Former German chancellor Helmut Kohl dead at 87

Former German chancellor Helmut Kohl has died, according to the German newspaper Bild.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/16/former-german-chancellorhelmut-kohl-dead-87/


wow just wow...i was born after the reunion. Germany has to thank Kohl for so much. A true titan and patriot.

 

I don't share Sobo's opinion often but he's right on this.

Helmut Kohl was a great man.

 

Yes, Kohl was a great man.
I have great respect for him.

 

I always liked Helmut Kohl and I think he was a great Chancellor. At least he had the courage to counter the Soviet deployment of the SS-20s with the Pershing II Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles and BGM-109G Cruise Missiles

I had to wake him up during the night one time to get his permission to move nuclear weapons on a German Holiday. I didn't actually communicate with Kohl, just his private secretary (who gave the okay so we could remove the last of the Nike-Hercules nuclear warheads).

 

I think the world today lacks leaders like Kohl.

 

He was a pretty good leader for Germany, the wall coming down was a great time in history, glad I was around to witness it.

 

Wow...

 

thank Gorbatchov, for it was him who reunited Germany and passed it on to Kohl.

 

It wasn't Gorbatchov who "reunited Germany", he most certainly played a significant role and could have said "no", but nobody knows what would have happened then.
The only one clearly in favour of a German reunification from the get go was Bush sen., France and especially Great Britain under Thatcher were very skeptical and afraid a reunited Germany would become too powerful.
Kohl's negotiation skills including a 5 billion credit for Moscow and emphasis on "no German reunification without a European integration" paved the way.
I never liked Kohl, but if you're familiar with some details regarding this reunification process (there are quite a few publications on that), Kohl proved to be the man of the hour.

 

A paperwork screw-up in the one upper ministry in the former DDR (East Germany) made this all possible.
It was supposed to say, as of x and x time, the border will be closed. Instead, it said, as of x and x time, the border will be opened.

Every German knows this.

But the behind the scenes work of Kohl and George H. W. Bush (41) should not be underestimated. Bush 41 is one of the unsung heros of this entire saga. My hat is off to the man.

Also, the former Czechoslovakia and Hungary also played a role in allowing E. Germans to flee over the Czech border and then either directly into Austria, some over Hungary and then into Austria and then finally landing in the BRD.

A lot of things happened starting with the first church protests in Leipzig in October 1989.

It was an unlikely convergence of many things that made the fall of the wall and the eventual reunification of Germany possible.

 

it was Gorbie, he marched Soviet troops out of East Germany and destroyed The Berlin Wall, instead of starting a nuclear war, then he took Kohl by the hand and led him where Honecker had been before, whom he took back to Moscow.

 

no, actually, it happened because the USSR was about to go the way China did later on, and the West had cheated Soviets out of starting nuclear war by offering them a Capitalist future, which turned out to become a tragedy for Russians in the 1990s, for this was a con.

 

Germany reunited out of its own. There is nothing that could have stopped it. Kohl simply made it in a way wthout bloodshed

 

yeah "on its own" lol, as if there was no Nato and East Bloc...

 

Sounds as if some Germans look at Kohl as the modern day father of current Germany.

Ronald Reagan played a very important role in the break up of the Soviet union, followed by more acts by George Bush.

I have myself been in the former East Germany during it's time of Communism. It was such a tragedy to see how people had to live. I got engaged to marry a girl who had been raised in East Germany and between her and her parents, I learned much about life as a German in East Germany.

I like to offer a book by a man who lived both under the Nazis and under Communism for Americans to get a grasp of what took place.

 

Gorbachev did not have his come to Jesus moment out of lack of shoving by Reagan.

I admit to liking Gorbachev for what he did do. But let's not credit him as if it was all his idea.

 

in fact, i hate him for that, as most Russians do.

no, let us not, because indeed, it was Gorbie & Reagan who turned that trick.

 

You have no clue what was going on here. My father was a soldier in the NVA then. It was before i was born. The army revolted and did not follow the instructions of the superiors anymore. Even the Stasi collapsed. There was no way to go back and stabilize the regime.

The feared STASI Boss Erich Mielke did stand in parliament and talked rubbish that he loves all people while the parliamentariens laughed about him.



NATO and Eastern Block could do nothing. The authority in eastern germany had collapsed. The only qestion was if it stays peaceful or gets bloody.

 

Stopping by to pay respects, sad day to lose a great person.

 

I thought you guys were happy the Soviet Union was gone? I have heard many Russians say they are happy that the Eastern Bloc countries got to chose their own destiny instead of being forced into Communism.

Do you disagree? No offense mean, I am honestly curious as to what Russians think of the dissolution of the USSR. The majority of people on this forum have in the past said it was a good thing

 

When looking back at everything it really was just a matter of time.

The quality of life in West Germany was FAR superior to that of East, of course they all wanted to be the same culture and of course they would chose what is more successful

 

You should thank Russia for not objecting to the reunion of East and West Germany, after all they suffered the most. It was their land and their people that were being killed so Germany get their extra living space. But that's okay, whatever one does comes back to them. The allies decided to solve Germany's over population problem with its bombing sprees.

When the people of Crimea voted in a referendum to unite with their Russian motherland, instead of Berlin showing the same understanding towards them that Putin showed to the East Germans, Merkel stabbed Russia and the Crimean people in the back. Not a good person.

 

Anybody know if Kohl paid his NATO bills or else if he was a scofflaw like Angela Merkel is ??

 

The only thing that pisses me off about Kohl and Merkel is their unpaid NATO bills.

Russia mobilized against Germany on July 30, 1914 which was the cause of WW1 and WW2 so Russia deserved everything they got back from the Kaiser and from Adolf.

 

eh, they could bloody do everything, start a nuke war for example, or take it all back to where it was in the year of 1945.