European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - July 4, 1990, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Man s 27 i of the in. J the fares an Ohad 3 been 60s. Ige at a or in r texture lion 15 Germany which nearly destroyed Poland half a Century a9<t had to cede Large areas of territory in order for a n cd Aow Laa a in Tran 6f a a 4v0 a Cost tent Ivka Rich Japan Post was St toy a Siccy to you sip a Success blyw0 out a Llott Imam Nti. The Buffalo news Tom Toles unification even More than its former Eastern european satellites do. Another reason May be the realization that after unification germans will be the most Likely advocates and agents of Western economic help for soviet efforts to rebuild their defunct centrally planned Economy. This would suit both of them the soviet Union with its inferiority Complex and Germany with its impossible yearning to be loved As Well As respected. It would also assuage the German sense of guilt which s far stronger in relation to the soviet Union and because of the unique barbarity of the holocaust to Israel than it is to France Britain or the United states some germans also feel guilt toward Poland where Willy Brandt As West Germany s Chancellor in 1970, fell to his Knees at the Monument to victims of the Warsaw ghetto jewish uprising of 1943. Despite that symbolic gesture German polish relations Are deeply troubled today. A the trouble is mainly Over the definition of what Poland Poland to be re created and Only last month finally gave up any claim to redraw the existing Border by adopting a join Resolution of the East and West German parliaments. But economists politicians and diplomats in Poland acknowledge that whatever they do for themselves and whatever assistance they can get from the United states their path to economic recovery will have to run through Germany. The czechoslovak authorities under president Vaclav Havel have recognized this even More explicitly. It is not Only the countries that suffered under German. Occupation that have changed their ideas of themselves Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain left their Mark on British psychology about a Europe Quot which Many of prime minister Margaret Thatcher s admirers and Way she does with profound detractors alike View the ambivalence. At the european Community Summit meetings she can be expected to repel what the British see As attempts by bureaucrats in Brussels to limit the hard won sovereignty of the British parliament saved a along with the country itself a by Churchill when he repelled the nazis. She has admitted that the Prospect of a United Germany in a tightly integrated european Community did cause her to feel Quot a Little bit of apprehension Quot As Well a apprehension about Britain in that kind of Europe in which a United Germany with 78 million people and a $13 trillion Economy would be by far the most powerful member. Germans like Chancellor Helmut Kohl who was 15 years old when the War ended have defined themselves As europeans and democrats for so Many years that they have trouble understanding Why their neighbors and the world can never absolve them for what their fathers generation did unification could make germans More self assertive and impatient with the Burden of guilt or it could make them More self confident and tolerant nobody knows so everybody worries. Quot often people think two different things about Germany at the same time Quot said Francois Heusbourg a former French Diplomat who is now director of the International Institute for strategic studies in London. Quot depending on what time of Day it is and what mood r you re in you find yourself More or less worried but in be never been terribly concerned about it. If there a any place that s not nationalistic these Days it s West  most people in Germany s smaller neighbors would agree despite their jitters Over occasional surges of right Wing German political feeling Over the years in the Cobblestone squares of Brussels Belgium people admit to anxiety mostly about terms of Trade Lysiane d Dhaeyere director of a Small publishing House said Quot we feel a bit crushed. So much wealth so much Power. At first we were All very Happy Lor them now Well  a in the czechoslovak spa town of Karloy vary known to germans As Karlsbad Jiri Kovarik the 47-year-old mayor said he thought the main threat from Germany in the Wake of the currency unification would be Loo Many East German tourists newly armed with d Marks laying waste to the shelves of local stores and perhaps too Many West German businesses buying up czechoslovak hotels and enterprises As Well. There is another explanation for the ambivalence that Many people in the neighbouring states feel about unification and that is the complicity of their own countries during the nazi occupation Quot the resistance during the War was blown up afterwards to heroic proportions Quot said Hugo Claus a belgian flemish novelist who came of age during the occupation Quot a lot of the flemish people had seen the French As oppressors and welcomed the germans after the War we discovered that everybody had been belgian  the lesson europeans draw at the end of All this painful self discovery could Well be a new Sel Confidence with which they can reassure themselves about German unification and succeed in making a United Germany As Good a neighbor As West Germany has been All these years Many of them already realize that the germans might never have had their cataclysmic National nervous breakdown half a Century ago if their neighbors had Only had the foresight to treat them As wisely in 1919 As they did after it was All Over in 1945 essay july 4_ i99o the stars and stripes a Page 15