Adenauer's Foreign Office: West German Diplomacy in the Shadow of the Third Reich

7. The Leadership Structure in the Auswärtiges Amt,1951–55

7 The Leadership Structure in the Auswärtiges Amt, 1951–55 A POPuLAR JOke In bOnn in 1952 compared the Auswärtiges Amt to a train, with Adenauer, Hallstein, and Blankenhorn as the locomotive. “The locomotive is traveling at full-steam, but it suddenly turns out that the train’s cars are standing still. About one division it’s even said that it comprises the sleeping car” (a reference to Division III).1 The joke highlighted the fact that decision making in the Foreign Office during the early 1950s was dominated by a small group of officials aroundAdenauer, often to the exclusion of major units of the ministry, including important diplomatic missions. During periods of particularly intense activity such as 1950–52 (dominated by the negotiations on the Schuman Plan, the European Defense Community, and the General Treaty) and between mid-1954 and early 1955 (marked by the failure of the EDC and a new round of negotiations on rearmament and the Occupation Statute), complaints about this situation became acute. Yet these narrow leadership structures did not present a major obstacle for a foreign policy that led to West German sovereignty in 1955. If the leadership was restricted to a relatively small circle, the leaders themselves represented the ministry’s greatest strength. Adenauer, Hallstein, and Blankenhorn Central to the leadership question was Adenauer’s own style. He depended on others both for information and as sounding boards for ideas and was skill- The Leadership Structure in the Auswärtiges Amt, 1951–55 183 ful at creating consensus. However, he did not make decisions based on collegial consultations or display any sentimentality in personnel issues.2 In many ways, Adenauer advocated secret diplomacy. As he told his cabinet on April 1, 1952, it was impossible to make foreign policy by appealing to the broad public.3 Unfortunately, he also tended to be secretive toward his own coalition and government. Wilhelm Grewe believed that Adenauer’s penchant for “secret-mongering [Geheimniskrämerei]” created unnecessary tensions among coworkers.4 He certainly did not appreciate public statements by ministers or bureaucrats that were uncoordinated with his foreign policy and did his best to suppress them.5 Other important aspects of Adenauer’s leadership style had already become clear during his years as lord mayor of Cologne (1917–33), including his attention to detail and use of personnel policy for political purposes.6 As noted previously,Adenauer harbored suspicions about all Wilhelmstraße veterans. Blankenhorn wrote in his diary in late 1949: “The Chancellor’s position on the Aus[wärtiges] Amt: skepticism, mistrust, resentment based on previous bad experience.”7 Herwarth speculated that Adenauer’s negative experience involved Geheimrat Heinrich von Friedberg, head of the Foreign Office’s Division for the Occupied Territories and the Saar (and Herwarth’s first boss), who in the 1920s personally reprimanded Adenauer for his plan to detach the Rhineland from Prussia. According to Herwarth, “Adenauer left the meeting deeply outraged [tief gekränkt].”8 There may have been a more important reason, too. On several occasions near the end of his lifeAdenauer asserted that German civil servants and others in official positions had not done what they could have to resist National Socialism . When asked by a reporter in 1965 if he thought at the time that Hitler would remain in power for 12 years, he said that this had been impossible to predict back then. Adenauer: . . . But I saw how little capable of resistance they were. Reporter [Friedrich L. Müller, Bild am Sonntag]: A sign, that the masses certainly were ready . . . Adenauer: . . . that the entire bureaucracy immediately gave in, when the Nazis exerted pressure. When they threatened with arrests, and so forth. If Hitler hadn’t started a war with the entire world, he would have remained in power for a long time still. He had the police and army.9 He told prominent CDU politicians assembled for his ninety-first birthday on January 5, 1967, that “if the German authorities had not failed to act [nicht 184 A D e n A u e R ’ S F O R e I G n O F F I c e . . . versagt hätten], National Socialism would never have come to power in Germany. That is for me a rock-solid conviction.”10 It is possible that Adenauer’s caution also was shaped by the advice on the Wilhelmstraße that he solicited from two...