|
View the H-Diplo Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in H-Diplo's July 2004 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in H-Diplo's July 2004 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the H-Diplo home page.
H-DIPLO mail #133 contained [the Panel 22 report posted on 8 July 2004] a nice
report by Garret Martin (LSE) on SHAFR Panel 22, in which I participated.
However, some of my arguments were quite misrepresented. Mr. Garret writes that
"Klitzing tried to put forward three main arguments: ... Kissinger tried to
appear more German than the Germans on the issue of reunification ..."
This amounts to a very errroneous rendering of Kissinger's position as he
himself said repeatedly that he never wanted to be "more German than the
Germans" (i.e. insisting on positions the German government itself was ready
to give up). Yet at the same time he never wanted to give up any more than
the Germans were willing to do ("be less German than the Germans", so to
speak) in order not to drive them away from the West. Hence my
interpretation that he wanted to be at any point "as German as the Germans":
a continuous tightrope walk.
In my paper I wrote:
"While repeatedly defending himself vis-a-vis Brandt's CDU-oppositon with the
assertion that the U.S. could not be „more German than the Germans", I would
conclude that Kissinger tried to steer a course of appearing at any point‚ as
German as the Germans'. This attitude reveals Kissinger's functional
understanding of German unification. Also U.S. firmness in West Berlin was as
functional in order not to endanger what Kissinger perceived as a precarious
internal stability and to keep West Germany "a willing member of the Atlantic
Alliance" as he had defined the American interest in 1965."
Furthermore, Mr. Garret writes:
"Eventually, relations between Kissinger and Brandt improved after the Berlin
Treaty of August 1970 - Kissinger felt it effectively sealed the German
division - but he continued to remain wary as far as the goals of Ostpolitik
went."
To which I would like to add that rather Kissinger's relationship to Egon Bahr
improved and, of course, the treaty under concern here is the Moscow Treaty and
not the Berlin Agreement of 1971.
Sincerely,
Holger Klitzing
--------------------------------------------
Holger Klitzing M.A.
Lehrstuhl Prof. Dr. D. Junker
Historisches Seminar
Universität Heidelberg
Grabengasse 3-5
D-69117 Heidelberg
Germany
--------------------------------------------
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
|