The SED government now sought desperately to save itself, and the GDR state, with an eleventh-hour makeover. A new cabinet under Hans Modrow, who took over as prime minister on November 13 (Krenz stayed on as general secretary), promised free elections in the near future. The “bloc parties,” previously little more than fig leaves for one-party rule, were given the green light to function independently. The People’s Parliament, using secret ballots for the first time, expelled Honecker and Mielke from its ranks. As he took his exit, the old Stasi boss had the bad grace to assure the East German people that he still “loved” them. Members of the new regime embarked on Round Table negotiations with dissident groups like New Forum and Democracy Now regarding the impending new order. They and the reformers talked enthusiastically about navigating a “third way” between communism and capitalism. These discussions, however, failed to generate much excitement among ordinary East Germans. Having seen the glitter of the capitalist West, many associated socialism as such with economic backwardness. “The third way,” people joked, “is the way to the Third World.”
The prospect of One German Volk was not uniformly welcomed by the powers that had defeated Germany in 1945 and presided over its division. After all, as the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper had noted in June 1989, the “delicate balance of Europe” was based precisely on that division. British prime minister Margaret Thatcher reportedly observed the events in Germany with great “unease.” She worried that a united Germany would be “much too large and powerful” for its own good, and, more importantly, for the good of its neighbors. French president François Mitterrand was equally discomforted by the thought of a united Germany. His stance reflected France’s traditional distrust of its eastern neighbor, a wariness best summed up in François Mauriac’s famous aperçu that the French loved Germany so much that they were glad there were two of them. Following the Wall’s collapse, Mitterrand did all he could to thwart or delay the drive for German unification. He warned Foreign Minister Genscher that German unity might plunge Europe into a chaotic maelstrom reminiscent of 1913/14. In December 1989 he visited Moscow to enlist Gorbachev’s help in keeping the Germans in their place. Gorbachev needed no French prodding: as soon as the Berlin Wall was breached he urged Chancellor Kohl not to do anything that might undercut the GDR government’s efforts to stay alive through reforms and economic renewal. This process would take “much time,” he cautioned.
Among the major foreign leaders whom Kohl consulted at that moment, only American president George Bush proved unambiguously positive about the developments in Germany. Like most Americans, he did not harbor that deep distrust of Germany that was second nature to many Western Europeans, Russians, and Poles. As he later wrote in his memoir, A World Transformed: “I was, of course, mindful of Germany’s history of aggression, but I knew the country had done a lot to live down its Nazi past, to compensate for the horrors it had inflicted on Jews and others across Europe. . . . I did not believe that all present-day Germans should have to pay forever for what some of their countrymen had done in the past.” Bush saw immediately that German unification might bring a strategic advantage to the West, namely, a shift of NATO’s operational area significantly closer to the Soviet Union. When Kohl called him right after the Wall came down, Bush wished him “much luck and God’s blessing.”
Kohl knew that he would need all the luck he could get in the coming months. He was worried that unification might be hard to control given the “hereditary burden” with which the SED had saddled East Germany. He suggested privately that Germany would be best off if unification did not come until the end of the century. At the same time, however, he believed that certain intermediary steps might be initiated toward a kind of quasi unification. Taking up a proposal from Modrow for a “contractual community” between the two Germanys, Kohl put before the Bundestag on November 28 a Ten-Point Program calling for “confederative structures between the two states in Germany with a view to creating a federation.” This step, his program stipulated, should be taken only after a democratic government had been freely elected in the GDR. Point Ten of the program looked toward German unification, but the timing was left vague: “With this comprehensive policy we are working for a state of peace in Europe in which the German nation can recover its unity in free self-determination. Reunification—that is regaining national unity—remains the political goal of the Federal government.”
Its cautious language notwithstanding, Kohl’s Ten-Point Program caused a tremendous sensation. Most of Germany’s partners thought that the chancellor was moving much too fast. Thatcher and Mitterrand were apoplectic. German unification, announced the Iron Lady, was “not on the agenda.” Gorbachev, who had just accused America’s ambassador to Bonn of “acting like a German gauleiter” for having openly embraced German unification, now told a group of Russian students: “There are two German states. History saw to that. And this fact is generally accepted by the world community. . . . That is the reality, and we must work on the basis of that reality. . . . I do not think that the question of the reunification of these states is currently a pressing political question.” President Bush, once again, did not echo the naysayers. Determined to bolster Kohl’s position, he professed himself quite satisfied with the latter’s initiative. “I feel comfortable,” he told the chancellor. “I think we’re on track.”
For a growing number of East Germans, meanwhile, unification could not come too soon. They knew their state was bankrupt, and with the ongoing exodus conditions for those who remained were only getting worse. Now even basic foods were in short supply. For the easterners who considered rapid unity as the only way out, Chancellor Kohl, whom they began to call “our Helmut,” emerged as a possible savior, a messiah wrapped in the West German flag. Their task was to convince Kohl that the time for unity was now, not ten years hence.
Pro-unification East Germans got their chance to deliver this message when Kohl paid a state visit to Prime Minister Modrow in Dresden on December 19, 1989. Huge crowds waving West German flags greeted the chancellor’s plane at the airport. The people made a point of ignoring Modrow and cheering Kohl. For the chancellor, this reception was a revelation. As he later wrote, he now knew that “the GDR was at an end” and that unity had to come soon. He decided to deliver a major address on the German question in a place that could accommodate the thousands of East Germans who were descending on the Saxon capital. He chose the square in front of the bombed-out Frauenkirche, an appropriate selection given East German Protestantism’s prominent role in the opposition. Thinking about his speech, he decided to avoid “nationalistic” bombast, for he worried that with any encouragement his audience might break out in a rousing chorus of “Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles.” Once he stood before the sea of chanting people, however, he could not suppress an element of nationalist pathos. After extending greetings “from all your fellow citizens in the Federal Republic,” he declared: “My goal remains, when the historical hour allows it, the unity of our nation. I know that we can reach this goal when we work toward it together.” Later, with the thunderous chants still ringing in his ears, Kohl said to an aide: “I think that we’ll achieve unity. It’s coming. The people want it, it can’t be stopped. This [GDR] regime is definitely at an end.”
On December 22 Kohl struck another blow for German unity by presiding, along with Modrow and the mayors of West and East Berlin, over the official opening of the Brandenburg Gate to pedestrian traffic. Kohl had never before set foot in East Berlin. He had once tried to enter via Friedrichstrasse, only to be turned away as “unwanted.” Now, as he stood at the historic gate, he declared that he would do all he could to promote German unity. He and Modrow each released a white dove while church bells rang, an orchestra with players from both east and west played Beethoven’s Ninth, and East Germans waved GDR flags with holes cut in the middle where the state emblem had been. West Berlin mayor Walter Momper, now reconciled to rapid unification, declared: “Berlin is still divided, but the people are no longer separated and the city has regained its old symbol.” A week later, on New Year’s Eve, that august symbol was transformed into a giant jungle gym as hundreds of Berlin youths clamored up its sides and partied on the top, doing serious damage to the quadriga.