Drang nach Osten ?
From SARAH GAINHAM
BONN
ACHRISTIAN DEMOCRAT member of the Bundestag with the improbable name of Majonica has pulled into the open a matter that
Foreign Minister Schroeder preferred to be dis- creet about—the efforts of the Federal Republic to get on better terms with the countries of the East European bloc. His signed articles suggest- ing that trade missions should be set up in these countries, most of which have such missions of their own in Frankfurt, came just at the moment when talks designed to reach agreement on exactly such missions were almost completed. They are at the moment postponed; quite nor- mally, the Foreign Ministry says, for final con- sultations with the various home governments before formal agreements are made. Others say the intervention of publicity may have caused the breakdown of the talks. Privacy was needed both on the German side and on the Communist. The talks were nearest success with the Hun- garians, never anti-German in any case, and worried about their agricultural exports to Ger- many now that the reduced internal tariffs of the Six make it harder for outsiders to sell to them over the external tariff barrier that makes a second hurdle. Agricultural produce forms a large percentage of the exports of Hungary, Bulgaria and Poland to Germany, which is the second largest importer of food in the world— Britain is the largest. For the Poles the matter is very important. Food exports form 60 per cent. of their exports to Western countries, most of the remainder being coal, which is steadily losing value everywhere.
The informal talks with the Poles over a year ago came to nothing, because the Federal Republic could not bring itself to recognise for- mally the Oder-Neisse frontier or to open normal diplomatic relations with a country that recog- nised the East German Government. In spite of their trade needs, the Poles showed their his- torical sense of their own dignity and stuck out for all or nothing. Then the same unofficial am- bassador who had nearly talked the Poles round was used in Hungary. Berthold Beitz, the managing director of Krupps, used the tradi- tional method of kings and emperors and went on hunting parties into Hungary, where the evenings in hunting lodges on the Puszta were used for conversations about trade relations, cul- tural exchanges and the like. On their eastern side the Russians were not too pleased at this sign of an historical friendship coming to life again and the Hungarians were reminded of their `duty of solidarity' at the last meeting of the busy but ineffectual Communist bloc economic com- mittee, which talks much of socialist integra- tion but achieves little. The word `integration' has a deeply ironical meaning in Eastern Europe, much as 'liberation' had all over Europe in 1945. Especially in Hungary, the only coun- try where the Soviet trade treaties have ever been fully published, integration means the ludicrous price paid by Russia for valuable Hun- garian uranium and the very high prices paid by the Hungarians for their own imports from Russia. So, even though they wish to make an
agreement with Germany, the Hungarians will now be almost forced to show intransigence once the matter has become public property. The other countries will probably follow suit and the Poles will be encouraged in their own natural 'but unfortunate attitude—unfortunate because they need Germany far more than Ger- many needs them.
The Germans are interested mainly in achiev- ing better contacts in what is really the diplo- matic field, without having to accord diplomatic relations to recognisers of Ulbricht's govern- ment and so kill off the Hallstein Doctrine. It is bad for Germany, and to some extent for the whole West, that Russia has the only diplomatic say in German affairs from the East of Europe. Up to now their only method of influencing Eastern trade partners has been to keep the trad- ing agreements to periods of one year, so that they have constantly to be renewed, but the dis- advantages of the method far outweigh its advantages. It is clear that the Federal Germans do not like a situation where the Ulbricht regime is the only German voice heard officially in Warsaw, Budapest, Bucharest, Prague, Sofia and Belgrade. And the Americans have been pointing this fact out in Bonn for some time now. But the matter is not quite so simple.
It is not only Germany which has advantages from the Hallstein Doctrine. The African and Asian countries, more particularly those that call themselves non-aligned, are persuaded by Ger- many's 'hard' Mark and excellent engineering, in the form of development aid, of the unwisdom of giving recognition to the dictatorship in East Berlin; but the whole of the Western world in- creases its influence by this pressure, and not only Germany. Without this pressure much more aid, closer educational contacts and other forms of infiltration would be accepted from the East.
There are considerable groups of informed opinion in Germany—perhaps notably in Ham- burg—which would like to bury the Hallstein Doctrine. The Foreign Minister would like to modify it, keeping it intact so far as 'neutrals' are concerned and softening it up a little for the European Communist countries; perhaps as far as permanent cultural missions, trade missions and visa offices—that is, consulates-general by another name. Perhaps there is another method which might find friends in a Germany rapidly becoming almost as empirical in diplomacy as England and increasing every day in genuine (as distinct from loud-voiced but nervous) self- confidence from her friendships in Western Europe. This would be to offer Poland an ex- ception in consideration of Germany's past crimes against her, and offer her full diplomatic relations in spite of the presence of an East Ger- man ambassador in Warsaw. If the Poles would accept a tactful formulation over their western frontier, which the Federal Government has in any case formally promised never to try to change by force, this might offer a real chance of reconciliation between Germans and Poles. It also offers solid gains to Poland. which needs to sell its food and needs outside friends even more than any other Eastern European country. Next to the Polish voting bloc in the US, rela- tions with Federal Germany could be Poland's best card in the struggle for more independence. And the Germans owe Poland something.
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