History has its own dynamism. While wars may kill and maim and while regional and global conflicts may leave countries split down the middle or brought into a single structure, it is the wheels of history which turn and which go into a shaping and reshaping of our world.
It was a tragedy when, in the aftermath of the welcome fall of the Nazis in 1945, Germany found itself splintered into two states per courtesy of the nations which had freed Europe from the menace that was Adolf Hitler and his National Socialists. The rush to take Berlin by Soviet, American and British troops and the subsequent division of the country into eastern and western zones was a reality the world had to live with till 1990.
The history of modern Germany makes for fascinating reading. The rise of Konrad Adenauer as West Germany's first chancellor and the strenuous efforts his government needed to put in place in order to bring his part of the old country to respectability is a page written in the annals of our times. On the other hand, when East Germany passed under the domination of the Soviet Union, it was the beginning of a new sad story for Germans.
The Berlin Wall came up in 1961, which was clearly a crude attempt to divide not only a city but an entire nation. The Berlin Wall was a manifestation of the tribalism which the Soviet leadership, beginning with Joseph Stalin, sought to push the German people into.
And, overall, the impression of Germany following the Second World War was that its reunification could spell disaster once more for the world. Western politicians were not too keen about reunification, though many of them railed against the Berlin Wall.
In 1963, US President Kennedy gladdened West German hearts when he spoke to them and indeed to their compatriots across the wall through his ringing endorsement of democracy and the free world. Kennedy spoke at the Brandenburg Gate where, decades later, President Reagan would ask Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.
For all our reading of German history post-1945, many of us yet remain ignorant about life in Germany between the allied occupation and the reunification in 1990. In the final days of the war, much of Germany lay waste through the air raids and ground assaults by troops from the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain, France and others.
Misery, of the sort to which the Nazis had subjected the people of the countries they had occupied, was visited upon the people of a defeated Germany. It would take a long time for German infrastructure, in both east and west, to be rebuilt. In the end, though, Germany recovered, to a point where many in the West were fearful of a resurgence of the Hitlerite politics which had caused the calamity of 1939-1945.
Germany is today a leading global power, especially in terms of the economic strength it embodies. It is a leading player in international politics, as evident through its participation in the Ukraine crisis and of late in the critical situation arising in Gaza. The importance Germany exudes in today's global politics brings to mind the brilliant politicians that the country, particularly the western part of it prior to 1990, produced in the post-war period.
Konrad Adenauer was a pivotal force in reviving German confidence after the war. But let it not be forgotten that in East Germany, or GDR as it was officially known, men such as Walter Ulbricht, Erich Honecker and Willi Stoph played critical roles, doing as best they could despite the Soviet shadow over their state.
In West Germany, following the departure from power of Konrad Adenauer, political leadership successively passed into the hands of Ludwig Erhard, the Kurt-George Kiesinger-led CDU-SPD grand coalition in 1966, Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt and others. It remains part of modern German as also world history that it was a German politician, in this instance Brandt, who initiated the first moves toward East-West détente, a measure later solidified by Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev.
Brandt went to Warsaw in winter 1970, knelt in contrition over Nazi crimes before the memorial to Nazi victims and so informed the world that a better global landscape could be fashioned. Brandt visited East Berlin to speak to East German leaders. It was Brandt's Ostpolitik at work.
Studies of modern Germany in our times cannot fail to take into account the remarkable economic leadership provided by Helmut Schmidt in the years he wielded power as Chancellor. Schmidt was followed by Helmut Kohl, whose sixteen years in office saw the Berlin Wall come down and the two segmented parts of the country reunite, despite reservations among many western leaders.
Kohl did a fantastic job of creating the circumstances that would ease East Germany's linking up with the rest of the country. Having been communist, with intelligence agencies like Stasi being big brother to East Germans, and having been a Soviet satellite state, the GDR was pretty squeamish about its reinvention as part of the old Germany. Kohl eased the process, with finesse.
One of the more remarkable stories of German resurgence in global politics relates to the rise of Angela Merkel as the reunified country's Chancellor. She grew up in the communist east, had her employment there. For her it was a stifling situation and had 1990 not happened, she would have toiled away as a scientist, which she is, in East Berlin and under communist rule.
But as German Chancellor, Merkel turned out to be the voice of progressive moderation in world politics during the period of her governance. Her sympathy for refugees making it to European shores may have upset many in her country, but that her heart was in the right place was made clear by her policy on the issue. In an otherwise global scene of mediocre politicians, Angela Merkel was a stateswoman, a proper inheritor of the mantle of Willy Brandt.
Germans are a contented lot today. In a world where not many countries are happy about their circumstances, Germans take pride in themselves. Their parents, who felt crushed in a divided country after 1945, would have celebrated the spirit of a new Germany, shedding its past, playing a pre-eminent role in global affairs today. Olaf Scholz knows what he needs to do.
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