The German Problem Then and Now. From The Threat of A 'German Europe' To The Edification of A European Germany

ROMANIAN REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, I, 2, 2009
THE ‘GERMAN PROBLEM’ THEN AND NOW: FROM THE

THREAT OF A GERMAN EUROPE TO THE EDIFICATION OF A
EUROPEAN GERMANY
Emanuel Copilaș*
Abstract
As Thomas Mann argued about postwar Germany, its future depended on its
power to return to its European cultural, economical and political sources. The
desideratum of a German Europe was eradicated from political and military
agendas of its new leaders, but especially from the minds of the ordinary Germans.
The core and also the stake of the Cold War, the ‘German Problem’ was offered a
sustained European and international response which eventually transformed the
former unstable and aggressive power into the stability center of the European
project. The new German identity can be understood only in the broader context of
the European Union as an enlarged form of a cultural and political community,
both containing the ‘German Problem’ and also ensuring and enriching its
development. Starting with Bismarck’s Germany and ending with the post-Cold
War Germany, this study proposes an analysis of the metamorphosis the German
identity was subjected to as a corollary of the German behavior within the
international context.
The source of change trough which the Germans perceived themselves and
the others was, on its turn, internationally induced: as socio- constructivist
theorists argues, states, as communities, extract their identities trough a
* Emanuel Copilaş, teaching assistant, West University of Timişoara, email:

copilasemanuel@ yahoo.com. The documentation for this article was partially facilitated by
an AMPOSDRU scholarship, obtained trough the following grant: Investește în oameni!
FONDUL SOCIAL EUROPEAN, Programul Operaţional Sectorial pentru Dezvoltarea
Resurselor Umane 2007-2013, proiectul „STUDIILE DOCTORALE FACTOR MAJOR DE
DEZVOLTARE AL CERCETĂRILOR SOCIO-UMANE SI UMANISTE‛.
24 Emanuel Copilaş
peremptory interaction with the international environment. The process is ongoing

and entails gradual transformations both for international actors and their milieu,
which proves that identities are not given, objective, fixed, but permanently
subjected to changes coming from a multitude of directions. The German identity
experienced this kind of change most intensely after the end of the Second World
War, when it renounced its Prussian legacy in favor of its European one.
Key words: ‘German Problem’, national identity, Cold War, civilian

power, European Germany
Introduction
From the second half of the 19th century, when it was unified by
Otto von Bismarck, and until the end of the Second World War, when the
Allied forces crushed the Third Reich and freed Europe from the Nazi
reign, Germany represented the central issue of European security.
Conducting an aggressive diplomatic behavior towards its neighbors and
challenging the great powers of the continent (like France or Great Britain),
this state was responsible for the two greatest conflagrations the last
century had witnessed. No wonder that after 1945 its territory was divided
between the four winners of the war, the United States, France, Great
Britain and the Soviet Union. Only the unexpected emergence of the Cold
War led to the building of two German states, placed within antagonistic
ideological camps; in the absence of this unusual confrontation, Germany’s
future as a political entity would have been rather uncertain.
Germany’s bellicose behavior was triggered by its authoritarian
political leadership, but the larger social layers were not at all hostile to it.1
After 1945, this disposition will know a radical change. The Federal
Republic of Germany made possible an economic miracle and a sustainable
democracy which impressed not only the West, but also devoted
communists from East Germany.2 However, this success would not have
been possible without a reconfiguration of the German national identity. To
the sense of duty and the sedulousness, the Germans added democracy, a
1 Christian conte von Krockow, Germanii în secolul lor (1890-1990), București: All, 1999, pp.
33-42.
2 Bernard Brigouleix, Zidul Berlinului, 1961-1989, București: Lucman, 2005.
The ‘German Problem’ Then and Now: from the Threat of < 25
peaceful behavior towards other peoples and the belief that every nation
can pursue its interest and achieve its security only within international
communities united by similar values and objectives and permanently
interacting and maintaining friendly relationships with other similar
communities.
Using a socio-constructivist methodology, I intend to prove that
postwar Germany became a respected member of international security
and economical-political organizations such as NATO or the EC (EU) only
after it redefined its identity by embedding it the larger European one and
renouncing the Sonderweg, namely the idea that Germany must become
modern using its own, unique path, different from the common direction
used by the rest of the European countries. This process started and
advanced trough permanent interactions with other states and cultures,
because every state, constructivists argue, extracts its identity from the
relations it has with the international environment. Furthermore, political,
social and cultural identities are not fixed; they redefine themselves by
interacting with the international environment which, on its turn, changes
for the same reason.3 Following this argument, Bismarck’s, Wilhelm II’ and
even Hitler’s Germany were influenced in a great extent by the
international environment, but a consistent change in the way Germans
perceive themselves and the others occurred only after the Second World
War. This represented the main premise of the Federal’s Republic and than
of reunited Germany’s firm adhesion to European institutions, norm and
values and to a broaden sense community in general.
Challenging the European order: the Prussian Germany
When writing about the ‘German Problem’, John Ieuan underlines

three major factors that should be taken into account in the attempt to
understand it. The first consists in the country’s ‘geographical location in
3Michael Barnett, ‘Social Constructivism’, in John Baylis; Steve Smith, Patricia Owens, The
Globalization of World Politics. An introduction to international relations, New York: Oxford
University Press, 2008, pp. 160-173; Christian Reus-Smit, ‘Constructivism’, in Scott Burchill;
Richard Devetak; Andrew Linklater; Matthew Paterson; Christian Reus-Smit; Jacqui True,
Theories of International Relations, New York: Palgrave, 2001, pp. 209-230.
26 Emanuel Copilaş
the very centre of Europe with all its diplomatic and strategic
consequences’, while the second one resides in its ‘relative size, in
comparison with its neighbors and other European states’, and on its
‘human and material resources’. Beside these, the third factor is of
particular importance. It is centered on the
‘political psychology, culture and behavior of *the+ ruling elites

who have been charged not only by foreign but also by German historians
and political scientists with lack of a sense of proportion and realism and
a tendency to pursue unlimited goals. Germans have been characterized
and perceived as unstable, restless and obsessed with an acute and
morbid anxiety (angst) bordering at times on hysteria.’4
This argument is very important because it offers one key

dimension, often underrated, of the ‘German problem’ as a whole: beside
geography and demography, psychology is indispensable for a pertinent
approach of the subject. Germans perceived themselves as an encircled and
pressed nation, and tried to overcome this shortcoming by gaining space
and the respect of other nations. Contemporary Germany is still in the
centre of the continent and has a numerous population, but it understands
itself now as a part of the European construction, not as a solitary
international actor.
Since the modern era, France benefited form the political
atomization of the Roman-German Empire. Only two German states were
recognized as authentic European powers: Austria and, from the 18th
century, Prussia, but they were second rank powers in comparison with
France. After Napoleon conquered the centre of the continent in 1806, he
abolished the now symbolic Roman-German Empire and created instead
the Rhine Confederation, which lasted until 1813. After two years, the
Vienna Congress created a new political framework for the German states
and free cities, namely the German Confederation. It represented a very
weak political union, due to the fact that the executive power remained at
the level of local governments, and it was not an international right
subject.5 Dissolved as a consequence of the national and liberal revolutions
4 John Ieuan, ‘The Re-emergence of ‚the German Question‛: a United Germany and
European Security and Stability’, in David Armstrong; Erik Goldstein, The End of the Cold
War, London: Franck Cass & CO. LTD, 1990, p. 127.
5 Peter Alter, Problema Germană și Europa, București: Corint, 2004, pp. 33-63.
of 1848, it was restored in 1851, but only to prove its ‘fragile and transitory
nature’.6 Within it, the rivalries between Prussia and Austria grew stronger.
After a short war which took place in 1866, Prussia defeated Austria and
became the dominant German power. This result allowed Otto von
Bismarck, the Prussian prime minister, to put an end to the obsolete
Confederation7 and to plan the creation of a unified German state,
dominated by Prussia. As a firs step towards this objective, he created
around the Prussian state the North German Confederation, and reinforced
the relations with the Southern German states.
Bismarck’s intensions were disregarded by the French Emperor,
Napoleon III, which supported Austria during the 1866 war. After four
years, France and Prussia were engaged in a short military conflict which
was won by the last, with the help of the other German states. Under
Prussia’s influence, Germany became in 1871 a unified national state.8
The unification affected profoundly the European balance of power.
Germany was now the strongest state on the continent, and this fact rose
feelings of unrest among the other European powers. Bismarck was very
much aware of them and the dangers it could entail. In order to prevent
‘the nightmare of coalitions’ (an alliance between France, Russia and the
British Empire against Germany) he conceived a very prudent diplomacy,
signing , over the course of the years, a number of treaties with Austria,
Italy and Russia. In order to gain the trust of its allies, he pragmatically
rejected the idea of the Reich as a colonial power. The German fleet was
insufficiently developed to manage a logistic capability of this size – he
argued - and, in case of war, the colonies would prove to be too vulnerable
and expensive to defend.9 His ‘system of alliances’ was therefore very
flexible, and its primary objective was to balance the existing tensions
between the other powers.10 It was also very complex and fragile, as he’s
successors would later find out.
Although a highly experienced diplomat, Bismarck annexed the
French provinces Alsace and Loren, a gesture which will affect profoundly
6 Ibidem, p. 95.
7 Ibidem, p. 101.
8 Ibidem, pp. 103-105; Henry Kissinger, Diplomația, București: Bic All, 2003, pp. 100-101; Bruce
Waller, Bismarck, București: Historia, 2006, pp. 52-55.

9 Bruce Waller, op. cit., p. 128.
10 Ibidem, pp. 85-88.

28 Emanuel Copilaş
the relations between the two countries11 and will also constitute one of the
main reasons for which France fought against Wilhelmian Germany during
the First World War. It appears that he hesitated in doing so, but he’s
generals were eager incorporate these territories into the new Reich.
However, the annexation of Alsace and Loren was one of the main motives
for which the German unification was perceived as a threat by the rest of
the European powers.12
Bismarck’s Empire was a very heterogeneous one. It contained
many national minorities, towards which a rather oppressive policy was
carried out. Furthermore, the Germans themselves were divided along
confessional lines: Protestants in the North and Catholics in the South. This
led to the so-called Kulturkampf, in which Bismarck tried to limit as much as
possible the Catholic influences over education and the parish offices. The
Roman Catholic Church was seen as relay trough which the Papal Chair
could interfere in the internal affairs of the German state.13 Politically, the
socialists were marginalized as Bismarck and his associates feared and
combated the revolutionary tendencies spreading among the workers,
which could entail damaging consequences for the new state. The memory
of the Paris Commune was very disquieting for the conservative Prussian
influenced government, therefore it created a strong social network which
successfully undermined the socialist attempts to seize power.14 The liberal
forces were also discredited as having a disorganizing influence over the
precarious social, cultural and political unity of the Empire. The German
conscience went against the Enlightenment ideals like liberty or equality;
instead, it valued ideas like order, duty or justice and it tried to affirm,
especially after Bismarck’s resignation from 1890, its own, special road to
modernization (Sonderweg), different and even hostile in respect with the
rest of Europe. Only after 1945 will Germany finally renounce the powerful
and harmful myth of the Sonderweg and gradually take its place among the
cultural, economical and political leaders of united Europe.
11 Jean-Michel Gaillard; Anthony Rowley, Istoria continentului european. De la 1850 până la

sfârșitul secolului al XX-lea, Chișinău: Cartier, 2001, p. 74.
12 Peter Alter, op. cit., pp. 104-105.
13 Bruce Waller, op. cit., pp. 97-101; Hagen Schulze, Stat și națiune în istoria europeană, Iași:
Polirom, 2003, p. 237.

14 Hagen Schulze, op. cit., p. 238; Christian conte von Krockow, op. cit., pp. 30-31.
Although very diverse, Bismarck’s Reich contained two powerful

catalysts. The first one was the Prussian army. Due to the fact that, socially
and politically, the German bourgeoisie never recovered completely after
its destruction which took place during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648)15,
its role as a social and intellectual foundation of democracy had never
materialized. Civil virtues were therefore substituted by military virtues.
The German national conscience was structured to a great extent around
the symbol of the victorious Prussian army. Its prestige was so high that it
consistently penetrated the educational and bureaucratic systems. Hagen
Schulze argues that the teachers and state officials were more found on
their status as reserve officers than on the status their current jobs provided
and they ‘applied in schools and in offices the norms with which they
became familiarized in the army.’16 Even the children were forced to wear
sailor uniforms on Sundays and on holidays.17
The second catalyst was represented by the model of the Prussian
state. In the absence of the bourgeoisie, the authoritarian state assumed the
role of modernizing the social and economic infrastructure. The bourgeois
who wanted to build up its career; it could only do so by becoming a
employee of the state.18 Therefore, Germany’s modernity came from
‘above’, not from ‘below’, although at the end of the century the developed
North and its emerging ‘industrial and commercial bourgeoisie’ fastened
the process.19 Even the Prussian qualities as the respect for duty,
sedulousness and responsibility did not constitute the results of a social-
cultural legacy; on the contrary, they were gradually induced within the
collective mentality since the times of Frederic the Great by the state,
trough the state and for the state.20
Germany entered the 20th century with this militarized, power
valuing identity, which would become the foundation of its national
conscience. The relative easiness trough which Nazism could be grafted on
it becomes therefore, in this light, a little bit clearer. But until that shameful
and horrifying episode of recent German history, I shall focus my attention
15 Christian conte von Krockow, op. cit., p. 38.

16 Hagen Schulze, op. cit., p. 239.
18 Ibidem, p. 38.
19 Jean-Michel Gaillard; Anthony Rowley, op. cit., pp. 258-259.

30 Emanuel Copilaş
on the diplomatic drift that characterized post-Bismarck Germany and

prepared the conditions for the First World War.
Unbalancing Bismarck’s system of alliances: Wilhelm II and

the failure of Weltpolitik
Wilhelm I, the former Prussian king, was proclaimed Kaiser in the

year Germany became a unitary state. After his death, he was replaced in
1888 by Wilhelm II. The new Kaiser fired Bismarck in 1890, ‘refusing to rule
in the shadow of such a dominating figure.’21 Young, ambitious and
arrogant, he sought to intimidate the other European powers and to affirm
his country’s might. However, he acted so in the absence of a certain
purpose and without following a diplomatic strategy.22 Influenced by the
example of France or the British Empire, the Kaiser wished to transform
Germany into a colonial power, although Bismarck specifically avoided
and warned against this temptation, being aware of its lack of gains and the
anxiety it would have rose among the other colonial powers.
Wilhelm’s triumphalism created unrest in France, the British
Empire and Russia. The ‘nightmare of coalitions’ that Bismarck feared so
much was beginning to take shape. In the 1890’s, France and Russia
became allies. When Germany tried to break the encirclement by ‘courting’
Great Britain, its colonial ambitions and London’s lack of interest turned
against it. Even if the German economy and industry were among the most
developed ones on the continent, the colonial temptation was high due to
the prestige and power it was associated with. The backbone of the Kaiser’s
Weltpolitik (global politics) resided in the need of overseas expansion. The
fact that this need was rather a matter of wrongly understood international
prestige, like the Iron Chancellor had proved, remained of little
importance: the impact of the international environment (namely the
British Empire or France) induced the idea that ‘World power is marine
power.’ In this respect, ‘Wilhelm II proved to be a representative of its
21 Henry Kissinger, op. cit., p. 144.

22 Ibidem, p. 145.
epoch, due to the fact that it appeared as the first sailor of the nation and as
a strong promoter of it.’23
The continuous expansion and improvement of the Reich’s fleet
worried the British Empire to the extent that, in 1912, ‘it started discussions
at high military level’ with France and Russia.24 The ‘nightmare of
coalitions’ was now complete: Wilhelm II succeeded in turning all the
European powers (except, of course, Austria) against his country.
Despite its catastrophic failure, Weltpolitik benefited from a strong
popular support. Germany’s ‘citizens in uniforms’25 were appealed by the
romantic ideals of their leader, and they too wanted the Reich to become a
strong and respected colonial power. The Prussian social legacy, based on
the image of the army and the authoritarian leadership, assured the
consonance between the society and the geopolitical ambitions of its
leadership. As Modris Eksteins writes,
‘Weltpolitik was not a foreign policy imposed to the Germans by

the intrigues of a less numerous clique of advisers around the Kaiser. It
reflected a wide spread sentiment, promoted by many eminent intellectuals and
public associations, according to which Germany must either expand itself or be
ruined. This change in politics, accomplished by the start of a naval
construction program and a noisy search of supplementary colonies
provoked, as it was expected, international anxiety regarding the long
term intentions of Germany (my emphasis).’26
Furthermore, Weltpolitik was not even a coherent concept. Geoff

Layton distinguishes, beside the already mentioned geopolitical sense of
the notion, two more complementary approaches. According to the
economical one, the German foreign policy between 1890 and 1914 was
nothing more than a ‘policy destined to contribute to the penetration of the
German capital on new territories and then to stabilize some influence
zones in as much as possible regions of the world.’ The second approach
placed Weltpolitik in direct continuity with the Lebensraum policy, arguing
that it had a racist character and ‘searched to create regions of German

26 Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring. The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, apud. Peter
Alter, op. cit., pp. 119-120.

32 Emanuel Copilaş
influence both over the seas and in the East.’27 In my opinion, the continuity
between Weltpolitik and Lebensraum is forced; although the first was ‘noisy’
and aggressive, it certainly lacked the ideological component the second
one possessed. But whatever its meaning was, the Weltpolitik’s potential
benefits were exceeded by far by its political costs.28
In her famous work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt
identified two types of imperialism; the shape European foreign policy
took in the last decades of the 19th century and in the first decades of the
20th. The first was classical colonialism, or ‘over the seas` imperialism
practiced by Great Britain, France, Holland, Portugal or Spain, and already
mentioned above. The second was ‘continental imperialism’, based on the
geographic proximity between the ruling center and the peripheries. This
type of imperialism was practiced by the Czarist Empire, but also by
Germany and Austria, and it is also known as PanSlavism or Pan
Germanism. From different reasons, the European powers which did not
possess sufficient colonies ‘over the seas’ tried to compensate by forging a
continental form of imperialism. But, while classical colonialism was
underlined by economic reasons (the expansion of capitalism), the pan-
isms were much more popular to the mobs because they were lacking
concrete, feasible aims, relying instead on vague objectives (like achieving
the ‘deserved’ greatness for the German or the Slavic people), and they
were also dynamic due to their refusal to be limited (and valued) by
specific political programs. They were grafted on a ‘general frame of
27Geoff Layton, De la Bismarck la Hitler: Germania, 1890-1933, București: All, 2002, p. 55.
28Following Hannah Arendt’s argumentation, the Marxist geographer and social theorist
David Harvey sustains that capitalism’s expansion at the end of the 19 th century
(imperialism, in Lenin’s terminology) contained a paradox. It emerged from national states,
yet it was of global range. Consequently, the philosophy articulating it was bound to
reconcile national identities with international economic expansion. In this way, racism
became the surrogate philosophical legitimating for the global ambitions of European
powers, consistently contributing, after a few decades, to the emergence of Fascism. I
partially agree with the argument. The economical dimension of the colonization process is
undoubtedly the most important, but it is not the only one; non-rational or extra-rational
factors like national pride, prestige or the sense of a groundless cultural superiority and the
competition they entailed are also to be taken into account when trying to understand
European international preeminence in the late 19 th century. This kind of attitudes (Francis
Fukuyama refers to them as thymothic) certainly cannot be derived exclusively, as Marxist
theorists argue, from economical explanations. See David Harvey, Noul Imperialism,
Bucureşti: BIC ALL, 2004, pp. 48-52.
mind’29, the same which entailed the popular support for the First World
War and also represented the main inspiration source for totalitarian
movements like Bolshevism and Nazism.30
Germany experienced, to different extents, both types of
imperialism. But, although Weltpolitik was doubled by an aggressive
rhetoric, its task of creating a major colonial empire for Germany was never
achieved. Pan Germanism, on the other hand, was much more successful. It
perfectly coped with the Zeitgeist and it prepared the way, as Hannah
Arendt magnificently pointed out, for the Nazi catastrophe.
War, resentments and the totalitarian drift
The Kaiser’s unrealistic and aggressive foreign policy, combined

with the unrest of the European powers, resulted into the First World War.
Animated by aspiration to become the hegemonic power of the old
continent, Germany firmly sustained its Austrian ally in its conflict with
Serbia regarding the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the heir of the
Austrian throne, without expecting Russia to intervene for its traditional
Serbian ally. But Czar Nicholas II, pressed by the Ministers and the popular
feelings, ordered the military mobilization. Germany declared war to
Russia and than, searching for a fast neutralization of its western neighbor,
to France. In order to reach Paris, the German army invaded Belgium, a
gesture that would convince Great Britain that Germany must be fought
against.31 In 1917, the United States too entered the war, a fact which, along
with the loss of resources in the unexpected ‘trench warfare’, led Germany
to collapse.
The emergence of the war did not disquiet Germans or other
European peoples; on the contrary, it was met with enthusiasm and
perceived as heroic way to break out of ‘the banality of the peaceful
everyday life’.32 The war vertigo contaminated political and social reason.
Its romantic image, popular support and the easiness trough which it was
29 Hannah Arendt, Originile Totalitarismului, București: Humanitas, 1994, p. 300.

30 Ibidem, p. 296.
31 Henry Kissinger, op. cit., pp. 180-187.

34 Emanuel Copilaş
unleashed contrasted painfully with its dreadful consequences, which will

echo all along the interwar period.
From 1916, due to political disorganization, the country was de facto
ruled by the General Staff. Following Germany’s defeat, Kaiser Wilhelm II
abdicated in November 1918. The popular resentments were extremely
high, fueled by the psychological deception of the defeat, the burdensome
conditions of peace imposed by the victorious powers and the myth that
the war was lost not on the battlefield, but ended by the treacherous
leadership who bargained its privileges with the enemy at the expense of
the country. However, the winners could have proved more pitiless: they
could have dismembered the Reich in the attempt of putting an end to the
‘German Problem’. The motive for which they did not resort to this extreme
solution lied in the necessity to preserve a certain balance of power on the
continent. In their opinion, a void of power in the centre of Europe could
have proved to be a transmission belt for the communist revolution which
already took place in Russia, a finality which was to be avoided by all
costs.33 Germany was instead forced to pay huge war compensations and
reduce its army to a great extent.
Social and political turmoil of 1918 led to the appearance of the
Weimer Republic in the following year. Trying to overcome its internal
difficulties, Germany embraced the form of a constitutional republic. In its
first five years, the young republic experienced a period of severe economic
and social crises.34
‘The lack of capital for investments, a profound commercial deficit and the
difficulties of readapting a war economy to the consequences of peace
were aggravated by claims aiming at the payment of war reparations,
solicited by the allies and by the loss of some important industrial regions
according to the dispositions of the Versailles Treaty. However, the major
difficulty of the precarious economical situation of Germany was the
immense governmental deficit and the decline of the Mark provoked by it,
which was reflected in the internal situation by the growth of inflation.’35

34 E.H. Carr, International relations between the two world wars (1919-1939), London: MacMillan,
1947, pp. 135-139.
35 Geoff Layton, op. cit., p. 117.
The republic remained very fragile along its entire existence.

Politically, the right wing and the left wing were involved in endless
disputes and, beside the economical and social reasons mentioned above,
the Germans lacked, as we have seen, a democratic political culture. More
than half of the Republic’s entire existence was underlined by crisis of all
sorts. Only during the Chancellor Gustav Stresemann’s leadership (1923-
1929) were the signs of improvement beginning to emerge36, but they were
insufficient for legitimizing the short and precarious German democracy.
The Weimar Republic’s collapse was entailed by the global
economic crisis which emerged in 1929 and ended in 1933, which had a
devastating effect over the European economies. Fearing a communist
revolution, Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, the president of the Republic,
named after the consummation of the alternative solutions and with strong
hesitation, Adolph Hitler Chancellor in 1933. In the social and political
turmoil from the beginning of the 1930’s unemployment rose dramatically,
while the political scene was divided between communists and national-
socialists. Unwanted and distrusted, the fragile and ephemeral German
democracy left way for the cruelest form of political dictatorship: the
national-socialist regime.
The rise of Hitler and its NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche
Arbeit Partei) is understandable trough a combination of four different
factors. The first one is of economical nature. According to Christian von
Crockow, ‘The take-over of power occurred in the most favorable
momentum, not at the peak, but at the end of the world economic crisis.’ 37
The German rearmament process, which begun secretly during the first
years of the Weimer Republic, coupled with ‘the massive growth of
working places in the public domain’ resulted in a considerable reduction
of unemployment.38 Next comes the demographical factor. Nazism was
perceived as a young, dynamic movement, and it certainly was so in
comparison with the parties that dominated the political scene during the
Weimar Republic. In 1930, over one third of its members and over one
quarter of its leaders were thirty years old or less.39
36 Henry Kissinger, op. cit., pp. 231-250.

38 Ibidem.
39 Ibidem, p. 212.
36 Emanuel Copilaş
The third factor consists in the political-ideological appeal of the

movement. The firmness of Hitler’s declarations and the uncompromising
image of the Party convinced the political elite that it represented the only
authentic opposition against the growing forces of communism and
manipulated the German militarized society by creating the impression of a
much more capable political leadership in comparison with the former
democratic regime. But probably the most important factor, closely related
to the third one, consists in the ability of the regime to create a double
conscience for the citizen: by making him feel like a hero, he was gradually
enslaved and submissively accepted the xenophobic and racist nature of
the new leadership. The Prussian legacy, with its cult for the army and the
strong state, was instrumented and distorted by the Nazis in order to give
rise to an obedient and enthusiastic society. Although Bismarck’s personal
and political qualities exceeded by far Hitler’s fanaticism, his shallow
rhetoric and lack of geopolitical sense, the fact that the Nazi ideology found
a fertile ground in the social and cultural legacy of Prussianism is
undeniable. Therefore
‘between 1933 and 1945, the ‚typically ideal‛ German lives a double life,
he has a double personality; exactly those people who rest as respectful
citizens in their normal apolitical existence are in the same time those who
put on the uniform and march intoxicated by the will of power and
enslaved by it, subjects which rise to power and people of power as
subjects. The power of attraction consists in that the regime serves both
the need of quiet, order and bourgeois safety, but also the conscience of
master and hero.’40
The conclusion is that Nazism was not at all an isolated ideology

and political leadership; it had strong social echoes and benefited from
popular support. The unprecedented symbols that it used offered the
movement a specific character and helped explain the success of its
‘ideological mobilization’. The Nazis struggled to build up ‘an ideological
and fight community, way above a political union of interests.’ For Norbert
Frei, the massive use of symbols and the disrespect of politics as a peaceful
and legally circumscribed confrontation between different ideas and
interests – understood as harmful, corrupt and disorganized – prove the
40 Ibidem, p. 220.
paradoxical theocratic features of this political regime structured by

modern technique and total mobilization.41 Sadly, the German society
possessed, with minor exceptions, the same understanding of democracy,
referring to it as weak, chaotic and dysfunctional. Ralf Dahrendorf
identifies another, perhaps more important paradox of national-socialism.
He argued that the regime ‘carried out the revolution of modernity for
Germany. It did it in a paradoxical contrast of its traditionalist ideology of
‚blood and soil‛, actually uprooting people and destroying the inherited
institutional structures’.42 In this regard, Nazism accomplished, by using a
traditional discourse and by speculating the Prussian symbols (the army
and the state), the social adherence and the prestige they were credited
with – a radical change. It created, another paradox (!), a certain form of
modern citizenship by pouring the foundation of a middle class with a
schizoid conscience, divided, as quoted above, between a rarely
understood enslaved dimension and a heroic dimension the official
propaganda strived to exacerbate. After 1945, this middle class could be
‘recycled’ for democratic and civilian uses, and soon became the backbone
of the new German identity<43
One should not forget, however, that Nazism was not a
hypertrophied form of nationalism, although it presented itself in this way
and massively exploited national symbols, attitudes and expectations. Its
essence was of imperial nature, and Pan Germanism, or ‘continental
imperialism’ to use Hannah Arendt’s expression, was the closest political
phenomenon it was related to. Of course, Nazi propaganda insisted on the
superiority of the so called ‘German race’ in order to attract popular
support, but the racial aim of the regime was quite different. The Germans
themselves were not believed to be part of a ‘master race’. The authentic
‘master race’ the Nazis wished for would have ruled Germans along with
all existing nations. This race did not appeared yet, but it was about to be
created during several centuries from SS members, which were not all of
German origins. It is known that Nazis used to kidnap children from the
occupied countries which resembled their racial ideals, and also form
41 Norbert Frei, Statul Führerului. Regimul național-socialist, 1933-1945, București: Corint, 2007,
p. 118.
42 Ralf Dahrendorf, După 1989. Morală, revoluție și societate civilă, București: Humanitas, 2001,
p. 189.
43 See also Christian conte von Krockow, op. cit., p. 280.
38 Emanuel Copilaş
different SS units using members from members of the occupied

populations. Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS, tried to convince the
latter to ‚subordinate *their+ national ideal to the greater racial and
historical ideal which is that of the German Reich.‛44
Anti-Semitism in general and even its Nazi orchestration in
particular is a far too complex subject for the dimensions and objective of
the present study. Still, to understand, as much as possible, how and why
the Germans embraced it so profoundly, we must once again turn our
attention to the work of Hannah Arendt.
The roots of European Anti-Semitism are undoubtedly deep, but
they are more powerful anchored in the 19th century than in every other
century of the Modern Era, or even the Middle Ages. Starting with the
Renaissance, but especially in the age of Absolutism, Jews played a key role
in the European diplomacy and financial affairs. Due to religious motives,
they were, in the past, gradually expelled from certain professions, but not
from commerce or financial affairs, which they came to master. However,
after the French Revolution and the national redefinition of post-
Napoleonic Europe, Jews, (the rich, ‘Court Jews’, not the poor majority of
them, not to mention the intellectuals) gradually lost their diplomatic
position, although not as fast as that of financial advisers around European
governments. They were still wealthy, but were not perceived as strong
anymore, due to their estrangement from the political sphere, and this
amplified social hostility towards them. In fact, Jews were never as strong
as the collective mentalities perceived them: because of an understandable
attitude that can be traced back to Antiquity, members of the Jewish
communities always sought political protection against popular
aggressions they were often subjected to. They were serving the states by
taking care of their financial activities, not dominating them. However, for
the public opinion, their image was closely related to that of states
themselves.
When national states made their entrance in the European history,
Jews and their allogeneous character became more obvious than ever.
Moreover, as the economic crises from the second half of the 19 th century
were emerging as rapid industrialization was taking shape, large social
layers from all over the continent were affected by them. They blamed, as
44 Hannah Arendt, op. cit., p. 535.

far as their political culture allowed them, they’re own governments and
one of the most prominent image of the state was, as we have seen, that of
the Jew who perfidiously dominated it at the expense of the people. 45
Therefore, starting with the last years of the First World War, and during
most of the interwar era, when Germany was economically and socially
ruined, a process which culminated with the 1929-1933 crisis - the German
hostility towards the monarchy and, afterwards, the Weimar Republic, was
at its highest. And because the Jews ‘behind’ the state were thought to be
responsible for its emasculation, it is not hard to understand the easiness
trough which Hitler and his Nazi Party won a considerable part of their
electorate by manipulating Anti-Semite symbols, and made Anti-Semitism
one of the key components of their social policy.
During the 1930’s, the Third Reich launched a massive campaign of
rearmament, simultaneously with an aggressive policy of territorial claims.
It annexed Austria in 1938 (the Anschluss) and large parts of
Czechoslovakia inhabited by ethnic Germans. Czechoslovakia disappeared
as a political entity. Instead, the Bohemia-Moravia protectorate was
created, under the total control of Nazi Germany. France and Great Britain
temporarily accepted these actions, subsuming them to the supreme
objective of maintaining peace.46 But Hitler also aimed to incorporate into
his Reich parts of France, Denmark, Poland and Italy which were too
inhabited by ethnic Germans.47 Although Nazi rhetoric was extremely anti-
Soviet, the two dictatorships signed a peace treaty in 1939, just a few weeks
before the beginning of Second World War.
Hitler was influenced to a great extent by the Italian fascist regime
of Benito Mussolini (although fascism was more an authoritarian then a
totalitarian political regime: it never aimed to achieve complete
administrative or ideological control over its population) and also by
Stalin’s Soviet Union. Therefore, Nazism was not an ‘exotic’ regime on the
European political scene, but a radical expression of an international
ideological trend (fascism), which reached its zenith during the interwar
period, and which represented, in the words of Mussolini, a ‘socialist
45 Ibidem, pp. 15-168.

46 Geoff Layton, Germania: al Treilea Reich, 1933-1945, București: All, 2001, pp. 121-131; A.J.P.
Taylor, Originile celui de-al doilea război mondial, Iași: Polirom, 1999, pp. 109-191.
47 Claude David, Hitler și nazismul, București: Corint, 2004, p. 43.
40 Emanuel Copilaş
heresy’.48 The common ideological root of right-wing and left-wing political

extremes was recognized even by the founder of fascism; their catastrophic
effects (understood sooner or later) were also impossible to set apart.
Divided Germany, the epicenter of the Cold War
In 1939, Germany challenged the world once again and once again
was defeated. But this time, the vanquished had to face way more harsher
conditions than they did back in 1918. Germany was occupied and divided
into four parts, each under direct rule of one of the Allies: the United States,
Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. Its capital, Berlin, was also
partitioned, even if it was in the middle of the Soviet controlled territory.
Germany ceased to exist as a political entity until the western powers
united their three regions, four years after the end of the Second World
War, and created the Federal Republic of Germany. In response, Stalin
transformed his share of the former Third Reich into the Democratic
Republic of Germany.
The ‘German Problem’ represented the core of the future ideological
confrontation between the former Allies.49 Except France, the other powers
were against the dismemberment of their former enemy out of concern for
the feelings of the German people. The lesson of Versailles, namely the
danger of marginalizing and humiliating the former enemy, urged the
western powers to help rebuild Germany and integrate it in their economic
and security perimeters.
However, the split of the Third Reich’s territory between the Allies
was not a planned action. It occurred spontaneously, as the Cold War was
beginning to emerge.50 This outcome had very much to do with the
indecision of the Roosevelt Administration regarding the future of postwar
Germany. Initially, the Morgenthau plan was take into account. It foresaw
a complete neutralization of Germany’s industrial power, followed by its
48 Joshua Muravchik, Raiul pe pământ. Mărirea și decăderea socialismului, Timișoara: Brumar,

2004, p. 161.
49 Peter Calvocoressi, Politica mondială după 1945, București: Allfa, 2000, p. 3; Eugen Preda,
NATO. Scurtă istorie, București: Silex, 1999, p. 59.

50 Peter Alter, op. cit., p. 184. See also Alfred Grosser, Occidentalii. Țările Europei și Statele
Unite după război, București: DU Style, 1999, pp. 74-81.

division into several traditional Lands were the main economic activity
was to be agriculture. Although Roosevelt initially supported the project of
his Finance minister, he eventually opted for ‘a peace of integration in the
future state communities.’51 But the plan was a palpable proof of the hatred
and animosity Nazi Germany draw upon itself, even from its democratic
opponents.
‘Morgenthau’s plan for the ‚pastoralization‛ of Germany is

understandable as a reflection of irrational wartime hatred for a cruel and
stubborn enemy. Nor is it surprising that many government officials, not
wanting to appear ‚soft‛ on Germany, at first supported the plan. Upon
reflection, however, the impractical and inhumane aspects of the proposal
quickly became clear, causing support for it within the Roosevelt
Administration to crumble even before unwanted publicity brought out
the President’s disavowal.’52
For the rest of the Allies, especially for the Soviets, the American
indecision regarding Germany entailed suspicions which will, combined
with other factors, ‘destabilize’ their partnership.53
The proposal of the State Secretary George Marshall, centered on
the need of economic and infrastructural reconstruction of the European
countries, replaced the Morgenthau plan in 1947. Albeit it was offered to
the USSR and its postwar allies as well, Stalin rejected it as an American
subversive measure aiming to neutralize the Soviet postwar influence upon
Eastern Europe.
In the Western regions of the former Reich, a monetary reform was
implemented as a part of the Marshall plan starting with 1948. The reform
was intended to stabilize the enormous inflation, willingly maintained and
even amplified by the Soviets in order to achieve a better control over their
part of Germany and to destabilize the parts occupied by the French, the
British and the Americans. When the new Deutsche Mark was introduced
into the western sectors, Stalin established in what was to become the
Democratic Republic of Germany a Soviet controlled currency, the Eastern
51 Wilfried Loth, Împărțirea lumii. Istoria Războiului Rece, 1941-1955, București: SAECULUM I.
O., 1997, p. 23.
52 John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947, New York:
Columbia University Press, 1972, p. 121.

53 Wilfried Loth, op. cit., pp. 21-23.
42 Emanuel Copilaş
Mark (Ostmark). But when the reform was extended to West Berlin,
Moscow had a prompt and radical reaction: taking advantage of West
Berlin’s which an enclave within the Soviet occupied zone is, it simply
blocked the access of his former allies into the city. The blockade of Berlin
was now in full effect.
Among the reasons which provoked such a harsh response from the
Soviets, one was ‘the humiliating and impossible to control’ situation
where their currency is neglected by the Berliners which preferred the
stronger and trustful western currency.54 Another one was Stalin’s extreme
discontent of the ‘American capitalism’ and its influence over Germany, ‘as
well as the establishment of a military American-European alliance’, which
was becoming more and more visible.55
President Truman offered a simple and ingenious approach to the
issue. Profiting by the fact that air access to the city was not included in the
regulations between the former Allies regarding the traffic in Berlin, he
organized a massive air campaign, providing West Berliners with the food,
medicine and fuel they needed in order to survive the blockade. Although
a military answer was taken into consideration at first, the Americans
opted eventually for this peaceful and simpler solution. After 324 days,
thousands of flights and millions of tons of provisions, Stalin renounced by
ending the blockade and renormalizing the traffic towards and from the
‘imperialist’ part of Berlin. This event represented the first serious clash
between the former Allies. Moreover, it led to the creation of the military
blocks (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization by the western powers and
the Warsaw Pact by the Soviet Union and its allies) and it accelerated the
division of Germany. In 1949, the Iron Curtain was passing through the
middle of the former Reich, as the Federal and the Democratic Republic of
Germany stood now at the heart of the Cold War.56
54 Bernard Brigouleix, op. cit., p. 115.

55 Wilfried Loth, op. cit., p. 197.
56 Eugen Preda, op. cit., pp-53-64; Martin McCauley, Rusia, America și Războiul Rece, 1949-
1991, Iași: Polirom, 1999, pp. 47-49; Tony Judt, Epoca postbelică. O istorie a Europei de după
1945, Iași: Polirom, 2008, p. 145; Frederick F. Hartmann, The relations of nations, New York:
MacMillan, 1978, pp. 495-498; Jiři Fidler; Petr Mareś, Istoria NATO, Iași: Institutul European,
2005, pp. 40-41; Jean Baptiste Duroselle; André Kaspi, Istoria relațiilor internaționale, 1948-
pînâ în zilele noastre (vol. II), București: Editura Știinţelor Sociale și Politice, 2006, pp. 11-17;
André Fontain, Istoria Războiului Rece. De la Revoluția din Octombrie la Războiul din Coreea,
1917-1950 (vol. II), București: Editura Militară, 1992, pp. 141-157.
But the disagreements between the superpowers over Berlin and the
‘German Problem’ in general were far from being over. In 1952, one year
after its death, Stalin advanced the proposal of a reunified, neutral
Germany, the first Soviet answer to the postwar ‘German Problem’. But he
was turned down by the FRG’s Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who chose to
maintain his country’s close relationships to the West instead of a doubtful
reunification which was very likely intended to drag West Germany into
the Soviet sphere of influence. A few years after this event and quickened
by the Korean War, the Federal Republic became, despite some powerful
protests, a member of the Western security structure, the North Atlantic
Alliance.57 Equally important, its sovereignty was also recognized by the
democratic powers, which means that the FRG begun its de facto existence
only from 1955, when she was finally admitted into NATO.58
This outcome troubled Moscow to a great extent. A decade after the
end of the Berlin blockade, Stalin’s successor decided that USSR was strong
enough to force the United States to put an end to the ‘German Problem’ in
Soviet terms. But there was another reason, of geopolitical nature, which
drove the Soviets to act: the Soviet Union was almost surrounded now by
American military basis, and the superpower talks about disarmament had
reached a dead end.59 Nevertheless, the migration of intellectuals, students
and workers from East Germany and East Berlin to West Berlin reached
alarming proportions both for Moscow and especially for German
communists, which saw their five-year plan compromised - and needed to
be interrupted using the less humiliating way possible.60
In a gesture of defiance, ‘Khrushchev (<) declared the agreement of
the four powers over Berlin null and void and insisted that West Berlin to
be transformed in a demilitarized, ‚free city.‛’61 With other words, he
demanded the ‘imperialists’ to retreat from their part of the city and
recognize the sovereignty of Eastern Germany. Speculating the fact that a
peace treaty with Germany has not been signed since the end of Second
57 Jiři Fidler; Petr Mareś, op. cit., pp. 74-84.

58 Josef Joffe, ‘The Foreign Policy of the Federal Republic of Germany’, in Roy Macridis (ed.),
Foreign Policy in World Politics: States and Regions, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall International,
1989, p. 76.
59 William Taubman, Khrushchev. The man, his era, London: Free Press, 2005, p. 403.
60 Bernard Brigouleix, op. cit., pp. 132-153.

44 Emanuel Copilaş
World War, he tried to convince Washington to ‘sign a peace treaty with

West Germany, while the USSR did so with both Germanys.’62 This
outcome would have made the presence of American troops in the West
Berlin useless and also silenced ‘a very irritating source of Western
propaganda, especially after the progress made by television, in the hearth
of a ‚socialist‛ country.’63
Despite the fact that Khrushchev’s pressures affected to some extent
the North Atlantic Alliance, they did not achieve their objective. West
Berlin remained the ‘cancerous tumor’, as Stalin’s successor used to refer to
it, of the socialist camp. To contain it, Khrushchev and Walter Ulbricht, the
East German Communist leader, started constructing in 1961 the infamous
Berlin Wall, a symbol of communism’s failure rather than success, as
Khrushchev referred to it when he stopped two years latter what is now
called the Berlin crisis.64
Only in 1971 reached the former World War Two Allies an effective
agreement over Berlin. Reaffirming the responsibilities, but also the rights
they have regarding the future of the city and of the ‘German Problem’ in
general, the Quadripartite Agreement loosened traffic from the East to the
West side and also improved the infrastructure of the city. Both German
states were also recognized as sovereign and independent, they recognized
each other’s sovereignty (Grundlagenvertrag) and were integrated into
United Nations in 1973. It appeared that the ‘German Problem’ was finally
solved, but the fall of the Berlin Wall in the autumn of 1989 witnessed its
unexpected and disquieting reoccurrence.
Renouncing the Prussian legacy: the Federal Republic of

Germany or the appearance of a ‘civilian power’
The political and geopolitical metamorphosis of the postwar world

offers only a partial image of the metamorphosis the ‘German Problem’
experienced during the transition from the 19th to the 20th century. To
62 William Taubman, op. cit., p. 435.

63 Bernard Brigouleix, op. cit., p. 141.
complete it, the radical changes of the German psychology and national
identity must be taken into account.
The issue of the so called Denazification is highly important in this
regard. The process certainly took place, but not trough the Nurnberg trial
and the Denazification comities, but trough a gradual change of mentalities
and generations. ‘Skepticism as a survival experience’ and a new ‘youth
culture, which was impregnated by the orientation towards the West, by
the American fascination [as a prosperous, free country+’ replaced in a
short period of time the Prussian army and state cult, and the change was
not at all superficial.65
‘The traditional Prussian-conservative power elites lost their

material basis and influence. The gravity center of politics moved from
East to West. For the first time, in a very long time, Catholic Germany
obtained a position of leadership. The power of the army crumbled;
although from the rearming the federal army could develop technically
way much more than the Reich’s army did during the Weimar Republic, it
never became a state again. Even the prestige of the uniform, so
characteristic in the old days, has gone; it is dressed only at the working
place and nowhere in the rest. The Germans became convinced civilians.’66
The German economic ‘miracle’ stood at the foundation of this new

identity. Experiencing the goodwill and consistent American help,
Germans felt encouraged to confront the difficult task of rebuilding their
country. Furthermore, the massive exodus of qualified working-hand from
Soviet occupied zone contributed substantially to the process.67 But, one the
other hand, one should not forget that this economic miracle was made
possible by former Nazi specialists; their presence in postwar German
economy and administration was very much disregarded by the winners of
Second World War, but everyone knew that their absence would have
proven to be disastrous for the efforts of rebuilding the country.
Pragmatism replaced moral considerations. Even Konrad Adenauer,
chancellor between 1949 and 1963 and the most important figure in
German postwar politics – condemned in 1946 what he considered to be
the exaggerated zeal of the winners regarding Denazification. He believed

66 Ibidem, pp. 301-302.
67 Ibidem, pp. 291-292.
46 Emanuel Copilaş
that the process would eventually lead to a revival of nationalism, not to

guilt, shame and obedience. This is how strong Nazism was embedded
within the German minds.68
Of course, this ‘Return of the citizen corresponded logically to the
return in Europe.’69 The Sonderweg was left behind as France and Germany
agreed to a common use of the resources of the Ruhr region, thus putting
the bases of the future European Community. As Peter Calvocoressi writes,
‘The European Community or Union was conceived as an

antidote for the German power, which’s presence in the centre of Europe,
represented a permanent threat for peace and stability. A Community or
Union like this was to include Germany, to create a favorable field for the
German ambitions to the benefit of Europe, not against it and, also, to
maximally increase the importance of common economic actions of its
members and even to create an economic power able to match the United
States or Japan. When these ideas were adopted both by France and by
Germany, they became political reality.’70
Indeed, the major postwar gain of both West Germany’s neighbors

and West Germany itself was the ‘exorcisation of its militaristic spirit’71 and
its sincere availability to bind its future to that of Europe, to integrate its
identity in its originary European matrix and to build a climate of trust and
cooperation with its former enemies within a common cultural,
economical, social and eventually political framework.
Konrad Adenauer was the first Chancellor of the FRG. A
conservative catholic, highly religious (a founding member of the Christian
Democratic Union of Germany, one of the strongest postwar German
political party) he was ‘one of the few anti-Nazis which survived inside
Germany’, and also ‘the most politically prominent.’72 Possessing an
68 Tony Judt, op. cit., p. 65.

70 Peter Calvocoressi, Rupeți rândurile! Al doilea război mondial și configurarea Europei postbelice,
Iași: Polirom, 2000, p. 165.

71 Peter Calvocoressi, Europa de la Bismarck la Gorbaciov, Iași: Polirom, 2003, p. 150.
72 Ghiţă Ionescu, Oameni de stat într-o lume interdependentă. Adenauer, de Gaulle, Tatcher,
Reagan și Gorbaciov, București: Bic All, 1998, p. 41. For a personal profile of ‘der Alte’ (the
‘old man’, as the Germans affectionately nicknamed him), see Richard Nixon, Lideri,
București: Universal Dalsi, 2000, pp. 172-214.
‘instinctive antipathy’73 towards Prussia, he struggled and succeeded in

creating a ‘civilian community’ out of the FRG. Constitutionally, Adenauer
started by ‘retracting the supremacy of the state or of the community over
the individual, together with its duty to sacrifice itself, which determined,
for so long, fatally, the ideologies of Germanity; liberty, equality and with
them, the responsibility of the individual became central.’74
In the field of international relations, Adenauer guided his country’s
policy in three major directions. He begun by ‘reassuring’ France ‘that there
would be no resurgence of the ‚German peril.‛’ Next, he tried to reach an
honorable compromise between the ‘constraints’ imposed by the Allies and
the ‘German aspirations for sovereignty.’ As a consequence, his ‘entire
diplomacy was devoted to transmuting the constraints imposed
unilaterally by the victors into mutual controls shared voluntarily by all.’
Finally, he figured that both of the objectives were achievable only trough a
substantial ‘political and economic integration that would supersede the
ancient logic of power politics by the new logic of community and mutual
gain.’75
Committed to the goal of morally, politically and economically
reconstructing his country, Adenauer obstinately refused the Soviet
proposal of reuniting Germany during the blockade and, respectively, the
crisis of Berlin, referring to it as an ‘unrealistic goal.’76 Although the refusal
affected his popularity, he understood that Germany’s future and eventual
reunification were guaranteed only by the firm ties with the western
communities.77
The most famous successor of Chancellor Adenauer was Willy
Brandt. His major geopolitical initiative, the Ostpolitik, did not at all
renounce the structural relationships of his country with the West; it was a
result of security needs in the nuclear era, as the Europeans started to fear a
73 Ibidem, p. 48.
74 Christian conte von Krockow, op. cit., pp. 302-303.
op. cit., p. 78. See also Neil Nugent, The Government and Politics of the European Union, New
York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006, p. 24.
76 Ibidem, p. 81.
77 Stephen Szabo, ‘The New Germany and Central European Security’, in John Lampe;
Daniel Nelson, East European Security Reconsidered, Washington: The Woodrow Wilson
Central Press, 1993, p. 36.
48 Emanuel Copilaş
catastrophic war between the superpowers that would be fought on their

continent. When the détente period appeared at the beginning of the 1970’s,
due to its geographic position, Germany needed a safe and promising
geopolitical environment, not the rigid isolation into the ‘Western camp’.78
But most importantly, it aimed to overcome the painful division of the
German nation trough Sisyphus’s example: by recognizing, accepting and
eventually overcoming it.79 But Ostpolitik was aware of the fact that
‘reunification was not an operative goal of West German foreign policy in
the short or medium turn.’ Furthermore, no attempts of destabilizing
Eastern Germany were conducted. The political reunification was
indefinitely postponed by the social, cultural and economical unification,
an activity so determined that it eventually softened the GDR leadership’s
circumspection towards it.80 In order to eliminate any possible doubt about
its intentions, Willy Brandt renounced the Hallstein doctrine, which stated
that the FRG would not engage in diplomatic activities with states that
recognize the DRG as a legitimate political entity.
During the Chancellor Helmut Schmidt’s leadership (1974-1979), the
‚margin‛ of the country’s ‚diplomatic maneuver (<) has been
extraordinarily enlarged.‛81 The Helsinki agreements signed in 1975
announced a relaxation of the international scene, one which Bonn was
determined to fructify.82 But when USSR abruptly invaded Afghanistan in
1979 and started to deploy SS-20 nuclear missiles in Eastern Europe, the
détente period was over. NATO responded by in a similar manner, by
adopting a policy of ‘neo-containment’. Western Germany was highly
vulnerable in this situation, because it risked becoming a ‚shooting gallery
of the superpowers‛.83 For the first time after 1945, powerful anti-American
feelings were beginning to emerge among ordinary Germans. The Bonn
leadership was disquieted as well by the American response to the rising
78 Renata Frisch Bournazel, „Germania și apărarea Europei‛, în Raoul Girardet (ed.),

Apărarea Europei, Iași: Institutul European, 2005, p. 108.
79 John Ieuan, ‘The Re-emergence of ‚the German Question‛: a United Germany and
European Security and Stability’, in David Armstrong; Erik Goldstein, op. cit., p. 132.
80 Ibidem, p. 133.
op. cit., p. 104.

82 Ibidem, p. 106.
83 Ibidem, p. 108.
international tensions. Schmidt tried to ‘moderate’ the new dissonance

between the superpowers, but with little success: ‘the Federal Republic was
not the Bismarck Empire. While an economic giant, the FRG was a political
dwarf when it came to playing in the arena dominated by the super-
powers.‛ As a consequence, ‘Moscow refused to negotiate while continuing
to add to its SS-20 arsenal.’84
During the 1980’s, due to the geopolitical contraction that
characterized the final phase of the Cold War, the reunification became a
more and more distant objective. Only after Gorbachev took the leadership
of the Soviet Union visible signs of improvement begun to emerge. Yet,
until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunification achieved by Chancellor
Helmut Kohl remained an almost utopian goal.
Returning to German identity during the development of the Cold
War, which can be referred to as the most important variable of the
postwar ‚German Problem’ (albeit its ‘absen*ce+ from the diplomatic
vocabulary’85 of the Federal’s Republic), Lisbeh Aggestam argues that it
was structured along four principal parameters. The first one resides in the
‘opposition to the Third Reich’. Nazism and his legacy of hatred and
destruction were forever excluded from the picture. Next, the FRG strongly
affirmed and assumed its European cultural, economical and geopolitical
identity. Furthermore, domestic factors like the liberal constitution, the
national currency and, nevertheless, ‘the social market economy’ led to the
appearance of what the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas called
‘constitutional patriotism’. He argued that national identities have entered
a phase of evanescence and a new, comprehensive post-national identity
begun its existence. The multicultural communities which started to replace
national states can prosper only if they are assumed and sustained trough
this procedural manner the ‘constitutional patriotism’ refers to. Without the
emotional or historical weight the national patriotism contains,
‘constitutional patriotism’ can ensure a common denominator for the
multitude of interests, ideas or values existent in a community without
depriving it of its philosophical fundament or its conscience.86 Finally, the
84 Ibidem, p. 110.
85 Lisbeth Aggestam, ‘Germany’, in Ian Manners; Richard Whitman, The Foreign Policies of
European Union Member States, Manchester University Press, 2000, p. 66.
86 Jürgen Habermas, ‘The Constitutional State’, in William Outhawaite (ed.), The Habermas
Reader, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000, pp. 214-216; Andrei Marga, Filosofia lui Habermas, Iași:
50 Emanuel Copilaş
last parameter which contributed to the German postwar identity

represents the ‘reconciliation with former enemies and [the] rejection of
military power projection for other purposes than territorial defense trough
NATO’.87 This whole process was not, as some authors have referred to it, a
‘self-fulfilling amnesia’88, but something way much more: a real and radical
identitary metamorphosis.
Although engaged in a powerful ideological competition, the two
Germanys were extremely different in terms of economical, social and
cultural prosperity. Therefore, to conclude that the ‘main’ Germany was
the Federal Republic is not at all exaggerated. After all, the reunited
Germany continues the legacy of the Federal, not of the Democratic
Republic. But, on the other hand, the GDR was one of the ‘strongest and
richest members’ of its alliance, too. In Josef Joffe’s words, the two ‘twin’
states were ‘both the greatest profiteers and the greatest victims of the
postwar system.’89
In search of a nation: the German Democratic Republic
In all of its short and unsecured existence, East Germany was

confronted with two major intertwined issues. The first and the most
important was that of identity. Along its forty years of permanent and
ideocratic dictatorship, the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands -
the Socialist Unity Party of Germany) had never managed to create a
distinct East German national identity, separated of and superior to that of
the Federal’s Republic. Because this lack of national identity, it was the
Polirom, 2006, pp. 484-485; Olivier Nay, Istoria Ideilor Politice, Iași: Polirom, 2008, pp. 592-
594. I tried to offer a presentation and critical approach of some of Habermas’s concepts in
political philosophy in Emanuel Copilaş, ‘Dincolo de teoria critică. O posibilă inserare a
filosofiei politice habermasiene în teoria relaţiilor internaţionale’, in Sfera Politicii, nr. 138,
2009, pp. 96-113.
87 Lisbeth Aggestam, ‘Germany’, in Ian Manners; Richard Whitman, op. cit., p. 66.
88 Uwe Nerlich, ‘Washington and Bonn: Evolutionary patterns in the relations between the
United States and the Federal Republic of Germany’, in Karl Kaiser, Hans-Peter Schwarz,
America and Western Europe. Problems and Prospects, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath and
Company Lexington, 1979, p. 369.
op. cit., p. 117.

most vulnerable Soviet satellite. Artificially and forcefully created by Stalin,

its existence was justified only as a product of superpower rivalry. It was
conditioned and owed its existence to the circumstances that made the
Cold War possible. Its communist leadership, the only category who truly
benefited from this state of events, was never found of destalinization,
détente, perestroika or glasnost, because these eroded the precarious
legitimacy of the GDR, the second major challenge which contested its
reason to exist.
The first leader of East Germany, Walter Ulbricht, was very much
aware of these difficulties. But he and his Stalinist acolytes believed that
they can be eventually overcame trough the power of ideology alone.
However, they forgot the fact that communism represented an ideal only
for them, without being shared by the rest of the population; its moral force
was therefore highly overrated and, after the economical, social and
cultural effects of ‘real socialism’ became painfully evident, totally
discredited.
‘The initial hopes of the founders of the GDR, not to mention

their Soviet protectors, had been that ideology alone would provide the
main legitimizing factor for the new state – the ideal of, quest for, the first
German socialist state. Walter Ulbricht, though in other respects a
pragmatic politician, always retained this ideal, and despite all the rebuffs
of subsequent experience, many older East German communists, schooled
in the struggles for communism and against Nazism, also clung to the
belief that socialism meant legitimacy.’90
As a corollary of the lack of adhesion towards communism, East

Berlin authorities faced in June 1953, a few months after Stalin’s death, a
massive and spontaneous workers strike, brutally repressed by Soviet
intervention, and which seriously affected the existence of the new state.91
17 June became a national holiday for West Germans, a reminder of the
sufferings of their Eastern brethren and a symbol of a, albeit divided,
common identity.
90 J.F. Brown, Surge to Freedom. The End of Communist Rule in Eastern Europe, Durham: Duke
University Press, 1991, p. 133.
91 Patrick Brogan, Eastern Europe, 1939-1959. The fifty years war, London: Bloomsbury
Publishing Limited, 1990, pp. 27-30.

52 Emanuel Copilaş
Walter Ulbricht was replaced in 1971 by Erich Honecker. Soviet

General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev coordinated the entire action. He took
the decision to remove Ulbricht due to the opposition of the German leader
(for motives mentioned above) towards détente. His successor came to
terms with the Soviet Union’s new approach towards the West and the
need to ‘normalize’ his country’s relations with the FRG by accepting Willy
Brandt’s Ostpolitik. However, being aware of the risks this strategy could
entail by diminishing the GDR’s reasons to exist, he responded by
advancing the Abgrenzung (demarcation) policy. It was intended as a firm
message for West Germany, stating that, although the economical and
cultural ties between the two parts were rapidly developing, there could be
no ideological compromise with the capitalist and imperialist forces which
enslaved the FRG. East Germany would perseveringly continue its path to
socialism and thus affirm it’s much needed separate identity. 92
As mentioned, the Party permanently struggled to forge an East
German national identity, separated from that of the Federal’s Republic. It
failed, not only for internal reasons like the planned economy the lack of
adherence of the communist ideal, but also because West Germans strived
trough Ostpolitik to do just the opposite. The GDR was, in J.F. Bown’s
terms, ‘a penetrated society’. The West’s prosperity and freedom had
continuously undermined the communist project of constructing an
independent and strong East Germany. West Germany did everything in
its power to destroy the communist regime behind the Berlin Wall using its
main advantage, soft power. The Deutsche Mark (a symbol of social
superiority and the usual bribe used to obtain better services or goods), the
‘West German travelers’ (with some exceptions, ‘the best advertisement for
the Western way of life’) and the ‘West German television’ (available for
80% of East Germans after 1970 and 100% starting with the 1980’s)
represented the ‘instruments’ trough which the Federal Republic was
trying to peacefully bring down the Wall.93
Despite these major disadvantages Erich Honecker and the SED had
to confront with while trying to obtain legitimacy trough forging a national
East German identity, they considered to be up to the task. In this sense, a
major provocation appeared during the 1970’s, when communist regimes
92 J.F. Brown, op. cit., p. 129.

93 Ibidem, pp. 135-138.
all around Eastern Europe, confronted with the lack of the promised
achievements and with the erosion of the few legitimacy they possessed,
started to resort to what they ferociously combated in the past, nationalism.
Aware of the dilemma, Honecker strived to overcome it with the help of
several factors. One of them was the ‘strong historical tradition of
regionalism in German history’. Next, due to the fact that a certain ‘sense of
East German ‚distinctiveness‛’ had emerged since the end of the end of the
Second World War, he hoped that it could constitute the basis of the future
identity. The amazing and ‘meticulously prepared’ performances of East
German athletes were also believed to contribute to the task. The final and
most important factor was the massive ‚rehabilitation campaign‛ the Party
launched, ‘searching into German history for figures to fit into the mold of
a progressive German nationalist outlook’ after they were publicly rejected
‘as the epitome of reaction’. Therefore, Frederick the Great, Otto von
Bismarck and, to some extent, Richard Wagner were recuperated and
ideologically purified to serve the capital task that the Party assumed, that
of creating the East German national identity. But failing it, East Germany
remained the most fragile postwar construction, paradoxically dependent
on both the Soviet Union and the FRG as well94 and, above all, on the Cold
War itself. Even if it achieved, after the Wall was build, a notable economic
development with reference to the other communist states (except the
Soviet Union), taking into account its post 1945 economic and
infrastructural condition and the millions of citizens it lost as they migrated
to West Germany95 - when Gorbachev started the process that will
eventually lead to the end of the superpower confrontation, its fate was
sealed.
Reunited Germany, the central component of the European

project
When Michael Gorbachev’s ‘new thinking’ significantly influenced

the relations between USSR, Eastern Europe and the ‘capitalist world’ and,
as a result, the Cold war was entering its final phase, East Germany
94 Ibidem, pp. 133-135.

95 Ibidem, p. 128.
54 Emanuel Copilaş
resorted once again to the Abgrenzung policy. But this time it searched to
isolate itself not from the corruptive effects of West German’s capitalism,
but from the new international program of its protector, the Soviet Union.96
As paradoxical as it seems, the ‘new thinking’ contributed to the
melioration of the relations between the two German states while
simultaneously deteriorating the ties between orthodox Stalinist countries
like the GDR or Romania with what Kenneth Jowitt referred to as the
‘Moscow centre’.97
When in September 1989 Hungary, one of the most liberal socialist
regimes, ‘declared its borders open’, tens of thousand of East German
citizens used the Hungarian breach to get to Austria and then to West
Germany. Many more appealed the Hungarian and West German
embassies from Warsaw and Prague asking for ‘exit visas.’98 Confronted
also with major demonstrations, Honecker resigned the next month and
was replaced by Egon Krenz. But by now, the situation was already beyond
the control of the Party and its efforts to prevent the further dissolution of
the regime were useless.99 In the first days of November, the
demonstrations reached East Berlin and on the night between 9 and 10 of
the month, the Berlin Wall was officially opened by East German
authorities.100 Reunification was now just a matter of time.
Until it finally occurred, one year later, it was conducted through
the ‘2 + 4’ formula. That meant that the two German states agreed first on
the conditions the reunification implied, and than presented the result to
the four winners of the Second World War. In this way the process was
fastened and the renewed Germany proved that it was no longer an object
of negotiation between the four powers,101 but, despite its enormous
historical burden, a powerful, European country able to assume it past, its
present and the construction of its future within the European common
96 Ibidem, pp. 140-144.

97 Kenneth Jowitt, New World Disorder. The Leninist Extinction, Berkley: University of
California Press, 1992, p. 159.
98 Patrick Brogan, op.cit., pp. 37-38.
99 Hans-Hermann Hertle, ‘The Fall of the Wall: The Unintended Dissolution of East
Germany’s Rulling Regime’, in Cold War International History Project (The End of the Cold
War), Issue 12/13, Fall/Winter 2001, pp. 131-164.
100 Bernard Brigouleix, op. cit., pp. 233-237.

framework. However, the geopolitical implications of reunification, albeit

German enthusiasm and determination, were extremely complex and it
took a rather long time to be adequately dealt with.
No one expected the Soviet Union not to intervene; after all, the
management of the ‘German Problem’ represented the core and also the
stake of the Cold War and none of the superpowers was willing to risk its
image and prestige by renouncing its part of Germany in favor of the other.
But Gorbachev’s USSR did. Why? According to Patrick Brogan, both
Washington and Moscow
‘were dragged along, bewildered and slightly nervous, in the

wake of the Germans’ rush to unity. What would they do with a country
that was a member of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact? This, obviously,
was the real sticking point. The question is what price could the Soviet
Union extract from the West for removing its troops from eastern
Germany and accepting that a united Germany would be a member of
NATO alone.’102
With other words, in his struggle to modernize the stagnant Soviet

Union and the communist ideology as well, Gorbachev agreed to the
reunification of Germany in exchange of the country’s sustained financial
contribution to its reformist program. Germany was the only strong
economy with a major reason for doing so, and it also agreed to ‘cover the
costs of repatriating the Soviet troops.’103 The total price West Germany had
to pay for the reunification was about ‘60 billion Deutschmarks.’104 Other
Western countries also contributed to Gorbachev’s efforts, but in the
backwash of German reunification and Eastern Europe’s anti-communist
revolutions, the Soviet colossus was unable to survive and it slowly
disintegrated.
After the reunification euphoria had passed, the Germans were
confronted both with external and internal challenges. In the first case, the
historical experience induced by the ‘German Problem’ disquieted France,
Poland and Great Britain. These states were main victims of past German
102 Patrick Brogan, op.cit., p. 43.

103 Timothy Garton Ash, Istoria prezentului. Eseuri, schițe și relatări din Europa anilor ’90, Iași:
Polirom, 2002, p. 59.
104 David Pryce Jones, The War That Never Was. The Fall Of The Soviet Empire, 1985-1991,
London: Phoenix Press, 2001, p. 286.

56 Emanuel Copilaş
aggressions and they needed insurances against an eventual resurgence of

German hegemonic tendencies.105 They would receive them in the
discourses and the activities of the reunited country, which renounced all
its potential territorial claims and strongly reaffirmed its Europenity. The
internal challenges were firstly of economical nature. West Germany had to
cover the huge costs of the dysfunctional economy of the east and the weak
Ostmark, which’s valued about 10% of the Western Deutschmark. This
resulted into enormous financial efforts and a wave of unemployment in
the Western part of the country, triggering social tensions as former West
Germans feared they would lose their jobs in favor of the Ossis. 106
In time, both types of challenges were properly addressed.
Economical conditions gradually begun to improve, even if social tensions
were never completely eradicated, and neither the structural disparities
between the former East and West Germany. Although not at all negligible,
social issues raised by the reunification are not strong enough to pose a
present or even a future threat to the German feeling of a common identity,
a sense of community shared both by former Westerners and Easterners.
For the foreseeable future, the German unity is irreversible.
At the international level, the German foreign policy entered a
phase of ‘normalization’, which consisted in a firmer articulation of
national interest, a will to ‘take on greater responsibilities internationally’, a
peaceful and reassuring approach towards the neighbors and a determined
position regarding the irreversibility of the past.107 However, a more
powerful appropriation of its identity, legitimate interests and role on the
international scene does not mean that Germany planes to separate itself
from the European Union; on the contrary, it represents the awareness of a
certain maturity Germany reached during the last century, especially in its
second half, which justifies its present emancipation, but also its ability to
learn from past mistakes. After all, the European Union, a more integrated
and politicized form of the European Community, emerged basically as a
response to the post-Cold War ‘German Problem’108, which remains and
will continue to do so in the predictable future its basic component. As
105 Peter Alter, op. cit, p. 228.

106 Christin von Krockow, op. cit., pp. 357-369.
107 Lisbeth Aggestam, ‘Germany’, in Ian Manners; Richard Whitman, op. cit., p. 71
108 Robert Gilpin, Economia Mondială în Secolul XXI. Provocarea capitalismului global, Iași:
Polirom, 2004, p. 152.

Timothy Garton Ash wrote in a recent book, ‘the true center of Europe is
Germany.’109
Concluding remarks: the European answer to the post-Cold

War ‘German Problem’ and the metamorphosis of a national
identity
The post-Cold War European Community renamed the European

Union, represented a fundamental compromise between political and
economical interests of two former historical rivals: France and Germany.
The weaker actor, France, wanted to secure itself with reference to German
economical power. As a consequence, it received an equal control as its
counterpart ‘over the monetary and financial European affairs’, and even
an advance regarding ‘the management of European economy’ in general.
However, France was also a traditional advocate of a ‘Europe of nations’,
opting for a less integrationist approach of the European construction, one
in which it could retain a more independent position. Germany, on the
other hand ‘wanted the European political unity to confirm the return of
the country towards democratic Europe and to guarantee that it would be a
peaceful country, without nationalist tendencies.’ Beside these moral-
philosophical reasons, Germany was also pragmatic: the more united
Europe becomes the more dominant its position becomes. In the end,
equilibrium was achieved through the willingness of the two parts to
cooperate, although certain issues remained suspended.110
Today, Germany has taken its rightful place among Europe’s
leaders as the unquestionable ‘economical motor’ of the Union. However,
the Cold War is over and Germany can no longer be understood as an
‘economic giant’ while a ‘political dwarf’. Starting with the 1999 Kosovo
crisis and then, with NATO’s 2001 Afghanistan involvement, Germany
took part, ‘for the first time after 1945’ to ‘military operations within
109 Timothy Garton Ash, Lumea liberă. America, Europa și viitorul surprinzător al Occidentului,
București: Incitatus, 2006, p. 73.
110 Robert Gilpin, op. cit., pp. 153-154.
58 Emanuel Copilaş
NATO’.111 Nevertheless, it remained a convinced ‘civilian power’, but ‘it

should be pointed out that the idea of civilian power does not necessarily
equate a pacifist renunciation of the use of military force under any
circumstances.’112 Contemporary Germany is assuming a more prominent
political role than West Germany did and tries to come to terms with the
past trough an adequate apprehension of present problems. But, despite
the geopolitical changes that occurred meanwhile, Germany firmly
continues the ‘European politics’ initiated by the famous West German
Chancellors like Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt or
Helmut Kohl.113
In the end, one of Robert Cooper’s diplomatic maxims, inspired by
one of the most famous architects of the European construction, Jean
Monnet, is most suitable when referring to the present status of the
‘German Problem’. It states that ‘when you have a problem that you cannot
fix, enlarge the context.’114 Monnet applied it to the irreconcilable French-
German dispute and its solution within the ‘enlarged context’ of the
European Community, but I believe it can be successfully applied to the
‘German Problem’ itself. The ‘enlarged context’ of the postwar ‘German
Problem’ is identical to that of the French-German rivalry: the postwar
European and, to a certain extent, international response to it induced, as I
tried to argument all along this study, a metamorphosis of the German
national identity. In its absence, Germany would have certainly looked
different, and it is most probable that, to paraphrase Peter Calvocoressi, its
‘*un+exorcized military spirit’ would once again have caused the world and
itself extreme and maybe impossible to cure injuries.
The European Union, understandable in this case as a post-Cold
War enlarged context of the new form the ‘German Problem’ has taken –
appears to be, until now, the best ‘containment’ method regarding its
eventual resurgence. But the most powerful factor which contributed to the
satisfactory solution offered to the issue was, beside external and rather
111 Sylvain Kahn, Geopolitica Uniunii Europene, Chișinău: Cartier, 2008, p. 77.
112 Lisbeth Aggestam, ‘Germany’, in Ian Manners; Richard Whitman, op. cit., p. 80.
113 Sylvain Kahn, op. cit., p. 82; Lisbeth Aggestam, ‘Germany’, in Ian Manners; Richard
Whitman, op. cit., p. 80.

114 Robert Cooper, Destrămarea Națiunilor. Ordine și haos în secolul XXI, București: Univers
Enciclopedic, 2007, p. 167.

coercive, internal and willingly assumed: the metamorphosis of the

German national identity.
60 Emanuel Copilaş
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ROMANIAN REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, I, 2, 2009

THE ‘GERMAN PROBLEM’ THEN AND NOW: FROM THE

* Emanuel Copilaş, teaching assistant, West University of Timişoara, email:

peremptory interaction with the international environment. The process is ongoing

Key words: ‘German Problem’, national identity, Cold War, civilian

Challenging the European order: the Prussian Germany

When writing about the ‘German Problem’, John Ieuan underlines

‘political psychology, culture and behavior of *the+ ruling elites

This argument is very important because it offers one key

Waller, Bismarck, București: Historia, 2006, pp. 52-55.

10 Ibidem, pp. 85-88.

11 Jean-Michel Gaillard; Anthony Rowley, Istoria continentului european. De la 1850 până la

Polirom, 2003, p. 237.

Although very diverse, Bismarck’s Reich contained two powerful

15 Christian conte von Krockow, op. cit., p. 38.

19 Jean-Michel Gaillard; Anthony Rowley, op. cit., pp. 258-259.

20 Christian conte von Krockow, op. cit., p. 25.

on the diplomatic drift that characterized post-Bismarck Germany and

Unbalancing Bismarck’s system of alliances: Wilhelm II and

Wilhelm I, the former Prussian king, was proclaimed Kaiser in the

21 Henry Kissinger, op. cit., p. 144.

‘Weltpolitik was not a foreign policy imposed to the Germans by

Furthermore, Weltpolitik was not even a coherent concept. Geoff

23 Christian conte von Krockow, op. cit., p. 81.

Alter, op. cit., pp. 119-120.

War, resentments and the totalitarian drift

The Kaiser’s unrealistic and aggressive foreign policy, combined

29 Hannah Arendt, Originile Totalitarismului, București: Humanitas, 1994, p. 300.

32 Christian conte von Krockow, op. cit., p. 93.

unleashed contrasted painfully with its dreadful consequences, which will

33 Peter Alter, op. cit., pp. 138-139.

The republic remained very fragile along its entire existence.

36 Henry Kissinger, op. cit., pp. 231-250.

The third factor consists in the political-ideological appeal of the

The conclusion is that Nazism was not at all an isolated ideology

paradoxical theocratic features of this political regime structured by

different SS units using members from members of the occupied

44 Hannah Arendt, op. cit., p. 535.

45 Ibidem, pp. 15-168.

heresy’.48 The common ideological root of right-wing and left-wing political

Divided Germany, the epicenter of the Cold War

48 Joshua Muravchik, Raiul pe pământ. Mărirea și decăderea socialismului, Timișoara: Brumar,

NATO. Scurtă istorie, București: Silex, 1999, p. 59.

Unite după război, București: DU Style, 1999, pp. 74-81.

‘Morgenthau’s plan for the ‚pastoralization‛ of Germany is

Columbia University Press, 1972, p. 121.

54 Bernard Brigouleix, op. cit., p. 115.

57 Jiři Fidler; Petr Mareś, op. cit., pp. 74-84.

60 Bernard Brigouleix, op. cit., pp. 132-153.

61 Henry Kissinger, op. cit., p. 497.

World War, he tried to convince Washington to ‘sign a peace treaty with

Renouncing the Prussian legacy: the Federal Republic of

The political and geopolitical metamorphosis of the postwar world

62 William Taubman, op. cit., p. 435.

‘The traditional Prussian-conservative power elites lost their

The German economic ‘miracle’ stood at the foundation of this new

65 Christian conte von Krockow, op. cit., p. 287.

that the process would eventually lead to a revival of nationalism, not to

‘The European Community or Union was conceived as an

Indeed, the major postwar gain of both West Germany’s neighbors

68 Tony Judt, op. cit., p. 65.

Iași: Polirom, 2000, p. 165.