Soviet leaders all along had tried to split Germany from the Atlantic alliance. In the later 1970s Brezhnev visited Bonn. There were German neutralists, and it even became chic in West Germany to talk as if all differences with the USSR could somehow be smoothed over. But the central problem remained, that the State which called itself the ‘German Democratic Republic’ was an embarrassment. It remained a place where the inhabitants had to be contained by a wall, and a very ugly one at that, complete with minefields and yapping hounds on dog-runs, in case they all decided to move out, as they had done before 1961, when the Wall was built. Erich Honecker was saying that the Wall would last for fifty years, and there was another very odd aspect to it, that many Germans agreed. Hans-Magnus Enzensberger wrote an essay saying the Wall would be an historical curiosity, and there were many West Germans with egg on their faces when it came down.
The East German state had already been reduced to a formality, kept going by the West. The Lutheran Church managed the sale of prisoners — 2,300 in 1983 and 1984, and emigration was anyway going ahead: a worker cost DM50,000 and a graduate DM200,000. From 1965 to 1988 30,000 were thus bought out, for DM2bn. Thirty thousand left legally every year while about 40,000 managed to escape (1961-88) and ten-day family visits went west (1.3 million in 1987). In 1981 East Germany owed $13bn and that took 43 per cent of export earnings; the Soviets did give loans but also cut back on cheap oil (hence the stink of lignite in Erfurt). In July 1983 it was Franz Josef Strauss (ambitious to be foreign minister) who negotiated with East Berlin — West German banks lending an interest-free billion Marks and another billion in 1984. The East Germans had reduced their trade with the West generally but it rose with West Germany. There were no customs barriers, and Strauss extracted two secret notes from Honecker as to the relaxation of border controls so as to prevent the strip-searching of children. Richard von Weizsäcker, as mayor of West Berlin, used to cross the border to discuss the S-Bahn and matters of pollution as no predecessor had done. Schmidt visited Honecker in 1981 and Honecker wanted to return but there were problems with Moscow and the Czechs and Poles, and besides Moscow had said that there would be no more such rapprochement if the Euro-missiles went ahead. Honecker therefore had to say in 1984 that he would not go, although in 1987 he indeed did. There he found a West Germany that gave him a welcome.
The SPD to Schmidt’s great disapproval now flirted with him, and in 1985 Oskar Lafontaine, minister-president of the Saarland, talked of accepting a separate nationality; in 1986 he even proposed a nuclear-free zone, though there had been the absurd ceremony for twenty-five years of the Wall, including a preposterous DDR stamp of a young girl giving flowers to soldiers shooting refugees. There was even a ridiculous ‘Values Commission’ of the SPD and the Academy of Sciences in East Berlin, and when the end came the Lutheran Churches were forbidden to ring their bells. It remains extraordinary that Bonn did not see the end coming: it was only in the spring of 1989 that Chancellor Kohl told the French he could see great problems coming for the East German state. In 1988 9,000 East Germans had got out through a country of the bloc where holidays were allowed — mainly Poland. In 1989, in the summer, tens of thousands moved out via Hungary and Austria. This was voting with feet, and Moscow did nothing to prevent it. The heart of the whole business was Germany. Russia and Germany had had the key relationship, and by 1988 the Gorbachev team were in creative mode. How could they get rid of Honecker and his colleagues? The answer lay in Hungary. The prime minister, Miklós Németh, had been promised DM500m if the border were opened (April, in Bonn). In June 1989 Gorbachev came to Bonn on an official visit. He told Kohl that whole areas of the USSR might need immediate help. Kohl consulted no-one and said the first despatches would happen at once. The East German parliament had approved of Tiananmen Square and on 13 June Gorbachev said that it would not happen in Red Square, and the communiqué of 13 June in Bonn spoke of ‘self-determination’. Much was made of an East German resistance that was now mostly stage-managed. The Protestants were restive and 120 young protestants who sat in before a church, protesting against local elections with their 98.5 per cent yes vote, were arrested, but then the church went to court over the electoral fraud and the prisoners were released (May). Even the SPD ‘Values Commission’ protested in March against long prison sentences for the Justice and Peace Work Circle. In July at the Kirchentag, or Church congress, there were clashes and from then on at the Nikolai-Kirche growing numbers appeared every Monday protesting at not being allowed to go west: curious that Saxony, the heart of the wretched state, was also its end. Honecker was quite remote and cushioned by Stasi reports, but on 10 September the Hungarians opened the border with Austria.
Hungary’s foreign minister, Gyula Horn, himself a 1956 represser, opened the border for the thousands milling around Sopron and had sent his deputy, László Kovács, to ask the Russians, who made no objection; anyway the wire and mines had gone. Twelve thousand transports of East Germans went off in three days and some with little Trabants, while 7,000 in the Warsaw and Prague embassies left by trains through East Germany; another 10,000 invaded the Lobkowitz gardens in Prague. Three months of high drama followed. Communists dropped out of the Polish government and Wałęsa took over. On 7 October the Hungarian Party changed its name to ‘socialist’ and on 23 October, the anniversary of the Revolution, the Communists’ own parliament proclaimed the restoration of the republic plus old flags. There was an equivalent in Berlin, as various efforts were made to vary the SED formula; there was even a last appearance of the Menshevik USPD (Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany) element, as Neues Forum was allowed at last in October, with a well-meaning earnest painter, Bärbel Bohley, to make critical comments about consumer goods and the refugees. The Leipzig church became too small, as the 5,000 marchers of 25 September became 10,000 a week later: even the factory militia started to be used with the police. Honecker did not mention it at all, but on 6-7 October Gorbachev visited for the fortieth anniversary — ritual kissing at the airport, Politburo servility and a soggy little joke from Honecker. The Russians were openly in ridicule mode, and Gerasimov remarked, ‘If you are late it’s a life sentence.’ Next day at a Politburo meeting Honecker went on about the success of the East German microchip and later denounced the ‘large-scale manoeuvre’ against him; indeed, Valentin Falin, the reigning German expert, seems to have encouraged Hans Modrow, the Dresden secretary, and Markus Wolf, the espionage chief, to get rid of this tiresome little know-all. They no doubt encouraged the demonstrators for Gorbachev on 9 October in Leipzig, 120,000 of them on the 16th. Apparently ammunition was distributed, but half a dozen people supervened, including Kurt Masur of the Gewandhaus. On the 18th Honecker resigned, with others, for ‘health reasons’: Soviet generals were privately saying that if the Wall went they would not intervene, and Shevardnadze had said as much to James Baker on 25 September. The extraordinary aspect of it all was the slowness among West Germans, and some of them were downright silly, right up to the last moment. The Left had been trapped: even Bahr in November 1988 was saying that talk of unification was ‘environmental pollution’, though he later tried to take credit for it. Some of the CDU put ‘Europe’ before unification and Strauss himself was making money out of the Moscow trade. Peter Glotz, an otherwise intelligent man who saw through the Yugoslav problem, rejected use of the word ‘unification’ as late as 21 October 1989. Norbert Gansel saved the Party’s honour when he recommended the expression Wandel durch Abstand as the hundreds of thousands of East Germans fled. Joschka Fischer for the Greens said, ‘We should strike the reunification commandment from the constitution’, in 1989 of all years, and Otto Schily had said the same in 1984. Both men went on to high government posts. Certainly no-one seems to have given any thought to how West and East Germany could be properly unified, and the subsequent story was unhappy: very high unemployment and empty cities.