Finding its Place in the World

Abstract

This dissertation assesses the Vietnam War’s effect on the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and its relationship with the United States in the 1960s. In the name of alliance solidarity, the West German government provided economic, technical, and humanitarian assistance to South Vietnam. The Federal Republic would have quietly continued this support and thought little more about Vietnam if not for President Lyndon B. Johnson’s mounting demands that Bonn share more of the burden of the defense of the so-called “Free World.” In the most dramatic example of this effort, Johnson and his advisers attempted in late 1965 to pressure Chancellor Ludwig Erhard into sending West German support troops to Vietnam. Erhard ruled out sending military personnel, but the episode – combined with a series of foreign policy and economic failures – led to his resignation in November 1966. At the heart of this setback in West German-U.S. relations was a dispute over the Federal Republic’s place in the world. West German leaders largely agreed that it was only a matter of time before the Federal Republic got out from under the shadow of the Third Reich and returned to the world stage, but they disagreed about how this goal could best be achieved. By comparison, the Johnson administration had a clear vision for the Federal Republic’s return to the world stage. Looking to co-opt German economic power to maintain American hegemony around the world, Johnson expected Bonn to play the role of America’s junior partner. Although Erhard proved incapable of filling the role intended by Johnson, he helped to establish the Federal Republic’s characteristic political culture, combining military reluctance with a strong preference for economic stability. After Erhard’s resignation, Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger and his Vice-Chancellor, Willy Brandt, established a genuine and productive partnership with the United States, even as they made the limits of their solidarity clear. Like the government, West German civil society struggled to come to terms with the Federal Republic’s evolving place in the world. This dissertation shows that "regular" Germans' grappling with the Vietnam War was linked to their attempt to define the Federal Republic’s place in the world and, perhaps even, early efforts to come to terms with their collective responsibility for the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes. For the German Red Cross, the West German Catholic and Protestant churches, and private "pacifist" organizations like Hilfsaktion Vietnam, humanitarianism and human rights was an important outlet for this endeavor. The West German government, for its part, learned that it could employ the language of humanitarianism and human rights to distance itself from the most controversial or morally dubious parts of American foreign policy without sacrificing its formal alliance with the United States. In the late 1960s, then, government pragmatism, civil society interests, and public (moral) outrage converged to bring humanitarianism and human rights to the forefront of the Federal Republic of Germany.