Anything to Fear?

By Bruce W. Nelan

Two thousand years ago in the piney fastness of the Teutoburg Forest, near where the city of Bielefeldr is today, an army of German tribesmen lay in wait for three Roman legions advancing from the Rhine. Led by the chieftain Arminius, the Germans ambushed the veteran legionaries and massacred them. Rome never again tried to extend its empire far beyond the Rhine. The Roman historian Tacitus called Arminius' ferocious style of warfare the furor Teutonicus: given to drinking and fighting, the Germans, he wrote, were tough, hardened warriors "fanatically loyal to their leaders." Concluded Tacitus: "Rest is unwelcome to the race."

The image has endured, to be intensified by the horrors of two world wars in the first half of this century. There is still, as there has been for decades, a German question. Germans and their country have arrived at the end of the 20th century burdened more than others with the curse of their history, a fact they may resent but cannot ignore. "The Germans want to think of the future," says Columbia University's Fritz Stern, a leading American expert on German history, "but their neighbors are thinking of the past." In Paris last month, former Prime Minister Michel Debre spoke warily about the prospect of a unified German nation. "We French," he said, "who know our neighbors well, how can we not remind all Europeans and the world as a whole of the need to guard against abuses which Germany commits in all areas when it sees an opportunity?"

Fear of the Germans, in abeyance for more than 40 years while the country was divided in a bipolar world, is on the rise again, triggered by the realization that Europe's destiny is no longer controlled by the rival superpowers -- and that unification is imminent. Last week in Bonn, representatives of West and East Germany and the four World War II Allies -- the U.S., Britain, France and the Soviet Union -- sat down in the Foreign Ministry on the Rhine to begin the complicated business of consolidating, and securing, a single German state.

At the next meeting, the delegation from East Germany will represent a government freely chosen in the first democratic balloting there since 1932. In coming months, the Germanys will work out the domestic legal and financial aspects of merger and will join in the so-called two-plus-four talks to end remaining Allied occupation rights and create a new security system around Germany.

The opening session had been intended to cover only procedural matters, but was forced into substance by a dispute that illustrates how quickly old apprehensions are resurfacing. Alarmed by Chancellor Helmut Kohl's ambiguity about the status of postwar German-Polish borders along the so-called Oder- Neisse line, the Poles demanded a seat at the table for discussions of their frontiers. Paris and London backed Warsaw -- something that sounded depressingly reminiscent of 1939.

After 7 1/2 hours of discussion, the conferees announced that they had agreed to invite the Poles to join in when the meetings focus on the Oder- Neisse line. In a belated attempt to reassure other Europeans who feel stampeded by the rush to unification, Volker Ruhe, general secretary of Kohl's Christian Democratic Union, said the process was so complex that it might take two to three years to complete. A single state would not be achieved, he said, "as long as the external questions are not settled."

Kohl, meanwhile, was busy with internal politics, stumping for East Germany's March 18 election in support of a conservative alliance there that is linked to his CDU and laying the groundwork in West Germany for balloting in December. Appealing to both sets of voters is complicated, and sometimes contradictory. Kohl told a cheering rally in the Eastern city of Cottbus that the two states would be joined in a currency union "as fast as possible." He pledged that individual East German savings accounts would be redeemed one for one in deutsche marks (the black market rate is 6 to 1) -- a guaranteed vote getter in the East, but one that will cost West Germans an estimated $100 billion.

In Bonn, by contrast, the CDU said it would introduce a bill cutting off special benefits for East Germans flooding across the now open border; that was to placate West Germans who have been growing restive at the high price of supporting penniless new arrivals.

Determined to go into December's election as "the unification Chancellor," Kohl has been summoning up on the hustings the name of Otto von Bismarck, who first achieved a united Germany in 1871, and closing with the call, "God bless our German fatherland." But it has also dawned on him that his politically motivated equivocation over Poland's borders -- a play to German right-wing sentiment -- has been damaging. Kohl last week emphasized that a unified Germany would have "good relations with all countries in East and West, and I name Poland in first place." No one need fear the unification of 61 million West Germans and 17 million East Germans, he said. "We take the fears of our neighbors seriously, but we ask them to take our wish to come together in one united fatherland seriously too."

For many Europeans the inhuman crimes of the Third Reich are as vivid as yesterday. The very word German can cause a shudder; some are convinced that history could repeat itself. Conor Cruise O'Brien, the Irish academic, has a preposterously anachronistic vision: "In the new, proud, united Germany, the nationalists will proclaim the Fourth Reich. I can see some of the consequences: expulsion of Jews, breaking off of relations with Israel, a military mission to the Palestine Liberation Organization, a statue of Hitler in every town."

Even if their heads tell the French that Germany has changed, the carnage of World War I followed by the humiliating defeat and Nazi occupation of World War II has not been erased from their hearts. "The French are deeply insecure," says Dominique Moisi, associate director of the Institute for International Relations in Paris. "The Germans are asserting themselves, and we are growing fearful. Our fears may not be well founded, but we have them nonetheless, and a fearful people will not always distinguish carefully between myth and reality." Recent polls nevertheless show that large majorities in most Western countries support the idea of German unification, with young people more strongly in favor than those who remember the war. In France 68% of those polled said peace would be strengthened by unification.

Even in the Soviet Union, where new estimates say 26 million died in World War II, surveys indicate that a majority does not worry about a single Germany. Nevertheless, Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze has warned of "sinister shadows of the past . . . a possible growth of militarism . . . the ghost of political revenge." The Soviet government is profoundly ambivalent about a unification it would much rather delay if not prevent altogether. In Poland, a third of which is made up of former German territory, opinion polls indicate that 64% are against unification.

Israel harbors the deepest dread, as the collective survivor of the Holocaust that slaughtered 6 million Jews. "We cannot know where German enthusiasm may lead," Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir wrote to Kohl not long ago. "The Jewish people cannot be enthusiastic about this union." Despite a carefully nurtured reconciliation between Jerusalem and Bonn, which has paid $33 billion in reparations to Jews, memories are powerful. When Foreign Minister Moshe Arens, aware that Bonn has often been Israel's best friend in Europe, said he did not "foresee any breakdown of the democratic institutions in West Germany," the daily Ma'ariv retorted that Arens and Israel seemed to be losing their sanity. Jewish acceptance of German unification, the paper said, "can be discussed in about 200 years, after ten generations of united Germans have proved that this is indeed a new Germany."

The Genetic Fallacy. As Moisi observed, fearful people do not always recognize reality. In the German case, concern is based on the assumption that aggression and fascism are in some way the result of genetic defects that particularly afflict Germans. If not in the genes, another line of thinking holds, perhaps the evil is rooted in national character. Neither notion is scientifically valid. "You can't talk about something genetically wrong with the German people," says Moshe Zimmerman, professor of German history at Jerusalem's Hebrew University. "All the characteristics attributed to Germans may be found in Swiss, Americans and others." Defining national character is risky business and leads to stereotyping; though countries do have observable characteristics, values and attitudes, they are acquired by growing up and being educated in a specific culture.

No one can overlook Germany's historic contributions to science, music and literature. But there is little argument about what German political culture includes. During the 19th and part of the 20th century, many of its theorists were romantic nationalists, some of them anti-Semitic. Even the Brothers Grimm, in their collections of fairy tales, emphasized nationalism, order, discipline and contempt for the Jews. Modern, post-1871 Germany was organized in the mold of the Prussian state and strutted the world stage until it lost the first World War, after which it was plunged into disorder, depression and despair. As Friedrich Nietzsche anticipated the response: "Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment." Out of the shambles of the well-meaning but ill-fated Weimar Republic surged Hitler and his criminal reign.

Patterns of national behavior do change over time, however. Under Napoleon, France was the scourge of Europe, conquering the Continent, marching as far as Egypt and Moscow, but for more than a century France has usually been a victim. When France launched and lost the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, the British historian Thomas Carlyle wrote that he felt privileged to see France, with its "shameless vanity, menacing, long-continued arrogance," replaced as the leader of Europe by the "peace-loving, brave, industrious, firm and noble race of Germans." What Carlyle, entwined in stereotypes, had not observed was the transformation taking place in Germany under the drilling of Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm I. The Germany of quiet university towns and small principalities was evolving into a nation that behaved like an army.

Germany's nationalist culture came to an abrupt end with unconditional surrender and military occupation. West Germans called 1945 Zero Hour, a total break with the past and a new beginning. Older Germans speak of the postwar years as "when we got democracy," and many use the image of an inoculation or the administration of an antidote to Nazi poison. In the Eastern zone the Soviets would eventually turn the Nazi dictatorship into a Stalinist one. But in the West, occupation forces and civil administrations set to work educating their larger portion of the nation in democracy. The process of individual "de-Nazification" was relatively ineffective below the top levels, but all institutions were turned inside out.

West Germany's Basic Law, its constitution, was essentially dictated by American and British legal experts. The educational system, study materials, courts and press were systematically vetted and rebuilt according to Western precepts. Today the Federal Republic's armed forces are scrutinized by a Bundestag ombudsman and taught innere Fuhrung, or inner direction, including the soldier's duty to refuse illegal or immoral orders. Neo-Nazi organizations are banned, anti-Semitic statements illegal. There have been right-wing parties in West Germany all along, troubling Germans and foreigners alike, but they have not done well enough at the ballot box to win representation in the Bundestag, which requires 5% of the vote. The National Democratic Party peaked in 1969 with 4.3%; the current shadow on the right, the Republican Party, has sunk during the debate on Polish borders to between 2% and 3% in opinion polls.

Schoolchildren are constantly reminded of Hitler, Nazism, the Holocaust: they are shown newsreels of death camps, visit concentration-camp exhibitions, spend a year of high school history studying the Third Reich. Dozens of books on the subject, many best sellers, have been published. Hardly a week passes in West Germany without a special television production on the war.

West Germans are among the best informed people on earth -- and one thing they know is that they have caused the world problems. But even well-meaning Germans sometimes feel as if they were damned by some sort of original sin -- and that the constant reminders of past crimes and transgressions are overdone. Says Frank Wittig, 20, a Bundeswehr soldier serving in Bonn: "I think we talk about it too much, maybe because we think that's what people abroad expect us to do." Kohl has said repeatedly that the majority of today's Germans were born after the war and are guilty of nothing. They are tired, he says, of being preached to by the world, and it is "high time" outsiders took note of "the positive things that have happened in Germany since 1945."

Redundant or not, the antidote seems to have worked. The Weimar Republic lasted less than 14 years, the Third Reich twelve. The Federal Republic of Germany is in its 41st year. Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti says, "The bacteria are no longer in the body of Germany."

West Germany has worked hard to overcome the past. Says William Wallace, deputy director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London: "Their commitment to democracy is clearly solid. They constantly worry that their institutions are not perfect, but in fact they work better than in most other democracies." A similar assessment comes from Jiri Musil, the director of the Institute of Sociology at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Prague, where the memory of German occupation is still sharp. "My father was killed by the Germans," he says. "But I do not believe in collective guilt. I deeply believe that the Germans have changed fundamentally, that the gap in the long process of enlightenment is now closed."

The Fear of Domination. The revived allusion to the "same old Germans" reveals more than the suspicion of a national psychosis. It also harkens to perceptions of German arrogance, selfishness, extremism and lack of concern for others -- what many Europeans mean when they fret that a united Germany will "dominate" the Continent. In fact West Germany alone, with 19% of the European Community's population, 22% of its gross domestic product, 31% of its exports and the mighty deutsche mark, already dominates Europe. The absorption of East Germany will add weight to the dominance, even taking into account the costly effort of bringing the East's run-down infrastructure and shaky economy up to Western standards, but not fundamentally alter current reality.

Europeans may have managed to submerge the fact of West Germany's economic prowess before. Now they must come to terms with it. Although mutterings in London, Paris and elsewhere imply the opposite, running a powerful and profitable economy with a skilled and diligent work force does not constitute aggression. When some Western politicians and intellectuals speak of a revived German threat, they may be fretting about a future Germany lording it over Europe, but they are also masking their concern about competing with it economically. The rise and fall of the deutsche mark, for example, can determine the value of the other European currencies, and the interest rates in powerful German banking centers can push rates in other countries up or down. "All the Italian savers will be rushing to Frankfurt," says Andreotti.

"What does one do about it?" asks Shepard Stone, former director of the Aspen Institute in West Berlin. "The U.S. is one of the greatest trading powers in the world. So is Japan. I know a lot of people who don't like the Americans or the Japanese. But it's smart statesmanship to work with reality. The Germans have behaved well in the European Community and the world."

At E.C. headquarters in Brussels and in capitals around the Continent there is some apprehension that after unification, Germany -- which may have to provide even more than the 28% of the E.C. budget it contributes now -- will grow tired of being the "paymaster of Europe." Moreover, Germany might concentrate on establishing commercial hegemony over the newly freed states of Eastern Europe, where German firms are already making major investments. Such a pull to the East, Eurocrats fear, could delay or even cancel the economic and political integration of the E.C. West German leaders deny any such intention. "No one needs to be worried about a German dominance in the European Community." says Kohl. "A united Germany would also be a reliable and solid partner."

By refusing to guarantee the Polish borders, Kohl allowed much of the world to point the finger and say, See, there they go again. As Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki told TIME last week, "All the recent ambiguous statements on the issue have convinced us that we are correct in demanding that the border be confirmed before Germany's unification."

The arrival of a politically more assertive Germany is a reality that the rest of the world must also take in stride. Germans are less apologetic and less willing to accept international tutelage than they used to be, which comes as something of a shock to others. Yet Germans could do more to ease the transition. "Little things add up," said Angelika Volle of the German Society for Foreign Affairs in Bonn. "What Germany needs right now is Fingerspitzengefuhl, a delicate, tactful approach."

The Threat of Neutrality. One of the most unsettling aspects of unification is that it will take place in a world in flux. The cold war is ending, communism is evaporating, the alliances that kept Europe tense but predictable for four decades are losing their meaning. In that uncertain climate, everyone is searching for sure, new guarantees of security.

While Europeans and the superpowers are looking for subtle ways to contain potential German ambitions, the Germans themselves are attracted by neutrality. Polls indicate that the majority in both parts of the country favor withdrawal from their alliances once they are united. But Germany's Eastern and Western neighbors suggest that neutrality is totally unacceptable. The new Germany, they insist, must remain firmly embedded in NATO and the E.C.; otherwise it could become an unpredictable force in the heart of Europe. "Our main concern is with the future of the North Atlantic Alliance," says British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, "and the crucial importance for that alliance and the security of Europe of continued German membership."

The Soviet Union is categorically opposed, demanding neutrality as a condition for unity. West German leaders have proposed that the new state remain in NATO, though Western troops and bases could be kept out of what is now East Germany. "We cannot agree to that," says President Mikhail Gorbachev. "It is absolutely out of the question." The U.S.S.R. has made German neutrality an article of faith ever since Stalin's days, even though Soviet fears might be better calmed by a Germany answerable to a larger military command than standing on its own.

Ironically, it is not clear what might constitute neutrality in a Europe from which hostile blocs have vanished. For the first time in modern history every country in Western Europe is led by a democratic government and every state in Central Europe is on the road to it. As Social Democratic Party (SPD) planner Egon Bahr has asked, Who is there to be neutral against?

That question will demand an answer in December if Kohl loses the West German election to the SPD. Some Social Democrats see little utility in NATO and believe that most of the voters share their view. The most likely SPD candidate for Chancellor, Saarland governor Oskar Lafontaine, says flatly, "Kohl is wrong if he thinks Germany can stay in NATO." Lafontaine favors a European defense system in a "United States of Europe." That kind of talk shocks Washington, and the Bush Administration has decided to put its weight behind Kohl and his commitment to the Atlantic Alliance. Even in Washington, however, where long-term planning covers two or three years at most, policymakers recognize the need to design a new security framework in Europe.

The first hints of that design will show up in the two-plus-four talks. Moscow has already indicated some of its demands: removal of all nuclear weapons from Germany, tight limitations on German armed forces, departure of all foreign troops over several years. Bonn is willing to accept most of those requirements in the interest of unification, but has not agreed to the withdrawal of allied troops. If it does, and the last 195,000 Americans from the Central Front go home, it could spell the end of NATO.

Not only the Poles but most of the Western European governments are demanding admission to the two-plus-four club as it becomes clear that the security of the entire Continent is under negotiation. Dutch Foreign Minister Hans van den Broek contends that a fait accompli will not be acceptable: "We insist on information and consultations on unification, especially as it affects our particular interests."

The new era's most eloquent attempt to restore Germany to a normal place in European minds came last week in Prague, where Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel welcomed West German President Richard von Weizsacker. Havel had arranged the visit to coincide with the 51st anniversary of Hitler's arrival in the city at the head of an occupying army. He called this an "anti- event," intended to counterbalance the dark memories of 1939 and mark a reconciliation. To speak with disdain about Germans, Havel told his countrymen, "to condemn them only because they are Germans, to be afraid of them only because of that, is the same as to be anti-Semitic." But, he also reminded the Germans, it is their continuing responsibility to show Europe and the world that there is nothing to fear.

With reporting by James L. Graff/Bonn,Christopher Redman/Paris and Frederick Ungeheuer/Berlin, with other bureaus