On 27 June 1987, Fritz Behrendt, a Dutch cartoonist originally from Berlin, illustrates the plan of French President Mitterrand (on the right) and Chancellor Helmut Kohl (on the left) to strengthen military cooperation between France and the Federal Republic of Germany by creating a Franco-German Brigade. The two leaders are shown smiling and shaking hands in the hatch of a tank bearing both French and German markings (the cockade and the Iron Cross, symbol of the Bundeswehr). The era of bloody wars between these long-standing enemies, shown in the background, seems to have long since passed (the Napoleonic Wars, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the First World War of 1914–1918 and the Second World War of 1939–1945).