Twenty-five years on from reunification, Germany is no longer reluctant about being Europe’s pre-eminent power From World Cup glory to the shaming of Volkswagen, Germany is never far from the front of the world’s mind these days. One day it might be the ogreish oppressor of the Greeks, the next the sainted saviour of the Syrians; but it’s always a country that counts. American pre-eminence has long carried with it loathing and admiration in equal measure. The continent’s superpower may be experiencing something similar, now that the Kissinger question – who do you call, if you want to call Europe? – has found its definitive answer in the chancellery in Berlin. Germany’s status as the demographic and economic giant of Europe has been beyond argument for a full quarter of a century, since the stroke of midnight ushered in 3 October 1990 and the admission of the lands of the communist east into the Bundesrepublik. Today it may seem like its political hegemony is the logical corollary of the population and GDP, and yet it took time to emerge. There was a bit of alarmism about the new Germany from François Mitterrand and Margaret Thatcher, whose friend and colleague Nicholas Ridley had to resign after telling the Spectator that he’d rather have “the [wartime] shelters and the chance to fight back” than be strangled financially by the same enemy in peacetime. There was a bit of unease, too, in Poland about Helmut Kohl’s reluctance immediately to declare that post-war Oder-Neisse border was fixed for all time. Continue reading...
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