White House. 2 Remarks by Chancellor Kohl in Press Availability, Reichstag, Berlin, July 12, 1994, Office of the Press Secretary, The White House.

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1968–79: the emergence of difference

pacity of the relationship to adapt to new circumstances. The importance of 1968 for the United States can be seen in the convergence of three developments: violence in the ghettos occasioned by the dearth of resources for the war on poverty and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; the expansion of student militancy from civil rights to antiwar protest; and the growing success of the new secretary of defense, Clark Clifford, in questioning the premises of U.S. policy in Vietnam. Together, these developments led to Lyndon B. Johnson’s retreat from the presidential race and destroyed the American foreign policy consensus that had prevailed since the presidency of Harry S. Truman.4 In Germany, 1968 was mainly a phenomenon of generational change, for the major foreign policy departure had already begun with Foreign Minister Gerhard Schr¨oder’s Politik der Bewegung (politics of movement) in 1963.5 Fundamental ideological differences also existed between the German and the American protest movements.6 With a fierce socialist-communist orientation, the German movement drew few ideological lessons from its counterpart in the United States, but was inspired by the American movement’s opposition to American imperialism in the Third World, particularly Vietnam, and to racism and its tactics. This largely one-way transfer of values often took a form by now firmly etched into many levels of the German-American partnership: the experiences and observations of German students, scholars, intellectuals, and public figures in America and its universities. The student movements in both countries were short-lived, but the German protest movement had long-term consequences for Germany’s efforts to become a more open democracy and develop a principled foreign policy as a “civilian power.”7 These efforts

In terms of comparative societal developments, the year 1968 represented a watershed in German-American relations, defining new parameters that have endured beyond the Cold War. The epoch it unleashed revealed fundamental cleavages within both societies, the depth of mutual disenchantment, and the ca-

4 Seyom Brown, The Faces of Power: Constancy and Change in United States Foreign Policy from Truman to Reagan (New York, 1983), 311–7. 5 Frank R. Pfetsch, Die Aussenpolitik der Bundesrepublik 1949–1992: Von der Spaltung zur Vereinigung (Munich, 1993), 50–1, 168–9. 6 See the chapter by Claus Leggewie in this section. 7 See the chapter by Stephen Kalberg in this section.

stimulus to mutual learning and understanding? Are differences the source of opposition and negative attitudes regarding the other country, or a source of fascination? What is the impact of differential timing of major social change in the two countries? Does it lead to preoccupation with self and relative disinterest in the other party? In terms of social policy or social trends, has each country provided a model for the other, whether through policymakers, scholars, or private-sector actors? At the bilateral level, a different catalog of issues emerges. What is the nature of social elites and the bilateral institutions in which they operate? Did they proliferate in the 1970s and 1980s as official relations grew more difficult? How much of the bilateral societal interaction was directly related to the Cold War? Regarding public opinion and images, a separate but linked line of inquiry unfolds. Has the Cold War acted as a magnet for negative attitudes or an adhesive for cementing positive ties? Who has shaped opinion in the two countries? What is the relationship between opinion, attitudes, and involvement in bilateral institutions? What role has generational change played in the development of attitudes? How much importance do the two governments attach to public opinion regarding the other country? Has there been congruence or disjuncture between public attitudes and governmental policy? I seek to address these issues by examining the three conceptions of German-American societal relations in the period 1968– 90. Based on changes in identity and stature of the two countries, key social events, and growth in bilateral institutions, the analysis falls into two sections: 1968–79 and 1980–90.

German-American Societal Relations in Three Dimensions, 1968–1990

would profoundly affect German-American relations a decade later in the Euro-missile debate. The outright rejection of the American capitalist model by German student radicals was followed by a milder disappointment with the American example on the part of significant segments of the mainstream, which culminated in broad opposition to the missile-deployment provisions of the 1979 double-track decision.8 As Fritz Stern has noted, “For many people it took the jolt of the peace movement and the dispute over deployment to realize that the old days of the Bonn republic as a kind of KleinAmerika [were] over.”9 The Americentric focus of the protest movement and of officialdom in the United States prevented both from recognizing how German society had begun to change in the first half of the 1970s. As Germany distanced itself from the American model in the 1970s and developed its own identity, it began to proffer a German model for America. Andrei Markovits has described Americans’ admiration of Modell Deutschland when the slogan first emerged in 1976: It implied Germany’s successful coming of age, a triumphant achievement to many, yet also a frightening fact to some. . . . The FRG conveyed this image of an island of stability, strength, prosperity, and confidence surrounded by a sea of nations plagued by insurmountable adversities. . . . Discipline, punctuality, obedience, conscientiousness, thoroughness and excellence were all seen as crucial ingredients . . . and it was often mentioned that part and parcel of the model was an elaborate web of social nets which cushioned the fall for victims of austerity, if indeed it could not stop it altogether.10

Although it was soon clear that the German model, as a product of German social 8

On the double-track decision, see the chapter by Michael Broer, vol. 2, Security. 9 Fritz Stern, “German-American Relations and the ‘Return of the Repressed,’” in James A. Cooney et al., eds., The Federal Republic of Germany and the United States: Changing Political, Social, and Economic Relations (Boulder, Colo., 1984), 238. 10 Andrei S. Markovits, “Introduction: Model Germany – A Cursory Overview of a Complex Construct,” in Andrei S. Markovits, ed., The Political Economy of West Germany: Modell Deutschland (New York, 1982).

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and economic circumstances, could not readily be copied, it nonetheless motivated American scholars, politicians, and economic leaders to devote more attention to the ills of American society. Health care, social security, and transportation were areas where German practice provided a benchmark, if not a model, for American discussions about reform.11 However, in other areas, such as immigration and urban planning, neither side saw the other as a candidate for comparison, either because the degree of difference was too great or because developments took place in Germany much later than in the United States.12 It was only in the 1990s, after the forces of economic globalization and the end of the Cold War produced mass movements of people, that the hesitation to compare was entirely overcome. The women’s movements in Germany and the United States also were quite different in origin and timing.13 Myra Marx Ferree has distinguished between the mid-1960s civil-rights origins of liberal American feminism, with its emphasis on equality, and the early-1970s stimulus of the abortion debate for the German women’s movement, whose most visible element was a radical feminism advocating autonomy.14 The idea that comparison between the two societies was worthwhile, even if it revealed differences, received approval from the highest government levels in 1972, when Chancellor Willy Brandt announced the creation of “The German Marshall Fund of the United States – A Memorial to the Marshall Plan.” One of the main purposes of the fund was the comparative study of problems common to all

11

Werner Link, The Social-Political Culture of Germany and the United States: Distinctions, Linkages and Transfers, (Bloomington, Ind., 1977), 9; see the chapter by Brian Ladd in this section. 12 See the chapters by Ulrike Fischer-Inverardi and Brian Ladd in this section. 13 See the chapter by Hanna Schissler in this section. 14 Myra Marx Ferree, “Political Strategies and Feminist Concerns in the United States and Federal Republic of Germany: Class, Race, and Gender,” in Metta Spencer, ed., Research in Social Movements, Conflicts, and Change: A Research Annual, vol. 13 (Greenwich, Conn., 1991).

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advanced industrial societies.15 Although the Marshall Fund represented Germany’s gratitude, it also reflected its growing sense of autonomy and its capacity to be a benefactor, not just a recipient. Moreover, the fund’s second purpose, to study problems of international relations that affect the common interests of Europe and the United States, signaled the German view that the relationship was framed by more than the Cold War. In the second area of societal connections, bilateral interaction, institutions forged in the Cold War’s heyday, such as the American Council on Germany, the Aspen Institute Berlin, and the Atlantik-Br¨ucke, continued their regular discussions of bilateral issues in this period. Other, less visible institutions also played an essential role in maintaining connections. Close interaction between German and American unions, and American assistance in rebuilding the union movement in Germany, had characterized the postwar reconstruction period, but by 1968 the fundamental differences in structure, setting, and purpose (free enterprise system versus social-market economy) that had been obscured during the height of the Cold War erupted and made for tense relations.16 Stark divergences occurred over domestic policy, particularly Germany’s expanded codetermination law (Mitbestimmung), and over international relations, especially the initiatives of the German Trade Union Federation (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, or DGB) toward the Soviet bloc. Such strains prompted bilateral reassessments. For example, the January 1975 conference on German-American Cultural Relations, cosponsored by the Ford Foundation and the U.S. Department of State, involved a frank exchange between representatives of the AFLCIO and the DGB. The outcome was an Amer-

15 See Brandt’s address at Harvard University on June 5, 1972, reprinted in German Information Center, Common Values, Common Cause: German Statesmen in the United States, American Statesmen in Germany, 1953–1983: Statements and Speeches (New York, 1983), 104. 16 See the chapter by Michael Fichter in this section.

ican acknowledgment of Germany’s growing autonomy vis-`a-vis the United States.17 German-American church relations also underwent a transformation at the end of the 1960s, again reflecting an incipient self-assertion on the German side. The evolution of d´etente and the structural differences between the two churches that had been submerged in the first two decades led to a rebalancing of relations, including the assumption of a greater international financial role by the German churches.18 As in the case of the unions, the tensions played out not only in bilateral fora but also in multilateral organizations in which Germany and the United States participated. In addition to articulating differences, both the unions and the churches focused on common challenges, a notion that also was uppermost in German-American discussions on the environment in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Transfer of American principles of local and grassroots politics occurred in a variety of areas, including environmental protection during what has been described as the German ecology movement’s “first phase” (1969– 75).19 The American experience had a particularly significant impact on one of the German movement’s luminaries, Petra Kelly.20 Environmental cooperation and mutual emulation were also significant at the governmental level as early as 1965 and resulted in an agreement on environmental issues in May 1974.21 The global interdependence of the early 1970s accentuated German-American differences and the necessity of confronting common challenges while legitimizing intellectually and practically the idea of “transnationalism” – the 17

U.S. Department of State, German-American Cultural Relations: A Summary Record of a Conference Held at Harrison House, Glen Cove, L.I., New York, Jan. 16–18, 1975 (Washington, D.C., 1976). 18 See the chapter by Robert F. Goeckel in this section. 19 Andrei S. Markovits and Philip S. Gorski, The German Left: Red, Green and Beyond (New York, 1993), 100. 20 See the chapters by Carl Lankowski and Thomas Reuther in this section. 21 Link, Social-Political Culture, 10.

German-American Societal Relations in Three Dimensions, 1968–1990

systematic, institutionalized international activities of nongovernmental actors. The American scholars who popularized the concept credit the German scholar Karl Kaiser, among others, with coining the term.22 Much of the early literature on transnationalism characterized nongovernmental actors as a challenge (and on occasion as a threat) to traditional state actors; this was evident in the German-American context, such as the radical student protest movement. However, the transnational activities of nongovernmental organizations could also augment official relations or, at times of crisis in official ties, offer substitute channels. The latter function was extremely important during the strains in the German-American relationship in the second half of the 1970s, when Chancellor Helmut Schmidt took steps to create a second, unofficial level of communication in 1978 by opening an office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Washington, D.C.23 Frustration with leadership on the other side of the Atlantic also prompted the American Jewish Committee (AJC) to engage in discussions with German leaders, such as with Schmidt in 1979, and to be responsive to suggestions for increased dialogue, thereby reversing a trend of relative nonengagement with Germany since the failure of the AJC’s “Operation Candle” program in the 1950s.24 By the end of the decade, societal relations between Germany and the United States had significantly expanded and diversified. The NATO double-track decision in 1979 provoked a new level of German societal opposition aimed at the United States and the Cold War and marked a turning point in the third area of societal connections – public opinion and images. Public opinion in Germany reflected the selfconfidence of a maturing nation. Yet, parallel

22

Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye Jr., Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1973). 23 See the chapter by Ann L. Phillips in this section. 24 Shlomo Shafir, American Jews and Germany After 1945: Points of Connection and Points of Departure (Cincinnati, 1993), 38. See also his chapter in this section.

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to trends in comparative societal developments and bilateral interactions, German attitudes for much of the 1970s revealed bifurcation: criticism of the United States at home and abroad coupled with gratitude for American support and trust.25 Thus, while 80 percent of Germans in the early 1970s were against “the Americans continuing to fight in Vietnam” and 46 percent believed the United States had “no right to be at war in that country,” 76 percent of respondents felt that Germany should “seek the closest possible cooperation” with the United States.26 The intensity of German attitudes about the United States was not reciprocated by American opinion, which was much more focused on domestic problems. What Germans saw as a slight, however, was in fact normal American preoccupation with self or the luxury of superpowerdom. In 1978, only 11 percent of the American public considered foreign policy problems to be “the two or three biggest problems facing the country today.”27 Other allies, such as Canada, were treated with similar indifference. The relative lack of American interest was often accompanied by a lack of understanding, a defect that has been attributed to three sources: “underrepresentation” of the Federal Republic, as opposed to Nazi Germany or Weimar, in American universities and in the media; “ambivalent emotions” concerning the robustness of Germany’s democracy; and “the truly complex nature of [Germany’s] institutional arrangements,” which lay outside American experience.28 The fickleness of the American media, veering from exaggerated praise of Germany to predictions of imminent demise, hardly enhanced understanding.29 Doubts in the German 25 See the chapters by Philipp Gassert and David B. Morris in this section. 26 Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, ed., The Germans: Public Opnion Polls, 1967–1980 (Westport, Conn., 1981), 409, 475. 27 John E. Rielly, ed., American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1987 (Chicago, 1987), 9. 28 Markovits, Political Economy of West Germany, 218– 20. 29 See the chapter by Thomas Reuther in this section.

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media about American leadership echoed, or even shaped, broader public attitudes: In August 1979, only 8 percent of respondents were “very confident” about American international leadership, with 26 percent identifying themselves as “somewhat confident,” 42 percent as “not so confident,” and 12 percent as “not at all confident.”30 Negative attitudes about the United States across the political spectrum hardly connoted a deep-seated, xenophobic anti-Americanism, as substantiated extensively in analyses of the 1970s and reiterated here.31 Yet for a small segment of German society, anti-American sentiments were suffused with a deep hatred, leading to extreme acts of violence against American institutions in Germany.32 By the end of the 1970s, the United States no longer could use the label “fringe phenomenon” to characterize the reality of opposition to its policies. The broad peace movement organized against missile deployment and the severe fissures within the German Social Democratic Party over the issue constituted the shocks that prompted both the United States and Germany to revisit their mutual preconceptions and build new relationships at both the governmental and nongovernmental levels.

1980–90: the acceptance of difference The 1970s unearthed the differences within German-American relations in societal dynamics and structures and foreign policies. The growing discord rattled the framework of relations but did not shatter it. The 1980s posed a more serious challenge, for at times the mutual recriminations (for example, unilateralism versus neutralism; Reaganism versus Genscherism) were interpreted as signs of serious disruption. In the 1970s, the public process of German self30

Cited in Gebhard Schweigler, “Anti-Americanism in German Public Opinion,” in Friedrich-EbertStiftung, ed., America’s Image in Germany and Europe; Papers of a Seminar on Anti-Americanism in Germany: Slogan or Reality? (Washington, D.C., 1985), 20. 31 See the chapter by David B. Morris in this section. 32 See the chapter by Philipp Gassert in this section.

assertion was set in motion; in the 1980s, this process ultimately led to the unification of Germany. Whereas in the 1970s the United States intermittently espied a changing Federal Republic, by 1990 it had fully recognized the new Germany and was able to accept it as different but equal. As in the 1970s, important aspects of tension and resolution in relations occurred in the three areas of societal connections. The advent of the Reagan administration in 1981 entailed two major policy foci with significant implications for societal developments in Germany and the United States: a reversal of the United States’ decline in the international system, especially vis-`a-vis the Soviet Union, and the reduction of the government’s role in society and the economy. Ronald Reagan’s commitment to restoring America’s military superiority over the Soviet Union accounted for his determination to station American missiles in Europe and his subsequent Strategic Defense Initiative.33 Both developments energized the German peace and ecology movements, whose mass demonstrations in 1981 and 1983 revealed the depth of dissatisfaction with the policies of both the United States and the Schmidt and Kohl governments. As in the 1970s, there were few direct links or lessons drawn between the German peace movement and the American equivalent, the nuclear-freeze campaign. As for the environmental movements, the substantial organizational and political differences between the German and American movements appear to have circumscribed, but by no means excluded, mutual exchange.34 Much of their interaction took place in multilateral fora, on topics of broad international, rather than exclusive German-American, concern. The entry of the Green Party into the Bundestag in 1983, the ultimate political manifestation of societal change in Germany, dented American official assumptions about the degree of congruence between German and American foreign policies. The visceral 33

See the chapters by Michael Boer and Kori N. Schake, vol. 2, Security. 34 See the chapter by Carl Lankowski in this section.

German-American Societal Relations in Three Dimensions, 1968–1990

anti-Americanism of significant segments of the Greens and the lack of a political counterpart in the United States guaranteed the absence of cross-fertilization of ideas or strategy. It would take fifteen years before the Greens as a party, via their affiliated Heinrich B¨oll Foundation, established substantial links with American environmental groups and other segments of American society (for example, the American Jewish Committee). Nonetheless, some groups associated with the Greens, such as parts of the feminist movement, did enjoy growing ties with their American counterparts in this period despite different social emphases (affirmative action and workplace issues in the United States; challenges to various forms of patriarchy in the Federal Republic) and different political strategies (working within political institutions in the United States; seeking to create alternative and separate institutions in Germany).35 American feminists influenced general thinking in the German women’s movement, if not the specific agenda.36 By the mid-1980s, focused comparison, and a related German-American network of scholars of feminism, was underway;37 with unification, these developments spread to eastern Germany as well. Reagan’s second commitment, to domestic change, led to a devolution of power to the states that spawned scholarly comparisons of American and German federalism, and programs of the German Marshall Fund and the United States Information Agency (USIA) helped develop networks between German federal states (L¨ander) and American states. The 1970s scholarly work on “transnationalism” extended in the 1980s to “transgovernmentalism,” which included the foreign relations of noncentral governments; the German and American cases were

35 36

See Ferree, “Political Strategies.” See the chapter by Hanna Schissler in this sec-

tion. 37 See, for example, Myra Marx Ferree, “Equality and Autonomy: Feminist Politics in the United States and Germany,” in Mary Fainsod Katzenstein and Carol McClurg Mueller, eds., The Women’s Movements of the United States and Western Europe: Consciousness, Political Opportunity, and Public Policy (Philadelphia, 1987).

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featured as examples.38 The German Marshall Fund continued to promote examination of common challenges to advanced industrial societies, including Germany and the United States, particularly in areas such as industrial relations and health care. By the mid-1980s, the importance of comparison and mutual learning was acknowledged by American officials but not always matched in concrete American policies; the conceptual leap, at least, had been made.39 The Bitburg affair in 1985 was a stark reminder of the practical and political consequences of misreading the other partner and underrating differences between how the two societies interpreted and experienced the past. The depth of misunderstanding and sense of crisis in the early 1980s had already occasioned a commitment on both sides to expand mechanisms and fora for interaction and exchange. Bitburg reconfirmed that need and produced new programs.40 In the second area of societal connections, bilateral interactions, the revitalization of existing institutions and the creation of new ones helped to resuscitate the relationship and improve understanding in the 1980s. Traditional transatlantic organizations like the Atlantik-Br¨ucke looked for new societal partners in the United States – for example, among Jewish organizations. Most organizations began to include younger participants in order to nurture a “successor generation.”41 Foundations such as The German Marshall Fund, the Ford Foundation, the Volkswagen, Bosch, and Thyssen foundations operated on the same assumption in their 38

See, for example, Hans J. Michelmann and Panayotis Soldatos, eds., Federalism and International Relations: The Role of Subnational Units (New York, 1990). 39 See Berndt von Staden, “Deutschland und Amerika: Verbunden durch gemeinsame Werte,” in Hans-Dietrich Genscher, ed., Nach vorn gedacht . . . Perspektiven deutscher Aussenpolitik (Bonn, 1987). 40 See the chapter by Shlomo Shafir in this section. 41 For discussions at the time of the need for a successor generation, see Hildegard Hamm-Br¨ucher, “A Fresh Start Between Germans and Americans,” Aussenpolitik 33 (1982) 29–35; Atlantic Council of the United States, The Successor Generation: Its Challenges and Responsibilities (Washington, D.C., 1981).

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financial support for fellowship programs and for German and European studies in the United States (for example, the Marshall Memorial Fellowship Program, the McCloy Scholars Program for Germans at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and the Robert Bosch Fellowship Program for Americans in Germany). They promoted comparative public policy and German-American understanding. New centers of research and public affairs, such as the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University, shared the goal of airing, rather than resolving, differences. A parallel institutionalization of academic relations between the East German and American universities also occurred as part of the German Democratic Republic’s effort to diversify relations with the United States.42 Government initiatives also sought the long-term benefits of regularization and institutionalization, particularly among young people, and built on long-standing programs such as the German-American Fulbright Commission and the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akdemischer Austauschdienst, or DAAD). The German-American Contacts Initiative, growing out of a fall 1981 governmentto-government meeting to address the relationship’s growing chasm, resulted in several large-scale efforts: the Tricentennial of German immigration to America, the CongressBundestag Youth Exchange Program, and the American Interagency Steering Committee for U.S.-German Contacts with its five subcommittees (i.e., science and technology, education and culture, economics and trade, urban affairs, and alliance affairs). Whether as a result of these initiatives or of other factors, exchange programs with West Germany grew more in 1983 and 1984 than with any other country except Mexico; more Americans went to Germany on governmental exchanges than to any other country; and the Federal Republic stood in the top tier of countries participating in exchanges with the U.S.

42

See the chapter by Rainer Schnoor in this section.

government. Many of the areas of exchange were in “low politics.”43 The creation, at the end of 1981, of the positions of “coordinator” for German-American relations in the German foreign ministry and in the USIA served the same purpose of diversifying and permanently anchoring the societal foundations.44 The same logic was employed when Kohl invited presidents of American universities in 1988 and presidents of American foundations in 1989 for discussions in Bonn.45 The opening of the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. in 1987 was part of a German government effort to increase mutual understanding of German history. This effort also included overtures to the major Jewish organizations such the AJC, the American Jewish Congress, B’nai B’rith, and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. For their part, in official visits to Germany and in their exchange programs with the German political foundations (set up in the early 1980s between the AJC and the Konrad Adenauer and Friedrich Ebert Foundations), American Jewish organizations tried to acquaint German society and the German government with the vividness of their memory and pain, and the lessons of American democracy and pluralism. A new aspect of the AJC’s growing activities with Germany was the connection in 1983 to the East German Jewish community. In the 1970s, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, under the leadership of Nahum Goldmann, had pursued the issue of outstanding claims against East Germany with both the American and East German governments. It continued to do so in the 1980s, as did the World Jewish Congress, but the AJC initiative to establish links with East German society 43 See U.S. Information Agency, Report on U.S. Government International Exchange and Training Programs (Washington, D.C., 1984). 44 Ausw¨artiges Amt, Addressbuch der deutschamerikanischen Zusammenarbeit (Bonn, 1983). 45 Ausw¨artiges Amt, America, Germany, Europe: Political Culture and Transfer of Knowledge Within the Western World: Results of the Visit of Presidents of American Foundations at the Invitation of Federal Chancellor Dr. Helmut Kohl, Sept. 27 –30, 1989 (Bonn, 1989), 3.

German-American Societal Relations in Three Dimensions, 1968–1990

represented a departure.46 East German officials, like those in Bonn, assumed that major Jewish organizations occupied a powerful place in American society. The West German government was also attuned to the growth of Holocaust consciousness among American Jews in the early 1980s.47 In the area of public opinion and images, both German and American governments believed that uncovering differences and promoting mutual learning through exchange could limit, though not eliminate, negative attitudes that continued to register in Germany in the early 1980s. The appearance of anti-Americanism in public-opinion polls caused grave concern on both sides of the Atlantic, expressed in frequent “pulse-taking” sponsored by governmental agencies and nongovernmental actors such as the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. A 1983 SINUS poll indicated that a majority of Germans (51 percent) wanted to be different from Americans in social and economic arenas, but still wanted to be connected as a close ally in security and foreign policy, a finding that supports conclusions about a differentiated German picture. Contrary to American fears, large numbers of Germans did not prefer the Soviet Union to the United States, but they did begin to recognize similarities in the behavior of the two superpowers.48 Most analysts in the 1980s downplayed antiAmericanism, preferring to note legitimate divergence with concrete American policies, a growth in un-Americanism, or a dilution of earlier philo-Americanism. As in the 1970s, profound anti-Americanism was incontrovertible among Greens; in the early 1980s, it was fueled by a dismissive contempt that sought to sharpen, to the point of antithesis, the differences between the two countries and to disavow

the United States as an ally. Just the opposite was the case with overall American sentiment toward Germany. Repeating the results of previous surveys in the 1970s and first half of the 1980s, a 1987 survey by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations showed that after Britain and Canada, the American public was most favorably inclined toward Germany.49 A stark contrast in attitudes did surface again in the mid-1980s over Bitburg. American polls showed that 41 percent opposed Reagan’s decision before the visit and 60 percent gave Reagan negative ratings thereafter. By contrast, some 73 percent of Germans termed Reagan’s visit to Bitburg a good thing.50 Germans were taken aback at the ferocity and diversity of American opposition, whereas Americans were surprised at how devoutly Germans wished for a seal of approval from the United States that would confirm the rehabilitation of their nation and, by implication, the appropriateness of the Bitburg venue. The unswerving amity of President Reagan and Chancellor Kohl stood in marked contrast to the bitterness of the societal and political debates, which pitted the two societies against each other.51 Less than five years later, the fundamental goodwill of American society toward Germany was expressed in strong support for German unification.52 The changes wrought by unification assigned a new priority to the affective dimension of German-American relations.

conclusion Societal relations between Germany and the United States in 1968–90 reveal the antinomic nature of the relationship. At the comparative level, while societal and system differences led 49

Rielly, American Public Opinion, 17–18. See New York Times, May 8, 1985; Harris Survey, May 16, 1985, and May 27, 1985; and the polls conducted by the Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen between May 17 and May 21, 1985. 51 New York Times, May 2, 1985. 52 See Andrei S. Markovits and Simon Reich, The German Predicament: Memory and Power in the New Europe (Ithaca, N.Y., 1997), 59. 50

46

On the issue of claims and East Germany, see Angelika Timm, Jewish Claims Against East Germany: Moral Obligations and Pragmatic Policy (Budapest, 1997), esp. chaps. 3 and 4. 47 See the chapter by Jeffrey Peck, vol. 2, Culture. 48 Schweigler, “Anti-Americanism,” 17–21; see the chapter by David B. Morris in this section.

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Germans to express estrangement, opposition, and outright rejection toward the United States (and Americans indifference toward Germany), they also inspired mutual curiosity. This became genuine mutual learning in the 1980s, when both the German and American “models” had lost their luster. The asynchronous nature of societal developments in the two countries accounted for preoccupation with self, particularly in the United States, and for the American surprise at the depth of German change when it assumed undeniable political significance. At the bilateral level, there was a consistent pattern of broad elite involvement in the relationship through national and bilateral institutions, yet there was still space for new areas and new kinds of interaction in the 1980s. No one form of bilateral activity dominated. The counterpart strategy (the unions, the churches, and the environmental, peace, and women’s movements) was accompanied by attempts at domestic influence (the peace and environmental movements in Germany pressuring their own government) and by actions aimed directly at an international power, the United States (both physical attacks and protest demonstrations). Physical institutional presence in the other country, such as political foundations and scholarly and funding organizations, may have had the most influence by combining the benefits of the other three approaches. As in the past, the activity of some societal actors complemented the work of the two governments in the two decades after 1968, whereas other societal actors pursued a competitive strategy. An innovation in this period was the deliberate use by the German government of a societal actor – the Friedrich Ebert Foundation – as a conduit for relations with the American political class and American society. Much of the day-to-day bilateral societal activity outlined in this chapter was unconnected to the Cold War, but the Cold War clearly did exert four types of influence on societal exchange: in forging and consolidating a variety of friendship organizations that promoted the transatlantic community’s common values; in creating tension between German and American institutions over specific

Cold War–related policies; in galvanizing the German peace and ecological movements and their American counterparts, particularly over the stationing of nuclear missiles in Germany and the Strategic Defense Initiative; and in contributing to the disenchantment in German society with both superpowers. Although the Cold War was a rallying point for some Germans’ disaffection with the United States, the legacy of American economic generosity and political support toward Germany during the height of the Cold War remained strong in public opinion. Similarly, apparent American indifference to Germany went handin-hand with Germany’s elevated place in the American public’s ranking of friends and allies. Although the reality of generational change affected elite perceptions of the robustness of relations and shaped the agenda for new political and societal forces in both countries, by 1990 it had not produced a qualitatively new bilateralism. Disjunctures between official policy and the attitudes of society, such as over missile deployment and Bitburg, were not confined to particular generations but rather reflected a broad sentiment of opposition. They also exposed how each country underestimated the potential for passionate engagement in the other. That each government ultimately took public attitudes seriously in the other country during the 1980s indicated the inadequacy of the traditional realist conception of German-American relations, for that approach deliberately ignores the significance of domestic issues and values. A more compelling approach must ultimately embrace the complexity and untidiness of relations: clarity and ambiguity, cooperation and conflict, support and opposition. Most importantly, it must recognize the centrality of partnership not only between governments, but also between governments and societies within Germany, the United States, and across the Atlantic.53

53 See Lily Gardner Feldman, “The Impact of German Unification on German-American Relations: Alliance, Estrangement, or Partnership?” in Bertel Heurlin, ed., Germany in Europe in the Nineties (London, 1996).

German-American Societal Relations in Three Dimensions, 1968–1990

suggestions for further readings There is sparse literature on German-American societal ties in the form of bilateral relationships. One exception is James A. Cooney, Gordon A. Craig, Hans Peter Schwarz, and Fritz Stern, eds., The Federal Republic of Germany and the United States: Changing Political, Social, and Economic Relations (Boulder, Colo., 1984), but even there societal ties are not the only focus. Roger Morgan’s The United States and West Germany, 1945–1973: A Study in Alliance Politics (London, 1974) does look at domestic politics in both countries, but as one of four levels of the relationship (in addition to bilateral ties, the multilateral setting, and the international system). Werner Link deals directly with the issue of societal connections in the bilateral relationship in The Social-Political Culture of Germany and the United States: Distinctions, Linkages and Transfers (Bloomington, Ind., 1977). There are important essays on bilateral societal relations in Frank Trommler and Elliott Shore, eds., The German-American Encounter: Conflict and Cooperation Between Two Cultures, 1800–2000 (New York, 2001), particularly by Daniel Fallon on education and Volker Berghahn on Fordism. The literature on comparative social developments is more voluminous, although it tends toward a single policy or actor focus rather than viewing societies comprehensively. At the most general level is Kurt L. Shell and G¨unter H. Lenz, eds., Crisis of Modernity: Recent Critical Theories of Culture and Society in the United States and West Germany (Boulder, Colo., 1986). At the broad philosophical level is Hermann Wellenreuther and Claudia Schnurmann, ed., German and American Constitutional Thought: Contexts, Interaction, and Historical Realities (New York, 1990). For discussion of relatively broad social policies, Daniel Levine’s Poverty and Society: The Growth of the American Welfare State in International Comparison (New Brunswick, N.J., 1988) is useful. The Management of Health Care Technology in Nine Countries, edited by Henry D. Banta and Kerry Britten Kemp, sets Germany and the United States in a broader context. The

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broader comparative framework is also found in Sven Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen, and Frank Longstreth, eds., Structuring Politics. Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis (Cambridge, 1992), which emphasizes different outcomes across countries. Ron Bean’s Comparative Industrial Relations: An Introduction to Cross National Perspectives (New York, 1985) also structures a larger context. German-American comparison within a multi-country framework is also provided in Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (Oxford, 2001), edited by Peter A. Hall and David Sostice. Steven Breyman focuses on a specific sociopolitical grouping in Why Movements Matter: The West German Peace Movement and U.S. Arms Control Policy (Albany, N.Y., 2000), as does Hans Trefousse, ed., in Germany and America: Essays on Problems of International Relations and Immigration (Lanham, Md., 1981). A useful GermanAmerican comparison on Migration is contained in Rainer M¨unz and Myron Weiner, eds., Migrants, Refugees, and Foreign Policy: U.S. and German Policies Toward Countries of Origin (Providence, 1997). On women’s issues from the perspective of the actor, Myra Marx Ferree’s “Political Strategies and Feminist Concerns in the United States and Federal Republic of Germany: Class, Race, and Gender,” in Metta Spencer, ed., Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change: A Research Annual (Greenwich, Conn., 1991), presents a close GermanAmerican comparison. Another social agent perspective is offered by Dietrich R¨uschemeyer in Lawyers and Their Society: A Comparative Study of the Legal Profession in Germany and in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1973). Hans Kessel’s Environmental Awareness in the Federal Republic of Germany, England, and the United States: Current Status and Changes (Berlin, 1984) addresses social policy and actors. Analysis of German and American attitudes and opinions toward the other are quite plentiful, for example, Klaus Weigelt, ed., Das Deutschland- und Amerikabild: Beitr¨age zum gegenseitigen Verst¨andnis beider V¨olker (Melle, 1986), and Willi Paul Adams and Knud Krakau, eds., Deutschland und Amerika: Perzeption und

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historische Realit¨at (Berlin, 1985). Particularly useful for data on public opinion are Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, ed., The Germans: Public Opinion Polls, 1967–1980 (Westport, Conn., 1981); Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann and Edgar Piel, eds., Allensbacher Jahrbuch der Demoskopie, 1978–1983, Band VIII (Munich 1983); and the

separate yearly volumes from the Institut f¨ur Demoskopie. On the American side, regular pulsetaking of American opinion on Germany can be found in the series of reports American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy for individual years, put out by John E. Rielly and the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations.

chapter one

“1968” A Transatlantic Event and Its Consequences Claus Leggewie Translation by Sally E. Robertson

had only a few thousand members and – in the Federal Republic more so than in the United States – cultivated an exclusive image for themselves as a revolutionary avant-garde. Yet they created an aura and influence that they hoped would extend far beyond the life of students, hippies, and communes. In this sense, they were indeed a “prophetic minority.”1 The turbulent history of the 1960s can be written as an event, an experience, or a mythology.2 Viewed as an event, 1968 stands midway between the turning points of 1945 and 1989, and marks the “end of the postwar era” (Ludwig Erhard). As a historical experience, the 1960s have gone down as a deep, quasi-revolutionary turning point that had the power to mold a whole generation. This kind of analysis speaks to a strong (auto-)biographical interest that takes individual careers and conversions as well as formative collective experiences into consideration. As a mythology or “cipher,”3 1968

event, experience, mythology: 1968 as a problem of contemporary history In the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany alike, the 1960s were a period of great unrest that was fundamentally shaped by student rebellions. It may be pure coincidence that the “ringleaders” in both countries bore the name SDS. In German, the acronym stood for Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (Socialist German Student Union), the antiauthoritarian and neo-Marxist coalition that broke away from the German Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD) in the late 1950s and became the engine of the student protest movement in West Germany between 1960 and 1970. On the other side of the Atlantic, the Students for a Democratic Society stood at the center of the protest movement during the same period. The adjective “socialist” did not appear in the Americans’ SDS, which points to an important difference. Student and youth movements in Germany and other European countries in the 1960s were more in thrall to socialist-communist ideologies and the organizational structures of traditional workers’ movements than their fellow students in America. The two New Left movements otherwise shared a predilection for deviations from and offshoots of the left tradition, such as anarchists and Trotskyists, and as self-proclaimed “tiersmondists,” both declared their steadfast solidarity with the liberation movements of the Third World. Each group

1 Jack Newfield, A Prophetic Minority (New York, 1966). 2 After thirty years, a historicization seems appropriate to analyze the “roaring sixties” from the perspective of social and cultural history. Recent examples include David Farber, ed., The Sixties: From Memory to History (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1994); Stephen Macedo, ed., Reassessing the Sixties: Debating the Political and Cultural Legacy (New York, 1997); Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey, ed., 1968: Vom Ereignis zum Gegenstand der Geschichtswissenschaft (G¨ottingen, 1998). 3 Detlev Claussen, “Chiffre 68,” in Dietrich Harth and Jan Assmann, eds., Revolution und Mythos (Frankfurt am Main, 1992), 219–28.

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captivates individual and collective memory to this day. A protest cycle that lasted from roughly 1963–4 to 1972–3 is reduced to a single annus mirabilis, a shorthand symbol tied to the extraordinary concentration of dramatic events that occurred that year: the Tet Offensive, militant street battles from Berlin and Paris to Mexico and Chicago, the “Prague Spring,” and the Chinese Cultural Revolution.4 The term “1968” therefore implies several, sometimes contradictory currents, including: r an antiauthoritarian protest movement driven mostly by middle-class college students; r a revolutionary cultural liberation movement encompassing both libertarian-individualist and communitarian-collectivist strains; r spillover from the periphery into the center of the anti-imperialist revolution of former colonial peoples; and r an antitotalitarian movement within the Soviet sphere of influence. With caution, one can thus describe the events of the 1960s as the first international social movement and as the expression of a postindustrial and postsocialist world revolution that, although it did not explode the political and economic contradictions of capitalist societies, did manage to explode their cultural contradictions.5

from berkeley to berlin: a social movement from west to east The following synopsis (Table 1) of the important stages of the student movements in both countries illustrates the dynamics and cycle of the protests, and it makes clear their role as a link between older and newer social movements.

This synopsis reveals four phases. The incubation phase up to the early 1960s saw the development of the two SDS organizations, autonomous student unions that were no longer solely concerned with representing special student interests or recruiting new party members. Rather, they also responded to national and international problems and generally worked to increase awareness of authoritarian political and social structures. To this end, they sought ties to older, nonacademic organizations such as the civil-rights movement in the United States and the Easter weekend peace marches in Germany (organized by the international peace movement). Its early development phase, lasting until 1964–5, was characterized by small, radical minorities protesting against the Vietnam War and racial discrimination. The severe and at times hysterical response of the “establishment” brought about ideological radicalization as well as adoption of traditions from the revolutionary workers’ movement. The original policy of nonviolence was increasingly called into question, at first more rhetorically than in practice. In the peak phase running through 1968, activist student groups were able to mobilize large numbers of students, primarily in large, occasionally violent demonstrations. The student movements succeeded in breaking out of their academic milieu and influenced marginalized minorities as well as members of the middle class. Division and dogmatism in the antiauthoritarian movements were characteristic of the phase of decline after 1968. In isolated cases, guerrilla movements in the Third World influenced these movements, and they switched their focus to terrorist actions. At the same time, the student movement expanded and diversified by generating new social movements, most notably feminist groups and environmental organizations.6

4

The GDR’s “1968” could not be addressed here; see Mary Fulbrook, “Popular Discontent and Political Activism in the GDR,” Contemporary European History 2 (1993): 265–82. 5 See Alain Touraine, Le communisme utopique: Le mouvement de Mai 68 (Paris, 1968); Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York, 1976); Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York, 1988).

a very special german-american friendship Comparison between the American and German movements shows a clear cause-and-effect 6

See the chapter by Carl Lankowski in this section.

“1968”: A Transatlantic Event and Its Consequences

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Table 1. The Student Movement in the U.S. and Germany United States

Year

Federal Republic

1960 American SDS founded; Conference on Human Rights (University of Michigan); alliance with the African American student organization, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and expansion of the civil-rights movement; trips to Cuba by prominent leftists

SDS breaks with the SPD (incompatibility resolution, 1961)

1961 SDS participates in the International Youth Festival, meeting of young people from all over the world organized by the Free German Youth (Freie Deutsche Jugend, or FDJ) in East Berlin 1962 Port Huron Statement: call for participatory democracy and solidarity with peoples of the Third World 1964 Jerry Rubin travels illegally to Cuba Anti-Tschomb´e demonstration in West Berlin Impact of the writings of Frantz Fanon and Che Guevara 1965 First march on Washington for peace in Vietnam; Kewadin meeting (antiauthoritarian); Tom Hayden travels illegally to Hanoi

Poster campaign by the West Berlin SDS against the Vietnam War; Protests against the emergency laws 1966

Maoist May 2 Movement joins the SDS Congress on “Vietnam – Analysis of an resistance against drafting of students for Example,” Vietnam demonstration and military service; Black Power movement committee and Black Panther Party founded Impact of the writings of Herbert Marcuse 1967 Riots in Chicago and Newark

Kommune I founded; anti-Shah demonstration; death of Benno Ohnesorg; congress on “The University and Democracy,” Critical University 1968 International Vietnam Congress; Easter protests against the Springer press after the assassination attempt upon Rudi Dutschke; Action Committee for Women’s Liberation

Occupation of Columbia University; SDS protests at the Democratic Party convention in Chicago; deaths in confrontations between students and police 1969 SDS splits; Weathermen formed

DKP ([new] German Communist Party) and Maoist parties formed; formation of Red Army Faction 1970

Decline of the SDS

Self-dissolution and prohibition of SDS

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relationship. The protests on both sides of the Atlantic were ignited by the same outrage at oppression and exploitation in the Third World and at U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia that began in 1964–5. This made the American protest movement the model and trigger for an expanding wave of protests, a mobilization that crossed international boundaries from west to east, from America to Europe. Thus, the protest movement in Europe was more strongly influenced by American models than the other way around. The antiauthoritarian movement in the United States determined the themes – Vietnam and racism – and gave shape to spontaneous forms of action, such as teach-ins, go-ins, sit-ins, and happenings, that were extensively adopted and imitated on the other side of the Atlantic. This was part of a broader diffusion of lifestyles, fashions, and images of the world within the framework of popular culture. It was also the cultural counterpart of the still unbroken American political and military hegemony.7 German students and young university teachers who had worked in the United States and reported on the American New Left were, along with spectacularly packaged media reports and American publications translated into German, the main carriers of the message. The social philosopher Herbert Marcuse, who had emigrated to the United States and frequently appeared at teach-ins in German universities, played a major role as mentor and idol, and his ideas had an immense influence on the West German advocates of antiauthoritarianism. Draft dodgers in the United States and GI deserters who had been stationed in Germany

7

See Doug McAdam and Dieter Rucht, “The CrossNational Diffusion of Movement Ideas,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 528 (1993): 56–74; Ingo Juchler, Die Studentenbewegungen in den Vereinigten Staaten und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland der sechziger Jahre: Eine Untersuchung hinsichtlich ihrer Beeinflussung durch Befreiungsbewegungen und -theorien aus der Dritten Welt (Berlin, 1996); Michael Schmidtke, “Reform, Revolte oder Revolution? Der Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund (SDS) und die Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) 1960–1970,” in Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey, ed., 1968: Vom Ereignis zum Gegenstand der Geschichtswissenschaft (G¨ottingen, 1998).

drew much interest and received practical assistance (in the so-called Big Lift actions). West Germans also followed the Black Power movement and the black nationalism of the Black Panthers with interest. Activists in Berkeley8 and other centers of American protest, by contrast, paid much less attention to events taking place in Europe. The radical opposition in the United States also shared in this exclusive focus on the United States.9 Its internationalism, to the extent that it reached beyond Latin America and Cuba, remained abstract and shallow. The form and substance of these movements drew deeply on egalitarian and communitarian American traditions. Members of the American opposition rarely appeared as guests in Germany, whereas German leftists did occasionally venture into the belly of capitalism, imperialism, and racism. In 1968, Gruppe 47 met in the United States; the writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger, who as editor of Kursbuch was a journalistic mentor of radical students, wrote a pamphlet entitled On Leaving America;10 and SDS leader Karl-Dietrich Wolff made a spectacular appearance before the U.S. Senate in 1969.11 The explosive rage of the times came less from some fundamental anti-Americanism than from the disappointment over a fallen idol by a generation that had grown up under the

8 The birthplace of the student movement was arguably the University of California at Berkeley; see W. J. Rorabaugh, Berkeley at War: The 1960s (New York, 1989). 9 Greg Calvert, Democracy from the Heart: Spiritual Values, Decentralism, and Democratic Idealism in the Movement of the 1960s (Eugene, Ore., 1991); Timothy Miller, The Hippies and American Values (Knoxville, Tenn., 1987). 10 Printed in the New York Review of Books, Feb. 29, 1968, 31–2, German version in Die Zeit, Mar. 1, 1968. Enzensberger gave up a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University and temporarily took up residence in Cuba. Uwe Johnson viewed this gesture as a key event in the estrangement of a whole generation of German leftists from the United States; see Anita Kr¨atzer, Studien zum Amerikabild in der neueren deutschen Literatur (Bern, 1982). 11 “Mr. Senator, you are a bandit.” SDS speaker KarlDietrich Wolff before the Armed Services Committee of the U.S. Senate, Der Spiegel 13 (Mar. 24, 1969).

“1968”: A Transatlantic Event and Its Consequences

influence of cultural Westernization and had admired men such as John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.12 Their abrupt estrangement did not prevent them from adopting American cultural fashions and protest forms such as beatnik style and teach-ins. In many respects, these anti-Americans remained an “American Left” or became one at a later date: That is, they were devoted to the basic elements of Western culture, individual freedoms, and democracy, or returned to those principles after excursions into totalitarian ideologies ranging from Soviet communism to Caribbean socialism and Maoism. These condemnations of American deficits illustrate the temporal context of the Vietnam protest and the development of the leftist student unions in both countries. The early 1960s marked the end of the immediate postwar era. The policy of d´etente removed the drama from the East-West coflict. The discrepancy in power between the United States and the Federal Republic remained. One can interpret the protests in Germany as symptoms of the loss of patronage and control by the defender of the West and a fumbling search for a new role for the semisovereign Federal Republic. Especially in West Berlin, the “front line” of the Cold War, the student protests were seen as a betrayal of the United States, the protecting power, and as complicity with Russians or the Spalter-Regime (“divisive regime”) of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

“village versus city,” or end of the postwar era The world is indebted to the two student movements for their effect on d´etente and the Vietnam protest even if their participants often acted in a politically naive and unconscious manner and if those at the movement’s margins resorted to terrorist excesses. In retrospect, the student movements have been proven right. They were the expression of and driving force behind a geopolitical shift in which the North-South 12

See the chapter by Philipp Gassert in this section.

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conflict intensified and the “periphery” became increasingly important. Viewed in this way, both movements were “Chinese,” as SDS theoretician Rudi Dutschke once put it, echoing the polycentrism of the leftist movement and global society that the People’s Republic of China advanced. Both student movements adopted writings by Ernesto Che Guevara, Frantz Fanon, and other “Third Worldist” authors who saw the “main contradiction” running between the metropolis and the periphery. These writers propagated the idea of a war between the villages and the cities in the world system, and they called for “two, three, many Vietnams.” In this antagonistic picture the radical students stood – with great moral emphasis – on the side of the “villages,” among which they also classified African American militants and other marginalized groups of the metropolis. They saw themselves functioning primarily as a peace and civil-rights movement. However, their assessment that they were facing a superior enemy force armed to the teeth led to a disastrous relaxation of their original adherence to the principle of nonviolence. The slogan “from protest to resistance” began to circulate on both sides of the Atlantic. Inspired by the examples of guerrilla fighters and black ultranationalists, the slogan opened the way for militant elements of the protest movements to use “violence against property” and ultimately “violence against persons.”13 This went further than playing with fire as the students were caught up in the phalanx of the “international civil war,” in which they took on the role of partisans and, completely misjudging the power on each side, acted as extraterritorial “street fighters.” The general public viewed this battle as treason, more so in the case of the anti-Vietnam protesters in the United States than for the

13 Hugh Pearson, The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power (Reading, Mass., 1994); Stefan Aust, Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex (Hamburg, 1986). Neoconservative authors see terrorism as a necessary result of the student movement. See Hermann L¨ubbe, Endstation Terror (Stuttgart, 1978), and David Horowitz, Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey (New York, 1997).

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radical students of West Berlin, because the former imagined themselves to be combatants “on the other side.”14 This internationalist claim notwithstanding, the protest movements had taken up themes that were rooted in the political cultures of their respective nations. In the Federal Republic, it was primarily “helpless antifascism” pitted against the “unresolved Nazi past” that also provided the stage for an intergenerational conflict. In the United States, the issue was racial segregation, the persistence of a similarly unresolved past that the civil rights movement called into question. One movement pilloried the authoritarian, ethnocentric tradition of the German Reich, and the other, discrimination against ethnic minorities in the United States, the land of immigrants. Although both movements were quite “chauvinistic” internally, they helped bring about a breakthrough in achieving equal rights for women in both law and in practice.15 They brought lasting changes in consciousness that led to far-reaching reforms. The utopian, illusionary goals of the student movements, which shocked their liberal sympathizers,16 remained unfulfilled; but particularly in Germany, they provided an impetus for a “happily failed reorganization” of the republic. Once again, elements of reciprocal influence across the Atlantic are unmistakable. The West German student movement in its own special way continued the denazification and reeducation that the Americans had encouraged, and it brought about a new political and cultural push toward Westernization. The United States discarded formally sanctioned racial segregation and adopted elements of the model of the European social welfare state. 14

Tom Wells, The War Within: America’s Battle over Vietnam (Berkeley, Calif., 1994); Emily Stoper, The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee: The Growth of Radicalism in a Civil Rights Organization (New York, 1997). 15 Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975 (Minneapolis, 1989); Alice Schwarzer, So fing es an! Die neue Frauenbewegung (Munich, 1983). 16 For example, Erwin K. Scheuch, Die Wiedert¨aufer der Wohlstandsgesellschaft (Cologne, 1968).

The two protest movements thus achieved their most lasting effects at home. Both rebelled against what they saw as the crippling, authoritarian, and conformist social and political conditions of the 1950s, the Adenauer and Eisenhower era. Both presented themselves as outsider movements: This position was manifested in unconventional behavior and hippie, beatnik, and drop-out (“Gammler”) attitudes. Marcuse’s “great refusal” reduced this nonconformism to a concise formula. The presidency of John F. Kennedy ushered in a generational change in the United States and brought to power a popular figure on whom youth pinned its hopes. However, the “change in power” was delayed until 1969 in the Federal Republic, by which time the White House was already occupied by a symbol of anticommunism, the conservative Republican Richard Nixon. The German student movement arguably helped the Brandt-Scheel government come to power, while the American movement was partly responsible for the end of the era of Democrats.17 In both countries, protest was tied to a considerable politicization of society, a transformation that was more lasting in Germany than in the United States. “1968” was a democratic awakening and the catalyst for a participatory revolution that – despite the movement’s own rhetoric about exploding the system – did not dismantle the liberal, democratic systems on both sides of the Atlantic. Rather, it solidified them. In theory and practice, the radical students and their mentors were convinced of the profound, incurable crisis of legitimacy in Western democracy. Therefore, they advocated alternative democracies, founded either on the principle of direct democracy or the model of citizen councils. They proclaimed themselves to be an extraparliamentary opposition. Ironically, this

17 The protests against the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968 played an important role in this regard; see David Farber, Chicago ’68 (Chicago, 1988); John P. Diggins, The Rise and Fall of the American Left (New York, 1992); Alan Brinkley, “1968 and the Unraveling of Liberal America,” in Carole Fink, Philipp Gassert, and Detlev Junker, eds., 1968: The World Transformed (New York, 1998), 217–36.

“1968”: A Transatlantic Event and Its Consequences

led to more involvement within the system. First, young people, who had tended not to be interested in politics at the beginning of the 1960s, moved closer to political participation. A wave of conventional and unconventional political involvement followed that swept through nearly all Western democracies, with increased voter turnout, growing attractiveness of political parties, and the emergence of new citizen initiatives. In A. O. Hirschmann’s terms, the 1960s and 1970s represented a transition from disappointment to involvement.18 It was not until the 1980s and 1990s that this mobilization abated and political apathy and alienation returned. One might say that the radical students had wanted a great revolution, but instead got small but far-reaching reforms.

historicization instead of mythologization: 1968 in context This indirect effect and astounding “connectivity” raise fundamental questions about the character of the “happily failed revolution” of 1968 and its supporters. It also raises questions about how a generational cohort and new social movements developed out of the student revolt. What happened in and around 1968 was more than a student revolt limited to the universities. Political action and social experiments began in what was then still the exclusive and coherent social space of the universities and secondary schools. But the campus revolt proceeded to spread to other social settings and encompassed other institutions, ultimately even leaving its mark on the judicial system and the churches. The pre-reform universities, run by the “German mandarins” (Fritz Stern), became a practice field for a general critique of authority and institutions. The actors and activists, who came mainly from middle-class, usually liberal families, found a relatively protected space there in which they could become schooled in the art of free speech, jargon drawn from the fields 18 A. O. Hirschmann, Abwanderung und Widerspruch (T¨ubingen, 1974).

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of psychology and sociology, and a set of freewheeling community rituals. It is no coincidence that the revolt in Berkeley began as a “free speech” movement. In Germany, too, a kind of secular Pentecostal miracle took place that helped this cohort attain an amazing level of eloquence and discursive competence. This awakening is hardly imaginable without the new educational policies that expanded the functions of formal academic education and raised its prestige. The revolt took place before the advent of present-day mass universities, which were an unwanted side effect of the educational reform instigated by the “sixty-eighters,” especially in Europe, in an economic environment in which the cultural capital of academically trained youth was still relatively exclusive and offered secure prospects for the future. At the same time, change in the labor market hovered on the horizon, along with a devaluation of the Abitur (the university qualifying examination) and university studies. Some of the energy of the rebellious students was directed at overcoming the so-called education catastrophe and functioning almost like a labor union in representing student interests on curriculum issues, research, and self-governance. In this sense, the revolt was an uprising of young people in both German and U.S. society who evinced a vigorous avant-garde and generational consciousness. This age group, consisting of those born between about 1938 and 1948, developed a strong feeling of generational unity around “1968,” the central historical event they staged.19 “Sixty-eighters” in Germany and “baby boomers” in the United States are not just labels invented by the culture industry. They signal a collective consciousness that touched even those who were not involved in the social movements of the period. The student movement was infused with cultural subcurrents that were interwoven to form a neobohemian selfimage and “alternative lifestyles” involving “sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll” and a search for authenticity. This led to conflicts with parents, schools,

19 Heinz Bude, Das Altern einer Generation: Die Jahrg¨ange 1938–1948 (Frankfurt am Main, 1995).

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universities, and other authorities, who reacted to the mostly harmless drop-outs with bewilderment and excessive repression. Provocative adolescent behavior turned into a sustained effort to dismantle middle-class lifestyles, hierarchies, and conventions. Nonconformity became the philosophy of life for a small but rapidly growing portion of university and younger students who were beginning to break out of the old world of the “establishment.” Provocation became a ritual and an attitude. In the process, the sixty-eighters did, in fact, practice new lifestyles, from rural hippie communes to urban German communal households (Wohngemeinschaften, or WG s). The year 1968 has also been described as a “sexual revolution.” New methods of birth control (the pill) facilitated so-called free love. These experiments – which could be interpreted as an irrational, late Romantic protest against the industrial career and work ethic and an opting out of late capitalist consumer culture – have long since been moderated and adapted to the consumer society at large. This raised the question of which actually came first, the provocation of the rebels or new behavioral forms of a postindustrial service and leisure society. The protest movement, which valued collectivist ideals and the creation of political community, bore undeniable signs of a strong individualism as well. The “consciousness-raising” that was practiced in loose groups became a model for hedonistic, postmaterialist orientation of values and an aesthetic, expressive search for experience. Sexual orientations disapproved of by the working and middle classes, especially homosexuality, and the desire for equal rights on the part of girls and young women (which was tolerated and experimented with in this setting) spread with astonishing speed. The 1960s opened the way for a “coming out” of groups that were seen as minorities and had suffered discrimination.

desired results and unintended effects: the legacy of 1968 Ultimately, the ironies of the protest movement are striking. The movement, which saw itself as

anticapitalist and anti-imperialist and which – as the New Left – called for a new type of socialism, ultimately ushered in the postsocialist era and eventually brought center-right parties to power in all of the rich industrial societies. The New Left did not survive long after 1968, but it provoked formation of an intellectual and populist New Right that is far stronger today than the Old or New Left of the 1960s ever were.20 Bill Clinton, a bystander member of the protest movement, became gravedigger for the Great Society his Democratic predecessors Kennedy and Johnson worked for in the 1960s. The thirst for revenge in a neoconservative movement reacting against 1968 has not been directed at a mere jockeying for positions at universities, but at a far-reaching revision of the indirect accomplishments of the 1960s, the Westernization of the Federal Republic of Germany and the dismantling of racial segregation in the United States. Bill Clinton was nonetheless elected because American society still identified more with the baby boomer than with the ideologues and practitioners of the conservative counterrevolution. The New Left dreamed of a revolutionary overthrow of political power in the years around 1968 but seemed rather oblivious to power in its actions. Thirty years later, it has achieved a certain cultural hegemony (if grossly exaggerated by its opponents) and has put its permanent stamp on everyday life in Western societies. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Federal Republic also experienced calls for a “spiritual, moral turnaround” directed against “1968.” However, the Kohl government did not opt for the same neoconservative course characteristic of the United States, Great Britain, and even France in the 1980s. In its economic and social policies and in its continuance of Ostpolitik and d´etente, the Kohl government accepted the legacy of the 1960s because the effects of the “fundamental liberalization” had even reached into the Christian Democratic Union (Christlich-Demokratische Union, or CDU).

20 Paul Lyons, New Left, New Right and the Legacy of the Sixties (Philadelphia, 1996).

“1968”: A Transatlantic Event and Its Consequences

Although the events in and around 1968 were only the crest of a long wave of social change and although it may seem problematic to characterize them as a “revolution” in the classical sense, the “revolt” did have a revolutionary quality. The utopian ideas for a “new society” and a “new human being,” propagated with great passion and much naivete, went unfulfilled. Nevertheless, the social and political systems of the Western democracies at the end of the twentieth

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century were characterized by a new political and cultural divide between libertarian currents on the right and the left, both of which had their origins in the 1960s.21

21 Heribert Kitschelt, The Transformation of European Social Democracy (Cambridge, 1994); Heribert Kitschelt, The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1995).

chapter two

Social Movements in Germany and the United States The Peace Movement and the Environmental Movement Carl Lankowski

movements, markets, states

movements turned largely on risks associated with the introduction of potentially lifethreatening mega-technologies.3 An additional novelty was the cyclicity of protest. In some countries, movement segments and campaigns blossomed for brief periods into a generalized challenge of the entire social and political order.4 This “totalization” pattern distinguishes continental European movements from those of the United States. The persistence of the state in continental Europe has created the conditions for a social-movement configuration quite unlike America’s. Therefore, despite common themes, individual movement segments as well as the entire movement ensemble are specific to national context.5 This difference also helps explain another contrast between Germany and the United States: namely, the crystallization of a movement party, Die Gr¨unen (the Greens, now B¨undnis 90/

After 1968, citizen participation in virtually all the advanced capitalist countries expanded beyond political parties and reconstituted itself in new forms. Most if not all parties subscribed to a “politics of productivity” based on economic growth as a solvent for potential class antagonisms.1 The terms of this postwar settlement left little room to accommodate sensibilities of affluent new middle-class strata, which focused on quality-of-life issues.2 Between 1968 and 1978, it became obvious that baby boomers reaching college age around 1968 were only the spearhead of a broader change in both the themes and modalities of politics. The emerging socialmovement sector involved an impressive variety of actors, which, in addition to peace and antinuclear protestors, included environmentalists, activists for the Third World, humanrights groups, women’s groups, gay and lesbian initiatives, squatters, and alternative economy projects. Although some movements were by no means new, they shared a novel element that justifies their designation as “new social movements.” Both the peace and environmental

3 Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London, 1992), and Ecological Enlightenment: Essays on the Politics of the Risk Society (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1995). See also Carol J. Hager, Technological Democracy: Bureaucracy and Citizenry in the German Energy Debate (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1995). 4 Sidney Tarrow, Struggle, Politics, and Reform: Collective Action, Social Movements, and Cycles of Protest (Ithaca, N.Y., 1989). 5 This point is made with explicit reference to peace movements in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland in Hanspeter Kriesi et al., New Social Movements in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis (Minneapolis, 1995).

1

Charles S. Maier, “The Politics of Productivity: Foundation of American International Economic Policy After World War II,” International Organization 31 (1977): 607–34. 2 Ronald Inglehart, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics (Princeton, N.J., 1977).

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Die Gr¨unen) in Germany and the lack of a significant exemplar in the United States. That the German Greens resonated with the antisystem mood of the movement sector is clear from debates at the end of the 1970s over whether to become a party at all and later debates over what kind of party they were. The Cold War and the attendant arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union provided the principal object of protest for the peace movements. Mass protest in both Germany and the United States began with the American presidential campaign in 1980 and continued through to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s unilateral initiative to get arms control back on track in 1987.6 Cold War rivalry was thought to amplify an already insatiable urge for technological prowess that quickly outstripped human dimensions and anesthetized decision makers to the dangers that new technologies posed to health, economic welfare, and democratic governance. The nuclear disasters of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl seemed to belie an underlying similarity of the competing systems. Thus, the Cold War reinforced a critique of prevailing patterns of technological innovation. Moreover, states were complicit in ghettoizing the movements by interpreting systemic opposition as antinomian. In the United States, historical developments all but eliminated thinking in terms of systemic alternatives. In Germany, opposition developed a discourse of system alternatives based either on “third way” scenarios between capitalism and state socialism or on the antipolitics of various social milieux or Szenen.7 In light of rational concerns attached to the special risks attending its exposed position in Cold War Europe, Germany’s democratic achievement can be measured by its resistance to nationalism and the new “special path” (Sonderweg) that this position implied. 6 See the chapter by Matthias Dembinski, vol. 2, Security. 7 See Heinz Brandt, The Search for a Third Way: My Path Between East and West (Garden City, N.Y., 1970); Dieter Hoffmann-Axthelm et al., eds., Zwei Kulturen? TUNIX, Mescalero und die Folgen (Berlin, 1978).

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the peace movement In the United States, the Nixon administration’s policy of disengagement from Vietnam, designed first and foremost to minimize American casualties, deflated the antiwar movement. Meanwhile, military preparations based on nuclear deterrence had created a mass psychology of heightened uncertainty and risk that would function as the mainspring of the peace movement in the 1980s. Because the logic of mutual assured destruction (MAD) required acknowledgment of the USSR as a necessary partner, peace mobilizations in the United States focused on stabilizing the arms race. Pacifism remained a fringe movement; protest occurred within the framework of deterrence, directing itself against efforts to upset the strategic balance by reverting to a war-fighting posture. The nuclear-freeze campaign typifies the period. It was animated by the bellicose rhetoric of Ronald Reagan’s bid for the presidency and the new Reagan White House in 1980–1, which, in contrast to every preceding administration, seemed to question the very principle of arms control. Through statewide referenda and municipal resolutions, activists in the freeze campaign mounted an important challenge to the virtual monopoly enjoyed by the federal government and the executive branch in the area of foreign policy. Their efforts were rewarded with a measure of success in the level of mobilizations and even government policy. Over the decade of the 1980s, more than 900 local entities adopted freeze resolutions, and smaller numbers demanded a halt to nuclear testing and refused cooperation with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s nuclear war exercises.8 In the Federal Republic of Germany, the peace movement mirrored the uncertainties associated with new weapons technology under the logic of “extended deterrence,” central to which were U.S. forces stationed in Europe. NATO’s double-track decision of 8

Michael Schuman, “Dateline Main Street: Courts v. Local Foreign Policies,” Foreign Policy, no. 86 (spring 1992): 158–77.

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December 19799 provided an opportunity for activists to argue that the dynamics of the arms race undermined the workability of deterrence. A framework for mobilization – the Committee for Disarmament and Cooperation (Komitee f¨ur Abr¨ustung und Zusammenarbeit, or KOFAZ) – had been set up in 1974 as a support for d´etente; starting in 1976 it managed to organize peace demonstrations that sometimes drew tens of thousands of participants. But neither the issue of the so-called neutron bomb in 197810 nor the double-track decision more than a year later led to immediate mass mobilizations. Rather, mass protest began with the Reagan administration’s bellicose rhetoric about fighting nuclear war in Europe. The brinkmanship of the new Reagan team led people in Europe to reject Washington’s military strategy. This explains the extraordinary expansion of movement mobilization in Europe following the double-track decision. In 1980, prominent activists called for rejection of Pershing 2 and Cruise missile deployments in the Krefeld Appeal, and German churches launched yearly “peace weeks.”11 The first major demonstrations in Germany occurred in mid-1981. In October of that year, 300,000 people attended a rally in Bonn to protest NATO deployment plans. In October 1982, during the waning days of his government, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt had to endure the rejection of his policy by his own party. The Greens rode the peace movement into the Bundestag in the March 1983 elections, and mobilization swelled as Bundestag ratification of NATO missile deployments approached in November 1983. Between 600,000 and 1,200,000 people expressed opposition to the deployments in the autumn of that year, the largest mobilization in the history of the Federal Republic.12 9

See the chapter by Michael Broer, vol. 2, Security. See the chapter by Matthias Dembinski, vol. 2, Security. 11 For a discussion of alliances within the movement, see Thomas Rochon, Mobilizing for Peace: The Antinuclear Movements in Western Europe (Princeton, N.J., 1988), chap. 6. 12 Roland Roth, “Neue Soziale Bewegungen in der politischen Kultur der Bundesrepublik – eine vorl¨aufige 10

Peace mobilizations were an important element of Germany’s transformation from a deferential to an activist polity that harbored a broad array of traditional and movement organizations with a range of policy preferences.13 The mobilizations also affected outcomes. Pressed by mass protest, the Reagan administration sought a technological fix to the arms race in the form of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) announced in March 1983.14 But genuine progress that directly addressed the concerns of the peace movement did not come until 1986, when Reagan and Gorbachev met at Reykjavik and discussed the possibility of a truly radical reduction in weapons of mass destruction. Out of this meeting came the nuclear-arms reductions in Central Europe that presaged the end of the Cold War and the deflation of the peace movement as a mass phenomenon.

the environmental movement In contrast to the peace movement of the 1980s, the connections of the environmental or ecology movement with the Cold War were indirect at best. The height of activity in the peace movement occurred in the early 1980s, whereas the environmental movement reached its peak ten years earlier. Most observers of the environmental movement distinguish between two leitmotifs in its development: the revival of interest in “pragmatic environmental protection” and the advent of political ecology.15

Skizze,” in Karl-Werner Brand, ed., Neue soziale Bewegungen in Westeuropa und den USA: Ein internationaler Vergleich (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), 67. 13 See Kendall Baker, Russell Dalton, and Kai Hildebrandt, Germany Transformed: Political Culture and the New Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1981). 14 See the chapter by Matthias Dembinski, vol. 2, Security. 15 See Dieter Rucht, “Von der Bewegung zur Institu¨ tion? Organisationsstrukturen der Okologiebewegung,” in Dieter Rucht and Roland Roth, eds., Neue soziale Bewegungen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Bonn, 1987), 238–60; Russell J. Dalton, The Green Rainbow: Environmental Groups in Western Europe (New Haven, Conn., 1995).

Social Movements in Germany and the United States

The controversy over nuclear power played a central role in the new environmentalism because its polarizing effects contributed to the development of political ecology. By pitting parts of industry and organized labor, which represented a continuation of growth-oriented techno-optimism, against techno-skeptics, for whom the risks associated with some technologies were untenable, political polarization cut across traditional class lines and revealed an important new source of political mobilization in the 1970s.16 As a reflection of this cleavage in the 1970s and 1980s, the environmental movement developed a bifurcated organizational structure comprising customary hierarchical organizations with traditional environmental aims as well as an informal, decentralized segment. In the Federal Republic, a group of citizens’ initiatives formed an umbrella group in 1972 to coordinate their disparate activities: the Federal Association of Citizens’ Environmental Initiatives (Bundesverband B¨urgerinitiativen Umweltschutz, or BBU). Affiliates included initiatives protesting infrastructure projects (airport expansion, road construction) as well as nuclear-energy projects. The BBU started with a membership of fifteen regional groups. It grew rapidly to include approximately 450 direct group members, until competing organizations and internal strife limited its further expansion. From 1969 to 1972, traditional environmental organizations faced new political pressures. A shake-up seized Germany’s mainstream environmental umbrella organization, Deutscher Naturschutzring (DNR), which led to the formation of a new organization dedicated to political work, the Bund f¨ur Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND) in 1975. With 220,000 members in 2,200 local groups, BUND had become the largest environmental organization in the Federal Republic by 1992.17 16 See J¨org Hallerbach, ed., Die eigentliche Kernspaltung: Gewerkschaften und B¨urgerinitiativen im Streit um die Atomkraft (Darmstadt, 1978). 17 Joachim H. Spangenberg, “The Role of NGOs in German Environmental Policy” (Cologne, mimeograph, May 1993).

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Although the environmental movement predated the oil boycott organized by OPEC in 1973, state-supported plans announced in 1974 to dramatically expand nuclear power generation provided a rallying point for mass mobilization. Protest was lively, sometimes dramatic, in the ongoing saga of opposition to nuclear power in Germany. The movement scored a major early victory in 1977 when mobilizations prevented construction of a planned nuclear station in Wyhl after a three-year struggle. Licensing procedures controlled by the federal states (L¨ander) licensing procedures allowed protesters to slow construction of other plants.18 Mass direct action continued, directed at every link in the nuclear chain, from fuel production to plant construction, from reprocessing to waste disposal. The Three Mile Island and especially the Chernobyl disasters provided major rallying points for the movement. Protest continued through the 1980s, but the “ecologization” of the movement transformed the themes it advanced, which now went beyond reactions to perceived threats in favor of presenting programmatic alternatives. At its membership meeting in 1979, the BBU adopted a catalog listing elements for a comprehensive ecological reform in Germany. In time the BUND moved in the same direction, away from the classic theme of protecting “nature” from humans and toward the goal of ecologizing work, production, and consumption.19 Estab¨ lishment of the Oko-Institut was part of this development, as was the formation of the Greens. Anxious about becoming complicit in Germany’s highly consensual system of catchall parties (Volksparteien), movement activists were wary about organizing in the traditional partypolitical fashion. The first efforts were made at 18 Susan Rose Ackerman, Controlling Environmental Policy: The Limits of Public Law in Germany and the United States (New Haven, Conn., 1995); Dorothy Nelkin and Michael Pollak, The Atom Beseiged: Extraparliamentary Dissent in France and Germany (Cambridge, Mass., 1981). 19 Reinhard Loske, “Verstrickt in die neue Un¨ubersichtlichkeit: Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” in Michael Franken and Walter Ohler, eds., Nat¨urlich Europa: 1992 – Chancen f¨ur die Natur? (Cologne, 1989), 74.

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the local level in 1977. At this point, movement activists from the BBU initiated a bid for electing Greens to the European Parliament. The initiators came from a collection of groups that were remarkable for not having roots in the political left.20 They coalesced not as a party but as a “special electoral association” (sonstige politische Vereinigung, or SPV) under German electoral law, calling themselves Die Gr¨unen-SPV. Their platform was based on what were to become the Greens’ four trademark values: ecology, solidarity, grassroots democracy, and nonviolence. Led by European Community civil servant and BBU board member Petra Karin Kelly and peace activist Roland Vogt, Die Gr¨unen-SPV polled 3.2 percent of the national vote, a performance good enough to demonstrate the potential to exceed the 5 percent required for Bundestag representation and provide a campaign war chest financed by public subventions. At the end of September 1979, a “green front” strategy brought together representatives across the political spectrum and succeeded in winning 5.1 percent of the vote in a municipal election in Bremen. But with the formation of a regular party in January 1980, the peace motif became more pronounced, as did the influence of the left, which rapidly drove out conservative elements.21 The Bundestag Greens, whose first delegation of twenty-seven deputies entered parliament in March 1983, acted initially as a tribune, concentrating on vocal opposition to policies in short speeches and a blizzard of parliamentary questions. But in 1986, with a view to the 1987 federal elections, the reformist wing steered a “Social and Ecological Reconstruction Program” through the parliamentary group and the party organization. Together with the movement, the Greens began to focus on programmatic goals and plans for participation in government. In the United States, the early breakthrough of market dominance, federalism, the character

of the party system, and the country’s regulatory structure produced a more decentralized and diffuse environmental movement than in Germany. A consumer society expects res publica to be provided by the market. Adequate information about products and processes, safety, and a competitive environment to set limits on market power are corollaries. Furthermore, in a relatively wealthy society, leisure activities require venues for “rustication,” or escape from the urban environment. In the United States this desire accounts for an important distinguishing feature of American environmentalism: wilderness.22 The new environmental movement in the United States therefore involved two basic themes: preservation/conservation and consumer awareness. Nonpartisan aggregation of voter preferences makes broker politicians eager to court organizations that can deliver votes, which encourages environmental groups to devote less time to protest activities and more time to lobbying, as does the tradition of quasi-legislative, independent regulatory agencies. Furthermore, single-member, “winner take all” electoral districts make it extremely improbable that a candidate running on a visionary platform will be elected. This encourages a pragmatic approach focusing on limited goals instead of the broader, visionary approach supported by the German system. Competition in campaigns for specific outcomes organized around America’s many subgovernments defines the situation. Environmental movement organizations in the United States, such as the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), typically have mixed staffs, combining lawyers, scientists, and campaigners to affect the formulation of legal texts, fight court cases, affect analyses by the regulators, and mobilize petitions and voters. Consumer protection advocate Ralph Nader recorded some impressive results with campaigns in the traditional American

20 ¨ Die Gr¨unen-SPV, DIE GRUNEN: Alternative f¨ur Europa (Bonn, 1979). 21 Werner H¨ulsberg, The German Greens: A Social and Political Profile (London, 1988), chap. 6.

22 Wallace Stegner, “A Capsule History of Conservation,” in Wallace Stegner, Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West (New York, 1992), 118.

Social Movements in Germany and the United States

idiom, focusing narrowly on specific legislative targets. If the “wilderness” sensibility produced a “green environmentalism” in America, the consumer sensibility produced a “brown environmentalism” – a preoccupation with fixing environmental damage wrought in large part by production externalities. These two strands coexisted uneasily in America in the 1970s and 1980s. Despite the appearance of new movement organizations and institutes, they failed to achieve a politically potent synthesis based, as in Germany, on a transformation of outlook from environmentalism to ecology. Indeed, organizations such as EARTH FIRST! served to perpetuate the American segmented idiom rather than to transform it. And yet environmental politics played an undeniable role at all levels during the period under review. During the Nixon administration (1969–74) the landmark National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) was passed, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established with cabinet rank. NEPA also established a strong regime of grassroots public participation by requiring environmental impact assessments based on impact statements, thereby opening the federal government to public scrutiny. Policies launched in the 1970s came under attack by the Reagan administration, which criticized prevailing public land use policies and the regulatory thicket industry had to navigate. In short, the new administration challenged the achievements of both green and brown environmentalism. By and large, the response was green lobbying, not local activism. Activists did attempt to pull together a national green political party in the shadow of the German Greens’ successes. It is symptomatic that the starting point, Barry Commoner’s 0.3 percent showing in the 1980 presidential campaign, was an order of magnitude less than the German Greens’ result in 1979. America, too, experienced a lively and polarizing debate over nuclear power, but the systemic differences produced different outcomes. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was one of the first governmental agencies to be

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sued for noncompliance with NEPA. Since in America’s state-level, decentralized generation system the choice of power generators is largely independent of federal commitments, power companies could more easily abandon nuclear power when faced with regional mobilization against it. Although the NEPA framework has encouraged movement organizations to concentrate on specific projects, it has also distracted them from the kind of programmatic work produced by German organizations. Furthermore, lacking an underpinning of entitlements based on continental social-democratic norms, political preferences in the United States are unlikely to embrace green systemic reform. Finally, machinelike, race-based urban politics, emphasizing equity issues, has played a more important role in America than visions of ecological transformation. Brown environmentalism is much more tailored to this American experience as well. the transatlantic dimension: anchor of world civic politics Aided by new communications technology – first the fax machine, ultimately electronic mail at the very end of the period under review – movements on both sides of the Atlantic began to “go transnational.” Explosive membership growth in environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Europe and the United States in the 1980s, along with the entry of the German Greens into both the Bundestag (1983) and the European Parliament (1984), created the basis for significant transatlantic collaboration. The central development consisted of a campaign to influence the activities of the Washington-based World Bank Group. A creative alliance between “new wave” American environmental lobby groups and the Bundestag Greens supported a steady stream of parliamentary questions that helped reveal the World Bank’s complete disregard for the environmental impacts of its megaprojects.23 Grassroots 23

By far the best source is Bruce Rich, Mortgaging the Earth: The World Bank, Environmental Improverishment, and the Crisis of Development (Boston, 1994).

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mobilization in Germany was organized by citizens’ initiatives under the umbrella of the Federal Congress of Development Action Groups (Bundeskongress entwicklungspolitischer Aktionsgruppen, BUKO). As it became apparent that satisfactory results would not be forthcoming based on lobbying alone, BUKO took the lead in organizing a massive demonstration on the occasion of the World Bank-International Monetary Fund ministerial meetings in Berlin in September 1988.24 By that time, the UN’s Bundtland Commission on Environment and Development had issued its report, Our Common Survival. Meanwhile, irrefutable evidence of a widening, man-made hole in the stratospheric ozone layer and of global warming rapidly raised the importance of global environmental issues. In 1990, German activists successfully launched a “climate alliance” involving several hundred cities in Europe that pledged to work together with southern NGOs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, ban the use of tropical wood, and initiate or expand municipal-to-municipal aid programs. In the United States, NGOs continued their Washington lobbying and likely had an impact on the Clean Air Act amendments that constituted the centerpiece of the environmental achievements made under the administration of George Bush. The July 1990 Group of Seven (G7) meeting in Houston was at least rhetorically responsive to these mobilizations. At that meeting Chancellor Helmut Kohl, in the interest of demonstrating action for biological diversity and against global warming, proposed that the G7 finance a pilot program to protect the Brazilian rainforest.

24

See B¨uro f¨ur ungew¨ohnliche Massnahmen and BUKO, ed., Wut, Witz, Widerstand: Die IWF/WBKampagne in Bild und Wort (Berlin, 1989).

conclusion Although the transnational network of movement actors is not, strictly speaking, a transatlantic or even a German-American phenomenon, the close links between German and American NGOs provide a potential anchor for its global articulation. The uncompromising and indefatigable campaigns of movement activists with special transatlantic (indeed, specifically German-American) pedigrees, such as Petra Kelly, suggested an antidote for the perceived political paralysis that threatened individuals and the planet. Their universalist aspirations pricked moral sensitivities and emboldened those from all over the world to raise their voices. Certainly, in this sense, the peace and environmental movements created an atmosphere of urgency that encouraged the deals leading to the winding down of the Cold War and the organization of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. For all that, the highly mediated character of global politics persisted and the “slow boring of hard boards” remained its dominant idiom. The different experiences, constitutional arrangements, and legal-administrative traditions of Germany and America meant that, even as a common desire for high levels of environmental protection was acknowledged, specific priorities and policy preferences would continue to differ. If anything, the situation became more complex with the growing significance of the European Community in setting common standards for its member states in preparation for the Single European Market. Especially from that point on, the intellectual traction of “transatlantic relations” increased at the expense of “GermanAmerican relations.” As for the movements, although they can justly claim to have played an important role in changing policy, their project of changing the world has only just begun.

chapter three

Women and the New Women’s Movement Hanna Schissler Translated by Margaret Ries

national containment.3 Security and order became high priorities at home in a world made insecure by the threat of nuclear war and the formation of two adversarial blocs. In West Germany, the cult of domesticity promoted integration of the men returning home from war into society and the economy, and created distance from the “forced emancipation” of women in the other half of Germany. An almost hysterical anticommunism played an important role in the ideological cohesiveness of both the Federal Republic and the United States, although individuals in West Germany confronted the results of the communist model of society much more concretely than in McCarthy-era America.4 The gap between ideology and the reality of women’s lives had grown wider in both countries since the war. Women confronted the demands of modernization, which often stood in direct opposition to the pressure to conform to traditional femininity. The “silent revolution” of the labor market created a conflict for women, stemming from the discrepancy between their lived reality and social norms.5 The

In the 1950s, West German and U.S. society reacted to the ambiguity of gender roles during the Second World War and the immediate postwar period by returning to patriarchal modes of behavior and enforcing rigid, traditional gender roles. While National Socialism had promoted a model of “comradeship” between women and men, a special problem arose at the end of the war. As Lutz Niethammer put it, “As . . . the male comrades returned, the substantial ‘normalization’ project that in retrospect seems rather embarrassing posed this problem: How could Kameradschaft be reconciled with traditional gender roles?”1 Women’s temporary “emancipation” in the United States had resulted from the exigencies of the war, but it had no place in the “American way of life” of the 1950s. Opposition to this emancipation began immediately at war’s end, when it was denounced as both morally suspect and socially deviant.2 The Cold War between the superpowers found a parallel on the homefront, with domestic containment corresponding to inter-

1 Lutz Niethammer, “‘Normalization’ in the West: Traces of Memory Leading Back into the 1950s,” in Hanna Schissler, ed., The “Miracle” Years: A Cultural History of West Germany from 1949 to 1969 (Princeton, N.J., 2000). See also Hanna Schissler, “‘Normalization’ as Project: Some Thoughts on Gender Relations in West Germany during the 1950s,” in Schissler, The “Miracle” Years, 359–75. 2 William H. Chafe, The Paradox of Change: American Women in the 20th Century (New York, 1991), 187–8.

3

Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York, 1988), 16–36. 4 Regarding the situation in the Federal Republic, see Hanna Schissler’s chapter, vol. 1, Society; Ute Frevert, Women in German History: From Bourgeois Emancipation to Sexual Liberation (Oxford, 1988), 253–303. 5 The psychological repercussions have been vividly described by Horst Eberhard Richter in “Zur psychoanalytischen Theorie von Familienkonflikten,”

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period from the end of the Second World War to the late 1960s was characterized by the fact that the burden of resolving this conflict fell to women, becoming their individual responsibility or personal failure. Efforts to resolve the dilemma by referring back to essential female characteristics ultimately proved to be fruitless. As sociologist Mirra Komarovsky and ethnologist Margaret Mead had already shown in the 1940s, gender roles were by no means a fixed and absolute quantity, but rather were social constructs.6 The privatized “female dilemma” could, consequently, be interpreted in sociological terms as a situation in which women were being subjugated to roles that no longer corresponded to the requirements of modern society. This conflict only entered public consciousness very gradually, however. It took the women’s movement to demonstrate how the “female dilemma” was actually a structural feature of the social organization of the relationship between the sexes in advanced industrial societies.7 In the 1950s, women in America were blamed for “Momism;”8 a decade later Betty Friedan described this as “the feminine mys-

in Dieter Claessens and Peter Milhoffer, eds., Familiensoziologie (Frankfurt am Main, 1980), 342–53. For the United States, see Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (New York, 1982); Sara M. Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America (New York, 1989), 250– 5. For the Federal Republic, see Eva Kolinsky, Women in Contemporary Germany (Providence, R.I., 1993), 151– 91; Klaus-J¨org Ruhl, Verordnete Unterordnung: Berufst¨atige Frauen zwischen Wirtschaftswachstum und konservativer Ideologie in der Nachkriegszeit (1945–1963) (Munich, 1994). 6 Mirra Komarovsky, “Cultural Contradictions and Sex Roles,” American Journal of Sociology 52 (1946): 182– 9; Margaret Mead, “What Women Want,” Fortune 34 (1946): 173. 7 On the situation of women in capitalist societies, see Hanna Schissler, “Women in West Germany from 1945 to the Present,” in Michael M¨ulshoff, Andrei S. Markovits, and Simon Reich, eds., From Bundesrepublik to Deutschland: German Politics After Unification (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1993), 126–9; Schissler, “The Project of Normalization.” 8 The psychological problems of the next generation, particularly those of young men, were blamed on supposedly domineering and clinging mothers, in short, “Momism.”

tique,” an obsessive cult of domesticity and “the problem that has no name.”9 While women in the United States and West Germany had to struggle against the contradictions resulting from the return to anachronistic gender roles and women’s increasing participation in economic life since the 1940s, the ideology of state-prescribed emancipation for women in East Germany also underwent a crisis. Declining birthrates forced the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to reevaluate its recruitment of women into the workforce and to create conditions in which women could also be mothers. In the 1970s, the GDR expanded its socialist welfare state by establishing comprehensive facilities for working women with children,10 an innovation that Western feminists regarded as exemplary for some time.11 In the 1960s, even before the new women’s movement launched its attack on traditional gender roles, the “woman question” began to receive increased political attention in both the United States and West Germany. In 1966, for example, the Bundestag conducted an investigation into social and economic discrimination against women.12 And in 1961, President John F. Kennedy created the Presidential Commission on Women, which published its findings in 1963. Despite the expressly antifeminist tone of the report – it spoke firmly against the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), for example13 – it 9

Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York, 1963). 10 Hildegard Maria Nickel, “‘Mitgestalterinnen des Sozialismus’: Frauenarbeit in der DDR,” in Gisela Helwig and Hildegard Maria Nickel, eds., Frauen in Deutschland 1945–1992 (Bonn, 1993), 233–56; Jutta Gysi and Dagmar Meyer, “Leitbild: Berufst¨atige Mutter– DDR-Frauen in Familie, Partnerschaft und Ehe,” in ibid., 139–65. 11 Even in retrospect, the transfiguration of the reality of the GDR by certain Western (above all, American) feminists is still evident. See Dorothy Rosenberg, “Shock Therapy: GDR Women in Transition from a Socialist Welfare State to a Social Market Economy,” Signs 17 (1991): 129–51. 12 Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung, ed., Die Frau in Beruf, Familie und Gesellschaft (Bonn, 1966). 13 For the history of the Equal Rights Amendment, see Nancy Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven, Conn., 1987).

Women and the New Women’s Movement

is a remarkable document and represents the U.S. government’s first attempt to address discrimination against women. One concrete result was the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which was followed by Title 7 of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. What a conservative congressman from the South had initially proposed in order to make the entire Civil Rights Act seem like a ridiculous idea that – namely, in addition to prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, religious conviction, and national origin, sex would also be included as a category – would prove to be one of the most potent weapons ever created in women’s fight for equality.14 Thereafter, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), now supported by a broad social movement, became the specific government authority to which African Americans as well as women brought their complaints. A wave of class action suits followed, in the wake of which both the federal government and individual states instituted a number of affirmative action programs. The new women’s movement – in the United States, Germany, and, indeed, the whole of Western Europe – was rooted in the U.S. civilrights movement, in the extraparliamentary opposition in the Federal Republic, and in the student movements.15 In West Germany, it was politically active female students within the German SDS (Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund) who initially revealed the contradictions inherent in their comrades’ proclamations of liberation and their paternalistic and often sexist behavior. Relegated to performing such “typically female” tasks as making coffee, photocopying, and listening, female students rehearsed their rebellion. In 1968 and 1969, their efforts came to fruition in the Frankfurt “Women’s Council” (Weiberrat) and the Berlin “Action Council for Women’s Liberation” (Aktionsrat zur Befreiung 14

Evans, Born for Liberty, 276. Sarah M. Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (New York, 1979). For the Federal Republic, see Alice Schwarzer, So fing es an! 10 Jahre Frauenbewegung (Munich, 1983); Andrei S. Markovits and Philip S. Gorski, “The New Women’s Movement,” in H¨ulshoff, Markovits, and Reich, eds., From Bundesrepublik to Deutschland, 137–45. 15

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der Frau), which staged provocative demonstrations to draw attention to the inconsistencies between emancipatory demands and the actual behavior of their fellow male students. They showed that it had not even occurred to their progressive comrades to take women seriously as political individuals, nor to extend their noble political principles to include what was traditionally regarded as “the private realm.” “Liberation” was something that needed to be achieved in Vietnam or South America, not at home, just as the oppressor was an “imperialistic power,” not oneself. Moreover, it was women, even those active in leftist circles, who performed all of the child-care duties, thereby setting men free to pursue their political work, a division of labor that they continued to take for granted. Women in the SDS and other groups were tired of having their concerns dismissed with the typical argument, coined in socialist terms, that they were “secondary contradictions.” The slogan “Liberate the socialist luminaries from their bourgeois dicks!” (“Befreit die sozialistischen Eminenzen von ihren b¨urgerlichen Schw¨anzen”) aptly captures the rage women felt toward comrades who acted like revolutionaries, but who – when dealing with women – behaved in an authoritarian, condescending, and sexist manner. The much-touted “sexual revolution” satisfied above all the needs of men, who justified their hunger for sexual experience and variety with the motto, “Whoever sleeps with the same woman twice already belongs to the establishment” (“Wer zweimal mit der selben pennt, geh¨ort schon zum Establishment”). Male sexual promiscuity was classified as a revolutionary act, a protest against bourgeois values, and a deliberate provocation against parents and other authority figures. Women who refused to accommodate demands for sex “weren’t progressive enough” and thus needed tutelage in their political (and private) understanding of the world.16 The women’s movement attracted a great deal of attention both in the Federal Republic and the United States by staging spectacular and provocative events. Of particular significance in this context were the declarations 16

Frevert, Women in German History, 287–8.

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of the numerous women in West Germany – many of them well-known figures – who voluntarily incriminated themselves by declaring they had violated Paragraph 218 of the country’s penal code, the provision outlawing abortion. These actions, aimed at decriminalizing and liberalizing abortion rights (“My womb belongs to me”) were especially important because they effectively demonstrated that some issues concerned all women, regardless of their class or social background. A woman’s existence was not determined solely by her membership in a particular social class, as both the institutional structures of society and the left’s critique of the system presupposed. The campaign in the Federal Republic to abolish Para. 218 initially seemed to be successful. In 1974, the Bundestag, with a majority of Social Democrats and the liberal Free Democrats, passed a law permitting the termination of pregnancy within the first three months, provided that the pregnant woman had consulted with a physician. This success was short-lived, however. Those states governed by the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), as well as the CDU/CSU caucus in the Bundestag, appealed to the Federal Constitutional Court, which ruled in 1975 that a woman was obligated to carry a pregnancy to term and thus declared the law unconstitutional.17 Many women made a point of traveling to Holland, where abortion was legal. The court’s overturning of the three-month law served to weaken and fragment the women’s movement in the subsequent period. In the United States, abortion was legalized with the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade. Abortion continues to be a highly controversial issue in America, however, as evidenced most crassly in the repeated militant attacks on abortion clinics made by fundamentalist fanatics of the Christian Moral Majority. 17

The court also ruled that: “Many women reject pregnancy because they are not willing to make the sacrifices connected with it or to fulfill their natural maternal obligations.” Angela Vogel, “Frauen und Frauenbewegung,” in Wolfgang Benz, ed., Die Geschichte der Bundesrepublik: Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main, 1989), 187.

In some ways, the women’s movement was the most lasting expression of the cultural upheaval of the late 1960s. In contrast to the student movement, which was ultimately paralyzed by internal power struggles, the women’s movement set the political and social tone until well into the 1970s. It was part of a cultural revolution that was tied to various thrusts toward increased individualization in a postmodern society. The revolution in education, which increasingly affected young women, played a decisive role in these events in both the Federal Republic and the United States.18 The revolution in the educational sector was the prerequisite for a new sensibility about the inequalities that stemmed not only from class, but also from gender. The inequality between the sexes suddenly came into public consciousness, while the social structures did not change with corresponding speed, thus rendering the divide between demands and reality all the more painful. In essence, the women’s movement in the Federal Republic can be divided into three different phases.19 The first, dating from approximately 1971 to 1974–5, was ignited in the first instance by the campaigns aimed at abolishing Para. 218. The second phase, beginning around 1975, was characterized by a turning inward, with women congregating in consciousnessraising groups to discuss their experiences. In the subsequent phase, the women’s movement broke up into multiple autonomous projects. A separate feminist counterculture developed with the publication of magazines such as Courage and Emma and the establishment of women’s bookshops and caf´es.20 Women’s shelters for abused

18

See Kolinsky, Women in Contemporary Germany, chap. 4. 19 Herrad Schenk, Die Feministische Herausforderung: 150 Jahre Frauenbewegung in Deutschland, 4th ed. (Munich, 1988), 83–101. 20 For the cultural manifestations of the new women’s movement, see Jost Hermand, Die Kultur der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1965–85 (Munich, 1988), 530–88. On the countercultural aspects of the American women’s movement, see Alice Echols, “Nothing Distant About It: Women’s Liberation and Sixties Radicalism,” in David Farber, ed., The Sixties: From Memory to History (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1994), 160.

Women and the New Women’s Movement

women – an idea imported from England – were also founded and supported by public funds for an extended period of time. Women in the Federal Republic probably came up against a greater intransigence of the political structures than their compatriots in other Western European or North American countries, and they exhausted their energies struggling against it. Gisela Kaplan has described the situation in West Germany with great insight, explaining the comparative lack of success of the women’s movement by citing the particular German traditions of a strong state, a weak social realm, and institutional mechanisms of regulation. Women achieved concrete results only where they were successful in forcing their concerns through the institutional structure of the Federal Republic and, subsequently, in winning more equality between the sexes through specific regulatory mechanisms. In West Germany, as in other Western European and North American countries, women developed a level of self-confidence heretofore unknown and subjected the relations between women and men to a deep-reaching critique.21 The women’s movement in West Germany was heavily influenced by its counterpart in the United States.22 West German women eagerly read American feminist tracts: Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, which was translated into German as Weiblichkeitswahn,23 above all, and the works of Germaine Greer, Shulamith Firestone, Kate Millett, Gloria Steinem, and others. Feminist novels such as Marilyn French’s The Women’s Room also gained a wide audience. German publications, including Alice Schwarzer’s Der kleine Unterschied und seine grossen Folgen24 and Verena Stefan’s H¨autungen (Shedding),25 also 21

Gisela Kaplan, Contemporary Western European Feminism (New York, 1992), esp. chaps. 1, 2, and 4. 22 See Ursula Linnhoff, Die Neue Frauenbewegung: USA-Europa seit 1968 (Cologne, 1974). 23 Betty Friedan, Der Weiblichkeitswahn oder Die Selbstbefreiung der Frau: Ein Emanzipationskonzept (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1979). 24 Alice Schwarzer, Der kleine Unterschied und seine grossen Folgen: Frauen u¨ ber sich: Beginn einer Befreiung (Frankfurt am Main, 1975). 25 Verena Stefan, Shedding (New York, 1978).

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entered the new feminist “canon” of required reading. The 1975 publication of Helge Pross’ study Die Wirklichkeit der Hausfrau had a particularly incisive impact and was important for helping to shift the consciousness of those women who were skeptical about the radical feminist strain of the women’s movement or had definitively rejected it.26 New feminist approaches in scholarship began to emerge, as in the United States, but in contrast to the experiences across the Atlantic, this development proceeded much more slowly and against much greater opposition. Feminists in the academy revealed to what extent scholarship had been male-centered, both in terms of the questions it had posed and the nature of its institutions. Like postcolonial discourse, feminist discourse questioned long-cherished assumptions of established scholarship, deconstructed its “master narratives,” and revealed the gendered nature of the objectivity that scholarship had touted over centuries.27 The influence of the American women’s movement was particularly evident in the extensive psychologization popular with its West German counterpart. As in the United States, women in West Germany tried to break out of their isolation by joining “consciousness-raising groups.” Although these were very meaningful to many women, they also threatened to focus exclusively on private and nonpolitical issues. Participants in this new women’s movement also refused to become involved in efforts aimed at concrete political change. According to these radical feminists, “the patriarchy” lacked the ability to change or to conduct a meaningful dialogue about change. Thus it was pointless to expect reform of the reigning political institutions or to form alliances with men. This faction of the women’s movement consequently maneuvered itself into the political sidelines 26

Helge Pross, Die Wirklichkeit der Hausfrau: Die erste Repr¨asentative Untersuchung u¨ ber nichterwerbst¨atige Ehefrauen. Wie leben sie? Wie denken sie? Wie sehen sie sich selbst? (Reinbek, 1975). 27 Karin Hausen and Helga Nowotny, eds., Wie m¨annlich ist die Wissenschaft? (Frankfurt am Main, 1986). For the United States, see Ellen Carol DuBois et al., Feminist Scholarship: Kindling in the Groves of Academe (Urbana, Ill., 1985).

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and embraced cultural feminism; its adherents escaped into the aforementioned psychologizing tendencies and promoted an essentialization of gender difference, which was not, however, welcomed by most women.28 These positions resulted in the self-inflicted ghettoization and fissure of the women’s movement at exactly the point when the political landscape of the Federal Republic began to shift and become more receptive than ever before to demands for emancipation and participation by previously disadvantaged social groups.29 Although the successes of the more politically active parts of the women’s movement may have been modest, they brought substantive advances: The first regional headquarters for women’s equal rights was founded in Hamburg in 1979 and other offices followed. Some initiatives developed plans for promoting female employment in the public sector. At many institutions – and especially at the universities, which continue to have particular difficulty in attaining equality between the sexes – women’s representatives were appointed to regulate hiring practices and ensure that more women were employed. In the subsequent period, all of the political parties began to examine enduring inequality between the sexes. This issue was, in effect, forced on them by the Green Party, which took up its seats in the Bundestag in 1982 with ten women (along with seventeen men).30 If the women’s movement’s relationship to the political left was difficult,31 its standing with conservative political powers was hardly better. The demand for paid housework (raised, for example, at the Berlin “Summer University” in 1976) as well as the glorification of motherhood (depicted most prominently in the Green 28

Kaplan, Contemporary Western European Feminism, 115–16. 29 Frevert, Women in German History, 292. 30 With this move, the Greens supplied 20 percent of the female representatives in one stroke. Vogel, “Frauen und Frauenbewegung,” 192. 31 Schenk, Die Feministische Herausforderung, chaps. 2, 4; see also Frigga Haug, “Perspektiven eines sozialistischen Feminismus,” in Autonome Frauenredaktion, ed., Frauenbewegungen in der Welt, vol. 1: Westeuropa (Berlin, 1988), 25–52.

Party’s so-called Mothers’ Manifesto) could easily be instrumentalized for the politics of a “new motherliness,” which the CDU has in fact done since 1986. Even within the confines of the women’s movement, the social dilemma posed by gender relations could only be articulated in a contradictory fashion: If they emphasized equality, women could easily be accused of only seeking to force women into “male structures” in society. An emphasis on gender differences, however, always ran the risk of essentializing differences, which in turn recalled the gender politics of the National Socialists.32 The women’s movement in the United States took on the character of a cultural revolution even more than in West Germany. Women organized spectacular actions to highlight their cause, such as a demonstration against the 1968 “Miss America” Pageant, where a sheep was crowned Miss America in a symbolic gesture protesting women’s social status as objects. Here, too, the women’s movement progressed through various phases until it finally split into various factions. The liberal wing of the movement proved the most successful, with the National Organization for Women (NOW) as its most visible exponent. Liberal feminists were quickly attacked by radical and socialist feminists, however, who claimed that they were only interested in assimilation and improving women’s opportunities, not in fundamentally changing society. As in the Federal Republic, radical feminists in America did not believe that the patriarchy was capable of change and thus ruled out any substantive debate with men, viewing it as pointless. Consciousness-raising groups nourished an exclusively female subculture, which was not well-positioned to form alliances with other organizations. Radical feminists often maligned concrete political initiatives made toward improving women’s situation in society as

32

Uta Gerhard et al., eds., Differenz und Gleichheit (Frankfurt am Main, 1990). See also Hanna Schissler, “Frauengeschichte vor Gericht: Der Rechtsstreit der amerikanischen Equal Employment Opportunity Commission mit der Firma Sears, Roebuck and Co.,” L’Homme: Zeitschrift f¨ur Feministische Geschichtswissenschaft 6 (1995): 98–121.

Women and the New Women’s Movement

“reformism,” interpreting every success as a defeat in disguise.33 Socialist feminists also attacked the reform efforts of the liberal feminist movement. This wing of second-wave feminism favored the categories of gender, class, and race to analyze social mechanisms of oppression and discrimination.34 Radical feminists used separatism for shock effect and to initiate a politics of identity in which their group identity became a means for making demands on society as a whole; by contrast, socialist feminists broke with the reigning American belief that U.S. society – in contrast to its European counterpart – was one in which every individual had equal opportunity and class divisions did not exist. Both feminist factions thus undermined a prevailing consensus about the organization and way of life of America.35 Ethnic and racial minorities put much greater pressure on American feminists to establish their legitimacy than was the case in West Germany. The explicit antifeminism of the New Right and the pro-family movement also had a much stronger following in the United States than in the Federal Republic. The ERA, which was greeted so enthusiastically by Congress in 1972, ultimately foundered in individual states’ legislatures.36 In the long run, the enduring recession spurred by the oil crisis of 1973–4, the Reagan years, as well as the formation of a widespread antifeminist opposition destroyed many promising initiatives for bringing more equality between the sexes and even intensified the competition between men and women. As a result of the women’s movement, the situation of women in both the United States and the Federal Republic did become much more complex and diverse. The changes the women’s movement brought about profitted middle-class women in particular. On the whole, however, the same inequalities still persist. The percentage of women who are unemployed is consistently higher than that of men, their average income is consistently 33

Nichols, “Nothing Distant About It,” 157, 162, 164–5. 34 Chafe, Paradox of Change, 202–10. 35 Nichols, “Nothing Distant About It,” 165–7. 36 Evans, Born for Liberty, 297, 304–7.

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lower, and their opportunities for advancement fewer. Advances in formal equality only served to highlight women’s discrimination and inequality in economic terms all the more starkly. Women freed themselves (or were freed) from their traditional caretaker role. But society had not changed in a way that would allow them to lead independent lives to the same degree as men. Because of historical and structural discrimination against women, they frequently fall into the lowest income tier and have incomes below the poverty line.37 This is particularly true of the many single and teenage mothers who live on welfare and of older women who were unable to contribute to their own pension fund during their lifetimes. This also holds true, however, for women in former GDR, who since 1990 have been undergoing a particularly painful process of adaptation. Women in the GDR had a constitutionally guaranteed right to employment, which went hand in hand with an obligation to work. Over 90 percent of all women had jobs and they contributed 40 percent of family income. (West German women, by comparison, only contributed 18 percent.) Since 1990, women from the former East German states have had to try to make do in the reality of a united Germany. While the costs of private reproduction, of having children, had been socialized to a considerable degree since the 1970s in the GDR, Western societies had largely privatized these costs and placed them mainly on women. At best, free-market societies only partially compensate for the most glaring injustices and discrimination against women.38 Although women were without a doubt the ultimate losers of German unification, one has to bear in mind that if an entire system collapses, it is unrealistic to expect that only its purportedly exemplary parts survive. The progressive and “emancipatory” policies toward women in the GDR were part of a system that proved incapable of surviving. 37

Chafe, Paradox of Change, 226; Ilona Kickbusch and Barbara Riedm¨uller, eds., Die armen Frauen: Frauen und Sozialpolitik (Frankfurt am Main, 1984). 38 For a detailed discussion of this, see Kaplan, Contemporary Western European Feminism.

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Female scholars in the United States have reproached West German feminists for being unaware of their (middle-) class character and of consequently not knowing how to confront ethnic differences or hierarchies. In contrast to the United States, there were only a very few efforts in the Federal Republic to address the issues facing women from minority groups that faced discrimination (Turkish women, other foreigners, asylum-seekers) and to bring these into the women’s movement as a whole.39 The

(relative) inability of West German feminists to come to terms with the problem of difference became particularly apparent in the conflictladen encounter between West and East German women after 1989. West German feminists could not understand some of the East German women’s responses (in particular their lack of an aggressive feminist spirit), and East German women rejected Western feminism, which they perceived to be just another form of cultural imperialism.

39 Sara Lennox, “Divided Feminism: Women, Racism, and German National Identity,” German Studies Review 18 (1995): 481–502; Myra Marx Ferree, “Equality and Autonomy: Feminist Politics in the United States and Germany,” in Mary Feinsod Katzenstein and Carol

McClurg Mueller, eds., The Women’s Movements of the United States and Western Europe (Philadelphia, 1987), 172–95; Kaplan, Contemporary Western European Feminism, 116.

chapter four

Transatlantic Networks Elites in German-American Relations Felix Philipp Lutz Translated by Richard Sharp

More lies behind international relations than the machinery of ministries and diplomacy, formal structures, and institutions. Foreign policy is also developed and influenced by people who can draw upon personal and informal relationships that enable them to pursue their aims outside their official contacts. Informal contacts and networks of this kind, stretching back to the interwar period and of growing in importance in the decades since World War II, have and still today greatly influence German-American relations. There has been a group of influential decision makers in Germany and the United States that has been of crucial importance in bilateral relations. Drawing its members from the fields of politics, business, and culture, this group made up what can be seen as the transatlantic elite, and this chapter will examine how this elite formed and operated.1 Although researchers lay great emphasis on the role of elites in shaping foreign policy,2 little concrete evidence as yet exists on their interactions outside of official channels. This chapter suggests some new directions for future research by comparing the origins of German and American elites and their influence on both their respective countries’ foreign policy. This history points to certain conclu-

sions about the transatlantic dimension of their activities.3 What is an elite? Elites are groups of individuals whose hold on power, positions, and potential resources provide them with opportunities for influence that enable them to play a decisive role in shaping policy, economics, and culture in transatlantic relations. Here, the term is used above all for the power elite whose members have held prominent positions in diplomacy, joint economic bodies, business, and many other institutions. The concept of “value elites” is also important for understanding transatlantic elites and their role in GermanAmerican relations since 1945. In traditional usage, which this chapter will adopt, the term means “minorities recognized as having a particular social, moral, and intellectual aptitude (value elites).” Originally this referred to the privileged segments of early bourgeois society, but the term can also be applied to an analysis of German-American relations.4 The term “transatlantic value elites” will denote people active in academic, political, cultural, military,

3 Wolf-Dieter Eberwein and Karl Kaiser, “Wissenschaft und aussenpolitischer Entscheidungsprozess,” in Wolf-Dieter Eberwein and Karl Kaiser, eds., Deutschlands neue Aussenpolitik, vol. 4: Institutionen und Ressourcen (Munich, 1998), 9. 4 Wilfried R¨ohrich, “Eliten,” in Wolfgang Mickel, ed., Handlexikon zur Politikwissenschaft (Bonn, 1986), 89– 93.

1

Nikolas Schwank (Heidelberg) carried out research for this chapter and supplied part of the draft. 2 Ernst-Otto Czempiel, Amerikanische Aussenpolitik: Gesellschaftliche Anforderungen und politische Entscheidungen (Stuttgart, 1979), 23.

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and media circles who work in close proximity to decision-makers. Members of the value elites themselves are positioned by their education, skills, and career paths to occupy decision making or powerful positions in the medium or long term. They are active in EuropeanAmerican relations and – like power elites – in the promotion of, for example, student exchange programs, transatlantic trade, agreement on and coordination of a joint foreign and security policy, and cultural exchanges and communication at all levels. In the process, they also learn other cultures’ values, in some cases absorb them, and – depending on the professional and social position of the individual – introduce them into their own culture through various channels. A full, detailed understanding of transatlantic elites would require consideration of the behavior, tasks, attitudes, and aims of the people attached to many institutions. Among those institutions are the German Foreign Ministry; the German chancellor’s office; political parties and other ministries; the White House; the State Department; the National Security Council and other advisory bodies in the foreign and security policy sector; private and semipublic foundations (e.g., the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Ebenhausen, the Thyssen, Bertelsmann, and Robert Bosch Foundations); the Atlantik-Br¨ucke; the Deutsche Gesellschaft f¨ur Ausw¨artige Politik (DGAP); think tanks (the Council on Foreign Relations, RAND, Brookings, and many others); the American Council on Germany; the German Studies Association; institutional and informal working groups and committees in politics, government, and economics; the Foreign Relations Committees of the Bundestag and U.S. Senate; TABD (Transatlantic Business Dialogue); the German Chamber of Commerce in the United States and the United States Chamber of Commerce in Germany; German-American academic or cultural policy committees (the Fulbright Commission and the German Marshall Fund); and the informal circles and networks that have developed in the

arena of bilateral relations.5 This circle of people are comprised of officials in top elected positions, senior political officials, artists, academics, intellectuals, high-ranking military officers, and business leaders and experts. Assessing the effect of these transatlantic elites would have to cover how they were recruited, their career paths, patterns of interaction, and attitudes. It would also be important to describe how the two countries’ elites conducted themselves against the background of Cold War international relations. This chapter is a preliminary attempt to make such an assessment, although adequate data on many issues is not available.

elites in germany It was clear to the Americans in 1945 that achieving a new political beginning in Germany relying on the Nazi elite would be difficult. American psychologists had interrogated German troops in prisoner-of-war camps before the end of hostilities to find out how deeply the National Socialist ideology had inflected the values, attitudes, and opinions of these troops. Younger servicemen who had undergone political socialization in Nazi organizations displayed a particular tendency to defend the ideological positions of the National Socialist regime. Germans born in 1926 or later had been socialized in Nazi Party, youth, and military organizations, passing from the Deutsches Jungvolk (German Youth) or Jungm¨adel (German Girls) into the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) or the Bund Deutscher M¨adel (League of German Girls), into the labor service, or Reichsarbeitsdienst, and eventually into the army or the Nazi women’s organizations. Members of this generation came to occupy leading posts in the Federal Republic in the 1960s and 1970s and, subsequently, in the 5

See Ausw¨artiges Amt, ed., Vor neuen Herausforderungen: T¨atigkeitsbericht und Dokumentation 1992/1993 des Koordinators f¨ur die deutsch-amerikanische zwischengesellschaftliche, Kultur- und informationspolitische Zusammenarbeit Werner Weidenfeld (Bonn, 1993).

Transatlantic Networks

1980s, occupied the highest government positions. Prominent representatives of this cohort included General Wolfgang Altenburg, head of the NATO Military Committee; Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher; Karl-Otto P¨ohl, president of the Bundesbank; Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger; Friedrich Nowottny, director of Westdeutscher Rundfunk (a radio broadcasting service); the writer Martin Walser; President Johannes Rau; the Christian Democratic politician Ernst Albrecht; the philosopher J¨urgen Habermas; sociologist Niklas Luhmann; and many others.6 The political elite was almost completely replaced after 1945. As a result of Allied policy, the proportion of former members of Nazi organizations in politics stood at only about 10 percent.7 But in government administration and the major organizations, especially in business, the law, and the police, the proportion was considerably higher.8 As in the United States, the late 1960s and early 1970s marked the beginning of a changing of the guard among elites, which was strongly reinforced by the 1969 change of power in Bonn and the accession of Willy Brandt to the post of chancellor. Just a few months after the Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD) replaced the Christian Democratic Union (Christlich Demokratische Union, or CDU), more than a hundred top civil servants were packing up their desks. Their successors were trained specialists who had been card-carrying members of the governing parties or closely affiliated with them. But after seventeen years in the opposition, the SPD had only a limited pool on which to draw, so even officials with no party affiliations were promoted to top positions. When

6 Heinz Bude, Deutsche Karrieren: Lebenskonstruktionen sozialer Aufsteiger aus der Flakhelfer-Generation (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), 10, 15. 7 Klaus von Beyme, Die politische Elite in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2d ed. (Munich, 1974), 68. 8 Wilfried Loth and Bernd-A. Rusinek, eds., Verwandlungspolitik: NS-Eliten in der westdeutschen Nachkriegsgesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main, 1998).

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Helmut Kohl was elected chancellor in 1982, the distribution of public offices aroused far less public interest and criticism than it had in 1969. But some 40 percent of senior civil servants, half of the undersecretaries, and one-third of the department heads had to take their leave under the new CDU government. Despite these two changes of government, the German elite has shown a remarkably high degree of continuity in terms of background and education even though individuals of more modest social origins and Catholics made up a larger proportion. More than 70 percent had university degrees, and only 15 percent had not gone beyond primary school studies. Among the university graduates, 65 percent studied law. In contrast to the rest of Europe and the United States, there are no elite German universities or other special schools that serve as recruiting grounds for the executive branch. About a quarter of all highly placed government officials had conducted at least some portion of their studies abroad.9 A very high percentage of undersecretaries and special ministers could also look back on long careers in politics and the major parties. Although a few “late entrants” came into the ranks between 1969 and 1990 – people who switched from the academic world to politics – they were generally unable to hold on to influential positions for long.10 At the same time, despite the high degree of social continuity and the importance of belonging to the “right” party, there was no mistaking a trend toward professionalization of the West German elites. The Federal Republic’s military elite played a particularly important part in the transatlantic context, even though this group is able and allowed to play at most a limited political role in NATO institutions. In the 1970s, the officers who had received their training on

9

Hans-Ulrich Derlien and Gerhard Pippig, “Die administrative Elite: Kontinuit¨at und Wandel 1949 bis 1984,” in Landeszentrale f¨ur politische Bildung BadenW¨urtemberg, ed., Eliten in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1990), 33–5. 10 Von Beyme, Die politische Klasse im Parteienstaat, 2d ed. (Frankfurt am Main, 1995).

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the general staff of the Wehrmacht before 1945 were replaced by younger generals and admirals who had been trained in the Bundeswehr and in the concept of individual moral accountability embodied in the principle of Innere F¨uhrung (literally “internal leadership”) and undergone joint training with the officers of the other alliance partners during the military integration of NATO.11 After 1945, three factors contributed to the establishment of a consensus on domestic and foreign policy among West German elites: the Cold War, the harsh lessons of German history, and the American democratic model. This consensus was not disrupted even during the period of Ostpolitik and d´etente, policies that were consistent with NATO’s Harmel Report. Only in the ranks of the new Left and in the nationalist conservative camp were anti-Americanism and anti-Western thinking still respectable, although they could not command majority support among the general public and were not politically viable.12 The transatlantic elites of the 1970s and 1980s, which still included some men who had fought in the war, wanted to enjoy the fruits of reconstruction, the economic miracle, and their recovered freedom. They had no ideological problems with the democratic, capitalist system, nor could they conceive of a Germany outside the Western community of nations. Helmut Kohl, Hans-Jochen Vogel, HansDietrich Genscher, Hans Apel, Karl Carstens, Eugen Gerstenmaier, Otto Graf Lambsdorff, Werner Marx, Helmut Schmidt, and the undersecretaries in the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Defense, and other federal ministries may have belonged to different generations, but they regarded alignment with the West as an indispensable ingredient of German policy.13

11 See Matthias Jung, “Die Bundeswehr-Elite: Eine Bestandsaufnahme nach 30 Jahren,” in Landeszentrale f¨ur politische Bildung Baden-W¨urtemberg, Eliten, 109– 23, esp. 117. 12 See the chapter by Philipp Gassert, vol. 1, Society. 13 See, for example, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1995); Helmut Kohl, Ich wollte Deutsch-

Like the great majority of the population, the elites had come to terms with the division of Germany. They forced the pace of European integration. A major disagreement arose in the early 1980s about the importance of the German-American relationship when the coalition between the CDU and the Christian Social Union (Christlich-Soziale Union, or CSU), the military, business, and the Free Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei, or FDP) placed considerably higher value on the alliance with the United States than did the elites from the SPD, the unions, and cultural circles.14 Although the credibility of the elites had fallen sharply since the 1960s in West Germany, the West German people generally followed the lead they gave in foreign policy matters. In the aftermath of Nazism, the westward orientation of the young Federal Republic was not something that many Germans took for granted. The public followed the lead of the foreign policy elites hesitantly at first. Such “top-down” processes are typical of the history of the Federal Republic, the most recent example being the military deployment of the German army in Kosovo, where the government’s policy was out of tune with public opinion. u.s. foreign policy elites In the late 1960s, a decisive change took place in the structure of the American elites. The Americans had left previously the shaping of foreign policy to a “regime of establishments” that made its decisions largely independently of the public.15 Cohesion among elites was tight; in domestic policy they had agreed to stand by the limited welfare state model initiated by President Franklin Roosevelt.16 On foreign lands Einheit, ed. Kai Diekmann and Ralf Georg Reuth (Berlin, 1996). 14 See Manfred G. Schmidt, Regieren in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Opladen, 1992), 58–9. 15 Hugh Helco, “The Emerging Regime,” in Richard A. Harris and Sydney M. Milkis, eds., Remaking American Politics (San Francisco, 1989), 300. 16 See Norman H. Nie, Sydney Verba, and John R. Petrocik, The Changing American Voter, 1st ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), 305.

Transatlantic Networks

policy, too, they shared a general consensus that could be explained largely by the Cold War.17 The “Iron Triangle,”18 made up of members of Congress, representatives of interest groups, and senior government officials, was characterized by a high level of internal recruitment – between 54 percent and 93 percent of senior officials came from within the public service sector19 – and a high level of social homogeneity. Almost all members of this elite came from the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant establishment of the American northeast. There were few female or African-American members of Congress.20 Decisions on foreign policy were the preserve of a small group headed by the president, the socalled wise men of American foreign policy – for example, Dean Acheson, John McCloy, Robert Lovett, George Kennan, and Charles Bohlen. Almost all of them were bankers, industrialists, or lawyers, and they stood for internationalism, Atlantic partnership, the market economy, and free trade.21 The Council on Foreign Relations in New York played a leading part in this network. It was here that the decision makers and the American academic elite met. And it was here that ideas were developed and exchanged. It was no matter of chance that, during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, some 50 percent of the leading positions in foreign policy were occupied by members of the Council.22 17

Lowell G. Field and John Highley, “After the Halcyon Years: Elites and Mass Publics at the Level of Full Development,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 24 (1986): 12. 18 Jeffrey M. Berry, “Subgovernments, Issue Networks, and Political Conflict,” in Harris and Milkins, Remaking American Politics, 240. 19 Pierre Birnbaum, “La place des hauts fonction` propos naires dans l’´elite du pouvoir aux Etats-Unis: A de la th´eorie de Mills,” in IPSA World Congress 1970, ed., Stratifications of the Elites and the Political System (Munich, 1970), 3. 20 Norman J. Ornstein, Thomas E. Mann, and Michael J. Malbin, Vital Statistics on Congress, 1991–1992 (Washington, D.C., 1992), 38–9. 21 See Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (New York, 1986). 22 Michael Wala, Winning the Peace: Amerikanische Aussenpolitik und der Council of Foreign Relations (Stuttgart, 1990).

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The “opening up of the cohesion of the [American] elites”23 in the 1970s came about as a result of a series of political reforms. The civil-rights legislation of the 1960s increased the opportunities for members of underrepresented groups to exert political influence. Thus, although the percentage of African Americans and women in the Senate rose only slowly between 1971 and 1992 – from 2.6 percent to 9.9 percent in the case of women, and from 2.6 percent to 7.3 percent in the case of African Americans24 – the rapid increase in later years makes the trend clear. Reform of campaign financing rules made candidates for Congress more independent of party organizations. George McGovern, George Wallace, and Jimmy Carter were examples of candidates for the highest political office who would probably not have made it onto the short list earlier.25 The reform of congressional structures played an extremely important part. The power of the committee chairs, who were elected by the seniority rule, was restricted, and the number of subcommittees was increased. This meant that newer members of Congress have, since the mid-1970s, had the opportunity, through subcommittees, to contribute their particular expertise to the decision-making process.26 The position of the foreign policy elite collapsed completely in the late 1960s–early 1970s as a result of the Vietnam War.27 The world of foreign policy no longer looked as simple as it once had. The Middle East and Southeast Asia came to occupy a much more prominent position in the public eye. The old elites had typically been dominated by generalists, notable for their leanings toward internation23 Adrienne Heretier, “Politische Eliten,” in Wolfgang J¨ager and Wolfgang Welz, eds., Regierungssystem der USA (Munich, 1995), 318. 24 Ornstein, Mann, and Malbin, Vital Statistics, 39–40. 25 Heretier, “Politische Eliten,” 320. 26 Lawrence C. Dodd and Bruce I. Oppenheimer, “The Rise of the Technocratic Reform: Congressional Reform in the 1970s,” in Harris and Milkins, eds., Remaking American Politics, 90. 27 Andreas Falke, “Der Einfluss der Intermedi¨aren Institutionen auf die Aussenpolitik,” in J¨ager and Welz, eds., Regierungssystem der USA, 442.

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alism and some background in European affairs, although not for their detailed expert knowledge. A highly professional elite equipped with specialized technical knowledge now replaced them.28 At the institutional level, too, a period of change began. The State Department in particular lost power. It found itself in competition with the presidential advisory staff – especially the national security adviser – and other arms of the government, such as the Pentagon and the Commerce and Treasury Departments.29 The fragmentation of the political decision-making structures and the demand for expert knowledge to deal with ever more detailed problems also accelerated the growth of private academic research institutes – think tanks30 – which underwent a boom in the 1980s. It is no coincidence that presidents today are identified more closely with particular experts than with their own vice presidents, the members of their cabinets, or legislators: John F. Kennedy with McGeorge Bundy and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Lyndon Johnson with Walt W. Rostow, Richard Nixon with Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter with Stuart Eizenstat and Zbigniew Brzezinski, and George Bush with Brent Scowcroft.31 In the American system of the elite formation, the phenomenon of “elite circulation” is typical, something that cannot happen in the same way in Germany. This means that the same person moves between different organizations and important government posts over time. For example, a change of government can bring a university professor to an advisory position in foreign policy. After the end of the administration, he or she switches to a think tank in Wash28 I. M. Destler, Leslie H. Gelb, and Anthony Lake, “From ‘Establishment’ to ‘Professional Elite,’” in I. M. Destler, Leslie H. Gelb, and Anthony Lake, eds., Our Own Worst Enemy: The Unmaking of American Foreign Policy (New York, 1984), 91–126. 29 Falke, “Einfluss der Intermedi¨aren Institutionen,” 443. 30 See Winand Gellner, Ideenagentur f¨ur Politik und ¨ Offentlichkeit: Think Tanks in den USA und Deutschland (Opladen, 1995). 31 James A. Smith, The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite (New York, 1991).

ington or New York, or to a position in the private sector. Ten years later, given the right contacts and activities, the same person can return again as an adviser under a new administration. This kind of cycle is not unusual in the culture of think tanks and elite East Coast universities. Large numbers of highly qualified academics, university professors, economists, lawyers, and other experts move between government, business, universities, and think tanks. This group of individuals not only provides a pool of talent that can be drawn on at any time but also cultivates personal friendships over and above official channels with Germany, where no comparable circulation of elites exists. It is true that in the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schr¨oder people have occupied key positions in the Chancellery and the Defense and Foreign Ministries who had also held similar positions in the SPDFDP coalition of the early 1980s. Yet they represent only a few isolated cases, given the long period of office enjoyed by the CDU/CSU-FDP coalition and the rigid structures of individual sectors (universities, business, and administration).

elites and german-american relations During the Cold War, a unique network of personal contacts evolved between Germany and America, partly as a result of a political planning and intent, partly through personal contacts. The participants in this network shared common basic views and common values. Yet Germans and Americans took their lead from each other to different extents. For many Germans, the United States was (and is) a role model, with its evidently enviable entertainment culture, lifestyles, music, and liberality and openness of culture. “Americanization” has thus become a much-discussed buzzword in Europe.32 Even the anti-Americanism of the 1970s and 1980s could not change this fact. By contrast, Americans have perceived European influences on the United States as being less direct 32

See the chapter by Axel Schildt, vol. 1, Society.

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and apparently less important, although many Americans still look toward European art, music, and literature.33 With a few omissions, the same applies to the debate on, for example, the European welfare state, a debate that took on some significance at the beginning of the Clinton era.34 After the end of World War II, both countries sought to establish a stable foundation for their future relations. The Fulbright Program, for example, came into existence shortly after the war; it proved to be a visionary project that created an extraordinary network of personal and professional contacts.35 Another example of the importance that can be attached to elites in German-American relations was the effort made by the German government to provide financial support for German and European studies at selected universities and institutes in the United States. The “centers of excellence” set up at Georgetown, Harvard, Berkeley, and Brandeis are symbolic of the enduring significance of transatlantic relations in German politics, and also of U.S. interest in Germany and Europe.

33

See the chapter by Pamela Potter, vol. 1, Culture. 34 See the chapter by Lily Gardner Feldman in this section. 35 See the chapter by Karl-Heinz F¨ussl, vol. 1, Culture.

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Storm clouds have gathered on the horizon, however. Demographic change will bring a change in the makeup of the elite. For some time now, politicians and academics have been contemplating the possible adverse effects of the change of generations on German-American relations. There is concern among the elites that the next generation, because of its different form of socialization, may pursue a different transatlantic policy; they fear that German-American relations will no longer have the same significance as they did to the Federal Republic’s founding generation, whose attitudes were still shaped by German emigrants and exiles, the Marshall Plan, American reconstruction aid, and the Cold War.36 Another dimension is America’s deliberate neglect of European history and culture at its universities, in favor of a teaching syllabus that gives the growing Latino, Asian, and African American minorities a greater sense of their own cultural backgrounds. This is reflected in the polemic against the “dead white European males” who have long dominated the curriculum. This attitude, and demographic change, cannot fail to have an impact on German-American relations.37 36 See Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York, 1994), 821; Stephen F. Szabo, ed., The Successor Generation: International Perspectives of Postwar Europeans (London, 1983). 37 See also Felix Philipp Lutz, “Europa und Amerika,” in Werner Weidenfeld, ed., Europa-Handbuch (G¨utersloh, 1999), 633–52.

chapter five

Bridging Constituencies German Political Foundations in German-American Relations Ann L. Phillips

The German political foundations have traditionally escaped serious scholarly analysis. This might have been because, until recently, of the absence of comparable organizations in other Western democracies. A more important obstacle, however, has been the high degree of circumspection defining the ethos of these very public organizations, which made “hard” information difficult to obtain. Of the two impediments, lack of attention has been displaced by a heightened admiration for the foundations’ singular qualities and efficacy, spawning imitations in a growing number of countries. When President Ronald Reagan called for the establishment of a National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in 1982, he had the German foundations (Stiftungen) in mind. More recently, the British, Canadians, Swedes, and Dutch have modeled their foundations on the German example. Others, including the Japanese, may follow suit.1 The attractions of political foundations are twofold: First, they fit well into an increasingly complex international environment in which relations have proliferated not only horizontally but also vertically. The state is one among many actors; the national level competes with or complements individual, local, and regional initiatives. Second, the impressive track record

of German political foundations has outlasted the Cold War. They constitute one of the more interesting transnational actors because they operate independently from the German government yet enjoy a special entree to elites and opposition in many parts of the world precisely because of their linkage to the German parties. This singular status has proven to be particularly effective during the transition from a bipolar to a more fluid post–Cold War environment. In many ways, the German political foundations prefigure the organizational modus operandi of the new age of globalization. Most foundation work occurs in public; a list of seminars, conferences, and workshops can be compiled from their annual reports, which detail their domestic and international activities. A rigorous analysis of these activities, however, is difficult, especially if we try to measure their impact on bilateral relations.2 Detailed information 2

There is little scholarly literature on the foundations. A good place to start is Roland Kress, “Politische Stiftungen,” in Wichard Woyke, ed., Handw¨orterbuch des politischen Systems der BRD (Bonn, 1992), 452–5; see also Henning Konrad von Vieregge, “Parteinahe Stiftungen und ihre Parteien” (Ph.D. diss., University of Bonn, 1976); Swetlana W. Pogorelskaja, Die politischen Stiftungen in der deutschen ¨ Aussenpolitik: Uberlegungen am Beispiel der T¨atigkeit der Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung und der Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung in der Gemeinschaft der unabh¨angigen Staaten und in den baltischen Staaten (Bonn, 1997); Michael PintoDuschinsky, “Foreign Political Aid: The German Political Foundations and Their U.S. Counterparts,” International Affairs 67 (1991): 33–63.

1 See the speech given to the French Senate by the director of the NED during deliberations over establishing French political foundations: Carl Gershman, “The Political Foundations in the Western Democracies: What Role and What Future,” June 6, 1996 (www.ned.org/page 6france.html).

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about budgets, partner organizations, and initiatives is closely guarded; the foundations see confidentiality and discretion as essential to their effectiveness. Some of their most important work occurs behind closed doors, especially in authoritarian or democratizing polities, but also in established democracies. Detailed information is recorded in internal foundation reports and supplied in somewhat sanitized form to the German Foreign Ministry and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (Bundesministerium f¨ur wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung), which are the major funding agencies of the foundations. Neither the ministries nor the foundations are obligated to make these reports available. As one high-ranking foundation official in Bonn has said, there is no Freedom of Information Act in Germany. Therefore, an analyst is dependent upon foundation and ministry officials to try to develop a complete picture of their complex function in Germany’s external relations as well as their successes and failures.

political foundations: the institutions Political foundations are a distinct expression of the Federal Republic of Germany’s party democracy. Although the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, or FES) was established in 1925 from the estate of its namesake, the late Social Democratic president of the Weimar Republic, the foundations are essentially a post–World War II phenomenon. Shut down during the Third Reich, the FES was resurrected in 1945. The Free Democrats created the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNS) in 1952; the Christian Democrats established the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) in 1964; the Christian Social Union founded the Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSS) in 1967; and the Greens established the Rainbow Foundation Association in 1988 and renamed it after Heinrich B¨oll in 1996. The Party of Democratic Socialism has established the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation without the benefit of public funding, although it meets the formal criteria to obtain it.

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The foundations represent the continuation of a long-standing German practice, dating to the time of Bismarck, of publicly funding organizations to engage in what elsewhere would be considered government business at home and abroad.3 In the post–World War II environment, the value of such organizations was enhanced by the natural mistrust and the constraints that West German government officials encountered. The importance of the foundations increased substantially in 1966, when a court ruled that public funds for political education could no longer be channeled through political parties. Thereafter, funding for the political foundations grew exponentially – from DM 25 million in 1967 to DM 650 million in 1994. The growth was due partly to the addition of two new foundations – the HSS and the Greens’ foundation – but a more important impetus was the expansion into overseas work that began in the 1960s. The total amount is currently distributed among the five foundations according to a formula linked to the strength of their affiliated parties in the Bundestag. The legal parameters of the political foundations remain somewhat vague. As organizations they fall somewhere between quasinongovernmental organizations (quangos) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).4 Operating funds are supplied by the public treasury, yet the political foundations are remarkably free from government control or interference. Public funding is intended to ensure the foundations’ autonomy from their affiliated parties, but the demarcation between the two is less than precise. Major party figures are prominent members of the executive board of the corresponding foundation, and the research institutes of the larger foundations serve as think tanks for their affiliated parties. This uneasy balance between affiliation and autonomy has produced the foundations’ envied agility and utility in relations 3

Pinto-Duschinsky, “Foreign Political Aid,” 34. Barthold Witte, former state secretary in charge of the culture department of the West German foreign ministry, calls the foundations quangos. Foundation personnel disagree on the proper categorization but tend to think of foundations as NGOs. 4

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abroad, but it has also opened them to criticism and even court challenges for financial improprieties and direct involvement in domestic and foreign elections.5 The mission of the political foundations is to promote democracy, the rule of law, and a market economy by means of political education in Germany and abroad. The first challenge the foundations faced in this mission was a domestic one: to contribute to the democratization of the Federal Republic of Germany following World War II. In the 1960s, they expanded their activities overseas as a counterbalance to engagement of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the Third World. The unique status of the political foundations soon proved its value. First, the organizations developed a method of operation that anticipated development criteria later generated by critics of Western aid programs.6 Second, they could reap the benefits of being linked to the major German parties while avoiding the constraints associated with official government status. As a result, the political foundations have developed contacts with segments of the political spectrum that might not have been possible for government officials or other NGOs. The foundations usually have more personnel and financial resources at their disposal than the German embassies do and, because each of the main German parties has a foundation, they can cultivate contacts with virtually the entire political spectrum in the host countries. The foundations often provide a useful “back door” channel in times of deteriorating official contacts. This has been important in relations with the United States. The ability of the foundations

to function in such sensitive areas, however, depends on their unofficial status and the personalities involved. Carefully guarded confidentiality of partners is therefore essential. In the 1970s and 1980s, the political foundations turned their attention to Western Europe and the United States. Although there is some overlap, each foundation has its particular areas of interest: The FES concentrates on labor issues and the media; the FNS focuses on the role of small and midsized business in a market economy as well as civil rights; the KAS has emphasized topics related to the rule of law and the social market economy; and the HSS highlights the advantages of decentralized government power through federal structures, works to strengthen local government, and promotes the modernization of agriculture. Each foundation tries to cultivate parties, organizations, and individuals that roughly comport with its own political orientation, but as German parties increasingly cluster around the center, competition for partners has increased. In addition, foundation agendas vary from country to country and region to region. In the developing and/or democratizing world, foundations define their role as supporting nascent elements of civil society essential to both democracy and the market. In established market democracies, foundation agendas focus on broad-based dialogue to promote bilateral understanding while underscoring the exchange of experiences, skills, and know-how relevant to tackling the challenges facing postindustrial societies.

political foundations in german-american relations 5

Hans Herbert von Arnim, “Die gesetzlosen F¨unf,” Der Spiegel 48 (1994): 26–8. The last serious legal challenge took place in 1986, when the Greens charged that the foundations were conduits of public funds to political parties. 6 See, for example, Thomas Carothers, “Promoting Democracy in a Postmodern World,” Dissent 43, no. 2 (1996): 35–40; Paula R. Newberg and Thomas Carothers, “Aiding – and Defining – Democracy,” World Policy Journal 13, no. 1 (1996): 97–108; Kevin F. F. Quigley, For Democracy’s Sake: Foundations and Democracy Assistance in Central Europe (Washington, D.C., 1997), chaps. 1, 8.

In the two decades following World War II, the overwhelming influence of the United States in West Germany forged a confluence of domestic and foreign policy interests that offered each side little alternative to cooperation. However, as Europe settled into a divided existence, anchored by the two German states, American and West German interests began to diverge. West German room to maneuver expanded as its political and economic base solidified and

Bridging Constituencies

East-West tensions eased. The differences between a global power and a reemerging regional power generated competing priorities in their international agendas. Therefore, when the German political foundations entered into the mix of well-established public and private connections in the late 1970s, they could look back on two solid decades of German-American cooperation. Why did the political foundations establish themselves in the United States? In part, their expansion is emblematic of a larger trend in international relations. Contacts among liberal democracies are conducted on several levels; diplomatic relations are only one, if still the most important, channel of communication. The timing, however, was born out of a crisis between Bonn and Washington that threatened to sour the bilateral relationship. During the late 1970s, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and President Jimmy Carter were under siege domestically over a range of issues, including the double-track decision on Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF).7 Personal antipathy between Schmidt and Carter did nothing to improve matters. The situation only worsened when Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980. German animosity toward Washington sharpened in response to the new administration’s hard-line policy toward the Soviet Union. The German political elite grew alarmed at the deadlock in official relations and the spread of anti-Americanism in Germany. Schmidt recognized the need to establish alternative, high-level channels of communication in order to preempt a potentially dangerous downward spiral in relations. The political foundations stepped into the fray. The Adenauer Foundation was the first, establishing an office in Washington in summer 1977; the Ebert Foundation followed in fall 1978. In 1984, the Naumann Foundation set up its Washington office; the Seidel Foundation arrived in 1989.8 In the 1970s, the political foundations were called upon to ameliorate what at times ap7

See the chapter by Michael Broer, vol. 2, Security. The Heinrich B¨oll Foundation, affiliated with the Greens, opened a Washington office in September 1998. 8

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peared to be a collision course between Bonn and Washington. Not only did they have to explain the German response to the breakdown of d´etente to a broad American audience; they also had to familiarize their own party leaders with U.S. thinking on East-West relations. Political differences over Ostpolitik were often played out in Washington, where in the 1980s, for example, members of the governing Christian Democratic Party freely criticized the opposition Social Democratic Party for pursuing an alternative foreign policy.9 Foundations regularly brought members of parliament and government officials at the federal and state levels from their affiliated parties to the United States for speaking tours. Parliamentary exchanges among members and staffers were expanded.10 The goal was to expose Americans and Germans to the many points of view on foreign and security policy in each country and to contribute to a more civilized and differentiated debate. Foreign relations and security policy topped the foundations’ agendas again in the 1980s. The decade witnessed major swings from mistrust and tension in the first years to President George Bush’s recognition of the Federal Republic as a “partner in leadership” in spring 1989. The FES focused on congressional committees with oversight responsibilities for arms control, electronic surveillance, and general foreign policy matters. It also maintained a steady stream of visitors in order to reassure official Washington that the SPD was not anti-American or antiNATO despite the growth of such sentiments in West Germany. The foundation’s director saw an important part of his job in the early 1980s as two-way damage control. This entailed not only explaining SPD concerns about a return to the Cold War to Americans but also a concerted effort to “undemonize” the United States in the eyes of the SPD, which were riveted

9

See Ann L. Phillips, “The West German Social Democrats’ Second Phase of the Ostpolitik in Historical Perspective,” in Peter H. Merkl, ed., The Federal Republic of Germany at Forty (New York, 1989), 408–24. 10 The KAS, for example, has a congressional staffer program, which brings groups to Germany on a regular basis.

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on the hard-line policies of the actor turned president. The governing parties in Bonn had their official links with members of the American administration, but their affiliated foundations were no less busy on foreign and security issues in efforts to expand contacts with Congress and beyond. Moreover, the parties that made up the governing coalition in Bonn were not without their differences on foreign policy; these could often be conveyed in private through foundation fora. In general, the Free Democratic Party constituted the more dovish flank of the governing coalition, whereas the Christian Social Union supported a harder line toward the Soviet bloc. The FDP was the original architect of overtures to the East in the mid-1960s through trade initiatives and, together with the SPD, had launched Ostpolitik. Led by Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and in coalition with the CDU since 1982, the FDP did not support a return to confrontation when relations between the superpowers deteriorated in the late 1970s. The director of the FNS used the foundation to provide a platform for German liberal leaders in the United States, who were often overshadowed by leaders of the two larger parties. He devoted his resources to building up networks in Washington, particularly on Capitol Hill. Even the KAS, whose affiliated party, the CDU, was the dominant party in the governing coalition after 1982, devoted roughly twothirds of its agenda to foreign policy issues until 1990. The foundation director at the time promoted a distinctly partisan message on foreign, economic, and social policies. He saw the foundation as an advocate for German foreign policy on the Hill. Working in Washington is not always easy, however. Political parties there have a fairly limited role compared to Europe and provide no natural partners to the German parties or their affiliated foundations. Cooperation with political leaders therefore depends more on personal chemistry and individual issues than on adherence to a party line. In view of the fragmentation and decentralization of politics in the United States, the foundations have actively courted interest groups, academics, and students through different kinds

of programs. The three foundations examined here stress the importance of working with independent think tanks, universities, and other nongovernmental organizations. They have also made a major effort to take their messages beyond Washington. Since 1980, the KAS, together with the Council on Foreign Relations and Columbia University, has hosted an annual German-American Roundtable, where about sixty prominent representatives from politics, academia, and the media from both countries meet to discuss key issues in transatlantic relations. In 1987, the KAS director established the American-German West Coast Conference and developed a partnership with the Center for the Study of the New West in Denver. Outside the Beltway, meetings have focused on trade and monetary policy as well as domestic issues. The KAS has gradually expanded its agenda to include the environment, health care, the impact of the information technology revolution on society, and the economic and social challenges of restructuring the welfare state, among others. On average the KAS hosts or cohosts six major conferences, two exchange programs, and roughly thirty lectures and roundtables each year. The latter are concentrated primarily in Washington. The FES and FNS have also expanded their reach far beyond Washington. The FNS has conducted programs with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York; the World Affairs Councils in Chicago, San Diego, Los Angeles, and St. Louis; and various universities and think tanks. The primary purpose of these programs is to promote liberalism (in the classic sense) both as a political philosophy and as a practical program for dealing with contemporary challenges. The FNS regards the dynamism of American society as an enormous intellectual stimulus for European liberals. Its “dialogue program” includes an annual international conference with thirty to fifty high-level policymakers, academic experts, and business executives. Three to four other conferences with similar participants are organized each year to discuss a specific theme. The topics range from market economy to migration issues. Leadership seminars bring together experts from politics,

Bridging Constituencies

business, and academia in workshops on specific issues of international interest, such as the future of liberalism, prospects for a Common Foreign and Security Policy in the European Union, and Central-East European transformation. Another forty to fifty lectures and roundtables are organized each year. The FES program in the United States maintains the foundation’s traditional focus on labor issues. It also addresses historical and cultural topics along with foreign and security policy. In addition to working closely with the American Federation of Teachers, the AFL-CIO, the United Auto Workers, as well as with unions in the telecommunications industry, the FES coordinates with universities and think tanks or organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union. The stated mission of the Washington office is to contribute to a comprehensive transatlantic dialogue by offering programs as well as publications on political developments in Germany and Europe. More than sixty events organized by the FES each year address core questions about the changing role of labor in postindustrial societies; general social topics such as migration, multiculturalism, education and gender; and economic developments in the United States and Europe. The German-Jewish dialogue11 constitutes an important theme in the work of the three major foundations in the United States. The KAS has worked very closely with the American Jewish Committee to organize programs on the Holocaust and reconciliation. Both FNS and KAS organize annual study and information tours in Germany. The FES, in conjunction with the American Federation of Teachers, has established an exchange of teachers who deal with the Holocaust in America and Germany. While dealing forthrightly with the horrors of Nazism, the foundations face the ongoing challenge of countering the oft-distorted picture of Germany presented in the American media, which tend to filter news about contemporary Germany through the lens of Nazi Germany and the

11 See the chapters by Shlomo Shafir, vol. 1 and vol. 2, Society.

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Holocaust. Whenever American and West German foreign policy preferences diverged, such as over the fate of d´etente in the late 1970s, the issues were often linked to questions about the viability of West German democracy and the Federal Republic’s reliability as a member of the Western alliance. The brief resurgence of the radical right in 1989–90 directed media attention almost exclusively to Germany even though support for right wing, nationalist parties is a Europe-wide phenomenon. The political foundations provide a valuable venue to place such issues in a proper context. Most foundation work, however, focuses on long-term, conceptual questions rather than the day-to-day business of politics. The end of the Cold War has seen a proliferation of “low politics” issues on foundation agendas – from health care to telecommunications to the environment. Within the parameters set forth by each foundation, the emphasis and style of a particular office depends a great deal on its director. This personal imprint has been strongest in the Washington offices, where longevity of directors has characterized foundation work. The second KAS director served from the early 1980s until the mid-1990s, the current FES director has been in charge for more than a decade, and the first HSS director in Washington was still in place in 1998. Only the FNS has rotated its Washington director every three or four years – the normal pattern for all the foundation offices elsewhere. The foundations seek to cultivate the next generation of leaders both in Germany and abroad through competitive fellowship programs for graduate students and senior scholars. Most scholarships are earmarked for Germans and students from developing countries, but American students are supported, as is study in the United States for German students. The KAS provides roughly 300 fellowships for foreign students each year; of those, students from the United States receive approximately a dozen but not more than twenty. The FNS awards about 150 fellowships to foreign students annually; of those, American students are awarded 3 percent. The Ebert Foundation’s statistics provide totals for the entire postwar period

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rather than annual accounts. As of 1993, the FES has awarded approximately 10,000 fellowships; of those, about 7,300 went to Germans and the remainder to foreign students. Of the 2,700 total awarded foreign students, American students have received 11 percent, or 297 fellowships since the end of World War II.12 The foundations maintain small staffs despite their impressive array of programs. Each office has a director sent from Germany and only three or four full-time employees. Interestingly, the smallest of the three major foundations, the FNS, has the largest operating budget for its Washington office. A total of about DM 1.5 million covers the director’s salary, three full-time staff, and programs for both the United States and Canada.13 The KAS budget in Washington is roughly DM 1 million for staff and programs, and the FES budget of approximately DM 950,000 pays for the director, a three-person staff, and more than sixty annual events.14 The foundations do more than facilitate German-American dialogue. Cultivating more diverse connections in and outside Washington than embassy work usually allows, the directors provide valuable and candid assessments of the political, economic, and social situation in the United States. These assessments range far beyond bilateral relations to include major topics on the American domestic agenda such as crime, economic restructuring, or bilingual education, and how they affect different parts of the country. As a result, foundation analyses often can place current events in a broader, more balanced perspective. The country assessments are part of the regular reports sent to foundation headquarters and may make their way to the leading political figures of the affiliated parties. In this way, the foundations provide additional sets of eyes and ears to monitor and interpret developments in the United States. The success of the German political foundations is very difficult to measure. Their objec12

The numbers are taken from the foundations’ annual reports. 13 Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung, Annual Report. 14 Numbers were provided by the Washington offices of the KAS and FES.

tives are broad, long term, and diffuse; it is virtually impossible to establish a causal link between their work and a specific policy outcome. Foundation officials themselves admit that their own criteria for measuring success are soft. Although the yearly number of events and attendance at each are carefully recorded, there is no reliable way to measure their impact. One can say that the German political foundations actively promoted mutual understanding between West Germans and Americans on the issues that divided them in the late 1970s and 1980s. It is also uncontested that Bonn and Washington avoided a major breach despite the difficulties in the relationship at that time. Even the rupture in public goodwill on both sides over the proper strategy for dealing with the Soviet bloc was eventually repaired. How much the political foundations contributed to these outcomes is less clear. At the least, the foundations have helped sustain German-American dialogue – not only between governments but also between societies – during times of substantial disagreement. Perhaps the strongest indicator of success is that so many countries have tried to emulate the German political foundations, including the United States. Traditionally, the United States Information Agency (USIA) has assumed functions broadly comparable to those of the foundations, but President Reagan thought that an independent, publicly funded foundation would be more effective in the competition with the Soviet Union. Reagan appointees consulted with German foundation directors to help flesh out the concept of the NED, then NED personnel expanded contacts with German foundation officials to discuss structures, mission, and projects. Two party-affiliated foundations, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, were set up under the NED umbrella. Their goals, too, are political education and support for democratization. Although they are not exact copies of the German foundations, consultations in Washington have continued sporadically. The revolutions of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe provided new impetus for further consultation, which led to cooperation on specific projects.

Bridging Constituencies

The foundations have helped improve mutual understanding in German-American relations through an ongoing, broad-based dialogue that links constituencies beyond the reach of official intergovernmental relations. Their programs have provided an important corrective to oversimplified, media-driven images of both countries. They also may prove to be among the most effective organizations Germany and

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the United States have to adapt to a fluid international environment and to sustain a strong bilateral relationship in a post–Cold War world less focused on the imperatives of security. At the same time, collaboration between German and American political foundations expands the potential for multilateral initiatives globally, adding another positive dimension to the GermanAmerican relationship.

chapter six

Normalizing German-American Labor Relationships in a Changing International Environment Michael Fichter

The period 1968–90 presents a vastly different picture of German-American trade union relations than the period 1945–68. No longer under the protective wing of the United States, the Federal Republic of Germany had achieved remarkable economic success and was a politically accepted and respected bulwark of the Western alliance. For their part, the German Trade Union Federation (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, or DGB) and its members were essential and integrated actors in the West German political and economic institutional framework. They had balanced their programmatic struggle for restructuring (Neuordnung) with pragmatic wage restraint supportive of economic reconstruction. With government assent, the unions had joined with the business and employers’ associations to fill the “economic leadership gap” (Leitungsl¨ucke),1 supplementing and shaping official policy through the comanagement of crucial aspects of the rebuilding process. Also, the West German unions quickly extended their operational horizon to include transnational activities, reviving bilateral exchanges with a wide range of other national unions and multinational contacts in the context of international union circles. The bilateral German-American trade union relations of the early postwar years became only part of a more complex setting of

interaction with an expanded number of participants and changing venues. By 1968, Germany’s place in the foreign policy interests of the United States was quite different from what it had been during much of the preceding two decades. With the war in Vietnam absorbing an extensive amount of attention and resources, the United States was relieved to have a staunchly loyal supporter on the front line in Europe and could afford to be less concerned with West Germany’s development than before. But for the American unions, relations with their German counterparts were growing more complex and contradictory. While relations were beginning to deepen between union officials and shop representatives on the branch and company level, there were signs of strain between the two national federation headquarters. The AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations) leadership was growing increasingly upset over independent action on the part of the DGB that no longer conformed to its ideological conception of the world.

conflicts over policy toward the soviet bloc The differences first became evident in 1966 after the DGB passed a resolution advocating informational trips to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. AFL-CIO President George

1

Werner Abelshauser, Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (1945–1980) (Frankfurt am Main, 1983), 81.

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Meany and his advisers went public in their criticism of this advance, using their newsletter, Free Trade Union News (published in Germany as the Freigewerkschaftliche Nachrichten), to call on the DGB to abide by the strict anticommunist, nocontact decision of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) from 1955 and heed the critics in its own ranks. The AFLCIO also referred to the fact that “leading German newspapers such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Welt had pointed out that the advances made by the DGB toward communist ‘trade unions’ went hand in hand with growing anti-Americanism and increasing coolness toward the AFL-CIO.”2 In his reply, DGB chairman Ludwig Rosenberg defended the initiative, pointing out the need to develop contacts and ease tensions. Addressing those who saw such contacts as the first step toward communist subversion, he noted that “if democratic convictions and way of life were so easy to overcome and subvert, then they would have long ceased to exist. Nowhere is there more freedom and opportunity for subversion than in a democracy, the strength of which is based on the conviction and principles of each and every one of its citizens.”3 The AFL-CIO repeated its criticisms at regular intervals until the DGB broke off all contacts to labor in the Soviet bloc after Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968. When the DGB resumed its initiative in December 1969, the AFL-CIO leadership once again stepped up to the firing line. In the same year, the American federation withdrew from the ICFTU, not least because it was unable to prevent a policy revision affecting contacts with Soviet bloc labor organizations. The DGB leadership made several trips to the United States in the following years for the purpose of reviving mutual contacts and explaining the motiva-

tion behind its interest in a normalization of exchanges with Soviet bloc countries. In a report published in November 1973, DGB chairman Heinz Oskar Vetter emphasized the need to differentiate between “a dialog over issues and political cooperation.” Vetter’s description of the DGB’s efforts to explain its “Ostpolitik” to the AFL-CIO leadership reveals how far apart the two federations were on international political issues. At the same time, the DGB’s chairman stressed the need for continued and intensified bilateral cooperation on a variety of issues affecting the economic well-being of union members in the United States and Germany.4 Throughout the rest of the decade, the AFLCIO under Meany’s leadership stuck rigidly to its anticommunist position. It led the American walkout at the International Labor Organization (ILO) meeting in 1975 and in general preferred to withdraw from international fora rather than compromise its long-held policy principles. Only after Meany’s death in January 1980 did the new president, Lane Kirkland, return the AFL-CIO to a participatory role in international trade union activities. The federation had not modified its political views but was now willing to accept the existence of other views as well. The DGB was pleased that the new AFL-CIO president took the initiative to break the ice in their bilateral relations. As the German federation noted in its four-year report for 1978–81, it was “now even possible to openly discuss controversial topics without differences in principle having a negative effect on relations.”5 According to subsequent reports, this was more than just a passing occurance, as relations – despite basic disagreements over the DGB’s Ostpolitik and the AFLCIO’s policy in Latin America – continued to improve.

4

2

“Kontroverse in Deutschland u¨ ber Kontakte mit kommunistischen ‘Gewerkschaften,’” AFL-CIO Freigewerkschaftliche Nachrichten, Oct. 1967, 1. 3 Ludwig Rosenberg, “Gespr¨ache mit dem Osten bauen Hass und L¨uge ab,” Welt der Arbeit, Aug. 11, 1967.

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Heinz O. Vetter, “Amerikanisch-deutsche Gewerkschaftsbeziehungen,” Gewerkschaftliche Monatshefte 24 (1973): 668. See also “Dialog u¨ ber die Beziehungen zwischen AFL-CIO und DGB,” AFL-CIO Freigewerkschaftliche Nachrichten, Dec. 1973, 1. 5 Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, Gesch¨aftsbericht des Bundesvorstandes 1978 bis 1981 (D¨usseldorf, 1982), 42.

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the growing importance of transnational branch union contacts To a large extent, this was a delayed reflection of the contacts between West German and American branch unions, which had been growing since the mid-1960s. In the early postwar years, German-American trade union relations had been concentrated at the federation level and had been highly political, even where the standard fare of trade union issues was involved. With basic political and socioeconomic issues at stake (Germany’s division, the clash between capitalism and socialism), this high-level concentration was to be expected; for the same reason, transnational relations between West German and American branch unions remained relatively underdeveloped. During the 1950s, contacts increased through a limited number of study trips and, later on, exchanges of delegates. These activities were important for broadening the foundation of German-American trade union relations beyond the increasingly difficult sphere of federation politics. The membership strength of the West German unions also offered them an opportunity to assume a prominent role in international circles. German union officials were elected to the executive committees of a number of international branch organizations and, in 1961, Otto Brenner, chairman of the German Metalworkers’ Union (IG Metall), was elected to the presidency of the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF). Three years later, his collegue Karl Hauenschild from the German Chemical, Paper, and Ceramics Union (IG Chemie-Papier-Keramik) took over the leadership of the International Federation of Chemical and General Workers’ Union (ICF). The booming postwar economy in the West and the expanding multinational operations of the most powerful enterprises brought about even closer working ties between American and German unions, both bilateral and in the form of multinational exchanges. Taking the lead were the unions responsible for organizing automobile workers. Already by the end of the 1950s, Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) and director of the auto-

motive department of the IMF, urged his German and other European Union colleagues to join the UAW in establishing world auto councils at each of the major multinational producers. Reuther argued for recognizing the importance of the exchange of information and the development of a common list of demands for representing employee interests in many different countries. Working closely with Brenner, Reuther prepared the way for the creation of the first of these councils in 1966 at Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, Volkswagen, and DaimlerBenz. Within the next eight years, councils for other multinational auto producers followed.6 In like manner, world enterprise councils were set up by the ICF in 1969 in response to the activities of multinational enterprises in the chemical, pharmaceutical, and oil refinery branches, as well as in the rubber, glass, paper, and cement industries. The ICF also created matching industry group committees to coordinate and support the tasks of the councils. In the mid-1970s, two of the six committees were jointly chaired by an American and a German trade unionist.7 Despite the unions’ impressive claims about the effectiveness of such multinational enterprise councils in supporting the collective bargaining positions of the individual national unions, independent research has failed to turn up evidence of such a role. In the glass industry, for example, the ICF had little to do with agreements reached at the national company levels. Moreover, despite agreements among national union representatives from a number of different countries to coordinate their bargaining strategies, contracts were signed (in Germany, for example) while the American unions were trying to use the threat of international action against a company to bolster their bargaining position.8 6 Herbert R. Northrup and Richard L. Rowan, Multinational Collective Bargaining Attempts: The Record, the Cases, and the Prospects (Philadelphia, 1979), 30–2; Ernst Piehl, Multinationale Konzerne und internationale Gewerkschaftsbewegung (Frankfurt am Main, 1973), 87–8. 7 Northrup and Rowan, Collective Bargaining Attempts, 158–9; IG Chemie-Papier-Keramik, Gesch¨aftsbericht 1972–1975 (Hannover, 1976), 27–31. 8 Northrup and Rowan, Collective Bargaining Attempts, 163–7.

Normalizing German-American Labor Relationships

Transnational trade union activities in other industries and sectors confronted the same problems throughout the 1970s, and American and German trade union relations were no exception. The available literature on transnational labor relations and trade union activities does not single out bilateral German-American trade union relations as a case of particularly intensive contacts.9 Whether this changed in the years up to 1990 cannot be ascertained for certain. Unfortunately, very little empirical research has been done on international trade union developments in the Western Hemisphere since the mid-1970s, and there is nothing at all available on the particular subject of German-American trade union relations.10 Official trade union reports of the DGB and its member unions record ongoing and substantive cooperation but do not provide any concrete information beyond such affirmative assessments.11 The increasing tempo of the European unification process and the expansion of its single domestic market during the 1980s led to more extensive trade union involvement in and academic treatment of transnational industrial relations in Europe. On the basis of these presentations, it may be said that the German trade unions intensified their interaction with their counterparts in the other countries of the European Community as well as with the European branches of the international trade unions. They were also extensively involved in the exchange of delegations with labor organizations in East Germany and in the rest of Eastern Europe. The reports and literature on such activ-

9 Ibid. See also Hans G¨unter, Transnational Industrial Relations (London, 1972). 10 See Peter R¨utters, Chancen internationaler Gewerkschaftspolitik (Frankfurt am Main, 1989). R¨utters criticizes the lack of research on international trade union activities in light of their growing importance for national unions throughout the world. 11 See, for example, IG Chemie-Papier-Keramik, Gesch¨aftsbericht 1984–1987 (Hannover, 1988), 27, which reports that “relations with the American trade unions were developed further. The yearly visit of a delegation of Japanese trade unionists continued.” The same sentences were used in both the previous and the following four-year reports.

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ities, together with the dearth of information on German-American trade union cooperation in this period, suggests that the relationship between the AFL-CIO and the DGB had completely lost the special nature that it had possessed for so many years. common challenges, different approaches In the 1980s, issues of employment relations arose in both countries that strongly affected the ability of the trade unions to effectively represent employees. The globalization of production and markets, along with newly implemented deregulation policies, increased international competition and induced companies in all industrial countries to become more innovative. Along with downsizing and outsourcing, management also introduced new schemes of employee involvement and teamwork. Both countries were also affected by international developments such as the creation of supranational economic zones (for example, the Single European Market and the North American Free Trade Agreement), the need for concession bargaining or “employment protection agreements,” and the problems of so-called self-employed workers. Trade unions in both the United States and Germany, therefore, were (and still are) confronted with similar changes despite their historical and structural differences.12 Throughout the 1980s, the widespread membership losses of the AFL-CIO and its elimination from bargaining representation in many sectors of the U.S. economy contrasted starkly with the German model of negotiated industrial relations and the organizational stability of the DGB. American union officials were also worried about their ability to continue to organize 12 Berndt Keller, “International vergleichende Arbeitsbeziehungen: USA-Deutschland,” in Clemens Heidack, ed., Arbeitsstrukturen im Umbruch (Munich, 1995), 209–33; J¨org Rosd¨ucher and Oliver Stehle, “Concession bargaining in den USA und besch¨aftigungssichernde Tarifpolitik in Deutschland: Ein Vergleich der tarifpolitischen Konzepte,” Industrielle Beziehungen 3 (1996): 307–33.

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and represent employees in the face of various participatory schemes introduced by management. These concerns generated discussion of the German model of codetermination, which was further encouraged by the UAW’s successful bargaining for a union seat on the board of directors of the Chrysler Corporation. Although some union officials rejected the introduction of codetermination out of hand, others were interested in the possibilities such an arrangement would offer for stabilizing employment relations and securing union involvement. As George Becker of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) explained: It is worth noting that unions in general, and the United Steelworkers of America in particular, want to develop a partnership arrangement with companies to ensure their economic success. Unions want businesses to succeed both locally and globally and will work hard to achieve this. But unions will also work hard to bargain protection and security provisions that reflect full partnerships between employees and management. To the extent that the German model and models from other nations can further social and economic justice for union members and for workers in general, the United States should look to those labor relations systems for lessons that can be applied at home.13

During his first term in office President Bill Clinton, along with Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and Secretary of Commerce Ronald H. Brown, set up the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations to make recommendations for a sweeping labor law reform. The commission, which was headed by former labor secretary John Dunlop, sought answers to the following questions: r What new methods or institutions would enhance workplace productivity through labormanagement cooperation and employee participation? r What changes in the legal framework and practices of collective bargaining would enhance cooperative behavior, improve productivity, and reduce conflict and delay? 13 George Becker, “German Labor Relations: A Model for Tomorrow?” Looking Ahead, Dec. 1993, 23.

r What measures would increase the extent to which workplace problems are directly resolved by the parties themselves? In pursuing these tasks, the commission included in its deliberations a review of the German system of codetermination as a possible step for improving labor-management relations. The AFL-CIO reacted favorably to Clinton’s initiative and supported the work of the commission. But after the release of the commission’s report in December 1994, the federation found much to criticize in its recommendations.14 Above all, the AFL-CIO rejected what it regarded as support for nonunion forms of workplace representation that “would allow the boss to decide who represents the workers.” In general, the unions argued that relaxing legal regulations in favor of voluntary schemes for resolving workplace problems would be detrimental to effective employee representation. “Union representation,” the federation concluded, must be made “freely accessible to workers who desire it.”15 To be sure, the AFL-CIO has shown only limited interest in promoting a German-style works-council system, and its introduction into U.S. labor relations would require a major revision of labor law and conventional labor relations practices. Instances of transplanting institutional models are rare, and it is more likely that such lessons can be more quickly learned and applied on the level of individual cases. Further, any number of the companies introducing new employment relations operate in Germany and the United States, and therefore provide a framework for comparison.16 Although the basic idea of negotiated or cooperative labor 14

U.S. Department of Labor, Report and Recommendations of the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations (Dec. 1994). 15 AFL-CIO press release, Jan. 9, 1995. 16 Lowell Turner, Democracy at Work: Changing World Markets and the Future of Labor Unions (Ithaca, N.Y., 1991); Kirsten S. Wever, Negotiating Competitiveness: Employment Relations and Organizational Innovation in Germany and the United States (Boston, 1995). Both studies are essential for comparing the American and the German approach to labor relations.

Normalizing German-American Labor Relationships

relations – as opposed to the historically adversarial structures in the United States – comes from Germany, American unions have developed their own approaches and have successfully initiated innovative “best practices” at the company level. The two most well-known, albeit somewhat different, examples are the auto plants in Fremont, California (NUMMI) and Springhill, Tennessee (Saturn), in which the UAW has a stake.17 In these plants, American unions have reduced conflict, improved the workplace climate, and secured a voice in the company’s future. Another strategy that American trade unions have turned to in certain cases is employee ownership. The USWA and other unions have helped employees faced with possible company closure to successfully invest in reorganization plans. German unions have been able to rely on the legal regulations of participation when faced 17 See Turner, Democracy at Work, for an extensive comparative analysis of NUMMI. See Wever, Negotiating Competitiveness, 67–70, for further examples of best practices.

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with mass layoffs or other changes at the workplace. A closer review of the structures and contents of union-management cooperation in the United States in such “best practice” cases could nevertheless provide the trade unions in Germany with valuable insights on noninstitutionalized aspects of improving employment relations at the workplace. At the end of the period 1968–90, both the DGB unions and the unions of the AFLCIO were faced with similar challenges to their roles in protecting the interests of their membership. Although there is still an enormous gap between the institutional settings in which both federations operate, global developments confront these settings with similar challenges. Despite the conflicts between the DGB and the AFL-CIO in the 1970s, a resumption of closer relations in a changing world environment seems possible. A continued readiness for mutual learning and consultation based on the strong interrelationships in the past could prove advantageous and essential to both in the future.

chapter seven

German and American Churches Changes in Actors, Priorities, and Power Relations Robert F. Goeckel

Two political developments in Germany in 1968–9 altered the German-American church relationship. First, the policy of Ostpolitik initiated by the newly elected social-liberal coalition in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) ushered in an era of d´etente in East-West relations. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) responded by forcing the organizational division between the East and West German churches, with more success in the case of the Evangelical Church in Germany (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, or EKD) than in the case of the Catholic Church.1 Second, the domestic upheaval in 1968 and the changes attendant to modernization engendered an internal debate in West German society that inevitably affected and politicized the churches; only later in the 1980s did such politicization affect GDR churches. This chapter describes and analyzes the effects of these two developments on the German-American church relationship, arguing that they brought about changes in the churches’

priorities, the distribution of power, and indeed the very actors involved in the relationship, as manifested in the dynamics of the latter half of the Cold War.

VOLKSKIRCHEN-free

churches

One constant throughout the Cold War was the asymmetry between the structures of German and American churches. The dominant churches in Germany, Catholic and EvangelicalLutheran, are national churches (Volkskirchen) that claim a historical identification with the nation-state, possess an extensive administrative apparatus and network of social services, and enjoy certain economic and legal privileges despite the constitutional principle of separation of church and state. As a result, the EKD in particular accommodates very disparate groups, including Lutheran and Reformed confessions and pietistic and liberal theological groups. By contrast, American churches are “free churches,” which are often identified with a particular national-ethnic group, are characterized by limited administration and relatively strong parish governance, and enjoy few public privileges. The mainline Protestant churches are only loosely coordinated under the auspices of the National Council of Churches (NCC); doctrinal differences have produced various schisms. As a result of this structural difference, the churches in the Federal Republic enjoyed a much closer relationship with the governing

1 Regarding the split in the EKD, see Reinhard Henkys, ed., Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR: Dokumente zu seiner Entstehung (Witten, 1970); Robert F. Goeckel, The Lutheran Church and the East German State (Ithaca, N.Y., 1990), 56–148; Gerhard Besier, Der Weg in die Anpassung (Munich, 1993), 628–725. Regarding the Catholic Church, see Robert F. Goeckel, “The Catholic Church in East Germany,” in Pedro Ramet, ed., Catholicism and Politics in Communist Societies (Durham, N.C., 1990), 99–103; Gerhard Lange et al., eds., Katholische Kirche: Sozialistischer Staat DDR (Leipzig, 1992), esp. 281–6.

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elite and greater influence in society than those in the United States, the phenomenon of civil religion in the latter notwithstanding.2 The German churches could speak more authoritatively, not only on issues of the churches’ self-interest (for example, religious instruction in schools, school prayer, and church tax), but also on social issues such as divorce and abortion.3 Bipartisan support for the special role of the churches was striking, ranging from Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt in the Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD) to Helmut Kohl and Richard von Weizs¨acker in the Christian Democratic Party (CDU). Leading German political figures often held high-ranking honorary positions in the church, especially in the EKD, with its various lay bodies. The representatives of the EKD and the Catholic Church to the Bonn government enjoyed much greater access to and influence with political leaders than the various American church “lobbying” offices in Washington. In their bilateral relations, then, the two dominant German Volkskirchen faced a wide range of potential “free-church” partners on the American side.4 The German churches also were in a much stronger position to influence public opinion than their American counterparts. The pronouncements of the German churches – for example, on peace (1981) – received widespread treatment in the media and resonated among the population. With the exception of the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Conference statement on nuclear weapons, no pronouncement by the

2 Peter Katzenstein, Policy and Politics in West Germany (Philadelphia, 1987), 74–6, argues that the decisive role of the churches in social welfare policy declined in the 1970s and 1980s. See also Gerhard Besier, Kirche, Politik und Gesellschaft im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 2000). 3 See Owen Chadwick, The Christian Church in the Cold War (New York, 1993), 173–90. 4 For example, in planning its 1981 visit to the United States, the EKD delegation pressed for contacts with non-Lutheran churches on the issues of peace and disarmament. See Memo, Eugene Brand to Claire Randall (NCC), Dec. 4, 1980, Archive of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (hereafter ELCA), 87– 1010, 38/51.

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American churches has enjoyed this kind of reception. However, as umbrella organizations encompassing diverse social and political groups, the Volkskirchen were sometimes reluctant to speak boldly on issues, seeking to avoid divisive positions and opting for broad-based compromises. Although their suprapartisan identification with the nation enabled the churches to act as a political arbiter, it also necessitated caution during periods of political turbulence, whether domestic, such as the 1970s, or international, such as the 1980s.5

modernization The winds of change after 1968 affected the Volkskirchen. Modernization, the process of social pluralization characteristic of advanced industrial society, began to put the churches on the defensive. Large numbers of worshippers began to leave the church, particularly the EKD.6 Although initially most did not opt for another religious affiliation, by the 1970s, as in the United States, increasing numbers were attracted to neo-Protestant groups and non-Christian sects, leading to concerted efforts by the Volkskirchen to blunt their growing influence.7 Religious diversity also increased as a result of the influx of guest workers, many of Islamic faith.

5 During the 1980 electoral campaign, the parties designated the EKD’s representative as a mediator to decide complaints, a role unimaginable for the American churches. See Kirchliches Jahrbuch f¨ur die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (hereafter Kirchliches Jahrbuch), 1980, 103– 4. 6 See the chapter by Mark Ruff, vol. 1, Society. On the generational differential regarding religion after 1968, see Karl Gabriel, “The Post-War Generations and Institutional Religion in Germany,” in Wade Clark Roof, Jackson W. Carroll, and David A. Roozen, eds., The Post-War Generation and Establishment Religion: Crosscultural Perspectives (Boulder, Colo., 1995), 113–30. For a general comparative outline see Hartmut Lehmann, “The Christianization of America and the Dechristianization in Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries,” Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 11 (1998): 8–20. 7 Eileen Barker, ed., Of Gods and Men: New Religious Movements in the West (Macon, Ga., 1983), 178–90, 195– 214.

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The modernizing context also reduced confessional differences in both the United States and Germany. The Lutheran and Reformed/ Union churches grew closer – especially after the 1973 Leuenberg Concordat, which guaranteed full intercommunion – but efforts to streamline the EKD’s organizational structure failed.8 Similarly, relations between Catholics and Protestants warmed, due in large measure to Vatican II.9 The Catholic and Evangelical churches took joint positions on a number of issues, including abortion, nuclear weapons, and peace. In the United States, declining resources often resulted in church mergers (for example, the Lutheran mergers in 1987). Until recently, however, the semiofficial church tax largely sheltered the German churches from the resource-driven decision-making process of the American churches. Modernization also confronted the churches with the mass media. The adoption of television, particularly by American evangelical groups, challenged traditional ecclesiastical structures and reduced the already limited social-political influence of the mainline Protestant churches. The German churches largely rejected such technology even while recognizing its increasing impact.10 Thus, the institutional differences between the American and German churches produced differing responses to the effects of modernization.

effects of d´e tente Institutional asymmetry also affected the churches’ roles in the East-West setting. In the 1960s, the German churches laid important foundations for the rethinking of relations with 8

Michael Ahme, Der Reformversuch der EKD 1970– 1976 (Stuttgart, 1990); Kirchliches Jahrbuch (1981–82): 31–5. 9 Hans Vorster, “Das Verh¨altnis der Konfessionen in Deutschland 1945 bis 1985,” in Gottfried Maron, ed., ¨ Evangelisch und Okumenisch (G¨ottingen, 1986), 207–27. 10 See Kirchliches Jahrbuch (1981–82). On American Televangelism, see Steve Bruce, Pray TV: Televangelism in America (London, 1990); Berit Bretthauer, Televangelismus in den USA: Religion zwischen Individualisierung und Vergemeinschaftung (Frankfurt am Main, 1999).

the East. The 1965 Ostdenkschrift by the EKD and the Catholic bishops’ exchange with their Polish counterparts in 1966 fostered reconciliation with the East and foreshadowed the new Ostpolitik. After the construction of the Berlin Wall, the EKD permitted the GDR’s churches greater regional autonomy in hopes of avoiding a formal division of the German churches along East-West lines. Indeed, the Brandt government saw the church as an institutional tie that would bind the German cultural nation despite its political division. However, under government pressure, the East German churches withdrew formally from the EKD in 1969 and formed the Federation of Evangelical Churches in the GDR (Kirchenbund). The division of the EKD loosened considerably the political straitjacket imposed on the church by the need for unity on the national question. For example, Kurt Scharf, the leftist bishop of Berlin and chair of the EKD Council during the 1960s, was criticized for his dialogue with the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group but enjoyed wide support among conservative GDR church circles as a symbol of German unity.11 After the division, however, he was replaced as EKD chair by a conservative Lutheran, Bishop Hermann Dietzfelbinger from Bavaria. For their part, the East German churches shifted to the left, generating tension with the West German churches, with whom they nonetheless continued to profess a “special community.” D´etente also shifted the agenda of the German churches. On international issues both the EKD and Catholic Church focused more on North-South issues. For example, both supported the economic agenda of the South, pressing the Federal Republic for increased development aid and shifting their emphasis from mission work to development.12 On the Vietnam War and the coup in Chile, the EKD assumed positions highly critical of American policy, a stance shared with many mainline American churches.13 11

Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1974, 119–26. Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1972, 206–12; Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1973, 97–103. 13 On Vietnam, see Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1968, 105–8; on Chile, see Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1973, 111–2. 12

German and American Churches

On inter-German issues, a significant segment of the EKD supported ratification of the Eastern treaties, and the churches sought to take advantage of the new opportunities under d´etente, engaging in leadership exchanges, partner-parish agreements, and construction of new churches in the GDR. D´etente afforded the churches the luxury of self-absorption in domestic issues. The rise of domestic terrorism in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) confronted them with the question of their proper role: defender of the Rechtsstaat (the rule of law), conciliator between antagonists, or agent of social change.14 The increased political activity of pastors in radical movements and partisan politics challenged the EKD’s traditional stance of political neutrality. Liberalization of abortion laws mobilized the opposition of the Catholic Church and the EKD leadership, placing them at odds with grassroots opinion.15 D´etente also produced a shift in priorities in the American churches. Rooted in their confessional and ethnic affinity, Lutheran churches in the United States had been instrumental in aiding the recovery of the German Protestant churches after World War II. They had long supported various church projects in the GDR through the Lutheran World Federation (LWF). Their maintenance of a senior representative of the LWF in Berlin not only demonstrated the American commitment to the city but also played a key role in maintaining interGerman church contacts after the Berlin Wall was built. With the advent of d´etente, however, the American Lutheran churches proposed eliminating this position because they saw it as 14 Kirchliches Jahrbuch (1976–77), 139–50, documents the churches’ condemnation of terror by the Red Army Faction as well as the more supportive stance of leftist theologians such as Helmut Gollwitzer. 15 The joint Evangelical-Catholic declaration opposing the liberalization of abortion proposed by the socialliberal coalition is documented in Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1973, 125–32, and Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1974, 104–18. The EKD synod favored the liberalization and conservative evangelical groups opposed it, indicating the greater dissent among Protestants.

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superfluous.16 Moreover, they also insisted on greater accountability for LWF expenditures in the GDR, arguing that “blind trust is no longer enough.”17 The German churches responded by insisting on continued secrecy regarding financial transfers and by opposing direct bilateral transfers to the GDR churches by the Americans.18 The Germans’ preference for a multilateral arrangement with continued American participation was revealed when they in effect reimbursed the Americans for their share of the LWF aid program. These shifts in priorities paralleled a longerterm shift in the relative resources of the American and German churches. The increasing financial strain on the American churches, coupled with the improved financial condition of their German counterparts, reduced the clout the Americans had enjoyed during the early Cold War. The Germans’ new priorities and standing were particularly noticeable in nongovernmental international organizations (NGIOs), such as the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva. Whereas the American churches had borne most of the WCC budget in the early postwar years, by the 1970s West German and American churches each covered roughly onethird of the costs, resulting in increased influence in Geneva for the German churches.19 For example, EKD opposition to the WCC program supporting groups using violence in their fight against apartheid in South Africa forced 16

Paul Wee, Description and Evaluation of the Work of the Berlin Office of the LWF/DCC, May 1973, ELCA Archive, 87–1010, 16/51. 17 Letter, Paul Empie (General Secretary, Lutheran National Committee) to Valdemar Toerner (Assistant Director, Administration and Finance, LWF Department of World Service), Sept. 16, 1969, ELCA Archive, 87– 1010, 16/51. The LWF provided 75 percent ($325,000) of non-German aid to the GDR churches in 1969. The remainder was provided by the WCC and the United Church of Christ, among others. See Some Questions and Answers About the Germany-East Program (n.d., likely 1969), ELCA Archive, 87–1010, 16/51. 18 Letter, Toerner to Empie, Oct. 22, 1969, with Discussion of Jahresnotprogramm, LWB/Weltdienst, Sept. 24, 1969, ELCA Archive, 87–1010, 16/51. 19 Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1978, 16.

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the WCC to accommodate West German concerns.20 A leading American official opined in 1982 that “the LWF is a European institution with many decisions being made between Geneva and Hannover.”21 The GDR churches likewise showed new confidence in international relations. They pursued NGIO contacts in order to confirm their newfound independence from the EKD. Normally suspicious of such NGIOs, the GDR in fact supported them in the 1970s as a means of gaining greater domestic and international legitimacy. For its part, the Kirchenbund sought to win favor with the GDR regime through its strong support of WCC policy on South Africa, aid to Vietnam, and dialogue with the Russian Orthodox Church, but continued its financial dependence on the EKD dating from the 1950s.22 Thus, the relaxation of Cold War tension after 1969 altered interests not only at the interstate level but also at the interchurch level. effect of the new cold war, 1979–85 The divergent national interests of the United States and the Federal Republic were dramatically revealed by the increase in East-West tensions in the late 1970s. After their earlier selfabsorption, the German churches focused anew on the superpower relationship. But unlike the pred´etente context, diplomacy would reflect the West German churches’ new clout and the presence of the GDR churches. During this period the German churches, East and West, became vehicles of new social 20 Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1970, 133–9, and Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1974, 255–70. 21 Paul Wee, Note to the Files, December 1982, ELCA Archive, 87–1010, 18/51. On the LWF see also the official jubilee publication by Jens Holger Schjørring, Prasanna Kumari, and Norman Hjelm, eds., From Federation to Communion: The History of the Lutheran World Federation (Minneapolis, 1997). 22 Armin Boyens, “‘Den Gegner irgendwo festhalten’: ‘Transfergesch¨afte’ der Evangelischen Kirchen in Deutschland mit der DDR-Regierung 1957–1990,” Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 6 (1993): 379–426.

movements, including those focusing on issues of peace and ecology.23 In the GDR, the Socialist Unity Party’s (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, or SED) monopoly on power conferred this role on the church by default; in the Federal Republic, the umbrella Volkskirche guaranteed that dissent in society would be heard in the churches as well. In both cases, the drop in membership and attendance added an incentive to the churches to accommodate dissenters.24 The West German churches registered doubts about NATO’s double-track decision of 197925 and called for renewed strategic arms control. Reflecting popular opinion, they worried that Europe would become the scene of a nuclear exchange and advocated a nuclear-free zone in Central Europe. The GDR churches also rejected the arms buildup but attributed it to the militarization of society and the economic interests of the military-industrial complex. They went so far as to consider declaring unarmed service in the nuclear era to be a matter of doctrine. The heightened international tensions also produced greater unity across confessional and political lines in Germany. The EKD and the Kirchenbund issued joint proclamations on various secular occasions, such as the fortieth anniversary of the end of World War II, calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons and elevating peace to a prime value.26 In a shift from positions in the 1950s, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference also inveighed against the possession of nuclear weapons. These positions reflected different views of the costs and benefits of d´etente. More than Americans, West Germans saw the benefits of increased contacts with churches in the East, in 23

See the chapter by Carl Lankowski in this section. Mark Bartholomew, “The Church, the Peace Movement, and the Social Democratic Party of Germany,” in Matthew C. Moen and Lowell S. Gustafson, eds., The Religious Challenge to the State (Philadelphia, 1992), 144–53. 25 See the chapter by Michael Broer, vol. 2, Security, 26 Joint Declaration of the EKD and Federation of Evangelical Churches in the GDR, in Kirchliches Jahrbuch, 1985, 106–17. 24

German and American Churches

particular with diaspora Protestants (i.e., Soviet Germans, Baltic Lutherans, and Protestants in Eastern Europe). During the periodic followup conferences to the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 (Belgrade in 1977 and Madrid in 1980),27 the German churches, in conjunction with other European churches, made the case that improvements in the churches’ status in the Eastern bloc were being ignored by the American negotiators, who emphasized the issue of religious dissidents. Leftist church groups took up the cause of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and Marxist guerrillas in El Salvador. However, this situation – with its parallels in the 1950s regarding the rearmament issue – was played out against a different backdrop: namely, triangular diplomacy involving the GDR churches. Bilateral ties between the GDR churches and the American churches gained increasing visibility in the late 1970s, as shown by the NCC’s assignment of a permanent representative to the GDR churches in 1978 and the exchange of high-level church delegations, including meetings with Vice President Walter Mondale in 1980.28 Both churches affirmed their opposition to the notion of justifiable war in the nuclear era and to the neutron bomb, and lent support to peace education and arms control. Perhaps in response to this new competition from their East German counterparts, the West German churches sought to revitalize their relations with the American churches. The stagnation of relations with the American churches in the 1970s also motivated the West Germans to pursue interchurch diplomacy with the Americans. In March 1981, a high-level official EKD delegation to the United States presented German views on international tensions in an ef27

See the chapter by Michael R. Lucas, vol. 2, Politics. See also Katharina Kunter, Die Kirchen im KSZE-Prozess 1968–1978 (Stuttgart, 2000). 28 A semiofficial documentation of the GDR churches’ relations with the regime is found in Christoph Demke, Manfred Falkenau, and Helmut Zeddies, eds., Zwischen Anpassung und Verweigerung: Dokumente aus der Arbeit des Bundes der Evangelischen Kirche in der DDR (Leipzig, 1995).

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fort to influence American thinking. This visit resulted in the creation of a new program to encourage study exchanges by American and German clergy, as well as an invitation for a return visit by an American delegation during Luther year in 1983. However, wary of the fragility of the transatlantic consensus in the renewed Cold War, the Germans sought to diversify their dialogue to include broader groups of American Protestants rather than rely primarily on their traditional partners, the Lutherans. In pursuit of influence, the German Volkskirchen adapted to the pluralistic American setting. The American churches’ Ostpolitik paralleled that of the U.S. government, though the motives were different. In the early 1980s, Washington sought to explore the GDR’s room for diplomatic maneuver as a means of pursuing its policy of differentiation between Moscow and Eastern Europe. The churches’ Ostpolitik, however, reflected a turn by mainline Protestant officials toward a position more critical of West German society and more favorable toward the model of “church within socialism” articulated in the GDR.29 The NCC dialogue on peace with the GDR churches was particularly critical of American and Western foreign policy.30 (Elected American church leaders, however, were less moved by the pacifism prevalent in the German peace movement and more cognizant of American public opinion, which largely supported a hard line in relations with the Soviet Union.31 )

29 Paul Wee, Random Notes on Church and Society in the GDR, Apr. 16, 1980, ELCA Archive, 87–1010, 20/51. Also, Paul Wee, letter to Helmut Gollwitzer, sympathetic to Rudi Dutschke after his funeral, Feb. 6, 1980, ELCA Archive, 87–1010 (18/51). 30 Alan Geyer, Christianity and the Superpowers (Nashville, Tenn., 1990) and Ronald Stone and Dana W. Wilbanks, eds., The Peacemaking Struggle: Militarism and Resistance (Lanham, Md., 1985). 31 At an international church conference in 1981, American Lutheran bishops rejected total disarmament as incompatible with Lutheran doctrine. Paul Wee, Notes on the Conference for Peace, Geneva, 7– 9.11.1981, ELCA Archive, 87–1056, 1/3.

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These church efforts did not succeed in altering the tough stance of the American administration toward the Soviet Union after 1979. If anything, the lobbying engendered increased criticism of the politicization of the mainline churches in both the United States and Germany. Under pressure from both left and right, the EKD issued a White Paper on Church and Democracy (1985) affirming its support for liberal democracy.32 But in Germany the critics of politicization in the church largely acted within the pluralistic structures of the Volkskirche, rather than opting for exit as in the United States. When Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet premier in 1985, the spotlight shifted from relations in the Western alliance to those in the Warsaw Pact. Ironically, the growing consensus between East and West German churches on the primacy of peace and disarmament reinforced the obduracy of the East German regime in the face of pressures for perestroika and glasnost. The grassroots politicization of the GDR churches, though delayed in comparison to the Federal Republic, gained strength and importance as new political movements used the protection of the churches to organize and eventually bring about the regime’s collapse.33 Thus given the signal effect of the fall of the Berlin

32 See Jens Motschmann and Friedrich-Wilhelm Kunneth, eds., Das neue Rotbuch Kirche (Stuttgart, 1978). 33 For the vast literature on this topic, see Gerd Kaiser, ed., Bibliographie zum Arbeitskreis “Christen, Staat, und Gesellschaft in der DDR,” 3 vols. (D¨usseldorf, 1993– 5). See also Deutscher Bundestag, ed., Materialien der Enquˆete-Kommission “Aufarbeitung von Geschichte und Folgen der SED-Diktatur in Deutschland,” 12. Wahlperiode des Deutschen Bundestages, 9 vols. in 18 pts., vol. 6: Rolle und Selbstverst¨andnis der Kirchen in den verschiedenen Phasen der SED-Diktatur (Baden-Baden, 1995); Gerhard Besier, Der SED-Staat und die Kirche 1983–1991: H¨ohenflug und Absturz (Berlin, 1995). Englishlanguage sources include John Conway, “How to Serve God in a Post-Marxist Land? East German Protestantism’s Contribution to a Peaceful Revolution,” Journal of Religious History 16 (1990): 126–39; Robert F. Goeckel, “The Evangelical-Lutheran Church and the East German Revolution,” Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe 10 (1990): 28–43.

Wall and communism in the GDR, the GDR churches indirectly caused the end of the Cold War after having earlier accepted its most salient feature, the division of Germany. Although their relations with the GDR churches had assumed the continued existence of two German states, the American churches greeted the collapse of the communist regime. Like many in West Germany, they hailed the particular contribution of the churches and the alternative groups to what was labeled a “Protestant revolution.”34

conclusion Both the American and German churches were affected by the processes of modernization, but their institutional asymmetry as free churches and Volkskirchen, respectively, resulted in different outcomes: The German churches remained in a stronger position to exercise political influence and retain institutional privileges. Changes in the international system also affected the relationship. As a result of the diffusion of power that accompanied the erosion of bipolarity, the American churches lost their earlier advantage over the German churches. The diffusion of power also was reflected in a new actor after 1969, the GDR churches, which increasingly engaged the American churches’ attention. Moreover, the churches were themselves agents in the diversification of power in contemporary international politics: namely, the rise of NGIOs as international actors alongside the nation-states, reflecting the challenge of multilateral diplomacy to traditional military power. 34

See John Burgess, “Preparing for the Fall of 1989: Religion and Democratization in East Germany,” Soundings 74 (spring/summer 1991): 45–64. The subsequent tarnishing of the reputation of East German churches as a result of revelations from the Stasi archives has, understandably, generated less heat among the American churches than among their German counterparts. See John Conway, “The ‘Stasi’ and the Churches: Between Coercion and Compromise in East German Protestantism, 1949–1989,” Journal of Church and State 36 (autumn 1994): 725–45.

German and American Churches

The German churches increased their profile and power in NGIOs, using them as vehicles of influence. Different interests and priorities arose between the German and American churches as a result of the d´etente process, and became particularly evident during the early 1980s. The German churches’ focus on continuing d´etente

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in Europe and the “new politics” issues in German society, juxtaposed with the interests of the United States as a global power and the domestically oriented interests of the American churches, led to tensions in the bilateral relationship that would be eased only by the end of the Cold War.

chapter eight

The Twisted Road Toward Rapprochement American Jewry and Germany Until Reunification Shlomo Shafir

Holocaust consciousness that had started in the wake of the Eichmann trial. The ascent of the survivors and their second generation to influential positions in American Jewish communal life and the rise of the right to power in Israel were other important factors that would affect the American Jewish community’s difficult task of coping with West Germany and its society.

The late 1960s saw major changes on the American and German scene brought about by the growing anti-Vietnam protests and the antiestablishment German student movement. It would take seven more years for the United States to extricate itself from its military involvement in Southeast Asia; meanwhile, the Democrats’ electoral debacle in 1968 ushered in a long tenure of Republican administrations, to be interrupted for only a single term by the administration of Jimmy Carter. In West Germany, the student revolt hastened the end of the short-lived “Grand Coalition” and its replacement by a left-of-center social democratic– liberal majority that was to remain in power until 1982. Israel, provoked by Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, emerged victorious from the Six Day War, which enhanced its status as a regional power in the Middle East and its role as a de facto ally of the United States in the East-West confrontation. During the short military campaign, Israel enjoyed broad public German support. However, its refusal to withdraw from the occupied territories and its increasing reliance on the United States caused it to lose sympathy among the German and European Left, parts of whom joined the proPalestinian anti-Israel camp. The breakup of the Jewish-Black partnership in the United States civil-rights movement, the exaggerated American Jewish anxieties regarding Israel’s existence in 1967, and its legitimate fears during the Yom Kippur War in 1973 strengthened Jewish ethnic identity and contributed to the growth of

confronting kiesinger and brandt After having been accustomed to West German anti-Nazi or at least non-Nazi heads of government such as Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard, American Jewish spokesmen at first were shocked by the election of Kurt Georg Kiesinger, a former member of the Nazi party and an official at the foreign ministry under Joachim von Ribbentrop, as chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and head of the “Grand Coalition” between it and the Social Democratic Party (SPD).1 Max Horkheimer, who still advised the American Jewish Committee (AJC) from Germany and who personally respected Kiesinger as an honest man and a good democrat, termed his election “the termination of confession of guilt”2 – an 1 Benjamin Epstein, Nov. 11, 1966, ADL Archives, New York, ADL FC Germany; NCRAC, Julian Freeman to membership, Dec. 8, 1966, YIVO Archives, New York, AJC Records, FAD-1, 1963–1970, box 25. 2 Horkheimer to John Slawson, Dec. 31, 1966, YIVO, AJC Records, FAD-1, 1963–1970, box 25.

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assessment that would prove premature. However, most American Jewish leaders subsequently met with Kiesinger as they had met with his predecessors and would meet with his successors. Representatives of the Claims Conference3 demanded further improvement of the indemnification payments, others discussed Israel’s needs and the extension of the statute of limitations, which the Bundestag eventually granted. Kiesinger, for his part, indicated his concern about the deepening Soviet infiltration of the Middle East, a concern not shared by his Social Democratic coalition partners, who were more keen to promote East-West d´etente. Like Adenauer and Erhard, Kiesinger hoped to enlist Jewish influence in the American public in favor of a more resolute anti-Soviet policy. In his opinion, that would be a reward for the spontaneous support West Germany showed for Israel during the Six Day War and its continuous economic and political backing of the Jewish state.4 Until the late 1970s, therefore, the relationship between organized American Jewry and Germany was dominated by issues concerning Israel. American Jewish leaders had met Willy Brandt, the SPD chairman and foreign minister in Kiesinger’s cabinet, during his earlier visits to the United States. As leader of the Social Democratic opposition, he had explained to them in 1965 his party’s preference for a multilateral arms deal instead of the semi-secret arrangement with Israel that had collapsed at the beginning of the same year. The Jewish community greeted Brandt’s appointment as foreign minister because of his unequivocal anti-Nazi record. During the Six Day War, Brandt made clear that the Federal Republic of Germany’s official policy of nonintervention did not prevent it from taking a moral stance in favor of Israel – a distinction welcomed both by Israel

and the Diaspora.5 Yet this expression of sympathy was soon balanced by Brandt’s stressing the legitimate interests of the Arab nations, some of which had started to renew the diplomatic links with the Federal Republic that they had broken off after the belated establishment of GermanIsraeli relations in 1965. The ambiguity of the American Jewish community’s attitude toward Brandt became more evident after his election as chancellor in the left-of-center coalition with the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) as junior partner. A memorandum by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith (ADL) noted that the Brandt government was composed of men with a clean past and expressed the hope that any changes in its foreign policy would be in “nuances” and not fundamental. Nonetheless, doubts regarding the new coalition’s impact on Israel were also voiced, particularly since Brandt’s desire for a rapprochement with the Eastern bloc might have a “softening effect” on Germany’s overall policies, including those with the Middle East; moreover, as an anti-Nazi resistance fighter he would be less solicitous than Kiesinger, who always attempted to live down his past.6 As Helmut Sonnenfeldt, Henry Kissinger’s assistant during his service as President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser, later recalled, Brandt’s emissary and close adviser Egon Bahr told Kissinger immediately after the change of government in Bonn that in striving for more independence, it would no longer concentrate on Israel so exclusively as its predecessors.7 The German government’s attitude was also affected by less friendly positions toward Israel in the framework of European Political Cooperation among the six, and afterward nine, members of the European Community (EC). In talks with American Jewish leaders, prominent German 5

3

See the chapter by Shlomo Shafir, vol. 1, Society. B’nai B’rith, Office of the President, A Visit to Germany, Mar. 1968, B’nai B’rith Archives (hereafter BBA), Washington, D.C., Germany File; News from the Committee, Sept. 6, 1968, AJC Archives, New York, BGX 67–68, Germany/West. 4

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Verhandlungen des deutschen Bundestages, 5th leg. period, 111 sess., June 7, 1967, 5267–88, 5303. 6 ADL, Owen S. Rachleff and Arnold Forster to regional offices, Oct. 3, 1969, and Jack Baker and Owen S. Rachleff, Nov. 20, 1969, ADL Archives, New York, ADL FC Germany. 7 American Jewish Committee, The Jewish Dimension in German-American Relations: Perceptions and Realities (New York, 1997), 20.

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Social Democrats tried to dispel Jewish fears with regard to the social democratic–liberal coalition’s Middle East policy. However, despite the impact of Brandt’s genuflection at the Warsaw ghetto memorial in 1970 and his glowing reception in Israel in summer 1973, the questions remained. Jewish disappointment was also voiced at meetings with German diplomats in that period; the Jewish leader Joachim Prinz, for example, complained to Ambassador Berndt von Staden that some of the former German diplomats in the United States had been easier to deal with because their Nazi past gave them problems of conscience in regard to Jews.8 Traditionally, American Jewry’s main concern in the German political scene was the extreme right. In the 1960s, the organizations were disappointed by the success of the German National Democratic Party (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or NPD) in various state elections. The AJC even raised the issue of the NPD with Undersecretary of State Eugene Rostow, but was told that it was essentially a German matter and that American interference would be counterproductive. Rostow rejected suggestions that the United States should confront German nationalism by taking a stand against German unification and Bonn’s unwillingness to recognize the Oder-Neisse border with Poland.9 Organized Jewry paid comparatively little attention to radicalized leftists, most of whom had joined the ranks of Israel’s opponents after the Six Day War and participated in vocal anti-American demonstrations.10 Even before that war, well-versed observers like Prinz complained about the changing attitudes among socialist students with regard to the German past and the historic responsibility

they refused to take upon themselves.11 Young American Jewish intellectuals who had come to Germany in the 1970s to conduct research on the Frankfurt School’s “Critical Theory,” which had influenced both them and their German counterparts, were also disappointed by the German leftists’ behavior. They concluded that the anti-Vietnam/anti-American sentiment among them and their identification with the Third World revolutionary movement were a much more constitutive aspect of their consciousness than the revolt against their fathers and the German Nazi past. Finally, the integration of many 68ers into the SPD had a longterm negative impact on the image of Israel within the party, especially among its younger members. The strengthening of the U.S.-Israeli security and strategic relationship after 1967 also contributed to the estrangement on the left.12 American Jewish disappointment with the Brandt-led coalition peaked during the Yom Kippur War, when the German government, as a “demonstration of neutrality,” refused in late October 1973 to allow further use of Bremerhaven for American supplies to Israel, although Brandt had earlier rejected his Foreign Ministry’s request to prohibit the use of those facilities. However, the role of American Jewish organizations in this confrontation was marginal. The Nixon administration provided aid to Israel as an endangered partner, and American Jews reacted as American citizens: upset by the lack of solidarity by the West German ally. After that war, West Germany’s differences with Israel drove the wedge between the American Jewish community and Germany even deeper, although bilateral German-Israeli cooperation continued and even expanded into other areas. 11

8

Jewish leadership meeting with Amb. Berndt von Staden, Sept. 11, 1973, ADL Archives, New York, ADL FC Germany. 9 Sandy Bolz to Slawson, Mar. 29, 1967, notes on meeting with Undersecretary Eugene Rostow and Deputy Undersecretary Fay D. Kohler, Mar. 10, 1967, YIVO Archives, New York, AJC Records, FAD-1, 1963–1970, box 26. 10 See the chapter by Philipp Gassert in this section.

Report on meeting with Brandt, Feb. 9, 1967, New York, YIVO Archives, New York, AJC Records, 1963– 1970, box 25; Forster to Epstein, Feb. 10, 1967, ADL Archives, New York, ADL FC Germany. 12 Anson Rabinbach, “The Jewish Question in the German Question,” New German Critique, no. 44 (spring-summer 1988): 159–92; Jack Zipes, “The Vicissitudes of Being Jewish in West Germany,” in Anson Rabinbach and Jack Zipes, eds., Germans and Jews Since the Holocaust: The Changing Situation in West Germany (New York, 1986), 27–49.

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The atmosphere worsened further during most of Helmut Schmidt’s chancellorship, during the last years of labor’s hegemony in Israel, and especially after the ascent of Israel’s right to power. Schmidt recognized in public speeches Germany’s historic responsibility, but his own lack of any emotional involvement made him a more difficult partner than his predecessor. For a number of years he evaded meetings with American Jewish delegations.13 Although Yitzhak Rabin became the first Israeli prime minister to visit Germany in 1975, Schmidt never paid an official return visit. The climate deteriorated even more after Menachem Begin succeeded Rabin. There were recriminations between both heads of government originating in Begin’s reference to Schmidt’s wartime service in the Wehrmacht.14 In 1981, Schmidt antagonized Israel and the American Jewish establishment by making pro-Palestinian statements at the end of his visit to Riyadh without mentioning German responsibility for the Jewish catastrophe. Further, although it was eventually scuttled by influential opponents in his own party, Schmidt supported the controversial plan to sell Leopard tanks to Saudi Arabia. A delegation of the Presidents Conference, acting according to Israel’s instructions, castigated Schmidt at a subsequent meeting,15 and the ADL ordered its officials to express “sentiments of outrage” at all cities where German consulates were located.16 The moderate-liberal 13 For example, at the bicentennial celebrations of the Declaration of Independence in 1976, no meeting between Schmidt and the American Jewish leadership took place. Instead, an ADL delegation was received by State Secretary Maria Schlei. Lawrence S. Leshnik to A. Forster, July 19, 1976, on leadership meeting with Maria Schlei, July 15, 1976, ADL Archives, New York, ADL FC Germany. 14 Schmidt was defended by Edgar Bronfman, who had just been elected president of the WJC. Edgar Bronfman, The Making of a Jew (New York, 1996), 99–101. 15 Report on the meeting between Schmidt and nine representatives of the Presidents Conference, May 21, 1981, Archiv der sozialen Demokratie, Friedrich-EbertStiftung, Bonn, Schmidt Depositum, 6770. 16 ADL, A. Forster, memorandum to regional offices, May 18, 1981, ADL Archives, New York, ADL FC Germany.

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AJC found itself in a quandary. Although it did not dare challenge the Israeli government, it refused to join public attacks on the German chancellor, who had been instrumental in the Bundestag’s decision to abolish the statute of limitations and had confidentially discussed a number of important issues with the AJC. One of these issues was Jewish support for the ratification of SALT II by the U.S. Congress. In his view, the change of Soviet policy with regard to Jews and other emigrants was not fundamental, but rather an act of expedience linked to Moscow’s interest in SALT; without it, all efforts to increase emigration would be fruitless.17

exchange programs as a new link The deterioration of Israeli-German relations in the Begin-Schmidt era, the declining effectiveness of the American Jewish-GermanIsraeli triangle, and the growing impact of Holocaust consciousness among the American public18 caused West German diplomats to redouble their efforts to open up direct American Jewish-German channels. Exchange programs were soon established; though not evading Israel, they focused mainly on bilateral issues and interests. Despite West Germany’s close political and military alliance with the United States, policymakers in Bonn saw the critical attitude of the American Jewish community, due to its influence in American public opinion, as a stumbling block in shaping a more central international role for the Federal Republic. Softening this attitude required willing partners from the American Jewish side, who were soon found. Particularly for the AJC, which had lost its paramount position of earlier years and was superseded in different fields by the Presidents Conference, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, these 17

AJC meeting with Schmidt, June 8, 1979, New York; Robert Goldmann to Richard Maass, June 15, 1979; and Maass to Goldmann, June 30, 1979, all in AJC Archives, New York, box 79, Germany/West. 18 See the chapter by Jeffrey Peck in this section.

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new American Jewish-German links became an interesting challenge. The ADL, which had conducted a first exchange program with German counterparts in the early 1960s, and B’nai B’rith followed suit, but AJC remained the leading partner. On the German side, first the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and then the Friedrich Ebert Foundation became involved in several programs; and, in the early 1990s, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and the AJC cooperated in projects promoting democracy in former communist Eastern Europe. In the latter 1980s, Atlantik-Br¨ucke, the German counterpart of the American Council on Germany, started periodical high-level conferences together with the AJC, which sometimes also included Israeli delegations. The turning point in this new chapter of American Jewish-German institutional relations was the presentation to Chancellor Schmidt in June 1979 of an AJC draft concerning an exchange program for future leaders in the Federal Republic and the American Jewish community.19 In order to provide young American Jewish leaders with a more objective view of democratic Germany, groups from a variety of professional fields, as well as those active in the community, were to be invited to visit. Upon their return, they were to transmit their knowledge and experience to others in the Jewish community as well as to broader sections of American society. Conversely, Germans of similar age groups and professional backgrounds – younger members of the Bundestag and regional legislators, educators, journalists, and representatives of the Protestant and Catholic churches – would come to the United States to study the American Jewish community and its contribution to the social and political life of America, its history and future. Seminars for the German guests would be held in New York. The participants would also visit other major communities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia and meet with American Jewish legislators in Washington.20 19

AJC meeting with Schmidt, June 8, 1979. Exchange Program for Future Leaders in the Federal Republic of Germany and the American Jewish 20

The AJC memorandum to the German chancellor had been preceded by informal contacts between West German diplomats in the United States and some influential AJC executives. William S. Trosten played an important role in forging the new relationship; Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, AJC director of interreligious affairs and afterward head of its international affairs department, also was involved in these contacts. Among their counterparts in the German consulate general in New York was Wolf Calebow, who later served in the embassy in Washington. After the AJC leadership returned to a more cautious attitude toward its German contacts, Trosten retired from the organization and, together with former AJC president Theodor Ellenoff, established the proGerman Armonk Institute, whose purpose was to promote friendly relations between American Jews and non-Jews and Germany. It enjoyed the strong backing of the Bonn government and has since been instrumental in bringing American high school and college teachers to Germany to acquaint them with its politics and society.21 However, as a private group it was not representative of the community, and the AJC remained the main partner in the mutual exchange. The new American Jewish-German relationship served Bonn’s interest in lessening criticism and furthering understanding for Germany on the part of the American Jewish community. Although reaching common ground was still a difficult task for the participants,22 the network of organizational links and personal acquaintanceships widened and became stronger.

Committee, AJC, German Jewish relations file, Blaustein Library, New York. 21 See Wolf Calebow, Auf dem Weg zur Normalisierung: 15 Jahre Dialog mit amerikanischen Juden (Berlin, 1999). 22 For example, summarizing the first AJC/AtlantikBr¨ucke conference in 1987, the American participants stated that both as Americans and as Jews, their feelings with regard to Germany were still negative, particularly because of the memory of the Holocaust. AtlantikBr¨ucke/American Jewish Committee, “American Jews and the Federal Republic of Germany: Problems and Opportunities,” report on a conference in Bonn-Bad Godesberg, Nov. 21–23, 1987, AJC Archives, New York.

The Twisted Road Toward Rapprochement

It helped American Jewry to overcome the American-German-Jewish crisis over the Bitburg imbroglio in 1985 and also accept German unification in 1990. American Jewish leaders were largely satisfied with their first meetings with Helmut Kohl, Schmidt’s conservative successor, despite arms deals with Arab nations and German business interests there.23 In spring 1985, however, the American Jewish-German relationship was traumatized by President Ronald Reagan’s and Kohl’s visit to the German military cemetery at Bitburg, where, among others, a number of SS soldiers were interred.24 In the interest of strengthening ties with the Federal Republic of Germany, Reagan had accepted Kohl’s invitation to a public demonstration of AmericanGerman rapprochement forty years after the end of World War II. The Jewish effort to block the Bitburg visit ended in failure despite support from both houses of Congress and the East Coast press. Shimon Peres, Israel’s prime minister at that time, took a rather subdued stand on the issue; because Israel wanted neither to antagonize the Kohl government nor endanger the good relations between President Reagan and American Jews and Israel, the affair was soon put aside, though not forgotten. Both the Presidents Conference and the AJC took a conciliatory attitude. An exception was the World Jewish Congress (WJC), which accused Jewish community leaders of engaging in a “whitewash” and acting as defenders of the Reagan administration.25 Bitburg and the subsequent campaign against Kurt Waldheim, the former UN secretary general who was elected Austrian president in 1986, indicated a major departure 23 Kenneth J. Bialkin, Presidents Conference, to Nathan Perlmutter, ADL, Nov. 16, 1982, ADL Archives, New York, ADL FC Germany. 24 Two volumes contain a wealth of material about the Bitburg controversy: Geoffrey Hartman, ed., Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective (Bloomington, Ind., 1986), and Ilya Levkov, ed., Bitburg and Beyond: Encounters in American, German, and Jewish History (New York, 1987); see also the chapter by Jeffrey Peck in this section. 25 Levkov, Bitburg and Beyond, 313–14; Walter Ruby, “WJC Head Angered by Jews Coming to Reagan’s Defense,” Jewish World, May 20, 1985.

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from the organization’s moderate course. In the long run, the WJC would translate its new activism into spearheading its campaigns for the restitution of Jewish property in Eastern Europe, the recovery of Jewish assets from Switzerland and other neutral countries, and reopening the issue of payment for slave labor by large German industrial firms. Kohl, who during his first years in office antagonized the Israeli public and government during his visit there in 1984 and subsequently clashed with the American Jewish community over Bitburg, later improved his relationship with Jewish counterparts in spite of continuing differences of opinion. He was respected by the German Jewish community and during his visit to Israel in 1995 was celebrated as Israel’s best friend.26 In contrast to the ups and downs in its relations with Bonn, the American Jewish community’s relations with communist East Germany were uniformly poor. The Cold War, the lack of American diplomatic ties with East Berlin until 1974, the persistent anti-Israel stance of the communist regime since the early 1950s, its refusal to share German moral responsibility for the Holocaust or to satisfy Jewish demands for restitution of property, indemnification, and recompense – all these factors contributed to the deadlock. But even as the East-West climate gradually improved, and despite repeated attempts by the Claims Conference and other organizations, no breakthrough was achieved with the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the area of Jewish claims and interests. Only in the latter 1980s did the East German leadership begin to court American Jewry because of its influence in public opinion and in Congress. This also brought about a slow improvement in the GDR’s public attitude toward Israel. After early contacts with the AJC, the main efforts were directed toward the WJC, especially because of that organization’s post-Bitburg attacks on the West German chancellor. However, the acceptance of East Germany’s share in historic responsibility for the murder of the Jewish 26

J¨org Bremer, “Noch nie hat Israel einen lebenden Staatsmann auf diese Weise geehrt,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 9, 1995.

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people came only after the demise of the communist regime, when German unification was all but inevitable.27

assenting to german reunification German unification, though explicitly supported by the administration of George Bush and a great majority of the American public, enjoyed less support among American Jews. In April 1990, 77 percent of Americans favored German reunification, while 42 percent of American Jews opposed it.28 The surprising rapidity of the unification process was emotionally painful for some Jews, who had come to regard German division as a kind of historic punishment for Hitler’s war of aggression and genocide. These feelings were reflected by Jewish columnists and authors in both the general and Jewish press, though there were also voices of support.29 Eventually, however, nearly all Jewish organizations endorsed unification.30 The positive record of West Germany – a stable democratic nation and a trusted ally of the 27 Neues Deutschland, Apr. 14–15, 1990. For more details, see Angelika Timm, Jewish Claims Against East Germany: Moral Obligations and Pragmatic Policy (Budapest, 1997), and Hammer, Zirkel, Davidstern: Das gest¨orte Verh¨altnis der DDR zu Zionismus und Staat Israel (Bonn, 1997). For a much more critical view, see Michael Wolffsohn, Die Deutschland-Akte: Juden und Deutsche in Ost und West: Tatsachen und Legenden (Munich, 1997). 28 Arthur M. Hanhardt Jr., “Die deutsche Vereinigung im Spiegelbild der amerikanischen o¨ ffentlichen Meinung,” in Wolfgang-Uwe Friedrich, ed., USA und die Deutsche Frage 1945–1990 (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), intro. and 407–17. 29 A. M. Rosenthal in the New York Times, Feb. 4, 1990, and Mar. 11, 1990; Michael Lerner, “‘No’ to German Reunification,” Tikkun 5 (Mar.–Apr. 1990): 6, 121–2; Alan M. Dershowitz, Chutzpah (Boston, 1991), 137–8; Cynthia Ozick in “The Writers’ Call to Conscience,” Washington Post, Feb. 12. 1990. 30 AJC, Statement on German Unification, May 17, 1990, Blaustein Library, New York; Seymour D. Reich, “Coming to Terms with a United Germany,” Jewish Monthly 104 (June–July 1990): 2; German Unification: A Fact Sheet, prepared by Warren Eisenberg, Apr. 12, 1990, B’nai B’rith Archives, Washington, D.C., Germany file.

United States – on reparations, restitution, and indemnification, as well as its steady support for Israel, made that adjustment easier, especially when compared with the negative record of the GDR in all these areas. Israel itself, after a short confrontation between right-wing Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Chancellor Kohl, also adjusted to the new situation.31 Even the WJC, which the GDR had approached for help in securing its survival, acquiesced to German unification. However, the WJC and other Jewish organizations were disappointed by how the Bonn government framed the preamble of the unification treaty. Rather than acknowledge the Nazi horrors, it merely made an oblique reference to the German people’s responsibility “before history.” Jewish protests to the State Department with regard to that omission were of no avail.32 German unification and the enhanced status of the united nation caused a number of changes in the American Jewish-German relationship. Whereas the effectiveness of American Jewry in influencing American public opinion toward Germany was somewhat reduced, the direct American Jewish-German contacts and common programs persisted. The German government continued to take the American Jewish voice into account, as shown by the ongoing meetings between delegations of Jewish dignitaries and Germany’s political leadership. Israel was still a topic at talks between American Jewish leaders and German officials, but its significance in the triangular relationship declined as a result of Israel’s rather solid political, economic, and strategic cooperation with unified Germany. When a spate of antiforeigner and anti-Semitic incidents occurred in Germany in 31

See Bundesminister des Innern, Dokumente zur Deutschlandpolitik: Deutsche Einheit: Sonderedition aus den Akten des Bundeskanzleramtes 1989/90 (Munich, 1998), 594–5, 632. (On the improvement of the atmosphere following the visit by Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Arens in February 1990, see ibid., 839–42). 32 Michael Y. Bodemann, “Federal Republic of Germany,” in American Jewish Year Book 92 (1992): 360–62; Abraham Foxman to Secretary of State James Baker, Aug. 29, 1990 and R. G. H. Seitz to Foxman, Sept. 28, 1990, ADL Archives, New York, ADL FC Germany.

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the early 1990s, American Jewry revealed more sensitivity than Israel33 ; the same was true of the prolonged German debate about the construction of a Holocaust memorial in Berlin.34 These developments increased American Jewish interest in the Jewish community in Germany, whose numbers and importance had grown as a result of the continuing immigration from the countries of the former Soviet Union and Germany’s stronger role in Europe. In 1998 the AJC chose Berlin as the seat of its new European office. The 33

Memorandum from Rabbi Andrew Baker, Robert Goldmann, and Warren Eisenberg to Jewish community organizations, Dec. 14, 1992, YIVO Archives, New York, AJC Records, AJC, DHX 1988–94, box 2; Adina Voges, “Die Skepsis bleibt, trotz langer Debatte,” Allgemeine J¨udische Wochenzeitung, Feb. 18, 1993. The AJC also advised the German Jewish community to combat antiSemitism by building coalitions with liberal progressive forces and the churches, but although such cooperation took place in reaction to special events, it was never institutionalized. 34 See the chapters by Abraham H. Foxman of the ADL in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Dec. 30, 1998; by Israel Singer of the WJC in the S¨uddeutsche Zeitung, Jan. 5, 1999; and by David Harris of the AJC in the S¨uddeutsche Zeitung, Jan. 13, 1999.

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election of Ignatz Bubis, chairman of the Central Council of the Jews in Germany, as president of the European Jewish Congress provided for a congress liaison office at the Leo Baeck House, the seat of the Central Council. The Ronald Lauder Foundation, which worked on issues related to the integration of the newcomers from Eastern Europe, had already opened its office in 1996. The continuous institutional American Jewish-German exchanges and the acceptance of the German Jewish community’s permanence and legitimacy were also accompanied by a gradual improvement in the American Jewish opinion of Germany in general.35 This mellowing of anti-German prejudices among individuals, however, should not be misinterpreted as a step toward closing the tragic chapter of the Holocaust. 35 In 1998, 30 percent of American Jews had a favorable opinion of Germany, 32 percent had an unfavorable opinion, and 69 percent believed that Germany was making sincere efforts to deal with the legacy of the Holocaust. AJC, 1998 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion (New York, 1999), 20–1.

chapter nine

Difference and Convergence Immigration Policy in the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany Ulrike Fischer-Inverardi Translated by Tradukas

Global migration movements and large refugee populations have become increasingly characteristic of the decades since the mid-1960s. Wealthy industrialized countries thus face the pressing problem of developing a coordinated immigration policy. The ideas that shape their policies and the reactions to migration movements are not determined solely by the political and economic situation prevailing in countries that are host to these newcomers. They also depend on a combination of international factors and the self-images of these countries. The immigration policies of the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) are thus quite different. Although immigration quotas and criteria are repeatedly contested in the United States and sometimes subjected to significant changes, there is a broad consensus that America is a nation of immigrants. The Federal Republic is different in this regard, not least because of its conception of national identity. An oft-repeated argument in the debates of the late 1980s emphasized that Germany was not an “immigration country” (Einwanderungsland). Differences notwithstanding, there has been a degree of convergence resulting from similar challenges, including, for example, huge numbers of refugees, labor migration, and conflicts of the Cold War and post–Cold War era.

immigration policy in a nation of immigrants: the united states Three main areas of concern dominate U.S. immigration policy: immigration legislation in the narrow sense, that is, laws regulating the extent and form of legal immigration; laws that deal primarily with illegal immigration; and finally, legislation on refugees and asylum. In the area of immigration legislation, passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments in 1965 was one of the most momentous decisions of the century. Not only did the amendments signal a shift in public opinion on race and ethnicity tied to the civil-rights movement, but they also opened the way for a wave of “new” immigrants. A distinct rise in annual immigration rates – 3.3 million legal immigrants entered the country between 1961 and 1970, 4.5 million between 1971 and 1980, and 6 million between 1981 and 1990 – was accompanied by a dramatic shift in these newcomers’ countries of origin. Between 1951 and 1960, 66 percent of legal immigrants came from Europe and Canada, 6 percent from Asia, 12 percent from Mexico, and 14 percent from the rest of Latin America. In the 1970s, however, Latin America and Asia together accounted for the largest proportion by far, 75 percent. This trend intensified between 1981 and 1990: Only

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14 percent of the legal immigrants were of European or Canadian origin, 44 percent were from Asia, 13 percent from Mexico, and 27 percent from the rest of Latin America.1 In the years that followed, U.S. immigration policy was marked by two laws that essentially confirmed the policy direction taken in the amendments of 1965. By subjecting both hemispheres equally to an annual maximum of 290,000 immigrants and a preference system, the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1976 and 1978 now followed the intention of the 1965 law of eliminating preferences on the basis of potential immigrants’ country of origin. In the second half of the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s – as growing numbers of illegal immigrants2 and refugees entered the country – the focus of political debate shifted to the issue of migrants not affected by the immigration legislation. The growing numbers of illegal immigrants who were apprehended and increasing concern about the social and economic repercussions of growing legal and illegal immigration led to greater public criticism. In a 1977 survey, 72 percent of those questioned favored punishment of employers who employed illegal immigrants; in 1981, 65 percent came out in favor of a reduction in immigration; and in 1982, 84 percent expressed their concern at the number of illegal immigrants.3 The sharp rise in the number of illegal immigrants that began in 1965 was due in part to the termination of the “bracero program” at the 1 See Barry Edmonston and Jeffrey S. Passel, “Immigration and Race: Recent Trends in Immigration to the United States,” in Barry Edmonston and Jeffrey S. Passel, eds., Immigration and Ethnicity: The Integration of America’s Newest Arrivals (Washington, D.C., 1994), 41; see also Reed Ueda, Postwar Immigrant America: A Social History (Boston, 1994). 2 Estimates give the number of illegal immigrants living in the United States in the mid-1980s as between three to five million; see Michael D. Hoefer, “Background of U.S. Immigration Policy Reform,” in Francisco L. Rivera-Batiz, Selig L. Sechzer, and Ira N. Gang, eds., U.S. Immigration Policy Reform in the 1980s: A Preliminary Assessment (New York, 1991), 18. 3 See Francisco L. Rivera-Batiz, “Introduction,” in ibid., 2.

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end of 1964. Mexican seasonal workers who until then had worked legally in American agriculture now entered the United States illegally. The U.S. economy’s demand for cheap and flexible labor, the population rise in many Latin American states, and the economic stagnation experienced by many Third World countries further contributed to this trend. Rising numbers of refugees across the globe led to the admittance of far more refugees than the anticipated annual maximum of 17,400 provided for in the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments. They came from Middle Eastern as well as communist states, particularly Vietnam and Cuba. Between 1975 and 1980, close to 500,000 refugees arrived from Southeast Asia, and between 1960 and 1980, around 800,000 people fled from Cuba for U.S. shores. Altogether, more than one million people came to the United States as refugees between 1975 and 1987.4 The Refugee Act passed in 1980 rested on a new definition of “refugee.” The ideological and geographical preferences of the earlier definition, which had been shaped by the Cold War, were eliminated, and the new definition followed the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Refugee status was to be accorded to people who had a “wellfounded fear of persecution” based on their political convictions, race, religion, membership in a particular social group, or nationality. The law regulated the constant influx of refugees, laid down the procedure for accepting refugees in emergencies, and took precautionary measures for the eventual resettlement of refugees. In addition, it separated the admission of refugees from the immigration system; the annual maximum for legal immigration was then lowered to 270,000 persons (plus immediate relatives). The Refugee Act did not lay down a fixed annual limit for the number of refugees; rather, the 4 See Michael C. LeMay, Anatomy of A Public Policy: The Reform of Contemporary American Immigration Law (Westport, Conn., 1994), 15, and David E. Simcox, “Overview: A Time of Reform and Appraisal,” in David E. Simcox, ed., U.S. Immigration in the 1980s: Reappraisal and Reform (Boulder, Colo., 1988), 53.

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U.S. president’s powers – in consultation with Congress – were extended, so that he or she could also determine the regions from which the United States would accept refugees on special humanitarian grounds. The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) passed in fall 1986 was an attempt to stem illegal immigration. The approach adopted in the IRCA became a cornerstone of U.S. immigration policy: remove the economic incentives for illegal immigration (the most important factor), while at the same time legalizing the status of long-resident illegal immigrants. Two provisions were central to the IRCA. First, the law instituted so-called employer requirements and sanctions banning the employment of illegal immigrants, which had long been demanded. Employers who violated the law faced the threat of fines and/or imprisonment. These sanctions were accompanied by two legalization programs, the second major provision of the IRCA. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has received more than three million applications under these two programs. The Legally Authorized Workers (LAWs) program gave illegal immigrants who had been living in the United States continuously since at least 1982 the opportunity to apply within one year for an unlimited residence permit and thus legalize their status. The second legalization program, which terminated in November 1988, made it possible under certain conditions for agricultural workers (so-called Special Agricultural Workers, or SAWs) to acquire initially temporary and then permanent residence permits.5 After passage and implementation of the IRCA, the focus of legislative activity shifted again – toward a reform of legal immigration. Providing for a significant increase in the vol-

5 Under the aegis of the LAWs Program, 1.76 million illegal immigrants applied for legal residence status; around 95 percent of the applications were approved. Approximately 1.28 million immigrants applied for SAW status; by the end of August 1990, almost 750,000 applications for temporary residence status had been approved. See Hoefer, U.S. Immigration Policy Reform, 29–36.

ume of legal immigration and reform of the preference system, the Immigration Act of 1990 represented a fundamental revision of previous legislation. It raised the annual ceiling for legal immigration to a flexible upper limit of 700,000 (675,000 as of 1995) and reformed the preference system. Preferences were now divided into three main categories, of which the immigration of family members (with more than 70 percent) remains the largest. Under the Immigration Act, 140,000 visas (20 percent and, since 1995, 20.74 percent) are allotted annually to the category of employment-based immigration. The third group of people given preference under the Immigration Act are the so-called diversity immigrants, to whom 40,000 – and, since 1995 – 55,000 visas have been allotted annually; these are meant to facilitate the immigration of people from countries from which little immigration to the United States has occurred since 1965. Beyond these measures, the Immigration Act revised the political and ideological bases of exclusion and deportation, a shift that was doubtlessly tied to the changed international political constellation.

“policy on foreigners” in an immigration country: the federal republic of germany The Federal Republic lacked any immigration policy comparable to that of the United States; instead, there was a “policy on foreigners” (Ausl¨anderpolitik) that neither conceptually nor institutionally took account of the fact that Germany had de facto been an immigration country for quite some time.6 Between 1968 and 1990, the Federal Republic was the destination for several migration movements. These included “guest workers” recruited to work in the Federal Republic until 1973, their family members, 6

See Claus Leggewie, “Institutionelle Rahmenbedingungen f¨ur eine Einwanderungskonzeption der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” in Forschungsinstitut der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, ed., Einwanderungskonzeption f¨ur die Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Bonn, 1995), 172–4.

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refugees and asylum-seekers from the Third World and Eastern Europe, as well as ethnic German “resettlers” (Aussiedler) from Eastern Europe, who have immigrated to the Federal Republic in growing numbers since the 1980s. A new type of migration developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s: “guest workers” from Central and Eastern Europe allowed to enter the country for limited periods. Citizens of other European Union (EU) countries have a special status because no limitations may be imposed on their right to enter the country to pursue gainful employment. And finally, the Federal Republic was the destination of an inner-German flow of migration from East to West in the late 1980s, which – despite having the structural characteristics of immigration – was hardly discussed and dealt with as such. In 1989, labor migration and the subsequent arrival of family members accounted for 20 percent of the immigrants entering the Federal Republic; 32.6 percent were people from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) moving to the FRG, 35.8 were ethnic Germans from the east, and 11.5 percent were asylum-seekers.7 Overall, the proportion of foreigners in the residential population in the Federal Republic rose from 1.2 percent in 1960 to 4.9 percent in 1970 and 7.2 percent in 1980. In 1988, the figure was 7.3 percent.8 The result of the labor recruitment programs (Anwerbevertr¨age) of the 1950s and 1960s was that until 1973 a large percentage of migrants came for work.9 They were at first the focus of a government policy on foreigners that was oriented toward the economic and social requirements of 7

See J¨urgen Fijalkowski, “Migration in Gesamteuropa: Sechs Thesen zu Nationalismus und Ausl¨anderpolitik,” in Bernhard Blanke, ed., Zuwanderung und Asyl in der Konkurrenzgesellschaft (Opladen, 1993), 100. 8 See Klaus J. Bade, “Einheimische Ausl¨ander. ‘Gastarbeiter’ – Dauerg¨aste – Einwanderer,” in Klaus J. Bade, ed., Deutsche im Ausland – Fremde in Deutschland: Migration in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3d ed. (Munich, 1993), 395. 9 In 1973, the number of foreigners in the workforce reached its highpoint, just under 2.6 million; see Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Thomas Schmid, Heimat Babylon: Das Wagnis der multikulturellen Demokratie (Hamburg, 1993), 100.

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the Federal Republic. This policy long ignored the fact that a stable minority of foreigners had put down roots in the country. The government’s attitude was manifested in the partially successful attempts in the early 1970s to limit the influx of foreign workers. Recruitment of labor from abroad was halted in November 1973 against the backdrop of the oil crisis. Since that time, government policy has aimed at a limited form of integration of the foreigners living legally in the Federal Republic and at restricting further immigration from countries outside the European Community (EC)/EU. Halting labor recruitment abroad was successful in achieving the goal of lowering the proportion of foreigners in the labor force; the number sank from more than 2.6 million foreign employees in 1973 to something more than 1.8 million in 1978, and around 1.7 million in 1989. However, an unintentional consequence was that halting labor recruitment abroad brought only a slight, short-term decline in the number of foreigners residing in the country; overall the number of foreigners living in the Federal Republic increased slightly, going from 3.97 million (1973) to 3.98 million (1979). By 1989, the population of foreigners living in Germany had risen to 4.9 million. Halting labor recruitment abroad curtailed the transnational fluctuation of foreign labor. Although fewer new “guest workers” came to the Federal Republic, those who were already there often arranged for their families to come and join them, and they attained a more secure residence status. The proportion of the foreign population in the Federal Republic in gainful employment, which in the 1960s had been extraordinarily high, now dropped and approached that of the “indigenous” population, as did the balance of the sexes and the age structure; the shift from guest workers with temporary status to a more fixed immigration pattern was consolidated.10 Beginning in the late 1970s, the Federal Republic was the destination of a new wave of migration primarily from the countries of the

10 See ibid., 111–4, and Bade, “Einheimische Ausl¨ander,” 393–8.

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Third World and Eastern Europe. They came to the Federal Republic mainly as asylum-seekers under Article 16 of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz), as ethnic German resettlers on the basis of Article 116 of the Basic Law or the Federal Refugees Act. While the number of applications for political asylum had remained steady at a relatively low level since the mid-1950s, it began to rise significantly from the late 1970s onward. In 1978, 33,136 people submitted applications for asylum; in 1980, the number had reached 170,818; and in 1990, a total of 193,063 refugees applied for political asylum in West Germany.11 In the second half of the 1980s, a shift also occurred in the principal countries of origin: whereas around three-fourths of the asylum-seekers were from non-European countries in 1986, almost twothirds came from European countries in 1987. In 1990, Romania, Yugoslavia, Poland, Turkey, Lebanon, and Vietnam were applicants’ main countries of origin.12 The second half of the 1980s also saw a sharp rise in immigration to West Germany of ethnic German resettlers, who were granted priority for immigration on the principle of jus sanguinis embedded in German law and Article 116 of the Basic Law. From the late 1950s to 1987, the number of resettlers arriving in the Federal Republic each year had been less than 100,000. In 1988 alone, however, 202,645 arrived; in 1989, 377,036; and in 1990, 397,073. After 1991, the numbers went down again.13 11

The number of asylum applications submitted continued to rise in 1991 (166,514) and 1992 (303,196); see Ursula M¨unch, Asylpolitik in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Entwicklung und Alternativen, 2d ed. (Opladen, 1993), 253. 12 See Klaus J. Bade, “‘Politisch Verfolgte geniessen . . . ’ Asyl bei den Deutschen – Idee und Wirklichkeit,” in Klaus J. Bade, ed., Deutsche im Ausland, 412–3; and Cohn-Bendit and Schmid, Heimat Babylon, 270–1. 13 See Hedwig Rudolph, “Die Dynamik der Einwanderung im Nichteinwanderungsland Deutschland,” in Heinz Fassmann and Rainer M¨unz, eds., Migration in Europa: Historische Entwicklung, aktuelle Trends, politische Reaktionen (Frankfurt am Main, 1996), 163–8; Volker Ronge, “Ost-West-Wanderung nach Deutschland,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte B 7/93 (1993): 19.

Most resettlers came from Poland, the Soviet Union, and Romania. The rise in immigration was accompanied by increasing xenophobia. A debate over “foreigners” arose in the 1980s that centered on asylum; the more intensely the issue was debated, the greater the hostility toward foreigners. In a 1985 survey, 45 percent of the respondents said they were “against the fact that several million foreigners live in our country,” and in a 1989 survey, 75 percent stated that there were “too many foreigners” in Germany.14 In the 1990s, these antiforeigner feelings occasionally turned to outbreaks of xenophobic violence that claimed a number of lives. To counter such feelings, there were also efforts to foster multicultural understanding and fellowship and to institutionalize certain multicultural structures, at least on a local level. The government nonetheless insisted that the Federal Republic was “not an immigration country” and continued to refuse to put forward a coordinated immigration policy. Political debate about immigration issues thus took place largely in the context of policies toward foreigners and measures to limit immigration. The procedure for granting recognition to refugees had already been reformed in the late 1970s and several times in the 1980s with the aim of accelerating the procedure and deterring “illegitimate” asylum-seekers or so-called spurious asylum-seekers or those seeking residency purely for economic reasons. But the number of asylum-seekers continued to rise; the discussion about a fundamental reform of asylum rights intensified in the face of waves of new immigrants arriving from Eastern Europe in the late 1980s. In December 1992, Article 16 of the Basic Law was revised through a “compromise on asylum” (Asylkompromiss): The individual right of asylum continued to exist de jure but was in practice significantly curtailed. On the basis of this reform, various categories of people were now excluded from the asylum application procedure, notably asylum-seekers who entered the 14

See Claus Leggewie, “‘Stolz, ein Deutscher zu sein . . . ’ Die neue Angst vor den Fremden,” in Baade, ed., Deutsche im Ausland, 425.

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country through member states of the EU or “safe third countries,” people who originated from “states where there is no persecution” unless persecution could be proven, and war refugees (who would, however, have the right to reside in Germany for the duration of the war). To reduce the immigration level of ethnic German resettlers from the east, application procedures in potential migrants’ countries of origin as well as a limit on the annual number of admissions – and thus the possibility of imposing quotas – were introduced in the early 1990s. Since that time, people born after 1992 can no longer call upon Article 116 of the Basic Law to claim the right of immigration to Germany. A time limit was thus placed upon the previously open-ended possibility of immigration. With these instruments, the means for regulating the numbers of resettlers took on a new quality: They now contained elements of immigration legislation and, in this respect, extend beyond the dominant policy approach of restricting migration to Germany. Along with new policies on asylum-seekers and ethnic German resettlers, a range of other approaches to immigration have emerged, especially since the late 1980s. These include the so-called repatriation agreements, bilateral arrangements with various countries allowing for a “return” or “taking back” of the migrants. Germany instituted tighter border controls (especially on the “green border” with Poland), the cordon sanitaire policy suggested in the “third country regulation” of the compromise on asylum, and the provision of development aid in an attempt to abate the factors that prompt migration.

differences and convergence The United States and the Federal Republic of Germany differ substantially in their political and cultural predispositions. The immigration legislation of the United States – by history and self-definition a nation of immigrants – has increasingly reflected the country’s economic interests and liberal-universal creed. The Federal

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Republic, by contrast, has to date defined its natural interests differently and, with some exceptions, has never had a genuine immigration policy. Rather, it has pursued a migration policy essentially aimed not at steering immigration, but at minimizing it. But some similarities may be detected in the immigration patterns affecting both countries as well as in social and political reactions. Both countries have been confronted with a global increase of refugees and increasing labor migration. Latin America and East and South Asia have been the main sources of immigrants to the United States, whereas Central and Eastern Europe, Turkey, and various non-European countries have been the main sources for the Federal Republic. In both societies, the increase in ethnocultural, religious, and linguistic heterogeneity, with all its social and economic consequences, has sometimes led to fierce clashes, particularly in the 1980s and early 1990s. These changes unleashed xenophobic tendencies, but they also gave rise to a discussion of the possibilities and forms of multicultural societies; particularly in the United States, this discussion has been conducted on a relatively broad basis and institutionalized in certain areas, education above all. On the level of political or legislative action, the differences between America and Germany are more striking. But the challenges faced – especially in terms of labor migration and particularly since the 1980s – have led to some convergence. This can be seen, for example, in the more resolute action taken against illegal immigration, in tightened border security, and in attempts to minimize the incentives for (illegal) immigration. Both countries’ immigration policies were also shaped by the East-West conflict. In the United States, in part because of the ideological challenges posed by the Cold War in the 1960s and 1970s, immigration preferences were eliminated in favor of a universal arrangement, and refugee and political asylum legislation initially remained focused primarily on refugees from the communist sphere of influence. As a result, the largest portion of the refugees entering the United States were from the centers of conflict

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of the Cold War. A more comprehensive definition of “refugee” first gained acceptance in the Refugee Act of 1980, which, in turn, was partly due to the d´etente of the previous decade. The relatively liberal asylum law that existed in the Federal Republic until 1992 was influenced less by the Cold War than by the experiences of the Nazi period, even if refugees from communist-controlled countries did indeed have good prospects when applying for political asylum. The repercussions of the EastWest conflict were more distinctive in policy toward ethnic German resettlers from the east. While ethnic Germans already enjoyed priority in immigration, the framework and the circumstances of their migration as well as the quite considerable financial commitment involved for the Federal Republic were shaped by the Cold War and the pressure to emigrate. Moreover, the success of d´etente – the bilateral treaties concluded within the framework of Ostpolitik, for example – had direct consequences on the migration of East Germans and ethnic Germans

from the east – for example, the easing of family reunification in 1983 and the changes in the late 1980s that led to growing numbers of immigrants. For the Federal Republic, the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet sphere of influence ultimately meant a dramatic rise for the Federal Republic, not only in the number of migrants from the former GDR to West Germany and ethnic German resettlers, but also in the number of asylum-seekers, especially from the former Yugoslavia and Romania. This development was one of the reasons behind the revision of the right of asylum in 1992–3. The immigration policies of both countries have been and are determined by historical experience, political and cultural predispositions, economic factors, and both domestic and international political considerations. Although the Cold War was not the primary determinant of the immigration policies of the United States and the Federal Republic, it nonetheless influenced migration as well as immigration policy.

chapter ten

Urban Planning, Transportation, and Suburban Development Striking a Balance Brian Ladd

Perhaps the central question facing urban and regional planners in the late twentieth century was that of the relationship between the forces of government and those of the private economy. One American student of transportation policies wrote that the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany exemplify the “market” and the “social subsidy” models of public policy, respectively. That is, Americans tended to mistrust public intervention in the market, whereas Germans did not trust private firms to make the right decisions for the community.1 Neither country has ever conformed rigidly to one model, but in the face of many forces making German and American cities more alike, different attitudes persisted, and they influenced the way many people viewed urban policies across the Atlantic.

As a result, Germans were less likely than before to envy the conditions in American cities. For their part, Americans saw more crisis than opportunity. The urban riots of the 1960s called attention to the growing racial and economic segregation that had accompanied the decentralization of American cities. Some American planners began to look to Europe, including Germany, for models of urban vitality, but much evidence suggested that German cities were in fact following the same course of development as American ones, if more slowly. Both countries’ transportation policies in the 1960s and 1970s promoted ambitious highwaybuilding programs. Germany still maintained a healthy (if subsidized) state rail system and by the 1980s was investing in new high-technology, high-speed rail lines. In the United States, by contrast, the privately owned rail lines were clearly in decline; when they halted their intercity passenger service entirely in 1971, the federal government established a public corporation, Amtrak, to maintain a modest passenger rail network. Some American officials looked abroad for models of a modernized rail network, but little government funding was forthcoming. Air transport, meanwhile, grew rapidly in both countries. Most of this growth had little to do with the Cold War, but the intra-German and Four-Power Berlin agreements of 1971 eased travel to Berlin;2 the West

global forces and transatlantic similarities The late 1960s marked a new era in the urban policies of the United States’ and the Federal Republic’s urban policies, although the circumstances were rather different in the two countries. In Germany, the enormous task of postwar reconstruction was drawing to a close. The pressing shortage of housing no longer overshadowed attempts to rethink the design of cities and their connections to the hinterland. 1 James A. Dunn Jr., Miles to Go: European and American Transportation Systems (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 55.

2

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See the chapter by Werner Link, vol. 2, Politics.

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German government subsidized air service between West Berlin and West Germany (mostly handled by the New York–based airline Pan American) while funding improvement of the overland transit corridors across East German territory. The similarities between the changes taking place in American and German cities reflected global trends more than bilateral influences. Everywhere challenges arose to some of the legacies of modernist design, notably the largescale urban renewal projects common in both countries. American slum-removal projects of the 1950s and 1960s, like the rebuilding efforts of many German cities, aimed to replace nineteenth-century tenements with airy, modern blocks. As a further step, many German cities began in the 1960s to construct high-rise satellite suburbs – for example, West Berlin’s M¨arkisches Viertel and Cologne’s Chorweiler. But there soon were reactions to this scale of development. The fact that East Germany began in the 1970s to build even larger and more monotonous satellite cities of its own only served to reinforce beliefs that such monstrosities were antithetical to Western individualism. The 1970s and 1980s, by contrast, saw many new projects that combined restoration of old buildings with small amounts of new construction.3 Global economic forces also affected both countries in some similar ways. Economics and finance – including real estate investment – increasingly escaped local and even national control. Deindustrialization was most apparent in the older cities of the American Northeast and Midwest, but in Germany, too, many manufacturing jobs disappeared. American and, to a lesser extent, German urban employment became more concentrated in the service sector. The jump in oil prices that followed the 1973 Arab-Israeli war raised troubling questions about the growing dependence on cars, trucks, and highway transit; about oil-dependent industrial cities and economies in general; and also

3 See the chapter by Werner Durth, vol. 2, Culture.

about German-American relations because the Federal Republic’s dependence on Mideast oil made it hesitant to support the United States and Israel unreservedly against the oil-rich Arab states.4 urban sprawl and mass transit The oil shock also raised doubts about urban sprawl because of its dependence on cheap transportation, above all by automobile. American suburbanization was already much further advanced: During the 1960s, the suburban population surpassed that of the central cities; by 1990, the majority of Americans lived in suburbs. In Germany, a comparable shift began slowly in the 1960s and accelerated during the following decade. In both countries, first manufacturing and then office jobs followed the residential population in the move to the suburbs.5 In 1990, however, a fundamental difference in urban form in the two countries was still apparent to any visitor, particularly one arriving by air. German cities remained much more compact, with twice the population density and with definite boundaries; the American urban fringe typically encompassed vast areas of fields and woods interspersed with highways, residential subdivisions, shopping malls and strips, and industrial complexes and office parks. Moreover, not only had most of the growth of older American cities gravitated to these “edge cities,” American urban growth also took place disproportionately in the newer Southern and Western “sunbelt” cities, which lacked substantial nineteenth-century cores, were almost entirely suburbanized, and depended on a combination of service-sector employment and 4

See the chapter by Helmut Hubel, vol. 2, Politics. Peter D. Linneman and Anita A. Summers, “Patterns and Processes of Employment and Population Decentralization in the United States, 1970–87,” and Rainer Mackensen, “Urban Decentralization Processes in Western Europe,” both in Anita A. Summers, Paul C. Cheshire, and Lanfranco Senn, eds., Urban Change in the United States and Western Europe: Comparative Analysis and Policy (Washington, D.C., 1993), 87–144 and 299–323, respectively. 5

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high-technology industry for their economic strength.6 Germany saw a comparable trend in the growing prosperity of southern cities (Munich, Frankfurt, Stuttgart) compared to such older industrial centers as Hamburg or Essen, but north-south differences in growth rates and urban form were far less pronounced than in the United States. Even before the oil crisis, both federal governments had taken steps to revive urban mass transit. The private automobile had long been a symbol of middle-class prosperity and of individual freedom in both countries. Although levels of automobile ownership in West Germany lagged behind the United States, they grew dramatically during the 1960s, making the Federal Republic more like the United States and less like East Germany. Both Western countries devoted enormous resources to highway construction in the postwar years, but a partial change of course began during the 1960s.7 In Germany, although the (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD) had not been hostile to highway construction, its proletarian and collectivist roots kept it from fully embracing the ideas of homeownership and individual mobility encouraged by the Christian Democratic Union. When the SPD entered the government in 1966, it began major investments in rail transit and promoted the coordination of metropolitan transit systems. By the early 1970s, major new subway and light-rail projects were underway in such SPD-run cities as Munich, Nuremberg, Frankfurt, and the Rhine-Ruhr conurbation. These included new Schnellbahn rail lines that ran through the city centers, thus promoting

6

Jon C. Teaford, Post-Suburbia: Government and Politics in the Edge Cities (Baltimore, 1997); Carl Abbott, The Metropolitan Frontier: Cities in the Modern American West (Tucson, Ariz., 1993); Rob Kling, Spencer Olin, and Mark Poster, eds., Post-Suburban California: The Transformation of Orange County Since World War II (Berkeley, Calif., 1991). 7 John Pucher, “Urban Passenger Transport in the United States and Europe: A Comparative Analysis of Public Policies,” Transport Reviews 15 (1995): 99–117, 211–27; Dietmar Klenke, “Freier Stau f¨ur freie B¨urger”: Die Geschichte der bundesdeutschen Verkehrspolitik 1949–1994 (Darmstadt, 1995).

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movement to – and development of – both central and fringe areas. Such balance and coordination of urban and suburban interests was much harder to come by in the United States, as American planners were painfully aware. The Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1970 marked a major federal initiative that was reinforced (as in Germany) by growing concerns about energy and pollution. As Americans began to worry about the cost of driving they bought smaller cars, and their leaders looked for alternatives to gas-guzzling automobiles. Several American cities (notably Washington, D.C., and San Francisco) constructed major new rail systems in the 1970s. Transit ridership reversed its long decline and showed a modest increase during that decade. But federal money largely dried up during the 1980s, and the construction costs and operating deficits of existing transit systems or proposed new ones made them unpopular, particularly in the independent and often booming suburbs. Low energy prices during the 1980s encouraged Americans to buy larger cars once again and to drive more than ever. Meanwhile, most development took place in the suburbs and in the sunbelt cities – that is, in areas often accessible only by private car. Proposals to raise gasoline taxes were widely unpopular. American students of transportation policy pointed to Germany’s and Europe’s much higher gasoline taxes as one reason for its success in promoting mass transit, on which much of that tax revenue was spent. Other reasons were rooted in the different spatial form of German urban and suburban development. German cities remained much more densely populated; there was less suburbanization; and even German suburbs were far more densely built-up than their American counterparts, with fewer singlefamily houses, smaller lots, and more access to transit lines. All of these differences, in turn, were rooted partly in economics, partly in culture, and partly, too, in government planning. After World War II, the United States departed from the pattern of “streetcar suburbs” that had been typical at the beginning of the century. Indeed, whereas streetcars remained basic to the transit systems of most German cities, by the 1960s they had all but disappeared in the United

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States, where wheeled transport demanded all available roadways. In Germany, a combination of high land prices and stricter land use controls, drawn up in part to ensure the continued use of mass transit, precluded American-style urban sprawl.8

inner cities in decline? In both countries, suburbanization was a matter of controversy in large part because of the fear that the inner cities, and their residents, were being left behind. By the 1960s, a clear pattern of racial and economic segregation had appeared in American cities. Wealthier residents were moving to new suburbs whereas poverty and racial discrimination left a growing proportion of poor minorities in inner cities. The use of the word “ghetto” aptly described the de facto segregation that remained even as the civil-rights movement successfully dismantled the legal segregation of the Southern states. Germany was spared such sharp divisions of race and class, but some Germans feared that similar problems might arise after millions of foreign “guest workers” were lured to Germany during the 1960s.9 Many of these workers took over old inner-city apartments abandoned by upwardly mobile German families; when the recession of the early 1970s slowed immigration, inner-city populations dropped. Germans reading the news from America, however, usually saw more differences than similarities. At most, they saw their own cities just beginning the kind of decline apparent in the United States. It was, above all, the urban riots of the late 1960s that shocked wealthier Americans into asking what had gone wrong with their cities. The migration of residents and then, 8

John Pucher, “Urban Travel Behavior as the Outcome of Public Policy: The Example of Modal-Split in Western Europe and North America,” Journal of the American Planning Association 54 (1988): 509–20. 9 J¨urgen Friedrichs and Hannes Alpheis, “Housing Segregation of Immigrants in West Germany,” in Elizabeth D. Huttman, ed., Urban Housing Segregation of Minorities in Western Europe and the United States (Durham, N.C., 1991), 116–44.

increasingly, of jobs out of the city centers had left behind growing concentrations of unemployment, broken families, crime, and other social problems. Depending on their point of view, Germans saw the American ghettos as a warning about either the dangers of ethnic mixing or of unbridled individualism, the desirability of a social safety net, or the need for vigorous efforts at urban redevelopment. This kind of Americanization, in any case, offered no model for Germany. Americans expressed a similar range of responses to their own urban problems. As the federal government’s 1960s urban-renewal and antipoverty programs lost public support, however, no consensus emerged on what should replace them. The tendency of the 1970s and 1980s was, rather, to reduce federal aid to cities. In lieu of massive new programs, both the United States and Germany – their federal and local governments alike – experimented with a range of inner-city redevelopment programs. Goals included stemming the loss of residents and jobs to the suburbs, the establishment of a more diverse and, above all, wealthier urban population, and the refurbishment of the city center for offices, shopping, and recreation. Both countries contributed to a new international commitment to historic preservation, one marked by the decision of the Council of Europe to designate 1975 as European Architectural Heritage Year. Public and private money funded the restoration of individual buildings and of urban ensembles (particularly from the nineteenth century) in many German and American cities, and prosperous young, single, or childless professionals moved into them. These “yuppies” were heralded as the harbingers of an urban revival, but the “gentrification” they brought was also criticized for promoting real estate speculation that drove poor residents from their homes.10 10 Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (London, 1996); J¨urgen Friedrichs and Robert Kecskes, eds., Gentrification: Theorie und Forschungsergebnisse (Opladen, 1996); J¨org Blasius and Jens S. Dangschat, eds., Gentrification: Die Aufwertung innenstadtnaher Wohnviertel (Frankfurt am Main, 1990).

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A more specific focus on the old commercial cores of cities was apparent in efforts to lure back prosperous consumers. A nearly universal development in German cities, peaking in the years around 1970, was the transformation of major shopping streets into pedestrian zones – first by closing them to automobile traffic, then by renovating pavements, signs, and street furniture to make them attractive places to linger. The apparent success of these zones made them a model for American planners, and many American cities and towns in the United States developed their own pedestrian zones – usually with limited success. More ambitious were the “festival marketplaces” developed with public and private money. Widely imitated models included Boston’s Faneuil Hall and Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. These were typically sited in neglected warehouse districts and sought to attract tourists as much as ordinary shoppers by offering a concentration of specialty shops, restaurants, and recreational activities that capitalized on the aura of an old and historic site – thus drawing shoppers and tourists away from suburban malls and theme parks. Although some of these festival marketplaces are economic success stories, it was only in the most general sense that they contributed to preserving a city’s existing commercial or residential areas.11 In that respect, American planners conceded that Germany’s combination of historic preservation, housing, inner-city redevelopment, and transit programs was much more successful. Several reasons for that success were apparent. In the 1980s, German cities were still significantly less suburbanized than American ones, with more middle-class residents near the city center and, above all, a much more stable core of retail shopping. With few exceptions, American downtown shopping no longer posed serious competition for suburban shopping centers; conversely, few German suburban shopping centers could match the inner cities’ concentration of large department stores 11 M. Christine Boyer, “Cities for Sale: Merchandising History at South Street Seaport,” in Michael Sorkin, ed., Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space (New York, 1992), 181–204.

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and small specialty shops. This notable contrast reflected other differences in urban planning and development. Although most Germans took most of their trips by car, German cities had much better mass-transit systems coupled with poor access to the center city by automobile. Higher crime rates and a desire to flee what were seen as abysmal urban schools also kept many Americans out of the cities.

germany: model or laggard? Observers on both sides of the Atlantic wondered whether Germany’s more stable cities were just a temporary phenomenon. Did trends similar to America’s – greater reliance on cars, urban flight, suburbanization of jobs as well as residence – presage an “Americanization” of German cities? When it came to urban development, were Germans simply twenty years behind their more individualistic, dynamic counterparts?12 Or did a combination of cultural stability (or rigidity) and government control ensure a more lasting future for Germany’s old cities? Developments in eastern Germany in the first years after German unification in 1990 demonstrated the possibility of a more rapid “Americanization” of cities: Looser planning controls and difficulties in developing innercity properties led to a proliferation of suburban shopping centers without parallel in western Germany. Whereas some scholars argued that global economic forces propelled Germany inexorably in the direction of the United States, by the 1970s, few praised the American model of transportation and urban development. The energy crisis of the 1970s raised questions about the German image of the United States as the land of unlimited opportunity. The freedom associated in both cultures with open roads, powerful cars, and cheap gasoline was challenged by fuel shortages and the imposition of national speed limits. For a time at least, Americans seized in 12

J¨urgen Friedrichs and Allen C. Goodman, The Changing Downtown: A Comparative Study of Baltimore and Hamburg (Berlin, 1987), 227.

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turn upon the German Autobahn, which remained exempt from the new speed limits, as a symbol of limitless freedom. The “market” model obviously does not explain all American urban policies any more than the “social subsidy” model explains all of Germany’s. Indeed, the American government’s role in transportation has been anything but small: Public investment in roads has been enormous, and no small amount has gone to mass transit. But the difference in attitudes still mattered. For example, recurring demands that the new American urban rail systems pay for themselves revealed persistent adherence to the market. Moreover, the refusal to develop coordinated urban development or mass-transit policies hampered the effective use of resources.13 The most popular model for American urban redevelopment programs in the 1980s, the “enterprise zone,” took the form of government tinkering with tax laws to encourage the private market to revitalize troubled inner cities. Conversely, the German government’s efforts to trim public subsidies during the 1980s represented an embrace of the market model, yet Germany continued to invest greater public sums in rail transit, for example, than the United States. German opponents of the trend toward

13 Pucher, “Urban Travel Behavior,” 512; Anthony Downs, “Contrasting Strategies for the Economic Development of Metropolitan Areas in the United States and Western Europe,” in Summers, Cheshire, and Senn, eds., Urban Change, 15–54.

privatization pointed to shattered American cities in warning of the looming “two-thirds society” – one that has abandoned its poor minority by following the American path of reliance on the free market to provide housing and transportation.14 In general, the difference in the powers of government remained striking. American planners looked with envy at Germany, while German real estate developers harbored the same feelings about their American counterparts. American cities thus came to represent the dark side of the unbridled individuality taken for granted by most Americans and envied, at least occasionally, by many Germans. American tourists loved the clean and efficient transit systems, the lively streets, and the pedestrian zones of German cities. And among those who came for longer periods, women in particular often reveled in the feeling of safety that permitted them to walk city streets without fear. German tourists in New York enjoyed Times Square and Rockefeller Center for their American street life, but the adventurous ones also ventured into Harlem or the South Bronx to marvel at poverty and devastation unimaginable at home. For all the similarities of urban and economic development, Americans and Germans saw each others’ cities as exotic places.

14 Hartmut H¨aussermann, “Ausblicke auf die Zweidrittelgesellschaft,” in Walter Prigge and Wilfried Kaib, eds., Sozialer Wohnungsbau im internationalen Vergleich (Frankfurt am Main, 1988), 272–87.

chapter eleven

Relations Between Right-Wing Extremists in Germany and the United States, 1945–1990 Thomas Grumke Translated by Richard Sharp

The ties between right-wing extremists in Germany and the United States have rarely received the attention of scholars, and no monographs on the subject exist.1 Comparative studies of the phenomenon of right-wing radicalism and extremism by social scientists are likewise extremely rare.2 There is a marked asymmetry in research on right-wing extremism. There has been a lively academic discussion in Germany of all aspects of the far right, but not in the United States.3 This asymmetry in research is inversely proportional to the importance of the Ameri-

can far right to its like-minded counterpart in Germany. This chapter provides a chronological overview of the development and nature of contacts between the German and American far right between 1945 and 1990, and it concludes with a look ahead. It makes clear that transatlantic interaction between far-right groups is a relatively recent phenomenon that first became important in the early 1970s. This overview focuses so far as possible on the leading figures and trace their activities in these movements. Two decisive factors have influenced relations between right-wing extremists throughout the period: the National Socialist regime in Germany and, second, Germany’s efforts to come to terms with its Nazi past and the resulting differences in German and American law. Social and political engagement with National Socialism and the Holocaust have been and remain

1

On the German debate and use of the terms Rechtsradikalismus and Rechtsextremus, see Richard St¨oss, ¨ “Forschungs- und Erkl¨arungsans¨atze – ein Uberblick,” in Wolfgang Kowalsky and Wolfgang Schroeder, eds., Rechtsextremismus: Einf¨uhrung und Forschungsbilanz (Opladen, 1994), 23–66. No similar discussion of terminology exists for the United States, leaving a chaotic range of terms available, with radical right, extreme right, far right, neo-Nazi, white supremacy, white separatism, and survivalist right used in undefined and overlapping ways. One exception is the study by Betty A. Dobratz and Stephanie L. Shanks-Meile, White Power, White Pride! The White Separatist Movement in the United States (New York, 1997), in which the authors attempt to define the terminology. 2 Among the studies that do exist are Thomas A. Herz, Soziale Bedingungen f¨ur Rechtsextremismus in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und in den Vereinigten Staaten (Meisenheim, 1975), and, more recently, Michael Minkenberg, Die neue radikale Rechte im Vergleich: USA, Frankreich, Deutschland (Opladen, 1998). 3 Although a small number of publications, mainly journalistic, on the subject of right-wing extremism have appeared in the United States since the Oklahoma City bombing, the literature on the subject remains unsatis-

factory. Apart from the classic work by Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790–1978, 2d ed. (Chicago, 1978), all that exist are a few studies of individual cases of extremism such as the Christian Patriots in Idaho (James A. Aho, The Politics of Righteousness: Idaho Christian Patriotism [Seattle, 1990]), the militias (Richard Abanes, American Militia: Rebellion, Racism and Religion [Downers Grove, Ill., 1996]), skinheads (Randy Blazak, “The Suburbanization of Hate: An Ethnographic Study of the Skinhead Subculture” [Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 1995]), or individuals such as David Duke (John Kuzenski, Charles S. Bullock III, and Ronald Keith Gaddie, eds., David Duke and the Politics of Race in the South [Nashville, Tenn., 1995]).

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much more intensive in Germany than in the United States. Right-wing actions that are illegal in Germany – such as the open use of the Hitler salute, the display of Nazi symbols, and Holocaust denial – are legally protected in the United States by the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech. The social and legal “opportunity structure” is therefore much more favorable for right-wing extremists in the United States than in Germany.

early contacts Immediately following World War II and during the formative years of the Federal Republic, it was above all in extreme right-wing circles – made up, unsurprisingly, of former Nazi party members – that the United States was viewed negatively as an occupying power and promoter of political reeducation.4 Right-wing extremists made no attempt to establish personal contacts in the United States under these circumstances. In the United States, pro-German, extreme right-wing circles continued to exist after 1945, the successors to the pro-Nazi GermanAmerican Bund;5 these groups gained new members who joined during the 1950s as a result of German immigration. One of the central figures in this movement was Hans Schmidt, who had immigrated to the United States in 1949. By his own account strongly influenced by his time in the Hitler Youth and the SS, Schmidt became one of the most active Holocaust deniers in the United States. Through his strongly anti-Semitic German-American National Public Affairs Committee (GANPAC), he has long produced publications such as the Germanlanguage USA-Bericht and the GANPAC Brief, which are also circulated in Germany. Schmidt also founded the German-American Information and Education Association (GIEA), whose 4

See the chapter by Philipp Gassert in this section. See Sander Diamond, The Nazi Movement in the United States, 1924–1941 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1974), and most recently, Cornelia Wilhelm, Bewegung oder Verein? Nationalsozialistiche Volkstumspolitik in den USA (Stuttgart, 1998). 5

president is the well-known anti-Semite Stanley Rittenhouse. On August 9, 1995, Hans Schmidt was arrested during a visit to Germany for distributing his revisionist USA-Bericht. Shortly after his arrest, GANPAC distributed an “Emergency Appeal” that claimed Schmidt had been arrested “because he wrote of the criminal activities against Germans and Americans by a certain ethnic group.”6 In January 1996, Schmidt was released on the grounds of ill health, on the condition that he remain available to the court. However, he immediately decamped for the United States. Schmidt continues to produce “revisionist” and anti-Semitic texts at regular intervals. A number have appeared in Liberty Bell, which is published by another American of German origin, George Dietz. Dietz, who migrated from Germany to the United States in 1957, runs a far-right propaganda machine from his home in West Virginia. His publishing company, Liberty Bell Publications, produces neo-Nazi literature in German, French, and Spanish. He also does a brisk trade in National Socialist medals, insignia, flags, videos, and cassettes that are destined primarily for the German market. In October 1990, Josef Schaller invited Dietz to join his umbrella association, the Dachverband Deutscher Interessen, and work to unify all nationalistically inclined groups in Germany. Dietz reprinted this invitation in the January 19, 1991, edition of Liberty Bell and called to his German readers to support Schaller’s cause.7 Wilfried Kernbach in Chicago had in the meantime organized an association with similar leanings, Germania International, whose circulars were also sent to Germany. And Willis Carto, who is married to a German, plays an important part as a propagandist in transatlantic far-right contacts with his Liberty Lobby, which he founded in 1955. The Liberty Lobby, whose magazine The Spotlight has made it one of the financially most powerful organizations of the political right in the United States, has stood out since its 6

See Anti-Defamation League, Danger: Extremism! (New York, 1996), 137. 7 See ibid., 32.

Relations Between Right-Wing Extremists in Germany and the United States

founding for its persistent denial of the Holocaust. In the early 1980s, Carto had an issue of The Spotlight entitled “The Great Holocaust Debate” translated into German and, with the assistance of the German-American Roy “Siegfried” Godenau, sent thousands of copies of this publication to Germany. Godenau, who now lives in northern Hesse, has for decades been a key figure in farright contacts between Germany and the United States. After flirting with the German Republikaner party and the Nazionalistische Partei Deutschlands (German Nationalist Party, or NPD), he was responsible for the blatantly xenophobic citizens’ initiative Unsere Zukunft (Our Future); its campaign slogan was “For all free peoples, there’s a way: keep the parasites at bay.” Gordon was also behind B¨urgeraktion gegen die Verunglimpfung der Wehrmacht. after 1968: the first antireformist drive Cooperation between German and American right-wing extremists increased in the early 1970s. Categorical rejection of the social changes taking place on both sides of the Atlantic in the wake of the movements of 1968 – such as the civil-rights movement, the women’s movement, the anti-Vietnam war movement – and unwavering anticommunism formed important ideological links in an increasingly interlinked far right. Against the “counterculture” identified by Theodore Rozak in the United States – and present in the Federal Republic, too – a parallel right-wing “countercounterculture” that refused to accept recent social changes developed on both sides of the Atlantic8 . As Dieter Rucht has persuasively demonstrated with the examples of the women’s liberation and environmental movements, the political culture of the United States makes room not only for reformist countermove8

Theodore Rozak, The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition (Garden City, N.Y., 1969); see also Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey, ed., 1968: Vom Ereignis zum Gegenstand der Geschichtswissenschaft (G¨ottingen, 1998).

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ments, but also for antireformist countercountermovements. In the United States, a heritage of liberal individualism coexists with a religious fundamentalist tradition.9 The result is a “tango of mobilization and demobilization,”10 which in this case had the effect of strengthening transatlantic cooperation on the far right by identifying common enemies. The “Americanization” of the reformist counterculture11 is also apparent in the antireformist countercounterculture and thus among extreme rightwing circles as well. A key figure in Germany was Manfred Roeder who, in the early 1970s, launched a massive campaign against sexual permissiveness and pornography in general and sex education in schools in particular.12 In 1974, Roeder traveled across America with Roy Godenau and made numerous contacts along the way. Roeder initiated meetings with leaders of American farright groups, such as Richard Butler of the Aryan Nations, Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizards James K. Warner and David Duke, and the segregationist National States Rights Party’s Ed Fields and J. B. Stoner, as well as Carto, Dietz, and Kernbach.13 Roeder, one of the leading far-right activists in Germany during the 1970s, continued to nurture and expand his American contacts after this first visit. In the mid-1970s, for example, he participated in a New Orleans conference where he met the 9 See Dieter Rucht, Modernisierung und neue soziale Bewegungen: Deutschland, Frankreich und USA im Vergleich (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), esp. 320, 491. 10 Mayer N. Zald and Bert Useem, “Movement and Countermovement Interaction: Mobilization, Tactics, and State Involvement,” in Mayer N. Zald and John McCarthy, eds., Social Movements in an Organizational Society (New Brunswick, N.J., 1987), 248. 11 See the following chapters in Gilcher-Holtey, ed., 1968: Michael A. Schmidtke, “Reform, Revolte oder Revolution? Der Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund (SDS) und die Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) 1960–1970”; Jakob Tanner, “‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ – Zur subkulturellen Dynamik der 68er Bewegungen”; and Robert Frank, “1968: – ein Mythos? Fragen an die Vorstellung und an die Erinnerung.” 12 Roeder founded the Citizens’ Initiative Against Political and Moral Anarchy in 1971. 13 Roy Godenau to the author, letter dated Nov. 26, 1998.

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leaders of the American extreme right-wing groups and discussed joint strategies for “taking back America.”14 Fleeing West German justice, Roeder returned to the United States and lived there between 1978 and 1980. In this period, Roeder produced his own Englishlanguage publication, Teutonic Unity, based in Buffalo, New York. Roeder’s coeditor and liaison officer was veteran right-wing activist Alexi Erlanger. Erlanger served as director of the Liberation Movement of the German Reich, the American section of Roeder’s Deutsches Reich movement, and had been an active figure on the American extreme right since the late 1950s. He not only provided Roeder with a place to live, but also helped him find additional contacts and funding. It was Erlanger who inducted Roeder into the right-leaning but financially powerful Friends of Germany. Roeder spoke before the group and called on it to support Germany’s “national struggle for freedom.”15 According to Roeder’s own records, individual donations of as much as $1,000 were not unusual on these occasions.16 Roeder’s main objective during the time he spent in the United States, apart from securing further donations, was to unite the diverse – but legal – extreme right in the United States and then link it with the largely illegal German right. In July 1980, Roeder met with the leader of the White Aryan Resistance, Tom Metzger, and stayed at his home, as he had with other sympathizers of Metzger’s in California in the preceding two months.17 Metzger has said that he organized a number of meetings for Roeder in Southern California during this period and later for Roeder’s wife Traudel while Roeder himself was imprisoned in Germany. 14

Interview with Manfred Roeder, July 3, 1998, Leipzig. 15 Other lecturers who addressed the Friends of Germany included, for example, the well-known American Holocaust denier Arthur Butz. See Anti-Defamation League, Extremism on the Right: A Handbook (New York, 1988), 86. 16 See the extracts from Roeder’s diary in “Weltweit Teutonic Unity,” Der Spiegel 35 (March 30, 1981): 86. 17 See H. G. Reza, “Klan Candidate’s Secret Meetings,” San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 23, 1980.

According to Metzger, Manfred Roeder exerted considerable political influence on the extreme right in America during the 1980s and found a following.18 At the 1982 World Congress of the Aryan Nations in Idaho, Alexi Erlanger presented Traudel Roeder with a medal for her courage in the struggle for the German “freedom movement”;19 Mrs. Roeder was standing in for her husband, who was in custody in Germany at that time. Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler still today believes that Manfred Roeder was the legitimate successor of Adolf Hitler because Admiral Karl D¨onitz himself had named Roeder as Reichsverweser (Custodian of the Reich).20 Even while imprisoned in Germany, Roeder continued to write for Teutonic Unity, which was distributed by Erlanger in the United States until the end of the 1980s. In a 1985 issue, for example, Roeder congratulated Alfred Dregger, then chairman of the CDU/CSU caucus in the Bundestag, on his steadfastness in the face of criticism of the “opinion mafia and the apostles of hate”21 when President Ronald Reagan visited the Bitburg military cemetery. Roeder counselled Dregger to take further steps to persuade Reagan and the American public of the “honor” of the German army and the SS: As a man and as a soldier you should make the next step to show yourself worthy of your brother and all the fallen comrades, who fought not for a “brown dictatorship” but for our people and fatherland and for the German Reich.22

Another important figure in GermanAmerican relations on the extreme right since the early 1970s has been Gary Rex Lauck. 18 Interview with Tom Metzger, Sept. 4, 1997, Fallbrook, Calif. 19 See Anti-Defamation League, Extremism on the Right, 86. 20 Richard Butler, personal interview with the author at Hayden Lake, Idaho, on July 24, 1997. Roeder denies this in his interview with the author (see note 14 above). On the Aryan Nations, see Thomas Grumke, “Die Aryan Nations und die Christian Identity Ideologie,” perspektiven ds 15, no. 1 (1998): 67–74. 21 Teutonic Unity 36 (Sept. 1985): 1. 22 Ibid., 4.

Relations Between Right-Wing Extremists in Germany and the United States

After a trip through Germany, the nineteenyear-old Lauck founded the Nationalsozialistiche Deutsche Arbeiter Partei–Auslands Organisation (National Socialist German Workers Party– Foreign Organization or NSDAP/AO) in 1972. In a strategy paper that is still used today, Lauck described the task of the NSDAP/AO as follows: The NSDAP/AO recognizes the rightness and absolute irreplaceability of National Socialism. The imperative for historical continuity demands the proud affirmation of the Third Reich and the continuation of the work of the F¨uhrer. . . . Mein Kampf is its ideological foundation. . . . The struggle against the prohibition of National Socialism [in Germany] lies at the heart of the NSDAP/AO’s propaganda strategy.23

From the outset Lauck’s attention – and hence the attention of the NSDAP/AO – was focused on relegalizing the Nazi party in Germany and the continuation of Hitler’s policies. Lauck conceived of his task as an “expatriate German”: He would agitate from the United States, where his propaganda was legal, to achieve that goal in Germany and to forge links with “old comrades” in Europe to promote his pan-Aryan ideology. From 1973 onward, he publicized his aims through the propaganda magazine NS Kampfruf, which appeared irregularly at first, quarterly from January 1976, and regularly every two months shortly afterward. That Lauck first launched an English edition, entitled The New Order, two years after the German one underlines the NSDAP/AO’s concentration on Germany. Lauck, a fluent German speaker, returned to Germany in 1974 and, at an event arranged by the German right-wing extremist Thies Christophersen, gave a speech that was subsequently widely distributed, “Why We Americans Still Venerate Adolf Hitler.”24 In the 1970s and 1980s, his party and propaganda activities having become a full-time 23

Gary Lauck, “Die NSDAP/AO – Strategie, Propaganda und Organisation,” quoted in Hamburg Regional Court, Criminal Division 27, Aug. 22, 1996, ruling against Gary Lauck, case no. 627 KLs 7/96 and 140 Js 3/92, 8–9. 24 This speech is still available by mail order from Lauck’s “NSDAP/AO” in Lincoln, Nebraska.

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occupation, Lauck extended his political contacts in Germany and cooperated closely with key figures on the German right, including Michael K¨uhnen, Gottfried K¨ussel, and Christian Worch. Until his arrest in Denmark on March 23, 1995, he could be regarded as the world’s leading producer and disseminator of right-wing extremist propaganda. For more than two decades, Lauck and his NSDAP/AO successfully organized a brisk export trade, mainly to Germany, in neo-Nazi tracts, flags, posters, and stickers. From its postal address in Lincoln, Nebraska, the NSDAP/AO distributes periodicals, swastika banners, audio and video cassettes, and stickers (Spukis) bearing slogans such as “Don’t buy from Jews!” and “Deport race mixers!” along with a wide selection of Nazi relics. According to evidence presented against Lauck in court, the Germanlanguage NS Kampfruf had a circulation of as many as 10,000 copies.25 Although his position in the United States is marginal, Lauck’s influence on the German neo-Nazi scene can hardly be overstated. Once again, a critical factor here is the much more favorable legal situation in the United States, which gives right-wing extremists a virtually free hand in producing and distributing their propaganda. The American NSDAP/AO thus functions as a legal branch of a German-based neo-Nazi network, which is illegal in Germany and therefore operates covertly.

second phase: the end of the cold war Since the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany, transatlantic cooperation between right-wing extremists has risen markedly. New communications technologies, particularly the Internet and e-mail, have facilitated this cooperation. Far-right propaganda on the Internet that originates in the United States can be downloaded as easily in Germany as it can anywhere else, thus effectively circumventing national legislative prohibitions on objectionable sites. American Internet sites such as Stormfront 25 See Hamburg Regional Court, ruling against Lauck.

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(www.stormfront.org) and others offer Germanlanguage sections; links to German Internet pages such as the Thule-Netz are common.26 The pan-Aryan idea is gradually replacing oldstyle nationalism and increasingly irrelevant anticommunism on the far right; as this idea has gained in popularity, the German-American axis has become increasingly important. Two examples illustrate this development. First, cooperation has existed for some years between the NPD and the National Alliance (NA), which according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is “the single most dangerous organized hate group in the United States today.”27 According to NA leader William Pierce, this cooperation began through the exchange of Internet links.28 Pierce also asserts that the NA has members in Germany. The March– April 1997 issue of the NA periodical National Vanguard featured a detailed article under the heading “Anti-Patriot Repression in Germany” denouncing the criminal proceedings against German right-wing extremists and the arrest of Gary Lauck. The same issue carried an interview with the president of the NPD, Udo Voigt, under the heading “Friends in Germany.”29 In

26

Other German-language Internet pages are also posted, for example, by the Aryan Nations (www.nidlink.com/∼aryanvic/index-G.html) and the National Alliance (www.natvan.com). Also available on the Internet is the complete text of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, which can be printed out at any time and anywhere. The mailing of far-right publications to Germany, always at the risk of action by the authorities, is gradually being replaced by the less hazardous downloading of the pages from the World Wide Web. See also www.hatewatch.org. For information on the ThuleNetz and the influence of American sites in Germany, and the legal implications of that influence, see the relevant sections in the annual reports of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt f¨ur Verfassungsschutz) since 1995. 27 Anti-Defamation League, Explosion of Hate: The Growing Danger of the National Alliance (New York, 1998), 3; see also Thomas Grumke, “Die ‘Turner Diaries’ und das ‘Oklahoma City Bombing,’” Die Neue Gesellschaft/Frankfurter Hefte 7 (1998): 583–7. 28 Interview with Pierce, Sept. 12, 1997, Hillsboro, West Virginia. 29 “Friends in Germany: The National Democratic Party,” National Vanguard (Mar.–Apr. 1997): 23.

April 1998, Pierce invited Alexander von Webenau, a member of the NPD executive board, to attend the seventh leadership conference at NA headquarters in Hillsboro, West Virginia.30 And on February 7, 1998, Pierce took part in the “Day of National Resistance” arranged by the NPD in Passau, where he met Manfred Roeder, among others.31 The second example is the work of Kirk Lyons. An attorney from North Carolina, Lyons, too, maintains contacts with the extreme right in Germany and has appeared as a speaker at various events there. His foundation, CAUSE (an acronym formed from Canada, the United States, Europe, all seen as “Aryan” territories), has gained visibility by representing various right-wing extremists in U.S. courts. Lyons and Pierce are just two links in the chain of extreme right-wing GermanAmerican cooperation. Lauck remains an important link. After his arrest in Denmark in August 1995, Lauck was extradited to Germany and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment in Hamburg on August 2, 1996. At the time of his conviction, he declared that he had no intention of abandoning his political activities after his release and planned to resume his propaganda activities in Germany from his base in the United States.32 Along with Holocaust revisionism, antiSemitism and the glorification and/or sanitizing of the Nazi regime – not anticommunism – are the main ideological ties between German and American right-wing extremists. The main purpose of Holocaust denial is the political and historical rehabilitation of the Nazi regime and National Socialist ideology in order to make them acceptable subjects for public discussion.33 In this context, the 30

National Alliance Bulletin (Apr. 1998): 1. Roeder stood as an NPD direct candidate in the 1998 Bundestag elections in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. 32 Interview with Lauck, Feb. 10, 1999, in the Suhrenkamp Correctional Facility, Hamburg. In fact, it is highly probable that Lauck’s marginal position within the American extreme right has been considerably strengthened by his arrest and the recognition it has brought him in right-wing circles. 33 See Deborah E. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (New York, 1993). 31

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German-American axis has been and remains indispensable to German right-wing extremists, given the more favorable social and legal opportunity structures in the United States. During the Cold War and still today, America’s right-wing extremists have supplied their German counterparts with National Socialist propaganda materials, which have been banned in Germany since 1945. The crucial links that bring them together have always been provided by bilingual individuals on both sides of the Atlantic; they built a network of mutual support that has survived the Cold War intact. This network could survive because it was not

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dependent on the Cold War, ideologically or organizationally. The shared ideological features always ran deeper: racism, anti-Semitism, and antiliberalism. Even after the Cold War ended, the aims of right-wing extremists on both sides of the Atlantic – now pursued with the aid of electronic media – have remained unchanged. They still seek to make the German Reich and National Socialism politically “reusable” and, as a counter-counterculture, to reverse the social reforms of the 1960s and 1970s. There are as yet no signs that the story of the transatlantic network of right-wing extremism has reached “the end of history.”

chapter twelve

With America Against America Anti-Americanism in West Germany Philipp Gassert Translated by Tradukas

1970s.1 At the same time, the increasing integration of the Federal Republic into the West2 meant that anti-American ideas often reflected Americans’ own criticisms of conditions in the United States and led to the formation of alliances between critics of “America” on both sides of the Atlantic. This was true for the student movement and the New Left as well as for the New Right since the 1980s. This chapter first briefly examines public attitudes and opinion poll results, and then turns to the anti-American discourses generated by left and right elites.3 The West German population’s image of America remained predominantly positive in the post-1968 period, even as a significant number of West Germans continued to take a negative, even hostile view of Americans. During the 1970s and 1980s, the proportion of West Germans who favored a neutral position between East and West over an alliance with the United States fluctuated

After World War II, as in the pre-1945 period, “America” was an arena for internal German debates on the country’s political and social orientation. The West German Left, despite reservations about tying the country’s foreign policy to the United States, maintained an overwhelmingly positive image of America up into the 1960s and argued for cultural and intellectual integration of Germany into the West. The right, despite its agreement with the United States on foreign policy, showed anti-American inclinations, which were directed against the cultural and social Westernization of the Federal Republic. This constellation dissolved in the course of the 1960s. The center left Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD) came to hold a strongly pro-American position. The New Left and the student movement, by contrast, shared the radical right’s reservations about the Federal Republic’s social and political integration within the West. At the same time, the ideological differences between the two major parties diminished. Emerging conflicts over the environment, peace initiatives, and immigration policy in a “multicultural” society weakened the opposition between classic “left” and “right” positions. Belief in or opposition to the “West” once again became an important dividing line in German politics. It was not a coincidence that “Antiamerikanismus” became a polemical term in the West German political vocabulary during the

1

For a definition, see my chapter in vol. 1, Society. For the debate in the 1970s and 1980s, see Peter L¨osche, G¨unter Moltmann, Kurt L. Shell, and Hans J. Kleinsteuber, “Antiamerikanismus in der Bundesrepublik? Vier Diskussionsbeitr¨age,” Amerikastudien 31 (1986): 355–82. 2 Axel Schildt, Ankunft im Westen: Ein Essay zur Erfolgsgeschichte der Bundesrepublik (Frankfurt am Main, 1999). 3 For a detailed analysis of the image of America in the population, see the chapter by David B. Morris in this section.

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between one-third and one-half of respondents,4 depending on how and exactly when questions were posed. In May 1981, 65 percent of West Germans reported liking the Americans, while 17 percent found them disagreeable. Among the Greens, however, those viewing them disfavorably reached as high as 46 percent. During the 1970s and beyond, supporters of the conservative parties (Christlich-Demokratische Union and Christlich-Soziale Union, or CDU and CSU) rated the United States more positively than did their counterparts in left-wing parties and in the younger generation as a whole.5 From the beginning of the 1960s, between 50 and 60 percent of respondents welcomed the presence of American troops in Germany, whereas 20 percent favored withdrawal and about a fourth had no opinion. In August 1981, 27 percent of West Germans agreed with the proposition that “the Americans are just pretending to the world that freedom is important to them. In reality they are only concerned with securing markets across the globe for American products.” Some 55 percent disagreed and 18 percent remained undecided.6 Since the 1970s, less than half of all Germans have trusted American leaders. Even after the end of the debate on INF (intermediate-range nuclear forces) modernization, 55 percent of West Germans still endorsed the peace movement. Negative stereotypes of America were particularly persistent in the sphere of culture. In December 1986, 70 percent of West Germans felt a positive association with “European culture,” while only 24 percent felt similarly about “American culture.” Respondents attached particularly negative values to the McDonald’s fast-food chain (despite its healthy sales in the Federal Repub4

See the survey of opinion poll results in Gebhard Schweigler, Grundlagen der aussenpolitischen Orientierung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Rahmenbedingungen, Motive, Einstellungen (Baden-Baden, 1985), 113. 5 Allensbacher Jahrbuch der Demoskopie, vol. 8: 1973–1983 (Munich, 1983), 606, opinion poll of Nov. 1982. 6 Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, “Anti-Amerikanismus: Eine Randerscheinung,” Allensbacher Jahrbuch der Demoskopie, vol. 8, 616–8.

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lic), the television series Dallas and Dynasty (despite their large viewing audiences), and bodybuilding and “Superman” comics (despite their numerous devotees). The term “capitalism” had positive associations for just one-third of the Germans questioned, whereas equal numbers reported that it had negative or neutral connotations. Even at the high point of the “Second Cold War” in the early 1980s, 23 percent of West Germans still supported “socialism,” while 44 percent rejected it and 33 percent took a neutral stance on the question.7 In sum, anti-Americanism – in the sense of reservations about Germany’s social and political integration within the West – failed to change the fundamental orientation of the Federal Republic’s foreign and domestic policies. But it was not simply a fringe phenomenon, nor was it, as critics liked to claim, the exclusive domain of a small but vociferous intellectual elite that was out of touch with popular opinion. Anti-Americanism became a matter of coexistence where Germans and Americans lived in close proximity: in towns near U.S. military bases, for example, or in popular tourist destinations. Although there has been little systematic study of the interactions between Germans and American soldiers and their families, it does appear that the reputation of the American troops deteriorated rapidly beginning in the mid-1960s. By the early 1970s, the devaluation of the dollar, drug problems, and soldiers’ general disillusionment during the Vietnam War era had led many West Germans to view the American forces as a threat to public order. Fear of being dominated by a foreign power turned into discrimination against American soldiers. In the early 1980s, “Off Limits for GIs” signs began to appear in bars and restaurants in southern Germany. The proprietors feared that the presence 7 Sebastian Knauer, Lieben wir die USA? Was die Deutschen u¨ ber die Amerikaner denken (Hamburg, 1987), 62, 24, 149. Knauer’s information is based on SINUS, Amerika und die Deutschen: Eine Studie im Auftrag der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung und des Stern. Erstellt im Dez. 1986 (Munich, 1987).

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of large numbers of American soldiers would change the character of their establishments and cause their German clientele to stay away. According to Emil-Peter M¨uller, the Heidelberg headquarters of the U.S. forces registered 105 such measures against G.I.s in 1982 and 71 in the following year. By 1984, the number had fallen to 40 as a result of countermeasures introduced by German and American authorities.8

vietnam and its consequences: anti-americanism on the left The anti-Americanism of the student movement was first and foremost an expression of anti-imperialism. In the tradition of economic theories of imperialism, America’s “expansive foreign policy” was interpreted as an attempt to shift the contradictions within American society to the periphery through military and commercial expansion. In contrast to classical Marxist theory, however, the New Left no longer defined “class struggle” as a conflict between the classes in the national context of the “metropole” but rather as conflict between the “late capitalist” First World and the Third World. The uprisings and liberation movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America appeared to confirm the theory of the “transfer of the class struggle to the international arena” (Herbert Marcuse). The war against the United States in Vietnam was deemed the most important example of a revolt of the “popular masses” of the South against the “imperialist powers” of the North.9 The Tet Offensive by the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front (NLF or FNL), 8

Emil-Peter M¨uller, Antiamerikanismus in Deutschland: Zwischen Care-Paket und Cruise Missile (Cologne, 1986), 28. 9 Herbert Marcuse, “Vietnam: Die Dritte Welt und die Opposition in den Metropolen: Eine Podiumsdiskussion, geleitet von Klaus Meschkat mit Rudi Dutschke, Peter G¨ang, Herbert Marcuse, Bahman Nirumand (Diskussionsbeitrag),” in Horst Kurnitzky and Hans-Martin Kuhn, eds., Das Ende der Utopie: Mit Diskussionsbeitr¨agen von Rudi Dutschke, Wolfgang Lef`evre, Peter G¨ang, Bahman Nirumand u.a. (Berlin, 1967), 137.

launched in January 1968, electrified student movements across the globe, Germany included. It was, as a contemporary recalled, a world-shaking event that allowed me to imagine what the Russian revolution must have meant for people with socialist ideals . . . . There next to the American embassy in Saigon the battle was raging from house to house, NLF’s flag was flying over Hue . . . . There was no doubt – the world revolution was dawning.10

Vietnam was proof that “imperialism as an overriding system . . . is in total retreat,” as the German student leader Rudi Dutschke argued at the international Vietnam congress in February 1968 in Berlin. The impressive advance of liberation movements in the Third World had to be followed by concrete action in the metropoles. The final communiqu´e of the gathering thus included a call for a “Smash NATO” campaign, for systematic educational work among U.S. soldiers stationed in Germany “to subvert the morale and discipline of the U.S. army,” and for attacks on American institutions in West Germany.11 Although most “68ers,” like West Germans in general, and the overwhelming majority of participants at the Vietnam congress abhorred violence against American personnel, their families, and American property, anti-American terrorist acts became a catalyst for West German terrorism in the 1970s and played an important role in its development. This was one of the darkest chapters in the history of post-1945 German-American relations. The activities of West German terrorist groups and their sympathizers included attacks on the Amerika-H¨auser in Frankfurt (January 1969), Berlin (December 1969), and Munich (January 1971). Terrorist attacks targeted U.S. Army headquarters in Frankfurt and Heidelberg in May 1972 and resulted 10 Quoted in Ronald Fraser, 1968: A Student Generation in Revolt (New York, 1988), 176–7. 11 Detail on the international Vietnam conference can be found in Ingo Juchler, Die Studentenbewegung in den Vereinigten Staaten und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland der sechziger Jahre: Eine Untersuchung hinsichtlich ihrer Beeinflussung durch Befreiungsbewegungen und -theorien aus der Dritten Welt (Berlin, 1996), 257–68.

With America Against America

in the death of several American soldiers. There was a bomb attack upon the Frankfurt headquarters in June 1976 and another two months later on U.S. Air Force headquarters at Ramstein that injured twenty American soldiers. In the same year, an explosive device went off at Radio Free Europe in Munich, and the records department of the American military police in Giessen was firebombed. In September 1981, an attempt was made on the life of the supreme commander of U.S. forces, General Fred Kroesen, in Heidelberg. The following year, German authorities recorded a total of sixty attacks on American facilities, including four immediately before President Ronald Reagan’s visit to Bonn in June 1982. In August, a car bomb at the U.S. military airport in Frankfurt left two dead and twenty injured, some critically. In August 1986, a bomb exploded in an American soldier’s private car, and in February 1987 a railroad line near Bremen was attacked to halt American supply trains.12 Although the violence against Americans and American property was in part the result of anti-American agitation by the student movement, the perpetrators were also firmly convinced that they formed a single front with the American protest movement.13 The situation in the Federal Republic appeared to be inseparable from the success of “progressive forces” in the United States. Protestant minister Helmut Gollwitzer, a leading figure of the early protest movement, made this very clear in October 1967 at a demonstration in Berlin. A “victory of imperialist America over democratic America” would also mean the “end of democracy in Germany.” The “brutalization of American foreign policy” was identical with the “brutalization of American domestic policy” and would have a similar effect on condi-

12 Details taken from Gerd Langguth, Protestbewegung: Entwicklung, Niedergang, Renaissance. Die Neue Linke seit 1968, 2d ed. (Cologne, 1983), 203–4; Knauer, Lieben wir die USA, 47–8. 13 On the similarities between European and American anti-Americanism, see Paul Hollander, AntiAmericanism: Irrational and Rational (New Brunswick, N.J., 1995).

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tions in Germany, he argued.14 Anti-American protests on the streets and in university lecture halls heightened a generation’s awareness of social and cultural conflicts in the United States, which had until then remained largely invisible in West Germany. Despite continuities between cultural anti-Americanism and the German debates about America of the 1920s and 1930s, the anti-Americanism of the student movement took its models, arguments, and forms of protest from the United States. This was to a large extent a result of the cultural westernization of the West German elites. The anti-Americanism of the New Left was thus anti-Americanism “with America against America.” It followed internal American debates and transposed them onto the social conditions in the Federal Republic as part of a general critique of capitalism. The leading periodical of the West German left-wing intellectuals, Kursbuch, edited by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, gave ample space to radical criticism from America. In March 1969, for example, Kursbuch published a series of German translations of essays by the American New Left, including an article on Black power by the African American student leader Stokely Carmichael. In December 1970, Kursbuch devoted an issue to “North American Conditions”; along with an interview with Herbert Marcuse, the issue included essays on the civil rights movement and neo-Marxist analyses of the U.S. social and economic situation. Selections from Reinhard Lettau’s programmatically titled anthology T¨aglicher Faschismus (“Everyday Fascism”), one of the German Left’s most controversial books about America, first appeared in Kursbuch; it was no coincidence that T¨aglicher Faschismus was made up of texts written in the United States, where the author was teaching at a university.15 Contrary to what some critics claimed, Lettau and others were not so concerned with using the term “fascism” in 14 Helmut Gollwitzer, speech at the Vietnam demonstration in Berlin, October 21, 1967, quoted from Juchler, Die Studentenbewegung, 250. 15 Reinhard Lettau, T¨aglicher Faschismus: Amerikanische Evidenz aus 6 Monaten (Munich, 1971); see Kursbuch 22 (Dec. 1970): 1–44.

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an American context in order to orchestrate “the projection of Nazism, dehistoricized as fascism, onto America” and divert attention from Germany’s past.16 Rather, their main goal was to attack the liberal system and its German and American proponents by unmasking the “American big brother.” The battle cry of “everyday fascism,” which creative demonstrators turned into the sharp slogan “USA-SA-SS,” referred not only to the American example but also indicated a fundamental repudiation of the liberalism that prevailed in both West Germany and the United States. The accusation of fascism directed against the United States was thus certainly not an expression of a genuinely nationalist or possibly apologetic tendency in the German Left, but a sign of the times, however objectionable. Leftists across the Western world used the catchword of “fascism” to polemicize against dubious practices and undemocratic conditions in the name of an undifferentiated and rash critique of “the system.” At the time, use of the term “fascism” was probably just as inflationary in Berkeley as in Berlin; American social revolutionaries, such as members of the Black Panther Party, did not hesitate to call the United States the “most violent, abominable, barbaric society that ever existed. And that includes the ‘Third Reich.’”17 Consistent with older German images of the United States, the left used “America” as a shorthand term for a pathological stage in the development of modernity, namely the liberal capitalist system that seemed to have been real-

16 See Dan Diner, America in the Eyes of Germans: An Essay on Anti-Americanism (Princeton, N.J., 1996), 130; Richard Herzinger and Hannes Stein, Endzeit-Propheten oder Die Offensive der Antiwestler: Fundamentalismus, Antiamerikanismus und Neue Rechte (Reinbek, 1995), 51 (which suggests that by using the term “nuclear Holocaust,” the peace movement also “disposed of ” the German past). 17 “Seize the Time: Sozialrevolution¨are Gruppen in den USA. Eine Dokumentation,” Kursbuch 22 (Dec. 1970): 89. See also the interview with Herbert Marcuse, in which he claimed that one could “very legitimately speak of a nascent fascism” in the United States, ibid., 46.

ized in paradigmatic form in the United States and had proven to be particularly powerful and internationally influential there. But it also referred to conditions within Germany itself. As the center of the Western world, an imperialist power of the first order, and the “stronghold of capitalism,” America was the guarantor of the ruling order in the Federal Republic, which the student movement had vowed to revolutionize. During the 1970s, in circles where West Germany was regarded as a kind of American satellite state, left-wing criticism of America moved closer to nationalist positions that had previously been advocated primarily by the radical right. This trend toward a new nationalism found supporters not only in communist groups (few of which, contrary to popular suspicions, sought German reunification as a first step toward the sovietization of the Federal Republic) but also within the peace movement and among the Greens in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During the INF modernization debate in the early 1980s, the nationalist wing of the Greens demanded neutrality for Germany and called for both German states to leave their alliances, arguing that the opposing alliances would mass their armies in Germany and turn the country into a battlefield in the event of war. They believed that both Soviets and Americans were forcing the Germans to act against their true national interests.18 Whereas the student movement of the 1960s and early 1970s saw the Federal Republic as an “accomplice” of American global policy, the left’s image of America had changed by the late 1970s and early 1980s. Anti-Americanism acquired a new quality in Germany as the militancy of anti-American demonstrations receded. The second and third postwar generations did not share the experiences of the older 1968 generation, which had studied in the United States, was disillusioned by Vietnam after being caught up in (naive) enthusiasm for John F. Kennedy, but still – like G¨unter 18

Andrea Ludwig, Neue oder Deutsche Linke? Nation und Nationalismus im Denken von linken und Gr¨unen (Opladen, 1995), 66–8.

With America Against America

Grass or Hans Magnus Enzensberger – maintained close relationships with Americans and saw criticism of the United States “as the best sign of loyalty.”19 By contrast, members of the younger generation active in the Greens embraced the sentiment of graffiti slogans such as “The FRG is El Salvador.” Germany was no longer the “accomplice” of American imperialism, but its “victim.” This criticism of American foreign policy, coming from a nationalist perspective, linked up with growing antipathy to American culture and society, as signaled by such ironic graffiti as: “Coca-Cola was good, jogging was good . . . why should Pershing be bad?”20 The peace movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s was the first time since the 1950s that a large number of West Germans distanced themselves from the Western defense community. Peace movement leaders such as the Social Democratic politician Erhard Eppler asserted that the United States was structurally incapable of peace. They called for “a common yearning for peace” to replace the values of the Western community or, as the popular journalist Fritz Alt demanded, a “German liberation movement” uniting East and West Germany.21 At the same time, many on the left, together with many supporters of the established parties, turned to the concept of “postmaterial” values. The process of modernization unleashed by industrial capitalism was taken as the main problem to be addressed in many analyses of society. Like the social criticism coming out of the student movement, this line of argument drew on similarly focused investigations that in fact originated in the United States, for example, the Club of Rome’s report The Limits of Growth or 19 Fritz J. Raddatz, “Kritik ist Beweis von Loyalit¨at: Ein ZEIT-Gespr¨ach mit G¨unter Grass,” Die Zeit, Apr. 25, 1980. On Enzensberger, see the interview in Heinz D. Osterle, Bilder von Amerika: Gespr¨ache mit deutschen Schriftstellern (M¨unster, 1987), 41–75. 20 Andrei S. Markovits, “On Anti-Americanism in West Germany,” New German Critique 34 (1985): 17. 21 Jeffrey Herf, War by Other Means: Soviet Power, West German Resistance, and the Battle of the Euromissiles (Toronto, 1991), 178–9.

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The Imperative of Responsibility by the GermanAmerican philosopher Hans Jonas, who had emigrated in the 1930s. Whereas the New Left of the 1960s had toyed with the idea of a socialist model of industrial progress, the ecology movement and the Greens rejected the “modernist project,” the industrial capitalist version of which the United States represented. In this sense, the anti-Americanism of wide sections of the left in the 1980s was an antimodernism that consistently opposed any orientation toward the West in foreign or domestic policy. Like antiAmerican critics on the right, left-wing critics of the civilization process now also advocated a “third way” between East and West, between the “real existing socialism” of the Soviet Union and the untamed capitalism of the United States.

a convergence of left-wing and right-wing anti-americanism since the 1980s? The conservative cultural critics who had dominated the West German discourse on America in the 1940s and 1950s had little impact in West Germany during the 1960s and 1970s. AntiAmericanism was seen as a truly left-wing problem. Supporters of the NATO double-track decision wielded the term “anti-Americanism” to discredit their opponents, as in Helmut Kohl’s famous attack on Willy Brandt during a televised discussion shortly after Ronald Reagan’s controversial visit in 1985.22 While the left dominated this public debate, the right not only appeared to lack any media influence, but also seemed politically isolated and condemned to a shadowy existence with no real power. Only briefly was the National Democratic Party (Nationaldemokratische Partei, or NPD) represented in several state parliaments. When the Grand Coalition of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats came to an end in 1989, most protest 22

See Hans J. Kleinsteuber, “Zur politischen Funktion des Antiamerikanismus: Einige Anmerkungen,” Amerikastudien 31 (1986): 375.

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voters were reabsorbed by the CDU/CSU. The result was further fragmentation of the extreme right and a simultaneous increase in its militancy.23 In the late 1960s and 1970s, the extreme right largely restricted its public criticism to West Germany’s close cooperation with the United States in the realm of foreign policy, as in the case of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It found few supporters for its views, however, despite a certain affinity with the Gaullist wing of the CDU-CSU.24 In the 1980s and 1990s, however, the right once again gained attention in West Germany after the failure of the NPD had prompted the radical right-wing camp to rethink its position. The intellectual leaders of the New Right that formed in the 1970s advocated “learning from the Left” as a strategy for regaining intellectual hegemony in Germany. Theory was to prepare the way for radical political change. Reviving the ideas of the conservative revolution of the 1920s, the New Right attempted to influence public debate by abandoning a narrow German national position and advocating a European “third way” between capitalism and communism, as the authors and editors of the journal Nation Europa had been proposing since the 1950s. Like the New Left of the 1960s, the New Right was a product of the cultural Westernization of West Germany. The New Right not only borrowed ideas from left-wing intellectuals; along with skinhead and Nazi rock, it also created a subculture drawing on British and American models.25 Its cooperation with the right in other Western countries has been a conspicuous feature. This included, for example, American “revisionists” and, above all, the 23

See Uwe Backes and Eckhard Jesse, Politischer Extremismus in der Bundesrepublik (Bonn, 1993), 86–99. 24 On Gaullism and the NPT debate, see the chapters by Eckart Conze, vol. 2, Politics, Erhard Forndran, vol. 1, Security, and Matthias Dembinski, vol. 2, Security. See also the speeches by the NPD’s cofounder, and chairman between 1967 and 1971, in Adolf von Thadden, Einsatz f¨ur Deutschland: Aus Reden in den Jahren 1965–69 (Hannover, 1969). 25 Mark Terkessidis, Kulturkampf: Volk, Nation, der Westen und die Neue Rechte (Cologne, 1995).

French Nouvelle Droite, whose early leader Alan de Benoist has been widely read by the German New Right since the end of the 1970s.26 Inspired by its unrelenting struggle against all egalitarian, leveling models of society – liberalism and Bolshevism in particular – this European New Right was clearly anti-American. For Pierre Krebs, editor of the programmatic journal Elemente and intellectual spokesman of the German New Right, the “cultural rebirth of Europe” was to be achieved through a “cultural war against all uprooting forces (the main enemy is the American way of life),” in alliance with the nonaligned states and the countries of the Third World “against the American-Soviet pincer.” The goal was to “define new historical models – in short: to establish a third force, a third way, to found the new European empire.”27 Since the end of the Cold War in 1989– 90, proponents of the third way have found new supporters in all political parties. Some researchers contend that left-wing and right-wing anti-Americanism are moving closer together, and they predict the anti-Western currents in otherwise divergent worldviews will converge. Richard Herzinger and Hannes Stein have pointed out that already in the 1980s the New Right supported the peace movement as an anti-Western movement and hoped that it would give impetus to a regaining of national “sovereignty.”28 In his essay on German antiAmericanism, Dan Diner also emphasized that anti-American tendencies in the West German Left in the 1960s and 1970s were less a vehicle for emancipatory consciousness than an expression of a tradition whose origins were ultimately antimodernist, anti-Western, and antiuniversalist.29 The classical differentiation of left and right clearly no longer has the same meaning it did before the collapse of communism in 1989, just as the Western alliance lost its original purpose when the Soviet empire collapsed. For this 26

Herzinger and Stein, Endzeit-Propheten, 102–6. Pierre Krebs, “Die erste Partei des Geistes,” Elemente 2 (1987): 2, quoting from Backes and Jesse, Politischer Extremismus, 104. 28 Herzinger and Stein, Endzeit-Propheten, 51. 29 Diner, America in the Eyes of the Germans, 155. 27

With America Against America

reason, third ways – which historically have almost always amounted to privileging particular cultural ties over universalistic trends – have found great favor in almost all European countries in the last ten years. However, the question of whether “left” and “right” have really become obsolete as political designation remains open. One indication of their continuing importance is how emphatically young conservative intellectuals call themselves the New

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Right.30 Even after the end of the East-West conflict, forty years of cultural Westernization can still be felt at all levels. That might be demonstrated by the still largely unwritten history of left- and right-wing anti-Americanism in West Germany during the Cold War era.

30

Terkessidis, Kulturkampf, 285–6.

chapter thirteen

The Maturation of a Relationship The Image of America in West German Public Opinion David B. Morris

As the term implies, “images” of another country are subjective interpretations of reality. They are based not on intimate acquaintance with the country but on indirect communication from a variety of other sources. Since Walter Lippmann’s seminal study in 1922, such images have been termed stereotypes.1 These need not be negative images; they derive from the need to make sense of one’s world amidst plentiful but imperfect information. Their defining characteristic is therefore abbreviation, not bias. Although impressionistic, these images carry political weight: The closer the relationship between two countries, the more importance attached to the images they have of one another.2 This was certainly true for Germany and America during the Cold War, which affected virtually all aspects of people’s lives. The ideological conflict assigned a crucial importance to the image other members of the West had of the state that led them in it: the United States. By the same token, Germany’s image of America was more important and had greater political implications than that of any other member of

the Western alliance. The Federal Republic’s acceptance in the Western community was based on its fundamental break with the antidemocratic and anti-Western traditions that had led to World War II and the ensuing Cold War in the first place. An Allied occupation regime led by the United States had refashioned Western Germany’s political system, economy, and society. In the Cold War, the Federal Republic’s unique vulnerability as a frontline state made it uniquely reliant on the United States for its own security. For these reasons, the Federal Republic had a unique interest in reassuring others, particularly America, that its attachment to the West and to the values it represented was genuine. The extensive polling of how Germans themselves thought about America, Americans, and American policies testifies to the importance both countries attached to supporting this reassurance. The limitations of such data are wellknown: How and when the questions are asked affects the quality of the answers. Still, there is no other reasonably empirical guide to Germans’ images of America.

1

Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York, 1922). ¨ See Knud Krakau, “Einf¨uhrende Uberlegungen zur Entstehung und Wirkung von Bildern, die sich Nationen von sich und anderen machen,” in Willi Paul Adams and Knud Krakau, eds., Deutschland und Amerika: Perzeption und historische Realit¨at (Berlin, 1985); Hans J. Kleinsteuber, “Ansichten vom ‘grossen Bruder’ – amerikafreundlich oder antiamerikanisch? USA-Stereotypen in der Bundesrepublik im Spiegel von Umfrageergebnissen,” Amerikastudien 36 (1991): 240–68. 2

the positive legacy In the late 1950s and early 1960s, America’s pervasive cultural, economic, and political influence, combined with its vital protection of the fledgling Federal Republic and West Berlin in the tensest phases of the Cold War, made 510

The Maturation of a Relationship

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70% 60% 50% 40% 30%

like them don't like them particularly undecided no opinion

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Graph 1. “Generally speaking, do you like the Americans, or don’t you like them particularly?” Source: Allensbacher Jahrbuch der Demoskopie, vol. 9: 1984–1992 (Munich, 1994), 964.

it a model for West Germans as they sought not only to rebuild their cities, but also to refashion their political culture and way of life in the face of discredited national traditions. By the late 1960s, this comparatively abnormal set of circumstances had come to an end. As the German-American relationship matured, so did Germans’ image of America. Although Germans retained a generally favorable view of the United States, they were now more prepared to criticize it for specific policies undertaken ostensibly in the interest of Western collective defense and security in the bipolar order. The result was a decline in the avid pro-Americanism of the earlier period and the growth of a more differentiated image of the United States. Despite these changes, Germans continued to hold America and Americans in high regard. Graph 1 shows Germans’ responses to a question the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research has asked them since January 1957. From 1967 to 1991, an average of nearly half (48.9 percent) said they “like” Americans. A poll conducted by SINUS in December 1986 confirmed this generally positive attitude toward Americans. By excluding the “no opinion” option, this poll encouraged respondents

to take a stand; as a result, “undecided” now accounted for 31 percent. However, the proportion saying they “like” Americans (51 percent) remained practically identical to Allensbach’s results, and those who “don’t like” the Americans now accounted for only 9 percent.3 Germans also felt closer to Americans than to any other country, both emotionally and politically. Between 1965 and 1981, Allensbach asked Germans which country they consider to be the Federal Republic’s “best friend.” In this free-answer survey, half of respondents named the United States; France took a distant second place at between 9 and 18 percent (see Graph 2). During approximately the same period, more than three-fourths of Germans named the United States as one of the countries with which the Federal Republic should cooperate as closely as possible. (Again in second place, France was

3

Selected results of the 1986 SINUS poll are compiled in Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, ed., The Germans and America: Current Attitudes (Bonn, 1987). The data referred to here are on p. 5. The SINUS 1986 data also form the basis of Sebastian Knauer, Lieben wir die USA ? Was die Deutschen u¨ ber die Amerikaner denken (Hamburg, 1987).

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David B. Morris 60%

50%

40%

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30%

Austria Switzerland

20%

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1973

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Graph 2. “Which country in the world do you consider to be Germany’s best friend?” (top four countries only). Source: Allensbacher Jahrbuch der Demoskopie, vol. 8: 1978–1983 (Munich, 1983), 594; Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, ed., The Germans: Public Opinion Polls, 1967–1980 (Westport, Conn., 1981), 408.

named about two-thirds of the time.)4 Later polls in 1984, 1987, and 1990 explicitly drew an analogy with personal relationships and asked Germans to rate the “closeness” (N¨ahe) of the Federal Republic and the United States on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the closest. Majorities of 41 to 53 percent assigned a value of 1 to 4.5 Germans’ feelings of friendship and closeness to the United States reflected the close political relationship between the two countries during the Cold War. Germans’ attitudes toward American culture, however, stem from a far broader array of historical traditions and images Germans have developed about America over the course of generations. As in the 1950s and 1960s, Germans continued to harbor the general disdain for American culture that had been part of European thought about America at

4 Allensbacher Jahrbuch der Demoskopie, vol. 8: 1978–1983 (Munich, 1983), 596. 5 Allensbacher Jahrbuch der Demoskopie, vol. 9: 1984– 1992 (Munich, 1993), 966.

least since Tocqueville. In its German form, this disdain traditionally revolved around the distinction between Kultur and (Anglo-)American Zivilisation – one of the most cherished traditions of the German “educated classes” (Bildungsb¨urgertum).6 In the 1986 SINUS poll, for example, 70 percent had positive associations with “European culture,” whereas “American culture” drew a far vaguer response: Positive and negative associations each accounted for 24 percent, while 51 percent were undecided. When asked about specific symbols of American culture, however, Germans’ attitudes were generally positive; New York, Hollywood films, American musicals, jeans, Coca-Cola, Walt Disney, and Mickey Mouse all generated positive associations for about one-half to two-thirds of 6

See Herbert A. Strauss, “Stereotyp und Wirklichkeiten im Amerikabild aus der Perspektive der Vorurteilsforschung,” in Adams and Krakau, eds., Deutschland und Amerika, 21–5. See also G¨unter C. Behrmann, “Geschichte und aktuelle Struktur des Antiamerikanismus,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte B 29/30 (1984): 6–8.

The Maturation of a Relationship

Germans.7 Although McDonald’s and the TV series Dallas and Dynasty received low marks – about half of respondents said they had negative associations with these things – actual consumer behavior may be a better guide to public opinion than the polls. Both Dallas and Dynasty, for example, were immensely popular in the Federal Republic. The pilot broadcast of Dynasty in April 1983 built on the already great success of Dallas, achieving record ratings of 45 percent. The first regular broadcast of the series exceeded this record by another two percentage points.8 It would appear that many West Germans simply liked American culture more than they cared to admit. Germans also attributed generally positive personal characteristics to Americans. In 1986, seven of the ten most frequently named characteristics in survey responses were positive, the others neutral. The positive traits were “progressive” (74 percent); “oriented toward the future” (65 percent); “energetic/active” (60 percent); “democratic” (59 percent); “optimistic” (58 percent); “independent” (52 percent); and “generous” (48 percent). The first negative characteristic (“superficial”) is in twelfth place at 37 percent.9 Similar polls show comparable results for the years 1962 and 1980.10 the critical trend Germans’ generally positive images of America and Americans paralleled an increase in

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criticism of America’s international activities and policies. Generally, this trend was due to the growing relative importance of policy in the overall makeup of Germany’s image of America. Compared to previous periods, attitudes toward American culture and the personal characteristics of Americans were not as important in how Germans viewed America; West Germans no longer saw things like jeans, Coca-Cola, and the many Americanisms in the German language as examples of a pervasive “Americanization” but as normal aspects of their daily life and culture.11 Just as the Germans had successfully incorporated democratic and international order initially imposed on them into their political institutions,12 so had they incorporated the cultural aspects of America’s influence into their political culture.13 Although this process built the foundation for the German-American relationship and its closeness over the years, it also allowed Germans to focus more on the objective nature and merit of United States policies. Throughout most of the 1980s, Germans expressed low trust in the quality of U.S. international leadership. From 1979 to 1986, relative or absolute majorities of between 46 and 54 percent said they were “not so confident” or “not at all confident” of the United States’ ability to assume a wise leadership role in the world. In 1960, only 23 percent had made this assessment.14 Generational change is often cited as an explanation for this trend. Indeed, the years immediately following Kennedy’s famous visit to Berlin in 1963 marked the high point of a generally pro-American consensus that also included

7

Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, ed., Germans and America, 9. 8 Eva-Maria Warth, “Amerikanische Fernsehserien ¨ auf deutschen Bildschirmen: Uberlegungen zum Einfluss amerikanischer Fernsehexporte auf das deutsche Amerikabild,” in Klaus Weigelt, ed., Das Deutschlandund Amerikabild: Beitr¨age zum gegenseitigen Verst¨andnis beider V¨olker (Melle, 1986), 66. 9 See Berthold Meyer, “Freundschaft auf Distanz? Ver¨anderungen des Amerikabildes in der o¨ ffentlichen Meinung am Beispiel der Bundesrepublik,” in Bernd W. Kubbig, ed., Transatlantische Unsicherheit: Die amerikanisch-europ¨aischen Beziehungen im Umbruch (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), 64–5. 10 Allensbacher Jahrbuch, vol. 8, 608.

11

See the chapters by Uta Poiger, vol. 1, Culture, and Michael Ermarth and Heidrun K¨amper, vol. 2, Culture. 12 See Gebhard Schweigler, Grundlagen der aussenpolitischen Orientierung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Rahmenbedingungen, Motive, Einstellungen (Baden-Baden, 1985). 13 See Kendall L. Baker, Russell J. Dalton, and Kai Hildebrandt, Germany Transformed: Political Culture and the New Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1981). 14 The results for 1982, when 40 percent lacked confidence in U.S. leadership, were the only exception to this trend. See the data in Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, ed., Germans and America, 31.

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the younger generation.15 This helps to explain the peak at this time shown in Graph 1, but also the decline that followed. Older Germans had experienced the ruins of war, CARE packages, the airlift, and the Marshall Plan; they had direct and personal experience with America as a liberator and as the guarantor of the young Federal Republic’s security in the tensest moments of the Cold War. Younger Germans, born into a prosperity and democratic stability unprecedented in German history, were just coming of political age when television was bringing race riots and the Vietnam War into German living rooms. Although the critical trend was most noticeable among the young, especially in the form of demonstrations and protests against the Vietnam War, it was by no means unique to them.16 The King and Kennedy assassinations, racial unrest, and the morass of Vietnam shaped the image of America for nearly all Germans, just as they did for nearly all Americans. In surveys taken following the sharp drop in sympathy for Americans after 1967, the youth cohort did not depart from the overall sample. In January 1967, the proportion of Germans who named America as one of the countries with which the Federal Republic should cooperate as closely as possible fell to a low of 72 percent – the only year in which France overtook the United States, with 76 percent. The figures for the 16- to 29-year-old cohort were virtually the same: 73 percent for the United States and 75 percent for France.17 In the same survey in August 1972, America had since regained its position (76 percent) ahead of France (63 percent); however, among the 16to 29-year-olds, support for close cooperation with the United States actually was stronger 15

See, for example, G¨unter C. Behrmann, “Antiamerikanismus in der Bundesrepublik: 1966–1984,” Amerikastudien 31 (1986): 343; Stephen Szabo, International Perspectives of Postwar Europeans (London, 1983). See also the chapter by Diethelm Prowe, vol. 1, Politics. 16 Hans Rattinger and Petra Heinlein, Sicherheitspolitik in der o¨ffentlichen Meinung: Umfrageergebnisse f¨ur die Bundesrepublik Deutschland bis zum “heissen Herbst 1983” (Berlin, 1986), 272–3. 17 Allensbacher Jahrbuch der o¨ffentlichen Meinung, 1965– 1967 (Allensbach, 1967), 431.

(79 percent). Similarly, in May and June 1973, the proportion of 16- to 29-year-olds who said they “like” the Americans was identical to the general sample: 48 percent; those who “don’t like” the Americans accounted for 25 percent of this group, only 1 percentage point higher than the overall sample. In the 30- to 44-yearold age group, affection for the Americans was even stronger, at 56 percent, with only 20 percent saying they “don’t like” them.18 It is most likely external factors, rather than internal ones like generational change, that provide the best explanation for Germans’ more critical view of the United States. Along with the increased importance of policy as a component of Germany’s image of America, changes in the bipolar constellation occurred in this period that affected how these policies themselves were viewed. By the early 1970s, d´etente and Ostpolitik had become fundamental parts of Bonn’s security and foreign policies.19 As d´etente gradually replaced confrontation, many Germans saw less need to rely on the United States as heavily or accept its interpretation of security as readily as in the “hotter” days of the Cold War. It was in this changed security “culture” that Germans witnessed the height of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Quite apart from America’s objective performance and prudence in this conflict, Germans could look at this latest example of Cold War confrontation with a far more distant and therefore more critical eye. Although the student movement’s neo-Marxist critique of America and capitalism and its often virulent anti-Americanism20 were not representative of German public opinion, large segments of the German population shared the students’ opposition to the war and their preparedness to criticize fundamental aspects of the United States. In a 1972 survey, 34 percent of Germans said their opinion of America had worsened in the past couple of years; only 10 percent said it had improved (for 42 percent, it had remained the same). The same poll in 1968 18 Allensbacher Jahrbuch der o¨ffentlichen Meinung, 1968– 1973 (Allensbach, 1974), 533, 555. 19 See the chapter by Werner Link, vol. 2, Politics. 20 See the chapter by Philipp Gassert in this section.

The Maturation of a Relationship

had shown that, among those whose opinion had worsened, the Vietnam War and domestic problems in the United States, such as racism and other social ills, were the most frequently named reasons for the change in attitude.21 Because it was only indirectly related to it, Germans’ more critical view of U.S. policies outlived the Vietnam War. America’s failure in the conflict was soon followed by the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Richard Nixon. In September 1973, Nixon received the lowest approval ratings by Germans of any U.S. president: Only 19 percent of Germans had a good opinion of him; a majority (51 percent) did not.22 In the United States, the tribulations of these years contributed to the election of Ronald Reagan, whose promise to restore America’s image abroad was equally devoted to restoring its image at home. But for many in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, the image was of a hegemon in fitful decline, beset by fundamental weaknesses that it sought to veil through domestic deficit spending and foreign military interventions. In a survey conducted in May 1981, a relative majority (47 percent) of Germans agreed with the view that the United States would not shy away from any means to strengthen its position as a world power, including the support of fascist dictatorships in Central and South America. By 1984, 55 percent shared this view. In the same year, 40 percent of Germans thought the United States was unreliable as a world power because of its inability to deal with domestic problems (37 percent disagreed, the rest were undecided). In November 1986, 51 percent of Germans had a “mostly negative” or “very negative” view of U.S. positions on peace and armament issues, and 58 percent thought the military and organizations like the CIA had too much influence on American policy.23 In this climate of opinion, the aftermath of NATO’s so-called double-track decision of 21

Allensbacher Jahrbuch der o¨ffentlichen Meinung, 1968– 1973, 556. A similar breakdown of reasons for the 1972 poll is not available. 22 Ibid., 557. 23 Allensbacher Jahrbuch, vol. 8, 609; vol. 9, 971–2.

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December 197924 became a defining moment for German-American relations and for Germans’ image of America. As the Geneva negotiations remained fruitless, a broad “peace movement” developed whose attention focused almost exclusively on the deployment track of the NATO decision. Compared to the protests against the United States’ involvement in Vietnam, this movement was less a fundamental ideological, neo-Marxist critique of the United States per se than it was an issue-specific opposition to the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) on West German soil.25 As with the Vietnam War, however, Germans were opposed to INF installation. In November 1982, a relative majority (47 percent) said it should be prevented. In September 1984, after installation had begun, 56 percent said they were opposed.26 Its focus on the INF question also enabled the peace movement to enjoy broader and more diverse support among Germans generally. In December 1982, nearly a third of Germans (32 percent) described themselves as “supporters” of the peace movement; of these, only 9 percent said they “work actively” with it, but 91 percent said they are “closely associated with it.” In a different survey conducted in November 1984, 54 percent of Germans said they were “for the peace movement”; among 16- to 29-year-olds the figure was 67 percent. The INF controversy was soon followed by the Reagan administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which Reagan announced in a televised address in 1985 without having consulted the European allies. Already sensitized by the INF debate, many Germans saw this move as yet another example of America’s preference for military rather than diplomatic solutions, or at least as proof of America’s naive faith in dubious technology as an answer to complicated questions of security. A survey in September 1985 showed that Germans were divided over whether SDI was technically even feasible; a 24

See the chapter by Michael Broer, vol. 2, Security. On the German peace movement of the early 1980s, see the chapter by Carl Lankowski in this section. 26 Allensbacher Jahrbuch, vol. 8, 633; vol. 9, 1064. 25

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relative majority of 39 percent said it wasn’t. Seventy-one percent of Germans thought SDI would provoke a new arms race, and nearly the same proportion (70 percent) thought SDI only presented new dangers for the world.27 As Germans focused more on policy in their image of America, they also focused more on the person they held responsible for that policy: the president of the United States. This personalization was particularly apparent in the case of Ronald Reagan, the only president who served two full terms during the period. Although his tough talk of an “evil empire” and the religiosity of his rhetoric reaffirmed positive stereotypes of themselves and helped him in his effort to restore American self-confidence, in the German context they lent support to traditional negative stereotypes of America (and its leader) as a naive but impetuous cowboy, all too prone to military action and insensitive to the subtleties of diplomacy.28 The sharp fluctuations in Germans’ assessment of Reagan, however, indicate that it was driven by specific policies and events in the bipolar order. In November 1982, Reagan was less popular among Germans than Nixon had been after Watergate: Only 18 percent of Germans had a good opinion of him, 52 percent did not. This began to change following the resumption of the Geneva arms-control negotiations in March 1985, when Reagan had nearly a third (31 percent) of Germans behind him. In May 1985, Reagan’s visit to the German military cemetery at Bitburg, although disastrous for his image at home, boosted his image among Germans: For the first time since June 1982, a relative majority (40 percent) now had a good opinion of him.29 This figure rose to 27

Ibid., 8:645; 9:1061, 1068. On the concepts of auto- and heterostereotypes, see Krakau, “Entstehung und Wirkung von Bildern,” 11– 12. On the importation into Germany of the unfiltered American autostereotypes generated by Reagan’s publicrelations machine, see Peter L¨osche, “Antiamerikanismus in der Bundesrepublik? Stereotype u¨ ber Ronald Reagan in der deutschen Presse,” Amerikastudien 31 (1986): 358. 29 On the Bitburg controversy, see David B. Morris, “Bitburg Revisited: Germany’s Search for Normalcy,” German Politics and Society (winter 1995): 92–109. For

44 percent in December, a month after the summit between Reagan and Soviet premier Michail Gorbachev. This was not only the first summit between the two men, but also the first Soviet/American summit at all since the signing of the SALT II treaty in 1979.

less pro-american or more anti-american? The growing criticism of America among the German public caused alarm both inside and outside Germany. The founding of the Green Party in 1980 and its entry into the Bundestag in 1983 appeared to give institutional cachet to the most vocal representatives of the America-critical trend. As observers began ruminating about Germany’s identity and the steadfastness of its moorings in the West, concern about anti-Americanism grew.30 Any trend has its extremes; in the case of Germans’ growing criticism of the United States, this extreme was anti-Americanism. But how significant was anti-Americanism as a component of Germans’ image of America? To answer this question, one can examine the degree of overlap between those who, in the 1986 SINUS survey, “don’t like the Americans” (9 percent) and those who have a generally negative assessment of American policies (28 percent). Among the latter group, only 20 percent also said they “don’t like” Americans. Thirtyseven percent liked them and the same proportion was undecided. Even among the 9 percent of the German population that “don’t like” the Americans, 10 percent still approved of American policy; 59 percent disapproved, and nearly a third were undecided.31 If a dislike for both

28

figures on Reagan and the visit, see Allensbacher Jahrbuch, vol. 9, 969, 975–8. 30 Of the countless examples, see Pierre Hassner, “The Shifting Foundation,” Foreign Policy, no. 88 (fall 1992); Michael St¨urmer, “The U.S. Role in German Political Culture,” in Klaus Weigelt, ed., Das Deutschland- und Amerikabild: Beitr¨age zum gegenseitigen Verst¨andnis beider V¨olker (Melle, 1986), 38–40. 31 Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, ed., Germans and America, 5.

The Maturation of a Relationship

Americans and American policy is a necessary condition of anti-Americanism, then these figures show that less than 6 percent of the German population exhibited this trait in 1986. However, a general dislike of Americans and American foreign policy can still coexist with an admiration for certain aspects of American culture and way of life that would be inconsistent with a genuine “anti” position. Indeed, of the 9 percent who said they “don’t like Americans,” only a third had a negative view of American culture; 18 percent liked it. Nearly half had positive associations with New York, and almost a fourth with the concept of capitalism. Although this group generally ascribed negative personal characteristics to Americans, 32 percent still found them generous, and 43 percent thought they were democratic.32 The most important change in Germany’s image of America, then, was not a growth in anti-Americanism, but the decline of the avid pro-Americanism that had featured so prominently in the 1950s. This was especially apparent as the Cold War entered its last years and cooperation began to be the norm rather than the exception in East-West relations. As the structures of the bipolar order loosened, the question of “pro” or “anti” lost its urgency, and Germans could look at America through a more differentiated lens.33 This differentiation can be shown in a number of surveys that explored Germans’ foreign policy orientation in the 1980s. In 1981, a relative majority said the Federal Republic should cooperate more closely with the United States. By 1991, this had dropped to 16 percent. Much of the concern inside and outside Germany about anti-Americanism was directed at such trends. However, the lower priority Germans assigned to close cooperation with the United States was not equivalent to a desire for closer cooperation with the Soviet Union; this figure ranged from only 1 to 5 percent over the period. Instead, 32

Ibid., 6. See Helga Haftendorn, “Das Bild der Meinungsforscher: Gegenw¨artige Einstellungsmuster gegen¨uber dem Partner,” in Adams and Krakau, eds., Deutschland und Amerika, 139–45. 33

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more Germans now favored closer cooperation with both superpowers: 38 percent thought this in 1981; by 1991, the figure had nearly doubled, to 72 percent.34 Rather than a radical change in Germans’ view of the United States, this convergence reflected Germans’ changing view of the Soviet Union as it underwent a welcome transformation. Germans’ perceptions of both superpowers grew more differentiated as the rigidities of the bipolar order gave way to a more differentiated world. Graph 3 combines three indicators of this trend: Germans’ views on the Soviet threat, on the need for U.S. troops in Germany, and the degree to which they would welcome the withdrawal of these troops. All these indicators were often cited as evidence of growing neutralism or anti-Americanism in the Federal Republic, but their close convergence in the late 1980s suggests far more strongly that Germans’ changing view of the German-American partnership was due to changes in the Cold War world in which that partnership had been shaped. conclusion From the mid- to late 1960s until the end of the Cold War, Germans’ image of America matured as their view of themselves and their relationship to America grew more differentiated. Paired with the generally good image Germans had of the United States was now a greater preparedness to criticize it for specific policies. This critical trend reflected changes in German society, but was most directly related to changes in the bipolar order that had given birth to the close German-American relationship in the first place. As the rigidities of this order loosened, so did the categories of “pro” or “anti” that had been such a vital part of Germany’s identification with America at the height of the Cold War. Just as “images” are a form of illusion, so was the change in Germans’ image of America a form of disillusionment. It was only natural that the pronounced pro-Americanism 34

Allensbacher Jahrbuch, vol. 9, 959.

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70%

60%

50%

40% concerned about Soviet threat view U.S. troops as necessary for German security

30%

would welcome U.S. troop withdrawal 20%

10%

0% 1966

1968

1970

1972

1974

1976

1978

1980

1982

1984

1986

1988

1990

1992

Graph 3. Relationship between perception of Soviet threat and views on U.S. troop presence. Sources: Allensbacher Jahrbuch der o¨ffentlichen Meinung 1968–1973 (Allensbach and Bonn, 1974); Allensbacher Jahrbuch der Demoskopie, vols. 8 and 9; Berthold Meyer, “Freundschaft auf Distanz? Ver¨anderungen des Amerikabildes in der o¨ ffentlichen Meinung am Beispiel der Bundesrepublik,” in Bernd W. Kubbig, ed., Transatlantische Unsicherheit: Die amerikanisch–europ¨aischen Beziehungen im Umbruch (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), 61.

of the 1950s and early 1960s should have given way to the disappointment that always accompanies a more realistic view. This sense of disillusionment, which many Americans themselves shared in regard to their own country, points to the emotional volatility of both pro- and anti-Americanism and, therefore, to the danger of judging international cooperation and the mutual pursuit of compatible national interests on the basis of friendship and love. Fritz Stern hinted at this danger in 1985: I believe we are now discovering that we are allies bound by common interests and threatened by divergent ones, that the rhetoric of sentiment will not dispel the reality of conflict, and that we had best recognize the differences among ourselves and search

for means of coping with them. We are allies with differences, friends with reservations.35

It is therefore a welcome development that, by 1990, Germans no longer felt bound by the emotionally laden categories imposed by the stark and rigid dichotomy of the Cold War. Germans saw the Americans less as beloved friends and more as valued allies – powerful, vital, but also imperfect. This realism is healthy, and it will largely determine the future of the GermanAmerican relationship as it continues to mature in the post–Cold War world. 35 Fritz Stern, “U.S.-German Relations: An Alliance Turned Normal,” in Frank Trommler and Joseph McVeigh, eds., America and the Germans: An Assessment of a Three-Hundred-Year History, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1985), 2:134.

chapter fourteen

Between Private Opinion and Official Pronouncement Images of America in the German Democratic Republic, 1971–1990 Rainer Schnoor Translated by Margaret Ries

East German images of America during the 1950s and 1960s were at no point simply a mental construct, divorced from the realm of politics.1 They were firmly anchored in the shifting systemic clash between East and West, and were thus part and parcel of the ideological conflict of the Cold War. In the 1970s and 1980s, “official,” “private,” and “intellectual” conceptions of America continued to be intimately bound up with political, ideological, and cultural developments in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Nonetheless, the period following Erich Honecker’s assumption of office in 1971 was more strongly marked by the tension between continuity and change than the 1960s had been. The announcement by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, or SED) at its eighth party conference ( June 1971) that it would focus on “further increasing the people’s material and cultural standard of living”2 seemed to suggest a move toward modernization and liberalization. But the party showed no sign of retreating from its insistence, familiar from the 1950s and 1960s, on the irreconcilability of socialism and capitalism. The SED again felt compelled to paint a picture of capitalism as politically unstable, parasitic, and degenerate3 and to pursue the related

objective of “exposing the inhumane nature of imperialism even more completely.”4 Nevertheless, reestablishment of contact to West Germany helped to initiate a process of change, as did the UN’s admission of both German states into its ranks, the diplomatic recognition extended to the GDR by a number of countries between 1973 and 1976, and the signing of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).5 A change of course in the GDR’s domestic affairs also seemed imminent. As the SED explained, the state’s cultural policy needed to make room for breadth and variety, as long as the foundations of socialism remained unchallenged. The vision of creating a homogeneous “socialist community of peoples” championed by Honecker’s predecessor, Walter Ulbricht, was abandoned. Sociopolitical measures – increases in wages, vacation time, and maternity leave; price reductions; and the building of more housing – temporarily gave the East German population a feeling that positive changes were underway. In the 1960s, government and party officials had either ignored or even disputed the influence of Western media. But now they tacitly accepted the fact that GDR citizens obtained information “bilaterally.” The growing power and influence of the media intensified the trend

1

See the chapter by Rainer Schnoor, vol. 1, Society. Eckhard M¨uller and G¨unter Benser, eds., Dokumente zur Geschichte der SED, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1986), 3:44. 3 See Programm der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands (1976 ) (Berlin, 1989), 15–17. 2

4 M¨uller and Benser, eds., Dokumente zur Geschichte der SED, 3:65. 5 See Hermann Weber, DDR: Grundriss der Geschichte 1945–1990 (Hannover, 1991), 314–27.

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toward a decentralization of discourse. The state’s policy of “delimitation” (Abgrenzung), especially toward West Germany, was supposed to counteract this development. Contrary to the intentions of those in power, and unnoticed at first by the general public, this policy actually laid the cornerstone for a shift in values and the growth of a counterculture. In this atmosphere, images of the United States underwent an evolution. “Official,” “private,” and “intellectual” conceptions of the country came to stand in a state of interdependence and interaction.

official images of america In contrast to the uniform official image of America in the 1950s and 1960s – the onedimensional depiction of the United States as the “center of international reactionaryism” – the image in the 1970s and 1980s was more nuanced. Several reasons lay behind the shift. East German officialdom faced a structural dilemma. Abandoning categories such as “class struggle” and “the clash of systems” was not feasible; but, in connection with d´etente and the policy of peaceful coexistence, the GDR both needed and wanted to establish a dialogue with the other side. After several Western countries extended diplomatic recognition to the GDR beginning in 1972, establishing diplomatic relations between the United States and East Germany was both desirable and overdue. That was achieved in September 1974, and a protracted struggle ensued. The United States sought to step up its previously insignificant trade relations with the GDR. It tried to influence the GDR politically (on human-rights issues, for example) and culturally (through exhibitions and use of its embassy as a cultural center). The East German leadership, by contrast – despite the trend toward liberalization under Erich Honecker – strove to limit the effect of these efforts.6 It quickly 6 On this, see Daniel Hamilton, “Ferne Sterne: Die Beziehungen der USA zur DDR 1974–1990,” in Wolfgang-Uwe Friedrich, ed., Die USA und die Deutsche Frage 1945–1990 (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), 259–79.

became apparent, for example, that hopes for expanding the possibilities for business and professional travel – expanded private travel was out of the question – would not be fulfilled in the near future. While GDR officials had previously cited the absence of diplomatic relations as the obstacle to, for example, study trips to the United States, they now blamed American restrictions on visitors from abroad. On the whole, however, reciprocal diplomatic recognition produced positive results. A continuation of the old anti-American propaganda was thus no longer possible. The dilemma posed by trying to hold to the party line on the socialism-capitalism conflict while keeping diplomatic considerations in mind was resolved through a threefold strategy. First, party conventions and plenary sessions of the Central Committee became a forum for inveighing against U.S. imperialism. Second, the party press began to separate editorial comment and news coverage, which resulted in a somewhat more objective tone. Finally, the struggle the ideological level was intensified because ideological coexistence remained unacceptable. This three-pronged approach was ultimately institutionalized, with the Politburo and the Central Committee of the SED prescribing the official line. The SED newspapers, the papers of the socalled block parties, and GDR television were responsible for conveying this line to the public. They could also provide more objective reporting, depending on diplomatic need and the general political climate. For political and diplomatic work and analysis of the United States, there was a circle of experts who were allowed to address issues in a fundamentally more pragmatic and “nonideological” manner. This circle included Karl-Heinz R¨oder and his staff at the Institute for the Theory of the State and Law of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR (Institut f¨ur Theorie des Staates und des Rechtes der Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR); Claus Montag and his staff at the Institute for International Relations at the Academy for Political Science and Jurisprudence of the GDR (Institut f¨ur Internationale Beziehungen an der Akademie f¨ur Staats- und Rechtswissenschaft der DDR); diplomats such as Rolf Sieber, Horst

Between Private Opinion and Official Pronouncement

Grunert, and Gerhard Herder, as well as experts from think tanks close to the party, including the Institute for Politics and Economics (Institut f¨ur Politik and Wirtschaft, or IPW ). The last group found itself in a position that Konrad H. Jarausch, in his study of the historical discipline in the GDR, described as standing “between partisanship and professionalism.”7 They were especially affected by the predicament of trying to balance a commitment to East German socialism and intellectual honesty. This situation understandably colored their conception of the United States but nevertheless allowed room for more objective portrayals of the country’s economy, and its foreign and domestic policies.8 The work of these experts was concentrated in the 1980s in the so-called Advisory Council for Research on the USA (Problemrat f¨ur USA-Forschung), which met approximately twice a year in Berlin and tried to produce a general analysis of the political and economic situation in the United States. Publications like Deutsche Aussenpolitik, which the Central Committee discontinued in 1983, the IPW-Berichte, and the weekly Horizont offered readers a view of the current state of these aspects of the official view of the United States. The partial liberalization of the GDR’s cultural policy between 1971 and 1976 also had an impact on GDR images of America, affecting official, private, and intellectual views alike. Opportunities now existed in publishing, the media, education, and youth policy that would have been unthinkable in the 1960s. East German publishing houses brought out works that had been long suppressed or whose time had finally arrived. This held for East German works as well as foreign, including American. American studies specialist Eberhard Br¨uning wrote retrospectively in 1980 that the GDR publishing world was visibly jolted by this shift, as was

7

See Konrad H. Jarausch, ed., Zwischen Parteilichkeit und Professionalit¨at: Bilanz der Geschichtswissenschaft der DDR (Berlin, 1991). 8 On this, see Karl-Heinz R¨oder, ed., Das politische System der USA: Geschichte und Gegenwart (Berlin, 1987); Claus Montag, ed., USA-Aussenpolitik in der Gegenwart (Berlin, 1986).

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the circle of critics that regularly commented on newly published literature.9 A similar phenomenon occurred in the realm of official media policy. GDR citizens who were not satisfied with the polemical picture of the United States proffered by Neues Deutschland or GDR television could – in addition to watching television programs from the West – switch to such weekly newspapers as Forum, Sonntag, and Weltb¨uhne to find objective and more balanced information. Movie theaters in the GDR were also showing more American films, ranging from first-rate works to trash, than ever before. A noticeable change in official youth policy occurred as well. There was a shift from the intense opposition of the 1950s and 1960s to Western, above all American, influence to an effort at partial appropriation and domestication of that influence. Although rock and beat music had previously been denounced as the Trojan horse of the class enemy, a sometimes incompetent bureaucracy responsible for cultural and entertainment policy now had to devote itself to taming and even promoting it.10 The Singebewegung (“song movement”) of the 1960s, which was rooted in the American hootenanny tradition, was quickly “de-Americanized” and politically instrumentalized by the Central Council of the Free German Youth (FDJ). Nevertheless, the officially sponsored “Festivals of Political Song” that took place annually after 1970 did provide a window on the world for many GDR youth.11 Even products that typified the 9 Eberhard Br¨uning, “US-amerikanische Literatur in der DDR seit 1965,” Zeitschrift f¨ur Anglistik und Amerikanistik 28, no. 4 (1980): 293–319; Daisy Wessel, Bild und Gegenbild: Die USA in der Belletristik der SBZ und der DDR (bis 1987 ) (Opladen, 1989), 29–39. 10 See Peter Wicke, “Zwischen F¨orderung und Reglementierung: Rockmusik im System der DDRKulturb¨urokratie,” in Peter Wicke and Lothar M¨uller, eds., Rockmusik und Politik: Analysen, Interviews und Dokumente (Berlin, 1996), 11–27. See also the chapters by Edward Larkey and Uta Poiger, vol. 1, Culture. 11 See Thomas Freitag, “Alles singt oder Das Ende vom Lied? Liederbe und Singekultur der ehemaligen DDR,” in Otto Holzapfel, Hartmut Braun, and J¨urgen Dittmar, eds., Jahrbuch f¨ur Volksliedforschung 38 (Berlin, 1993), 50–63.

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American way of life but had been vigorously denounced in the past – such as Coca-Cola and blue jeans – suddenly became acceptable. On several occasions, entire planeloads of American jeans were imported directly and sold to GDR consumers, with the local SED officials even organizing their sale at universities and colleges. This official toleration and promotion of things American also had an impact on education. Despite the continued existence of certain taboos and limits, English teachers and American studies scholars now had more leeway. The new atmosphere also served to expand the information sources for private conceptions of America. Inconsistency characterized East Germany’s offical cultural policy in the 1980s. It alternated unpredictably between surprising concessions (such as huge open-air concerts with Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen) and narrow-minded prohibitions. For the East German public, dissatisfaction with the economic situation combined with the growing discontent about the contradictions between official pronouncements and everyday reality. Many GDR citizens formed their own opinion of the West through visits to the Federal Republic (undertaken by 1.7 million individuals in 1986). The contradiction between Gorbachev’s reforms and the SED leadership’s refusal to introduce similar measures intensified the crisis of legitimacy. In 1989, this erupted in the GDR’s existential crisis.

private images of america The changes in East Germany’s political climate and policies during the 1970s inevitably affected individuals’ private conceptions of America. Increased exposure to West German television produced increased access to Western politics and culture. In contrast to the country’s ascetic early years, the “main task” (“Hauptaufgabe”) of the 1970s legitimized the pursuit of material goods. Despite strict import restrictions, visitors from the West ensured that a considerable portion of the GDR population was continually supplied with Western goods. The special stores created to bring in needed Western currency, “Intershop” and “Genex,” also satisfied the desire of many GDR citizens for Western

products. They became islands of Western consumer culture. Expanded diplomatic ties, the GDR’s signing of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe Final Act, and the “Eurocommunism” of the 1970s awakened hopes for greater toleration. This in turn encouraged dissent and departures from dogma. This sense of broader freedoms and perspectives, which peaked during the Tenth World Youth Festival in East Berlin in 1973, influenced the public’s long-standing interest in the United States. Apart from the images transmitted by the media and generated above all by U.S. popular culture, East Germans focused on “tangible” products of the American way of life such as jeans and T-shirts. “Real” jeans – meaning Levi’s or Wranglers, not the GDR-produced imitations – became fetishized cult objects. As Ulrich Plenzdorf described in his extraordinarily popular play Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. (The New Sorrows of Young W., 1972), wearing American jeans went hand in hand with a cautious nonconformism, which was a precursor to the development of multidimensional political and cultural “milieus” in the late 1970s and the 1980s.12 Official reactions to these trends, which had been imported from the United States via the Federal Republic, was not as consistently hostile as they had been in the 1960s. They ranged from harsh criticism and narrow-minded rejection to resigned tolerance and even efforts to appropriate these cultural tendencies.13 East German rock bands, for example, were subject to official scrutiny and obstacles, but they were nonetheless able to build large followings of fans. Many Indianistik-Clubs were founded during this period where members explored Native American customs. Country and Western bands also became increasingly popular. Although the use of the American flag was officially deemed a provocation, East German culture bureaucrats did not know how to react to the occasional display of the Confederate battle flag, nor were they fully aware of its 12 See Paul Kaiser and Claudia Petzold, Boheme und Diktatur in der DDR: Gruppen Konflikte Quartiere 1970– 1989 (Berlin, 1997). 13 See Manfred J¨ager, Kultur und Politik in der DDR 1945–1990 (Cologne, 1995), chaps. 6 and 7.

Between Private Opinion and Official Pronouncement

meaning. The GDR “Festivals of Political Song” introduced East Germans to American political folk music by performers such as Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan and contributed to the development of a leftist climate that was moderately critical of the system. Church-based peace groups, particularly in Berlin, held “blues services” to draw attention to the guilt that the United States and Soviet Union shared for the arms race. The State Security Police (Stasi) observed and infiltrated these groups from the outset. A “drop-out culture” modeled on the American example developed as a belated reaction to the 1960s; its adherents faced not only harassment by the authorities, but also the disapproval of older citizens of Arbeitsgesellschaft DDR (“work society GDR”). Older East Germans generally had little use or understanding for such displays of cultural selfassertion. Their image of America was influenced by television and, occasionally, movies. In the 1970s, the made-for-television movie Roots proved extremely popular. In the 1980s, American series such as Magnum P. I., Miami Vice, Dallas, and Dynasty were very influential. Dallas had a particularly strong impact and dictated how many East Germans spent their leisure time on the day it was aired. No work brigade gatherings were held on Tuesday nights, and marital disputes – Dallas versus soccer or thrillers – were unavoidable. Even without official ratings, one could measure the show’s popularity by watching the lights go off in apartment blocks when the show ended at 11 p.m. This behavior clearly represented an escape from the indoctrination strategies of the GDR media, signaling the population’s need for variety, glitter, and glamour. It is unlikely that Dallas affected East Germans’ impressions of the average American’s life. Articles criticizing the series only seemed, contrary to intention, to draw even more attention to it. Radio existed alongside television as a source of American political and cultural influence on all age groups. East Germans regularly tuned in to Radio Luxembourg, Voice of America, American Forces Network, and Radio Free Europe as well as to the BBC and West German stations. Studies of youth and the media conducted in the GDR – most only available in unedited form since 1989–90 – generally found

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an increasing “detachment of daily life from the reality offered in and by the media.”14 The strictly enforced prohibition on the import of printed material from the West was important for publishing houses’ policy on American literature. The restrictions of the 1950s and 1960s, which had limited publishers to the socially critical authors like Mark Twain, Jack London, and Theodore Dreiser, were lifted. Twain and London were joined on the “Top 30” list of young people’s favorites during the 1980s by Karl May, Alex Haley (Roots), Walt Disney, and Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich, who wrote about Native Americans. Works by John Updike, Joseph Heller, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, and James Baldwin, among others, were published in the GDR beginning in the early 1970s and were extremely popular, and they provided East Germans with a taste of life and manners in postwar America. The impact of books by GDR authors that directly or indirectly referred to the United States should also not be underestimated.15 By contrast, English instruction in schools and textbooks did not contribute much toward fostering a realistic picture of the United States. Although authors were well-intentioned and received help from American studies specialists, they still had to bow to pressures from the Ministry for Education (Ministerium f¨ur Volksbildung). The result – evident, for example in the textbook English for You – was a mix of useful material on history, geography, and literature with tendentious and ideologically skewed lessons.16 American cultural policy in the GDR could do little to counter these images. There were 14 See Hans-J¨org Stiehler, “Blicke in den Medienalltag Jugendlicher,” in Werner Hennig and Walter Friedrich, eds., Jugend in der DDR: Daten und Ergebnisse der Jugendforschung vor der Wende (Weinheim, 1991), 74. 15 See Chris Weedon, “Marxist Cultural Politics in Eastern Europe: The Case of the German Democratic Republic,” in Glenn Jordan and Chris Weedon, eds., Cultural Politics: Class, Gender, Race, and the Postmodern World (Oxford, 1995), 106. Also see Wessel, Bild und Gegenbild, 51–5; in chaps. 2–5, Wessel analyzes U.S.related subjects treated by East German authors. 16 English for You: Englisches Lehrbuch Teil V (Berlin, 1983). See also Heinrich Bortfeldt, “Das USA-Bild in den Schulb¨uchern der ehemaligen DDR,” in Geschichte – Erziehung – Politik 3 (1992): 217–23.

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only occasional exceptions to the impediments of the Cold War – the well-attended American Cinema exhibition in East Berlin, for example, and the celebrated exhibition The Splendor of Dresden in the United States. East Germans’ private images of the United States in the 1970s and 1980s did not show a marked inclination toward anti-Americanism. Many individuals criticized the Vietnam War, Watergate scandal, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and President Ronald Reagan’s rhetoric. But this criticism did not lead to a wholesale rejection of the United States, as it did among some Western Europeans on both the left and the right. On the contrary, a naive sympathy for “the Americans,” for their technological and athletic successes, and their culture stubbornly persisted among the populace, perhaps partly in defiance to official criticism of the United States. This sympathy sometimes took the form of a kind of philo-Americanism, shaped by popular culture, among young East Germans. There is, though, little empirical evidence for this assertion. Although public opinion and youth researchers in East Germany utilized the tools of empirical social research, they had to avoid questions that might produce undesirable answers. Pollsters also appear to have avoided direct questions about the United States.17 There is, however, unambiguous evidence that East German citizens were increasingly convinced of the economic and technological superiority of the West.18 Likewise, the increasing influence of Western, and particularly American, popular culture transmitted by the Western media was evident. The appeal of the United States and certain elements of the country’s image for citizens of the GDR, particularly the young, could only be documented retrospectively after the fall of the Berlin Wall.19 East Germans’ willingness 17 See Heinz Niemann, Meinungsforschung in der DDR: Die geheimen Berichte des Instituts f¨ur Meinungsforschung an das Politb¨uro der SED (Cologne, 1993); Walter Friedrich and Hartmut Griese, eds., Jugend und Jugendforschung in der DDR (Opladen, 1991). 18 See Niemann, Meinungsforschung in der DDR, 49. 19 Jens F¨ugener and Ulrike Skorsetz, “Das USABild im Bewusstsein der B¨urger in den o¨ stlichen Bundesl¨andern: Ergebnisse einer Befragung vom Fr¨uhjahr 1990,” Amerikastudien 36 (1991): 269–83.

to accept Americanisms stands in marked contrast, for instance, to efforts in France to preservice the purity of French. Campaigns against the use of American terms in the computer field, in popular culture, among the young, and in everyday speech were rare and unsuccessful. By the 1970s, the use of Americanisms had already become common and widespread.20 Ultimately, many of those responsible for politics, ideology, and culture realized, if reluctantly, that there was little they could do against a global, Americaninfluenced mass culture.21 intellectual images of america A new generation of intellectuals educated in the GDR joined older teachers and scholars – e´ migr´es who had returned after the war and “pioneers of the first hour” – at East German schools and universities in the 1970s. This younger generation seized on new opportunities. The field of American studies in the GDR could now also operate on “two tracks”: Teaching and research remained wedded to MarxistLeninist theories, but there was the possibility of a more conciliatory attitude toward the theoretical problems of the discipline and its research subject, the United States.22 Whereas the articles by the CPUSA (Communist Party of the United States of America) leaders Gus Hall and Henry Winston that appeared in Political Affairs and the Daily World remained normative, Angela 20 See Ingrid Heiss, “Untersuchungen zu Anglizismen in der deutschen Gegenwartssprache in der DDR” ( Ph.D. diss., University of Potsdam, 1987). 21 See Kaspar Maase, “Amerikanisierung der Gesellschaft: Nationalisierende Deutung von Globalisierungsprozessen?” in Konrad H. Jarausch and Hannes Siegrist, eds., Amerikanisierung und Sowjetisierung in Deutschland 1945–1970 (Frankfurt am Main, 1997), 228–33. 22 See Eberhard Br¨uning, “Die Amerikanistik an der Universit¨at Leipzig (1950–1990): 40 Jahre Gratwanderungen eines ungeliebten Faches,” in Rainer Schnoor, ed., Amerikanistik in der DDR: Geschichte – Analysen – Zeitzeugenberichte (Berlin, 1999); Rainer Schnoor, “Ideological Commitment and Intellectual Pursuit: Evolutions in East German American Studies Since the 1960s,” in G¨unter H. Lenz and Klaus J. Milich, eds., American Studies in Germany: European Contexts and Intercultural Relations (Frankfurt am Main, 1995), 38–43.

Between Private Opinion and Official Pronouncement

Davis, who had briefly belong to the CPUSA, brought a breath of fresh air into party committees and editorial boards. Many East German youth, as well as teachers and students in American studies, identified with her. That was all the more necessary in the wake of the marginalization of American studies and the strengthening of Marxism-Leninism departments in the university reform of 1969. Previously subordinated to the study of British language and literature, American studies was now put in departments with more dominant partners such as German studies and Slavic studies. Nevertheless, the discipline developed a stronger academic profile, which had a beneficial impact on the quality and quantity of works of American fiction, classic and contemporary, that were published in the GDR. Eberhard Br¨uning, Karl-Heinz Sch¨onfelder, Karl-Heinz Wirzberger, and their students brought about these long-overdue improvements. Encouraged by Robert Weimann’s scholarly work, East German literary scholars tried in the 1970s to integrate new theories from abroad critically into their own work and to overcome the dogmas of the past.23 In long and arduous discussions with the section heads in GDR ministries during the 1970s, scholars were slowly able to free themselves from the overly ideological curriculum plan imposed in 1969. The 1982 curriculum, for example, provided more opportunity for dealing with the literature, history, society, and culture of the United States even though certain restrictive political-ideological guidelines remained in place.24 The same applied to research. The immense popularity of works by Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Charles Bukowski was evidence of a growing interest in nonconformity. The anthology Anspruch und Wirklichkeit (“Claim and Reality”) published by Eberhard

23 Robert Weimann, “New Criticism” und die Entwicklung b¨urgerlicher Literaturwissenschaft (Munich, 1974). 24 See Ministerrat der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, Ministerium f¨ur Volksbildung, and Ministerium f¨ur Hoch- und Fachschulwesen, Lehrprogramme f¨ur die Ausbildung von Diplomlehrern der allgemeinbildenden polytechnischen Oberschulen im Fach Englisch an Universit¨aten und Hochschulen der DDR (Berlin, 1982), 60–80.

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Br¨uning on the occasion of the American Bicentennial in 1976 was particularly important: It was the first collection published in the GDR to include texts by Thomas Jefferson, Thoreau, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr.25 American studies conferences were held biennially starting in 1976. And a little earlier, in 1974, the surprised GDR citizen could even read in G¨unter Kunert’s unconventional travel book Der andere Planet: Ansichten von Amerika (The Other Planet: Views from America): “You are entering a world where more things exist than you can dream of with your socialist book learning.”26 In the second half of the 1970s – after a hiatus of ten years – possibilities for travel opened up again. At the end of the decade and at the beginning of the 1980s, American universities established exchange programs with GDR partner institutions (Kent State University with Leipzig, Brown University with Rostock, Johns Hopkins University with Berlin’s Humboldt University, Colby College with Jena). A carefully selected group of GDR students and scholars, including American studies specialists, were allowed to visit “the other planet,”27 and many reported on their experiences in articles and books.28 These trips put at least a partial end to the isolation of the discipline of American studies that had existed since 1961, and they vastly improved the availability of scholarly materials. A system of reciprocal information exchange and private lending punctured the so-called poison cabinet rule, under which a certain category of books and journals, usually selected arbitrarily by narrow-minded librarians, could only be read with a special permit in closed-off areas of larger libraries. The International Research Exchange (IREX) program as well as direct contacts at the 25 Eberhard Br¨uning, ed., Anspruch und Wirklichkeit: Zweihundert Jahre Kampf um Demokratie in den USA. Dokumente und Aussagen (Berlin, 1976). 26 G¨unter Kunert, Der andere Planet: Ansichten von Amerika (Berlin, 1974), 23. 27 See Burton C. Gaida, USA – DDR: Politische, kulturelle und wirtschaftliche Beziehungen seit 1974 (Bochum, 1989), 209–20. 28 See the bibliography in Rainer Schnoor, Aspects of the USA: Society – Politics – Ideology (Potsdam, 1990), esp. 224–5.

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university level also brought American academics – unconnected to the U.S. Communist Party – to East German universities. They were passed from university to university, thereby importing a host of new ideas and information into the curriculum. These new opportunities increased the attractiveness of American studies in the 1970s and 1980s. And, in part because of these opportunities, students in the field, despite critical reservations about the United States, did not share the hostile official view of the country. Studies conducted after the collapse of the GDR have substantiated this point.29 Surveys 29

See Heinz F¨orster, M¨oglichkeiten, Probleme und Grenzen der Lehrveranstaltungen Landeskunde USA an

found that the image of America among young people in the GDR was shaped not only by their interest in technology and sports, but also by an admiration for American multiculturalism, federalism, and the separation of powers (lacking in the GDR). And they also showed young East Germans’ admiration for American individualism, tolerance, self-confidence, and mobility. The fact that these attitudes could only be confirmed after 1989–90 points to the complicated interactions running between official, private, and intellectual images of America.

einer Universit¨at der ehemaligen DDR: Unver¨offentlichtes Manuskript (Leipzig, 1999), 6–12; F¨ugener and Skorsetz, “Das USA-Bild.”

chapter fifteen

The American Image of Germany, 1968–1991 Thomas Reuther Translated by Tradukas

The American image of Germany between 1968 and 1989 was characterized by a mix of continuity and ambivalence. It usually depended on the political and ideological standpoint of the observer.1 On one point, however, scholars and politicians are in agreement: The special influence that public opinion and interest groups exerted on American foreign policy made the question of the American image of Germany an issue of more than purely academic interest. From the mid-1980s on, the importance of this factor has been reflected, for instance, in the numerous governmental and private publicrelations initiatives aimed at promoting a better understanding of the Federal Republic in the United States.2

prerequisites, conditions, traditions What was the overriding feature of America’s image of Germany in this period? The rather low importance accorded to the two German states in the collective consciousness of Americans is probably the most striking characteristic. Quite a number of American foreign correspondents working in the Federal Republic complained eloquently that their efforts at informative and balanced reporting met with little interest in the United States. This held even for the few newspapers with comprehensive foreign coverage, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. Above all, the strong trend toward crisis-oriented reporting meant that stories on the Federal Republic were either rare or predominantly about spectacular events. That 1960s television increasingly displaced the daily newspaper as the leading news medium strengthened these trends.3 The qualitative and quantitative decline in the American media’s attention to the Federal Republic since the 1960s can be traced back to

1

There is no comprehensive overview of this subject. See the chapter by Thomas Reuther, vol. 1, Society; Beverly Crawford and James Martel, “Representations of Germans and What Germans Represent: American Film Images and Public Perceptions in the Postwar Era,” in David E. Barclay and Elisabeth Glaser-Schmidt, eds., Transatlantic Images and Perceptions: Germany and America Since 1776 (New York, 1997), 285– 308; Wolfgang Bergsdorf, “Kontinuit¨at im Wandel: Die deutsch-amerikanischen Beziehungen im Spiegel der Demoskopie,” in Karl Dietrich Bracher, Manfred Funke, and Hans-Peter Schwarz, eds., Deutschland zwischen Krieg und Frieden: Beitr¨age zur Politik und Kultur im 20. Jahrhundert (Bonn, 1990), 197–211. 2 Marc R. Gramberger, Wider den h¨asslichen Deutschen: ¨ Die verst¨andnisorientierte Offentlichkeitsarbeit der Bundesrepublik in den USA (M¨unster, 1993).

3

John Dornberg, “Das deutsch-amerikanische Verh¨altnis aus amerikanischer Sicht,” in Siegfried Quandt and Gerhard Schult, eds., Die USA und Deutschland seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (Paderborn, 1985), 31–41; Gerald R. Kleinfeld, “Das Deutschlandbild in der regionalen amerikanischen Presse,” in Klaus Weigelt, ed., Das Deutschland- und Amerikabild: Beitr¨age zum gegenseitigen Verst¨andnis beider V¨olker (St. Augustin, 1986), 54–60.

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several factors. One decisive factor was that between the construction (1961) and fall (1989) of the Berlin Wall, Germany no longer represented a significant “other” for the United States. In the 1930s and early 1940s, Hitler’s Germany was the main villain for the liberal, capitalist system of the United States. In the early Cold War years, Germany became a European cornerstone of America’s containment strategy, the economic locomotive of Europe’s reconstruction, and, symbolized above all by Berlin, an ever-present reminder of the potential danger of a third world war. With the beginning of John F. Kennedy’s policy of d´etente, the stabilization of the Federal Republic, the de facto resolution of the German question through the building of the Wall, and the growing entanglement of American policy in Vietnam, the “German question” gradually lost its explosiveness. Overall, Europe’s significance for the United States seemed to diminish, and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s designation of 1973 as the “Year of Europe” did little to change that. The early 1970s marked a low point in American-European relations. A 1974 opinion poll found more Americans opposed than in favor of supporting Europe militarily in the event of war.4 The liberal-internationalist consensus among the political elite and the broad American public dating from the 1930s began to disintegrate in the mid-1960s. This process of disintegration inevitably affected the American image of Europe and Germany. Until the Kennedy era not only U.S. foreign policy, but also domestic discourse had been conducted by an interventionist, East Coast elite with many personal connections to Europe. The political center of gravity then shifted to the western part of the country and the booming sunbelt states. A new generation of politicians thus gained power and influence. For them, the “Pacific challenge” was at least as important as the European challenge, and they did not fully share the admiration for French culture, German economic power, or the special relationship with Great 4

Gebhard Schweigler, Politikwissenschaft und Aussenpolitik in den USA: Am Beispeil der europ¨aischamerikanischen Beziehungen (Munich, 1977), 251–3.

Britain that had characterized the generation of George F. Kennan and Dean Acheson.5 Given the far-reaching changes in American political culture, the relative consistency of attitudes toward Germany and the Germans is all the more remarkable. The importance of Germany as an ally in American eyes remained high and the overall image of Germany was positive. In the late 1980s, 29 percent of Americans said that they were of German ancestry, thus making German-Americans numerically the largest ethnic group in U.S. society. For most of them, though, preserving cultural tradition was limited to Steuben Day parades, Oktoberfest celebrations, and a sentimental enthusiasm for “typically German” things such as Lederhosen and sauerkraut. Only rarely did their connection to Germany take the form of actively examining the West German political and social situation.6 Thus, the positive features of the American image of Germans arose from a peculiar mixture of historical traditions and contemporary references, which – from the Germans’ point of view – sometimes verged on the ridiculous. This was true of the negative features as well. the alliance under scrutiny: the federal republic as an ally in foreign policy Although there had been concern in the United States during the 1950s about what Germany might look like after Adenauer,7 Americans were well disposed toward the Social Democrat who became chancellor in the late 1960s. Willy Brandt embodied two things at once in 5

On these developments, see Benjamin I. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro, The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans’ Policy Preferences (Chicago, 1992), 221–3; Melvin Small, Democracy and Diplomacy: The Impact of Domestic Politics on U.S. Foreign Policy, 1789–1994 (Baltimore, 1996), 110–40. 6 Bergsdorf, Kontinuit¨at im Wandel, 203; Helmut Hubel and Bernhard May, Ein “normales” Deutschland? Die souver¨ane Bundesrepublik in der ausl¨andischen Wahrnehmung (Bonn, 1995), 58–9. 7 See the recent work by Thomas Reuther, Die ambivalente Normalisierung: Deutschlanddiskurs und Deutschlandbilder in den USA 1941–1955 (Stuttgart, 2000).

The American Image of Germany, 1968–1991

the eyes of the American public. He was the man who just a few years earlier had stood up firmly against the communists as mayor of that political flashpoint, Berlin. And at the same time, in terms of his age and manner (and, as American media liked to report, attractiveness to the opposite sex), he was something of a German Kennedy. Reactions to the Ostpolitik launched by Willy Brandt and Egon Bahr were nonetheless divided. The concept of Ostpolitik brought to mind negative associations, such as Rapallo and the Nazi-Soviet Pact: The danger of German Sonderweg seemed to be looming again. But it soon became apparent that the West German government was negotiating with the Soviet Union and Poland in the spirit of reconciliation and with a sense that it was part of the Western camp. West Germany was also seen as a more reliable ally than Italy or Charles de Gaulle’s France, even if it did not enjoy quite the high level of trust accorded Great Britain.8 Brandt was succeeded after his resignation as chancellor by Helmut Schmidt, whose loyalty to the alliance was never in dispute. However, his term of office had its critical phases; and Schmidt’s tenure did, however, have periods of tension, particularly as a result of his strained relationship with President Jimmy Carter. Although some columnists, above all those of a conservative bent, showed understanding for Schmidt’s position, he became the prototype of the arrogant German for sections of the liberal press.9 But such irritations proved to be shortlived. A more lasting impression was left toward the end of Schmidt’s time in office by the passionate debate on the deployment of new intermediate range nuclear missiles in the Federal Republic and by the emergence of Greens, a new political phenomenon. American me-

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dia interest in the Federal Republic subsided again by time of the Christian Democratic– Free Democrataic victory in the 1982 election: Once again, the danger that America’s German ally would turn neutral was averted. Occasional tensions notwithstanding,10 the essentially proAmerican orientation of West German policy up until the spectacular events of 1980–90 was never in doubt. This was not changed by the fact that increasingly close German-German relations occasionally gave cause for concern in the United States and led skeptical journalists to revive the “Rapallo myth” at regular intervals.11

democracy under scrutiny: german domestic policy from the american perspective What was true of West German foreign policy also held for domestic policy: It aroused less interest among the American general public than it had in the 1950s. The few news items that crossed the Atlantic and found their way into American news broadcasts were “spectacular events.” Whereas German political unrest of the late 1960s was largely unnoticed by the American public, the wave of terrorism in the late 1970s offered the opportunity to speculate on the reliability of West German democracy. The outcome of such speculation was, on the whole, positive, however. The New York Times, known for its critical reporting on Germany, concluded in the aftermath of the 1977 hostage crisis in Mogadishu that the Federal Republic had proven itself.12 It was the appearance of the Greens as a new type of party in the early 1980s that stirred up great interest in America, above all in intellectual circles. What was fascinating about the party was less its strong emphasis on ecological issues than

8

Schweigler, Politikwissenschaft und Aussenpolitik, 272ff.; see also the results of the surveys of the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations, which have been published regularly since 1975: John E. Rielly, ed., American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy (Chicago, 1975, 1979, 1983, 1987, 1991, 1995). 9 Andrea Lentz, Aspekte des Deutschlandbildes in der amerikanischen Presse w¨ahrend der zweiten H¨alfte der sozialliberalen Koalition 1977–1982 (M¨unster, 1989), 445–7.

10 Eberhard Schulz and Peter Danylow, Bewegung in der deutschen Frage? Die ausl¨andischen Besorgnisse u¨ ber die Entwicklung in den beiden deutschen Staaten (Bonn, 1984), 49. 11 See, for example, “Germany: An East-West Thaw. Warmer Ties Between Bonn and East Berlin Trouble Allies of Both Governments,” Newsweek, May 7, 1984. 12 Lentz, Aspekte des Deutschlandbildes, 431.

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the remarkable combination of anti-American slogans and the political socialization many of its leaders had experienced in the United States. As one American journalist declared, [Petra Kelly’s] confidence is minted in America, her sensibility shaped around the struggle for civil rights in the American South and the protests against Vietnam. Her familiarity with the style and substance of American protest gave the movement a message and heroes and tactics that could avoid the heavy weight of German history.13

There was a tendency in the American perception of Germany and the Germans to trace all political and cultural phenomena perceived as positive back to the influence of American (political) culture and to see all negative traits as deeply anchored in the German “soul.” The Third Reich remained the touchstone for judging West German realities. In this respect, Germany’s Sonderweg to modernity has remained a separate standard for judging Germany into the postmodern era. Nevertheless, as time passed, West German democracy won increasing trust in the United States. In the 1970s, American exchange students still complained of West Germans’ materialism and tendency toward coldheartedness – the unappealing side of West Germany’s oft-discussed postwar “economic miracle.” In the 1980s and 1990s, these criticisms were heard less often. The complaint that Germans had a pedantic sense of order and a love of authority apparently rooted deeply in the German collective consciousness proved more enduring.14 If the American perception of the Federal Republic as an ally in foreign affairs is kept distinct from the assessment of its political system 13

James Reston, Jr., “The Other Children of the Holocaust,” Esquire, 102 (1984): 57. 14 This stereotype of the Germans is still quite widespread abroad. It is especially prevalent in the Anglo-Saxon countries, probably as a result of their traditional rejection of state interventionism; see Manfred Koch-Hillebrecht, Das Deutschlandbild: Gegenwart, Geschichte, Psychologie (Munich, 1977); G¨unter Trautmann, ed., Die h¨asslichen Deutschen? Deutschland im Spiegel der westlichen und o¨stlichen Nachbarn (Darmstadt, 1991); Wolfgang Holl, Alles klar – alles in Ordnung? Beobachtungen und Erfahrungen ausl¨andischer Wissenschaftler in Deutschland (Bonn, 1994).

and political culture, a discrepancy remains despite the favorable overall assessment of German democracy. Between 1968 and 1990, the Federal Republic could claim to be one of the most loyal allies of the United States. But in a survey conducted in 1988, 68 percent of those interviewed were prepared to accept Great Britain as a democratic state and only 51 percent the Federal Republic (and even fewer France).15

the past under scrutiny: images of the third reich and their influence on the american image of germany In 1994, quite a few Germans expressed annoyance toward the decision of French President Franc¸ ois Mitterrand not to invite the German chancellor to celebrations commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Allied landing at Normandy. In the United States the response to this decision was mixed. While some pointed out that history could not be rewritten because of what happened afterward, others found this stance outdated and politically dangerous. According to International Herald Tribune columnist William Pfaff, nothing could be more injurious to the Federal Republic than continued isolation on account of the past as it underwent a traumatic reexamination of its place in the international community. The underlying issue was the old question, raised during the war, of the connection between the Nazi dictatorship and German national character. With the exclusion of the Federal Republic, Pfaff argued, it was the victory over the German nation, not over Nazism, that was being celebrated.16 The debate about German participation in Allied victory celebrations gives forceful insight into the significance of World War II for the American image of Germany decades after the beginning of the Cold War. After the Soviet Union supplanted Hitler’s Germany as the archetypical enemy in the 1950s, the American political establishment and culture industry tacitly consented not to delve 15

Bergsdorf, Kontinuit¨at im Wandel, 207. Cited in Hubel and May, Ein “normales” Deutschland? 35. 16

The American Image of Germany, 1968–1991

too deeply into the new German ally’s faults. The war films produced in this decade concentrated almost entirely on the Pacific theater, and Germans rarely appeared. When they did, they largely played skeptical, sometimes magnanimous, but mainly upright soldiers sympathetic to the resistance.17 The Holocaust was not yet the crime of the war in the American collective consciousness. If portrayed at all, the Holocaust was presented in a manner in keeping with the consumer habits of the American public – as, for example, in the extraordinarily successful stage and film adaptations of The Diary of Anne Frank. The fate of a particular individual stood in for the death of millions; in place of hopelessness, the end left room for fundamental human goodness. 18 It was not until the 1960s that change gradually occurred and people began to reevaluate the early 1940s. The breakthrough came after the Vietnam War, and this process of reevaluation has continued into the present. First, after the traumatic experiences of the Vietnam War, World War II resurfaced in the American consciousness as the last “good war.” It was good because the United States had been fighting against an ideology that – in retrospect, too – was the embodiment of “pure evil.” It was good because the Americans conducted it through apparently fair means; there were no images of the bombing of Dresden as vivid as those of the My Lai massacre. It was good because the Americans won. Second, the murder of millions of Jews in the Third Reich moved from the periphery into the center of remembrance of the war. With the concept of the Holocaust, this genocide attracted a level of attention in the United States unmatched in the other Allied countries and comparable only to the scrutiny it received in the countries of the perpetrators (the Federal Republic) and the victims (Israel).19 17

See the film list at the end of Jeanine Basinger, The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre (New York, 1986). 18 Ilan Avisar, Screening the Holocaust: Cinema’s Images of the Unimaginable (Bloomington, Ind., 1988); Alvin H. Rosenfeld, The Americanization of the Holocaust (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1995). 19 See the chapters by Jeffrey Peck, vol. 2, Culture, and Alan E. Steinweis, vol. 1, Culture.

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Third, a focus on the Holocaust also placed the question of the “nation of perpetrators” into a more central place. The complicity of sections of the German people in the genocide of the Jews became and remains a central question. The passionate response to Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners, which received mainly negative reviews from historians of the period in Israel, the United States, and Germany, showed clearly that preoccupation with this theme continues undiminished. Fourth, the “Americanization” of the Holocaust has led to an expanded use of the term. Especially since the 1980s, prompted not least by the debate over multiculturalism, the concept “Holocaust” was increasingly detached from its concrete historical – and, thus, inevitably German – context. It is now a catchword in everyday politics. Fifth, what is true of “Holocaust” also holds for “Nazi”: It, too, has become detached from its original context. In John Schlesinger’s 1974 film Marathon Man, which received considerable public attention, the U.S. Secret Service cooperates with Nazis who have gone underground; in John Landis’s Blues Brothers, some brown-shirted American “patriots” cause a stir. The image of the Nazi became a means of criticizing abuses and injustices in American society, in a way that had not been possible before. Under new circumstances, the Nazis served a purpose that had already fallen to them during the war. This explains the apparent paradox that the American image of Germany has in fact tended to improve despite increasing interest in the Holocaust. The war and the Holocaust have received considerable attention since the late 1960s, at least among politically influential segments of the American public such as the liberal East Coast establishment and American Jews, whereas in the 1940s and 1950s many issues had been left unaddressed. As resistance to the Vietnam War grew, a critical “counterpublic” developed in the United States. The secure social standing of American Jews made it possible, furthermore, for the Holocaust to be confronted seriously as an issue to an extent that would have been inconceivable at the beginning of the Cold War. Remembrance of the Holocaust took form in belated commemorations for the victims and

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of legitimation for the founding of the state of Israel. It also served as a kind of “ideological glue” for the American-Israeli alliance; the Six Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973 acted as a catalyst for discourses about the Holocaust in the United States.20 Although the discourse on the Holocaust was conducted mainly at a remove from contemporary German-American relations, there was overlap at times. This became particularly clear in the bitter debate about President Ronald Reagan’s visit to the Bitburg military cemetery in spring 1985. Reagan himself saw the visit to the military cemetery, where fortyeight members of the Waffen-SS were buried alongside 2,000 Wehrmacht soldiers, as a gesture of reconciliation that would help heal old wounds left by the war and strengthen the Atlantic alliance.21 Weeks before the actual visit, Reagan’s intention roused consternation among American Jews, Christian churches, the media, members of Congress, and influential veterans’ associations. This unrest culminated in an appeal to the president by Elie Wiesel: “May I, Mr. President, if it’s possible at all, implore you to do something else, to find a way – to find another way, another site. That place, Mr. President, is not your place. Your place is with the victims of the SS.”22 It is open to question whether, despite these protests, a majority of Americans disapproved of Reagan’s visit to Bitburg. According to a survey by the Washington Post and ABC on April 22, 20

Rosenfeld, Americanization of the Holocaust, 6; see also Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (New York, 1999); Hilene Flanzbaum, ed., The Americanization of the Holocaust (Baltimore, 1999). 21 Ronald Reagan, An American Life (New York, 1990), 384. See also Geoffrey H. Hartman, ed., Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective (Bloomington, Ind., 1986); David B. Morris, “Bitburg Revisited: Germany’s Search for Normalcy,” German Politics and Society 13, no. 4 (1995): 91–109. 22 “Remarks of Elie Wiesel at Ceremony for Jewish Heritage Week and Presentation of Congressional Gold Medal, White House, April 19, 1985,” in Hartman, ed., Bitburg, 243. On the discussion in the United States generally, see Ilya Levkov, ed., Bitburg and Beyond: Encounters in American, German, and Jewish History (New York, 1987).

1985, 60 percent of Americans felt that American Jewish leaders were attaching too much importance to the Bitburg visit. A survey by the New York Times and CBS on the day after the visit found a clear split in the American public: 41 percent approved of Reagan’s visit and precisely as many disapproved. The president himself took the protests into account by including a visit to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp into his schedule at short notice.23 The majority of those who disapproved of the visit did so less for fear that it would degrade the memory of the victims of the Holocaust than out of concern that it would tarnish the memory of American soldiers. The protests of the American veterans’ associations proved much more persuasive for broad sections of the population than arguments made by American Jews. The “Bitburg affair” made it clear that the heroic view of the war followed the image of “the good war”; all attempts to put the Holocaust at the center of attention ran up against this boundary.24 There has been no lack of attempts to change this, and the American public has shown some openness. In spring 1978, the television miniseries Holocaust was followed by an extraordinarily large audience. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington is one of the most frequented museums of the American capital. Steven Spielberg’s 1992 film Schindler’s List won a number of Oscars and reached an audience of millions in the United States. The effect of such media events on Americans’ image of Germany remains difficult to judge, but their impact has evidently been limited. The distinction between “good Germans” and “evil Nazis,” dating from the war, seems still to have force.25 23 See William Bole, “Bitburg: The American Scene,” in Hartman, ed., Bitburg, 71, 76. 24 This is confirmed in a more recent study by the American Jewish Committee, What Do Americans Know About the Holocaust? (New York, 1993). A substantial minority of adult Americans – 38 percent – had no clear notion of what the Holocaust was; 65 percent were uncertain about the number of victims. 25 Gerhard Probst, “Images of Germany and the Germans in American Media,” in Lothar Bredella, ed., Mediating a Foreign Culture: The United States and Germany (T¨ubingen, 1991), 81–92.

The American Image of Germany, 1968–1991

the nation-state under scrutiny: american reactions to reunification and the “berlin republic” The survey results speak for themselves: None of Germany’s other allies supported the idea of German unification as wholeheartedly as the United States. The government, the minority party in Congress, and the public were in rare agreement on the issue. According to a joint New York Times-CBS News survey in November 1989, 67 percent of all Americans were in favor of German reunification. In January 1990, according to the Los Angeles Times, the figure was 61 percent. ABC found 76 percent were in favor in April and 84 percent in May. A breakdown by different social groups reveals that the rate of approval was highest among Americans of German extraction. Americans with some experience of Germany, soldiers who had been stationed there, academics with contacts in Germany, and members of the American business community were likewise overwhelmingly in favor of reunification. Reservations were most pronounced among American Jews, Polish Americans, intellectuals, and veterans of the two world wars. But even in these groups, supporters of reunification still outnumbered opponents.26 The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, was a significant media event in the United States that about half of all Americans followed with keen interest. For Americans, Germany was again a stage of world history in the making for the first time since the second Berlin Crisis: Berlin stood for the collapse of communism, a new unity in Europe, and the American “victory” in the Cold War. 26 See Wolfgang G. Gibowski and Holli A. Semetko, “Amerikanische o¨ ffentliche Meinung und deutsche Einheit,” in Wolfgang-Uwe Friedrich, ed., Die USA und die deutsche Frage 1945–1990 (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), 391– 406; Arthur M. Hanhardt Jr., “Die deutsche Vereinigung im Spiegelbild der amerikanischen ver¨offentlichten Meinung,” in ibid., 407–17; Konrad H. Jarausch, “American Policy Toward German Unification: Images and Interests,” in Barclay and Glaser-Schmidt, eds., Transatlantic Images, 333–52.

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The way unification was achieved also helped improve the image of Germany. The peaceful protests by the East German public, the moderate stance of the West German government (aside from its briefly uncertain position on the Oder-Neisse border), and the whole spirit of the first peaceful revolution in German history seemed clearly to confirm that the Sonderweg of German political culture had finally been relegated to the past. In a survey carried out in the United States, Britain, France, and Poland commissioned by the Los Angeles Times and The Economist, 29 percent of the Americans polled expressed concern that Germany might once again become the dominant power in Europe and 62 percent said they did not fear such a development. In the other three countries, the proportions were reversed.27 An overwhelming majority of Americans, particularly among the political elite, called for the Federal Republic to take on increased responsibility in international affairs. President George Bush spoke of a “partner in leadership”; the U.S. Senate wanted Germany to participate in international peacekeeping missions; a survey in fall 1994 by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations showed that 56 percent of respondents from the political elite and 45 percent of the general public expected that Germany would come to play a “more significant role” in the next ten years.28 The State Department’s expert on Germany, David Hamilton, spoke of the “Berlin Republic” and was one of the first foreign observers of Germany to openly call on the Germans to meet their increased international responsibilities. Large sections of the U.S. population seemed to attach more hope than fear to the growing power of the enlarged Federal Republic in world politics. There was thus little reason to fear that, in a period of foreign policy disorientation following the disappearance of the Soviet enemy, the American public might find a substitute enemy in the “Berlin Republic.”

27 28

Hubel and May, Ein “normales” Deutschland? 24. Rielly, American Public Opinion (1995).

OUTLOOK America, Germany, and the Atlantic Community After the Cold War∗ Hans-Peter Schwarz Translated by Richard Sharp

A decade has already passed since the defining year of 1990. It was too much to hope that the collapse of the Soviet empire would bring about “the end of history.” Even the global triumph of liberal democracy, heralded at the time by Francis Fukuyama with a misleadingly worded historical-philosophical thesis, has not yet come to pass.1 Instead, Europe in general and American relations with Germany in particular have undergone a process that – despite many differences – bears resemblance to the course of events between 1945 and 1955. On both occasions – in 1945 and in 1990 – deep-reaching changes took place in power relations in Europe and in the broader Atlantic realm. Contemporaries perceived this shift clearly on each occasion, and hindsight leaves no doubt about the importance of these turning points. Needless to say, 1945 was a more dramatic turning point for the history of Europe as a whole, especially for Germany, than the collapse of the communist regimes in 1990 was. Both of these new beginnings, however, gave way to a prolonged and very unclear transition period. Some far-sighted theorists in 1945 and 1990 did indeed perceive and describe the outlines of the coming systems. On each occasion, however, it was a full decade before the balance of power, while still precarious, had

stabilized to the point that one could speak of a new international order or, more precisely, of a new order encompassing the Atlantic and reaching far beyond Eastern Europe. As the present work has noted in detail, it was not until 1955, when the Federal Republic of Germany joined NATO and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was incorporated within the Warsaw Pact, that the new postwar European-Atlantic system took more or less final form. A divided Europe, a divided Germany, a precariously positioned Berlin: This situation seemed to be becoming permanent in 1955. But it was also in 1955 that East-West d´etente began with the Geneva summit and that the beginnings of German-Soviet d´etente were laid with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s decision to accept the Soviet offer to open diplomatic relations. The decades between 1955 and 1989 brought many changes and crises of all kinds. But diplomats, political analysts, and historians came to believe that a relatively durable system existed that rested on specific and undeniably solid structures. Like most international systems of earlier decades and centuries, it was not without its weaknesses, tensions, asymmetries, and inherent dangers, but it was nonetheless a relatively durable system. In the unsettled period between 1945 and 1955 – and later, too – two states made crucial contributions to the evolution of this new order in the Atlantic world: the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany. Of course, many

∗ This chapter was completed in summer 1999; a postscript written on March 20, 2003, has been added. 1 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York, 1992).

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forces and conditions played an important part as well. But for the United States, the hegemonic power in Western Europe, the Federal Republic of Germany represented its geostrategic platform. In turn, the West Germans came to recognize the United States during the period that came to an end in 1990. As shown in this book, the year 1990 marked the high point of this bilateralism. In contrast to what had taken place in 1945 and the following years, the development of a new Atlantic and European order beginning in 1990 was an evolutionary process characterized much more by continuity than discontinuity. Yet it was also a period of uncertainties, risks, and apprehension. And as with the stabilization of the shattered European political order between 1945 and 1955, the United States and the newly reunited Germany were of fundamental importance This is the theme of the sketch that follows. The major questions are not difficult to select. First, which basic patterns in GermanAmerican relations between 1948 and 1990 have survived the upheaval of 1989–90 and which have not? Both continuities and discontinuities are laid out here. And, because historians attach importance to being more than mere prophets of hindsight, another obvious question is: Which of these continuities or new structures are likely to last at least for the medium term? Permanence has no meaning in history, as the upheavals of 1989–91 reminded us. Leading politicians are always trying to persuade themselves and others that such a thing as an “irreversible” structure or option exists. But they are deceiving themselves or others. Nevertheless, the analyses contained in these volumes make clear that there are basic facts, at the microand macrohistorical level, that hold true over the longue dur´ee. They can be identified, described, and weighted, and cautious conclusions can be drawn from them. The essay that follows proceeds in three stages. It begins with an outline of those basic conditions that shaped German-American relations in the forty five years up to 1990. Second, an overview follows laying out the continuities, discontinuities, and, not least, uncertainties that marked the 1990s. These reflections lead,

third, to this question: For how long, and under what conditions, will we continue to see those continuities that survive from the long phase of the Cold War in which relations between the United States and the Federal Republic could be summarized with the phrase “superpower and junior partner”?2 Another question should at least be touched upon: Amid a global historical movement subject to the law of acceleration, which of the continuities that have survived so far should be retained for as long as possible in the interests of stable development? German-American relations are not just a matter for historians, political scientists, scholars of culture, or economists, however important their research may be. They are, first and foremost, a central political issue. 1949–89: superpower and junior partner Any would-be analyst of the basic conditions of German-American relations over the decades from 1945 to 1990 should consider the first beginnings of a concept that later came to control the course of history: the Atlantic community. In the summer of 1944, as the armies under the command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower were fighting in Normandy and the collapse of Germany seemed imminent, Walter Lippmann published a study entitled U.S. War Aims. He had already coined the phrase “Atlantic community” during World War I. The young left-liberal editor of the New Republic conceived of the idea of the Atlantic community as being primarily a security community; its purpose would be to keep open the sea lanes across the Atlantic – “vital highways of our world” – and secure the United States’ eastern coast against attack. Yet even at this stage, the young Lippmann associated these geostrategic and economic considerations with a conviction that the United States, Britain, and France, as democracies spurred primarily by 2

See Hans-Peter Schwarz, “Supermacht und Juniorpartner: Ans¨atze amerikanischer und westdeutscher Ostpolitik,” in Hans-Peter Schwarz and Boris Meissner, eds., Entspannungspolitik in Ost und West (Cologne, 1979), 147–91.

America, Germany, and the Atlantic Community After the Cold War

liberal impulses, were the guarantors of modern civilization against the military autocracies of Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary, and that there were structures and convictions that made it inevitable that a community would be formed in the Atlantic region. During World War II, a more conservative Lippmann returned to this idea. He now believed that one of the main reasons that the Atlantic nations were a “living community” was that they were based on the centuries-old tradition of Western, Latin Christendom.3 He was already very much aware of the ideological contrasts to the Soviet Union, but he also considered these contrasts from a broad historical perspective and saw them as a continuation of the cultural difference between the more politically and economically constrained Byzantine civilization of the East and the freer, more individualistic civilization of the West that had been shaped by Roman law. What position should Germany and the Germans occupy within the Atlantic community, whose task lay in guaranteeing a prosperous, liberal, and peaceful world order? During the war, as passions were still running high, Lippmann expressed his conviction that Germany, too, formed part of the West. Nazism and militarism would of course have to be eliminated and permanently removed as a threat after the fall of the Reich, and those responsible in the Nazi regime would have to be punished. But after a period of about fifteen years during which Germany would have to be “watched,” a democratic, demilitarized, trade-oriented Germany could take its place within the Atlantic community, so Lippmann argued in the summer of 1944. This was a very good, albeit not a completely accurate prediction. The democratic, tradeoriented Germany found a respected place within the Atlantic community at an early stage and with relatively few complications. This of course applied only to the Federal Republic of Germany created in the West in 1949; the eastern zone, on the other hand, fell under the dominion of the Soviet Union. Western Germany was by far the largest and most productive part 3 Walter Lippmann, U.S. War Aims (New York, 1944), 172.

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of the dismembered German Reich, accounting for some 80 percent of the German population and containing – apart from Berlin and Saxony – the most economically advanced regions. By the early 1970s, the noncommunist community of nations had also come to recognize West Germany’s claim to be the only legitimate successor state of the German Reich. Lippmann’s prediction was wrong on three points. The integration of the democratic West German state began much earlier than he expected: in 1949. By contrast, the period during which this new Germany had to be “watched” (in entirely bearable fashion) to ensure that there was no further outbreak of German insanity lasted longer.4 And, contrary to Lippmann’s expectations, the modus vivendi with the Soviet Union that he had advocated did not 4 It has become the fashion for some historians to refer in this context to “dual containment”: containment of the Soviet Union, with the aid of West German forces, among others; and containment of the rearmed Federal Republic, which the American military presence would deter from any adventures. But the term containment is wrong for a number of reasons. It obscures the fact that the joint effort to control the Soviet Union had unconditional priority; a Federal Republic that was the target of pointed discrimination would not have been willing to become a voluntary and loyal member of the Atlantic community. Another reason why the term is wrong is that the Federal Republic, unable even to defend itself, let alone wage war, was too unfavorably placed to pose any threat to its western or eastern neighbors. States that are structurally sensitive to pressure do not need to be “contained” like an autonomous great power. What is meant by the problematic term containment would be more accurately expressed by the term control. Of course, the efforts to control the Federal Republic were particularly vigorous because the problem of partition, the Berlin question, and the presence of Soviet combat troops on German soil represented a genuine threat of war. In the early days of the Federal Republic, doubts about whether the West Germans really had experienced a conversion to democracy and peace also played an important part. But the American desire for optimum control of the Allies was not directed at the Federal Republic alone but also at France and Britain. We need only remember the obstruction of independent French or British efforts to evolve their own policy toward eastern Europe, to say nothing of the tough American reaction to the Suez interventions of 1956. Yet no one talks in that context about the containment of France or Britain. The ill-chosen term dual containment does more to obstruct understanding than to assist it and should, therefore, be taken from circulation.

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succeed: Germany was divided, the West German state was rearmed. That Lippmann continued to argue through the 1950s in favor of a nonaligned, largely demilitarized, reunited Germany and was correspondingly critical of West Germany’s defense contribution was entirely consistent and logical.5 Nonetheless, the acclaimed columnist, while no Germanophile, had no doubts that Germans, having returned to their senses and been placed in the right domestic and international frameworks, would be natural members of the Atlantic community. As it turned out, the Atlantic community did indeed develop after 1945 through trial and error. The United States was the dominant power, the Federal Republic of Germany its loyal partner. Many important themes run through the history of the Federal Republic in the period from 1949 to 1990. One of the most important – if not the most important of all – is that the West German state quickly learned and never forgot to define itself as a member of the Atlantic community, by election if not by birthright. It was for this reason that the public at large in the United States and Western Europe felt only limited concern as a larger, potentially stronger Germany, freed from the pressure of the East-West conflict, unexpectedly returned to the world stage in 1990. Only a relatively small number of senior Western politicians such as Margaret Thatcher and Franc¸ ois Mitterrand, whose thinking was still fixed on World War II, were occasionally haunted by the specter of the past. By and large, however, all of reunited Germany benefited from the reputation that the West German state had earned during the Cold War decades. It was assumed, not unjustly, that the West Germans could be trusted to persuade the East Germans, who had not been able to participate in the forty-year process of democratization and Westernization, of the advantages of integration in the West and the Atlantic community. In looking back to the genesis of the idea of incorporating Germany into the Atlantic community, one comes across a German author 5 Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (Boston, 1980).

who, at the end of the war, advanced the same argument Lippmann made in U.S. War Aims. One of the most significant features of GermanAmerican relations in the Cold War era was that thoughtful Germans and Americans arrived at similar conclusions, despite differences in basic premises, power relationships, and interests. In summer 1945, economist Wilhelm R¨opke published an analysis of the German question as perceptive as Lippmann’s. R¨opke, who had emigrated in 1933, expected a division of Europe and believed that the Elbe had become the boundary line of the West, a boundary marking a complete separation in moral, political, social, and economic principles. He argued in favor of the inclusion of a West German confederation “as a worthy and valuable member” in an Atlantic community along the lines Lippmann envisioned – if such a community, based upon tradition and geography as well as political and economic interests, could be realized in the face of strong communist currents in Western Europe. The partitioning of “Prussia,” he wrote, would endure “until the Russian problem is resolved.”6 In another study he published in 1945, R¨opke envisaged the “Pax Britannica” of the nineteenth century being replaced by a “Pax AngloSaxonica” shaped largely by the United States. He saw the culturally linked democratic states of the Atlantic region – the United States, Britain, France, Italy, the Benelux countries, Scandinavia, and “a Germany reawakened from its lunacy” – in irreconcilable opposition to a second European region dominated by the Soviet Union and a repressive, anti-Western collectivism.7 From the outset, R¨opke placed much greater emphasis than Lippmann on two basic conditions that would determine the future integration of Germany into the Atlantic world: the indispensable presence – political, economic, and military – of the United States in Western Europe, especially Germany; and the preeminent role of the United States in the new 6 Wilhelm R¨opke, Die deutsche Frage (ErlenbachZurich, 1945), 250. 7 R¨opke, Internationale Ordnung (Erlenbach-Zurich, 1945), 296–302, 297.

America, Germany, and the Atlantic Community After the Cold War

international economy. Whereas Lippmann believed that the United States would be able to play a part in the reconstruction of Europe only for a limited period and rejected the idea of a permanent military presence in the Old World, R¨opke accurately foresaw that the self-preservation of the West was inconceivable without American hegemony, without military protection for the European part of the Atlantic world, and without a world economic order dominated initially by the United States. In these blueprints for an Atlantic community, both authors made clear that it would in large part be the task of Germany’s West European neighbors to encourage a democratic and peaceful course of development in Germany. The importance of European cooperation and integration in the overall framework of the Atlantic community was not clear at first, but the West European regional component had certainly been foreseen. It was also unclear what form conflict and coexistence with the Soviet world would take. R¨opke thought in terms of both defense and confrontation. Lippmann, by contrast, placed his trust in agreements dictated by Realpolitik and balance-of-power considerations; in this regard, he was very much a forerunner of the proponents of d´etente. Both authors were aware that the German question represented an almost irresolvable problem in Soviet-American relations. This vision of an Atlantic community incorporating Germany as a integral member was by and large realized. The highly complex, multilayered, and sometimes contradictory form this idea took is the subject of the individual chapters of the work at hand. Of the many different points discussed in these volumes, it is worthwhile singling out and listing a few that proved to be of critical importance after the upheavals of 1989–91.

r

r

r

r

r

r For forty-five years, there was a GermanAmerican “special relationship”8 because the r 8

rity.

See the chapter by Wolfgang Krieger, vol. 1, Secu-

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Federal Republic was the geostrategic center point of the United States’ hegemonic position in Europe; the security aspect of the German-American relationship was paramount. As far as the Federal Republic of Germany was concerned, the United States was also the e´conomie dominante, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. The readiness of the West Germans to build a credible, peaceful democracy respectful of international law was undoubtedly a basic precondition of German-American relations. Neither the United States nor the Federal Republic was ever able or willing to give primacy to bilateral relations in its foreign policy; for both countries, a multilateral framework for foreign relations was provided by Atlantic community institutions as well as the global institutions created and/or largely dominated by the United States (e.g., GATT, OECD). At an early stage, the West German government also recognized the need to create some kind of counterweight within the Atlantic community to the community’s hegemonic power. The failed European Defense Community (EDC) and the three organizations merged in 1967 to form the European Community (EC) – the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Economic Community (EEC), and the European Atomic Community (EURATOM) – were created largely, if not exclusively, with this idea in mind, as were the plans for European political union sponsored by Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer. German-American relations were generally a function of American-Soviet relations, but occasionally the opposite was the case; the division of Germany and the explosive Berlin problem were of central importance during certain phases of the Cold War. One point that must not be overlooked is the ambivalence in relations (inevitable in the relationship between hegemon and client

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state). In the United States, there were recurring fears about a possible resurgence of Nazism, the instability of German democracy, and the possibility of an arrangement between the Federal Republic, the Soviet Union, and the GDR at the expense of the Atlantic community. Conversely, fears about the United States also regularly came to the fore in the Federal Republic, although the particular form those fears took varied considerably: American neoisolationism; the sacrificing of German interests in the course of American-Soviet d´etente; the unreliability of the protector in the event of military advances by the Soviet Union; a policy of antiSoviet confrontation or even belligerence on the part of the United States that would make Germany into a nuclear battlefield; damage to the German economic and social systems caused by the e´conomie dominante; and cultural Americanization, whatever that might entail. r Cultural factors played a very important role, including awareness of a Western community of values; the “Americanizing” effect of everyday culture, the American lifestyle, and American media; the model offered by certain forms of American business culture and by the American educational and university system; the impact of the American counterculture; and also, as so often happens with intercultural relations, cultural misunderstandings and misconceptions. These and other factors influenced the process of the Federal Republic’s absorption into the Atlantic community, though not necessarily all to the same degree or at the same time. The end result of these intertwined processes under the influence of American hegemony was to convert western Germany into an unmistakably Western nation. The United States was hardly the only external influence. Overall, however, it was a more powerful influence than any other country in the Atlantic community, more important than Britain or France, let alone other European countries.

what has changed since 1990 and what has stayed the same? The year 1990 initially marked a triumphal high point of the partnership between Germany and the United States. In a diplomatic feat once inconceivable, the U.S. administration under President George Bush and the West German government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl succeeded in peacefully achieving all of the most ambitious aims of German and American joint policy: the reunification of Germany “as a worthy and valuable member” of the Atlantic community, as R¨opke put it forty-five years earlier, and of NATO; the willingness of the Soviet Union to withdraw within its own borders; and, in turn, the extension of Western democracy, the Western free-market economy, and Western influence to Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and even the Baltic. Thanks mainly to American support, Germany resumed its role as the central power in Europe.9 Although the establishment in Bonn deliberately ignored President Bush’s declaration – before 1990 – that that the Federal Republic and the United States were “partners in leadership,” no one in 1990 could overlook the fact that France and Britain, which had only hesitantly agreed to reunification, had briefly been relegated to the second rank behind the United States and Germany. Then, at the end of 1991, the Soviet Union itself broke apart, so that the triumph of the United States in the Cold War was complete. The next phase in German-American relations was nonetheless marked by considerable uncertainty. That was the result of six interlinked questions: r Would the implosion of the Soviet Union bring chaos to Eastern Europe? r What policy would the United States pursue toward Europe and Germany? Withdrawal to its own continent – like the sheriff in High Noon after taking care of the bad guy? Unilateral and largely unchecked power politics or a continuing presence in Europe as a member 9 Schwarz, Die Zentralmacht Europas: Deutschlands R¨uckkehr auf die Weltb¨uhne (Berlin, 1994).

America, Germany, and the Atlantic Community After the Cold War

r

r

r

r

of a reformed and perhaps expanded NATO? Or something else entirely? Would the member states of the European Community have sufficient foresight and strength to develop a genuine alternative to the liberal American hegemony in the power politics of the Atlantic community? Would there be a fundamental change in attitudes, perhaps a turn away from “Americanization” in Germany and a resurgence of Germanophobic views in the United States? What consequences would the triumph of capitalism in Europe have: self-serving domination by the United States, further development of transatlantic cooperation, transatlantic conflict, or something else? What line would the reunited and apparently stronger Germany follow? Would it look primarily toward the Atlantic – in other words, toward the United States? Would it give priority to the expansion of the European communities? Would it return to a semiautonomous policy of equilibrium in the role of a European central power, for which geography and potential had predestined it? Would there be a shift of emphasis toward Central and Eastern Europe? Or another attempt to resume the mantle of a dominant European power, under different conditions and by more subtle methods than in the past, a past that was now remote, yet still psychologically alive?

1. The most pleasant surprise concerned the debris of the Soviet empire. The appalling chaos feared by many has been avoided thus far. The events in Chechnya and Georgia have, though, made sufficiently clear what might have happened in the event of a major conflagration. Russia may have been the sick man of Europe, but – thanks mainly to cautious U.S. and German diplomacy – the patient’s dignity was preserved and he was helped through the most critical phase of his self-inflicted humiliation. Germany’s especially careful policy toward Russia was to a large extent an aftereffect of that excessive caution that had developed during the decades when Soviet troops were still encamped on German soil. It was also sensible given that

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the withdrawal of Russian troops from German territory was not completed until 1994. During this period at the minimum, close cooperation with the United States on policy toward Eastern Europe was also absolutely necessary. Common sense required that this policy should continue. If the first beginnings of a partnership in leadership became apparent at that time, it was mainly in connection with postcommunist Russia and the problems of the Confederation of Independent States as a whole. It was not until Boris Yeltsin was reelected in 1996 that the West began to think – perhaps incorrectly – that the most dangerous phase of post-Soviet uncertainty was over. For reunited Germany, however, Russia’s weakness was of the utmost importance. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a “Russian option” no longer existed even in theory, even if Bonn had been unwise enough to head in that direction. The uncertainty surrounding Russia made it imperative to maintain a U.S. military presence in Europe. 2. It likewise took a few years before America’s post–Cold War policy on Europe became somewhat clearer. In the first half of the 1990s, an animated debate took place in the American media about the future of American foreign policy. Peering into their crystal balls, the experts described a wide variety of options, all labeled with attractive titles. Some saw a “new world order” in which the United States would be the “balancer” as Britain was during much of the nineteenth century. Others sketched a policy of “primacy” and “unilateralism” on the part of the United States as the only surviving world power. There was talk, too, of “neoisolationism” after America’s wide-ranging ventures into world politics during the “short twentieth century” as well as of “multilateral globalism,” especially within the framework of the United Nations. Some experts advised “competitive internationalism” in the interest of foreign trade. And there were further labels of similar character.10 10

See Stefan Fr¨ohlich, Die USA und die Neue Weltordnung: Zwischen Kontinuit¨at und Wandel (Berlin, 1992); John C. Hulsman, A Paradigm for the New World Order: A

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But the foreign policy of a world power rarely develops along carefully thought-out lines. The administrations of George Bush and Bill Clinton swung between positions that were often theoretically incompatible. The Gulf War in early 1991 seemed to confirm the United States in the role of the world’s policeman, unhesitatingly tackling trouble. President Bush is said to have observed on the eve of victory, “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all!”11 In that same period, Bush also proclaimed the grandiose concept of a “new world order.” But as British journalist Martin Walker accurately noted, this was “a phrase looking around vaguely for a policy.”12 While the United States adopted the stance of keeper of global order in the case of Iraq, Bush carefully avoided military action to end the Serbian atrocities against Croats and Bosnian Muslims amid the wreckage of Yugoslavia. He allowed the states of the European Union (EU) to demonstrate their impotence in this instance, wanting not to overburden an American public weary of international engagement. Subsequently, however, he once again gave full rein to a policy of global activism in the case of Somalia, and he was eventually defeated by Bill Clinton, whom the electorate evidently expected to give priority to domestic reform rather than activism on the world political stage. Clinton was many things during the eight years of his presidency. In Haiti, America’s own backyard, he was a decisive interventionist in the cause of human rights. In the Bosnian tragedy, he was temporizer until 1995 and then a practitioner of selective military commitment (as he School-of-Thought Analysis of American Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era (New York, 1997); Richard N. Haas, The Reluctant Sheriff: The United States After the Cold War (New York, 1997); Christian Hacke, Zur Weltmacht verdammt: Die amerikanische Aussenpolitik von Kennedy bis Clinton (Berlin, 1997); Barry R. Posen and Andrew L. Ross, “Competing U.S. Strategies,” in Robert J. Lieber, ed., Eagle Adrift: American Foreign Policy at the End of the Century (New York, 1997), 100–34. 11 Richard A. Melanson, American Foreign Policy Since the Vietnam War: The Search for Consensus from Nixon to Clinton, 2d ed. (Armonk, N.Y., 1996), 231. 12 Martin Walker, “The Establishment Reports,” Foreign Policy 89 (winter 1992–3): 88.

was again in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999). He was a proponent of a cautious approach in dealing with Russia, but he was also the president who pushed through the expansion of NATO to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. He was sympathetic to the deepening of European integration as envisioned in the Maastricht Treaty, but he was also the head salesman of American products, including modern weapons systems, and the proponent of an aggressive foreign trade policy that did not shy away from conflict where necessary. All in all, his administration was much more inclined to undertake engagement abroad than to withdraw – at least vis-`a-vis Europe. Both Bush and Clinton, with an eye to serious budget deficits, drastically reduced the U.S. troop presence in Europe. In September 1989, the United States had some 245,000 troops stationed in Germany; by 1999, the figure had fallen to 57,000 (42,000 in the Army and 15,000 in the Air Force).13 But the 1990s were also the decade that saw American military engagement in Bosnia, the involvement of American troops in the Bosnian peacekeeping operation, and the expansion of NATO. U.S. security commitment in Europe thus presents a contradictory picture. But, ultimately, when the situation became critical, America always followed the same basic line that had developed since the late 1940s: It was the strongest and most resolute power on the European continent and would pursue its security policy within the framework of the Atlantic community. What Richard Holbrooke frankly stated in 1995 has since become an indisputable fact: The United States is not only standing by its commitment, but has become – or rather, remained – a European (super)power.14 Because Russia has withdrawn almost to St. Petersburg and far behind the Dnieper, and because NATO enjoyed a wide buffer zone 13

Hartmut Pohlmann, “The Domestic Impact of Allied Troops in Germany,” in David G. Haglund and Olaf Mager, eds., Homeward Bound? Allied Forces in the New Germany (San Francisco, 1992), 82; The Military Balance 1998–9, 55. 14 Richard Holbrooke, “America: A European Power,” Foreign Affairs 74, no. 2 (1995): 38–51.

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comprised of the Baltic states, the Ukraine, Poland, and the Balkan democracies through the 1990s, Germany’s strategic value to the United States has sharply declined. It is still regarded as an important springboard for the exercise of power in the Mediterranean region and the Middle East, and it is also a major power within Europe comparable to Britain or France. The United States no longer acts as Germany’s protective power, nor need it any longer fear the outbreak of crisis there. The special strategic relationship that formerly existed has thus become redundant. Today, Germany is mainly of interest as the central power of the EU. And, because the EU very clearly became the gravitational field of the European system of states during the 1990s, the United States no longer plays the role of the indispensable dominant power in Europe and the Atlantic community as it did during the decades of the Cold War. From the German perspective, however, the United States nonetheless still performs a number of important strategic functions. And, at the beginning of the third millennium, it looks as if a new and perhaps lasting basic pattern has developed in this respect. First and foremost, the alliance with the United States through NATO is regarded as an insurance policy against future unrest in Russia, an unsettled nuclear power. It was only U.S. participation in the eastward expansion of NATO that allowed the Federal Republic to enter into a multilateral defensive alliance with Poland at apparently little risk; under unfavorable conditions, this might have provoked a clash with Russia. The German expectation – which may not have been thought through to its logical conclusion – is that in the event of crisis or war, the United States would have to make the first move to counter a threat to Poland by Russia. Viewed from this standpoint, the eastward expansion of NATO is a plan to lock the United States in as a potential protector for the foreseeable future. Similarly, the American presence seems highly advantageous with a view to future crises in the Mediterranean region or the Gulf region. And, in the turmoil of Bosnia and Kosovo, it repeatedly became apparent that the necessary

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minimum of order could not be restored in Europe without American air power and troops. One thing that has changed since the early 1990s is that much of the Balkan region is now within NATO’s sphere of influence. In the process, a complex equilibrium between the United States and the EU member states has developed. But the extension of the American sphere of influence to include Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Romania is a fact. It may not be a popular sentiment in the cabinets of Europe, but everyone knows that whenever the situation heats up in Southeastern Europe, it becomes desirable for the dormant major power of the Atlantic alliance to abandon its policy of keeping a low profile and take control, at least for the duration of hostilities. In contrast to the early 1990s, it now seems fairly certain, following the eastward expansion of NATO and in light of the convulsions in the Balkans, that the United States will retain a military presence in Europe. This might be a prime example of the type of “entangling alliance” that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson warned against so emphatically, but it is also an alliance that served Europe’s democracies extremely well in guaranteeing their freedom and prosperity during the second half of the twentieth century. Even so, it should be said again that American power no longer gravitates toward Germany, but rather the Balkans and the Mediterranean basin. Germany is by no means of only marginal interest to American strategists, but it no longer occupies central place by necessity in Washington’s international policy. At present, in contrast to any time in the twentieth century, reunited Germany does not face any acute security problems. From the German perspective, it is only partially correct to speak of the American military presence in Europe as an “insurance policy,” but the notion is not entirely inaccurate. The United States’ role as the dominant power within NATO is also useful from the German perspective with regard to relations with other European powers that are both partners and rivals. If Germany, with its greater military and economic strength, had to go it alone

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on questions of strategy or senior appointments within a European defensive alliance, it would probably have even greater problems with the other major and intermediate European powers than it has previously had. The predominance of the transatlantic hegemon has kept rivalries between the Europeans in check. There have been regular complaints about the selective nature of American military commitment. All in all, though, there is much to be said in favor of an ally of great resources, even if its reactions to minor crises are difficult to predict. Such an ally can be influenced; there is no need to fear the worst immediately if it reaches the wrong decision on a particular intervention. It can be relied on to be on hand in the event of a major crisis. 3. It seemed at the time of the great changes of 1989–90 that the future course of the EC could be predicted with some certainty. There was general agreement at least among the continental states, led by Germany and France, that the EU – as the EC was renamed – would become the decisive gravitational field of a “new world order” or would at least create a new order in Europe. It seemed that everything could be achieved simultaneously: creation of an economic and monetary union with a common currency; deepening ties within the community in many areas; agreement on a common foreign and security policy; and expansion to include the new democracies of Eastern Europe. Two things were clear from the outset. The Federal Republic was determined not to give in to the temptation of going it alone or shifting positions as advantageous. It wanted, rather, to take a leading role in establishing a European federation and, in connection with that goal, it was prepared to give priority to a common foreign policy within the framework of the EU. There was something like a partnership of leadership between Germany and America in 1990 even if Bonn did not speak of Germany’s leading role in order to avoid giving offense, especially in Paris, London, and Rome. It then became apparent to Washington, however, that Germany, unlike Britain, was working in every conceivable area – trade policy, currency, foreign

policy, and even security – toward a concept of the Atlantic community in which a strong nucleus of European states would have the ability to negotiate with the dominant Atlantic power and the will to resolve political differences. The Federal Republic was also much more consistent than France in its efforts to reach negotiated solutions with the United States on matters of NATO reform, the Western European Union (WEU), and trade. There could be and can be no doubting Germany’s fundamental resolve to make the EU the most central and important reference point for Germany’s new foreign policy. From this perspective, bilateral relations between Germany and America are being increasingly overtaken by the pattern of relations between the United States and the EU. This position developed over the course of the 1990s even though it quickly became clear that the ambitious aims of European policy set out early in the decade were, with the exception of the single currency, unachievable. From the failure of EU policy on Yugoslavia in summer and fall 1991 to the Kosovo conflict at the end of the century, it was clear that the EU could not muster sufficient strength to prevent war within Europe or enforce order there. It must be said again: Progress toward peace in Bosnia and Kosovo became possible only when the United States resolutely took over the leadership. Efforts to make the WEU an instrument of genuinely European security policy within NATO, or in close cooperation with it, are making similarly slow progress. In the course of the 1990s, the WEU became little more than a parallel body to NATO – with modest resources and still of little practical importance – to which Washington paid generous lip service but in fact only cautiously tolerated. Like the handsome prince reviving Snow White with a kiss, the EU tried again after its Cologne summit in June 1999 to bring the WEU back to life. So far, however, the governments of the EU states have not been prepared to accept long-term increases in their defense budgets in order to undertake a technological modernization of the European military forces.

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The opposite has been the case, not least in Germany. The German defense budget, accounting for less than 1.5 percent of GDP, ranks among the bottom third of the NATO states.15 In real terms, defense spending in the United States and the European countries of NATO fell by about 25 percent during the 1990s, but because the United States had spent more in the past and had much higher capabilities, the gap widened.16 In 1999, per capita expenditure on defense in the United States was about $1,000, compared $430 in Germany and an average of $411 among the European NATO members.17 The European NATO members would have great difficulty in transporting 50,000 lightly armed troops to a crisis region because they have less than one-tenth of the Americans’ long-haul transport capacity.18 They depend on American satellite reconnaissance.19 Without American support, the European powers’ aircraft carriers would not be able to impose their will in the event of a major crisis in the Mediterranean region, let alone take control of another Gulf crisis or take effective action to counter a threat to the sea-lanes. The technological imbalance between American and continental European forces is also steadily increasing.20 If the WEU wanted to replace American capacity in only a few of areas so that Europe could credibly act alone when necessary – the true test of European defense autonomy – the EU states would have to be prepared to divert an additional one or two percent of their GDPs to their defense budgets in the long term, a totally unrealistic 15 Interview with General Klaus Naumann, Die Welt, July 28, 1999, 6. 16 “A Survey of NATO,” The Economist, Apr. 24, 1999, 11. 17 Dieter Wellershoff, former inspector-general of the Bundeswehr, Die Welt, July 24, 1999, 6. 18 Michael O’Hanlon, “Transforming NATO: The Role of the European Forces,” Survival 39, no. 3 (1997): 13; “A Common European Military Policy: Serious at Last?” Strategic Comments 5, no. 6 (1999): 2. 19 In 1999 the United States had sixty-five military satellites in service, the European states only five. 20 In the sector of “Command, Control, Communications, Computer, and Information,” the European states of NATO were at least five years behind and losing ground. Interview with General Naumann, 6.

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notion. In any case, the 1990s were a decade of pronounced indolence on defense matters in Western Europe, Germany included. 4. The great rupture of 1989–90 obviously did not affect all facets of life equally. The global history of a geographical region, as we have known since Fernand Braudel’s study of the Mediterranean world in the age of Philip II, is marked by both slow and fast sequences of events and changes on the different levels considered. There are thus not merely “two or three measures of time, there are dozens, each of them attached to a particular history.”21 We do not yet have as illuminating studies of cultural contacts and social development during the years 1990–99 as the present volumes provide for earlier decades. Yet much evidence supports the assumption that the politically decisive year 1990 had little impact on slower, longerterm cultural and social developments. These developments continue at a glacial pace, studied only in part by scholars and open to contradictory interpretations. They probably continue to influence the psychological soil of GermanAmerican relations very strongly as in the past. The question is whether individual phases of development can be clearly identified here at all. Interactions in such disparate areas as, for example, language, literature, music, architecture, moviegoing, television, dance, religious attitudes, feminism, the labor movement, ecological awareness, or regional planning occurred at very different times and at very different paces during the period from 1945 through 1990, and there is reason to assume that the great political turning point of 1990 left little mark in these areas – except in eastern Germany. In the relatively small region of the former GDR, home to about 20 percent of the German population, there have been new and very complex patterns of interaction worthy of future study. The states of the “old Federal Republic” have, in general, been little influenced by attitudes or events in the “new states.” The cultural interactions 21

Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2 vols. (Berkeley, Calif., 1995), 2:1238.

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between the United States and the western sections of the Federal Republic were largely unaffected by the political upheaval of 1989–90, and it is western Germany that will likely shape the country as a whole for a long time to come. The most politically noticeable development in relations between the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany dates back to the early and mid-1980s. At that time, two aspects of their political cultures were perceptibly drifting apart. As a result of the so-called Reagan revolution, certain factors in American life came under pressure: labor unions, for example, the welfare state, and environmentalism. Previously, American social and fiscal policies were becoming, broadly speaking, more like the European welfare states’, and, accordingly, the thinking of the political elites was moving in the same direction. But the relatively long period of conservative Republican economic policy under Reagan, along with the economic policies of Bush and Clinton as well, led to an increasing divergence apparent at many levels. This trend went hand in hand, moreover, with a significant increase in the importance of Christian fundamentalism in the United States. The second aspect was and still is the attitudes toward war and peace among the political elites and the public in the two countries. Germany has become generally more pacifistic since the widespread antimissile demonstrations of the early 1980s. The American public and political class, although not becoming belligerent, has had a more relaxed attitude toward the use of military force – provided that U.S. wars or interventions were selective and of short duration. The accession of the eastern German states to the Federal Republic has temporarily strengthened socialist and pacifist attitudes. Whether and to what extent the military actions against Yugoslavia have lastingly weakened the pacifist elements in political culture remains to be seen. Regardless, the fact remains that in 1999, when Yugoslavia was brought to its knees above all by U.S. airpower, there was no sign of a resurgence of the anti-American pacifism seen at the time of the Gulf War. Compared with these fundamental but not yet dramatic differences of opinion on the

welfare state and questions of war and peace, the other issues that routinely preoccupy the media are of secondary importance. Of course, European businesspeople and governments regard the Helms-Burton Act as an astonishing act of arrogance on the part of a world power, but the wider public takes no notice of it at all. The German public regarded the American “banana war” waged against the EU for breaching the guidelines of the World Trade Organization (WTO) with more amusement than annoyance, because in Germany the French-driven preference for the somewhat unimpressive bananas from the EU member states’ former colonial possessions in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific (ACP States) has long been viewed as an absurdity. The outcry in the American press about the xenophobic outbreaks of the early 1990s met with a distinctly positive reaction from the German public and was taken as confirmation of their own abhorrence of such attacks. It may well be the case that dramatic current debates and campaigns on such matters as, for example, Scientology, the death penalty, and genetically modified food might influence wavering minds more powerfully in the television age than formerly. All in all, however, it is open to doubt whether we can truly speak of a German “cultural rift with America.”22 5. In trade relations, too, the political break of 1990 was of only secondary significance. Both before and after, the United States was Germany’s most important overseas trading partner, a major buyer of motor vehicles, machine tools, electrical goods, chemical products, and optical equipment from the Federal Republic. Trade between the two has of course varied considerably over the years as a result of the business cycle and exchange-rate fluctuations.23 During the 1990s, the proportion of total German exports shipped to the United States rose from 6.3 percent (1991) to 9.4 percent (1998). The value of Germany’s exports to the United 22 Werner Weidenfeld, America and Europe: Is the Break Inevitable? (G¨utersloh, 1996). 23 See the chapters by Lutz Fr¨uhbrodt, vol. 1, Economics, and Welf Werner, vol. 2, Economics.

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States increased from DM 54.1 billion in 1994 to DM 89.3 billion in 1998; in other words, by roughly one-third.24 German imports from the United States (mainly machinery, electronic goods, and aircraft) are consistently somewhat lower than U.S. imports from Germany, but of comparable scale. Germany enjoys a more favorable balance of trade. The present trend in investment is a continuation of what has been observable since the late 1980s: a net capital outflow of German investment capital to the United States and a simultaneous decline in U.S. investment in Germany. Even if portfolio investments are also taken into account, there is still an asymmetry in the movement of capital between the United States and Germany. Spectacular events in the late 1990s, such as the Daimler-Chrysler merger and Bertelsmann’s investments in the U.S. media sector, illustrate this. It is nonetheless important to bear in mind that German exports still head first and foremost to markets in Western Europe. The topten list of German export markets (1997) shows the relative significance of the United States: France (10.5 percent), the Netherlands (8.5 percent), Italy (7.8 percent), the United States (7.7 percent), Britain (7.0 percent), BelgiumLuxembourg (6.2 percent), Japan (4.9 percent), Switzerland (3.9 percent), Austria (3.7 percent), and Spain (3.4 percent). All the same, it should be borne in mind that Germany earns about one-third of its gross domestic product from exports, the United States less than one-tenth. It follows that exports to the United States are much more important to Germany than exports to Germany are to the United States. A second factor is the well-known fact that Germany’s foreign trade policy is integrated within European trade policy. During the 1990s, as in earlier years, the EC/EU had a large role in structuring German-American economic relations. Trade relations between the EC/EU and the United States are long established. More 24

Figures from Fischer-Weltalmanach 1992–1999 (Frankfurt am Main, 1991–8), and German Federal Office of Statistics 1998.

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recent developments – the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), WTO negotiations, and the like – have done little to change the basic fact that the United States and Europe are two very closely interconnected major economic areas. In such a relationship, cooperation for mutual benefit is as natural as occasional conflicts. Observers have regularly predicted over the decades that serious conflicts with the United States would occur with increasing frequency as the process of European integration intensifies. Nor was there any shortage of Cassandras in the 1990s. And, indeed, disagreements arose regularly: during the negotiations that led to the founding of the WTO, on global warming at the Tokyo conference, over car imports, over antitrust policy, over European steel exports and U.S. exports of genetically modified farm products, over the EC’s banana policy, and a halfdozen other more minor sources of irritation. But the two sides have also repeatedly come to terms on many issues. Although always precarious, these agreements demonstrate that shared interests in many arenas are still much greater than conflicts in individual areas. Whether the European currency block will bring about serious changes in relations between Europe and the United States is difficult to foresee. To date, the United States has taken a relaxed attitude toward the introduction of the European currency. Expectations that the euro would take its place alongside the dollar as a reserve currency have yet to be realized. Almost simultaneously with the political upheaval, a radical globalization of capital markets occurred in the late 1980s–early 1990s that posed a threat to continental Europe’s labor markets and social systems. It, too, has caused friction in transatlantic relations, and such friction may well become more intense. The fact that two different economic cultures exist in the United States and continental Europe – flexibility and correspondingly high growth rates on the one side, tight state control, a hypertrophic welfare state, inflexible labor markets, and correspondingly restricted growth on the other – does nothing to facilitate coexistence. This difference is not primarily an

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issue in bilateral German-American relations, but rather a question of asymmetries between the extremely competitive American e´conomie dominante and the major, reform-resistant welfare states of continental Europe, especially Germany, France, and Italy. The differences were certainly very marked throughout the 1990s. Assessments so far have varied widely. One transatlantic school of thought holds that the U.S. economic and social system is the only one in step with the times and that it will prevail in global competition. According to a recent study by Thomas L. Friedman, for example, a new international system emerged after the end of the Cold War based on free markets, the unchallengeable power of global financial markets, and worldwide consumerism. The establishment of this dominant international system was, in Friedman’s view, the most important event of the 1990s. And because the United States’ socioeconomic order, bolstered by its capacities as a superpower, is so well-suited to this new international system, he argued, all countries that wish to continue sharing in prosperity, including the countries of Europe, must adapt their economic and social structures to this model.25 By contrast, another transatlantic school of thought points to the social problems of the American model.26 In many cases, these authors also hold the opinion that the differences between the welfare states of continental Europe and the United States that became so marked in the 1990s have so far proven no obstacle to sensible coexistence and cooperation. In the early 1990s, the opinion was still often expressed in the United States that “Rhineland capitalism” had many advantages. But by the middle of the decade, even an observer as sympathetic to the welfare state as Lester Thurow was wondering aloud whether the German “social market economy” (Sozialmarktwirtschaft) 25 Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York, 1999). 26 Edward Luttwak, Turbo-Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the Global Economy (London, 1998).

was really still up to date. The economic growth and unemployment figures from Germany and the United States, he suggested, unfortunately spoke for themselves. “In two decades,” Thurow wrote, European unemployment rates have gone from half those of the United States to more than twice those of the United States. Without changes two decades from now that gap will become much larger. Twenty years have passed with no growth in European employment. The system will break with another twentyfive years of the same experience.27

In fact, unemployment in Germany by the end of the 1990s was running at about 10 percent, and that was not only because of the significantly higher level of unemployment in the eastern German states. Whereas the Clinton administration believed at the beginning of the 1990s that the United States could learn something from German health policy, American opinion by the end of the decade was almost unanimous in recommending that Germany take the United States as its model on fundamental question of political economy. German reformers take the same view. 6. It was especially difficult in the early 1990s to predict the direction of reunited Germany’s foreign policy. The entire world initially held an illusory view of this economic power’s capacities. Not until 1993 did it become apparent that reunification would be more of an economic and political burden than a boost. That may change in the long term. But it is also clear – in the United States and elsewhere – that Germany is not going to enjoy unbounded growth in wealth and power any time soon. The unwillingness of Germany’s governments to enact reforms has clearly played an important part in this. It is no surprise that an increasingly skeptical tone has crept into the titles of books, essays, and editorials on German-American 27

Lester C. Thurow, The Future of Capitalism: How Today’s Economic Forces Will Shape Tomorrow’s World (New York, 1996), 321.

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relations. In the early 1990s, it was still possible for books published in the United States to predict a period of serious competition among America, Japan, and Germany during a coming “cold peace.”28 Today, neither Japan nor Germany is about to take on the role of a world power. In the case of Germany, it remains uncertain whether and how the German welfare state can be trimmed so that Germany’s economy can once again become the engine of the European economy. The uncertainty about how reunited Germany would use its political power and military capabilities has, by contrast, cleared. Until 1994, the country left a very mixed impression on critical Americans. The rush to recognize Croatia in December 1991 briefly created the feeling that the German giant was once again tramping along familiar paths into the gorges of the Balkans. The Federal Republic was, in fact, motivated primarily by humanitarian considerations in this instance. A few months earlier, the picture had been reversed. In winter 1990–91, Bonn, with an eye toward the waning peace movement, refused to send troops to march alongside its American ally in the Gulf. But the Federal Republic was nonetheless a quiet ally in the Gulf War. It contributed logistical assistance, arms, and transfer payments that, in all, amounted to nearly DM 18 billion in value.29 Even so, hesitation about deploying troops in “out-of-area” missions within the alliance persisted. Until the Federal Constitutional Court ruled on the question in 1994, the German government insisted, disingenuously, that the Basic Law forbade participation in such operations. Some commentators at the time described the Federal Republic and Japan as “civil powers” that followed the principle of “Gutes schaffen ohne Waffen” (doing good without weapons).30

Accordingly, the worry in the United States at the time was not so much that an unleashed Germany would run amok, but rather that pacifist inclinations would make the strongest European member of NATO unable – or more accurately, unwilling – to participate in multilateral operations to resolve crises or bring order to troubled regions of Europe. The main reason for the German government’s reluctance was strong opposition from the Social Democrats and Greens and the powerful argument provided by Germany’s recent past. Even in the late 1990s, Germany could still be described as being “[c]aught between the Scylla of collective memory that will not permit it to exercise power in a normal manner, and the Charybdis of contemporary exigencies, which demand German acceptance of its responsibilities in Europe and maybe even the world.”31 Germany’s uncertain course has in the meantime stabilized. Today, the United States can feel confident that Germany is willing in principle to participate as part of the alliance in peacekeeping and peace-enforcement missions outside the NATO area – and without UN mandate if need be, as NATO’s military actions in Yugoslavia demonstrated. That the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schr¨oder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer backed NATO military action without reservations also indicates that all the major German political parties see the Atlantic alliance as a force for keeping order in Europe. A realistic attitude on using force against international troublemakers, long a matter of course for other European powers, has taken hold in Germany belatedly – and, one should add, just as tenuously as in the other Western democracies. Ten years after the upheaval of 1989–90, it can be said that the uncertainties temporarily surrounding German-American relations have diminished. It might not be entirely misleading

28 Jeffrey E. Garten, A Cold Peace: America, Japan, Germany, and the Struggle for Supremacy (New York, 1992). 29 Die Internationale Politik 1991–1992, 128. 30 Hanns W. Maull, “Zivilmacht: Die Konzeption und ihre sicherheitspolitische Relevanz,” in Wolfgang Heydrich et al., eds., Sicherheitspolitik Deutschlands:

Neue Konstellationen, Risiken, Instrumente (Baden-Baden, 1992), 771–86. 31 Andrei S. Markovits and Simon Reich, The German Predicament: Memory and Power in the New Europe (Ithaca, N.Y., 1997), 7. The author advanced this argument back in 1994; see Schwarz, Zentralmacht Europas, 20, 170–9.

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to think that the basic pattern of relations has stabilized to a certain extent – only to a certain extent because fully trouble-free conditions are not to be expected in a world subject to ceaseless processes of change.

what lies ahead? In the mid-1960s, the futurologist Hermann Kahn distinguished between “surprise-free projects,” “nearly surprise-free Canonical Variations,” and “surprising changes.” In the unsurprising or predictable projections, trends that are observable today are assumed valid for the medium and long term, although variations are conceivable. In the surprising projections, by contrast, completely unexpected factors enter into play and change everything.32 In the cabinets of Europe – Berlin included – and among analysts, the general expectation at present is that the surprise-free projections are the most probable. As observed previously, two dimensions in relations have been critically important in the recent past: economics and military security. That is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. In the area of economics, direct GermanAmerican relations will be very limited. Most dealings between the two countries will be conducted through the EU. But within the EU, Germany, its leading economic power, will set the tone. Berlin cannot set the course the EU will follow in transatlantic affairs, but a policy contrary to German interests has no chance. Economic relations are thus likely to continue more or less as in the past – unless the EU collapses, and there is no sign at present it will. The form that future economic relations will take is unclear. Some eloquent and influential voices will always argue for transatlantic “grand designs.” But no progress has so far been made with the plans for the Atlantic free-trade zone so 32

Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Wiener, The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-Three Years (New York, 1967).

strongly favored by Bonn during Klaus Kinkel’s tenure as German foreign minister.33 Scholars and politicians who advocate major initiatives complain that there is an increasingly strong trend toward a short-sighted focus on domestic matters in both the United States and Europe. This trend, they say, can be reversed only if two key issues are placed atop the agenda in transatlantic negotiations: a new round of trade liberalization measures to counter protectionist backsliding and the exchange-rate problems. In the view of observers such as C. Fred Bergsten, the EU’s proposal for a millennium round of trade talks offers an opportunity for further liberalization. It remains to be seen whether the new EU Commission will pursue this proposal and whether the new U.S. administration will take it up. The issue of exchange rates, again according to Bergsten, needs to be given priority for two reasons. First, the increasing American balance-of-payments deficit is strengthening negative, protectionist tendencies at home. Second, the dollar-euro rate could unsettle transatlantic relations and shake the international monetary system as a whole.34 Whatever one might think of the alarmist tone or the feasibility of these suggestions, there is no doubt that European-American economic relations will be of prime importance to the German-American relationship. In this respect, it is likely that Germany will continue, out of genuine self-interest, to press within the EU for a high degree of trade liberalization and comprehensive solutions. The lessons of half a century of German-American cooperation in the management of the international economy suggest this, as do Germany’s own interests. And past experience certainly justifies the hope that this “management of interdependence” will 33

Specific proposals for a North Atlantic Economic Community (NATEC) can be found in Ellen L. Frost, Transatlantic Trade: A Strategic Agenda (Washington, D.C., 1997). 34 C. Fred Bergsten, “America and Europe: Clash of the Titans?,” Foreign Affairs 78, no. 2 (1999): 20–34. Similar concerns are expressed by Owen Harris, “America and the Euro Gamble,” The National Interest 53 (autumn 1998): 125–8.

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succeed. Ultimately, it is also in America’s best interests that it should.

are there grounds for cautious optimism about security relations? What was true during the Cold War era and the 1990s is likely to shape the future as well: Successes, failures, and disasters in the area of “high politics,” especially security policy, are ultimately the most serious and may well cause the greatest problems in the future as they have in the past. But in this area, too, continuities might well be more marked in the mid- and long term than discontinuities. A look back to the Cold War era shows that European governments then were preoccupied with the issues that are most important today. Many essential aspects of the new European order of the 1990s are extensions of ideas that seemed sensible to many during the Cold War decades. Bringing communist-dominated Eastern Europe into closer contact with the West – and thereby perhaps minimizing Soviet dominance in the long term – was the explicit or implicit intention of many of the initiatives of Western d´etente policy. Present and future efforts to bring Eastern Europe, the Baltic, the Balkans, and even Russia and Ukraine into the Atlantic community are, accordingly, a continuation of d´etente policy under fundamentally more favorable conditions. America itself was caught during the Cold War, just as it is today, between two impulses that were difficult to reconcile: on the one hand, the intention to control events in Europe in its own interests as far as possible and, on the other, the desire to minimize the financial burdens of its commitment in Europe and the attendant risks. This is not likely to change in the future. During the 1990s, a new situation emerged as the result primarily of three developments. The consequences of these developments are likely to become more pronounced in the future. First, the collapse of the Soviet empire has extended the Atlantic community’s – and thus the United States’ – sphere of influence deep into

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Eastern and Southeastern Europe. NATO’s line of defense now extends to the Bug River, runs through the Beskid Mountains, and includes the great Hungarian plain together with Slovenia, Croatia, the NATO “protectorates” over Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, but also Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, and Rumania as adjoining zones of influence. This is likely to be of the utmost importance when Russia recovers its footing as a major power. The “Atlanticization” of Eastern and Southeastern Europe may possibly be a permanent structural element of the new European state system. Second, Germany has clearly become less important to the United States because the potential for crisis there has been defused. This major European power, undeniably important to the future development of the Atlantic community, is in a comfortable position for the time being. It is no longer as exposed as it was to the storms of history, and it has therefore moved out of the American public’s field of vision somewhat – it has become a normal, and rather boring, large country. Even so, Germany remains very important as the central power of the European Union and NATO’s springboard to Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Third, for the first time in the recent history of the Atlantic community, an increasingly cohesive EU has been gaining in importance in its own right. If Germany is no longer as crucially important a partner for the United States as it was during the Cold War era, neither are any of the other European states. They are all increasingly engaged in the EU’s multilateral consensus-building and decision-making processes. If Germany nevertheless remains of prime importance to the United States, it is as the “gentle giant”35 of a Europe striving for economic and political union. It thus appears at the end of the 1990s that, in the medium term, relatively stable, unsurprising progress will be possible in the area of 35

Josef Joffe, “Amerika und Deutschland: Die Weltmacht, der ‘sanfte Hegemon’ und die nat¨urliche Partnerschaft,” in Karl Kaiser and Joachim Krause, eds., Deutschlands neue Aussenpolitik, vol. 3: Interessen und Strategien (Munich, 1996), 117–22.

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security, even if it will take a long time still to bring peace to the remains of the former Yugoslavia. New procedures have become established in the security arena since the end of the Cold War, and they promise a degree of permanency. The situation is more calculable for all involved – especially the United States and Germany – than it was in the early 1990s. At present, there are many reasons to think this state of affairs will continue. It is, admittedly, likely that the international situation will tend toward increasing unrest. Nonetheless, as of 1999, the outlines of a European security structure were becoming visible; in this system, responsibility for maintaining order in the region in a crisis will fall not to the EU, but rather to the Atlantic alliance. In this context, the relationship between NATO and Russia represents the dignified part of the new European system. The goal is to keep Russia at arm’s length, but not to drive it into the wilderness, where who knows what might be lurking. So Russia is allowed to sit at NATO’s children’s table and permitted to station a few battalions in Bosnia or in Kosovo. The efficient part of the new European system, however, is NATO, with the United States as the dominant power. Similarly, in regard to security from outside Europe – rogue states, crises in the Gulf, terrorism, Muslim fundamentalism, medium-range missiles – close cooperation is more advantageous for both the United States and Europe than risky attempts to go it alone. It is to be expected that the United States will repeatedly be tempted to mobilize the Europeans as assistants in pursuing its ends, just as the weaker, disunited European powers will likely try, by means of clever persuasion, to make American power serve their ends. The disputes with Iraq and Iran on one hand and, on the other, the Bosnian crises and the Kosovo conflict clearly point in this direction. This trend is likely to continue. Yet even asymmetries in power and interests can be controlled. Here again, it is less a question of problems in bilateral German-American relations than of difficulties arising from U.S. policy on Europe and the policy of the EU powers toward America.

Will relations continue like this? Should they? Intelligent and skeptical Americans, such as David P. Calleo, who voiced doubts on the subject even during the Cold War era, are expressing them again today: “As Europe becomes self-evidently a monetary and commercial superpower, the inappropriateness of U.S. military hegemony in Europe will grow more onerous and embarrassing for Americans and Europeans alike.”36 Will this not result in fundamental change? The question is justified. Still, there are many indications that the “European pillar” for NATO that has been called for repeatedly for at least thirty-five years will be at best a slender prop – unless the security situation changes dramatically. The United States cannot take action in Europe without or in opposition to European allies, nor would it want to do so. But those allies have neither the desire nor the ability to guarantee European security with their own resources. This is the lesson of the 1990s, all the EU’s plans and pronouncements notwithstanding. Any change in the long term will probably be the result of the United States tiring of the burden and of the babbling ineffectualness of its European partners in the area of NATO cooperation. So much for the “unsurprising projections.” Yet the history of the Cold War also makes clear how rapidly the essential elements of an international political system can change, whether as a result of crisis (the Berlin blockade of 1948– 9, the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the Suez crisis of 1956, the Cuban crisis of 1962, the Vietnam War, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, the reunification of Germany, the disintegration of the Soviet Union) or because of the emergence of unexpected personalities (Adenauer, de Gaulle, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Reagan, Deng Xiaoping, Gorbachev). The futurologist Hermann Kahn is no longer with us. But even today there are realists with 36

David P. Calleo, “The Strategic Implications of the Euro,” Survival 41, no. 1 (1999): 13. Even more skeptical is Stephen M. Walt, “The Ties That Fray: Why Europe and America Are Drifting Apart,” The National Interest 54 (winter 1998–9): 3–11.

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the gift of imagination who, even in the medium term, can discern dramatic divergences from more or less surprise-free developments. Their main concerns are focused on areas of tension outside Europe: the Far East, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and the Gulf region. Samuel P. Huntington, for example, asked in 1996 how a war in 2010 between the United States and China might unfold. His scenario ends with a third world war in which the United States, Europe, Russia, and India wage “a truly global struggle” against China, Japan, and most of the Islamic world; the devastation and severe weakening of the Atlantic world, Europe included, is a possible consequence. Germany does not feature in this futuristic depiction of a clash between cultures.37 The emergence of unexpected personalities also has to be considered. Would anyone have believed it possible in 1913 that, twenty years later, millions of Germans would throw themselves into the arms of an Austrian thug who would cause them to run amok and have millions of European Jews murdered in the darkness of the death camps? Thus, when we look at past or present attempts to make the Atlantic community the heart of a “new world order,” we can hope that these efforts will make positive progress in the medium term, but we cannot entirely forget that the worst might happen. It is precisely for such cases, which from today’s perspective are not very likely yet still possible, that the closest possible political association between the states of Europe and the United States is indispensable. In Germany, which had ample opportunity between 1917 and 1999 to experience the decisive significance of America as a world power, there are many people who still remember this very clearly. So there is reason to expect that the Germans, being desirous of stability, will – at least for the foreseeable future – accurately assess the significance of the all-in-all benign American hegemon and the value of the Atlantic community.

37 Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York, 1996), 312–8.

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a postscript (march 20, 2003) “What lies ahead?” I asked in the “Outlook” above, which I wrote in early 1999. That essay was an attempt to describe the main lines of German-American relations as well as the uncertainties in those relations during the 1990s. From today’s perspective, that decade was clearly a brief interlude. Shortly after September 11, 2001, John Lewis Gaddis dubbed the relative short period that began on November 9, 1989, and ended in the ruins of Ground Zero the “post Cold-War era.”38 Today, it seems, the world, and with it German-American relations, has entered into a critical new era. “Whirl is king,” as a poet wrote. Many people are already looking back to the 1990s, the years of Bill Clinton, with nostalgia, much as many looked back on the “roaring twenties” after Wall Street’s “Black Thursday” crash of October, 23, 1929. It was, as a recent book title has it, “The Best of Times.”39 The preceding essay thus needed to be updated. German-American relations initially continued along established lines after the cut-off year of 1999. The governing coalition of the CDU, CSU, and FDP under Chancellor Helmut Kohl came to an end with the Bundestag election of September 27, 1998. Since autumn 1982, that government had remained loyally at the side of the United States through the ups and downs of international politics. This reliably pro-American orientation was in no way impaired by the Kohl government’s simultaneous efforts in promoting the dynamic development of the European Community, nor did it require Germany to forgo its goal of building friendly relations with the nations of Eastern Europe. It was possible then to maintain a successful balance between Germany’s various partners and frames of reference: NATO, the European Community/European Union, the postcommunist states of Eastern Europe and 38 John Lewis Gadis, “And Now This: Lessons From the Old Era for the New One” in Stors Talbott and Nayan Chanda, The Age of Terror: America and the World After September 11 (New York, 2002), 1-21. 39 Haynes Johnson, The Best of Times; America in the Clinton Years (New York, 2001).

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the Balkans, and the United Nations. Likewise, a balance was maintained among the major states for German foreign policy – Washington, Paris, London, Moscow, and Warsaw, to name only a few. There was no break in continuity after the new Social Democratic–Green government led by Chancellor Gerhard Schr¨oder (SPD) and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer (Greens) took office. Despite traditional reservations about NATO among the Greens and the SPD’s left wing, the “red-green” government demonstratively took its place alongside the United States in NATO’s war with Serbia in Kosovo – even though the military operations required combat participation on the part of the German air force for the first time and, moreover, were carried out with the mandate of the UN Security Council. Since the CDU, CSU, and FDP also supported German participation in NATO’s U.S.-led war in Kosovo, there was a remarkable degree of consensus among the political parties on this very sensitive test case in transatlantic relations.40 The “relatively stable, surprise-free development” mentioned in the essay above continued uninterrupted to the amazement of not a few observers.41 This was even the case as George W. Bush took the helm of a conservative Republican administration and as the foreign and domestic policy landscape in the United States was fundamentally transformed on September 40 On the far from uncomplicated relations among the NATO partners in the lead-up to and during the war in Kosovo, see Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat (Oxford, 2001); Tony Weymouth and Stanley Henig, eds., The Kosovo Crisis: The Last American War in Europe? (London, 2001); Ivo H. Daalder and Michael O’Hanlon, Winning Ugly: NATO’s War to Save Kosovo (Washington, D.C., 2000); and David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals (New York, 2001). 41 A vivid and up-to-date overview of the period from 1990 through 2002 is given in Christian Hacke, Die Aussenpolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Von Konrad Adenauer bis Gerhard Schr¨oder (Berlin, 2003), 436–584. Equally valuable, though covering events only up until 2000, is Helga Haftendorn, Deutsche Aussenpolitik zwischen Selbstbeschr¨ankung und Selbstbehauptung (Stuttgart and Munich, 2001), 386–445.

11, 2001. Schr¨oder and Fischer did have to resort to the rarely used device of a parliamentary vote of confidence to compel the coalition parties to support sending Bundeswehr troops to Kabul in line with “unrestricted solidarity” with the United States. Still, the tactic worked. Were I writing this postscript in summer 2002, I would have offered the same concluding assessment that I wrote in early 1999: “Ten years after the upheaval of 1989–90, it can be said that the uncertainties temporarily surrounding German-American relations have diminished.”42 As I write on March 20, 2003 – the first day of a U.S.-led coalition’s war against Iraq – precisely the opposite holds true. German views, expert and lay alike, on the Bush administration’s Iraq policy and the Schr¨oder government’s refusal to participate in the war are just as polarized as opinion in the rest of Europe and the United States itself. The difference is that the large majority of citizens in the United States consider the war against Saddam Hussein necessary and the large majority of German citizens oppose the war. This polarization notwithstanding, however, those in Germany who consider the war against Iraq necessary and legitimate and those critical of Bush are agreed that there has been an unprecedented cooling in German-American relations within the past couple of months. For as long as the Federal Republic has existed, official relations have not been so bad. Never before have opinion polls yielded such negative findings.43 Nor has the future course of relations 42

See p. 549. Since 1954, the Allensbach Institut has regularly asked citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany which countries they think the Federal Republic should cooperate with most closely. The United States has continuously been the country cited most frequently: by 78 percent of respondents in 1954, 90 percent in 1963, 76 percent in 1972 (at the end of the Vietnam War), and 79 percent in 1983 (during the large-scale protests against the deployment of American Pershing II and cruise missiles in the Federal Republic). Elisabeth NolleNeumann and Edgar Piel, eds., Allensbacher Jahrbuch der Demoskopie 1978–1983, Bd. VIII (Munich, 1983). The question “Which country do you consider Germany’s best friend?” drew a similar response. In 1982, a critical year for German-American relations, 48 percent 43

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ever been so difficult to predict. At the same time, the question of policy toward the United States is beginning to polarize the German political parties. From the late 1980s until summer 2002, there was a clear consensus among the parties on the importance of good relations with the United States; now, however, American relations have become an area of controversy between the SPD-Green governing coalition and the CDU-CSU opposition. For the latter, the alliance with the United States was traditionally of great importance. Although the conservative opposition initially took a very cautious line on the American Iraq policy, taking into account the opinion polls and the critical position of church circles, it is now, in the person of CDU chair Angela Merkel, voicing unreserved understanding for America’s decisive policy on Iraq as well as for the war to remove Saddam Hussein – and she has been sharply criticized by the government and some in the public. The causes of this uniquely dramatic crisis in German-American relations and those responsible for it can be identified with some certainty. But because all is in a state of flux at the moment, even experienced analysts seem to be at a loss on how to answer the question, “Where are things heading?” And if we were to ask, “How should things go?”, the contradictory answers received in response would make clear the incompatibility of the differing perceptions of threat, differing ideas about objectives, and differing notions of international order that now exist. Regardless of how one might assign blame for the present situation, two points are clear. The current crisis in German-American relations was triggered by decisions, calculations, and diplomatic maneuvering in the very recent past. But they were also preceded by a long prehistory.

of the respondents to an Allensbach survey named the United States as Germany’s best friend; in 1995, 50 percent named the United States and 17 percent France; in March 2003, 11 percent named the United States and 30 percent France. Figures cited in Thomas Petersen, “Gef¨ahrdete Freundschaft,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 19, 2003.

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the convergence of long-term trends in the crisis over iraq As noted here and there in the “Outlook” above from 1999, there were already signs of continental drift in the techtonics of German-American relations during the 1990s. This drift accelerated greatly during the early years of the Bush administration. Three main fault lines became evident: the combination of qualitative differences in economic productivity and diverging economic philosophies; a divergence in military spending and capabilities resulting from long-developing divergences in European and U.S. views on security; and a distinctly critical view of the Bush administration among many in the German press, the red-green coalition, and, in turn, the German public. 1. All responsible were and are fully aware of the dependence of Germany’s economy on America’s.44 That the German economy has continued to grow despite its inherent impediments to growth and the Asian economic crisis is in large measure thanks to the robustness of the U.S. economy. Even the collapse of Wall Street’s bull market and the drop in the U.S. growth rate since 2000 have not changed the situation because of America’s fundamentally higher productivity. That “Rhineland capitalism” – characterized by an overregulated labor market, a redistributive welfare state system, and marked corporatism – works as a brake on growth is much clearer in the current period of stagnant growth than it was in the long boom period before 2000. Many observers have been speaking of “the German disease” for at least two years now. But now as before, few in Germany are prepared to take the American economic system as a model to emulate. German lawmakers have even declined so far to take any of the more 44

During the 1990s, the U.S. economy grew by an average of 4.2 percent annually, the German economy by 1.8 percent: see Jahrbuch Internationale Politik 1999/2000 [=Jahrb¨ucher des Forschungsinstituts der Deutschen Gesellschaft f¨ur Ausw¨artige Politik, Bd. 24]: 92.

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economically successful European social welfare states that have much lower unemployment rates than Germany as a model.45 In fact, as of this writing, the crisis in Germany’s economy, social welfare system, and public finances has not led to deep-reaching reforms. The left has, though, become sharper in its criticism of the United States: Blame for economic stagnation rests not on Germany itself, the argument runs, but on the globalization of international financial markets, the main beneficiary of which is allegedly the United States. Critics of globalization among the Social Democrats, Greens, and the labor movement would undoubtedly have great difficulty building a common front with antiglobalization groups like attac given Germany’s integration within the European and global economies. But in an economically stagnant Germany, there is a strong inclination to hold the conservative Bush administration, American corporations disgraced by financial scandals, and American “predatory capitalism” responsible for problems of our own making. It is no wonder that German critics of the United States have taken Nobel laureate Joseph Stieglitz, who has condemned the World Bank and the U.S. Congress, as their star witness in their indictment of globalization.46 The endemic obsession anti-am´ericaine47 and equally endemic anti-Americanism of the European left have given rise to a sharply focused protest attitude that is not easily translated into action. In Germany, this attitude is currently given 45

On this subject, see Adair Turner, Just Capital: The Liberal Economy (London, 2001). In summer 2000, before the international economic downturn, the unemployment rate in Germany was 9.4 percent. That was higher than in Great Britain (5.3 percent), Sweden (4.1 percent), Austria (3.1 percent), and the Netherlands (2.5 percent), but better than in France (9.6 percent), Italy (10.5 percent), and Spain (14.5 percent). Turner contends that the European countries burdened with slow growth and high unemployment do not need to adopt the much more liberal American economic system, but they should take a lesson from the more liberal European states. This argument remains persuasive. 46 Joseph Stieglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York, 2002). 47 Jean-Francoi Revel, L’obsession anti-am´ericaine. Son fonctionnement, ses causes, ses incons´equences (Paris, 2000).

expression in vague calls for a “German way” or demands for “Europe” to stand up together against the United States. Resentment stemming from Germany’s own lagging economic situation has over many years prepared the ground for a cultural antiAmericanism that is as difficult to understand as it is influential. It has been bolstered not least by the churches, which, as in the past, have an influence on the major parties (SPD, CDUCSU). Linked to this cultural anti-Americanism is the strong fixation in Germany on environmental threats, in particular global environmental problems such as global warming, pollution of the oceans, radioactive waste, and nuclear accidents beyond Germany’s borders. Among environmentally engaged groups, the Kyoto Protocol, although open to question on strictly environmental grounds, has been an important symbol for several years. That the U.S. Senate had never ratified it remains largely ignored: The Bush administration’s withdrawal from the protocol, however, was widely noted and has come to stand as a prime example of American egoism, shortsightedness, and arrogance. 2. There has been a double paradox in Berlin’s defense policy in the years 1999–2003. The German government has acknowledged that rampant, diffuse threats around the world have made a restructuring of the Bundeswehr necessary – a restructuring that will necessitate increased defense spending. Moreover, the war in Kosovo made clear the technological gap between the U.S. armed forces and the Bundeswehr. The German government made a variety of promises to strengthen the Bundeswehr’s mobile response units for “crisis management” and “conflict prevention” – be it within the framework of the EU or of NATO. But until very recently, defense spending continued in fact to fall: The tightly woven social security net appears to be more important than security from external threats. It is equally paradoxical that the Schr¨oder government was prepared, in contrast to the Kohl government, to make Bundeswehr forces available for combat missions (like

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the Kosovo war) and peace-keeping missions (as in Afghanistan). The long-held idea that the army would serve solely for the purpose of national defense within the context of the Atlantic alliance was in fact abandoned. But these new tasks, too, are subject to the dictates of empty coffers, and neither the current red-green government nor the parliamentary opposition shows sign of being willing to do anything about this situation. Underlying this paradox is the defense philosophy of a society that, having faced a threat to its very existence for over forty years, needs a rest after the Cold War. This philosophy is, for the most part, not pacifistic but sets high hopes on everything, or most nearly everything, connected with a policy of multilateral dialogue – from strictly diplomatic measures (including checkbook diplomacy), to assistance aimed at promoting peace (as in the Middle East) to arms control and disarmament. It is almost the case that only “soft policy” is considered legitimate; hard military engagement is considered odious. Only when there is a powerful emotional spur to action is military action considered necessary – as in the case of Kosovo, when the German government justified participation in the attacks upon the Yugoslav army (and, at the same time, Serb cities) by arguing that the mission was intended to prevent genocide against the Albanians. The deployment of Bundeswehr troops to the ISAF inAfghanistan as part of the American war against terrorism was possible only because of the surge of emotion that followed the mass murder of September 11, 2001. Tellingly, the German government knew to arrange matters so that the large-scale use of combat units would be avoided. The German troops in Kabul are there solely to maintain peace and help in the democratization of Afghanistan. Because the Federal Republic from the outset erected a tightly woven safety net of legal impediments to the possible deployment of the Bundeswehr in combat, it places the highest value on rather elaborate, legally established procedural rules for military operations – be it a Bundeswehr mission at home, a mission within the framework of NATO (the participation, for instance, of German troops in AWACS

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surveillance flights), or a mission undertaken by NATO or individual alliance partners. This pronounced tender to circumscribe military power and military missions explains, among much else, the Federal Republic’s continued insistence on the United Nations’ “monopoly of force.” Whereas specialists on international law and political scientists in the United States hold a broad range of views on this matter, the German “community” of international law scholars argue for a seemingly restrictive interpretation of the UN Charter.48 Robert Kagan recently contrasted, in rather broad terms, what he sees as the prevailing European and American conceptions of international order at the present time.49 “Postmodern” Europe, he contends, currently plays the idealistic part in international relations. Pointing to the terrible experience of war in the first half of the twentieth century and noting, with praise, the miracle of the European community, Europe is calling for all the world to take up its successful policies for peace. “The transmission of the European miracle to the rest of the world has become Europis new mission civilsatrice”50 This thesis will help anyone trying to analyze the findings of opinion polls in the United States and Europe.51 The situation is not so clear-cut 48

See, for example, the essays gathered under the title “What is the International Community?”in Foreign Policy (Sept.–Oct. 2002): 28–46. The positions put forward there by Jeane J. Kirkparick and Ruth Wedgwood are seldom heard in Germany. 49 Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order (New York, 2003). 50 Ibid. X. 51 EOS Gallup reported in late January 2003 that throughout Western Europe as well as in Turkey majorities of 60 to 80 percent of the public agreed with the statement that “military intervention in Iraq without UN support is unjustified.” In the United States, by contrast, 50 percent of the pubic thought intervention would be justified “if the UN opposes action but some allies such as Britain, Australia and Italy support it.” Figures reported in The Economist, February 15–21, 2003: 26. Kagan had first outlined first outlined his argument – in an essay entitled “Power and Weakness” that appeared in Policy Review (June–July 2002) – before European and American differences on Iraq came to a head. In response to Kagan’s essay, Craig Kennedy and Marshall M. Bouton cited a variety of survey findings that suggest there is no

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when it comes to governments. A majority of the EU states – Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the Eastern European candidates for membership – supported the United States on the intervention in Iraq; only France, Germany, and Belgium were openly and energetically opposed. Kagan’s observation nonetheless undoubtedly holds true for Germany. The governing SPDGreen coalition, supported by nearly 90 percent of the public, sharply opposed going to war against Iraq without a UN mandate. Among the German political class, the national press, and foreign policy experts, however, there are apparently many critics of the government, which has visibly set itself on a collision course with the United States and Great Britain. It would certainly be incorrect to consider the emphatic opposition to the war on Iraq on the part of the German government and a majority of the public as merely a momentary surge in emotion. The transatlantic rift on the question of war as the final means in politics runs deeper and has long been evident. To paraphrase Robert Kagan, the Germans are most comfortable on Venus and distrust the people from Mars. There is a marked inclination in continental Europe, especially in Germany, to catch a free ride when it comes to security matters. One indication of this inclination is the long discussion in the EU on creating a rapid response force for use in crisis regions: It is envisioned that these troops will be used only for establishing and maintaining peace, not for combat against aggressive, high-risk regimes that possess weapons of mass destruction and are led by gangsters. There are many reasons for this: France and Britain want to maintain control over their national militaries, for one, and an effective EU force would be expensive. One reason why fundamental difference in European and American views on the use of military power (“The Real Transatlantic Gap,” Foreign Policy [Nov.–Dec. 2002]: 66–70). In fact, however, the figures Kennedy and Bouton give point toward a divergence in outlook that has since widened. According to the polls they cite, 90 percent of Americans surveyed but only about 64 percent of Europeans called international terrorism the most dangerous global threat; Iraq was named as the second most serious threat by approximately 87 percent of the Americans surveyed but only by a little more than 60 percent of the Europeans.

crisis scenarios like the 1991 Gulf War or the Iraq war of 2003 are being left out of consideration is Germany’s manifest reluctance. Kagan’s skeptical question is thus fully justified, particularly so with regard to the German public: “If Europe’s strategic culture today places less value on hard power and military strength and more value on such soft-power tools as economics and trade, isn’t it partly because Europe is militarily weak and economically strong? Americans are quicker to acknowledge the existence of such threats and take them seriously because they can envision doing something against them.”52 The EU has nonetheless shown itself to be resolved to make progress in the area of military policy at least in the long run. The seventyeight-day Kosovo war against Yugoslavia, a third-rate power, revealed the many weaknesses in Europe’s defense capabilities and again made clear the immense qualitative and quantitative military superiority of the United States; the EU decided at its Cologne summit, as the war was coming to an end, to take prompt action on establishing a European Rapid Reaction Force (ERRF). The following year, Berlin gave credible assurance that this force, the core of an independent EU armed forces, should be created and deployed only as a subsidiary to NATO and only in close agreement with the United States.53 That France saw in this force an instrument for the EU nations to free themselves at least partially in the long run from American hegemony in security matters was, however, clear to all, and Germany considered the French position sensible, though only in very longterm perspective. All parties in Berlin considered the closest possible coordination with Paris the prerequisite for a viable European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP). Within the EU, meanwhile, Britain was secretly considered 52

Kagan, Of Paradise and Power, 31. See Michael Quinlan, European Defense Cooperation: Asset or Threat to NATO? (Washington, D.C., 2001) and David S. Yost, “The NATO Capabilities Gap and the European Union,” Survival 42/4 (winter 2000–01). On Franco-American differences on security policy, see Michael Brenner and Guillaume Parmentier, eds., Reconcilable Differences: U.S.-French Security Relations in the New Era (Washington, D.C., 2002). 53

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an American Trojan horse despite the Blair government’s announcements to the contrary. Thus, the trend toward a polarization between Berlin-Paris and Washington-London in the run-up to the Iraq war had a long prehistory. In this respect, too, the Iraq war broadened the already visible tectonic fissure in transatlantic relations. 3. It is clear that the critical assessment of the war against Iraq is a transatlantic phenomenon. There was not a single reservation or argument put forward in the discussion among scholars and politicians in Germany that had not been voiced within the American strategic community or by the small handful of very critical senators. Well-known center and far left critics have been denouncing the “war on terrorism” and, more vigorously, the preparations for war on Iraq as an imperialist conspiracy of rightwing Republicans, whom they see as the representatives of a corrupt capitalist republic.54 Well-known theorists of American “imperial overstretch” warn against a war that will entail huge costs, isolate America, and lead directly to the country’s free fall.55 Well-known analysts who consider careful multilateralism a fundamental prerequisite for acceptance of American leadership are alarmed.56 Well-known conservatives who have nothing against American great power politics in principle, such as John J. Mearsheimer, criticize the decision for war on Iraq as a mistake – the wrong war against the wrong enemy at the wrong time.57 The discussion converges on the term “American 54 This argument has been made by Gore Vidal – Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated (New York, 2002), which takes up where his The Last Empire: Essays 1992–2000 (New York 2001) had left off – and, not surprisingly, Noam Chomsky, 9–11 (New York, 2002). 55 See, for example, Immanuel Wallerstein, “The Eagle Has Crash Landed,” Foreign Policy (July–August 2002): 60–8. 56 See, for example, Joseph S. Nye Jr., The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone (New York, 2002); Philip H. Gordon, “Bridging the Atlantic Divide,” Foreign Affairs (Jan.–Feb. 2003): 70–83; and Jack Snyder, “Imperial Temptations, The National Interest, 71 (spring 2003): 29–40. 57 John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, “An Unnecessary War,” Foreign Policy (Jan.–Feb. 2003): 50–9.

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empire.”58 Does such an empire already exist? Is the neo-Wilsonian agenda of the Bush administration only rhetorical camouflage for a global imperialism? What consequences will follow from the war on Iraq? These questions are hotly contested, and this new debate promises to be every bit as fierce as the “great debate” of the early 1950s and the bitter conflicts of the Vietnam War era. The echo in Germany is correspondingly loud. Academics, commentators, and politicians of all stripes are taking up themes of American self-criticism in line with their own political views. But there is a fundamental difference between this German debate and the debate in the United States. In Germany, there are virtually no influential neoconservative unilateralists who argue that, given the weakness and indecisiveness of the Europeans, the United States is right to undertake a preventive war on its own to disarm Iraq.59 The numerous friends of America within the community of journalists and commentators in Germany primarily voice the ideas – and reservations – of the American multilateralists. And, although the Bush administration enjoys broad support in Congress and among the public as a result of September 11, none of the political camps in Germany defends the war without reservation or is in favor of it. The reasons are also to be sought in Washington’s diplomatic tactics since the summer of 2002. They have been anything but consistent, persuasive, or intelligent, even well-disposed observers have noted. But it is essential to note 58 For a discussion that covers the period from the Spanish-American War through the Clinton and early Bush administrations, see Andrew J. Bacevich, American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy (Cambridge, Mass., 2002). For a sampling of very different views, see the essays by James Kurth, Philip Zeelikow, Jack Snyder, Anna Simons, Stephen Peter Rosen, and Gideon Rose gathered under the title “Empire?” in The National Interest 71 (spring 2003). 59 See, for example, Robert Kagan and William Kristol, eds., Present Danger: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy (San Francisco, 2000); Eliot A. Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime (Princeton, 2002); and Victor Davis Hanson, An Autumn of War: What America Learned from September 11 and the War on Terrorism.

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that the conservative Republicans, with their ideological ties to unilateralist intellectuals, the “moral majority” in the Bible Belt, the Israel lobby, and the arms industry, think in terms entirely foreign to German political culture. Equally foreign to contemporary Germans is the Manichaean view of the world that is sometimes espoused in America when monsters, as Henry Kissenger has put it, appear on the horizon.60 The use of confrontational expressions – Ronald Reagan’s dubbing the Soviet Union the “evil empire” or, more recently, George W. Bush’s reference to an “axis of evil” running from Iraq through Iran to North Korea – is noted with critical astonishment in Germany. Against the background of d´etente in Reagan’s day or the much-loved policy these days of intercultural dialogue, most Germans do not like being reminded of nasty dictators. The sterile language of distanced, neutral analysis is prized; trust is placed entirely in advantages of a multilateral foreign policy; and there is a distrust of all unilateral action, especially if it entails combat.61 Deep-seated reservations about the conservative Republicans’ foreign and security policy first became widespread in Germany when Reagan became president. Much of the German left condemned him as a warmonger from the outset, while the moderate center mourned the d´etente policy of the moderate Republicans, such as Nixon and Ford, and of the Democrat Jimmy Carter. With similarly nostalgic sighs, many of the Germans well-disposed toward America in principle look back today on President Bill Clinton, who was always open to dialogue and compromise with America’s European allies, and praise the multilateralist Colin Powell. The German left portrays President George W. Bush as an arro60 Detlef Junker has noted the strong influence of Puritanism on political culture in the United States; see, for example, his short study The Manichaean Trap: American Perceptions of the German Empire, 1871–1945, German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C., Occasional Papers no. 12 (Washington, D.C., 1995). 61 On the views prevailing in Germany at the present time, see Klaus Larres, “Mutual Incomprehension: U.S.German Value Gaps Beyond Iran,” The Washington Quarterly 26/2 (spring 2003): 23–42.

gant violator of international law who disregards allies’ concerns, a Texan fundamentalist who is eager to go to war. Although moderate centrists do not criticize the president so shrilly, they nonetheless consider the administration’s foreign policy misconceived. This negative image rests not least on the German electronic media’s seemingly critical coverage of the younger Bush’s administration from the outset. In January 2001, only 18 percent of the respondents to a survey by the Allensbach Institute said they had “a generally good opinion” of Bush and 27 percent said they had a “not good opinion” of him. The balance between Bush admirers and skeptics evened out a bit after Bush cut a good figure following the attack on the World Trade Center. But in March 2003, shortly before the start of the Iraq war, the percentage of those who said they had a “not good opinion” of him had risen to 71 percent and only 10 percent considered him a good president.62 Before the Iraq crisis, Germans repeatedly cited a list of reasons to explain their reservations about Bush: the dubious circumstances of his election; the rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on March 13, 2001; the withdrawal from the ABM treaty and the decision to build an antimissile system; the revocation of President Clinton’s signing of the agreement on an International Criminal Court; the initial “benign neglect” of the moribund Middle East peace process; the sharp criticism of Yasir Arafat while tolerating Ariel Sharon’s hard line; and the “national security strategy” set out in September 2002, which included the possibility of the preventive use of force, on a unilateral basis if need be, against the risk of the use of weapons of mass destruction by criminal regimes.63 These political differences touched on issues about which most Germans had made up their

62

Petersen, “Gef¨ahrdete Freundschaft.” German security policy experts have been, on the whole, very critical of the new U.S. security doctrine; most of the arguments they offer have been heard in the American debate as well. See, for example, Edward Rhodes, “The Imperial Logic of Bush’s Liberal Agenda,” Survival 45/1 (spring 2003): 131-53. 63

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minds years or even decades earlier, and the prevailing German views had become the positions of the EU. The German political establishment looked on with increasing astonishment, to put it bluntly, as the Republican administration slaughtered one sacred cow after another: the Kyoto Protocol, the most ambitious attempt at global environmental policy to date64 ; the ABM Treaty, for thirty years the symbol of arms-control policy65 ; the International Criminal Court, an unprecedented attempt to fortify international law with universally valid criminal penalties; the Middle East peace process, which the EEC/EU has backed and helped finance for thirty years; and on top of all, the new U.S. security strategy, which Europeans see as a flat-out declaration of American primacy and as a return to traditional great power politics. Almost by necessity, the astonishment at the different values of the new administration colored the general image of American held by the German public. In March 2003, just before the start of war, there were also reservations about Americans generally.66 That the negative stereotypes attached to 64 The best account of German-American differences on the Kyoto Protocol is Petra Holtrup, “The Lack of U.S. Leadership in Climate Change Diplomacy,” in Bernard May and Michaela Hoenicke Moore, eds., The Uncertain Superpower: Domestic Dimensions of U.S. Foreign Policy After the Cold War (Opladen, 2003), 185–207. See also David G. Victor, The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocaol and the Struggle to Slow Global Warming (Princeton, 2001). 65 An opinion poll was conducted shortly before September 11, 2001, in which respondents were asked whether they agreed with the Bush administration’s decision to develop an antimissile system even if it would be necessary to abrogate the ABM Treaty. In Germany, 10 percent of those surveyed agreed with the decision, 83 percent disagreed, and 11 percent either did not have an opinion or did not respond. In France, 75 percent of those surveyed disagreed; in Great Britain, 66 percent; in Italy, 65 percent; and in the United States, 42 percent. Figures cited in Georg Schild, Die bedrohte Supermacht: Die Aussen-und Sicherheitspolitik der USA nach dem Ende des Kalten Krieges (Opladen, 2002), 111. 66 The figures are alarming. In March 2001 and March 2003, the Allensbach Institut asked Germans whether they would use particular terms to describe Americans. The 2003 responses are given here before the 2001 responses: “reckless” (r¨ucksichtslos) 54 percent/28 percent; “violent” (gewaltt¨atig) 54 percent/33 percent; “arrogant” (hochm¨utig) 66 percent/38 percent; “honest” (ehrlich) 17

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an administration are simplistically applied to population as a whole is a familiar form of collective behavior, but it must nonetheless alarm those who place value on German-American friendship.

The Unfolding of the Crisis It was from these views that the current crisis developed in a very short time. Reciprocal accusations of blame between governments are natural in such instances. This is not the place for a comprehensive account of events, but a few words of clarification about them are appropriate. Taking the German part of the story on its own, the period from August 2002 through March 2003 can be read as a five-act tragedy. Act One: At the highpoint of the campaign, looking ahead to the Bundestag election on September 22, 2002, Chancellor Gerhard Schr¨oder finds himself in a hopeless position. All the opinion polls say unambiguously that he will be voted out of office after a single term on account of the alarming state of the German economy. In this desperate situation, knowing how the public feels about America and the international scene, he decides to push the issue of peace to the foreground. His slogan as the campaign formally opens on August 5: “This country will never be available for adventures under my leadership” (“Dieses Land wird unter meine F¨uhrung f¨ur Abenteuer nicht zur Verf¨ugung stehen”). In an interview with the New York Times on September 4, he goes a step further: Under no circumstances will Germany participate in a war against Iraq,regardless of what theUNmight decide. Since the CDU and CSU likewise know that the electorate is markedly pacifistic on the issue of Iraq, they cannot and will not argue against this position directly. General opinion holds the government’s early “no” to a war on Iraq responsible for the unexpected red-green electoral victory. This victory comes, though, at a price: deep disgruntlement in Washington, percent/30 percent; “peace-loving” (friedliebend) 18 percent/41 percent; “responsible” (verantwortungsbewusst) 27 percent/51 percent.

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especially because Federal Minister of Justice Herta D¨aubler-Gmelin had compared Bush to Hitler on September 18. Both of them, she said, wanted to divert attention from domestic problems with war. Schr¨oder is not willing – four days before the election – to fire her at once.67 Act Two: The opposition, some of the press, and various experts accuse the chancellor of seriously harming German-American relations and isolating Germany with his premature decision on a still open situation. This criticism increases when Schr¨oder, in the wake of a state election in Lower Saxony, promises Germany will not vote in favor of a “resolution legitimating war.” To counter the charge of having isolated Germany, the chancellor teams up with President Jacques Chirac during the celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the GermanFrench Treaty in Versailles on January 22, 2003. Both stress that the decision for war or peace rests with the UN Security Council alone and that war is always the worst option. Chirac recognizes that, for the first time in decades, a hardpressed German government is prepared to take France’s side against the United States (and Great Britain) on an issue of vital importance to relations with the United States. Given France’s veto power in the Security Council, it can call the shots; Germany tags along. There is hope of isolating England and securing a majority of EU member states for the Franco-German line. Act Three: This situation polarizes the EU. On January 22, as Schr¨oder and Chirac are celebrating in Versailles, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mocks France and Germany as “old Europe.” There is also a “new Europe,” however: the Eastern European candidates for EU membership, which are on America’s side. On January 30, eight heads of state and government publish a veritable declaration of loyalty to the United States in numerous European newspapers. This “Gang of Eight” includes Britain, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Poland, the 67

For an account of disagreements during the campaign and the following weeks, see Anja Dalgaard Nielsen, “Gulf War: The German Resistance,” Survival 45/1 (spring 2003): 99–116. See also Larres, “Mutual Incomprehension.”

Czech Republic, and Hungary. Other Eastern European governments join them. Paris and Berlin can no longer claim to speak for Europe. On an issue of the highest importance, Europe’s common foreign policy, something France and Germany have long advocated, ceases to exist. Act Four: Neither Paris nor Berlin gives in. The dispute moves to the UN Security Council. Schr¨oder plays a major part in bringing Russia into the diplomatic “coalition of the unwilling,” which comes to include China as well. The wrangling over a second resolution, which would make military action possible, turns increasingly into a debate on the more fundamental issues of the UN’s “monopoly on force” and the legitimacy of the U.S. taking charge on its own in disarming high-risk states by force. Act Five: After the blockade in the Security Council becomes clear, the second resolution is withdrawn. On March 20, the United States, Great Britain, and Australia go to war against Iraq. Germany and France find themselves supported within the EU only by the governments of Belgium and Luxembourg. Although seemingly isolated, Berlin and Paris can point to the sharply critical view of the Iraq war held by the majority of citizens in many EU countries. But, for the moment, America has made an example of the dangerous Iraqi regime and also of France and Germany, which impertinently tried to build a coalition against the superpower and were once again given a lesson on the asymmetry of power relations. From the French and German viewpoint, however, the issue of Iraq had long ago given way to the issue of America’s hegemonial claims. That, to date, is the course of events in this unprecedented crisis in German-American relations. Three critical elements deserve mention. First, disappointment with the political leaders and a surprising public confrontation after more than fifty years of close partnership have introduced an emotional element that is likely to persist. Both societies are disappointed and embittered. The reaction to September 11 has occasionally been called a “defining moment” in history. It is to be feared, however, that the “defining moment” did not actually occur

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until the period August 2002–March 2003 – on both sides of the Atlantic, unfortunately, and with worrisome consequences. Second, the disagreement centers on a matter of fundamental principle. The French and Germans say openly that basic conceptions of international order separate them and the Bush administration. The representatives of the “coalition of the unwilling” insist on the UN Security Council’s “monopoly on force” and rather bluntly accuse the war coalition of wanting to nullify prevailing international law. For its part, the Bush administration points to the new dangers posed by the weapons of mass destruction held by criminal governments, reserves the option of preventive action, and is no longer willing to be impeded in serious cases by collective decision-making bodies or international law. From the perspective of France and Germany, the conflict centers steadily less on Saddam Hussein or ABC (atomic-biologicalchemical) weapons and, instead, increasingly on America’s pretensions in preserving and extending its position of global leadership. How much on each side is rhetoric? What will have long-term impact? It would certainly not be the first time in modern history that the foreign policy elite in a leading power – a leader in all areas – have shown a fascination with the idea of empire. Nor would it be the first time that weaker powers – in this case, France, Russia, and Germany – and up-and-coming powers, like China, were to join together to form a counterweight to the feared or envied hegemon. Reference to international law always plays a role in such instances: The Lilliputians will try to tie down Gulliver with thread.68 It is not yet clear whether this dispute, closely tied up with fundamental issues, will continue and intensify. If it is not resolved, that would mean not only the end of the transatlantic community in its current form, but also the end of the European community because not all European countries are prepared to follow Paris and Berlin down the antihegemonic path.

68 See Josef Joffe, “Continental Divides,” The National Interest 71 (spring 2003): 157–60.

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Third, the conflict has dangerously shaken the reference points of German foreign policy: NATO, the EU, relations with the postcommunist states of Eastern Europe (what effect will it have on Poland or the Baltic states when the French and Germans collaborate with Russia against the United States, the one halfway reliable defender against the return of the Russian bear?!), and the UN. Nothing will be as it was.

what lies ahead for german-american relations? At the moment (March 20, 2003), there is only one thing that can be said with any certainty about the future of German-American relations: The old certainties are past. The situation is so serious because, as a result of its own doings, Germany’s foreign policy has once again become the subject of decisions and processes over which it has no control. Whether the unilateralists or multilateralists will prevail within the Bush administration probably depends on the consequences of the Iraq war and postwar developments in the Middle East. Washington has lost interest in Germany for the time being, perhaps for a long time to come; Germany will have to come to terms with no longer being able to influence the formulation of American foreign policy. And wherever Berlin might try with Paris to exert an influence in the three main areas of policy – NATO, the EU, postcommunist Eastern Europe – in its own interest, it might run up against a mistrustful, perhaps somewhat arrogant and revengeful America that is no longer willing to play the role of “benign hegemon” toward the ungrateful Germans and the other upstart Europeans. Whether the red-green government will make a major effort to put Germany firmly alongside the United States again is not entirely certain. As long as the Social Democrats and Greens find themselves so unpopular on account of the poor economic situation, they will be tempted to play the role of advocate of international law, to sing the praises of the UN, to condemn military adventures, and

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to denounce every unilateralist step the United States takes. That would clearly find approval, including among many in the media. The impetus for such a policy will disappear only when the majority of voters have had enough. Similar conditions hold for President Chirac in France. The Franco-German antihegemonic axis might thus persist longer than London and Washington would like. At the very least, this axis will remain a constant temptation. Henry Kissinger might not have been entirely wrong when he wrote pessimistically early in the crisis that a form of anti-Americanism might become a lasting hallmark of German foreign policy.69 Whether the German critique of the Bush administration based upon universal principles is actually only a pretext for a more nationalistically oriented foreign policy, for a “German way,” is open to question. But that might by default become an unintended consequence of the division in the EU caused by France and Germany’s sharp criticism of the United States. But nothing is certain yet. There are of course those in Germany – mainly in the parliamentary opposition but also within the ranks of the governing parties – who are strongly urging that German-American relations be patched up so far as possible and that the polarization between America-loyal and America-critical governments within the EU be resolved. There are three main arguments for Germany to return to the original transatlantic conception of its policy toward the United States. First, friendly relations with the United States have been the foundation of the Federal Republic’s political stability, economic well-being, and, not least, security for more than half a century. Abandoning this traditional, proven policy would be foolish. There would be an element of cheap ingratitude toward the United States and the countless Americans to whom the Federal Republic owes, in large part, its positive political and economic development, its security during the four decades of the Cold War, and its 69 Henry A. Kissinger, “The ‘Made in Berlin’ Generation: Germany’s Rift with the United States Goes Deeper than American Unilateralism and Disagreement over Iraq Policy,” Washington Post, Oct. 30, 2002, A23.

reunification as well. Leaving aside that it would not be smart to jeopardize a long successful policy for what is ultimately a matter of secondary importance, there is also an emotional and moral factor at work here. One does not turn openly against a tried and true friend, especially if that friend is about to make a mistake. Experience teaches that a country has a better chance of influencing a world power by being a friendly ally and avoiding open confrontation or attempts to build a coalition against it. Deciding not to participate in a war because of doubts about its appropriateness or morality is one thing; building a diplomatic coalition against long-standing allies is something else. The first might be defensible – the participation of German troops in the Iraq war was not even requested – but a sharp confrontation with a longtime protector for no reason at all is not. The second argument concerns the potential dangers confronting Europe as a whole. Al Quaeda’s global conspiracy; the rapid proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems; and the existence of criminal regimes prepared to build, distribute, or use ABC weapons – these will conceivably pose a serious threat in coming decades, so the argument runs. Should these trends prevail, the international order, already threatened today in many regions by zones of anarchy, could soon degenerate into a free-for-all. Given these circumstances, the United States, the only country able to take action and (at least for now) willing to do so, is absolutely indispensable. As necessary as it may be to address potential threats or prevent such threats from developing by some combination of nonmilitary means, it could also be necessary now and again to undertake surgical wars which the Security Council might not sanction. It is this conception of and means of responding to new dangers that few in Germany and Europe are considering at the moment. Sooner or later, Germany will again face the question: Which is preferable – the hegemonic United States disabling a high-risk state when the UN Security Council is incapable of taking action, or patiently accepting the threat posed by a high-risk state, with perhaps very grave consequences, when there is no majority for action in the Security Council or action is

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blocked by veto? In the lead-up to the Kosovo war, the NATO states – including Germany – considered it acceptable to launch a war, or at last to support one politically, even without a UN mandate. In the case of the Iraq war, Britain, Spain, Italy, and other EU member states again came to that same decision, while Germany and France pleaded for a second option. It would be tragic if Germany would be prepared to support a “coalition of the willing” in response to a serious threat only if it itself or another European country were the target of mass murder or blackmail by ABC weapons. It is to be doubted that, if confronted by continued criticism from important European allies, the United States will be willing to play the role of international policeman – a role that also serves the interests of the European democracies – indefinitely. What will happen to the militarily weak states of Europe without American assistance if they find themselves at the mercy of high-risk states or terrorist groups threatening to use nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction? The twenty-first century has only just begun, and many indications give reason to fear that the threats to security in the future will be just as serious as those in the twentieth century, if not more so. In the past, Germany several times demonstrated a fatal tendency to tie itself incautiously to weak or geographically remote allies – with Austria-Hungary in the First World War, with Italy and Japan in the second – as well as to provoke and then fight the truly strong Anglo-Saxon powers. The consequences of those mistaken decisions were not good. Historical analogies are, of course, never exact. But “ganging up” diplomatically against the United States and Great Britain, a longtime European ally, without any compelling reason for doing so does nonetheless bring to mind stupid German foreign policy decisions of earlier times. Finally, the third argument touches upon the connection between American leadership within the Atlantic community and Europe’s integration within the framework of the EU. That peace and prosperity in Europe would have been unthinkable without the presence of the United States and its active, generally well-intentioned support for Europe’s unification seems to be unquestioned among the ex-

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perts. In recent decades, however, there have been threatening signs that the United States might not be able to continue to support plans, promoted above all by Germany and France, to deepen European integration through the development of a common foreign and security policy. The crisis that occurred between August 2002 and March 2003 demonstrated that European foreign and security policy cannot be successful against the United States. Should the Europeans nonetheless attempt such a policy, Washington will be all the more tempted to pursue a policy of “divide and rule” toward Europe. That would help neither the reestablishment of the badly shaken Atlantic community nor the continuation of European integration within the EU framework. Thus, the rapid and comprehensive restoration of European-American relations, willfully put in jeopardy on both sides of the Atlantic, is a prerequisite for the continuation of Germany’s similarly imperiled European policy. If the arguments sketched here prevail in the near future, it might be possible to resolve the current crisis in relations. But even if Berlin officialdom and the general public come once again to see good German-American relations as being of primary importance, it will not be possible to clean up the broken glass without considerable changes in conduct in both Paris and Washington. Whether things will go positively thus remains uncertain. It is somewhat paradoxical that the Englishlanguage edition of a work that is, in effect, a scholarly monument to forty-five years of remarkably successful German-American relations within the Atlantic community must end on a surprisingly skeptical note. Indeed, it is precisely the current turmoil that makes clear the great, epochal achievement of the years between 1945 and 1990 – and also, one might add, of the period from 1990 through 2002. Current events also demonstrate that nothing in the political realm can be considered permanent, not even the common course of two nations that proceeded together through thick and thin for nearly a half-century. We must face the facts squarely, but we must also continue to work, on both sides of the Atlantic, for GermanAmerican friendship. And we must hope.

Index

Abish, Walter, 267 Acheson, Dean, 85, 528 Adam, Theo, 307, 310–11 Adenauer Foundation, 453, 456–8 Adenauer, Konrad, 455, 528 Brandt and, 83 CDU and, 90 de Gaulle and, 57 detent´e and, 34 era of, 120 Adorno, Theodor W., 264, 269, 289, 291 aerospace industry, 167, 191, 195–6 Afghanistan, 6, 22, 70, 98, 121–3, 136–7, 145, 217–8, 254, 557 Africa, 247, 254, 546 African Americans, 130, 347, 439, 474 agriculture, 63, 206, 208–9, 215, 220–3, 225–6, 484 Air-Land doctrine, 137–8, 161 Alewyn, Richard, 296 Alt, Fritz, 507 America Insitutes, 295–7 American Civil Liberties Union, 457 American Federation of Teachers, 457 American studies, 294–7, 313–4, 525–6 Americanization, 541 Americanisms and, 326, 330, 332, 524 causes of, 332 culture and, 522, 540 East-West integration, 331 German language and, 326, 329–30 globalization and, 339 Holocaust and, 406, 531 Kohl and, 338 language and, 330, 332 media and, 336–7 pop music and, 342 Reagan and, 338 social change and, 330–1

urbanization and, 493 use of term, 335 Americans of German Descent, 284 Amerika-Hauser, 260, 275, 279, 294 Angermann, Erich, 296 Angola, 121, 246 Annand, Jacques, 364 antitotalitarianism, 288 antitrust laws, 193 Arab-Israeli War, 71, 117, 133, 136, 490 architecture, 387–93. See also urbanization; specific persons, groups Argentina, 247 Armacost, Michael, 99 art, 257–8, 310, 383. See also specific artists, media Asia, 211–14, 224–5, 482–3. See also specific countries, organizations Asian Tigers, 213–14 asylum law, 486–8. See also refugees AT&T, 193 Atlantic Charter, 48 Atlantic community, 535–41 Atlantic Declaration, 3, 63–4 Atlanticism, 90, 92, 120 Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), 435 automobile industry, 199, 205–6, 215, 224 Axen, Hermann, 98–100, 102, 309 Bachmann, Ingeborg, 323 Bahr, Egon, 2, 10, 27–8, 92, 96, 529 Baker, James, 14, 101, 105–6 balance-of-payments deficit, 83, 86 Baldwin, James, 523 Balkans, 543, 549 banana policy, 547 Bangladesh, 247 banking, 192, 197 Barkley, Richard, 100 Barthes, Roland, 399 Baruch Plan, 115

567

568

Index Basic Law, 73 Basic Treaty, 78, 486–7, 549 contradictory aims, 79 immigration and, 487 inter-German relations, 79 Quadripartite Agreement, 78 Bauhaus group, 265, 391 Bausch, Pina, 377–8 Beckett, Samuel, 373, 382 Behnisch, Gunter, 393 Beil, Gerhard, 101–2 Belgium, 161 Bell, Daniel, 271, 395, 398 Bellow, Saul, 523 Benjamin, Walter, 380 Benoist, Alan de, 508 Berghahn, Wilfried, 352 Bergsten, C. Fred, 550 Bergstraesser, Arnold, 296 Berlin Agreement, 19–20, 29, 78–9 Berlin Wall, 361, 472, 528, 533 Cold War and, 257 fall of, 138, 279 Hungary and, 138 media and, 44 opening of, 100–101, 106, 287 rock music and, 348 Bernhard, Thomas, 323 Beuys, Joseph, 262, 381, 384 Bieler, Manfred, 321–2 bilateralism, 415–16, 418 biochemical weapons, 115, 184 biotechnology research, 192 Birrenbach, Kurt, 83 birth rates, 438 Bitburg affair, 87–8, 91, 267, 403–4, 415, 417–18, 479, 516, 532 Black Power movement, 424 Blackwill, Robert, 105 Blair government, 559 Block, Rene, 384 Bohlen, David, 307 Boll, Heinrich, 320 Bonn Summit, 190 Bosnia, 176, 233, 542–4 Bradbury, Ray, 316 Brandt, Willy, 27, 76, 528–9 Adenauer and, 83 American Jewry and, 474 Brandt report, 245 Brandt-Scheel government, 426 Brezhnev and, 21, 29 Grand Coalition and, 28 Kohl and, 507 Nazism and, 475 Nixon and, 19 Ostpolitik and, 1–2, 40, 78 troop reductions and, 84. See also specific topics

Braudel, Fernand, 545 Brazil, 143, 224–5, 247 Brecht, Bertolt, 322–3, 373–5 Bretton Woods system, 59, 63, 187, 196–7, 206, 229, 238 Bundesbank and, 231 collapse of, 229–30 Deutsche Mark, 229–30 dollar devaluation and, 230 economic summits and, 249 IMF and, 231 United States and, 230 Brezhnev, Leonid, 4, 21, 29, 85 Brezinski, Zbigniew, 6, 268 Brinkman, Rolf Dieter, 264, 312, 339 Bronfman, Edgar M., 99 Brookings Institution, 253 Bruckner, Jutta, 360 Brumm, Ursula, 297 Bruning, Eberhard, 315, 525 Buchloh, H.D., 385–6 Bukowski, Charles, 312, 525 Burns, Arthur, 277, 279 Burt, Richard, 98 Buruma, Ian, 324–5 Bush, George H., 100, 436, 533, 542, 555, 559, 563 American-European relations and, 67 broad support of, 559 Federal Republic of Germany and, 32, 455 Gorbachev and, 106 Kohl and, 11–12, 104–5, 108, 540 Kyoto Protocol and, 556 Mainz speech, 106, 109 objectives of, 105 Poland visit, 100 unification and, 88, 108–9 Bush, George W., 554, 560 Calleo, David P., 552 Canada, 212–4, 216, 223, 236 capital markets antitrust laws and, 237 crisis in, 240 cycle of production and, 236–7 direct investments, 240–1, 547 exchange rates and, 238 German-American flows, 237–40 German coupon tax, 240 interest rates and, 239–40 oligopolies and, 237 portfolio flows, 238 profitability differences, 236 reunification and, 240 risk-capital, 192 tax reform, 240 wage cost differences, 237 capitalism, 190–1, 504, 506, 508

Index capitulation decree, 327 CARE packages, 514 Caribbean region, 247 Carl Duisberg Society, 281 Carter, Jimmy, 5, 86, 449, 560 CSCE and, 41–2 detent´e and, 6, 65, 69 dollar and, 253 economic summits and, 255 energy policies and, 252 German question and, 22 Holocaust and, 403 locomotive model, 253 NATO and, 6 pro-European attitude and, 64 SALT talks, 6, 98 Schmidt and, 5–7, 22, 529 Soviet Union and, 30, 69 trade deficits, 252 trilateralism, 252 USIA and, 259, 276. See also specific topics Catholic Church, 447, 467–9 CDU/CSU. See Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union CDU-SPD coalition. See Christian Democratic–Social Democratic Grand Coalition Celan, Paul, 323 Center for North American Research, 295 Central America, 213–14 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 171–2 CFE Treaty, 153, 162, 183 Chandlerian effect, 192 chemical weapons, 123 chemicals industry, 192, 215 China, 76, 123, 224, 422, 447 Chirac, Jacques, 562 Christadler, Martin, 295–6 Christian Democratic–Social Democratic Grand Coalition, 28, 507 Christian Democratic Union (CDU), 58, 89 Adenauer and, 90 American party system and, 90 detent´e, 89 KAS and, 456 Kohl and, 90 liberalization and, 428 United States and, 503 Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU), 83, 90–1, 553, 555 Christian fundamentalism, 546 Christian Social Union (CSU), 89–90, 503 churches, 98, 412, 467, 471 detent´e and, 468, 470–1 domestic issues, 469 double-track decision and, 470 free churches, 466 GDR churches, 466, 470

media and, 468 modernization and, 468 national, 466 nuclear weapons and, 470–1 Ostpolitik and, 471 religion and, 466 structural differences, 466–7 terrorism and, 469 civil disobedience, 93 civil rights movement, 93, 411, 439, 474 class struggle, 430, 504 Clinton, Bill, 409, 428, 464, 542, 560 COCOM. See Coordinating Committee in Multilateral Export Controls CMEA. See Council for Mutual Economic Assistance Cold War Atlantic community and, 535 Berlin Wall and, 257 bilateralism and, 410, 418 cultural policy, 257 Federal Republic and, 510 German-American relations and, 1, 410 Gorbachev and, 53 immigration and, 487–8 multilateralism and, 49 new and, 470 political conclusion of, 123 post–Cold War period, 535 security and, 409 Third World and, 69 Committee for Disarmament and Cooperation, 432 Committee on the Present Danger, 145 communism, 426, 508, 522 anticommunism and, 120, 367 capitalism and, 508 collapse of, 154. See also Soviet Union economic stability and, 163 eurocommunism, 112 Federal Republic, groups in, 506 INF treaty and, 154 Nixon, 19 U.S. and, 524–5 computer technology, 193, 333 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), 20–1, 77, 258, 519, 522 Carter and, 41–2 detent´e and, 42–3 economic cooperation and, 45 establishment of, 52 European security and, 105, 183 Federal Republic and, 40 Helsinki and. See Helsinki Conferences human rights and, 41, 52 Madrid conference, 41–2 multilateralism and, 183 NN states, 41–2

569

570

Index Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (cont.) nonviolence and, 44 Reagan and, 42–3 role of, 40, 43 United States and, 40 Vienna meeting, 43 Conference Group of German Politics, 289 Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange Program, 278 Conradt, David, 289 conservative groups, 560 consumerism, 192, 335, 548 containment strategy, 528 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) talks, 153, 162, 183 Cooper, John S., 97 Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM), 45 corporatism, 191–2 Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), 216–18 Council on Foreign Relations, 456 counterculture, 258, 263, 270, 338, 345–6 crime rates, 130 Croatia, 233, 549 CSCE. See Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe Cuban Missile Crisis, 52, 70, 111, 128 culture Americanization. See Americanization art and, 257–8. See specific types, artists clashes of, 553 Cold War and, 257 contacts, 545 education, 260 GDR and, 305, 522 German studies, 287 hegemony and, 335 identity and, 268 media and, 266, 527. See specific media multiculturalism, 270–1 New York, 261 popular. See pop culture television and, 366, 368–9 youth culture, 257–8. See also specific topics current-account surplus, 193–4, 200 Cyprus, 76 Czechoslovakia, 69, 83, 116, 118–19 Daimler-Benz, 194 Dallas series, 523 Dallas show, 503, 523 Dalton, Russell, 289 Darboven, Hanne, 383 Daubler-Gmelin, Herta, 562 Davis, Angela, 524–5 de Gaulle, Charles, 2–3, 52, 56–7

decentralization, 489 deconstruction, 400 defense spending, 165–6, 193 Delors, Jacques, 66–7 democratization, 105, 270, 369 Denmark, 199 Der Spiegel, 314 deregulation, 193 Derrida, Jacques, 399 Derwinski, Edward, 82–3 detent´e, 114, 120–2, 133, 135, 138–41, 175–6, 203, 249, 254, 457, 475, 514 American policy, 33 arms control and, 146 asylum law and, 488 Berlin Agreement, 20 Carter and, 6, 65, 69 CDU and, 89 churches and, 468–71 CSCE and, 42–3 CSU and, 89 defense expenditures, 83 deterrence and, 30 end of, 4 FDP and, 94 Federal Republic and, 18, 30–1 Ford and, 21–2 France and, 136 GDR and, 10 German question and, 528 Gorbachev and, 11 Harmel report, 135 Honecker and, 244, 309 Jews and, 475 Kennedy and, 57 Kissinger and, 29, 144 KOFAZ and, 432 Lippmann and, 539 multilateralism and, 52 multipolarity and, 1 Nixon and, 7, 19, 52 Ostpolitik and, 1, 86 perestroika and, 12 regional view of, 31 Schmidt and, 9 SDI program, 146 security and, 23, 154 Soviet Union and, 3, 145, 150 SPD and, 92 student movements, 425 superpowers, 23 trade and, 216–217 unification and, 12, 128, 135–6 United States and, 7 Vietnam and, 128 deterrence, 30, 118 Deutsche Bundesbahn, 195

Index Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), 298–299 developing countries Alliance for Progress and, 242 BMZ and, 243–4 Brandt report, 245 Cold War and, 242 Conference on International Cooperation, 245 debt crisis and, 246–7 detent´e and, 245 G-77 bloc, 245 GDR and, 244 German reunification and, 247 Hallstein doctrine, 244 infrastructure projects, 243 loan restrictions, 243–4, 247 Marshall Plan for, 245 OECD and, 243–4 oil crisis, 245 OPEC and, 246 Ostpolitik and, 244 overseas development assistance, U.S., 243–4 Peace Corps and, 242 price stability and, 246–7 revolutionary movement, 476 strategic vs. altruistic aid, 245 technology transfers and, 245 Turkey and, 244–5 UN and, 245 UNCTAD and, 243 United States and, 242, 247 USAID and, 242. See also specific countries, programs Diner, Dan, 508 disarmament, 48, 115. See nuclear weapons; specific nations, treaties dollar, 52, 63, 550 double compatibility, 55, 60 double zero option, 94 drama, 313 Dregger, Alfred, 91 Dreiser, Theodore, 523 drug trade, 130, 176, 254 dual-basing, 129–30 dual broadcasting system, 341 dual containment, 537 dual-state theory, 77–8 Dulles, John Foster, 367 East-West trade, 216–18, 246–7, 331 Eastern Europe, 152, 213–14 Ebert Foundation, 455 Ebert, Friedrich, 90 EC. See European Community economic summits, 249 American hegemony, 250

American unilateralism, 249 bilateralism, 255 Bonn summit , 251–3 currency stability, 253 energy policies and, 251 Ford and, 251 Franco-German relations and, 250, 254–5 G5/G7 meetings, 253 growing interdependence, 250 growth vs. price stability, 251 Library Group meetings, 250, 254–5 Louvre agreement, 253 multilateralism, 249. See multilateralism personalities and, 254 Plaza agreement of, 253 processes of, 254 Rambouillet meeting, 250 regional vs. global responsibilities, 253 security issues and, 254 trade deficits/surpluses, 251–2 Versailles summit, 254 Williamsburg summit, 254 economics, 64–5, 289 adaptability, 198 American internationalism and, 187 Anglo-Saxon capitalism model, 191, 193, 199–200 balance of payments and, 83, 86 banking, 197 capitalism and, 188, 190–1, 504, 506, 508 catching-up theory, 188–9 communism and, 163 CSCE and, 45 defense spending, 165 deregulation, 187 economic miracle, 51, 187, 192, 228 Federal Republic and, 188 financial sector, 191–2 free markets, 187, 204, 548 German GDP, 212 growth and, 188, 190, 192 inter-German trade, 79 labor. See labor markets liberalism, 187 managed corporatism, 187 medium-sized firms, 192–3 models and, 191, 231 monetary policy and, 190 oil prices and, 390 organized capitalism, 187 Ostpolitik and, 59 privatization, 187 Reagan and, 66–7, 192 regulations and, 188 Rhineland capitalism, 191, 193, 199, 548, 555 sanctions, 73 scientific cooperation, 45 security and, 197, 207

571

572

Index economics (cont.) small firms, 192–3 Soviet Union and, 45 stagnation, 556 strategy and, 65 summits. See economic summits technology transfer and, 163 United States and, 187, 188, 212. See also specific topics ECSC. See European Coal and Steel Community EDC. See European Defense Community edge cities, 490 education, 328, 387, 416, 457, 523, 525 culture and, 260 European schools, 194–5 foundations and, 457–8 students. See student movements university and, 525–6 women and, 440 EEC. See European Economic Community Egypt, 242 Eichmann trial, 474 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 276, 536 Eisenmann, Peter, 391 EKD. See Evangelical Church in Germany electronics industry, 168, 196, 224 elites American, 449 circulation of, 450 defined, 445 formation of, 450 German-American relations and, 450 in Germany, 446 military and, 447–8 transatlantic, 445–6, 466 value elites, 445–6 ´ ee Treaty, 57 Elys´ EMS. See European Monetary System EMU. See European Monetary Union energy policies, 252. See also environment; specific resources English language, 195, 326, 332, 524 English literature, 303. See also specific authors Enlightenment period, 397, 400–1 enterprise zones, 494 entertainment culture, 261 environment, 75, 412, 430, 432–5, 556 Enzensberger, Hans M., 258, 264–5, 317, 424, 505, 507 Eppler, Erhard, 507 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 439 Erhard, Ludwig, 51–2, 58, 421 Estonia, 233 Ethiopia, 121–2, 246 ethnic identity, 363 EU. See European Union

Euratom, 56 Eurocentric strategic focus, 155 eurocommunism, 112 Europe fiscal policies, 216 monetary policies, 216 policies toward regions outside, 69 Third World, 69 unification of, 67–8 welfare states, 548. See also specific countries, organizations European Atomic Community, 539 European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), 51, 56, 539 European Community (EC), 42, 197, 225, 539 American relations and, 62–3 banana policy, 547 exchange rates and, 64 Federal Republic and, 29, 213 France and, 220 future course of, 544 Hanover summit, 123 imports/exports and, 214 Kissinger and, 63 monetary policy and, 220 NATO and, 179 Nixon and, 63 oil price shocks and, 220 trade policies and, 203, 206, 213, 222, 226–7 unification and, 179 U.S. exports, 213–14 European Defense Community (EDC), 56, 539 European Economic Community (EEC), 51, 56–7, 198, 539 European Monetary System (EMS), 60, 62, 64, 565 European Monetary Union (EMU), 64, 188 European Political Cooperation, 64 European Rapid Reaction Force, 558 European Security and Defense Policy, 558–9 European Union (EU), 542–4, 551, 563 Britain and, 558–9 Commission for, 550 European security and, 3, 547, 552 Germany and, 543, 547, 550 NATO and, 179 old Europe and, 562 trade policies and, 463 welfare states, 546 Europeanization, 58, 286, 339 Eurosclerosis, 188, 191, 199, 221 Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), 466–70, 472 exchange programs, 278 exchange rates, 194, 197–8, 205, 550 antidumping measures, 206–7

Index capital markets, 238 currency basket, 232 currency stability, 200, 233 Deutsche Mark and, 229, 233 dollar and, 194, 223, 228, 231–2, 253 EC and, 64 euro and, 233–4 France and, 232 G5/G7 meetings, 253 gold standard and, 232 IMF and, 232 monetary policy, 232 political spending and, 228 price stability vs., 233 reserves and, 232–3 target zones, 232 Tokyo round, 221 trade deficits and, 231–2 yen and, 230. See also specific countries, currencies Experiment in International Living, 278 export levels, 73, 168–9, 192, 546–7 expressionism, 374, 386 Farbstein, Leonard, 84 Fassbinder, Rainer Werner, 363, 404 FDP. See Free Democratic Party Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), 54 American literature and, 317–18 American Studies and, 294 anti-Americanism and, 502 Asian imports and, 213 automobile imports, 224 Basic Treaty and, 38 Bush and, 32, 455 Cold War and, 510 creation of, 50 CSCE and, 40 democratization and, 454 detent´e and, 18, 30–1 developing countries and, 242 domestic policy, 529 dual-state theory, 77–8 East-West trade, 218, 244 EC imports and, 29, 213 exports and, 73 foreign policy, 517, 528 France and, 213, 530 as frontline state, 510 Fulbright program and, 275 as gatekeeper, 18 GDR and, 77–9 Gorbachev and, 32 Great Britain and, 213 immigration and, 482, 484 imports to, 214 INF treaty and, 151 international affairs and, 30, 251, 533 investments and, 194

Israel and, 475 Italian imports and, 213 Japanese imports and, 213 mass media and, 285–6 military forces and, 155–6 monetary policy, 232 NATO and, 29, 543 New Left and, 1 Non-Proliferation Treaty and, 142 nuclear arms and, 147–8 Pleven Plan and, 56 political foundations, 453 popular culture and, 334 right-wing extremism and, 495 Six Day War and, 474 southern cities of, 491 Soviet Union and, 196–7 superpowers and, 26 Third World and, 69 trade exports and, 213, 215–16 trade policies and, 227 Turkish workers, 244–5 Two-Plus-Four negotiations, 80 United States and, 28, 70, 213–14, 535–6, 538–9, 544, 546, 564 universities in, 312 upheaval of, 546 urban policies, 489 Vietnam and, 119 West Berlin and, 37 federalism, 526 Federation of German Industries, 195 feminism, 322, 361, 400, 411, 441 Fernau, Joachim, 339 Fiedler, Leslie, 263–4, 312, 398, 400 film. See motion pictures Finger Plan, 389 Finlandization, 36 First German Television Network (ARD), 367 fiscal policy, 216, 228, 233 Fischer, Gottfried Bermann, 314 Fischer, Joschka, 549, 554 Fischer-Lueg, Konrad, 382 Fischer, Oskar, 97 Flexible response strategy, 113, 118, 133–5 Follow-on Forces doctrine, 116, 137–8 Follow-on-to-Lance (FOTL) issue, 153 Ford Foundation, 296–8 Ford, Gerald, 5, 251 detent´e, 21–2 German question, 18 Honecker and, 97 Ostpolitik, 22. See also specific topics, persons Foucault, Michel, 400 foundations, 413, 415–6, 446, 453, 457–8. See specific organizations Four-Power Agreement, 19, 21, 29, 76–8 Fraenkel, Ernst, 297

573

574

Index France, 120, 511–12 antihegemonic axis, 564 arms control and, 140 Atlantic community and, 540 Bonn summit and, 252 cultural identity, 268–9, 528 currency stability, 232 detent´e and, 135–6 developing countries and, 242 Eurocorps and, 61 European Community and, 220 Federal Republic and, 213, 530 flexible response strategy and, 134 Franco-German relations, 55–7, 61, 122–3, 254–5, 564 Gaullism, 59, 61 imports/exports, 214 Leopard I tank, 167 NATO withdrawal, 111, 132, 157 neo-mercantilism, 204 Schuman Plan, 56 technology transfer and, 167 Tokyo Round and, 221 trade policies, 220, 226 unification and, 61, 107–8 United States and, 55, 544, 562 Vietnam and, 126 WEU and, 124 Williamsburg summit and, 254. See also specific persons, groups Frankfurt school, 289, 396–8, 476 Free Democratic Party (FDP), 9, 82, 89–90, 93–4, 456 Free German Youth (FDJ), 521 free markets, 204, 548 Free-trade zone, 550 Free University, 296–7 French, Marilyn, 322 Friedman, Thomas L., 548 Friedrich, Heiner, 384 Friedrich Naumann Foundation, 453–4, 456–8 Fukuyama, Francis, 535 Fulbright, J. William, 294 Fulbright program, 260, 275, 280, 451 Fuller, R. Buckminster, 390–1 GAAS. See German Association of American Studies GATT. See General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Gaddis, John Lewis, 553 Gas pipeline agreement, 76 Gay/lesbian initiatives, 430 Gay, Peter, 288 GDR. See German Democratic Republic General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 197–8, 220, 250

American system, 221–2 consensus requirements, 209 limitations of, 224–5 negotiations for, 205 tariff reductions, 204 Tokyo Round, 207, 209, 220–1, 223, 226 Uruguay Round, 209, 225–7 General Motors, 194 generational change, 448, 513–15 Geneva talks, 98, 122 Genscher, Hans-Dietrich, 11, 27, 32, 94, 106, 108, 456 Genscherism, 11, 32, 94, 414 gentrification, 492 geopolitical theory, 396 Gerber, Margy, 308 Gerhardt, Rainer Maria, 312 German Academic Exchange Service, 259, 278, 281, 283 German-American relations after 1999, 553 arms control, 112 capital flows, 237–9 Cold War, 1, 410 cooling in, 554–5 crisis in, 562 current crisis in, 555 elites, 450 German political foundations, 452 investments and, 236–7 labor markets, 460 literature on, 124, 419–20 political foundations in, 454 portfolio flows, 240 security, 113 societal, 419–20 trade unions, 460 German-Americans, 284 German Association of American Studies (GAAS), 277, 297 German Democratic Republic (GDR), 52 American studies, 308, 315, 525 Americanisms and, 332 America’s relationship with, 96 ASSGDR and, 305–6, 308 Basic Treaty birth rates, 438 churches and, 466, 470 constitution of, 78 cultural policy and, 521–4 delimitation of, 519–20 detent´e, 10 developing countries and, 244 domestic issues, 519–20 dual-state theory, 77–8 exports, 102

Index folk music and, 521 FRG and, 77–9 GDR studies, 306, 309 gender roles, 438 images of America, 519, 526 Jews and, 403, 476, 479–80 liberalization and, 521 media and, 521 most-favored-nation status, 102 motion pictures, 362 NATO and, 96 perestroika and, 32 political foundations, 454 Reagan and, 98 recognition of, 96 rock music, 344 science in, 308 SED and, 519–20 television and, 520 trade relations with, 520 Two-Plus-Four negotiations, 80 unification and, 80 United States and, 96, 98, 100, 272, 305, 519 universities and, 525 Warsaw Pact, 535 youth policy, 521–2 German-German trade, 219 German Historical Institute, 416 German language, 319, 324, 326, 329–30 German offset payments, 128 German question, 18, 22 German Research Council, 298 German Studies Association, 287, 308–9 German Trade Union Federation, 412 German unification, 111, 123, 178, 188, 506 arms control and, 115 detent´e and, 128, 135–6 developing countries and, 247 economic costs of, 192 European Community and, 179 Genscher plan, 181–2 German-German trade and, 219 Hallstein Doctrine, 135–6 Jews and, 480 locomotive model, 253 NATO and, 112, 179 Polish border issue, 476 portfolio flows and, 240 security features of, 178 security strategy and, 179 Soviet Union and, 179 trade unions and, 463 United States and, 533 Uruguay Round and, 226 women and, 443 Gewandhaus Orchestra, 310–11 Gienke, Horst, 103

Ginsberg, Allen, 525 Giscard d’ Estaing, Valery, 7, 59–60 glasnost policy, 44, 53, 100 global warming, 556 globalization, 188, 193, 198, 203, 211, 411, 463, 556 Americanization and, 333, 339 anti-globalization groups, 556 capital and, 235, 547 direct investments, 235 international trade and, 235 linguistic, 333 multinationals and, 235 politcal foundations and, 452–3 pop music and, 341 telecommunications and, 235 transfer payments correlation, 198–9 transportation and, 235 U.S. and, 199 Goethe Institutes, 281–2, 285–6 gold, 63 Goldhagen, Daniel, 406, 531 Goldwater, Barry, 352–3 Gollwitzer, Helmut, 505 Goodpastor, Andrew, 84 Gorbachev, Mikhail S., 44, 66, 107, 111, 431, 472, 516 Bush and, 106 Cold War and, 53 detent´e and, 11 Federal Republic and, 32 Genscher and, 32, 94 glasnost and, 53, 100 NATO and, 10 perestroika and, 53, 100 Reagan and, 24 Soviet Union and, 12 unification and, 13 Grabe, Hans Dieter, 371 grain, 112 Grand Coalition. See Christian Democratic-Social Democratic Grand Coalition Grass, G¨unter, 317, 320, 359, 506–7 Great Britain, 528 anglicization and, 326–7 Atlantic community and, 540 Bonn summit and, 252 capital markets, 236 EEC and, 57 European Union and, 558–9 Federal Republic and, 213 imports/exports, 214 SDI and, 169 unification and, 107–8 United States and, 213–14, 236 Vietnam and, 126 Great Society programs, 51, 129

575

576

Index Greens, 8, 89, 93, 337–8, 414–15, 431–2, 434–5, 442, 453, 506–7, 529–30, 563–4 Groll, Gunther, 351 Group of Seven (G7) meetings, 436 Grunert, Horst, 310, 520–1 Gruppe, 263, 291, 356 guest workers, 190 Gulf crisis, 545 Gulf War, 72, 542 Gunlicks, Arthur, 289 Gunness, Robert C., 102 Guthke, Karl S., 290 Gymnich formula, 59 Gysi, Klaus, 103 Haacke, Hans, 383 Habermas, Jurgen, 93, 265, 340, 394–5, 405 Hagen, Nina, 344 Haiti, 542 Hall, Gus, 524–5 Hallstein doctrine, 71, 244 Hamilton, David, 533 Handke, Peter, 263, 323 Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSS), 453 Hanrieder, Wolfram, 289 Haring, Hugo, 393 Harmel Report, 6, 89, 135, 150, 154, 183, 448 Hartz, Louis, 397 Hassan, Ihab, 399 Heidegger, Martin, 398 Heimat series, 360, 362–3, 370–1 Heinrich Boll Foundation, 415, 453 Heller, Joseph, 523 Hels-Burton, 546 Helsinki Conferences, 4–5, 30, 40–1, 43, 76, 118, 122, 471 Herder, Gerhard, 521 Hermand, Jost, 290 Herzinger, Richard, 508 Hesse, Hermann, 319 Heym, Stefan, 321–2 Hillebrecht, Rudolf, 387–8 hip-hop, 347 Hochhuth, Rolf, 404–5 Hofstadter, Richard, 352 Hogan’s Heroes series, 365 Holborn, Hajo, 288, 291 Holbrooke, Richard, 542 Hollywood, 262, 282, 285–6, 349, 362, 364 Holocaust, 96–7, 102, 266, 360, 365, 370, 457, 474, 477, 479–81, 495, 531–2 Americanization and, 406, 531 Bitburg visit and, 532 Carter and, 403 denial of, 496–7 Jews and, 359, 402, 531

Nazi, 366 revisionism, 500 tv miniseries, 366, 403 U.S. museum, 407 Honda, 193 Honecker, Erich, 96–7, 99–100, 309, 344, 519–20 Horkheimer, Max, 264, 269, 289, 291 Horn, Rebecca, 383 hostage crisis, 529 Howe, Irving, 397–8 Hugo Boss, 194 Hull, Cordell, 48 human rights, 30, 41, 43, 52, 174, 430, 542 Humboldt Foundation, 281, 298 Hungary, 116, 123, 138, 158, 233 Huntington, Samuel P., 553 Hutchings, Robert, 105 Huyssen, Andreas, 395 IBM, 168, 195 ideology, 487, 520 IMF. See International Monetary Fund INF. See Intermediate-range nuclear forces immigration Asia and, 482–3 Basic Law and, 487 Cold War and, 487–8 Federal Republic and, 482, 484 ideological challenges, 487 Latin America and, 482–3 repatriation agreements and, 487 Turkish workers, 244–5 United States and, 482–4 imperialism, 504, 520 India, 143, 224–5, 242 individualism, 490 inflation, 52 intellectual property rights, 225–6 intelligence operations, 171, 193 allies and, 174 China and, 172 CIA, 171–2 counterintelligence, 173–4 covert operations, 174 cryptology and, 172–3 drug trade and, 176 espionage techniques, 175 Federal Republic of Germany and, 172 human resources for, 172 human rights and, 174 human vs. technical, 171 incentives for cooperation, 171 Israel and, 174–5 languages and, 172 Latin America and, 176 liaising risks, 174–5

Index Middle East and, 174, 176 military threat and, 175 moles and, 174–5 Nazi-U.S. ties, 174 radio airwaves, 174 smugglers and, 174 space platforms and, 173 technical systems and, 171–2 technology transfer and, 172, 174 Turkey and, 176 Vietnam and, 176 interest rates, 66, 216, 239–40 intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF), 32, 86, 92–3, 111–12, 123, 137–8, 148, 153, 162, 174, 371, 455 communism and, 154 controversy over, 515 demonstrations against, 53 deployment of, 121 FOTL issue and, 153 German interests and, 151 installation of, 515 modernization and, 119, 149, 151, 260, 372, 503, 506 negotiations, 151 NATO and, 67, 258, 260, 371 policy of, 154 Schmidt and, 31 trade issues, 208 treaty, 10 International Atomic Energy Agency, 115, 143 International Building Exhibition, 392–3 International Chemical Weapons Convention, 115 International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, 461 International Energy Agency, 250 International Institute for Strategic Studies, 156 international law, 76, 114–15 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 231, 242, 247, 250, 436 International Research Exchange (IREX), 102, 307, 525 international system, 198–9, 235, 548 internationalism, 332–3, 362, 425, 541, 548 internet, 336 investments, 226 anti-inflationary policy, 190 bank domination of, 191–2 capital, 547 Germany, 191 international, 193, 235 Ostpolitik and, 244 rates of, 190 saving rates and military spending, 196 United States, 191. See also economics; specific countries, groups

Iran, 74, 131, 194, 242, 252, 254 Iraq, 72, 74, 176, 254, 542, 554–5, 557–63 IREX. See International Research Exchange Ireland, 76 Iron Curtain, 270 Iron Triangle, 449 Israel, 474, 531–2 American Jewry and, 474 Arab-Israeli wars, 71, 117, 133, 136, 490 exchange programs and, 477, 480–1 Federal Republic and, 475 intelligence and, 174 Kissinger and, 475 Nixon and, 476 occupied territories, 474 Pollard case, 175 radical left and, 476 Saudi Arabia and, 477 tank sales, 477 Vietnam and, 476 Italy, 161, 204, 213–14, 252 Jackson, Henry, 5, 86 Jackson-Nunn amendment, 86 Jackson-Vanik amendment, 45 Jahn, Helmut, 392 Jameson, Fredric, 399–400 Japan, 197, 271 automobile exports, 224 capital markets and, 236 currency stability and, 230 developing countries and, 242 economic growth of, 211 economic summits and, 255 Federal Republic and, 213 fiscal policies, 216 imports/exports, 206, 213–14, 224, 226 international investments, 194 keiretsu networks, 192 market access to, 224–5, 232, 252 monetary policies, 216, 232 organized capitalism, 188 protectionist measures against, 223–4 trade imbalances, 200 trade policies, 224, 226 trade surpluses, 216 U.S. and, 213–14 Williamsburg summit, 254 Jarausch, Konrad H., 521 Jefferson, Thomas, 543 Jews, 531–2 African Americans and, 474 AJC and, 413, 416–17, 474, 477–80 anti-Semitism, 405–6 Brandt and, 474 civil rights movement and, 474 Claims Conference, 475 compensation claims, 96–7

577

578

Index Jews (cont.) detent´e and, 475 GDR and, 403, 479–80 Holocaust and, 359, 402, 531 Israel and, 474, 476 Kiesinger and, 474 organizations, 416 reparations and, 480 unification and, 480. See also Israel Johnson, Lyndon B., 410, 449 Johnson, Philip, 391 journalism, 328 Junger, Ernst, 340 Junker, Detlef, 104 Kagan, Robert, 557–8 Kahn, Hermann, 550, 552–3 Kaiser, Karl, 413 Kekkonen, Urho, 268 Kelly, Petra, 279, 412, 434, 436, 530 Kennan, George F., 528 Kennedy, John F., 438–9, 449, 506–7 assassination of, 274 Bahr and, 33 Cold War and, 259 detent´e and, 57 grand design, 57 Ostpolitik and, 33 visit to Germany, 58, 370, 513 Kennedy, Robert, 274 Kerouac, Jack, 525 Keynesian theory, 165–6, 187 Kiefer, Anselm, 262 Kiesinger, Kurt G., 474 King, Martin Luther, 274 Kinkel, Klaus, 550 Kirsch, Henry, 309 Kissinger, Henry, 14, 21, 77, 245, 528, 560, 564 Atlantic declaration, 3 Bahr and, 35 Berlin Agreement and, 20 detent´e and, 29 EC and, 63 economic summits and, 249 Final Act and, 38 Fischer and, 97 Four-Power negotiations, 37 Israel and, 475 Mansfield and, 85 monetary crisis and, 249 Ostpolitik and, 2–3 Kluge, Alexander, 357–60, 362 Kodak, 193 Kohl, Helmut, 86, 260, 409, 428, 553 Americanization and, 338 Brandt and, 507 Bush and, 11–12, 104–5, 108, 540 CDU and, 90

economic summits and, 255 foreign policy, 9 NATO and, 11, 13 Oder-Neisse border, 13 Reagan and, 10, 87–8, 284, 417 SDI and, 9–10 short-range missiles, 11 Soviet Union and, 9 Ten-Point Plan, 106, 108 unification and, 104 Konrad, Gyorgy, 258 Korea, 76, 224–5 Korean War, 69, 126 Kosovo conflict, 542–4, 554, 556–8, 565 Krebs, Pierre, 508 Krefeld appeal, 432 Kroesen, Fred, 505 Krone, Heinrich, 34 Kuhn, Helmut, 296 Kunert, Gunter, 306, 317, 525 Kunze, Reiner, 322 Kursbuch, 424, 505 Kuspit, Donald, 385 Kuwait, 72, 194 Kyoto Protocol, 556, 560–1 labor markets, 205 Clinton administration and, 464 codetermination system, 194, 412 flexibility of, 190–1 German-American relations, 460 guest workers, 190 human capital and, 199 job security, 199 labor recruitment programs, 485 SAWs and, 484 unemployment rates, 188–90, 193, 195, 199, 548 unions, 190–1, 412, 460 vocational training, 191–2 wage cost differences, 237 women and, 437 work-hours, 190–1, 198–9 worker-management relations, 192, 464. See also trade unions Lacan, Jacques, 399 Lafontaine, Oskar, 8 Lance systems, 153 language, 195, 326, 329–30, 332–3, 524 Lanzmann, Claus, 406 Latin America, 93 debt crisis of 1980s, 246–7 drug trade and, 176 economic conditions in, 247 immigrants, 482–3 market access to, 224–5 price stability, 246–7 League of Nations, 48

Index Lefkowitz, Mary, 322 left-wing groups, 476, 502, 504, 506–7 Legally Authorized Workers (LAWs) program, 484 Leopard I tank, 167 Lettau, Reinhard, 505–6 liberalism, 1, 397, 508. See specific groups liberalization, 428, 469, 521 Libya, 73, 117 Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, 115 Lindenberg, Udo, 343 Lindenstrasse series, 368 Link, Werner, 15, 55 Lippman, Walter, 510, 536–7, 539 literature, 263, 523, 525. See specific authors loans, 327 Locke, John, 397 locomotive economic model, 252–3, 528 London, Jack, 523 long-range intermediate-range nuclear forces (LRINF), 151–3 Long Term Defense Program (1978), 159 Louvre Discussions, 190 Lubitsch, Ernst, 349 Lugar, Richard, 87 Lutherans, 468–9, 471 Lyotard, Jean-Francois, 265, 395 Maastricht Treaty, 61, 67, 123, 542 machine industry, 192, 199, 206, 224 MAD. See Mutual Assured Destruction Maier, Charles, 405 mail-order business, 329 Mailer, Norman, 523 Malta Summit, 106 management systems, 194–5 Mann, Thomas, 321 Mansfield amendment, 85–6, 132 Mansfield, Mike, 83–5, 129 Marcuse, Herbert, 264, 353, 380, 396, 424, 426, 504–5 market model, 494 Markovits, Andrei, 404, 411 Marshall Fund, 415 Marshall Plan, 49, 55, 212–4, 274, 280, 411–12, 415, 514 Marxist theory, 112, 131, 353, 397–8, 504–5, 514–15, 524–5 mass transit, 490 Masur, Kurt, 310–11 Mathias, Charles, 85 Mathias, Oswald, 392 Max Planck Institutes, 303 May, Gisela, 306–7, 310–11 May, Karl, 353, 523 MBFR. See Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions

McCormick, John, 296–7 McLuhan, Marshall, 265, 312 Mearsheimer, John J., 559 mechanical engineering, 199, 215 media, 266, 527 Americanization and, 336–7 Berlin Wall and, 44 churches and, 468 culture industry and, 269 GDR and, 521 German media, 413–14 imperialism and, 268 McDonaldization of, 336 media studies, 272–3 modernization and, 468 newspress, 328 Vietnam and, 268. See also specific types Mediterranean region, 543, 545 medium-ranged missiles, 254 Meehan, Francis, 100 Mehnert, Klaus, 337 Meier, Richard, 391–2 Merkel, Angela, 555 Mexico, 212–14, 223, 246–7 Michal, Wolfgang, 336 Microsoft, 193 Middle East, 64, 70 drug trade and, 176 intelligence and, 174, 176 oil and gas, 70 peace process, 560 Suez crisis, 56 tank purchases, 477 Third World and, 71 military, 83, 195 aerospace industry and, 195–6 anti-Americanism and, 503–4 bases, 503–4 Central Europe, 155 crowding out effect, 196 deficit politics and, 196 deployment, 157, 161 electronics industry and, 196 elites, 447–8 employment and, 195 force assessments, 156 investment/savings rates and, 196 metals technology, 166 military-industrial complex, 196 price levels and, 196 research and development, 195 spin-offs effects, 196 strategic vs. theater forces, 155, 157 troop reductions, 84. See also specific topics Military Selective Service Act of, 85 minimalism, 381–2 Mitscherlich, Alexander, 388 Mittag, Gunter, 98

579

580

Index Mitterand, Francois, 10, 255, 268–9, 530 Modell Deutschland, 188, 199, 411 modernism, 367, 394–6 modernization, 472 arms control and, 150 churches and, 467–8 media and, 468 nuclear arms and, 151–2, 503 Modrow, Hans, 101 Mogadishu crisis, 529 Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement, 48 Mondale, Walter, 471 monetary policy, 190, 197, 206, 249 Bretton Woods. See Bretton Woods system Bundesbank and, 231 currency stability and, 232 different philosophies of, 229 dollar and, 231 EC and, 220 EMS and, 231 Europe and, 216 Federal Republic and, 232 GATT and, 220 growth rates and, 190 international system, 220, 550 Japan and, 216, 232 Kissinger and, 249 monetary crisis and, 249–50 monetary targeting rule, 231 price stability and, 228 target zones, 232 United States and, 216, 230 world economy models, 231 Montag, Claus, 306, 310, 520 Montebello Group, 152–3, 161 Moore, Charles, 391 moral majority, 560 morality, 266 Morgenthau Plan, 48 Morrison, Jim, 312 Moscow/Warsaw treaties, 13, 257 Mosse, George, 288 most-favored-nation status, 45 motion pictures, 266–7, 269 critics and, 262 in Europe, 364 French, 262 GDR and, 358–9, 362 Hollywood and, 262, 282, 285–6, 349, 362, 364 MPEA and, 349 multiculturalism and, 363 new German cinema, 356, 357 postwar period, 349 vision of society, 351 Mozambique, 121 Muller, Heiner, 321–2, 376–8

multiculturalism, 270–1, 363, 400, 457, 526 Multilateral Force (MLF), 50, 119, 128, 174 multilateralism, 197–8, 559, 563 Cold War and, 49 defined, 47 detent´e and, 52 example of, 47 international relations, 47 Marshall Plan, 49 NATO and, 50 purposes of, 52–3 reunification and, 53 roots of, 47 Schmidt and, 4–5 Stalin and, 49–50 multipolarity, 1–3, 140 Munch, Richard, 339 Munich Games, 393 Murnau, F.W., 349 Murrow, Edward R., 365 Mushaben, Joyce, 289 music, 341 African-American, 347 folk, 521 GDR and, 344, 521 political, 343 punk music, 345 rap, 347 rock music, 341–4, 347, 522–3 Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions (MBFR), 84–5, 115, 122, 136, 144–5, 158, 183 Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), 431 MX missile, 145–6 Nader, Ralph, 434 NASA, 167 National Defense Education Act of, 260 National Democratic Party (NPD), 507 National Endowment for Democracy, 452 National Endowment of the Arts, 259 National Socialism, 295, 358 NATO, 543, 563 American interests and, 105 anticommunist policy, 45 Balkan region and, 543 Brussels summit, 107 budget increase agreement, 159 Carter and, 6 churches and, 470 command structure of, 118 defense spending in, 545 double-track decision, 7, 9, 31, 91, 137, 148–51, 154, 159, 411, 431–2, 470, 515 eastward expansion of, 543 EDC, 56 European pillar for, 552 European Union and, 179, 544

Index export controls system, 216–17 Federal Republic in, 29–30, 106, 112, 535, 543, 549 flexible response doctrine, 83–4 FOFA doctrine, 116 France and, 122–3, 132, 157 GDR and, 96 German dependency on, 124 Gorbachev and, 10 Greens and, 93 Harmel Report, 6, 89 INF and, 66, 258, 260, 371 Kohl and, 11, 13 Mansfield and, 85 multilateralism and, 50 nuclear arms. See nuclear weapons preservation of, 124 purpose of, 50 Reagan and, 9 Schmidt and, 7 short-range weapons, 13, 106 SPD and, 92, 455 strategy of, 133 unification and, 13, 104–5, 107–8, 179 United States and, 6, 543 Western European Union, 544 Naumann Foundation, 455 Naumann, Friedrich, 90 Nazism, 266, 366, 370, 404, 446–7, 457, 474, 495, 506, 529–31 Brandt and, 475 fascism and, 506 German cinema and, 363 German radical and, 476 Holocaust and, 366 images of, 531 Nazi period, 267 neo-nazis, 347 Soviets and, 529 television and, 365 Nenning, Gunther, 339 neo-conservatives, 502, 508, 559 neo-expressionism, 262, 384–6 neo-isolationism, 541 neo-mercantilism, 204 Netherlands, 194, 199, 213–14, 236, 273 Nettelbeck, Uwe, 352 Neutral and Nonaligned states, 41–2 neutron bomb, 31, 86, 92, 137, 144–5 New Critics, 397 New German Cinema, 363–4 New Historicism, 289 New Left, 1, 421, 428, 448, 502, 504–5, 507–8 New Right, 502, 508–9 New York, 261–2 New York Review of Books, 324

Nicaragua, 121–2 Nichols, Charles, 297 Nier, Kurt, 97–8 Nietzsche, F., 398 Niles, Thomas, 99 Nixon, Richard, 21, 352–3, 426, 515 Brandt and, 19 Breshnev and, 37 communism and, 19 currency and, 63 detent´e and, 7, 19, 52 EC and, 63 environmental policies and, 435 German question and, 18 Israel and, 476 linkage policy, 70 Mansfield and, 83–4 Nixon doctrine, 129, 132, 144 Ostpolitik and, 19–21 Reagan and, 516 SALT agreement, 21 Siemens address, 20 trade deficit and, 63 trips abroad, 77 Watergate scandal, 21, 515 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), 1, 51, 73, 76, 108, 111, 115, 119, 184, 508 Brazil and, 143 controversy over, 141 export controls and, 143 extension of, 147 Federal Republic and, 142 France and, 141 Indian test explosion, 143 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 435–6, 453–4, 469–70, 472–3 nontariff trade barriers (NTBs), 205, 221–2 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 223, 463, 547 North-South detent´e, 246–7 NPD. See National Democratic Party NPT. See Non-Proliferation Treaty nuclear power, 22, 433 nuclear weapons, 113, 133, 142 ABC weapons, 115 ABM Treaty, 115, 122, 143–4, 561 arms control, 113–15, 121–2, 136, 138–9, 141, 146, 203, 561 banning of, 115 churches and, 470–1 credibility of threat, 148–9 demonstrations and, 431, 433, 546 detent´e and, 146 deterrence vs., 118 Eastern Europe and, 152 exports of, 73 Federal Republic and, 147 Fight Nuclear Death campaign, 142

581

582

Index nuclear weapons (cont.) France and, 140 German-American relations and, 112, 140–1 iconography and, 369–70 intermediate-range missiles and, 140, 371 KOFAZ and, 432 limited wars, 113, 115–16 LRINF, 151–3 MAD, 431 MBFR, 85, 122, 136, 158, 183 modernization and, 150 multipolar concert, 140 MX missile, 145–6 neutron bomb, 31, 86, 92, 137, 145 neutron bomb and, 144 no-first-use doctrine, 160 NPT. See Non-Proliferation Treaty radioactive waste, 556 Reagan and, 66, 257, 432 reunification and, 115 SALT. See Strategic Arms Limitation Talks SDI program. See Strategic Defense Initiative program short-range missile system, 11 SNF, 32, 106, 152–3 SRINF, 151–2 superpower condominium, 136, 141 test ban treaty, 143 Three Mile Island and, 431 Two-Plus-Four Treaty and, 184 Williamsburg summit, 254 zero option, 150–3. See also specific types, treaties, programs Nunn amendment, 86–7 Nunn, Sam, 86 Oder-Neisse border, 2, 13, 77 OECD. See Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development offset payments, 51, 117 oil, 64, 120, 131–2, 136, 491, 493–4 crises, 71, 245, 250, 252, 390, 491 deregulation and, 222 EC and, 220 economic summits and, 251 energy policies and, 251 Jamal pipeline project, 197 Middle East and, 70 natural gas pipeline, 32 OPEC and, 198, 200, 245–6 prices, 64, 112, 198, 215, 390, 490 production of, 215 Soviet pipeline, 209, 254 Soviet Union and, 197 Tokyo Round, 221 Olympic Games, 98, 122

Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act (1988), 199, 225 Onnasch, Reinhard, 383–4 Open Skies conference, 106 opera, 310–11 optical industry, 215 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 195, 198, 250 Ostpolitik, 9, 20, 52, 111, 120, 122, 175–6, 179, 183, 455–6, 466, 471, 514, 529 American detent´e policy, 34 Berlin Agreement, 20 Brandt and, 1–2, 40, 78 CDU/CSU opposition, 21 churches and, 471 defense expenditures, 83 detent´e and, 1, 86 developing countries and, 244 economic factors, 59 faded, 38 Ford and, 22 Grand Coalition and, 34–5 Harmel Report, 135 inter-German relations, 79 Kennedy and, 33 Kissinger and, 2–3 Nixon and, 19–21 Quadripartite Agreement, 76 Schmidt and, 21 Soviets and, 35 SPD and, 92 trade unions and, 460 unification, 39 unification and, 76 Union and, 90 U.S. government and, 90 Vietnam and, 127–8 Ottawa Open Skies conference, 106 out-of-area operations, 117, 133 Pacific challenge, 528 Package solution, 99–100 Pakistan, 242 Palestine, 76 Paris Treaty, 119 partial-state theory, 78 Patalas, Enno, 352 patents, 165, 167–9 peace movements, 44, 116, 430–2, 503, 506–8 Pell, Claiborne, 88 perestroika, 12, 32, 44, 53, 100 Petersen, Wolfgang, 360 Piene, Otto, 383 Plaza Discussions, 190, 200 Plenzdorf, Ulrich, 522 Pleven Plan, 56 poetry, 313

Index Poland, 42, 77, 116, 123, 184, 254, 476 political foundations, 452–4 NGOs, 454 political science, and history, 288 polls, 511–2, 516–17 Pommer, Erich, 349 Pompidou, Georges, 59 popular culture, 263, 285–6, 312, 334–5, 337–8, 346, 379–81 population growth, 389, 490 Portugal, 121 postindustrial society, 90 Postman, Neil, 269 postmodernism, 263, 265, 273, 373, 557 America and, 397 architecture and, 387–91 concept of, 394 geopolitical factors and, 396 Lyotard on, 395 modernism and, 394, 396 politicization of, 400 poststructuralism and, 399–400 theater and, 374 United States, 401 Powell, Colin, 560 price stability, 198, 228, 234 anti-inflationary policies, 187, 190, 197–8 currency stability and, 233 Deutsche Mark and, 230 developing countries, 246–7 economic miracle and, 228 economic summits, 251 fiscal policy and, 228 international diplomacy and, 228 investment levels and, 190 Latin America and, 246–7 military spending and, 196 monetary policy and, 228 reserve currencies and, 229 U.S. dollar and, 229 professionalization, 447–8, 521 propaganda, 520 protest movements, 93, 316, 337–8, 422, 425–6, 428, 430–1, 433. See also student movements Protestant churches, 468 publishing industry, 314, 328 Quadripartite Agreement, 19, 21, 29, 76–8 quality-of-life issues, 430 radio, 523 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 174 radioactive waste, 556 Rainbow Foundation Association, 453 Rakete, Jim, 344–5 Rapallo pact, 29, 48, 63, 529 RCA, 194

Reagan, Ronald, 7, 246, 431, 507, 560 Americanization and, 338 anti-American demonstrations and, 260 anti-Soviet confrontation and, 23 anticommunism and, 8 assessment of, 516 Berlin speech, 24 Bitburg visit, 87–8, 91, 267, 403–4, 516, 532 CSCE and, 42–3 economic strategy, 66–7 economic summits and, 255 environmental policies, 435 Europe and, 65–6 GDR and, 98 Genscherism and, 414 German foundations and, 452 German question and, 23–4 Gorbachev and, 24 Kohl and, 10, 87–8, 284, 417 NATO and, 9 NED and, 452 Nixon and, 516 nuclear arms and, 66, 257 Reagan Doctrine, 8 rearmament and, 8 Schmidt and, 8–9, 455 SDI. See Strategic Defense Initiative SED and, 98 Soviet Union and, 7–8, 414 SPD and, 92 television and, 269 Third World and, 69 transatlantic relations and, 65 troop cuts and, 87 welfare states and, 546. See also specific topics, persons real estate, 492–4 rearmament, 8, 50 red-green government, 554 REFORGER maneuvers, 117 refugees, 483 Reitz, Edgar, 357, 360–1, 370–1 religion. See churches Resnais, Alain, 362 Reykjavik summit, 91, 122 RIAS radio network, 275 Richardson, Elliot, 83 Ridgway, Rozanne L., 99 right, 502 right-wing groups, 502 anti-Americanism and, 507 anticommunism and, 500 Bitburg visit, 498 Dachverband Deutscher Interessen, 496 Dietz and, 496 early contacts among, 496 Federal Republic and, 495

583

584

Index right-wing groups (cont.) free speech and, 496, 501 German-American Bund, 496 Germania International, 496 internet and, 336 nationalism and, 500 Nazi party. See Nazis Roeder and, 497 sexual permissiveness and, 497 studies of, 495 transatlantic interactions, 495–7 United States and, 495 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 324 Rockefeller, David, 102 Rockefeller Foundation, 298 Roder, Karl-Heinz, 520 rogue states, 176 Ropke, Wilhelm, 538–40 Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, 453 Rosenfeld, Alvin, 406 Ross, Dennis, 105 Ruckriem, Ulrich, 382 Rumsfeld, Donald, 562 Rush, Kenneth, 36 Russia, 249, 541, 552 Rygulla, Ralf-Rainer, 312 Sander, Helke, 361 Sander, Volkmar, 324 Sanders-Brahms, Helma, 360 Scharoun, Hans, 393 Scheel, Walter, 27, 94 Schleyer, Hanns Martin, 358 Schlondorff, Volker, 358 Schmauch, W. Christoph, 305–6, 308 Schmidt, Helmut, 4, 27, 30–1, 92, 413 Atlanticists and, 5 Carter and, 5–7, 22, 455, 529 detent´e and, 9 economic summits and, 255 Giscard d’ Estaing and, 59–60 intermediate-range weapons and, 31 Israel and, 477 multilateralization and, 4–5 NATO and, 7 Ostpolitik and, 21 peace movement and, 38–9 rapprochement and, 5 Reagan and, 8–9, 455 SALT talks and, 5–6 Shultz and, 29 Wehrmacht past, 477 Schmieding, Walter, 352 Schneider, Peter, 321 Schonemann, Friedrich, 294–5 Schonherr, Albrecht, 103 Schreier, Peter, 310–11 Schroder, Gerhard, 410, 549, 554, 556–7, 561

Schultz, George, 99 Schuman Plan, 56 Schwab-Felisch, Hans, 258 Schweiger, Til, 363 Scott, Hugh, 85 sculpture, 379 security, 551–2, 564 bilateral trade and, 209–10 Cold War and, 409 detent´e and, 23, 154 economics and, 197, 207 European integration and, 565 intelligence. See intelligence operations NATO and. See NATO SPD and, 92. See also specific topics, persons, organizations Seidel, Hanns, 90 self-determination, 105, 109 semiconductors, 206, 224 September 11 attacks, 553, 562–3 Serbia, 554 services sector, 192, 225–6 sexuality, 497 Shevardnadze, Eduard, 106–7 shipbuilding industry, 191 shoes, 206 short-range intermediate nuclear forces (SRINF), 151–2 short-range nuclear forces (SNF), 32, 106, 148, 152–3 Shultz, George, 29 Shyer, Laurence, 376 Sieber, Rolf, 520–1 Singapore, 211 Single European Act, 123 Single European Market, 67 Six Day War, 474–6, 532 skinheads, 346–7 Slovenia, 233 Smith, Hedrick, 269–70 Smith, Michael, 100 Snow, C.P., 397–8 Social Democratic–Green government, 554 Social Democratic Party (SPD), 58, 89, 421, 447, 455–6 American party systems and, 90 Atlanticism and, 92 CDU-CSU opposition and, 555 detent´e and, 92 Ebert and, 90 FDP and, 82 Greens and, 555, 563–4. See also Greens highway construction and, 491 liberals and, 1 NATO and, 92, 455 Ostpolitik and, 92 pro-American position of, 502 Reagan and, 92

Index security policy and, 92 SPD and, 1 transit systems and, 491 United States and, 92 social movements, 430 social sciences, 304 social security taxes, 190–1 social spending, 199 social welfare states, 556 Socialist Unity Party (SED), 97, 315, 470, 519–20 Solidarity, 8–9 Somalia, 542 Sontag, Susan, 258, 263, 398 Soule, Carl, 305–6 South America, 213–14 South Korea, 211, 245 Soviet Union, 145, 472, 537–8 Afghanistan and, 22, 98, 145, 217–18, 254 Africa and, 254 assessment of, 114, 118 Carter and, 30, 69 collapse of, 151, 233, 541 cultural exchange program, 276 Czechoslovakia and, 83, 116 debris of, 541 detent´e and, 3, 150 Deutsche Mark pegging, 233 economic cooperation, 45 as evil empire, 32, 145 German-American relations and, 113 Gorbachev and, 12 Hungarian troops, 116 Jewish emigration, 477 Kohl government, 9 nuclear strategy of, 118 numerical advantage of, 137 oil, 197, 209, 254 Ostpolitik and, 35 Poland, 116, 254 Rapallo pact, 48 Reagan and, 7–8, 414 Russian option, 541 SDI program, 146 SS-20 missiles, 121, 137–8, 149–50, 160, 254 as superpower, 27–8 technology and, 137 Third World and, 69–70, 121–2 trade credits to, 196–7 trade unions and, 460 trade with Germany, 196–7 unification and, 12, 105, 107, 179 United States and, 145, 530–1 Special Agricultural Workers, 484 Spielberg, Steven, 406 Sputnik, 282 Stalin, Joseph, 49–50

Starfighter airplane, 166 steel industry, 191, 198–99, 205–9, 224 Stein, Hannes, 508 Stennis, John, 85 Stern, Fritz, 288, 427, 518 Stieglitz, Joseph, 556 Stirling, James, 392 Stockholm Conference, 138 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), 5, 84, 115, 120, 136–7, 143, 145, 149–50 Carter and, 6, 98 emigration and, 477 Forward Based Systems, 144 Nixon and, 21 SALT II, 98, 138, 144, 149–50, 477 Schmidt and, 5–6 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), 24, 66, 91, 122–3, 138, 145, 414, 418 arms control and, 146 British contractors and, 169 detent´e and, 146 economic effects of, 195 Kohl and, 9–10 political effect of, 146 Reagan and, 432, 515–16 Soviet Union reaction to, 146 Star Wars speech, 146, 161 technology transfer and, 169 Strauss, Botho, 337 Strauss, Franz-Josef, 91 structural asymmetry, 26 student movements, 131, 258, 356, 387, 389, 410–11, 421–2, 425–8, 439, 502, 504–7, 514 suburbanization, 389, 489, 491–2 Suez crisis, 56 sunset industries, 191 supply-side economics, 253 Sweden, 199 Switzerland, 236 Taiwan, 211, 224–5, 245 Taylor, A.J.P., 288 technology, 113, 329 alliance cohesion and, 170 American interests in, 164 brain drain and, 164, 166, 261 computerization, 194–5, 215 defined, 163 developing countries and, 245 East-West race for, 216–17 economies of Europe and, 163 electrical engineering, 168 France and, 167 German interests in, 164 high-technology, 112, 192–3, 224–5 high-technology goods and, 169

585

586

Index technology (cont.) IBM and, 168 independent development and, 164, 169 intelligence and, 172, 174 ITT/SEL, 168 Leopard I tank, 167 NASA and, 167 patents and, 163–4 restrictions on, 163–4, 168–9 rogue states and, 176 SDI and, 169 secrecy and, 163 Soviet numerical advantage, 137 Starfighter airplane, 166 third country exports and, 168–9 trade imbalances and, 204 V/STOL fighter project, 167 telecommunications, 215, 235 television, 44, 266–7, 337, 360, 503, 513, 523 advertising and, 367 anti-American sentiments, 371–2 culture and, 366, 368–9 modernism and, 367 Nazis and, 365 Reagan and, 269 Vietnam and, 371. See also specific persons, programs Teltschik, Horst, 108 Ten-Point Plan, 106, 108 terrorism, 117, 176, 254, 504–5, 529, 558, 564 Baader-Meinhof group, 131, 176, 468 churches and, 469 left-wing, 121 Red Army Faction, 112 Sept. 11 attacks, 553, 562–3 United States and, 504–5 Vietnam and, 131 textiles, 205–6, 222, 224 Thatcher, Margaret, 107, 109, 255 theaters, 261–2, 373 Third World, 30, 69, 430 Cold War and, 69 economic sanctions, 73 environment and, 75 Europe and, 69 exports to, 74 Federal Republic and, 69 Hallstein doctrine, 71 Middle East and, 71 Reagan and, 8, 69 regional conflicts in, 71 revolutionary movements, 476 Soviet Union and, 69–70, 121–2 United States and, 69 Thomsen, Christian, 339 Thurow, Lester, 548 timber, 224

Title VI Program, 260 Tocqueville, A., 512 totalitarianism, 114 Tower, John, 87 trade exports, 223–4 Asia and, 211–12 Britain and, 214–15 Canada and, 214–15 COCOM and, 216–17 currency stability and, 231–2 deficits and, 197–8, 216, 231–2 double-track decision and, 208 East-West trade, 216 employment from, 212 fair trade, 206 fast-track procedures, 222 Federal Republic and, 199–200, 211–15 France and, 214–15 German-German trade, 218 grain and, 217–18 Great Britain and, 214–15 imbalance and, 204 INF treaty and, 208 Italy and, 214–15 Japan and, 200, 214–15 Mexico and, 214–15 Netherlands and, 214–215 quotas for, 212 raw materials and, 215 restraints on, 206 technology and, 204 unfair trade and, 199 United States and, 197–200, 204, 211, 213–16 U.S. Congress and, 205. See also specific countries, products trade policies, 203 American restrictions, 236 antidumping measures, 206–9, 224 bilateralism, 209–10, 224–5 Canada and, 216 China and, 224 EC and, 206, 222, 226–7 fast-track procedures, 222 Federal Republic and, 215–16, 227 France and, 220, 226 GDR and, 520, 546 Group of, 231 high-tech, 112 injury test, 224 Japan and, 216, 224, 226 most-favored-nation status, 225 multilateralism and, 220, 227 neoprotectionism, 220, 223 OMAs and, 206 Ostpolitik and, 244 Plaza agreements, 232–3 pressure groups and, 206

Index protectionism, 194, 197–8, 200, 205, 221, 223–5, 231–2, 252 regionalism, 220, 223, 226 sectors, 224 security issues and, 209–10 tariffs, compensatory, 224 technological goods, 218. See also technology unfair practices, 206–7, 215–16, 224–5 unilateralism, 199, 207–9 United States and, 215, 226, 546 Uruguay Round, 226 U.S. Congress and, 208–9, 222–3 VERs and, 206 trade unions, 193, 289 AFL-CIO, 463–5 codetermination, 464 concession bargaining, 463 DGB, 463, 465 European unification and, 463 German-American relations, 460 multinational enterprise councils, 462–3 NAFTA and, 463 Ostpolitik and, 460 reunification and, 463 Reuther and, 462 Solidarity and, 8–9 Soviet-directed policies of, 460 transnational contacts between, 462 United Auto Workers (UAW), 462, 464–5 works-council system, 464 transatlantic networks, 67, 107, 415, 445, 466, 489 transnational corporations, 193–5, 412, 415 transportation, 215, 489–91, 493–4 Treaty of Rome, 79 Treaty of Versailles, 105 trilateralism, 252 Trilling, Lionel, 398 trucking industry, 193 Tuch, Hans, 271 Turkey, 176, 244–5 Twain, Mark, 523 Two-Plus-Four Treaty, 53, 80, 101, 104–7, 119, 123, 133, 181, 184 Ulbricht, Walter, 519 UNCTAD conference, 245 unemployment, 188–90, 193, 195, 548, 556 UNESCO, 258, 268, 270 unification, 79, 111, 123, 178, 188, 506 arms control and, 115 Britain and, 107–8 Bush and, 88, 108–9 detent´e and, 12, 128, 135–6 diplomacy of, 106 economic costs, 192 European Community and, 179 France and, 61, 107–8

GDR and, 80 Genscher plan, 181–2 German-German trade and, 219 German question and, 22 Gorbachev and, 13 Hallstein Doctrine, 135–6 Jews and, 480 Kohl and, 104 locomotive model, 253 monographs on, 17 multilateralism and, 53 NATO and, 13, 105, 107–8, 112, 179 Ostpolitik and, 76 perestroika and, 12 phases of, 106 Polish border issue, 476 portfolio flows and, 240 post-unification, 480 Ropke and, 540 security and, 178, 179 Soviet Union and, 12, 105, 179 Thatcher and, 109 treaty, 79–80 trade unions and, 463 United States and, 61, 104, 533 Uruguay Round and, 226 USIS and, 279 women and, 443 unilateralism, 541 Union. See Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union United Kingdom, 161, 194 United Nations (UN), 483 charter of, 114–15 Declaration of, 48 East Germany, 96 GDR admitted into, 307 Security Council, 562 UNESCO, 258, 268, 270. See also specific treaties, decisions United States, 126, 296, 310, 314–15 1968, 421 African Americans, 130 agricultural workers, 484 American English, 333 American literature, 312, 315, 317–18 Americanization and, 450–1, 513. See Americanization Americans of German Descent, 284 anti-Americanism, 260, 274–5, 371–2, 417, 448, 503–8, 514, 517, 520, 556 antihegemonic axis, 564 antitrust laws, 237 arms control and, 141 Asian exports, 213–14 Asian imports, 213 Atlantic community and, 541 banana policy, 546–7

587

588

Index United States (cont.) bracero program, 483 Bretton Woods system and, 230 Broadway and, 261 budget deficit and, 52 Canadian exports, 213–14 capital markets, 240 capitalism and, 236, 556 CDU and, 503 churches and, 466, 469 Congress and, 82, 449 corporate America and, 193 crimes and, 130 CSCE and, 40 CSU and, 503 cultural imperialism, 268 culture and, 512 detent´e and, 7 developing countries and, 242, 247 drug culture, 130 economic summits and, 250 economic weakness, 59 environmental movement, 434–5 European Community, 62, 213–14 fascism and, 476, 506 Federal Republic and, 28, 62, 70, 213–14, 476, 502, 535–6, 538–9, 544, 546, 564 film and, 269 financing of, 115–16, 126 fiscal policies, 216 foreign policy, 62, 448, 505, 528 France and, 54–5, 544, 562 free speech and, 496, 501 GDP in, 189 GDR and, 96, 98, 100, 272, 305, 519 German-Americans, 284 German image of, 284–5, 510, 517 German literature and, 319, 324 German studies, 289–90 Germany’s strategic value, 543 global imperialism, 559 grain exports, 217–18 Great Britain and, 213–14 hegemony of, 54, 220–1, 539–41, 552, 562–5 Holocaust and, 403, 406–7 illegal immigrants, 483 image of Germany, 284–5, 502, 527 immigrants, 482–4 imperialism, 520, 559 importance of, 410 imports, 214, 218 intellectual images of, 524 interest rates, 216 international direct investment, 191, 235 international growth, 251 international leadership, 513 Japan and, 213–14

Mexico and, 213–14 MFN status, 45 military bases and, 503–4 monetary policy, 216, 230 NAFTA and, 213–14, 223 NATO and, 6, 543 negative attitudes about, 414 neo-Marxist critique, 514 New Right and, 508 newspapers, 527 nuclear protection, 148 offset payments, 117 out-of-area operations, 115–17 political reform, 449 post-Cold War policy, 541 postmodernity and, 401 price stability, 251 private images of, 522, 524 pro-Americanism, 517 protection guarantee, 149–50 protest movements, 424 public diplomacy, 275 rapid deployment and, 129 regional distribution of exports, 213 right-wing extremism, 495, 507 as role model, 450–1 satellite reconnaissance, 545 SAWs and, 484 Soviet Union and, 145, 530–1 SPD and, 92 as superpower, 27–8 terrorism attacks on, 504–5 Third World and, 69 trade relations, 203, 205, 208–9, 213–16, 222–3, 225–6, 546 transportation and, 493–4 troop presence in Europe, 542 unemployment and, 189 unification and, 61, 104, 108, 279, 533 unilateralism and, 249 urban development, 489, 493–4 USIA and, 259, 276, 367, 458 USIS and, 276–9 VERs and, 236 Vietnam and, 115–16, 119, 158, 403, 504, 514 volunteer army, 159 See also specific topics, persons, organizations universities, 260, 289–91, 294, 296, 416, 525–6 Updike, John, 523 urbanization, 388 Americanization and, 493 architecture and, 387–90 Berlin and, 393 cities and, 387–8 decentralization and, 489 enterprise zones, 494

Index Finger Plan, 389 functionalism and, 389–90 ghetto areas, 492 inner cities and, 492 living conditions, 387 Lynch on, 389–90 mass transit and, 490 Mitscherlich on, 388–9 office space, 387, 390 planning and, 387, 391–2 population density, 490 population growth, 389, 490 real estate and, 492–3 Romerberg site, 392 skylines of, 388 suburban shopping centers, 389 transportation and, 491 urban development, 387–8 urbanization, 388 U.S. and, 493–4 van der Rohe, Mies, 282–3, 391 Vance, Cyrus, 97 Venturi, Robert, 265, 390–1 Versailles system, 48 Viereck, Wolfgang, 326 Vietnam, 1, 51, 69, 74, 116–17, 120–1, 133, 188, 258, 266, 275, 413, 449, 503–4, 515, 531–2, 542 American troops and, 115–16 anti-Americanism and, 504 Britain and, 126 detent´e and, 128 domestic politics and, 119 economic effects of, 195 Federal Republic and, 119 France and, 126 German support, 126 imperialism and, 504 intelligence sharing and, 176 international coalition, 126 internationalists and, 425 Israel and, 476 media and, 268 MLF and, 128 offset payments and, 128 Ostpolitik and, 127–8 protests. See student movements radical left and, 476 Saigon-Berlin analogy, 127 strategic focus and, 155 terrorism and, 131 Tet offensive, 504 U.S. troops and, 158 visual arts, 379 Vogt, Roland, 434 Voice of America, 367

Volkswagen Foundation, 298 Volkswagon, 193–4 Voluntary agreements on export restraint (VERs), 222–4, 236 von Hentig, Hartmut, 339 von Trotta, Margarethe, 360 von Weizsacker, Richard, 404 Waldheim, Kurt, 479 Walker, Martin, 542 Walther, Franz Erhard, 383 Warhol, Andy, 263, 312, 339 Warsaw Pact, 27, 84, 116, 472, 535 Warsaw Treaty, 36 Wartime Host Nation Support Agreement, 160 Washington, George, 543 Watergate scandal, 21 Wayne, John, 352 Weber, Max, 396, 398 Weidenfeld, Werner, 260 Weinberger doctrine, 116 welfare states, 546, 548 Welskopf-Henrich, Liselotte, 523 Wenders, Wim, 267, 317, 335–7, 353, 356–7 Western Europe, 197, 213–14, 547 Western European Union (WEU), 67, 123–4, 544 Westernization, 339–40, 505, 508–9 Whitehead, John C., 99–100 Wiesel, Elie, 359, 532 Wilson, Robert, 374–8, 559 Wingspread Conference Center, 309 Winston, Henry, 524–5 Wischnewski, Hans-Jurgen, 75 Wohl, Paul, 305–6 Wolf, Christa, 321, 325, 361 Wolf, Konrad, 361 Wolfe, Tom, 391 Wolff, Helen, 324 Wolff, Karl-Dietrich, 424 women, 437–9 abortion issue, 411, 440 birth rates, 438 civil rights movement, 411, 439 counterculture and, 258 discrimination against, 438 education and, 440 EEOC and, 439 Equal Pay Act, 439 ERA and, 438, 443 factions of, 442–3 Federal Republic and, 438 feminists. See feminism GDR and, 438 ideology and, 437–8 labor market revolution, 437 paid housework and, 442 reunification and, 443

589

590

Index women (cont.) SDS and, 439 sexual liberation and, 439 words, 327 World Bank, 242, 247, 250, 436 World Council of Churches (WCC), 469–70 World Fellowship Center, 308 World Jewish Congress, 479–80 World Trade Organization (WTO), 546–7

World Youth Festival, 522 Worner, Manfred, 87 Yom Kippur War, 3, 64, 131–2, 474, 476, 532 youth movements, 257–8, 278, 331, 337, 514, 521–2 Yugoslavia, 542, 544, 546, 549, 558 zero option, 150–3 Zoellick, Robert, 105