German-Bashing Issue Haunts Thatcher : Britain: A hunt begins for the person who leaked a government memo listing ‘bullying’ and ‘egotism’ among German character traits.

LONDON —  Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on Monday launched a political damage-control campaign aimed at safeguarding her country’s image in Europe after a leaked, internal document describing key German character traits as “bullying,” “egotism,” “angst” and “aggressiveness” added to the controversy surrounding Britain’s official attitude toward European unity.

A spokesman for the prime minister announced that a formal investigation will be held into the weekend leak of the confidential memorandum. The memo was prepared by Thatcher’s private secretary as a report on discussions about Germany and its role in Europe during a private think-tank session the prime minister attended with senior British policy-makers last March.

The formal inquiry will target senior British Defense Ministry and Foreign Ministry officials familiar with the session. The probe was announced by the prime minister’s office at 10 Downing St. after a weekend of continuing media criticism and deepening political debate about Britain’s policies toward its European neighbors.

The leaked document was published in the Independent newspaper Sunday, one day after Thatcher attempted to end a similar controversy by accepting the resignation of Minister of Trade and Industry Nicholas Ridley.

Ridley had made critical remarks about the Germans, the French and the European Community in general in an interview with the prestigious magazine the Spectator, and the remarks generated a storm of controversy when they were published last week.

Ridley, 61, a British aristocrat famous for his occasionally undiplomatic candor, did, however, echo the sentiments of many World War II-era Britons in voicing his strong skepticism about Germany’s continuing role in unifying Europe, calling it “a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe.” Ridley also said the French were behaving like “poodles” in permitting Germany to dominate the unification movement, and he condemned the 17-member European Commission as “unelected reject politicians,” adding, “You might just as well give it (sovereignty) to Adolf Hitler.”

The commission is the executive body of the European Community.

Officially, Thatcher’s government supports European unity, although she has been the most cautious of all European leaders in selecting the time frame for bringing down the borders between the EC’s 12 member nations.

Thatcher’s opponents in Britain’s Labor Party tried hard late last week to cast Ridley’s stated opinions as the privately held beliefs of the prime minister as well, a charge she denied in Parliament.

But Sunday’s leak made it even more difficult for Thatcher to distance herself from the anti-Europeanist elements in her Conservative Party.

The leaked memorandum concluded that present-day Germany is not a threat to Britain and generally endorsed the idea of a unified Europe. But it was revealing of the overall cynicism with which some senior officials still view the German nation.

The report quoted no one by name; rather, it described the general discussions and conclusions of those who attended, chief among them Thatcher.

“We started by talking about the Germans themselves and their characteristics,” the prime minister’s secretary wrote toward the beginning of his report on the session, which was held at Chequers, Thatcher’s weekend retreat. “It was easier--and more pertinent to the present discussion--to think of the less happy ones: their insensitivity to the feelings of others, their obsession with themselves, a strong inclination to self-pity and a longing to be liked.

“Some even less-flattering attributes were also mentioned as an abiding part of the German character: in alphabetical order, angst, aggressiveness, assertiveness, bullying, egotism, inferiority complex, sentimentality.”

Nonetheless, the document added, “There was a strong school of thought among those present that today’s Germans were very different from their predecessors.”

Finally, after a long discussion of the social and political changes that have taken place within Germany during the four decades since Hitler’s war machine bombed Britain and conquered most of Europe, the memorandum concluded:

“The overall message was unmistakeable: We should be nice to the Germans. But even the optimists had some unease, not for the present and the immediate future but for what might lie further down the road than we can yet see.”

Despite the second round of bitter debate touched off by the leaked memo, diplomatic repair efforts were under way Monday on a regional scale as well. And most met with apparent success.

During Monday’s EC foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd was quoted as saying that he had encountered no problems with his counterparts as a result of the controversy, an assessment shared publicly, at least, by perhaps the most important of his European colleagues on British television Monday morning.

Irmgard Adam-Schwatzer, the German official standing in for West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, declared simply, “It is a British internal political affair.”