the 1980s had grown altogether more harsh;
economic health was the priority. Governments
encouraged enterprise and productivity in indus-
try, and the devil catch the hindmost. So the
safety net was beginning to show large holes.
Ecology, the health of the earth, became a
growing concern. In Western Germany especially,
a sizeable part of the community rebelled against
a society that put material interests above all else
and was therefore damaging the environment.
There were ever more cars, and forests were dying
from acid rain. Governments began to take notice
and to discuss measures to reduce pollution. The
Chernobyl disaster in 1986 sensitised people to
the dangers of nuclear reactors. The Greens ben-
efited as the anti-nuclear party. There were violent
clashes between protesters and police at the sites
of two nuclear reactors being built at Wackersdorf
and Brokdorf. The government defended the
nuclear-energy option, but this was really the end
of nuclear expansion in West Germany. France,
meanwhile, took the opposite course.
West Germany was characterised during these
years by an altogether more active public ready to
join mass protests on issues that moved them. The
protesters were no longer only young people and
students, as they had been in the 1960s. It was a
welcome sign that Germans were no longer awed
by authority and bureaucracy, as they had been in
the bad old days of the 1930s. The Pershing mis-
siles based in Germany were the cause of continu-
ous and widespread protest. But Genscher’s
diplomacy maintained West Germany on a shady
path, keeping Franco-German relations in good
repair, behaving as good Europeans in the
European Community and particularly normalis-
ing relations with the East German regime. While
reunification remained the official line, few at that
time believed they would see it happen in their life-
time. So the West German government set itself
the task of overcoming the unnatural divisions
caused by the Wall and concluded agreement
which made travel between the two Germanies
easier. The East German regime was much aided
by the flourishing trade with West Germany, which
also gave its neighbour large credits.
With unemployment high, every legal effort
was made to stem the number of asylum-seekers,
other than Germans from the East, wishing to
enter the Federal Republic. The Gastarbeiterwere
not as welcome as before, and Turkish families
who had lived for years in West Germany were
encouraged to return by the offer of a federal
grant. Few took advantage of it.
As election day in January 1987 approached,
the Kohl administration could count on solid sup-
port from the electorate, which was enthused by
the expanding economy and prepared to overlook
the unemployment. Genscher was popular too; he
enjoyed a reputation as a skilful and successful
foreign minister who was covering more air-miles
than any of his predecessors. Kohl was rather
underrated, as it turned out, and was regarded as
stodgy, with an unfortunate flair for putting his
foot in it. That the television stations repeated his
1985 Christmas address in 1986 by mistake
seemed a typical mishap. A more serious incident
occurred during Reagan’s visit in May 1985. To
mark the anniversary of the ending of the Second
World War, as a gesture of reconciliation the US
president and the federal chancellor paid their
respects at a German military cemetery, but the
choice of Bittsburg was unfortunate, because it
contained many SS graves. There were protests,
and Reagan was embarrassed. Kohl made another
gaffe in 1987 when he likened Gorbachev’s pro-
paganda to that of Joseph Goebbels. But in truth
these were really just minor embarrassments. No
1
THE GERMAN FEDERAL REPUBLIC 837
Gross national product per head (US$)
1983 1985 1987 2000
Federal 10,510 10,940 14,400 22,800
Republic
of Germany
Britain 8,186 8,460 10,420 23,680
Unemployment as percentage of workforce
1983 1985 1987 2000
Federal 8.9 9.0 8.9 8.1
Republic
of Germany
Britain 12.5 11.3 10.3 5.3
