“Churchill also observed of the Germans: “The Hun is either at your throat or at your feet.’’”
For Churchill’s time and from his experience that was true. It was America’s will and treasure that made Germany the fine upstanding international citizen they are today. America stood guard so the German’s wouldn’t have to. For roughly five generations America helped mold the German psyche into a good neighbor. What they are today they owe to the beneficence of those who won World War Two, including the British. But it is time to allow them to sink or swim on their own. We should part in friendship and let them take over the burden of protecting what we, together have built.
While America fought The Cold War and we plowed billions into our own defense and the NATO partnership, German steel and automakers pretty much crowded us out of the market. It has been my experience over the last forty years to have known some Germans, here as students and while they are proper, respectful largely in moments of candor they reveal themselves. They don’t like us. It isn’t just that we beat them in two world wars, they resent our constant pointing to their past, to be fair a past that at least three generations of Germans had nothing to do with. They also resent our hubris in world affairs that I think is perhaps a latent insecurity that there has been in history a ‘’Pax Britannia’’ or an “American Century’’ but there has never really been a ‘’Deutchland Uber Alles’’ in the true sense of the word. That being an imperial power with a two ocean navy and much larger share of territories and colonies around the world than a few colonies they once had in East Africa. In my years of looking and reading so much WW1 and WW2 history Germany seems to be this great powerhouse of energy and power and promise but no real constructive and peaceful way of achieving. Sort of ‘’all dressed up and no where to go’’ if you will. And while I’d be more than willing to bet that the days of “Drang Nach Osten’’ won’t return and neither will the jackboots I think that some Germans might still struggle with the “Weltenshunning’’(sp?) or “World View’’ of themselves as a nation and a people. Goethe did observe of his fellow Germans as being ‘’noble in the individual and wretched in the collective’’. But we’re a long way from his days and I think the great majority of the German people don’t want a war of any kind. And as long as they keep competing in and winning World Cups in soccer they won’t be thinking about marching around again.