Speech before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council on March 28

Speech before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council on February 11, 2002:

His Excellency Erwin Teufel
Minister President of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany

German-American Relations Before and After September 11th

President Mack, Dr. Rice, Consuls General, ladies and gentlemen of the United States and my compatriots from Germany. I would like to thank you very much for this kind invitation that you’ve extended to me, Mr. President, and I would also like to thank you for your kind words of introduction before I’m going to make my brief statement. I consider it an honor that I can speak here in front of this honorable Council, this very important institution, because you’ve had very illustrious speakers before me. I would like to welcome you on behalf of the state government of Baden-Wuerttemberg, also very personally and on behalf of all the members of my delegation who have who came in their capacity as businessmen and are seeking extensive contacts both in California and with the United States of America in general.

We are very happy that we have the opportunity to meet you today. I have been given the subject to talk about German-American relations before the September 11^th and after that. Now, ladies and gentlemen, my country has varied relationships with the United States. I just want to give you three examples to show this. The first one is among the seven million Germans who, after 1830, immigrated to the United States. Twenty-five percent of these 7 million came from what today is the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. Our state always was a very poor state and, until the middle of the 19^th century, 70 percent of the population was employed in agriculture. It was sheer poverty and misery which drove them, in the middle of the 19^th century, to go into small state industries or to emigrate. But these small state industries [led to the invention of] the automotive vehicle, something that our state, of course, is still profiting from. Many, many people in my state have families and personal relations to citizens of the United States.

The second thing is there [have been] American forces situated in Baden-Wuerttemberg, so we’ve had very close ties with not only the American armed forces, but also with their families. A lot of friendships have been brought about in that way. There was a very, very good mix. We are very happy that after the reunification of Germany not all of the forces have been relocated to the United States, but have stayed behind as friends, partners and allies in our country.

The third thing that ties us together is, of course, various political and economic ties. For Germany, the European partners are the main trading partners -- Italy, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The number one exporting country for Germany is the United States and … corporations in our state have footholds in the United States, like Daimler Chrysler and Audi. They are at home here and there are thousands of medium size businesses as well, many are represented by CEOs, by owners and by directors who are members of our business delegation who have accompanied me. So there are many, many things from my home state, which is situated in the southwest of Germany. We in the southwest have one border with Switzerland and the longest common border with France, so it’s not any mystery. It’s the everyday business, cultural and human relationships which tie our countries together.

Ladies and gentlemen, four years ago when the President of the German Bundesrat, that’s our second chamber, our Senate at the federal level . . . the day of German reunification, in October -- which is our national holiday – and it took place in our state capital of Stuttgart. On the occasion of that celebration I invited the American president, George Bush, Sr. I invited him because there is no second person around that we owe more when it comes to German reunification. On the occasion of that celebration I thought: it is not that we owe a lot to the Americans. We owe them everything. That is my firm conviction and I would like to explain why.

The Americans were drawn into the First World War. After the First World War, the decision of the American government [was to withdraw] again from Europe. That is why the post-war period after the First World War became the pre-war period to the Second World War.

The Second World War was started by Hitler Germany. Our neighbors were attacked by us and the evil monstrous crime was committed against humanity that is without example: the Holocaust was committed, the killing of millions of Jewish citizens in Germany and in Europe. Many citizens who have achieved great merit for our country, at the time emigrated to the United States. Many of them, unfortunately never made it. The United States, against their will and intention, were pulled into the Second World War. What happened in the Second World War … Germany tendered unconditional surrender. But it is a day of the defeat just like it is a day of liberation for Germany. A day of defeat, but first and foremost the insight into the fact that we could never have overcome on our own the national socialist dictatorship; we needed the United States of America and their allies to do so. This is why it is also a day of liberation for the German people. One of the best-known theologians of the Protestant church in Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was also a resistance fighter and who only a few weeks before the end of the dictatorship, before the end of the World War, was killed in a concentration camp, said: “We Germans have to pray that we lose the Second World War.” That was the situation at the time.

Now the time after the Second World War, in fact, it did not become again a pre-war time. That is because this time the United States did not withdraw from Germany and from Europe. They stayed, and that is why I’m saying not that we are owing much to the United States. We owe them every single thing. Anyone who had to become a prisoner of war during the Second World War would have given anything to become an American prisoner of war, and everyone who had to live in a zone of occupation after the Second World War, before the Republic of Germany was founded, they did everything possible to go to the American occupied zone. I think that says it all. That says it about the attitude, the humane attitude displayed by the citizens of your country after everything you had to do in the Second World War.

There were many big things said in speeches made at the time. On the 6^th of September 1946, James F. Byrnes, Secretary of State, made a speech of hope in the Stuttgart Opera House, which was the only big house in Germany left standing. It was a very, very important speech, which was a turnaround of American foreign politics in Europe at the time. It was impossible that the four victorious powers agreed on a common future for Germany, which was divided into four zones of occupation. The United States of America then decided to politic on their own for a different one, and that is the three Western occupied zones, the British, the French and the American zones, were joined together and a future state would be created which was to be politically tied to the West. And it was announced that this state would also get the support and aid of the United States, and that was the Marshall Plan.

But it was also expressed in [school programs] and this guaranteed the survival of many children in our cities. Every German will remember the CARE packages which were sent from the United States to Germany. So there was a two-zone economic council of the British and the Americans in Stuttgart, which is today my seat of office…and for the first time there was political action taken in post-war Germany. The end was the foundation, the creation, of the Federal Republic of Germany. The first Chancellor was Konrad Adenauer and, as his first goal, he …realized that for the young Federal Republic of Germany, West Germany, that [it would] not try to remain neutral between East and West, but it [would] became West-oriented. That was the basic decision of Germany after the Second World War by its responsible politicians, to be oriented to the West, become an ally of the West.

But it was not only a geographic orientation to the democratic spirit of the West, to the ideal, to the American Revolution, to human rights as they are being practiced in this country. It was a commitment to the positive values of the French Revolution, it was a commitment to the Magna Carta Libertata of Great Britain, it was a commitment to the …European values, of Greek philosophy, of Roman law, of Jewish and Christian heritage, but also the values of the Enlightenment in our country and in Europe to everything that binds us together, what we value in a community.

This, I would say, was not understood in the German Parliament, and the Soviet Union, of course, fought it bitterly and there was an exchange of diplomatic notes in 1952 when West Germany was promised reunification at the price of neutrality to get West Germany out of the Western Alliance. Konrad Adenauer refused to do that. He said the West orientation, the West Alliance, is supreme to reunification, and added to the Alliance the human rights as we have them written into our constitutional law. That is more important than German reunification and … Germany became a founding member of the European Union. Germany … in 1955 was accepted into NATO. Germany made its own defense contribution with the Americans, who only saved Berlin in 1948 with the airlift. We are owing the longest period of peace in modern history, we owe it to the commitment of the United States of America in Europe and in Germany.

Stalin expelled millions of refugees into a West Germany destroyed by war. He thought that this would cause a Communist revolution in post-war Germany. That failed, and we owe it to the United States. Freedom, liberty, human rights, a law and order state, we owe to your country, and this is why I said we are not owing you a lot, we are owing you, the Americans, everything. We are on the side, I believe, of the United States and nobody expressed it more clearly than our Chancellor Helmut Kohl who, in his first government statement, said the alliance with the United States is, for us, part of our raison d’etre as a state. I don’t know how to translate that. It is part of the basic principle of the foundation on which our state is based. It is part of our identity.

What we wish to express by this is that it is not a new alliance for us. We are an integral part of Europe, not only historically speaking, but in our own understanding as a state. That’s the relationship that we enjoy, which has been brought about by your attitude, and I thank you for that. I thank you in the name of all American citizens, because politics are what the people want and so we are not only owing this to exceptional American politicians, we are owing this to the American citizens as well.

All this, of course, was crowned with the reunification of Germany. The German reunification we owe to a lot of different factors. The Solidarity movement in Poland… we owe it to Gorbachev’s politics, not only a visitor or observer but as someone who has carefully read the documents which led up to the German reunification, we first and foremost owe the German reunification to the United States of America and to your President George Bush. A relationship of confidence existed in a difficult historic period between the American government and the German government, between the American President and the German Chancellor. America motivated the others. The British Prime Minister traveled to the States over a weekend in order to talk the American President out of the reunification. The French President, a friend of ours, visited Kiev and visited East Berlin during the most difficult period in order to express what he saw as problems with a reunified Germany.

We got more agreement and approval from our eastern European neighbors, and we had not been allied with them for over a decade. The President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel, said, “we don’t need to be afraid of a free Germany, we have to be afraid of an undemocratic Germany,” and under the leadership of the American government and the American president, within months, and I’m sure that this was also because of the attitude of the people in East Germany, that reunification was brought about. What I think was the biggest success is that we succeeded in negotiations with the Soviet Union, and later on with the Russian government, to keep this reunified Germany in NATO -- that is, within the Western Alliance … of values. I consider this to be so important because I think it would have been too high a price to pay not only in 1952, but in 1989 as well, too high a price to pay if we had given up this Western Alliance for German reunification.

Today, all of Germany is part of the Western Alliance. That’s where we belong. Into that situation we experienced this terrible event of September 11^th in New York and Washington. For us, it left us speechless, it struck us dumb, it made us angry because we couldn’t prevent it and we could not overcome the consequences in a short time. It made us deeply sad and most of all it brought us into a solidarity with the American people and with the American President and the American government as no other event before. We suffered with you. It was not only the German government through the Chancellor that we have an unlimited solidarity with the American people and its government, but it was a testimonial reaction of thousands and thousands of German citizens.

The first day after it, I visited the American Supreme Commander in his headquarters in Germany, and I expressed my whole-hearted sympathy and that of all the citizens of Baden-Wuerttemberg, and at the Castle in Stuttgart downtown we put out books of condolences. Thousands arrived, and it wasn’t just signed by officials. There were memorial services throughout the state. I visited the American ambassador in Berlin and expressed to him our whole-hearted sympathy during these very dark hours. We were at the side of the American people. We feel a high respect for those who rescued the firefighters and all the other rescue workers in New York. We are standing by your side. We have and we will and not only out of gratitude for what you have done for us, but because it is also in our own interest because Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Berlin are no les vulnerable than Washington or New York, as these cities have shown to be vulnerable. We are really even more vulnerable. So it became clear to us that, in a flash, we are confronted with a totally new kind of danger.

Many, after 1989 and the big turnaround in Europe, foresaw the end of all conflict and sometimes they have even thought of the end of historic events, but we now realize that now we have suddenly been confronted with totally new risks and danger, and that it may threaten the foundation of our common order, of our liberties, of our freedom, of our human rights. This is what we uphold more than all, a humane order. Freedom is only made possible by security. The prerequisite of liberty is the security of citizens. The clause of defense [Article 5] has been declared for the first time in the history of NATO. Nobody in the United States and nobody in Germany could have imagined that if the defense clause was ever declared, that this would have been declared because of an attack on the United States, because that was unimaginable and this decision was the right decision.

Many had thought at the time that the United States of America would hit back overnight without really having analyzed the terrible terrorist attack. These United States have shown themselves to be very courageous and very considerate and thoughtful at the same time. Over weeks they’ve created an alliance. The United States is the master of creating alliances anyway, though this was a joint action then, which was taking place in Afghanistan under American leadership even though the Americans accepted the full burden of the operation.

We all know that in order to control this new threat of terrorism that we need to have stamina and patience. The United States President has mentioned, in his State of the Union message he said it as well, that we need to have patience, but we know that you are a country at war and there are consequences. I just want to briefly refer to a few of these consequences.

I already mentioned the first one, and that is you have to pay a price for freedom and liberty, and this is why the defense effort, especially in Europe, will have to be increased. We do not have an equal partnership in the defense of properties of the United States and Germany and the United States and Europe. Between the United States and the other partners in NATO, I know there is a big imbalance in this, and this will continue for a longer period of time, but the imbalance in its war effort exists. That cannot remain. Otherwise this war, this quantity, will turn into a negative quality as well, meaning that we in Europe have to work harder to make a greater contribution. The young Germans for the first time in Germany, the third generation, has grown up that doesn’t have to go to war, and they were especially shocked at the events of September 11^th. So they will have to learn as well that freedom comes at a price.

NATO’s logo is that watchfulness is the price for freedom, and another thing is that we have to promote European unification more, that was the end of unification, and that means that we must jointly work more strongly the question of foreign policy, and not like fifteen national states side by side, even though seeking a mutual agreement. No, we must invest more power into such supra-national institutions like NATO and the European Union, and that means that we have to relieve the Americans of their burden when it concerns … [issues] inside of Europe. We have to relieve the Americans of their burden in Macedonia, in Kosovo, in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was a fact that the conflict there could only be solved after the United States had decided to interfere, and the Europeans on their own could not solve this conflict. But that is something where we have to relieve the United States so that that can turn to tasks that we, due to the quality of our armament and defense, cannot help with.

The current leader in Asia, I am just now thinking of the Minister-President of Malaysia, leaders in Asia in recent years have always said they did not want to have Western values imposed on them. They had their own culture and their own development. The Chinese, for example, refuse ideas of human rights as we have them, they refuse them and they say, these are not our values. I think that as far as basic human rights are concerned these are rights which every human being has a right to and it is not granted him by the state. John F. Kennedy once said, “We do not have human rights as a favor from a state, we have them from the hand of God.” So these are universal values. We must require, and the Americans are right in asking for that, that these basic and human rights, even given the variety of cultures that exist, that they are undeniable rights for all human beings and are the basis for an international order and of national order, for national order in every country.

The different history, mentality, culture, language, religion of the various nations and peoples, of course, must be respected and our Western culture and civilization, of which you are convinced and of which I am convinced, we cannot impose it onto others against their will. So I differentiate between basic and human rights, which we consider to be universal rights of human beings, and various cultures that all exist at equal value and equal weight. Nobody has the right to impose another culture against the will of the people.

Remember, another consequence to be learned from September 11^th, we are at war, said the American President. You want to win a war, and I’m sure that the United States will win this war, a war that they didn’t want like they didn’t want any of the other wars into which they have been pulled in. But I think if you want to have peace in the long run and a peaceful cohabitation of peoples, you must not only want to win your war, but you have to win peace as well. But how can you win peace in the long run if you know that there is human frailty and all the evil in the hearts of people and in other places?’

A major philosopher of the medieval age, Thomas Aquinas, and many after him said that this is the work of justice. So peace is the consequence of just conditions. Here I must say that there are a lot of unjust conditions in the world, and it is our task to give help so that they can help themselves. I think help to overcome the immense misery and poverty existing in many developing countries of the world, that is a new name for peace. In order not to be misunderstood, my words are not ones that were also raised after September 11^th, saying that the cause and the reason for terror is the appalling condition existing in many developing countries, the situation of the poor people there. Terror, to my mind, cannot be justified by anything, and so there must not be a sort of explanation for September 11^th in that direction. But it is true, I think, that -- and these are figures from the statistics of the World Bank -- that more than 1 billion people live in the world earning less than $1 a day for everything they need to live: for food, for education, for health -- less than $1 a day. If we still have 1 billion people living like that, then we will have no just conditions and no peace.

I think that the Western industrialized nations decided 30 years ago, or committed themselves 30 years ago, to pay 0.7 percent of the Gross National Product for developing aid and now, 30 years afterwards, not even half of that amount is being spent on developing aid. So I’m talking about help so that they can help themselves. You cannot transfer help, but you must give them a starting help. I think about an American example. John F. Kennedy once wrote to Peace Corps. [Director] Mr. Shriver at that … time after the Sputnik shock, he told his people -- many have seen it, Americans can go to a Russian museum to listen to that speech by John Kennedy -- he said, “In ten years we will be on the moon,” and in a joint effort without example the American people made it.

If we were to fight in the same way, the Western nations with common values, and once the military victory has been brought about over terrorism, that we would also make a joint effort like going to the moon at the time, if we would also decide to do more for the development of other countries and the resources that we have, the excellent resources, that they are made available also to other people -- I think if that happened we could not only win the war against terrorism, but we could even win peace in many countries of the world.

There will never be eternal peace, not while we are living and while humans are living on this earth, but I wish for the American people and I wish our people and the citizens of this nation a good future and peace.