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ABSTRACT
After 1967, West Germany started to develop its own ‘Arab policy’. Its initial focus was not the Arab peninsula, but North Africa, particularly Algeria and Libya. The main reasons were what Bonn perceived to be strategic necessity in the face of a Soviet advance there and convenience, as the North African states seemed more open to West German overtures in the late 1960s. But Bonn’s strategy failed. By 1973 it re-calibrated its policy towards the Arab peninsula. Overall, this West German ‘Mediterranean moment’ illustrates how this ‘Arab policy’ was motivated by the dynamics of the Cold War in Central Europe.
Acknowledgments
I want to thank Brendan Simms and Darren O’Byrne for their comments on this paper. Ayşe Zarakol and Glen Rangwala read and gave feedback on parts of the argument at an early stage. Two anonymous peer-reviewers provided valuable advice on how to further strengthen the argument brought forward in this paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 For British post-war policy towards the MENA see Wm. Roger Louis, “Britain in the Middle East after 1945,” in Diplomacy in the Middle East: The International Relations of Regional and Outside Powers, ed. Carl Brown (London: IB Tauris, 2001), 21–58. For France, see Effie Pedaliu, “Fault Lines in the Post-War Mediterranean and the ‘Birth of Southern Europe’, 1945–75,” in Détente in Cold War Europe: Politics and Diplomacy in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, ed. Elena Calandi, Daniele Caviglia and Antonio Varsori (London: IB Tauris, 2016). For the USA, see David Lesch, The Middle East and the United States: History, Politics and Ideologies (London: Routledge, 2018). For the Soviet Union see Alex Vasiliev, Russia’s Middle East Policy: From Lenin to Putin (London: Routledge, 2018); or Galia Golan, Soviet Politics in the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
2 On German relations with the Middle East during the First World War, see Sean McMeekin, The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power (London: Penguin, 2010). For the same topic in the context of the Second World War, see David Motadel, Islam and Nazi Germany’s War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); or Ralf Georg Reuth, Entscheidung im Mittelmeer: Die südliche Peripherie Europas in der deutschen Strategie des Zweiten Weltkriegs, 1940–1942 (Koblenz: Bernard&Graefe, 1985).
3 On early West German-Israeli relations, see most recently Carole Fink, West Germany and Israel: Foreign Relations, Domestic Politics, and the Cold War, 1965–1974 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019); or George Lavy, Germany and Israel: Moral Debt and National Interest (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013). On East Germany and Israel see Lorena De Vita, “Overlapping Rivalries: the Two Germanys, Israel and the Cold War,” Cold War History 17, no. 4 (2017): 351–66.
4 This is worked out well in a recent publication by von Bülow in a rare piece of historical research on Germany and North Africa after 1945, focusing on the FRG’s role as FLN sanctuary during the Algerian war for independence in the 1950s: Mathilde von Bülow, West Germany, Cold War Europe and the Algerian War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
5 Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).
6 Carole Fink and Bernd Schaefer, Ostpolitik, 1969–1974: European and Global Responses (Washington, DC: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
7 Friedemann Buettner, “Germany’s Middle East Policy: The Dilemmas of a ‘Policy of Even-Handedness’ (Politik der Ausgewogenheit),” in Germany and the Middle East: Past, Present and Future, ed. Haim Goren (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 2003), 115–59.
8 A large part of the documents used for this paper – and most of the thus far unpublished ones – come from the Political Archive of the German Federal Foreign Office (Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts – PA/AA) . Key documents from those archives are also regularly published and available in the editions on German foreign policy making (Akten der Auswärtigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland – AAPD). Another source is the minutes of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs in the German parliament.
9 As examples for this, see Peter Hünseler, Die außenpolitischen Beziehungen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland zu den arabischen Staaten von 1949–1990 (Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Hochschulschriften, 1990); Karl Kaiser and Udo Steinbach, Deutsch-arabische Beziehungen: Bestimmungsfaktoren und Probleme einer Neuorientierung (Munich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 1982). Hünseler, in Die außenpolitischen Beziehungen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, states that some of his claims might have to be reconsidered once relevant archival material becomes accessible (Ibid., 11). There are two exceptions, but they focus on Egypt and the topic of the Arab-Israeli conflict respectively. See Dalia Abu-Samra, “Deutschlands Außenpolitik gegenüber Ägypten. Abbruch und Wiederaufnahme der Beziehungen” (PhD Thesis, Berlin: Freie Universität, 2002); and Daniel Gerlach, Die doppelte Front: Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Nahostkonflikt, 1967–1973 (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2006).
10 See Rolf Steininger, Deutschland und der Nahe Osten: von Kaiser Willhelms Orientreise bis zur Gegenwart (Reinbek: Lau Verlag, 2015); Gerlach, Doppelte Front; or Buettner, Dilemmas of a ‘Policy of Even-Handedness.’
11 Notes by Gehlhoff, 11 February 1970, Document 48, AAPD. Here, Foreign Minister Walter Scheel explicitly talks about an “Arab policy” (arabische Politik).
12 On economics as a tool for foreign policy, see Ullrich Damm, Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland und die Entwicklungsländer (Geneva: Graphischer Betrieb Hans Biehl, 1965). For a more recent take, see Hans Kundnani, “Germany as a Geo-Economic Power,” The Washington Quarterly 34, no. 4 (2011): 31–45.
13 See, for example, the characterisation of West German Middle Eastern policy by Joffe, who sees moralpolitik pushing Bonn to Israel and realpolitik pulling it towards Arab markets and oil, while the Cold War is merely a backdrop before which this engagement plays out: Josef Joffe, “Reflections on German Policy in the Middle East,” in Germany and the Middle East: Patterns and Prospects, ed. Shahram Chubin (London: Pinter, 1992), 195–209.
14 Examples are Francis Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Motadel, Islam and Nazi Germany’s War; McMeekin, Berlin-Baghdad Express; or von Bülow, West Germany, Cold War Europe and the Algerian War. Also, a large amount of work understandably deals with Germany’s relations with Israel after 1945, stressing questions of guilt and reconciliation (see n. 3). That does, however, leave aside other important topics, such as the impact of Cold War dynamics on West German foreign policy in the MENA region.
15 Von Bülow, West Germany, Cold War Europe and the Algerian War.
16 Gerlach, Doppelte Front; and Buettner, Dilemmas of a ‘Policy of Even-Handedness’.
17 Tom Segev, Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 2008).
18 see Hünseler, Deutsch-arabische Beziehungen.
19 On the competition between the FRG and GDR in the Middle East, see Massimiliano Trentin, “‘Tough Negotiations’: The Two Germany’s in Syria and Iraq, 1963–1974,” Cold War History 8, no. 3 (2008): 353–80; de Vita, Overlapping Rivalries. On the same topic in general, see William Glenn Gray, Germany’s Cold War: The Global Campaign to Isolate East-Germany, 1949–1969 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); and Werner Kilian, Die Hallstein-Doktrin: Der diplomatische Krieg zwischen der BRD und der DDR, 1955–1973 (Berlin: Dunckler&Humblot, 2001).
20 Abu-Samra, Deutschlands Außenpolitik gegenüber Ägypten, 179; see also comments by ministerial director Meyer-Lindenberg, cited in Yeshayahu Jelinek, Deutschland und Israel 1945–1965: Ein neurotisches Verhältnis (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 2004), 798.
21 Memorandum by Meyer-Lindenberg, 27 July 1967, Document 283, AAPD.
22 Nigel Ashton, The Cold War in the Middle East: Regional Conflict and the Superpowers 1967–1973 (London: Routledge, 1997), 1.
23 Ennio Di Nolfo, “The Cold War and the Transformation of the Mediterranean, 1960–1975,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Vol. 2, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 247; see also George Lenczowski, American Presidents and the Middle East (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), 113.
24 Grewe (NATO) to Auswärtiges Amt, 14 June 1967, Document 220, AAPD.
25 Frank Costigiola, “US Foreign Policy from Kennedy to Johnson,” in Cambridge History of the Cold War, Vol. 2, ed. Leffler and Westad, 119.
26 Memorandum by Meyer-Lindenberg, 23 June 1967, Document 232, AAPD.
27 See, for example, “Prestige ist nicht so wichtig,” Handelsblatt, 19 October 1966.
28 Grewe (Paris/NATO) to Auswärtiges Amt, 30 June 1967, Document 242, AAPD.
29 Confidential telegram to embassies in Ankara, Teheran, Islamabad, Kabul, and Mogadishu, 28 July 1967, B130 2575A, PA/AA; Memorandum by Söhnke, 8 August 1967, B130 2575A, PA/AA.
30 Di Nolfo, Cold War and Transformation of the Mediterranean, 247.
31 Memorandum by Gehlhoff, 20 July 1967, B130 2646A, PA/AA.
32 Speaking notes by IB 4 on the situation in the Middle East, 9 October 1967, B130 2569A, PA/AA.
33 Lahn (Cairo) to Auswärtiges Amt, 13 March 1968, Document 95, AAPD.
34 Grewe (Paris/NATO) to Auswärtiges Amt, 21 June 1967, Document 229, AAPD.
35 Memorandum by Ministry of Defence, 22 September 1967, B130 2578A, PA/AA.
36 Conversation of Kiesinger with US ambassador McGhee, 19 June 1967, Document 225, AAPD.
37 See n. 19 for international German-German relations and antagonism.
38 Memorandum by Meyer-Lindenberg, 23 June 1967, Document 232, AAPD.
39 On the Baathist coup and Arab politics, see Eberhard Kienle, Ba’th versus Ba’th: The Conflict between Syria and Iraq, 1968–1989 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1991).
40 von Bülow, West Germany, Cold War Europe and the Algerian War, 232–4.
41 Memorandum by Gehlhoff, 29 November 1967, Document 410, AAPD.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid.
44 See, for example, Bente (Beirut) to Auswärtiges Amt, 14 October 1967, Document 353, AAPD.
45 Memorandum by Bismarck-Ohnken, 9 June 1967, B52 337, PA/AA.
46 Telex from Tripoli embassy, 5 July 1967, B36 260, PA/AA.
47 Brandt to Kiesinger, 24 July 1967, Document 279, AAPD.
48 Memorandum by Caspari, 26 January 1968, B36 379, PA/AA.
49 See, for example, German-French consultations on North Africa, 26 January 1968, B36 379, PA/AA; or Franco-German political consultations (political directors), 2 December 1968, B36 379, PA/AA.
50 Memorandum by Frank, 21 October 1968, B36 379, PA/AA.
51 Memorandum by Behrends, 7 February 1968, B130 4313A, PA/AA. That Bonn was not satisfied with De Gaulle’s laissez-faire attitude on the issue is also illustrated by explicit West German support for the tougher Italian stance on the issue during NATO meetings: Ohncken (Brussels/NATO) to Auswärtiges Amt, 7 March 1968, B130 4313A, PA/AA.
52 Von Braun (Paris) to Auswärtiges Amt, 24 March 1970, B26 421, PA/AA; Conversation of Brandt with Pompidou, 26 January 1971, AAPD. In the early 1970s, foreign policy coordination with France was further expanded by adding a European dimension to it through the European Political Cooperation (EPC). One of its key areas of application was the Middle East. On the first years of the EPC, see Daniel Möckli, European Foreign Policy during the Cold War: Heath, Brandt, Pompidou and the Dream of Political Unity (London: IB Tauris, 2009).
53 Memorandum by Behrends, 9 May 1968, B130 4313A, PA/AA.
54 Ibid.; on the Mers El-Kebir rumours, see Strenziok (Algiers) to Auswärtiges Amt, 16 October 1968, B36 308, PA/AA.
55 Memorandum by departments I and III, Document 193, 9 June 1969, AAPD.
56 Memorandum by Behrends, 9 May 1968, B130 4313A, PA/AA.
57 For a recent take on Algeria’s role in the Non-Aligned movement, see Jeffrey James Byrne, Mecca of Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
58 Dirk Vandewalle, ed., Libya since 1969: Qhadafi’s Revolution Revisited (Palgrave Macmillan: New York, 2008).
59 Memorandum by Gehlhoff, 8 September 1969, Document 281, AAPD.
60 Notes by Frank, 14 October 1968, B41 54, PA/AA. While not explicitly stated in the document, the secretary of state carrying out the briefing was most likely Duckwitz, who oversaw, amongst others, policy towards the Mediterranean.
61 Ibid.
62 Notes by IA 4, 5 December 1968, B36 401, PA/AA.
63 Fink and Schaefer, Ostpolitik, 2.
64 See comments by then Minister of Defence Helmut Schmidt to the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, 25th session on the 12 November 1970, where he told CDU parliamentarians: ‘The treaty [of Moscow] does not have to fail because the CDU/CSU wants to stop it. […] But it could fail because, for example, SALT fails dramatically, it could fail because a new war starts in the middle east.’ Wolfgang Hölscher, ed., Auswärtiger Ausschuss des Deutschen Bundestags: Sitzungsprotokolle 1969–1972 (Düsseldorf: Leinen, 2007), 423.
65 Notes by Hansen, 20 February 1970, B26 471, PA/AA. See also a conversation of Parliamentary Secretary of State Moersch with Tunisian ambassador Mestiri, Notes by ZA 5, 15 March 1971, B36 438, PA/AA.
66 Hünseler Deutsch-Arabische Beziehungen, 188; Gerlach, Doppelte Front, 29.
67 Notes by Gehlhoff, 11 February 1970, Document 48, AAPD.
68 Notes by Frank, 6 April 1970, B130 4533A, PA/AA.
69 Conversation of Brandt with Bouteflik, 8 January 1970, Document 4, AAPD; Scheel’s meetings were in February (Conversation of Scheel with Bouteflika, 11 February 1970, Document 47, AAPD; Notes by Gehlhoff, 26 February 1970, Document 78, AAPD).
70 Memorandum by Gehlhoff and Hauthal, 18 June 1969, B130 10084A, PA/AA.
71 Conversation of Brandt with Bouteflika, 8 January 1970, Document 4, AAPD.
72 Conversation of Scheel with Bouteflika, 11 February 1970, Document 47, AAPD.
73 Secretary of state in the Auswärtiges Amt Duckwitz mused whether the FRG should still open an embassy in Algeria, even despite the GDR embassy there. Brandt and Scheel did not reject the idea outright, though ultimately they decided that their policy on German-German rapprochement would need to take priority. Still, the episode illustrates the weight Algeria was given in West German government circles at the time (Duckwitz to Brandt, 25 March 1970, Document 133, AAPD).
74 Der Spiegel, “Hallstein-Doktrin: Durchlöcherter Anspruch.”
75 Notes by Gehlhoff, 26 February 1970, Document 78, AAPD.
76 Ibid; Conversation between Scheel and Bouteflika in Brussels, 11 February 1970, Document 48, AAPD.
77 Notes by Gehlhoff, 31 March 1970, B36 281, PA/AA.
78 Notes by Gehlhoff, 17 April 1970, Document 164, AAPD.
79 German-British government negotiations in London, 3 March 1970, Document 86, AAPD.
80 Country briefing Algeria, 17 August 1970, ALGI 17936, PA/AA.
81 Turnwald (Tripoli) to Auswärtiges Amt, 7 September 1969, B130 2191A, PA/AA.
82 Report on Libya and the situation in the Mediterranean, 30 April 1970, B36 413, PA/AA.
83 Conversation of Moersch with Jalloud and el-Mabruk in Tripoli, 8 March 1971, Document 83, AAPD.
84 See Vandevalle, Libya since 1969.
85 The West German view that Tunisia was an important dealmaker within the Arab League comes out, amongst others, in a Foreign Office briefing from summer 1971: Memorandum by Redies, 10 August 1971, B36 440, PA/AA.
86 Frank to Scheel, 11 March 1970, B36 438, PA/AA.
87 Ibid.
88 Moltmann (Tunis) to Auswärtiges Amt, 21 December 1970, B36 438, PA/AA.
89 Interministerial meeting for preparation of Brandt’s visit to Algeria, 5 March 1974, B36 104702, PA/AA.
90 Memorandum on the situation in the Middle East after the withdrawal of Soviet military advisors from Egypt, 31 July 1972, B26 472, PA/AA. Ginor and Remez show that Soviet support for Egypt remained significant even after the retreat of the military advisors in 1972, with Soviet fighter pilots taking part personally in the 1973 October War of Egypt and Syria with Israel: Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967–1973: The USSR’s Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). But nothing in the German archives indicates that the Auswärtige Amt was aware of such covert support at the time.
91 To give just two examples: a report for Brandt in 1968 mentions, when discussing the Mediterranean, Syria, Egypt, Algeria, or Iraq (Frank to Secretary of State, B130 8826A, PA/AA). A few years later, in mid-June, a situation report on the Mediterranean deals solely with Greece, Portugal, Turkey, and Cyprus, Notes by IA 4, 15 November 1971, B26 471, 434ff, PA/AA.
92 Lahn to chancellery, 13 March 1974, B36 104702, PA/AA.
93 Interministerial meeting for preparation of Brandt’s visit to Algeria, 5 March 1974, B36 104702, PA/AA.
94 Memorandum by Ahlers, Document 159, 16 May 1969, AAPD.
95 Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski, Mit Leidenschaft und Außenmaß (Munich: Bertelsmann, 1989), 105.
96 See n. 74.
97 The Kommission für Geschichte des Parlamentarismus und der politischen Parteien has made West German parliamentary party group transcripts available online (https://fraktionsprotokolle.de).
98 An excellent study on ‘Third Worldism’ and its relation to the FRG from a bottom-up, student-centred perspective is provided by Quinn Slobodian, Foreign Front: Third World Politics in Sixties West Germany (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012). See also Joseph Ben Prestel, “Palästina-Solidarität. Bruchstelle einer globalen Linken,” Merkur 73, no. 839 (April 2019): 61–7.
99 See Jared Poley, Decolonisation in Germany: Weimar Narratives on Colonial Loss and Foreign Occupation (Bern: Peter Lang, 2005).
100 Notes by Gehlhoff, 11 February 1970, Document 48, AAPD.
101 The role of hierarchy in international relations has been a focus of IR recent scholarship. See, for example, Ayşe Zarakol, ed., Hierarchies in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); or, in a Cold War context, Tony Smith, “New Wine for New Bottles: A Pericentric Framework for the Study of the Cold War,” Diplomatic History 4, no. 1 (2000): 567–91.
102 For an excellent study on Germany’s Mediterranean policy in the more recent past, see Edmund Ratka, Deutschlands Mittelmeerpolitik (Baden-Baden: Nomos/CAP, 2014).
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Philipp Hirsch
Philipp Hirsch (BA University of Konstanz, MPhil University of Cambridge, MA University of Potsdam) is a PhD Candidate at the Department for Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, where his doctoral research focuses on West German foreign policy towards the Arab states during the Cold War. At Cambridge, he also teaches on international relations and contemporary politics of the Middle East.
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