Hoover Senior Fellow Philip Zelikow discusses how the unification of East and West Germany was achieved in 1990. Diplomatic maneuvering. Based on the Philip Zelikow – Condoleezza Rice papers at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives, and a book by Zelikow and Rice, titled “Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft” (Cambridge, Mass., 1995).
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Philip Zelikow
Books
How can we make better decisions—especially when the stakes are highest? In Judgment Calls, historian Zachary Shore tackles this timeless puzzle with intellectual daring and uncommon range.
November 1, 2026
Articles
The world breathed a sigh of relief when, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month—November 11, 1918—the guns fell silent. The Great War, as World War One was then known, was over in Europe.
November 11, 2026
Articles
This Monday marks thirty-six years since the beginning of the end of the Cold War. In the excerpt below from Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World, I recall watching the Iron Curtain part while serving in the Second Armored Cavalry Regiment, a unit charged with border surveillance and control along the East-West German border and the West Germany-Czechoslovakia border.
November 10, 2026