Brandt 1945. Every city in Germany reduced to rubble. So what did we start rebuilding with? The rubble. It was all we had. Lines of women patiently sorting the usable bricks out one by one. Passing them from hand to hand, cleaning them, storing them . . . Who knows what buildings those bricks had been part of? The cellars of the local SS . . . the factories where the slave labourers suffered and died . . . They cleaned up the bricks as best they could, and out of them we built the plain straightforward cities we all live in today. It was the same with the people. Who were the people we rebuilt our shattered society with? Some of them were survivors of the camps and prisons. Some of them were exiles. But most of them had been the ordinary citizens of the Reich. They were our building materials. We had no other. And with those people we built the plain straightforward institutions of the society we're all part of. Now what confronts us? Two Germanies, broken apart like the old shattered masonry. This is the material out of which we have to build the world we're going to be living in tomorrow. This is the only material we possess - the two Germanies as they actually are. Riddled with doubts and suspicions on both sides. If the building we're creating is going to stay up, we have to make sure that this fragile stuff will bear the load we're placing upon it. We have somehow to find ways for the doubtful and the fearful on both sides to accept what we're doing.

Schmidt Willy's dream. Life without conflict.

Brandt Conflict resolved.

Schmidt Irreconcilables reconciled.

Brandt Even the irreconcilables inside our own party.

Ehmke Now there's a really solemn thought.

Brandt One more solemn thought to carry with you into the night, gendemen, as you go back to your pining wives and children, if you can still remember where they live: under capitalism man is oppressed by man - under socialism it's the other way round . . . Clear the desk, will you, Uli. Work to be done.

Guillaume (to Bauhaus) I'll help you.

Schmidt Yes, where do our wives and children live . . . ?

Brandt East Berlin sends one of its functionaries to the West to report back on the death of capitalism. He goes to London, he goes to Paris, he goes to New York. Gets back to East Berlin. 'It's a beautiful death,' he says.

Wilke Didn't try Bonn, I notice . . .

Wilke and Schmidt go.

Wehner I wonder if Number One has ever asked Herr Bauhaus what he feels about being used as his buder and bottlewasher.

Brandt Uli?

Ehmke He's your bodyguard, Willy.

Brandt No one's going to shoot me at this time of night.

Bauhaus If there's nothing else, Chief . . .

Brandt Wife and children, Uli.

Bauhaus I'll be waiting with the car. (Goes.)