Comment du Jour

20th Anniversary of German Unity

1990-2010


On October 3rd, 1990, Germany was re-unified in peace and freedom.

The long shadow of the divide, symbolized by the Berlin Wall, but frozen in the Cold War between West and East, suddenly disappeared. The government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl quite unexpectedly would play political midwife to unity between the communist "German Democratic Republic" in the East and the free Federal Republic in the West.

Of the international players, the United States played perhaps the key role in the transition from a divided Germany into a re-united one. "I'm deeply convinced that there was a very limited window of opportunity," German Ambassador Klaus Scharioth said recently in Washington,"And I must give credit to President George H.W. Bush because he was the first international leader who saw that this was a unique opportunity. (...) When we had to overcome serious obstacles, it was the US which came to our aid."

Let's face it. The Soviets who occupied the GDR and served as its political protector, did not wish to see a United Germany, period. The United Kingdom was decidedly nervous. So was France to a lesser degree. Each of these countries, including the USA were among the post WWII occupation powers.

But he fall of the Berlin Wall the year before, he collapse of communism in the GDR and most of Middle Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary) opened the floodgates of freedom. Germany would have it too.

But's let's not forget that just a few years earlier when President Ronald Reagan spoke in Berlin and called on the Soviet leader "Mr. Gorbachev, Tear down this Wall," most people laughed across the political classes in Europe. But Reagan was right and a few years later he was proven so.


In November 1989 when the Joshua Trumpet sounded and the Wall in Berlin came tumbling down, German Unification came a step closer. The aspiration, some would say the impossible dream, of German Unity in peace and freedom became a reality.

Thank You Ronald Reagan and Helmut Kohl!