Overlapping rivalries: the two Germanys, Israel and the Cold War

Abstract

The case of early German-Israeli relations offers unique insight into the dynamics of the German Cold War. As this article shows, the two Germanys were ideologically and geopolitically antithetical, but vis-a-vis the question of relations with Israel East and West German representatives faced a situation that was uniquely related to the German past and to the German Cold War competition.

Keywords:

• Federal Republic of Germany
• German Democratic Republic
• Israel
• Middle East
• Suez Crisis
• Arab League

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Aberystwyth University and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for supporting the research that made this article possible. The International Politics Research Seminar at Aberystwyth University (UK), the Doktorandenschule led by Professor Norbert Frei at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena (Germany), the European Summer School on Cold War History, the conference ‘International Affairs and the Politics of Memory: German-Jewish-Israeli Affairs after the Holocaust’ at the University of Haifa and the History of International Relations Research Seminar at Utrecht University proved to be congenial settings in which to discuss my thoughts on the subject. I am indebted to all those who read and commented on earlier drafts of this article, including the anonymous referees, Campbell Craig, R. Gerald Hughes, Laura Considine, Turlach O Broin and Jacob S. Eder.

Notes

¹ Dan Diner’s monograph on the topic offers a touching description of the event. Dan Diner, Rituelle Distanz: Israels deutsche Frage (Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2015), esp. 11–34.

² Der Spiegel, ‘Israel-Abkommen: ohne Händedruck’, 13/1952, 5.

³ The use of the term ‘reparations’ is contested in the literature. Although aware of the problematic implications of this term, in this article I employ ‘reparations’ and ‘restitutions’ interchangeably because doing so conveys the language of contemporaries. Wiedergutmachung was the German term employed at the time (and has been since), and Shilumim the Hebrew equivalent. These two terms, however, are not synonymous, as explained by Axel Frohn, “Introduction: The Origins of Shilumim” in Holocaust and Shilumim. The Policy of Wiedergutmachung in the Early 1950s, ed. Axel Frohn (German Historical Institute Washington, Occasional Paper No. 2, 1991), 2.

⁴ ’British Legation (Beirut) to Foreign Office (London)’, 4 September 1952, Reprinted in: ‘The Arab League: British Documentary Sources’, Anita L.P. Burdett, 7 (Slough: Cambridge Archive Editions, 1995).

⁵ Fawaz A. Gerges, The Superpowers and the Middle East: Regional and International Politics, 1955–1967 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994); Avi Shlaim, and Yezid Sayigh, eds., The Cold War and the Middle East (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); Galia Golan, “The Cold War and Soviet Attitudes towards the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” in The Cold War in the Middle East: Regional Conflict and the Superpowers, 1967–1973, ed. Nigel J. Ashton (London: Routledge, 2007), 60.

⁶ Guy Laron, “Cutting the Gordian Knot: The Post-WWII Egyptian Quest for Arms and the 1955 Czechoslovak Arms Deal” (CWIHP Working Paper No. 55, 2007.

⁷ Which would later be known as the ‘Eisenhower Doctrine’. The full text is available at: http://millercenter.org/president/eisenhower/speeches/speech-3360 [Last accessed 31 December 2016].

⁸ Tony Smith, “New Bottles for New Wine: A Pericentric Framework for the Study of the Cold War,” Diplomatic History 24, no. 4 (2000): 567–591. Hope Harrison, in particular, has demonstrated how fruitful this approach can be when employed for understanding German political history: Hope Harrison, Driving the Soviets Up the Wall: Soviet-East German Relations, 1953–1961 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003).

⁹ See for example Massimiliano Trentin, ‘‘Tough negotiations’. The two Germanys in Syria and Iraq, 1963–1974” Cold War History 8, no. 3 (2008): 353–380 as well as the relevant contributions in the volume edited by same author in collaboration with Matteo Gerlini, The Middle East and the Cold War: Between Security and Development (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012); Miriam M. Müller, A Spectre is Haunting Arabia: How the Germans Brought their Communism to Yemen (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2015).

¹⁰ Bullettin der Presse- und Informationsamtes der Bundesregierung (Bonn) ‘Jede Anerkennung der ‘DDR“ ein unfreundlicher Akt’, 13 December 1955, 1. See William Glenn Gray, Germany’s Cold War: The Global Campaign to Isolate East Germany, 1949–1969 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).

¹¹ On West German-Israeli relations see, for example, Yeshayahu Jelinek, Deutschland und Israel: Ein neurotisches Verhältnis (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1995); Niels Hansen, Aus dem Schatten der Katastrophe. Die deutsch-israelischen Beziehungen in der Ära Konrad Adenauer und David Ben Gurion. Ein dokumentierter Bericht (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2002); Dan Diner, Rituelle Distanz: Israels deutsche Frage (Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2015); Michael Wolffsohn, Ewige Schuld? 40 Jahre deutsch-jüdisch-israelische Beziehungen (Munich: Piper, 1991) later translated into English and published as Eternal Guilt? Forty Years of German-Israeli Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); Lily Gardner Feldman, The Special Relationship between West Germany and Israel (Boston, MA: Allen & Unwin, 1984). On East German-Israeli relations see Timm, A. Hammer, Zirkel, Davidstern. Das gestörte Verhältnis der DDR zu Zionismus und Staat Israel (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1997). A partial exception to this is: Jeffrey Herf. Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967–1989 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

¹² I am grateful to one anonymous referee for alerting me to this dynamics, for it is crucial if one intends to “re-assess and re-emphasise the place of Europe in the Cold War” and “in particular, to demarcate Germany’s place and role in it’, Federico Romero, “Cold War Historiography at the Crossroads,” Cold War History 14, no. 4 (2014): 697.

¹³ Akten zur Auswärtigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (hereafter AAPD) 1949/1950, Doc. 30: Bundesminister Erhard an Bundeskanzler Adenauer, 75, fn. 3.

¹⁴ On this document and its origins, dating back to the 1940s, see Nana Sagi, German Reparations. A History of the Negotiations (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 1980).

¹⁵ AAPD 1951, Doc. 204: Ministerialdirektor Blankenhorn an Generalkonsul I. Klasse Krekeler, Washington, 14 December 1951.

¹⁶ Reprinted in New Encyclopaedia of Zionism and Israel (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994). Given the scope of this article I will focus on the negotiations between the West German and Israeli delegations.

¹⁷ FRUS 1952–1954, Vol. IX, Part 1, Doc. 408: The Minister in Syria (Cannon) to the Department of State, 3 March 1952.

¹⁸ FRUS 1952–1954, Vol. IX, Part 1, Doc. 417: The Secretary of State to the Legation in Syria, 12 March 1952.

¹⁹ AAPD 1952, Doc. 84: Botschafter Du Mont, Den Haag, an das Auswärtiges Amt, 24 March 1952.

²⁰ AAPD 1952, Doc. 136: Aufzeichnung des Botschaftsrats a.D. Kordt, 15 May 1952.

²¹ In early 1953 an AA representative noted that the Arab states would never have managed to campaign so effectively against the West German-Israeli talks had not a “whole series of powers” not come together to galvanise it: AAPD 1953, Doc. 74: Aufzeichnung des Vortragenden Legationsrat Allardt, 20 February 1953.

²² See Conze et al., Das Amt, 581.

²³ The two quotes in the text are, respectively, from: Political Archives of the Foreign Ministry of the Federal Republic of Germany [PA AA Personalakte Werner Otto von Hentig 49856, Hentig, 27 September 1952, and PA AA Personalakte Werner Otto von Hentig 49856, Abschrift. Frowein, 6 April 1955.

²⁴ PA AA Personalakte Werner Otto von Hentig 49856, Abschrift. Frowein, 6 April 1955.

²⁵ Ibid., Notiz. Bauer, 24 March 1955.

²⁶ Conze et al., Das Amt, 580. See also Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World. On this topic, contrast W.G. Schwanitz, and M.G. Rubin, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), with Motadel, D. Islam and Nazi Germany’s War (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014).

²⁷ PA AA: Mf AA A 9287 Privatunternehmer Friedrich Geyer zum Bericht der Firma Emil Heinrich & Co. aus Kairo über die Marktlage im Vorderen Orient. Lessing, 10 December 1952. Quoted in Schwanitz, Deutsche im Nahost 1946–1965, 171, fn. 43. See also Abediseid, Die deutsch-arabischen Beziehungen, 97–98.

²⁸ PA AA: MfAA A 9286 Vizeaußenminister Borek zu Agypten-DDR. Bringmann, 18 December 1952.

²⁹ BAK B126 51545, Memorandum der Delegation der Arabischen Staaten Ägypten, Irak, Jemen, Jordanien, Libanon, Saudi-Arabien und Syrien an die Regierung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 31 October 1952. See also Memorandum of Conversation with Foreign Minister Zafer Rifai of Syria; United Nations Ambassador Farid Zeineddine of Syria; Minister Rafik Asha of Syria; Henry Byroade; and Edwin A. Plitt, 14 November 1952, Truman Library, Dean Acheson Papers, Secretary of State Files, available at: https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/achesonmemos/view.php?documentVersion=original&documentYear=1952&documentid=71-3_24 [Last accessed 15 February 2017].

³⁰ AAPD 1952, Doc. 222: Gespräch des Staatssekretär Hallstein mit einer arabischen Delegation, 28 October 1952.

³¹ TNA: PRO: FO 371/97860 Stevenson (British Embassy, Cairo) to Kirckpatrick, 1 November 1952.

³² The Federal Republic’s Embassy was not even two weeks old when this happened, as it had opened on 16 October 1952. The economic exchange between the Federal Republic and the Arab countries in 1951 amounted to over DM 420 million. Berggötz, Nahostpolitik in der Ära Adenauer, 290 and 133, respectively. See also the older, though still valuable, Mohammad Abediseid, Die deutsch-arabischen Beziehungen – Problemen und Krisen (Stuttgart: Seewald, 1976), and T.W. Kramer, Deutsch-ägyptische Beziehungen in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Tübingen: Erdmann, 1974).

³³ AAPD 1953, Vol. 1, Doc. 2: Botschafter Pawelke, Kairo, an das Auswärtige Amt, 4 January 1953.

³⁴ AAPD 1953, Vol. 1, Doc. 41: Staatssekretär Hallstein an Staatssekretär Westrick, Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft, 29 January 1953. Adenauer, too, very much hoped it would succeed: Doc. 307: Adenauer an den Vorsitzenden der VDU/CSU-Fraktion des Deutschen Bundestages, Dr. Heinrich von Brentano, 23 December 1952, in: Briefe 1951–1953 edited by Hans Peter Mensig (Berlin: Siedler, 1987). The negotiations started two days later, on 3 February and lasted until 15 February.

³⁵ AAPD 1953, Vol. 1, Doc. 50: Vortragender Legationsrat Allardt, z.Zt. Kairo, an Ministerialdirektor Blankenhorn, 5 February 1953. A full list of the participants is in the annex to Allardt’s letter to Blankenhorn, in the following folder: PA AA B150/183.

³⁶ PA AA B10/1686 Pawelke and Westrick to Hallstein, 11 February 1953. See also AAPD 1953, Vol. 1, Doc. 56: Staatssekretär Hallstein an Staatssekretär Westrick, Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft, z.Z. Kairo, und Botschafter Pawelke, Kairo, 10 February 1953.

³⁷ AAPD 1952, Doc. 253: Botschafter Pawelke an Auswärtiges Amt, 30 December 1952.

³⁸ Der Spiegel, ‘Kanonen nach Kairo’, 18 February 1953, 15.

³⁹ AAPD 1953, Vol. 1, Doc. 56: Staatssekretär Hallstein an Staatssekretär Westrick, Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft, z.Z. Kairo, und Botschafter Pawelke, Kairo, 10 February 1953, and AAPD 1953, Vol. 1, Doc. 57: Staatssekretär Westrick, Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft, z.Z. Kairo, an Staatssekretär Hallstein, 10 February 1953. See also Shinnar, Bericht eines Beauftragten, 61. For an account of initial Egyptian-West German economic exchanges see Berggötz, S.O. Nahostpolitik in der Ära Adenauer, 338ff.

⁴⁰ William Glenn Gray, Germany’s Cold War, 20.

⁴¹ Der Spiegel, ‘Kanonen nach Kairo’, 18 February 1953, p.15.

⁴² Only 104 of the 214 members of the Bundestag (MdBs) of the coalition parties voted in favour of the ratification, as noted by I. Deutschkron, “Die politischen Beziehungen zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und Israel – eine Bilanz,” in Deutschland und Israel: Solidarität in der Bewährung, ed. Ralph Giordano (Gerlingen: Bleicher Verlag, 1992), 57.

⁴³ Sir T Rapp, British Middle East Office, Political Division, to Sir J. Bowker, Foreign Office, 30 March 1953 in Israel: Boundary Disputes with Arab Neighbours 1946–1964, Vol. 6, edited by Patricia Toye and Angela Seay (Slough: Cambridge Archive Editions, 1995).

⁴⁴ M. Kerr, The Arab Cold War, 1958–1964: A Study of Ideology in Politics (London: Oxford University Press, 1965).

⁴⁵ R. Herrnstadt, “‘Wiedergutmachung’ - für wen?,” Neues Deutschland, 25 November 1952, 1.

⁴⁶ Ibid.

⁴⁷ AAPD 1952, Doc. 216: Botschafter Pawelke, Kairo, an das Auswärtiges Amt, 14 October 1952.

⁴⁸ A. Timm, “The Image of Jews,” in Jews, Muslims and Mass Media, ed. Parfitt and Egorova ,125.

⁴⁹ See, for example, K. Kaplan, Report on the Murder of the General Secretary (London: Tauris, 1990); M. Kotik, The Prague Trial: The First Anti-Zionist Show Trial in the Communist Bloc (New York: Herzl Press/Cornwell Books, 1987).

⁵⁰ See J. Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), esp. 40–68 and 113–122; Herf, J. “Dokumentation: Antisemitismus in der SED: Geheime Dokumente zum Fall Paul Merker aus SED- und MFS-Archiven,” Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 42, no. 4 (1994), 635–667; J. Herf, “East German Communists and the Jewish Question: The Case of Paul Merker,” Journal of Contemporary History 29, no. 4 (1994), 627–662.

⁵¹ See, e.g. A. Weigelt, and Hermann Simon, eds., Zwischen Bleiben und Gehen: Juden in Ostdeutschland 1945 bis 1956, zehn Biographien (Berlin: Text, 2008), esp. 111ff.

⁵² On the overlap of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in history see Jeffrey. Herf, ed., Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism in Historical Perspective: Convergence and Divergence (London: Routledge, 2007), and especially Angelika Timm’s contribution on the GDR, 186–205.

⁵³ M. Fulbrook, German National Identity after the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 35.

⁵⁴ Herf, Divided Memory; Fulbrook, German National Identity; Jon Berndt Olsen, Tailoring Truth: Politicising the past and negotiating memory in East Germany, 1945–1989 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015).

⁵⁵ Reprinted in: Schwanitz, “Judenargwohn?,” 656–659.

⁵⁶ Ibid.

⁵⁷ MfAA A 9286/12, Erklärung des ministers für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten zum Abzug der englischen und französischen Truppen aus Ägypten, n.d. MfAA A 9351/16, The Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, n.d. See also Neues Deutschland (Berlin) “DDR verurteilt Aggression in Nahost,” 7 November 1956, 1.

⁵⁸ PA AA: MfAA A 9286/3, Handelsvertretung DDR Ägypten. Vorläufige Einschätzung zur Ableitung einer außenpolitischen Linie Ägyptens, 17 December 1956, Stude.

⁵⁹ Relevant documents can be found in PA AA: MfAA A 9318, Reise des stellv. Ministerpräsidenten Paul Scholz 1957 in die VAR.

⁶⁰ “Erklärung des Leiters der Handelsdelegation der Regierung der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, Gerhard Weiß, vor der Presse in Bagdad am 27. Oktober 1958,” Dokumente zur Außenpolitik der Regierung der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, Vol. VI (Berlin: Rütten & Loening, 1959), 317.

⁶¹ BAL-SAPMO, DY 30 IV 2 / 20 / 373 22, Simons, Vermerk. July 1960.

⁶² Ibid. See also Conze et al. Das Amt und die Vergangenheit, 626.

⁶³ Original text in English. See PA AA B12 89, Telegramm. Schirmer (Kairo) an AA, 5 April 1956.

⁶⁴ Ibid.

⁶⁵ Ibid.

⁶⁶ PA AA B2 94/150 Botschafter Becker: Politisches Referat über Ägypten, n.d.

⁶⁷ PA AA B2 94/208 Generalkonsul Voigt: Politisches Generalreferat über den Nahen Osten sowie Das Israel-Problem, n.d.

⁶⁸ Franz Quiring, Hans Podeyn, Herbert Nöhring, Kurt-Fritz von Graevenitz, Hansjoachim von der Esch and Walther Becker, respectively.

⁶⁹ Which they had entered in 1920, 1929, 1922, 1921 and 1925, respectively. See, e.g. Auswärtiges Amt, Biographisches Handbuch des deutschen Auswärtigen Dienstes 1871–1945 Vols. 1–4 (Munich: Padenborn, 2000, 2005, 2008, 2012).

⁷⁰ See J. Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009); B.M. Rubin and W.G. Schwanitz, Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014) and D. Motadel, Islam and Nazi Germany’s War (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014); Indeed, Bonn’s experienced Arabisten (orientalists) had become so also because they had remained on duty in the Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Ministry) until well after the Third Reich was established (and most of them stayed until the bitter end). See Conze et al. Das Amt.

⁷¹ R. Stauber, “Realpolitik and the Burden of the Past: Israeli Diplomacy and the ‘Other Germany’,” Israel Studies 8, no. 3 (2003): 100–122; F. Shinnar, Bericht eines Beauftragten: die deutsch-israelische Beziehungen 1951–1966 (Tübingen: Wunderlich, 1967).

⁷² “Aufzeichnung über den Besuch des israelischen F.E. Gesandten, Shinnar im Auswartigen Amt vom 27.1.1956,” n.d. in Yeshayahu Jelinek, Zwischen Moral und Realpolitik: deutsch-israelische Beziehungen 1945–1965: eine Dokumentsammlung (Gerlingen: Bleicher, 1997), 359. The Israeli quest for diplomatic relations would continue into the 1960s, although the topic was not even mentioned when Ben Gurion and Adenauer met for the first time in New York in 1960s. See, e.g. Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel 1960, Comp. Vol. 14, Doc. 204: G. Rafael (Brussels) to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, 26 January 1960.

⁷³ Only a few members of the West German cabinet knew about them. The Foreign Ministry was not informed until 1964 – see AAPD, 1964 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1995), as well as Niels. Hansen. “Geheimvorhaben” ‘Frank/Kol’. Zur deutsch-israelischen Rüstungszusasmmenarbeit 1957 bis 1965,” Historisch-Politische Mitteilungen, Archiv für Christlich-Demokratische Politik 6 (1999): 229–264.

⁷⁴ Although in fact Moshe Dayan did not take part in the meeting.

⁷⁵ PA AA B12 1045, Fernschreiben (verschüsselt) aus Washington an AA. 27 December 1957, Kessel.

⁷⁶ Neues Deutschland, Bonn der Lüge überführt, 29 December 1957, 7.

⁷⁷ At the wheel of the car was Asher Ben Natan, future first ambassador to (West) Germany. Author’s Interview with Asher Ben Natan (Ramat HaSharon, Israel: 20 January 2014); Asher Ben Natan, The Audacity to Live (Jerusalem: Mazo Publishers, 2007): 120–121.

⁷⁸ Shlomo Shpiro, “Shadowy Interests. West German-Israeli Intelligence and Military Cooperation, 1957–1982,” in Israel’s Clandestine Diplomacies, ed. Clive Jones and Tore T. Petersen (London: Hirst, 2013): 171–189.

⁷⁹ See Shlomo Shpiro, “Friends in the dark: The First Decade of German-Israeli Intelligence Cooperation,” in Die deutsch-israelischen Sicherheitsbeziehungen. Vergangenheit, Gegenwart, Zukunft, ed. Milena Uhlmann (Berlin; Berliner Wissenschaftsverlag, 2008): 76–89.

⁸⁰ PA AA B12 1045, Telegramm 31 December 1957, Welck.

⁸¹ PAA B12 1045, Diplogerma Damaksus, 4 January 1958, Knoke.

⁸² MfAA/A 13777/5, Konsularabteilung Prag. Aufzeichnung über eine am 15.1.1960 stattgefundene Unterredung mit dem israelitischen [sic] Konsul in Prag, Herrn Raveh. 18 January 1960, Seydewitz.

⁸³ MfAA/A 13777/3, Botschaft DDR Prag. Unterredung des Genossen Dr. Seydewitz mit dem israelitischen Konsul in Prag. 21 January 1960, Neugebauer.

⁸⁴ MfAA/A 13777/1, 3.AEA, Unterredung Dr. Seydewitz mit israelischen Vertreter. 2 February 1960, Simons.

⁸⁵ My italics. MfAA/A 13777/1, 3.AEA, Unterredung Dr. Seydewitz mit israelischen Vertreter. 2 February 1960, Simons.

⁸⁶ William Glenn Gray, Germany’s Cold War.

⁸⁷ E.g.Fawaz A Gerges, The Superpowers and the Middle East; Avi. Shlaim and Yezid. Sayigh, eds., The Cold War and the Middle East; Ashton, ed., The Cold War in the Middle East; Massimiliano. Trentin, ed., The Middle East and the Cold War, among others.

⁸⁸ SAPMO-BArch DY 30/11348 Botschafterkonferenz des SED in Berlin am 1. bis 2. Februar 1956, 1 February 1956.