ples' reuniting in front of our very eyes. Playing to the approving applause of the crowds, domestic and international, the players - particularly Helmut Kohl, Chancellor of democratic West Germany - did as they were encouraged to do.
There was reason to hurry: nearly 400,000 Soviet troops still sat inside the borders of East Germany. Although reunification was not discouraged by the U.S.S.R.'s leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, there was no telling how long his direction of Soviet policy would prevail. Indeed, less than a year after the official rejoining of the two Germanies, in August 1991 a coup attempt was made against Gorbachev by hardline Communist government officials; the Soviet troops were still barracked in the eastern half of Germany as it happened. The luck of history was still on the Germans' side (or "the end of history" was against a Communist resurgence, as historian Francis Fukiyama would put it): democratic forces prevailed in the Soviet Union, eventually "dis"-uniting that system into eighteen separate nations. Still, the lesson of history is apparent: when a chance for territorial expansion is offered, seize it - it is not an open-ended opportunity.
Having successfully "seized the day" of reunification, only then could Germans from both sides of the former border take the time to examine what they had bought in to. Beneath the shiny exterior of German brotherhood and language, they found, there were surprisingly different parts running the machine of their respective societies. Historically speaking, this should not have been a surprise.
Technically, except for the short period from 1871 to 1945, Germany had never been a "united" country in the nationalistic terms defined by France, Britain or the very young United States. Rather, her nationalistic heritage was more akin to that of Italy's, another territorial entity whose "national identity" was founded only in the 1800s: both were characterized by...