Germany: Great Future Left Behind

Yes, the Germans are worthy of pity. Such is my opinion, even if objections immediately follow on all sides in Europe.

Take Italian housewives, for example – and of course, all househusbands are included here too. Fortunately, during my long tenure as a political correspondent on the skewed Rome-Berlin axis, on this world and that world, i.e. on both sides of the Alps, I have often encountered them.

The typical Italian housewife takes the spaghetti with a firm grip and, almost without looking, places into a pot of boiling water just the right amount for 2, 4, 6, etc. people. And all is fine. But what about the Germans? They need a kitchen scale to calculate the right amount per person according to the recipe.

And that’s where the dilemma comes in. You have either too few or too many of these thin long sticks, either on the scale or in your hand… That’s actually the problem with Germans. For centuries, but actually, for more than two millennia.

Why, for example, the Germanic tribes under Arminius, also known as Cherusci German, once had to fight so hard in the Teutoburg Forest, that is, in the misty north, in AD 9, that the Emperor Augustus was at pains to exclaim in Rome: “Varus, Varus, give me back my legions!” It is said that 15,000 Romans died.

Couldn’t we have settled on a smaller number of losers and winners? For some, the Battle of Teutoburg Forest became a tragedy and soon a myth, which Tacitus (58 – 120) reinforced by praising the fighting spirit of the Germanic tribes and the ferocity of their women.

Unfortunately, tragedy and myth are not long forgotten. Or did Julius Caesar frame his victories in “Commentaries on the Gallic War” so moderately that Parisians are still proud of their Roman past?

Once again, I catch myself feeling sorry for the Germans. Because in the Middle Ages, in the “Holy Roman Empire” and then also in it but with the “Germanic Nation” addition, when the German kings were anointed by the Pope, things didn’t go so badly for them. They were willy-nilly catching up with a civilization that already existed south of the Alps. But no, German historians have endowed the beautiful German Middle Ages with the epithet “dark.” Not yet knowing or keeping quiet about what comes next.

That’s when it got really dark. Namely through Martin Luther (1483 – 1546). Since I was raised Catholic in Protestant Berlin, I can talk about this quite openly: Germans could have, should have, and must have done the whole Reformation in a more measured way. As a measured reform; there is no distinction between these words in Italian. After all, one should not immediately start wars over one’s personal beliefs, no matter how they were formed and by whatever tortuous paths. Especially if you are pursuing political interests. And certainly not to be at war for thirty years, as then was the case, from 1618 to 1648.

I have a suspicion that the popes in Rome didn’t even know, or perhaps couldn’t even imagine what the Teutons really wanted in regards to their faith. You make a deal on financial matters, such as selling indulgences, but you don’t bother the celestials.

I, for example, like St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome better than the 20 (!) independent Lutheran, Reformed, and Uniate regional churches in Germany today. The only thing the Vatican and the Protestant Church in Germany have in common is financial problems. From a global perspective, the Pope has made great strides; despite all the dogma, his capacity for self-correction was probably greater; after all, he is in Italy.

But even the cleverest German foreign policy maker, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815 – 1898), did not draw the right useful conclusions from history; and therefore, it is all regrettable. And here’s why: at a Reichstag meeting on May 14, 1872, Bismarck proclaimed: “We’re not going to Canossa.”

It was about the infallibility of the Pope, about his rights in the German Church, but above all about German domestic politics with its pride and honor. Exactly! Because “Canossa,” actually an innocuous castle in Emilia, is an anachronism in 1872 (or 2024).

But the then “Cultural Struggle” (Kulturkampf) between Berlin and Rome proved so fatal because Germans – very unfortunately – simply did not learn how to resolve differences elegantly. With all due respect to Bismarck’s achievements, this realization did not come until later.

So, another of Bismarck’s phrases, “We Germans fear God and nothing else in the world,” uttered against all political considerations at a Reichstag meeting on February 6, 1888, remained fatal. It may have been only a phrase, but it left a dangerous legacy as it failed to temper the Germans’ fervor. That of the generals after the victory over France (1870/71), of the greedy businessmen because of Alsace-Lorraine, and of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Was it too much to ask of the “unfortunate” Germans?

And so began World War I, a war in which the Germans and a certain front-line infantryman, Adolf Hitler, were assured of victory over the entire world just weeks before it ended in November 1918. Of course, it was not entirely fair that the victors of 1918 placed all the moral blame on the Germans and their imperial ambitions in addition to the military defeat. It was unfortunate and fraught with consequences. The wise Pope Benedict XV (born in 1854, years of pontificate 1914 – 1922) constantly admonished all nations and shrewdly warned of the consequences of victors’ revenge.

Meanwhile, a certain Adolf Hitler, in his madness, planned to diabolically exploit the violated honor of the Germans to quench his political thirst for power. Thus began the terrible 12 years of National Socialism (1933 – 1945). And it is almost a miracle that German history continued after this reign of terror of national racial insanity against almost the entire world.

But life always goes on. And the Germans still exist. They and we were lucky to have Chancellors Konrad Adenauer (1949 – 1963), Willy Brandt (1969 – 1974), and Helmut Kohl (1982 – 1998). No political atrocities were committed under them, and foreign policy was conducted in a balanced manner and with a balance of interests.

But then the Germans got it all mixed up again. Here we are in the new millennium, and the Social Democratic Chancellor of the SPD, Gerhard Schröder (1998 – 2005), is in power. He wanted and needed to stabilize the affluent welfare state. Because Germany was considered “the sick man of Europe” for its weakening economy, and Europe doesn’t need a sick man in the center. Also, because Schröder feared that increasing social benefits would lead to excessive public debt, which cost the rather capable Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in 1982. But his own party, the SPD, failed him because it lost its sense of proportion on social issues.

That’s how Angela Merkel came to power. First in 1990, back in the communist GDR, German Democratic Republic, as deputy government spokesman with corresponding public attention, then, in the united Germany, as minister under Helmut Kohl from 1991, then as secretary general from 1998, chairman of the CDU, Christian Democratic Union, from 2000, and chancellor for 16 years from 2005. Undoubtedly, this was a tremendous achievement. To which many external factors contributed. If you look at it soberly… But that’s a separate topic.

In August 2024, the fact that the Chancellor’s most important decisions were, and still are, linked to “unweighted” spending is increasingly coming to the fore when it concerns merits. The high bills that the Chancellor left behind are only gradually surfacing.

The current governing coalition, Traffic Light, is not up to the task. Also, because Merkel’s policy is essentially continuing. Increasingly generous welfare payments, benefits for children, maternity, housing, heating, and more, as well as subterfuge and deception, “special assets,” and accounting fraud, such as Merkel’s “unbalanced” anti-crisis decisions, have dire consequences: she responded to the 2008 banking crisis (which started in the USA) and the subsequent bankruptcy of Greece in a political, graceless, clumsy and financially unprofessional manner. Americans and Greeks were more sophisticated; Italians would probably have behaved the same way.

Then there was the impulsive “nuclear phase-out” after Fukushima in 2011, combined with irrational assumptions about global warming and climate policies based on unrealistic alternative energy sources. She wanted to save the entire planet at once; a responsible head of government would have abandoned the endeavor halfway through.

Call for uncontrolled mass immigration from the East with an organized “welcome culture” and “friendly face”; “we can handle it” without asking other “Europeans.” The British fled such paternalism; this should have provided food for thought. Fighting the coronavirus pandemic (2020 – 2023) has been more authoritarian than necessary and incredibly costly. Moralizing foreign and economic policies, for example towards Russia or China, lead to higher prices for everyone in the European Union.

The Chancellor of a beautiful government with no sense of proportion, with pretty pictures, looking like a darling almost everywhere, a cavalier ruler with a narrative zeitgeist and its persuasive propagators behind her back, went about things in a totally deliberate way. The bills for these actions have been passed down through inheritance.

Poor Germans – and they are not the only ones.