Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of ...

German foreign policy-making since 1945 89
into broader society through the democratisation of its armed forces and
the creation of new image of the German soldier as ‘a citizen in uniform’
(Staatsbürger in Uniform). Here again the lessons of the past loomed
large. Post-war German military reformers were determined that the
armed forces should never again become the font of authoritarian, antidemocratic
values that it had been in the pre-1945 period. Even Social
Democratic critics of rearmament such as Fritz Erler were convinced that
the left during the Weimar Republic had committed a fatal error by failing
to reach out to the armed forces and integrate them into a democratic
polity. 30
These three principles emerged during the 1950s and became the template
on which all subsequent German foreign policy was based. While
initially controversial, gradually this approach to foreign policy was accepted
by all the major political players in Germany and enjoyed considerable
popular support. By most criteria German foreign policy was
remarkably successful. The Federal Republic rose from the ashes of the
defeat in the Second World War and was reintegrated as a central player in
European affairs. Militarily Germany enjoyed an unprecedented degree
of security, while economically it grew and became immensely prosperous.
The two major causes of concern from the German point of view
were the continued partition of the German state and a relative lack of
room for independent manoeuvre. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in
November 1989 both of these situations came to an abrupt end.
German foreign policy and historical memory
after the fall of the Berlin Wall
The effective end of the Cold War in 1989 and the formal reunification of
Germany in 1991 transformed the German domestic political system and
its international political environment. Domestically the sudden addition
of seventeen million new citizens from East Germany dramatically altered
the electoral landscape and imparted a profound shock to the German
economy from which it has yet to recover. Accompanying these wrenching
changes was an initial upsurge in nationalist feelings, reflected in the
outburst of a mood of popular exuberance in the immediate aftermath
of reunification and, more ominously, in the rise of xenophobic violence
directed against asylum seekers and foreign residents in Germany. 31
30 See Abenheim, Reforging the Iron Cross, 123–5.
31 For an expression of the kinds of concerns that these developments created, see Reinhard
Kühnl, ‘The German Sonderweg reconsidered: Continuities and Discontinuities in
Modern German History’, in Reinhard Alter and Peter Monteath (eds.), Rewriting
the German Past: History and Identity in the New Germany (Atlantic Highlands, NJ:
Humanities Press, 1998).