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It is only a concern for international acceptability, and the oftenrelated economic advantages or consequences, which has madethe white elite express concern at the harsher aspects of separa-tion; which has placed economic priorities above immediateideological objectives; which has forced the pace of transitionin the separate structures; which will curb extremes of govern-ment action against opposition leaders and organizations; andwhich makes it important to adhere to, or maintain to some de-gree, the existence or appearance of democratic and judicialprocess.

In short, the dependence of the white elite and particularlythe economy on international goodwill is possibly the most signi-ficant pressure which can mitigate the Nationalists' use or abuseof power. And it is that power which is central to South Africanpolitics at this point in time. However, in the past, fascinationwith the white political process has often led to an implicit as-sumption, or to action based on the assumption of the legitimacyof this process. In the international context this assumption lendsgreat weight to the white elite. International concern shouldbe motivated by, and exercise, an active consideration forthe majority of South Africans and their situation, and the im-pact of international action upon these. But very often theWestern nations have oriented themselves only in terms of thewhite elite, and the activity of overseas investors and corpora-tions in South Africa has been the supreme example of this.

Until the Polaroid "experiment" in 1970-71, no internationalcorporation had sought to change or challenge either the separa-tion or the discrimination, and all profited by conforming tothem. It is not unfair to call the result exploitation, and to callfor the undoing of this exploitation by either withdrawal or theinstitution of practices of full equality. The half-measures whichPolaroid took were welcome and provided a lead, but are in-sufficient. And there can be no justification for continued en-gagement short of provision of full equalitypartly since inalmost all instances there is no legal restraint to prevent this.

To argue for engagement on terms other than full equality isonly to continue the present economic trends toward greater in-equality and discrimination. Full equality means, first, recogni-tion and encouragement of Black trade-union activity, paymentof equal wages and wages which reflect reasonable rates for thejob; equal access to promotion and training facilities; and full

296 FOREIGN AFFAIRSand equal provision for health, insurance, transport, housing, andbenefits and services to both employees and dependents.

It could be misconstrued as "terrorism" for me, as a SouthAfrican citizen, to advocate withdrawalbut although the de-cision, of course, is not for me to take, the choice seems clearfull equality or disengagement. Withdrawal would have thegreater impact on the white elite, but both would promote adegree of change.

Finally, it must be stressed that the international dependenceof the white elite and the economy is going to grow and not de-crease, and that the white eliteby diplomacy and particularlyby economic expansionis keen to strengthen its internal posi-tion by gaining international credibility and active support. Itrests with corporations, private individuals and governments todetermine whether their involvement and participation in SouthAfrica have been coopted into this process, or whether theyprovide any support for the majority of South Africans in theirattempts to obtain change. At this point in time most interestshave been coopted.

VII

Change in South Africa is going to be a painful process,actively resisted by the white elite. It is going to require theemergence of Black leadership and a power base from which tooperate; the development of organizing and organizations; andat least limited freedom in which to exercise them.

The situation within South Africa is rising to a crisis whichwill either be staved off by further repression or explode intoactive conflict whose dimensions and impact may extend farbeyond South Africa itself. A scenario of events is difficult to con-struct, as much depends on unforeseen crises or events at presentin the making; but unless there is rapid change toward greaterequality and distribution of power tragedy lies ahead. It is inthe interests of the Western nations to make a far greater attemptto ensure that this tragedy is avoided, .and to align their interestswith those of the majority of South Africans.

EAST GERMANY BETWEENMOSCOW AND BONNBy Robert Gerald Livingston

1 EVENTEEN months of intricate negotiation involving thefour powers responsible for Germany, the two Germanstates and the North Atlantic and Warsaw Treaty alliances

have finally yielded a Berlin agreement. It is the first major East-West accord in Europe since the Austrian State Treaty in 1955and suggests that old-fashioned diplomacy still has its virtues.The agreement's provisions, which are far better than Westernforeign offices dared hope when the negotiations began, regulatethe thorniest aspects of the Berlin problem, notably the accessissue. But they do not solve the problem in the sense of estab-lishing a new status for the city. Indeed, whether the agreementholds up at all depends on whether the present detente in Europecontinues. Experience with Soviet policy has taught that this isnot predictable. One result is, however, certain: the agreementcompels the West to come fully to terms soon with the secondGerman state. The German Democratic Republic is becoming,as Alice might put it, permanenter and permanenter.

Not only is the G.D.R. expressly included under its formalname in the Berlin treaty, the follow-on arrangements for transittraffic which it is negotiating with West Germany are to consti-tute an integral part of the overall agreement. The road now isopen, American and West German officials agree, to talks be-tween NATO and Warsaw Pact countries on reducing forces andat the same time or later to an East-West conference on securityin Europe. Are negotiations on troop reductions feasible with-out direct involvement of the state whose army is rated the mostefficient in the Eastern alliance? And is a security conferenceconceivable without participation by the one member of theWarsaw Pact which feels itself the most insecure? It hardlyseems possible, likelyor even desirable. In opening the road tothese projects the Berlin agreement also virtually ensures theemergence of the German Democratic Republic as a full-fledgedactor in the politics of European security.

It is a little surprising that this entrance is so belated. The rea-sons are to be found in Berlin's vulnerability and in the Westernalliance's solidarity. As long as there was no agreement guaran-

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teeing access to the city, the Federal Republic and its allieswhich occupy Berlin feared that to legitimize the G.D.R. inter-nationally would be to reinforce its claims to sovereignty over theair, rail, highway and canal routes running from West Germanyto Berlin through East German territory. Sufficient unto the daywas the existing evil of the G.D.R.'s de facto control over theseroutes, which it demonstratively exploited at its pleasure todelay, harass and sometimes completely block traffic to the iso-lated city. Equally important, America, Britain and France, andwith them Bonn's other NATO allies, have been pledged since1954 to accept the West German government as the sole legiti-mate spokesman for all Germans, to support its objective ofreunification and thus not to accord the G.D.R. formal recogni-tion. They also have more or less willingly backed the West Ger-mans in their campaign to keep the G.D.R. from gaining politi-cal responsibility and international status.

Underlying the allies' solidarity with the Federal Republic onthis score has been the conviction that moves on their part tolegitimize the G.D.R. would be interpreted in Bonn as prejudic-ing chances for reunification and might give birth to a new Ger-man nationalistic backlash that could undo the democratic sys-tem in West Germany and lead Bonn to combine with Moscowin policies inimical to the alliance. Most allies, especially theUnited States, therefore publicly endorsed the official West Ger-man thesis of the 1950s and early 1960s that the division of Ger-many was inherently unstable, hence the primary cause ofdivision and tension in Europe. These assessments weighed over-whelmingly in Western calculations until recently.

Chancellor Willy Brandt's Social Democratic-Liberal (SPD-FDP) government, which has made the German national ques-tion central to its Ostpolitik, has now fundamentally altered pre-vious policy toward East Berlin. At the same time as the G.D.R.is becoming politically consolidated, the regime is well en-trenched and its people may be developing a sense of identifica-tion with their state. Its ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED)apparently encountered little trouble last spring in replacingveteran leader Walter Ulbricht with Erich Honecker, thus suc-cessfully passing that most difficult test for a communist regime,the transfer of political power. But still lacking a national basein this sense it is a nationless statethe G.D.R. remains vulner-able to infiuence from the West, which focuses with peculiar in-

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tensity through the lens of the common nationality that EastGermans share with their countrymen in the Federal Republic.

II

The Grand Coalition of Kiesinger's Christian Democrats(CDU) and Brandt's Social Democrats, which assumed officein late 1966, already had begun to revise previous attitudes to-ward the G.D.R. by including it as an entity in policy towardEastern Europe instead of ignoring it as predecessor administra-tions had done. The striking changes came with the BrandtScheel administration in 1969. The innovative and extraordi-narily sophisticated minds behind the new departure have beenHerbert Wehner, the SPD's shrewd Bundestag floor leader, andEgon Bahr, Brandt's long-time personal adviser on Easternpolicy matters and now State Secretary in his Chancellery. Theradical break^ with the policies of previous administrations canbe found in the Brandt government's declared willingness to:(i) accept the G.D.R. as a state and the SED as its effectiveruler; (2) treat with the SED leaders on the basis of fullequality; (3) respect what was formerly called the "demarca-tion line" between East and West Germany as an inviolablefrontier; (4) abandon previous claims that the Federal Re-public alone is entitled to speak for all Germans; (5) conclude abinding treaty with the G.D.R. regulating mutual relations.

Where has Brandt stopped? Responding to opposition chargesthat national goals have been put aside, the Government saysthat it still adheres to the concept of one German nation, aconcept that is also embodied in the G.D.R.'s constitution, thuskeeping alive the emotional, cultural and perhaps eventuallythe political basis for unity of the "two German states." It main-tains that this preserves the right of self-determination for Ger-mans and thus the means of one day altering the status quo.

And, finally, it stresses even more than its predecessors thatFour-Power (American, French, British and Soviet) responsi-bility for Germany, which has constituted the basis for the Berlinagreement, symbolizes that there is as yet no final settlement ofthe German problem, and, Bahr has argued, actually precludesWest Germany from accepting, even if it should want to, thepermanent division of the country.

Refusing, then, to accord the G.D.R. full recognition, Brandt's1 Helmut Schmidt, "Germany in the Era of Negotiations," Foreign Affairs, October

1970, describes certain elements of this change.

3OO FOREIGN AFFAIRS

government has sought to draw a distinction that is subtle butpolitically vital for its present domestic position and future pol-icy toward East Berlin. It maintains that the Federal Republic'srelations with the O.D.R. are not the same as those with foreigncountries but of a "special" nature, since the O.D.R. is not "for-eign" to West Germany. If the G.D.R. will accept the distinctionand sign satisfactory agreements with the Federal Republic onthat basis, Bonn is willing to cease opposing G.D.R. relationswith third countries and to agree to its membership in the UnitedNations. So far the Federal Republic has been successful in con-vincing other countries to delay recognition of the G.D.R. untilthe two Germanys have come to an agreement, and in withstand-ing pressures for early admission of both to the United Nations.But for success to last, the West Germans must be able to pointto concrete progress toward settling their differences with theG.D.R. Otherwise third countries will not be long deterred. Ofthe 29 states that now accord East Berlin full recognition, morethan half are non-communist. And public pressure for recogni-tion is building steadily even in NATO countries such as France,Britain, the Netherlands, and Denmark.

Brandt's government isn't saying much about its long-term ob-jectives toward East Germany. Calling upon Germans to face atlast the bitter truth that the idea of a unitary German state enjoysvirtually no support abroad, the Chancellor has relegated unifi-cation to a future so distant as virtually to renounce it as a prac-tical policy objective. Among the West German public, too,there is today little discussion of the projects and schemes forbringing the West and East Germany closer togetherthe jointcommissions, confederations, loose federations and internation-ally supervised free electionswhich professors and politiciansproposed so plentifully until just a few years ago.

Brandt prefers to focus on the short term: a treaty that willregulate "coexistence" (ein Nebeneinander) between the twoGerman states and will lay the basis for what can only be trans-lated as a future "togetherness" {ein Miteinander) betweenthem. Interpreted, these phrases seem to mean establishing aworking relationship and hoping it can be used first to ameliorateconditions of life for East Germans and later to halt the steadydivergence that has marked the development of the East andWest German societies and political structures over the pastquarter-century. One should perhaps not speculate beyond these

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declared aims. However, the communists surmise that Brandtand his associates also hope, through the working relationship,to develop new communities of East-West German interest, ac-celerate already evident trends toward embourgeoisification inEast German society, moderate the SED's political behavior,and promote political pluralism in the G.D.R. (For the EastGerman Communist Party, of course, such objectivesall un-stated by Bonnare equivalent to an effort to subvert its rule.)

It is self-evident that Bonn's new policy toward East Germanyruns a high risk of perpetuating the very partition it seeks to at-tenuate. To accept Honecker's regime is to enhance its interna-tional status and help its domestic consolidationa process thatis already far advanced.

Ill

Honecker's apparently uncontested and untroubled takeoverof power from Ulbricht last May underscores East Germany'sstability and the fact that the SED regime has been in powerlonger23 yearsthan any German government since the fallof the monarchy. For more than a decade, the G.D.R. has beenmore stable than other communist states: there has been no overtunrest of significance since 1953 and no known infighting amongthe Party leaders since Ulbricht rid himself of a rival faction in1958.

The SED's new First Secretary himself typifies this continuityand stability as well as the now indigenous nature of the regimehe heads. Fifty-nine years old and a communist since childhoodhe joined the Young Pioneers at ten, the Party at 17he be-came SED heir-presumptive as early as 1958, when Ulbrichtmade him a Politburo member. Like his predecessor, a sober,methodical and energetic manager of Party organization men,he has long watched over the armed forces and security servicesfor the SED, handled its organizational matters and is reportedto have prepared and executed its riskiest political project so farerection of the Wall in 1961. He has been placing his peoplein key positions within the Party and military for over a decade,many of them officials who helped him run the communist youthorganization as far back as 1946.

Tough, hard-working and experienced, this generation intheir fifties or early sixties has matured in the G.D.R. and its rul-ing Party. Their cause is perfecting, consolidating and making

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both institutions run efficiently. Honecker, who was imprisonedin a Brandenburg penitentiary during the entire 12 years of Nazirule and has spent little time abroad except for two years ofpolitical schooling in Moscow 15 years ago, operates within theframework of the East German state. He lacks the Cominternbackground which, it sometimes seemed, led Ulbricht to lookupon the G.D.R. as the nucleus of a larger communist Germanyand to aspire to influence leftists in the Federal Republic.

Under Ulbricht, Honecker and Prime Minister Willi Stoph,the SED has entrenched itself solidly since the Wall, developinginto what is the archetype of a post-revolutionary communistregime as described by Richard Lowenthal: a machine stronglyrational in running the economy and a highly organized gov-ernment, conservative in the predictable regularity of its bureau-cratic procedures, administrative rules and law; but yet authori-tarian in its readiness to dispense with legal guarantees when itfeels threatened from below and in its willingness to tolerateonly those limited elements of pluralism which it can keep undertutelary control. At home, the regime's stability rests on threefactors: (i) a socioeconomic structure that differs totally fromthat of the Federal Republic; (2) the unique modernized natureof the SED; and (3) an impressive economic performance,which helps the Party legitimate its rule.

The G.D.R.'s imposed revolution has restratified society, abol-ishing or bringing under Party control all traditional Germaninstitutions capable of commanding a separate loyalty from EastGermans or linking them with their countrymen in the West.Paradoxically, however, it has not at the same time destroyedtraditional Germanor better, Prussianattitudes and patternsof authoritarian political behavior. Readiness to accept disci-pline, respect for constituted authority, and apathy toward pol-itics have greatly assisted the communists to rule. Potential fociof opposition are lacking in G.D.R. society in any case. The lit-erary and humanistic intelligentsiathe fount of dissidence inRussian and most East European countrieshave never playeda political role of that sort in Germany and do not stand high inEast Germans' esteem. The managerial-technocratic elite are asapolitical as Albert Speer was in his time and cannot be expectedto challenge the Party's primacy individually, much less collec-tively.

East German society, is, however, characterized by a high de-

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gree of social equality and of mobility, offering to personalitiesattuned to the demands of a technological age and industrializedcommunist society wide access to higher education and rapid ca-reer advancement. Since 1961 the managerial-technical elite pro-duced by this system has come to accept and share with the Partyan orientation of values toward performance and efficiency. Im-portant, too, in giving this elite a stake in the system were EastGermany's economic reforms introduced in 1963 and promotedby Ulbricht himself. East Germany has become unique amongcommunist societies in its capacity to diffuse modern technology,maintain close cooperation between industrial and politicalelites, and tolerate a limited pluralism in the economic spherewithout noticeable effect on the political structure. It is themodel of technocratic conservatism in the communist world.

Nowhere among communist countriesexcept perhaps in theSoviet Uniondoes the Party play so prominent a role in guid-ing and controlling society and the economy. The SED has beensuccessful in combining ideological orthodoxy with economic re-form, centralized controls with material and career incentives,and managerial-technocratic expertise with continuing politicalindoctrination and rigid Party discipline. Abandoning the terrorand totalitarian methods of the 1950s and early 1960salthoughthe Wall still stands as a repulsive symbol that these methods can,if necessary, be appliedthe SED has developed a highlysophisticated system of "line" authority, formal staffs, and in-formal cooperation with enterprise managers that enables it torun the industrialized East German economy without diminish-ing Party control. It has coopted and advanced the managersand technicians, rewarding them but granting them little politi-cal voice. Its leadership is far better educated and more science-oriented than that of other communist parties. With a member-ship of nearly two million in a total population of 17 millionalarger share than in any other communist countrythe SED hasalso been able over the past decade to bring an increasing num-ber of citizens into the political process.

With the population generally, the SED's chief means of legit-imation remains its performance in running the economy soas to keep living standards rising more rapidly than in othercommunist countries. Despite setbacks in the last two or threeyears, growth over the past decade has been respectable for aneconomy that was already highly industrialized to begin with:

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between i960 and 1969, the gross national product in real termsgrew 4.5 percent annually, which was only a shade below the an-nual expansion in West Germany (4,8 percent). The averageEast German's living standard today is far ahead of that else-where in Eastern Europe: perhaps a third higher than in Hun-gary or Czechoslovakia and certainly twice as high as in theSoviet Union. In personal consumption, social welfare and edu-cation the G.D.R. also maintains its traditional lead. Simultane-ously, it has been able not only to fulfill heavy export obligationsto the Soviet Union but also to increase investments, so that todayat about 23 percent of GNP, the East German investment ratiois nearly at the West German level but with a greater share goingto industry. Their economy's performance nourishes East Ger-mans' sense of pride and superiority vis-a-vis the Soviet Unionand the G.D.R.'s eastern neighbors, thus promoting their identi-fication with their state.

Distinctive social patterns, efficient Party control, and a risingliving standard have advanced a process whereby East Germans'previous hostility toward the regime changed first into passiveacceptance and now is moving toward positive loyalty and a senseof a separate East German national identity. How far the pro-cess has gone, no one can really say. The regime will not permitits citizens' loyalty to be put to a true test. Some Western ob-servers take the popular acclaim for Willy Brandt when hevisited Erfurt in 1970 as evidence that the SED cannot count onEast Germans' allegiance. All that can be said with reasonablecertainty is that East Germans generally accept the G.D.R. as aseparate state for the foreseeable future, approve of its socialorder and most aspects of its economic system, and have devel-oped a sense of distinctiveness from both West Germany andtheir Slavic neighbors.

But the tie of common German nationality still retains a dy-namic political potential: the Party discovered to its discomfortwhen it polled workers recently that 71 percent considered "Ger-many" rather than the G.D.R. as their fatherland. The lack of anational base will remain the greatest weakness of the G.D.R. aslong as the concept of the nation-state remains the prime deter-minant of political attitudes in Europe, the more so since Brandthas revitalized the concept of a single German nation.

IVAlthough the SED regime has a firmer internal base for its

EAST GERMANY 305rule than has commonly been realized in the West, it is also truethat linkages with the Soviet Union remain the chief guaranteeof its durability and stability. Because the process of East Ger-man "nation-building" is incomplete and the pull of a commonGerman nationality is still strong, the SED's leaders continue tofeel insecure and to regard the closest possible integration withthe Soviet Union as a vital self-interest for their state. They havemade a deliberate policy decision to intensify that relationshipin order to increase all possible fields of political, ideological andeconomic interaction. Ulbricht's objective, and it seems to beHonecker's as well, has been to make East Germany indispens-able to the Soviets and thus to maximize its influence not onlyin Moscow hut also in the Eastern bloc's regional organizations,COMECON and the Warsaw Pact.

For a Soviet Union whose first foreign policy priority, in timesof detente as of tension, remains cohesion of its East Europeanpower sphere, the stakes in the G.D.R. are high. East Germanyanchors Soviet hegemony in East Europe, as was evidenced inthe military action against Czechoslovakia in 1968 and in thePolish upheavals in 1956 and perhaps again in December 1970.Although Soviet military planning may be underway for thetroop cutbacks which Brezhnev has declared he is willing todiscuss, it is well to remember that Moscow has considered for-ward deployment of 20 or more Soviet divisions in the G.D.R.essential to its military security system since the Second WorldWar. A fundamental alteration in that deployment would be sur-prising. Brezhnev's offer may still be genuine enough, of course.He and his Polithuro evidently have concluded that the Westwill not credit their talk of detente in Europe unless they alsotalk of troop cuts. They might decide that, with the G.D.R. con-solidated, the Soviet Union's military and political positions nolonger require as many as the 300,000 or more Soviet troops and800 combat aircraft presently stationed west of the Oder.

Politically, the Kremlin has been able to count upon the con-sistent and outspoken support of East Berlin against polycentrictendencies in the communist movement, whether of the Maoist,West European (especially Italian communist) and East Euro-pean revisionist, or Jugoslav and Rumanian nationalist varieties.In hoth the Warsaw Pact and COMECON, the G.D.R. acts as acentripetal force reinforcing alliance cohesion. What East Ger-man deviations there have been have taken the form of prefer-

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ences for a tighter bilateral relationship with the Soviet Union.Diminished Soviet political and ideological authority in thecommunist world has served to confer a special role upon theG.D.R. as a staunch supporter of Soviet policies.

Over the past decade, too, the G.D.R. has become an increas-ing economic asset to the Soviet Union. Each has long been theother's largest foreign trade partner. East Germany accountingin 1969 for 15.3 percent of total Soviet turnover, while Soviettrade represented 41.2 percent of the G.D.R.'s total. East Ger-many supplies the Soviet Union with high technology outputfrom its specialized industries: machinery, machine tools, preci-sion and optical instruments, and a large variety of chemical andelectronic products. During the past few years it has also beencalled upon to provide investment credits for Russian extractiveindustries. At the same time, because it lacks raw materials, in-cluding coal, iron and petroleum, the G.D.R. constitutes a sig-nificant market for Soviet exports of these items. In certainproduct fields the G.D.R. has set out to develop a symbiotic re-lationship with the Soviet Union. Their 1971-1975 trade agree-ment reflects new patterns of closer integration, notably an ap-parently significant political decision to make the East Germaneconomy more dependent upon Soviet machinery.

These strategic, political and economic advantages make it un-likely indeed that the Soviet Union will dispense with the G.D.R.or willingly see it weakened. The relationship between Moscowand East Berlin is no longer a one-way street, however, theG.D.R. no longer a satellite but a junior partner, at least in Euro-pean matters. The greater mutuality of the relationship opens upopportunities for East German influence in the Kremlin. And thisinfluence is directed toward keeping the territorial, ideologicaland political lines of division in Europe as distinct as possible.To blur them is to undermine the rationale for a G.D.R. separate-ness that must override an underlying bond of common national-ity with West Germans. The instinctive East German approachthus has heen to stress to Moscow the dangers of coexistence andinsist on a rigid doctrinaire stance in dealings with the West,thus reinforcing residual ideological components in Soviet for-eign policy.

As the Soviet-West German treaty of 1970 and the recent Ber-lin agreement suggest, G.D.R. influence in Moscow is not sufli-cient to deter the Kremlin when broader policy considerations

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dictate an emphasis on reconciliation and diminishing tensionsbetween East and West. Neither the treaty, nor the agreement,nor closer relations between Bonn and Moscow are to East Ber-lin's liking. They bring the G.D.R. under new pressures. Greaterstability and greater influence in Moscow, however, put theG.D.R. in a position to mitigate these pressures and to win tan-gible political benefits for East Berlin from the new set of inter-national relationships that now seems to be developing in Europe.

Inclusion of the German Democratic Republic in the Berlinagreement underlines what West Germany's new policy, theG.D.R.'s stability, and Soviet interests have made inevitable. Asearly as 1955, when the Geneva conferences on Germany failedand the Soviet Union thereupon signed a treaty with the G.D.R.affirming its sovereignty, it became clear that Moscow had optedfor two states in Germanya choice which West Germany andits allies have been powerless to alter. Perhaps sensing this. Sec-retary Dulles, who in 1958 contemplated acknowledging theEast German controls on access routes to Berlin, and PresidentKennedy, who was in 1962 and 1963 willing to countenance theirparticipation in a Berlin access authority and their signature onthe nuclear test ban and other arms-control agreements, fore-saw an international role for the G.D.R.

Western statesmen have shrunk from pursuing these lines ofthought too far, however, chiefly because they have feared areaction in West Germany that might undermine its stabilityand its loyalty to the alliance. Perhaps such fears were alwaysexaggerated. In any case, Brandt has been able to carry off hisnew approach toward the G.D.R. without provoking any suchbacklash so far.

The partition of Germanya state of affairs which has beenthe rule not the exception in that country's historyhas since1945 coincided with a high degree of stability in both Germanstates and in the European balance. The present reduced level oftension must cast doubt on previous policy assumptions that thepartition of the country is the cause of tension, that it is neces-sarily unstable and unnatural.

Brandt's government has displayed realism and much politi-cal courage in questioning some of these assumptions and in fac-ing up to the fact of two German states. It recognizes too that the