Kevin Myers: We now know there's no such thing as Europe. Admit it and be grateful: Deutschland uber alles
Wednesday April 28 2010
The sun rises on a new dawn, and once again, the begging bowl is passed to Germany to pay for the excesses of others. And Germany will complain, and it will grumble, but most of all, it will pay. Why? Because payment confers power. The EU might fundamentally be just a Franco-German club, a glorified Franconia, but the club president-paymaster still lives in Berlin. For the most intelligent, the most talented, the most resourceful and energetic people in Europe are those whose lands lie between the Oder and the Rhine.
Sixty-five years ago this week, the idea that Germany might one day come to the economic rescue not just of Greece, but to the entire European project, and within the lifetimes of people then living, would have seemed utterly ridiculous. A national Nemesis unique in world history was befalling the Reich. Allied bombing had turned its cities into funeral pyres, within which hundreds of thousands of German civilians had perished. Another 400,000 Germans were killed in ground-fighting in 1945 alone. Perhaps two million ethnic-Germans were murdered or died during their flight from the ancient ethnic homelands in the east. Eight million Germans were roofless refugees. Tens of thousands of German women and girls were being raped by Soviet soldiery, who were to continue their rampage long after the last shot had been fired. Victor's justice followed: Germans were hanged for deeds that were no worse than many done by their conquerors.
The Germans invented the word, Gotterdammerung: it was for the Germans now to discover the full meaning of such righteous wrath.
Few Germans today complain about the fate of their country in 1945. They know a condign, if evil, punishment had been done for the misery they had wrought on the other peoples of Europe. No land that had felt the fall of the Nazi jackboot was spared the inhuman savagery of the Third Reich. From Greece to Italy, from Norway to the Ukraine, the tale varied in but detail: massacre, torture, extortion and slow-moving trains to their final destinations, marked by high smokestacks and strange smells.
So, 65 years ago this spring, the Germans began to rebuild their land. Somebody with a screwdriver began to assemble Volkswagens. A man with a drawing-board in the middle of rubble sketched out a design for a new Mercedes Benz. Willi Messerschmitt, whose surname in German means "knife-smith", and who had designed the first jetfighter in the world, began to make quirky little bubble-cars. From the ashes of Armageddon arose a new Germany, as hard-working and as inventive as ever, but with a new ethos, in which militarism was shunned and a duty to others extolled.
You get a good feel of a country as a hitchhiker. As a teenager, I hitched through Germany, and met nothing but kindness and hospitality. In Greece, I was wasting my time even trying to get a lift. So I caught a bus from Athens heading north to Thessaloniki, with my rucksack and my sleeping bag on my back. A man began to make jokes about me. The rest of the bus laughed. More jokes; more laughter -- uproarious mockery, actually. All in all, I preferred Germany.
I like Germans. They don't complain; well, not compared to other people. They get things done. They have their national vices, as do all peoples. Their word for 'modesty' or 'humility', Bescheidenheit, is a subordinate of the word for 'inform', or 'instruct'. This suggests a certain imprecision about what real humility actually means. So self-confidence is a natural German characteristic. The people who gave us Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Bruckner, who have twice emerged from defeat in the two worst wars in world history, and then twice created economic powerhouses, are right to feel a certain self-confidence. The motor car, the washing machine, the space rocket, these are German inventions. Some of the most 'American' aspects of the USA -- Boeing, Heinz, Kraft, hot dogs, hamburgers, coleslaw, cookies -- are actually German. Milton Hershey, the founder of the chocolate-company and the Wright Brothers, the creators of the aeroplane, were culturally German-Mennonites.
We now know that there is no such thing as 'Europe'. There is Germany, way out in front, and then there is France, but not much else. A great historic alignment is finally occurring. A new empire is finally arising, 65 years after allied troops were completing the conquest of Hitler's death lands. Germany is now about to become financial and political lord of all of mainland Europe.
Participation in a fiscal-system based on a currency which was designed for German needs, the euro, helped spell ruin for Ireland's tiger. The Mediterranean countries are about to go the same way. The cultural dynamism which, but for the mad militarism of the Kaiser and Hitler, would have naturally given Germany a continental lordship long ago, is now finally triumphing. Germany is today our lawmaker and our policeman. And if this means that in Ireland, real rules are really imposed and are then really obeyed, then it can only be a considerable improvement on the repeated lunacies and debacles of independence. Admit it, once and for all, and be grateful: Deutschland uber alles.
kmyers@independent.ie
- Kevin Myers
Irish Independent
