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