Friendly Enemies: Britain and the GDR, 1949-1990

By Stefan Berger and Norman LaPorte

During the Cold War, Britain had an astonishing number of contacts and connections with one of the Soviet Bloc’s most hard-line regimes: the German Democratic Republic. The left wing of the British Labour Party and the Trade Unions often had closer ties with communist East Germany than the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). There were strong connections between the East German and British churches, women’s movements, and peace movements; influential conservative politicians and the Communist leadership in the GDR had working relationships; and lucrative contracts existed between business leaders in Britain and their counterparts in East Germany. Based on their extensive knowledge of the documentary sources, the authors provide the first comprehensive study of Anglo-East German relations in this surprisingly under-researched field. They examine the complex motivations underlying different political groups’ engagement with the GDR, and offer new and interesting insights into British political culture during the Cold War.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Release date: May 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781845458270

Stefan Berger

Stefan Berger is Professor of Social History and Director of the Institute for Social Movements at Ruhr University Bochum since 2011. He is also Executive Chair of the Foundation History of the Ruhr and Honorary Professor at Cardiff University in the UK.

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Friendly Enemies

For Fiona and Jutta

FRIENDLY ENEMIES

Britain and the GDR, 1949–1990

Stefan Berger and Norman LaPorte

First published in 2010 by

Berghahn Books

www.berghahnbooks.com

©2010, 2015 Stefan Berger and Norman LaPorte

First paperback edition published in 2015

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Berger, Stefan.

Friendly enemies : Britain and the GDR, 1949/1990 / Stefan Berger and Norman LaPorte.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-84545-697-9 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-78238-685-8

(paperback) — ISBN 978-1-84545-827-0 (ebook)

1. Great Britain--Foreign relations--Germany (East) 2. Germany

(East)--Foreign relations--Great Britain. 3. Cold War. I. Laporte,

Norman. II. Title.

DA47.9.G4B47 2010

327.41043’109045--dc22

2010007452

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Printed on acid-free paper.

ISBN: 978-1-84545-697-9 hardback

ISBN: 978-1-78238-685-8 paperback

ISBN: 978-1-84545-827-0 ebook

CONTENTS

List of Tables

List of Abbreviations

Preface

Introduction: Britain and the Other Germany

Chapter 1 Negotiating the Emergence of Two Germanys. British–GDR Relations in the Context of the Evolution of the Post-war Political Order, 1945–1955

Chapter 2 From Sovereignty to Recognition, 1955–1973

Chapter 3 Normalisation of Relations and New Beginnings, 1973–1979

Chapter 4 From the Second Cold War to the Collapse of the GDR, 1979–1990

Conclusion: Britain and the GDR, 1949–1990

References

Index

LIST OF TABLES

1.1: British Trade Unions Delegations to the GDR, [Undated] 1954 [?].

2.1: Development of Trade Relations between the GDR and Great Britain, 1960–1969.

2.2: Number of Western Visitors Staying in FDGB Holiday Homes, 1956–1958.

3.1: Contacts between GDR and British Universities.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

PREFACE

Over the last nine years we have amassed a number of debts to people and institutions, and we would like to use this opportunity to thank them. Above all, we are grateful to the British Academy for generously funding our research over a number of years. This allowed us to visit numerous archives and libraries in Britain and Germany, where many archivists and librarians were extremely helpful in locating relevant materials (for a full list please see the bibliography). Especially for the more recent period, this book could not have been written without access to some of the East German archives, which shed light even on aspects of the bilateral relations where the British archives remain closed due to the thirty-years’ rule. True, some East German archival material, e.g. the archives of the East German foreign ministry, also are closed under the German variant of the thirty-years’ rule, but other material, especially that of the political parties and mass organisations of the GDR remain open to researchers right up to the very end of the GDR. In some respects this is a unique opportunity, but there is also a danger in relying (increasingly over time) on East German sources. Professional historians trained in archival research of course know that no document should be taken at face value, but this is particularly true for many documents originating from the official apparatus of the GDR’s foreign policy. The GDR officials who wrote these reports were always acutely aware of what the relations between Britain and the GDR were meant to achieve, and therefore their reports do not necessarily reflect what was going on, but rather what was supposed to be going on. There is an element of wishful thinking in these GDR reports, which means that we have tried to contrast them, wherever possible, with British sources – which cannot only be found in the National Archives (formerly the Public Record Office) but also in party, trade union and church archives. In addition, we have conducted twenty-nine semi-structured interviews with people who had been central to British–GDR relations, and we have used their information to good effect in the subsequent pages. Again, such forms of oral history are not without their dangers, as people’s memories are different from people’s perceptions at any given moment in the past. Careful contextualisation and juxtaposition with archival material is necessary in order to arrive at a realistic picture of what had been going on.

We have had the pleasure of discussing our research findings with a number of colleagues, in particular Marianne Howarth, the undisputed doyenne of British–GDR relations, and Henning Hoff. Our book stands consciously on their shoulders and would not have been possible without the work they have published on the topic. Many thanks also to the many interviewees from both Britain and Germany, who gave generously of their time and expertise to tell us about their views on British–GDR relations. Marianne Howarth and Henning Hoff have read the entire manuscript (in Marianne Howarth’s case, she did so twice); John Sandford and Sheila Taylor read parts of the manuscript and we are very grateful to all of them for their comments and suggestions. Any remaining errors, are, as always, entirely our own. The final reworking of the manuscript was done by Stefan Berger during his time as Senior Fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS). He would therefore like to thank in particular the two directors of the School of History, Jörn Leonhard and Ulrich Herbert, for allowing him to spend a very productive year 2008/9 at the Institute. Very many thanks also to Isabel Flory and Christopher Volle from the FRIAS for carefully going through the final manuscript, eradicating typographical errors, harmonising the footnotes, helping with the index and providing a list of abbreviations. The last nine years have been an exciting intellectual journey for both of us und it has been a rewarding scholarly cooperation, which hopefully will lead to further joint work in future.

Stefan Berger and Norman LaPorte

Disley and Cardiff, May 2009

Introduction

BRITAIN AND THE OTHER GERMANY

The Multi-Angular Nature of British–German Relations in the Cold War

In 1945, a pervasive mistrust of all things German informed political opinion and the public mood in Britain. Yet within the next two years British policy became oriented towards integrating a separate West German state into the Western alliance against communist-dominated Eastern Europe in the nascent Cold War. Indeed, the old German and the new Soviet threat became deeply intertwined in Britain’s policy in Europe, as it increasingly saw its task in managing Germany in order to contain the Soviet Union. Such rapid realignment of British foreign policy was personified by Ernest Bevin, the first post-war Foreign Secretary. Bevin clearly saw the need to accommodate a separate West Germany but found it hard to feel any real sympathy for Britain’s new allies: ‘I tries hard but I ’ates them’.¹

Although a number of close professional relationships developed between individual West German and British politicians – perhaps most noteworthy was the one between Chancellor Schmidt and Prime Minister Callaghan in the 1970s – bilateral relations were never particularly strong.² An explanation for this can be found in the countries’ differing post-war priorities. Chancellor Adenauer accepted President de Gaulle’s strategic olive branch, developing this into the Franco-German axis at the heart of the European project.³ By the later 1950s, Franco-German cooperation in Europe significantly limited British influence on the continent. But in 1945, British foreign policy had other priorities than Europe.

In the period immediately following 1945, Britain’s over-ambitious objective of maintaining her status as a world power involved an orientation towards the ‘special relationship’ with the USA and presiding over the transformation from Empire to Commonwealth.⁴ It was only after the Suez debacle of 1956 that Britain came to accept her internationally diminished role, began to come to terms with imperial decline and started its reorientation towards Europe. But the latter proved difficult.⁵ During the 1960s, two British applications for membership of the EEC were vetoed by the French. British foreign policy became painfully aware that it needed West German support, but, war-time memories died hard and prevented Anglo-German relations from becoming too close. Following British admission to the EEC in 1973, the offshore island all too often took on the mantle of Europe’s ‘awkward partner’, which pushed it further to the continent’s periphery.⁶

If Britain’s relations with West Germany were not particularly close, they were virtually non-existent, at least at an official level, with East Germany until 1973. In line with other Western states and the West German Hallstein Doctrine, Britain did not recognise the GDR. However, as we shall explore in chapter 2 below, after 1955 much of British political opinion was increasingly willing to accept post-war realities and come to some sort of de facto recognition of the GDR. Until the later 1960s, Berlin’s location as the likely front-line in any super-power conflict ensured that the ‘German question’, with its potential threat to world peace, drew considerable British attention. During the 1970s and throughout most of the 1980s, international acceptance of the existence of two German states under conditions of détente meant that the ‘German question’ lost much of its importance in international relations. Yet British–GDR relations always took place in a triangle, also involving the FRG. Especially if Britain wanted to overcome the French resistance towards British entry into the EEC, it needed to woo West Germany for support. Hence British policy was careful not to let British–GDR relations have a negative bearing on British–FRG relations which were of far greater importance to Britain. Relations with the GDR in general had to ‘remain one step behind Bonn’.⁷

From the GDR’s perspective, its policies towards Britain were also pursued with one eye firmly on West Germany. From the beginnings of a GDR foreign policy in 1955 to recognition by West Germany in 1972, all of the GDR’s international relations were dominated by the omnipresent objective of etching East Germany onto the post-war map of Europe. This meant primarily overcoming West German objections to recognition. As Martin Sabrow has pointed out, ‘the GDR always remained inseparably bound up with the Federal Republic and interconnected with it. Political demarcation (Abgrenzung) from the Federal Republic, the competition with it and the secret orientation towards it made up the actual raison d’être of the second German state’.⁸ Hence, during the entire period of our investigation, the FRG remained the ‘third player’ in all aspects of British– GDR relations.⁹

International relations between states are influenced by mutual perceptions.¹⁰ Much of this book will be concerned with the development of British perceptions of the GDR from the foundation of the GDR to its eventual dissolution. On balance, there was little public interest in the GDR. It was a country that many Britons knew nothing about and that they imagined as one of the invariably grey and drab Eastern European communist regimes. Yet, especially on the British left, there was a minority who took an interest. Those who advocated socialist measures at home could, and did, investigate the GDR’s policy of ‘constructing socialism’ as a potential political model. There were also those concerned about the possibility of a third world war in Europe: issues of peace and détente acted as an incentive to take an interest in the GDR. As will be demonstrated below, the motivations for taking an interest in the GDR were highly diverse. And yet, anyone showing any interest in, or worse, sympathies for Eastern European communism was quickly dubbed a communist or communist fellow traveller in the West, even if there were actually few who subscribed lock, stock and barrel to ‘actually existing socialism’ behind the Iron Curtain.

The official GDR perception of Britain was guided by its analysis of Britain as a declining capitalist country. ‘Proletarian internationalism’ was the official doctrine guiding GDR foreign policy.¹¹ In practice this meant seeking an alliance with all progressive forces in Western capitalist states while denouncing the capitalist regimes and the alleged misery they brought for the working classes. Unfortunately, for the entire period of SED rule, the wider population in the GDR did not believe this negative stereotyping of ‘Western capitalism’. Hence the GDR attempted to quarantine the East German public from the virus of ‘decadent’ Western individualism. All contacts with the ‘non-socialist world’ were subject to state approval and regulation. Sympathies for the ‘capitalist West’ could have serious consequences for personal careers and livelihoods in the GDR. Within the Cold War conflict, it became increasingly difficult for people on both sides of the Iron Curtain to take up a stance between the capitalist West and the communist East, although in the West opposition to the official anti-communism was far less dangerous than opposition to the official anti-capitalism was in the East.

British–GDR relations during the entire Cold War were also situated vis-à-vis wider concerns of the lead power within both power blocks. British foreign policy towards the GDR not only had to be coordinated with the FRG, but also with the USA and France. West Germany was, after all, not a fully sovereign country. As a result of the post-war settlement, the Western allies retained certain rights. Even if the FRG, especially after 1955, became increasingly a player in its own right,¹² the Allied responsibilities – especially in Berlin – acted as a constant reminder that a minimum amount of coordination of the Western powers’ policies towards the two Germanys was necessary.

The GDR’s ability to act on the international stage was constrained by Moscow’s ‘leading role’ in the Warsaw pact far more than the FRG’s foreign policy was determined by the Western allies. In 1955, the Soviet Union officially granted East Berlin ‘sovereignty’ in international relations. Yet, public statements of ‘friendship’ and ‘cooperation’ to one side, East German foreign policy had to remain firmly within the framework prescribed by Soviet hegemony. Throughout the GDR’s forty year history, East Berlin did on occasion strive for a degree of autonomy of action. In the early years, this was particularly true where Moscow’s foreign policy appeared to risk trading East German statehood for Soviet security. In the 1980s it was the East German desire to avoid the consequences of the second Cold War, which again brought tension to Soviet–GDR relations. Yet, without the Soviet Union acting as guarantor of a separate East German statehood, the GDR was not viable. This became clear in 1953 and again in 1989. In the language of international relations theory, East German foreign policy had been a ‘penetrated system’.¹³ As Detlev Nakath put it, the GDR ‘at any [given] time was dependent on the Soviet Union’.¹⁴ If the degree of dependency varied slightly, the basic fact of dependency never changed.

Given the centrality of the ‘German problem’ to diverse Cold War scenarios in Europe, the triangular relationship between Britain and the two Germanys is situated in a wider multi-polar relationship which involves the two leading superpowers, but also other key European states in both Western and Eastern Europe (notably France and Poland). Investigations of Cold War foreign policy, as Friedhelm Niedhart and Oliver Bange point out in relation to their project on ‘détente and Ostpolitik’, have to take account of transatlantic and European networks of communication and cannot be reduced to bilateral analyses.¹⁵ This current study, however, is more limited in its ambitions and seeks to shed further light on why Britons took an interest in the GDR and what the GDR hoped to achieve with its policies vis-à-vis Britain. While cognisant of the wider field in which British–GDR relations took place, it is not so much a contribution to illuminating British and GDR foreign policy, as it is a book about the GDR’s strategy towards Britain, and about the British Left’s self-understanding. For it was the British Left which was primarily interested in developing contacts with the GDR. Tracing their motivations and commitments will tell us a good deal about how the British Left perceived itself and its ambitions during the Cold War.

Understanding the Institutional Framework of British–GDR Relations

In the GDR, foreign policy was determined by the politburo on the basis of information collected and collated by an extensive bureaucracy spanning both party and state.¹⁶ East Berlin’s role in international relations was based on what the regime understood as a ‘socialist foreign policy’, encompassing the key components of internationalism, anti-imperialism, peaceful coexistence and solidarity with national-liberation movements in the Third World. The decision-making process was only rarely encumbered by strict adherence to the ideological tenets of Marxism–Leninism. More often than not the implementation of policy took into account political realities, while Marxism–Leninism retained its function as a legitimising narrative.¹⁷ The politburo’s foreign policy was put into practice by three tiers of East German bureaucracy. In addition to the party- and state-directed bureaucracies, ‘societal’ (gesellschaftliche) organisations played an important role in setting up partner organisations in the West, and using them to build up contacts with ‘target groups’ and influential individuals in political, economic and cultural life.¹⁸ The foreign intelligence organisation of the Ministry of State Security (Stasi), the HVA, also presented the politburo with detailed evaluations of political developments in Britain. In addition to reports assessing the likely direction of British governments’ foreign policy, attention was given to opinion in political parties, trade unions and the peace movement.¹⁹ Much attention has been given to the Stasi and its operations inside and outside the GDR. In all foreign relations of the GDR, it was indeed a permanent presence, which shadowed, accompanied and often steered the country’s foreign policy. But can the relations of the GDR with Britain, or, for that matter, the relations of the GDR with any other Western state, be reduced to the Stasi and its dealings? As will become obvious from the subsequent pages, we do not think so. The transnational relations between the GDR and Britain were far too complex and involved far too many actors to be reduced to a story about Stasi spies. Whilst it would be naïve to disregard the importance of the Stasi, it would equally miss the point of many of the interactions, if one were to look only to the Stasi. Hence we bring in Stasi connections, where they seem relevant to us, but otherwise we are more interested in exploring a highly diverse range of contacts that developed between Britain and the GDR over forty years of post-Second World War history.

In what was a strictly centralised foreign-policy apparatus of the GDR, each pillar of the bureaucracy received its policy directives from the SED leadership and was charged with putting party policy into practice.²⁰ In political and ideological terms, the most important layer of the foreign-policy apparatus was headed by the party. At the apex of this organisational hierarchy was the Central Committee’s Secretariat for International Relations, which was headed by Hermann Axen, who, from 1970 was a full member of the politburo. Axen was widely regarded as the key architect of the GDR’s foreign policy from the late 1960s onwards. Below the Secretariat was the Department for International Relations, which, in 1978, had forty departments which liased with the corresponding departments in the state apparatus.²¹

Within the state apparatus, which was headed by the Council of Ministers, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MfAA) had primary responsibility for putting foreign policy into practice. From the late 1950s, policy vis-à-vis Britain was the domain of the Ministry’s Fifth European department.²² In the early years, Foreign Ministers were appointed from the nominally independent (i.e., non-socialist) ‘Block Parties’ in order to give the outward appearance of a multiparty system. The practice was abandoned in 1966 with the appointment of Central Committee member Otto Winzer, and his successor, Oskar Fischer, in 1978. Excluded from the discussions in the politburo, however, Foreign Ministers exercised no actual influence on the formation of policy and remained subordinate in the hierarchy to Hermann Axen. In addition to cooperating with the Central Committee’s Secretariat for International Relations in researching and conceptualising foreign policy, the MfAA also oversaw the training of diplomats at the ‘Institute for International Relations’ within the ‘Academy of State and Legal Sciences’.²³ After 1949, the East German diplomatic core was constructed from scratch, marking a radical departure from the pre-war diplomatic service. What these new diplomats lacked in experience was compensated for by commitment to the East German state. In the case of Karl-Heinz Kern, the first East German diplomat to Britain, a middle-class upbringing did not exclude a top-flight career in the foreign services.²⁴ Although the GDR was never granted an official state visit to Britain, after the normalisation of diplomatic relations, the MfAA did develop close contacts with the British Foreign Office and held a series of meetings between both foreign ministries’ respective research institutions.²⁵

The MfAA, under the direction of the Abteilung Auslands information in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the SED, coordinated the work of an extensive array of departments within the party and state administration, which were charged with pursuing cultural and propaganda activities in the West. The central objective of this aspect of foreign relations was directed towards countering the regime’s negative image abroad by presenting a wide range of ‘socialist achievements’ in the social, cultural and economic spheres. The quintessential component of cultural and propaganda work centred on presenting the GDR as the ‘morally better’ Germany. Not only had the GDR learnt the lessons from the experience of Nazism, it was also a truly ‘anti-fascist’ state pursuing policies for world peace. The FRG, by contrast, was governed by former Nazis and ‘neo-Fascism’ just waited to re-emerge.²⁶ Although outright propaganda attacks on Bonn subsided somewhat after 1973, they returned at the end of the 1980s when East Berlin again felt the need to assert the regime’s independence.²⁷

By presenting the GDR as a ‘new’ and ‘better’ Germany, it was hoped that ‘target groups’ in the West would become supportive of East German foreign-policy objectives. In a range of Western European countries, the GDR was able to intensify its cultural and propaganda activities through locally situated cultural and information centres. East Berlin also promoted interest in its version of German culture through the Herder Institutes, which rivalled the West German Goethe Institutes.²⁸ Although none of these institutions operated in Britain, a vast media-based propaganda effort was directed towards Britain.²⁹ From April 1955, the East German State Broadcasting Committee transmitted Radio Berlin International to the outside world. Although the vast majority of broadcasts were domestic, featuring interviews with visiting foreign personalities, by the mid 1970s international transmissions had reached six-and-a-half hours per week. In Britain, one hour of RBI programming could be heard on Sunday evenings.³⁰

In the communist tradition, considerable emphasis was placed on the power of the printed word to convince doubters. At the academic end of the range was the flagship international relations journal Deutsche Außenpolitik, which was issued quarterly by the ‘Institute for International Relations’. Between 1962 and 1975, it was published in English translation. The journal’s expert on British foreign policy was the lifelong English advocate of East German socialism, the one-time Reynold’s News journalist and trade unionist Gordon Schaffer. The East German Press Office also sent out Panorama GDR to British newspapers, published the eight-page Foreign Affairs Bulletin every ten days and cooperated in producing the weekly Horizont. An extensive array of magazines and brochures were also issued by the Dresden-based publishing house Zeit im Bild.³¹ A number of central themes emerged from what was a truly vast, and costly, undertaking. The GDR was primarily presented as a state promoting international peace and disarmament, commitment to anti-fascism, supporting national liberation movements in the Third World, and, last but not least, enjoying ‘socialist achievements’ in the fields of cultural, social and economic life. There was also an attempt to present speeches made by leading members of the SED as important contributions to international relations. Implicit was always the objective of holding up the GDR as a model for the development of socialism abroad. A range of monthly magazines aimed to present positively the activities of the East German trade unions (FDGB Review) and the Peace Council (Information), in addition to magazines promoting trade (Monthly Technical Review), sporting successes (Sport in the GDR), and even women’s fashion in East Germany (Saison).

Within this universe of East German literature, two publications were of particular importance in Britain – Democratic German Report (DGR) and GDR Review. From 1952 until 1975, John Peet, the former bureau chief of Reuters News Agency in Berlin, almost single-handedly produced the fortnightly eight-page newsletter Democratic German Report. By exploiting a flair for good journalism, and considerable personal charm, Peet was able to gain a substantial readership among left-wing MPs, trade unionists, journalists and teachers in Britain.³² While the DGR had the appearance of a low-budget, quasi-autonomous publication, the GDR Review had all the trappings of a would-be central organ of East German propaganda in Britain. Between 1952 and 1989, the magazine, which was translated into seven European languages and distributed in thirteen countries, was printed on good quality paper and carried large numbers of colour photographs in a well laid-out sixty pages which, although not shying away from the overtly propagandistic, avoided communist jargon. Until 1973, GDR Review focused on promoting East German diplomatic recognition in Britain, including considerable emphasis on putative benefits of trade relations, in addition to the standard East Berlin line on the merits of constructing a ‘socialist society’. Thereafter, the emphasis switched to legitimising the GDR by presenting it as a modern, industrial state with a generous cradle-to-the-grave welfare state, a comprehensive, equal-opportunities education system, free of unemployment and the inequalities of the ‘capitalist’ FRG and, last but not least, a force for world peace.³³

The third tier in the East German foreign policy apparatus was the ‘societal’, or nominally ‘non-state’, organisations. Until 1973, their primary function was to coordinate East Berlin’s campaign for recognition in Britain. In doing so, one of their central tasks was to organise exchanges between Britain and the GDR in a policy known as ‘diplomacy by delegation’ (Besuchsdiplomatie). After normal diplomatic relations were established, these organisations continued to play an important, if secondary, role in promoting a positive image of the GDR abroad.³⁴ The historic origins of the ‘societal’ organisations are found in the communist-dominated ‘front organisations’ of the inter-war years, which aimed to transcend communism’s traditional base of support by forming ‘alliances’ among wider groups of prominent personalities and ‘sympathisers’.

Although the SED enjoyed fraternal, if sometimes strained, relations with the CPGB, the latter’s marginal political influence meant that, from the East-German perspective, it was desirable to build up wider political contacts. For this purpose, the Inter-Parliamentary Group of the GDR (IPG) was set up in 1955 with the objective of developing contacts with Western parliamentarians. From 1966 until 1973, the IPG cooperated with the House of Commons-based Britain–GDR Committee, under the leadership of left-wing Labour MPs Will Owen and Renée Short. After 1973, the IPG was admitted to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), which had been founded in Paris in 1889 with the objective of promoting contact and cooperation between parliaments on a global scale. Until the collapse of the GDR, the IPU served as a channel for dialogue between parliamentarians, extending beyond the ranks of Labour left-wingers to include Liberal and Conservative MPs.³⁵

Party-to-party contacts were also built up by the East German ‘Bloc Parties’.³⁶ The British Conservative Party – with the exception of a small number of MPs involved in East–West trade – proved resistant to East Berlin’s overtures. Yet the East German Liberal Party (LDPD) proved able to open up dialogue with the British Liberal Party, including a number of fact-finding delegations to East Berlin and mutual attendance of party conferences. A number of broadly political contacts were also cultivated by the International Relations departments in the East German ‘mass organisations’, including the official trade unions (FDGB), the youth movement (FDJ) and the women’s movement (DFD), in the form of attendance of East German-sponsored international events and exchanges, with comparable organisations in Britain.³⁷ Although there were no official relations between the East German and British trade union movements until 1973, contacts and connections between trade unionists in the individual unions of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) made up one of the largest number of delegations to East Germany throughout our period.

Before 1973, trade relations were a key component in East Berlin’s foreign-policy drive to establish normal diplomatic relations with the West. The first practical move in this direction was taken in 1955, with the setting up of the Leipzig Fair Agency in London to promote East–West trade. On the fringes of the Trade Fair, East German officials were able to initiate political discussion with foreign – including British – participants. The subsequent, and ultimately more important, development was the opening of an East German Chamber of Commerce (KfA) in London in 1959, when the first semi-official trade agreement was signed with the Federation of British Industry (FBI). Although the annual trade agreements adhered to the letter of Britain’s official policy of ‘non-recognition’, it was increasingly evident that FBI and KfA were fronting trade agreements between the ministries of trade. During the 1960s, the KfA went on to develop important contacts among the business community, journalists and parliamentarians. Its most important role, however, was acting as a channel for crypto-diplomatic relations under the watchful eye of the FCO, which was keen to ensure that KfA did not overstep its limits. However, by the early 1970s, KfA Ltd. was starting to operate as the de facto East German embassy in Britain and included MfAA diplomats among its staff.

At the centre of the ‘cultural’ component of the GDR’s Westpolitik was the Liga für Völkerfreundschaft (LfV). Founded in 1961, the Liga largely superseded the earlier Society for Foreign Cultural Relations, founded in 1952. Its main role was to act as an umbrella organisation, housing the various friendship societies that promoted East German diplomatic recognition in the West.³⁸ In 1963, the LfV set up the Deutsch–Britische Gesellschaft (Debrig) to organise cultural work in Britain. Two years later, its British ‘sister’ organisation, the British–German Information Exchange (BRIDGE), was founded in London with a remit of developing contacts with MPs, trade unionists, teachers, local-government officials and journalists.³⁹ Under the chairmanship of Hilda Forman, BRIDGE remained a small, communist-dominated organisation without public profile. In 1971, in what became standard practice in the post-recognition period, East German officials founded the Committee for Recognition from a range of sympathetic public figures, including the Labour MP Richard Crossman, the Liberal MP David Steel and churchman Paul Oestreicher.⁴⁰ In 1974, BRIDGE was re-founded as the Britain–GDR Society and, until the collapse of 1989/90, it attempted to disseminate a positive image of East Germany by developing a wide range of cultural exchanges, holding exhibitions, film shows, language courses and distributing the English-language literature we discussed above. During the ‘second cold war’ of the 1980s, the Britain–GDR Society saw something of a revival of its importance in East German foreign policy. Above all, it promoted dialogue at the local level, such as town twinning, and developed contacts supportive of the anti-nuclear ‘coalition of reason’.⁴¹

The official East German peace movement had a variety of contacts with diverse peace groups in Britain. Founded in 1949, the East German Peace Council acted as the representative of the officially approved peace movement in the GDR. The Peace Council, which was a member organisation within the Soviet-led World Peace Council, focused its energies on garnering support for East Bloc ‘peace’ initiatives, and organising visits by Western peace campaigners.⁴² In Britain, the Peace Council was able to develop an often close professional relationship with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and peace campaigners within the Churches. The sensitivity of this relationship, which involved contact with peace campaigners critical of the GDR, ensured close surveillance by the East German Ministry of State Security.⁴³ The Peace Council leadership included delegates from the East German Churches, which took an active interest in promoting peace and détente and, during the 1980s, pushed for greater independence from the state. Church contacts between Britain and the GDR flourished more generally in the 1970s and 1980s. A large number of high-profile delegations in both directions represented the tip of an iceberg in what was a surprisingly high degree of dialogue, covering issues from world peace to the ecumenical movement.⁴⁴ However, here, too, the SED-Staat maintained close control over contacts with British churchmen, using the Christian Democratic Party (East) (CDU-Ost) as the medium and facilitator of these contacts.

The gargantuan East German foreign policy apparatus proved to be wasteful and inefficient. Particularly during the campaign for recognition, high expenditure brought meagre results, falling far short of the ambitious aim of using foreign friendship societies as ersatz foreign ministries.⁴⁵ The official slogan of East German ‘diplomacy by delegation’ was to cultivate ‘friendship between the peoples’ of East and West in order to underpin peaceful coexistence. In practice, however, neither the LfV nor Debrig were open to individual membership; instead, they were staffed by hand-picked, party-trained apparatchiks, who took their political instruction in a chain of command descending from the politburo.⁴⁶ In fact, the leading cadres of the Liga have been described by one official involved in the work of the French friendship society, as ‘cadre tip’ (Kadermüllkippe), arguing that the Liga suffered from poor leadership throughout much of its existence.⁴⁷ Many Liga officials who dealt with Britain had developed close personal contacts with British friends during their years of exile in Britain. The GDR drew readily on their first-hand knowledge of the language and culture. Horst Brasch, de facto head of the LfV’s activities in Britain, had spent the war years in London. So, too, had Wilhelm Koenen, who played a central role in setting up Debrig, and Hans Herzfeld, whose manifold activities in relations with Britain included heading the department responsible for English-language radio broadcasts into the West, as well as involvement in the Peace Council and the Berlin (East)–London Committee during the 1980s.⁴⁸ A wide range of mid-level LfV officials also fitted this pattern,⁴⁹ in what was a development common to all national friendship societies.⁵⁰

While the loyalty of East German officials was taken as given, delegates selected to represent East Germany abroad were put forward by the local party organisations, and were subject to approval by the central party authorities after extensive screening to ensure political reliability.⁵¹ The system used to supervise foreign ‘delegations’ visiting the GDR also operated to isolate them from ‘ordinary citizens’, while seeking to implant a positive image through a highly structured programme of events and visits. The ultimate aim was to ensure that ‘delegates’ became ‘friends’ of the GDR, spreading the word back home of ‘socialist successes’ behind the Wall. The LfV also sought to control the Britain–GDR Society through regular ‘strategy meetings’ in East Berlin.⁵² Crucially, while the GDR aimed to improve its image in Britain, it intended to do so without the risks involved in a two-way flow of ideas. The SED was all too evidently opposed to any transfer of ideas; indeed, Western culture was treated as a potentially lethal political ‘virus’ from which East German citizens must be quarantined. For this reason, the study of political of cultural transfer would be of limited value,⁵³ although personal contacts could, and did, modify opinions and change perceptions and prejudices on both sides. Thus, the wide range of contacts, from trade unionists and town councillors to academics and churchmen, was not entirely without effect.

The British policy of ‘non-recognition’ of the GDR until 1973 was determined by international obligations to NATO and West Germany’s status as an important European ally.⁵⁴ In the planning and prosecution of Britain’s policy towards East Germany, the Foreign Office stood centre stage. The ‘non-recognition’ of East Germany meant that the ‘Ulbricht regime’ was dealt with by the Foreign Office’s ‘Western Department’ under the rubric ‘Germany’, rather than by the ‘Northern Department’, which had responsibilities for the Soviet Union and the wider East Bloc. The foreign-policy bureaucracy in Whitehall, which had many senior officials with detailed knowledge and first-hand experience of the situation in Germany, exercised considerable influence on government policy. It helped prepare government for what was widely believed to be East Germany’s almost inevitable recognition as the tide of international relations turned in the course of the 1960s. Most notably, in 1971 Geoffrey McDermott, the British Political Advisor in Berlin from 1960–1962, was willing to lend his support to the East German-sponsored Committee for the Recognition of the GDR, which comprised around forty public personalities (e.g., politicians, academics, clergymen and writers). Although this Committee did, after considerable delay, publish an open letter in The Times calling for the recognition of the GDR, it came too late in the day and was of too little significance to matter much. A public opinion poll the Committee organised through the Electoral Reform Society asked respondents to express an opinion in favour of or against recognition of the GDR. Of the 21 per cent that replied, the overwhelming majority was in favour, but given that 79 per cent did not bother to reply, the result was a mixed blessing at best. The Committee also undertook lobbying work among government ministers, but overall, by the time it was activated, international policy was already moving swiftly in the direction of the recognition of the GDR. At best one can say that it helped to keep the issue of GDR recognition before the public eye; its influence on the course of British politics, however, was limited.⁵⁵

The task of ensuring adherence to Britain’s anti-communist foreign-policy objectives, and, more specifically, countering communist propaganda emanating from East Berlin, fell to the Foreign Office’s Information and Research Department (IRD).⁵⁶ Anti-communist propaganda was also broadcast into the GDR by the BBC’s ‘German Service’, which operated from West Berlin.⁵⁷ From the end of the 1940s, the ‘External Department’ of the British Embassy in Bonn operated as the Political Department of the British Military Government (BMG) in Berlin, with the department’s ‘Political Advisor’ to the BMG taking on the position of deputy City Commandant. Although personnel in the ‘External Department’ enjoyed, in principle, unrestricted movement, military intelligence in the GDR was run by the ‘British Commander-in-Chief’s Mission to the Soviet Forces in Germany’. Berlin, which had become the epicentre of cold-war espionage operations, was also the point of departure for British foreign intelligence (SIS) operations.⁵⁸

Apart from the Foreign Office and other state-run institutions, in particular the Board of Trade, the Labour Party was a crucial player when it came to relations with the GDR. In particular the Labour Left took a keen interest in ‘actually existing socialism’, as it related the latter’s alleged ‘achievements’ to their own core objectives focused on improving the condition of the working class and state ownership of the means of production.⁵⁹ In foreign-policy terms, common cause was found in a particularly vociferous opposition to Atlanticism. However, no one opinion emerged vis-à-vis the GDR even on the Labour left which spanned a spectrum of views, including many which retained critical perspectives on Eastern European communism. Although the following study will devote considerable attention to the pro-Soviet Left, both within and outside the Labour Party, and its strong support for contacts with the GDR, it will also explore the role of other left-wingers who were less in harmony with ‘actually existing socialism’, but favoured dialogue and détente over the hostilities of the Cold War.⁶⁰ Those gripped most strongly by what Dennis Healey called the Labour Party’s ‘Russia complex’ saw in the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies a political model for socialism. Inconsistencies and contradictions between theory and practice were explained away by the difficulties encountered by Moscow since 1917 – not least of which was Western aggression. In this mindset, the Soviet regime’s faults could be excused as transitional and redeemable, rather than relating to the inherent narrowness of Marxist–Leninist ideology. Accordingly, the ‘Russia complex’ fostered a Manichean worldview, dividing the world into the dark forces of the American-led capitalism and the forces fighting for socialism.⁶¹ Among the latter could also be counted Eastern European communism, even if one found fault with certain aspects of it. At least the GDR, like other communist states in Eastern Europe, had abolished capitalism.

During the period of ‘non-recognition’, the British Foreign Office officially requested that participants in non-governmental organisations (NGOs), such as trade unions, peace movements, churches, etc, did nothing to support East Germany’s mushrooming campaign for diplomatic recognition. On the world stage, however, the GDR had a considerable degree of success in gaining entry to international organisations. By 1970, East Germany was a member of some 500 international NGOs, from sport and medicine to astronautics.⁶² If the GDR could never break free of its negative public image as the grey, hard-line communist Germany, then East Berlin did develop a surprisingly strong network of British ‘friends’ prepared to act as either unofficial ambassadors of ‘actually existing socialism’ or, more commonly, proponents of the politics of dialogue. Hence, in the British case, one has to distinguish carefully between official attitudes towards the GDR as reflected in governmental policies and positions formulated by the Foreign Office and the attitudes of a variety of ‘societal’ organisations – from political parties, to trade unions and peace movements, to church organisations. It is the objective of this study to examine the extent, motivation, successes and failures of British–GDR relations from both the governmental, official level and the unofficial societal level.

Researching British–GDR relations

The study of British–German relations is a well-established field of historical writing,⁶³ but much of the literature on the post-1945 relations has focused on relations between Britain and the FRG. In examining the full scope of British–GDR relations, this study can build on a comparatively manageable literature, which has mainly dealt with British–GDR relations in the period between 1949 and 1973. In 1977 the Research Institute of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik published a brief account of the GDR’s relations with Britain, which was largely based on the available published material.⁶⁴ The undisputed pathfinder and doyenne in the field of British–GDR relations is Marianne Howarth. Her 1977 thesis, written under the name Marianne Bell, incorporates extremely valuable information on a wide range of contacts before the period of recognition in 1973, and all subsequent scholars have benefited enormously from her work.⁶⁵ Bert Becker’s book from 1981, covering the same period, is a good case in point.⁶⁶ On the eve of the East German revolution of 1989 Axel Bachmann gave a brief survey of the GDR’s policies vis-à-vis the Anglo-Saxon countries.⁶⁷ And Anne Deighton, in the year of German reunification, provided a comprehensive account of Britain’s role in the division of Germany.⁶⁸

With the opening of the archives post-1990, research began to flourish. In particular Henning Hoff’s masterly study of the multi-faceted relationships between Britain and the GDR until 1973 has expanded our knowledge of the subject area substantially.⁶⁹ Hans-Georg Golz has provided us with a full account of the activities of the friendship societies.⁷⁰ Ulrich Pfeil, who has himself worked most extensively on France,⁷¹ has also published a valuable collection which compares the relationship of the GDR with a wide variety of Western states drawing on the expertise of a large range of European scholars, including that for Britain of Henning Hoff.⁷² Pfeil also explicitly considers the period of the 1970s and 1980s on which there is still least information. Once again Marianne Howarth made a first attempt at an overview of British–German relations after 1973.⁷³ Anthony Glees has lavished much attention on the activities of the East German secret service, the Stasi, in Britain.⁷⁴ Klaus Larres has provided us with intriguing glimpses of economic and political relations up until the fall of the wall. ⁷⁵ And Arnd Bauerkämper has edited a formidable collection of articles bringing together considerable expertise in British–GDR relations over