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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, FEBRUARY 24, 1984
PAGE 11
Such an economic tie-in could form part of a larger East-West "deal
II
in
Europe that we've speculated about lately. In any case, the two halves of
Europe are slowly inching together. Notice this February 15 WALL STREET
JOURNAL article written by Franz Loeser, an East German party official who
fled west last· September:
It wasn't the money that outraged West Germans and dumbfounded
East Germans last fall when Franz Josef Strauss carried one
billion Deutsche marks, or about $355 million, to Erich Honecker
on the other side of the Berlin Wall.
It was the political
si � nificance of West Germany's bank loan to its Communist
neighbor and the fact that it was delivered by Mr. Strauss, a
virulent anti-communist in the eyes of the West Germans and an
evil capitalist to the East Germans....
For more than 30 years East German schoolchildren have been
taught that Franz Josef Strauss is imperialism incarnate. Then
one morning East German citizens opened their copies of Neues
Deutschland, the leading Communist Party paper, and saw a front
page photograph of Erich Honecker shaking hands with Franz Josef
Strauss. Greater astonishment followed upon reading that Strauss
was now a man of peace and goodwill. Bewilderment was complete
when the East Germans learned, via West German television, that
Mr. Strauss had lent East Germany one billion marks. Their own
media had never mentioned the loan.
So East Germans faced the rude realization that their country was
in such economic disarray it had to accept a loan from the avowed
archenemy of "real socialism."
It was more than a shock and
humiliation. Driven by economic opportunism, the party leaders
had remolded Mr. Strauss as a goodwill ambassador and clumsily
tried to cover their tracks by hiding the loan. Their already
tarnished credibility suffered further.
The loan's political impact for East Germany...represents another
�tep toward dependence on West Germany.... Economic dependence
inevitably fosters polftlcar-dependence. But the connection
...doesn't mean Mr. Strauss can order Mr. Honecker to tear down
the wall.... The political weaning of Communist countries is much
more gradual, complex, subtle ana contradictory....
So the
Strauss loan...wasn't the flub it might have appeared. On the
contrary, it was part of the West German government's calculated
effective long-range strategy to defeat East Germany's "real
socialism" by economic rather than military means.
Moscow simply is unable to provide the economic assistance needed by the
relatively prosperous (by East Bloc measures) East German economy. The
German Democratic Republic has to maintain a higher standard of living than
the other Eastern countries because its citizens are accustomed to
comparing their lifestyle with the West Germans (80 percent of East Germans
regularly watch West German television). The Kremlin has no choice but to
give the DOR a larger economic {but not political) leash.
"East is East and West is West," goes the old saying, "and ne'er the twain
shall meet." Except in Europe, that is.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau