[Skybird]

^ Rest assured, there are enough Germans who become sentimental over him and refer to his title "chancellor of reunification". Its just that the official logbook of German history gets written by the establishment and the mainstream, and so this is not really surprising. People mistake coincidence of him being in office during reunification, with causality. Merkel, btw, was his direct creation, in a way, without his support she probably would not have been able to establish herself in the CDU and to form the network she needed to become chancelor. A favour he has done Germany with that - not. And with quite some other decisions not as well.

However, he (and Francois Mitterand) continued Helmut Schmidt's and Valery Giscard d'Estaing's reconciliation policy between France and Germany. This is something that even I have to recognize. Itsd just that this often was at the disadvantage of Germany, and culminated in Kohl's submission to Mitterands demand to defuse the German atom bomb (French for D-Mark) as price for German reunification. This led to the acceleration of the planned currency union and the economically unexcusable introduction of the Euro. Mitterand wanted to weaken Germany that way, to counter its growing weight after reunification.

If Mitterand still was alive today, I wonder if he still would think it was a good idea. As I see it, it backfired, currently still to germany'S advantage, but in the forseeable future, due to the immense foreign debts Germany has accepted to "finance", it will backfire once again - and then it could bring Germany to its knees.

Of all nonsense Kohl did, this is my biggest complaint about him. The price the French demanded - getting the Euro - was way too high.

Which puts French-German reconciliation into relation, doesn't it. How did former US ambassador Jack Kornblum put it on German TV some years ago, and shocked the German audience nationwide? "States do not have friends. States have interests."