KONRAD ADENAUER AND THE COLD WAR
1944/45: Adenauer predicts confrontation between the USA & USSR and calls for alignment with the West.May 1950: Adenauer embraces the “Schuman Plan” for a European Coal and Steel Community.August 1950: Adenauer volunteers a “defense contribution” by the FRG for NATO in a “European Defense Community.”1954/55: After France rejects the EDC, West Germany gains admission to NATO.1956: West Germany restores military conscription.March 1957: Treaty of Rome creates the “Common Market.”1958: Adenauer provokes emotional debate with a call for nuclear arms for the Bundeswehr.1959: Heinrich Böll publishes Billiards at Half-past Nine, and Günter Grass, The Tin Drum.
THESE CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATS OPENED TALKS IN 1950 OVER A “COMMON MARKET” AND “EUROPEAN DEFENSE COMMUNITY” (EDC)
Alcide de Gasperi, Italian
PM, 1945-53
Konrad Adenauer, West
German Chancellor,
1949-62
Robert Schuman, French foreign
minister, 1948-53
The Schuman Plan to create the European Coal and Steel Community was described differently to the French &
Germans“Two Ways of Reading the Schuman Plan” (1951)
Representatives of Belgium, Luxemburg, Italy, France, West Germany, and the Netherlands sign the European Coal and Steel Community Treaty on April 18, 1951
Headquarters of the ECSC High
Authority in Luxemburg
The Common Market was
launched in 1952 by
THE SIX:Italy, France,
West Germany, Luxemburg,
Belgium, and the Netherlands.
When North Korea invaded South Korea in
June 1950, the U.S. Government instructed Dwight D. Eisenhower as NATO commander to raise an army of 40
divisions to defend Western Europe.
In August Adenauer volunteered to help.
Interior Minister Gustav Heinemann was the
elected lay moderator of the Synod of the
Evangelical Church of Germany.
He resigned from the cabinet in August 1950
as a foe of rearmament.
Pastor Martin Niemoeller:
“Under Fascism the Church was guilty because it
kept silent. Now it must do
everything possible to win its members for the cause of peace.”
(Placard from West Berlin, 1951).
Adenauer’s approval rating dipped (green), and his disapproval rating soared (red), when he announced
support for rearmament and a “Common Market”
ADENAUER RELIED ON TWO (CATHOLIC) CHRISTIAN TRADE UNIONISTS TO ADVANCE HIS FOREIGN POLICY
AGENDA
Jakob Kaiser, Resistance hero and “Minister of All-German
Affairs” (1949-57)
Theodor Blank, vice-chair of the Mineworkers’
Union, appointed in Oct. 1950 to prepare
rearmament
Count Wolf von Baudissin served under Rommel in North Africa and emerged as the Blank Agency’s best
spokesman.
He set up shop in the Cologne train station to engage with youths who opposed rearmament
Count Baudissin’s principles of
“Inner Leadership” for an army of “citizen soldiers” (1952):
Education of soldiers who think
Respect for the human dignity of the soldier
Obedience based on insight Leadership through example No commissars, but tough
training
STALIN SOUGHT TO DISRUPT THE EDC WITH A PLAN FOR A “FINAL PEACE TREATY” IN MARCH
1952
Unified German stateWithdrawal of all occupation troops within one year after all-German electionsDemocratic rights and liberties; free activity for all parties except those “hostile to democracy and peace”No alliances aimed at former enemies from the Second World WarAcceptance of the borders drawn at the Potsdam ConferenceIndependent German army and arms industry
“STALIN: That is Peace”
The rebuttal of the West German government:
“STALIN’S VICTIMS WARN
US”(Federal Republic
of Germany, 1952)
Heinemann & Joseph Wirth founded a neutralist party in 1953 but won just 2% of the vote.
Neutralist propaganda was discredited by a popular uprising in East Berlin on June 17, 1953, crushed by
Soviet tanks
The CDU won 45% of the vote in September 1953, and its ally the FDP, 10%
The French parliament rejected the EDC in August 1954(“WARNING! THE EUROPEAN DEFENSE FORCE WILL
REVIVE THE WEHRMACHT,” French Communist poster, 1953/54)
“NATO: His Comrades,
our Allies” (West Germany,
1955):The Paris Treaties of
October 1954 admitted the FRG as an equal partner in NATO, but the FRG
renounced any development or
deployment of “ABC” weapons.
“Negotiating is better than saber-
rattling”(German Labor
Federation youth rally 1954/55)
INSTITUTIONAL CONCESSIONS TO THE
CRITICS OF REARMAMENT
The Bundestag created a Security Committee in 1953, and Blank honored its demands for frequent testimony about every aspect of military planning.The Bundestag created a Personnel Screening Board in July 1955, authorized to veto the appointment of officers.In response to a mutiny within his own party, Blank reduced the term of service in the new conscription law from 18 months to 12 in September 1956. Conscripts could complain to a Bundestag ombudsman.Conscientious objectors could perform “alternative service.”
Defense Minister Theodor Blank greets the public in 1955, flanked by Generals Adolf Heusinger and Hans Speidel
They enrolled their first 101 volunteers in Bonn
on November 12
The evolution of the German eagle, 1871-1953
The “German Cross.”
In 1957 it became legal to
wear medals
awarded by the 3rd
Reich, if the swastika
was removed
ADENAUER’S POLICY TOWARD THE PAST:LET BYGONES BE BYGONES…
1945-51: West German courts convict 5,500 Nazi criminals, but then the will to prosecute declines. Only 5% of West Germans polled in 1946 term the Nuremberg Trial unfair, but 30% do in 1950.
Dec. 1949: Amnesty Law for all sentenced to up to 1 year for economic crimes and 6 months for other crimes in 1945-49; 792,000 Germans benefit, many of them Nazis.
1951: New civil service law requires the rehiring of 150,000 denazified government employees.
1954: New Amnesty Law pardons most crimes committed during the “time of collapse.”
1958: Meeting of state prosecutors vows a renewed campaign to prosecute war crimes.
Budapest on 23 October 1956,after Soviet tanks
intervened against a popular
uprising.
Adenauer and Italy’s prime minister, Antonio Segni, signing the Treaty of Rome on March 24,
1957, to create the European Economic Community
AVERAGE ANNUAL GROWTH OF GDP(EEC members in boldface)
COUNTRY 1870-1913
1913-1950
1950-1960
1960-1970
1979-1985
France 1.6% 0.7% 4.6% 5.8% 1.3%
Germany 2.9% 1.2% 7.8%* 4.8%* 1.6%*
U.K. 2.2% 1.7% 2.7% 2.8% 1.2%
Italy 1.4% 1.3% 5.8% 5.7%
USA 4.3% 2.9% 3.2% 4.3% 2.2%
Sweden 2.4% 2.0% 4.4% 4.5%
* Refers solely to West Germany.
SPENDING ON SOCIAL WELFARE AS A PERCENTAGE OF GDP (including old-age pensions, jobless benefits, public health services, and assistance to the needy)
1950 1960 1970
France 10.9% 12.7% 15.8%
West Germany
14.1% 14.9% 17.2%
Italy 7.9% 12.0% 16.8%
United Kingdom
8.9% 10.3% 12.9%
USA 4.0% 6.2% 7.5%
Japan 3.2% 4.7% 6.5%
“No Experiments!”In 1957 the CDU won 50.2% of the
West German vote.Adenauer then
secured a Bundestag
resolution in March 1958 that the
Bundeswehr should acquire all “the most modern weapons” if invited to by NATO.
The SPD’s “Struggle against Nuclear Death” attracted
120,000 protesters in Hamburg
A young Helmut Schmidt in Duisburg
“Albert Schweitzer warns! Atomic weapons
are a deadly experiment!”
“The SPD warns: Atomic weapons cause mass
death”
Writers from “Group 47” meet with British friends in Berlin in 1955: Seated from left are Heinrich Böll,
Hans Richter, Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Martin Walser, and Milo Dor
The cast of Pablo Picasso’s play, “Desire Caught by the Tail,” March 1944, including Sartre, Albert
Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir (Group 47 was inspired by French existentialism)
Heinrich Böll (1917-1985)
on Cologne radio, December 1953
Born in Cologne, the son of a Catholic sculptor and anti-Nazi; refused to join Hitler Youth.1939-45: War service as army conscript; wounded four times.1951: Receives “Group 47” literary prize1973: Wins Nobel Prize for Literature.
Unfortunately for Böll,
Pope Pius XII(Eugenio Pacelli,
reigned 1939-1958)championed German
rearmament to prevent the spread of
Communism
Heinrich Böll and Oskar Lafontaine protest at Mutlangen against U.S. plans to deploy intermediate-range nuclear ballistic missiles, September 1, 1983
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