The So-Called Berlin Question
Berliner", "
The German voters have expressed their dissatisfaction with the foreign policy of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer whom. the socialist leader Dr. Schumacher once, in a premeditated rash of...
...That would be a crudely materialistic view...
...It should receive an East own government...
...Munich was followed by the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact...
...He has incorporated East Berlin in his satellite East German state (which is a violation of existing agreements...
...He cannot, however, by any act of his, abolish rights which the allies hold, which include the three air corridors and the right to travel on the ground for allied personnel...
...Also in passing, we note the international co-operation of the militarists: without Khrushchev's threats, Kennedy might not have obtained Congressional approval for his defense budget so quickly...
...This agreement, of course, was signed by subordinate officials of the two governments which don't recognize each other...
...Since no East * * The barbed wire that divides Berlin is of West German manufacture...
...But Khrushchev, who is sensitive to satellite opinion, has dropped the specter of a resurrected Germany...
...The gain would be entirely ours, since we are in no position to challenge the arbitrary disposition of territory which the Russians have made after the war, but such a declaration of good intentions would go a long way in alleviating the fear of Germany's irredentism which drives her Eastern neighbors into Russian arms...
...The simplest answer would start out from the endemic crisis in the satellite empire...
...What we are asked to sign, rather, is an admission that there is no alternative to surrender...
...It should supervise of their fathers, of rights which we prefree elections in all of Germany and tend to defend...
...to sign is not an arrangement that might be more workable than the present one...
...The tion by peaceful means, they might be only real solution of the so-called Ger-faced with a revolutionary situation man or Berlin problem, indeed, is free-full of unexpected dangers...
...It is irrelevant whether these territories are Polish or German (in fact few Germans survive there or in the Sudeten land...
...One might say that the Wall has not changed anything in the real relation of power...
...The servitude of East Germany is the stopper which holds this ferment in the empire bottle, and the freedom of West Berlin might uncork it...
...The tradition of diplomatic techniques here calls for an enlargement of the area under discussion...
...Suppose Khrushchev could force the West to "formalize" the status quo—would his puppet regime in Pankow be less odious...
...men will find a way out of the impasse...
...For the first time Germans were confronted with the truth about the balance of terror...
...First, Berlin today is a "free city," inasmuch as it does not elect deputies to the Bundestag, and the laws of the Federal Republic are not automatically valid in Berlin...
...But he is doing precisely the opposite—serving ultimatums and threatening atomic warfare...
...Why must he, instead of declaring himself satisfied, threaten eight countries with extinction unless a paper is signed giving him what he al ready has...
...But he is creating a crisis where there was none—why such irrational behavior...
...If by "UN presence" is meant the transfer of the world organization's headquarters to a place of trouble where Khrushchev might control the supply of hotel personnel and general ambience, the suggestion is ridiculous...
...They afford a certain convenience," he said, "but we do not seem to need them yet...
...It is not surprising that advocates of surrender, of unilateral disarmament and of non-resistance, are becoming more vocal at this juncture...
...Ruhr industrialists are doing a flourishing business with the East** and so great is the economic interdependence of the two Germanys that the mere threat of a boycott forced Ulbricht to conclude an airtight agreement guaranteeing the free flow of goods from and to Berlin...
...What matters to Khrushchev is our advice to our partisans beyond the Iron Curtain: give up all hope that we are interested in your fate...
...there are indications that on August 13, when the Wall went up in Berlin, the East German government was deadly afraid of counteraction...
...Already, at thetime of proofreading, some Western chancelleries speak of "making negotiable" positions which only yesterday were considered vital...
...In passing, we may note that neither Berlin nor even West Germany is militarily defensible, except to reconquer their ruins...
...From an A.P...
...But he attached two conditions to his acquiescence in the status quo: the West must confirm de jure what today merely is recognized de facto, and the ugly anomalous situation of Berlin, 100 miles inside the Eastern zone of Germany, must be regularized...
...When nothing happened, Ulbricht's press crowed "Kennedy is a coward...
...It is the proper place to lodge the plaint against broken treaties and dom for the Germans to choose their promises...
...Berliner can go to West Berlin, the "show window" is boarded up—so what is Khrushchev really trying to achieve...
...no one seriously challenges his possession of East Germany...
...It has been shown that freedom has no power...
...Many Germans would condone neutralism rather than abandon an illusory claim to lost territories...
...Let us not forget that the Russians ousted the legal mayor and councilmen from the City Hall (situated in the Eastern sector), and so far Senator Mansfield alone has asked for restoration of an all-Berlin administration...
...But it is not Berlin's prosperity which has caused 1000 to 2000 people a week, year in year out, to abandon all their possessions in Eastern Germany and to start a new life as refugees—in freedom...
...However, United Nations might have another function in the present dispute...
...Besides these elementary truisms, the technicalities of the so-called Berlin issue pale into insignificance...
...surrender yourselves to the Soviet authorities as we have surrendered to their atomic blackmail...
...Sixth, after Khrushchev has concluded peace with his puppet government in Pankow, he can, of course, under international law (what there is of it) transfer to Ulbricht whatever sovereign rights he holds, in particular the control of the access roads to Berlin...
...West Berlin itself, the largest industrial city of both Germanys, is viable only because of its heavy tax subsidies, and its present boom has been manufactured to make it the West's show window in the East...
...However, this policy may be revised soon...
...They handed Adenauer a vote of no-confidence in the United States...
...A deliberative Assembly should be under less, not under more pressure than it is now...
...But he can harass those trying to exercise these rights, or use such harassment to bludgeon the Western allies into recognizing the Ulbricht government...
...The Socialist vote increased by 13%, from 31 to 36% of the total...
...With a situation so completely involved, and basically impossible of solution, is there any hope that statesExcept air traffic to West Berlin...
...Some major horse-trading may be done here—the concession of control, by the Russians, against the Western concession of a limitation on German rearmament...
...United Nations is an ideal mediator for such deals, but we should distinguish between UN as a bargaining place, UN as an agency of moral pressure to bargain in good faith or as an alibi for poor bargains, and UN as an enforcement agency...
...the institution of pioneer projects of inspection and control to verify compliance with such agreements...
...As a general, we would attempt to pull our troops out of such a trap...
...the "thinning out" of foreign occupation troops or their complete withdrawal from the area...
...Ever since their Vienna meeting Kennedy had tried to convey to Khrushchev the message that the United States will not brook any unilateral changes in the status of Berlin...
...Charge It to...
...The world also understood that Dulles did not believe in "Liberation" when Russian tanks quelled the East German rebellion in 1953 and the Hungarian revolution in 1956...
...FAR FROM BEING an instrument of German revanchist designs—as some illinformed or ill-disposed writers on the American and British Left continue to charge—the Western alliance to this day has been an impediment to German irredentism...
...Soviet diplomacy then told the Germans west of the Elbe: you may visit your cousin across the river provided you don't join NATO...
...We are told that he must prove to the Chinese the value of "peaceful co-existence" as a method of conquest in preference to militant warfare...
...Mende, a former officer who likes to display the knight's cross he earned in Hitler's war, conducted his campaign under the slogan: Germany must have an independent foreign policy...
...This feeling of shame and impotence will spread and more people will run for the cover of neutralism if more proofs of Western flabbiness are forthcoming...
...but all sectors were supposed to be under one administration...
...They would be a signal for West Germany to seek accommodation with the Soviet Union...
...Soviet propaganda once played with the theme of German unity...
...Irenaeus Hersher, O.F.M., treasurer of the Franciscan Educational Conference, said monks in Canada had been using the cards because "they are not supposed to handle money...
...after the walling-off of West Berlin, however, the voters took a second look at Germany's future and decided that the close alliance with the West no longer promised fulfillment of their national aims...
...It maintained the status quo and protected the West German Republic within its present boundaries...
...IF THIS IS SO, why then should Khrushchev not be happy with the present state of affairs...
...The German voters have expressed their dissatisfaction with the foreign policy of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer whom...
...The free city of West Berlin is the only beacon of hope for the 70 million captive people in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Hungary, Lithuania, Estonia, Livonia and Eastern Germany...
...That was in Stalin's time...
...This increase may partly be attributed to the dynamic personality of Berlin's Mayor Willy Brandt, to the appeal of many youthful candidates on his list and to the abandonment of Marxism in the party's program—but only partly...
...Much of the current diplomatic interchange is devoted to facesaving: we will allow Khrushchev to climb down from his limb if he will allow us to maintain that we did not surrender...
...However, to the uninitiated, a few things need to be repeated...
...he has severed the unity of the city (which is illegal under existing statutes...
...Is it thinkable that a man like Khrushchev is so much disturbed by the lack of legal title to anything he holds in Hungary, in Germany or elsewhere...
...if we know Khrushchev and Ulbricht, it will be less workable...
...They have long resented NATO as the instrument of an American policy which assigned to them the role of foot soldiers in the cold war, and the more nationalistic among them never cherished the consequences: West Germany's integration into the West European Community threatens to absorb her sovereignty and virtually excludes the restoration of an allGerman sovereignty...
...if the Western powfree speech to all German parties (the ers and the United Nations fail to Communists in West Germany and the help them in achieving self-determinaother parties in East Germany...
...between the two states...
...You are asked to make a sacrifice of pride in the interest of peace, you have lost these territories which you once colonized, as a consequence of a war— neither as an atonement for starting it nor as a penalty for losing it...
...To bring peace to Eastern Europe, we might further think of the plans, dating back to 1952 and 1955, which are known by the names of Van Zeeland, Eden and Rapacki...
...He is determined to show that the threat of retaliation cannot stop him...
...This right-wing party which must be represented in any coalition, tends to seek an accommodation with the Soviet Union, in exchange for the mirage that hoping for unification might not be in vain forever...
...7 Canadian members of the Franciscan Order are carrying credit cards...
...Under prevailing conditions, the replacement of Western by UN troops would be the beginning of an erosion process which must end in the loss of Berlin to the West...
...Franciscans take a vow of poverty upon joining the order...
...Khrushchev never offered to "unify" the city...
...The fulfillment of Hitler's "last demand" was followed by accelerated, increased demands...
...The mere prospect that the escape hatch might be closed swelled the stream of refugees to 2000 a day—and forced Ulbricht's hand...
...he wishes to keep what he has and to negotiate about what is still missing...
...Tactfully and earnestly the question might be broached to the Germans in these terms: you have buried the centuries-old axe of wars with France, why not mend your fence with your Eastern neighbor...
...Suppose the proAmerican high-brow magazine Der Monat, and the satirical weekly, Tarantel, were published in Bonn instead of Berlin: would Ulbricht be any less low-brow and ridiculous...
...it would not be surprising if the message of Western surrender also would find a hearing among the policy-makers in some countries...
...Father Herscher declined to say whether Franciscans in the United States would start using credit cards...
...WE ARE TOLD that his position at home, in front of the Chinese or the generals, is shaky and that he must have a "success"—but is it our business to bail him out of the hole into which he has "ultimatumed" himself...
...For the last twelve years the 70 million captives have looked to Berlin as a place where the Western powers are committed to defend the rights of free men...
...Germany's Slav neighbors found satisfaction in this de facto out come of the world war and the cold war...
...Now they remembered the Socialists' frequent warning that Adenauer would not and could not achieve the reunification of the two Germanys...
...Though for reasons already discussed the complete disbanding of the NATO and Warsaw Pact alliances is neither feasible nor desirable, European socialists feel that their belligerence can be de-fused...
...in previous local elections the Socialists had made higher percentage gains on the strength of their welfare politics, but hitherto the voters always had refused to extend their confidence to them in a national election where foreign policy was the major issue...
...Second, any change in the present status of Berlin would mean that (under the troika rule which Khrushchev imposes on United Nations) the freedom of the Berliners would be "guaranteed" by troops from, say, Sweden, Cyprus, Egypt, Ghana, Cambodia and Cuba—a prospect which makes this Berliner shudder...
...the socialist leader Dr...
...It therefore is difficult to understand the U. S. government's military demonstrations there...
...Though the Bonn gvernment does not recognize the Pankow government and severs diplomatic relations with any third government* that maintains an embassy in Pankow, in fact treaty relations exist • Except the Soviet Union itself...
...Since the Wall has been erected, East Germany is better insulated against spies and agitators than it could ever be if Berlin were declared a "free city"—the aim Khrushchev pretends he is pursuing...
...Neither Khrushchev nor Ulbricht needs Berlin but they can use its vulnerable position to demonstrate that freedom can no longer be defended anywhere...
...It is further suggested that the West should recognize the present border between East Germany and Poland—the Oder-Neisse line—as definitive and that West Germany should resume relations with Poland...
...And let there be no mistake— any of the "reasonable" solutions of the so-called German question, to which one might agree if this were an ordinary dispute about establishing order among the nations, indeed any of the solutions which we have advocated ourselves in the Spring issue of DISSENT * (and which the first draft of this article, written before August 13 had reiterated), any of the solutions so movingly and penetratingly recommended by Walter Lippmann and other reasonable men, would be proof —or would be so interpreted by Khrushchev— that the West is not ready to fight...
...They provide various degrees of disengagement or detente, such as forbidding the use, training, installation or equipment of atomic artillery in an area extending between the rivers Rhine, Danube and Vistula...
...The Rev...
...Suppose the RIAS transmitter— the West's strongest voice in Eastern Europe—were moved 100 miles west: would Ulbricht sit any easier in his satrap's chair...
...To renounce this irredenta means turning a material loss into a moral opportunity...
...Neither the French nor the British care to see Germany re-united and the U. S. has paid lip service to a transcendental aim of German unity —but it did so only to save Adenauer's face when his opposition accused him of neglecting the German cause...
...On their face, these demands do not sound so unreasonable...
...The terror has increased in Poland, xenophobia is officially whip ped into a rage in Czechoslovakia, the Ulbricht regime could not survive one week if the Russian troops were withdrawn, the empire economic plan has broken down...
...The crisis does not consist in any anomaly of Berlin's location, it has been created to test the West's will to resist...
...This interpretation is forcefully sup ported by the dazzling success of the Free Democratic Party whose leader, Dr...
...People in Europe who are more sensitive to the moral factors of the power game, feel acutely that something has changed...
...a Khrushchev without the Berlin "toothache" will be more formidable than the one we have known before...
...the right of German civilians to free access is implied, but it always has been controlled by the Ulbricht government.* Fifth, for its supply of merchandise Berlin depends on treaties with the East German authorities, i.e., on their willingness to keep the roads and canals in repair, not to levy prohibitive transit tolls, etc...
...The main reason for the Socialist success, all observers and the pollsters agree, was the Western powers' failure to act on August 13...
...Schumacher once, in a premeditated rash of nationalist anger dubbed "the Chancellor of the Allies...
...For all practical purposes the Iron Curtain is the boundary between freedom and servitude in Europe...
...Fourth, the freedom of access which has been guaranteed by treaties refers to allied personnel exclusively...
...Many who feel that the Berlin anomaly cannot last forever anyway, consider the injection of UN as a painless way of pulling this tooth...
...In these days, when Africa and Asia are maturing to self-determination, these once independent countries may claim for themselves the elementary Human Rights to which the United Nations have set their seal...
...the question is neither one of law nor of right, but one of political wisdom: we are paying millions of good-will money to the Poles, but we don't dare to set their minds at ease on the one question that matters, for fear of offending a few million German voters who already have received indemnification for the loss of their property...
...the majority of the German demand for self-determina-German voters today were unborn or tion, an East Berlin appeal to restore under age when Hitler came to power...
...Dispatch, dated August 15...
...To that end, well-meaning people suggest a "UN presence" in Berlin—with all due respect to the late inventor of the term, this is another version of the "let Dag do it" philosophy, burdening the world organization with assignments it cannot fulfill in the absence of big-power understanding, and need not undertake if the big powers do their duty...
...In fact he is—and even tries to legalize it...
...Third, the area Khrushchev is talking about is only that part of Berlin which under the Potsdam agreement was to be policed by the Western powers...
...If he wished to prove that "peaceful co-existence" works to his advantage, he would simply open Berlin to all traffic and allow it to be absorbed by its natural economic hinterland...
...It is in this respect that the German elections are so significant...
...He frankly told the British when in London: you guard your Germans, we'll guard ours...
...Tragic as the lot of any refugee is, the expellees from Eastern Germany must be counted as aristocrats among the exiles of all times...
...Khrushchev cannot extinguish this beacon of hope, but he can dim it: he is trying to show that the West does not stand by its word...
...Up to that date, the Socialist vote was trailing badly behind its potential in all polls...
...IN THE OPINION of many European statesmen, as well as some U. S. Senators, the New York Times and White House advisers, it would be good politics to grant the Pankow government formal recognition, in return for a new and better guaranty of free communications to and from Berlin for allied personnel, German civilians and merchandise...
...the unity of the city and the legality They cannot be deprived, for the sins of its constitution...
...Could it make much difference to Khrushchev whether this state of affairs is merely enforced by the power of his rockets or is confirmed in writing...
...Khrushchev means to prove that there is no "balance of terror" if one side is determined to reduce the world to ashes and the other is not...
...Russian treaties always are dynamic: what we are asked * One should note too there is a difference between extending recognition to thePankow and Peking governments of ourown will, or at gunpoint...
...Surrender of Berlin would (I do not say "might") be followed by a KhrushchevDe Gaulle Pact...
...If "UN presence" means the dispatch of troops, I must side with Khrushchev's statement, that there is no such thing as an impartial arbiter...
Vol. 8 • September 1961 • No. 4
