He wished to be the chancellor of a liberated not a defeated Germany, said Willy Brandt on the evening of his election victory in 1969. Yet only on October 3, 1990, was Germany liberated. Better still: Germany liberated itself. Not all alone, of course. Every German politician pays tribute to Gorbachev, to the pioneers of emancipation in Eastern Europe, to the Americans, French, and British, without whom, as authors say in their Acknowledgements, this book could never have been written. But it was the Germans who wrote the book.
Feature, 5587 words
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