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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, APRIL 27, 1984
"Europeanization of Europe," the withdrawal of both Germanys from
military blocs, and union through neutralization. It is perhaps
to
be detected also in the zeal with which political and
economic
contacts with East Germany are being pursued by West· German
politicians. This is illustrated by the number of provisional
and federal ministers who showed up at the recent Spring Fair in
Leipzig, by the visit of a Social Democratic delegation from the
Bundestag to the East German Volkskammer and by the projected
visit of the East German Communist Party chairman, Erich Honeck
er, to West Germany in the fall.
It is worth noting that� relations between the Soviet Union and
the United States steadily worsen, those between the two Germanys
have never been better. This is not going to lead to a dramatic
shift 1n alliance alignments in the immediate future. But it is
clear that these new German currents--which recently led the dean
of German journalists, Countess Marion Donhoff, to ask worriedly,
"What's up with the Germans?"--deserve serious attention in
Washington.
The Reagan Administration has too easily assumed that, despite
last year's agitations about missile deployment, the Federal Re
public, under the firm hand of Kohl, would return to a condition
of Nibelungen loyalty to America. There is no basis for this
kind of wishful thinking. One of West Germany's shrewdest po
litical observers, Rolf Zundel, wrote recently in DIE ZEIT that
there is no doubt about the fact that his countrymen object to be
being reduced "to an alliance partner bristling with weapons in
stern alliance discipline (but possessing no guaranteed right of
opinion about the employment of the most dangerous weapons)" •...
"This unconditional absorption in the Western world," he wrote,
"naturally arouses opposition." This doesn't signify that West
Germans are preparing to depart from the Western alliance, or
will waver in their faith in parliamentary democracy. But it
does mean that the United States can expect, in Zundel's words, a
new self-regard to its ally's demeanor: "A calm, self-confident
presentation of what separates German p erceptions from the
American world view...not pro- or anti-Americanism, but attention
to what 1s on""'e'"s own.
Otherwise, there can be no lasting
alliance capability and no inner peace."
East Germany--People Flee While Prussianism Is Revived
"Strange things are happening" (as comedian Red Buttons used to say) in
East Germany too. As part of recent arrangements with Bonn, the East German
regime is once again opening the refugee faucet.
An average of 4,000
citizens are leaving for West Germany each month. Incredibly, up to half�
million people, more than one in every 40 of the adult population, have
applied for an exit visa. There is little doubt that many of those leaving
are ones who have been more vocally opposed to the East German regime.
Prominent among these are members of the Protestant churches who have
espoused the non-official East German peace movement. Then too, part of
the exodus may be due to East German response to huge loans from the Bonn
government.