I never could figure out why nearly 30 years had passed since the end of World War II before (East and West) Germany was allowed into the United Nations. Was it because Germany was essentially the raison d’être of the United Nations – the Allied Nations in alliance with each other to defeat Nazi Germany? But Germany wasn’t the only Axis country in WWII – Italy joined the UN on December 14, 1955, and Japan joined on December 18, 1956. So why were they allowed into the UN nearly 20 years before Germany?
Were the German people still feeling guilt over their role in WWII and therefore thought it would be awkward to try to join an organization that was created to oppose them? Did the US or USSR oppose German membership up until 1973? Or was joining the United Nations just simply not a priority for either East or West Germany?
Remember that Germany was two separate nations from 1949 until 1991. The Soviet Union would not consent to the B.R.D. (West Germany) joining, and the U.S. and or the U.K. would not consent to the D.D.R. (East Germany), through most of the Cold War.
Exactly. But notice the combos I set up: The US didn’t want the DDR, the Soviet satellite, to join; the USSR didn’t want West Germany, which they saw as our satellite, to join. Each veto power blocked the other’s affiliate.
Yes, but other Soviet-dominated nations, such as Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania, and Romania all joined in 1955. Likewise, other Western countries such as Spain, Portugal, and Ireland also all joined in 1955. Presumably, some sort of agreement had to have been made between the US and USSR in order to allow those countries from their respective spheres of influence to join the UN. But, again, why did it take nearly another 20 years for the US and USSR to allow the two Germanies to join the UN?
I think the basic issue was that the West German government considered itself to be the legitimate government of all Germany (I don’t know if East Germany necessarily reciprocated in claiming to be the sole government of Germany). Thus, until the two Germanies signed a treaty in 1972 officially recognizing each other’s existence, the situation was somewhat analogous to the People’s Republic of China/Republic of China (Taiwan), North or South Korea, or North or South Vietnam. Only one of the “two Chinas” has been a member of the U.N. (the ROC/Taiwan until the 1970’s, when it was replaced by the PRC/Mainland China); I don’t believe either North or South Vietnam was a member, with Vietnam only being admitted after the war was over and the country was unified; and the two Koreas were only admitted in the 1990’s. Once the FRG and the GDR agreed to officially admit they both existed, they could then both be admitted to the U.N. as two sovereign states.
Yes it did; this was the problem. It didn’t matter if the Eastern Bloc got into the U.N. But letting, say, East germany in would be an implicit statement that it was acepted as the “legitimate” Germany, and vice versa for West. And putting both of them in would implicitly say that Germany was really two countries, not one which happened to be split for a while. And neither Germany nor the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were willing to accept that. So it stayed neutral. Neither side really would get anything from getting theirs in, so it was never a real issue.
In its first years East Germany officially supported reunification (under the appropriate system of course…) but at some time in the 1960s renounced this (which was a bit awkward as it had adopted a national anthem mentioning Deutschland, einig Vaterland (Germany, united fatherland). The anthem was kept, but since the early 1970s it was not sung anymore, just played. Like the Soviet anthem the lyrics of which embarassingly still praised Stalin.).
While West Germany’s doctrine was first “one state”, then, “one country, temporarily two states”, East Germany’s policy was “two countries, two states” or, rather, “two and a half states” as they did not recognize West Berlin as a full part of West Germany.
