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Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the domino-effect that ended the Cold War, it's easy to forget that other European countries wanted to stop the two Germanys from uniting. For world leaders at the time, it was a palpable concern.

That Margaret Thatcher, an anti-communist Cold Warrior, asked Mikhail Gorbachev to prevent East Germany from leaving the Communist orbit and joining West Germany in 1989 – contradicting a goal of Western policy that had stood for a generation – might seem shocking.

But Brian Mulroney is not at all surprised.

Around the table at G7 summits and at other events, it was clear that European leaders believed the union of East and West Germany would bring a power shift.

“They were totally – totally – opposed to it,” Mr. Mulroney, who was prime minister at the time, recalled in an interview Monday.

“I thought that the reasons for it were first, the memories of the two world wars, one of which was reasonably fresh, and the strategic imbalance that this [a united Germany] would create.”

Europe then had fewer nations, and the major players – France, Britain, Italy, and West Germany – were about the same size. European leaders knew that that uniting 20 million East Germans with West Germany's 61 million people could create a dominant power, he said.

That fuelled most European leaders' opposition. But Mrs. Thatcher, more than others, seemed to fear a united Germany might build up its military or see a revival of nationalism, and Mr. Mulroney said he's “not at all surprised” by reports she pressed hard to prevent it.

“She was a child of the war,” Mr. Mulroney said. “She had lived through it.”

The extent of Mrs. Thatcher's opposition was revealed recently through copies of Kremlin notes from a meeting in Moscow less than two months before the wall fell, that reportedly record her bluntly telling Mr. Gorbachev, then leader of the Soviet Union: “We do not want a united Germany.” Newly released French files indicate that she said that not only Britain and France, but eventually a free-market Russia, would have to join forces to counter the “German danger.”

Canada, however, and the United States believed that the union of East and West Germany would lead to a more stable and integrated Europe, and Mr. Mulroney publicly supported it.

A conference of foreign ministers in Ottawa in February of 1990 turned into talks between the two Germanys, the United States, France, Britain, and the Soviet Union that set the framework for unification.

By then, Mr. Mulroney wrote in his memoirs, it was unstoppable.

What was crucial in the days after the Berlin wall fell was Mr. Gorbachev's cool response, Mr. Mulroney said. “His attitude was key: He showed no alarm.”

When the Soviet premier visited Ottawa in early 1990 on his way to Washington, he told Mr. Mulroney that he was prepared to accept a united Germany as long as it withdrew from the western military alliance, NATO; Mr. Mulroney said he warned Mr. Gorbachev not to make that position public, because Mr. Bush would never accept it, and it would become a sticking point.

In the end, Mr. Gorbachev accepted a NATO Germany after U.S. secretary of state James Baker formulated nine assurances that assuaged Soviet concerns.

Mr. Mulroney insists that West German chancellor Helmut Kohl was the driving will that pushed German unification beyond the fall of the wall.

“Everything seems inevitable after it happens,” he said; but Mr. Kohl deserves “99 per cent of the credit.” His vision was influential, despite European unease, because Mr. Kohl saw unification as much more, Mr. Mulroney said.

“He saw it as a condition precedent for what you see now, a Europe of 27 nations where divisions and threats have receded,” Mr. Mulroney said.