BERLIN Former Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel The memoirs, which will be published on Tuesday, are an interesting peek behind the scenes of the world’s power games and the effects of German reunification.
The leader of the center-right CDU party ruled Europe’s largest economy for 16 years, from 2005 to 2021.
For the first two years, Merkel was allowed to focus on leadership in peace, but then the crises began.
gathered seven interesting excerpts from Merkel’s work Freedom.
That’s it, there is a new problem on the table again, which is a result of the previous governments’ actions.
Angela Merkel on the euro crisis and the European refugee crisis 2015 in her memoir Freedom.
1. Putin has the trauma of an eternal loser
The most annoying things Merkel says about Russia About Vladimir Putinwhom he met dozens of times throughout his career. Putin was often very mean.
For example, the Russian leader scolded Merkel about her fear of dogs a couple of times, for example by bringing a labrador retriever to their meeting.
“You could read from Putin’s expression that he enjoyed the situation. Did he want to test how a person in distress reacts,” Merkel ponders.
In meetings, Putin had a sickening habit of listing various humiliations that Russia had had to face since the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to him.
Holding such monologues, Merkel believes, also belongs to the negotiation style of many other authoritarian leaders.
Under Merkel, however, economic relations with Russia only deepened. He draws attention to the fact that the deepening of relations was already started through him.
For example, the NordStream gas pipeline was his predecessor, a Democrat politician by Gerhard Schröder accomplishments.
Towards the end of her career, it became clear to Merkel that European leaders no longer mattered to Putin. This wanted only great powers on the other side of the table.
“Putin’s reference point was only and only the United States; I wouldn’t say that he even dreamed of the roles that the Soviet Union and the United States had in the past during the Cold War.”
Thus, Putin’s goal was to correct the situation in which the United States had emerged victorious from the Cold War.
Waiting for the president of the United States at international meetings was one of Putin’s greatest hobbies, Merkel says.
2. Ukraine’s NATO membership would have known problems
Merkel has been criticized for blocking Ukraine from becoming an official candidate for NATO membership at the Bucharest summit in 2008.
According to her memoirs, Merkel was already afraid of Russia’s military response at that time.
He had drawn attention to the fact that there was a base of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet on the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine. It was still an agreement between the countries.
“This kind of physical overlap between a member candidate and the Russian army had never been encountered before,” says Merkel.
He also explains that accepting a new member should bring more security to NATO as well. This was not the case with Ukraine. In addition, only a minority of Ukrainians supported their country’s NATO membership at that time.
3. Trump doesn’t understand the common good
Germany has been the home of past and future presidents of the United States Donald Trump’s always in the teeth.
Now Merkel reveals that her conversations with Trump were mostly about Trump’s slandering Germany. Merkel responded by refuting Trump’s claims with figures and facts.
Trump didn’t pay any attention to Merkel’s arguments, and if he did, it was mainly to find a new way to use them.
“He didn’t even seem to try to resolve the issues that arose,” Merkel writes.
According to Merkel, Trump doubts everything that he has not negotiated himself.
Merkel concluded from the discussions that “it would not be possible to work together with Trump for a networked world”.
“He evaluates everything like the real estate entrepreneur he used to be. Each plot of land could only be handed over once. If he didn’t get it, someone else did.”
Merkel on conversations with Trump.
4. The doors had to be opened for the refugees
The support of anti-immigration parties started to grow towards the end of Merkel’s reign.
In 2015, Germany took in almost a million refugees after the Arab Spring, mainly from Syria and Afghanistan. Since then, there have been terrorist attacks in Germany, the perpetrators of which came to the country at that time. The country’s economic situation has weakened and people’s dissatisfaction has grown.
According to German critics, Merkel would not have made the decision if she was originally West German. Since he himself has crossed the former border from east to west, he looked at the matter from the point of view of the newcomers.
According to Merkel, the refugees’ situation was so bad due to, among other things, rampant human smuggling that the doors had to be opened for them.
“I am still convinced that no one leaves their home region on easy grounds, not even those who leave solely driven by economic and social misery and who therefore have no chance of obtaining asylum seeker status in Germany,” Merkel says in her book.
5. The era of nuclear power is over
Merkel is a physicist by background, who had time to work in the field years before the wall between Germany was broken. That’s why his decision to close Germany’s nuclear power plants has been admired abroad.
However, Merkel does not regret the decision. As a physicist, he says that he assessed the risk associated with nuclear power as “reasonable”. When making the decision, however, he listened to the political environment and public opinion.
He came to his negative position, for example, after the intense demonstrations against the transport of radioactive material and the Fukushima nuclear accident.
“I cannot recommend Germany to return to the use of nuclear energy in the future. We can achieve the climate goals even without nuclear power, create successful technologies and at the same time encourage other countries around the world,” Merkel writes now.
6. The GDR background was a burden in Germany
Merkel was still thinking about an academic career in East Germany when the wall between Germany was broken.
In the end, hard work, perseverance and political toughness brought him to the top of a united Germany.
Merkel says that during her career she often got into difficult situations because of her background – like many other former East Germans in today’s Germany.
Merkel talks about the bitterness etched into the souls of East Germans, “brought about by West Germans’ incomprehension of their experiences in 1990 and after.”
According to Merkel, it was difficult to talk about life in the GDR to the West German public. The media suspected him, for example, of concealing his thesis, even though the reason for losing it was practical. During the GDR, universities used to throw theses away.
“The incident caught me off guard and for many years I spoke about my life during the GDR only carefully weighing my words so that they would not lead to suspicion,” says Merkel.
7. Big countries decide in Europe
From between the lines, the book also reveals how big European countries negotiate with each other over smaller heads on practically all major lines.
Finns are not even mentioned in the book – except for the former prime minister Antti Rinne (sd.) in passing because, while receiving him in Berlin, Merkel had an attack of illness.
Whether it was negotiating the rescue of Greece, the relationship with Russia, or free trade agreements, Merkel’s 700-page book contains only representatives of large countries, both in text and in pictures.