Germans celebrate reunification | Article | The United States Army Share via Email 1 / 1 Show Caption + Hide Caption – The German Infantry liaison officer's house was decorated with balloons and flags for the German Unity Day anniversary event Oct. 12. (Photo Credit: John D. Helms/MCoE Public Affairs) VIEW ORIGINAL FORT BENNING, Ga. - Post leaders came together Tuesday evening to celebrate German Unity Day, marking the 20th anniversary of the nation's reunification. Known by Germans as "Tag der Deutschen Einheit," the event commemorates the treaty between West and East Germany that went into effect Oct. 3, 1990, the day both countries officially became one again after the Berlin Wall was torn down a year earlier. It's a national holiday in Germany. Fort Benning's observance took place at the on-post residence of Lt. Col. Frank Schuster, the German Infantry liaison officer, and his wife, Regina. The reception included traditional German food, beer and champagne. "It is not important when we celebrate German Unity Day ... because it's just very important to celebrate it," Lt. Col. Schuster said.

"Twenty years later, we are all very proud to be German - it doesn't matter to be on the East or West part. A lot of things have been changed ... but we're all happy to be one. "It's the same as in the Army - doesn't matter if it's the German or U.S. Army - we are one unit and one team. And the same is with Germany." He told the gathering how his father, a former journalist, had been on the eastern side of Berlin picking up photographs the day the Wall was built in 1961, but managed to make it back to the western part "at the right moment." Two years later, Lt. Col. Schuster was born. Sgt. Maj. Frank Zindel, the NCO representative at the German Armor liaison office, said he grew up in the middle part of West Germany, about 15 miles from a fence bordering the East. People could gaze over and see East Germany, but no one could visit without a special visa. It was a "dangerous time" as tensions were always high between the two sides, he said, recalling how armed guards, surveillance systems and minefields sat just across the East border.

Over there, mistrust and suspicion became a part of life. The sergeant major said people would occasionally discover that a good friend or relative was actually working for "the Stasi," the name given to East Germany's security machine. "I only knew there was a fence - they are East part, we are West part," he said. "(Reunification) came so suddenly. ...I never thought I'd see it. It surprised everybody how fast it happened." Economic conditions in the former East Germany were severely depressed, Sgt. Maj. Zindel said. People didn't have the same democracy or freedoms enjoyed in the West and the living standard was far lower. He said much has changed. "You can really see the development now," he said. "Twenty years ago, it was like gray and color (between East and West Germany)." At Tuesday's celebration, a small contingent from the Maneuver Center of Excellence Band played the U.S. and German national anthems. Lt. Col. Schuster praised the strong ties between the two allies. "The U.S. helped Germany become the nation it is today," he said.

SGM Bernd Rabenstein of the German Infantry liaison office said he believes German Unity Day is the most significant milestone in the country's history. "For my father, this day was more important than the end of (World War II)," he said. "A lot of us and our parents lived through that separation. Reunification was talked about a lot, but no one ever thought it would happen." THE ROOTS OF GERMAN UNITY DAY "Tag der Deutschen Einheit," which means "The Day of German Unity," is the national day of Germany, celebrated Oct. 3 each year as a public holiday. It commemorates the anniversary of German reunification in 1990. Reunification was the method in which East Germany's German Democratic Republic and Berlin, reunited into a single city, joined West Germany's Federal Republic of Germany, as provided by its then-Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. Germans commonly refer to the start of this process as "die Wende," or "The Turning Point." The end of unification is officially called German unity. The East German regime began to falter in May 1989, when removal of Hungary's border fence opened a hole in the Iron Curtain.

It caused an exodus of thousands of East Germans fleeing to West Germany and Austria via Hungary. The Peaceful Revolution, a series of protests by East Germans, led to the GDR's first free elections on March 18, 1990, and to negotiations between the GDR and FRG that culminated in a Unification Treaty. Meanwhile, negotiations between the GDR and FRG and the four occupying powers produced the so-called "Two Plus Four Treaty" (Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany), granting full sovereignty to a unified German state, whose two halves had previously been bound by a number of limitations stemming from their post-World War II status as occupied regions. The united Germany remained a member of the European Community - later the European Union - and NATO. On May 18, 1990, the two German states signed a pact agreeing on a monetary, economic and social union. It took effect July 1, 1990, with the Deutsche mark replacing the East German mark as the official currency of East Germany. While the GDR transferred its financial policy sovereignty to West Germany, the West started granting subsidies for the GDR budget and social security system.

At the same time, many West German laws were adopted in the GDR. This created a suitable framework for a political alliance by diminishing the huge gap between the two existing political, social and economic systems. A reunification treaty between West Germany and the GDR was negotiated in mid-1990, signed Aug. 31 that year and finally approved by large majorities in the legislative chambers of both countries on Sept. 20. After that last step, Germany was officially united when the clock struck midnight on Oct. 3. RELATED LINKS Reunification of Germany 3 October 1990 | ICV 3. 10. 2010 Reunification of Germany 3 October 1990 The reunification of Germany in 1990 is one of the most important historical milestones of the European history after 1945. However, it is not possible to narrow circumstances preceding this historical event only to the period between November 1989 and October 1990, it means to the time period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the act of the German reunification. The entire second half of 1980’ was an important political prologue to this process.

Political Situation in Europe before the Reunification Relations between both parts of Germany were very strained during the entire Cold War. However, since the half of 1980’ certain changes in communication between West German and East German politicians began to be apparent. The General Secretary of the Communist Party of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) Erich Honecker accepted, as the first Eastern Europe political representative, invitation to visit the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in 1984. The meeting was not held eventually because of deployment of intermediate range ballistic missiles in the FRG. He met Helmut Kohl as late as in 1987 during his visit to the FRG. Both leaders agreed on a "constructive cooperation in spite of different views on crucial issues". Nevertheless, a decisive factor for the German reunification was the arrival of a new Establishment in the Soviet Union after the appointment of Mikhail Gorbachev to the office of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In contrast to his predecessors, Gorbačov regarded as necessary to change radically not only the internal economic and political conditions but also the foreign policy of the Soviet Union including the attitude to the East European countries.

On 25 October 1989, during his visit to Finland, Gorbachev officially repudiated the Brezhnev's doctrine and admitted that East European countries had right to make their own policies. The new approach to the existing East European satellites became common under the term Sinatra Doctrine, which was a reminiscence of the lyrics of the Sinatra's song "I do it my way". However, Gorbachev's attitude to the German reunification was radically negative both before 1989 and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The first meeting of Mikhail Gorbachev and the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Helmut Kohl was held on 24 October 1988. At that time Kohl did not believe that he would ever negotiate with Mikhail Gorbachev on the German reunification. When asked about a possibility of Gorbachev offer of reunification of Germany, Kohl replied: "I am not a writer of futuristic novels like Wells. What you ask me about, is rather something of the Empire of Fantasy".

Events after the fall of the Berlin Wall The crucial role in the process of the German reunification was played by the West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl who, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, clearly declared his intention to reunify both parts of the divided German state. On 28 October he gave in Bundestag an important speech in which he emphasized necessity of a speedy reunification of both German republics. On 28 November 1989 he presented so-called ten-point plan for German reunification. The most important was the fifth point of the plan in which Helmut Kohl mentioned a possibility to "develop confederate structures between the two states in Germany with the objective of creating of a federal order in Germany". However the negotiations with East German political representatives were complicated by the fact that the West German side had not known for a long time whom to regard as the legitimate partner at the negotiating table. Officially it was Egon Krenz, the General Secretary of the SED, who was the highest representative of the GDR, but he was holding his post only from 24 October 1989 to 6 December 1989 and thus he was not able to guarantee continuity of the negotiating process.

It was apparent that this issue could be solved only by general elections in the GDR. They were held on 18 March 1990 and the Alliance for Germany, which won more than 47 % of votes, became a straight winner of the elections. Also Kohl’s CDU took part in the elections as a part of this alliance and won more than 40 % of votes. "Not even I had expected such a result" said Helmut Kohl. The ensuing negotiations on the new cabinet were quite smooth and on 12 April 1990 a new cabinet was appointed. It was headed by Lothar de Maizir (CDU) who negotiated with Helmut Kohl on the future arrangements. The integration of the two states was done also at the economic level. The date of declaration of the monetary union between the GDR and the FRG was set and the union came into effect on 1 July 1990.

On 23 August 1990 the East German parliament (Volkskammer) adopted at its extraordinary session the reunification of both parts of Germany in the ratio of 294 to 64 and on 31 August 1990 the Reunification Treaty was signed by the State Secretary of the GDR Günther Kraus and by the West German Minister of Interior Wolfgang Schäubl. The Treaty contained 45 articles and three annexes. In the Treaty there were defined relations between the two German republics and set down the state division of former GDR to five federal republics governed by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany. Attitudes of the USA, Soviet Union, France and Great Britain On 13 November 1989 an important negotiation of the most significant American politicians -President George Bush, the Secretary of State James Baker and the chief expert on foreign policy Henry Kissinger – was held. Henry Kissinger said on the issue of the German reunification: "The German reunification is inevitable and the United States will have to pay for that if Germans feels that we are putting obstacles in their path".

Most of American political representatives connected the support of the German reunification with its membership in NATO. The unity of NATO was more important for the United States than the act of the reunification of both German republics itself. As far as this issue is concerned, Kohl was for the United States a fundamental advocate of their strategy of incorporation of unified Germany into the NATO structures. A significant event in the process of negotiations on the German reunification was the setting-up of so-called “4+2 mechanism“. This mechanism meant regular meetings of representatives of the Soviet Union, United States, Great Britain, France and both German states. There were certain critical opinions regarding this arrangement. In particular on the American side there were fears of loss of the influence on the situation in Germany because of broadening of negotiating competences to more states. Mikhail Gorbachev’s approach to the German reunification was always very reserved and he was absolutely unsympathetic to plans for the incorporation of unified Germany to the NATO structures. This issue was very sensitive for Gorbachev because these discussions had begun soon after the breakdown of the Eastern Block.

Gorbachev became more involved in the negotiations on the German reunification at the end of May 1990 when he intensively discussed this issue with his American counterpart George Bush. George Bush together with the Secretary of State James Baker presented during these negotiations their idea on the role of NATO in arrangement in Europe. According to Bush and Baker, NATO intended to play a role of an "anchor of stability" which would guarantee solidarity of Europe with NATO. Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to this proposal in fact, which meant principal change in the attitude of the Soviet representatives to the issue of reunification. Further important shift in opinion took place during the visit of Helmut Kohl in the Soviet Union in mid-July 1990, after which Gorbachev withdrew his reservations to the planned size of Bundeswehr and the German membership in NATO. Thus, main reservations on the Soviet side to the German reunification were removed. In France there were strong fears of unification of the two divided German republics. These fears were based on the idea that the strong Germany would have different view of the function of the European Union.

France was afraid of weakening of its influence on the foreign policy of the European Union Also the demographic factor played its important role in this respect. While the FRG had number of inhabitants similar to that of France, the unified Germany would have about 80 million inhabitants. The advisor of the French President Mitterand, Jacques Attali, confidentially told his Soviet counterpart that "France does not wish the reunification of Germany despite its conviction that it is inevitable in the end". Not even the French President Mitterand concealed his fears of united Germany. As early as in August 1989 began to hold an opinion that in connection with the unification of the two republics the term unification instead of reunification should be used. Mitterand’s fears of a possibility of unification of Germany further increased during 1989. In September, during his visit to Kiev, he declared that excessive haste in connection with the German unification could have negative impact on the stability of the European Community. His fears of German reunification could not be mitigated even by the fact that Mitterand and Helmut Kohl were tied by a firm bond of friendship.

He expressed his feelings on 20 January 1990 when, during a private conversation with the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, stated that "reunification of Germany might lead to the birth of a new Hitler and to the revival of memories of bad Germans who ruled over Europe then". In March 1990 the French Ambassador to the United Kingdom during his visit to Margaret Thatcher said that according to the meaning of the French government "France and Great Britain must jointly face to the German threats". An extremely negative stand to the German reunification was holding by the Prime minister of Great Britain Margaret Thatcher. Unlike other statesmen, she did not regard the German reunification as a historical crowning of the disintegration of the Soviet Block and the unification of divided Europe. She was seeing the process of German reunification from the point of view of her fears of the revision of German frontiers. Her fears increased in December 1989 after the release of ten-point plan of Helmut Kohl; in response to this plan she said: "We have defeated Germans twice and now they are here again".

During her meeting with Helmut Kohl she declared that "it is possible to consider the German reunification of the two republics as late as after some 10 or 15 years when it is undoubted that both countries have sufficiently firm democracy". She was seeking allies for her approach among European politician and partly found such an ally in the person of François Mitterand who, however, did not held such a strong attitude. Unlike the French President, she did not believe that Germany would restrict its own political and economic ambitions in the framework of the European Community". She regarded the process of reunification as too fast and improvident. She also feared that the process of reunification would weaken the Gorbachev’s position in the Soviet Union. Immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, Thatcher informed Mikhail Gorbachev that German reunification was not in the interest of Great Britain. Nevertheless, the British Prime Minister remained isolated with her flat resistance to the German reunification,. "Margaret Thatcher went too far with her opposition in this matter", said former west German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

The attitude of the British Prime Minister changed as late as after the Dublin summit in May 1990; the summit guaranteed existing frontiers on Oder and Neisse. Thus, the ensuing negotiations in the composition 2+4 could be held in a more unemotional spirit. On 12 September 1990 the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany was signed in Moscow. This principal document stipulated the German reunification from the point of view of the international law. By the adoption of this Treaty, the Allies lost their right and responsibility related to Berlin and Germany as a whole. In the Article 7 it is stipulated that "the united Germany shall have full sovereignty over its internal and external affairs". The Treaty also bound member states to maintain limited number of German armed forces of Germany at the level of 300 000 men. After the signature of this Treaty nothing hampered the German reunification. German Unity Day On the night of 2 October to 3 October 1990, more than 100 000 people came to celebrate the reunification of both German states at the Republic Square in Berlin.

As Helmut Kohl highlights in his memoirs, the act of the German reunification at the place in front of the Reichstag building was a historical symbol: "From the window of the western portal, the social democrat Scheidemann declared in November 1918 the First German Republic. Its end was symbolized by flames which flared up out of the cupola of the building in 1933. After the end of the Second World War, Soviets hoisted on its ruins the red flag and started the division of Germany and Europe. What could have been a better place, after those forty-five years, for celebration of the end of this division and of the start of a new and let us hope more peaceful era?" Berlin Wall - Cold War - HISTORY.com Berlin Wall A+E Networks Introduction On August 13, 1961, the Communist government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) began to build a barbed wire and concrete “Antifascistischer Schutzwall,” or “antifascist bulwark,” between East and West Berlin.

The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West. The Berlin Wall stood until November 9, 1989, when the head of the East German Communist Party announced that citizens of the GDR could cross the border whenever they pleased. That night, ecstatic crowds swarmed the wall. Some crossed freely into West Berlin, while others brought hammers and picks and began to chip away at the wall itself. To this day, the Berlin Wall remains one of the most powerful and enduring symbols of the Cold War. Google The Berlin Wall: The Partitioning of Berlin As World War II came to an end in 1945, a pair of Allied peace conferences at Yalta and Potsdam determined the fate of Germany’s territories. They split the defeated nation into four “allied occupation zones”: The eastern part of the country went to the Soviet Union, while the western part went to the United States, Great Britain and (eventually) France. Did You Know?

On October 22, 1961, a quarrel between an East German border guard and an American official on his way to the opera in East Berlin very nearly led to what one observer called "a nuclear-age equivalent of the Wild West Showdown at the O.K. Corral." That day, American and Soviet tanks faced off at Checkpoint Charlie for 16 hours. Photographs of the confrontation are some of the most familiar and memorable images of the Cold War. Even though Berlin was located entirely within the Soviet part of the country (it sat about 100 miles from the border between the eastern and western occupation zones), the Yalta and Potsdam agreements split the city into similar sectors. The Soviets took the eastern half, while the other Allies took the western. This four-way occupation of Berlin began in June 1945. The Berlin Wall: Blockade and Crisis The existence of West Berlin, a conspicuously capitalist city deep within communist East Germany, “stuck like a bone in the Soviet throat,” as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev put it. The Russians began maneuvering to drive the United States, Britain and France out of the city for good.

In 1948, a Soviet blockade of West Berlin aimed to starve the western Allies out of the city. Instead of retreating, however, the United States and its allies supplied their sectors of the city from the air. This effort, known as the Berlin Airlift , lasted for more than a year and delivered more than 2.3 million tons of food, fuel and other goods to West Berlin. The Soviets called off the blockade in 1949. After a decade of relative calm, tensions flared again in 1958. For the next three years, the Soviets–emboldened by the successful launch of the Sputnik satellite the year before and embarrassed by the seemingly endless flow of refugees from east to west (nearly 3 million since the end of the blockade, many of them young skilled workers such as doctors, teachers and engineers)–blustered and made threats, while the Allies resisted. Summits, conferences and other negotiations came and went without resolution. Meanwhile, the flood of refugees continued. In June 1961, some 19,000 people left the GDR through Berlin. The following month, 30,000 fled.

In the first 11 days of August, 16,000 East Germans crossed the border into West Berlin, and on August 12 some 2,400 followed—the largest number of defectors ever to leave East Germany in a single day. The Berlin Wall: Building the Wall That night, Premier Khrushchev gave the East German government permission to stop the flow of emigrants by closing its border for good. In just two weeks, the East German army, police force and volunteer construction workers had completed a makeshift barbed wire and concrete block wall–the Berlin Wall–that divided one side of the city from the other. Before the wall was built, Berliners on both sides of the city could move around fairly freely: They crossed the East-West border to work, to shop, to go to the theater and the movies. Trains and subway lines carried passengers back and forth. After the wall was built, it became impossible to get from East to West Berlin except through one of three checkpoints: at Helmstedt (“Checkpoint Alpha” in American military parlance), at Dreilinden (“Checkpoint Bravo”) and in the center of Berlin at Friedrichstrasse (“Checkpoint Charlie”).

(Eventually, the GDR built 12 checkpoints along the wall.) At each of the checkpoints, East German soldiers screened diplomats and other officials before they were allowed to enter or leave. Except under special circumstances, travelers from East and West Berlin were rarely allowed across the border. The Berlin Wall: 1961-1989 The construction of the Berlin Wall did stop the flood of refugees from East to West, and it did defuse the crisis over Berlin. (Though he was not happy about it, President Kennedy conceded that “a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.”) Over time, East German officials replaced the makeshift wall with one that was sturdier and more difficult to scale. A 12-foot-tall, 4-foot-wide mass of reinforced concrete was topped with an enormous pipe that made climbing over nearly impossible. Behind the wall on the East German side was a so-called “Death Strip”: a gauntlet of soft sand (to show footprints), floodlights, vicious dogs, trip-wire machine guns and patrolling soldiers with orders to shoot escapees on sight. In all, at least 171 people were killed trying to get over, under or around the Berlin Wall.

Escape from East Germany was not impossible, however: From 1961 until the wall came down in 1989, more than 5,000 East Germans (including some 600 border guards) managed to cross the border by jumping out of windows adjacent to the wall, climbing over the barbed wire, flying in hot air balloons, crawling through the sewers and driving through unfortified parts of the wall at high speeds. The Berlin Wall: The Fall of the Wall On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin’s Communist Party announced a change in his city’s relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country’s borders. East and West Berliners flocked to the wall, drinking beer and champagne and chanting “Tor auf!” (“Open the gate!”). At midnight, they flooded through the checkpoints.

More than 2 million people from East Berlin visited West Berlin that weekend to participate in a celebration that was, one journalist wrote, “the greatest street party in the history of the world.” People used hammers and picks to knock away chunks of the wall–they became known as “mauerspechte,” or “wall woodpeckers”—while cranes and bulldozers pulled down section after section. Soon the wall was gone and Berlin was united for the first time since 1945. “Only today,” one Berliner spray-painted on a piece of the wall, “is the war really over.” The reunification of East and West Germany was made official on October 3, 1990, almost one year after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Tags Allied Occupation of Germany, 1945-52 Other State Department Archive Sites Allied Occupation of Germany, 1945-52 After Germany's defeat in the Second World War, the four main allies in Europe - the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and France - took part in a joint occupation of the German state.

With the original understanding that the country would eventually be reunified, the Allied Powers agreed to share the responsibility of administering Germany and its capital, Berlin, and each took responsibility for a certain portion of the defeated nation. This arrangement ultimately evolved into the division of Germany into a Western and an Eastern sector, thereby contributing to the Cold War division of Europe. During the Second World War, one of the major topics under discussion at conferences of the Allied leadership was how to deal with Germany after the war. Having experienced great losses as a result of German invasions in the First and Second World Wars, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin preferred that a defeated Germany be dismembered and divided so that it could not rise to its former strength to threaten European peace and security again. At the Tehran Conference between U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1943, the two countries agreed that after the war Germany would be divided and occupied jointly. At the final wartime conference between these two men at Yalta in 1945, the two powers agreed to shift the eastern border of Germany to the West, enlarging western Poland as compensation for the eastern sections of that country annexed by the Soviet Union.

They also determined that the occupation would divide Germany into sections, with each Allied power taking responsibility for one section, although they would be governed as a single economic unit in anticipation of their eventual reunification. Finally, they also concluded that they would demand reparations from Germany, although they did not yet agree on exactly how much they would request. A meeting later in 1945 between Stalin and new U.S. President Harry Truman held at Potsdam confirmed and ratified these arrangements. After the victory over the Axis powers, however, the wartime cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union soon faded. In reality, mutual distrust ruled the relationship between the two countries, and nowhere was this more evident than in the difficulties over the occupation of Germany. The Allies agreed to a joint occupation, with each country taking charge of a larger zone and a sector of the nation's capital, Berlin. Upon British insistence, France joined Great Britain and the United States in the occupation of West Germany and West Berlin, while the Soviet Union managed the affairs of East Germany and East Berlin. The divided Germany was weak and dependent on the allies for goods and the differing approaches of the occupying powers served to establish what would become a stark contrast between the two Germanys.

The Soviet Union stripped its sector of manufacturing equipment in an effort to garner partial payment for wartime remittances, further stifling the reemergence of a strong German economy. In the western sector, military leaders from the United States soon grew concerned about the economic costs of a Germany completely dependent on the United States, and the United States began investing in German industries. In 1946, the United States and Great Britain merged their occupation zones, and in 1947 the U.S. Government began a massive aid program under the Marshall Plan , which pumped dollars and goods into Europe to aid in recovery. The Soviet Union prevented the countries along the Soviet border in Eastern Europe, many of which had experienced the rise of communist leadership in the wake of the war, from taking part in the arrangement. Instead it offered the Soviet Union offered its own postwar program for economic aid. By 1948, the Western Allies began the project of pulling their occupation zones together for the sake of rebuilding - a project that the Soviet Union, still worried about a Germany threat to its security, wished to prevent.

Although the Western Allies made frequent suggestions for the terms under which the country might be reunified, usually involving the introduction of free and democratic elections and German autonomy for conducting its own foreign policy. These proposals were never made in terms that the Soviet Union would consider accepting, so the continued division of the country was in many ways inevitable. In June 1948, the Soviet Union took action against the West's policies by blocking all road access between West Germany and West Berlin, effectively cutting off the city's occupation zones from the British, French, and American forces responsible for maintaining them. The administrators of the western zones had no agreement with the Soviet Union that required the latter to allow ground access to the city through Eastern Germany, but they did have an agreement on air access. As a result, the United States began an airlift of supplies to the stranded citizens of West Berlin. Over the course of the next eleven months of the blockade, the Americans, assisted by the British and the French, supplied West Berlin entirely by air, landing planes filled with food, clothing, and coal for heat nearly every minute.

Because it was a mild winter, they were able to keep ahead of the city's requirements, and the extraordinary accomplishments of the Berlin Airlift became an early propaganda success for the West in the emerging Cold War. After nearly a year, the Soviet Union lifted the blockade, making it once again possible to supply West Berlin overland. The blockade and airlift contributed to cementing the division of Germany and Europe into East and West. The Soviet Union was not alone in worrying over the threat to European security that could come of a revitalized Germany. Countries to the west, including France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg, were also wary and preferred a neutral and demilitarized Germany. To address these concerns, the British proposed a collective security arrangement that would include these nations, plus Britain, West Germany and the United States. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formally established in 1949. In 1949, the occupying powers in both East and West Germany replaced their military governors with civilian leaders, and the occupations ended officially in the mid-1950s. Even so, both sides retained a strong interest in Germany, and the country and its capital remained divided throughout the Cold War.

Reunification finally took place in October of 1990. The dark side of German reunification The dark side of German reunification By Erik Kirschbaum September 29, 2010 Germany will mark the 20th anniversary of its reunification on October 3 — but not everyone in Germany will be celebrating two decades together. German unity has been a shaky marriage. That may seem like a surprise to people outside Germany. But opinion polls inside Germany show widespread discontent, especially in the formerly Communist east. Chancellor Angela Merkel has called it a success and other political leaders will be singing the praises of unification in their lofty speeches and German media interviews this weekend. But for many in the east, like straight-talking Brandenburg state premier Matthias Platzeck, German unification in 1990 was not a merger of equals but instead an “Anschluss” (annexation) with West Germany taking over East Germany. Many easterners have endured change, hardship, upheaval and various negative developments – including sometimes being evicted from their houses that people who fled during the Cold War returned to reclaim.

Free speech and freedom to travel have been great but the price has been high: millions lost their jobs, their homes as well as the fabric of their society and their way of life. Many are still struggling to come to terms with life in reunited Germany – and are understandably nostalgic about life in East Germany, to the great irritation of western Germans who have helped pay 1.6 trillion euros to rebuild the east. Reasons for their disenchantment can be seen everywhere: The eastern population has shrunk by about 2 million, unemployment soared, young people are moving away in droves and what was one of the Eastern Bloc’s leading industrial nations is now largely devoid of industry. Did it all have to happen like that? Platzeck thinks not. There are no ghost towns in the east yet but some cities with dwindling populations have torn down thousands of flats on their outskirts and let the forests grow back around them.

It should come as little surprise, then, that an opinion poll published in Stern magazine on Wednesday found 67 percent of easterners do not feel like they are part of a united country and only 25 percent said they felt like “ein Volk” (one people) – by contrast 47 percent of the westerners surveyed feel that the two parts of Germany have overcome what divided them in the last 20 years. Another poll found that one in 13 easterners would have preferred if the Berlin Wall were still splitting the two Germanys. Another survey found 25 percent the situation in the east has worsened in the last 20 years. It is also hardly surprising that eastern Germans vote for different political parties than their western brethren. We had the chance to talk to Platzeck , a leader in the centre-left Social Democrats and probably the most popular leader in eastern Germany, about his “Anschluss” comment – a loaded term that is usually associated with Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938. This is what he had to say: “There was an ‘Anschluss mentality’ at the unification negotiations. There is a lot that went wrong in those talks.

We tried to explain (to West German negotiation partners) that when a society takes on a new form with a small group joining a larger group, it’s important to include some elements or symbols from the smaller group for the sake of harmony. That way the smaller group won’t feel like they’ve been overwhelmed and run over. But there was nothing the smaller group (East Germany) left in united Germany. …It was like ‘Look, children. We’ll take you in, we’ll pay for it all, but forget your demands’. That’s the attitude I was talking about. “It would have been easily achievable to save a few symbols, a few structures – there are some aspects of the way East Germany handled medical care that are coming back now as good ideas 20 years after they were discarded, some aspects of education like the 12-year school system or pre-school care from a very young age. All these things were thrown out of the unification talks because of ideological reasons. Just taking over one of these things would have been enough. But there was nothing. The rule was: what’s from the west is good what’s from the east is bad.

“Today, 20 years later, all the surveys in the east show that 50 percent of the people don’t feel like they’re part of united Germany – in their minds and their hearts. Everyone in the west is baffled by that. They ask: ‘Why don’t you feel like you’re part of one country after all the money we spent for you?’ My answer to them is always: ‘Just imagine you’re from a society that completely disappears and there’s nothing left’. You would also feel to a certain extent homeless. Some people got back on their feet but many never did.” Platzeck also thinks it’s more than just a shame that there is hardly any industry left in the east. He said eastern leaders urged the Treuhand agency that was tasked with selling off East Germany’s state industries to “be careful about selling some of the more competitive companies to western German rivals. There was a near-complete de-industrialisation of the east in the 1990s. In Oranienburg, there was a steel plant that was competitive. It was sold by the Treuhand to Krupp. They bought the steel plant and shut it down six weeks later.

We allowed these mistakes to happen in the 1990s. We could have held on to more of the industrial base in the east.” Platzeck was on a roll explaining why “Ossies” are so upset at the “ Wessies” and did not want to stop: “Keep in mind that 80 percent of the eastern Germans had to learn a new profession after unification, that every second family in the east has been affected by unemployment, and that there were quite a few speculators from the west who came in here and made a killing. That’s caused a lot of discontent.” And finally he pointed to the village of Kleinmachnow, just outside West Berlin. Many fled the town for West Berlin in the years just before the Wall fell. Their houses were taken over by the East German state, which sold them to East Germans. But after unification, those who reclaimed their property were given priority over those who had acquired it from the East German state: “Take a look at Kleinmachnow,” Platzeck said. “Nearly 80 percent of the people living in houses in Kleinmachnow were uprooted and had to leave their houses.

No one can be happy when they’re told they have four weeks to leave their house because someone whose name was in the property deed in 1946 shows up at the door. It may all be totally legal in united Germany. But that kind of thing doesn’t promote harmony. Go talk to someone who had to move out of their house 20 years ago and now lives in a small high-rise apartment somewhere what they think of unification. If you think of people in their situation, you might be able to better understand why there are a lot of people who are not very happy about the way things have turned out.” « Previous Post

Question: In what year did Germany officially reunify?
Answer: 1990