William Tyler
The West German Miracle
William Tyler - The West German Miracle
- So good evening everyone and welcome. I don’t know what the weather is like with you, but it’s pretty grey and miserable down here, so I’m pleased to be able to put the lights on, put the Zoom on, and talk about something which I hope you will find interesting. Now, today our topic is post-war West Germany, a state that existed in a divided Germany between 1949 and 1990, a period therefore of a mere four decades, four decades in which this half, the western half, of Germany, was restored to the community of nations, undertook what became known as the German economic miracle, was in the very front line of the Cold War, and became what it had been under Weimar, Germany, a major state in Western Europe. West Germany recovered very quickly in fact from the Second World War, so quickly that you could argue that Nazism had always been, however dreadful and however horrific Nazism was, had always been without firm roots in Western Germany. This was an oppressive state goes the argument, the Nazi state, that oppressed even its own people. Well, yet in recent weeks, we have shown that there were not just compliance by ordinary Germans, but actually active, much active support for the Third Reich, so that doesn’t really explain the change in 1945- ‘49. We saw last time that denazificition took place in all four of the areas of occupation, the Russian in East Germany and the American, British, and French in West Germany. We also learned that in West, in particular, after an initial denazification programme, which was, I hesitate to use the word vigorous, but perhaps a better word is angled at the leadership of the Third Reich, a veil was cast over others.
You remember it was cast in the west over industrialists and businessmen and civil servants and lawyers. The reason being that the west regarded that as essential if Germany, in their case West Germany, was to recover, and recover quickly, and must be less of a burden on the victorious Allies in effect, less of a burden on the United States Exchequer. It also was important to pull West Germany into the liberal, democratic west, because of course, as we heard last week, a division appears almost immediately between the three Western allies in the West and Russia in the East, and what we know as the Cold War was beginning to start and we needed a secure Germany, not as a bulwark against the East, but as a base from which American and British troops could operate, and could not only operate but could be a threat to the Russians where the Russians decided to take West Germany by force. When I was at school and a member of the Cadet Force, we always were hearing about BAOR, the British Army on the Run, the army of occupation, because there were always chances for cadets to go on a summer holiday and spend some weeks there, and likewise, the Americans, and of course, it was the Americans that had the larger force, so there are lots of reasons pushing, particularly Britain and America, to ensure that West Germany turned out to be the success story that actually history tells us it was. Now you may be asking, and I’ve asked myself in my notes that I’ve written, that to a large extent, abandoning the denazification programme, was it morally right? Should we have done it, or should we have gone further down the lists of members of the Nazi party and others who had actively been involved in the Third Reich? Was it morally right?
Or was political expediency of Britain and America in particular, was this political expediency justified? And I suppose if those who were making the political decisions in 1945 to '49 were asked now, they would say, “Well it was completely justified,” because West Germany and subsequently after reunification, the whole of Germany, became a valued member of the community of nations and a member of NATO, et cetera, et cetera, but you have to make your own minds up. Were we morally right to stop denazification, and does political expediency trump that moral cause and case? I think those questions are very difficult, and if you or I had been a politician in 1945, shall we say, in Washington or in London, would we have made any different decision and had we done so, would it make matters far worse, in fact, worse because what happened was positive? However, I want to finish this little introduction by reading a little passage from Frederick Taylor’s book, which I used last week, “Exorcising Hitler, the Occupation and Denazification of Germany”, and he writes this, “In the early 1950s, Adenauer,” who was chancellor of Germany for a good period after the end of World War II, “In the early 1950s, Chancellor Adenauer, despite his initially lukewarm attitude towards compensation for Nazi crimes against the Jews, he habitually spoke of Jewish suffering, but hardly ever about German perpetrators, carried out negotiations with the Israeli government, mostly behind closed doors. In September '52, Adenauer agreed to a deal with the Israelis that would over years to come, compensate Jewish Holocaust survivors to the extent of some 100 billion Deutschmark.
The chancellor’s difficulties came when he tried to get the settlement through the Bundestag,” the Parliament, “in Bonn,” capital of West Germany, “in March '53. The deal was unpopular among many in the country at large. A year earlier, only 5% of Germans had admitted feeling guilty about the fate of the Jews. Although 29% felt that some restitution was owed by Germany to the Jewish people, 40% felt that any compensation should be paid by 'those responsible’, and 21% felt, ‘the Jews themselves were partly responsible for what happened to them during the Third Reich.’ Many of Adenauer’s own party voted against it. Adenauer had to rely on the Social Democrat Opposition to get the bill through. It was a difficult and momentarily embarrassing beginning for a decades-long West German policy that was both morally right and diplomatically cunning”, to pay, “committed support of Israel in foreign policy and a determined philosemitism at home.” But why? Well, the reason is, there’s a Latin phrase that covers it, which is “Do ut des. Do ut des.” I give so that you give. The argument being that the Germans gave compensation to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in order to whitewash the crimes of the Third Reich. Nothing is ever straightforward in international politics. You must make your own minds up and we shall come back to this whole issue in my last talk when we look at reorganisation in the position in Germany today. So difficult questions to answer, difficult issues to look at and come to a judgement on, but what we can say, is that West Germany, established by the three Western allies in 1949, went from strength to strength and in the end, was able to absorb East Germany, 1989, 1990, 1991, was able to absorb East Germany back into a democratic liberal democratic state of then and now of a whole Germany, a success story. Robert Cole, in his “History of Germany” writes this, and it’s just to sort of sum up where we’ve been.
“In the British zone, political backgrounds were checked only when the person in question had obvious Nazi affiliations. The French simply assumed that all Germans about the age of 12 were beyond redemption, and focused their attention entirely on reeducating the young. The Americans tried to live up to the actual policy dictates, extensive background checks and form filling and the denial of a living to some 7 million German families. It proved more harmful than useful. In 1946, the Americans abandoned the process, and gave denazification and reeducation over to German tribunals. After ‘47, an increasing number of ex Nazis were in important administrative positions in West Germany.” And that began the recovery of West Germany for good or ill, morally maybe for ill, economically and politically maybe for good. Recovery itself was very swift. A free press started operating in West Germany as early as the end of 1945. Radio broadcasting without the Nazi propaganda was on air almost immediately after the collapse of the Third Reich, and then, in the early 1950s, television as it did across Europe as a whole, Western Europe at least as a whole, became a more frequent means of both entertainment and news. A democratic multi-party state evolved, the Christian Democrats, the Christian Socialists, the Free Democrats, and the Social Democrats. That was a very important difference between West Germany and East Germany, which was totally controlled by the Communist Party for the 40 years of East German state.
There were six chancellors. Remember that there is a chancellor and a president, and in the Constitution, which we talked about last week, the basic law, the role of the president was demoted from that of the role of the president under Weimar. The president became a icon of the nation, a symbol if you like, and the real power lay with the chancellor. There were six chancellors in the 40 years that the West German state existed. The first, and very important chancellor, who had been anti-Nazi was Herr Konrad Adenauer. Adenauer was chancellor from the emergence of the state in 1949 until 1963, so throughout the 50s, over a decade, Adenauer guided this new state forward. Then there was Willy Brandt, the flamboyant ex Mayor of Berlin, who was chancellor between 1969 and 1974, and began the rapprochement with his opposite number in East Germany. And then there’s finally the two Helmuts Helmut Schmidt, who was chancellor in the 70s, 1974 to 1982. And finally the chancellor that saw Germany reunited from 1982 as chancellor of West Germany and right the way through to 1998 when, of course he’d become chancellor of the reunified, reunited Germany. So the West German story is really the story of the German state. The East German story, which I’ll cover next week is, I think in the future as historians look at, it will be a sort of hiccup in the story, a very unpleasant hiccup, but a hiccup to the story that began with the unification of Germany by Bismarck in the same way that the Third Reich was a hiccup, a horrendous hiccup, but a hiccup.
In 300 years time, were we all still to be here, then I think the history of Germany may well be one where these two events, the Third Reich and the East German state will appear as difficult to explain then as it is now, but they will be seen as an interruption to the path of German democracy and unification begun by Bismarck in 1871 in Paris, and well we can only say lasting through so far to 2023, but I think most people would, if push came to shove, say they see no indication of Germany splitting again, but who knows what the future may hold. What else can we say about this new emerging state? We said that free press, free radio, free television, which allows people to express their own views is now operational, not so of course in East German state. There’s a multi-party, so you can change political parties in terms of who governs you both as a local, at a Länder level, and at a national level. Again, all elements of a democracy as we understand it. In 1947 what began to happen was the coming together of the West German state. The British and the Americans established a Bizone state, in other words not a separate American, a separate British, but an Anglo-American state. The French, well of course the French wouldn’t do that. They remained outside, but it doesn’t really matter, because the French have little power. In fact the British have little power. The power lies with America. Why does the power lie with America? Because America has money, and America has troops that it can pay. Britain was bust, so is France. America institutes martial aid as you all know.
It was a huge sum running into billions of dollars that the Americans pumped in to many western European countries including enemy states, Italy and Germany. Germany received 11% of martial aid. Of all the martial aid went to Europe, Germany got 11%. What is not really ever acknowledged is that Britain received from America 26% of martial aid. If you do a history of Germany, the story that is told, which is correct, is that marshall aid did not cover all the expenditure that the West German state needed to recover, but they used it in order to build their infrastructure, and in building their infrastructure they were able to build their economy upon that base. When it comes to Britain, who received more than twice as much as the Germans did, we didn’t spend it on infrastructure. We squandered it, and the argument is we didn’t spend it on infrastructure because much of our infrastructure was still operational even though all of it was pre-war. Some of it, in my own family’s factories, were Victorian. They still had Victorian equipment being used. There were Victorian tools. We never retooled as the Germans had to. We could have done with the use of the marshall aid, but we didn’t, and there’s a lot of arguments about why Britain didn’t do this. Well, it would appear to be quite straightforward that we didn’t do it because we thought we were victors, and we didn’t need to do it. We thought that with being a head of the sterling area, and with the commonwealth, the former empire, we could just plough our own furrow, but of course we couldn’t. And the interesting story of Britain and Europe, and Britain and Germany is that Britain’s economy fell far behind that of Germany where the West Germans engage in what is called the German economic miracle in the 1950s, Britain was lagging far behind.
We also had massive trouble with unions and trade union strikes in a way that Germany didn’t. Why not? Because the British and the Americans, but very largely the British, set up a whole new way of relationships between employers and unions in Germany, which was never set up here in Britain, and so we were working a system that was deeply out of date with deeply out of date equipment, and yet with a feel, unjustified, of superiority. Now if you’re listening in Britain, you may care to draw more modern analogies that our failure, and it was not, incidentally, a failure of a conservative government. It was a failure of the Attlee government, And although some argued against it, advisors argued against it, they were determined not to, in any way, detract from the status of Britain. They were just as imperially minded as were the conservatives, and the parallel of course is Brexit, where both political parties are committed to a Brexit which many see as deeply failing, and failing because we thought, or those who voted for Brexit thought and the politicians that led them, that we didn’t need Europe in the same way as what we thought over the Marshall Plan. So the Marshall Plan kickstarts the German economy, and that is a really, a very important issue indeed. It means that Germany can go forward. Now I’ve been talking. I’ve dropped my piece of paper, I’ve been talking about the early developments, we talked about the press, we talked about television, we talked about multi-party state, we talked about the Marshall Plan.
We also have to talk, in 1948, just before the establishment of West Germany that, well in effect the Americans, the West introduced a new mark, the Deutsche Mark. They introduced it, because the East were producing fake Reichmarks, and it was having a terrible effect on the West German economy, so they revised it by having a Deutsche Mark. The old Reichmarks in the West went to the East, causing inflation there. They also had to change the currency, which the West Germans always called the Ostmark, the East mark. So there’s the Deutsche Mark in the West and the Ostmark in the East, and it was really the final division, you might say between East and West Germany and East and West Berlin. “It was,” as Clinton remarked, “always the economy. It’s the economy, stupid,” said Clinton may be the wisest thing he ever said, and it was, of course, the case in West Germany. You could do all the, as it were, bells and whistles of democracy, but without the economy then you were back in the same situation as the Weimar Republic had been in the 1920s, and that would be a very dangerous situation. And so we go forward to what is called the German or West German economic miracle. In the book that I’ve been quoting from already, which is Frederick Taylor’s “Exorcising Hitler”, Frederick Taylor writes this, “After a shaky start,” 1949, “amidst an economy still recovering from the post-war breakdown,” and remember, Germany was in a appalling state in 1945. I mean flattened is not an unacceptable word to use about, not only the German economy and German life, but the German landscape and urbanscape and industrial scape.
“After a shaky start, amidst an economy still recovering from a post-war breakdown, with shortages still widespread, an industry only slowly picking up capacity, within a couple of years of its foundation of the Federal Republic '49, the country was booming. Its democratic predecessor, the Weimar Republic, had never quite achieved sustained economic growth, not even in the mid 1920s when it came as close to economic, and as a result political civility as it ever would. West German’s long boom continued from 1950 to 1965 as Germans, chastened by war and determined never to go hungry again, worked as never before and correspondingly benefited more than any other country from the enormous resurgence of the world economy following the Second World War,” unlike Britain I would add. “The period of uninterrupted German growth,” says Taylor, “and prosperity lasted in fact a little longer than the entire Weimar Republic, and a lot longer than the 1,000 year Third Reich. Even the relatively mild recession of the mid 60s, though it caused dismay at the time, was a mere pause in a road to national riches that continue.” And so West Germany, the first truly democratic state in Germany, other than Weimar, proved to be lasting because it got the fundamentals of a state right. “It’s the economy, stupid” and something Britain struggled with, and something Britain is struggling with again today, self-inflicted, I would say, in Britain’s case. Others will take a different view.
All contemporary history gets very, very challenging for the person teaching because I can say whatever I like about the economy in Northern England in the 11th century, and unless you have actually studied that, you’re not likely to have a view one way or the other, but if I say something about the economy in the 1960s, somebody is bound to say, “Yes, well I was in the Treasury in Britain” or “I was working for the United States banking industry and I can tell you it wasn’t like that.” One of the problems, so you have to just accept that modern history is quite difficult to teach. I will always attempt either to be objective, or to say “I’m not being objective.” Now, I am being objective about the Marshall Plan. I think I’m being objective about Brexit, but many British people would argue that I was being subjective about Brexit. It’s too soon to say, so we just have to agree to differ. This boom in Germany was an extraordinary boom, and it takes a lot of explaining. The Marshall Plan is only part of it. It is the determination of the people to recover, and of course it was the use also of many Germans who had been brought up as young businessmen during the Nazi years, and I wanted to read just one other thing from Frederick Taylor’s book if I can find it very quickly, 'cause I think this is quite interesting. “After January, 1950 food was no longer rationed.” It was still being rationed in Britain right up until the Queen’s coronation in 1953. Well actually through to 1954 when sweets came off rationing, so the Germans were ahead of us. Did that not give British politicians a moment’s thought? It should have done. “A construction boom was underway. With the pump primed by the Marshall Plan, and Europe eager to get back to work, the German social market economy took off.
The generation of young managers,” the point I was making, “who had learned their skills in the Nazi armaments boom of the 1930s and early 40s now turned to peaceful, export-led manufacturing in a post-war world crying out for machine tools and high quality manufactured goods.” Machine tools, the very thing that we fail to do in Britain. And Taylor goes on, “As one writer has said, this is a British historian, 'The social market economy of Ludwig Erhard had its roots in the policies of Albert Speer,’ and it did no harm that the bombing and chaos of ‘39 to '45 had swept away much old plant and factory space as well as rusting infrastructure. In contrast, Britain continued with antiquated industrial practises” with trade unions, “factories, and equipment. Its long decline as a manufacturing nation accelerated at the same time as Germany’s revival went into overdrive.” And Britain’s manufacturing industry and decline has been a light motif my life from 1945 to 2023. So the German economy is what propelled Germany forward. It secured Germany’s democracy, and it’s secured West Germany’s place in the community of nations. In other words, you could say that the greatest outcome of the economic miracle in West Germany was a political outcome. In 1957 was the creation of the common market by the Treaty of Rome, led by West Germany and France, who earlier had joined in the iron and steel community, and that arrangement of the common market in '57 has become the dominant structure not only in Western Europe, but in Central and Eastern Europe since, and remain so today, but without Britain’s membership.
Why France was key was both an economic advantage, there had been huge loss of industry in Northern France, and it answered in the whole that is all summed up in this phrase, the common market between, well France is concerned that the common market between itself and Germany and also in the south between France and Italy. The common market drove France into this arrangement with Germany, but more than that, France had been invaded three times in less than a century by the Germans, in the Franco Prussian War of 1870, in the First World War of 1914, and of course occupied after the fall of France in the Second World War in 1940. Arrol, in his book, “Black, Red, and Gold” says this, “The French government saw this as a mean,” this being the common market, 1957, “as a means to controlling West Germany. Paris had been occupied in 1870 and 1940. Sandwiched between the psychological hammer blows was the terrible loss of life inflicted during World War I. Schuman and his compatriot, Jean Monnet, were pioneers of a different French approach to post-war relations with their eastern neighbour, Germany.” Economic cooperation, which the Germans saw as future political cooperation and the French have always been slightly hesitant about the political developments. It was always said it was Britain who was anti-political developments. Well the French seemed to have always been in support of it. It was French led. Remember, Giscard d'Estaing looked at the possibility of an EU constitution, but in any sense in which it wouldn’t dominate Europe.
Think about what Macron has said about France, then he doesn’t want to know about further political moves, so there are divisions between Germany and France still, I’ve always maintained that that division is a more fundamental division than the division between Germany and Britain, and despite Brexit, the links are being undoubtedly built again between Britain and Germany. France is always difficult, both for the Germans and the British to deal with. All that is forgotten in Berlin, sorry in Bonn, capital of West Germany in Bonn, and Paris in 1957. It suited both countries to come together. Using Arrol again, let me just finish by reading this little piece from Arrol. “Subsequent leaders in Bonn,” West Germany, “remain committed to the institutions which grew up in Brussels, viewing them as a means of securing long-term growth and security. For Germany, there was the reassurance that if it was firmly tied into Paneuropean institutions, there was no chance of it descending into abyss as it had in the 1930s. They were a means of predicting Germany from itself.” That is a very interesting observation, “a means of protecting Germany from itself.” So there were lots of reasons, and economic ones were, what you could say it’s the economy’s stupid argument again, were the top ones, but that I think would be false. Equally concerning are the political ones, externally for France, internally for Germany. Two years before the Treaty of Rome, 1957. In 1955, West Germany had joined NATO. That was more of a paper move than a reality move.
The British army on the Rhine and the great American presence in West Germany remained, and if there was ever to be an attack from East Germany or from the East in general on the west, it would be still America, well NATO, but hugely led by American forces and American money that will be defending the West. The same situation exists today, and raises interesting questions about EU American relations and British American relations, and I’ll come to that in the final talk in two weeks time. In 1973, East Germany and West Germany were accepted as separate states and members of NATO, and I suppose at the time, if you can think back to 1973 and that arrangement, most of us who are adults in '73, believe that that will be the state of Europe for our lifetimes and perhaps longer, an East German state and a West German state, a Marxist state and a liberal democracy, a member of the Warsaw Pact and a member of NATO. In 1976, West Germany joined the G6. We’re always hearing about the G meetings, and the six were America, Britain, Japan. Japan, again thanks to American money, and interestingly, American careful politics in Japan. America and the Japanese story’s a very, very interesting one, and the resurgence of Japan as a member of G6 as almost an honorary American European, it is extraordinary in itself. So America, Britain, West Germany, Japan, France, and Italy formed the G6.
So Germany is now, that’s 1976, Germany is now fully accepted by the West as one of themselves. As so, of course incidentally was Japan, and all of that is important, very important. Japan, I will put on one side, we may can’t be able to come back to the issue of Japan and the developing relationships with America, not least because of today’s military threat towards Taiwan and the islands off mainland China, and Japan’s importance to America, not only as a base from which to operate, but as a military force in its own right. That’s a different story. The story now is that West Germany, which was more complex for America to deal with, 'cause it had to deal with Britain and France whilst being overlooked by Russia, was a much more difficult issue, and we know what the issue was. It’s the Cold War, and as I said last week, the Brandenburg Gate, separating East and West Berlin, the whole of Berlin, East and West being within the East German state for the whole of the 40 years, and yet half the city was West German, Berlin and the Brandenburg Gate and later from 1961 onwards, the Berlin Wall, which is the very symbol of the division of Europe between East and West. McKay, in his rather large tome on the history of Berlin, just two short sentences, “Under skies of grey pale blue, people from either side of the fractured city of Berlin simply sought to live in a way that much of the world took for granted, working, falling in love, raising families. This untidy arrangement whereby Berliners could slip from one ideological universe to another and back again, without even especially acknowledging it was, inevitably, not to last.”
And it didn’t. As the war went up. Crunch came in 1948 when, as I said earlier, the West introduced the Deutschmark. The East responded by blockading all land and water traffic to West Berlin. Now that doesn’t mean from just East Berlin to West Berlin. It means from West Berlin across the land to Berlin, to West Berlin, to cross East Germany to get there. They closed all their routes, so you couldn’t get food supplies, for example, from West Germany to come to West Berlin, because they closed all the borders, nor could you move of course from West Berlin to East Berlin. That’s obvious, and that produced a crisis in June, 1948. It was resolved by what has become very famous, the Berlin Airlift, conducted by the Americans and by the British. Now I’m quoting from the US State Department’s site, the Office of the Historian, which is, for those of you who are British, this is like the British Government Foreign Office site, which simply gives, well largely speaking, a impartial historian’s academic explanation of events. Now this is the American State Department. I read, “The crisis started on June 24th, 1948 when Soviet Forces blockaded rail, road, and water access to allied controlled areas of Berlin. The United States and United Kingdom responded by airlifting food and fuel to Berlin from Allied Air bases in Western Germany. The crisis ended on the 12th of May, 1949 when Soviet forces lifted the blockade on land access to West Berlin.” What does that teach us in 2023? That if you stand up to the Russians, for example, and the Russians are always behind East Germany, if you stand up to the Russians, united and firm, you can force them back.
The State Department go on to say, “On the 13th of June '48, the administrator of American occupied Germany, General Clay, reported back to Washington. This is General Clay. 'There is no practicability in maintaining our position in Berlin, and it must not be evaluated on that basis. We are convinced that our remaining in Berlin is essential to our prestige in Germany and in Europe. Whether for good or bad, it has become a symbol of the American intent.’” And that’s the truth. Without America in Europe, Europe could easily fall during the Cold War to Russian expansionism. Not only is America committed not to lose face, but the West dare not allow America to withdraw. “Finally, the United States launched Operation Vittles on the 26th of June. The United Kingdom following two days later with Operation Plainfare. Despite the desire for of peaceful resolutions to the standoff, the US also sent the United Kingdom B-29 bombers, which were capable of carrying nuclear weapons.” That’s the proper way to deal with it. We will supply food. We will supply fuel, but don’t in any way underestimate us, because we can launch a nuclear attack from British airfields at the drop of a hat. I think it’s extraordinarily interesting as we look back on the Berlin Airlift, and it was finally lifted when Moscow realised it couldn’t win. And the American State Department’s piece ends by saying, “The Berlin Crisis of 1948-1949 solidified the division of Europe,” into East and West. It’s solidified the Cold War, which is going to be even more solidified when the East build the Berlin Wall.
And that pattern of standoff is the pattern that continues for 40 years. We always talk about the Cold War, and if I ever talk about the Cold War, I always say, “Yes, it was cold, but it was also a hot war in other places, eg Korea and Vietnam.” It happens to be cold in Europe. We know that, at the end of 40 years it all comes to an end, and that’s my story of reunification two weeks time, but what I want to say today in the time I’ve got left is that there were signs of change long before we entered the late 1980s. Now, if you’re American, I only need to tell you, do I not, that the first event that matters is in West Berlin on the 26th of June, 1963 in the Rudolph-Wilde-Platz in Berlin, 26th of June, 1963. If you’re American, and you’re thinking, “What is he talking about?”, then shame on you, because this is the extraordinary speech made by President Kennedy. Kennedy’s speeches are beautiful examples of the use of words to convey such dramatic meanings to ordinary people, and he said, “I am proud to come to this city as the guest of your distinguished mayor.” That was Willy Brandt, who becomes chancellor later. “Who has symbolised throughout the world the fighting spirit of West Berlin, and I’m proud to visit the Federal Republic with your distinguished chancellor,” still Konrad Adenauer in 1963, “who for so many years has committed Germany to democracy and freedom and progress, and to come here in the company of my fellow American, General Clay, who has been in this city during its great moments of crisis, and will come again if ever needed.” What an interesting phrase that was slipped in. I wonder if Kennedy slipped that phrase in himself or one of his speech writers did. I’d like to think it was Kennedy that put that in. “2000 years ago,” said Kennedy, “the proudest boast was civis Romanus sum” I am a Roman citizen.
“Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is Ich bin ein Berliner.” Later in the speech, Kennedy said, “What is true of this city is true of Germany. Real lasting peace in Europe can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice.” One of the interesting things about Kennedy’s diction is he says the same thing in two words. It’s very like the Anglican prayer book, which also says one thing in two words, he says here, “free choice.” He could have said, choice. “Free men, true of Germany, real and lasting peace,” he reemphasize there. It’s a very good way of speaking. “Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful glow.” It’s tremendous stuff, “in a peaceful and hopeful blur.” “All free men,” he ended, “All free men, wherever they may live are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, Ich bin ein Berliner.” It was a remarkable speech that resonated everywhere across the globe, but particularly in West Berlin, hemmed in by the Marxist East, which everyone thought would live forever. Kennedy lights a candle that day with that speech, a speech which indicates that there will be another way formed, and that it isn’t all going to end in complete disaster, and then it changes under Will Brandt after that speech. And Willy Brandt, mayor of Berlin later becomes, in 1969, chancellor of the whole of West Germany, and he initiated a new policy which he described as Ostpolitik, an Eastern policy.
And Mary Fulbrook, in her “Concise History of Germany” writes this, “Brandt was able to push through a series of treatises and agreements which culminated in the basic treaty between East and West Germany in December, 1972.” That’s nearly a decade after Kennedy’s speech. “This was ratified again with opposition in May, 1973. In September, 1973, both Germanys were accepted as full members of the United Nations,” as I said earlier. “From then on, the two Germans formally recognised each other’s existence, not as entirely foreign states, but in a special relationship perceived somewhat differently on each side. This was symbolised by the exchange not of ambassadors, but of permanent representatives. From ‘75 to '89 inner German relations were concerned less with an apparently receding, almost metaphysical question of potential reunification, and rather more with the improvement of relations between the two countries.” So no reunification under Brandt, but a way of coming to terms with East Germany, which had not been existent before. So if the candle had been lit by Kennedy, and it was somewhat stuttering nine years later, it was relit it by Brandt. So you cannot say that it was totally unexpected, but people still regarded the events at the end of the 80s the beginning of the 90s, as unexpected. All of that would be a positive way to end the talk, and I thought, at one stage, I would end like that, with Kennedy’s rousing words. And I thought, no, it’s not right to do that, because we look at history in order to illuminate today. Kennedy’s words were of their time. They kickstarted, in my view, the view towards reunification, true, but reunification has now happened, and Kennedy’s words, remarkable though they are, remain consigned to the history books, but something else was going on in West Germany.
Dig a little deeper under the surface of West Germany, and all is not bright and shiny as Western politicians, and I don’t mean only German politicians, would have you believe at the time, or indeed would have you believe in the history books. It wasn’t a glorious move from 1949 through to reunification of the democratisation of the whole of Germany, punctuated by issues like the speech in West Berlin by Kennedy or the Ostpolitik policies of Willy Brandt. In the 1970s, left wing groups of young people began challenging the regime, and I wanted to read a little bit about that. You may remember about this. You’ll remember it certainly when I speak about it. “Urban terrorism with some East German support was a reality in the 1970s in West Germany. Notably the Red Army Faction, founded and led by Gudrun Ensslin, Andreas Baader, and Ulrike Meinhof. The mindset was clear. 'You know what kind of pigs we’re up against? That is the generation of Auschwitz. We must arm ourselves.’ The Red Army Faction began in 1968, and its principal leaders were jailed four years later. From prison, they issued orders to their followers, mostly students, who between 1974 and ‘77, murdered at least 30 people, kidnapped others, and bombed American and German government installations and the occasional department store. The objective was to destabilise West German society so that Marxist revolution would be inevitable.” Martin Kitchen has written, “Their fatal legacy was that the authorities in West Germany were so upset with left wing terrorism that they intended to ignore the sinister activities of extremist right wing groups.”
And goes on to say, “The German Reich party, dominated by ex Nazis, started as early as 1945. It’s most extreme element emerging in 1950 as the Social Reich Party whose leaders included Werner Naumann, a high official in Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry. A federal constitutional court outlawed the party just before the ‘53 general election. A hiatus followed until 1964, when the appropriately named Adolf von Thadden founded the National Democratic Party. Its perspectives included chauvinism, all of Germany’s ours, xenophobia, throw out all foreigners, and holocaust denial. The last was based in part on evidently unsupported writings by revisionist like David Irving, and of course there were street going neo-Nazi organisations and movements including skinheads, the rank and file of which were largely undereducated, unskilled, and often unemployed. Their major target was the guest workers, particularly the Turks, the Greeks, and the Spanish.” They were brought in, you remember to to cover up for a crisis in the number of workers in the 1970s.
So what am I saying? I’m saying that the story, if you take a thread all the way through from 1870, Bismarck’s unification to 1991 reunification, you can see the golden strand cut after Bismarck’s dismissal leading to World War I, cut again by the Nazis in '33, leading to the World War II, but nevertheless, a golden thread that takes you through, but in the period and the history of West Germany, under the surface there are extremist groups of both left and right, Marxist and Nazi if you want to label, who want to destroy the democracy of West Germany. And why do I finish with that? Because that is a situation that we have to deal with two weeks time when we look at Germany today. How democratic truly is West Germany? Threats from the far left and threats from the far right, the reemergence of antisemitism, et cetera, et cetera. So I’m going to end with a phrase from a German patriotic song against the French. The patriotic song against the French is “Watch the Rhine”, “The Watch on the Rhine”, and I would like to suggest to you that America, Britain, France, and NATO also need still to keep a watch on the Rhine for what is happening in Germany today. Thanks ever so much for listening. Next week it’s East Germany, the scars and all the horrors of the East German regime. Now I’m sure there’s people who have got points and questions. Let me see how many I can get through.
Q&A and Comments:
Yes, Michael, you’re right. Canada also had troops in West Germany after the war.
No, the West Germans were educated about the Nazis, because the educational situation was set up by the Americans and British and French, so yes, they were.
Q: “How could the Jews be responsible for any grief for what happened to them?”
A: Well, that’s the old antisemitism of the Germans, absolutely. Of course they weren’t. That all relates to them having all the money and so on. It’s, as you say, Ali, complete nonsense. As a human, not simply a Jew, the denazification simply did not do, but what was worse is the help for survivors did not come and British actions in Palestine is agreed, hang on. I’ve lost the thread. As a human, not simply a Jew. The denazification simply not do it, but what was worse is the help the survivors did not come, and the British actions in Palestine was egregious and certain countries like Austria did not- Yeah, I’m not getting involved into British Palestine, which is quite a different story. You may think it’s the same story. It really isn’t the same story. There are problems of course looking at that, and Austria is definitely a problem, and we might look at Austria remains a problem, incidentally, of course today. The only left wing part of Austria was and remains Vienna in the old Austria-Hungarian empire remain Vienna.
How much is 100 billion Deutschemark in-? I haven’t got that figure off me. Michael, that’s why Google is wonderful. You can look it up. I will be interested to know what you think about the comparison with the aftermath of Europe, whether the De-Ba'athification may have been a factor in the ensuing chaos.
Ruth says, “I will be interested to know what you think about the comparison with the aftermath of the Iraq war where the De-Ba'athification may have been a factor in the ensuing chaos.” Yeah. Yep, I don’t disagree with what you’re suggesting. There is always a problem at the end of a war. Churchill said, “Be magnanimous in victory.” and that is something I would stick with.
Q: “How did Britain squander marshall aid?”
A: On pointless things in terms of, well, not entirely pointless things, but in terms of social things as well as, you’re right, in paying off lend-lease. It did not spend it as it should have done on industry, and a great deal was spent on NHS, Lawrence. You’re right. But remember what I’ve been saying, it’s the economy stupid, and we got ourselves in a position now where the NHS is in major trouble in Britain, and it’s the economy, stupid. Neither political party would not spend on the NHS if we had a thriving economy. One German Nazi said the Holocaust will just be a burp in the long and great history of Germany.
Q: A version of Hitler’s statement says, Sharon, who remembers the Armenian genocide by the Turks?
A: Nobody. Yeah, well, we do remember the Holocaust, and we’re not going to forget the Holocaust, and many do not forget the Armenian genocide, and that’s another interesting question, which I hope one day we might get a turn to. No, the German believe the Jews were partially responsible because they were isolated. It’s all the normal stuff, because their religion was different, because they lived in separate communities, because they funded themselves, because they had a great deal of money, blah, blah, blah. It’s all the normal anti-Semitic tropes that they use.
Oh, this is a new point. Monty, “After World War II, some South African Jews refused to buy German made goods. When they visited Israel, they found plenty there, probably part of reparations.” Well, when I first became a principal in London in 1984, we were forbidden by the local authority to buy South African apples because of apartheid, and my parents would not buy anything German or Japanese, particularly Japanese.
Q: Oh, David, “How is it possible, how did this come about that Britain could have one industrial policy of industrial relations at home and another for industrial relation in Germany. What factors brought this divide about?”
A: Answer, British politicians, British politicians would not change. Everything, whether it’s the Conservative party or the Labour party follow traditional lines, and won’t look at the reality of the policies pursued in West Germany were those of educators originally many from the Army Education Corp, but educators in general, they weren’t just left wing in terms of voting labour, because the Labour party is as much to blame as the conservatives over not touching industrial relations. They simply looked at it intellectually. The Labour Party didn’t because the unions were funding the Labour Party. The Tories didn’t because the unions causing trouble was a good way of gaining votes. If you think, well, I said just now that when I was talking that you have to be careful with what I say about contemporary things. I would argue that the fact that neither major political party in Britain is prepared to talk about Brexit as a disaster area is another example of how politicians choose to be oblivious to the realities and the politicians who are oblivious to the realities, not only of industrial relations, but also of educational developments, so that West Germany had a far better educational system then and now than Britain does, and it’s depressing for those of us in education.
Yes, Peter, you are right. Surely it was the German work ethic as well as their superior technical education apprenticeship. Absolutely right, and that was a view that is still being stated in Britain by politicians, by the conservative government at the moment. There’s attacks on, “We don’t work hard enough, We don’t work.” When I was at school, I had the advantage of going to a British public school, and we were always being told as we came to up to take our A level exams at the age of 17, 18, that we weren’t working as hard as those in grammar schools, and this has always been the British thing, that our leaders have always told us we’re not working as hard as. Now, there is truth in that then, and there is a certain amount of truth in it today, and you’re absolutely right, Sarah. the property boom in Berlin, well across Germany as a whole, was a major factor in West Germany growing so fast, and we helped by having bombed the old build- absolutely right. The property, I nearly said that as I was speaking, and for some reason or other I went on to another point, but the property, it’s buildings that created the move, and if any of you become, join a government, Canada, Israel, Britain or America, think about what you need to do first to get economies going, and look at what doesn’t. It’s interesting, isn’t it? If you look at Roosevelt before the Second World war, that, for all his grand schemes, there were more unemployed people at the beginning of World War II when America entered than there was when Roosevelt came to power. You’ve got to think about where you place your money.
John, “I served with BAOR between 1954 and '57, British Army On The Run. I remember a sergeant telling us that when he first saw Dortmund in '45, the city had virtually been flattened, a truly shocking thought. Later we were invited out to spend the New Year with a Dortmund family. The member of the family who collected me gave me a long and distressful history of how much he had been through, not a mention of the German contribution to the suffering of a German occupied Europe. When I mentioned my great, great grandfather, Nathan Oppenheimer from Weimar, there was a distinct cooling of the atmosphere.”
I bet Anthony said, “I thought that more than 80% of German production industry survived the Allied bombings.” No, a lot of it was destroyed, and that is why it was able to recover. After World War II, Britain also had enormous war debts, particularly to United States. Yes, and also going back to World War I incidentally, but also Canada. Yes, there was difficulties, that’s true, but the problem with Britain in 1945, the underlying problem with Britain in 1945, and still a problem post Brexit is seeing ourselves not as other see us. We saw ourselves in 1945 as still having an empire. Because of the coronation this weekend, I’ve been thinking back to 1953 when I was eight, and I collected whole, I made a whole scrapbook of the Queen’s visit to the Commonwealth, which we always refer to as the empire. She and Prince Philip toured the globe, and we knew about the empire. We celebrated that we conquered Everest on Coronation Day in 1953. Everything was still Imperial. Post Brexit, we were going to be global, which is another word really, Britain was going to be global Britain, which is almost the same as saying Imperial Britain, and that doesn’t work. We haven’t yet come to terms with who we are, whole of my lifetime. How deeply depressing is that? I told you, you don’t have to agree. Lots of you will disagree. I don’t know your first name. is your second name.
“I have been arguing for over 50 years that the British education system worked against the modernization of industry.” Correct. “As a result, very little British engineering industry exist today.” Correct. “The productivity of British industry goes from bad to worse.” Correct. I wish you were by my side. We agree completely about all of that. We don’t have proper technical education. We’ve never funded technical education in Britain properly ever, and I speak from the inside, not the outside of that.
Leonard says, “The Marshall Plan was ingenious. It dolled out only US dollars, which made it the common currency. You had to buy from the US. The US dollar then became the favourite currency of the world.” Excellent point, Leonard. Completely correct. Why should I be patronising and say completely correct? Absolutely right. I find another phrase.
Q: Vivian says, “Should we be concerned about the strong rise of right in Germany today?”
A: Absolutely, Vivian, and I shall come back to that in my last talk. That’s why I ended today’s talk in a way that I’m might not have done 10 years ago.
Yes, Alfred said, “But Germany skimped on one important, and potentially costly area. Because of the shortage of blue collar labour, cheap primary Turkish labour was imported, and Germany was unwilling to invest in the Germanification of the foreigners.” Absolutely right. I remember going in the 1980s, on my own as a British representative. I was invited to a German conference on adult education. It was, it was mainly about adult literacy, big issue, and I went, and I was asked to go by the German organisers, and I went, and they had, like any other exhibition people, had along the hall, all these exhibits, and I was taken round and you know what you do. You go round and say, “How interesting. Do you do this? Do you do that? How nice to meet you.” And I went round all the stalls and did the right thing, said the right thing, I hope, and there was another stall in a corner, and I wasn’t led there by my German host, and I said, “What’s that stall? Oh, you don’t need to go there. It’s the Turks.” And I said, “Well,” and I did, so I walked over on my own and I said, “Why aren’t you over there?” And they said, “Well, we aren’t allowed to go there.” I’ll have to talk about American Japan at another stage. It’s a big long history as that. Why did France not participate? Because France is always being awkward. The anti-government spent it on all sorts of things like NHS, but they did not spend it on what they should have spent it on. They simply didn’t. We were so short of money. It was just poured into the exchequer. Remember that in Britain, all money goes into one pot.
Oh, Lawrence, I can’t answer that. Oh, I don’t want to answer that. “Do you think that if the Republicans don’t win America, America could have a wave of terrorism as in Germany?” God knows. We are continually horrified by the, I’m sure all of you Americans are well, by the mass shootings. We had all of the Texas mass shooting on our television screens last night, so who knows if people have got access to guns, what people might do.
Q: “The right wing and left wing extremist factions are surely not unique to Germany. Are they more active or more threatening in Germany?”
A: Well, they’re not present here in Britain. They are present in France, and they are present in Italy. That is true. And there are worries in other parts of Europe, much more close worries like Hungary and Poland, but Germany is worrying because of its history, and because it’s not like Hungary and Poland, which are outside, as it were, of Western Europe. It’s really part and parcel and integrated into Western Europe, and there is a fear, as there’s always been a fear that what happens in Germany could spread into France and Italy, and so yes, Germany is a worry.
Q: “How many years of the Weimar Republic?”
A: Well, from the end of the First World War, basically early 1920s to 1933 and the Nazis,
Q: Diane. Oh no, no. This is the well known story. Is it true that people burst into laughter?
A: No, they didn’t, at Kennedy’s, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” because it is a name of a popular donut. No, no, no, no. It is true that that Berliner outside of Berlin can mean a donut. In Berlin, it isn’t the word that’s used, and although it would be okay if he didn’t say, ein, a German scholars say it’s perfectly correct to say, “Ein Berliner” particularly if you are not a born Berliner, so the whole story was one of these fabrications. They wouldn’t have been as stupid as to do that. He was emphasising that as an outsider, he was a Berliner. That’s why they put the ein in. It’s nothing to do with donuts, and nobody laughed at him, absolutely the opposite. Yeah, there was some denazification on the radio and press, not enormous amount and people simply moved to a different regime. I know it sounds awful, but that’s what happened.
Any comment on the, no, no, no. I’ve done that. Yeah, I’m sure Michael, you’re right. Kennedy’s speech was product of speech writers. It would be nice to think that he had some input. Maybe he did. We were used to, before that, to the great orator Churchill, who wrote his own speeches. It’s awfully depressing to know that today no politician speaks his own words, and sometimes they can’t speak correctly the words that are given to them by their speech writers. I make no illusions, particularly to elderly politicians.
Okay, I think I’ve come to the end. You’ve all been tremendous with your questions and comments, and I appreciate them. I appreciate them very much indeed. I look forward to next week, and next week it’s East Germany, so I’ll call it an evening now. Thanks very much for listening.