Kohl Wins His Way

By Bruce W. Nelan

Waving expansively at the snow-topped Caucasus Mountains, Mikhail Gorbachev observed with a grin that he and Chancellor Helmut Kohl were already in the foothills and wanted "to develop our relations further upward." After two days of talks, their cordiality escalated to outright chumminess. They emerged from a resort lodge in sweaters and open-necked shirts to stroll bantering through the fields and flowers of the Russian countryside. At the resort spa of Zheleznovodsk, they jubilantly announced that they had swept aside the last significant obstacles to uniting Germany by the end of the year. Yes, Gorbachev said, a unified Germany could join NATO if it liked. And yes, said Kohl, Germany would agree to ways to allay Moscow's fears about the future.

Though the four World War II victors -- the U.S., Soviet Union, Britain and France -- must still formally sign off on unification this fall, the Zheleznovodsk agreement caps nine months of dizzying change in Europe and signals the beginning of a fresh era. As Gorbachev put it, "We are leaving one epoch in international relations and entering another." Added Kohl: "The future has begun."

German unification had been discussed at a string of minor and major summits over the past few months, including the NATO meeting in London three weeks ago that declared the Soviet Union was no longer an adversary, thus paving the way for Gorbachev to drop his reluctance to let a united Germany join the alliance. Nonetheless, the swiftness and scope of last week's pact stunned and slightly discomfited the Western allies. George Bush and Secretary of State James Baker, strong supporters of Kohl and his unity efforts, were embarrassed at being taken unawares. Baker's flustered response: "This is a delightful surprise to the extent that it's a surprise, and it's only a surprise to the extent that we anticipated." Bush pointed out that he had long advocated a unified Germany in NATO, "the sooner the better," but his response bore the air of a man slightly defensive about being left out of such a historic photo op.

It is a measure of the skillful diplomat Kohl, 60, has become that he quickly praised Bush for all his efforts, saying, "Our American friends can rely on it that we are going this way in close cooperation and partnership with them." The German leader has always been the consummate local pol, more at ease hoisting a glass in the local wine cellar than sitting in chandeliered rooms stiffly exchanging diplomatic niceties with foreign leaders. But over the past year, as Kohl realized that he had the historic opportunity to bring his country together again, he rose to the challenge better than many people -- Germans and non-Germans alike -- expected.

Kohl accomplished his diplomatic feats by relying on the same skills that have put him on warm terms with a number of world leaders. He started out badly with Gorbachev in 1986, comparing the Soviet leader's public relations talents with those of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. When Kohl met with Gorbachev in Moscow last February, the two were civil to each other, nothing more. This time Kohl asked if part of his trip could be spent in Gorbachev's home region of Stavropol and the nearby spas, where the two leaders might relax and get to know each other.

Though the ground for last week's pact had been prepared in six meetings between foreign ministers Eduard Shevardnadze and Hans-Dietrich Genscher over the past two months, Kohl had no reason to expect Gorbachev would agree so quickly. The Soviet leader clearly wanted to settle the issue of German unification so he could move on to his country's domestic problems. But the atmosphere surely helped. By the time they made their announcement, the two men were laughing together. Observes a Western diplomat in Moscow: "It may come as a surprise, but Kohl and Gorbachev kind of like each other."

Soviet officials insisted it was not just Kohl's sincerity that carried the day. "The Kohl of 1990 is not the Kohl of 1986," said Vladimir Shenayev, deputy director of Moscow's Institute of Europe. "Even a year ago, Kohl would have said that a unified Germany would be a member of NATO and there was no point in discussing it. Now he's showing an ability to compromise." The promise of financial aid helped: having already pledged some $3 billion in credits to Moscow, Kohl agreed to sign a comprehensive economic pact with the Soviet Union.

The prospect of more deals to come between Bonn and Moscow presents Kohl with a different diplomatic challenge: how to assure his allies in Europe that the German powerhouse, the largest economy in the European Community, is not seeking to control Eastern Europe. Even before he arrived home, Kohl was asked if the Zheleznovodsk agreement was a new Rapallo -- a reference to the 1922 treaty between the communist U.S.S.R. and the Weimar Republic that paved the way for German rearmament after World War I. The comparison is "wholly off," said Kohl, because "the reunified Germany is part of NATO and the European Community."

As he showed again just before leaving for the Soviet Union, Kohl has become increasingly adept at handling the spasms of angst about Germany. The immediate grievance was a statement by British Trade Minister Nicholas Ridley that the "uppity" Germans were plotting to take over Europe, and he would just as soon hand over the Continent to Hitler. What made the uproar worse was the widespread conviction that Ridley had only said what Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher thought. But Kohl wisely laughed off Ridley's remarks as "pretty silly," comparing them to his own gaffe about Gorbachev and Goebbels. Ridley was forced to resign.

Thatcher's anti-German feelings seemed further confirmed by last week's leak of a memorandum written by her private secretary Charles Powell after a seminar she held with several well-known experts on Germany. They had to explain to the Prime Minister that the countries of Eastern Europe actually wanted German investment and that this "did not necessarily equate to subjugation." The Powell memo alleged that "abiding" characteristics of the Germans, "in alphabetical order," included "aggressiveness, assertiveness, bullying, egotism, inferiority complex, sentimentality." The concept of permanent national character is generally fatuous, and in this case Powell's words make a poor fit for Kohl, the biggest German of them all. Kohl can be intimidating because of his size (6 ft. 3 in.) and might sometimes appear aggressive, but no more so than Thatcher. If he now looks assertive, it is only in contrast to the penitent posture Germany adopted for most of the postwar years.

Kohl understands the visceral suspicion of Germany among its neighbors and says, "I cannot deny our history." At the same time, he insists that it is time to recognize how much Germany and the world have changed. Kohl was 15 when the war ended. He calls himself the first Chancellor of the post-Hitler generation, and he firmly believes a little patriotism without nationalism would be good for the country.

As early as 1976, when Kohl made his first run for Chancellor, he said one of his ambitions was to work with foreign leaders "to bring about a more normal relationship with the Germans." On his first visit to Moscow in July 1983, he asked Kremlin leader Yuri Andropov, "What would you say as a Soviet patriot if Moscow and the U.S.S.R. were divided?" A return to normality has been his constant theme. "I am strictly against having Germany singled out," he said in a TIME interview last month.

After Kohl came back from the Soviet Union last week, he was asked how it felt to be the man of the hour. "When people come to write about my period of office," he replied, "I would be very happy if they say that I made a contribution to finding the happy medium again for the Germans."

He summed himself up in that one sentence. He has no driving ideology and no grand visions, other than that Germany must be unified and anchored peacefully inside Europe. He really is the German Everyman, striving for the Utopia of ordinariness. Says Robert Leicht, political commentator for the Hamburg weekly Die Zeit: "I often disagree with Kohl, but I take it for granted he is a harmonizer. His whole life is dominated by the idea that we must fit in the framework. It makes him a man who deserves to be trusted."

The notion of a framework helps explain why Kohl is so committed to the increased integration of the European Community and German membership in NATO. He says the isolation of the Weimar Republic was one of the worst mistakes made after World War I ended, and he vows to keep it from being repeated. "Germany is part of the Western community of shared values," he says.

While Kohl is riding the tide of popularity today, his earlier course was often rough. Though he rose very quickly in local Christian Democratic Party politics, he lost his first bid for Chancellor and was outmaneuvered in 1980 by his purported ally, Franz Josef Strauss, who became the candidate that year. Kohl grew up in the provincial politics of the Rhineland-Palatinate, where he was minister president from 1969 to 1976. He has spent almost his entire adult life as a workaday politician, cultivating thousands of grass- roots contacts and even now spending hours a day chatting with local pols on the phone. His values are those of the large middle class that supports him. Small wonder: he is middle class himself -- conservative, monolingual, a lover of plum tarts and whipped cream.

West German journalists and politicians prefer cosmopolitan polish, and were quick to label him a bumbler. While he did not lose his longing for normalization after becoming Chancellor in October 1982, he often left foreign policy in the hands of his coalition partner Genscher, the leader of the Free Democrats.

Instead, Kohl put his talents to work on the domestic front. He instituted politically painful reforms of the tax and health-insurance systems and supported a tight monetary policy that made the German mark even hardier than the legendary Swiss franc. Annual economic growth doubled from less than 2% to 4%. His policies made the country so rich it can afford to pay $100 billion for unification and have enough left over to sweeten its relations with Moscow and Warsaw.

When Kohl did strike off on his own in foreign affairs, some of his bungles lived up to the pundits' dark predictions. He strained ties with Washington in 1985 when he insisted that Ronald Reagan visit a cemetery in Bitburg even after it was discovered that some Nazi SS troopers were buried there. His visit to Poland last November was badly mismanaged by his aides, and he alarmed the Poles and most of the world by playing domestic German politics with recognition of the postwar border.

His stubborn refusal to guarantee the Oder-Neisse frontier with Poland in the name of a united Germany demonstrates the pragmatic way Kohl calculates political possibilities. He expected the next election to be close, and he counted as many as 10 million voters as having some ties or sympathy with the German "expellees" from western Poland. By postponing the final word on the border issue, he made them feel his concern for them. He expects them to remember that when they step up to mark their ballots.

Kohl's favorite line is that he makes a good living out of being underestimated. An indifferent public speaker, he can be quite articulate in small meetings. He reads hungrily, concentrating on biographies and histories; he impressed Gorbachev last week with his grasp of Russia's past. If Kohl's girth and glad-handing make some people who do not know him think he is buffoonish, many who do finally meet him come away talking about his sharp mind. He takes the measure of an issue and comes up with a gut response on whether a policy will fly. Says Friedhelm Kemna, editor of Bonn's daily General-Anzeiger: "He thinks deeply that he is successful and doesn't need suggestions from others."

And now this perpetually undervalued man is the Unification Chancellor, even if some of his success was owing to good luck. The fact that Kohl happened to be the West German Chancellor last year had nothing to do with Gorbachev's refusal to keep East German leader Erich Honecker in power or with the march of hundreds of thousands of Leipzigers and East Berliners through city streets.

But when the Berlin Wall fell on Nov. 9, Kohl understood that unification was possible, and soon. During August 1989, 5,000 East Germans each week had arrived in the West through Hungary. In November, 130,000 streamed through the dust of the Wall. This was domestic politics, for which Kohl has an instinctive feel. He knew that the dissidents on the other side had won, that German communism was dead. And he knew that he could probably wrap up his re- election if he could bring the Germanys together. At the end of November, Kohl put forward a 10-point plan for unification. It startled his allies, who counseled caution and deliberation.

Even before the 10 vaguely worded points could be properly explained to all parties concerned, they had become outdated. Kohl had suggested a series of treaties with East Germany for 1990, a confederation by 1992. "I thought we would have unification in 1993 or 1994," he says. But the stampede of East Germans into the West -- 340,000 in 1989 -- convinced him that the only way to keep them at home was to take the West German system to them. In February he proposed an economic and currency union that he pushed through, against objections from his central bankers, and put into effect July 1.

Kohl was now the engineer of the Deutschland Express. He saw political unity within reach, and he was determined to grab it before the opportunity vanished. Alone among the NATO leaders, Bush signaled full speed ahead. Kohl plunged into the East German elections in March, making a triumphant six-city speaking tour, waving to huge crowds roaring, "Hel-mut! Hel-mut!" -- a reception rarely accorded Kohl in West Germany. Middle-class virtues and the dream of normality had not been suffocated by more than 40 years of communism. The conservative coalition for which Kohl campaigned, led by Lothar de Maiziere, scored an unexpected landslide.

Kohl is looking forward to a similar drive on his own behalf. His standing in the polls sank as low as 36% early last year, making it far from certain the Christian Democrats would prevail at the polls this December. With Gorbachev's agreement on the future in hand, the December election is expected to include both parts of Germany. Kohl's beaming face is on every German front page, and the polls put his popularity above 50%. He said quietly last week: "You will forgive me if I say I intend to win this election." He should be taken seriously; he is very good at such calculations. And if he does win, it will be the second time he has united his country.

With reporting by Daniel Benjamin/Bonn, James Carney/Moscow and J.F.O. McAllister with Baker