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 ...
What Hanson is pointing out here is symptomatic of a national case of passive-aggressive disorder, not any chronic pacifism. Germany has, since reunification, used its resources well. Unfortunately some of those resources happened to be other countries', who are now impatient at Germany's stubborn self-satisfaction at its own prosperity, earned, to be sure, and its resentment at being reminded of the sources not always her own, and met by an ostensibly altruistic desire to address it by importing the disadvantaged who, unfortunately, also happen to be antithetical to the German culture responsible for the prosperity. The result is a net drain on the welfare state. Milton Friedman famously stated that one cannot have open borders and a welfare state at the same time. Germany is demonstrating why not.
It isn't up to the United States or any country other than Germany herself to cure this set of misconceptions and false cures. Disengagement will help. And for her neighbors, vigilance and preparation for what are likely to be some difficult times across the border. The Muslim is now far larger than the Jewish population ever was, and that's going to cause some real problems in the place of those that were once imaginary.
And they could march. Boy, at one time them Krauts were stomping around like they owned the Earth.
“The Hun is either at your feet or at your throat’’.
Goethe said it best of his fellow Germans when he said they were ‘’noble in the individual’’ and ‘’wretched in the collective’’.
“The Germans and the French lost their genetic warrior blood lines the past century.”
I always laugh at that concept. Hitler himself could have made it.
Nazi’s were just another form of Communist. The reason they “hated” communists was simply because they were competitors for the masses.
You might want to research why the Nazi flag was red. It was literally to attract communists to their side.
A nazi is a hard left communist that fits in neatly with a soviet, or a modern American Antifa or Democrat.
The nest proof of this is east Germany. The Germans there easily adapted and decided being Stasi was just as good as Gestapo. The Stasi wasn’t Russian.
“After WW1 there was a life and death struggle between the communists and the NSDAP as to who would rule Germany.”
I give you Hillary supporters vs Bernie Sanders types.
What an intelligent, well-written article, wide in scope and knowledge of European history.
That was socialist versus communist. Are you saying Hitler and Hess were right wingers? LOL!
In the context of the tumultuous times in post WW1 Germam politics I would say it was between the left and right although I don’t like those terms. Don’t like because our filthy left tries to equate us, “the right”, with NSDAP.
Germany did not want the war. The Kaiser probably did more than anybody else to prevent it. He tried to negotiate with his cousin the Tsar and explained to him that Russia mobilizing on Germany’s border would leave Germany defenseless if it did not react by going to war immediately. Germany’s only defense was speed - it could mobilize a lot faster than Russia could. It couldn’t afford to watch this crucial advantage frittered away when faced with a much larger enemy. The Tsar then promised not to mobilize on Germany’s border only to have his arm twisted by his own generals to do exactly that.
What did France do to prevent the war? Britain? Italy? The Ottoman Empire? Russia? The Hapsburg Empire? None of them even tried to engage in personal diplomacy to head off what was coming.
For
example Niall Ferguson has noted that “it is especially striking Germany, the state most notorious for its
’militarism’ in this period, was by this measure somewhat less militaristic than her two neighbours and
rivals, France and Russia”.
2
Equally, John Hobson’s detailed article on the pre-First World War
military spending in comparative terms has shown that the United Kingdom and Germany were among
the low-spending group.
3
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8af6/ebf80fe035dcbff1c9c060305de903d92f43.pdf
“Germany did not want the war. The Kaiser probably did more than anybody else to prevent it.”
One of the basic facts about WW1 is that Germany slashed and burnt it’s way thru Belgium on it’s way to invade France. It would seem simple enough for any fool to comprehend but apparently no so.
In the same way, Mussolini was part of the Italian Communist Party until internecine power struggles put him on the outside. He didn’t change his ideology, he just developed a new marketing model, Nationalistic socialism, to counter the international socialists, ie. commies.
The war had started by that point.
No leaders at f any of the other countries involved made and kind of effort to avoid war starting. Wilhelm II did. Germany unlike France or Italy or Russia was not seeking territorial aggrandizement.
You, sir, are full of crap. Get lost.
You challenged me to produce a source. I produced multiple sources.
Now you resort to the ad hominem.
You lose.
“The war had started by that point.
No leaders at f any of the other countries involved made and kind of effort to avoid war starting. Wilhelm II did. Germany unlike France or Italy or Russia was not seeking territorial aggrandizement.”
Tell us, was it your momma or your papa that dropped you on your head at age 2?
Or was it both?
Ah yes, more ad hominem.
Another loser.
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