Cold War Politics in Postwar Germany

218 Pages·1999·1.01 MB·English

by  David F. Patton (auth.)

Cold War Politics
in Postwar Germany
David F.Patton
To my parents
COLDWARPOLITICSINPOSTWARGERMANY
Copyright © David F.Patton,1999.All rights reserved.No part of this
book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles or reviews.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1999 978-0-333-76527-2
First published in hardcover in 1999 by St.Martin’s Press
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DOI 10.1057/9780312299613
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Patton,David F.,1963-
Cold War politics in postwar Germany / David F.Patton.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-349-41499-4
1. Germany—Foreign relations—1945– 2. World politics—1945-
I. Title.
DD257.4.P32 1999
327.43’009’045—dc21 98–41912
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Part I
The Founding Era
Chapter 1:Cold War and Codetermination 15
Chapter 2:An Alliance for a New Westpolitik 35
Part II
The Détente Era
Chapter 3:Détente and Democracy 61
Chapter 4:An Alliance for a New Ostpolitik 79
Part III
Unification
Chapter 5:The Two Dimensions of Deutschlandpolitik 107
Chapter 6:An Alliance for a New Deutschlandpolitik 125
Conclusion 147
Notes 157
Selected Bibliography 197
Index 213
Acknowledgments
F
or their support on this project,I am indebted to many individuals and
institutions.Foremost,I would like to thank my family and friends for their
patience and encouragement.Peter Katzenstein,Jonas Pontusson,Martin
Shefter,and Sydney Tarrow all made insightful comments during the early
stages of this project at Cornell University.As a fellow at the Berlin Pro-
gram for Advanced German and European Studies,I had the opportunity
to witness Germany’s unification firsthand.I am indebted to the directors
of the Berlin Program,Monika Medick-Krakau and Ingeborg Mehser,for
their support during and after my fellowship there.As a Research Associ-
ate at the Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown Uni-
versity,I researched and wrote the third case study.I would also like to
thank Connecticut College for providing me with generous research sup-
port.While a fellow of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in 1997,I developed
a better understanding of politics in Germany since unification.
I would like to thank Mary McKenzie,Michael Harvey,Greg Colman,
my readers at St.Martin’s Press,and above all Robert Kahn,who carefully
read and commented on the manuscript in its entirety.For his many hours
of hard work at Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library,I would like to thank Jens
Kreinath.Finally,I am indebted to Anita Allen for secretarial assistance.
Introduction
T
he Federal Republic of Germany has long been known for its consensus
politics.1 Although political conflicts were of course always present in the
Federal Republic,its major groups came to accept in the 1950s a social mar-
ket economy that included a comprehensive welfare state,worker represen-
tation in company decision making,industry-wide collective bargaining,and
an economic strategy of export-led growth.At times of economic crisis,the
top associations of labor and business and the political parties consulted with
one another to arrive at appropriate policy responses within firms and at the
state and federal levels.Extensive consultations followed the downturn of the
mid-1960s,the oil shocks of the 1970s,and the collapse of the eastern Ger-
man economy after unification.Rather than using the political confronta-
tion and social exclusion inherent in Thatcherist or Reaganist political
strategies,the political parties and leading interest groups favored social part-
nership and,if necessary,outside mediation by the courts to settle their dis-
putes. In this spirit, German trade unions, Social Democrats, church
representatives, and even some Christian Democrats and industry leaders
have proposed a broadly based “Partnership for Jobs”that addresses the prob-
lem of high unemployment.
Scholars alternatively describe this consensual policy making as “liberal
corporatism,”“democratic corporatism,”“Modell Deutschland,” and “coor-
dination democracy.”2 They have attributed its origins to Germany’s late
industrialization,to a reaction against the class warfare of the Weimar era,
to the fat postwar years when the notion of winners and losers appeared
anachronistic,and to political institutions in the Federal Republic.
The Puzzle
This much-vaunted consensual policy making was conspicuously absent
when the Federal Republic formed its most important foreign policies.
D.F. Patton, Cold War Politics in Postwar Germany
© David F. Patton 1999
2 Cold War Politics in Postwar Germany
Each policy was extremely controversial. In the early 1950s, Chancellor
Adenauer developed a Western policy—that is,a Westpolitik—that would
bind the new state within Western European economic,political,and mil-
itary institutions. In the early 1970s, Chancellor Brandt implemented a
new Eastern policy—that is, an Ostpolitik—that would normalize the
Federal Republic’s relations with the Communist states of Eastern Europe.
In early 1990, Chancellor Kohl initiated a new unification policy—a
Deutschlandpolitik—that would unify the two German states within nine
months.All three were hotly contested policies within the Federal Re-
public.For passing moments,chancellor democracy triumphed over coor-
dination democracy,and interest coalitions realigned.What accounts for
the shifting political alignments and the strength of the chancellors during
these three periods?
These three periods were crucial in the history of the Federal Repub-
lic.In regard to rearmament and Ostpolitik,the historian Charles Maier
concurs with Ernst Nolte that “these major reconsiderations of what the
Bonn polity represented in terms of its domestic social forces and interna-
tional role were the truly formative political foundations.”3Unification in
1990 was another such moment of appraisal.
While the Federal Republic developed many important foreign policies
(toward the third world,the Middle East,and East Asia),Konrad Adenauer’s
Westpolitik,Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik,and Helmut Kohl’s Deutschlandpoli-
tik were the foreign-policy cornerstones of the Federal Republic.Since the
early 1960s,all major parties and interest groups backed the tenets of Ade-
nauer’s Westpolitik;since the early 1980s,they favored normalizing relations
with Eastern Europe and the German Democratic Republic (GDR).Today,
all but the far right and the far left are in basic agreement over Western in-
tegration,support for the fledgling democracies of East-Central Europe,and
national unity.However,although Westpolitik,Ostpolitik,and Deutschland-
politik later became part of a far-reaching consensus,they were not formed
by a foreign-policy consensus nor by corporatist policy making.
Rather than broad agreements among the leading interest groups and
political parties,fragile untested partnerships arose to support the new for-
eign policies.They contained odd bedfellows.In the early 1950s,promi-
nent West German industrialists and trade union leaders backed, rather
than scuttled or delayed,West German participation in the European Coal
and Steel Community (Schuman Plan) and in a West European army.
Their shared purpose seems surprising given their past and subsequent dif-
ferences over economic policy. Equally surprising is that this alignment
dissolved almost as quickly as it formed.In its wake,the trade unions suf-
Introduction 3
fered a major setback in industrial relations. Twenty years later, trade
unions,urban professionals,church activists,and university students backed
a new Ostpolitik orchestrated by an unprecedented alliance of Social De-
mocrats (SPD) and Free Democrats (FDP) in Bonn. When this social
coalition expired soon after forming,it hastened the demise of the Brandt
government.In 1990,a new alignment of social groups backed Kohl’s uni-
fication.By the following year,two of its key members had defected,forc-
ing the chancellor to make a sudden U-turn on his unification policy.
Each of these periods was also characterized by chancellor ascendance.
Whether in the early 1950s,the early 1970s,or the early 1990s,the federal
chancellor stood at the center of the political system.Adenauer,Brandt,
and Kohl dominated policy making to a degree that was unusual in the
Federal Republic. To secure domestic majorities for their controversial
programs,they linked their foreign policies to domestic policies,set the
terms of the political debate,and relied on kitchen cabinets.
Chancellor dominance was exceptional in a state better known for its
federalism,corporatism,and coordination democracy.Nonetheless,in the
early 1950s and early 1970s,and in 1990,three chancellors with different
personalities, ideologies and leadership styles towered over foreign
policy–making. Curiously, Brandt was considered a “weak chancellor”
when he fell from office in the mid-1970s;surprisingly,Helmut Kohl gen-
erally did not win acclaim as a policymaker prior to 1989 or after 1991.4
For brief periods,however,Brandt and Kohl,like Adenauer before them,
presided over a chancellor democracy that was at odds with the established
policy-making practices of the Federal Republic.
The Argument in Brief
For four decades,Germany stood on the front line of the East-West con-
frontation.With its strategic location,its industry,and its military poten-
tial, it was considered contested terrain in the Cold War. The Federal
Republic of Germany felt the pressures of the Cold War more directly
than did other mid-level powers such as France and the United Kingdom.
Each new phase in Cold War relations left the Federal Republic with lit-
tle choice but to adjust its policies in accordance to the transformed inter-
national climate.Had it not done so,it would have jeopardized its own
national security.
After Soviet power had grown by the late 1940s,Bonn pursued a Western
policy that bound the vulnerable Federal Republic closely to its Western
4 Cold War Politics in Postwar Germany
neighbors. Without such a reorientation, Bonn risked facing the Soviets
alone.After Cold War tensions had eased in the late 1960s,the Federal Re-
public normalized its relations with the Communist states of Eastern Europe.
If it maintained its intransigence toward the East,then the Federal Republic
risked political isolation when the Western Allies embraced détente.As Com-
munism collapsed in the late 1980s,Bonn unified the two German states.Had
it not,it would have faced a future of instability on its eastern border and a
continued influx of East German refugees.
Germany was not the only Cold War battleground, nor was it the
only frontline state forced to change its foreign policy to meet a new in-
ternational environment.Nonetheless,shifts in the Cold War demanded
foreign-policy adjustments that perplexed the West Germans more than
they bothered the frontline democracies of Italy and Japan.5 This is be-
cause the Cold War had split Germany into two states,keeping it tied
forever to the national question. Each Cold War stage required from
Bonn a foreign-policy adjustment that was related to the division of
Germany in one way or another.Would Bonn’s policy of Western inte-
gration in the early 1950s perpetuate or help overcome the division of
Germany? Would its new Ostpolitik draw together the two German
states or seal their separation? Would the incorporation of eastern Ger-
many in 1990 create true national unity or just a unified state? In each
case, Westpolitik, Ostpolitik, and Deutschlandpolitik revealed the
predicament of a divided nation on the front line.Each approach raised
concerns among West Germans that Bonn would betray the German na-
tion for the sake of its Western interests—or,vice versa,that Bonn would
betray its Western interests for the sake of the German nation. They
forced into the open disruptive national questions that upset politics as
usual in the Federal Republic.
A traditional division between a “high politics”of international diplo-
macy and a “low politics”of domestic coalition formation cannot explain
German politics in the early 1950s,the early 1970s,and 1990,when diplo-
macy abroad and coalition-building at home were intricately intercon-
nected.At these moments,Cold War changes pressed Bonn to develop a
new Westpolitik,Ostpolitik,and Deutschlandpolitik that would better re-
flect the new relations in Europe.Within the Federal Republic,heated for-
eign-policy debates followed,disturbing existing political partnerships and
creating opportunities for chancellors to forge new majorities in support
of controversial foreign policies.The unprecedented alignments and the
chancellor resurgence were rooted in the Federal Republic’s condition as
a divided nation on the front line of an evolving Cold War.
Introduction 5
This point has not been a part of the leading accounts of social coali-
tion–formation in the Federal Republic.Yet without a consideration of the
Federal Republic as a divided,frontline nation,both an international-state-
system approach and a political-leadership approach to domestic coalitions
offer incomplete explanations of the new alignments and powerful chan-
cellors of the early 1950s,the early 1970s,and 1990.
An International-State-System Perspective
Scholars have begun to provide insights into how international military
pressures influence domestic alignments. For instance, Peter Katzenstein
has shown that the Nazi threat and the shock of world depression in the
1930s and 1940s shaped social coalitions within the small states of West-
ern Europe.“In those two decades business and unions,as well as conser-
vative and progressive political parties,became convinced that they should
impose strict limits on domestic quarrels,which they viewed as a luxury
in a hostile and dangerous world.”6 With its exposed international situa-
tion,the Federal Republic resembled the small states of Western Europe.7
This may explain why the internal politics of the Federal Republic were
in many ways like those of the small states,with both tending toward de-
mocratic corporatism.
To Wolfram Hanrieder,the Federal Republic was a penetrated system
with its occupied status (from 1945 to 1955) and its exposed location on
the front line of the Cold War.He writes that “international contingen-
cies not only overshadowed domestic ones but in effect came to shape
and determine them.”8 The Federal Republic’s external setting led its
parties and interest groups to adopt foreign-policy positions consistent
with the international system.Cold War realities “imposed from outside”
a grand compromise between the West German left and right on West-
ern integration and détente with Eastern Europe.9In a highly penetrated
mid-level power,long-term domestic opposition to international realities
had little chance of success.The eventual internalization of international
constraints produced in the Federal Republic a widespread agreement on
foreign policy.10
Yet why was such a consensus so slow to form? This study contends
that because the Cold War affected divided nations differently than unified
ones the heightened external pressures of the late 1940s,1960s,and 1980s
did not lead to a closing of the ranks in the Federal Republic around a
necessary foreign-policy adjustment. Rather than domestic unity, as was