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Solving the 'German Problem'
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20052 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1992 |
3,080 Words |
| Author
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David Carlton
David Carlton is lecturer in politics and international
studies at the University of Warwick. He is author of Anthony
Eden: A Biography (1981) and of Britain and the Suez Crisis
(1988). |
As the dust settles after the French referendum and as European governments try with greater or less enthusiasm to patch up the shattered exchange rate mechanism (ERM), the underlying reality is that "the German problem" is once again coming to the top of the agenda. And no people are more aware of this than the Germans themselves.
For at least a century, "the German problem" has been actually or latently the most acute of all those facing European statesmen. It is inextricably linked to what has less frequently been called "the French problem." Essentially both "problems" arise from what may be the greatest misfortune in modern European history, namely that by the seventeenth century the great majority of French speakers were consciously living under one national roof whereas this condition was not achieved by the more numerous German speakers until the days of Otto von Bismarck. The French speakers thus grew used to belonging to what was normally the preeminent state on the continent of Europe. "The French problem" was and perhaps still is about how the French could bring themselves to accept that an arriviste state, with a significantly larger population, greater industrial strength, and higher standards of technological education, had now a claim to be recognized as primus inter pares. And the German problem was and perhaps still is how a proud people could come to terms with being apparently vexatiously denied the wholehearted recognition by others of this claim. For from 1894 until 1940, the French sought to resist their fate by forging a succession of alliances to the east and, when possible, with the Anglo-Saxons. The aim was to ensure that Paris remained at the hub of the European system and that Germany would never be wholly accepted at the heart of the world establishment. This could be compared to Mexico deciding to ally with Canada and various European powers to try to deny the United States preeminence in North America. The result could be seen in 1945: a ruined Germany facing partition and a humiliated France victorious only by courtesy of others.
Almost the only moment of hope for the Europeans during the playing out of this terrible tragedy may have come in 1938, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain persuaded the French that there might be better way--namely, according Germany at least equal status in European counsels and acknowledging the folly of trying to prevent self-determination for the German speakers of eastern Europe. But Adolf Hitler's Third Reich a year later behaved with such brutality and recklessness that France and Great Britain were forced to declare war. Germany, in short, could have had European preeminence for more or less the asking in 1939. But when it appeared
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