Willy Brandt by Hélène Miard-Delacroix

Author:Hélène Miard-Delacroix [Miard-Delacroix, Hélène]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Political Process, Leadership, History, Europe, General, Biography & Autobiography, Historical, World, European
ISBN: 9781786720245
Google: JemKDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2016-09-19T01:12:39+00:00

Going to Moscow to Go to Warsaw

The Berlin border-crossing agreement of Christmas 1963 had been a humanitarian measure, allowing families separated by the wall to see each other once a year. But how could a feeling of shared identity be maintained in the long term without a more permanent arrangement for communication and exchange between the two sides? It did not take much imagination to see what the most likely scenario was: if reunification became possible in 50, 100 or 200 years, it would be too late, and completely pointless. Without contact, the two populations would have become estranged from each other. To stop things reaching that point, the ‘reunification imperative’ imposed by the Bonn Constitution on all German politicians had to be taken seriously.

Brandt had to negotiate a change in direction, by any means possible within the law, in order to introduce a new approach. ‘If there are new objectives, we must admit that everything which has been taken for the absolute truth until now may not in fact be completely correct,’ Brandt said in the Bundestag. He had spent hours refining his inaugural policy statement to make clear exactly how far this new Eastern policy should go, this Ostpolitik which would turn the Germans into ‘good neighbours at home and abroad’.7 Home included the Germany of the Soviet zone, although the Eastern Bloc wanted it to be recognised as part of Germany’s ‘abroad’. And what should be done about the GDR? Brandt continued: ‘Even if two states exist in Germany, they are not foreign countries. Their relations with each other can only be of a special kind.’ It was a well-chosen turn of phrase, which managed to please everyone. It insisted on the unity of Germany, but at the same time, as if in passing, referred to the GDR as a state. His words seemed peaceful, but they masked a breaking of Bonn’s unconditional taboo: refusing to recognise the existence of the GDR and affirming that only Federal Germany had the authority to represent the German people.

Brandt’s concession had a particular audience in mind: Moscow. Brandt and Scheel were convinced that the key to change lay with the Soviets, whose position was not definitively fixed, and who must somehow be movable. In Brandt, Leonid Brezhnev, the general secretary of the USSR Communist Party, saw an interesting man who did not correspond to the communists’ image of a social democrat. If Brandt approached Moscow, Moscow might be open to discussion. The Chancellor judged that he had said enough in his inaugural policy statement, and that involving the whole government in the discussions would only end up complicating his plans. He decided to send Egon Bahr on a semi-secret mission to Moscow. He knew Bahr to be a fierce defender of the idea of Germany, so convinced of the West’s superiority that he saw no danger that free Germany would be contaminated by contact with the East. Brandt could give him carte blanche to negotiate within the framework the two

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.