The Man Who Restored Germany’s Moral Standing : Leadership: Willy Brandt understood that before his country could act like another nation, it would have to overcome its lingering legacy.

Every once in a while, a statesman rises to symbolic heights because of a confluence of his character and the needs of his society. Such men serve to seize a historic moment and, having fulfilled their mission, disappear to remain forever as deeply honored symbols. Willy Brandt was such a man.

Though I knew Brandt for 30 years and saw him frequently, we never achieved real intimacy. I admired his achievements even when I was--occasionally--uneasy about his policies. I supported them while he was chancellor and helped to negotiate the Berlin agreement of 1971, despite my initial skepticism about Ostpolitik .

One cause of my ambivalence was that Brandt’s policies were judged by the criteria of diplomacy, which deals with the familiar, while his historic role was that of the apostle of a new era for his people and for all mankind.

Ostpolitik challenged many firm beliefs. Brandt’s effort to directly deal with the Soviet Union on the future of Germany seemed risky and possibly beyond Bonn’s capacity to manage. In the end, a nationalist Germany might have emerged, one vulnerable to extortion by Moscow’s East German satellite and by a Kremlin doling out progress toward unification piecemeal and on its own terms.

Yet, the more Brandt’s initiative gained momentum, the more I came to realize that he was forcing the West onto the only path it would be able to sustain. Whatever the pitfalls of Ostpolitik , the alternative was riskier. When Brandt became chancellor in 1969, he inherited a policy that laid claim to Bonn as the sole representative of the entire German nation and that demanded a policy of non-recognition of the East German regime by all other nations. To preserve bargaining chips for an ultimate peace negotiation, the Federal Republic refused to accept Germany’s new borders with Poland along the Oder-Neisse line.

In the event, it became increasingly clear that this doctrine was unsustainable. By the mid-’60s, Bonn had modified it with respect to the East European governments on the somewhat lame argument that they were not free to decide.

The problem went deeper than any legalism, however. In the 1960s, it seemed inconceivable that Moscow would simply let its East German satellite collapse, or that it could happen without Soviet communism weakening. But the Berlin crises of 1958-62 had shown that no one in the West was prepared to run the risk of war, or of endless confrontation, over the juridical status of East Germany’s de facto authorities. Any crisis that could plausibly be presented as the result of German insistence on its national aspirations contained a high potential for splitting the Western alliance.

Thus I came to regard Ostpolitik as the salvation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization even while I believed that to Brandt--in his heart of hearts--NATO was a necessity, never a top priority. The Western alliance could only be held together by supporting Brandt. Only in this way would the allies be able to keep Germany within the institutions--such as NATO and the Common Market--to which it had committed itself. Only thus would Germany assume the major responsibility for unification; no ally, however close, nor the alliance, as a whole, could play that role.

Had the West refused to cooperate with Brandt, a solitary German course would have been inevitable sooner or later. Germany would have sullenly deplored a lost opportunity; the Western allies would have come to resent being forced to sustain repeated crises with the Soviet Union on an issue that was bound to concern them less than their German ally. The only way out was to link Ostpolitik , as a largely German enterprise, with a solution to the Berlin crisis, as a largely allied effort.

Brandt’s contribution was both extraordinary and indispensable. He understood that before Germany could act like another nation, it would have to overcome the lingering legacy. And this was a mission not subject to the usual give-and-take of diplomacy.

Postwar Germany had had the enormous good luck that its first chancellor was Konrad Adenauer, who ended Germany’s oscillation between East and West. He recognized that a policy of playing Germany’s neighbors off against each other would end up isolating the Federal Republic. Adenauer’s commitment to the West was so absolute as to retrieve confidence in Germany’s reliability and legitimacy.

Brandt built on this achievement--he restored Germany’s honor and moral standing. Who can forget Brandt’s kneeling at the site of the Warsaw ghetto? Or his facing the crowd heading toward the Brandenburg Gate to challenge the East German border guards? The measure of what he did for Germany’s moral standing was that, after him, the worst accusation made against the new Germany was of being excessively conciliatory to its potential adversaries.

In four years, Brandt completed the task that Adenauer had started. But his calling was that of a prophet, not that of a statesman. He showed his people a way out of the wilderness, but he was not the one to implement the ultimate triumph of his vision.

Brandt’s relations with America were ambivalent. He was never a comfortable interlocutor for his American counterparts--partly because of his long silences, which they interpreted as moodiness, partly because they did not share his optimistic view of long-term Soviet goals. Nor was Brandt ever at ease with President Richard M. Nixon, who was in office throughout his tenure, or without doubts as to America’s purpose. Still, the two countries cooperated effectively to ease tensions even while American leaders were not as willing as Brandt to believe in the possibility of a humane communism. In the end, both sides were proved right by events: Brandt foresaw the inevitable evolution of the Soviet system; his U.S. interlocutors were correct in their assessment that the communist system was beyond being humanized--only a transformation of it would lead to real progress.

But these were issues for future debates. To make historic breakthroughs, it was enough that Brandt grasped the vulnerability of communism to erosion by time, and that free peoples require their leaders to demonstrate they have spared no effort to maintain the peace. He was firm in vindicating the West’s values and elevated in raising the sights of not only his people, but of all mankind.