Euro crisis firms German power, 25 years after fall of Berlin Wall

Paris

"WE beat the Germans twice and now they're back," then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher reportedly said after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, expressing her fears a reunited Germany would grow to dominate Europe.

Fast forward to Athens in 2012, at the height of the eurozone crisis, and that domination appeared to have come to pass.

On a trip to debt-wracked Greece, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was mocked with Nazi imagery amid hostile riots against what was seen as a crippling austerity effort imposed by all-powerful Berlin.

Twenty-five years after the Wall fell, analysts have l…