History buffs might have already seen this, but it’s amazing nonetheless: On the eve of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Margaret Thatcher appealed to Mikhail Gorbachev to keep Germany divided:

Thatcher:

We are very concerned about the processes taking place in Eastern Germany. Some big changes could happen there, forced partly by the state of the society and partly by the illness of Erich Honecker. One example of this is the flight of thousands of people from the GDR to the FRG. All of this is on the surface, it is very important but even more important is something else.

The reunification of Germany is not in the interests of Britain and Western Europe. It might look different from public pronouncements, in official communiqué at Nato meetings, but it is not worth paying ones attention to it. We do not want a united Germany. This would have led to a change to post-war borders and we can not allow that because such development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security.

And, she said, the President of the United States - which at that time would have been George Herbert Walker Bush - felt exactly the same.

Given Germany’s historical belligerence, and its effect on Britain and France (and the United States), you can understand the sentiment; but it’s shockingly anti-democratic. And a reminder that even the champions of “freedom” are apt, sometimes, to elect for stability over liberty.