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Britain, Germany, and the Fall of the Soviet Empire
economic balance within the EC where Germany already dominates.’
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The documents selected for the last eight months preceding
Germany’s unification on 3 October illustrate admirably two strands
in the British contribution. It was British officials, including the
FCO’s legal advisers working in close harmony with their German
counterparts, who devised practical solutions to innumerable problems
in winding up QRR, such as the role and status of foreign,
including Soviet, forces, that were both technically complex and
politically sensitive. The Americans were behind the curve, preoccupied
mainly with avoiding a treaty that would have to be submitted
to the Senate for ratification. 52 There was outstanding, even visionary,
work on future European security. It was the British diplomat
Brian Crowe, leader of the British delegation at the preparatory negotiations,
who invented the title of the concluding document of the
CSCE summit in Paris which brought the Cold War to a close: ‘The
Charter of Paris for a New Europe.’ But this work was carried out
against a backdrop of continuing ructions over German and Euro -
pean unity that culminated in the sacking of Nicholas Ridley from
the cabinet on 14 July (two weeks after GEMU), for expressing views
on German and European unity widely believed to represent the
Prime Minister’s own. 53 Ridley described European Monetary Union
as a ‘German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe’ in an
interview with the Spectator that was illustrated with a cartoon
depicting Ridley adding a Hitler moustache to a poster of Chancellor
Kohl. 54 At the same time, publication in the Independent on Sunday
and Der Spiegel of Charles Powell’s record of the Prime Minis ter’s
seminar with historians, held on 24 March at Chequers to pre pare for
her summit meeting with Kohl and the annual British–German
Königswinter conference in Cambridge at the end of the month, reinforced
these perceptions. It was clear from this record, reprinted with
associated correspondence in the appendix to German Unification,
that it was the Prime Minister, not the historians or her Private
51 Elizabeth Pond, Beyond the Wall: Germany’s Road to Unification (Washing -
ton, 1993), 157.
52 Salmon, Hamilton, and Twigge (eds.), German Unification, no. 174.
53 Ibid. no. 217.
54 Nicholas Ridley’s interview with the Spectator was published on 14 July
1990, p. 9.
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