The Foreign Service Journal, November 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2019 45 Predicting the Fall George F. Ward Jr. Bonn, Federal Republic of Germany w hen East Germans began streaming to the West through the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, I was deputy chief of mission at the embassy in Bonn. The events of that day set in motion a swift process that led to the unification of Ger- many on Oct. 3, 1990. The fall of the wall came as no surprise to Ambassador Vernon A. “Dick” Walters. On April 7, 1989, while preparing for his assignment to Germany, Walters had asked me to be his deputy. At the beginning of our conversation, he said, “George, we’re going to Germany at a very interesting time. The Berlin Wall’s going to come down.” At the time, this was an astounding statement, and I was skeptical. The conven- tional wisdom ascribed to by some of the State Department’s Germany experts and by a number of West German politi- cal leaders was that German unification would take place only over an extended period of time, through a convergence of the systems in East and West. Walters had a broader vision and a different view. The Soviet Union had suffered a defeat in Afghanistan and was weakened economically. General Secretary Gorbachev, Walters reasoned, would not use the Red Army to quell the popular unrest that was bubbling just below the surface in East Germany. Therefore, Ger- man unity seemed plausible, even predictable. The geopolitics of German unity were worked out through the Two Plus Four negotiating process, which involved the four World War II Allies—the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union—plus the two German states. The embassy in Bonn supported this process but found its principal role in helping to wind down the special status of the four powers in Germany. The sovereign status of the four powers was most evident in Berlin, but it also provided the basis for many institutions and activities throughout Germany, including the stationing of NATO forces and even the right of the United States to occupy the embassy complex in Bonn. Along with many other members of the embassy and mission in West Berlin, I was involved in quite a number of formal and informal negotiating processes. All of this unfolded at a dizzying pace, and the outcome was unclear until close to the end. The most consequential negotiation concerned the future status of the more than 200,000 U.S. military personnel and tens of thousands of other NATO troops in a unified Germany. For a while, some negotiators on the West German teammaintained that members of NATO forces would be restricted from entering the territory of the former East Germany, perhaps even on per- sonal travel. Although the Allies had no intention of establishing bases in the former East Germany, the proposed travel restric- tions were unacceptable. In addition, German proposals to subject Allied military personnel and their families to German law in a number of mundane areas would have posed substantial inconvenience. It is a tribute to the excellent German-American relationship that had been built up during the years since World War II that these and other questions were resolved through frank but amicable dialogue in time for German unification. Embassy Bonn’s role in the German unification saga was best summed up by words included in the group honor award it received: “a classic example of successful American diplomacy, in which intelligence, energy, dedication and a clear understanding of U.S. interests combined to produce results beyond expectations.” For me personally, German unification brought the joy of family unification. My grandmother had emigrated from Saxony to New York early in the 20th century. When the BerlinWall came down, I was able to establish contact with relatives in the East. Visiting with them in their workers’ apartment in Halle brought both joy and sadness—joy over discovering family I had never known, but sadness about the grim conditions they had endured since 1945. Later, I was able to bring my relatives to Bonn for a tearful, cheerful time with my mother, who was visiting us. Our happy walks along the Rhine made me thankful for the work and sacri- fices of so many that resulted in a good end to the Cold War. The deputy chief of mission in Bonn in 1989, Ambassador George F. Ward Jr. was a Foreign Service officer from 1969 to 1999. Since retir- ing, he has served in leadership roles at the United States Institute of Peace, World Vision and the Institute for Defense Analyses. For me personally, German unification brought the joy of family unification. My grandmother had emigrated from Saxony to New York early in the 20th century. –George F. Ward Jr.