The Day of German Unity

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The Day of German Unity

• German Society of Essex University

By Benjamin Gaiser
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Content

• Part I Reasons for division
• Part II Early division
• Part III East policy
• Part IV Signs of change
• Part V Fall of the DDR
• Part VI Way to unification
• Part VII The last formality

By Benjamin Gaiser
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Part I Reasons for division

• Unity day not just nationally significant but for
  Europe and the world as well
• From 1871 to 1945 Germany was seen as the most
  militant country, threating notjust her
  neighbours but also the world stability
• Germany has also been seen as obedient and
  totalitarian
• Bismarck first sought peace between Germanys
  neighbours stating Germany was saturiert, which
  means satisfied in terms of new land
• Kaiser Wilhelm II. and his expansionist seek for
  world power fuelled foreign suspicious

By Benjamin Gaiser
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Part I Reasons for division

• The Treaty of Versailles has been seen as a
  humiliation by Germans. Certain phrases led to a
  low acceptance for the newly democratic Weimar
  Republic, because they stated that
• The First World War was completely Germanys
  fault
• That Germany has to cover huge costs of
  reparations, which might have slowed down the
  economy
• An omission to integrate Germany into Europe and
  into the World in a post-war scenario.

By Benjamin Gaiser
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Part I Reasons for division

• 1943 in Teheran, president Roosevelt suggested
  the plan of dividing Germany into pieces in order
  to avoid any further hegemonic ambitions of that
  country.
• However in 1945 in yet another conference, the
  British prime minister Winston Churchill was no
  longer sure as to whether that is a good idea
  fearing the increasing influence of the Soviet
  Union

By Benjamin Gaiser
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Part I reasons for division

• The division of Germany however was not the
  result of the defeat of Germany but of the
  beginning Cold War and started with the
  East/West-conflict about the Marshall aid in
  1947, the currency reform in 1948 and the Berlin
  blockade in 1949

By Benjamin Gaiser
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Part II Early division

• In order to prevent further influence of the
  Soviet Union in Europe, the first chancellor of
  the Federal Republic of Germany Konrad Adenauer
  followed a policy of west integration, to enhance
  the political ties between the Western European
  countries
• Policies like a United States of Europe, or a
  European Army have been much in debate at that
  time
• It also was a policy to be acknowledged among
  other countries as a sovereign and equal country
• This led ultimately to the joining of the NATO in
  1955 and the beginning of the European Economic
  Area in 1957 with Germany as one of the founding
  nations

By Benjamin Gaiser
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Part II Early division

• For East Germany the story was different
• Already during the war, the Soviet Union trained
  future communist leaders and politicians in
  Moscow, many of whom joined the SED
  (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands), the
  socialist unity party of Germany
• This led to a seamless transition from a
  totalitarian nation into a communist country,
  albeit other parties existed and stood for other
  policies, they were soon forbidden or forcefully
  integrated into the SED
• The Soviet Union started almost immediately to
  overthrow the capitalist system by introducing a
  command economy, a single-party system and the
  nationalisation of companies

By Benjamin Gaiser
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Part II Early division

• The support for the new political system differed
  thus in the West and the East, with the East
  facing a legitimacy problem from the beginning
  because the people never had a chance for free
  and fair elections, albeit many of the German
  intelligentsia, i.e. Bertolt Brecht favoured the
  Eastern version of communism as an utopian-like
  country at the beginning

By Benjamin Gaiser
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Part III East policy

• The West always held to the idea of an eventual
  unification of Germany.
• The international Cold War however made an early
  unification impossible and the confrontation of
  West and East up to the point of the Cuban
  missile crisis was reflected in Germany with the
  building of the Wall on the 13th of August 1961.
• Only with the appeasement of both blocks and the
  election of Willy Brandt as chancellor things
  improved, most notably the recognition of East
  Germany as a sovereign country by the West and
  some treaties which improved relations and travel
  between the two Germanys.

By Benjamin Gaiser
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Part IV Signs of change

• The appeasement strategy did not however lead any
  of the two Germanys to abandon their unification
  ideas. Being recognized however they duelled
  diplomatically now in the world as two
  co-existing ideas
• A member of the politburo said peaceful
  co-existence is not the same like peaceful
  ideological co-existence
• East Germany for example was concerned that the
  new easier communications and travel
  possibilities being agreed upon will make their
  regime more complicated, i.e. in 1970 there were
  700.000 inter-German-telephone calls, whilst this
  jumped to 23.000.000 in the 1980s

By Benjamin Gaiser
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Part IV Signs of change

• Most notably East Germany tried to spy on their
  people and try to prevent them from foreign
  contact (which included West Germany), with the
  budget for the state security rising 400 in 21
  years from 1968 to 1989, the so-called
  Staatssicherheit (Stasi) or state security became
  infamous.

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Part IV Signs of change

• The discontent with the East German party grew
  and the churches became place for the opposition.
• Beginning with the 1980s and the upheavals in
  both Poland and Hungary and the nomination of
  Michael Gorbatschow as the new leader of the
  Soviet Union, the end of the East block and East
  Germany was nigh.
• Most notably in 1989 the adoption of the
  Sinatra-Doctrine of the Soviet Union led to the
  sovereignty of the Eastern bloc countries, which
  then led to the decay of many communist systems.
  The answer for East Germany was more isolation.

By Benjamin Gaiser
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Part V Fall of the DDR

• Non-existing legitimacy, no reforms after
  Gorbatschow and the ever more visible difference
  between the capitalist west and east were three
  main reasons for the decay of the East.
• Hungary with her abolition of the electric fences
  to the West started what became the cataclysmic
  fall of the Iron Curtain.The elections of the
  7th of May 1989 havent been rigged any more or
  any less than usual but the people of East
  Germany started not just to doubt the figures
  (95 in favour for the ruling party) but went out
  and demonstrated.

By Benjamin Gaiser
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Part V Fall of the DDR

• Or they just flew the country by trying to get
  into West Germany via other countrys embassies
• As a response to the rigging, from June onwards
  there have been mass demonstrations on every 7th
  of the month and after a sermon on the 4th of
  September in Leipzig, people began the famous
  Montagsdemonstrationen, Monday demonstrations

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Part V Fall of the DDR

• The response to the demonstrations was confused
  and brutal but it couldnt change the course of
  things.
• On the 17th of October Erich Honecker was elected
  off his positions and the political change
  finally arrived in East Germany in form of Egon
  Krenz but he did not change much but to tolerate
  the demonstrations.
• In the first November week the biggest
  demonstrations occurred, triggering the dismissal
  of the GDR parliament and yet again a reshuffling
  of the Politburo.

By Benjamin Gaiser
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Part V Fall of the DDR

• On the 8th of November the secretary of
  information Günther Schabowski had to announce a
  paper circulating in the party which deals with
  the topic of free travel however ambiguously
  stated by Krenz, he announced the paper as if it
  was already a law, in which course he said that
  the borders are opened from tomorrow morning,
  which led to the de facto abolishment of the Wall

By Benjamin Gaiser
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Part VI Way to unification

• The political calculations of that time have been
  very different, whilst some Soviets wanted to
  brutally end the demonstrations and London and
  Paris feared a unified Germany, Washington and
  Bonn favoured the developments.
• Helmut Kohl, then chancellor of the Federal
  Republic of Germany was aware of the suspicion of
  many countries, especially of the fear of Poland
  and so acted quite passively until later that
  year when he published a ten-point programme
  being initiated in Moscow but criticized there
  and in America most noteworthy are the first
  free and fair elections in the GDR since its
  proclamation.

By Benjamin Gaiser
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Part VI Way to unification

• There has been a lot of deliberation but the
  people of East Germany did not fade in their
  demands and the unification happened faster than
  many politicians expected, hoped or feared.
• Another tipping point for the DDR was the ever
  worsening economic condition with high foreign
  debts and a huge budget deficit.
• In early February the rather modest and passive
  style of the Western government changed and the
  introduction of the DM Deutsche Mark was no
  longer an idea of a distant future but of a near
  one

By Benjamin Gaiser
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Part VI Way to unification

• West Germany offered to take the debts and to run
  the economic system if the East adopts capitalist
  structures only the exchange rate was disputable
  and experts varied from 21 to 31 but Helmut
  Kohl decided on 11, what the people of the East
  wanted
• The first free and fair elections were held on
  the 18th of March 1990, a point when the dramatic
  decay of the Eastern authority led to a jump of
  approval for reunification of more than 27 per
  cent point from the end of the previous year to
  then

By Benjamin Gaiser
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Part VII The last formality

• The four big powers USA, GB, France and the
  Soviet Union had different opinions on Germanys
  unification. Whilst the USA and the SU announced
  a reserved green light for it, the French and the
  British politicians were very reserved and afraid
  of a pre-1913 disequilibrium in Europe
• France could have only been won with the promise
  for further integration and a common currency in
  the European Economic Area
• The decay of the Soviet Union led to the fact
  that the Western Allies managed to get their will
  through that a united Germany will be integrated
  in NATO rather than in the Warsaw Pact

By Benjamin Gaiser
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Part VII The last formality

• The 4 powers have agreed on German reunification
  on the 12th of September but officially it took
  place on the 3rd of October unity day.
• It took another 9 years for the government to
  change from Bonn to the new capital Berlin with
  some administrative buildings still in Bonn.
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By Benjamin Gaiser