Their worst fears realized

Margaret Thatcher believed the fall of the Berlin Wall was part of a Nazi-style "German threat" to peace and stability led by a power-crazed Helmut Kohl, French diplomatic files have revealed.

"France and Great Britain should pull together today in the face of the German threat," Baroness Thatcher told the French ambassador to London in March 1990, according to a French diplomatic telegram.

Maurice Vaisse, the French historian who supervised the release of the Paris files, said Lady Thatcher was "horrified" that German reunification would, just 44 years after the Second World War, "reinvigorate the country's bid to become the most powerful country in Europe".

Yup, it happened. Germany has the third largest economy in the world, after the U.S. and Japan. It is the world's largest exporter. It is the leader in renewable energy, and produces the most wind energy in the world.

So, it could have been worse.