Germany remains among the few countries in Europe to acknowledge, officially and nationally, its responsibility for the crimes it led against our people.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
We Germans have a special responsibility to be alert, sensitive, and aware of what we did during the Nazi era and about lasting damage caused in other countries. I've got tremendous sympathy for that.
I am not saying that during the Second World War Germany did not, under the leadership of the National Socialist government, commit crimes.
We have a huge responsibility to make sure that Europe remains a prosperous and peaceful continent.
We have given most of Europe to Hitler. Let us try to hold on to what we have got left.
Germany is determined to provide substantial help. So are the Netherlands and other states. But a day will come when we have to count on our own resources.
True, other countries are helping us. Germany is determined to provide substantial help. So are the Netherlands and other states. But a day will come when we have to count on our own resources.
Germany must be a country which generates political ideas and leadership, which is capable of compromise, which is sovereign and yet knows that it needs its partners on both sides of the Atlantic.
Germany's fate is decided first and foremost in Europe. Reconciliation and cooperation in Europe have brought us freedom, peace and prosperity. Who would have dared to believe so much 50 years ago?
Germany has become a country that many people abroad associate with hope.
Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins.