by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n Cologne, Germany<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m still in Germany, and keep noticing a predictable, but continually interesting, pattern in talking to Germans of all walks of life \u2014 tourists, hoteliers, guides, drivers, casual bystanders, or students. When Greece comes up (or rather is brought up by Americans), there is a noticeable tension. Brows tighten. German smiles momentarily vanish. A second later a forced recovery and grimace follow, accompanied by a sort of pained EU propaganda speech, along the lines of \u201cWell, yes, we all have to get along\u201d or \u201cWe Europeans of the Union must work something out.\u201d Then after the platitudes, we are back to silence and a look to see whether their constructed optimism worked on you.<\/p>\n The Scratched Veneer<\/strong><\/p>\n But then if you press with a polite question or two \u2014 something like an innocent (or perhaps not quite so innocent) \u201cBut is it really true that the Greeks find ways to retire in their fifties while you work to 67?\u201d or \u201cHow did those deficits get so big without being detected?\u201d \u2014 the fa\u00e7ade crumbles. Your German friend takes a quick look to the side, to see whether anyone is listening. And then in a quiet, but soon to be louder and finally animated voice, he starts in on the \u201cEU racket\u201d and \u201cHow in the world is Germany supposed to pay for all these freeloaders?\u201d<\/p>\n In minutes you begin to sense that the entire cohesion of the EU is predicated now on two dubious premises. One, of course, is\u00a070-year-old war guilt<\/a>\u00a0[1]. I do not mean that in the logical sense as it pertains to the use of victimization by Mediterranean debtors (after all, how can once fascist neutrals like Spain and Portugal, or the successors of Mussolini\u2019s Axis Italy, piggy-back onto Greece\u2019s World War II suffering?). Rather, there is a larger guilt about the Holocaust, Hitler, and starting a war that ended up killing 50 million and, obviously, wrecking Germany (Germans like to point out the extent of the 8th Air Force\u2019s and Bomber Command\u2019s destruction along the Rhine, where 60-80% of some of the larger urban centers were destroyed.) War guilt, then, looms as the lever to pry out German cash, and after three generations the Germans are getting tired of it.<\/p>\n The second premise touches on a vaguer issue \u2014 the near admission that with a wink and a nod German companies and banks set up a sort of mercantilism, in which a Mercedes or Siemens found lucrative markets in Mediterranean Europe, got banks to back buying on time, and then sold things on credit to dubious government-sponsored entities and private corporations. After all, the Athenians had no business having one of the highest per capita rates of Mercedes ownership in Europe. Did Germans really think that siestas and 9 p.m. dinners led to prompt repayment of Audi and BMW loans?<\/p>\n No Players Left?<\/strong><\/p>\n In other words, Germans seem to admit that they were playing poker with amateurs, that they knowingly took the players for a ride, and that they now find themselves with all the chips and no one anymore with the wherewithal to keep on playing. And yet they don\u2019t think they can start over and divvy up the chips, not just because to do so would be to forfeit their winnings, but also because they suspect that the game would repeat itself identically every five or six years. They are right, which explains why the euro in its present manifestation is doomed, and why the Germans are exasperated for doing everything rightly that is now condemned as doing everything wrongly.<\/p>\n Worry-warts?<\/strong><\/p>\n The EU crackup and the looming costs for Germany \u2014 are Germans to work until 70 or are they going to put off another bridge over the Rhine, or pass up building an autobahn? \u2014 seem to lead to other \u2014 how should I put it? \u2014 \u201cexasperations.<\/a>\u201d[2] The Muslim population in places like Berlin and Cologne is growing and not being assimilated. Meanwhile, the good-life, statist Germans are shrinking and aging with one of the most depressing fertility rates in Europe. The angst grows because the Germans themselves brought Muslims in, kept them as permanent second-class aliens, and now are quite confused over their proper status \u2014 both not wanting them to become full Germans (there is still a word, after all,\u00a0Volk<\/em>, in their language, which, like\u00a0Raza<\/em>, denotes a solidarity beyond mere shared citizenship), and yet resentful of their chauvinism and often militant Islamism. As one of my conversationalists put it, \u201cOh yes, the Turks \u2014 how can their sons somehow afford our BMWs?\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, the list of other exasperations is growing. The once beloved United Nations\u2019 UNESCO bunch is likewise picking on poor Germany by \u201cred listing\u201d some of their tourist treasures. Must Germans really tear down their new super-modern aerial tram over the Rhine \u2014 an engineering marvel which resembles a designer kitchen as much as a cable lift \u2014 at Koblenz, or postpone building high-rise office towers and apartments in Cologne just to ensure UN World Heritage status for their Rhine gorge castles or the cathedral at Cologne (e.g., \u201cSo an Iran or Syria is to be judge of our heritage?\u201d)?<\/p>\n Then there is\u00a0Angela Merkel\u2019s proposed shutdown<\/a>\u00a0[3] of Germany\u2019s 17 nuclear power plants in the wake of panic about the Fukushima tsunami disaster. Once minor German concerns about geological fault lines and obsolete designs have now snowballed into a hyped-up nuclear terror (e.g., if the Toyota-building Japanese can have a disaster, then even the BMW-building Germans in theory could, too).<\/p>\n But from where comes the replacement electrical power? (The Ruhr today looks like Detroit and Cleveland should have.) There is still plenty of coal, but the green Germans pride themselves on being\u00a0model global warming alarmists<\/a>[4]. The German countryside is dotted with enormous windmills, but they seem to the casual observer to turn slowly, if at all. I have enjoyed about three or four hours of sunshine every other day, so I don\u2019t think solar is going to save Germans from blackouts. In other words, Germans seem again agitated over their dilemma: the greenest of Europeans cannot survive through wind and solar power; their coal is politically incorrect; they have little natural gas; and now nuclear, which used to be a non-carbon, non-heating approved energy, is discredited. What is a good pan-European to do? Perhaps buy nuclear-produced electricity from a cash-hungry France?<\/p>\n Be Careful about What You Wish For<\/strong><\/p>\n Another grimace comes from mention of their beloved Barack Obama. He too seems lately to be adding to German angst. Make no mistake about it and let me be perfectly clear, Germans, could they vote in the US, would reelect Obama by a wide margin. I\u2019ll spare you the reasons (Bush comes up in the conversation, of course). But they are edgy with him nonetheless: Is it really a good time to be drawing down NATO and redeploying Americans to \u201cAsia\u201d? (As in \u201cwho will pay for our defense or ensure NATO solidarity as the EU unravels?\u201d)<\/p>\n Resentments, or so Germans fear, are building against Germany, and Germans themselves sometimes sound as if they fear their inner demons as much as do the French in the Alsace. Does Obama \u2014\u00a0\u201cPolish death camps,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0[5]\u00a0Austrian-speaking Austrians<\/a>\u00a0[6],\u00a0Berlin Wall anniversary skipped<\/a>\u00a0[7], the old demand for speechifying at the Brandenburg Gate \u2014 appreciate the contours of Europe politics and the pretensions of the Atlantic Alliance? Germans assume that we Americans grasp their old postwar two-step that allows them to snicker about Americans (e.g., McDonald\u2019s, Texas, George W. Bush, etc.) publicly and count on us privately. In sum, concerning Obama, there grows a flicker of realization that Germany proverbially should have been careful about what it wished for.<\/p>\n An Edgy Nation<\/strong><\/p>\n Let me sum up. Germans are,\u00a0just as the stereotypes go<\/a>\u00a0[8], thrifty, solvent, and an industrial people who played by all the postwar rules. To watch the Rhine is a dizzying experience as barges zoom by, as if on a three-lane highway, while rail cars roar in the background and the parallel autobahns are crammed, all beneath the steam stacks of the Ruhr plants. In comparison, California seems like it is in a slumber.<\/p>\n Germans rebuilt their country, renounced war and did not rearm, unified their bifurcated nation at their own cost, subsidized European development, were good EU and UN head nodders, are at the forefront of the green global warming cult, are rejecting nuclear power \u2014 and are terrified that they are unfairly not liked. I am not sure whether they are afraid that the world does not appreciate their efforts or that anytime the world does not appreciate German efforts,\u00a0petulant Germans can become a bit scary<\/a>\u00a0[9] to Germans themselves as well as to their neighbors.<\/p>\n I would be very careful to support Germany as much as we can in accordance with US national interests. I would not, like Obama, encourage French-socialist calls for \u201cgrowth,\u201d which is a euphemism for inflating and stimulating European economies without commensurate structural reform at the expense of Germany.<\/p>\n I would also be careful about downsizing and redirecting NATO at a time when Germany has an anemic military and a growing list of envious if not angry rivals and former friends. I would cut Germany some slack (and I have been guilty in the past in print of not doing this) about its hypocrisies and strained multicultural internationalism, given its own psychological uneasiness about its past proclivities. And finally, at some point, cannot some American flat out state that it was Germany that worked hard, saved, invested, and prospered, and that is to be admired rather than caricatured and condemned? Texas is not responsible for California any more than Germany is responsible for contemporary Greece. An envious Europe seems to look at Germany the way that Obama has trained us to disdain those above the $200,000 in annual income Mason-Dixon line.<\/p>\n Yes, we might prefer to vacation in Florence or Santorini, but only because we are able to \u2014 given that there are for a while longer more wealth-producing Germanys in the world than there are wealth-consuming Italys and Greeces.<\/p>\n URLs in this post:<\/p>\n [1] 70-year-old war guilt:\u00a0http:\/\/cdn.pjmedia.com\/eddriscoll\/2011\/11\/02\/greece-go-boom-soon\/<\/a> \u00a92012 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Cologne, Germany I\u2019m still in Germany, and keep noticing a predictable, but continually interesting, pattern in talking to Germans of all walks of life \u2014 tourists, hoteliers, guides, drivers, casual bystanders, or students. When Greece comes up (or rather is brought up by Americans), there is a noticeable tension.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[168],"tags":[12,1015,316,1050,107,30,169,1056,1037,1068],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-bN","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1594,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-new-old-german-problem\/","url_meta":{"origin":731,"position":0},"title":"The New Old German Problem","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 23, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Reflections on Germany Munich \u2014 I\u2019ve been walking the last two days through Munich. Much of the city core was bombed out by the allies by spring 1945. Yet today there is little evidence of such destruction. The museums are among the best in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "May 2010"","block_context":{"text":"May 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/may-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8887,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-decline-of-modern-germany\/","url_meta":{"origin":731,"position":1},"title":"The Decline of Modern Germany","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 21, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Tribune Media Services Germany\u2019s political stability and economic sway have until recently earned Chancellor Angela Merkel unprecedented global influence and power. Postwar Germany has become the financial powerhouse of Europe and a model nation. Give credit to German hard work and competency for the country\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/map_Germany_300.gif?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":760,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/let-sleeping-germans-lie\/","url_meta":{"origin":731,"position":2},"title":"Let Sleeping Germans Lie","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 28, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The newly elected French Socialist president, Francois Hollande, is warning Germany that Mediterranean ideas of \"growth,\" not Germanic \"austerity,\" should be the new European creed. 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The Europe that Kaiser Wilhelm lost in 1918, and that Adolf Hitler destroyed in 1945, has at last\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Germany"","block_context":{"text":"Germany","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/germany\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11859,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/is-germany-becoming-germany-again\/","url_meta":{"origin":731,"position":4},"title":"Is Germany Becoming Germany \u2014 Again?","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 6, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review The more things change, well, the more they . . . So it is with the perpetual German resentments of the U.S. Recently German chancellor Angela Merkel reminded us of that German fixation, when she made some astounding statements to the German media that\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8971,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-enigma-of-germany\/","url_meta":{"origin":731,"position":5},"title":"The Enigma of Germany","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 23, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online What to fear in Germany \u2014 an ideologically driven leader who unilaterally is changing the demographics of the nation without public support, or an angry populist counter-movement that vows to keep Germans safe by any means necessary when the government won\u2019t? 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\n
\n[2] exasperations.:\u00a0http:\/\/www.freerepublic.com\/focus\/f-news\/1550345\/posts<\/a>
\n[3] Angela Merkel\u2019s proposed shutdown:\u00a0http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-europe-13592208<\/a>
\n[4] model globing warming alarmists:http:\/\/cdn.pjmedia.com\/eddriscoll\/2010\/09\/26\/springtime-for-algore\/<\/a>
\n[5] \u201cPolish death camps,\u201d:http:\/\/cdn.pjmedia.com\/eddriscoll\/2012\/05\/29\/obamas-polish-death-camp-gaffe\/<\/a>
\n[6] Austrian-speaking Austrians:\u00a0http:\/\/newsbusters.org\/blogs\/tom-blumer\/2009\/04\/06\/if-obama-believes-austrian-language-so-will-ap<\/a>
\n[7] Berlin Wall anniversary skipped:http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/2009\/11\/08\/obama-draws-criticism-sitting-berlin-wall-anniversary\/<\/a>
\n[8] just as the stereotypes go:http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/articles\/301356\/culture-still-matters-victor-davis-hanson<\/a>
\n[9] petulant Germans can become a bit scary:http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/articles\/300149\/let-sleeping-germans-lie-victor-davis-hanson<\/a><\/p>\n