The New Old German Problem
Reflections on Germany
Munich — I’ve been walking the last two days through Munich. Much of the city core was bombed out by the allies by spring 1945. Yet today there is little evidence of such destruction. The museums are among the best in the world, the streets and parks spotless, the infrastructure superb, and the people as hard at work as ever. To walk an urban street in Germany is a different experience from say in Athens or Istanbul — traffic follows law, pedestrians are respected, horns are used rarely, trash is absent. In other words, things work and work well.
Such observations sound stereotypical these days, but to even the casual observer the difference between life in Germany and much of the eastern and southern Mediterranean seems far greater than the divide between a Minnesota and Mississippi. For someone who has lived in Greece and occasionally visits Germany, it becomes increasingly clearer each year why the European Union won’t work. Germans work and create wealth. Yet under the present system, they do not receive commensurate psychological rewards — and they increasingly receive insufficient material compensation as well.
And history shows us that an unhappy Germany is a very dangerous thing indeed.
Memory Lane
Let me explain by a brief historical detour.
After the unification of Germany in 1871 and its subsequent alliances over the next decades with Austria, Europe was not sure how to handle its powerful German-speaking center. In the twenty-first century it is politically incorrect to suggest that culture matters, though most privately grant that the German work ethic, cohesiveness, and competence all lead to economic and financial clout that eventually ends in superior political — and ultimately military — power.
In the last century and a half, there have been all sorts of ways to check that German dynamism from spilling over its borders. The idea of a two-front British/French/Russian alliance was supposed to dissuade Germany from expanding its sphere of power either westward or eastward. Nonetheless, wars usually followed, and it was no solace to the millions who perished in World Wars I and II that such anti-German containment, largely aided by the entry of the United States into two wars, eventually led to the defeat of Germany — for a time.
Try, try again
After the war, a divided Germany, shared European fear of Soviet communism, and a nuclear France and Britain all in various ways ensured there were supposed to be no more worries about Germany for a half-century.
But with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the implosion of the Soviet Union, a newly ascendant Germany — once the costs of East German unification were absorbed — was supposed to be integrated into the new utopian European Union with it common currency, the euro.
That is, the unstated idea was that natural German economic strength could be harnessed through new tariff-free markets for its export-driven economy, whose goods and services would help bring eastern and southern Europe up to northern European standards of living. Germany would be captain, but still a team member, and all would pay homage to its star for leading the team to victory.
So cash-flush German banks loaned the European poorer nations easy money to buy all things German. The EU would both guarantee the debts, and reap the benefits at large — as Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain would begin to see their infrastructure and lifestyles match those of France, Germany and the Netherlands. Southern siestas, strikes, tax evasion, and low worker productivity would all be nullified by northern European largess.
The Supposed End of History
As a result, instead of the old deadly inter-European rivalry, for a while a continental culture did indeed emerge. Prosperous Europeans from the Mediterranean to the Baltic embraced socialism, utopianism abroad, childlessness, agnosticism, and a fashionable anti-Americanism, ensuring no more 19th-century nationalism or 20th-century wars. At least all that was what we were lectured about for the last twenty years by European chauvinists and dreamy American liberals.
Yet such dreams were always predicated on some dubious propositions.
I’m curious as to why you weren’t saying any of this stuff when George Bush was President. When Texas wanted to execute an illegal alien who raped and murdered two Texan teenagers and Mexico took the case to the UN George BuSh sided with Mexico! Bush said publicly that it was a good thing that parts of the US were being Mexicanized and there is no doubt that he like his brother Jeb opposes what Arizona is doing. Under George Bush the US federal government spent like socialists. Yet VDH acts as if things suddenly changed under Obama. Wrong. Obama is a continuation of Bush-Cheney, at least when it comes to immigration and spending.
You can’t be serious.
What was the deficit left by the Bush administration, after 8 years, an attack on our soil, and the cost of the war? Now compare that total to the deficit run up by the Obama administration in… 18 months? Please, to say that the Obama administration is an continuation of the Bush administration in the area of finances is laughable.
Further, the current administration’s grasp of history or international politics is juvenile at best; that cannot be said for the Bush administration, whether you agreed with the Iraw war or not. Obama is a fool, and a contemptuous one at that.
History will be harsh on george Bush for a lot of reasons. If GWB hadn’t spent like mad and had bothered to check in on the domestic spending side once and a while we wouldn’t have had the bubble economy we had: interest rates at ludicrous lows; deficit financiing for every pork project; no spending vetos–none–in is term–even Clinton vetoed more. Bush should have raised atxes to finance the war in Iraq and Afghanistan but like LBJ, he thought he’d just kick the can down the road. Inexcusable!
If Dennis Hastert, the overweight, incomeptent buffoon that was Speaker of the House for the GOP majority, hasn’t made spending and corruption his goal in life for 8 years, perhaps the election would have gone to the GOP in 2008 as a reward for a job well done.
That didn’t happen because the economy was falling apart. Because the GOP helped ruin it. Spare me the droning about prior democratic administrations–its true they were horrible too but the GOP begain to act like democrats.
The GOP pissed away its brand loyalty and millions of voters desperate for what had been the assurance that the GOP at least acted like adults, went elsewhere.
The GOP handed Obama the election on a platter. Bush did the right thing by taking out Hussein and acting afer 9-11. But he did so much domestic damage by undermining the economy and assuring 4 years of total democratic rule, its an open question if ti was worth it.
Oh nonsense, history will have a lot of respect for GWB. Rather, it is the ankle-biters like you that have been taken in by this Lefts propaganda machine that history will have contempt for.
Just rabid ranting from an ill-informed useful idiot of the Marxist in the Democrat party.
BUSH DESTORIED THE TOWERS ,CONTROLLED DEMOLITION
Have bothered looking at the sidebar that prominently features VDH’s “Mexifornia?”
Bush is a decent man and did a decent job promoting democracy and trying to eliminate some very bad people from power. In the end he might have gotten a little punch drunk from so many people making the most vile off-the-wall criticism of him personally. But still, Obama has spent 4 times the amount Bush (with a democratic congress which is where spending originates) did in 8 years.
Kudos to you Ron. History will be considerably kinder to Bush than to Obama.
Unfortunately, for a long while the majority of historians will be left wing hacks who will excoriate Bush and compose either encomiums or apologies for Obama.
Actually Coisty I was there when G.W. was trying to push through his amnesty program and so were millions of other conservatives. Don’t you remember? We screamed bloody murder and, eventually, the idea was scuttled. Also, we screamed bloody murder about G.W.’s “compassionate” spending habits. We begged him to veto pork barrell spending bills and not to pass Medicare drug reform. We shouted him down when he nominated the unqualified and unknown Harriet Maiers. We screamed to please stop spending so much money. We were disgusted with how he fought in Iraq until he finally got smart and ordered the Surge. We hated his alliance with Ted Kennedy and “No Child Left Behind.” We castigated him for signing the unconstitutional “McCain/Feingold.” We harangued him for removing N. Korea from the terrorist list. And we eventually lost faith in him. We were there Coisty. Don’t you remember?
George Bush was not perfect, and his presidency was marked by the flaws that other commentators here have listed, but he possessed three sterling qualities: he loved America, he was not Al Gore, and he was not John F(in’) Kerry.
As someone who lives next door to Germany, I believe your usually sound analysis is way off. Germany is ill equiped physically (demographics) and psycologically.They have accepted virtual pacifism for two generations. You can’t develope a fearsome wehrmact with girly men.
If an alliance of some of the former Warsaw pact nations ,ie. Poland, Czec, Hungary and Slowakia came into being you might have a strong pro American force. This would be all post Obama of course.
My daughter lives in Germany, and I visited the Dortmund area last September. I did not get the impression that young German males were girly-men, especially after seeing a violent protest at the Dortmund train station that required dozens of police to control. The police were mostly young adults, and they were in excellent physical condition (especially the women who looked like they could perform as well as a typical US Army soldier). The protesters were tough and were willing to fight bare-handed against the police (who were mostly using truncheons and were willing to crack heads when it seemed necessary).
There is a large cohort of restless young adults (mostly men) in Germany, and they can readily become frontline troops if Germany becomes militaristic again (which fortunately isn’t likely).
What impressed me most about Germany was that the nation survived unification and finally has become as strong as the West Germany of twenty-one years ago. I think Germany is too socialist and nanny statist, but the Germans themselves mostly are pleased with the government and the economy. They are going to be extremely displeased if they have to bail-out other European nations after spending the last twenty years bailing out East Germany (with essentially no financial assistance from any other nations).
There’s a central component to infantry that is missing in Germany. Infants. If you’re not having babies, you can’t march young men around in uniform.
THat problem was solved in Das Jazz Age too.
Medals for Motherhood.
I truly hate it when people argue by making unsupported and incorrect claims.
Germany has 82 million people. It has almost ten million males between the ages of 15 and 34. Enlistment of 10% of them would give Germany a million man military force. That’s more than enough to overcome all neighboring nations.
Okay, you propose a 10% enlistment which would eventually lead to a million man army for ze-Germans. However, depending on their enlistment standards (incontinence while in formation, for example, was not a excluding factor during the American Civil War), the actual numbers will be much lower. All branches of service, the local police, and federal law enforcement(FBI, Secret Service, ATF) all compete for the same ~25-28% of young adults that are eligible for service (either due to drug, arrest record, or congenital health conditions are deemed unfit). So you can see how quickly that number dwindles in a country of Germany’s size. Anyhow, I like VDH’s writing, however in this case I don’t see Germany regaining any of its desire to influence the world.
what the German yet still don’t know, is that their banks cheated them(as so Merkel, knowing that, delayed crucial decisions on the Greece case, and now the whole eurozone is on the verge to collapse), they are bankrupted, not because they fueled little Greece (it’s only 2% of Germany GDP), but they bought a huge amont af debt bonds from around the world, especially from the US banks. That’s why the aware German massively exported what was left of their savings to Switzerland last week. The poor average German will have the surprise when the markets will awake after Germany in the coming weeks
Sometimes it’s not just a matter of desire. Sometimes it ends up on necessity. Some of the components (like hanson exposed) are there.The balance of power around the world is short on Western strong players. Why not Germany? Remember that they’re are directly threatened by muslim aggressiveness. And remember that germans aren’t (historically) keen on bending to outsiders threats.
When you see bands of restless and/or violent young men in Germany (of the non-Muslim, non-Middle Eastern/Turkish/North African variety), there’s a solid likelihood that they’re Russian. That’s not to say that they couldn’t possibly be German, but still, it’s probably more likely that they’re Russian.
As for the young Germans, they — much like their Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Belgian, Swedish, British & Greek, etc Euro-brethren — are too busy pursuing hedonistic ends to pose a threat to the world. If they’re “restless,” it’s because they’ve been partying too hard. Europe may be on its death bed, and we all know that a cornered animal is often the most dangerous of all, but what German gives a damn about his/her fatherland’s pending societal collapse when he’s/she’s rolling on ecstasy in a packed 24 hour techno club at 10 in the morning? Got to give credit where it’s due though, for the last 30 years, the Germans have done a fantastic job of proving that they’re not the militaristic, war-oriented, racist Nazis that their grandfathers were. Where their forebears crowded the streets of Berlin to bear witness to the Fuhrer and the Nazi war machine on parade, today’s Germans crowd the streets of Berlin for Love Parade (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVDFQYSSH90&feature=related), (berlin-life.com/berlin/berlin-love-parade).
But at least everybody (minus Victor Davis Hanson, apparently) now knows that Germans are tolerant and pacifist. Warmongers you say? That’s yesterday’s news. Today’s Germans are happily candy flipping and rollin’ balls as they commit demographic suicide. Yay! Imperialistic invaders? No more. Although, it is just about time for Germans (along with Dutch, Swedes, Italians and Britons) to invade the nightclubs and beaches of Ibiza (http://youtube.com/watch?v=KmwEUHIRgh0) for the summer.
And regarding those fit and restless young German men, today they’re fueled by disco biscuits, Ketamine and blow, not nationalism. But they can be pretty entertaining, as evidenced by Techno Viking (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIwLWNEZtbc).
When you see bands of restless and/or violent young men in Germany (of the non-Muslim, non-Middle Eastern/Turkish/North African variety), there’s a solid likelihood that they’re Russian. That’s not to say that they couldn’t possibly be German, but still, it’s probably more likely that they’re Russian.
As for the young Germans, they — much like their Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Belgian, Swedish, British & Greek, etc Euro-brethren — are too busy pursuing hedonistic ends to pose a threat to the world. If they’re “restless,” it’s because they’ve been partying too hard. Europe may be on its death bed, and we all know that a cornered animal is often the most dangerous of all, but what German gives a damn about his/her fatherland’s pending societal collapse when he’s/she’s rolling on ecstasy in a packed 24 hour techno club at 10 in the morning? Got to give credit where it’s due though, for the last 30 years, the Germans have done a fantastic job of proving that they’re not the militaristic, war-oriented, racist Nazis that their grandfathers were. Where their forebears crowded the streets of Berlin to bear witness to the Fuhrer and the Nazi war machine on parade, today’s Germans crowd the streets of Berlin for Love Parade (www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVDFQYSSH90&feature=related), (berlin-life.com/berlin/berlin-love-parade).
But at least everybody (minus Victor Davis Hanson, apparently) now knows that Germans are tolerant and pacifist. Warmongers you say? That’s yesterday’s news. Today’s Germans are happily candy flipping and rollin’ balls as they commit demographic suicide. Yay! Imperialistic invaders? No more. Although, it is just about time for Germans (along with Dutch, Swedes, Italians and Britons) to invade the nightclubs and beaches of Ibiza (http://youtube.com/watch?v=KmwEUHIRgh0) for the summer.
And regarding those fit and restless young German men, today they’re fueled by disco biscuits, Ketamine and blow, not nationalism. But they can be pretty entertaining, as evidenced by Techno Viking (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIwLWNEZtbc).
The Germany of the Weimar Republic was a pretty decadent sort of place and yet many of those Berliners hanging out at cabarets and watching Marlene Dietrich in “The Blue Angel” in 1930 were pinning the swastika on their lapels a few years later. In his book “The Europeans,” Italian Luigi Barzini noted that the Germans have a way of making sudden, and sometimes terrifying shifts en masse.
I think KT Cat pinpoints the problem – the birthrate. Sure, you can start giving medals for motherhood, but it’s still gonna be 18 years before those babies can fight. What do you do in the meantime?
Technology. Here’s your answer.
Well the concept of yesterday/today related to history is a little overestimated by you. Who in 08/11 2001 would ever thought that 2 boeings would crash on WTC? All of a sudden, the multicultural new world order faced the reality of the world … Those good for nothing pseudo-leftists who preached peace and love and caring and financing humanitarian help around the globe saw the crude reality behind that putrid facade. “What use do we have for US Marine Corps? – Why do we need to spend so much on military?”
well thats why.
And so it is with the Germans. Do you really believe that suddenly the german people has thrown away centuries of forged characteristics, just because after WWII Europe has been largely at peace? Those who study history knows that it has ups and downs … And that its “line” is not straight…
Sorry for the phony analogy … But “theres always a calm before the storm”. And unfortunaltely “our” calm has perdured for far too long …
As my first post was censored here, I’ll try a 2nd time as a “reply” to a post with which I agree.
This author may be a wizard at HISTORY, but seems to know diddly as to the current state of affairs as far a Germany goes, as far as I am concerned.
I lived there for 6 years recently, and can say without doubt that a 1914 or 1933 repeat is out of the question.
I’ll skip the “girly men” remark, and just say that, while those who ignore history are bound to repeat it, it is equally true that those who excessively focus (…tempted here to say “obsess”) on history are bound to treat/perceive every current situation as Abraham Maslow suggested: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”
apparently you have read little about the Weimar years. We only think of the inflation perhaps. But there was a society very much our roaring 20′s, filled with debauchery and hedonism, that one would never contemplate when thinking of the stereotypical German. Yet it was there. Berlin became a cultural center, art, plays, bauhaus, etc. Almost a haven for the creative types. And Hitler roused the conservative (19th century conservative) members of society with its mention.
In 1929, Germany was wealthy, peaceful, happy and growing. Yes, there was article 231, but for most Germans it was long gone. Only the depression would shake this. Hitler and the Nazis got 2% of the vote in 1930 don’t forget. Yet, it didn’t take long did it?
They can do it again. Don’t believe Fichte’s Addresses to a German Nation nor Wagners Niebelungen are as distant to Germans as Madison and Jefferson are to Americans.
In fact, Clemenceau’s greatest fear were his words to DLG at Versailles, “There’ll always be more Germans than Frenchmen.” There still are.
Indigo’s analysis is correct. As an enemy, the Germans had the most powerful and best trained national army on earth, which was only defeated by a huge allied coalition. As an ally, today, they are useless. The current Bundeswehr consists of comic opera soldiers dressed up in the uniforms of the mighty Wehrmacht, minus the swastika. This is not only pathetic, but shameful.
Think of it! By May, 1945, the German infrastructure had been totally destroyed! There were no operating water or sewage systems, no electricity, 90% of the buildings in the major cities were destroyed, with some 50,000 dead buried in the rubble. There were some 450,000 people without any shelter, there was no food, no fuel, and the entire transportation system was destroyed, including all main roads, bridges, railroads, and canals, and pipelines. There were virtually no crops planted that spring, and much of the livestock had perished.
The American Army, on the direct instructions of the great General Eisenhower, feed, clothed, and provided shelter for what was left of the German population in what became known as West Germany. The Americans then restored, at massive expense, the overall infrastructure, including the fuel necessary to run it. Later, the American Marshall Plan restored German industry at staggering expense. Throughout this post-war period, the German population was little more than a nuisance.
Today, Germany has a newer infrastructure than many great American cities, not to even speak of their comparably modern industrial plant! Americans, an impossibly generous people, not only tolerated all of this but strongly supported it! Today, the Germans begrudge a few Euros to Greece, a country they invaded and held captive during WW II? Frankly, the mind simply boggles at the totally vacuous European culture! In any case, few Americans have any illusions about the viability of Europe, which is non existent!
Well, you have to consider the fact that they would only be competing with the rest of Europe. So, militarily speaking, in the land of lepers they would have the most fingers.
girly men?you cannot breed out thousands of years of ass kicking in a few generations.
Thousands of years?
Europe isn’t thousands of years old.
Ever since becoming a nation Germany has indeed started many wars, but they don’t do such a great job of finishing them. In WW2, western Europe surrendered to them quite readily, but in the East, despite a policy of ruthless mass murder of civilians, they didn’t do so well, and the moment the great Aryan war machine was stalled, the Germans began to panic. They’re only tough when they put on Nazi uniforms and round up women and children. In real battle, they haven’t done so well, and should consider themselves lucky that America gave them (yet another) chance despite the unthinkable crimes they unleashed against civilization.
The German Problem will be Greater Switzerland.
First, Germany is OLD. The birth dearth is quite strong in Germany. Its TFR is 1.42, and that is with Turks and other Muslim immigrants and their descendants.
Germany does not have enough young men to stage a really good soccer team. Much less roll into the Low Countries.
Second, is the nature of Germans. Yes they are very, very angry. They are angry that the European Project, which was to have given them the ironic Sex Pistols “Safe European Home” has turned out to be a Madoff ponzi scheme. So Bild, Frankfurter Zeitung, etc. are all in favor of “Greater Switzerland.”
That is, a return to the Deutschmark, a lip service EU, and probably some form of deterrent.
German nukes are not anything to worry about. Any more than Polish, Danish, Czech, or Swiss nukes. All those nations face near-catastrophic demographic decline. Nukes being merely a way to prevent them from being conquered by hungry neighbors (Russia in the case of Poland, and perhaps the Czech Republic) or threatened by Iran (Germany, Switzerland, Denmark) as nations seek to check independence minded or take-over minded Muslim sectors in their nations.
The real nightmare is not another round of Germans marching around Europe. It is Iran acting as “protector of Europe’s muslims” insisting on Sharia and/or independence for Europe’s Muslims. This threat is what Jacques Chirac of all people responded to with his bizarre statement about Frances nuclear forces being “reconfigured” to deal with non-strategic terrorist threats, communicated to the Iranians.
The threat of decline of American security guarantees falls mostly on the US. WE not Europe remain the biggest targets. Germans with say, 1,000 nukes, are not a threat. Iran with 10 is. Because of the nature of both regimes. Not just the people in charge, BUT the people.
Germans are angry, but solid middle class people who are older. Most older than fifty. That sort of people does not go marching into conquest or war. They make arrangements for security to live a comfortable retirement.
The biggest impact of Greater Switzerland is economic. The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and some nordic nations are far richer, more disciplined, and lower-labor cost in a deeply competitive, rival with China world, than others in Europe. Basically the EU is cracking up into nationalism. Not the 1930′s kind, but a small, isolationist, old folks nationalism, seeking the best security for themselves.
Inference: the US is alone in seeking partners for security. There are none, save perhaps India, with common interests and youthful demographics.
This is a great analysis. I too have doubts that Germany’s nation of security obsessed geriatric teenagers will be willing to start any war within Europe in the near future. The modern German nationalism is more likely to resemble an elderly couple that closes their curtains and turns up the tv in response to chaos outside.
I think the transformation of Germany into a Greater Switzerland would be a great idea on many levels. I just don’t know how feasible it would be given the one-trick pony “manufacturing for export economy” that Germany now has. Switzerland relies heavily on services to feed its citizens; Germans have historically mistrusted the service economy and focus on the “real work” of heavy industry. In all truth, Germany’s workforce isn’t prepared for a transition to a more service based economy like those of Denmark or the Netherlands. As we speak, the educational system here is still churning out people with a apprenticeship type degrees that have absolutely no value in the global market. Until Germany takes some desperately needed labour market reforms by adapting to global conditions, they will continue to export their workers to Switzerland where they can work and keep some of their money. (The Swiss have been siphoning off trained workers that Germany’s labour markets have no room for for a while now, though they’ve recently cracked down on this.)
If Germany wanted to become Greater Switzerland, I say bring it on. We desperately need some tax relief up here.
“Germans have historically mistrusted the service economy and focus on the “real work” of heavy industry.”
What is “service economy”? You serve me a Big Mac, I serve you a Whopper, buy everything else from China?
That is exactly the German philosophy. Actually, they phrase it a bit differently; I read in a paper here once that a service economy is everyone cutting everyone else’s hair.
Unfortunately for the Germans, they have not developed a strong service industry. If you want to build cars, Germany is the country for you. If you need software solutions or IT expertise, you should go somewhere else. Ditto for financial services or marketing or communications. Little Israel with a population far smaller than Germany’s has managed to carve out a niche for itself in the IT field as well as other knowledge based services. Germany is unfortunately stuck in a strange version of groundhog day where they wake up in the Wirtschaftswunder every morning. Until they cast off yesterday’s “Made in Germany” label for the new “Designed in Germany”, the downward slide is bound to continue.
No software expertse. Ever hear of SAP? Itruns the world.
SAP? It’s the exception that proves the rule. Where is the European answer to Apple or Google? (It’s not for want of trying. EU taxpayers have shelled out billions for dud programs that were supposed to compete internationally. Quaero ring any bells?) There is not really any great wealth of software expertise in the country. Roughly 50% of all IT positions in Germany are currently unfilled for lack of qualified workers. What about Financial services? One of the reasons why German banks were on the hook for so much sub-prime debt is that there just aren’t many investment options here. Germany’s economy still runs on production of goods such as cars and metal. Their Marketing and Communication services cannot compete with those of next door neighbours, let alone globally. Germany’s economy just isn’t prepared for a transition out of production which will surely happen as a result of growth in China and India.
Though this only quasi related; the last time I walked by SAP’s Berlin offices near Hackescher Markt, leftist rioters had destroyed the entire front of the building.
That Google guy is a Russian. iPod, iPhone, iPad…designed by a group of Europeans, headed by an Italian. Other parts were designed and made in various “foreign” countries and assembled in China. Apple is an international company headquartered in the US, because Steve Jobs wants to stay home. Boeing Dreamliner is designed by engineers from all over the world, the parts are made in Spain, Japan, Italy, France, … and assembled in the US. Germany is still producing talented Germans who find their homes in America. The genius of America is not in its lousy educational system, but in its freedom. The danger of Obamarism is over regulating American society, regulates its creativity to death… a la Europe. I read somewhere a Brit has to go to court to retain his rights to sell his produce in pounds. Euro bureaucrats decred it’s illegal to use non-metric measurements. I couldn’t help but smiled when I read a label here in which the bottle holds a litre of liquid, the patient is to drink 8 oz every 15 minutes.
Obama wants to soak the rich. Unfortunately, the rich don’t want to be soaked. The rich are moving east, Singapore is setting up high tech labs, medical labs for American and European scientists.
Pretty soon, America will be as devoid of creativity as Europe.
Yup, that about sums it up.
America has benefited greatly from the opportunities we offer foreigners to do business in the US. The starkest examples are in scientific research; Europeans know that they will probably have to move to America to get the funds. I think we should try to use Europe’s high unemployment and increase our highly skilled worker Visas so that we can catch as much of this talent as possible. Switzerland has taken in Germans for years, as has America. If you move into a country and take their oil fields or factories from them, it is an act of war. If you siphon off their human capital which is in many cases more valuable than “stuff”, then, well, tough loss.
One of the main problems that exists in Europe, especially in Germany, is the one that you mentioned of death by regulation. Germany does not have a free-market capitalist system; it is a corporatist mercantile economy. Certain favoured industries receive government backing and the government stacks the legislative playing field on their side. When Germans rail against free-markets, they don’t realize that most of the target of their ire exists because the markets are anything but free. Trust me on this one; I opened a small business in Germany. The bureaucracy is stifling, and the barriers to market entry are gargantuan. For example, if you want to serve hot coffee at your business, you have to attend nearly 40 government run classes to get the necessary certificates; one class is specifically on the handle and care of ground beef which is more sensitive to contamination than meat in chunks. You have to have this degree before you can serve a hot beverage. It is no wonder that the shadow economy in Germany is twice what it is in America. It is effectively illegal to do business in many respects. This is maybe the one area that could support VDH here; nationalism has lost its appeal in Germany, but they (as are other Europeans) are extremely protective of “their” prized companies.
BMW has manufacturing plants in Alabama: http://www.bmwusfactory.com
If I have to live in a socialist workers paradise it may as well be one like Germany with a culture that values productive people. The US is getting more nauseating by the year with all the worship of the political and parasite classes.
Obviously I meant the BMW factory is located in South Carolina.
In a nutshell, the service economy covers everything that doesn’t fit into the manufacturing category.
Burger flipping qualifies. So does computer programming.
Wal-mart greeters qualify. So do consultants.
I have to agree with Whiskey. My family and I spent three years in Munich (back when it was still in West Germany… i.e., the 70s) and even then they were an aging, mostly childless population more concerned with scrubbing their underpasses clean and selling Hummels to American G.I. families, than dominating Europe. If they go nuclear, I’d see it as self-protection against Iran and Russia than anything else. In fact, if German nationalism ever does grow and get violent, it will most likely be against their rising and troublesome Muslim population, as Aryanism is not yet as dead as Nazism.
“…if German nationalism ever does grow and get violent, it will most likely be against their rising and troublesome Muslim population, as Aryanism is not yet as dead as Nazism.”
If the Germans ever get violent against their Muslim population, it would be an act of self-preservation against the “troublesome”, aggressive minority who refused to integrate into the native culture, has nothing to do with Aryanism. Your statement is misguided and racist. Racist that violence is the fault of the white people.
“Aryanism is not as dead as Nazism”. Aryanism is white racist neo-Nazism.
Nazis aimed to exterminate a group of peaceful people out of jealousy of the minority’s achievements. The Jews in the 1930′s were peaceful, never advocated violence against the German people. They were scapegoats of Germany’s woes. The 21st century jihadist Muslims believe in their own “superiority”, and advocate violence against and domination over the German people.
While you are correct regarding the disparity between the Jews and the rabid Turkish jihad that lives in the German South, you forget that many enlisted in the Nazis to fight the Communists and Socialists, a not unworthy goal due to the very active threat those two were.
Just because the enemy is real doesn’t mean we can safely write off a possible chain reaction and the birth of a new group of radicals.
War has always been about chosing between the bad and the worst. Chose: Radical german government (ruled by germans and radical towards muslins) or radical muslim government (ruled by muslins and radically ruling over germans on the very same soil your great-great grandfathers fought to creat?)
Its just me or is it not a simple choice?
Cheers
This is one of those rare times when I must adamantly disagree with Victor Davis Hanson. He is overlooking the fact that the Germans are not having enough babies. They simply lack sufficient numbers of young adults to turn into soldiers. Kaiser Bill and Adolph Hitler most certainly did not have this problem. Germans had larger families during the earlier part of the 20th Century.
Is the only war we can imagine in the 20th century one where 100,march across a border? Certainly not, and VDH references this by writing, “Germany can go nuclear in 6 months”. It’s not just “nuclear”, it’s all things tech-based: battlefield robots, unmanned drones, aircraft… a retooling of its economy in a couple of years could produce a German quasi-superpower (which, given that we are looking at a Chinese superpower doesn’t sound so bad). Reliance on sheer numbers of troops is a pre-Cold War notion.
You still need boots on the ground to do the dirty fighting. Robots are still of limited value. You also need troops to occupy lands of conquest. Germany can be troublesome in a few years, but not dominant.
You only need boots on the ground if you want to control another country, not if you simply want them to go away and stop bothering you.
For example, Iran’s main defense is the difficulty of running the place after the relatively easy task of defeating it militarily. If you don’t care what happens there, as long as they are not bothering you, that can be taken care of in an afternoon by nuclear missiles. Without population centers or infrastructure, Iran would be unlikely to pose much threat to Germany for a few decades.
I’m not so sure that the quantity of fighters would determine a winner or loser. Will there even be a battlefield or salient? What if the next conflict will be where somebody pushes buttons far away from the intended victims?
In 1913 nobody anticipated trenches. What about Poland’s calvary against Hitler?
If a war is to come, it may be different than we imagine. If the quantity of soldiers were the issue, Israel would have been history…again.
A Germany that lacks enough younger people will have to be suicidal if it wishes to win a major military conflict. It takes a large number of people to win—and thrive. A nihilistic nation might be able to severely harm its opponents. But only a well populated one can defeats foes and take advantage of its victory. A large population is mandatory if you are going to be truly victorious.
It depends on what you mean by “win”. To invade another country and control it you need lots of young men. To smash it flat so that they no longer make trouble, not so much.
Germany can say bye bye to her dream of Switerland bis, no more money in the banks, all gone to true Switzerland
Germany can no longer be a super power. It can either be a modestly successful military power—or a nihilistic entity. Nothing more:
“According to a preliminary analysis by the Federal Statistics Office, 651,000 children were born in Germany in 2009 — 30,000 fewer than in 2008, a dip of 3.6%. In 1990, German mothers were having on average 1.5 children each; today that average is down to 1.38 children per mother. With a shortfall of 190,000 between the number of people who died and the number of children who were born, Germany’s birth rate is well below the level required to keep the population stable. “
http://tinyurl.com/2ejoy39
Sounds to me that Gernmany is becoming as angry as Americans who have worked and who had parents and grandparents that worked and sacrificed for decades.
They don’t like redistribution, and neither do we.
But hey, maybe like us, they will peacefully accept their descent into subservience to con men who subvert their government and their generous natures to steal from the beavers to give to the sloths.
Perhaps, unless we have here in America those who see these realities and desire to tell all Americans of them in such ways that a general awareness comes to pass with our voting citizens electing those who have such visions.
If not, I should have bought that missile silo complex in North Dakota last year!
Robert Mundell on exchange rates, fixed and not, role of the Fed, the effect of a common dollar between the (U.S.) states, and a common euro between EC states. His talk starts at 1:13:30.
http://www.heritage.org/Events/2010/04/The-Dollar-The-Euro-and-the-International-Monetary-Order
Well worth watching. He observes that the U.S. states share a common currency and only recently have had a common monetary policy (given state regulation of most financial institutions). Unsaid is that our current troubles are largely due to centralization – only a government that spends $10B per day (and obligates as much again in regulatory dictates and future spending) could conceive of propping up failing industries, no state could. So past market bubbles tended to be short and painful – quickly reallocating resources against the next opportunity.
So, yes, Canada and Mexico could share a common currency as long as markets were permitted to do their magic unhindered (and business was more powerful than any central government). Aka a return to the era before progressivism. In the same way we would not need worry about immigration if the welfare state did not exist. Curiously, in not trusting in the market the Left documents that it does not believe in Darwin (or free will).
Succintly said. Thanks.
But is there no fear of a Russian Empire? Does it not seem as if Putin is trying to create that very thing, and with a certain success? And might not German sullenness and German sanctimoniousness again combination in a determination (for public consumption) to save Europe from the imperfectly-Westernized Tatars of the East?
That might be a scarier scenario if the native Russian population weren’t disappearing at a fast clip.
And not only is Russia’s reproduction rate (birth rate) as low as or lower than the Europeans, but the average lifespan — especially of the males — is abysmally low!
There, the supposed quote by Kipling that Russia should be viewed as the Westernmost Asian country, not the Easternmost European country may have implications for this discussion. Because as in Russia, like the rest of Europe, it’s the Muslim population that is reproducing at a fast rate (irrespective of whether they’re Turks [Germany], North Africans [France], Pakistanis [UK], or “indigenous” Asiatic Muslims [transplanted from former Southern USSR], but now living in Russia proper).
The juxtaposition of a “death spiral rate” of European non-Muslims vs. an accelerated birth rate of European Muslims may spell civil war or other forms of unrest in Europe. However in Russia, a wholly different outcome could come from the same two birthrate curves.
Due to Putin’s reinstatement of the Czarist system (more or less), Muslims in Russia I think will effectively be forced to “integrate” — at the very least they’ll serve as man-power for a (potentially reinvigorated) Russian army on the ground.
So, if you buy that, then it’s Russia, not Europe who may be the future (main) threat across the Atlantic.
Of course, that’s not counting the Persians and the Arabs. ;-)
yeah, some others invented their shemes on global warming with a computer program too
The Obama solution is to allow ourselves to be absorbed by bureaucratic multilateral organizations despite the examples set by the League of Nations, the United Nations and now NATO and the European Community. Deaf to the lessons of history, leftist theorists are addicted to talking shops.
It’s not Obama’s solution, IT IS HIS AND THE “totalitarian Liberals ” PLAN. And has been since the beginning of their political clout most recently since the 1960s, as the scions of Woodrow Wilson and F.D. Roosevelt. The ONLY PROBLEM it solves is that of bringing the WEST, with America the standard bearer, to her knees with their economic crimes against the people. with the active cooperation / collusion of the Congresses and Courts. DO NOT believe those commentators who sniff – poo at judgments THEY CALL conspiracy theory to discount the clear intentions of their political actions. Oddly consistent world-wide in the West for the past half century with the same result in all Western nations, “for their own good”. And the citizens of all those countries, “educated” to the litany of these “liberals” marched to their drums and their own destruction.
I want to see Germany thrive and become a major power. I’m thinking about omoving there. It’s cleaner, safer and the streets aren’t infested with gangstas and other assorted riff raff that think the US owes them a free meal ticket. Unfortunately, Germans for all intents and purposes are going extinct. I hear that you can even celebrate Christmas there without all the legal wrangling seen in the US.
I have actually toyed with the idea of starting a website aimed at people who think of moving here. I was going to call it “Donotgodeutsch.de” or something similar. Germany has a highly regulated society that largely has no place for foreigners except as taxi drivers and toilet cleaners. In fact, Germany has one horrible distinction; the children of immigrants here have the lowest social mobility of any country in the West.
As for gangstas, Germany has them too. While Munich may be quite safe, as is Boston, for example, Germany has a huge problem with unemployment meaning there are armies of angry alcoholics infesting many portions of Hamburg where I currently live. We have regular left-wing riots that turn certain sections of town into a scene from downtown Waziristan.
Check out this video on my blog of left-wing anarchists destroying a branch of the Deutsche Bank on the 1st of May this year. This carnage happened a mere 15 minute walk from my house.
http://wearegovernment.blogspot.com/2010/05/hamburg-1-mai-2010-demonstranten.html
If you want to see anymore, I have another video up, or you can just google “Krawalle” “1. Mai” or variously “Kreuzberg” or “Sternschanze”.
All of this talk about Germans being hard workers is only relative to the rest of Europe, particularly the profligate entitlementoholics of southern Europe. That does not mean that they compare favorably to the US. There is also a huge section of the German society that is professionally unemployed and has every intention of remaining that way, using force if necessary.
I usually really enjoy VDH’s columns, but this one doesn’t fit the reality of Germany that I know. German nationalism in its old form is no longer possible. Leftist violence, however, is an ever increasing scourge that has links in other countries. The biggest problem here is that political will to reform anything is largely lacking as the hard left continues to make gains in regional elections.
Jacob: are you German? Or just living in germany?
(Just curious)
I think jacob is right about almost all of his observations about germany.
I spent a mere year in Germany recently. “The German Work Ethic”, as jacob says, is best, ONLY when compared to other european countries.
From the viewpoint of an american living in germany, i thought i was in a third-world country (that’s where i am orginially from, so i should know).
There is a Murphy’s law which says, “If anything can go wrong, it will.” I had my own rule about Houston, “EVERYTHING will go wrong, regardless of whether it can or not.” Well, i found that Germany is worse than Houston. And i believe only GERMANS can achieve that despite being the most disciplined people in the world.
In germany, everything goes wrong. Absolutely nothing works as it is supposed to. (Except maybe the Strassebahn—which has no AC). What usually takes five minutes to accomplish in america takes roughly two weeks in Germany—if you are lucky.
My apartment building had four floors and eight apartments, each with a balcony the size of a small pizza pan (3feet x 6feet), which they once decided to resurface—i.e. pave it with tiles. The contractors came and looked at the building from the back yard for about an entire day, briefly retiring to the shade to smoke, and coming back to their job again. Then they vanished for a week or so. Then one day they came and built scaffoldings on the balcoly-side of the building. The scafoolding could have passed for another building.
It took them good three days to build the scaffolding. Then they vanished again for a couple of weeks. Then they came and ploughed the balcony floors with sledge-hammers. That’s three more days puncutated by 3-4 days intermissions of vanishing. Then they came back and surveyed the scaffolding from the backyard for another full day.
Vanish again. Came back and started putting concrete … after two months of mind-numbing noise and little accomplished, i changed my residence.
And this is TYPICAL of all kind of work in germany.
Anyone who wants to move to germany because it is “clean” and “no crimes” and is tired of paying for those who don’t work (here in u.s.), is mainly deluded. Germany is the mecca for deadbeat nonworkers—my estimate is that roughly 20 percent of population is govt handhouts. My roommate, a gardner, paid 48% income-tax. Rounding it off to 50 and combinging it with 20 %VAT on everything he buys (more tax for “entertainment and such), he, a mere gardner, paid 60% of his hard-earned income to the govt. Clerks and middle income people pay roughly 67% and higher income people must be paying at least 80% in taxes and levies and all kinds of things.
And all this nonsense SHOWS on the faces of germans on the street. I was in college town, where altstadt (‘old town’–downtown) was flooding with thousands of people on the street (where cars were not allowed). If you stand half an hour at a busstop, roughly 5 thousand people would pass you. You have to wait for at least an hour before you see a german SMILING. In germany, smiling is defined to be a state of not frowning and scowling—actual smiles with lip movements and teeth showing, are to be seen only on pubescent to pre-pubescent girls. (the american equivalent would be the teenage miley cirrus giggly types) …
The rest of the population is in a perpetual angst (english angst–in german that word means something else.) over something. That something is, to a substantial degree, due to the stress of staying alive in a socialist madhouse. But there is a huge component of that angst is primal. I think it was born way before Holy Roman Empire brought these thousand german kingdoms together. THAT deeply culturally rooted angst running through at least a millenium of german history, is what caused two Word Wars and the Holocaust. That the latter was performed by germans is no accident. There is something deeply unsettling (and unsettled) in german psyche–specially male german psyche. The state is a nanny-state (for now), but germans, and male germans, are anything BUT nannies or “girly” as someone commented above. While other factors may and would affect the question of whether germans can spring into a nationalistic-militaristic nationa-state, this deep unsettled-ness has before, and will again, play a major role. And it is merely a question of time—germans are not french, the latter inherently being sissies. The upshot is that VDH’s concern can turn from ‘mere paranoia’ into real threat almost overnight, and most historians will not be surprised by that—most REAL historians, not the post-modern acultural, politically correct excuses of a scholar. History is witness that germans can, by sheer power of will, can transform themselves into anything they choose to. And they will, again, depending on the currents of time.
I am an American living in Germany. I have seen a lot of Anglos come and go since I came here in 2006. Many of them sounded exactly like Opened Eyes who has heard about traditional German values like hard work and saving money and wants to come here in search of a better life. Most of them last around 6 to 9 months. Usually you can start to see the bureaucratic strain at about 3 months. I have actually met a few people fresh off the boat who lectured me about my general pessimism regarding life in Germany before they went off the deep end and vowed never to return again a few months later. The demeanor of the people can be quite a downer, especially if you come from a really polite culture where saying “please”, “thank you”, and “I’m sorry” are considered normal. My biggest gripe with Europe, which you can check out on my blog if you click my name, is mostly economic. Germany has one of the largest economies in the world, but they their economy has been diverging from the US’ for a good two decades or so. They have a downright confiscatory tax policy that views anything you make or do as state property first and what’s left is yours when they’ve drunk their fill. My main gripe has to do with labour market regulations that make legal, profitable entrepreneurship as scarce as a wet t-shirt contest in downtown Medina. (As a small business owner, I have to pay my taxes IN ADVANCE. That is, I give the government their share a year before I can earn my share.) People moving to Germany, particularly from the US or Britain, should be ready for a giant descent on the socio-economic ladder. As much as I disagree with large portions of VDH’s article, it is apparent that Germans are not ready to have successful immigrants living here. It’s fine if you want to clean toilets or run a Dönerbude, but if you have any kind of foreign qualifications, they generally won’t accept them. I know a lot of people here with Master’s Degrees in Marketing and Business or software who work cleaning making coffee for less than welfare.
In order to steer its way out of the crisis, Germany will have to drop a lot of the bureaucratic red tape and stop punishing productivity, but I don’t think they have the will power to do so.
try Hamburg, drunkeds and druggeds are common
Come on, who can really be scared of these guys?
http://wearegovernment.blogspot.com/2010/05/auf-der-reeperbahn.html
Akatsukami:
Doubtful at best. Russia also suffers from severe demographic issues. Within 50 years or thereabouts, their population will be about that of a large average European nation, not that of a proto-Superpower.
I read something quite interesting on the topic of Russia’s demographic implosion once, but unfortunately I can’t remember where. (It may have been Mark Steyn’s “America Alone”, but I’m not sure. It’s well worth reading, at any rate.)
The writer made the point that Russia’s demographic implosion may be more “colourful” than that of Western European nations as the Bear struggles to retain the power that a smaller, aging population can’t support. The same goes for China, although the problem there is a lack of women instead of Russia’s lack of “marriage material” men.
At any rate, demographics will play a huge roll in Europe’s future. European societies need immigration on a massive scale to pay for their ponzi-esque pension system, but they have thus far been unable to integrate the people already here; consequently, there is little political will left for bringing anyone else in. This is compounded by the fact that most larger European countries have structural unemployment at or over 10%, including Germany. Germany gets around this with an unofficial figure that doesn’t reflect the true nature of the problem. The professionally unemployed here are often forced into Eurojobs in which they receive 1-2 Euros per hour of work. (They still retain unemployment benefits.) If they work over 15 hours a week, this amount is deducted from their welfare, but they are then *abracadabra* considered employed and off the official roll. Many long term unemployed people are also forced into so called “early retirement” sweeping them as well from the official unemployment statistics. Since there are so many Germans without jobs, it is hard to find the political will to bring in lots of foreigners, Indian IT workers for example, to plug these wholes in the labour market. These long term unemployed are often low-skilled workers. The fact that only 50% of IT jobs in Germany are filled at any one time doesn’t influence public opinion to be more pro-immigration. In fact, in 2002 or 2003, a type of German “Green card” was supposed to be instituted to help attract these Indian IT workers that Germany needs. There was a massive public backlash at the idea; the rallying cry was “Kinder statt Inder” or “Children instead of Indians.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jürgen_Rüttgers
Europe’s demographic death will probably be slow and violence free like Japan’s instead of Russia’s.
I agree that demographic trends are not promising, for Russia or the rest of Europe. David Goldman (a/k/a “Spengler”) at the Asia Times has said, “In 200 years, French and German will only be spoken in Hell”.
OTOH, we have Keynes’ dictum that “In the long run, we are all dead”. In 200 years, Europe may well have become Eurabia, inhabited by the descendants of Maghrebi and Mizrahi Muslims. Or it may have become “the West under Heaven”, inhabited by people who style themselves Han, but are the descendants of the current generation of Chinese men and women bought or seized by military force from Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.
Rather, what happens in those 200 years? I opine that the mass army of conscripts is obsolete; a modern, high-tech force of professionals with sufficient ruthlessness will entrap it, kill everyone that it find useless, and enslave the rest.
Who has the required combination of technology and ruthlessness? The Chinese certainly; the Russians may lack the tech, and the Germans the ruthlessness (although they may hand us an unpleasant surprise yet).
I don’t know if you’re japenese and actually I don’t care. But Admiral Bill Halsey had the ultimate reason to say that.
Yours is gibberish.
Cheers MoF.
One good, big, technological war- and all the counters get reset to zero. History isn’t a series of gentle troughs and crests like sand dunes. It’s the edge of a very old and broken saw.
An old saw, manufactured by ‘Zardoz’ the movie. :(
It may not be a total loss; Self-sufficient communities
will be a possibility soon, including self-defense.
Good piece, doc, but I have to quarrel with one point. You cite the return of American isolationism as exemplified by Barack Obama. Obama exemplifies only the Harvard-Hates-America Left. He is not our first Pacific President, but our first anti-American President. Restlessness about the War on Terror, it must be remembered, is stoked by an Establishment Media trying to revive the sentiments of the Vietnam war for the benefit of the Democrat Party. I don’t see most Americans unwilling to face the realities of the war, only the Left wants to because it requires we spend money on the kind of social welfare disasters you describe.
My theory on the election of Obama is that the American electorate, particularly those in the center and right, were disgusted and disillusioned with Bush’s second term (his *second* term, mind you: he was re-elected in 2004 despite massive intervention by the liberal Media).
For whatever reason, Bush lost his mojo in his second term. He allowed the Democrats after 2006 to spend way too much. Most importantly, he got soft on terror, refusing to confront Iran as he promised. Americans (pacifist minority aside) will not tolerate half-hearted military strategy. We want to win and we want to win fast and big. If it’s really a “war” on terror then act like it. Build up the active military and relieve the strain of deployments. Take on Iran aggressively, etc… Americans saw in the second term that Bush was going half-a$$ed (and GOP congress, too) and got sick of it, opting for “change.”
TS… I think you’re right on the money with what happened to GWB after 2004. It was a slow and steady slide into mush. The Democrats, with the left and media, non-stop .. I don’t know if they wore him down or what, but the GOP in the congress and around him in the administration all went native. I think Dick Cheney was one of the few who were stalwarts and he was even left hanging and his chief of staff sent to jail on trumped-up charges. Very disheartening. The debacle of the 2005-2008 period of Bush’s second term deserve inspection, because a lot happened that made it very hard to feel good about the Bush administration. The greater wonks in the administration dithered and the dems and the Washington-class enveloped what was left of anything conservative and overwhelmed it. I place the blame for Obama clearly at the feet of the national media. He clearly was “the chosen story” and too good to be true. Also, there was plenty of money spread around to grease the wheels. Add a unhappy conservative base with the barely-republican McCain, most folks I know either sat at home or voted against Obama. It was a perfect storm and the GOP owns it. The media helped a lot, pushing McCain forward, too, our stupid primary system that front-loads the ticket with the type of GOP candidates that are mostly mushy and unelectable.
You & T.S. have nailed the whys & wherefores of the mess we’re in. Thanks!
I theorized similarly that Germany would rise again. This article is on the money. What will happen is a German Franco EU peacekeeping force will be created to “stabilize PIIGS as riots break out. Due to Germanys past a new avenue for remilitarization of Germany will occur through a backdoorapproach. THat will happen as US falls into civil unrest so there is no stopping it. Do not elieve 2 decades of pacifist behaviour changes anything. The Thais are Buddhists and there are riots in Bangkok. History repeats itself. Expect WW3 to start in few years under the banner of peace keeping forces, German demands for Greek island sales though on th sidelines is exactly whats gonna happen.
“U.S. fall into civil unrest”? You bet it will.
It begins this summer when =:0bama brews up a long, hot summer of racial discontent to stem the bourgeois tide.
Germany and the rest of the EU will seethe with mutinies like the turn of the 20th century, except the Menscheviks this time around have spiky hair-dos and punk rocker getups, and the Bolsheviks are Muslim fanatics.
Dogs bark, nukes boom and the caravan moves on.
Interesting thesis, but I think this is much more likely:
Greece will eventually be cut loose and a communist or totalitarian style government (viz. Hugo Chavez) will take over and nationalize everything to the cheers of the unions and welfare dependents. This, of course, will do nothing to remedy Greece’s lack of an economy, but guess what? North Korea doesn’t have an economy either? They depend on hand-outs from China. Greece will get by for awhile by confiscating whatever wealth is left in Greece and then will use a combination of oppression and supplication to whore itself to whatever power will pay the most (Russia? China? Iran?)
After Greece, the same thing will likely befall the other ugly sister of the E.U. Pressure will increase on nations like France and Germany to keep their population happy or risk left-wing takeovers.
We could very well see the emergence of an authoritarian Europe in the next 20 years. Their population will continue to sink through almost irreversible demographics. They will deal with unassimilated minorities pretty ruthlessly at that point. Think of how Palestinians are treated by their Arab hosts.
Socialism, if left unchecked, inevitably leads to authoritarianism.
Excellent forecast. Totally agree.
Add a few nukes and Mad Max in he U.S.
So…
Germany = U.S. People
Greece = Washington DC
Achtung panzer?
The two main culprit of European disasters were Germany and France. Do not forget that the Napoleonic wars incited all the nationalism in Europe and triggered the second German Reich. Ideally we would have a Western Military, Economic and Cultural alliance between European nations, Canada, Australia and the US. Loosely coupled, but jointly operating against those that act against Western interest. It are the French that do not understand this concept. They want to be the Core Nation of the West and can’t accept the US leadership as a Germany could, and the UK and others already do. It are the French Presidents that talk about standing up against American influence and the need to form an European counter balance, while at the same time doing dodgy deals in the Middle East. France needs to change or it will move into oblivion with the other Southern European countries. I would not fear Germany, it is probably good to have a strong nation on the continent that can be economic and military powerhouse by it self and which always has one eye to the East; Russia. This time it is a different kind of pride that Germans have. In the old days there was a lot of envy against the British Empire and sheer hate against France. No need for that anymore. Germany is like a Heavy weight boxer surrounded by Light weight boxer. No need to start throwing punches to show that you are stronger.
the Germany you dream of doesn’t exist !
Her Elite has cheated the EU and her own people all along
and anti-Americanism is much more developped in Germany than France, just read the papers !
Better german than french! It’s a shame to be french!
I bet you’ll be welcome in Germany with your Pseudo
“Germany is a heavyweight boxer surrounded by lightweight boxers ….doesn’t have to throw punches …” Germany is a heavyweight self-sufficient boxer which is being eaten alive by deadbeat lightweights. Sooner or later it going to understand the folly and revolt against it. No need to throw punches? Have you ever seen a lioness being eaten alive by hyenas?
Besides, it is in germany’s national DNA to throw punches—whenever opportunity arises. Look at modern times-look at pre-Holy Roman time. The primary pre-occupation of three hundred or so deutch principalities was to attack the neighbors and take home booty. (somewhat like proto-muslim bedouins in arabia).
Also, leftist factions stirring up trouble in germany that Jacob above mentions—whole german politics is leftist dominated (minor recent execeptions notwithstanding). Now leftist = totalitatrians. I believe germany will move even more to the left—not less. And when left takes overs completely, the nation has to eat its own body, then half-way through have to look for other suckers to eat. Whole europe is going the communist way—not out of the socialism, but towards its more ugly manifestation. Russia has been there, and again poised to go there again—read pravda. Once more, the russian empire and ‘fourth reich’ will be forced to “divvy up” the booty—unless one backstabs the other.
Muslims is a problem—mainly created and aided and abetted by Soviet Union (and now russian federation). Sort of unwitting mercenaries of the Leftist monster. It would be intersting to see how the latter deals with the former when push comes to shove. It will not be pretty. At any rate—right now we are (including the US) inexorably diving into a state of serfdom—serfs of the Left. And this time the Left has gone international.
Once again, america is the ONLY hope of humanity on earth, and only possible allies we have are Israel and India (only partially, though). If we can eliminate the fifth-column currently entrenched in Whitehouse and Congress, we CAN save ourselves (and hence the world). It will take a great number of miracles, though. And “it will get worse before it gets better”. If ever.
That’s because the Muslims are blood knights. They really don’t care about money as long as they have a war to fight. Just give them supplies and they’ll go fight because they love fighting.
As a German I can not honestly say other than that American Eagle is right. His analysis tells like it is. The political mainstream and the mainstream within the media account a politician like Barack H. Obama als “center-right”. And if you see it from their angle this is even true…
In Germany you will soon again read about members of the so-called intellectual elite and leftist politicians in the papers criticizing people wearing t-shirts in the colors of the German flag during the Soccer World Cup because they think that this were too much of nationalism. If a politician in the U.S. acted like that he would be better off not even trying to run for re-election. In Germany the marxist parties (“The Left” mostly supported by the welfare receivers and in East Germany, the Green Party mostly supported by the rich brats of the elite families doing full-time party for 10 years on the Campuses) gain more and more momentum, strongly supported by media, schol teachers and even church leaders. Not only that you will not find any right-wing, conservative party (like the German Republicans or Pro NRW) supraregionally receiving more than 1.5 % of the vote (I do not count the Nazi scum NPD as “right wing” for it is a collectivist socialist party of the lumpenproletariat). Meanwhile even the F.D.P. as an established party at least trying to set an agenda on economic freedom has to fear dropping out of parliament on behalf of extremely declining support.
In Afghanistan German soldiers are more and more likely to be attacked by the Taliban because the islamofascists realized that in no other country involved the public support of their soldiers is as low as here. In Germany you will find leftist “peace movement” adherents publicly doing party every time the news is heard about another Bundeswehr soldier being killed in Afghanistan.
The extreme left wing is so dominant in Germany that most of the people believe what they are telling without reflecting about it critically. The leftists tell that they were the only and real “antifascists”, while conservatives are most likely suspect to Nazi sympathies.
Filled with this kind of self-righteousness, German leftists are extremely busy breeding hatred against the U.S. and against Israel without the slightest trace of remorse.
No need to worry about Germany. Even if the EU somehow collapses, Germany’s demographics wouldn’t make anything like conquest practical.
Whiskey
“Safe European Home” was from the Clash, not the Pistols.
But other than that, I generally agree, especially with the demography problem.
How can I get you all to my blog and back. I would like people to read me and also to go to you for some very valuable info. I am still experimenting as to what I should write about. Right now, I am transcribing my diary. What say you? Let me know so I can join the party.
“The idea that nations like Greece, both overtly and implicitly, insult nations like Germany has no basis in historical terms.”
Well maybe that fellow was right, the one who said we were at the end of history. In place after place, situation after situation we are now supposed to bow down to the low. From the president of the US taking the side of illegal invaders from Mexico over the very people who elected him, to a school board suggesting science classes be dumbed down since the stupider children don’t do as well as the smart ones it is like every day is lived in bizarro world.
Ask yourself, can this end well?
It all depends on where you consider the end to be.
All positive change is uncomfortable.
Have you ever lost weight?
You very uncomfortably destroy fat to do it.
It looks like America just has some pounds its got to shed to be a leaner, more efficient, more productive and better America.
Russian Empire???
The demographics in Russia are even worse than what is happening in Europe, particularly when you look at life-expectancy, and combine that with an abysmal birth-rate (and since abortion seems to be the birth-control method of choice, it doesn’t say much about the future fertility of the average Russian woman).
The babyboomer inability to perceive the danger posed by the real Russia, as opposed to the Russia on paper, is frightening. Is Mercedes-Benz – are East Germans – building nuclear programs outside Tehran or proposing them in secret in Caracas?
Honestly – Germany? You guys have watched too many Nazi movies. Why is there such a conspiracy of silence about Russia?
Yes, Dan, Russia is and will continue to cause lots of problems, but only in a collateral way, not directly.
Russia, whatever its pretensions, is finished. It is imploding demographically as pointed out above.
Furthermore, the only thing keeping Russia’s head above water right now is the price of oil and natural gas. That is a losing bet as huge new discoveries of oil and gas will dilute the market price and as advanced economies continue to research alternative fuel sources. The world will abandon oil long before it ever runs out. Russia has nothing after that.
Lots of good points VDH, but I disagree that the Germans can mount any significant response beyond harsh words. It’s a country of old Germans and young Muslims, and the Muslims have none of the Germanic traits. German wealth will be pissed away into the southern European nations and that will be the end of that. The US on the other hand is not going to be in any position to support or defend anyone either. We are a country of old conservative men and a nation of misguided socialist Soviet youth. China, Russia or Iran will be the world leader by the end of the 21st century and the US will be a failed experiment. The natural human condition is to be ruled by a harsh and very cruel dictator and the world will return to that state following its brief detour into individual liberty exemplified by the US. This detour was only made possible by the expansion of the globe in the fifteenth century and the globe has become small again. There is no longer anywhere to run. I love your work VDH but I do not think Germany will rise this time.
In 1939,one might have successfully defended Napoleon’s comment: ‘Gold will not always get you good soldiers,
__________but good soldiers can always get you gold.’
In 2010, it is, one would hope, clear that gold spent on
economic development will yield a greater return than war.
If it becomes desirable to effect a change of regime in
Greece, for example, economic sanctions should suffice;
Even bureaucrats get tired of beans for every meal, and
if they remove the cocoon of red tape stifling investment
by entrepreneurs, some mutually profitable joint ventures may be possible between Greece and Germany.
ah yes, economic sanctions.
Please provide 1 example of economic sanctions not backed up by military action or blockade that worked.
And by worked, I mean resulted in the stated objective of the boycott AND didn’t leave the population of the target nation much worse off under the new boss than they were under the old regime.
You are correct;
Successful blockade requires the use of force, short of war,
but denial of credit does not; If Greece is forced to pay cash on the barrel head for every import except the necessities of life, the Greeks will soon tire of eating beans by candle light.
Those who object to such a harsh policy can be answered,
truthfully, by saying that Greece being forced to experience _now_ a carefully controlled and moderated
taste of what it will experience later in complete chaos.
Those who expect a minor inconvenience may laugh;
Those who have examined a map of Europe, and the Near East,
coded for Moslem population demographics, not so much.
The First World War was started because of a series of European alliances were created to maintain the balance of power between the European states. That ‘balance of power’ all fell apart because one man in the Balkans killed the emperor presumptive of the Austria-Hungarian empire. One man, One pistol in the right place at the right time and 50 years of diplomacy and nation-state political interraction all went up in flames that extinguished the lives of a generation of Frenchman, Englishman, Germans and Russians. As each of the European states in the various alliances all raced each other to take advantage of the situation presented by a single Serbian man, the wider war that they had walked into would redefine the continent for nearly a century. The last of the Continental European Monarchies disappeared, and the rise of Soviet Bolshevism and European Fascism took root in their place.
Here we are nearly a century later and the watching the Euro unravel from ‘across the pond’. The Euro is currency, but the the Euro can also be thought of as an economic treaty, a treaty that exists for many purposes, but first and foremost it exists as a guarantee that the economic balance of power in Europe will be one where Europe as a whole rotates around France and Germany.
Sound familiar?
It seems to be that Greece is playing the role of the Serbians this time, as the small spark that lights a bigger fire. If the past is prologue, then Russia should make her move next. If she does move to secure her eastern European flank, then who will rise to stop her? Russia is already proving it has the will to use force and intimidation to get what it wants, it is almost certainly going to do the same with the collapse of the Euro.
As the old saying goes; “there is opportunity in chaos”.
The last time the balance of power was disturbed in Europe, that continent was essentially in a state of war from 1914 until 1989. What I fear now is not so much that we are watching the end of the Euro, but that we are watching the end of Pax Americana. Will we see another century of European warfare that starts with the collapse of the Euro? Its hard to say.
Sorry, but you are wrong about the cause of WWI. The death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was NOT the cause of WWI. Not even directly. Because the Serbs had ALREADY apologized and capitulated to almost the entirety of the ultimatum Vienna had sent them. The Austrians simply ignored them and chose to attack. Prodded on by a Berlin that feared peace more than it did war due to the recovering Russian power in the East.
Firstly, those systems of alliances did not exist for no reason whatsoever, because people do not simply make byzantine alliances for the sheer hell of it. They were made in response to the militant expansionism of Bismarck and his heirs during the unification of Germany and afterwards. From the very onset, it was clear that Berlin desired to expand its power and obtain a place in the sun, and that only became more obvious after the fairly pragmatic Bismarck had been kicked out. What most people ignore is that for the past two decades, Germany had been methodically and aggressively probing the boundaries of the fledgling alliance against it, first in Cuba and China, then in Morocco, then in the Ottoman Empire and at sea, and finally in the Balkans. The deaths of the Austrian heir was nothing but the straw that broke the camels back and the droplet of water that caused the dam to spill over, because more than any other power Germany had been seeking this war to avoid the possibility of being encircled by a Russia that had finally recovered from its defeat against Japan along with the West. Which was estimated to occur in 1916. Which was why the German general staff urged the Austrians to accept no compromise even when the alternative was in any due probability a major war.
Germany and Italy were both nations that were in pieces at the start of the nineteenth century. The the rise of German and Italian nationalism and the unifications under Garibaldi and under Wilhelm were processes that ended with the end of WWII. Notice that Spain, although fascist, was a nation that had been long unified and ‘glorified’ by empire won and lost and was not therefore under popular irredentist pressure, and so Spain avoided the path of Italy and Germany in search of a larger and greater Italy or Germany.
I don’t think German anger will translate into a new push for expansion. Anger over unfair rules resulting in Germans subsidizing the easy life in Greece are not at all related to the dead irredentist impulse. There is no reason to think that this impulse would reawaken, just as Spain’s drive to expand, long dead, did not rise again with the opportunity offered in WWII when its relatively young fascist allies went to war under the not yet completed impulse which had awoken in them in the nineteenth century.
Unrest and disturbance may result from a dying Euro, but it is hard to believe that we would see the a reanimation of the process that drove Germany from the mid nineteenth century until the end of WWII.
Just my two pfennig’s worth of opinion.
The one man who was responsible for World War I was not Princep, who shot Archduke Ferdinand, but Kaiser Wilhelm II who was unstable and, like his successor, Hitler, was overcome with jealousy and envy. Unlike Hitler amd his followers, who had some cause, Wilhelm ruled a peaceful kingdom that had no reason to go to war. His father, had he lived, would have avoided the war and the 20th century would have been a very different time.
Forces larger than Hitler or Wilhelm II were at play in Europe in the 20th century. You can check Hitler’s Empire by Mark Mazower for a good description of German nationalism, born in the mid 19th century, and the role it played. Neither Hitler nor Wilhelm II created these forces. One could say that these forces created them.
French President Poincarre spent the summer between the assasination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and “the Guns of August” egging on the Russians to pledge protection to the Serbs and preparing to go to war against Austria. France had invested in Russian railroads in the later part of the 19th century that allowed Russian troops to be mobilized and transported to the German border.
Poincarre’s goal was to regain Alsace and Lorraine which had been lost to Germany in the Franco-Prussian war in 1870. He believed that if Germany was fighting a war on its eastern front, French troops, full to the nose holes with “cran” and making human wave bayonet charges, would be able to restore France’s “sacred hexagon” in the chaos. That theory did not work out so well in practice, although by allying itself with the horrid anglo-saxons, the French did eventually regain their lost provinces by diplomatic means after main force had failed them.
When Poincarre returned to France after the fighting had begun in 1914, he boasted that he had started the war.
While you have a point regarding Poincarre, the fact remains that even if his word mysteriously pushed the Russians from total neturality to war, he could not have started the war for the simple fact that it had started weeks earlier when the Austro-Hungarians marched across the Serbian border.
And they had done so under orders of a Vienna that had been rashly encouraged to ignore the extremely concillatory Serbian response to its ultimatum (giving in to all but ONE of its demands) and go to war. In short, while nationalist firebreathing and Western greed doubtless played some role in how it played out, ultimate responsiblity rests with Vienna and the German and Austro-Hungarian general staffs who blew a fairly minor scandal up into a world war.
Again, while Poincarre doubtless didn’t help matters, he could not have started the war because it had already begun weeks earlier when the Austro-Hungarians had marched armies into Serbia at the urging of Berlin and in spite of Belgrade’s caving to all but one of Vieena’s demands. The simple fact is that while the French doubtless hungered for Revanche, the Germans were the ones who had spent the past two decades and even slightly beforehand planning and preparing to wage this war, which was unquestionably aggressive in character.
And finally, if by “diplomatic means” you mean “the complete and utter wrecking of the German military in 1918 due to the Western Allied victories in the West, Italy, and the Balkans on one hand and the disintegration of German imperial power at home” than that is by all means true. But most of us would not call it so. The simple truth is that the Versailles succession confirmed what had already effectively been won on the battlefield.
M. Report @22:
“In 1939,one might have successfully defended Napoleon’s comment: ‘Gold will not always get you good soldiers, but good soldiers can always get you gold.’
In 2010, it is, one would hope, clear that gold spent on
economic development will yield a greater return than war.”
These are truly the words of someone who has never seen or can even conceive of the elephant.
Your naïve assumption that pursuit of economic development trumps martial might is based on the fallacy that warlike folks aren’t playing for all the marbles.
Blathering such a ridiculous assertion in educated company before “progressive” thought diluted critical thinking would have immediately resulted in being laughed out of the room in any gathering of educated men and women.
I suggest you try selling your snake oil about spending on economic development trumping spending on soldiers and the military to:
The Pashas of Mysore in India, or those rulers of sub-Saharan Africa, the many descendants of Shaka Zulu.
Tell it to the king of the Carthaginians.
Tell it to Moctezuma’s descendant, the king of Mexico, or to the rulers of South America, the descendants of Atahualpa’s, king of the Inca.
What? You can’t? They’re all DEAD or never existed because their nations and cultures were completely destroyed by aggressive militaristic adversaries?!!!
I’m sure if they had just concentrated on spending their resources on economic and technological advancement they would all be thriving today. And the tooth fairy is real!
It takes a strong industrial base, robust scientific and engineering research & development, and a strong military to be as safe as possible in this world.
Our “progressive” elite in Europe and the U.S. have pissed away most of our economic and technological prowess over the past 35 years.
The current U.S. administration is Hell-bent on dismantling our military might.
An entire generation of progressives, (I’m talking to you liberal baby-boomers out there who voted for Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Gore, and the thrice cursed Barry Sotero) deserve to be tortured to death in dire agony for their malfeasance and the destruction they’ve wrought on western society.
I think there’s a major point being missed here. The Germans were a pretty unhappy people about local events in the 20′s and 30′s. The Treaty of Versailles left them broke and desperate. But they only because militaristic because an inspiring madman came along. Without Hitler to organise and whip them up, WW2 would not have happened. Just as it took Bismark to unify and a power mad militaristic Kaiser to set off WW1. Yes, in general Germans ARE militaristic – and this means being a willing follower of a senior figure who gives orders. This the Germans are very very good at.
So – what sort of leaders do they have now? They have the same sort every Western Christendom country has – intellectual elites from ivy towered universities, who have imbibed Cultural Marxism and Gramsci thought as though with their mothers milk; who delight in directing their countries down paths of illogic, abstract, self indulgent idiocies such as relitavism, multiculti-PC subservience to any noisy minority, inability to identify that which is right, ruling over an increasingly aging population who have no strength to fight to see it carried out; which do nothing but weaken a country, and at an ever escalating rate.
The future lies with those countries that never were infected – and thus affected – by, the Franklin School and it’s death dealing ideology. China, India, nearly all of the East still believe in making individual efforts, and in leaders being strong in defense. The future belongs to them, they are the ones who will rise to world dominance.
Germanys’ future lies in the same realm of subject state as the rest of the West, destroyed from within by a poisonous culture, and an aging population too weak to get up and fight it.
Another German awhile back was upset with hard-earned German money being siphoned off by archaic bureaucrats living it up on the Mediterranean. He decided to do something about it though it very likely might have gotten him killed. He had no personal power other than his pen and his pulpit, but he was ultimately protected by the German elites, who used him to protect their own considerable fortunes from flowing south. This low level revolutionary started all his trouble by nailing his 43(?) Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral. His name was Martin Luther. You know the rest. Hitler was a corporal. Franco and Bonaparte were colonels. Washington, similar to Cromwell, was a farmer, surveyor and part time soldier. Lenin and Mao were active intellectuals and Castro and Stalin were observant and soulless nobodies. Leaders can come from anywhere and its only after they figure out how to do what they have to do that we elevate them to the perches they later seem to hold as a natural birthright.
An expansionist power needs a large youth to man its armies. Germany’s demographics ensure that it will not be a great military power or threat any time soon.
You cannot have an army without soldiers, you cannot have soldiers without men, and you cannot have men without boys. The women of the West have chosen the pill over children.
No more we’ll see the hob-nailed boots
The stuka screams, the panzer shoots
No more the crosses row on row
In flowered fields where poppies grow
The German wives are women still
But choose not children but the pill
For children interfere with fun
And thus they limit kids to one
Yes German wives are like the rest
Of womankind throughout the West
Who did collectively decide
That kin and nation suicide
Was better than a mother be
And so today the family tree
Has hit the rocks and hit the skids
With more grandparents than are kids
The hob-nailed boot has seen its last
Proud regiments are of the past
No stuka scream, no panzer roar
The West foreswore the art of war
Walt you bring up an interesting point. I’ve never seen a discussion of feminism on this website or by VDH. We’ve got Boxer, Feinstein, Pelosi representing the nation and the Golden State with Meg Whitman and Calry Fiorina a contenders for Governor. We could have just as easily had a President Clinton or Palin this time around. We’ve got a newly seated Justice Sotomayor and will most likely see Harvard Dean Kagan appointed to the Supreme Court.
So why aren’t women aged 18-26 required to register for Selective Service? Given that 9 out of 10 soldiers support the other 1 in 10 combat troops and women making their mark in nearly all types of service,( just recently cracking the submariner service), how could any legitimate argument be made for not subjecting women to military draft? Surely President Palin or Clinton would include women in a draft should the need arise… Of course President Bush would have and President Obama would subject their own daughters to military service – wouldn’t they?
If women want it all then let them step up to the plate. Does anyone think those young men would have it any other way?
Look at the EU. Collapsing under demographics, socialism and Islam.
Might not Mr. Hansons’ German problem be the Europeans’ solution?
Do we really want a dead Europe? Are the German ideas of hard work and personal reward so hard to embrace? Might not Greece and Turkey and France and England benefit from these ideas?
Just asking.
A better country to worry about in this way would be China …
The Chinese also have demographic problems. As well as internal Muslim problems.
Check out “Jolly Green Badge Of Courage” on the Fernandez thread.
Several US Military Men were publicly decorated in Germany recently with the Gold Cross—–successor to the Iron Cross—-.
Our beloved MSM ignored the event, of course. Doesn’t fit their precious “narrative”. German media did not ignore it. Overall German attitudes seem to have been that it was a worthwhile show of appreciation to a valiant ally.
Indicates that the Krauts are getting more than a little willing to fight.
Be advised.
If demographics are indeed destiny, then Europe is mostly on a downward course to oblivion; the only people on the continent reproducing themselves at anything like replacement level or more, are Muslim. To paraphrase Mark Steyn, “The future belongs to those who show up.”
Walt (#28), “You cannot have an army without soldiers, you cannot have soldiers without men, and you cannot have men without boys. The women of the West have chosen the pill over children,” and Iain (#27), “An expansionist power needs a large youth to man its armies. Germany’s demographics ensure that it will not be a great military power or threat any time soon.” Noted geostrategist and former army intel officer Colonel Ralph Peters takes a different view; he believes that native Europeans are still quite capable of making the streets run red with blood, whatever their numbers, once a trigger sets off the next conflict. Perhaps he sees it (c.f. William Lind) as a fourth-generation/unconventional war in the offing. Europe contains ever-more disaffected, unassimilated Muslim youth, the kind of angry young men who sometimes follow messiahanic figures into battle. Recent history suggests that once Muslims attain a certain critical mass or percentage of the host nation’s population, they become more militant and begin making ever-more difficult demands, and things devolve rapidly thereafter. Will 4GW come to Europe? Only time will tell whether the status quo ends with a whimper or a bang. Recent events suggest the former, but no one has a crystal ball.
If the 13th century jihadists act too soon to take up the cudgel they dropped at Tours, Lepanto and the Gates of Vienna, will the american descendants of Europe come East once again to rescue their heritage, to repay a debt already repaid with the greeting: “Lafayette, we are here?” If we do come — AGAIN — we will win — AGAIN.
Cringeworthy article, can’t Pajama find someone who knows something about the topic?
Hanson, see me after class, for plagiarising Darymples’ nonsense. Setzen, sechs.
“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see. A. Shopenhauer
I currently live in Germany and while I agree with VDH on history, I don’t agree with him here on what might happen in Germany. Yes, they are not amused with the Greeks and their behavior – actually, I just got back from 3 days in Rome – you don’t have to go as far as Greece to see the dirty streets, no-rules, no working, etc. I had dinner in Rome with two Dutchmen – they were appalled that the Greeks expected to retire so early. They also acknowledged that there are no rules in southern Europe – they like to visit it but not live there.
The Germans have for the last two generations taught “influence through integration.” They are uncomfortable with flag-waving or over the top expressions of nationalism. They truly believe in their brand of order (ordnung muss sein) and socialism. They are not overly militaristic. I would call it a private pride. It’s oxymoronic in that they believe in integration, but they tend to be quite inflexible on things. They can be very predictable that way – the German way. It is at times comforting and exasperating.
Yes, they might secretly acquire nuclear capability – and they might become a bit more isolated. As others have said, they don’t have much military capability or young people to use that limited military capability. They are tied economically to all of the EU nations, Russia and others. They do think before they act.
The greater Switzerland from an economic standpoint may be a better prediction.
Really, I just don’t buy it. The Bundeswehr are a bunch of wimps & could not beat my dead great granny! The Germans are peace at any price kinda people. No way they would start a war. Besides, if they did, Zimbabwe would probably beat them like a rug.
What Germany should do is to withdraw from the EU. Then let France whine (as usual) & tell the Greeks, etc. to take a hike & pay for their own bills.
EU people are so naive it is amazing. Here in Bulgaria they gave the gov’t nearly 1/2 a billion Euros about a year ago. Naturally, it ALL disappeared never to be accounted for! Ask the Germans how they feel about that!
If Merkel was smart, she’d introduce a bill do withdraw from the EU in the Bundesrat & re-introduce the DM. Germans would leap for joy.
“withdraw from the EU. Then let France whine (as usual) ”
and why France should whine ? no, we just defend our position ! BTW, I’m sorry to tell you that the german enterprises have no more means to bribe your corrupted elite to get the markets !
‘They are uncomfortable with flag-waving or over the top expressions of nationalism.’
As a frequent visitor, I submit that while I “never” saw a German flag in the late 80s & the 90s. I started to see them over homes in small towns in the early 00s and now in cities.
Not necessarily flag-waving, but flag flying.
Interestingly, I also started seeing them over the islamic enclaves in the Ruhr. Not sure what that indicates yet.
Hello,
You say there has never been a currency union without political union. Blatantly false.
Example among rich countries: Latin Monetary Union (1865-1927)
Or, since 1945 (so 65 years and counting): the CFA Franc in West Africa.
For more, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_union
BTW, I also live in Munich, and work as a bartender in a local pub in one of the poorer parts North of the center. Apparently we speak to different people, because not one of my customers (lower income Germans), although mad at Greece, doubts the good things the EU and Euro have done, and the necessity to preserve it.
The problem was fiscal profligacy of certain countries, which will, by necessity, be curtailed, either at the national level (France is mulling a constitutional amendment to balance the budget), or community level (some kind of EU check on spending).
Countries, communities, go through good and bad times! After all, I wouldn’t judge the future of the US based on Obama’s mess. Americans are too resilient for that!
styx
Well, well, well, such a surreal vision of Germany goals in the euro business is blurring the objective truth.
How Greeks got the money to become a member of the eurozone ?
German banks (and french banks) made that happening.
The greeks with their new inflated money could buy Mercedes, tanks submarines planes… build their modern infrastructures, but of Germany’s conception (for a much lesser level, from France’s too).
The job business was going well too, as the money was floading, social services were increasing. Greeks thought that they were safe as long as they could hire money with the same rating as Germany.
But, but, the 2008 crisis broke this idealised bubble.
German banks were hit, and had to be bailed out by german good money taxes.
Though the first Merkel government coalition was still for supporting the eurozone, it’s how, when Greek debt was pointed by the markets, that the German Finance Minister responded quickly, that no euro country would be left away, and the debt bonds speculators calmed down. But as soon as the new german coalition government was formed, some of the proeminent german bankers started to tell convenient insidious things to the media, that Greece was overdebted, that the country couldn’t repay back… bizarrely the speculators heard that too, and since Greece became their first target of the eurozone.
Our currencies, the euro, as the dollar, are no more indexed on gold values, but rest on governments relevance and confidence to repay back debt loans, these german personnalities have purposely broken the confidence in the euro, and thus launched the attacks on the eurozone.
So what was the hidden agenda ? a guess, the german banks were broke (not because of the greek debt alone, but because of their general investments in world debt bonds), and freeing the wolves onto the euro was a opportunity for the german banks to fill their cash reserve, because they were the ones that attacked Greece and the euro in the first place with their own traders. While, Merkel was purposely hezitating and made that no decision nor support could be taken, telling the medias that Germany was going to ban speculations on the nacked products and make regulations for protecting the euro.
Behind these manipulations, we can guess that Germany’s real design might be to walk out the euro, as her economy indexes are flat, as her local banks are broke, she can’t anymore afford her non-ending contribution to the eurozone. Germans aren’t spending money on buying goods, but saving what they earn by hard working in low paid part-time jobs. They will likely forn an association with her proxy neighbours, Austria and Benelux to form a new currency zone.
“Are German Banks Short the Euro?”
http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/109581/are-german-banks-short-the-euro
“How German Companies Bribed Their Way to Greek Deals”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,693973,00.html
Now Sarkozy was trying to save the cohesion of the eurozone nations, as being aware that if you’re are not solidary, then you are exposing yourselves to bigger threats, which happened. If Germany had reacted at the very beginning, probably that the big bailing out of the euro, and by extension, of our banks wouldn’t have been necessary, though knowing what we do now, Merkel was playing only for the german part.
Markets will tell us if next week, Germany will not have the boomrang return, cuz her middle and upper class money escaped to Switzerland.
Now I know Munich too.
Effectively your description is right, great museums (I saw there the “Farnese collection” with Titian paintings) and german docility is well seen.
I remember when waiting at a traffic lights cross, it was red for pedestrians, no cars coming around, we decided to cross the street. German would still wait that the light went green, though watching us to overpass the rules, they finally decided to cross too.
Marie, or Mademoiselle Claude,
I have finally figured out the proper English adjective to describe you after plodding through your many recent postings.
In short, you are a prig.
I encourage you to look the word up in a dictionary in order to fully appreciate its meaning.
The fact that you are a prig should not have come as a surprise to me as this is a national trait of the French.
Your endless criticisms of everyone but the French have grown, well tiresome. If you check the demographic data, I’m afraid you will find that your precious country is quickly (and quietly) being taken over by North African baby production, and inter-marriage. In short, your precious France is disappearing before your very eyes.
So, please continue to cluck away like a hen and make your grand proclamations, as they are nothing more than the sounds of a dying nation…
So far, the topic was about how those poor good ol Germans are exploited by the other EU nations, and thus becaause of the French. Therefore, my position here, it’s not to sing with the chorus, for most of the time the French are flammed for “arrogance” whenever they marcked their point of vew.
But, I can’t see where you contribuated something positive, but your bile.
in short, you’re a lazy old maid that critisizes rather the appearances than the found
Thank you, I’m OK
You tell ‘em Nomad!! ; )
hi tedders, see I’m still in the race :-)
What seems to be lost upon some of the commenters here is that in the wake of the Second World War a nation does not have to darken the skies with endless sorties of bombers in order to wreak havoc upon an adversary. In the course of a few months, one nation that needed to enlist the entire output of its economy to overcome the axis powers went from loosing B-17 bombers wholesale in an effort to bomb Germany into submission to having a single B-29 destroy an entire Japanese city with a single bomb.
A nation, Germany is the example here but any nation will do, that harnesses its intellectual prowess and manufacturing might can overcome any demographic shortcomings it may have.
German militarism revived? I don’t know but I am willing to bet that if they begin to have a lot of trouble with their Muslim minorities they will deal with it in a forceful manner.
Now, speaking of WW1, the slow burning fuse has been lit there already and one of George Bush’s worst moves was to support Muslim Kosovars against the Serbs. This ticked the Russians off to no end and there was no appreciation from the Muslim countries. I seriously disagree with all those that say Russia is a has been even though it is still basically a third world country. But they have huge numbers of nukes and the ability to use them and besides their technological abilities are way better than they were under the Soviet regime. I have been predicting since the middle 90′s that we will have terrible trouble with Russia in the future and their recent moves with Venezuela, Iran, Turkey and Syria only reinforce that feeling.
The Kosovo War was in 1999. The decision to support the Muslim Kosovars over the Serbs was Bill Clinton’s, not George Bush’s.
You are right in one respect.The Kosovo War started under Clinton but the real deal came in February 2008 when the Bush administration backed independence for Kosovo over the strong protests of the Russians and they have not forgotten it. Why Bush did it I don’t know. Maybe a payback for Putin’s trying to protect Sadam Hussein. Between 1999 and 2008 Kosovo was under UN supervision.
Again I must agree with Whiskey. Please Prof. Hanson, I usually enjoy your writings, but this time you are far off. I could even show you quarters of Munich where you would get a completely other expression then you did in Schwabing and Munich Innenstadt. Not to speak of Berlin, Hamburg, the Ruhrgebiet, etc. I am not in the mood today to explore this more. Some Germans have an affinity towards fanatism, I would agree with that. But the fanatism nowadays takes strange ways. Germans nowadays want to lecture the world in antifacism. There is even a movement called “Antideutsch”. So in a pneumopathological twist german nationalism expresses itself as antinationalism. Some Germans would be happy to fight wars against global warming and for more diversity in Arizona. Some (mostly) lefty Antizionists want to prevent Israel from becoming a Naziregime. But regarding wars there is the problem of demographics. More and more boys born in Germany go by the name of Ali or Mohammed. And they like to call the members of generation Kevin “Scheiß deutsche Kartoffel”. And sometimes they like to smash german potatoes. The real men left in Germany will have enough to do to prevent Ali and Mohammed from taking over. So, do not worry. And in most european countries the real men left have the same thing to do.
So which side of the execution pits were the ‘real men’ of Germany on when it came time to ‘deal with’ Levi and Moishe (and their wives and children) back in 1941?
Don’t bother answering. We already know.
Look at Germany’s demographics and you realize the following:
New Old German Problem c. 2030 = New Ottoman Empire problem.
expression impression
ja ja
deutsche Sprache schwere Sprache
By the way Walt
you nailed it
And the children still born they are no children anymore, they are “projects” with “freedom of expression”. And the parents getting older and older (first child with 35) and act younger and younger.
There is a reason for the late birth of children. Germans often don’t start work until much later than their counterparts in America, Britain, and even France and the participation of women in the workforce is one of the lowest in the West. My wife who is the same age as me, for example, got her Abi (A-levels) when I was about to graduate from University. Then, she went to a Staatliche Fremdsprachenschule (foreign language school) for a couple of years because there was no immediate place at the University. She then worked briefly as a temp before starting her degree in Lehramt at a University. Because her subjects were French and English, she was obliged to live abroad. (Lucky for me, we met while both living in France.) During this time, I was working. I then did a British MA, and afterwards, moved to Germany to start working. She was still at University. After finishing University, she had to do an 18 month Referendariat (teacher’s training), while I was still working. During her training, she received less than 1,000 Euros a month and had to travel to neighbouring Lower Saxony because there is a waiting list of several years for a trainee position in English and French in Hamburg and the training in Schleswig-Holstein takes longer and isn’t universally accepted. Afterwards, she was able to take her first paying job in her life…. as a teacher in a school where a substantial portion of the students are classified as having a “non German background.” Her first job came started when she was 32. Of course, she can’t finish her studies and then have a baby because she has to get her foot in on the ladder. If we are lucky, we will be able to think about, G’d forbid, spreading my genes around when she is around 35.
As a side note, she was extremely surprised when the first question a student asked her was “Are you Moslem?” First day, first class, first question. And of course any attempts to make the class function is met by the question “What? Do you have something against Moslems or something?” or literally in the brand of German they speak there, “Wash lobbershu denn? Hassu was gegen muslims oder was, alter?”. And of course, calling someone a “Jew” amongst these immigrants is considered an insult. When she told them that they were not supposed to use the word Jew as an insult, they started using the word “zionist” instead. I think a rise of German nationalism is not really the most pressing issue here.
It’s the summer of ’39 in Europe. But in economic terms. Some Euro country will either default or revert to it’s national currency before long. Then all hell breaks loose in the markets. Last member of PIIGS to default is a rotten egg. The Greeks are played for suckers, even if they deserve it. Germans are already moving money to Swiss banks and swamping gold bullion retailers. Several generations of Granmas have told them stories of Weimer marks. They will militarize for defense this time. They don’t see themselves guilty for the sins of the Third Reich. But they see the USA withdrawing into Lala Land while the Russian bear clearly means to dominate the continent. The French would like to follow their example, but sometime after the holidays, or maybe after the next holidays… I’m no expert but I live in an Army town full of German grandmothers where October Fest is a very big deal. The ladies at the German deli know what’s happening as well as anyone.
after holidays… :lol: not me,and all the self employeds or small enterprises !
but look, some Germans still like the military life, of their way :
German mercenaries to fight UN-backed government in Somalia http://bit.ly/cKsNMj
One of the more interesting issues to take away from VDH’s article is that it is a matter of time and not too distant at that before BO turns his EYE to the military and begins to disarm. Mostly unnoticed Gates has already announced the downsizing of the Navy. There is too much money available by downsizing the military for BO not to go after it.
This is one of those times in history when the world just might back itself into an unintended war. Of course naive incompetent fools like BO believe that is impossible, just like Nevil Chamberlain a likeable incompetent fool from the past.
These are dangerous times we live, run by feel good idiots in the West.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/205794-der-tarp-germany-is-hiding-a-big-banking-problem
Germany Is Hiding a Big Banking Problem
And they are not the only ones in on the action. Spain has been bragging about raising enough capital from the markets to pay for its debt, but apparently what is happening is that Spanish banks have been encouraged to lend and then they are quietly selling those bonds, which may be subject to a future “haircut” if Spain runs into trouble, to the ECB under the new rules. The Euro has bought itself some time, but this is possibly just postponing (and exacerbating) the inevitable crash. http://www.libertaddigital.com/economia/el-tesoro-se-asegura-la-venta-de-bonos-con-los-bancos-a-golpe-de-telefono-1276393201/
The truth is, some German banks were in trouble before the 2008 crisis. A couple of whistleblowers tried to call attention to Hypo’s dodgy accounting 6 months before Lehman Brothers.
I think that anyone who thinks Germany could not become a major military player in two years time is fooling themselves.
The engineering capability is there, the manufacturing base is there, the technology is there,,, all that is lacking is the military-minded leadership.
During my time in Germany I saw a national shame manifest itself because of the WWII holocaust, Germans want desperately to live down that image and are willing to eat a pile of crow to do so. However, the Turkish/Muslim invasion is quickly absolving the German physic of that guilt. Could the Turks possibly be the new Jew in Germany? Welfare clans are not welcome in Germany, Germans believe in the ethic of either work or starve. I think hard working Germans may be coming to the conclusion that they have paid enough for the sins of the father. Who could blame them?
I suspect that the EU should pay close attention to upcoming German elections.
“Could the Turks possibly be the new Jew in Germany?”
No, the Turks are a demographic problem. The Jews have been a problem of imagined and real impact in Academia, Philosophie, etc. But they never have been a demographic force.
“Welfare clans are not welcome in Germany”
But they are welcomed from all major parties and also from a very loud and fanatical portion of the public.
“Germans believe in the ethic of either work or starve.”
I think this kind of Germans are already a minority. Hedonism and permissivity are rampant.
“…Turkey and Brazil flaunt U.S. faculty-lounge sermons…”
I’d think VDH of all people would know the difference between flaunt and flout.
Germany, and Europe have their problems. But as you discover, they (as in most north european countries) look after their people much better than in the Americas. However, the economic strain of the union begins to show because each country is allowed to follow its own spending path. This has to change… and has recently changed in Greece. I think the economic problems in Europe are (like America), cyclical; hence, recovery will begin within the next year or so. Fingers crossed eh? Nice article, thanks.
Define “look after their people much better”. I would hardly say that Germany’s extremely high structural unemployment and the low PPP of their wages hardly qualifies as looking after them. Keep in mind, many in the West often argued that East Germany “looked after their people much better”, but when the wall fell, people came running this way and not the other way around.
You know dear poor one, “look after their people”, has a double meaning. And you are perfectly right with the meaning you have not intended. The meaning you have intended has one result: bankruptcy. And by the way, there is no recovery from bankruptcy. There is recovery after bankruptcy. But this you will find out in the USA as well. One advantage you have over there are weapons and ammo in the hands of citizens(are you to poor for them?). Fingers crossed and quick on the draw. Best wishes from multiculti paradise.
As always, you prefer myth to reality.
How is having a lower quality of medical care, looking after the people?
How is having no prospect to improve ones self economically, looking after the people.
Frankly, I don’t have any problem with a pissed-off Germany. If the socialists and communists of Europe and the Middle East want to criticize GErmany and demand German money to finance their marxist sloth, then that just means the criticism target is off of America. I just hope America can figure out how to be as mean to Mexico as GErmany is capable of being mean to Greece. Then maybe some of these greedy lazy communists will look to mother Russia for their noon-time naps, drunken binges, and cradle-to-grave pensions since Russia is the birthplace and rightful owner of these ideas.
REgarding the concept of BO disarming America, don’t you think it’s more likely that he’ll rent them out to the highest bidder? The UN has been pleading, demanding and whining about getting control of America’s military (and all its nifty-neato toys) for years now. All Obama has to do is cede control to the UN or NATO in exchange for some budget-balancing funds flowing in, and then he’ll be able to really crow about his brilliance. I sincerely hope the SOB has been impeached before he can get that far.
Should Obama try anything like “renting out” the US military to NATO or, worse, the U.N., the mildest result he could expect would be impeachment.
Well said, and with blunt clarity.
Mr. Hanson, I wish you would inform your readers of your travels plans, as I would have gladly made the drive down to Münich to buy you a Weißbier und Weißwurst with the hopes of a conversation. Shame on you. You seem to have picked up an international following of late.
Regarding different cultural temperaments and habits, I noted several years ago when crossing from German speaking Switzerland to French speaking Switzerland the houses and yards changed from spic-and-span orderliness to something significantly less so.
Culture matters.
One more:
I think the Turks are for Germany what the Mexicans are for the USA.
And by the way. I buy every week some Schweizer Franken. Gold is already to expensive and difficult to get.
The 19th Century …
We may see a return of the Ottoman Empire in the form of Turkey taking back the lead in the Islamic world, and with the failure of the EU the entire 20th Century would look like an opportunity that the world failed to take advantage of. For all the talk about unifying and reordering, we may well see the equivalent of the Hapsburg Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Russian Empire, all return. Maybe the US will focus on self-sufficiency and being a and Pacific oriented power after wasting a century being the rich uncle and whipping boy for Europe.
It’s funny how all those fears and panics over various “New World Order” conspiracies never framed the dangerous future as a return of the “Old World Order”
Regards
The writer’s analysis is wrong.
Germany is filled with pacifist liberals. Nationalism? A very dirty word in Germany. (Yes, I live in Germany.)
The first time Germans ever waved their flags in mass in Germany was during the last World Soccer Championship held in Germany 4 years ago. Germans were shocked that other Germans would so brazenly wave the German flag from their houses or cars.
Forget about a rise of Nationalism in Germany.
Which country wouldn’t be a bit upset if their country has to foot the bills for some other the bankrupt nation? I see Greece being booted out of the Euro zone as a worst case scenario. (And perhaps others.)
One must remember that Chancellor Merkel is a protege’ of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who helped push the Euro idea through. Even in his retirement Kohl is still pushing for the Euro. This has to have some effect on Merkel.
The Germans making nuclear weapons??? No way. They are already trying to shut down all the nuclear power plants in Germany. If one took a vote in Germany today the majority would probably vote to disband the scrawny military it has left. There are just over 250,000 troops in the entire Army, Navy and Air Force. Most have zero war/fighting experience.
The post WWII German form of parliamentary government was set up that there is virtually no way any Hitler-type leader could rise to power. People in Germany do not even directly vote for the new Chancellor; they vote for the party which picked their candidate. For a new “nationalist” type party to start up and get in the Bundestag would be nearly impossible. It would take too long and their are too many hurdles to pass. Keep in mind that individuals do not run for the Chancellor office (no independent startup 3rd or 4th parties), the parties run for office of Chancellor. And rarely, if never, in modern times has one party had a majority to control Parliament; there is always a coalition government made of multiple parties.
The German people look at themselves as being liberal, leaning big government socialistic, capitalistic, cosmopolitan, educated and multi-cultural. (Over 4 million Muslims live in a German population of 88 million.) Germans travel the most outside their country of any nation.
And the German population is aging and getting smaller – there is no mood for expanionistic activities in an aging population. The birth rate is negative; There were over 150,000 Germans this year as last year.
The biggest loser is all of this is the United States. Obama is the absolute worst President at the worst time. He provides zero leadership and given a choice of alternatives Obama choses that one that is worst for the US and the western world.
If Russia was stronger (it is old, poor and dying) then the Europeans would start heeding the newSoviets.
The Obama dream would be everything crumbles and then a new world government under the UN would rule things.
One not fear from the Germans reviving the WWII-era Nationalistic days. The biggest enemy is in the US with its debt and leadership problem. And the second biggest problem is the potential of Mexico invading the US. Not the government, but the people. All lead and coordinated thru a Chavez, Iran, Chinese, Russian axis.
Exactly. Long before a nuclear bomb is exploded by terrorists, the population bombs have already been detonated.
Silent weapons in a quiet war.
And used together with the agitprop soft weapons as favoured by Barry “Doctor Utopia” Soetoro and his controllers… A near-fatal geopolitical blitzkrieg.
While the Germans are certainly going to resist going nuclear, lets see how they react to the continuing withdrawal of the United States from the world arena. I think that within a year after Iran detonates its first nuclear weapon Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are likely to have their own “Force de Frappe” mainly because they have already experienced life under the tender guidance of the Russians and they would not like to repeat the experience. Within five years afterwards Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria are likely to join the club. And that is just in Europe.
How do you think the Germans are likely to react to being the only significant European country without a nuclear arsenal? Especially when they figure that the US is retreating back into another period of isolationism.
This has been an amazing thread I might add.
Rarely do I read through almost all of the comments on a thread this long.
Incredible thread. Usually the obsequious “spot on” comments stop me cold about halfway through. This thread leaves my head spinning! Just the same, I’d say you’d better watch out for those pacifistic Girly Men when they find out their bank accounts are worthless. Anyone who has ever stereotyped a German knows what that means.
The only problem I see with an angry nuclear German military marching off to force fiscal responsibility on a socialists country like Greece would be the odds of their turning left and northwest and marching into Poland.
“These are our financial and territorial demands.”
Good read Dr. Hanson.
But do not fear,
Obama and his teleprompter will stop them.
You do not have to have a huge army to take over much of anything if you have the technology: you kill the enemy back until they can no longer resist even a small force. As pointed out higher up, nuclear devices are the reductio ad absurdum of Total War – the lowest cost for the greatest amount of destruction. The mass armies of old have gone the way of the Dodo, as observed by the forces the US deployed in Iraq being equal in numbers to the amount that was deployed in the Philippines after the P-A war. The death toll on those in the P-A post-war period was high, in Iraq negligible – high tech, especially medical technology, became a force multiplier. Precisions munition delivered by their hundreds at great distance allowed tiny forces in Iraq to control large areas… a re-militarized Germany can do the same abroad, and at home.
It is the unassimilated in Europe that threaten all of the continent: Ali and Mohommed become the majority names, nations become balkanized (like France with its no-go zones), and the old native populations find themselves being outdone by a poorer yet more procreative minority that puts demographics on its side. Unless, that is, force multipliers are used. It cannot be forgotten that it was France that had the concept of cordon sanitaire, and that self-sealing migrant neighborhoods fit the bill for that by definition. If Greece pulls Germany into the economic abyss, Germans may point their finger outward but in the lack of economy and having their own population segment that is not functioning, might not that be seen as a primary drag to a Nation, even if it isn’t? This makes the Europe of today unlike that of over a century ago – then Europe was vibrant, now it is in economic decline due to ‘social services’. Then there were ethnically homogeneous populations, now imported foreign labor is dividing up old social systems and identities. Then there was a clear understanding of force as a necessary external system between Nations to defend against other Nations, now if the threat is seen at home force becomes an internal system to re-align internal political realities which would complete the transition started during WWII from external war to internal war against segments of populations seen as foreign or unnecessary. That is not a pleasant thought, but it must be expressed so we are not caught unawares by a horrific concept returned to Europe.
America, meanwhile, has forgotten the basics of what a Nation is and how one operates, so is it any wonder it slides into decadence? When elites believe they can dictate the nature of man from government, that is not a sign of enlightenment but debasement. Europe, too, has this problem natively, but in America it is now being seen as an unwanted import… the concept that social services will create wealth and prosperity now reveal themselves, in full, as a ponzi scheme writ large by those who claim to know more and better than the common man. And when one finds out that their hard earned future is gone, the reaction in America will not be the European one, but distinctly different as the treatment given to such elites has historically involved tar, feathers and rails. That usually does not kill the recipient, but makes them the long term subject of ridicule and scorn… something the elite will now need to re-learn as their house of cards, promised to always be there, now collapses. Obama is finding he can only do so much, only so fast and that the systems he wishes to overload are now overloading in ways that were not expected. Instead of embrace of change, he finds rejection of it not only the recent material but more and more heading into past systems now seen as destructive. What comes next isn’t fun nor good… and if you don’t have America to kick around anymore, then just who will Europe kick around? Especially when you know that this time America will not arrive to help.
Have you noticed ? Obama first fomented conflict between individuals, then between states, and now between nations. His only hope for a second term is to have an attack on the homeland. Perhaps his muslim brothers and other U.S. haters can accomodate. Who could not support a president during such times ? In many ways the USA seems rather like Germany pre WW2. Would be good to hear from VDH on this.
I do not see it as a “German problem” if all the Germans do is cut off the parasitic nations of Southern Europe. A German who has worked 40 hours a week until he is 67 has every right to say no to an idolent Greek who spent that time gossiping over coffee. Additionally, it will be the Germans who eventually lead Europe in its inevitable war with Islam. Blood will flow in the streets (or strasses).
While I tend to agree with those here who point out Germany’s demographic drawbacks for the project of repeating the excursions of the 1860s-1940s period, the professor is right about a larger point.
The terms I would put it in are this: geopolitics abhors a vacuum. The US in retreat is leaving one. All the forces that have been held in check by American dominance since 1945 will reemerge. One of those forces is generated by Germany’s national character and geographic position: centered in Europe, with difficult-to-defend borders (and access to the sea at the sufferance of other nations), between France and England on one side and Russia on the other.
This situation sets a challenge for a national character that the Prussian Germans have met by unifying their less-aggressive ethnic fellows, and being too hard a nut for their immediate neighbors to crack. Under certain leaders and certain conditions, this posture of alert readiness for aggression, predicated on defensive consolidation of culturally congruent territory, has sometimes shifted to preemptive attack in the recent past.
The very biggest reason it hasn’t, in the years since 1945, is that the US has implicitly guaranteed the status quo in Europe. Nothing has met the tipping point in menacing Germany’s national position.
But the physical terrain hasn’t changed. As the political conditions do, Germany is one of the European nations most likely to perceive a need to adjust her security situation as it deteriorates to her disadvantage. And it will, if Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine become effective vassals of Russia, and the failed fantasy economies of southern Europe demand to plunder German savings accounts.
I’m not convinced today’s Germany will see preemptive war as an answer. But we may be seeing already the outlines of what the interim answer will be: a tacit alliance with Russia. The ideological barrier to such an accord is no longer what it was during the Cold War. Germany is already the NATO European nation most interlinked with Russia’s natural gas empire. Other issues like Muslim immigration, relations with Turkey, and the disposition of Poland tend to find Germans and Russians in sympathy rather than the reverse. The main condition needed, for Germany, like other European nations, to rethink her security arrangments, is for American power to become a nullity in continental dynamics.
When it does, we will find that stability is not a natural condition, and even demographically challenged nations can find war to be not their policy choice, but their only policy answer. An international power realignment not supervised by us will be the ugliest thing we have faced in our lifetimes. Nothing we have assumed for the last 65 years will hold true.
Armageddon Rex @ 25
AR: You have never seen the elephant.
MR: I have never been an infantryman in ground combat,
but the US has many troops who have, and they will be the strongest voices, and votes, for non-military solutions to economic problems, particularly if the Progressives try to save money by cutting the size of the military.
AR: Martial might trumps economic development
MR: True, Iron trumps Gold, when the players are roughly equal, but war between 1st world countries is so destructive that victory is phyrric: A lesser defeat.
_Hopefully_ Europe has noted the greater ROI of economic vs military conquest.
AR: Mysore, Ch’aka Zulu, Carthaginians, Montezuma, Atahualpa
MR: Mysore had the mixed luck to be conquered and administered by the British Raj, and a successor state exists today; The Carthaginians had the bad luck to be in competition with Rome, and would not accept defeat, so they were destroyed. The other primitive cultures you listed are dead, and gone, and good riddance; Most people, probably including you, do not realize just how horrific they were. Further, those countries were _more_ aggressive and militaristic than their enemies;
They lost because they were tactically and technically inferior in war.
AR: Progressives deserve Purgatory for Mil-Tech malfeasance.
MR: Doubtless they do; However, since they were freely elected by the People, who have been happily gobbling up consumer goods and avoiding military service for the last fifty years, they will have lots of company, if the Hell-on-Earth they are all going to experience, starting
in a few years, is not punishment enough.
The good news is that there will be a narrow window of opportunity for the development of enough new technology to generate wealth and weaponry sufficient to power and protect the 1st world;
The Chinese are the only major military adversary, and they were winning economic wars against their opponents before there was such a place as Europe, let alone the U.S.ofA; They will protect their economic sphere of influence in the China Sea and the Pacific, but they are not about to invade CONUS or Europe (Hawaii, Alaska, and Africa are conquests of a different color).
The Muslims may try, and end up like Carthage.
Life is not fair, to any of us;
This is not news, or cause for complaint.
We are doing for Mexico de facto what the EU is doing for Greece, except that we’re not imposing any conditions. We employ millions of Mexicans who send money back home while their government teeters on the edge of bankruptcy.
I was born in the Netherlands and am a naturlized American citizen. I just got back from living in Germany for quite a while too. The Germans are starting to be less ashamed and timid about expressing their nationality. There are a zillion cars with little German flags fluttering off of them everywhere. There are a bunch of German and Dutch people that are very wary of their Muslim residents. Last year during elections in Germany I saw posters everywhere that said “Germany without Turkey”. They really really don’t want to admit Turkey into the EU.
Yes, there is some anti American sentiment growing too. But I don’t think Germany will continue to suffer insults and disrespect without doing something about it. Some of my German friends are really pissed at Greece too. One friend emailed me a cartoon of the Parthenon where the columns were replaced by sitting vultures holding it up.
Whew!
Good post, great thread! Lots of pretty well-thought points. Some may even be right.
Personally, I think Germany will get pretty pissed at Greece and end up taking it out on the moslems first…I hope. We all need to expel islam from the west. It’s our greatest threat. Economies can recover, ideas can be seen as failures or successes over time and voters can act accordingly, but when society fragments, amd it will, islam will step in and waste no time working it’s way through the populations. When Iran goes nucler, Europe will be effectively held hostage and will beg the US for it’s missle defense (the one obama/gates are defunding) or go one of two roads; submit or retaliate in kind and in full.
No matter what happens, our future is going to be full of the horrors of war. The exact form it takes is anybody’s guess, but no honest observer can convince me otherwise.
The multitude of principalities comprising the soul of Mitteleuropa has a long history of peripeties (notably the iconic Treaty of Westphalia) on its ascent towards realizing the unifying trajectory of German “e pluribus unum.” If history has a value, or possesses any truth, is it not, first, that it repeats itself?
The easy evocation of dissimilar behavior evident in modern Greeks and Germans—which can equally be said of any American city with a population of several hundred of thousands, if the speech police were to allow it—pays tribute to history’s heavy hand in predicting the accomplishments of human endeavor, or lack thereof.
Why would those with a history of hard work, a symbol of their heritage, fail to form a grievance against those who do not? Why would anyone fall into the myopia of our historic first Islamic apostate president’s enthrallment with the noblesse of the third world?
German assertiveness is anathema to post-WWII sensibilities, but history has no conscious. Only the weak assert the strong have to appease weakness. When Mitteleuropa regroups anew, its standing will be tat of an ally in our pursuit of the defeat of those who have the goal of fundamentally transforming our way of life.
“History has no conscious.”?? Perfect.
The only redeeming thing about this thread is that some people get to share their real-world experiences in Europe, BUT…
VDH’s, er “creative” column of sweeping pronouncements triggered by a visit to one of Munich’s nicer sections, has, in turn, set off a burst of sweeping pronouncements by PJM readers. It seems, that although no one in Germany, or Greece, for that matter, has to take a suitcase of money to the bakers in order to buy bread, things are indeed worse right now, than at any time since the French Revolution. Why? Because Obama is President, which means that the sky is falling in a way that it has never fallen before.
Obviously, political (and all?) discussions tend to get ignored, unless they employ hyperbole. The problem is, though, that if you scan down the titles of the articles on the PJM Home page on any given day, you get the sense that a creative writing class of a middle curriculum has been given the assignment (day after day, week after week) to find new ways of telling us how the winner of the last American Presidential election is a villain, a scamp, a scoundrel, and, oh yeah, incompetent too. VDH, whom one would assume should be able to supply at least some reasonable historical context, also falls in line by multiple columns on how Obama is the worst, or in this case, wurst. Is it too much to ask for more balanced historical context, or does all have to be in thrall to politics?
“No conscious,” indeed.
German nationalism won’t be able to blame it’s impatience on the Jews this time. It’ll be their cultural neighbors in Greece. And Portugal. And Spain. And Italy. And ultimately in Belgium.
The last time I read this piece it was entitled “The Gathering Storm.’
First af all VDH is right in his analysis that the european contries differ very much. Thats the point why the Euro will fail.
Germany has in fact a big problem with its national identity which has been defined by strong currency and exportation of high end technical products so far.
Social security is a kind of religion in Germany blocking all reforms consequently. The political parties in Germany define no national policies in favour for the German citizens. This facelesness mounts in the intent to replace at the Reichstag in Berlin the national banners by the European banner. National symbols lack all public places. To round up the insane situation of national negation the Cancellor A. Merkel thanked the Red Army for liberating Germany 65 years ago on the 8th may this year. Anyone who deals with history knows that the influx of the Red Army in Europe meant millions of death.
In fact we have no national policies in Germany at all which may lead in the opposite. A kind of civil war within the european union similar to the schisms of former Yugoslavia is in sight.
“The eurozone won’t be fixed until Germany figures out how to generate growth and wealth without beggaring its neighbors and its trading partners”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/20/AR2010052005278.html
The last time I read this piece it was entitled “The Gathering Storm.’
A few historical facts to at least raise some questions. While it is true that Germany has undergone a population contraction of its younger people, it is worth remembering that 1939 Germany on the eve of its blitz also had a deficit of about one million men in its 20-24 age group due to the low fertility caused by World war I and its aftermath. It made up for this population deficit by expanding its recruitment pool to volksdeutsch in neighboring countries and by convincing the Rumanians, Hungarians, Finns and Italians to join its war on the Soviet Union.
Maybe this time the Germans will decide to institute a democratic republic and true capitalistic society. Then maybe we can hope they take over most of Europe. Heck, then we can escape to the new promised land. Hey, I can dream can’t I?
I don’t see why people insist on equating the Germany of WWII with the Germany of WWI.
WWI was primarily a bunch of colonial powers fighting amongst each other to see who would get the best colonies. Germany and it’s allies lost, but that doesn’t mean that they were in anyway more evil than Britain and it’s allies. (Including the US, which should have stayed out of that war.)
Oh, how prescient Patton was. And if the Western Allies had taken his advice to turn their guns on the Russians as soon as the Germans surrendered, we would be living in a completely different world now. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, and Leftist thinking was allowed to persist, fester, and metastasize. Western Civilization, over the coming half-century, is about to pay a terrible price for that mistake. But I think the pronouncements of Europe’s demise are a bit apocalyptic.
Human nature is human nature, regardless of culture, time, or place. And while, I too, see the inherent danger associated with the low birthrates in not only Germany, but all of Europe, I don’t really envision a “fall of Europe” to the Muslim hordes. Why? Because everyone’s a pacifist…until they get punched in the mouth for the first time. When push comes to shove – and that push is coming soon in historical terms – the Germans will remember who they are, as will the rest of Europe. As the saying goes, they will “put away childish things” and open their eyes to the reality that surrounds them: namely, that they’ve allowed a barbarian horde to enter the gates. When that happens, the reaction is going to be swift and brutal.
I sincerely believe that Europe is about to face a cultural earthquake, the likes of which hasn’t been seen on the continent since Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, effectively ending a 1,400 year age of princes and kings. For over a thousand years, the average European toiled under a system that required personal responsibility while offering no personal freedom. For the past 60 years, they have indulged in a system that offers personal freedom without personal resposibility. One can only hope that, following the trying times that lie ahead for them, they will finally learn to balance the two.
Mr. Hansen, you mention the mediochre German industries of Mercedes and BMW. You forget the Porsche 911 cabriolet. Any people who can make the Porsche cab can do anything. Long live Deutschland. A large population does not mean a great race. Just look at the usual make-up of large populations…pretty yukky and exist on contributions.
Coisty, you have the same problem a lot of lefties have. You can’t get it into your head that Bush is no longer president. The buck now stops on Obama’s desk, and he is doing a piss poor job of owning it. VDH is merely focusing on the present reality. You would be wise to emulate his example.
I am going out on a limb here, since others know a lot more about modern-day Germany than I, but I am guessing that a military resurgence is a long way off. What is missing are a charismatic leader and a unifying symbol, ein Fuehrer, ein Volk. Hitler, despite or perhaps because of his demonic maliciousness, was indeed charismatic and could move a crowd. The infiltration of Moslems has certainly diluted das Volk. Also, the Germans of the post-WWI era did not embrace utopian pacificism; their military ambitions only smoldered in resentment.
So–again, I could be wrong–I don’t see the Germans standing up to the jihadis or even weaning themselves off nanny-state socialism enough to become real Wagnerian heroes.
JE Dyer @ 60 makes an excellent point, that is,
conjecture may or may not be dissuaded by
the facts on hand. For all of the talk of current
German hedonism, I do seem to recall reading a
bit about Weimar Berlin’s cabaret shows…
Phooey. The Germans are no threat to anyone, and for reasons given in many of the preceding posts. A sloppy, lazy piece of analysis by Hanson.
Great thread and it is good to see so many people who see the potential problems we are facing.
I have just a few thoughts…
To me its about the invasion of the Muslim from the middle east and africa. The European nations subsidize this silent invasion because it seems better then having to actually pick up a gun and fight but they can only put it on ignore for so long and because of the birthrate, it might even be too late to fix. Germany’s population as well as Europe will soon be overtaken by the Muslim and the African. Show me a society that is even slightly successful where the majority population is black or Muslim. Thats why we are headed into a downward spiral. Tell me all these European countries wont be run by Chavez types in 20 years. There will be no EU.
In the past, the lazy European and the socialist government could always be laughed at and tolerated because they didnt have such a population influx from non europeans and they reminded us of our own history. They have always been a laughing stock, but now that their problems are causing us additional problems which are compounded because of our own incompetant leadership, it is not a situation we can ignore if we want to preserve our american way of life.
The lack of nationalism is just an indication that people do not want to be labled racists so it gets scaled back which is a shame because all the muslims and mexicans are the first to wave a flag while trying to destroy another country.
Ultimately Europe is Zimbabwe in 50 years or sooner and we are not far behind. We are war with the muslims again and this time we are not fighting and will lose. The sad thing is all these countries with muslim problems would love to see the USA destroyed even if we have been the place that kept things in check through or strength which seems to be gone now because we are a wussified society.
Its a shame to see the european culture diluted because like their socialist mindset or not, they are a people that americans have a lot in common with. Obama wants us shaped in his mold so people can feel the sorrow and sadness that he felt growing up with no identity.
Interesting times.
Considering the rapidly advancing islamization of Europe, a German invasion and subsequent occupation might be the best that Germany’s neighbors could hope for. It won’t happen though. Even today Germans are having a hard time controlling what is happening in their own cities. I doubt they will be able to occupy Berlin 20 years from now.
Quite interesting views on Germany and the Germans. But here comes an authentic opinion “Made in Germany”.
Forget about Nazi-Germany. Worry about Muslims in Germany and the rest of Europe.
In Europe, the same happens as in Arizona or California. As far as I know, Americans are not amused to be conquered by Latinos. But really, you should pray for them: they are catholics, they want to become true US-Citizens, and they come to work hard for a better future. And not to forget, they bring latin culture, music, beauty.
What about Muslims (Turks and Arabs) in Germany. They come to abuse the Wellfare-System, they live as aliens in a country they not even accept. They either hate it or they just abuse it.
They have many angry kids, that are just useless by (admittedly high) German standards, and that feel as such.
They are true believers and can easily be formed into troops.
And last not least – they are not alone, but they are
i) highly supported by the German “Gutmensch”
ii) part of a rapidly growing “European Muslim Brotherhood”.
In only a few decades Europe will be the worst enemy of the US. But it will not be the Europeans Europe, but an agressive young Islamic Europe, now powered by European technology, economy and competence.
That’s really scaring – and unfortunately quite realistic
Some observations from someone who lived and worked in Germany for many years and more importantly was accepted and invited into the German circle, which is quite rare.
firstly this thing about the Germans being different now in that they don’t work as hard misses the point entirely.
The germans are the most focused people on the planet and consequently are the most efficient workers in the world. this means that 1 hour of german work does not equate to one hour of another race.
Also the germans are the most logical people on the planet and they can change their point of view and actions in a heart beat if they understand that the situation has changed.
I personally do not fear any of these national traits as I have great hope that this time it will be the Germans who revolt and blow away all the relativistic PC lies and illusions and see it for what it really is – Cultural Marxism , Wir Mussen!!
Sometimes I wonder if Roger Simon realizes what sort of comments this site attracts. It’s not at all hard to see why the Nazis had so many fervent supporters in their time. Beneath the surface, little has changed for many people. I mean that seriously.
2 thoughts:
1. Europe as we know it today exists primarily because of America’s role as provider and protector. If not for the Marshall Plan, you’d all be speaking Russian. America’s role of benevolent security provider through NATO has allowed the continent to work together and rebuild their economies to the level they are today. It has allowed the Nazis to quietly return to their lives unmolested and go from murdering babies back to building BMWs without Germany’s neighbors being understandably hell bent on taking revenge.
Without this sort of US involvement, the scab of Europe is ripped open and the old wounds bleed.
2. There are still people alive in Germany who enthusiastically perpetrated the extermination of civlilians. There are still enthusiastic Nazis around. And there are still people who survived the German murderers alive in the world. In a few years there will be neither. By all rights, Germany should have been left to the wolves in 1945, but because of American intervention they weren’t. Germans know this. They feel shame for what they did and for the way their 1930s arrogance was turned into 1940s humiliation.
As the last of the Real Men (thank you Herr Fink) of 1939-45 Germany die off, Germans will feel even less reason to feel guilty for the horrors their grandparents enthusiastically perpetrated. People mention the sight of German flags slowly returning to public view. It will continue to increase gradually once the shame and guilt wear off.
Looking at points 1 and 2 together lead me to believe the future is bright for heel clicking German nationalists…..and a grim day for everyone else. People in Germany who look Muslim would do well to read the comments above, take a look at the Real Men of modern German history and what they’re capable of doing to women and children of auslanders and untermenschen, and start stockpiling weapons.
The best case to be made concerning the dangers of a re-emergent German nationalism is the geographic one. Threats that emerge from the east historically come through the flatland of Poland (bypassing the impenetrable mountains in Czechoslovakia), and lead to first, to Northern Germany, but secondly, to an access to western Europe as well), and if Germany is or feels threatened, then they can arguably, and perhaps shrewdly make the case that it is in their defensive interest to unite for the goal of defending themselves against the invading Huns from the east. if they become militaristic (yet again), it will be because of this ages old fact and would explain the ingrained , (although atavistic in recent times) German militarism (historically) in the first place.
The signatories pointed out that meets the press a public mission. In case of misuse of duties and rights and the loss of trust a free press has an obligation to inform the public.
Ambassador Media Press UG Germany Phone + 49 4381- 4161711 Fax + 49 4381- 4161713 email L.Boesselmann@googlemail.com
Germany broke the Treaty of the European Convention on Human Rights again
Society & Politics Press release from 06/24/.2010
The Applicant Lothar B. has present his complaint under Article 34 the European Convention on Human Rights and Rules 45 and 47 of the rules of Court and a urgent Application for interim injunction against the Federal Republic of Germany.
Violation of the Convention Article 3, 5, 6, 7 Part 1, 8 Part 1, 9 Part 1, 13, 14 and the violation of property under the additional protocol to the ECHR.
Criminals in black robe: “The Sly Judge Rambo Stein” from the Regional Court of Germany and the Ex-President of of the regional Court and today Minister of Justice of the Regional Government Schleswig-Holstein Emil Schmalfuß break the convention of human rights ECHR. What’s going on Chancellor Merkel and Federal Minister of Justice Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger. You don’t shame when Germany crashed and your guarantee of the Convention are useless?
Statement of alleged violations of the Convention and protocols of relevant arguments
The first Part of violation
The complainant was convicted in the District Court on 08/26/2008 Neumünster to one year imprisonment without parole. A lawyer, he was requested by him despite his health problems known to the court six days before the date of refusal. The next day, the 08/27/2008, the complainant submitted an appeal by mistake, since he has not been sufficiently informed by the court and had no lawyer. On the file the complaint with the Higher Regional Court of Schleswig – Holstein revision would have to insert by a lawyer. The reasons of already inadequate in the opinion of the district court. It was negotiated against him four hours and 41 minutes. The hearing was due to the illness of the complainant four times to be interrupted. The complainant was hindered in his legal defense, the judge yelled at and insulted on several occasions.
The second Part of violation
Already on 06/10/2010 occurred before the 12th little criminal division at the Regional Court of Kiel an unusual court hearing was start on 06/17/2010. After the defendant to stand trial Lothar B. confess simply did not want him to have committed the alleged crimes and did not want to withdraw the appointment to a sworn statement of a witness, prosecutor conjured Dr.Thorsten Holleck. in Rambo-style suddenly an alleged blackout risk from the case and requested custody. The accused is evidence (brought to its discharge) and the witnesses Volker Sch.und have visited his wife (whom the defendant since 3/12/2007 know) to drink with them a cup of coffee. This incident should have been already one week before the Local Court Judgment 08/26/2008. Judge Rambo Stein proclaimed “As agreed, then obviously the pre-trial detention, after he had offered the defendants unsuccessfully on 06/03/2010 already” a deal that could not refuse. ” Lothar B. The accused had no reason to accept this deal one year imprisonment on probation to the delight of “sly prosecutor”, judge and jury to cure its procedural and unconstitutional law and the convention and the law, against whom he regularly at the court hearings proceed with complaints under the European Human Rights Convention.
Obviously still a quick sentence for the Rambos by the district court and the district court of former President Emil Sch. cause to celebrate, the defendant was deprived of his liberty unlawfully to him to sign a withdrawal of the appeal to “persuade”. The psychogenic aphonia in a (speech up to the speechlessness) and other diseases suffering Lothar B. was of the order of the trial and the previously handed down decisions of Judge Rambo stone traumatized and shocked. He was led away in handcuffs and locked in a small detention room of the District Court. After a while the Rambos Atilla A. the lawyer sent a new offer, which could not reject the defendant “. He had only understood that he could go after the signature home to his family. Thus he was led back into the courtroom and signed without his glasses, a document whose contents were unknown to him and he could not read. A copy was not handed to him and not delivered. After today, lawyer Gernot Sch. has visit “Judge Rambo Stein” is certain that the accused unlawfully by his signature apparently withdrawn the appeal.
For Chancellor Angela Merkel is the observance of human rights the foundation of German foreign policy. To mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Amnesty International had denounced human rights violations in Germany. The General Secretary of the German Section, Barbara Lochbihler complained to deal with asylum seekers and refugees, violent excesses of German police officers and a German co-responsibility for human rights violations.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UN Resolution 217 A III was adopted in 1948 by the UN General Assembly against the background of terror of the Second World War and the Nazi regime. The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and fundamental freedoms of the ECHR as amended by Protocol No. 11
The text of the Convention was amended in accordance with the provisions
• Protocol 3 (ETS No. 45), entered into force on 21 September 1970
• of Protocol No. 5 (ETS No. 55), entered into force on 20 December 1971 and
• of Protocol No. 8 (ETS No. 118), entered into force on 1 January 1990.
It included also the text of Protocol No. 2 (ETS No. 44), which, according to article 5 paragraph 3, on the 21st since its entry into force September 1970 was part of the convention. All provisions that were modified or added by these Protocols are on the entry into force of Protocol No. 11 (ETS No. 155) 1 November 1998 replaced by the latter. From that time on 1 October 1994 repeal came into force Protocol No. 9 (CETS No. 140).
Serious human rights violations are still all over the world. The conditions would have to be designed around the world so that human rights can also be lived, “said Merkel. At the same time must be taken to ensure that governments are strong enough to tackle non-governmental organizations, human rights violated.
What now, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Federal Minister of Justice Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger? Probably there will be another devastating indictment after the Gäfgen Application No. 22978/05, with far greater consequences against Germany because of inhuman treatment, violation of fair trial, persecution of an innocent person and injury to property in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Germany stresses to respect human rights and international conventions and draw other states for the convention to conduct the human rights pillory. The case Gäfgen suggested in the population to the discussion of whether the threat of force in conventional and unlawful exercise of state institutions as a means to achieve appropriate statements. However, it has clearly shown that the ECHR said explicitly in his last sentence, that inhuman treatment and torture by orders of superiors to their subordinates, not the means to an end and so the convention is. Here was the ECHR in Strasbourg pointed on the so-called Daschner process before the Regional Court Frankfurt. There are the perpetrators have been punished too mild.
As the case is heard by the ECHR Bösselmann remains to be seen, as the complaint under Article 3, 6, 7 and 14 were made in Section 1 and Article 41 European Convention on Human Rights only. The question was raised but now that the Federal Republic of Germany can’t afford even a second case Gäfgen a much larger extent, since the signature of the state guarantees its citizens rights under the ECHR, which, if they hurt constantly, impact on membership have the community can. If it becomes clear that Germany will be called soon with China, Burma, Iran and other countries against convention in the same breath, the Federal Chancellor Merkel not human rights as a cornerstone of German foreign policy and denouncing represent other states and at the same time the citizens in their own country deny these rights. That would be absurd in the matter.
The federal government should rethink whether they want to be by against convention behavior of individual civil servants soon myself once again put on the human rights pillory, or disposed of immediate corrective society and the convention crimes against humanity for their information immediately and the criminals to existing criminal laws without delay with all sentencet hardness so that the known examples do not do school, find more imitators and perpetrators can continue to take the safety as the so-called judicial privileges and their imaginary independence.
Law
Federal Court of Germany >BGH, Verdict of 29.04.2010, 3 StR 314/09 main proceedings LG Kiel, BGH 2 StR 35/04, ECHR appeal no. 22978/05, Verdict Hamburger Kessel VG 2442/86, 830 Js 182/86, Verdict Daschner process Regional Court Frankfurt aM file number: 5 / 27 KL 7570 Js 203814/03 (4 / 04); BverfG NJW 85, 125; BGH 33, 126, 127, NJW 60, 2108; NStZ 84, 279; in arbitrary: BGH 29, 216; BverfG 29, 45, 49, BGH 10, 278, 281, 29, 351, 353, 33, 126, 127; NStZ 84; 279; Case Kraska. /. Switzerland Verdict of 04/19/1993, Series A, vol 254, p.48 Rz.26; Klein. /. Germany, no.33379/96, Verdict of 27/07/2000, Rz.26). In this context it is irrelevant whether it is in the process before the Federal Constitutional Court is a reference to the Federal Constitutional Court Act is preliminary decision under § 32 (Pammel and Probstmeier. /. Germany, Verdict of 07/01/1997, Reports 1997-IV, S.1109- 1110 and 1135-1136, Rz.53-58 and 48-53) or an anti-constitutional legal proceedings (Becker. /. Germany, No. 45448/99, Verdict from 09/26/2002.
Lothar Bösselmann
موضوع جميل
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I’ve been working in Germany for a year and I saw a rebirth of a new nationalism in Germany. People don’t show their flags as often as in other countries, but there’s a psycological opposition against foreigners. They try to tease you with unpleasent comments or they just not talk to you.
Their psyco holds a lot of problems that will bring Europe to the shame, again. So be aware of Germany, they lack any kind of emotional reaction and there is not comparison with any other culture in the world.
The article claims that this situation could make the german nationalism arise, people just don’t know what hides in every german householder’s brain. Most of them just pretend.
They should never trick you. British elderly know this by heart.