THE HUMAN SIDE OF GERMAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85M00364R001202030028-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 24
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 19, 2008
• Sequence Number: 28
• Publication Date: March 14, 1983
• Content Type: REPORT

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Executive Registry
'I 83 - too 09~i
EMBASSY OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Bonn
March 10, 1983
I am enclosing another speech
of mine which you may find of interest.
With every good wish, I am,
Sincerely yours,
Arthur F. Burns
Ambassador
The Honorable
William J. Casey
Washington, DC
C - 3~g
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THE HUMAN SIDE OF GERMAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS
by
American Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany
Presented at
The Ubersee Club
Hamburg, Federal Republic of Germany
March 14, 1983
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THE HUMAN SIDE OF GERMAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS
by Arthur F. Burns
As the Ambassador of the United States in the Federal
Republic of Germany, I have often spoken about the
political, economic, and security relationships between
our two countries. This evening I would like to address a
more fundamental theme -- the human relationship between
your country and mine.
We are commemorating this year the 300th anniversary
of the arrival in North America of the first permanent
immigrants from Germany. The 13 Mennonite and Quaker
families who in 1683 settled in Germantown, now a part of
the City of Philadelphia, came in search of freedom -- the
freedom to pursue their religious beliefs and the freedom
to seek economic betterment for themselves and their
children. They found both. I dare say that a great
majority of the forebears of the approximately 60 million
Americans who today claim German ancestry came in search
of these same objectives -- personal freedom and economic
opportunity.
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Across the centuries, America has been identified with
these basic human strivings. Our Declaration of
Independence and our Constitution eloquently express these
ideals, and they have served in all parts of the world as
a beacon for people seeking a new life for themselves -- a
life that would enable them to speak or write freely, to
worship God as they saw fit, and to pursue economic
opportunities without being encumbered by rigid customs or
authoritarian rule.
The human significance of the centuries-old stream of
immigration to America -- at first from Western Europe,
later from Eastern and Southern Europe, still later from
Latin America, Asia, and other parts of the world -- can
hardly be exaggerated. Americans may justly note with
pride that their country has remained a land of hope and
welcome for uprooted people -- that it accepts even at
present many more immigrants than does the rest of the
world. Most of them still come in search of personal
freedom and economic opportunity for themselves and their
children.
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The United States, in turn, has continued to benefit
from the unceasing flow of immigrants to its shores. If
they caused social problems at times, they also ultimately
enriched our industrial, political, and cultural life. My
country could not have developed the way it did, nor
become the society that it is today, without the moral
courage and the intellectual and technical skills that
were continually being brought to us from the Old World,
and particularly from your country.
The names of many of the German immigrants to America
are well known on both sides of the Atlantic; and if I
mention some tonight, they serve only as examples of those
who have energized American life and culture. There is --
as the first of these -- Franz Daniel Pastorius, the
founder of Germantown, a prophetic figure who projected a
clear vision of the kind of country that the United States
was to become. In advocating the separation of church and
state, tolerance of religious and ethnic diversity, and
the abolition of slavery, he was well ahead of his time.
Another was William Rittenhouse, a minister and papermaker
from Muehlheim on the Ruhr, whose great grandson, David
Rittenhouse, served as the first director of the United
States Mint and achieved lasting fame as a mathematician,
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astronomer, and inventor. Thomas Jefferson was moved to
say of him: 'He has not indeed made a world, but he has
intimately approached nearer its maker than any man who
has lived." There was the printer, journalist, and
publisher - Christopher Saur, who was the first to print
the Bible in a European language in America. A more
famous immigrant was John Peter Zenger, who is still known
in the United States as the 'patron saint' of freedom of
the press. And there was Hans Nikolaus Eisenhauer, an
immigrant from Eiterbach, in what is now Southern Hesse,
who arrived in America in the middle of the 18th century,
achieved neither wealth nor fame, but became the ancestor
of Dwight David Eisenhower -- the 34th President of the
United States.
And, if I may continue, there were also the heroes of
the Revolutionary War -- Johann de Kalb and Friedrich
Wilhelm von Steuben; the political thinkers and reformers
-- Friedrich Becker, Carl Schurz, John Altgeld, and Robert
Wagner; the bridge builder -- John Augustus Roebling; the
organ builder -- Henry Steinway; the businessmen -- John
Jacob Astor and Levi Strauss; the artists -- Emanuel
Leutze and Albert Bierstad; the political cartoonist --
Thomas Nast; the musicians and composers -- Leopold
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Damrosch, Arnold Schoenberg, Bruno Walter, Kurt Weil; the
linguist -- Maximilian Berlitz; the banker and
philanthropist -- Paul Moritz Warburg; the theologian --
Paul Tillich; the architects -- Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
and Walter Gropius; the scientist -- Albert Einstein; the
writers -- Thomas Mann and Hannah Arendt; and -- to round
out this illustrative list -- your friend and mine, Henry
Kissinger. Where would America be, or for that matter
where would the world be, without the momentous
contributions of these German immigrants!
These people, their children, and their children's
children -- the 60 million Americans who claim German
antecedents -- forged the chain that linked our two
societies. These links had nothing to do with political
treaties, security arrangements, or trade agreements.
Indeed, they survived severe strains in the political
relationship between our countries -- even two terrible
wars. Perhaps the best example of the strength and
durability of these human ties is the speed and commitment
with which the people of my country devoted themselves to
assisting the German people after World War II.
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It was primarily the interaction between our two
peoples that brought democracy and physical reconstruction
to the Federal Republic and established the partnership
between our two societies that exists today. To be sure,
the Marshall Plan was a critical instrument in rebuilding
West Germany's shattered economy. The North Atlantic
Treaty provided the essential guarantee of security
against aggression. Other actions -- such as the Berlin
airlift -- further showed the resolve of the United States
to share in the protection of the young democracy that had
risen from the ashes of World War II. But the driving
force of all these salutary political developments was the
human network created by the millions of Americans of
German descent, by the numerous German refugees who
reached our shores in the 1930s, by the hundreds of
thousands of German prisoners of war who lived for years
in the United States, by the tens of thousands of
Americans and Germans who cooperated in rebuilding the
democratic society which the Federal Republic is today,
and by the legion of Fulbright scholars and exchange
students. It was their interaction that formed the
foundation of the partnership between our two countries --
a partnership that has proved strong enough to withstand
all sorts of temporary economic irritations and political
differences.
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These Americans and Germans who lived and worked
together came to understand and appreciate one another.
They knew or soon learned that they were bound together by
shared,values and convictions -- by respect for human
rights, by faith in democracy, by devotion to the rule of
law. And they transmitted these insights to those of
their countrymen who had no direct involvement with people
of the other nation. But by the late 1960s and early
1970s this creative generation of Germans and Americans
gradually moved out of positions of leadership and
influence. The network of human relationships that had so
closely linked our societies thus became looser. The
generation taking their places had no similar formative
experiences, and as a result it had a less personal
commitment to the German-American relationship.
In recent years the tight net of shared values between
our two peoples has been sagging, in part because we are
now less intimately involved with each other. At the same
time, other developments began to cloud the optimistic
mood, especially of young people, in our countries. Among
these was the diminished lustre of the noble dream of a
united Europe, the persisting hunger and despair in many
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of the less developed parts of the world, the Vietnam War
in which the United States had unfortunately become
entangled, the civil rights turmoil in my country, the
enormous Soviet military build-up during the 1970s in the
face of a proclaimed detente, the political adventures of
the Soviets in Asia and Africa and their invasion of
Afghanistan, the suppression of the newly achieved freedom
of speech and assembly in Poland, the rampant inflation
and rising umemployment in the Western world, and -- not
least important -- the growing feeling in the Federal
Republic that its 'Wirtschaftswunder' had come to an end.
All these factors, while not directly involving the
German-American relationship, have cast their shadow upon
it. It is an inescapable fact that the relationship
between our two peoples has become less close. The
educational system, which could have partially replaced
the loss of direct personal experience between Germans and
Americans, has failed us. The new generation has not been
well served by the slight attention of our schools to the
teaching of history, ethics, and the principles of our
Western civilization.
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Human understanding is always imperfect. That is
man's lot on earth. We know this from our daily lives.
Parents do not always understand their children, or
children their parents. So it is also between husbands
and wives, between employers and their workmen, between
landlords and tenants, between bankers and borrowers,
between professors and students. But if misunderstandings
exist within our families, schools, and workshops, they
have much greater opportunity to arise -- and even
flourish -- among nations, since differences of history
and language conspire with limited direct contacts between
peoples to breed misunderstanding and at times,
unfortunately, even mistrust. Foreign service is no
longer an entirely new career for me; I am now well into
the second year of my ambassadorship to your country. But
I must confess that I still continue to be astounded by
the strange opinions that highly placed Europeans now and
then express about the United States, and -- I should add
-- vice versa. Is there any wonder, then, why many of the
young people in your country and mine have so little
understanding of one another's society?
I have spent many hours with young people in your
country, as I previously did in mine. I admire their
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intelligence, their idealism, their horror of armaments,
and their sympathy for the downtrodden. But I am also
appalled by the ignorance that so many of them exhibit of
the history even of their own country, to say nothing
about their ignorance of the United States. And I am
especially troubled by their apparent lack of appreciation
of what it means to live in a democracy.
It is a puzzling and saddening feature of our times
that many of our young people, perhaps even more so in
your country than mine, seem unable to differentiate
between the moral and political order of the West and the
oppressive totalitarianism of the Soviet bloc. After all,
the values of Western democracies are not abstract or
elusive concepts. The liberty of the individual to speak,
write, worship, and assemble with others; the equality of
all individuals under the law; the protection of every
citizen against arbitrary acts of government; the freedom
to choose among economic, social, and cultural
alternatives -- these basic values of Western democracies
are practical realities that every intelligent person
should be able to grasp. They certainly are thoroughly
understood and appreciated by those who live under
Communist rule and are not able to enjoy them.
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The reason that many young people in Europe and
America take basic Western values for granted must be that
they have never been without them. They do not seem to
realize that their right to demonstrate for a nuclear
freeze, their freedom to press publicly for unilateral
disarmament, their right to march against what they
consider to be wrong American policies in Central America
-- that these privileges are theirs under a democratic
system that they themselves must help protect against
those who would take them away, as they have' been taken
away from both the young and old in Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Afghanistan, and many other
places. Young people of average intelligence ought to be
.able to see the difference between the impulses animating
America and those governing the Soviet Union. They ought
to be able to recognize that the invited presence of
American troops in Europe has the express purpose of
helping to protect the values of our Western civilization,
whereas the Soviet armies that have willfully occupied
Eastern Europe for 35 years are there to insure the
suppression of the freedoms for which their citizens yearn
to this day.
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The reality and the attraction of our Western values,
it appears to me, should be clear to anyone contemplating
the lives-of the unhappy people under Soviet domination
who, whenever possible, have taken to voting with their
feet because they cannot vote any other way. There are
millions of individuals who have escaped from East
Germany, Poland, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Cuba and
other Communist countries. But is anyone aware of a flood
-- or even of a trickle -- of refugees migrating to any of
these countries?
The misguided views of young people -- and even of
some who are not so young -- are often attributed to the
persistence and power of Soviet propaganda. I hear this
repeatedly from my business friends. That explanation,
however, is an escape from realities. The Soviets, to be
sure, use every opportunity to defame our Western
societies and to disguise the truth about their own. But
their ability to do so with success derives fundamentally
from the fact that both parents and teachers in our
countries have failed to impart to children a sufficiently
sound moral and historical education, so that they can
appreciate the democratic institutions that they have been
fortunate enough to inherit.
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To be sure, the democratic systems that prevail in
Western Europe and in the United States have their
shortcomings and abuses. But what is noteworthy about a
democracy is its capacity for improvement and renewal.
Open criticism, evolution of institutions, and orderly
change in the laws governing society-are inherent elements
of the democratic system. The Soviet system, in contrast,
stifles through terror and repression any attempt of its
citizens to change it significantly.
The young people of Western Europe must realize that
if they wish to preserve their liberties, if they wish to
enjoy the basic rights of a democratic society, they must
feel part of that system, and they therefore must be
prepared -- if it ever becomes necessary -- even to fight
for it. As parents, teachers, and politicians, we have
the responsibility on both sides of the Atlantic to make
sure that the democratic values that bind us'in the North
Atlantic Alliance are understood and appreciated by those
who follow in our footsteps.
How can we do that? I come from a background of
teaching, and I naturally value the benefits of a good
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education. It is clear to me that we must do a far better
job of educating our young people in ethics, history,
languages, and political science. This requires, among
other things, that we be more alert as parents and
teachers to the inadequacies of our formal educational
apparatus, particularly the gymnasia in your country and
the high schools in mine. The textbooks used in both
German and American schools are often obsolete, and for
that reason alone tend to convey serious misinformation
about our respective countries. Teachers of history and
political science have a special obligation to be
objective and up-to-date. They can be aided in fulfilling
this responsibility by an educational system that
encourages and rewards those teachers who diligently
continue their own education.
I also have a background in international finance. It
is for me a familiar territory of relative order and
predictability. International politics and diplomacy, on
the other hand, are a new discipline for me. I find it a
universe inordinately filled with gossip, emotion, and
even suspicion -- a world in which perception of facts
often obscure the facts themselves. This, I readily
admit, is the situation in my country as it is in yours;
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and I recognize that an ambassador must do what he can to
clear out this underbrush of emotion and faulty perception
that at times disturbs the relationship between his
government and the government to which he is accredited.
The achievement, however, of true understanding
between any two governments depends fundamentally on the
kind of relationship that exists between their peoples,
rather than on foreign ministers or ambassadors.
Governments in democratic countries are inevitably
influenced by, and to a considerable degree they even
echo, the thinking of their citizens. It is therefore
highly important that improvements in our respective
educational systems be supplemented by a vastly greater
network of personal contacts between the peoples of our
two countries. Bringing about better understanding of our
respective institutions of work and play, of life in our
homes and communities, and of the aspirations and fears of
our peoples should be our mutual goal. I know of no other
way of re-establishing the camaraderie and understanding
that existed between Americans and Germans after World War
II -- a camaraderie that forged the partnership between
our governments in furthering peace and protecting freedom.
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A dramatic expansion is now needed of programs under
which Americans can study, teach, or work for some time in
your country, while Germans become correspondingly
involved in my country. To accomplish this, both our
countries will have to devote larger resources -- in
manpower and in private and public financing -- to human
contacts and exchanges. I am told that the United States
Government now spends about $115 million per year on its
human exchanges with other nations, and that only a small
part of that sum is devoted to West Germany. Private
spending on exchange activities is much larger, but I am
convinced that neither private nor public financing of
this vital effort is nearly large enough. I would hope
that five years from now the American Ambassador will be
able to report to you that the moneys devoted by his
country to exchange programs with other nations, and
particularly with the Federal Republic of Germany, have
increased at least tenfold. That is how essential I
consider these exchanges to the freedom, security and
prosperity of the Western world.
Let me now turn more specifically to the exchange
activities between our two countries that I have in mind.
At present, various academic exchanges under private
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auspices are being supplemented by an academic exchange
program conducted jointly by the governments of the United
States and the Federal Republic. This program had its
origin many years ago when an American of vision, Senator
J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, became concerned about
an intellectual gap and proceeded to deal with it by
sponsoring an educational exchange program between the
United States and other countries. Its purpose was
cogently described by the Senator when he wrote some years
later: "Perhaps the greatest power of educational
exchange is the power to convert nations into peoples and
to translate ideologies into human aspirations. I do not
think educational exchange is certain to produce affection
between peoples, nor indeed is that one of its essential
purposes; it is quite enough if it contributes to the
feeling of a common humanity, to an emotional awareness
that other countries are populated not by doctrines that
we fear but by individual people -- people with the same
capacity for pleasure and pain, for cruelty and kindness
as the people we were brought up with in our own
countries.'
Since its inception the Fulbright exchange program has
enabled about 130,000 Americans and citizens of other
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countries to study, teach, or do research abroad, and
thereby improve understanding between and'among peoples of
different countries. The highly successful
American-German educational exchange program is a good
example. At the outset it was entirely financed by the
United States, but in time the German Government became so
convinced of its utility that it now contributes nearly
three-fourths of the total annual cost. This enlightened
program deserves increased support from my government as
well, and I am pleased to report that this view is widely
shared in Washington today.
There is also a vital need for a greatly expanded
youth.exchange program. Looking to the quality of the
future leadership of our societies, it is obviously
important to foster sensible dialogue among young people
at an early stage of their intellectual development.
Attitudes in both our societies are often formed before
youngsters reach the university level or embark on working
careers. In view of that, it would be especially useful
to provide larger opportunities for teenagers -- say,
those between 16 and 19 -- to spend some time in the
partner country. I am thinking of stays that would be of
sufficient duration to enable youngsters to go to school,
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live in a private home, and participate in the community
life of the other land. A young person who has spent a
school year or so in the partner country will have a real
opportunity to learn to understand its society. That
experience and knowledge will stay with him or'her over a
lifetime. I would hardly expect all young persons to
become enamored of their partner country, but their doubts
or criticisms will at least have been disciplined by some
first-hand knowledge.
President Reagan recently announced an international
youth initiative that focuses on this particular need with
the vision and commitment that characterized Senator
Fulbright's proposal back in 1946. The parliaments of
both our countries -- your Bundestag and the American
Congress -- have lost no time in endorsing the principle
of expanding youth exchanges, and both our governments are
already involved in translating their parliamentary
resolutions into practice. For instance, a plan is being
developed under which every member of the Bundestag and
every member of the American Congress will have the
opportunity to nominate a teenager from his or her
electoral district to spend a school year in the partner
country. This project, incidentally, would encourage our
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elected political leaders to become personally involved in
exchange activities, and it would thus establish
procedures that should benefit our two democracies in the
next generation. Not only that. It has been observed
time and again that exchange youngsters reinforce the
bonds of friendship they had formed with their host
families through their own parents, other relatives, and
fellow students. We need precisely such a matrix of human
contacts to rebuild the warm spirit of partnership that
existed between our two peoples during the late 1940s and
1950s.
Still another exchange activity that can yield rich
dividends of understanding would involve young Germans and
Americans who have already embarked on their life's work
in business or farming, as journalists or churchmen, as
teachers or government officials or trade unionists. They
too will eventually have a role, perhaps even a major role
of leadership, in our respective societies, and some of
them should have the opportunity to improve their
perspective on life by working for a time in another
country. In response to a wise suggestion by the German
Government, I am glad to report that. we in the United
States have begun to explore ways of cooperating with your
country by including working youth in the enlarged
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exchange activity between our peoples that is now being
designed -- an activity that should involve our homes,
schools, universities, churches, trades, and professions.
It is only by strengthening the human relationships
between our peoples that we can sustain our 'shared values.
In. concluding this discourse, allow me now to
summarize my message to you. Effective political,
economic, and security interaction between the United
States and the Federal Republic of Germany rests on a
foundation of human relationships between the people of
your country and mine. Our citizens share a set of values
that center on personal liberty, freedom of choice, and
the rule of law -- values that they have developed over a
period of three centuries. These values must be
understood and accepted by our citizenry if our political,
economic, and security ties are to be preserved. In order
to understand and appreciate these values, our citizens
must understand each other and each others' societies. To
accomplish this we need to improve our schools and
increase exchanges among our young people. Our two
countries are fully capable of providing the resources to
increase youth exchanges manifold, thereby avoiding doing
too little too late. We owe this to ourselves, and we owe
this to those who will follow in our footsteps.
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President Reagan recently remarked that the best way
-- in fact the only way -- to international peace "is
through understanding among nations and peoples." I dare
say that much the same is true of the preservation of our
Western civilization.
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