Twenty years ago, as Germany moved toward reunification, leaders in Britain, France and Russia feared that a newly united Germany would threaten the security of Europe.

Official transcripts of Kremlin meetings smuggled out of Moscow and published on the Times Online Thursday show that then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev that Britain did not want a united Germany.

A separate set of documents published by the British Foreign Office show that French President Francois Mitterrand feared a united Germany, and even considered a French-Soviet military alliance to stop it from happening.

Mitterrand told Thatcher that a united Germany could “make even more ground than had Hitler.” He said that if Germany expanded, then Europe would be in the same position that it was in before World War i. He also said that reunification could turn Germans into the “bad” people they used to be. He pointed out that historically Germany had never accepted its current borders, but pushed outward.

The Time’s Kremlin papers show that the Russians also were worried about a united Germany. Premier of the Soviet Union Nikolai Ryzhkov told Gorbachev that if Germany was allowed to reunify on its own terms, “then in 20 or 30 years Germany will start another world war” (emphasis ours throughout).

Jacques Attali, adviser to the French president, was equally concerned. He told one of Gorbachev’s senior aides that French leaders questioned whether Russia’s lack of interference in the fall of the Berlin Wall meant that “the ussr has made peace with the prospect of a united Germany and will not take any steps to prevent it.”

“This has caused a fear approaching panic,” he said.

Attali later told Mitterrand that he was so scared of a united Germany that should it come to pass he would “fly off to live on Mars.”

Thatcher believed that a united Germany was so much of a threat that she was willing to work with Gorbachev to stop it from happening. The British prime minister asked to go off the record while she told Gorbachev her real opinion on German reunification. Although this conversation was not recorded, Kremlin officials reproduced it from memory after the meeting was over.

“The reunification of Germany is not in the interests of Britain and Western Europe,” she said. “It might look different from public pronouncements, in official communiqué at nato meetings, but it is not worth paying one’s attention to it. We do not want a united Germany. This would have led to a change to postwar borders and we cannot allow that because such development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security.“

Thatcher was horrified when she heard reports that the Bundestag in Bonn sang “Deutschland Über Alles” to celebrate the wall’s destruction. The song includes the words “Germany, Germany above all, Above all in the world.”

Her worries persisted. In 1990, she told Gorbachev, “All Europe is watching this [German reunification] not without a degree of fear, remembering very well who started the two world wars.”

At a meeting with Mitterrand she said then-West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl had forgotten that “the division of Germany was the result of a war which Germany had started.”

Unfortunately, too many other diplomats had forgotten this same fact. Mitterrand soon caved in to a unified Germany in an effort to increase France’s power within the European Union. America also backed a united Germany. The entire British Foreign Office supported German reunification. Strong as the “Iron Lady” was, Prime Minister Thatcher could not stand against the world alone. Germany united less than a year after the wall fell.

These leaders knew their history. They knew Germany. They knew where a unified Germany would lead.

Thatcher continued to warn about a united Germany. “You have not anchored Germany to Europe,” she said in 1995. “You have anchored Europe to a newly dominant, unified Germany. In the end, my friends, you’ll find it will not work.”

History alone warns that a unified Germany will threaten Europe, and, in today’s era of advanced weaponry, threaten the whole world.

These leaders were right to be worried. For years the Trumpet and its predecessor, the Plain Truth, have been issuing exactly the same warning. Germany has been expanding economically and politically within the EU. Very soon it will begin expanding militarily, just like these leaders feared. Watch for this to happen.

Look for more articles on this story on theTrumpet.com soon.