The peaceful reunification of a divided Germany
On 3 October 2020, Germany celebrates the 30th anniversary of its reunification. Like many historical events, this was believed impossible until it was actually achieved. After 1945, Germany had been divided into two states because the Soviet Union and the western powers could not agree on how to prevent it becoming a threat once again. During the Cold War the division became a fixity, marking the boundary between two global systems. Berlin, though in East Germany, was also divided between the two blocs, cemented by the wall built in 1961.
By the 1980s, however, the Soviet system was struggling. Mikhail Gorbachev initiated reforms that gradually relaxed Soviet rule over eastern Europe, and by spring 1989, Poland and Hungary were engulfed in revolution. The GDR (German Democratic Republic) now found itself in an awkward position. The regime in East Berlin set its face against change. But many East Germans had already begun to exploit the loosening of Soviet control, escaping across the Hungarian border to the west, knowing that they had an automatic right to citizenship in West Germany. Unlike any other eastern-bloc state, the GDR faced the existential challenge of a prosperous western neighbour sharing the same history, culture and ethnicity.
By November 1989 mass demonstrations were making East Germany ungovernable. But the regime, paralysed by confusion and uncertain of Soviet support, elected not to use military force against its own people. In a sequence of comical misunderstandings, a plan to relax travel restrictions led to the totally unexpected opening of the Berlin Wall on 9 November. The world was stunned.
On 28 November, West German chancellor Helmut Kohl announced his Ten Point programme for unification. West German politicians had always talked hazily about unification, yet there was no blueprint. Kohl was flying in the dark. His biggest achievement was to dispel fears of a ‘Fourth Reich’ that still troubled Germany’s European partners. Rather than permitting an unpredictable egalitarian merger of the two states, Kohl opted for a “takeover” of the East by his Federal Republic. This won overwhelming support in East German elections of March 1990.
Kohl’s policy had mixed consequences. The loss of East German statehood gave rise to a sense of lost identity that would endure. But the GDR’s absorption into West Germany established international trust. This was deepened in the west by the inclusion of the enlarged German state into the European Community and Nato, and in the east through bilateral negotiations with the Soviet Union, buying Gorbachev’s assent through financial aid.
A fundamental reconfiguration of the European system was accomplished without war and bloodshed. Whatever the flaws in the new design, this was in itself a remarkable achievement.
Politicians had always talked hazily about unification, but there was no blueprint