Goran Sumkoski: Hello, our next guest, does not need a special introduction. Ralph T Niemeyer, who has fought for decades for the return of the sovereignty of the German people. Politician, journalist, witness of historic events from the fall of the German Wall, to bringing millions of people in the streets protesting wars. So without further ado and in order to set the field for explanation of what we do together with Ralph representatives of our people, in order to bring about platform, international platform for solving these issues, for having a seat at the table of the new institutions that are forming in front of our eyes. And how we can get the real voice and the will of sovereign European people that are now under cultural, political, social, economic threat. And, ultimately, how to channel and formulate that voice in the institutions of the new multipolar world order. Ralph, without further ado, please.
Ralph T. Niemeyer: Well, let me briefly say well, thank you very much for the opportunity to chat with you and to address these issues. We believe that many people about are not aware what is really happening in Germany and with Germany now and this goes back, if you want to the end of the Second World War. There was the Potsdam agreement of 1945 that officializes Germany’s borders of the 31st of December 1937, this was the time before Hitler invaded other states like Austria, Czech Republic, also Poland, and parts of the Soviet Union.
This is the time and this is the term they referred to in the Potsdam Agreement of the 1st of August 1945. The Potsdam Agreement was a peace treaty. It was simply between the powers of the four allies, the Soviet Union, the United States, Great Britain and France. And it was only about military capitulation, not political dissolution of the state of Germany. So it was simply occupied since the 1st of August 1945 at the end of the war. After problems emerged, because the Soviets wanted to hold free elections in parts of Germany, but the America dominated western part and it didn’t want elections, since they wanted, as they said, to make sure that church is separated from the power.
So we have two states, on the 7th of October 1945 the German Democratic Republic was established, and they had a constitution actually, while in the West Germany, that’s the part of Germany being founded by the three western allies, Britain, France and United States, we have this so-called Basic Law. The Basic Law is under the international people’s law, and it is not the constitution. The Constitution is based on the people’s law and it comes from the right to self determination that every people have, and that we never had again since 1871. We never had a Constitution that was not imposed by other powers on us since 1871 which was the foundation of the Reich. There was of course, an emperor and it was not a constitutional democracy. That was 1871. It was done in the Hall of Mirrors salon in the Castle of Versailles near Paris and it had 26 member states in this foundation of the Empire. As I said, this was not not a constitutional democracy, this was an empire, the German Empire. So it was a foundation work. And then of course we had, the First World War, of 1918. We had kind of a revolutionary situation and of course having lost the First World War, it meant that we lost to the powers who wanted, actually forced us to accept a country that we did not found ourselves. That was the so-called Weimar Constitution.
Now, if you have a gun pointed at your head and been told you have to adopt this, that is anything else but self determination. That is the opposite. So that’s why I say that since the times of Hitler, from 1933 to 1940 was not constitutional democracy either It was into fascist dictatorship. But now, after 1945, as I just said before we had the Potsdam agreement splitting Germany into 4 parts, and then there was 1 Western state. The Americans strongly told us to adopt this Basic Law as a preliminary constitution and the Potsdam agreement stated that we will have to have a treaty at the end of the occupation and it was not defined when that would be. That was an open chapter and, we can say that we since then – because we are still lacking the peace treaty – that since time we live in a situation of a ceasefire.
Actually speaking, the Second World War has not ended, because we don’t have a peace treaty. That means we have a situation right now, which I see that we are being forced to send arms to countries that is then directed against Russia and that’s why it is important that we have a constitution one day and of course a situation of self-determination that we find in the last article of the so-called Basic Law that Americans imposed in 1948/49. It’s Article 146 which stated that this Basic Law shall be until such time that the united Germany will adopt a Constitution at a referendum on constitution, founded under the international law and based on the right of self determination. But that is the first constitution we will have since 1871. That’s the truth.
Goran Sumkoski: And I know that you have a very interesting story about why this the adoption of the Constitution did not happen. You’ve been witness of this historic event with Helmut Kohl and Mikhail Gorbachev. And please let us know and our viewers why this was so close, for Germany to adopt that constitution, and why did not happen? Who prevented this from happening?
Ralph T. Niemeyer: Well, I can go back in this to 1990ies, well after the wall had fallen, further in 1990 November, there was a negotiation going on between the chancellor Kohl and all war powers of the Second World War, to unite Germany after this revolution in East Germany, when the German Democratic Republic just crumbled into pieces and socialism was gone for good. Then of course, during these events Chancellor Kohl was very much tricked into achieving a less favourable outcome. So, I cannot criticise him for that.But what he did was to exclude territory that is of course German territory and it should be German territory and that is defined as such in the Potsdam agreement.
Since the Germany is defined with Germany’s borders before annexations and expansions that took place with the crimes that were committed. So that is the Germany of the 31st December 1937. That is what Potsdam Agreements says. Then, Helmut Kohl, the chancellor, immediately said, that he will not be removing the borders between the two Germanies, and that Germany Democratic Republic will become a part of the Federal Germany. He also didn’t want to open the issues of Poland’s borders, which I also agree with him. Of course, we cannot simply say, oh, give it back. We had started the war and we had lost the war. That’s all clear. There were tremendous crimes which Polish and other people suffered from the German military fascism. So I’m not the one to not take that into account and try to carry the territories back.
But the peace treaty begun with, and applies to this territory, and we haven’t closed this chapter of the Second World War. And before you want to start the Third World War, let’s close the final chapter of the Second World War. Sounds a bit silly, but this is the true matter.
Now on the 11th of February 1990, Chancellor Kohl went to Moscow The President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, offered to him to have a peace treaty signed. Mr. Gorbachev later told me in our contacts. I was a journalist at that time and I interviewed Helmut Kohl when he came out from meeting Mr. Gorbachev in the Kremlin I asked him, Mr. Chancellor, is not this the moment to adopt the Constitution as Basic Law article 146 is stating? And Mr. Kohl said yes, that is right, we ought to draw our own Constitution for Germany. So I said OK, thank you very much Chancellor. Let’s start doing that. So I formed, according to the constitutional right under the Article 146, and as a citizen, I formed this council.
I formed a council for the preparation of such a Constitutional Assembly and I became the chairman of that council. We had people supporting us from all sides from all parts of Germany, even from those from Kaliningrad, that was German territory occupied by the Soviet Union and is held by the Russian Federation now. Again, I’m one who knows that we can’t simply take that territory back right after 80 years of what has happened. People live there and we can’t move them out, this is not what we want.
What we want is, that we have it on paper that the occupation has ended and that we will not be more in the ceasefire situation, but to have a proper peace treaty. That is exactly our position in the world as free independent democratic partner to all other nations. So that we take back our seat in the middle of the group nations like everybody else has.
And at the moment we are occupied because we don’t have this peace treaty, we got the 1990, that so-called 2 + 4 treaty on the German reunification and settlement of Germany, as it says. But this 2 + 4 treaty it has a lot combined secrets, such as the presence of the US forces, US Air base. We still had a lot of eastbound of Stuttgart barracks from the Americans that are expanding, they used Ramstein base in all of their wars. They conducted attacks from German territory and we always said that only peace shall come from German soil after the tragedy of the two world wars. So Mr. Gorbachev, said to me in 1990 He said when I asked him: did you offer to Germany a peace treaty? He said, well, yes, we offered a treaty to be signed and he explained that Chancellor Kohl had rejected this. When I asked him why, Mr. Gorbachev laughed and said the Americans prevented it, ask your Western allies. So that was the reality and that’s why it is so urgent to solve it now.
Goran Sumkoski: But if I may, many would argue that in a way: Germany had elections, governments had relative economic prosperity and well-being, hence the citizens did not even need or notice the lack of sovereignty, or lack of voice or will. Only now, do you agree, when the time of economic crisis is coming, when the western neoliberal model has finished its mileage and it is not delivering development and wellbeing anymore for the Western nations. Only now this issue, that is legalistic maybe and very academic for many people, the issue of sovereignty and lack of sovereignty for the German people is coming to the fore. Just because of that economic point, that now with the Nord Stream 2, with the destruction and the de-industrialisation of Germany, we see that German people actually do not have levers to affect their destiny, and their destiny has been and it is solved somewhere else.
Ralph T. Niemeyer: Yeah, I can agree with you. True, it is important for our well-being and our life as a nation, but it’s also important for all of the European partners that we have with the European Union, European Economic Area that they have a strong, stable and democratic partner in the centre of Europe. We now have instability. That is not good for none of our neighbours. So in this historic context, we have to look at the economics as one of the most important parts, and, as you rightly said, the inability to use Russian gas supply in the past two years, causes the big crisis in this economic system. And I myself, I was involved to the large extent to open it because as a business person I am thinking of the accompanying self-needs for let say steel, and we have to melt a lot of it, we need gas for it that means we need a lot of energy.
I had of course immediately the interest to solve this matter, at the time when of the latte 2022, when Russia stopped the North Stream 1 gas pipeline because they didn’t get turbine back then from Siemens sent to Canada for service. And this turbine did not come back because they had said they could not send it due to the sanctions that were imposed. Then, of course the Nord Stream 1, did not function anymore. They had to switch off the gas supply. I immediately rang the former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who is a good friend of President Putin, and he’s also the chairman of the Nord Stream AG in Switzerland, that is the administrative owner of the pipelines 1 and 2 which providers of gas use, so he is in charge actually. So I rang him and he went to Moscow, and he went to meet with Mr. Putin that said he should open Nord Stream 2, but that was it. And he didn’t continue to make any pressure or political pressure of the government in Berlin. And then I asked to do what I can, and that he cannot give up. So I said, ok, now what shall we do. He says, fly there, talk to them, maybe agree new contract.
So I went there. I spoke to Dimitry Peskov as well as with Sergey Lavrov. I had some projects with them already. So I went to them in Vladivostok at the Eastern Forum and there I also met Gazprom chairman Alexei Miller. To solve this issue, please give us contracts for opening Nord Stream 2. And he said no problem, I will do it. I explained to him that my position as the chairman of Council for Sovereign Constitution would allow me to represent Germany. Of course the Ge4rmany of 1937, of course not as a representative for the Federal Republic of Germany, which is, Mr Scholtz and President Steinmeier. I’m not pretending anything. I’m just saying we want to have a contract for opening the North Stream 2 for Germany, not only for the Federal Germany, or as I always say, the Federal Republic in Germany, because it’s only the administrative and not a legal entity. Mr Miller understood that. He gave me the contratcs, Mr. Lavrov also said it’s ok.
And I came with the contracts back to Berlin. One is for the government of the Federal Republic of Germany, and the other contract for the administration of the United Germany And I went to see Mr Scholtz, together with Mr Schroeder, we walked through the doors, since for me because would not have been possible to enter just like that. So Schroeder played a very positive role in that event. We went to see Chancellor Scholtz. We put two contracts on the table, and Mr Habeck, the energy and economics minister from the Greens, was also sitting there and saw this as well. He always claimed that Russians switched off the gas. I said, well, we can switch it on ourselves. We want to be trusted to tell Russians that we preserve this project, this treaty. And so I put both treaties there at the table and said either you sign or I sign But if I sign, then you resign. And then, only 9 days later the Nord Stream 2 was bombed.
Goran Sumkoski: And now we’re coming to the key issue maybe of what we are discussing here. That’s the issue of institutions and legitimacy, and what we do outside of these institutions that do not represent the real voice and will of the sovereign nations anymore. And how we can through for example our Macedonian National Assembly, People’s Assembly and your German Constitutional Congress and other institutions that represent millions of people who have gone to the streets to protest the system that does not allow formulation of such indigenous will into real political power through the corrupt institutions. How do we bring these issues, that are of essential interest for our nations, to the core in the institutions? And how do we put pressure on the institutions to act according to the will of our sovereign nations? And if they don’t, how do we, outside of the formal institutions, create platforms that will channel this will, directly to the institutions of the new multipolar world? I know that there are wonderful people, parties and movements throughout Europe that are fighting for sovereignty, but they are never allowed to get the real power. The examples that we saw are Salvini in Italy, Le Pen in France, Alternative for Deutschland, Sara Wagenknecht in your country, other parties that are not allowed to be part of the mainstream, not let alone get the power. So what do you think? Whether there is a potential for us to work within the institutions or outside of the institutions to solve this crucial issue of the return and the need for return of sovereignty of our nation states.
Ralph T. Niemeyer: Yes, I see a great chance, and this is also due to the second presidential term by President Trump because he is not an isolationist, he is internationalist, but he is questioning whether the United States would be in gain or will cost them a lot of money. On the other hand, or to bring some compromise on his part, we can probably with him find a better way to say, you know, to remain friends, but that we don’t want next wars in Afghanistan or what is happening in Syria, Ukraine, to be conducted from our territory. So we can talk to him probably, since he is rather peaceful in general in that sense that he in his first term would not start new wars and tried to close some of them in respect to Afghanistan or he managed a bit in that sense. So I think we can have that chat that the European nations for once live under their own dominance and can now be good partners to the United States. But it will not be instantly, and we have to put more focus and more interest on the economic issues.
So I mean, I should join BRICS because we see in 2023, we see our export to China has decreased and our overall export market has decreased. The trade balances have shifted, and this is the real statement about the phenomenal pace of change in the new world order that we want to build, instead of the neocolonial system that ties the world to the Americans and Western Europe. So I assume that the BRICS and its new world order, is going to be beneficial for all, the countries won’t depend on the West in that sense. We should have cooperation between permanent republican states, that’s what we should aim at.
Well, I as I said, believe that once people aware of it and you saw it now just at this climate conference they had. Obviously even the poorer nations are now suddenly waking up to it, where they say, it’s not a fair deal, and we’ll continue to oppose, and they are opposing it. Hence they walked out from the final meeting. So they couldn’t reach any agreement, because they are aware and they’re opposing the idea of this carbon trade or the emission trade concept and bonds, which is just a neocolonial way to dominate countries by capitalistic systems, that only favours the rich nations. And the rich nations want on that matter to use these carbon emission bonds trade, to keep the poorer nations deprived of further knowledge development, giving them a few months here, of course, to have their governments be corrupted, so that they agree to something, but yesterday that didn’t work. So we see that these nations are waking up, from Africa, to East Asia, and to South American countries. They’re making certain that the time was over when you can come and dictate us, after they reached their independence.
This followed 60 years of Neocolonialism that like the European partnership, this was the European partnership for Africa, and this was the new colonialism. And now, they see that with the BRICS they have the chance to represent themselves in the world and get a better deal, make new allies, and this was the case for India to a certain extent also for Russia. So this is exactly why I have my hope that the people are waking up, and more and more of the nations know this, and, of course it is now becoming a selfdriving force, because people wouldn’t fear asking from their leaders or to ouster Prime Ministers or to say, Mr Chancellor why don’t you say, or do this or do, that, you know, it just show how things have changed. We see the established party system does not do well anymore. We see new parties taking over issues now, that before usually were addressed by the Christian Conservatives or Social Democrats here or in Great Britain. That is not anymore, you know, and I think that each year they will do better and more by demanding that they have the true representation of their interests by their governments.
Goran Sumkoski: Thank you very much, Ralph, and to conclude. I hope to make this happen quicker so rather than later, because we live in really profound geostrategic changes in the world. These changes make our just and fair efforts and struggle possible. I think more possible than it was like 10 years ago. I hope that, as you said, that this we come together be able to represent our nations, sovereign nations, oppressed nations. And realise this idea and vision of Charles De Gaulle, Eurasia from Vladivostok to Lisbon for the benefits of all sovereign nations and that we will have a sovereign Germany without Ramstein, we will have Bondsteel removed from the Balkans and from near my Macedonia. That we will have Incirlik removed. And that we all live in welfare, friendship and cooperation.
Ralph T. Niemeyer: Thank you, all the best to all of you, especially in Macedonia
Goran Sumkoski: Thank you.
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