Word: oder
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Nevertheless, we cannot simply dismiss the possibility of German revanchism. One of the most sensitive issues of German reunification, the recognition of the Oder-Neisse line as the definitive border with Poland, illustrates Germany's ambivalent self-perception. On one hand, nearly all Germans are willing to renounce claims to this territory (to which they have a strong historical claim) as atonement for their historical guilt. But a small minority refuse to recognize the necessity of viewing Germany's place in the world through the lens of the Third Reich...
...constitutions of both East and West Germany recognize the Oder-Neisse line, but German Chancellor Helmut Kohl created an international flap when he suggested that a reunification treaty could not reaffirm that understanding without the consent of the united German parliament...
...their Two-plus-Four talks and breakthrough agreements on the future of Germany, political leaders are still running behind events. More quickly than anyone could have imagined, East Germany is being absorbed in the Western market economy. From travel-agency offers in Frankfurt-on-the-Oder to used-car lots filled with Western automobiles in Plauen, the deutsche mark life has arrived. The changes are good and bad, sometimes even ugly, but East Germany, once Erich Honecker's drab land of barracks communism, will never be the same...
More recently, his refusal to recognize the Oder-Neisse line as Poland's definitive Western border reconfirms that he prefers to cater to a small domestic right-wing audience rather than pursue reconciliation with those who suffered most during the Nazi rule...
Germany is powerful, and there is economic jealousy, which is understandable. And there were the damaging three weeks it took Chancellor Kohl to realize that he had to be firm and definitive about guaranteeing the Oder-Neisse border with Poland. That was enough to worry some people -- including in France. Still, it doesn't change our position, which is that we favor German unity. The fewer problems Germans have between themselves, the fewer they will have with the rest of the world...