 Writing in 1986, Stürmer complained that recent opinion polls showed 80% of Americans were proud of being American, that 50% of the British were proud of being British, and 20% of West Germans were proud of being German, and argued until national pride could be restored, West Germany could not play an effective part in the Cold War.At the 1986 Römerberg Colloquia (a gathering of intellectuals held annually in Frankfurt), Stürmer argued that Germans had a destructive "obsession with their guilt", which he complained led to a lack of a positive sense of German national identity.Likewise, he argued that the legacy of 1960s radicalism was an over-emphasis on the Nazi period in German history.