GERMANY IN THE POST-WAR WORLD

[This is the fourth of six articles I am writing on the respective positions of Britain, the US, France, Germany, Russia and China in the Post-War World]

1945-49 Allied Control Commission

Chancellors of the Federal Republic of Germany

1949-63 Konrad Adenauer   1974-82 Helmut Schmidt

1963-66 Ludwig Erhard       1982- 98 Helmut Kohl 

1966-69 Kurt Kiesinger        1998 – 2005 Gerhard Schroeder

1969-74 Willy Brandt           2005 -      Angela Merkel

Leaders of the German Democratic Republic

1949-50 Wilhelm Pieck          1973-89 Erich Honecker       

1950-73 Walter Ulbricht        1989      Egon Krenz

Germany in Defeat

In May 1945 Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. She was leaderless, her economy had ceased to function, her cities had been devastated, hunger was widespread and she was occupied by foreign armies whose attitude towards the native German population was at best unsympathetic and at worst brutally vengeful. Divided into 4 zones, British in the North, US in the South, Soviet in the East and a rather nominal French zone in the West, Germany was run by a Control Commission established by the 3-power Potsdam Conference (France excluded) of July-August 1945.

Cologne in 1945

Germany lost 25% of its territory – East and West Prussia, Upper Silesia and two-thirds of Pomerania including the great historic cities of Koenigsberg, Danzig and Breslau - as the Polish and Soviet borders moved sharply west. About 4m Germans fled from these areas and entered East Germany, many soon to defect to the less desolate West.

A further 3-4m ethnic Germans (the statistics are controversial) left Eastern Europe in 1945-50 where they had lived in scattered pockets for many generations, especially Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia, others from Poland, Hungary, Romania and Croatia. Most were brutally uprooted, often the elderly, women and children carrying the war-guilt of the Nazis. At least 500,000 died during this period of local atrocity and forced repatriation while others were traumatised.

The Germans had become pariahs in their own country. The American Army initially had a strict non-fraternisation policy forbidding any but official conversations with the natives. An early policy, known as the Morgenthau Plan, proposed the “pastoralisation” of Germany, dismantling its heavy industries and concentrating on agriculture. In the Russian zone, wholesale industrial dismantling took place in the name of reparations as plant was shipped to the USSR. Some food aid was delivered but priority was given to “displaced persons”- refugee Poles, Jews and others – with Germans at the end of a long queue. The misery was made worse by a severe winter in 1946-7, with fuel unobtainable by civilians, the Reichsmark currency worthless and US cigarettes being the key bartering commodity.

Seeds of Revival

Before the future could be built, the past had to be faced. Belsen had been liberated by the British, Dachau by the Americans, Auschwitz by the Soviets. Inevitably feelings ran high against the Germans. The main Nuremberg Trial of 1945-6, illuminated by the eloquence of US prosecutor Robert Jackson and the penetrating cross-examinations of Briton Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, resulted in the death sentence for 12 leading surviving Nazis, long prison sentences for 7 more and acquittal for 3. The US continued with further tribunals until 1949, convicting lesser figures while a de-Nazification programme was applied throughout West Germany until 1951, seeking past political details of all citizens. In time, some kind of a line was drawn under the Nazi era, although inevitably most people had been compromised in some way.

The Western Allies perceived that they were under threat from the Soviets. It was not in their interest that Germany should remain a burden – a functioning German economy became a priority and all thoughts of de-industrialising Germany were dropped. The 3 Western zones were united under a common Allied regime and in 1948 a new currency was introduced, the D-Mark replacing the discredited Reichsmark. This angered the Soviets, who used it as a pretext to withdraw from the Control Commission and blockade Berlin. The famous Anglo-American Berlin Airlift of 1948-9 defied the Soviets and heartened the Germans. The Cold War had begun.

German local government was allowed to function and among the more capable and clean politicians was the ex-mayor of Cologne Konrad Adenauer. Soon after the Airlift, West Germany (the FRG), with its capital at Bonn, was created although extensive Allied controls remained. In free elections Adenauer’s CDU party won and the 73 year-old Adenauer became her first Chancellor. In the East the Russians created the GDR, a Soviet satellite state, effectively run by the communist party leader Walter Ulbricht, with its capital in East Berlin.

 Recovery

The creation of East and West Germany was seen in Bonn as a temporary arrangement pending a proper re-unification. The Basic Law (Grundgesetz) set out the machinery of the FRG government but it was never called “a Constitution” as that would imply a permanent arrangement. The FRG did not recognise the GDR and promulgated the Hallstein Doctrine whereby it would not recognise any other country (apart from the USSR) which did. This effectively isolated East Germany and the policy lasted until 1969. Labour unrest in East Berlin resulted in rioting in June 1953, harshly repressed by Soviet troops and persecution by the all-pervading Stasi secret police, greatly damaging the international image of East Germany.

Konrad Adenauer

From 1949 onwards, the German economy took off with an astonishing average 8% annual growth rate in the 1950s and a very creditable 4.6% in the 1960s. Germany had a number of positive advantages. Despite Allied bombing only 6% of plant had been destroyed: most of the remaining 94% was less than 10 years old. A reservoir of skilled labour existed as up to 1961 some 3m East Germans fled to the West. Anyhow labour relations were good leading to the early settlement of disputes, unlike strike-bound Britain and France. The economy benefited from Marshall Aid but the main stimulus was Western rearmament following the outbreak of the Korean War, where German engineering expertise and spare capacity were at a premium.  Germany’s own defence budget was modest, only being allowed to form the Bundeswehr in 1955 when it also joined NATO. Unlike Britain and France, Germany had no onerous and expensive colonial obligations.

Adenauer entrusted economic matters to Ludwig Erhard who had courageously abolished price controls in 1948; he diligently steered the growth of Germany for 14 years and got much of the credit for the Wirtschaftswunder (the economic miracle). Erhard was a believer in free markets and worried about the expense of welfare legislation, but ultimately supported it.

Germany and European cooperation

Adenauer wanted Germany to be re-admitted to the family of democratic nations. When France proposed the pooling of the iron and steel resources of France, Germany, Italy and Benelux, he readily joined the European Iron and Steel Community in 1950, a forerunner of the EEC. The underlying agenda was French fear of Germany’s powerful industries on the Ruhr. An ambitious French proposal in 1951 for a European Defence Community was finally voted down by the French Assembly of a different political complexion in 1954. A huge step forward was made in 1957 when the seminal Treaty of Rome was signed establishing the EEC with Germany a founder member.

In the early 1950s Germany made overtures to the new State of Israel, recognized its right to represent the victims of the Holocaust and paid out large reparations. Bi-lateral agreements with other nations saw Germany try to make some amends for the past. With its long borders to the East, Germany was seen as the potential battleground of any conventional war with the Soviet bloc. She became a key member of NATO, contributing financially for years to the deployment on her soil of large US forces and the British Army of the Rhine. Although the West did little to assist the Hungarians when they revolted in 1956, the military threat from the Soviets in Europe receded as Khrushchev embraced a policy of “peaceful coexistence”.

While the border between West and East Germany was closely guarded, 4-power Berlin was a loophole and finally, to stabilise its limping economy, the GDR erected the notorious Berlin Wall in 1961 to stop its haemorrhage of skilled workers. It cruelly divided families and became a symbol of the repressive communist regime.

The Brandenburg Gate after the Building of the Wall

Adenauer continued to act as the good European, striking up a good relationship with de Gaulle and deferring to French diplomatic and administrative expertise, although the German economy was now much the stronger. Having won 4 consecutive terms in office Der Alte was reluctantly persuaded to retire in 1963 at the ripe old age of 87. He had served his country with great distinction.

 Life in Germany

The early post-war years were mainly devoted to grim survival; it is not surprising that “a German comedian” is almost a contradiction in terms. Germany was always proud of her culture, much of it high-minded. As early as 1946, novelist Hermann Hesse was awarded the Nobel Prize. Best known for Steppenwolf, Hesse’s wide popularity was largely posthumous. Heinrich Boll and Gunter Grass (The Tin Drum) were admired too, although not much known outside the German-speaking world.

Bertolt Brecht had completed his main dramas by 1945 but his Berliner Ensemble touring company electrified the theatre. His The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui was written in 1941 but only first produced in 1957, most strikingly at the TNP in Paris in 1961 with Jean Vilar in the lead role. Music retained its hold as ever with the distinguished tenures of Herbert von Karajan and Sir Simon Rattle at the Berlin Philharmonic. Otto Klemperer heavily illuminated the profundities of Beethoven. Lovers of modern music could enjoy the atonal offerings of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Hans Zimmer followed in the steps of Erich Korngold composing rousing film and TV music while the late-developing German pop scene spawned Tangerine Dream’s electronic innovations and a genre known as Krautrock.

The German cinema appealed to an art-house audience although Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God, shot in Peru, won international interest. Prolific directors Rainer Fassbinder and Wim Winders are representative figures. German pulchritude was demonstrated by Romy Schneider in her 1955 Sissy trilogy, by smouldering Elke Sommer, by the singing and dancing Kessler Twins but most of all by lovely, bubbly model Claudia Schiffer whose face adorned every magazine front page.

Claudia Schiffer - a German Treasure

Sport remains an obsession with West German World Cup football success in 1954, 1974 and 1990 being high-spots. East Germany performed surprisingly well in Olympic athletics, later exposed as fuelled by illegal steroids, although beautiful Katerina Witt won two figure skating Golds by fair competition. Record-breaking Michael Schumacher brilliantly dominated Formula One motor-racing from 1994 to 2006.

From the mid-1950s onwards West Germany was a pre-eminent consumer society with its citizens spending lavishly on every modern gadget, eating and drinking well, buying fine cars and taking Mediterranean holidays. The economically mismanaged East lagged far behind; while it may have been the richest Eastern bloc state, that is not saying much.

Post-Adenauer Germany

Germany started to change. The building of the Wall cut off a vital supply of labour and the Guest Worker (Gastarbeiter) programme was initiated attracting many supposedly temporary single workers from Spain, Italy, Greece and above all from Turkey. Inevitably many took their families and settled – mosques, kebab houses and exotic restaurants proliferated.

The CDU political dominance faded and in 1969 Willy Brandt became the first Social Democratic Chancellor. He introduced a policy known as Ostpolitik, easing relations and freeing trade with East Germany and recognising the Eastern bloc countries. The danger of conceding de facto acceptance of partition was recognised but Eastern Europe perceptibly melted with much freer travel and communication.

Gradually the conventional Allied military presence in Germany was scaled down as ICBMs became the most likely weapon of war; any residual fear of German revanchism diminished when the loss of the old eastern territories to Poland was formally acknowledged in 1990.

As West Germany settled down to a prosperous bourgeois existence, under the long and successful chancellorships of Helmut Schmidt and Helmut Kohl, she was plagued from 1970-98 by the activities of the Red Army Faction (originally the Baader-Meinhof Gang). These extremists represented the Anarchist-Marxist viewpoint, hating the West German state as the heir of Fascism, murdering 34 people, some prominent bankers and businessmen, and in 1977 cooperating with Arab terrorists in a hi-jacking ending bloodily in Mogadishu, Somalia. There were three waves of activity; many of the protagonists committed suicide in prison. The RAF finally dissolved itself in 1998 after much mayhem.

Re-unification

In the 1980s the Russian economy was in trouble, unable to compete with NATO in the ruinously expensive arms race. Mikhail Gorbachev was the prophet of change and put pressure on old-time Stalinist Erich Honecker to stand down; Honecker refused and Gorbachev left East Germany to its fate. When Hungary opened its borders to the West in 1989, a flood of East Germans set out for freedom. Unable to contain the situation in Berlin, the Wall was breached and joy was unconfined as at last Germans could intermingle without restriction. Free elections followed in 1990, the East German state was dissolved and absorbed into the West under the Basic Law, with no new constitution deemed necessary. A series of treaties finally recognised the full sovereignty of Germany, residual Allied powers in Berlin ended and the 1945 borders of Germany were confirmed. Communist regimes collapsed in the East and finally the USSR itself disintegrated in 1991. This victory in the Cold War was a triumph for the West in which the FRG had played a notable part.

Joy at the Fall of the Wall 1989

Rebuilding and absorbing East Germany has proved an expensive process and 20 years later there still exists a significant gap in living standards between the old two Germanies; there are differences in attitudes too with the Ossies thought less enterprising and more welfare dependent, if less acquisitive.

The Euro crisis and German dominance

The Economic Crisis from 2007 placed an unwelcome burden on Germany. As the richest state in the Eurozone by some margin, she was crucial to any agreement on assistance for struggling members. By 2009 Greece was in dire trouble, revealing her mismanagement and past doctored statistics; her remedies were feebly incompetent. The European Union leaders in Brussels, van Rompuy, Barroso, Juncker and Rehn were ineffective and slow and the ECB unhelpful. It took Chancellor Angela Merkel to knock EU/IMF rescue packages into shape for Greece (twice), Portugal and Ireland and to push forward measures to assist Spain and Italy.

Angela Merkel, daughter of a Lutheran pastor in East Germany, is a highly capable politician but possibly lacks any appreciation of the merits, but is well aware of the shortcomings, of Mediterranean Europe. Along with her Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble, she has been rather self-righteous in her criticism and looks upon the solidarity of the Eurozone as a sacred cause, in the face of ample evidence that Greece at least must manage her own exit.

The countries of the Mediterranean periphery easily blame Germany for their self-inflicted troubles and Germany is uncomfortable being at the centre of affairs; the establishment of German hegemony over Europe is an unwanted, unplanned but perhaps inevitable outcome.

The Future

Germany has atoned for the grievous horrors of the past. She is democratic, generous and highly prosperous. Her people have admirable qualities and she carries an enviable artistic and cultural heritage. She has yet to demonstrate universally recognised political leadership abilities and this is the challenge facing re-united Germany.

Schauble and Merkel plan the Future

SMD

15.09.12

Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2012.

GOOD FOR A LAUGH

It is a cliché that Humour, like some fine wines, does not always travel well. We British fall about laughing at the mere sight of Sid James, Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey of the Carry On team and laugh immoderately at lines uttered by Kenneth Williams’ stabbed Caesar – “Infamy, Infamy, they all have it in for me!” Yes, quite. It would not be surprising if foreigners sit stony-faced through such entertainments, (there were 31 Carry On movies), just as we do not much care for the US’ dire Animal House or Police Academy, weary chapters 1 to 6. As for the French, they had their ribs tickled by leaden Fernandel and, Sacre Bleu, have you ever endured a Louis de Funes comedy at which the French laugh like a drain, comme une descente d’eau as they (probably don’t) say?

A stricken Kenneth Williams as Caesar

Written humour is no doubt equally insular but I would like to celebrate two heroic English maestros, Arthur Marshall and PG Wodehouse.

Arthur Marshall (1910-89) was stage-struck as a child in Barnes and attended many a West End theatrical matinee and to his retrospective horror gave “concerts” to his parents’ friends. He was sent to go-ahead Oundle public school in Northamptonshire, whence to Cambridge, reading languages. He returned to Oundle as a schoolmaster and, apart from the war years, was there until 1954. He evinced a profound knowledge of schoolgirl literature (Angela Brazil a speciality) and broadcast on the radio as a comic Nurse Dugdale gaining a modest popularity. His circle of friends was notably theatrical, many of them, like himself, “wonky” gentlemen, to use his own phrase – names like Terence Rattigan, Somerset Maugham, John Gielgud, supplemented by Maurice Bowra and Guy Burgess give you a flavour.

During the war, Arthur was in the Intelligence Corps and so hilarious a raconteur was he that it is said that his section of the beach at Dunkirk was the only one to echo with laughter. He was charged with guarding captured Keitel and Jodl in 1945, so impeccable in their uniforms and batons in contrast to Arthur’s sloppy informality, that he wondered how on earth we had won the war.

He returned to Oundle where a banking colleague of mine recalled his jokey ways teaching Frog irregular verbs and left to work for Lord Rothschild, moving on to read and vet plays submitted to his friend Binkie Beaumont, the theatrical impresario. Arthur meanwhile wrote hilarious columns first for The New Statesman (sacked for expressing admiration for Mrs Thatcher) and then for The Spectator. A wider audience got to know him as a chubby good-natured presence on the TV game show Call My Bluff.

Arthur Marshall

An Arthur Marshall column jumped around an amazing variety of subjects from Queen Victoria’s oddities, the limitations of British railways, the bon mots of famous actors, Dame Edna unbridled, horoscopes, the Table of Kindred in the Prayer Book, Tennyson’s Maud, bird-song, Dr Crippen, gifts to the Royal Family, foot fetishism, saucy postcards, the Old Testament, ghosts, London taxi-drivers, peculiar names, visits to the dentist, Dame Edith Evans and learning the facts of life, to name but a few.

All these matters were handled with the lightest touch and gems of humour extracted. Arthur is invariably cheerful and his sunny disposition bucks me up immeasurably; I often take one of his volumes to get me through the longeurs of the queue at the Athens bank or the wait at the café while my lovely wife indulges in some retail therapy. His short pieces of about 1500 words are miracles of conciseness and I would give my eye-teeth to write half as well. They are published in collections I Say!, Smile Please, I’ll let you Know, Sunny Side Up, and I also enjoy his autobiography Life’s Rich Pageant.

Arthur Marshall rejoiced in his frivolity; he was truly one of England’s humorous glories.

P G Wodehouse (1881-1975) was a more famous name, writing solidly from 1902 onwards, author of 96 books and lyricist for 30 musical comedies. He lived in England and the USA and also in France. His best years were the inter-war ones but in 1941 he made a foolish comic broadcast after release from German internment, deemed to be collaborationist; he was harshly criticised and never returned to Britain. He continued to write in the US and was long exonerated, being knighted belatedly just before he died.

P G Wodehouse

Wodehouse, known as Plum, once almost got me into very hot water. With my Greek wife and two young sons, we were visiting Athens in 1975 and staying with an aunt and her 2^nd husband. After a few days, the uncle suddenly and sadly died of a heart attack casting a dark pall over proceedings. Following the custom in Greece, the funeral was the next day and an open-coffin Wake for friends and relatives soon took place in the downstairs reception rooms with much weeping and wailing. I was excused this duty and was delegated to look after my two boys then aged 4 and 5 in the study and bedrooms upstairs. The boys were angelic but this is where Plum comes in. The aunt’s 1^st husband was English and some of his books were in the office, among which sat Meet Mr Mulliner and, already a PG fan, I fatally began to read the first story called The Truth about George. It is one of Plum’s best.

- George Mulliner, of independent means, lived in the country and his great pleasure was solving crossword puzzles with the vicar’s daughter Susan “the first girl in Salop to know the meaning of stearine and crepuscular”. Unfortunately he was afflicted by a bad stutter and becoming enamoured with Susan, every time he attempted to express his regard he sounded “like a soda siphon trying to recite Gunga Din”. He decided to take the train to London and consult a Harley Street specialist “a kind man with moth-eaten whiskers and the eyes of a meditative cod-fish” Unable to speak he was advised by the specialist to explain by singing and he launched into “I love a Lassie” supplemented by a tuneless “If you knew Susie” after which the wincing specialist preferred him to write down his requests.

The specialist diagnosed shyness as the problem and told George to engage three strangers a day in conversation after which the shyness and stutter would disappear. Then “in a voice of the clearest timbre, free from all trace of impediment” he requested 5 guineas from George and sent him out into the world. George did not care for the advice but with the courage of the Mulliners pressed on. He took the train home and when a large fierce-looking man entered his compartment he sought to enter into conversation with him. However his visitor anticipated him by saying “The wur-wur-wur-wur weather sus-sus seems to be ter-ter taking a tur-tur turn for the ber-ber better, der-der doesn’t it?” George realised that to answer his choleric visitor with “Y-y-y-y-y-yes” would obviously be madness, and with presence of mind he pointed to his tonsils and feigned dumbness. He sank back into his corner, “quivering in every limb”

Having to change trains for the branch line, he strolled down the empty platform, not far from the County Lunatic Asylum, to be accosted by a distinguished-looking stranger “simply dressed in pyjamas, brown boots and a mackintosh”. Informing George that he was the Emperor of Abyssinia, there followed an alarming conversation on the merits of human sacrifice. George pushed the Emperor into a dark mop-and-lamp room and fled, hiding under the seat of his waiting branch line train. He saw feminine ankles and heard a porter report that someone had escaped from the Asylum.

The train set off and George slowly edged out of his hiding-place while the lady passenger read her paper. Seeking to engage her in conversation as ordered, he cleared his throat, smiling winningly. The lady, believing herself to be quite alone was “a little in the position of Robinson Crusoe when he saw the footprint in the sand” and “regarded him with pale-faced horror”. Her eyes were now “the size of regulation-standard golf balls” George wanted to ask her to join him in a cup of tea from the thermos in his case but could only manage “a sizzling sound like a cockroach calling to its young”. A brainwave saw George singing instead “Tea for Two”, but at this his companion, certain she was in the company of the escaped lunatic, closed her eyes, her lips moving feebly “reminding George of a newly-gaffed salmon”.

George awaited her recovery and meanwhile drank tea from his thermos. The train ran over some points and the thermos was jolted off the seat and exploded noisily. The lady “with a single piercing shriek, rose straight into the air like a rocketing pheasant; having clutched the communication cord, she fell back into her seat.” At this juncture George fled the stationary train and sprinted for home pursued by an angry mob of rustics. He outran them and after downing a reviving whisky and soda, found Susan in his cottage studying his dictionary of synonyms. He explained that he was suffering from “extreme fatigue, weariness, lassitude and languor” and suddenly realised he was no longer a stammerer. He proposed to her in eloquently orotund terms: “Love” he declaims, “Like the topmost topaz of an ancient tower, cries to all the world in a voice of thunder – you are mine!” Susan of course accepts passionately but George has to excuse himself to hide from the mob in the coal-cellar for half an hour. But the pair are happily united. –

On reading this lunatic tale, my two young sons were bemused to see me, face empurpled, eyes popping, stuffing handkerchiefs into my mouth to suppress the peals of laughter that would otherwise have emanated from me, but wholly inappropriate in the sombre house that day. When I am feeling blue, I still read Plum’s story as the perfect restorative.

Wodehouse probably made more readers laugh than any other writer. His fans were legion and included Belloc, Kipling and Evelyn Waugh. Meet Mr Mulliner was dedicated to former prime minister and another fan H H Asquith, (Asquith must have been a fun person; my grandfather, a dancing-teacher, instructed him in the fashionable dance the Black Bottom, while Asquith holidayed in Scotland in about 1926!).

Wodehouse created his own mythical world of idle rich at the Drones Club, men about town like Bertie Wooster and his inimitable valet Jeeves, Lord Emsworth obsessed by his prize pig at Blandings Castle, a series of formidable aunts, the butler Beach, Uncle Fred, wonderful golfing stories and his earlier tales of Psmith and Ukridge.

To be taken out of this difficult real world and into the innocent, gentlemanly and hilarious world of Wodehouse is a privilege indeed. My gratitude to and admiration of PG Wodehouse is boundless.

SMD

5.09.2012

Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2012

FRANCE IN THE POST-WAR WORLD

[This is the third of six articles I am writing about the respective positions of Britain, the US, France, Germany, Russia and China in the Post-War world]

1944-46  Provisional Government of France. Chairmen: Charles de Gaulle, Felix Gouin, Georges Bidault, Leon Blum.

1946-58 The 4^th Republic: Premiers (often more than once): Ramadier, Schuman, Marie, Queuille, Bidault, Pleven, Faure, Pinay, Mayer, Laurel, Mendes-France, Mollet, Bourges-Manoury, Gaillard, Pflimlin, and de Gaulle. 

1958 – The 5^th Republic: Presidents:

1958-69 Charles de Gaulle                1995-2007 Jacques Chirac

1969-74 Georges Pompidou              2007 -12 Nicolas Sarkozy

1974-81 Valery Giscard d’Estaing    2012-      Francois Hollande

1981-95 Francois Mitterrand

De Gaulle on the Champs-Elysees July 1944

All my life I have thought of France in a certain way. This is inspired by sentiment as much as by reason. The emotional side of me tends to imagine France, like the princess in the fairy stories or the Madonna in the frescoes, as dedicated to an exalted and exceptional destiny. Instinctively I have the feeling that Providence has created her either for complete success or for exemplary misfortunes. If in spite of this, mediocrity shows in her acts and deeds, it strikes me as an absurd anomaly, to be imputed to the faults of Frenchmen, not to the genius of the land. But the positive side of my mind also assures me that France is nor really herself unless she is in the front rank; that only vast enterprises are capable of counter-balancing the ferments of disintegration inherent in her people; that our country, as it is, surrounded by the others, as they are, must aim high and hold itself straight on pain of mortal danger. In short, to my mind, France cannot be France without greatness.

…..I did not question that France would have to go through gigantic trials, that the interest of life consisted in one day rendering her some signal service, and that I would have the occasion to do so.

This famous opening passage from de Gaulle’s first volume of memoirs (The Call to Honour, 1955) eloquently sets out his mystic vision of France, which was to inspire his countrymen and exasperate his allies throughout his illustrious and long career. The history of France since 1945 can be seen as moving from an unhappy prelude to the return of de Gaulle, de Gaulle’s own decisive presidency and the lengthy Gaullist aftermath, although entirely new currents eventually appeared.

France in 1945 was in a sorry state. Its wartime military performance had been markedly wet with Occupation following defeat and the collaborationist Vichy regime of Petain becoming initially very popular. De Gaulle rallied the Free French, whose military significance was negligible but de Gaulle consistently claimed he alone represented the real France and insisted that no other power could encroach upon the French empire. Touchy and difficult, de Gaulle particularly alienated Roosevelt and even the often supportive Churchill complained “In this war I bear many crosses, but the heaviest is the Cross of Lorraine”. Liberation put de Gaulle at the head of his nation in 1944 but the tide was moving leftwards and he disagreed with the proposed new constitution, embodying in his eyes the dominance of parties, which had frustrated the 3^rd Republic. De Gaulle’s own party failed to make much electoral impression and he temporarily retired from the fray in May 1953.

The 4^th Republic

The 4^th Republic was unstable in the sense that there were 20 administrations and 16 premiers, but there were achievements. Welfare legislation, at least as radical as that in Britain, gave much needed security to the people. Through the vision of Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet, the European Iron and Steel Community of 1950 laid the foundation of cooperation between France, Germany, Benelux and Italy. This resulted in the Treaty of Rome of 1957 and the creation of the six-nation EEC. The French economy steadily revived guided by a far-sighted civil service, applying the statist policy of dirigisme. Society was sharply divided with a strong Communist party and a flurry of right-wing extremism bringing successes for the xenophobic shop-keeper dominated Poujadists.

The politicians failed to agree on decolonisation, notably in Indochina and Algeria, and this proved to be the Achilles heel of the 4^th Republic. The war in Indochina stretched wearily from 1945 to 1954 (90,000 French casualties) with the Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh eventually defeating the French after their redoubt at Dien Bien Phu fell after a long siege to General Giap. The war was very unpopular in France, with the French Left particularly scathing, and energetic premier Pierre Mendes-France organised French withdrawal.

But Algeria was an even harder nut to crack. 1m French settlers there (the pieds noirs) were determined to remain part of France and a fierce war against the FLN insurrectionists got underway in 1954. The French Army supported l’Algerie Francaise and its methods were harsh and sometimes brutal. The political elite in Paris knew that holding onto Algeria was an unlikely outcome but were unable to lead public opinion. In 1958 the Army revolted, orchestrated by de Gaulle’s wartime colleague and former governor of Algeria Jacques Soustelle, demanding the return of the General. De Gaulle became premier with emergency powers, signalling the end of the 4^th Republic.

Early days of the 5^th Republic

De Gaulle as the Elder Statesman

A new constitution was drafted largely by Michel Debre who became de Gaulle’s first premier. The President, (originally elected for a 7 year term, later 5) controlled foreign affairs and defence while the premier ran domestic affairs through the elected National Assembly. The constitution, which has proved durable, was approved by referendum and de Gaulle overwhelmingly elected the first President.

In July 1958 de Gaulle had enigmatically told a wildly enthusiastic crowd of pieds noirs in Algiers that “Je vous ai compris”. He probably well understood their views but did not agree with them. Before long de Gaulle authorised talks with the FNL and, despite terrorism and several attempted coups in Algiers, they resulted in a ceasefire and the 1962 Evian Accords, recognising the independence of Algeria. Embittered pieds noirs fled to France and de Gaulle escaped assassination attempts organised by the OAS, associated with Generals Salan and Challe and one-time ally Jacques Soustelle. Basically however the Algerian boil had been lanced. The estimated French death toll of 27,000 was much less than in Indo-China but the prospects of the pieds noirs in Metropolitan France were sadly dim.

 

Francophone Africa was granted independence and the decolonisation era was ended. Georges Pompidou became de Gaulle’s premier and concentrated on the modernisation of France’s economic infrastructure and the beautification of Paris. De Gaulle established good relations with Chancellor Adenauer of Germany, and in a characteristically anti-Anglo-Saxon but perhaps perceptive move, vetoed British entry to the EEC twice in 1962 and 1967. His high-handed ways were also evident when he implicitly backed separatist terrorists in Canada as he cried “Vive le Quebec libre!” in Montreal in 1967.  He insisted on building up a French nuclear force de frappe and in an anti-American gesture withdrew France from NATO’s military command structure in 1966.

De Gaulle’s ultra-nationalism and his politics of Grandeur were outdated and he was almost toppled by the younger generation when Paris exploded in student and trades union revolt in 1968. He survived but resigned in 1969 after losing a constitutional referendum. De Gaulle was a great patriot who ultimately brought stability and prosperity to his country. He had rendered fully that “signal service” foretold in his Memoirs.

Life in France 1945-2012

Thankfully life is not all politics. France reverted to its fine traditions of good food, rural beauty and profound intellectuality. In due course material prosperity spread widely and France overtook Britain economically in the late 1960s. Paris was surrounded by new shopping centres, a network of broad autoroutes was constructed, and historic sites were lavishly restored. Its motor and aircraft industries flourished, at least in good times. Women had been fully emancipated and French society was tolerant.

In literature Sartre and de Beauvoir bored with their leftist bromides and promising fellow-activist Albert Camus died prematurely in 1960 “extinct in his refulgent prime” as Shelley would have said. In 1972, tortured novelist and playwright Henri de Montherlant, whose masterly dramas Le Maitre de Santiago and Le Cardinal d’Espagne had stimulated Paris, entertained his friends for lunch but, going blind, then shot himself, “asserting to the end his proud independence” in the words of Malraux. Jean Vilar and Georges Wilson held theatrical court at the TNP. Popular novelist Colette came to the end of her career passing on the baton to much-read but drug-blighted Francoise Sagan. The music hall resounded again to the charm of Maurice Chevalier and Georges Guetary and Edith Piaf delighted France with her dramatic concerts at the Olympia.

Edith Piaf in 1962

The cinema remained a French passion and although they laughed (nobody else did) at the post-war comedies of Fernandel, a more discerning audience enjoyed Truffaut’s Jules et Jim, Tirez sur le Pianiste and Les 400 Coups. New Wave leader Jean-Luc Godard directed Breathless and Alain Resnais mystified us with Last Year in Marienbad. More popularly, Brigitte Bardot revealed her pert bottom and much else in Vadim’s And God created Woman, one of many French sirens ranging from Martine Carol to Catherine Deneuve. Even France could not resist the pop world and in time a cult grew around Johnny Hallyday, the French Elvis.

The perils of US economic dominance were described in Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber’s 1967 Le Defi Americain, which became an international best-seller and a Gaullist handbook. Academic France was irrepressible, profound if sometimes obscure, with the Structuralism of ethnologist Claude Levi-Strauss greatly influential; his La Pensee Sauvage appeared in 1962.  Further contributions came from philosopher Michel Foucault and sage critic Roland Barthes. The intellectual credentials of France remained formidable.

The 5^th Republic from 1969 Onward

De Gaulle’s departure ushered in a succession of very capable presidents. Georges Pompidou was a cultivated moderniser, who facilitated Britain’s accession to the EEC, while haughty Valery Giscard d’Estaing sought to widen French influence in the world, notably in Africa. Both supported an ambitious and successful nuclear energy programme. Enigmatic Francois Mitterrand united the Left, although his own political allegiance remained unclear. 14 years president, he was a consummate politician, outmanoeuvring the communists, whose vote nose-dived, and coping easily with two periods of co-habitation with a Gaullist National Assembly and premier.

Just as de Gaulle had befriended Adenauer, Mitterrand had a close working relationship with Helmut Kohl. France and Germany were close and France was flattered by Germany deferring to French diplomatic and administrative skills; an alliance of equals was the façade but Germany was much stronger economically and the gap was growing. They both had to deal with a resurgent Britain and her doughty champion Margaret Thatcher, not slow to express her opposition to remorseless EU integration.

His successor Jacques Chirac was president for 12 years but he was already widely experienced as deputy, cabinet minister, mayor of Paris and premier. A vigorous type, known as Le Bulldozer, he got things done including an extensive programme of privatisation, though he swung between free market policy and dirigisme. His career had been controversial and he was convicted of embezzlement, after he left the presidency, for actions as mayor of Paris. In foreign affairs he earned the enmity of the US and Britain for threatening to veto a UN resolution consenting to intervention in Iraq in 2002, saying, maybe correctly, that Saddam Hussein did not pose an international danger, however obnoxious he might be internally.

Nicolas Sarkozy had the misfortune to be president during the Economic Crisis, starting in 2007, worsening in 2008 and spreading to the Eurozone in 2009. There was little Sarkozy could do to arrest the global depression and all governments then in office suffered. France was evidently the junior partner to Germany in the crisis with Chancellor Merkel calling the shots from Berlin. France showed itself a vigorous and committed NATO ally to the US and Britain (Germany notably absent) when assistance was given to the rebels in Libya, eventually overthrowing the fetid regime of Gaddafi. There was however a petulantly vain side of Sarkozy which did not match the dignity of his office.

Mild-mannered Francois Hollande is in the first year of his presidency as the standard-bearer of the Left and has yet to make an impression. He was second choice after the much more charismatic Dominique Strauss-Kahn, whose scandalous private life led to his downfall.

Sarkozy hands over to Hollande 2012

The Future

France, like Britain, is a highly respected power of the second rank. Rightly proud of her history and individuality she finds pressure from Brussels for ever closer union unsettling even though she understands the logic, as the French mind does. It may be that the EU needs to step back a little from integration, even to manage a break-up of the euro project, to allow public opinion to catch up – reculer pour mieux sauter.

The French values of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity are her priceless gifts to the world.

SMD

3.09.2012

Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2012

THE US IN THE POST-WAR WORLD

[This is the second of six articles I am writing on the respective positions of Britain, the US, France, Germany, Russia and China in the post-war world]

Presidents:

1945-53 Harry S Truman                    1977-81 Jimmy Carter

1953-61 Dwight D Eisenhower           1981-89 Ronald Reagan

1961-63 John F Kennedy                    1989-93 George Bush

1963-69 Lyndon B Johnson                1993-2001 Bill Clinton

1969-74 Richard M Nixon                  2001-09 George W Bush

1974-77 Gerald Ford                          2009-     Barack Obama

The US was the overwhelming victor of the Second World War. Although she had spent enormous sums of money equipping herself and her Allies and had suffered heavy casualties (405,000 dead), her homeland and civilians were untouched, her industries were operating at full capacity and her huge armed forces were victorious in Europe and the Pacific. Franklin Roosevelt, the inspiring leader since 1933, died in office in April 1945 just before the German surrender in May and his successor vice-President Harry Truman took the fateful decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 ending Japanese resistance. The Nuclear Age had dawned and the US maintained global dominance for the next 25 years.

Early Post-War Years

Harry S Truman

Dean Acheson

There was inevitably a period of confusion as millions of soldiers returned to civilian life and industries once geared up for war production changed to manufacturing other much-desired items. Generous schemes were established to assist GIs re-integrate, but there were shortages of materials and many strikes – union power was curbed by the Taft –Hartley Act of 1947, passed over Truman’s veto. Against the expectations of pundits, Truman won re-election in 1948 and surrounded by a competent New Deal team later including Dean Acheson, headed a successful presidency. He took the risk of alienating Southern Democrats by ordering the desegregation of the armed forces, which took some years to take full effect.

Foreign affairs were an urgent priority. Europe was prostrate but the US responded generously with the Marshall Plan greatly helping reconstruction in Western Europe.  The Iron Curtain divided Europe into Allied and Soviet spheres, with partitioned Berlin an isolated island. The Soviets blockaded Berlin in 1948-49 but an Anglo-American airlift lasting 10 months triumphantly defied this pressure. Immediate recognition of the State of Israel in 1948, despite State Department misgivings, upset the Arab world but was electorally popular. NATO was established in 1949, underlining the US commitment to Europe; West and East Germany were created. In 1949, the Soviets showed they were rapidly catching up in the arms race by exploding their first atom-bomb.

In Asia, Japan was governed by US General McArthur and China, though rent by civil war, was a special US interest. The triumph of Mao’s communists in 1950 came as a nasty shock and the US persisted in a policy of only recognising Chiang-Kai-Shek’s Nationalist government, now exiled to Formosa (Taiwan). A major crisis arose when North Korea invaded the South in 1950. A UN force, mainly American, was despatched but the war was bitter and 30,000 US soldiers lost their lives. China intervened dangerously and the US commander McArthur disobeyed Truman who dismissed him in 1951.The fighting ended in 1953 with de facto partition but no peace treaty was ever signed.

The US in the 1950s

Soviet and Chinese hostility stiffened the attitude of a growingly conservative US. The expansion of Communism was to be limited by the policy of Containment associated with the state department official George Kennan. This policy came to be exercised aggressively in the 1950s, especially by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who would intervene politically or even militarily when communism threatened. The US came to support some unattractive anti-communist regimes, notably those of Syngman Rhee in South Korea, Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam and others in Latin America.

Dwight D Eisenhower

John Foster Dulles

 An anti-communist hysteria and spy-mania engulfed Washington through the House Un-American Activities hearings and the wild accusations of Senator Joe McCarthy until his bubble was pricked in 1954. As an omen of much worse unrest later, Eisenhower used Federal powers in 1957 to force the desegregation of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, when governor Orval Faubus defied the law.

Despite these problems, the US enjoyed a golden age of capitalism in the 1950s. Great corporations expanded and prospered, the stock market rose headily, business was good. No country could rival the US; American cars, clothes, machines, movies and life-style were admired and yearned for. The mighty dollar allowed Americans living abroad to live like kings. Easy-going President Eisenhower, a popular war hero, ran a largely laissez-faire administration. As he relinquished office he wisely warned against the power of “the military-industrial complex”

There were a few international set-backs; Nasser seized the Suez Canal in 1956 and collusion between key US allies, Britain, France and Israel to regain it upset Eisenhower who refused to support them. A period of recrimination followed when Nasser kept the Canal. An attempt by Hungary to break free of foreign domination was ruthlessly suppressed by Soviet tanks in 1956. Soviet scientific progress was apparent as they beat the US to launch the first satellite Sputnik in 1957 to be followed in April 1961 by the first man in outer space with Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight.

The American Dream

The Americans must have regarded themselves as the most fortunate of people. National wealth brought great material comforts. The US standard of living, her easy luxury, her gleaming consumer goods outstripped those of any other country. A flood of immigrants was absorbed into the melting-pot, employment levels were high, equality was proclaimed – even if black Americans lagged behind. Since 1945 American culture had been vibrant. Novels, if not their best, flowed from Hemingway and Steinbeck. Norman Mailer, James Jones and JD Salinger captured the imagination of a new generation.  Jack Kerouac’s On the Road spoke to the disillusioned; Arthur Miller’s dramas thrilled his audiences; the All-American verities of artist Norman Rockwell in time gave way to experimental Rauschenberg. Wonderful movies streamed out of Hollywood, including timeless MGM musicals to make the world sing, dramas like All about Eve or A Star is Born, Cecil B deMille blockbusters and comedies ranging from Abbott and Costello to Bob Hope. The reach was global as pop music burgeoned from the sophisticated tones of Frank Sinatra to the raucously dynamic Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and Little Richard.

The Sixties and early Seventies

The 1960s were more troubled. They started off in a blaze of optimism as John Kennedy succeeded Eisenhower, representing a new and more glamorous generation. A memorable Inaugural address fired the idealism of service and another at the Berlin Wall proclaimed Western freedom – but the rhetoric was greater than the achievement. A crisis over Soviet missiles in Cuba in October 1962 brought the world to the brink until Khruschev backed down. Kennedy had acted decisively. When Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on 22 November 1963, the US and the world were stunned and regretted what might have been if Kennedy had served his full term.

John F Kennedy

Lyndon B Johnson

                                               

  The assassination of JFK high-lighted the worrying trend towards political violence in the US. Civil Rights workers were murdered in Mississippi, Malcolm X was gunned down in 1965, Martin Luther King shot dead by a white racist in 1968 and Robert Kennedy, campaigning for the Democratic nomination, killed in Los Angeles also in 1968. The new President, Lyndon B. Johnson, was a Southern machine politician and expectations were not high. However LBJ understood how Capitol Hill worked and made very substantial legislative progress on what he called The Great Society confirming voting rights, educational rights and employment rights for American blacks. This was a huge achievement to emerge from much turmoil.

Johnson was less fortunate overseas. For years the US had been at the edges of the conflicts in Indo-China. When the French were defeated in 1954, American aid and later “advisers” bolstered the mainly Catholic regime of Ngo Dinh Diem (assassinated in 1963) against North Vietnam and the local communist Vietcong. JFK had increased US involvement and in 1964 Johnson used an obscure naval action in the Gulf of Tonkin to justify obtaining from Congress freedom to wage open war against North Vietnam. Despite immense US commitments and optimistic assessments, little military progress was made and there was a shock when multiple targets were attacked in the 1968 Tet Offensive. The US gradually withdrew its armies in 1973 but the war dragged on until South Vietnam finally collapsed in 1975. This was a heavy blow to US prestige in Asia and the war split US society grievously; the human cost of 58,000 US dead was chilling.

Richard M.Nixon

Kenry Kissinger

 

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LBJ did not stand for re-election in 1968 and there were serious riots as Hubert Humphrey became the Democratic candidate at Chicago. George Wallace, governor of Alabama, stood on a racist platform as the third candidate. The Republican Richard Nixon won the election comfortably and the liberal 1960s were over. Richard Nixon was unlovable but an experienced politician who became expert in international affairs. Early on, he was able to bask in the reflected glory of the NASA Apollo 11 moon landing in July 1969.  Closely advised by Henry Kissinger, Nixon pulled off a momentous détente with China in 1972 and a US settlement of the Vietnam War with the Paris Peace Accords of 1973. His real virtues were overshadowed by the shameful Watergate scandal of 1974 and painfully he resigned to avoid impeachment.

Economic Pressures

The US’s total dominance of the global economy could not last. By the 1960’s Japan had made great strides as had Germany and the EEC. The US started to run a balance of payments deficit rectified not by higher taxes but by overseas deposits in the US as a safe haven. Inflationary pressures arose both from Johnson’s Great Society and from the cost of the Vietnam War. The dollar had become overvalued and in 1971 the Bretton Woods system which had run from 1945 broke down. The dollar’s fixed exchange rate ended and it ceased to be convertible into gold; in due course all major trading currencies floated. Although the US as much as Europe suffered when the Arabs imposed their oil embargo in 1973, followed by a huge increase in the cost of oil, the US deficit was easily offset by the flood of petro-dollars returning to her. The US sucked in global liquidity from the Middle East, and later from China, which was recycled by Wall Street into a variety of financial instruments, contributing to the Economic Crisis of 2007.

 The unhappy 1970s and the Reagan Era

Nixon’s stopgap successor Gerald Ford lacked charisma and was followed by dogged Democrat Jimmy Carter. Both suffered from an economic recession and “stagflation”. Ford fell out with intransigent Israel, who had plenty friends in Washington, and Carter was eventually brought down by his failure to end a 444-day diplomatic hostage crisis in Iran in 1980, whose revolutionary Shia Muslim government was rabidly anti-American. Important arms limitation treaties were signed with the USSR and a green agenda was established by idealistic Carter.

The US wanted a change and embraced former movie actor and California governor Ronald Reagan. He was at 69 older than any other incoming president and no intellectual but his two presidential terms were highly successful, greatly reviving the Right.

Ronald Reagan meets Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986

 Nonchalant, confident and homely Reagan has a rather simple world vision. The US was threatened by the “evil empire” of the USSR – so US military expenditure was much increased and the Star Wars missile defence plan initiated. Libya was funding terrorism – so Tripoli was the target of a punitive bombing raid in 1986. Taxes were too high – so Reagan cut business taxes and followed the monetarist policies elucidated by Milton Friedman. The US economy responded and prosperity returned, even though some taxes were re-imposed. He frowned upon welfare dependency – so he cut programmes for the poor and urged them back to work. In all this he was supported by his close ally Margaret Thatcher of Britain who operated similar policies. The USSR’s ramshackle economy could not compete with the US on defence and Reagan’s successor Bush witnessed the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and finally the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. Much of the credit goes to Ronald Reagan.

Life in the US from 1960 to the present

There has of course been a transformation in the last 50 or so years but some things do not change. The US remains by a wide margin the richest country in the world and a global leader. Her people are a curious mixture of the puritanically religious, the dedicatedly commercial and the wildly unconventional. Her politicians do not have the debating and intellectual skills valued in Europe but seem to manage pretty well. Business enjoys a much higher prestige than elsewhere.

The cultural reach is enviable. Fine concert orchestras and auditoria abound. Most cities have galleries and museums of estimable quality. The theatre survives and some television is of a high standard. Writers like Gore Vidal, Tom Wolfe and Lewis Lapham have scandalised, amused and instructed us, as have gadflies like Truman Capote. The art world has seen reputations come and go including those of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. The film industry has rather abandoned Hollywood itself but the world has still thrilled to the Star Wars and Indiana Jones sagas or the films of Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The horrors of Vietnam were evoked by The Deer Hunter and Platoon and there have been fine sci-fi fantasies from Back to the Future onwards. Pop music has seen black Americans take a leading place with many fine Motown artistes, energetic Michael Jackson and lovely but tragic Whitney Houston.

The US seems basically conservative, but she enjoys an excellent education system and the people are better travelled and less parochial than once they were. Their pride in their own country and her achievements is admirable.

The US from 1989 onwards

Although George Bush Senior saw the end of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR, his presidency was essentially an addendum to that of Reagan. He handled well the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and saw to Saddam’s dislodging and defeat; he might have pressed his advantage harder. Preppy Bush did not have Reagan’s popular touch and he gave way to Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton in 1993.

Clinton had the good fortune to preside over a period of unparalleled prosperity.  He was folksy and articulate, pushing forward the North America Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, pressing a State Insurance Program for children through the Republican Congress together with other welfare reforms. He undertook in return to balance the budget. Overseas, the Cold War was over but NATO forces had to intervene against the Serbs in Bosnia in 1996 and in 1999 NATO handed over Kosovo, where Serbia had been harassing ethnic Albanians, to UN administration. Various embassy bombings in East Africa underlined the growing threat from Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. Clinton’s womanising became an issue and he was accused of perjury and almost impeached; the US had little appetite for such a move and Clinton escaped, remaining a popular, if personally flawed, president.

 The two presidential terms of his Republican successor George W Bush were beset by great problems. The election was won by a whisker of votes in Florida; Bush himself was not an impressive figure, oddly inarticulate publicly. He surrounded himself with Neo-Con figures, given to extreme rightist opinions, although there were mainstream Republicans too. He relied on advice from his experienced Vice-President, Richard Cheney.

On 11 September 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists hi-jacked 4 civilian airliners and flew them in suicide attacks on the New York World Trade Centre, whose twin towers collapsed, on the Pentagon, which was seriously damaged and on the Capitol, saved by the brave actions of the passengers. Almost 3,000 people were killed; the US rallied patriotically round her President.

Richard Cheney

George W Bush

Bush declared a War on Terror invading Afghanistan which harboured Osama bin Laden and overthrew the Taliban. Establishing a stable regime proved elusive and the Taliban continue to mount a major insurrection.  He had a handful of allies, notably Tony Blair’s Britain. More controversially he and his allies attacked Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003, on the pretext that it was developing weapons of mass destruction, later unproven. Saddam was overthrown and hanged but murderous sectarian divisions between Sunni and Shia emerged and more than 100,000 Iraqis have since died. Both wars became very unpopular in the US and Iraq has been evacuated and an Afghanistan withdrawal is under way.

Domestically Bush dismissed the Kyoto green protocols, spent large sums on welfare and Medicare as the economy improved but his second term was difficult. He was blamed for mishandling Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans in 2005. Much worse was the Economic Crisis which simmered from 2007 with sub-prime mortgage worries but exploded in 2008 with the collapse of Lehmann Brothers and difficulties in many other financial institutions. Wall Street had been inadequately controlled in retrospect by Alan Greenspan, 19 years heading the Fed. The sober-sided bankers of yesteryear had morphed into greedy well-heeled shooters betting, and ultimately losing, in a vast global crap-game. Greenspan’s successor Ben Bernanke had to clear up a horrible mess and the world economy has stalled.

The Future

The election of Barack Obama as President was a triumph for the long struggle for black civil rights. He inherited a deep well of goodwill, but though his rhetoric has often been inspiring, his achievements have disappointed and his crab-like caution has frustrated his supporters.

Barack Obama

Yet in the final analysis the US occupies an immensely strong place in the world. Her GDP is twice that of her nearest rival, China. The Cold War and the overt threat of nuclear war are over. Diverse and multi-racial US society is peaceful and forward-looking. Internationally the US has earned loyal friends. How to live with an assertive Muslim world remains a challenge and patient diplomacy may be required to bring China fully into the family of nations.

Long may the US flourish!

SMD

26.08.12