Germany's Fourth Reich plan (From The Northern Echo)

Germany's Fourth Reich plan

2:47pm Tuesday 31st January 2012 in Peter Mullen By Peter Mullen

I RETURN to a question I asked in this column some months ago: “Is it possible that control of Europe which Germany nearly achieved three times by force, under Bismarck in 1870, the Kaiser in 1914 and under Hitler in 1939, might now be achieved by economic means under Angela Merkel?”

It’s time to take another look and try to assess how far Germany’s attempted dictatorship of Europe has progressed. Are we closer today to the accomplishment of a Fourth Reich than we were six months ago?

Now, before I am lined up against the wall and a guttural accent tells me, “For you Englander, the war is over” I should stress that I am not suggesting we are seeing a fourth eruption of Prussian militarism to follow the first three. Europe is not threatened by Panzers and the Luftwaffe.

Nonetheless, I believe all the signs point to a persistence of Germany’s desire to be European top dog. Its means are financial and economic.

Last week, Angela Merkel said that the impoverished Greeks should, if they want help to rescue them from their dire financial plight, hand over the running of their national finances to the EU.

As expected, the Greeks responded to this with an outrage so vehement that I was glad my understanding of modern Greek does not stretch so far that I could interpret all the rude words they were calling the Germans.

When we speak of the power of the EU, we mean of course German power, for Germany is by far the strongest nation in Europe.

With German approval, the progress of European fascism seems to be getting along pretty nicely. The EU is trumpeted by its leaders and supporters as a huge step forwards for democracy. So we must ask, how is it then that, in the last three months, the political leadership in both Greece and Italy is not in the hands of democratic institutions, but its rulers are unelected technocrats – in effect, commissars?

The biggest financial weapon in the hands of the Germans is the Euro itself. It is like a straitjacket or an iron fist. The Euro stands for the doctrine that one size fits all. And all the countries who adopted the Euro 12 years ago must use that currency whether it suits their economies or not.

Manifestly, the Euro does not suit many European economies. In fact it is destroying them and the well-being of their people. The easiest way to resolve a financial deficit is to devalue the currency.

Membership of the Euro, that dogma of one size fits all, means that, for instance, the Italians cannot afford to make cars any longer.

The production of cars in Italy fell by 15.3 per cent last December alone.

Spain likewise cannot return to the peseta, with the result that there are five million unemployed there, including a catastrophic 50 per cent of those between 18 and 24. If Greece were allowed to return to the drachma, it would at a stroke revive its high earning tourist industry – ironically, visiting Germans – and begin to climb out of its financial mess.

The one country which does benefit from the Euro is Germany. Germany will not go back to the deutschmark, because then that former national coinage would go sky high on the currency markets and German industries, led by its car industry, would suffer a fatal rise in its costs.

So here we are again: the EU, run by Germany, uber alles. How long will the rest of Europe put up with the deprivations which this produces before social unrest throughout the continent breaks out?