Two statesmen who reshaped history in post-war Europe

They were both statesmen who had a defining role in the shaping of politics in their countries. Both saw the Second World War up close, as participants in it in their different ways. One escaped his native Germany, for it was infested with Hitler and his murderous Nazis, to seek refuge in Norway, from where he would engage in journalism he believed could play a part in awakening the world to the dangers thrown up by the Third Reich. The other, initially associating himself with the collaborationist Vichy regime in occupied France, saw the error of his ways and moved away to discover his own means of resistance to Hitler.

Willy Brandt and Francois Mitterrand would come to prominence, as so many others around the world would, in the aftermath of the war. They would both come to symbolize brands of socialism they believed were imperatives for their nations. In comparative terms, the pains engendered by the Second World War were deeper for Brandt than they were for Mitterrand, for where the latter had France intact once the Nazis had been beaten back in 1944—and here credit must go to Charles de Gaulle and the country’s allies—the former came back to a land that was broken in spirit, bruised in morale and divided in terms of geography. The ramifications of the war left Germany not only, and happily, free of Nazism but also, sadly, segmented into a democratic federal republic and a communist democratic republic. The terms the world would soon come to apply to the two Germanys would be FRG and GDR. In purely symbolic terms, these terms would be evocative of the Cold War that set in once Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union decided that Berlin needed to be placed under a blockade.

If the Second World War initiated Brandt and Mitterrand into an early comprehension of the consequences of a world coming apart through force of arms, the Cold War was for the two men baptism of a kind. Mitterrand, in his new avatar, would be part of the Fourth Republic, which would in the end turn out to be an exercise in political chaos. Governments would walk in and out through the revolving door, to a point where in 1958 Charles de Gaulle would be invited back to the centre of things, to inaugurate a more stable Fifth Republic. De Gaulle, in his decade in office, would transform France, bringing it level with the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain on the world stage. France under De Gaulle swiftly turned into a global player. It would be this France Mitterrand would inherit, despite his antipathy towards De Gaulle, and take full advantage of the political opportunities it offered.

Also read: https://www.dhakatribune.com/magazine/arts-letters/2020/02/08/narratives-of-a-war-across-frontiers 

Willy Brandt’s moment in history, a sign that he was on his way to building history in a wider way, came with his election as mayor of Berlin, the western section of a city now divided into a capitalist west and a communist east. As mayor, his prominence on the international stage received a boost with US President John F. Kennedy’s inspirational address in West Berlin—‘ich bin ein Berliner’—in 1961. It was balm for the wound inflicted by the building of the Berlin Wall by the communist east. To a considerable degree, the ferment over Berlin would be a springboard for Brandt to national politics. He had the Social Democratic Party (SPD in German format) as his engine to the future, despite the fact that Konrad Adenauer and then Ludwig Erhard, remnants of post-war Germany, yet dominated the country through the Christian Democratic Union. 

Brandt’s concept of social democracy powered him to a political condition where, in 1966, he effectively cobbled a grand coalition into shape with the new CDU leader Kurt-Georg Kiesinger. There was a future for socialism in the country, as Brandt conceived it. More importantly, the FRG could begin thinking in terms of a world role more than two decades after the defeat of Hitler. Brandt was deputy chancellor and foreign minister in the coalition government. He relished his role.

For Francois Mitterrand, politics was a difficult proposition in 1960s France, given that the Fifth Republic had put in place a political system based on a balance of power, with the president of the republic holding authority over foreign affairs and defence. Moreover, if Mitterrand was opposed to the French withdrawal from Algeria in 1962, he was careful to maintain circumspection about any expression of opinion. But that he, as a socialist, saw little of good in a France under De Gaulle was made manifest through his political opposition to the president. For De Gaulle, he was a thorn on the side. Indeed, it was Mitterrand’s tenacity that placed him, in 1965, as the socialist rival against De Gaulle in that year’s presidential election. He did not win, but neither did he fade away. The future was out there.

Mitterrand and Brandt were men of intense intellectual prowess. They were erudite men, profound thinkers, characteristics that were on display in their days in power. Brandt rode to power, through forming a coalition with the small Free Democratic Party, in 1969. He was in his element as he inaugurated his policy of Ostpolitik in 1970 and then did the charmingly unthinkable: he went to Warsaw and knelt in contrition before a memorial to those murdered by Nazi Germany. It was an image that would begin to cause scratches on the edifice of the Cold War, much before Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing, dubbed by the US leader as a week that changed the world.

Mitterrand’s moment of glory came in 1981 when he finally made it to the Elysee as president. The Cold War was yet in place and a new generation of leaders had come of age in Europe and the United States. Mitterrand was determined to play his full part in the world, despite the roadblocks that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher put up before him. To the Soviet Union, traumatised by a poverty of leadership following the deaths in quick succession of Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, Mitterrand upheld the Gaullist doctrine of France being a voice for Europe when it came to shaping global diplomatic perspectives. His relations with Mikhail Gorbachev were proper, but there are reasons to suppose he was disturbed by the collapse of the Soviet Union under the weight of glasnost and perestroika.

Brandt walked away from power in 1974 when an East German mole was discovered in his office. He would later play an influential role in the Socialist International and author The Brandt Report. He passed away in 1992. Mitterrand, a writer and bibliophile, would govern for two whole presidential terms until 1995 (part of the period being interspersed with political cohabitation with the rightwing Jacques Chirac). He died in 1996.

These works by Philip Short and Helene Miard-Delacroix are a rich record of a transformational phase in European history. They deserve prominent places on the shelves of people drawn to ideas that have reshaped global politics in our times. 

Syed Badrul Ahsan is a journalist and biographer. His books include From Rebel to Founding Father: Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (published by Niyogi Books)