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Konrad Adenauer
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For other uses, see Konrad Adenauer (disambiguation).
| Konrad Adenauer | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Chancellor of Germany | |
| In office 15 September 1949 – 16 October 1963 | |
| President | Theodor Heuss Heinrich Lübke |
| Deputy | Franz Blücher Ludwig Erhard |
| Preceded by | Lutz von Krosigk (as Leading Minister) Joseph Goebbels (in title) |
| Succeeded by | Ludwig Erhard |
| Minister of Foreign Affairs | |
| In office 15 March 1951 – 6 June 1956 | |
| Chancellor | Himself |
| Preceded by | Lutz von Krosigk |
| Succeeded by | Heinrich von Brentano |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer 5 January 1876 Cologne, German Empire |
| Died | 19 April 1967 (aged 91) Bad Honnef, West Germany |
| Political party | Centre Party (1906–1933) Christian Democratic Union (1945–1967) |
| Spouse(s) | Emma Weyer (1904–†1916)Auguste Zinsser (1919–†1948) |
| Children | 8 |
| Alma mater | University of Freiburg University of Munich University of Bonn |
| Religion | Roman Catholicism |
| Part of a series on |
| Christian democracy |
|---|
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| Politics portal |
Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (German pronunciation: [ˈkɔnʁaːt ˈhɛɐman ˈjoːzɛf ˈaːdənaʊɐ]; 5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a German statesman. As the first post-war Chancellor of Germany (West Germany) from 1949 to 1963, he led his country from the ruins of World War II to a productive and prosperous nation that forged close relations with old enemy France, the United Kingdom and the United States.[1] During his years in power Germany achieved democracy, stability, international respect and economic prosperity ("Wirtschaftswunder", German for "economic miracle").[2] He was the first leader of the Christian Democratic Union(CDU), a Christian Democratic party that under his leadership became, and has since usually been one of the most powerful parties in the country.
Adenauer, dubbed "Der Alte" ("the old one"), was one of the oldest democratically elected leaders in world history[citation needed], belied his age by his intense work habits and his uncanny political instinct. He displayed a strong dedication to a broad vision of market-based liberal democracy and anti-communism. A shrewd politician, Adenauer was deeply committed to a Western-oriented foreign policy and restoring the position of West Germany on the world stage. He worked to restore the West German economy from the destruction of World War II to a central position in Europe, presiding over the German Economic Miracle. He founded the Bundeswehr in 1955 and came to terms with France, which made possible the economic unification of Western Europe. Adenauer opposed rival East Germanyand made his nation a member of NATO and a firm ally of the United States.
A devout Roman Catholic, he was a leading Centre Party politician in the Weimar Republic, serving as Mayor of Cologne (1917–1933) and as president of the Prussian State Council (1922–1933).
The 1968–1969 academic year at the College of Europe was named in his honour.
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[hide]The Cologne years[edit]
Early life and education[edit]
Konrad Adenauer was born as the third of five children of Johann Konrad Adenauer (1833–1906) and his wife Helene (née Scharfenberg; 1849–1919) in Cologne, Rhenish Prussia, on 5 January 1876.[3] His siblings were August (1872–1952), Johannes (1873–1937), Lilli (1879–1950) and Elisabeth, who died shortly after birth in c. 1880. One of the formative influences of Adenauer's youth was the Kulturkampf, an experience that as related to him by his parents left him with a lifelong dislike for "Prussianism", and led him like many other Catholic Rhinelanders of the 19th century to deeply resent the Rhineland's inclusion in Prussia.[4] At the Gymnasium that Adenauer attended, one of Adenauer's close friends, Heinrich Lehmann recalled about their social circle that:
Adenauer's biographer Hans-Peter Schwarz argued that given that Adenauer was a member of the social circle from "staunch Catholic families" described by Lehmann, and in view of the marked anti-Prussian views that he was later to display, that it is quite likely that he shared the anti-Prussian views held by the social circle described by Lehmann.[5]
Leader in Cologne[edit]
As a devout Catholic, he joined the Centre Party in 1906 and was elected to Cologne's city council in the same year. In 1909, he became Vice-Mayor of Cologne, an industrial metropolis with a population of 635,000 in 1914. Avoiding the extreme political movements that attracted so many of his generation, Adenauer was committed to bourgeois common-sense, diligence, order, Christian morals and values, and was dedicated to rooting out disorder, inefficiency, irrationality and political immorality.[6] From 1917 to 1933, he served as Mayor of Cologne and became qua office a member of the Prussian House of Lords.
Adenauer headed Cologne during World War I, working closely with the army to maximize the city's role as a rear base of supply and transportation for the Western Front. He paid special attention to the civilian food supply, as the city financed large warehouses of food that enabled the residents to avoid the worst of the severe shortages that beset most German cities during 1918–1919. He set up giant kitchens in working-class districts to supply 200,000 rations per day.[7] In the face of the collapse of the old regime and the threat of revolution and widespread disorder in late 1918, Adenauer maintained control in Cologne using his good working relationship with the Social Democrats. As a Catholic Rhinelander who deeply disliked Prussia, in a speech on 1 February 1919 Adenauer called for the dissolution of Prussia, and for the Prussian Rhineland to become a new Land (state) in the Reich.[8] Adenauer made it clear that he expected the new Land to be an autonomous state with very wide-ranging powers, and argued that the Reich government would accept this under the grounds that this was the only way to prevent France from annexing the Rhineland (at the time the Paris peace conference was still in session, and many believed that the French would demand the annexation of the Rhineland as one of the peace terms).[8] Both the Reich and Prussian governments were totally against Adenauer's plans for breaking up Prussia.[9] When the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were presented to Germany in June 1919, Adenauer again suggested to Berlin his plan for an autonomous Rhineland state, arguing that if Berlin agreed to this, then perhaps the Allies might modify the terms of the Versailles treaty, and again his plans were rejected by the Reich government.[10]
He was mayor during the postwar British occupation. He established a good working relationship with the British military authorities, using them to neutralize the workers' and soldiers' council that had become an alternative base of power for the city's left wing.[11] During the Weimar Republic, he was president of the Prussian State Council (Preußischer Staatsrat) from 1921 to 1933, which was the representation of the provinces of Prussia in its legislation. Since the early 20th century, a major debate within the Zentrum concerned the question if the Zentrum should "leave the tower" (i.e. allow Protestants to join to become a multi-faith party) or "stay in the tower" (i.e. continue to be a Catholic only party). The debate had been started in 1906 when the Catholic journalist and Cologne politician Julius Bachem wrote a widely publicized article under the title "We Must Come Out Of The Tower!", which had sparked much debate within the Zentrum.[12] Adenauer was one of the leading advocates of "leaving the tower", which led to a dramatic clash between him and Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber at the 1922 Katholikentag, where the Cardinal publicly admonished Adenauer for wanting to take the Zentrum "out of the tower".[13]
Adenauer flirted with Rhenish separatism (a Rhenish state as part of Germany, but outside Prussia). Adenauer's relations with France and the Rhinish separatist movement in 1923 was to be the source of considerable controversy both at the time and later in his career with many accusing Adenauer of treason while Adenauer's defenders have argued that he was a loyal German who merely was coping with very difficult conditions caused by the hyper-inflation of 1923 that had destroyed the German economy.[14] In October–November 1923, Adenauer was involved in talks with the French and the Reich government under what terms might an autonomous Rhineland state be created, arguing that this was the only way to save the economy.[15] This was especially the case when in mid-October 1923, the Chancellor Gustav Stresemann announced that Berlin would cease all financial payments to the Rhineland and that the new Rentemark, which had replaced the now worthless Mark would not circulate in the Rhineland, a policy that would in effect economically sever the Rhineland from the rest of Germany by forcing the Rhinelanders to use the worthless mark while the rest of Germany was using the new Rentemark.[16] On 24–25 October 1923, Adenauer met with Stresemann to discuss the ramifications of the new currency policy with Adenauer arguing that Stresemann had abandoned the Rhineland, and if this continued, then he would have no other choice, but to reach an accommodation with the French to save the Rhineland economy and Stresemann telling Adenauer that in effect that he could not care less about the Rhineland, and that the Rhinelanders have to do whatever necessary to survive.[17][clarification needed] From Stresemann's viewpoint, his first priority was to save the German economy, and the Rhineland would to be written off for the moment with the additional caveat that the Rhinelanders would have to engage in talks with the French that could be disallowed if Stresemann disapproved of their direction that they were going.[18] Adenauer for his part remained loyal to Germany, but at the same time his first priority was in rescuing the Rhineland economy from the effects of the hyper-inflation by working out whatever arrangement necessary with the French to save the Rhineland economy.[19]
under the Nazi government[edit]
Election gains of Nazi Party candidates in municipal, state and national elections in 1930 and 1932 were significant. Adenauer, as mayor of Cologne and president of the Prussian State Council, still believed that improvements in the national economy would make his strategy work: ignore the Nazis and concentrate on the Communist threat. He was "surprisingly slow in his reaction" to the Nazi electoral successes,[24] and even when he was already the target of intense personal attacks, he thought that the Nazis should be part of the Prussian and Reich governments based on election returns. Political manoeuvrings around the aging President Hindenburg then brought the Nazis to power on 30 January 1933.
By early February Adenauer finally realized that all talk and all attempts at compromise with the Nazis were futile. Cologne's city council and the Prussian parliament had been dissolved; on 4 April 1933, he was officially dismissed as mayor and his bank accounts frozen. "He had no money, no home and no job."[25] After arranging for the safety of his family, he appealed to the abbot of the Benedictine monastery at Maria Laach for a stay of several months. His stay at this abbey, which lengthened to a full year, was cited by the abbot after the war when the monastery was accused by Heinrich Böll and others of collaboration with the Nazis. According to Albert Speer in his book Spandau: The Secret Diaries, Hitler expressed admiration for Adenauer, noting his civic projects, the building of a road circling the city as a bypass, and a "green belt" of parks. However, both Hitler and Speer concluded that Adenauer's political views and principles made it impossible for him to play any role in Nazi Germany.
Adenauer was imprisoned for two days after the Night of the Long Knives on 30 June 1934, but already on 10 August 1934, manoeuvring for his pension, he wrote a 10-page letter to Hermann Göring (the Prussian interior minister) stating among other things that as Mayor he had even violated Prussian laws in order to allow NSDAP events in public buildings and Nazi flags to be flown from city flagpoles, and added that in 1932 he had declared publicly that the Nazis should join the Reich government in a leading role.[26][27] Indeed at the end of 1932, Adenauer had demanded a joint government by his Zentrum party and the Nazis for Prussia.[28] And on 29 June 1933, i.e., several months after Hitler was made Chancellor and the Nazis were given full police power over Germany, and while the Nazis were still busy terrorizing and murdering Communists, Social Democrats, and Labor Union officials, Adenauer wrote in a letter: "In my opinion the only salvation is a monarch, a Hohenzollern[...], even Hitler in my opinion, a lifetime Reichpresident [...]".[29]
During the next two years, Adenauer changed residences often for fear of reprisals against him, while living on the benevolence of friends. With the help of lawyers in August 1937 he was successful in claiming a pension; he received a cash settlement for his house, which had been taken over by the city of Cologne; his unpaid mortgage, penalties and taxes were waived. With reasonable financial security he managed to live in seclusion for some years. After the failed assassination attempt on Hitler in 1944, he was imprisoned for a second time as an opponent of the regime. He fell ill and credited Eugen Zander, a former municipal worker in Cologne and communist, with saving his life. Zander, then a section Kapo of a labor camp near Bonn discovered Adenauer's name on a deportation list to the East and managed to get him admitted to a hospital. Adenauer was subsequently rearrested (and so was his wife), but in the absence of any evidence against him was released from prison at Brauweiler in November 1944.
After World War II and the founding of the CDU[edit]
Shortly after the war ended, the American occupation forces installed him again as mayor of heavily bombed Cologne. After the transfer of the city into the British zone of occupation, the Director of its military government, General Gerald Templer, dismissed Adenauer for incompetence in December 1945.[30] As mayor, Adenauer clashed with the British military government a number of times in the summer and fall of 1945, and a speech lamenting the devastation of Cologne by Allied bombing was seen as implicitly anti-British since it was British bombers that wreaked the devastation that Adenauer bemoaned.[31] Adenauer always believed that the Labour government in Britain had favored their fellow socialists in the SPD in their zone of occupation in Germany, and that he was sacked by the British to improve the SPD's odds.[32] In a 1962 television interview, Adenauer commented that his sacking was a blessing in disguise, and that he would never have become Chancellor if he had not been sacked.[33] Adenauer's sacking by the British military government gave him a reputation as a man who would stand up to the Allies, and contributed much to his subsequent political success and allowed him to pursue a policy of alliance with the West in the 1950s without facing charges of being a "sell-out". Adenauer never forgave the British for firing him, and in the 1950s–1960s, many British officials believed that Adenauer's unfriendly attitude towards them was due to his resentment of the humiliation of being ordered out of the Lord Mayor's office by British officers.[34]
After his dismissal as Mayor of Cologne, Adenauer devoted himself to building a new political party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which he hoped would embrace both Protestants and Roman Catholics in a single party, and thereby achieve his long-standing goal of bringing the Zentrum "out of the tower". In January 1946, Adenauer initiated a political meeting of the future CDU in the British zone in his role as doyen (the oldest man in attendance, Alterspräsident) and was informally confirmed as its leader. Adenauer had become a leader almost by default. During the Weimar Republic, Adenauer had often been considered a future Chancellor and after 1945, his claims for leadership were even stronger.[35] Of the other surviving leaders of the Zentrum Wilhelm Marx was too old and in bad health; Joseph Wirth was considered to be too left-wing; Heinrich Brüning's austerity policies during his time as Chancellor in 1930–32 had earned him the moniker the "Hunger Chancellor" and had made him into one of Germany's most hated men; and Andreas Hermes lacked Adenauer's national reputation, and had begun his post-war political career in the Soviet zone, which led many people to see him as a Soviet "collaborator".[36] Since the core of the new CDU was formed by men who served in the Zentrum, it was considered essential to have a Catholic leader, which ruled out Protestant conservatives such as Robert Lehr and Hans Schlange-Schöningen who had belonged to the German National People's Party.[37]
Reflecting his background as a Catholic Rhinelander who had long chafed under Prussian rule, Adenauer believed that Prussianism was the root cause of National Socialism, and that only by driving out Prussianism could Germany become a democracy.[38] In a December 1946 letter, Adenauer wrote that the Prussian state in the early 19th century had become an "almost God-like entity" that valued state power over the rights of individuals.[38] Adenauer continued that after German unification was unfortunately achieved by Prussia in 1871, the Prussian-German state had become an inhuman "sovereign machine" that cared nothing for "Christian natural law" and freely tramped over the rights of individuals.[38] Adenauer concluded that "National Socialism was nothing, but a logical further development of Prussian statism".[38]In a September 1948 speech, Adenauer said "Prussia is identical to centralism, and centralization is identical to depersonalization."[38] In December 1945, Adenauer told the British historian Noel Annan that the greatest mistake Britain had done with Germany was "at the Congress of Vienna, when you foolishly put Prussia on the Rhine as a safeguard against France and another Napoleon".[39]
Chancellor of West Germany[edit]
First government[edit]
The first election to the Bundestag of West Germany was held on 15 August 1949, with the Christian Democrats emerging as the strongest party. During the 1949 election, Adenauer—who was something of an Anglophobe—charged that the British government was backing the Social Democrats because a socialist government would ruin Germany economically, and thus eliminate a potential British economic rival.[53] There were two clashing visions of a future Germany held by Adenauer and his main rival, the Social Democrat Kurt Schumacher. Adenauer looked towards the West, and favored integrating the Federal Republic with other Western states, especially France and the United States in order to fight the Cold War, even if the price of this was the continued division of Germany. Schumacher by contrast, though an anti-Communist, was in favor of neutrality in the Cold War, and wanted to see a united, socialist and neutral Germany. As such, Adenauer was in favor of joining NATO, something that Schumacher was adamantly opposed to.
The Free Democrat Theodor Heuss was elected the first President of the Republic, and Adenauer was elected Chancellor (head of government) on 15 September 1949 with the support of his own CDU, the Christian Social Union, the liberal Free Democratic Party, and the right-wing German Party. At age 73,[54] it was initially thought that he would only be a caretaker Chancellor. However, he would go on to hold this post for 14 years, a period spanning most of the preliminary phase of the Cold War. During this period, the post-war division of Germany was consolidated with the establishment of two separate German states, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
As part of his politics of integration, where those who had supported the Nazis were to be integrated into the democratic system, Adenauer's first important speech as Chancellor occurred on 20 September 1949, where he denounced the entire denazification process pursued by the Allied military governments between 1945–49.[55]Adenauer attacked the "much misfortune and mischief" that he argued had been caused by denazification.[56] Adenauer stated that those "truly guilty" of crimes during the National Socialist era deserved to be punished, but he argued that denazification was morally and practically wrong as it sought to punish the millions of Germans who supported the Nazi regime, which Adenauer claimed was unjust and unworkable.[56] Adenauer ended his speech with the remark that it was time for the distinction between "two classes of human beings in Germany", namely the "politically objectionable" because they had supported the Nazi regime and the "politically unobjectionable" because they had opposed the Nazi regime, to "vanish as fast as possible".[56] Despite his claim that he believed in punishing those guilty of crimes, Adenauer announced in the same speech that he was planning to bring in an amnesty law for the Nazi war criminals and he planned to apply to "the High Commissioners for a corresponding amnesty for punishments imposed by the Allied military courts".[56] Adenauer's speech caused some controversy outside of Germany because his sole reference to the Holocaust in his entire two hour speech was to the "anti-Semitic endeavors manifest here and there", a statement that many felt trivialized the genocide waged by the National Socialist regime.[57]
A major part of his strategy of integration led Adenauer to make paradoxical and contradictory arguments about German history.[68] On one hand, Adenauer argued that the Prussian-German state and its values had led straight to National Socialism while on the other hand in his attempt to win votes for the CDU, Adenauer portrayed the Nazi regime as a gang of few criminals entirely unrepresentative of German society, who somehow managed to dupe millions of good Germans into following them.[68] For electoral purposes, Adenauer liked to promote the idea of the National Socialist regime as a small criminal gang with the vast majority of their supporters being people who Hitler had tricked into following him, and who done nothing wrong under the Third Reich.[69] In marked contrast to the collective guilt theories popular in some quarters in the Allied countries where all Germans were considered equally guilty of National Socialist crimes, Adenauer went to the other extreme of collective exoneration where all living Germans were equally innocent of National Socialist crimes with his thesis that all of the Nazi crimes were the work of a small clique of men who were conveniently all dead.[70] Such a version of the past not only absolved almost all Germans of any responsibility for what had happened in the years 1933–45, but also allowed the story of the Third Reich to be presented as first and foremost as a story of German victimization at the hands of both their own regime and at the Allies rather than a story of Germans victimizing others.[69] Adenauer's repeated statements that Hitler had deceived and tricked people into following him suggested that the Nazis themselves were in a certain sense victims of Hitler.[69] For this reason, Adenauer insisted that a memorial day could be set aside for the victims of National Socialism as long as one included all of the Germans killed by Allied bombing or fighting in the Wehrmacht or the Waffen SS as being equally victims of National Socialism as those who died in the concentration camps or killed in the death camps.[69]Adenauer's proposed memorial day was vetoed by the Allied High Commissioners as an act of unacceptable moral equivalence, who stated that those Germans killed in the Wehrmacht/Waffen SS fighting for the Nazi regime were victims of National Socialism, but were not victims of National Socialism in the same way as those were killed in the death camps were.[69] For Adenauer a painful confrontation with the Nazi past was out of the question as it would cause feelings of shame and disgust amongst the Germans, which he believed would cause a nationalist backlash, and what was needed was a version of the past that would inspire pride in being German.[70] Herf wrote that for Adenauer neither memory nor justice mattered much in the pursuit of integration, and all that he cared about was that he achieve his aims.[62]
In 1950, a major controversy broke out when it emerged that Adenauer's State Secretary Hans Globke, who been a high ranking civil servant under the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich had a dubious past under the latter.[103] Globke had played a major role in drafting anti-Semitic laws in Nazi Germany and was praised on 25 April 1938 by the Reich Interior Minister Dr. Wilhelm Frick as "the most capable and efficient official in my ministry" when it came to drafting anti-Semitic laws.[104] On 12 July 1950 Adolf Arndt, a SPD member of the Bundestag brought up Globke's career in Nazi Germany and accused him of having "committed mass murder with the help of legal paragraphs" on the floor of the Bundestag.[105] In his reply, Adenauer stated he was saw nothing wrong with Globke's past that warranted his dismissal. Adenauer kept Globke on as State Secretary as part of his strategy of integration, namely to show the millions who had supported Hitler that if a man like Globke, despite everything he had done under the Third Reich, could go on to a good career in the Federal Republic, serving as Adenauer's right-hand man, then so could they.[106] Starting in August 1950, Adenauer began to pressure the Western Allies to free all of the war criminals in their custody, especially those from the Wehrmacht, whose continued imprisonment Adenauer claimed made West German rearmament impossible as he maintained that Germans would not fight for the West against the Soviet Union as long as the Western nations imprisoned German officers for war crimes.[107] Besides for the Wehrmacht war criminals, Adenauer also wanted the release of the so-called "Spandau Seven" as the seven war criminals convicted at Nuremberg imprisoned at Spandau prison were known.[108] The "Spandau Seven" were Albert Speer, Admiral Karl Dönitz, Baron Konstantin von Neurath, Rudolf Hess, Walther Funk, Admiral Erich Raeder and Baldur von Schirach. Adenauer had been opposed to the Nuremberg trial in 1945–46, and demanded right from the moment that he became Chancellor in 1949 that the Western Allies do everything in their power to free the "Spandau Seven" as a sign of friendship with Germany and claimed that this was essential to allow Germans to fight against the Soviets in case World War III should break out.[109] In response, during a lengthy correspondence over 1950–51, the three Allied High Commissioners informed Adenauer that conditions at Spandau were not inhumane as he claimed and that "the prisoners sentenced by the International Military Tribunal, serve their terms ... in accordance with the principles adhered to in all democratic countries".[110]
the end of his chancellorship in sight, his "nuclear ambitions" began to taper off.
Third government[edit]
1957 saw the reintegration of the Saarland into West Germany . The election of 1957 essentially dealt with national matters.[227] His re-election campaigns centered around the slogan "No Experiments".[54] Riding a wave of popularity from the return of the last POWs from Soviet labor camps, as well as an extensive pension reform, Adenauer led the CDU/CSU to the first—and as of 2014, only—outright majority in a free German election.[228] In 1957, the Federal Republic signed the Treaty of Romeand become a founding member of the European Economic Community. In September 1958, Adenauer first met President Charles de Gaulle of France, who was to become a close friend and ally in pursuing Franco-German rapprochement.[229]
Throughout the 1950s, the East German leader Walter Ulbricht had been pressuring the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev for an end to West Berlin, maintaining that the German Democratic Republic could not prosper as long as West Berlin existed as an escape valve for unhappy East Germans.[230] In February 1958, the Soviet Ambassador to East Germany Mikhail Pervukhin suggested to Khrushchev that "the Berlin question can be resolved independently from resolving the entire German problem, by the gradual political and economic conquest of West Berlin".[230] On 10 November 1958, Khrushchev gave a bellicose speech warning that he wanted to see the end of West Berlin, which he called a "cancer" in East Germany and then on 27 November another Berlin crisis broke out when Khrushchev submitted Ultimatum with a six-month expiry date to Washington, London and Paris.[231] Khrushchev demanded that the Allies pull all their forces out of West Berlin and agree that West Berlin become a "free city", or else he would sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany.[230] A Soviet-East German peace treaty would mean at least officially the ending of the Soviet rights in their zone of Germany.[230] Every since 1945, American, British and French forces had enjoyed access rights to West Berlin through East Germany, and to do so, they had dealt with the Soviet forces.[230] Ending the Soviet rights in East Germany would meant to enjoy their access right to West Berlin the Allies would now have to deal with the East Germans rather the Soviets.[232] Under the Hallstein Doctrine, Adenauer had a policy of breaking off diplomatic relations with any state except for the Soviet Union that recognized East Germany.[232] Thus, a Soviet-East German peace treaty would mean that the Allies would to recognize East Germany to use their access rights to West Berlin and have Adenauer break off relations with them or alternatively the Allies would have to give up on their access rights to West Berlin if they did not wish to deal with East Germany.[233] The plans for the "Free City of Berlin" were regarded by everyone at the time including most importantly Khrushchev as a mere prelude to the East German annexation of West Berlin, and as a providing a face-saving way for the Allies to pull out of West Berlin before the East Germans marched in.[233] Alternatively, if the Allies did recognize East Germany, and Adenauer then enforced the Hallstein Doctrine by breaking diplomatic relations with Washington, Paris and London, then all of Adenauer's work towards integrating the Federal Republic into the West would be undone at one stroke.[233] From Khrushchev's viewpoint, either outcome would be equally desirable for the Soviet Union, and he believed that the crisis could only be resolved in his favor because the only way in which the Western powers could continue enjoy their access rights to West Berlin without recognizing East Germany would be war, and Khrushchev did not believe the West would risk World War III for the sake of Berlin.[233] At the time that Khrushchev presented his ultimatum in 1958, he was said to have made the remark that "Berlin is the testicles of the West. Every time I want to make the West scream, I squeeze on Berlin".[231]
The U.S. secretary of state John Foster Dulles suggested that the American response to Khrushchev's ultimatum should be to recognize and deal with the East Germans as "agents" of the Soviet Union, something that Dulles hoped might be an acceptable compromise.[232] In a message to the U.S President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Adenauer stated that any form of American recognition of East Germany, even as Soviet "agents" would mean that West Germany would enforce the Hallstein Doctrine by breaking off diplomatic relations with Washington.[232] Eisenhower complained privately that thanks to Adenauer's threat to enforce the Hallstein Doctrine that this was "another instance in which our political posture requires us to assume military positions that are wholly illogical" and that average American would have trouble understanding why thermonuclear war was being risked because "we worry about the shape of the helmet of the official to whom we present credentials".[232] Eisenhower decided that rather than risk a rupture with Bonn, that the Americans would refuse to have any dealings with the East Germans, and come 27 May 1959 if a Soviet-East German peace treaty was signed, then an American platoon would be sent to fight its way across East Germany to West Berlin.[232] If the platoon was repulsed, then an American armored division would be sent to fight its way to West Berlin in order to create a situation as the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff put to convince the world that U.S. "would use whatever degree of force may be necessary" to enjoy its access rights to West Berlin without dealing with the East German regime.[232] Dulles during a visit to Bonn in February 1959 told Adenauer that if the division was rebuffed in its attempt to access West Berlin, the U.S. would go to war with the Soviet Union, a war "in which we obviously would not forego the use of nuclear weapons".[232] Adenauer, who never much liked Berlin is said to have told Dulles in horror: "For God's sake, not for Berlin!".[232] Adenauer had already been informed by NATO planners in 1955 that the use of tactical nuclear weapons alone in Germany should World War III break out would release enough radiation to kill about 1.7 million German civilians at once and hospitalize about 3.5 million Germans civilians with radiation-related injuries.[232] This estimate of German civilian casualties were for tactical nuclear weapons alone, and excluded the dead and wounded expected from the use of conventional weapons. Adenauer was opposed to the American plan to fight their way across East Germany as the consequences of a Third World War from the German point of view were too horrific, but at the same time was opposed to any sort of negotiations with the Soviets, arguing if only the West were to hang tough long enough, Khrushchev would back down.[234]
As the 27 May deadline approached, the crisis was defused though not resolved by the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who visited Moscow to meet with Khrushchev to discuss the Berlin crisis over the objections of Adenauer who believed that Macmillan would seek a compromise that would in some way imply recognition of the German Democratic Republic.[232] Macmillan failed to get the resolution of the Berlin crisis he was seeking, but managed to win time by getting Khrushchev to extend the deadline by promising a four-power conference on a solution while not committing himself or the other Western powers to concessions.[232] The four-power conference that was to discuss the Berlin crisis was the abortive Paris summit of May 1960 that was cancelled due to the U-2 incident. Adenauer-who was always inclined to believe the worst about the British-was livid about the Moscow summit, and believed quite wrongly as it turned out, that Macmillan had made a secret deal with Khrushchev at the expense of the Federal Republic.[235] At a subsequent Anglo-German summit between Adenauer and Macmillan to discuss the Berlin crisis was quite frosty with the two leaders being barely civil to one another.[235] At the end of the Moscow summit, an Anglo-Soviet communiqué was released, which spoke in very vague terms of the British and Soviet governments' desire to end the nuclear arms race and a solution to the "German question" that would be satisfactory to all parties.[236] Adenauer saw the Anglo-Soviet communiqué as a sign that Macmillan had surrendered too much to the Soviets, and did nothing at the Bonn summit with Macmillan to hide his displeasure.[236] Adenauer saw Macmillan as a spineless "appeaser" unable and unwilling to stand up to Khrushchev, and in a 1965 interview was to call Macmillan "stupid" for holding the 1959 summit with Khrushchev.[237] The dislike between Macmillan and Adenauer was mutual. In his diary entries from 1959, Macmillan variously described Adenauer as "half crazy", "... a false and cantankerous old man", and "... vain, suspicious and grasping".[238] Macmillan argued that Adenauer by opposing all talks with the Soviets was taking a needlessly intransigent line on the Berlin crisis that was likely to plunge the world into a nuclear holocaust, and argued the best solution to the Berlin crisis was to follow Churchill's dictum that "jaw-jaw-jaw" was always better than "war-war-war".[239] By contrast with his poor relations with Macmillan, Adenauer enjoyed excellent relations with General de Gaulle of France, whom Adenauer saw as a "rock", and the only foreign leader whom he could completely trust.[240] One of Adenauer's aides Heinrich Krone wrote in his diary in early 1959 that: "The Chancellor is intent on the closest partnership with France".[236]
Adenauer briefly considered running for the office of Federal President in 1959. Adenauer's biographer Hans-Peter Schwarz commented that though Adenauer was normally very cautious and careful when making decisions, but at times, Adenauer would act recklessly and impulsively with no thought for the consequences.[241] Adenauer had tarnished his image when he announced he would run for the office of federal president in 1959, only to pull out when he discovered that under the Basic Law, the president had far less power than he did in the Weimar Republic. Adenauer believed that he could re-reinterpret the powers of the presidency in such a way as to be an effective power-player instead holding a merely ceremonial post by attending cabinet meetings (the Basic Law was silent on whether the president could attend cabinet meetings or not).[242] In a letter that showed signs of much anger, President Heuss wrote to Adenauer that he had always worked to prevent him from attending cabinet meetings, and argued that having established that precedent, was now very annoyed by Adenauer's idea if he was elected president, he would chair cabinet meetings.[243] Additionally, the departing and respected Theodor Heuss had established the precedent that the president be nonpartisan, which clashed with Adenauer's vision.[244] After his reversal he supported the nomination of Heinrich Lübke as the CDU presidential candidate whom he believed weak enough not to interfere with his actions as Federal Chancellor. For a couple of weeks in 1959, Adenauer considered leaving the chancellorship and becoming Federal President. He initially believed the office could be fulfilled in a more politically active way than president Heuss did. He reconsidered, among other reasons, because he was afraid that Ludwig Erhard, whom Adenauer thought little of, would become the new chancellor.
By early 1959, Adenauer came under renewed pressure from his Western allies, especially the Americans and the French to recognize the Oder-Neisse line with the Americans being especially insistent.[245] The Americans argued that Adenauer's revanchist statements about the Oder-Neisse line were a godsend to Communist propaganda in Poland, and that the best way of countering the Communist claim that the Federal Republic was out to stage a new Drang nach Osten, thereby requiring the Red Army to protect the Poles was for Adenauer to publicly accept the Oder-Neisse line.[246] In response to the Franco-American pressure, the Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano suggested as a way of gaining "breathing space" was for the Federal Republic to sign non-aggression pacts with Poland and Czechoslovakia, which would imply recognition of the Oder-Neisse line without formally saying so.[247] Since it was extremely unlikely that the Poles would ever willingly return the Recovered Territories to Germany, realistically war was the only way that the Germans could ever hope to challenge the Oder-Neisse line, so by signing a non-aggression pact with Poland would effectively mean accepting the Oder-Neisse line.[248] In response to Brenatno's proposal, Adenauer gave his "explicit and unconditional approval" to the idea of non-aggression pacts in late January 1959, and for next several months, West German officials met with American, British and French diplomats to discuss in conditions of great secrecy the texts of the suggested non-aggression pacts.[249] Crucially, Adenauer did not inform either the Ernst Lemmer, the Minister of All-German Affairs or the Theodor Oberländer Minister of Refugees as the former was close to the expelle lobby while the latter was one of the leaders of the expelle lobby.[250] In March 1959, Adenauer had a rare public rift with his friend General de Gaulle of France, when de Gaulle publicly urged Adenauer to recognize the Oder-Neisse line, a statement which promoted a press release from Chancellor's office which firmly declared the Chancellor believed that "the German borders are still those of December 30, 1937".[251] At the same time, the London Times ran an article documenting the most of the leaders of the powerful expellee lobby had been active National Socialists, and some had been war criminals such as the SS officer Hermann Krumey, who after the war led one of the Sudeten expelle groups.[252] The article charged that by refusing to recognize the Oder-Neisse line and promoting the idea of Heimatrecht that Adenauer had been "keeping alive the sentiments and hatreds" expressed by the expellee lobby.[252] By late April 1959, the texts of the proposed non-aggression pacts were largely finished, and all that remained was to present them to the governments of Poland and Czechoslovakia.[253] But before that could happen, the New York Times on 21 May 1959 leaked the news of the proposed non-aggression pacts.[254] The expellee lobby reacted with open dismay, charging that the non-aggression pacts were only the first step towards accepting the Oder-Neisse line and the loss of the Sudetenland, and called Adenauer's commitment to the cause of the expellee lobby "a mere illusion".[255] Adenauer had never laid claim to the Sudetenland, but the Sudeten German expellee groups had been quite open in expressing their views that the Munich Agreement was still in effect in their opinion, and as such the Germans had the right to invade Czechoslovakia to take back the Sudetenland, which had been "illegally" occupied by Czechoslovakia since 1945.[256] Adenauer insisted that he was still opposed to the Oder-Neisse line, and that the proposed non-aggression pacts did not change that fact, but this argument fooled almost no-one. The expellee lobby knew well that without the option of war that the Oder-Neisse line would remain unchanged (Adenauer's argument that the Poles could somehow be persuaded to peacefully return the land lost by the Oder-Neisse line did not impress many), which is why they were so outraged by the idea of a non-aggression pact with Poland.[257]
In June 1959, Adenauer attended a four-day rally organized by the expellee lobby in Cologne during which he promised that his government would never cease demanding Heimatrecht for the expellees, declared that the expulsion of the Germans was a "great crime", and announced that if diplomatic relations were ever established with Poland and Czechoslovakia that he would demand that the Poles and the Czechoslovaks pay reparations.[258] Adenauer's speech was well received in West Germany, but attracted much outrage in Poland, when it was widely publicized by the Communist government as an example of why Poland needed the Red Army to counter the Adenauer's alleged new Drang nach Osten.[258] The demand that the Poles and the Czechoslovaks pay reparations to Germany was considered very offensive in those nations as the Federal Republic had never paid any reparations to either Poland or Czechoslovakia for their war-time occupation by Germany. Adenauer's speech at the Cologne rally was intended to undo the damage done to his reputation amongst the expellee lobby by the news that he had been seeking non-aggression pacts with Poland and Czechoslovakia. In early July 1959, coming under strong Western pressure, Adenauer decided to revive the idea of the non-aggression pacts, authorizing Brentano to formally present the non-aggression pacts to the Polish and Czechoslovak governments after he had obtained the approval of the cabinet for the non-aggression pacts, which was expected to be a mere formality.[259] At that point, the expellee lobby swung into action to scuttle the idea of the non-aggression pacts, and organized protests all over the Federal Republic while bombarding the offices of Adenauer and other members of the cabinet with thousands of letters, telegrams and telephone calls promising never to vote CDU again if the non-aggression pacts were signed.[260] Faced with this pressure, Adenauer promptly capitulated to the expellee lobby, telling his cabinet on 22 July 1959 that there would be no vote on approving the non-aggression pacts while at same time telling Brentano to inform the American, French and British governments that the idea of the Federal Republic signing the non-aggression pacts was now dead.[261] Adenauer explained to the cabinet he had killed his own plans for non-aggression pacts because of the "several hundreds of thousands of votes" held by the All-German Bloc/League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights, which he believed that the CDU could win in the 1961 elections provided that the CDU stayed in the good graces of the expellee lobby.[262]
In late 1959, a controversy broke out when it emerged that Theodor Oberländer, the Minister of Refugees since 1953 and one of the most powerful leaders of the expellee lobby had committed war crimes against Jews and Poles during World War II.[263] Oberländer had been in command of the Nachtigall Battalion which between 2–4 July 1941 shot about 7, 000 people mostly Jews and Polish intellectuals in what is now the Ukrainian city of Lviv.[264] Oberländer admitted to having commanded the Nachtigall Battalion in July 1941, but insisted in an interview with Die Zeit on 9 October 1959 that "not a shot was fired" by his men, maintaining that no massacre had taken place.[264] Despite his past, on 10 December 1959, a statement was released to the press declaring that "Dr. Oberländer has the full confidence of the Adenauer cabinet".[265] Der Spiegel ran a cover-story on Oberländer and an editorial written by Rudolf Augstein commented that "This man should never have been appointed a minister".[265] Even other Christian Democrats made it clear to Adenauer that they would have liked to see Oberländer out of the cabinet, and finally in May 1960 Oberländer resigned.[266]
Fourth government[edit]
The mood had changed by election time in September 1961. Over the course of 1961, Adenauer had his concerns about both the status of Berlin and US leadership confirmed, as the Soviets and East Germans built the Berlin Wall. Adenauer had come into the year distrusting the new US President, John F. Kennedy. He doubted Kennedy's commitment to a free Berlin and a unified Germany and considered him undisciplined and naïve.[267]
For his part, Kennedy thought that Adenauer was a relic of the past, stating "The real trouble is that he is too old and I am too young for us to understand each other." Their strained relationship impeded effective Western action on Berlin during 1961.[268] The construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 and the sealing of borders by the East Germans made his government look weak. His "reaction was ... lame;" he eventually flew to Berlin, but he appeared to have "lost his once instinctive, ultra-swift power of judgement".[269] Rather than visiting West Berlin right after the construction of the Berlin Wall had began to show solidarity with the people of Berlin, Adenauer chose to remain on the campaign trail, and a disastrous misjudgement in a speech on 14 August 1961 in Regensburg chose to engage in a personal attack on the SPD Mayor of West Berlin, Willy Brandt saying that Brandt's illegitimate birth had disqualified him from holding any sort of office.[270] Adenauer's attempt to make Brandt's illegitimate birth the major campaign issue at the time that the Berlin wall was going up was widely seen as a crude effort to distract attention from the Berlin Wall, and as a mean, low personal attack over an issue that Brandt had no control over.[270] Reflecting the popular mood, the tabloid Bild ran a famous headline on its cover that read: "The East has acted. What is the West doing? The West is doing nothing! Kennedy is silent, Macmillan goes fox hunting and Adenauer insults Willy Brandt!".[270] After failing to keep their majority in the general election 36 days after the wall went up, the CDU/CSU again needed to include the FDP in a coalition government. To strike a deal, Adenauer was forced to make two concessions: to relinquish the chancellorship before the end of the new term, his fourth, and to replace his foreign minister.[271] In his last years in office, Adenauer used to take a nap after lunch and, when he was traveling abroad and had a public function to attend, he sometimes asked for a bed in a room close to where he was supposed to be speaking, so that he could rest briefly before he appeared.[272]
During this time, Adenauer came into increasing conflict with the Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard over just what precisely the Federal Republic was integrating into. Erhard was very much in favor of "widening" the EEC by allowing other nations, especially Britain to join while Adenauer was all for "deepening" the EEC by strengthening ties amongst the original founding six nations of West Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Italy.[273] Erhard, a firm Atlanticist supported the idea of Britain joining the European Economic Community, which he saw as only the first step towards the creation of a gigantic trans-Atlantic free trade zone embracing all of Western Europe, the United States and Canada.[273] Adenauer was against Erhard's Atlanticist plans, telling him that "We must first solidify the European economic and political community before we even consider the question of an Atlantic community".[273] A month later, in a speech Adenauer rejected the idea of an Atlantic economic community with a stern warning that free trade with the United States would hinder German prosperity.[274] Shortly afterwards, in an interview Adenauer stated that he was all in favor of an alliance with the United States, but at the same time there were important cultural differences between Americans/British "Anglo-Saxons" and continental Europeans that required a certain distance for the alliance to work.[275] Adenauer argued that: "We Europeans have an ideology, the ideology of Christian humanism, which forms the foundation for the freedom of the individual and the state as a whole ... But the Anglo-Saxons ... make the same mistake; they have no ideology, no supporting idea driving resistance and the struggle against the totalitarian atheism of Russia and Red China".[276] Thus, in Adenauer's viewpoint, the Cold War meant that the NATO alliance with the United States and Britain was essential, but the same time, there could be no deeper integration into a trans-Atlantic community beyond the existing military ties as that would lead to a "mishmash" between different cultural systems that would be doomed to failure.[277] Though Adenauer had tried to get Britain to join the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951–52, by the early 1960s Adenauer had come to share General de Gaulle's belief that Britain simply did not belong in the EEC.[278] An more outspoken advocate of this viewpoint was his ambitious Defense Minister, the leader of the CSU, Franz Josef Strauss, who become by the early 1960s the leader of a fraction known as the "German Gaullists", so-called because they shared General de Gaulle's hostile views about the United States as an ally, and for the need for a Bonn-Paris axis to act as a "Third Force" in the Cold War.[279]
In October 1962, a scandal erupted when police arrested five Der Spiegel journalists, charging them with espionage for publishing a memo detailing weaknesses in the West German armed forces. Adenauer had not initiated the arrests, but initially defended the person responsible, Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss, and called the Spiegel memo "abyss of treason". After public outrage and heavy protests from the coalition partner FDP he dismissed Strauss, but the reputation of Adenauer and his party had already suffered.[280][281]
Adenauer managed to remain in office for almost another year, but the scandal increased the pressure already on him to fulfill his promise to resign before the end of the term. Adenauer was not on good terms in his last years of power with his economics minister Ludwig Erhard and tried to block him from the chancellorship. In January 1963, Adenauer privately supported General Charles de Gaulle's veto of Britain's attempt to join the European Economic Community, and was only prevented from saying so openly by the need to preserve unity in his cabinet as most of his ministers led by Ludwig Erhard supported Britain's application.[282] A Francophile, Adenauer saw a Franco-German partnership as the key for European peace and prosperity and shared de Gaulle's view that Britain would be a disputative force in the EEC.[283] Adenauer failed in his efforts to block Erhard as his successor, and in October 1963 he turned the office over to Erhard. He did remain chairman of the CDU until his resignation in December 1966.[284]
Adenauer ensured a truly free and democratic society, which had been almost unknown to the German people before — notwithstanding the attempt between 1919 and 1933 (the Weimar Republic) — and which is today not just normal but also deeply integrated into modern German society. He thereby laid the groundwork for Germany to reenter the community of nations and to evolve as a dependable member of the Western world. It can be argued that because of Adenauer's policies, a later reunification of both German states was possible; and unified Germany has remained a solid partner in the European Union and NATO. The British historian Frederick Taylor argued that Federal Republic under Adenauer retained many of the characteristics of the authoritarian "deep state" that existed under the Weimar Republic, and that in many ways the Adenauer era was a transition period in values and viewpoints from the authoritarianism that characterized Germany in the first half of the 20th century to the more democratic values that characterized the western half Germany in the second half of the 20th century.[285]
The German student movement of the late 1960s was essentially a left-wing protest against the conservatism that Adenauer—by then out of office—had personified. Radical student protesters and Marxist groups were further inflamed by strong Anti-Americanism fueled by the Vietnam War and opposition to the conservative Nixon administration.[286]
In retrospect, mainly positive assessments of his chancellorship prevail, not only with the German public, which voted him the "greatest German of all time" in a 2003 television poll,[287] but even with some of today's left-wing intellectuals, who praise his unconditional commitment to western-style democracy and European integration.[288]
Death[edit]
Adenauer died on 19 April 1967 in his family home at Rhöndorf. According to his daughter, his last words were "Da jitt et nix zo kriesche!" (Cologne dialect for "There's nothin' to weep about!")
Konrad Adenauer's state funeral in Cologne Cathedral was attended by a large number of world leaders, among them United States President Lyndon B. Johnson. After the Requiem Mass and service, his remains were taken upstream to Rhöndorf on the Rhine aboard Kondor, with two more Jaguar class fast attack craft of the German Navy, Seeadler and Sperber as escorts, "past the thousands who stood in silence on both banks of the river".[289] He is interred at the Waldfriedhof ("Forest Cemetery") at Rhöndorf.
Honours[edit]
This is an incomplete list that may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with entries that are reliably sourced.
- This article incorporates information from the equivalent article on the German Wikipedia.
- Order of the Red Eagle, 4th class (Prussia, 1918)
- Grand Decoration of Honour of the Order for Services to the Republic of Austria (first Austrian republic, 1927)
- Knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (1951)
- Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (1953)
- Order of the Southern Cross (Brazil, July 1953)
- Order of the Sun (Peru), 1953.[290]
- Grand Cross, Special Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (January 1954)
- Charlemagne Prize (Aachen, May 1954) – as a "powerful promoter of a united Europe"
- Order of the Condor of the Andes (Bolivia, 1955)[290]
- Order of the Golden Spur (Papal Order of Chivalry, December 1955)
- Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (UK), 1956.[290][291]
- Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold with Sash for Services to the Republic of Austria (1956)[292]
- Bavarian Order of Merit (May 1958)
- Honorary knight in the Teutonic Order (1958)
- Order of the Netherlands Lion (1960)
- Grand Croix of the Légion d'honneur (France, 1962)[293]
- Order of the Rising Sun, Grand Cordon (Japan, 1960)[290] – "because of its long-standing commitment to an understanding of the Japanese–German friendship, and for the peace and prosperity in the world"
- Order of the Rising Sun with Paulownia Flowers, Grand Cordon (Japan, 1963)[290]
- Supreme Order of Christ (September 1963)[294]
- Grand Cross of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre (1964)
- Order of Isabella the Catholic, Grand Cross (Spain), 1967.[290]
- Order of the Liberator General San Martin (Argentina)
Time magazine named Adenauer as Man of the Year in 1953.
Legacy[edit]
Adenauer was the main motive for one of the most recent and famous gold commemorative coins: the Belgian 3 pioneers of the European unification commemorative coin, minted in 2002. The obverse side shows a portrait with the names Robert Schuman, Paul-Henri Spaak and Konrad Adenauer.
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