To meet the imaginary Russian threat to Western Europe, Germany will lead an expanded, militarized EU.
Olaf Scholz, federal chancellor of Germany, meets Volodymyr Zelenskyy, president of Ukraine, in Kiev, Feb. 14, 2022. (President of Ukraine)
By Diana Johnstone
in Paris
Special to Consortium News
The European Union is girding for a long war against Russia that appears clearly contrary to European economic interests and social stability. A war that is apparently irrational – as many are – has deep emotional roots and claims ideological justification. Such wars are hard to end because they extend outside the range of rationality.
For decades after the Soviet Union entered Berlin and decisively defeated the Third Reich, Soviet leaders worried about the threat of “German revanchism.” Since World War II could be seen as German revenge for being deprived of victory in World War I, couldn’t aggressive German Drang nach Osten be revived, especially if it enjoyed Anglo-American support? There had always been a minority in U.S. and U.K. power circles that would have liked to complete Hitler’s war against the Soviet Union.
It was not the desire to spread communism, but the need for a buffer zone to stand in the way of such dangers that was the primary motivation for the ongoing Soviet political and military clampdown on the tier of countries from Poland to Bulgaria that the Red Army had wrested from Nazi occupation.
This concern waned considerably in the early 1980s as a young German generation took to the streets in peace demonstrations against the stationing of nuclear “Euromissiles” which could increase the risk of nuclear war on German soil. The movement created the image of a new peaceful Germany. I believe that Mikhail Gorbachev took this transformation seriously.
On June 15, 1989, Gorbachev came to Bonn, which was then the modest capital of a deceptively modest West Germany. Apparently delighted with the warm and friendly welcome, Gorbachev stopped to shake hands with people along the way in that peaceful university town that had been the scene of large peace demonstrations.
I was there and experienced his unusually warm, firm handshake and eager smile. I have no doubt that Gorbachev sincerely believed in a “common European home” where East and West Europe could live happily side by side united by some sort of democratic socialism.
Gorbachev on June 13, 1989 in the market-square in Bonn. (Jüppsche/Wikimedia Commons)
Gorbachev died at age 91 two weeks ago, on Aug. 30. His dream of Russia and Germany living happily in their “common European home” had soon been fatally undermined by the Clinton administration’s go-ahead to eastward expansion of NATO. But the day before Gorbachev’s death, leading German politicians in Prague wiped out any hope of such a happy end by proclaiming their leadership of a Europe dedicated to combating the Russian enemy.
These were politicians from the very parties – the SPD (Social Democratic Party) and the Greens – that took the lead in the 1980s peace movement.
German Europe Must Expand Eastward
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is a colorless SPD politician, but his Aug. 29 speech in Prague was inflammatory in its implications. Scholz called for an expanded, militarized European Union under German leadership. He claimed that the Russian operation in Ukraine raised the question of “where the dividing line will be in the future between this free Europe and a neo-imperial autocracy.” We cannot simply watch, he said, “as free countries are wiped off the map and disappear behind walls or iron curtains.”
(Note: the conflict in Ukraine is clearly the unfinished business of the collapse of the Soviet Union, aggravated by malicious outside provocation. As in the Cold War, Moscow’s defensive reactions are interpreted as harbingers of Russian invasion of Europe, and thus a pretext for arms buildups.)
To meet this imaginary threat, Germany will lead an expanded, militarized EU. First, Scholz told his European audience in the Czech capital, “I am committed to the enlargement of the European Union to include the states of the Western Balkans, Ukraine, Moldova and, in the long term, Georgia”. Worrying about Russia moving the dividing line West is a bit odd while planning to incorporate three former Soviet States, one of which (Georgia) is geographically and culturally very remote from Europe but on Russia’s doorstep.
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In the “Western Balkans”, Albania and four extremely weak statelets left from former Yugoslavia (North Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina and widely unrecognized Kosovo) mainly produce emigrants and are far from EU economic and social standards. Kosovo and Bosnia are militarily occupied de facto NATO protectorates. Serbia, more solid than the others, shows no signs of renouncing its beneficial relations with Russia and China, and popular enthusiasm for “Europe” among Serbs has faded.
Adding these member states will achieve “a stronger, more sovereign, geopolitical European Union,” said Scholz. A “more geopolitical Germany” is more like it. As the EU grows eastward, Germany is “in the center” and will do everything to bring them all together. So, in addition to enlargement, Scholz calls for “a gradual shift to majority decisions in common foreign policy” to replace the unanimity required today.
What this means should be obvious to the French. Historically, the French have defended the consensus rule so as not to be dragged into a foreign policy they don’t want. French leaders have exalted the mythical “Franco-German couple” as guarantor of European harmony, mainly to keep German ambitions under control.
But Scholz says he doesn’t want “an EU of exclusive states or directorates,” which implies the final divorce of that “couple.” With an EU of 30 or 36 states, he notes, “fast and pragmatic action is needed.” And he can be sure that German influence on most of these poor, indebted and often corrupt new Member States will produce the needed majority.
France has always hoped for an EU security force separate from NATO in which the French military would play a leading role. But Germany has other ideas. “NATO remains the guarantor of our security,” said Scholz, rejoicing that President Biden is “a convinced trans-atlanticist.”
“Every improvement, every unification of European defense structures within the EU framework strengthens NATO,” Scholz said. “Together with other EU partners, Germany will therefore ensure that the EU’s planned rapid reaction force is operational in 2025 and will then also provide its core.
This requires a clear command structure. Germany will face up to this responsibility “when we lead the rapid reaction force in 2025,” Scholz said. It has already been decided that Germany will support Lithuania with a rapidly deployable brigade and NATO with further forces in a high state of readiness.
Serving to Lead … Where?
Robert Habeck speaking at protest before Green Party headquarters, Berlin, Oct. 28, 2020. (Leonhard Lenz/Wikimedia Commons)
In short, Germany’s military buildup will give substance to Robert Habeck’s notorious statement in Washington last March that: “The stronger Germany serves, the greater its role.” The Green’s Habeck is Germany’s economics minister and the second most powerful figure in Germany’s current government.
The remark was well understood in Washington: by serving the U.S.-led Western empire, Germany is strengthening its role as European leader. Just as the U.S. arms, trains and occupies Germany, Germany will provide the same services for smaller EU states, notably to its east.
Since the start of the Russian operation in Ukraine, German politician Ursula von der Leyen has used her position as head of the EU Commission to impose ever more drastic sanctions on Russia, leading to the threat of a serious European energy crisis this winter. Her hostility to Russia seems boundless. In Kiev last April she called for rapid EU membership for Ukraine, notoriously the most corrupt country in Europe and far from meeting EU standards. She proclaimed that “Russia will descend into economic, financial and technological decay, while Ukraine is marching towards a European future.” For von der Leyen, Ukraine is “fighting our war.” All of this goes far beyond her authority to speak for the EU’s 27 Members, but nobody stops her.
Germany’s Green Party foreign minister Annalena Baerbock is every bit as intent on “ruining Russia.” Proponent of a “feminist foreign policy”, Baerbock expresses policy in personal terms. “If I give the promise to people in Ukraine, we stand with you as long as you need us,” she told the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED)-sponsored Forum 2000 in Prague on Aug. 31, speaking in English. “Then I want to deliver no matter what my German voters think, but I want to deliver to the people of Ukraine.”
“People will go on the street and say, we cannot pay our energy prices, and I will say, ‘Yes I know so we will help you with social measures. […] We will stand with Ukraine and this means the sanctions will stay also til winter time even if it gets really tough for politicians.’”
Certainly, support for Ukraine is strong in Germany, but perhaps because of the looming energy shortage, a recent Forsa poll indicates that some 77 percent of Germans would favor diplomatic efforts to end the war – which should be the business of the foreign minister. But Baerbock shows no interest in diplomacy, only in “strategic failure” for Russia – however long it takes.
In the 1980s peace movement, a generation of Germans was distancing itself from that of their parents and vowed to overcome “enemy images” inherited from past wars. Curiously, Baerbock, born in 1980, has referred to her grandfather who fought in the Wehrmacht as somehow having contributed to European unity. Is this the generational pendulum?
The Little Revanchists
Stepan Bandera torchlight parade in Kiev, Jan. 1, 2020. (A1/Wikimedia Commons)
There is reason to surmise that current German Russophobia draws much of its legitimization from the Russophobia of former Nazi allies in smaller European countries.
While German anti-Russian revanchism may have taken a couple of generations to assert itself, there were a number of smaller, more obscure revanchisms that flourished at the end of the European war that were incorporated into United States Cold War operations. Those little revanchisms were not subjected to the denazification gestures or Holocaust guilt imposed on Germany. Rather, they were welcomed by the C.I.A., Radio Free Europe and Congressional committees for their fervent anticommunism. They were strengthened politically in the United States by anticommunist diasporas from Eastern Europe.
Of these, the Ukrainian diaspora was surely the largest, the most intensely political and the most influential, in both Canada and the American Middle West. Ukrainian fascists who had previously collaborated with Nazi invaders were the most numerous and active, leading the Bloc of Anti-Bolshevik Nations with links to German, British and U.S. Intelligence.
Eastern European Galicia, not to be confused with Spanish Galicia, has been back and forth part of Russia and Poland for centuries. After World War II it was divided between Poland and Ukraine. Ukrainian Galicia is the center of a virulent brand of Ukrainian nationalism, whose principal World War II hero was Stepan Bandera. This nationalism can properly be called “fascist” not simply because of superficial signs – its symbols, salutes or tatoos – but because it has always been fundamentally racist and violent.
Incited by Western powers, Poland, Lithuania and the Habsburg Empire, the key to Ukrainian nationalism was that it was Western, and thus superior. Since Ukrainians and Russians stem from the same population, pro-Western Ukrainian ultra-nationalism was built on imaginary myths of racial differences: Ukrainians were the true Western whatever-it-was, whereas Russians were mixed with “Mongols” and thus an inferior race. Banderist Ukrainian nationalists have openly called for elimination of Russians as such, as inferior beings.
So long as the Soviet Union existed, Ukrainian racial hatred of Russians had anticommunism as its cover, and Western intelligence agencies could support them on the “pure” ideological grounds of the fight against Bolshevism and Communism. But now that Russia is no longer ruled by communists, the mask has fallen, and the racist nature of Ukrainian ultra-nationalism is visible – for all who want to see it.
However, Western leaders and media are determined not to notice.
Ukraine is not just like any Western country. It is deeply and dramatically divided between Donbass in the East, Russian territories given to Ukraine by the Soviet Union, and the anti-Russian West, where Galicia is located. Russia’s defense of Donbass, wise or unwise, by no means indicates a Russian intention to invade other countries. This false alarm is the pretext for the remilitarization of Germany in alliance with the Anglo-Saxon powers against Russia.
The Yugoslav Prelude
Cutting firewood in Sarajevo during wars that broke up Yugoslavia, 1993. (Christian Maréchal/Wikimedia Commons)
This process began in the 1990s, with the breakup of Yugoslavia.
Yugoslavia was not a member of the Soviet bloc. Precisely for that reason, the country got loans from the West which in the 1970s led to a debt crisis in which the leaders of each of the six federated republics wanted to shove the debt onto others. This favored separatist tendencies in the relatively rich Slovenian and Croatian republics, tendencies enforced by ethnic chauvinism and encouragement from outside powers, especially Germany.
During World War II, German occupation had split the country apart. Serbia, allied to France and Britain in World War I, was subject to a punishing occupation. Idyllic Slovenia was absorbed into the Third Reich, while Germany supported an independent Croatia, ruled by the fascist Ustasha party, which included most of Bosnia, scene of the bloodiest internal fighting. When the war ended, many Croatian Ustasha emigrated to Germany, the United States and Canada, never giving up the hope of reviving secessionist Croatian nationalism.
In Washington in the 1990s, members of Congress got their impressions of Yugoslavia from a single expert: 35-year-old Croatian-American Mira Baratta, assistant to Sen. Bob Dole (Republican presidential candidate in 1996). Baratta’s grandfather had been an important Ustasha officer in Bosnia and her father was active in the Croatian diaspora in California. Baratta won over not only Dole but virtually the whole Congress to the Croatian version of Yugoslav conflicts blaming everything on the Serbs.
In Europe, Germans and Austrians, most notably Otto von Habsburg, heir to the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire and member of the European Parliament from Bavaria, succeeded in portraying Serbs as the villains, thus achieving an effective revenge against their historic World War I enemy, Serbia. In the West, it became usual to identify Serbia as “Russia’s historic ally”, forgetting that in recent history Serbia’s closest allies were Britain and especially France.
In September 1991, a leading German Christian Democratic politician and constitutional lawyer explained why Germany should promote the breakup of Yugoslavia by recognizing the Slovenian and Croat secessionist Yugoslav republics. (Former CDU Minister of Defense Rupert Scholz at the 6th Fürstenfeldbrucker Symposium for the Leadership of the German Military and Business, held September 23 – 24, 1991.)
By ending the division of Germany, Rupert Scholz said, “We have, so to speak, overcome and mastered the most important consequences of the Second World War … but in other areas we are still dealing with the consequences of the First World War” – which, he noted “started in Serbia.”
“Yugoslavia, as a consequence of the First World War, is a very artificial construction, never compatible with the idea of self-determination,” Rupert Scholz said. He concluded: “In my opinion, Slovenia and Croatia must be immediately recognized internationally. (…) When this recognition has taken place, the Yugoslavian conflict will no longer be a domestic Yugoslav problem, where no international intervention can be permitted.”
And indeed, recognition was followed by massive Western intervention which continues to this day. By taking sides, Germany, the United States and NATO ultimately produced a disastrous result, a half dozen statelets, with many unsettled issues and heavily dependent on Western powers. Bosnia-Herzegovina is under military occupation as well as the dictates of a “High Representative” who happens to be German. It has lost about half its population to emigration.
Only Serbia shows signs of independence, refusing to join in Western sanctions on Russia, despite heavy pressure. For Washington strategists the breakup of Yugoslavia was an exercise in using ethnic divisions to break up larger entities, the USSR and then Russia.
Humanitarian Bombing
Western politicians and media persuaded the public that the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia was a “humanitarian” war, generously waged to “protect the Kosovars” (after multiple assassinations by armed secessionists provoked Serbian authorities into the inevitable repression used as pretext for the bombing).
But the real point of the Kosovo war was that it transformed NATO from a defensive into an aggressive alliance, ready to wage war anywhere, without U.N. mandate, on whatever pretext it chose.
This lesson was clear to the Russians. After the Kosovo war, NATO could no longer credibly claim that it was a purely “defensive” alliance.
As soon as Serbian President Milosevic, to save his country’s infrastructure from NATO destruction, agreed to allow NATO troops to enter Kosovo, the U.S. unceremoniously grabbed a huge swath territory to build the its first big U.S. military base in the Balkans. NATO troops are still there.
Just as the United States rushed to build that base in Kosovo, it was clear what to expect of the U.S. after it succeeded in 2014 to install a government in Kiev eager to join NATO. This would be the opportunity for the U.S. to take over the Russian naval base in Crimea. Since it was known that the majority of the population in Crimea wanted to return to Russia (as it had from 1783 to 1954), Putin was able to forestall this threat by holding a popular referendum confirming its return.
East European Revanchism Captures the EU
The call by German Chancellor Scholz to enlarge the European Union by up to nine new members recalls the enlargements of 2004 and 2007 that brought in twelve new members, nine of them from the former Soviet bloc, including the three Baltic States once part of the Soviet Union.
That enlargement already shifted the balance eastward and enhanced German influence. In particular, the political elites of Poland and especially the three Baltic States, were heavily under the influence of the United States and Britain, where many had lived in exile during Soviet rule. They brought into EU institutions a new wave of fanatic anticommunism, not always distinguishable from Russophobia.
The European Parliament, obsessed with virtue signaling in regard to human rights, was particularly receptive to the zealous anti-totalitarianism of its new Eastern European members.
European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. (U.N. Photo/Eskinder Debebe)
Revanchism and the Memory Weapon
As an aspect of anti-communist lustration, or purges, Eastern European States sponsored “Memory Institutes” devoted to denouncing the crimes of communism. Of course, such campaigns were used by far-right politicians to cast suspicion on the left in general. As explained by European scholar Zoltan Dujisin, “anticommunist memory entrepreneurs” at the head of these institutes succeeded in lifting their public information activities from the national, to the European Union level, using Western bans on Holocaust denial to complain, that while Nazi crimes had been condemned and punished at Nuremberg, communist crimes had not.
The tactic of the anti-communist entrepreneurs was to demand that references to the Holocaust be accompanied by denunciations of the Gulag. This campaign had to deal with a delicate contradiction since it tended to challenge the uniqueness of the Holocaust, a dogma essential to gaining financial and political support from West European memory institutes.
In 2008, the EP adopted a resolution establishing August 23 as “European Day of Remembrance for the victims of Stalinism and Nazism” – for the first time adopting what had been a fairly isolated far right equation. A 2009 EP resolution on “European Conscience and Totalitarianism” called for support of national institutes specializing in totalitarian history.
Dujisin explains, “Europe is now haunted by the specter of a new memory. The Holocaust’s singular standing as a negative founding formula of European integration, the culmination of long-standing efforts from prominent Western leaders … is increasingly challenged by a memory of communism, which disputes its uniqueness.”
East European memory institutes together formed the “Platform of European Memory and Conscience,” which between 2012 and 2016 organized a series of exhibits on “Totalitarianism in Europe: Fascism—Nazism—Communism,” traveling to museums, memorials, foundations, city halls, parliaments, cultural centers, and universities in 15 European countries, supposedly to “improve public awareness and education about the gravest crimes committed by the totalitarian dictatorships.”
Under this influence, the European Parliament on Sept. 19, 2019 adopted a resolution “on the importance of European Remembrance for the Future of Europe” that went far beyond equating political crimes by proclaiming a distinctly Polish interpretation of history as European Union policy. It goes so far as to proclaim that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is responsible for World War II – and thus Soviet Russia is as guilty of the war as Nazi Germany.
The resolution,
“Stresses that the Second World War, the most devastating war in Europe’s history, was started as an immediate result of the notorious Nazi-Soviet Treaty on Non-Aggression of 23 August 1939, also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and its secret protocols, whereby two totalitarian regimes that shared the goal of world conquest divided Europe into two zones of influence;”
It further:
“Recalls that the Nazi and communist regimes carried out mass murders, genocide and deportations and caused a loss of life and freedom in the 20th century on a scale unseen in human history, and recalls the horrific crime of the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazi regime; condemns in the strongest terms the acts of aggression, crimes against humanity and mass human rights violations perpetrated by the Nazi, communist and other totalitarian regimes;”
This of course not only directly contradicts the Russian celebration of the “Great Patriotic War” to defeat the Nazi invasion, it also took issue with the recent efforts of Russian President Vladimir Putin to put the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement in the context of prior refusals of Eastern European states, notably Poland, to ally with Moscow against Hitler.
But the EP resolution:
“Is deeply concerned about the efforts of the current Russian leadership to distort historical facts and whitewash crimes committed by the Soviet totalitarian regime and considers them a dangerous component of the information war waged against democratic Europe that aims to divide Europe, and therefore calls on the Commission to decisively counteract these efforts;”
Thus the importance of Memory for the future, turns out to be an ideological declaration of war against Russia based on interpretations of World War II, especially since the memory entrepreneurs implicitly suggest that the past crimes of communism deserve punishment – like the crimes of Nazism. It is not impossible that this line of thought arouses some tacit satisfaction among certain individuals in Germany.
When Western leaders speak of “economic war against Russia,” or “ruining Russia” by arming and supporting Ukraine, one wonders whether they are consciously preparing World War III, or trying to provide a new ending to World War II. Or will the two merge?
As it shapes up, with NATO openly trying to “overextend” and thus defeat Russia with a war of attrition in Ukraine, it is somewhat as if Britain and the United States, some 80 years later, switched sides and joined German-dominated Europe to wage war against Russia, alongside the heirs to Eastern European anticommunism, some of whom were allied to Nazi Germany.
History may help understand events, but the cult of memory easily becomes the cult of revenge. Revenge is a circle with no end. It uses the past to kill the future. Europe needs clear heads looking to the future, able to understand the present.
Diana Johnstone was press secretary of the Green Group in the European Parliament from 1989 to 1996. In her latest book, Circle in the Darkness: Memoirs of a World Watcher (Clarity Press, 2020), she recounts key episodes in the transformation of the German Green Party from a peace to a war party. Her other books include Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions (Pluto/Monthly Review) and in co-authorship with her father, Paul H. Johnstone, From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning (Clarity Press). She can be reached at [email protected]
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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Germany and the Vatican were the first to recognize Croatia and Slovenia’s independence. Most unseemly since the Catholic church was instrumental in running the ratlines that exfiltrated hundreds of Nazi war criminals out of Europe.
Croatians desire for independence predates the Ustashi or even the creation of Yugoslavia. The Ustashi were not well liked. Croatia’s first president, Franjo Tudjman, fought with Tito’s Partisans but during his term in office he was frequently described as a fascist. As the author notes many Ustashi emigrated and became America’s interface with Croatian separatists, much as Banderites did for Ukraine (with some help from Operation Keelhaul whereby the west repatriated 2 million Soviets citizens to their wartime ally, including communist Ukrainians. The Banderites were exempt since they were Galicians and therefore not part of the USSR before the war).
Didn’t Germany pretty much single-handedly engineer the name change from FYROM to North Macedonia, which seems to have upset everybody?
And shouldn’t the EU get a little credit for uniting the Bosnians (because all Bosnians hate the EU)?
Yeah. Astounding! And a great confirmation of Ms. Johnstone’s main thesis.
I did btw attach it to a tweet not about Larry Johnson but this WAPO BS – talk about swallowing a camel.
@lvincenta1
‘…Russia spent millions on secret global political campaign: U.S. intel hxxps://washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/13/united-states-russia-political-campaign/
‘We’re putting the[m] on notice…’
Right. REDACTED shed this light on US commissioned covert RAND plan to invent RUS-Germany conflict, i.e. the UKR war: [= your youtube link]
An excellent analysis ^^
Thank you for that.
Very shaming for someone being born in Germany and feeling responsible for “our” leading insane.
Perhaps the only way out of this (mainly western) mad money- and power “game” could be something like this, if it could be introduced by someone of influence at U.N.- level:
It is a challenge to transition the giant industries including all the connected “jobs” from a destructive towards a constructive process/ progress.
There is really a lot(!) to do to “repair”- looking at the human/ industrial made huge social and environmental damage in history and at present around the planet (including the oceans).
Let’s shift (almost in the first place) the military budget (~ 2 trillion dollars per year) in a step by step international binding agreement within a 12 year time-frame to regenerating nature and social balance.
The attached industries will follow consequently.
Let our (military) guys and girls be good “forces”/ stewards for a healthy and as far as possible resilient planet, and a socially stable global society including all wonderful creatures sharing the world with us.
By training the staff correspondingly and thoroughly.
That would be really great & smart for national and global security!
And lets make them finally undertake the long overdue clean up of all the highly dangerous, poisonous and tremendous mess, the military and their industries have been leaving or dumping about everywhere around the planet during and after past (world) wars.
Including the deadly nuclear waste time bombs rotting somewhere.
Dangerous work for decades.
There is only one garden Eden we very likely are ever able to reach ^^
The entire weapon industry (military- industrial complex) must become state owned and controlled for no monetary profit.
Just maintained for the really necessary defence needs.
Not more than that!
And this can be probably done very well with just ~10% of the present budget/ cost in about every country.
In the hands of a shareholders dictated industry they always will be looking for more profit every single day and year by year.
And if there is no conflict/ crisis they will create one at its “best”. They even are in for multiple conflicts/ crisis if maximum profit is on the horizon.
Again and again, always based on malicious propaganda, spread by “government” agencies, evil willing „think tanks“ and allied media.
Accepting/ causing millions of civil deaths and natures destruction.
There is a choice for what to use global yearly military spendings…
… of now more than 2.000.000.000.000,. $ each year.
We got to want it and insist on it!
How exactly is Germany going to re-arm after their industry is destroyed by not having Russian energy? In any case, Germans–with the exception of the hard Right and the missed GDR– have been completely pussyfied by the defeat of the Wehrmacht during WWII and the subsequent US occupation. But all of this is moot because Russia can defeat the combined armies of NATO (including the US) in a conventional war, if you believe Andrei Martyanov, which I do.
“…. it is somewhat as if Britain and the United States, some 80 years later, switched sides and joined German-dominated Europe to wage war against Russia, alongside the heirs to Eastern European anticommunism, some of whom were allied to Nazi Germany.”
As it turns out it was only a matter of time, some 77 years, that Winston Churchill’s “Operation Unthinkable” finally again vanquished its decades of inertia and dusted itself off:
“…somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again;… ”
I am so, so weary of the lies. The Big Lie especially. The one that so enamored the top Nazis of WW II Germany. The one that is incessantly drummed into the minds of the many millions of the Western nations, the repetition, the repetition… the unholy repetition.
As always, I remain in awe of Diana Johnstone. I have found it a truism that I can never finish up reading anything she writes without having learned something significant and consequential.
Thankyou for one of the best historical summaries I have ever read.
Your point that western Europe uses the spectre of Russian expansion westward to justify militarisation is key to todays problems. As you note historical fact is USA/NATO expansion eastward. Europe is not threatened but Russia is.
extremely unsettling the fact that since 1950s nothing has changed. Soviet rapprochement by Stalin, Bulganin, Khrouchtchev were ignored by the conservative government(s). To me it is still mysterious how this Red Scare took hold even within those who had diplomatic info on what was going on beyond scary newspapers headlines. Of course one shouldn´t forget that for the European public suppression of more democratic demands in Eastern Europe was closer than mass murder in the (former) colonies by the West. Latin America, Africa, SouthEast Asia – all of them victims of the “democratic” West were of little interest. Otherwise people would have grasped what a South American writer (was it Octavio Paz? I have forgotten) said to his Eastern European colleagues: Here you are thrown into prison. But where I live, dissidents are tortured and killed. But for that to be understood you to look beyond your own turf. That however didnt happen then as it has not in the present time. Just compare the significance of non-European refugees with Ukranian refugees for policy-makers. Former are regarded a nuissance. Latter are god-sent.
Ms. Johnstone’s article is great; thoughtful, detailed and, in the end, chilling. Best to recall the old capitalist adage; if you are not growing, you are dying. The EU understands this. They need new markets, new resources, and they need to spread the debt. It should be clear to everyone by now that Russia never intended and was never capable of rolling across Europe. They are in a wierdly defensive posture.
It’s also noteworthy IMHO that Japan’s actions is ignored by the memory entrepreneurs (great description)
It might be worthwhile remembering under which circumstances Hitler came to power. Is Europe heading that way…again?
Haven’t heard from General Winter and General Energy yet.
Can’t do much without steel (hxxps://www.wsj.com/articles/arcelormittal-closes-two-steel-plants-amid-european-energy-crisis-11662136823)
I always learn so much from Ms. Johnstone’s writing. As others have stated, those who most need to read her won’t for one reason or another. Too many prefer to cling to illusions and virtue signaling than seek out actual historical context in forming an opinion. Thanks to CN for giving those of us seeking knowledge rather than feel good lies a place to find it.
The United States pretty much picked up where Germany was forced to leave off after 1945, treating Russia and the Russian people as somehow sub-human. Former president, Bill Clinton, brought back the same old Fatum, “Drang nach Osten,” using NATO to expand European borders eastward, ever eastwards, towards Russia.
The United States’ policy on Russia and the Russian people is very straight forward. Stated in strictly personal terms that get as close as possible to how things really stand, and are likely to play out, the reality is: “You will have a job, a house, a home, a family, a bank account, safety in your person and possessions, your country, until somebody doesn’t like you, and then you will not.” That is the essence of US foreign policy. The United States, and its minions, the west, has not liked Russia for over 70-years.
And now here we are. Once again.
If Napolean and Hitler were alive today, they would be most pleased that the distance from the current NATO border to downtown Moscow was just a days’ drive.
The United States has just been putting all the pieces in place — making it up as they go along — for the final conquest of all of Russia. Sanctions are an act of war. A proxy war is an act of war. Confiscation of another country’s treasury and foreign assets is an act of war. Invasion of Russia is inevitable. Whether this invasion of Russia brings about World War 3 is irrelevant. The United States believes nuclear war is both winnable and survivable.
The thing is — war with Russia was inevitable. Taking the ideology of “Drang nach Osten” and placing it alongside as much cold-hearted, clear-eyed practicality as is possible, all wars are resource wars. Russia has natural gas, oil, coal, minerals, and rare earths in “shameful abundance.” The West, which is running out of these resources looks to take what can no longer be satiated by trade. Hatred is a resource, too. One that must be fed.
Hitler invaded Russia because Germany did not have the oil to run its war machine. Germany’s offensive ran out of gas before it could reach Russia’s oil fields. Today, Germany does not have any of it. Germany is already out of gas. Germany is burning dirt that is being called coal for electricity. Germany is about to run out of a lot more than just oil.
“Drang nach Osten.”
Thank you Ms. Johnstone for this fine essay – a real tour de force. Your understanding of European history and political currents sheds a welcome light, clarifying much that is obscured in this very dark moment.
Thank you, Joe Lauria and CN for continuing to publish the very best journalists.
It seems obvious that in a short period of time – eventually before 2030 – that many europeans will be walking around Europe wearing armbands with swastikas like symbols!
And since the human animals roaming around in Europe have little to no brain capacity to avoid such Future this is where it will end.
How can so many people in Europe continue to support sanctions against Russia that have backfired so spectacularly, causing so much damage to the European economies, and threaten to cause a lot of hardship this coming winter?
While there are always many sides in wars, and much more propaganda than usual, the damage caused by the sanctions is visible and starting to hurt Europeans badly. In a couple of months when the cold sets in, it will become far worse. Yet European and EU politicians deliberately ignore the realities – the hard cold irrefutable facts of the sanctions war. Europe simply cannot survive without Russian gas – there are no viable alternatives, and won’t be for a long time to come.
For countries that purport to be democracies, there is a glaring flaw -they are not representing their people, and are not acting in their best interests. While most Germans may well support the war against Russia, without understanding the history or the actual facts, they are putting their economy and personal wellbeing at risk.
It’s a new form of Russian roulette, but with only two bullets in the chamber, one that says peace and the other that says war.
I don’t have any links with me right now, but I seem to remember that poll results showed that most Germans were against the war, for what it’s worth.
Diane, this is by far the most frightening thing of yours I’ve read.
I hadn’t heard of most of this. It’s like the end of Reconstruction and the re-branding of the Civil War as a mistake on the North’s part or the beginning of the Cold War where “East Asia was the enemy. Indeed, had always been the enemy” in 1984. Fukiyama should have named his notorious book, not The End of History, but The End of Sanity.
This is also one of your most convincing constructions of historical logic. You’ve managed to take the controversial, but mostly forgotten (in America, at least) of side show wars – the attack on the Serbs, add it to yet another French diplomatic cockup composed of fear and faux sophistication (as in the run up to the last 2 world wars), add to that German revanchism, put it all in a base of American covert operations and come up with a chilling description of the setup for the next big Western conflict of choice.
An absolutely wonderful article! Diana Johnstone is a treasure. I have loved her writing ever since I read Queen of Chaos years ago, and I hope we’ll see more of her in CN. However, I fear that the people who really should be reading this will not be doing that because the length prohibits it. I’m about to forward this to my grandson who is a history major and will find this very helpful, but those who are currently in charge of “history” in the State Dept, and the halls of Congress will not take the time to read this, and lord knows no one in our main stream media will bother. It would be nice if the essays could be a bit shorter. This is more like a whole history course, and unless you have been reading or studying what has been happening, it will be hard for new comers to genuine, accurate history to comprehend. They need smaller doses to acclimate.
Informed observation and analysis doesn’t get any better than this. Indeed, in a short form such as this essay, it seldom comes near the excellence of this piece. Thank you, Ms. Johnstone.
As I read, the famous words of Hasting Ismay, first Secretary General of NATO, echoed in my mind. He said that the purpose of the alliances was to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”
Oops.
Another oops: HASTINGS Ismay
I still prefer the great comedian Richard Pryor’s solution to racism.
You should find it on YouTube or somewhere, because his delivery is much better than mine. But, his answer was ….
“We should all f#$% each other until everyone is the same shade of light brown.”
Here’s to light brown, and having a good time getting there! And if the UpTight Establishment types don’t like it, well, eventually there will be more of us light browns than there are of their uptight @#$$e$. We’ll have had more fun, while they will be even more repressed and uptight than before.
Maybe we can make a reservation for them or something? As long as its got a wall. A big beautiful wall between them and the better world. With modern mind-control, we can probably even convince them that they’ve succeeded in creating an UpTight Establishment Homeland and what the wall is really doing is keeping the rest of us out. :)
Absolutely brilliant – as usual from Ms. J! The most compact History of the 21st C. to date. With all the most salient if dark distillations from the 2oth. Also proving that ‘everything has been written, but not everything has been read.’ E.g., Dujisin’s ‘anticommunist memory entrepreneurs’ thesis, which really helps link the demise of ‘defensive’ NATO in 1999 to what we have seen since the 2014 US’s UKR putsch and Putin’s preventive plebiscite, etc. But the many roles of memory for the various machinations of the current Players is a tale woven with precision. Hopefully, will be directed to the attention of some Higher-ups before it is too late. As Nietzsche said, ‘You say justice [Gerecht] but I hear revenge [Geracht].’ While that helps to decode Scholz’s recent nefarious moves, perhaps the German and other Euro publics can make enough noise to awaken the rest of the world to him and his co-plotters.
‘so what changed him into an “enemy”?’
Have to ask Winston Churchill that question? Hitler was always convinced that there was an alliance to be made between his conservative Germany and the French Conservatives and the British Conservatives …. all allied to go after the enemy, the workers of the world.
Hitler got his alliance with the French Conservatives. After the French army surrendered, the French Conservatives were happy to set up and run Vichy France which applied Hitler’s rules and shipped the Jews off to camps.
Hitler stopped his Panzer Divisions short of the beaches at Dunkirk, still hoping for a deal and alliance with Churchill and the British Conservatives. There was of course a contradiction between these like-minded, anti-worker, conservatives. England still viewed Germany as a challenger as they did before World War I when England was threatened by Germany’s Fleet and colonies. Thus, one would guess that Churchill’s determination to stay on top and fight off all comers to stay supreme outweighed the notion of a common war against the common enemy – the workers.
America, as a part of the British Commonwealth, of course followed Great Britain into the war eventually. America was already turning away shiploads of Jewish refugees. America already had a substantial number of oligarchs supporting Hitler financially, and profiting from investing in Germany. It is hard to imagine America fighting on a different side of a war from the British Monarchy, thus it is hard to imagine America joining Russia to fight a United Europe determined to crush the threat of the workers forever.
A dot to connect ….
If you read the old John LeCarre spy novels, the ones that he wrote in the late 50’s, early 60’s after leaving the British Foreign Office, many of them are set in Germany, and they refer to the people of West Germany talking about how the same ‘grey men’ still rule them. The Hitlers and the Speers and the Goerings are gone, but the underlings, the factory managers and city mayors and the bankers who all supported Hitler’s rule and who all played their parts in the machine, are still in power. The ‘western’ occupation of Nazi Germany put all of these same people back into the positions of power that they had enjoyed under the Nazis.
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss, and the beards did not even grow any longer.
They are good novels, if you need something to read. One of them, “The Spy Who Came In From the Cold”, was made into a Richard Burton movie.
If only more people read this quality of journalism we’d be better off for it. I greatly appreciate learning from good writers.
Thank you, Diana Johnstone. Thank you, Consortium News!
considering the Gladio stay-behind terrorism networks which were intermeshed with governments in EU down to the 80s (at least), plus the support of US elites for Hitler and all of the western capitalists continuing to do business with Germany during the war, and the fact that these western powers never roused themselves until Hitler had walked over half the map of Europe, i had always assumed that we (US/UK anglosphere) WERE on Germany’s side until something changed in the air. Much like Gaddafi and Hussein were our men until they weren’t.
we were totally happy as long as Hitler was going after USSR. even if he had to steal the productive areas of Europe to do it. so what changed him into an “enemy”? or was it just that it was clear he wouldn’t succeed? something changed behind the scenes. and it wasn’t working the domestic enemies in those slave labor camps to death, either. that has been overplayed and companies would love to do it again, hence the expansion of jails and companies & governments contracting slave labor there for pennies on the dollar.
yes, we have always been the bad guys. but we’ve been playing a longer game and pretending to be the good guys.
I always thought that Gladio had huge effects on Italy, keeping socialism/ communism from controlling that country? I expect that Gladio was also used in other countries, but less obviously.
The OSS and CIA under Allen Dulles worked closely with the NAZIs during WWII, protecting not just technically skilled Germans, but also those who were seriously anti-Soviet, particularly the NAZI intelligence (and banking) networks; this was happening DURING WWII and continued unabated into and after the Cold War I. The Ukrainian NAZIs continued fighting Soviet Ukrainians and Russians into the ’50s. The US supported, championed and glorified the Galician UkroNAZIs since at least the Orange Revolution in 2004/2005, when Yushchenko, who had learned banking in the US and was married to an American State/CIA official was installed by the CIA; Ukraine had become a US puppet state. The less maleable puppet Yanukovych, was overthrown in the Maidan Coup of 2014 by Biden and a host of State/CIA officials whose families were from Ukraine or other anti-Russian Eastern European states, with the goal of wiping out the Russian language and culture, and also most ethnic Russian Ukrainians (“cockroaches” or untermenshen, like the Jews and Slavs in WWII, and Blacks in the US.) Yanukovych, democratically elected, was ironically much more tolerant of ALL UKrainians than the US regime under VP Biden and the Americans who see corrupt Ukraine as a uge opportunity (ukrainegate.info).
Much like Japan and older Asians looking more favorably at China, the older members of Europe fear Germany more than Russia. But they are dying off, and the Western propaganda is propping up the Russian Bear as the bogeyman (the Turks more realistically threatened Europe for centuries). Probably best that Russia has turned East to the Future.
The “Fight to the Last Ukrainian” may soon intensify in response to Ukraine knocking out infrastructure, including electricity and water in the Donbass breakaway republics and in bordering Russia. Putin has spared this same infrastructure but the UkroNAZIs’ actions will give him cover to escalate his “SMO” into a real WAR (which will be accepted globally, if not by the West). It’s clear that this is what Biden and NATO desperately want (but not clear why? Maybe to replace the money streams lost in Afghanistan?)
The American love affair of the Hitler v Russia era simply can not go away.
Very clear and incisive account of fairly recent history. I have two perspectives on the USSR. The 1917 Revolution scared Western elites and they did their best to kill the USSR at birth. Over the next 100 years, the Soviets, then the Russians have been vilified, their history distorted, their accomplishments downplayed or ignored (myths like “Russia is a gas station posing as a country…”). This is especially evident about Putin who has frustrated Western efforts, first by chasing away the finance capitalists, then preventing ISIS from capturing Damascus. As reward, Putin is easily the most demonized leader in world history. So, reports even of the Gulag are likely distorted or just made up, such as the German assurance that Russia plans to conquer Europe.
Second, all during the Soviet Union and even now in the Russian Federation, there have been active fifth column saboteurs and provocateurs, paid and supported by the West, usually CIA and its buddies. I have not seen the invoices, but I am convinced that the Bandera Nazis in Maidan were directed by the CIA as this is the American standard operating procedure when running a coup.
Any nation under attack has to compromise its citizens to protect its citizens, and this distorts politics, distorts democracy. So, when the NED sets up a magazine in Moscow, it is actually a threat to the State, but when the State closes it down, the West cries “autocracy”.
In short, I don’t believe the Western narrative either about the USSR or the Russian Federation.
The only solution to this international hatred of Russia is total denazification of the West.
Very hopefully done by the West’s own population!
And not by even more war, and possibly the last (nuclear) one. Destroying almost all life on this precious planet for many thousand years, if not forever.
Supreme irony: banksters funded both Communism & Fascism.
Book: Pawns in the Game by William Guy Carr, a WWII Canadian naval lntelligence officer.
Can be read free online at bibliotecapleyades.net
Also useful is the youtube BILL STILL MONEY MASTERS 3 1/2 hrs, if memory serves
JD.
Many of us who live in the US have know for years that the promise to Gorbavhev of no NATO
expansion was a lie. This article provides very valuable info into events in Europe. Sadly the fools in the US and Germany do not understand sancsions will harm the West more than Russia
Excellent points and historical context here. On the other hand, Germany is a vassal of the US Empire and is undermining its own economic interests to serve their overlords. The German economy is suffering and will likely be in decline for some time given the huge increases in energy costs. . It seems having a re-militarized Germany with powerful armed forces is quite optimistic at this point. Without a strong economy, German military capability (independent of their US overlords) will likely remain something of a joke. At this point it looks like Germany will be de-industrialized and turned into a financialized “service economy” US/UK style.
The Operation Paperclip Nazis (my sarcastic term for far-right authoritarian mass murderers) in the USA are in control. “The Germans lost WWII, but the Nazis won”. (George Carlin)
Another doubt: are the young people of Germany ready to to join the Drang Nach Osten? Are they willing to fight on the Eastern Front? As a sarcastic joke, we should have billboards in Germany asking for volunteers to fight on the Russian Front.
Also, Nazi racial theory considered Slavs (including Ukrainians) as uentermenschen. and were to be ethnically cleansed to create the lebensraum for Germans. Nazis did not differentiate between Russian and Ukrainians – millions were slaughtered by the Germans in WWII. The Ukrainian Banderites have a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome
Excellent comment! While I greatly enjoyed reading Ms. Johnstone’s informative article, I completely agree with your very valid points. I don’t think that Germany is the instigator here or has any desire or the power to expand east. They are just following US orders as usual, and will destroy themselves in the process this time. And Scholz is a corrupt little weasel, deep in the pockets of Warburg Bank. Also, I agree that the vast majority of young Germans have zero interest to fight in a war.
Misguided comments. Johnstone never said Germany was the instigator or that it isn’t following the US. She wrote: “The remark was well understood in Washington: by serving the U.S.-led Western empire, Germany is strengthening its role as European leader.”
For a real insight into Europe’s diminishing future as its population shrinks, look at Sweden’s election results for what is about to happen across low birth-rate Europe whether Germany expands its military or not. Like the United States, Canada, European Union, and Australia, without Brown immigrants — which the Swedish electorate increasingly dislikes as its just completed election results show — could all but disappear by the end century as their White populations rapidly decline. Germany, like the rest of Europe including Russia, loves the Ukraine war because millions of Ukrainians have fled to neighboring nations and are welcomed mostly because they are not Brown and are Christians. Unfortunately, even before the so-called recent invasion, Ukraine was also in population decline and cannot afford to lose those who have left because many — if not the majority — are unlikely to return to an economically broken nation. Germany, for all its past and present economic and military bluster, is just another dying nation which will never again rise to great glory.
An excellent article. If only the people who need to read it, would read it!
The author’s book Circle In The Darkness contains a useful history of how the German Greens switched from being an environmentalist party to a right-wing one.
Diana Johnstone wrote one of the most informative and truthful books I have ever read, and Paul Craig Roberts said it’s the best book he ever read!
Over the years, I have learned so much about European politics from Diana’s articles, I’ll thank her from now until the “cow jumps over the moon!”
Yes, Alex, Ms Johnstone highlights the German Greens, who drank the Kool-Aid (my words, not hers) and turned against Russia, but ‘Circle In The Darkness’ covers so much more material and information, it’s for me, a Gift from the Gods and a real page turner.
History buffs, purchase a copy of it and read (see) for yourself!
Ms Johnstone had written about Yugoslavia and is similar to what Dr. Michael Parenti said in his book on the breakup of Yugoslavia, ‘To Kill A Nation’ which set the stage for the NATO war machine in moving eastward.
Serbia fought on the side of the allies in both world wars and in WW2, Croatia supported the Nazis and had their own Waffen SS unit which Diana mentioned, the Ustasi, responsible for killing about 800,000 Serbs, Jews, and gypsies, or Roma, as they’re called in Europe.
I remember, when living in Southern California in the 1970’s and 80’s that it seemed every year, the Los Angeles Times covered a story about the Yugoslavian government formally asking the US to extradite a Mr. Artuchovich, (spelling ?) a Croatian and millionaire contractor living in the San Pedro, Long Beach area, as he was an officer in the Ustasi and part of the extermination apparatus of the above mentioned, but his lawyers managed to block extradition. Money talks, doesn’t it?
I wish I could be optimistic about the future, but 22 years into this century, it’s been one continuous war for world domination.
Thank you Diana for another well researched and accurate article about the chain of events, present and near past in that part of the world!
Thanks for the reference Frank and I will pick up a copy, as I’m going on vacation and was looking for a solid read to get into.
Yes, Diana always brings the critical elements of European developments into focus here. For me, it’s great because I haven’t the time or expertise to sort through all the partisan narrative maintenance, and US media certainly does not even pretend to cover the real Europe – pretends we have no interest beyond the broadest of headlines.
You’re welcome, vinnieoh! Diana is an incredible person and a sparkling treasure of information in world affairs, I cannot praise her enough with the knowledge she puts together in making everything understandable.
May you have a wonderful, and safe vacation, and enjoy reading Ms Johnstone’s ‘CIRCLE in the DARKNESS’ semi-autobiography (my description, not Diana’s) which will enrich your knowledge (and also, if you’re like me) make you quite angry, or better yet, disappointed in our fellow beings around the planet for “going along with the program, and wonder why it’s getting worse for the common people of the world.
Hear hear! One of the greatest writers of our times. Deserves a very wide audience.
Berlin est strictement vassal de Washington. La BÊTE IMPÉRIALISTE OCCIDENTALE ALLEMANDE est en train de se faire terrassée pour la troisième fois, et cette fois-ci encore, par la BÊTE IMPÉRIALISTE OCCIDENTALE ANGLO-SAXONNE, dont Washington est l’antre capitale actuelle.
Malheureusement, c’est vrai.
Reinhard Gehlen and Adolph Heusinger:
“Comrades! Our fate is dark! We have been set back a thousand years…the political line we must follow is plain. It is clear that we have to go along with the Western Powers…[but] we should make sure that the unity given us by National Socialism is maintained under all circumstances. Only through this [Nazi] unity will it be possible for us to master the coming times…” Farewell Address to German Officers Corps by Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, Hitler’s personally appointed successor, May 7, 1945
“We must remember our past…Let us stick to the old principals, those principles we used to have.” General Adolph E. Heusinger, Inspector General of the West German Bundeswehr, to its Officers Corps, Sept. 27, 1958
These quotes are from the beginning of the Prologue of Charles Allen’s “Heusinger of the Fourth Reich” published in 1963.
Heusinger was chief of Operations and Planning of the O.K.H. (Oberkommando des Heeres-all the land forces of Hitler’s armies) and the personal appointee of Adolph Hitler as the last Deputy Chief of the German General Staff during WWII. As of April 1, 1961, (when Allen was writing) he was the Chairman of the Permanent Military Committee of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization . His suite of offices in the Pentagon was numbered 3-E 180 and was on the same tier as the highest ranking military chiefs of the United States. C. Allen
Heusinger spent the war at Hitler’s side. He was the link between Keitle and Jodl. He formulated Hitler’s desires into military operations. Wikipedia says he was part of the Valkyrie plot. However he was sitting next to Hitler, as he usually was, when the bomb went off being grievously injured and, of course, he wasn’t one of the 2500 executed in retaliation.
Gehlen’s roll is a little more known. He was head of military intelligence in the East. The OSS brought him in when he surrendered to them in the spring of 1945 and was with the C.I.A. from the get go in 1947. With the Banderite crowd in [The] Ukraine he ran the guerilla war against the Soviet Union until it ceased in 1953 or 56 (I’ve seen both dates). What I’m not aware of is whether there was some settlement reached, e.g. Crimea going to the Ukraine.
Johnstone raises a very serious issue in her second to last paragraph. A history misinterpreted, misrepresented and suppressed. It’s not kooky to ask if we are witnessing the final chapter of WWII.
Thank you for this exceptionally clear and well informed analysis.
I agree Libero Diana’s understanding and analysis was extremely insightful and interesting.
Thank you Diana.
Another extraordinary analysis from Diana.
Politicians and civil societies in Europe and the US should take careful notice.
I have been arguing myself for over a decade now that Germany has fallen back on very dark trends (some of which, frankly, if we focus on Berlin’s security and intelligence establishment, had never really gone away).
Germany has been turning the gears to become a military imperialistic power again and the Ukraine crisis is the perfect scapegoat to that end.
The absolutely ludicrous excuse of the German chancellor for the recent request for massive increase in military spending – a phantomatic security threat from Russia – could convince only pious souls or, precisely, those who know really nothing of contemporary German history.
A strong military build up was many years in the making in Berlin, which has however behaved as an intolerant, unilateralist bully within the EU for even longer.
Diana provides the perfectly apt historical and political review to understand how Germany got here.
Repressed long term trends, obfuscated by an inadequate understanding of the role of WWII in Germany’s collective unconscious, also possible because of cold war politics and logic, combined with a renewed power hunger dominating will, as the German “burden of history” fades away have resulted in Berlin’s reborn, now full swing, militarism.
The consequences of this, very grave potentially, are not yet fully visible.
But we should start worrying about it.
“(some of which, frankly, if we focus on Berlin’s security and intelligence establishment, had never really gone away).”
Indeed!
Very shaming, sad and frightening!!!
Supporting obvious and proven murderous fascists in the Ukraine makes clear which evil spirit there truly is (still) behind German and other “leaders”.
A very good article.
“But the real point of the Kosovo war was that it transformed NATO from a defensive into an aggressive alliance, ready to wage war anywhere, without U.N. mandate, on whatever pretext it chose.
This lesson was clear to the Russians. After the Kosovo war, NATO could no longer credibly claim that it was a purely “defensive” alliance.”
It is important to bear in mind that this bombing was based, surprise, surprise, on deception and lies.
“The Rambouillet text, which called on Serbia to admit NATO troops throughout Yugoslavia, was a provocation, an excuse to start bombing. Rambouillet is not a document that an angelic Serb could have accepted. It was a terrible diplomatic document that should never have been presented in that form.”
—?Henry Kissinger, The Daily Telegraph, 28 June 1999.
Interesting speculation … Germany, like Japan, has been occupied by the USA since WW2. So, is this apparent ‘reverting to type’ of the German establishment homegrown or something devised by a ‘nudge’ unit in Washington ? Is it just coincidence that at the exact same time Japan is becoming more militaristic, particularly towards China, another USA foe.
IMO, France, which values its independence and suffered at the hands of the Nazis, will act as a potential brake on any fourth Reich ambitions Germany might have in Europe – and, this winter the German people might push back against Scholz and his buddies.
I wish I could have been in the meeting where they decided to start putting German helmets on US military members. I’d like to know which side their dads, uncles & grandfathers fought on, if either.
One of my umcles landed on Normandy beach, survived while 80% died, he scaled the cliffs, took out German guns, survived the war but had ptsd all his life. It both angers and saddens me to see Nazis rise again.
Well, not all Germans were Nazis. My German grandparents did not vote NSDAP (Nazi Party), this was known in their small town and they were constantly harassed and threatened, their business destroyed, and my grandfather’s brother, who was a leading SPD (Social Democrats) member in his region was sent to the concentration camp. My family has always hated Nazis. But yeah, certainly a nightmare to see this crap starting all over again, and this time with an SPD chancellor, upside down world (though SPD and Green Party sadly have long switched sides and Scholz is a total crook).
Amazing article that should help cut through the ‘fog of war’ and the cant of so called “greens” and “socialists” that has so confused and demobilized the left in the US.
I love the sane reflection in the notational 10th paragraph and the highly sensible prescriptive conclusion in the final paragraph. Kudos to the learned author of this article, hopefully it gets the readership it richly deserves in the corridors of Eurasian and Trans-atlantic power !
Mrs. Johnson has enlighten European problems, questions and intentions better than all institutes together.
Clearly, the Russian SMO objective to denatzify Ukraine needs to be extended to the rest of Europe.