VIEWPOINT
When Willy meets With
GEORGE GALE
Chancellor Willy Brandt of West Germany meets Prime Minister Willi Stoph of East Germany at Erfurt, in Thuringia, now part of East Germany, a most ancient German town, a few miles from Gotha to the west and Weimar to the east. At Weimar the German Republic was established in 1919. At Erfurt the young Martin Luther went to monastery. At Erfurt Napoleon met Czar Alexander I. At Erfurt the German social democrats in 1891 adopted a Marxist pro-
gramme. At Erfurt this week, when Willy meets Willi, we are witnessing yet another event of undoubted significance, even if nothing more comes out of it than a hand- ful of trimmed platitudes and an agreement to meet again, this time in West Germany.
For, slice it how you will, the meeting is a further and a public recognition of two Germanys; and a further and public recognition that a peace treaty with Germany and a final effort at a European security conference depends upon the con- tinuing existence of two Germanys and the formal affirmation of the Oder-Neisse line between East Germany and Poland. It would be much more to the point if the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office devoted its not inconsiderable energies to the serious problem of recognition of two Germanys, of the Oder-Neisse line, of a German peace treaty and a European security conference, instead of playing around with such in- considerable matters as the recognition of Rhodesia. or its now year-long direct rule in Anguilla. The Government. and the Op- position come to that, seem intent on taking Britain into the Common Market, which is to say into Europe, both politically and economically, without giving any serious thought or speech to Europe itself, and especially its political shape.
The west generally, indeed. seems quite content to allow Willy Brandt to make the running, as if it were some small, domestic, internal affair. Everybody knows it is nothing of the sort. East Germany speaks for, and sometimes to, Moscow; West Germany speaks for, and sometimes to, Washington. But how much that is germane has Paris said, since de Gaulle mused gran- diloquently of a Europe stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals? What have the Low Countries said? What has Italy said, or the Scandinavians? What has Britain said? Nothing since the war, or rather nothing much, except what Churchill said when he travelled to Aachen in 1956: 'No one can doubt the usefulness of the Western Euro- pean Union, the Economic Committee, the Coal and Steel Committee, and the Council of Europe . . . But I believe that our main themes of salvation should be a Grand Alliance of the European Powers linked with Canada and the United States . . . I repeat, just in case there should be any misun- der%tanding. the spirit of this agreement should not exclude Russia and the Eastern European States.'
Sir Winston Churchill, in that Aachen speech. delivered when he accepted the city's Charlemagne Prize for services to European unity, did not say that Russia should be invited into NATO. but he did then remark that the Soviet Union should not be excluded from the spirit of NATO. in which event 'it might well be that the great issues which affect us. of which the gravest is the reunification of Germany. can then be solved more easily than they could by rival blocks confronting each other with suspicion and hostility. This was Churchill's last great speech and he had to be carried into the Cor- onation Room of Aachen's town hall by a team of firemen before he could make it. He was already out of power, and his words were swiftly put out of sight and out of mind. West Germany's then Foreign Minister. von Brentano, ardent cold warrior if ever there was one, scoffed. Washington was cool. London said nothing. then, or since.
Churchill hoped for German reunification; but he also hoped for an end to the cold war, -and he also saw that any German reunifica- tion could only follow after a settlement with the Soviet Union on general European security. Churchill, in an old-fashioned sort of way, wanted to see countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia gain their freedom; and he saw quite clearly that, again, such freedom could only follow a general settle- ment with the Soviet Union. Others have, of course, seen as much just as clearly: but they have almost invariably concluded that therefore there can be no German reunifica- tion and therefore can be no freedom for the east European states, full stop. What the statesmen of the west have refused to do, or even to contemplate at all seriously, is to set about endeavouring to reach a general Euro- pean settlement with the Soviet Union. A few months after Churchill spoke, Hungary revolted and Khrushchev crushed that revolt with tanks. The west did nothing but shed tears and shrug shoulders. It was the same in 1968, with Czechoslovakia.
Now I do not myself happen to think that the reunification of Germany is itself all that desirable. Certainly, to free the Poles and the Czechs and the Hungarians from the op- pression of the Soviet Union would strike me as a more desirable object of foreign policy than to preserve a status quo because Moscow rules out German reunification. If, however, the reunification of Germany were to be achieved through a general European settlement and in a way acceptable to the Soviet Union, then I suppose the west, too, could accept that way. But it is the general European settlement that is desirable and important, not the reunification of Germany; and if, as is very likely indeed, the condition for such a settlement is the division of Germany, then that condition should be met; for the gains outside the two Germanys greatly exceed the losses inside the two Germanys; and, anyway, Germany started the war and Germany lost it.
It would be very ironic, but very, very welcome, if in fact the essential diplomacy preceding the formal recognition of the fact of two Germanys was carried out by the West and East Germans themselves. It is West Germany that must make the sacrifice: but the sacrifice is more national than real. To unite West Germany with East Germany would not make West Germans richer, although it might well make them more arrogant and irridentist. One great asset of the division of Germany is that East Germany is in no position to do much about Germany's traditional eastwards land-lust. A united Germany could, conceivably, yet again seek its Lebensraum; a divided Germany cannot.
We must congratulate Willy Brandt on the courage of his eastern policies and we must hope that he does not falter along what will undoubtedly prove to be a stony and difficult route. He, alone among the statesmen of the west, perceives that a general European settlement is in the national- self-interest of every state. If Germany may be prepared to pay the price of such a settlement, that price being the lasting division of Germany, who
among the allies of the last war should com- plain? The Foreign Secretary could do something worthwhile himself, for a start (and a change). He could declare on behalf of the British government that in the negotiating of a German peacc treaty, the British government recognised the Oder- Neisse line as the western frontier of Poland.
He could also prepare to recognise East Germany, not for the sake of the East Germans, of course, but for the sake of the Czechs and the Poles and the Hungarians, and also, come to that, for our own sake.
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