By comparison, Poland accounts for 10 per cent, Finland for 3 per cent and France for 2 percent. Mr. Siepe, one of the many West German executives keen to build up business with the Soviet Union, has been digging through the archives for details on O und K's railway equipment factory constructed in the 1880's in Petersburg, now Leningrad. The plant was expropriated in the Bolshevik revolution and was probably demolished in the Second World War Battles, but its fate, and even its address, are a mystery. I find it hard to believe in the idea of united Germany as a dutiful partner in Nato. It is an idea that is not in line with Zeitgeist of the last decade of the 20th century, which is increasingly nationalist.
Russian nationalists are opposed to any kind of German unity.
German nationalists, passionately in favour, would feel unity to be sullied by incorporation in an international entity, dominated by countries which defeated Germany in the war. The first is that it is Germany that will make the Nato decision, not Washington or Moscow, and certainly not London or Paris. The second is that as the two alliances decay in Europe a declaration of allegiance to Nato is a very different thing from what it would have been a year or so ago. Staying in NATO now means little in a genuinely military sense. It has been argued that it has become simply a code for a German commitment to the idea of collective decision making and consultation within Europe and between Europe and North America.