Posted on 09/28/2002 9:34:39 PM PDT by PecosBill
Every nation has its enduring myths. Britain has King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. America has Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill. And Germany has Dr. Faust, the professor who sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for wealth, power, youth and Helen of Troy.
It is indeed fitting that Germany's most enduring myth is the Faust legend, because no nation in modern history has sold its soul to the Devil as many times as Germany. First there was the German allegiance to an aristocracy composed of lunatics and the feeble-minded like the Wittelbachs1 and to the morally reprehensible and not very intelligent Hohenzollerns2. Then there was Germany's near-universal adulation of a failed painter from Austria whose 12-year, 1,000-year Reich caused more murder and mayhem in a shorter amount of time than any regime in history. And now we have Gerhard Schroeder.
I will admit that Herr Schroeder is more intelligent than Kaiser Bill3 and has less larceny in his heart than the testicularly-challenged Schiklgruber4, but the current Chancellor's pact with the Devil, while less destructive of life and property than those of the past, is no less a damnable offense.
You have to wonder what was going on in Schroeder's mind during the recently-concluded German election. Germany was virtually destroyed during its last Satanic pact, was then rebuilt by the grace and tax dollars of the American people, and has enjoyed fifty years of prosperity without invading another country or trying to exterminate another religious minority. You might think a reasonable person would show some gratitude, or at least keep his big mouth shut. Schroeder did display at least a modicum of courage when he committed German troops to guard duty in Afghanistan. But then, since Germany is the leading sanctuary in Europe for Muslim terrorists and there were approximately 250 German nationals killed in the 9/11 attack, it's the least he should have done. To be perfectly blunt about it, German's army, largely made up of conscripts serving a required tour of duty, is a pretty inept organization. German public opinion, never very high for the deployment of German troops in Afghanistan, began to decline dramatically when a couple of young soldiers got the bright idea of trying to defuse a Taliban bomb so they could send it home as a war souvenir. The resulting blast killed a number of soldiers and wounded substantially more.
Shortly after that incident, public opinion polls showed Schroeder trailing conservative candidate Edmund Stoiber by double digits. The Chancellor was at one of those crossroads that define a man's character. He could choose between toughing it out and standing up for freedom in the war against terrorism, or taking the easy way out by turning against America and making a play for Germany's substantial anti-American left wing, the still substantial, anti-Semitic core in both the left and right wings, and the country's large Muslim minority. Well, Schroeder is no Daniel Webster, that's for sure, and he decided that he would rather be Chancellor than be right or in the right.
The ensuing campaign was probably the most vitriolic since the German elections of 1932 and 1933 that brought Hitler to power. Anti-Semitism was a major facet of the campaign and was a subtext in virtually every political debate. Because of Germany's laws prohibiting overt anti-Semitism, it is impolitic to directly criticize Jews or Israel. "Zionism" is, therefore, the loaded code word that replaces Jew, Judaism and Israel in German political discourse. When a German politician says Zionism is evil, he is really saying Israel is evil. German political discourse, then, is euphemistic in nature and essentially dishonest.
German politicians may be as anti-Semitic as Julius Streicher5 while claiming not to be talking about Jews per se. Say what you will about ol' Adolf—at least he was explicit about his hatred. As the campaign proceeded, the anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism became more and more pronounced. At times it became difficult to distinguish between the political rhetoric of Germany's Free Democrat Party and that of Yassir Arafat's Al-Fatah. Yes, the leader of the FDP did distance himself somewhat from the rantings of the notorious, Jew-baiting, FDP vice-chairman Juergen Moellemann, but he didn't see fit to prevent the popular Moellemann from campaigning. You will often hear Germans admit that there are anti-Semites in their country, but that they only come from the impoverished former East Germany. Don't buy that lie. Moellemann is from the wealthy, industrialized Rhineland, and the center of the neo-Nazi movement is in Karlsruhe, an industrialized city in Swabia. Both Swabia and the Rhineland are in the extreme western portions of Germany.
The German election was beneficial to the extent that it did reveal to the world the extreme amount of latent anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism that is bubbling beneath the surface of the repressed German populace. The same visceral hatreds that brought Hitler to power are ready to erupt again. All that is needed for the explosion is the proper catalyst.
Schroeder attempted to release German hatreds just enough to propel him into office once again without causing any diplomatic damage. He was attempting a controlled explosion of German resentments of America and Israel. He almost succeeded. But once you start an avalanche it's hard to keep from being inundated yourself.
Just several days before the election, Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin publicly compared President George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler. Her remarks were reported by a newspaper reporter who even verified their accuracy with Daeubler-Gmelin before they were published. The report caused a firestorm of controversy that was further compounded when Daeubler-Gmelin tried to lie her way out of the situation by saying that she didn't compare Bush to Hitler, but instead to "Adolf Nazi". This shows not only how politically inept Frau Minister Professor Doktor Daeubler-Gmelin is, but is also indicative of her arrogance in believing that Americans are not bright enough to know the true identity of "Adolf Nazi".
In "working towards the Chancellor", Daeubler-Gmelin had gone further than was permissible given the political situation of the moment. Schroeder had to distance himself far enough from his Justice Minister's remarks to placate a justifiably outraged American public, but not far enough to anger his homeland constituency, a large number of whom agree with the Minister's remarks. Daeubler-Gmelin may have cost Schroeder a percentage or two in the final polling. One bright note is that the voters of Daeubler-Gmelin's Tuebingen constituency did have enough common sense to vote her out of office, and she has just turned in her resignation as Justice Minister. By the thinnest of margins, Schroeder has retained the Chancellorship. His party, the SDP, lost voter share from the last election and only remains in office due to the strong showing of his coalition partners, the radical environmentalist Green Party. Six of the twelve SDP ministers running for re-election lost their seats. And relations with the United States, the guarantor of Germany's freedom and prosperity for over fifty years, are at their worst level since May of 1945.
In fairness to Chancellor Schroeder, I do not believe him to be an inherently evil man. I think that he is just hopelessly naïve, like those deluded and arrogant German politicians in the early 1930s who assisted Hitler in his rise to power and who thought that once Hitler was elected to office, he would be easy to control. Likewise, Schroeder may find that having made overt anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism fashionable again in German politics, he has unleashed an explosion that he cannot control.
At the end of Goethe's "Faust", the blind, 100-year old Dr. Faust thinks that he is performing a great service to mankind by trying to reclaim land from the sea. Since he is blind, he is unaware that his land reclamation work is causing the death and destruction of innumerable people. Gerhard Schroeder may soon discover that, having made a pact with the Devil, he, too, is alone, blind and ruling over a government of mayhem and disaster.
References:
1. Wittelsbachs: The Bavarian Dukes of the Wittelsbach's Family ruled Bavaria from 1180-1918.
2. Hohenzollerns: The Dynasty prominent in European history, chiefly as the ruling house of Brandenburg-Prussia (1415–1918) and of imperial Germany (1871–1918).
3. Kaiser Bill: Refers to Frederick Wilhelm Viktor Albert of Hohenzollern (1859-1941), who became Kaiser (Emperor) Wilhelm II of Germany in 1888; he was forced to abdicate as part of the World War I Armistice.
4. Schiklgruber: Adolph Hitler's father's given name. His father was born Aloïs Schiklgruber; the name was later changed.
5. Julius Streicher (1885-1946): "Through his words and his deeds Julius Streicher assumed for himself the unofficial title of "Jew-baiter Number One" of Nazi Germany."
Copyright © 2001, 2002 by William E. Grim & America's Voices, Inc. All rights reserved. William E. Grim is an American writer who lives in Munich, Germany. In addition to Bill's work for America's Voices, where he writes the column "A View From Europe", he is the foreign correspondent for BrokenNewz.com and a contributing editor to Iconoclast.ca. He also writes articles and reviews for AllAboutJazz.com and SonyJazz.com. You can e-mail Bill at wgrim@americasvoices.org and view his personal website here.
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