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History Teaches Us that We Learn Nothing from History

 

COMMENT: The title of this quote is, appro­pri­ate­ly enough, from a Ger­man. Euro­pean nations are becom­ing fear­ful of dom­i­na­tion by Ger­many, the only coun­try with suf­fi­cient funds to bailout the ail­ing Euro­zone.

The advent of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion is no acci­dent. It has been planned for a long time and should come as a sur­prise to no one, par­tic­u­lar­ly Euro­peans.

Writ­ing in the New York Her­ald Tri­bune of 5/31/1940, Dorothy Thomp­son set forth the Third Reich’s plans for Euro­pean and world dom­i­na­tion, embody­ing a tem­plate for­mu­lat­ed by Friedrich List in the 19th cen­tu­ry.

. . . . The Ger­mans have a clear plan of what they intend to do in case of vic­tory. I believe that I know the essen­tial details of that plan. I have heard it from a suf­fi­cient num­ber of impor­tant Ger­mans to cred­it its authen­tic­ity . . . Germany’s plan is to make a cus­toms union of Europe, with com­plete finan­cial and eco­nomic con­trol cen­tered in Berlin. This will cre­ate at once the largest free trade area and the largest planned econ­omy in the world. In West­ern Europe alone . . . there will be an eco­nomic uni­ty of 400 mil­lion per­sons . . . To these will be added the resources of the British, French, Dutch and Bel­gian empires. These will be pooled in the name of Europa Ger­man­i­ca . . .

“The Ger­mans count upon polit­i­cal pow­er fol­low­ing eco­nomic pow­er, and not vice ver­sa. Ter­ri­to­r­ial changes do not con­cern them, because there will be no ‘France’ or ‘Eng­land,’ except as lan­guage groups. Lit­tle imme­di­ate con­cern is felt regard­ing polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions . . . . No nation will have the con­trol of its own finan­cial or eco­nomic sys­tem or of its cus­toms. [Ital­ics are mine–D.E.] The Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of all coun­tries will be accom­plished by eco­nomic pres­sure. In all coun­tries, con­tacts have been estab­lished long ago with sym­pa­thetic busi­ness­men and indus­tri­al­ists . . . . As far as the Unit­ed States is con­cerned, the plan­ners of the World Ger­man­ica laugh off the idea of any armed inva­sion. They say that it will be com­pletely unnec­es­sary to take mil­i­tary action against the Unit­ed States to force it to play ball with this sys­tem. . . . Here, as in every oth­er coun­try, they have estab­lished rela­tions with numer­ous indus­tries and com­mer­cial orga­ni­za­tions, to whom they will offer advan­tages in co-oper­a­tion with Ger­many. . . .

Ger­many Plots with the Krem­lin; T.H. Tetens; Hen­ry Schu­man [HC]; 1953; p. 92. [1]

In FTR #746 [2], we exam­ined in detail the Greek eco­nom­ic deba­cle, which was not sole­ly the prod­uct of fis­cal irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and great­ly exac­er­bat­ed by Ger­man pol­i­cy.

Lis­ten­ers may want to check out FTR #99 [3], in order to bet­ter under­stand the real­iza­tion of the blue­print detailed by Ms. Thomp­son and imple­ment­ed by the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work [4] about which we speak so often.

“In Europe, New Fears of Ger­man Might” by Michael Birn­baum; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 10/22/2011. [5]

EXCERPT: For decades, Germany’s role in Europe has been to sup­ply the cash, not the lead­er­ship. With fresh mem­o­ries of war, the con­ti­nent was cau­tious about Ger­man dom­i­na­tion — and so were the Ger­mans them­selves.

But the eco­nom­ic cri­sis has shak­en Europe’s post­war mod­el, and Ger­many increas­ing­ly calls the shots. As coun­tries strug­gle to pay their debts, only Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel has enough mon­ey to haul them out of trou­ble. And the price Merkel is demand­ing — more con­trol over how they run their economies — is set­ting off alarm bells in cap­i­tals across the con­ti­nent.

In Athens, pro­test­ers dressed up as Nazis rou­tine­ly prowl the streets, an allu­sion to the old mod­el of an assertive Ger­many. In Poland, accu­sa­tions that Ger­many has impe­r­i­al ambi­tions became a cam­paign issue in the recent pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

And although Ger­man lead­ers have sought in recent weeks to soothe oth­ers’ fears in advance of high-lev­el meet­ings in Brus­sels on Sun­day and in com­ing days, the tone has some­times sound­ed pugilis­tic.

“The ques­tion of who could accept a Ger­man mod­el has been set­tled by the mar­ket,” said a spokesman for Ger­man Finance Min­is­ter Wolf­gang Schaeu­ble. “We are real­ly only talk­ing about the details and the extent of the mea­sures, not about their nature.” . . .

. . . . Still, many econ­o­mists — includ­ing those at the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund — ques­tion whether the Ger­man mod­el is real­ly the best way to dig out of a reces­sion, giv­en the country’s out­size reliance on exports. And the sense of a fait accom­pli is rais­ing hack­les around Europe. Slo­va­kia recent­ly held up a plan to bol­ster the bailout fund before it approved it under heavy pres­sure from Ger­many. Even long­time allies such as Aus­tria are resist­ing.

“I can absolute­ly not accept” that Ger­many and France make deci­sions, then present them to the rest of the euro zone, Aus­tri­an For­eign Min­is­ter Michael Spin­de­leg­ger told Aus­tri­an tele­vi­sion last week. “There’s no eco­nom­ic board or dik­tat. We have a euro zone with 17 coun­tries.”

In Ger­many, the dis­sen­sion is rais­ing eye­brows.

“Every­body is call­ing for lead­er­ship,” said the country’s deputy for­eign min­is­ter, Wern­er Hoy­er, “but no one wants to be led.”