Transcript: Chapter 12

Narrator: Bush encouraged the reforms Gorbachev had allowed. His active role came after the reform movement spread to East Germany. In August East Germans sought asylum at the West German missions in Prague and in East Berlin. Then Hungary opened its borders to Austria, and East German tourists fled into Austria. As protests for reform grew in East Germany, the British and the French grew more worried about a reunified Germany. In the first half of the 20th century they suffered from German aggression in two world wars. In the second half, with Germany divided, Europe had been at peace. The possibility of a reunited Germany almost 50 years after Hitler did not worry George Bush.

Reporter (archival): Mr. President, do you think a reunified Germany would be a stabilizing force in Europe or a destabilizing force?

George H. W. Bush (archival): I think there is in some quarters a feeling a reunified Germany would be detrimental to the peace of Europe, of Western Europe in some way, and I don't accept that at all, simply don't.

Narrator: They "can't turn back the clock", Bush told the New York Times. "The change is too inexorable." One writer called this a "verbal volley heard around the world."

Condoleezza Rice: His pronouncements before the wall came down were probably among the most unstaffed comments by any president of the United States. I can tell you that was wonderful, to have the President come out and say, "Germany ought to unify, and unify as quickly as it can, on terms that are acceptable to Germans." Because we didn't have any debates inside the administration about whether Germany ought to unify. The President had already said it was going to unify. Our job then was just to make it happen. He was out in front of all of us.

Timothy Naftali: Germany loomed large in the history of postwar Europe, and arguably of the whole U.S.-Soviet competition. The Soviets felt that their share of Germany was a prize that they had won for beating Hitler. They also saw their slice of Germany as their front line, as a defense against future attacks. Bush saw that with care, he could get the Soviets to give up what had been their great prize. This is where Bush actually got ahead of most of the foreign policy analysts and most of the leaders in the free world.

Narrator: The Soviets had built the wall dividing Berlin in 1961 to keep the East Germans from fleeing. In early November 1989 Gorbachev prodded East Germany's leader to open its borders to "avoid an explosion." Within days, the Berlin Wall, the very symbol of the Cold War, was breeched.

George H. W. Bush (archival): Well, I don't think any single event is the end to what you might call the Iron Curtain, but clearly this is a long way from the harsh days, the harshest Iron Curtain days -- a long way from that.

Reporter (archival): In what you just said, that this is a great victory. You don't seem elated.

George H. W. Bush (archival): I am elated. I'm not a very emotional kind of guy.

Richard Norton Smith: He famously said that his mother told him as a boy not to indulge in braggadocio. And if there was ever a time when any other American president would have been tempted to indulge in braggadocio, it was 1898-1990, the end of the Cold War, the great victory of the West over the Marxist experiment, over the "evil empire."

Narrator: The wall had inspired some of the most memorable post-war presidential rhetoric.

John F. Kennedy: And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, Ich bin ein Berliner.

Ronald Reagan: Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

Richard Norton Smith: Any other president would have gotten in a plane and flown to Berlin, and beat his breast, and engaged in "I told you so" triumphalism. And Bush not only didn't need to do that, he had the strength of character to resist everyone around him who told him that that's what he should do as President of the United States and leader of the free world. Condoleezza Rice: I was one of those who thought he should go to Berlin, he should be at the wall; for Kennedy, for Reagan, for all of those who had wanted the wall to come down, he should go there. From his point of view, this was a German moment. He wanted to have the end of the division of Germany be a German moment. It was a moment for Germany to come to terms with its division. And it was a moment for Germany to celebrate that that division had ended.

Narrator: Bush's self restraint was more than modesty and courtesy. He had geo-politics in mind. He remembered when Hungarians revolted against their Soviet backed regime in 1956 and the CIA had led Hungarians to believe the U.S. would rush to their support. He did not want East Germans to expect the U.S. Army to rescue them if the Soviets ordered a crackdown. More important, Bush wanted to work with Gorbachev to end the Cold War. He worried that grandstanding in Berlin could provoke a coup in Moscow.

Pavel Palazchenko: He actually said to Gorbachev on the phone that "I will not be dancing on the wall." That is, I think, something that Gorbachev appreciated, because he didn't want additional problems for himself within the country, from the hardliners, from the conservatives within the party, if anything happened that could have been conceived as humiliating to Gorbachev.

Timothy Naftali: It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of that cool-headedness and delicate approach at a time of international change, revolutionary change in international politics.

Narrator: At home Bush's restraint was met with criticism and ridicule.

Senator George Mitchell (archival): I urge President Bush to express the sense of elation that all Americans feel as the East German people and erase barriers that have imprisoned them for decades.

Senator Richard Gephardt, House Majority Leader (archival): Even as the walls of he modern Jericho come tumbling down, we have a president who at least for now is inadequate to the moment.

Bush impersonator (Dana Carvey): The wall coming down. Me? Enthusiastic but prudent. Out in front of the situation -- not too far. Playing it just right.

Narrator: East and West Germans voted to unify, and Bush wanted the unified Germany in the Western camp, in NATO.

Condoleezza Rice: Gorbachev was clearly not predisposed to have a unified Germany be in NATO. How could that be good, from Russian- the Soviet point of view? The divided Germany had, after all, been the epicenter of that ideological conflict, and the Soviet Union had most of its Warsaw Pact forces and clearly its most elite forces in East Germany. So how was this going to work?

Narrator: Bush and Gorbachev tackled this issue at a summit in Washington in early June 1990.

Mikhail Gorbachev (translated): I said, "We want Germany to be neutral." That was our initial position that we proposed. This was the subject of very passionate debate. President Bush said, "Why are you afraid of Germany?" I said, "Well, my impression is that you are afraid of Germany, because you are afraid to set Germany free from NATO. We are not afraid of Germany out of NATO. Why should we be afraid?

Condoleezza Rice: President Bush said, andof course the Helsinki accords which we had all signed in 1975 allow that any state in Europe can choose its alliances. So once there's a unified Germany, it can choose its alliances. And Gorbachev said, "That's right."

Mikhail Gorbachev (translated): Yes. I said, "Well, if you insist, then it is not up to us to decide which alliance Germany would join, so let the Germans decide whether they would want to be a part of the Warsaw Treaty or a part of NATO or to be a neutral country."

Brent Snowcraft: And his associates at the table started talking among themselves, Russians, and they called a halt to the meeting, and they went off in the corner and had a debate. It was really, really something. And they tried to get Gorbachev to back away from that statement, that the German -- it was up to the Germans.

Condoleezza Rice: And we actually called the Russians that night and said, "Now, when President Bush says this in his press conference statement, is President Gorbachev going to say yes, or is he going to contradict him?" And we waited long hours. I remember going home and waiting well into the night. And finally the call came. Yes, in fact, President Gorbachev was going to be fine. He wouldn't contradict it. And then we all held our breath through the press conference.

George H. W. Bush (archival): I believe as do Chancellor Kohl and the members of the alliance believe Germany should be a full member of NATO. President Gorbachev frankly does not hold that view. But we are in full agreement that the matter of alliance membership is in accordance with the Helsinki Final Act a matter for the Germans to decide.

Pavel Palazchenko: Bush said to Gorbachev, "I do understand why you have doubts about Germany. I do understand. I do know the history between the Soviet Union and Germany. But I believe that Germany has paid its dues, that Germany has paid its debts, and that it is now a responsible nation that will behave responsibly on the international scene." And I think that that argument did have some force with Gorbachev.

Condoleezza Rice: That was one of the seminal moments in unifying Germany. And President George H.W. Bush was the only person that I think could have pulled it off, just because of his personal qualities and the way that he thought about diplomacy.

Narrator: Bush considered a united Germany in NATO one of the crowning achievements of his presidency. One historian called it "one of the greatest moments in the history of American statecraft" after Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase and the diplomacy of the so-called Wise Men who, at the start of the Cold War, planned the policy of containing the Soviet Union.

Narrator: Eighteen months into his term, George Bush faced the first international crisis of the post-Cold War world. Iraq's president Saddam Hussein invaded neighboring Kuwait in a dispute over oil fields. Bush would have to decide how to deal with a man he saw in terms of Hitler. How he would meet that challenge would test all his skills as President. His actions would propel him to the heights of popularity. That would make his rejection by the American people less than two years later all the more bewildering and painful.