The Third World War: August 1985

There was another actor in this drama which the protagonists were apt to overlook. East German opinion had long been among the most suppressed and distorted in Eastern Europe. The failure of the Soviet offensive with the subsequent ferment in Poland and the eastern republics, at last gave back a voice to those who had perforce been silent for so long. The apparatchiks of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschland (SED) were brushed aside and a real debate began to make itself heard, among academics, technicians, managers and army officers, in fact among all those professionals who, in spite of Soviet ideological interference, had kept the state running and made its industry a formidable factor in the world. Their opinions were not exactly what might have been expected in the West, or in the East. They did not clamour to join their democratic brothers west of the Elbe; they saw little joy in a united Germany controlled by West German bankers in the sole interest of economic growth. They found the conformism and hierarchies of the West almost as stifling as their own. They saw a better future in a state with some of the old Prussian virtues which they had assimilated into their own system: frugality, a certain puritanism, a feeling of superiority towards their neighbours on each side — a conviction that they were more advanced than the Slavs on the east and morally superior to the mixed economies in the West, already, in East German eyes, showing symptoms of decadence.

The West Germans became aware of these views through the increased contacts they were able to establish across the growing anarchy of the Warsaw Pact’s forward areas. They were shocked and surprised that their fellow Germans in the East should be reluctant to join in the economic miracle and the political freedom of the West. Secretly, perhaps, some of them were also a little relieved to find that they would not after all have to assimilate 17 million more Germans (and probably as many socialist voters), which would have considerably distorted the German political scene. In the light of these assessments West German pressure to invade the East was significantly reduced. There was little joy in the prospect of a West German army entering the East as liberators, only to be shortly told by their liberated brothers to go back home.

This increased the difficulty for the Americans in persuading their allies to join in a counter-offensive against Soviet Russia and the Warsaw Pact through East Germany, Poland and the Ukraine. In a final attempt to resolve the argument the President of the United States called for a summit meeting to be held in London and attended by the heads of Government of the Atlantic Allies.

The discussion revolved round three topics:

1. The advantages of finishing off the job and so guaranteeing peace in our time.

2. The risk that a Western attack would trigger nuclear war.

3. The German problem.

The Americans argued that they had once again saved Europe by their exertions; three times was enough. The only way to make sure it didn’t happen again was to push the Soviet Union back out of Europe. The Russians were not mad enough to prefer nuclear destruction to the loss of their East European satellites, even if they also lost some of their territory. Limited war aims would be announced, giving them the assurance of a continued secure existence in their own heartland, but not of dominion over others. The German problem was for the Germans to solve. Even if they chose to unite, there would be so much repair and reconstruction to be done after the war that they could hardly constitute a threat to the other West Europeans, whose territory had escaped comparatively lightly and so left them with less rebuilding.

The West German leaders, still divided among themselves and conscious of continuing army pressure to move forward, kept a low profile in the discussion. The British, French, Beneluxians and Scandinavians were unimpressed by the American arguments and repeated their fears of nuclear attack and of a future united Germany. Moreover, the march of events in the Soviet Union was rapidly leading to collapse even without any further Western attack. It was much easier and less costly, as the German General Staff had argued in 1917 when they smuggled in Lenin, if defeat came about from internal disintegration rather than from external invasion. Any future Soviet attempt to arouse nationalistic passions against the foreigner and regain lost positions would be much less plausible if no foreign armies had invaded Russian soil.

The Americans, with the more hawkish elements of the German armed forces, considered moving in alone. Who knows what might have been the outcome if they had? A new dramatic shift in the debate in Moscow removed the necessity to reach a conclusion.