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Book reviews – Comptes rendus – Buchbesprechungen
Institut für Zeitgeschichte on behalf of Auswärtiges Amt (ed.) – Akten zur Auswärtigen
Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 1951, ed. by Matthias Jaroch; 1952, ed. by
Martin Koopmann and Joachim Wintzer, R. Oldenbourg Verlag, München, 1999, LVIII,
816 p. – ISBN 3-486-56418-8; 2000, LVIII and 842 p. – ISBN 3-486-56480-3. – 64,80 €
(each volume).
In the early 1950s West German foreign policy had to face a serious dilemma: on the one
hand, Chancellor Adenauer, who since March 1951 was acting as foreign minister, too, tried
to reduce West Germany’s dependency on the Western Allies; on the other hand, he desperately
needed – and asked for – Allied support, especially after the Stalin proposals of spring
1952 concerning the unification of Germany. Thus Adenauer, at the same time, had to avoid
the impression on the part of the Western powers that West Germany might again turn to traditional
power politics, and on the part of the German people that he was some sort of a puppet
on Allied strings. How successful he and his government in Bonn were in managing this
problem is, amongst many other topics, documented in the two volumes.
These volumes – a first one, dealing with the years 1949/1950, was published in 1997 –
are the first steps towards filling the gap between 1949 and 1963, the starting point of the
“official” edition project concerning the foreign policy of the Federal Republic of Germany.
They, too, may be read in addition to the documentation on the talks between Adenauer and
the Allied High Commission, published in two volumes in 1989 and 1990. As was the case
with the former volumes, a summary of their content is not provided, but abstracts for each
document and a detailed index are valuable tools for searching certain topics. The annotations
by the editors concentrate on more or less “technical” aspects like the references of a
certain document to others or to other record groups, the importance of documents within
the decision making process or its political and organisational background. The main source
of documentation in these two volumes have been the archives of the German foreign ministry;
furthermore, they contain some records of the papers of Herbert Blankenhorn, head of
the political department of the Auswärtiges Amt, and the Federal Chancellery kept by the
Bundesarchiv Koblenz, of the Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv in Freiburg and of the Adenauer
papers, kept by the Stiftung Bundeskanzler-Adenauer-Haus in Rhöndorf near Bonn.
The altogether 469 documents, including memoranda, notes, minutes and correspondence,
cover a wide range of topics: the West German contribution to the common Western defence
against the “communist threat”, the European Defence Community (EDC), the ratification of the
treaty on the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the “contractual agreements”
between the Three Powers and the Federal Republic and the termination of the occupation statute,
the establishment of diplomatic relations with other countries, the negotiations on the settlement
of Germany’s foreign debts, the restitution negotiations with Israel, the problem of German
reunification, the Saar question, and arms production, to mention only the most important. Surprisingly,
there are only a few entries concerning the Organisation for European Economic
Co-operation and the European Payments Union, which were without doubt of high importance
for the integration of West Germany into the West European economic and political setting. One
may wonder whether this fact reflects the attitude towards the OEEC of Adenauer and his administration
or of those who selected the documents.
Among the most interesting topics rank the Soviet Union’s proposals regarding a unified,
but neutralised Germany and the reactions of the Western powers, as well as of the Federal
Republic and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). It becomes clear that not only the
Federal Chancellor and his supporters were afraid of the potential consequences, but also
the GDR government. Ulbricht and other leading politicians of the Socialist Unity Party
(SED) feared that they might be “sacrificed cold-heartedly”, if the Soviet Union succeeded
in keeping West Germany out of the “aggressive block” dominated by the United States. So
Adenauer’s rigid refusal to explore the Soviet offer was received with great relief by the East