A Tale of Two Countries

Happy Birthday, Germany! ....and how this affects the United States

The year 2009 is a big year for Germany – 60 years after the signing of the Constitution on May 23, 1949 and 20 years after the fall of the wall in Berlin on November 9, 1989. Much has been written in Germany about the 60 years of the Federal Republic of Germany, including some characteristic pictures (one good piece is here in Der Spiegel in English:), so I will leave the account of historical facts to others and concentrate on a personal assessment.

My mother fled the Russians with my brother and me in the waning days of WW II. I remember bits and pieces of Germany in rubble after the war, walking to a British soup kitchen with a lunch pail, stealing some coal from the Brits with my little handcart, only having enough to eat because my grandfather bred chickens and we had a big vegetable garden. There wasn't that much destruction in the little town in Northern Germany in which we grew up. We did know, however, about the difficulties Berlin was having with the blockade and the unbelievably courageous effort by the Americans in trying to save Berlin through the airlift („Luftbrücke“ or air bridge).

Two more things I remember vividly: The 2 Pfennig blue stamp we put on each letter and postcard to help Berlin (called „Notopfer“ or emergency help) and the care packages which were part of the Marshall Plan (I remember my mother was particularly thrilled with the coffee in the package). It was only much later that I understood the full scale of the destruction of the war, including the personal tragedies due to the loss of relatives and being driven from home towns or regions („Vertriebene“).

While we did not have an abundance to eat, we did not go to bed hungry, unlike the people of Berlin, who would not have survived at all if the Americans hadn't started the airlift with the help of the Brits. Amazing and appreciated to this day were the actions of Gen. Clay in pursuing the airlift against all the odds and the humanitarian efforts associated with it, such as the dropping of sweets for the kids of Berlin, an idea conceived by Col. Gail Halverson. These people will never be forgotten by the Germans, especially the people of Berlin. (A really excellent read on this subject is The Candy Bombers)

Germany was effectively governed by the Allied Forces USA; Great Britain, France and Russia. Very soon after the war, it became clear that Russia did not want to cooperate with its Western Allied partners and looked for confrontation in securing their sphere of influence, and they captured one Eastern European country after the other, with Czechoslovakia, in the Spring of 1948, being the one which woke everybody up. The blockade of Berlin by the Soviets in June 1948 was a logical consequence of their previous actions. It was a scary time.... for the Germans, and particularly the people of Berlin, not knowing whether they would be protected against the communists, and for the Americans, because the fear was that of a third world war.

One of the reasons for the action of the Soviets was that the Western Allies (the Americans, for that matter, represented by Gen. Clay) were in the process of setting up a new currency system in the Western part of the country and started to establish the rules for a German government. This is how, in August 1948, 33 selected people (lawyers, intellectuals and members of democratic parties) met on the island of Herrnchiemsee on the Chiemsee lake in Bavaria and ironed out a Constitution for Germany, the so called „Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch“ (BGB, or common law). They did that in only 13 days of seclusion, despite minimal provision of food and drink, in an effort which some people have compared, because of its significance, to the generation of the Constitution of the United States. In the months to come, it had indeed become, under discussion with the Allies and respecting their demands, a very even handed document. This document was then ratified by the Federal Convention, incorporated by the Allies, in the Spring of 1949, and signed by the head of this Convention, Konrad Adenauer, on May 23, 1949. Later in that same year, Theodor Heuss was elected by the Federal Convention to become the first President of the newly founded Federal Republic of Germany and, in Autumn, the people elected a conservative government and Konrad Adenauer was elected the first Chancellor of this new State by the „Bundestag“ (Parliament). By that time, the blockade of Berlin was broken down and West Germany started a new beginning, as did, under pressure by the Soviets, the East German country of „German Democratic Republic“, implementing a communist government.

This was, therefore, the starting point for two German States, established under very different sets of rules. And exactly here lies a very interesting point in study: What happened to these two States which started from the same German people, but implemented with opposite political systems? We saw the results almost 40 years later.

West Germany had undergone what we called the „Wirtschaftswunder“ (economic wonder), achieved by Ludwig Erhard through his „social economics“ – which is a capitalist system with social attributes (as opposed to a socialistic system). The social attributes came from the aftermath of WW II, where every individual helped everybody else, in the sense of „if we do it together, we will succeed“. It is,at least to me, unbelievable what really was achieved in the 50’s and the 60’s, building Germany up from unbelievable destruction to a powerful economy. A symbol of this will to succeed is represented by the „Trümmerfrauen“ (rubble ladies) who collected the stones out of the rubble, cleaned them by knocking off the old concrete, and prepared them for reconstruction.

Because of the rapid build-up after the war, Germany became increasingly

wealthy and prosperous, life was excellent. The country grew and flourished until, after about 25 years, and because of a creeping social system which finally went too far, it became rather complacent. When I came back to work with a German company in the 90’s after 15 years of working in foreign countries, I couldn’t believe what I saw – the drive and productivity exhibited by the people during those great years after the war was replaced by an entitlement mentality. If government pay for unemployment is of the same order as a normal salary, the system goes bankrupt and morale suffers. In addition, the burden on companies became so large and employee 'protection' so far reaching, that companies avoided hiring additional personnel and started to relocate company headquarters and production. What

had happened? The conservative government had been replaced by a socialist government, and the subsequent conservative government failed to turn these policies around. The subsequent socialist/Green party government made matters worse, and Germany is now in the process, under conservative leadership, of trying to turn some of these „social achievements“ around for the better again.

At the same time after the war, East Germany implemented the communist system under pressure and direction by the Soviets, where everything was owned by the State and planned through a central government organization, and everybody was „equal“, except, of course, the government and party officials who had all the nicest amenities in life. But the rest of the population was suppressed, spied upon (even for trying to listen to Western radio or TV to find out about the West), and had to eat or consume only what the planning department made available, after the officials had been served, of course.

After the wall opened in 1989, the people of the West were stunned to see the results of 40 years of communism. East Germany was an absolute mess on all levels, personal, infrastructure, government, everything. West Germany has since spent trillions of dollars bringing that part of the country up to the same level as the West. Vast improvements have been made, particularly in infrastructure projects and in support of the industrial basis, but it's not over yet. The main reason is the mentality of some people in the East. There are still some 30% of the population in the East who vote for the ex-communist party – they prefer a government taking care of them rather than a competitive working environment.

Here are lessons for the current situation in the United States:

1. The difference of the social and economic situation between East and West Germany provides clear evidence that the free market system is far superior than a state planned economy or, as otherwise expressed – communism/socialism don’t work.

2. A free society like West Germany, where the economy works because the people take personal responsibility, is far more successful than a system which is built on the suppression of people and opinions.

3. As can be recognized from the evolution in West Germany, a sliding transition toward excessive social benefits has a negative effect on companies which consequently must compensate for that by outsourcing to other countries. The consequence is that the country becomes less competitive.

4. The effect of communism takes at least two generations to reverse.

While Germany is working hard to re-unify the country and to bring increased individual responsibility back to the country through a reversal of excessive social benefits, the United States is doing exactly the opposite under Obama. Each and every one of the actions of this government goes in the direction which East Germany took after WW II, and that does not only include economic actions, such as the nationalizing of companies and putting companies at a disadvantage relative to the unions, but affecting society through trying to suppress civil discourse through the help of the mass media as the fifth column.

While Germany would not have survived the pressure from the Soviets without the unbelievable help of the United States after WW II, maybe the time has come that the U.S. should look back to Germany to see how the West prospered under conservative direction and how the East ruined itself under the Socialist/Communist regime. Same people, same genes, same history; but what a difference under two distinctly different ideologies. America, please benefit from Germany's past. We owe it to you.

By Mr. Z