• • •
It is one thing to have an idea. It is another thing to have the idea at the right time. And it is still another thing to be the kind of man who can make the idea work. These were the three components of Adenauer’s greatness.
His idea was a partnership among nations in the face of a common enemy, the Soviet Union, and partnership within West German society in the pursuit of prosperity and the protection of liberty. Within Europe he aimed at recapturing the ninth century’s brief moment of unity in order to prevent a repetition of the twentieth century cataclysms that had resulted from hatred between nations. At home the idea was to replace nationalism with Europeanism and to prevent tyranny, either of the right or the left, by keeping any one sector of society from gathering enough power to smother the liberty of individuals.
The rightness of his policies becomes clearer with each passing year. In 1954 many of Adenauer’s critics said West Germany did not need to rearm and join NATO; now it is difficult to imagine a free Europe without West Germany’s divisions. Skeptics scoffed at his belief that France and Germany, after three wars in less than a century, could become allies and friends. Yet Adenauer and de Gaulle, two giants on the European stage who stood head and shoulders above their critics, were able to consummate their rapprochement with the Franco-German treaty of 1963. Throughout the 1950s Adenauer was criticized for failing to unify the two Germanys; now the suggestion that the Soviets would at that time have allowed an independent, united, free Germany sounds incredible. Until his retirement he was criticized for not seeking a détente with East Germany and the Soviets such as the one Willy Brandt and his successors have sought through Ostpolitik; now it is clear that Ostpolitik by a West Germany less strong and prosperous than the one Adenauer built through an alliance with the West would have been folly, and that Ostpolitik as practiced has not lived up to its architects’ overly optimistic hopes.
In the 1960s, as the Cold War eased, it became fashionable in West Germany and elsewhere to “take the Russians at their word”—that is, to be more receptive than Adenauer had been to their overtures on such issues as Berlin and the German unification question. Many argued that the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe was no more than a buffer against aggression from the West, and that peace—and possibly even freedom for the people of Eastern Europe and East Germany—would be assured if we could only prove our own peaceful intentions to the Soviets. Khrushchev, with his talk about Nazi atrocities against the Russians, had tried to sell this line to Adenauer in 1955, but the Chancellor was not buying. Nonetheless this attitude has increasingly colored the East-West policies of his successors. Despite Ostpolitik, however, the Soviet empire remains, and Soviet adventurism has escalated rather than diminished.
• • •
As a leader in free Europe today, how would Adenauer view the world? I am certain that he would view it differently than some of those who succeeded him in office. In Afghanistan in 1979 he would have seen not a minor flare-up in a remote corner of the Third World, but a brazen bid by the Soviet Union for access to the riches of the Persian Gulf. He would not have taken the parochial view, as many Europeans did at the time, that a threat to the oil that fuels Europe was beyond the scope of the European alliance’s legitimate interests. It was to deal with such situations, in fact, that Adenauer had struggled for the creation of NATO. He knew that if the perimeters of the West were breached, its center would soon collapse.
Similarly, in Poland in 1981, Adenauer would have seen not an internal political problem but an unconscionable effort by the Soviets to perpetuate their subjugation of an independent-minded, Christian people of Europe. He would have viewed the Polish crackdown as an act of international criminality and responded accordingly; to today’s West German leaders it is a regrettable inconvenience that may go away if they look long enough in another direction. Ironically one of the goals of Ostpolitik was to find a way for West Germany to compensate the people of Poland for the wrongs they had suffered at the hands of the Nazis. Now that the Poles are suffering at the hands of a new master, the West Germans can only wring theirs.
These hypothetical considerations, of course, beg the question. With leaders like Adenauer in Western Europe, the Soviets would have been less confident of getting away with their adventures with impunity. Adenauer was always known as a “Cold War warrior,” and he heartily approved of the designation. If he were alive today and could survey Europe, with all its disunity and moral listlessness, he would not agree that the Cold War has ended. He would say that one of the combatants has stopped trying to win it.
If he could hear the talk of neutralism, so reminiscent of the Europe of the 1930s, he would hang his head in shame. He believed that Europe could break its back trying to “sit between two chairs”; the backbone that remains in Europe today is there in large measure because of the efforts of Adenauer and his partners in France. The fact that European unity seems frighteningly fragile whenever a crisis develops, such as those in Afghanistan and Poland, is evidence that Adenauer’s successors have forgotten the urgency of his message to Europe: that it confronts a danger greater than any it has ever faced before.
More than anything else, Adenauer would have been shocked by the state of affairs within the alliance. In 1955 Adenauer and a majority of his countrymen considered it an honor to be admitted to the European alliance so soon after the end of World War II. Today many members of NATO, including West Germany, quibble over how much they will spend to support the alliance or waffle over whether they will allow its missiles—which restrain the Soviets from moving beyond Poland and East Germany—to be placed within their borders. Meanwhile Ostpolitik continues; soon, even as the Soviets edge closer to the Persian Gulf, Russian natural gas may be flowing into West German homes.
Adenauer’s reaction to all of this would have been simple. He would deplore the suggestion, implicit in Ostpolitik, that the United States presents as great a threat to Europe as the Soviet Union. He would warn that in reaching east, the Europeans are in danger of breaking their lifeline to the West. And he would say that no policy is worth pursuing if it makes you lose those friends you do have while courting those friends you do not have, especially if your new friends turn out to be your deadliest enemies.
• • •
In comparison with the two other titans of postwar Europe, Churchill and de Gaulle, Adenauer is sometimes described as being relatively colorless and uninteresting. Apart from being superficial and unfair, this description misses two important points. The first is that France and Great Britain were the winners in World War II, and Germany was the loser. De Gaulle’s hauteur and dashing theatrics were appropriate qualities in the founder and leader of the Fifth Republic, but they would have been dangerously inappropriate in the leader of the defeated Germany. Similarly Adenauer, though possessed of a sharp wit himself, could not have gotten away with deploying it as broadly as did Churchill, especially when the Allies were still calling the shots in occupied Germany.
But those who found Adenauer uninspiring also missed the point that there are different styles of leadership. Churchill, the wry, sometimes cantankerous intellectual, could deflect criticism from an opposition MP or a journalist with a single well-timed, finely crafted barb. De Gaulle’s dignity was simply impenetrable. But Adenauer, with his patient, calculating lawyer’s mind, was the kind of leader who prevailed because he was willing to work harder, reason more closely, and sit longer than those around him. He dominated issues by mastering them and overcame critics by outguessing and outthinking them. A central tenet of his Catholic philosophy was that good things resulted only from hard work. He did not expect West Germany to blunder into respectability, sovereignty, security, and prosperity. He expected that these things would come about only as a result of a concentrated struggle to bring them about.
Adenauer’s greatest strength, his vision of a European colossus united against the Russian colossus, was also the source of his greatest weakness. Flowing from the same spring
as his affection for the French and his commitment to the European ideal was a lingering suspicion that eastern Germany did not belong. To him Berlin stood on the threshold of Asia and was tainted by a kind of modern barbarism. Prussian leaders had too often acted the part of Oriental despots and too seldom encouraged peace or cared about the liberty of their people. Charlemagne’s empire, and thus enlightened European civilization, ended at the Elbe. In a way it was the same with Adenauer’s Europe.
As a German and as a man, he cared for each East German and longed for his freedom. He welcomed and protected those who managed to escape. But as a historian and Rhinelander, he believed Soviet East Germany was lost to Christian civilization. In the depths of his soul its loss may have seemed inevitable and possibly even permanent.
In the end, as a result of the postwar policies of the Soviet Union, this deep-set philosophical bias did not matter. No diplomatic overtures during the Adenauer era could have changed the Soviets’ intention to make East Germany their western outpost. Such overtures, therefore, could only have lost ground for the West in its battle to protect its freedom and ideals. Adenauer’s personal commitment to rapprochement with the West was the direct result of his background and his faith in God. Coincidentally it was also his only rational choice as a statesman if he was to protect the liberty of his defeated people.
Adenauer’s monument is the free democratic Federal Republic of Germany, just as de Gaulle’s monument is the French Fifth Republic. After being humiliated and degraded by Hitler, Germany has again become a respected member of the family of nations.
My most vivid personal memory of Adenauer, however, will always be not of one of the premier political leaders of the postwar period but of Adenauer the man: a man who was inflexible in adherence to principle but shrewd and subtle in tactics; a man outwardly stiff and austere but who, to those fortunate to be his friends, was cherished as a warm and sensitive human being with a captivating sense of humor; a man who deeply loved his family, his church, and his people, each equally but in different ways; a man one could always count on to stand firm as a rock no matter how great the risks or desperate the odds.
Rarely has a private man been so perfectly suited for public responsibility.
NIKITA
aKHRUSHCHEV
The Brutal Will to Power
NIKITA SERGEEVICH KHRUSHCHEV was ebullient as he clinked glasses with guests at a diplomatic reception in Moscow in late 1957. As a boy, he had herded pigs for two kopeks a day; now, at the height of his power, he was the undisputed master of Russia. With the buoyant self-confidence of a man who had defeated the last of his rivals for power, he turned to a group of western reporters among the guests and enthusiastically recited a fable.
“Once upon a time,” Khrushchev began, “there were some men in a prison. There was a social democrat, an anarchist, and a humble little Jew—a half-educated little fellow named Pinya.” They decided to elect a leader to distribute the food, tea, and tobacco, he went on. The anarchist, who opposed putting anyone in authority, contemptuously proposed that they elect lowly Pinya, and they did. Soon they decided to try to escape by tunneling beyond the prison walls. But they realized that the guard would fire at the first man through, and no one seemed willing to lead. “Suddenly,” said Khrushchev, his voice building with the plot, “the poor little Jew, Pinya, drew himself up and said, ‘Comrades, you elected me by democratic process as your leader. Therefore, I’ll go first.’
“The moral of the story,” Khrushchev continued, “is that no matter how humble a man’s beginnings, he achieves the stature of the office to which he is elected.” The Soviet leader then paused for a moment and added, “That little Pinya, that’s me.”
Like all analogies, the story of Pinya is accurate in some respects but misleading in others. Khrushchev, of course, was neither democratically elected nor reluctantly thrust into leadership. For forty years he had fought and clawed, intrigued and double-crossed, bullied and murdered, his way to the top of the Soviet Union. Pinya’s rise to power from humble origins is not nearly as astonishing as Khrushchev’s. A pig tender, a coal miner, and a pipe fitter before joining the Bolsheviks in 1918, Khrushchev had no formal education until he was in his twenties. He was underestimated by his colleagues and the world throughout his career. But by 1957, when he consolidated his grip on power, this peasant-czar could be ignored or disparaged only at one’s peril.
• • •
Of all the leaders I have met, none had a more devastating sense of humor, agile intelligence, tenacious sense of purpose, and brutal will to power than Nikita Khrushchev. His successes and failures, more than those of any other leader, dramatically and decisively altered the course of history in the post-World War II era.
He was the man who built the Berlin Wall—the first wall in history whose purpose was not to keep enemies out, but to keep his own people in.
He was the man who so brutally suppressed a people’s revolt against Communist rule in Hungary that I denounced him in 1956 as the “Butcher of Budapest.”
He was the man who put nuclear missiles on Cuba and who, even as he backed down and removed them, extracted American pledges to pull U.S. missiles out of Greece and Turkey and to refrain from supporting those who might threaten Fidel Castro’s sanctuary in Cuba.
He was the man who started the great Soviet offensive in black Africa and throughout the developing world by trying to take over the Congo through his protégé Patrice Lumumba.
He was the man who began the massive Soviet buildup in strategic nuclear weaponry that would eventually turn the fifteen-to-one Soviet disadvantage during the Cuban Missile Crisis into a significant Soviet advantage today.
He was the man who signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty with President Kennedy, who began removing the shrouds of Stalinist secrecy that enveloped the Soviet Union, and who took significant steps toward making Russia a European country through his policy of “peaceful coexistence.”
He was the man who defrocked Stalin and thus permanently shattered the unity of the Communist movement.
Above all, he was the man who was primarily responsible for communism’s greatest setback and the most significant geopolitical event since World War II: the break between the Soviet Union and Communist China. His foreign policy, despite its successes and initiatives, probably will be remembered for its greatest failure: Khrushchev lost China.
Of all the leaders I have met, I disagreed with none more vehemently than Nikita Khrushchev. And yet none earned my grudging respect for his effective exercise of raw power so consistently. That he was the Devil incarnate, many would concede. That he was an ominously able Devil, few could dispute.
• • •
I was Vice President when Khrushchev first emerged in the elite of the Soviet leadership in 1953. Many in the West were quick to judge him, and their first impressions were often far off the mark. They were accustomed to Soviet leaders like Stalin: austere, secretive manipulators who controlled events by pulling the strings from offstage. When Khrushchev’s rotund figure bounded to center stage, he broke the pattern so completely with his uninhibited behavior, indiscreet statements, and bombastic pronouncements that many did not take him seriously.
Life labeled him “an unimportant little man”; a Newsweek columnist dubbed him “an unimpressive civil servant” and “an undistinguished work horse”; and Time called him “a Vydvizhenets,” one who has been “pushed forward” by events despite a lack of education or training. Most western observers did not think Khrushchev was fit to shine Stalin’s boots, much less fill them. His behavior when he traveled to Belgrade on one of his first trips outside the Soviet Union did little to improve his image. He was crude, unpolished, and drunk, clearly out of place in the international social set. The press delighted in describing his alcoholic binges and wrote that, compared to Stalin, he was a lightweight who would not last long.
The foreign policy dilettantes in the Washington social circles and even some members of the career foreig
n service also underrated Khrushchev. One of them commented to me at the time that he did not think very highly of Khrushchev because the Soviet leader drank too much and spoke “bad Russian.” These observers simply did not understand that Khrushchev’s garbled syntax, unfashionable clothing, and unrefined tastes did not lessen his effectiveness as a leader. Overly impressed by style and education, they forgot that elegant manners do not make a strong leader. In statesmanship what counts is not the surface but the substance of the man. No matter how well polished the veneer of his personality, a statesman will not succeed unless he has a well-tempered, visceral strength underneath it.
Khrushchev was a sort of Russian Senator Claghorn in public. During the May Day military parade one year, the members of the Soviet elite impassively watched as their armed forces passed before them. But when a squadron of jet fighters roared overhead, Khrushchev bounded around the reviewing stand, slapping Premier Nikolai Bulganin on the back and beaming with the joy of a little boy with a new set of toys. Khrushchev did not maintain Molotov’s icy dignity as he watched the jets, but that did not mean he would be any less ruthless in using them.
Khrushchev’s personality was forged on the anvil of Stalin’s years of absolute power. Stalin had two kinds of subordinates: the quick and the dead. Second only to Mao Zedong, Stalin was responsible for killing more of his own people than any man in history. Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko, in his book The Time of Stalin: Portrait of a Tyranny, puts the number at one hundred million, including Stalin’s own wife and Lenin’s widow. Only men with a talent for ruthlessness and an instinct for intrigue stayed alive and rose to the top in those years. To fight his way through the ranks, Khrushchev had to have had intelligence, stamina, and iron determination. John Foster Dulles recognized this. At a National Security Council meeting just after Khrushchev took power, he said, “Anyone who survives and comes to the top in that Communist jungle is bound to be a strong leader and a dangerous enemy.” He was right. One perceptive western diplomat said Khrushchev was a flabby-looking man “with a core of steel.”
Leaders Page 23