Mitterand and the fall of the Berlin Wall

WoollyRedHat

Did some reading and found out today that Mitterand had warned Thatcher, who was venomously opposed to the removal of the Berlin Wall, that this act could bring about the return of a Nazi- era Germany. All in all were these comments not completely without foundation, and blatant fearmongering?

Did both leaders have a further agenda and simply used fearmogering and propaganda as it were on the part of Mitterand to oppose German re-unification?

Either way surely, the east and West were going to reunite, as by the will of the people

Relevant link here

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/6166487/Britain-and-France-feared-fall-of-Berlin-Wall.html

Reekwind

WoollyRedHat wrote: »

Either way surely, the east and West were going to reunite, as by the will of the people

The thought of the Volk reuniting was not something likely to reassure either leader...

This is one of those things that seems very strange in hindsight but it should be remembered that the last memories that people had of a united Germany at the time was a nation that had just finished marching over Europe. Twice. France, and to a lesser degree Britain, had spent the better part of a century struggling to contain German ambitions in Europe. These fears had lain behind the original partition and dismantlement of the defeated Germany in '45

A generation of leaders who had grown up during WWII were not going to relinquish these fears easily. The Soviets were adamantly opposed to reunification (but were powerless to stop it) as were most European nations, including the UK and France (who were powerless to stop it). The deciding factor was Washington's support for reunification, on the condition of NATO membership, and the fact that it was actually happening on the ground

Ironically, the core of the Franco-British fears don't seem all that misplaced today. It's taken two decades but Germany is currently in the process of reasserting its place as the foremost European power. The underlying demographic and economic realities of the late 19th C haven't gone away. Which is not, of course, to suggest that another war of conquest is imminent, just that Berlin is slowly eclipsing both London and Paris as the most powerful capital in Europe

Manach

From my memories of the era, Reekwind sums it up well. I seem to remember segments of the US government as being particular pro-unification and dismissive of Frano/British concerns.

jonniebgood1

I would not be a fan of Thatchers policies in many arenas, from Ireland to some of her domestic policies and her use of foreign policy 'toughness' to help boost her popularity at home. However some of her reasoning behind being against the unification would seem to have been correct. The declassified information in the OP is from 2009 and Speigel goes into better detail:

Thatcher, for her part, believed up until February 1990 that she would be able to slow the pace of reunification. She felt it was all happening far too quickly and feared that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev would be destabilized by reunification, a concern borne out by history. She backed a five-year transitional period with two German states and did not share Mitterrand's optimism that the Germans could be tamed by being incorporated into European institutions. "The problems will not be overcome by strengthening the EC" she wrote on February 2, 1990, in an internal memo, referring to the predecessor organization of the European Union. "Germany's ambitions would then become the dominant and active factor."

In public, Thatcher became known for her shrill warnings about the German appetite for power. In an interview with SPIEGEL on March 26, 1990, she said that Kohl had told her that he did not recognize the Oder-Neisse border with Poland, a frontier which had been drawn up after World War II. Kohl was enraged by her remarks and said he had never made such a statement.

The statement if it was made by Kohl would have been quite remarkable.


There is a section of notes of the British discussions on the possible reunification of the German states here http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/11_09_09thatcher_unification.pdf

charlemont

I would think that because Prussia as an entity/German state had not existed since the end of the war that any fear of a resurgent militaristic united Germany was pointless. It was Prussia that had initially united Germany anyway and isolated Austria. The Germans had learned their lesson and uniting with their East was only going to lead them to have an inward looking mentality as they had a lot of reconstruction and relations to repair internally between East and West. Interestingly enough I read recently that the Russians had also offered Konigsberg/ Kaliningrad Oblost back, Now if that was true and did happen then Europe would have been worried particularly Poland and the Baltic states.

franc 91

It's a pity that Germany didn't accept that offer - if it is indeed true, because the European Union now finds itself with a Russian enclave within its boundaries. I'm sure that Putin is delighted, though the Polish can't be particularly pleased with that outcome. But it does seem that at the time Mitterand was worried by the pace of events, as he wasn't expecting it to happen so quickly - and that Germany could become even more important within Europe. That said, in my humble opinion, he rose to the challenge and his relations with Kohl showed him to be far more statesmanlike than Thatcher could ever have been. When you think that not so long ago, someone called Sarkozy had the cheek to try and make us believe that he was there in Berlin when the Wall came down, and he might even have tried claiming the credit for it, given half a chance. I think I'm right in thinking that Putin was a KGB officer in East Berlin at the time, about which he wouldn't have exactly indifferent, I suspect.

franc 91

I've just looked up an article in the Nouvel Observateur about it and it shows that initially he wasn't exactly happy about the turn of events, though he very quickly understood how it needed to be handled in terms of diplomacy. He made a very ill-advised official visit to East Germany from the 20th to the 22nd of December 1989 when he declared that 'The German Democratic Republic and France, we still have much to do together', which rather dismayed the West German leadership and which also showed the mistaken view that French diplomats held at that point that Gorbatchev wouldn't allow German reunification. On French television in 2009 there was a programme that brought together Mikhaïl Gorbatchev and Hubert Vedrine, who was a diplomatic councillor to Mitterand, though in 1988 he had became the official spokesman for the President and later became Foriegn Minister. He is well-known and respected for his clear thinking and presentation of his views and his political experience.
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the diplomatic activity before and after was the subject of their discussion. The article was published the following day.
Affaires étrangères - le Blog de Vincent Jauvert - Mitterand et la chute du Mur de Berlin
Nouvel Observateur jeudi le 5 novembre 2009
http://globe.blogs.nouvelobs.com/archive/2009/11/04/mitterand-et-la-reunification-allemande.html
The link isn't working but it's still there in the archives

Fratton Fred

Didn't Mitterand and Kohl do a deal. I remember reading the quote "We get the euro, you get unification".

jonniebgood1

Fratton Fred wrote: »

Didn't Mitterand and Kohl do a deal. I remember reading the quote "We get the euro, you get unification".

Is this possible?

The term 'euro' was not used at the time.
Perhaps a less specific terminology referring to what followed in the Maastrivht treaty may have been used.

franc 91

I've found this article on the subject - Letters from Europe - Did Kohl give up the Deutsche Mark for East Germany?
http://euroletters.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/did-kohl-give-up-the-deutsche-mark-for-east-germany/
Kohl certainly put a lot of money on the table for Gorbatchev (but that's another story)

Reekwind

The quote doesn't look right but the general gist is sound. Mitterand was more realistic than Thatcher (if only in that he realised that the Germans weren't about to invade Poland again) but I understand that he made French approval conditional of German membership of the EMU; ie the body that had been planning the introduction of the single currency since the 1970s

Again, this should be seen in the context, like NATO membership, of tying the new Germany into the European order through institutional and treaty commitments. If Germany was to return to the heart of Europe then it would be on Paris and Washington's terms

franc 91

First of all, I don't understand your remark about the quote.
I can post up several interesting documents about this subject, but of course they are in French. The first one is taken from a website created by diplomats, so the person speaking here was closely implicated in this -
La réunification allemande et les relations franco-allemandes, par Jacques Jessel, ministre plénipotentaire honoraire.
http://www.diploweb.com/p5jese01.htm - Géopolitique
You may or may not know, but here we have a Franco-German television channel called ARTE which often produces programmes on Franco-German relations.
http://www.arte.tv/fr/2923766,CmC=2923846.html - "Je suis disponible" - 1989 l'Elysée au pied du Mur - Entretien avec Patrich Barbéris sur le rôle de président Mitterrand dans le processus qui allait aboutir à la réunification allemande.
'Je suis disponible' was what said by Mitterrand to Kohl to signal his agreement to what Kohl was doing - up till then he must have felt that he was being outmanoeuvred.

pedroeibar1

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

Is this possible?

The term 'euro' was not used at the time.
Perhaps a less specific terminology referring to what followed in the Maastrivht treaty may have been used.

The Ecu. The Brits got their knickers in a twist over it because it favoured the French (although ECU was the European Currency Unit, it also was the name of a 16th C French coin.) Les Francais were very upset when as a result the name was changed to Euro. Les enarques et Bercy etaient tres decu

franc 91

I'm not sure about that - the main reason the word Euro was adopted is because of its simplicity and that it could easily be used in all the European languages. I've also heard that in German ecu resembles a rather unsavoury slang word, which was also put forward as a strong reason not to use it - as incidentally it does in French.

pedroeibar1

franc 91 wrote: »

I'm not sure about that - the main reason the word Euro was adopted is because of its simplicity and that it could easily be used in all the European languages. I've also heard that in German ecu resembles a rather unsavoury slang word, which was also put forward as a strong reason not to use it - as incidentally it does in French.

I don’t speak colloquial German so don’t know the word to which you refer, but ‘ecu - an old French word, was heavily supported and fought for by the Academie at a time when French was under huge Anglophone pressure (dawning of IT growth) and they had lost the battle on so many new words e.g. ‘navette spatiale’ and ‘courriel’ (if you are old enough to remember those! ) Anyway, Schlesinger, a former president of the Bundesbank when asked why he disliked the Ecu replied, “I have nothing against the Ecu apart from its name—I think it should be called the Deutschemark”.

Mitterrand was quite cosy with Kohl at that time, but like all Frenchmen he knew with what he was dealing. He also would have known (back in ’92) that Soros and other currency speculators were encouraged by the Bundestag to sell both £stg and the Lira because the Germans wanted to break up the ERM. The FrF was to be left alone. Soros confirmed this last year when interviewed shortly after the death of Richard Medley, his political advisor at that time. *

Not much has changed, the Germans are still playing their own game. For example, Weber, former Bundesbank president, and Stark, former vice-president, both voted against the ECB’s support for Greece back in 2010 because it did not suit Germany. When it happened they were highly critical in the media. Then, when the ECB decided to support Spain and Italy, both resigned in protest—and again were very vocal on EU policy. Central bankers – even ‘ex’ ones – do not do public criticism. Soon after that event the FT reported that Siemens had become nervous about the French banking system and withdrawn its deposits from SocGen. Most in the market believed that the background to the story and leak came from the Bundesbank, to strengthen the German hand.
Even at present the Bundesbank continues a campaign to persuade the German public that ECB bond purchases and quantitative easing are illegal under European law. This is wrong, as bond purchases are - as we now know - perfectly legal and EU laws don’t mention QE.

When von Clauswitz said that war was the continuation of politics by other means, he could have added that enforced economic policy is the continuation of war by another means. We are being bullied into accepting German economic directives, practices and monetary theories. If we don’t, we will have to leave (or be thrown out of) the Eurozone and face the ensuing financial chaos. That is the economic equivalent of warfare: accept German ideas & rules, or face economic annihilation. Thatcher might have been a bitch, but she was right.


*Interesting article (in English) here http://www.lastampa.it/_web/CMSTP/tmplrubriche/giornalisti/grubrica.asp?ID_blog=145&ID_articolo=171&ID_sezione=308

Fratton Fred

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

The Ecu. The Brits got their knickers in a twist over it because it favoured the French (although ECU was the European Currency Unit, it also was the name of a 16th C French coin.) Les Francais were very upset when as a result the name was changed to Euro. Les enarques et Bercy etaient tres decu

euro works in pretty much every european language, currency doesn't. so Euro makes more sense than ECU ever did.

Britain got it's knickers in a twist because it got absolutely arse raped when it was in the ERM http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/16/newsid_2519000/2519013.stm