Post Wall, Post Square

In sum, Kohl had proposed a blueprint for that new relationship between the two Germanies, and one clearly based on Bonn’s terms. Reflecting ‘the greater political self-assurance’ of the Federal Republic – ‘already widely recognised as a weighty economic power’, as Vernon Walters, the US ambassador to the FRG, put it – Kohl had presented the world with a fait accompli and set the agenda.[102] And as East Germany unravelled, far more rapidly than anybody had expected, other leaders now had to respond to what the chancellor had put on the table. Coming from a man who had been in essentially reactive mode for the previous three weeks, it was an extremely skilful demonstration of political leadership.

*

What’s striking in retrospect is the lack of public attention devoted to Kohl’s speech internationally. This was, however, hardly surprising at the time given the drama that was beginning to unfold across Czechoslovakia. On the day Kohl addressed the Bundestag, the front page of the New York Times ran as its main headline ‘Millions of Czechoslovaks Increase Pressure on Party With 2-Hour General Strike’. A foretaste of Kohl’s speech was buried on page 14 stating that he would ‘call for a form of confederation’, mainly to dispel criticism that his reaction to the ‘tumultuous changes taking place in East Germany’ had been ‘passive and grounded in West German party politics’.[103] On Wednesday 29 November, Czechoslovakia was again the main news with a banner headline across the paper’s front page ‘Prague Party to Yield Some Cabinet Posts and Drop Insistence on Primacy in Society’. Kohl and his ‘confederation outline’ got a small box lower down the page.[104] Thereafter Germany disappeared from the Times’s front page for the rest of week, with Prague continuing to dominate the news, together with the weekend’s Soviet–American summit in Malta. Even in the Federal Republic, the story was seen as an essentially domestic issue. In any case from Thursday, all other news was eclipsed by the latest act of Baader–Meinhof terrorism, the shock killing of Kohl intimate, Alfred Herrhausen.[105]

Despite the lack of immediate public reaction, however, the ‘Ten Point’ plan was a ticking time bomb. Whatever Kohl might have hoped, his speech naturally opened him up to comment, mostly critical, from all the major powers. Because in his vision, as Ambassador Walters put it, ‘the German states, virtually alone, would plan their future’.[106] Now that the chancellor had gone out on a limb, he had to gear up for another round of international diplomacy to rebuff the criticism, and secure, if not acceptance, at least tolerance for his blueprint for German self-determination. This round would go on until the middle of December.

The first and most important person to be kept happy was Bush. The chancellor had sent the president a pre-emptive letter on the morning of his speech – the only advance warning he sent out. Kohl couched it as a steer on how the US president should handle Gorbachev at Malta but his lengthy missive offered a wide-ranging analysis of the revolutionary processes in Europe, the situation in the Soviet Union and the imperatives for arms reduction, both strategic and conventional. This was all a prelude to what was really on his mind, namely how Bush should discuss the German question at Malta. Kohl made a point of linking Gorbachev’s ‘freedom-of-choice policy’ in 1989 with America’s grand design in 1776 for ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. He stressed that the current bid for emancipation was coming from the people themselves – Poles, Hungarians, Czechs as well as East Germans – and that this was no simple turn to the West but a historically significant movement for reform emanating from within each nation and its distinctive culture. With this statement he sought a neat way out of any Western ‘victory’ rhetoric while at the same time giving weight to the core theme of his letter, ‘self-determination’: so crucial for his approach to resolving the German question. Only then did the chancellor discuss unification – the longest element in his message – setting out his Ten Points. With an eye on the upcoming summit, Kohl explicitly asked Bush for his support, insisting that the superpowers must not simply sort out Germany over his head, like Roosevelt and Stalin in 1945. There should not, he told Bush, be ‘any parallel between Yalta and Malta’.[107]

Interestingly Egon Krenz also wrote to Bush about Kohl’s speech – a striking sign of the times in that he clearly realised that Moscow’s support would no longer be sufficient to ensure the GDR’s survival. Krenz warned of ‘nationalism’ and ‘a revival of Nazi ideas’ – clearly pointing the finger at Bonn – and asked the president to support the status quo, in other words the two German states as members of ‘different alliances’. Krenz never got a reply. Bush knew he was a nobody whose days in office were numbered.[108]

But the president picked up the phone next morning to talk to Kohl. The White House had immediately grasped the implications of the Ten-Point Plan, seeing it as a strategic move in international politics rather than a mere tactical game on the domestic plane. Scowcroft was concerned about Kohl’s bold, unilateral step but Bush, though surprised, was not particularly worried. He knew that the chancellor could not pursue unification on his own and doubted that Kohl would want to alienate his closest ally. ‘I was certain he would consult us before going further,’ Bush reflected later. ‘He needed us.’[109]

On 29 November president and chancellor talked for thirty minutes. First, they discussed arrangements for a meeting as ‘personal friends’ straight after Malta, from which it was agreed to exclude Genscher. Kohl would bring only his unification mastermind Teltschik – a decision that once more underlined the institutional and personal rivalry between the Chancellery and the Foreign Ministry. Then Kohl explained in more detail how he hoped to proceed towards unification. Despite the display of solidarity at Strasbourg a week before, the chancellor remained concerned about the extent of Mitterrand’s support. He also made clear his reliance on the United States. ‘History left us with good cards in our hands,’ he told Bush. ‘I hope with the cooperation of our American friends we can play them well.’ The president, as usual, did not waste words. ‘I am very supportive of your general approach. I note your stress on stability. We feel the same way. Stability is the key word. We have tried to do nothing that would force a reaction by the USSR.’ Bush went on to amplify this latter point. He recognised that the Soviet economy was doing much worse than he had previously realised, yet Shevardnadze had stated proudly that the Soviets did not want America to ‘bail us out’. So help would have to be offered ‘in a sensitive way’. But Bush and Kohl agreed that Western aid would be needed because ‘we want him to succeed’. The chancellor was gratified by the conversation, thanking Bush for his ‘good words’ – ‘Germans East and West are listening very carefully. Every word of sympathy for self-determination and unity is very important now.’[110]

Commenting on the phone call to the press straight afterwards, Bush said: ‘I feel comfortable. I think we’re on track.’ Having been mocked when vice president for his reluctance to indulge in what he had called the ‘vision thing’, he was asked about how he saw Europe’s future over the next five or ten years.[111] The president was now sufficiently relaxed to joke: ‘In terms of the “vision thing”, the aspirations, I spelled it out in little-noted speeches last spring and summer, which I would like everyone to go back and reread. And I’ll have a quiz on it.’ When the laughter died down, Bush continued, ‘You’ll see in there some of the “vision thing” – a Europe whole and free.’ And, he added, ‘I think a Europe whole and free is less vision than perhaps reality.’ But the president had to admit: ‘How we get there and what that means and when the German question is resolved and all of these things – I can’t answer more definitely.’[112]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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