Let History Be Our Guide : Germany: The Congress of Vienna got a bad press, but it brought on a long peace. Today’s superpower leaders need to keep that lesson in mind.

Two historical coincidences come to mind as one contemplates the fabulous events in East Germany and East Berlin.

One is the period from 1933 to 1989. The Wall was erected in 1961, 28 years ago. That was 28 years after Adolf Hitler had become the chancellor of Germany, in 1933. Hitler’s principal aim was to unite all of German-speaking Europe into a Great German Reich that would dominate the Continent and whose people would become the master race in the European East. He failed. The result of the World War that Hitler had unleashed was the division of Germany, the division of Europe and the division of Berlin. The division of the latter began immediately after the end of the war, but did not become final until September, 1961, when the East German government felt compelled to close the last half-open hole across that division by building the Wall.

That monstrous and unnatural edifice sealed the division of Berlin and of Germany. But history is never of one piece. At the very time when the Berlin Wall was put into place, in the 1960s, the Iron Curtain separating other Eastern European states from the West was beginning to open, here and there, for the purposes of trade and mass tourism. By the 1970s, the contacts between the two Germanys began to improve and increase. And now--principally because of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev--things have begun to speed up and the Berlin Wall is gone. How and when the reunification of the two Germanys will take place we do not know. That it will take place (and that in some forms it is already taking place) is almost certain.

Thereby, in 1989, the principal legacy of World War II has come to an end. Hitler’s Germany was crushed by the coalition of the English-speaking democracies and the Soviet Union. It was a war that neither of these then-allies could have won alone. After the war, and in view of the threatening presence of Soviet armies and of communism on one side of the Iron Curtain, a Western European-American alliance was formed that contributed to the lasting division of Europe. Anti-communist propaganda notwithstanding, American and Atlantic Alliance policy never challenged the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe--not only because of the prospects of potential war but because a Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe would have to be accompanied by an American withdrawal from Western Europe.

But now the Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe has begun. It is proceeding fast.

The dangerous prospect ahead of us is not really that of a reunited Germany. It is that of an American-Soviet struggle for the favors of a reuniting, though not-yet-reunited, Germany. If, in exchange for a Soviet military withdrawal from Eastern Germany and Eastern Europe, the American government would agree to an American military withdrawal from Western Germany and Western Europe, that would be one thing. But I doubt whether the Bush Administration would be willing to consider that. President Bush has not yet spoken out unequivocally in favor of a united Germany. But I fear that he will not be immune to the temptation to do so. This then could lead to an ominous conflict with a Soviet Union that would either oppose a united German state or agree to it only after a withdrawal of both superpowers from the center of Europe.

This brings me to the second historical coincidence.

At the Congress of Vienna, in 1814-15, the crowned heads and statesmen of Europe and England came together to restore some kind of order on the continent after 25 years of the French revolution and Napoleonic wars. Some of their decisions were good ones, others were not. By and large the Congress of Vienna had a bad press--like Yalta 130 years later. But it was not until the 20th Century that a new kind of retrospect began to emerge. The Congress of Vienna had not been so bad, after all. It had contributed to what may be called A Hundred Years’ Peace--a time that brought about the greatest growth of prosperity and liberty in the Western world, in Europe as well as in America. There were no world wars from 1815 to 1914. The Congress of Vienna established that there were five great European powers: Britain, France, Austria, Prussia and Russia. That relative standing remained for a century--except for one important change that came 40-some years after the Congress of Vienna. Prussia was transforming itself into a united Germany, powerful enough to endanger the European balance of power, although another half-century passed until the unwisdom of its leaders contributed to World War I.

In 1945 the Yalta Conference led to the division of Europe, and then to that of Germany, and of Berlin. It also led to 44 years of relative peace. As after 1815, there were wars--in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, the Middle East--but like most wars during the 19th Century, they were small. The superpowers did not fight each other directly. That was not the result of the wisdom of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Josef Stalin. It was the result of many things, including the existence of atom bombs. Nevertheless, there it was. And now, 44 years after Yalta and the last world war--just as in the 1860s, 44 years after the Napoleonic world wars--a great change has come: the union of the two Germanys is around the corner again.

History does not repeat itself. In the 1860s the architect of German unity was Bismarck. There is not such a man today; neither are the German people of today the people of Hitler’s time. Gorbachev is not Stalin. Bush is not Roosevelt. But, while history does not repeat itself, it remains the only guide for the present and the future. It will take much knowledge of history, much courage, and much insight on the part of the United States to understand some of the prospects of what is now happening. It calls for an honest recognition of many things, including the interests of the Soviet empire itself. It calls for a serious and judicious recognition of dangers--dangers not at all restricted to a united Germany but to all kinds of populist pressures from the Third World that threaten the vital interests of the United States as well as the Soviet Union. It calls for an authentic effort to listen to each other, to talk at length, a practice that cannot be achieved or even initiated during a two-day summit. The Congress of Vienna was many things. A photo opportunity it was not.