Greeks Attack Merkel Government as Nazi Regime

At London's Daily Mail, "Furious Greeks lampoon German 'overlords' as Nazis with picture of Merkel dressed as an SS guard."

Greeks angry at the fate of the euro are comparing the German government with the Nazis who occupied the country in the Second World War.

Newspaper cartoons have presented modern-day German officials dressed in Nazi uniform, and a street poster depicts Chancellor Angela Merkel dressed as an officer in Hitler’s regime accompanied with the words: ‘Public nuisance.’

Greeks are furious at the deal, even though it means the banks will write off 50 per cent of the country’s debt and Socialist prime minister George Papandreou said Greece had ‘avoided a mortal national danger’.

Opposition parties blasted the landmark agreement, with conservatives warning it condemned the country to ‘nine more years of collapse and poverty’.

But it is the fury of ordinary Greeks which is raising eyebrows.

Greek government officials who agreed to the belt-tightening moves have been portrayed in cartoons giving the Nazi ‘Sieg Heil’ salute.

And German visitors flocking to ancient tourist sites are being met with a hostile welcome from some Greeks.

Berlin’s interference has revived historical enmities and evoked comparisons to the massive destruction of Greece at the hands of Hitler’s Germany more than 65 years ago.

That's pretty cheap.

Of course, Greece is the freeloader of Europe, so naturally they'd attack the powerful Germans as "Nazis."

Archaeologists in France Discover Underground Remains of 21 German Soldiers from World War I

At Der Spiegel, "WWI Grave Find Tells Story Germans Want to Forget":

Archaeologists in northern France have unearthed the bodies of 21 German soldiers from World War One in an elaborate underground shelter that was destroyed in a French attack in March 1918, and hasn't been opened since.

Individual war casualties are still frequently found during construction work on the former Western front battlefields of France and Belgium, but the discovery of so many soldiers in one location is rare.
The tomb, poignant and grisly, sheds light on the lives of the soldiers who died in explosions from heavy shells that penetrated the tunnel.

"It's a bit like Pompeii," Michaël Landolt, the French archaeologist leading the dig, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "Everything collapsed in seconds and is just the way it was at the time. This is an extraordinary find."

Fascinating. It turns out Germans don't really like digging up the past, so to speak. German newspapers buried the story on the inside pages.

RTWT.

German Officials Reopen 1980 Oktoberfest Bombing Investigation

This is interesting.

At Der Spiegel, "Oktoberfest Bombing Under Review: Officials Ignored Right-Wing Extremist Links":

It was less than two weeks before the Oct. 5, 1980 German parliamentary election, and the CSU and its then Bavarian state governor and chancellor candidate, Franz Josef Strauss, were not interested in right-wing extremist terrorism. In their worldview, the threat always came from the left. The social climate was toxic, and the Strauss camp, and others, treated left-wing extremist terror group the Red Army Faction (RAF) and its sympathizers as Germany's public enemy number one.

What did not fit into this worldview was the idea that right-wing extremist groups were at the same time developing their own, loosely defined terrorist network, with cells in Hamburg, Nuremberg, Esslingen near Stuttgart, as well as in Antwerp and Bologna. Not surprisingly, efforts to investigate the threat from the far right were half-hearted at best.

For three decades, the official explanation for the Oktoberfest attack involved the theory of a confused "sole perpetrator." In May 1981, after just eight months of investigation, the Bavarian State Office of Criminal Investigation (LKA) postulated this theory in its "final comment" on the case. The Federal Prosecutor's Office also noted that there was "no evidence whatsoever" that "third parties" could have influenced Köhler. Case closed -- or so it seemed.

Until now, this final comment was the only document relating to the case that had been made available to the public, while the investigation files on which it had been based remained unknown. Now SPIEGEL has evaluated these files for the first time, in addition to dossiers from the former East German secret police, the Stasi, and other records, some of which were formerly classified -- a total of 46,000 pages.

The Once and Future German Problem

My dad used to always warn against the eventual rise of Germany after World War II. It's a question that's always fascinated me. Germany's already wielding tremendous influence amid all the economic turmoil, but if the Eurozone crashes say goodbye to a united Europe and the promise of peace it established.

At Washington Post, "In Europe, new fears of German might."

BERLIN — 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.

Germany reengineered its culture after 1945. And I expect its role as economic powerhouse will satisfy renascent nationalist aspirations for European dominance. But there were predictions of a return to multipolarity and armed conflict in the years following the end of the Cold War. Hyper-institutionalization in the European project made that an impossibility. But times change. A lot depends on the role of the United States, whether we stay engaged in NATO and continue to keep Germany down, as we had throughout the postwar era. Is war among the leading European powers even a possibility at this point? Well, probably not --- I haven't heard a lot of calls for territorial revisionism, for example --- but you can't rule these things out. The pillars sustaining the peace are giving way. See Joshua Goldstein's recent essay, "Think Again: War."

RELATED: Anne-Marie Burley (Slaughter), "The Once and Future German Question."

European Leaders Debate Severe Options for Accord

At WSJ (via Google):

BRUSSELS — European leaders took their first steps toward a new plan to stem the euro crisis, admitting that their last grand plan, agreed to only three months ago, has failed.

The new effort, which leaders hope to finalize at another summit on Wednesday, involves a sweeping recapitalization of European banks, a substantial restructuring of Greece's debts, a bigger bailout fund, and even possibly fresh efforts to entice sovereign-wealth funds in China and elsewhere to come to Europe's aid.

Continue reading at that link.

Banks are writing off some of their Greek loans, and lots more capitalization is needed. See also Der Spiegel, "German Parliament Slows Euro Rescue Decisions," and Telegraph UK, "David Cameron vows to reclaim EU powers amid looming rebellion."

The Iranians 'Tricked and Misled Us'

At Der Spiegel, "Interview with Former Nuclear Watchdog Olli Heinonen":

SPIEGEL: Mr. Heinonen, if you consider your time as the United Nations' atomic "watchdog," do you look back in anger? Or did you succeed in making the world safer from nuclear bombs?

Heinonen: There are quite a few things I'm proud of. While I was at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), we played a significant role in putting Abdul Qadir Khan -- the most dangerous nuclear smuggler of all times -- out of action. But when I think about the nuclear activities of certain states, for instance Iran's nuclear program, I have to say that we allowed ourselves to be placated too often. We should have done more than carrying out our inspections. Yes, with hindsight you could perhaps even say we failed.

SPIEGEL: You sound worried. Is Tehran really on a direct path to becoming a nuclear state?

Heinonen: It's undeniable that Iran's nuclear program is far more advanced than it was in 2003, when the discovery of the Natanz facility brought it to the IAEA's attention. At the time, uranium enrichment tests were being carried out in secret on a small scale. But at the end of 2003, the Iranians admitted they were also planning to set up a heavy-water reactor in Arak to generate plutonium.

SPIEGEL: In other words, the other ingredient you need to create either nuclear power or an atom bomb.

Heinonen: Iran always told us it was only interested in the civilian uses of atomic energy. I've always had my doubts about that, more so now than ever.

SPIEGEL: Why don't you say what your former boss, Mohamed ElBaradei, said: That you haven't found the so-called "smoking gun" -- i.e. clear proof that Iran is developing nuclear weapons?

Heinonen: Before opponents of the Iranian regime exposed the existence of Natanz, those in power in Tehran had kept parts of their nuclear program secret for two decades. Today the facts are as follows: The conversion plant in Isfahan has produced 371 tons of uranium hexafluoride. Some 8,000 centrifuges in Natanz are being used to enrich this raw material. In February 2010, Iran began increasing enrichment to 20 percent. That's a significant step closer to making an atomic bomb because it takes only a few months to turn that into weapons-grade material. And at the beginning of this year, Fereydoun Abbasi was appointed the head of the atomic energy organization in Tehran ...

Continue reading.

I'm reminded of a few years back, toward the end of the George W. Bush administration, when the global left was pushing back hard against a tough inspections regime and there was talk of preemptive war. It didn't happen. But Iran sure seems more powerful today.

Did Angela Merkel Save the European Union?

This was at the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, "Germans Reconsider Ties to Europe: Merkel Scrambles on Bailout Vote as Key Allies Desert Her" (and at Google):

BERGISCH GLADBACH, Germany -- As Angela Merkel races to convince Germans that their continued prosperity rests on preserving the euro, she is encountering strong resistance even from those in her own party who have been traditionally among the country's most pro-European politicians.

When German lawmakers vote Thursday on whether to put more money into Europe's bailout fund—a step many investors see as essential to prevent a market panic—several conservative deputies, including Wolfgang Bosbach, a prominent champion of European integration, are expected to vote "no." Mr. Bosbach, a high-ranking conservative in Ms. Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, has recently become an outspoken critic of the bailout strategy.

"The first medicine didn't work, and now we are simply doubling the dose," said the lanky Mr. Bosbach of the Greek debt crisis. "My fear is that when the big bang happens, it won't just be us who will have to pay but generations hereafter."

The lawmaker rebellion underscores a broader shift among Germans about their nation's role in Europe since the crisis erupted nearly two years ago. While the Thursday vote is expected to pass, and a vast majority of Germans continue to feel a strong, historical commitment to Europe, with a common currency as its anchor, many have grown doubtful of whether it's worth the ever-growing cost of saving the euro.

Like many Europeans, few in Germany today fear the return of armed conflict in Western Europe, the decades-long impetus behind what Germans still often call the "European peace project."

Instead, economic prosperity and stability have become the main rationale for monetary union, an argument many Germans say they have trouble reconciling with one ineffective bailout after another.

Unable to persuade an increasingly skeptical German nation to go along with more rescue measures, Ms. Merkel risks presiding over Germany's growing isolation and the dissolution of the euro—the crowning achievement of Europe's post-World War II drive toward integration.

See if you can get through at those links. It's a fascinating piece. Seventy-five percent of German voters opposed Merkel's vote on the European bailout fund, which was approved Thursday.

And a roundup of opinion at Der Spiegel, "'Europe Can Breathe Easier' after Crunch Vote":

"The markets would prefer more and more money, and ever-increasing loans, but in the end, the money will not have much value anymore. The first serious experts are already talking of an impending need for currency reform, a traumatic idea for the Germans."

"Countries that live beyond their means should not be allowed to expect more money. Banks who make bad deals must be allowed to go bankrupt, without putting the whole system in danger. Creating the necessary structures to allow that is the task of politicians. What's needed are clear rules for national bankruptcies. It is also necessary to force banks to accumulate, as quickly as possible, enough capital so that they can survive a debt restructuring by, for example, Greece."

Man, that's harsh.

Merkel bought some time, and not a whole lot else.

Germany's Far-Left Left Party Faces Charges of Anti-Semitism

Well, yeah.

And this is a surprise?

At Der Speigel, "A Map without Israel: Germany's Left Party Faces Charges of Anti-Semitism" (via Memorandum):

Swatiskas intertwined in the Star of David, a map of the Middle East with Israel missing, boycotts of Israeli products: Germany's far-left Left Party, many feel, has a growing anti-Semitism problem. The issue threatens to divide the party.

Germany's far-left Left Party has been struggling for months to have its voice heard on the national political stage. Falling membership numbers, shrinking support and a very public leadership battle this spring have all left the party struggling to find relevance.

Now, though, the party is facing yet another challenge. For years, the Left Party -- a partial outgrowth of the East German communists -- has been criticized for harboring anti-Semitism and being overtly critical of Israel. Just recently, Left Party floor leader Gregor Gysi pushed a resolution through the party's parliamentary faction stating: "In the future, the representatives of the Left Party faction will take action against any form of anti-Semitism in society."

The party, the resolution read, will no longer participate in boycotts of Israeli products, will refrain from demanding a single-state solution to the Middle East conflict and will not take part in this year's Gaza flotilla.

That resolution, however, did not sit well with the party's left wing. The group protested against being "muzzled," complaining that Gysi's declaration was "undemocratic" and "dangerous," as Left Party parliamentarian Annette Groth complained. And Gysi, formerly head of the party, gave in. This week, he plans to compose a further resolution on anti-Semitism.

He provided a hint at what it might contain in a recent interview with the leftist paper Neues Deutschland. "I don't see a problem with anti-Semitism in the Left Party," he said. "I am not a fan of the inflationary use of the term 'anti-Semitism.'" Gysi himself is from a family that has Jewish roots, several members of which were murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust.

Yet More Strife

More pragmatic members of the Left Party are up in arms. "A further resolution on the subject ... wouldn't solve a single problem, rather it would create new ones," said Raju Sharma, a Left Party parliamentarian who is also the party's treasurer. Michael Leutert, also a member of Germany's federal parliament, the Bundestag, is concerned that the issue could plunge the party into yet more strife.

Still, it seems unlikely that the Left Party will be able to quickly silence the debate. On Monday, Dieter Graumann, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, wrote a guest commentary for the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung in which he accused Left Party members, particularly those from western Germany, of "downright pathalogical hatred of Israel." He also wrote that the "old anti-Zionist spirit from East Germany still stains the party."

There are many within the party who agree. Chief among them is Benjamin-Christopher Krüger, a founding member of a Left Party working group which aims at rooting all forms of anti-Semitism out of the party. "We have an anti-Semitism problem," he said.

A recent study by the University of Leipzig quoted in the daily Frankfurter Rundschau would seem to support Krüger's claim. The study said that positions hostile to both Israel and Jews are "increasingly dominant within the party" and critics of anti-Semitic positions are "increasingly isolated."

Several recent incidents bear witness to the problem. In April, the website of the district chapter of the Left Party in the western city of Duisburg featured a swastika entangled with a Star of David. The symbol linked to a pamphlet which called Israel a "rogue nation" and called for a boycott of Israeli products. The Duisburg Left Party chapter distanced itself from the pamphlet and claimed that the site had been illegally manipulated -- but the head of the Duisburg Left Party has long supported a boycott of Israeli products.

In May, Inge Höger, a member of the Bundestag from the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, appeared at a Palestinians in Europe conference attended by numerous Hamas sympathizers. She was wearing a scarf printed with a map of the Middle East that did not include Israel. Höger claimed that she was handed the scarf and didn't want to be impolite.

More at the link and at Memeorandum.

At least the German Left Party is debating the issue, and looking to rid itself of the vile hatred.

Not so in the U.S.

The Democrats revile Israel, the Obama administration is working toward the destruction of the Jewish state, and longtime affiliates of Barack Obama continue to promote the cause of Israel's delegitimation. See, "PASTOR WRIGHT, OBAMA'S MENTOR OF OVER 20 YEARS, CALLS ISRAEL "ILLEGAL, GENOCIDAL," URGES BLACKS TO DISAVOW THEIR COUNTRY."

RELATED: From Mark Steyn, at National Review, "Hate Couture."

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Falls on May 1st this year, the same day as international workers' solidarity day. There's some profound puzzle in that coincidence, but I'll unravel it later. Jeff Jacoby, of the Boston Globe, lost family members in the Holocaust, and he writes: "A demon gone, but evil remains":

The Germans slaughtered 1.3 million human beings in Auschwitz, of whom 1.1 million were Jews. Six of those Jews were my father’s parents, David and Leah Jakubovic, and their children Franceska, Zoltan, Yrvin, and Alice. Gassed to death in 1944, they represent 1 one-millionth — 0.000001 — of the 6 million European Jews annihilated in the Holocaust.

On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, it hardly needs to be said that mass murder didn’t end with the defeat of the Third Reich. In the decades since 1945, innocent men, women, and children beyond number have been massacred — in Mao’s China and Pol Pot’s Cambodia, in the Soviet gulag and North Korean slave camps, in Rwanda and Bosnia, Sudan and Syria, Congo and Uganda. Yet even in an epoch that has shattered every record for bloodiness and barbarity, the Holocaust is unique. What sets it apart from other campaigns of butchery is not its body count or its brutality or its genocidal nature. Nor is it the rapidity with which it was carried out, or the international indifference against which it unfolded.

The destruction of European Jewry stands alone because it was not a means to any end. The “Final Solution’’ was an end in itself. Jews were not murdered by the millions in the context of a struggle for power or land or wealth. There was no political or economic rationale for wiping out the Jews; they had nothing the Nazis coveted, and Germany gained nothing by their deaths. There was only the maniacal ideology of eliminationist anti-Semitism — the determination to track down and kill anyone born of Jewish ancestry. “It was precisely this — the fact of being born — that was the mortal sin, to be punished by death,’’ the historian Yehuda Bauer has observed. “That had never happened at any time — or anywhere — before.’’

RTWT. No need to guess where today's evil resides.

Who Was Worse, Hitler or Stalin?

At New York Review, "Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Killed More?":

In the second half of the twentieth century, Americans were taught to see both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as the greatest of evils. Hitler was worse, because his regime propagated the unprecedented horror of the Holocaust, the attempt to eradicate an entire people on racial grounds. Yet Stalin was also worse, because his regime killed far, far more people, tens of millions it was often claimed, in the endless wastes of the Gulag. For decades, and even today, this confidence about the difference between the two regimes—quality versus quantity—has set the ground rules for the politics of memory. Even historians of the Holocaust generally take for granted that Stalin killed more people than Hitler, thus placing themselves under greater pressure to stress the special character of the Holocaust, since this is what made the Nazi regime worse than the Stalinist one.

Discussion of numbers can blunt our sense of the horrific personal character of each killing and the irreducible tragedy of each death. As anyone who has lost a loved one knows, the difference between zero and one is an infinity. Though we have a harder time grasping this, the same is true for the difference between, say, 780,862 and 780,863—which happens to be the best estimate of the number of people murdered at Treblinka. Large numbers matter because they are an accumulation of small numbers: that is, precious individual lives. Today, after two decades of access to Eastern European archives, and thanks to the work of German, Russian, Israeli, and other scholars, we can resolve the question of numbers. The total number of noncombatants killed by the Germans—about 11 million—is roughly what we had thought. The total number of civilians killed by the Soviets, however, is considerably less than we had believed. We know now that the Germans killed more people than the Soviets did. That said, the issue of quality is more complex than was once thought. Mass murder in the Soviet Union sometimes involved motivations, especially national and ethnic ones, that can be disconcertingly close to Nazi motivations.

Ultimately, folks'll have to assess this essay themselves, given the nature of the discussion. The author, Timothy Snyder, isn't as clear as he should be, given that he's claiming the Nazis killed more than the Soviets. But the basic gist is that the Soviet numbers have been revised downward. And does it matter at this point, despite the discussion of the marginal enormity of one more single death out of the 100s of thousands or even millions? Only God knows the suffering of each of the families that lost loved ones. It becomes a metaphysical thing, at some point. And despite the author's numerical exegesis, I'm not convinced that Stalin's modernization planning and ruthless political liquidation programs are of the same kind of totalitarianism that resulted in the Holocaust. It's all depressing, and if folks recall Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism, the permissive causes (especially anti-Semitism) were found all across Europe following the turn of the 20th century. Beyond this, I'm leaving it to the experts. At least in reflecting on these things, the last thing that comes to mind is the GOP's budget balancing programs today. Progressive Democrats are hoisting signs emblazoned with STALIN, HITLER, WALKER. And the effect --- beyond sheer stupidity --- is simply to illustrate how fleeting is the left's legitimacy and its grip on the social welfare state in early-21st century America.

DoubleTapper Visits Dachau

A photo-essay: "Memorial Day for Holocaust Victims."

Ending the War to End All Wars

An essay from Margaret MacMillan, at New York Times:

NOT many people noticed at the time, but World War I ended this year. Well, in a sense it did: on Oct. 3, Germany finally paid off the interest on bonds that had been taken out by the shaky Weimar government in an effort to pay the war reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles.

While the amount, less than $100 million, was trivial by today’s standards, the payment brought to a close one of the most poisonous chapters of the 20th century. It also, unfortunately, brought back to life an insidious historical myth: that the reparations and other treaty measures were so odious that they made Adolf Hitler’s rise and World War II inevitable.

In truth, the reparations, as the name suggests, were not intended as a punishment. They were meant to repair the damage done, mainly to Belgium and France, by the German invasion and subsequent four years of fighting. They would also help the Allies pay off huge loans they had taken to finance the war, mainly from the United States. At the Paris peace talks of 1919, President Woodrow Wilson was very clear that there should be no punitive fines on the losers, only legitimate costs. The other major statesmen in Paris, Prime Ministers David Lloyd George of Britain and Georges Clemenceau of France, reluctantly agreed, and Germany equally reluctantly signed the treaty.

In Weimar Germany, a society deeply divided by class and politics, hatred of the “dictated peace” was widespread, and there was no shame in trying to escape its provisions. The final sum for reparations was not mentioned in the treaty — itself a humiliation in German eyes — but was eventually set in 1921 at 132 billion gold marks (about $442 billion in today’s terms). The fact is that Germany could have managed to pay, but for political reasons chose not to.

Some might recall that I wrote about this at the time: "Germany Pays Off Reparations Imposed at Versailles — 92 Years Later!"

How to Leave European Monetary Union

From The Economist, "How to Resign From the Club" (via Instapundit):

The idea of breaking up the currency zone raises at least three questions. First, why would a country choose to leave? Second, how would a country manage the switch to a new currency? Third—and perhaps most important—would leavers be better off outside the euro than inside it?

The main reason why a country might choose to leave the euro is to regain the monetary independence it sacrificed on joining and to set monetary policy to suit its own economic conditions. This could apply to the strong as well as the weak. Germans may long to have the Bundesbank in charge again. It would surely not take risks with long-term inflation, by keeping liquidity lines open to weak foreign banks, or with its political independence, by buying government bonds. And given the strength of the German economy, it might raise interest rates soon.

As it is, the European Central Bank (ECB), though based in Germany and modelled on the pre-euro Bundesbank, has had to react to the economic and financial weaknesses of the rest of the euro zone in ways that Germans do not like. Add to this taxpayers’ disgust at having to stand behind the public debts of less thrifty countries, and the idea of abandoning the euro looks enticing to some Germans. That appeal might extend to countries, such as Austria and Netherlands, with strong economic ties to Germany. They might prefer to join a new D-mark block than to stay with the euro, were Germany to leave.

Interesting, and more at the link.

It's gonna break up. I've suggested this a couple of times already, but I sense it's more than economics that's driving the shift, especially if it's Germany that first abandons ship.

Ireland Bailout Threatens European Monetary Union

This is the big story from Europe, at WSJ, "Irish Grasp at EU, IMF Lifeline":

The Irish government all but buckled to pressure to accept a historic international bailout Thursday, capitulating after a week of intense lobbying from officials across Europe and spurring questions about which other European economies will need a helping hand. Ireland's central-bank governor and finance minister acknowledged for the first time Thursday that the country needs help rescuing its banking industry, which has been crippled by losses on sour loans.

The Irish government is in talks with the International Monetary Fund and European officials about a loan package that is likely to amount to "tens of billions" of euros, the central-bank governor, Patrick Honohan, said. "It will be a large loan because the purpose...is to show Ireland has sufficient firepower to deal with any concerns of the market."

Ireland's grudging decision to accept foreign aid, after insisting it didn't need help, is a bitter moment for a country that won its independence from Britain decades ago. Already, some lawmakers and editorial writers are bemoaning what they see as the inevitable loss of sovereignty that will accompany a foreign bailout.

And this is key, in my opinion:

It is an equally pivotal point for the 16 nations that use Europe's common currency. After rescuing Greece in the spring, European leaders are now betting that if they extinguish the financial crisis engulfing Ireland, it won't spread to other euro-zone weak spots. But with bond markets continuing to punish those countries, new bailouts may be needed soon—a prospect that some believe will call into question the durability of the euro as a common currency.

I reported some time back that Germany's economic resurgence was lapping many other EU nations, and the prospect of renew demands for German autonomy outside the political union was said to threaten European integration. (And at NYT, "German Identity, Long Dormant, Reasserts Itself.")

RELATED: At The Other McCain earlier this week, "EUROPE IN CRISIS: Sudden Financial Emergency Strikes EU Zone UPDATE: Götterdämmerung?"

Germany Pays Off Reparations Imposed at Versailles — 92 Years Later!

Fascinating piece, at the Times of London, "First World War Officially Ends" (at Memeorandum):

The First World War will officially end on Sunday, 92 years after the guns fell silent, when Germany pays off the last chunk of reparations imposed on it by the Allies.

The final payment of £59.5 million, writes off the crippling debt that was the price for one world war and laid the foundations for another.

Germany was forced to pay the reparations at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 as compensation to the war-ravaged nations of Belgium and France and to pay the Allies some of the costs of waging what was then the bloodiest conflict in history, leaving nearly ten million soldiers dead.

The initial sum agreed upon for war damages in 1919 was 226 billion Reichsmarks, a sum later reduced to 132 billion, £22 billion at the time.

The bill would have been settled much earlier had Adolf Hitler not reneged on reparations during his reign.

Hatred of the settlement agreed at Versailles, which crippled Germany as it tried to shape itself into a democracy following armistice, was of significant importance in propelling the Nazis to power.

"On Sunday the last bill is due and the First World War finally, financially at least, terminates for Germany," said Bild, the country's biggest selling newspaper.

Most of the money goes to private individuals, pension funds and corporations holding debenture bonds as agreed under the Treaty of Versailles, where Germany was made to sign the 'war guilt' clause, accepting blame for the war.

France, which had been ravaged by the war, pushed hardest for the steepest possible fiscal punishment for Germany.

The principal representative of the British Treasury at the Paris Peace Conference, John Maynard Keynes, resigned in June 1919 in protest at the scale of the demands.

"Germany will not be able to formulate correct policy if it cannot finance itself,' he warned.

When the Wall Street Crash came in 1929, the Weimar Republic spiralled into debt. Four years later, Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany.

Yes, Keynes was right (see, The Economic Consequences of the Peace), but it's a much more complicated story. The United States was deeply implicated in the harsh settlement at Versailles. Americans would not agree to inter-Allied debt forgiveness for Britain and France, both of whom were facing financial collapse from the war, which in turn compelled them both, and especially France, to demand a punitive armistice with steep reparations. (And then there's the infamous "War Guilt Clause," Article 231, which made Weimar Germany responsible for damages caused by the war. There's a bit of historiographic controversy on this, discussed at Wikipedia. The word "guilt" appears nowhere in the article and it was actually designed to make Germany responsible only for the civilian costs of the war and not TOTAL costs. See William Keylor, The Twentieth-Century World and Beyond. That said, historical memory imputes tremendous symbolism to the war guilt clause, and over time it has come to represent intense allied vindictiveness and short-sightedness. Note how the Times article above is sure to cite it.)

Versailles. A flawed peace. Paved the way for the Second World War.

'A Film Unfinished'

Opens Friday in Los Angeles. I should be able to make it. And from LAT:

Four years ago, Yael Hersonski was struck by an unthinkable concept: In the foreseeable future, there would be no Holocaust survivors left to bear witness to the atrocities they once experienced. So the Israeli filmmaker set out to find the kind of unforgettable footage she might cinematically use to help keep this horrific chapter of history alive. What Hersonski uncovered, with an assist from producer Noemi Schory, was a 62-minute, 35-millimeter rough cut of a never-released 1942 Nazi propaganda film simply labeled "Das Ghetto."

The film, discovered by Schory in a Jerusalem Holocaust museum but first unearthed in an East German film archive in 1954, was particularly curious as it was apparently abandoned after it was shot without evidence of who was behind it, its exact purpose or why it was never completed. More remarkable was the fact that it even still existed, given that a reported 90% of film footage shot by the Nazis was destroyed at the end of World War II. But this one, lost and recovered several times through the decades, had already been examined in the years following the war, its footage thought to be a starkly real depiction of life inside the Warsaw Ghetto, the largest of the Jewish ghettos established by the Nazis in occupied Poland.

It was one of many such films produced by the Third Reich to promulgate its policies, help gain and maintain power, vilify the Jews and, in some segments, portray Jews seemingly living the high life under the Nazis' "compassionate" protection.

But what Hersonski came across as she watched four unfolding reels of emaciated captives, corpse-strewn streets and even scenes of the Jewish elite attending posh Champagne balls, was a staggering fifth reel of outtakes that had been discovered in 1998 by a British researcher. In those images could be seen entire scenes being reshot, cameramen in the background and signs of staging. It was proof that the film, while capturing some genuine suffering, was being manipulated by SS cameramen.

This soundtrack-free assemblage so inspired the director it would wind up as the centerpiece of her own unique and gripping Holocaust documentary, "A Film Unfinished," which opens in Los Angeles theaters Friday.

RTWT.

The film's official homepage is here.

'The White Ribbon' and Comparative Politics

Okay, as promised, here's a little update on The White Ribbon. I went to last night's late showing at Irvine's Westpark 8:

I saw Spiderman at Westpark in 2002, but the theater's an art-house cineplex now. Below is a poster of the Village Voice's movie review "Certainty and a Sure Hand Behind The White Ribbon's Unsolved Mystery":

The White Ribbon is Michael Haneke's first German-language film since the original Funny Games (1997) and, addressing what used to be called "the German problem" while dodging the filmmaker's own likeability issues, it's his best ever.

A period piece set on the eve of World War I in an echt Protestant, still-feudal village somewhere in the uptight depths of Northern Germany, The White Ribbon—which won a deserved Palme d'Or at last May's Cannes-fest of Cruelty—is as cold and creepy and secretly cheesy as any of Haneke's earlier films, if not quite as lofty. Instead of sermonizing, Haneke sets himself to honest craftsmanship. Detailed yet oblique, leisurely but compelling, perfectly cast and irreproachably acted, the movie has a seductively novelistic texture complete with a less-than-omniscient narrator hinting at a weighty historical thesis: It's Village of the Damned as re-imagined by Thomas Mann after studying August Sander's photographs of German types while perusing Wilhelm Reich's Mass Psychology of Fascism.

Actually, it's still called "the German problem," at least for students of comparative politics and international relations. No doubt such descriptions are unfashionable in the postmodern academy, but a key problématique in comparative political science is in explaining transitions to democracy, especially among the nations of the advanced industrialized West. The German case is perhaps the most fascinating for late-developing democracies, which for Germany doesn't come until after WWII. Perhaps more than any other nation before the 1920s and interwar period, Germany's political culture of paternalistic authoritarianism overdetermined the political regime toward the rise Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich. As Lawrence Mayer has written, in Comparative Politics: Nations and Theories in a Changing World:

Among the themes in the German culture that have been identified as conducive to the emergence of the Nazi dictatorship are the following: a submissive, authoritarian culture; an anti-intellectual and antirational romanticism; what has been called Volkishness -- a combination of anti-intellectual romanticism and a distorted form of populism and xenophobia; an exaggerated form of nationalism with a corresponding rejection of internationalism; a glorification of war and martial values; a hostility to the West and modernism and their values; and a deeply rooted hostility to the Jews.

Several scholars conducted immediate postwar studies whose data indicate a strong strain of authoritarianism in the German familly and in other social relations, such as those between teacher and student, employer and employee, and even husband and wife. Related to this is the finding of the classic Civic Culture study that, compared to the citizens of the Anglo-American democracies, citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany felt less competent to participate effectively in political activity.

Mayer goes on to stress that such an explanatory scheme is grossly inadequate in explaining the enormity of the origins of Nazi totalitarianism, and Germany was not uniquiqely isolated in its oppressive cultural attributes when compared to Eastern European regimes. But in the totality of things, this cultural composite, which came together with the specific geographical factors contributing to a sense of German praetorianism in the 19th century, provides a powerful framework for understanding the regime prior to the 1920s and 1930s, and of course for explaining the reengineering of German culture after 1945.

Thus, with this in mind, the critical acclaim for The White Ribbon is entirely understandable. It's not just the film's cinematic exellence and powerful acting, but its complete authenticity of historical presentation.

Readers might check the review at the Los Angeles Times as well, "'The White Ribbon': Michael Haneke Attempts to Explain the Seeds of Nazism in his Cautionary Tale."

GM's Opel Decision Stokes Anger in Germany

Publisher's Note: It is my pleasure once again to publish a guest essay from a reader, Bill Dawson. A U.S. citizen, Bill has lived in Austria since 2000. He blogs regularly about German History rather than contemporary politics, but he has his finger on the pulse of the German-language media and offers an interesting perspective from across the pond.

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A story which involves a U.S. company but is just barely on the news radar in the United States is by far the biggest story in Germany today, November 5, 2009.

The Germans have gone wild with anger after hearing the news that General Motors has decided to keep Opel, a European subsidiary, rather than sell it as previously planned. The original idea was that GM would sell Opel to Canadian firm Magna International and Russia's Sberbank. The Germans -- and by that I mean the government and the gigantic trade union IG Metall -- apparently had much more faith that the Magna/Sberba combo would better protect Germany's Opel jobs. The Detroit News article (linked above) suggests otherwise by indicating that GM's plan to cut 20% of the Opel workforce is similar to what Magna had planned. Honestly, the details of the respective plans do not interest me, so I've not dug deep and tried to compare them.

What does always interest me is the predictable reactions that many Germans have when businesses in the United States affect people (read: "workers") in Germany. Journalists, politicians and labor leaders dust off their cowboy boot cliches and whine about the heartlessness of capitalism.

"Capitalism has apparently learned nothing," asserts angry IG Metall chief Berthold Huber (my emphasis, link is to German content). That statement appears in an interview; neither Huber nor the interviewer thought it necessary to explain what exactly was meant. If GM makes a decision based on its own interests, then this shows that "Capitalism has apparently learned nothing." I guess from Huber's perspective this means that Capitalism has failed to learn that if it does not protect jobs at all costs then... what? I can only assume he means that the lesson of the current worldwide financial crisis is that jobs must be protected at all costs, even if they don't make economic sense to the companies who provide those jobs. And Capitalism has failed to learn that lesson. Right.

"This behavior of General Motors shows the ugly face of Turbo-Capitalism," laments the Minister President (head of the government) of the German state North Rhine Westphalia (German link, my emphasis). He is a member of the Christian Democrats, the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel, which is traditionally considered center-right and is often accused by the Left of being too pro-business.

"Smoking Colts" (German link) is the title Thomas Wels chose for his very short opinion piece on the website of the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. "The Americans have bargained just like they always do: up to the last minute, and with a Colt on the table." (My emphasis.) The disappointed Wels accuses GM of acting "purely in self-interest".

"Hatred for the Grave-Diggers of Detroit" (German link) is how the Sueddeutsche Zeitung titled their article about the anti-GM demonstrations that occurred today (11/5/2009) in the town of Ruesselsheim. Though the link is to a German article, you might enjoy clicking on it and then scrolling down until you see the slideshow consisting of six photos of the demonstration. Click that first photo and I'll take you through the photos with some translation where necessary. Hopefully they haven't changed up the photos by the time you read this.

1. The yellow shirt simply says, "We are Opel". Note that all labor demonstrations in Germany are dominated by the red flags that always make me think of Leninism.
2. This photo needs no commentary!
3. The sign on the lady's hat reads "Freedom for the slaves of GM."
4. The finger sign reads "Keep your hands off our Opel!" (The German is literally "finger away" rather than "hands off.")
5. I wasn't joking when I mentioned cowboy boots earlier. I think the message here is clear: the cowboy boot of American capitalism is crushing Opel.
6. The sign that is flipping off GM says "Get out!"
7. Uninteresting.
8. The sign on the upper left reads "Don't let Opel die" and on the upper right "Yes we Can -- better without GM."

Now all of you have been thinking throughout this whole article, "Are they nuts? GM is not 'capitalism.' It's socialism!" All German commentators whom I've come across so far are conveniently ignoring this fact. A few have mentioned that the U.S. government under world darling President Barack Obama owns the largest chunk of GM, but, funnily enough, they haven't elaborated on that: it doesn't fit the message.

Obama at U.N.: Disastrous Agenda

From Ben Johnson at FrontPage Magazine, "Obama’s Dangerous UN Agenda":

Barack Obama’s UN speech advanced a doctrinaire left-wing foreign policy that will hamstring American defense, further sideline the economy, and leave the nation relying on “law enforcement” to chase down terrorists after the fact. His anti-American statements were offensive, but his substantive proposals could do far more damage.

The whole thing is at the link.

See also my response to Obama's speech, "Obama at U.N.: Worst Foreign Policy Ever."

Obama's Post-Allied America

From Abe Greenwald, at the Weekly Standard, "Post-Allied America: The U.S. Shrinks Its Influence and Severs Ties With Sympathetic Global Partners":

With last Wednesday's decision to scrap plans for a promised missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, President Obama put the finishing touches on a new and dangerous entity: post-allied America. With his declaration a week later before the UN General Assembly that "alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long gone Cold War" no longer apply, he justified his creation. As a string of headlines from Central and Eastern European capitals makes plain, the U.S.'s most reliable democratic partners see the administration's decision for what it was: a historic shift in America's priorities. Adversaries' wishes now enjoy equal baseline footing with the needs of friends. Whatever may tip Washington in this or that policy direction, a history of cooperation or shared ideology will not be a factor. The Obama administration believes, ahistorically, that this will turn bad actors good.

The implications are disastrous. Small democracies, like Poland and the Czech Republic, may fall prey to aggressive, expansionist neighbors like Russia. Rogue and autocratic regimes will go unchecked as they ratchet up various proscribed initiatives. The U.S. will lose access to valuable partnerships, thus halting our ability to roll back dangers and maintain global stability. Already fading is American credibility. How can the U.S. hope to shame China out of abetting totalitarian North Korea when President Obama himself has just agreed to snub the pro-Democracy Dalai Lama out of deference to China? One-time allies will be forced into expedient relationships with our ideological antagonists. Democracy may see worldwide retreat.
The missile defense decision was a knock-out blow to our fraying alliances. But the Obama administration's unmistakable capitulation to the Kremlin was preceded by months of escalating post-ally policy. It should be no surprise that some of the potential dangers listed above have been realized. Treating Israel as just another Middle Eastern country with stubborn complications has led Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into secret security discussions with Moscow. Indifference to maintaining our relationship with Great Britain may be seen as the backdrop before which Scotland freed the murderer of 190 Americans in order to facilitate Libyan oil contracts.

The shift in American policy is more than geostrategic. It is a shift in the realm of ideas. President Obama has not merely sided with anti-democratic states over democratic ones, but supported anti-democratic forces over democratic ones within the same states. Instead of throwing U.S. patronage behind aggrieved Iranian voters, the American president "bore witness" to their deadly struggle before the White House publicly recognized their tormentor as "the elected leader" of Iran. Instead of standing with democratic Hondurans, who refused to see their country go the way of regional banana republics, Obama has decided to refuse them aid and recognition until they accept a would-be self-appointed strongman.

More at the link.

Related: The Washington Post, "Iran Reveals Existence of Second Uranium Enrichment Plant." Plus, Dana Loesch responds, "Obama Knew About Second Iranian Facility?" (via Memeorandum).