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

8. The Career Diplomats andAdenauer’s Foreign Policy

8 The career Diplomats and Adenauer’s Foreign Policy The InFLux OF veTeRAn DIPLOMATS into leadership positions demonstrates that experienced officials desired to restart their careers after 1949 and were successful in doing so, but it says little about their intentions. More important is determining whether Wilhelmstraße veterans had great sway within the new ministry, and whether they preferred a foreign policy based on their experiences from the pre-1945 era. Not surprisingly, the answer to the first question is no. Veterans were not in a position to exert significant influence within the Auswärtiges Amt. However, the answer to the second is much more complex and perhaps unexpected. Adenauer’s most thoughtful critics within the diplomatic corps shared his analysis of the strategic situation and even his overall goal of close cooperation with the West. However, they differed on tactics for waging the Cold War. The post-Stalin thaw in the Cold War in combination with the Federal Republic’s imminent sovereignty and rearmament would lead to increasing dissatisfaction—and not only among Weimar veterans but also for newcomers like Wilhelm Grewe—with Adenauer’s hard-line “policy of strength” vis-à-vis the USSR. The Limited Ability of Wilhelmstraße Veterans to Assert Their Position Many career diplomats were unhappy in the early 1950s for reasons that had nothing to do with opposition to Adenauer’s foreign policy. As demon- The career Diplomats and Adenauer’s Foreign Policy 215 strated previously, both Wilhelm Haas and Gustav Strohm, among others, implied that the Weimar-era diplomatic corps was a positive model for the new Foreign Office. Moreover, both they and their former colleagues asserted that during that period the professional diplomats had conducted German foreign policy and that this policy was relatively successful. During the years 1949 to 1955, however, veteran diplomats were in a poor position to assert their leadership . Due to the ministry’s late official foundation and the growing importance of new areas in foreign policy after 1945 (especially economic affairs), other ministries were able to claim leadership in certain areas of German foreign relations. The Foreign Office was never able to reestablish the predominant position among the ministries that it enjoyed before 1945. In addition, the ministry ’s personnel grew so fast in the early 1950s that it is doubtful whether the old hands could have shaped the Foreign Office’s self-understanding and es­ prit de corps very substantially. Indeed, outside observers of the Auswärtiges Amt thought that the old solidarity from the pre-1945 era had somehow been left behind, even if many of the veteran diplomats had not been.1 Blankenhorn noted that he did not recognize over 80 percent of the officials gathered at the Auswärtiges Amt’s first social evening in Bad Godesberg on February 11, 1953.2 The early 1950s also were a golden age for outsiders in the West German foreign service, which the career diplomats did not always appreciate. Ulrich Sahm, in charge of the Schuman Plan Secretariat and a newcomer to diplomacy, recalled that in the early years the office’s overworked leadership could do little to create a sense of camaraderie among the officials. This task was also complicated by the fact that the ministry’s various divisions were scattered in so many different buildings.3 Greater solidarity undoubtedly developed within the ministry as it came out of the reconstruction phase. Just as in the past, some elements of the diplomatic corps began to see themselves once again as an elite among the government bureaucrats. The ministry, as usual, also had to contend with the associated public perception that it was elitist as well.4 However, the point is that the reconstruction phase in the early 1950s was a very poor time to mold the new ministry according to old forms. Some traditions from the pre-1945 period, such as the annual fox hunt for the foreign diplomatic corps organized by Herwarth, were revived successfully; others like the three-hour lunch died out entirely as the veteran diplomats retired.5 Moreover, as more and more veterans left the diplomatic service, memories of the Wilhelmstraße faded and were replaced by a new and thoroughly democratic “‘Bonn’ or ‘Federal Republic’ institutional self-understanding.”6 216 A D e n A u e R ’ S F O R e I G n O F F I c e Veteran diplomats were also displeased...