"Europe Doesn't Need the Euro" - conservative German author links it to the Holocaust

[pampango]

It's hard to think of a good American equivalent to Germany's Thilo Sarrazin, the politician turned best-selling author. The closest one could be Pat Buchanan...(In a previous book) he suggested that African and Middle Eastern immigrants were destroying the country, in part because of "hereditary factors" that made their children stupid and violent. He suggested educated Germans out-breed them.

Many of the paragraphs are entirely reasonable, picking apart the questionable logic of Germany's euro-savior syndrome with remarkable dexterity. But Sarrazin's underlying message is this: Germans are being taken for a ride by countries that aren't holding up their end of the bargain -- and Germans are willing to go along with it because they feel guilty about the Holocaust.

Angela Merkel has been wildly successful with the formula "if the euro fails, Europe fails," as no one in Germany, aside from a couple of German nationalists and right-wing populists, wants to be responsible for the failure of Europe.

The really provocative and revealing part of Sarrazin's book isn't the oft-repeated quote about Holocaust guilt, it's sentences like, "It's certainly very complicated, but on the other hand not as complicated as many want to make it!" or "Everyone who has an opinion on the euro also has either consciously or unconsciously an opinion on Europe." It's sentences comparing Angela Merkel to "the friendly woman on the navigation system in my car."

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/05/the-controversial-german-book-linking-the-euro-to-holocaust-guilt/257618/

[Turbineguy]

1. I remember once when Gerhard Schroder

was giving a speech he said something about Germany being on the right side of history for a change. I thought the last bit was a bit of a freudian slip.

It was a terrible thing that happened to Germany (and as a result to others).