To understand the geographic constraints on German initiatives, just look at the current map here and also recent historical maps of Europe. Today, Germany shares land borders with nine countries (Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, and Denmark), while its North Sea and Baltic coasts are exposed over water to eight other countries (Britain, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania). In addition, Germany acquired three other land neighbors when it annexed Austria in 1938 (Italy, Yugoslavia, and Hungary), and one more land neighbor (Lithuania) between 1918 and 1939. Some of those countries formed part of two large land neighbors (Russia and the Habsburg Empire) until 1918. That makes a total of 20 recent historical neighbors of Germany (if one counts each historical entity only once, rather than double-counting land and overwater neighbors or else former and modern successor states). Of those 20, 19—all except Switzerland—have either invaded, attacked by sea, had German troops stationed or (Sweden) in transit, or been invaded by Germany between 1866 and 1945. Five of those 20 neighbors are or were powerful (France, Russia, the Habsburg Empire, Britain, and formerly Sweden).
It’s not just that Germany has neighbors. Most other countries also have neighbors, but borders between neighboring countries often coincide with protective geographic barriers. However, northern Germany is part of the flat North European Plain (Plate 6.6), which is not dissected by any natural defense barriers: no mountain chains (unlike the Pyrenees that divide Spain from France, or the Alps that ring Italy), and only narrow rivers easily crossed by armies throughout history. (Not even the Rhine has been a serious barrier to armies.) For example, when my Polish-American wife Marie and I flew from Berlin to Warsaw, Marie, with the black humor that has permitted Poles to retain their sanity throughout their history, looked down from our airplane on the flat plain in which Germany and Poland invisibly merge into each other, and commented: “Excellent terrain for tank warfare!” She was thinking of Hitler’s tanks rolling into Poland in 1939. But a historically minded German would instead have been thinking of all the armies that rolled into northern Germany from the east and from the west, including the Soviet and Allied armies in World War Two, Napoleon’s armies two centuries ago, and other armies before that.
Germany’s central geographic location surrounded by neighbors seems to me to have been the most important factor in German history. Of course, that location has not been without advantages: it has made Germany a crossroads for trade, technology, art, music, and culture. A cynic would note that Germany’s location also facilitated its invasion of many countries during World War Two.
But the political and military disadvantages of Germany’s location have been enormous. The Thirty Years’ War, which was the major religious and power struggle between most of the leading nations of 17th-century Western and Central Europe, was fought mainly on German soil, reduced the population there by up to 50%, and inflicted a crushing economic and political setback whose consequences persisted for the next two centuries. Germany was the last large Western European country to be unified (in 1871), and that unification required the leadership of a highly skilled diplomat (Bismarck) with a unique ability to take account of the possible reactions of many other European powers. The military nightmare for the resulting unified Germany was the risk of a two-front war against both its western neighbor (France) and its eastern neighbor (Russia); that nightmare did materialize and led to Germany’s defeat in both world wars. After World War Two, three of its neighbors plus the U.S. partitioned Germany. There was nothing that the West German government could do directly to achieve re-unification: it had to await favorable opportunities created by events in other countries.
Differing geographic constraints have meant that bad leadership results in much more painful consequences for Germany than for geographically less constrained countries. For instance, while Germany’s Emperor Wilhelm II and his chancellors and ministers were notorious for their blunders and unrealism, Germany has had no monopoly on poor leadership: the U.S. and Britain and other countries have had their share. But the seas protecting the U.S. and Britain meant that inept leaders doing stupid things didn’t bring disaster upon their countries, whereas the ineptness of Wilhelm and his chancellors did bring disaster upon Germany in World War One.
The philosophy guiding the foreign policy of successful German politicians was summed up in a metaphor by Bismarck: “One should always try to see where God is striding through world history, and in what direction He is heading. Then, jump in and hold on to His coattails, to get swept along as far as one can go.” That was also Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s strategy in 1989–1990, when political developments in East Germany and the Soviet Union finally, after Willy Brandt’s initiatives of 1969–1974, created the opportunity for German re-unification. An equivalent strategy in the American game of football is “Play for the breaks.” That philosophy would have been unthinkable to Britain at the height of its imperial power, and still is unthinkable to the U.S. today (in foreign policy, but not in football). Instead, imperial Britain expected, and the U.S. today expects, to take initiatives and to be able to impose their will.
Another respect in which Germany constitutes an extreme among our case studies concerns self-pity and sense of victimization (factor #2). This is an especially illuminating subject for discussion, because Germany actually constitutes not one but two opposite extremes: in its contrasting reactions to World War One and to World War Two.
By October 1918, shortly before the end of World War One, Germany’s last military offensives on the western front had failed, Allied armies were advancing and had been strengthened by a million fresh U.S. troops, and Germany’s defeat had become just an inevitable matter of time. But German armies were still conducting an orderly retreat, and the Allies had not yet reached Germany’s borders. Armistice negotiations were hastened to a conclusion by a mutiny of the German fleet and by outbreaks of armed insurrections in Germany. This permitted post-war German agitators, especially Adolf Hitler, to claim that the German army had not been defeated militarily but had been betrayed by a “stab in the back” from treacherous civilian politicians. The conditions of the Treaty of Versailles imposed upon Germany by the victorious Allies, including a notorious “war guilt clause” branding Germany as the aggressor responsible for the war, provoked further German resentment. As a result, although many post-war German historians themselves analyzed pre-war Germany’s political blunders that had plunged Germany into war under unfavorable conditions, the prevalent post-war view of the German public was that Germany was a victim whose leaders had not been responsible for their country’s misfortunes.
Now, contrast this German sense of victimization after World War One with Germany’s post-war view after World War Two. In May 1945 Germany’s armies had been defeated on all fronts, all of Germany had been conquered by Allied troops, and Germany’s surrender was unconditional. No German or non-German denied that World War Two in Europe had resulted solely from Hitler’s intention. Germans gradually learned of the unprecedented atrocities committed by German government policy in the concentration camps, and by the German military on the eastern front. German civilians themselves also suffered: especially in the bombings of Hamburg and Dresden and other German cities, in the flight of German civilians before the advancing Soviet troops, and in the expulsion of all ethnic German residents of Eastern Europe and former eastern German territory by Poles, Czechs, and other Eastern European governments just after the war’s end. The Soviet advance and the expulsions are estimated to have sent more than 12 million German civilians fleeing as refugees, killed more than 2 million of them, and subjected on the order of a million German women to rape.
Those sufferings of German civilians receive some attention in post-war Germany. But self-pity and sense of victimization have not dominated Germans’ view of themselves after World War Two, as they did after World War One. Part of the reason has been German recognition that the horrors inflicted by Russians
, Poles, and Czechs on German civilians resulted from the horrors that Germans had so recently inflicted on those countries. But we should not take for granted Germans’ rejection of the victim role and assumption of shame after World War Two, because it contrasts with the assumption of the victim role by Germans themselves after World War One and by Japanese after World War Two (Chapter 8). The result of this painful reckoning with the past has been to Germany’s advantage today, in the form of much better security and better relations with former enemies than prevailed for Germany after World War One or for Japan today.
Two further respects in which Germany is an extreme case for our purposes are linked: the role of leadership, and honest self-appraisal or the lack thereof (factor #7). Because Germany’s central European geographic location has chronically exposed it to more difficulties and dangers than face Britain and the U.S., protected by water barriers, the effects of good or bad leadership have been more obvious for Germany than for Britain or the U.S.
Among leaders whose effects were bad, Hitler enjoys pride of first place in recent world history. One can of course debate whether the combination of the Treaty of Versailles, the collapse of Germany’s currency in 1923, and the unemployment and economic depression beginning in 1929 would have spurred Germany to go to war to overturn the treaty even without Hitler. But one can still argue that a World War Two instigated by Germany without Hitler would have been very different. His unusual evil mentality, charisma, boldness in foreign policy, and decision to exterminate all Jews were not shared by other revisionist German leaders of his era. Despite his initial military successes, his unrealistic appraisals led him repeatedly to override his own generals and ultimately to cause Germany’s defeat. Those fatally unrealistic decisions included his unprovoked declaration of war against the U.S. in December 1941 at a time when Germany was already at war with Britain and the Soviet Union, and his overriding of his generals’ pleas to authorize retreat by the German army trapped at Stalingrad in 1942–1943.
Second to Hitler in bad leadership in recent German history was Kaiser Wilhelm II, whose 30-year rule ended with his abdication and Germany’s defeat in World War One. One can again debate whether there would still have been a World War One without Wilhelm. However, such a war as well would probably have taken a different form, because Wilhelm, like Hitler, was unusual, albeit in a different way. While Wilhelm was much less powerful than Hitler, he still appointed and dismissed Germany’s chancellors, held the loyalty of most Germans, and commanded Germany’s armed forces. Although not evil, he was emotionally labile and unrealistic, had poor judgment, and was spectacularly tactless on numerous occasions that created unnecessary problems for Germany. Among his many policies that resulted in Germany’s entering World War One under unfavorable circumstances leading to defeat was his non-renewal of Bismarck’s treaty between Germany and Russia, thereby exposing Germany to that already mentioned military nightmare arising from its geographic location: a two-front war simultaneously against Russia and France.
A German counter-example of successful leadership and realistic appraisal is provided by Willy Brandt, whose recognition of East Germany and other Eastern Bloc countries, treaties with Poland and Russia, and acceptance of the loss of German lands beyond the Oder-Neisse Line reversed 20 years of previous West German foreign policies. While West Germany’s subsequent chancellors continued Brandt’s policies, one can argue that his leadership made a difference. The opposing CDU Party continued to oppose those policies for the next several years; Brandt’s acceptance of the Oder-Neisse Line required outstanding realism and political courage lacking in his predecessors; and his successors lacked his charisma that made his visit to the Warsaw Ghetto so convincing and unforgettable. Among other German chancellors since World War Two, Konrad Adenauer, Helmut Schmidt, and Helmut Kohl also stand out as gifted. Overall, as an American I am struck by the uninterrupted good sense of West Germany’s chancellors since World War Two, during an era in which the U.S. has been suffering from several failed or undistinguished presidencies.
The remaining German counter-example of successful leadership that made a difference was Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian prime minister and then imperial German chancellor who achieved German unification in 1871. That unification faced overwhelming obstacles—notably, opposition from the smaller German kingdoms other than Prussia, opposition from the neighboring powerful Habsburg Empire and France that could be resolved only by wars, the more distant potential opposition of Russia and Britain, and the vexing question as to which German populations could realistically be incorporated into a unified Germany. Bismarck was an ultra-realist, familiar with the reasons for the failure of Germany’s 1848 revolutions, aware of the internal and external opposition to German unification, and accustomed to proceeding stepwise, beginning with small measures and moving on to stronger measures only if smaller measures failed. He recognized that Prussia’s ability to initiate major events was limited by geopolitical constraints, and that his policy would have to depend on awaiting favorable opportunities and then acting quickly. No other German politician of his generation approached him in his political skills. Bismarck has often been criticized for failing to groom a suitable successor, and for failing to cure problems in Germany that culminated in World War One, 24 years after his chancellorship had ended. But it seems to me unfair to criticize him for the follies of Wilhelm II and Wilhelm’s appointees. Bismarck is also criticized for supposedly being warlike, but Germany could hardly have been unified over the prevailing opposition without Bismarck’s three wars, two of them very brief. (The unification of Italy required four wars, but Italy has not been branded as warlike.) Once Germany had been unified in 1871, leaving millions of German-speaking peoples outside its borders, Bismarck was realistic enough to understand that he had achieved the most that was possible, and that other powers would not tolerate further German expansion.
Other fits of Germany to our framework can be summarized more briefly. Germany since World War Two does illustrate selective change (factor #3). Of all the countries discussed in this book, Germany is the one that experienced the largest changes in its political borders. It drastically reassessed its Nazi past. It made some large social changes, especially with regard to its former authoritarianism and the status of women. But many other core values of traditional German society have remained little changed, including government support of the arts, government support of everyone’s medical care and retirement benefits, and emphasis on community values over untrammeled individual rights. Whenever, as an American, I return to Germany, I am pleasantly surprised to re-discover that even small German cities have opera houses, that my older German friends can still afford to live comfortably after retiring, and that villages preserve local color (because zoning laws specify that your house’s roof style has to conform to the local style).
Support from other countries has varied greatly with place and time in recent German history (factor #4). American Marshall Plan aid, and West Germany’s wise use of it, made possible West Germany’s economic miracle after 1948. Conversely, negative economic aid—i.e., extraction of war reparations—contributed to the undermining of East Germany after World War Two, and of Germany’s Weimar Republic after World War One.
Germany’s strong national identity helped it survive the traumas of devastation, occupation, and partition (factor #6). (Some non-Germans would go further, and would argue that Germany has had too strong a national identity.) That national identity and pride are based especially on Germany’s world-famous music, art, literature, philosophy, and science; the bond of the German language as codified by Martin Luther’s Bible translation transcending spoken German dialectical variation; and memories of shared history that enabled Germans still to identify themselves as one people despite centuries of political fragmentation.
Germany illustrates patience born of past defeats and initial failures (factor #9), and also illustrates confidence born of past successes (factor #8). It recovered from defeat in
two world wars. Its successes requiring patience included unification against heavy odds culminating in 1871, re-unification also against heavy odds culminating in 1990, and the post-war economic miracle.
Post-war developments in Germany involved both internal triggers and external triggers. Internal triggers drove Germany’s coming to grips with its Nazi past, and the explosion of student revolt in 1968. External triggers—such as Hungary opening its border with Austria in 1989, and the Soviet Union’s decline—set in motion the achievement of re-unification.
Among questions arising for national crises without close parallels in individual crises, Germany illustrates to an outstanding degree reconciliation between former opponents. Germany’s acknowledgments of its Nazi past, symbolized by Brandt’s kneeling at the Warsaw Ghetto, have made possible relatively smooth and honest relations with Germany’s neighbors Poland and France—far more so than Japan’s relations with Korea and China (Chapter 8). Another question arising specifically for national crises is whether drastic change occurs by revolution or by evolution. Modern Germany has experienced three revolutions or uprisings, two of them failures in their immediate outcomes: the failed 1848 revolutionary attempt at unification and democratization, the 1918 uprisings that did overthrow Germany’s kings and emperor, and the 1968 student uprisings that sought violently to change Germany’s society, economic system, and form of government. One of those goals was then achieved by evolution: the post-1968 peaceful accomplishment of many of the goals of the student revolutionaries. The drastic change of re-unification in 1989–1990 was also achieved peacefully.
Interestingly, recent German history provides four examples of an interval of 21–23 years between a crushing defeat and an explosive reaction to that defeat. Those four examples are: the 23-year interval between 1848’s failed revolutionary unification attempt and 1871’s successful unification; the 21-year interval between 1918’s crushing defeat in World War One and 1939’s outbreak of World War Two that sought and ultimately failed to reverse that defeat; the 23-year interval between 1945’s crushing defeat in World War Two and 1968’s revolts by the students born around 1945; and the 22-year interval between those 1968 student revolts and 1990’s re-unification. Of course, there are big differences between those four sets of events, and external factors played a role in determining those intervals, especially the interval between 1968 and 1990. But I think that there is nevertheless a significance to those parallels: 21–23 years is approximately one human generation. The years 1848, 1918, and 1968 were decisive experiences for Germans who were young adults then, and who two decades later became their country’s leaders and finally found themselves in a position to try to complete (1871, 1990) or to reverse (1939) that decisive experience of their youth. For the student revolts of 1968, the leadership and participation required were not of seasoned politicians in their 40’s or 50’s, but instead of unseasoned radicals in their 20’s. As one German friend who experienced 1968 expressed it to me, “Without 1968, there would have been no 1990.”
Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis Page 24
