I remember being teenager five years before that fall and, being European and in contact with German people, the thing I remember the most is the longing for one Germany by German people, a wish I considered a piped dream back then. It was the time when we believed Soviet Union would last all our lifetimes, at least.

Fair enough, the lands belonging to West Germany and East Germany were divided except some 75 years from 1871 to 1945. But 75 years means that an entire worldview can change. People who saw Germany being divided in 1945 didn’t remember a divided Germany (except the really old ones). They have lived all their lives in one Germany, and this was the way it was for them.

Furthermore, even before 1871, German nationalism already considered Germany as one nation. You seem to forget that nationalism was born in Germany and this ideology separated the concepts of State and nation. They defined the nation as a community bound by bonds of language, race and culture, that is, what German people called “folk”. One of the tenets of German nationalism is that every nation SHOULD have their own State. Hegel advocated for a German state.

All nationalisms (we have some of them in my European country) carbon-copy the original German nationalism: from nation to state.

So trying to depict reunification as something that could be avoided is false. The wish for one Germany was long. A divided Germany was only possible because of the use of the force. When the oppression by the Soviet bloc disappeared, a united Germany was inevitable.

magyar vagy, barátocskám?!?! honfitársam ahh…

1. Before 1945, you would have been right. But if you’ve been in the areas of former eastern Germany that the Poles took over (in return for accepting the cession of their east to the Soviet Union), well, effectively, German culture in these areas is dead. There is a reason why Breslau is today Wroclaw, Stettin is today Szczecin, Posen is today Poznan, and Thorn is today Torun. (I’m not even going to bother about Koenigsburg/Kaliningrad.) In context of the article (and the 1990s), eastern Germany is the former DDR.

Don’t really have any bones to pick over points 2 and 3. I’m sure that Russia wanted as much of Germany in its orbit as possible, but well, in the end, I guess they figured it advantageous to give their then Western Allies their own sectors in Berlin, as well as in the rest of Germany.

2) The reason why some “easterners” didn’t want to reunite from the DDR was because of the fake geopolitical patriotism. However, Stalin actually wanted a united Soviet Germany. Beria, after Stalin’s dead, also said that a united neutral Germany is in soviet interests.

3) Even the flags were the same (aside from the silly typical socialist state emblem of the GDR) – having its roots in the 1848 revolution.

not as far as i know.

slavic, i think.

i don’t speak serbo-croatian, so a serbian language club would be boring.

you don’t say.

you don’t say.

When Miklos Nemeth started tearing down the fences between Hungary and Austria. Suddenly, East Europeans started seeking a record amount of vacation visas to spend some time in Hungary. When Germany realized that Hungary was going to get away with what they were doing, there was no turning back.

Think of it; back then both the US & Germany were racist, homicidally-militaristic fanatics with a superiority complex. Both adore the image of a Jesus/Fuhrer.
Both nations have diets centered on greasy weiners & fat-laden burgers and both nations were (are?) comprised mainly of fat fucks who can’t even reach their own asses in order to wipe properly after defecating.

Was she a sex slave brought over by the Russian Jewish mafia?

Is she even ethnic Russian given the fact that usually when reference is given to Russian it usually means Jewish like the “Russian” revolution and the “Russian” mafia.

Did you go to a Serbian language class maybe you should ask them if they want to go to that paradise on earth they created in Kosovo?

I went to one and asked a Serbian women if she wants to go back to US created Kosovo and she told me “No my heart belongs in New York. The local dentist Ginsburg has it was harvest by the KLA and sold to him”

Seems to be US foreign policy democracy at home tyranny abroad with Islamic created and US lead sponsored terrorism across the world in Balkans, Crimea, Africa, Russia, Central Asia and China as well as their connection to western intelligence and international Jewish Russian mafia.

i’m just posting this to annoy everyone but carlos, even though it is true.

America won the Cold War and emerged as global hegemon. No rational, sentient human being can deny this. The cute Commies thought they could have 20-25 percent of GDP going towards the military at the expense of consumer goods and investment in civilian infrastructure. This meant that citizens of the Eastern Bloc literally couldn’t even get toilet paper reliably. Truly disgusting.

Furthermore, the impacts of the Chernobyl disaster and world opinion about Soviet technology contributed to the delegitimization of the regime. Combined with Gorbachev’s new reforms of the Soviet Union both internally and internationally, the people finally had breathing room.

Oh, and Reagan probably did help bring it to a close, though I don’t give the senile fuck too much credit given the sheer incompetence of the Soviet Union.

By the way, when Helmut Kohl was speaking at Rathaus Schoeneberg on November 11th before a huge crowd of Berliners fromboth parts of the city, and he got into re-unification blahblah, people started furiously to whistle. If you see those TV pictures fromthat even, you can’t even hear him. This is how popular re-unification was before the right wing propaganda started…