Victor David had better have a care lest he like Icarus, with whom Hanson as a classical scholar is well acquainted, flies too close to the truth and gets burned.
Posted on 12/15/2011 2:21:36 AM PST by Kaslin
The rise of a German Europe began in 1914, failed twice, and has now ended in the victory of German power almost a century later. The Europe that Kaiser Wilhelm lost in 1918, and that Adolf Hitler destroyed in 1945, has at last been won by German Chancellor Angela Merkel without firing a shot.
Or so it seems from European newspapers, which now refer bitterly to a "Fourth Reich" and arrogant new Nazi "Gauleiters" who dictate terms to their European subordinates. Popular cartoons depict Germans with stiff-arm salutes and swastikas, establishing new rules of behavior for supposedly inferior peoples.
Millions of terrified Italians, Spaniards, Greeks, Portuguese and other Europeans are pouring their savings into German banks at the rate of $15 billion a month. A thumbs-up or thumbs-down from the euro-rich Merkel now determines whether European countries will limp ahead with new German-backed loans or default and see their standard of living regress to that of a half-century ago.
A worried neighbor, France, in schizophrenic fashion, as so often in the past, alternately lashes out at Britain for abandoning it and fawns on Germany to appease it. The worries in 1989 of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President François Mitterrand over German unification -- that neither a new European Union nor an old NATO could quite rein in German power -- proved true.
How did the grand dream of a "new Europe" end just 20 years later in a German protectorate -- especially given the not-so-subtle aim of the European Union to diffuse German ambitions through a continent-wide super-state?
Not by arms. Britain fights in wars all over the globe, from Libya to Iraq. France has the bomb. But Germany mostly stays within its borders -- without a nuke, a single aircraft carrier or a military base abroad.
Not by handouts. Germany poured almost $2 trillion of its own money into rebuilding an East Germany ruined by communism -- without help from others. To drive through southern Europe is to see new freeways, bridges, rail lines, stadiums and airports financed by German banks or subsidized by the German government.
Not by population size. Somehow, 120 million Greeks, Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese are begging some 80 million Germans to bail them out.
And not because of good fortune. Just 65 years ago, Berlin was flattened, Hamburg incinerated and Munich a shell -- in ways even Athens, Madrid, Lisbon and Rome were not.
In truth, German character -- so admired and feared in some 500 years of European literature and history -- led to the present Germanization of Europe. These days we recoil at terms like "national character" that seem tainted by the nightmares of the past. But no other politically correct exegesis offers better reasons why a booming Detroit of 1945 today looks like it was bombed, and a bombed-out Berlin of 1945 now is booming.
Germans on average worked harder and smarter than their European neighbors -- investing rather than consuming, saving rather than spending, and going to bed when others to the south were going to dinner. Recipients of their largesse bitterly complain that German banks lent them money to buy German products in a sort of 21st-century commercial serfdom. True enough, but that still begs the question why Berlin, and not Rome or Madrid, was able to pull off such lucrative mercantilism.
Where does all this lead? Right now to some great unknowns that terrify most of Europe. Will German industriousness and talent eventually translate into military dominance and cultural chauvinism -- as it has in the past? How, exactly, can an unraveling EU, or NATO, now "led from behind" by a disengaged United States, persuade Germany not to translate its overwhelming economic clout into political and military advantage?
Can poor European adolescents really obey their rich German parents? Berlin in essence has now scolded southern Europeans that if they still expect sophisticated medical care, high-tech appurtenances and plentiful consumer goods -- the adornments of a rich American and northern Europe lifestyle -- then they have to start behaving in the manner of Germans, who produce such things and subsidize them for others.
In other words, an Athenian may still have his ultra-modern airport and subway, a Spaniard may still get a hip replacement, or a Roman may still enjoy his new Mercedes. But not if they still insist on daily siestas, dinner at 9 p.m., retirement in their early 50s, cheating on taxes, and a de facto 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. workday.
Behind all the EU's 11th-hour gobbledygook, Germany's new European order is clear: If you wish to live like a German, then you must work and save like a German. Take it or leave it.
German Americans have been influential in almost every field in American society, including science, architecture, industry, sports, entertainment, theology, government, and the military. German American generals Baron von Steuben, John Pershing, Dwight Eisenhower, and Norman Schwarzkopf commanded the United States Army in the American Revolutionary War, World War I, World War II, and the Persian Gulf War, respectively. Many German Americans have played a prominent role in industry and business, including John D. Rockefeller, William Boeing, Walter Chrysler, George Westinghouse, and Donald Trump. Some, such as Brooklyn Bridge engineer John A. Roebling and architect Walter Gropius, left behind visible landmarks. Others, including Albert Einstein and Wernher von Braun, set intellectual landmarks. Still others, such as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jack Nicklaus, Doris Day, and Leonardo DiCaprio, became prominent athletes or actors.[7]
German Americans established the first kindergartens in the United States,[8] introduced the Christmas tree tradition,[9][10] and originated popular American foods such as hot dogs and hamburgers.
... For the record I am not German. I am first generation American, born in NYC. My father was Irish and my mother was Dutch. But I am married to a German and my daughter is German. :)
Bump
My father’s mother was from London. I need to put that in there! (in case anyone cared)
Germany runs a large trade surplus every year. Germany became rich via exporting. They made what the rest of EU Europe wanted to buy. Chemicals and well made manufactured goods. Germans have hi-IQ and have their shyte together.
This is how they got to where they are. By being better at producing upscale tech items and selling to their neighbors. Ethnic Germans (part and full) are responsible for a lot of our Midwest manufacturing. Just last week Wisconsin was called the state with the highest percentage of workers in manufacturing. Wisconsin is heavily ethnic German
If the deadbeats in Europe don’t like the terms, then they don’t have to take the money.
Ping.
I am a naturalized citizen from Germany
Rhinelander, WI comes to mind
So what? Those are the common people and don’t have very much to do, if anything at all, with the elite. And if they came here, their bloodlines may prove to have been very different from other German folk besides.
No, that’s not it. Forgot that it was eight years ago that they were the “sick man of Europe”? Not even their large manufacturing base was helping them. It was the euro, and the shenanigans involved in setting that up. They control its central bank.
Good article, I wonder what the great thinkers on campus will say about this.
Victor David had better have a care lest he like Icarus, with whom Hanson as a classical scholar is well acquainted, flies too close to the truth and gets burned.
I hope you enjoy your next hamburger. :)
Germany has never been the "sick man of Europe". That honor fell to Britain in the sixties and seventies till Thatcher came along. Germany has been the economic power in the EU since it rebuilt after the War.
It was Germany's economic success that frightened the French into creating the Euro in the first place. France, in schizophrenic fashion, as so often in the past, alternately lashes out at Britain for abandoning it and fawns on Germany to appease it.
Whatever their sins in the past, since 1945, the Germans have kept their heads down and worked their butts off. And, in typical human fashion, they are now criticized and envied for it.
I love reading VDH and respect him highly. That being said, he failed in the first sentence of this article. Yikes!
The German century started in either 1865 or 1870-71, depending on your point of view.
The Germany century reached it’s first pinnacle in 1912-14,...
but anyways, not a bad article.
If you wish to live like a German, then you must work and save like a German...
Live like a German? You call that life? I want to live like an Italian and work and save like one. If you look at the statistics (export, home ownership, gold reserves, past honoring of debts, and others) you might be surprised. Sorry if we work to live and don’t live to work. In any case Italian credit institutions barely participated in the 700,000 billion dollar loan boondoggle that poisoned the market. No housing bubble here. That’s a New York, London, Paris, Frankfurt creation. Actually, playboy Berlusconi had improved the debt situation somewhat vis-a-vis past years (which oddly was never tragic). And now it seems that it all hinges on Italy... And to solve the problem we must live like Germans. How about those financial geniuses copying the caution of the Italian banking system?
I did buy a Weedeater blower-vac from the base exchange and subsequently went around vacuuming up all their little piles of dirt and leaves for which they were very amused.
Still, I have seen my share of German welfare cheats (and their welfare is much more generous than ours) and Swartz-Arbeiteren (black workers) who take cash money on the side....
That was a kind of weird display of the German work effort mixed with laziness... Guys who didn't have a real job, collecting unemployment/welfare benefits, busting their chops every day painting houses, hanging wallpaper, setting tile, fixing cars, etc., on the sly, so the Federal republic wouldn't/couldn't tax them.
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