Indivisible Germany: Illusion or Reality?

141 Pages·1963·4.873 MB·English

by  James H. Wolfe (auth.)

INDIVISIBLE GERMANY
ILLUSION OR REALITY?
INDIVISIBLE GERMANY
ILLUSION OR REALITY?
by
JAMES H. WOLFE
Department 0/ International Studies
The University 0/ South Carolina
Columbia, South Carolina
•
THE HAGUE
MARTINUS NIJHOFF
1963
Copyri{{ht I963 by Martinus Nijhoff. The Hague. Netherlands
Softcover reprint of the hardcover Js t edition J9 63
All rights reserved. including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
ISBN 978-94-011-8480-9 ISBN 978-94-011-9199-9 (cBook)
DOl 10.1007/978-94-011-9199-9
TO MY PARENTS
PREFACE
During World War II the quadriga, the impressive figure of the
charioteer Victory driving four horses, on top of the Brandenburg
Gate was destroyed. Later, both the East and West German au
thorities agreed to replace it with a copy of the original. The former
possessed the molds; the latter supplied the metal for casting. The
process of negotiation and production required nearly two years.
After the new quadriga was mounted, it was found that the Commu
nists had made an important change: the chariot driven by Victory
was placed so that it faces east and not west as in former times. The
wit of the Berliners is sharp. It soon became known along the Kur
fiirsten Damm (and not quite so loudly along what was then Stalin
Allee) that Victory was advancing to defeat the East. The Pankow
regime had unwittingly created an apparently prophetic symbol of
its impending collapse.
The significance of the reversed quadriga is the story of the German
Question. It is the purpose of this study to offer an interpretation of
that story within a fundamentally historical framework. An unrevised
version of the manuscript was presented in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy in political science
at the University of Maryland. I wish to express my deep appreciation
to Professor Elmer Plischke under whose patient direction the original
manuscript was completed. Also I wish to recognize the assistance
of Miss Sally Hey whose suggestions were instrumental in formulating
the model which appears in Chapter VI.
However, I alone must accept the responsibility for what I have
written.
JAMES H. WOLFE
Columbia, South Carolina
October, 1962
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. WHY REUNIFICATION? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. I
II. THE DIPLOMACY OF WORLD WAR II - GENESIS OF THE PROBLEM 3
Tehran-Moscow 3
Yalta. . 7
Potsdam . . . I6
III. OCCUPATION AND PARTITION, I945-I949 . 29
The Allied Control Council . . . 30
The Birth of Two German States. 37
The Council of Foreign Ministers. 4I
Germany in I949· . 47
IV. REUNIFICATION AND THE EUROPEAN ALLIANCE SYSTEM,
I950- I954· .... 52
Elections for Unity. 53
The Rearmament Question 55
Economic Integration 57
Two Concepts of Reunification. 58
The Soviet Note of March IO, I952 . 60
Elections ....... . 60
Neutrality . . . . . . . 62
Peace Treaty Negotiations 64
Frontiers .. 65
Rearmament . . . . . . 66
Berlin ......... . 69
European Security and German Unity 7I
v. GERMANY AND EAST-WEST COEXISTENCE, I955-I962 . 74
The Summit Conference of I955 74
The Mounting Crisis, I956-I958 . . . . . . . . . 78
X TABLE OF CONTENTS
Soviet-West German Relations. 80
Disengagement 84
Berlin, 1958-1962 89
The Coalitions React 96
The Western Bloc 96
German Federal Republic. 96
Great Britain 99
France. 100
The Soviet Bloc . 101
German Democratic Republic 101
Poland and Czechoslovakia 103
VI. INDIVISIBLE GERMANY: ILLUSION OR REALITY? 105
The Illusion of Reunification 10J
A Way to Unity? IIO
The Prospect: A European Union IIJ
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 122
CHAPTER I
WHY REUNIFICATION?
It is not in the interest of the German people or
in the interest of world peace that Germany should
become a pawn or a partner in a military struggle
for power between the East and the West. 1
Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, September, I946.
Professor Hans Rothfels of Tiibingen University, in writing about
the German Question, has concluded that "nations are divisible. 2
There is abundant historical evidence to substantiate this postulate
if one considers the partitions of Poland, or the contemporary situation
in Korea and Viet N am. Is Germany to become still another example?
The record of Great Power diplomacy in Central Europe since 1944
indicates that this might be so.
The viewpoint of the United States appears to be that a Germany
divided and partially within the Western alliance system is preferable
to one reunited and neutral. Indeed, to the American mind the concept
of "Germany" often conjures up an unfavorable political stereotype,
which the events of two world wars have created. In terms of foreign
policy this means that an element of public opinion not only is un
disturbed by the persistent failure of all attempts at reunification, but
was relieved when the Berlin wall finally sealed the partitition of
Germany. Now, some hoped, the United States and the Soviet Union
would be able to reach a detente and define their spheres of influence in
Central Europe.
Therein lies the danger. Even a conditional toleration of two states
can lead to a debacle for United States policy in Germany for two
reasons. First, current Great Power policies in Germany lead to
friction and incidents which may become increasingly hard to
control. It is difficult to understand how this could be otherwise,
considering the nature of the Cold War. Therefore, if the problem of
Germany is to be solved in any manner acceptable to the West,
Berlin must become the capital of a reunited nation. Reunification is
1 "Restatement of U.S. Policy on Germany: Address by the Secretary of State, Septem
ber 6, 1946," Department of State Bulletin, Vol. xv (September IS, 1946), p. 496.
2 Hans Rothfels, Zeitgeschichtliche Betrachtungen (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht,
1959), p. 243·
2 WHY REUNIFICATION?
a necessity if the potential danger of war over Germany is to be
averted.
Second, Soviet expansion in Central Europe is facilitated by the
partition. Regardless of how closely it is tied to the West, the West
German Federal Republic is vulnerable to Soviet overtures holding
out the eventual prospect of reunification. There is an increasing
uneasiness in West Germany today over the inability of the Western
Powers to bring about the formation of a unified national government
based on free elections. Ultimately disillusionment with the West may
lead German nationalists to seek unity at any cost - perhaps even if
it entails a rapprochement with the Soviet Union. An new Rapallo
would be a disaster for the West.
The problem is a difficult one for the Western Powers, for they
insist that a reunited Germany must be free to join the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization. Conversely the Soviet Union has been more
flexible in its approach. Moscow has tended to regard only the "re
vanchist" and "militaristic" policies of Bonn as a threat and has not
unalterably opposed a settlement provided that Germany would be
reunited within the framework of a general European security pact
and forbidden to join any regional alliance system. It is the flexibility
of this policy which so magnifies the challenge of Soviet diplomacy.
The West has responded by striving for the formation of a Western
European Union which would implicitly reduce the role of the nation
state and, therefore, the attractiveness of any serious concessions to
the Soviet Union in return for reunification. The immediate prospect
is that the European Movement will continue to flourish, and that
reunification will remain a mystical goal to be achieved in the course
of history rather than by concrete negotiations in the near future.
Germany will remain a shatter zone between the East and West,
thus perpetuating the conditions which Secretary Byrnes considered
so threatening to world peace.
Could it have been otherwise? The answer lies in the development
of the Great Power attitude on reunification as revealed in a com
parison of plans publicly presented and policies actually implemented.
This is the story of the German Question and a case study in the art of
stimulating a permanent crisis so characteristic of Gold War diplomacy.
CHAPTER II
THE DIPLOMACY OF WORLD WAR II
GENESIS OF THE PROBLEM
I dislike making detailed plans for a country which
we do not yet occupy.
President Roosevelt, October, I944.
The growth of Allied policy toward Germany during World War II
can be observed in three discernible phases, each of which is associated
with one or more of the major Allied wartime conferences. Tehran
Moscow, Yalta, and Potsdam serve as evolutionary stages to demon
strate the development and persistence of the central theme of this
policy: Germany must be divided so that she may never again pose a
military threat to any of the victors.
TEHRAN-MOSCOW
The German Question appeared in its embryonic stage at a plenary
session of the Tehran Conference, on December I, 1943. At previous
meetings President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston
Churchill, and Marshal Josef Stalin had concerned themselves with
such immediate questions as whether or not Turkey would enter the
war. Now they turned to the matter of the political arrangements
to be made in Germany after the cessation of hostilities.
Stalin began the discussion with the suggestion that Germany be
permanently divided, Churchill stated that he did not object "in
principle," and Roosevelt replied that for three months he and his
staff had been studying a plan to do just that. The American plan for
Germany required a partition of the country into five autonomous
states and two areas under international control (the Ruhr and Saar,
and Kiel and Hamburg). Stalin chided Churchill for not listening
carefully and charged that he did not really wish to have Germany
divided. Such was not the case. The Prime Minister was in favor of
partition, but he had a different plan. Prussia was to be separated
and isolated from the rest of Germany, while the southern German