The Return of anti German Sentiment?

     When discussing Germany these days, I mean how do you discuss Germany in a polite way as Ambrose Pritchard says:

    As for the conduct of Germany over the past week, what can one politely say? It is deemed poor taste to mention that the allied powers agreed to wipe out half of Germany's external liabilities at the London Debt Agreement in February 1953.

   "This act of statesmanship came less than eight years after the end of the Second World War, and the Nazi occupation of Greece, when the horrors were still fresh in everybody's mind. It is roughly equivalent to the lapse in time today since the Lehman crisis."

    "Debt relief came at some cost to Britain, the biggest pre-war creditor. It was agreed in the collective interest, on the basis of economic science, and deliberately framed as a "negotiation among equals" in order to clear away the fog of moral judgments. The result was the German Wirtschaftswunder and the glory years of post-War reconstruction."

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/11742624/EMU-brutality-in-Greece-has-destroyed-the-trust-of-Europes-Left.html

    After WWII no doubt the Allies did the right thing in not repeating the Treaty of Versailles. It's just rather shocking that the Germans have such short memories here.

   Hayek related how much Keynes was revered in Germany and Austria after he wrote The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Too bad they didn't actually read it.

    So Germany believes in 2 debt repayment plans

    1. The German plan for Germans. The Germans have never in the modern era paid back its debt.

    2. The British plan for Greece and other debtors. Britain has a long history of sacrificing its own economy to pay back debt. The classic example is 100 years of sacrificing 2.5% GDP between the Napoleonic Wars and WWI.

   The British did finally learn something post WWII-you would hope so as the world's greatest economist was British.

   http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-greeks-have-been-using-british-plan.html

    I agree that reflexive anti German sentiment-like any other bigotry is a dead-end. But when you really think about it Germany has just fucked up Europe so many times in the last 150 years. 

   With their latest bloodless coup in Greece they now again are occupying a European country-the last time a major European country was occupied? You guessed it-the Vichy Regime. 

   Now we're hearing that the Franco-German rift will intensify. 

   http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/08728bce-2a42-11e5-acfb-cbd2e1c81cca.html#axzz3flujEkVV

   True, except that this rift has always been intense-the Franco-German rivalry is behind almost all the problems Europe has face over 150 years. 

   But the Germany backlash is here and it's tough to argue with it right now. 

   http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d533aa6e-2afe-11e5-8613-e7aedbb7bdb7.html#axzz3flujEkVV

   The dirty little secret is that the whole point of the EU for Germany was always to be able to cloak their national aggression, They knew after WWII they could never be explicit in their national geopolitical ambitions again. 

    The EU was how they could disguise their geopolitical ambitions while advancing them. 

    As for France, though, I'll believe that they're going to stand up to the Germans when I see it. They have their own national pretensions for the EU which will be tough to give up. Remember what is said of the French: The French have never forgiven the rest of the world for losing its Empire. 

   Krugman is appalled by the economic illiteracy of the EU but to understand its actions what you need is not economic analysis but geopolitical analysis. Politics not economics drives the train-economics is just politics by other means.