The Cold War and the German Unification: A Twenty Year Retrospect Ricardo K. S. Mak Department of History, Hong Kong Baptist University.

The Cold War and the German Unification: A Twenty Year Retrospect

Ricardo K. S. MakDepartment of History, Hong Kong Baptist University

The Emergence of a Bipolar World

The decline of the old world order The expansion of the USA and of the USSR The two superpowers and the two camps

The Two Superpowers A superpower must be

able to conduct a global strategy including the possibility of destroying the world; to command vast economic potential and influence; and to present a universal ideology

http://www.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/ChinaLinks-New/coldwar.html

Different Forms of Cold War Deterrence and com

pellence Armament race Military

interventions Ideological warfare Financial aid Alliance

The Basic Aim of the Two Superpowers

USA, “The government realized that economic prosperity had been produced by the war, and that the only way to keep it going was by restoration of the Open Door Policy and a world safe for capitalism.”

The USSR, export of the “continuous revolution”

World map in 1982

The Fate of Individual Nations

Subordination of national interests to superpowers: sovereignty, independence, security, geopolitics, domestic needs., etc.

Exceptions: China, Yugoslavia, Austria, Switzerland, etc.

The German Question before 1990 The "German question" refers to the division of Germany a

nd the ways to unify or reunify Germany. “It existed for 184 years, the German Question. It arose on

August 6, 1806 when Franz II, the last Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, bowed down to an ultimatum from Napoleon, laid down his crown, relieved the Estates of their duties and thereby dissolved the “Old Empire”. The German Question was resolved on October 3, 1990, with the approval of the four former occupying powers, when the German Democratic Republic acceded to the Federal Republic of Germany.” (http://www.tatsachen-ueber-deutschland.de/en

/history/main-content-03/farewell-to-the-german-question.html)

The German Question after 1990

“The German Question has therefore been almost entirely concerned with its national identity within a European context…In this context, the national drive for German unification became possible not only because of the domestic situation but largely because it could be built upon the premise of unfettered European integration.” (Bill Cash, a British Conservative MP)

Major Western Powers’ Perception of Germany since 1945 1946-49: Containing Germany 1949-89: Containing the USSR,

through integrating Germany into Western Europe

Since 1989: Requiring Germany to help maintain Western diplomatic and military presence in troubled regions, achieve a stable European economy, and combat terrorism in the post-911 era

New Global Trends since the 1990s

Nationalist conflicts Regionalism and globalization The eclipse of superpowers Multi-polar world

Is the New Germany, an Embedded European Power, Satisfied with its New Role?

The biggest population (over 80 million) compared with Italy, France and the UK

The biggest exporter of the world EU countries absorbed 70% of the German export The greatest contributor to the EU, 1/3 more than

France. Germany possesses all of the four components of

economic dominance: control over raw materials, control over markets, control over sources of capital, and a competitive advantage

How about military strengths?

The USA and the USSR’s Growing Participation in European Affair: A Prelude of the Cold war in

Europe

From neutrality to growing participation

Franklin Roosevelt’s position

The Pearl Harbour Incident 7th December, 1941

Roosevelt’s Message to the Congress 6th January, 1941 In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look for

ward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms…The first is freedom of speech and expression everywhere in the world; the second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way everywhere in the world; the third is freedom from want, which translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants everywhere in the world; the fourth is freedom from fear - which, translated into world terms, means a worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor - anywhere in the world.

And the Soviet Union… The Nazi-Soviet Pact on

28th August 1939 The invasion of Poland

and Finland Operation Barbarossa,

15th May 1941

The Confrontation Began

The USSR: the Master of the East The American Supremacy: from 1939 to 1

945 population increased from 131 to 140 million, GNP from US$90 billion to US$211billion

Conferences of Teheran and of Yalta

The German Question in the “Stunde Null” (Zero Hour) President Truman’s

anti-communism The argument over r

eparation The formation of the

Bizonia in Feb., 1947 The Iran Incident The Greek Civil War

President Truman’s Speech to Congress, 12th March, 1947 At the present moment in world history nearly every nation

must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is often not a free one. One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedom. I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.

Occupied Germany and Austria 1945-1948

The Principle of the Marshall Plan It is logical that the United States should do

whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.

The Escalation of the Confrontation

The Soviet Union excluded from the European Recovery Plan

Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Rumania’s withdrawal

The formation of the Cominform Purging democratic elements in Eastern

European nations

The Berlin Blockade France joint the Bizo

nia in early 1948 A by-product of the S

talin-Tito confrontation

The Blockade

The Western Military Formation

The Brussels Pact in March 1948 The Vandenberg Resolution June 1948 The Formation of NATO on 4th April, 1949

The NATO Strategies and the Division of Europe “Shield and Sword”: European conventional f

orce plus USA Strategic Air Command (SAC) The birth of the PRC and the Korean War The first Soviet atomic bomb test on Aug. 29, 19

49, at Semipalatinsk Test Site, in Kazakhstan. Eisenhower became Supreme Allied command E

urope The Warsaw pact 1955 New strategy of “massive retaliation” The end of the plan of “rolling back communis

m”

International Politics in a Bipolar World

In a bipolar world: a state faces threat from either the USA or the USSR and needs to seek help from either one. Conflicts among lesser states are to be regulated by the superpowers.

The German Question in the Bipolar World Why was it a exclusive question in the West? The transplantation of the Soviet Model in East

Germany: centralized bureaucracy, planned economy and personal cult of Walter Ulbricht

But West Germany which adopted parliamentary democracy and market economy would eventually regain full sovereignty. How to watch over this government with great industrial and military potential was an issue to be concerned.

At the same time, West Germany could be a major bulwark against a possible Soviet invasion.

Western integration as a solution: West Germany’s admission into ECSC in 1951, the NATO in May 1955.

West Germany’s Western Integration

Konrad Adenauer’s Chancellorship (http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/

marcuse/classes/133c/133CwImages/PortAdenauer.jpg)

West Germany’s Western Integration

Hallstein Doctrine: A basic foreign policy principle of the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1955 to 1969. According to this doctrine, the Federal Republic asserts the exclusive right to represent the entire German nation. It will not establish or maintain diplomatic relations with states that recognize the German Democratic Republic (DDR). The doctrine is applied for the first time against Yugoslavia (1957), followed by Cuba (1963) and Arab countries (1965).

The Consolidation of the Two Germanies The Hungarian Crisis in 1956: the help from the Wes

t was not on the way The routinization of the communist rule in East Ger

many The “Sputnik” shock and the NATO’s new tactic

of “massive retaliation” The conclusion of the Franco-German Friendship Tr

eaty 20th June 1963

Despite Destalinization, Berlin remained Problematic Khrushchev, “Berlin is the testicles of

the West. Every time I want to make the West scream, I squeeze on Berlin.'

But it was not only the problem of the West, as 184,198 East German fled to the West in 1954.

A series of events 1957-1960. The Berlin Wall

Photo: Germans running away from East Germanyto West Germany through a house

which was built on the common border

The Age of Disillusion, the 1960s and the 1970s Europe sidelined Tyranny in the West …but socialism was n

ot an alternative either

Detente (Salt 1 from November 17, 1969 until May 1972 ) and West Germany’s Ostpolitik

Street riothttp://graphics8.nytimes.com/

images/2008/04/30/world/22973953.JPG

Street riot http://pagesperso-orange.fr/titi.nanou/images/prague.jpg

The Hopeless Economic Giant West Germany’s economic

miracle But still a political dwarf in

Ronald Reagan's plan of combating “the evil empire”.

The Installation of Pershing II in Britain, Holland, Belgium, Italy and West Germany from 1983 to 1984

The German unification 1989-1990

The Unified Germany

The Unified Germany in the Post-Cold War Era

Strong states such as Germany has suddenly more options: Germany’s recognition of Croatia and Slovenia, refused to participate in the Iraq War, reservations to European economic integration

New calculation over pain and gain Domestic pressure Even as a member of the EC/EU, Germany

now wanted to seize a leading position

The Case of the Independent Movement in the Balkans in 1991

1991 Germany unilaterally recognized the independence of Slovenia and Croatia

Weak international regimes and conflicting norms

Domestic drive, political culture and historical memory

Yugoslavia: ethnic division, 1991

The EU’s Direction CSCE (Conference on Security and Cooperation in E

urope) supported the existing border EC’s resolution on 25th June 1991 (1) preserving Y

ugoslavia, (2) enabling ex-communist states to participate in reshaping new Europe (3)providing loans for a united Yugoslavia

The Brionde Accord concluded by Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands succeeded in convincing the Serbs to withdraw from Slovenia but not Croatia in which 600,000 Serbs lived.

Even the UN and the USA stood aside

Germany’s Basic Direction

West Germany’s decade-long policy of liberating East Germany produces the following strategy: “To the extent that this norm shaped Germany’s post-war foreign policy, elites may have calculated high domestic ‘gains’ from being the champions of self-determination in the Yugoslav conflict.”

New Variables The Mass Media of Germany (Süddeu

tsche Zeitung and FAZ) The ruling party’s (CDU) new self-im

age The lobbying activities of Croatia in F

ebruary 1991 The offensive of the Green/Bündnis 9

0 The SPD’s political bandwagoning

http://www.iranfocus.com/uploads/img440b5b4d704f0.jpg

Some More New Variables

The survey of mid-July 1991 (38% for the independence of the two states, 34%, 27% neutral)

The ideological dilemma posed by the German unification in the 1990

The visit of Kohl and Genscher, the German Foreign Minister to Yugoslavia

The EC Turned to Follow Germany

EC vs. Croatia and Slovenia Serbia and Montenegro excluded the

other Republic from the federal leadership

EC decided in August 1991 that the recognition would be delayed for two months. For Germany the green light was on.

The Last Month

On 8thDecember, Germany indicated that it would recognize these states soon.

France and Britain showed that they would bright this issue to the UN

The CDU party convention in Dresden in which Kohl should show a new course in foreign policy

EC backed down and Germany’s recognition of the two states on 23rd December 1991

Conclusion

International Politics in a Multi-polar world

Suggested reference:

Mary Fulbrook, A History of Germany, 1918-2008: The Divided Nation (Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)

Otis C. Mitchell, The Cold War in Germany: Overview, Origins, and Intelligence Wars (Lanham: University Press of America, 2005).