West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1990 wanted desperately to unite his country with the East. It had been divided since the end of World War II. But Kohl was the only other world statesman who wanted this.

The Polish Pope, John Paul II, was all for ending Communism’s iron grip, but he was not overly eager about the Germans coming together. Poland had suffered horribly at the hands of the old Germany. The Iron Lady, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, remembered the Blitz of World War II.  She was cool to the idea of Germany becoming Europe’s premier economic and political giant. France’s Francois Mitterrand was unexcited about a new next-door neighbor reunified and rejuvenated. France had been overrun three times in a hundred years by Germany. He had reason to fear.

Back in the USSR, with the Communist regime spinning out of control, party chairman Mikhail Gorbachev was dealing with the inevitable consequences of his decision in November 1989 not to shoot as demonstrators danced on the crumbling Berlin Wall.

The German Democratic Republic (DDR) was the name of the rump state created by Stalin. It was never a democratic republic. And, as became obvious once the Wall came down, it wasn’t German either.

TIME Magazine, of course, and the Nobel Peace Prize Committee would credit Gorbachev for the peaceful end of the Cold War. Well, they certainly couldn’t give credit to Ronald Reagan and George Bush! As my friend Morton Blackwell says, is there any other example of giving credit to the hostage taker for not shooting his hostages?

Actually, there is. It’s called the Stockholm Syndrome. There’s probably no better description of the mindset of Western liberalism than this bizarre situation—where the hostages began to identify psychologically with their own captors.

Gorbachev came to power with 27,000 nuclear weapons trained on the West. Some of them doubtless would have hit Manhattan’s West Side, Washington’s Georgetown, and they may even have had one targeted on Martha’s Vineyard. They had enough to spare.

So, when Gorbachev didn’t shoot, he naturally became the darling of the Western elites.

If, as a candidate for President in 1988, George H.W. Bush had said he would like to see Communism collapse in on itself, the Outer Empire of Eastern Europe liberated, and the Inner Empire of the Baltic Republics, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Byelorussia go free, he would probably have been dismissed as dangerous, even delusional.

It’s not at all clear that George Bush himself envisioned all that would come to pass on his watch. He was, however, prepared and coolly capable of pressing events to their proper and pacific conclusion.

Germany had been the source of incredible danger and terror for the entire world—but only from 1890 to 1945. We should never forget the Rape of Belgium in 1914 or the Holocaust of 1942-45. Still, the German people had centuries of spiritual, cultural, and scientific genius to share with mankind.

With the single exception of unjustly persecuting home schoolers, Germany since 1945 has been a reputable modern democracy. Ambassador Klaus Sharioth publicly thanked America for sending 60 million young soldiers and airmen to defend his divided country. He said no nation in history had so generously protected another.

In 1989, I loudly opposed George H.W. Bush’s policy of “not dancing on the Berlin Wall.” I thought Ronald Reagan would have publicly celebrated the great day. But President Bush was right and I was wrong. He surely deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for this signal achievement. And just as surely, he will never get it.

I want to focus on just one portion of that vital conference: the Reunification of Germany.

Ambassador Klaus Scharioth. the urbane and witty diplomat assigned to Washington by the Federal Republic of Germany, paid fulsome tribute to the United States for helping his country achieve reunification. He thanked Americans for the 60 million young servicemen and women who had helped to protect Germany from Soviet aggression for forty-five years. I was stunned to hear that amazing figure. That heroic and generous contribution by America is not something we need to apologize to anyone for.

Ambassador Scharioth also noted how the Hungarians and Czechs helped greatly to bring down the Wall. The liberalizing communist regimes in those countries had opened their gates to East Germans desperate to escape the “Workers’ Paradise” in the Soviet puppet state behind the Iron Curtain. The ambassador recalled the important work of West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who never wavered in his devotion to reuniting his beloved land. Most of all, Ambassador Scharioth credited President George H.W. Bush with steadfast support for bringing down the Wall and peacefully reuniting Germany.

The former President is famously modest, perhaps too modest. As a boy, his dad, Prescott Bush, used to quiz him on his report card. “How are we doing in ‘claims no more?’” The elder Bush, a U.S. Senator from Connecticut, was referring to the portion of his son’s prep school report that gave a high mark to any young lad who “claims no more than his share of attention.” Young George always scored high in “claims no more.”

Consider the world of the 1980s. For some of those years, millions of people in the U.S. and Western Europe really feared that Ronald Reagan would stumble into World War III. They watched films like “The Day After,” a made-for-TV, made-for-terrifying-us-all movie that purported to show the after-effects of a nuclear war in Kansas.

Yes, by 1989, when George H.W. Bush took office as President, the fears of nuclear war had largely abated, thanks to President Reagan’s steady strategy of “peace through strength.” But there were still tensions. The Berlin Wall symbolized those tensions.

It took infinite skill and tremendous presence of mind to manage the end of the East-West confrontation that had been a daily fact of life since 1945. George Bush had that skill, that courage, that much-lampooned “prudence.”

If, in 1988, candidate George Bush had said: “I’d like to preside over the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the peaceful reunification of Germany, her incorporation into NATO as a free and democratic state, and I propose to do all of this without firing a shot, without alienating our allies or breaking relations with the Soviets,” the reaction would have been one of stunned silence. The gray beards and chin strokers of the chattering classes would have pronounced Bush a madman. Alarmed, they would have said: “He’s even worse than Reagan!”

Yet, the magnitude of Bush’s achievement is there. He managed all that so calmly, so prudently, that it seemed the most natural and unavoidable of conclusions.

Britain’s staunch Margaret Thatcher did not want Germany reunified. Francois Mitterrand did not want a new great power to challenge France’s preeminence in Europe. The Soviets did not want it. The Poles did not want it. Even the West German Socialists did not want it.

So, how did it happen? America supported her stalwart ally. President Bush backed up with American resolve Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s yearning for unity. And he did so for the most American of reasons: We had given our word to the Germans and the world for forty years. When the time came to end the division of Germany, the United States would be there. The time came in 1989.

For this, President George H.W. Bush clearly deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. They have been given for far, far lesser achievements. As we celebrate twenty years of peace in the heart of Europe, as we recall that two world wars were fought in the heart of Europe, we can all be grateful to the skillful statecraft, the personal modesty, and the honoring of promises that characterized the brilliant diplomacy of this very American hero.