Wednesday, 23 November 2011
GERMANY APPROACHES THE DOMINANCE IT ALWAYS SOUGHT
Rodney Atkinson
(My books Fascist Europe Rising and Europe 's Full Circle are now on Kindle)
In the Sunday Telegraph of 13th November 2011 Thomas Kielinger, a German journalist based for many years in London denied Germany has sought to dominate Europe. He said the last thing Germany wanted to show was "leadership" given the role of the "Fuehrer" in the past! But history tells us otherwise, not least the years since the second world war which have culminated in a German State which has bound other nations by treaty but frequently exempts itself, has established a 17 country currency based in Frankfurt and has become rich and industrially dominant while many EU countries approach bankruptcy.
It was Helmut Kohl who said "The future will belong to the Germans ... when we build the house of Europe." and it was Adenauer's Minister of Commerce, Dr Seebohm (anticipating the British Government's favourite phrase "Britain at the heart of Europe"!) who asserted that "Germany is the heart of Europe and the limbs must adjust themselves to the heart not the heart to the limbs." As the Mediterranean members of the European Union teeter on the brink of bankruptcy Germany has accumulated a Euro 750 billion trade surplus with them - due entirely to the Euro which subsidises German exports and prevents those countries from adjusting a national currency to their loss of competitiveness.
It was a German Christian Democrat Party paper in 1995 "Reflections on European Policy" which issued the threat: "If European integration were not to progress, Germany might be called upon by its own security constraints to try to effect stabilisation of Eastern Europe in the traditional manner"
As Walter Lippman wrote in the Herald Tribune in 1947 "If thirty years hence Germany dominates Europe and thus holds the balance of power between Russia and the English speaking nations, German historians will not count this war as a true defeat." This is the situation 60 years later and it did not come about "by accident".
Indeed Germany makes no secret (now that the structures of EU power are in place) of its domineering intent. In 2014 the change to majority voting rules (to reflect population size) will give far more power to Germany and Berlin has demanded that voting rights in the European Central Bank are distributed according to national GDP! Germany has drawn a clear line in regard to their commitment to the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF) beyond which there will be no further pan-European support for bail outs and it has rejected the "lender of last resort" roll for the ECB which might have been a way out of the grave Euro-crisis. So in both political and economic power Germany ruthlessly pursues national interests, despite selling the new Europe as a means of "fighting nationalism".................................................................................
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