1. Warning for East and West:
BRANDT, WILLY
Berlin - Three Articles 1. Warning for East & West By Willy Brandt West Berlin In West Berlin resistance is never looked upon as a frivolous matter. Nor do the inhabitants of this city appeal...
...By signing a separate peace treaty, Khrushchev will not serve the peace...
...West German currency is West Berlin's staff of life...
...But by pretending to "recognize" the status quo in Germany, such a peace treaty will actually aggravate the issue of German reunification...
...And it is a dangerous delusion to think that love of their country and the yearning for national reunification can be torn out of the German people's hearts...
...What follows, therefore, is a warning, not a threat—a warning that all concerned would do well to heed...
...Not even international corridor guarantees—desirable though they, too, would be—can prevent the Soviets from exerting pressure against this city...
...Indeed, if nothing were changed in the status of West Berlin but its currency, if West Germany currency ceased to be legal tender and the city were given a currency of its own, within one year West Berlin would be depopulated and devastated both economically and morally...
...It would become a dead city...
...Sometimes one gets the impression that there are people in both the East and the West who feel "fed up with the damned Berlin problem," who are eager to get rid of it or at least take the sting out of it...
...German democrats in my own and in younger generations do not intend to repeat past mistakes...
...nothing can as long as Germany remains divided...
...Nothing can be subtracted from the things that fasten West Berlin to West Germany without encouraging the Communists to attack the currency core of that relationship...
...A final solution of the Berlin problem must wait until the great powers are ready to permit the German people to reunite their country...
...They know that in any European cataclysm they would be struck down first...
...they will never buckle under as did democrats in the Weimar Republic...
...here they can mobilize their moral and material resources, bury their differences and act in unison...
...In other words, they aim at finally dividing this stalwart alliance...
...That would begin to happen the moment Allied authorities failed to respond to Communist interference and harassment of German traffic in the very same manner that they would defend the right of Allied military forces to travel between Berlin and the West...
...By pretending to ameliorate an "abnormal" condition, recent Soviet proposals actually hope to separate the interests of West Berliners from the interests of their protectors...
...Of course, we cannot prevent Khrushchev from signing a separate peace treaty with himself in his German "colony," but we are obliged to warn what the consequences will be...
...The Kremlin knows this...
...While this fact is probably appreciated, what many Western leaders may not yet appreciate sufficiently is the danger of severing or weakening West Berlin's relationship to the Federal Republic in areas that do not directly involve the normal traffic of persons and goods...
...In these circumstances, the only relevant question is how much pressure will the Russians dare to exert...
...The balance will always be unfavorable to the Soviets in the end...
...Freedom-loving forces in my country have woven the demand for national reunification into the fabric of their banners and they will not let this appeal fall into the hands of undemocratic elements...
...Hence, I think it is of paramount importance for the Western Allies to insist more vigorously than ever that four-power responsibility for Germany as a whole cannot be affected by any kind of unilateral Soviet action...
...Since the start of the cold war it has been demonstrated time and again that Berlin can be a source of unmatched difficulty for the Soviet Union...
...We will have to seek ways of surmounting it...
...Moscow enjoys a certain tactical advantage here because of Berlin's geographic position, and there is no escaping this fact...
...Indeed, it will be far more difficult to deal with this problem than it has been until now, with the four former occupation powers acknowledging that it is their responsibility to solve it...
...There will be tension as long as the whole city is surrounded by a Communist realm, even if Berlin itself is reunited...
...To act otherwise would be to live without self-respect as democrats and without faith in our rights as Germans...
...until my country is united, my people will know no rest...
...If Allied rights and obligations in this city do not cover the essential interests of the civilian population, the Allies will be unable to act as protectors, and they will cease to be considered reliable or adequate protectors...
...During the long years of unemployment and difficult reconstruction that followed, it was again the Deutsche Mark West which assured Berliners that they could work their way forward to full prosperity as free men and women...
...Willy Brandt, whose previous exclusive articles on the fluctuating Berlin crisis appeared in our issues of December 8, 1958, and May 16, 1960, is the Mayor of West Berlin...
...All the developments here since 1948 have hinged on this historic choice: The blockade broke out on this issue, and the hope that encouraged the beleaguered population to hold out was built on the introduction of hard West German currency in Berlin...
...The crucial national interest must never become the domain of Communists or neo-Nazi neutralists...
...The key issue behind the resistance of Berliners to all "free city" and most interimagreement proposals is the defense of our right -to choose the currencysystem we belong to...
...We cannot and must not respect a borderline dividing our people as the frontier of a foreign state...
...As long as our Allied friends are determined to provide a satisfactory answer to that question, the Communists will only be able to derive a limited advantage from West Berlin's position...
...This is not only because Berlin contributes to the instability of an anemic East German satellite...
...The North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations have repeatedly rediscovered their solidarity in periods of crisis over Berlin, and nothing frustrates Moscow as much as this sudden closing of the free world's ranks precisely when it is banking on Allied discord...
...IT IS for the Soviet Union to decide what it prefers in Central Europe: a people prepared to live in peace and understanding with its neighbors, seeking conciliation, or a people left with no choice but to press for "revision...
...But no isolated "'solution" of the Berlin problem can remove the sting...
...In this sense, our initiative as revisionists can decide the life or death of democracy in Germany...
...This is what lies behind the lure of its "free city" proposal...
...Not only the confidence of the Berliners, but also the confidence of West German and of foreign investors emanates from the fact that West Berlin is an integral part of the Federal Republic's economic system...
...At that point, we Germans will truly become active revisionists where the division of our country is concerned...
...Nor do the inhabitants of this city appeal for action by their countrymen before weighing carefully the responsibilities and risks involved...
...It is because Berlin has become a rallying point for the Western democracies...
...there would be nothing left to defend...
...The Allies would not then be able to defend Berlin even if they had three divisions stationed there instead of 12,000 soldiers...
...The national movement for German reunification must remain wedded to insistence by the Western Allies on their rights and obligations to bring about such a reunification...
...Then, whoever demands the reunification of his fatherland will be labelled, in Communist terms, a "dangerous revisionist and chauvinist...
...Yet the greater the crisis, the firmer the solidarity of the Western Allies is likely to be...
...At the same time, Berlin will remain an outstanding challenge to the alertness, the faithfulness to principle and the reliability of the West...
...Such a treaty will result in the claim that the boundary dividing Germany is inviolable, that it has become a frontier between two sovereign German states...
...Dependence on West Germany currency is responsible for that minimum of economic and juridical unity which binds West Berlin to the Federal Republic today...
...Thus, the Communists want people to think that nothing will happen in Berlin or in Germany if Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev signs a separate peace treaty with his East German satellite...
...Meanwhile, Germans in West Berlin will set an example of reliability and self-control that should prove to any open-minded neighbor that Germans can safely be entrusted with the right to self-determination...
...without it no one would invest in Berlin, no one would believe in Berlin's normalcy and hard-earned stability...
Vol. 44 • July 1961 • No. 28
