Sarah Paine

Why are you doing that?

Because you want those soldiers focused on buying furniture, not running a military coup.

That's what they're doing.

So the unification happens in mid-September 1990.

And here's the Polish borders.

At the end of World War II, Stalin moved Poland 200 kilometers to the west, and it winds up taking a third of German territory by the time that's all over.

And so the Germans don't really want to sign all that away.

And in addition, as part of that, there were 12 million German refugees who were thrown out of where they were living to send them back to Germany, of whom 2 million died.

So this is a big deal, and it's in living memory.

Germany agrees to this.

that the borders are done, German and Polish borders are set.

Complicating factor, a month and a half before this unification treaty is signed, Saddam Hussein decides he's going to invade Kuwait because he's broke because he's had a long war with Iran, huge debts, many owed to Kuwait, which he doesn't want to pay back.

So if you invade them, that solves that problem.

And also he would take over Kuwait's very rich oil fields and together that would make Iraq probably the swing producer of oil.

So he thinks that's a great idea, except the Cold War's over, actually, and the Russians are more than willing to cooperate with the United States.

Gorbachev really needs more money, and he is willing to go along with Iraq out of Kuwait, but not with regime change.

Iraq.

Because think about it, Iraq is a very important creditor state to the Soviet Union.

It owed them between $10 and $13 billion.

That's a lot of money for a broke creditor.