TIME FOR FRATERNISATION

Timothy Garton Ash argues that Britain should realise that

its interests are similar to Germany's, and the antipathy between the two countries is economically damaging

ONE COULD recount the history of Anglo-German relations over the last few Years in Spectator covers. First, there's Nick Garlands wonderful cover of 1988, show- ing a red-faced Margaret Thatcher sitting out the dance, while a cartoon Fritz and Madame Liberte whirl off to European Union in a Franco-German waltz. Then there's Peter Brookes' ingenious drawing '3,_f 1990, at the time of German unification, Showing the shape of West Germany on

the map as the face of Helmut Kohl, And now? Lady Thatcher has, with her

emoirs and with an outspoken interview Io this week's Der Spiegel, once again thrown an outsize spanner into the Anglo- German works. In her memoirs, she says with remarkable frankness that she was °PPosed to German unification in 1990 but _unfortunately failed to prevent it, because President Mitterrand decided after all to stick to Chancellor Kohl, and so did Presi- dent Bush. 'You Germans,' she says in the interview, 'don't want to anchor Germany in Europe. You want the rest of Europe to be anchored in Germany.' The remark is rather outrageously abridged by Der Spiegel into the headline: 'You want the rest of Europe'. It would be wrong to underestimate the hurt which such remarks, or reported remarks, can cause in Germany. For Ger- many, in sharp contrast to Britain, is still enormously sensitive to what the outside world says about it — and above all to the opinions of the former victims and the for- mer victors of the second world war. To this day, when I go to Germany I still find myself being asked about the views of a certain Herr Ridley, as given in Dominic Lawson's famous Spectator interview. And someone is always sure to mention the 'Chequers affair' — that is, the leaked memorandum by Charles Powell rather colourfully reporting a discussion with Ger- man specialists, including myself, at Che- quers in March 1990.

The whole business has been forgotten in this country. Lady Thatcher quite rightly does not even mention it in her memoirs. Heaven knows, there were far more impor- tant conversations going on at that time. Yet again and again people in Germany still raise the subject — the word 'Che- quers' in German having now almost the inverse symbolic connotations of 'Munich' in English. Of course we really didn't mind, they say; and then talk about it for half an hour.

Meanwhile, for as long as I can remem- ber British diplomats and officials have gone around saying that the Anglo-Ger- man relationship is much better than it seems. In fact, they say, it is really more solid and substantial than the Franco-Ger- man relationship. It's just that the French and

Germans haven't noticed, poor things. There is a touch of whistling in the dark about this, but there is also some truth in it.

Let's start with the shadows of history. These are actually not half as long as in German relations with France, let alone those with their Slav neighbours to the east. There is no great mediaeval or early modern conflict between our peoples. In the 18th century, when, as Linda Colley shows in her book Britons, the British national identity was forged in war and conflict with France, our kings were Ger- mans. Whether or not Lady Thatcher's fighting spirit comes originally from some Saxon (i.e. German) warrior forebears, our

monarchs certainly come from the houses of Hanover and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

No, what Paul Kennedy called 'The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism' is of comparatively recent origin. In his splendid book of that title, Kennedy traces it from 1860 to 1914. In the 1860s, Kennedy notes, The Spectator was in favour of German uni- fication. By 1900, this journal was describ- ing Germany as 'England's Real Enemy'. One of the main explanations Kennedy gives — the shift in relative economic power — seems somehow familiar.

Of course, it would be absurd to under- estimate the importance of the subsequent, tragic experience of two world wars. But there is some real mutual incomprehension here. People in Germany are understand- ably offended by tabloid comparisons of, say, the Bundesbank with the Reichswehr. Yet they also, in my experience, often find it hard to grasp how far the British memory of war has nothing whatsoever to do with the Germans. For in harking back to the 'finest hour', affectionately or ironically, we are essentially talking to ourselves and about ourselves. Dad's Army is really no more about Germany than is Coronation Street.

Der Spiegel also illustrated its extracts from the Thatcher memoirs with a Mac cartoon of Mrs Thatcher pushing model battleships across a war-chart of Europe, while Denis advises her to have a nice cup of tea before declaring war on Germany. I wonder how many Spiegel readers really appreciated that this was a joke not against Germany but against Mrs Thatcher — and on ourselves. So all British war-related humour is liable to be misinterpreted unless stamped in large letters: Britisehe Selbstironie. (Peter Brookes' illustration to this article may furnish another case in point!) This said, British attitudes to Germany surely do have an undertow of resentment which derives from the feeling that 'we won the war but they won the peace'. Unifica- tion, and the resulting further shift in polit- ical as well as economic power, at least temporarily sharpened the edge of that resentment. When the federal state of Bavaria had some difficulty adapting to German unification, the diagnosis ran: 'Germany has got bigger, Bavaria has not.' Well, nor has Britain.

This is further reinforced by the sense that Germany will always side with France, and that America is most likely to side with Germany. Those are the special relation- ships now.

It is often forgotten that Britain actually played a larger and more constructive part in the post-war reconstruction of West Germany than France, up to and including the unprecedented treaty commitment in 1954 of a British army to defend West Ger- many. But after Churchill declined Ade- nauer's invitation to take the lead in the integration of western Europe, after Britain declined to join in the process lead- ing to the founding of the EEC, after de Gaulle made his grand, calculated reconcil- iation with Adenauer and signed with him the Elysee Treaty, then a course was set which Chancellor Kohl once again reaf- firmed in the French Senate a fortnight ago.

Moreover, the United States has general- ly, if inconsistently, seemed to like and encourage this course. A Vicky cartoon of 1962 shows John F. Kennedy wooing the ugly sisters Adenauer and de Gaulle, while Harold Macmillan as Cinderella complains, 'But in the story / have a special relation- ship with Prince Charming.' When Presi- dent Bush declared in spring 1989 that America and Germany should be 'partners in leadership', and consequently backed Chancellor Kohl in his rush both to Ger- man and to (West) European unification, ndy Thatcher obviously felt rather the same way.

And as John Major has discovered to his cost, Garland's 1992 cartoon with the por- trait photos brilliantly captured an essential truth. Whatever may be said in diplomatic speeches, whatever his own officials may tell him, intellectually, emotionally and politically Chancellor Kohl simply does not regard the relationship with Britain as being on the same plane as those with France and America.

This — in, so to speak, cartoon history — is where we come from. But it is not precisely where we are at. Such a sketch neglects the deep ties that have been built up over 45 years, in business, in the mili- tary, in politics, in intellectual life, in all the elites represented at the annual Anglo- German Konigswinter conferences. It understates the degree of western and European integration already achieved, the habits of day-to-day co-operation. But more importantly, it overlooks the actual and even more the potential common interests.

The point here is that, while every state in Europe, including Britain, has to re- examine its vital national interests after the end of the Cold War, no state has a more fundamental re-examination to make than Germany. This is somehow obscured by the massive bulk of Helmut Kohl, who is pro- foundly committed to continuing on his old course of building a 'European Union' 'They're starting to act like a future government!' around a Franco-German core. But even if he emerges as victor from Germany's 'year of elections' (19 of them) in 1994, even if he carries on for a year or two after that, he is most unlikely to achieve that result.

There are too many streams flowing too strongly against it. In Germany, as else- where in Europe, Maastricht, intended by Kohl and Mitterrand as a European response to German unification, has proved a treaty too far. In Germany, as elsewhere, there is a strong reaction against the technocratic building of Europe from above. The Federal Constitutional Court has just hedged about the German acces- sion to Maastricht with some quite signifi- cant reservations.

The federal states, the Lander, are wor- ried about their own powers and authority being diminished. The German business and banking communities are delighted with the single European market, but gen- erally in no hurry at all to move on to a sin- gle European currency. They, too, see the importance of a Gatt agreement for their other export markets. The German govern- ment itself, struggling under the colossal financial burden of unification, is no longer half so willing to bankroll large transfers to the Community's poorer states, in the interests of 'cohesion'.

More broadly, Germany has the chal- lenge of post-communist Europe at its front door. When the German government has moved to Berlin, which it has now firm- ly resolved to do by the year 2000, Poland will be less than an hour's drive away. pi the circumstances, many are asking whether it is realty more important to deepen the EEC to Germany's west than it is to bring at least her immediate eastern neighbours into the Community at the pre- sent level of integration. Adapting the cur- rent Eurojargon, Lord Dahrendorf, once described as Britain's most famous German and Germany's most famous Briton, has argued that 'widening is deepening'. His argument finds echoes in Germany as well as Britain.

Beyond this, Germany is very direcilY affected by the civil disorders and wars in the former Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia. Faced with these challenges, it looks more than ever for the firm alliance and support of the most militarily experi- enced and self-confident western powers, which means above all the United States, but also Britain. Certainly this seems to be the case with the country's fluently Anglo- phone (and, one trusts, still mildly Anglophile) defence minister, Volker Riihe.

1 don't suggest that in the mid-1990s we will see a special relationship developing between, say, the government of a Chancel- lor Rtihe or Schaible and that of Mr John Major or his successor. (Or, for that mat- ter, between the governments of a Chan- cellor Scharping and a Mr Smith.) That would be to nourish yet another British illusion. But a sober analysis of common and complementary interests in Europe after 'Yalta' may indeed point to a some- what stronger, closer relationship. And there is quite simply no other country in the world which is more important to the economic future of Britain.

However, such relationships are not just built on sober analysis. Historical baggage, personalities, emotions and legacies all play their part. Plain speaking about national and European interests can only be to the good. But, especially in this case, plain speaking, or just humorous speaking, can also wound quite deeply, even if it is only meant to tickle or stimulate.

To adapt a famous wartime warning: careless talk costs jobs.

Timothy Garton Ash's new book, In Europe's Name. Germany and the Divided Continent, has just been published by Jonathan Cape.