Cold War Germany, the Third World, and the Global Humanitarian Regime

Human Rights in History

by Young-Sun Hong

This book examines competition and collaboration among Western powers, the socialist bloc, and the Third World for control over humanitarian aid programs during the Cold War. Young-sun Hong's analysis reevaluates the established parameters of German history. On the one hand, global humanitarian efforts functioned as an arena for a three-way political power struggle. On the other, they gave rise to transnational spaces that allowed for multidimensional social and cultural encounters. Hong paints an unexpected view of the global humanitarian regime: Algerian insurgents flown to East Germany for medical care, barefoot Chinese doctors in Tanzania, and West and East German doctors working together in the Congo. She also provides a rich analysis of the experiences of African trainees and Asian nurses in the two Germanys. This book brings an urgently needed historical perspective to contemporary debates on global governance, which largely concern humanitarianism, global health, South-North relationships, and global migration.

Genres: History

439 pages, Hardcover

First published March 16, 2015

Reviews

[Andre]

From the start I hoped that the book could keep it up to be engaging and I think the book managed to do that, not that I didn’t have some reservations and questions, like "How does he define "Third World?""
It was hilarious, partially, to read about the first post-War dealings between South Korea and West Germany. Apparently, there are even more reasons to be pissed at Adenauer (like whom he send to Pusan). And I did wonder whether some animosity towards the GDR was due to their support for China, North Korea and Vietnam. I also wondered how this West-developed/rest-underdeveloped ideology was ever maintained when looking at China and especially Japan back in the day. Today it is even more puzzling when you look at several countries in East-/Southeast Asia.
Also, I knew about North Korean students in the GDR (which the Germans were better prepared for than for the Malinese students) and East German rebuilding programs in North Korea but I hadn't heard about Korean orphans in the GDR yet. And of course there was the old "don't get too friendly" by the authorities back then in North Korea already. They should have said that to the German and Korean students back in Germany, because they got so friendly with each other, some of them married and had kids. However, I do suspect that the author would immediately label this behavior as racist if it was done by the Germans instead of the North Koreans. She does do a good job of showing some tension and friendships, and one lover, but this stinks of double standard to me.
Interestingly, I suspected that Renate Hong might be mentioned here, albeit she was not the only German woman married to a North Korean man at the time.
And from East Germany and North Korea the book went to West Germany and South Korea, to deal with the impact of the Korean War on the German "economic miracle."
And speaking of post-War Germany: The press had reported about Huwer's Nazi past in the late 1950s, one article even compared the proposed honors to the medical staff to Adenauer's defense of Globke and called into question the qualifications of the Red Cross due to their assessment of Auschwitz and Buchenwald... I have come across several such examples before and so wonder how anyone could claim the 70s Shoah film made Germans aware of the Holocaust for the first time.
The book also gave me interesting information on French-Indochina, like the French legacy in the field of public health being one of discrimination and malign neglect. During the colonial era, hospitals had only been constructed in politically sensitive cities, such as Hanoi, Haiphong, and Saigon, and in regions of particular economic importance, such as coal mining and rubber-producing areas.
I also never new that Stalin mistrusted Ho Chi Minh, and Ho had been in Berlin in the 1920s for a short time, based on other articles he was in Neukölln. Speaking of Vietnam: GDR censorship had a problem with Kirsch's portrayal of Vietnam. They disapproved of the pervasive tone of "arrogance", the depiction of "superiority" of "European, German intellectuals" and infantilizing the North Vietnamese, rather than treating them as equal comrades, of his offensive and disparaging descriptions of Vietnamese culture and customs etc. Looks like GDR censors weren't all bad. And those friendship hospitals built by the soviet bloc countries in Vietnam were a main site of collaboration both among the socialist countries and between the Second and Third Worlds. Even French doctors were still there. Sounds like a bunch of very interesting stories.
However, in one chapter I was confused. Do East Germans count as Easterners or as Westerners in that one?
But no matter, my confusion was soon of no importance as according to the book not only was West Germany a haven from the French Police; the country also provided ready access to socialist countries of Eastern Europe, which were an early source of humanitarian aid to FLN and the FLN took advantage of this window of opportunity to obtain weapons from West German arms dealers. Not that this was legal as the West German government was on the side of the French during the Algerian affair. France, who wanted to test their A-bombs in Algeria. And because Syria didn't want any influence in their oil deals from Britain and France (their former colonial masters) they offered exploration rights to the leading West German Oil company DEA. That is so deliciously ironic. And the West German government should have stayed out of the whole colonial politics of their European allies.
And speaking of rivalries: Third World countries also hired physicians who had been forbidden to practice medicine at home because they had been implicated in more egregious Nazi crimes.
Apparently, the East German strategy was more effective than the West German one when it came to not offend African countries. Maybe the slogan of solidarity does yield better results in such cases. Or maybe the West Germans were just stupid, as they apparently really did not anticipate that non-aligned countries in Africa would exploit their rivalry with East Germany.
Speaking of exploitation: So the German hospitals recruited Filipino nurses because they believed that the Philippines had a surplus of highly trained nurses because such nurses where so often going to Canada and the USA. That is ironic. Double ironic because these nurses actually were more qualified than their German counterparts.
However, the history of Filipino nurses is nothing compared to that of Koreans. Not only did the Korean ambassador in Bonn intervene in a Korean miner strike and end it to protect Korean business interests, but the Korean government saw the nurses they send to Germany as commodities. And holy shit, in 1966 every 5th Korean nurse departed for Germany. And apparently only about 40 % of the Korean nurses returned later. And when the South Korean and West German governments were criticized for the mess with the nurses, the Korean government painted a rosy picture and the German government happily believed it to be blameless and the relations were further clouded when in Jun67 50 KCIA agents kidnapped 17 Koreans residing in West Germany to stand on trial in Seoul for spying for North Korea. In Seoul a German citizen and her Korean husband was also arrested. And the image that the Korean government disseminated about the nurse work in Germany idealized. And interesting to read the differing reasons these women had for going to Germany, sometimes building houses, supporting families, opening doctor's offices, furthering career or just straight up go out of the country. Of course the government claimed that these women still preferred an arranged Korean marriage.
When it came to China here, we get told that the Chinese argued that solidarity with the Third World was based on a shared history of racial and colonial subjugation. To which I say: Wow, someone has a short historical memory, ignoring the fact that most of China was never colonized, past and present you can find plenty of mistrust of and racism against other Asians and Africans.
Zinn's reasoning as to African attraction to the Chinese is almost the same reasoning as the Chinese had used, except that Zinn considered both "colored world". The only valid argument he had was with the problems of overpopulation and development. Gerhard Schröder probably had it right when he doubted a lasting anti-white alliance due to the Chinese feeling even more racially superior. In the end the chapter on Chinese influence aid in Zansibar is a bit boring. The one about Korean nurses was more exciting.
While I agree with her on transnational research and not romanticizing East Germany, I think she should not have ended it so abruptly and with such lack of criticism of the Chinese. I know that Chinese were racist towards Africans, but how many other readers know that?


PS. It is not just the West back then who had insane predictions for the future. Based on the GDR and their fantastic predictions of the future in the 1960s we should have had constant easily replacable organs 19 years ago.

PSS. I can relate to being questioned as to whether there were cars and televisions in Korea and being considered primitive. I did not get as much of such questions about being an East German in my life but I saw it happen and got some insulting statements and questions regarding alleged backwardness as well.