1989- The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe Page 13
The event was such a fiasco that Baker had to apologize in writing to Kohl: “Dear Helmut, I regret very much that comments I made during a press conference caused problems for you. I wanted to achieve exactly the opposite.” He assured Kohl that “the furthest thing from my mind was to be critical. I hope that you know how much importance I assign to German-American relations, and particularly relations with you. With greatest respect and warm personal greetings, Jim.” 125 After this disaster, it was clear to both Bonn and Washington that there should be no further quadripartite meetings; but some kind of mechanism needed to be devised that would at least pacify Gorbachev.
One would eventually emerge, but at this point only decisive, concerted action by the British, French, and Soviets could have preserved the restoration model. Such action was not unthinkable; old divisions were fading, and new bonds could have been forged at this point. The key player here, as at so many other junctures, was actually Mitterrand. Gorbachev and potentially Thatcher would have been willing to continue down the path of restoration. And the French president’s state visit to the East German regime at the end of December showed that he was hardly averse to dealing with relics of the past.126
Mitterrand, who liked to speak in terms of what France wanted or needed, showed his choice of policy through his actions rather than words. That is, he liked to have several conceptual irons in the fire for a while before choosing one. Although he complained to Gorbachev on December 6 that Kohl was moving ahead too quickly, the French president was increasingly realizing that the smart move would be to accept Kohl’s plan and see what percentage there was in it for France and the EC.127 Already in October, Kohl had told the EC Commission President Jacques Delors that helping Mitterrand was one of his main priorities (presumably hoping Delors would pass it on).128 And as Teltschik had told Le Monde, if Paris let Bonn take the initiative on national unification, then Bonn would agree to practically anything that France wanted in European integration.
This dynamic had already become apparent at the final major meeting of the French EC presidency, the European Council session in Strasbourg on December 8 and 9.129 Kohl once again endured heavy attacks from Thatcher and other anxious European leaders. “I will never forget Thatcher’s furious remarks,” he wrote in his memoirs. “‘Twice we’ve beaten the Germans! And now here they are again!’ she said.” Kohl estimated that of all of the EC leaders, only the Spaniard Felipe González and Irishman Charles Haughey (about to take over the EC presidency) had no reservations about his plans.130
But the chancellor sealed an important deal nonetheless. In exchange for a Council declaration that endorsed the desire of the German people to “regain its unity through free self-determination,” and a tasking to the EC commission to prepare an EC strategy for unification, Kohl fulfilled Mitterrand’s desire to make substantive progress on economic and monetary union within a year.131 The basic decision for this union had already been made, but Kohl had wished to delay further specific plans for implementation until after he had survived West Germany’s federal elections—which according to its electoral law, had to be held by January 1991—fearing that the idea of giving up the DM would inhibit his ability to get votes.
Now the need for French approval of his plans for Germany, however, was expediting the schedule. In advance of the Strasbourg meeting, Mitterrand had sent Kohl a letter making it clear that an intergovernmental conference had to happen in the second half of 1990—that is, before the next West German elections. Kohl’s position had been that the date for such a conference should be set in 1990, not that it should actually take place, but it was not enough for the French president. Moreover, Mitterrand pointedly ignored Kohl’s desire to have a discussion about expanded rights for the European Parliament before such a conference.
Analyzing this letter, the French expert on Kohl’s chancellery staff, Joachim Bitterlich, concluded that Mitterrand saw Bonn’s concern for the parliament as a mere diversionary tactic, meant to delay monetary union. It was of little interest to Mitterrand, not least because the French wanted to give the parliament only “symbolic powers.” Bitterlich further concluded that Mitterrand was trying to send a personal message to Kohl: the chancellor’s present level of engagement with and commitment to a realistic calendar for the implementation of monetary union “was not enough for him [Mitterrand].” Getting the project of economic and monetary union well under way was “the ultimate goal” for Mitterrand in his remaining time in office, concluded Bitterlich, and so he was pushing Kohl to make sure it happened.132 In the end, Kohl agreed to call for the necessary intergovernmental congress before the end of 1990. On top of this, the French leader also succeeded in getting agreement to launch a “European Bank for Reconstruction and Development” and a “Stabilization Fund” for Poland.133 Ultimately, however, these were not enormous concessions on the part of the West German chancellor. He would have preferred to postpone the conference longer, but fundamentally believed in monetary union, and now he was seeing a way that his preexisting commitment to European unity could help advance the cause of German unity. It might even help to win over skeptics within the FRG if they thought that European integration was the price of national unity.
Mitterrand, as a result, had within three days in December 1989 previewed his two main alternatives for dealing with the prospect of German unity: using either the quadripartite route, or the EC, in conjunction with a like-minded commission president, Delors.134 The French president’s subsequent actions show that he viewed the latter as the greater opportunity. By working within both the EC and the Franco-German bilateral relationship, Mitterrand could help to ensure stability and watch out for French interests during the transitions that were to come.135 There was also a subtext to the project of monetary union—namely, whether West Germany would agree to it because of or despite its own economic self-interest.136 In comments kept secret even from members of his own government, Kohl told Baker that his support for rapid economic and monetary union was self-sacrificing. The chancellor had conceded on timing in Strasbourg even though it was “against German interests” and the president of the West German Federal Bank, or Bundesbank, was particularly opposed. But “the step had been important politically, because Germany needs friends.” Simply put: “There cannot be any mistrust of us in Europe.” He didn’t mind if France got all the credit, but without his giving in, it would never have happened.137 Kohl was presumably exaggerating for effect, but his past efforts to postpone specific steps toward monetary union before the next West German election showed the extent of his worry about whether voters would find it in their interest or not. Mitterrand was presumably not unaware of this subtext. Regardless of whether Kohl’s remarks were exaggerated or not, French support for unification was now effective leverage for guaranteeing that Kohl would move forward on monetary union quickly. Realizing all of this caused Mitterrand to lose interest in the restoration model, and since it could not succeed without him, it began to fade.138
Fig. 2.4. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Dresden, with East German Minister President Hans Modrow (foreground), December 19, 1989. Courtesy of Patrick Hertzog/AFP/Getty Images.
The exact same fate befell revivalism as well. Even as he traveled to Dresden on December 19 to begin implementing his own confederative ideas, Kohl realized that he could do better. Amazingly enough, the trip was Kohl’s first extended immersion in the powerful, street-level reality of the East German revolution. Other than brief stops in West Berlin, he had been working at some distance from the GDR since the opening of the wall, spending time traveling to Paris, Poland, and even three days in Hungary (to thank the leadership for opening the border), but not in the other half of Germany.139
Kohl, Teltschik, Seiters, and a few others flew in a small Challenger aircraft directly to Dresden. As they rolled to a stop on the runway, they could see hundreds of people waving at them from the airfield as well as the roof and windows of the airport. Kohl remembers that sight, and the experience of ge
tting off the plane to that roaring welcome, as the single most important moment for him personally in fall 1989. Standing on the tarmac, he knew instantly that he had a mandate to unify Germany as fast as possible. He turned to Seiters and muttered a colloquial phrase meaning roughly “it’s a done deal.” Nonetheless, he went through the motions of negotiating with soon-to-be impotent East German government officials.140 He also met with dissident leaders, who would in time become impotent as well; but unlike the SED, they still enjoyed enormous legitimacy and authority at this point.141 Much more significant than any of the talks was a speech that he gave.142 Looking at the tens of thousands who had gathered on a dark December afternoon in front of the ruins of a church destroyed in World War II, Kohl heard them chanting “unity, unity, unity.” He announced that there would be free elections in the spring and that confederative structures would follow. But he made clear what he really wanted, to an enormous cheer: “My goal—if this historical hour will allow it—is the unity of our country.” He pushed on, choking up with emotion, to close by saying that “Christmas is the festival of the family and friends. Particularly now, in these days, we are beginning to see ourselves again as a German family.” 143
Yet the joy of the Dresden crowd had a less happy echo. The sight of throngs of Germans cheering a strong leader revived fears of an older specter than fourpower control—one that Kohl would have to address and overcome if he wanted to reunify the country. Just before Kohl’s departure for the city, the Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, warned the chancellor in a letter that “we cannot forget the pictures of cheering masses in the 1930s and what resulted.” 144 Shamir was hardly alone in worrying about what it all meant for the future. Right there in Dresden, the local KGB office—which included Putin—watched with anxiety. It is not clear whether Putin was in the crowd while Kohl was speaking, but it is certainly possible and even likely, given that he would melt into crowds at other points in 1989. And Putin’s wife, Lyudmila, who had accompanied him to his KGB posting in Dresden with their two small daughters, remembered that they both had a “horrible feeling” at the end of 1989 about what might come next.145
CONCLUSION
After the Dresden visit in December 1989, the slow boat to confederation was already sunk in Kohl’s mind. In other words, the actions of the population of East Germany convinced him, and would convince others, that there would be no time for the new confederative structures that he had just promised. It was not the first or last time that the actions of the East German street would be decisive. The four-power idea was not viable either. Both the restoration and revivalist visions were dead on arrival; new ideas were needed.
Now Kohl, sitting at a middle distance from the revolution—neither immersed in its calls for freedom, nor as remote from it as Moscow or Washington—would be the one to realize fully the chance that it presented. Until his Dresden visit, he had worked on the assumption that unity would be a slow process, and formulated his models for the future accordingly. After his firsthand contact with the three critical components of East German society—party leaders, dissidents, and the broader public—he realized that the former two were ignoring the third. The crowds wanted neither the continuation of their old regime in a confederation nor a revamped East Germany, which were the goals of the first two groups. They wanted unity, but they did not yet understand that questions involving countries far beyond their borders would need settling for that to happen.
Rather than trying to slow down the process, Kohl realized that there was opportunity in the midst of crisis. He could use the desires of the East German crowds as a justification to his foreign partners for dramatic action. Whether he could have slowed the process down (as Gorbachev and Thatcher fervently wished) became a moot point after Dresden, because he was no longer interested in doing so. Whether his own slow process of creating confederative structures might have been a financially more astute strategy for merging with East Germany also became moot.
Kohl was a politician facing a West German election sometime before January 1991 and he was sensing a winning strategy. There was a multilevel competition under way for the creation of some durable political order in all of Germany, which in turn had an impact on the future shape of Europe and its alliances in the world. Kohl realized that his ability to connect with average East Germans as well as potentially pull along West German voters toward a future they did not yet completely desire might allow him to shape events. But there would be many others who wanted to shape events too.
CHAPTER 3
HEROIC ASPIRATIONS IN 1990
... whatever may be our situation, whether firmly united under one national government, or split into a number of confederacies, certain it is that foreign nations will know … and they will act towards us accordingly.
—The Federalist Papers, no. IV, 1787
I am not one of those who left the land to the mercy of its enemies. Their flattery leaves me cold, my songs are not for them to praise.
—Anna Akhmatova, 1922
I said to the guard who was standing at the door: “When I was condemned to death in the Nazi era, my parents were allowed to be present in court. They also received permission to speak to me for half an hour after the reading of the verdict.” I do not know if the socialist Cerberus understood me properly, because he gave a disarming reply: “Well, now you see, we don’t live in the Nazi era any more.”
—Robert Havemann, trying to attend the trial of his sons in East Germany in 19681
Robert Havemann had carried out an unusual comparative study for a chemistry professor. He had—involuntarily—investigated the best methods for surviving both Nazi and Stasi interrogations. When he was interrogated in 1943 in the infamous cells of the Gestapo on Prinz Albrecht Street, he willed himself to believe that the blows of his captors did not hurt. Havemann drew pleasure from their obvious fury at his refusal to confess to helping Jews in hiding. His tactic for the Stasi in 1966, this time on Magdalenen Street, was different: confuse them with his extensive knowledge of the legal rights available to a suspect. The result in both cases was the same: short-term defeat, resulting in a death sentence in the Nazi era, and the loss of his job and freedom in the Stasi era; but long-term triumph.
Havemann lived to see his own victory over the Nazis. Friends convinced the Gestapo that Havemann was worth more alive, thanks to his chemistry training. His jailers agreed to postpone his death sentence month by month if he developed poison gas in a lab set up for him in a Brandenburg prison. As if he were not in enough danger already, Havemann used the reprieve, which lasted twenty months, to organize resistance in the jail. He built his own radio and circulated a “newspaper” to other inmates—every day—with reports from the outside world. He kept this secret long enough to be freed by the Red Army in May 1945. For his actions during the war, he would become one of Yad Vashem’s “Righteous among Nations.” 2
Havemann felt (not unreasonably) that he owed his life to the Russians who released him. Such gratitude, and the fact that Havemann had been a member of the Communist Party of Germany since 1932, helped him to become the recipient of a shower of honors in the state of East Germany, including a professorship at the Humboldt University in Berlin. But when Joseph Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, revealed the depth of Stalin era crimes in a secret speech in 1956, Havemann came to realize that he had been deceived. The professor began once again to question and to challenge the authorities. His critical attitude resulted in interrogation by the Stasi, expulsion from his profession, the persecution of his family (particularly his children), and years of house arrest.3 Havemann could probably have arranged exile in the West, where he had numerous admirers who would have helped him, but he wanted to remain in the GDR even under those conditions. He hoped for peaceful change and better days, both for Germany and for socialism, but died in April 1982 without seeing either.4
In life and death, he served as a powerful example to the dissidents who would come to prominence in 1989. The group
New Forum, an overarching protest movement organized by Bohley and Rolf Henrich together with Havemann’s widow, Katja, was founded in the Havemanns’ living room in September 1989; for this, Bohley was called the “mother of the revolution” in Western media. And the slightly older group Initiative for Peace and Human Rights (IFM in German) bore the imprint of his thinking as well. In recognition of his importance, Havemann would be rehabilitated posthumously in 1990 and his works reprinted. And when the day came, a foundation and archive dedicated to the protest movement would be called the Robert Havemann Society.5