Despite this lamentable lack of balance in our education I do not believe that either children or adults in my country are permeated by a widespread hostility to Germany.

We, Britain and Germany, can neither of us be happy about our handling of the Iraq war.

But Germany will always suffer, I fear, from the intensely dramatic character of the crimes of the Third Reich.

Margaret Thatcher, growing up in a bombed and battered Britain, derived a distrust which has grown with the years not just of Germany but of all continental Europe.

Margaret Thatcher was fearful of German unification because she believed that this would bring an immediate and formidable increase of economic strength to a Germany which was already the strongest economic partner in Europe.

A delusion is something that people believe in despite a total lack of evidence.