German Unification Quotes
This was written after the war when Germany was divided into four parts, later to become East and West Germany. German historical and cultural aggression and militarism, most policy makers feared, would cause more war if Germany was unified and allowed to become a strong state. NATO and The European Union became the federations that Kennan was seeking. And Germany underwent a radical cultural and political change.
Prior to WWI there had been several plebiscites in Austria with the people overwhelming voting to become part of Germany. But after the War, the victorious allies prohibited any more plebiscites as they did not want militaristic Germany to become larger or more powerful. This was a sore point, and one of Adolf Hitler’s first WWII foreign actions was marching into Austria and incorporating it.
Metternich, the Chancellor of Austria under the Emperor was a very gifted and imposing diplomat. However he had little vision of the inevitable progress towards democracy and the liberalization of and limitation of the power of monarchs. His advice was on how to be better autocratic monarchs, not on how to reform and he saw no need for absolute monarchy to reform. He advocated press censorship and saw the press as a major enemy. See {630724}. The result was most of the monarchs who took his advice ended up being forced from power or required to cede much of their powers and “rights”. The English monarchs, after their disastrous civil war and its aftermath, in contrast, often led the reform to a constitutional monarchy where the powers and rights of the monarch was defined and limited by a Constitution. Victoria was one of the greatest of the English reforming monarchs, and saw Metternich’s conservatism as responsible for most of the disasters that befell the crowned heads of Europe while she had no such problems. See {607340} for Metternich’s negative view of Constitution.
Asked his opinion on the desirability of German unification:
