FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

TOPIC 8:
THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

By
Dr. Henry A. Kissinger

"This is an official document of The National War College. Quotation from Abstraction from, or Reproduction of all or any part of this document is NOT AUTHORIZED without specific permission of the Commandant of The National War College.

Presented at
The National War College
Washington, D. C.
2 February 1968

FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

By
DR. Henry A. Kissinger

(2 February 1968)

GENERAL CREER: (Introduced the speaker).

DR. KISSINGER: General Creer, gentlemen:-

Whenever I am introduced I think of the rather painful
experience I had sometime ago. I had to introduce somebody at
Harvard and I asked my secretary to take the background out of
"Who's Who." I made a very eloquent introduction. When I was
finished the speaker arose and said: "Thank you very much. My
brother is a very remarkable man."

Also, I always feel the need, when I am introduced in
this generous manner, for a certain correction and to point out
what a British reviewer said about one of my books. He said: "I
do not know whether Mr. Kissinger is a great writer but anyone
finishing this book is a great reader."

My subject today is "The Federal Republic of Germany." I
thought that the best way to approach it would be to discuss it some-
what from the point of view of psychology and the point of view of
what lessons we might draw for our policy-making.

I think that the major problem we confront in the German
situation today has to do with a very complex psychological situation
produced in part by a certain historical tradition and the major con-
tributions we have made to the complexity of the situation have not

-1-

FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

[1c]

been because our policies have been wrong but because we have not
always been able to gear our decision-making procedures to what the
Germans can stand and to the internal requirements of the German
situation.

Let me begin with a few general observations.

The first is that German history shows extreme alterations
between periods of excessive weakness and periods of excessive strength.
In the 20th century it had become axiomatic to believe that one threat
to the peace of Europe came from an excessively strong Germany and
one tendency has been to attempt to contain Germany in structures
larger than itself. But it is well to remember that before 1870 the
peace of Europe tended to be jeopardized as much by an excessively
weak Germany as it was jeopardized later on by an excessively strong
Germany. In fact, the tragedy of German history has been that when
Germany was united and powerful it brought about the coalition of
hostile powers that had been its nightmare. But when Germany was
weak it became the arena for a contest of the various other European
powers that sought to exploit its division.

It can be said with some justice that in the last 300 years
Germany has been either too weak or too strong for the peace of Europe.

A second point to remember is that foreign policy for a
country located in the center of a continent with open frontiers on
all sides is a more complicated matter than for an island power like,
for example, Great Britain, and to a considerable extent we used to
be for the greater part of our history.

- 2 -

[L.C.]

Germany could not afford mistakes that in other countries would not be penalized immediately. Also, what Germany did and still to some extent does in the center of the continent has consequences towards both East and West. It is this peculiar difficulty of German foreign policy, coupled with a history which made Germany the last of the European powers to be unified and to enter the diplomatic game which produced so much of the instability before the end of World War II.

In the best of circumstances, the emergence of a powerful country in the center of Europe was bound to affect the equilibrium to some extent adversely.

Any country must have as one of its objectives the preservation of its national security. Any country, at least up to the nuclear period, had to strike a balance between the requirements of security and the requirements of achieving some degree of international consensus. If security became an end in itself it tended to drive the country towards empire. The only way a country can be absolutely secure is by having every other country absolutely insecure -- that is, by achieving physical predominance. On the other hand, no country can make itself completely dependent on the continued good will of another state.

The problem of the Germans was that, starting with a very complicated security problem and with the fact that they had achieved unity by making a permanent enemy out of France so that the possibilities of their alliances become much more limited than for any

- 3 -

[Lc]

other European country -- starting from this they developed before
World War I a security system and a strategic planning which trans-
formed what had been their nightmare into the only possible strategy.
Up to 1890 the Germans said: What happens if we have to fight a
two-front war? And they developed war plans in which in the worst
case they could fight a two-front war. They intended to be on the
defensive on both fronts and strike at the weakest enemy first.

Then they decided that this was too uncertain and that
they had to have a strategic plan which would enable them to knock
out one of their enemies and then throw their whole weight against
the other. And since the Russian mobilization plan was much slower
than the French they decided to strike first against the French,
leading to the problem by 1905 when they said: What if it is not a
two-front war? In other words, what if the Russians fight us and
the French do not declare war?

Well, they got themselves into a situation through their
strategic planning where no matter how the war broke out, even if
it broke out under conditions that were politically favorable to
them, namely, as a one-front war against Russia, they would have to
declare war on France in order to make sure, they had decided, that
if France decided to stay neutral they would demand some of their
fortresses as a guarantee, which was really a way of forcing France
into a war.

In other words, Germany's quest for security before World
War I forced them to produce a two-front war, which before 1890 had

- 4 -

[1c]

been their nightmare.

There were many other factors that produced the confrontation in Europe. In the immediate causes of the war I really believe that the Germans were less guilty than some of the other powers, but in the over-all political constellation the German attempt to achieve security on a national basis in the center of the continent had to be disastrous for the security system of Europe.

If you look at the diplomatic corollary of German foreign policy before World War I, one comes to the conclusion (or at least I come to the conclusion) that the difficulty was not that the Germans were aggressive. In fact, most of the German Ministers prior to World War I between Bismarck and World War I were actually rather timid. They were not so much aggressive as incapable of establishing priorities. They attempted to combine the advantage of every course of action. When they had a choice typically they attempted to do a little bit of everything.

I have to stress this to a group like this because in our American experience we have never done any of these things. Therefore, the Germans obtained the reputation for bellicosity and unreliability. Again, while I do not believe that in the months prior to World War I the Germans were primarily responsible, indeed the diplomacy of that period is itself a fascinating case study of how military planning ran away with diplomacy. Nevertheless, they are somewhat responsible in a deeper sense because they never could establish national priorities and because they never could relate

- 5 -

[L.C.]

their national strategy to what was attainable in the international
system as it existed.

I have put so much stress on German behavior prior to
World War I because I have the impression that we sometimes are
worried about the wrong danger. Many of the American intellectuals
speak of problems raised by Germany; they are concerned about a
resurgence of Naziism.

Naziism is not the danger in Germany today. Even those
who are not appalled by the crimes the Nazis have committed have
been discouraged by the complete failure of the Nazi philosophy and
the Nazi military effort. The danger is not Naziism but a return
to the sort of policy which made World War I inevitable.

Much more than an overly assertive Germany I fear a sort
of romantic self-pitying Germany pursuing a policy of petty advantage
in the center of the continent, driven by its national divisions
inevitably into a concern with national issues that is not shared
by most other states or indeed by any other states and thereby bring-
ing about a general sense of insecurity.

I would feel that in the 1970s the national problem in
the Atlantic area is much more likely to be Germany than France and
not because the German leaders are wicked but because the environ-
ment in which they have to operate has changed dramatically since
the foundations of the Federal Republic were laid in the 1950s.

One has to add one other important factor. I have been
struck by the extent to which for most American leaders history tends

- 6 -

[LC]

to begin on the day they first took an interest in a certain problem,
and by the enormously and _in toto_ approach of American policy-makers
to the problem of foreign policy. When one hears our eminent men
discourse on foreign policy problems it very soon returns to what a
given Foreign Minister or Prime Minister told them over drinks on a
certain day. As a result, there has been a tendency in the United
States to equate Germany with the stability and firmness of the first
German political leader in the postwar period and to forget that the
formative experiences of Chancellor Adenauer were in the time before
the turn of the century. He was very untypical for the present
German leadership groups.

The formative experiences of the present German leadership
group include two lost wars, two foreign occupations, four changes
of systems of government, each of which claimed to be morally anti-
thetical to its predecessors -- twelve years of a history which every
German or every responsible German is trying to blot out in his
memory.

The result of all this is that inward insecurity is
endemic in German policy-making. It is very difficult for them to
conduct a policy in which they have great flexibility without losing
their sense of proportion.

Many of my academic colleagues in the 1950s thought they
could combine the advantages of Adenauer's firmness with the bene-
fits of the latest theories of East-West _detente_. I doubt that this
will prove possible for the Germans as a national policy. And this

- 7 -

[LC]

is the main theme of what I want to talk to you about.

It is this leadership group and this society living in a
country that has boundaries that reflect no historical experience,
with 17 million people under communist rule in a political organi-
zation that is beginning to appear more and more permanent, that is
now thrown into a reassessment of all the assumptions that have
characterized their postwar period.

When the Federal Republic was first established there were
a number of presuppositions on which all of Western policy, and
especially German policy, used to be based. It used to be believed
that the solidarity of the allies was in the overwhelming interest
of everybody.

Secondly, there was a conviction that a common threat
existed, that a Soviet attack was, if not imminent, at least pos-
sible. The division of Germany was recognized as an important prob-
lem, but it was dealt with by the proposition that the best road to
German unity lay in strengthening allied ties so that one could
ultimately talk to the communists from a position of strength. It
was thought that the final end of the Cold War would come at some-
thing like a diplomatic confrontation in which the Soviet Union
would disgorge Eastern Germany under some security guarantees and
Germany could remain a member of both NATO and the European Economic
Community.

Every one of these assumptions has been shaken by the
events of the recent decade and the Germans are entering a new period

- 8 -

[L.C.]

without any firm theory of what it is that they can accomplish and
with some policies that in my view will over a period of time prove
inconsistent with what has been pursued in the past.

During the two Berlin crises many of my academic colleagues
tended to criticize Chancellor Adenauer's rigidity, and it used to
be axiomatic in some quarters to deplore the fact that American
foreign policy was allegedly being made in Bonn. It was never under-
stood that few people distrusted the Germans more than Chancellor
Adenauer.

Chancellor Adenauer tied the German policy so closely to
Washington because he was afraid, above all, of the return to the
more nationalistic orientation of the period prior to the two World
Wars and because he was convinced that the Germans were incapable
psychologically of sustaining a purely national policy in the center
of the continent. When American and British reaction in the two
Berlin crises convinced him, rightly or wrongly, that the Anglo-
Saxon countries might put requirements of over-all *détente* over the
immediate needs of what he considered German policy he then began
increasingly to follow with what had always been a temptation for
him, namely, to tie Germany rather closely to France. But his basic
concern had been constant and this was to submerge German policy in
an entity larger than Germany and to force a consideration of German
problems on a stage larger than the Federal Republic. And this, I
believe, whatever his conclusions, was a correct assumption.

The worry I have about the trends that are developing in

- 9 -

[Lc]

Germany, partly with American encouragement, is that they are going to be driven more and more into considering policies on a more national basis. As I have said, almost every policy that has been pursued in Germany since the 1950s has failed to a greater or lesser extent.

The belief that integration into the North Atlantic alliance would automatically produce a political situation in which German unity could be discussed on an allied basis and from a position of greater strength was undermined by the building of the Berlin Wall and the Western reaction to that challenge.

After the building of the Berlin Wall it became obvious what perhaps might have been known before that German unity was not a primary objective of any of the allies and that none of the allies were willing to run major risks on behalf of German unity. It became obvious that the West would defend what existed but not necessarily pursue a very active policy in altering the *status quo*. This is perfectly understandable from the Western point of view. It is in the long run intolerable from the German point of view.

Many people ask: Are the Germans really interested in unification?

I frankly do not know what the question means. Every political leader in Germany and every political party avows their interest in unification. My experience with political leaders has not been that they tend to go under barricades for causes that they believe have no popular support. There is no political leader in Germany

- 10 -

[L]

who indicates that unification is not the prime political objective. So, from an operational point of view, every likely political leader must have this as one of his goals. What they can do about it is another matter. But as long as the issue exists it will affect German policy.

Integration into NATO has also suffered in part because of certain American approaches to policy-making and because of certain German ambiguities with respect to policy.

We, living in a stable society, often have a tendency to believe that foreign policy can be conducted like a seminar in a university, with new ideas being sparked every six months and with perfect adaptability to new circumstances.

I am struck by the fact that when I am consulted in Washington the most frequent question I am asked is: Have you had any new ideas lately? Now, the notion that good policy consists of coming up with something novel every year, that something that is a year or two old must be bad tends to be demoralizing for others that have to deal with us. Other societies will not judge us by our brilliance but more by our steadiness. Other political leaders can gear their actions to ours only if there is some expectation that these actions will be maintained over a period of time.

If one looks at the strategic debate within NATO, without going into the merits of the issue, it is obvious that every three years the United States has developed a new dispensation which we have then pressed with almost maniacal intensity on our allies. In

- 11 -

[lc]

1957 we developed a new look which demonstrated that conventional weapons were old-fashioned, that tactical nuclear weapons were important. In 1961 we developed a strategy in which we deprecated tactical nuclear weapons -- would have liked to deprecate strategic weapons, too, but did not quite dare -- and emphasized that conventional weapons were the key and that if the Europeans did not build up to 30 divisions the security of Europe would be jeopardized. We sent additional troops to Europe and spent every NATO meeting trying to induce our allies to build up more forces.

Three years later we began to try to (I was tempted to say sneak troops out of Europe, but shall we say) get troops out of Europe, and without really changing the doctrine very much reduced the level of forces to below what it was when the 1961 exercise started. If the new doctrine of flexible response means anything it must mean that tactical nuclear weapons are coming back into vogue, even though we do not really have a very good doctrine for what to do with the several thousand weapons which we always say we have there.

Well, again I have taken positions on strategic doctrine, but I am not for these purposes insisting on the correctness of one particular view. What I would like to stress is that the leaders who defended an American position at one period would find themselves attacked by the opposition three years later for undermining the American alliance.

Political leaders are notoriously slow to appreciate the

- 12 -

[Lc]

intellectual merit of arguments that make them look ridiculous, and
one of the conclusions that has been drawn to a greater or lesser
extent by all our allies, but especially by German leaders who made
allegiance to the United States one of their prime appeals to the
electorate, has been that in order to survive politically they have
to make themselves somewhat independent of the United States.

In 1963-64 it was an axiom of American policy (which I did
not share) that unless the Germans participated in the possession
and control of nuclear weapons the alliance was in danger. By 1966
it had become an axiom of American policy that unless the Germans
renounced forever the possession of nuclear weapons world security
might be endangered.

Now, these sudden shifts in American policy, whichever the
merit of any particular position, have tended to create a situation
today where most German political leaders are trying to disassociate
themselves from us to a greater or lesser extent, where until the
fall of Erhard every German Chancellor made an immediate pilgrimage
to Washington. The present German government has gone to great
pains to indicate that it is not automatically following the American
lead. It would have been unthinkable 18 months ago that a German
Chancellor, when asked about the Vietnam war, would say "this is not
an area of our concern and, therefore, we have no moral right to pass
judgment on it."

So there has been this degree of disillusionment with the
United States.

- 13 -

[L.C.]

On the other hand, the alliance with France has not brought much greater results. In 1963 Germany signed the treaty of friendship with France which provided for intimate consultation. The United States made a strong effort to indicate its displeasure with that treaty, and party as a result of this the Erhard government did not do too much to implement it. But whatever the Germans would have done, it is not de Gaulle's style to consult with other countries prior to his actions and he has treated the Germans with supreme cynicism; convinced that the Germans have really no alternative to go anywhere, he has begun an initiative towards the East which further contributed to the German sense of isolation. And this German insecurity with respect to foreign policy is compounded by disenchantment within Germany with domestic policy.

One of the great contributions of Adenauer was that for the only time in German history there was a democratic leader who could also govern firmly. Even though intellectuals complained bitterly about this in Germany, the Adenauer government as a result had considerable prestige among the German population. Since then German governments have on the whole been weak and confused.

One of the striking phenomena in Germany today is the degree of disassociation of the younger generation from the political process, a disassociation one can notice also in other democratic countries. However, this cynicism towards politics which was so dangerous to the Weimar Republic in the '20s is reappearing again, especially in the younger generation. The vote for the extremist

- 14 -

[c]

parties is not among the old Nazis; it is especially among the
younger age groups as a form of protest.

Now, it is in this situation that many of the current poli-
cies have to be assessed. It is a great temptation in the West to
believe that because there is no obvious solution to the German
problem it would be very convenient if they could turn it over to
the Germans and let them worry about it. And one sees many learned
articles which demonstrate that German unity will be achieved by the
unity of Europe which submerges national frontiers in a spirit of
conciliation and as the issues of national frontiers disappear
German unity will be achieved more or less automatically.

Unfortunately, in foreign policy not everything that is
plausible is necessarily correct. Of course, if the issue of national
boundaries disappears the issue of German unity will disappear as
well. But I have seen precisely little, if any, evidence that
national boundaries have disappeared in the West, much less in the
East of Europe and even less as between the East and the West of
Europe.

The notion that Germany should build bridges towards the
East, the idea that the previous policy has failed and that, there-
fore, an alternative is essential and that this will bring about a
satisfaction of German aspirations should be treated with extraordi-
nary caution.

First of all, if one looks at what the Germans have been
forced to do as a result one sees that the so-called German successes

- 15 -

[L.C.]

are to establish diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia and with Romania.
Looked at from Soviet eyes -- from well-meaning Soviet eyes -- this
does not appear like building bridges to the East but like picking
out the dissidents in the communist camp and like a German attempt,
if it is anything, to undermine the Soviet orbit. The result has
been that the East Germans have strengthened their political bonds
with the other nondissident communist countries rather than loosened
their bonds.

Nor do I see what tremendous success there is in re-establishing
diplomatic relations with a country like Yugoslavia, which already has
100,000 of its workers working in Berlin and where they maintained
consular relations all during the time of the rupture of diplomacy.
These are apparently not real successes.

My point is that if we tell the Germans that they must solve
their national problems and that they can build the bridges to the
East it will become apparent, first of all, that the opposite of a
failing policy is not necessarily a success and, secondly, that a
German policy that more or less alone attempts to solve their national
problems will force them on a national plain.

The Germans will be forced at every stage of the way to
confront alternatives which they avoided in the '50s. They will have
to ask themselves in every stage whether the membership in their
Western relationships is consistent with the attempt to solve their
national questions. And as they ask that question they will be driven
more and more into the kind of national orientation which I think

- 16 -

[c]

it is everybody's interest to avoid.

It is almost impossible for a government with the kind of
structure that I have described to decide whether a seemingly marginal
concession changes matters qualitatively or whether it will contribute
to unity. It is interesting to note that the East Germans, as West
German policy has become more flexible, have not become more concili-
atory but have become more intransigent.

The result of all this may well be, as time goes on, an
increasing demoralization of German politics. It may seem absurd
today, but to the degree the East German regime becomes consolidated
in East Germany it will attempt to play an ever greater role in
West Germany as well.

We have seen in Europe that in those countries in which
there are large Communist Parties that the democratic process has
become very difficult to operate. It will not be necessarily easier
in a country in which there is not a Communist Party but a sovereign
communist state located on the territory of old Prussia and claiming
increasingly that it represents the real German aspirations, or if
it should be possible that the two German states settle the question
of unification some day among themselves, the only possible basis
on which they can come together is extreme nationalism; and if this
were to happen it would be, in my view, a disaster for all of Europe,
East and West.

We can talk about security guarantees today, but I do not
know how one imposes security on guarantees on 80 million people

- 17 -

[LC]

who have already agreed among themselves to settle their basic concerns.

Now, I mention this not because there is a danger of anything immediate happening. This German government, composed of the two leading parties with no one, except extremists, in opposition, is not going to do anything very dramatic. I am concerned about longer term trends that will be apparent over a decade and not about dramatic initiatives that become immediately visible.

One of the questions that one is always asked is: If this is true, what would you do about it?

Now, humility is not the outstanding attribute of Harvard professors, but nevertheless I do not want to imply that everything that is wrong in policies around the world or in Germany is due to the fact that any advice is not being adequately solicited. There are some situations for which there is no brilliant technical remedy. I do not have a master policy that could be applied and remove all difficulty. Indeed, I would say the following:

Almost any half-way reasonable policy that is pursued over an interim period of time, say a five-to-ten-year period, will be better than the most brilliant policies that change every two or three years. It is infinitely more important for the Germans, for example, to be sure that a certain number of divisions will still be there in 1980 than to guarantee them every January that five divisions will be there and then to try to sneak out as many troops as we can get away with during the year or to run down the combat effectiveness

- 18 -

[Lc]

by sending most of our untrained troops to Germany.

It is more crucial, seems to me, to come to some understanding with the Germans about a strategic doctrine that we can both believe in than to go through the exercise every year of pretending to each other that nothing has really changed since 1949, a process which enables both sides to avoid difficult choices.

The strategic situation has changed fundamentally since 1949. When our posture statement for four years running estimates that in the case of a general nuclear war American deaths might run as high as 120 million, it is absolutely absurd to say that the validity of the nuclear guarantee has remained unimpaired. Something has happened in the period between 1949, when the United States was immune to attack more or less, and 1967-68, when the Soviet Union began to develop a nuclear arsenal that could at least be compared with ours. The fact that it has been convenient for both the Europeans and us to avoid this and even more convenient for the Europeans to avoid this does not change the fact that simply to escape these difficult choices stores up troubles for the future.

Chancellor Kiesinger, when he met with President Johnson last year, proposed that there be a stock-taking and the development of an over-all political concept.

Now, Americans are very uneasy with this sort of approach. We are a pragmatic society. We deal domestically with problems as they arise. Yet, Europeans with a different tradition -- and in any case the Germans-in their insecure position need as much philosophical

- 19 -

[L]

assurance as a mechanism to make current decisions. Therefore, I
repeat, it is much more important to develop some common concepts
and to give them the sense that we have a picture of the world into
which they fit than to try to develop specific remedies for specific
situations.

It is dangerous to believe that because we might get
German acquiescence to particular initiatives, such as the non-
proliferation treaty, that this means that the Germans agree with
us. To the Germans the nonproliferation treaty is an example of a
United States-Soviet agreement on a vital German issue in which the
Germans did not participate and in which the Germans have been asked
to give up something for no benefit that is immediately apparent to
them, and they can cite American statements to them of three years
previously to that effect.

Now, again the issue is not whether the nonproliferation
treaty is wise or not; the issue is that the only way to avoid this
sort of difficulty that it has produced is within a framework of
agreement on some over-all objectives and that in the absence of
this any disagreement becomes unbearable and any agreement not fully
reassuring. In this sense I would think that our relations with
Germany are an example of a deeper problem that the United States
faces.

As I have said, the United States is a pragmatic society.
And the course of events in the late 1940s seems to confirm our
expectations of what international relations would be like. Crises

- 20 -

[Lc]

that arose could usually be solved by an application of resources.
American leadership because of our predominance, economically and
militarily, was unquestioned.

The leaders that formed our present European policy have
tended to equate the normal pattern of relationships with this
strenuous exercise of American initiatives expressed in a series
of practical solutions.

We are now entering an era which is much closer to tra-
ditional relations. We are not going to be able to exercise the
degree of physical leadership that was possible in the late 1940s.
Nor are the issues that present themselves now primarily technical.
The challenge to us in the decade ahead is that we cannot wait for
a crisis to become obvious. It is more important now to have some
sense of historic evolution, some over-all picture of the world, some
conception of where we are going, and we can keep our alliances to-
gether, above all, by the confidence that we can inspire and by the
steadiness of our course.

We may think about de Gaulle what we wish, but it is re-
markable that a man representing a country with a tenth of the gross
national product of ours could have had this impact. And he has had
this impact at least in part because in a world of petty calculation
he has offered at least some over-all conception.

Now, whether this can be done is not clear to me. I would
like to emphasize that almost any criticism that you can make of
American policy you could also make, and even more strongly, of German

- 21 -