Demonstrating Reconciliation : State and Society in West German Foreign Policy Toward Israel, 1952-1965 [1 ed.] 9781789204209, 9781845452872

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Demonstrating Reconciliation

Demonstrating Reconciliation : State and Society in West German Foreign Policy Toward Israel, 1952-1965, Berghahn Books,

Monographs in German History Volume 1

Volume 9

Osthandel and Ostpolitik: German Foreign Trade Policies in Eastern Europe from Bismarck to Adenauer Mark Spaulding

The Ambivalent Alliance: Konrad Adenauer, the CDU/CSU, and the West, 1949–1966 Ronald J. Granieri

Volume 2

Volume 10

A Question of Priorities: Democratic Reform and Economic Recovery in Postwar Germany Rebecca Boehling

The Price of Exclusion: Ethnicity, National Identity, and the Decline of German Liberalism, 1898–1933 E. Kurlander

Volume 3

From Recovery to Catastrophe: Municipal Stabilization and Political Crisis in Weimar Germany Ben Lieberman Volume 4

Nazism in Central Germany: The Brownshirts in ‘Red’ Saxony Christian W. Szejnmann Volume 5

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Citizens and Aliens: Foreigners and the Law in Britain and the German States, 1789–1870 Andreas Fahrmeir

Volume 11

Recasting West German Elites: Higher Civil Servants, Business Leaders, and Physicians in Hesse between Nazism and Democracy, 1945–1955 Michael R. Hayse Volume 12

The Creation of the Modern German Army: General Walther Reinhardt and the Weimar Republic, 1914–1930 William Mulligan Volume 13

Volume 6

Poems in Steel: National Socialism and the Politics of Inventing from Weimar to Bonn Kees Gispen

The Crisis of the German Left: The PDS, Stalinism and the Global Economy Peter Thompson Volume 14

Volume 7

“Aryanisation” in Hamburg Frank Bajohr Volume 8

The Politics of Education: Teachers and School Reform in Weimar Germany Marjorie Lamberti

“Conservative Revolutionaries”: Protestant and Catholic Churches in Germany After Radical Political Change in the 1990s Barbara Thériault

Demonstrating Reconciliation : State and Society in West German Foreign Policy Toward Israel, 1952-1965, Berghahn Books,

DEMONSTRATING RECONCILIATION State and Society in West German Foreign Policy toward Israel, 1952–1965




Copyright © 2007. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Hannfried von Hindenburg

Berghahn Books New York • Oxford

Demonstrating Reconciliation : State and Society in West German Foreign Policy Toward Israel, 1952-1965, Berghahn Books,

Published in 2007 by

Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com ©2007 Hannfried von Hindenburg

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hindenburg, Hannfried von. Demonstrating reconciliation : state and society in West German foreign policy toward Israel, 1952–1965 / Hannfried von Hindenburg. p. cm. — (Monographs in German history ; v. 18) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-84545-287-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Germany (West)—Foreign relations—Israel. 2. Israel—Foreign relations—Germany (West) 3. Germany (West)—Politics and government. 4. German reunification question (1949–1990) I. Title. DD258.85.I75H56 2006 327.430569409'045—dc22

2006100354

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments Introduction

vii 1

1. Society and Ideas in German Foreign Policy Making Historiography as Signifier of Ideas Ideas as Road Maps and Institutions

13 15 17

2. Ideas, Beliefs, and Politics, 1950s–1960s “Only One German State”: Governmental Beliefs “It’s Time for a Change”: Society’s Beliefs “Quo Vadis Germania?” Beliefs on the International Level Conclusion

20 20 26 35 39

3. The First Ten Years: National Interest vs. National Obligation, 1952–1962 Unification Policy and Israel, 1952–1958 Burgeoning Pro-Israel Activities among German Society, 1958–1962 Economic and Military Aid beyond Restitution, 1957–1962 Conclusion 4. “The Fateful Question of the German Nation”: German Foreign Policy toward Israel, 1962–1964 “The Time Has Come…”: Diplomatic Relations with Israel? 1963–1964 “Coming to Terms with the Past”: German Scientists in Egypt, 1962–1964 “A Question of Policy, Not Law”: The Statute of Limitations for Murder, 1963–1964 Politics by Stealth: Military Aid to the “French Colonies,” 1962–1964 Conclusion: German Foreign Policy towards Israel, 1962–1964

Demonstrating Reconciliation : State and Society in West German Foreign Policy Toward Israel, 1952-1965, Berghahn Books,

46 47 50 52 54 58 59 68 77 84 94

vi | Contents

146

6. Demonstrating Reconciliation: State and Society in West German Foreign Policy toward Israel, 1952–1965 The Competition of Ideas The Race for Change Conclusion and Outlook

176 177 180 191

Acronyms

201

Bibliography

204

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5. “The Normalization of the Situation”: German Foreign Policy towards Israel, 1964–1965 “The Smell of Hay Permeates the Region”: Weapons Deliveries Exposed, October–December 1964 “At a Crossroads”: Nasser Invites Ulbricht, January 1965 “The Worst Foreign Policy Crisis”: Bonn Cancels Arms Aid to Israel, February 1965 “Striving for Diplomatic Relations with Israel”: Bonn Offers Full Ties to Jerusalem, March 1965

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108 109 118 129

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book feels much like an autobiography as it has accompanied me for a quarter of my life. What I have put to paper reflects some of my thinking on the Germans’ relationship with their past following the Holocaust and World War II, and on how this relationship ties in with ideas on German statehood. My biggest reward would be if this book stimulates further thought and discussion. Thanks to the Fulbright Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and the Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation for helping to fund my research. I am highly indebted to my academic mentor, Helga Haftendorn, and to Lily Gardner Feldman for their support and helpful comments on the manuscript. Ernest R. May at Harvard University and Stephen F. Szabo and David P. Calleo at SAIS were all gracious hosts. I am grateful to my publishers Marion and Vivian Berghahn for taking on this project, and to Melissa Spinelli for her sound advice and patience in overseeing the production process. My parents Vera and Hubertus and my brother Ferdinand never failed to believe that I could finish the project, while stressing that I did not have to, which was an immensely liberating thought that helped me to stick it out. Without many of my friends and colleagues, this book would never have been written—either because they gave me the time I needed, or suggested fresh ideas, or helped me to enjoy life when, at times, this project’s weight seemed too much to bear: Klaus Deutsch, Helmut Frangenberg, Sebastian Fries, Lucie Giraud, Nanna Hepke, Gabe Hutter, Adam Jasser, Claudia Keller, Andreas Kempas, Aaron Lobel, Barbara Löchte, Dan Magder, Nadia Malinovich, Markus Michel, Dirk Müller, Rani Mullen, Janet Northcote, Hans Obermeier, Matthias Riedel, Dirk Roßbach, Howard Sargent, Axel Sauder, Greg Shaya, Heidi Strecker, Karen Taylor, Angelika Werden. Above all, I owe the completion of this project to Elke Pickartz and to her unswerving support and insight. Finally, the incredible gift of Anisha Abraham’s love came just at the right time to help me cross the finishing line. Along the way, she singlehandedly turned the introduction into a readable piece of literature. Thanks so much to everyone. Washington, D.C., October 2006

Hannfried von Hindenburg

Demonstrating Reconciliation : State and Society in West German Foreign Policy Toward Israel, 1952-1965, Berghahn Books,

INTRODUCTION




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Rolf Friedemann Pauls faced an obstacle course in making his way to Israeli president Zalman Shazar’s residence in the summer of 1965. Strong security guarded West Germany’s envoy against rioters in Jerusalem’s streets, protesting their government’s inaugural handshake with a representative of the Holocaust perpetrators. Yet, when Pauls stepped forward to present his credentials as Bonn’s first ambassador to Israel, the roar of enraged demonstrators mixed with the tune of the German national anthem played by an Israeli police band (NYT Magazine, Oct. 31, 1965).1 How did both countries arrive at this stage in their history of bilateral relations? How was it possible that twenty years after the demise of Nazi Germany Israeli musicians would play “The Song of the Germans”, a title drawn from the third verse of an anthem still familiar to many behind the police barriers as “Germany above all in the world” (Deutschland über alles in der Welt)? The many twists and turns of the events leading up to this scene on August 19, 1965 have the making of a suspense novel. Yet, beyond the riveting plot, the commencement of diplomatic relations between the two unlikely partners was the result of multiple forces that influenced and shaped the political process. Political scientists need to discard the myth that the chain of events was the result of a few great men’s farsighted stewardship. As such, characterizations of West German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard’s eventual decision to offer Israel the establishment of diplomatic relations as a “spontaneous reaction of weariness” (Weingardt 1997: 152), or an ingenious example of the chancellor’s use of his policy-setting power (Barzel 1991: 18–19), or a single-handed act uninfluenced by any outside factors or advice (Blasius 1994b: 209–210; Kaltefleiter 1995: 22–24) are not helpful as they lack explanatory power.2 This book seeks to broaden the view from a focus on a few executives at the helm of the Federal Republic to encompass the multifaceted role West German society played in bringing about diplomatic relations between Notes for this section begin on page 11.

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2 | Demonstrating Reconciliation

the two countries some fifteen years after their respective inceptions in 1948 and 1949. Typically, academic accounts of the Federal Republic’s political development portray the government of Ludwig Erhard, Germany’s second head of government, as engulfed in an air of failure and diminished significance. Erhard earned himself a reputation as little more than a “transitional” chancellor (Hildebrand 1997: 11–21; Schmidt 1972: 395). Indeed, his term in office did not last long. A previous minister of economics, the widely acclaimed father of Germany’s “economic miracle” in the 1950s spent barely three years at the helm of the country. His stewardship has often been labeled as “weak” since his coalition government was marred by internal strife and external trouble. Having succeeded his innerparty rival and West Germany’s legendary first chancellor Konrad Adenauer in the fall of 1963, Erhard had to give way to a Grand Coalition between his Christian Democrats and the opposition Social Democrats in 1966. Another three years later West Germany was run by its first Social Democratic-led government under the leadership of charismatic Willy Brandt. Are Erhard’s short guard and his foreign policy—one may wonder—therefore not worth looking at, as they sit in history sandwiched between West Germany’s two most epoch-making developments, Adenauer’s vigorous integration of the Bonn Republic into the West and Brandt’s rapprochement with the East? To the contrary, in many ways Erhard’s time in office has been unduly neglected and his person wrongfully relegated to the role of a scapegoat, hit by parliamentarians on all sides of the aisles. This study sets out to show that Erhard’s tenure, while undoubtedly scarce of domestic or foreign policy accomplishments, was more than a mere historical waiting room, the country fleetingly visited while transferring from one train of history (Westpolitik) to the next (Ostpolitik). Erhard gains his significance as chancellor precisely because the developments he oversaw served as a vital hinge between two eras. Erhard’s chancellorship marked the beginning of a new epoch as he presided over and helped to usher in West Germany’s coming of age. In fact, Erhard was present at the creation of the political system that has come to characterize West Germany’s and, later, unified Germany’s social fabric: a system that provides society with numerous opportunities to influence governmental decision making. For more than a decade, starting in the mid 1950s, West Germany denied Israel the commencement of official diplomatic relations for fear Arab governments might avenge such a step by recognizing its nemesis, Communist East Germany, as an independent state and thereby cementing the division of the German nation state. Even worse, Bonn feared the move would trigger a domino effect, with official recognition of East Berlin spreading beyond the Middle East and thus ringing the death knell to the Federal Republic’s claim to the sole representation of Germany as a whole, West and East. The goal of German unification was far more important to government policy makers in the 1950s and early 1960s than full and open reconciliation with Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust. However, in a seemingly sudden change of policy, Bonn reversed course in

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Introduction | 3

1965 and offered Jerusalem the exchange of ambassadors. In this book, I interpret the government’s turnaround in policy as the result of grassroots intervention in high-level politics. By looking at attitudes not only among government decision makers, but also among ordinary Germans, the book provides the first in-depth look at the role society played in shaping Germany’s relations with Israel and the Arab states. The study uses a new approach to the analysis of policy formulation by portraying the making of Bonn’s Middle East policy as a struggle between two competing sets of ideas, the one based on considerations of national interest and the other on notions of national responsibility. In the course of Germany’s debate about its relationship with Israel and the Arab states, domestic elites (such as students, professors, trade unions, religious groups, writers, the media, and others) replaced traditional ideas, centered on the state as the key player in foreign policy as espoused by the government, with a novel concept that ranked the aim of reconciliation with Israel higher than the goal of a unified Germany. The commencement of diplomatic relations in 1965, I argue, was a consequence of that development. Hence, the book challenges conventional wisdom about German governmental attitudes toward Jerusalem by suggesting that prior to societal intervention, pragmatism and national interest were the main drivers behind official policy rather than the oft-quoted sentiment of moral obligation. Among German society, in contrast, awareness of historical guilt grew significantly in the early 1960s and reciprocally corresponded with a waning preoccupation with unification. German-Israeli relations in the wake of the genocide represent one of the most relevant issues in modern Western history and contemporary politics. A close look at this relationship and its perception among ordinary Germans is particularly topical in view of recurring debates on Germany’s collective guilt and its role in today’s reorganization of the Middle East. Contemporary German society—as the 2002 anti-Semitism/Möllemann debate, which I analyze briefly, shows—evinces a convincing rejection of anti-Semitism, coupled, however, with a growing readiness to criticize Israeli government policies in the occupied territories. Therefore, the book’s argument about the significance of domestic factors in foreign policy making suggests that current societal trends precipitate a German foreign policy that will continue to stand by its unambiguous endorsement of the Israeli state, but may in the future dispense diplomatic support and material aid more selectively than in the past. In its approach, the book is interdisciplinary. It applies methods of political science to a historical case to gain insights that transcend the time frame under scrutiny and enable the reader to better understand the German-Israeli relationship as well as the overall mechanics of German foreign policy making. The study does not view states as so-called unitary actors or see the examination of state-level interaction alone as sufficient to explain governments’ external policies. Instead, it aims to open up what too often remains a “black box,” i.e., political activities on the societal level, and to investigate how certain ideas—grown over time and

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4 | Demonstrating Reconciliation

derived from historical experience—spread among government representatives on the one side and society on the other to compete for the determination of foreign policy. Also, the study concentrates on a vertical relationship, examining one country’s behavior in one issue area. What some (international relations) theorists may regard as a disadvantage—the lack of a cross-case comparison—is made up for by an in-depth comparative analysis within a crucial case of Germany’s history.3 German foreign policy toward Israel in the early 1960s is set apart from other cases by its intrinsic importance. It centers around the immediate consequences of such seminal events as the Holocaust and World War II—events that shaped the course of history and had special bearing on Germany’s future development. Yet, the immediate link to outstanding historical events has had many a student of German foreign policy rush to the conclusion that the country’s special moral responsibility must best explain policy choices in German-Israeli bilateral relations.4 Indeed, public statements by government representatives at the time repeatedly referenced the notion of moral responsibility toward the Jewish state. However, nonpublic governmental records neither express explicitly nor imply that moral considerations were the prime motivation for decision makers’ actions. Therefore, the real drivers of West German foreign policy toward Israel in the 1950s and early 1960s must lie elsewhere. There are—given the complex, unique, and meaningful relationship between Germany and Israel—relatively few studies on the bilateral ties between the two countries.5 As the saga of establishing full diplomatic relations with Israel drew to a close in the spring of 1965, a West German diplomat remarked that “there is material for several doctoral theses here.”6 And Erhard’s foreign policy advisor noted at the time that “one or even several books could be written” on the Middle East crisis (Osterheld 1992: 150). However, to this date, most of these books and doctoral theses remain to be penned. It appears that until the early 1980s, historians and political scientists were still primarily preoccupied with unearthing and analyzing the meaning and ramifications of the Holocaust. Only a few of them approached the issue of German-Jewish relations following the mass killings. While literature on the bilateral relationship between Germany and Israel has grown since then, the focal points of subsequent publications cluster around the restitution agreement between the two countries and the World Jewish Congress, struck in 1952.7 In recent years, a few researchers have expanded the time horizon of their accounts to include the period up until the commencement of diplomatic relations in 1965. Niels Hansen’s detailed report published in 2002 and Yeshayahu Jelinek’s 2004 study are worth mentioning. Hansen’s 800-page book is likely to remain a highly valuable reference book on the subject for years to come. However, while his study boasts admirable breadth and minute detail, it does remain a “documentary report,” as its subtitle suggests. The lack of a rigorous analysis renders the account somewhat one-dimensional in that it almost exclusively focuses on highlevel diplomacy and fails to produce a convincing explanatory paradigm as to why

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Introduction | 5

German foreign policy toward Israel unfolded in the way that it did. Jelinek does touch on nongovernmental aspects of the German-Israeli relationship more than Hansen, but he too fails to include these aspects in an explanatory framework. Both studies portray the events rather comprehensively, but offer few explanations for policy outcomes. A brief study by Marcus Mohr (2003) focuses exclusively on the military relationship between Germany and Israel prior to the Six Day War of 1967. His account is informative, but Mohr also does not make domestic variables a central piece of his analysis. Jörg Seelbach’s 1970 analysis is greatly outdated. Written in the immediate aftermath of the events, and therefore based on media reports and other public material, it represents little more than a first stab at the subject. A number of studies dealing with a whole range of issues shaping the bilateral German-Israeli relationship over the decades have touched on the complicated path leading to the exchange of ambassadors. Again, however, most of this academic work has focused almost exclusively on governmental policy and paid little heed to the role society or the German concept of national identity has played in German foreign policy toward Israel.8 Lily Gardner Feldman’s (1984) study is still the most authoritative overview of the “special relationship” between West Germany and Israel. Feldman examines the symbiotic nexus between both countries, with Germany taking on the role of a donor of significant economic aid and Israel assuming the role of a provider of moral absolution at a time when Germany was universally doubted. However, Feldman too focuses on governmental interaction in her discussion of the political and military relationships between both countries, neglecting society’s role. This study attempts to fill those gaps by explaining Germany’s Israel policy in the late 1950s and early 1960s neither primarily by patterns of government interaction in the international system nor by the immediate impact of the Third Reich legacy. Both variables played a significant role, to be sure, but in isolation are insufficient to elucidate the policy outcome in the case at hand. Instead, it is important to factor the domestic level into the analytical equation. This analysis will establish German foreign policy toward Israel during the early 1960s as one of the first instances in the Federal Republic’s history to boast the emergence of society as a relevant force in foreign policy making. Moreover, while some researchers have touched on elements of unification policy in their accounts of West Germany’s relations with Israel during the 1950s and 1960s, this analysis will attempt to provide for the first time a thorough analysis of the nexus between German concepts of the nation state and relations with Israel. West German government records on relations with Israel in the 1950s and early 1960s depict a country fighting fiercely to keep the option for German unification open. After the integration into NATO and European multilateral institutions was sealed in the 1950s, Bonn’s quandary between its rational commitment to the West and its longing for reunification with its Eastern part grew tremendously. In that situation, the Federal Republic’s relations with Israel severely strained the resilience of nascent West Germany since its Nazi past threw

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6 | Demonstrating Reconciliation

the legitimacy and continuity of the German state into doubt. Documents in the political archive of the West German Foreign Office (Auswärtige Amt) make the ministry’s traditional thinking particularly palpable.9 The office under Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder was most reluctant to relinquish ground on the question of intra-German relations by accommodating the Israelis in their desire to commence diplomatic relations with Europe’s emerging political and economic heavyweight. It was traditionally the chancellor’s office under both Adenauer and Erhard that, in its public rhetoric, hinted at a somewhat more accommodative stance toward Israel. The pressure that West Germany’s ever more assertive society exerted on the political establishment in favor of official relations with Jerusalem is particularly well documented in the Chancellery’s records. Interest groups such as churches, student organizations, trade unions, and other nongovernmental organizations routinely made their voices heard by intervening in the matter.10 Both German states—East and West—fought out their antagonistic positions on the issue of statehood and national identity by attempting to draw legitimacy from divergent interpretations of German and European history. Therefore, documents of the former East German governing party, the Communist SED, provide an interesting commentary on West German behavior.11 As the triangular West German-Israeli-Arab relationship set the stage for the intra-German fight over national sovereignty, East German archival records provide valuable information on East Berlin’s strategy for winning Egypt’s prized endorsement as a second German state. East German premier Walter Ulbricht was particularly skillful at making inroads into the international arena outside the Communist Bloc by providing development aid to Egypt. What is more, Ulbricht managed to entice Egyptian President Gamal Abd el-Nasser to invest East Germany with the credentials of a full-fledged nation by inviting him as East Germany’s head-of-state to an official state visit to Cairo. No issue of German postwar foreign policy can be adequately analyzed without taking the role of the United States into account. While US interest in diplomatic relations between Germany and Israel was limited, Washington exerted substantial influence when it came to military matters. Records of the Lyndon B. Johnson presidential library in Texas reveal Washington’s scheme of having Bonn stand in for the United States as a direct arms supplier to Israel. At the same time, US government records show an administration in the midst of a reversal of its Middle East strategy and the mixed policy signals it therefore sent to Bonn blunted its ability to coherently steer the junior partner in one direction or the other. It was only well into the second term of President Johnson that Washington abandoned its opposition to becoming a major direct arms provider to the Middle East itself. The triangular arms relationship between Germany, Israel, and the United States, the reversal of Washington’s Middle East stance, and also USIsraeli bilateral relations all play an important role in this case study.12 Jews around the world, particularly in the United States, also took a keen interest in German affairs and tried to accelerate German society’s process of coming to terms with the Nazi past. American-Jewish organizations lobbied their

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Introduction | 7

government, urging (albeit largely unsuccessfully) the Johnson administration to sway the Germans to accommodate Israel’s request for official relations. More importantly, US Jewish organizations attempted to influence Bonn’s policy directly by meeting with German government officials, staging boycotts, and initiating public relations campaigns. Moreover, US societal organizations helped to create a network of transnational domestic communities by lending support to domestic actors within Germany.13 All science is about dissecting the ensemble to excavate its parts. But such excavation is valuable only if it improves the understanding of the whole. While historical events need to be deconstructed to unearth underlying structures, motives, and causes, there is no denying that history progresses in a chronological order. This order cannot be neglected if change in human behavior is to be understood. This study hopes to live up to all of these exigencies by adopting a threefold perspective: it looks at four issue areas (diplomatic relations, German scientists in Egypt, statute of limitations of German war crimes, German military aid to Israel) from the vantage point of three levels of political action (government, society, international) over a time period of roughly fifteen years. Following this introduction, I lay out the methodology of this study in chapter 1. Germany’s political relationship with Israel was to a large degree dominated by notions of national identity as ingrained in the collective consciousness of the German people, its elite, and its policymakers. Such ideas are particularly noticeable in a people’s interpretation of its past. Historiography can therefore serve as a reliable indicator of a nation’s self-image, and an understanding of how society views its history helps to explain foreign policy choices—particularly German foreign policy choices toward Israel, as they consistently touched on Germany’s national identity. A country’s vision of its own past translates into a vision for the future. A society’s conceptualization of its past typically informs firmly held worldviews and principled beliefs, which in turn translate into road maps and institutions that guide contemporary policy.14 Chapter 2 delineates the shape taken by ideas prevailing on the governmental, societal, and international levels as they applied to concrete political action in the 1950s and early 1960s. On the governmental level, West German policymakers’ political worldviews were steeped in the historiographical traditions of nineteenth century historicism, which—based on Hegel’s and Ranke’s philosophy of history— afforded attainment and preservation of statehood the highest value in the communal life of a nation. In the 1950s and early 1960s, such state-centered concepts underpinned a foreign policy that afforded unification of the divided German nation state a higher philosophical and operative value than the morally infused notion of a special German responsibility toward Israel. This set of ideas found its institutionalized shape in the so-called Hallstein doctrine of 1955, which stipulated that no country must deepen Germany’s division by officially recognizing its Communist Eastern part as a separate, full-fledged state. Following Germany’s partition after World War II, a legally defined West German foreign policy was designed to ensure the German nation’s passage toward a reunited state.

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While such ideas and policies espoused by the government remained static throughout the period under scrutiny, ideas on the domestic level were subject to change. In the late 1950s and early 1960s the cohesion of the historical-political construct of the postwar years crumbled, and a revision of society’s interpretation of the German past set in. Society came to accept its guilt in perpetrating the Holocaust, and historians no longer viewed the state as a monolithic entity, but rather as a product of many, often conflicting, social and political forces. Civil society, after lying dormant for most of the Adenauer years during the 1950s, started to demand a say in high-level policy making, beginning to develop the German “bottom-up” political system that affords domestic players opportunities to permeate and influence government policy. Grassroots actors now challenged government decision makers’ foreign policy prerogative by substituting morally informed values for politicians’ state-centered worldviews as policy guidelines. Their successful demands for the alignment of foreign policy with moral imperatives culminated in the exchange of ambassadors between Germany and Israel. Society’s onslaught on government policies was also supported by international change as Bonn’s overriding goal of German unification lost its top spot on the global agenda in line with the tacit agreement between Washington and Moscow to preserve the European status quo. Chapter 3 looks at the restitution agreement of 1952 between Germany, Israel, and the Claims Conference, representing Jewish Holocaust victims outside Israel, as the first and most obvious outcome of the unique, historically determined nexus between the two countries and their people. While motivated in part by honest moral considerations, the agreement was also steeped in Realpolitik with Chancellor Adenauer responding to international pressure and acting on his desire to resurrect Germany’s international reputation after 1945. Similarly, Bonn agreed to clandestine military and economic aid programs for Jerusalem in 1960 and thereafter, predominantly in order to compensate Israel for West Germany’s refusal to commence official political relations. While Jerusalem did not follow up on Bonn’s soundings for full relations in 1952 (at the time it was too early for the state that sheltered many Holocaust victims to take such a significant step), it was Bonn that denied Israel official recognition from the mid 1950s onward for fear the Arab nations would retaliate by recognizing East Germany as a full-fledged state. Under the paradigm of unification policy, such a step was to be avoided at all costs; hence the national interest in German unification took precedent over a national obligation to align foreign policy toward Israel with the moral imperatives that policymakers publicly claimed were guiding their decision making. German society showed its first, timid signs of questioning this order of priorities in the late 1950s, but at that point it was unable to affect high-level foreign policy making in a meaningful way. In delineating Germany’s policy toward Israel from 1952 to 1965, the book traces the competition between policymakers’ and society’s antagonistic sets of worldviews. Chapters 4 and 5 examine the four main issue areas: diplomatic relations with Israel, German scientists’ role in Egypt’s armament program, the

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Introduction | 9

expiration of the statute of limitations for German war crimes, and Bonn’s military aid to Jerusalem. The chapters explore how the two main sociopolitical concepts on the governmental and societal levels translated into specific policy choices. They also examine what effect, in the international arena, US, British, and French influence had on Bonn’s foreign policy toward Jerusalem. Bonn’s diplomacy between 1962 and 1964, discussed in chapter 4, revealed the extent to which considerations of national unity overshadowed a willingness to accommodate Israel and led to an increasingly inflexible foreign policy that regressed to ever more legalistic positions. To Jerusalem’s dismay, Egyptian president Nasser had managed to secure the collaboration of German missile experts in his arms race with Israel. Bonn delayed indefinitely any decisive action to extract the scientists from Egypt—citing legal caveats—for fear such a move would alienate the Arabs enough to prompt them to recognize East Germany. Concerns that East Germany might win international recognition as an independent state also kept the West German government from authorizing its state prosecutors to conduct a full-scale investigation into Germany’s criminal past in East European archives, again putting national interest, couched in legal terms, ahead of a morally informed policy. Similarly, fear of a retributive act on part of the Arabs in the event that West Germany would commence diplomatic ties with Israel led to a policy of preemptive obedience that precluded the exchange of ambassadors between Bonn and Jerusalem. Among German society, however, a groundswell of support for Israel—in no small part fed by a popular culture that began tackling the thorny issues of the past—grew tremendously in the early 1960s. Academics, religious groups, writers, trade unions, and others sent petitions to the chancellor, staged demonstrations, and organized signature drives. The combination of willingness to face up to the country’s Nazi past and an increasing political assertiveness on part of German society led to demands to make the domestic learning process manifest in foreign policy by commencing diplomatic relations with Israel and pulling German scientists out of Egypt. International pressure on the German government was also strong at times, as Washington enticed Bonn to take on the role of an arms supplier to Jerusalem. Ultimately, however, the overall message of Germany’s three key Western allies—the United States, Britain, and France— on Bonn’s relations with Israel was incoherent and governed by temporary political expediency, rather than long-term strategy. In sum, until the second half of 1964, German foreign policy toward Israel did not experience a major shift. However, the onset of détente in global politics, coupled with an ever more assertive German society that cared deeply about its relationship with Israel, set the stage for change at a later time. Chapter 5 analyzes the events and forces that eventually brought about the start of diplomatic relations between Germany and Israel in the spring of 1965. Word of Germany’s initially secret weapons deliveries to Israel was leaked to the press in late 1964, severely straining Bonn’s relationship with the Arab world. A few months later, Cairo invited East Germany’s premier Walter Ulbricht to pay President Nasser a visit, bestowing on him all the honors appertaining to a head

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10 | Demonstrating Reconciliation

of state and thus openly challenging West Germany’s claim to sole representation of the German people. Confronted with such setbacks, and faced with the diminishing importance of the goal of German unification in the international arena, Bonn’s foreign policy makers ever more forcefully reaffirmed their established unification policy. The government developed a change-averse fortress mentality, holding on to traditional worldviews amid a perceived world of uncertainty. At the same time, domestic pressure in favor of diplomatic relations with Israel grew tremendously in late 1964 and early 1965. Trade unions called for solidarity with Israel, university professors and religious groups pleaded with the chancellor to put moral obligations ahead of national unification, students issued a string of resolutions, demonstrators took to the streets, and a growing number of parliamentarians petitioned the government on behalf of the German people. Media revelations of the secret arms deal between Germany and Israel further enhanced society’s attempts to influence official foreign policy by creating the public sphere necessary to mobilize large parts of society. Eventually, government advisors began to realize that a pro-Israel policy would significantly improve Chancellor Ludwig Erhard’s election prospects at forthcoming national polls. Official foreign policy changed radically in early 1965 when Erhard agreed to commence diplomatic relations, accepting society’s emphasis on a moral obligation toward Israel and adopting a revamped concept of national interest as defined by Germany’s sovereign right to freely choose its partners, irrespective of outside pressures. The concluding chapter synthesizes the key findings of the study and looks to the future of German-Israeli relations. For about a decade, high-level policymakers balked at the idea of inaugurating diplomatic relations with Israel for fear of Arab retribution. But all the while, societal elites and a growing share of the population at large called for a more accommodative policy toward Israel in a bid to align official foreign policy with the domestic process of “coming to terms with the past.” Eventually, political leadership moved to change course and chose a policy path in line with society’s demands even though the threat of the Arabs recognizing East Germany had not dissipated. In sum, we can observe a high degree of consistency between developments on the domestic level and the ultimate change in foreign policy. At the same time, Bonn’s legally defined foreign policy emerged as ill-suited to deal with the changing international system, since détente appeared to cement Germany’s division. A concluding review suggests that domestic public opinion remains a decisive element in German policy toward Israel to the present day and looks set to continue to do so in the future by prescribing policymakers a foreign policy that is more discriminate in its support for Israel than in the past. I also demonstrate that German foreign policy toward Israel in the late 1950s and early 1960s is the first significant instance to boast what from then on came to be known as Germany’s typical bottom-up political system, providing society with multiple ways of influencing high-level foreign policy making.

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Introduction | 11

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Notes 1. Unless indicated otherwise, the term “Germany” denotes—depending on the context—either the German state before 1945, or West Germany between 1945 and 1990, or the united Germany after 1990. 2. Jekutiel Deligdisch is similarly mistaken, portraying the decision as inevitable by depicting it as “forced upon” Erhard since he allegedly had no “room for maneuver” (1974: 108). Josef Joffe believes offering diplomatic relations was no more than an act of “retaliation” against Egypt (1992: 200). 3. Arend Lijphart stresses that single-country and single-area approaches are valuable ways of maximizing comparability (1971: 688–690; 1975: 158–177). On the validity and merits of crucial, single-case studies see George (1979a: 53) and Eckstein (1975: 113–123). On merits of withincase case studies see George (1979b: 106; 1969: 191, 220–222) and Van Evera (1997: 61–63). 4. See, among others, Wolffsohn 1987, 1989; Lavy 1996; Deligdisch 1974; Hildebrand 1984; Kaltefleiter 1995. Policymakers themselves also nourished this view: Adenauer 1965–1968 and Barzel 1978, 1991. 5. In 1997, Yeshayahu Jelinek also drew attention to this situation, pointing out that research on German-Israeli relations in both countries had been “sparse” at best. Lily Gardner Feldman offered the same diagnosis in 1984. It has to be pointed out, however, that I can speak about literature in German and English only. I lay no claim to assessing the situation for Hebrew literature as well. 6. Handwritten note on Cable Embassy Mexico-Foreign Office, April 7, 1965, PA/AA, B 36, no. 189, 82.00. 7. See, among others, Goschler 1992; Theis 1989; Herbst/Goschler 1989; Zweig 1987; Jena 1986; Balabkins 1971. Timm (1997) has written a very comprehensive volume on East GermanIsraeli relations. 8. See, among others, Weingardt 2002, 1997; Lavy 1996; R. Blasius 1994b; Deutschkron 1991; Theis 1989; Rolef 1985; A. Neustadt 1983. Chubin’s compilation provides a balance between emphasis on domestic, national and international factors in German foreign policy in the Middle East (1992). Michael Wolffsohn’s tight but encompassing overview of Germany’s relations with Israel also touches on some psychological and other nongovernmental factors shaping the relationship (1993). 9. Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts (PA/AA), Berlin (formerly Bonn). Documents contained in the series B 150 (Aktenkopien) contain most relevant material. A selection of Foreign Office documents has been published as Akten zur Auswärtigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1963–1966 (AAPD). Other source editions are Vogel (1987/1988) and Jelinek (1997). 10. Bundesarchiv Koblenz (BA). Records of the Erhard Archive, hosted by the Ludwig-ErhardStiftung e.V., contain very little material on foreign policy and no files on Bonn’s relations with Israel. 11. Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv (SED Archiv), Berlin. 12. Lyndon B. Johnson presidential library in Austin, Texas (LBJ Library) and United States National Archives, Washington, D.C., and College Park, MD (NA). The personal papers of George C. McGhee, US ambassador to Germany from 1963 to 1968, are archived at Georgetown University’s Lauinger Library in Washington, D.C. The author also conducted interviews with officials of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations: McGeorge Bundy, national security advisor; Robert Komer, national security council member for Middle East affairs; Myer Feldman, special counsel. 13. See the historical material of the American Jewish Congress (AJCs) archived by the American Jewish Historical Society, Brandeis University in Waltham, MA (AJHS Archives); archival records of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) are located at the YIVO Archives in New

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York City and B’nai B’rith International material is housed at their headquarters in Washington, D.C. Other primary sources documenting Jewish and Israeli views of German politics can be found in the Central Zionist Archives (CZA) in Jerusalem. Also in Jerusalem, a few Englishlanguage Israeli Foreign Office documents, collected at the Israeli State Archives (ISA), cast some additional light on various episodes such as German scientists collaborating in Egypt’s armament program. 14. In this respect, I intend to add a new facet to existing research on the interface between history and foreign policy. One strand of academic inquiry has focused on policy makers’ usage of historical analogies for contemporary decision making (Khong 1992; Neustadt and May 1986; Vertzberger 1986, and others). In the last ten years or so the study of reconciliation following violent events has also come into focus as an element in international relations (for an overview see Feldman 1999a, 1999b). There are also a number of studies on the impact of Germany’s Third Reich legacy on the Federal Republic’s foreign policy (such as Markovits and Reich 1997a; Banchoff 1996; also Herf 1997). My approach, based on a framework developed by Goldstein and Kochane (1993a), seeks to examine how long-held worldviews, rooted in a country’s historical traditions, influence present-day foreign policy choices. Axel Sauder (1995) investigates a similar phenomenon when he detects a correlation between Germany’s and France’s security policies and the historical evolution of their political systems.

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Chapter 1

SOCIETY AND IDEAS IN GERMAN FOREIGN POLICY MAKING




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Why did the Bonn government embark on an accommodative foreign policy toward Jerusalem in 1965 and offer to commence diplomatic relations after resisting precisely this step for more than a decade? How can we explain the Federal Republic’s policy conundrum in the Middle East as well as the circumstances and presuppositions that brought about the striking reorientation of Germany’s Israel policy in the mid 1960s? Why did Germany’s policy toward Israel remain so constant for so long, only to become supplanted by a bout of rapid change? These are this book’s main research questions. The phenomenon to be explained—in political science terminology, the dependent variable—is the shift in Germany’s policy toward Israel and the Middle East generally, and its implications for unification policy (Deutschlandpolitik). Finding answers to these questions is particularly challenging as West Germany’s political system has been characterized as allowing incremental change only (Katzenstein 1989; Risse-Kappen 1992: 177). However, despite the change-averse institutional organization of most of Germany’s social, economic, and political fabric, there have indeed been instances of dramatic shifts in the Federal Republic’s foreign policy.1 Bonn’s policy toward Israel in the mid 1960s is a case in point. To understand change in a change-averse environment, one needs to scrutinize all three levels of political action to explore how particular combinations of circumstances can be exploited to overturn existing policy beliefs and prerogatives: the domestic level (actions undertaken by nongovernmental actors such as German society at large, interest groups, and parliamentarians, as well as their attitudes

Notes for this section begin on page 18.

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toward Germany’s history and the state of Israel), the national or governmental level (government policies, particularly the Chancellery’s and the Foreign Office’s attitudes and actions toward Jerusalem), as well as the international level (conditions created by the international system during the Cold War and the onset of détente as well as the United States’ influence on German foreign policy). Such a three-pronged analysis allows us to capture the full array of factors that may have affected the complex sociopolitical process. Therefore, these three levels of political action represent the pool of independent variables (i.e., possible causes for the policy outcome under scrutiny). It will be critical to examine how proceedings on each of these levels cross-referenced and influenced each other. Furthermore, we complement this first tier of analysis with an additional layer of finer granulation. Following a methodology of assigning considerable significance to belief systems and the role of domestic actors in foreign policy formulation, we analyze how ideas and attitudes pertaining to the concept of German national identity as held by both policymakers and society, might have influenced relations with Israel. What roles did notions of history, national identity, and the state play? It is often assumed that history was an important driving force behind German policy toward Israel, but precisely which concept of “history” was at work, and how was that concept embedded in the foreign policy framework? The investigation also encompasses an evaluation of Germany’s specific political system. Change in foreign policy toward Israel may have been due in part to a societal transformation process that took root at the time. Germany’s bottom-up policy making system began to emerge in the early 1960s, slowly but steadily supplanting the top-down framework that prevailed in the 1950s. The argument for an explanatory framework that integrates all three levels of analysis—domestic, national, and international—may seem rather obvious today. However, only in the last two to three decades has it come to receive serious attention in the literature on international relations and foreign policy. A growing number of scholars—first in the field of international political economy and later in the foreign policy and security areas—have argued the need for integrating domestic and international levels of analysis to explain topics as diverse as regime formation, international trade policy, alliance behavior, security policy, and foreign policy decision making. In a further step, researchers have ventured to explore the significance of political cultures in the foreign policy making process and have assigned a key role to ideas as explanatory variables. Specifically in the case at hand, Germany’s Middle East policy cannot be explained without taking ideas’ role in policy formulation into account. The notion that ideas matter, however, poses the questions of how and under what conditions they are influential determinants of policy. More important than the origins of ideas— although these are certainly of interest—are the factors that help particular ideas to take hold and grow. Therefore, I draw on literature concerned with the significance of the domestic structure for foreign policy and studies on ideas in foreign policy making.2

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Society and Ideas in German Foreign Policy Making | 15

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Historiography as Signifier of Ideas Germans’ interpretation of the character and role of the nation state has most decisively shaped Germany’s collective identity throughout modern history. That interpretation becomes most relevant whenever Deutschlandpolitik—Germany’s unity and issues of statehood—is at stake. In the case of foreign policy toward Israel, this was almost always the case. The East-West conflict not only turned the Middle East into a proxy battlefield for the world’s superpowers, but by extension also provided the turf on which both parts of divided Germany fought out their own antagonistic Cold War over identity and national legitimacy. The Holocaust and the attendant national guilt complicated West Germany’s perception of itself further and made the country’s understanding of its role in the international system even more relevant for operative foreign policy toward Israel. But how do we grasp the exact character of West Germans’ beliefs and ideas about the international environment and parameters of national identity that helped to shape foreign policy? The answer lies, I suggest, in Germany’s view of history and the historiography the country has produced. I nominate historiography as a key signifier of the domestic debate about Germany’s national identity. “There is no more significant pointer to the character of a society,” British historian Edward Hallett Carr noted in 1961, “than the kind of history it writes or fails to write” (1961: 53). Historians, Carr insists, do not operate in a vacuum, nor do they write history as individuals; rather, they are a social phenomenon, influenced by their environment and possessing knowledge informed by many previous generations: “The historian is . . . both the product and the conscious or unconscious spokesman of the society to which he belongs; it is [in] this capacity that he approaches the facts of the historical past” (1961: 42). Historians, in other words, reflect in their writings the state of contemporary society. By stepping into the public realm through their publications on the human condition and its development, historians express publicly the general thinking of their times and thus act as representatives—“spokesmen,” in Carr’s terminology—of their society and its ideas.3 Furthermore, historiography is a key ingredient in the formation of nations. In fact, the politics and historiography of nations are always intertwined for historiography—as John G. A. Pocock has pointed out—is “both the instrument and the record” of nation-building (1982: 321). These observations on the role and function of historians are particularly poignant in Germany’s case, as political and philosophical ideas developed by historiographers have played a prominent role in German history. As if intending to amend Carr’s and Pocock’s dictums by relating them to Germany specifically, a long-time observer of German society and politics wrote in 1996 that “history is a German obsession, a German métier. There are people who claim that, with Hegel and the great nineteenth-century historiographers, Germans actually invented history” (Kramer 1996: 257). While this assertion may be somewhat exaggerated, there can be little doubt that Germany is a history-conscious country

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that has produced a large number of distinguished and influential historians, an observation certainly true for the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.4 The country has enjoyed a lively historical culture, with its legions of chroniclers and interpreters of the past and present emblazoning their respective times. What is more, history and the interpretation of historical events through academic institutions and historiographers have had a profound impact on society and its prevailing ideas, as well as on political and social concepts. The country’s sheer endless stream of Historikerstreite (historians’ controversies) is a case in point. Society did not merely witness those often intense and divisive arguments; rather they enthralled the general public, touching on the respective times’ most pivotal issues. Indeed, the arguments were fought out not only in academic journals but also in popular magazines and newspapers. These controversies have been so powerful particularly because they have gone straight to the core of issues such as German statehood and national identity.5 It follows that historians, their debates, and their political as well as societal concepts have not just been embellishments or purely academic exercises. Instead, they have echoed and generated prevailing ideas during their respective epochs. Historiography has been a reflector that not merely relayed a mirror image, but influenced politics by actively disseminating political initiatives, differentiated in the prism of historical writings. In fact, German historians have frequently crossed the line between chronicler and policymaker to become actors themselves, while political actors have extensively tapped historians’ pool of ideas and concepts. In sum, German historiography and political ideas are—given the influence and social status historians have enjoyed—ideally positioned to serve as a gauge of the country’s view on issues of national identity and German statehood. Skeptics might argue that it is too simplistic to put heavy emphasis on historiography representing and indicating societal ideas’ role in the process of formulating foreign policy toward Israel. However, views of the population at large are almost impossible to ascertain as they are much too volatile and elusive, and elite views indeed matter. Therefore, the study of political, social, and cultural elites is particularly important as national leaders do not make their political decisions in a vacuum or base them solely on isolated, individual reflections of the past and their implications for the present. Rather, they have broader national and international sources. On the governmental level, leaders draw on memories, views, interests, and instincts as expressed by elites and embedded in authoritative texts, rituals, media representations, and informal exchanges. Those elites encompass historians, along with political parties, interest groups, and the media.6 Given historians’ immense success in shaping the Federal Republic’s domestic agenda in the era under scrutiny, and considering that foreign policy toward Israel represents a particularly history-sensitive issue area, it is legitimate to assume that historiography, historical concepts, and issues of national identity played a role in shaping Bonn’s relations with Jerusalem.

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Ideas as Road Maps and Institutions If, as I am suggesting, ideas derived from history indeed matter in policy formulation, one needs to approximate how they do so. It is impossible to provide final cause-and-effect relationships, but one needs to at least ascertain how elite ideas on history, national identity, and foreign affairs may find their way into the policy making process. Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane have developed a matrix for categorizing the various types of ideas influencing policy and have identified several ways in which they potentially shape policy. Applying their framework, I define historical concepts of national identity mediated through historiography as “worldviews” and “principled beliefs” that affect the foreign policy process via their functions as “road maps” and “institutions.”7 Goldstein and Keohane (1993a: 8) describe worldviews as ideas embedded in culture and deeply affecting modes of thought and discourse. “Worldviews,” they state, “are entwined with people’s conceptions of their identities.” In addition, principled beliefs consist of normative ideas that specify criteria for distinguishing right from wrong and just from unjust. In some ways principled beliefs are a subcategory of worldviews because they are often justified in terms of larger worldviews, but they appear to be located closer to policy outcomes as they tend to mediate between fundamental doctrines and concrete guidance for immediate action. In the case of Israel we will look first at deep-seated convictions and beliefs that had sprung up long before in the past but were still salient in the 1950s and early 1960s (i.e., worldviews derived from history). We will then examine how these ideas changed and how the surfacing of new concepts and beliefs generated new foreign policy responses. Ideas are powerful tools in mapping out the road ahead for policymakers, and the need for ideas to act as points of orientation becomes particularly acute when the degree of uncertainty—either about the external environment or about one’s own interests—is highest. This was certainly the case in Bonn’s foreign policy toward Israel in the 1950s and 1960s. In such instances, ideas as road maps serve the purpose of guiding behavior under conditions of uncertainty by laying down causal patterns and providing orientation for action. Among German decision makers, some of these direction-giving ideas took on an institutionalized shape as they were cast in policy doctrines (such as, most prominently, the Hallstein doctrine, which stipulated that Bonn regard other countries’ official relations with Communist East Germany as unfriendly acts, hence shaping West German relations with other states in accordance with policymakers’ views and beliefs on German unification and statehood).8 Because ideas make their broadest impact on human action, and thus on foreign policy making, when they come in the shape of institutionalized beliefs and worldviews, these are the types of ideas that are most “sticky.” Yet, Goldstein and Keohane’s concept can indeed also help to explain the change in German foreign policy toward Israel that occurred in the early 1960s. They write: “New ideas may … lead—even if not immediately—to

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a significant change in the very constitution of interests. This change may come about when an existing set of ideas is discredited by events or when a new idea is simply so compelling that it captures the attention of a wide array of actors” (Goldstein/Keohane 1993a: 16). In other words, worldviews are particularly long-lived and as such consequently do not lend themselves easily to rapid change. This helps to explain why throughout its history Germany for the most part went through phases of very slow, incremental change only. The case at hand demonstrates that it took German society more than fifty years to let go of old concepts of the German nation state, and that it took German postwar governments more than ten years to come around to recognizing Israel on a diplomatic level. However, once worldviews do shift—or are supplanted by a new set of powerful principled beliefs—and once new ideas are taken up by influential actors, the impact on political action is all the more profound.

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Notes 1. Chancellor Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik in the early 1970s is one prominent example. 2. This study is part of a growing body of literature on the need to integrate international and domestic levels of analysis in order to fully grasp the driving forces in international relations and foreign policy (see, for instance, Katzenstein 1978a, 1976; Risse-Kappen 1991; Szabo 1992; Evangelista 1988; Barnett 1990; Haggard and Moravcsik 1993; Haftendorn 1991; Putnam 1988). Work on the role of ideas in international relations and foreign policy is growing rapidly, as the approach is a useful research tool to ever more scholars (see above all Goldstein and Keohane 1993b; Goldstein 1988; Checkel 1993; Banchoff 1995; Risse-Kappen 1994; Sikkink 1991). 3. Alexander George (1979a: 44) also acknowledges the historian’s task as the guardian of society’s memory: “Historians . . . are perforce the custodian of relevant historical memory.” Jan Philip Reemtsma similarly argues that historians, as guardians of society, can prevent others from repeating mistakes of the past by preserving historical memory (FAZ, April 4, 2000). 4. The vast pool of prominent German historians and historical philosophers includes figures such as G. W. F. Hegel, Leopold von Ranke, Johann Gustav Droysen, Karl Marx, Theodor Mommsen (who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1902), Heinrich von Sybel, Otto Hintze, Friedrich Meinecke, Karl Lamprecht, Hans Rothfels, Eckhart Kehr, Hans Rosenberg, Ernst Fraenkel, Gerhard Ritter, Karl-Dietrich Bracher, Martin Broszat, Fritz Fischer, Ernst Nolte, Andreas Hillgruber, Thomas Nipperdey, Hans and Wolfgang J. Mommsen, HansUlrich Wehler, and Jürgen Kocka, to name but a few. 5. Throughout modern history German historians have triggered numerous public disputes, particularly those touching on issues of national identity. The most prominent instances of historians’ debates that informed the general public’s discourse include: the Hegel/Marxism/ historical materialism debate, which originated in the nineteenth century and lingered on for the rest of this and much of the twentieth century (on the question of progress in history and how best to organize sociopolitical life); the Karl Lamprecht debate during the closing years of

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the nineteenth century (known as Methodenstreit, on how to employ the historian’s craft to portray historical events); the Eckhart Kehr debate during the Weimar Republic (on the issue of supremacy of foreign versus domestic policy); Hans-Ulrich Wehler’s revival of the Kehr debate in the 1960s; the Stalin Note debate in the 1950s and beyond (on whether German unity in the 1950s was a real possibility); the Fischer controversy in the 1960s (over German expansionism and imperialism on the eve of World War I); the Sonderweg debate in the 1960s and after (on the causes of the rise of German Nazism), the Historikerstreit in the 1980s (on the originality and comparability of the Holocaust); the debate about a central Holocaust monument in Berlin in the 1990s (centering around the issue of how best to preserve the memory of the Holocaust and commemorate its victims); the Goldhagen debate in the late 1990s (on the role of ordinary citizens in Hitler’s death camp machinery). On the character of German historical disputes generally see Maier (1988). To be sure, historical debates throughout the centuries are not an exclusively German phenomenon. A prominent example is the Anglo-Saxon revisionist debate on the origins of the Cold War. However, German historians’ controversies have almost always touched on issues of statehood and nation-building and thus have been instruments of collective self-realization and not mere academic arguments. For a useful summary of the major strands of the historiography of international relations—including the revisionist debate—see Maier (1980: 355–387). 6. On the role of elites in defining prevailing ideas and shaping collective memories see Markovits and Reich (1997a: 18–19) and Faulenbach (1998: 11). 7. Goldstein and Keohane (1993a: 8–26) distinguish between three types of ideas (worldviews, principled beliefs, and causal beliefs) and three ways in which these ideas can influence policy (as road maps, focal points or “glue,” and institutions). 8. Legal doctrines are a typical example of institutionalized ideas (Goldstein and Keohane 1993a: 20).

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Chapter 2

IDEAS, BELIEFS, AND POLITICS, 1950S–1960S




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“V

ery frequently the ‘world images’ that have been created by ideas have, like switchmen, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest,” sociologist Max Weber (1958: 280) observed almost a century ago. While it would be wrong to assume that ideas alone shape politics, the case for beliefs’ role in German foreign policy making is particularly strong during the 1950s and 1960s. I have defined the pool of independent variables that potentially influenced the outcome under scrutiny as political ideas and corresponding actions on the German governmental, domestic, and international levels. In this chapter I outline the ideas specifically prevalent on each of these levels and the potential they had to influence political choices.

“Only One German State”: Governmental Beliefs Defending the notion that there was “only one German state” and creating a unified “Germany as a whole” was the single most important policy imperative among Bonn’s decision makers during the 1950s and early 1960s. The underlying belief system that informed this policy focus was couched in the legal framework of the Hallstein doctrine, West Germany’s main foreign policy pillar at that time. However, the roots of a particular focus on the integrity of the German nation state lie deeper than the postwar desire to reunite Communist East and Capitalist West Germany.

Notes for this section begin on page 41.

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Ideas, Beliefs, and Politics, 1950s–1960s | 21

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Nineteenth Century Roots: Historicism One of the most influential ideas in German historiography has been the concept of historicism, developed in nineteenth-century Prussia.1 Historicism, in brief, assigns utmost importance to the state as a political entity. The state represents the political goal any nation should strive for. Born out of discomfort and frustration over Germany’s scrapped political system in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Napoleon’s invasion of German territory, and the failed revolution of 1848, statehood and state power became increasingly idealized by German thinkers. The goal of a unified German Reich, congruent with what was perceived as the German nation, almost reached the status of a religious cult, culminating in the concept of a deified state. In this framework, historicism rested on Hegel’s philosophy of history, which interpreted humanity’s progress over time as a divinely inspired teleological process, a movement from one level to the next, eventually climaxing in a state of God-like Weltgeist (world historical spirit). For Hegel and historicism, the state played a key role in this philosophical construct as it represented the dialectical development’s final stage on earth, the divine spirit in its mundane shape.2 In historicism’s view the final, ideal state of being (the pure spirit) is attained in the political state. Historicism’s godfather, Leopold von Ranke, assumed— based on religious faith—that there were meaningful units in history and that these units represent positive values as expressions of the will of God. States were such meaningful units—embodiments of the idea of God—and as such they could only do good in following their vital interests. Power was ascribed a spiritual character, and thus the state was not merely seen as an empirical concentration of power, but as the owner of a positive spiritual content (Ranke 1949: 38).3 Thus, historicism stipulates, every effort has to be made to attain statehood, and every aspect of private and public life has to be subjugated to the attainment of that goal. The international realm is seen as an arena of struggle between nation states, since the anarchical international system leaves each member state little choice but to pursue its quest for survival and supremacy.4 To fend off threats, all members of society share the responsibility of rallying around the state’s defense. The collective state is unambiguously considered to be more valuable than the well-being of society’s individual members. It follows from these premises that historicism assigns a key role to foreign policy and propagates an outright neglect of domestic policy. Statehood is seen as the raison d’être of a people, and historicism’s famous dictum of the primacy of foreign policy (Primat der Außenpolitik) refers to means of achieving and maintaining that very reason for being. Differences in domestic politics must be transcended in public discussion and “politics again relegated to the field of power and foreign affairs where it belongs” (Ranke 1949: 36–37).5 Historicism’s statecentered philosophy, developed and advocated most prominently by historians for more than a century, left a sizeable imprint on the conduct of German foreign policy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In fact, it became—even if frequently in a distorted and abused fashion—the core principle of German

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decision makers’ view of their country’s position and role in the international arena. Policymakers at times fused principles derived from Hegel and Ranke to justify in religious terms the Machtstaat (powerful state) whose foremost purpose was to survive in an amoral and anarchic international environment (Fischer 1975: 30; Moses 1975: 24; Markovits and Reich 1997a: 30). The end of World War II and the founding of the Federal Republic in 1949 undoubtedly marked a clear break from the Machtstaat-components of Germany’s external policies. From 1949 onward, West German foreign policy followed the road of transnational cooperation in a network of international institutions. Yet, the notion of a transcending significance of the state and the prominence of foreign policy prevailed throughout the 1950s. Historio-philosophical traces of historicism remained an element in Bonn’s conduct of external policy, and remnants of historicism prevailed in German historiography during the 1950s. Moreover, Germany’s postwar political system was cast in the mold of a “top-down model.” Konrad Adenauer, West Germany’s towering first chancellor, dominated Bonn’s political scene in such a way that he was effectively able to press an autocratic stamp on the fledgling democracy. West Germany at that time has been dubbed a “chancellor democracy” (Kanzlerdemokratie) dominated by an authoritarian spirit—a far cry from a democratic civil society (Baring 1969; Faulenbach 1998: 14–15). Both historicism as a concept in West German foreign policy and the autocratic political system were fully abandoned only from the early 1960s onward when today’s “bottom-up” political system began to emerge and the primacy of foreign policy started to give way to a more balanced approach. The core idea of historicism, with its focus on the state and the interpretation of the international system as an anarchic scheme in which only the fittest—those able to pursue their self-interest successfully—survive, much resembles the concept of realism as employed in the field of political science. I argue that realism, with its focus on the state as a unitary actor coupled with the premise that states act rationally at all times in their quest to sustain peer pressure in the international system, makes use of a considerable number of ideas and hypotheses developed by historicism. In fact, the two concepts are similar to the point where the PrussianRankean school can be seen as one of realism’s predecessors (Müller and RisseKappen 1990: 375–376). Realism, like historicism, inadvertently supports the primacy of foreign policy and interprets states as organizing and coordinating their internal policy with a view to their primary goal of surviving in an environment of external threat and hostility. My hypothesis here is, in other words, that because historicism decisively influenced German foreign policy in much of the nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth century, German governmental decision makers essentially followed realism’s paradigm in their pursuit of foreign policy up until the 1960s.6 This becomes particularly apparent in the case of the country’s foreign policy toward Israel. Issues of state and national character, coupled with the threat emanating from the Cold War deadlock, were constantly at stake in the bilateral relations between Bonn and Jerusalem. The depiction of German foreign policy as following

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Ideas, Beliefs, and Politics, 1950s–1960s | 23

paradigms of realism and historicism contributes to understanding the change in Germany’s attitude toward Israel in 1965.

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Bridging the National Gap: The Hallstein Doctrine German policymakers in the 1950s operationalized the nineteenth-century concept of historicism and realism, with its focus on the central role of a (unified) nation state by casting it in a legalistic foreign policy and enshrining it in the Hallstein doctrine. The doctrine, a mainstay of West German foreign policy between 1955 and 1965, was designed to politically isolate Communist East Germany by preventing Bonn’s nemesis from gaining international diplomatic acceptance. The doctrine stipulated that any country—with the exception of the Soviet Union—that commenced official diplomatic relations with East Berlin was guilty of an “unfriendly act” toward West Germany and would hence suffer reprisals from Bonn.7 To keep East Germany in a state of political quarantine was to underline the Federal Republic’s claim to the exclusive representation of Germany as a whole, West and East. The need to state this policy unequivocally in public emerged after the Adenauer government had boxed itself in by initiating ambassadorial relations with Moscow upon the Soviets’ release of scores of German prisoners of war. While freeing soldiers from captivity earned the chancellor much acclaim at home, the deal meant that Bonn now maintained official relations with a country that simultaneously recognized East Germany as a fullfledged state, complete with diplomatic credentials. Consequently, Adenauer rushed to put the world on notice that such an arrangement with a West and East German ambassador residing in the same capital must remain a singular exception: “I have to state unequivocally that the Federal Government will in the future regard as an unfriendly act the commencement of diplomatic relations with the ‘GDR’ by third states with which the Federal Republic entertains official relations, since such a step would be conducive to deepening the German division” (Bundestag 1955: 5647). About a year later, Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano elaborated by saying that an official recognition of East Germany by a third state would have to be regarded as sanctioning the “unlawful splitting off of one part of the German territory and as an intrusion in internal German affairs.” In such a case, Brentano warned, the Federal government would have to “reexamine” its relations with that respective state (Bundestag 1956: 8421–8422). In the ensuing years the doctrine hardened to mean that Bonn would break diplomatic relations with those countries. Acting on the doctrine, Bonn severed diplomatic ties with Yugoslavia in 1957, when Marshal Tito formally recognized Communist East Germany, and did so likewise with Cuba in 1963. To most of the West German people in the 1950s and certainly to Bonn’s foreign policy makers of the 1950s and early 1960s, the Hallstein doctrine was more than simply a foreign policy directive. It amounted to no less than West Germany’s proverbial “basic law” and hence displayed all the characteristics of institutionalized worldviews and principled beliefs.8 Already in 1954, Chancellor Adenauer had stated categorically that “there is only one German state, there has

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been only one and there will be only one.” By referencing a “German state” the chancellor did not have the Federal Republic in mind, but rather a yet to be achieved unified Germany that maintained the legal framework of the German Reich. “The organs of the Federal Republic of Germany are the one and only ones that today represent this German state which never ceased to exist,” he explained (Bundestag 1954: 794). These comments were at the heart of an attempt to construe a legal continuity that spanned the Reich of 1871, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the Federal Republic, and eventually a reunified “Germany as a whole.” Resuming a tradition perceived as worthy of preservation, the idea of a unified German state was resurrected after World War II by arguing that the legal entity of the Reich had not been annihilated in the military defeat of 1945.9 The Foreign Office’s legal stance contended that the new West German constitution had not created a new state in 1949, but merely “reorganized the German state, which did not fall in 1945, in a manner possible at the time.” In that sense, the office argued, the Federal Republic upheld and embodied the “legal identity” of the Reich.10 Worldviews, according to Goldstein and Keohane, include views about cosmology and ontology; they are entwined with people’s conceptions of their identities, evoking deep emotions and loyalties (1993a: 8). West German unification policy in the 1950s and early 1960s was such a manifestation of worldviews about the German state. In the face of the looming threat of a lasting separation between the German nation and its state, these views consolidated to become principled beliefs, denoting normative ideas employed to distinguish right from wrong and just from unjust. The beliefs policymakers held about the German nation state served as road maps to guide foreign policy choices in the times of change and uncertainty that came with the Cold War and the onset of détente. In fact, beliefs about the German nation became so entrenched that their road map function was codified in a legal institution. Some of the best examples of ideas’ institutionalization are seen in “legal doctrines”—socially constructed sets of worldviews that constrain and guide contemporary policy making.11 The Hallstein doctrine, with its emphasis on the continuation of the German state in the wake of the German Reich’s demise, was such a legal doctrine. It was the material expression of Bonn’s belief that the constitutional tradition of the German Reich— purged of its National Socialist components—was worthy of preservation.12 As such, the doctrine helped to translate worldviews about the German nation state into actual policy choices by providing guidelines amid the uncertainty of a divided world and partitioned country. The underlying conceptual basis of the Hallstein doctrine as West Germany’s pivotal foreign policy directive reflected the political gyrations the German nation had traversed in its difficult and painful genesis between the ninth and nineteenth centuries. For the most part, the entities “Reich,” “Germany,” “Germans,” and “German nation” were incongruent. In the eighteenth century the national consciousness was still defined by cultural achievements and not tied to political bodies such as a “Reich” (Conze 1985: 24–30). No earlier than in the nineteenth

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century did a German national movement emerge, based on concepts of a cultural and eventually political nation. This trend culminated—even if in a somewhat distorted fashion—in the forging of the German Reich via amalgamation of the ideal of a German nation with the Prussian state (Sheehan 1985: 12–13). While this political entity seemed less than perfect to many at the time, it came to be the only political and legal bracket denoting a German nation state, and its legal framework appeared worth preserving in 1945 and beyond. Gottfried Keller, a renowned author of German romanticism, takes us on a journey through some of these layers of historical identity formation. In his epochmaking novel Der Grüne Heinrich, the protagonist Heinrich Lee dreams of arriving at the banks of a river spanned by a bridge. In the architecture and the bustling life on and around the bridge, Heinrich recognizes his homeland (Heimat). The murals along the walls of the bridge depict the “entire history and all activities of the country,” and the people strolling on the bridge not only resemble the ones shown in the frescos but blend in with them, and vice versa, the painted figures mix with the actual revelers in the street. As there is a continuous exchange between painted and real life, with everything renewing itself while simultaneously staying the same, it occurs to Heinrich that the bridge captures “past, presence and future all in one thing.” Puzzled by the spectacle, the wanderer’s knowledgeable horse explains that all of this is called “the identity of the nation.” Upon the protagonist’s probing question of what exactly—the bridge or the people populating it—is the nation’s identity, the jade elaborates that a bridge can never be a nation because only the people represent the nation, but that both together—bridge and people—make for the identity of the nation.13 The Hallstein doctrine served precisely such a bridging purpose. The doctrine was the legal vehicle with which decision makers hoped to span the gap between a divided and thus virtually stateless German nation, and a unified Germany. By codifying the identity of the German nation in a legal institution, politicians hoped to be able to escort the German people from the German Reich to a future nation state after unification. In fact, institutionalized norms typically are rooted in the past and constitute a formative part of a collective memory that creates repertoires of political action (Katzenstein 1993: 265–295). It is therefore precisely this bridging or road map function that the Hallstein doctrine fulfilled in Bonn’s foreign policy making during the 1950s and early 1960s. Walking Keller’s “identity bridge” became a daily policy proposition in those days, with historicism’s primacy of foreign policy serving as a yardstick. As the novelist’s metaphorical horse explains: “The people on the bridge have set their eyes first and foremost on maintaining their identity as well as on defending it against any sort of attack” (Keller 1990: 664). Espousing such realist, powercentered paradigms, Keller has been seen as an exponent of historicism’s so-called young-German/free-thinking (jungdeutsch/freisinnig) mold (Heselhaus 1990: 779–781). Indeed, it is the state, not social norms or moral values, that is the foundation of Germany’s legal norms. As researcher Peter Katzenstein puts it, the concept of the German state is “imbued with connotations of ‘right’ and ‘law’ which

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logically as well as normatively precede any particular type of regime such as democracy or authoritarianism” (Katzenstein 1989: 383). Social norms in Germany are typically codified in legal language, and in the early days of the Federal Republic its foreign policy was equally couched in such legal terms. Consequently, Bonn’s external relations are aptly characterized as having been dominated by a “legalpolitical” strategy (Hanrieder 1989: 181). To be sure, the state as an important vehicle of national identity formation is not an exclusively German phenomenon. But as opposed to the French notion of the state, for instance, the German concept relegated individual freedom and fraternity to lesser ranks. The French concept of the nation state is based on its voluntary character, which requires its members to make a conscious, affirmative decision of willingness to belong to this community. The German conception presupposes that the nation is analogous to the individual; i.e., the nation and the state are perceived as a purpose-instilling ideal governing the human condition. Membership in the German nation is not a conscious, individual decision, but a state of being based on common ethno-cultural history and experience. Moreover, while the French nation developed within consolidated state structures, Germany had never quite succeeded in forming a nation state with full congruence between nation and state.14 However, as the desire to form a true nation state grew during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, liberal German philosophers and historians construed a version of the German past through which people, nation, and state might be reconciled (Sheehan 1985: 9–13). As the German post-1945 division stood yet again in the way of such reconciliation, the Federal Republic refused to develop a concept of statehood of its own as that would have broadened the hiatus between people, nation, and state. Consequently, the Federal Republic represented little more than a temporary political proxy (a so-called Provisorium) for the prospect of a whole and united Germany, and as such served to counter East Berlin’s vision of a newly conceived and permanent (East) German state (Definitivum) unfettered by legacies of the past. In that sense, West Germany’s legalistic stance ascribed a salutary character to a unified state, closely following historicism’s interpretation of the state as embodying a messianic quality.15 The merging of East and West Germany in the legal tradition of the German Reich was not simply a political goal, but was seen as an ideal state of being. It was a philosophical aspiration, based on the German concept of a nineteenth-century liberal nationalism satisfying a mass longing for community (Gemeinschaft). In fact, as the nation had not taken its mundane shape as a state yet, it simply had to be believed.16

“It’s Time for a Change”: Society’s Beliefs “It’s Time for a Change.” It was this slogan, coined by the Kennedy campaign and subsequently endorsed by American voters at the polls in 1960, that German intellectuals adopted as their motto amid their quest to transform German society

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into a more participatory political system that would grant domestic actors a bigger say in high-level decision making and foreign policy (Lettau 1965). The key epistemological development at the onset of the 1960s was a growing realization that the claim to German unity could no longer be based on a state-centered historiographic tradition rooted in nineteenth-century thought. The “national cult” (Edgar Wolfrum) lost more and more of its appeal and eventually was crushed, first and foremost by revisions in the German interpretation of national history as well as by the emergence of a West German identity and changes in the international system. German intellectuals—historians and political scientists in particular—together with an increasingly broad-based segment of German society, reckoned that present-day democracy could not be won without facing the country’s dictatorial past. Invariably, opinion leaders realized that all emancipation from the predemocratic societal norm of the 1950s would have to remain incomplete, dishonest, and hollow if it was not based on a thorough discussion of Germany’s tarnished history. Adolescents began to confront their fathers’ and grandfathers’ generation and the role they played during the National Socialist regime. German-Israeli student circles mushroomed across Germany, and as the young graduates debated the Holocaust and learned about contemporary Israel, it dawned on them that democracy and tolerance on one side, and totalitarianism and anti-Semitism on the other, mutually conditioned and reinforced each other.17 As Germans sought to reverse the top-down model of the West German political decision making process that had prevailed during much of the 1950s, opinion leaders and society at large began to tackle the task of facing the country’s Nazi past, changing prevailing foreign policy parameters, and empowering societal actors.

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Facing the Past Much of German historiography did not experience a significant shift until the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the immediate wake of National Socialism and World War II, historians acknowledged the crimes committed during the Third Reich, but widely stuck to their state-centered approach, continuing to portray, as they long had, the German concept of the nation state as superior to Western notions of statehood and forms of sociopolitical organization. German historiography in the late 1940s and the 1950s showed a strong sense of continuity and a striking absence of a break with past traditions. In public and academic life, the scholars who dominated intellectual debates were the same as those during the Weimar Republic, and professors who occupied university chairs during the Third Reich continued to do so in the early years of the Federal Republic.18 An overriding concern with the shattered German self-confidence stood in the way of honest attempts to come to grips with the country’s most recent past. The basic impulse for historians—such as Friedrich Meinecke, Gerhard Ritter, Hans Herzfeld, and Hans Rothfels, among others—was to try to salvage the national narrative: Hitler had desecrated the German name and the German cultural legacy and had gambled away the German national state, but he and his Third

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Reich, they held, were a mere temporary deviation from the true path of German national history (Broszat 1988: 167–169). Historians acutely felt the need to reaffirm the purposefulness (Sinnvollhaftigkeit) of the German state in the wake of its crushing military and moral defeat. Gerhard Ritter, writing in the late 1940s, sought to show that the roots of Germany’s national development remained healthy and that the series of later events culminating in National Socialism were in fact an un-German aberration, arising not from German thought but instead from Western European mass democracy. Ritter differentiated between German concepts of the state (which he promoted) and Western European political ideas (which he abhorred), while distancing himself from National Socialism and Emperor William II.19 In fact, German governmental decision makers and scientists seconded each other in efforts to instill a sense of purpose and direction among the German people by attempting to prolong the Reich’s legacy as a unified nation state. Political decision makers operationalized this strand of historiography via a legalistic foreign policy based on the Hallstein doctrine, while historians insisted on a historiography that continued to view the nation state as an ideal state of being and the purveyor of world historical progress. In their quest to provide the basis for a “moral and psychic regeneration of the nation” (H. Mommsen) following World War II, historians harked back to ideas of German idealism and historicism, defining historiography’s purpose as the science of the nation state and hence focusing on constitutional history and states’ foreign policy.20 Academic discourse on the Holocaust remained an exception during the late 1940s and much of the early 1950s. The first phase of Holocaust historiography (roughly from 1945 to 1957) saw little more than the publication of a few source editions and occasional articles on the extermination of the Jews. Many historians, much like the German population at large, appeared unable to face the horrific truth by dealing with the historic details that awaited academic scrutiny and explanation. In 1952, Hermann Mau, head of the renowned Munich-based Institute for Contemporary History, noted that there was almost no academic inclination to work on National Socialism. This, he said, was reflected in the research agenda of the time: “It is limited to three larger issue areas: 1. World War II, 2. foreign policy issues, 3. problems of the resistance.”21 As a result, German society between the late 1940s and the mid 1950s failed to confront its tainted past. Clinging to the Nazi propaganda image of the clean concentration camp, as Harold Marcuse (1993: 9) argues, large segments of postwar Germany pleaded ignorance about what went on inside the death camps. Departure from the mindset of the 1950s was slow in coming and set in only when a generational change rolled around. In the mid 1950s, most Germans still delegated responsibility for the atrocities of the Third Reich to Hitler and a small group of war criminals, while casting themselves in the role of seduced victims (Frei 1996: 405–406). For most of the 1950s, proponents of an open dialogue about German crimes remained a minority, and on the whole a sentiment of passivity and indifference prevailed.22 Change in West German historiography dawned around 1960, when a new generation of historians ventured into hitherto uncharted territory, turning to

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contemporary history and altering the perception of the state in West German political thought.23 The historio-political construct of the postwar years crumbled, and a revision of the German conception of the country’s most recent past set in.24 Also, from then on the state was no longer seen as imbued with a uniform identity, but as resulting from many, often conflicting, societal forces and political demands. As if to spark off this new trend, historian Fritz Fischer burst onto the scene in 1961 with a groundbreaking book about Germany’s war aims on the eve of World War I (Fischer 1961). Fischer questioned the prevailing belief at the time that the European powers simply “slid” into war, and that no single country was to be blamed for its outbreak. Instead, he put the guilty verdict squarely onto Germany’s shoulders. The sharp indictment contrasted with the consoling view that the Reich’s behavior had differed little from its adversaries’. Likening aspirations during World War I to Nazi goals, Fischer furthermore undermined the apologetic notion that Germany in 1933 had been seized by “demonic forces” from outside. The impact of the ensuing controversy was significant by any standards, serving as the “swan song” (W. J. Mommsen) of the traditional mold of nationalpolitical historiography.25 From now on Fischer’s colleagues, such as Hans-Ulrich Wehler and others, turned the academic spotlight on social history. Critical historians—some of them dubbed “Kehrites”—who propagated a reinterpretation of German history and stressed long-term German peculiarities now captured the academic high ground.26 Critique of the nation’s development in all of its ramifications clashed fundamentally with historians’ traditional mission of justifying the role and character of a spiritually empowered German state. Newly emerging research on the Nazi past and the refusal to view the Third Reich as a mere “factory accident” (Betriebsunfall), together with the epistemological debates unfolding in the wake of the Fischer controversy, brought down established German historiography and helped to pave the way for a more sober view of the German state and unification policy. History shed its role as a tool of state legitimization— a development that helped to sever the link between historiography and the primacy of foreign policy. A string of trials against NS perpetrators in Germany and Israel, as well as the desecration of the Cologne synagogue in the winter of 1959/1960, led to what Harold Marcuse has termed a “historical rediscovery of [the] genocide” between 1957 and 1965 (1993: 11–15). In the spring of 1960, US Senator Thomas J. Dodd captured the newly emerging trend not only in historical research, but also among society at large when he pointed out that there was a growing tendency in West Germany toward public castigation of what happened during the Nazi period. This trend, Dodd said, referring to a report by the American Council on Germany, was becoming more and more evident in the press, in TV programs, in the movies, and most important of all, in schools: “It has taken 15 years, but this year marks the beginning of a really noticeable awareness of Nazi crimes and a determination to bring them out into the open, to examine the developments which led up to 1933 and to answer the demanding questions of this generation of

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youth about the period in their country’s history which they did not know” (March 15, 1960, US Congress 1960: 11). Atlantik Brücke e.V., a West German organization devoted to the promotion of German-American friendship, made a similar observation when it headlined “Democracy on the Offensive” and pointed out that “substantial segments among the younger generation awakened, formed their own opinion about the past, and were not willing to put up with everything.” The trials of Nazi mass murderers had gone a long way in opening their eyes, the organization said, adding: “Discussion in youth groups, among students, in cultural circles, also in the labor unions—especially among the younger members of the unions—continue ever since” (Newsletter, Nov. 12, 1959). Pedagogues began to think of ways to teach the Nazi period as the concept of “coming to terms with the past” (Vergangenheitsbewältigung) came into use. The Frankfurt School of philosophical thought assisted in this effort with Theodor Adorno’s famous essay “What does ‘Working through the Past’ mean?” representing an early effort to influence the discussion (1963: 125–146). In 1963, Adorno’s fellow professor Max Horkheimer was in a position to report substantial progress on the issue. High school curricula and schoolbooks had finally changed to include not only teachings on the Nazi period generally, but also the crimes and mass extinction more specifically.27 Such change was also reflected in popular culture. Satirist Matthias Walden staged a spoof on the “traditional fraternities” (Traditionsverbände) whose reactionary disposition did not fit in with modern-day democracy, and entertainer Wolfgang Neuß put on a radio play about political opportunism, depicting it as the “Germans’ hereditary disease” (DISkussion, May 1960). Not all of these representations may have done full justice to the situation, but they helped to break up complacency and instigate broad-based discussions among society at large. Rolf Hochhuth’s best-selling play The Deputy (Der Stellvertreter) was quite possibly the most significant publication in this respect at the time (Hochhuth 1990). The play, a fact-based parable about the Holocaust and the role of the Roman Catholic church during Nazi rule, tells the story of a rebellious priest who joined the Jews in their deportation and died a martyr’s death in the gas chambers while Pope Pius XII sat in Rome, idly looking on. Hochhuth’s work stirred up a huge controversy on the issue of collective guilt, as the piece appeared to indict all those who were not involved in perpetrating actual crimes but remained mum in the face of mass killings. The play unleashed street riots when it premiered in 1963 and sparked tumultuous debates on the issue in its wake.28 What made this and similar literary works relevant was the fact that societal policy entrepreneurs, such as novelists and other artists, effectively took on the role of historians by introducing historical research into popular culture. Hochhuth, for instance, handed his audience a sensual stimulus to grasp some of the Jewish sufferings by vividly illustrating what textbooks and documentaries had tried to convey with only meager success. Historian Golo Mann (1990) admitted at the time that no thorough study by the Institute for Contemporary History had accomplished what Hochhuth managed to bring about with his play: making the fate of the Jews a tangible experience for the broad masses.

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The overwhelming reception of the The Diary of Anne Frank in the second half of the 1950s was similarly powerful proof that, starting in the closing years of that decade, the broad German public was ready to learn about the past and empathize with the fate of the Jews if confronted with a personalized human-interest story. The German edition of the diaries, ending with the deportation of Anne’s family from Amsterdam, was published as early as 1950, but did not catch on in the Federal Republic until the late 1950s when it was turned into a play and a movie version and a German author traced Anne Frank’s history beyond Amsterdam to the death camps. The reception of texts such as Hochhuth’s and Frank’s served both as a sign of a maturing society and as a catalyst, propelling German society onto a higher plane of domestic assertiveness by helping to brake taboos salient in an up to then largely inactive, complacent population.29 A few years later these and other accomplishments of German society were also recognized by Jewish leaders whose overriding interest was to make Germany safe for democracy and insulate the country against a relapse. The American Jewish Congress acknowledged the existence of at least the “outer trappings” of democracy in 1965, mainly attributing this to the vigilance of newly emerging German policy entrepreneurs like university students, editors, clerics, and political leaders.30 There can be little doubt that the Eichmann trial in 1961 figures among the most far-reaching events in the Germans’ debate on their past, and in relations between Bonn and Jerusalem. Adolf Eichmann, head of the Jewish Office of the Gestapo (secret police) and chief orchestrator of the so-called Final Solution during Nazi rule, had fled to Argentina immediately after the war. He was tracked down by Israeli secret agents in May 1960, abducted to Israel, and publicly tried in Jerusalem for crimes against the Jewish people and humanity in 1961. Eichmann was sentenced to death and executed in May 1962. The case aroused enormous international interest and some controversy, particularly in Germany. During the run-up to the trial, Israeli Premier David Ben-Gurion went out of his way to assure the Federal Republic that he did not confuse the Nazis with presentday German democrats and that to him a “decent German” was just as much a “decent human being” as anyone else (Bulletin 41, March 10, 1961). Although much appreciated, these words did not go all the way in alleviating fears among German policymakers. Chancellor Adenauer in particular voiced his apprehension that the trial would “stir up again all the horrors” and produce a new wave of anti-German feelings throughout the world (Bulletin 50, March 14, 1961). While images of Eichmann standing trial in the District Court of Jerusalem’s bullet-proof glass booth had a significant impact on the German conscience as the media reported minutely on the court proceedings, Adenauer’s fears proved to be unfounded. Almost all major German papers had sent special correspondents to Jerusalem, and German television aired footage of such an event for the first time. The trial resonated with almost the entire German population and dominated much of the popular debate (Lamm 1961; Cohen 2002; Bergmann 1997: 250– 261). Around 90 percent of West Germans knew of the trial and were generally well informed about what went on inside the court room; 60 to 70 percent agreed

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that Eichmann deserved life imprisonment or capital punishment.31 More importantly, the Eichmann trial had a decidedly educational quality, as it helped to break the “conspiracy of silence” surrounding Germans’ complicity in Nazi crimes.32 In fact, as Hannah Arendt (1964: 16) has poignantly remarked, the Eichmann trial had its most far-reaching consequences in Germany. The up to then prevalent discourse centering on Germans’ role as victims turned into a discourse on German perpetration. In Germany, courts had sentenced several thousand NS perpetrators in the late 1940s, but in the early to mid 1950s Nazi court cases ebbed away, and—as Bonn’s Justice Ministry admitted in 1964—the “erroneous view” took root that “the entire complex had already been coped with” (Bundestag, March 10, 1965: 8518– 8519). In the late 1950s and early 1960s the situation changed again, and the trials in Germany, in spite of their rather narrow judicial scope and often lenient verdicts, made a major contribution to public knowledge of National Socialist crimes. Historians played an active role in this process by giving expert testimonies in court to help rectify a neglected judicial analysis of the NS past during much of the 1950s (Frei 1996: 406; Herbert 1981: 36). At that point, German historiography had embraced a radically different, fundamentally new quality: it no longer fulfilled the role of justifying the state, but instead helped state authorities to indict some of its most gruesome former representatives.33

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Empowering Societal Actors and Changing Foreign Policy In the summer of 1965 the Christian Democratic government alleged that the opposition had succumbed to the “pressure of an outside force,” a reference to the trade unions’ influence among the Social Democrats. An observer of German politics and society labeled this loathing for societal mingling with high politics a “German concept of representative government . . . based on elite thinking,” but noted that an increasing number of intellectuals—such as novelist Rolf Hochhuth and social scientist Wolfgang Abendroth—were unwilling to put up any longer with such a top-down approach to politics.34 Themselves spearheading a new elitist avant-garde, these intellectuals turned against old government elites and brushed aside what struck many foreign observers as authoritarian and antidemocratic attitudes in the Federal Republic which so far appeared to comprise the norm of political life. As one international observer noted, Konrad Adenauer’s indisputable commitment to a democratic political system could not cloud the fact that West Germany’s first chancellor had failed in one critical respect: “Here is a man of unbelievable decency and of political and human greatness, who not only led the German government for many years but became the father image of the German people. He has in a tragic, unintended way prevented democracy from becoming a part of German thinking. By democracy I mean something beyond parliamentarianism, beyond government; I mean democracy as a way of life.”35 The fact that democracy did eventually become the way of West German life, however, is owed to the emergence of new intellectual elites and an ever more independent media. Particularly, the so-called Spiegel affair went a long way in

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rallying intellectual and societal brain power around the cause of civil liberties. In 1962 Germany’s investigative weekly Der Spiegel exposed NATO’s defense posture in such intimate detail that it appeared likely to have been based on secret NATO military documents (Der Spiegel, October 10, 1962). Defense Minister Franz-Josef Strauß—already stung by numerous editorial attacks—moved to collect evidence for a case of high treason against the magazine, ordering a police raid of its offices and the arrest of reporter Conrad Ahlers and publisher Rudolf Augstein (Schwarz 1983: 261–273). The ensuing public outcry was tremendous. Students took to the streets, protesting the “muzzling of the press” (photograph in Schwarz 1983: 270). Faculty, writers, and fellow media outlets attacked the police action as a violation of the right to freedom of speech as enshrined in Germany’s constitution. A foreign observer of postwar Germany characterized the public rage as “the first wholesome sign that there is in West Germany today a nucleus of libertarian sentiment that will not stand idly by when democratic rights are violated.”36 What irked German intellectual elites in particular, and what eventually brought down Strauß as defense minister, was an apparent contempt for the parliamentary process in the political aftermath of the raid. Strauß, in parliamentary hearings, first denied and later admitted only piecemeal to his role in marshalling the police action. Political scientist Theodor Eschenburg commented at the time that a minister who did not provide the elected body with any, with wrong, with incomplete, or with late answers was guilty of violating the parliamentary order. Such a demeanor had to be punished or else the parliament would lose its already sullied reputation as a power-checking body, he argued. Eschenburg typically espoused a conservative attitude toward the state and therefore struck a chord not only with liberals, but among the wider strata of German society (Schwarz 1983: 271). To be sure, the early 1960s were not the first time that German society had experienced the dawn of a new era. During the immediate postwar years the political climate was also full of hope for change and democratic renewal. Intellectuals initiated ad-hoc discussion circles—such as, for instance, Hans Werner Richter’s famous “Group 47”—to debate new ways of addressing pressing political issues of the time. Yet, the effect of those initiatives in the wake of Nazism and World War II was rather limited (Münkel 2000: 224). It was only when West Germany’s emblematic “bottom-up” political system began to emerge in the post-Adenauer years that society was able to influence high-level policy. The new system allowed ideas held among society to work their way up through the political process and eventually penetrate the governmental decision-making mechanism. This system has been described as “democratic corporatism,” where conflicting objectives are informally coordinated through a continuous bargaining process among state bureaucracies, political parties, and interest groups.37 It was only with this system in place that worldviews based on historicism and realism were replaced with what came to be known as constitutional patriotism (Verfassungspatriotismus), a kind of patriotism based on an evolving West German national identity nurtured by democratic ideals and societal involvement in high politics.

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As a West German democratic identity emerged, the appeal of national unity among society waned noticeably. Bonn’s New York Times correspondent observed in 1965 that: “In word and deed West Germany’s political leaders are replying ‘no’ to a question often asked among themselves and among ordinary citizens: Is unification a goal that 55 million complacent and prosperous West Germans really care about?” (NYT, Jan. 30/31, 1965).38 Even Parliamentary President Eugen Gerstenmaier—who in the 1950s had ruled out categorically that there could ever be any such thing as an independent West German sense of history (Geschichtsbewußtsein)—grudgingly recognized in 1963 that unification was an “illusion” no longer worth pursuing (Wolfrum 1999: 1, 216). Philosopher Karl Jaspers contributed much to the emergence of a West German identity in the Western mold when he suggested replacing the aim of a unified state with the individualistic freedom axiom of Western democracies. Not the forging of a unified Germany, but individual freedom for the East Germans had to be the ultimate goal, he told German television in 1960: “Only freedom—that is what counts. Compared to that, unification is unimportant” (FAZ, August 17, 1960). Jaspers and other intellectual policy entrepreneurs blazed the trail for a broad change in domestic mood with respect to unification specifically and social norms more generally. Oskar Negt (1965: 142), today an internationally renowned sociologist and at the time a young research assistant at Heidelberg University, called for the “realization of the democratic rights of freedom as provided by the Basic Law.” By applying the Western freedom axiom to the West German constitution, the young societal entrepreneurs sketched out a concept to counter the state-centered and community-oriented interpretation of West Germany’s constitution. Intellectuals in the early 1960s moved to thwart the until then prevailing Hegelian amalgam of spirit and (state) power by basing their assertiveness on the consensus that participation of the ordinary citizen in the political process was imperative to a Western democratic state system (Münkel 2000: 226). Political scientist Dieter Senghaas (1965: 53), twenty-five years old at the time, diagnosed the Christian Democratic leadership’s blind eye toward détente and international change as a phenomenon of the “pathology of German foreign policy.” The stereotypical rejection of disengagement, he noted, justified the assumption that Bonn’s foreign policy was still based on a policy of strength. While Senghaas did not spell it out in such terms, he effectively exposed Chancellors Adenauer and Erhard’s policy as suffused by power-based paradigms rooted in realism and historicism: “The Federal government’s leitmotif still follows the thesis of an opponent’s retreat in the face of strength.” Similarly, law student Walter Euchner (1965) debunked the “legalistic covering” of current unification policy, and Rudolf Augstein, publisher of Der Spiegel, formulated a kill-it-with-kindness approach to East Germany, convinced that interest in a new approach to the old problem of unification was rising (NYT, Jan. 30/31, 1965). Until the early 1960s, opposition parties in the Federal Republic were best advised to stick to the golden rule of not attacking the government’s foreign policy, since the electorate perceived such an attack not simply as criticism of a party or

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government, but as an assault on the state as such (Baade 1962: 73–74). Konrad Adenauer time and again portrayed support and approval of his international stewardship as a patriotic duty to be honored by the entire German populace. In the 1960s, however, the mounting impatience of intellectuals and society at large with an inflexible foreign policy enabled the opposition Social Democrats to campaign, and eventually win the popular vote, on issues of foreign policy.39 In the early days of 1965 a memorandum by opposition leader Willy Brandt was leaked to the press; in it, the Social Democratic chairman sketched out what later emerged as his renowned New Ostpolitik. US Secretary of State Dean Rusk had asked Brandt to outline some of his ideas, and Brandt—much in line with American policy—suggested bringing Eastern Europe closer to the West by intensifying economic and cultural cooperation (NZZ, Jan. 27, 1965). The Social Democratic chairman—supported and jolted forward by a changing domestic base—helped to usher in a new vision of Germany, motivated by a renewed set of worldviews and principled beliefs.40 But even before Brandt, Chancellor Ludwig Erhard’s leadership style as a “Volkskanzler” (people’s chancellor) had contrasted markedly with the “Kanzlerdemokratie” (chancellor democracy) of his predecessor. Erhard, much like Adenauer, espoused a disdain for internal conflict and societal meddling in high politics, but at the same time he emerged as a signifier of the changing political culture because he respected, more than his predecessor had, the voice of societal groups as a natural part of democratic life (Soell 1997: 37; Hildebrand 1997: 13). Such a predisposition suggests that Erhard’s policies may have been shaped by revamped ideas on the nature of the state as expressed in calls for a foreign policy that ceased to put the traditional definition of national interest (i.e., German unification) before full reconciliation with Israel.

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“Quo Vadis Germania?” Beliefs on the International Level “Quo vadis Germania?” an American memorandum asked warily in the summer of 1961. The study, prepared by the US embassy in Bonn, discerned a slow but definite erosion of American-German relations.41 Fears spread in West Germany that John F. Kennedy—who had taken over as thirty-fifth president of the United States earlier that year—would initiate a policy of East-West rapprochement that would be to Germany’s detriment. Faced with the prospect of all-out nuclear warfare and the possibility of a destabilizing unified Germany at the heart of Europe, the United States and the Soviet Union embraced a tacit modus vivendi in the early 1960s, assigning themselves the role of guardians of the European status quo. A policy of détente became the signifier of the decade, notwithstanding some setbacks along the way (Hanrieder 1989: 172; Czempiel 1991). German policymakers’ view of international politics—based on historicism and realism— as an anarchic system requiring states to defend themselves against ubiquitous threats and hostilities had resonated strongly with the antagonistic character of the Cold War. However, when the Cold War gave way to a period of rapproche-

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ment between Washington and Moscow, that system of ideas and the legalistic unification policy that signified it became ever more anachronistic and German unification lost much of its relevance in global East-West politics. Moreover, the beginning isolation of Germany among its allies extended beyond diplomacy. The disaffection reached deeper, touching on history and society, indicating that the country was falling behind not only in matters of international relations, but also in its development of civil relations. Beginning with a rash of swastika graffiti in the winter of 1959/1960, Germans were continuously reminded that they had not altogether lived down their Nazi past. The Eichmann trial in 1961 loomed for months as a specter haunting the future, and Alan Shirer’s US best-seller The Third Reich disturbed official Bonn. It was then that a window of opportunity began to open for emerging domestic policy entrepreneurs promoting a new policy agenda and revamped ideas on international politics and the German nation.

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German Dialectics: Unification vs. Détente In October 1961, West Germany’s ambassador to the United States, Wilhelm G. Grewe, turned to the Federal Republic’s long-time friend, former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson. Never in ten years had he felt so depressed about GermanAmerican relations, Grewe confided. “The Germans,” the ambassador complained, “had been told almost categorically that it was a waste of time even for negotiating purposes to talk about reunification of Germany.” Moreover, he said, the US administration was moving toward something “which was indistinguishable from de facto recognition of East Germany.”42 Indeed, when in the early 1960s West German policymakers’ pursuit of a unified German nation state by means of a legalistic foreign policy reached its climax, it was precisely this policy that isolated Bonn within the Western camp. The issue of German unification rapidly lost its top spot on the West’s policy agenda, and the Federal Republic realized only belatedly that the political circumstances of the 1960s were fundamentally different from those that had sustained GermanAmerican relations in the 1950s. The two countries had been chained together ever since the Federal Republic’s admission to the community of Western states. Yet, while the arrangement lent momentum to the fight against communism in the 1950s, the Federal Republic’s uncompromising stance toward the East became an impediment to a more flexible Western strategy toward Moscow in the 1960s. Bonn was particularly worried that the US policy of engaging with the Eastern Bloc without achieving a solution to the problem of Germany’s division first would deprive it of its only remaining political leverage in the fight for unification. To counteract this gravely felt danger, the German government promoted unification as an indispensable prerequisite for the West’s rapprochement with the East. Chancellor Erhard captured the essence of the difference between Bonn and its allies when he mused that Germany juxtaposed “dialectically” the thesis of “unification through détente” with the antithesis “détente through unification.”43

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However, the United States, Britain, and France had no time for German geopolitical dialectics. Instead, German unification policy had arrived at a dead end, a situation quite clearly recognized by some strategists in Bonn’s Foreign Office. As one official observed in a secret study, the Federal Republic’s room for maneuver was confined by the interdependency between its unification policy as pursued toward the Soviet Union on the one hand, and the Western Allies’ interest in coming to a lasting understanding with Moscow and its partners on the other.44 In the long term, those divergent goals had to be reconciled and Bonn’s policy aim had to be the complete normalization of relations with all Eastern European states, the study said. While these ideas very much sounded like harbingers of the new Ostpolitik, to be implemented by the Social Democratic-led government some five years later, Bonn at this point was still unable to draw the necessary conclusions and instead tied itself down by insisting that European rapprochement could only be accomplished via German unification. In other words, the Federal Republic curtailed its own room for maneuver quite consciously, even though the global sentiment of détente allowed a much wider radius of action. What were the reasons for such behavior? Adapting to the changing international environment was such a difficult undertaking for the German government because the emerging international power constellation required the Federal Republic to renounce its much cherished unification policy doctrines. Détente demanded no less of Bonn than to do away with its historicism-based worldview that assigned to the state a key function in the international system and a defining role in the identity-shaping process of the German nation.45 Therefore, the argument over the preeminence of German unification was not merely an issue of divergent foreign policy views. Rather, it threw up full force the question of Germany’s identity as it was defined by Bonn’s political guard at that time. If unification could and should no longer be the ultimate policy goal, what then did the term “Germany” denote? To official Bonn, the allied recalcitrance on unification of the German nation state conjured up the eighteenth and nineteenth century image of a Germany unable to attain the coincidence of people, state, and nation. With Germany partitioned and set to remain so, yet again the petrifaction of a discontinuity between the German people and their state loomed large. As nation and state threatened to drift apart, Bonn’s legal strategy was designed precisely to prevent this from happening. In sum, the Western Allies’ call for Germany to recognize and accept the fact that unification was no more than an elusive, long-term goal rather then an immediate policy imperative, was tantamount to asking Germans to let go of an identity that referred to a unified state and instead to develop a West German identity. During much of the 1950s Bonn’s policymakers were wholly unprepared for such a move. However, the changes in the international system in those years provided a stepping stone for German society to promote new sociohistorical ideas and fill the intellectual void that the Cold War’s demise and the onset of détente had left behind in the Bonn Republic. As we shall examine in more

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detail later, historians and other intellectual elites began to erode the historicisminformed German political matrix—and its corresponding foreign policy, as codified in the Hallstein doctrine—in the context of Bonn’s Middle East policy during the early 1960s.

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Germany, the Middle East, and the Cold War In its operational foreign policy, Bonn employed the threat of executing the Hallstein doctrine primarily among the group of non-aligned states in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. With Europe carved up between the two major political camps, it was at the periphery of the East-West conflict that endorsements of either one of the two competing visions of the German nation state were up for grabs. The Middle East quickly took center stage as it was situated at the strategically important south flank of Europe, its oil reserves were of vital importance to the Western industrialized world, and the Egyptian-dominated Arab League played a critical role in the world of nonaligned states. Moreover, the Levant provided the ideal lever for the Soviet Union to further its political goals in Central Europe, since the fragile West German-Israeli relationship, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the Arabs’ growing economic and military dependence on the Soviet Union could be exploited to cement Germany’s division. The Middle East soon turned into a proxy for the intra-German fight over diplomatic recognition, and in waging that battle, international development aid became the weapon of choice. In the mid 1950s, the Eastern Bloc recognized the unique opportunity that the financing of the Aswan High Dam on the river Nile—Egyptian President Gamal Abd el-Nasser’s most cherished domestic project—presented to them in their efforts to lure the hitherto neutral Arabs over to the communist camp.46 Britain, the United States, and the World Bank had agreed to grant millions of dollars for the project in 1956, but soon the West took an increasingly jaundiced view of Nasser and the dam as the Egyptian president began to fill state coffers with Moscow’s additional monies. Washington, London, and the World Bank retracted their offer of funds, prompting Nasser to drop his bombshell: he ordered the Suez Canal Company—charged with regulating traffic flowing through the commercially critical waterway—to be nationalized, and future revenues to be applied toward construction of the Aswan Dam. Most directly affected by the sequestration were France and Britain, who owned a combined controlling stake of 90 percent in the company. From then on things unraveled quickly. Paris and London forged plans to invade Egypt with Israel’s help and take control of the Suez Canal. At the end of October 1956, Israeli forces parachuted into Egypt, followed by Franco-British bombardments of strategic military targets. The Americans, fearing for their carefully crafted power equilibrium in the region, demanded an immediate end to the hostilities. Britain and France caved in to this pressure, and an armistice was reached in early November, although Israel refused to withdraw its troops from the Sinai Peninsula.47 As a net result of the Suez Canal crisis Moscow had achieved most of its aims. The West had lost much credibility with the Arab world, paving the way for

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heightened Soviet influence in the region. From now on Moscow heavily supplied arms and money to Israel’s enemies in order to win allies among the Arabs and erode West Germany’s claim to the sole representation of the entire German state.48 Following the simultaneous inception of the Hallstein doctrine and the unraveling of the Suez Crisis, the fight for influence among Arab nonaligned states became a case of checkbook diplomacy. All the way up until Bonn’s recognition of Jerusalem in 1965, German development aid was more or less exclusively a function of unification policy. Financial and economic aid disintegrated into a simplistic reward system: Bonn doled out money to those neutral states that behaved well on the issue of German unification while threatening to turn off the tap on those that toyed with the idea of commencing relations with East Berlin.49 “It has to be pointed out,” Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder noted in 1964, “that a close link exists between our nonrecognition policy toward the Soviet-occupied zone and our development policy.” Schröder was convinced that the Federal Republic owed the feat of so far having been able to hold the trenches on neutral states’ nonrecognition of East Germany to Bonn’s generous offers of development aid.50

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Conclusion The early 1960s represent a milestone in the Federal Republic’s political development toward a mature system in the Western democratic mold. Chancellor Ludwig Erhard oversaw the emergence of German domestic politics as a powerful variable in the country’s foreign policy making process. As the Adenauer era drew to a close, West Germany increasingly grew out of its childhood years of the preceding decade. So-called policy entrepreneurs such as parties, media, trade unions, churches, and ad-hoc, unorganized activist groups emerged from within society, taking advantage of “policy windows,” which were opened up to them in part via change in the international environment, to influence the foreign policy making process.51 German political decision makers’ belief system was predicated on the goal of attaining a unified nation state. This state-centered worldview was translated into a legalistic foreign policy and institutionalized in the Hallstein doctrine, designed to keep Communist East Germany in political quarantine and make German unification a prerequisite for Western rapprochement with the East. The Cold War’s antagonistic international system during the 1950s nourished a worldview that ascribed a primary role to foreign policy and canonized the idea of subjugating private and public life to the task of achieving and preserving the inviolability of the state. Bonn’s foreign policy represented the institutionalized creed of a prerogative that espoused traces of nineteenth-century political thought. When the Cold War abated in the 1960s, however, the international community of states lost much of its character as an anarchic system of self-help amid external threat and hostility. Hence, with the onset of détente, the case for a formulaic

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view of the state as the raison d´étre of all politics weakened considerably. Confronted with this development, the West German foreign policy establishment’s reflex was to defend traditional concepts of the German state even more vigorously by taking recourse to ever more rigid legalistic diplomacy. As the 1960s wore on, however, this strategy collided fundamentally with the changing international climate as Washington pushed for détente between the world’s superpowers while seeking to preserve Europe’s status quo, including Germany’s division. Bonn’s unification policy had arrived at a dead end among its Western allies and proved equally ill-suited to keep the Arab states at bay at a time when they were leaning ever closer toward allegiance with Moscow and official endorsements of East Germany. Within Germany, the era of rapprochement helped to prepare the ground for new paradigms of a political neoliberalism that assigned a key policy making role to the domestic level.52 Historians and other societal leaders among German society questioned the central position of the German state in historical perspective and challenged its key role in Germany’s political life. Abandoning historicism and breaking the link between historiography and the German national state had serious political implications. The broad public debate on the origins of World War I vividly demonstrates that discourses on the interpretation of national history were by no means confined to the secluded quarters of academic ivory towers. Quite to the contrary, in the early 1960s dispute over history, the German nation, and related worldviews served as an interface between state-centered axioms of domestic and foreign policy and liberal principled beliefs (Berghahn 1974: 145–154; Wolfrum 1999: 236). Historians and fellow policy entrepreneurs introduced a new set of ideas that provided a revamped road map for politicians and society alike. West German society began to develop a national identity in reference to the Federal Republic (as opposed to the rather elusive concept of a “Germany as a whole” still propagated in the 1950s), and recognition of the Germans’ role as perpetrators during National Socialism began to take center stage in public discourse. As much as the issue of German unification lost its significance due to the changing international environment at the time, the waning interest in unification policy was also to a large degree a function of change in the prevalent ideas on the character of the nation. In the mid 1960s the “cult of the nation state” (Wolfrum 1999) began to cease functioning as the dominant social glue among West German society. Moreover, the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem and Nazi trials in Germany triggered societal learning processes and attitude changes among the West German population that led to a strengthening of the civic spirit, marking a clear departure from the “long 1950s” (Frei 1996: 406). Intellectual elites not only challenged the dominating political interpretation of national history but also started to transform contemporary West German society by giving domestic players greater influence in high-level politics. While initially the German government—closely guarding its special national interests—was unwilling to go along with those changes on the global and soci-

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etal levels, consequently isolating and immobilizing itself, societal policy entrepreneurs were increasingly able to introduce their demands into governmental foreign policy making. In the following chapters we will see how elites, informed by a new view of Germany’s past and a new definition of national identity, insisted that the domestic process of “coming to terms with the past” must be reflected in Bonn’s foreign policy toward Israel. I will demonstrate how, amid a changing public’s view of the state and a changing historiography, it became increasingly difficult for policymakers to carry on with politico-philosophical concepts steeped in historicism.

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Notes 1. Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886) is widely regarded as historicism’s founder. Best known for his seemingly positivistic dictum to narrate historical events “as they really were” (“wie es eigentlich gewesen”), Ranke developed an intricate philosophy of historiography. In fact, Ranke was anything but an empiricist in today’s sense of the concept; rather, he assumed that there was a certain objective order to historical events. On historicism generally see Iggers (1968). There is a sheer unlimited body of literature on Ranke’s role in historiography and historicism. For a good overview see Iggers and Powell (1990). On historians’ historistic concept during the Weimar Republic see Faulenbach (1980) and on German historiography generally Faulenbach (1974). 2. In Hegel’s (1953: 51) words: “The universal Idea manifests itself in the state.… The state is the divine Idea as it exists on earth.” Hegel (1770–1831), setting out to address one of the most pressing sources of social confusion and disorientation of his time, aimed to reconcile modern science with a traditional religious view of the world. In that context he devised his renowned dialectics, which depicted progress in history as a continual process of thesis and antithesis resolving in synthesis—a higher level that preserves what is worth preserving of the preceding thesis/antithesis opposition. Hegel introduced reason to the interpretation of history by depicting the dialectical progress over time as a evolving purification process toward an ever clearer self-presentation and self-representation of the world historical spirit (1953: 11–19 and 22–49). 3. Note that there are differences between Hegel’s and historicism’s conceptualizations of the state. Hegel had a much more comprehensive view of the character of the state than is encased in historicism’s notion of the state as a deified power-political entity. Historicism views the state as an end in itself and conceptualizes it as a Machtstaat, with the Prussian enlightened Obrigkeitsstaat in the mold of the Hohenzollern monarchy during the reform era serving as a model (Iggers 1968: 7–8; Faulenbach 1980: 297–298). 4. By the mid eighteenth-century, many German historians were convinced that a national state was the most mature stage in the life of a people, the proper destination in its journey toward self-expression. In time, state and nation were seen as inseparable, the one drawing its power and legitimacy from the other. “The natural glue of a people,” historian Georg Waitz asserted, “attains its perfection when it reaches the shape of a state” (quoted in Sheehan 1985: 9). Sheehan describes this conviction, as espoused by German historians, as the basis of a “national interpretation of history.” 5. A state can fully develop only to the extent that it is independent of other states, Ranke believed. Considerations of foreign policy and military strength are primary to the state, and internal life

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6.

7.

8.

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9.

10.

11. 12.

13.

must be subordinated to those needs (Ranke 1949: 35–36). For the application of that concept by mainstream historiography during the Weimar Republic see Faulenbach (1980: 178–184). There is a caveat to this claim, however. Historicism and realism cannot be conflated for the former represents a worldview, the latter an analytical tool. In addition, historicism was developed in opposition to Western ideas of individualism, whereas realism is a Western concept. Historicists rejected the idea of supremacy of individual rights as embodied in the Declaration of Human Rights, the cornerstone of the French Revolution, and in much of ensuing Western political thought. Realism, on the other hand, was initially developed by American thinkers in the wake of World War II. Proponents of the “realist” school of thought most often wrote their influential studies under the impression of epoch-making cataclysmic events in the history of international relations, thereby ushering in a new phase in political and academic debate. The origins go back to Hans J. Morgenthau’s influential book on state behavior, which he wrote in the aftermath of World War II (1948). Edward H. Carr is widely recognized as the other original proponent of the realist school (1964). Neo-Realism was most prominently developed by Kenneth N. Waltz in the late 1970s (1979). A more recent exposition of realism is Grieco (1993). On the core concept of the Hallstein doctrine see a number of studies prepared by Bonn’s Foreign Office: Memo Müller-Roschach, Feb. 3, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965; Memo Referat II 1, July 29, 1963, AAPD 1963 II, doc. 251: 830-832; and Memo “Foundation of the Hallstein-doctrine,” Jan. 25, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. On the inception and evolution of the doctrine that carried State Secretary Walter Hallstein’s name, but was in fact the brainchild of Wilhelm G. Grewe, Assistant Secretary of State for Political Affairs (Leiter Politische Abteilung) in the Foreign Office, see Grewe (1979: 251–262); Der Spiegel, March 23, 1960 and March 17, 1965. There is an abundance of literature on the Hallstein doctrine. Apart from Grewe’s memoirs, see for instance Haftendorn (2001: chapters 1 and 2; 1986: 31, 64–65); Schwarz (1982); Buchheim (1984: 81–83, 126–129). As Bonn’s Foreign Office put it in 1963: “We will continue to stick to the basic law of exclusively entertaining diplomatic relations with those states that themselves do not maintain diplomatic relations with Pankow” (Memo Referat II 1, July 29, 1963, AAPD 1963 II, no. 251: 832). To be sure, West German political culture and state institutions did not follow in the footsteps of an undemocratic, imperialistic power state. In that sense Werner Link (1987: 403–405) is right in pointing out that the West German constitution (basic law) was the product of a close analysis of the Third Reich, that it was drafted in clear demarcation of the racist criminal state, and that as such it embraced Western democratic values. However, an examination of Foreign Office documents shows that as for the concept of a nation state which amalgamated the German people with the German state, the Reich still served as a role model. In the German original: “Grundlage dieses Rechtsstandpunktes ist unsere Auffassung, daß das Grundgesetz keinen neuen Staat geschaffen, sondern lediglich den 1945 nicht untergegangenen deutschen Staat im Rahmen der gegebenen Möglichkeiten reorganisiert hat und die Bundesrepublik Deutschland somit das Deutsche Reich unter Wahrung seiner rechtlichen Identität fortsetzt.” (Memo “Foundation of the Hallstein-doctrine,” Jan. 25, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965.) This view contradicted the Allied spirit, as at the end of World War II the victorious powers had stipulated the “unconditional surrender of Germany”, resulting in the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union assuming “supreme authority in Germany.” See “Berliner Erklärung,” June 5, 1945 and “Potsdamer Protokoll,” August 2, 1945 (Rauschning 1989: 16 and 24 respectively). Institutionalized ideas, according to Goldstein and Keohane (1993a: 22), assume a particularly prominent role when ideas of statehood, sovereignty, and political representation are at stake. In an excellent study, Edgar Wolfrum (1999: 161) argues that the idea of the Reich without its National Socialist connotation was not rejected after 1945 as fast and sweepingly as is often assumed. Keller, though being a Swiss national, spent his formative years in Germany, wrote and published his major works there, and espoused a liberal, young-German mindset. Der Grüne Hein-

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14.

15.

16.

17. 18.

19.

20. 21.

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22.

23.

24.

25.

rich was first published in 1853–1855. On the reflections on national identity as contained in Keller’s novel see also SZ, March 2, 1998. Axel Sauder (1995: 303–330) provides a useful overview of the French and German conceptions of nation and state when he juxtaposes the French “subjective” or “voluntary” notion of the nation with the German “objective” one. Rainer Barzel (1962: 56), a leading member of Konrad Adenauer’s governing Christian Democrats, described politics as “a realm of God’s mission to worldliness” (Politik als Bereich der Sendung Gottes in die Zeitlichkeit). Edgar Wolfrum (1999: 124–210; 49) analyzes a number of political-religious symbols, such as songs, torches, and flags, which served as rallying points for the unification cult in the 1950s. He also describes West German attempts to “imagine” the yet to be completed nation. On the strikingly similar national cult in the nineteenth century, using almost identical insignia, see Schulze (1985: 106–107). See, for instance, Jochen Denso—a representative of the German student press at the time— reporting on a trip he took to Israel at the time of the Eichmann trial (Initiative, July 1961). There is little disagreement on this point in literature on German historiography. See, for instance, Conze (1977: 11–13); Iggers (1974: 109); H. Mommsen (1974a: 112–120); Kleßmann (1990: 159–177). See von Rantzau’s (1954: 164–165) characterization of Ritter’s writings (Ritter 1948; 1947). US historian Charles Maier (1988: 141) notes: “Setting the dominant tone for the profession as a whole until the 1960s, they [historians Friedrich Meinecke and Gerhard Ritter] ascribed the ‘German catastrophe’ to broader, Western trends . . . National Socialism sometimes appeared just the end result of the French revolution.” Hans Mommsen (1974a: 113–115) points out that the axiom of the primacy of foreign policy remained immensely influential after 1945. See also Herbert (1981) and Conze (1977: 11–12). Mau on May 17, 1952, quoted in Möller (1999: 31); see also Herbert (1981: 34–35). However, Horst Möller (1999: 34) is correct in pointing out that some work on the subject was done as early as the first half of the 1950s, but it remains true that for the most part German academia at that time had little to say on the Holocaust. Certainly, some segments of German society already concerned themselves with the Third Reich atrocities during the 1950s. Erich Lüth’s (1976) initiative to ask Israel for peace in 1951 is one such instance, but as Hans-Peter Schwarz (1983: 208) writes: “All in all things remained oddly silent on the crimes of the Third Reich during the 1950s. All that changed indeed very abruptly in the year 1960.” There is widespread agreement on the dating of this turning point. Werner Conze identifies a historiographical “turnaround around 1960” (1977: 13). Hans Mommsen describes a “radical process of change since the early 1960s” (1974b: 140–141). Charles Maier points to American studies analyzing the Germans’ failure to liberalize and their pursuit of “variants of conservative thought that praised wholeness, organic nationalism, spiritual commitment, and a subordination of critical reason.” By the 1960s such US critiques, Maier says, were re-imported to Germany and served as a major intellectual source for a new generation of German historians (1988: 104). Historian Harold Marcuse writes: “Lack of historical knowledge was typical of the state of public consciousness about the concentration and extermination camps in the 1950s: They were places where terrible things had happened, but there was very little knowledge as to who the victims were or who the perpetrators had been. In the years between 1957 and 1964, this situation changed dramatically. Teenagers were fascinated by the history of the Nazi period, which, at the popular level, was gradually broadened from the limited postwar conception of the chaotic death camps to encompass the history of the extermination camps” (1993: 13). See also Hildebrand (1984: 117). On the Fischer controversy see, among many others, John A. Moses (1975), Wolfgang Schieder (1969), and Imanuel Geiss (1972).

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26. Eckart Kehr, writing during the Weimar Republic, was among the first German historians to emphasize domestic sources of foreign policy choices and coined the famous dictum of the “primacy of domestic policy” (Kehr 1930). It was not until the 1960s, however, that Kehr’s work had a significant influence on German historiography. For the reception of his work in the 1960s and beyond see Wehler’s edition of Kehr’s essays (Wehler 1970). 27. Horkheimer to Goodman, Dec. 8, 1963, YIVO (AJC), FAD-1 Germany, box 28. Ample evidence for political and sociological transformation in West Germany in the early 1960s should not cloud the fact, however, that the process was a slow one. For instance, the broadcasting station Hessischer Rundfunk reported in 1963 that four fifths of listener feedback on their NS radio documentaries was negative. Also, while affirmative answers to the question of whether Hitler would have been one of Germany’s greatest statesmen without the war dropped considerably between 1955 and 1964 to 29 percent from 48 percent, the 1964 figure still showed close to one third of the West German population agreeing with the statement (Noelle and Neumann 1967: 144). 28. The major contributions to the public discussion at the time are documented in Raddatz (1963). A more recent reevaluation of the debate is Brechenmacher (2001). 29. US Senator Dodd told his fellow lawmakers that “it has been remarked that the hundreds of thousands of Germans who came to performances of The Diary of Anne Frank, sat through the play in a stunned silence more eloquent than any spoken repentance” (US Congress 1960: 11). 30. News Release American Jewish Organizations, April 18, 1965, AJHS (AJCs), I-77 (XVIII. 3.), box 219. 31. Preliminary Findings Institute for Social Science, YIVO (AJC), FAD-1 Germany, box 22; Noelle and Neumann (1965: 225). The polls were conducted in April/May 1961 and Jan./Feb. 1962. 32. West Berlin mayor Willy Brandt believed the Eichmann trial would be “beneficial in that it will end the ‘conspiracy of silence’ under which teachers and parents, generally, have failed to give the facts to the children and Germans, generally, have closed their minds to Germany’s recent history” (Memo dinner Willy Brandt, March 18, 1961, YIVO (AJC), FAD-1 Germany, box 25). Parliamentary President Eugen Gerstenmaier, originally skeptical about the trial’s ramifications, also came around to recognizing the positive impact it would have on German-Jewish and German-Israeli relations (Bulletin 66, April 8, 1961). 33. Until the 1970s some of the most important West German research on NS repression and genocide was conducted in conjunction with litigation by the Ludwigsburg-based “Central Office of State Judicial Authorities for the Prosecution of National Socialist Crimes” (Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustitzverwaltungen zur Aufklärung nationalsozialistischer Gewaltverbrechen) founded in 1958. Most prominent examples include the Ulm Einsatzgruppenprozeß (Ulm trial of the SS mobile death squads) and a study prepared by the Munich-based Institute for Contemporary History as expert testimony at the Auschwitz trials in Frankfurt (Buchheim et al. 1967). In 1958, the Munich institute received about 150 requests for academic expertise in the context of NS-related litigation. By 1966, the number had grown to around 600 annually (Möller 1999: 6). 34. Report from West Germany, June 23, 1965, YIVO (AJC), FAD-1 Germany, box 22. 35. Report Joachim Prinz, undated (1966), AJHS (AJCs), I-77 (IX.), box 26. Also on Adenauer’s autocratic leadership style see Faulenbach (1998: 14–15) and Baring (1969). 36. News Release AJCs, Dec. 10, 1962, AJHS (AJCs), I-77 (X.), box 52. 37. I largely follow the framework championed by—among others—Peter J. Katzenstein (1989a; 1976; 1985) and Thomas Risse-Kappen (1991; 1988). 38. Public opinion polls also reflected growing indifference toward German unification. In 1964 as many as 42 percent of those surveyed said they had become “used to” Germany’s division. Three years later, this number grew to 61 percent (Institut für Sozialwissenschaft (infas), in Wolfrum 1999: 240). 39. Adenauer, for instance, rejected criticisms leveled by the press against his foreign minister Heinrich von Brentano on the grounds that these accusations limited the government’s sphere

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40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46.

47.

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48.

49.

50. 51. 52.

of influence abroad and thus were detrimental to the entire country’s international interests (Bulletin 104, June 12, 1958: 1047). On the growing impatience with the foreign policy inertia, see Klaus Hildebrand’s account of the mobility/immobility debate regarding foreign policy and West German society’s growing restlessness about an inflexible conduct of external affairs in the mid to late 1960s (1984: 190–202). Brandt’s formula of one German nation and two German states—introduced during his inaugural address in 1969—signified this change most radically. Brandt, acknowledging the existence of two states on German soil, recognized that nation and state would rarely coincide (Bundesministerium für innerdeutsche Beziehungen 1970: 12). US Embassy Bonn to Department of State, June 8, 1961, NA, RG 59, CDF 1960–1963, box 1275, 611.62A/6-861. Memo conversation Dean Acheson-Wilhelm Grewe, Oct. 11, 1961, NA, RG 59, CDF 1960–1963, box 1275, 611.62A/5-861. Memo conversation Erhard-Charles de Gaulle, July 4, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 187: 772. Study prepared by Müller-Roschach, head of the Foreign Office’s Policy Planning Council (Planungsstab), Feb. 3, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. The point was vividly illustrated when German Chancellor Erhard told French President Charles de Gaulle that the Germans too—just like France—had to have a “national consciousness” (Nationalbewußtsein), a trait that was robbed of its safe underpinning after the country’s division, the chancellor explained. “Germany,” he insisted, “does not want to be a second or third ranked nation, it does not want to see disengagement become a reality, and it does not want to stand ostracized in the world” (Memo conversation Erhard-de Gaulle, Jan. 19, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 22: 105, 116). Moscow’s offer of financial support for the dam was a long-planned scheme to roll back Western influence in the region. In a letter from the Soviet capital, the East German minister Rau impressed on Premier Walter Ulbricht how crucial a role Eastern European loans for the Aswan project could play in wrestling Egypt from the West’s commercial grip (Nov. 25, 1955, SEDA, NY-4182, vol. 1335). For the Suez crisis and the ensuing Sinai campaign see, among many others, Howard Sachar (1999: 77–107; 1993: 485–514) and David Schoenbaum (1993: 113–124). Israel, for its part, had gained control of the Sinai, containing the Egyptian threat for the time being. It had also destroyed many of the Arab terrorist Fedayun bases, but Jerusalem now stood diplomatically isolated in East and West. Bonn, however, pulled out of the international phalanx, resisting calls by the United Nations, Washington, and Arab countries to halt payments and the flow of supplies to Israel as contracted under the 1952 restitution agreement. This support, Chancellor Adenauer argued, was a matter of principle and could not be subjugated to day-to-day politics. His position won Bonn much praise form the Israelis and, together with Jerusalem’s need to tap new financial sources after being cut off from much Western aid, laid the basis for setting the bilateral relationship afoot (Feldman 1984: 159–160; Ben-Natan 1996b: 62; Wolffsohn 1993: 30–31). In 1964/1965, for instance, a flurry of diplomatic activities on both sides of the German wall saw Bonn and East Berlin lobbying heavily on the eve of a string of high-profile summits among nonaligned states in the hope of picking up endorsements of their respective visions of the German state. Cairo quickly emerged as the focus of these activities, with East Berlin and Bonn officials literally lining up at Nasser’s doorstep. Between February and November 1964 alone, a record number of ten delegations from both German sides took a seat on Nasser’s velvetclad sofa, each promising money and know-how to fire up the ailing Egyptian economy (Foreign Office memos on parliamentarians’ trips and the summit of neutral states: Feb. 19, 1964, Sept. 28, 1964, Sept. 29, 1964, all in: PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964). Letter Schröder, Sept. 4, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 241: 996. On the concepts “policy windows” and “societal entrepreneurs” see Checkel (1993). On neoliberalism see, among others, Moravcsik (1992); Baldwin (1993); Putnam (1988).

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Chapter 3

THE FIRST TEN YEARS National Interest vs. National Obligation, 1952–1962


When Israel celebrated the tenth anniversary of its foundation in April 1958,

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German officials were little inclined to mark the occasion. They believed their policy of ascribing paramount importance to German unification did not allow them to. President Theodor Heuss wrote to Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano: I have been—there are also naïve Jews—a) approached by Berlin Jewish students to give a keynote address on the occasion [of the anniversary]—b) to write a “message” to the Jewish New York newspaper Der Aufbau. I have refused both with the simple and banal remark that one has to have visited the country in order to appreciate the accomplishments of those 10 years . . . . The congratulatory message to Nasser a few weeks ago [on occasion of forming the United Arab Republic between Egypt and Syria in early 1958] was conveyed by the foreign missions in Cairo and was endorsed by me right away so that Pankow would not get there first.1

Aside from a rather awkward choice of words, Heuss’ remarks highlight the close correlation between West German–Israel relations on the one hand and intraGerman relations on the other. They also show that the president either did not notice or did not care to elaborate on the fact that he could not visit Israel as head of state precisely because no official relations existed, but that expeditious congratulatory messages to Nasser on the other hand were possible precisely because diplomatic relations with Egypt did exist. Brentano, in a letter to Adenauer on the same matter, agreed with Heuss and told the chancellor: “I believe that we, simNotes for this section begin on page 55.

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The First Ten Years | 47

ply out of consideration for our relations with the Arab world, should not distinguish ourselves with an outright ‘demonstration’ [on occasion of the anniversary].”2 This chapter will give an overview of the first ten years of the bilateral relationship—from 1952 to 1962—to demonstrate to what extent the GermanIsraeli relationship was a function of unification policy. Following that we will be in a better position to assess the policy changes as they occurred in the first half of the 1960s.

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Unification Policy and Israel, 1952–1958 There is an abundance of literature on the restitution or shilumim agreement between West Germany and Israel and the plethora of opinions on Chancellor Adenauer’s likely motivation for concluding the so-called Luxembourg treaty, which allotted a lump sum of DM 3 billion to Israel plus DM 450 million to the Claims Conference representing Jewish victims outside Israel.3 The exact details of the diplomatic proceedings leading to the signing on September 10, 1952 in Luxembourg are of little to no value to this study’s research design. However, a few pertinent observations regarding underlying structures and policy patterns are in order here. Adenauer compensated Jews and Israel for a mix of motives, some of them surely based on his moral conviction that Germany had to—as much as possible— make good again for the crimes perpetrated against the Jews.4 Yet, there can also be no doubt that as a statesman and head of government, the chancellor’s motifs were interspersed with no small dose of Realpolitik. Rolf Pauls, Bonn’s first ambassador to Israel, who as an official in the Foreign Office was intimately involved with the restitution policy, candidly relays that next to moral considerations Adenauer equally, if not more so, harbored reasons pertaining to the Federal Republic’s international stature. The chancellor was convinced, Pauls reports, that Bonn’s relations with the United States hinged to no small degree on his country’s official attitude toward the Jewish world. “We will not get our feet on the ground in America,” Adenauer confided to his foreign policy advisors, “if we don’t enter into some kind of relationship with the Jews that is perceptible to the world and particularly perceptible to the Americans” (Pauls 1996: 73). Adenauer’s state secretary Walter Hallstein stressed at the time that the settlement of foreign debt and restitution had to be counted among Bonn’s most noteworthy foreign policy accomplishments in 1952: “Both issues, as long as they remained unresolved, stood in the way of Germany’s return to the community of people,” he pointed out.5 Lily Gardner Feldman (1984: 52–66) has collected related evidence, finding that it took some cajoling by the three Western Allies and Western public opinion abroad to push Adenauer through on reparations for Israel. In the end, the political expediency of the move appeared to have carried the day. When the chancellor made his initial offer to negotiate a restitution settlement with Israel and Jews across the world, he showed some signs of remorse over the crimes committed by

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the Germans, but deliberately opened his statement in Parliament by stressing the relevance of recent expressions of world public opinion to his overture (Bundestag, Sept. 27, 1951: 6697–6698).6 Upon submitting the signed treaty to Parliament for ratification in early 1953, Adenauer mentioned the “moral necessity” of the agreement as well as the Germans’ obligation to make sacrifices, but he equally stressed that “due respect has to be paid again to the name of our fatherland in accord with the German people’s historic accomplishments in the fields of cultural and economic affairs” (Bundestag, March 4, 1953: 12092). It is important to note, however, that while Adenauer cited world public opinion as one driver behind his restitution policy, he was under no substantial pressure from domestic public opinion to compensate the Jews and Israel. In the early to mid 1950s, there were no signs yet of a movement among German society striving to entice policymakers into compensating Israel or Jews around the world. To the contrary, public opinion polls showed West Germans took an indifferent or even negative stance toward the concerns of Nazi survivors (Noelle and Neumann 1956: 130; Goschler 1992: 211–214). The literature on the restitution negotiations holds that part and parcel of the chancellor’s policy of rehabilitating Germany by means of improving relations with Israel and the Jews was his early initiative to not only conclude the Luxembourg agreement, but to simultaneously propose the commencement of diplomatic relations. Adenauer, it appeared, wanted to settle the “guilt issue” (Schuldfrage) once and for all, rather than dealing with it in separate installments.7 Some saw the chancellor’s attempt to initiate official relations no more than six to seven years after the last death camp was liberated as a tactless move vis-à-vis Israel, contending that the Adenauer government figured that it was opportune—not only for reasons of historical expediency, but even more so for political-tactical reasons—to offend the Arabs with an Israel-friendly move only once (Der Spiegel, March 23, 1960). In sum, the Luxembourg agreement and the Germans’ sounding out of a commencement of diplomatic relations were born out of a sense of a need for recompense in the face of unspeakable crimes committed by the Germans. However, Bonn’s restitution policy was also suffused with a good dose of political realism and was conducted to no small degree in pursuit of national interest. We may already state at this point that moral considerations on the governmental level were not the only—possibly not even the most important—independent variable driving Bonn’s bilateral relations with Jerusalem. Instead, it appears that political expediency, or as Israel’s first ambassador to Bonn put it, Staatsräson, played a major role on the German, but also on the Israeli side (Ben-Natan 1996a: 20). The Israelis rejected Adenauer’s tentative bid for a simultaneous conclusion of the restitution agreement and a commencement of official ties. To officials in Jerusalem such a move would have come too early; it was likely to hurt many victims’ feelings and to divide Israeli society even more deeply than the acceptance of payments from the hands of the perpetrators already had. The so-called Israel Mission—Israel’s representation set up in Germany to administer the restitution

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The First Ten Years | 49

monies paid out in German goods and services—was accorded the rights and privileges of other diplomatic missions in the Federal Republic, but did not enjoy formal recognition and was deliberately based in Cologne, a half-hour drive north of the capital Bonn.8 In 1955/1956, after Jerusalem had signaled its desire for closer association with West Germany, the Foreign Office approached the Israeli side with a proposal to establish a German visa office in Israel that essentially would serve as a counterpart to the Israel Mission in Germany.9 Jerusalem reacted favorably, but the Germans, a few months after their overture, retracted their offer and resisted closer diplomatic ties with Israel for the decade to come. The policy of refraining from commencing ambassadorial relations with Jerusalem was first laid down at a conference of West German ambassadors to the Middle East in Istanbul, Turkey, in May 1956. It was at this meeting, chaired by State Secretary Walter Hallstein, that the offer to establish a visa office in Israel was knocked down, ostensibly for fear of growing Soviet influence in the region but most of all in reaction to the Arabs’ pending threat to recognize East Germany in an act of retaliation should Bonn commence official relations with Israel.10 The Arabs— most prominently Egypt—had not failed to impress on the Federal Republic that any form of official ties between Bonn and the Arabs’ arch-enemy, Israel, would not go unanswered. In a meeting in May 1956 between Chancellor Adenauer and Minister of State Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt, the latter availed himself of the opportunity to stress that any form of diplomatic recognition of Israel by West Germany would deal a “substantial blow” to his country. Adenauer hastened to assure his visitor that Bonn was—against the background of high tensions in the Middle East—“punctilious about avoiding anything that could either offend one side in the region or lead to an increase of tensions.”11 Israel was disappointed at the Germans’ decision not to advance on the road toward formal relations. In the ensuing years Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion launched several more initiatives to convince Bonn otherwise, but was frustrated in his attempts time and again (Der Spiegel, March 23, 1960). Starting in the mid 1950s, Jerusalem desired official relations since it felt that, first, the atmosphere was right for such a step; Bonn’s reputation among the Israeli people had improved considerably since it stood by its commitment to carry out the reparation payments despite heavy Western pressure to halt the shipments in the aftermath of the Suez crisis. Second, West Germany more and more assumed a key political position in Europe, and Israel’s economic and financial ties with the burgeoning economic powerhouse grew ever more important, requiring the establishment of an official political basis to the relationship. In addition, Israel increasingly felt that the absence of diplomatic relations with Germany played out as a political advantage for the Arabs. Without an official outpost in Israel, but with an ambassador in each of the Arab capitals, the information flow and the brain trust gathered in the Foreign Office and its diplomatic corps was heavily lopsided in favor of the Arab view of things.12

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Burgeoning Pro-Israel Activities among German Society, 1958–1962 The state of Israel and Bonn’s compensation payments for Nazi crimes were both highly unpopular among Germans during much of the 1950s. Research on the 1952 restitution agreement has shown that Chancellor Adenauer had to pursue the indemnification project against the leanings of much of West German society and faced considerable skepticism within his own party. His cabinet approved the restitution payment for the Jewish Claims Conference (representing Diaspora Jews living outside Israel) only by a narrow margin, and Finance Minister Fritz Schäffer pointed out that the entire shilumim agreement was unpopular among the German public and would cost the governing Christian Democrats dearly at the ballot box. Indeed, public opinion polls in August 1952 showed that no more than 11 percent of Germans approved of the payments (Noelle and Neumann 1956: 130). In the late 1950s, such societal sentiments began slowly to change as initial signs of pro-Israel activities among German society emerged. In April 1958, a German-Israeli student group sent a letter to Chancellor Adenauer and other German political representatives, urging the government to use Israel’s tenth anniversary as an occasion to join those nations around the globe that had long formally recognized the Jewish state. The student circle, founded at Berlin Free University, consisted of students of Christian and Jewish faith. The group was met with much positive feedback, and the idea of forming such circles quickly spread to other German universities. In their letter to Adenauer, the students shrewdly picked up on policymakers’ paramount concern with national autonomy by arguing that good relations with Arab states were important, but that it would be undignified for Bonn to allow others to curtail German sovereignty and limit its room for maneuver. The students’ demand that the government live up to the burden of the past and “do politically what is a moral imperative” was tantamount to suggesting that foreign policy should be adjusted to a changing domestic base as German society began to come to terms with its recent past amid a wave of Nazi trials in German court rooms. They argued that only thus, and not by subjugating societal concerns to alleged foreign policy prerogatives, could the emerging lacuna between foreign policy and domestic policy be bridged.13 It was in such instances of early societal assertiveness that all three core societal developments taking place at the time—a push to change foreign policy, a trend to empower societal actors, and willingness to face the past—came together and weighed on policymakers to change their tack in policy toward Israel. Yet, historical evidence suggests that at that point, such nascent attempts to influence political decision making in the late 1950s had little to no impact on actual foreign policy outcomes. Ironically at first glance, the burgeoning pro-Israel sentiment among German society received fresh momentum when on Christmas Eve 1959 German youths desecrated the Cologne synagogue with swastika runes, triggering a rash of antiSemitic incidents in January and February 1960. The ensuing public indignation

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was tremendous, and the general sense that it was mandatory to learn from the past lest it should recur spilled over into demands directed at official foreign policy. The German Coordination Council of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation contended in February 1960 that a sign of support and goodwill by the German government toward Israel was in order “particularly now.” With reference to the anti-Semitic incidents, the council called on Chancellor Adenauer to establish formal relations with the Jewish state. It not only characterized such a move as appropriate against the background of Germany’s horrible past and recent neoNazi manifestations, but claimed moreover that such a foreign policy would be read as a sign of a mature and stable West German democracy.14 Domestic policy entrepreneurs started to invoke a trend in the young Federal Republic toward more democracy and increased participation of society in the foreign policy decision making process. This domestic trend was helped and reinforced from abroad, with American-Jewish organizations making it their top priority to inoculate German youths against the temptations of authoritarianism.15 US Senator Thomas J. Dodd confirms the significance of the public reaction to the swastika smearing. “Most indicative, in my opinion, of the vast progress Germany has made,” Dodd told his fellow senators, “was the reaction of the German people to the incident at Cologne.” The rabbi of the synagogue, Dodd said, received “thousands of wires and letters from individual Germans, expressing their personal indignation and their shame.” According to Dodd, the Protestant and Catholic churches, trade unions, and student and youth organizations all condemned the desecrations, and virtually every newspaper “thundered editorially against the delinquents and criminals who were fanning the evil embers of the past” (March 15, 1960, US Congress 1960: 11). Indeed, the West German press dealt extensively with the subject in those days and, most importantly, linked domestic politics to foreign policy by pointing out that the incidents heightened the urgency of establishing diplomatic relations with Jerusalem. Stuttgarter Zeitung (Jan. 23, 1960), for instance, wrote in an op-ed piece that the commencement of diplomatic relations might be instrumental in counteracting the current wave of anti-Semitic incidents. The Social Democrats’ newsletter (SPD-Pressedienst, Jan. 14, 1960) similarly expressed the conviction that establishing official ties with Jerusalem, “particularly in the present situation,” would find general acceptance and appreciation in Israel and around the globe. Moreover, 15,000 students marched in anti-Nazi protests in Berlin, and the parliament debated the issue in a special session. Social Democrat Carlo Schmid made clear that the disgrace brought to Germany by the daubing could not be mitigated by the fact that other countries experienced ruffianism under the sign of the swastika as well (Bundestag, Jan. 20, 1960: 5231). In the ensuing years, societal groups kept knitting an ever tighter network of nongovernmental relations between the two countries. Federal President Heinrich Lübke noted in 1961 that exchanges between “Germans and Jews” (Deutschtum und Judentum) had improved. The Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation as well as adult education programs of all kinds had earned great merits for foster-

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ing mutual understanding, the president was convinced. More and more books were published on the subject, universities endowed professorships in Jewish cultural and intellectual history, the Cologne library “Germania Judaica” was founded and exhibitions on German-Jewish issues made the rounds (Bulletin 48, March 5, 1961: 434). The German Federation of Trade Unions (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund—DGB) built up close relations with Histadrut, its counterpart in Israel. A number of German-Jewish Social Democrats and Labor activists continued their career in the Israeli socialist Kibbutzim movement after the Holocaust and helped to initiate contacts with their former brethren. In February and May 1961, delegations of the DGB’s youth organization traveled to Israel upon Histadrut invitations and called for “steps toward the establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel” (DGB Nachrichtendienst, March 6/ May 24, 1961). Yet, those calls for formal governmental ties coming from the midst of society were still tepid at the time and did not carry significant clout with policymakers on the governmental level.

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Economic and Military Aid beyond Restitution, 1957–1962 The swastika daubing of 1960 provided the backdrop against which the first-ever meeting between German and Israeli government leaders took place in the spring of the same year. One must not underestimate the political ramifications of the swastika incidents, Wilhelm Grewe, Bonn’s ambassador to Washington, warned. West Germany’s international reputation had undoubtedly suffered, Grewe was convinced (Der Spiegel, Jan. 13, 1960). Chancellor Adenauer was so concerned that in mid January he convened a special cabinet meeting to discuss the issue. Germany’s yet again sullied reputation may well have enticed the chancellor to be more forthcoming than he otherwise might have been at the historic meeting with his Israeli counterpart on the thirty-fifth floor of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York on March 14, 1960.16 At the same time, however, Adenauer kept his commitments vague during the two-hour talks. When Israeli Premier David BenGurion requested a USD 500 million loan over ten years as a continuation of economic aid once the restitution payments terminated in 1966, the chancellor simply responded: “We will help you.”17 Adenauer was more precise on military aid, agreeing to the shipments of submarines and missiles that had been prepared by West German Defense Minister Franz-Josef Strauß and Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Shimon Peres. The first installments of the loans, under the code name “Geschäftsfreund” (business partner), moved in 1961 and by 1965 amounted to a total of DM 629.4 million. The terms of the secret shipments of military equipment, altogether worth more than DM 300 million, were finalized in 1962; they commenced in 1963 under the code name “Frank./Kol.” Military aid was topped up in the summer of 1964 but curtailed in the wake of the Middle East crisis of 1965.18 Israel—in particular its founding father Ben-Gurion—was adamant that the fledgling country needed friends and weapons wherever it could get them, and

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Israel’s first premier seized the opportunity to obtain military equipment from Bonn. Initial contacts and preliminary deals in the field of military aid had occurred prior to the New York meeting. Between 1957 and 1959, Peres and Strauß had hammered out a number of agreements, ranging from the sale of Israeli Uzi handguns to Germany, to military training and light armament provided by the Federal Republic to Israel.19 The deals precipitated two major political crises in Israel that caused Ben-Gurion to step down twice in the space of eighteen months. However, the premier came back each time and unflinchingly stood by his conviction that Germany was too important, and had emerged as too big a political and economic force, to be overlooked by Israel in its quest for potent friends. From Germany’s perspective, military and economic aid to Israel was equally remarkable in that substantial support was granted to a country with which Bonn entertained no formal relations. But that was precisely the reason why: Germany felt the need to compensate Israel for agreeing to overlook the blemish of nonexisting official ties between the two states and for publicly acknowledging a “new,” purified, post-Nazi Germany. Moral reasons may have played a role as well, but Adenauer and his successor Erhard were mostly magnanimous in dispensing financial and military aid to Israel to compensate Jerusalem for the lack of diplomatic recognition and thus paid the price for keeping the Arabs at bay on the issue of nonrecognition of Communist East Germany. In the words of State Secretary Karl Carstens: “It has to be our goal that if we grant financial aid, the Israelis quit pressuring us on the subject of commencement of diplomatic relations.”20 The success of this policy was thwarted, however, by Bonn officials who protracted the negotiations and fussed over the exact nature of the New York agreement. By late summer 1961, German-Israeli relations had reached a new low. While Adenauer confirmed in a letter to Ben-Gurion in mid 1960 that they had discussed the continuation of German economic aid to Israel after the expiration of the so-called “Israel treaty,” he did not mention a specific sum. Ben-Gurion repeated the loan terms of USD 500 million over ten years in his response, prompting State Secretary van Scherpenberg to believe that the chancellor had actually committed to the sum—which, in van Scherpenberg’s mind, was bound to trigger Arab formal recognition of East Germany. However, just under a year later Adenauer denied having ever made promises of such a nature and insisted that no economic help on top of the restitution money could go ahead until the Eichmann trial was over.21 During the run-up to the trial Ben-Gurion did his part to keep the Israeli end of the tacit bargain by going out of his way to assure the international public that he did not confuse present-day German democrats with Nazi thugs (Bulletin 41, March 10, 1961: 367). But the bickering in Bonn over the exact nature and size of the economic aid package, the still absent diplomatic relations, and doubts over Germany’s willingness to lobby on Jerusalem’s behalf for a closer Israeli association with the European Community weighed on relations in late 1961 (SZ, Sept. 5, 16/17, 1961). Notwithstanding such disturbances, operation “Geschäftsfreund” was finally launched that same year. As for the

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exact terms, both sides agreed on two loans per year, each ranging between DM 50 and 100 million. With the issue of economic aid out of the way, agreeing on military support went more smoothly despite disagreements between Bonn’s Defense Ministry and the Foreign Office on the prudence of such aid.22 Peres presented his wish list of armaments worth DM 240 million to the Germans in June 1962. Strauß thought the request was reasonable, and Adenauer had already given his general consent earlier in an exchange of letters with Ben-Gurion. Incoming Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder and his state secretary Karl Carstens strictly opposed the deal for fear of an Arab backlash in the event that the secret arrangement became public. Notwithstanding such concerns, the deliveries of army supplies and other German weaponry to Israel under the code name “Frank./Kol.” went ahead in 1963.23 The ensuing military aid program to Israel was substantial by all accounts. At the end of 1964, of the total DM 695.1 million of taxpayers’ money slated to be spent on military equipment aid to developing countries, Israel took up DM 270 million, or 39 percent (including both the 1962 and 1964 agreements). With such a lion’s share earmarked for Jerusalem, Israel was far and away the biggest recipient of military aid at that time. Jordan, the only other Middle Eastern country to receive military aid, was promised to receive DM 2.4 million worth of equipment. The United Arab Republic (Egypt) received economic and financial aid, but no weapons.24

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Conclusion During the first half of the 1950s, the link between Bonn’s relations with Israel on the one hand and Bonn’s unification policy on the other fostered a policy of accommodating the Israeli state: West Germany could not defend its claim to the legal succession of the German Reich without accepting responsibility and offering compensation for crimes committed by the Reich. Also, full admittance to the circle of Western democracies could not be achieved without living up to the obligations of the past. In the second half of the 1950s, however, the way in which unification policy and Israel policy conditioned each other was reversed. From now on the two did not reinforce each other, but became mutually exclusive. After policymakers’ ideas about the German state had been institutionalized in the Hallstein doctrine, Germany increasingly became hostage to its own policy. To salvage its unification policy and prevent Arab recognition of East Berlin, Bonn complied with Arab demands and denied Israel diplomatic ties. Bonn, in other words, shied away from handing the Arab states any pretext under which they could move to recognize Communist East Germany. In such an event West Germany would have been under pressure to execute the Hallstein doctrine, setting off a chain reaction by severing ties with the Arab world and possibly other nonaligned states—a step West Germany strove to avoid at all costs as it would have seriously undermined its position as the sole representative of “Germany as

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a whole.” At the same time, however, Bonn perceived the need to compensate Israel for the lack of official relations by doling out financial and military aid. Consequently, the Hallstein doctrine started to make Bonn vulnerable to pressures— sometimes even blackmail—from both the Israeli and Arab sides. Hence the doctrine began to emerge as a double-edged sword, giving interested third parties the opportunity to turn it against Bonn.25 Starting in the late 1950s, German society began to pick up on this inconsistency within the German foreign policy framework. Societal elites also began to notice an inconsistency between society’s growing readiness to face Germany’s past and policymakers’ unwillingness to reflect such a development in foreign relations by taking a more accommodative stance toward Israel. Those were the beginnings of a significant change. However, still in the mid 1950s, 85 to 90 percent of West Germans did not favor closer ties with Israel, and societal elites did not pursue a pro-Israel policy yet (Noelle and Neumann 1956: 279, 1957: 338). And while that situation changed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, domestic and governmental politics remained two separate realms with the former doing very little to influence the latter. Isolated societal demands for more amicable relations with Israel did not yet manage to penetrate the foreign policy making process. Chancellor Adenauer’s Israel policy up to 1962, it is safe to say, was not driven by domestic demands for a revamped foreign policy toward Jerusalem.

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Notes 1. March 17, 1958, BA, B 136, 301 01, vol. 3635. East Berlin’s neighborhood Pankow used to be the home to many East German officials; the term was used in West Germany as a synonym for East Germany’s government. 2. Letter Brentano-Adenauer, March 19, 1958, BA, B 136, 301 01, vol. 3635. 3. As of mid 1951, the Israelis referred to the global restitution payments as shilumim, the Hebrew word for recompense. The term, borrowed from the book of Isaiah, connoted that these payments did not imply an expiation of guilt, and that their acceptance did not mean forgiveness. In that sense shilumim is fundamentally different from the German word Wiedergutmachung, which etymologically means to return to former conditions, to offset what has been done (Frohn 1991: 1–2; Jelinek 1989: 119–138). The restitution payments were instrumental in stabilizing Israel’s nascent economy, allowing it to defray between 12 and 15 percent of its annual imports (Theo M. Koch, “Diplomatic Relations between the German Federal Republic and Israel,” undated (July 1965), YIVO (AJC), FAD-1 Israel, box 40). The Jewish Claims Conference served as an umbrella organization representing twenty-two organizations of Jewish refugees living outside Israel. It was founded in 1951 and chaired by Nahum Goldmann. 4. For an argument positing a morally conscious German foreign policy that did not require US pressure to compensate Israel financially and diplomatically see Wolffsohn (1987: 19–29, 1993). 5. Decree Adenauer, Sept. 19, 1952, PA/AA, B 2, vol. 14.

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6. Adenauer’s spokesman Felix von Eckardt (1967: 200) confirms in his memoirs that “the psychological effect in the entire Western world” played a role in the conclusion of the restitution treaty. 7. “The Israeli refusal [to establish diplomatic relations in the fall of 1952] split the normalization of our overall relations with Israel, which was intended by us to be one action, into two parts,” Foreign Office official Josef Jansen noted retrospectively (June 23, 1963, AAPD 1963 II, doc. 205: 656). 8. Felix E. Shinnar, head of the Israel Mission, held the personal title of “ambassador” (Shinnar 1967: 112–114; Feldman 1984: 157–158). 9. Memo Jansen, June 23, 1963, AAPD 1963 II, doc. 205: 657; Shinnar 1967: 113–114. 10. Egyptian President Nasser had publicly warned Bonn of such a step a month earlier (dpa, April 4, 1956). On the Istanbul ambassadorial conference see Memo Jansen, June 23, 1963, AAPD 1963 II, doc. 205: 657; Hansen 2002: 421–440; Birrenbach 1984: 91–92). 11. Conversation Adenauer-Sadat, May 18, 1956, BA, B 136, 301 05, vol. 2068. Sadat succeeded Nasser as Egypt’s president in 1970. 12. On Israel’s view of Germany’s economic importance see Ben-Gurion’s statement to the Knesset, July 15, 1957 (Deutschkron 1991: 97). Israeli representative Felix Shinnar explained the detrimental effects that the lack of diplomatic relations had on German-Israeli relations to German Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder (April 5, 1963, AAPD 1963 I, doc. 142: 466). Similarly, German Parliamentary President Eugen Gerstenmaier pointed out that there were misunderstandings between the two countries and added that those could not be resolved “if we do not have a regular representation, just as in any other country, and if we do not come to normal diplomatic relations” (TV interview Dec. 2, 1962, in Vogel 1987 I, vol. 1: 214). The staff of the Foreign Office’s desk for Middle Eastern and North African affairs was comprised of officials who all had worked in the Middle East before taking up their current posts. Three of them spoke fluent Arabic, and desk head Hans Schirmer had served more than four years as council in the Cairo embassy (Die Welt, Feb. 19, 1965). Separately, the diplomatic corps were suspected of having accommodated many former Nazis after the war. The issue was subject to parliamentary investigations in the early 1950s, and in a 1952 parliamentary debate Chancellor Adenauer admitted that 66 percent of the Foreign Office’s higher echelons (Referenten and above) were former NSDAP members (Bundestag, Oct. 22, 1952: 10735; FR, June 1–6, 1951). 13. Letter German-Israeli Student Group FU Berlin to Adenauer, April 17, 1958, BA, B 136, 301 01, vol. 3635. 14. Letter Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation to Adenauer, Feb. 1, 1960, BA, B 136, 301 01, vol. 3635. 15. “Never has it been more vital to teach a whole generation the truth about their nation’s past, for only by looking squarely at this truth can a new beginning be made by the German people,” Joachim Prinz, president of the American Jewish Congress, told Adenauer in the aftermath of the Cologne incident (March 7, 1960, AJHS (AJCs), I-77 (X.), box 52). 16. Although the meeting had been planned long before the swastika smearing occurred, the Israeli side was conscious of the fact that the neo-Nazi incidents had psychologically prepared the ground for substantial demands on Germany. Yitzhak Navon, Israel’s president at the time, expresses this quite openly in his account of the events (Vogel 1987 I, vol. 1: 152–157). See also Weingardt (1997: 37); Seelbach (1970: 99); Deligdisch (1974: 63–65). 17. The Israeli and the German minutes of the meeting are virtually identical on this and almost all other issues (both minutes are published in Jelinek/Blasius 1997: 309–344). There are a number of accounts and studies touching on this historic meeting between the two statesmen: Rath (1994: 214–219); Shinnar (1967: 94–99); Birrenbach (1984: 93); Vogel (1987 I, vol. 1: 144–157); Der Spiegel, April 11, 1966; Hansen (2002: 539–553); Jelinek (2004: 313–317); Weingardt (1997: 37–40); Seelbach (1970: 99, 102–107). 18. On the loans: Memo Lahr, May 3, 1966, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1966. The military deliveries were covered up in the budget as development aid and itemized as “Frank(reich)/ Kol(onien)” (French Colonies).

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19. The first meeting between Peres and Strauß took place under conspiratorial circumstances at the German defense minister’s private home in Rott am Inn. The early contacts led to an arrangement under which planes and helicopters, their insignia painted over, were flown to France and then shipped to Israel (Strauß and Peres interviews in Vogel 1987 I, vol. 1: 134–143; Schoenbaum 1993: 130; Mohr 2003). 20. Memo Carstens, Oct. 15, 1963, AAPD 1963 III, doc. 390: 1327. Similarly, the Foreign Office acknowledged its strategy when admitting that it had not worked as intended: “The attempt to compensate the lack of diplomatic relations with Israel with weapons deliveries to Israel did not yield the desired result” (Memo Jansen, Nov. 3, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964). Shimon Peres also acknowledged the link between military support for Israel and Bonn’s unification policy when he told Strauß: “Alright, you have your Hallstein doctrine. Therefore, we cannot make the first step [commencing diplomatic relations]. Let’s make the second step first then [commencement of a military relationship]” (interview Peres, July 30, 1968 in Deutschkron 1991: 265). The compensatory function of military and monetary aid is also confirmed by Israel’s first ambassador to Bonn, Asher Ben-Natan (1996b: 63). Several researchers have also noted the link: Blasius (1994b: 154–210); Hildebrand (1984: 112); Seelbach (1970: 103); Wolffsohn (1997: 31–32). Feldman (1984: 131–133) emphasizes the moral motives of the Adenauer government, primarily relying on public statements by Defense Minister Strauß. Josef Joffe (1992: 200), also overestimating the moral factor, believes Bonn delivered arms “to lighten its moral burden.” 21. Letter Adenauer-Ben-Gurion, Aug. 5, 1960, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1960; Memo Scherpenberg, Dec. 5, 1960, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1960; Memo Carstens, June 12, 1961, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1961. 22. The Foreign Office would have preferred to substitute economic aid for military support, but Strauß believed Bonn owed Jerusalem since Israel “prevented [an] extreme smear campaign against us (Globke)” (Memo Carstens Feb. 23, 1962 (attachment 2), Jan. 4, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 2: 8–9). Hans Globke, Adenauer’s chief of Chancellery, was under investigation by Federal prosecutors in early 1961 for an alleged collaboration in the persecution of Jews in Greece during Nazi rule. Interventions by Israeli Premier Ben-Gurion and Israeli Chief Prosecutor Hausner contributed much to the dismissal of the case (Vogel 1987 I, vol. 1: 175–184). 23. For the negations on military aid: Memo Carstens, July 11, 1962 (attachment 3) and memo Carstens July 29, 1963 (attachment 4), Jan. 4, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 2: 9–12. 24. All military spending figures are according to a Defense Ministry compilation of equipment aid at the end of 1964 (Dec. 15, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964). Total spending on military aid to Israel was DM 334 million (194 million for actual deliveries plus 140 million in compensation after the unilateral termination of the shipments in 1965) (Memo Lahr, May 3, 1966, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1966). Including economic aid, Israel received a total of DM 3.8 billion in grants. Cairo, in comparison, received DM 1.4 billion in economic aid, almost all of it in repayable loans (Der Spiegel, Feb. 24, 1965). 25. See for a similar line of argument Feldman (1984: 158). Seelbach (1970: 10–13) also touches on the connection between Bonn’s Israel policy and unification policy, albeit with little to no analysis.

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Chapter 4

“THE FATEFUL QUESTION OF THE GERMAN NATION” German Foreign Policy toward Israel, 1962–1964




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May I remind you that the policy pursued by the German government is determined by the spirit and sense of responsibility toward the fate and future of the entire German people and that the German-Israeli relationship, which undoubtedly plays an important role in this, cannot be looked upon in isolation, but rather we are forced to relate it to the fateful question of the German nation, the reunification of all Germans in peace and freedom.1

It was with these words—fraught with much import—that Chancellor Ludwig Erhard enunciated Germany’s unambiguous policy prerogative at the onset of the Middle East crisis: the goal of recreating the whole German nation as organized in a single state would take precedent over full German-Israeli relations. Erhard’s lines, part of a letter addressed to Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, came as a stark reminder that Bonn’s foreign policy makers were imbued with a clear sense of mission, delineating the aim of German postwar unification as derived from the country’s longstanding quest for the amalgamation of state and nation. The “fateful question of the German nation,” as Erhard put it, had governed many of German foreign policy choices in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and appeared to do so again—albeit under decidedly different, this time democratic, insignia—in the 1950s and 1960s. In the operative foreign policy of that time these policy guidelines were laid down in the Hallstein doctrine. I will examine in the following chapters what the doctrine meant for

Notes for this section begin on page 97.

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“The Fateful Question of the German Nation” | 59

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Bonn’s Israel policy, to what extent unification policy was sustainable longerterm, and what role domestic policy entrepreneurs played in German foreign policy making. To recap, these are the main research questions: Why did German foreign policy toward Israel change dramatically in the early 1960s as it moved from resisting the establishment of full diplomatic ties between the two countries to accepting an exchange of ambassadors in March 1965? And, secondly, what—if any—correlation existed between Germany’s foreign policy toward Israel in the early 1960s and developments among German society? What role did notions of history, national identity, and the state play in this framework? The variable to be explained is the shift in Germany’s policy toward Israel and the Middle East generally, and its implications for unification policy To best explain this change, I am examining in what follows instances of increased interest in German-Israeli relations on the part of domestic actors and the government’s response to this new phenomenon during the period roughly spanning the years 1962 to 1964. In a second step, I will scrutinize events and factors contributing to an altered foreign policy stance toward Israel on the part of Bonn’s decision makers by dissecting the developments that led to the commencement of diplomatic relations with Jerusalem in March 1965. Four issue areas dominated the bilateral relationship between Germany and Israel during the early 1960s: diplomatic relations, the role German scientists played in Egypt’s defense program, the pending expiration of Germany’s statute of limitations for murder, and Bonn’s military aid to Israel. The first part of the case study will be organized along those issue areas; within each issue area I will examine the three key levels of analysis successively, putting a premium on interactions between the governmental, domestic, and international levels.

“The Time Has Come . . .”: Diplomatic Relations with Israel? 1963–1964 “I believe the time has come to commence diplomatic relations with Israel,” Chancellor Adenauer stated solemnly in February 1963 and again in August of the same year.2 Both of Adenauer’s last-ditch attempts to salvage his policies on unification and Israel remained unsuccessful, but pressure to establish official ties grew tremendously toward the end of Adenauer’s tenure and at the onset of Ludwig Erhard’s watch. Pressure exerted by domestic policy entrepreneurs grew as societal actors began to revamp West Germany’s thus-far prevailing top-down foreign policy making system and challenged government decision makers’ strong emphasis on unification policy. Government decision makers, on the other hand, stuck to their traditional policies, seeking to fend off requests from German society and the Israeli government to change course.

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The Governmental Level When Chancellor Adenauer proposed commencing diplomatic relations with Israel in early 1963, he was convinced the Arabs would refrain from responding to such a step by recognizing East Germany. In addition, the US public would welcome such an initiative. All Bonn had to do was to proceed in a skilful manner, the chancellor told his foreign minister. Adenauer made remarks to the same extent in public, assuring Karl Marx, publisher of the German-Jewish paper Allgemeine Wochenzeitung der Juden in Deutschland, that he would see to it that relations would be inaugurated during the remainder of his tenure, due to expire in mid October that same year.3 The chancellor believed that Germany’s generous development aid to the Middle East was incentive enough to deter Arab states from establishing official relations with East Berlin—a claim vigorously disputed by Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder and State Secretary Karl Carstens, who together moved to foil the chancellor’s plan.4 Schröder told Adenauer and Israeli representative Felix Shinnar that in the current situation there was no way for Bonn to consider an exchange of ambassadors, repeating the Foreign Office’s mantra that such a step would backfire and “have grave consequences for our foreign policy as well as for unification policy.”5 In the face of internal opposition, Adenauer caved in and told Shinnar—contradicting his earlier expectation—that he was convinced Cairo and its followers would not hesitate to retaliate by recognizing East Berlin.6 Not surprisingly, Israel’s hopes for a sea change in bilateral relations ran high when Ludwig Erhard replaced Adenauer as German chancellor in October 1963. However, during his inaugural news conference the newly anointed head of government moved quickly to dampen such expectations: “The decisive element is the spirit which connects Israel and Germany and has formed a true friendship. Compared to that, the issue of diplomatic relations appears to me to be of somewhat lesser importance. . . . If you ask me directly whether I have the intention of submitting to the cabinet a motion of this kind now [commencement of diplomatic relations with Israel], then I have to say: not for the time being.”7 While the Israeli press and public were outraged at the comments and heaped scorn on Erhard, the Arabs were jubilant.8 Erhard continued Germany’s policy of attempting to buy itself a respite on the issue of recognition by granting financial aid to Israel. In late November, State Secretary Rolf Lahr relayed to Felix Shinnar that Bonn was willing to top up the DM 100 million granted under operation “Geschäftsfreund” for 1963 with an additional DM 52.7 million.9 The payments, however, failed to quell talk of formal relations. Various interim solutions to substitute for full diplomatic ties were mooted, ranging from initiating consular relations to establishing a German analog in Israel to the Israeli restitution mission in Cologne. However, Bonn quickly dismissed the idea of dispatching a West German consul with full diplomatic credentials, since such a move would be all but indistinguishable from full relations and thus prone to triggering the same dreaded consequences. The idea of simply installing a German visa office or trade mission in Jerusalem, on the other hand, was not met with much enthusiasm on

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the Israeli side. Various Jewish representatives outside Israel had suggested such a possibility, but the Israeli government rejected any stopgap arrangement that could be perceived as a sort of second-class recognition.10 The programmatic basis for the Foreign Office’s stance on diplomatic relations was laid out by Alexander Böker, a senior official in the Foreign Office. He wrote in an internal memo: “If Germany was not a divided country, all would have to be said in favor and very little against commencing diplomatic relations with Israel. As the free part of a partitioned country, which has to fight for the continuous recognition of its right to speak for the entire German people, we would maneuver ourselves into a very dangerous situation by recognizing Israel. . . . Commencing diplomatic relations with Israel at this point would in all likelihood suddenly present us with the difficult choice to either abandon the Hallstein doctrine or to retreat for the unforeseeable future from a region that is for political, economic and strategic reasons of utmost importance to us.”11 These comments demonstrate the degree to which Bonn’s foreign policy toward Israel was determined by a concern for national unification and zeal to maintain West Germany’s legally informed right to represent the entire German people. The Foreign Office grew ever more wary of the activities of East Germany’s representative in Cairo. In early 1964, State Secretary Carstens and Ibrahim Sabri, Egypt’s ambassador to Bonn, spent as much as an hour and a half discussing such obscure issues as the political significance of diplomatic posts’ staffing levels and the makeup of invitation lists to state banquets. Nasser had received East Germany’s incoming representative Ernst Scholz and accepted his credentials—a highly diplomatic act, Carstens complained. Sabri remained unfazed: “The president receive(s) just about everyone, including his enemies,” he retorted. And besides, the East German representative would not be invited to Nasser’s New Year’s reception and appeared in no diplomatic listing, quite in contrast to the “ambassador of so-called Israel” in Bonn.12 The Foreign Office became acutely aware of how tenuous unification policy in the Middle East was and seemed to have little faith in its own key policy instrument. Bonn, evidently, was not convinced that, if it were to commence official relations with Israel, the threat of cutting diplomatic relations and terminating development aid would suffice to stop the Arabs from recognizing East Berlin.13 Bonn became hostage to its own policy long before Egyptian President Nasser explicitly turned the Hallstein doctrine around in early 1965, threatening to grant East Germany diplomatic relations if Bonn did not halt its weapons deliveries to Israel.14 The West German side found itself bound by this “Egyptian Hallstein doctrine” as Nasser promised to answer any West German pro-Israel step with a pro-East Germany move. Based on this implicit casual relationship, and owing to the dynamics of the Hallstein doctrine, the German government found itself unable to determine its own course of political action, and incapable of barring other countries from taking steps to the detriment of West Germany. Historicist and legalistic foreign policy as enshrined in the Hallstein doctrine emerged as ever more ill-suited to meet the challenges of present-day politics.

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Ironically, East German government documents even suggest that the Foreign Office may have unnecessarily inflated the problem, and that Adenauer appeared to have been right on the mark with his initial expectation in early 1963 that the Arab response to a commencement of diplomatic relations between West Germany and Israel would have been rather muted. Upon returning from a trip to Cairo, East German Trade Minister Julius Balkow reported that owing to Egypt’s dire economic situation, Nasser was unlikely to help solve the German problem in a manner favored by East Berlin: “The assessment has to be that the government of the UAR will not take any steps in this respect [East German-UAR diplomatic relations] for the time being, this even more so since a strong economic dependency on the key imperialistic countries decisively influences its decisions on the issue.” Nasser remained noncommittal when Balkow suggested that they “raise the status of both countries’ respective representations to a higher level,” skirting the issue by saying that the German problem was a difficult one, that he tried to bring both sides together but that the differences were considerable.15 East Berlin’s frustrated efforts to pick up Cairo’s diplomatic endorsement—intended to strengthen East Germany’s stature as an independent state—suggests that the much repeated claim that Bonn’s hands were tied on the issue of diplomatic relations with Israel was not borne out by the facts. In 1963, Cairo was far from taking concrete steps toward recognizing East Berlin, and hence West Germany’s repeated cave-ins on the issue of relations with Israel in the face of Arab blackmail appears to have been a case of preemptive obedience. In fact, US Secretary of State Dean Rusk suggested as much by pointing out that Bonn’s concern for unification clouded its view of political and economic realities. Rusk told his German counterpart that he did not think the danger of Egypt recognizing East Berlin was all that great, since the United States and other countries also entertained official relations with both countries, Israel and Egypt.16 The Domestic Level During a meeting in April 1963, Hans Schirmer, head of the Middle East and North Africa desk in West Germany’s Foreign Office, confided to Egyptian President Nasser that his government’s political room for maneuver on Israel’s diplomatic recognition was “made difficult domestically.” He explained: In the eye of the international public, but also the German public, the entire problem is intensely charged with the emotional remembrance of the Nazi crimes. Furthermore, parts of the German public do not understand the government’s policy toward Israel since many nations—in the Eastern bloc as well as among the Afro-Asian countries—cooperate closely with Egypt while at the same time entertaining relations with Israel without the Arabs taking offence in this.17

In the early 1960s, sizeable quarters of German society began to question the prevailing presupposition that withholding official recognition from Israel was a legitimate policy stance on the road toward reinstating a unified Germany. Parliamentarians and university students began to promote a revamped foreign pol-

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icy agenda, advocating reconciliation with Israel now that German society was making the effort to come to terms with the Nazi past. Remarkably, in Parliament these initiatives were not limited to left-of-center politicians alone. In fact, it was the Christian Democrats Eugen Gerstenmaier and Franz Böhm who took the lead in 1963. Böhm, who in the early 1950s had headed up the German delegation to the Luxembourg restitution negotiations, considered it a disgrace that the Federal Republic was in a state of “abnormality” with Israel. He wrote to Foreign Minister Schröder that “no citizen or any member of Parliament has the impression that our Foreign Office undertakes anything, or merely contemplates, how we can get out of the current undignified situation.”18 Böhm vowed that in the face of government inertia the parliament would now take over the matter. Not much came of the parliamentary initiative in the end, but it marked one of the first challenges to the government’s Israel policy. Leading Social Democrat Carlo Schmid broke with what so far had been a sacrosanct taboo across all party lines by arguing that official relations between Arab states and East Germany were in fact acceptable to the Federal Republic. “I am not sure whether it is good, with a view to the Arab matters, to refrain from diplomatic relations with Israel,” Schmid said. “I don’t think it is. I also don’t think that it would harm us much if indeed—which I don’t even expect—some Arab states were to recognize Pankow” (Bundestag, May 8, 1963: 3512). Rankled opponents defended Bonn’s legalistic foreign policy, but the push for diplomatic relations with Israel received support from many public figures, including an unlikely ally, the conservative former Defense Minister Franz-Josef Strauß. Strauß—after something of a conversion experience during a recent trip to Israel—declared that Germany felt responsible for Israel’s survival and called for “an end to half-hearted solutions,” urging the government to initiate diplomatic relations with Israel for moral and political reasons.19 By mid 1963, support among parliamentarians for official ties with Israel had reached such intensity that Bonn’s deputy assistant secretary of state for political affairs, Alexander Böker, deemed it necessary to approach “certain members of Parliament with the request to hold back on comments regarding the Israel problem.” Similarly, State Secretary Carstens confronted Gerstenmaier to persuade him—unsuccessfully—to refrain from calls for diplomatic relations.20 Such attempts to muzzle nongovernmental mingling with official Bonn’s foreign policy went hand in hand with efforts to actively engage parliamentarians in support of Bonn’s foreign policy.21 Ludwig Erhard’s remarks at his inaugural press conference as chancellor, indicating that he was not inclined to consider commencing diplomatic relations with Israel for the time being, unleashed a storm of indignation among German society. Student groups in support of closer German-Israeli ties bombarded the chancellor’s office with protest notes, arguing that Erhard’s comments were “a setback which wipes out our generation’s attempt to arrive at normal relations with Israel.” Economic interest or unification policy may not, the students argued, be the only criteria for the conduct of foreign policy generally and in Israel’s case specifically. To them, it was not that opening diplomatic relations with Israel was

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of “lesser importance,” as Erhard had put it, but rather the consequences such a step might cause for unification policy were seen as less significant. Israel, the students claimed, had a “moral right to a bare minimum of inter-governmental appreciation.” They warned that without political action transcending the mere material relationship as manifested in the restitution payments, Germany’s attempts to come to terms with the past would have to remain compulsive and would be ossified as a hollow ritual gesture.22 Effectively, these domestic policy entrepreneurs employed a new set of worldviews and principled beliefs to make their case for a revised foreign policy strategy. Just a few days after the news conference, Erhard himself affirmed the central role of ideas in politics in a speech at Heidelberg University: “The politician and statesman must not exclusively orientate himself to the demands of everyday political life, but also has to take his cues from higher values. . . . It is a question of fate for the German people that it finally bequeaths upon spiritual values the significance they deserve” (Die Welt, December 13, 1963). The students took the chancellor at his word, contending that unification policy belonged to the realm of “everyday political life,” whereas political and moral support for Israel had to be regarded as of “higher value.” Essentially the students argued that a new foreign policy must cease to follow historicism’s dictum of viewing the attainment of a unified nation state as foreign policy’s single most important task. They believed that if the German people adhered to the chancellor’s dictum and allotted spiritual values the “significance they deserve,” the country would have no other choice but to respond to the “question of fate” by commencing official ties with Israel.23 This value system represented the exact flipside of the government’s worldview: to Adenauer, Erhard, the Foreign Office, and many more decision makers, the undisputed top political issue of “higher value” was their vision of a united German nation state. No doubt, the relationship with Israel was important to them, but it was subordinated to the goal of German unity: the relationship with Israel was seen in light of unification policy, not the other way round. Newly emerging policy entrepreneurs effectively turned this hierarchy of political values upside down by ranking relations with Israel higher than concerns for unity of the German nation state. And the student groups wanted to see this transformed value system reflected in high politics. If Germany was serious about making a fresh start after 1945, they argued, such change could not be limited to German society. Rather, they demanded that “this transformation also has to manifest itself in political decision making” (NZZ, July 10, 1964).24 This argument had implications for the transformation of German national identity as well. The students explained that as “responsible German citizens” (verantwortungsvolle deutsche Staatsbürger) they could not agree with their government’s current Middle East policies. The statement signified an avowal of the German state and citizens’ role in its political fabric, suggesting that a new vision of German identity might lie in putting historical obligations ahead of traditional definitions of national interest. By avowing the German state, the students inadvertently responded to and allayed conservative fears—most prominently voiced by Chris-

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tian Democrat Eugen Gerstenmaier—that lessons learned from the seductive quality of the National Socialist state might be taken to such extremes as to denounce state authority altogether. With such concerns assuaged, a morally motivated push for diplomatic relations with Israel effectively joined ranks with a conservative impetus for reconciliation with Israel aimed at salvaging the German state by clearing its name of the blemish of the past.25 In June 1964, students staged a signature drive and a protest march in the center of Munich in support of full ties between Germany and Israel. Demonstrators’ banners bore slogans such as: “For diplomatic relations with Israel” and “We demand Israel’s recognition by the Federal Republic of Germany.” More importantly, the protesters gave their demands a wider political significance with placards demanding: “Israel-issue before the parliament!” By calling for the involvement of the legislative branch of government, societal policy entrepreneurs targeted the traditional leadership role of the executive branch in the foreign policy making process. Submitting the issue of diplomatic relations to the parliamentary process allowed societal groups to use parties and parliamentarians as a transmission mechanism in their quest to influence high level decision making. Via this political leverage, it may be assumed, the protesters hoped to make an impact on the formulation of foreign policy toward Israel. And indeed, parliamentarians did serve as a conduit for societal demands when, a few months after the Munich protests, lawmakers pressured State Secretary Carstens in Parliament to respond to many German citizens’ desire for the commencement of diplomatic relations with Israel. That desire became particularly palpable as public figures came out in greater numbers in favor of official recognition of the Israeli state. Social Democrat Karl Mommer initiated a cross-party parliamentary working group on the issue. Munich’s mayor, Hans-Jochen Vogel, returning from a visit to Jerusalem, lent his voice to the Israeli people’s desire for diplomatic relations. Gerstenmaier, Strauß, Schmid, and Liberal Democratic Parliamentary Vice President Thomas Dehler voiced their support on a television program entitled “Diplomatic Relations with Israel.”26 Foreign Minister Schröder was keenly aware of the power domestic policy entrepreneurs could exert on the government’s primary right—as he saw it—to determine the course of external affairs.27 With reference to Germany’s domestic mood tilting in favor of diplomatic relations with Israel, the minister went as far as to suggest to Cairo’s ambassador that the Arabs might want to consider the advantages such ties might hold for the Arab world. Schröder pointed out that church circles were propagating the commencement of diplomatic ties with Israel. If diplomatic relations existed, one could silence these quarters, Schröder argued, by pulling the rug out from under demands for more far-reaching economic support for Israel. The foreign minister apparently began to sense that a clear-cut distinction between domestic and international politics, as enshrined in historicism, was ever more difficult to uphold—also and particularly so with respect to relations with Israel. “German politics,” Schröder explained to Ambassador Sabri, “is heavily mortgaged by the past.” Therefore there were “certain conflicts between

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aspects which were of exclusive foreign policy nature and those aspects that were determined by restitution and repentance (Wiedergutmachung).”28 In essence, Schröder relayed the fact that German foreign policy in Israel’s case could not be surgically separated from society’s readiness to face up to past sins. At the onset of the 1960s, in other words, it was becoming evident that shaping and determining external relations in the vacuum of a cabinet room would be increasingly difficult. Society emerged as a force to be reckoned with, and the traditional foreign policy elite, albeit adversely poised toward this development, was keenly aware of such a trend.

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The International Level “Détente grows out of congruent interests between the United States and the Soviet Union,” State Secretary Karl Carstens told the West German diplomatic corps in April 1964. Such congruency worried the Foreign Office as it threatened to entail an acceptance of the European and German status quo. Bonn felt particularly uneasy about the US motives for embracing détente. While the Russians—like the Germans—still regarded the German problem as priority number one, the Americans did not. The United States, in the analysis of the Foreign Office, had abandoned power politics in favor of an “evolutionary” strategy, based to a large degree on concepts of mutual agreement with the opposing side. This development puzzled and alienated Bonn because the philosophical underpinning of its foreign policy rested precisely on a realist power paradigm where only strong states were seen as capable of surviving in an environment of anarchy. The concept of détente inherently questioned Bonn’s prime goal of achieving a unified Germany and doubted the political sustainability of a worldview steeped in ideas of nineteenth-century historicism. Inevitably, the global change in the early 1960s triggered a West German sense of forlorn insecurity. Bonn did not have convincing answers to the new geopolitical challenges; hence the political establishment reacted by applying its traditional worldviews and principled beliefs in an even more rigorous fashion as road maps for political action: “(It) follows our task to persistently point out the limits of détente,” Carstens admonished. “There must not be a security vacuum in Europe; Germany may not be discriminated against. Pankow must not be upgraded. Steps toward détente should contain concrete steps toward the solution of the German problem.”29 In 1963 and 1964, the Soviet Union stepped up its efforts to slug out the Cold War on Middle Eastern soil. Not only did Moscow hope to lure the bloc-free Arab nations over to the communist camp—a major concern for the United States—but it also moved to advance its central European strategy by promoting its so-called two-state theory pertaining to the two German political entities—a major worry for West Germany. In fact, the Soviets combined both efforts by promising substantial financial premiums to the Arab countries should they agree to endorse East Germany as a separate state under international law. In the early 1960s, the Bonn government put the better part of its diplomatic efforts into preventing precisely this from happening, trying to entice the Arabs to uphold their

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until then prevailing stance that only West Germany embodied the German state. Communist East Germany, in contrast, strove to upgrade itself politically from a territory (the so-called Soviet Occupied Zone) to a second German state, demanding its share in representing at least part of the German people. With much of the globe carved up between the two political camps, the neutral states emerged as the battleground and ultimate prize, not only for the two superpowers, but also and particularly for the two Germanys. A thumbs up or down verdict from those countries sitting politically and ideologically on the fence could make or break the international standing of either version of the German state. The prime target for both sides was Egypt, a leader among independent countries. In 1964 the German-German tug of war in the Middle East centered on the Cairo summit of nonaligned states.30 These countries had put the German issue on the meeting’s agenda, and a month before the conference, Bonn’s foreign minister Schröder issued a stern warning to his cabinet colleagues: “All indications are that the Soviet Union intends to use this opportunity to facilitate the breakthrough of its unification policy and induce at least some of the neutral countries to commence diplomatic or consular relations with the Soviet Zone. . . . The conferences and the months ahead will be of crucial importance to our policy and the sustainability of our right to sole representation [of the German people].”31 The race between Bonn and East Berlin was on and the Foreign Office wasted no time setting up a special task force focusing exclusively on “defense measures” in the area of unification policy. The main tool for both East and West Germany in wooing neutral states—most of them developing countries—was to dole out economic and financial assistance in return for good conduct on Germany. East Berlin inundated African and other nations with memoranda on the German question and went on a spending spree in the neutral world, offering lavish economic aid.32 Equally, Bonn’s State Secretary Rolf Lahr made no bones about the fact that development aid was a key tool in defending West Germany’s vision of the German state: “Development aid is a first class foreign policy instrument (of course, one has to abandon the ‘pure’ school of thought holding that development aid represents global social policy). It is unquestioningly so, that trade and development policies are our main pillars in pushing through our nonrecognition policy.”33 The instrument certainly had some bite, particularly since the West outspent the Soviet Union in financial and economic assistance to developing countries by a ratio of eleven to one, according to West German numbers.34 When East Berlin confronted Egyptian President Nasser with a request to help convince fellow nonaligned countries to recognize East Germany, Nasser remained noncommittal, pointing to India’s and Indonesia’s reluctance to go through with such a plan for fear of economic repercussions. The president also indicated that he himself was not prepared to go all the way. Nasser believed he had already done much for East Berlin by agreeing to the implementation of an East German consulate in Cairo, for which he had taken considerable flak from Bonn.35 Similarly, Bonn was able to hold the trenches when Egypt and its fellow bloc-free states did not challenge West Germany’s unification policy at their summit.36 Bonn was

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jubilant, but it soon became clear that West Germany had won no more than a Pyrrhic victory. In fact, Nasser skillfully double-crossed both Germanys as he played East Berlin’s and Bonn’s visions of the German state against each other. Nasser made far-reaching suggestions toward strengthening trade relations and economic cooperation between East Germany and Egypt, while carefully keeping the East Germans at arm’s length in the area of political relations. He wanted to see Germany united, Nasser told Wolfgang Kiesewetter, the East German representative in Cairo, but added that currently “Germany consists of two countries,” skillfully skirting use of the term “state.” During the same meeting, however, the president proceeded to agree, on principle, to a visit by East German Premier Walter Ulbricht to Egypt, an immensely explosive move since an official visit by East Germany’s head of state was prone to be seen as an Egyptian de facto recognition of East Germany as a full-fledged state. Conscious of that possibility, Nasser went out of his way to make an actual visit a virtual impossibility by postponing a concrete date indefinitely.37 While the visit, when it did happen in February 1965, brought the Middle East crisis to a head, the trip was not a preordained affair. The Egyptian leader appeared to be determined to use the highly symbolic trip of an East German leader only when he could hope to get political mileage out of such a move or when he saw reasons to politically clobber the Bonn government. On the other hand, the invitation to Ulbricht showed Nasser—true to his reputation as a “surfer of the Cold War”—slowly edging toward an anti-Bonn and anti-Western stance. The Egyptian president was forging a political weapon in late 1963 and early 1964, even though he was not prepared to wield it just yet. At that time, it was still convenient for Cairo to harness Bonn’s fear of an East German political upgrade by forcing West Germany to desist from any steps toward official recognition of Jerusalem.

“Coming to Terms with the Past”: German Scientists in Egypt, 1962–1964 “After the fall of the Hitler-regime, which caused the extermination of millions of Jews, members of this people reappear today with actions designed to eradicate the state of Israel,” Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir thundered on the floor of the Israeli parliament in March 1963.38 German scientists’ participation in the Egyptian rocket program dominated—at times possibly more than any other issue—bilateral relations between Bonn and Jerusalem in 1963 and 1964 and compounded Israel’s dismay about the absence of diplomatic relations between it and West Germany. Two key tangents can be isolated from the intricate and at times confusing web of political bickering over this highly charged issue. Both themes strike paramount psychological chords. For one, the fact that German citizens extended a helping hand to a country hostile to Israel and bolstered a weapons machinery aimed at

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the extermination of the Jewish people, inevitably raised the specter of the dark German-Jewish history. The task of “coming to terms with the past” (Vergangenheitsbewältigung) was pitted against the West German national interest in unification—a goal that appeared to preclude an accommodation of Israel’s demands. The material threat that the Egyptian missiles generally and the German scientists more specifically posed to Israel was—according to German, American, and even Israeli officials—negligible. Consequently, the key concern from Jerusalem’s perspective was not a military but a psychological one, while from Bonn’s perspective it was Israel’s—not Germany’s—coming to terms with the Nazi past that was at stake. Secondly, German society asserted itself during the protracted political deliberations over the possible use of legislative means to force the engineers to return home. Even though the Bonn government did not budge in the end, the role that societal actors in Germany and abroad played in the Federal Republic’s foreign policy making process reached a new, higher quality. The crisis surrounding the German experts in Egypt originated with President Nasser’s decision, some time after the Suez conflict, to commit Egypt to the development of a rocket in his arms race against Israel. The president enlisted German scientists’ help, hiring three leading experts from a Stuttgart research institute in 1959 and 1960.39 Quiet Israeli government protests against their activities eventually led to the three engineers’ discharge from the institute, but not to the end of their activities on behalf of the Cairo regime. Israel was put on heightened alert on July 21, 1962, when Egypt publicly launched two missiles for the first time.40 It soon became public that the German experts were part of the effort—a particularly shocking piece of news to the Israeli public as it reverberated across the country. The German government came under immediate heavy attack from the Israeli press, and in August 1962 Jerusalem’s Deputy Defense Minister Shimon Peres called on his counterpart Franz-Josef Strauß “to take steps in order to stop these activities in the future.”41 Bonn demurred, claiming it could do nothing about private activities of German citizens, and denied the Israeli charge that German nationals were engaged in the development of atomic, biological, or chemical (ABC-) weapons.42 The German government’s reluctance to intervene actively contrasted with an internal Foreign Office memorandum acknowledging that the role German engineers played in the Egyptian aircraft and rocket industry amounted to a “direct participation in the armament program of the UAR, which is eminently directed against Israel.”43 By March 1963, about ten German specialists were collaborating with the Egyptian missile program, and 200 to 250 experts from Germany, Austria, Spain, and Switzerland were helping Cairo to develop military jet planes.44 The Governmental Level At the heart of the Germans scientists’ cooperation with Cairo’s rocket program was more than meets the casual observer’s eye. The central theme of analysis here revolves not around military concerns, but the salient issue of how Germans came to grips with the fallout from Nazi rule and the Holocaust amid the country’s bid

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to recapture the philosophical imagination of a unified state and morally immaculate nation. According to security officials in Washington, Egyptian airborne weapons posed no immediate threat to the political and military stability of the Middle East. The Johnson administration had argued for years that martial Egyptian rhetoric was not to be taken at face value and that Cairo’s military capabilities were no cause for Israel to worry. “In analyzing Arab threats to Israel, it is crucially important to distinguish between actions and words!” Robert W. Komer, National Security Council assistant for Middle Eastern affairs, implored in a commentary on the Israeli-UAR arms balance.45 Egypt’s rocket arsenal was a case in point, the US administration believed, and concluded that the “UAR missile capability will remain primarily a psychological threat and that there will be no UAR nuclear capability.”46 It was precisely this psychological component, however, that was of crucial importance to the Israelis. When President Johnson informed Israeli Premier Levi Eshkol of his administration’s belief that the Egyptian missile threat was likely to remain feeble through 1970, the prime minister retorted by invoking a typical Israeli historio-political paradigm steeped in the belief that at any given moment, the final verdict on the survival of the millenniums-old Jewish people could be handed down. “We cannot afford to lose,” the prime minister told the president. “This is our last station in history.”47 Invariably, this particular historio-psychological framework, as it pertained to Jewish history and the arms race in the Middle East, came even more to the fore when Israeli officials dealt with Bonn on the role German nationals played in Nasser’s weapons machinery. For historical reasons—the Jewish struggle for survival over centuries and the extermination of Jews under Nazi rule—it was of secondary importance to the Israelis whether or not the Egyptian rockets indeed represented a major strategic advantage to Nasser. The German scientists’ impact on Israel’s sense of security was more a matter of psychology than one of balance of power. Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Abba Eban made this abundantly clear when he told a group of leaders of major US Jewish organizations that from a military point of view the German experts in Cairo “were not the main problem.” Eban explained that “Egypt has only second-rate Germans, none of whom has as yet published a scientific paper. Israel’s progress is, so far, greater than theirs.” Eban emphasized, however, that “the German scientists are essentially a moral issue for Germany.”48 All three key governmental players—the United States, Germany, and Israel— agreed that the activities by German experts in Egypt represented a significant psychological problem but posed no viable military threat to Israel. Germany and Israel fundamentally disagreed, however, over whose people’s collective psychology was at stake and consequently over whether the onus was on Israel to simply resign itself to the scientists’ presence in Egypt or on Germany to actively seek their return. Decision makers in Bonn did not conform to Abba Eban’s view that the experts were a “moral issue for Germany.” Quite to the contrary, the Foreign Office believed the scientists were an element in Israel’s process of coming to terms with the past. The German mercenaries on Nasser’s payroll caused a major tur-

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moil in Israeli domestic politics. No other incident in the countries’ bilateral relations appeared to stir the emotions of Nazi survivors and their brethren to quite the same degree as German collaboration in Egypt’s war effort.49 West German support for Egypt’s armament program conjured up the Jewish and Israeli collective nightmare of a recurring Holocaust and sparked harsh attacks on the Israeli government for what was perceived to be an overly pro-German policy. Moreover, due to Bonn’s stonewalling over taking constitutional measures to force the scientists in Cairo to return home, it became ever harder for the Israeli government to defend its trust in the German leadership against harsh criticism by Israeli opposition parties and the public at large, as Bonn’s assistant secretary of state for political affairs, Josef Jansen, observed: “Consequences are a more skeptical view of the Federal Republic held by heavyweight politicians such as Eshkol and Mrs. Meir and a disruption of the psychological ‘coming to terms with the past’ on the part of the Israeli public.”50 West German officials appeared to equate Israel’s difficult domestic situation on issues pertaining to Germany with a process of digesting—possibly even forgetting—recent German-Jewish history. The Germans dismissed Israel’s repeated insistence that the scientists posed a moral challenge to be tackled by Germany, framng it as a matter solely intended for domestic consumption in Israel. This issue was not, the Germans insisted, their problem to solve. The government deflected suggestions that it would be well advised to accept a moral responsibility in the matter by referencing the legal situation. Bonn, government spokesman KarlGünther von Hase said, had “no way of keeping German citizens from traveling abroad unless they violated German law or the laws of their host country.”51 At no point did the German cabinet proceed beyond the stage of merely contemplating legislative measures aimed at keeping German nationals from engaging in preparations for warfare abroad. Bonn’s reluctance to follow up words with deeds left any such proposals languishing in parliamentary and governmental bureaucracies. In several instances, interministerial task forces got together to brainstorm possible solutions to the problem, but the ensuing debates time and again showed a lack of political will to tackle the issue in earnest. In the spring of 1963, a suggestion by the Defense Ministry to draft a constitutional amendment that would have made German nationals’ collaboration in foreign armament programs subject to special government approval was brushed aside by Hans Globke—State Secretary in the Chancellery—who maintained that any legislative action would run into severe opposition among all political parties.52 A few months later, Adenauer even decided to “shift down a gear.”53 Predictably, such passiveness drew heavy fire from Jerusalem, lending momentum to the Israeli campaign to put moral pressure on Germany. A Knesset resolution in May 1964 invoked Germany’s Nazi legacy, proclaiming that Bonn had a moral obligation to bar Germans from developing weapons intended to kill Jews (NZZ, May 16, 1964). German-Israeli relations reached a new low that year as the ill will over the missile experts was compounded by Bonn’s refusal to commence diplomatic relations and its reluctance to extend the statute of limitations for Nazi murders beyond its

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twenty-year time horizon (Die Welt, October 9, 1964). Amid the mêlée between Bonn and Jerusalem, the complex historio-political psychologies on both sides fed on each other. The more the German side believed the scientists represented largely an Israeli domestic issue and refrained from steps to prevent their work, the more heated the political debate became in Israel and the more its government was forced to invoke moral pressure by calling on Bonn to live up to the burden of the past. Such behavior, however, hardened the Foreign Office’s view that Israeli representatives’ references to the Holocaust were mostly intended for their domestic audience. And this audience—in the Foreign Office’s view—had trouble coming to terms with the past, for it refused to view Germany as a normal country that could be afforded the legitimacy to support both Israel and Egypt. While Bonn was acutely aware of the difficulties that its refusal to take tangible steps against the scientists posed to the Eshkol government, internal German foreign policy documents contain no mention of a perceived moral obligation to follow through with enacting a law against the experts’ work in Egypt. In external communications, policymakers went out of their way to acknowledge Germany’s moral burden and express regret for and disapproval of the role German scientists played in Cairo. Yet at the same time, Chancellor Erhard and other officials made it unequivocally clear that moral considerations and sympathy for Israel’s concerns ended where Bonn’s relations with the Arabs began—and where, by extension, its unification policy was affected.54 Particularly in 1964—on the eve of the series of summits of Arab and nonaligned states—Israel could not hope to see Bonn steel itself to honor its halfhearted commitment to take legislative steps to force the scientists out of their lucrative jobs in Cairo. A proposal to change the country’s passport law to make it easier to revoke German citizens’ travel documents was held up by the government.55 “In executing crucial German interests,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Böker explained, “we could not have gone any other way to avert detrimental implications for our unification policy and the right to sole representation of the German people.” Several neutral states might be tempted to upgrade East Germany at the imminent summits, Böker said, and concluded: “Putting the draft legislation on the back burner is intended to avert triggering disgruntlement on Cairo’s part and thus on the part of the Arab states at this point since Cairo would perceive the approval of draft legislation as an unfriendly act, directed against its vital interests.”56 Not only was the Foreign Office reluctant to force the scientists to leave Egypt; it also came to regard their presence in Cairo as a useful political tool. Germany had been supplying weapons to Israel under the secret “Frank./Kol.” deal. However, it emerged by mid 1964 that these deliveries were significantly less secret than all sides involved would have hoped. The Jordanians and Egyptians had spotted anti-aircraft artillery installations “made in Germany” along Israeli borders, and the New York Times as well as the Jerusalem Post had carried a number of stories on secret German military aid to Israel. Some reports even claimed the program was substantial in scope and had been in place for as many as five years.

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Despite such intelligence, the Arabs had not lodged any official complaints with the Bonn government. A fact, Foreign Office staff concluded, “definitely attributable” to the off-setting character of German scientists’ help with Egypt’s armories.57 The scientists’ contribution to the Egyptian armament industry, they believed, had to be looked at as political currency, suitable to counterbalance whatever knowledge the Arabs had acquired on German military assistance to Israel. However, a major leak to the international press in late 1964, revealing the full scope of West German military aid to Israel and sending shock waves through the Arab world, threatened to disturb this delicate balance as the shaky Arab support for Bonn’s—rather than East Berlin’s—version of the German state diminished significantly. To contain further political fallout from the press reports, the Foreign Office was ready to bring the scientists to bear in yet another tradeoff. The office now was prepared to offer Egypt the complete termination of all arms shipments to Israel under the condition that Cairo dismiss the German scientists.58 In other words, to defend its position on the exclusive representation of the German state, Bonn’s diplomacy proposed to withdraw military support from Israel if Egypt was ready to forego the German brain power it had thus far harbored.

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The Domestic Level Much of German society was appalled to learn that some of their compatriots supported the weapons machinery of Israel’s enemies (Die Welt, Dec. 5, 1964). “These activities,” Chancellor Ludwig Erhard admitted, “are condemned by large groups of the German people” (Bundestag 56, Oct. 15, 1964: 6787). Lawmakers of all three parties represented in Germany’s parliament moved to drum up support for a law that would have barred the technicians from continuing their work in Cairo. Against the background of Germany’s NS past, the parliamentarians were moved by fundamental beliefs about right and wrong and just and unjust, setting aside considerations for national unity and inadvertently promoting a new ideational framework that clashed fundamentally with the Foreign Office’s belief system. These members of parliament, a high-ranked government official noted in dismay, looked at the problem of the scientists “exclusively from the viewpoint of the German people’s moral burden.” The parliamentarians were, as he saw it, willing to accept that proposed legislative measures prohibiting collaboration with Egypt’s rocket program would lead to “further rapprochement between the Arab states and the Soviet Occupied Zone, probably even to its full recognition.”59 Such a position, the government believed, was an attack on its unification policy and by extension an assault on what it regarded as irrevocable tenets of German foreign policy. However, as the cohesive power of an unambiguous focus on national unity waned among West German society, the parliament carved out ever more room to unfold its influence in foreign policy, a field that thus far had been the exclusive prerogative of the executive branch of government. The Foreign Office’s legal department protested that while the draft bill may formally have been a legislative effort initiated by the legislative branch of government, it might eventually emerge as “an act of [executive] foreign policy in the shape of a law.”60

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Despite such inroads, the back and forth between the government and the parliament on possible legislative measures against the scientists in Cairo in 1963 and 1964 paints a picture of a society and lawmakers still bereft of the wherewithal to shape foreign policy conclusively. After initial rounds of discussions, Franz Böhm—the key sponsor of an anti-scientists bill—toned down his draft legislation in a bid to win approval among his fellow Christian Democrats. The proposed supplementary law to Article 26, Paragraph 2 of the German constitution stipulated making German participation in the production and dissemination of ABC-weapons a punishable offence. The opposition Social Democrats stood foursquare behind Böhm and the Liberal Democrats acquiesced, but a majority of Böhm’s governing Christian Democrats dissociated themselves from the effort, leaving the three factions no other choice but to settle for the lowest common denominator, i.e., passing a resolution in mid 1963 that tossed the reins of action back to the executive branch of government. It called on the government to initiate appropriate legislation—a stark sign that in 1963 the parliament was not quite ready yet to follow through on its initial resolve to take on the role of a key foreign policy driver.61 When the proposed change to the German constitution was taken up in interministerial steering groups, the discussions—like so many before—did not progress beyond the mere dissection of the obstacles to such a law. The government resolved that tighter export controls on goods destined for Egypt and discreet poaching of the scientists, but no legislative action, was the route to take. However, the idea of drafting a bill lingered for the rest of 1963 and much of 1964, keeping the government on its toes. The Social Democrats were particularly unwilling to abandon the issue. After failing to orchestrate a cross-party consensus, they went ahead unilaterally and submitted a motion to Parliament in June 1964 (NZZ, June 27, 1964). The Interior Ministry objected that the draft, if enacted, would inflame the Arabs and thus thwart Bonn’s goal of preventing East Berlin from achieving international legitimacy.62 The cabinet endorsed this view, but foreign policy documents show a government that remained jittery when faced with the prospect of the legislative branch possibly voting the bill into law anyway, thus threatening to wrest foreign policy powers from the executive. If a law came at all, it had to pertain to future German expatriates only, not to present ones, Foreign Minister Schröder demanded. And State Secretary Carstens admonished: “We have to be in touch with the parliamentary groups, so that we can be sure the parliament will not settle on a law detrimental to our concepts.”63 In late 1964, Chancellor Erhard conveyed to Egypt’s president Nasser his resolve not to support an anti-scientist law. Erhard emphasized, however, that the government had no way of telling “to what extent it would be able—with a view to the atmosphere in the German Parliament—to push through its policy successfully.”64 In the end no such law materialized, but the various parliamentary initiatives had a powerful impact via the woeful public relations they generated for the government at home and abroad. The legal bickering did not map out a clear path for foreign policy, but it spotlighted a newly assertive parliament,

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which—supported by society at large—was attempting to wield power in foreign policy formulation.

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The International Level Domestic pressure in favor of honoring Israeli sensitivities regarding German collaboration in Egypt’s armament program was reinforced by nongovernmental groups residing abroad. The American Jewish Committee, along with other American-Jewish organizations, launched a campaign aimed at instilling a resilient civil spirit in West Germany’s nascent democracy. The AJC was most interested in empowering societal policy entrepreneurs to nurture an organic German opposition to the scientists’ activities and asked Frankfurt sociologist Max Horkheimer to ascertain “the general feelings of the intellectual, educational and academic circles” in Germany.65 Likewise, other international Jewish organizations appealed to German domestic policy entrepreneurs, calling for “German public opinion” not to tolerate governmental attempts to portray the scientists’ collaboration in Egypt’s weapons development as an issue where Israel, not Germany, had to “come to terms with the past” (FAZ, March 28, 1963). International nongovernmental actors also moved to directly influence foreign policy at the highest levels. In mid 1963, an American Jewish Committee delegation stepped up the pressure by calling on Ambassador Heinrich von Knappstein in Washington, expressing their dismay at the scientists’ activities and urging Bonn’s representative to take action on the matter. Knappstein was rather sympathetic toward the Jewish complaints about the weapons experts and suggested that perhaps he was even more concerned than his visitors because the issue was “so terribly embarrassing to his government.”66 In similar instances, Jewish leaders and clergymen traveled to West Germany, impressing on German officials their concern over the presence of the scientists in Egypt. Most prominently, Nahum Goldmann, President of the World Jewish Congress, intervened with Chancellor Erhard, urging him to issue a statement of regret and to voice his resolve to take action.67 The Israeli government also did its part in orchestrating a cross-border network of domestic communities by attempting to strengthen the hand of German society. In a key policy speech on the problem of the scientists, Prime Minister Eshkol played not only to his audience at home in Israel, but also to societal elites within Germany. He wanted to express his wish, Eshkol said, that “the best of the German people” understood Israel’s feelings about the annihilation of the European Jews by Germany. The premier went on to affirm his hope that Germans may never again raise their hand against the Jews. His call on the German consciousness culminated in an appeal to the entire society, while targeting some of its key policy entrepreneurs: “The entire people, its youth, women and mothers, the press, radio, television, the million members of the trade unions, who have condemned the work of the scientists, the intelligentsia, the pupils and their teachers at all levels of the education system—they can all create the atmosphere which incites every German, no matter whether scientist, technician, or simply

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the man in the street, to guard themselves against extending a helping hand to our mortal enemies.”68 With these emphatic words the Israeli premier clearly aimed to influence a burgeoning movement of Germans who dissociated themselves from what they perceived as an immoral and inflexible foreign policy stance on the part of the Bonn government. Such domestic actors were willing to put moral parameters, informed by lessons of Germany’s gruesome past, above the country’s national interest in unification, and Eshkol skillfully moved to nudge along what he hoped would emerge as powerful domestic opposition to German government policy. Political scientists Emanuel Adler and Peter M. Haas have argued that socalled international epistemic communities—pockets of intellectual societal agents engaged in actively generating and promoting new policy ideas—can play an important role in the evolution of high-level decision making. The attempts by American-Jewish organizations and the Israeli government to influence not only official Bonn, but also West German domestic elites, may be interpreted as efforts to shape policy innovation by “framing the range of political controversy surrounding an issue” (Adler and Haas 1992: 367–390). German policy entrepreneurs (such as students, churches, and trade unions) and Jewish communities in the United States together with the Israeli government formed, however loose and informal, a transnational coalition dedicated to changing Bonn’s foreign policy. Yet, despite the powerful potential of transnational coalitions, it has to be kept in mind that they cannot always shape policy as they wish. Cross-border domestic communities are most successful when there are no existing policies in place and decision makers are unfamiliar with the issue concerned (Adler and Haas 1992: 381). Precisely these preconditions were not in place in the case of the German scientists in Cairo. To the contrary, the immense publicity of the matter and the importance of the Middle East in the context of the Cold War made decision makers act swiftly on policy formulation and prompted them to monitor the issue closely. In fact, Cold War–related concerns appeared to have induced the US administration to refrain from joining the campaign against the scientists. While Washington was in no way enthusiastic about their presence in the Middle East, as it feared their work would be detrimental to the region’s delicate power equilibrium, it did not object to Western collaboration with Egypt’s military aircraft industry. “The West in any event cannot prevent the UAR from obtaining its military aviation requirements from the Soviet Union,” the US government believed, “and it is preferable that the UAR be partially reliant on the West in this field.”69 The administration was considerably less sanguine, however, about the use of Western personnel in Egypt’s rocket program; yet, here too it abstained from recommending the German scientists be pulled out of the country.70 There are no internal records available indicating how the exchange of views between the United States and Germany progressed on the matter beyond 1963, but at least publicly the White House gave the impression that the administration had not changed its neutral stance in 1964. When approached by US interest groups requesting that its German ally be nudged toward adopting legislative means forcing the technicians’ departure, the Johnson administration remained

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steadfast, maintaining it would be inappropriate for the president “to become involved in the internal affairs of the German government.”71 In sum, German diplomacy in the course of 1964 revealed the extent to which considerations of unification policy overshadowed the Federal Republic’s willingness to accommodate the Jewish state on the issue of the scientists specifically and the psychology of the burden of the past more generally. The German government put the burden of “coming to terms with the past” squarely in Israel’s purview, absolving itself of having to align its foreign policy with moral parameters. In as much as the fate of a few German missile experts was deemed capable of tipping the balance in the intra-German struggle over supreme legitimacy, West German diplomacy grew increasingly inflexible and curtailed its political room for maneuver by reverting to a legalistic foreign policy. While the restraint exercised by the US government on the issue might have helped Bonn to stick to its position in the face of stiff nongovernmental opposition, we also have no evidence of Washington urging Bonn to keep the biggest bone of contention—the rocket experts—in Egypt. To the contrary, the US government was rather wary of the scientists’ presence in the Middle East. Consequently, Bonn’s refusal to act on the issue was unlikely to be motivated by Cold War or alliance considerations. National interest—the concern for the German state—is the most compelling explanatory variable in this instance. Societal elites asserted themselves further, even though the German government could not be swayed by domestic and international policy entrepreneurs to take effective means against the scientists. The highly publicized and emotion-laden issue helped to strengthen German societal actors and bolstered transnational epistemic communities.

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“A Question of Policy, Not Law”: The Statute of Limitations for Murder, 1963–1964 The prosecution of crimes sanctioned by life in prison comes under the statute of limitations after twenty years….72

It was this passage of West Germany’s penal code that caused a global uproar in late 1964 and early 1965. Paragraph 67 provided for a twenty-year statute of limitations imposed on the prosecution of murder. For capital crimes committed during Nazi rule, the statute began to run on May 8, 1945, the day the regime collapsed, and—according to the twenty-year rule—was to expire on May 8, 1965. A judicial act, such as an indictment, could interrupt the period of limitation for that particular offense and cause it to be extended by an additional twenty years. Therefore, some known Nazi criminals against whom judicial proceedings had been initiated stood not to benefit from immunity after May 1965. However, hundreds, if not thousands of other Nazi criminals who had not yet been apprehended or charged, were to remain free and, effectively, be cleared off their gruesome past in the spring of 1965.

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Typically, a country’s legal code represents a purely domestic concern with few international ramifications. However, the animated international debate over the possibility of extending Germany’s twenty-year statute of limitations represented a significant foreign policy challenge for the Bonn government. German policymakers’ primary concern with national unification barred German prosecutors from conducting research in Eastern European archives: it was feared such an official act would be perceived as an implicit acknowledgement of the legitimacy of Communist governments, including that of East Germany. East Berlin, on the other hand, exploited Nazi documents in its possession as propaganda tools in its efforts to question the legitimacy of the West German state. West Germany’s statute of limitations also influenced relations with other countries as the Federal Republic’s nascent democracy was subjected to intense international scrutiny in the postwar years, particularly on matters related to its Nazi past. In fact, interest groups in the United States appeared to have helped German domestic forces to challenge the government’s policy agenda and ameliorate the ground for a reversal of Bonn’s reluctance to extend the statute of limitations.

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The Governmental Level Roughly 10,000 National Socialist–inspired murderers were still at large at the end of 1964, in the estimate of Robert M. W. Kempner, US Deputy Prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials.73 German courts had indicted and tried several thousand perpetrators in the late 1940s, but after the foundation of the West German state in 1949, trials against Nazi perpetrators tapered off as the common belief took hold that the problem had been dealt with sufficiently. Upon realization that this assessment had been too optimistic, prosecution of Nazi murder cases began in earnest only six to seven years prior to the 1965 expiration date, starting with the Ulm trial of SS mobile death squads in 1958. In 1964 and 1965, many legal experts suggested more time was needed to fully uncover the manifold instances of crimes against humanity committed during Nazi rule. Chancellor Ludwig Erhard agreed. It would be “unbearable” if mass murderers were to go unpunished after May 8, 1965, he said (FAZ, Sept. 26, 1964). However, the chancellor was overruled by his cabinet peers, and on November 5, 1964 the government decided not to extend the expiration date on constitutional grounds.74 Government representatives—most prominently among them Justice Minister Ewald Bucher—quoted two related arguments against prolonging the statute. For one, retroactive legislation was deemed impermissible because no law must be applied that did not exist at the time the crime was committed (nulla poena sine lege). Therefore, such an effort would violate Article 103, Paragraph 2 of the German constitution prohibiting ex post facto legislation. The second argument against the extension was that such a change at the government’s whim would smack of dictatorial practice, echoing the Nazis who had routinely twisted the law to suit their purposes. “The Erhard government does not want to imitate them,” spokesman Karl-Günther von Hase explained (The Jerusalem Post, Nov. 12, 1964). The proponents of an extension, on the other hand, pointed out

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that murder had always been a crime and that the proposed change in the duration of the statute pertained to procedural law only, not to the criminal legislation itself, and that this kind of procedural provision may be amended by Parliament without violating constitutional guarantees. Moreover, crimes against humanity, such as the Nazi murder cases, were to be treated differently from ordinary crimes. The penal code—its origins dating back to the Bismarck Reich of the nineteenth century—was directed at exceptional, individual homicide, not mass atrocities and genocide, they argued.75 The majority of NS death camps were located in Eastern Europe; hence a thorough probe into Germany’s criminal past required tapping archival sources in Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere. Yet, the German government barred its Ludwigsburg office for the prosecution of NS crimes from accessing documents stored in Communist Europe. Bonn’s Justice Ministry and the Foreign Office shied away from taking up Eastern European countries’ offers to make their records available to West German prosecutors, since it was feared that an official exchange on the matter would be seen as an implicit political endorsement of these countries. Exchanging legal documents would have insinuated the existence of mutually agreed state-certified acts, the Justice Ministry argued in an expertise: “If the Federal government were to request the receipt of files or other written documents from [Eastern Bloc] states, it would not enter into an immediate obligation to offer legal aid in a similar case. The other state could, however, in accordance with international standards, assume that the Federal Republic was prepared to grant reciprocity… Already the mere impression of such preparedness must be avoided, as otherwise unwanted foreign policy consequences could be attached to it” (Der Spiegel, March 8, 1965). Such “unwanted foreign policy consequences” were thought to lie in the Eastern adversaries’ political exploitation of a tacitly implied recognition of the European status quo and possibly even a political upgrading of East Germany. For that reason, Bonn was loath to send civil servants (i.e., state representatives) to East Germany: “With that, the entire project would take on way too much political weight,” the Justice Ministry believed (Der Spiegel, March 8, 1965).76 Making use of intermediaries to do the job of picking up the records seemed equally inadvisable to Bonn. When Nahum Goldmann, President of the World Jewish Congress, offered to travel to East Berlin and obtain the material, Foreign Office State Secretary Carstens warned that the East German regime would take “full propagandist advantage” of such a visit. His counterpart in the Chancellery, Ludger Westrick, raised equally strong objections as such a trip was in his view prone to amount to an upgrading of the “Soviet Occupied Zone.”77 Moreover, the Justice Ministry argued, the material was of such high political value to its owners that a complete declassification for Western interrogators was unlikely anyway. Indeed, East Germany used West Germany’s difficult and laborious process of coming to terms with the past for its political exploits. East Berlin released Nazi documents piecemeal, utilizing them as political currency in attempts to discredit West German government representatives. That practice was

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particularly palpable in 1963 when East Germany tried West German State Secretary Hans Globke in absentia for his alleged role in Nazi Germany’s mass killings of Jews after West German courts had dismissed the case against him. Not only did the East German regime try to get political mileage out of the mock trial by discrediting the Adenauer government, but it also strove to underpin its version of unification policy by justifying Germany’s division into two states: “With the trial against Globke we are also proving the need to secure our state borders,” East Berlin’s ruling Socialist Unity Party argued.78 In a highly publicized move, East Germany lifted its statutory period for Nazi and war crimes on September 1, 1964, and the Czech parliament followed suit about three weeks later.

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The Domestic Level By the time the discussion about the extension of the statute of limitations heated up in 1964/1965, German society had begun to deal with its Nazi past and had come to accept a public discourse centering on the German people as perpetrators, rather than victims who suffered at Hitler’s or the Allies’ hands. Particularly the parliamentary debates on the extension of the statutory period in spring 1965—at the end of which the people’s representative decided to push back the expiration date by four years, defying the government’s previous decision not to do so—are still today regarded as one of Parliament’s stellar performances. In fact, much of the domestic impetus in favor of giving German courts more time to bring Nazi criminals to justice stemmed from society’s elite circles and the parliament, as well as from domestic communities abroad. In November 1964, the same month that the German government refused to extend the statutory period on constitutional grounds, Simon Wiesenthal, head of the Vienna-based Documentary Centre of the Federation of Jewish Victims of the Nazi Regime, initiated an opinion drive asking German and Austrian public opinion leaders to come out in favor of an extension of the statute of limitations (Wiesenthal 1965). Of all responses, 90 percent were in the affirmative, urging the Bonn and Vienna governments to rethink their positions and to take into account that crimes against humanity had to be treated separately from so-called ordinary crimes. Among the petitioners were authors such as Ingeborg Bachmann, Käthe Hamburger, Hans-Werner Richter, and Uwe Johnson as well as academics such as Wolfgang Abendroth, Karl Buchheim, Konrad Repgen, Golo Mann, Ossip Flechtheim, and Annemarie Schimmel, along with business leaders such as banker and former Adenauer adviser Hermann Josef Abs and newspaper publisher Kurt Neven Dumont. Some of the total 360 responses that were handed over to the German government in January 1965 represented thoughtful reflections on the permissiveness of any statute of limitations for murder and questioned the wisdom of purely legally informed arguments like the ones frequently put forward by the government. Others argued on the grounds of “legalism,” suggesting the twenty-year period should be commenced not in 1945 but in 1949 or 1955, as prior to these dates German courts had not yet been vested with full, sovereign judicial powers.79 University students also took the lead, among them

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Stuttgart philosophy student Hans Rüdiger Minow and his fellow students, who staged a signature drive in favor of extending the statutory period (Der Spiegel, March 8, 1965). At the same time, the mood among the general public appeared to be more mixed, with a Wickert poll in 1964 showing 63 to 76 percent of those surveyed favoring an end to trials against Nazi criminals, while an Allensbach poll in 1958 showed 54 percent supporting such tribunals. That support tailed off in October 1963 and January 1965, when no more than 34 and 38 percent respectively backed war crimes tribunals (Der Spiegel, March 8, 1965; Noelle and Neumann 1965: 221; 1967: 165). After deciding on November 5, 1964 not to extend the statute of limitations, the cabinet waited as many as six days before making its decision public, attempting in the meantime to get all political parties, including the opposition, to close ranks with the government (The Jerusalem Post, Nov. 12, 1964). The delay and the ensuing negotiations were a thinly veiled attempt by the government to align domestic forces with the executive, aimed at presenting a united German front in the face of stiff international opposition to the government’s stance. Official Bonn feared that a protracted internal debate would exacerbate West Germany’s standing and invite heavy international criticism. However, the opposition Social Democrats foiled Bonn’s plan by bringing a motion to the parliament that called for the collection of all outstanding material on Nazi war crimes regardless of their location and demanded the full prosecution of the criminals, effectively inviting international involvement in the issue. A few days later, on November 20, the governing Christian Democrats and the cabinet in an about face joined the bandwagon by signing on to the initiative, abandoning their reluctance to tap archival resources in the Communist East and issuing an appeal to “all governments, organizations and individual persons, both in Germany and abroad” to make documents relating to Nazi crimes available to German prosecutors. Moreover, the Ludwigsburg office’s jurisdiction was broadened to include crimes committed within Germany.80 The parliamentary resolution called on the Justice Ministry to state by March 1, 1965 whether inquiries had been initiated in all Nazi murder cases, and if—in case this had not happened—the government was prepared to review the issue of extending the statute of limitations (FR, Dec. 5/6, 1964). The opposition party, in other words, had refused to close ranks with the government on its decision not to extend the statute of limitations. Instead, the Social Democrats pushed for a policy reversal and helped to change a subset of Bonn’s policy as the government now permitted research in Communist Europe. However, Bonn’s decision in November to widen legal probes and extend research efforts eastward was in part also a means to win respite from national and international pressure to keep the statutory period from expiring. The expectation among government quarters was that if Bonn invited the world to provide Nazi records now, prosecutors might be able to work through the remaining cases by the time the expiration deadline rolled around in the spring. “It is very unlikely,” Foreign Minister Schröder cabled American Jewish representatives only four days after the appeal was issued, “that a substantial number of hitherto unknown Nazi

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criminals will be discovered in the future.”81 That expectation quickly turned out to have been wishful thinking. In February 1965, Ludwigsburg chief Erwin Schüle and his team began sifting through Polish records. The Czech government sent 600 sheets of primary material to Ludwigsburg and held out the prospect of opening its state archive to West German state attorneys. Based on preliminary findings in Polish and Czechoslovakian archives, it could not be ruled out, the Justice Ministry concluded in March, that “after May 8, 1965 so far unknown crimes of significant proportions or unknown offenders of high rank will become known.”82

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The International Level The international Jewish community was particularly adamant that postwar Germany apply the democratic rule of law, extend civil liberties to all, and hold accountable those who had defiled social order by committing racist crimes. The American Jewish Congress (AJCs) began lobbying the US government over a year prior to the expiration of West Germany’s statutory period.83 The success of recent trials in Germany—such as the Auschwitz and Treblinka trials—and the beneficial purpose of making the German people look anti-Semitism squarely in the face, prompted the AJCs to press for the continued prosecution of Nazi criminals beyond 1965. Joachim Prinz, President of the American Jewish Congress, told US Secretary of State Dean Rusk he was aware that a revision of German law could only be brought about by a domestic decision, but he stressed: “We earnestly request however that the United States use its good offices and the high standing it now enjoys with the government of West Germany to recommend that West German authorities support this extension and thus not foreclose the just trial of war criminals not yet apprehended.”84 The Johnson administration, however, appeared disinclined—as in its refusal to exert pressure on Bonn regarding German scientists operating in Egypt—to publicly interfere with German internal affairs. Myer Feldman, President Johnson’s special counsel on Jewish affairs, told Jewish representatives that “it would be inappropriate for the United States to intervene in domestic concerns of the German government. However much I sympathize with your position and with the merit of your claim, we must consider it a question for the German government.”85 After being turned away by the White House, American-Jewish organizations worked to create an international public sphere that could influence German policymakers and cajole them into rethinking their position. Not surprisingly, the November 5 decision by the Bonn cabinet not to consider an extension to the statute unleashed a barrage of criticism from Prinz, a former rabbi of Berlin who had emigrated in 1937, who assailed the step as a “callous affront to world opinion and a shocking reminder that the moral redemption and rehabilitation of the German people is yet to be achieved.”86 It was this point in particular that the US Jewish community pressed on Foreign Minister Schröder in the context of “mounting grievances of Jews everywhere over many of the current positions of your government.”87 The groups were exasperated with Germany’s reluctance to

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recall German scientists developing arms for Egypt, disturbed about Bonn’s “inexcusable” refusal to enter into full diplomatic relations with Israel, and concerned about the German people’s as yet “unredeemed obligation both to history and to those who survived the Nazi Holocaust.”88 The Jewish representatives assured Schröder that they were mindful of the many steps Germany had taken to make amends for crimes committed against the Jews. However, Bonn could not rest on its laurels, they argued: “We hope . . . that the German government does not harbor the illusion that anyone regards these efforts at material reparation as sufficient demonstration of a new moral posture. This would be a tragic misreading both of the reparations program and of the German responsibility after World War II.”89 The American Jewish representatives suspected the German government’s incapacity to act on the statute derived not so much from fear of violating constitutional law as from fear of incurring public disfavor. One organization cited the 1964 Wickert poll, showing that 63 to 76 percent of West Germans supported an end to all war crimes prosecutions. And a correspondent for the American Jewish Committee believed the government’s stance foreshadowed upcoming general elections in the fall of 1965, since the ruling coalition had to fight for every vote, “even neo-Nazi” ones.90 It appeared to have been this reading of the domestic mood in Germany—be it justified or not—that induced American Jews to see the need to create something of a counter-mood among the international public.91 American Jewish representatives particularly took issue with Bonn’s enumeration of the many cases already investigated and the scores of perpetrators sentenced by German courts in the recent past, as well as with its assertion that only a very few additional criminals were likely to be uncovered in the future. The latter claim was necessarily speculative, they said, but more importantly, the government’s legalistic and statistical approach was irrelevant for an issue of much wider significance: “What is involved is a question of policy, not law.”92 Moreover, the statistical approach “invokes quantitative criteria that are altogether unrelated to the moral issue at stake. Whether there be many or few, every Nazi criminal guilty of mass atrocities and genocide must be brought to justice.”93 Lobbying by Jewish representatives in the United States was complemented by Nahum Goldmann’s use of his good offices with the German government to press for an extension of the statute while the Israeli government also put considerable pressure on Germany.94 And indeed, the concerted international effort— combined with attempts by leaders among German society to soften the cabinet’s entrenched stance—did not fail to make an impression on the Bonn government. An international campaign to brand Bonn’s position as a form of leniency on Nazism—nurtured by a combination of a morally motivated Western public opinion and Eastern political propaganda—helped the Social Democrats convince the Erhard government to sign on to their parliamentary motion, which broadened the probes into Nazi crimes to include Eastern European records. Meanwhile, the international debate also threatened to impede Bonn’s unification policy. The Foreign Office watched in horror as the government’s handling

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of the statutory period undermined its efforts to keep the US administration committed to the goal of German unification. The fallout from the legalistic bickering over the prosecution of Nazi criminals burdened the German-American relationship, an internal Foreign Office memorandum warned. Bonn’s handling of the war crimes issue weakened the United States’ preparedness to go out on a limb for West Germany on the question of unification, it noted. In the United States, the theme was making the rounds that although the Federal Republic was quick to point out that the injustice of Germany’s division must never come under the statute of limitations, it was not prepared to suspend the statutory period for Nazi crimes. This development could be of “decisive significance for the future of our entire foreign policy,” the reporting official admonished and in light of these facts he strongly recommended that the government reevaluate its refusal to extend the statute of limitations for Nazi crimes.95 In sum, German policymakers’ preoccupation with national unification not only interfered in its policy toward the Israeli state, but also in the process of judicial review of the Nazi past. Bonn sought to avoid any state act that could be construed as an upgrade of its Eastern nemesis. Research in East European archives by West German prosecutors was therefore initially off limits, as it was seen as an implicit acknowledgement of the European and German status quo. Issues of national sovereignty also came into play among those government representatives, who opposed a change of national law to extend the statute of limitations for Nazi crimes beyond twenty years. However, pressure from domestic and particularly international interest groups contributed to Bonn’s decision in November 1964 to abandon its reluctance to tap archival resources in the Communist East. In fact, interest groups in the United States helped German domestic players challenge the government’s policy agenda and ameliorate the ground for an eventual reversal of Bonn’s opposition to extending the statute of limitations.

Politics by Stealth: Military Aid to the “French Colonies,” 1962–1964 Asked about the weapons agreements between Bonn and Jerusalem, former Israeli Premier David Ben-Gurion recalled the following anecdote: For a long time we received secret weapons shipments from France which were unloaded under cover of the night in Israeli ports. I know of a great Israeli poet who coincidentally witnessed one of those nightly operations and wrote a poem about it. However, as it contained secret classified information, he was barred from publishing it (NZZ, March 6, 1965).

The ex–prime minister’s story illustrates in more than one way the exceptional secrecy surrounding German military aid to Israel in the early 1960s. For one, even poets were ordered to fall silent on the matter, and secondly, even retrospectively Ben-Gurion did not dare to talk about the players involved in direct terms,

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instead obliquely referring to the operation’s code name “Frank./Kol.” (Frank(reich)/ Kol(onien) or French Colonies) by substituting “France” for “West Germany.” The anecdote draws attention to the enormous amount of stealth involved in this immensely political matter and thus highlights a key structural element in this component of German-Israeli relations. The choice to exclude the German public from the decision making process for one of Bonn’s most far-reaching military aid commitments to that date is a compelling example of government officials’ predisposition toward a top-down foreign policy decision making formula. Equally, the outrage among the German public about the arms deal once it was disclosed indicates German society’s increased interest in matters of foreign policy toward Israel. To recap, West Germany’s motivation for granting substantial military and economic support to Israel was rooted in a linkage between such aid and Bonn’s refusal to initiate German-Israeli diplomatic relations for fear the Arabs might respond in kind by recognizing East Germany as a full-fledged state. The Adenauer and Erhard governments compensated Israel economically and militarily for the lack of official relations and thus paid the price for keeping the Arabs at bay. The first major weapons deal between Germany and Israel, sealed in 1962, included heavy arms and military equipment such as speedboats, submarines, howitzers, helicopters, rockets, war planes, and anti-aircraft guns, among other items.96 Given the sensitive nature of West Germany’s position in the Middle East, Bonn insisted on top secret security classification for the Israel-bound deliveries. In fact, for fear that a security leak would trigger an Arab recognition of East Germany akin to the consequences anticipated in the event of a German-Israeli exchange of ambassadors, German government officials sidestepped not only routine consultations with the United States, but also the domestic parliamentary process. The zeal to keep the arrangement with the Israelis under cover eventually backfired badly, both at home and abroad. In the following, I first ascertain the budgetary practice by which Bonn hoped to keep the lid on its politically sensitive support program. I then take a first look at the domestic ramifications of such a secretive policy and the government’s response, and will finally elaborate on the international implications of the arms deals with a special emphasis on the US role in Germany’s weapons deliveries to Israel. The Governmental Level Very nearly all arms agreements are clandestine in nature. Yet, the enforcement of secrecy in Israel’s case was extreme, and it is here that the legality of the secrecy has been questioned (Feldman 1984: 123–124). German budgetary records between 1963 and 1965 demonstrate how opaque the process was—even to many governmental decision makers themselves—and which constitutionally questionable means Bonn resorted to in its effort to conceal the donations. The parliament was kept in the dark about the deals, and consequently for several years the German public remained oblivious to military aid granted to Jerusalem. The “Frank./Kol.” package figured in the Defense Ministry’s budget as a “special project” and was

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booked as an expenditure under the item “equipment aid.” The country name “Israel” appeared neither in the budget nor in internal correspondence on the issue. Consequently, the project’s true denotation was not brought to the attention of the parliament’s budgetary committee and was not discussed as part of the annual parliamentary budget debates. A very few, select members of the parliament were apprised of the situation, but were sworn to secrecy.97 Not only was most of the parliament kept in the dark about the Germany’s single biggest military aid program in its history thus far, but to obscure the trail of the shipments the Defense Ministry also undercut budgetary rules by engaging in creative accounting, a practice that made the finance minister’s hair stand on end. In 1964, for instance, Bonn drew on army surplus stocks to deliver DM 100 million worth of goods to Jerusalem. However, that amount was never put on the books. Instead, the ministry incurred DM 52.8 million in 1964 and DM 1.3 million in 1963, a fraction of the actual assets delivered. Also, as in the case of the economic aid granted to Israel, the amounts entered into the Defense Ministry’s budgets were kept deliberately uneven each year to avoid the impression of regular installments. In addition, the bulk of the budgetary impact was fiscally carried forward as far as 1970.98 Not long after the first deliveries reached Israel’s shores, rumors of substantial German military aid filled Arab papers and airwaves. Particularly the delivery of anti-aircraft guns made the rounds and had the Foreign Office on edge, denying vigorously any such deliveries.99 While the Foreign Office was apprised of the existence of the shipments, its difficult task of representing Germany in this highly sensitive matter was amplified by the comparatively scant information it had at its disposal. It was on record as having opposed the deal ever since it was struck in 1962. Against this background, and owing to the military nature of the arrangement, it was the Defense Ministry—first under Strauß and since 1963 under KaiUwe von Hassel—that handled the military cooperation with Israel, effectively conducting a second strand of foreign policy in parallel with the official line represented by the Foreign Office.100 Foreign Minister Schröder frequently complained about this situation and deemed it outright “intolerable and highly dangerous.”101 However, it continued to remain in place not least because in the end the Foreign Office did not relish taking over the lead on an issue it loathed and objected to, but knew it could not change as it enjoyed the chancellor’s full backing. Bonn’s Defense Ministry entertained close and amicable relations with the Israeli side and was adamant to conceal the aid package as much as possible and to secure its funding amid tight budgetary conditions and internal opposition not only from the Foreign Office, but also from the Finance Ministry. Finance Minister Rolf Dahlgrün knew very little about the true nature of the payments. In a harshly worded letter to Defense Minister von Hassel, Dahlgrün erroneously distinguished between the “Frank./Kol.” project and “the use of German helicopters elsewhere,” complaining he had been insufficiently informed about the former. He flatly rejected any “political and budgetary responsibility” for the item and refused to release funds for both the purchase of new helicopters and the delivery

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of speedboats.102 The Defense Ministry together with the Foreign Office riled the exchequer even more by requesting to cross-charge the “Frank./Kol.” expenditures to the Finance Ministry’s books. Amid dire budgetary conditions in 1964, Defense and the Foreign Office were eager to free up funds in the Defense Ministry’s coffers in case the need arose to grant additional military aid to neutral countries in return for their continued endorsement of West Germany’s position on unification. The goal, in other words, was to regain fiscal room for political maneuvering, currently blocked by the substantial Israel outlays.103 During a Federal Defense Council (Bundesverteidigungsrat) meeting, Defense Minister von Hassel and Finance Minister Dahlgrün almost came to blows over the holdup of equipment aid for the “French colonies.” Von Hassel, barely containing himself, demanded the immediate release of the monies. The two ministers scheduled a one-on-one meeting to resolve the outstanding issues, and Dahlgrün eventually relented on the release of the “Frank./Kol.” funds but refused to take them over to his budget.104 Instead, the Defense Ministry had to bear the costs incurred by the 1962 arms deal plus the costs of the additional delivery of 150 tanks, estimated at DM 30 million and taken on at Washington’s request.105 The budgetary secrecy of the military aid to Israel, and the fact that even among government agencies information about related transactions was scant, show how the executive branch of government circumvented the parliamentary process and effectively shut out large parts of the German public from a central aspect of German foreign policy. The cabinet regarded this matter as the executive’s exclusive domain and neglected to submit it to the process of domestic consensus-building. Therefore, once exposed, this secretiveness particularly angered German society and fueled outrage at the government, raising the stakes for domestic involvement in foreign policy toward Israel.

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The Domestic Level As the arms deal with Israel was subject to top secrecy, German society’s reactions to the arrangements can not be observed until they were leaked to the press in late October 1964.106 However, an animated public discussion of the government’s handling of the matter was precipitated as early as in 1963 when one parliamentarian—among those apprised of the arms deals with Israel—divulged one aspect of the military assistance extended to Jerusalem. Social Democrat Hans Merten, perhaps disagreeing with the notion of leaving the general public in the dark about military support for Israel, said in an interview: “We grant training to Israeli soldiers here in the Federal Republic.”107 The comments caused a considerable outcry in the Arab world, as they came amid the German parliament’s drive to enact legislation aimed at forcing the German rocket scientists in Egypt to leave the country and calls by former Defense Minister Strauß to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. The Foreign Office quickly moved to reassure the Arabs that such public pronouncements did not represent a shift in government policy. In instructions for its ambassador in Cairo, it expressly contrasted official foreign policy with private remarks by nongovernmental actors. The current public dis-

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cussion on German-Israeli relations “is intricately tied to the Germans’ still unfinished business of confronting their own past,” it pointed out. “Therefore, many comments are not to be judged as balanced foreign policy statements, but have to be seen in context of our domestic issues.” The government’s line, it added, remained wholly unaffected by such statements.108 The Foreign Office attempted to erect a firewall between the governmental and domestic levels in foreign policy in a bid to insulate their decision making processes from influences unrelated to the pursuit of national interest (i.e., German unification). Promulgating the belief that official statements rather than societal sentiments are what counts in the foreign policy making process, the Foreign Office espoused yet again its predisposition toward paradigms of realism and historicism with a focus on the state as a unitary actor, relegating society to a tertiary role in policy making.

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The International Level Bonn initiated the 1960 and 1962 arms arrangements with Israel without prior consultations with its closest allies.109 Instead, the Americans got wind of the situation in a rather suspect way when US military experts spotted American-built helicopter gunships in Israel—equipment that Washington had never provided to Jerusalem. “Could they have been delivered by Germany?” Coburn Kidd, a counselor for political affairs at the US embassy in Bonn, inquired of the Foreign Office.110 Indeed, the helicopters were part of Germany’s secret “Frank.Kol.” package to Israel and had come out of deliveries the United States originally made to Germany. The news unsettled the Americans, who saw their carefully crafted power equilibrium in the Middle East endangered by unilateral dispersions of weapons in the region, of which they could keep no tally and which were bound to thwart their own plans in the long run. The frustration was illustrated by deep-seated suspicions in Washington that Bonn’s overall military support for developing countries was much larger than so far anticipated. The Americans were particularly upset about what they considered a “veil of secrecy” in which the Germans shrouded those programs vis-à-vis their allies. The US State Department suspected it had so far seen no more than the “tip of the iceberg” and guessed that about “nine tenths was hidden below the water line.” In Washington, the impression took hold that “the Germans are wicked and the embassy stupid.”111 Bonn’s Foreign Office eventually admitted to the diplomatic gaffe, claiming, however, that the helicopters had not been sold, but had been sent to Israel on a “loan” basis only.112 The excuse was disingenuous, as the military hardware had come as a gift and thus indeed did not carry a sales tag, but a return of the helicopters to Germany was surely not envisaged. In sum, the 1962 “Frank./Kol.” package for Israel was one of West Germany’s own making and did not originate with an US initiative, let alone pressure.113 To the contrary, Bonn defied the US State Department’s request for openness—admitting only to the helicopters but not divulging the entirety of the “Frank./Kol.” package—even as the Americans voiced strong concern over the unsettling impact unilateral support for Israel could have on the balance of power in the Middle Eastern Cold War theater.114

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By the time Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the presidency in 1963, it had been longstanding US policy in the Middle East—spanning several administrations since the 1940s—to keep an even keel as to support for both the Israeli and Arab sides. Washington had been particularly careful not to become a major supplier of offensive arms to either Israel or the Arabs. At the same time, the Johnson administration—like the Kennedy government earlier—feared Moscow would be able to make real headway in the Cold War on Middle Eastern soil.115 For this reason, the United States aimed to stay actively engaged in the region in order to protect Israel, to shield the Arab states against each other, and above all to keep Soviet influence out as much as possible. The American-Arab relationship must not deteriorate, US officials pressed on the Israelis, as it would be as much in Jerusalem’s as in Washington’s interest to expand American influence over Nasser.116 It thus comes as no surprise that the State Department was less than pleased with the Federal Republic’s covert and unilateral support for Israel. The Soviet influence over Arab states was bound to rise if the West created a stark imbalance in Israel’s favor. Consequently, at that time Washington would have preferred that Bonn support the Arabs militarily instead of Israel—a request, however, that the Germans flatly rejected, pointing to Bonn’s nominal policy of restraint in the region.117 Before 1964, in sum, the general sense in Washington was that “we would do well to persist in . . . maintaining a reasonable balance in our ArabIsrael relationships, consistent with our special concern for Israel.”118 However, in a two-step process, this US stance was about to undergo a significant and substantial change. While the United States continued to deem maintaining good relations with both camps essential, Washington edged toward becoming a major arms supplier to both Israel and the Arabs during 1964 and 1965—first by getting its allies, most notably West Germany, to step into the breach, and later by directly supplying Israel and Jordan with offensive weapons itself.119 In the opening months of 1964, the Israeli government stepped up pressure to acquire weapons from the United States directly. Jerusalem was particularly interested in tanks with a wide cruising range, capable of penetrating deep into opposition territory.120 In January, the White House’s point man for Middle Eastern affairs, Robert Komer, recommended to President Johnson “that you are personally sympathetic to some US action . . . toward helping meet Israel’s tank needs.”121 At this point it was still an open issue whether those needs should be satisfied by dipping into US or its allies’ surplus. Key presidential advisors warned strongly against the United States taking on the role of a major arms supplier to Israel. The CIA issued—as one memo put it—“storm warnings,” foreseeing heavy weather brewing for US-Arab relations should Washington change course: “To provide them [with the 500 US tanks] would reverse a long-standing US policy, and we would face a sharp decline in relations. The Arab states would probably seize opportunities to demonstrate their unhappiness with the US. These might include moves in the UN on such questions as the admission of Red China and could well put US-Arab relations back to the level obtaining in 1957– 1958.”122

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Equally, Carl T. Rowan, director of the United States Information Agency, believed delivery of US tanks was a disaster waiting to happen. The Joint Chiefs of Staff acknowledged the case for modernization of Israel’s obsolescent armor, but was against augmenting quantities.123 The way out of the US administration’s quandary of wanting to support Israel with tanks while at the same time being reluctant to get its own hands dirty doing the job, was to make the political commitment to Jerusalem but present to the Israelis a hardware supplier other than the United States itself. The choice fell on West Germany—a puzzling port of call and a significant reversal of policy, considering that the two partners had just put to rest their row over German arms deliveries to Israel. Now, in early 1964, Washington wanted Bonn to do precisely what had roused its ire the year before: pass US military equipment on to Jerusalem. In March 1964, the Johnson administration decided to postpone a final decision on the tank issue until after the summit with Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, scheduled for June the same year. In the meantime, President Johnson ordered all departments involved to “explore ways and means of meeting Israeli needs which will minimize the risk of compromise in our relations with the Arabs,” and his national security advisor urged the State and Defense Departments as well as the CIA to assess the possibility “that Israel could satisfy its needs elsewhere,” i.e., outside the United States.124 Following the review, Washington exhorted Israel to turn to its traditional arms suppliers, mainly France and Britain, and to take a particularly close look at the English Centurion and the forthcoming Chieftain tanks.125 The Israelis, however, came back to the White House dissatisfied. While the US army was convinced that the Centurion’s cruising range of about 150 miles “should not be a critical limitation for defensive operations within Israel’s narrow confines,” the Israelis wanted the M-48A3, a tank with about double that reach. The fact that the Israelis insisted on a tank with a combat range much larger than necessary for defensive purposes highlights the political explosiveness of the tank deal. The armory sought by Jerusalem was, in effect, offensive in nature.126 Faced with the dilemma of France and Britain being unable to satisfy the Israeli demands for technical reasons, and the United States itself being unwilling for political reasons, it occurred to Washington’s Defense Department that West Germany owned what Israel sought, albeit not quite. Germany commanded an inventory of 634 M-48A1 and 1,077 M-48A2 tanks, precursors of the type Israel had in mind, but falling short of the M-48A3’s power and the Centurion’s 105millimeter gun.127 The solution—which the Americans had already prepared while still attempting to cajole the Israelis into accepting the merits of the British option—was simple, as it appeared to kill two birds with one stone: the German equipment (specifically some of the M-48A1s) would be “up-gunned” and retrofitted with new diesel engines using US kits effectively turning them into M-48A3s with a Centurion-like 105-millimeter gun and thus accommodating Jerusalem’s defense needs while meeting, at least halfway, Bonn’s urgent request to obscure the origins of the deliveries as much as possible.128

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Johnson’s assistant Myer Feldman went to Israel at the end of May to whet the Israelis’ appetite for the new plan, which he and other US officials touted as an equivalent of direct US shipments.129 Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Shimon Peres wasted no time and traveled to Bonn for direct talks immediately following the Feldman mission, but cabled back home “that while the Ministry of Defense favored selling tanks to Israel, there was considerable hesitation in the Foreign Ministry.”130 In the chancellor’s office, there was—to say the least—just as much hesitation. When US Ambassador McGhee broached the subject with Erhard, the chancellor quipped that while no final decision had been made yet, “America should not hold its breath; chances for such a deal are nil.” Erhard’s State Secretary Ludger Westrick, however, believed transshipment of the tanks to a third country before setting sail for Israel—as suggested by Peres during his Bonn visit—seemed feasible. A direct delivery was out of the question, the chancellor concurred, as “our relations with Israel are the critical element in our relationship with the Arabs.”131 Indeed, those relations were a critical element in Bonn’s unification policy and its operative mainstay—the Hallstein doctrine—and thus marked the centerpiece of Bonn’s foreign policy generally. A critical part of Erhard’s chancellorship overall, however, was an amicable relationship with the American president, and Johnson chose to bluntly pressure his counterpart into the tank deal. Consequently, Erhard’s room for maneuver was limited in this particular instance. At the same time, however, the German government was left with political choices at all times. The chancellor’s decision to eventually give in to Johnson’s demands came as a conscious, purposeful step and was not a foregone conclusion. In the space of twelve days in June 1964, both Eshkol and Erhard came to wine and dine with President Johnson in Washington and mostly “talk tanks.” Atmospherically and substantively, Eshkol saved what was by far the better end of the meetings for himself. The President hailed Eshkol’s arrival as the first official visit by an Israeli premier to the United States, and while there was some divergence of views regarding Nasser’s role in the Middle East, Eshkol left the talks having gained Johnson’s goodwill and understanding regarding Israel’s security concerns (NYT, June 2, June 16 1964; NZZ, June 6, 1964). Most importantly, the premier all but brought home the bacon on tanks. During the JohnsonEshkol meeting, Eshkol reiterated the strong Israeli preference for the German M48 over the British Centurion, citing the larger cruising range of the former and suggesting that if “the Germans objected to doing it directly it could be done through Italy.”132 He also asked Johnson to lean on Erhard when he came to see the president and the president promised to do exactly that. “As to tanks, you’ll work on Erhard,” Johnson’s top Middle East aide summarized the summit session with the prime minister.133 A few days later, it was German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard’s turn to call on the President in Washington. The two had met officially for the first time about half a year earlier, when Johnson and Erhard feasted on an open-fire barbecue at the LBJ ranch in Texas. The heads of state had got off to a good start then, with hopes running high that a new “special relationship” between Bonn and Washington

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was in the offing, ending the years of freeze between Adenauer and Kennedy (The Economist, Jan. 4, 1964). Erhard was elated and exuded satisfaction with the reception in the United States in December 1963, while the Johnson White House heaved a sighed of relief at the favorable press coverage. There had been a mutual need for both men to make the summit a success in order to cement their burgeoning leaderships.134 No more than half a year later that situation had changed fundamentally. The honeymoon was over. Erhard found himself in virtually the same box as his predecessor, demanding to put German unification ahead of détente and getting nowhere with that proposition. In addition—against the background of an accelerating war in Vietnam—German-American relations were strained by disagreements over offset payments, tacitly linked by the US administration to the continued presence of six divisions in West Germany, and Washington’s dissatisfaction with Bonn allegedly not shouldering its fair share of global development aid.135 Even more importantly, in the summer of 1964 Johnson sat firmly in the political saddle, both internationally and domestically. Erhard, on the other hand—constantly assailed by opponents within his own party—did not (NYT, April 24, 1964; Die Welt, May 30, 1964). When the two heads of government met on June 12, Johnson clearly had the upper hand and had been impeccably briefed on the tank issue: “Erhard is reluctant on this, and it is essential that he should know of your deep concern . . . . We must not let him give us a flat no. The Israelis have played ball with us so far, and we owe them this much,” Bundy put the matter to Johnson just before the encounter. As the meeting approached, the administration resolved that it wanted a “favorable German reaction” and would “urge” them to get just that.136 According to the German minutes of the one-on-one top-level meeting, Erhard preempted any additional pressure he might have expected from the president by presenting the delivery of used US tank chassis without guns and engines to Israel via Italy as a done deal. This way, Erhard hoped, it might be possible to camouflage the German origin of the vehicles after all.137 Defense Secretary Robert McNamara had already done the legwork for the president and convinced Erhard to acquiesce. For Johnson, all there was left to do was to thank the chancellor and express his deep appreciation for Erhard’s handling of the issue.138 The move to equip Israel with offensive weapons was an immensely political decision. However, the choice of the particular hardware supplier was—at least initially—mainly driven by convenience and technical considerations, not by political parameters. Germany was the only country—aside from the United States itself—that owned tanks approximating those the Israelis wanted. The political rationale against inducing West Germany to tap its inventories was intra-German in nature. While that factor was a concern of enormous proportions to Bonn, it was of almost no significance to Washington at the onset of détente in the early 1960s. Undertones of a contemptuous US attitude toward issues pertaining to Bonn’s battle for nonrecognition of its East German nemesis could be heard time and again in American statements on tanks for Israel. “The best point to make,”

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Bundy advised Johnson ahead of the Erhard summit, “is that whatever troubles the Germans might have are small compared to the general damage to the West if the Arabs go into convulsions against the US.”139 Effectively, this statement translated into a dismissal of West Germany’s concerns for unification as “small troubles.” Similarly, Ambassador McGhee suggested to Erhard that the Arabs “put everything that America does under a microscope. Whereas what the Germans and the English do, attracts almost no attention.”140 Not only was the ambassador’s statement rather inaccurate, but more importantly, it dealt a severe blow to Bonn’s efforts to cajole its allies into understanding its precarious situation in the Middle East. Insisting on unification as a primary goal in international politics, the Germans had to realize yet again, did not get them very far anymore in times of European détente. Washington exerted considerable pressure on the Bonn government regarding the delivery of tanks to Israel, and Erhard’s room for maneuver was sharply curtailed. The US administration substantially influenced German foreign policy toward Israel in this instance and coaxed the Germans into taking considerable risk as to their unification policy, which otherwise Bonn would have been unlikely to do. However, over the years, the Americans espoused a high degree of inconsistency in their handling of German-Israeli relations. In 1963, Washington was upset about Bonn’s unilateral support for Israel, citing concerns for the balance of power in the Middle East. In 1964, in contrast, Johnson pushed Erhard into propping up Jerusalem’s defense posture, employing the same reasoning his administration had previously used when chiding Bonn for helping Israel.141 In 1965, Washington appeared to change course again when the US administration was chiefly concerned with Germany keeping amicable relations with Egypt, Israel’s adversary. Erhard, it is true, was prone to follow US directives on most foreign policy issues. It appeared, however, that in the case of policy guidelines concerning the Middle East in the early 1960s, the call from across the Atlantic lacked coherence and was laden with echoes of the 1963/1964 irritations. Moreover, we must not overstate the command the Americans exerted over West Germany and Erhard in particular on the subject of tanks. Even on an issue with strong American interests at stake, there was room for policy choices. Before the chancellor arrived for direct consultations in Washington in mid 1964, the outcome was—even according to US estimates—still wide open. “A German deal (even through another intermediary) looks questionable so far,” the National Security Council cautioned only a few days ahead of the top-level encounter.142 And while on the one hand Bundy exhorted the president not to let Erhard get away with a “flat no” on tanks, on the other the White House appeared to be willing to settle for less than a straight yes: “At the minimum, Erhard can agree to keep this question open for further discussion on ways and means.”143 Whereas Erhard gave in eventually, he did use some of his leeway to deny the joint AmericanIsraeli request for 200 and more tanks. It was going to be 150 and no more, the German government decided. Protestations by White House and US Defense Department officials that such “an attempt to restrict the sale by the Germans to

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150 would have all the earmarks of a retraction of our previous assurances to the Israelis” were to no avail.144 Setting the tank deal on the rails in June 1964 marked an important milestone for US and German policy in the Middle East. As the Soviets made ever stronger political gains in the Middle East, key Arab states began to seek ever closer ties with Moscow, and as domestic pressure on the White House to help Israel grew, the United States reached a crossroads in its Near Eastern policy. Faced with the choice of either openly supporting Israel and leaving the Arab world to the Russian sphere of influence or continuing its policy of evenhandedness while possibly seeing Israel fall prey to ever heavier Arab armament, Washington—in a first step—chose to have it both ways. A third country was to take on the military support for Israel at Washington’s behest, while the United States would formally keep the clean bill of health of an honest arbiter in the region. It was this dualtrack US policy that sent conflicting policy signals to Bonn. As so often occurs with countries in the midst of reorientation and change, Washington’s mixed bag of messages blunted its overall impact on Bonn. US influence represents a comparatively weak independent variable in the policy matrix that resulted in West Germany’s changing foreign policy toward Israel in early 1965.

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Conclusion: German Foreign Policy toward Israel, 1962–1964 “A public sentiment in the Federal Republic has to be avoided,” Foreign Minister Schröder told Egyptian ambassador Ibrahim Sabri on one occasion, “which accuses the government of not having the courage to commence diplomatic relations with Israel because of the Arabs, which is outrageous . . . . We are somewhat caught between two lines of fire, which possibly could be avoided by initiating normal conditions.” The Federal Republic was an open country, the minister explained, in which opinions were voiced freely. “It is often very difficult to find a common denominator,” he said, but stressed: “Toward the outer world, however, it is the position of the government that counts.”145 It was precisely this conflict between official foreign policy and a multifaceted German society increasingly demanding a say in high-level policy making that dominated GermanIsraeli relations between 1962 and 1964. I have analyzed four aspects of that relationship under the premise that after a period of little or no change in much of the 1950s, a shift in German foreign policy toward Israel was in the making during the early 1960s. While until 1964, this change—eventually culminating in the commencement of diplomatic relations—had not materialized just yet, the first variations among key determining factors emerged, indicating that a significant shift in policy outcomes may have been about to occur. On the governmental level, decision makers espoused a clear preference for the completion of the German nation state over any other foreign policy goal. Due to this preference, German-Israeli relations reached a low point in the second half of 1964. Israeli frustration over being strung along on the issue of diplomatic rela-

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tions mixed with the row over the role German scientists played in the Egyptian rocket program. Jerusalem was furious that a number of German weapons experts extended a helping hand to Cairo’s arms machinery, which sought to exterminate the Israeli population less than twenty years after the Holocaust. Consequently, worries grew in Jerusalem over West Germany’s commitment to support Israel four-square—a development, in fact, that was not lost on Bonn’s Foreign Office:

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The relationship with the Federal Republic is not only strained by Hitler’s persecution of the Jews. The Israeli public considers our hesitation to commence diplomatic relations with Israel—even if under considerable foreign policy sacrifices—humiliating.146

This meant in practical terms that the Foreign Office accepted the humiliation of the Israeli public as collateral damage wrought by its unification policy. This is not to say that Bonn was unaware of the burden bequeathed upon Germany by National Socialism and the Holocaust. Chancellors Adenauer and Erhard repeatedly affirmed West Germany’s special relationship with Israel in public. Yet this morally informed link did not drive foreign policy outcomes—in fact, moral considerations are barely, if at all, mentioned in internal government documents. Instead, as one observer noted at the time, German foreign policy toward Israel was characterized by “cool pragmatism” (NZZ, May 12, 1964). West German policymakers stuck to a worldview informed by the sociophilosophical traditions of historicism and realism. They were adamant about staying in control of foreign policy formulation and execution, rejecting the notion that parliamentary committees or societal elites should share in that government prerogative. Government representatives followed their worldviews and principled beliefs about the German nation as codified and institutionalized in the Hallstein doctrine. The doctrine, placing the highest political value on the attainment of the complete German state, served as a road map guiding policymakers in times of uncertainty. In daily operative politics this meant steadfastly upholding West Germany’s right to the sole representation of the entire German people. In sum, German diplomacy between 1962 and mid 1964 revealed the extent to which considerations of national unity overshadowed a willingness to accommodate Israel on issues such as diplomatic relations, German scientists on Nasser’s payroll, and the psychology of the burden of the past generally. Parallel to such developments, a societal transformation process took place on the domestic level during the late 1950s and early 1960s. After neglecting the study of atrocities committed against Jews under National Socialism for more than a decade, West German historians began to research the Holocaust during the early 1960s, and a broad-based effort to “come to terms with the past” manifested itself in popular culture and judicial prosecution of Nazi perpetrators. These developments also helped to generate society’s interest in Germany’s political relations with Israel. Simultaneously, intellectuals’ push to assert a newly emerging consensus that ordinary citizens’ participation in the political process was a mandatory ingredient of a Western-style democracy helped to foster societal actors’

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interest in shaping relations with Israel. Moreover, societal entrepreneurs, vested with new worldviews and principled beliefs, attempted to redefine the German notion of “national interest.” A younger generation of academics critically examined official Bonn’s unification policy, labeling policymakers’ blind eye toward international change and détente a “pathology of German foreign policy” (Senghaas 1965). They developed new, evolutionary approaches to overcoming Germany’s division amid a waning interest in unification among the general public. University students in particular argued that it was more in the country’s national interest to align foreign policy choices with moral values derived from the societal learning process about Germany’s gruesome past than to allow the traditional goal of national unification to paralyze foreign policy altogether. Relations with Israel during the early 1960s demonstrated how hitherto irrevocable tenets of government policy became increasingly shaky as the focus on the German question ceased to function as political and social glue. Domestic elites’ unwillingness to make do any longer with a top-down approach in politics conjoined with an issue area (Israel; Germany’s past) of growing concern to society at large and together prepared the ground for a transformation of the foreign policy making process. However, at this point it was no more than preparatory work. Up until 1964, the German foreign policy making framework began to change only slowly, and specific policy choices regarding Israel experienced gradual variations at best. Actual change in operative foreign policy had not materialized yet. On the international level, European détente was the key development characterizing the onset of the 1960s. The US administration under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson abandoned the antagonistic East-West confrontation that had prevailed during the 1950s and pursued a policy of mutual understanding, designed to mitigate the Cold War by accepting the status quo of two spheres of influence in Europe. All of Bonn’s efforts, in contrast, were focused on changing the European status quo and achieving unification. Consequently, Germany’s foreign policy makers struggled to grasp the character of Washington’s altered strategy. In early 1964, top Foreign Office officials wondered why the United States did not take advantage of the Soviet Union’s weakness to improve the West’s position. The answer was held to be that the Americans had abandoned the “classical rules of power politics.” Instead of banking on its political, economic, and military might, Washington put stock in an evolutionary transformation process within the Eastern Bloc and focused on “atmospheric improvement” in international relations, the officials observed.147 In other words, the United States had abandoned key characteristics of the realist policy theorem, such as taking advantage of adversaries’ weaknesses via the application of power politics. Washington, with its preference for taking small steps and solving “peripheral problems” before tackling bigger bones of contention, had tacitly embraced so-called institutionalism in foreign policy conduct, a school of thought emphasizing states’ rationales for cooperating with each other in order to navigate the pitfalls of the international system. It was this change to which German foreign policy makers, still firm believers in realism’s survival of the fittest paradigm, had huge difficulties adjusting.

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Bonn continued to put trust in the merits of power politics, which the Germans believed was the strategy best suited to extract concessions from the East on the German question. While the change in the US attitude and the onset of détente helped to provide a window of opportunity for new foreign policy ideas to take hold and grow within Germany, it initially led to a hardening of the government’s stance. As the Foreign Office saw the issue of German unification fade from the international agenda, it steadfastly pointed out the limits of détente—a fact that helps to explain why, at this point, West German foreign policy toward Israel did not yet undergo significant change. Direct US influence, however, was not at the heart of Bonn’s foreign policy toward Israel. While pressure may at times have been strong, particularly when Washington was keenly interested in enticing Bonn to supply tanks to Jerusalem, the overall message of the United States to the Federal Republic on relations with Israel was incoherent and appeared to be governed by temporary political expediency, rather than long-term strategy. Washington itself was in the midst of a reorientation of its Middle East policy as it grappled with the question of whether to become a direct supplier of offensive weapons to Israel and the Arabs. Therefore, the messages it sent on Middle East policy issues had a limited impact on Bonn’s overall policy posture. European détente would open a window of opportunity for German domestic actors promoting a revamped foreign policy agenda, but neither détente nor direct influence from Washington prescribed specific foreign policy choices outright to the German government. In sum, up until mid 1964 no decisive shift occurred in foreign policy toward Israel, but factors came into play that helped to prepare such a change. The West German domestic level—spearheaded by policy entrepreneurs such as university students and parliamentarians—asserted itself, strove to influence the foreign policy making process, and questioned the rationale of assigning German unification the highest policy priority in external relations. Old-style foreign policy, conducted from the secluded realm of the cabinet room irrespective of the domestic mood, was ever harder to maintain. The two key factors responsible for this development were a transforming societal level, introducing new worldviews and principled beliefs, and a changing international environment with the onset of détente helping to challenge conventional ideas on the overriding significance of the attainment of complete German statehood.

Notes 1. Letter Erhard-Eshkol, Nov. 4, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 313: 1240. 2. The chancellor launched his initiatives in letters to Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder on February 15 and again on August 17 (Feb. 15, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963; Aug. 17, 1963, AAPD 1963 II, doc. 307: 1038). See also Hansen (2002: 590–607).

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3. Memo Press Officer Dohms, March 7, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963. 4. Schröder came out strongly against Adenauer’s suggestion. The foreign minister argued in his response to the chancellor: “There can be no doubt that the Arabs would react violently to the commencement of diplomatic relations between us and Israel. Some of them would likely commence relations with the SBZ, others would reexamine their relations with us and possibly terminate them” (March 13, 1963, AAPD 1963 I, doc. 121: 404). 5. Letter Schröder-Adenauer, Aug. 27, 1963, AAPD 1963 II, doc. 318: 1064; Conversation Schröder-Shinnar, April 5, 1963, AAPD 1963 I, doc. 142: 466. 6. Conversation Adenauer-Shinnar, May 28, 1963, AAPD 1963 I, doc. 182: 595. Three months later Adenauer reversed his position again, telling Shinnar and Schröder that he was “in favor of commencing relations and still want to do this during my term in office” (Letter AdenauerSchröder, Aug. 17, 1963, AAPD 1963 II, doc. 307: 1038)—only to change his mind for a third time just four weeks later when he claimed disingenuously that all he had promised was to investigate the issue (Letter Adenauer-Schröder, Sept. 1, 1963, AAPD 1963 II, doc. 324: 1079). 7. Dec. 3, 1963, Archiv der Gegenwart, vol. 33 (1963): 10940. 8. One Arab daily went as far as to publish a poetic eulogy to Erhard, praising the chancellor’s farsighted stewardship: “To the chancellor of West Germany/The Arabs pay tribute to you, o Erhard/…/With this you have earned the title of a ‘chosen chancellor’./The Jews were not only stunned, but also very surprised about you./You spoke plainly with them and you dumbfounded them and their heart missed a beat./The German Reich has proved that after long patience comes the rage./…/” (my English translation from the West German embassy’s German translation of the Arabic original, Dec. 13, 1963, PA/AA, Ref. I B 4, vol. 42). For the Israeli reaction see Shinnar’s report to State Secretary Rolf Lahr, Dec. 7, 1963, AAPD 1963 III, doc. 455: 1569. 9. Conversation Lahr-Shinnar, Nov. 28, 1963, AAPD 1963 III, doc. 437: 1513–1515; Letter Erhard-Eshkol, April 30, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964. 10. In mid 1964, Israeli counsel Leo Savir warned Foreign Office official Hans Schirmer not to test Israeli sensitivities with any such proposals. It would be best to sit tight and do nothing as long as full diplomatic relations would not or could not be commenced. “Any substitute solution would be received as a provocation by the majority of the Israeli people and would represent nothing but a burden,” Savir advised (July 29, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 214: 907–908). 11. Memo Böker, Aug. 15, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963. Böker, in the rank of a Ministerialdirigent, served as head of the division I B in the Foreign Office (Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Political Affairs). 12. Conversation Schröder-Sabri, Jan. 30, 1964, AAPD 1964 I, doc. 32: 160–165. 13. This is all the more noteworthy as Bonn concluded a DM 230 million loan agreement with Egypt in April 1963. The deal came with the promise of additional loans worth DM 259 million and the prospect of negotiating an agreement on economic and technical cooperation (News Bulletin Economics Ministry, April 5, 1963, BA, B 136, 650 15, 2972). Conceivably, such arrangements were motivated not only by considerations of unification policy, however highly they might have rated in this context, but by economic interests as well. 14. Nasser made this threat explicit in a meeting with Bonn’s ambassador, Georg Federer, on January 31, 1965 (Feb. 1, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 48: 229). 15. Meeting Balkow-Nasser, Feb. 11 and 15, 1963, SEDA, NY-4182, vol. 1335. 16. Conversation Schröder-Rusk, April 10, 1963, AAPD 1963 I, doc. 145: 478. 17. Conversation Schirmer-Nasser, April 10, 1963, AAPD 1963 I, doc. 146: 482. 18. Letter Böhm to Schröder, March 21, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963. 19. Strauß visited Israel from May 28 to June 7, 1963, having left Germany still convinced that commencing diplomatic relations would not be a prudent step. He changed his mind during the trip and caused much ado in Bonn when he came out in favor of full relations (Memo Böker, PA/AA, B 36, Ref. I B 4, vol. 43; Report Ambassador Weber, Cairo, June 5/6, 1963, AAPD 1963 II, doc. 189: 609–613).

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20. Memo Böker, Aug. 14, 1963, AAPD 1963 II, doc. 303: 1028; Memo Carstens, Jan. 29, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963. 21. The Foreign Office sent loyal parliamentarians such as Christian Democrats Ernst Majonica and Berthold Martin to the “Arab friends” (Böker) in order to further foreign policy goals by improving relations atmospherically. During the trip, the two professed that official ties with Israel were not in Germany’s interest and asserted that Bonn would “never” exchange ambassadors with Israel (Report Embassy Cairo-Foreign Office, Sept. 9, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963; Die Welt, Sept. 5/9, 1963). The Foreign Office refused to distance itself from the comments, arguing that they only evened out Gerstenmaier’s and Strauß’s calls for the commencement of diplomatic relations with Israel (Blasius 1994b: 200). 22. Letter German-Israeli student group Munich University to Erhard, Dec. 6, 1963, BA, B 136, 301 01, vol. 3635; Letter German-Israeli student group Frankfurt University to Erhard, Dec. 5, 1963, BA, B 136, 301 01, vol. 3635: “Wollen wir unsere Beziehungen zu Israel darauf beschränken, auf Veranstaltungen über freundschaftliche Beziehungen zu reden und kommen wir nicht über freundschaftliche Beziehungen hinaus, so ergibt sich daraus eine nur zwanghafte Bewältigung unserer Vergangenheit in rituellen Handlungen, und unsere Beziehungen zu Israel haben dann lediglich einen Buße- oder Wiedergutmachungscharakter. Damit geht man jedoch einer echten Freundschaft mit Israel aus dem Wege.” 23. Letter German-Israeli student group Heidelberg University to Erhard, Dec. 6, 1963, BA, B 136, 301 01, vol. 3635: “Von diesen übergeordneten Werten her halten wir die Anerkennung Israels für eine notwendige politische Konsequenz Ihrer Rede. Nur so ist Ihr Appell an uns glaubwürdig.” 24. While the times were not ripe for such an immediate impact yet, governmental records show that Erhard’s foreign policy adviser Horst Osterheld, and Chief of Chancellery Karl Hohmann—and the chancellor himself—took note of the students’ petitions and spent a significant amount of time and effort drafting responses. The archived petitions are fitted with handwritten notes by Osterheld and Hohmann, carry stamps indicating that they should be presented to the chancellor, and are initialed by Erhard himself (handwritten notes, Jan. 1964, BA, B 136, 301 01, vol. 3635). 25. Parliamentary President Gerstenmaier was deeply perturbed by the “torn German national consciousness” (tief gestörtes deutsches Nationalbewußtsein) that, according to him, prevailed among the German public following National Socialism. The Germans’ disturbed relationship with state authority generally after the Third Reich’s demise was taken to extremes, he said in a speech at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University in November 1963, that did not bode well for the resurrection of a German state. Consequently, the precondition for the “road to the future” (i.e., unification) lay in the Germans’ task of arriving at a “settled national consciousness” (geklärtes Nationalbewußtsein) and an “orderly relationship with German history” (geordnetes Verhältnis zur deutschen Geschichte). Gerstenmaier believed reconciliation with Israel was a necessary element in this effort and therefore concrete steps toward that end—such as the establishment of diplomatic relations—had to be taken (Vogel 1987 I, vol. 1: 200–214). 26. For the student demonstrations see photos in Wolffsohn 1986: 23 and this book’s front cover illustration; Carstens in Parliament: Bundestag, Nov. 4, 1964: 7095; Support for diplomatic relations: SZ, April 1, 1964; Decree Jansen, April 7, 1964, AAPD 1964 I: 398 (fn 17). 27. When Social Democrat Mommer initiated the parliamentary committee on relations with Israel, Schröder objected strongly, seeking to guard the government’s ascendancy over foreign policy: “This is indisputably the government’s affair—we will object to the idea of building a parliamentary working group.” Schröder’s objections were to no avail (Blasius 1994b: 204). 28. Conversation Schröder-Sabri, Aug. 9, 1963, AAPD 1963 II, doc. 289: 962–964. 29. Minutes of ambassadors’ conference, April 20, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964. 30. The nonaligned states’ summit was scheduled for October 1964, and 1964 saw several more meetings among bloc-free states: the summit of the Organization of African Unity (July); Arabic summit (September); the 2nd Bandung-conference was planned for 1965 but was cancelled (April 24, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 105: 457–458).

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31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37.

38.

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39.

40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45.

46.

Letter Schröder, Sept. 4, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 241: 994. Foreign Office memo, Sept. 29, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964. Minutes of ambassadors’ conference, April 20, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964. Minutes of ambassadors’ conference, April 20, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964. On West German aid to Egypt see note Böker, Sept. 26, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964. Conversation Kiesewetter-Nasser, Dec. 29, 1963, SEDA, NY-4182, vol. 1335. East Berlin had asked, among other things, that nonaligned summit participants endorse the admittance of “both German states” to the United Nations, a step—it emphasized—that would not require a de jure or de facto recognition of East Germany. However, this was an idea to which Bonn was adamantly opposed: “The SBZ [Soviet Occupied Zone] cannot and must not become member of the UN . . . because the SBZ is not a state. Only the Federal government can legitimately represent the German people” (Memo Luedde-Neurath, Oct. 6, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 275: 1126–1129). On the outcome of the summit: Ambassador Federer, Cairo, Oct. 15, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964; transcript of Nasser’s television interview, Oct. 4, 1964, SEDA, NY-4182, vol. 1335. January 1964 was no good, Nasser told Kiesewetter, because Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev had announced his intention of visiting Egypt at that time. Then there was the summit of Arab states, which was immediately to be followed by the holy month of Ramadan, the president explained. And then it had just been decided two days ago that the date for Egypt’s parliamentary elections would be pushed back so that they could take place right after the holidays. When Kiesewetter finally suggested the end of March as a possibility, Nasser responded that regrettably the end of March had already been earmarked for a visit by Yugoslavian President Tito—a date which could not possibly be moved for political as well as health reasons (Tito suffered from rheumatism, and the Egyptian climate had brought him great relief during previous visits, Nasser explained). Kiesewetter objected that Ulbricht’s health and age also had to be taken into account, and Nasser eventually agreed to March or April 1964, but only as a “rough reference point” (Conversation Kiesewetter-Nasser, Dec. 29, 1963, SEDA, NY-4182, vol. 1335). The trip went ahead no earlier than in February 1965 as Egypt was able to string East Berlin along for as much as an additional twelve months. Quoted in Blasius (1994b: 167). For excerpts of the speech see also Memo German Scientists in Egypt, March 28, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963. Eugen Sänger, Wolfgang Pilz, and Heinz Krug. Hans Kleinwächter and Paul Görke were also prominent among the group (Letter Peres-Strauß, Aug. 17, 1962, ISA, RG 130.02; FAZ, March 30, 1965; See also Hansen 2002: 637–664 and Jelinek 2004: 417–429). The rockets al Mahir and al Zafir had a reach of 600 and 380 kilometers respectively (Memo German Scientists in Egypt, March 28, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963). “Who did help Egypt?” Peres asked Strauß rhetorically and proceeded to answer his own question: “The main help came from Germany” (Letter Peres-Strauß, Aug. 17, 1962, ISA, RG 130.02). Confidential reports by Bonn’s embassy in Cairo confirmed collaboration between Egypt and German scientists (March 28, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963). Report German Ambassador in Cairo, March 22, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963, and Memo German Scientists in Egypt, March 28, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963. Memo Schirmer, Jan. 30, 1963, AAPD 1963 I, doc. 66: 230. Numbers according to the German Foreign Office (Memo German Scientists in Egypt, March 28, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963). Komer Commentary, Aug. 14, 1965, LBJL, NSF, NF: Komer Memos, vol. I, box 6 (emphasis in the original). Robert W. Komer served as a National Security Council staff assistant to National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy from 1961 to 1965. Department of State Circular, June 26, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, box 143. Robert Komer stressed: “The UAR missile strength is often exaggerated. There is no evidence that the UAR has 250 surface to surface missiles. Indeed it is doubtful that the UAR has any significant operational missile capability, though it is actively testing. … No Arab state has any capability to produce nuclear weapons. Nor is the UAR believed capable of producing effective radioactive

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47. 48.

49.

50. 51. 52.

53.

54.

55.

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56. 57.

58. 59. 60. 61.

62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67.

rubbish devices” (Aug. 14, 1965, LBJL, NSF, NF: Komer Memos, vol. I, box 6; similarly interview Robert Komer with author, June 8, 1995, Washington, D.C.). Conversation Johnson-Eshkol, June 1, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, box 143. Unofficial summary of remarks by Abba Eban, Oct. 15, 1964, YIVO (AJC), FAD-1 Israel, box 40. Eban admitted that while Israeli military experts were initially concerned, they now accepted the Pentagon’s appraisal that the Egyptian missiles did not yet represent a real threat. Returning from a trip to Israel in early 1964, Munich’s Social Democratic mayor Hans-Jochen Vogel reported that many Israelis drew an analogy between the Nazi gas chambers on the one hand and German collaboration in Egypt’s rocket program on the other (SZ, April 1, 1954). Memo Jansen, April 6, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964. Memo German Scientists in Egypt, March 28, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963. Interministerial review, March 26, 1963, AAPD 1963 I, doc. 133: 435. Globke’s assertion was a blatant misrepresentation of the prevalent mood among West German lawmakers. In fact, it was the parliamentary groups (Fraktionen) that eventually took the lead on this issue as impatience with the government’s inertia grew (Vogel 1987 I: 234–237; Memo Böker, April 2, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963). The issue topped the cabinet’s agenda on March 27, April 8, April 24 and May 2. At the May meeting the chancellor recommended putting the issue on the back burner for the time being (“daß… zunächst ‘kürzer getreten werden solle’”) (May 2, 1963, I B 4, vol. 17, quoted in AAPD 1963 I: 562, footnote 4). Bundestag 56, Oct. 15, 1964: 6787; Letter Erhard-Eshkol, Nov. 4, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 313: 1240–1241. At the same time, Bonn took pains not to condone the scientists’ work in Cairo. Foreign Office official Hans Schirmer, for instance, argued against any official whitewashing of the scientists’ activities in Egypt (Memo Schirmer, Jan. 30, 1963, AAPD 1963 I, doc. 66: 230–231). This initiative was contemplated as an alternative to an amendment to the German constitution proposed by Christian Democrat Franz Böhm in 1963 (NZZ, May 10, 1964; Memo Jansen, April 6, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964). Cable Böker, April 24, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964. Memo Jansen, June 14, 1964, AAPD 1964 I, doc. 164: 670; Memo Schirmer, Feb. 24, 1964, AAPD 1964 I, doc. 54: 269–272. Schirmer, the head of the Middle East desk in the Foreign Office, listed as many as five major news stories on German arms aid to Israel, many of them quoting high-ranking Israeli and German officials (such as Peres and Strauß) hinting at arms transferals between the two countries. Schirmer and Jansen concluded that the only reason why the Arabs had kept a low profile on the issue was to be seen in the off-setting character of German scientists’ work in Egypt. Memo Jansen, Nov. 3, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964. Memo Böker, April 2, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963. Memo Borries, Aug. 1, 1963, I B 4, vol. 17, quoted in Blasius 1994b: 192–193. The government was tasked with taking legislative measures that would bar German collaboration in weapons production outside the boundaries of the Federal Republic (Vogel 1987 I: 234–237). Memo Interior Ministry, Nov. 6, 1964, quoted in AAPD 1964 II: 1298, footnote 11. Memo Carstens, Nov. 2, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964; Letter Schröder to Erhard, Nov. 9, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 315: 1247. Erhard Briefing, Nov. 16, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 340: 1335. Letter Segal-Horkheimer, April 5, 1963, YIVO (AJC), FAD-1 Germany, box 22. As an emigrant in New York during National Socialism, Horkheimer had been director of the American Jewish Committee’s research department in 1943/1944. On the role of the American-Jewish community in the campaign against German scientists’ activities in Egypt see also Shafir (2001: 62). Letter Singman-Slawson, June 7, 1963, YIVO (AJC), FAD-1 Germany, box 24. Conversation Erhard-Goldmann, Oct. 8, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 276: 1133.

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68. Eshkol speech in Knesset, Oct. 12, 1964 (Informationsabteilung der Israel Mission), DGAP Press Archive, Israel 101, Jan. 1, 1964-Dec. 31, 1964. 69. Report by the German ambassador in Washington on a US State Department aide-memoire, April 17, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963. Ambassador Knappstein believed the memorandum had been approved at the highest levels. 70. “The US is troubled much more deeply by rocket programs in the Near East than by the production of military aircraft. We do not believe that the question whether or not the UAR is to achieve independence from the Soviets in this field should—per se—be considered a significant factor. We would appreciate an effort by the FRG to obtain as complete information as possible, including the experience and capabilities of the German scientists working on the rockets, and we would hope the FRG would share fully with us such information. We would not at this moment recommend, from our standpoint, an effort to force the German scientists out of the UAR program, but we should like to review the matter with the FRG later when a more complete study has been undertaken on the basis of better information” (US aide-memoire, April 17, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963). 71. Jim Novy, a resident of Austin, TX, in close proximity of the LBJ ranch and apparently an acquaintance of Lyndon Johnson, urged the president to “write a letter to Chancellor Ludwig Erhard of West Germany concerning this urgent issue [i.e., draft legislation prohibiting Germans from developing or producing war material] at your earliest opportunity” (Letter Novy to President, Oct. 10, 1964 and Letter Popple (Assist. to Pres.) to Novy, Oct. 15, 1964, LBJL, WHCF, Countries CO 92 Germany, box 34). 72. German Penal Code (Strafgesetzbuch) § 67, 1964. In the German original: “Die Strafverfolgung von Verbrechen verjährt, wenn sie mit lebenslangem Zuchthaus bedroht sind, in zwanzig Jahren … .” 73. Other sources believed “several thousand” murderers had not been indicted yet. Simon Wiesenthal’s research showed that 250 Nazi leaders presumed dead were in fact still alive. Altogether, about 80,000 Germans had been tried and sentenced by domestic and international courts for Nazi crimes generally, including, though not exclusively, murder. The bulk of those trials had been carried out by the Soviet Union (around 24,000 according to the Justice Ministry), followed by Poland (16,819), Czechoslovakia (around 16,000), East Germany (12,807 according to the Justice Ministry), and the Western Allies (around 5,000). West Germany, according to the Justice Ministry, had sentenced 6,115 persons by the end of 1964. Of those, just above 400 were sentenced for murder or manslaughter (Kempner in Tagesanzeiger, Dec. 12, 1964; for the Justice Ministry’s figures see Bundestag, March 10, 1965: 8517; Der Spiegel, March 8, 1965; Die Zeit, Nov. 27, 1964. See also Hansen 2002: 664–673). 74. Next to Erhard, only the ministers Ernst Lemmer (Refugees), Paul Lücke (Housing), and Theodor Blank (Labor) voted in favor of the statute’s extension. Apart from Kurt Schmücker (Economics) who abstained, all other members of the nineteen-minister cabinet—including Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder—vetoed the setting of a later expiration date (Der Spiegel, March 8, 1965; Barzel 1978: 27–28). 75. Eugen Kogon (1965: 151); interview Karl Jaspers (Der Spiegel, March 8, 1965); Die Zeit, Nov. 27, 1964. In a case unrelated to the statute of limitations for murder, the Federal Constitutional Court upheld in 1952 the principle that what mattered was whether the committed act was regarded a criminal offense under the law at the time, not whether the statute of limitations had been of the same duration at the time of the crime. The decision was quoted by Christian Democrat Ferdinand Friedensburg in a speech to the parliament (Bundestag, March 10, 1965: 8554). 76. Political scientist and publisher Eugen Kogon (1965: 150) commented on this government position that “to many the Iron Curtain as a result of international tensions came in handy: it obstructed contacts which could have led to dangerous archives.” 77. Conversation Erhard-Goldmann, Oct. 8, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 276: 1132. 78. Opinions about the Globke trial, July 11, 1963, SEDA, DY 30/IV A2/5, vol. 22. 79. The Federal Republic was founded in 1949 and officially achieved sovereignty only after the Contractual Agreements (Deutschlandvertrag) were ratified in 1955 (Rauschning 1989).

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80. Bulletin 170, Nov. 21, 1964. Up until that point, the Ludwigsburg attorneys were commissioned to investigate exclusively crimes committed outside the territory of the Federal Republic. 81. Telegram Schröder-AJC, Nov. 24, 1964, YIVO (AJC), FAD-1 Germany, box 24. 82. Minister Bucher’s report to Parliament (Bundestag, March 10, 1965: 8518–8519). The head of the Polish commission for research on Hitler crimes in Poland, Gumkowski, also voiced skepticism about the feasibility of accomplishing a full review of the Warsaw records in the space of the remaining few months (Embassy Warsaw-Foreign Office, Jan. 25, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965). According to Inge Deutschkron (1991: 243), around 5,000 to 6,000 new cases came to the attention of the Ludwigsburg office between 1965 and 1967 alone. 83. See also Shlomo Shafir (2001: 62) on the American Jewish community’s efforts in support of an extension of the German statute of limitations for murder. 84. Letter Prinz-Rusk, March 2, 1964, AJHS (AJCs), I-77 (IX. C.), box 26. 85. Letter Feldman-Rabbi Meisels, Aug. 17, 1964, LBJL, WHCF, FG 11-8-1/Feldman, Myer, box 82. 86. AJCs News, Nov. 15, 1964, AJHS (AJCs), I-77 (X.), box 52. 87. Telegram Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations to Gerhard Schröder, undated (Dec. 18, 1964), AJHS (AJCs), I-77 (X.), box 52. The organizations included: American Israel Public Affairs Committee, American Jewish Congress, American Zionist Council, American Trade Union Council for Histadrut, B’nai B’rith, Hadassah, Jewish Agency for Israel—American Section, Jewish Labor Committee, Jewish War Veterans oft the USA, Labor Zionist Movement, Mizrachi-Hapoel Hamizrachi, National Community Relations Advisory Council, National Council of Jewish Women, National Council of Young Israel, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, United Synagogue of America, Zionist Organization of America. 88. Statement on Germany, undated (Nov./Dec. 1964), AJHS (AJCs), I-77 (X.), box 52. 89. Telegram Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations to Gerhard Schröder, undated (Dec. 18, 1964), AJHS (AJCs), I-77 (X.), box 52. 90. Memo West German Statute of Limitations, AJHS (AJCs), I-77 (IX. C.), box 26; Report from West Germany, Dec. 28, 1964, YIVO (AJC), FAD-1 Germany, box 22. 91. The American Jewish Congress even took its campaign to the airwaves on at least one occasion, when Governing Council Chairman Shad Polier took part in a television program (WNDTTV—Channel 13, Dec. 21, 1964, AJHS (AJCs), I-77 (X.), box 52). 92. Background Material on West Germany’s Statute of Limitations, undated (Dec. 1964/Jan. 1965), AJHS (AJCs), I-77 (X.), box 52. 93. Press release Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Dec. 24, 1964, AJHS (AJCs), I-77 (X.), box 52. 94. Conversation Erhard-Goldmann, Oct. 8, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 276: 1132; Conversation Erhard-Goldmann, Dec. 4, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964; The Jerusalem Post, Nov. 12, 1964. 95. Memo statute of limitations for Nazi criminals, Dec. 10, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964. 96. For the origins of the German-Israeli arms relationship see chapter 3. 97. Initially in 1962, the group included two representatives of each party: Georg Kliesing (CDU), Albert Leicht (CDU), Karl Mommer (SPD), Friedrich Schäfer (SPD), Thomas Dehler (FDP) and Hans Georg Emde (FDP). In 1964, Richard Jaeger (CSU), Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski (SPD), and Klaus Freiherr von Mühlen (FDP) were added to the list. Responding to domestic pressure, Erhard made the names public in a speech to Parliament on February 17, 1965 (Bundestag, Feb. 17, 1965: 8104). 98. After the DM 1.3 million and DM 52.8 million in 1963 and 1964 respectively, the Defense Ministry earmarked DM 102.5 million for 1965, 30 million in each of 1966 and 1967, and 35 million in 1968, 1969, and 1970 respectively. The fact that the installments added up to

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99. 100.

101. 102.

103.

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104.

105.

106. 107.

108. 109.

considerably more than the DM 240 million set earlier may have been owed to the expected incurring of additional overhead (Defense Ministry’s Compilation of Equipment Aid Projects at end-1964, Dec. 1964, attachment to Memo Equipment Aid Consultations, Dec. 15, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964; Memo Pauls, Oct. 21, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 289: 1165–1166.). Memo Middelmann, July 9, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964; Embassy BeirutForeign Office, Oct. 16, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964. Horst Osterheld (1992: 150), head of the Chancellery’s foreign policy department, recalls that even cabinet members and most of the staff in the Chancellery found out details of the weapons agreements only piecemeal in early 1965 from a few insiders in the Defense Ministry. For an overview of the disagreement between the Foreign Office and the Defense Ministry see Memo Carstens, Jan. 4, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 2: 6–12. Also on the disagreement between the two ministries and the secrecy see Mohr (2003). Letter Schröder-Erhard, June 5, 1964, AAPD 1964 I, doc. 151: 604. The helicopters were part and parcel of the “Frank./Kol.” project. (Letter Dahlgrün to von Hassel, June 24, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964). In a similar instance, Minister for Economic Development Walter Scheel also raised “constitutional and budgetary” objections to the secrecy surrounding economic aid to Israel, demanding that project “Geschäftsfreund” (business partner) should be treated just like any other development aid program. The Foreign Office, however, swiftly vetoed the suggestion. For budgetary reasons it might be preferable to abandon the secrecy, the office conceded, but it considered the idea completely “intolerable for foreign policy reasons.” The anticipated storm of indignation in the Arab world should the “business partner” relationship with Israel become public could only be countered by paying the same amounts to Arab states or canceling payments to Israel. “Both are impossible,” the Foreign Office noted (Letter Scheel-Erhard, March 19, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964 and Memo Lahr, March 20, 1964, AAPD 1964 I, doc. 76: 366). Memo Meeting Foreign Office-Defense Ministry, Dec. 15, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964. Defense Minister von Hassel argued that equipment aid was not to be regarded as defense costs, but as a matter of “big picture policy” (Gesamtpolitik) (Memo Meeting Federal Defense Council, July 8, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964). Memo Meeting Federal Defense Council, July 8, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964; Letter Dahlgün-von Hassel, June 24, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964; Memo Sachs, Oct. 21, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964. The Defense Ministry did not think it could do this without exceeding a previously set DM 240 million threshold for the “Frank./Kol.” budget—it would instead have to be something like DM 270 million, it told the Foreign Office (Memo Sachs, Dec. 22, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 396: 1559). For the leak and the ensuing public debate see chapter 5. The key quotes of the interview are reported in: Cable Press Department, Hille, June 15, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963. Social Democratic parliamentarian Merten—next to Kliesing, Emde, and Schäfer—took part in a meeting of the select group of parliamentarians initiated in arms agreements with Israel, even though he was not originally a nominated member of that group. He may have substituted for his fellow party member Karl Mommer (Memo Pauls, June 12, 1963, AAPD 1963 II, doc. 193: 630). Blasius (1994b: 189) believes Merten was one of “four parliamentarians” informed by the Foreign Office about equipment aid provided to various countries. Jansen-Embassy Cairo, June 21, 1963, AAPD 1963 II, doc. 202: 649. As for the 1960 agreement between Adenauer and Ben-Gurion, the State Department said that it had “no knowledge that the US was even aware of such an agreement,” let alone exerted pressure on the Germans to conclude it. As for the Strauß-Peres deal two years later, US Ambassador McGhee complained to Foreign Minister Schröder that “no one knew anything

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112. 113.

114.

115. 116. 117. 118. 119.

about the 1962 agreement.” According to Schröder, the Israelis had promised to inform the Kennedy administration about it not only on Jerusalem’s, but also on Bonn’s behalf. (Memo David Klein, Feb. 17, 1965, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, tanks vol. II, box 145; Meeting SchröderMcGhee, Feb. 22, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 89: 369–370). Memo Keller, Aug. 15, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963. The reference to “the embassy” denotes the US embassy in Bonn. The State Department increasingly believed its outpost in Bonn did a poor job at ascertaining exact numbers on German military aid to developing countries (Memo Jansen, June 21, 1963, AAPD 1963 II, doc. 203: 651). The British, in 1964, voiced similar complaints and warned that the intelligence obtained could lead to “misunderstandings” and “unnecessary worries” in London (Memo Middelmann, June 2, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964). Memo Keller, Aug. 29 and Aug. 30, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963. German Foreign Minister Schröder told US Ambassador McGhee on one occasion that “there can hardly be any claim that the Americans were originally involved.” Reportedly, President Kennedy was apprised of the deal and saw “no reason to oppose this arms policy,” but also never claimed he had initiated it or that the United States had partaken in it. Since information about the arrangement was strictly limited to Kennedy’s person, the State Department and later the Johnson administration appeared to have been insufficiently informed about the proceedings—a fact that helps to explain the State Department’s surprise and annoyance with the Germans in 1963 (Meeting Schröder-McGhee, Feb. 22, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 89: 369–370; for President Kennedy’s involvement: Memo Carstens, Sept. 25, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963; Schoenbaum 1993: 131). Some of the literature touching on the German-Israeli arms deals holds erroneously that the 1962 agreement was “initiated” or “instigated” by the United States (Hildebrand 1984: 112; Wolffsohn 1993: 32). Haftendorn (1971: 22) has it right by distinguishing between two generations of GermanIsraeli military agreements—the first one bilateral, the second one on behalf of the United States. The confusion may stem from Adenauer’s misleading retrospective intimation that the military agreement with Israel under his auspices came about at a US request (“at the wish of a friendly country”). This was, in fact, not the case, and Adenauer’s additional claim that he had not negotiated over weapons with Ben-Gurion in 1960 was equally misleading (Die Welt, Feb. 17, 1965). Government spokesman von Hase corrected Adenauer’s comments a few days later (Die Welt, Feb. 27, 1965). Adenauer may have made the remarks in February 1965 to deflect heavy domestic criticism—even by his own Christian Democrats—of the government’s handling of the secret deals after they became public in late 1964 and early 1965. This concern was voiced time and again as US officials learned of ever more details of the German arms deliveries to Israel (Memo Keller, Aug. 15, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963; Cable Embassy Washington, Sept. 19/20, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963; Meeting Schröder-Ball, Sept. 22, 1963, AAPD 1963 II, doc. 358: 1211; Interview Robert W. Komer with author, June 8, 1995, Washington, D.C.). Interview Robert W. Komer with author, June 8, 1995, Washington, D.C., and interview McGeorge Bundy with author, May 31, 1995, New York. Telegram Dep. of State-US Embassy Tel Aviv, Oct. 30, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, vol. III, box 139. Memo German-American Consultations, May 13 and 15, 1963, AAPD 1963 I, doc. 166: 537–538. Memo Read-Bundy, April 7, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, vol. II, box 138. US Under Secretary of State Averell Harriman marked the fundamental reversal of Washington’s stance in early 1965, calling the imminent decision by the US government to sell offensive weapons to Israel a “historic change in our policy” (Conversation Eshkol, Harriman, others, Feb. 25, 1965, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, vol. IV, box 139). In 1962, the Kennedy administration had already agreed to sell the Israelis the Hawk, a US surface-to-air missile. However, the deal was not significant in quantity and involved a purely defensive weapons

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120.

121. 122. 123.

124. 125. 126.

127.

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128.

129. 130. 131. 132.

133.

system (NA, RG 59, CDF 1960–1963, box 2058, folders 784A.56/1-860, 784A.56/7-260, 784A.56/1-561, 784A.56/10-961, 784A.56/1-862, 784A.5612/3-2560). “Israel,” the CIA summarized in February 1964, “has embarked on an intensive campaign to persuade the US to provide it, on grant basis, with substantial numbers of tanks. The Israelis argue that the only vehicles capable of matching the UAR’s T-54 are the US M-48 and M-60, and that they will need to get up to five hundred such tanks in the next few years. These would be to replace their own older equipment and to match growing UAR armored strength” (CIA Special Memo No. 6-64, Feb. 25, 1964, LBJL, NSF, McGeorge Bundy Memos to Pres., vol. II, box 1). Memo Komer-President, Jan. 29, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, vol. I, box 138. CIA Special Memo No. 6-64, Feb. 25, 1964, LBJL, NSF, McGeorge Bundy Memos to Pres., vol. II, box 1. Memo Rowan-President, March 25, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, tanks vol. I, box 145; Joint Chiefs of Staff Memo to Sec. of Defense, March 12, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, tanks vol. I, box 145. The high military command also concluded that “the substantial military equilibrium presently existing among Near Eastern states does not warrant immediate action to supply major quantities of arms to any of those countries. Rather, the highest priority effort should be directed toward achieving agreement among Middle East arms suppliers to restrict the flow of arms into the area” (Joint Chiefs of Staff Memo to Sec. of Defense, Jan. 18, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, tanks vol. I, box 145). Draft NSAM, undated (March 1964), LBJL, NSF, McGeorge Bundy Memos to Pres., vol. II, box 1; NSAM 290, March 19, 1964, LBJL, NSF, NSAMs, box 3. Memo Komer, May 18, 1964, LBJL, NSF, Files of McGeorge Bundy, Memoranda of Meetings with President vol. I, box 19. Memo Johnson, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, tanks vol. I, box 145. Myer Feldman, who was heavily involved in the tank deal, confirmed this conclusion in an interview with the author, June 27, 1995, Washington, D.C. For the Israeli complaints see Meeting Harman-Harriman, May 25, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, tanks vol. II, box 145. In contrast to the Centurion, all M-48 models mounted 90 mm guns only (“In-Country Map Tank Deliveries” attached to Memo Port, Jan. 13, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, tanks vol. I, box 145; Memo army operations deputy, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, tanks vol. I, box 145). Retrofitting German equipment and eventually delivering a tank (the M-48A3) that had never been part of the Federal Republic’s inventories would help to keep the additional “Frank./Kol.” shipments secret, the reasoning went. Yet, the measure did not entirely calm a jittery Bonn government that was extremely nervous about the deal (Memos “Conversion of M-48 tanks to M-48A3 w/ 105mm Gun” and “Provision of Tanks Through West Germany,” both attached to Memo Kovalevsky, March 5, 1964, LBJL, NSF, NSAMs, NSAM 290, box 3). Memo Komer, May 18, 1964, LBJL, NSF, Files of McGeorge Bundy, Memoranda of Meetings with President vol. I, box 19. Meeting Ambassador Harman-Harriman, May 25, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, tanks vol. II, box 145. Meeting Erhard-McGhee, May 23, 1964, AAPD 1964 I, doc. 136: 568. Conversation Johnson, Feldman, Eshkol, Harman, June 1, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, Eshkol visit, box 143. Robert Komer confirms that the Israelis were the ones who proposed Italy as the place to retrofit the tanks before transshipment to Israel (interview Robert W. Komer with author, June 8, 1995, Washington, D.C.). Memo Komer-President, June 2, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, Eshkol visit, box 143. “My instinct is,” Komer explained earlier, “that Israel will make every effort to get M-48s, but fall back on the UK if this fails. So we ought to make every effort to help them with the Germans, but not let them come back to us if this aborts” (Memo Komer to President, May 28, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, Eshkol visit, box 143).

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135. 136. 137.

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139. 140. 141.

142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147.

Johnson had taken over the reins just a month earlier upon President Kennedy’s assassination in late November 1963. Erhard had succeeded Adenauer in mid October, about two months prior to the summit. “Erhard,” Secretary of State Dean Rusk told Johnson ahead of the December 1963 visit, “is anxious to build up his own image in Germany as a world statesman and international political leader. . . . he attaches the highest political importance to his visit with you.” For Johnson, the stakes were similarly high: “The Erhard meeting is an important one because if it goes well it can lay a basis for your leadership, both within the [North Atlantic] alliance and in relations with the Soviet Union,” Johnson’s top foreign policy aide advised the president (Memo Rusk to President, undated (Dec. 1963), LBJL, NSF, CF Germany, Visit of Chancellor Erhard Briefing Book, box 190; Memo Bundy-President, Dec. 20, 1963, LBJL, NSF, CF Germany, Erhard visit, box 190). Memo Bundy, June 12, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Germany, Erhard visit, box 191. Memo Bundy, June 12, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Germany, Erhard visit, box 191; Telegram Rusk-McGhee, June 3, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, tanks vol. II, box 145. Meeting Erhard-Johnson, June 12, 1964, AAPD 1964 I, doc. 161: 653–656. Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder later called the conversion of German-owned tanks in Italy a process of “so-called de-Germanization” (sogenannte Entgermanisierung) (Meeting Schröder-McGhee, March 12, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 125: 506). Meeting Erhard-Johnson, June 12, 1964, AAPD 1964 I, doc. 161: 653–656. Horst Osterheld (1992: 151), Erhard’s foreign policy advisor, believes Erhard agreed to the deal after “substantial pressure” exerted by the US administration—notably Secretary of Defense McNamara—during the June visit. Memo Bundy, June 12, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Germany, Erhard visit, box 191. Meeting Erhard-McGhee, May 23, 1964, AAPD 1964 I, doc. 136: 567. Commenting on Germany’s deliveries of helicopters to Israel, the US embassy in Bonn told the Foreign Office in mid 1963: “This reinforcement of the Israeli air force is conducive to disturbing the military balance of power in the Middle East and therefore worries the American government.” No more than nine months later, however, US Ambassador McGhee told Erhard: “As for the delivery of tanks to Israel, America . . . hopes very much that the English and Germans could help Israel . . . . Everyone has great responsibility for maintaining the balance of power in the Middle East.” This change of mind came about despite Washington’s own estimates that the security situation in the Middle East had not changed significantly between 1963 and 1964. In late January 1964 the Joint Chiefs of Staff re-endorsed their December 1963 memorandum, stating that “the substantial military equilibrium presently existing among Near Eastern states does not warrant immediate action to supply major quantities of arms to any of those countries” (Memo Keller, Aug. 15, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963; Meeting Erhard-McGhee, May 23, 1964, AAPD 1964 I, doc. 136: 567; Memo Joint Chiefs of Staff, Jan. 18, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, tanks vol. I, box 145). Memo Komer, May 28, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, Eshkol visit, box 143. Memo Bundy, June 12, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Germany, Erhard visit, box 191. Letter McNaughton-Komer,” July 15, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, tanks vol. II, box 145. Meeting Schröder-Sabri, Aug. 9, 1963, AAPD 1963 II, doc. 289: 963, 961. Memo German Rocket Scientists, March 28, 1963, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1963. Minutes Ambassadors’ Conference, April 20–22, 1964 (evening April 21), April 21, 1964, AAPD 1964 I, doc. 106: 468.

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Chapter 5

“THE NORMALIZATION OF THE SITUATION” German Foreign Policy toward Israel, 1964–1965


The federal government is striving for diplomatic relations with Israel. This step is designed to contribute to a normalization of the situation. It is not directed against any Arab state (Bulletin 41, March 9, 1965: 325).

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The West German offer to establish diplomatic relations between Bonn and Jerusalem, announced by a government spokesman on Sunday, March 7, 1965, marked the climax of an exhilarating instance of postwar diplomacy. However, the commencement of diplomatic relations was not the final point in a historical development strung together by a coincidental series of events. The confluence of factors in 1964 and 1965 was not the outcome of pure chance, but the result of particular historio-political structures in Germany and a certain political configuration in the Middle East and the world. As for the German decision making process, the interplay between international and domestic factors is key in understanding the eventual policy outcome. During the six months preceding the offer to establish diplomatic relations, domestic pressure on the government mounted as the country witnessed a wave of public protests criticizing Bonn’s indecision over whether to recognize Israel and attacking its perceived leniency toward Egypt despite Cairo’s hostilities toward both Israel and Germany. Abroad, a head-of-state reception in early 1965 for East German Premier Walter Ulbricht in Egypt amounted to the most formidable threat to date to West Germany’s policy of isolating its Eastern adversary by denying it international recognition as a separate and full-fledged nation state. Notes for this section begin on page 163.

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Meanwhile, the debate about the statute of limitations intensified in early 1965 as the twenty-year deadline neared its expiration. And while tensions between Germany and Israel over German scientists’ role in Egypt’s weapons program had lingered since 1962, they came to a head in the spring of 1965 as Bonn’s complacency on the issue contrasted sharply with its readiness to yield to Arab pressure to terminate military aid for Jerusalem. The public disclosure of the arms relationship between Bonn and Jerusalem helped foster a debate about Germany’s relationship with Israel and hence opened the door further to societal involvement in high politics. To recap, these are this study’s main research questions: Why did German foreign policy toward Israel change dramatically in the early 1960s as Bonn moved from resisting the establishment of full diplomatic ties with Israel to accepting an exchange of ambassadors in March 1965? And, secondly, what was the correlation between Germany’s foreign policy toward Israel and activities among German society? What role did notions of history, national identity, and the state play in this process? Consequently, the variable to be explained—the dependent variable—is the shift in West Germany’s policy toward Israel, the change in the German leadership’s understanding of its Middle East policy, and its implication for unification policy. In the previous chapter, I have examined the time period between 1962 and 1964 by looking separately at the four key issue areas that dominated German-Israeli relations (diplomatic relations, German scientists in Egypt, the statute of limitations for murder, German weapons deliveries to Jerusalem). As for the present chapter’s examination of the actual change in foreign policy toward Israel in late 1964 and early 1965, it is necessary to highlight the four issue areas’ conspicuous interrelation by blending them into one unit of analysis and proceeding in chronological order. At the end of 1964 and in early 1965, the four policy fields became intertwined to a degree unseen in earlier days. While it was crucial to portray the underlying intricacies of each of the four issue areas individually first, it serves the epistemological interest to now interweave them as much as possible to reflect interdependencies as they existed in historical reality.

“The Smell of Hay Permeates the Region”: Weapons Deliveries Exposed, October–December 1964 [Israeli embassy official Mordechai] Gazit said that of course deliveries [of M-48 tanks by Germany] could be kept secret. [State Department official Rodger] Davies responded that when 200 to 500 elephants were shipped into the Near East, the smell of hay would permeate the region. He doubted very much the Arabs would be unaware of the delivery.1

In October 1964 and again in January 1965, the “smell of hay” indeed permeated the region, and the State Department official’s augury turned into reality as German tank deliveries to Israel and related military support under code name “Frank./Kol.” transpired in the press. On October 26, 1964 the Frankfurter Rund-

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schau, followed a few days later by the New York Times (Oct. 31, 1964, US edition), reported that Germany was shipping heavy armor and know-how to the Middle East, one of the most troublesome hot spots of the Cold War. The carefully orchestrated secrecy of the quadrangular tank delivery arrangement between the United States, Germany, Italy, and Israel was uncovered on January 20, 1965 by a CBS television report and a New York Times story the following day (NYT, Jan. 21, 1965).

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The Governmental Level Initially, Bonn shied away from confirming that it had indeed entertained relations with Israel beyond economic aid. Hours after the story of German arms shipments to the Middle East broke, government spokesman Karl-Günther von Hase hastily convened a news conference in which he neither confirmed nor denied the reports, but admitted that as for weapons deliveries, Germany and Israel had moved beyond the “stage of chastity” (Der Spiegel, Feb. 24, 1965). The Israelis, on the other hand, flatly denied having received any such aid from Germany and urged the Bonn government to do likewise. At the very least Jerusalem tried to cajole the German leadership into refraining from announcing that Bonn entertained no plans for additional arms agreements with Israel in the future.2 A day after the first reports on German military aid to Israel had gone to press, the cabinet had agreed on a two-part official statement, first admitting to weapons deliveries of limited scope to a number of countries, including Israel, and secondly stating that no new deliveries were planned.3 Ironically, at first glance, the Germans—thus far eager to conceal the weapons deliveries as much as possible in order not to upset the Arabs—increasingly took a jaundiced view of the stealth surrounding the arms relationship with Israel. Since a good part of the weapons deliveries had been exposed in the press, the veil of secrecy cast over the arms relationship had slipped considerably, and a reassessment of the situation seemed in order. The revelations hurt the government in public, with German society voicing ever stronger opposition to Bonn’s Middle East policy, branding it as void of any moral basis.4 Moreover, the secret arms deal had failed to fulfill its purpose of tempering Israel’s anger over the absence of diplomatic relations: “The attempt to compensate the lack of diplomatic relations with Israel with weapons deliveries to Israel did not yield the desired result,” a Foreign Office official noted. “In addition, the Arab side now puts into question the success of our policy of paying for the sole representation of the German people with the sacrifice of not commencing diplomatic relations with Israel.”5 Given this assessment of the situation, calls for a political “clean-up job” (Flurbereinigung) grew louder among Bonn’s top echelons. The Foreign Office certainly would have preferred to abandon the military relationship. The Israelis did not honor Bonn’s generosity, Foreign Minister Schröder and State Secretary Carstens complained. Instead, the Israelis put pressure on Germany about diplomatic relations and the German scientists operating in Egypt, Carstens pointed out, with Jerusalem knowing full well that Bonn was unable to counter such pressure by

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publicly boasting about the military support it granted to Israel: “The military cooperation with Israel is, from the perspective of German interest, useless and harmful. We should therefore terminate it in the future.” As for diplomatic relations, the Foreign Office admitted internally that it would be best to offer Jerusalem their full inauguration, but for the well-known reasons of unification policy that was deemed impossible. Again, as in 1963 and early 1964, the Foreign Office put much stock in Arab threats and resigned itself to Egypt’s blackmail: “Commencing diplomatic relations with Israel would, according to the unanimous opinion of our ambassadors in the Arab countries, result in the commencement of diplomatic relations between those countries and East Berlin. Relations with Israel would therefore result in a severe setback in positions of our unification policy.” Instead of full relations, Foreign Minister Schröder favored setting up trade missions with consular powers in Israel and Germany, hoping Jerusalem could be persuaded to give up its opposition to interim solutions short of full diplomatic ties.6 In late November, the Christian Democratic parliamentarian Eugen Gerstenmaier embarked on a publicity-laden trip to the Nile. He went to see Nasser in his capacity as President of the German Parliament, but at the same time the representative was charged with an official government mission. Initially, Gerstenmaier was little inclined to go. The parliamentary president had grown apprehensive of the relationship between the executive and legislative branches of government as it had developed during the Middle East crisis. Gerstenmaier, like most of his fellow lawmakers, was outraged about having been kept in the dark by the government on the secret arms deal with Israel and having learned about it only through the press. Undertaking his trip to Cairo, he insisted, was conditional on a candid government briefing about the full range of details implicated in the arms deal and on an unambiguous mandate to converse with Nasser on behalf of the government. He was fully aware, Gerstenmaier said, that usually governments negotiate with governments, not the parliament or its president, but in this instance he could not see how his trip would be of any use if he was not authorized to discuss specific policies with Nasser. Gerstenmaier was clearly angry and threatened to cancel the trip if he did not receive the requested information. Erhard obliged and arranged for a full briefing before the parliamentary president left on November 20.7 During the preparation for his trip the parliamentary president asserted himself, seeking to strengthen the role of the political body he chaired. While Gerstenmaier asked Erhard for specific guidelines and authorization on what he might convey to Nasser and the issues from which to abstain, he was also adamant about not allowing the government to rope him into its agenda. During his twohour meeting with Nasser, the substantive part of the conversation centered almost exclusively on the issue of relations between Bonn and Jerusalem. Gerstenmaier defied Erhard’s request to explain to Nasser that German weapons deliveries to Israel were merely settlements of agreements entered into “a long time ago” and that in principle Bonn stood by its decision not to deliver weapons

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to so-called areas of tension. Gerstenmaier also ignored the request to broach the issue of the German scientists with Nasser. Moreover, he made no use of the authorization to indicate Bonn’s willingness to further support Egypt’s economic development with aid programs. While government documents often enough conceal more than they reveal, it seems fair to assume that Gerstenmaier made these omissions on purpose, as in all three instances the respective issues did come up in the course of the conversation, presenting convenient opportunities for Gerstenmaier to inject Erhard’s messages had he been inclined to do so.8 This is not to say that the parliamentary president was uninterested in amicable relations with Nasser. To the contrary, Gerstenmaier went out of his way to create an atmosphere of mutual respect and appreciation. He also was a supporter of offering Egypt economic compensation should Cairo agree to closer German-Israeli ties without recognizing East Berlin. The point is that Gerstenmaier skillfully used the meeting to raise most prominently the issues he was most interested in (i.e., full German-Israeli relations).9 Having demanded to be invested with the authority to speak for the government, the parliamentary president did more than that—he also spoke for the German public, telling Nasser he “was very anxious not to speak to you only on my own personal behalf, but on behalf of the German people and the German government.”10 As for tangible results of the meeting, Gerstenmaier returned with the indication that Nasser might resign himself to full relations between Bonn and Jerusalem without retaliating by recognizing East Berlin if Egypt was compensated appropriately, and if the Germans handled the issue skillfully. In their meeting, Gerstenmaier had suggested opening a new era in German-Egyptian relations. However, such a new era must also entail, he said, the “normalization” of German relations with Israel in order to free Germany from the additional burden of guilt stemming not only from the Holocaust itself, but also from having denied Israel the commencement of diplomatic relations. It was only “natural” that the Israelis used this situation to make “disproportionate demands” on Bonn in other areas, Gerstenmaier pointed out. President Nasser, according to the minutes of the meeting, listened to these comments intently, with interest and without objections.11 While Germany’s Ambassador Georg Federer said that it would be a mistake to assume Nasser would accept diplomatic relations between Bonn and Jerusalem “just like that,” he could imagine that the president would possibly “resign himself to the commencement of diplomatic relations with Israel, if we grant him spectacular economic and financial aid which would—also in the eyes of the other Arab states—make up for them abandoning their political lever [politisches Druckmittel ].”12 A second precondition for Nasser’s presumed consent was seen to be an immediate termination of the arms deliveries to Israel and a return to the principle that Germany did not ship weapons to areas of tension. The details of such a “package deal” were to be worked out during a visit by President Nasser to Germany, for which Gerstenmaier extended an invitation. Yet, at this stage the Erhard cabinet was unwilling to comply with the Egyptian stipulation that all arms ship-

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ments to Israel had to cease. Such a move would have meant defying Washington’s urgent request for tank deliveries and would have amounted to no less than the unilateral cancellation of a bilateral agreement with Israel. Consequently, the Foreign Office started to prepare a policy shift in late 1964 and early 1965, submitting to the cabinet the proposal to abstain from future weapons deliveries to Israel, but honoring those already committed to.13

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The Domestic Level When the news of secret German military support for Israel broke on October 26, opposition Social Democrats jumped at the opportunity to reiterate their disapproval of German military involvement in areas of tension and proceeded to vent their outrage about what was perceived as government manipulation of the parliamentary process by leaving parliamentarians in the dark about the deal. Leading Social Democrat Herbert Wehner accused the Erhard government of “official hypocrisy” in its pursuit of secret military aid for Israel (FR, Oct. 31, 1964). The government argued that only the executive branch had the knowledge and insight needed to assess which policy choices were most conducive to Germany’s national interest. Wehner could only make such accusations, the government contended, as he “did not have to shoulder the severe consequences for the allGerman development (gesamtdeutsche Entwicklung) which a different policy in the Middle East would have entailed.”14 However, even the vast majority of the ruling Christian and Liberal Democrats parliamentarians had no knowledge of the clandestine arms deals. In a surprise announcement, Parliamentary President Eugen Gerstenmaier revealed during a television show that he had only found out about the arrangement through the press. Gerstenmaier insisted that the military support for Israel had not been approved by Parliament. “There is no parliamentary body, no parliamentary sub-committee which gave its blessing to such military aid,” he said (FR, Oct. 31, 1964). Indeed, most German politicians were oblivious to Bonn’s arms relationship with Israel, as Horst Osterheld (1992: 150), head of the Chancellery’s foreign policy department, confirms: “Even cabinet members, most staff in the chancellery, including myself, only caught snatches of the details at the end of January and early February through ever more precise reports from the few insiders in the Defence Ministry.” The fact that six select members of Parliament were apprised of the deals did not qualify, in the view of many of their colleagues and the press, as a full subjugation of the matter to the workings of parliamentary codetermination typical of a Western-style democracy. Indeed, the six constituted a rather randomly chosen group, not a constitutionally sanctioned subcommittee (such as the Foreign Relations or Defense Committee), let alone the full plenary or the public at large. The revelation of the arms deal lent crucial momentum to the domestic campaign in favor of diplomatic relations with Israel. The media took on an important role in that process as publications paved the way for a genuine democratic process by pulling away the veil of secrecy that had been cast across this key component of the German-Israeli relationship. In the days following the disclosure,

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the press sharply criticized the government for its double-edged diplomacy in attempting to keep its options open toward both the Arab and Israeli sides, and for refusing to take a principled stance. The Frankfurter Rundschau (Oct. 31, 1964) noted that the disclosure of the weapons shipments had torn “gaping holes in the federal government’s nicely woven net” of interdependent linkages between issues and countries. With the secrecy gone, societal actors were able to promote their ideas more effectively by using political parties and the parliament as amplifiers in their efforts to channel political demands into the foreign policy decision making process. About half a year after demonstrators in Munich had demanded that the issue of diplomatic relations with Israel should be brought to the parliament’s floor, Christian Democrat Ferdinand Friedensburg asked State Secretary Karl Carstens in Parliament what the government planned to do on relations with Israel: “Does the federal government intend to comply with the mounting urging by many German citizens (wachsendes Drängen vieler deutscher Staatsbürger), according to which the diplomatic relations of the Federal Republic with the state of Israel— particularly with a view to the special moral obligation of the German people— should be settled in the same manner as with all other states?” (Bundestag, Nov. 4, 1964: 7095). Carstens’ response to Friedensburg’s query was evasive, restating the government’s position that it was not contemplating commencement of diplomatic relations for the time being. Even after further probing questions from several lawmakers, all invoking Germany’s unique moral obligation toward Israel, the state secretary did not concede any ground. He was prepared to elaborate further in a closed session of a parliamentary subcommittee, he said, but could not and would not discuss the issue in the public realm of a parliamentary questionand-answer session. When Carstens drew some applause from Christian Democratic parliamentarians for the comment, Social Democrat Herbert Wehner heckled: “A self-castrating Parliament applauds that it is kept in the dark!” Carstens’ answer and Wehner’s objection highlighted the contrasting views between a government representative preferring to shield foreign policy against public intervention, on the one hand, and parliamentarians attempting to wrest some influence in foreign policy formulation from the executive branch on the other. The contrast was further exemplified when another parliamentarian demanded to know whether the growing concern among the German public about the “abnormal” relations with Israel were one element to be considered in policy formulation. Carstens, in his response, refused to factor domestic parameters into the foreign policy equation: “I believe that this question should be looked at and decided upon first and foremost under consideration of foreign policy criteria” (Bundestag, Nov. 4, 1964: 7095). Despite Carstens’ reticence, public activities in support of Israel and stronger ties between Bonn and Jerusalem grew considerably in late 1964. A contemporary observer noted that “Israel-Bonn relations were one of the most important issues in domestic affairs during the past month [November 1964]. There is strong public opinion pressure . . . on the government to establish diplomatic relations

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with Israel.”15 German-Israeli student groups, active at various West German universities since the late 1950s, had reached a high degree of organization by 1964, now featuring a national umbrella body and a tax-exempt status (Bundesverband Deutsch-Israelischer Studiengruppen e.V.). At the end of their fourth convention in early November, the students issued a resolution calling for the commencement of diplomatic relations, lamenting the continued work of German scientists in Egypt, and calling the Hallstein doctrine outright “absurd.” The policy of threatening to sever official ties with a country that would recognize Communist East Germany had opened the door for other countries to determine German foreign policy in an extortionate fashion, the statement said, referring to the Arab strategy of deterring Bonn from recognizing Israel by threatening to recognize East Germany in retaliation. Thus Germany still owed the world credible evidence of its “abolishment of the National Socialist way of thinking” (Abbau des nationalsozialistischen Denkschemas) as the country had violated its own selfdeclared “ideational principles,” the students believed. As an alternative to current policy, the student groups suggested a policy guided by the “moral obligations of the German people” and demanded the inauguration of official ties between West Germany and Israel in a bid to create the necessary preconditions for cooperation and reconciliation.16 The students did not welcome the military support Bonn was extending to Jerusalem, as in their view weapons deliveries contradicted the government’s aim of contributing to rapprochement in the Middle East, just as the collaboration of German scientists in Egypt’s armament program torpedoed a peaceful coexistence in the region. Parliamentarians and the German public did not accept military aid as a positive element in the German-Israeli relationship; rather, it was rejected as a dangerous and inappropriate substitute for full diplomatic ties. The idea of terminating the arms shipments to Israel was generally approved of by the German public, and hence by late 1964 the military relationship with Israel not only represented a liability for the government in the international arena, but proved to be equally burdensome at home.17 The German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB) also lent its voice to those who called for diplomatic relations with Israel. During a courtesy call on the Israeli union Histadrut in early October 1964, Chairman Ludwig Rosenberg vowed that his organization would muster all of its influence to induce the government to commence full relations (Die Welt, Oct. 2, 1964). Later the same month, the board—jointly with the German Coordination Council of the Societies for Christian-Jewish Cooperation—called on its members and the entire West German population to sign a petition in favor of full diplomatic ties. The unions urged Bonn “not to allow threats by other states or economic considerations to guide its foreign policy decisions.” Initiating official ties with Israel was a matter of “conscience” and a political act of “restitution,” DGB board members were convinced.18 Within one month the DGB’s petition had garnered as many as 20,000 signatories, and the government was clearly unhappy with the effort. When IG Metall, West Germany’s powerful engineering unions, collected signatures on

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the premises of state-owned companies, Minister for Federal Assets (Schatzminister) Werner Dollinger ordered a ban on such activities.19 In November academic elites also launched an initiative in favor of closer relations with Israel and called for concrete steps toward allaying the grave dissonance that had emerged between Germans and Israelis over the German scientists’ support for an armament industry aimed at the extinction of the Israeli people. More than a dozen professors called on government representatives and members of the parliament’s foreign relations committee to do all they could to support the process of reconciliation between Germans and Jews, which, they believed, had already started within German society. In line with the students’ calls on Erhard in 1963 and 1964, the university teachers too expressed concern about a widening gulf between the domestic effort to rid Germany of the shadows of the past and an official foreign policy that appeared to ignore the societal maturation process. In fact, the worry was that the reconciliation achieved by society would be undone by the government’s intransigence toward Israel. Of the fourteen undersigned professors, more than half were in the fields of history and philology, acting together with Nobel Prize winners and Supreme Court judges as “spokesmen”—in E. H. Carr’s terminology—of contemporary society, reflecting and embodying social phenomena of their times. All efforts undertaken so far to create a new, positive relationship between Germans and Jews after the persecution of European Jews by Nazi Germany, the professors argued, were thrown into jeopardy by withholding diplomatic relations from Israel and by the government’s complacency on the scientists matter. As a result, the claim that the Germany of the 1960s had broken with the spirit of Hitlerism appeared increasingly doubtful to the Israeli public, they warned.20 This concern was very much shared by Aktion Sühnezeichen, an organization founded in 1958 by Protestant youth groups aiming to allay injustice done by Germans during World War II through voluntary social work abroad. The group was particularly active in Israel and feared its efforts there would be “disavowed, even cast into doubt” by the government’s policy. The foreign policy pursued toward Israel rendered its attempts to pave the way for “forgiveness through reconciling deeds” implausible, the group argued, and it called on official Bonn to commence diplomatic relations with Jerusalem.21 Similarly, the university professors feared that regrettable behavior on the part of the government would not only lead to setbacks in foreign policy, but also have serious repercussions among society: “The discrepancy between words and deeds must also hamper a reorientation toward Jews among the German population and may promote anti-Semitic attitudes.” Turning down Israel’s request for normal relations was intolerable for reasons of morality, honor, and policy, the men of letters believed, pointing out that ironically the Hallstein doctrine was effectively applied toward Israel (in that official ties were denied), not the Arabs, even though Jerusalem had no intentions of recognizing East Berlin.22 The church in Germany also joined the call for swift action on the issues of official ties with Israel and German scientists operating in Egypt. In October

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1964, Kurt Scharf, chairman of the Council of the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD), sent a letter to Chancellor Erhard, urging the government to commence German-Israeli diplomatic relations and exhaust all options to bring home the scientists. In his response, the chancellor agreed with the basic premise that moral obligations played a role in relations with Israel, but maintained that other factors had to take precedence. The Arabs were likely to respond to an exchange of ambassadors by recognizing East Berlin, Erhard stressed, and added: “Such a development would pose a severe setback for our entire unification policy and could seriously thwart the reunification of our people. The basic principle of our unification policy would be endangered once two internationally recognized German states existed alongside each other.”23 However, the oft-repeated point failed to impress the church leaders. A few days later the EKD issued a statement reiterating its call for diplomatic relations and suggested to lure back the scientists with offers of sufficient research opportunities for peaceful purposes in Germany (Die Welt, Dec. 5, 1964). By the end of 1964, the might of domestic sentiment in favor of bringing moral considerations to bear in relations with Israel, and the desire to express the Germans’ break with the past by aligning foreign policy with a domestic maturation process, had grown considerably. Nahum Goldmann of the World Jewish Congress poignantly summarized the new quality that domestic pressure had reached by predicting an exchange of ambassadors in the near future. Asked on what evidence he based his assumption, Goldmann told the Israeli paper Maariv: “Now a strong domestic pressure in this direction exists in Germany, and it’s coming from various circles. The Socialists are pushing, the Protestant church is pushing, the trade unions are urging—and the Hallstein doctrine loses more and more in value as well.”24

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The International Level Erhard was in an uncomfortable position at the end of 1964 as he came under substantial pressure not only at home, but also abroad. The Arab countries generally and particularly Israel’s main adversary, Egypt, were predictably outraged about the intimate arms relationship between Bonn and Jerusalem. While Cairo had had ample intelligence on West German military aid to Israel even before the story broke in the media, Egypt appeared genuinely surprised about the large scope of the support. Initially, the Arabs had refrained from harsh reactions to the public disclosures, apparently to prevent the relationship with Bonn from souring prematurely.25 However, Nasser aired his annoyance during Gerstenmaier’s visit to Cairo in late November, after it became clear that Bonn was dealing with the matter in a dilatory fashion. Eventually, the large scope of German military aid combined with Soviet pressure appeared to have swayed Nasser, who then went ahead with welcoming East German Premier Walter Ulbricht on a state visit.26 At that point, German-Arab relations entered a serious crisis. The credibility of Bonn’s ambassadors to the Middle Eastern capitals had been shaken due to their— untruthful, as it turned out—earlier assurances that, as a matter of principle, Germany did not deliver weapons to areas of tension. These developments were

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all the more reason for Bonn’s Foreign Office to advocate for ceasing the futile attempt to keep the German-Israeli arms relationship secret and terminating such deliveries. While Bonn appeared to take an increasingly skeptical view of the secrecy surrounding the weapons deliveries to Israel, the Americans continued to consider it essential that the tank deal remained secret. If their strategy of avoiding becoming a major arms supplier to the Middle East by having a substitute shoulder the burden was to succeed, secrecy had to remain a number one priority. Any public discussion of the deliveries would have inevitably revealed Washington’s central role in the tank deal. Therefore, the United States was faced with an unpleasant surprise in December 1964. Possibly motivated by the German Foreign Office’s increasing unhappiness with the secrecy, some members of Gerstenmaier’s entourage during his trip to the Nile reportedly told their Egyptian counterparts that the Bonn government had agreed under strong American pressure to deliver a significant number of US tanks to Jerusalem. Reports of these comments made it to the White House and caused considerable upset there. The Americans treated the matter as “top secret,” as it would be “very embarrassing” to them if the Egyptians found out about the deal and particularly if Cairo got the impression that the United States had used its clout to instigate it, a US representative told his German contact.27 In fact, the matter was so important to the administration that Under Secretary of State Averell Harriman, after the tank deal had been leaked, called in German ambassador Heinrich von Knappstein to discuss the issue. The Americans were all but certain that the publication of the information was traceable to Bonn government circles.28 The Israeli paper Yediot Achronot, citing Israeli government sources, also reported that the Germans, specifically Bonn’s Foreign Office, had leaked the transactions (Die Welt, Feb. 22, 1965). German Ambassador Knappstein and the Foreign Office denied the charges, first laying blame on the Pentagon, later charging Egypt with leaking its intelligence on the deals at a politically expedient point in time.29 In fact, however, the Foreign Office admitted in an internal response to the US inquiry that staff traveling with Gerstenmaier had indeed told Egyptian officials that Bonn was shipping Americanmade tanks to Israel. The Egyptians knew Bonn was delivering US tanks, and it was obvious to them that Germany could not do this without Washington’s consent, the Foreign Office official explained. “Therefore, the talks [with Egyptian officials] only confirmed what could not be kept secret any more anyway.”30 The secret had now become an open secret by all accounts, and the Germans—specifically the Foreign Office—clearly had lost all interest in keeping the tank deal under wraps.

“At a Crossroads”: Nasser Invites Ulbricht, January 1965 On January 24, news that President Nasser had invited East German Premier Walter Ulbricht to pay Egypt a state visit sent West German policymakers into a

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state of shock. Bonn saw itself confronted with what was to date the biggest challenge to its policy of reducing East Germany to the role of an isolated pariah zone, tolerated solely within the narrow confines of the Eastern Bloc. “We are at a crossroads,” Bonn’s ambassador in Cairo pointed out, “not only regarding our Middle East policy, but also regarding our unification policy.”31 Hosting Ulbricht as a state guest in Egypt, a key player in the nonaligned world, was in West Germany’s view tantamount to official recognition of East Germany as a separate state. Chancellor Erhard felt that something of a “storm front” was clouding Bonn’s political skies. This storm, however, had been brewing for several years, had gathered on many different fronts, and was home-grown rather than spawned by unswayable heavenly forces. In early 1965, West Germany’s relationship with Israel was gravely compromised, relations with the Arab world were in a crisis, its unification policy was left in tatters, and at home the Erhard government found itself in woeful times. The panoply of key policy areas implicated in the web of Middle Eastern affairs was linked by four main nexuses. First, Bonn saw a close connection between its weapons deliveries to Israel and German scientists supporting the Egyptian armament effort. Secondly, the Hallstein doctrine prescribed a close correlation between West German-Israeli relations and the kind of relations the Arabs would choose to entertain with East Germany. Thirdly, the Foreign Office believed development aid should be evenly spread across the Middle East, making it mandatory to match substantial financial support for Israel with similar aid for Arab nations. Lastly, the extension of the statute of limitations for Nazi murderers was believed to be an essential part of an all-encompassing “package deal” that would satisfy Israeli demands and avoid international isolation during Bonn’s quest for unification. In the following chapters, I will analyze all of these factors and their linkages, with a special focus on the manifold correlations between issues and levels of political action. The month of January was dominated by the public announcement of the official invitation extended to Ulbricht to visit the Egyptian capital and the second spate of revelations on the West German-Israeli arms relationship. The protests against the government’s Middle East policy and demands for the commencement of diplomatic relations with Israel continued unabatedly, as did the urgings by societal players abroad to pull the scientists out of Egypt, extend the statute of limitations for murder, and commence official relations with Jerusalem. The Governmental Level Parliamentary President Eugen Gerstenmaier was utterly exasperated when he wrote to Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder on January 11, 1965 that, to his “great and painful regret,” Bonn appeared to have done nothing to follow up the political process he believed he had set in motion during his meeting with Nasser six weeks earlier. If Bonn put a stop to military support for non-NATO countries (including Israel), and if Egypt was to be presented with the prospect of substantial economic and financial contributions to its second five-year plan, Bonn might

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just get away with commencing official relations with Israel without jeopardizing its long standing unification policy, Gerstenmaier believed. However, instead of pursuing such leads, the chief parliamentarian charged, the formal invitation to Nasser had still not been dispatched, and Bonn’s outpost in Cairo had been left without specific instructions on how to keep up the political momentum. Two days later the parliamentary president followed up with an even more scathing attack, this time charging that, should the whole concept of coming to a negotiated agreement with Nasser fall apart, the blame would have to be squarely placed on Foreign Office complacency.32 Indeed, judging by available foreign policy records, no substantial efforts were initiated in the wake of Gerstenmaier’s trip to the Nile, even though the visit had been strongly encouraged by Chancellor Erhard and the Foreign Office. Moreover, when Ambassador Georg Federer met Egyptian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Riad on January 21—two months after the Gerstenmaier mission—he inquired whether Cairo was interested in continuing the political talks initiated by the parliamentary president, but admitted that he had no official mandate for the query. Riad reaffirmed Egypt’s interest, but emphasized that the next step had to be taken by Germany, indicating that so far Bonn had done little to explore a negotiated settlement with Nasser. Christian Democratic parliamentarian Rudolf Werner, on an official mission to Cairo at the time, also indicted Bonn’s diplomacy by alleging that the Egyptian invitation to East Germany’s premier had been extended in part because “thus far we were unable to decide on doing anything which may have neutralized our weapons deliveries to Israel.”33 Inert diplomacy in late 1964 and early 1965 squared with the rather passive stance of previous years. Throughout the years-long argument over the likelihood of an Arab recognition of East Germany in the event Bonn decided to initiate official relations with Israel, the Foreign Office took Arab threats at face value without exploring whether such a draconian response was indeed set in stone. No doubt, there were manifold warnings and indeed pressure from Arab officials indicating that diplomatic relations with East Berlin might be inevitable should Bonn exchange ambassadors with Israel. However, often enough such pronouncements came in measured wordings, indicating some room for maneuver on the Egyptian side and presenting opportunities for German diplomats to explore alternative political paths. West German foreign policy records testify to a reactive German diplomacy that rarely took the reins of action into its own hands.34 East Germany, in contrast, scored its most significant political victory in its quest for state recognition on January 24, confronting Bonn with the “to date most difficult situation for our claim to the sole representation of Germany.”35 The newspaper Al Ahram, Egypt’s official mouthpiece, reported that East Berlin Premier Walter Ulbricht, as part of a series of visits by foreign state dignitaries, was to travel to Egypt in February.36 Christian Democrat Rudolf Werner initially believed this was a hoax. The parliamentarian had just arrived in the Egyptian capital to sound out options for patching up relations with Egypt on behalf of the German government. Only toward the end of their meeting and in passing did he

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mention to Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer, Nasser’s deputy and closest advisor, that obviously all efforts to improve West German-Egyptian ties were nil if news of the Ulbricht invitation turned out to be accurate. The report was in fact true, Werner’s counterpart confirmed, and the news quickly spread around the globe. Werner and Federer formulated on the spot what was to become the centerpiece of subsequent excruciating government deliberations revolving around the conundrum of how to respond to Ulbricht’s imminent reception in Cairo: should the East German premier indeed be received as a head of state as announced, Werner told Amer, this would have to be regarded as an “implied act in the spirit of the Hallstein doctrine” (konkludente Handlung im Sinne der Hallstein-Doktrin). At worst, it could be seen as a de facto recognition of the East German regime and therefore give Bonn reason to break off diplomatic relations with Cairo.37 Bonn and the West as a whole perceived the move as an integral part of Moscow’s strategy to promote its so-called “two states theory” in reference to Germany on the one hand and its policy of wooing Arab states on the other. Ulbricht’s trip to Cairo—his first state visit outside the Eastern Bloc—was designed as an act of political symbolism, bestowing on East Berlin the insignia of an independent, sovereign state. Certainly it was understood that way in Bonn: “Ulbricht,” Assistant State Secretary Franz Krapf was quick to point out, “is a symbol of all that we reject in the Soviet Occupied Zone.” Above all, West Germany rejected East Germany’s attempts to establish itself as an independent state and its corresponding claim to the sole representation of the German people, which rivaled Bonn’s identical assertion. East Germany’s aspirations undermined the prospect of speedy unification and thus the creation of a complete German nation state in the West German mold. Ulbricht personified East Germany’s strategy of torpedoing Germany’s state building process as delineated by Bonn’s policymakers. His welcome outside the narrow confines of the Communist camp perforated the mainstay of West German unification policy as enshrined in the strategic goal of keeping the Communist adversary in international quarantine. The premier’s symbolic value in representing all that West Germany detested about Communist East Germany “remains unmatched by any other prominent figure in the Zone,” Krapf explained.38 Compared to East German Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl’s visit to Egypt six years earlier, Bonn saw Ulbricht’s trip in a much different light. Grotewohl had carried out official acts of a sovereign state by securing Egypt’s consent to an East German consulate in Cairo, but seen through Bonn’s political lens he had not— in his function as prime minister (Ministerpräsident)—represented an East German state. Ulbricht, as head of state (Staatsratsvorsitzender), in contrast, was an entirely different matter to the Bonn government.39 Therefore, granting Ulbricht “the triumph of an entry into Cairo” raised for Bonn the specter of an act granting official recognition to East Germany. In that case, contagion would be all but unavoidable, the Erhard government believed, as the Communist premier would have gained entrée to the international family of nation states. Such an act, it was feared, would set off a chain reaction in which the whole uncommitted group of

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nations would acknowledge the partition of Germany into two sovereign states. Ultimately, officials believed, it would prove impossible “to patch up cracks in the Hallstein doctrine’s dam.”40 Indeed, Ulbricht played his hand smoothly by taking advantage of Bonn’s ties to both Egypt and Israel while playing on Arab antagonisms toward the Jewish state. At first, Bonn tried to hide its state of alarm over the developments, but after a few days decided to put Cairo and the world on notice that it was not prepared to overlook an Ulbricht visit as a mere peccadillo. It said it was “seriously concerned” and warned of repercussions for the German-Egyptian relationship (Die Welt, Jan. 28, 1965; NYT, Feb. 1, 1965). However, simultaneously with issuing stern alerts in public, a diplomatic frenzy set in behind the scenes in a last-ditch effort to prevent the visit from going ahead. In order to clinch Cairo’s commitment to canceling the Ulbricht invitation, Ambassador Federer deemed it absolutely necessary to push for an immediate halt to weapons deliveries to Israel as a bargaining chip. In doing so, he cautioned, it would be insufficient to merely relay Bonn’s intent to desist from future arms deals with Jerusalem. Instead, he requested authorization to tell Nasser during an imminent meeting that Bonn was prepared to terminate—at least in part—current shipments already agreed upon. But Foreign Minister Schröder reined in his envoy in Cairo. Federer received authorization neither to announce the termination of Israel-bound arms shipments nor to commit to a specific sum Bonn might contribute toward Egypt’s five-year plan.41 These stern instructions were precipitated by a rift between the Foreign Office and Erhard’s office, the latter growing increasingly weary of Bonn’s relationship with Nasser and the former continuing to press for appeasement of Cairo. In a letter to Schröder, chief Erhard aide Ludger Westrick objected in the strongest terms to any suggestion that the government might be prepared to unilaterally stop previously contracted arms shipments or had already decided not to renew military agreements with Jerusalem. At this point, the Chancellery evidently was loath to offend the Israelis with hasty, uncoordinated announcements to Jerusalem’s detriment. Bonn did indeed seek to cancel its arms commitments, but not without arriving at a negotiated and mutually acceptable settlement, the chief of chancellery insisted. Until that happened, Erhard was at the outside prepared to say that “weapons free of charge should in future no longer be delivered in excess of the contractually agreed volume.”42 This was also the outcome of interministerial consultations and a cabinet meeting on January 27. In those discussions, the chancellor’s office—represented by Westrick and Erhard—argued in favor of relaying to Cairo Bonn’s indignation over the Ulbricht invitation, whereas Carstens— representing the Foreign Office—opposed leveling draconian measures against Egypt. Foreign Minister Schröder went as far as to propose ending all weapons deliveries to Israel and increasing economic aid for Cairo to DM 500 million annually, three times as much as Bonn’s current economic support for Jerusalem. However, the cabinet was little inclined to endorse the plan: the invitation to Ulbricht could not be rewarded with additional funds, Schröder’s colleagues

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decided. Weapons deliveries to Israel that were already signed off on should continue, the round agreed. New military agreements should preferably not be entered into.43 On the night of January 31, five days after Al Ahram broke the news of Egypt’s invitation to Ulbricht, Ambassador Federer convened with Nasser at the president’s private residence to talk things over and sound out options for compromise. However, two hours later Bonn’s envoy left the residence convinced that the East German premier’s visit was a foregone conclusion. Not only was there no way of enticing Nasser to change his mind, Federer reported, but the Egyptian ruler had also proceeded to turn the tables on the Hallstein doctrine, countering the German promise to break diplomatic relations with any country that recognized East Germany with the Egyptian threat to recognize East Berlin if weapons shipments to Jerusalem persisted.44 In sum, the strategy of offering a tradeoff— stopping the flow of weapons to Israel in return for the cancellation of Ulbricht’s visit to Cairo—had failed, in part because Nasser was intent on hosting East Berlin’s premier and in part because Bonn was not prepared to stop all arms shipments to Israel just yet. Instead, diplomacy in February concentrated on preventing a full-blown recognition of East Germany as a sovereign state during Ulbricht’s stay in Cairo. Nasser had assured Federer that the visit was in no way tantamount to granting diplomatic recognition, but with the Egyptian version of a Hallstein doctrine in the air, this seemed neither a comfortable nor a very credible promise, particularly since Nasser was unwilling to repeat it in public. There was another facet to Germany’s hardware support of Israel’s defense needs. The Foreign Office believed a close linkage existed between this support and German scientists’ support for Egypt’s arms buildup. One could hardly expect Cairo to accept the withdrawal of German experts from Egypt while Germany continued to equip Israel with heavy armor, the Foreign Office argued.45 However, while Egypt had some success in recruiting more German experts to assist in its rocket project, more and more scientists of the first generation left the country and returned to Germany. Israel was particularly concerned about forty-five German technicians who had received training at Litton Industries, a major US electronics group, in order to subsequently work at Litton’s German subsidiary in Freiburg, southern Germany. The latter part of the program had fallen through and the jobless technicians were approached by Cairo with the proposition to work on an Egyptian aviation guidance system that could—after technical mutations—also be used for rockets. Only fifteen accepted the offer; former Defense Minister Franz-Josef Strauß reportedly played a prominent role in persuading the remaining thirty to stay in Germany and instead accept jobs at Bölkow aerospace in Munich.46 The strategy of offering good jobs and favorable employment terms turned out to be the solution to Germany’s lingering problem of scientists on Nasser’s payroll. Efforts by German authorities to lure the scientists back home with the promise of good jobs and substantial pay began in summer 1964. By the end of the year, prominent scientists Paul Görcke and Hans Kleinwächter had left Egypt,

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Wolfgang Pilz’s departure appeared imminent, and altogether more than 100 foreign technicians had abandoned their positions.47 Between 1962 and 1964 the German government for the most part viewed the task of bringing the scientists back as a legal problem. The eventual pursuit of pragmatic rather than legal solutions signaled that the government had started to abandon its legalistic foreign policy in favor of a more realistic stance. The expiration of the statute of limitations for Nazi murderers interfered with German-Israeli relations ever more forcefully as the cutoff date of May 8 moved closer. In January, the cabinet—which in November 1964 had voted against extending the present expiration date on constitutional grounds—was biding its time, waiting to hear back from State Attorney Erwin Schüle on the likely volume of Nazi crime cases still outstanding after the completion of Schüle’s trip to Eastern European archives. In addition, it seemed as if Bonn was also waiting to see how the international response to German reluctance on extending the deadline evolved. However, when the Foreign Office started to warn of serious negative repercussions for international support of Bonn’s unification and Middle East policies if the statute were indeed to expire in May, an increasing number of cabinet members slowly revised their opposition to an extension. More and more policymakers endorsed the view that the West German justice system had effectively taken up its sovereign work not on May 8, 1945, but rather in 1949, the year West Germany was founded, or possibly not until 1955, when the Contractual Agreements came into force, conferring upon West Germany full sovereignty from the hand of the three Western Allies.48 With such a reading of West Germany’s history, a delay in the expiry of the statute of limitations became an option.

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The Domestic Level As German society increased pressure in favor of diplomatic relations with Israel, the Foreign Office recognized that the domestic mood could no longer be ignored. Internal memos now spoke of the need to confront “domestic forces who advocate the immediate commencement of diplomatic relations with Israel” in a bid to regain political room for maneuver in unification policy.49 Officials asked their fellow Germans to tone down demands for Israeli recognition, as they feared these calls would have detrimental effects on the government’s unification policy and help Ulbricht on the road to East German state recognition. However, the Foreign Office also appeared to have taken on board some domestic elites’ subtle points about the Hallstein doctrine’s growing inadequacy. Societal leaders, such as the trade union chairman Ludwig Rosenberg and his deputy Bernhard Tacke, showed a strong sense of political acumen by invoking elements of unification policy and state sovereignty to support their pro-Israel argument. The trade union leaders pointed out that refraining from recognizing Israel merely for fear of Arab reprisals limited Bonn’s sovereignty by allowing Germany’s own “national, inalienable and justified demands to become tokens of political barter” (Rosenberg 1964: 523). The government’s vulnerability to Arab threats was counterproductive, since those threats endangered West Germany’s sovereignty as

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an independent state—one key differentiator between West and East Germany. Such sovereignty could be asserted only by following the call of morality and by freely deciding with which state to entertain diplomatic ties, the trade union leaders argued. In other words, they promoted a new understanding of foreign policy by redefining the character of national interest as following moral parameters and revamped principled beliefs. The Hallstein doctrine, Rosenberg pointed out, was generally accepted among the German public as an expression of national self-esteem, but that esteem was ill-served if the doctrine’s application remained at the mercy of outside forces and political threats. That point seemed to have hit home with the Foreign Office when it recognized that a linkage existed between Germany’s Middle East policy and its quest to regain political room for maneuver. What was more, the Foreign Office now also acknowledged that that the “government’s reserve on the issue of diplomatic relations” had given rise to “misunderstandings” within German society and in Israel. For the very reason of such misunderstandings it was now deemed advisable to install diplomatic channels between Bonn and Jerusalem to improve the exchange of views between both countries. To be sure, the Foreign Office was not thinking of full diplomatic relations yet. However, it envisioned a three-step process, starting with the exchange of trade missions and leading, via the set-up of consulates, to the eventual installation of embassies.50 Society’s demands for diplomatic relations had scored a first victory by translating into a plan—even if still inadequate—to offer an exchange of trade missions with Israel. In early 1965, the Erhard government needed all the domestic support it could muster. The governing coalition of Christian Democrats and Liberal Democrats was under substantial pressure both internationally and at home. “No one appeared to have sufficient water to put out all the flames in time and simultaneously; no one mobilized sufficient creative power to ignite a different kind of fire,” the Christian Democratic majority floor leader Rainer Barzel (1978: 27) noted in commenting on the government’s numerous blunders and the scarcity of productive policy initiatives. The government was marred by grueling political infighting and disagreement over the course ahead on a number of issues, among them the multilateral nuclear force, European integration, the Middle East, and the statute of limitations. Chancellor Erhard was unable to curb the relentless personal attacks among his government’s coalition partners, which increasingly threatened to cloud his government’s credibility. To make matters worse, the political rift was not just between the Christian Democrats and their junior coalition partner: the conservatives were equally at odds amongst themselves, unable to agree on a common European and transatlantic foreign policy strategy. As the international environment changed and the issue of Germany’s division lost its all-embracing significance on the world stage, the so-called “Gaullists” faction within the Christian Democrats advocated a close partnership with France and the so-called European option, enamored of French President Charles de Gaulle’s vision of a European political counterweight to the United States. The so-called “Atlanticists” among the Christian Democrats, on

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the other hand, favored strong ties with the United States, the West’s undisputed superpower. This internal struggle weakened the ruling Christian Democrats, making them look unorganized and at risk of losing national elections later in 1965.51 “The elections in the fall cast their shadow ahead,” Barzel noted (1978: 27). Such woes, stemming from challenges to Erhard’s leadership from within his own party as well as societal dissatisfaction with his Middle East policy, made Erhard all the more dependent on the domestic mood and societal demands for a revamped foreign policy. Against this background it was an error of judgment on Erhard’s part to have promised the Egyptians not to recognize Israel, at least not until Germany’s national elections in September.52 The chancellor had not yet realized how much the inauguration of diplomatic relations with Israel was a domestic demand that carried considerable vote-winning potential. This misguided assessment of the domestic mood was to change substantially during the ensuing five weeks. Erhard’s political fortunes—more than Adenauer’s chancellorship previously—hinged on support among the population at large and therefore provided societal leaders with substantial political leverage by which to channel their demands into the policy making process. After the decision was made on March 7 to offer Jerusalem an exchange of ambassadors, Erhard exuded confidence that the step would pay off at the ballot box in the fall.53

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The International Level Soviet pressure might have contributed much to Egypt’s decision to receive East German Premier Walter Ulbricht as a state guest in Cairo. Nasser extended the invitation one month after Soviet Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Shelepin paid a visit to Cairo. Shelepin promised much-needed military and economic aid while reportedly making the money conditional on Egypt granting a state visit to a high-ranked East German official.54 At the same time, Cairo hoped that the invitation would not be understood as a significant shift in its policy toward both Germanys. Although East Berlin had been lobbying for the trip for more than a year, President Nasser showed no active interest until late December 1964 and was careful not to offend Bonn while accepting overtures from East Berlin. In his official invitation to Ulbricht, Nasser avoided the use of the term “state,” substituting it with the expression “German people” and “two [German] parts” on another occasion.55 Consequently, the Egyptian leadership seemed genuinely surprised at the alarmed West German reaction and was taken aback by the harsh consequences that would ensue, as relayed by Ambassador Federer to his contacts in Cairo, in the event that the trip were to go ahead as a full-dress state visit. Nasser was annoyed by West Germany’s preoccupation with its Eastern adversary and quipped that relations between East and West Germany were significantly better than those between the Arabs and Israel.56 Federer had no right to inquire about the treatment Ulbricht would receive in Cairo, Nasser reportedly said, and equally, the West German media had no right to blow the issue out of proportion. While

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Egypt’s president felt Bonn’s military support for Israel justified his invitation to Ulbricht, he also appeared to indicate that as far as Egypt was concerned, the visit by the Communist premier could be a low-key affair that did not jeopardize Egyptian–West German relations or Bonn’s Hallstein doctrine.57 Such a development, however, was conditional on Bonn terminating its weapons supply to Israel. Should this not happen, the Egyptians certainly would have to revisit their stance on Germany and consider the endorsement of East Germany as a separate sovereign state. Nasser, in other words, wanted to have the cake and eat it too as he played the two Germanys off against each other. He also utilized Germany’s arms relationship with Israel to deflect attention from the Ulbricht visit, effectively turning the tables and declaring Bonn’s weapons shipments to Israel—not Egypt’s invitation to East Berlin’s premier—to be the main problem between the two countries. Cairo seized on the opportunity presented by the public disclosure of Bonn’s arms relationship with Israel to formulate its own version of the Hallstein doctrine, stipulating it would inaugurate relations with East Germany, or sever ties with West Germany, if Bonn failed to stop its military support for Israel, Egypt’s nemesis.58 At this point it was evident that the West German Hallstein doctrine was a weapon that could easily be wielded against its bearer. Bonn’s flank was wide open—a situation that not only invited international blackmail, but also, together with the changes on the world stage, helped to open a window of opportunity through which German domestic policy entrepreneurs gained influence over the foreign policy decision making process. Separately, relations with Israel remained strained as Jerusalem adamantly refused to go along with Bonn’s plan to introduce official bilateral ties in subsequent stages. Israeli Premier Levi Eshkol made it unmistakably clear on German television that his government would oppose the establishment of trade missions prior to the opening of embassies. Israel did not want to get caught up in the maze of the many rules, stipulations, and exceptions that the Bonn government had set forth over the years on the issue of German recognition. Bonn had determined in 1959 that the instatement of an East German consulate in Cairo did not amount to full recognition of East Germany as a sovereign state, and Jerusalem did not want the same dubious privilege bestowed upon it as well. Given West Germany’s interpretation of the political significance of consulates in 1959, Bonn would only “through the suggestion of establishing a consulate in Israel indirectly support Nasser’s thesis that Israel did not exist as a state,” the Israeli representative in Germany explained.59 On January 21, a New York Times headline read “Bonn Gives Modern Weapons to Israel”; the subsequent article disclosed Bonn’s shipments of helicopters, antiaircraft guns, submarines, and American-made tanks to Jerusalem.60 This second spate of media reports on the weapons deliveries, following those of October the previous year, now disclosed the full extent of the arms relationship between Germany and Israel, including the deliveries of US tanks that all sides involved had tried so hard to keep under wraps. News reports said the US administration had given the Germans “permission” to transfer American-made M-48 tanks to Israel

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as part of a military support package worth USD 80 million. Washington did not comment on the reports, refusing to disclose the exact nature of its role for fear of adverse repercussions in the Middle East. The administration was wary of alienating Arab nations at a time when it was trying to patch up relations with Egypt (NYT, Feb. 1, 1965; Die Welt, Feb. 1, 1965). Predictably, that communications strategy gave the German government the bitter aftertaste of being left in the lurch. Heinrich von Knappstein, Bonn’s ambassador to Washington, came to see National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy in an “upset” mood, complaining that the no-comment policy had put Bonn on the spot. State Secretary Carstens, Knappstein said, objected to the public impression that Washington had agreed to the tank deal only at the “request” of the Germans and had granted permission “reluctantly,” as was reported in the media. Bundy tried to pour oil on troubled water, saying this had not been the intention at all, but the issue was to cause further turmoil between the two partners in coming weeks.61 Bonn appealed to its allies to intervene with Egypt to help stop Ulbricht’s visit to Cairo, and while most of them objected to the invitation, France, Britain, and the United States were clearly disinclined to become engaged in a major fashion. Washington—on account of its strained relations with Egypt—initially shied away from even issuing a démarche; a later intervention remained counterproductive.62 However, a policy of strict neutrality also meant that the US government did not side with initiatives that were critical of German policies, either. The state senate of Massachusetts, for instance, adopted a resolution urging “the President of the United States and the Secretary of State to prevail upon the West German government to recall certain scientists developing missiles for the United Arab Republic, and to extend its statute of limitations relative to war crimes.” Deputy Assistant Secretary for European Affairs Robert Creel, speaking on behalf of the State Department, turned down the request, stating that the United States “should not attempt directly and officially to influence the actions of the German Federal Republic.” The problems mentioned are ones that today’s Germany must solve itself, Creel said, since forcing a solution upon Bonn “would be in derogation of the sovereignty conferred upon that government in May 1955 by the British, French and American governments as former occupying powers.”63 As attempts by US society to influence the US government on Germany were frustrated time and again, the American public, strongly but not exclusively represented by Jewish organizations, turned to the German government directly by exploiting Bonn’s preoccupation with state sovereignty. “A sovereign nation like Germany,” the American Jewish Committee stressed, “should not be bluffed into being prevented from doing the right thing,” i.e., commencing diplomatic relations with Israel.64 Aside from the lack of official ties between Bonn and Jerusalem, the American and Israeli publics were much concerned with the continued help German scientists provided to Nasser’s armament industry and the prospect of Nazi murderers going free after May 8, 1965. In mid January, the American Jewish Congress and other Jewish organizations picketed all fourteen German consulates in the United States in an effort “to dramatize our protest of the failure of the

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West German government to extend the statute of limitations and to bring about withdrawal of the German scientists working for Nasser.”65 There are indications that such societal initiatives abroad and within Germany were in fact successful in penetrating the policy making process. A Bonn Foreign Office document pronounced in late January that, with a view to the strong attacks coming from Israel and the international Jewish public, the government was left with no other alternative but to support efforts to entice the scientists to return home.66 Similarly, American Jewish representatives scored a victory when Justice Minister Ewald Bucher promised Morris B. Abram, president of the American Jewish Committee, that his office would examine the possibility of extending Germany’s statute of limitations by considering a later start date for the statutory period than May 8, 1945. Bucher also told a German radio station that Abram’s recommendations would “play a role” in further deliberations on the subject.67 In sum, the US government’s reluctance to become fully invested on either side of the argument over the various facets of bilateral relations between Bonn and Jerusalem supports the point about the largely neutral effect the United States had on German foreign policy toward Israel in the early 1960s. This is not to say that Washington did not have a vital interest in the Middle East or Europe. Yet the US administration was much concerned with maintaining a balanced policy and hence did not take sides in a heavy-handed manner on issues pertaining to Germany’s past or bilateral relations between Germany and Israel. Parts of the American public, on the other hand, succeeded in strengthening German society in line with the firm belief that “a knowledgeable and committed public opinion is a vital force in nurturing the roots of democracy.”68 By appealing to the conscience of the German public, by educating German elites, and by working on the German government through private channels and public demonstrations, these organizations were able to create a transnational public sphere that made it difficult for West German policymakers to ignore their political demands.

“The Worst Foreign Policy Crisis”: Bonn Cancels Arms Aid to Israel, February 1965 By February 1965, the political storm front raging across Germany had picked up considerable speed, prompting Ambassador Heinrich von Knappstein to call Bonn’s Middle East quagmire “possibly the Federal Republic’s worst foreign policy crisis since its foundation.”69 The government’s attempt to win a respite from Arab threats by halting weapons shipments to Israel in February 1965 backfired badly at home and abroad. The New York Times correspondent in Bonn dispatched a resounding indictment of German policy: West Germany is being excoriated in Western capitals as a traitor to Israel and a meek victim of Egyptian blackmail. The Communist world is celebrating the public humiliation of West Germany. And Walter Ulbricht, head of the Communist East state that Bonn insists

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is no state, will be received on the banks of the river Nile in a few days with all the honors due the chief of a sovereign country. (NYT, Feb. 21, 1965)

In February and early March 1965, the Middle East crisis dominated the daily routine in the Chancellery unlike any single policy issue had ever done before.70 German diplomacy became consumed by last-ditch attempts to entice Egypt to withdraw the invitation to the East German premier or at the very least not recognize East Germany. Ulbricht, however, did go to Egypt and enjoyed a “triumphal” visit, while German society—led by authors, commentators, parliamentarians, trade unions, and university students—asserted itself ever more boldly. It now became apparent that domestic elites’ critique of government policies were leaving an imprint on German foreign policy making. This development was supported by the international public as particularly American interest groups vented their outrage about Bonn’s handling of its relations with Israel and—in the case of the statute of limitations—its National Socialist past.

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The Governmental Level In early February—still weeks before Ulbricht set foot on Egyptian soil—Chancellor Erhard believed he was left with no other choice but to make the formal decision of to terminate arms shipments to Israel, clutching at straws in an attempt to salvage relations with the Arab world and Bonn’s crumbling unification policy. Having all but given up hope of preventing the Ulbricht visit, Bonn strove to dissuade the Egyptian president from making good on his threat to use the occasion to recognize East Germany if West Germany continued providing combat materiel to Israel. Officially, Bonn’s decision did not target Israel alone, but ended military support to any country located in an area of tension. Yet, the three-part stipulation was tailor-made to fit the Israeli case and designed to allay Arab concerns.71 Following the decision to refrain from future military engagement in the Middle East and other global hot spots, government officials worked behind the scenes to also relieve Germany of the political burden associated with already contracted arms commitments. Jerusalem, it was hoped, would consent to accepting financial support in lieu of agreed, but yet to be delivered, military shipments. Israel, however, had no intention of forgoing the weapons and accepting funds in their stead. “The Israeli government sees no chance,” Israeli representative Felix Shinnar relayed to “deeply disappointed” State Secretary Carstens, “of accepting the suggestion of modifying the agreements on weapon deliveries.”72 Bonn, in turn, was little inclined to take no for an answer. Westrick and Erhard implored Jerusalem’s envoy and reverted to legal arguments, maintaining that since the deliveries had been exposed in the press, the “basis of the transactions” had ceased to exist (Wegfall der Geschäftsgrundlage).73 Use of such legal arguments typically peaked when political uncertainty was highest and Bonn’s decision makers feared that the very essence of the German nation state was at stake. Following Ulbricht’s invitation to Cairo, the foreign policy establishment was convinced it faced no less than a life-or-death situation. The Egyptians were

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guilty of “taking the axe to the root of German policy” and threatened the very existence of the German state, Foreign Minister Schröder claimed.74 But even though Cairo was the perpetrator, Israel was considered to be the only actor capable of helping Bonn out of the dilemma. Therefore, Westrick buttressed his legal arguments by stressing to the Israelis that Germany’s “vital interests” were at stake. “The Chancellor was not in a position,” Westrick admonished Shinnar, “to gamble away Germany’s Lebensinteressen in order to fulfill a commitment of giving away wrecked weapons as a free gift while the agreed preconditions had ceased to exist.”75 A few days later, on February 12, Erhard confirmed to Bonn’s foreign press corps that the arms deliveries had ended and disclosed his intention to enter into negotiations with Israel over substituting the provision of “other services” for the supply of weapons (NYT, Feb. 13, 1965; Bulletin 28, Feb. 16, 1965: 218). The decision to go public with the initially secret plan was intended to buy a respite from Arab pressure and the barrage of domestic and international criticism of Bonn’s Middle East policy generally and its clandestine weapons shipments specifically (Osterheld 1992: 156). However, the move backfired badly, unleashing a fresh wave of criticism from all sides. While indeed West German elites— including those advocating an accommodative stance toward Israel—rejected the secret deliveries as a circumvention of the parliamentary process and as a sort of conscience payment to allay Bonn’s hands-off attitude to diplomatic relations, unilateral termination of the military aid without diplomatic compensation was seen as equally unacceptable. Israeli and world public opinion was particularly outraged, perceiving the move not as a means to evade Egyptian blackmail, but rather as acquiescence to the very core of Arab threats (NZZ, Feb. 14, 1965; Die Welt, Feb. 20, 1965). The first word of Germany’s decision to cancel its arms aid to Israel had emerged two days ahead of Erhard’s public confirmation, when Egyptian Prime Minister Ali Sabri told the Cairo national assembly on February 10 that Bonn had promised to cut off military aid to Israel. Sabri referred to information conveyed to him by Spanish diplomat Marquis de Nerva. The Madrid government had offered its mediation services to avert a falling out between Bonn and Cairo, as it regarded itself as a friend of both Egypt and Germany.76 However, de Nerva—Spain’s special emissary in the matter—appeared to have underestimated the complicated network of conditions each side had attached to the respective other side’s hypothetical moves. Consequently, the eventually abortive de Nerva mission evinced a rather convoluted history. The main point here is that the episode attests that the German government lacked a clear concept for the political road ahead. Officials in the Foreign Office blamed the numerous mishaps marring the Spanish envoy’s mission on an alleged inclination to negotiate with the Egyptians at his own discretion and outside Bonn’s instructions, and a good dose of personal vanity that supposedly prompted de Nerva to brag unduly about the success of his services. While this indeed may have been part of the problem, Bonn itself had in fact been ambiguous in its diplomatic instructions, incoherent

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in the political interpretation of the Middle Eastern situation, and obsessed with the meaning of certain terms and phrases in the context of unification politics— the deeper significance of which was prone to become skewed, if not lost, in the maze of countless cables, the numerous parties involved, and the manifold translations among the German, Spanish, and Arabic languages. Irrespective of assurances by Ambassador Federer that the Ulbricht visit to Cairo would have to be regarded as a fait accompli, and irrespectively of the already redirected diplomatic focus toward averting full recognition of East Berlin on the occasion of Ulbricht’s stay in Egypt, the Foreign Office went back a step in its instructions for de Nerva, insisting that any outcome of the mission short of accomplishing a cancellation or indefinite postponement of the Ulbricht visit would have to be regarded as a failure.77 Given the Egyptians’ unswerving determination to go through with the trip at the end of the month, this mission proved to be impossible to accomplish from the outset—the more so as Cairo upped the ante by threatening not only to recognize East Germany, but also to sever diplomatic ties with West Germany (NYT, Feb. 8, 1965). In his consultations, de Nerva offered his Egyptian counterparts—well within the limits set by Carstens’ instructions and Erhard’s previous decision regarding areas of tension—the West German termination of weapons shipments to Israel. Prime Minister Ali Sabri had set such an end to military aid for Israel as a precondition by for downgrading the Ulbricht trip from a full-dress state visit to a simple courtesy call. And a few days later, Sabri confirmed that Cairo was indeed prepared to make precisely this concession following Bonn’s promise to halt the flow of weapons to Israel. However, the Foreign Office now rejected the Egyptian offer as insufficient. State Secretary Carstens told the Spanish envoy pointblank that it was his impression that he had lost sight of the “critical point that we cannot under any circumstances tolerate an Ulbricht visit, even if downgraded in protocol.” Yet, just a few days later, Carstens seemed to change his mind and appreciated that de Nerva may have prevented the one event Bonn feared most: “It should not be ruled out that Nerva has averted the danger of a recognition of the Soviet Occupied Zone by the UAR.”78 While the political nexus between weapons deliveries to Israel and the Ulbricht visit to Egypt was mishandled by Bonn’s diplomats, the blunder on the issue of German-Israeli diplomatic relations was Marquis de Nerva’s. In this instance the Spanish envoy strayed from instructions provided to him by Bonn’s Foreign Office. De Nerva told reporters he had conveyed to the Egyptians not only Bonn’s promise to cancel military aid to Israel, but also an alleged resolve to abstain from recognizing Jerusalem diplomatically in return for Cairo’s commitment not to recognize East Berlin.79 Available West German foreign policy records on the Spanish mediation episode do not contain any instructions for de Nerva to throw in nonrecognition of Israel as a bargaining chip. Yet, at the same time, the chancellor and the foreign minister had demonstrated a few days earlier that they were, on principle, prepared to utilize the promise of not commencing diplomatic relations with Jerusalem as a political token by authorizing Ambassador Federer

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to hold out the prospect of Bonn withholding recognition from Israel until upcoming national elections in September. However, Federer apparently never made use of this point in his consultations with Nasser, and de Nerva eventually retracted his reference to an alleged German promise of nonrecognition, insisting he had been misquoted in the press.80 The damage was done, however, and as a net result of the Spanish mediation episode, Erhard’s awkward policy of attempting to play off Israel against Egypt and East Germany was exposed. That impression could hardly be reversed by the government’s attempt to set the record straight, remonstrating against having ever offered concessions on diplomatic relations with Jerusalem and emphasizing that Bonn’s decision to cancel military exports did not apply to Israel alone (NYT, Feb. 13, 1965). Yet, it was not only Israel that was—figuratively speaking—up in arms about Germany’s handling of its Middle East relations. German and international public opinion were no less appalled. Nasser came out of the latest round of political punches greatly strengthened, as he had been able to turn the Hallstein doctrine against the Germans by pressuring Bonn into stopping the arms shipments. German parliamentarians and intellectual elites were outraged, and a New York Times editorial excoriated Bonn for making “an almost incredible mess of the linked issues of arms to Israel and relations with Egypt” (Feb. 17, 1965). And German paper Die Welt charged the government had, in a crude maneuver, fallen into the trap of making “the egregious error of trying to buy off Mr. Nasser by halting the arms shipments to Israel” (Feb. 13, 1965). Moreover, Bonn’s key instrument in its fight over identity and legitimacy against the other, Communist, Germany was in a shambles. The Hallstein doctrine had, as one commentator put it, “suffered shipwreck in the muddied waters of the river Nile” (Die Welt, Feb. 10, 1965). Attempting to isolate East Berlin had led to severe immobilization of Bonn’s own policy, since it essentially allowed President Nasser to dictate the character of West German relations with a third state, Israel. The government was reluctant to apply the Hallstein doctrine to Egypt, fearing other Arab states would—in an act of solidarity—follow Nasser’s lead and also upgrade East Germany, thereby setting off a chain reaction in which the whole uncommitted group of nations would acknowledge the partition of Germany into two sovereign states. In that case, the doctrine would have prescribed that Bonn terminate relations with all of these countries—a step Bonn was loath to take. The fear of triggering such a diplomatic vicious circle sharply diminished the doctrine’s political value. Chancellor Erhard therefore attempted to soften the doctrine somewhat, but as a result only blunted its effectiveness further. The Ulbricht visit, if it happened, would constitute “a hostile act against the German people,” he said, and would spark the reprisal of an end to German economic aid to Egypt (Bulletin 29, Feb. 17, 1965: 225; Bundestag, Feb. 17, 1965: 8104). By threatening to turn off the tap on loans and credit guarantees, but upholding diplomatic relations for the time being, the Erhard government essentially backtracked on the Hallstein doctrine’s implicit warning that the end to financial

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and economic aid would come as a consequence of the withdrawal of ambassadors. With the government now wanting to have it both ways—i.e., inflicting some of the consequences of the Hallstein doctrine on Egypt (termination of development aid), but shying away from its full execution (severing diplomatic relations)—Bonn was mired in its own doctrinal web, a prisoner of its policy’s conditionality. Even the Christian Democratic parliamentarian Rudolf Werner, ordinarily a staunch supporter of government policies in the Middle East, believed that Ulbricht’s visit to Cairo made a farce out of the Hallstein doctrine and showed that the rigid instrument ought to be replaced with more flexible tools.81 On Wednesday, February 24, East German Premier Walter Ulbricht arrived at the banks of the river Nile. East Berlin’s head of state had chosen to travel by sea, and in anticipation of celebrating a resounding political triumph in Cairo, the mood aboard his silver-grey vessel was buoyant. As the Völkerfreundschaft (Peoples’ Friendship) sailed past the Peloponnesus en route to Alexandria, the news chief of East Germany’s official news agency ADN cabled from aboard: “Premier’s standard flying atop mainmast just above the national flag - stop - making eighteen knots, light swell - stop - aboard everyone well and in best spirits.”82 The report indicates the immensely charged political symbolism that was at play during the trip, cutting to the core of the German nation state as antagonistically defined by the two German regimes. Ulbricht—hoisting the “standard” of a head of state and a “national flag”—showed off insignia representing what he claimed was a state, but Bonn considered a mere geographical zone.83 At that point in time Ulbricht had the upper hand and was determined to expand the political breakthrough he felt his regime was about to score in the Middle East. An honor guard awaited the East German premier at the quay as his ship moored in Alexandria’s harbor, and upon disembarkation the Communist leader received the all-out military honors becoming of a head of state. Egyptian fighter jets and naval vessels had escorted the Völkerfreundschaft during its final approach, booming out the traditional twenty-one-gun salute for a visiting chief of state. Ashore, both countries’ national anthems were intoned before Nasser bestowed on Ulbricht Egypt’s highest decoration, the Grand Collar of the Nile, and received in return East Germany’s gold medal of the Order of the Grand Star of International Friendship (NYT, Feb. 25, 1965). There was little doubt in Bonn that Ulbricht and Nasser had thrown down the gauntlet in the fight over representation of the German people and the identity of the German nation state. Politicians and observers agreed that the reception for the Eastern leader differed little from the welcome traditionally extended to internationally recognized heads of state (Osterheld 1992: 159–160; NYT, Feb. 3, 1965). In fact, East Berlin was effectively able to emulate former West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s renowned “carpet policy.” In September 1949, during a ceremonial handing-over of West Germany’s occupation statute, Adenauer had managed to step onto the same carpet as the three Western High Commissioners, erasing a symbolized difference in status and asserting West Germany’s self-esteem as an independent state (Adenauer 1965: 233–234; Haftendorn 1996:

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9). No doubt, Ulbricht’s political situation in Cairo was entirely different, but stepping onto the red carpet there for the first time outside the Communist East Bloc did amount to a comparable moment of political initiation.84 Majority floor leader Rainer Barzel recalled that Ulbricht was welcomed by Nasser “with all head of state honors, with a ‘red carpet’, which was seen as a violation of the Hallstein doctrine and the right to sole representation of the German people” (Vogel 1987/1988: 282). The New York Times (Feb. 17, 1965) predicted: “President Ulbricht is going to Cairo . . . and he will get red carpet treatment.” And Moshe Tavor, spokesman at the Israel Mission in Germany, quipped: “German-Egyptian relations are now dependent on how big the red carpet is going to be” (Der Spiegel, Feb. 17, 1965). The political size of the proverbial red carpet was very big, as it turned out, since the reception in Cairo conferred upon Ulbricht and Communist East Germany the very state insignia that East Berlin vitally needed to legitimately assert its identity as a separate state. Following Ulbricht’s departure from Egypt on March 2, West German diplomats in Cairo had no doubt that Nasser had given him head of state treatment, though the president carefully skirted the term “two German states” and saw to it that the honors bestowed on the East German leader could not be mistaken for an official diplomatic recognition.85 Ulbricht, for his part, used the triumphal seven-day visit to lash out at Bonn’s policies and advance his interpretation of the German state. “Do not confuse the West German imperialists,” the premier advised the Arabs, “with the German people.” The East German government was the only one truly representing the German people as a whole, he said. In fact, his task of representing the “interests of the entire German nation” had even been sanctioned by the West Germans, Ulbricht asserted, since Bonn had cleared the way by withdrawing its ambassador from Cairo prior to his arrival. As he was the only high-ranking German official present in Egypt at that time, “it was relatively easy to . . . sweep away the Hallstein doctrine.” The doctrine had proved to be a “Hall-steinzeit,” a principle dating back to the political stone age, exposing the high degree of “senility and paralysis” reigning in Bonn, he jeered. The current Bonn policy stood in contrast to the realities in Germany as well as in the world, but as long as its wrecked remnants were upheld, it contributed to the deepening of Germany’s division, Ulbricht said.86 As for diplomatic relations between East Berlin and Cairo, the East German delegation did not even raise the issue during its stay in Egypt, Ulbricht said, and judging by available records that seems indeed to have been the case.87 The reason appears to be simple: East Berlin saw no chance of pushing such a request through. To try anyway and to fail would have spoiled the triumphant advance in Egypt. It also appeared unnecessary at this point, given that West German policymakers were all too prepared to accept the mere fact of the trip and the sort of reception Ulbricht was treated to as reason enough to acknowledge Egypt’s de facto recognition of Communist East Germany. “In Cairo, we did not even ask the question [about East German-Egyptian diplomatic relations],” the premier said. “We are advancing purposefully on our path. We know exactly where it is

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leading us.”88 Indeed, it led to East Germany’s full-fledged diplomatic endorsement by Cairo four years down the road. As Bonn suffered a political defeat in Egypt, relations with Jerusalem also soured significantly in the wake of the decision to terminate military support for Israel. Becoming ever more deeply ensnarled in the web woven by the manifold political strands, Bonn now sought to placate the Israelis by extending the statute of limitations on Nazi murder. While in November 1964 Foreign Minister Schröder, together with a majority of his cabinet peers, had still vetoed an extension of the statute, the Foreign Office now recommended an extension of the statutory period, in part because “a decision on the issue of the statute as favored by the Israelis, would improve our standing with Israel significantly.”89 Chancellor Erhard himself had implicitly suggested to Felix Shinnar a somewhat awkward deal, asking for Israeli complaisance toward the West German proposition of substituting money for arms and indicating that in return the statute of limitations might be extended.90 Possibly even more importantly, German wavering on the statute began to take a toll on unification policy. Negative worldwide reaction to the cabinet’s November 1964 refusal to allow an extension had been much stronger than anticipated, and West Germany increasingly maneuvered itself into international isolation at a time when it badly needed support for its claim to sole representation of the German people. The Foreign Office was now convinced that it would be impossible to hold the trenches on unification policy without modifying the government’s stance on the statutory period.91 Moreover, it became ever clearer that previous claims of further discoveries of a substantial number of hitherto unknown Nazi criminal cases being highly improbable had been overly optimistic. In fact, the Justice Ministry’s forthcoming progress report to the parliament was expected to arrive at the conclusion that—after sifting through archives in Eastern Bloc countries—major NS crimes were still awaiting investigation, and that therefore the extension of the statute of limitations was inevitable. Ever more cabinet members now came around to supporting a lengthening of the statutory period, and the cabinet paved the way for an extension on February 24.92 However, it did so by delegating the ultimate responsibility for the decision to the domestic level. Promising to endorse parliamentarians’ efforts on the matter, it handed the reins of action to Parliament: “The government’s report concludes that contrary to the previous assumption, it can not be excluded that new punishable acts will become known after May 8, 1965. The Federal government will support the German parliament in its efforts to create the possibility of satisfying justice while maintaining the principles of legality” (Bulletin 35, Feb. 25, 1965: 273). While the government had previously maintained that changing legislation retrospectively would weaken the rule of law in Germany’s young democracy, in February and March the view took hold that bypassing the ex post facto provision in this particular instance was morally defensible (NYT, Feb. 25, 1965). On March 24, the parliament voted to push ahead the statute’s start date from 1945 to 1949, effectively allowing four more years for the prosecution of Nazi criminals.93

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The Domestic Level In February and March 1965, German society’s push for full political relations with Israel combined with exasperation and anger over the way in which Chancellor Erhard and the Foreign Office appeared to insult Jerusalem and caved in to Cairo blackmail in an effort to uphold what increasingly looked like outdated vestiges of unification policy. The Middle East crisis reverberated throughout the country, and its manifold ramifications received more media attention than any other issue at that time. An increasingly assertive press, representing much of Germany’s elite thinking, launched scathing attacks, calling Bonn’s Middle East policy the “work of a buffoon” (Hanswurstiade) carried out by people “in carnival costumes stumbling all over the place” and poring over the “sad remains” (Scherbenhaufen) of West German foreign policy. They called it a “sad affair” (Trauerspiel) and a “disgrace” (Blamage), even diagnosing “sheer incurable stupidity on part of German foreign policy.”94 Günter Grass—one of Germany’s most renowned authors and among those elites striving to give domestic players greater room for influence in the political decision making process—charged Chancellor Erhard with incompetence in “escalating his political bankruptcy all the way up to a catastrophe” (Die Welt, Feb. 15, 1965). The chancellor should resign from his post, he demanded. The most pointed remarks came from essayist Rudolf Krämer-Badoni, who emphasized that he did not represent any institution, neither party nor club nor pressure group, but all the same possibly spoke for a large number of Germans: “Foreign policy as you, my dear ministers, conduct it is absolutely unacceptable,” he wrote. “Why should we citizens have to blush every other day in anger and shame?” Policy toward Israel was a matter of morality, he said. Politicians representing this country should have made unambiguously clear where this “new Germany stands, where it sees its moral obligations.” Instead, Krämer-Badoni charged, foreign policy makers “allow a narrow-minded man at the banks of the Nile to blackmail us to the disadvantage of those expelled by us, to those who escaped the gas chambers, to the detriment of all those traits which must be dear to everyone of us: loyalty and faith, morality, decency, shrewdness, face. We are hurling insults at Israel hammer and tongs” (Die Welt, Feb. 13, 1965). The author exhorted politicians to provide clear and comprehensive information to Parliament and the general public on the weapons deliveries and all other matters pertaining to the GermanIsraeli relationship. “The literary mouth does not make up for what the mouth of the statesman has neglected,” Krämer-Badoni said, though in fact this was precisely what he and other members among the societal elite were doing in those days: talking in politicians’ stead. Ultimately, this talking became so influential that it helped to convince politicians to change course, follow society’s lead, and fall in line with popular demands for the commencement of diplomatic relations with Israel. The call for comprehensive information and transparent politics made up an important part of the domestic criticism leveled against Bonn’s handling of the Middle East crisis. Not only were domestic actors unhappy with the government’s opposition to full diplomatic relations with Israel, but they also and particularly

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resented the autocratic style in which Bonn had handled the secret arms aid to Israel. Erhard’s decision to rescind weapons shipments to areas of tension met with general approval among the German public and all three major political parties, as the step was seen as contributing to peace in the Middle East.95 Yet, the manner in which Bonn unilaterally stopped all military support for Jerusalem—including those deliveries already contracted—without arriving at a mutually agreed arrangement, and the secretive way in which it had consented to the deliveries in the first place and then continued to conceal them from the public eye, were subject to heavy criticism inside and outside the parliament. The enforcement of secretiveness in the arms arrangements with Israel was so extreme that its constitutionality and legality has been questioned. The budgetary handling of the matter was particularly opaque, indicating the rather hazardous way in which the executive branch of government took advantage of its policy making powers by circumventing the parliamentary process. The secrecy backfired badly when the full scale of the weapons deliveries was exposed in the media. The fresh press reports in late January 1965—disclosing the tank deal and divulging a growing body of details concerning the government’s secretiveness in the matter—lent renewed momentum to domestic involvement in the foreign policy making process. Christian Democrat Eugen Gerstenmaier deplored Bonn’s military support for Israel, which he regarded as needlessly provocative toward the Arabs, and a sort of conscience payment to make up for Bonn’s standoffish attitude on diplomatic relations. Providing aid to Israel was the right thing to do, Gerstenmaier told a radio audience on February 15, but he stressed that “it is incomprehensible why this has to be done in secret and by way of arms deliveries.”96 Social Democratic floor leader Fritz Erler similarly assailed the government’s “back door methods” (Hintertreppenpolitik) in its relationship with Israel and charged that the current Middle East crisis was the result of a policy that had replaced sincerity with secret arrangements. Arriving at a secret weapons agreement with Israel had laid Germany open to Egyptian blackmail, Erler was convinced. In the future, he promised, all military exports would be submitted to the full scrutiny of the parliamentary control processes to avoid similar harm (NZZ, Feb. 14, 1965). Not again, parliamentarians resolved, would they allow the government to singlehandedly make a decision on such an important matter through circumvention of the parliament. Outside the parliament, student demonstrations in favor of diplomatic relations with Israel continued in 1965, and in light of the emerging details, the demonstrators particularly chastised Bonn officials for at first agreeing to arms shipments, only to cave in to Nasser’s threats later and unilaterally abandon the commitment.97 Under the weight of such heavy domestic pressure, Chancellor Erhard sought to deflect some of the criticism by publicly revealing the names of the handful of parliamentarians who, sworn to secrecy, had been sporadically kept apprised of Bonn’s military commitments.98 However, the move did not buy him the respite he had hoped for. Instead, the system of swearing a few insiders to secrecy reaf-

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firmed the image of a government practice characterized by convoluted provisions designed to keep the Arabs, the parliament, and the general public unaware of the weapons shipments. The ensuing parliamentary debate was bitter, with the opposition charging that the committee of confidants and Parliament, as well as the public at large, had been given too little information, too late. Furthermore, the appropriation of confidants did not amount to submitting a matter of such proportions to full parliamentary scrutiny. “From the outset until today the parliament … has been informed too late, then incomplete or only half-truthfully, also and especially during the recent weeks of heightened crisis,” Social Democrat Erler inveighed. Similarly, members of Parliament exhorted the government to acknowledge that the manner in which Bonn dealt with the arms support for Israel was of great interest to the German public and that continued secretiveness would do more harm than good (Bundestag, Feb. 17, 1965: 8114, 8077–8078). While such comments were surely not entirely free of pre-election rhetoric, and while a clandestine nature is intrinsic to many military agreements, the German furtiveness in the Bonn-Jerusalem case, and the manner in which the matter was handled from a budgetary and political perspective, were unusual. Even foreign commentaries emphasized that

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“if secrecy is exaggerated beyond the frontiers of fuzziness, if discretion becomes deceit, the exposure when it comes, as come it must in time, comes with a bang . . . it is only now, and in the most inept possible way, that the German parliament and public (and the Israeli parliament too) have learnt a little of what has been going on. Consequently, a policy that is stoutly defensible in itself was so obscured behind the sinister-seeming folds of its cloak that it has been stabbed by its own dagger” (The Economist, Feb. 13, 1965).

The heavy protests and criticisms in early 1965 that lambasted the government’s practice of insulating an important part of foreign policy from societal intervention amounted to an effort on society’s part to change the German policy making process and give domestic actors a greater say in high politics. It was in those days, and in the context of the Israeli case, that societal policy entrepreneurs such as literary writers, commentators, students, university teachers, and parliamentarians started to attack the traditional foreign policy making process based on historicism as espoused by former Chancellor Adenauer and his successor: “How is it possible that Adenauer could conclude a secret agreement on weapons for Israel and informed—aside from Defense Minister Strauß—only a few other ministers and politicians about it and those evidently only in a rather incomplete fashion? This is not secret diplomacy anymore—it is cabinet policy, 18th century style” (Die Welt, Feb. 17, 1965). Such comments formed part of an emerging zeitgeist that strove to do away with the outdated models of autocratic government and usher in a Western-style democracy characterized by a healthy apportionment of power with built-in checks and balances. This is also the reason why Chancellor Erhard’s call for a united front among all political powers in defense of the government’s Middle East policy was quickly frustrated: the opposition placed the

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blame for the bungled Middle East diplomacy squarely on the executive branch of government (Bundestag, Feb. 17, 1965: 8103). The fact that Erhard decided to include the names of those parliamentarians who had been apprised of the arms exports in his parliamentary speech only minutes before taking to the rostrum may be interpreted as an indication that domestic pressure had begun to penetrate the chancellor’s thinking on relations with Israel. His foreign policy aide Horst Osterheld (1992: 157)—a self-confessed supporter of former Chancellor Adenauer’s political style and a proponent of the old school of foreign policy—had drafted Erhard’s speech on the Middle East situation and was both surprised and dismayed to learn that without his knowledge the parliamentarians’ names had been inserted into the script during the lunch break. “Domestically this may have been the right thing to do; abroad, however, it will have negative repercussions as now the Arabs are undeniably informed about the details,” he noted at the time, and continued: “Erhard is much surrounded by publicity people, who also meddle in foreign policy matters. These days, everyone claims to know something about foreign affairs!” References to a domestically prudent step that may have been to the detriment of a foreign policy imperative, and references to the growing influence of so-called “publicity people” advising Erhard, are indicative of a trend whereby domestic currents and demands emerged as ever more significant factors on the chancellor’s political radar screen. In mid February, after the de Nerva mission had failed, Ambassador Federer was getting ready to make a final pitch to Nasser for the withdrawal of the Ulbricht invitation. Foreign Office guidelines for the encounter instructed Federer to tell the Egyptian president that the German public regarded the visit as an insult to the entire German people. However, public sentiment would change if Nasser threatened to recognize the Soviet zone and if Bonn was forced to sever diplomatic ties with Egypt. “German public opinion would then turn in Israel’s favor and would demand that the government take corresponding steps,” the Foreign Office said.99 These instructions were either ignorant of the prevailing public mood at that time or a deliberate misreading of the public’s inclinations, as German public opinion had already turned in Israel’s favor. What is important here, however, is that the Foreign Office had begun to factor domestic policy preferences—and not solely decision makers’ concerns for unification—into the decision making process. Popular demands appear to have successfully penetrated the foreign policy realm. To be sure, those demands did not yet shape policy outcomes, but they increasingly assumed their role as one element in the equation, particularly as societal elites kept up their relentless, morally informed push for accommodation of Israel’s policy requests. Students continued to stage street protests, exhorting the government to profess an “unambiguous avowal of Israel,” and urged governmental decision makers to introduce “morality” as a key variable into the policy equation: “Policy + Morality = Diplomatic Relations with Israel,” one placard read.100 Similarly, theologian Helmut Gollwitzer—who had initiated the November 1964 open letter by university professors calling for full ties with

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Israel and the expeditious withdrawal of German rocket scientists from Egypt— wrote to Erhard again in February, sending him an updated list of undersigned that in the space of three months had swollen from 14 to 421, and warned the chancellor that in relations with the Jewish state no less was at stake than “the entire moral-political construction of the new Germany.”101 As time went on, the looming elections in the fall also helped the appeal for full relations with Jerusalem to secure a set role in governmental decision making. Ludwig Erhard’s leadership was acutely dependent on public support, and the chancellor himself had professed to be particularly sensitive to public opinion. He had a history of being susceptible to opinions voiced by intellectual elites and had clinched his succession to the popular Konrad Adenauer mainly because he was seen as the Christian Democratic candidate who was most favored by the general electorate and hence best positioned to bring home another election victory.102 Yet, in the midst of the Middle East crisis, Erhard looked anything but a safe bet for the September 19 ballot. In February 1965, for the first time in more than a decade, polls showed that voters disapproving of the chancellor’s policies outnumbered those supporting them. Ratings for Erhard’s Christian Democrats were equally discouraging, coming in at 42 percent in February, down from 46 percent in January, and well below the 47 percent for the opposition Social Democrats.103 Facing this devastating feedback from the electorate, the party leadership let slip the first indications of a growing realization that the commencement of diplomatic relations carried significant vote-wining potential. It was dawning on policymakers that what so far had been contemplated under pure foreign policy imperatives—i.e., the strategy of not recognizing Israel before the elections so as to allay Arab fears—could well turn out to be a rather grave mistake domestically. On February 26, the New York Times’ Bonn correspondent filed a report indicating that weighing the establishment of formal ties with Jerusalem was a step urged upon the chancellor by his party. The events during the Middle East crisis were “appraised by Christian Democratic leaders as a severe blow to the domestic prestige of the Erhard government,” he reported. There were warnings that Erhard would have “to stage a vigorous comeback on the foreign policy front to avert defeat in the national election.” A consensus appeared to be developing among the party that initiating “a new policy toward Israel” would represent an “opportunity” to this end (NYT, Feb. 26, 1965). The International Level “In Israel, Bonn’s shares are in a virtual free-fall,” Die Welt correspondent Bernd Nellessen reported from Jerusalem, summarizing the Israeli public mood in February 1965. Israeli government and society were outraged about the cutoff of arms supplies to Jerusalem, feeling betrayed by what they perceived as a surrender to Nasser’s blackmail at the expense of Israeli security (Die Welt, Feb. 20, 1965; NZZ, Feb. 14, 1965; Ben-Vered 1965: 484–485). On February 14, the Israeli government rejected the German proposition to substitute the weapons consignments with financial compensation and decided not to send Felix Shinnar

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back to his post in Germany (Shinnar 1967: 156–157). The following day, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol assailed Bonn in harshest terms in a speech to the Knesset. Eshkol—mindful of Bonn’s concern for Germany’s identity as a united nation state—skillfully invoked the notion of Germany’s national sovereignty by pointing out that “any government which gives in to such pressure, sacrifices part of its sovereignty by handing Egypt the right to dictate its policy in an area of international relations.”104 Amid his anger, the Israeli premier even canceled a long-planned and initially much sought-after summit meeting with Chancellor Erhard. Not only the Israeli government and society were shocked and annoyed about the German decision to cease military support. Societal elites around the globe, particularly in the United States, also vigorously protested the move, denouncing it as a “capitulation to Nasser” and a “breach of international morality.” The cessation of arms deliveries was perceived as especially disconcerting in the context of a whole slew of decisions that had chagrined the American-Jewish community in recent years, such as the hands-off attitude on de jure recognition of Israel, complacency toward German scientists operating in Egypt, and most recently the refusal to extend the statute of limitations on NS crimes.105 Exploiting Germany’s concern for its international reputation, Jacob Blaustein—one of the most distinguished American-Jewish leaders and honorary president of the American Jewish Committee—invoked Germany’s “good name in the world” in a telegram to Erhard, exhorting Bonn not to give in to Nasser’s blackmail. “It is impossible for us,” he cabled, “to conceive that the proud Federal Republic of Germany would ever yield to pressures of this kind,” going on to remind West Germany hat “acquiescence in such pressure would inevitably be regarded as very serious diminution of Germany’s moral and political stature in the world. It is for these reasons that I am convinced that the German people under your enlightened leadership would never give way to pressures of this nature.”106 Blaustein’s conviction was disappointed, of course, when Erhard publicly confirmed the cutoff in arms aid to Israel a few days later. The incident had Heinrich von Knappstein, Bonn’s ambassador in Washington, fielding a deluge of similar interventions from Jewish leaders and his embassy and West German consulates in the United States were inundated with protest letters from across the country.107 Furthermore, the protests did not remain limited to harsh words but were augmented by private economic sanctions. Though these had no more than a negligible impact on the German economy overall, politically they added considerable urgency by exacerbating Bonn’s international woes. The US textile and apparel industry in particular launched boycotts of German goods and suspended trade relations with German suppliers. Botany Industries, for instance, a diversified textile group, ordered its purchasing managers to take Germany off their suppliers list, slicing about USD 200,000 in revenues off West German companies’ books. The company’s chairman said he had lost his respect for the German government: “I think any American, Jewish or not, would take the same stand.” Other clothing companies followed suit, saying they had received a “favorable response in

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messages from all over the country and abroad.” On the labor side, Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, AFL-CIO, appealed to organized labor in Germany to urge their government to reverse the decision to cut the arms supply to Israel (NYT, Feb. 18, 1965). In Germany, the situation did indeed appear to be serious for some companies, with at least one apparel maker appealing directly to Chancellor Erhard for help.108 Expressions of dismay may have been most vocal among the Jewish community, but dissatisfaction with Bonn’s decision was by no means confined to those quarters. Reverend James A. Pike, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California in San Francisco, for instance, pointed out in a letter to the editor of the New York Times that the German government’s “capitulation to Nasser’s blackmail” had profound significance for the entire free world, not just for Israel. To the bishop’s mind, Bonn’s unilateral decision threw into question the country’s general trustworthiness and commitment to any international agreement: “On the basis of this development what assurance is there, for example, that Bonn’s commitments on the Atlantic nuclear force, or the MLF, not to manufacture atomic, bacterial or chemical weapons will be maintained if alleged German national interests should dictate otherwise?” (NYT, Feb. 28, 1965). In short, developments in German-Israeli relations in early 1965 amounted to an international public relations disaster for the German government. Bonn rejected the charges as “completely unjustified” and branded the protests and boycotts a “campaign by world Jewry (Kampagne des Weltjudentums).”109 Indeed, there may have been a concerted effort on the part of American-Jewish organizations, and these organizations themselves called their actions a “campaign.” However, Bonn made the international Jewish community a scapegoat for its dismal situation, while the organizations were merely responding to specific policy choices made by the German government itself. The situation was compounded by the government’s assessment that there was nothing much it could do about the public fallout from the arms matter. An initiative to send a special emissary to the United States to better communicate to Jewish representatives the rationale behind Bonn’s decision to stop its military support for Israel was dealt with in a dilatory manner. Similarly, German requests that the US administration publicly deplore the boycotts yielded no more than a lukewarm statement by a US government spokesman, stating that “as a matter of principle we do not favor private boycotts as a measure of retaliation” (NYT, Feb. 19, 1965).110 As for the international outcry over Bonn’s reluctance to extend the statute of limitations, the government’s assessment of its ability to take action was a more positive one: “The issue of the statutory period is the only issue on which we can do something to support our unification policy in our own right without being dependent on the help of third parties. We urgently need this respite.” Germany was increasingly isolated “among the general public of friendly countries,” the Foreign Office noted. Little had been as disadvantageous to Bonn’s unification policy as the refusal to extend the statute of limitations. The apparent re-emergence of World War II–era coalitions between Western and Communist countries in

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opposition to Germany seemed particularly alarming. Hence, it would be impossible to garner continued support for Bonn’s unification policy without extending the statutory period, the Foreign Office concluded.111 Minister Erich Mende, a Liberal Democrat, made the interplay between German and international societal pressure palpable when expressing his conviction that the eventual decision in favor of an extension had come about in response to “domestic and international pressure (inner- und außenpolitischer Pressionen).”112 “The plot is thickening,” the White House point man for Middle Eastern affairs, Robert W. Komer, noted in mid February as the political tremors triggered by Germany’s cessation of military aid to Jerusalem hit the US administration full force.113 Following Bonn’s decision, both West Germany and Israel turned to Washington for help. The Israelis were eager to secure an American commitment to take over the still outstanding deliveries, and the Bonn government believed that since Washington had got it into the “mess,” Washington should now be prepared to get it out as well (Osterheld 1992: 154). The German Foreign Office had no qualms about invoking an alleged “moral obligation” on the part of the US administration to support its effort to obtain Israeli consent to substituting money for the remainder of the weapons shipments.114 Not only was the use of a moral argument by the Germans rather peculiar in this context, but the reasoning that without American instigation the weapons agreement with Israel would not have come about was also problematic, as the 150 tanks to be delivered at Washington’s request were only a relatively small part of the “Frank./Kol.” project, whose origins dated back to bilateral German-Israeli agreements in 1960 and 1962.115 While Washington finally agreed to abandon its no-comment policy and publicly acknowledged that it in fact had “favored” the sale of German tanks to Israel, nerves were frazzled on both sides of the Atlantic in February 1965.116 Washington was extremely reluctant to bail out the Germans by taking on the role of a direct arms supplier to the region itself. To do so would be “a major problem” for the US government, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Averell W. Harriman told Ambassador Knappstein, and urged the Germans to deliver as many tanks as possible.117 However, even as it admonished Bonn to abide by its commitment to equip Israel with American-made tanks, Washington simultaneously prepared a major change in its Middle East policy, at the end of which it gave up its reluctance to become a direct provider of weapons to the Middle East and started to equip both Jordan and Israel with offensive arms. The policy reversal also allowed the US administration to furnish Jerusalem with the outstanding installments of tank deliveries, effectively relieving Bonn of its onus. In a telephone conversation at the end of February, Harriman and Under Secretary of State George Ball agreed not to press Bonn any further as that “would hurt our relations with Germany.” The two State Department officials believed the United States would “have to take up the slack,” and Ball added that “our attitude with the Israelis regarding Bonn is, don’t be too hard on the Germans on this because they have tried to be helpful to them.” The department sent out a telegram to

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Ambassador McGhee in Bonn the same day, indicating Washington might be of assistance to the Germans with the Israelis after all.118 Concerns over growing Soviet influence in the region, the timing of a Jordan arms request, US domestic factors, and the implosion of the delicate policy of supporting Israel by playing the ball off the German edge all led to what US officials themselves called a “major policy shift” regarding the Middle East. As the State Department aptly summarized:

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At stake is our long-standing policy of avoiding direct sale of offensive arms to any of the key countries in the Arab-Israeli dispute. But we have arrived at a watershed in this policy because of continuing Soviet arms supply to the Arabs, which may now be extended to Jordan and which in any case is gradually threatening Israel’s deterrent superiority. West Germany’s withdrawal as an arms supplier to Israel further undermines our policy of encouraging Israel to look to its traditional European arms sources.119

Jordan had requested the sale of American combat planes, and the National Security Council agreed in early February that if the United States would not do it, the Soviets surely would. Hence, the administration decided that if entering the arms race in the Middle East proved unavoidable, Washington should at least control it by supporting both sides: “These factors lead us to conclude that the wisest course would be to sell arms to Jordan and to Israel too. If we become a supplier to one, we cannot escape becoming a supplier to the other.”120 However, providing arms to Israel was not solely a corollary of the perceived need to contribute to Jordan’s defense needs. There was an additional domestic component, and even more importantly the leak of the US-German-Italian-Israeli arms deal had all but brought down Washington’s scheme of having Bonn substitute as a weapons supplier to the region while keeping a clean bill of health itself.121 That scheme depended entirely on watertight secrecy as otherwise the Arabs could easily unmask Washington’s phony claim to the role of unbiased arbiter.122 Such unmasking was precisely what happened in the wake of the tank deal’s public exposure in early 1965, and consequently the US administration was faced with no alternative but to reconsider its Near East foreign policy. In sum, the confluence of the Jordan arms request, domestic considerations, and above all exposure to the abortive German tank deal had forced the administration’s hand. Washington now quickly entered into negotiations with the Israelis, embarking on a bargaining marathon amid strong Israeli resistance to various strings the Americans sought to attach to consenting to becoming a direct arms supplier. Moreover, the Israeli shopping list grew ever longer, with Jerusalem asking for combat aircraft and a substantial number of tanks, by far exceeding the still outstanding ninety German M-48 models. Agreement on the planes was not reached before mid 1966, but on tanks Robert Komer was able to report consummation to President Johnson on April 23, 1965: “We think we finally have the Germans off the hook on the Israel tank deal (although at the cost of taking it on ourselves).”123

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“Striving for Diplomatic Relations with Israel”: Bonn Offers Full Ties to Jerusalem, March 1965 The decision of our two governments [to establish diplomatic relations] has been taken against a somber historical background and a stormy political one (Bulletin 84, May 14, 1965: 665–666).

Those were the words chosen by Prime Minister Levi Eshkol—in an act filled with much historic import and political potent—to inaugurate full-dress diplomatic relations between Bonn and Jerusalem two months after Germany’s initial offer. The aim of this final chapter of the case study will be to show how domestic demands influenced the high-level decision making process that led to Bonn’s decision to commence full relations while also asking how strong the influence of Bonn’s Western allies might have been in convincing Germany to make certain policy choices. The Governmental Level

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In Bonn, the early days of March were dominated by the question whether to respond to Ulbricht’s head-of-state treatment in Egypt with the unambiguous execution of the Hallstein doctrine, i.e., the severance of diplomatic ties with Cairo. Government deliberations between March 2 and 5 amounted to excruciating discussions characterized by a gaping lack of imagination and an absence of innovative thinking. Ministers and high-ranking officials turned in circles, unable to break out of their preset ideational paradigm of traditional unification policy. The occasional admonition, by Development Minister Walter Scheel and a few others, that the Hallstein doctrine was in dire need of an overhaul went unheeded. Specifically, the debates revolved around three options that were perceived as the key policy alternatives available to governmental decision makers: • Would it be advisable—and what would be the consequences—if Germany cut its ties to Cairo without reaching a prior agreement with Israel on the substitution of the outstanding weapons deliveries? • What would happen if Bonn severed ties with Egypt after reaching an agreement with Israel on the substitution of money for weapons deliveries? • What if Bonn opted not to execute the Hallstein doctrine and merely curtailed economic aid for Egypt in a “mild” form (honoring current commitments, but not entering into new ones) or in a “sharp” fashion (cutting off all support in contempt of international law)?124 To German foreign policy makers these options were set worlds apart—but only to them. Communicating those filigree political nuances to the international public and particularly to the Arab nations was a difficult task, to say the least. With the options for decision framed in such a way, the government split into two main camps, one (led by Chancellor Erhard) leaning toward a break with

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Egypt and the other (led by Foreign Minister Schröder) favoring no more than economic sanctions. However, the argument played out as less a power struggle between two government agencies than a tepid bout of indecisive wavering on all sides with most ministers sitting on the fence. The chairman of the Christian Democrats and former chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, was quick to urge that West Germany respond to Egypt’s “fresh blackmail attempt” with the unambiguous execution of the Hallstein doctrine. Walter Hallstein, the official who had lent his name to the doctrine, also chimed in, strongly recommending a break with Cairo (Osterheld 1992: 160). Erhard leaned in the same direction, concluding that knuckling under at this juncture would leave the Hallstein doctrine implausible and further weaken West Germany’s claim to the sole representation of the German people. At the same time, however, Erhard appeared not entirely convinced that it would be prudent to cut loose from Egypt before relieving Germany of the burden to equip Israel with arms.125 To recap, the government’s reluctance to apply the Hallstein doctrine stemmed from fear that a break with Egypt, besides prompting Cairo to recognize East Berlin, would also anger Egypt’s allies, thereby setting off a chain reaction in which a great many of the uncommitted group of nations would acknowledge the partition of Germany into two sovereign states. In other words, it was feared the execution of the doctrine would achieve the opposite of what the threat of its application was hoped to accomplish: it might jeopardize, rather than foster, the project of keeping the Communist East in a state of international political quarantine. The reason why the issue was before the cabinet in the first place was the generally accepted interpretation of Ulbricht’s reception in Cairo as a de facto— even if not de jure—recognition of East Germany. In the view of the government this represented an unfriendly act, which—at least according to a strict reading of the doctrine—would have triggered the execution of the doctrine’s implicit punishment (severance of economic and political relations). The key cabinet meetings took place on March 4 and 5, lasting altogether a record thirteen hours. The discussions were heated, as they touched on the very essence of West German foreign policy and by extension on German national identity as a nation state in the making. The first began on Thursday morning, March 4, at 10 A.M. and lasted until 6:15 P.M. without interruption.126 However, the discussions on both days failed to live up to the hype and drama that surrounded them, as they were much less distinguished by an all-out battle of words and violent clash of positions than was made out in the press. Rather, the impression is one of participants merely putting their opinions on the table with little sense of direction or the mechanics of conflict resolution. However, the sessions appeared to satisfy Chancellor Erhard’s osmotic approach to decision making, characterized by the assimilation of other opinions and the passing on of his own political volition. The chancellor kicked off by stating that Germany’s national interests had to be maintained; he leaned toward salvaging Bonn’s unification policy with a proactive move to preempt any additional step Egypt’s president might have up his sleeve. The Foreign Office, in contrast, believed there was

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no value in executing the Hallstein doctrine if such a step was unlikely to bring about the intended effect (i.e., deterrence). There was a general global trend among nonaligned nations to the detriment of Bonn’s unification policy, State Secretary Carstens had explained two days earlier: “If he was convinced that this disadvantageous trend could be halted by terminating diplomatic relations [with Egypt], he would recommend the break. However, he did not have that conviction.”127 Moreover, Foreign Minister Schröder challenged the interpretation of Ulbricht’s trip to the Nile as a full-dress head of state visit. It was a very conspicuous visit, but not more than that, he argued.128 Chancellor Erhard, however, took exception to the Foreign Office’s view that economic sanctions would be a face-saving way out of the crisis: “What if we terminate our economic aid and Nasser breaks with us—then we are making a fool of ourselves.” Therefore, it was preferable for Bonn to proactively take the next step.129 Schröder demurred, insisting Nasser had not recognized East Germany and emphasizing that it was in no one’s interest—least of all that of the three Western Allies—if West Germany beat a retreat in the Middle East and allowed East Germany to politically infiltrate Egypt. Yet, the chancellor believed that an agreement could be reached with Israel on the substitution of the remaining weapons deliveries, and that such an agreement would prevent a chain reaction among the Arab nations if Bonn were to break diplomatic relations with Egypt.130 Housing Minister Paul Lücke sided with the chancellor, convinced Bonn had to take the initiative even if Jerusalem did not warm to the idea of accepting money in lieu of weapons. “If we deliver the rest, then Nasser will break and we will be caught between a rock and a hard place,” he said. Several ministers appeared to be missing sufficient information to make up their minds. Economics Minister Kurt Schmücker insisted on a more thorough analysis of Arab states’ likely responses in case Bonn was to cancel official ties with Cairo. A number of cabinet members asked what the Western Allies could do to help out Bonn. Many in the round may have tacitly agreed with Transportation Minister Hans-Christoph Seebohm, who, conjuring up the insupportable “pictures from Egypt,” believed “Ulbricht has won the battle against us.” East Germany’s recognition is a fact, Minister for Federal Assets Werner Dollinger agreed, and Family Minister Bruno Heck concurred: “Nasser has given East Germany the right to representation (Vertretungsrecht).” Therefore, Heck voted to break off diplomatic relations with Cairo: “Consequences? We have to stick it out—put it to the test!” While Seebohm agreed with the conclusion, he pointed to the possibility of devising a new unification policy. That option was precisely the reason leading the five Liberal Democratic ministers to align with Foreign Minister Schröder and veto the execution of the Hallstein doctrine. Led by Development Minister Walter Scheel, the Liberal Democrats urged moving away from the rigid doctrine and espousing greater flexibility. Party Chairman and Minister for All-German affairs Erich Mende pointed to the Western powers’ unification policy and admonished: “Let’s not pretend to be stronger than we are.” Even conservative Interior Minis-

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ter Hermann Höcherl wondered: “Can we go on applying the Hallstein doctrine like this?” However, no policy recommendations followed from those timid hints at political soul searching. To the contrary, the discussion eventually deteriorated into a simple game of chicken proposition: Who would break diplomatic relations first—Cairo or Bonn? And: which scenario would be preferable? Chairman of the Federal Security Council Heinrich Krone: “Better Nasser breaks than us.” Labor Minister Theodor Blank: “Rather we break than Nasser.” Health Minister Elisabeth Schwarzhaupt: “Nasser breaking or us? Against [us] breaking.” In the end, there was no roll call and neither was there a decision. The cabinet adjourned on Friday night after an excruciating two-day debate, having achieved nothing.131 There had been little to no big-picture thinking. Although the changing international climate did come up, and although traditional unification policy was put into question, the decision makers stopped there, leaving it to others at some other time to draw the appropriate conclusions. Israel was barely mentioned, and if at all, solely in the context of Germany’s much-resented obligation to deliver weapons. Foreign Minister Schröder reportedly repeated at one point the Foreign Office’s much touted, yet pointless concession of offering Jerusalem consular relations.132 The issue was not discussed, however, and neither was the possibility of inaugurating full diplomatic relations with Israel. German-Israeli relations, in other words, were initially not of primary concern to government decision makers in early March; therefore, other factors must have come into play and helped to put the commencement of German-Israeli diplomatic relations on the government’s agenda. American Jewish representatives were the first ones to raise the idea of addressing the lack of direct Bonn-Jerusalem contacts by sending a German emissary to Israel for face-to-face talks about weapons.133 On February 23, Chancellor Erhard—seeing merit in the concept of trying to iron out differences with the Eshkol government in direct negotiations—asked Kurt Birrenbach, a Christian Democratic parliamentarian and a tried and tested emissary in delicate matters, to fly to Jerusalem on a secret mission. On the evening of March 5—just after the chancellor, Foreign Minister Schröder, and Defense Minster von Hassel had wrapped up their second marathon cabinet meeting—the three met with Birrenbach to prepare the mission (Birrenbach 1984: 83, 99). Schröder went into the meeting with a list of six issues he deemed in need of clarification, all exclusively concerned with paving Germany’s way out of the military relationship with Jerusalem. None pertained to the issue of political relations with Israel. However, over the weekend a flurry of crisis meetings set in, and on Saturday morning, March 6, newly appointed Christian Democratic majority leader Rainer Barzel counseled Erhard to commence diplomatic relations with Israel (Barzel 1978: 45–46; Der Spiegel, March 17, 1965). In the afternoon of the same day, Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder, State Secretary Karl Carstens, Defense Minister Kai-Uwe von Hassel, and Erhard convened again in the chancellor’s bungalow to weigh the pros and cons of the various options, with Rainer Barzel also taking part. Eventually, Erhard called

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Birrenbach—who was standing by to depart for Jerusalem the next morning— into the meeting, instructing him to persuade Premier Eshkol to accept payments in lieu of the still outstanding weapons installments and to stick to previous Foreign Office recommendations of offering Jerusalem no more than subambassadorial relations, even though the Israelis had stated unambiguously that they were not prepared to accept anything short of unqualified, full relations (Birrenbach 1984: 99–100; Osterheld 1992: 167–168; Barzel 1978: 46–47). That day, societal demands for full diplomatic relations with Israel were again superseded by Schröder’s foreign policy concept. On Sunday morning, with Birrenbach already en route to Jerusalem, consultations in Bonn continued unabatedly. Barzel held meetings with Ludwig Erhard, Federal President Heinrich Lübke, and government spokesman Karl-Günther von Hase. “My suggestion was now backed emphatically,” was Barzel’s summary of the March 7 consultations (1978: 48). A few hours later, the chancellor made the decision to offer Israel official status as West Germany’s full diplomatic partner. The government’s press office issued a statement, declaring in a terse third point that the Federal Republic was “striving for the commencement of diplomatic relations with Israel. This step is designed to contribute to a normalization of the situation. It is not directed against any Arab state” (Bulletin 41, March 9, 1965: 325; NYT, March 8, 1965). In Jerusalem the following day, Bonn’s emissary—oblivious of the policy change back home—offered the exchange of consulates, only to be informed of Erhard’s most recent declaration by his Israeli counterparts (Birrenbach 1984: 100–103; Shinnar 1967: 127–133, 158–171). In sum, deliberations on the governmental level alone do not suggest a conclusive reason for the change in policy and therefore represent a highly improbable independent variable to explain the policy reversal that led to Bonn’s offer to commence diplomatic ties with Jerusalem. During cabinet sessions no major new arguments were exchanged, no decisions made, no specific measures initiated, and relations with Israel had not been occupying government officials’ minds. Instead, a change in Israel policy was introduced into the decision making process by nongovernmental actors, as we will see in the following section. The Domestic Level The cabinet did not deliberate—nor did the chancellor make up his mind—in a political vacuum during the final days preceding the eventual decision to bite the bullet and offer Israel the kind of relations Bonn had been unwilling to commit to for about a decade. The same week that high-level decision makers brooded over Bonn’s relationship with Egypt, Germany kicked off its annual Brotherhood Week in observance of the newly defined relationship between Germans and Jews. There had been talk of calling off the event that year, as some feared tensions in official relations between Bonn and Jerusalem might turn a public celebration of brotherhood into a fiasco. A majority of public leaders, however, had argued that this was precisely the time when a visible, nongovernmental event bringing Jews and non-Jews together was most needed. As it turned out, fear of an estrange-

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ment between the two groups within German society had little basis. To the contrary, government blunders in Bonn’s relationship with Israel had evoked both waves of indignation and additional support for the Jewish state among German citizens. Demonstrations in support of Israel had continued, and the faculty of Berlin’s Free University had staged a signature drive condemning the government’s “betrayal” of Israel. Karl Marx, publisher of Germany’s Jewish newspaper Allgemeine Wochenzeitschrift der Juden in Deutschland, reported that never before had he received so many sympathetic letters as during February and early March 1965 (NYT, March 7, 1965). Domestic activities in 1964 and early 1965 demonstrated a widespread desire to adjust foreign policy toward Israel in line with society’s efforts to come to terms with its Nazi past. Against this background, domestic considerations infiltrated the cabinet sessions on March 4 and 5. “It’s not only about foreign policy consequences,” Minister Alois Niederalt, responsible for government liaisons with the upper house of Parliament (Bundesratsminister), admonished his colleagues. “Our policy could become dubious—domestically; the people see Nasser as a blackmailer. We need to make a clean sweep of it, even if it hurts,” the Christian Democrat urged, echoing popular criticism aimed at the government for having caved in to Egypt’s blackmail. And Heinrich Krone agreed: “The elections need to be taken into consideration.” On the eve of national polls in the fall, the coalition government between Christian Democrats and Liberal Democrats was in a shambles. The Liberal Democrats had gone so far as to threaten to leave the coalition if Erhard were to sever ties with Egypt.134 The Christian Democratic leadership was alarmed about the government’s depressing showing in the polls, and there was noticeable dissatisfaction among the party rank and file over Bonn’s Middle East policy. A majority appeared to support diplomatic relations with Israel, and many deemed it high time for decisive action to stop the losing streak and turn around the negative trend in public perception (Osterheld 1992: 168; Barzel 1978: 45). Opinion surveys showed that the Egypt–Israel–East Germany quagmire was the chief reason for the poor showings. Among the electorate, 49 percent blamed the government for the Middle East crisis, while only 6 percent believed Nasser’s Egypt or German military support for Israel were responsible (Emnid poll in Wolffsohn 1986: 50). Upon returning from an inaugural visit to the United States on the morning of March 6, the recently appointed majority leader Rainer Barzel went into his meeting with the chancellor with those “catastrophic” public opinion surveys in mind. The majority leader suggested to Erhard that he needed to take the political rudder firmly into his own hands if he wanted to rid himself of the public perception that his policy was passive and reactive, void of any strategic concept. The majority leader picked up where Erhard’s cabinet peer Niederalt—stressing the domestic consequences of the Middle East crisis—had left off two days earlier. The domestic implications of the episode loomed large as Barzel stressed to Erhard that commencing diplomatic relations with Jerusalem would not only stabilize the situation in the Middle East, but would first and foremost “put his

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government back on track domestically should he make the decision still this weekend” (Barzel 1978: 46). The majority leader argued that a new course in foreign policy, aligned with demands stemming from German society, would have favorable domestic repercussions.135 Indeed, opinion polls indicated that societal policy entrepreneurs’ calls for diplomatic relations with Jerusalem were backed by a majority among the population at large. An Allensbach public opinion survey showed 46 percent supporting the call for full official ties in March 1965; 34 percent were opposed and the rest undecided. A tally by public opinion pollster Emnid showed even more convincing results, with 62 percent opting for diplomatic relations “now” or “later,” and no more than 17 percent disapproving of such a step (Noelle and Neumann 1967: 470; Emnid poll in Wolffsohn 1986: 52). However, those advisers to the chancellor who believed that aligning Middle East policy with domestic demands would stabilize the Erhard government and secure favorable ratings still suffered a defeat on Saturday, March 6, when Foreign Minister Schröder carried the day and special envoy Kurt Birrenbach was sent to Israel with narrow instructions to negotiate an end to the military relationship and offer no more than the commencement of consular relations. But, Christian Social Union Chairman Franz-Josef Strauß, Christian Democratic official Will Rasner, Barzel, and other leading party officials did not give up and entreated the chancellor on Saturday night and the following morning to go beyond the directive given to Birrenbach and initiate full diplomatic relations with Israel. Barzel was convinced ambassadorial relations were the right step to take domestically and—returning from consultations with Jewish leaders in the United States—also morally and internationally. Rasner’s concerns stemmed from domestic considerations that he had imparted to the chancellor on a number of occasions.136 On Sunday morning, the chancellor conferred with Federal President Heinrich Lübke and government spokesman Karl-Günther von Hase before making his final decision (Die Welt, March 8, 1965; Barzel 1978: 48). Both Lübke and von Hase represented government agencies that by their political nature were open to societal concerns and prone to take account of the public echo of policy choices. Lübke was inclined to promote the idea of reconciliation with the state of Israel. He had also argued against calling off Brotherhood Week in the face of German-Israeli governmental tensions: “Jews and Christians among our people have, despite the unbridgeable chasm that divides them, made a start and begun a dialogue. It must not be broken off now,” he said (NYT, March 7, 1965). Erhard spokesman von Hase was responsible for managing the public image of the government and must have been less than delighted about nose-diving approval ratings and a general distrust toward Erhard’s leadership. In fact, this was the likely motivation for his vigorous demand that the government issue a “clear statement toward the public” on its decision making in the Middle East conundrum.137 On Sunday, March 7, the clearest and best suited statement to counter the fact that, in Hase’s words, “Jews around the globe are against us,” as well as to eradicate the impression that “in the eyes of the public we have suffered a hammering,” was to align government policy with domestic demands in a bold move

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by announcing Bonn’s intention to seek full diplomatic ties with Israel (Osterheld 1992: 162). The pressure on Erhard was considerable, and his political future hung in the balance. Party officials went all the way to the brink by issuing an ultimatum, threatening to convene an emergency meeting of a parliamentary group empowered to topple the chancellor, should he fail to make a decision before the weekend was out. Through the grapevine, Parliamentary President Eugen Gerstenmaier and Baden-Württemberg State Premier Kurt-Georg Kiesinger were mooted as possible Erhard replacements (Osterheld 1992: 168; Der Spiegel, March 17, 1965). Pressure on the chancellor was mounting to such a degree that eventually Barzel’s and his fellow party and government officials’ push for full relations with Israel enjoyed general backing. Erhard made the final decision prior to further consultations with the cabinet to preempt any possible moves by party committees, standing by to convene the following day.138 Significantly, Foreign Minister Schröder—who in his reluctance to establish full diplomatic ties with Israel had still prevailed on Saturday—was all but excluded from Sunday’s final decision making process. In fact, he was informed about the policy reversal only after the decision was taken and just an hour before the news was made public (Osterheld 1992: 169; Wagner 1965a: 366). Predictably, the Foreign Office was miffed about the outcome, and State Secretary Carstens regretted the decision in a telephone conversation with Birrenbach after the latter had arrived in Israel. The entire Christian Democratic parliamentary group was in favor of the decision to offer diplomatic ties to Israel, Carstens told Birrenbach. Several other sources testified that “Barzel had a good deal to do with the chancellor’s decision.”139 The young Christian Democratic hopeful Rainer Barzel was among those who best understood the new significance of the domestic variable in West Germany’s emerging, post-Adenauer political system.140 To be sure, the majority parliamentary leader was still championing some vestiges of historicism and a belief in the primacy of foreign policy. Yet, he also espoused a growing appreciation of the role that society had begun to play in German foreign policy making. In a meeting with US President Johnson at the end of February, Barzel stressed that international relations must not be left up to “diplomats and soldiers,” but should be shaped by those forces that contribute to the fashioning of public opinion.141 Barzel realized that if the domestic level was a crucial element in foreign policy making, it was the decision makers’ task to adapt their policies to societal demands, rather than forcing society to champion the elusive common good of the state as defined by governmental decision makers. Expectations that the offer to inaugurate diplomatic ties with Israel would play well with German society and pull the Erhard government out of its current slump turned out to be justified. Erhard was buoyed by solid domestic support for the offer, and his aide Horst Osterheld (1992: 170)—a staunch proponent of oldstyle foreign policy in the Adenauer mold—conceded that Erhard’s decision did indeed bode well “with the German press and generally domestically.” Rainer

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Barzel summarized the political fallout from the decision by noting that “the Erhard government, just before still crumbling and shaky, was stable now. . . . Erhard won the elections in the fall.”142 The chancellor himself also acknowledged the domestic impact of his new Israel policy. When the cabinet reconvened on Tuesday, March 9—the first meeting after their fruitless marathon sessions the previous week—Erhard was quick to point out that he had taken his decision over the weekend “because of the domestic repercussions of the foreign policy situation.” Keen to preempt possible reproaches from his cabinet colleagues for not consulting them again prior to making the final call, Erhard conceded he had not been able to convince everyone of the prudence of the policy reversal, but, he stressed, “public opinion in our country will prove us right” (Osterheld 1992: 170). The chancellor seemed to be banking on the hope that favorable public reaction would—as had been suggested to him by Barzel, Dufhues, Rasner, Strauß and others—override whatever disgruntlement there might have been among government officials. And indeed, Erhard was able to get significant political mileage out of having aligned high policy decision making with domestic demands.143 Despite the eventual decision by ten Arab states to sever ties with Bonn in response to the exchange of ambassadors with Jerusalem, the chancellor was able to tell a round of distinguished American guests at a dinner in June 1965 “that the German people have nonetheless regarded their action in recognizing Israel with well-nigh universal satisfaction and approval and have not been dismayed or had any second thoughts about it.”144 A survey taken in May by the public opinion pollster Infas Institute showed as many as 56 percent of West Germans in favor of Bonn-Jerusalem diplomatic relations, with no more than 10 percent opposing the move (Deutschkron 1991: 311). Erhard’s personal approval ratings also improved significantly in the wake of the March 7 decision, jumping to 39 percent in late March after a record low of 34 percent the previous month. Two months later, favorable ratings climbed to levels as high as 48 percent (Noelle and Neumann 1967: 199). Back in February, the US administration had considered it likely that the Erhard government would stumble over the Middle East crisis. “The Chancellor is in deep trouble,” David Klein, a senior National Security Council official, told Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, “and it is not beyond the realm of probability that after Ulbricht gets to Cairo, and FRG contingency plans do not fall into place, the chancellor may get swept over.”145 However, the Erhard government did have a chance of survival if it adapted its policies to the new domestic sentiment. Because the chancellor did precisely that, he survived politically in 1965 and won the national elections comfortably, a development that eventually was also appreciated by the White House: “Erhard now seems to think that finally recognizing Israel will net out a political plus in his fall elections.”146 In sum, continued public demonstrations for closer allegiance between Germany and Israel, compounded by a slump in government approval ratings and general support among the West German population for diplomatic relations with Jerusalem, brought about a policy reversal as West Germany emerged in the post-Adenauer

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years as a Western political system affording societal actors numerous opportunities to penetrate the foreign policy making process. On March 10, the German parliament convened to hear the much-anticipated government report on progress in the prosecution of Nazi murderers.147 Justice Minister Ewald Bucher, a staunch opponent of extension of the statutory period, had to admit that in contrast to earlier assurances, there was no way for state prosecutors to ensure that all major Nazi criminals would be put to trial by early May. Based on recent findings in Polish and Czechoslovakian archives it could not be ruled out, the Justice Ministry concluded, that “after May 8, 1965 so far unknown crimes of significant proportions or unknown offenders of high rank will become known.”148 With that, a law enabling the judicial system to prosecute Nazi murderers beyond the twenty-year deadline became all but inevitable. Three motions were brought to the floor, with the one introduced by Christian Democrat Ernst Benda and cosponsored by fifty fellow parliamentarians looking most promising for passage.149 However, following the debate, an insufficient number of Christian Democrats could be persuaded to vote an abolition of the statutory period into law. After extensive deliberations in the judiciary subcommittee, Christian Democrats and Social Democrats eventually settled for a compromise. The parliament decided to agree that the West German judicial system had not been able to properly begin its work before the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949. Therefore, it was determined that the stipulation of May 8, 1945 as the start date for the statutory period had been a “mistake,” which the parliament now moved to rectify by pushing it up four years. In the eyes of many inside and outside the parliament the new law was far from ideal, yet it appeared to reflect the lowest common denominator.150 Even though the decision was blemished in that it merely delayed the start date for the statutory period instead of extending the twenty-year time span or doing away with it altogether, the debates preceding the vote marked an important milestone in West Germany’s development as a Western-style democracy. Ernst Benda captured emblematically the historical significance of the debates when he voiced his expectation that the parliament’s decision making process would represent a “victory of the parliamentarian principle.” The people’s representatives, Benda said, would arrive at their final vote by “exchanging ideas” and eventually find the best solution “in the marketplace of truth” (Bundestag, March 10, 1965: 8520). Philosopher Karl Jaspers believed that the parliamentarians were about to embark on the endeavor of giving the people a voice in the political process. The differences in opinion among members of parliament cut across party lines, he noted in satisfaction: “The individual members follow their conscience, not their party membership, and they cogitate as true representatives of the people” (Der Spiegel, March 8, 1965). Indeed, during the debates parliamentarians made clear that the issue before them was not of a mere legal quality, but was an identitydefining moment that concerned everyone. “At the heart of the legal battle is the issue … of how we interpret the constitutional state,” Benda pointed out, and his Social Democratic colleague Gerhard Jahn agreed: “The decisive question is:

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should the monstrous scope of the crimes, as they are in this form, in this magnitude, in this cruelty singular in history, be answered solely with judicial considerations or are we called upon to first and foremost make a political-moral decision?” (Bundestag, March 25, 1965: 8522, 8537). Jahn, Benda, Social Democrat Fritz Erler, conservative Richard Jaeger, and others unambiguously answered this question in the affirmative. Similarly, the philosopher Karl Jaspers believed the prosecution of Nazi murderers could be carried out convincingly—and the extension or abolition of the statute of limitations therefore decided upon—only if National Socialism was understood as a caesura in German history. The continuity of the state and its legal provisions was ruptured in 1945, and the social-political order had to be built anew. The history of the (West) German state after 1945 had to be viewed as the outcome of a spiritual revolution (geistige Revolution) in the wake of the Third Reich, Jaspers insisted. The philosopher viewed the imminent decision by the parliament as part of this revolution and hence as an identity-defining moment for West Germany’s body politic (Staatswesen) (Der Spiegel, March 8, 1965). Jaspers’ view of an intellectual rebirth of the German state represented a sharp departure from the government’s premise that the German state had not gone under in 1945 and that hence West Germany embodied the legal tradition of the German Reich. In the early 1960s, in other words, new ideas were born and exchanged in the “market place of truth” (Ernst Benda), replacing the outdated conceptualizations of the German state that had proved to be incapable of dealing with either the intellectual maturation process of German society or present-day foreign policy challenges.

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The International Level Bonn pleaded time and again with its Western Allies to lend it a helping hand in untangling the diplomatic knot in which it had become ensnared. And time and again government officials had to realize that their insistence on German unification isolated them in their quest to navigate a way out of the Middle East dilemma. Great Britain, France, and the United States were waiting for Germany to give up its claim to sole representation, and Bonn’s Foreign Office understood full well that its unification policy was incompatible with the Western policy of détente.151 NATO Ambassador Wilhelm Grewe captured the general reluctance to come to Bonn’s rescue when he advised that it was a waste of time to put Germany’s Middle East problem on the agenda of NATO council meetings. “Basically, owing to its all-German element (gesamtdeutschen Aspekt) no one is interested in supporting our policy on this issue,” he told the Foreign Office.152 Indeed, responses from the Western capitals were hardly encouraging. France promised to “think intensively” about the problem of the “Hallstein doctrine and the Third World” and offered to “consult” with the Germans on the matter, hoping to be “more concrete soon.” Britain assured Bonn it could count on its “assistance” in Israel, but stressed it was hardly able to do anything in Cairo. And US Ambassador George McGhee all but ruled out American support: “There are relatively few opportunities [for the United States to help] in Tanzania and in the

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UAR as well as in Israel.”153 Bonn’s policy makers, in other words, were left to their own devices in dealing with the Middle East crisis. The three main Western allies refused to get drawn into the matter in a major fashion; they refrained from suggesting a certain choice for political action and preferred to stay on the sidelines.154 Not even the Israelis believed the United States should attempt to sway Germany one way or the other on diplomatic relations. Premier Eshkol raised the issue with US Under Secretary of State Averell Harriman in late February: “There was great need for public and diplomatic moves to show the world Israel was not alone. He felt it was his duty to ask US help in the establishment of full diplomatic relations with Iran, Turkey and India. As for Germany, it would have to come to Israel. It was strange that the Germans had not recognized their moral obligation to Israel in this connection.”155 Neither US Secretary of State Dean Rusk nor President Johnson used meetings with the majority leader Rainer Barzel in February 1965 to press Bonn on relations with Israel. The encounter with Rusk was entirely dedicated to the German question; in his session with Johnson, Barzel touched on Bonn-Jerusalem relations, but the president left it at thanking Germany for its support to Israel and merely regretted the difficulties caused by the leak of the secret German-USIsraeli weapons deal. Political relations with Israel or Egypt were not discussed, let alone preferences communicated.156 In sum, Bonn’s allies neither offered advice nor applied pressure to influence how Germany might shape its political relationship with Israel. Washington took a neutral stance, torn between a pro-Israel constituency at home and its interest in keeping a Western foothold in the Arab world.157 This situation indicates that the international system might have had only modest influence on German decision making on diplomatic relations with Jerusalem. As for Germany’s relations with Egypt, however, the Western Allies took a more forceful stance. The three demanded that Bonn should keep its formal ties with Cairo intact and desist from executing the Hallstein doctrine by severing diplomatic relations in response to Nasser’s political hospitality toward Ulbricht. On Friday, March 5, Erhard received the three ambassadors of the Western Allies just minutes after briefing the heads of the three parliamentary groups and shortly before commencing the second leg of the marathon cabinet session on the Middle East crisis. He wanted to inform the ambassadors ahead of time, the chancellor said, about the possibility that his government might decide that the already announced economic sanctions against Egypt should be followed up with additional political sanctions by severing diplomatic ties with Cairo. Listening to Erhard’s remarks, Washington’s envoy George McGhee could barely contain himself, and in a rather tense meeting the ambassador went on to impress on the chancellor that his government was fundamentally opposed to such a step. The administration had a “very decided opinion” on this issue, McGhee said, “namely that [Germany] should not break relations.” With such a step Bonn would only play into the hands of the Communists. “Germany has a great reputation in the Middle East. The Americans have little influence. The West needs the German

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influence.” British envoy Sir Frank Roberts was more composed, but agreed with McGhee. “British relations with the UAR are not good. We have had the Suez crisis,” he said. “The British are of the opinion it would be better to have bad relations with Nasser than no relations at all.”158 US Under Secretary of State George Ball also voiced his “strong concerns” over a possible break between Germany and Egypt and gave Bonn “friendly advice” to refrain from such a step.159 When on Sunday, March 7, the news of Germany’s decision to offer full political relations to Israel while leaving ties with Egypt intact went around the globe, the three Western Allies greeted the step with general approval. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, on a visit to Germany at the time, welcomed the decision at a news conference on the spot. Political circles in London commended both the decision not to cut ties with Cairo and the plan to exchange ambassadors with Israel.160 Reactions in Paris echoed the British sentiment, welcoming both the establishment of full official relations with Jerusalem and the adherence to ties with Cairo (Die Welt, March 9, 1965). The United States appeared genuinely surprised about the decision, but accepted it without recorded demur.161 The muted to positive responses are noteworthy, as five days earlier Ambassador McGhee had warned Foreign Minister Schröder not only of potential dangers associated with severing ties with Egypt, but also of political hazards linked to any steps that would force Egypt to take the initiative and break relations with Bonn.162 Yet, this was precisely what did ensue when Bonn and Jerusalem commenced full diplomatic relations. Egypt plus nine other Arab states responded by severing official ties with West Germany, albeit refraining from inaugurating full ties with East Berlin. Despite his earlier warnings, McGhee did not reiterate the United States’ attitude toward German-Egyptian relations, and the State Department went as far as to tell Bonn that the administration was “glad FRG has established relations with Israel, and want to work together with FRG in efforts to build up stability in ME.”163 In sum, it is doubtful that foreign governments were a key factor in bringing about the policy outcome in the case at hand. The Allied governments did not push for diplomatic relations with Israel and urged Bonn to keep relations open with Cairo. Therefore, the actual outcome—official ties with Jerusalem resulting in a break in relations with Egypt—calls for a different explanation. While Western governments were rather passive on German-Israeli relations, societal leaders and interest groups abroad took an active interest in Germany’s handling of its tainted past and relations with the Jewish state. All doors stood wide open, Barzel (1978: 40) recalls concerning the many meetings he had in New York and Washington in February/March 1965, as he had access to “senators and representatives, ministers, military officers, university professors, journalists, economic leaders, trade unionists, bankers, elder statesmen.” The influential Christian Democrat was subject to intense US lobbying as pressure groups similar to those who back home tried to sway the government to grant Israel official recognition also worked to the same end on German visitors in Washington and New York.164

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The worldwide interst in Germany’s handling of the shadows of its past was particularly strong in the case of the statute of limitations for Nazi murders and reflected the international dimension of the crimes. West Germany might have gained sovereignty in 1955, politcial scientist Eugen Kogon pointed out, yet “morally and politically it is certainly not sovereign in its prosecution of National Socialist crimes” since the “victims are international” (Kogon 1965: 152; FR, Feb. 8, 1965). Consequently, the German parliament’s deliberations about an extension of the statutory period were subject to omnipresent interest and noticeable pressure from societal actors abroad. Almost all speakers referred to such international pressure and denounced it as unusually strong. “The issue at hand has to be examined very carefully,” Justice Minister Bucher said, “as the problem of the statutory period has attracted domestic as well as strong foreign policy significance.” The minister referred to “petitions form foreign individuals and particularly to appeals, resolutions and protests which have reached us from organizations and federations abroad” (Bundestag, March 10, 1965: 8519). Many of the parliamentarians saw themselves confronted with the notion that pressure from world public opinion (Druck der Weltmeinung) tarnished what should have been a timelier and voluntary moral act on the part of German decision makers. Neither domestic nor international influence, several speakers asserted, but merely their own conscience should be the deciding factor in making up their minds on the subject (Bundestag, March 10, 1965: 8520 and March 24, 1965: 8764). However, a good number of parliamentarians argued in favor of accepting and acknowledging international pressure as a natural part of the political process. World opinion was legitimate if policymakers deemed it justified, Social Democrat Adolf Arndt said: “We have no reason to strut around, as some do, as if no one out in the world could possibly give us advice” (Bundestag, March 10, 1965: 8550). Preceding the debates, philosopher Karl Jaspers argued that next to a national domestic level there existed an international domestic level—world public opinion—which constituted one important factor in national decision making. The statutory period, Jaspers demanded, should be extended, but not simply because it appeared politically expedient; not because there was a certain angst as to how the Ausland might react to the German decision. Instead, the consensus among the international community of people in favor of extension should be taken as an important pointer to what appeared to be an internationally accepted truth. Agreement among so many nations, states, and their peoples deserved due attention, Jaspers believed. The resounding unanimity of the desire for the extension of the West German statutory period, as expressed by Western civilization, could stem from the common viewpoint that the Nazi genocide was of singular quality, Jaspers surmised. Therefore, should West Germany wish to be part of Western civilization, it should sign on to what this community has accepted as a core value: crimes against humanity and particularly genocide may never come under any statute of limitations.165 Parliamentarians picked up this thread, arguing that Germany’s membership in the free world of the West required an adherence to certain legal standards.

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“The world in which we live in is too small; the free world, for which we have opted irrevocably, is too much in danger for there to be room for irreconcilability and islands of hatred,” the majority leader Barzel admonished—a theme, in fact, that appeared to come straight out of a conversation Barzel had had with Joachim Prinz, president of the American Jewish Congress, in New York the previous month. Prinz had told him: “The world of today is too small to allow for islands of hatred” (Bundestag, March 10, 1965: 8532; Barzel 1978: 42). Conservative parliamentarian Richard Jaeger pointed out that the West German constitutional state (Rechtsstaat) was based on the model of other Western powers with whom Germany was allied. The Anglo-Saxon tradition did not provide for a statutory period in cases of capital crimes, France had unanimously abolished the statute of limitations, Belgium had taken similar action, and Austria, faced with the same problem as Germany, had also opted for abolition or extension of the statute, Jaeger said. Therefore, he noted, “something of a European legal conscience (europäisches Rechtsbewußtsein) has developed. The persecution of the Jews was a European problem and the response to it is a European reaction.”166 Hence, the eventual decision to extend the statute of limitations may be seen as an acknowledgement of the European and global dimension of the issue, notwithstanding criticism in Israel and by Jewish groups over the limited scope of the extension.167 In that sense the philosopher Jaspers, the writer Kogon, and a good number of parliamentarians intrinsically supported a network of transnational communities that constituted and gave voice to a cross-border public sphere. With its numerous outposts abroad, Aktion Sühnezeichen—the German Protestant youth group engaged in social work in countries that had suffered under the Third Reich— proved to be a classic agent for the facilitation of the international transfer of ideas and concerns relating to Germany’s relationship with its gruesome past and the state of Israel. The organization, in an open letter to the government, pilloried the reasoning behind the cabinet’s initial refusal to stop the expiration of the statutory period as a diminution of the issue to a mere formalistic-legal argument. “We observe with great worry the growing anger and bitterness in all countries in which we operate about the pending expiration of the statute of limitations for National Socialist crimes,” it wrote. By taking its cues from concerns collected abroad and confronting the government with these worries, it helped to knit a cross-border network of public communities and partook in channeling international concerns into the German decision making process. “The caveats against the extension of the statute of limitations prompt the people of those countries in which we operate to suspect a conscious aiding and abetting of the perpetrators and cast into doubt the sincerity of our people’s efforts in coming to terms with the past,” Aktion Sühnezeichen said, and beseeched the Bonn government not only to extend the statute of limitations, but also to commence diplomatic relations with Jerusalem.168 In sum, while foreign governments’ influence on German-Israeli relations might have been limited, societies abroad were able to exert considerable

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influence on German politics, specifically on issues that represented a significant reputational risk to the Bonn government, as was the case with the statute of limitations for Nazi crimes.

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The Final Steps toward Full Diplomatic Relations The Arabs did not waste much time before reacting to Bonn’s March 7 announcement of offering diplomatic relations to Israel—a step that they perceived as favoritism for Israel over Egypt and the Arabs generally. Iraq and Yemen proclaimed unspecified counter-measures against the Germans. Kuwait vowed to break relations with Bonn. Nasser in two speeches on March 8 and 9 derided West Germany as a liar, cheater, and “the world’s worst imperialist.”169 The Arab League hastily convened a foreign ministers’ conference on March 14 and decided after a night of intensive conferencing to withdraw their ambassadors from Bonn and sever ties once diplomatic relations with Israel were formally established. Germany, with its decision in favor of Israel, was now committed to the “Zionistic-imperialistic plan in the Middle East,” the ministers’ communiqué contended.170 The strong Arab rhetoric suggested a rather severe answer to the German decision. Yet, in actuality the response was relatively mild, in part due to a split among the Arab nations about the appropriate reaction to Bonn’s actions and in part owing to Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba’s moderating influence on Egypt’s more far-reaching designs. While ten Middle Eastern states indeed broke off official relations with Bonn, none of them initiated ambassadorial relations with East Berlin. Egypt had initially envisioned doing so, but eventually dropped such plans for fear it would hurt Nasser’s standing among the Arabs and the nonaligned world, since only two other Middle Eastern nations and no non-Communist country were willing to follow suit. Moreover, three Arab nations—Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia—were determined to keep their relations with West Germany intact.171 The same day the Arab foreign ministers convened in Cairo to heap scorn on Bonn, the Jerusalem government accepted the offer to enter into negotiations over the initiation of full diplomatic ties. A day later the Knesset also gave its consent by a wide margin.172 Initially, reactions among Israeli society had been subdued amid—in the words of Foreign Minister Golda Meir—a debate “between the head and the heart,” but Israelis quickly warmed to the notion of exchanging ambassadors with Germany (NYT, March 15, 1965; NZZ, March 10, 1965). The government and particularly Prime Minister Levi Eshkol had demanded such an initiative all along and therefore seized the moment to endorse the proposition.173 What followed were two months of drawn-out negotiations between the German and the Israeli sides about the exact terms under which full official ties would be commenced. The main talking points between German envoy Kurt Birrenbach and Premier Levi Eshkol, Foreign Minister Golda Meir, Deputy Defense Minister Shimon Peres, and Ambassador Felix Shinnar constituted a mirror image of the contentious issues between Bonn and Jerusalem as they had existed since 1960:

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• Diplomatic relations: When would they be commenced? Where would the German embassy be located—in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv? Who would be chosen as ambassadors? • German scientists in Egypt: Israel continued to demand adamantly that they be pulled out of Cairo. Bonn promised to do all it could to lure them back. • The statute of limitations: Birrenbach assured his counterparts that after the parliamentary debate on March 10 an extension was all but a certainty. • Weapons: The main sticking point—Israel initially demanded that the weapons agreement be fulfilled to the very last howitzer. Bonn, however, was intent on turning around the reciprocity: For years it had delivered weapons in order to avoid diplomatic relations; now it wanted political relations in part to free up the government from the political burden of a military relationship.174 In March and April, Birrenbach conducted three rounds of negotiations in Israel, each matched by German efforts to soften the impact the final settlement with Jerusalem was expected to have on German-Arab relations. At the end of the second leg, Israel accepted the concept of substituting money for German military equipment deliveries, but the talks had been tense and remained so until the very end.175 Jerusalem was particularly upset about the Foreign Office—which supervised Birrenbach’s negotiations in Israel—playing for time to avert Arab retaliation, and about attempts to divest the German-Israeli relationship of its special character. The talks were on the brink of collapse when Bonn suggested manifesting in the concluding communiqué that Israeli-German relations would be on no different footing than any other German bilateral relationship with non-NATO states. Jerusalem—invoking Germany’s moral obligation toward the Jews—insisted on a continuing special relationship between Bonn and Jerusalem.176 Eventually agreement was reached on issuing a joint one-sentence communiqué accompanied by an exchange of notes between Chancellor Erhard and Prime Minister Eshkol.177 In his note Erhard affirmed that his country was “aware of the peculiar position of Germans in relation to Jews all over the world, including those in Israel.” The chancellor further expressed his satisfaction that it had been possible to reach agreement on “the conversion of the deliveries of weapons still outstanding from earlier agreements” and promised to enter into discussions on future economic aid soon. Eshkol in his response thanked Erhard, stressing the gruesome historical background against which the establishment of diplomatic relations had been taken. The premier also touched on the “cancellation of the statute of limitations” which to Israel’s regret had not been voted into law, and emphasized that the matter would remain “of deep concern to us.” Eshkol also took note of Erhard’s comments on the issue of German scientists in Egypt. The chancellor stated that recently a significant number of experts had returned home and that even more of them had the intention of doing so. He also said that generally “German authorities take legal action against any person or persons who, without permission, seek to entice German nationals to take up sci-

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entific, technical or expert activities in the military field abroad.” About eighty West German experts had left Egypt during the first five months of 1965, reflecting uncertainty about future relations between Bonn and Cairo, a decline in morale, Egypt’s shortage of hard currency for their salaries, and financial inducements offered by West Germany’s government and businesses (NYT, May 15, 1965; NYT, March 23, 1965). After another history-induced tussle over the appropriate choice for ambassador on both sides, Rolf Pauls and Asher Ben-Natan took their respective posts in early August 1965, marking “a further milestone on the road toward better understanding” and a “brighter future” between Germany and Israel.178 The impact of the break in relations between Bonn and the ten Arab states was minimal, as even East German sources had to admit, since political and cultural relations continued unabatedly and economic ties grew even stronger.179 Moreover, full official relations with all ten were soon reestablished between 1969 and 1975.

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Notes 1. Conversation Gazit-Davies, May 22, 1964, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, tanks vol. II, box 145. 2. Memo von Hase-Erhard, Nov. 2, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 306: 1215–1217; Meeting Erhard-Shinnar, Nov. 4, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 312: 1235–1239. 3. Memo von Hase-Erhard, Nov. 2, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 306: 1217. 4. Letter Schröder-Erhard, Nov. 9, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 315: 1244. 5. Memo Arab reaction to German weapons deliveries to Israel, Nov. 3, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964. 6. Draft Letter and Final Letter Schröder-Erhard, Nov. 9, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 315: 1246/1247 (footnote 11). 7. Gerstenmaier expressed his conditions for the trip on several occasions: Memo Jansen, Nov. 3, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964; Letter Gerstenmaier-Erhard, Nov. 12, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 325: 1281. For Erhard’s acquiescence to Gerstenmaier’s conditions and Erhard’s guidelines for the meeting with Nasser: Letter Erhard-Gerstenmaier, Nov. 16, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 340: 1333–1335. 8. Nasser raised the arms shipments to Israel, but Gerstenmaier used the moment to promote his own idea of a general ban on German arms deliveries outside NATO. Nasser brought up the issue of German scientists working at the Israeli Weizmann Intitute and alleged they were helping Israel to acquire atomic weapons. Gerstenmaier merely denied this, but did not talk about the German experts on Nasser’s payroll. Egypt’s economic development was also discussed, but Gerstenmaier made general remarks only and did not mention the prospect of further German aid (Memo Ambassador Federer, Cairo, re meeting Gerstenmaier-Nasser, Nov. 23, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 352: 1374–1379). According to a Foreign Office official, the minutes of the meeting were identical with Gerstenmaier’s own account, which he delivered to a parliamentary committee after returning from Egypt (Memo Jansen, Dec. 11, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 385: 1515). 9. This observation is corroborated by Ambassador Georg Federer in Cairo, who noted that Gerstenmaier stressed repeatedly the issue of “normalizing our relations with Israel,” whereas the

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10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

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21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

27. 28.

issues of German experts in Egypt and economic aid “were left unmentioned” (Memo Federer, Nov. 25, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964). Memo Ambassador Federer, Cairo, re meeting Gerstenmaier-Nasser, Nov. 23, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 352: 1376. Memo Ambassador Federer, Cairo, re meeting Gerstenmaier-Nasser, Nov. 23, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 352: 1374–1379. Some press reports of the meeting said Nasser had outright agreed to diplomatic relations between Bonn and Jerusalem. This was not the case. Memo Federer-Carstens, Nov. 25, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964. Attachment Cabinet Proposal Foreign Office, Dec. 21, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964 and Cabinet Proposal Foreign Office, Jan. 4, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 1: 3–5. Cabinet Proposal Foreign Office, Jan. 4, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 1: 3–5. Report from West Germany (October 16–November 25, 1964), YIVO (AJC), FAD-1 Germany, box 22. Resolution Federation of German-Israeli Student Groups at IV. Convention, Nov. 9, 1964, BA, B 136, 301 01, vol. 3635. When Bonn stopped the shipments in early 1965, 64 percent of West Germans supported the move, according to an Allensbach poll (Noelle and Neumann 1967: 471). Appeal for diplomatic relations with Israel, in Die Quelle 15 (Dec. 1964): 522; Rosenberg (1964: 522–524). Communication IG Metall (Salzgitter AG), No. 22/64, Dec. 7, 1964 and Letter SchaafNeussel, Feb. 4, 1965, both in BA, B 136, 301 01, vol. 3635. Open Letter 14 Professors to Parliamentary President Eugen Gerstenmaier, Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, Minister Gerhard Schröder, members of the foreign relations committee, undated (mid-November 1964), BA, B 136, 301 01, vol. 3635. The fourteen signatories were: Helmut Arndt, Berlin (social economics), Helmut Gollwitzer, Berlin (theology), Gustav Heckmann, Hanover (philosophy and education), Herman Heimpel, Göttingen (history), Uvo Hoelscher, Heidelberg (philology), Rolf Rendtorff, Heidelberg (theology), Kurt Sontheimer, Berlin (political science), Wilhelm Weischedel, Berlin (philosophy), Max Born, Bad Pyrmont (physics), Hans Braun, Bonn (medicine), Martin Drath, Karlsruhe (judge on the Federal Constitutional Court), Karl Freudenberg, Heidelberg (chemistry), Werner Kliefoth, Kiel (physics), Alfred Marchionini, Munich (medicine). Aktion Sühnezeichen Calls on the Government, undated (February 1965), BA, B 136, 301 01, vol. 3635. Open Letter 14 Professors, undated (mid November 1964), BA, B 136, 301 01, vol. 3635. Letter Erhard-Scharf, Nov. 25, 1964, BA, B 136, 301 01, vol. 3635. Excerpts Maariv-Interview with Goldmann, Dec. 18, 1964, BA, B 136, 301 01, vol. 3635. The complaint about the unanticipated large scope of the aid was echoed over and over again. Initially, Egypt believed the shipments consisted mostly of light weapons. That this was not the case was taken as a particularly huge blow (Cable Müller (Cairo)-Foreign Office, Feb. 17, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964; TV interview Nasser with Peter Scholl-Latour et al., DFS, Feb. 18, 1965, BA, B 136, 650 15, vol. 2972). The initially tame reaction was acknowledged by Assistant Secretary of State Jansen and Ambassador Federer in Cairo (Memo Jansen, Nov. 3, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964; Federer-Carstens, Jan. 26, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 38: 193). Moscow was likely to have made financial assistance to Egypt conditional on Cairo’s help in upgrading East Berlin’s international standing by hosting Ulbricht as a head of state (NYT, Feb. 24, 1965; Wagner 1965a: 359–370). Memo Böker, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 388: 1534–1535. Harriman believed, based on information provided by Bonn-based CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr, that high-placed sources in the German government had leaked the information (Cable Knappstein, Feb. 2, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965). NSC Assistant for the Middle East Robert Komer also believed German, not Israeli, sources had leaked the deal (Memo Komer, April 23, 1965, LBJL, WHCF-CF, CO 126 Israel 1964–1965, box 9).

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29. Cable Knappstein, Feb. 2, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965; Cable Knappstein, Feb. 18, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 85: 354; Memo Indiscretions Weapons Deliveries to Israel, Feb. 25, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. Political scientist Jörg Seelbach (1970: 109) speculates that the Israel Mission in Germany leaked the information. Michael Woffsohn (1989: 119; 1993: 34–35) holds the Foreign Office responsible. 30. Memo Schirmer, Dec. 22, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964. 31. Federer-Carstens, Jan. 16, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 38: 194. 32. Letter Gerstenmaier-Schröder, Jan. 11, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 10: 49–52; Letter Gerstenmaier-Schröder, Jan. 13, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. Schröder rejected the charges straight away in a terse response to both letters (Letter Schröder-Gerstenmaier, Jan. 18, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965). 33. Federer-Carstens, Jan. 21, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 30: 166; Letter Werner-Schröder, Jan. 25, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. 34. For instance, on December 18, 1964, the Egyptian ambassador warned Bonn not to put Nasser in the “predicament” of having to recognize East Germany by commencing diplomatic ties with Jerusalem. The wording left open the option for a negotiated settlement that might have averted such a “predicament.” An even more conspicuous incident was a conversation between Foreign Minister Schröder and Cairo’s ambassador to Bonn in mid 1963 in which Schröder suggested examining whether the establishment of official Bonn-Jerusalem relations might be useful from both German and Arab viewpoints. Ambassador Sabri responded that his government had contemplated this very aspect as well. There are no records, however, documenting German diplomatic efforts to follow up on such apparent opportunities (Memo Jansen, Dec. 22, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 394: 1555; Meeting Schröder-Sabri, Aug. 9, 1963, AAPD 1963 II, doc. 289: 963). Moreover, German foreign policy documents bespeak rather unimaginative policy planning. A memo by Assistant State Secretary for Political Affairs Hermann MeyerLindenberg entitled “Renewal of our Middle East Policy” merely rehashed old positions without suggesting workable solutions for the challenges ahead (Memo Meyer-Lindenberg, Jan. 25, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965). 35. Memo Krapf, Jan. 27, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 41: 201. 36. German translation of the official Egyptian news agency’s pickup of the Al Ahram story in: Press Publications and Instructions on Ulbricht’s visit to UAR, Jan. 25, SEDA, NY-4182, vol. 1336. The text of the official invitation had been transmitted to Ulbricht about two weeks prior to the publication and was dated January 10, 1965. 37. Letter Werner-Schröder, Jan. 25, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. Horst Osterheld (1992: 151–152), one of Erhard’s closest foreign policy advisors, claims that the Bonn government knew about the invitation ahead of its publication. However, such advance knowledge, if weighed against all available evidence from primary records, is highly unlikely. 38. Memo Krapf, Jan. 27, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 41: 201. 39. Memo Federer re meeting with Nasser, Feb. 1, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 48: 228. On the Grotewohl visit to the UAR see SEDA, NY-4090, vol. 242, particularly Grotewohl’s report on the government delegation’s trip to the UAR, Iraq, and India: “Die Völker verstehen die Bonner Sturheit nicht mehr.” 40. Cable Federer-Foreign Office, Jan. 26, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965; FedererCarstens, Jan. 26, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 38: 194. 41. Cable Federer-Foreign Office, Jan. 28, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965; Cable Schröder-Federer, Jan. 29, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. 42. Letter Westrick-Schröder, Jan. 29, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. 43. Osterheld (1992: 152); Memo Carstens, Jan. 27, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 40: 199–200. The summary stoppage of all weapons deliveries, including those already agreed upon, was a new demand on the part of the Foreign Office and was likely rooted in Ambassador Federer’s warnings that all would be lost if Cairo saw more arms reaching Israel’s shores. 44. Federer-Foreign Office, re meeting with Nasser, Feb. 1, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 48: 227–230. On Nasser’s counter doctrine see also Wagner (1965b: 160–162).

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45. Memo Meyer-Lindenberg, Jan. 11, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 9: 44–48; Memo MeyerLindenberg, Jan. 25, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. 46. Meeting Erhard-Shinnar, Nov. 4, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 312: 1237; Memo Lahr, Nov. 6, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 314: 1242–1243; NYT, Jan. 21, 1965. 47. Memo Meyer-Lindenberg, Jan. 25, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965; Memo Meyer-Lindenberg, Jan. 11, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 9: 46; Carstens’ testimony to parliament (Bundestag, Jan. 21, 1965: 8350); NZZ, Feb. 10, 1965. Deteriorating German-Egyptian relations—in part due to the controversy surrounding the scientists in Cairo itself—also played a role in prompting some German experts to reconsider their position in an increasingly hostile environment (Die Welt, Feb. 2, 1965). 48. Memo re statute of limitations for NS criminals, Dec. 10, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964; Memo Krapf re extension statute of limitations, Feb. 2, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 53: 244–246. 49. Memo Krapf, Feb. 2, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 52: 243. 50. Attachement to Cabinet Submission Foreign Office, Jan. 19, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. 51. The Christian Democrats suffered a series of setbacks in local elections in late 1964, with the Social Democrats gaining in popularity and strength. Under the leadership of charismatic Willy Brandt, the Social Democrats even looked as if they might be able to take over the reins of government in 1965 on the national level (Hildebrand 1984: 99–111). 52. Foreign Minister Schröder informed Ambassador Federer of Erhard’s decision (Cable SchröderFederer, Jan. 29, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965). 53. Osterheld (1992: 170). For further elaboration see chapter 5, “Striving for Diplomatic Relations with Israel.” 54. Nasser’s deputy admitted Cairo “had been pushed by the Soviet zone for more than a year to extent the invitation” (Cable Federer-Foreign Office, Jan. 25, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965). Shelepin granted Egypt a USD 270 million loan, which Ulbricht topped up with an additional USD 75 million during his visit in February (Shinnar 1967: 129; Hottinger 1965: 107–114; Wagner 1965a: 359–370). Western diplomats also concluded that the decision to invite Ulbricht was made in late December, when “the fine hand of the Soviets,” as one diplomat put it, was most evident in Cairo (NYT, Feb. 24, 1965). 55. Letter Winzer-Ulbricht with wording of invitation, Jan. 12, 1965 and Cable Weitz re Meeting Nasser/Federer and Nasser/Erofeew, Feb. 2, 1965, SEDA, NY-4182, vol. 1336. 56. Copy of Cable on Nasser/Federer Meeting, Feb. 2, 1965, SEDA, NY-4182, vol. 1336 and Memo Federer re meeting with Nasser, Feb. 1, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 48: 228. 57. Federer-Carstens, Jan. 26, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 38: 193. Egyptian embassy counselor Mohamed Abd El Karim was also dismayed at the seriousness with which news of the Ulbricht invitation was received in Bonn (Memo Schirmer, Feb. 2, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 51: 239–241). Haftendorn (1971: 27) stresses that it was the West German reaction to the Ulbricht invitation, and not the German-Israeli military agreement, that was at the heart of the German-Egyptian tensions in early 1965. 58. Memo Federer re meeting with Nasser, Feb. 1, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 48: 227–230; Wagner 1965a: 361, 363. 59. Meeting Westrick-Shinnar, Feb. 1, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. 60. NYT, Jan. 21, 1965. The story echoed a CBS television report from the previous day (cable Knappstein re meeting with Harriman, Feb. 2, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965). 61. Telephone conversation Bundy-Ball, Feb. 1, 1965 and telephone conversation Tyler-Ball, Feb. 1, 1965, LBJL, PP, Papers of George Ball, West Germany vol. II, box 4. In fact, the 1964 tank deal originated with Washington and was only reluctantly endorsed by Bonn (see chapter 4, “Politics by Stealth”). 62. Initially, the US ambassador in Cairo simply relayed the US support for the German request not to invite Ulbricht to the Spanish ambassador in Cairo (Knappstein-Foreign Office, Feb. 18, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 85: 352, footnote 8). Ambassador Lucius D. Battle then intervened

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63.

64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

69. 70.

71.

72.

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73.

74. 75. 76.

77. 78.

on February 18 (Meeting Schröder-McGhee, Feb. 22, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 90: 367–368), but without success (Ambassador Allardt (Madrid)-Foreign Office, Feb. 23, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 90: 373–374, footnote 12). Resolutions by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Office of the Secretary, State House, Boston 33, 1965, Jan. 19, 1965, LBJL, WHCF, Countries CO 92 Germany, box 34; Robert Creel to Thomas Chadwick, Clerk of the Senate, Feb. 5, 1965, LBJL, WHCF, CO 92 Germany, box 34. Blaustein-Goldmann, Jan. 22, 1965, YIVO (AJC), FAD-1 Germany, box 24. Memo AJCs, Jan. 5, 1965, AJHS (AJCs), I-77 (IX. C.), box 25. Memo Meyer-Lindenberg, Jan. 25, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. Newsletter AJC, Feb. 5, 1965, YIVO (AJC), FAD-1 Germany, box 22. “Statement on Germany,” Jan. 18, 1965, YIVO (AJC), FAD-1 Germany, box 22. The American Jewish Committee cooperated with officials in Germany and the United States to sponsor annual study missions of German teachers to the United States to enable them to experience the American educational system firsthand. Knappstein-Carstens, Feb. 12, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 74: 313. Deliberations during the weekly cabinet meetings on February 3, 10, 17, and 24 centered on this subject, and the issue likewise dominated the cabinet sessions on March 2, 4, and 5. In addition, Erhard consulted with officers and ministers on February 1, 2, 11, and 20, and on March 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 (Osterheld 1992: 153). On February 3, Chancellor Erhard stipulated after a number of high-level consultations that (a) no more weapons would be shipped to areas of tension, that (b) the Middle East represented an area of tension, and that (c) the Foreign Office would try to find a solution with Israel whereby already contracted deliveries would be “replaced” with payments. The decision was confirmed by the cabinet later the same day, but was to be kept secret for the time being (Memo Carstens, Feb. 3, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965; Osterheld 1992: 154–155). German government officials, including the chancellor, made numerous attempts to convince the Israelis to accept such a tradeoff. Shinner, however, did not budge, saying the decision not to accept money instead of weapons was made at the highest levels in Jerusalem (Meeting Westrick-Shinnar, Feb. 1, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965; Cable Carstens-Embassy Washington, Feb. 4, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 57: 259–260; Meeting Erhard, Westrick, Shinnar, Feb. 11, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 70: 297–301; Memo Carstens, Feb. 10, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 65: 286–289; Shinnar 1967: 148–150). It was Bonn’s understanding that the arms shipments, particularly the delivery of Americanmade tanks, were conditional on the arrangements remaining secret and that the deal was off once it became public (Meeting Erhard, Westrick, Shinnar, Feb. 11, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 70: 297–301). Meeting Schröder-Egyptian Ambassador Mansour, Feb. 13, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 75: 317. Meeting Erhard, Westrick, Shinnar, Feb. 11, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 70: 299; Letter ErhardEshkol, Feb. 11, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. On February 2, the Foreign Office requested the Spanish mediation services after the Spanish ambassador in Bonn had suggested this route to government spokesman Karl-Günther von Hase. After being approached by the Germans, the Spanish government under General Franco agreed to be at Bonn’s service and named Francisco Elorza y Echaniz Marquis de Nerva, General Director for International Organizations in Madrid’s Foreign Ministry, as a special envoy in the matter (Cable Carstens-Ambassador Madrid, Feb. 2, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965, particularly the typewritten attachment; Memo Carstens, Feb. 11, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965; Cable Allardt-Foreign Office, Feb. 3, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965). For a detailed account of the de Nerva intervention see Hansen (2002: 714–728). Cable Carstens-Embassy Madrid, Feb. 8, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. De Nerva stayed in Cairo from February 4 through February 11 and mostly consulted with Prime Minister Ali Sabri, but also had a meeting with President Nasser (Meeting Carstens-de Nerva, Feb. 12, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 73: 307–312; Allardt-Foreign Office, Feb. 7, 1965,

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79. 80.

81.

82.

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83.

84.

85. 86.

87.

88.

89. 90.

AAPD 1965 I, doc. 59: 262–264). Egypt apparently agreed to grant Ulbricht no more than the courtesy treatment of a “distinguished foreigner,” to refrain from political statements in the concluding communiqué of the forthcoming visit, to abstain from a return visit by Nasser to East Berlin, and to continue its nonrecognition policy vis-à-vis East Berlin (Cable AllardtForeign Office, Feb. 11, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965). The outcome of the Spanish mission was also laid down in a letter by the Spanish ambassador in Cairo, Miguel de Lojendio, to Egypt’s Prime Minister Ali Sabri (Cable Allardt-Foreign Office, Feb. 14, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965). Carstens’ debrief with de Nerva: Cable Carstens-Embassy Madrid, Feb. 13, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. Carstens’ apparent reevaluation of the mission: Memo Carstens-Schröder, Feb. 17, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. The key section of de Nerva’s television interview was read out in Parliament by Social Democrat Fritz Erler: Bundestag, Feb. 17, 1965: 8113. See also Der Spiegel, Feb. 24, 1965. Federer’s protocol of his audience with President Nasser at the end of January does not mention an offer to abstain from recognizing Israel. Therefore, State Secretary Carstens appears to have been truthful when he assured parliamentarians that no one in Bonn’s diplomatic corps had ever promised the nonrecognition of Israel to Arab governments (Memo Federer re meeting with Nasser, Feb. 1, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 48: 227–230; Bundestag, Feb. 17, 1965: 8076–8077). For de Nerva’s retraction: Meeting Carstens-de Nerva, Feb. 12, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 73: 308–309. Cable Werner-Schröder, Feb. 3, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. Defying the threat of an impending withdrawal of West German development aid, President Nasser declared Egypt could get along just as well without Bonn’s economic aid (NYT, Feb. 19, 1965). The impact of the retaliatory measure was further weakened as it was to be largely limited to new loan commitments and future export credit guarantees (Memo Foreign Office re economic retortion against UAR, Feb. 17, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965; Memo Carstens on meeting in chancellor’s office, Feb. 22, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 88: 363–366). Hansen (2002: 628–629) and Jelinek (2004: 453) also diagnose a highly contradictory and uncoordinated German foreign policy during the Middle East crisis. Ulbricht was enjoying the passage exploring the ship, sunbathing, and playing shuffleboard with Gerhard Weiss, East Germany’s deputy minister for international and intra-German trade, the report said (Cable Voelkerfreundschaft-Ruegenradio DHS, Feb. 22, 1965, BA, B 136 BA, 301 02, vol. 6228). How seriously the West German decision makers took such symbolism is highlighted by the fact that Erhard’s staff deemed the intercepted cable important enough to show it to the chancellor, and Erhard initialed the document on February 23. The New York Times (Feb. 25, 1965) reported: “As Mr. Ulbricht stepped from the train [which had brought him from Alexandria’s harbor to Cairo] onto the red carpet, a group of young athletes in light gray suits cheered rhythmically, in German, ‘Welkommen, welkommen, welkommen. Ulbricht, Nasser, Ulbricht, Nasser.” Müller-Foreign Office, March 3, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 104: 432–434; Nasser/Ulbricht Joint Communiqué, March 1, 1965, in Seelbach (1970: 249–253). Ulbricht’s farewell speech at Port Said (ND, March 3, 1965); TV interview Ulbricht (March 7, 1965, SEDA, NY-4182, vol. 721); Report Walter Ulbricht to the 16th session of the state council (March 12, 1965, SEDA, NY-4182, vol. 721). However, Ulbricht did agree with his counterparts on the inauguration of an Egyptian consulate in East Berlin. An East German consulate in Cairo had already been set up in 1959 (Schröder-Erhard, July 17, 1965, AAPD 1965 II, doc. 284: 1184–1187). “I was welcomed in the United Arab Republic as representative of the whole peace-loving Germany not least because of the intensive, week-long propaganda preparation of my visit on part of the Bonn Federal Republic,” Ulbricht noted with satisfaction (TV interview Ulbricht, March 7, 1965, SEDA, NY-4182, vol. 721). Memo Meyer-Lindenberg, Feb. 15, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 77: 327. Conversation Erhard, Westrick, Shinnar, Feb. 11, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 70: 299.

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91. Memo Krapf, Feb. 2, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 53: 244–245. 92. Next to Chancellor Erhard and Ministers Lemmer (refugees), Lücke (housing), and Blank (labor)—who had already voted in favor of the statute’s extension in November 1964—Ministers Kurt Schmücker (economics), Elisabeth Schwarzhaupt (health), and Bruno Heck (family) now also spoke out in favor of extending the statute of limitations. Even the hardliners Höcherl (interior) and Bucher (justice) contemplated a change of mind (Der Spiegel, March 8, 1965). 93. For an analysis of the parliament’s decision see chapter 5, “Striving for Diplomatic Relations with Israel.” 94. For a synopsis of the German press on the issue see NZZ, Feb. 17, 1965. 95. In a March 1965 poll, 64 percent of Germans supported the basic decision not to equip Israel with arms any longer, 11 percent were opposed to the idea and one quarter remained undecided (Noelle and Neumann 1967: 471). German-Jewish organizations, however, condemned the cutoff of military aid to Israel (Die Welt, Feb. 13, 1965). 96. Bulletin 28, Feb. 16, 1965: 218. Haftendorn (1971: 67) points out that Gerstenmaier later revised his assessment of the quality of information provided by the government to Parliament on arms aid for Israel. 97. Photo of a West Berlin student demonstration: Placards called for clear recognition of Israel by the West German government and asked if Bonn feared “Arab blackmail,” printed in NYT, Feb. 27, 1965. 98. According to Erhard, the parliament’s budgetary committee agreed in March 1962 on a procedure under which each party faction would nominate two members who would be kept abreast of the secret deals by the government while being required to maintain strict secrecy about the classified information. However, according to Karl Mommer—a Social Democratic member of the group—this modus was put in place only after the 1960 and 1962 deals were struck and just barely before the actual deliveries were to go out, and not before members of the budgetary committee got wind of a sizeable sum in the Defense Ministry’s budget that was earmarked for a top-secret project. Only when Social Democratic floor leader Erich Ollenhauer asked Chancellor Adenauer about the project did the government inform the three floor leaders under strongest security precautions and put the system of six (later nine) confidants in place. The group met on December 13/17, 1962; February 5, 1963; February 10, 1964; June 30, 1964; October 7, 1964, and February 10, 1965 (Erhard’s speech to Parliament: Bundestag, Feb. 17, 1965: 8103–8105; Social Democratic interventions on the issue: Bundestag, Feb. 17, 1965: 8113–8115; Mommer’s account: Die Welt, Feb. 17, 1965). 99. Instructions trip Federer, Schirmer to Cairo, Feb. 16, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. The plans for the meeting were overtaken by events and the encounter did not take place. 100. Photo of a West Berlin student demonstration urging Bonn to recognize Israel, printed in NYT, Feb. 27, 1965. 101. Letter Gollwitzer-Erhard, Feb. 18, 1965, BA, B 136 BA, 301 01, vol. 3635. 102. “The way I work,” Erhard had confided in 1963, “I need the exchange of views (Ansprache und Aussprache) in order to be effective. I assimilate public opinion and I also want to pass on the political volition which shapes up inside of me.” (Erhard press conference, Dec. 3, 1963, Archiv der Gegenwart 1963: 10938). Erhard had consistently led the field of Christian Democratic contenders for Adenauer’s succession since 1961. In December 1961, he recorded an approval rating of 54 percent, followed by Parliamentary President Eugen Gerstenmaier (13 percent) and Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder (3 percent). In April 1963, shortly before the decision in favor of Erhard, he led at 39 percent, while 23 percent preferred Schröder to succeed Adenauer and 6 percent went for Gerstenmaier (Schmidtchen and Noelle-Neumann 1963: 173–174). 103. Of those surveyed, 34 percent disapproved and 33 percent approved of Erhard’s policies in February 1965 (another 33 percent were undecided). The ratio had last been negative thirteen years earlier, in January 1952. The ratings for the Christian Democrats were at their lowest thus far during Erhard’s tenure as chancellor (Noelle and Neumann 1967: fold-out chart fol-

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104. 105.

106. 107.

108.

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109.

110.

111. 112.

113. 114. 115.

lowing 199). Christian Democratic majority leader Rainer Barzel (1978: 45) called the ratings “catastrophic.” Eshkol speech in Knesset, Feb. 15, 1964 (Informationsabteilung der Israel Mission), DGAP Press Archive, Israel 101, Jan. 1, 1964–Dec. 31, 1964 “The new Germany has been trying to persuade the world that it has reformed and that it has stamped out Nazism and the Nazis. But events of the last two years are disconcerting and discouraging; the refusal to extend the statute of limitations on war crimes when it expires next May 8; the refusal to recognize Israel de jure; the refusal to take effective action to bring back the German scientists. . . . And now, as reparations come to an end, West Germany breaks an agreement to arm Israel, in painful surrender to the neo-Nazis of the Nile” (Report American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Feb. 15, 1965, AJHS (AJCs), I-77 (IX. C.), box 25). For protests by German- and British-Jewish organizations see Die Welt, Feb. 13, 1965. Telegram Blaustein-Erhard, Feb. 8, 1965, YIVO (AJC), FAD-1 Germany, box 24. Among the Jewish leaders were Joachim Prinz (American Jewish Congress), Label Katz (B’nai B’rith), Max Nussbaum (Zionist Organisation of America), and Lewis Weinstein (former president of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations). Knappstein-Foreign Office, Feb. 6, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 58: 260–262; Knappstein-Foreign Office, Feb. 15, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. See also the call to send letters to local and national media and the German embassy: Memo American Jewish Congress, Feb. 18, 1965, AJHS (AJCs), I77 (IX. C.), box 25. American buyers had already canceled an order worth DM 120,000 due to the “Bonn-Israel tensions,” and if this were to continue the company would end up in a “catastrophe,” Strickwarenfabrik Bösinger & Co. wrote in a telegram. “Our American business partner allows us or rather our government—and that is practically you, Dear Mr. Chancellor—about one week to settle the issue in question to Israel’s and thus also to America’s satisfaction” (Telegram Bösinger-Erhard, Feb. 25, 1965, BA, B 136, 301 01, vol. 3635). The German consulate in New York compiled a list of nullified orders and fielded calls from worried suppliers, reporting “in part substantial” cancellations (Cable Washington-Foreign Office, Feb. 17, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965). Memo Carstens Interministerial Discussion, Feb. 22, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 88: 365; Knappstein-Foreign Office, Feb. 18, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 85: 353. “So forceful a reaction is all the more disappointing,” government spokesman von Hase said on one occasion, “when it is recalled that respect for public opinion in America was a factor in the Federal Republic’s long and continuous concern for good relations with Israel” (NYT, Feb. 20, 1965). For the Germans’ assessment that their hands were tied: Decree Carstens, Feb. 17, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 84: 348. The initiative to send an emissary to the United States did not mature beyond a preliminary planning stage (Memo Krapf, March 2, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 106: 437–439). Memo Krapf, Feb. 2, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 53: 245. Bundestag, May 6, 1965: 9071–9074. The role of world public opinion also surfaced frequently during the parliamentary debates of March 10 and 25, at the latter of which the final vote in favor of a four-year extension was taken. For an elaboration on this subject see chapter 5, “Striving for Diplomatic Relations with Israel.” Memo Komer-Bundy, Feb. 19, 1965, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, vol. III, box 139. Cable Carstens-Knappstein, Feb. 12, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965; US embassy Bonn-Sec. State, Feb. 16, 1965, LBJL, NSF, CF Germany, vol. VII, box 185. Deliveries still outstanding in February 1965 comprised 90 American-made M-48 tank chassis, but also 2 speedboats, 2 submarines, 36 howitzers, and 3 Dornier-28 planes. All of the non-tank deliveries had been committed to without American influence or prior knowledge. State Secretary Carstens conceded as much in internal instructions for Ambassador Knappstein, when he said only the “latest” agreement would not have come about without American involvement (Cable Carstens-Knappstein, Feb. 12, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965). Generally, the Foreign Office believed that by February 1965, equipment worth DM

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116.

117.

118.

119. 120.

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121.

122.

123.

230 million—or around 80 percent of the grand total of around DM 280 million in military hardware support for Israel—had been delivered (Cable Knappstein-Carstens, Feb. 12, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965; Decree Carstens, Feb. 17, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 84). The US administration had adopted the no-comment policy immediately after the disclosure of the tank deal in late January for fear of adverse repercussions in the Middle East. In background media briefings it had even spun the story in such a way that it seemed as if the Germans had requested US permission for the arrangement (for details see chapter 5, “At a Crossroads”). For the change in that communications policy: Memo Klein-Bundy, Feb. 17, 1965, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, Tanks vol. II, box 145; NYT, Feb. 18, 1965. Knappstein-Carstens, re Conversation with Harriman, Feb. 12, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 74: 313–316. Knappstein received almost identical negative responses from National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and Assistant Secretary of State William Tyler (Knappstein-Carstens, re Conversation with Bundy, Feb. 12, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965; Knappstein-Foreign Office, re Conversation with Rusk, Feb. 18, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 85: 351–355; Knappstein-Foreign Office, re Conversation with Tyler, Feb. 13, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965). Phone Conversation Harriman-Ball, Feb. 22, 1965, LBJL, PP, Papers of George Ball, West Germany vol. II, box 4. McGhee imparted the gist of the State Department’s new position to Foreign Minister Schröder during a meeting also the same day (Meeting Schröder-McGhee, Feb. 22, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 89: 370–371). Memo Rusk-President, Subject: Near East Arms, Feb. 19, 1965, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, Tanks vol. II, box 145. Memo Rusk-President, Subject: Near East Arms, Feb. 19, 1965, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, Tanks vol. II, box 145; Summary Notes 544th NSC Meeting, Feb. 1, 1965, LBJL, NSF, NSC Meetings File, vol. III, tab 26, box 1. Government officials believed outrage among the US public in response to military support for one of Jerusalem’s enemies would only be manageable if offset by equal support for Israel itself. “I kept pressing on State,” White House aide Robert Komer said, “to face up to the fact that if we agreed to sell Jordan, we’d have to sell Israel too—as the only way of protecting our domestic flank.” The State Department concurred: “Israel’s acquiescence in sales to Jordan coupled with confidential briefings of Jewish community leaders and members of the Congress should keep [domestic pressures] within manageable limits. We count upon Israel and the American Jewish community to help avert an adverse Congressional and public reaction” (Memo Komer-Bundy, Feb. 7, 1965, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, vol. III, box 139; Memo RuskPresident, Subject: Near East Arms, Feb. 19, 1965, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, Tanks vol. II, box 145). In contacts with American officials, Bonn kept insisting it had been agreed that the tank deal would be off once it became public. US officials first denied this, later admitted to it. Washington itself had insisted on such a caveat: “Since public knowledge of the supply of US-made tanks to Israel would cause severe political damage to the United States’ interests in the Near East,” a State Department memo explained, “we agreed to enter into the transaction only on the basis of Israeli assurances that it could be kept secret at least two-three years. To limit possible damage from premature disclosure we have proposed inclusion . . . of a sentence to the effect that if the nature of this transaction should become public knowledge . . . the United States might be compelled to exercise the right of cancellation.” For the German insistence on the secrecy caveat and American reactions: Knappstein-Carstens, re Conversation with Harriman, Feb. 12, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 74: 314; Meeting Schröder-McGhee, Feb. 22, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 89: 370. For the State Department memo: Memo HarrimanBundy, Nov. 7, 1965, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, Tanks vol. II, box 145. Emphasis in the original. Memo Komer-President, April 23, 1965, LBJL, WHCF-CF, CO 126 Israel 1964–1965, box 9. The German government had continued to lobby the US administration to help out with tanks. After US consent was obtained in principle, the major sticking point was Israel’s request to receive from the Americans different, more modern tank

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124.

125. 126.

127. 128.

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130. 131.

132.

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models than those Germany had committed to deliver (Jerusalem now asked for the M-48 A II C instead of the retrofitted, German-owned M-48 I). Washington eventually agreed to those requests in April 1965 (For US-Israeli negotiations on tanks and bombers in 1965: LBJL, NSF, CF Israel, vol. IV, box 139; Schoenbaum 1993: 143–146. For the Germans lobbying Washington: Conversation Schröder-McGhee, March 12, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 125: 501–507; Memo Carstens-Erhard, April 6, 1965, AAPD 1965 II, doc. 163: 654–655). These three key options represented a common thread during almost all intragovernmental discussions in early March. They were most concisely framed in: Telephone Message Osterheld, March 2, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. Memo Carstens, March 2, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 101: 422–425. The bulk of both sessions were conducted as so-called minister meetings (Ministersitzungen), from which all nonministerial officials were excluded. This is the reason why no comprehensive official minutes of the sessions exist. The best source for the March 4 and 5 meetings are Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder’s handwritten notes (PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965). Horst Osterheld’s minutes (1992: 164–167) of the opening parts of the meetings before he and fellow officers had to leave the room are also useful. Michael Wolffsohn (1989: 118–124) reconstructs the two cabinet sessions by using Defense Minister Kai-Uwe von Hassel’s diary notes. All three sources corroborate each other and paint a very similar picture of the sessions. In the following account of the cabinet meetings, all quotes are taken from Schröders’ handwritten notes unless indicated otherwise. Memo Carstens, March 2, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 101: 423–424. Meeting minutes March 2 and 4: Osterheld 1992: 161, 164. The Foreign Minister’s reluctance to apply the Hallstein doctrine in full may also have been part of his attempt to introduce a measure of flexibility (Auflockerung) into Bonn’s unification policy. German industry would find its way back into Egypt no matter what, and industry had no qualms doing business with Communists anyway, the chancellor and former economics minister believed (Osterheld 1992: 164–165). Meeting minutes March 4: Osterheld 1992: 164–165. According to Foreign Minister Schröder’s notes of the meetings, at the end of Friday, March 5, the following cabinet members were in favor of breaking relations with Cairo: Erhard, Seebohm, Blank, Lemmer, Lücke, Heck, Niederalt, Schmücker, and Westrick (not present, but according to Die Welt he also favored a break). The following ministers opted against severing ties with Cairo on Friday: Schröder, Krone, Dollinger (who switched sides from Thursday to Friday), Mende, Dahlgrün, Bucher, Scheel, von Hassel, Schwarzhaupt, Höcherl, Schwarz, and Lenz (the latter two were not present, but according to Die Welt they opposed a break). Minister for Postal Affairs Richard Stücklen’s position remains unclear. The tally appears to support Osterheld’s assessment that a vote on Thursday would have supported Erhard’s inclination toward a break in relations with Egypt. On Friday, Foreign Minister Schröder might have carried the day, but the margins were razor-thin. Such narrow margins and possibly also the fact that the hardliners enjoyed support from political heavyweights outside the cabinet such as Adenauer and Strauß, may have been the reason why the Foreign Minister suggested not taking a vote. Pointless since Israel had made it repeatedly and abundantly clear it would not agree to official relations below the ambassadorial level. For Schröder’s comments see Osterheld’s minutes of the March 2 meeting (1992: 162). The Foreign Minister apparently repeated those comments on March 4 (Wolffsohn 1989: 119). According to German government records, the idea was first raised by Max Nussbaum, president of the Zionist Organization of America, in a conversation with Ambassador Knappstein. A couple of days later, Christian Democratic parliamentarian Erik Blumenfeld relayed a message from Premier Eshkol and Foreign Minister Golda Meir to Erhard, saying that it would be desirable if Erhard were to send a representative to Israel for direct talks. Erhard approached Birrenbach the following day (Cable Knappstein-Foreign Office, Feb. 20, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965; Memo Carstens, Feb. 23, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965).

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134. In a meeting with the chancellor, Liberal Democrats Wolfgang Mischnick and Fritz-Rudolf Schultz stated unambiguously: “Our party will not support a termination of relations [with Egypt].” (Handwritten notes Schröder: Erhard meetings with party representatives, March 5, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965). 135. Feldman (1984: 162) agrees that there was considerable domestic pressure on Erhard and that his party was firmly committed to diplomatic relations with Israel. 136. Osterheld 1992: 167–168; Handwritten notes Schröder: Erhard meetings with party representatives, March 5, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. 137. Memo Carstens, March 2, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 101: 424. 138. This account by Osterheld (1992: 168) is corroborated by Barzel (1978: 46, 48). A commencement of diplomatic relations would be advantageous for his government should he make the decision “still this weekend,” Barzel recounts saying in his conversation with Erhard, and points out that Erhard made the decision “without waiting for further cabinet deliberations or the meetings of the Christian Democratic party board (Präsidium) and the Christian Democratic parliamentary group which were scheduled for Monday.” Deutschkron (1991: 284) also reports that Barzel threatened to convene the party’s board if Erhard failed to arrive at a decision. 139. The quote from Christian Democratic parliamentarian Erik Blumenfeld (Memo of Conversation Blumenfeld-Rostow, March 12, 1965, LBJL, NSF, Files of Robert Komer, box 20; Birrenbach 1984: 103, 106). 140. His fellow parliamentarians had chosen Barzel, born in 1924, as their leader in late 1964 in the hope that he would be able to serve as an integrating figure, capable of uniting the warring fractions within the group and smoothing out the many fissures marring the party ahead of the 1965 elections. Prior to this assignment, Barzel had been the youngest minister under Chancellor Adenauer (Baukloh 1965: 3). 141. Knappstein-Foreign Office, Feb. 26, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. 142. Barzel 1978: 49. The chancellor garnered 47.6 percent of the vote, while the opposition Social Democrats and their candidate Willy Brandt reached 39.3 percent, handing the governing Christian Democrats their thus far second-best result ever (Hildebrand 1984: 142–152). 143. At the end of March, Erhard even used the Middle Eastern events as an issue to rally the party rank and file behind him at a pre-election convention (NYT, March 30, 1965; NZZ, March 9, 1965). 144. Comments by influential Senator Jacob Javits to his congressional colleagues on June 2, 1965, reporting on Erhard’s dinner remarks the night before (Excerpt Congressional Record, BA, B 136 BKA, 301 01, vol. 3635). 145. Memo Klein-Bundy, undated (Feb. 1964), LBJL, NSF, CF Germany vol. VII, box 185. 146. Memo Komer-President, April 23, 1965, LBJL, WHCF-CF, CO 126 Israel 1964-1965, box 9. The contrast to the situation in 1952 could not have been sharper. Then, Finance Minister Fritz Schäffer had pointed out that the restitution agreement was hugely unpopular among the German public and would cost the governing Christian Democrats dearly at the ballot box (Wolffsohn 1993: 23). 147. In December 1964, the parliament had asked the Justice Ministry to sift through all available historical records—including those in Eastern Europe—and report back by March 1, 1965 on whether indictments had been initiated in all Nazi murder cases and if—in case this had not happened—the government was prepared to reverse its opposition to extending the statute of limitations (see chapter 4, “A Question of Policy, not Law”). 148. Bundestag, March 10, 1965: 8518–8519. Between five and six thousand new cases came to light between 1965 and 1967 alone (Deutschkron 1991: 243). 149. Benda had initially proposed a change to §67 of the penal code (Strafgesetzbuch) that would have extended the statute of limitations from twenty to thirty years. But he and his colleagues changed their proposal the night before the debate to recommend the abolishment of the statutory period for murder altogether. The Social Democrats had filed two motions, one also

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150.

151. 152. 153.

154.

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158.

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159. 160. 161.

162. 163. 164.

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demanding the abolition of the statutory period, the other suggesting a change to the German constitution to assuage the fears of those who believed a retroactive extension would violate Germany’s Basic Law (Bundestag, March 10, 1965: 8519–8526 and 8526–8530). On March 25, 1965, the overwhelming majority of 361 parliamentarians voted in favor of what effectively amounted to an extension of the statutory period, 96 parliamentarians voted against the measure, and there were four abstentions (Bundestag, March 25, 1965: 8759–88790). Memo Carstens, March 2, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 101: 423. Grewe-Foreign Office, Feb. 18, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. Ambassador Knoke (Paris)-Foreign Office, Feb. 18, 1965; Ambassador Etzdorf (London)Foreign Office, Feb. 19, 1965, both: PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965; Meeting SchröderMcGhee, March 2, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 100: 421. Germany’s policy of isolating East Germany was under siege not only in the Middle East but also in other nonaligned countries. Tanzania at the time was in the process of establishing an East German consulate in Dar es Salaam. State Secretary Carstens described the Allies’ position on Germany’s Middle East conundrum as one of “indifference” and even at times showing barely concealed Schadenfreude (Note Carstens, April 5, 1965, AAPD 1965 II, doc. 161: 651). Conversation Eshkol-Harriman, Feb. 25, 1965, LBJL, NSF, CF Israel vol. IV, box 139. Knappstein-Foreign Office, Feb. 25, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 96: 402–404. Some publications on German-Israeli relations in the 1960s (see, for instance, Seelbach 1970: 136) mistakenly attribute Erhard’s decision in favor of diplomatic relations to an alleged change of mind on the part of the Johnson administration, which allegedly was communicated to Erhard via Barzel. This was not the case. Conversation Erhard-Ambassadors of three Allies, March 5, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 112: 457–461. The French had less strong views on the matter. Ambassador François Seydoux came to the March 5 meeting without any instructions from Paris, but informed Erhard the following day that his government—having been asked for its opinion—would also advise Bonn “not to take the first step” (Conversation Erhard-Seydoux, March 5, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965). Knappstein-Foreign Office, March 5, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. Decree Carstens, March 10, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 122: 495; Die Welt, March 9, 1965. Telephone Conversation Talbot-Ball, March 8, 1965, LBJL, PP, Papers of George Ball, West Germany vol. II, box 4; Conversation Schröder-McGhee, March 11, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 125: 501. The entire NATO Council of Ministers paid tribute to Bonn’s decision (Note Carstens, April 5, 1965, AAPD 1965 II, doc. 161: 651). Conversation Schröder-McGhee, March 2, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 100: 417–418. Memo for the Secretary, May 28, 1965, LBJL, NSF, CF Germany, Erhard visit, box 191. Along with Barzel, Kurt Birrenbach, Franz-Josef Strauß, and other officials visited the United States in early 1965 (Report Birrenbach to chancellor, March 15, 1965, BA, B 136 BKA, 301 01, vol. 3613; Der Spiegel, March 17, 1965). Der Spiegel, March 8, 1965: 60-61. The Foreign Office had used the argument of political expediency in favor of an extension of the statute of limitations. It noted that German arguments against the extension were met abroad with “mostly no sympathy at all.” Without an extension, the Foreign Office said, Bonn would become isolated at a time when it most needed international support for its unification policy (Memo Krapf, Feb. 2, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 53: 244–246; Note Gawlik, Feb. 17, 1965, quoted in AAPD 1965 I: 244, fn. 7). Bundestag, March 25, 1965: 8767. Jaspers also—like Jaeger—cited France’s National Assembly decision to abolish any statute of limitations for mass atrocities. Similarly, the European Council had recommended that its member governments adopt national laws stating that crimes against humanity do not come under the statutory period (Der Spiegel, March 8, 1965: 58). Prominent Liberal Democrat Thomas Dehler, however, disagreed with Jaeger’s assertion

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167.

168. 169. 170. 171.

172. 173.

174. 175.

176.

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177.

178.

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of a common European legal conscience and insisted that Germans should solely decide and act in accordance with the German legal standpoint. “We must not listen to the echo of a fictitious European legal conscience,” he said (Bundestag, March 25, 1965: 8772). On American-Jewish criticisms of the extension as “disappointing and wholly inadequate” see NYT, March 31, 1965. For Israeli disappointment see Excerpts from Knesset Speech Golda Meir, March 29, 1965, DGAP Press Archive, Israel 101, Jan. 1, 1964–Dec. 31, 1964. Aktion Sühnezeichen calls on Government,” undated (Feb. 1965), BA, B 136 BKA, 301 01, vol. 3635. Memo Meyer-Lindenberg, March 9, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 119: 483–486; NYT, March 9, 1965; NYT, March 10, 1965; Wagner 1965a: 366–367. Memo Redies, March 16, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 129: 521–522; NYT, March 15, 1965. The Arab foreign ministers’ statement stressed the “friendship that connects the Arab and the German people” and the “belief that it will continue to exist,” effectively distinguishing between governmental action and alleged feelings among the German people (NYT, March 15, 1965; NYT, April 4, 1965; Decree Carstens, May 10, 1965, AAPD 1965 II, doc. 203: 812– 815; Meeting Nasser-Weiss, April 19, 1965, SEDA, NY-4182, vol. 1336). NYT, March 15, 1965; NYT, March 17, 1965. The Knesset vote was 66 in favor and 29 against, with 10 abstentions. Golda Meir was initially somewhat less sanguine, but also came around to accepting that full ties with West Germany were in Israel’s best interests (Die Welt, March 16, 1965; Die Welt, March 17, 1965). For a good overview of the key issues at stake: Cable Birrenbach-Schröder, March 18/19, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, docs. 132/133: 529–540; Ben-Vered 1965: 486–488. Birrenbach made three trips to Israel from March 7 to 10; March 17 to 22, and April 6 to 14. Simultaneously, parliamentarian Rudolf Werner visited Cairo and other Arab nations (NYT, March 23, 1965; NYT, April 7, 1965; NYT, April 16, 1965; Birrenbach 1984: 101–119; Shinnar 1967: 159–166). On the memorandum of understanding on weapons: Cable BirrenbachSchröder, March 21, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 136: 551–555; Cable Birrenbach-Foreign Office, March 22, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 142: 582–584. Cable Birrenbach-Erhard, April 7/8, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, docs. 167, 172: 663–670, 681–688. The communiqué read: “The Government of the Federal Republic of Germany, by virtue of an authorisation given to it by the President of the Federal Republic, and the Government of Israel, have agreed to establish diplomatic relations between their two countries” (NYT, May 14, 1965; Bulletin 84, May 14, 1965: 665–666). Copies of the original notes, signed by each head of government, are in YIVO (AJC), FAD-1 Israel, box 40. Israel had hoped Germany’s nominee would be publicly identified with the policy of atonement, but instead Erhard chose Rolf Pauls, a top-grade career diplomat who had served in the Wehrmacht, to give relations with Israel the character of “normalcy.” Bonn, on the other hand, had to accept Asher Ben-Natan, the official who administered Israel’s once-secret arms relationship with Germany and who, stigmatized by the deals, was an unwelcome choice to the Germans (NYT, July 8, 1965). Asher Ben-Natan’s and Rolf Paul’s quotes in NYT, Aug. 17, 1965; NYT, Aug. 12, 1965. East Berlin noted in an analysis that “the character of Bonn diplomats’ activities has barely changed following the break in relations. They carry out the same functions as before, in the same buildings, only under the flag of a different country.” France, Italy, the United States, and Switzerland represented Bonn in the ten Arab nations that had cut diplomatic ties with Germany. The situation was similar in Bonn, where “most Arab diplomats continued activities barely different from those prior to the break in relations.” Also, economic trade between West Germany and the Arab nations did not decline, but instead increased noticeably, the East German memo pointed out (The Arabic-West German relationship after the Break of Diplomatic Relations, May 17, 1966, SEDA, NY-4182, vol. 1336).

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Chapter 6

DEMONSTRATING RECONCILIATION State and Society in West German Foreign Policy toward Israel, 1952–1965




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Dr. Erhard told [President of the American Jewish Congress] Dr. Prinz that he alone had taken the decision to seek full diplomatic relations with Israel “without any outside considerations except that of conscience.” The Chancellor added that he took a great deal of personal pride in the decision.1

It was with words such as these that Chancellor Ludwig Erhard boasted of the decision to exchange ambassadors with Israel as a single-handed act of farsighted political aptitude on his part, seeking to hide the many influences that had governed him and the complex decision making process. In mid 1965, a few months before national elections, the chancellor liked his decision to Alexander the Great’s proverbial prowess in gashing the Gordian knot. Erhard’s foreign policy aide noted in his diaries at the time: Erhard’s long hesitation and wavering in the Middle East crisis disappointed and even embittered many. But now Erhard goes around telling everyone: “I cut the knot on March 7!” He loves strong, metaphoric expressions—insiders know however, that above all it was Barzel and the parliamentary group who forced the decision. (Osterheld 1992: 224, June 13, 1965, emphasis in the original)

This study’s detailed examination of the three key levels of political action—governmental, domestic, international—implicated in the process leading up to the Notes for this section begin on page 197.

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commencement of full political relations between Bonn and Jerusalem has provided strong indications that the outcome cannot be explained by focusing on a single leader’s alleged stroke of superior ingeniousness. Rather, Osterheld’s reference to Barzel’s and the parliament’s role in the process points us in the right direction, although here too we still do not fully assimilate the reasons behind Bonn’s decision to inaugurate diplomatic relations in March 1965. This policy outcome is awaiting identification of its true, underlying causes with all the more urgency, since much of the literature on the subject so far has perpetuated the myth that Erhard’s lone hand was the sole force behind Germany’s Middle East policy. Research repeats the chancellor’s metaphor of “gashing the Gordian knot” (Hansen 2002: 755) or holds that Erhard made the decision “alone and against his advisors” (Blasius 1994b: 209–210). Some claim it was Erhard’s “personal decision” to commence diplomatic relations with Israel (Kaltefleiter 1995: 22), the deed having been “less of a thoroughly planned decision” than a “spontaneous reaction of weariness” (Weingardt 1997: 152) or simply an act of “retaliation” against Egypt (Joffe 1992: 199–200; similarly Jelinek 2004: 459). Even Christian Democratic majority leader Rainer Barzel (1978: 48)—presumably for reasons of loyalty and resolve not to dent the chancellor’s reputation posthumously—obfuscated the true character of the decision making process by noting that Erhard made the decision “alone.” This study set out to prove that domestic factor analysis is best suited to explain the dependent variable, defined as the commencement of diplomatic relations between Israel and Germany. At the end of the empirical investigation the hypothesis indeed holds true. Domestic factors—in combination with a variety of supporting developments—represent the key independent variable accounting best for the policy outcome. In this final chapter we will first revisit the hypotheses and theoretical assumptions put forward at the outset of this study, align them with the empirical findings in a second step, and finally draw the necessary conclusions. We will end by utilizing our findings for predictions about the likely future character of German-Israeli relations.

The Competition of Ideas At the beginning of this study I nominated ideas and specifically historiography— interpretations of national history—as key signifiers of Germany’s internal debate over national identity and elites’ definition of national interest as a component in foreign policy making. As a hypothesis it was put forward that German foreign policy toward Israel depended to a large degree on particular notions of national identity and concerns about national unity as ingrained in the collective consciousness of the German people and its policymakers. Moreover, I proposed a need to integrate domestic and international levels of analysis approaches. Domestic settings and foreign policy are inextricably linked in a relationship of mutual conditioning. Specifically, a correlation existed between the domestic

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level, i.e., the political system and ideas salient among society’s members, and Germany’s external policy toward Israel in the early 1960s. Basing the concept of ideas’ powerful role in foreign policy making on a matrix developed by Goldstein and Keohane (1993a), I am interpreting historical concepts as “worldviews” and “principled beliefs,” which affect high level politics via their function as “road maps” and “institutions.” The need for ideas to act as guidelines becomes particularly apparent when the degree of uncertainty—either about the external environment or about one’s own interests—is highest. Such uncertainty about the external environment abounded in the case of German foreign policy toward Israel in the 1950s and the early 1960s.

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Government Decision Makers’ Ideas The Hallstein doctrine denoted a policy of keeping East Germany in a state of quarantine by threatening to cut ties with any country—save for the Soviet Union—that politically recognized East Berlin. At its core, the doctrine codified an ideational construct aimed at stripping East Germany of its state insignia and upholding the view that West Germany represented the German state, whereas East Germany was a mere geographical zone, representing no more than a “truncated piece of a people’s body.”2 The idea of reuniting the German state on West German terms represented the key objective pursued by Bonn’s governmental foreign policy makers and as such was the unequivocal “main goal of our policy” generally.3 Espousing such characteristics, the Hallstein doctrine embodied worldviews that had first surfaced under the label of historicism in nineteenthcentury Prussia. Historians and philosophers at the time assigned the utmost importance to the state as a political entity. Attaining a unified Reich, congruent with what was perceived as the German nation, was interpreted as a divinely inspired teleological process in foreign policy making to which every aspect of private and public life had to be subjugated. Postwar West Germany clearly represented a break from that tradition and its Prussian-German Machtstaat excesses. However, the transcending significance of the state and the dominance of foreign policy over domestic policy prevailed in the young Federal Republic of Germany. In the mold of the Hegelian-Rankean tradition, the attainment of unified statehood was revered as the undisputed main political objective. In operational politics, the philosophical idea of the state’s central role took the shape of West Germany’s claim to the sole right of representing all Germans, West and East. “All other issues” (alle anderen Überlegungen) were seen as secondary to the overarching aim of recreating a united German nation state and therefore “have to be subordinated to this goal.”4 In the nineteenth-century, defining the raison d’être of a people as the attainment of statehood helped to coin historicism’s famous dictum of the primacy of foreign policy over domestic issues. Similarly, following Germany’s partition in 1945, foreign policy as codified in the Hallstein doctrine was seen as signifying no less than West Germany’s “basic law,” with which all of public life had to be aligned. In that sense, the doctrine institutionalized a worldview of historicism and laid out a road map for day-to-day pol-

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itics by embodying principled beliefs mediating between the fundamental doctrine and contemporary political action. Translated into the world of a bipolar Cold War, historicism represented the German version of realism, which was focused on the state as a unitary actor and linked to the premise that states organize their internal politics in the manner best suited to sustain peer pressure in the international system. In the context of German-Israeli relations, institutionalized ideas as embodied in the Hallstein doctrine prescribed a foreign policy of turning down Jerusalem’s requests for full diplomatic ties, as such a step was held to endanger the creation of a unified Germany. Exchanging ambassadors with Israel was seen as inviting Arab nations to break Communist East Germany’s international quarantine and therefore would have violated Bonn’s proverbial basic law.5

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Society’s Ideas In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a new breed of domestic policy entrepreneurs emerged within West Germany, proposing a definition of national interest that differed significantly from the thus far prevalent state-centered philosophy. Trade unions, journalists, students, church leaders, writers, and other societal entrepreneurs began questioning foreign policy priorities as enshrined in the Hallstein doctrine, and a younger generation of academics critically examined the policy axiom of unification. While the relationship with Israel was not unimportant to government policy makers, it was subordinated to the overriding goal of attaining German unity; i.e., the relationship with Israel was seen in light of unification policy, not the other way round. Societal leaders in the early 1960s effectively turned this hierarchy of political values upside-down by ranking relations with Israel higher than considerations of unification or concerns for the nation state. While German policymakers espoused a predisposition toward paradigms of historicism and realism, the newly emerging societal elites were cast in the mold of a new West German historiography that emerged at the end of the 1950s and in the early 1960s. At that time, younger historians ventured into hitherto uncharted academic territory, turning to contemporary history (Zeitgeschichte) and altering the way the state was perceived as a political entity. The state, from then on, was no longer viewed as embodying a collective identity, but interpreted as a result of many, often conflicting, societal forces and political constellations. Debates triggered by historian Fritz Fischer on Germany’s role on the eve of World War I served as the “swan song” (Wolfgang J. Mommsen) of the old tradition of focusing historiography more or less exclusively on national-diplomatic developments on the state level. Hans-Ulrich Wehler and other historians abandoned the thus far prevailing focus on constitutional history and the goal of reaffirming a purposefulness in German national history. Based on Eckart Kehr’s famous dictum of the “primacy of domestic policy,” they put the academic spotlight on subgovernmental and substate levels by introducing concepts of social history to academic research. Relinquishing the link between historiography and the German national state eventually led to concrete political implications. Intellectuals in the early 1960s

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moved to deconstruct the prevailing Hegelian amalgam of spirit and state power by basing the new domestic assertiveness on an emerging consensus that participation of the ordinary citizen in the political process was imperative to a Western democratic system. Domestic actors called for a revamped foreign policy agenda, and by way of redefining West Germany’s identity, societal policy entrepreneurs proceeded to espouse a fresh set of worldviews. Key to those worldviews was an implicit redefinition of national interest as denoting not the completion of the German nation state as codified in the Hallstein doctrine, but rather the aim to reflect the process of coming to terms with the Nazi past in domestic and foreign policy. German society defined making amends with Israel and Holocaust survivors as the new main national interest. Fresh worldviews on German national interest and German identity translated into principled beliefs, i.e., subsets of worldviews that are drivers of concrete political action. If the Bonn Republic indeed wanted to make a fresh start after 1945—as was the goal now overwhelmingly accepted among the general public— such change must not be limited to the societal level, domestic policy entrepreneurs believed. Instead, as university students pointedly put it to the chancellor, “this transformation also has to manifest itself in political decision making.” The government’s current Middle East policies, the students and other elites argued, were at odds with what they viewed as their obligation as “responsible German citizens” (verantwortungsvolle deutsche Staatsbürger), namely the commencement of diplomatic relations with Israel (NZZ, July 10, 1964). Societal leaders were also convinced that attempting to pay down the national guilt by secretly delivering weapons to Jerusalem was neither desirable nor sustainable as an alternative to full political relations. Moreover, Germans believed that for historical reasons the government should take every step possible in its efforts to bring home German scientists collaborating with Egypt’s armament program, even if this came at the expense of angering Cairo and consequently suffering a setback in maintaining Bonn’s right to sole representation of Germany as a whole. And finally, principled beliefs suggested to many—even if not the majority of the West German population—the importance of facilitating the prosecution of Nazi murderers beyond the twenty-year statutory norm.

The Race for Change The first part of the present case study, covering the time period between 1962 and mid 1964, shows a number of trends and initiatives indicating the advent of a significant shift in West Germany’s foreign policy toward Israel. The actual change occurred in late 1964 and particularly early 1965, when the Erhard government offered to exchange ambassadors and abandoned its long-held policy of denying Israel full diplomatic relations due to their anticipated detrimental effect on unification prospects. The hypothesis is that German society brought about that very change by infiltrating the government’s foreign policy making process

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via organizational channels embedded in the West German policy framework. Domestic structure approaches are best positioned to explain foreign policy outcomes, as linkages between society and state are crucial in introducing societal demands into the foreign policy decision making process. The West German policy network allows interest groups to influence policy outcomes by way of informal coordination between conflicting objectives through a continuous bargaining process among state bureaucracies, political parties, and interest groups (Katzenstein 1976: 9–16; 1989a: 15–17, 367–370; Risse-Kappen 1991: 484–487).

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The Governmental Level Bonn policymakers displayed an overriding concern for unification policy and an unambiguous preference for putting the completion of the German nation state ahead of any other policy goal, and this premise was not subject to a fundamental shift in late 1964 or early 1965. Considerations of German unification unequivocally took precedent over requests to accommodate Israel on issues such as diplomatic relations or scientists operating in Egypt. Foreign policymakers curtailed their own room for maneuver by retreating to legally informed strategies, and the executive branch of government rejected any suggestion that the parliament or societal elites should participate in the operative foreign policy making process. Moreover, Bonn’s policymakers responded to the challenge of the United States abandoning the “classical rules of power politics” in fighting the Cold War by clinging to the traditional political road map provided by the Hallstein doctrine. Equally, in the face of Ulbricht’s and Nasser’s direct threat to West Germany’s claim to sole representation of the German people, Bonn officials dug in their heels, again resorting to traditional policy reflexes. The visit to Cairo by East Germany’s premier was part of Moscow’s larger strategy of promoting its so-called “two-states theory” of Germany. The trip— Ulbricht’s first outside the Eastern bloc—was designed as an act of political symbolism, bestowing on East Berlin the insignia of an independent, sovereign state. In that much Ulbricht challenged West Germany’s foreign policy philosophy head-on and struck at the very core of West Germany’s identity. In response to the challenge, Bonn reaffirmed in ever more forceful terms its traditional historio-philosophical worldview by mapping out a foreign policy that operated under the assumption that West Germany’s primary task was to safeguard the passage of the German nation—in historicism’s tradition—to its ultimate goal, a complete union of nation and state.6 With Ulbricht donning all the insignia of a state representing the entire German nation of its own, and with the nonaligned world’s most powerful country—Egypt—accepting and promoting this display of an independent East German state, West Germany’s national mission was thrown into serious doubt. Hence, Chancellor Ludwig Erhard perceived his counterpart’s inroads into the international community of states as a “general attack on unification policy and the German right to sole representation.”7 Ulbricht’s passage to Egypt and Bonn’s response delineated the deep-seated susceptibility of West and East German policymakers to a metaphoric policy of

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invoking state symbols. Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder went as far as to brand Ulbricht’s visit to Cairo as nothing less than severance of Germany’s lifeline. “The Ulbricht visit is seen as the climax in a series of events and in that much puts the axe to the root of German policy,” Schröder told Egypt’s ambassador in Bonn. “Therefore,” he pointed out, “it must not come as a surprise that the German reaction is so forceful and violent.” To West German government officials, confining East Germany to a state of quarantine by ensuring its nonrecognition outside the Communist Bloc took on the quality of a life or death issue. Egyptian President Gamal Abd el-Nasser was thus rendered guilty of ignoring Germany’s “questions of life” (Lebensfragen). Similarly, Israel—to the chancellor’s mind—by stonewalling Bonn’s request to substitute its weapons deliveries to Jerusalem and thus jeopardizing attempts to fend off Nasser’s invitation to Ulbricht, was implicitly demanding that Bonn “forgo the life of our nation.”8 In late 1964 and early 1965, in other words, Bonn’s key foreign policy decision makers continued to cling to traditional positions of unification policy. In the face of perceived threats stemming from a changing international environment (détente) and East Germany’s onslaught on its Middle East policy, Bonn’s policymakers developed a change-averse “fortress” mentality, holding on to traditional worldviews amid a world of uncertainty. To be sure, foreign policy did change eventually when Bonn moved to offer Jerusalem full ties in March 1965. Yet, we do not observe a significant shift in beliefs and preferences held on the governmental level. This fact suggests that other explanatory variables must account for the change in policy toward Israel. First questions concerning the viability of the Hallstein doctrine did surface in early 1965. A thorough review, however—let alone a revision of traditional parameters guiding official German foreign policy— did not take place at that point in time. In sum, governmental decision making mechanics and their ideational underpinnings alone represent a highly improbable independent variable responsible for the foreign policy outcome we seek to explain. Independent variables on the governmental level—if examined in isolation without taking interference from other factors, such as the domestic level, into consideration—remained remarkably constant and are therefore ill-suited to account for change. The Domestic Level German society grew ever more assertive in the early 1960s, calling for an alteration in foreign policy toward Israel and demanding the commencement of diplomatic relations with Jerusalem. Simultaneously, policy entrepreneurs rejected the top-down style of foreign policy making in which a small group of politicians steered external relations from the cabinet room, irrespective of the domestic mood and societal elites’ preferences for policy choices. Societal actors such as university students, church circles, and parliamentarians launched various initiatives, manifesting their interest in helping to shape Bonn’s relations with Israel and signaling that a bottom-up policy framework was in the making.

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EMERGENCE OF A BOTTOM-UP POLITICAL SYSTEM Political systems, owing to their informal nature, evolve over time and are not solely dependent on administrative acts such as the adoption of a country’s constitution. In Germany’s case, the first ten years during Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s tenure were still characterized by a “top-down” model in which virtually all policy setting powers were amassed at the top end of the political pyramid and the executive was in undisputed control of external relations. In the early 1960s, therefore, societal policy entrepreneurs saw themselves faced not only with the need to challenge specific government policies toward Israel, but also with the task to revamp the prevailing West German policy framework. Only the advent of vocal nongovernmental actors led to closer interaction between society and the state. Society demanded direct participation in selected issues pertaining to Germany’s external relations. An end to the government’s complete domination of foreign policy making and a strengthening of the parliament’s role in that process allowed the public to inject its demands into the political process by using parties as transmission belts. The system increasingly enabled interest groups (bottom) to influence policy outcomes on the state level (up).9 The eventual breakthrough in altering bilateral relations with Israel was therefore one of the first instances in which the burgeoning West German bottom-up system enabled societal demands to affect governmental decision making. In mid 1964, pro-Israel demonstrators realized they would have to use the parliament as a conduit and called for the issue of diplomatic relations to be brought to the parliament’s floor. Parliamentarian Ferdinand Friedensburg and a number of his colleagues picked up the thread and proceeded to press on State Secretary Karl Carstens to “comply with the mounting urging by many German citizens” to initiate full ties with Israel (photo in Wolffsohn 1986: 23 and on this book’s cover; Bundestag, Nov. 4, 1964: 7095). As a Christian Democrat, Friedensburg was politically aligned with the government, but in executing his mandate as a people’s representative by taking up societal concerns despite their implicit criticism of the government indicates that a political bottom-up transmission mechanism kicked in at that time. Media revelations of the secret arms deals between Bonn and Jerusalem marked another important stepping stone in both the development toward a participatory political system and the change in German foreign policy toward Israel. Two waves of media reports—hitting the newsstands in October 1964 and again in January 1965—pulled away the veil of secrecy that had been cast upon a key component in the bilateral relationship. The secret weapons deliveries were intended to compensate for the lack of diplomatic relations, which Bonn was loath to grant for fear of Arab retribution. Once the deal was exposed, however, the ensuing public discourse subjugated the panoply of facets of the German-Israeli relationship to the intense public scrutiny typical of democratic processes. Publicity enabled societal policy entrepreneurs to puncture the political shield that governmental representatives had hoisted in a bid to insulate their decision mak-

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ing from influences unrelated to the pursuit of national interest as defined by German unification. What is more, the secretiveness in which the arms aid was shrouded fueled general outrage over government contempt for the democraticparliamentary process and amplified domestic engagement in German foreign policy making.10 The media enabled societal actors to promote their beliefs by activating parties and the parliament as conduits for societal demands.11 Commentators and columnists—nuggets of society capable of capturing the public high ground— helped to mobilize larger parts of German society and thus to bring down the primacy of foreign policy. Public leaders increasingly recognized the need to speak out in the government’s stead, and the press exhorted the Social Democrats not to allow the division between government and opposition to become blurred. The actions of the democratically elected West German executive, one commentator charged in a scathing attack, were no different from those of the German monarch on the eve of World War I: “Once the government gets into trouble, the respective chancellor invites the opposition leaders and proclaims just like [Emperor] Wilhelm II on August 1, 1914: I know of no parties anymore, I only know of Germans” (Die Welt, Feb. 17, 1965). In early 1965, society and the parliament were unwilling to rally around an elusive national idea and rejected Franz-Josef Strauß’s admonition “to put aside even justified concerns for the benefit of national unity” and exert “national discipline in dangerous times” (Die Welt, Feb. 25, 1965). Societal actors’ view of the “benefit of national unity” was diametrically opposed to decision makers’ definition. Democracy best served the national idea, societal leaders believed, if it was enlivened with an honest opposition that engaged the government in a discourse on the best policy alternatives.

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DOMESTIC PRESSURE TOWARD DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS During the six months from October 1964 to March 1965, domestic pressure urging diplomatic relations with Israel and the withdrawal of German scientists from Cairo grew exponentially as trade unions staged signature drives, university professors and the churches appealed to the chancellor in the strongest terms to put moral obligations ahead of outmoded parameters of unification policy, student organizations issued a string of pro-Israel resolutions, demonstrators took to the streets, and parliamentarians confronted executive decision makers with society’s mounting demands to commence diplomatic relations with Jerusalem. Public pressure reached a new peak at that point in time as individual activities carried out by scattered interest groups evolved into a broad-based movement led by elites who were increasingly able to capture the imagination of wide strata of German society. Societal leaders fought their battle for the viability of new ideas in the burgeoning West German policy framework by striving to align foreign policy with the domestic learning and maturation process. The leadership of a stubborn

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executive, steadfastly resisting calls to adopt new, morally informed concepts as the basis for a policy of national interest, gave rise to worries over the sustainability of the newly championed domestic values. It seemed doubtful that fresh worldviews would stand a chance of survival if they were not reflected in the government’s belief system, guiding actual policy choices. It was therefore with increased vigor that domestic policy entrepreneurs challenged old ideas and worldviews as held among policymakers. Students and professors now called the Hallstein doctrine outright “absurd” and contended that the moral reconstruction of Germany after the Holocaust superseded the task of reconstructing the German state following its division in 1945. A waning concern for unification, accompanied by a mounting desire to break with “Hitlerism” and to engage with Israel, lent momentum to the drive to make societal change palpable in foreign policy. Eventually, revamped concepts of historiography and society’s role in a Western civil society prevailed in Germany—a change that was paradigmatically reflected in the transformation of Bonn’s foreign policy toward Israel. Trade unions in particular combined government concerns for national sovereignty with society’s interest in changing the bilateral relationship with Jerusalem. Union officials pointed out that Arab threats to avenge Bonn-Jerusalem relations with official Cairo–East Berlin ties were nothing short of attempts to curtail West Germany’s political room for maneuver by constraining “our sovereignty and . . . democratic principles.” It could not possibly be in West Germany’s national interest, union leadership stressed, to allow its own “national, inalienable and justified demands to become tokens of political barter” (Welt der Arbeit, Oct. 30, 1964; Rosenberg 1964: 523). This shrewd argumentation allowed those Germans to whom unification was dear to join the call for diplomatic relations with Israel, and thus helped to broaden support among society for such demands. What set in at that moment in West Germany’s history was the deconstruction of the binary opposition between defending the national interests of the German state on the one hand and accommodating Israel by softening the ideational construct of the Hallstein doctrine on the other. In fact, the more a West German national identity emerged in the early 1960s—i.e., an identity relating to the Federal Republic of Germany, rather than to the elusive concept of a unified Germany—the more it became a “patriotic” act to assert this new identity. Having drawn the appropriate lessons from the past constituted a critical part of that identity; having built a new state suffused with the lessons of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich was another. The two conjoined in a growing realization that commencing diplomatic relations with Israel was one important instance of asserting just that new West German national self-esteem. In November 1964, Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder attributed deteriorating German-Arab relations to “strong [domestic] pressure” to establish official ties with Israel, and to the critical view taken by the “German public and large parts of the parliament” of German scientists’ collaboration with Egypt’s armament in-

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dustry. The minister’s comments show how societal sentiments and activities had now emerged as one factor to be considered in foreign policy making. In January 1965, the Foreign Office acknowledged that the “government’s reserve on the issue of diplomatic relations” had given rise to “misunderstandings” within German society and in Israel. In February, the Foreign Office went so far as to use domestic pressure as a bargaining chip at the international table in its efforts to restrain Nasser’s anti-Bonn policy. It warned Cairo of “German public opinion” tilting in “Israel’s favor” if Egypt indeed hosted East German Premier Walter Ulbricht as a state guest. And in March, the cabinet realized that the government’s Middle East policy had become “dubious domestically” and that the upcoming “elections need[ed] to be taken into consideration.”12 In a misreading of the public mood, Chancellor Erhard had failed to recognize the vote-winning potential of a pro-Israel policy earlier in the year and instead committed to nonrecognition of Israel prior to national elections in the fall. However, when the government’s approval ratings slipped dramatically in February and March and the incumbent looked to be anything but a safe bet at the ballot box, Erhard’s advisors became aware that relations with Israel had potentially significant domestic ramifications. Opinion polls showed that the bungled Middle East policy was one important reason for the government’s slump and that a majority of Germans supported official relations with Jerusalem. Taking their cues from such public sentiment, Christian Democratic parliamentarians and party officials now urged Erhard to change course on Israel and align Bonn’s Middle East policy with domestic demands to regain voter support. Christian Democratic majority leader Rainer Barzel, along with other party officials and parliamentarians, understood that foreign policy could not operate in a vacuum detached from socio-political processes and began to espouse the kind of political pragmatism indicative of a Western-style democracy by insisting that nongovernmental pressure—be it welcome or not—constituted a political reality that had to be included in the political decision making process. “We have to recognize that even a wrong opinion … is a political reality. If we are smart, we factor even that into our political calculation,” Barzel believed (Bundestag, March 10, 1965: 8531–8532). During the final weeks of the political drama leading up to the commencement of German-Israeli relations, Barzel, other party officials such as Will Rasner and Josef-Hermann Dufhues, and various parliamentarians served as political conduits, channeling domestic demands into the operative governmental decision making process. Domestic pressure, mediated through the parliament and the Christian Democratic party, tipped the balance in favor of diplomatic relations. A correlation between domestic demands and the eventual foreign policy outcome was also conspicuously reflected in semantics. Prior to Bonn’s announcement of its intention to commence full ties with Jerusalem, fourteen eminent German university professors, acting as elite societal policy entrepreneurs, exhorted Erhard to commence diplomatic relations with Israel. They wrote:

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The Federal government would with the termination of this unbearable situation in no way take sides against the Arab states; through the normalization of its relations with Israel it would rather contribute to a normalization of the situation in the Middle East.13

The professors closed their letter by expressing the hope that their concerns would be taken up in governmental deliberations. Indeed, their thoughts appeared to have made their way into high level considerations in such a successful manner that they were reflected almost word for word in the government’s official announcement:

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The Federal government is striving for the commencement of diplomatic relations with Israel. This step is designed to contribute to a normalization of the situation. It is not directed against any Arab state. (Bulletin 41, March 9, 1965: 325)14

Erhard repeatedly justified his decision in favor of relations with Israel as a response to “public opinion in our country” and “domestic repercussions.” What is more, he accepted society’s rationale for the decision: “He could not see why particularly Germany should not be allowed to recognize Israel while many other states which were friends with the Arab world also maintained relations with Israel,” the chancellor told the Moroccan ambassador two days after the decision.15 Such reasoning is puzzling since, according to the often touted government mantra, it was obvious why “particularly Germany” could not maintain relations with both the Arabs and Israel: Germany’s divided status had prescribed diplomacy that carefully avoided any step that might have jeopardized the overriding national interest in unification. Relations with Israel were seen as endangering this goal by way of inviting Arab recognition of East Berlin. Even though this threat had only grown bigger by March 1965, Erhard changed his foreign policy and endorsed the rationale for relations with Israel as championed by domestic actors: “As for the recognition of Israel, Germany has grappled with this problem for ten years now,” the chancellor said. “If there is a country which, owing to its tragic history, bears a certain moral obligation toward Israel, it is Germany.”16 To be sure, Erhard had acknowledged Germany’s moral responsibility toward Israel in public pronouncements before, but in operative politics and confidential government contacts, arguments of power politics informed by principled beliefs concomitant with a worldview of realism and historicism had routinely carried the day. In March 1965, that was no longer the case. The goal of unification remained a very prominent one and the Hallstein doctrine was not abandoned overnight, but the chancellor had at last caught on to the ideational construct devised by domestic actors, according to which the government would best promote Germany’s inalienable right to self-determination by shaping its relations with third states at its own sovereign will and agreeing to full relations with Israel.17 Foreign Minister Schröder captured the sea change when he complained that “the entire foreign policy has been changed.” To Schröder, the Middle East conundrum had consisted of three main players: West Germany, East Germany, and Egypt. Israel, in his book, was not part of the equation. He exclaimed in exasper-

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ation: “And suddenly Israel was put into the foreground!” and remarked that “unification policy, which it all really was about, has been abandoned.”18 In sum, foreign policy had changed in two critical respects: first that domestic determinants had infiltrated the decision making process, and secondly that unification policy had ceased to furnish the single, exclusive canvas against which the eventual decision was taken. The International Level The governments of Germany’s three Western Allies did not conclusively determine Bonn’s policy toward Israel and Egypt despite their strong geopolitical interest in the Middle East. However, Washington’s policy of rapprochement with the East discredited Bonn’s continued belief in power politics toward the Eastern adversaries and thus prepared the soil in which new political ideas could take hold and grow within Germany. Foreign nongovernmental groups aligned themselves with German policy entrepreneurs to create transnational communities that helped to change Bonn’s policy on issues such as German scientists’ support for Egypt’s rocket program and the extension of the statute of limitations for Nazi crimes.

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ALLIED GOVERNMENTAL INFLUENCE Germany repeatedly asked the Western Allies for support in extricating itself from its political entanglement in the Middle East—an area where, according to Walt Rostow, head of policy planning in the State Department, you could “easily meet yourself coming through a swinging door.” However, decisive help was not forthcoming from Paris, London, and Washington because the strong unification feature of Germany’s Middle East policy was frowned upon by its partners. State Secretary Karl Carstens knew of no description of the Allies’ position other than that of “indifference” and at times even “Schadenfreude.” When Bonn appealed to the Western Allies to intervene with Egypt and convince Nasser to retract the invitation to Ulbricht, most of them complied, but by issuing only lukewarm protest notes and making it otherwise obvious that they were disinclined to become engaged in a major fashion. And when the secret arms deal between Germany and Israel blew up in public, the US administration hesitated long before bailing out Bonn, initially telling the Germans to continue delivering as many American-made tanks to Israel as possible. Germany was isolated in the Middle East, with none of its partners being eager to get burnt politically by prescribing a certain policy path to Bonn. To be sure, there were vital issues at stake in the region for Washington, yet the US administration did not outright take sides on issues pertaining to Germany’s past or bilateral relations between Bonn and Jerusalem. In December 1964, the State Department stated unequivocally that the US position on German-Israeli ambassadorial relations remained unchanged: “The American administration regards the decision whether the Federal Republic and Israel want to exchange diplomatic missions as an issue exclusively concerning the two states involved.”19 Even the

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Israelis themselves did not ask Washington to lobby Bonn on their behalf. Regarding diplomatic relations, the Germans had to come to them, Premier Levi Eshkol told the Americans. As for Germany’s relationship with Cairo, the situation was entirely different. Washington and London were adamant that Bonn should desist from applying the Hallstein doctrine toward Nasser’s Egypt and instead keep its relations with the Arab hegemon intact for the common good of maintaining a Western foothold in the Middle East. However, when Bonn eventually offered Jerusalem the commencement of diplomatic relations, the decision was met with approval in the Western capitals even though ten Arab states, among them Egypt, responded by severing diplomatic ties with Germany. In sum, there are four key observations in the context of international governmental policies. First, Germany’s Western Allies were unwilling to embark on an all out campaign in support of Bonn’s Middle East policy, which was seen as an extension of an anachronistic and obtrusive form of unification policy. The allies preferred to take a ringside seat rather than get involved center stage. Second, the issue of diplomatic relations between Bonn and Jerusalem was not of major importance to the Western partners. While supporting such ties in principle for moral reasons, they left the matter for Germany and Israel to decide. Third, on Bonn-Cairo relations they felt strongly that Bonn should keep them. Fourth, once West Germany decided to establish full relations with Israel, the three Western Allies welcomed the move even though it came with the unwanted corollary of a severance of ties between Bonn and Cairo. Three conclusions can be drawn from these four observations. For one, international influence or even pressure on Bonn in its political relations with Jerusalem was negligible, if not nonexistent. Secondly, commencing diplomatic relations with Israel amounted to defying allied pressure to maintain relations with Cairo. Bonn did not sever ties with Egypt, but it accepted a break as a likely consequence of its decision to commence ambassadorial relations with Israel. McGhee’s admonitions that Germany should refrain from anything that might force Egypt to take the initiative into its own hands, triggering a break, went unheeded. And thirdly, US Middle East policy was itself subject to frequent changes, and hence Washington did not communicate a clear policy line to Germany. Bonn was caught up in the midst of a US policy reversal in the Middle East, and policy reversals—as a matter of course—do come with uncertainties. As a Near Eastern expert pointed out in early 1965, US policy in the region was “erratic” and fluctuating “like the stock market with every political crisis.”20 It follows that the international governmental level is unlikely to have played a major role in bringing about the policy outcome in the case at hand. EUROPEAN DÉTENTE The US administration did not prescribe specific policy choices to the Bonn government concerning relations with Israel. However, the policy of détente as pursued by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations did have an indirect, albeit

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powerful, impact on German foreign policy. The paradigm shift away from the classic application of power politics vis-à-vis the Eastern adversary and toward a strategy of evolutionary transformation provided fertile soil in which German societal entrepreneurs’ ideas could thrive. Détente discredited the Hallstein doctrine internationally and thus empowered domestic actors to attack the government’s preoccupation with German unification. Germany’s Western Allies were disinclined to go out on a limb for Bonn’s Middle East policy, which was seen as an inauspicious form of outdated unification policy. In private, US officials went so far as to call Bonn’s Middle East policy “schizophrenic” and the Hallstein doctrine a “phony.”21 At the same time, Egyptian President Nasser, one of the nonaligned world’s most powerful leaders, moved ever closer toward endorsing the Eastern “two-states theory” of Germany. These simultaneous developments—both of which undermined traditional mainstays of postwar German foreign policy— conjoined to create a heightened sense of uncertainty among Bonn’s decision makers. The need for ideas to act as points of orientation becomes particularly urgent when the degree of uncertainty is highest. Therefore, with diminishing US support and German unification policy suffering shipwreck in the Middle East, Bonn’s reflex was to resort ever more forcefully to traditional ideas on German unification. The need for ideas to serve as a road map was particularly great at the height of the Middle East crisis. A commentator at the time depicted the predicament as “in a way the first encounter of the Federal Republic with international politics after it had sailed pretty comfortably in the wake of the Western Allies for the first ten years since attaining sovereignty” (Wagner 1965a: 369). However, as the Hallstein doctrine was incapable of thwarting the Ulbricht visit to Egypt and the de facto recognition of East Berlin, traditional worldviews and principled beliefs proved blunt and ill-suited to cope with present-day challenges. East Germany’s success in breaking out of the political quarantine Bonn had set up to isolate its Eastern adversary hastened the decay of the Hallstein doctrine. The doctrine from now on limited, rather than expanded, Bonn’s international room for maneuver and allowed societal policy entrepreneurs at home to fill the vacuum by suggesting a novel set of ideas as guidelines for foreign policy toward Israel. TRANSNATIONAL DOMESTIC COMMUNITIES International interest groups played a part in ushering in a change in West German foreign policy by exerting pressure on the Bonn government and supporting German society in its efforts to fill the ideational vacuum European détente had created in Germany. German and foreign domestic actors conjoined to build transnational domestic communities working to change Germany’s Middle East policy. Interest groups, most prominently in the United States, launched public campaigns to convince the German executive and legislative branches of government to prolong the statutory period for Nazi crimes beyond its expiration date in May 1965 and to remove German rocket scientists from Egypt. Bonn government officials acknowledged that owing in part to such pressure they were left

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with little choice but to comply by luring back the scientists and opting for an extension of the statutory period. The weight of international nongovernmental pressure was particularly conspicuous during the parliamentary debates about the extension of the statutory period, in which a majority of parliamentarians accepted the value of external pressure. Chancellor Erhard appeared to be thankful for the transnational work done by US interest groups when he stressed, in a meeting with the American Jewish Committee, “the AJC’s specific role in channeling public concern in the extension of the Statute of Limitations for murder. Mr. Erhard emphasized that his own position on this issue had been quite clear for he could not imagine living in a Germany surrounded by war criminals and murderers.”22 Moreover, the international outcry over Bonn caving in to Nasser’s blackmail by unilaterally withdrawing contractually committed military aid to Jerusalem in a bid to salvage its unification policy, lent considerable momentum to demands to fully recognize Israel. In sum, the international community of nongovernmental actors—often represented by American-Jewish but also other societal organizations—was successful in strengthening German society in line with the belief that “a knowledgeable and committed public opinion is a vital force in nurturing the roots of democracy.”23 By appealing to the conscience of German society and policymakers, by educating elites, and by working on the government through private channels and public demonstrations, they were able to create a transnational public sphere that made it difficult for German policymakers to neglect their political demands.

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Conclusion and Outlook A maturing German society that demanded the commencement of diplomatic relations between Germany and Israel and built on a changing global political climate was the main reason for Bonn’s decision to abandon its traditional Middle East policy and offer an exchange of ambassadors with Jerusalem on March 7, 1965. For about a decade Bonn’s policymakers had balked at the idea of taking this step for fear of a retaliatory Arab upgrading of Bonn’s nemesis, East Germany, to an internationally recognized state. That threat was by no means gone in the mid 1960s; if anything, it had grown even more pronounced. Yet, societal policy entrepreneurs and an increasing share of the West German population called for a more accommodative policy toward Israel, striving to align the domestic process of coming to terms with the past with governmental foreign policy. Eventually, political leadership moved to change course and went down a policy path in line with society’s demands. Chancellor Ludwig Erhard accepted the revamped political priorities advocated by societal leaders, justifying his decision by moral considerations and neglecting the goal of German unification. Ideas have their broadest impact on human action, and thus on foreign policy making, when they take the form of worldviews. At the same time, worldviews are the type of ideas that are most durable and consequently do not lend themselves

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readily to bouts of rapid change. However, worldviews—owing to their potency— may become agents of change once “an existing set of ideas is discredited by events or when a new idea is simply so compelling that it captures the attention of a wide array of actors” (Goldstein and Keohane 1993a: 20). Changes in ideas frequently yield a change in policy once the pre-existing policy consensus concerning a particular issue area has been destabilized. The Hallstein doctrine was initially such a powerful, institutionalized worldview. But as US support for German unification diminished and Bonn’s traditional foreign policy crumbled in the Middle East, societal entrepreneurs proposed to replace the doctrine by commencing diplomatic relations with Israel and pursuing a morally motivated foreign policy that would fill the ideational void created by the Cold War’s demise. Whereas the bipolar world of the Cold War had provided fertile soil for politics guided by paradigms of historicism and realism, the dawning era of rapprochement helped to prepare the ground for paradigms of political neoliberalism, assigning a key policymaking role to the domestic level. Political scientist Dieter Senghaas (1965: 53) branded the government’s stereotypical rejection of EastWest cooperation as an attempt to cling to an outmoded “leitmotif ” still based on a “policy of strength.” Novelists Hans Werner Richter (1965: 11) and Dieter Wellershof (1965: 18) attacked the Hallstein doctrine as antiquated and called for the end to a reactive foreign policy that they believed was held hostage to yesterday’s positions on German unification. Theologian Helmut Gollwitzer stressed to the chancellor that the new international situation presented the government with the opportunity “to adopt a more flexible and proactive unification policy and to reinstate honor to the German name by abandoning the Hallstein doctrine.”24 Domestic policy entrepreneurs proposed a switch from a foreign policy informed by a concern for national interest as enshrined in the Hallstein doctrine to a morally informed foreign policy of national responsibility. The Hallstein doctrine—and by extension the government’s Israel policy, which derived from it—thus was brought down both from within (by societal changes) and from outside (via the changing geopolitical climate). We may therefore dismiss Chancellor Erhard’s claim that “he alone had taken the decision to seek full diplomatic relations with Israel without any outside considerations” and contrast it with the pungent observation contained in a US National Intelligence Estimate of April 1965: Erhard’s handling of all the problems arising out of the Ulbricht visit to Cairo and Bonn’s halting of military aid to Israel was widely criticized by the West German public as extremely inept diplomacy, and he eventually responded to pressure for a harder line against the Arabs.25

Societal actors—the West German public—had handed executive foreign policy makers a redrawn road map to guide foreign policy decision making generally and in the Israel case specifically. Erhard—more than he liked to admit in hindsight— was a leader particularly susceptible to such societal guidance.

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At the outset of this study, I stated that foreign policy during Chancellor Ludwig Erhard’s term would merit a detailed examination because he presided over and helped to usher in West Germany’s coming of age. We can now conclude that indeed the Israel case of the early 1960s and its climax, the German Middle East crisis of 1964/1965, served as a rite of passage for the maturing Federal Republic of Germany. The resulting foreign policy structures have prevailed ever since and, I argue, provide us with guidance for predictions of future policy. Similarly, the Ulbricht visit to Cairo contributed heavily to forming Communist East Germany’s identity as a separate state. East Berlin gained international acceptance as a result of the trip, and Ulbricht’s choice of ferrying to Egypt by ship was a deliberate act symbolizing East Germany’s sociopolitical passage to statehood in the most ostentatious terms. To West German policymakers’ chagrin, it was impossible to ignore that a “local identity and pride may be developing in the GDR.”26 In 1965, West Germany’s postwar era had indeed come to an end, as Erhard himself aptly stipulated (Holz 1965: 908–917). The Bonn democracy asserted itself in the mid 1960s, and West Germany emerged as a country constructing its identity in a discursive fashion and abandoning its ritualistic disposition (Wolfrum 1999: 239–249). This development’s most conspicuous consequence was an immediate review of the Hallstein doctrine in the wake of the decision to exchange ambassadors with Jerusalem. Not least in response to the learning process that the country underwent in the course of the Israel episode did West Germany come into its own by way of adopting an identity as a Western nation state and gaining entrée as a reliable member of the community of democracies.27 The episode rang the death knell to an anti-Western understanding of foreign policy informed by historicism and epitomized by contempt for society’s role in external affairs. In fact, it was in the mid 1960s that domestic interest groups and society assumed their constituent role in the German foreign policy fabric. Since then, public interest and scrutiny of foreign affairs as a key feature of the West German political system has intensified over time, having started with very little relevance during the Adenauer years but increasing ever since Erhard under Chancellors Brandt, Schmidt, Kohl, Schröder, and Merkel.28 In order to illustrate this point and delineate the relevance of the 1960s case study for subsequent instances of German foreign policy, we will have a brief, final look at the unfolding relations between Bonn/Berlin and Jerusalem in a few selected post-1965 instances. The inauguration of official ties between Germany and Israel gave burgeoning nongovernmental contacts a boost and spurred the emergence of transnational communities for both countries.29 German public support for Israel increased steadily in the following years and reached a peak in 1967 when Israel, perceived as the biblical David in the Middle East, took on the proverbial Goliath—the arrayed front of Arab states—in the Six-Day War. Support among German societal elites, media, and the general public for Jerusalem in its pre-emptive strike against a belligerent Arab phalanx was overwhelming and helped to nudge the Bonn government, which initially maintained “strict neutrality” in the conflict, to side more clearly with Jerusalem (Büttner and Hünseler 1981: 125–126; Hubel 1992:

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43; Hub 1998: 114–125). In an interview following the end of hostilities, Asher Ben-Natan, Israel’s ambassador to Germany, underlined the impact of the domestic level on Bonn’s governmental foreign policy: “A positive development between Germany and Israel has been coming for years now. There is no question that demonstrations of support and the help which the German people have extended to Israel will continue this development; I’d like to say that the improvement in relations between our two peoples is being accelerated by the stance of the German population” (quoted in Neustadt 1983: 78). Following the Six-Day War, public sympathy for Israel dropped continuously and German society—again spearheaded by elite segments such as university students and intellectuals—took an increasingly jaundiced view of Israel’s strength and treatment of its Arab neighbors in 1968 and thereafter. “Significant changes in the Middle East led to a differentiation among public opinion which again helped to prepare and support a change in German policy,” researchers Büttner and Hünseler conclude (1981: 128). The coalition government between Social Democrats and Liberals and in particular its Foreign Minister Walter Scheel moved toward a more critical stance vis-à-vis Jerusalem, emphasizing that in their view no special relations existed between Germany and Israel. During the late 1960s and 1970s a maturing and stable West Germany conducted an ever more self-confident foreign policy, beginning with Chancellor Willy Brandt’s reign and accelerating under his successor Helmut Schmidt (Hacke 1993: 319; Feldman 1984: 166–169). During the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Bonn chose to pick a fight with Washington when the US administration secretly used the German port of Bremerhaven to supply Israel with weapons. Germany’s harsh protest, lodged only after the shipments became public and Israel had gained the upper hand in the conflict, amounted to little more than a symbolic step as it was deliberately designed to spark a political tussle without wreaking havoc on the US-Israeli defense effort. Yet—in a development reminiscent of the publication of secret German arms deliveries to Jerusalem in 1964/ 1965 and the ensuing public debate—once the secret US shipments via German ports were exposed in the press, Bonn’s objections were squarely supported by the German public, despite society’s generally supportive stance toward Israel during the war (Rolef 1985: 14–16, 28; Deutschkron 1991: 376–378). Later, during the tenures of Chancellors Helmut Schmidt and Helmut Kohl, a watchful and assertive society kept the government from selling tanks to Saudi Arabia. In 1980, Riyadh approached Bonn with a request to purchase 300 Leopard tanks and other weapons. Schmidt was inclined to respond favorably, as the economic gains for Germany and strategic advantages for the West seemed formidable (Karsh 1992: 141–142; Risse-Kappen 1992: 188–189; Feldman 1984: 136–138). Yet, once the envisaged deal was publicized, its unprecedented scope generated a heated public debate within the German political system. A powerful domestic coalition formed against the Saudi deal and eventually succeeded in forcing the chancellor to back off from the plan. Schmidt’s Christian Democratic successor Helmut Kohl fared no better, as he too—after much domestic debate—had

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to frustrate the Saudi request for tanks, albeit selling Riyadh other, “defensive” weapons instead.30 Public sentiment was no less instrumental in bringing about a change in official German foreign policy during the Gulf War of 1990/1991. After Iraq had invaded Kuwait, the allied military buildup was watched apprehensively by large parts of the German public. An antiwar mood quickly developed and was given voice by societal elites such as parliamentarians, unions, church leaders, and considerable parts of the public at large. Sizeable peace rallies not only represented beliefs held by fringe groups, but more likely expressed—even if only tacitly— widespread skepticism of a US-led counterattack on Iraq (Risse-Kappen 1992: 189–190; Udo Steinbach 1992: 220–223). However, supporters of the Western military campaign were almost equally numerous and vocal about expressing their beliefs. Public opinion, in other words, was split, and the resulting ambiguous message sent by the domestic level paralyzed official Bonn, translating into an inert governmental foreign policy stance: “There was an interaction between a domestic political issue in which the government was not leading boldly and the international repercussions which saw the consequent loss of credibility of Bonn with the allies.”31 Foreign policy changed fundamentally, however, as soon as the German domestic mood switched, finding a more homogenous expression once Iraqi Scud missiles began to hit Israel. The prospect of a second Holocaust in which Israelis would have to protect themselves against Iraqi poison gas produced with German support hit home in Germany. A morally induced change in public sentiment had Bonn rushing to Jerusalem’s side, doling out generous humanitarian and military aid, including deliveries of antimissile Patriot rockets (Witzthum 1992: 82; Joffe 1992: 205). Some ten years later, Social Democrat Gerhard Schröder staged a come-from-behind victory in national elections by aligning his foreign policy with the strong antiwar sentiment among German society. In 2002, Chancellor Schröder committed Germany to firm opposition to US plans to strike Iraq as part of Washington’s “War on Terror” following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. This time the government’s steadfast antiwar stance was made easier, however, since Israel was not center stage in this conflict and German opposition to the war was hence not equated with abandonment of Israel. These rough sketches may suffice to support our expectation that the political structures and foreign policy making mechanisms dissected as part of the 1960s case study continued to apply in following decades. These structures and mechanisms are therefore intrinsically important, as they transcend their specific historical setting and help us to understand German foreign policy generally and the dynamics of German-Israeli relations specifically. Assessing contemporary attitudes toward Israel and Jews among German society will therefore also help us to make predictions about future developments in German-Israeli relations.32 The so-called “anti-Semitism debate” sparked by Liberal Democrat Jürgen Möllemann in 2002 serves as a particularly pertinent gauge of German societal attitudes toward Jews and Israel at the beginning of the twenty first century. The

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late Liberal Democratic vice chairman unleashed an intense public argument after he appeared to condone Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel and invited a controversial former Greens parliamentarian, who had accused the Israeli army of engaging in “Nazi methods” during incursions into Palestinian territories, to sit on the Liberal Democratic benches in a regional parliament. What was more, Möllemann proceeded to accuse the Israeli prime minister and the deputy president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany of being responsible for contemporary German anti-Semitism: “Hardly anyone makes the anti-Semites, who unfortunately do exist in Germany, more popular than do Mr. [Ariel] Sharon and, in Germany, [Michel] Friedman,” he said (SZ, May 11/12, 2002; FAZ, May 31, 2002). Such actions and comments by a leading politician were widely seen as anti-Semitic, as they employed the infamous stereotype that Jews themselves were to blame for hostilities inflicted on them and hence analogously were also assigned responsibility for the Holocaust. Möllemann—suspected to have made the comments to garner right-wing votes ahead of national polls—was subject to a barrage of criticism from all segments of German society, which in turn put his party under intense pressure to distance itself from him. There were, however, also voices of support for what was seen by some as a long overdue break with a German taboo. The Liberal Democratic leadership eventually responded to the crisis by reining in their vice chairman. Möllemann apologized, if only reluctantly.33 Considerable pressure from societal elites, the public at large, and fellow Liberal Democrats stopped the party official in his tracks and forced the party to take action in order to salvage its election prospects. Polls showed that Möllemann’s rhetoric might have won the Liberal Democrats some right-wing votes, but that at the end of the day there were considerably more defectors than joiners.34 What emerged as the key overriding feature of the episode was a general public consensus that Germans could and should criticize Israel, its politicians, and its policy just as they were free to criticize any other country. However, Möllemann had stepped out of bounds—as the public consensus had it—when he couched this criticism in anti-Semitic undertones. By doing so he deterred key Liberal Democratic clientele—young urban entrepreneurs—who agreed with him that the taboo on criticism of Israel and Jews should be broken but refused to endorse his anti-Semitic remarks (FAZ, June 2, 2002). This “natural revisionism” (Israeli Ambassador Shimon Stein)—that is, the growing readiness among German society to take Israel to task over its policies coupled with a convincing rejection of anti-Semitism—was corroborated by a study at the University of Essen and a public opinion poll at the time of the debate. A NFO Infratest survey showed that opposition to anti-Semitism had increased considerably over the past eleven years and that racism was particularly detested among younger Germans. Out of the total number canvassed, 49 percent agreed that the German people still had a special responsibility toward the Jews and 79 said it did not matter to them whether they lived next door to Jews or not. However, 70 percent insisted that Germans were entitled to criticize Israel just as any other country.35

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From such domestic sentiment we can extrapolate a future foreign policy that will continue to endorse the Israeli state and whole-heartedly support its right to existence. Yet, Jerusalem will notice that German governments are to become somewhat more assertive friends. The Social Democratic/Greens government between 1998 and 2005 under Schröder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer emerged as a more engaged partner, ready to play a mediation role in the Middle East. And only a few months into her chancellorship, Christian Democrat Angela Merkel has led the European Union in supporting Israel in the face of a stunning Hamas election victory in the Palestinian territories. However, German governments, less constrained by the past and driven by unfettered societal sentiment, will also be freer to criticize Israeli leaders, convinced that constructive criticism and advice—for instance, to be more accommodative of Palestinian interests—is in Jerusalem’s and the region’s best interest. In further signs that German society is still very much alert to the shadows of the past, public response in the early 1990s to Daniel Goldhagen’s book on ordinary citizens’ involvement in the Holocaust and both of the so-called Martin Walser-debates (1998 and 2002) on how to deal with the Holocaust in the media and elsewhere today, has been tremendous and affirms the continued need to factor the past into the sociopolitical equation. In that sense, historian Thomas Nipperdey could not have been more on the mark in reversing Ranke’s famous dictum that “every epoch is related directly to God” by pointing out that “all German history is related indirectly to Hitler. And to the Federal Republic.”36

Notes 1. News release, AJHS (AJCs), I-77 (X.), box 52. 2. “Bei der SBZ handelt es sich um ein gegen den Willen seiner Bevölkerung abgetrenntes Stück eines Volkskörpers” (Decree Carstens/Krapf, Feb. 17, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965). 3. Memo Krapf, March 3, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 106: 437. 4. Knappstein-Foreign Office, Feb. 6, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 58: 261. 5. As Erhard put it during a news conference on December 3, 1963: “We are today obviously in a situation where we do not want the commencement of diplomatic relations with Israel to revive the issue of recognition of the GDR, particularly in the Arab world” (Dec. 3, 1963, Archiv der Gegenwart 33 (1963): 10940). 6. Bonn insisted on a right to “self-determination of Germans living in the Federal Republic of Germany and in the Soviet Occupied Zone and of those settling in serried ranks” (Selbstbestimmungsrecht der in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und in der SBZ lebenden und geschlossen siedelnden Deutschen). Decree Carstens/Krapf, Feb. 17, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. 7. Meeting Erhard-McGhee, Feb. 22, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 90: 373. 8. Meeting Schröder-Mansour, Feb. 13, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 75: 317; Bundestag, Feb. 17, 1965: 8103–8104.

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9. Thomas Risse-Kappen (1992: 181) writes about the West German political system: “Public opinion, interest groups and societal organizations such as the business community, trade unions and churches usually work through the party system to raise their demands and objections concerning specific policies. The system has proved to be comparatively open to societal demands and has even adapted to the concerns of non-established public interest groups.” 10. Notably the January press reports—disclosing the US-German-Israeli tank deal and divulging the more intricate details of the governmental secretiveness implicated in the matter—lent momentum to domestic involvement in the foreign policy making process. The tank deliveries raised a storm of public indignation that, as US Under Secretary of State George Ball predicted, the Erhard government might not be able to weather: “This has become a cause celebre in Germany—that government cannot survive” (TelCon Vance-Ball, Feb. 6, 1965, LBJL, PP, Papers of George Ball, West Germany vol. II, box 4). 11. Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (1972: 396–397) describes the same phenomenon at the birth of Germany’s Ostpolitik. German interest in rapprochement between East and West, Schmidt argues, did not originate with the government, but with “groups that did not have an immediate or even any political mandate at all.” Clerical and other initiatives pushed for reconciliation with the people living on the other side of the Iron Curtain, setting in motion a process that—via the transmission belt of a receptive press—helped political parties to reconsider their hostile, hands-off stance toward the Eastern Bloc. The sentiment in the media, Schmidt says, greatly influenced the Social Democrats, who, once in power, modeled their renowned Ostpolitik along lines mapped out by societal groups years earlier. 12. Schröder-Erhard, Nov. 9, 1964, AAPD 1964 II, doc. 315: 1244; Attachment Cabinet Memo Foreign Office, Jan. 19, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965; Instructions Federer, Schirmer, Feb. 16, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965; Foreign Minister Schröder’s handwritten notes cabinet sessions March 4 and 5, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965. 13. Open Letter 14 Professors, undated (mid November 1964), BA, B 136, 301 01, vol. 3635. 14. Certainly it is possible that the congruence in intention and wording in the two statements was a mere coincidence. Yet, against the background of evidence in favor of strong societal pressure and its impact on high-level decision making collected in this study, it is justified to afford such a chance no more than a remote probability. 15. Precisely this point had been made time and again by societal leaders. The university teachers, for instance, pointed out that West Germany was the only state in the world—aside from the Arabs, East Germany, and Communist China—that did not recognize Israel (Letter Gollwitzer-Erhard, Feb. 18, 1965, BA, B 136 BA, 301 01, vol. 3635). Jelinek (2004: 373) also describes much sympathy for Israel among the German society in the mid 1960s. 16. Meeting Erhard-Boucetta, March 9, 1965, AAPD 1965 I, doc. 117: 478. 17. A few days after the March 7 decision Erhard told Arab officials that “with [a] view to the fact that 85 countries—among them also non-aligned states—entertained diplomatic relations with Israel as well as with the Arab states,” he could not understand “why the Federal Republic should be curtailed in its sovereignty and discriminated against, why the same right as extended to the 85 other states should not be extended to it as well” (Meeting Erhard-Ayed, Boucetta, March 14, 1965, AAPD 1965 II, doc. 207: 836). 18. Osterheld 1992: 171–172. When Minister Alois Niederalt pointed out on March 4 that, in weighing the next steps in the Middle East crisis, not only foreign policy consequences but also domestic considerations had to be taken into account, Schröder indicated his disapproval of such a notion by marking this passage of his notes with a question mark (Foreign Minister Schröder’s handwritten notes cabinet session March 4, 1965, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1965). 19. The statement is included in Note Schirmer, Dec. 10, 1964, PA/AA, B 150, Aktenkopien 1964. 20. Badeau 1965. Kurt Birrenbach similarly charged that US foreign policy generally was lacking in “coherent leadership” and that decisions were “unpredictable” (Report Birrenbach-Erhard, March 15, 1965, BA, B 136, 301 01, USA 1963–1965, vol. 3613).

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21. TelCon Bundy-Ball, March 12, 1965; TelCon Harriman-Ball, Feb. 22, 1965, LBJL, PP, Papers of George Ball, West Germany vol. II, box 4. 22. Memo Meeting AJC delegation-Erhard, June 2, 1965, YIVO (AJC), FAD-1 Germany, box 24. 23. Statement on Germany, Jan. 18, 1965, YIVO (AJC), FAD-1 Germany, box 24. 24. Letter Gollwitzer-Erhard, Feb. 18, 1965, BA, B 136 BA, 301 01, vol. 3635. 25. National Intelligence Estimate no. 23–65, April 22, 1965, LBJL, NSF, National Intelligence Estimates, West Germany, box 5. 26. Memo Rostow-Tyler, March 20, 1965, LBJL, NSF, Files of Robert Komer, box 20. 27. Historian Werner Kaltefleiter (1995: 2) writes: “This decision [to commence diplomatic relations between Bonn and Jerusalem] amounts to a process of crystallization in the development of the Federal Republic toward a reliable member in the community of democracies.” 28. Risse-Kappen (1992: 181) makes the claim for the period up until Kohl’s tenure. Stephan F. Szabo (1992: 106) writes: “It is difficult to think of another country in which domestic and foreign policy have been so closely intertwined as in Germany. Foreign policy is often the extension of domestic politics by other means, but the reverse is also often the case.” 29. Youth exchange programs intensified at the time, and in 1965/1966 the German-Israeli Society (Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft) was founded. Other parliamentary and societal associations—such as the German-Israeli Parliamentary Group (Deutsch-Israelische Parlamentariergruppe) in 1971 and the German-Israeli Working Group for Peace in the Middle East (Deutsch-Israelischer Arbeitskreis für Frieden im Nahen Osten e.V.) in 1977—followed in later years (Das Parlament, April 14, 1995). 30. Karsh 1992: 145. Corroborating my analysis of the 1964/1965 German-Israeli tank deal, Thomas Risse-Kappen (1992: 189) writes about the Saudi case: “Once an arms export issue becomes public, the mechanisms of democratic corporatism work. Foreign- and security-policy interests enter the decision-making process and, so far, domestic coalition-building has worked against the weakening of export restrictions, especially where the Middle East is concerned.” 31. Udo Steinbach 1992: 222. It has to be noted, however, that others would explain inert German foreign policy during the Gulf War by delineating a country preoccupied with the process of German unification and the apprehension that a more assertive foreign policy a few weeks after unification could have been misinterpreted as a sign of renascent German power politics. 32. German unification in 1991 did not alter the country’s political system or its policymaking mechanisms. Democratic corporatism has continued to serve as a cornerstone in the political bartering process of a now somewhat bigger Westernized Germany (Risse-Kappen 1992: 190–191: Szabo 1992: 106). Similarly, Lily Gardner Feldman (1999a: 333–335) agrees that notwithstanding unification, patterns set by the old West Germany have persisted. 33. Berlin Declaration, Freie Demokratische Partei Deutschlands, May 31, 2002; FAZ, June 1, 2002. 34. All parties represented in the German parliament denounced Möllemann’s comments in the strongest terms and suggested it would be difficult, if not impossible, to form a coalition government with his party after the elections in September. Business associations called on the Liberal Democrats to put an immediate end to the debate, which had begun to trigger boycotts that threatened to depress German exports. Trade unions and churches warned of the dangers anti-Semitism posed to democracy. Journalists signed a petition against what they reckoned was apparent “racism” and “anti-Semitism” on Möllemann’s part. Academic experts also came out in favor of a strict ban on anti-Semitism (FAZ, May 26, 2002; SZ, May 28, 2002; Reuters News Service, June 5, 2002). In early June, when the debate reached its peak, 50 percent of the voters believed the Israel-critical comments by the politician and his row with Friedman had hurt rather than helped the party. Polls recorded an outright slump in the Liberal Democrats’ popularity from 12 to 8 percent, squarely attributing the development to Möllemann’s comments and the inner-party conflict they had set off (Die Zeit, May 29, 2002; Der Spiegel, June 10 and July 1, 2002; Die Welt, June 29, 2002). For less optimistic, but unconvincing, readings of the “Möllemann debate” see Kaufmann and Orlowski’s collection of essays (2002).

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35. Ahlheim and Heeger 2002. The NFO Infratest poll see Der Spiegel, June 10, 2002. Michael Wolffsohn (2001: 36) also discerns a growing distance between Germans and the state of Israel amid a low rate of anti-Semitism in Germany. 36. “Alle deutsche Geschichte ist mittelbar zu Hitler. Mittelbar auch zur Bundesrepublik” (Die Zeit, Oct. 17, 1986).

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ACRONYMS




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AA AAPD

Auswärtiges Amt (West German Foreign Office) Akten zur Auswärtigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland ABC Atomic, Biological, and Chemical (weapons) AJC American Jewish Committee AJCs American Jewish Congress AJHS American Jewish Historical Society (Brandeis University) Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte AusPuZ BA Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archives) CDF Central Decimal File Christlich Demokratische Union (Christian Democratic Party) CDU CF Country File CIA (US) Central Intelligence Agency CIA Perspectives Council on International Affairs Perspectives CSU Christlich Soziale Union (Christian Social Union, Christian Democrats’ sister party in the state of Bavaria) DDR Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic/East Germany) DGAP Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik (German Council on Foreign Relations) DGB Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (German Trade Unions) DOD (US) Department of Defense dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur (West German news agency) EKD Rat der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland (Council of the Protestant Church in Germany) EU European Union FAD Foreign Affairs Department (of the American Jewish Congress) FAZ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

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202 | Acronyms

FDP Fedgov FR FRG GDR GOI IDF ISA JCS LBJL ME MLF NA NATO ND NF NS NSC NSAM NSDAP

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NSF NYT NZZ PA/AA PP PR RG SBZ SED SEDA SPD SS SZ UAR USG USIA VAR

Freie Demokratische Partei Deutschlands (Liberal Democratic Party) Federal government Frankfurter Rundschau Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) German Democratic Republic (East Germany) Government of Israel Israeli Defense Forces Israeli State Archives (US) Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyndon Baines Johnson Library Middle East Multilateral Nuclear Force (US) National Archives North Atlantic Treaty Organization Neues Deutschland Name File National Socialism (US) National Security Council (US) National Security Action Memorandum Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist Party) National Security File The New York Times Neue Zürcher Zeitung Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts (Political Archive West German Foreign Office) Personal Papers Public Relations Record Group Sowjetisch Besetzte Zone (Soviet Occupied Zone/East Germany) Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (East German Socialist Unity Party) SED Archive (Stiffung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR in Bundesarchiv) Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party) Schutzstaffel (NS Protection Squad) Süddeutsche Zeitung United Arab Republic (federation between Egypt and Syria) United States Government United States Information Agency Vereinigte Arabische Republik (United Arab Republic)

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Acronyms | 203

VDS WHCF WHCF-CF YIVO

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ZDF ZK

Verband Deutscher Studentenschaften (Federation of German University Students) White House Central File White House Central File-Confidential File Yidisher Visenshaftlikher Institut (Institute for Jewish Research) Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (German TV network) Zentralkomittee (Communist Central Committee)

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BIBLIOGRAPHY


Sources

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INDEX

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A Abendroth, Wolfgang, 32, 80 Abs, Josef Hermann, 80 Adenauer, Konrad, 2, 6, 8, 22, 23, 32, 34, 35, 45n48, 46–48, 50, 52–55, 56n15, 59–60, 62, 71, 80, 85, 95, 98n6, 134, 140, 141, 147, 183 Kanzlerdemokratie, 35 Adler, Emanuel, 76 Adorno, Theodor, 30 Ahlers, Conrad, 33 Aktion Sühnezeichen, 116, 160 Al Ahram, 120, 123 Allgemeine Wochenzeitung der Juden in Deutschland (Marx), 60, 151 Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, AFL-CIO, 143 American Jewish Committee, 83, 101n65, 128–129, 142, 167n68, 191 American Jewish Congress (AJC), 11n13, 31, 75, 82, 103n91, 128–129, 160 anti-Semitism. See also Jürgen Möllemann, 27, 50–51, 82, 116, 195–196 debate, 3, 195–196, 199n34 Arab countries. See Egypt. See under Federal Republic of Germany Arndt, Adolf, 159 Atlantik Brücke e.V., 30 Augstein, Rudolf, 33, 34

B Bachman, Ingeborg, 80 Balkow, Julius, 62 Ball, George, 144–145, 158 Barzel, Rainer, 43n15, 125–126, 135, 149–154, 157, 158, 160, 170n103, 173n138, 173n140, 176, 177, 186 Ben-Gurion, David, 31, 49, 52–54, 84

Ben-Natan, Asher, 163, 175n178, 194 Benda, Ernst, 155–156 Berlin Free University, 50, 151 Birrenbach, Kurt, 149–150, 152–153, 161–162 Blank, Theodor, 149 Blaustein, Jacob, 142 Böhm, Franz, 63, 74 Böker, Alexander, 61, 63, 72 Brandt, Willy, 2, 18n1, 35, 44n32, 45n40, 166n51, 194 Brentano, Heinrich von, 23, 44n39, 46 Brotherhood Week, 150, 152 Bucher, Ewald, 78, 129, 155, 159 Buchheim, Karl, 80 Bundy, McGeorge, 12n12, 92–93, 128, 154

C Carr, Edward Hallett, 15, 116 Carstens, Karl, 53–54, 60, 61, 63, 65, 66, 74, 79, 110–111, 114, 122, 128, 130, 132, 149, 153, 183, 188 Christian Democrats, 2, 32, 50, 74, 81, 113, 125–126, 141, 147, 151, 153, 158, 166n51, 183, 186 Cold War, 14, 22, 24, 35–37, 39, 66, 76–77, 89, 96, 110, 179, 181, 192 Cologne synagogue incident, 29, 50–52, 56n15 Council of the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD), 117 Creel, Robert, 128

D Dahlgrün, Rolf, 86–87 Deputy, The (Der Stellvertreter) (Hochhuth), 30 Der Grüne Heinrich (Keller), 25

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détente, 9, 10, 24, 34, 35, 36–37, 39–40, 66, 92–93, 96–97, 156, 189–190 Deutschlandpolitik. See under Federal Republic of Germany Diary of Anne Frank, The (Frank), 31 Documentary Centre of the Federation of Jewish Victims of the Nazi Regime, 80 Dodd, Thomas J., 29, 44n29, 51 Dollinger, Werner, 116, 148 Dufhues, Josef-Herman, 186 Dumont, Kurt Neven, 80

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E East Germany. See German Democratic Republic Eastern European archival documents, 79, 81–82, 83, 84, 124, 136, 155 Eban, Abba, 70 Egypt, 49, 67–68, 69–77, 108, 111, 117–119, 121, 123, 126–128, 130–132, 137, 146–147, 151, 158, 161, 181, 187–189, 193 Suez Canal crisis, 38–39, 49, 69, 158 Eichman, Adolf, 31–32 1961 trial of, 31–32, 36, 40, 44n32, 53 Final Solution, 31 Erhard, Ludwig, 1–2, 6, 10, 34, 35, 36, 39, 53, 58, 59, 60, 63–64, 72–74, 75, 78, 83, 85, 91–93, 95, 111–112, 113, 117, 119–121, 122, 125–126, 130–133, 136, 137–140, 142, 146–154, 156, 164, 167n71, 169n98, 169n102, 176–177, 181, 186–187, 191, 192–193, 197n5 Erler, Fritz, 138, 156 Eschenburg, Theodor, 33 Eshkol, Levi, 58, 70, 75–76, 90–91, 127, 142, 146, 149, 150, 161–162, 163, 189

F Federal Republic of Germany, 2, 4–6, 13, 15, 17, 22–24, 26–27, 31, 32, 34–35, 37, 39–40, 47, 49, 51, 53, 63, 66, 70–71, 76, 82, 84, 89, 94–95, 97, 126, 142, 144, 150, 178, 185, 193 1949 foundation of, 22, 103n79, 124, 155 foreign policy, 2, 3, 17, 21–25, 39, 63–64, 66, 69, 73–74, 75–76, 86–87, 88, 91, 94–96, 114–117, 120, 124–125, 127, 129–132, 137–139, 141, 146–149, 152, 178–188, 190, 192–197 societal factors of, 2–4, 5, 7–8, 26–27, 33, 41, 59–60, 64,

75–76, 87–88, 108–109, 114, 119, 123, 125, 129–130, 138–141, 146, 152–156, 159, 161, 177–197 toward Israel. (see also West German, Israeli relations), 5, 9, 13–14, 16–18, 22, 41, 55, 59–66, 84–85, 93, 94–95, 97, 109, 116, 129, 137, 150–151, 177–178, 180–183, 185, 188, 190 toward Middle East. (see also West German, Arab relations), 3, 13, 14, 38, 58–59, 60, 94, 109, 110–111, 113, 119, 121, 124–126, 130–132, 134, 137–141, 151–152, 156–157, 176–177, 180, 182, 186, 188–191, 193 government Defense Ministry, 85–87, 113 Finance Ministry, 86–87 Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt), 6, 14, 24, 37, 47, 49, 54, 56n12, 57n20, 57n22, 61–63, 66, 69–97, 110–111, 113, 118, 119–120, 122–125, 129, 131–132, 136, 137, 140, 143–144, 147–150, 153, 156, 162, 186 Abwehrmaßnahmen, 67 Justice Ministry, 79–80, 81–82, 136, 155, 173n147 unification policy (Deutschlandpolitik), 2–3, 5, 6, 7–8, 10, 13, 14, 17, 24, 29, 34, 35–37, 39–40, 46–49, 58–60, 61, 63–64, 67, 72, 73, 78, 80, 83–84, 87, 88, 91–93, 95–97, 109, 111, 117, 119–121, 124, 130, 132, 136, 137, 140, 143–144, 147–149, 156, 179, 181–182, 184, 188–192, 199n32 scientists in Egypt, 9, 68–75, 82–83, 87, 95, 109, 110–112, 115–117, 119, 123, 128–129, 141, 142, 162–163, 180–181, 184, 185, 188, 190–191 society, 2, 3, 5–7, 8–9, 13–14, 15, 18, 26–27, 31, 33–34, 35, 37, 39, 48, 50–52, 55, 59–60, 61, 62–66, 73, 75, 80–82, 84–85, 87, 94–96, 108–109, 110, 112, 113–116, 125–126, 129, 135, 137–142, 150–154, 156, 158–159, 177–186, 190–191, 193–197

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elites/intellectuals, 3, 10, 16, 17, 26–27, 32–33, 35, 38–41, 55, 64–66, 75–77, 80–82, 84, 95–96, 99n24, 115–116, 124, 126, 129–130, 131, 133, 137–142, 177, 179–182, 184, 186, 191, 193, 194–196 moral obligation toward Israel, 4, 8, 10, 114–115, 117, 125, 142, 162, 184, 187, 189, 191, 192, 196 Nazi past (Vergangenheitsbewältigung), 3, 7, 9, 10, 15, 27, 28–29, 30, 36, 41, 63, 69–77, 79–80, 88, 112, 130, 151, 160, 180 policy entrepreneurs, 30–31, 34, 36, 39, 41, 50–51, 59–60, 64–66, 69–77, 96, 97, 127, 137–141, 152–155, 179–180, 182–186, 188, 190–192 Federer, Georg, 112, 120–121, 122–123, 126, 132–133, 140, 163n9 Feldman, Lily Gardner, 5, 11n5, 47 Feldman, Myer, 12n12, 82, 91 Fischer, Fritz, 29, 179 Fischer, Joschka, 197 Flechtheim, Ossip, 80 France, 9, 37, 47, 90, 124, 125, 128, 148, 156, 158, 188 nation state, 26 Frank(reich)/Kol(onien), 52–54, 72, 85–88, 104n102, 109–110, 144 Frank, Anne, 31 Frankfurt School, 30 Frankfurter Rundschau, 109–110, 114 Friedensburg, Ferdinand, 183

German Coordination Council of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation, 51–52, 115 German Democratic Republic government, 2, 6, 17, 23, 26, 34, 39, 61–62, 66–68, 72, 78, 100n36, 115, 119–121, 130, 133–136, 163, 182, 187, 190, 193 Middle East recognition of, 2, 6, 8, 9, 10, 40, 49, 53, 54, 60, 61, 85, 108, 111–112, 116, 117, 120, 123, 124, 127, 130, 132–136, 146–148, 165n34, 167n78, 178, 181, 186–187, 190, 193 release of Nazi documents, 79–80 German Federation of Trade Unions (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund—DGB), 52, 115, 124–125, 184–185 Gerstenmaier, Eugen, 34, 56n12, 63, 65, 99n25, 111–112, 113, 117, 118, 119–120, 138, 153, 163n8, 163n9 Geschäftsfreund. See West German, Israeli relations Globke, Hans, 71, 80 Goldmann, Nahum, 75, 79, 83, 117 Goldstein, Judith, 12n14, 17–18, 19n7, 24, 42n11, 178 Gollwitzer, Helmut, 140–141, 192 Grass, Günter, 137 Great Britain, 37, 38, 90, 124, 128, 148, 156, 158, 188 West Germany relations, 9, 42n10, 47, 90 Grewe, Wilhelm G., 36, 52, 156 guilt (Schuldfrage). See under Federal Republic of Germany

G

H

Gemeinschaft, 26 German historiography, 7, 15–16, 17, 18n5, 21–29, 32, 40–41, 43n23, 95, 109, 156, 177, 179, 185 nation state, 2, 6, 7, 14, 15–16, 18, 20–41, 41n3, 41n4, 58–59, 64–65, 68, 94–95, 109, 121, 124–125, 130–135, 147, 156, 178–179, 181, 185, 193 Sinnvollhaftigkeit, 28 national identity, 5, 6, 7, 14, 15–16, 18n5, 26, 27, 33–34, 37, 59, 64, 109, 133–134, 142, 147, 177, 180–181, 185, 193

Haas, Peter M., 76 Hallstein doctrine of 1955, 8, 17, 20, 23–25, 28, 38, 39, 54–55, 58–59, 61, 91, 115, 116–117, 119, 121–123, 124–125, 127, 133–135, 146–149, 156–157, 178–181, 185, 187, 188–190, 192–193 Hallstein, Walter, 47, 49, 147 Hamburger, Käthe, 80 Hansen, Niels, 4–5, 11n5 Harriman, Averell, 105n119, 118, 144, 164n28 Hase, Karl-Günter von, 71, 78, 110, 150, 152 Hassel, Kai-Uwe von, 86–87, 149 Heck, Bruno, 148

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Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 7, 21–22, 41n2, 41n3 Herzfeld, Hans, 27 Heuss, Theodor, 46 Histadrut, 52, 115 historicism, 21–23, 33, 34, 35, 40–41, 41n3, 42n6, 65–66, 88, 95, 153, 178–179, 181, 192–193 primacy of foreign policy (Primat der Außenpolitik), 21–25, 44n26, 153, 178, 184 state-centered philosophy, 21, 41n3 young-German/free-thinking (jungdeutsch/freisinnig), 25 historiography. See German historiography Hitler, Adolf, 27, 28, 80 Höcherl, Hermann, 149 Hochhuth, Rolf, 30–31, 32 Holocaust, 4, 15, 27, 28, 52, 69–72, 83, 95, 112, 180, 196–197 Horkheimer, Max, 30, 75

Knappstein, Heinrich von, 75, 118, 128, 129, 142, 144 Knesset resolution, 71, 142, 161 Kogon, Eugen, 159–160 Komer, Robert W., 12n12, 70, 89, 144–145 Krämer-Badoni, Rudolf, 137 Krapf, Franz, 121 Krone, Heinrich, 149, 151

I

Maariv, 117 Machtstaat. See German nation state Mann, Golo, 80 Marcuse, Harold, 28, 29, 43n24 Marx, Karl (publisher Allgemeine Wochenzeitung der Juden in Deutschland ), 60, 151 Mau, Hermann, 28 McGhee, George, 12n12, 91, 93, 105n113, 145, 156–158, 189 McNamara, Robert, 92 Meinecke, Friedrich, 27 Meir, Golda, 161 Mende, Erich, 144, 148 Merten, Hans, 87 Middle East crisis. See under Federal Republic of Germany Minow, Hans Rüdiger, 81 Mohr, Marcus, 5 Möllemann, Jürgen, 195–196, 199n34 Mommer, Karl, 65, 169n98

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IG Metall, 115–116 Institute for Contemporary History, 28, 30 Israel, 1, 6, 17, 27, 46–55, 59, 60–97, 106n120, 108–111, 113, 115–116, 123, 124–125, 127, 141–142, 152–153, 162, 180–182, 187, 193, 194, 196 Israel Mission, 48–49, 135 Israeli society, 48, 60, 69, 71, 95, 129, 141–142, 161 state, 3, 50–51, 77, 114, 122, 151, 197

J Jaeger, Richard, 160 Jahn, Gerhard, 155–156 Jansen, Josef, 71 Jaspers, Karl, 34, 155–156, 159–160 Jelinek, Yeshayahu, 4–5, 11n5 Jerusalem Post, 72 Jewish Claims Conference, 47, 50, 55n3 Johnson, Lyndon B. See also United States government, 6, 89–93, 145, 153 Johnson, Uwe, 80

K Katzenstein, Peter, 25–26 Keller, Gottfried, 25, 42n13 Keohane, Robert O., 12n14, 17–18, 19n17, 24, 42n11, 178 Kiesewetter, Wolfgang, 68, 100n36 Klein, David, 154

L Lahr, Rolf, 60, 67 Liberal Democrats, 74, 113, 125, 144, 148, 151, 194–196 Litton Industries, 123 Lübke, Heinrich, 51, 150, 152 Lücke, Paul, 148 Luxembourg agreement. See also shilumim agreement; See under West German-Israeli relations, 47–48, 63

M

N Nasser, Gamal Abd el-, 6, 9, 38, 61–62, 67–68, 69, 74, 89, 91, 100n37, 111–112, 117, 118–120, 122–123, 126, 133–135, 140, 142, 148, 163n8, 165n34, 168n81, 182, 186, 188 National Socialism. See also Nazi Germany, 1, 27, 28, 95, 156 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), 5, 33, 163n8

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Index | 227

Nazi Germany, 1, 27, 31, 33, 65, 95 criminals, 28, 31, 32, 77–78, 80–82, 83–84, 95–96, 128, 136, 155–156, 180 Jewish Office of the Gestapo, 31 trials, 30, 31–32, 40, 50, 78, 81–82 war crimes, 29–30, 31, 47, 50, 78–79, 81–82, 84, 124, 155–156, 159 statute of limitations for, 9, 71–72, 77–79, 80–84, 109, 119, 124, 125, 128–130, 136, 142, 143–144, 155–156, 159–163, 169n92, 173n149, 188, 190–191 Negt, Oskar, 34 Nellessen, Bernd, 141 Nerva, Marquis de, 131–133, 140, 167n76, 167n78 Neuß, Wolfgang, 30 New Ostpolitik (Brandt), 18n1, 35, 37 New York Times, 34, 72, 110, 127, 129, 133, 135, 141, 143 Niederalt, Alois, 151 nonaligned states, 38–39, 45n49, 66–67, 72, 99n30, 148, 161, 181 Nuremberg trials, 78

O Osterheld, Horst, 104n100, 113, 140, 153, 177

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P Pauls, Rolf Friedemann, 1, 47, 163, 175n178 Peres, Shimon, 52, 54, 57n19, 69, 91, 100n41, 161 Pike, James A., 143 Pilz, Wolfgang, 124 Pocock, John G., 15 principled beliefs, 7, 17–18, 20, 23, 35, 39–41, 64, 66, 95, 96, 97, 125, 178–180, 187, 190 Prinz, Joachim, 44n35, 56n15, 82, 160, 170n107

R Ranke, Leopold von, 7, 21–22, 41n1, 41n5, 197 Rasner, Will, 152, 154, 186 realism, 22–23, 33, 34, 35, 48, 88, 95, 179, 187, 192 Realpolitik, 8, 47 Repgen, Konrad, 80 Riad, Mahmoud, 120 Richter, Hans Werner, 80, 192 “Group 47,” 33

Ritter, Gerhard, 27, 28 Roberts, Frank, 158 Rosenberg, Ludwig, 115, 124–125 Rothfels, Hans, 27 Rowan, Carl T., 90 Rusk, Dean, 35, 62, 82 S Sabri, Ibrahim, 61, 65–66, 94, 131, 132, 165n34 Sadat, Anwar el-, 49 Schäfer, Fritz, 50 Scharf, Kurt, 117 Scheel, Walter, 146, 148, 194 Schimmel, Annemarie, 80 Schirmer, Hans, 62, 98n10 Schmid, Carlo, 51, 63, 65 Schmücker, Kurt, 148 Scholz, Ernst, 61 Schröder, Gerhard (chancellor), 193, 195, 197 Schröder, Gerhard (foreign minister), 6, 39, 54, 56n12, 60, 63, 65, 74, 81–83, 86, 94, 98n4, 105n113, 110, 111, 119, 122–123, 131, 136, 147–149, 152–153, 158, 165n34, 182, 185, 187–188 Schüle, Erwin, 82, 124 Schwarzhaupt, Elisabeth, 149 scientist. See under Federal Republic of Germany Seebohm, Hans-Christoph, 148 Seelbach, Jörg, 5 Senghaas, Dieter, 34, 192 Shazar, Zalman, 1 Shelepin, Alexander, 126 shilumim agreement. See also Luxembourg agreement; See under West German-Israeli relations, 47, 50, 55n3 Shinnar, Felix, 56n12, 60, 98n6, 130–131, 136, 141–142, 161 Shirer, Alan, 36 Six Day War of 1967, 5, 193–194 Social Democrats, 2, 35, 51, 74, 81, 113, 138, 141, 155, 166n51, 184, 194, 197 Soviet Union, 23, 35, 37, 66–67, 126 Arab relations, 38–39, 94 Spiegel, Der, 33, 34 Spiegel affair, 32–33 statute of limitation for murder. See Nazi Germany, war crimes Strauß, Franz-Josef, 33, 52, 54, 57n19, 57n22, 63, 65, 69, 86, 87, 98n19, 100n41, 123, 152, 154, 184

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Stuttgarter Zeitung, 51 Suez Canal crisis, 38–39, 49, 69, 158

T Tacke, Bernhard, 124 Tank deal West Germany-Israeli-United States, 89–94, 109–110, 118, 127–128, 138, 144–145, 171n116, 188, 194–195, 198n10 Tavor, Moshe, 135 Third Reich, 12n14, 24, 27–29, 43n22, 156, 160, 185 Betriebsunfall, 29 Third Reich, The (Shirer), 36 Traditionsverbände (Walden), 30

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U Ulbricht, Walter, 6, 10, 68, 108, 117, 118–119, 120–123, 124, 126–128, 130, 132–135, 140, 143, 146–148, 154, 168n82, 181–182, 186, 188, 190, 193 United States Arab relations, 88–90, 94, 97, 144–145, 189 government, 7, 35, 36, 38, 62, 66, 70, 76–77, 82, 85, 88–96, 118, 124, 128–129, 142, 144, 156–158, 181, 188 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 89–90, 106n120 Israeli relations, 7, 82, 89–90, 144–145, 188–189, 194 society, 7, 60, 128–130, 142 West German relations, 9, 14, 35, 36, 47, 82–84, 88–92, 126, 143–145, 148, 151, 154, 156–158, 171n121, 171n122, 181, 188–190 boycott of West German goods, 142–143 West German-Israeli relations. (see also Tank deal) military aid and equipment, 6–7, 9, 89–93, 109–110, 113, 117–118, 127–128, 145

V Vergangenheitsbewältigung, 30 Vogel, Hans-Jochen, 65, 101n49

W Walden, Matthias, 30 Weber, Max, 20

Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, 29, 179 Wehner, Herbert, 113, 114 Weimar Republic, 24, 27, 185 Wellershof, Dieter, 192 Welt, Die, 133, 141 Weltgeist. See German nation state Werner, Rudolf, 120–121, 134 West German. See Federal Republic of Germany Arab relations. (see also Federal Republic of Germany, foreign policy toward Middle East), 10, 13, 46–48, 50, 54, 60–62, 65–68, 70–77, 85, 87, 91, 93, 98n13, 100n36, 111–112, 117, 119–123, 126–127, 130–135, 140–141, 146–148, 150–151, 154, 156–158, 161, 185, 189, 195, 197 conference May 1956, 49 Israeli relations. (see also Federal Republic of Germany, foreign policy toward Israel), 4, 9–10, 14, 16, 22, 38, 39, 46–54, 58–61, 63, 68–77, 85, 88, 94–96, 109, 111–112, 113–117, 119–120, 122, 124, 127, 130–135, 137–138, 140–141, 143, 146–151, 158, 160–162, 177–179, 182–187, 193–197 diplomatic, 1–3, 5, 8–9, 10, 13–14, 18, 49, 51, 59–63, 65–66, 68, 77, 83, 85, 87–88, 94–95, 108, 110–111, 113–117, 119, 124–126, 128, 131–133, 135, 137–141, 146, 148–154, 158, 160–163, 172n132, 176–177, 179–181, 183–186, 188–189, 191–193 economic aid, 8, 49, 52–55, 60, 110, 148, 162–163 Geschäftsfreund (business partner), 52–54, 60, 104n102 military aid, 8–10, 49, 52–55, 61, 72–73, 84–87, 88–93, 109–111, 113, 115, 117–119, 122–123, 127, 129–133, 136, 137–139, 142, 144, 149, 162, 164n17, 180, 182–183, 188, 191, 194 restitution agreement of 1952 (see also Luxembourg agreement; shilumim agreement ), 4, 8, 45n48, 47–50, 52, 60–61, 66 Westrick, Ludger, 79, 91, 122, 130–131 What does ‘Working through the Past’ mean (Adorno), 30

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worldviews, 7, 9, 10, 12n14, 17–18, 23–24, 33, 35, 37, 39–41, 64, 66, 95, 96, 97, 178, 180–181, 185, 187, 190, 191–192

Y Yediot Achronot, 118 Yom Kippur War of 1973, 194

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Wiesenthal, Simon, 80, 102n73 Wilson, Harold, 158 Wolfrum, Edgar, 27, 43n16 World Jewish Congress, 4, 75, 79, 117 World War II, 4, 8, 22, 24, 27, 28, 33, 83, 116

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