THE SETTING: THE HALL OF MIRRORS, VERSAILLES, JANUARY 1871: In the palace of the Bourbons, the rulers of Germany's 25 independent and quarrelsome states gather to savor the fruits of their victory over France's armies. The Franco-Prussian War has given the Germans something that eluded them for centuries—unity. As the architect of that unity, Count Otto von Bismarck looks on, gripping the long spike of his Prussian helmet, while Prussia's King Wilhelm proclaims the establishment of the German Empire. Historian Thomas Carlyle hails the German victory in a letter to the Times of London: "That noble, patient, deep, pious and solid Germany should be at length welded into a nation and become Queen of the Continent instead of vaporing, vainglorious, gesticulating, quarrelsome, restless and oversensitive France seems to me the hopefullest public fact that has occurred in my time."
THE SETTING: THE OLD JEWISH GHETTO, WARSAW, DECEMBER 1970: His broad, ruggedly handsome face etched with lines of concern, West Germany's Chancellor Willy Brandt walks slowly to the simple granite slab that memorializes the 500,000 Jews from the city's ghetto who were massacred by the Germans during World War II. For a moment he stands with bowed head, enveloped in silence except for the soft hiss of two gas-fed candelabra. Then, as if to atone for Germany's sins against its neighbors, Brandt falls to his knees. "No people," as Willy Brandt has said, "can escape from their history."
EACH tableau represents a turning point in the history of Europe—and of the world. Contrary to Carlyle's bright hopes, a united and powerful Germany proved neither noble nor patient. Twice Bismarck's heirs burst across their borders in cataclysmic wars that ended with two new superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, facing each other across a divided continent—a division dramatically symbolized by the hideous masonry of the Berlin Wall. A quarter of a century after the end of World War II, no European peace treaty has been written, and, in a very real sense, the results of the war have not been resolved. Willy Brandt is in effect seeking to end World War II by bringing about a fresh relationship between East and West. He is trying to accept the real situation in Europe, which has lasted for 25 years, but he is also trying to bring about a new reality in his bold approach to the Soviet Union and the East bloc.
In the East, the situation has been frozen by Communist leaders who feared that contact with the West would undermine their hold on their people. In the West, Bonn made detente impossible by refusing to acknowledge the loss of a huge chunk of its land to Poland and by stridently insisting that it would absorb East Berlin's Communist regime in an eventual German reunification. Willy Brandt is the first West German statesman willing to accept the complete consequences of defeat: the lost lands, the admission of moral responsibility, the acknowledgement of Germany's partition. In the process, he is also challenging the Communist countries to expand their dealings with the West, and indirectly, to allow wider freedom for their own people.
While most political leaders in 1970 were reacting to events rather than shaping them, Brandt stood out as an innovator. He has projected the most exciting and hopeful vision for Europe