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Helga Zepp-LaRouche Sets the Record Straight
on Helmut Kohl

Helga Zepp-LaRouche.

The Chairwoman of the Schiller Institute Helga Zepp-LaRouche wrote the following statement for the Strategic Alert Service on June 18, two days after the passing of Helmut Kohl, the former German Chancellor from 1982 to 1998.

The various assessments of Helmut Kohl as the “father of German unity” and “the visionary of a united Europe” sound more like the PR description of the politically correct reading that Kohl's contemporaries are supposed to have of that historical period, which coincided with his term in office. What is totally suppressed are the geopolitical operations that targetted Kohl, in particular during the time of German reunification, and that still play out to this day to in other forms.

Alfred Herrhausen (left), Chairman of Germany’s largest commercial bank,Deutsche Bank, greets German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

It is to Kohl's credit that, with the release of his “Ten Point Plan for a Confederation of the two Germanies” on Nov. 28, 1989, he made a first baby step toward establishing German sovereignty, a step which he had not coordinated with the Allies or with his coalition partner Hans-Dietrich Genscher. A truthful picture must include the fact that the assassination two days later of Alfred Herrhausen, the then-chairman of the Deutsche Bank and a close advisor to Kohl, allegedly by the third generation of the RAF, was meant to immediately contain this impulse to obtain sovereignty.

What is also omitted in the many comments is Margaret Thatcher's hate-filled “4th Reich campaign” against Kohl, as well as François Mitterand's threats of war in the event Kohl were not ready to abandon the deutsche mark as the price to pay for reunification, and to accept the constraints of the Maastricht corset and the euro, as reported by Jacques Attali in his biography of Mitterand. Kohl later described the European Community Summit in early December 1989 in Strasbourg, during which he faced these attacks, as one of the darkest hours of his life. According to his own statements, it was not until his visit to Dresden on Dec. 19, 1989, when the population was shouting with joy “Helmut!, Helmut!”, that he realized that the moment for German reunification had come.

Of course, Helmut Kohl was also a living witness to the promise made by the Americans to Mikhail Gorbachov, as was reported by the then-US ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock, among others, that NATO would never expand up to Russia's borders. For Kohl, the Cold War had ended with the breakup of the Soviet Union and it is highly doubtful that he would have agreed with the demonization of Vladimir Putin of the past years. The fact that Mrs. Merkel now considers herself as the proconsul of Barack Obama's policy of confrontation would probably also not be to his liking.