The world celebrated when the Berlin Wall opened and Germany could once more be united. People across the globe felt that here was a new opportunity for a Germany which had learned the lessons of her militarist past and had atoned for the crimes committed during the Nazi period.

Nobody then could have predicted the course that events would take, just as nobody now should take what is happening in Germany as anything other than a warning to the world.

We are all familiar with the headlines - now becoming fewer as violence is more and more accepted as normality - about nazi terror and burning refugee hostels. Who can forget the nightmarish images that have come to be associated with the names of Hoyerswerda, Rostock, Mölln and Solingen?

These images are the most visible part of a torrent of fascist, racist and antisemitic criminality let loose by reunification of Germany.

In my opinion, the nazis are only a small part of a much bigger problem of German nationalism which permeates almost the whole of German society and which now finds an ever more open expression within the ranks of Germany's political class, the intellectuals (with a few honourable exceptions like Günther Grass and Ralph Giordano), the judiciary, the Vertriebene who want back the "lost territories" and, most ominously, the military.

The time for shame is over. German tanks at Arc de Triomphe in Paris July 1994

This nationalism, fundamentally antidemocratic and filled with hatred for the ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity, was not created by today's Hitler fans. They just make use of this lethal leftover from the past, while nobody puts the real national revivalists under the spotlight. It is almost a matter of bad taste to talk about the German government and nationalism all in the same breath.

Facts, however, are stubborn things. They can be rather unpleasant, too. And the fact is, that to ensure the fulfilment of German unity as part of their political programme. Chancellor Kohl's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and their allies in the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) drove the process of reunification forward with the whip (and, for some, the carrot) of nationalism.

The new Great Power Germany, which begins - even if cautiously - once more to militarise its politics, is not what most people wished for from reunification. They did not think it was part of the package. And few would have thought that the question of how to relate to this would-be superpower would now be exercising the minds of politicians of other countries.

The nationalism unleashed during that indecently short period between 9 November 1989, when the Berlin Wall opened, and 3 October 1990, when Germany was reunited, cannot be put back into the bottle like a genie.

It has become the leitmotiv of German foreign policy. It determines community relations inside Germany where, thanks to talk by CDU and CSU politicians about "foreign infiltration", foreigners are made to feel exactly what they are: foreigners.
It provokes ugly antisemitic attitudes that are not confined to street-comer shaven-headed louts but which reach as far as Helmut Kohl's own advisers.

Each day we see more and more of the real consequences of all the talk about "German identity", "German sovereignty", "German destiny" and "German nationhood" in the eleven months leading up to reunification when Bild, read by 17 million people a day, often carried its headlines in the German national colours of black, red and gold. It is Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the now Green and former "Red" hero of the 1968 student revolt in Paris, who today waves these other colours and demands that the German airforce bombs Belgrade. So, who needs Bild?

The "ambitions" of the government haven't yet got round to include bombing anyone. Germany wants a seat in the UN Security Council. Its generals want to build an army of intervention. Its political leaders want to decide on the future of other members of the European Union and when anybody objects, well, there is always the Bundesbank on hand to dish out a currency devaluation or two to keep the objectors in line.

The situation is - another unpalatable fact - slipping out of control. The mess surrounding the policies of the United Nations, NATO and the European Union in former Yugoslavia testifies to the inability of supranational institutions to contain nationalism. To a great extent, these last two institutions were established precisely to restrict German ambitions.

When these same institutions lose all authority and prove useless, what then? National interests can only predominate and must clash at first politically and later, such is the way of the world, with arms.

The whole tragedy of Bosnia indicates that.

The German state arrived late on the historical scene in 1871. It wanted its "place in the sun" and tried to get it with a war. Foreign policy after the defeat in the First World War was not fundamentally different. The "ambitions" remained even if the military power to realise them was removed by the Versailles Treaty.

Then, Germany also had a democracy: the Weimar Republic. It lasted 14 years until crisis intervened and those with "ambition" - the politicians, the military, the captains of industry, the intellectuals - handed the power to Hitler. "Go on," they encouraged him, "have a try. See what you can do to make Germany great again." He failed, of course, and we all know the price: 55 million dead, including six million Jews and 500,000 Roma.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl is not remotely a Hitler. He is not even a fascist. But he is a nationalist. He wants an expansion of German power and an extension of German influence and he is not afraid of pushing other nations around when given the chance.

He is surrounded by others who are, if anything, even worse: men like Wolfgang Schäuble who will most probably succeed him. Schäuble's agenda has none of Kohl's hesitations. For him, the "Nation" lives through its "identity" and "history". He is possessed of a sense of destiny.

We should all be rather cautious of such men. Their ideas about destiny have a habit of leading to catastrophe.

The anti-fascist movement internationally should be especially cautious and vigilant. What concerns us is not just the struggle against the nazi nationalists in Germany, hard though that endeavour is.

I appeal to you, do not just pay attention to the nazis and their street armies. Keep a very close watch on the big party nationalists, on the generals, on the Rightist opinion shapers.

Above all, see that inside Germany there are many who are in active resistance to this Grossdeutschland and its new "ambitions". Give these people your solidarity and help. They need it and deserve it.

And read this pamphlet and act on the warning!

Michael Schmidt is the producer of the powerful and internationally acclaimed prize-winning documentary film on the theme of neo-nazism: "Wahrheit macht frei" (The Truth Shall Make You Free). He is also the author of the book Heute gehört uns die Strasse (The New Reich), awarded an Anne Frank Prize in 1993.