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1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe (Princeton Studies in International History and Politics)

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1989 was a year of miracles, with the fall of the Berlin wall and democratic revolutions across Eastern Europe. But 1990 was also miraculous for the two Germanies, with a leap to full economic and political unification in under a year.

Prof Sarotte provide an excellent account of the German unification process. However, this means that (despite the book's title) her account is more focused on 1990 than 1989 and it is primarily concerned with the German unification issues, and only indirectly with the broader European picture.

Sarotte emphasizes that there were many possible models for how Germany might evolve after the fall of the wall, from a reformed but still independent East Germany, to a loose German confederation, to an attempt to reassert the historic Four Power supervisory role, to a unified neutral Germany, to full unification within NATO. Events moved with indecent haste, often overwhelming proposed models even as they were being fleshed out. The final outcome was very far from being inevitable.

The choices made for Germany in 1990 set the stage for much later development, including the accession of other Eastern European countries to the EU and NATO, but also led to a strong sense of disenchantment in Russia, when NATO unexpectedly grew to Russia's very borders.

Sarotte emphasizes Kohl's central role in rapidly forcing through unification in the face of hesitations and concerns from his colleagues. In retrospect, it seems plausible that there was a fairly short historic window where massive change was possible, when citizens in both Germanies were open to radical change and when Gorbachev still held sufficient sway to ensure reluctant Soviet acquiescence. A sensible, carefully considered unification process might well have taken many years and thus might well have failed, or led to a very different outcome. Kohl seems to have been one the few players to have a true sense of urgency, often speaking of the need "to get the harvest in before the storm comes".

Sarotte leads us through accounts of the many international negotiations, summits, proposals and counter-proposals, focusing particularly on the roles of Kohl and Baker. There is some risk of getting lost in the details here, but fortunately Sarotte also steps back periodically and reminds us of the larger picture and of how the various choices are playing out.

In general this is a very lucid and readable account of a key period of European history. Sarotte does a good job of conveying both the uncertainties and the intensity of the period.

I am very familiar with the reunification of Germany and know or have at least met some of the players. This book weaves an exciting narrative of the process and the constantly changing realities on the ground. It also fills in the backgrounds of the participants, describing experiences that make their behavior understandable or even more remarkable. I am thinking of Thatcher and Mitterand in particular. For many Americans it will come as a shock that Ronald Reagan did not cause the fall of Communism singlehandedly. The Germans on the ground in Dresden and Leipzig had something to do with it, along with the economic collapse - unknown to even high ranking East German, Polish and Soviet politicians - of the Communist Bloc. Of particular interest (to me) was the explanation of how Gorbachev painted himself into a corner and got less out of the deal than he expected. This is a lesson to anyone who engages in negotiations.

This book is an incredible study of history. The author combines terrific first-hand research, solid analysis, and explores other possible outcomes for German reunification. She does this with a wit and a fascination for the topic which is addicting as a reader. I highly recommend this work to not only to anyone interested in German history, but to fans of history in general.

This work by Mary Elise Sarotte received honorable mention for the the 2011 Laura Shannon Prize for European Studies, an award that is administered by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame. The jury statement reads, "Mary Elise Sarotte in 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe recounts the accidents, political calculations, and social changes that led to the fall of the Berlin wall and the reunification of Germany. Linking individual stories to high politics, Sarotte's masterly narrative and skillful studies of key decision makers argues that the structure of today's post-cold war world was not inevitable. Beautifully written and well-researched; a landmark study of European politics." The final jury was composed of Nancy Bermeo, Nuffield Professor of Comparative Politics, Nuffield College, University of Oxford; Laura Engelstein, Henry S. McNeil Professor of History, Yale University; Felipe Fernández-Armesto, William P. Reynolds Professor of History, University of Notre Dame; James Sheehan, Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus, Stanford University; Catherine H. Zuckert, Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame. For more information about the book and the Shannon Prize, visit [...].

Mary Elise Sarotte's look at German reunification and NATO expansion is a good high-politics history of the "Injun trading" that went into both; outlining how a "gentlmens' agreement" between leaders conned Gorbachev into thinking he had a deal, while the legally slick team of Baker-Kohl - knowing that no deal is honorable in the West until there's a signature on the bottom line - got what they wanted.

This work covers the same ground as Konrad Jarausch's "The Rush to German Unity" - which is the better of the two, in my opinion, as Jarausch's book focuses more on German society than the personal machinations of leaders. Ms. Sarotte still writes like a professional policy wonk out to enlighten and advise the Big Men Behind the Desks, perhaps also explaining her fixation on which leader met with whom and said what when.

Amazingly, she also seems oblivious to the symbolism of November Ninth in German history: the anniversaty of the 1918 German revolution that led to the Armistice, the Sparticist Uprising and the birth of German Communism, and finally the Weimar republic. Only Hitler's cynical use of the date for the "Krystallnacht" is noted, another liability of policy analysts when approaching history. Opening the Berlin Wall on this date was to symbolize the unity of the East German leaders and people, seeking a new beginning in keeping with the progressive side of German history. That it backfired had more to do, of course, with Kohl's interjection in events, which Ms. Sarotte describes fully.

I do think she goes a bit far in giving Kohl full credit. Without Gorbachev's acquiescence there could have been no deal. But Kohl was on a roll at this time: having bulldozed the return to respectability of German revisionism in the FRG, it was time to set his sites abroad. History dropped a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity in his lap that he played masterfully. The result was a second Anschluss, based on deceit - "You will retain your safety net, you will share in the West's prosperity, there will be no military expansion." In truth, this probably would have happened regardless. The GDR, like Austria after WW I, was a rump state with little credibility following loss of empire. But its unification could certainly have been accomplished with more dignity. Ms. Sarotte is on target when she states that the course of least resistance always seems, at the time, the "politically correct" one.

She is also correct in stating that the Tienanmen Square massacre cooked the old regime's goose, of any hope of saving it by force. The worldwide revulsion against Beijing's bloody repression disarmed the European party bosses, including Gorbachev, whose entire policy and legacy would be lost if he either drew the sword or allowed his satellites to do so. Once this discovery spread to the capital streets of eastern Europe the domino effect was inevitable.

But Ms. Sarotte is mistaken when she writes that on March 18, 1990, "East Germans would have their first opportunity since the dawn of the Nazi era to cast their ballots freely." The eastern elections of 1946 were relatively free, with the SED achieving its plurality only by piggybacking on the SPD through merger. Even so, in East Berlin the SED came in second. Overall, though, the book is a good, if leader-centered, look at the promises made at an historic turning point - but not committed in writing, guaranteeing that the world would stay much the same after all.

In matters that pertain to the recent history of Europe and attempt to chronicle the paths towards the demise of the Soviet Union and its client states, there have been many works that have analyzed the content of the Cold War and its aftermath. In the case of the book 1989: The Struggle to Create a Post-Cold War Europe, author Mary Elise Sarotte has taken a rather newer tact in this analysis by focusing with strong clarity on the period that shortly succeeded the downfall of the Berlin Wall, and has further sought to develop a concise understanding of the reasons for why the unification of Germany occurred as it did. The result of Sarotte's investigation of the subject is an informative and well-researched view of the events that influenced the follow-up political environment in Europe, and adds greatly to our understanding of the end of the Cold War.

The strength of the author's principal premise rests on the idea of the means by which the varying governments of the time approached the matter of the reunification of Germany. On one hand Sarotte names various methods that were favored by actors to the issue, as with Gorbachev and his attempt to revert to a restoration model that would bring Germany back to its situation before the advent of the Cold War, but she quickly focuses on the means and person that would most shape the upcoming period: Helmut Kohl. The German Chancellor at the time is revealed as being the person who most understood and affected the environment that would inform the events that led to West and East German becoming one nation. Further, his ability to understand that East Germany needed to be absorbed quickly and under the structures of the already-existing West German state, what Sarotte refers to as a "prefab model", was of the utmost importance, because at that time there was no other actor in either West or East Germany who did or could have moved toward this conclusion. Kohl was simply the right person at the right time, and his prescient outlook and actions altered the course of history.

The Chancellor, however, needed the help of other leaders in order to make his vision a reality, and his skills at corralling the support he required make up a large part of Sarotte's narrative. In order to gain the acquiescence of French leader Francois Mitterand for his project of reunification, Kohl quickly promised to give the French almost whatever they want in regards to European Union integration in the future, if he can get them to accept the structure of a unified Germany under West German rules. With the United States, Kohl is able to win over a cautious President H. W. Bush to his ideas rather quickly, and the subsequent existence of American support proves crucial for the enterprise, though Bush also is quick to point out that reunification will be paid for by the West Germans--not the United States. Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, is never supportive of Kohl's efforts at rapid integration, but because of his solidification of support with the Americans, cannot affect the outcome. With that, the entire West was influenced to ensure the German leader's path towards reunification was viable.

This left the most important of people to agree with Kohl's venture as being Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet General Secretary. In this respect Kohl had to overcome the understandable doubts of a nation that had suffered severely during two wars in the last century at the hands of a united Germany, and was not inclined to agree with a new unified state as a result. Fortunately for Kohl, because the Soviet Union by the time of the Berlin Wall's collapse was in its death throes, the matter of gaining their support came down to buying them off. The result would mean that by September 1990, the Soviets would acquiesce to a united Germany for a sum of fifteen billion Deutsch Marks in cash and credits, an amount that would cause much strife in the German economy at a later time.

In all respects the outcome of a united Germany at the end of the Cold War was far from a foregone conclusion; indeed, the reality was that several other nations were in fact the ultimate determiners of whether or not Germany would be allowed to exist as a single state again. In this context the author does an admirable job at giving credit for the end result to the German leader at the time, who saw and grasped the impediments to a whole Germany, and moved quickly to ensure they would be overcome. Speed and timing were everything, and Helmut Kohl made the present European model possible. Whatever the aftereffects that a unified Germany would impose on our present environment in relation to Russia and its future, this book does well in informing how Germany came to exist following the trauma of two World Wars and the struggle that followed it.