BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

Despite such assurances, however, reunification and the future of Germany’s western-
oriented strategic alliances prompted U.S. President George H. W. Bush, during a Camp David
meeting with Chancellor Kohl, to issue warnings about the dangers of “unpredictability” and
“instability” facing a Europe without NATO. 12 Shared worries about NATO’s future and “a new
unstable world of shifting alliances and multi-polar uncertainties” resounded across political and
international fronts with news of Italian Socialist foreign minister Gianni de Michelis’s
pessimistic outlook after Italy’s exclusion from the “two-plus-four talks.” 13 Perhaps more
revealing as to the depth of concern from the British perspective, Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher convoked a meeting of eminent historians at Chequers to discuss German character and
its ramifications for the future of the European Community. A confidential memorandum of the
meeting written by Thatcher’s private secretary, and later leaked to the press, noted that Germans
historically demonstrated “insensitivity to the feelings of others . . . their obsession with
themselves, a strong inclination to self-pity, and a longing to be liked . . . a capacity for excess, to
overdo things, . . . a tendency to overestimate their own strengths and capabilities,” but also
stated more optimistically that “there was a strong school of thought among those present that
today's Germans were very different from their predecessors.” 14 Nevertheless, references to
12 Strobe Talbott, “America Abroad: NATO über Alles,” Time (26 March 1990): 47.
13 Lally Weymouth, “Being Beastly to Germany,” National Review 42 (16 April 1990):
22, wrote that de Michelis, “even more than Margaret Thatcher, . . . has come to symbolize
European apprehension about growing German power.” His failed demands for participation in
“two-plus-four,” which drew the curt reply from West Germany’s Foreign Minister Hans-
Dietrich Genscher that “You’re not a player in this game,” only amplified de Michelis’s
opposition to a rush to reunification that he feared would jeopardize NATO.
14 Craig R. Whitney, “Sizing Up the Germans: A Thatcher Symposium,” New York Times
(16 July 1990): A6. A generally positive consensus that German reunification would enhance
both European integration and East European democratization emerged from the meeting, which
249