Without wishing to blow my own trumpet too much 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but I wrote this in 1987:
‘Already signs of change are visible in the Soviet Bloc which could well have serious consequences for European politics in a period when western economies appear to be entering a period of economic downturn… The national question in Germany will in future become a much more important political issue and its solution will increasingly be seen as a way to solve some of the internal social and economic problems in both German states and the rest of Europe.’
Peter Thompson, ‘Socialism and the German Question’, unpublished undergraduate dissertation, Portsmouth Polytechnic, 1987, pp. 50–51.