German Unity and Rearmament: The Challenge of Unification:
LOWENTHAL, RICHARD
GERMAN UNITY AND REARMAMENT The Challenge of Unification By Richard Lowenthal LONDON THE MID-JANUARY Soviet declaration on Germany, offering for the first time free all-German elections under...
...Since World War II, our policy toward Germany has had two aims, which time and Soviet attitudes have often made to seem contradictory...
...they present views which are highly individual...
...Already, reports from West Germany show that the offer of free all-German elections has made a deep impression on independent German opinion, even far into the ranks of the Government parties...
...But it should welcome, not fear, any chance for an alternative solution which, however unknown and risky at first sight, would ultimately be more in tune with the nature of things...
...and it would not be possible to refute this view conclusively if the offer had never been put to the test...
...they would merely have to be strong enough to prevent Germany's being overrun without serious fighting—with the main cover for the strategic prize of the Ruhr still provided by the deterrent forces of Western bombers under an international guarantee of the Locarno type...
...To the West German Socialist opposition, which has always held out for four-power negotiations with Russia on this subject, even when there was no evidence whatever that Russia was willing, the offer has given a new, telling argument...
...Even apart from that, rejection of the Russian offer might leave millions of Germans feeling that a real chance for restoring the unity of their nation in freedom had been arbitrarily rejected by the West...
...There is only one risk against which no institutional guarantee could be provided in such a system: the risk that an independent, armed Germany might one day line up with Russia against the West...
...The two articles which follow tackle precisely these questions...
...Obviously, the loss of the West German area for the Western land and air forces would pose grave problems for the land defense of Western Europe, but the disengagement of both Western and Eastern forces from Germany would also give scope for a reduction of conventional armaments...
...Most Weslern observers regard the new-Soviet offer as a mere trick, inspired by the hope that the West will turn it down and thus take responsibility in German eyes for keeping Germany permanently divided...
...So long as the Russians remain determined to prevent German unity, the West must make do with the Western part as best it can...
...but clearly the West cannot adopt conditional ratification and negotiation with a time limit as a tactical solution unless it is prepared, if the Russians are willing, to accept a positive outcome of the negotiations...
...for the Russians have convincingly pointed out that, once the Paris agreements on West German sovereignty and rearmament are in force, they may still negotiate??but no longer about German unity...
...Far ahead lay the ultimate "maximum program": a reunified democratic Germany with military and political tics to the Atlantic alliance...
...Yet, it is highly doubtful that an adequate answer to the new Soviet offer can be found at all, so long as the West confines itself to the tactical plane...
...The tactical risk of negotiation before ratification could be greatly reduced if the Germans adopted, in agreement with the Western powers, a procedure of "conditional ratification" with a time limit: The Bundestag could empower the President to deposit the ratification documents in a few months' time, unless the Soviet Union had meanwhile bound itself in a four-power conference to accept free all-German elections according to the principles defined in earlier resolutions of the Bundestag, as well as in repeated proposals by the Western powers...
...Logically, there were few contradictions, but politics is not logic...
...The West cannot "call the Russian bluff" if it is bluffing itself...
...Richard Lowenthal, now Bonn correspondent of the London Observer, was prominent in the German Socialist movement before Hitler...
...Ever since Secretary of State Dean Acheson proposed West German rearmament, we have actually been haunted by two great dilemmas: 1. What would we do if the USSR agreed to German unity in freedom on the single condition that the reunified Germany make no "entangling alliances" ? 2. In rearming the West German Republic, are we sure that the military tail will not wag the parliamentary dog...
...The first aim is political and ideological: the peaceful reunification of Germany under free institutions...
...If the West is to avoid these dangers, an attempt at negotiation must be made now...
...it would also leave such a Germany, however Western-inclined, in a politically independent position between East and West...
...To reconsider these plans now would upset the entire long-range program for Western defense in Europe, because a Germany reunited with Russia's consent would presumably have to be neutral and free from occupying forces of either side...
...Secondly, the Western powers??and the Federal Government in Bonn —are by now firmly committed to linking West Germany to the Atlantic alliance and then negotiating with Russia on the basis of a partitioned Germany...
...Behind these lay the ultimate "minimum program": preventing the marriage of German industrial power with Soviet armed might, a task which George F. Kennan defined as the single most important objective of U. S. policy...
...When all is said, the facts of geography and population in Europe do not provide for any adequate balance to Russian pressure so long as the weight of Germany is missing: Any system which seeks to keep Germany permanently divided and to replace its weight by any other combination is inherently artificial and unstable...
...The second aim is political and military: the utilization of German manpower and industry in the cause of freedom...
...In fact, the present situation shows that Western strategy in Europe, unless it is ready to envisage this alternative to its present plans, is still too rigid to be successful...
...But what if the Russians should really agree to genuine free all-German elections...
...Max Brauer was Mayor of Hamburg from 1946 to 1953...
...Yet, it seems to me that this view, however seemingly well founded in history, overlooks the changed contemporary situation —of which the Germans are thoroughly aware—in which Germany could no longer be the senior or equal partner, but only the satellite of Russia...
...it is a challenge to new strategic thinking on the chances of ending the cold war in Europe...
...The defenses of a united and independent Germany, no doubt limited by the peace treaty, would form part of the effective balance against Russian and satellite military predominance in Europe, even without an alliance with the West...
...GERMAN UNITY AND REARMAMENT The Challenge of Unification By Richard Lowenthal LONDON THE MID-JANUARY Soviet declaration on Germany, offering for the first time free all-German elections under international supervision without insisting on the previous formation of an all-German authority incorporating representatives of the East German puppet regime, has been treated by the Western governments as an awkward tactical embarrassment...
...And the decision to accept and to try seriously for a solution on these lines—an independent, genuinely free, and united Germany, not tied to the Western alliance—would mean adopting an alternative to present Western political strategy, not merely a tactical move...
...This view also overlooks the deep gulf which the last war and the postwar experience have created between Germans and Russians, and which would be even more noticeable in an independent Germany of which the former Soviet Zone formed a part...
...Nobody in the West wishes to face the obvious military and political risks of such a leap into the unknown at this stage...
...What if they are so worried about the prospect of a rearmed West Germany, allied to the West, that they are even prepared to sacrifice their East German satellite in order to prevent it...
...hence the inclination to look at the Soviet offer merely from the tactical angle of how to play it down, to evade it, or to unmask it as insincere...
...There are two reasons why the Western governments are so far inclined to look on the Soviet declaration as a purely tactical move...
...If the Russian proposal was a trick, the negotiations would call the bluff and nothing would have been lost for the West except a few months—a trifling loss compared with the risk of a disaffected West Germany...
...Admittedly, the prospect is not very probable...
...It is, of course, this fear which has largely dominated Western thinking on the subject and has led many Western statesmen to accept the prospect of a permanently partitioned Germany as the lesser evil...
...In fact, it is much more...
...It would be difficult to work out an adequate solution on these lines, but not beyond the wit of man...
...If negotiation is now refused, German organized labor—for the whole trade-union movement is committed to a similar attitude—may well pass from its present Parliamentary opposition to the Paris agreements to an attitude of non-cooperation which would entail grave dangers for the creation of the future West German army...
...First, all the evidence of recent years —at least since the Soviet statements of August 1953 which drew the lessons of the East German June rising of the same year—has suggested that the Soviet Government feels it cannot really afford free elections in Germany, since they would mean abandoning the East German Communist regime, with unforeseeable effects on the other satellites...
...They believe that, if the Russians are taken at their word at a four-power conference, they will use one or more of the half-dozen verbal ambiguities in the declaration to get out of their seeming new commitment...
Vol. 38 • March 1955 • No. 10
