Originally posted 2015-07-14 11:10:27.
Today I am spitting nails. I see that I have been lied to. Germany is not the good European nation it sells itself as. It is the same bullying, totalitarian monster it always has been. (This article was written in 2015; things are a lot worse now, in 2022.)
Today I am furious.
And why? Because I have seen Germany destroy a weaker nation for political ends. I have seen Germany destroy all notion of European solidarity. I have seen Germany reveal its true self — the monstrous bully of Europe that cannot suffer dissent and insists that its orders must be followed, on pain of destruction.
In 1871 Germans failed. In 1914 they failed. In 1939-45 they failed — although defeating them cost 72 million lives and the destruction of Europe, not to mention the horror of the Holocaust.
But in 2015 they have succeeded. They have finally achieved their end. They have crushed a sovereign nation, not with tanks and bombers, but with threats and usury.
We believed, in our innocence, that suffering appalling want for years after 1945 so that Germany could be reconstructed, was worthwhile because then, Germany would be a good European nation. Billions were poured into its economy and restructuring under the Marshall Plan, so that Germany would be a good European nation.
Further billions were poured in for decades as NATO maintained vast armies along the Rhine — so that Germany would be a good European nation. We allowed Germany to re-unify, believing that it was, by then, actually a good European nation. For the same reasons we allowed it to organise an Exchange Rate Mechanism that favoured Germany by keeping the costs of its exports down, and we then even allowed them to change the name of that and call it a ‘currency union’ — which it is not.
Why did we do all this? Because we wanted Germany to be a good European nation and at the back of our minds, always, were those 72 million dead and the images of the horrors of Auschwitz.
And all of that, all of it, failed. Germany has revealed, once again, the ghastly monster of its true nature. It will stop at nothing to impose its will on others.
What is the deep, rotten cancer at the core of the German psyche that makes Germans think they have a right to tell others how to run their countries? What is the evil in their national character? I wish I knew because as far as I can see we have done everything that could be done to appease them and the monster that corrupts their national soul.
And none of it was enough. None of it will ever be enough. Germany is not a good European nation; it is, as ever, the enemy of freedom and democracy. It is the dark totalitarian vampire at the heart of Europe, that sucks the blood of liberty and will go on sucking it, until the continent is a dried out husk and freedom itself is dead.
It is too late now to demand forgiveness for errors past; too late to claim that the evils once done were then, not now, and that the sins of the parents should not be visited on the children. It is too late now to insist, yet again, that Germans have changed, because every single living German is guilty as charged in the indictment of the monstrous behaviour of their nation. A nation has been destroyed in their name and with their sanction. Democracy has been snuffed out, because they allowed it, indeed, desired it.
Today’s Germans are are just as culpable as those who sent Jews to the gas chambers or who helped round up gays for execution. There is a rot at the heart of the German soul that we now must understand can never be cut out. If all the effort we have made to make them a civilised, good European nation over the last 70 years has failed, then there can be no hope. Germany is a beast that can never be treated with, and must instead be chained.
(Add, 2022. I wonder whom we shall find to finally chain the German monster, to slay its Tiamat? Perhaps he in the Kremlin? It might yet happen. )
Personal tragedy
For me, this week has been a personal tragedy. I voted, in the 1970s, for the UK to join the EEC, as it was then. I believed in the dream of Europe, in the fantasy of being a ‘good European’. All through the 1980s and 90s, while the ‘democratic deficit’ at the heart of Europe worried me deeply, I held on to my faith. I told myself that Europe was bigger than this, that it would be all right. I told myself how apt it was to choose ‘Ode to Joy’ as the European anthem, to express hope for a harmonious, democratic future.
After the millennium I went on believing; I had no interest, ever, in the euro project, an ill-favoured child from the outset, but despite the increasing evidence to the contrary, I told myself that the European commitment to peace, democracy and human rights counted for more than these worries. And most of all, that Germany could be a good European nation.
This week, Germany pulled aside its ‘good European’ mask and I saw how wrong I had been. The entire European project is nothing more than an attempt to turn the whole continent into a satrapy of Berlin. Just as in 1871, in 1914 and 1939. Every one of the German promises was a lie. It will accept our acquiesence in its Master Plan, but if we resist, it will bludgeon us until we surrender.
Just as it has done with Greece.
Oh, in the end, this had little to do with Greece, other than the public whipping of an errant child who dared disobey its Master. The real message in the destruction and pauperisation of a tiny, weak, poor country, the message in condemning its children to starvation, is not for the Greeks. Germany doesn’t care about Greece. It’s just more beaches for them to clog up, more locals for them to be rude to.
The message is for the Italians and the Spanish and the Portuguese and the French, to show them what will happen to them if they ever dare to stand up against Germany. That is the real reason why the Greek nose had to be rubbed in urine — except, it’s not even Greek urine, but German.
Well, I say enough. Germany would like to be the economically-driven Gestapo of Europe, but we are still free. We can rally to the Greek side. We can shout from the rooftops, march in the streets, besiege the German Embassies and Consulates, telling them, you shall not do this.
Can Germany be a Good European?
We can boycott their services and products. Don’t buy German cars. Don’t patronise German shops. Let us see a Europe full of boarded-up Aldis and Lidls. German flags should be in flames all over Europe, their pyres surmounted by effigies of Merkel, Hitler’s political daughter.
We can flood the internet with our disapproval of their monstrous and unacceptable behaviour and we should challenge every German we meet, not with violence, but with a patient explanation of why their behaviour is not acceptable and that until they mend their ways, they are not welcome among us; that they should go home and tell their Chancellor that she has disgraced them both as Germans and Europeans, or accept that they really are the monsters they appear to be.
The European Project has no future now. It has been eviscerated, by Germany. Many people’s dreams, including mine, have been shattered. But we will live on.
Today is the 14th of July, Bastille Day, here in France. Today they will read off the roll of the sons of this tiny village who gave their lives for France to be free from the German monster. It is a fitting day to be reminded that Europe is once again under threat from it.
I hope no war would ensue.
No, that won’t happen. Germany has no significant military capability and is overwhelmingly out-resourced by several other European nations, including France, the UK, Italy and, paradoxically, even Greece. (Both France and the UK are nuclear powers, in addition.) NATO would not permit a German arms build-up either. Germans are arrogant, they’re not stupid.
True, but Germany can help start civil unrest or a civil war in Europe.
France is experiencing terror and planning to wage war. Imagine if the world bombed France for any retaliating that it did to the terror. But that’s exactly what we did to Bosnia and Kosovo.
Many, many poor Muslims left Albania for Yugoslavia that could not feed or house them.
In the early 70’s, Serbs were 45% and Croats were 45% and the other 10 percent were many other peoples. For 20 years, Serbs begged the world for help, and in the 1990’s, Muslims were a major population in Bosnia, and they began to claim the land by claiming they wanted democracy. They did not want democracy, they wanted land. They took land that did not belong to them, as they were not from the area, but news reporters looked at the majority population and said – yes, they are the majority and yay for democracy. And then 8,000 fanatics came to Yugoslavia and waged terror on Bosnia and Kosovo, and for every retaliation against terror that Serbs waged, the world bombed the Serbs. The terrorists raped, killed, tortured, cut off heads of Serbs, and on top of that, the world was angry with Serbs. At the time, no one understood or believed how horrible terrorism is. The war ended, those 8,000 fanatics went back to the middle east and left Serbia with a final lie – that Serbs had mass murdered 8,000 missing Muslims, calling it ethnic cleansing – except those fanatics were safely back in the middle east. Anyway, why would Christians dig individual graves and put crosses on a secret mass grave they dug for Muslims? They wouldn’t. And you were seething mad at Serbs. Don’t be angry, be sad. The Serbs would have wiped out terrorism from Europe. Read the Serb experience, look at the pictures of boxes of decapitated heads, and be sad at what the world allowed to happen.
And Germany that was beaten in 2 wars by tiny Serbia retaliated in a spineless way by heading a new kind of war – manipulation, Muslims style. Germany is more than arrogant, she is spineless and heartless also.
One of the biggest problem of the EU the ECB and the Euro.
Having a single currency and unique central bank for countries that:
– Do not have a common fiscal policy
– Have their economic sectors different (i.e. Germany has a strong industrial background, but a county like Belgium hare good with trading with their modern ports)
– Are socially different
– Are culturally different, sometimes even within a same country (i.e. Scotland & England)
– Many do not speak the same languages
is a recipe for a disaster. In fact, the ECB and the Euro are destroying Europe.
This was accurately predicted by Milton Friedman in 1997 : https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-euro–monetary-unity-to-political-disunity
In fact, the Euro is not an economical currency but a political currency, used to tie Germany and France to avoid a new war. The Euro was created out of fear of Germany, like the European Union as a matter a fact. How can a political project based on fear can last?
Germany is also being very hypocritical as it was bailed out at last 2 times (3 times maybe with the Euro) with the Marshall Plan and with the London Debt Agreement ( debt relief treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and creditor nations in 1953).
After WW2 the Allied should have split Germany in several smaller nations, with limited armies. They did not and now we pay the price.
Pat, I agree, but: ‘After WW2 the Allied should have split Germany in several smaller nations, with limited armies. They did not and now we pay the price.’
Well, they did; Germany was split into East and West. You might be arguing that it would have been better to divide even further, but the realpolitik of the day would have made that very difficult; the moment Germany surrendered it became an ally of the US against the USSR.
I agree about paying the price; I don’t think it is possible for Europe as presently constituted to survive. It will have to break up to rebalance power between a Germany outside the EU and what remains. The only alternative is for the EU to collapse completely.
Certainly the Euro has been a disaster and needs to be abolished immediately. It sucks money out of southern Europe and gives it to the north.