1989- The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe Page 10

  From the night of November 9 onward, Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders increasingly found themselves reacting to events rather than shaping them—an uncomfortable role. Chernyaev confided his thoughts to his diary: “The Berlin Wall has collapsed. … Only our best friends Castro, Ceaucescu, Kim Il Sung are still around—people who hate our guts,” he wrote. On a more positive note, he concluded: “This is what Gorbachev has done. And he has indeed turned out to be a great leader. He has sensed the pace of history and helped history to find a natural channel.” 36 Gorbachev would later admit in his memoirs: “I should be less than sincere if I said that I had foreseen the course of events and the problems the German question would eventually create for Soviet foreign policy.” 37

  Mitterrand and Gorbachev, as shocked as they may have been about the wall opening, at least had some leverage over the process and would belong to the group of key actors shaping events in the future. The experience of November 9 was even more frustrating for those who would largely remain spectators, such as the governments of Poland and Great Britain. In summer 1989, Solidarity was ascendant. Its indispensable ally, Polish-born Pope John Paul II, continued to dominate the Vatican, and Mazowiecki was in charge at home. Bronislaw Geremek, a Warsaw Ghetto survivor, Solidarity supporter, and future foreign minister, put the feeling into words: “The winds of history have normally blown against us Poles. Finally they are blowing in our direction.” Solidarity’s success seemed likely to earn an extraordinary amount of West German economic and financial aid for Poland. It had caused Kohl to agree to the five-day state visit that started on November 9. Nor was the trip meant to be an empty show; in conversations with Bush around the time, Kohl repeatedly stressed the need for the West to help Poland. Even when the two leaders spoke on November 10, the day after the wall opened, Kohl talked so much about Warsaw that Bush finally had to say pointedly that he had no further questions about Poland and wanted to talk about Berlin instead.38

  Kohl’s interest in helping reforms in Warsaw was partly to incentivize the same in the GDR. But when the border was suddenly open and the easterners in need of aid were now Germans, Polish leaders realized immediately that they had lost priority. Even as Kohl was preoccupied with how to get back to West Berlin in time for the public rally, Mazowiecki and his finance minister tried to get as much of the chancellor’s attention as they could, and presented a long list of requests for aid from Germany. They expressed their hope that this aid would come in the form of a gift.39 With the begging bowl clearly out, they had little leverage and enormous worries that the eastern border of a united Germany might creep closer to Warsaw. Some West German legal scholars felt that despite all the various accords that had been signed since World War II, the border status remained an open question in juridical terms.40

  In short, the Poles had a weak hand, but would play it well, focusing on one strong card: world sympathy for Poland. Mazowiecki and others would use press conferences, public forums, their contacts in the United States, and every possible venue to make it clear that they viewed the 1989–90 period as a time when West Germany’s status as a trustworthy democratic state needed proving. “I am of the opinion that [in] this historic hour … the value of all kinds of words and declarations about the readiness to reconciliation will be tested,” Mazowiecki would remark publicly.41

  Similarly, Thatcher was in an awkward position. In her case it was partly by default and partly by her own choice. With British forces based inside West Germany, she had no choice but to be involved. With British memories of two twentieth-century wars with Germany, and (as already mentioned) her own personal childhood memories of World War II, Thatcher had no choice but to be concerned. But perpetually at odds with the EC, in deepening political trouble at home (she would have to turn over Number 10 Downing Street to John Major before the end of 1990) and soon to be at odds with both Washington and NATO leadership, she had trouble finding like-minded souls who agreed with her strong desire to resist rapid change in divided Germany. She could no longer rely on her relationship with Reagan as a means of influencing foreign policy, since he was out of office and her connection to Bush was not nearly as strong.42 Mitterrand would have been her most likely possible coconspirator; over the years she had found a rapport with him, despite their party differences. Indeed, Mitterrand had once approvingly commented that he liked Thatcher because she had the eyes of Caligula and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe.43 The Frenchman’s habit of auditioning several different strategies before deciding on one often gave various conversation partners the sense that he agreed with them, and Thatcher thought that he might. Her foreign secretary apparently tried to caution her that this might not be the case, but to no avail.44

  Another potential ally for Thatcher was the man who was still nominally NATO’s main enemy: Gorbachev. Already in September 1989 (as described in the previous chapter) Thatcher had tried to stiffen his spine with regard to divided Germany by telling him, off the record, that no one in NATO wanted unification. In the months to come, she would continue to appeal to Mitterrand and Gorbachev, and world opinion, in her hopes of slowing down the process.

  WHAT NEXT?

  As these key actors and the rest of the world experienced the night of November 9 and tried to comprehend the new reality, the biggest question was obviously, what next? It was clear that the Cold War order was crumbling, and that piecemeal changes would no longer be enough. As the financial newspaper Handelsblatt put it, “The politics of taking small steps … is over.” 45 The Cold War order was in rubble. But what new political and social order would follow?

  The first two answers to this question to emerge were short-lived, but highly significant: the Soviet idea of restoring four-power control and the West German concept of reviving a confederation. Both of these were backward-looking solutions, yet with a difference. Restoration meant reinstating quadripartite control exactly as it had been in 1945, with subsequent alterations stripped away; accordingly, the issues of 1945—reparations and borders—would become major ones. Revivalism, on the other hand, was the more feasible process of adapting and modernizing an older structure to make it suitable for use once again. Both the restoration and revival models would become public, garner adherents, and dominate headlines—and then suddenly become obsolete, when events and second thoughts overtook them.

  None of this was immediately apparent late on the night of November 10, when Kohl finally returned to his office in Bonn after the West Berlin rallies. Although he had only that night and the morning of November 11, a Saturday, it was enough to get an overview of the situation from his staff before heading back to Poland. He attempted to reach all of the four powers, and managed to speak to Thatcher and Bush in the final hours of November 10.46 Both conversations included lengthy discussions of Polish needs in addition to talk about the wall. Kohl also spoke to Mitterrand (whom he somewhat less than believably assured that “the process is evolutionary, not revolutionary”), Krenz, and Gorbachev. To the latter, Kohl emphasized the need to speak to each other “without dramatic accents” in their dialogue. Presumably this was to signal that the phone message of the night before had gone too far in that direction for Kohl’s taste.47

  Crucially, he got an assessment of the situation from experts whom he trusted, whether in person, on the phone, or through quickly prepared reports and telegrams. He assembled his closest aides for a Saturday morning meeting: Ackermann, Klein, and Teltschik, of course, but also his trusted personal assistant Juliane Weber, who had been with him for twenty-five years, along with the head of the chancellery, Rudolf Seiters, and a few others.48

  Kohl also received even more surprising information, if that were possible, from East Berlin. Bertele informed the chancellor that the most significant event in divided Germany since the war had been a mistake. Border guards had been clueless and had no instructions. Sources within the East German government suggested that it might still try to reverse what had happened. Western media reports that the borders were open had been exagge
rations. Bertele was right; the border was still, in the eyes of the SED, theoretically a deadly no-go zone. Starting at 3:00 a.m. on November 10, East German border guards forcibly cleared the area between the wall and the Brandenburg Gate. They continued using water cannons as late as November 11 to drive people off the wall itself. Guards at Invaliden Street, where armed support had been called up on the night of the ninth, successfully reinstated border controls by dawn on the tenth. More ominously, a motorized division with air support, trained in urban warfare, had been placed on alert for deployment in East Berlin following the opening of the wall, although in the end it had not left its base. The incompetence at the top would become increasingly apparent in the days to follow. Reports to Bonn indicated a growing sense that no one was in charge and the emergence of a “save yourself if you can” mentality. And Kohl’s finance minister, Theo Waigel, gave the chancellor a quick estimate of how much this was all costing. Bonn was already subsidizing East Berlin, but now it had the added burden of supporting the large number of refugees in the West.49

  As a result, while traveling back to Poland later on that Saturday, Kohl could mull over two salient facets of the recent developments. The first was that they were not planned, and therefore even more chaotic than they already seemed; and the second was that West Germany was going to spend a lot of money on the problem, one way or another. An out-of-control, expensive problem is particularly unwelcome in an election year, and Kohl, who had often been mischaracterized as slow-witted, was a savvy politician who understood this.

  He knew that the focus of attention would turn from West German–Polish relations to events in divided Germany, and that he needed to wrap up matters in Poland in a way that would satisfy a variety of audiences. In an effort to do so, Kohl visited Auschwitz, but also insisted (despite the shortened schedule and adverse weather conditions) on traveling by bus on Sunday, November 12, to Silesia, a past source of much conflict between Poles and Germans. There, he and Mazowiecki jointly took part in a Catholic mass held on land that once belonged to Helmuth James Graf Moltke, who had been convicted of attempting to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944, and was executed in 1945.50

  Kohl insisted on this visit because he wanted to strike the right balance between acknowledging the past while keeping open freedom to maneuver in the present. He knew that irredentist issues would surely emerge and wanted to have leverage with such groups; taking the time to visit their old homeland would help him. Kohl also had to be alert not only to those West German voters (or their families) who had been expelled from their homes in now-Polish territory in the wake of the Nazi defeat, however, but also the sizable number of voters who were far more concerned about good relations with all European neighbors, East and West, than any lost territory.

  The chancellor also wanted to forestall fresh talk about a peace treaty for World War II, which would raise the unhappy issue of reparations. It was a tricky situation for an elected politician, and yielded some benefits for the Poles. The Polish trip culminated with a joint statement on November 14, in which West Germany agreed to forgive extensive Polish debts dating back to 1975, along with other measures.51 But as the coming weeks would show, it would not be enough to assuage Polish anxieties, especially after Kohl subsequently failed to convince Bush to provide $250 million in credit to Warsaw.52

  Kohl had to assuage anxieties on his Western borders as well. Mitterrand called for a short-notice dinner in Paris on Saturday, November 18. Sitting around the table would be just the leaders of the twelve EC member states. The aides would be at a separate dinner, presided over by Mitterrand’s foreign policy adviser Jacques Attali. Clearly, the “grown-ups” were going to speak their minds plainly in advance of the end-of-year EC summit.53

  Dinner proceeded without serious incident, but according to both Kohl and Attali (presumably informed by Mitterrand afterward), Thatcher made her move over dessert. As a summary written the next day by her private secretary Charles Powell noted, the prime minister made it clear that there could be “no question of changing Europe’s borders, which had been confirmed in the Helsinki Final Act. Any attempt to raise this or the issue of reunification would risk undermining Mr. Gorbachev’s position … [and] open a Pandora’s box of border claims right through Central Europe.” Kohl replied by pointing out that NATO had in fact endorsed German reunification at a summit in 1970. Thatcher, according to Kohl, snapped that this endorsement happened then because nobody believed it would ever take place; Kohl responded that be that as it may, the NATO decision still stood. His reply angered Thatcher so much, he remembered, that she started stamping her feet in fury. Kohl was on some level grateful to know where he stood: “The Iron Lady wanted to keep the status quo.” He also observed that Mitterrand seemed to approve of Thatcher’s remarks.54 The EC—or at least its most powerful members—were going to demand something in return for tolerating Kohl’s talk of a united German nation.

  Kohl realized that he would have to prove his commitment to European integration even more than he had already done. His first foray in doing so, at a special meeting of the European Parliament on November 22, became a kind of test. Kohl knew that it was crucial, after the tempestuous dinner in Paris, that the Franco-German motor appear to be running smoothly. He asked Mitterrand to appear jointly with him before the special session. As late as the day before, Mitterrand avoided agreeing. But when the time came, Mitterrand decided to stand with Kohl, and the event proved to be a success from the German point of view. The parliament, after hearing Kohl speak, passed a resolution saying that the East Germans had the right “to be part of a united Germany.” 55 For his part, Mitterrand justified the need for the special November 18 dinner, and asked for the EC to pay attention to the needs of those farther to the east than Berlin. “Has the Community answered the expectations of those who have faith in it? Has it really answered Mr. Mazowiecki’s anguished appeal asking us not … to perpetuate the Europe of the poor and the Europe of the rich?” 56

  THE FOUR (OCCUPYING?) POWERS

  Even as Kohl tried to assess the situation, the four countries with troops in divided Germany—Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union—tried to do the same. In 1945 they had collectively become the highest ruling authorities in defeated Nazi Germany, which had surrendered unconditionally, and had begun occupying the country. Yet modifications to quadripartite rule had emerged in the following decades. Western occupation zones merged and formed the FRG in 1949, while the Soviet zone became the GDR in the same year. The three Western powers, seeking a united front against the Soviet threat, subsequently acknowledged de jure what had already happened de facto—namely, that Bonn had regained some ruling authority in the West. In particular, an October 1954 treaty allowed West Germany to become a member of NATO in May 1955, thereby making it much more a partner and much less an occupied subordinate. Still, important limitations remained, especially with regard to West Berlin. The four allies retained a large military and political presence there in particular, controlling among other things all air routes into the city; as mentioned, this prevented Kohl from flying nonstop on November 10. Meanwhile, East Germany and the Soviet Union also technically became allies in the Warsaw Pact, but the GDR remained subordinate to the USSR.57

  In summary, the original four-power rights still existed in 1989, albeit in modified form. A shared quadripartite interest in preventing nationalist developments in Germany from threatening international stability and security survived as well. But it had been quite a while since there had been any “quadripartitism”—that is, occupiers exercising those rights over the heads of the Germans. The fact that the occupied had regained some authority (much more so in the West than in the East) and that new military alliances had appeared (a much more voluntary one in the West than in the East) had added layers of complexity to the situation.

  In the wake of events calling the post–World War II reality into question, Moscow’s initial instinct was to strip away those layers and revert back to t
he legal situation as it existed on day one of the occupation. Gorbachev and his advisers wanted to restore quadripartitism. This goal of restoration would culminate in an old-fashioned, four-power-only meeting on December 11, in the very same building used in the 1940s.58 The West Germans would be aghast to discover that despite all the various treaties and declarations of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the three Western powers were still willing in 1989 to sit down with just Moscow. Making sure that the USSR did not duplicate the feat rapidly became one of Kohl’s highest priorities.59

  How, in detail, did the Soviet restoration model emerge? Gorbachev had proposed it as early as November 10. He contacted London, Paris, and Washington, saying that he had already informed his ambassador in divided Berlin to make the necessary initial preparations.60 It was obvious to the first U.S. recipients of the message, Gates and Rice, that Gorbachev wanted a four-power meeting at an even higher level, and they let their boss, Scowcroft, know. But Bonn was able to fight off Gorbachev’s November 10 initiative. After hearing from Gates and Rice, Scowcroft immediately called Teltschik in Bonn. Teltschik made it clear that the West Germans would have no patience with exhuming the moldy specter of four-power-only decision making.61 The idea came to nothing in the short term as a result.62