CSCE, the German Question, and the Eastern Bloc

During a visit to Israel in June 1973, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt spoke at the Weizmann Institute in Jerusalem about the development of East-West relations. As always, he emphasized the gradual nature of his own approach. A “sustainable peace policy” was to him no “project of large leaps.” Instead, he described his own policy as one of “small, progressing steps.” Even the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which was about to start in Helsinki in the summer of 1973 and comprised all European states (with the exception of Albania) plus Canada and the United States, should not lead to “wishful thinking,” Brandt declared. “And yet, who would have dared to predict a decade ago that a conference of such constructive substance was taking shape!”¹

The preceding years—the early 1970s—had witnessed a new form of rapprochement between East and West in general and between the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the member-states of the Warsaw Pact in particular. Although this new form of interaction did not eliminate the fundamental conflict between East and West, it did change the mode and framework in which the conflict was to be conducted from then on.

The Final Act of the CSCE, signed in Helsinki on 1 August 1975 by 35 national leaders, was an expression of this change: “It was there that Europe’s postwar era finally came to an end.”² This document defined the principles that ought to guide all relations and interactions among the signatory states. Above all was the renunciation of the threat and use of force and the inviolability of frontiers. This self-obligation to keep the peace was complemented by a much enlarged definition of peace itself. Henceforth, not only rules for the resolution of international conflicts but also certain norms and domestic political structures counted as essential preconditions for the stabilization of peace in Europe. This included intensified economic exchange and, last but not least, respect for human rights and improved possibilities for traveling abroad and access to information across the line that still divided West and East in Europe.

The era of détente, which began in the 1960s, was anything but a linear process. However, the term “Cold War” disappeared from the vocabulary of the political actors at the time. In contemporary perception, the “Cold War” of the 1950s and 1960s as one form of the East-West conflict was replaced by détente as a new form in which the conflict was to be pursued. The long period of confrontation and delimitation was superseded by efforts aiming at a more cooperative—yet still antagonistic—coexistence. The increasing “perforation of the Iron Curtain” heralded a new phase in East-West relations, signaling the end of the “Cold War conflict in its 1940s and 1950s form.”³

Détente in Europe was possible only if the “German question”—often referred to outside Germany as “the German problem”—could be defused. How this was successfully managed from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s is the subject of this JCWS special issue. The dividing line in Germany was the spot in Europe where the confrontation of the two blocs was most highly visible, as was evident when Soviet leaders triggered the Berlin crises of 1948– 1949 and 1958–1962. When the latter crisis subsided, the outcome created possibilities for de-escalation on the basis of the territorial status quo. This was the essence of President John F. Kennedy’s appeal of 1963: “We must deal with the world as it is.” Even though he called for a “relaxation of tensions” and a “strategy of peace,” Kennedy never denied the fundamental differences between West and East. Yet while recognizing the continuing political and societal antagonisms, he called for mutual respect of the other’s positions. By arguing for the peaceful resolution of conflicts (“If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity”), Kennedy both evoked and redefined Woodrow Wilson’s famous notion of making “the world . . . safe for democracy.”⁴

If applied...