James Mann - The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan

The prolonged test of wills between the United States and the Soviet Union over intermediate-range missiles in Europe had increasingly unsettled the Germans. The West German governments of both Schmidt and Kohl, who succeeded him in October 1982, had supported the deployment of the Pershing II and cruise missiles. The rationale was clear: without those American missiles, the Soviet SS-20s might enable Moscow to subject Western Europe to nuclear blackmail. Yet once the Reagan administration and its Western allies decided that NATO should deploy its own intermediate-range missiles in response to the Soviets, then many in West Germany began to voice a new set of fears: that the Cold War could erupt into a nuclear conflict, one that might begin on German soil. Perhaps with the new deployments of missiles that could not cross the Atlantic Ocean, the Reagan administration and the Soviet Union—whose relations, in 1983, were more acrimonious than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis—might be less hesitant about waging a limited nuclear war that would affect only Europe. “The Europeans were afraid that America would not be sufficiently interested in the dangers of these new weapons, because they couldn’t reach America anyhow,” explained Richard von Weizsäcker, who served as mayor of West Berlin in the early Reagan years and became the West German president in 1984. 15

The groundswell of antinuclear sentiment contributed to an unusual new form of German nationalism, one that sometimes spanned the longstanding divisions between West and East Germany. At one point, former West German chancellor Willy Brandt called the new missiles being stationed on German soil “the work of the devil.” East German president Erich Honecker picked up Brandt’s phrase and began to use it himself. Honecker also began to speak of a “coalition of reason” between Bonn and Berlin, suggesting that he would like to see both the American and the Soviet missiles removed from German soil.

According to Egon Krenz, Honecker’s top aide and heir apparent, Soviet officials were angered by what Honecker was saying. In July 1984, two articles in Pravda, the Soviet Communist Party organ, suddenly warned of the dangers of German reunification. A few weeks later, Honecker was summoned to a secret meeting in Moscow. There, the senior-most leaders of the Soviet Union—among them Communist Party general secretary Konstantin Chernenko, Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov, and the rising young Communist Party official Mikhail Gorbachev—served notice to Honecker that he should keep his foreign policy in line with that of Moscow and should not get too friendly with the West Germans.

Chernenko warned that “the issue concerning development of the relationship between the GDR [East Germany] and the FRG [West Germany] is a question of our common global policy. This question directly affects the Soviet Union and the entire socialist community.” He said he could not see how warming up to West Germany would do anything to offset the harm caused by the American missiles. 16

Gorbachev, as an aide to Chernenko, was particularly outspoken in warning the East Germans not to go astray. “In these negotiations, Gorbachev played the hard-liner, so to speak,” recalled Krenz. “He criticized Honecker very sharply.” 17

Other factors besides the missile deployments were also driving West and East Germany toward each other. During the mid-1980s, powerful economic forces had prompted Honecker to turn toward the West. The East Germans were desperate for hard currency. In 1983, Franz Josef Strauss, the Bavarian prime minister who was West Germany’s most prominent conservative politician, helped arrange a government-backed loan of one billion marks (then about four hundred million dollars) to East Germany, a landmark deal.

In the years that followed, Honecker sought and was given ever-increasing amounts of financial help from West Germany. In return, Honecker was willing to permit increasing numbers of East Germans to emigrate to the West and to make it easier for West Germans to visit their families in the East. By mid-1984, Honecker was talking eagerly, and in public, about making what would be the first visit to West Germany by an East German leader. Resistance from Moscow forced him to postpone the idea. In the same Pravda commentary that argued against German reunification, the Soviets also warned that West Germany was using “economic levers and political contacts” to undermine East Germany’s Communist system. 18

In short, by the mid-1980s, West Germany was beginning to pursue a conscious strategy of easing Cold War tensions through accommodation with East Germany. In a sense, this effort was the natural follow-up to the 1970s policy of Ostpolitik, Brandt’s drive to improve relations with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. “We were ultimately convinced—I can say this also on behalf of Willy Brandt—we were trying to overcome the division of Germany,” said Egon Bahr, Brandt’s longtime aide and adviser. 19

The West Germans were increasingly tired of Cold War confrontation and skeptical about American policy. The shift in mood could be detected not merely in public opinion or within the opposition Social Democratic Party, but also among West German’s more conservative leaders. In West Berlin, Mayor Eberhard Diepgen, a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, began seeking new cooperation with the East Germans on such local issues as traffic and gas supplies. “In those times, West Germans were on the way to accepting, more and more, the division of Germany,” reflected Diepgen in an interview many years later. 20

Kohl, as West German chancellor, generally resisted these trends. He emerged as a particularly strong supporter of Reagan and, more generally, of American policy in Europe. Kohl warned of the dangers of “Finlandization,” a reference to Finland’s policy during the Cold War of maintaining neutrality and declining to challenge the authority of the Soviet Union in international affairs. West Germany’s peace movement had revived a proposal first put forward by former Polish foreign minister Adam Rapacki for a nuclear-free zone that would cover East and West Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and perhaps eventually other countries as well. Kohl summarily rejected the idea, arguing that it would mean that the Americans would be effectively pushed back to the English Channel, leaving the Soviet Union to dominate Europe. 21

However, Kohl and the West German government were also moving toward doing business with East Germany in ways that made the Reagan administration uneasy. American officials complained that the West Germans were conferring too much legitimacy upon Honecker’s government. To be sure, the Soviet Union didn’t like the idea of Honecker’s visiting West Germany, but the same prospect put the Reagan administration on edge too. In mid-1986, for example, American officials became alarmed by reports that Kohl’s government was thinking about an agreement with Honecker that would formally accept as permanent the post-World War II division of the city of Berlin; the West Germans would formally recognize East Berlin as part of East Germany, and the East Germans would accept the incorporation of West Berlin into West Germany. 22

Even ceremonial events were becoming problematic. The city of Berlin was officially observing its 750th anniversary in 1987, and West and East German officials began preparing separate events to commemorate the event. By the fall of 1986, the three allied powers in Berlin had let it be known that their three heads of state—Queen Elizabeth, French president François Mitterrand, and President Reagan—would visit West Berlin at some point during the anniversary year. But then Honecker extended an invitation to the young mayor of West Berlin, Eberhard Diepgen, to come to East Berlin for its celebration. Allied officials feared such a visit would undermine their legal position that Berlin should still be considered a united city governed by the World War II Allies; Diepgen’s visit might instead buttress Honecker’s claim that East Berlin was the capital of East Germany.