Childs' anti-communist views had been developed by works such as Orwell's 1984 and Koestler's Darkness At Noon, as well as his early visits to Germany.

The institute's purpose-built centre was opened by then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1989, hosting conferences on themes such as the Austrian resistance to National Socialism, and ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union.

John Gunn had presided over the collapse of British & Commonwealth, one of the largest city businesses, and could no longer fund the Institute.

Childs, promoted to professor in 1989, came under great pressure from those who had long disapproved of his line on Germany and Communism, and from professional rivals.

[1] Childs' former students include politicians Neil Carmichael and Kelvin Hopkins, and Owain Blackwell, Head of Law at Bolton University.

When he later spoke at the 'Pacific Workshop On German Affairs: The Two Germanies at Forty' about the likely collapse of the DDR, he again met with strong opposition and ridicule.

The following day The Guardian wrote, 'It would mean that a dangerous situation in the heart of Europe has been liquidated ...' Childs' wide knowledge of both domestic and international affairs has been utilised by both government and commercial organisations.

In 2011, he was invited to talk at the Italian-German Historical Institute, based in Trento, Italy, at a conference on International and multidisciplinary perspectives 20 years after the collapse of communism.

It is about Martin Thomas, an Englishman who fought for the Waffen SS on the Eastern Front, survived a Soviet concentration camp, worked as a Stasi agent during the Cold War and witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall.

They travelled across Germany monitoring the various parties and witnessed Angela Merkel's famous third term as German Chancellor.