by Erich Topp
Guttenberg stood solidly in the tradition of Christianity and of the values of western civilization. Educated by Jesuits, he grew up in an environment that taught him to guard against intolerance and tyranny. When he was taken prisoner by the Allies in 1944 he worked dedicatedly against Hitler. This line of thinking would characterize him all the way to his last great speech before the German parliament in May 1970 when he was already marked by his fatal illness.
He admonished, he warned, he provoked. He was a fighter who was not afraid to confront his colleagues in parliament, the media, and the public. His adversaries treated his public speeches with spite and hatred. Being a baron whose family had lived in its home castle for 800 years and who had served in the "feudal" 17th Cavalry Regiment in Bamberg, Guttenberg suffered much malice as a representative of the people. His noble family background brought out the cheapest prejudices against him. In 1965, during a debate at the Free University in West Berlin, he was openly ridiculed for demanding as the primary goal of German policy freedom for all Germans and an end to the totalitarian regime in East Germany. He was yelled at and noisily interrupted when he referred to the part of the world that did enjoy freedom and democracy and when he characterized the Federal Republic of Germany as a free and sovereign state.
Such disappointments accompanied his political life to the very end. Even during his last great speech before parliament, when he was visibly close to death, a fellow representative derided him by suggesting, "Let's give him the benefit of extenuating circumstances." Guttenberg replied that he had lost yet another illusion. He believed that politics must rest on a strong moral foundation. He stuck to his principles without regard for ideologies. He had suffered under the lawless tyranny of the National Socialist regime and knew what he was talking about when he would tolerate no compromises over the question of free self-determination.
He was not a nationalist; he was a patriot. He drew the inner strength for his independent stance from his faith in God, from his familiarity with the currents of freedom that have pulsed through our history, and from his personal experiences under a dictatorship. The principles he represented could not be measured with the yardstick of politics as usual; they had different dimensions. He had great hopes for democracy. He thought Herbert Wehner to be the strongest representative of the Social Democrats and developed friendly relations with him. It was Guttenberg whose long negotiations with Wehner paved the way for the Great Coalition between the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats.
On December 18, 1962, he wrote me:
Thank you so much for your letter indicating that the common initiative of Minister Lucke, Mr. Wehner, and myself has made headlines even in the United States. You probably have also learned what kind of consequences I had to face in my own party about this matter. At the moment I am quite busy defending myself against my own "colleagues."
Incidentally, the "consequences" Guttenberg refers to concern a reprimand he earned from his own party, the Bavarian Christian Socialist Union, for having followed Chancellor Adenauer's request to discuss the possibilities of a political coalition with the Social Democrats. His own party boss, Franz-Josef Strauss, had not been informed of the matter.
Guttenberg was not without illusions. The "representative of the na tion," as he was sometimes called, nevertheless arranged the deal with the representative of International Socialism. With it he laid the basis for the subsequent treaties with the East, treaties whose substance he opposed because in his eyes they undermined West Germany's integration into the West. In Guttenberg's view, Soviet intentions always covered a broad spectrum. One of its principles, expressed in various disguises, was the desire to control all of Europe. Soviet political and military measures depended on strategic considerations, changing tactical conditions, and efforts to exploit real or suspected weaknesses of the West. Western politicians, according to Guttenberg, had to remain aware of these guidelines of Soviet policy. Crucial for him was the solidarity of all Germans, in the East and the West, as well as solidarity among the political parties. Without it there could be no future for the German people, neither as a nation nor as an integrated component of the European Community. He stood in the forefront of forging this solidarity, but he found only few followers in his own party and even fewer among the political opposition.
One evening Guttenberg, Captain Edward Wegener, the German naval attache in Washington, and I had a long talk about morale and motivation among our soldiers and also about how to get the public to embrace the basic values of our constitution more enthusiastically. The immediate occasion for our conversation was a visit of three young officers of the German destroyer Z 5 whose ship was then in Norfolk and who had been guests in our house. During that meeting I had made several disturbing observations. The officers (1) displayed a lack of tolerance for the views of others, toward their host country, and for the American way of life; (2) expressed a yearning for great, over-arching ideals while seeing their own life and environment in nihilistic terms; and (3) displayed a lack of historical knowledge that led to an inability to see the great intellectual currents of the past and to place the events of recent history into that wider context.
I must admit that human greatness has become a somewhat relative term and is being measured today by different criteria than in the past, something that has done damage to the image of the great men of yesterday. Psychoanalysis enables us to examine aspects of individuals and situations that did remain obscure before. New findings are not being swept under the carpet but are openly debated. This is the situation in which young men must function today. Only those who have the proper mental and intellectual background and are open to the influences of the world around them will be able to experience the exciting diversity of life's phenomena.
I asked Guttenberg and Wegener what kind of mental and intellectual guidance our young officers receive. How far do we assist them in finding their own stand on major issues? Where are ideals still strong enough that they have an impact on the life and thinking of our young officers? Wegener, who had been in the United States for some time, noted that the intellectual insecurity of the officers had only partially to do with the lost war and the discontinuity of German history. All nations, even the American people, witnessed the phenomenon to some degree. He also thought we should engage the citizen in uniform more directly in the values he is supposed to defend. A soldier must be imbued with these values and committed to them emotionally before there can be a true willingness to stand up for them. This commitment is, after all, one of the three pillars on which the strategic concept of the West is based.
Wegener suggested we should model our officer schools on universities and stress academic subjects more prominently. At the very least there should be contacts between the various institutions, faculty exchanges, and the like. Officer candidates would be required to take survey courses as part of a studium generale but also be given the opportunity to do research in a specific field like history, technology, physics, or international law. For this reason more qualified faculty should be hired, libraries enlarged, and curricula expanded beyond the present narrow subjects. The officer should see his area of specialization whenever possible as part of the broader historical, cultural, economic, social, and political context. Wegener's ideas, by the way, were expressed long before the creation of Germany's universities for military personnel.
Guttenberg disagreed. He wished we were right and that indeed there was a chance to persuade individuals through rational means to stand up for a common cause. He feared, however, that such an attitude did not reflect man's true nature. Emotional forces, he argued, are always stronger than anything else, certainly stronger than the force of reason. He believed that one must also try to mobilize the people's emotional resources. That required the reawakening of prime symbols, of archetypes and ideals that the entire people could understand instinctively and follow in its quest for motivation.
Wegener got a little restless in his chair. As a rationalist he seemed
uneasy about this appeal to archetypes. In his opinion the time had come to throw out emotions growing from the subconscious, such as love of country, and to replace them with knowledge about historical contexts and the analysis of political necessities. For him, instincts and irrational motivations should be controlled by rational insight based on careful studies. Our profession demanded a solid historical background as much as a watchful eye for the specific problems of our time. Our defense is not the mere defense of territory but makes sense only if we commit ourselves to our common values, for the future existence and welfare of our people.
I repeated my question: Will we have soldiers who are prepared to de fend the freedom of their people with their lives? In short, is it possible to teach bravery?
I had followed with great interest the theoretical and philosophical propositions of my guests. In my experience proper motivation to fight is relatively easy to achieve and should not be a major problem in a war. Bravery, I am convinced, grows directly from the experience of solidarity, of comradeship. The fighting spirit of a U-boat or a company of soldiers stems from the knowledge of mutual dependence, of mutual loyalty, from one's responsibility for a comrade, and, not least, from the will to survive. It was the immediacy of these concerns that made the difference. Less crucial, but not unimportant, were such values as defending one's country, the fatherland, duty, and the service oath. We should not assume that things have changed dramatically in this respect. We still see people risking their own lives to save others. We recall images of miners underground rescuing their buddies without much concern for their own safety and survival. Only a few individuals ever manage to raise the values of our western civilization to the level of a personal experience that is both exciting and worth defending. As for the masses, we will have to rely on more elementary forces such as the experience of solidarity and comradeship.
A few extracts from my extensive correspondence with Baron von Guttenberg can show better than a retrospective summary what moved and concerned us in those days, often matters that are still or again in the news.
I had prepared an analysis for Guttenberg about changes in the application of military power and about the importance of naval power for NATO. He wrote back on August 31, 1963:
Dear Captain:
Many thanks for your letter of August 8. The theses you presented could easily become the skeleton for an entire book. I only fear that you do not now have the time to write that book, however beneficial it would be.
Since I do not have the time at the moment to discuss in detail every one of your important suggestions, allow me to agree with you that the problems of modern military power seem like a late justification for Karl Marx in the sense that apparently quantity has been transformed into quality and the very nature of military power has thus been changed as well. This calls for a revision of Clausewitz. Recently Pierre Gallois made the following interesting comment to me: "Clausewitz had written that the purpose of war is the destruction of the enemy's army to take over his territory and possessions. Today it seems the other way around. The purpose of nuclear war appears to be the destruction of the enemy's territory and possessions, which also means the defeat of the enemy's army."
I, too, have the impression that the "conspiracy" I suggested to you in the past is becoming more and more desirable. The global political scene seems almost more ominous than our domestic one. While the clear and always well-understood policies of Adenauer's government are now giving way to the unprincipled improvisations of Chancellor Erhard's coalition, the Americans and the English seem to come to an arrangement with the Soviets for which we have to pay. For this reason a hard core must be formed inside the Christian Democratic Party and in parliament. Would you be interested? I think we should get together and talk about this matter in more detail. Could you possibly meet me in Bonn in early October? Please let me know. The second week in October would be best for me.
We met in Bonn. He suggested I should become a member of the Christian Democratic Party and seek election to the West German Bundestag by way of one of the "state lists" without the need to fight local opposition. It was a tempting proposal, but given my experiences in the past as well as in the present, I felt I could do more for the Navy if I remained on active duty. This, as it turned out, was an illusion. The Navy let me go at the age of fifty-five. But more about that later.
On October 2, 1963, Guttenberg wrote:
Dear Captain:
The Soviet Union needs a "rest" but otherwise continues unchanged its revolutionary and expansionist intentions. Moscow's only reason for pursuing a policy of detente is that the Kremlin leaders face difficulties and see themselves forced to pull back their stakes temporarily. As Professor L6- wenthal suggests, this Soviet dilemma is primarily a result of the West's successful resistance in the cases of Berlin and Cuba. The other interpretation, namely, that Khrushchev wants to avoid trouble with the West in order to deal with Mao, appears hardly convincing to me. The Chinese "comrades" do not yet marshal an arsenal impressive enough to put real pressure on the superpower Soviet Union. The true significance of the breach between Moscow and Peking lies rather in the long-range consequences of an unbridgeable schism. This schism challenges and partially ends the "legitimacy" that allowed the communist world to present itself as a kind of "union of those who have seen the light."
The key question the West must answer now is how to treat an adversary who obviously is in trouble and as a result offers us detente. While searching for an answer to this question I see the danger that the Soviets will achieve under the pretense of detente what threats could not bring about in the past: the legal consolidation of the division of Germany and the collapse of the Atlantic Alliance. This is not just a theoretical possibility. The danger is real and pressing because even today we can see that the Soviets know how to improve their situation when they are down, while the West seems incapable of capitalizing on the failures of the enemy.
If we assume for a moment that the military clauses of the Moscow Treaty restore the balance between East and West, the scales are clearly loaded in favor of the Eastern side if we analyze the treaty's political as peers. We should remember that Khrushchev had good reason to thank the American and English delegations publicly for having accepted the proposals presented by the Soviet government. Ulbricht's participation as a player in this deal means undoubtedly added recognition for the so-called Second German State and represents a significant Western concession to the Soviets with regard to Germany's future. The treaty's history and conclusion demonstrate the evident intention of the Anglo-Saxon negotiators not to sacrifice the desired reduction of tensions through a partial ban on nuclear testing by interfering with Moscow's ploy of bringing the "GDR" into the global political arena. For me this part of the treaty is a limited success for the Soviet policy of detente.
It seems paramount to me to warn against the continuation of a policy whose first step this Moscow Treaty represents. We failed to take our stand with regard to the most crucial point, namely, how to respond to an enemy that has fallen on hard times. Instead of asking the East to pay a price for the breathing space it needs, we actually reward them for their troubles. Instead of insisting on progress in the questions of Berlin and German reunification, we allow detente to become a concession to the East and weaken our traditional resolve not to elevate Ulbricht to a player on the international political scene. I am saddened by the fact that the joining of a Soviet policy of detente and Washington's "peace strategy" brings for Germany no more than the perpetuation of the status quo. We see here the possible beginning of a situation where we mistake the Soviet Union's "desire for detente" for a genuine change in its attitude when in reality there is no changed political will, only a temporary dilemma.
Even if the Moscow Treaty as a first concrete step toward detente does not result in any modifications in the military relations between East and West, the clauses dealing with military arrangements nevertheless deserve analysis from a political point of view.
There can be no question that the treaty reinforces the common intention of the main nuclear powers to keep membership in that exclusive "atomic club" limited. Without getting into the self-evident argument that one should limit the unchecked proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries, one can still raise the question whether there is no alternative between an exclusive group of nuclear powers and unlimited proliferation. For instance, arming European NATO partners in collaboration with the United States with nuclear weapons seems to me a greater contribution to the maintenance of world peace than, say, San Marino's declaration that it will refrain from testing atomic devices.
These considerations make clear what consequences the limitation of membership in the nuclear club to the beati possidentes of the present moment are likely and perhaps intended: The bipolar power situation in the world today will remain untouched as long as the United States and the Soviet Union maintain their nuclear hegemony within their respective military alliances. It goes without saying that the Soviets, given the nature of their regime, will not share their nuclear monopoly with their satellites. We cannot deny that the situation is different in the West. The petrification of the present arrangements with regard to nuclear power, implicitly agreed to in the treaty, should be measured with a different yardstick.
Furthermore, I think it worth considering that this first effort by the two superpowers to cement a bipolar world balance has in actuality already failed. Red China will not give up its nuclear arsenal, and France is determined to develop its "force de frappe" further, as the French Defense Minister Messmer indicated the other day. In this sense the Moscow Treaty does not bring us the end to the Cold War, but likely the end of the bipolar structure of the world under which we have lived so far.
