Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl: "Germany has dealt with its history. In future, it can admit to its world role and widen it. The whole of Germany has the chance now to find its inner harmony... to which belongs living patriotism."
Federal Government statement, 30 January 1991.

Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl: "It would be a historical failure if we allow ourselves to be just satisfied with German reunification."
Quoted in Süddeutsche Zeitung, 16 June 1992.

Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl: "If the Oder-Neisse frontier (with Poland) were the eastern frontier of the political union, that would be a catastrophe for this country."
Quoted in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 28 May 1993

Federal Defence Minister, Volker Rühe: "Germany must not accept that a new political border establishes itself on its eastern frontier."
Quoted in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitting, 8 September 1993.

Wolfgang Schäuble, CDU/CSU Fraction leader in the Bundestag:
"Without a further development of (western) integration, Germany could be seduced by its own security needs to bring stability to eastern Europe by itself and in the traditional way."
Überlegungen zur europäischen Politik, 1 September 1994.

Federal Defence Minister, Volker Rühe: "Our economic, technological and financial capacities do not permit us to follow the old restrictions of German foreign policy any longer."
Quoted in Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik. No. 12,1991.

Bavarian Prime Minister, Edmund Stoiber: "Kohl is achieving what Kaiser Wilhelm and Hitler could not manage. If the frontiers between Germany and Austria and Germany and Switzerland were to fall, then the entire German-speaking cultural region could be brought together."
Quoted in Fürstenfeldbrucker Neueste Nachrichten, 5 August 1992.

Friedbert Pflüger, CDU defence specialist and Bundestag member: "The spirit of the times is blowing again from the Right...Whoever travels round the country and talks to the party grass roots feels everywhere the influence of the New Right...In many of my meetings, Poland's western frontier is questioned and the return of Silesia and East Prussia is demanded."
Quoted in Frankfurter Rundschau, 19 April 1994.

Wilhelm Hankel, chief of the credit department in the German Economics Ministry: "Maastricht we can forget about. What we need is a new concept."
Quoted in Der Standard, 22 October 1993.

Matthias Kleinert, Daimler-Benz chief executive: "We must invade (the East), economically, of course."
Quoted in Süddeutsche Zeitung, 6 July 1993.

General Klaus Naumann: "It is part of the Bundeswehr's main task to familiarise the soldier with death."
Quoted in Der Spiegel, No.15,1992.

Admiral Wellershoff, Bundeswehr: "A people that has forgotten the meaning of power and wants zero-risk policies will also produce conscripts incapable of overcoming feelings like fear."
Quoted in Hunno Hochbergen Die Intervention der BRD in den jugoslawischen Bürgerkrieg, Cologne 1992.

Hannelore Ronsch, former Federal Family Minister: "It is important to support parents who wish to have children. After all, the Defence Ministry needs enough young soldiers to be able to maintain a fighting army."
Quoted in Kieler Nachrichten, 10 February 1993.