The Rest Is History - 102. Germany from Adenauer to Angela

Episode Date: September 28, 2021

As Angela Merkel bows out of German politics, Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland explore the surprisingly colourful world of Germany’s Chancellors since the Second World War. It’s a story of rebels, exiles, Nazis, chain-smokers, the colossal bulk of Helmut Kohl and the East German youth of the future Frau Merkel. And to Tom’s relief, there’s lots of Christianity. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. well-sealed windows no other country can make such well-sealed and nice windows this apparently was angela merkel's answer to a question asked by journalists more than a decade ago when the journalist asked her what she most associated with Germany. And that's the kind of detail that we expect in a column from the Restless History's top pundit, Dominic Sandbrick, who is here with me. And Dominic, you wrote this article, I think, just before the elections that were on Sunday. That's right.

That will be bringing the curtain down on Angela Merkel's 16 year reign as Chancellor of Germany. So we thought we'd do a kind of guerrilla look at not just Angela Merkel but the entire history of post-war German democracy. And this is obviously a subject that

particularly interests you. Well, I think like everybody in Britain, I was on the edge of my seat for the German federal elections. I know it's that's um it did seem to me that people in england were and britain were more interested uh in in this do you think so i don't think yes i think it's articles about merkel about wither germany all that kind of stuff well it may be in the broadsheets but i think it's a really interesting thing that people in Britain get so interested in American presidential elections. The BBC do. And, you know, these sort of incredibly consequential elections in the biggest, most powerful, most economically dynamic state in Europe kind of pass most people by.

I mean, most people couldn't name the leaders of the CDU or the SPD, the two big German parties. Could you name them, Tom? I'm not, I don't actually think I could. Of course you could. I think it's, I think it's a really interesting and revealing thing. And actually German, German politics is much, I mean, it has this reputation in Britain of being just stupefyingly bland. Isn't that the point though? But I, well, I think this is the point, and this is historically really interesting. The point that you make in your article about Merkel

is that, in a sense, the kind of... the cosy tedium is precisely the point, because, of course, it's being set in contrast... Exactly. ..to what had happened up till 1945. Exactly. So when our producer said, you know, why don't you do something about Angela Merkel's departure and German politics?

And I started looking in, thinking about the German post-war chancellors. I mean, they're all against the backdrop of the war. Indeed, both world wars in one way or another. I mean, they've all got the war in their personal history or in their family background. And actually, it turns out to be colossally more interesting than you think. And the blandness, the ordinariness, and the humdrum nature of German politics

is, as you absolutely say, it's part of the point. It's deliberate. And of course, Merkel has the communist period growing up in East Germany as well. So all the chancellors have, as this kind of backdrop, the experience of fascism and communism. Exactly. So I think what we should do, Tom, is rattle through the chancellors first. So to give people a sense of the context, because I think that's really important and interesting. And then probably in the second half or so, we'll see how we do. We can get on to Merkel. How does that sound? That sounds an excellent plan. Okay, so I'll kick off. So Germany in 1945, actually, just to think about the facts and

figures of it is astonishing. So there's 5 million people dead. There's 9 million men in allied, Western allied or Soviet prison camps. So Germany is, to an extent, that we in Britain, we sort of get very misty-eyed about Coventry Cathedral and the Blitz and all this sort of stuff. But this is a completely different order of magnitude of destruction,

but also of kind of a moral destruction, this sort of moral humiliation. The country is on the verge of being divided. Yeah, it's about to be divided between um sort of allied and soviet zones uh in berlin 4 000 people are dying every day of disease in the second half of 1945 so it's i mean the germans call this stunde null so zero hour but they mean that in in that's got a kind of ambiguous meaning because on the one hand it means kind of they're absolutely the depths of degradation and despair

but at the same time they like to think of this and it's projected to them as a clean break with the Nazi past which is a bit of a well which is a complete myth actually because as we'll see there are tons of Nazis around I mean they don't all disappear

no and one of them becomes Chancellor becomes Chancellor exactly but Dominic have you read I mean, they don't all disappear. No, and one of them becomes chancellor. Becomes chancellor, exactly. But Dominic, have you read this new book that's just come out in English by Volker Ulrich, who wrote a great biography of Hitler, Days in May, How Germany's War Ended? So I haven't read this. Have you read this, Tom? I have. I actually just read it just before the idea for this podcast got suggested

which is why i was ready to say yes okay let's do it because um i mean it's full of it's brilliant it's kind of pointillist um depiction of the last eight days between the the suicide of hitler and um the the kind of complete surrender of germany so it's the kind of durnitz government isn't it yes so durnitz is is kind of supposedly in power but you have um all these kind of complete surrender of germany so it's the kind of durnitz government isn't it yes so durnitz is is kind of supposedly in power but you have um all these kind of little portraits of different people say people from the nazi regime um people who are its victims and um germans who were opposed to nazism so you get these portraits of various people who will become leading players in the history of the Federal Republic.

One of whom, of course, is Konrad Adenauer, who will become the first chancellor of the Federal Republic. But there's an amazing description of how he gets brought by the Americans to become mayor of Cologne. And he sees the cityscape of Cologne. And it's absolutely flat and the cathedral is you know devastated buildings are totally and he he can't he can't comprehend how the city could be rebuilt and the Americans say no we must you know you must rebuild it and so he he puts his shoulder to that particular wheel but the sense that even Adenauer who who plays such a crucial role in getting Germany back on its feet his first instinct is to say it can't be done well this is the extraordinary thing so there's

another another book that I read but called um came out this year also translates into English called Aftermath by a guy called Harold Yeener and he talks in that book it's basically how 10 the 10 years after the war so a lot of it is about denazification and the lack of and so on but he has a whole chapter about rubble um and basically there is so much rubble so many buildings have been destroyed that clearing it up is is the work of years and it's this colossal kind of national to begin with it's the women who have to do it right exactly because all the men are away because all the men are in so yeah i mean it's an absolutely mind-blowing story, which doesn't really get told in the West, because it's, you know, we won, the Germans lost,

hurrah, hurrah, end of story. And in Germany, the way they told that story themselves was pretty distorted. So in his book, Aftermath, Jena says, basically, they repressed all memory of everything they'd done. Or we repressed, rather, he says. And he says, we coped by casting ourselves as victims. But having said that, I mean, there are heroes.

And I think Adenauer does rank as a hero, doesn't he? So Adenauer is the, let's get into him. He's such a titanic figure. So when the Germans had a competition called Unsere Besten, they had a big vote where three million people voted. It was the equivalent of the Great Britain's contest that the BBC had at the beginning of the 21st century to find the greatest German in history. And Adonai won. Do you know who came second? You'd like this. Well, I'm guessing you didn't come second. Yeah, he was banned.

Goethe. No, come second. Yeah, he was banned. Goethe. No, Martin Luther. Oh, excellent. Karl Marx came third, interestingly. Anyway, Adenauer. So Adenauer is an extraordinary man. He is ridiculously old when he takes office. So he becomes Chancellor in 1949.

This is when West Germany is finally up on its feet. He's 73 years old. He was born in 1876. And he'd been... You say about the Americans making a mayor of Cologne, he'd been deputy mayor of Cologne in 1909. I mean, imagine a man who'd been in politics in Britain. He'd been mayor of Cologne from 1917, hadn't he? Yes, he had.

Up to the Nazis taking power. So you'll like him, no doubt, because his religion is very important to him. He's a Catholic. He's a Rhinelander. He's been part of the Centre Party. I mean, the great formational moment in Adenauer's political development was Bismarck's Kulturkampf against the Catholic Church. And he hates the Prussians as a result of this. Well, Dominic, would you, I mean, I know that I kind of bring this theme up every time, but would you not say that looking at the history of post-war Germany,

the Catholic and Protestant dimensions to it are actually incredibly, and even looking at the electoral map, as we're recording this on Monday, so the day after the election, and you have this kind of, the CDU, the conservative union founded, you know, Adenauer kind of led from the beginning.

It's a very Catholic, kind of concentrated in the South, where historically Catholics have been concentrated. And the SPD to the North. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Much more Protestant and Lutheran. And actually, when I went through this with doing the chancellors, I wrote down next to each one, Catholic or Protestant.

And it's funny how it always points it out in there all biographies of them always mention it because it's so foundational in german politics that catholic so adnan hates prussians because he sees prussians as protestants anti-catholic all these kinds of things um it's why he's actually quite keen on the idea of setting up west germany he's actually not in some ways he's actually not that bothered about losing east germany because they're it's full of Prussians and he hates them. And he blames them for Nazism. So Adenauer presides over Germany till 1960. Well, but also, Dominic, just to say, I mean, just to say that his record under the Nazis, I mean, he sits it out, but he does get arrested, doesn't he?

Twice. He's in prison twice. Yeah. After the knife, the long knives, and then again in the war. And he tries to escape, gets arrested again, taken to the Gestapo cell, somehow managed to get out. So, I mean, you know, he's... He's got a great record. It's not surprising that the Germans voted him as their best German,

because, you know, it's a great story. So he's a very old man. One thing he does do is he scraps denazification. So he says, basically, we can't go on having endless trials and interrogations and so on. We need to get the country back up on its feet and we need to shut this down. And effectively, he shuts it down pretty soon

after taking over as chancellor. And he prioritises recovery and rebuilding rather than kind of, you know, accounting for all the sins. He says we can't account for all the sins of the past. Now, authors like Harold Yeaner say this is sort of poor stuff. But I suppose you could make an argument that, from a point of view of pure pragmatism, because so many people were implicated in the Nazi regime

to get Germany on its feet, especially given the pressure of the Cold War, he probably had to shut it down to some extent. But of course, he then becomes some, goes on to become a sort of founding father of European unification and so on. The alliance with France. The alliance with France.

Yeah, he takes Germany to NATO. He re-arms West Germany. So, and he's 87 when he retires. So he makes Joe Biden look like him. Yeah. And he remains head of the CDU until he's 87 when he retires so he makes Joe Biden look like yeah and he remains head of the CDU until he's 90 yeah ridiculous I mean because because the the guy who succeeds him Ludwig Erhardt yeah never actually although he leads a CDU government never actually joins the CDU no he's a very a political figure actually ludwig erhardt i just wanted last thing on a ad now an amazing fact i found um in 1957 in the ministry of justice in 1957 this is

sort of volkswagen rebuilding germany you know germany's a cuddly again and the economic miracle is underway in 1957 eight out of ten officials in the Ministry of Justice had been Nazis. So that's the sort of dark side, if you like, of the Adenauer regime. Now, Ludwig Erhardt, we're talking about the World Wars. Here's a great sort of World War story. He's Bavarian, so a Catholic part of Germany, but he has a Protestant mother. And he's raised as a Protestant. Who raises him as a Protestant.

Exactly right. And he fights in World War I on both fronts. And he's badly injured at the Fifth Battle of Ypres. Gary Sheffield would enjoy these facts. As my grandfather was. Really? But your grandfather didn't become economics minister in a post-war German government. No.

A notable man, no doubt, in his own right but um yeah uh and did your grandfather have his one arm shorter than the other i don't think so ludwig erhardt he looked excellent in the hat did he your grandfather or ludwig erhardt uh my grandfather because i don't know whether i don't know whether i have i've seen pictures of erhardt in a hat actually did he lookon Johnson. Yeah, he looked very good. He was kind of grinning, brown-faced. He was kind of a roly-poly guy. Yeah, very roly-poly. So he's not really one of life's politicians. So during the 1930s, the Nazi era,

he'd actually worked as an economist for the German finished goods industry, for the Association of Finished Goods Manufacturers. So there was boring stuff happening before the federal republic yeah he sort of kept his head down and uh he's he's a technocrat mid-60s he falls after three years because he's seen as too pro-american i think by and large and he's just not very political and and so he falls and now we have a nazi yeah so now we have this very very interesting character so imagine i mean if you were so for a brief shining moment he's the world's most famous

kissing or kiesinger as he's called kurt georg kiesinger but then of course he's completely eclipsed by henry kissinger something like you were spider-man tom yeah it is you know so so yeah so a certain degree of fellow feeling yeah well you're but you're not a nazi and never have been no that's true so so tell us about his record as a nazi well first of all he comes from and how he ends up as as chancellor he's um he's from baden wurttemberg in the southwest now he's the reverse of ludwig ehart so he comes from a family of protestants but his mother was a catholic and she brought him up as a catholic and it's interesting is it not this how many of them have a bit of both bit of catholic and a bit of protest very

interesting and also the mother being the the sort of outsider who pushes them into her confession and that sort of slight sense of outsideness i wonder if that plays a part so good this is me my freudian psychology anyway but plugging into church history in an excellent way. Good to see you. I finally got you. So Kurt Georg Kiesinger, I mean, he's a careerist. So he joins the Nazi party in 1933. There's only one reason you join the Nazi party in 1933.

It's that they're in power. You know, because if you're, you know, that's why he's done it, obviously. And he has this, we can say, colourful history, working with Ribbentrop and Goebbels, producing propaganda, anti-Semitic propaganda. Because he doesn't fight, does he? No, he's a pen pusher. He's a pen pusher who basically kind of ends up making propaganda for the Foreign Office. So that's basically what he does. And he just does this consistently.

Even after he knows that that what's happening to the jews so after it's kind of common knowledge um he carries on doing it so there's basically no you know he's he's a kind of at best you would say he's a he's an amoral careerist at the worst you say he's just an utter nazi and and what's interesting about so he is chance of what 66 to 69 so this is the and has 1968 in the middle slap bang in the middle of that term of office when um anxieties among teenagers people in the early 20s students about nazis so this is your genesis of the Baader-Meinhof group. This is your, you know, he's very critical of,

you know what he said about the baby boom generation? A shameful crowd of long-haired dropouts who need a bath and someone to discipline them. So, you know, he's not holding back. He's leaning into his reactionary reputation. So the CDU conference, he gets slapped, doesn't he? Yes, he does. By a protester.

So I'm not surprised. A Nazi hunter. A Nazi hunter, yes. She's Beata Carsfield, and she slaps him in the face at the CDU convention while shouting at him, Kiesinger, you're a Nazi, step down. So, I mean, it's all out there. mean it's not good optics is it no um and yet this is what's fascinating and actually this takes me back to that book aftermath about the after you know the about the aftermath the

second world war um a lot of germans you know you don't often hear this now and actually it's not part of almost the received narrative of sort of german post-war history but a lot of germans actually don't feel very apologetic about the second world war or indeed about nazism opinion polls show that very clearly lots of people think you know oh here's the problem is he went too far and kiesinger wins almost 50 of the vote in 1969 is is that more presumably more true of people on the right than the left? Or am I being unfair? No, I'm sure that's true. To the EU voters there.

I'm sure that's true. Because for the SPD, the left. Yes. I mean, that is different, isn't it? And so the guy who succeeds Kissinger, Willy Brandt. Great character. Yeah. He's a fabulous character. Yes, he is.

Absolutely. I mean, you know, his whole life is anti-fascist. Yes, anti-fascist. So, of course, he's not billy brant no that's not his name it's an alias imagine if we had a british prime minister who governed in the 70s under imagine if ted heath was an alias or james callahan so actually his real name is herbert fram um and he's the son of a single parent department store cashier who never he never knows his father in lubeck the whole lubeck yes incredibly beautiful city i've never been to lubeck i have i've got a friend who lives in lubeck oh very nice uh when you visit will you

bring me back oh you must buy marzipan and i definitely like marzipan but i like marzipan a lot to be polite i bought quite a lot when you next go please bring me back some lubeck marzipan but i like marzipan a lot to be polite i bought quite a lot when you next go please bring me back some louis beck marzipan anyway we're going off piste um yes so willie brandt uh he's a socialist he's you know card carrying absolute sort of quite hard left um in the standards of the 20s uh he flees germany uh when the nazis come in he has to. He goes to Norway and Greece and Spain. And Willy Brandt is one of his many aliases. And when he comes back to Germany at the end of World War II, he decides it's a better name than Herbert Fram.

And he ends up being mayor of West Berlin. And I think he's right, isn't he? Because, I mean, it's a great name. Yeah, it is a good name. And he's built up hugely by Kennedy. So Kennedy identifies him quite early on and says, this guy's a tremendous fellow. You know, we should sort of build him up. And Kennedy, obviously, when he goes to make his speech in West Berlin, Ich bin ein Berliner, Willy Brandt is at his side.

And the Americans are very keen on Willy Brandt. But Willy Brandt is kind of, he's the voice of youth. He's the voice of, he says, you know, we need more reform. We need more democracy in Germany. And he comes in in 1969 as part of a coalition, I think, after, so Kiesinger is out and he comes in. I mean, he's less, he's kind of become more centrist, doesn't he? Since his early firebrand socialist days.

Yes, absolutely. And so he does, I mean, he's very pro-American. I mean, whether that's because... Well, you have to be pro-American in West Germany because America is defending you against... I mean, isn't he backing Vietnam and things like that? Yeah, and that's one of the things that West German government... And he hates communists.

Yeah, of course. He's a Keir Starmer figure. That really... Cracking down on the left. Keir Starmer has never been on the run. No. I don't see him as a man leading a... I withdraw that analogy. But he is also...

I mean, the famous thing he does is Ostpolitik. Ostpolitik, so basically recognising East Germany. Exactly. Which none of the previous chancellors have done. No, they basically said East Germany is illegitimate. He he says let's normalize relations then we can both join the un the other thing he does the one thing that he's very famous for in the in sort of um outside germany and i found this fascinating when i discovered this so this extraordinary moment in 1970 when he goes to warsaw to the the memorial to the um ghetto uprising in warsaw yeah and he kneels in this

fantastic photograph incredibly you know it's a very moving moment and and it's always taken i think in sort of anglo-american textbooks and things you know this is a sign of the new german in all this what is absolutely fascinating is that a plurality of germans did not agree with him so 48 of west germans thought not agree with him so 48 percent of west germans thought that was wrong to have knelt why why did they think it was wrong well you can can you not i mean they thought it was yeah it's unpatriotic unpatriotic too much um groveling you know you don't have to it's it's uh it's too dramatic it's too you know we shouldn't be doing that we should be

forgetting you know a whole load of reasons which you can complete if a british prime minister did it for something at amritsar yeah right you can imagine the commentary so it's kind of not dissimilar i think um yeah i mean not to downplay the amritsar massacre but it's it's not quite on the scale of the holocaust no of course not of course not i mean i mean but that's what's so interesting that in 1970 even as lots of young germans the sort of barda meinhof type people and their fellow travelers are saying this place is full of nazis we haven't got over the you know we've we've buried our guilt we haven't admitted it and all this even at that moment 48 of their fellow citizens are saying branch should not have knelt um at the at the ghetto memorial so he's very popular anyway

with sort of liberal minded intellectually kind of people so artists and and all this um gunter grass exactly but he has this um he's a to use your brother's terminology he is a massive lad so i think it's our terminology as well there's a there's a lot going on with the ladies and there's a lot of drink being taken and he also suffers from depression so and also he has a secretary doesn't he who has an unfortunate turns out to have an unfortunate background uh gunter guillaume I think his name is. So he's basically a German spy. Have you seen the brilliant Michael Frayn play about that?

No, I haven't. Democracy. Yeah. It's really good. I think it was on at the National, it must have been 20 years ago or something like that. And it had Roger Allum, who is in... Was he Willy Brandt? Of course, in Endeavour now.

Yeah. Yeah, he was Willy Brandt. Yeah, he'd be very good as... Yeah, he was fabulous. Really fantastic. It still lives vividly in my memory. So ever since, Willy Brandt has been my favourite Chancellor. But Willy Brandt doesn't resign

just because of the spy. The spy is kind of the trigger. You know, he's sick of it anyway. Okay, so I may have got that wrong then. You know, there's a memorial to him. You love these walks. There's a memorial to Willy Brandt in Hammersmith. Is there?

He donated, when he was Mayor of West Berlin, a memorial to him. You love these walks. There's a memorial to Willy Brandt in Hammersmith. Is there? He donated, when he was mayor of West Berlin, a lamp or lantern and swapped it with Hammersmith. They twinned with some part of West Berlin. And it's still there with a little plaque underneath saying Willy Brandt. I'll go and search that out. I don't think it's worthy of a podcast before you get excited. No, but possibly

worthy of a little stroll. Very good. Do we have time for one more before the break do you think well i think we i think we should we should whistle through because i think that the the later ones will be kind of escalatingly more familiar we're about to get into my favorite one though helmut schmidt helmut schmidt he was a nazi as well well i think you're being hard so he literally he literally joined the wehrmacht in wait a second wait a second so he was in the Hitler Youth.

He was kicked out of the Hitler Youth for not being a Nazi, for being anti-Nazi. For being arrogant, I thought. But then it's very ambiguous, because he's then back in the Hitler Youth, and there are reports from his superiors saying, he's a great Nazi. Yeah.

So he's a teenager. He's dithering. He doesn't know what he is. We've all been there he's wrestling with his with his ideological convictions but yes he fights

he has an amazing war he fights on the eastern front he fights he's at the siege of Leningrad and on the drive on Moscow yes he's at the trial I think the evidence is stacking up here

but he's a German he's in the German army yes and he's about 12 I don't know he's signed up to the German army he's attacking Moscow he's laying siege to Leningrad he's in the german army i mean and he's about 12 i don't know i mean he's signed up to the german army he's attacking moscow he's laying siege to leningrad he's at the trial of the staufenberg conspirators but not on trial he's just watching uh and then he fights at the back that i gather is what changed his is that right i didn't know that i didn't know that he goes there

and i think this this is from from Ulrich's book. Yeah. That he attends this hearing of the conspirators against Hitler. And it's only then that he realizes that the Nazis are criminal. And he says this himself, apparently, in an interview that he did later in life. Too late, Schmidt added. He'd realized it's too late. Yeah, so I think he was

he was compromised and then he kind of he realised it he admits his compromise though Tom I like that about him he admits his compromise I knew he was

yes he absolutely admits it he goes on to fight he still fights he fights in the Battle of the Bulge he fights in the Ardenne but he's I think

he's on a journey by that point he's on his journey right he's on a journey he's captured by the British, isn't he? Yeah, well, he ends up becoming a Social Democrat. He does indeed.

So he takes over from Willy Brandt. He's very pro-European. He's very hard on the Baader-Meinhof group. He takes an incredibly hard line against them in the so-called, what's it called, the German... I can't remember what it's called. It's either called the German Spring, the German Summer, or the German Autumn. I can't remember which one of them. I'm sure it's not the German Winter.

Springtime for Germany. Anyway, it's one of these things where they're at their peak and they've kidnapped Hans Martin Schleyer, or whatever his name is, the head of the German business group, and it's all very big news. Anyway, he's a chain smoker. He's great pals with... Callaghan.

Callaghan, Gerald Ford. They go on holiday together when they've fallen from office. I'd love to write a play about this. That's very Michael Frayn. He could play with that. Henry Kissinger said he hoped he... What did he say he hoped? He died before Helmut Schmidt

because he wouldn't like to live in a world that didn't have Helmut Schmidt in it. Obviously a man of incredible charm. Which is a very nice thing. Charm and charisma. When Margaret Thatcher became Britain's Prime Minister, Helmut Schmidt went around saying to all the other leaders, this is going to be awful, she's the most dreadful bitch.

Oh. But then he pitched up in London and they got on really well. Because she kind of had a bit of a fancy for kind of chain-smoking cats. Yeah, he was kind of Cecil Parkinson-type looks, didn't he? And when he used to come to meet you know they used to meet up she used to say to him i love talking to you because you're the only world leader ever me who's more right wing than i am um because he although he's in the spd he's very kind of hard line on something because he'd become very hard line economically so um yeah i like i am a great fan of helmut schmidt i think he's a

great character he's obviously obviously very, very charismatic, perhaps in a way that quite a lot of German chancellors deliberately haven't been. Like Ted Heath, he was very big on the piano. He recorded piano music. He was arrested in later life for smoking against the smoking ban. Massive lad.

Yeah, massive lad, exactly. He contributed an article to a festschrift for the philosopher Karl Popper. I mean... He's the complete Chancellor. He's the German... I mean, maybe apart from the war. He's the German Chancellor you'd want to be, isn't he?

Yes. Yeah, he is. Now, maybe at this moment we should take a break. We haven't got to Angela Merkel yet, but maybe that's the story. But we have the huge bulk of Hel coal looming looming towards us so let's take a quick break and then when we get back um more germans more germans don't go away germans we got them i'm marina hyde and i'm richard osmond and together we host the rest is entertainment it's your weekly fix of entertainment news reviews reviews, splash of showbiz gossip.

And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Today I read on Twitter from a satisfied listener to our James Bond podcast that what was great about The Rest Is History's Bond podcast was that it wasn't full of the flippancy and clichés that you get from so many

podcasts whether people will say that about this podcast about post-war german politics remains to be seen but as tom said we now confront yeah the vast bulk of helmut kohl so helmut kohl is probably the german chancellor who gives german chancellors not exactly a bad name i mean he's a colossus isn't he's a political in every sense but he is quite boring but it's again i mean we've said this throughout that the boringness is a quality. Yeah. And if you're not boring, then there's a faint hint of suspicion, I guess, as happens with Schmitt.

Schmitt famously said, there was talk about German politics lacking vision. And Schmitt said, you know, if you're seeing visions, you need to consult a doctor. And I think, yes, and some listeners to the podcast will say, oh, this giggling about politicians being boring is typical of a british flippancy and a and a and a sort of deliberate nihilistic silliness which is you know sort of landed british has resulted in boris right and that actually you

know you why are you laughing at helmut kohl being boring when actually helmut kohl is an is a incredibly serious and important figure well, you know the father of modern Germany? Do you know who called him that? Margaret Thatcher. Right. Well, Margaret Thatcher, of course, and Helmut Kronen have this terrible relationship. But she admired him.

They're both on the centre-right, so she can't forgive him for German reunification. You know what she says about German reunification? We defeated the Germans twice, and now they're back, which is obviously not very constructive. Well, Mitterrand basically felt the same, didn't he? The president of France. Yeah, but he didn't say it publicly.

No, he didn't say it publicly, but he was kind of, you know, phoning up Mrs. Thatcher and they were moaning away about the Germans. But Mitterrand didn't come out. I can't remember whether we talked, I think we did talk about this, but I enjoy it, so I'll talk about it again on our anglo-german relations podcast so she went over to visit helmut kohl in germany and and this is they're obviously both

center-right leaders they're both you know invested in the cold war they're both friends he's cdu he's catholic he's from the rhine yes i mean they should get on fine and actually he's determined that they will get on fine. And he takes her to the platanet, the Rhineland platanet, where he's from. And he takes her to his hometown of Ogersheim. I mean, well, I think all German politicians should come from somewhere called Ogersheim. He takes her to his favourite restaurants, and they have a lot of sausages and stuff. And then he takes her to the cathedral in Speer, in the platanet,

where eight Holy Roman emperors are buried I've been there have you is it a good cathedral oh it's fantastic yeah I mean if you if you love 10th and 11th century German history there's nowhere better which I do yeah no I've got 20 children there and he takes he take did you god what you should have gone with Margaret Thatcher so Helmut K, or with Helmut Kohl. So he takes her in, and while they're behind a pillar or something, he says to Charles Pohl, her foreign policy guy, he says, this is really important for me, this.

This is the quote. It's absolutely crucial that Mrs Thatcher knows I consider myself a European first and a German second. And he takes her in, he shows her the tombs and all that, and then she leaves. And the first thing she says is, god that man is so german and of course he is very german yeah um and he's not he wouldn't work in britain but he works in germany precisely because of the lack of color lack of vision all of those kinds of things but to mrs satchett's credit i think you know the father of modern germany she wouldn't just say that.

No, no. She didn't come out with guff. And clearly she could recognise, despite the fact that she didn't like him in the way that she'd obviously liked Schmidt, that he was a titanic figure. Yeah. Which he really was. Which he was. Because he is the Chancellor who presides over the reunification of Germany. And they do it so quickly, within a year.

So quickly and effectively and efficiently. Yeah. I mean, it's very costly at the time. Costy for everybody. It's costly for East Germans because they are disadvantaged. You know, they're economically disadvantaged and so on. But, you know, in the long run, it obviously worked and turned Germany into the powerhouse that it now is.

There's an argument that had he delayed and delayed, you know, people would have started to find objections and so on, but he really went for it. For a very kind of stolid-looking man, it was an act of almost swashbuckling kind of decisiveness. And, yeah, absolutely played... He had a very sad ending, Helmut Kohl. So he had... I don't know if it was a stroke or something like that,

but basically, while he was in hospital um he ended up marrying somebody who was about 40 years younger than himself who then kept him well this is contested but basically his family claimed that she kept him as a virtual prisoner and he fell out with the whole of the rest of his family very sad story so that was the end of him anyway he was replaced by a a man who i think shyster yeah am i allowed to say that absolute so gerhard schroeder really shouldn't be a german politician i mean he's a british politician yes he's a sort of tory mp from the major government something yes he is he's made a fortune kind of flogging second-hand cars so so his father was killed in world war ii when he was a baby in Romania.

He's a Lutheran. Well, nominally I think he's actually an atheist. Grew up in Westphalia. I'm supposed in 1982... Are you reading this off from Wikipedia? No, I'm reading it off my notes. I'm reading it off my notes. 1982, he supposedly visited the federal

chancellery, drunk, and shouted, I want to get and shouted i want to get in i want to get in and eventually he did in 1988 amazing story amazing um but because he was quite i mean he was quite he's bad left he was quite hard left oh yes yeah and then he gets into power and he basically chums up with tony yeah you should love him he's third way he's pure third way so blair clinton and schroeder kind of very very uh his his economic policies are really quite right wing yeah but i think actually the truth of the matter is politically he's been completely eclipsed by his behavior so he's been married five times you know what the germans call him the lord of the

rings so previously germans have no sense of humor previously they called him when he was married four times they called his nickname was audi man and then now they call him olympic man i mean it's a he's a parody his wives have become progressively younger um but the other thing is the is the russia's hair i mean yeah it's shocking paul mcgarney's sort of level um the other shocking thing about gerhard schrader is the russia stuff so which is which is a story that will run with merkel as well yeah he became a lobbyist for gazprom and rosneft and all these russian companies you know he spent his 70th birthday party in the yusupov palace in st

petersburg and the guest of honour was Vladimir Putin. And there's no doubt, I mean, he's been paid for a lot of this. You know, he's just become, as you say, a complete and utter shill, basically, for the Putin regime. And he's kind of huge behind the Nord Stream, bringing the Russian gas directly to Germany and bypassing Ukraine. So I think we're going to come to that, because this is obviously one of Angela Merkel's great legacies, is the Nord Stream gas pipeline.

So now we've come to Angela. And, of course, this will be music to your ears because her religious background is very important. Which is why she opens the last chapter in Dominion. I've forgotten that. I'm not blanking out Dominion. I mean, it's like Calais, it's engraved on my heart. So each chapter begins with a scene,

21 chapters spanning 2,500 years. And the last one is Angela Merkel on TV in Rostock with a Palestinian girl who's a refugee, who's come to Rostock for medical treatment and now has to go back. And she asks Merkel, why do I have to go back? I don't want to go back. And Merkel says, well, basically that's tough.

It's the way things are. We can't have everyone over here. And the girl bursts into tears and Merkel looks embarrassed. And then a few weeks later, in the face of the great migrant crisis, refugees from Syria and Afghanistan and so on crossing Europe, she unexpectedly opens the borders. And my thesis, which is not original to me because i think lots of people think it is that this is very powerfully influenced by the the parable

of good samaritan which she would have absolutely absorbed at the feet of her father who was a lutheran pastor who very unlike most people at the end of the war, are going from East Germany to West Germany. He goes from Hamburg to Berlin to keep the Lutheran fire alive in what's obviously going to become communist East Germany. But it's not just the Lutheranism, though, is it? Isn't it also her sense of what we've been talking about in in this podcast of german history and of german guilt and german's obligations germany's obligations to the world absolutely but i also wonder i mean with her so her father i mean when he goes there

i mean there's this kind of lutheran idea that you know of church and state that you don't really worry about what the state is you focus on the church which kind of enables him morally to to live and work in east german society but i i mean obviously merkle has i mean she is she is still a kind of devout lutheran and it obviously does inform her her morality and her politics and her seriousness i think yeah um but when that when the berlin war comes down and um east germany becomes part of west germany and you know fused into the federal republic she joins the cdu the conservatives and a cat you know catholics and she's a lutheran but i think that that, you know, so her father was called Red Casner. So her father was, you know, that was her maiden name.

I wonder whether, as well as a kind of Christian commitment, she also inherited from that experience a kind of mistrust of wild idealism of the kind that her father had shown by going to East germany i don't know her mother her mother was deeply opposed to the move east so they went against the mother's wishes and obviously the fact that he was called i find that fascinating that he was called red

casner because i think he's called that because he clearly has left of center sympathies definitely and that's what enables her to get the great education that she does. Yeah. Because what's interesting about her as well is that, and actually this does tie in with some previous chances, you know, to Helmut Schmidt and the people who are in the Hitler Youth and so on. She is in, you know, the, she works as a,

I mean, there's a lot of argument about this in Germany about exactly what she did, but she probably worked as a propaganda officer for the sort of the main, you know, state-sponsored communist youth organisation in the GDR. She was never anything vaguely, remotely resembling a dissident. And she's completely, you know, she's been completely open about that. She sort of said it would be career suicide,

it would be, you know, very damaging for my family. This is this is obviously true of you know millions upon millions of people in east germany she kept her head down and um you know sort of got on with it and well she's not a radical no and it's always safety first yeah and there's the famous story isn't that when the berlin war comes down that she goes and has a look and then she goes back because she's got to get up and she's got work the next morning. Exactly. Absolutely. Exactly right. And I think, you know, she won big student Russian competition.

She worked, you know, she had a head down for years, for years. You know, we're talking about 10 years or more um in science you know you know what our thesis is our research paper tom do you know the title of a research paper i don't it's vibrational properties of surface hydroxyls non-empirical model calculations including anharmonicities well what does that tell you nothing i don't know what any of that means well i guess what it might tell you is that i mean she she has a lutheran background yeah she obviously has a background in hard science yes uh science operates and you know who this is this is leading us towards who she's very similar to yes yes uh in in so many ways and yet in so many ways not to mr satcher i guess yeah to margaret

thatcher i think it's both scientists both from you know what we would call non-conformist or low church backgrounds and both consistently underestimated by their male opponents until the moment when they reveal themselves more opportunistic more cunning you know what helmut helmut kohl she stabbed ended up stabbing him in the back at the end of the he appoints her fairly quickly he Minister for Women in the CDB. Just like Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher, actually. She comes on board as a token woman. She's a pure...

And Cole patronises her dreadfully. He goes around, he says, this is my midget and this is my girl kind of thing. You know, this is my little mascot from the East who I'm showing off. And he introduces... I think he introduces someone like george bush senior in this incredibly condescending way i mean this is a woman who's been a research scientist for 10 years in the east um and then you know quietly all the time people call her the snake

in the in the in the 90s but the con the contrast with mrs that is that Mrs Thatcher kind of made a virtue out of, you know, the smoke and crash of battle. Yeah. I mean, she would advance towards fire. Yes. Whereas Merkel, it seems, has always done the opposite. Yes, she has. And this is the criticism that you read in a lot of the commentary. Well, it's not necessarily criticism, is it?

Well, no, because it's brilliant short-term politics, right? But is it not also going with the grain of what Germans want? It probably is. Because, again, if you compare it to Britain, one of the things about British politics that is Merkel's criticism of it is that it's flippant it's short term it it yeah unnecessarily sensationalist and aggressive sensationalist kind of you know rolling things on a throw of the dice all that kind of stuff which which you might say reflects the fact that um britain didn't undergo a fascist dictatorship wasn wasn't kind of defeated in two world wars wasn't divided

didn't have a quarter of the country under communist dictatorship so Britain is able to kind of treat recent history in a faintly flippant manner, in a way that Germans can't and shouldn't that she has

how would you not have that sense if you'd grown up in East Germany in a way that German Germans can't. That's absolutely right. Yeah, absolutely right. That she has. How would you not have that sense if you'd grown up in East Germany? And if you grew up growing up with that, the experience of the two world wars, the Holocaust and so on, Nazism hanging over you as all Germans have to this day. The interesting question, I suppose,

is when that runs out, you know, when will German politics become flippant? And well, I did. I mean, so if you think of uh of johnson with his kind of ironic post-modern yet also faintly serious identification with churchill yeah but it's all a bit of a joke it's a kind of oxford union debating pose yeah

and you contrast that with the the palpable influence that the experience of growing up under a communist dictatorship has had on merkel you know the the difference in seriousness is obviously immense i mean who is to say perhaps extreme seriousness can be overdone because i do think i did i do you know obviously the, obviously the Johnsonian approach is all about let's create chaos. Let's throw the dice. Let's see what happens. And, you know, as the queues at petrol stations grow, we can see what some of the consequences of that might be. But equally, I suppose one of the criticism of Merkelism would be that she's incredibly reactive.

Yeah. Is that fair? I mean, i think it probably is fair she's not a very crisis to blow up and then she kind of responds to them exactly and she often responds to them in ways that aren't necessarily great well the example a good classic example of the eurozone so you know if you're listening to the podcast from portugal ireland greece or spain your take on angela mer Merkel might be very different from, you know, somebody's take in Germany, you would say, she punished us, she made us clients of, you know, German manufacturing, made it impossible for us ever to be competitive,

because the austerity put in place with that came with the bailouts at the beginning of the 2010s. So yeah, I mean, I think there's a sort of fantasy the which is which is which by the way is brilliant politics that you know i'm a pure pragmatic scientist but i'm also an idealist right making the right decisions but kind decisions in the national interest um and that is that is yeah the muti kind of exactly i'm the nanny you've got to go to bed early because it's for your own good because you've got school and it's slightly different it's interesting that sort of that that female archetype i mean i think i think one of the great stories of politics actually in the last 30 40 years is what a terrible time women politicians have well she hates she hates the

nickname doesn't she and she does and how subject we are to stereotypes i mean margaret thatcher was was always seen as the nurse who gives you the really harsh medicine. I mean, she sort of embraced that herself. Or the doctor who prescribes, you know, you need to have both legs amputated to save your life. Merkel is exactly the mother who tucks you up at night with kind of soothing words. You know, she gives you...

The mother who serves you porridge, basically. She's not giving you something really horrible not giving you something terribly nice either but she that sort of mother of the nation thing is part of her is a very successful part of her persona and actually you know you were the contrast of Johnson

different political personas work in different environments and when you've talked about this with Rome and somebody like Nero I mean I know it's a ridiculous comparison but difference well i mean i think a politician needs to adjust their presentation to the expectations of the society they're living in and they and what works in one will not you know theresa may is actually in some ways a very good comparison with angela merkel and she didn't work in Britain, she would have probably worked much better in Germany. Yeah, yeah. I mean, another kind of interesting contrast with Germany and both Britain and France

is that when there was that tsunami, and the reactor in japan got crippled that merkel's response was actually one of seems a panic closed down all nuclear reactors with the result that germany now its carbon footprint is twice that of france or yeah britain i think the colossal amounts of their energy they get from fossil fuels something like like a third or a quarter. Which is also going back to the Nord Stream. Right. Well, this could be her biggest legacy, I think, actually. So obviously we're recording this at a time when people are saying that there may be power cuts in Britain because of the lack of gas. And we've got queues of petrol stations and all kinds of things. So energy crisis seems very salient here.

But actually, Germany's energy crisis is, in the long term, kind of much more crippling. Well, is it an energy crisis? I mean, they've got a deal with Russia. Well, it depends if you put the energy crisis in the context of global warming, of the kind of the macro level that actually to give him credit johnson at least is yeah affecting to to care about talk about with his muppets references um yes references to sophocles to be fair to him uh well i mean but so part of the the um one of the kind of consequences of Johnsonian flippancy is that you can just suddenly kind of change your mind.

You know, I mean, he was he was massively anti-green and now suddenly he's going on about Kermit. Yeah, I think that's true. And I think there's all kinds of questions about that Nord Stream project. So for people who don't know, this is, as Tom said, this is this pipeline that goes basically from Russia to Germany. It bypasses Eastern Europe, the Baltic states. So what it does is it makes Germany dependent on Russian natural gas. But it means that, in a way, you can sell out those countries in between those two places. And actually, Germany, one of the stories that's never reported in Britain or America about Germany, one of the stories that's never reported in Britain or America about Germany.

It's in the last 10 years, Germany has become one of Russia's key trading partners. There are all kinds of links. And China's, right? Yeah, and China's. We talk all kinds of things. We talk about Gerhard Schroeder. So lobbying links and all these kinds of things between Germany and Russia. Angela Merkel spoke to Vladimir Putin every week on the phone.

Even though she hated dogs. Well, he did this notoriously. It's weird that he would do that. She's one of his pals. He got this big black Labrador to sort of stalk around her. The photos are actually... Well, that's kind of...

Yeah, it's very Russian. But they would speak sometimes in russian they'd speak he speaks german she speaks russian um and she believed that she had a almost a unique insight among western leaders into russia's mindset but i mean against that so against the fact that she has cozied up to russian gas suppliers and uh so on and she's she's uh cut um victor orban a lot a lot of slack because even though they obviously have completely contradictory opinions say on refugees um a lot of german manufacturing is in hungary and so on so um she's very kind of practical um maybe cynical i might say on that school but I think she

I mean the reason that Remainers in Britain love her is that she has she kind of has put the integrity of the European Union and Germany's dominant position within it kind of centre stage so to that extent

she has kind of stuck up for Western values. Well I think she has a vision of the eu um that that absolutely does have germany center stage and i think germany is more now that britain has left the eu obviously germany is now 20 of the population more than 20 of the gdp um france is probably the only counterweight i mean effectively the the eu has become more and more german it's interesting with... Obviously, the Franco-German relationship throughout this period has been central right the way back to Adenauer.

Yeah, far more than the German, Anglo-German. Oh, completely. But, you know, Colomitron standing together in cemeteries is kind of one of the defining images of the 80s, isn't it? Absolutely. But, I mean, again, Macron has been pushing Merkel kind of one of the defining images of the 80s isn't it absolutely but um i mean again macron has been pushing merkel to kind of beef up european defense i mean that's and that's the backdrop to the um the bust up with with the british and american australian submarine thing

um is that actually it's not only britain's let him down, it's also Germany. The French want a friend. They just want a friend. Well, I mean, Macron wants a Europe that, as every French president has done, wants a Europe that can, led by France, that is effectively independent of America. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.

And he's been pushing and pushing Merkel to do that, and she hasn't wanted to do it. Well, I mean, that's because, partly because of this legacy that's hung right. And he's been pushing and pushing Merkel to do that, and she hasn't wanted to do it. Well, I mean, that's because, partly because of this legacy that's hung over the whole podcast, the World War legacy. I mean, this sort of, I know this seems like a parody of a sort of British history podcast

talking about Germany, the kind of Basil Fulte don't mention the war, but I don't think you can not mention it. I think it's absolutely, you know, you visit Berlin now and it is still there. And the sort of, what it gave Germans was a consciousness unmatched in, I think, in Europe of the sort of dangers of militarism, the damage that impassioned political rhetoric can do. I mean, just to describe the horrors that Germans endured in the 20th century, the dictatorships of left and right,

you know, it's a different universe from anything in Britain or indeed in France, actually, even with the occupation. The other thing that we haven't really talked about and it reflects the fact we're definitely not a politics podcast is of course that it's

almost always dependent on coalitions. the fact we're definitely not a politics podcast is is of course that it it's um uh almost always dependent on coalitions yes and we see that now that basically you know the cdu and spd both got the same basically the kind of same number of votes um and so there's going to be lots of horse trading and so probably merkel will remain chancellor for weeks maybe months so you don't get the bear pit adversarialism of British politics. That obviously also is a difference and is a structural one,

again, designed to keep the spectre of dictatorship at bay. That's not in any way a profound observation. No, I think it's a good observation. I thought we should kind of just chuck that into the mix. Do you know what, Tom? Do you think we talk to Germany out out now the producer said to us before we started maybe 20 25 minutes and we've waited on for um an hour uh so i think we should definitely

um call a halt and i will go off to contemplate my signed photographs of helmut schmidt and you can go and do whatever German activity seems to you fitting I'm actually going to go and watch the Sopranos film which isn't German at all this is the exactly the sort of louche life that

the listeners will talking of films we are doing a very exciting event aren't we yes we are at the Odeon Leicester Square this is the first time we've spoken about it publicly on this podcast it's on the 14th of November

14th of November we're going to be doing history and the cinema in the cinema what could be more appropriate and I don't think the tickets have yet gone on sale maybe they have maybe they haven't um check our channels on twitter we will advertise the tickets there are lots of them we'd love to see as many listeners as possible uh we should be talking about some very entertaining films some controversial choices as

well including one that i think i described as the worst portrayal of a bottom in cinema history well if that's not enough to get you visible i mean what else would you rather be doing on a sunday afternoon so on that note we will see you next time thank you for listening to the Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.