Tim Weiner's new book The Folly and the Glory, on US/Russian political warfare since 1945, makes a compelling case that it was not inevitable at all. Most of Europe was opposed to the idea, and the only enthusiastic supporters were the US and the Germanies.
Russia was virulently opposed, and according to the book, West Germany paid Russia $2T to remove all of its soldiers from East German territory. The book makes the case that the reunification of Germany is one of the foundations of Russian resentment towards the US, since the Bush I administration gave them categorical assurances that the borders of NATO would not move "an inch Eastward."
The $2T cited in the book does not refer to the direct costs paid to Russia but to the total amount spent on reunification which came out to something like $100 billion per year for twenty years.
The opposition of the rest of Europe and Russia has to be put in context. Russia would not have been able to support the East German economy nor would it have been able to afford to maintain a pointless troop presence that would no longer have local support. The rest of europe might have been opposed because of historical reasons having to do with security but not allowing unification would have created a massive roadblock for the european economy. Short of reunification, there was not an acceptable legal regime to end Germany's limited sovereignty(which the rest of europe supported).
Given that Germany strongly supported reunification and the US was in support for obvious geopolitical reasons there was no way for any other power to stop the process. Russia could either be paid to leave or get nothing and spend money it doesn't have to maintain the troop presence to boot. Poor relations with Germany would have had a catastrophic impact on the Russian economy. The UK was never really serious about stopping reunification and barely tried to bluff. Similar reasons apply to France which could not oppose reunification and support European integration.
For all these reasons I find the the focus on contingency to be rather overdrawn. It was not inevitable in the sense that it had to happen(you can come up scenarios where the soviet union continues into the 21st century) but given the collapse of the Warsaw Pact it's hard to understand how unification could have been ultimately prevented.
You can see a similar dynamic taking place in South Korea where unification is broadly supported by the younger population in the face of titanic security and economic concerns. German unification has been supported for hundreds of years for comparable reasons.
> You can see a similar dynamic taking place in South Korea where unification is broadly supported by the younger population in the face of titanic security and economic concerns. German unification has been supported for hundreds of years for comparable reasons.
> Short of reunification, there was not an acceptable legal regime to end Germany's limited sovereignty(which the rest of europe supported).
Ending Germany's limited sovereignty did not require reunification. It required (a) the Four Powers renouncing their residual authority over Germany, as they did in 1990's 4+2 Treaty (b) an agreement about what to do with West Berlin. The obvious options for removing occupying power control of West Berlin without reunification would have been (i) West Berlin becomes an exclave of West Germany; (ii) West Berlin is integrated into East Germany; (iii) West Berlin becomes independent as a third German state.
Reunification meant that Germany's power in the EU increased. Becoming a bigger country with a larger population got more seats and pushed the bloc more in its direction. Thus reducing Britain's influence there.
It has to be said that the matter was somewhat settled in European circles by an agreement between Francois Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl: Germany would be reunited, but in exchange it would be "bridled" by the common European currency that was being designed. Most other countries were in support of this arrangement, since they stood to gain from effectively sharing the power of the almighty Deutschmark (which they did, and are, despite some other issues). Britain had no realistic chance to oppose anything.
And ironically had Britain joined a currency pulled weaker but the eurozone's expansion, they might have been able to stay an industrial power like Germany!
Was German reunification setting a president for Irish reunification never a concern for the UK government, like how e.g. today Scottish independence is today a concern for the Spanish government setting a president for an independent Catalonia?
Perhaps, but I don't think it was much of a realistic concern for any who held it in the UK government.
Whereas Germans, East and West alike, had largely thought of themselves as Germans in varying senses since Bismark (and both the DDR and BRD claimed to be legitimate successors to the same historical state), the peoples who lived (and live) in Northern Ireland didn't all think of themselves in the same way. Some thought of themselves as British, some as Irish, and many as some mix of both. A big reason why historians mark the Good Friday Agreement as the end of The Troubles is that it recognized the right of each person in Northern Ireland to identify with the nationality they chose (self-determination), in a way that both the British and Irish governments cooperated to recognize in administrative affairs where nationality mattered.
There wasn't a separate ethnoreligious East German identity. There were (and are) conflicting identities in Northern Ireland with ethnic, religious, national, and historical dimensions. The two situations on-the-ground were extremely different.
The Russians negotiated a three (or four?) year stand down. Allegedly the soldiers liked the German posting because of the chocolate and generally better life in Germany than in Russia.
I remember back around '92 or '93 looking out from the window of an in-law who lived in the Harz mountains and seeing an old border watch tower. Then I commented that it looked like there were people up there. "Oh yes, those are the Russians" I was told. "Even though there is no border they keep up the procedures because they're afraid that if they just sit around they'll be sent home".
If I remember correctly, the number was rather 30 billion Deutsche Mark. But still, it was a good deal for the Sovjet Union. Personally, I think that Gorbatchew was very aware of the pure financial state of the Sovjet Union and this was the ability to get rid of the DDR not only at no costs, but having all costs of relocating the military covered by the west. Still, he managed to delay the collapse of the Sovjet Union only by a few years.
Yeah that fact about the Russian soldiers blew my mind when I stumbled across it. Germany also provided money for housing when the soldiers got back. It was basically bribery haha. They didn’t leave until 1994 iirc
Helmut Kohl negotiated a very good deal. Money was not an issue for Germany but speed and total withdrawl of the Russian troops. Germany would have paid much more. A year later and it might be too late for the reunification (Gorbachev was kicked out of the Kremlin).
Is not like the Soviet Union has a really long life ahead anyway. They had gotten the mortal wound, the question was mostly how long the bleeding out would take.
I guess they could have gone down in flames if they wanted to choose that instead. The rest of the world owes them a huge thanks for accepting defeat gracefully. And for beating Hitler of course.
Here's the relevant paragraph from The Folly and the Glory. It does not provide a supporting citation for the $2T claim, as far as I can tell.
> Kohl would shoulder the lion’s share of the costs for extracting 546,000 Red Army troops from Germany—an exodus requiring fifty troop trains a day, fifty-five cars each, for more than three years—and building bases to house them once they were home. The immediate cost of the buyout, or the bribe, was measured in tens of billions, then hundreds, a spectacular use of economic power in political warfare. Its immensity matched the importance of the moment. Over time, *the bill for unification would come to more than two trillion dollars.*
Thatcher and Mitterand expressed doubts and fears, but did not publicly oppose German reunification. Public opinion in Western European countries were strongly in favor of reunification so France's and Britain's leaders were hardly in any position to stop it.
> Mary Elise Sarotte, “Not One Inch Eastward? Bush, Baker, Kohl, Genscher, Gorbachev, and the Origin of Russian Resentment Toward NATO Enlargement in February 1990,” Diplomatic History 34, no. 1 (January 2010): 119–40. Sarotte fought for, and won, the declassification of key documents cited in this chapter, and she is the leading scholar on the question of NATO expansion. Key conversations between the Bush administration and Gorbachev are in a 2017 National Security Archive briefing book, “NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard,” https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//dc.html?doc=4325680-Document-06-....
After speaking with many of those involved and examining previously classified British and German documents in detail, SPIEGEL has concluded that there was no doubt that the West did everything it could to give the Soviets the impression that NATO membership was out of the question for countries like Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia.
On Feb. 10, 1990, between 4 and 6:30 p.m., Genscher spoke with Shevardnadze. According to the German record of the conversation, which was only recently declassified, Genscher said: "We are aware that NATO membership for a unified Germany raises complicated questions. For us, however, one thing is certain: NATO will not expand to the east." And because the conversion revolved mainly around East Germany, Genscher added explicitly: "As far as the non-expansion of NATO is concerned, this also applies in general."
Shevardnadze replied that he believed "everything the minister (Genscher) said."
In the session with Baker on February 9, 1990, Gorbachev discussed various forms of German unification and association with NATO. Although he could not accept it publicly, he agreed with Baker’s argument that the presence of U.S. troops in Europe was a factor in overall European stability, which implicitly meant accepting the idea of Germany’s eventual membership in the Western alliance. It was during this conversation that Baker offered Gorbachev guarantees (that is the word used in the Russian memorandum of conversation—garantii) that NATO would not “spread an inch eastward,” and the Soviet leader accepted the statement as sufficient on the basis of the trust he felt had been built between him and the U.S. leadership—never asking for a written pledge. Gorbachev’s reasoning could partially be explained by the domestic dilemma he faced: how could he tell the Politburo that he had asked for written guarantees that NATO would not expand to the territories of the Warsaw Pact while the Pact was still in existence? That would have meant he had already accepted the idea that the socialist alliance was on its deathbed. In this conversation, Baker was not trying to mislead Gorbachev in any way; he was merely expressing the official position of the U.S. government at the time, which was fully shared by other Western leaders, talking specifically about the NATO presence on East German soil, but by implication also about any future expansion. However, the Bush administration would change that position very soon—without providing any notification to Gorbachev.
It’s not unreasonable to think they meant it at the time though. Things changed rapidly, I see how it looks bad from a Russian perspective but when for example the Baltic requested protection it looks reasonable to help out given their history.
I was wondering about that; if Nato not exanding to the east was imortant, then why didn't the Soviet Union insist to put it into an agreement? I guess it's not quite possible to put such a future commitment of not expanding Nato into writing; as there is no legal mechanism to enforce it.
“Gorbachev’s reasoning could partially be explained by the domestic dilemma he faced: how could he tell the Politburo that he had asked for written guarantees that NATO would not expand to the territories of the Warsaw Pact while the Pact was still in existence? That would have meant he had already accepted the idea that the socialist alliance was on its deathbed”
A good diplomat might have phrased that differently, without removing too much content, though, so that the Warschau pact wouldn’t lose face from it. Maybe something along the lines of that the two parties recognized each other’s spheres of influence? (Or maybe that wasn’t something either party was willing to commit to?)
don't know about that argument, they could have insisted to put that commitment into some kind of secret amendment, but wikipedia says that these are no longer practiced; well, who knows, wikipedia also says that there are exceptions to this rule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_treaty#Decline_in_moder...
What about the fact that Stalin offered the West a unified Germany in 1953, on the (reasonable) condition that she not join a hostile alliance. (Stalin note)
Something that was beaten into us as history majors was to be highly skeptical of anyone suggesting that an historical event was "inevitable".
It's easy to look back on the past and think that you see "obvious" trends and patterns but so much of that is influenced by your modern perspective and how selectively history is preserved and told.
Like any humanities or social science, history is not objective. Part of studying and analyzing history necessarily involves studying and analyzing the context and biases of sources, stories, and narratives.
I guess it depends on your perspective: If you believe in hard determinism then you could argue that literally everything that has ever happened and will happen is "inevitable".
When we talk about "inevitable" in this sense, we more mean "obviously had to happen given the events leading up to it" than "was predetermined to happen".
I get what you're saying, though, but please ask yourself: how does this idea contribute to discussion?
Sure, but that is largely useless information. At the layer of abstraction we care about (human and societal behavior), those systems are so chaotic that even if they are deterministic it is completely non-actionable to say "well it all derives from physics".
None of this stuff is "actionable" anyway, unless you're part of a tiny cadre of policymakers. It's useless information anyway, it just depends what level of abstraction you find more interesting to ponder about.
The answer is probably no. While Pan-German and Pan-Italian nationalists[0] were successful (well, the German ones partially successful, what with Austria being left out), Pan-Scandinavians were not.
I doubt many things in history were inevitable. I do feel like German re-unification were probably more likely following the Second World War than German unification was after the Congress of Vienna, even if it looked bleaker for re-unification from the outset.
[0] To be clear, Italian and in particular German unification were not the success of pan-nationalists movement but rather strong political forces (like Bismarck) exploiting a popular movement for political gains. Put another way, German unification was not for the benefit of Germans, but for the benefit of Prussia.
I don't think those cases are really comparable. Scandinavian countries had separate state institutions (even when countries were part of the same empire or composite monarchy) in a way that didn't apply to the former Holy Roman Empire/German Confederation which were nominally part of the same political unit and saw themselves as having much closer ethnic ties. The HRE was seen as an entirely german political entity and had almost no non-german kings in its entire history. The fact that German states jealously guarded their sovereignty does not mean they did not see themselves as fundamentally german.
Similar reasons apply to Italy. Because of the geography of the Italian peninsula a unified Italian nation state would be much more successful economically than a patchwork of small entities. Once Italy's maritime commercial decline began states had less incentive to block unification.
>> Put another way, German unification was not for the benefit of Germans, but for the benefit of Prussia.
The rest of Germany not only strongly benefited economically from german unification but also supported protective tariff policies after unification that had the effect of tying their economies much closer to Prussia (and vice-versa of course). If they didn't believe it was in their interest why in the world would they do that? If anything, the rest of the German states probably engaged in free-riding off of Prussia's military support. This once again benefits both sides.
>Similar reasons apply to Italy. Because of the geography of the Italian peninsula a unified Italian nation state would be much more successful economically than a patchwork of small entities. Once Italy's maritime commercial decline began states had less incentive to block unification.
Italy's largest maritime states, Genoa and Venice, never acquiesced; they were sacked by Napoleon. Modern Italy rose from the ashes. Venice never got over it.
Yeah, Italian unification has really little to do with economic forces or incentives. Largely, one kingdom exploited the fall of non-Italian powers to make territorial gains. Most of the Italian states were surviving thanks to foreign protection (Austria, France, and Spain). The Savoy administration was just very quick to stake a claim every time one of those protections had a wobble. Napoleon in particular had done a lot of the work, to then leave a void ready to be filled.
The states, sure, but the people? Some of them still felt a little betrayed after 1848.
While the discussion about why Scandinavian unification never happened, while Italian and German did, is indeed an interesting one, the broader point is that I do not believe it is reasonable to say either the Italian and German ones were inevitable.
It was by no means certain in 1820 that Prussia would be able to beat Austria over German hegemony, hence whether it was probably not inevitable. The article kind of asks whether German unification the way it happened was inevitable. It is not unreasonable to think of a timeline where Austria learns some real lessons of 1848, and becomes a political powerhouse, while Prussia withers.
Scandinavia was basically Sweden fighting for independence from Denmark-Norway, and Finland fighting for independence from Sweden and Russia. There was no hope for the Kalmar Union to even continue (which didn't happen anyways).
Yeah, under Bismarck it was more “one nation, under Prussia”. It’s also quite well known that there was resistance to unification from the West, due to not wanting that again.
> It’s also quite well known that there was resistance to unification from the West, due to not wanting that again.
If that was so well known, then why was it that the first thing the West did was to unify their pieces of Germany into West Germany? Surely it would have been beneficial to them to keep Germany separate if they shared your assumption.
Considering most Germans alive today experienced the (1990) unification and the political climate during that time, it's a bit weird to ask four non-German historians.
This question would be better posed to politicians of that time, many of which are retired now, but still alive.
I can guarantee the answers would be more interesting for sure.
Well the unification of the German speaking areas mentioned in the article never really happened as Austria and the Swiss-German areas are still separate countries from Germany (and in the case of Switzerland always have been).
So the answer is it's been avoidable and actually been avoided :)
The question raised is specifically about the inevitability of the unification that actually happened in 1871 and 1990, not about any idea of larger German state. The article does not mention language at all as far as I can see, nor cultural connections.
Overall this article not really answering anything, though. The answers are t0o high level and short to treat the subject seriously.
That's perfectly correct on a rational level, but I presume you're getting downvotes because the last person who tried to "unify" Austria & Germany was Hitler in 1938.
I think it will kind of happen by proxy as European Union members are slowly turning into administrative regions rather than remaining as proper countries.
Switzerland is not part of the EEA, although they have many treaties with the EU that more or less comprises the relationship the EU has with an EEA country.
I am aware of that, but my prediction is that they will be slowly less and less sovereign over time and at one point there will be one unified european superstate. Who knows, maybe German will become the main language?
No, english is the neutral communication language european wide. One of the major players extending their language union wide (France, Italy, Germany) is not possible. It also wouldn't make sense.
One romanic language would be easier to learn for the whole romanic language family. And eastern europe would inevitable and rightfully so feel alienated.
Such imperialistic nonsense is just eating resources and getting nowhere. That road would certainly lead to resentment and then a fracturing of the EU.
english as a language is not really neutral (but neither are other languages)
but then, with great britain leaving the EU, english became a much more neutral option than it was before.
however i would interpret the parent comments in the light of popularity. german and french may dominate the EU culturally without intending to do so. so it is reasonable to ask.
putting this down as imperialistic nonsense suggests a political motivation that i just can't read from the parent comment
Your question sounds imperialistic. There are more people speaking a Romance language (French, Romanian, Italian, Spanish, Catalan) than a Germanic one. And the cherry on top of the cake... what about the Slavic ones? EU will be a federation like Switzerland is.
What mechanism do you propose causes Switzerland, which is 100% sovereign (and even isn't part of the EU, despite all their neighbors being such), to become "less and less sovereign over time"? Who rules them? How? Why?
The EU is obviously Switzerland's biggest trading partner, and whatever trade is subject to rules and regulations they would negotiate with each other. But guess who has the upper hand in negotiations, if you guess the side with more money and the bigger market, i.e. the bigger economy, correct.
I do find it strange that Switzerland allows anyone from the EU to come and live there if they have a job in the country (AFAIK this includes menial jobs like being a waiter). maybe it was something the EU offered as a package that the country had to take as a whole. In return obviously Swiss people are allowed to live and work anywhere in the EU as well. More on that: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54316316
So in short, Switzerland is sovereign to do what it wants, but going too much against the will of its big brother would damage itself as well. And I imagine if the big brother decides for something new, Switzerland doesn't have unlimited power to say otherwise.
The EU is the UK's biggest trading partner, but that didn't stop us leaving after we were already in (sadly).
There's a long history of people overestimating the importance of economic considerations in international relations. See e.g. all of the people who thought that the First World War couldn't happen because it would be an economic disaster. Turns out that it did, and was.
I am not a historian, but I grew up in the western part of a split Germany. Everyone did consider Germany a split nation. All of the older people living had lived in the pre-War Germany which was unified. That meant that many families were spread across both halves of Germany before the war and consequently separated due to the split. In several cases (not only Berlin) the border whould run across cities.
If most people considered Germany a split country, how can a reunification not be inevitable? The fact that the border had to be guarded against the East German citizens from leaving is another idicator. Finally, after the border opened, Eastern Germany was on the brink of civil collapse, as a lot of people would just leave for the West, due to the economic imbalance and probably not so much trust to keep their freedom in the future. Reunification was the one way to stop this.
"how can a reunification not be inevitable?" - for a contrasting example, look at Koreas; the same arguments you list apply also there, and at least there reunification does not seem inevitable; and with every generation of separation the ties grow weaker.
Well, assuming of course, the regime which holds its population hostage, fails. Which happened in eastern Germany. Of course, if the countries had stayed separate for 100 years, anything might happen. With Korea, it depends on how long the north keeps the border closed and if and how the regime fails.
It's not the same situation and I think it's hard to believe it will ever be - it only on the surface seems to be similar because it involves two countries of different systems that are bonded by same culture, history and language up until the split. The details matter; the German unification was a result, as you may remember, of the Autumn of Nations revolution that lead to fall of the Eastern Bloc and Soviet Union; the situation was building up for over 10 years if not more - some consider the Chernobyl disaster as being the first domino piece that fell down, some the strikes and emergence of 'Solidarność' movement in Poland or even 1968' Prague Spring.
North Korea is alone on the playground and at best is being supported by People's Republic of China, economically and politically (to some degree); it holds power in a good grip, the propaganda machine and control of citizens life works there very well - at least from what we know. There's simply no possibility for opposition movements to exist and even be strong enough to question the Kims power and images as leaders. I'd rather expect that China would eventually incorporate North as another province rather than South deciding for the unification which certainly would have some harsh social and economical outcome. The differences between these countries seems to be too big to just dismantle DMZ and become one happy Korea with population of ~76mln.
Still, it's a wild guess and anything might happen.
North Koreans are very nationalistic and would never accept a Chinese annexation, and South Korea would very likely join the conflict against China annexing ethnically Korean populations and lands. Nothing like identity politics to rile up the population and topple some politicians.
It's far more likely that SK eventually ejects US military bases from their country and SK and NK work towards a loosening of borders and increased economic ties with Chinese acknowledgement but still wary of Chinese interference in the process. Especially considering the shifting power balance in Asia, having US military bases will eventually be more of a liability than a benefit for SK.
the GDR was much more liberal than the DPRK (North Korea), In north korea you got some 300,000 people in concentration camps, they also had real famines - and that didn't move the rulers an inch. Also the GDR was a sattelite state of the SU; The GDR couldn't possibly continue as they were about to default on foreign loans, and the SU was about to follow soon.
Albania and Kosovo (which is 90% albanian)... they were force-ably split after WW1 when the ottoman empire fell, then re-united for a bit in 1939-1945, then split again....
Then Kosova gained independence after the Yugoslav disintegration.
Now they both want re-unification (70% want re-unification), but geopolitics wont allow it as it might be de-stabilizing to the region, and the EU is afraid it will stroke instability within its own countries (i.e. Basque independence, Catalan independence, german towns in france wanting to go back to germany, Belgium disintegration, etc... etc...).
Ps. I am Albanian, My dad is half form the north and half from the south, but he was born in Kosova, and raised in Tirana, Albania. We consider it to be the same nation, just divided by arbitrary borders.
If the Soviet Union had hung on for another 20 years, it would have made it into the Internet era. A classic argument against Soviet-style communism is that central planning doesn't work. It doesn't scale. Only free markets scale.
Then came the Internet. Now, companies can scale up to planetary scale. Amazon doesn't seem to be having scaling problems - the bigger it gets, the better it works. Nor does Tencent, or Alibaba, or Citibank, or AT&T, or Disney, or Union Pacific. Competition is on the way out.
So today, central planning works at scale. No reason it couldn't work for a communist economy. China's not doing badly.
The issue with central planning has never been scaling. Back in the mid-20th century, the Soviet Union often managed to excel in scaling particular metrics that were prioritized by leadership. The issue is price discovery and resource allocation, and the ability of politics to interfere with or undermine the price discovery mechanism.
The internet has helped with market-based price discovery by acting as a source of legibility and homogenization, which allows for the mega corporations to extract a lot of the value provided by acting as monopoly providers of the platforms for price discovery. But if you look at their internal corporate economies, all of them have issues with substantial waste, resource misallocation, and politics.
1. Central planning might work today but not in a democracy. Keeping the economy at arms length distance from politics seems essential in a liberal democracy. Pretty sure Amazon wouldn’t be as successful if the leadership was elected by employees / customers / stakeholders.
2. The problem with autocracy + central planning is when things go wrong or the world changes in some important way (or people’s preferences change). No way to correct or replace the administration without revolution.
So, I’d still bet on liberal democracy and capitalism over the long term.
Democracy and capitalism are not joined at the hip, and while the neoliberals are praising the idol of free market, capitalism is dismembering our democratic institutions, like independant journalism and access to justice.
Slightly tangential but Germany's neighbor, maybe the most interesting historical counter factual I know of is the United States of Austria [1]. This was an actual plan of the Habsburgs/Franz Ferdinand until he was assassinated. A Central/Eastern European super state and there likely wouldn't have been the world wars as we knew them.
Why was the Holy Roman Empire never restablished in the post-Napoleonic era? If I remember the last HRE was still around for many years after the outster of Napoleon.
The Austro-Hungarian empire was considered to be a successor state and claimed the title for a time, and basically the German Empire and Austro-Hungarian empire were somewhat viewed as successors along protestant and catholic lines - unifying the division of the two under a 'new' ideology was a big part of third reich ideology (irrespective of how bad naziism was, this is a huge part of the history of the broader topic of 'german unification') .
This article mentions neither historical austria-hungary, the reformation, the anschluss, or modern day austria, so it seems more than a bit lacking from my perspective. But again, not a German nor a Historian so I could be missing something..
> Why was the Holy Roman Empire never restablished in the post-Napoleonic era
Well, that was one of the ideas behind the "Third Reich" (Roman Empire, HRE, then German Reich). Of course, it was under Hitler, not any hereditary emperor.
> If I remember the last HRE was still around for many years after the outster of Napoleon.
No, the last recognized HRE (Francis II) was defeated by Napolean.
But technically, there still is an heir, although his family has renounced any claim to that or any other title (among other reasons, because Hungary and Austria don't permit the use of such titles):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_von_Habsburg
Hereditary (and especially primogeniture) wasn’t as big a deal under any of the Roman Empires as it was for European monarchies. Even when an emperor had heirs, they were often adopted.
The Holy Roman Empire was an European monarchy from the middle ages to ~1800. That's what I was referring to - perhaps that wasn't as clear as it should have been.
Yes, but he ceased to be HRE in 1806 upon defeat by Napoleon. I see there's some ambiguity here in the way the question was posed and how I answered, but that's what I meant to refer to.
As a German, I think the term "unification" is very misleading and burying a lot of issues very relevant to this day in Germany.
What happened back then wasn't "partners joining into an equal union", what happened was the annexation and selling out of a whole half of a country to prove an ideological political point about the alleged superiority of one of them.
Which was then followed with widespread and systematic demonization of anything related to the GDR. A situation that left millions of Germans not just suddenly without a job or any perspective, but being the target of resentment from West Germans who allegedly have to pay for "lazy East Germans" trough the Soli, while seeing a lot of their own political views suddenly equaled to Nazi Germany.
The result of which being that the modern day Federal Republic of Germany is not a product of "unification", but rather a continuation of the very same FRG that came out of Western allied occupation with the added territory of the GDR.
But in the many ways a unified Germany could have learned from both sides, none did really manifest. For example unified Germany still took years and decades to decriminalize and rehabilitate homosexuality, an issue that was for the most part already solved in the GDR.
That's why to this day there's a pretty massive rift going trough the country that particularly many Western Germans are completely oblivious about.
As a non-german, living in east germany, this is more or less my observation too. The unification was literally just one side taking over the other - high level civil servants were replaced by west-german civil servants, teachers were fired, industries closed down as the regulatory enviroment changed overnight, etc.
The essential thought of reunification was that there was nothing worth saving in the East. That wasn't actually something many easteners agreed with.
Korean unification seems even more inevitable, and I've been waiting for North Korea to collapse since the 1980s, but here we are close to 80 years since the split and the status quo remains as intractable as ever.
It's not going to collapse as long as it is supported by other states. At this point, the U.S. political cycle is too short lived to do anything about it and all the players at the table know this.
interesting that the article doesnt mention the Zollverein/German customs union of 1833; Wasn't that the role model for EU integration, where they argued that political union would follow an integrated economy?
When West Germany merged with East the impact upon GDP wasn't dramatic and it was a democratic choice.
Indeed it went so well, I dare say it was a motivator towards more integration within the EU and will say the EU went on a pokemon phase not long after in member growth. Which even the EU phrases as "Re-unification of Europe" https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/policy/from-6...
So the re-unification of Germany had many aspects too it that get overlooked.
> When West Germany merged with East the impact upon GDP wasn't dramatic
I think actual Germans cared a bit more about things like suddenly being unemployed, in the millions, and actual economic opportunities, than the rather abstract value of GDP.
And on that end unification presented quite a dramatic change for the everyday reality of many Germans, a change that's lasting to this day and wasn't actually for the better for everybody [0]
As one of the actual Germans let me tell you many of us do indeed care about other things than GDP numbers, for example having our families reunited, half of which for many people ended up on the other side of a wall.
Many things are complicated but a regime that has to cage its own citizens in, and at times shoot them when they try to leave, is rotten to the very core.
Reunification was inevitable and a good thing. Sure, major historic change causes upheaval, but it's a trivial truth that this is the case every time things change.
As an actual German born and grown up in the West, by family that completely legally left the East, I'm no fan of these crass generalizations.
I've crossed the allegedly "caged border" several times to visit family and vice versa.
People tend to forget that back then border regimes, with often complex visa regulations, existed everywhere. It's not like Europe was the EU and everybody had freedom of movement except for people from the GDR.
No, visas were still required over the place, borders were reinforced and heavily controlled from both sides, both sides treated you like a pseudo-criminal by completely and utterly taking your belongings apart to suppress any possible smuggling. Which was mostly down to the fact of the two Germany's also serving as a cold war border.
But adding any nuance like that to these discussions is simply not allowed, the only thing allowed is equating the GDR, and the people who lived in it, with Nazi Germany at worst, at best as a bunch of people that had to be "liberated" economically and socially from the Soviets by their glorious Western saviors.
A narrative that will continue to alienate a rather big part of the population, a problem that becomes slowly noticeable, but has yet to be acknowledged any more meaningful way than the usual Nazi-Keule of "Them East Germans are just neo-Nazis".
> but it's a trivial truth that this is the case every time things change.
The not so trivial truth is that not everything changes to the better for everybody, and in the case of "reunification" a whole lot of things changed for the worse for a whole lot of people, to this day.
You can't just hand-wave that away with "Oh it was inevitable!", when the rushed and one-sided way "reunification" actually happened was absolutely not "inevitable", it was the result of Kohl's ambition to have reunification as his legacy, damned be the actual people and consequences for them.
Ah, not the first unification that springs to mind. I wasn't aware of that, and reading a bit about it and the timeline - you may be very well right. Certainly it interesting to look at how historical events panned out with hindsight and cause and effect. Whole aspect of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Revolution_of_1918%E2%8...
takes some getting your head around.
East Germany still faces incredible far ranging economic & societal difficulties after the West Germans swept in, strong armed the state, offered little support, & privatized all industry.
The economy was having enormous difficulties. Rather than support & help the population, it was GDP & GDP alone that was focused on.
My sources for what happened then are mostly the 4-part netflix drama The Perfect Crime, about the assassination of the Trust Agency head who paved over communism with capitalism. Not fancy, so I'm not super well versed. The movie doesn't go far into the aftermath, which, if you look at East Germany, has many of the scariest Trumpist vibes one might imagine to it. People got left the heck behind. It was a conquest not an integration.
Edit: People seem to really really hate that I cited my sources and it's not good enough. Perhaps a wikipedia quote to confirm some of my stance might make you modestly less skeptical? My words are radical but the situation itself was too:
> Despite these problems, the process of unification moved ahead, albeit slowly. The Treuhand, staffed almost entirely by Germans from the west, became the virtual government of eastern Germany. In the course of privatization, the agency decided which companies would live and which would die, which communities would thrive and which would shrivel, and which eastern Länder would be prosperous and which would not. It also decided who might or might not buy eastern firms or services.
I'd like to find a way to hand out more credit, to be fairer, and I lack that expertise. My apologies. This was an incredibly difficult situation. Yet, it feels very much, the German "reunification" was a one way integration, was one country taking over another, with few chances at all for the German Democratic Republic government & people to try to self-determine what path forward they wanted to take towards reunification.
Support peaked at 1/3rd of GDP. At the time, there were a lot of critics (domestic and foreign) of how expensive Kohl's vision of rebuilding the East was.
I'm not saying: the East has caught up, it was handled perfectly, there aren't still problems, there aren't ugly political problems.
I am saying you have a very weirdly biased view of what happened, and maybe should consider not single-sourcing your history to tee vee shows, or at least recognize the limits of doing so.
One of the obvious problems is that Ossis are still massively underrepresented in the German elite. Only a tiny proportion of big business owners are Eastern, the proportion of Easterners among university professors or judges is smaller than expected, even in the new Länder, the same applies in culture.
This cannot really be compensated by money, especially if that money flows back into Western corporations (such as construction companies that build infrastructure).
Support was offered, on West Germany's terms. As per wikipedia,
> Despite these problems, the process of unification moved ahead, albeit slowly. The Treuhand, staffed almost entirely by Germans from the west, became the virtual government of eastern Germany.
I agree, I would like to have a better background on this. The West did face severe difficulties & extreme extreme burdens of it's own in trying to support & integrate. But it continually feels to me like the image of this being a take-over are not unfounded. Trying to figure out a way to sustain & support the economy, to allow space for a more graceful self-rule, under which terms transition could be better, more slowly explored would have been immensely interesting. Instead, we got a much fairer, nicer version of what was just starting to happen somewhat East of Germany, in the wake of the fall of the USSR ten months three weeks earlier: a sell off, a economic re-dividing up of spoils, a commercialization of a nation.
There were huge huge challenges, and it's not as simple at all as saying capitalism is at fault here. This wasn't even necessarily predatory. The world continues to have faith above all in the GDP, in macro-economics. The drive to push GDP up, by all means, quickly, or else (given the economic troubles faced) is a very real & valid survival reflex; quite understandable. It's hard to imagine what alternatives there were, especially given the already fairly dire economic state of East Germany/the German Democratic Republic at the time, but I don't think it is a "very weirdly biased view" at all that I nor wikipedia present: that the GDR was coerced into change, rapidly, by external forces, with little respect to self-determinism & little chance given for the people to figure out a way forward to try to support each other, in a less ambitiously bottom-line oriented manner.
I'm a little more aware of the contemporary situation, where there is an alarming rise of far-right angry-popularism. From the same sort of economically-left-behind folks who feel left out of modern society. And while I think their reaction is malformed, I can sympathize with their anger and recognize the common problems faced by "rural America" and much of East Germany.
Anyhow, you've rather told me I'm full of shit, and I'd like rather much if you could find something beyond criticism to offer to this conversation. Do you have any materials or suggestions for the readers here?
A lot of these topics don't even get that much mainstream coverage in the German language sphere because there's no real common ground to be found.
The Treuhandgesellschaft and Kohl are topics you will come across extremely polarized opinions from "Best thing ever" to "Worst thing ever", but these kind of controversies rarely make it out of the German language sphere, as they require a fair bit of deeper understanding not just about German history, but also about German political culture.
In that context The Perfect Crime on Netflix is a pretty good piece of documentary shining a light on parts of German history that, particularly West Germans, just love to gloss over but have in East Germany lead to deep scars lasting to this day.
From my American perspective I think the reason nobody talks about it in West Germany is because honest talk about German history has been ruthlessly suppressed by nearly all the institutions of the German state, including the state media. This is not healthy, people should be exposed to the best of all different perspectives.
Still, they are correct. I can tell you from first-hand experience that this is what happened to many east Germans. Mass unemployment, deserted cities and rural areas, general loss of perspective lead to many social problems, right-wing extremism one of them.
I don't think, that western Germany is solely to blame, though. If you look into the "Klassenfeind" in eastern Germany, that is entrepreneurs, bourgeoise, Christians, even just small-scale craftsman, they all did rather well after a short transition. But they did so in a very difficult environment: The masses of workers, educated to be lead by and taken care of, by the state were now completely on their own. Underqualified faced an especially dire situation: In eastern Germany even the most inept would have some payed position, even though they were completely useless there. It was basically an alternative to unemployment. Now these, say, 5% of the workforce never had been told that they should have some qualification to get some work. They simply expected some simple position to be created for them (I personally met some of these people, btw.). These people never faced a chance on the labor market.
Prior to Covid, I visited former GDR several times.
Places like Hoyerswerda are the worst German-speaking communities I ever saw, the spirit of hopelessness permeates everything.
Even in cities like Görlitz that were restored to their original beauty, the loss of population has been so enormous that entire building blocks are empty, the windows blinded by years of dust. Ghost neighbourhoods, very untypical for Europe.
Zittau on the Czech border has lost like a third of population within thirty years. Many of the remaining residents are over 70.
Russia was virulently opposed, and according to the book, West Germany paid Russia $2T to remove all of its soldiers from East German territory. The book makes the case that the reunification of Germany is one of the foundations of Russian resentment towards the US, since the Bush I administration gave them categorical assurances that the borders of NATO would not move "an inch Eastward."