Posted on 01/26/2006 1:09:45 AM PST by 12B
"Except of course, you think I deny the capability of Germany to build nuclear power plants ;-)"
A suggestion: Let's agree on the following: Germany has the technology and the infrastructur to build both new nuclear reactors and atomic bombs. The obstacles are of a political nature, and these obstacles are very real.
However, if prices for natural gas should double in the wake of the next big war with Iran, the withdrawal from nuclear power will not last very long ;-). And right now noone really sees the need for a German a-bomb. As always with politics, it's all a matter of circumstances.
All I want to say is: We are Borg - We have the technology ;-) *LOL !
I know what you mean, however, it doesn't help very much if it's only a tiny fraction of the whole population. And it's even worse if the best leave Germany for other countries, like the US for instance. I know some of them and I can't say I fault them.
That's what I wanted to convey ;-)
However, if prices for natural gas should double in the wake of the next big war with Iran, the withdrawal from nuclear power will not last very long ;-). And right now noone really sees the need for a German a-bomb. As always with politics, it's all a matter of circumstances.
Indeed, although in the case of Germany I guess the circumstances would have to be very grave.
"Indeed, although in the case of Germany I guess the circumstances would have to be very grave."
Well, if you do it right, it doesn't take that much to sway public opinion. After all, that puny little party the Greens managed to dictate large parts of the Red-Green agenda.
And right now, Adolfinejad is doing a fine job in turning the public's opinion here. The average German suddenly feels like a part of the western alliance again. Yeah, baby!
Even as a german I can understand that.
I feel entirely uncomfortable with ANY Nation to hold nukes. Because I see the interpretation of democracy in Russia, the lurking conflict between india and pakistan, the militia in the US and the arrogance and corruptness of the french - well I am less worried about france and the UK actually - but Israel - you know Israel is a really instable country they should definetly not have it.
So - who should have or controll nukes ? Not easy to decide hu ? - Yeah of course everybody thinks it's own country would be a stabile and trusting base. But can you tell what's going to be tomorrow ?
Even if you think it's in the germans attitude or genes - remember we where exporting world champion after WW1 - we exported millions and millions of people - mainly to the US.
and of course read von Clausewitz. I think much of modern warfare strategic background was systematically developed by the prussians. They where systematic wariors.
But where they longing to conquer ? I don't know.
It certainly is not enough to brand my ancestors as evil people. Some of them where and some of them where not. Evil was in the ideology of the NSDAP and it sure found a nutritious environment in the legacy of the prussians.
We inherited parts of the attitude of the prussians and use it to make cars, plants and weapons - planning - strategy.
It can be used for good and evil.
A capable nation - capable people - heavy armed - will make a fine ally.
But once infected with an agressive ideology that sees everything through crosshairs and every problem as to be solved by a military action. A nation that would like to controll anything and everybody.
That would be our biggest threat.
You are right to be suspicious about germany - but not only on us.
I have suggested earlier that I am something of a Germanophile (although less so than in earlier years), and I have never thought of the Germans as "evil". Capable, diligent, methodical, agressive, but not as a people evil. Unemotional in one sense but quite susceptible to emotional appeals, especially from the last quarter of the 18th century on (ever play the game of guessing the number of times Herz or some variant will occur on any given page of Die Leiden des Jungen Werther? or hiked along the Romantische Strasse?), and especially when connected with German nationalism. I've always been quite sympathetic to the original impulse for unification (think Hofmann von Fallersleben's poem now set to Haydn's Gott Erhalte Franz den Kaiser or Die Wacht am Rhein), but I think the way things got bound up with the Hohenzollerns in the mid-19th century created a dangerous mix -- not that unification under the Habsburgs would have been much better had things gone differently at Sadowa/Koenigraetz.
Interestingly, with respect to your comments concering genetics and German immigration to the US, the primary larger German immigration to the US (as opposed to the non-Germans who came from German territories after WWI) followed the Revolution of 1848, mostly people who faced repression after the failure of the Frankfurt Parliament. Settled primarily in the Midwest, from Missouri north. But, the were mostly liberals of one sort or another by the standards of the day. Karl Schurz and Sutter (of the Gold Rush) came after 1848.
Curiously, in the US, the military reputation of the Germans plummeted with our civil war. There were large numbers of Germans who fought for the Union -- mostly in the IXth Corps of the Army of the Potomac -- but had a very undistinguished war under very undistinguished German officers (e.g. Franz Siegel who was beaten in 1864 by a battalion of Virginia Military Institue (a Kadettschule cadets). It wasn't until the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars that American opinion of German arms revived.
Excellent,
thank you for your analytical and learned approach to understand my homecountry in detail. It's not easy to find germans that know about the german revolution.
Hmm, Franz Siegel- wasn't he the guy that is attributed to have created the expression 'o.k.' for 'all korrekt' ?
...and wasn't it nice if the world was a littel bit less curious about our military capabilities and discovered other fields of interests about germany ?
I would be happy if they started with the octoberfest - it doesn't have to be reading the entire Thomas Mann and die bored.
You wrote:
...had things gone different at sadowa...
Time passes quickly thinking of how different this world would have looked today.
All the best...
I've been in Munich during Oktoberfest, but I confess I am also fond of Thomas Mann - my high school senior German class project was Der Zauberberg taught by an uncompromising Doktorin Germanistik (Berlin 1929) who left Germany in the late '30s weil den Hitler solchen schlecten Sitten haette. Mann's actually much easier to read than, say, Hegel. Have you read his Doktor Faustus? Outstanding. I think my favorite German prose writer is Nietzsche. Truly, some of the most beautiful German in the 19th century. I'm also a fan of Goethe (isn't everyone), Schiller and Heine (both the poety, and, for sheer fun, the Harzreise. I know, pretty mundane stuff everyone has read, but there's a reason it's still read....
Your mention of Oktoberfest is interesting. Of course, it brings to mind the fun-loving Bavarians (with their dialect), but it also reminds the historian of the events at the Burgerbraeu Keller in 1923 and the abortive putsch (where apparently only Ludendorff behaved like a German soldier - I've a friend whose greatuncle was a participant, went to Landsberg-am-Lech for his part in it, and wrote of his experiences: Mit Adolf Hitler auf Festung Landsberg).
People often remark on the incongruity that the NSDAP's first great strength was in Bavaria rather than Prussia (where the Reds were strong as well as the Freikorps). Based on my own experiences in Germany, I don't think it particularly odd, because I found the Bavarians to be actually far more regelmaessig than, say, Hanoverians or Berliners.
Then we´re not argueing. :-)
[Abbreviation of oll korrect, slang respelling of all correct.]
WORD HISTORY OK is a quintessentially American term that has spread from English to many other languages. Its origin was the subject of scholarly debate for many years until Allen Walker Read showed that OK is based on a joke of sorts. OK is first recorded in 1839 but was probably in circulation before that date. During the 1830s there was a humoristic fashion in Boston newspapers to reduce a phrase to initials and supply an explanation in parentheses. Sometimes the abbreviations were misspelled to add to the humor. OK was used in March 1839 as an abbreviation for all correct, the joke being that neither the O nor the K was correct. Originally spelled with periods, this term outlived most similar abbreviations owing to its use in President Martin Van Buren's 1840 campaign for reelection. Because he was born in Kinderhook, New York, Van Buren was nicknamed Old Kinderhook, and the abbreviation proved eminently suitable for political slogans. That same year, an editorial referring to the receipt of a pin with the slogan O.K. had this comment: “frightful letters … significant of the birth-place of Martin Van Buren, old Kinderhook, as also the rallying word of the Democracy of the late election, ‘all correct’ .... Those who wear them should bear in mind that it will require their most strenuous exertions … to make all things O.K.”
Apparently the usage precedes Franz Siegel. I had hear the association with van Buren, but understood (seemingly correctly) that the usage was older and applied to him as a positive association.
thanks for the research ... ol korrekt - also fits to Van Buren's probable dutch roots (where that spelling would be phonetically fitting). Sounds O.K. for me.
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