Watch on The Rhine: German Efforts to Extort The Czechs, Forge Relations with Rogue States Are Ominous Indicators

(Washington, D.C.): Nearly sixty years
ago, Adolf Hitler used trumped-up claims
of Czech mistreatment of the
Sudetenland’s ethnic Germans as a pretext
for invading Czechoslovakia. Western
indifference and appeasement of Nazi
Germany with regard to this blatant act
of aggression led, in due course, to
World War II. Following Germany’s
unconditional surrender, the Sudeten
Germans who welcomed Hitler’s invading
armies and collaborated with the Nazi
occupation were expelled by the Czechs.
Most settled in the German state of
Bavaria, where they have become a potent
political force.

War Reparations for
Germany?

Notably, the Sudeten German lobby is
currently using its considerable
influence with the Bavarian faction of
the ruling Christian Democratic party to
shape government policy on a most
sensitive matter — compelling
Chancellor Helmut Kohl to make Germany’s
acceptance of the Czech Republic’s
admission into the European Union and
NATO contingent on completion of a
bilateral reconciliation declaration. In
deference to the Sudeten Germans, Bonn is
insisting that Prague apologize for
displacing this population and
create grounds for compensating those who
lost property as a result of the
expulsions.

The text of the draft reconciliation
declaration was leaked to the German
media yesterday. The Czech Foreign
Ministry issued a pointedly terse
statement today saying: “[It]
regrets the fact that someone on the
German side did not keep up the mutual
agreement and publicized the text of the
declaration before the conclusion of the
negotiations about it.”

Remarkably, the draft publicized on
German television last night treats
Germany’s conduct before and during World
War II fleetingly and with considerable
understatement:

“…Germany admits
responsibility for Munich, for the
flight and expulsion of people from
Czechoslovak border areas, as well as
for the destruction and occupation of
Czechoslovakia…regrets
wrongs…[and] is aware that it thus
created ground for the post-war
flight, expulsion and forcible
removal [of Sudeten Germans].” href=”96-C127.html#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾

By contrast, the text reflecting Czech
responsibility is tonally different — and
revisionist:

“The Czech side regrets that
by the post-war pursuit, as well as
by forcible removal, of the Sudeten
Germans from Czechoslovakia,
confiscations and stripping of
citizenship, much suffering and wrong
has been caused to guiltless
people, also because of the
collective character of the
adjudication of guilt.

“It particularly regrets the
excesses which were inconsistent with
elementary humanitarian principles as
well as legal norms valid at the
time, and regrets moreover the fact
that the [Czech] Law 115 of 8 May
1946 precluded seeing these excesses
as illegal and that, in consequence
of that, these acts were not
punished.” (Emphasis added.)

The idea that the people who
played a pivotal role in precipitating
World War II are now demanding
apologies and reparations from those who
were early victims of Nazi aggression is
absurd and deplorable. href=”96-C127.html#N_2_”>⁽²⁾
While there are, of course, profound
differences between the circumstances of
the present German intimidation of the
Czechs and that of Adolf Hitler sixty
years ago, freedom-loving peoples
— including, surely, the vast majority
of Germans — cannot ignore the ominous
signals now being sent by those throwing
Germany’s weight around in a region that
has spawned cataclysmic conflicts in the
past.

What Could Happen if Bonn
Gets Its Way

Of particular concern is the following
prospect: The acknowledgment being sought
of injustices perpetrated in expelling
the Sudeten Germans could pave the way
for legal redress of financial grievances
against the Czech Republic. According to
an article which appeared in the 25
November 1996 editions of the Wall
Street Journal, such an admission by
the Czech government in a written treaty
would “open floodgates to
countless compensation claims against the
Czech government and a new influx of
Sudeten Germans and their
decedents.” If so, there
could be dire consequences for the
economic recovery now underway after
decades of Communist mismanagement and
despoiling of the Czech regime.

The draft reconciliation declaration
gives little grounds for encouragement
that such repercussions will actually be
avoided. It says, in part, simply: “Both
sides therefore declare that they will
not burden their relationship
with political and legal questions based
in the past.” (Emphasis
added.) Even such an insubstantial
bulwark against the expected tidal
wave of Sudeten German claims against the
Czech Republic may be weakened
further as a result of the
calculated leak of this document which
has reportedly inflamed anti-Czech
passion in Bavaria.

It could also create a
dangerous precedent for others,
notably the Kremlin, which still nurtures
grievances over some of the repercussions
of the aggression it began in
the Baltic States and Eastern Europe
following the signing of the infamous
Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. At the very
least, the Sudeten Germans’ campaign —
and Chancellor Kohl’s efforts to
accommodate it by leaning on Prague to
accept Germany’s terms for a
reconciliation agreement by Christmas —
threatens to become a
destabilizing element in Central Europe,
a region that can ill-afford further
turmoil, possibly including derailing the
planned inclusion of the Czech Republic
into the EU and NATO. NATO
ministers meeting today in Brussels to
plan this expansion should be alive to
such a danger and actively oppose any
German gambit that entails it.

Other Worrisome German
Initiatives

Unfortunately, the seeming
pressure on the Czech Republic is not the
only instance in which Germany is
behaving in a manner that appears
inconsistent with long-term German
interests and which is, in any event, inconsistent
with the interests of the United States
and/or Bonn’s other key allies.
The following, partial list of such
behavior is illustrative:

• Germany is accommodating
  Croatia’s increasingly evident disengagement
  from the Dayton Accords in Bosnia
  — a step that is undermining the
  Bosnian-Croatian federation and
  sets the stage for accelerating
  the unraveling of the
  “peace” temporarily
  achieved by those agreements.
  The practical effect will be to
  invite a resumption of
  hostilities that could well
  endanger U.S. and IFOR forces on
  the ground. Such a
  prospect makes all the more
  odious Germany’s ongoing,
  forcible expulsion of Bosnian
  refugees.
• Germany has played a
  leading role in precluding
  consideration of the Baltic
  states for admission among the
  first (and possibly only)
  tier of nations to be admitted to
  an expanded NATO. The
  Baltics appear to be performing at
  least as well as Hungary and
  Poland with respect to the
  institutionalizing of genuinely
  democratic and free market
  systems. And their need for
  formal inclusion in the Western
  community is indisputably no less
  great than that of other
  candidates in light of the
  authoritarian/imperial tendencies
  in evidence once again in Minsk
  and Moscow.
• Germany is in the
  forefront of allied nations
  trying to eviscerate the future
  use of economic sanctions as a
  policy tool — the only
  middle ground between mere words
  (read, diplomacy) and
  military action. In particular,
  Bonn is helping to advance a
  strategy being pursued by the EU
  and Canada to counter U.S.
  efforts to contain rogue
  dictatorships in Iran,
  Libya and Cuba.
  Of special concern is Germany’s
  expanding relationship with Iran,
  including its intimate
  interactions with Teheran’s
  intelligence services.
• Germany is in the midst
  of fostering potentially
  militarily-relevant high
  technology cooperation with North
  Korea, ostensibly under
  the auspices of an
  academic-oriented exchange
  program scheduled to begin in the
  next year or so.
• Germany is poised to
  resume reckless technology
  transfer arrangements with Iraq
  as soon as sanctions against
  Saddam Hussein’s regime are fully
  lifted — a step toward which the
  international community took
  today with the resumption of
  limited Iraqi oil sales. In the
  past, such transfers have
  included the covert provision of
  chemical weapons manufacturing
  capabilities by German companies
  to Baghdad (and, indeed, to
  Teheran, Tripoli and elsewhere).
• German hostility toward
  Turkey is contributing to the
  latter’s exclusion from European
  commercial and political circles
  which is, in turn, feeding into
  the drift toward radical Islam
  now evident in the current
  coalition government and its
  policies. This
  development can only have
  profound — and very adverse —
  repercussions for Western
  interests in southern Europe, the
  Balkans, the Eastern
  Mediterranean, the Transcaucasus,
  Central Asia and the Middle East.

The Bottom Line

The William J. Casey Institute of the
Center for Security Policy believes that
Chancellor Kohl should be urged in
connection with the issue of
reconciliation with the Czech Republic
not to yield to domestic pressure in a
manner that assuredly will have
undesirable international consequences.
Appropriate recognition should be given
in a revised text to the important
asymmetries between the Nazis’ conduct
before and during World War II and that
of the Czechs after hostilities ended.
Such a text should also include a clear,
mutual commitment to preclude any Sudeten
German bids for restitution against the
Czech Republic or its citizens.

With respect to the policies being
pursued by Germany elsewhere around the
globe, Mr. Kohl should be put on
notice that efforts to obtain short-term
political or commercial advantage at the
expense of larger Western interests is a
formula for jeopardizing the prestige as
good international citizens that the
German people have worked so hard for
half-a-century to earn.

Should Germany fail to alter
course with respect to these and similar
policies, the United States and her
allies must make it clear that there will
be costs to the Federal Republic.
These may take the form of an
unwillingness to accommodate German
political, economic or strategic
preferences or, as appropriate, more
serious measures.

In order closely to monitor German
behavior — and as means of determining
how best to respond — the Casey
Institute intends to produce a new
“Watch on the Rhine” series.
The Perspectives periodically
produced in this series will monitor
German activities that may be inimical to
U.S. and Western interests and propose
corrective actions that should be taken
by the German government and/or those of
its allies.

– 30 –

1. All cited
portions of the draft Czech-German
declaration represent unofficial
translations of the leaked text.

2. Unfortunately,
as long ago as 1994, the highly regarded
Helsinki Commission may have, perhaps
unwittingly, have given some comfort to
the vocal minority in Bavaria and
elsewhere in Germany who are anxious to
portray Nazi and Czech behavior as
morally equivalent. In a September 1994
publication, the Commission opined:

“…At issue is the question
of whether or not the Czech people
understand that, even if the
expulsion [of Sudeten Germans] was
blessed by the international
community at that time, such
expulsions are impermissible today
and that the brutality of the
expulsion process was, by any
standard, unacceptable.”

It is to be hoped that the Commission
co-chairmen in the 105th Congress, Sen.
Alfonse D’Amato (R-NY) and Rep. Chris
Smith (R-NJ), will take a fresh look at
the way in which this and related issues
have been treated in the past and take
appropriate corrective action.