13 - The United States and German Unification

Summary

The consensus of historians, government leaders, and the public on American diplomacy toward German unification is that it was both masterful and crucial to the right outcome. Detlef Junker's assessment, that “Seven years after the unification of Germany, it is a certain historical judgment that the Germans would not have won their unity without the determined and consequential support of the United States,” is characteristic of this consensus. All the contemporary accounts of German unification, by insiders, academics, or journalists, tend to portray the story as “one of unblemished American achievement.” The American role was central in three ways. First, American support for Chancellor Helmut Kohl's swift approach to unification shielded him against domestic opponents and from those allies, especially Britain and France, who would have or actually tried to block it. Second, the Americans shaped the Two-Plus-Four framework, which secured the authority of the Four Powers in the external aspects of unification while reassuring the Federal Republic that neither they nor other powers would interfere in its internal aspects. Third, American diplomacy was central to creating the compromise that limited the destabilizing potential for European security by keeping a united Germany within the NATO framework.