Foreign relations of Germany
The Federal Republic of Germany is a Central European country and founding member of the European Union, a member of G4, G7, the G20, the Organizations for Economic Co-operation and Development, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the only remaining of two former German members of the United Nations. It maintains a network of 229 diplomatic missions abroad and holds relations with more than 190 countries. As one of the world's leading industrialized countries it is recognized as a major power in European and global affairs.
Germany's relations to other powers are characterized by its past and by its commitment to promote peace, stability, the rule of law and democracy, while it seeks a progressing integration into the European Union. The heavily West-aligned Germany inherited diplomatic relations and missions from communist East Germany, which was "Germany" to those countries which had only relations to one of the two German states. However, due to its allegiance and market economy, the perception of Germany by some of the former Eastern bloc countries changed with Germany's reunification.
History
The history of German foreign policy covers diplomatic developments and international history since the foundation of Germany in 1871.Before 1866, Habsburg Austria and its German Confederation were the nominal leader in German affairs, but the Hohenzollern Kingdom of Prussia exercised increasingly dominant influence in German affairs, owing partly to its ability to participate in German Confederation politics through its Brandenburg holding, and its ability to influence trade through its Zollverein network. The question of excluding or including Austria's influence was settled by the Prussian victory in the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, excluding the Austrian Empire from Germany. The unification of Germany was the political purpose of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, in which the smaller German states joined behind remaining Prussia in a smashing victory over France. The German Empire was erected in 1871 by Otto von Bismarck, who dominated German and indeed all of European diplomatic history until he was forced to resign in 1890.
Germany's diplomatic weight increased by transitioning its economy and society from an agrarian country to Europe's second industrial powerhouse, which soon sought competition with the leading economic power of that era, Great Britain. As from 1884, Germany engaged – as the last major European power – in overseas colonization, but held only few colonies for economical exploitation, leaving Germany vulnerable to the protectionist mercantilism of other colonial powers who controlled the world's market of raw materials. Germany's development and transition led to internal tensions, which Emperor Wilhelm II., infamous for his Hun speech throughout Europe and an increasing diplomatic liability, sought to hedge with naval armament and increased imperialism much to the suspicion of the other European powers, especially the Entente Cordiale. Encircled by the Triple Entente, and due to the negligence of Germany's emperor and his diplomatic advisors by giving Austria-Hungary a "blank cheque" on treating Entente-allied Serbia for the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the Empire of Germany had to fight back its enemies in a war on multiple fronts and was cut off from international trade routes, leading to hunger and impoverishment in Europe's most populous country.
Germany was defeated in the battlefield in 1918, with its riches turning to spoils for the victors. The country had neither say nor seat at the table on which the victors negotiated how Germany and its treasures would be apportioned. The Treaty of Versailles forced Germany to convey away Alsace-Lorraine to France, a part of East Prussia to the Second Polish Republic and to accept the occupation of major industrial areas around Germany's centers for coal and steel production in Silesia and the Rhine province. When Germany was unable to fulfill the Allied demand for reparations in gold, France occupied the Ruhr valley to shave Germany's coal production. The Weimar Republic had to solve these crises to gain back its international stand in diplomacy, which lead Germany to joining the League of Nations in 1926.
However, the ransack and ongoing compromisation of Germany after World War I came with a toll on its internal stability and put the republic's attempt to establish peace and order to failure and its diplomatic influence from marginal to inept. Political extremist factions from left and right put the screws on Germany's politics by rallying against the weakened republic. International indifference to the events in the defeated country only turned into cautious unease after the Reichstag fire and Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933. The newly appointed chancellor ran on a platform of revising the Treaty of Versailles by rearmament, shaking off the shackles of occupation and "gaining room to live" in the East. Racial and genocidal undertones in his program were internationally ignored as the new government was able to establish the long-sought peace and order in Germany and pursued international recognition as a stabilizing power: although Hitler's government withdrew Germany's membership from the League of Nations in 1933 much to the wary of the remaining nations, Germany managed to appease the world by hosting the Olympic Games of 1936 and presenting the world a stable, progressive and prospering country while secretly starting a program for rearmament at the same time. Shortly after the games, Germany signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan, which sought to establish a common sphere of interest between Germany and Japan and their allied countries as well. Initially the pact was directed against the Soviet Union.
Despite its public presentation, Germany soon would raise suspicion by its rapidly progressing military programs, which weren't overlooked by international press. With massive interference in the internal affairs of Austria, which was unable to overcome economical challenges for 20 years after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany managed to annex Austria in the Anschluss, reversing the resolution of the German war 70 years earlier and violating the Treaty of Versailles once again, which forbade the union of both countries. Germany tested its newly gained strength on boosting the Sudeten crisis of 1938, as Sudeten Germans, attracted by Germany and its success, rebelled against Czechoslovak authorities. The crisis lead to the Munich Agreement, the first gain in territory for Germany since World War I. However, Hitler was dissatisfied with how the crisis was solved peacefully. The policy of appeasement by Neville Chamberlain allowed for Hitler to violate the agreement shortly after signing it, by dissolving the Czechoslovak government and occupying the rest of the country in 1939, followed by the wary European powers of France and Great Britain to draw a red line for Poland. Germany signed the Pact of Steel with Italy, shaping with the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan before and with the Tripartite Pact later on, what will come to be the Axis alliance.
After signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the USSR on 24 August 1939, which led Japan to distance itself from Germany until the Tripartite Pact was signed in 1940, Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, with the declaration of war followed by Britain and France three days later. The declarations of war did little to change the outcome of the Blitzkrieg against Poland, which soon was occupied by German and Soviet forces. Less than two years later, Germany would invade the USSR under violation of the pact. The same year, the Axis-allied Japanese Empire would attack Pearl Harbor, and as Germany was bound to aid Japan diplomatically by the Tripartite Pact, Hitler declared war against the USA four days after, unintentionally ending any remaining meaningful isolationist opposition in the U.S. against joining the European war and changing the U.S. stance to the rest of the world to this day.
The following years, German diplomacy is occupied with supporting the war effort and keeping together the Axis alliance as well as attending to the minor Axis-allied governments in Europe, such as Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Croatia to facilitate the "Final Solution". As Germany found itself on the losing side over time, Germany's diplomacy lost its ability to back up the increasingly futile war effort. Only the invocation of favors and long-lasting diplomatic aid and relationships with countries like Chile and Argentina, as well as their own network, enabled the escape of some Nazi high-ranks and collaborators into exile, such as Dr. Josef Mengele. The government of Germany, and therefore its diplomatic corps, ceased to exist according to the Allied Control Council's 1st Proclamation.
Germany as a state was only reestablished in August 1949 in three of the four Allied occupation zones, but international representation for the state was not reestablished until 15 March 1951. As a habit, chancellor Konrad Adenauer employed former Nazis for his administration, and for foreign affairs, he employed former NSDAP diplomats, which left a dark stain on the founding history of the newly formed Federal Foreign Office as a democratic institution.
The first years of the Bonn republic were characterized by the efforts of a second democratic Germany to rehabilitate itself in the eyes of the world. Adenauer's government decided to align West Germany with the Western bloc and made controversial decisions in its early years. Only ten years after World War II has ended, his government decided to rearm Germany once again, founding the Bundeswehr in 1955 and joining the NATO, after he discarded Stalin's attempt to negotiate reunification and neutralization of Germany in 1952. The years of Germany's division and the relations of the two German states, West-German FRG and East-German GDR, to each other mirrored the grander conflict at the Iron Curtain and the two systems. Mutual distrust, exclusion and agitation against one another captured the division of the two German nations. The FRG would characterize any attempt to open diplomatic relations to "the other German state" as an unfriendly act which would provoke the closure of the West-German diplomatic mission in the attempting country. The GDR assumed the sole right of representation for all Germans within the Eastern bloc. However, West Germany attracted some of the communist countries to open diplomatic missions despite the risk of spurning the East-German government, as the Eastern bloc was in dire need of hard currency and its members tried to open channels to markets which would trade in such.
In the 1970s, chancellor Willy Brandt would attempt to ease the relations between the two German states to prevent future confrontations like the Cuba crisis a few years earlier, in which the world narrowly escaped a World War III and nuclear annihilation. West Germany acknowledged the borders which were established after World War II, namely the Oder–Neisse line with Poland. The chancellor's Kniefall von Warschau would mark a major pivot point in the international perception of Germany, from a defeated and criminal warmongering power to a society which collectively would feel ashamed by its past, would swear to abstain military power and dominance and to uphold peace and to seek friendly relations with the People Germany wronged in the past. The gesture found cautiously positive remarks internationally, and Willy Brandt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize of 1971, to this day the only German chancellor ever being awarded the prize. 1973, both East and West Germany became United Nations members.
Willy Brandt's policies helped grander diplomatic efforts between the two super powers and would bear fruit shortly after his tenure, when the Helsinki Accords were signed in 1975. The Accords enabled organizations of the civil society and NGOs to assess whether the Soviet Union would abide the legally binding declarations it signed, for the rule of law, civil liberties and guarantees of property. They also lead to the arising of human rights activism in the East bloc and to media activity directed from the West towards the East.
Especially for the partaking East German government, which was confident at first the Accords would denote a victory for East bloc diplomacy, the Accords would turn out to be a calamity in internal affairs. West German media, consumed by the East German population despite attempts of inhibition, informed their audience about their rights the East German government just signed off on, very much including the sensitive issue of freedom of movement, especially between the two German states which shared a fortified and dangerous-to-life border, symbolized by the Berlin Wall. Ever since the Accords have been signed, the East German government had to face increasing mail of citizens who petitioned for "permanent departure" to West Germany, invoking the Helsinki Accords.
As East Germany's economical situation became untenable in the 1980s, West German prime minister of Bavaria, Franz Josef Strauß, procured a new credit line for the GDR in 1983, which would impede the economical collapse of East Germany. Combined with the growing frictions within East Germany's society and the continuous escape movement of Germans through Eastern Europe and diplomatic missions of Germany, the GDR would survive its 40th anniversary and peaceful protests by only less than a year, with the collapse of its communist government heavily quickened by negotiations of West Germany to enable the "permanent departure" of Germans by a non-stop train from the Czech Republic through East Germany to West Germany. The departure met intense media coverage, creating a lasting impression on both sides of the German border and forecasting the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall.
In 1990, both German states with both freely elected governments, as well as the four former occupying powers, would sign an agreement about Germany's future. The agreement became effective on 3 October of the same year, which became the German Unity Day.