The shadows of Rapallo are long, and they are still getting longer

[Skybird]

I post this separate from the Ukraine or German poltics tread, since it touches both. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung has a nice historic analsis that explains much better than I can (and tried) why the Germans tick as strange as they do. The message is clear and valid until today - and especially today: do never trust Germany. And I mean it. Especially regading the announced German "change of eras". Fierce resistance to turning away from Russia and implementing the 100 billion promise and 2% target for the Bundeswehr has long since formed in the SPD and the political left after Bubble-Olaf made his speech 5 weeks ago - and sicn ethen fell silent and kept his feet on the brake. All blockades to doing more in this conflict are not erected in the ministries of economics (Green) or foreign relations (Green) or finance (Liberals) - but the chancellor's office (SPD) that has aquired all responsibilities and authority for this, and ministry of defence (SPD), and the federal presidnet himself (SPD). "Rot zu Rot gesellt sich gern...", and it sticks together what belongs together...

At the same time, it should not be concealed that France, in the shape of LePen, could also set out to transfigure Russia anew and seek proximity to it, all the while LePen has already openly threatened to lead France out of NATO and to terminate cooperation with Germany in the armaments and economic spheres.



NZZ writes:


Germany's questionable special relations with Russia at the expense of third parties are historically deeply rooted in the Rapallo Treaty of 1922. To this day, the Western community of states cannot rely on German political allegiance. Large sections of the West German political elite have supported Germany's appeasement policy toward Putin.

One hundred years ago, on April 16, 1922, then-German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau and Soviet Commissar Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin signed the legendary Treaty of Rapallo. The two losers of World War I and pariahs of the international community of states at the time agreed to resume diplomatic relations, mutually waive war reparations payments and seek closer economic cooperation between the two states.

The West German steel barons on the Rhine and Ruhr, the Stinnes and Krupps, rubbed their hands with glee at the new market potential for their steel and munitions exports to the USSR. In addition, the treaty, without being explicitly formulated, henceforth formed the basis for lively cooperation between the Reichswehr and the Red Army: now the Reichswehr could practice military exercises on Soviet territory without being bothered by the military restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles and maintain a close exchange of experience with the Red Army.

The secret military cooperation sprang from the political conservative thinking, widespread in Weimar, to re-establish a common German-Russian border at the expense of Poland, which had been re-established by the Versailles Treaty. All subsequent Weimar governments of every party political stripe secretly supported it.

The treaty caused political horror in the Western community of states. Germany, the insecure cantonist, all too easily seduced into German-(Soviet)-Russian special relations at the expense of third parties and whose unconditional political affiliation with the Western community can therefore never be completely certain: This specter arose at that time and continues to revive today.

That is why the Treaty of Rapallo is so legendary in the history of international relations in Europe. It set in motion, after the initial shock, a policy of the Western powers in the 1920s. Peace and war-renouncing treaties in Europe, along with American economic aid, were intended to help the Weimar Republic out of its political and economic turmoil and integrate it into a Western treaty architecture.
Weimar's reverence for the USSR

Beyond all politics, the spirit of Rapallo is accompanied by an almost hymn-like glorification of the USSR: ". . . what do I owe to Russia, - it has made me what I am, all my inner origin is there!" raved Rilke. For Thomas Mann, German and Russian culture are related and superior to Romanesque civilization. Oswald Spengler, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Ernst Bloch and many others harbored similar expectations of salvation vis-à-vis Stalin's USSR. All these raptures were guided at the time by the idea that Russia had a future that the West no longer had: Democracy, modern progress, civilization, and politics appear as expressions of Western decadence; in contrast, Russia is seen as superior to the West in the strength of its people, in unspoiled nature and self-sufficiency, in the special form of community of ruler and people.

A philosophy of Eurasian spatial connectedness is just as inherent in the large-area thinking of the Weimar constitutional law scholar Carl Schmitt as the Eurasian movement of Soviet philosophers in European exile is convinced of Russian superiority in the large Eurasian area. Eighty years later, Alexander Dugin uses this as a basis for a philosophy of history that is intended to legitimize Putin's annexation of Ukraine and his expansionist desires.

Even the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, in its opposition to the West, can still be read as the last outpouring of the spirit of Rapallo before Hitler invaded the USSR in 1941, to Stalin's complete surprise.
Bonn's Orientation to the West and the German Economy

In the young Bonn Republic, CDU Chancellor Konrad Adenauer leaves no doubt that the young Federal Republic would be firmly anchored in the European community organizations and NATO, and in 1952 he rejects Stalin's note - the Soviet offer of reunification with a German commitment to neutrality. In the Cold War, firmly anchored West German integration was more important to Adenauer than vague dreams of German reunification. The SPD, which was much more nationalist at the time, was quite different, with its chairman Kurt Schumacher vehemently promoting Stalin's offer and German reunification.

While Adenauer was laboriously negotiating the release of the last German prisoners of war and the establishment of diplomatic relations during his first visit to Moscow in 1955, German business had already founded the Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations in 1952, primarily to resume trade with the Soviet Union. Here, the crème de la crème of German business grew together to form the most powerful lobby group for West German business with Russia and had a major influence on German policy toward Russia from 1955 onward. Under the motto "change through trade", the profitable Russian business of the German economy found its higher political consecration until the end - beyond all wars and domestic crimes of the respective Kremlin dictatorship and beyond all system differences. Even days before Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the Eastern Committee did not want to skip its annual tea talk with Putin.

The Rapallo Treaty of 1922 also laid the foundation for this purely economic pragma of German-Russian relations with its rapid economic cooperation with the young USSR for the benefit of the German steel industry.

After the first signals of a policy of détente by U.S. President Kennedy toward the USSR in 1963, a new Ostpolitik emerged under the then West Berlin mayor Willy Brandt under the motto "change through rapprochement" in an attempt to break down the ossified fronts of the Cold War in favor of a "modus vivendi" between the two German states with the consent of the USSR.

As chancellor (1969-1974), Brandt implemented this policy of détente with the treaties with Eastern Europe, which culminated internationally in 1975 in the Helsinki Final Act. This was based on the de facto recognition of a separate Soviet hemisphere in Europe, which was not touched despite the Prague Spring and the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan. The ground was laid by the NATO doctrine of deterrence against the USSR, which was reaffirmed by the NATO Double Decision and thus contributed significantly to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The German perception of the Russian turmoil in the political and economic transformation process from the USSR to the Russian Federation, from Gorbachev to Yeltsin to Putin in the decade of the 1990s, was lost in the frenzy of reunification and long-lasting Gorbomania.

Then came Vladimir Putin, "the German in the Kremlin." For German Russophiles, Kant's "eternal peace" seemed imminent. A Russian president who gave his introductory speech in the Bundestag in 2001 in German! The deputies of all parties were at Putin's feet, although even then he hinted at how newly he saw Russia's role in Europe and in the world.

Putin quickly began to tear down the first democratic beginnings in Russia: The press was largely nationalized, the parties were increasingly brought into line, and the most important business enterprises were run by the silovniki of the Putin-connected Russian power apparatus. But for SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Putin was the "flawless democrat" with whom he agreed on the Nord Stream pipeline project to bypass Ukraine in 2005, just eight days before the end of his term.

German federal governments ignored what was happening in Russia from the beginning of Putin's presidency in March 2000. The unspeakable spirit of Rapallo, which the German sorcerer's apprentice had temporarily successfully banished back into the bottle, had sprung up again.

Merkel's refusal to allow Ukraine to join NATO, the war with Georgia provoked by Putin in August 2008 and the annexation of Crimea in 2014 - everything was accepted with leniency and harmless sanctions. Allegedly, in order not to offer Putin any reasons for further escalation. Yet he doesn't need them at all, he escalates to war crimes - without any reasons at all.

In its appeasement policy towards Putin, the SPD has always referred to a transfiguration of Brandt's policy of détente. In Soviet times, the German-Russian gas deal could indeed contribute to political stabilization, because since Brezhnev the USSR wanted to preserve the territorial status quo in Europe.

For Putin, on the other hand, European gas exports are a tool to bring the political map in Europe back into line with Soviet spheres of influence through European import dependencies. In Putin's policy, a growing threat to Germany and Europe became increasingly evident. Nevertheless, Merkel has stubbornly stuck to Germany's appeasement policy.

Germany's policy toward Russia is now in ruins. It symbolizes the failure of large parts of the German political elite, which supported this policy headlessly and ignorantly. But some voters have also accepted this policy uncritically. Ukraine is rightly rejecting a visit to Kiev by the German President Steinmeier these days, since he, along with Merkel and Schröder, is the main operator of this unspeakable policy as foreign minister for many years.

Meanwhile, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) is still reluctant to visit Kiev, to supply Ukraine with heavy weapons, in other words, to follow up on the grandly proclaimed "turnaround of the times" with deeds.

The shadows of Rapallo are long, and they are still growing longer.
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The author Jörg Himmelreich teaches at the École Supérieure de Commerce de Paris (ESCP), Paris/Berlin.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)