I guess when we're all gone historians are going to have to recognize that some big things happened on our watch. But the babyboomers will probably still be alive and taking all the credit.
My standard answer would be: “Yeah right! Wishful thinking. Not going to happen.” Growing up during the 1970s and 1980s in West Germany, I was taught there were several good reasons for the separation of our country. In my generation, no one I knew had any doubts about this: Our forefathers made some severe mistakes. Germany initiated two world wars and brought destruction and suffering to Europe. Taking away territories and splitting Germany in half was a just punishment for our ancestors’ crimes.
Reunification? No way! Why?
“Why should we be reunited?” I asked then. The world is split into a Western, capitalist part and an Eastern, communist one. Much of this is a result of events that started in Germany, and now the frontier line between East and West is the “inner-German” border between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. Of course it would have been nice if the world had decided to end the Cold War and just get along, but not even the biggest optimists expected that.
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