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AD E NAU E R

Also by Charles Williams

THE LAST GREAT FRENCHMAN: A LIFE OF GENERAL DE GAULLEBRADMAN: AN AUSTRALIAN HERO

AD E NAU E RThe Fat h e r o f t h e New Germany

Charles Williams

JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC.NEW YORK CHICHESTER WEINHEIM BRISBANE SINGAPORE TORONTO

Copyright 2000 by Charles Williams. All rights reserved. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

First published in Great Britain in 2000by Little, Brown & Company

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CO N T E N T S

LI S T O F IL LU S T R AT I O N S viii

PR E FAC E x

PA RT O N E : The Kaiser s Germany

1 CO LO G N E : 1876 3

2 GAU D E A M U S IG I T U R JU V E N E S DU M SU M U S 15

3 TH E EN D O F YO U T H 31

4 TH E LA D D E R O F AM B I T I O N 45

5 A TI M E O F TR AG E DY 60

6 TH E MA NAG E M E N T O F DE F E AT 75

PA RT T WO: Weimar Germany

1 TH E AF T E R M AT H O F WA R 95

2 LI F E HA S TO GO ON 111

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3 TH E RE PA R AT I O N S CR I S I S 126

4 1923 140

5 CO LO G N E IS FR E E ! 157

6 TH E PR I VAT E A N D PU B L I C MAYO R 172

7 DU B I O U S MA N O E U V R E S 186

8 CO N F RO N TAT I O N 203

PA RT T H R E E : Hitler s Germany

1 DE S C E N T I N TO DA R K N E S S 215

2 TH E Y STA RT TO CLO S E IN 229

3 HE NO LO N G E R MAT T E R S 241

4 KE E P I N G OU T O F TRO U B L E 253

5 A QU I E T WA R 266

6 TH E WA R IS OV E R ! 276

PA RT F O U R : Adenauer s Germany

1 SAC K E D B Y T H E BR I T I S H 2932 AN OT H E R PO L I T I C A L B I RT H AN OT H E R

PE R S O NA L DE AT H 307

3 TH E BE G I N N I N G S O F T H E NE W GE R M A N Y 323

4 TH E FE D E R A L CH A N C E L LO R 344

5 BU I L D I N G EU RO P E AN D FAC I N G T H E BE A R 362

6 AT HO M E A N D AT WO R K 380

7 PO L I T I C S I S A N ART NOT A SC I E N C E 392

8 WH E R E DO E S GE R M A N Y STA N D? 410

9 CA N AN YO N E BE TRU S T E D? 424

10 EN T E R T H E GE N E R A L 446

11 KH RU S H C H E V S CH A L L E N G E 465

CO N T E N T S

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12 TH R E AT S A N D CO U N T E R-T H R E AT S 486

13 FRO M TR I U M P H TO DI S M I S S A L 503

14 FI NA L E 524

AC K N OW L E D G E M E N T S 539

SE L E C T BI B L I O G R A P H Y 542

NOT E S 546

IN D E X 570

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CO N T E N T S

LI S T O F IL LU S T R AT I O N S

PIBB: Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung, Bundesbildstelle, BonnStBKAH: Stiftung Bundeskanzler-Adenauer-Haus, Bad Honnef

1. The young schoolboy. [PIBB]2. The first communion. [Archiv/Interfoto]3. The Abitur class of 1894. [StBKAH]4. The law student. [PIBB]5. With Emma in 1902. [StBKAH]6. President Ebert visits Cologne in 1924. [PIBB]7. Hindenburg and Adenauer on presidential visit to Cologne in 1926.

[StBKAH]8. Opening the Mlheim Bridge. [StBKAH]9. Gussi and family. [StBKAH]

10. Adenauers children (and dog) visit Maria Laach. [StBKAH]11. Exile in Berlin. [StBKAH]12. Brigadier Barraclough. [PIBB]13. Adenauers first post-war political speech, 12 May 1946. [StBKAH]14. With Kurt Schumacher and Carlo Schmid. [PIBB]15. . . . with French Foreign Minister Schuman. [StBKAH]16. . . . with President Eisenhower. [AKG Photo]

viii

17. . . . with Secretary of State Dulles. [PIBB]18. Adenauer in Moscow, September 1955. [AKG Photo]19. Khrushchev, Bulganin and Adenauer. Bulganin makes a point.

[PIBB]20. Praying . . . [AKG Photo]21. Tending his roses . . . [Deutsche Presse-Agentur]22. With his dog, Csar . . . [StBKAH]23. Signature of the Treaty of Rome, 1957. [Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung]24. First meeting with de Gaulle, Colombey, September 1958. [Agip/

Interfoto]25. With David Ben-Gurion in New York, 1960. [PIBB]26. Rheims Cathedral, 8 July 1962. [PIBB]27. Adenauer with Kennedy . . . [AKG Photo]28. . . . and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. [AKG Photo]29. De Gaulle and Adenauer embrace after signing the Franco-German

Treaty, 1963. [Popperfoto/Interfoto]30. The Chancellor goes on holiday. [Gerhard Conrad/Westdeutsche Allgemeine

Zeitung]31. Adenauer with his successor, Ludwig Erhard. [AKG Photo]32. Puzzling over his memoirs. [Munker]

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LI S T O F IL LU S T R AT I O N S

PR E FAC E

The story of Adenauers life can best be seen as three stories in one. The firstis the story of a homeland: the land of the Rhine, that ambiguous andmythic river which like Adenauers own life rises in obscurity, gainsstrength and momentum in its course, but ends in doubt and confusion. Thesecond is the story of the emergence of a fourth Germany out of the ship-wreck of the three earlier Germanies through which he lived. The third is thestory of a man who lived a full and occasionally dangerous life, who was dis-liked by many for his complex and difficult character but who, at the end ofhis biblical span, summoned the energy and ambition to bring his countryback into the civilised world from what seemed to be permanent ostracismand into a new Europe based on the recognition of individual freedom, tol-erance and, above all, democracy.

The passage of years and the onward march of events provide another pegon which to hang the triple story. The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989and the subsequent reunification of Germany have brought to light newsources of information from the former Soviet Union and its satellites.Moreover, distance lends its own perspective. It may now be possible to putAdenauers whole life, with its three stories merging into one, into the con-text of history. That he can legitimately be called a great leader is no longerin doubt; but who this difficult man was and why the accolade of greatnessseems appropriate needs to be explored and examined. This I have attemptedto do in this book.

Pant-y-RhiwApril 2000

x

PART ONE

The Kaiser s Germany

1

CO LO G N E : 1876

Die Eindrcke im Elternhaus sind bestimmend fr dasLeben eines Menschen*

KONRAD HERMANN JOSEPH Adenauer was born in 1876, at half-past three inthe morning of Thursday the fifth of January, the eve of the Epiphany, ashe himself might have put it, of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The birth took placeat his parents home in Cologne Balduinstrasse 6, the birth certificaterecords and, although occurring at an obviously inconvenient hour, seemsto have passed without unusual incident. The future Chancellor of theFederal Republic of Germany, his parents third son, accordingly arrived intothis world, admittedly by the light of an oil-lamp and on a cold winter night,in good health and apparently lusty spirits.

It was not until the following day, the feast of the Epiphany itself, that thebabys father, Johann Konrad, made his visit to the official registrar to recordthe birth. No doubt he took time, after absorbing the emotion of the safedelivery of a third son, to go to Mass to celebrate both the event and thefeast in the appropriate manner. Given his intense and unremitting piety, it

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* A mans life is determined by the first impressions received in the home of his parents:Adenauer, quoted in P. Weymar, Konrad Adenauer: Die autorisierte Biographie (Munich, KindlerVerlag, 1955), p. 13.

would have been the natural thing to do. Furthermore, it would not havegiven any offence to the registrar. Catholic feast days, however important inthe Churchs calendar, were not recognised as public holidays by the Prussianadministration of the Rhine Province, and the rich ceremony of the Churchcould be conveniently followed by the more prosaic but equally laborious dealings with the civil authority. It was accepted, with understanding cour-tesy, that the two cultures had to live side by side.

The birth certificate was duly inscribed by the registrar in the Prussianscript, read out to the father, and countersigned by him as a true record, withthe childs names properly spelled out. Konrad Adenauer was by that act for-mally registered as a citizen of Prussia, born of parents of the Catholicreligion as the certificate has it and resident in Cologne. Thus was illus-trated, even at his birth, one of the paradoxes of Adenauers long life: aprofound attachment to his birthplace of Cologne and to its RomanCatholicism coupled with, and on occasions conflicting with, an equally pro-found loyalty to a Germany which included a largely Protestant Prussia.

In fact, the origin of that paradox lies even further back in time. Thetruth is that, whatever their, or his, subsequent pretensions, Adenauers par-ents were themselves of what was known, then as now, as mixed stock. Hisfather, for instance, Johann Konrad Adenauer, the son of a baker fromBonn who had moved to Messdorf (at that time on the outskirts of butnow a suburb of Bonn) when the bakery in Bonn failed financially was bybirth a Catholic Rhinelander. Yet at the age of eighteen he had volunteeredto fight, with apparently every intention of pursuing a military career, for theKing of Prussia. Adenauers mother, Helena Scharfenberg, although claimedlater to be pure Cologne (and indeed she had been born there), was thegranddaughter of an oboist in a regimental band from Bad Sachsa, in theHarz region of Saxony, who had settled in Cologne almost by accident.Furthermore, her father, August Scharfenberg, was a Protestant, andalthough he married a good Catholic shopkeepers daughter from Bonnthere was no disguising the fact that their daughter was the product of amixed religious marriage not at all the native of the Rhineland that herson later claimed.1

True, Johann Konrads progress in the Prussian Army was far fromremarkable. He spent fifteen years in relatively undistinguished service, risingto the rank of Warrant Officer in the 7th Westphalian Infantry Regiment atthe time of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. The high point was at the

TH E KA I S E R S GE R M A N Y

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