EU = cheap migrant Labour for big business.
Cheap migrant Labour for big business = political unrest.
Net Zero = even higher taxes on the already restless.
Its not complicated – and it’s not left v right.
Katharine Eyre
3 months ago
Some notes:
Germany’s housing crisis goes way back, especially in big, desirable cities such as Munich. I lived there 20 years ago as an Erasmus student and was lucky to nab student digs – otherwise I would have been flailing as affordable housing was scarce even then. Therefore, the adjective “burgeoning” in this article seems a bit inappropriate.
In the postwar world, I question whether Germans really prided themselves on being a “geopolitical power”. Most of the time, Germans prefer it when their governments hang back when it comes to geopolitics. The tone is very much “why is this our business? Why do we have to get involved?” Subtext (at least in the last 20 years): leave us alone to be comfortable and wealthy, bitte.
The problem with Germans (and I say this as a lifelong Germanophile) is their desire for an idea, a principle, morals, rules which they can commit themselves to wholeheartedly and then stand back and say “we did it properly, most accurately, to the highest degree, the best”.
This is basically a good thing and has allowed them to develop world-beating industries where these virtues come to the fore. But ti also makes them prone to extremes and – on occasional – intensely irritating. Especially when there’s another attempt underfoot to become world champion in morals and the attitude of “die Welt wird am deutschen Wesen genesen” (the world would heal if everyone was like the Germans) takes hold.
What we are seeing now is the cumulative disaster of this kind of masochistic perfectionism having been applied in multiple areas: energy policy, more or less anything to do with EU membership/euro, migration, climate policy.
The virtues that made the Germans so successful in the postwar period are now threatening to ruin them.
Thanks! I always like the comments under the articles about the US and Canada – often just as good as the article itself, especially if the response is “this article is guff, this is what I think”.
My understanding of those countries is pretty patchy so I like any opportunity to observe live discussions about them by the people who live there.
I often try to comment on the American articles I find particularly far-fetched or ridiculous. From the UK authors, they tend to be either a result of limited understanding of the peculiarities of American politics or a lack of knowledge of American history pre-WWII. Quite forgivable. I wouldn’t presume to intelligently comment on UK politics, though I do get the vague sense that things are even worse over there. The articles from American authors tend to suffer from the same maladies as all American media, that is they tend to be subtly or not so subtly spun towards a particular political, social, racial, or religious group. There’s really no such thing as a ‘neutral’ American publication. Polarized politics has bled into absolutely everything over here. It’s so inescapable that the media source most consistently trusted by Americans is the BBC.
“the world would heal if everyone was like the Germans”.
What a truly astonishing remark!
Have the modern Germans completely forgotten/sanitised their simply appalling (recent)history? And may I ask did you learn/hear that in Munich of all places?
Agreed, why is Katy bigging up the Germans? They frigged the euro in their favour, cheated on their car emissions, screwed us over Brexit, I don’t even need to mention WW2…? Plus they are quite unemotional. (Just sayin’)
Also my partner and I were refused accomodation in a bed and breakfast in the late 90’s because we were English! They are no better than anyone else, stop being sycophants please…
You think this extremely critical article is “bigging up” the Germans?
Someone was nasty to you once in Germany? I’ve never experienced that I must say, but perhaps I’ve been lucky. One German corporation cheated the emissions testing regime? Of course no British corporations do anything bad, do they, such as pumping vast amounts of sewage into our rivers?. Germany has (or had) many good points, many services far better run than in the UK.
I know some Germans and they do actually have a sense of humour! And even like British humour. The complacent belief that only the British have a sense of humour or produce good comedy is just the usual British conceit, part of our endless superior / inferior mindset – which are two sides of the same coin.
Germany is a big complex and very diverse country of over 80 million people. These sweeping generalisations are ridiculous. All British people are repressed, small minded, culturally bereft, insular hypocrites perhaps?
By the way, I am patriotic and pro-British. But the best of British doesn’t consist of dissing other peoples.
I understand what K is saying – I think she means it’s an ingrained cultural imperative, in the German dna; not a logical, debateable, stated position.
Ah! I didn’t realise you were a member of the identitarian Left.
I thought right wingers are supposed to think that the “sins of the fathers should NOT be visited upon the sons (and daughters?)”. There is almost noone now alive who lived at the time of the Third Reich.
“Am deutschen Wesen mag die Welt genesen” (Rough translation; ‘The world may benefit from the German spirit’) is a 19th century political slogan which aimed at uniting previously independent acting German speaking states under (Prussian) Kaiser Wilhelm I. Meaning the ‘German world’ – not the whole world. The original meaning is often misunderstood and misused.
makes them prone to extremes and – on occasional – intensely irritating.
I used to work with SAP, the German software company. You could never just call them and ask them a question. You had to book a meeting in a fortnight’s time and they would come with a team of twelve engineers. It was impressive but in a world where agility and speed are of the essence, it was anachronistic and occasionally, intensely irritating.
Yeah that sounds familiar. Working with Germans is always a mixture of complete admiration for their precision and thoroughness and wanting to shout “OMG, JUST GET ON WITH IT!!!”
It’s funny how national characters come out when you work with people. Americans are hard working, very direct, happy to change direction quickly and are very focused on the bottom line. Brits, Aussies, Kiwis, South Africans, Canadians work less hard than the Americans, are generally similar to them in creativity/agility but are usually nicer to each other in the office. Indians and Chinese (Hong Kongers) work hard but tend to require direction from above and a reluctant to deviate from the plan. Eastern Europeans are industrious and bright but tend to be too blunt which can lead to friction within the team.
I love seeing all the differences.
I find Poles, Czechs, Slovaks etc. extremely hardworking, refreshingly honest (or blunt, depending on your perspective)…but love to whinge and whine. Not because they are having a particularly bad time, but because it’s simply part of the Slavic mentality (which carries over into eastern Austria too). Hungarians tend not to be whingy, but brood, darkly.
Recently found myself working with an American for the first time and was simply astounded at the drive, the flexibility of thinking, the “roll your sleeves up and let’s do it” attitude…all of which I was in absolute awe and happily allowed myself to be swept along with it, it was wonderful! However, what was lacking was a sense of what really was impossible and which goals were no longer worth pursuing. I understand that boundless optimism has made the US into what it is, but they will get themselves into massive tangles with that belief that positive thinking can overcome everything.
Absolutely spot on, as a Easter European professional, working in Austral-Asia, Middle east and elsewhere( I have visited 90 countries )with all kind of different nationalities , all stereotypes about nations, very much make sense.
I can not agree more that we Serbs are as an average whingy and if successful overconfident and blunt .
Back to the subject, in my opinion smart text, Unheard is the best magazine!
In short, the Germans have the outlook of children…things are black or white, and once they have decided which it is will pursue it no matter what the consequences.
And children with power are exceptionally dangerous.
That’s just a truly ridiculous remark, just really beneath anyone’s intelligence on here.
If you look at either the dark or the better sides of German history, their seriousness, the power of ideas and philosophy, (Luther, Goethe, Hegel, Kant, Nietzsche etc) this could not be further from the outlook of children.
May be one misunderstanding is that Germans and there culture are quite distinct from the rest of Europe since they escaped the clutches of the Roman Empire.
The BAP has some interesting things to say on this subject, particularly about German music
“The problem with Germans (and I say this as a lifelong Germanophile) is their desire for an idea, a principle, morals, rules which they can commit themselves to wholeheartedly and then stand back and say “we did it properly, most accurately, to the highest degree, the best”.
This is the best description of the German mentality that I’ve ever read. I am a quarter German through my half Austrian and half Bavarian mother, but having been socialised in England, I have always had more in common with my English father’s side of the family. Every country has its idiosyncrasies, but the “am deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen” attitude has ironically been most pronounced under Merkel and the subsequent Scholz coalition government. It’s a bizarre combination of misguided morality, virtue signalling, self-flagellation, and German efficiency/knowhow. In their fervour of “never again” they have been steadily sliding down the slippery slope to exactly the never again they always invoke, which has become a poorly defined and utterly vague threat.
I vividly recall how Merkel’s critics were treated back in 2015 and beyond. I was one of those critics, and people with whom I had been friendly, suddenly turned into vicious and spiteful individuals who threatened to denounce you and even ruin your social/professional reputation for daring to write that Merkel’s (in)action was a disaster. They didn’t even realise how much their actions resembled what happened in the 1930s and 40s.
I like most of the people in rural Bavaria and Austria, but the leftist, self-righteous city populations are another story.
After the war the Germans were working like crazy and emerged as an economic super power, very much like the Japanese. Their ability in engineering and committing themselves wholeheartedly to their new goal to show the world, that they could build a “good” Germany and making amends for their past. But because they were trying to stay away from any geopolitical ambitions, they put their faith in the Market Economy, created by Ludwig Erhard, believing in their strong currency, the Deutsche Mark, and were proud of the perfectly engineered German car.
But after the reunification, when German politicians were worried, that their country could become too much of an economic super power, they decided with their European allies, and in agreement with the US, to dissolve Germany into a European Union. The French were only happy with this new political Union as long as they retained the political say in this relationship and Germany would remain a sort of economic beating heart. But this basically was the first step to the downfall of the “new German soul”. They had to give up their beloved German DM. As I was told by disappointed German friends and relatives: “nobody asked us”… Although they were assured by the new European Bureaucrats, that there will be no difference as the Euro would be as stable as the DM with an independent ECB, very much like their Bundesbank. All this came crashing down in the 2009-10 debt crisis, and the Germans had to acknowledge, that the one pillar of their political philosophy was crumbling down. They were also trying to embrace the new Green Religion like the rest of their Western allies, always sticking 100% to Green rules and regulations. Now the Germans reluctantly have to acknowledge, that their beloved car is becoming redundant, which stood as a symbol for their engineering prowess.
Most Germans now seem to be totally confused, coming to another crossroad.
The “good” Germany under Merkel also had to prove to the world that they were champions in the migrant crisis, opening the doors to millions of “asylum seekers”. Merkel told her fellow citizens: we will create a more “colourful” country (Wir Schaffen Das!)
Now all the familiar rules have changed, how will they ever adjust to being not only the “good” Green Germans, but also losing their industry, and having the enormous task of integrating millions of people from totally different cultural backgrounds.
Only time will tell….
You’re talking about the last 20 years but should look much further back into the Reich’s history and see what might happen when it commits itself to an idea. It always is some variation of the Reich’s superiority. Masochistic? You’re mistaken.
Very interesting comments, thank you. I’ve always thought that many post-war Germans have wished that their country could be another Switzerland: rich, neutral and tucked away from the European Schwerpunkt.
Charles Stanhope
3 months ago
TRACTORS today, TANKS tomorrow?
Paul MacDonnell
3 months ago
Good article.. I’m not sure if I agree that there was under investment in infrastructure but I could be wrong. The problem seems to be that the country has committed industrial suicide.
Note to Unherd subs. It is linchpin, not “lynchpin”.
First, it leapt on the anti-Russian bandwagon
Not a bad article but when an inaccurate statement like the one above appears, my scepticism rises. Please correct me, but my recall is that Germany did an awful lot of belly aching before commiting to reducing their dependency on Russian energy. When the Bundeskanzler finally came out with their decision, it was quite clearly not an easy or straightforward one.
P.S. They were also taking lots of flak for their dallying – including in here!
Interesting analysis, but I fear the causes of Germany’s downfall have not been addressed.
The proportional representation electoral system has facilitated the rise of extremist parties and enabled Germany’s enduring bias towards a mercantilist economy.
The deeply flawed German political and economic system has been well and truly found out.
Allison Barrows
3 months ago
Short version: government is both evil and incompetent.
AC Harper
3 months ago
Do you hear that? Silence.
All over the Western World, and Germany in particular, the cans are no longer being kicked down the road because there is no more road.
Although there have been some noteworthy exceptions, politicians have been able to defer making hard choices. Using inflation and interest rates as a means of making borrowing ‘cheaper”. Calling borrowing to fund running costs as ‘investment’. Dodging capital costs by engaging commercial companies to provide infrastructure facilities on a rental basis. Using trade restrictions to wage war by other means.
And many politicians used to a cosy life on the never-never don’t know how to respond.
Alex Lekas
3 months ago
A couple of years ago, there was a report that claimed the Rand Corporation had cobbled together a plan to weaken Germany. The Corporation, of course, vigorously denied the claim, https://www.rand.org/news/press/2022/09/14.html, but as events have unfolded, was it really false?
America was involved in – at the very least, knew about – the plan to blow up Nordstream, which has impacted energy prices. We were among the countries pushing for the importation of people unfamiliar with the native culture and often, hostile to it. How’s all that worked out? Maybe Rand’s hands are clean, but something happened.
Yes, America loathes rivals, they were concerned about the friendly and improving relations between Germany (via Kohl and Merkel) and Russia, so they destabilised Europe (to keep us down and more reliant on them) The blowing up of the Nordstream 2 pipeline was the biggest act of sabotage since WW2 and America was responsible! Shameful.
Gayle Rosenthal
3 months ago
There is something rather dim-witted about Germans and neo-liberals in general. For almost 100 years liberal and quasi-socialist governments have been pumping “free money” into economies through entitlements and other means to level the playing fields and give labor contingents a better standard of living. What do we get from third party money ? Inflation and self-generated shortages, that’s what. The capitalists have profited by cheap labor, most recently immigrant labor, so they are reluctant to shut it down, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
For the next 100 years there will be political and social strife as Islamists and Europeans fight over the spoils of wealth that have been created. Living standards are going to stagnate and the knee-jerk reaction will be to crush free speech and confiscate more and more of the productivity of the capitalist class. It’s a road to hell but then …. life is a narrow bridge.
Michael Daniele
3 months ago
As Monika Schnitzer, the head of the German Council of Economic Experts, put it: “Nobody thought it through to the end about what [these rules] could mean in a serious crisis, that there is not enough room to manoeuvre”.
This made me laugh out loud. Then I got to thinking about how much fun it would be to attend a meeting of the German Council of Economic Experts, and had several more minutes of chuckling.
Indeed! That group title is like something out of Monty Python.
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago
The WEF-influenced uniparty has to go. Net zero, open immigration, DEI are big frauds perpetrated by people insulated from the real world.
Pedro the Exile
3 months ago
massive anti-AfD protests have swept the country —
really?I am aware of some protests but……
James Kirk
3 months ago
Always amused at the German’s idea of orderliness. 40 years ago I lived there for three years. You had to speak German to anyone over forty, unlike other countries who’d let you struggle a while before switching. I came to the conclusion they were enthusiastically lazy. They’d go out on a lawn with nail scissors to remove an offending daisy instead of waiting and getting the mower out. Gardening was almost routine changing of spare parts supplied by the Blumenhaus on every corner. Aldi were selling cheap chinese tat long before we were.
As I recall, more that 50 years ago ‘they’ used to ‘kill’ about 20K pa on their splendid roads, when we could only manage a paltry 8K or so. Those were the days!
The Greens established themselves long before ours with photos of dead brown forests; the Greens’ ambition to have a world population of 500 million. Werner von Braun would have had them on the Moon by 1950 if they’d not attacked Russia and declared war on USA.
My experience was entirely different. I went as a 14 year old in 1976–while studying German in school. Couldn’t find anybody who would let me try out my poor version of German. Everybody spoke English with the exception of a man in a smaller town who sold sporting goods. But he gave me a steep discount on some football gear.
Richard Calhoun
3 months ago
Interesting analysis, but I fear the causes of Germany’s downfall have not been addressed.
The proportional representation electoral system has facilitated the rise of extremist parties and enabled Germany’s enduring bias towards a mercantilist economy.
The deeply flawed German political and economic system has been well and truly found out.
Not true, They like others under the power and influence of America have succumbed to the Elite designs, Net Zero, which I believe was made up by the Americans to hobble China…
James Love
3 months ago
Canada has a human rights protest by truckers and the Liberal government also called them “far right”. They invoked Marshal Law and shut down their bank accounts. It was a peaceful protest that blocks several streets in front of the parliament buildings. The Truckers Protest revealed the illiberal underbelly of Canada’s elites.
Agreed, the ‘illiberal media’ also painted the group far right even though a lot of their number were native Canandian and Sikh!
This ‘liberal/establishment’ media regime is disgraceful, the American media is disgustingly biased, so obviously bought and paid for by the elites.
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago
Hard to see the euro staying above the doller with the German economy tanking. What happens if the euro loses 20% against the doller ? This is sometjing i would like to see explored more here on unherd.
Their exports will be more competitive and cheaper USA imports will help bring money printing inflation down to allow for guess what? More money printing and debt…
Andrew Fisher
3 months ago
Fazi makes some decent points. But remember. He’s a Marxist, so his anti capitalist “solutions” would bring about a far bigger disaster.
Alan Hawkes
3 months ago
As one western country after another begins to splinter among economic contradictions The thought that keeps rising in my mind is that what we have here is the next version of events that have repeated since the Bronze Age Collapse, analysed in Joseph Tainter’s book, The Collapse of Complex Societies.
Chris Hayes
3 months ago
There were three planks to Germany’s economic success: a devalued currency (€1 = DM1.4 – 1.5), effectively reducing the cost of German exports; cheap energy from Russia; and a booming Chinese economy sucking in their exports.
Now, with Russian energy cut off and the Chinese economy slowing, they are reaping the rewards of the Euro – which has, in effect, been an economic ducking stool exporting unemployment and misery to Europe’s peripheries – all the while sanctimoniously refusing the bail out their neighbours.
Alexander Herzen summed them up succinctly when in the 19th Century he observed that “where an Englishman or a Frenchman would be stopped by their conscience, a German would have to be stopped by a policeman.”
Malcolm Beaton
3 months ago
With Brexit in place and the restraining hand of Britain gone-Germany is effectively “in charge” of the EU
Historically both times Germany has been in this dominant position-things haven’t gone well
Malcolm Beaton
Germany is a mess, no question. We can only hope this spells the end of the disconnected political technocrats who have been running the show.
When the German trains are being late that’s surely the sign of the end of time
Tres amucant.
Très amusant surely?
We are all far-right now.
EU = cheap migrant Labour for big business.
Cheap migrant Labour for big business = political unrest.
Net Zero = even higher taxes on the already restless.
Its not complicated – and it’s not left v right.
Some notes:
Germany’s housing crisis goes way back, especially in big, desirable cities such as Munich. I lived there 20 years ago as an Erasmus student and was lucky to nab student digs – otherwise I would have been flailing as affordable housing was scarce even then. Therefore, the adjective “burgeoning” in this article seems a bit inappropriate.
In the postwar world, I question whether Germans really prided themselves on being a “geopolitical power”. Most of the time, Germans prefer it when their governments hang back when it comes to geopolitics. The tone is very much “why is this our business? Why do we have to get involved?” Subtext (at least in the last 20 years): leave us alone to be comfortable and wealthy, bitte.
The problem with Germans (and I say this as a lifelong Germanophile) is their desire for an idea, a principle, morals, rules which they can commit themselves to wholeheartedly and then stand back and say “we did it properly, most accurately, to the highest degree, the best”.
This is basically a good thing and has allowed them to develop world-beating industries where these virtues come to the fore. But ti also makes them prone to extremes and – on occasional – intensely irritating. Especially when there’s another attempt underfoot to become world champion in morals and the attitude of “die Welt wird am deutschen Wesen genesen” (the world would heal if everyone was like the Germans) takes hold.
What we are seeing now is the cumulative disaster of this kind of masochistic perfectionism having been applied in multiple areas: energy policy, more or less anything to do with EU membership/euro, migration, climate policy.
The virtues that made the Germans so successful in the postwar period are now threatening to ruin them.
This is an example of informed and informative insight that makes reading UnHerd comments rewarding.
Thanks! I always like the comments under the articles about the US and Canada – often just as good as the article itself, especially if the response is “this article is guff, this is what I think”.
My understanding of those countries is pretty patchy so I like any opportunity to observe live discussions about them by the people who live there.
I often try to comment on the American articles I find particularly far-fetched or ridiculous. From the UK authors, they tend to be either a result of limited understanding of the peculiarities of American politics or a lack of knowledge of American history pre-WWII. Quite forgivable. I wouldn’t presume to intelligently comment on UK politics, though I do get the vague sense that things are even worse over there. The articles from American authors tend to suffer from the same maladies as all American media, that is they tend to be subtly or not so subtly spun towards a particular political, social, racial, or religious group. There’s really no such thing as a ‘neutral’ American publication. Polarized politics has bled into absolutely everything over here. It’s so inescapable that the media source most consistently trusted by Americans is the BBC.
“the world would heal if everyone was like the Germans”.
What a truly astonishing remark!
Have the modern Germans completely forgotten/sanitised their simply appalling (recent)history? And may I ask did you learn/hear that in Munich of all places?
Agreed, why is Katy bigging up the Germans? They frigged the euro in their favour, cheated on their car emissions, screwed us over Brexit, I don’t even need to mention WW2…? Plus they are quite unemotional. (Just sayin’)
Also my partner and I were refused accomodation in a bed and breakfast in the late 90’s because we were English! They are no better than anyone else, stop being sycophants please…
You think this extremely critical article is “bigging up” the Germans?
Someone was nasty to you once in Germany? I’ve never experienced that I must say, but perhaps I’ve been lucky. One German corporation cheated the emissions testing regime? Of course no British corporations do anything bad, do they, such as pumping vast amounts of sewage into our rivers?. Germany has (or had) many good points, many services far better run than in the UK.
I know some Germans and they do actually have a sense of humour! And even like British humour. The complacent belief that only the British have a sense of humour or produce good comedy is just the usual British conceit, part of our endless superior / inferior mindset – which are two sides of the same coin.
Germany is a big complex and very diverse country of over 80 million people. These sweeping generalisations are ridiculous. All British people are repressed, small minded, culturally bereft, insular hypocrites perhaps?
By the way, I am patriotic and pro-British. But the best of British doesn’t consist of dissing other peoples.
“All British people are repressed, small minded, culturally bereft, insular hypocrites perhaps?”
That’s something to be proud of
I understand what K is saying – I think she means it’s an ingrained cultural imperative, in the German dna; not a logical, debateable, stated position.
Ah! I didn’t realise you were a member of the identitarian Left.
I thought right wingers are supposed to think that the “sins of the fathers should NOT be visited upon the sons (and daughters?)”. There is almost noone now alive who lived at the time of the Third Reich.
“Am deutschen Wesen mag die Welt genesen” (Rough translation; ‘The world may benefit from the German spirit’) is a 19th century political slogan which aimed at uniting previously independent acting German speaking states under (Prussian) Kaiser Wilhelm I. Meaning the ‘German world’ – not the whole world. The original meaning is often misunderstood and misused.
I used to work with SAP, the German software company. You could never just call them and ask them a question. You had to book a meeting in a fortnight’s time and they would come with a team of twelve engineers. It was impressive but in a world where agility and speed are of the essence, it was anachronistic and occasionally, intensely irritating.
Yeah that sounds familiar. Working with Germans is always a mixture of complete admiration for their precision and thoroughness and wanting to shout “OMG, JUST GET ON WITH IT!!!”
It’s funny how national characters come out when you work with people. Americans are hard working, very direct, happy to change direction quickly and are very focused on the bottom line. Brits, Aussies, Kiwis, South Africans, Canadians work less hard than the Americans, are generally similar to them in creativity/agility but are usually nicer to each other in the office. Indians and Chinese (Hong Kongers) work hard but tend to require direction from above and a reluctant to deviate from the plan. Eastern Europeans are industrious and bright but tend to be too blunt which can lead to friction within the team.
I love seeing all the differences.
I find Poles, Czechs, Slovaks etc. extremely hardworking, refreshingly honest (or blunt, depending on your perspective)…but love to whinge and whine. Not because they are having a particularly bad time, but because it’s simply part of the Slavic mentality (which carries over into eastern Austria too). Hungarians tend not to be whingy, but brood, darkly.
Recently found myself working with an American for the first time and was simply astounded at the drive, the flexibility of thinking, the “roll your sleeves up and let’s do it” attitude…all of which I was in absolute awe and happily allowed myself to be swept along with it, it was wonderful! However, what was lacking was a sense of what really was impossible and which goals were no longer worth pursuing. I understand that boundless optimism has made the US into what it is, but they will get themselves into massive tangles with that belief that positive thinking can overcome everything.
Absolutely spot on, as a Easter European professional, working in Austral-Asia, Middle east and elsewhere( I have visited 90 countries )with all kind of different nationalities , all stereotypes about nations, very much make sense.
I can not agree more that we Serbs are as an average whingy and if successful overconfident and blunt .
Back to the subject, in my opinion smart text, Unheard is the best magazine!
Spot on. RE Indians, an exaggerated respect and fear of the ‘boss’ is engrained in their culture.
Hence March 1918 and all that followed.
Who would want to use SAP
Whenever I have come across it it has been hugely expensive and way over budget and required a huge amount of resource
In short, the Germans have the outlook of children…things are black or white, and once they have decided which it is will pursue it no matter what the consequences.
And children with power are exceptionally dangerous.
I never thought of it as childlike – “naive earnestness” is the phrase which most springs to mind.
That’s just a truly ridiculous remark, just really beneath anyone’s intelligence on here.
If you look at either the dark or the better sides of German history, their seriousness, the power of ideas and philosophy, (Luther, Goethe, Hegel, Kant, Nietzsche etc) this could not be further from the outlook of children.
May be one misunderstanding is that Germans and there culture are quite distinct from the rest of Europe since they escaped the clutches of the Roman Empire.
The BAP has some interesting things to say on this subject, particularly about German music
Their ‘Achille’s heel’ no less. How often Greek mythology gets simply and memorably to the heart of the human condition and its contradictions.
That’s hardly surprising is it, considering both they and the Ancient Romans virtually invented the Western World?
“The problem with Germans (and I say this as a lifelong Germanophile) is their desire for an idea, a principle, morals, rules which they can commit themselves to wholeheartedly and then stand back and say “we did it properly, most accurately, to the highest degree, the best”.
This is the best description of the German mentality that I’ve ever read. I am a quarter German through my half Austrian and half Bavarian mother, but having been socialised in England, I have always had more in common with my English father’s side of the family. Every country has its idiosyncrasies, but the “am deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen” attitude has ironically been most pronounced under Merkel and the subsequent Scholz coalition government. It’s a bizarre combination of misguided morality, virtue signalling, self-flagellation, and German efficiency/knowhow. In their fervour of “never again” they have been steadily sliding down the slippery slope to exactly the never again they always invoke, which has become a poorly defined and utterly vague threat.
I vividly recall how Merkel’s critics were treated back in 2015 and beyond. I was one of those critics, and people with whom I had been friendly, suddenly turned into vicious and spiteful individuals who threatened to denounce you and even ruin your social/professional reputation for daring to write that Merkel’s (in)action was a disaster. They didn’t even realise how much their actions resembled what happened in the 1930s and 40s.
I like most of the people in rural Bavaria and Austria, but the leftist, self-righteous city populations are another story.
After the war the Germans were working like crazy and emerged as an economic super power, very much like the Japanese. Their ability in engineering and committing themselves wholeheartedly to their new goal to show the world, that they could build a “good” Germany and making amends for their past. But because they were trying to stay away from any geopolitical ambitions, they put their faith in the Market Economy, created by Ludwig Erhard, believing in their strong currency, the Deutsche Mark, and were proud of the perfectly engineered German car.
But after the reunification, when German politicians were worried, that their country could become too much of an economic super power, they decided with their European allies, and in agreement with the US, to dissolve Germany into a European Union. The French were only happy with this new political Union as long as they retained the political say in this relationship and Germany would remain a sort of economic beating heart. But this basically was the first step to the downfall of the “new German soul”. They had to give up their beloved German DM. As I was told by disappointed German friends and relatives: “nobody asked us”… Although they were assured by the new European Bureaucrats, that there will be no difference as the Euro would be as stable as the DM with an independent ECB, very much like their Bundesbank. All this came crashing down in the 2009-10 debt crisis, and the Germans had to acknowledge, that the one pillar of their political philosophy was crumbling down. They were also trying to embrace the new Green Religion like the rest of their Western allies, always sticking 100% to Green rules and regulations. Now the Germans reluctantly have to acknowledge, that their beloved car is becoming redundant, which stood as a symbol for their engineering prowess.
Most Germans now seem to be totally confused, coming to another crossroad.
The “good” Germany under Merkel also had to prove to the world that they were champions in the migrant crisis, opening the doors to millions of “asylum seekers”. Merkel told her fellow citizens: we will create a more “colourful” country (Wir Schaffen Das!)
Now all the familiar rules have changed, how will they ever adjust to being not only the “good” Green Germans, but also losing their industry, and having the enormous task of integrating millions of people from totally different cultural backgrounds.
Only time will tell….
You’re talking about the last 20 years but should look much further back into the Reich’s history and see what might happen when it commits itself to an idea. It always is some variation of the Reich’s superiority. Masochistic? You’re mistaken.
Very interesting comments, thank you. I’ve always thought that many post-war Germans have wished that their country could be another Switzerland: rich, neutral and tucked away from the European Schwerpunkt.
TRACTORS today, TANKS tomorrow?
Good article.. I’m not sure if I agree that there was under investment in infrastructure but I could be wrong. The problem seems to be that the country has committed industrial suicide.
Note to Unherd subs. It is linchpin, not “lynchpin”.
CRT says different
ha – I had to think about that
First, it leapt on the anti-Russian bandwagon
Not a bad article but when an inaccurate statement like the one above appears, my scepticism rises. Please correct me, but my recall is that Germany did an awful lot of belly aching before commiting to reducing their dependency on Russian energy. When the Bundeskanzler finally came out with their decision, it was quite clearly not an easy or straightforward one.
P.S. They were also taking lots of flak for their dallying – including in here!
Interesting analysis, but I fear the causes of Germany’s downfall have not been addressed.
The proportional representation electoral system has facilitated the rise of extremist parties and enabled Germany’s enduring bias towards a mercantilist economy.
The deeply flawed German political and economic system has been well and truly found out.
Short version: government is both evil and incompetent.
Do you hear that? Silence.
All over the Western World, and Germany in particular, the cans are no longer being kicked down the road because there is no more road.
Although there have been some noteworthy exceptions, politicians have been able to defer making hard choices. Using inflation and interest rates as a means of making borrowing ‘cheaper”. Calling borrowing to fund running costs as ‘investment’. Dodging capital costs by engaging commercial companies to provide infrastructure facilities on a rental basis. Using trade restrictions to wage war by other means.
And many politicians used to a cosy life on the never-never don’t know how to respond.
A couple of years ago, there was a report that claimed the Rand Corporation had cobbled together a plan to weaken Germany. The Corporation, of course, vigorously denied the claim, https://www.rand.org/news/press/2022/09/14.html, but as events have unfolded, was it really false?
America was involved in – at the very least, knew about – the plan to blow up Nordstream, which has impacted energy prices. We were among the countries pushing for the importation of people unfamiliar with the native culture and often, hostile to it. How’s all that worked out? Maybe Rand’s hands are clean, but something happened.
Yes, America loathes rivals, they were concerned about the friendly and improving relations between Germany (via Kohl and Merkel) and Russia, so they destabilised Europe (to keep us down and more reliant on them) The blowing up of the Nordstream 2 pipeline was the biggest act of sabotage since WW2 and America was responsible! Shameful.
There is something rather dim-witted about Germans and neo-liberals in general. For almost 100 years liberal and quasi-socialist governments have been pumping “free money” into economies through entitlements and other means to level the playing fields and give labor contingents a better standard of living. What do we get from third party money ? Inflation and self-generated shortages, that’s what. The capitalists have profited by cheap labor, most recently immigrant labor, so they are reluctant to shut it down, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
For the next 100 years there will be political and social strife as Islamists and Europeans fight over the spoils of wealth that have been created. Living standards are going to stagnate and the knee-jerk reaction will be to crush free speech and confiscate more and more of the productivity of the capitalist class. It’s a road to hell but then …. life is a narrow bridge.
As Monika Schnitzer, the head of the German Council of Economic Experts, put it: “Nobody thought it through to the end about what [these rules] could mean in a serious crisis, that there is not enough room to manoeuvre”.
This made me laugh out loud. Then I got to thinking about how much fun it would be to attend a meeting of the German Council of Economic Experts, and had several more minutes of chuckling.
Indeed! That group title is like something out of Monty Python.
The WEF-influenced uniparty has to go. Net zero, open immigration, DEI are big frauds perpetrated by people insulated from the real world.
massive anti-AfD protests have swept the country —
really?I am aware of some protests but……
Always amused at the German’s idea of orderliness. 40 years ago I lived there for three years. You had to speak German to anyone over forty, unlike other countries who’d let you struggle a while before switching. I came to the conclusion they were enthusiastically lazy. They’d go out on a lawn with nail scissors to remove an offending daisy instead of waiting and getting the mower out. Gardening was almost routine changing of spare parts supplied by the Blumenhaus on every corner. Aldi were selling cheap chinese tat long before we were.
As I recall, more that 50 years ago ‘they’ used to ‘kill’ about 20K pa on their splendid roads, when we could only manage a paltry 8K or so. Those were the days!
The Greens established themselves long before ours with photos of dead brown forests; the Greens’ ambition to have a world population of 500 million. Werner von Braun would have had them on the Moon by 1950 if they’d not attacked Russia and declared war on USA.
My experience was entirely different. I went as a 14 year old in 1976–while studying German in school. Couldn’t find anybody who would let me try out my poor version of German. Everybody spoke English with the exception of a man in a smaller town who sold sporting goods. But he gave me a steep discount on some football gear.
Interesting analysis, but I fear the causes of Germany’s downfall have not been addressed.
The proportional representation electoral system has facilitated the rise of extremist parties and enabled Germany’s enduring bias towards a mercantilist economy.
The deeply flawed German political and economic system has been well and truly found out.
Not true, They like others under the power and influence of America have succumbed to the Elite designs, Net Zero, which I believe was made up by the Americans to hobble China…
Canada has a human rights protest by truckers and the Liberal government also called them “far right”. They invoked Marshal Law and shut down their bank accounts. It was a peaceful protest that blocks several streets in front of the parliament buildings. The Truckers Protest revealed the illiberal underbelly of Canada’s elites.
Agreed, the ‘illiberal media’ also painted the group far right even though a lot of their number were native Canandian and Sikh!
This ‘liberal/establishment’ media regime is disgraceful, the American media is disgustingly biased, so obviously bought and paid for by the elites.
Hard to see the euro staying above the doller with the German economy tanking. What happens if the euro loses 20% against the doller ? This is sometjing i would like to see explored more here on unherd.
Their exports will be more competitive and cheaper USA imports will help bring money printing inflation down to allow for guess what? More money printing and debt…
Fazi makes some decent points. But remember. He’s a Marxist, so his anti capitalist “solutions” would bring about a far bigger disaster.
As one western country after another begins to splinter among economic contradictions The thought that keeps rising in my mind is that what we have here is the next version of events that have repeated since the Bronze Age Collapse, analysed in Joseph Tainter’s book, The Collapse of Complex Societies.
There were three planks to Germany’s economic success: a devalued currency (€1 = DM1.4 – 1.5), effectively reducing the cost of German exports; cheap energy from Russia; and a booming Chinese economy sucking in their exports.
Now, with Russian energy cut off and the Chinese economy slowing, they are reaping the rewards of the Euro – which has, in effect, been an economic ducking stool exporting unemployment and misery to Europe’s peripheries – all the while sanctimoniously refusing the bail out their neighbours.
Alexander Herzen summed them up succinctly when in the 19th Century he observed that “where an Englishman or a Frenchman would be stopped by their conscience, a German would have to be stopped by a policeman.”
With Brexit in place and the restraining hand of Britain gone-Germany is effectively “in charge” of the EU
Historically both times Germany has been in this dominant position-things haven’t gone well
Malcolm Beaton