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Multilateralism, German Foreign Policy and Central Europe

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How does the foreign policy of reunified Germany differ from the strong West German commitment to multilateralism? Multilateralism, German Foreign Policy and Central Europe focuses on German relations with the Czech Republic and Poland in order to investigate the changes and continuities in German foreign policy following the Cold War. After a theoretical introduction and an overview of multilateralism in German foreign policy, the book analyzes the “high politics” of German foreign policy towards Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic and Poland, focusing on the main diplomatic agreements negotiated after 1945. The following two chapters address the legacy of the past in contemporary Czech–German and Polish–German relations, including compensation for victims of the Nazi regime and the rights of ethnic German minorities. Then the book shifts its emphasis to the future of German relations with its eastern neighbors, and to the subject of European Union enlargement in particular. This scholarly volume will interest all students and researchers of German foreign policy and Central European politics.

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Claus Hofhansel is Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Rhode Island College. He is also an affiliate at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University.

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Routledge Advances in European Politics 1 Russian Messianism Third Rome, revolution, Communism and after Peter J.S. Duncan 2 European Integration and the Postmodern Condition Governance, democracy, identity Peter van Ham 3 Nationalism in Italian Politics The stories of the Northern League, 1980–2000 Damian Tambini 4 International Intervention in the Balkans since 1995 Edited by Peter Siani-Davies 5 Widening the European Union The politics of institutional change and reform Edited by Bernard Steunenberg 6 Institutional Challenges in the European Union Edited by Madeleine Hosli, Adrian van Deemen and Mika Widgrén 7 Europe Unbound Enlarging and reshaping the boundaries of the European Union Edited by Jan Zielonka 8 Ethnic Cleansing in the Balkans Nationalism and the destruction of tradition Cathie Carmichael 9 Democracy and Enlargement in PostCommunist Europe The democratisation of the general public in fifteen Central and Eastern European countries, 1991–1998 Christian W. Haerpfer 10 Private Sector Involvement in the Euro The power of ideas Stefan Collignon and Daniela Schwarzer 11 Europe A Nietzschean perspective Stefan Elbe 12 The European Union and e-Voting Addressing the European Parliament’s internet voting challenge Edited by Alexander H. Trechsel and Fernando Mendez 13 European Union Council Presidencies A comparative perspective Edited by Ole Elgström

14 European Governance and Supranational Institutions Making states comply Jonas Tallberg 15 European Union, NATO and Russia Martin Smith and Graham Timmins 16 Business, the State and Economic Policy The case of Italy G. Grant Amyot 17 Europeanization and Transnational States Comparing Nordic central governments Bengt Jacobsson, Per Lægreid and Ove K. Pedersen 18 European Union Enlargement A comparative history Edited by Wolfram Kaiser and Jürgen Elvert 19 Gibraltar British or Spanish? Peter Gold 20 Gender Politics and Society in Spain Monica Threlfall, Christine Cousins and Celia Valiente 21 European Union Negotiatons Processes, networks and negotiations Edited by Ole Elgström and Christer Jönsson 22 Evaluating Euro-Mediterranean Relations Stephen C. Calleya 23 The Changing Face of European Identity A seven-nation study of (supra)national attachments Edited by Richard Robyn 24 Governing Europe Discourse, governmentality and European integration William Walters and Jens Henrik Haahr 25 Territory and Terror Conflicting nationalisms in the Basque Country Jan Mansvelt Beck 26 Multilateralism, German Foreign Policy and Central Europe Claus Hofhansel

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Multilateralism, German Foreign Policy and Central Europe

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Claus Hofhansel

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First published 2005 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2005 Claus Hofhansel All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Hofhansel, Claus. Multilateralism, German foreign policy, and Central Europe/ Claus Hofhansel. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Germany – Foreign economic relations – Poland. 2. Poland – Foreign economic relations – Germany. 3. Czech Republic – Foreign economic relations – Germany. 4. Germany – foreign economic relations – Czech Republic. 5. European Union – Europe, Eastern. 6. World War, 1939–1945 – Reparations. 7. Europe – Economic integration. I. Title. HF1546.15.P7M85 2005 327.430437–dc22 2004019118

ISBN 0-203-79929-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0–415–36406–X (Print Edition)

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Contents

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Preface

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Explaining support for multilateralism

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German multilateralism in East and West

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From the “policy of movement” toward reconciliation

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The diplomacy of compensation for Eastern European victims of Nazi crimes

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German minorities in Poland and the Czech Republic

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Germany and the eastern enlargement of the EU

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Conclusion

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Notes Bibliography Index

123 141 153

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Preface

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This book began almost a decade ago as a conference paper on German– Czech relations. Since then German–Czech and German–Polish relations as well as my manuscript have seen a number of ups and downs. Certainly German–Czech relations are in better shape today than they were in the mid-1990s. In writing this book I have incurred a number of debts. A research grant by the American Political Science Association and two Rhode Island College research grants enabled me to travel to Europe and conduct interviews. Jeffrey Anderson and Peter Dombrowski offered advice on parts of the manuscript as did a number of conference participants and anonymous reviewers. My wife Alexandra endured my anxieties and numerous requests to read drafts. About halfway through this journey Franziska entered our lives and became the most pleasant distraction from completing this project.

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Post-World War II (West) German foreign policy was distinctive in two ways. First, Germany showed great reluctance to use force abroad. In the 1990s this antimilitarist posture partially eroded, but only partially, as German military personnel participated in a variety of missions outside of the traditional NATO area. Furthermore, even though German pilots flew missions in the bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999, German forces took part in a multilateral effort. This “reflexive support for an exaggerated multilateralism” is the second, and arguably most important, distinctive characteristic of German foreign policy and the focus of this book.1 More specifically, this book will analyze German policy toward Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic and Poland in a set of case studies involving the history of diplomatic negotiations between Germany and its two eastern neighbors from the 1960s until the 1990s, disputes over the compensation of Czech and Polish victims of Nazi crimes, the rights of ethnic Germans in Poland and the Czech Republic, and the German position in the EU enlargement negotiations. There are a number of studies on German foreign policy which have found considerable continuity in German policy across the Cold War divide, despite a radically changed international environment.2 To some extent, though, the fact that there has been a fair amount of continuity in German foreign policy should not be so surprising since simple institutional inertia may at least partially explain why German policy makers have not given up on policies that have served Germany well for decades. Thus, German policy toward the Czech Republic and Poland is a particularly interesting case since a record of institutionalized cooperation was not (yet) in place by the early 1990s. There is also a historical basis for distinguishing between German policies toward Western and Eastern Europe. In the interwar period Weimar governments were willing to consider multilateral arrangements with Western European countries, but in the East, and Poland in particular, Germany pursued revisionist policies.3 This study also allows me to compare German policy toward Poland with German policy toward the Czech Republic, which is significant since German–Czech reconciliation lagged behind similar efforts with Poland.

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A study of German policy toward Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic and Poland is also important because German–Czech and German–Polish relations have been among the most sensitive relationships in German foreign policy this century. In fact, their repercussions reached far beyond the three countries directly involved. The infamous Munich Agreement of 1938 not only became a national trauma for Czechs, but American foreign policy makers from Truman to George Bush, Snr have invoked the “lessons of Munich” to justify American military intervention from East Asia to the Middle East.4 World War II began in Europe on September 1, 1939 when a German navy ship fired the first shots against the Polish garrison at Danzig. On a more positive note, the most potent symbolic gesture of West German détente policy occurred on December 7, 1970 when Willy Brandt kneeled in front of the monument for the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 the government of united Germany negotiated new treaties to replace the détente era treaties of the 1970s and to put the relationships with its eastern neighbors on a new basis. In the aftermath of German reunification, academics, policy makers and journalists raised a number of questions, such as whether Germany would lose interest in Western integration and once again turn its gaze toward the East. Furthermore, given that falling boundaries between East and West and the reorientation of Central and Eastern European economies toward Western Europe were bound to result in increased economic opportunities for German firms, would Germany once again seek to exploit its economic influence in the region for a variety of other purposes? These questions fit into a broader debate which has centered around the relative significance of interests, institutions and norms, including collective memories as a source of norms, for explaining foreign policy. Will the changed international environment of the post-Cold War era result eventually in a renewed German pursuit of traditional great power politics, or will Germany remain a “tamed” or “reluctant” power due to either its deep enmeshment in European institutions or its aversion to militarism and unilateralism rooted in a changed political culture?5 Applied to German policy toward the Czech Republic and Poland, Emil Nagengast has argued that the [German] government’s policies have demonstrated an unmistakable break with past nationalist priorities. The promotion of European institutions as the defining feature of post-Cold War foreign policies concerning east Europe strengthens the argument that German foreign policy makers have made conscious efforts to sustain the pre1989 pattern of FRG multilateralism as the surest safeguard against a reemergence of unilateral priorities.6 In a study of German–Polish relations he argued that due to Germany’s “European identity” Germany included the fate of Poland in its own definition of its “national” interest.7 Others, such as Patricia Davis, completely

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Explaining support for multilateralism 3 reject such claims. Regarding Poland, she argued that German interests have changed relatively little; what has changed is that German governments no longer use aggressive military means to achieve their goals. This change notwithstanding, Germany still seeks to advance its own narrow national interests at the expense of Polish ones.8 Much of the debate over German foreign policy and the larger controversy over the relative contributions of rationalist and constructivist approaches to international relations theory have been marred by a number of problems. Too many authors engage in what Jeffrey Anderson called “causal one-upmanship,” which gives primacy to either material interests, institutions or norms/ideas as the key sources of foreign policy and relegates the rest to the status of mere supplements.9 Furthermore, not enough attention is being paid to the conditions under which German foreign policy exhibits particular traits, e.g. unilateral versus multilateral policies.10 During the Cold War, German multilateralism had a geopolitical basis in that a semisovereign West Germany depended on the support of its Western allies, particularly in relations with the East. Furthermore, West German governments sought to reduce fears or suspicions of Germany by deeply binding themselves to multilateral institutions. In West Germany’s relationships with Central and Eastern European countries, geopolitical considerations trumped economic interests. This book argues that, overall, post-Cold War German governments have continued to champion multilateral organizations and extended their multilateral approach to Germany’s relations with Central and Eastern Europe, but in some areas we have witnessed a decrease in German support for multilateral principles, and on balance German governments are less willing to subordinate national economic or other domestic interests to geopolitics.

Defining multilateralism How can we explain German support for a foreign policy committed to participation in multilateral organizations and to multilateral principles of conduct in the past and assess the likelihood of continued support for such policies in the future? One difficulty in answering this question is that the term multilateralism can refer to different things. At a minimum a multilateralist foreign policy is distinct from its bilateral or unilateral alternatives because it requires three or more states to coordinate their policies. A thicker alternative to this thin definition “may imply a deeper, rule-bound form of cooperation, whereby independent countries agree to coordinate their conduct in a particular realm according to certain principles, norms and procedures.”11 James Caporaso, following Ruggie, has spelled out the meaning of this thick alternative by defining multilateralism as “an organizing principle [of international life] . . . distinguished from other forms by three properties: indivisibility, generalized principles of conduct, and diffuse reciprocity.”12 The best illustration of indivisibility is the principle

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governing collective security that an attack on any one member is treated as an attack on all members. In international trade the most-favored nation principle is a good example of generalized (nondiscriminatory) principles of conduct in contrast to the discriminatory Nazi trade policies of the 1930s. Diffuse reciprocity differs from specific reciprocity in that the grantor of a benefit does not expect the grantee to reciprocate in the short term. In principle it is possible to distinguish multilateral foreign policy strategies from the goals of foreign policy, which may be focused on narrow national interests, the interests of the international community of states, or the interests of humanity as a whole.13 In practice this distinction frequently breaks down since a multilateral strategy may become an end in itself. Thus, analyses of German foreign policy frequently do not clearly distinguish between goals and strategy and instead associate multilateral strategies with broad internationalist rather than narrow nationalist goals. During the Cold War, West German governments assiduously avoided “going it alone” and tended to define German interests in the European Community, for example, in relatively broad terms. After the end of the Cold War the key question became whether this would continue to be the case.

Explaining multilateral preferences In broad terms, there are two ways to account for support for multilateral policies. First, states may support multilateral policies because these policies are in their instrumental interest. Second, states support multilateral policies because such policies fit broadly held norms or a country’s foreign policy culture. Institutional arguments may play a role in either interest- or norm/culture-based accounts as institutions either facilitate such policies or make their adoption more difficult. Interests Realists emphasize the centrality of differing distributions of power defined in terms of material capabilities, such as the size of the economy and military strength. In an anarchic environment states will change their behavior in response to changes in the international distribution of power. Thus, a common realist argument is that unilateralism rather than multilateralism is “the default strategy of great powers.”14 The reasoning behind this argument is fairly straightforward. As Moravcsik put it: Multilateral commitments tie governments down to common rules and procedures designed to promote reciprocal adjustment. In deciding whether to enter into a multilateral arrangement of this kind, rational governments must make a cost-benefit calculation as compared with unilateral or bilateral alternatives. For any given state, the costs of multilateralism lie in the necessity for each participant to sacrifice a

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Explaining support for multilateralism 5 measure of unilateral or bilateral policy autonomy or legal sovereignty in order to impose a uniform policy. All other things being equal, the more isolated and powerful a state – that is, the more efficiently it can achieve its objectives by unilateral or bilateral means – the less it gains from multilateral cooperation.15 Even if unilateralism is the default strategy of great powers this does not necessarily mean that great powers consistently favor unilateralist strategies. On any given issue the benefits of a multilateral strategy may outweigh its costs in terms of lost sovereignty or autonomy. The arguments discussed so far tend to infer what a state’s interests might be on the basis of its capabilities (power). A more direct way to analyze state preferences is to examine the preferences of German political actors and how the political process aggregates these preferences. Following Moravcsik, we would then be able to explain “variation in the substantive content of foreign policy.”16 Given that the preferences and relative influence of domestic actors vary across issues, there is no reason to assume that a given actor consistently favors (or opposes) multilateral strategies across different issue areas. Thus, labor unions, for example, might favor a multilateral trade policy but bilateral agreements on immigration issues. The role of domestic institutions Understanding the preferences of different actors is not enough, though. Different institutional arrangements may handicap or favor the effective representation of different actors. Peter Cowhey has argued that, for multilateralism to work, great powers need to be able to make credible commitments.17 This ability in turn depends on a state’s domestic political system, and its electoral system in particular. More specifically, Cowhey claims that: Multilateralism will be more credible if (1) the structure of political competition in the country (e.g. type of voting system and voter preferences) provides incentives for leaders to advocate the provision of international collective goods; (2) the structure of political competition makes it difficult for an individual party or leader to reverse major foreign policy commitments quickly; (3) conflicts between domestic political incentives and multilateral commitments can be eased by adaptation of domestic and international institutions; and (4) domestic political and economic decisions are transparent to interested third parties.18 The first condition means that multilateral promises are more credible if the political system favors the provision of broad collective goods rather

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than particularistic private goods. Second, multilateral commitments are obviously more credible if the domestic costs of defection are high. An illustration of the third condition is the way the US Congress delegated trade policy authority to the executive branch and, for much of the post-World War II period, ensured a US commitment to a multilateral trade regime while remaining sensitive to the concerns of import competing sectors. Finally, multilateral commitments are more credible if foreigners have confidence in their understanding of the policy making process. Norms and foreign policy culture The previous section has argued that states support a multilateralist foreign policy because it serves their interests. Alternatively, states may pursue multilateralist policies because they regard it as the “right” or appropriate thing to do. The starting point of nonrationalist or constructivist discussions of foreign policy is the assumption that state interests are not given or exclusively determined by external constraints, such as the international distribution of power, but are shaped to a significant extent by norms. In principle we can distinguish between regulative and constitutive norms where “[r]egulatory norms define standards of appropriate behavior that shape interests and help coordinate the behavior of political actors,” whereas “[c]onstitutive norms express actor identities.”19 More specifically, states are more likely to support multilateralism if they see themselves as embedded in a community of states rather than as states engaged in a Hobbesian struggle of all against all. If support for multilateralism is rooted primarily in normative commitments this raises the further question of where these norms come from. Here I argue that foreign policy norms reflect states’ historical experience, or more precisely the reinterpretation of history for present purposes, i.e. collective memories.20 It is important to use the plural here for two reasons. First, as events in the present lead to reinterpretations of the past, collective memories change. Second, different groups in a society may interpret past events differently and thus have different memories. Put differently, memories are contested. The maintenance of memory requires “that through participation in commemorative meetings with group members of the current generation we can recreate through imaginatively reenacting a past that would otherwise slowly disappear in the haze of time.”21 Such commemorative meetings require organization which itself requires resources. Thus, depending on their endowment with material and intellectual resources, some groups will be more successful than others in maintaining memory. For the issues at stake in this study this point is particularly important for a comparison of the role of expellee organizations in German policy toward the Czech Republic with their role in policy toward Poland.

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Explaining support for multilateralism 7 Norms versus interests: competing or complementary explanations? There are limits to using cultural norms for explaining foreign policy. First of all, cultural norms may contradict each other and thus provide little guidance for foreign policy makers. For the German case I have emphasized the importance of support for antimilitarism and multilateralism. In the 1990s a tension developed between these norms as Germany’s allies in NATO and partners in the EU expected Germany to make not only a financial but also a military contribution to crisis intervention, such as in (former) Yugoslavia. The maintenance of a strict antimilitarist stance could have resulted in German isolation within the multilateral institutions which German governments cherished. Second, cultural explanations will be more compelling in times of uncertainty and turbulence than during periods of relative stability because in times of uncertainty cultural beliefs and values serve “as sources of sociopolitical meaning and as guides to political action.”22 Thus, we should see the effects of culture most clearly around the time of German unification and shortly before and after but less so during the Cold War. Furthermore, cultural arguments may help explain broad patterns but they are less useful for explaining concrete events or policy decisions where a host of other factors come into play. In the case of the issues at stake here, political culture may be useful for understanding some broad features of German policy towards Central and Eastern Europe but less so for untangling subtle differences between German policies toward the Czech Republic and Poland. A more fine-grained analysis should also be sensitive to the fact that states interact on a variety of issues and what holds for security relations may not be true for economic interactions, for example. Besides explaining German preferences on multilateralism, this study also sheds light on the distributional outcome of the diplomatic negotiations analyzed in this book. Here, I argue that German bargaining power relative to that of the other actors provides a clear and sufficient explanation. I contrast this approach with arguments emphasizing the power of “norms” or “persuasion.”

Explaining the outcome of negotiations The distribution of gains from international agreements depends on the relative bargaining power of the participants. International negotiators are players at two different but related games.23 First, they try to reach an agreement with their foreign counterparts. For any international agreement to be effective, however, it needs to be ratified by each side’s domestic constituents. Thus, the wider the range of possible agreements which may be ratified domestically, or in other words the larger the win-sets of the parties involved, the more likely it is that the negotiations will conclude with a viable agreement. This has important implications for the distributional outcome of negotiations. A player’s relative bargaining power depends on the

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size of his/her win-set. A larger win-set increases the likelihood of an agreement but decreases the player’s bargaining power at the international game. The size of win-sets depends on the nature of domestic preferences. If the costs of no-agreement are low for a negotiator’s domestic constituents they will most likely not approve an agreement which makes significant concessions to foreigners. In other words, the win-set is small. Furthermore, if the negotiator’s supporting coalition includes hardliners, these hardliners may exert considerable influence over the negotiations even if they only represent a small minority group. Thus, the nature of a negotiator’s supporting coalition may cause a negotiator to reject agreements which in principle could be ratified. An alternative account starts with the claim that negotiators do not just seek to maximize their utilities but are guided by norms of appropriate behavior and/or “engage in truth seeking with the aim of reaching a mutual understanding based on a reasoned consensus (verständigungsorientiertes Handeln), challenging the validity claims involved in any communication.”24 If actors follow either a “logic of appropriateness” or a “logic of arguing” materially weak actors gain compared to instances of pure utility maximization. Taking full advantage of materially weak actors may violate norms of appropriate behavior, and in communicative processes weak actors may nonetheless have the better arguments.

Plan of the book Chapter 2 starts with an overview of German foreign policy and analyzes the role of multilateralism in the broad contour of (West) German foreign policy after World War II. It then introduces the specific policy issues discussed in the subsequent chapters. Chapter 3 of this book will analyze the “high politics” of German policy toward Czechoslovakia and Poland, focusing largely but not exclusively on the main diplomatic agreements negotiated after 1945. Analytically, Chapter 3 will discuss German policies toward Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic and Poland in terms of their fit with Germany’s support for multilateralism. Beyond that, the chapter will analyze differences between German policies toward the Czech Republic and Poland. The following two chapters address the legacy of the past in contemporary Czech–German and Polish–German relations, and more specifically compensation for victims of the Nazi regime in Chapter 4 and the rights of ethnic German minorities in Chapter 5. Again, the primary theoretical concern is the extent to which German policies showed support for multilateral principles. After that the book shifts its emphasis from efforts at addressing the burdens of the past to the future of German–Czech and German–Polish relations. Chapter 6 analyzes German policies towards the eastern expansion of the EU. Finally, Chapter 7 will conclude with an overall assessment of German policies across these cases.

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The West German multilateralist tradition rested primarily on West German policies toward NATO and the European Community which anchored West Germany in the West. Here it is important to remember that in 1949 the Federal Republic was not a sovereign or even a semisovereign state but an occupied country. Only with the entry of the Federal Republic into NATO in 1955 did it regain some measure of sovereignty.1 Symbolically, this was shown by the fact that on May 1, 1955 the West German diplomatic missions in Washington, London and Paris were turned into embassies. Put differently, West Germany tied itself to multilateral organizations, such as NATO, and thus accepted restraints on sovereignty in order to regain sovereignty. At the same time West Germany joined the West European Union and accepted various limitations on its military capabilities. Most importantly West Germany agreed not to manufacture nuclear, chemical and biological weapons on German soil and thus reassured its European partners that they would not have to fear German military might again. Similar arguments help explain West German support in 1957 for the Treaties of Rome, the founding documents of the European Community. European integration policy helped “to bring West Germany’s economy back into the world market, to have a security guarantee against . . . tendencies towards neutralization of Germany and to ensure a military coalition of the Western states with West Germany against the danger of Soviet expansionism.”2 Over time the purposes served by German integration into Western multilateral organizations shifted. More specifically, in the 1960s and 1970s the EC proved useful for West German foreign policy toward a variety of regions outside of Western Europe. Writing in the late 1970s Ernst-Otto Czempiel noted that “[a]s a European Economic Community member, Germany could and can appear in areas of the world where it has not been present before, and where it would perhaps not be welcome as the West German national state,” such as Southeast Asia.3 In regard to relations with Eastern Europe, integration into the EC, and coordination of member state foreign policies within the so-called European Political Cooperation in particular, served three purposes. First, domestically, it reassured the

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West German public that West German policies had the backing of its Western allies. Second, consultations with its EC partners also served to counter potential fears of unilateral West German moves and, finally, it demonstrated to the Soviet Union that West German governments had the support of their Western European partners.4 Around the time the Cold War ended, the leaders of the EC member states signed the Treaty on European Union at Maastricht in February 1992. Arguably, the Maastricht Treaty represented at least in part a European response to German unification. A reunified Germany again raised the German question. As in the 1950s, European leaders responded by tying Germany more closely to its European partners through ever deeper European integration via monetary and political union.5 As in the 1950s, this strategy was not imposed on unwilling Germans but received strong support from German political elites. At the time German leaders believed that Germany would benefit because “[f]urther integration in defense and foreign policy would help assuage the concerns of other Europeans about possible German independence and would provide Germany with an acceptable multilateral framework for exercising its increased power and influence.”6 However, at the same time there were developments which cast doubt on Germany’s continued commitment to a multilateralist foreign policy. On December 23, 1991 the German government unilaterally recognized Slovenia and Croatia as independent states despite an agreement among EC governments to wait until an arbitration commission had determined whether Slovenia and Croatia had met certain conditions. Arguably this contributed to the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the bloody wars that followed.7 Until the late 1990s, though, most observers considered this episode as an aberration. Writing in 2000 Bulmer et al. argued

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that a narrow interest-driven focus to the study of German European diplomacy, such as that favoured in realist analyses of international politics, is inadequate. Germany is manifestly not a realist state, pursuing its interests on a case-by-case basis and acting accordingly, as the realist paradigm would demand. Rather, Germany has pursued, in a more strategic sense, broad-based and diffuse milieu goals, directed at shaping wider conditions of inter-state interaction and, above all, cooperation beyond national boundaries.8 Thus, German influence in the EC/EU manifested itself less in specific policy victories than in the broad direction of the EC/EU, and Germany rarely found itself isolated within the EC/EU, in sharp contrast to Britain, for example.9 In the national security area West German foreign policy was distinctive in that all West German forces were under NATO rather than purely

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German multilateralism in East and West 11 national command. Second, West German policy makers were particularly open to and interested in participating in multinational units. As Baumann pointed out, “[i]n the 1980s, when NATO had few such [multinational] units . . ., the FRG [Federal Republic of Germany] contributed to several of them,” including a few naval units, NATO’s Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), and a binational German–Danish corps.10 More than a decade after the end of the Cold War and the lifting of restraints on German sovereignty, and six years after the end of the long chancellorship of Helmut Kohl, the question is whether old patterns of German multilateralism still hold. On security issues German governments by and large have maintained the German emphasis on multilateralism. In the 1990s Germany expanded its participation in bi- and multinational units, including, for example, the German–Dutch Corps and the Multinational Corps North East which consists of Danish, German and Polish forces.11 Germany also took steps to establish a national command structure. Given that the Bundeswehr had not had a general staff this might appear as a significant deviation from multilateralism, but the point of establishing a Führungszentrum for the Bundeswehr was to facilitate German participation in multilateral operations outside of the NATO framework. A more significant deviation from the multilateralist tradition is German rhetoric and behavior during the intra-Western debates over the war with Iraq. During the run-up to the war Chancellor Schröder stated at one point that Germany would not participate in a military intervention even if it had the backing of the UN Security Council. Beginning in early 2004, the issue became whether NATO would play a formal role in stabilizing Iraq after the anticipated restoration of Iraqi sovereignty in the summer of 2004. The German government then made it clear that it would not send combat troops to Iraq, and some SPD politicians raised the issue whether Germany should remove staff officers from any potential NATO units in Iraq. Thus, German support for NATO-approved missions appeared conditional. Whereas the record of continued German multilateralism on security issues is mixed, there are clear signs of change in German policies toward the EU. From the mid-1990s under Chancellor Kohl, and even more clearly under his successor Schröder, German governments have taken a more hard-nosed attitude toward European integration and pushed policies which defined German interests quite narrowly, particularly when it came to budgetary matters. Partly as a result of this shift, German governments increasingly found themselves at odds with the European Commission over German violations of the stability pact on fiscal discipline by member states of the Eurozone, and over state subsidies and other issues.12 Particularly damaging to Germany’s reputation was the fact that the stability pact had come about at the insistence of German governments who did not trust other member states to exercise the same level of fiscal responsibility as Germany. Yet, for the past couple of years it has been Germany which has violated rules of its own design on budget deficits.

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This shift in policy toward the EU can be explained by changes in Germany’s position in the international distribution of power, changes in German material interests and changes in values/political culture. First of all, Germany is no longer a frontline state in a confrontation between two global alliances but is surrounded by friendly neighbors. NATO is still central to German security policy but Germany has become less dependent on the United States and thus more willing to openly express disagreements over such issues as Iraq. Second, more than a decade after German reunification, the German economy and German governments are still grappling with the enormous costs of maintaining adequate living standards in the east, upgrading eastern German infrastructure and providing the foundation for self-sustaining economic growth in the east. As a consequence, German governments are much more reluctant than in the past to act as the EU’s paymaster and to facilitate further integration measures through side payments.13 Furthermore, the eastern and western German electorates differ in their political values.14 In regard to transatlantic relations, support for the Western orientation of German foreign policy is more shallow in the east than in the west.15 Thus, Schröder’s “no” to the Iraq war and German participation in it, whether multilaterally legitimated or not, resonated particularly with voters in eastern Germany. He himself is a Western politician but also represents a generation that, exceptions such as Joschka Fischer notwithstanding, has a more instrumental attitude toward multilateral institutions such as the EU.16 This study will focus on German policy toward the Czech Republic and Poland. Throughout the Cold War and for over a decade after its end, these two countries were part of neither NATO nor the EC/EU, which are at the core of German multilateralism. Thus, for German policy toward the Czech Republic and Poland the issue has been less whether German multilateralism weakened toward these countries and more whether Germany would over time extend the multilateral approach developed in German relations with its Western partners to its eastern neighbors.

Issues in German policy toward the Czech Republic and Poland German governments interact with their Czech and Polish counterparts across a wide range of issues. In this study I have focused on issues where multilateral organizations and multilateral principles, including most importantly nondiscrimination and diffuse reciprocity, are particularly relevant. Any discussion of German policy toward Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic and Poland should include an analysis of the major diplomatic agreements between (West) Germany and its two eastern neighbors, beginning with trade negotiations in the 1960s and the détente era treaties of the early 1970s and ending with the friendship treaties of the early 1990s, and

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German multilateralism in East and West 13 in the case of the Czech Republic extending until the German–Czech Joint Declaration of 1997. Most of these agreements were negotiated during the Cold War or shortly thereafter. During this time period Germany did not enjoy full sovereignty. Particularly during the early decades of the Cold War, West Germany was a relatively weak international actor highly dependent on the support of its Western allies. These geopolitical considerations go a long way toward explaining the (West) German emphasis on close consultations with its Western allies and support for multilateralism more generally. On the other hand, given that today united Germany no longer faces such tight geopolitical constraints, one of the pillars supporting German multilateralism has weakened. More specifically, the Cold War agreements dealt with the staples of German Cold War diplomacy, including the perennial haggling over the status of Berlin. The Warsaw Treaty of 1970 and the Prague Treaty of 1973, however, also addressed the most sensitive issues in post-World War II German–Czech and German–Polish relations, i.e. the German–Polish border on the Oder– Neisse line and the date for the invalidity of the Munich Agreement of 1938. These and related issues were once again taken up after the end of the Cold War in 1990–92. The friendship treaties of the early 1990s also pointed to the future in that Germany affirmed its commitment to the main multilateral project in Europe in the post-Cold War period – the integration of Central and Eastern European countries into Western institutions in general and the European Union in particular. But European integration had played a role even in the trade agreements West Germany had negotiated with Poland and other Eastern European countries in the 1960s. Poland had wanted a bilateral trade agreement with West Germany because it feared the effect of the emerging Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) on its exports, and the West German government needed the agreement of its EC partners before negotiating a trade deal with Poland. One issue which is very much part of the historical legacy of German policy toward these countries but which warrants closer attention on its own is the issue of compensation for Czech and Polish victims of Nazi crimes, and forced/slave laborers in particular. Although the main compensation agreements benefiting Eastern European victims were not concluded until the 1990s, West Germany established the legal framework for compensation payments as far back as the early 1950s, and the principles behind these diplomatic agreements and legislation shaped all subsequent efforts. Largely due to the Cold War, Eastern European victims were excluded, although there were exceptions to this pattern, such as the 1975 West German–Polish agreement on pension claims. East Germany paid high reparations to the Soviet Union in a variety of forms, including the removal of industrial equipment and personnel. Beyond that, however, East Germany did not consider itself a successor state to the German Reich and therefore responsible for compensation. When Eastern European countries raised reparations and other compensation claims, they addressed

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these claims to West Germany. This changed, of course, with German reunification. In the early 1990s Germany negotiated a series of bilateral compensation agreements with Central and Eastern European countries. After the election of Gerhard Schröder as German chancellor, the German government entered into negotiations to compensate forced/slave laborers. Initially, the German government wanted to conduct these negotiations on a bilateral basis with the US government and only reluctantly agreed to include Eastern European governments, American class action lawyers and other representatives of victims.17 In the end the German government signed a multilateral agreement on the compensation of forced/slave laborers. An especially sensitive question in the negotiations in the late 1990s on a forced/slave labor fund was the issue of equitable treatment of different groups of victims, which is central to multilateralism’s emphasis on generalized principles of conduct. A third issue, which has its roots in the more distant past, involves the rights of German minorities in the Czech Republic and Poland. Here a key question is whether Germany not only demanded minority rights for ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic and Poland but also granted reciprocal rights to ethnic Czechs and Poles in Germany. This again is clearly related to multilateralism’s “generalized principles of conduct.” In the interwar period both the newly formed Czechoslovak and re-established Polish states included sizable German minorities. However, these minorities differed in terms of size, political orientation and levels of nationalist sentiments. Furthermore, both the nationalizing states of Czechoslovakia and Poland, and the external homeland Germany, differed in their policies toward these minorities.18 During the Weimar Republic, German politicians across the political spectrum pursued revisionist policies directed against Poland. In addition, the German government indirectly supported the efforts of German minorities abroad. Weimar Germany’s relations with the Czechoslovak Republic tended to be correct, if not friendly. During the Cold War the fate of the remaining and much diminished German minorities was one of the standard issues in German diplomacy as West German governments sought to secure the right of emigration or to improve their position within Central and Eastern European societies. Since then the issue has lost much of its conflict potential, and in the Czech Republic had not been as prominent as in German–Polish relations because, after 1945/46, there were few ethnic Germans left in the country and those who remained for the most part no longer lived in areas of traditional German settlement along the borders. With the end of the Cold War it became possible to put disputes over the rights of minorities into a broader multilateral context. In the negotiations on the friendship treaties of the early 1990s the German government attempted to commit its Central and Eastern European counterparts to incorporate minority rights provisions adopted by the multilateral Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) into the bilateral friendship treaties. However, the

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German multilateralism in East and West 15 German government denied the existence of Czech or Polish minorities in Germany. The protection of minorities also played a role in the negotiations on the accession of Central and Eastern European countries to the EU. As the process of the EU’s eastern enlargement becomes reality, both old and new member states face significant adjustments. The new member states have had to adopt a large volume of existing EU legislation, the acquis communitaire, and implement reforms in important sectors of their economies, such as agriculture, and the EU needs to adjust its institutions and policies to make enlargement work. Within the new member states a common suspicion has been that the old member states are willing to offer Central and Eastern Europe only a second-class membership, which, of course, would be discriminatory and thus run counter to multilateral principles. This study will analyze the German position in these negotiations focusing on two issues – free movement of labor and agricultural policy – which will test Germany’s commitment to multilateralism. Free movement of labor is one of the key freedoms in the EU’s single market and thus is at the core of the EU itself. Eastern Europeans interpret unwillingness to grant this freedom until the expiration of a lengthy transition period as unfair. Agricultural policy raises similar issues regarding differential treatment of farmers in Western and Eastern Europe. Thus, multilateralism plays a role in all these policy areas. But these issues also vary in a number of respects. First of all, there is an aspect of temporal variation. Some of the diplomatic negotiations covered in this book took place in the 1960s and 1970s, others in the 1990s. We would expect cultural arguments to be more compelling in the more turbulent early 1990s, when cultural norms could provide tools for charting unfamiliar territory, than in the 1960s and 1970s. The trade agreements of the 1960s and détente treaties of the early 1970s were negotiated in an international environment in which the Polish and Czech governments, and to a lesser extent the West German government as well, faced tight constraints as frontline or near frontline states in two opposing alliance blocs. This changed in the 1990s. We would also expect the significance of collective memories to vary both indirectly through their influence on cultural norms and directly through their impact on the attitudes of policy makers on specific issues. Thus, the influence of collective memories should be most direct and immediate on issues such as the invalidity of the Munich Agreement, and compensation claims of victims of Nazi persecution. On the other hand, when it comes to the details of the EU accession negotiations, such memories provide little guidance to policy makers. Finally, the importance of different political actors varies across these issues. The Cold War treaties dealt with some of the most important geopolitical issues of the Cold War period, such as Germany’s eastern border, and reconciliation between Germany and its eastern neighbors. To the extent that these treaties were contentious, German political parties

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articulated the contending positions. Interest groups, such as business groups, churches or expellee organizations, also played a role, but, as Günther Schmid showed in his detailed study of the German decisionmaking process on the eastern treaties in 1969/70, these groups largely worked through the parties.19 In contrast to the Cold War agreements, economic interest groups played a central role in determining the German position in the EU accession negotiations. Given German federalism and the access which the German Länder enjoy to decision making on German EU policy, their role was also significant on the issue of the German position on Czech and Polish EU accession.

Theoretical expectations Interest-driven explanations If realists are correct and West German multilateralism reflected West Germany’s geopolitical position, reunified Germany should on balance be less interested in multilateral strategies than before. In more concrete terms, though, we would expect German governments to weigh the costs and benefits of uni-, bi- and multilateral strategies in different situations. Thus, there is no reason to think that German policy toward Poland should be the same as German policy toward Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic. During the Cold War, West German multilateralism served to reassure its Western partners that post-World War II Germany would no longer pose a threat. This was particularly important for West Germany’s relations with France, its largest Western neighbor against whom Germany had fought several wars in the last 100 years. To the extent that this logic still operated after the Cold War, a German reassurance strategy should be particularly prominent in German–Polish relations. German–Polish borders had repeatedly changed as a result of wars, whereas territorial issues hardly played any role in post-Cold War German–Czech relations. Furthermore, Poland is significantly larger than Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic. An alternative explanation of differences between German policies toward the Czech Republic and those toward Poland emphasizes domestic politics. In the late 1990s sensitive issues in German–Polish and German– Czech negotiations involved the multilateral negotiations over Czech and Polish EU accession and attempts to address the legacy of the past, such as the negotiations over the compensation of former forced and slave laborers. Regarding EU accession, some German political actors have been concerned about Polish and Czech labor migration to Germany, whereas German expellee politicians have attempted to inject their demands into the accession negotiations. Thus, some German demands primarily concern the economic consequences of integrating the Czech Republic and Poland into the EU’s internal market, whereas others relate more to identity issues. The range and influence of domestic German political actors involved

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German multilateralism in East and West 17 in these different issues have varied and so have German preferences and policies. Following this approach we would expect German support for multilateralism to vary depending on the constellation of domestic preferences and how German political institutions aggregate them. If the substantive content of a multilateral agreement is closer to the substantive preferences of domestic German actors than that of any bilateral or unilateral alternatives, those actors will support the multilateral agreement. If we take a longer-term view, the range of German political actors with strong preferences on German policy toward Central and Eastern Europe has undergone significant change. For much of the Cold War period economic exchange across the Iron Curtain, whether it involved trade or movement of capital or labor, was quite limited. Relatively speaking, West Germany played a larger role in East–West trade than other Western European countries, but even for West Germany the economic significance of East–West trade was limited.20 This meant that unions, for example, did not take strong positions on West German foreign policy towards Eastern Europe although there were exceptions when it came to trade issues. Thus, what counted most were not economic interests but the geopolitical imperatives of the East–West conflict. Beyond that, most politically sensitive issues in German relations with Eastern Europe, particularly from the 1950s until the 1970s, involved the historical legacies of events from 1938 until 1945/46. Thus, churches played a significant role in fostering reconciliation and in the atonement for Nazi crimes. Expellee groups, on the other hand, opposed West German concessions to Poland and Czechoslovakia. Differences between German policy toward Czechoslovakia and Poland can be explained by differences in the relative influence of Sudeten German expellees compared to expellee groups from territories east of the Oder– Neisse line, such as Silesian expellees. Although these issues have not completely disappeared, the state of German–Polish relations no longer hinges on letter exchanges by German and Polish bishops, and, by 2000, Czech policy makers had learned that inflammatory statements by the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft had relatively little influence on the German government in Berlin. Rather, the main issue in German policy toward the Czech Republic and Poland at the beginning of the new millennium involved the economic and social consequences of Czech and Polish integration into the European Union. However, as election campaigns in the Czech Republic and Germany in 2002 showed, German–Czech and German–Polish relations as well remain vulnerable to populist exploitation of the legacies of the past. Economically, one consequence of the collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the reorientation of Central and Eastern European economies toward Western Europe was internationalization, defined as “processes generated by underlying shifts in transaction cost that produce observable flows of goods, services, and capital.”21 Between 1989 and 1995 exports by the then twelve member states of the European Community to

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six Central and Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia) grew by 131 percent, and EU imports from these states increased by 185 percent.22 Over the same time period Germany’s share of EU exports to these six states grew from 36 percent to 51 percent.23 Once Poland and the Czech Republic become fully integrated into the European Union the remaining restrictions on the free movement of goods, services, capital and people will fall. For this study the key issue is to explain the preferences of domestic German political actors regarding these developments. There is a broad overall consensus that EU expansion represents a benefit for the German economy as a whole. However, despite this aggregate net welfare gain, EU expansion may have adverse distributional consequences for specific groups. Depending on which underlying economic model one chooses, different actors benefit or lose from decreased costs of international transactions.24 If we limit ourselves to trade, the Stolper-Samuelson theorem posits that within any given country the owners of those factors of production which are relatively abundant will benefit from increased international trade, whereas the owners of relatively scarce factors will lose and consequently will push for protection.25 Relative to the rest of the world, and Poland and the Czech Republic in particular, the Germany economy is well endowed with physical capital, whereas labor is relatively scarce. Thus, we would expect German business to support the eastern enlargement of the EU, whereas labor unions should be less enthusiastic. As Frieden and Rogowski point out, there are other possibilities as well. Following the Ricardo–Viner perspective, we would expect that

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[n]ot the country’s factor endowments, but the specificity of the particular industry’s human and physical capital, and its position in world trade and payments, would predict the likely pressure for and against liberalization. Rather than sharpening battles between laborers and capitalists, easier trade would lead to greater conflict between internationally competitive and uncompetitive industries, uniting workers and managers alike behind sectoral demands.26

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Finally, in sectors where internal economies of scale are important, we should see a third pattern, where large and internationally experienced enterprises favor liberalization while small and less internationally experienced companies do not.27 In the German case this perspective has a regional dimension in that in eastern Germany the proportion of small and medium-sized enterprises is particularly high.28 In regard to EU accession, trade between old and new EU member states will most likely continue to expand at substantial rates, but, in terms of trade restrictions, trade in goods had been completely liberalized already, with the partial exception of trade in agricultural products. Thus, EU accession as such will not make much difference to trade between old

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German multilateralism in East and West 19 and new member states. For the most part, provisions on the free movement of capital were not controversial in the accession negotiations, with the exception of restrictions on acquiring real estate in accession countries. The area where EU accession could produce the most change compared to the status quo is in the movement of labor. At this point, old EU member states restrict the movement of Central and Eastern European workers into the EU. Over time those restrictions will disappear. Up to now the vast majority of immigrants from the eastern accession countries live in Austria and Germany, and, to the extent that EU accession results in further migration, these two countries would most likely remain the primary destinations. There is, however, considerable uncertainty over the likely magnitude and composition of such migration flows. Given the aging of German society and related difficulties in financing the German welfare state, one can argue that increased migration to Germany would benefit the German economy as a whole. The impact of immigration on labor market outcomes for native workers, i.e. their wages and chances of becoming unemployed, depends on the extent to which Central and Eastern European immigrants substitute or complement native workers. This in turn depends on the skills of immigrants relative to natives.29 Here some analysts argue that potential migrants from East Central Europe to Germany and Austria tend to be more highly skilled than the average worker in the countries of origin.30 Others suggest that, given increasingly attractive salaries for the highly skilled in places such as Prague or Warsaw and given the historical experience of Germany’s guestworker program in the 1960s and early 1970s, a large proportion of migrants will be low-skilled.31 A common line of argument claims that employers favor liberal immigration policies and the cheap pool of labor these immigrants provide, whereas unions oppose high levels of immigration. Leah Haus has shown that American unions in the 1920s indeed favored restrictionist policies, but that this was not the case at the end of the twentieth century when immigration levels were quite high.32 Haus attributes this difference largely to changes in the ability of the state to effectively control immigration. In the 1980s and 1990s unions questioned the ability of the state to limit immigration, and, if restrictionist policies were bound to fail in any case, it made more sense for unions to try to organize immigrant workers. Advocacy of restrictionist policies would have undermined the unions’ ability to attract immigrants as new members. Thus, in the 1980s American unions favored the Immigration Reform and Control Act’s legalization program of 1986. On the other hand, unions took a more restrictionist position toward temporary nonimmigrant workers, who would have been much more difficult to organize, and guest-worker programs. Following this logic, German unions should not oppose inevitable Central and Eastern European immigration as such, but favor restrictions on temporary workers, border commuters and foreign subcontractors bringing in foreign workers for project-tied work. A good case can also be made, though, that purely

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rational self-interest-driven explanations of immigration policy do not do justice to that issue. This holds for Germany’s multilateralist foreign policy as well. Norm-driven explanations Arguably German support for multilateralism over time became so deeply ingrained among German elites that it has become “reflexive.”33 In the wake of debates over why Germany’s “special path to modernity” had produced Hitler, unilateral or special German foreign policies have been considered highly suspect. There is a consensus on this point across the major political parties in Germany from the Christian Democrats to the Greens.34 Similarly, German policy makers also considered “seesaw politics” between the blocs as illegitimate – rather, Germany had to be a reliable partner. Furthermore, German politicians place considerable weight on the need for German foreign policy to be predictable (berechenbar).35 All of this provided a solid normative foundation for the German pursuit of multilateralism. The sources of the attitudes and values discussed above are easy to identify. After 1945 and the experience of the Nazi regime and of World War II, German political culture was “remade.”36 German support for multilateralism and antimilitarism is a reaction to the failures of Weimar and the horrors of the Nazi regime. However, what matters is not so much history as such but its reinterpretation for present purposes, or in other words collective memories.37 In the case of Germany there has been a broad consensus on the appropriate lessons to draw from Germany’s experiences in the first half of the century, but there are some differences as well. Adenauer’s understanding of the past differed from Brandt’s, and subsequent leaders echoed those differences.38 The historian Robert Moeller has analyzed the ebb and flow of competing memories in the “search for a usable past in the Federal Republic of Germany.”39 He argues that, by the 1950s, one of the major strands of public memory saw Germans not only as perpetrators but as victims who had lost the eastern territories and suffered from brutal expulsions. This image of the past receded in the 1960s, and the visually most powerful symbol of this shift was the image of Willy Brandt kneeling at the memorial for the victims of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising.40 However, a second shift took place in the aftermath of 1982, when the Christian Democrats took power, symbolized by President Reagan’s and Chancellor Kohl’s visit to the military cemetery at Bitburg, which contained graves of SS soldiers.41 However, as Moeller also notes, in the 1980s not only conservatives but Social Democratic politicians as well, such as Peter Glotz (a Sudeten German expellee), compared the Holocaust to what they considered genocidal expulsions of Germans from Eastern Europe.42

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German multilateralism in East and West 21 Most recently, German expellees caused a heated political controversy by pushing for the establishment of a center against expulsions in Berlin. Polish, Czech and German opponents of such a center argued that it would further a rather selective memory focused on the expulsion/resettlement of Germans. If such a center were established at all it should have a European (or multilateral) character and call attention to other expulsions/ resettlements in twentieth-century Europe, such as expulsions in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Thus, such a center should have its seat in Sarajevo or another European city, but not Berlin.43 More broadly, “the latest historical discussions and debates represent the left coming to terms with the memory of German suffering, just as conservatives came to terms with the memory of German crimes in the 1980s and 1990s.”44 Although these debates played a role in both German–Czech and German–Polish relations, there are variations between the two countries. As will be shown in the following chapter, accounts by German diplomats suggest that German politicians were particularly sensitive to German moral obligations toward Poland, which had suffered so much from German occupation during World War II. In the 1990s and beyond, Czech observers were incensed by German downplaying of Czech suffering and more generally by the perceived low priority German governments accorded to the Czech Republic.45

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Running head recto 23

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From the “policy of movement” toward reconciliation

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The primary purpose of this chapter is to analyze German support for multilateralism in a series of major diplomatic agreements which (West) Germany negotiated with Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic and Poland since the early 1960s. From its establishment in 1949 until the 1970s, the Federal Republic of Germany did not maintain diplomatic relations with most Central and Eastern European countries. The main exception to this pattern was the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union, as one of the four victorious powers of World War II, and West Germany in 1955. The major obstacle to diplomatic relations between the Federal Republic and countries in Central and Eastern Europe was the socalled Hallstein doctrine, according to which West Germany in practice would break off relations with states that had recognized East Germany. Under Christian Democratic Foreign Minister Schröder, who served from 1961 until 1966, the West German government took the first steps to move away from the rigid positions of the 1950s. The main vehicle for this move were trade negotiations aimed at the establishment of trade missions, which would also serve as a partial substitute for full diplomatic missions. In the case of Poland, the West German government succeeded in securing such an agreement in 1963, but the Polish government made it clear that there could not be any full normalization of relations without recognition of Poland’s western frontier.1 Similar negotiations with Czechoslovakia were much more protracted and did not result in an agreement until 1967 under the Social Democratic Foreign Minister Willy Brandt and his assistant Egon Bahr. Change in West Germany’s Ostpolitik accelerated after the 1969 elections, which put Willy Brandt in the chancellor’s office. The first major fruits of Brandt’s détente policy were treaties with the Soviet Union and Poland in 1970, followed by major agreements with East Germany in 1972 and Czechoslovakia in 1973. Following these agreements, West German and Central and Eastern European governments negotiated a number of agreements addressing various issues in the areas of cultural and economic cooperation. Relatively speaking, however, these were only incremental efforts. Relations underwent a dramatic and qualitative change in 1989 after the regime changes in Central and Eastern Europe, and

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German reunification. Diplomatically, these upheavals resulted in a series of friendship treaties which in essence replaced the détente era treaties of the 1970s. These treaties were all bilateral treaties in a formal sense, but it would be impossible or at least misleading to analyze them in a purely bilateral context. First of all, these treaties were all part of larger sequences of negotiations which involved not only (West) Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland but other former Eastern bloc countries, such as Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania as well. This raises the question of whether the (West) German government systematically discriminated between their Central and Eastern European negotiating partners. Second, as the previous chapter pointed out, an important theme of (West) German foreign policy was the emphasis on being a dependable alliance partner. This was incompatible with negotiating separate German deals with Eastern Europe without consulting (West) Germany’s Western partners. In Western capitals signs of an overly independent German Ostpolitik raised the specter of Rapallo, the infamous 1922 treaty between the two diplomatic outcasts of the early interwar period, Weimar Germany and the Soviet Union. Third, the German–Polish treaties of 1990 and 1991 were clearly tied to the multilateral “2+4” negotiations on German reunification. Furthermore, the German–Czech and German–Polish friendship treaties of 1991 and 1992 contain repeated and explicit references to the main multilateral project in Europe – European integration. In article 8 of the German–Polish treaty, the German government positively evaluated the prospect of Polish membership in the EC as soon as the prerequisites for such a membership had been fulfilled.2 Article 10 of the German–Czech treaty stated that the Federal Republic of Germany would support the efforts of the Czech and Slovak Federated Republic to meet conditions for the full integration of the âSFR into the European Communities.3 Beyond the explicit references to multilateral organizations in the text of some of these treaties, we still need to answer the question of whether the substance of the treaties and Germany’s negotiating positions and behavior were compatible with multilateral principles. To understand German negotiating behavior Robert Putnam’s metaphor of two-level games reminds us that it is necessary to recognize that German negotiators on one side had to reach an agreement with their Polish and Czech counterparts, but they also had to make sure that any agreement reached at the international table was acceptable to their domestic constituencies.4 Thus, this chapter will pay close attention to the role multilateral arguments played in German ratification debates over these treaties. In the following, I will take a chronological approach and first discuss the trade treaties of 1963 and 1967 before moving on to the détente treaties of the 1970s and finally the German– Czech and German–Polish treaties of the early 1990s and the German–Czech declaration of 1997.

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From the “policy of movement” toward reconciliation 25

The trade agreements of 1963 and 1967 German–Polish negotiations 1962–63 Although the negotiations which led to the 1963 German–Polish agreement on trade missions did not begin until November 1962, the idea for such an agreement was much older. As early as 1948 Poland had established a trade mission in Frankfurt, and Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria maintained such offices in Frankfurt as well.5 West Germany, on the other hand, did not maintain equivalent missions in Eastern bloc countries. In 1955 the West German Foreign Office suggested the establishment of a West German trade mission in Poland.6 After an initially positive response by the Polish government, intra-bloc coordination among Eastern European governments resulted in increased demands which the West German government rejected. In 1956 the Free Democratic Party (FDP) introduced a resolution in the Bundestag which called for the establishment of trade missions with consular authority.7 Although the West German foreign minister at the time did not support this resolution, in 1957 Wilhelm Grewe, then the head of the political department within the German Foreign Office, wrote a memo in which he suggested trade missions as an alternative to the establishment of diplomatic relations.8 However, the Foreign Office did not act on these suggestions until the early 1960s under the new Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder. Within the Christian Democratic Union Gerhard Schröder represented the Atlanticist wing. This wing of the party placed priority on a close West German relationship with the United States and recognized that West Germany’s allies supported established West German policies regarding the status of West Berlin, German reunification and the final status of territories east of the Oder–Neisse line only to a limited extent. In order to prevent a further estrangement from West Germany’s key Western allies through overly rigid West German policies toward Eastern Europe, the West German government needed to show more flexibility and pursue a more active Ostpolitik.9 From the perspective of the Gaullist wing of the party and of the Christian Social Union (CSU) this policy represented a dead end.10 Rather than kowtowing to the United States, West Germany needed to seek a closer partnership with France and to build a European Union along Gaullist lines. This way Germany would be able to pursue its own interests and to overcome the status quo in Europe. At the international level the West German government was in some ways in a relatively strong position as far as trade negotiations with the Eastern bloc were concerned. Western European integration efforts had gathered steam, and more specifically the European Economic Community (EEC) had embarked on a common agricultural policy. Poland and other Eastern bloc countries perceived this new policy as a clear threat to their export interests and were eager to reach trade agreements with West Germany,

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whereas the West German government attempted to exploit this eagerness for political purposes. However, the West German government did not have a free hand either, as the envisioned trade agreement with Poland did not conform to the new EEC policy, and the West German government first had to secure the agreement of its EC partners to allow exceptions for West Germany’s trade with the East.11 In fact, the Dutch government had objected to the planned West German trade agreement with Poland.12 Leading German politicians reiterated these restrictions on the German negotiating position at various points. At a meeting between high-level West German government officials and business representatives on July 18, 1963, Ludwig Erhard, then a member of Adenauer’s cabinet and later his successor, noted that the common agricultural policy imposed limits on West German imports from the Eastern bloc.13 Foreign Minister Schröder reiterated this point during a conversation with US Secretary of State Rusk on September 20, 1963.14 This also underscores the point that, although the German–Polish agreement was bilateral in form, in order to understand it one has to consider it in a multilateral context. One aspect of this multilateral context was that West Germany conducted negotiations with several Eastern bloc countries, but these negotiations did not take place simultaneously. This worked to the advantage of the West German government. In May 1962 the Hungarian government indicated its interest in the establishment of a West German trade mission in Hungary which contributed to the Polish offer to do the same.15 Nonetheless, from a West German perspective, the successful conclusion of a trade agreement with Poland had priority because in the German–Polish case there were a number of unresolved political issues, including cultural exchange and the position of members of the German minority in Poland. The Polish government, on the other hand, wanted to discuss compensation payments for Polish victims of Nazi crimes.16 The actual negotiations began on November 29, 1962, after the EEC Council of Ministers had given its “green light” to a West German trade agreement with Poland.17 The chief West German negotiator Helmut Allardt of the West German Foreign Office and his Polish partner Franciszek Modrzewski first reached agreement on the commodity lists and then turned to the more difficult political issues of the incorporation of West Berlin into the trade agreement and of the establishment and status of a West German trade mission in Warsaw. The German negotiators gained the impression that their Polish counterparts faced pressures from both a divided Polish government and Communist Party and from the East German government, which opposed both the West German claim to represent West Berlin diplomatically and the establishment of a West German trade mission.18 In the end, the two sides settled on a trade agreement and the exchange of letters in which the Polish government confirmed that, for the duration of the trade agreement, it would not cancel a previous payment protocol of November 16, 1956 which in turn had included a Berlin clause.

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From the “policy of movement” toward reconciliation 27 The question of the establishment of a West German trade mission involved a number of difficult technical issues concerning the precise status of such a mission and its privileges. Neither side wanted to give such an agreement much publicity, and the two sides then exchanged confidential letters regarding the trade missions. From the perspective of the West German government the limited status of the trade mission had the advantage that such an agreement did not require parliamentary ratification.19 Nonetheless, domestic opposition to this agreement surfaced in any case. The city government of West Berlin complained that the West German– Polish agreements of March 7, 1963 did not adequately incorporate West Berlin.20 German Gaullists, such as Hans Graf Huyn, argued that West German trade interests would have been served better if the West German government had pushed harder to achieve common EC trade policy toward Eastern Europe.21 German–Czech negotiations 1963–67 In November 1963 the West German government signaled its desire to improve relations with Czechoslovakia. The West German government had waited until it already had concluded trade agreements with Poland, Hungary and Romania.22 In the fall of 1963 the Czechoslovak government also indicated its interest in establishing some form of official relations with West Germany. On November 27, 1963 a representative of the Czechoslovak foreign trade mission discussed the possibility of negotiations on this issue with German foreign office officials in Bonn.23 The negotiations centered around four sets of issues. First, West Germany was interested in an agreement on the exchange of trade missions, while Czechoslovakia also wanted a commodity agreement. Early on German diplomats gained the impression that the Czechoslovak government wanted to reach a commodity agreement first in order to gain negotiating room for the politically more sensitive issue of trade missions.24 The West German government, on the other hand, insisted on linking the two issues. Second, the two sides disagreed on the status and powers of the new trade missions. In mid-April 1964 Czechoslovak diplomats presented their first draft of the agreement on the exchange of trade missions. This draft envisioned more than missions. Rather, these missions were to amount to more than a consulate but less than a full embassy. In essence, Czechoslovakia wanted to establish full diplomatic relations but was willing to settle for trade missions as a first step.25 At that time this presented problems for the West German government. The West German government feared, as one German diplomat put it, that the granting of consular powers to trading missions would indirectly facilitate East German efforts to establish a network of consulates itself.26 In other words, agreeing to the Czech suggestions would have undermined the Hallstein doctrine. Once the West German government had rejected the Czech position, the Czechoslovak government itself

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changed course and, in January 1965, was willing to grant the trade missions only very limited powers. In an internal memorandum West German Ambassador Freiherr von Mirbach expressed the concern that the Czech side would severely restrict the work of the West German mission in Prague and that this could have domestic repercussions in West Germany.27 The third and quite contentious issue involved the status of West Berlin. While the Federal Republic insisted that the agreement had to cover West Berlin, the standard Eastern European position was that West Berlin represented a separate political entity. In other agreements West Germany and Eastern European countries had found a way to paper over this difference, and as late as February 1965 the Czechoslovak delegation had indicated its willingness to consider a compromise formula involving a currency area clause. Yet, when the negotiations broke down in March 1965, the stated reason for the breakdown was disagreement over the Berlin issue.28 While the first three issues represented generic problems in West German relations with Eastern Europe, the fourth issue addressed the most traumatic moment of Czech–German relations in this century – the Munich Agreement of 1938. At the annual Sudeten German meeting in May 1964, West German transport minister and Sudeten German spokesman Hans Christoph Seebohm called for the “return of the stolen Sudeten German homeland to the Sudeten German people” and argued that the Munich Agreement had been negotiated in a perfectly legal manner.29 The Social Democrats vigorously denounced these remarks and Chancellor Erhard reprimanded Seebohm. On June 11, 1964 Chancellor Erhard attempted to undo some of the diplomatic damage caused by Seebohm’s remarks during a speech in New York. In this speech Erhard stated that Hitler himself had torn up the Munich Agreement through his actions, that Germany had no territorial claims against Czechoslovakia, and that the federal government wanted to clearly distance itself from statements that had cast doubts on this position.30 Although such statements reassured the Federal Republic’s Western allies, the Czechoslovak position was that the Munich Agreement had been void from the beginning. In the negotiations themselves the West German government attempted to avoid dealing with this issue. On the domestic front Chancellor Erhard met with members of the Sudeten German council (Sudetendeutscher Rat) on October 16, 1964. In preparation for this meeting State Secretary Carstens prepared a memorandum in which he argued that the Sudeten Germans could not demand that the federal government put Sudeten German interests ahead of Germany’s national interests as a whole. It was in the interest of Sudeten Germans themselves to make clear that their demand for self-determination did not imply territorial claims.31 These domestic difficulties were matched by the erratic course of the diplomatic negotiations. Exploratory talks began in November 1963. These talks were continued in April 1964 when a Czechoslovak delegation submitted a draft agreement. In September 1964 German diplomats

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From the “policy of movement” toward reconciliation 29 traveled to Prague, and in negotiations in December 1964 the two sides settled on a draft agreement for the exchange of trade missions which bracketed the most contentious issues, however. Further negotiations took place in January and February 1965 before the talks were broken off in March 1965. On March 23, 1965 a German diplomat recorded that the Czechoslovak negotiating position had hardened considerably between February and March. Although the Czechoslovak delegation had indicated a willingness to compromise on the Berlin issue in February 1965, in March the Czechs withdrew this offer and indicated that it had not found favor at “higher places.” West German diplomats interpreted this as a sign of the close coordination on this issue between Czechoslovakia on one side and East Germany and the Soviet Union on the other.32 Although no formal negotiations took place between March 1965 and January 1967, there were a number of attempts to maintain contacts in the meantime. These efforts utilized the good offices of Bundestag deputy Blumenfeld, the Czechoslovak trade mission in Frankfurt and the Czechoslovak military mission in Berlin.33 West German diplomats also continued to express irritation over statements by Sudeten German expellees, which not only raised concerns in Czechoslovakia but also damaged the West German reputation among its Western allies.34 In December 1966 a new government came to power in West Germany that for the first time included the Social Democratic Party (SPD), and Willy Brandt became foreign minister. Brandt and Justice Minister Gustav Heinemann successfully pushed for a statement by the West German government acknowledging again that the Munich Agreement had come about under the threat of force and that it was no longer valid.35 More generally, Chancellor Kiesinger expressed the desire to open diplomatic relations with Eastern European countries where circumstances permitted such a step. As far as hardliners in the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) were concerned, Chancellor Kiesinger had gone too far. At a meeting of the CDU/CSU parliamentary delegation on December 13, 1966, Seebohm criticized the speech because Kiesinger had not mentioned the “right to the homeland” (Heimatrecht) for the expellees. Furthermore, Seebohm questioned the precise meaning of Kiesinger’s statement on the validity of the Munich Agreement. Seebohm was only willing to accept that the agreement had become invalid at some point after the expulsion of Sudeten Germans but not before.36 In his response Kiesinger acknowledged that the statement on the validity of the Munich Agreement had been controversial between the coalition partners until the night before Kiesinger’s speech on December 13. He also pointed out, though, that he had attempted to move away from the old language and that Germany had to adjust its Ostpolitik to new realities, and America’s interest in détente in particular.37 Official Czechoslovak responses to Kiesinger’s speech by Deputy Foreign Minister Ota Kliãka and President Antonin Novotn˘ emphasized the Munich Agreement and repeated the Czechoslovak position that the Munich

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Agreement had been invalid ab initio. Novotn˘’s New Year’s Day speech was relatively moderate and stated that Czechoslovakia would watch further developments under the new West German government and that Czechoslovak responses would depend on concrete West German steps.38 Kliãka’s radio interview, on the other hand, was perceived in West Germany as more hardline.39 In January 1967 German diplomats resumed negotiations in Prague.40 The German delegation went into these negotiations prepared to discuss not only the opening of a trade mission but also the establishment of full diplomatic relations, whereas the Czech side had sent a note containing compensation/reparations demands.41 These talks did not produce concrete results, and there were indications that the Czechoslovak leadership was divided internally on the proper course of its relations with West Germany.42 Since 1963 the Novotn˘ regime had come under increasing domestic pressure, and the conflict between conservative and more reformoriented factions manifested itself, among other areas, in different views on relations with West Germany. In the past, orthodox Communists had always used the bogeyman of German aggression to stabilize the domestic situation in Czechoslovakia.43 To understand the complexity of this case it is also important to put German–Czechoslovak negotiations in the broader context of both West German diplomacy and relations within the Eastern bloc. In mid-January 1967 a high-ranking East German diplomat visited Prague and presented a paper which included the so-called Ulbricht Doctrine, i.e. that no Socialist country should normalize relations with West Germany until West Germany had recognized the regime in East Berlin. On January 31, 1967 West Germany and Romania established diplomatic relations, but this success of West German diplomacy made it imperative for other Eastern European countries to show intra-bloc cohesion and thus reduced the bargaining room for countries such as Czechoslovakia. On February 4 Soviet leader Brezhnev went to Prague himself and supported the East German position.44 These efforts to re-establish alliance cohesion showed results in the friendship treaty between East Germany and Czechoslovakia, which the two sides signed on March 17, 1967. Article 7 of the treaty reaffirmed the position that the Munich Agreement was void from the beginning, and article 8 referred to West Berlin as a special political entity.45 At further meetings between Czech and German officials in April and June 1967 Czech diplomats made it clear that they did not see a realistic chance for the establishment of full diplomatic relations in the near future.46 In mid-July 1967 Foreign Minister Brandt sent Egon Bahr to Prague to conclude negotiations on establishing official relations at the level of foreign trade missions and to conclude a trade agreement. The negotiations successfully ended in early August, but despite the short time frame they were far from smooth. On July 26 Brandt called Bahr back to Bonn for consultations. The following day the West German cabinet discussed the state of

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From the “policy of movement” toward reconciliation 31 the negotiations.47 Bahr immediately returned to Prague, but a few days later the negotiations again came to a standstill. The sticking point was whether the agreement would refer to West Germany as the “German Federal Republic” or by its official name, the “Federal Republic of Germany.”48 Finally, on August 3, 1967 the two sides signed a trade agreement and an agreement on the establishment of trade missions.49 In order to obtain the agreement West Germany had to make significant concessions. In 1967 the West German government had hoped to establish not only trade missions but full diplomatic relations. Furthermore, the Czech version of the text of the agreement referred to West Germany as “Nûmecká spolková republika” (German Federal Republic). This seemingly trivial point could be interpreted as undermining West Germany’s claims on the German question. Beyond that, West Germany did not fully succeed with its demand for giving the German trade mission consular rights, although the German trade mission could at least issue visas. Regarding the two most contentious issues in the negotiations, the text of the agreement did not contain a Berlin clause, nor did it refer to the Munich Agreement. In West Germany reactions to the treaty were mixed. Some conservative newspapers in particular expressed skepticism about the treaty’s value.50 At the same time the Czech side faced criticism from the East German Communist party that Czech negotiators had made too many concessions as well. After the conclusion of the negotiations Czech officials were quite slow in making all of the documents available to East German diplomats.51 In the following months heated exchanges took place between party leaders Novotn˘ and Ulbricht, and between Hermann Axen, the East German party secretary responsible for international affairs, and the Czech ambassador to East Germany, Koláfi.52 Analysis Although the trade agreements the West German government concluded with Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1963 and 1967 respectively were bilateral in form, the previous discussion has shown that it is impossible to understand these agreements, and how they came about, outside of their multilateral context. First of all, progress within the EC on establishing common trade and agricultural policies both constrained and strengthened the West German bargaining position in its negotiations with Eastern European governments. Karen Smith has argued that [t]he absence of Community agreements with the East European countries contrasted with its ties in other regions. . . . The member states’ reluctance to allow the Community to do the same with the East European countries partly reflects the degree to which they guarded their own national economic and political interests in the region and partly the effects of the Cold War and of Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe.53

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Nonetheless, EC policies did constrain the West German government as shown by the fact that it sought Council approval before proceeding with a trade agreement with Poland. On the other hand, Polish worries over the trade implications of the Common Agricultural Policy strengthened the West German bargaining position. Thus, West Germany’s commitment to multilateralism and multilateral organizations in the West had consequences for the pursuit of bilateral West German diplomacy in the East. It is also important to realize that the negotiations with Poland and Czechoslovakia were part of a larger sequence of negotiations that included Hungary and Romania. By conducting these negotiations sequentially the West German government attempted to overcome domestic West German opposition, but to some extent at least it also served to play the Eastern European negotiating partners off against each other. This strategy was not particularly successful, however, and it runs counter to a commitment to multilateralism. The relative merits of multilateral versus bilateral diplomacy also came up during the domestic debates over these agreements. It would be wrong, however, to argue that members of the Gaullist wing of the German Christian Democratic Union, who opposed these agreements and wanted to wait until the EC had formulated a common trade policy toward Eastern Europe, were more multilateralist than members of the Atlanticist wing. Rather, these two groups agreed on Germany’s commitment to Western multilateral institutions but disagreed over which multilateral option Germany should pursue and which option would serve German interests the best. As the following section will show, consultations with West Germany’s Western allies also played a significant role in the preparations for West Germany’s main détente era treaties with Poland and Czechoslovakia in the early 1970s.

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The détente era treaties of 1970 and 1973 The Warsaw Treaty of 1970 Neither the German–Polish trade agreement of 1963 nor the German– Czechoslovak trade agreement of 1967 had addressed the most sensitive issues in the relations between these countries. In the German–Polish case this involved German recognition of Poland’s western border at the Oder–Neisse line. The East German government had recognized the border in the so-called Görlitz (Zgorzelec) Treaty of 1950, but in West Germany none of the established political parties supported the diplomatic recognition of that border. In the 1960s this began to change. A number of developments contributed to this change. First, the earlier rigid West German policies and the half-hearted attempts to introduce some degree of flexibility under Chancellor Erhard and Foreign Minister Schröder

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From the “policy of movement” toward reconciliation 33 appeared to have failed.54 Second, it became increasingly clear to West German diplomats and politicians that West Germany would have no support among its Western allies if it pursued policies which appeared to question the territorial status quo in Europe.55 At the same time there were signs of a change in domestic West German politics on this issue. West German churches played a prominent role in this shift. In early November 1961 a group of eight prominent German Protestant academics wrote a memorandum known as the “Tübingen memorandum,” which stated that Germany had to recognize that it had lost its claims to territories east of the Oder–Neisse line.56 Official church representatives initially distanced themselves from this document, but a working group received the charge to formulate a memorandum on behalf of the EKD (Evangelical Church of Germany). Upon publication in October 1965, this memorandum triggered an extremely heated discussion in Germany, including arson attempts and death threats, although this document did not go as far as the 1961 memorandum in recognizing the legitimacy of the Oder–Neisse line.57 On November 18, 1965 the Catholic bishops of Poland joined the fray and wrote a letter to their German colleagues. The letter included a synopsis of German–Polish relations going back about a thousand years and ended with a discussion of the German occupation during World War II and its aftermath. As stated in the letter, about six million Polish citizens had died in German camps, including roughly 2,000 Catholic priests and five bishops. The letter also briefly referred to the suffering of millions of German refugees and expellees, and the conclusion contained the famous statement: “We forgive and ask for forgiveness.” German Catholic bishops were more cautious and defensive, but on December 5, 1965 they responded with their own letter.58 Although the German response disappointed its Polish addressees, this letter exchange had significant long-term consequences. Most importantly, it contributed to a shift in German public opinion toward increased public acceptance of Poland’s western border and increased support for a new Ostpolitik among West German political parties. According to opinion polls, between 1962 and 1970 the proportion of respondents who accepted the Oder–Neisse line increased from 26 percent to 58 percent, and the most dramatic increase occurred between 1966 and 1967 when acceptance jumped from 27 to 46 percent.59 The activities of the churches also paved the way for shifts in party positions, which can clearly be seen in the case of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). After Protestant intellectuals had formulated the Tübingen memorandum in 1961, the SPD leadership, including Willy Brandt, rejected its recommendation of recognition of the Oder–Neisse line.60 Again, after the publication of the more official EKD memorandum of 1965, Willy Brandt initially refused to endorse this call for reconciliation with Poland as well.61 Then came the letter exchange between Polish and German Catholic bishops. A few months later the SPD changed course. On May 4, 1966 the

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SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag approved an endorsement of the EKD memorandum following months of internal debates.62 However, the party as a whole had not yet committed itself to an unambiguous recognition of the Oder–Neisse line, and the discussion within the party continued. In 1967 the Jungsozialisten (Young Socialists) passed a resolution in which the Jusos demanded recognition of the Oder–Neisse line.63 In early March 1968 the EKD and German Catholic intellectuals intervened in the debate again. On March 14, 1968 Helmut Schmidt, then leader of the SPD parliamentary group, gave a speech in the Bundestag in which he reminded his compatriots what Germany had done to Poland and that his party now wanted to offer Poland a renunciation of force declaration, which meant respecting the current border.64 In this way Schmidt emphasized the moral aspects of this question and thus picked up the arguments by the churches. That same month at a party congress the party as a whole agreed on a platform calling for recognition of the Oder–Neisse line.65 Roughly parallel to developments within the SPD the Free Democrats had moved towards the recognition of the Oder–Neisse line as well. At the end of 1966 and early 1967 two prominent FDP politicians, Wolfgang Schollwer and Hans-Wolfgang Rubin, demanded the recognition of the Oder–Neisse line.66 Two years later these two parties formed a coalition government. After the elections of 1969 the new government moved quickly to implement its new eastern policy. In contrast to the trade negotiations of the early and mid-1960s, negotiations with the Soviet Union received the highest priority, but the new government also pursued talks with the Polish government. On November 25, 1969 the head of the West German trade mission in Warsaw, Ambassador Böx, presented a diplomatic note to the Polish deputy Foreign Minister Winiewicz in which the West German government suggested talks about all aspects of German–Polish relations.67 The actual negotiations began in February 1970. Before the West German government could proceed too far, however, it was imperative that it consult with its Western allies. Although the Western allies were not openly critical, there were some concerns regarding the level and quality of consultations between the West German government and its counterparts in Britain, France and the United States, and the speed at which the West German government was moving, as well as reservations about the substantive implications of the new policy. Regarding the German–Polish negotiations in particular, the Western allies supported a normalization of West German–Polish relations, including the recognition of the Oder–Neisse line, but the US government also signaled that such a recognition should not infringe on the rights of the allied powers of World War II.68 Before the negotiations had even started, a British diplomat informed the West German foreign office of his government’s position that a final and permanent recognition of the Oder–Neisse line had to await the conclusion of a peace treaty. The British diplomat also emphasized that his government did not oppose a settlement of the Oder–Neisse problem but

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From the “policy of movement” toward reconciliation 35 wanted to make sure that it would be consulted before the West German government took any significant steps.69 Suspicions that the Western allies had of Brandt’s Ostpolitik also come through in Kissinger’s memoirs of the last years of his service under President Nixon. There he argued that Egon Bahr, described as the primary intellect behind Ostpolitik, in fact wanted to pursue a policy toward Eastern Europe separate from the policies of the Western allies. Bahr “was an old-fashioned German nationalist.”70 Besides making sure that it had the backing of the Western allies, the West German government also had to be sensitive to the concerns of important domestic political actors, which at that time included expellee organizations. Until the early 1970s some major Silesian expellee politicians, such as Herbert Hupka, still called the SPD their political home. Thus, on December 6, 1969 Foreign Minister Scheel met with the executive council of the expellee federation to discuss the upcoming negotiations with Poland.71 Similar meetings took place in the following months. The negotiations themselves were conducted in seven rounds, beginning in February 1970 and ending in November 1970.72 On November 18, 1970 the two foreign ministers initialed the normalization treaty, and Chancellor Brandt and Prime Minister Cyrankiewicz signed the treaty during Brandt’s historic visit to Warsaw on December 7, 1970. Initially, the West German government offered to respect the western border of Poland through a renunciation of force treaty. This did not satisfy the Polish side, though, and during the third negotiating session the German delegation presented a new formula according to which the two sides stated that the Oder–Neisse line was the western border of Poland, and that the Federal Republic of Germany would respect this border in the future but that this would not affect existing treaties. The last part of this formula referred to the responsibilities and rights of the allied powers in relation to Germany. Although the negotiations moved forward during this negotiating round in April 1970, there were domestic complications on the West German side. The West German chief negotiator State Secretary Duckwitz had presented a personal letter by Chancellor Brandt to the Polish Communist party leader Gomu∏ka. Neither Brandt nor the career diplomat Duckwitz had informed Walter Scheel, the West German foreign minister, of this letter. One of the consequences of this episode was that Duckwitz did not finish the negotiations but was eventually replaced by Paul Frank. Another glitch occurred on June 12, 1970, when a West German tabloid published parts of an agreement that Egon Bahr had negotiated with Soviet Foreign Minister Grom∏ko. One part of this so-called “Bahr Paper” contained a statement on Poland’s western border. Polish officials were quite irritated because in their view it showed the low priority that West Germany placed on German–Polish rather than German–Soviet relations. In exchange for concessions on the border question the German side needed to show progress in other areas of German–Polish relations in order to be able to sell the treaty to a domestic audience. Thus, German foreign

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office guidelines for the third round of negotiations in April 1970 stated that the German government could only justify a border agreement domestically if the Polish government demonstrated its willingness to achieve reconciliation through substantive concessions in other areas. Here the German government emphasized improvements in the position of the German minority in Poland, and in particular enhanced opportunities for ethnic Germans to emigrate from Poland.73 Nonetheless, in November 1970 the negotiations concluded and in December 1970 Willy Brandt traveled to Warsaw to sign the so-called Warsaw Treaty. On December 7 Brandt made the most important symbolic gesture of West German détente policy by kneeling at the monument for the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The actual treaty consisted of five articles, the first of which addressed Poland’s western border. In this article the Federal Republic recognized Poland’s western border as it had been designated in chapter 9 of the Potsdam Agreements of August 2, 1945. Article 5 contained the qualification that the treaty did not affect previous bilateral or multilateral agreements that either side had made in the past. This agreement with Poland was part of a larger sequence of treaties with a number of Eastern bloc countries, including most importantly the Soviet Union but also, among others, East Germany and Czechoslovakia. The Prague Treaty of 1973 In mid-October 1970 the West German government initiated exploratory talks with Czechoslovakia, but these and subsequent efforts showed no concrete results until 1973. The most sensitive issue concerned the invalidity of the Munich Agreement. German negotiators made the argument that it was impossible to erase complex multilateral agreements through a bilateral treaty.74 This referred to the fact that, besides Germany, signatories of the Munich Agreement had included the governments of Britain, France and Italy. The Czech side countered that as early as the 1940s French and Italian authorities had declared the agreement as void, thus accepting the Czech position, and that only Britain, due to its imperialist interests, had rejected a similar declaration.75 In fact, during 1972 British diplomats contacted German officials on more than one occasion to register their concerns regarding any German willingness to declare the Munich Agreement as void or to issue a strong moral condemnation. In the British view the Munich Agreement had undoubtedly been a valid agreement until 1939, and however one evaluated Neville Chamberlain’s policies one should not question his good intentions.76 During the summer of 1972 the negotiations were interrupted, but in February 1973 the two heads of government signaled willingness to compromise. By this time the West German treaties with the USSR and Poland had entered into force and the Basic Treaty between East and West Germany was ready for ratification. On May 7, 1973 the official

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From the “policy of movement” toward reconciliation 37 negotiations began and ended with the initialing of a treaty on June 20, 1973 in Bonn.77 After the initialing of the treaty, however, new difficulties arose when a number of Eastern European countries interpreted the Quadripartite Agreement on Berlin rather narrowly. More specifically, this involved the question of “whether the federal government could represent West Berlin with respect to ‘juridical’ (firms, government agencies, courts, and so forth) as well as ‘natural’ persons.”78 West German Foreign Minister Scheel found a solution to this problem during a visit to Moscow in early November 1973. The Czechoslovak government then indicated its willingness to compromise on this issue as well.79 Finally, on December 11, 1973 the heads of government and foreign ministers of the two countries signed the treaty. Due to the nature of the Czechoslovak political system, formal ratification of the treaty presented no problem, but in West Germany the Christian Democratic opposition used all its means to delay ratification. Although the coalition of Social and Free Democrats had a clear majority in the Bundestag, the Christian Democrats enjoyed a majority in the upper house, the Bundesrat. Thus, the Bundesrat rejected the treaty, and the governing parties had to use their majority in the Bundestag to override this objection. Regarding the content of the treaty itself, the first two articles addressed the main bone of contention – the validity of the Munich Agreement. Article I states: “The Federal Republic of Germany and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic regard the Munich Agreement of September 29, 1938 as void in regard to their bilateral relations under the terms of this treaty.” In essence this formulation allowed both sides to continue holding different views of this problem. Czechoslovak (and Czech) governments have maintained that the treaty had never been valid, whereas Germany claimed that the treaty had been concluded in a legally valid fashion. Article II further restricts the meaning and consequences of this declaration on the nullity of the Munich Agreement. This was important to the German side because if the Munich Agreement had been invalid ab initio, Sudeten Germans would not have become German citizens. Furthermore, article II rules out Czechoslovak material claims, for reparations for example, on the basis of this treaty. The remainder of the treaty parallels the German–Polish treaty of 1970 with some modifications. During the ratification debates in West Germany opposition politicians acknowledged that this treaty had been negotiated more carefully than the treaties with the USSR and Poland, but the opposition rejected the treaty nonetheless.80 On July 1, 1974 a member of the Saarland cabinet summarized Christian Democratic objections.81 First of all, key provisions of the treaty were ambiguous. Second, the treaty, and particularly the treaty’s preamble, did not accurately present the historical record. It was not only the Czechs and Slovaks who had been wronged by Germany, and the Nazis in particular. Rather, the Sudeten Germans had also suffered because they had been denied their right to self-determination in 1919. Third,

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some Sudeten German politicians feared that the treaty supported Czechoslovak efforts in legitimizing the expulsion of Sudeten Germans after World War II.82 Fourth, the treaty was one-sided, containing many West German but no Czechoslovak concessions. Finally, the treaty did not ensure the full consular representation of West Berlin by the Federal Republic of Germany. In retrospect, the Christian Democratic opposition was right in pointing out that the treaty would not resolve conflicts over historical questions. The argument that West Germany had made too many concessions reflects the general opposition rhetoric against Brandt’s Ostpolitik as a whole, but it misinterprets the treaty. Rather, as Griffith pointed out, “[a]lthough in appearance a compromise, the treaty reflected more Czechoslovak than West German concessions.”83 In 1967 the two sides were unable to address issues relating to the Munich Agreement. By 1973 they still held differing views, but had reached a compromise on some of the legal consequences. This change came about, first of all, because in the intervening years the domestic support for new directions in Ostpolitik had widened. Expellee organizations formed a significant constituency for the Christian Democrats but not the Social Democrats. On the Czechoslovak side, intra-bloc politics had changed. In 1967 East Berlin had a strong interest in preventing too many Czechoslovak concessions to West Germany. By the time West German–Czechoslovak negotiations had reached their critical stage in 1973, however, both Moscow and East Berlin had resolved some fundamental issues in their relations with West Germany. Between 1970 and 1973 West Germany concluded a complex sequence of agreements with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Within this sequence the Prague treaty occupied the final element, and this weakened the Czechoslovak bargaining position.84 Analysis The point that West German bilateral agreements with Eastern bloc countries were bilateral in form but embedded in a multilateral framework is even more clear for the détente era treaties of the early 1970s than for the trade agreements of the 1960s. The most sensitive issues in West Germany’s eastern policy, including relations with East Germany, the status of Berlin and recognition of the post-1945 borders, directly involved West Germany’s Western allies. This meant that major new initiatives on these issues required allied approval or acquiescence. On the one hand, Brandt’s Ostpolitik brought West German policy closer in line with allied policies and reduced tensions not only between West Germany and its eastern neighbors but lessened frictions with West Germany’s Western allies as well. On the other hand, by doing so Ostpolitik created the conditions for more independent West German policies in this area. This embeddedness of German policy in a multilateral framework is particularly apparent in the German–Polish case. In that case the consultations between the West

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From the “policy of movement” toward reconciliation 39 German government and the Western allies, as well as the insistence of the allies on such consultations, show that German multilateralism was driven by a politics of interest and simple necessity since these negotiations addressed issues where West German sovereignty was limited.

German unification and Germany’s eastern neighbors German–Polish agreements The legal argument that the West German government made even after the Warsaw Treaty of 1970 was that with this treaty the Federal Republic of Germany had recognized the Oder–Neisse line but that this did not affect earlier bilateral and multilateral agreements, and this meant that the commitment arguably was not binding for a reunited Germany. One of these earlier agreements was the so-called Deutschlandvertrag (Germany Treaty) of 1954, which ended the occupation status of West Germany. In article 7 of this treaty the Western allies and the Federal Republic agreed that they would work toward a peace settlement for Germany as a whole and that the final determination of Germany’s borders would not take place until then. For a long time this legal interpretation of the Warsaw Treaty did not appear to have any practical consequences, but in 1989 and 1990 such arguments again assumed political significance. On November 9, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall fell, Chancellor Kohl was in fact in Poland but then interrupted his visit to fly back to Germany. For the new Polish non-Communist government under Prime Minister Mazowiecki, who had been elected in August 1989, the most sensitive issue in German–Polish relations was German recognition of the finality of Poland’s western border. This had been a longstanding Polish concern as had been compensation for Polish forced laborers during the Nazi period. In contrast to the Polish Communists and nationalists on the right, the new government did not oppose German reunification as such, but in the Polish government’s view German unity was not just a bilateral affair of the two Germanys but required agreement among the four allied powers and the approval of all European states, and Germany’s neighbors in particular.85 The West German government repeated the well-known legal arguments, but in fact the Kohl government did not favor negotiating a final peace treaty. Article 5 section 2 of the London Debt Agreement of 1953 stated that a review of reparations claims by countries that had fought against Germany in World War II would be postponed until the conclusion of a peace treaty. Thus, in a memorandum by Kohl’s foreign policy adviser Horst Teltschik of March 15, 1990, Teltschik argued that it was not in the interest of either the West German government or of a government of a united Germany to conclude a formal peace treaty since this would mean the reopening of the reparations issue.86 Theoretically, there were a number of possibilities to settle the external aspects of German unification, including

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the two Germanys handling everything themselves, a conference of the four allied powers, or a meeting of the much larger Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). In the end, the United States and West Germany pushed for negotiations among the two Germanys and the four allied powers.87 This clearly did not satisfy Poland and the Polish government eventually secured the right to participate in negotiating sessions concerning its borders. Although none of the political parties represented in the Bundestag questioned the German–Polish border, there were disagreements concerning the timing and the process of a final recognition or confirmation of Poland’s western border. These disagreements both within the governing coalition of Christian and Free Democrats and between the governing parties and the opposition were largely driven by domestic politics. Chancellor Kohl was widely criticized both at home and abroad for appearing to waffle on the finality of the German–Polish border. From Kohl’s perspective it was important that his policy toward Poland enjoyed as broad a support as possible, including from expellees.88 For the most part his party followed him on this issue, although on some occasions prominent Christian Democrats, such as the former speaker of the Bundestag Rita Süssmuth, were willing to make greater concessions to the Polish government than Kohl.89 In contrast to Helmut Kohl and large parts of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian affiliate, the Christian Social Union (CSU), his foreign minister, the Free Democrat Hans-Dietrich Genscher, at various times was willing to make more reassuring statements concerning Polish borders. Thus, when Kohl presented his ten-point plan for establishing confederative structures between East and West Germany shortly after the fall of Berlin Wall, Kohl had not consulted his coalition partner beforehand, and Genscher, as well as others, criticized that none of the ten points addressed the border issue.90 Such disputes occurred at other points during the reunification process as well, and at times it raised the specter of a breakup of the coalition.91 In 1990 German and Polish governments agreed that this border would be confirmed in a treaty between a united Germany and Poland. On June 21, 1990 both the East and West German parliaments expressed their will to confirm the border between a united Germany and Poland in a treaty. The resolutions referred to the Görlitz (Zgorzelec) Treaty of 1950 between East Germany and Poland and the 1970 Warsaw Treaty between West Germany and Poland in which the existing borders had been recognized. Shortly after this vote German expellee organizations and their political supporters in the CSU pushed for a broader friendship treaty which would not only include the border guarantee but also deal with such issues as the rights of the German minority in Poland.92 Helmut Kohl supported a link between the border confirmation and other issues in German–Polish relations because the chance of winning a broad majority for his policy toward Poland appeared higher this way than with a pure border treaty.93

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From the “policy of movement” toward reconciliation 41 However, this was not acceptable to the Polish government, and the two sides reached a compromise according to which Poland and Germany would negotiate two separate treaties which would be ratified at the same time, though.94 Formal negotiations on the two German–Polish treaties began in October 1990, shortly before presidential elections in Poland and parliamentary elections in Germany. According to Artur Hajnicz, who worked for the Polish Senate at the time, Polish Senate officials and the campaign managers of the mainstream presidential candidates reached an agreement not to make German–Polish negotiations a campaign issue.95 On November 14, 1990 the two foreign ministers signed the border treaty. The second round of negotiations on the friendship treaty took place on November 26 and 27, 1990, a week before German elections on December 3. The day before, Polish Prime Minister Mazowiecki had lost in the first round of presidential elections and resigned immediately thereafter. The German delegation at that time did not want to discuss the most sensitive issues in the treaty, such as the German minority in Poland, before the formation of a new German government after the upcoming December elections.96 The negotiations on the friendship treaty then finally concluded in April 1991. The text of the border treaty is rather short, consisting of a preamble and four articles. In the preamble the two sides mention their efforts to construct a peaceful European order in which borders would no longer divide peoples, and note their deep conviction that the unification of Germany as a state with permanent borders represents a significant contribution to peace in Europe. As Dieter Bingen pointed out, by emphasizing this supranational context the authors of the treaty attempted to show that the driving force behind its conclusion was not the desire to sign a substitute peace treaty, which had never been negotiated after World War II, but to make a contribution toward the construction of a new Europe.97 On the day of its signing German Foreign Minister Genscher insisted that the signing ceremonies were kept as simple as possible because, although with this treaty Germany had done the right thing, this day was not a joyous occasion for Germans, including his wife, who had lost their homes east of the Oder–Neisse line. Genscher also did not want the ambassadors of the four allied powers to be present because this treaty was strictly a German–Polish treaty. In his memoirs he wrote: On that November 14, 1990, I did not want to keep silent about the aspect of the day that was painful to Germans. Part of the new relationship between Germany and Poland was that our Polish partners understood what the treaty meant to us, and it was important that these circumstances were addressed by someone the Poles knew to be trying sincerely and with all the strength to achieve a new relationship between Germans and Poles. It was crucial to point out that no

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From the “policy of movement” toward reconciliation sacrifice had been forced on us. We were acting in accordance with our own historical and moral responsibility, and we were taking this step in full awareness of the crimes that had been committed in the name of Germany and by Germans against the Polish people.98

Whereas the border treaty only confirmed the finality of the German– Polish border, the friendship treaty of April 1991 covered a broad range of topics. Dieter Bingen has argued that this treaty was in fact the longest and most detailed friendship treaty signed between any member state of the EC/EU and a Central and Eastern European country since the end of the Cold War.99 In the treaty the Federal Republic pledged to support Polish efforts to get ready for membership in the European Community. In article 9 the Federal Republic committed itself to assist Poland in its economic transition process in order to reduce economic disparities. The treaty also contained provisions on cooperation in numerous areas from scientific exchange and environmental protection to cooperation between border regions. From the German perspective, particularly important and sensitive were Polish concessions on the rights of members of the German minority in Poland. The Polish government recognized the significance of this issue but also did not want to go further than the minority rights standards Poland had agreed to in the multilateral context of the CSCE and various human rights instruments. It did not want to grant the German minority special rights.100 Article 20 of the treaty stated that members of the German minority in Poland had the right to express and develop their ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity. The same applied to German citizens in Germany who were of Polish descent or who identified with the Polish language, culture or tradition. However, the Polish government did not yield to all German demands in this area, such as the installation of bilingual signs for towns in areas of traditional German settlement or a right of return for German expellees. On the other hand, the treaty did not address a key Polish demand – compensation for Polish victims of the Nazi regime. However, to facilitate ratification of the treaty by the Polish parliament, in October 1991 the two sides agreed to the establishment of a foundation for reconciliation, which provided modest compensation payments to Polish victims and which was financed by the German government. In Poland the ratification debates took place a month before Polish parliamentary elections in November 1991. Hajnicz argues that, given the uncertainty and unpredictability of Polish politics at the time, it was important that ratification took place before the elections when the government of Prime Minister Bielecki and Foreign Minister Skubiszewski were still in power.101 In the end both the Polish and German parliaments supported the treaties with decisive majorities.

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From the “policy of movement” toward reconciliation 43 German–Czech agreements The intention to negotiate an equivalent German–Czechoslovak treaty was first announced during a visit by Hans-Dietrich Genscher to Prague on November 2, 1990. In February 1991 the actual negotiations began. In April 1991 the two sides exchanged draft treaty texts. On October 7, 1991 Genscher and his Czechoslovak counterpart Jifií Dienstbier initialed the treaty, but a domestic German political controversy over the treaty delayed its signing. On January 21, 1992 a meeting of the governing German coalition parties removed the political obstacles to signing the treaty in February. The actual ceremony took place on February 27, 1992. Two months later, on April 22, 1992, the Czechoslovak parliament ratified the treaty. In the House of Nations 74 of 117 present deputies voted in favor of the treaty compared to 70 out of 109 in the House of the People. On May 20, 1992 the lower house of the German parliament, the Bundestag, approved the treaty, but there were dissenting votes among the ranks of the leading governing party, the CDU/CSU. On June 26, 1992 the German Bundesrat also voted in favor of the treaty against the opposition of Bavaria. These are the dry legal facts which concluded a rather controversial political process in both countries. Large parts of the German–Polish and German–Czechoslovak treaties are virtually identical to each other.102 Roughly parallel to a provision in the German–Polish treaty, in article 10 of the German–Czechoslovak friendship treaty the Federal Republic pledged to support the efforts of the âSFR to create the conditions for its full integration into the EC. There are significant differences, however, in the provisions on minorities. In article 21 of the German–Polish treaty the Polish government committed itself to support efforts to teach German to members of the German minority and to respect the right of members of the minority to participate in public life. The Czechoslovak government was not willing to include equivalent provisions in its treaty with Germany. For the most part, though, the politically sensitive aspects of bilateral German–Czech and German–Slovak relations were not dealt with in the treaty text itself. However, the preamble of the treaty refers to the fact that the Czechoslovak state had never ceased to exist since 1918 and contains a reference to the Munich Agreement of September 29, 1938. The most explosive issue in Czech–German relations in the 1990s, though, has been the treatment of the expulsion of Sudeten Germans after World War II. The preamble of the 1992 treaty began to tread through this political minefield. Thus, one part of the preamble reads: “mindful of the numerous victims of tyranny, war, and expulsion.” From a German perspective this may sound innocent enough, but among Czechs the use of the word vyhnání (expulsion) was highly controversial. Furthermore, the foreign ministers of the two countries exchanged identical letters, which state that in the context of future Czechoslovak integration into the European Community the

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Czechoslovak government would create the opportunity for German citizens to settle in Czechoslovakia. The two sides also declared that the treaty did not address property questions. To understand the politics behind this treaty we have to consider the position of Sudeten German expellee organizations and of the major political parties. Although Sudeten German expellee organizations like to present themselves as representatives of a unified ethnic group, historically Sudeten Germans have been a rather diverse lot, both in ethnic/linguistic and political terms. Some of these historic divisions have survived among the minority of politically active Sudeten Germans and colored their perceptions of the 1992 treaty. The largest and politically most significant expellee organization is the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft, which claims to speak for Sudeten Germans as a whole. Different political tendencies are represented by the Catholic Ackermann-Gemeinde, the Social Democratic Seliger-Gemeinde and the right-wing Witiko-Bund.103 Both the Ackermannand the Seliger-Gemeinde supported the treaty, while the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft rejected it. Whereas the Landsmannschaft recognized some positive elements in the treaty, some members of the Witiko-Bund rejected even the premises of the treaty. As far as Alfred Ardelt was concerned, for example, there was no point in getting the Czechs to apologize for the expulsion. Rather, the key issue was that Czechs had occupied German territory which did not belong to them and which they needed to return to the rightful owners.104 Although Sudeten Germans can be found among the ranks of all major German parties, the majority of the roughly 3 million Sudeten German expellees settled in Bavaria and became an important constituency for Bavaria’s leading party, the CSU. During the negotiations in April and May 1991 the German and Czechoslovak governments agreed not to settle property issues in the treaty text itself.105 The domestic German political controversy heated up in January 1992 after the treaty had already been initialed but not yet signed. On January 20 CSU chairman and Federal Finance Minister Waigel acknowledged that it probably was too late to achieve changes in the actual treaty text, but insisted on an exchange of letters which stated Sudeten German concerns and a resolution by the Bundestag to accompany ratification of the treaty.106 Leading Free Democratic politicians, such as then FDP chairman Count Lambsdorff, objected to further delays in signing the treaty and regarded the resolution demanded by the CSU as superfluous.107 On January 21 leading representatives of the three governing parties, the CDU, CSU and FDP, agreed to sign the treaty in February and to ratify the treaty accompanied by an appropriate Bundestag resolution.108 The party caucuses were to begin drafting the resolution in January, but in fact this process proved so acrimonious that the resolution was not finished until a day before treaty ratification in May 1992.109

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From the “policy of movement” toward reconciliation 45 During the ratification debate representatives of all parties endorsed the treaty. The Christian Democratic rapporteur Werner argued that it was in Germany’s interest to establish a basis of trust in Germany’s relations with its eastern neighbors and to seek to stabilize Eastern European democratic institutions and economies through close cooperation. Addressing his fellow expellees he stated that the treaty did not diminish the rights of Sudeten Germans.110 Gerd Poppe of Alliance 90/The Greens criticized the Christian Democrats for emphasizing the crimes committed against Sudeten Germans without noting the persecution of Czech and Slovak Jews by the Germans, the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, and the causal connection between Nazi Germany’s policies and the expulsion of ethnic Germans after the war.111 The Social Democrat Karsten Voigt appealed to his fellow citizens to show greater sensitivity in their interactions with Czechs and Slovaks. Germany was the big neighbor and while Germany’s national identity was never threatened by Czechs and Slovaks, the Czechs had to defend their national existence against Germany.112 The only opposition to the treaty came from the ranks of the CDU/CSU, but this of course carried political weight because the Christian Democrats were the governing party. In a written declaration Helmut Sauer and Bernhard Jagoda criticized the treaty because the Czechoslovak government had refused to invalidate Bene‰’ presidential decrees of 1945, which had provided the legal basis for the expropriation of Sudeten German property without compensation, compulsory labor conscription, etc., and because of a number of ambiguities in the treaty regarding the Munich Agreement and property issues.113 Furthermore, some German conservatives were incensed by a Czechoslovak government report to the Czechoslovak parliament in which the government appeared to backtrack on some of the concessions it had made to Germany in the treaty. Even before the 1992 treaty went into effect, it was clear that further negotiations were necessary. These remaining open questions included, first of all, the issue of how to compensate Czech victims of Nazi persecution. Representatives of Sudeten German organizations, on the other hand, wanted their material claims addressed. Directly related to that, the German side wanted the Czech government to formally distance itself from the expulsion. In more concrete terms, such a statement of regret/apology could either cover only “excesses” committed during the expulsion, differentiate between the so-called “wild” expulsion before the Potsdam agreement and the “organized transfer” after the Potsdam agreement, or condemn the expulsion/transfer as a whole. The Czech side, on the other hand, pushed for some kind of assurance from the German government that it would no longer pursue Sudeten German claims for restitution of property. Finally, the two sides planned to take further steps toward reconciliation, possibly including a youth exchange program, a German–Czech forum for dialogue, etc.

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The negotiations on this set of issues were rather complex, and to a large extent they were conducted secretly. After the ratification of the 1992 treaty the âSFR was preoccupied with its own dissolution, but during the summer of 1993 President Havel visited Germany, and Chancellor Kohl promised a solution to the question of compensation for victims of Nazi persecution. During the fall of 1993 Havel raised this issue again, and Czech Foreign Minister Zieleniec visited Germany as well. However, the German government told its Czech counterpart that a resolution of this issue would have to wait until after the German elections in 1994.114 German national elections were held in October 1994, and in early 1995 the Czech side was prepared to negotiate the text of a declaration which encompassed the outstanding issues. German negotiators, however, did not have a mandate for such negotiations. The actual negotiations finally began in late July 1995. By November 1995 substantial progress had been made, although a few issues were still bracketed.115 On December 20, 1995 leading politicians of Germany’s governing parties met, and Bavaria’s CSU demanded further changes in the draft text.116 The Czech government made additional concessions in early 1996, but then the Czech electoral calendar intervened. The Czech Republic held parliamentary elections in June 1996, and the governing parties wanted to keep Czech–German relations out of the campaign. For the most part they succeeded, but Václav Klaus’s governing coalition nonetheless narrowly lost the election on domestic issues and was forced to form a minority government dependent on support from the Czech Social Democrats. In December 1996 the negotiations finally came to an end. The outcome was a declaration which is worth quoting at length: The German side acknowledges Germany’s responsibility for its role in a historical development which led to the 1938 Munich Agreement, the flight and forcible expulsion of people from the Czech border area and the forcible breakup and occupation of the Czechoslovak Republic. It regrets the suffering and injustice inflicted upon the Czech people through National Socialist crimes committed by Germans. . . . The German side is also conscious of the fact that the National Socialist policy of violence towards the Czech people helped to prepare the ground for post-war flight, forcible expulsion and forced resettlement. The Czech side regrets that, by the forcible expulsion and forced resettlement of Sudeten Germans from the former Czechoslovakia after the war as well as by the expropriation and deprivation of citizenship, much suffering and injustice was inflicted upon innocent people, also in view of the fact that guilt was attributed collectively. . . . Both sides agree that injustice inflicted in the past belongs in the past, and will therefore orient their relations toward the future. . . . Both

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From the “policy of movement” toward reconciliation 47 sides therefore declare that they will not burden their relations with political and legal issues which stem from the past. In another part of the declaration and in a letter accompanying it, the Czech government indicated its willingness to accept applications by German citizens to live and work in the Czech Republic. In evaluating these applications Czech authorities promised to consider family and other ties. For the Czech side the most valuable part of the declaration was the last sentence of the quote above, which in practice meant that the German government would not actively pursue and support legal claims of expelled Sudeten Germans. The sensitivity of these issues again came through in the choice of Czech words for expulsion. In contrast to the preamble of the 1992 treaty, the 1996 declaration used the word vyhnanûní. On January 21, 1997 the German Chancellor and Czech Prime Minister signed the declaration, and on January 30, 1997 the German Bundestag approved it with a large majority of 577 of 620 attending deputies.117 Opposition to the declaration came from the ranks of the CSU. On February 14, after four days of debate, the Czech Chamber of Deputies supported the declaration with 131 to 59 votes. All 99 representatives of the governing parties – Václav Klaus’s Civic Democratic Party (ODS), the Civic Democratic Alliance (ODA) and the Christian Democrats/People’s Party (KDU-âSL) – voted in favor, as did the majority of Social Democrats (âSSD). The ultranationalist Czech Republicans, the Communists and some Social Democrats opposed the declaration.118 Hopes that this declaration would put an end to political debates over the past and to populist attempts at nationalist saber-rattling proved to be illusory. During the summer of 1998 the Czech Republic witnessed the formation of a new government under the Social Democrat Zeman. Zeman firmly rejected calls for the repeal of the Bene‰ decrees.119 After Zeman had made comments comparing the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft to the Communists and the extremist Czech Republicans, a CSU Bundestag deputy asked the German government to try to have the EU enlargement negotiations stopped until Zeman had issued an apology.120 A few months later the Social Democrat Gerhard Schröder became chancellor of Germany, and the two Social Democratic governments worked to finally defuse this issue. On March 8, 1999 Schröder said after a conversation with Zeman that the German government did not intend to press property claims against the Czech Republic, and Zeman in turn declared that a few laws dating from 1945 no longer had legal force.121 But even though, for the time being, this settled the issue between the two governments, Jörg Haider’s Austrian Freedom Party kept the issue alive. By early 2002 Austrian–Czech relations had become quite tense due to Austrian demands that the Czech government shut down a nuclear plant at Temelín. The Austrian Freedom Party had pushed for a referendum linking Austrian support for Czech EU membership to the fate of the Temelín

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nuclear plant. As this referendum turned into a failure, right-wing Austrian politicians raised another obstacle to EU enlargement. Before the Czech Republic would be allowed into the EU it had to abolish the Bene‰ decrees. Czech Prime Minister Zeman responded in an interview with an Austrian magazine in which he referred to Sudeten Germans as traitors and “Hitler’s fifth column.” The German government had attempted to stay out of the Austrian–Czech dispute but Zeman’s remarks led to friction in German– Czech relations. On January 23, 2002 the Bundestag debated Zeman’s remarks. Christoph Zöpel, a junior minister in the Foreign Office, exercised restraint and simply characterized the remarks as not constructive and unwise, whereas opposition politicians used much stronger language.122 Within the Czech Republic President Havel also criticized Zeman. In February 2002 more countries were drawn into this controversy. The Hungarian Prime Minister Orban called upon the Czech Republic and Slovakia to abolish the Bene‰ decrees, which had formed the legal basis for the expulsion and expropriation of not only a few million Sudeten Germans but of thousands of ethnic Hungarians as well, before EU accession. This predictably was met with strong protests by the Czech and Slovak governments. To fuel the diplomatic fire further, in an interview with an Israeli newspaper Zeman compared Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat to Adolf Hitler and appeared to suggest that Israel could solve its Palestinian problem the same way Czechoslovakia had dealt with the Sudeten Germans. This earned Zeman a rebuke by EU Commissioner Verheugen. At the end of February Chancellor Schröder then cancelled a trip to Prague, which had been planned initially to symbolize positive developments in German–Czech relations five years after the declaration of 1997. Neither the German government under Schröder nor the European Commission wanted to establish a link between the multilateral project of EU enlargement and the bilateral German–Czech dispute over the Bene‰ decrees. However, the chairman of the Czech Civic Democratic Party (ODS) Klaus then exactly made such a connection when he demanded that the EU accession treaty for the Czech Republic contain a clause recognizing the legal validity of the decrees. In May 2002 the German Interior Minister Otto Schily called upon the Czech government to abolish the Bene‰ decrees. In return the German side should declare that such a step would not lead to German compensation and restitution demands.123 All these statements and demands have to be seen against the background of campaigns for parliamentary elections in April 2002 for Hungary, June 2002 for the Czech Republic, and September 2002 for Germany.

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Analysis The German commitment to multilateral organizations and multilateral principles most clearly manifested itself in the pledge to support Czech and Polish efforts to join the European Union, Europe’s most important

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From the “policy of movement” toward reconciliation 49 multilateral project. Such a commitment had obviously not been possible during the Cold War period, and thus German–Czech and German–Polish relations took on a new quality. Comparing the German–Czech and German–Polish cases, Germany went to greater lengths to embed its relationship with Poland in a broader multilateral framework than with the Czech Republic. This is not evident in the treaty texts themselves, which for the most part are quite similar, but it does show in how the treaties were negotiated and in subsequent developments. First of all, the treaties with Poland were an integral part of the broader diplomacy on German unification that involved not just the two Germanys but the four allied powers and Poland as well. Beyond that, in August 1991 the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland initiated the so-called “Weimar Triangle,” i.e. regular meetings among the three foreign ministers.124 This institution served to support Polish efforts to join the EU, but it also had the purpose of reducing Polish fears of German dominance.125 In the area of security cooperation, in September 1999 Denmark, Germany and Poland established the multinational army corps Northeast. There is no equivalent with the Czech Republic. Even in the Polish case, though, there were limits to Germany’s commitment to multilateralism. The Kohl government did not favor a large multilateral forum to settle the diplomatic aspects of German unification and it resisted Polish demands to turn the 1990 border treaty into more than a bilateral treaty.

Conclusion This chapter has shown that in the 1960s and 1970s West Germany’s integration into Western multilateral institutions constrained West Germany’s policies not only with other Western countries but with Eastern Europe as well. Beyond that, however, West Germany pursued its own bilateral priorities. At the end of the 1980s a qualitative shift occurred in German relations with the Czech Republic and Poland, as well as other countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Helping to integrate these countries into Western multilateral institutions became a major goal of German foreign policy. This extension of the German multilateral approach to Eastern Europe served German economic and strategic interests, but it had a normative component as well. In the early post-World War II period West German multilateralism reflected West German weakness as West Germany needed the support of its Western allies, particularly on issues related to the East–West conflict in Europe. After the end of the Cold War an important goal of German multilateralism was to reassure its European neighbors and to dispel fears of a renewed German dominance, particularly in areas of traditionally strong German influence, such as parts of Eastern Europe. For the time period discussed in this chapter German policy, particularly in the case of Poland, also contained a moral component. As Dieter Bingen argued in his study of Bonn’s policy toward Poland from 1949 until 1991,

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this moral sensibility paradoxically grew with increasing temporal distance from the Nazi period.126 In order to explain the outcome of the negotiations covered in this chapter we need to analyze the relative bargaining power of the parties involved. The wider the range of possible agreements acceptable to a negotiator and her constituents the less bargaining power the negotiator has. On the other hand, if the win-sets of the negotiating parties get too small, the likelihood of reaching a viable agreement also drops. In the cases at issue here, for a number of reasons German and Czech negotiators faced tighter constraints than their counterparts in German–Polish negotiations. This explains why German–Czech negotiations tended to be much more protracted than German–Polish ones. First of all, the Cold War had a differential impact on Czech and Polish foreign policy and left the Polish leadership with more flexibility than the Czechoslovak party and government. More specifically, Czechoslovakia shared a border with West Germany, making it a frontline state, whereas Poland and West Germany did not share a border. Intra-bloc relations explain why in August 1967 West Germany was not able to negotiate more than a limited trade agreement with Czechoslovakia. After Romania had agreed to the establishment of diplomatic relations with West Germany early in 1967, the Soviet Union insisted on tighter intra-bloc discipline. Intra-bloc relations also account for the sequence of the détente treaties of the early 1970s. After the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in August 1968 it was clear that the West German strategy of improving relations with Eastern Europe by focusing on the smaller Eastern European countries first had failed. Thus, in 1970 the West German government under Willy Brandt first negotiated a renunciation of force treaty with the Soviet Union, followed by the Warsaw Treaty and the Basic Agreement between East and West Germany of 1972, and then it was Czechoslovakia’s turn. However, although intra-Soviet bloc relations account for the broad sequence of détente treaties, this does not fully explain why it took until the end of 1973 to reach agreement on the Prague Treaty. As Jiri Valenta put it, [i]ntransigence on the issue of rapprochement with West Germany originated in Prague and not in Moscow, though it was tolerated for a short time by Brezhnev – until 1973 when the Soviet leader personally pressured the Czechoslovaks to pursue further negotiations with West Germany.127

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A similar argument can be made for the trade negotiations in the 1960s. Intra-bloc relations explain the limited nature of the 1967 German– Czechoslovak agreement, but the dynamics of intra-bloc relations were not the main reason why it took until 1967 to reach such a limited agreement on the exchange of trade missions. The German–Czechoslovak trade

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From the “policy of movement” toward reconciliation 51 negotiations began in 1964 but broke down in March 1965 and had to be restarted in 1967. Müller and Utitz suggested that by 1965 the Czechoslovak party leadership under Novotn˘ was under enough domestic pressure that it feared the potential political consequences of improved relations with West Germany and took an increasingly rigid approach which resulted in the breakdown of negotiations.128 Thus, we need to consider the impact of domestic politics. De-Stalinization occurred earlier in Poland than in Czechoslovakia, and in the 1970s the very insecure Husák regime pursued domestic policies that even by Soviet bloc standards were rather repressive, and its foreign policy was quite timid. This can partly explain why West Germany found it easier to reach agreements with Poland in the 1960s and 1970s than with Czechoslovakia. However, differences between the Czechoslovak and Polish regimes did not always predict differences in the outcomes of the negotiations. At times at least, West German diplomats perceived signs of greater flexibility in Prague than in Warsaw. Thus, in March 1966 the West German government launched a diplomatic initiative aimed at Eastern Europe, which used more conciliatory language toward Czechoslovakia than Poland. The rationale behind this initiative was that Prague appeared more receptive to Western arguments, and German diplomats noted Czechoslovak reservations against Soviet tutelage. Domestically, the West German foreign office wanted to take on the expellee organizations separately rather than face a united opposition of Silesian and Sudeten German expellees.129 During the Cold War period differences in the political influence of different expellee groups were indeed important for understanding variation in German policies toward the Czech Republic and Poland. It was easier to mobilize Sudeten German expellees politically, partly because they, more so than other groups, were concentrated in one state, Bavaria. Bavaria’s leading party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), adopted the role of protector of Sudeten German interests. Since the CSU has been part of every German government led by Christian Democrats, Sudeten Germans have had a voice at the federal level that other expellee groups did not enjoy to the same extent. This presence of hardliners in the governing coalition restricted the German win-set in German–Czech negotiations. More specifically, of all West German states, Bavaria has been the home of the largest number of expellees. A majority of expellees in Bavaria had come from Czechoslovakia, and, of all Sudeten Germans who settled in West Germany, a majority found a new home in Bavaria.130 This high degree of concentration made it easier to maintain a distinct group identity by facilitating communication among members of the group. For example, of all expellee groups in Bavaria, Sudeten Germans had the lowest ethnic intermarriage rate. Furthermore, a higher percentage of Sudeten Germans joined expellee organizations than did other expellees.131 There was also a mismatch between social and economic structures in Bavaria after the war and the socioeconomic background of Sudeten German expellees, which

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complicated their integration by increasing the tension between the local population and the new arrivals. After the war Bavaria was still a predominantly agricultural region, whereas a high proportion of Sudeten Germans had worked in industry. This may partly explain why, according to a 1985 poll, a lower percentage of respondents in Bavaria agreed that expellees had become fully integrated than respondents from any other German state.132 Thomas Grosser also suggested that at least during the Cold War support for foreign policy demands by expellees provided a way for German and particularly Bavarian politicians to redirect expellee frustrations without incurring significant political costs.133 Numerically, German Silesians from Poland formed an even larger expellee group than Sudeten Germans. However, they were not as successful in establishing a collective identity and faced greater obstacles in mobilizing political support. Whereas after the war a single homeland society (Landsmannschaft) claimed to represent Sudeten Germans, similar efforts among Silesians resulted in a split between the Silesian homeland society and a homeland society for Upper Silesia. In the late 1980s support for Silesian expellee politicians eroded within the Christian Democratic party. In 1987 Herbert Hupka, the leader of the Silesian homeland society, failed to win renomination for a seat in the Bundestag, and Herbert Czaja, the other prominent Silesian expellee politician, had difficulty in getting reelected to the CDU executive board in Baden-Württemberg.134 Thus, Sudeten German expellees enjoyed greater political success than expellees from Poland, and this complicated German–Czech relations. Today expellee politics matters less than it did during the Cold War but these issues played a role during the negotiations on compensation for victims of Nazi crimes, which is the subject of the following chapter.

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The diplomacy of compensation for Eastern European victims of Nazi crimes

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The issue of compensation for Eastern European victims of Nazi crimes has been one of the most emotionally charged issues in German relations with its Central and Eastern European neighbors. For the purposes of this study the key concerns are the use of bilateral versus multilateral compensation agreements and the extent to which German governments followed “generalized principles of conduct” in their compensation policies. The chapter makes three major points. First, although the main compensation agreements benefiting Eastern European victims were not concluded until the 1990s, West Germany established the legal framework for restitution/ compensation payments as far back as the early 1950s, and the principles behind these diplomatic agreements and legislation shaped all subsequent efforts. German policy makers and lawyers distinguished between reparations as payments to other states for war damages and compensation to individuals for crimes characteristic of and unique to the Nazi regime (Wiedergutmachung).1 The domestic West German Wiedergutmachung legislation in principle limited payments to individuals who had some territorial connection to Germany. This territorial principle resulted in obvious inequities. Virtually all subsequent legislative efforts and diplomatic agreements up through the 1990s can be interpreted as efforts to work around decisions made in the late 1940s and early 1950s in regard to reparations and Wiedergutmachung. Second, as the evaluation of Nazi policies and general German attitudes toward different groups changed in the 1960s and thereafter, compensation policies changed as well. To provide just one example, whereas in the 1950s German compensation authorities and courts typically denied compensation claims by gypsies/Sinti and Roma because they allegedly had not been systematically persecuted before 1943, German courts began to reverse earlier decisions in the 1960s. Third, for the most part the compensation agreements which Germany concluded until the late 1990s were bilateral agreements. This changed in 2000 with the agreement on the establishment of a foundation to compensate forced laborers, but even in the case of this agreement the German government initially favored a bilateral agreement with the United States.

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To a significant extent, differences among these agreements reflect differences in the bilateral relationships between Germany and the respective negotiating partners. Thus, in the early and mid-1990s Germany negotiated the establishment of various foundations to compensate Nazi victims in Poland, the Czech Republic, Belarus and Ukraine. The German–Czech negotiations were the most difficult ones due to the overall difficulties in German–Czech relations at the time. More specifically, the German and Czech governments struggled with conflicting interpretations of the expulsion of Sudeten Germans after World War II, and this issue blocked progress on other issues as well. On the other hand, the significance of the US–German relationship meant that, once the US government and US courts became involved in the forced/slave labor issue, pressure to reach a settlement increased.2 This was so even though the majority of the intended beneficiaries of the forced/slave labor foundation were not US citizens. Of particular significance for this study is the fact that the multilateral forced/slave labor agreement at least attempted to come to terms with the issue of discrimination among different groups of victims. This chapter will first discuss the issue of reparations, then provide a brief overview of domestic German compensation legislation of the 1950s and 1960s before moving on to an analysis of diplomatic agreements in the 1960s and 1970s to compensate victims of crimes characteristic of the Nazi regime. Toward the end of the chapter I will provide a discussion of the issue of compensation for forced labor and a comparison of the compensation agreements concluded between 1991 and 1997.

Reparations As Zieger has pointed out, the reparations issue did not play a prominent role in the allied war conferences.3 The Potsdam Agreement of August 1, 1945 stated that “[p]ayment of Reparations should leave enough resources to enable the German people to subsist without external assistance.”4 The following section of this document anticipated the future division of Germany into two parts for reparations purposes: 1. Reparations claims of the U.S.S.R. shall be met by removals from the zone of Germany occupied by the U.S.S.R., and from appropriate German external assets . . . 2. The reparation claims of the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries entitled to reparations shall be met from the Western zones and from appropriate German external assets.5 Along these lines Western countries then signed a reparations agreement in Paris in 1946 and established an interallied reparations agency which continued working until its dissolution in 1959.

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Compensation for Eastern European victims of Nazi crimes 55 On January 3, 1951 the Israeli cabinet decided to seek reparations from Germany. At that point there was great reluctance to deal with any German government directly, and the Israeli government instead wrote diplomatic notes to the allied powers in which it essentially asked for $1.5 billion to cover the costs which Israel had incurred for absorbing 500,000 Jewish refugees.6 The allied response to Israel’s request was discouraging, and this ultimately led to direct contacts between Israel and West Germany. In October 1951 a number of Jewish organizations formed the Conference of Jewish Material Claims against Germany. On December 6, 1951 the chairman of the Jewish Claims Conference Nahum Goldmann met with West German Chancellor Adenauer in London, and Adenauer agreed to write a letter to Goldmann in which he accepted Israel’s request as the basis for negotiations.7 Diplomatic negotiations began in March 1952 and concluded with the signing of an agreement between West Germany and Israel in Luxembourg on September 10, 1952. In this agreement the Federal Republic of Germany committed itself to paying DM 3 billion to Israel and an additional DM 450 million with the Jewish Claims Conference as the beneficiary. The official West German position at the time was that these payments did not constitute reparations in a legal sense because reparations claims could only be made by states, and the state of Israel did not exist until 1948. Rather, Germany recognized its moral obligation to make such payments and acted voluntarily.8 Roughly at the same time West Germany concluded negotiations with the Western allied powers on ending the occupation status for West Germany. As part of this set of agreements the Federal Republic committed itself to compensating persons who had been persecuted due to their political views, religion, race or nationality.9 Also directly related to the negotiations with Israel were negotiations on German foreign debt which ended with the London Debt Agreement of 1953. Article 5 section 2 of this agreement stated that a review of claims by countries that had fought against Germany in World War II would be postponed until the conclusion of a peace treaty. In this context German politicians expressed the hope that, although this did not amount to a legal renunciation of future reparations claims, the likelihood of such claims in the distant future was rather low.10 The Dutch delegation at these negotiations initially objected to this clause because it feared its effect on potential claims by individual Dutch citizens who had survived German concentration camps or forced labor. The Dutch government hoped to reach a compensation agreement with the Federal Republic on this issue and did not want to have to wait until the final disposition of reparations claims.11 However, the West German government pointed to its limited resources and the Western allies gave priority to their debt claims, which meant that the Dutch position had no chance of success. Regarding Eastern European reparations demands, in February 1947 the smaller Axis powers, which included the Eastern European countries of

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Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania, signed peace treaties in Paris. Most of these peace treaties included provisions in which the former Axis powers waived claims against Germany, including claims for loss and damage arising during the war.12 Thus, article 30 section 4 of the Hungarian peace treaty states that “Hungary waives on its own behalf and on behalf of Hungarian nationals all claims against Germany and German nationals outstanding on May 8, 1945, except those arising out of contracts and other obligations entered into, and rights acquired, before September 1, 1939.”13 On August 15, 1953 the Soviet government sent a note to the Western allies in which it expressed its intention to release Germany from any further reparations obligations effective on January 1, 1954. On August 22 the Soviet Union signed a treaty along these lines, and a parallel Polish treaty followed two days later. Although this waiver of reparations claims was initially directed at East Germany, it was expressed in such a general form that arguably it included all of Germany.14 However, Polish governments of all stripes from the 1940s through the late 1990s fairly consistently distinguished between reparations and compensation for concentration camp survivors and other victims of Nazi persecution. With the election of Willy Brandt as chancellor in 1969 and the intense controversy over Brandt’s Ostpolitik, reparations and other compensation issues became caught up in domestic West German debates over the 1970 détente treaties with the USSR and Poland, and subsequent treaties with Czechoslovakia and other Eastern European countries. Christian Democratic members of the Bundestag argued that, beyond a variety of other flaws in these treaties, the treaties also opened the door to potentially massive financial claims. Deputies repeatedly asked questions about the financial consequences of Brandt’s Ostpolitik, and how the federal government planned to respond to reparations claims. To give only one example, on November 20, 1970 the finance ministry wrote in response to such questions that the federal government never considered the payment of reparations. Rather, the federal government adhered to the London Debt Agreement which essentially ruled out reparations until the conclusion of a peace treaty.15 During the negotiations with Poland, which concluded in 1970, the issue of reparations was not a major one. To achieve clarification on this point, the West German government asked for a confirmation of Poland’s 1953 renunciation of reparations claims, which the Polish government granted in 1970 before signing the Warsaw Treaty in December 1970.16 Nonetheless, the day Willy Brandt signed the treaty Polish Communist party leader Gomu∏ka told Brandt that about ten million Poles would be eligible for compensation payments if West German compensation laws were applied to them. If West Germany were willing to grant Poland a credit of DM 10 billion at an interest rate of no more than 2 percent Poland would drop all future compensation demands. If Brandt regarded this proposal as unacceptable he should ignore it, and the question would have to remain

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Compensation for Eastern European victims of Nazi crimes 57 open for the time being.17 Polish restraint on this issue ended, however, after the Warsaw Treaty had cleared the political hurdles to German ratification and the Brandt government had been re-elected with a more comfortable majority in the fall of 1972. The West German government had expected that Poland would show a cooperative spirit on the “humanitarian issue” of granting exit permits to members of the German minority in Poland. In 1973 and 1974, however, it became quite clear that progress in this area would be linked to another humanitarian issue, compensation for concentration camp survivors and forced laborers. Thus, on March 22, 1973 the First Secretary of the Polish Communist party gave a speech in which he stated that the Warsaw Treaty of 1970 had opened positive perspectives for relations between the two countries, but that it was also necessary to address the losses Poland had suffered under the Nazis.18 Germany was not willing to consider reparations demands but instead hoped to placate Polish wishes through enhanced economic cooperation, including the provision of subsidized credits. Finally, on August 1, 1975 after a long night session, West German Chancellor Schmidt and Polish leader Gierek reached an agreement, which included a global settlement of pension claims, a large West German credit and Polish assurances on emigration possibilities for members of the German minority in Poland. This package deal of 1975 aroused considerable controversy in West German domestic politics, and the Bundesrat, where the Christian Democratic opposition had a majority at the time, approved it only after considerable haggling. Much of the controversy involved the issue of exit permits for Germans living in Poland, which I will address in the next chapter. Nonetheless, the controversy also involved the pension claims agreement itself. When Foreign Minister Genscher introduced the agreement to the Bundestag he argued that for legal and political reasons the federal government could not satisfy Polish compensation demands for concentration camp survivors.19 However, as the Social Democratic deputy Sund explained, the intended beneficiaries of the agreement included Poles who had been forced laborers in Germany during World War II and who had part of their wages withheld as contributions to German social insurance agencies.20 Helmut Kohl, at the time minister president of Rhineland-Palatinate, questioned whether a global settlement would really advance the cause of German–Polish reconciliation. In his view direct payments to individual claimants would have been more effective.21 As the following section will show, West German domestic legislation provided for compensation payments to victims of Nazi persecution, but it largely excluded claims by foreigners and particularly claims by victims who lived in Eastern Europe.

German domestic compensation and restitution legislation The first steps toward (West) German legislation took place at the initiative of the allied occupation authorities. To provide only one example, on

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September 8, 1945 the French military government in Germany issued an order to establish a state-wide (Land) authority for assistance to victims of the Nazi regime.22 Characteristic of these early efforts was the wide variation among Länder restitution laws in terms of coverage, eligibility requirements, financing methods, etc. On April 1, 1949 a compensation law went into effect in the US-occupied zone, which served as the model for future West German compensation laws. Shortly thereafter the Federal Republic of Germany adopted its constitution, the Basic Law, which included compensation and restitution among the federal government’s concurrent powers. The federal government came under considerable pressure in 1949 and 1950 to exercise this authority by victims’ organizations, the allied occupation authorities and the Social Democratic opposition.23 However, Adenauer’s government resisted. Beginning in 1951 some Länder gave up their resistance to the use of federal authority in this area and in 1953 the German Bundestag passed a federal compensation law which was amended in 1956 and once again in 1965 with the passage of the federal compensation terminal law (BEG-Schlussgesetz). This law defined a victim of Nazi persecution as one who was oppressed because of political opposition to National Socialism, or because of race, religion or ideology, and who suffered in consequence loss of life, damage to limb and health, loss of liberty, property or possessions, or harm to vocational or economic pursuits.24 This sounds comprehensive enough, but in practice some victims faced very high hurdles to gain recognition of their claims. Until 1963 German courts denied that gypsies/Sinti and Roma faced persecution on racial grounds before 1943, when Himmler ordered the removal of all gypsies to Auschwitz. Gypsies had been persecuted before 1943, but German courts and compensation authorities argued that this pre-1943 persecution was based on anti-social behavior by gypsies and that anti-gypsy measures followed a tradition predating the Nazis.25 Many Eastern European victims of Nazi persecution did not meet the criteria of section 1 as they were persecuted because of their nationality rather than their political views. The 1956 and 1965 versions of the law reinforced this distinction verbally by reserving the term Verfolgte (persecuted) for racial, religious and political cases and using the word Geschädigte (injured) for those who had suffered due to their nationality. In order to receive any benefits as a so-called Nationalgeschädigter the claimant had to prove that he or she was a refugee according to the Geneva Convention of 1951. These legal distinctions had significant practical consequences because, under the early versions of the law at least, persecuted victims received greater benefits than Nationalgeschädigte.26 But even if Eastern European victims had gained recognition at least as Nationalgeschädigte, they were still not eligible for benefits associated with

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Global agreements of the late 1950s and 1960s Between July 1959 and July 1964 the Federal Republic of Germany signed compensation agreements with eleven Western European countries (Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, Greece, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Great Britain and Sweden). On the basis of the agreements Germany provided these countries with a lump sum, which the recipient governments then used to compensate their own citizens who had been persecuted by the Nazis.27 The negotiations were almost invariably difficult. The West German government was willing to offer much lower amounts than the recipients initially had anticipated. Another major point of controversy involved the distribution of these funds and the determination of the ultimate beneficiaries. Germany and its negotiating partners could not reach agreement on this issue and ultimately it was left to the discretion of the recipient governments. Germany, for example, did not want to compensate resistance fighters because, in the German view, they were persecuted for military security reasons rather than on racial, religious or political grounds. Another problematic group of beneficiaries involved victims who had not been citizens of the recipient countries at the time of the persecution. This issue was particularly prominent in the negotiations with Great Britain. During the war Germany did not occupy Great Britain, with the exception of the Channel Islands, and thus there were few British citizens who had directly suffered under German occupation. However, the British government acted as the advocate of Polish victims who had fled to Britain after the war and who had then acquired British citizenship. The West German government disputed the British claims but in the end the two sides agreed on a text which was vague enough to cover victims who only recently had become British citizens. Thus, with few exceptions, Eastern European victims of Nazi persecution did not receive any compensation during the Cold War. West Germany fought off reparations claims by pointing to the London Debt Agreement and the 1953 renunciation of reparations claims by Poland and the Soviet Union. East Germany paid high reparations to the Soviet Union in a variety of forms, including the removal of industrial equipment and personnel. Beyond that, however, East Germany did not consider itself a successor

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state to the German Reich and thus deemed itself not responsible for compensation. When Eastern European countries raised reparations and other compensation claims, they addressed these claims to West Germany. The residence requirements of West German domestic legislation also effectively excluded most foreign victims. Western European governments then put pressure on West Germany so that at least their citizens would receive compensation, but the Cold War precluded similar agreements with Eastern European countries. The only exception to this exclusion was a set of four agreements negotiated between 1961 and 1972 with Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland to provide compensation for victims of pseudomedical experiments in concentration camps. These agreements were the result of pressure from the United States, where a visit by 35 Polish women, who had been subjected to such experiments in a German concentration camp, had received considerable publicity.28 With the end of the Cold War, however, it became possible and necessary to settle the remaining issues from the World War II era between Germany and countries in Central and Eastern Europe.

Foundations for reconciliation After German reunification Germany negotiated a series of diplomatic agreements with Eastern European countries to put the relationship with these countries on a new basis. This provided the opportunity to settle remaining issues from the past. One of these issues involved compensating Eastern European victims of Nazi crimes. However, there were other outstanding issues as well, such as the rights of any remaining ethnic German minorities in these countries and a re-evaluation of the expulsion/ forcible resettlement of ethnic Germans after the war. These issues were most sensitive in German relations with its two eastern neighbors, the Czech Republic and Poland. After the fall of the Berlin Wall German reparations became part of the diplomatic negotiations over German reunification. As discussed in the previous chapter, Poland had demanded that Germany provide explicit assurances on the finality of Poland’s western border. For domestic political reasons Chancellor Kohl hesitated with such assurances and broadened the debate to include issues which were important to parts of his conservative constituency, such as minority rights for German speakers in Poland. On March 8, 1990 the German Bundestag passed a resolution in which it suggested that after the elections in East Germany both German parliaments adopt resolutions confirming the finality of Poland’s border with Germany. The resolution also expressed the expectation that Poland would honor its 1953 renunciation of reparations claims in regard to a united Germany.29 On March 19, 1990 the issue of compensation payments for Polish forced laborers and concentration camp survivors came up in a conversation between Kohl’s foreign policy adviser Teltschik and two Polish diplomats.

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Compensation for Eastern European victims of Nazi crimes 61 The Polish officials emphasized that they were not making reparations claims to be settled between governments but favored the establishment of one or two foundations to assist Polish victims on an individual basis.30 In the context of the ratification debate in the Polish parliament of the border and friendship treaties, the two governments exchanged identical letters which called for the establishment of a German–Polish foundation for “Reconciliation.” The German government committed itself to paying DM 500 million in three installments. Beneficiaries included roughly 40,000 former concentration camp inmates, another 30,000 victims who as children had been imprisoned or forced to do heavy labor, and about 500,000 forced laborers.31 Given the large number of applicants, the average payment did not exceed the rather paltry sum of DM 500. In the note exchange the Polish government agreed that it would no longer raise compensation claims against the German government and that it regarded this issue as settled. However, this did not preclude private Polish citizens from making additional claims.32 The issue of forced labor was also quite sensitive in German negotiations with successor states of the Soviet Union. Soviet citizens who had been subject to forced labor in Germany were not only victims of Nazi persecution, but after the war Stalin treated the forced laborers as collaborators with Nazi Germany and they ended up in Soviet camps. At the end of 1990 the Soviet government rehabilitated displaced forced laborers, and the victims themselves formed their own organizations. In 1991 and 1992 the Russian government raised the issue of compensation in talks with its German counterpart. Initially, Germany took the position that the USSR had relinquished its reparations claims in 1953 and that Russia was a successor state and thus had lost its claims as well. However, on December 16, 1992 German Chancellor Kohl and Russian President Yeltsin agreed on a joint declaration in which Germany promised to pay DM 1 billion to victims of Nazi persecution.33 On March 30, 1993 Germany, the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Belarus exchanged diplomatic notes in which Germany reiterated its promise and left it to the three Soviet successor states to divide this sum among themselves. On August 15, 1993 the three countries signed an agreement according to which Russia and Ukraine would receive DM 400 million each, and Belarus would get the remaining DM 200 million. Beyond that, the parties agreed that Russia would provide for victims in Lithuania and Latvia, Ukraine would cover the Moldovan claimants, and Belarus would be responsible for Estonia.34 To implement this agreement, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus set up foundations in their respective capitals and worked out guidelines for distributing the funds, which began to arrive in December 1993. Germany did not have any influence over the operation of these foundations, which suited all sides. Russia, as well as Ukraine and Belarus, did not want any German influence, and the German government wanted to rid itself of a rather unpleasant and sensitive issue.35

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However, the issue did not completely disappear. Including the Baltic states in these arrangements was inherently problematic. These states had been illegally incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940 as a result of collusion between Hitler and Stalin. It is at least questionable whether the 1953 renunciation of Soviet reparations claims should count against the Baltic states. Furthermore, one could raise political and moral objections against asking Baltic victims of Nazi persecution to apply for compensation at Russian offices that Baltic citizens may perceive as oppressors as well. Thus, at the end of 1993 the German government offered the Baltic states DM 2 million each in addition to the funds that Baltic citizens could receive through the foundations administered by Russia and Belarus. The German government envisioned that these additional funds would be used to support projects such as nursing homes rather than direct payments to individuals. This approach, though, was thoroughly criticized by the potential beneficiaries and by members of the German parliament. Latvian victims wrote in a letter to the German foreign minister that they had had enough experience with German institutions.36 Nonetheless, in July 1995 the Estonian government agreed to accept these funds, and Lithuania followed in July 1996.37 Latvia proved more intractable, partly at least because the Latvian government linked such an agreement to additional German compensation for Latvian members of the SS.38 Particularly complex were negotiations with Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic. The key to understanding German–Czech difficulties is that politically the negotiations over compensation to victims of Nazi crimes were linked to other disputes, including the Czech evaluation of the expulsion/resettlement of Sudeten Germans in 1945/46. In December 1996 the negotiations on a Czech–German declaration on reconciliation finally came to an end. Article VII of the declaration called for the establishment of a Czech–German “Fund for the Future.” Germany committed itself to contributing DM 140 million to this fund, whereas the Czech Republic pledged about DM 25 million.39 In identical letters attached to this declaration the two foreign ministers stated their expectation that the bulk of the funds would be used to benefit Czech victims of Nazi persecution.40 Beyond that, the German government expected that Sudeten Germans would also benefit. Even then, further negotiations were necessary before the fund could begin its operation. The two sides disagreed on who should sit on the administrative board governing the fund’s activities, and on what kind of projects should receive support. Regarding the personnel question, the two sides had agreed that each government would nominate half of the board’s members. However, the German government, and in particular the chancellor’s office, insisted on nominating two prominent Sudeten Germans, which was not acceptable to the Czech government.41 Finally, on December 29, 1997 the Czech and German foreign ministers exchanged diplomatic notes establishing the “Fund for the Future” and a Czech–German forum, while

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Compensation for Eastern European victims of Nazi crimes 63 postponing decisions on who would serve on the boards overseeing these bodies.42 At the end of January 1998 the two governments announced the members of the administrative board of the Fund for the Future, which, on the German side, included two Sudeten German politicians. Sudeten German expellee organizations demanded that expulsion victims should receive compensation as well. The Czech government rejected this demand, but the fund’s administrative board agreed that in exceptional circumstances German victims of Nazi persecution could receive benefits as well. An example of such special circumstances would be German Social Democrats who had fled to Czechoslovakia after 1933 and who had been extradited by Czechoslovak authorities.43 In 2000, Sudeten German charities submitted a request to the fund to assist needy Sudeten Germans who had suffered from long imprisonment and forced labor in Czechoslovakia. At that time the fund’s administrative board refused to act on the request. In 2003 these groups resubmitted their request. In this context Foreign Minister Fischer wrote a letter to Bavarian Premier Stoiber in which Fischer supported a “humanitarian gesture” to needy Sudeten Germans. He was careful not to use the term “compensation.” The initial reaction of the Czech government was not favorable, though.44 After some delays the administrative board of the fund rejected this request in October 2003. Jewish concentration camp survivors criticized that the fund did not envision direct payments to victims, many of whom because of their advanced age would not live long enough to benefit from the time-consuming building of nursing homes.45 Addressing some of these concerns, the Jewish Claims Conference and the German government announced in January 1998 that the Jewish Claims Conference would set up a fund to assist Jewish Holocaust survivors in Eastern Europe and that the German government would contribute DM 200 million to this fund.46 As shown by this brief discussion of foundations for reconciliation in Soviet successor states and Poland, and of the Czech–German Fund for the Future, there are significant differences among these arrangements. The Czech–German fund to some extent has a broader purpose and is more ambitious than the foundations for reconciliation in Warsaw, Moscow and elsewhere. The primary purpose of the Czech–German fund is to provide assistance to Czech victims of Nazi persecution, but the fund also anticipates that it will support other clearly “future”-oriented activities, such as youth exchanges. This was not the case for the previously established foundations for reconciliation. Related to this difference in purpose and goals are differences in financing and the type of beneficiaries benefiting from these foundations. The foundations for reconciliation established in Warsaw, Moscow, Kiev and Minsk administer and distribute funds provided by the German government. Germany also foots most of the bill for the Czech–German fund, but the Czech government will pay into it as well. Furthermore, in contrast to the foundations for reconciliation, although the Czech–German fund has not provided compensation for

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Sudeten Germans, it may support projects that are of interest to this group as well. On the other hand, it was more difficult to negotiate the Czech–German fund than the foundations for reconciliation. This may partly be due to the fact that in some ways the Czech–German fund serves a wider range of purposes than the foundations for reconciliation, but it also reflects the particularly difficult state of German–Czech relations in the early and mid-1990s.

Compensation for forced labor Forced laborers constitute a large and previously neglected group of victims. According to Ulrich Herbert, “[i]n August 1944, there were 7,615,970 foreign workers officially registered on the employment rolls in the territory of the ‘Greater German Reich’; 1.9 million of them were prisoners of war, 5.7 million civilian workers.”47 In terms of country of origin, the largest contingent came from the Soviet Union, with Polish forced laborers not far behind. Despite the vast scope of forced labor, the issue did not receive much attention in studies of the Nazi regime until the 1970s.48 From a legal perspective, forced laborers are also in a different position to other victims because in principle they could make claims against the German government as the legal successor to the Third Reich and against the companies who benefited from their work. In practice, however, forced laborers faced particularly high hurdles in pressing their claims against either the German government or against private companies. German compensation legislation, as interpreted by German courts and German administrators, does not recognize forced labor as such as a ground for receiving compensation.49 Forced laborers may be eligible for compensation if they worked in a concentration camp or under prison-like conditions or suffered damage to their health as a result of forced labor. Beyond the usual formal hurdles involving residence and filing requirements, some German court decisions imposed even further restrictions on the claims of forced laborers. In the 1950s and 1960s German courts argued that forced labor did not constitute political persecution because it was motivated by economic considerations.50 Fairly early some survivors attempted to get paid for their labor and compensated for pain and suffering by suing their former German employers. Thus, in 1950 Norbert Wollheim, who had spent two years at Auschwitz and worked at the I.G. Farben plant in Auschwitz-Monowitz, filed suit against I.G. Farben.51 Wollheim won his trial at the district court of Frankfurt, but the company appealed and the case ended with a settlement. The company agreed to pay DM 30 million to settle all claims. The Jewish Claims Conference took on the task of distributing payments to individual Jewish claimants, and the company insisted on withholding 10 percent for non-Jewish claims. The Jewish Claims Conference also prepared cases against Krupp, AEG-Telefunken, Rheinmetall and other

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Compensation for Eastern European victims of Nazi crimes 65 German companies. The standard defense argument the companies used was that they had no choice in using foreign labor and that the SS was in charge of the forced laborers and their treatment. Thus, the plaintiffs should sue the German government rather than individual German companies. When companies, such as Krupp, agreed to settle they insisted that the settlements were gestures of goodwill rather than acknowledgments of legal obligations. By 1990 I.G. Farben, Krupp, AEG, Siemens, Rheinmetall and Feldmühle Nobel AG had paid DM 55.5 million to the Jewish Claims Conference, the German Red Cross and other organizations.52 Beyond such modest concessions, however, the bulk of German companies refused to consider requests for compensation. In the early 1960s the Jewish Claims Conference made some efforts to reach a global settlement with the Federation of German Industry, but these efforts failed.53 This is where matters stood until the 1980s, when the issue of forced labor received renewed attention. In 1985 the historian Ulrich Herbert published the first comprehensive study of Nazi forced labor policy in German.54 In early January 1986 Feldmühle AG, which had belonged to Friedrich Flick’s industrial empire, agreed to pay the rather small sum of DM 5 million to compensate Jewish forced laborers.55 Friedrich Flick had been convicted of using slave labor at the Nuremburg trials, but in the 1960s he resisted all efforts by the Jewish Claims Conference to achieve a settlement for the claims of Jewish slave laborers. At the end of 1985, however, his heir decided to sell his holdings, and the new owner Deutsche Bank came under enough pressure to make at least a token payment. At the same time the Green Party, which had first gained representation in the Bundestag in 1983, formulated new legislative initiatives to address the concerns of victims of Nazi crimes. In one of their bills the Greens demanded that all forced laborers should receive adequate payments from their former employers. In the statement of reasons accompanying the bill the party detailed the involvement of Flick companies in the forced labor program.56 In another bill the party proposed a complete overhaul of West Germany’s compensation laws, which the Greens regarded as fundamentally flawed.57 As proposals by a new and small opposition party the bills did not have a realistic chance of passage, but it spurred the Social Democrats, the larger opposition party, to present their own ideas and it sparked a wider debate on this issue. The Greens reintroduced their bills in the eleventh legislative period of the Bundestag, which began in 1987. Two years later the Greens modified their proposals and introduced a bill calling for the establishment of a foundation “Compensation for Nazi Forced Labor.”58 The federal government would provide the initial funds for the foundation with the expectation that private companies and city governments that had benefited from forced labor would also make contributions. The party also called on the federal government to put pressure on German companies to pay compensation to forced laborers, and the party proposed

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a diplomatic agreement with Poland providing individual compensation for Polish forced laborers.59 For a number of years the Social Democratic Party (SPD) had favored the establishment of a foundation, which would handle requests of victims who had been excluded before. In 1989 the SPD suggested the formation of an additional foundation for forced laborers.60 These proposals suffered essentially the same fate as the opposition proposals during the previous session, but the governing parties agreed at the end of 1987 to establish a new hardship fund for victims who for a variety of reasons had not received benefits before. At the same time government spokespersons rejected calls for a more fundamental rethinking of past compensation policies. They also expressed their expectation that the establishment of this DM 300 million hardship fund would be the final step in bringing the compensation chapter to a close.61 The federal compensation act of 1965 had been entitled the Federal Compensation Terminal Act, but that had been an illusion, and expectations that the additional measures of the late 1980s would finally “wrap things up” were similarly misguided. Although Germany’s past proved to be as “unmasterable” as before, the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent German unification brought the postWorld War II period to a close in other ways, and this had consequences for compensation issues as well. East Germany had not paid compensation to Jewish survivors living abroad.62 In the agreement on the implementation and interpretation of the Unity Treaty between East and West Germany the federal government committed itself in article 2 to establishing a new fund for Jewish victims who had not received compensation. Such a socalled article 2 fund was established in the early 1990s, but its guidelines excluded victims living in Eastern Europe. In January 1997 the Greens and the Social Democrats called on the government to extend payments from this fund to victims in Eastern Europe.63 A year later the Jewish Claims Conference and the German government reached agreement on such a solution. In 1996 the Bundestag had already agreed to set aside funds for foundations for reconciliation yet to be established with Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia and the successor states of former Yugoslavia.64 In November 1997 the Greens again submitted a resolution which called on the government to put pressure on German companies and to establish a foundation for the compensation of forced laborers.65 Besides increasing political pressure for change, German courts began to re-evaluate at least partially their position on the validity of compensation claims. In 1992 22 Auschwitz survivors filed a lawsuit with the district court of Bonn for the wages they should have received as forced laborers between September 1943 and January 1945. The district court questioned whether compensation claims by individual forced laborers constituted essentially a reparations issue to be dealt with exclusively by governmental agreement. On July 2, 1993 the district court referred this question to the German federal constitutional court. The constitutional court ruled in

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Compensation for Eastern European victims of Nazi crimes 67 1996 that the referral was inadmissible, but also noted in an obiter dictum that international law did not preclude forced laborers from pressing individual claims on the basis of national German law.66 On November 5, 1997 the district court awarded one of the plaintiffs DM 15,000 plus interest since April 1992 and rejected the claims of the other plaintiffs who had already received various forms of compensation based on German legislation.67 In another case on June 2, 1998 the district court of Bremen awarded DM 15,000 to a former forced laborer and rejected the claims of two others, using the same reasoning as the district court of Bonn. However, both the federal government and the plaintiffs appealed. In yet another case, the superior administrative court of Münster on November 19, 1997 rejected the compensation claim of a former Polish prisoner of war who had been forced to work during German captivity.68 Even if in the late 1990s courts ruled in favor of the plaintiffs on occasion, the German legal route was not promising for the elderly plaintiffs. In the case decided by the district court of Bonn two plaintiffs died before the court had reached its decision, and the former Polish cadet who had initiated a suit in a German administrative court died during the appeal. However, the plaintiffs in the mushrooming number of law suits in 1998 and 1999 did not necessarily plan to spend years in court but also hoped to increase political pressure on the German government and specific German companies who had employed forced laborers, and to force a favorable settlement. In the late 1990s some large German companies were particularly vulnerable to pressure by American lawyers. American plaintiff lawyers initiated a number of class action suits against German companies in US courts. The upsurge of Holocaust-related litigation in the United States began in 1996 with law suits filed against Swiss banks; then attention shifted to European insurance companies, and in 1998 American plaintiff lawyers turned their sights to the slave/forced labor issue.69 The claims against Swiss banks involved a number of issues, including primarily the failure of Swiss banks to return monies deposited by Holocaust victims to their heirs and the profits Swiss banks and the Swiss government had derived from trading in gold which had been looted by the Nazis.70 The Swiss banks faced not only a number of lawsuits and intense negative publicity but also the threat of economic sanctions by a variety of state and local governments. In the end the banks agreed to settle the various claims by paying $1.25 billion. Agreeing to an overall settlement amount did not resolve all open questions, though. One question involved who precisely would need to come up with this money. In return for accepting these funds the plaintiffs agreed to drop pending lawsuits, but there was the issue of whether this release from further litigation would also cover other Swiss entities besides the banks named as defendants. A third thorny issue involved the distribution of the funds among various categories of claimants and the related question of attorney fees. The settlement distinguished

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between five categories of claimants, including claimants seeking to recover assets deposited in Swiss banks before the end of World War II, claimants who sought compensation for looted assets, two classes of slave laborers from whom Swiss companies had benefited, and refugees who had been turned back by the Swiss and who had subsequently suffered at the hands of the Nazis. In some ways, though certainly not in all details, this settlement provided a model for resolving the lawsuits and negotiations involving insurance claims and German and US companies that had benefited from the use of forced/slave labor. Commenting more generally on lawsuits in US courts in the 1990s “to right wrongs done by governments in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s and in Cuba during the 1960s” Detlev Vagts argued that “US rules on certain matters will seem strange and extravagant to European lawyers.”71 Significant differences between such lawsuits in the United States and Europe included, among others, the fact that class action law suits are not known in Germany, that the American approach to issues of jurisdiction differs from European ideas, and that the size of damage awards by American juries appears rather large to Europeans. In March 1997 the first lawsuit was filed against European insurance companies in the federal court in New York. European insurance companies, such as the Italian company Assicurazioni Generali and Allianz of Germany, had come under fire for not honoring life insurance policies taken out by Holocaust victims before World War II. Parallel to developments in the Swiss bank cases, some European insurance companies agreed to settle the issue through the establishment of a commission, the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims. A year after the initiation of lawsuits against European insurance companies, Ford Motor Company became the defendant in a federal class action suit over the forced/slave labor issue. During World War II the German subsidiary of Ford had used forced labor. Similar lawsuits against German companies followed. Even if German companies were to win at least some of these cases in court, the negative publicity and political fallout from this controversy threatened to disrupt the plans of German multinationals. Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest bank, was in the process of taking over the American investment bank Bankers Trust, which required regulatory approval by both New York and US federal authorities.72 For German car companies the US market was quite important. Volkswagen (VW) had just begun to enjoy success again, and Daimler-Benz had become DaimlerChrysler. Thus, the united front of German companies began to crumble in 1998. First, Degussa and Diehl, both of which had employed forced laborers and concentration camp inmates in Poland, agreed to pay compensation. Even more significant was a shift in VW’s position on the forced labor issue. Confronted with a potential lawsuit, VW’s management in June 1998 reiterated the standard position that the government rather than the company bore responsibility for forced laborers. The works council of VW

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Compensation for Eastern European victims of Nazi crimes 69 favored the establishment of a foundation financed by German companies which had employed forced laborers. Gerhard Schröder, then Minister President of Lower Saxony and a member of VW’s supervisory board, supported this idea.73 In the face of mounting criticism, the company reversed its position in July and promised to establish a private fund to compensate former forced laborers.74 A few months later Siemens followed and established a fund of DM 20 million to assist former forced laborers.75 From then on the pace of events accelerated. Shortly after the election of Gerhard Schröder as German chancellor he agreed to help German company executives find a solution to this issue.76 The coalition agreement of October 1998 between the Social Democrats and the Greens included a provision that called for the establishment of a fund for compensating forced laborers. In early February 1999 the head of the Chancellor’s Office Bodo Hombach, accompanied by the chief executive officer of Deutsche Bank Rolf Breuer, went to Washington to begin talks with Stuart Eizenstat, then Under Secretary of State for Business and Economic Affairs, and representatives of Jewish organizations.77 On February 16, 1999 twelve German companies (Allianz AG, BASF AG, Bayer AG, BMW AG, DaimlerChrysler AG, Deutsche Bank AG, Degussa-Hüls AG, Dresdner Bank AG, Friedr. Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp, Hoechst AG, Siemens AG and Volkswagen AG) announced an initiative to set up a fund to compensate forced laborers and other Nazi victims.78 Negotiations to fill this initiative with life were quite complex, however. There were internal divisions both within German industry and among representatives of the victims. Large German manufacturers who had employed forced laborers during the war primarily faced forced labor claims. However, a significant proportion of forced laborers worked in agriculture, and German industry had little interest in paying compensation to those workers.79 German bankers and insurance companies faced different kinds of claims altogether. On the side of the victims German negotiators initially met primarily with US government officials and representatives of major Jewish organizations in the United States. German company executives distrusted the private attorneys who had filed a number of suits independent of the main Jewish organizations.80 Soon after the negotiations had begun, representatives of Eastern European victims became concerned that they would be excluded once again. The representative of the US government Eizenstat pushed the German government to include both the private attorneys and the Eastern European governments in the negotiations.81 Thus, at another conference in May 1999 negotiators included not only German, US and Israeli government officials but Russian, Belorussian, Ukrainian, Polish and Czech representatives as well, plus attorneys for the victims and major Jewish organizations.82 Controversial issues included, first of all, how much money German companies and the German government would make available. When on February 16, 1999 twelve large German companies announced their

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intention to set up a fund to compensate forced laborers and victims of “aryanization” and of other Nazi crimes, a figure of $1.7 billion circulated in the press.83 Ten months later, after difficult negotiations, representatives of the victims and their governments, German companies and the German government agreed on a total amount of DM 10 billion.84 A second question dealt with who precisely would have to come up with what share of the overall amount. Forced/slave laborers had been used throughout the entire German economy, including both the public and private sectors. In the end the foundation initiative of the German industry and the German government agreed to contribute equal shares, but this did not end discussions over the question of which contributions would count toward the public and private shares. For the public portion the German federal government at one point intended to ask the German Länder for a contribution. However, in the context of the completely unrelated tax reform debate of 2000, the German federal government secured approval of its tax package by the German Bundesrat through various concessions to Länder interests. For one of these concessions the Länder were not asked to contribute to the forced/slave labor fund.85 Financially less significant but of symbolic importance was the question of whether German churches who had also employed forced laborers would contribute to the fund. Protestant Churches in Germany had decided to pay into the private sector portion of the fund, but the Catholic Church in Germany established its own separate fund and searched its archives to find names of former forced laborers.86 The main problem on the private sector side was that too few companies were willing to pay into the fund. Thus, on July 6, 2000, the day the Bundestag passed legislation to establish the foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future,” speakers from all parties criticized German companies who had failed to contribute to the private foundation initiative.87 A third issue involved who exactly would receive how much compensation. When twelve German companies announced the establishment of the foundation initiative to compensate forced laborers and other Nazi victims, they envisioned two funds. One fund would distribute payments to Nazi victims, including most prominently forced/slave laborers, whereas a so-called “future foundation” would finance a variety of projects related to the remembrance of the Holocaust, youth exchanges, promotion of tolerance, etc.88 After the agreement of December 1999 to cap the total amount at DM 10 billion, representatives of forced/slave laborers demanded that the entire amount go towards the compensation of forced/slave laborers. The “future foundation,” compensation for property damage and attorney fees had to be financed otherwise.89 The German companies who had set up the foundation initiative rejected this demand, but over the course of the negotiations the amount allocated to the “future fund” shrank from DM 1 billion to DM 700 million. Regarding the distinction between compensation

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Compensation for Eastern European victims of Nazi crimes 71 for personal injury and for property damage, the negotiating partners eventually agreed to set aside DM 8.1 billion for personal injury compensation and DM 1 billion for property damage cases. A further question involved how to treat different categories of forced laborers. The use of forced labor by the Nazi regime had been a grave injustice in all cases, but there had been differences in how various groups of forced laborers had been treated. Inmates of concentration camps had worked under the most horrendous conditions, and these so-called “slave laborers” were to receive a maximum of DM 15,000. Others who had been deported to Germany or to German-occupied territory and forced to work for a commercial or industrial enterprise or in the public sector could receive compensation up to a maximum of DM 5,000. This excluded a significant number of forced laborers who had worked in the agricultural sector. In the end, however, the German law establishing the slave/forced labor foundation contained a clause which allowed the implementing organizations to use some of their funds to compensate forced laborers in agriculture. Even more sensitive was the issue of whether victims living in the United States would receive the same amount as victims in Eastern European countries or whether payments would take into account differences in purchasing power among different countries.90 This proposal was met with such strong opposition that it was dropped, and recipients should receive the same amount regardless of their residence. The German foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future” itself did not plan to write checks to individual beneficiaries in different countries but wanted to leave this to so-called partner organizations, including the reconciliation foundations in Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and the Russian Federation, the German–Czech Future Fund and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany. Representatives of the governments of these countries, the Jewish Claims Conference, plus the governments of the United States and Israel participated in the international negotiations on the establishment of the foundation for Nazi victims. This still left the issue of how to compensate non-Jewish victims elsewhere “in the rest of the world.” In the end the International Organization for Migration (IOM) took on responsibility to handle claims of those victims. However, there were concerns that the funds earmarked for the IOM might be insufficient. The day the German Bundestag passed the law on the establishment of the foundation it also supported a resolution in which the German parliament expressed its concern over possible inequities among different groups of beneficiaries and noted its obligation to make necessary financial adjustments.91 In the final debate on the bill and the resolution a vast majority of members from all parties supported the bill but the Christian Democrats rejected the resolution, and a small number of individual CDU/CSU deputies voted against the bill. One of the stated reasons for these no-votes was discrimination among different groups of victims.

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A final stumbling block in the negotiations involved the interest of German companies in legal peace. In other words, in exchange for contributing to the foundation German companies wanted to make sure that they would be protected from lawsuits, particularly in the United States. Thus, in an agreement between the German and the US governments of July 17, 2000 the US government committed itself to inform its courts through a Statement of Interest . . . that it would be in the foreign policy interest of the United States for the Foundation to be the exclusive remedy and forum for resolving such claims asserted against German companies . . . and that dismissal would be in its foreign policy interest.92 Article 17 of the German law on the establishment of the slave/forced labor foundation stated that funds would be made available for the first time after the corresponding German–American governmental agreement had entered into force and after sufficient legal peace had been achieved. The German Bundestag would decide when these conditions were met. During the course of the year 2000 and early 2001 it became clear that German companies were having difficulties collecting their portion of the foundation funds. This in turn influenced at least one American judge, US District Court Judge Shirley Kram of the southern district of New York, who had to decide on the cases against German banks. In March 2001 Kram denied a motion by the plaintiffs to dismiss these lawsuits noting that “[m]any of the absent plaintiffs in this case have waited decades to receive compensation for their property claims, and it would be unjust to divert their claims to a forum whose funding remains in question.”93 After additional legal wrangling Kram dismissed the case, though. Shortly thereafter, on May 30, 2001, the Bundestag passed a resolution declaring that sufficient legal peace had been achieved, and this paved the way for the disbursement of funds.94 Sufficient legal peace did not mean absolute legal peace, though, as some plaintiffs continued to pursue their claims in court, and new lawsuits were filed.95 Further controversies arose during the implementation phase of the forced/slave labor agreement. The joint statement of July 17, 2000 said that the DM 5 billion contribution of German companies shall be due and payable to the Foundation and payments from the Foundation shall begin once all lawsuits against German companies arising out of the National Socialist era and World War II pending in U.S. courts . . . are finally dismissed with prejudice by the courts. . . . German company funds will continue to be collected on a schedule and in a manner that will ensure that the interest earned thereon before and after their delivery to the Foundation will reach at least 100 million DM.

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Compensation for Eastern European victims of Nazi crimes 73 German companies, supported by the German government, interpreted this to mean that by paying DM 5.1 billion the German companies had fulfilled their obligation. American attorneys disputed this interpretation and claimed that German companies owed additional interest payments. Simply put, these attorneys, and to some extent the US government, charged that the foundation had not been fully funded. Finally, the mechanism of transferring funds from the German forced/ slave labor foundation to the Polish foundation in charge of disbursing the funds to Polish beneficiaries became acrimonious. The Polish foundation had requested that the funds be transferred in Polish z∏oty, but a drop in the value of the Polish currency meant that Polish beneficiaries received less than they would have if the transfer had been conducted in Euros. A debate ensued over who was responsible for this fiasco, and after further negotiations the two foundations agreed on an additional payment to Polish beneficiaries.96

Conclusion This chapter has provided a brief overview of German attempts to provide compensation to victims of Nazi persecution, concentrating on Eastern European victims. Regardless of how one evaluates these efforts toward other groups, victims living in Eastern Europe faced particularly high hurdles in gaining recognition and receiving at least minimal payments. This pattern was clearly a result of the Cold War. To the extent that the West German government concluded any compensation agreements with governments on the other side of the Iron Curtain, these agreements were of a bilateral nature. Initially, this remained the same even after the end of the Cold War when united Germany made compensation payments through the reconciliation foundations or the Czech–German future fund. This also meant that the state of bilateral relations influenced compensation negotiations. A shift occurred with the negotiations leading to the establishment of the foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future.” This agreement was the result of multilateral negotiations, and concerns over the equitable treatment of different classes of victims was an important point of contention. Even in this case, though, the German government had initially resisted multilateralizing the negotiations.

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Another issue in German–Eastern European relations which could not be resolved during the Cold War was the status of remaining ethnic Germans in Central and Eastern Europe. To the extent that the West German government was able to negotiate improvements in their position during the Cold War, such improvements were the result of bilateral efforts. After the end of the Cold War the German government negotiated a further set of bilateral agreements, but the minority rights provisions of these agreements more or less conformed to multilateral minority rights standards formulated by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and other multilateral bodies. The links between issues such as the recognition of Poland’s western border, compensation for Nazi victims and the rights of German minorities in Central and Eastern Europe may not be obvious, but during the Cold War and at the end of the Cold War period such links were in fact quite tight. In a memorandum prepared by a highranking foreign office official for a meeting with Chancellor Brandt in April 1970, the West German diplomat proposed that the German delegation link German concessions on the border issue with demands for Polish concessions on minority issues. The West German delegation should not bring up the reparations question, though.1 Twenty years later, on February 27, 1990, in the context of negotiations on German reunification, officials in Chancellor Kohl’s office suggested to Kohl that he propose a friendship treaty, which would contain a final recognition of Poland’s western border, a final Polish renunciation of reparations claims and a legally binding Polish commitment to respect the minority rights of ethnic Germans in Poland.2 In the German–Czech case the minority issue was less central for a number of reasons, although this did not make the overall state of relations less difficult. In September 2000 the German government estimated the number of ethnic Germans in the Czech Republic as 100,000 compared to 400,000 in Poland, although more recent Czech census figures put the number at fewer than 40,000.3 Furthermore, compared to the situation in Poland after World War II and the expulsions/resettlement of ethnic Germans that followed, ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia were more

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dispersed compared to the more compact pattern of settlement in Polish Upper Silesia. Politically, Polish governments did not recognize the existence of a German minority until the end of the Cold War, whereas in Czechoslovakia nationality policy became less repressive in the 1960s. The policy of German governments toward ethnic German minorities varied across countries and time. During the Cold War the (West) German government could do little to improve the situation of German minorities in their countries of residence, and German policy focused on emigration opportunities for members of the minority groups. In the early 1990s Germany experienced a large influx of ethnic German resettlers, and other migration-related issues became a hot topic in German politics as well. Thus, in 1993 Germany restricted the right of return for ethnic German resettlers (Aussiedler) although the door remained at least partially open for ethnic Germans and their relatives from the former Soviet Union, and Russia and Kazakhstan in particular.4 Instead of encouraging the resettlement of ethnic Germans in Germany, the German government attempted to persuade them to stay in their countries of settlement by improving their position, which itself varied across countries, through various assistance programs. Understanding these variations requires at least a brief discussion of the broader historical background.

Ethnic German minorities in historical perspective After the peace settlement of World War I and related border changes, the newly formed Polish and Czechoslovak states included sizable ethnic German minorities, and in the case of Poland former German citizens. Regarding the case of Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia, there is widespread agreement that the term originated only in the twentieth century. Jan Kfien has argued that in the early nineteenth century German Austrians were relatively indifferent toward national sentiments and instead emphasized Habsburgian patriotism and/or traditional regionalism.5 Within Austrian Germandom, German inhabitants of the lands of the Bohemian crown did not form a cohesive group. Rather, they tended to identify as Bohemian, Moravian or Silesian Germans.6 A drastic shift occurred after the end of World War I. On October 28, 1918 the Czech national committee proclaimed an independent Czechoslovak state, and the following day Deutschböhmen (German Bohemia) attempted to join the newly formed German Austrian Republic. Parallel developments took place on October 30 in Moravia and Silesia. At that point the term “Sudetenland” referred only to Austrian Silesia and North Moravia.7 In March 1919 events took a dramatic turn when the Czechoslovak government in effect instituted a new currency, and German Bohemian Social Democrats called for a general strike on March 4. On that day Czech soldiers fired on German demonstrators, resulting in over 50 deaths. According to Karl Braun, these events crystallized a “Sudeten

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German minorities in Poland and the Czech Republic 77 German” identity and broadened this identity beyond North Moravia and Austrian Silesia.8 In this process Sudeten German identity became a national identity. Numerically, Sudeten Germans were a minority. Sudeten Germans, though, were unwilling to limit their demands to that of a national minority. Rather, they insisted on being considered a state-nation coequal with the Czech nation.9 In the case of Poland, as a result of the Versailles Treaty Germany lost the provinces of Posen/Poznaƒ and West Prussia, which became the Polish corridor connecting Poland to the Baltic Sea. The city of Danzig became a free city. Furthermore, the allied powers agreed to postpone the determination of Upper Silesia’s status until after the area’s population had expressed its preference in a plebiscite. On March 20, 1921 about 60 percent of the voters expressed a preference for Germany; tabulated by commune the result was 844 for Germany and 678 for Poland.10 After considerable diplomatic wrangling between Britain and France, the allies decided to divide the province, with Germany receiving 70 percent of Upper Silesia’s territory, but Poland ended up with the particularly valuable industrial areas. Thus, in the interwar period, both the newly formed Czechoslovak and the re-established Polish states included sizable German minorities. However, these minorities differed in terms of size, political orientation and levels of nationalist sentiments. Furthermore, both the nationalizing states of Czechoslovakia and Poland, and the external homeland Germany, differed in their policies toward these national minorities.11 In the Czechoslovak case Germans constituted the largest minority with 22.3 percent of the population, outnumbering by far even Slovaks, according to the 1930 census. In interwar Poland in 1931, Germans represented only 2.3 percent of the total population.12 Sudeten Germans had a well-developed associational life and a firmly established political party system. This was less the case for Germans in Poland. As Jaworski has pointed out: Among the Germans of Poland, it was characteristic that the further east they had moved, the less the feeling they had retained of belonging to the German “mother country”. If, for example, the Germans in Poznania-Pomerania, as one time German citizens, had reacted to their separation from Germany with a mass exodus, the Germans in the farming settlements of Volhynia reacted differently. For them their “Germanness” became simply a cultural question of language and customs following their inclusion in the Polish state.13

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During the Weimar Republic German politicians across the political spectrum pursued revisionist policies directed against Poland. Furthermore, the German government indirectly supported the efforts of German minorities abroad. The Polish government in turn pursued more repressive policies against its German minority than did the Czechoslovak government.

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Weimar Germany’s relations with the Czechoslovak Republic tended to be correct, if not friendly. As Campbell put it, “Weimar governments sympathized with the Sudeten German activist parties, which sought to cooperate with the Czechs and Slovaks in governing Czechoslovakia. . . . For Weimar . . . the Sudeten Germans were much more valuable in Czechoslovakia than in Germany.”14 Here we should also keep in mind that, in contrast to German Silesians, the Sudeten Germans were not, nor had they been, German citizens. In the mid- to late 1920s so-called German “activist” parties joined Czechoslovak cabinets. These parties dominated the political spectrum among Sudeten Germans until the election of 1935 and the rise of Konrad Henlein’s Sudetendeutsche Partei, which eventually became Hitler’s tool in dismantling the Czechoslovak state. Beyond border changes and the establishment of a number of new states in Central and Eastern Europe, the peace settlement of World War I also included the formation of the League of Nations and a system for the protection of minorities. A number of countries, including both losers in the war, such as Bulgaria, and newly formed or re-established states, such as Czechoslovakia and Poland, had to accept treaty provisions imposing minority obligations. Thus, grievances of ethnic German minorities became the subject of numerous petitions to the League of Nations. The victorious Western powers were not subject to minority obligations and resisted efforts at establishing a universal minority rights regime. States subject to minority obligations, such as Poland, resented the unequal and in their view discriminatory treatment.15 Given the failure of the League, this may be of little more than historical interest, but some authors claim that more recent multilateral efforts in the area of minority rights are universal in form but in practice discriminate against Central and Eastern European countries as well.16 For an analysis of German foreign policy this means that an emphasis on multilateral forms does not automatically mean multilateral, i.e. nondiscriminatory, substance. Put in the context of the different definitions of multilateralism discussed in Chapter 1, the minority rights regime of the League of Nations meets the criteria of the thin but not the thick definition of multilateralism. With the rise of Hitler, though, there was no more room for multilateralism in German foreign policy. In October 1938 German troops moved into territories that Czechoslovakia had been forced to give up as a result of the Munich Agreement of the previous month. Shortly before the arrival of German troops about 155,000–160,000 Czechs fled the Sudetenland. Those Czechs who stayed were faced with the closing of Czech schools, restrictions on Czech cultural life, and the repressive apparatus of the Nazi regime more generally.17 Administratively, on November 1, 1938 the Nazis established the new Reichsgau Sudetenland. After the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the German authorities established a Reichsgau Wartheland and a Reichsgau DanzigWestpreußen, enlarged the provinces of East Prussia and Silesia and

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German minorities in Poland and the Czech Republic 79 further east created the so-called Generalgouvernement. The Polish population of these areas, and the intellectual and economic elite in particular, was systematically persecuted and millions were killed. The western areas of German-occupied Poland were to be completely Germanized, and thus over a million Poles were deported from the Reichsgaue into the Generalgouvernement.

German minority policy after World War II Czechoslovakia In 1945 and 1946 close to 3 million ethnic Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia. Only about 200,000 ethnic Germans, including those with Czech marriage partners, specialists who were deemed essential for economic purposes and anti-fascists, were allowed to stay. A significant number of the remaining ethnic Germans were forced to work in the interior of the country so that after 1947 there were few communities with significant numbers of ethnic Germans in the traditional areas of German settlement. Particularly in the early post-World War II years, members of the German minority were in a very vulnerable position.18 Legally they were stateless as one of the so-called Bene‰ decrees had stripped them of their Czechoslovak citizenship. In 1948 the Czechoslovak government allowed Germans who permanently resided in Czechoslovakia to reapply for citizenship. Not many ethnic Germans availed themselves of this opportunity, though, and in 1953 the government collectively granted all ethnic Germans in the country Czechoslovak citizenship. At around the same time restrictions on the cultural life of the minority were loosened, German theater and music groups were formed, the Communist trade unions began publishing a German language weekly, and on a limited scale German was taught again in schools. In another twist of Czechoslovak nationality policy toward ethnic Germans, the new constitution of 1960 mentioned the Hungarian, Polish and Ukrainian minorities but not the German one. This did have practical consequences as German cultural groups were dissolved and German language instruction in schools ended. In the context of liberalization in Czechoslovakia in 1966/67 and the “Prague Spring” of 1968 the situation of the German minority again changed. Censorship of the press essentially ended in March 1968, and the German language Prager Volkszeitung published articles which were critical of past government policy. Beginning in February 1968, East German authorities stopped the distribution and confiscated copies of the Volkszeitung in East Germany. In June 1968 a preparatory commission for the establishment of a cultural association of Germans in the âSSR was formed. After the invasion of Czechoslovakia by “allied” Warsaw Pact troops and the crushing of the Prague Spring, the Volkszeitung again became a

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mouthpiece of the official party line. Nonetheless, in June 1969 the cultural association of Germans in the âSSR was formally established, and constitutional amendments, which went into effect in 1969, turned Czechoslovakia into a federated state and, among other things, referred not only to the rights of ethnic Poles, Hungarians and Ukrainians but mentioned ethnic Germans as well. The most important development, though, affecting the German minority was emigration. Czechoslovak policy in this area underwent significant changes over time. In 1950 and 1951 Czechoslovak authorities let a relatively large number of ethnic Germans emigrate, but in the following years the numbers dropped to a slow trickle and those who applied for emigration faced various repressive measures, such as being fired from their jobs. Between 1966 and 1970 policy changed again and emigration levels reached their highest levels during the Cold War. In the years after 1971 Czechoslovak authorities tightened the granting of exit permits, but in the early 1980s another liberalization took place. Overall, between 1950 and 1989 about 100,000 ethnic Germans left Czechoslovakia. Thus, in 1990 Libor Rouãek predicted that due to the aging of the remaining German population the German minority would not survive the year 2000.19 Although in fact the German minority has not completely disappeared, it does not play a significant role in German–Czech relations today. Nonetheless, during the Cold War the fate of German minorities in Eastern Europe was one of the staples of German foreign policy, although even during the Cold War this issue occupied a less central position in West German diplomacy toward Czechoslovakia than in that toward Poland. The primary West German concern was to assist Germans who were persecuted due to their German ethnicity and who had to pay a particularly heavy price for Germany’s actions during World War II. Since West Germany had few means to influence the domestic politics of countries on the other side of the Iron Curtain, the West German government relied primarily on humanitarian arguments. Eastern European governments should allow ethnic Germans to emigrate so they could be reunited with their relatives in Germany. Thus, during negotiations in January 1965 on the establishment of German–Czechoslovak trade missions the German side responded to Czech demands that the German government declare the Munich Agreement as void from the beginning and that it restrict or prohibit the activities of expellee organizations with its own demands. More specifically, the German government asked for Czech cooperation in processing petitions for family reunification, but it also demanded equality of treatment for the German minority compared to other minorities in Czechoslovakia.20 The issue of family unification came up again in the negotiations that led to the Prague Treaty of 1973. The treaty text as such did not address the issue, but in a letter exchange the Czechoslovak government agreed to favorably review petitions from ethnic German citizens of Czechoslovakia

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to resettle in West Germany in accordance with Czechoslovak laws. The West German side in return agreed to do essentially the same for Czechs and Slovaks living in Germany.21 The Christian Democratic opposition in the Bundestag criticized that, given how long German diplomats negotiated this issue, the end result was unsatisfactory. Ethnic Germans had not gained the right to emigrate and the superficially equivalent commitment of the West German government made a mockery of Germany’s liberal legal system since anyone could leave the country in any case.22 As the following section will show, though, these skirmishes were fairly mild compared to the central role these issues played in German–Polish negotiations.

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In the German–Polish case there was no agreement until 1989 that a German minority even existed in Poland, and once Polish authorities recognized the existence of a German minority there were differing estimates of its size. Thus, in the early 1990s a German politician stated that “in 1991 approximately one million Germans were residing in Poland. Yet in September 1989, Polish Internal Affairs Minister Czeslaw Kiszczak claimed there were only 2,500 German inhabitants of Poland.”23 For the most part this controversy centered around the ethnicity of Silesians in Upper Silesia. The Polish government claimed that the indigenous (autochthon) population of this area was essentially Slavic but had been Germanized under German rule. To the extent that after the (West) German economic miracle some members of this group claimed to be German, these Volkswagendeutsche were simply trying to improve their economic position by gaining German passports and the right to live and work in Germany. On the other hand, representatives of German expellee organizations made at least equally expansive claims and noted that after 1945 Poland forcibly Polonized ethnic Germans. However, debates over who is a “true German” or “true Pole” are rarely fruitful and frequently have traumatic consequences for people at the margins. Taking a longer term historical perspective, Ther et al. argued that: Following the collapse of the Central European empires at the end of the first World War, one of the few things to unite Czechoslovak, German and Polish nationalists was the perceived hypocrisy of Upper Silesians who from the ethno-nationalist perspective seemed to change their identities according to whoever happened to be talking to them at the time. To students of nationalism as a phenomenon, this should come as no surprise. However, German, Polish and Czechoslovak nationalists were wedded to an idea of primordial national identity which implied national identity was somehow genetically predetermined. Thus when they were confronted with people whose collective consciousness was

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German minorities in Poland and the Czech Republic not monistic but multiple, and as such contradicted the shibboleths of primordial nationalism, small wonder that they failed to understand the situation.24

After World War II the demographic makeup of the western territories which Poland had gained from Germany changed considerably. Much of the German population had either fled or had been expelled/resettled. But there was also an influx of Poles from central and eastern Poland, including territories that Poland had lost to the Soviet Union. These settlers and Polish authorities distrusted members of the indigenous population who did not speak standard Polish but a distinct dialect and treated them as Germans and thus rather harshly.25 The Polish government also instituted a verification/ rehabilitation campaign in which residents of the area, who had been citizens of Germany, had to demonstrate their Polishness, such as mastery of the Polish language. Bilingual Silesians who were classified as Germans lost their property and had to leave for Germany. If, on the other hand, they were classified as Poles they could stay.26 In this context it is important to note that several years earlier the Nazis had constructed a German ethnic list (Deutsche Volksliste). According to the relevant decree, categories 1 and 2 of this list included Germans who before the outbreak of the war had either actively professed their Germandom or at least had maintained their German heritage. People classified in category 3 supposedly were Polonized Germans who could be reassimilated and, most importantly, used in the German army.27 This became important again in the context of article 116 of the (West) German constitution of 1949. Article 116 said that a German within the meaning of this Basic Law is a person who possesses German citizenship or who has been admitted to the territory of the German Reich within the frontiers of 31 December 1937 as a refugee or expellee of German stock or as the spouse or descendant of such person. From a Polish perspective this was quite problematic because the German borders of 1937 included a significant chunk of post-World War II Poland and because Germany was claiming people as German citizens whom Poland regarded as its own citizens. Until 1989 people who had been included in the German list category 3 could easily be recognized as Germans according to the German Basic Law. This itself raised eyebrows as German authorities were using rather questionable Nazi categories of Germanness.28 As in the case of Czechoslovakia, by 1945/46 a high proportion of Germans had fled Polish territories or had been expelled, but a significant number stayed for economic and other reasons. In the 1950s Polish authorities let many ethnic Germans emigrate to Germany, but after 1959 this

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German minorities in Poland and the Czech Republic 83 liberal policy ended. The 1950s also saw some improvements in the position of ethnic Germans within Polish society. German schools were established, and in 1957 an association of ethnic Germans in Walbrzych in Lower Silesia officially began its work.29 For (West) German diplomacy the fate of ethnic Germans became an important political issue in the negotiations over the Warsaw Treaty of 1970. Even when the Brandt government began its negotiations with Poland in 1969 its majority in the Bundestag was already slim and thus, as briefly shown in Chapter 2, the West German government needed to show tangible results of its détente policy, or at least the prospect of such results. The key issue was, of course, West German recognition of the Oder–Neisse line, but in return for this German concession German diplomats wanted Polish flexibility on emigration opportunities for ethnic Germans. There were differences of opinion among German decision makers, though, on how to handle this issue. Initially, the negotiations had been led on the German side by State Secretary Duckwitz, but in 1970 he was replaced with State Secretary Frank. In his memoirs Frank noted that, when he took over, the negotiations had progressed considerably but he was alarmed that the two sides had not seriously discussed any agreement on the fate of ethnic Germans in Poland.30 On November 10, 1970 Egon Bahr, who was then state secretary in the chancellor’s office, wrote in a memorandum for Willy Brandt that the treaty with Poland had not been negotiated as well as the one with the Soviet Union. He attributed this primarily to the fact that the German side had no political connections to the important decision makers in the Communist Party in Poland and that the German Foreign Office had still not grasped the significance of such political channels. He also noted tensions between Frank and Duckwitz.31 During the negotiations the Polish side avoided concrete discussions of these “humanitarian issues” as long as the treaty text on the border question was not finalized. Furthermore, since the Polish government denied that a German minority still existed in Poland, Polish negotiators wanted an informal arrangement, whereas the German side pushed for binding declarations. Furthermore, there were disagreements over the criteria and process to be used for determining who would get permission to migrate from Poland to Germany. Related to that was the question of numbers. During a meeting between West German Foreign Minister Scheel and Polish Foreign Minister J´drychowski on November 9, 1970, J´drychowski spoke of around 30,000 people who might qualify for emigration.32 German Red Cross figures were considerably higher. The end result of these efforts was a Polish information note of December 7, 1970 in which the Polish government acknowledged the existence of a group of several tens of thousands of people who were either clearly ethnically German or from mixed families. The Polish government authorized the Polish Red Cross to discuss these cases with the German Red Cross.

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Although these Polish concessions represented progress, it was not enough to satisfy the expectations of the German side. From 1970 to 1971 the number of Aussiedler (resettlers) from Poland increased from 5,624 to 25,241, but in the following years until 1975 Polish authorities granted fewer and fewer exit permits.33 The Polish government, on the other hand, had high expectations in the future of Polish–West German economic cooperation and also pushed the issue of reparations/compensation for Polish victims of Nazi occupation. These expectations were disappointed as well. Although there is no inherent connection among these issues, politically both sides linked them. In August 1975 the West German and Polish governments reached a compromise which resulted in several agreements, including an agreement on pension claims, a large credit to Poland at concessional rates and Polish assurances on emigration permits for ethnic Germans. In more concrete terms the Polish government promised to issue exit permits for roughly 120,000 to 125,000 persons within the following four years, and following this agreement the number of Aussiedler indeed increased again.34 This is where matters stood until the late 1980s.

German minority policy in the post-Cold War period Toward the end of the 1980s West German politicians put greater emphasis on the rights of ethnic Germans in their discussions with Polish authorities. Thus, when Foreign Minister Genscher visited Poland in January 1988 he met with representatives of so-called German Friendship Circles. These ethnic Germans who were largely from Upper Silesia gave Genscher a petition that called attention to discrimination against ethnic Germans.35 In the 1980s there had been a number of efforts to establish and register associations and publications for ethnic Germans in Poland that were met with repressive measures by Polish authorities. In December 1985 the first “German Friendship Circle” was formed in Racibórz.36 In the context of this study at least, the most significant change of the late 1980s was the election of a non-Communist government in Poland and the fall of the Berlin Wall, which occurred while Chancellor Kohl was visiting Poland. At the end of this visit Chancellor Kohl and Prime Minister Mazowiecki signed a lengthy joint declaration, which in point 45 included a commitment to make it possible for individuals or groups living in Germany or Poland, who were of German or Polish descent or who identified with the language, culture or tradition of the other side, to maintain or develop their cultural identity.37 To further mollify Polish fears of potential “fifth columns” the declaration went on to say that the exercise of these rights had to conform to international law and the law of the concerned state. In the international arena the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and its successor, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which had not seriously dealt with minority

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German minorities in Poland and the Czech Republic 85 issues during the Cold War, began to tackle this problem after the end of the Cold War.38 The most important development in this context was the second meeting of the so-called Conference on Human Dimension within the CSCE, which took place in Copenhagen in 1990. As Chandler pointed out, this document “went beyond previous measures against discrimination and for equal rights to argue for positive rights.”39 More specifically, paragraphs 33 to 35 included the following commitments by the participating states: The participating States will protect the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity of national minorities on their territory and create conditions for the promotion of that identity. . . . The participating States will endeavor to ensure that persons belonging to national minorities, notwithstanding the need to learn the official language or languages of the State concerned, have adequate opportunities for instruction of their mother tongue or in their mother tongue, as well as, wherever possible and necessary, for its use before public authorities, in conformity with applicable national legislation. . . . The participating States will respect the right of persons belonging to national minorities to effective participation in public affairs, including participation in the affairs relating to the protection and promotion of the identity of such minorities.40 When after the end of the Cold War the German government attempted to put its relationships with Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Romania on a new basis and negotiated friendship and cooperation treaties with these countries, it sought to incorporate the CSCE standards on minority rights into the treaties.41 Thus, all four treaties refer to the Copenhagen document but differ in the intensity of the commitment to make these standards legally binding on the treaty partners. The German–Hungarian friendship treaty was the most explicit in this regard; the German–Polish treaty, chronologically the first one of the four, was the weakest.42 Within the same time frame Poland also negotiated a number of treaties with other Central and Eastern European countries which contained minority rights provisions.43 Jan Barcz has argued that the minority rights provisions of the German– Polish treaty served as a model for Polish treaties with its eastern neighbors.44 One of the longstanding difficulties in minority rights law has been the problem of defining “national minority.” The German–Polish treaty addressed this difficulty and in article 20 spoke of members of the German minority in the Republic of Poland, i.e. persons with Polish citizenship who are of German descent or who identify with the German language, culture or tradition, as well as persons of German citizenship in the Federal Republic of Germany who are of Polish descent or who identify with the Polish language, culture or tradition.

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This provision raised eyebrows in Poland because the term national minority was only used for ethnic Germans in Poland and not for ethnic Poles in Germany. Here the German government consistently argued that the only national minorities in Germany were Danes and members of the Sorbian people of German citizenship. For example, when the German government signed the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of 1995 it issued a declaration to this effect, although it extended the application of the convention to two groups traditionally resident in Germany: Frisians and Gypsies (Sinti and Roma). Ethnic Poles in Germany do not meet the German government’s definition of national minority because they are spread throughout the country. One particular group of people of interest to the Polish government was that of Polish migrant workers in Germany who typically would not have German citizenship. Although the treaty as such did not address this group, in a letter by German Foreign Minister Genscher to his Polish colleague Skubiszewski he declared on behalf of the German government that Germany would work to make available the rights and opportunities spelled out in the treaty to Poles not covered by the treaty itself. A German diplomat with responsibilities in this area wrote in the early 1990s that the Central and Eastern European states with which Germany had signed friendship and cooperation treaties in the early 1990s had made sincere efforts to implement the minority rights provisions of these treaties. Germans should not forget that the German record in this area was not necessarily perfect either and that Germany, as well as other states, had grave reservations about the granting of collective minority rights.45 More generally, Polish–German difficulties in this area may be an example of the fact that “underneath the veneer of commitment [to minority rights], there is little political will to act when this means upsetting the delicate political status quo in the east or questioning the sovereignty of states in the west.”46 The rights granted to members of the minorities corresponded largely to rights listed in the 1990 Copenhagen document. One issue, which was not resolved in the treaty but which has been one of the few sources of controversy since then, was the German request from Poland to allow German place names in the areas of traditional settlement of the German minority. Here the letter exchange of June 17, 1991 stated that the Polish government at the time did not see the possibility to fulfill this request but promised to re-evaluate its position at an appropriate time. Another sensitive problem involved German citizenship and article 116 of the German constitution with its expansive definition of Germanness and reference to Germany in the borders of 1937. Since Germany within the borders of 1937 included significant parts of today’s Poland, a sizable number of Polish citizens could claim German citizenship on the basis of article 116 as well. Polish concerns over German citizenship laws are partly responsible for article 22 section 2

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German minorities in Poland and the Czech Republic 87 of the German–Polish friendship treaty, which essentially says that members of the German minority in Poland need to act as loyal to Poland as all other Polish citizens. In the letter exchange accompanying the treaty the two sides noted that the treaty did not deal with citizenship questions where the two sides have different views. After the end of the Cold War and with the signing of the friendship and cooperation treaty it also became easier for the German government to support the German minority financially. In 1992 financial support from the German foreign office amounted to DM 3.1 million and remained relatively level after that, increasing marginally to DM 3.7 million in 1999. More substantial funds were distributed by the ministry of the interior, but after the election of the Red–Green coalition in 1998 funding dropped from DM 26 million in 1998 to DM 18 million in 1999.47 This contributed to increasing tensions between representatives of the minority and the German government.48 Projects supported by these funds include the training of German teachers, German language publications, radio/TV broadcasts and, in the case of the ministry of the interior, infrastructure and economic development projects in the areas of settlement of the German minority.49 In the case of the Czech Republic the minority rights provisions of the German–Czech friendship and cooperation treaty of 1992 largely mirror those of the German–Polish treaty of 1991, but they are not identical. In the case of Poland the German government refused to recognize ethnic Poles in Germany as a national minority, but article 20 of the German– Polish treaty gives both the German minority in Poland and ethnic Poles in Germany the same rights. In the German–Czech treaty article 20 addresses the rights of the German minority in the Czech Republic, whereas the slightly less wordy article 21 deals with ethnic Czechs in Germany. Brümmer attributes this to the simple fact that there is no significant group of ethnic Czechs in Germany.50 Another difference concerns the right of members of the ethnic minorities to participate in public affairs. This is mentioned in article 21 of the German–Polish treaty but not the treaty with the Czech Republic. As in the German–Polish case, in the 1990s the German government financially supported the German minority in the Czech Republic but, given the differences in size of the two groups, at much lower levels than the German minority in Poland. On the whole, the presence of a German minority in the Czech Republic, to the extent that one still exists, presents a much less sensitive issue in German–Czech relations than the equivalent in the German–Polish case. For example, in a response to questions by Christian Democratic Bundestag deputies the German government stated that representatives of the German minority had various grievances against the Czech government relating to compensation for confiscated property, lack of representation, and rules on the use of minority languages. However, the minority had not raised political demands with the German government.51

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The contemporary situation of the German minorities in Poland and the Czech Republic After the political regime change in 1989 the new Polish government stopped denying the existence of a German minority in Poland. When in the late 1980s activists of the German minority established German cultural associations and attempted to register these organizations with the courts they were turned down. In January 1990 a court in Katowice registered the Sozialkulturelle Gesellschaft der Menschen deutscher Volkszugehörigkeit in Gleiwitz (sociocultural society of ethnic Germans in Gliwice). After that all legal obstacles to the establishment of German minority associations fell and the number of such associations mushroomed throughout Poland.52 On September 15, 1990 leading representatives of the German minority, including among others Dietmar Brehmer, Georg Brylka, Henryk Kroll and Friedrich Schikora, established an umbrella organization, the Zentralrat der Deutschen Sozial-Kulturellen Gesellschaften (central council of German social-cultural societies), which later changed its name to Verband der deutschen sozial-kulturellen Gesellschaften in Polen (VdG).53 Shortly thereafter the group formulated a 16-point declaration which included such demands as making German an official language in those areas where ethnic Germans constituted the majority, the establishment of German schools and media, and guaranteed representation in the Polish parliament, the Sejm.54 In early November 1990 the group traveled to Germany and presented its program to German politicians. During this trip the group broke with one of its founding members, Dietmar Brehmer. Brehmer was a leading representative of the German minority in the industrial region of Katowice/Kattowitz where he established the Deutsche Arbeitsgemeinschaft “Versöhnung und Zukunft” (German Working Group “Reconciliation and Future”). To some extent, differences between the political approach of Brehmer’s group and the German cultural associations come through already in the labels of the organizations. Brehmer’s group viewed itself as an organization for both Poles and Germans, whereas the German “Friendship Circles” defined themselves as distinctly German associations.55 These different German organizations did not limit themselves to cultural activities but participated in Polish elections. Their electoral fortunes declined over time, however. In 1991 representatives of the German minority won seven seats in the Sejm, plus one in the Senate. In 1993 Gerhard Bartodziej successfully defended his seat in the Senate but the delegation of the German minority in the Sejm shrank by three seats. Four years later only two candidates of the German minority from the region around Opole (Opolskie voivodship) won seats in the Sejm, candidates in other areas were not successful and Bartodziej lost his Senate seat as well. In 2001 the German minority, again led by Henryk Kroll, defended these seats. However, the total number of votes received by candidates of the German

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German minorities in Poland and the Czech Republic 89 minority in the voivodship declined from 60,770 in 1993 to 51,027 in 1997 and 42,340 in 2001. One of the difficulties faced by groups appealing to the German minority was below average voter turnout. Possible explanations for such low turnout include that it may be more difficult to mobilize the group now that many of its members have gained German passports and thus have the option of living and working in Germany as well as Poland, and that the cohesive bond of an external threat in the form of oppression by the Polish government is gone.56 A significant number of Germans from Opolskie voivodship work in Germany but have retained their Polish identity documents and thus remain on Polish voter registration lists but have not bothered to return home to vote.57 Some of the most sensitive political demands made by the German minority include issues stemming from the past. The German minority, with the support of the German government, has asked for bilingual place names in areas heavily populated by ethnic Germans. One of the difficulties here is that some towns had more than one German name before being Polonized after 1945. Thus, after the Nazis had taken over in 1933 they changed the name of the Upper Silesian town Kandrzin to Heydebreck to honor a high-ranking SA official who had fought against Polish forces in the struggle for Upper Silesia in 1921. Heydebreck himself was assassinated on Hitler’s behalf in 1934. After the war the town’s name changed to K´dzierzyn. When members of the German minority established a “Deutscher Freundschaftskreis Heydebreck” they apparently were unaware of this historical background. They then later changed the name of their organization to “DFK Kandrzin.”58 Nazi era place names are obviously not acceptable to Polish authorities. Even more explosive is the demand that members of the German minority should be able to count time spent in the German army, as prisoners of war, or in detention in Polish internment and forced labor camps toward their pensions. In January 2001 Christian Democratic deputies in the Bundestag introduced a resolution which supported this demand.59 In the Bundestag debate on the resolution the expellee politician Koschyk stressed the humanitarian aspect of this issue, i.e. helping retirees whose pensions hardly reached subsistence level.60 Representatives of all the other parties represented in the Bundestag rejected the resolution. The Green deputy Helmut Lippelt called it a scandal to ask the Polish government to pay for pensions of former soldiers who had served in an army responsible for the destruction of Poland.61 Other demands of the German minority concern its ability to maintain a distinct identity. This includes the perennial issue of German language instruction. In this regard the situation improved considerably during the 1990s. When Polish officials have been confronted with such requests they have been able to point out that Germany’s record in providing Polish language instruction for ethnic Poles in Germany is far from perfect.62 When asked what the German government has done to support the Polish

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language in Germany, German federal officials typically respond that under German federalism this is a responsibility of the Länder.63 A quite controversial political issue within Poland in the 1990s was the issue of administrative reform. In early 1998 the Polish government proposed a restructuring and reorganization of local authorities (gminy) and regional governments (voivodships) and the creation of a new level of government, the powiaty (counties). The plan called for a reduction in the number of voivodships from 49 to 12. Furthermore, the voivodships were to receive more power and autonomy than before, but the government also proposed to reduce the power of the centrally appointed voivods in favor of regional directly elected assemblies, the Sejmiks.64 Of particular relevance for the German minority in Upper Silesia was the fact that the original plans called for the elimination of the Opolskie voivodship and the creation of a much larger voivodship for Silesia. This would have resulted in a considerable dilution of the political influence of the minority, and the economic interests of the relatively rural Opolskie voivodship would have taken a backseat to the more industrial Âlàskie voivodship.65 Both ethnic German and Polish inhabitants of the Opolskie voivodship mobilized against this plan, and in the end the Opolskie voivodship was maintained. The significance of this reform goes much beyond the interests of the German minority, though. Polish administrative reform was motivated by the desire and need to make Polish administrative structures conform to the requirements of EU regional policy. Despite successes, such as influencing the Polish government’s decision to preserve the Opolskie voivodship, the minority faces a number of challenges. As this section has shown, the ability of minority politicians to mobilize their electoral base has declined over time. Second, there “is a generational gap within the minority. . . . Younger, well-educated urban Germans find it difficult to identify with a minority organization that in effect emphasizes antiquated German characteristics.”66 Finally, the minority has to adjust to decreasing levels of financial support from the German government. The situation of the German minority in the Czech Republic differs from that in Poland, although the German minority in the Czech Republic shares similar challenges to the one in Poland, but in a more severe form. At the organizational level, an association for Germans in Czechoslovakia had already existed since 1968/69: the Kulturverband der Bürger deutscher Nationalität der âSSR (cultural association for Czech citizens of German nationality in the âSSR). During the “normalization period” after 1968, however, the leadership of this organization was filled with orthodox Communists and simply served the function of a transmission belt for the Communist party.67 In 1989 the Civic Forum addressed the national minority question and established a commission within which a German section formed. This section in turn provided the impetus for the establishment of an association of Germans in Czechoslovakia in August 1990.

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German minorities in Poland and the Czech Republic 91 Debates within the German minority resulted in a decision to move away from centralized structures in favor of regional associations. To coordinate the work of these regional groups, a Landesversammlung der Deutschen in Böhmen, Mähren und Schlesien formed in November 1992.68 At the same time the Kulturverband still existed. As in the case of Poland, the German government has financially supported the German minority, and the Landesversammlung in particular. Initially, these funds were funneled through the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft. At the request of the Landesversammlung this practice ended in the mid-1990s. This reflects the ambivalene in the relationship between the Landesversammlung and the Landsmannschaft. In 1990 representatives of the minority sought out the Landsmannschaft. Then, however, representatives of the minority pulled away as they discovered that some elements of the Landsmannschaft had rather extreme views. Furthermore, within Czech society the Landesversammlung had to be careful not to be regarded as a “fifth column” again.69 In another parallel to the situation of other German minorities in Central and Eastern Europe, the preservation of German culture and language is an important concern of the minority in the Czech Republic. Compared to the minority in Poland, though, the German minority in the Czech Republic faces the additional difficulty that there are virtually no compact areas of German settlement left. This means that the minority finds it virtually impossible to meet quotas for the official use of minority languages and other minority privileges in the Czech Republic.70 The politically most explosive demand of the minority has been to request compensation for forced labor, time spent in internment camps after World War II and for confiscated property. In August 2001 the Landesversammlung submitted a petition along these lines to the Czech parliament. The handling of this issue also showed differences of opinion within the minority. The former president of the Landesversammlung Korbel took the position that, if the petition committee of the Czech parliament rejected the request by the minority, the Landesversammlung should seek outside support from the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft and others. Irene Kunc, who beat Korbel in elections in October 2001 with the votes of 19 against 16 delegates, argued that this should be treated as an internal Czech issue. Any attempt to bring in others, and Sudeten German organizations in particular, would only result in increasing resistance within Czech society.71 Such resistance would of course undo some of the progress the minority has made in the post-Cold War period. The most important problem facing the minority, though, is the simple fact that the number of Czech citizens who identify themselves as ethnic Germans/of German nationality is continuing to shrink. According to the 1991 census, there were 48,556 Czech citizens who specified German as their nationality. At that time representatives of the minority claimed that the true number was about twice as high because many Germans were still reluctant to reveal their identity due to

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decades of repression. The 2001 census counted 38,321 Czechs of German nationality, about 20 percent fewer than in 1991. Today, even the newspaper published by the Landesversammlung admits that these low census figures cannot be explained away as the result of Communist repression. Rather, the children and grandchildren of ethnic Germans have become increasingly assimilated and identify themselves as Czechs.72

Conclusion Even after Poland and Czechoslovakia had attempted to solve the “problem” of German minorities on their soil once and for all through the transfer/ forcible resettlement/expulsion of Germans, the remaining, if much diminished, minorities remained an irritant in German–Czech and German– Polish relations throughout the Cold War period. Today, however, the explosive potential of this issue has largely been defused. As this chapter has shown, multilateralism and multilateral organizations have played a role in reducing tensions between Germany and its eastern neighbors over this issue. It was easier for Poland to accept CSCE standards on minority rights than special rights for Germans. However, multilateral organizations, such as the CSCE/OSCE or the League of Nations, did at times impose minority rights standards on states which in practice violated multilateral principles, such as the nondiscrimination principle. Examples are the minority rights provisions imposed on Central and Eastern European states after World War I. Nondiscrimination was a sensitive issue in the 1990s as well. This can be seen by the insistence of the Polish and Czechoslovak governments to make the minority rights provisions of the friendship and cooperation treaties with Germany reciprocal, i.e. Poland has to respect the rights of ethnic Germans and Germany grants the same treatment to ethnic Poles. In the negotiations with Hungary and Romania, which do not share borders with Germany, this was not problematic. The most important commitment, though, that Germany made in these treaties with Poland and the Czech Republic was to support their efforts in joining another multilateral organization, the European Union.

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Germany and the eastern enlargement of the EU

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The diplomatic negotiations on the eastern enlargement of the EU were rather long and complex. This chapter will focus on German policies on EU enlargement relating to two critical issues: freedom of movement of workers, and agriculture. At the end of the chapter, I will contrast the German position on these issues to German government responses to attempts to link EU enlargement, and Czech accession in particular, to Czech concessions on the Bene‰ decrees and the Temelín nuclear plant. These issues are particularly well suited for an analysis of German support for multilateral principles, including generalized principles of conduct and diffuse reciprocity. Demands for long transition periods for the establishment of full freedom of movement of labor and decisions by the old member states and the European Commission to exclude the new member states from some agricultural subsidies aroused suspicions in the new member states that the EU was only willing to offer a “second class membership.” If such charges were true, this would be incompatible with the multilateral principle of generalized principles of conduct. Furthermore, a number of academic analysts, such as Bulmer et al., claim that

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Germany is . . . not . . . pursuing its interests on specific issues on a caseby-case basis. . . . Rather, Germany has pursued, in a more strategic sense, broad-based and diffuse milieu goals, directed at shaping wider conditions of inter-state interaction and, above all, cooperation beyond national boundaries.1 Anderson argued that “Germany’s European policies after 1989 continue to be driven by concerns about process and principles, but Bonn officials are paying closer attention to distributive outcomes and net-pay-offs in the short term.”2 Put differently, a key question is whether Germany is continuing to show a strong commitment to norms of diffuse rather than specific reciprocity. EU agricultural policy has obvious distributional implications pitting net budgetary recipients against net contributors, but distributional arguments also matter for domestic German debates on the free movement of labor.

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Beyond that, German politicians recognize the critical importance of these issues. In a speech by Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer on “multilateralism as a task of German foreign policy” he argued that the “multilateral imperative” in German foreign policy presented Germany with a number of challenges, including most prominently EU enlargement. The two concrete policy issues he mentioned in this context concerned the free movement of labor and agriculture.3 If domestic support for multilateralism is weakening in Germany this would manifest itself in these policy areas if German political actors favor different sets of rules for the old member states and the new member states, such as a different (and less generous) agricultural policy for the new member states than for the old ones, or special rules for Germany for the establishment of the free movement of labor and services.

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Free movement of labor Before discussing the free movement of labor after EU enlargement it is important to consider the experience of the EC with previous expansions and the experiences Western European countries have had in partially opening their labor markets to Central and Eastern European migrants on a bilateral basis. In the first enlargement in 1973, when Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom joined, freedom of movement was not a major issue. This changed with the southern expansion of the EC in the 1980s. The accession treaty between the EC on one side, and Portugal and Spain on the other side, contained a number of provisions on the free movement of workers. Article 56 of the treaty stated that the free movement of workers would not apply to Spain until January 1, 1993, seven years after the accession date, and this transitional period could be extended for Luxembourg until the end of 1995. The reason for the special rule for Luxembourg was that Luxembourg at the time had a large number of workers from the Iberian peninsula.4 An additional provision allowed the shortening of this period. Article 216 contained the equivalent rules for Portugal.5 The accession treaty for the northern expansion involving Austria, Finland and Sweden did not contain provisions on the free movement of workers. Beyond these accession treaties, the EU more recently negotiated a number of agreements with Switzerland, one of which concerns the free movement of workers. This agreement allows Switzerland to limit immigration from the EU for five years through the use of quotas. Thereafter EU citizens enjoy freedom of movement in Switzerland, but Switzerland may reintroduce quotas if large-scale immigration takes place.6 The politically important and controversial issue for this chapter is what can and should be learned from these agreements for the eastern enlargement of the EU. A very common line of argument has been that previous experience shows fears of immigration waves to be rather exaggerated. In the 1950s and 1960s before the freedom of movement was actually fully implemented in the EC there were concerns which turned out to be unfounded about large

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Germany and the eastern enlargement of the EU 95 numbers of Italian migrants moving further north.7 Similarly, Thomas Straubhaar has argued, as have others, that the southern expansion of the EC did not lead to a massive migration wave. Rather, in line with the theoretical expectations of neoclassical trade theory, integration of Greece, Portugal and Spain led to significant increases in trade and direct investment between the old and the new member states, rather than labor migration.8 This view is shared by the European Commission. In April 2000 the European Commission presented an information note to the member states which stated that enlargement most likely would have only a limited impact on EU labor markets. In response the Austrian government issued its own information note which suggested that enlargement could have a significant impact on the Austrian labor market and that there were a number of important differences between the EC’s southern expansion and the EU’s eastern enlargement.9 From the perspective of the German debate, an important point of the Austrian information note was that, although immigration might turn out to be limited, there was also the issue of border commuters. In the context of very large income differentials there is a strong economic incentive to work in Austria and earn high wages but to spend this income in the Czech Republic or Hungary where the costs of living are much lower. The Austrian note argued that this was not much of an issue at the time of the southern expansion because income differentials between southern French and northern Spanish border regions were much less than those between Austria and its Central and Eastern European neighbors. Furthermore, simple topographical differences between the mountainous French–Spanish border regions and the much more permeable Austrian borders made border commuting more difficult at the time of the southern expansion. Not only in Austria but in the German debate as well, the issue of border commuters played a significant role.10

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Bilateral agreements in the early 1990s After 1989 migration from Central and Eastern Europe to destinations in Western Europe, including most prominently Germany, initially increased substantially but has tapered off since then. In 1997 a total of 415,823 citizens of Central and Eastern European accession countries lived in Germany, representing 0.7 percent of Germany’s total population.11 By far the largest group were Poles. In 1998 Germany took 58.8 percent of gainfully employed Hungarian, Polish and Romanian citizens working in the EU; Austria accounted for 15.6 percent.12 Although the numbers for Austria are lower than for Germany, in Austria Central and Eastern Europeans represent a higher proportion of the labor force. Again, geography matters. So far, immigrants from the eastern accession countries have settled primarily in Bavaria and parts of Baden-Württemberg rather than the eastern German border regions. This is not too surprising since Bavaria

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borders the Czech Republic and is quite prosperous, a characteristic it shares with Baden-Württemberg. Eastern German border regions, on the other hand, are relatively poor with high unemployment rates. In the 1990s a number of EU member states had bilateral agreements with non-EU countries to recruit labor migrants for fixed periods of time. Poland, for example, had small guestworker programs with Belgium, France, Germany and Switzerland.13 These agreements covered four main types of workers: guestworkers, seasonal laborers, project-tied workers (Werkvertragsarbeitnehmer) and border commuters. This chapter will concentrate on project-tied workers and seasonal laborers because of both their quantitative significance and the political controversies surrounding particularly project-tied workers. Guestworker programs, on the other hand, have been rather small and thus may be safely neglected here, but we will need to discuss border commuters in a separate section. Project-tied workers come to Germany on the basis of a Werkvertrag between a German company and a foreign subcontractor. The subcontractor agrees to finish a particular project in Germany using his/her own workforce. Thus, there is no labor contract between the foreign workers and the German general contractor. The workers are paid by the foreign subcontractor who also provides social insurance for the workers according to the social insurance laws of the country of origin. Legally, subcontractors do not pay German social insurance contributions, which by itself results in total wage cost savings of 20–25 percent compared to German workers.14 In practice, the wages paid are often considerably below German wages, and project-tied work has given rise to various illegal practices. The number of legal project-tied workers is regulated in the form of quotas (Kontingente). The first project-tied workers agreements of 1989/90 with the Czechoslovak Federated Republic, Yugoslavia, Poland and Hungary provided for quotas totaling 20,000 workers, with Polish workers accounting for over half of this figure.15 In the early 1990s these numbers increased substantially with the Polish quota increasing from 11,000 to 35,170 in 1992.16 At the same time these agreements became highly controversial politically. Besides the problems already mentioned, there were concerns about competitive distortions as project-tied workers were concentrated in the construction sector, the big cities and the new German Länder.17 In response to these concerns, the 1992 agreement with Poland included a sentence which called upon the German employment office to prevent a regional or sectoral concentration of project-tied workers. Furthermore, the 1992 agreement contained an additional quota for small and medium-sized German companies. Both the German construction workers union (IG Bau) and employer associations in the construction sector asked for the cancellation of the agreements with Central and Eastern European countries. The administrative board of the German employment agency (Bundesanstalt für Arbeit) took a critical position as well. This view was not shared, however, by the peak association of German employers

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Germany and the eastern enlargement of the EU 97 (Bundesvereinigung deutscher Arbeitgeberverbände). The SPD played an ambivalent role. The federal government thus faced conflicting pressures on the one hand from unions that opposed these agreements, and on the other hand from Central and Eastern European governments that pushed for increases in the quotas.18 In the end the German government responded by defending these agreements in principle, yet it also significantly reduced the quotas, shelved new agreements with Russia and Lithuania, and took other measures to address abuses of project-tied contracts.19 As if these problems had not been enough, in 1996 the European Commission challenged the German–Polish agreement by claiming that it violated Community law. A French entrepreneur had wanted to conclude project contracts with Polish companies to be carried out in Germany. However, the German–Polish agreement only covered German general contractors.20 In response the German labor ministry in July 1997 asked the employment agency to temporarily stop accepting requests for project-tied workers.21 All these issues were particularly sensitive in the construction industry. There, German unions were not only concerned about Polish workers undercutting German wages but about subcontractors and workers from other EU member states as well. This resulted in a protracted struggle within the European Union over a directive concerning the posting of workers, and within Germany over a national law setting minimal standards for workers employed by a foreign subcontractor in Germany. In 1996 the Council agreed on an EU directive over the opposition of Great Britain and Portugal.22 In the German debate, unions and employers’ associations in the construction industry supported these efforts, whereas the peak association of German employers opposed both the national law, which was passed several months before the adoption of the EU directive, and the EU directive as protectionist.23 The controversy did not end in 1996. Shortly after the Social Democrats and Greens had gained power in 1998, the new government initiated several changes in the national German law, the so-called ArbeitnehmerEntsendegesetz. One of these changes made it easier than before for the German labor minister to apply a collective bargaining agreement on minimum wages in the construction sector to all construction firms, regardless of whether or not they were a party to the agreement.24 In May 1999 the German construction workers’ union and two employer associations in the construction sector reached such a minimum wage agreement, and the labor ministry then declared it applicable to all firms in the sector. An employer association from Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, which had left the national association, and three individual construction firms then filed a constitutional complaint with the Constitutional Court which in July 2000 declined to hear the case.25 Less sensitive than project-tied workers in the construction industry but still significant are seasonal workers. The vast majority of seasonal workers

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from Central and Eastern Europe are used in the agricultural sector, and a significantly smaller proportion work in hotels and restaurants. By far the largest nationality group is the Poles, who in 1996 accounted for 89 percent of seasonal workers.26 For the most part these workers receive permits to work in Germany for up to three months. The same German union which represents construction workers (IG Bau) also organizes agricultural workers. There are about 150,000 full-time employees on German farms, but there are also significant variations between eastern and western Germany. In the East employees account for 70 percent of the agricultural work force compared to 25 percent in the West. According to the IG Bau, in the late 1990s German farmers saved about DM 5.5 billion annually through the use of seasonal workers rather than full-time native workers.27 In 1999 the IG Bau launched an initiative through the European Union’s Economic and Social Committee to set up an agricultural migrant work observatory, to issue identity cards for migrant workers, and to extend the social security coverage of agricultural migrant workers.28 Europe agreements Besides the patchwork of bilateral agreements, the association agreements, the so-called Europe Agreements, between the accession countries and the European Union also contained a few provisions about the rights of migrant workers. Thus, article 37 of the Europe Agreement with Poland stated that Polish citizens who were legally employed in one of the member states enjoyed the same treatment as EU citizens in regard to working conditions, pay and employment termination. However, article 37 did not grant Polish citizens the right to move to an EU member state to take up employment, with the partial exception of dependents of Polish citizens who were already employed in the EU. Article 41 called upon the member states to open their labor markets to Polish citizens to the furthest possible extent. In 1993 both the Bundesrat and the Bundestag supported the Europe Agreements with Poland and Hungary which were ratified at the same time.29 The vote in the Bundestag was unanimous. To the extent that there were concerns, they primarily dealt with the issue of freedom of movement, and in particular the project-tied workers program and the implications of the right of establishment for the job prospects of German medical graduates potentially competing with Eastern Europeans. The Europe Agreements were seen as an intermediate step toward eventual membership in the EU. Actual accession negotiations between the existing member states and the so-called “Luxembourg group” (Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Cyprus) began in 1998. The European Commission’s negotiating strategy was to leave the particularly controversial issues, such as the free movement of labor and agriculture, for later negotiating rounds.

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Germany and the eastern enlargement of the EU 99 By the end of 2000 German political actors had formulated their positions on this issue. The positions of German political actors The Deutscher Industrie- und Handelstag (German chambers of commerce) argued in a position paper of April 2000 that it did not share fears of increased immigration. Linguistic and cultural barriers as well as insufficient flexibility would limit migration, and, in any case, the immigration of wellqualified workers could be an advantage.30 The federation of German industry (BDI) argued that the EU should hold to the principle of not allowing long transition periods. Where transitional arrangements were necessary, such as in the area of freedom of movement, there needed to be clear and firm agreements when the acquis in these areas would apply to the accession countries.31 In more concrete terms, the federation of German employers’ associations (BDA) and the federation of German industry argued in a position paper that transition periods of seven years, as used during the southern expansion, were too long. Even within limited transition periods, there was the need for flexibility by allowing individual member states or sectors to gradually introduce free movement of labor and services on a bilateral basis before the end of the transition period.32 German farmers had their own special concerns with regard to agricultural policy but they are also employers who have benefited from the use of Central European seasonal workers. The German farmers’ association received some political support for its position, as the conference of German agriculture ministers asked in its resolution of March 24, 2000 that any transition arrangements for labor had to take into account the needs of the German agricultural sector.33 For German unions this is a more difficult and divisive issue, particularly for those unions, such as the construction workers’ union, which are most affected and face the most intense pressure from the rank and file.34 A key issue for German unions is to maintain German labor and social standards and to prevent “social dumping.” Specifically regarding the free movement of workers, the German trade union federation (DGB) demanded transitional arrangements rather than fixed transitional periods.35 The union which is most affected is the IG Bau, which organizes workers in agriculture, construction and janitorial services. In a position paper of September 2000 the union supported the eastern enlargement of the EU in principle, but also argued that the accession countries had to strictly meet the Copenhagen accession criteria and specifically had to institute a functioning social dialogue and remove restrictions on unions.36 The union emphasized that it did not see its demands as protectionist or shaped by xenophobic fears. Specifically regarding freedom of movement issues, the union demanded a sector-specific restriction on the free movement of services for a minimum of ten years applicable to firms in the construction,

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100 Germany and the eastern enlargement of the EU forestry and janitorial services sectors. On the issue of free movement of labor the union argued that this presented fewer social problems than the use of foreign workers by foreign subcontractors on German construction sites. Nonetheless, the union asked for a ten-year transition period during which migration would be regulated through the use of quotas that would be differentiated by sector and could increase over time. For Germany, these quotas could be based on the quotas it had set up in the bilateral agreements with Poland and other Central and Eastern European countries on projecttied workers. Finally, the union demanded special restrictions for border regions and border commuters. More specifically, border commuting should be restricted to a zone of no more than 30 kilometers from the border, and initially border commuting should be prohibited for the sectors organized by the IG Bau. On September 28, 2000 the IG Bau and two German construction sector employer associations issued a joint declaration which essentially endorsed these demands and added a demand for changing EU legislation on migrant workers. According to this demand, social insurance payments should be made for foreign workers posted in another EU member state sooner than under existing legislation.37 Among German government agencies, the German labor ministry and the finance ministry pursued a more restrictive line than the foreign office. The German labor ministry sought to balance the demands of economic sectors and regions that perceive labor migration from the new member states as either a potential threat or an opportunity. Regarding transition periods, labor ministry officials responsible for this area favored the “Swiss model” more than the “southern expansion” model and supported a solution where there would be one transition period for all member states. To the extent that some member states wanted to open their labor market earlier they would be free to do so. The German finance ministry was more concerned with the issue of the coordination of social security systems, which is directly tied to the freedom of movement question and which has clear budgetary implications. The foreign office took a more liberal position. On September 29, 2000 Wolfgang Ischinger, state secretary in the foreign office, argued in a speech that German border regions in particular did not have to fear a large influx of labor migrants. After the establishment of the free movement of labor, Polish migrant workers would most likely go to regions with high demand for labor rather than regions with high unemployment. Furthermore, German farmers needed Polish seasonal workers.38 On December 18, 2000 Chancellor Schröder presented the official position of the German government. He noted that, compared to the transition arrangements for the southern expansion of the EC in the 1980s, transition agreements for the eastern enlargement should be more flexible. More specifically, he proposed a seven-year transition period for the free movement of labor. However, this period could be shortened for individual accession countries. Beyond that, in case of labor shortages in the existing

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Germany and the eastern enlargement of the EU 101 member states, these should be able to grant access to their labor markets during the transition period according to their national laws. Finally, Schröder proposed restrictions on the free movement of services for selected areas, including the construction sector and handicrafts (Handwerk).39 Reactions to these proposals varied. Politicians in the accession countries initially strongly opposed such transition periods and argued that such demands were based on misplaced fears. Within Germany, responses were mixed. In a statement prepared for a hearing conducted by the European affairs committee of the German Bundestag, the peak association of German employers (BDA) and the federation of German industry supported the flexible and differentiated handling of transition periods but criticized the government’s defensive approach, which neglected Germany’s need for immigrants due to an aging population.40 In a response to questions by the committee, Christoph Kannengießer of the BDA noted that in principle an increased mobility of workers was a positive development, but he also recognized that a quick introduction of freedom of movement could have negative distributional consequences, particularly in sectors with many lowskill jobs, such as construction or agriculture.41 A representative of the German trade union federation agreed that in the medium and long term Germany needed immigrants. Nonetheless, German unions regarded transition periods on the free movement of workers as necessary for about seven to ten years after the accession of the Central and Eastern European candidate countries.42 Representatives of the business community in border regions also supported transition arrangements for the free movement of labor and services, but there were noteworthy differences between Bavaria and eastern German border regions. A representative of the small business chamber of Niederbayern-Oberpfalz noted that there already was a shortage of skilled labor in his region, and thus he did not support very strict transition periods for labor. On the other hand, he emphasized the need for precisely such strict transition periods for the free movement of services.43 In contrast, an official with the chamber of commerce in Neubrandenburg in eastern Germany noted that, given very high unemployment rates in eastern Germany, even low levels of migration could strain regional labor markets.44 This did not mean, though, that the governments of eastern German border states uniformly favored long transition periods. Kurt Biedenkopf, the minister president of the eastern Land of Saxony, argued during a visit to Hungary that Western European fears of being flooded by cheap Eastern European labor were based on ignorance, and lengthy transition periods were unrealistic and not in Germany’s interest.45

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The EU’s negotiating position and treaty results Efforts by the EU to adopt a common negotiating position were hampered by a dispute over a Spanish attempt to link transition periods on the free movement of labor to the future of the structural funds and specifically the

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102 Germany and the eastern enlargement of the EU eligibility of relatively poor Spanish regions for EU structural funds support beyond 2006. After the Spanish government had relented on this question the Commission publicly presented its proposal for transition arrangements in April 2001. This proposal called for a general transition period of five years, but no later than two years into this general transition period there would be a review, which could result in a shortening or lifting of the transition period. In the case of serious disturbances of their labor markets individual member states could maintain national restrictions for an additional two years beyond the five-year general transition period. Thus, the EU negotiating position called for a maximum transition period of seven years, which in practice, though, could be shortened significantly. Although some applicant countries, such as Poland, strongly objected to this proposal, Hungary fairly quickly accepted it. In the end the Act of Accession between the old member states and the new member states (Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia) contained such a flexible seven-year framework.46 Austria and Germany obtained a derogation from article 49 of the EC treaty, which guarantees free movement of services. This derogation is limited to particular sectors. For Germany the relevant list includes the construction industry, industrial cleaning and interior decorators. In essence this provision responds to the concerns that the IG Bau had regarding project-tied workers. Austria protected a wider range of sectors beyond the construction industry, including, among others, horticultural services and home nursing. Although Austria and Germany had been at the forefront of the push for restrictions on the free movement of labor and services, by May 2004, when ten new member states joined the EU, the majority of the old member states had put in place restrictions on the free movement of labor. Analysis To conclude, transition arrangements in the area of free movement of labor and related questions can take different forms, from a simple fixed transition period applicable to all member states to highly complex solutions differentiated by member state, sector and region. In the German debate on these issues German construction sector employers and unions articulated the most detailed proposals. These demands, which supported sector- and region-specific solutions, take on a bilateral character. This becomes evident when the IG Bau used the bilateral project-tied workers agreements as a model for at least some parts of transition arrangements for the EU’s eastern enlargement. The German federation of employer associations also supported a flexible solution which allowed for bilateral variations but with the goal of reducing the length of any transition period. After the treaty negotiations were completed the treaty provisions on this set of issues deviated from multilateral principles. This is most obvious in the provision that granted Austria and Germany a derogation from article 49 of the EC

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Germany and the eastern enlargement of the EU 103 treaty on free movement of services. On the other hand, one could also argue that this was a relatively small price to pay for obtaining political support in Austria and Germany for the larger multilateral project of EU enlargement. As stated earlier, support for bilateral or multilateral principles may rest either on a normative or an interest-based foundation, or a combination of the two. German opposition to a quick introduction of full freedom of movement was based on both diffuse (and exaggerated) fears of a large migration influx and concrete interests, such as in the construction sector. When German politicians attempted to counter such diffuse popular fears, they primarily used the language of interests. Thus, both Chancellor Schröder and Foreign Minister Fischer, as well as others, argued that the opening to the east had already created more jobs for German workers in export-oriented industries than had been lost through internationalization. The more interesting question is which interests mattered the most. Arguments emphasizing a straightforward division between employers favoring a cheap source of labor, and unions opposing liberal immigration policies, find only limited support in this case. German unions were relatively quiet on this issue, with the important exception of the IG Bau. This, and the position which the IG Bau took support Haus’s arguments distinguishing between opposition to immigration and opposition to temporary migration. The union took its strongest position not on restricting the right of Central and Eastern European workers to permanently settle in Germany but on the free movement of services, i.e. foreign contractors employing foreign workers in Germany subject to foreign labor and social insurance laws. Furthermore, the union favored tight restrictions on border commuters who are difficult to organize. In the construction sector the union found allies among employer associations, whereas in agriculture union demands ran counter to the position of the German farmers’ association. Such variation across sectors is at least partially linked to regional differences. The construction industry plays a more prominent role in the eastern German states than in western Germany. The controversy over project-tied workers also revealed concerns over the differential impact of the opening of labor markets on small and large companies. More generally, small enterprises in border regions are seen as potential losers of the enlargement process, which explains their insistence on transition periods on the free movement of services. Overall, the evidence presented here endorses the argument that support for multilateral policies among interest groups will vary according to the perceived costs and benefits of multilateral policies relative to their bi- or unilateral alternatives. In this case the most explicit demands for sectorspecific bilateral transition arrangements came from the construction union, which saw itself, and was regarded by others, as a potential loser in the enlargement process. We also see in this case how distributional conflict weakened institutions that in the past served to aggregate preferences.

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104 Germany and the eastern enlargement of the EU Evidence for such developments is most clear in the construction sector, where regional associations and individual firms left the national employers’ association and a protracted struggle over minimum wages took place. On the other hand, we also see the continuing influence of multilateralist norms. Thus, one of the questions that the Bundestag’s European affairs committee posed to the interest groups and individual experts at the hearing on free movement issues was whether a differentiation among accession countries was compatible with the principle of nondiscrimination. Union representatives presented their demands not only as necessary for German workers but argued that transition arrangements should serve the interests of workers in both old and new EU member states. None of the interest groups involved in this area questioned the desirability of EU enlargement as such.

Agriculture Compared to freedom of movement issues, agriculture arguably was an even more important hurdle that the accession negotiations had to clear. This was so for a number of reasons. First of all, agriculture still represents the largest component of the EU’s budget, and the acquis in this area is more extensive and complex than the lower regulation density for free movement of labor issues. Second, changes in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are highly sensitive in some member states and agricultural policy is even more sensitive for the largest accession country, Poland. Third, the CAP is clearly a moving target, under pressure from a variety of directions, including negotiations within the WTO. Distributional issues are critical for understanding the CAP. First of all, it represents a rather costly and inefficient income transfer from taxpayers and consumers to farmers. The supranational organization of agricultural policy in Europe has played a critical role in this respect. It is quite unlikely that national parliaments would have continued such an agricultural “welfare program” over decades as the economic significance of the agricultural sector rapidly declined.47 As Elmar Rieger put it, “[t]he CAP thus helped to take agricultural policies out of divisive domestic distributional conflicts by creating a functionally segmented and politically insulated policy arena.”48 Within the farming sector, the CAP has disproportionately benefited large farms. Finally, the CAP raises distributional issues among the member states in terms of the EU budget. As a net payer Germany would benefit from a national co-financing of agricultural policy, an idea that France has vigorously opposed. Although the size of Germany’s net contribution to the EU budget has been an issue of concern in German debates for a number of years, in the past Christian Democratic-led governments did not favor a comprehensive reform of the CAP. Under the Red–Green coalition of Chancellor Schröder a shift has occurred that is partially due to the fact that Social Democrats and Greens are less vulnerable electorally

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Germany and the eastern enlargement of the EU 105 to pressure by the farm lobby. This means that the Schröder government has been “prepared to consider more far-reaching reforms than previously with the aim of making a breakthrough on net contributions.”49 An analysis of the position of the German farmers’ association (Deutscher Bauernverband) shows the prominence of distributional arguments. The most frequently repeated argument was that the extension of the “four freedoms” of the single market (free movement of goods, labor, services and capital) to the accession countries should occur simultaneously. For the Bauernverband it was not acceptable to end all restrictions on agricultural trade while the establishment of free movement of labor was postponed through lengthy transition periods. In more concrete terms, the managing director of the association demanded that if the federal government asked for transition periods of seven to ten years for labor then there should be equivalent transition periods for labor-intensive agricultural products.50 Regarding the financial side of enlargement, the Bauernverband claimed that the budget package for 2000–06 provided adequate funds for incorporating the accession countries into the CAP. More specifically, the Bauernverband denied the need for introducing degressive elements into the direct payments scheme for farmers in the old member states, i.e. reducing direct payments over time to pay for enlargement.51 In June 2000 the accession negotiations on the agricultural chapter were formally opened. Particularly difficult issues included the fixing of quotas, veterinary and phytosanitary standards, and the extension of the system of direct payments to the accession countries. Regarding production quotas the accession countries essentially asked for generous quotas in line with historic patterns or future production potential rather than actual current production. Here it is important to note that, in 1990 and the following years, agricultural production in Central and Eastern Europe dropped significantly.52 The European Commission opposed this demand and pushed for reference periods close to the present. It is also important, though, to recognize sector-specific differences. One sector that is particularly important for German agriculture is the milk sector. In the context of the Agenda 2000 proposals the German agriculture ministry had pushed for an extension of the milk quota system.53 Here representatives of the German dairy industry had a different perspective than the Bauernverband. Whereas the Bauernverband did not regard milk quotas as particularly problematic in the context of EU enlargement, the German milk industry viewed the EU milk quota system as administratively rather complex and difficult, and favored a phase-out of milk quotas.54 A second issue concerns veterinary and phytosanitary standards, such as sanitary standards for dairies and slaughterhouses. Here the accession countries asked for transition periods. For the EU, this raised concerns about consumer protection and the potential spread of animal diseases. Before the establishment of the single market without border controls, such issues were easier to handle. The EC could grant transition periods and make sure that

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106 Germany and the eastern enlargement of the EU shipments of products that did not meet EC standards were stopped at the border. Today, the reinstitution of border controls would undermine one of the major accomplishments of the EC/EU. Here the German government opposed transition periods that undermined the operation of the single market.55 The German farmers’ association opposed such transition periods as well.56 The most contentious issue involved direct payments, which today account for a large part of EU support to farmers. These payments were introduced as part of the 1992 reform of the CAP in the context of the Uruguay Round GATT negotiations and were meant to compensate farmers for decreases in price support which brought EC/EU prices closer to world market prices.57 In WTO terminology these direct payments are part of the so-called “blue box” of agricultural support measures. This issue has obvious budgetary implications, which brings out a potential contradiction in German policy. On the one hand, Germany has been an advocate of eastern enlargement, but, on the other hand, the Schröder government has been concerned with reducing its disproportionate contribution to the EU budget. The issue also directly touches a central aspect of multilateralism: generalized principles of conduct. To exclude the new member states from the system of direct payments arguably represents a second-class membership. On the other hand, direct payments were first instituted to compensate farmers for price cuts. Since integration into the EU will mean higher prices for the majority of Central and Eastern European farmers, there was no reason to extend them to the accession countries. However, this argument did not hold for Slovenia where prices tended to be higher than in the EU.58 To the extent that direct payments have purposes other than compensation for price cuts, exclusion of Central and Eastern European accession countries was even more questionable. Thus, “[i]f payments are paid as income support, the poorest farmers cannot be excluded. If payments are, finally, seen as a reward for stewardship of the land, all farmers should receive such a reward.”59 In a speech on July 10, 2000 EU Agriculture Commissioner Fischler made a distinction between equal and fair treatment and stated that he was “committed to fair treatment of all members, old and new.”60 He also repeated other arguments against the extension of direct payments, for example that direct payments would not facilitate the necessary restructuring of the agricultural sector in the accession countries, and could lead to social tensions between subsidized farmers and industrial workers. The financial perspective for 2000–06, which the leaders of the member states agreed upon at the EU summit in March 1999, did not include funds for direct payments to farmers in the accession countries. One solution to the conflicts surrounding direct payments, which was supported by German political parties across the political spectrum from the Greens to the Christian Democrats, would have been to partly renationalize direct payments through substantial national cofinancing. As Rabinowicz pointed out, this “would suit the interests of countries that wish to reduce their

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Germany and the eastern enlargement of the EU 107 contribution to the budget but avoid a radical reduction of agricultural support. Germany is a prime example.”61 These plans would not have been in the interest of the new member states, however, as they would find it difficult to raise the necessary funds for such schemes. In 1999, however, German proposals for national cofinancing failed due to French resistance.62 In any case, pressure for change in EU policy on direct payments was increasing. At a Bundestag hearing in January 2001 the EU Commissioner for agriculture Franz Fischler argued that EU budget decisions of 1999 left enough room to gradually introduce direct payments for farmers in the accession countries before 2006.63 The Bauernverband stated that in principle it supported the extension of direct payments to farmers in the accession countries.64 At the end of January 2002 the European Commission formally presented its proposal for this issue.65 This proposal envisioned that “direct payments would be introduced in the new Member States equivalent to a level of 25% in 2004, 30% in 2005 and 35% in 2006 of the present system” and reach the full support level by 2013.66 Predictably, this proposal received a critical reception in the applicant countries but in the end they had to accept this scheme. Among the old member states, net contributors to the EU budget, including Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden, were concerned that the Commission’s proposal was too expensive and demanded an agreement on the principles of a reform of direct payments before the eastern enlargement of the EU. The German government also criticized that the EU’s financial perspective for 2000–06 had envisioned a first enlargement round in 2002 rather than 2004, and thus the Commission should have used the lower 2002 budgetary figures rather than the larger amounts for 2004. This would have lowered the cost of enlargement and resulted in budgetary savings for Germany. Within the German government the finance ministry had pushed for this position, whereas the foreign ministry was willing to be more generous to the accession countries.67 In the end, the most important line of conflict divided net contributors to the EU budget, including Germany, from the primary net beneficiaries, such as France. In October 2002 German Chancellor Schröder and French President Chirac reached a compromise on the EU agriculture budget, including most importantly direct payments. For the next budgetary period 2007–13 there will be a ceiling on EU agricultural spending, not including funding for rural development. The other member states were not all pleased with this Franco-German compromise, but they accepted it. Future changes in policy on direct payments will not only be controversial at the international level but have a domestic conflict potential as well, because, as Rabinowicz argued, the shift from price support to direct payments made distributional conflicts among farmers more likely: As long as price support was the major agricultural policy instrument, large and small farmers shared the same interests. Faced with a choice

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108 Germany and the eastern enlargement of the EU between low price and high price, all farmers unanimously united behind demands for the latter even if price policy mostly benefited large ones. Reinstrumentation of agriculture policy towards direct payments make this coalition weaker and redistributional conflicts among different groups of farmers more pronounced.68 This is so because direct payments and their distributional effects are more transparent than traditional price supports.69 In the German case reunification exacerbated the potential for distributional conflict as reunited Germany contains a large number of small farms in western Germany and large farms in the east.70 Thus, in a Bundestag debate on the results of the Berlin EU summit of 1999, members of the governing parties claimed that the government had succeeded in preventing the introduction of differentiating elements into the administration of direct payments, i.e. large farmers receiving relatively less than small farmers, and thus had defended the interests of eastern farmers.71 In July 2002 Franz Fischler presented the European Commission’s proposal for a further reform of the CAP.72 Important components of this proposal included a decoupling of direct payments from production and increasing emphasis on environmental and food safety standards and on rural development. As such this fit well with German preferences, but the German government criticized that expenditure on agriculture, and thus Germany’s budget contributions, would decrease only marginally.73 In the past the German farming lobby has been quite effective. Consumers (and taxpayers) who have paid for the EU’s “agricultural welfare program” through higher prices and taxes have not mobilized an effective counterweight to the German farming lobby.74 Similarly, as Wilson and Wilson have pointed out, [t]he influence of the agri-business lobby is surprisingly limited given the economic importance of food processing to the German economy. One reason for this is that the agri-business lobby is too diversified in its interests, with food processors generally identifying closely with farmers’ interests, while exporters have been more in favor of market liberalisation.75 Overall, the German negotiating position on agriculture has been less narrowly focused on specific subsectors, with the exception of defending the particular interests of eastern farmers, than on free movement of labor and services issues. This can be explained by the fact that the Bauernverband still enjoys a virtual monopoly over the representation of agricultural interests in Germany and thus is able to keep in check potential distributional conflicts within German agriculture. As the previous section has shown, this is not the case for German employers’ associations and unions.

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Germany and the eastern enlargement of the EU 109 The reluctance of the German government to extend direct payments to farmers in the new member states can be interpreted as a sign that the German government is moving away from a strong commitment to generalized principles of conduct. Furthermore, the German government is increasingly concerned about its net contributor position, which would also indicate a shift toward specific rather than diffuse reciprocity. However, there are a variety of other good arguments for reforming the EU’s agricultural policy, and the system of direct payments in particular. Beyond the arguments already mentioned, in the context of WTO trade negotiations the EU will face demands to decouple direct payments from production and thus to reduce the market distorting effects of EU policy. Ecological considerations also speak for a reform of EU policy in this area. Even if demands by the German government for a broad policy change are not just self-serving, the same cannot be said for using 2002 rather than 2004 figures for budgetary decisions. This reflects a clear concern with short-term budgetary problems and thus a shift toward specific reciprocity.

Conclusion In the past German governments have supported multilateral policies, and the eastern enlargement of the EU in particular, both because multilateralism served material German interests and because over time a strong normative consensus developed behind the pursuit of such policies. By and large this consensus still holds. Yet, in some areas, the willingness of German governments to bear the costs of multilateral policies has diminished. This chapter has provided evidence for this argument in the areas of free movement of labor (and services) and agriculture.76 In these areas German interest groups (labor unions, some employers, border regions and farmers) feared substantial costs due to EU enlargement. In these areas we also saw significant distributional conflicts. The evidence presented here shows domestic distributional conflicts on the free movement of labor issue and over agriculture, although on the domestic side distributional conflict has been more intense over the free movement of labor than agriculture. As expected, unions and employers in the construction sector and border regions made narrowly focused demands. It is instructive to compare the German position on these issues to other issues that are politically quite sensitive in Germany and some of the accession countries, but that do not entail as much domestic distributional conflict in Germany. As Chapter 3 has shown, the Bene‰ decrees, and the expulsion/resettlement of Sudeten Germans more generally, have been a major irritant in German–Czech relations. To a lesser extent, different interpretations of the expulsion/resettlement of Germans from Poland also complicate German–Polish relations. Although there is a material dimension to this issue, it does not pit different German economic actors, such as unions, employers or farmers, against each other. In contrast to members of

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110 Germany and the eastern enlargement of the EU the Austrian government, the German government has not made German support of Czech EU accession conditional on Czech abolition of the Bene‰ decrees. CSU politicians have been quite vocal in calling for the abolition of these decrees and have questioned the Czech Republic’s qualification for EU membership, but the CSU has not claimed that abolition of the Bene‰ decrees was a precondition for EU membership. Another recent irritant in German–Czech relations has been Czech insistence on proceeding with the Temelín nuclear power project. The Temelín nuclear power plant has been plagued by numerous technical and financial problems, and it is located 60 kilometers from the German border and also close to Austria. Again, the Austrian Freedom Party linked the demand for a shutdown of this plant to Austrian support of EU enlargement. The German government showed much more restraint. German government officials have voiced strong objections to Czech plans but did not want this dispute to turn into another obstacle to EU enlargement.77 Furthermore, these verbal protests have been much more tame than what has taken place in Austria, including a failed popular initiative campaign and blockades of Czech–Austrian border crossings. The relative German restraint is remarkable in light of the fact that both the German environment minister and the German foreign minister are members of the Green Party, which historically grew out of the anti-nuclear power movement. Thus, on political issues that are sensitive in Germany but where there is no or only limited domestic distributional conflict, the German government has been more concerned with keeping the enlargement process on track than with protecting narrow German interests. To what extent have German policies changed over time? Among the existing member states, Germany was one of the early proponents of the EU’s eastern enlargement. Yet, by the end of the 1990s it was clear that the willingness of German governments to subordinate German interests in protecting vulnerable industrial sectors or in reduced net budgetary contributions and the related issue of EU agricultural policy reform to the broad goal of EU enlargement had its limits.78 In the area of labor migration, Germany initially opened its labor markets at the end of the Cold War. However, after domestic opposition arose, Germany renegotiated the agreements with Central and Eastern European countries and dealt with distributional conflicts within Germany through sector-specific variations. This approach also characterized the German negotiating position in the accession negotiations at the end of the 1990s. Other studies which compared pre- and post-unification German policies in the areas of the EU budget and the CAP found a shift in German priorities. Wolfgang Wagner showed that compared to the 1970s and 1980s German governments in the 1990s became more assertive in demanding budgetary relief and “German decision makers have consciously disregarded European norms.”79 Jeffrey Anderson demonstrated that before unification “German governments pursued a consistent CAP policy that

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Germany and the eastern enlargement of the EU 111 centered around the maintenance of high prices for its farmers and a structural policy supportive of small-scale farming.”80 This is clearly not the case today, a development which Anderson attributes to structural changes in German agriculture due to unification and external pressures from international trade negotiations. This still leaves the question of why distributional conflicts became more difficult to resolve in the 1980s and 1990s. Here the evidence presented in this chapter has favored interest-based explanations. A common objection to such arguments is that ideas/norms frame or shape preferences. Both changes in material interests and ideational shifts help explain the changes in the positions of labor unions in the United States and elsewhere on immigration from the 1920s to the late twentieth century, as observed by Leah Haus and others.81 On the other hand, when we examine the specific arguments of German unions and employers on freedom of movement issues, the proposals for sectoral and regional differentiation are easily explained on the basis of material interests but there is no clear ideational explanation. More broadly, it would be far-fetched to argue that norms/ideology do more than supplement the rather hard material interests at stake in the issues analyzed in this chapter.

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Overall, since the end of the Cold War, German governments have extended their emphasis on multilateral arrangements in Germany’s foreign relations from the West to relations with Central and Eastern Europe. This comes through, first of all, in an analysis of (West) German treaties with Poland and Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic from the Cold War period to the 1990s. The Cold War treaties were bilateral treaties, although to understand them it is important to put them into the context of Cold War alliances and West German embeddedness in Western multilateral institutions in particular. In contrast to the infamous Rapallo Treaty of 1922 between Germany and the Soviet Union, in the 1960s and 1970s West German governments went to great lengths to inform Western allies of West German intentions and progress in the negotiations with the Soviet Union, Poland and Czechoslovakia. In the friendship and cooperation treaties of the early 1990s Germany committed itself to assisting Poland and Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic in their efforts to join the most important multilateral European organization, the European Community/ European Union. These treaties also contained provisions on the rights of German minorities, which incorporated multilateral minority rights norms agreed to in the context of the Conference (Organization) for Security and Cooperation in Europe. On the other hand, there is also evidence of limits to German support of multilateralism. The border and friendship treaties between Germany and Poland of 1990 and 1991, and the border treaty in particular, were closely linked to the diplomacy of German reunification. However, the German government strongly resisted attempts to extend the range of participants in the negotiations on German reunification beyond the two German states and the four victorious allies of World War II. This position was directed particularly against attempts by the Polish government, which had been concerned about German waffling over the German–Polish border, to become a full-fledged participant in these talks. Furthermore, the compensation agreements for victims of Nazi crimes have been almost exclusively bilateral agreements. This applies to both the Cold War and post-Cold War period. The only exception is the multilateral forced/slave labor agreement

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114 Conclusion of 2000. However, at first the German government and German industry had resisted efforts to multilateralize the forced/slave labor negotiations. If we use a “thick” definition of multilateralism and consider the extent to which the different agreements covered in this book follow the multilateral principles of indivisibility, generalized principles of conduct and diffuse reciprocity, we see deviations from these principles. During the negotiations for a slave/forced labor compensation fund there was the question of how much money various groups of victims, including victims in different countries, would receive. An early German proposal was to take into account differences in purchasing power. This would have meant that in Deutsche Mark or Euro terms victims in Eastern Europe would have received less than those living in the West. In the end it was decided that victims living in Poland, Ukraine or the Czech Republic would receive the same amount as victims in the West. The key argument here was that Eastern European victims should not be discriminated against. How discriminatory the German proposal was is not quite as obvious as it might seem, though, as DM 15,000 goes a lot further in Warsaw or Kiev than in New York. Nevertheless, the initial German proposal was clearly motivated by a desire to reduce the total cost of the agreement rather than equity considerations. Regarding minority rights, Western states including Germany have been hypocritical in seeking to impose standards on Eastern Europe that Western European states were not willing or able to live up to themselves. More specifically, the Polish government was quite concerned that the friendship treaty of 1991 should not only protect the rights of ethnic Germans in Poland but those of ethnic Poles in Germany as well, whereas the German government denied the existence of a Polish national minority in Germany. For EU enlargement this book has focused on two particularly sensitive topics in the negotiations: free movement of labor and agricultural subsidies. In the new member states, including Poland and the Czech Republic, it has been charged that, by insisting on transition periods for the free movement of labor, one of the core four freedoms in the EU’s single market, and by denying Central and Eastern European farmers full and immediate participation in the EU’s system of direct payments, the EU was offering them only second-class membership. Since Germany, along with Austria, was one of two key member states pushing for transition periods for labor migration and wanted to limit budgetary expenditures for agriculture, this charge would apply with particular force to Germany. In regard to EU enlargement it is important to note, though, that in previous enlargements accession countries were not pleased with the terms of the accession treaties either and tried to renegotiate the terms of accession after they had become members of the EC. Furthermore, EU enlargement is not particularly popular with the German public, or the general public of other old member states either. In the German case unemployment

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Conclusion 115 and migration are particularly sensitive issues. Thus, negotiating tough transition periods for the free movement of labor may not have been justified on economic grounds but it was politically necessary to keep the larger multilateral project of EU enlargement on track. Overall, we see a mixed pattern of both continued support for multilateral organizations and at least a partial shift toward more narrowly defined national interests and bilateral arrangements where these suited German interests better than multilateral agreements. The key question is how this pattern can be explained. Realists expected a fundamental reorientation of German foreign policy after the Cold War due to a changed international distribution of power. This book, along with other analyses of post-Cold War German foreign policy, has not found much evidence of such a drastic shift, including a fullscale retreat from multilateralism. However, this does not really undermine the realist emphasis on power. Where the expectations of some neorealist authors have been proven wrong is in their estimates of a large increase in German power. What has changed, though, is that in geopolitical terms Germany is less dependent on its Western allies, and the United States in particular, than during the Cold War. This dependence at least partially explained the West German emphasis on multilateralism after World War II. To the extent that this dependence has diminished, one of the factors supporting German multilateralism has also weakened. One of the trump cards that West Germany held during the Cold War, and which partially compensated for its geopolitical weakness, was its economic strength. Thus, at various points West German governments held out the promise of economic benefits to gain political concessions from their Eastern European negotiating partners. Today, the German economy limps along. EU enlargement serves both German geopolitical and economic interests, but German governments have shown only limited willingness to pay the economic costs of enlargement. Rather, German governments have secured lengthy transition periods for vulnerable economic sectors, such as the construction industry, or trucking companies. Even the budgetary costs to Germany of EU enlargement are limited. An analysis of changes in the international distribution of power is useful to establish a baseline for the likelihood of significant change in foreign policy. However, it tells us little about the specific policy areas where we might expect to see change. In order to understand why the German construction workers’ union pushed for bilateral agreements on the opening of German labor markets or why the German agriculture minister advocated a reform of the CAP but opposed the capping of direct payments to large farms, one has to understand domestic preferences, and interest group politics in particular. The significance of domestic preferences will be even more obvious for explaining differences in the outcomes of the negotiations covered in this book.

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116 Conclusion Scholars emphasizing norms or culture as the driving force behind foreign policy have argued that the relative continuity in the values held by German foreign policy elites can explain relative continuity in German foreign policy, despite drastic changes in Germany’s external environment. Nonetheless, cultural values do change and such changes may then explain changes in policy. However, the evidence presented in this study presents challenges for cultural/norm-driven arguments. To the extent that postWorld War II German anti-militarism and reflexive multilateralism were norm-driven they represent reactions to the Nazi period. Yet, one issue area where German governments clearly preferred bilateral rather than multilateral agreements was compensation for victims of Nazi crimes. The Kohl government did not want the external aspects of German reunification to be settled at a multilateral peace conference because it feared potential reparations claims by Poland and others. Similarly, the Schröder government, unlike its predecessor, was willing to reach a diplomatic agreement on the compensation of forced/slave laborers, but it wanted to settle this issue in bilateral negotiations with the US government rather than include Eastern European governments, the government of Israel and American class action lawyers. If German multilateralism was primarily a reaction to Nazi unilateralism, the German preference for a bilateral agreement in this area would appear odd. However, there is a simple instrumental interest-driven explanation for the preferences of German governments and industry. Multilateralizing the negotiations was bound to result in an agreement which carried a higher price tag. This book also tries to explain the distributional outcome of the negotiations covered in Chapters 3–6. Here I argue that the outcome of negotiations depends on the bargaining power of the participants and more specifically domestic preferences. The wider the range of possible agreements that may be ratified domestically, i.e. the wider the win-sets, the more likely it is that the negotiations will conclude with a viable agreement. However, negotiators with tight domestic constraints have greater bargaining power at the international table. In the negotiations covered in Chapter 2 it is striking that the negotiations with Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic were more difficult and protracted than those with Poland. The most sensitive issue in the German–Czech negotiations was the invalidity of the Munich Agreement. On this issue Czech and German governments could not reach common ground in the 1960s, 1970s or 1990s. The win-sets of the two sides did not overlap. On a number of occasions State Secretary Frank, the chief German negotiator for the Prague Treaty of 1973, told his Czechoslovak counterpart that the West German government was not trying to get Czechoslovakia to accept West German legal arguments on the invalidity of the Munich Agreement. Rather, West Germany was looking for a formula that would move the relationship forward while allowing each side to maintain its own legal position.1 Beyond the substantive disagreements, Frank argued that

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Conclusion 117 the West German government could not accept the Czechoslovak position because such a step could adversely affect the ratification chances of the eastern treaties with Poland and the Soviet Union.2 In contrast to the Czech–German disagreement over the Munich Agreement, Germany and Poland were able to resolve the Oder–Neisse issue. In order to make ratification of the Warsaw Treaty of 1970 and the border and friendship treaties of 1990/91 easier, the (West) German government needed Polish concessions in regard to the rights of ethnic Germans in Poland. In the German–Czech case this was never such an important issue. This can explain why the German–Polish friendship treaty of 1991 contains provisions which are slightly more favorable to the German minority than the equivalent sections of the German–Czechoslovak treaty. In the negotiations on the establishment of a forced/slave labor fund the side representing victims had important bargaining advantages. It was not that the Polish or Czech governments themselves enjoyed such a strong position but they benefited from the fear of German business leaders (and politicians) that lengthy and acrimonious court battles in the United States would damage the image of German industry. Thus, almost any agreement would have been better than no agreement. Although one can argue that the final figure of DM 10 billion did not represent a large burden on either the German government or German industry, this figure was significantly higher than the initial offer by German industry of DM 1.7 billion. The negotiations on EU enlargement were the most complex of all negotiations covered in this book. This can be seen in the fact that the treaty/act of accession takes up about 5,000 pages. Bargaining took place not only between the old member states and the new member states but among the old member states themselves. Thus, at one point the Spanish government attempted to block progress on a common EU position on the free movement of workers, in order to secure German concessions on continued EU aid to relatively poor Spanish regions. On the whole, the Central and Eastern European applicant countries were in a weak bargaining position. The costs of potential EU exclusion and the long-term benefits of EU membership are quite high, whereas for the old member states both the benefits and costs of EU enlargement are much more modest. However, the costs and benefits of EU enlargement are unevenly distributed among old member states. Germany stands to gain more from the integration of Poland and the Czech Republic into the EU, but Germany also will bear more of the costs than the majority of the other old member states. Given this distribution of costs and benefits, the applicant countries had to accept terms that were not particularly generous. On the particular issues covered in more detail in this book, Germany and Austria received the transition periods on the free movement of labor and services, which Germany had pushed for and which were politically more sensitive in Germany and Austria than in the Nordic and southern European member

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118 Conclusion states. On the other hand, Germany had to pay a price. Germany did not make much progress in reducing its burden as a net contributor to the EU budget through a reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. Such a reform has been a delicate political issue in France, which also has much less to gain from EU enlargement than Germany. Among the applicant countries Poland represented a difficult case for the EU due to its size and important agricultural sector. On the other hand, Poland was relatively successful in securing concessions from the EU. In both Poland and the Czech Republic there were fears that rich Western Europeans, and Germans in particular, would be able to buy up land in Poland and the Czech Republic at bargain prices. Poland secured a transition period of twelve years during which it may maintain national restrictions on the purchase of agricultural land and forests by foreigners. The transition period for the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and the Baltic states is seven years. Overall, bargaining power can explain the outcomes of the negotiations covered in this book. This is not to deny that normative considerations also played a role, such as in the negotiations on EU enlargement. However, on the basis of the evidence presented in this book it would be difficult to argue that approaches based on a logic of appropriateness or arguing could do a better job explaining outcomes than bargaining power. In fact, some of the evidence is not compatible with norm-based arguments. One would expect norm-based arguments to carry particular weight on Holocaust-related issues. Yet, in the 1990s the Kohl government was not willing to reopen the compensation issue and establish a foundation to compensate forced laborers. In the end such a foundation was established with the support of all parties represented in the Bundestag, but the negotiations had been difficult and the German government and German companies relented only after they had come under considerable pressure from abroad. Although not covered in the book but relevant for this issue, in the 1990s and beyond German governments refused to compensate Greek victims of Nazi atrocities, or their families, and argued that West Germany had settled the issue decades earlier in one of the global agreements between West Germany and Greece. The main reason was the fear that by giving in once the floodgates would open to potentially enormous financial claims. Similarly, in regard to evidence for a “logic of arguing” in these negotiations, arguing and consensus-oriented truth-seeking undoubtedly took place in the negotiations. Yet, in the negotiations on the issue of the invalidity of the Munich Agreement, the key stumbling block in West German– Czechoslovak relations, the only way to bring the negotiations to a successful conclusion was to abandon efforts at reaching a consensus about the past. In the 1990s politicians came up with the idea of leaving these issues to a joint commission of historians and various private efforts along similar lines.

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The future of German foreign policy What can we expect for the future of German relations with the Czech Republic and Poland, and German foreign policy more generally? After the end of the Cold War reunified Germany and its Central European neighbors were able to settle many of the unresolved conflicts of the past and put their relationship on a new and more constructive basis. However, during the past couple of years there have been a number of irritations in German– Czech and German–Polish relations and we should expect more of those to come. One of these irritations involved an issue discussed earlier in this book, the establishment of a center against expulsions. Most of the other points of controversy concern the future of the EU and the role of old and new, small and large, rich and poor member states within the enlarged EU. Germany is one of the old founding members states of the EC. In terms of population size it is the largest member state, and economically it is one of the wealthier, although lately not one of the more dynamic members. Poland and the Czech Republic are both new and relatively poor member states. German governments have been concerned that European institutions that were set up in the 1950s for a community of 6 countries would not function effectively in a union of 25. More specifically, the argument goes that an ever-expanding European Commission becomes too unwieldy. Furthermore, voting rules in the Council of Ministers need to be changed to make it more difficult for a single member state or a small number of member states to block decisions. Thus, in the negotiations over a European Constitution/ Constitutional Treaty, German politicians supported limiting the size of the Commission even if that meant that individual member states would not necessarily get their own commissioner. The “Draft Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe” reflected this desire by limiting the number of commissioners to fifteen after November 2009. A number of small member states, including the Czech Republic, objected to such a loss of representation within the Commission. At an EU summit meeting in June 2004 the leaders of EU governments finally agreed that each member state would be entitled to one commissioner until 2014. Assuming that this treaty is ratified, after 2014 the number of commissioners will be limited to two-thirds of the number of member states. Poland, together with Spain, took a strong stand on the issue of qualified majority voting in the Council of Ministers. The Nice Treaty of 2001 had established a system under which Germany, France, the UK and Italy received 29 weighted votes compared to 27 for Spain and Poland. Relative to population size, this represented quite a victory for Poland since it received almost as many votes as Germany despite the fact that its population was about half that of Germany. In the negotiations on the European constitution Germany pushed for the principle of a double majority of member states and of the EU’s population. Article 24 of this draft constitution/constitutional treaty stated that “[w]hen the European Council

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120 Conclusion or the Council of Ministers takes decisions by qualified majority, such a majority shall consist of the majority of member States, representing at least three fifths of the population of the Union.” Poland and the Conservative Spanish government under Prime Minister Aznar strongly objected and threw the project in limbo. After changes in government in both Poland and Spain the EU summit of June 2004 settled on a compromise formula where a qualified majority required the approval of 55 percent of member states representing 65 percent of the EU population. The votes of at least four member states were necessary to block a decision. National prestige may have mattered for Polish insistence on maintaining the weighted voting scheme of the Nice Treaty but decision rules also have implications for substantive policy decisions. One of the most important battles shaping up within the EU is the debate over future EU budgets. Here the German federal government as the largest net contributor wants to limit the size of the EU budget. Other member states, including relatively poor new members such as the Czech Republic and Poland, oppose such efforts. Even the German position is complicated by the tension between the eastern German Länder, who want to continue to receive EU subsidies, and the federal government, which wants to rein in the budget. One policy area where Germany has strongly supported greater EU activism is foreign and security policy. Here deep divisions opened up between Germany and its Central European neighbors over support for the war in Iraq. The broader issue involved the role of the United States in Europe and the relationship between the EU and NATO. Central European governments do not want to see the EU expand its role in this area at the expense of NATO. Beyond that, these differences may reflect different perspectives on European integration in general. As Marcin Zaborowski put it, “there are some considerable divergences between Warsaw and Berlin in their attitudes towards the notion of supranational integration. Although Poland remains all but unenthusiastic about joining Western institutions, it appears significantly less keen to support European federalism.”3 Overall, although Germany and its Central European neighbors have managed to lighten the weight of the historical baggage in their relationships, new divisions have opened up. These divisions do not precisely follow Donald Rumsfeld’s distinction between “old” and “new” Europe. The fact that a German government took such a strong position against the United States on an important issue, such as the war in Iraq, was a new development. At the same time Germany supported Czech and Polish efforts to “return” to Europe. What do these developments mean for the future of multilateralism in German foreign policy? There is every reason to expect that Germany will continue to support the EU and NATO, the cornerstones of German multilateralism. However, the German commitment to further European integration and the continued loss of national authority/sovereignty to European institutions is becoming less reflexive and more conditional than

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Conclusion 121 in the past. On domestically sensitive issues Germany increasingly will insist on national veto rights. Thus, we are witnessing a hollowing out of “reflexive multilateralism” in German foreign policy. Recent evidence for that includes German resistance to giving the EU Commission more power to enforce the stability pact, German insistence on maintaining national restrictions on access to the German labor market in the context of EU enlargement, and more generally German positions on a range of migration-related issues from EU norms on asylum procedures to the European constitution. German governments are also becoming less able and less willing to support further integration efforts through financial side payments. The members of multilateral organizations will experience a more assertive Germany. This more assertive Germany will frequently push narrowly defined national interests more openly than in the past. It will also demand recognition of its size and power. Again, this has already begun to happen. In the late 1990s Germany pushed for a German director of the International Monetary Fund. Currently, the German government has renewed its efforts to gain a permanent seat for Germany on the UN Security Council. Whether this increased assertiveness will ultimately benefit Germany is debatable. Within the EU there are signs of growing irritations among small member states directed against Germany. Furthermore, if increased German ambitions corresponded to growing German resources and the willingness to use them, these demands would have credibility. As it is, though, Germany is becoming more assertive internationally at a time when German spending on foreign affairs, whether in the form of defense spending or foreign aid, has declined in relation to domestic expenditures.4 As such, there is nothing wrong with a more “self-confident” German foreign policy, but the means should match the ends.

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1 Explaining support for multilateralism 1 Jeffrey J. Anderson, “Hard Interests, Soft Power, and Germany’s Role in Europe,” in Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., Tamed Power: Germany in Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), p. 85. 2 See for example Jeffrey Anderson, German Unification and the Union of Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); John S. Duffield, “Political Culture and State Behavior: Why Germany Confounds Neorealism,” International Organization 53 (Autumn 1999): 765–803. 3 For a good overview of Weimar foreign policy see Peter Krüger, Die Aussenpolitik von Weimar, 2nd edn (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993). 4 Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). 5 Neorealist contributions to this debate include John J. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War,” in Sean M. Lynn-Jones, ed., The Cold War and After: Prospects for Peace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), pp. 141–192; Christopher Layne, “The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise,” International Security 17 (Spring 1993): 5–51. A good example of institutional arguments is Jeffrey J. Anderson and John B. Goodman, “Mars or Minerva? A United Germany in a Post-Cold War Europe,” in Robert O. Keohane, Joseph S. Nye and Stanley Hoffmann, eds, After the Cold War: International Institutions and State Strategies in Europe, 1989–1991 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 23–62. For cultural arguments see, among others, Thomas U. Berger, Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998) and John S. Duffield, World Power Forsaken: Political Culture, International Institutions, and German Security Policy After Unification (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998). 6 Emil Nagengast, “Coming to Terms with a ‘European Identity’: The Sudeten Germans between Bonn and Prague,” German Politics 5 (April 1996): 96–97. 7 Emil Nagengast, “Germany’s New Ostpolitik and the Ideology of Multilateralism,” International Politics 35 (September 1998): 325–326. 8 Patricia A. Davis, “National Interests Revisited: The German Case,” German Politics & Society 16 (Spring 1998): 82–111. 9 Anderson, German Unification and the Union of Europe, p. 205. 10 Beverly Crawford, review of “Tamed Power” and “The German Predicament,” American Political Science Review 92 (March 1998): 263. 11 Stewart Patrick, “Beyond Coalitions of the Willing: Assessing U.S. Multilateralism,” Ethics & International Affairs 17, no. 1 (2003): 40.

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124 Notes 12 James A. Caporaso, “International Relations Theory and Multilateralism: The Search for Foundations,” in John Gerard Ruggie, ed., Multilateralism Matters: The Theory and Form of an Institutional Form (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 53. 13 Patrick, “Coalitions of the Willing,” p. 41. 14 Christopher Layne, “Offshore Balancing Revisited,” Washington Quarterly 25 (Spring 2002): 243. 15 Andrew Moravcsik, “Why Is U.S. Human Rights Policy So Unilateralist?,” in Stewart Patrick and Shepard Forman, eds, Multilateralism and U.S. Foreign Policy: Ambivalent Engagement (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002), p. 348. 16 Andrew Moravcsik, “Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics,” International Organization 51 (Autumn 1997): 534. 17 Peter F. Cowhey, “Elect Locally – Order Globally: Domestic Politics and Multilateral Cooperation,” in John Gerard Ruggie, ed., Multilateralism Matters: The Theory and Praxis of an Institutional Form (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 157–200. 18 Ibid., p. 161. 19 Peter J. Katzenstein, Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 18. 20 Andrei S. Markovits and Simon Reich, The German Predicament: Memory and Power in the New Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), pp. 14–15. 21 Lewis Coser, “Introduction: Maurice Halbwachs 1877–1945,” in Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 24. 22 Fritz Gaenslen, “Advancing Cultural Explanations,” in Valerie M. Hudson, ed., Culture & Foreign Policy (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997), p. 268. 23 Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” International Organization 42 (Summer 1988): 427–460. 24 Thomas Risse, “ ‘Let’s Argue!’: Communicative Action in World Politics,” International Organization 54 (Winter 2000): 1–2.

2 German multilateralism in East and West 1 Wolfram F. Hanrieder, Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of German Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 39. 2 Hanns Jürgen Küsters, “West Germany’s Foreign Policy in Western Europe, 1949–58: The Art of the Possible,” in Clemens Wurm, ed., Western Europe and Germany: The Beginnings of European Integration 1945–1960 (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1996), p. 56. 3 Ernst-Otto Czempiel, “The Atlantic Community, Europe, Germany: Options, Objectives, or Contexts of German Foreign Policy,” in Wilfrid L. Kohl and Giorgio Basevi, eds, West Germany: A European and Global Power (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1980), p. 98. 4 Reinhardt Rummel, “Bonn and European Political Cooperation,” in Wilfrid L. Kohl and Giorgio Basevi, eds, West Germany: A European and Global Power (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1980), p. 76. 5 Michael J. Baun, An Imperfect Union: The Maastricht Treaty and the New Politics of European Integration (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996). Moravcsik disputes this interpretation. See Andrew Moravcsik, The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), p. 428. 6 Baun, An Imperfect Union, p. 80.

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Notes 125 7 Beverly Crawford, “Explaining Defection from International Cooperation: Germany’s Unilateral Recognition of Croatia,” World Politics 48 (July 1996): 428–521. 8 Simon Bulmer, Charlie Jeffery and William E. Paterson, Germany’s European Diplomacy: Shaping the Regional Milieu (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 124. 9 Ibid., p. 6. 10 Rainer Baumann, “German Security Policy within NATO,” in Volker Rittberger, ed., German Foreign Policy Since Unification: Theories and Case Studies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), p. 154. 11 Ibid., pp. 154–155. 12 Charlie Jeffery and William E. Paterson, “Germany and European Integration: A Shifting of Tectonic Plates,” West European Politics 26 (October 2003): 59–75. 13 Ibid., p. 67. 14 Robert Rohrschneider, Learning Democracy: Democratic and Economic Values in Unified Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 15 Volker Rittberger, “Selbstentfesselung in kleinen Schritten? Deutschlands Außenpolitik zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts,” Politische Vierteljahresschrift 44 (March 2003): 14–15. 16 Jeffery and Paterson, “Germany and European Integration,” p. 71. 17 Stuart E. Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II (New York: Public Affairs, 2003), pp. 217–220. 18 Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 19 Günther Schmid, Entscheidung in Bonn: Die Entstehung der Ost- und Deutschlandpolitik 1969/1970 (Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1980), pp. 237–238. 20 For good overviews of West Germany’s Eastern trade policy see Angela E. Stent, From Embargo to Ostpolitik: The Political Economy of West German–Soviet Relations 1955–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Michael Kreile, Osthandel und Ostpolitik (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1978); Robert Mark Spaulding Jr., “The German Trade Policy in Eastern Europe, 1890–1990: Preconditions for Applying International Trade Leverage,” International Organization 45 (Summer 1991): 343–368. 21 Helen V. Milner and Robert O. Keohane, “Internationalization and Domestic Politics: An Introduction,” in Robert O. Keohane and Helen V. Milner, eds, Internationalization and Domestic Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 4. 22 Heather Grabbe and Kirsty Hughes, Enlarging the EU Eastwards (London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1998), p. 12. 23 Ibid., p. 14. 24 Jeffry A. Frieden and Ronald Rogowski, “The Impact of the International Economy on National Policies: An Analytical Overview,” in Robert O. Keohane and Helen V. Milner, eds, Internationalization and Domestic Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 25–47. 25 Ronald Rogowski, Commerce and Coalitions: How Trade Affects Domestic Political Alignments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). 26 Frieden and Rogowski, “The Impact of the International Economy,” p. 38. 27 Ibid., p. 39. 28 Hermann Ribhegge, Die Osterweiterung der Europäischen Union als Herausforderung für die neuen Bundesländer im Transformationsprozess (Frankfurt/ Oder: Frankfurter Institut für Transformationsstudien, 1997), p. 17.

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126 Notes 29 Rachel M. Friedberg and Jennifer Hunt, “The Impact of Immigrants on Host Country Wages, Employment and Growth,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 9 (Spring 1995): 23–44. 30 Heinz Fassmann, “EU-Erweiterung und Arbeitsmigration nach Deutschland und Österreich,” IMIS-Beiträge 19 (August 2002): 65–88. 31 Elmar Hönekopp, presentation at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, December 10, 2002. 32 Leah Haus, “Openings in the Wall: Transnational Migrants, Labor Unions, and U.S. Immigration Policy,” International Organization 49 (Spring 1995): 285–313. 33 Anderson and Goodman, “Mars or Minerva?,” p. 60. 34 See for example Volker Rühe, Deutschlands Verantwortung: Perspektiven für das neue Europa (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1994), p. 142; Joschka Fischer, Risiko Deutschland: Krise und Zukunft der deutschen Politik (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1994), p. 221. 35 Duffield, “Political Culture and State Behavior,” p. 782. 36 David P. Conradt, “Changing German Political Culture,” in Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, eds, The Civic Culture Revisited (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1980), pp. 212–272. 37 Andrei S. Markovits and Simon Reich, The German Predicament: Memory and Power in the New Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), pp. 14–15. 38 Thomas Banchoff, “Historical Memory and German Foreign Policy: The Cases of Adenauer and Brandt,” German Politics and Society 14 (Summer 1996): 36–53. 39 Robert G. Moeller, “War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany,” American Historical Review 101 (October 1996): 1008–1048. 40 Ibid., p. 1035. 41 Ibid., p. 1041. 42 Ibid., p. 1046. 43 Wadyslaw Bartoszewski, “Wider das selektive Erinnern,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 6, 2003, p. 9. 44 Eric Langenbacher, “Changing Memory Regimes in Contemporary Germany?,” German Politics and Society 21 (Summer 2003): 62. 45 See for example Jaroslav ·onka, “Zukunft statt Vergangenheit: Die Bene‰Dekrete und das Deutsch-Tschechische Verhältnis,” Internationale Politik 57 (September 2002): 30.

3 From the “policy of movement” toward reconciliation 1 Hansjakob Stehle, The Independent Satellite: Society and Politics in Poland since 1945 (New York: Praeger, 1965), pp. 289–290. 2 For the text of the treaty see Europa-Archiv 1991, pp. D315–325. 3 For the text of the treaty see Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 12/2468. 4 Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics.” 5 Mechthild Lindemann, “Anfänge einer neuen Ostpolitik? Handelsvertragsverhandlungen und die Erichtung von Handelsvertretungen in den Ostblockstaaten,” in Rainer A. Blasius, ed., Von Adenauer zu Erhard: Studien zur Auswärtigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1963 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1994), p. 47. 6 Ibid., p. 47. 7 Ibid., p. 49. 8 Wilhelm Grewe, Rückblenden 1976–1951 (Frankfurt: Propyläen, 1979), p. 263.

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Notes 127 9 Clay Clemens, Reluctant Realists: The Christian Democrats and West German Ostpolitik (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989), pp. 43–46. 10 Hans Graf Huyn, Die Sackgasse: Deutschlands Weg in die Isolierung (Stuttgart: Seewald, 1966). 11 Hans-J. Kirchner, “Das neue deutsch-polnische Handelsabkommen,” EuropaArchiv 18 (10 April 1963): 242; Robert W. Dean, West German Trade with the East: The Political Dimension (New York: Praeger, 1974), pp. 175–176. 12 Akten zur Auswärtigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1963, vol. 1 (AAPD 1963, I), doc. 29, p. 95, footnote 8. 13 AAPD 1963, I, doc. 232, p. 770. 14 AAPD 1963, II, doc. 349, p. 1170. 15 Lindemann, “Anfänge einer neuen Ostpolitik?,” pp. 56–58. 16 Ibid., pp. 55, 57. 17 Ibid., p. 60. 18 AAPD 1963, I, doc. 29. 19 Dieter Bingen, Die Polenpolitik der Bonner Republik von Adenauer bis Kohl 1949–1991 (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1998), pp. 82–83. 20 AAPD 1963, I, doc. 1893. 21 Huyn, Die Sackgasse, p. 345. 22 Dean, West German Trade, p. 185. 23 AAPD 1963, III, doc. 432, pp. 1503–1504. 24 AAPD 1964, II, doc. 256, p. 1065. 25 AAPD 1964, I, doc. 100, p. 437. 26 AAPD 1964, I, doc. 177, p. 707. 27 AAPD 1965, I, doc. 19, p. 88. 28 Dean, West German Trade, p. 185. 29 “Munich Heritage Divides Germany,” New York Times, June 1, 1964, p. 6; “Seebohm: Rückgabe an das Heimatvolk,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 19, 1964, p. 3. 30 Germany (West), Auswärtiges Amt, ed., 40 Jahre Aussenpolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Eine Dokumentation (Stuttgart: Bonn Aktuell, 1989), p. 162. 31 AAPD 1964, II, doc. 274, p. 1125. 32 AAPD 1965, I, doc. 144, p. 597. 33 AAPD 1966, docs 3, 42, 54, 310, 353. 34 AAPD 1966, I, doc. 31. 35 Willy Brandt, Begegnungen und Einsichten: Die Jahre 1960–1975 (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1976), pp. 219–220. For the text of Kiesinger’s speech see Kurt Georg Kiesinger, Die Große Koalition 1966–1969: Reden und Erklärungen des Bundeskanzlers, ed. Dieter Oberndörfer (Stuttgart: Deutsche VerlagsAnstalt, 1979), pp. 6–26. 36 Archiv für Christlich-Demokratische Politik, VIII-001, carton 1012/1. 37 Ibid. 38 Excerpts of speech by Antonin Novotny, Europa-Archiv, March 10, 1967, p. D102. 39 For excerpts see Europa-Archiv, March 10, 1967, pp. D99–101. 40 AAPD 1967, I, docs 10, 13. 41 AAPD 1967, I, doc. 3. 42 “Drei Abgesandte aus Bonn sondieren in Prag,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 10, 1967; “Die Kontake in Prag werden fortgesetzt,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 14, 1967; “Große politische Debatte in Prag,” Welt, January 18, 1967; “In Prag nach der Warschauer Konferenz,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 21, 1967.

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128 Notes 43 Adolf Müller and Bedrich Utitz, Deutschland und die Tschechoslowakei: Zwei Nachbarvölker auf dem Weg zur Verständigung (Freudenstadt: Euro-Buch, 1972), p. 141. 44 Ibid., pp. 147–148. 45 For the text of the treaty see Dokumente zur Außenpolitik der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik 1967 (Berlin: Staatsverlag der Deutschen demokratischen Republik, 1970), part II, pp. 1036–1040. 46 AAPD 1967, I, doc. 174, 218. 47 “Unterbrechung in Prag,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 27, 1967, p. 1; “Bahrs Bericht im Kabinett,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 28, 1967, p. 1. 48 “Prag will die Bundesrepublik nicht beim Namen nennen,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 2, 1967, p. 1. 49 “Ein Schritt zur Annährung zwischen Bonn und Prag,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 4, 1967, p. 1. 50 Georg Schröder, “Prag – ein nur kleiner Schritt,” Welt, August 4, 1967; Jürgen Tern, “Die Zwischenlösung mit Prag,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 4, 1967; “Bahr des Pokerns unkundig,” Christ und Welt, August 11, 1967. 51 Stiftung Archiv Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv (SAPMO), SED NY 4182/1232, 155. 52 SAPMO, SED IV 2/2.035/53. 53 Karen E. Smith, The Making of EU Foreign Policy: The Case of Eastern Europe (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999), p. 27. 54 Bingen, Polenpolitik, p. 141. 55 For example, on January 25, 1963 the West German ambassador to the Vatican van Scherpenberg wrote to Foreign Minister Schröder that in his view no Western ally had any interest in Germany regaining territories east of the Oder– Neisse line. Furthermore, one issue which had negative effects on Western public opinion about West Germany was perceived aggressive West German intentions toward Eastern Europe. See AAPD 1963, I, doc. 54. 56 See excerpt in Eckart Thurich, Schwierige Nachbarschaften: Deutsche und Polen – Deutsche und Tschechen im 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1990), pp. 157–158. 57 Karl-Alfred Odin, Die Denkschriften der EKD: Texte und Kommentar (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchner Verlag, 1966), p. 157. 58 For the text of these letters see Edith Heller, Macht, Kirche, Politik: Der Briefwechsel zwischen den polnischen und deutschen Bischöfen im Jahre 1965 (Cologne: Treff-Punkt Verlag, 1992), pp. 203–220. 59 Hubert Feger, “Einstellungen von Deutschen zu Polen,” in Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Carl-Christoph Schweitzer, Jerzy Su∏ek and Lech Trzecíakowskí, eds, Bundesrepublik Deutschland – Volksrepublik Polen: Bilanz der Beziehungen, Probleme und Perspektiven ihrer Normalisierung (Frankfurt: Alfred Metzner, 1979), p. 252. 60 Ludwig Wilhelm Maria Elsing, Sozialdemokratie und Polen: Die Polenpolitik der SPD bis zum Warschauer Vertrag, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Bonn, 1981, p. 409. 61 Ibid., pp. 435–436. 62 Ibid., p. 437. 63 Ibid., p. 471. 64 Deutscher Bundestag, Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 7. Wahlperiode, Stenographische Berichte 7/90, p. 8306. 65 Elsing, Sozialdemokratie und Polen, p. 475. 66 Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Erinnerungen (Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1995), p. 96. 67 AAPD 1969, II, doc. 375; Schmid, Entscheidung in Bonn, p. 100.

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Notes 129 68 Bingen, Polenpolitik, p. 128. 69 AAPD 1969, II, doc. 374. 70 Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1982), p. 147. 71 Schmid, Entscheidung in Bonn, p. 101. 72 The following account largely follows Bingen, Die Polenpolitik der Bonner Republik, and Schmid, Entscheidung in Bonn. 73 AAPD 1970, I, doc. 141. 74 AAPD 1971, II, doc. 171. 75 Ibid. 76 AAPD 1972, I, doc. 101. 77 Ibid., 96–7. For a short personal account by the West German diplomat who led the German delegation see Paul Frank, Entschlüsselte Botschaft: Ein Diplomat macht Inventur (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1981), pp. 303–312. 78 William E. Griffith, The Ostpolitik of the Federal Republic of Germany (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978), p. 222. 79 Europa-Archiv, February 10, 1974, p. 69. 80 Deutscher Bundestag, Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 7. Wahlperiode, Stenographische Berichte 7/110, 7443. 81 Bundesrat, Stenographische Berichte 409, 301. 82 For this point see in particular the speech by Walter Becher in Deutscher Bundestag, Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 7 Wahlperiode, Stenographische Berichte 7/90, 6025. 83 Griffith, Ostpolitik, p. 222. 84 Benno Zündorf, Die Ostverträge (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1979), p. 101. 85 Krzysztof Miszczak, Deklarationen und Realitäten: Die Beziehungen zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der (Volks-)Republik Polen von der Unterzeichnung des Warschauer Vertrages bis zum Abkommen über gute Nachbarschaft und freundschaftliche Zusammenarbeit (1970–91) (Munich: Tuduv, 1993), pp. 318–320. 86 Hanns Jürgen Küsters and Daniel Hofmann, eds, Dokumente zur Deutschlandpolitik: Deutsche Einheit – Sonderedition aus den Akten des Bundeskanzleramtes 1989/90 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1998), pp. 955–956. 87 Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), chapter 5. 88 Horst Teltschik, 329 Tage: Innenansichten der Einigung (Berlin: Siedler, 1991), pp. 14, 165–166, 359. 89 Werner Weidenfeld, Außenpolitik für die deutsche Einheit: Die Entscheidungsjahre 1989/90, vol. 4 of Geschichte der deutschen Einheit (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1998), p. 481. 90 Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Rebuilding a House Divided, trans. Thomas Thornton (New York: Broadway Books, 1998), pp. 302–304. 91 Weidenfeld, Außenpolitik für die deutsche Einheit, p. 488. 92 Michael Ludwig, Polen und die deutsche Frage: Mit einer Dokumentation zum deutsch-polnischen Vertrag vom 17. Juni 1991, 2nd edn (Bonn: Europa Union, 1991), pp. 84–85. 93 Teltschik, 329 Tage, p. 165; Dieter Korger, Die Polenpolitik der deutschen Bundesregierung von 1982–1991 (Bonn: Europa Union, 1993), p. 68. 94 Korger, Polenpolitik, p. 68. 95 Artur Hajnicz, Polens Wende und Deutschlands Vereinigung: Die Öffnung zur Normalität 1989–1992 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1995), p. 108. 96 Ibid., p. 109.

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105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127

Bingen, Polenpolitik, pp. 281–282. Genscher, Rebuilding a House Divided, p. 465. Bingen, Polenpolitik, p. 303. Miszczak, Deklarationen und Realitäten, p. 427. Hajnicz, Polens Wende, pp. 131–132. For the text of the treaties see Deutscher Bundestag, 12. Wahlperiode, Drucksache 12/2468; Europa-Archiv, July 10, 1991, pp. D315–325. The Seliger-Gemeinde took its name from Josef Seliger, a politician under the Habsburg Monarchy and later Czechoslovakia, while the names of the other organizations refer to works of literature, i.e. the fourteenth-century Ackermann aus Böhmen by Johannes von Saaz, and Adalbert Stifter’s Witiko. For a more detailed discussion of expellee organizations see Hans W. Schoenberg, Germans from the East (The Hague: Martinus Nijoff, 1970). Alfred Ardelt, “Zum Selbstverständnis sudetendeutscher Politik,” in Helmut Diwald, Richard W. Eichler, Alfred Schickel, Lothar Bossle, Gerhard Reschl et al., eds, Die Tschechoslowakei: Das Ende einer Fehlkonstruktion: Die sudetendeutsche Frage bleibt offen (Berg: Verlagsgesellschaft Berg, 1993), pp. 112, 113. “Außenminister Genscher und Dienstbier formulieren ‘Prager Thesen’ zu Europa,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 13, 1991, p. 6; “Bonn und Prag verhandeln,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 8, 1991, p. 4. “CSU verlangt Entschließung zum Nachbarschaftsvertag mit Prag,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 21, 1992, p. 4. Ibid. “Der Vertrag mit der Tschechoslovakei wird im Februar unterzeichnet,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 22, 1992, p. 1. Deutscher Bundestag, Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 12. Wahlperiode, Stenographische Berichte 12/93, p. 7629. Ibid., p. 7627. Ibid., p. 7633. Ibid., pp. 7636–7637. Ibid., pp. 7686–7687. Rudé právo, November 24, 1993 (FBIS-EEU-93-227, p. 10); Author’s interview, German foreign office, July 11, 1995. Author’s interview, Czech foreign ministry, June 25, 1996. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 9, 1996, p. 10. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 1, 1997. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 17, 1997, p. 5. “Sozialdemokratische Minderheitsregierung in Prag bestätigt,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 20, 1998, p. 2. “‘EU-Verhandlungen stoppen’,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, August 5, 1998. “Vertriebene drohen mit Klagen,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 10, 1999, p. 1. Deutscher Bundestag, Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 14. Wahlperiode, Stenographische Berichte 14/211. The speech is available at: www.bmi.bund.de/dokumente/Rede/ix_80705. htm (accessed June 7, 2002). Genscher, Rebuilding a House Divided, pp. 465–457. Norbert Baas, “Das Weimarer Dreieck: Von regionaler Kooperation zu europäischer Integration,” Internationale Politik 54 (November 1999): 44. Bingen, Polenpolitik, p. 325. Jiri Valenta, “Soviet Policy toward Hungary and Czechoslovkia,” in Soviet Policy in Eastern Europe, edited by S.M. Terry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 119–120.

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Notes 131 128 Müller and Utitz, Deutschland und die Tschechoslowakei, pp. 139–140. 129 Rainer Blasius, “Erwin Wickert und die Friedensnote der Bundesregierung vom 25. März 1966,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 43 (July 1995): 548. 130 Thomas Grosser, “Die Integration der Vertriebenen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Annäherung an die Situation der Sudetendeutschen in der westdeutschen Nachkriegsgesellschaft am Beispiel Bayerns,” in Hans Lemberg, Jan Kfien and Du‰an Kováã, eds, Im geteilten Europa: Tschechen, Slowaken und Deutsche und ihre Staaten 1948–1989 (Essen: Klartext, 1998). 131 Ibid., p. 76. 132 Ibid. 133 Ibid., pp. 76–77. 134 Clay Clemens, Reluctant Realists: The Christian Democrats and West German Ostpolitik (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989), p. 297.

4

The diplomacy of compensation for Eastern European victims of Nazi crimes

1 As Kischel points out, the basis for making a clear distinction between these terms is in fact murkier than it might appear at a first glance. See Uwe Kischel, “Wiedergutmachungsrecht und Reparationen,” Juristenzeitung 52 (February 7, 1997): 126–131. 2 Constantin Goschler, “Offene Fragen der Wiedergutmachung,” in Helmut König, Michael Kohlstruck and Andreas Wöll, eds, Vergangenheitsbewältigung am Ende des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998), p. 49. 3 Gottfied Zieger, “Das Thema der Reparationen im Hinblick auf die besondere Lage Deutschlands,” Recht der internationalen Wirtschaft-Außenwirtschaftsdienst des Betiebs-Beraters (RIW/AWD) 26, no. 1 (January 1980): 11. 4 US Department of State, Documents on Germany 1944–1985 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1985), p. 59. 5 Ibid. 6 For more detail on the Israeli decision process see Michael Brecher, “Images, Process and Feedback in Foreign Policy: Israel’s Decisions on German Reparations,” American Political Science Review 67, no. 1 (March 1973): 73–102. 7 Nahum Goldmann, The Autobiography of Nahum Goldmann: Sixty Years of Jewish Life, trans. Helen Sebba (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), pp. 259–261. 8 See for example Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 1/4141, p. 4. 9 For excerpts of the relevant provisions see Archiv des Völkerrechts 29, nos 1–2 (September 1991): 140–141. 10 Thomas Oppermann, “Die Haltung der Bundesregierung gegenüber den Reparationsansprüchen der Westmächte,” in Günter Hoog, ed., Völkerrecht, Staatsangehörigkeit, Entschädigung (Hamburg: Forschungsstelle für Völkerrecht und ausländisches öffentliches Recht der Universität Hamburg, 1970), p. 294. 11 Ulrich Herbert, “Nicht entschädigungsfähig? Die Wiedergutmachungsansprüche der Ausländer,” in Ludolf Herbst and Constantin Goschler, eds, Wiedergutmachung in der Bundesrepublik (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989), p. 280. 12 Cornelius Pawlita, ‘Wiedergutmachung’ als Rechtsfrage? Die politische und juristische Auseinandersetzung um Entschädigung für die Opfer nationalsozialistischer Verfolgung (1945–1990) (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1993), pp. 152–153.

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United Nations Treaty Series 41 (1949): 200. Zieger, “Das Thema der Reparationen,” pp. 15–16. Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 6/1462, p. 2. Heinz Geyr, Auf dem Wege zur Aussöhnung: Bonn, Warschau und die humanitären Fragen (Stuttgart: Verlag Bonn Aktuell, 1978), p. 80. AAPD 1970, III, doc. 589. Geyr, Auf dem Weg zur Aussöhnung, pp. 94–95. Deutscher Bundestag, Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 7. Wahlperiode, Stenographische Berichte 7/202, p. 13934. Ibid., p. 13986. Ibid., p. 13949. Ernst Féaux de la Croix and Helmut Rumpf, Der Werdegang des Entschädigungsrechts unter national- und völkerrechtlichem und politologischem Aspekt (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1985), p. 17. Ibid., pp. 45–46. Kurt Schwerin, “German Compensation for Victims of Nazi Persecution,” Northwestern University Law Review 67, no. 4 (September–October 1972): 496. Arnold Spitta, “Entschädigung für Zigeuner? Geschichte eines Vorurteils,” in Ludolf Herbst and Constantin Goschler, eds, Wiedergutmachung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989), pp. 385–401. Laszlo Schirilla, Wiedergutmachung für Nationalgeschädigte: Ein Bericht über die Benachteiligung von Opfern der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft (Munich and Mainz: Kaiser, Grünewald, 1982). The following is based largely on Féaux de la Croix and Rumpf, Der Werdegang des Entschädigungsrechts, pp. 201–288. Hans Günter Hockerts, “Wiedergutmachung in Deutschland: Eine historische Bilanz 1945–2000,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 49 (April 2001): 194. The text of the resolution is reprinted in Michael Ludwig, Polen und die deutsche Frage, p. 219. Küsters and Hofmann, Dokumente zur Deutschlandpolitik, pp. 958–959. Artur Hajnicz, Polens Wende und Deutschlands Vereinigung, p. 186. Herbert Küpper, “Die Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts in den Staaten Osteuropas,” Osteuropa 46 (August 1996): 762. Herbert Küpper, “Die Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts in den Nachfolgestaaten der Sowjetunion,” Osteuropa 46 (July 1996): 645. Ibid. Ibid., p. 646. Ibid., p. 655. Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 13/8454. Küpper, “Die Wiedergutmachung,” pp. 654–655. Vladimir Handl, “Czech–German Declaration on Reconciliation,” German Politics 6 (August 1997): 158. Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 13/6787. “Die Versöhnung ist ein schwieriges Geschäft geblieben,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 19, 1997, p. 6. “Deutsch-tschechischer Notenaustausch in Prag,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 30, 1997, p. 1. “Erste Hilfen aus dem deutsch-tschechischen ‘Zukunftsfonds’,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 18, 1998, p. 4. “Prag lehnt ‘humanitäre Geste’ für Sudetendeutsche ab,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 3, 2003, p. 1; “Wer hat die humanitäre Geste für die Sudetendeutschen torpediert?,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 5, 2003, p. 6. “Jüdische Organisationen in Prag fordern direkte Entschädigung,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 26, 1997, p. 6.

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Notes 133 46 Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung, Bulletin, No. 6, January 26, 1998, p. 16. 47 Ulrich Herbert, Hitler’s Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany under the German Reich, trans. William Templer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 1. 48 Ibid., p. 4. 49 Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 10/6287, p. 47. 50 Pawlita, “Wiedergutmachung” als Rechtsfrage?, pp. 362–363. 51 For more details on this case see Benjamin B. Ferencz, Less than Slaves: Jewish Forced Labor and the Quest for Compensation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), chapter 2; Wolfgang Benz, “Der Wollheim-Prozeß: Zwangsarbeit für I.G. Farben in Auschwitz,” in Ludolf Herbst and Constantin Goschler, eds, Wiedergutmachung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989), pp. 303–326. 52 Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 13/4787. 53 Ferencz, Less than Slaves. 54 An English translation appeared in 1997. See Herbert, Hitler’s Foreign Workers. 55 Der Spiegel, January 6, 1986, p. 28. 56 Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 10/4640. 57 Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 10/5796. 58 Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 11/4704. 59 Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksachen 11/4705, 11/4706. 60 Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 11/5176. 61 Deutscher Bundestag, Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 11. Wahlperiode, Stenographische Berichte 11/46, p. 3210. 62 For a detailed analysis of this issue see Angelika Timm, Jewish Claims against East Germany: Moral Obligations and Pragmatic Policy (Budapest: Central European University, 1997). 63 Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 13/6847. 64 Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 13/8454. 65 Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 13/8956. 66 The decision is reprinted in Klaus Barwig, Günter Saathoff and Nicole Weyde, eds, Entschädigung für NS-Zwangsarbeit: Rechtliche, historische und politische Aspekte (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1998), pp. 222–247. 67 Ibid., pp. 248–289. 68 Ibid., pp. 291–299. 69 The following largely follows Michael J. Bazyler, “Nuremberg in America: Litigating the Holocaust in United States Courts,” University of Richmond Law Review 34 (March 2000): 1–283. 70 For a detailed account by a participant in the fight over these issues see Gregg J. Rickman, Swiss Banks and Jewish Souls (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1999). 71 Detlev F. Vagts, “Restitution for Historic Wrongs, the American Courts and International Law,” American Journal of International Law 92 (April 1998): 232. 72 “Für die Deutsche Bank steht viel auf dem Spiel,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 6, 1999. 73 “Zwangsarbeit entschädigen,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 18, 1998, p. 19. 74 “Überraschender Schwenk von VW bei der Entschädigung von Zwangsarbeiter,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 10, 1998, p. 18; “VW bringt den Stein ins Rollen,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 9, 1998. 75 Handelsblatt, September 24, 1998. 76 “Geheimtreff bei Schröder,” Der Spiegel, October 19, 1998, pp. 124–126.

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134 Notes 77 In 1995 Stuart Eizenstat, who at the time was US ambassador to the European Union, was asked to become the State Department’s special envoy “to encourage the return of property confiscated from religious communities by the Nazis and then nationalized by Eastern European Communist governments.” See Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice, p. 23. Eizenstat kept this portfolio in subsequent positions within the Clinton administration as Under Secretary of Commerce, Under Secretary of State and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. Eizenstat represented the US government in negotiations with Swiss banks and German companies/the German government on forced/slave labor issues. 78 “Unternehmen einigen sich auf Entschädigungsfonds,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 17, 1999, p. 1; “German Companies Set Up Fund for Slave Laborers Under Nazis,” New York Times, February 17, 1999, p. 1. 79 “Gleiches Recht für alle Opfer,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 22, 1999, p. 2. 80 “Schacher um ein Versöhnungswerk,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 22, 1999, p. 2. 81 Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice, pp. 217–218. 82 “Hombach: Fortschritte im Entschädigungsstreit,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 8, 1999, p. 13. 83 “German Companies Set Up Fund For Slave Laborers Under Nazis,” New York Times, February 17, 1999, p. 1. 84 “Zehn Milliarden Mark für die Zwangsarbeiter: Erleichterung über die Einigung,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 18, 1999, p. 1. 85 “Bundesländer beteiligen sich nicht an Entschädigungsfonds,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 19, 2000, p. 1. 86 “Aus Verlegenheit gut,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 16, 2000. 87 Deutscher Bundestag, Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 14. Wahlperiode, Stenographische Berichte 14/114, pp. 10751–10771. 88 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 17, 1999. 89 “Zwangsarbeiter wollen die ganzen 10 Milliarden DM,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 19, 2000, p. 15. 90 “Höhe der Entschädigung weiter umstritten,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 26, 1999, p. 2. 91 Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 14/3790. 92 The text of the agreement is available at: www.usembassy.de/dossiers/holocaust/ agreement.htm (accessed August 8, 2000). 93 The text of this ruling is available at: www.bundesregierung.de. 94 Deutscher Bundestag, Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 14. Wahlperiode, Stenographische Berichte 14/172, p. 16858. 95 Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 14/9161. 96 Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 14/8673.

5 German minorities in Poland and the Czech Republic 1 2 3 4

AAPD 1970, I, doc. 155. Küsters and Hofmann, Dokumente zur Deutschlandpolitik, p. 878. Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 14/4045, p. 4. Rainer Münz and Rainer Ohliger, “Long-Distance Citizens: Ethnic Germans and Their Immigration to Germany,” in Peter H. Schuck and Rainer Münz, eds, Paths to Inclusion: The Integration of Migrants in the United States and Germany (New York: Berghahn Books, 1998), chapter 6. 5 Jan Kfien, Die Konfliktgemeinschaft: Tschechen und Deutsche 1780–1918, trans. Peter Heumos (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1996). 6 Ibid., p. 34. 7 Karl Braun, “Der 4. März 1919: Zur Herausbildung sudetendeutscher Identität,” Bohemia 37 (1996): 355.

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Notes 135 8 Ibid., pp. 372–373. 9 Rudolf Jaworski, Vorposten oder Minderheit? Der sudetendeutsche Volkstumskampf in den Beziehungen zwischen der Weimarer Republik und der âSR (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1977), p. 63. 10 F. Gregory Campbell, “The Struggle for Upper Silesia, 1919–1922,” Journal of Modern History 42 (September 1970): 372. 11 Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed. 12 Rudolf Jaworski, “The German Minorities in Poland and Czechoslovakia in the Interwar Period,” in Paul Smith, ed., Ethnic Groups in International Relations (New York: New York University Press, 1991), pp. 174–175. 13 Ibid., p. 171. 14 F. Gregory Campbell, Confrontation in Central Europe: Weimar Germany and Czechoslovakia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), pp. 266–267. 15 Stanis∏aw Sierpowski, “Minorities in the System of the League of Nations,” in Paul Smith, ed., Ethnic Groups in International Relations (New York: New York University Press, 1991), chapter 2. 16 Adam Burgess, “Critical Reflections on the Return of National Minority Rights Regulation to East/West European Affairs,” in Karl Cordell, ed., Ethnicity and Democratisation in the New Europe (New York: Routledge, 1999), chapter 5. 17 Jaroslav Macek, “Zur Problematik der abgetrennten Grenzgebiete, besonders des sogenannten Sudetenlands in den jahren 1938–1945,” in Detlef Brandes and Václav Kural, eds, Der Weg in die Katastrophe: Deutsch-tschechoslowakische Beziehungen 1938–1947 (Essen: Klartext, 1994), pp. 58–59. 18 The following is largely based on Libor Rouãek, Die Tschechoslowakei und die Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1949–1989: Bestimmungsfaktoren, Entwicklungen und Probleme ihrer Beziehungen (Munich: Tuduv, 1990). 19 Ibid., p. 215. 20 AAPD 1965, I, doc. 28. 21 For the text of the letter exchange see Europa-Archiv 29 (February 10, 1974): D68–69. 22 Deutscher Bundestag, Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 7. Wahlperiode, Stenographische Berichte 7/90, pp. 6013–6014. 23 Patricia Davis, “Ethnic Germans in Poland: Bridge Builders or a New Source of Conflict?,” German Politics and Society 31 (Spring 1994): 24. 24 Philipp Ther, Tomasz Kamusella and Petr Kacir, “Silesia and the Dawning of the Modern Era,” in Karl Cordell, ed., The Politics of Ethnicity in Central Europe (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000), p. 88. 25 W∏adis∏aw Wszebór Kulski, Germany and Poland: From War to Peaceful Relations (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1976), pp. 79–80. 26 Thomas Urban, Deutsche in Polen: Geschichte und Gegenwart einer Minderheit, 4th edn (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2000), pp. 68–72. 27 Ibid., pp. 21–22. 28 Ibid., pp. 22–23. 29 L. Belzyt, “Die deutsche Minderheit nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg: Das Problem der sogenannten Autochthonen,” In H. Meulen, ed., Anerkannt als Minderheit: Vergangenheit und Zukunft der Deutschen in Polen (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1994), p. 58. 30 Frank, Entschlüsselte Botschaft, pp. 316–317. 31 AAPD 1970, III, doc. 534. 32 AAPD 1970, III, doc. 528. 33 Miszczak, Deklarationen und Realitäten, p. 115. 34 Bingen, Polenpolitik, p. 173.

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136 Notes 35 Ibid., p. 240. 36 Urban, Deutsche in Polen, p. 98. 37 For the text of the declaration see Europa-Archiv, December 10, 1989, pp. D679–686. 38 David Chandler, “The OSCE and the Internationalisation of National Minority Rights,” in Karl Cordell, ed., Ethnicity and Democratisation in the New Europe (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 64. 39 Ibid. 40 Arie Bloed, ed., The Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe: Analysis and Basic Documents, 1972–1993 (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993), pp. 457–458. 41 Bingen, Polenpolitik, p. 288. 42 Christoph Brümmer, “Die Nachbarschafts- und Freundschaftsverträge mit Polen, Ungarn, Rumänien und der Tschechischen Republik im rechtlichen und praktischen Vollzug,” in Dieter Blumenwitz and Dietrich Murswiek, eds, Aktuelle rechtliche und praktische Fragen des Volksgruppen- und Minderheitenschutzrechts (Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1994), p. 76. 43 Andrzej Sakson, “Die Nationalitätenpolitik der III. Republik,” WeltTrends 27 (Summer 2000): 75–76. 44 Jan Barcz, “Der polnisch-deutsche Vertrag vom 17. Juni 1991 und der Schutz der Minderheiten,” in Hans van der Meulen, ed., Anerkannt als Minderheit: Vergangenheit und Zukunft der Deutschen in Polen (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1994), p. 89. 45 Brümmer, “Nachbarschafts- und Freundschaftsverträge,” p. 84. 46 Chandler, “The OSCE and National Minority Rights,” pp. 71–72. 47 Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 14/4045, p. 3. 48 Urban, Deutsche in Polen, p. 132; Karl Cordell and Karl Martin Born, “The German Minority in Upper Silesia: Electoral Success and Organizational Patterns,” Nationalism & Ethnic Politics 7 (Spring 2000): 56. 49 Stefan Wolff, “Changing Priorities or Changing Opportunities? German External Minority Policy, 1919–1998,” in Stefan Wolff, ed., German Minorities in Europe: Ethnic Identity and Cultural Belonging (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000), p. 195. 50 Brümmer, “Nachbarschafts- und Freundschaftsverträge,” p. 77. 51 Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 14/6744, p. 2. 52 Urban, Deutsche in Polen, p. 108. 53 “Rückblick und Ausblick,” Schlesisches Wochenblatt, October 26, 2001, p. 1. 54 Urban, Deutsche in Polen, p. 117. 55 Ibid., p. 134. 56 Ibid., p. 130. 57 “Wähler blieben zu Hause,” Schlesisches Wochenblatt, November 28, 2001, p. 1. 58 Urban, Deutsche In Polen, p. 162. 59 Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 14/5138. 60 Deutscher Bundestag, Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 14. Wahlperiode, Stenographischer Bericht 14/168, p. 16473. 61 Ibid., p. 16473. 62 See for example the conversation between Polish Prime Minister Mazowiecki and Chancellor Kohl on November 14, 1989 in Küsters and Hofmann, Dokumente zur Deutschlandpolitik, p. 537. 63 Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 13/1036. 64 Karl Cordell and Karl Martin Born, “The German Minority in Upper Silesia: Electoral Success and Organizational Patterns,” Nationalism & Ethnic Politics 7 (Spring 2001): 44–45. 65 Ibid., p. 46.

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Notes 137 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

Ibid., pp. 58–59. Rouãek, Die Tschechoslowakei und die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, p. 210. Personal interview, Walter Piwerka, Prague, June 25, 1996. Ibid. Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 14/6744, p. 2. “Neuwahlen der Landesversammlung,” Landeszeitung, November 6, 2001. “Wo sind die Deutschen geblieben?,” Landeszeitung, July 31, 2001.

6 Germany and the eastern enlargement of the EU 1 Simon Bulmer, Charlie Jeffery and William Paterson, Germany’s European Diplomacy: Shaping the Regional Milieu (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 124. 2 Anderson, German Unification, p. 207. 3 Bulletin der Bundesregierung, September 4, 2000, p. 5. 4 Ulrich Becker, EU-Erweiterung und differenzierte Integration: Zu beitrittsbedingten Übergangsregelungen am Beispiel der Arbeitnehmerfreizügigkeit (BadenBaden: Nomos, 1999), p. 17, footnote 36. 5 Official Journal No. 312, November 15, 1985. 6 Heinz Hauser and Thomas A. Zimmermann, “Zum wirtschaftlichen und integrationspolitischen Stellenwert der bilateralen Verträge Schweiz-EU,” Aussenwirtschaft 54 (December 1999): 476. The text of the agreement can be found at: www.europa.admin.ch (accessed December 10, 2004). 7 Manfred Husmann, “Osterweiterung der EU und Arbeitnehmerfreizügigkeit,” Zeitschrift für ausländisches und internationales Arbeits- und Sozialrecht 13 (1999): 433. 8 Thomas Straubhaar, “Osterweiterung der Europäischen Union und Migration aus Ost- nach Westeuropa,” in Werner Zohlnhöfer, ed., Perspektiven der Osterweiterung und Reformbedarf der Europäischen Union (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1998), pp. 145–161. 9 The text of the information note is available at: www.bmaa.gv.at/aussenpolitik/ wirtschaft/movement.html.en (accessed August 8, 2000). 10 Personal interviews, German foreign office, German labor ministry, state chancellory of Saxony, summer 2000. 11 Elmar Hönekopp and Heinz Werner, Eastward Enlargement of the European Union: A Wave of Immigration?, IAB Topics no. 40, table 2, available at: www.iab.de (accessed December 10, 2004). 12 Wolfgang Quaisser, Monika Hartmann, Elmar Hönekopp and Michael Brandmeier, Die Osterweiterung der Europäischen Union: Konsequenzen für Wohlstand und Beschäftigung in Europa (Bonn: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2000), p. 106. 13 Heinz Werner, “Die befristete Zuwanderung von ausländischen Arbeitnehmern: Dargestellt unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Ost–West Wanderungen,” Mitteilungen aus der Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung 29 (1996): 45. 14 Ibid., p. 48. 15 Klaus Sieveking, Uwe Reim and Stefan Sandbrink, “Werkvertragsarbeitnehmer aus osteuropäischen Ländern: Politische Konzepte und arbeitsmarktpolitische Probleme,” Recht in Ost und West 42 (June 1998): 159. 16 For the text of the 1992 German–Polish agreement see Bundesgesetzblatt II, 1992: 93–94. 17 Sieveking, Reim and Sandbrink, “Werkvertragsarbeitnehmer aus osteuropäischen Ländern,” p. 161. 18 Ibid., p. 162. 19 Ibid., 163–164.

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138 Notes 20 Manfred Husmann, “Europa-Abkommen: Dargestellt am Abkommen mit Polen,” Zeitschrift für Sozialreform 44 (February 1998): 126. 21 Ibid. 22 Klaus Sieveking, “Staatliche Reaktionen auf Illegalität in Deutschland: Europa-, ausländer-, und arbeitsrechtliche Aspekte,” in Eberhard Eichenhofer, ed., Migration und Illegalität (Osnabrück: Rasch, 1999), pp. 110–111, footnote 70. For the text of the directive see Official Journal No. L18, January 21, 1997. 23 Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 13/3155. 24 For more information on the law and the positions of the different political parties on this matter see Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 14/151. 25 “Tarifaußenseiter am Bau müssen Mindestlohn zahlen,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 1, 2000, p. 15. 26 Elmar Hönekopp, Labour Migration to Germany from Central and Eastern Europe – Old and New Trends, IAB Topics no. 23, p. 9, available at: www. iab.de (accessed December 10, 2004). 27 Personal interview, IG Bau, July 31, 2000. 28 Official Journal No. C204, July 18, 2000. 29 Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 12/4275; Deutscher Bundestag, Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 12. Wahlperiode, Stenographische Berichte 12/164, p. 14124. 30 Deutscher Industrie- und Handelstag, Europa 2000 plus: DIHT-Positionspapier zur Regierungskonferenz 2000 und zur Erweiterung der Europäischen Union, available at: www.diht.de (accessed September 29, 2001). 31 Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie, EU-Erweiterung zügig und mit realistischer Perspektive vorantreiben, available at: www.bdi-online.de (accessed December 10, 2004). 32 Bundesvereinigung der Deutschen Arbeitgeberverbände and Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie, Stellungnahme EU-Erweiterung: Freizügigkeit der Arbeitnehmer, Dienstleistungs- und Niederlassungsfreiheit, available at: www. arbeitgeber.de (accessed December 10, 2004). 33 Personal interview, German agriculture ministry, July 10, 2000. 34 Personal interview, IG Bau, July 31, 2000. 35 Personal interview, IG Metall, July 27, 2000. 36 Industriegewerkschaft Bauen-Agrar-Umwelt, IG BAU Position zur EUOsterweiterung, available at: www.GRUENE.de/lak.wirtschaft.bayern/LAK_ downloads/IGBAU.pdf (accessed October 7, 2001). 37 Hauptverband der Deutschen Bauindustrie, Gemeinsame Erklärung des Deutschen Baugewerbes, des Hauptverbandes der Deutschen Bauindustrie und der Industriegewerkschaft Bauen-Agrar-Umwelt anlässlich des “Bündnisgesprächs Bau” am 28. September 2000 in Berlin, available at: http://bauindustrie. de/3inf/B,ndnisBau.htm (accessed October 10, 2000). 38 Wolfgang Ischinger, Vortrag anlässlich der Konferenz “Deutschland-PolenOsteuropa: Fragen nach einer gemeinsamen Ostpolitik,” available at: http:// auswaertiges-amt.de/www/de/infoservice/presse/presse_archiv?archiv_id=684 (accessed December 10, 2004). 39 Bundespresseamt, Bulletin der Bundesregierung, no. 90–1, December 19, 2000. 40 Deutscher Bundestag, Ausschuss für die Angelegenheiten der Europäischen Union, Materialsammlung zur öffentlichen Anhörung “EU-Erweiterung und Arbeitnehmerfreizügigkeit” am 4. April 2001, p. 116. 41 Deutscher Bundestag, Auschuss für die Angelegenheiten der Europäischen Union, Ausschussdrucksache 14/1488, p. 3. 42 Deutscher Bundestag, Ausschuss für die Angelegenheiten der Europäischen Union, Wirtschaftliche Chancen und Herausforderungen der EU-Erweiterung: Öffentliche Anhörung am 14. Februar 2001, p. 52.

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Notes 139 43 Deutscher Bundestag, Ausschuss, Ausschuss für die Angelegenheiten der Europäischen Union, Materialsammlung “EU-Erweiterung und Arbeitnehmerfreizügigkeit”, p. 60. 44 Ibid., 64. 45 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, October 5, 2001, p. 1. 46 The rules for the Czech Republic are spelled out in annex V of the Act of Accession and in annex XII for Poland. 47 Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation-State, p. 317. 48 Elmar Rieger, “The Common Agricultural Policy,” in Helen Wallace and William Wallace, eds, Policy-Making in the European Union, 4th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 206. 49 B. Lippert, K. Hughes, H. Grabbe and P. Becker, British and German Interests in EU Enlargement: Conflict and Cooperation (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2001), p. 80. 50 Deutscher Bundestag, Ausschuss für die Angelegenheiten der Europäischen Union, Auswirkungen der EU-Osterweiterung auf die Gemeinsame Agrarpolitik und die Regionen: Öffentliche Anhörung des Ausschusses für die Angelegenheiten der Europäischen Union und des Ausschusses für Ernährung, Landwirtschaft und Forsten am 17. Januar 2001, p. 23. 51 Ibid., 108. 52 Zdenek Lukas, “Die Landwirtschaft der Oststaaten 1998,” Osteuropa-Wirtschaft 44 (June 1999): 133. 53 Lippert et al., British and German Interests in EU Enlargement, p. 93; Geoff A. Wilson and Olivia J. Wilson, German Agriculture in Transition: Society, Policies and Environment in a Changing Europe (New York: Palgrave, 2001), p. 268. 54 Deutscher Bundestag, Ausschuss für die Angelegenheiten der Europäischen Union, Auswirkungen der EU-Osterweiterung auf die Gemeinsame Agrarpolitik und die Regionen, pp. 27, 55. 55 Personal interview, German agriculture ministry, July 10, 2000. 56 Personal interview, Deutscher Bauernverband, July 12, 2000. 57 For a more in-depth treatment of the 1992 reform see Lee Ann Patterson, “Agricultural Policy Reform in the European Community,” International Organization 51 (Winter 1997): 135–163. 58 Ewa Rabinowicz, “EU Enlargement and the Common Agricultural Policy: Finding Compromise in a Two-Level Repetitive Game,” International Politics 36 (September 1999): 409. 59 Ibid., 410. 60 Franz Fischler, Enlargement of the EU – Challenges and Perspectives for the Agricultural Sector, Brussels, July 10, 2000, available at: http://europa.eu. int/rapid (accessed August 9, 2000), p. 3. 61 Rabinowicz, “EU Enlargement and the Common Agricultural Policy,” p. 412. 62 Quaisser et al., Die Ostererweiterung der Europäischen Union, p. 137. 63 Deutscher Bundestag, Ausschuss für die Angelegenheiten der Europäischen Union, Auswirkungen der EU-Osterweiterung auf die Gemeinsame Agrarpolitk und die Regionen, p. 63. 64 Ibid., 108–109. 65 Commission of the European Communities, Information Note: Common Financial Framework 2004–2006 for the Accession Negotiations (SEC (2002) 102 final). 66 Ibid., p. 4. 67 Personal interview, German agriculture ministry, July 10, 2000. 68 Rabinowicz, “EU Enlargement and the Common Agricultural Policy,” p. 405. 69 Rieger, “The Common Agricultual Policy,” p. 198.

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140 Notes 70 For a detailed analysis of the impact of German unification on German agricultural policy see Anderson, German Unification, chapter 6. 71 Deutscher Bundestag, Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, Stenographisches Protokoll 14/45, p. 3690. 72 COM (2002) 394. 73 Steven Erlanger, “European Union to Tackle Overhaul of Farm Subsidies,” New York Times, July 11, 2002, p. A9. 74 Gisela Hendriks, Germany and European Integration: The Common Agricultural Policy: An Area of Conflict (New York: Berg, 1991), chapter 5. 75 Wilson and Wilson, German Agriculture in Transition, p. 12. 76 Another area where the German government pushed for (and gained) a transition period in order to protect a specific German industry is transport policy. 77 See, for example, the letter by the German Minister for the Environment Trittin to Czech Foreign Minister Kavan of May 23, 2001. The text is available at: www.bmu.de (accessed December 10, 2004). 78 Henning Tewes, Germany, Civilian Power and the New Europe: Enlarging NATO and the European Union (New York: Palgrave, 2002), p. 214. 79 Wolfgang Wagner, “German EU Constitutional Foreign Policy,” in Volker Rittberger, ed., German Foreign Policy Since Unification: Theories and Case Studies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), p. 222. 80 Anderson, German Unification, p. 173. 81 See for example Leah Haus, “Labor Unions and Immigration Policy in France,” International Migration Review 33 (Fall 1999): 700.

7 Conclusion 1 AAPD 1971, docs. 117, 171, 322. 2 AAPD 1971, doc. 324. 3 Marcin Zaborowski, “Power, Security and the Past: Polish–German Relations in the Context of EU and NATO Enlargements,” German Politics 11 (August 2002): 179. 4 Gunther Hellmann, “Von Gipfelstürmern und Gratwanderern: ‘Deutsche Wege’ in der Außenpolitik,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, March 8, 2004, pp. 35–36.

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Major newspaper and magazine sources Christ und Welt Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Handelsblatt New York Times Schlesisches Wochenblatt Der Spiegel Süddeutsche Zeitung

Archives Archiv für Christlich-Demokratische Politik. St Augustin, Germany. Stiftung Archiv Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv. Berlin, Germany.

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Ackermann-Gemeinde 44 Adenauer, K. 20, 26, 55, 58 Allardt, H. 26 Anderson, J. 3, 93, 110–11 Arbeitnehmer-Entsendegesetz 97 article 116, German constitution 82, 86 Aussiedler 76, 84 Axen, H. 31 Aznar, J. 120

Bundesrat 37, 43, 57, 98 Bundestag: and EU enlargement 98, 104, 107; and forced labor foundation 71–2; and friendship treaty with âSFR 43–4; and German minority in Czech Republic 87; and German minority in Poland 88–9; resolution on Oder–Neisse line 60; and Prague Treaty 37, 81 Bundeswehr 11

Bahr, E. 23, 30–1, 35, 83 Barcz, J. 85 Bartodziej, G. 88 Bauernverband 99, 105, 107–8 Bavaria 43; and free movement of labor 95–6, 101; and Sudeten German expellees 44, 51–2 Bene‰ decrees 45, 46–8, 79, 109; and EU enlargement 48, 93 Bielecki, J. 42 Bingen, D. 41, 42, 49 Brandt, W. 33; as chancellor 38, 56, 75, 83; and collective memories 20; as foreign minister 23, 29–30; kneeling at Warsaw Ghetto monument 2, 20, 36 Braun, K. 76 Brehmer, D. 88 Brezhnev, L. 30, 50 Brümmer, C. 87 Bulmer, S. 10, 93 Bundesanstalt für Arbeit 96

Campbell, F.G. 78 Caporaso, J. 3 Carstens, K. 28 Catholic bishops letter exchange 33 Chandler, D. 85 Chirac, J. 107 Christian Democrats: atlanticist wing 25, 32; and Common Agricultural Policy 104, 106; and forced labor foundation 71; Gaullist wing 25, 27, 32; and German–Czech relations 29, 43, 81, 87; and German–Polish relations 88–9; and multilateralism 20; and Silesian expellees 52 Christian Social Union (CSU) 40; and Bene‰ decrees 110; and German–Czech declaration 46; and Sudeten Germans 44, 51 collective memories 6, 15, 20–1 Common Agricultural Policy 13, 25, 31–2, 93, 104–9, 110–11, 117; direct payments 106–9; distributional

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154 Index issues in 93, 104, 107–8; and WTO 104, 106, 109 compensation: agreements with Western European countries 59–60; for Czech victims of Nazi regime 45, 62; for Polish victims 42, 61; for victims of medical experiments 60 compensation legislation, German 57–9, 66; and forced labor 64; Nationalgeschädigte 58; territorial principle 59 Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany 55, 63–6, 71 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE): and German reunification 40; minority rights standards 14, 42, 75, 84–6, 92, 113 constructivism 6 Council of Europe 86 Cowhey, P. 5 Cyrankiewicz, J. 35 Czaja, H. 52 Czech–German “Fund for the Future” 62–4, 71 Czechoslovakia: Communist party 30; de-Stalinization 51; and East Germany 30–1, 38; expulsion of Sudeten Germans 43, 45, 79; German minority 14, 43, 75–81, 90–1; and Munich Agreement 28, 29–30; parliament 43; position in Soviet bloc 38, 50; “Prague Spring” 79; Soviet intervention 50, 79 Czech Republic: Civic Democratic Party (ODS) 48; and expulsion of Sudeten Germans 47; German minority 91–2; relations with Austria 47–8, 109; Social Democratic party 46 Czempiel, E. 9 Davis, P. 2–3 Deutschlandvertrag 39 Dienstbier, J. 43 diplomatic negotiations, outcome of: logic of appropriateness 8, 118; logic of arguing 8, 118; ratification 7, 117;

relative bargaining power 7, 8, 31–2, 116–18 Duckwitz, G. 35, 93 Eizenstat, S. 69 Evangelische Kirche Deutschlands (EKD) 33 Erhard, L. 26–8, 32 European Community 9–10; see also Common Agricultural Policy; German foreign policy; European Community European Union: constitutional treaty 119–20; directive on posting of workers 97; Maastricht Treaty 10; Nice Treaty 119–20; see also German foreign policy; European Union European Union enlargement 15, 19; Czech membership 24, 43, 117; and German business 18–19; and German Länder 16; and German unions 18–19, 99; Polish membership 24, 42, 117; and protection of minorities 15; trade 18; transition periods 15, 93, 99–103, 117; see also Common Agricultural Policy; free movement of labor expellees: center against expulsion 21, 119; and EU enlargement 16; Heimatrecht 29; Silesians 17, 35, 51–2, 81; Sudeten Germans 17, 29, 44–5, 51–2, 109 expulsions 20, 45 Federal Republic of Germany: political culture 20; and minority rights in 86, 89–90; sovereignty 9, 13, 39 Fischer, J. 12, 63, 94, 103 Fischler, F. 106–8 Flick, F. 65 forced labor 64–73; agreement on compensation for 53, 69–72; and American class action lawyers 14, 70; and American courts 67–8, 72; and churches 70; and German companies 64–5, 68–70, 72–3; and German courts 66; and Länder 70; and United States 14, 69, 72

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Index foundations for reconciliation 60–4, 71; Baltic states 62; Belarus 61; Czech Republic see Czech–German “Fund for the Future”; Poland 61, 73; Russia 61; Ukraine 61 Frank, P. 35, 83, 116–17 Free Democratic Party (FDP): and Oder–Neisse line 34, 40; and trade missions in Eastern Europe 25; see also Genscher, H. free movement of labor: agreement with Switzerland 94; and Austria 95, 102; bilateral agreements of early 1990s 95–8, 100; border commuters 95, 100; Commission proposal 102; and eastern German border regions 95–6, 100–1; Europe agreements 98; first enlargement 94; and German employers 96–7, 99, 101, 103; and German trade union federation 99; northern enlargement 94; position of German government 100–1; project-tied workers 96–8, 102–3; seasonal laborers 96–9; southern enlargement 94–5, 100; see also IG Bau Frieden, J. 18 friendship treaties of early 1990s 13, 23–4, 92, 113, 117; German–Czech 24, 43–5, 87; German–Polish 24, 40–2, 75, 85–7 generalized principles of conduct: in compensation agreements 53, 70–1, 73, 114; definition of 3–4; and détente era treaties 24; and ethnic German minorities 14, 92, 114; and EU enlargement 15, 104, 106, 109, 114; and trade agreements 32 Genscher, H. 40–3, 57, 84, 86 German–Czech Joint Declaration of 1997 13, 46–7 German farmers association see Bauernverband German foreign policy: antimilitarism 1, 6, 116; aversion to unilateralism 2, 20; and churches 17, 33; continuity in 1, 110–11, 115–16; détente 1, 23, 32–9; economic interests 3, 17, 115;

155

and European Community 4, 9–10; European identity 2; and European Union 11–12, 110–11, 120; geopolitics 3, 12–13, 15, 17, 115; and NATO 9, 10–12, 120; and political culture 7, 12, 20, 116; renewed pursuit of great power politics 2, 121; “tamed power” 2; and unions 17 German reunification 10, 12, 16, 23–4, 39, 113; and compensation for Nazi victims 66 Gierek, E. 57 Glotz, P. 20 Goldmann, N. 55 Gomu∏ka, W. 35, 56 Greens 20, 45, 89, 104, 106, 110; and compensation agreements for Nazi victims 65–6 Grewe, W. 25 Griffith, W. 38 Gromyko, A. 35 Grosser, T. 52 Haider, J. 47 Hajnicz, A. 41–2 Hallstein doctrine 23, 27 Haus, L. 19, 103, 111 Havel, V. 46, 48 Heinemann, G. 29 Herbert, U. 64–5 Holocaust related litigation in United States: insurance companies 68; Swiss banks 67–8 Hombach, B. 69 Hungary 24–5, 32, 48, 85, 92, 95, 118 Hupka, H. 35, 52 Husák, G. 51 Huyn, H. 27 IG Bau 96, 98–100, 102–3 indivisibility 3, 114 international distribution of power 4, 12, 115 internationalization 17 International Organization for Migration (IOM) 71 Ischinger, W. 100

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156 Index Jaworski, R. 77 J´drychowski, S. 83 Jeffery, C. 10, 93 Jewish Claims Conference see Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany Kacir, P. 81 Kamusella, T. 81 Kiesinger, K. 29 Kissinger, H. 35 Klaus, V. 46–8 Kliãka, O. 29–30 Kohl, H. 11, 39–40, 46, 49, 61, 75, 84, 118; Bitburg cemetery visit 20; as minister president of RhinelandPalatinate 57 Koschyk, H. 89 Kfien, J. 76 Kulturverband der Bürger deutscher Nationalität der â SSR 90 Lambsdorff, O. 44 Landesversammlung der Deutschen in Böhmen, Mähren und Schlesien 91–2 League of Nations 78, 92 London Debt Agreement 39, 55–6, 59 Mazowiecki, T. 39, 41, 84 migration impact on labor markets 19 Modrzewski, F. 26 Moeller, R. 20 Moravcsik, A. 4–5 Müller, A. 51 multilateralism: and credible commitments 5; definition of 3, 114; and domestic institutions 5, 17; and domestic preferences 5, 17–20, 94, 103, 115; German support for 3, 9, 10–11, 12–13, 16–17, 20, 39, 49, 93–4, 103, 109, 113, 115, 121; and great powers 4–5; interest based explanations of 4, 16–20, 39, 49, 103, 109, 111; norm based explanations of 6–7, 15, 49, 103–4, 109, 111 Munich Agreement: and Britain 36; and dismemberment of Czechoslovakia

78; invalidity of 13, 15, 29, 36, 43, 80, 116–18; lessons of 2; and Neville Chamberlain 36 Nagengast, E. 2 nondiscrimination see generalized principles of conduct norms 6; see also multilateralism: norm based explanations of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 1, 7, 9, 12; German entry 9; multinational units 11 Novotn˘, A. 29–31, 51 Oder–Neisse line 13, 25, 35, 39, 60, 75, 83, 113, 117; and allied powers 34, 41; border treaty of 1990 41; Görlitz (Zgorzelec) Treaty 32, 40; and Potsdam Agreement 36; and SPD 34; Tübingen memorandum 33 Ostpolitik 25, 35, 38, 56 Paterson, W. 10, 93 pension claims, West German–Polish agreement on 13, 57 Poland: administrative reform 90; and Common Agricultural Policy 25; and German minority 14, 36, 40–2, 57, 60, 75–7, 81–90; German–Polish agreement on labor recruitment 96–7; and German reunification 39, 49, 113; and NATO 120; and Oder–Neisse line 35; participation in “Weimar” Triangle 49; position on EU constitutional treaty 119; waiver of reparations claims 56, 59–60; western border see Oder–Neisse line Prague Treaty of 1973 13, 36–8, 80–1, 116; Christian Democratic objections 37–8; and status of Berlin 37; and Sudeten Germans 37 Putnam, R. 24 Rabinowicz, E. 106–8 Reagan, R. 20 realism 4, 16; and German foreign policy 10, 16, 115 reciprocity: diffuse 3–4, 12, 109, 114; specific 4, 109

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Index reparations 53–7; East Germany 13, 66; and former Axis powers 55; and Israel 54–5; and Potsdam Agreement 54; West Germany 14 Rieger, E. 104 Rogowski, R. 18 Romania 24–5, 30, 32, 50, 92 Rouãek, L. 80 Rubin, H. 34 Ruggie, J.G. 3 Rumsfeld, D. 20 Rusk, D. 26 Scheel, W. 35, 83 Schily, O. 48 Schmid, G. 16 Schmidt, H. 34, 57 Schollwer, H. 34 Schröder, G. (CDU) 23, 25–6, 32 Schröder, G. (SPD) 48, 100–1, 103–4, 106–7, 116; election as chancellor 14, 47, 69; and Iraq war 11–12; as minister president of Lower Saxony 69 Seebohm, H. 28–9 Seliger-Gemeinde 44 Skubiszewski, K. 42, 86 Smith, K. 31 Social Democrats (SPD) 28–9, 104; and compensation for Nazi victims 65–6; and free movement of labor 97 Soviet Union: German minority 76; waiver of reparations claims 56, 59 Stoiber, E. 63 Straubhaar, T. 95 Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft 17, 44, 47, 91 Sudeten Germans: “activist” parties 78; identity 76–7; and Munich Agreement 28 Süssmuth, R. 40 Teltschik, H. 39, 60

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Temelín nuclear plant 47–8, 93, 110 Ther, P. 81 trade 17–18 trade agreements: Berlin clause 26–8, 31; with Czechoslovakia 23, 27–31, 80; and East Germany 26, 30–1; with Poland 23, 25–7, and Soviet Union 30 two-level games 24 Ulbricht, W. 30–1 Upper Silesia 77, 81, 84, 89–90; Opolskie viovodship 88–90 Utitz, B. 51 Vagts, D. 68 Valenta, J. 50 Verheugen, G. 48 Wagner, W. 110 Waigel, T. 44 Warsaw Treaty of 1970 13, 32–6, 39, 56–7, 83, 117 Weimar Republic: policy toward Czechoslovakia 14, 78; policy toward Poland 1, 14, 77; Rapallo Treaty 24, 113 Wiedergutmachung 53 Wilson, G.A. 108 Wilson, O.J. 108 win-sets: determinants of 8; in German–Czech negotiations 50, 116; in German–Polish negotiations 50; size of 7–8 Witiko-Bund 44 Wollheim, N. 64 Yeltsin, B. 61 Zaborowski, M. 120 Zeman, M. 47–8 Zieger, G. 54 Zöpel, G. 48