ABSTRACT
The reunification of Germany in 1989/90 caught almost everyone on the intellectual scene in the Federal Republic by surprise. On the left, Germany’s division had long been regarded as part of the price paid for the crimes of Nazism, and advocates of reunification as dangerous reactionaries who harked back to the days of the Bismarckian Empire if not the panGermanism of the Third Reich. Communist East Germany was depicted in neutral, even to some extent favourable, terms, often simply as a different kind of democracy, rather than a tyranny that had to be overthrown, or a part of Germany wrongfully under foreign occupation. Militant antiCommunism of the sort which became commonplace in the United States once more under the Reagan presidency appeared threatening because any serious attempt to conquer East Germany by force would inevitably lead to a war on German soil, with massive devastation caused by the use of tactical nuclear weapons. On the whole, therefore, reunification was opposed on the West German left because it raised old ghosts of German history and conjured up the nightmare of a nuclear holocaust.
