Andrew Roberts: Was Margaret Thatcher right to fear a united Germany?
[Andrew Roberts is a Trustee of the Margaret Thatcher Archive Trust. His latest book is 'The Storm of War'.]
"We do not want a united Germany," Margaret Thatcher told President Gorbachev at a lunch meeting in the Kremlin in September 1989, two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall. "This would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the whole international situation and could endanger our security."
Among the 1,000 transcripts of Politburo and other high-level papers smuggled out of Russia by Pavel Stroilov, a researcher in the Gorbachev Foundation, and published for the first time last week – in what The Times described as a "bombshell" – was Thatcher's admission to Gorbachev that although she supported German reunification in public, in private and off-the-record she felt "deep concern" about the "big changes" afoot.
In fact, far from being a scoop, each of these points were contained on pages 792 and 793 of The Downing Street Years, Lady Thatcher's autobiography published in 1993. But what the smuggled Russian documents do is highlight the accuracy of Thatcher's own account of those heady days of two decades ago.
Writing of the meeting with Gorbachev, she says: "I explained to him that although Nato had traditionally made statements supporting Germany's aspiration to be reunited, in practice we were rather apprehensive."
In reply, "Mr Gorbachev confirmed that the Soviet Union did not want German reunification either. This reinforced me in my resolve to slow up the already heady pace of developments. Of course I did not want East Germans to live under Communism, but it seemed to me that a truly democratic East Germany would soon emerge and the question of reunification was a separate one, on which the wishes and interests of Germany's neighbours and other powers must be fully taken into account."
That this did not happen – because, instead, Chancellor Kohl forced through speedy reunification – is a matter of history, and no one appreciated her utter defeat more than Thatcher herself: "If there is one instance in which a foreign policy I pursued met with unambiguous failure, it was my policy on German reunification," she later admitted.
Yet before Thatcher is criticised for myopia, and even worse xenophobia, over her German policy, it is worth considering the dangers that Western leaders believed they might face when the tectonic plates of 45 years shifted overnight.
Margaret Thatcher's first concern was over the future of Nato, which had kept the peace in Europe since 1949, for it was widely feared that a reunited and thus much more powerful Germany might leave Nato to pursue its own security arrangements, perhaps as part of a deal with USSR.
In a long phone conversation with President Bush on February 24, 1990, Thatcher emphasised that Germany had to remain in Nato and that the Soviet Union must not be made to feel isolated. She saw how the balance of power in Europe might change overnight, and warned that "looking well into the future, only the Soviet Union – or its successor – could provide such a balance".
Another fear was that a strong Germany might replace Britain as America's closest ally in Europe, a suspicion that had been inflamed by a speech of President Bush's in May 1989, in which he had referred to Germany as America's "partner in leadership". Although he later added that Britain was a partner in leadership too, in Margaret Thatcher's view, "the damage had been done". Any power likely to usurp Britain's role as America's ally, in effect to kill off the Special Relationship, was likely to raise Thatcher's ire...
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
"We do not want a united Germany," Margaret Thatcher told President Gorbachev at a lunch meeting in the Kremlin in September 1989, two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall. "This would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the whole international situation and could endanger our security."
Among the 1,000 transcripts of Politburo and other high-level papers smuggled out of Russia by Pavel Stroilov, a researcher in the Gorbachev Foundation, and published for the first time last week – in what The Times described as a "bombshell" – was Thatcher's admission to Gorbachev that although she supported German reunification in public, in private and off-the-record she felt "deep concern" about the "big changes" afoot.
In fact, far from being a scoop, each of these points were contained on pages 792 and 793 of The Downing Street Years, Lady Thatcher's autobiography published in 1993. But what the smuggled Russian documents do is highlight the accuracy of Thatcher's own account of those heady days of two decades ago.
Writing of the meeting with Gorbachev, she says: "I explained to him that although Nato had traditionally made statements supporting Germany's aspiration to be reunited, in practice we were rather apprehensive."
In reply, "Mr Gorbachev confirmed that the Soviet Union did not want German reunification either. This reinforced me in my resolve to slow up the already heady pace of developments. Of course I did not want East Germans to live under Communism, but it seemed to me that a truly democratic East Germany would soon emerge and the question of reunification was a separate one, on which the wishes and interests of Germany's neighbours and other powers must be fully taken into account."
That this did not happen – because, instead, Chancellor Kohl forced through speedy reunification – is a matter of history, and no one appreciated her utter defeat more than Thatcher herself: "If there is one instance in which a foreign policy I pursued met with unambiguous failure, it was my policy on German reunification," she later admitted.
Yet before Thatcher is criticised for myopia, and even worse xenophobia, over her German policy, it is worth considering the dangers that Western leaders believed they might face when the tectonic plates of 45 years shifted overnight.
Margaret Thatcher's first concern was over the future of Nato, which had kept the peace in Europe since 1949, for it was widely feared that a reunited and thus much more powerful Germany might leave Nato to pursue its own security arrangements, perhaps as part of a deal with USSR.
In a long phone conversation with President Bush on February 24, 1990, Thatcher emphasised that Germany had to remain in Nato and that the Soviet Union must not be made to feel isolated. She saw how the balance of power in Europe might change overnight, and warned that "looking well into the future, only the Soviet Union – or its successor – could provide such a balance".
Another fear was that a strong Germany might replace Britain as America's closest ally in Europe, a suspicion that had been inflamed by a speech of President Bush's in May 1989, in which he had referred to Germany as America's "partner in leadership". Although he later added that Britain was a partner in leadership too, in Margaret Thatcher's view, "the damage had been done". Any power likely to usurp Britain's role as America's ally, in effect to kill off the Special Relationship, was likely to raise Thatcher's ire...