Germany Moves East

...Since there is no inter-German tariff barrier, East Germany is, despite the political barrier, in effect an honorary member of the prospering Common Market...

...The exception is East Germany, which alone is in a position to compete with the West, and to attain a Western standard of living...

...There can be little doubt that discreet use of them, combined with the Russian wish to get its western borders settled, should enable Bonn to exert pressure on Walter Ulbricht and improve the lot of the East Germans, even if reunification is still beyond the horizon...

...Brandt is in power in Bonn...

...It does not seem to have struck the anti-German faction in Britain -again, especially on the Left-that the previous immobilism of German foreign policy really served their interests very well...

...The mantle of de Gaulle, the architect of European destiny, would descend on Willy Brandt...

...Yet there is one factor in East Germany's success not shared by the rest of Eastern Europe: Inter-German trade has supplied East Germany with the best industrial infrastructure and technology in the Communist world, and this trade is constantly on the increase (by 30 per cent last year...

...In Britain, at any rate, delays in the hoped-for process of rapprochement with Communist countries were put down to German obstinacy...

...Something further escaped Britain's long-term critics of Germany: that the national interest of the Germans might lead them, not toward the leadership of a staunch anti-Communist bloc, but to a policy of rapprochement...

...Already in WestJohn Mander's most recent book is The Unrevolutionary Society...

...But the British were behaving in their traditional manner, interpreting others' actions and changes of view in terms of their own national self-interest, though expressing themselves in the language of universal benevolence...

...Of course, there is no immediate likelihood of any such dramatic ren-versement des alliances...

...If peace were ever to be achieved in Europe, the thinking went, West German obstructionism would somehow have to be overcome-or a pax Russo-Americana imposed on the West, and the certainly no less obstinate East, Germans...

...The truth is, the "politics of strength" and the theory of "rollback" never had a chance...

...And this was bound to happen sooner or later, given West Germany's industrial power and its preponderant contribution to nato...

...The cards the Germans hold evidently have a considerable drawing power...

...In the last year, however, the scenario has been rewritten...

...The West Germans, after all, have several strong cards to play in negotiating with the East-and why should they not play them, partic-ularly when they support the declared policies of the U.S., France and Britain...

...This, in turn, contributed to a distrust of the Germans that remained rampant here long after the U.S., France and the Common Market countries had come to terms with post-Hitler Germany...

...What would have happened if Bonn had pursued a foreign policy that did not suit John Foster Dulles or General de Gaulle, but the Germans themselves...

...There is no special secret in this success story, achieved despite the most depressing political circumstances, unless it be that Germans are inherently more efficient than other peoples (a doubtful myth...

...It is often difficult to persuade the British that others play the same game-except that they are more frank about their national concerns...

...De Gaulle's game, it begins to appear, was based to a large extent on mere bluff...

...And in a quiet way, it has been flirting with the elements of a cordial Eastern policy ever since Gerhard Schroeder became Foreign Minister in 1961-perhaps even, some would argue, since Adenauer visited Moscow in 1955 and agreed to mutual diplomatic recognition (thus contradicting the Hallstein doctrine, supposedly the cornerstone of his foreign policy...

...Both events were greeted by the British with unconcealed enthusiasm: The road was now open into Europe, and the Germans would abandon their Adenauer-like policies...

...The French, for example, seem openly dismayed by the way the power balance in Europe has shifted suddenly from the west to the east bank of the Rhine (suggesting an uneasy parallel with events exactly one century ago...

...His putative successor would seem to be in a far more favorable position to influence the entire European scene...

...De Gaulle has departed...

...Rich and prosperous, West Germany is no longer afraid of Communism, either internally or externally...

...two immobilist structures would be simultaneously dismantled...

...But it is only logical that Bonn should now seek its advantage to the East, just as it sought it in the West in the 1950s...

...The wheel would then have come full circle...

...The real obstructionists were always the Russians, more so than ever after Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and the impossibility of reversing the after-effects of Hitler's war was quite apparent to most thinking Germans by the '60s...

...Its Communist neighbors are understandably jealous of these benefits, the Soviets not least (witness the large-scale deal involving the exchange of Soviet natural gas for West German steel pipes, recently completed with Brandt's blessing...

...Today, opinion polls show that a narrow majority of West Germans (51 per cent), and a higher proportion of young people, would not balk at recognition of the German Democratic Republic, and less than a third would strongly object to an affirmation of the Oder-Neisse line as Poland's western frontier...

...ern Europe one hears whispers of the wicked word "Rapallo": Might it not be in the German interest to reach an understanding with the Soviet Union, as it had once before under Walter Rathenau in 1922, preempting any settlement without its consent by the Americans...

...Whether Brandt succeeds or fails, it appears that Britain's professional anti-Germans will have some rethinking to do...

...Eastern Europe-with one exception-has decisively lost the economic race with Western Europe...

...The charge brought against them in the past, particularly by the Left, was that of "immobil-ism": They alone among the peoples of Europe held fast to the Cold War policies personified by John Foster Dulles...