Thatcher's European delusions

The recent celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall have generated much historical interest—but not always historical accurateness. The release of documents on British policy towards German unification in 1989-90, in particular, has triggered a considerable flurry of “spin” aimed, it seems, at rewriting history itself. From over 500 pages, journalists have zoomed in on one apparent gem: that President Mitterrand and Margaret Thatcher, in early 1990, viewed the impending German unification with a shared angst—panic, even.

To the delight of commentators, a memo written by Charles Powell, Thatcher’s then private secretary, quoted Mitterrand using the H-word in a conversation with Thatcher on 20th January 1990. In their quick march to unification, Mitterrand said, the Germans were once more behaving as “bad” Germans. If nothing was done, he continued, they would swallow up a bigger chunk of Europe than their infamous predecessor. Mitterrand, it seems, was tormented by the resurgence of France's Teutonic neighbour, and determined to prevent German unification from happening.

But was this really so? A closer look at the document shows that quotes from Powell’s memo have been taken out of context. Clearly, this historical parallel was less something Mitterrand adhered too than an argument (a ‘very blunt’, one, he recognized) that he was using with the Germans themselves in order to make them understand the need at this crucial juncture for a cautious approach of unification, both more controlled and less unilateral.

Likening his friend Helmut Kohl to Hitler was hardly Mitterrand's style; what he was instead concerned about was a return to old style European alliances of “reinsurance” against Germany—similar, in other words, to the situation "back in 1913.” Even more critically, commentators have ignored the most important message that Mitterrand delivered to Thatcher that day: that Germans “had the right to self determination,” that “we had to accept that there was a logic to reunification,” and that “it would be stupid to say no.”

His message was in sharp contrast to Thatcher’s. She had come to the Elysée palace to ask Mitterrand to pursue a joint policy of postponing unification. Though she “accepted that in the end reunification would come about,” she thought they “must find a way to slow it down.” She “did not necessarily agree that there was nothing to be done.” But to no avail. The only concession Thatcher obtained from Mitterrand was that their respective foreign ministers, Douglas Hurd and Roland Dumas, would soon meet to review the options.

Nothing further came out of the foreign ministers’ meeting several days later. Evidently, Mitterrand and Thatcher had fundamentally different positions on unification and its consequences, and the meeting on 20th January 1990 exposed this. Thatcher rejected German unity as such, whilst Mitterrand’s uneasiness had to do with modalities. “Everything depends on the how and when,” he told Thatcher, emphasising the “reactions of the Soviet Union,” which he feared could be brutal. In other words, he wanted to control German unification, not to oppose it. For him, as also made clear by French documents recently released, the only sensible course of action was to make sure that a unified Germany be kept in a strong international— and especially European—framework.

In the end, the only thing that the conversation on 20th January confirmed was the illusory character of the Franco-British entente. Thatcher left the Elysée disappointed, certain that Mitterrand shared her own prejudices and only lacked the daring to express them. She had hoped, as she later wrote in her memoirs, to get him to overcome “his tendency to schizophrenia” and to cooperate in making use of “all the means available to slow down reunification.” But she recognised that “little or nothing in practical terms” came from the meeting. Persisting in her conviction that Mitterrand was not able to “match private words with public deeds,” she later conceded that he was nevertheless right, that “there was nothing we could do to halt German reunification.”

Mitterrand, it is said, was to some extent under the charm of Thatcher. Perhaps this led her to entertain illusions of a new entente cordiale against a resurgent Germany? As Helmut Kohl remarked in his memoirs, Thatcher “seemed always to hear what she wanted to hear.” But it was Hurd who got it most right: as he wrote years later, Mitterrand’s apparent concurrence with her was “just intellectual play.” His actual aim, the foreign minister understood, was by no means to block German unification, but instead to strengthen Franco-German cooperation and, even more vitally, to re-launch European integration. This, of course, was a cause to which the French president did not even dream of converting the Iron Lady. Within two months of German unification, she was out of Downing Street and spared the agony of signing the Maastricht Treaty, which Kohl and Mitterrand had jointly promoted as a response to it.

Frédéric Bozo is the author of "Mitterrand, the End of the Cold War and German Unification" published by Berghahn Books