Palgrave Studies in Oral History The End of the Cold War?: Bush, Kohl, Gorbachev, and the Reunification of Germany, (Hardcover)

The re-unification of Germany was part of a process that changed the world: it extended the West to the East bringing parliamentarian democracies and a market systems, and expanded NATO to the (Bela) Russian border with an increasing American influence; at the same time, the Soviet Union imploded and the Eastern military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, disappeared. Alexander von Plato traces this process in detail. His carefully researched history draws on archival sources as well as a wealth of new interviews with on-the-ground activists, political actors, international figures, and others to move beyond the narratives-both the German and American varieties-that have dominated the historical memory of reunification. In the process, it addresses some fascinating lingering questions from 1989: What led the Soviet side to agree to the reunification of Germany and the membership of a united Germany in NATO? Was it promoting, as a condition for German unity, military neutrality or an overall European security system as an alternative to the expansion of NATO? Was the government of the FRG subjected to pressure from the Soviet side to decide between unity and its ties to the West? Did the American side rule this out? And what strategies did the West and East European as well as the Canadian governments ultimately pursue? What are the consequences until now?