Second Conversation between M.S. Gorbachev and FRG Chancellor H. Kohl

On June 12, 1989, Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev began a four-day visit to West Germany, just two weeks after a similar visit to West Germany by United States President George H. W. Bush. Gorbachev had by the summer of 1989 become a popular figure and expectations were running high in West German society over the summit. From the Soviet Union's perspective, West Germany represented the largest economy in Europe and welcomed the possibility of increased trade. For many Germans, the visits by both Bush and Gorbachev during the summer of 1989 illustrated joint recognition of the new, pivotal role that West Germany played in East-West relations.

During their second formal meeting during Gorbachev's visit to West Germany (on June 13), West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl discussed his efforts to limit the number of nuclear weapons in Europe and discussed his opposition to the deployment by the United States of the Lance missiles. Because these weapons were to be stationed primarily on German soil and had such a short range, the German people were overwhelmingly opposed.

In his conversation with Gorbachev, Kohl attempted to plead his genuine concern with issues of arms reduction, stating that he has two sons who were officers in the West German army (the Bundeswehr) and that he had lost his brother in the Second World War as well. Coinciding with his talks with Gorbachev on arms reduction, Kohl's wife was accompanying Raisa Gorbachev on a visit to a Soviet memorial in Stuckenbruck, a move intended to further emphasize Kohl's notions that all of Europe was tied together and that West Germany was not the same aggressor as Nazi Germany forty years earlier.