The Federal Republic Of Germany And The United States

Changing Political, Social, And Economic Relations

James A Cooney, Gordon Craig, Hans-Peter Schwarz, Fritz Stern

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367307585
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000301403
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the current and historical dimensions of relations between the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany, focusing on the complex economic issues that make the two countries interdependent and on the resulting policy implications. The contributors analyze the reasons for increasingly problematic relations between the United States and West Germany, arguing that the situation is exacerbated by the inadequate understanding Americans often have of the changing nature of society, politics, and culture in West Germany.

The West Germans, Western Democracy, and Western Ties in the Light of Public Opinion Research

by Hans Peter Schwarz

“Incertitudes allemandes” was the title of a study by Pierre Vienot¹ which has been long forgotten and remains nearly forgotten today. Writing in 1931, the concerned author was fully justified in formulating his doubts. “Incertitudes allemandes” — the theme has since been struck repeatedly, heavy with gloomy premonitions, in the Western democracies associated with the Federal Republic as much as in Germany itself.

Usually, two main worries impose themselves. Anxiety as to the stability of West German democracy is one worry, uncertainty as to the West Germans’ foreign political reliability the other. Certainly, the two are interconnected. The remarkable talent with which the Germans, early in the 1930s, first wrecked their own democracy and then proceeded to lay in ruins the rest of Europe remains unforgotten. Indeed, one followed the other.

But domestic political foolishness, excessive even by twentieth century standards, must not necessarily coincide with unscrupulousness or idiocy in the conduct of foreign policy. One does not step into the same river twice. It is theoretically possible that the Germans will remain good democrats, while simultaneously leaving nothing untried to upset the European balance by buffoonery in the field of foreign policy. In any event, to separate clearly the questions of democratic stability and basic foreign political orientations in the Federal Republic seems expedient.

It is true that a democracy requires the same tender care as a beautiful garden. But we have probably worried far too often and far too much during the past decades that the Federal Republic might go the way of the Weimar Republic. “Bonn is not Weimar,”² but a democracy like most others in Western Europe — with the great advantages inherent to this form of government, though also with the well-known internal tensions and strains. One will reach this conclusion even taking into account the challenges described by catch-phrases like “shifting values,” “alternative movement,” “alienation,” “generation gap,” etc.

By contrast, there have been more frequent grounds for worry lest the Federal Republic’s integration into the Western security system cede to an irritating lability. Anyone familiar with the conditions for European stability is keenly aware of the key role played by the Federal Republic. Fundamental changes in Bonn’s foreign policy, or even irritations of some duration, could shake the overarching system of the Western community and of East-West relations as much as an unlikely collapse of democracy in the Federal Republic.

The suspicion with which West German foreign policy is being observed by the West feeds on this insight throughout the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s, and again now in the early 1980s. Vast though the benefit may be which the Western world has derived from the Federal Republic’s thirty years of foreign political reasonableness, its potential ability to do harm is equally large.

If endangered at all, Bonn does not face an end like the Weimar Republic in 1933, but rather that of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1938/39 or the French Third Republic in 1940, which, after all, had survived 65 difficult years: not suicide, then, but death by asphyxiation or decapitation at the hands of totalitarian neighbors!

The ensuing analysis is directed at underlying values and orientations observable with regards to the issue areas just outlined: the stability of democracy and basic attitudes in the field of foreign policy. Naturally, basic orientations are only one of many elements determining the politics of a nation. The currents of international affairs, coincidences of domestic politics, even incidents such as the death of a great leader or a personal power-struggle in a ruling party determine the course of history to a large extent.

How might the history of the Federal Republic have unfolded if the neo-National Socialist and authoritarian NPD had not barely missed the 5 percent threshold by a few tenths in the federal elections of 1969? There would have been no social-liberal coalition, no neue Ostpolitik by Willy Brandt, though instead perhaps a general shift to the right in German politics! Or, what would have been the effect of a different outcome in the federal elections of March 6, 1983?

A nation’s politics, however, are not determined merely by parliamentary constellations, by the international system, and by many and frequently random conditions, but also by long-term values. The more diffuse the domestic and international scenery, the more important become these guiding ideals. They form the subject of the following essay.

Few phenomena which are the object of observation by political scientists and historians are harder to grasp or more ambiguous than basic orientations and their impact. This holds even more true if these vague objects are yet to be analyzed over longer periods of time.

Constraints of time and space prohibit a differentiated discussion of even a few factors in a short essay. A thorough elucidation of all findings is out of the question, but flash exposures are at least revealing. To reduce the observer’s subjectivity somewhat, the following exposition will rely to a certain extent on data generated in polls conducted by the EMNID-Institut, the Institut für Demoskopie in Allensbach (IfD), and by the Sozialwissenschaftliches Forschungsinstitut der Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.³

Two complexes will be singled out:

• (1) conditions for stability and critical factors affecting democratic constitional government in the Federal Republic of Germany;
• (2) basic orientations relevant to foreign policy, especially tendencies circumscribed by the terms “nationalism,” “neutralism,” and “pacifist and anti-Western unilateralism.”

Using these findings as a starting point, attempts will be made in each case to formulate general statements about the value system in the Federal Republic.

Stability of Democracy

There is a neurotic quality to the uncertainty which causes Germans time and again to wonder whether their democracy is truly secured. The relevant literature would fill a medium-sized library. Since 1949, political opponents have often been reproached for endangering the long-term existence of democracy From the early years of the Federal Republic, demoscopic institutes, too, have forever been asking questions about systemic stability. From time to time, comforting or disturbing analyses are published which trigger a lively public discussion — for instance, about the time of the NPD’s rise during the second half of the 1960s, or regarding leftist radicalism in the first half of the 1970s. Yet, all those who were concerned about democratic stability in postwar Germany have overlooked one basic orientation: the nearly unanimous consensus on the merits of constitutional government which existed not only within the party system but also in the multi-faceted world of published opinion. This consensus was already apparent in the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly, drafting the Grundgesetz (“Basic Law”) in 1948/1949. It was corroborated throughout the first decades of the Federal Republic and it has held to this very day. Thus, these problems are among the most discussed trends in German politics, and there is no shortage of demoscopie analyses.

Actually, the German public should have been reassured by election results since 1949. Contrary to the Weimar Republic, the parties unequivocally supportive of democratic constitutional government have always been able to garner majorities well in excess of 90 percent. While other Western countries have grown used to large Communist parties as in France and Italy, the rise, in the German case, of smaller parties and movements potentially opposed to the system — the NPD between 1966–1969, the APO in the same period, the “Greens” today — has led to considerable anxiety. Since Hitler started from practically nothing, the reassuring election results did not calm the West Germans. A menacing anti-democratic potential might be lurking behind this ostensibly stable facade, to be activated by unfavorable conditions — by, for example, the disappearance of Adenauer’s strong democratic leadership, a recession, or a change of government from center-right to center-left or vice-versa.

The Federal Republic, so it appeared, should be guided by the ideas of “Western democracy.” Which elements were to be seen as specifically “Western” remained and remain...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
• FOREWORD
• INTRODUCTION: THE CONTEXT OF GERMAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS
• GERMANY AND THE UNITED STATES: SOME HISTORICAL PARALLELS AND DIFFERENCES AND THEIR REFLECTION IN ATTITUDES TOWARD FOREIGN POLICY
• CULTURAL CHANGE AND GENERATION CHANGE IN POSTWAR WESTERN GERMANY
• THE WEST GERMANS, WESTERN DEMOCRACY, AND WESTERN TIES IN THE LIGHT OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH
• RELIGION AND POLITICS IN GERMANY AND IN GERMAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS
• THE INTEGRATION AND DIVERGENCE OF GERMAN AND AMERICAN ECONOMIC INTERESTS
• THE ECONOMIC RELATIONS OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY AND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
• AMERICAN FORCES IN THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC: PAST, CURRENT AND FUTURE
• SQUARING MANY CIRCLES: WEST GERMAN SECURITY POLICY BETWEEN DETERRENCE, DETENTE AND ALLIANCE
• POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF DEVELOPMENT AND THE PRESENT STATUS OF U.S.-GERMAN RELATIONS: A GERMAN POINT OF VIEW
• SUSTAINING THE AMERICAN-GERMAN RELATIONSHIP IN A TIME OF STRATEGIC AND ATTITUDINAL CHANGE
• CONCLUSION: GERMAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS AND “THE RETURN OF THE REPRESSED”