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The Great German Meltdown
Defining Ideas: Hoover Institute ^ | May 23, 2018 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 05/24/2018 7:02:57 AM PDT by C19fan

Every 20 to 50 years in Germany, things start unraveling. Germans feel aggrieved. Ideas and movements gyrate wildly between far left and far right extremes. And the Germans finally find consensus in a sense of victimhood paradoxically expressed as national chauvinism. Germany’s neighbors in 1870, 1914, 1939—and increasingly in the present—usually bear the brunt of this national meltdown.

Germany is supposed to be the economic powerhouse of Europe, its financial leader, and its trusted and responsible political center. Often it plays those roles superbly. But recently, it’s been cracking up—in a way that is hauntingly familiar to its European neighbors. On mass immigration, it is beginning to terrify the nearby nations of Eastern Europe. On Brexit, it bullies the British. On finance, it alienates the southern Europeans. On Russia, it irks the Baltic States and makes the Scandinavians uneasy by doing business with the Russian energy interests. And on all matters American, it increasingly seems incensed.

(Excerpt) Read more at hoover.org ...


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: angelamerkel; brexit; emmanuelmacron; europeanunion; france; germany; macron; nato; theresamay; unitedkingdom; vdh; victordavishanson
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To: fatboy

As a percent of GDP, Russia and France spent MORE on Defense than Germany did. Oh and France had conscripted a higher percentage of its male population into the military than Germany did. Given it had two hostile and well armed neighbors on its borders, you bet your azz Germany too was well armed. It had to be.

But I guess it doesn’t fit the narrative to admit that Russia and France were armed to the teeth too huh?


21 posted on 05/24/2018 8:40:18 AM PDT by FLT-bird (..)
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To: FLT-bird

I don’t think some yahoo nobody with a FR account (You) is going to get all that far claiming VDH is wrong on history “as usual.”


22 posted on 05/24/2018 8:51:40 AM PDT by anton
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To: C19fan

Napoleon coined a saying “if you set out take Vienna, take Vienna”. If Germany really, genuinely wants to make amends to Jews and Slavs, it should make amends to Jews and Slavs. I think Germany can’t actually stomach the thought of doing this with respect to Jews and Slavs since, deep down, they don’t really think there was anything wrong with the Final Solution, so they’re importing masses of Arabs and Africans as a kind of virtue-signaling exercise.


23 posted on 05/24/2018 8:54:58 AM PDT by Zhang Fei (Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.)
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To: anton

Ah so facts be damned. (you can look up GDP % spent on Defense for various countries and % of male population conscripted)

Just full on Appeal to Authority fallacy.

Got it.


24 posted on 05/24/2018 9:15:02 AM PDT by FLT-bird (..)
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To: Zhang Fei

Good theory except that the Germans have paid immense amounts of money to Israelis starting in the 1950’s and then later to Jews in the US and worldwide. I have not seen that the Germans have paid out to the slavs. But to this day the Germans as a people don’t have much self respect. Otherwise why would they import people whose only desire is to rape and pillage them.


25 posted on 05/24/2018 9:23:06 AM PDT by ckilmer (q e)
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To: fatboy

“And it was just a dumb luck that Germany had a huge army and navy. And detailed plans to invade France via Belgium. And to counter Russia in the east.”

Hmm, the USA has a huge army and navy, and our military has contingency plans for every possible scenario, for example, how best to invade and annex Canada.

Does that prove we are planning to commit aggressive war against our neighbors?


26 posted on 05/24/2018 9:30:46 AM PDT by Boogieman
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To: Bonemaker

That is the classic argument; however, NAZI is an acronym for “National Socialist Workers Party”. Socialists are left. The battle between the commies and the NAZIS was for the control of the country, not the political ideology.


27 posted on 05/24/2018 9:31:25 AM PDT by GingisK
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To: C19fan

I take issue with the 1870 thing. That was not Germany going off the rails that was the great Bismark creating modern Germany.


28 posted on 05/24/2018 9:42:51 AM PDT by jpsb
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To: FLT-bird

Russia and France were world wide empires. Brittan also. Germany wanted to be a world wide empire. That is why they were better prepared and used the excuse to invade France. Germany wanted to be the big cheese in Europe and took steps to accomplish that goal.

Germany wanted this war. This is why the Keiser didn’t even try to avoid committing Germany into a war over the Austro-Hungary infighting. This is why the Keiser and the German high command was furious when they found out that Charles I was negotiating an exit to the war with France.

I used to think that it wasn’t that difficult to understand but I’ve been wrong before.


29 posted on 05/24/2018 9:45:04 AM PDT by fatboy
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To: FLT-bird

True, the Germans got a royal screwing in WW1, with a BIG assist from the French.


30 posted on 05/24/2018 9:47:29 AM PDT by jpsb
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To: ckilmer

“Good theory except that the Germans have paid immense amounts of money to Israelis starting in the 1950’s and then later to Jews in the US and worldwide.”


The property losses alone were estimated by David ben Gurion at $3b dollars. The Germans paid 3 billion marks, which pencils out to $750m at the average exchange rate of the period of the payments. At best, the Germans paid a fraction of the property losses incurred of the 6m Jews they killed. If we assume that the average lifetime earnings of each Jew would have been worth $50K at the time, the survivors of the 6m Jews would have been owed $300b. The $750m actually paid represents a fraction of the property losses to Jews, and not even 1% of the value of Jewish lives lost. In effect, Jews paid for the reconstruction of Germany.

http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/projects/currency.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reparations_Agreement_between_Israel_and_West_Germany
Despite the protests, the agreement was signed in September 1952, and West Germany paid Israel a sum of 3 billion marks in total over the next fourteen years. That


31 posted on 05/24/2018 9:51:21 AM PDT by Zhang Fei (Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.)
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To: fatboy
"Germany wanted this war."

Then the German high command were fools. No sane leader wants a two front war against powerful adversaries. You are out flanked before the fighting even starts.

32 posted on 05/24/2018 9:57:12 AM PDT by jpsb
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To: C19fan

Yes, but what military it even has now is laughable. Total keystone capers.


33 posted on 05/24/2018 9:57:23 AM PDT by Sam Gamgee
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To: FLT-bird

I see many crimes on the Allied side in WWI. The British just couldn’t handle another power rivaling them, so they needed to take Germany down a peg.

Wilson lied his bald face off, promising to never get into that war, only to do so.

And you are correct. Germany had just recently consolidated and was still very weak financially and militarily. It had no desire whatsoever to get into a war.


34 posted on 05/24/2018 10:00:06 AM PDT by Sam Gamgee
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To: FLT-bird

And the Serbs came out nicely from the war, with a territory many times its original size. Another “gift” from Wilson.


35 posted on 05/24/2018 10:01:17 AM PDT by Sam Gamgee
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To: BRL

They can still engineer stuff but they are morally bankrupt.they still hate jews, they just do it now by proxy....import muslims
...........
It would be more correct to say that the Germans hate themselves. I read a jersalem post writer say a couple years ago that he went to Germany. He knew quite well that Russian Jews were the second largest ethinic group after the great russians in the russian communist party —and therefor —played a significant part in the mass murders in the old soviet union. A lot of Russia’s jews—including former communist party and red army people had subsequently moved to Israel. This was just history. So the writer was prepared to let bygones be bygones. Especially since Israel had become a successful country. But the Germans the Israeli writer met would not have it. They would not let go of their guilt. They believed they had done not just a terrible thing—but an unforgivable thing.

Its the Germans own self hatred that’s killing them — not antisemitism. The moslems they’re importing after all —are semites. Heck the moslems want the germans dead. They’ll likely be more effective at that job than jews. But the moslems are merely instruments of the german desire for self immolation.

Thanos is a popular bad guy in the avengers series infinity wars in theaters now. He’s also called thanatos or the “will to death” as described by sigmund freud. Thanos is a creature of the left.

Interesting movie Infinity wars. Thanos believes he is called to destroy half the population of the galaxy so that the other half can grow and prosper. He believes that he’s on a mission of mercy.


36 posted on 05/24/2018 10:07:17 AM PDT by ckilmer (q e)
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To: Sam Gamgee

“And you are correct. Germany had just recently consolidated and was still very weak financially and militarily. It had no desire whatsoever to get into a war.”

Sarcasm is not your forte.


37 posted on 05/24/2018 10:35:34 AM PDT by fatboy
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To: FLT-bird

The most concise rebuttal I could quickly Google is this:

“In his 2010 book Hitler: A Biography, British historian Ian Kershaw wrote that despite putting the interests of the state above those of capitalism, he did so for reasons of nationalism and was never a true socialist by any common definition of the term:

[Hitler] was wholly ignorant of any formal understanding of the principles of economics. For him, as he stated to the industrialists, economics was of secondary importance, entirely subordinated to politics. His crude social-Darwinism dictated his approach to the economy, as it did his entire political “world-view.” Since struggle among nations would be decisive for future survival, Germany’s economy had to be subordinated to the preparation, then carrying out, of this struggle. This meant that liberal ideas of economic competition had to be replaced by the subjection of the economy to the dictates of the national interest. Similarly, any “socialist” ideas in the Nazi programme had to follow the same dictates. Hitler was never a socialist. But although he upheld private property, individual entrepreneurship, and economic competition, and disapproved of trade unions and workers’ interference in the freedom of owners and managers to run their concerns, the state, not the market, would determine the shape of economic development. Capitalism was, therefore, left in place. But in operation it was turned into an adjunct of the state.


38 posted on 05/24/2018 10:37:40 AM PDT by Bonemaker (invictus maneo)
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To: Leaning Right
But hey, the Nazis wore fancy military uniforms. So they must be right-wing.

And they are racist, sexist, bigot homophobes so they really must be right wing.

39 posted on 05/24/2018 10:57:38 AM PDT by DungeonMaster (...the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light...)
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To: FLT-bird

VDH said it was less than 2%. Internet says it is 1.2%. You say what?


40 posted on 05/24/2018 11:12:09 AM PDT by anton
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