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Home , German Empire, Reich, Revanchism

THE NS ESSAY Ein über alles: Hans Burgkmair the Elder’s woodcut of 1510 shows a double-headed eagle, symbol of the Holy Roman The new European integration was designed to contain ’s power – instead, it has increased it By Brendan Simms

n a blistering speech to the Greek par- who died in January, right to say that Chan- liament on 15 July, the former finance cellor is a calculating “Mer­ minister Yanis Varoufakis referred to kiavelli”, whose ambition to “Germanise” the harsh “bailout” conditions impos­ has now been validated by events? ed by eurozone leaders, and especially The short answer to these questions is, IBerlin, as a “new Versailles”. This calculated “No.” is not oppressing Greece, allusion to the punitive peace inflicted on or any other eurozone country. Nobody imperial Germany after the First World forced these previously sovereign states War, especially the “reparations” she was into the common currency, at the barrel of a forced to pay, was picked up by media com- gun or in any other way. It was a dance they mentators and politicians across the world. insisted on joining, in some cases rather like Berlin’s approach was widely condemned the ugly stepsisters, doing violence to their as “brutal”. Boris Johnson, the Mayor of economic body shape in order to fit into London, claims that “the man with the gun the shoes of the required convergence cri- is the German finance minister, Wolfgang teria. Besides, none of them wants to leave, Schäuble”, and that “it is the who because they have no desire to resume the are now running the show”. Indeed, one failed national they were trying could be forgiven for wondering whether to escape through “Europe”. Polls suggest the “” that the Irish histo- that, offered a clear choice between return rian, politician and journalist Conor Cruise to the drachma and reclaiming national sov- O’Brien warned about in 1989, shortly be- ereignty, or accepting German leadership of fore the Wall fell, had now come to pass. So the eurozone, most Greeks prefer the latter. has the euro crisis brought about peacefully The same is true, more or less, of the rest of something that the and Hitler failed the common currency area. Clearly, there to achieve militarily, namely the German is only one thing worse than being domi- domination of Europe? Less hyperbolically, nated by Germany in the eurozone and that

AKG-IMAGES was Ulrich Beck, the eminent sociologist is not being dominated by Germany in t

22 | NEW STATESMAN | 24-30 JULY 2015 24-30 JULY 2015 | NEW STATESMAN | 23 t the eurozone. Whatever else is going on form of power-sharing through impe- In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Ger- here, it is not the re-creation of the Second rial courts and the imperial assembly, the mans played by the rules but nobody else or Third Reich. Reichstag. and were guar- did. After a long agony, the Holy Roman That said, the current crisis is very much antor powers from the Peace of empire collapsed under the onslaught of a product of “the German problem” and, in 1648, with the right to intervene in Ger- revolutionary France and . Later, indeed, of the German imperial legacy. In man affairs to keep the peace or to prevent the German , which failed order to understand why, we need to go foreign interference, and in the 18th cen- to deter French , was destroyed back to the origins of a question that has tury was also formally awarded that by Bismarck in his drive to create a united driven the history of our continent for hun- privilege. The of Germany in 1871. This turned the Ger- dreds of years and fundamentally shapes 1815, the successor to the empire, was con- mans from objects of the system into its politics today. structed on very similar lines in order to en- ­subjects, with a powerful voice in Europe sure that Germany did not lapse into civil and the world. ermany, or the various polities in war and that it remained strong enough to As is well known, however, the estab- which most Germans lived, has repel invaders, but never became so strong lishment of a consolidated power centre been the fulcrum of the entire as to pose a threat to its neighbours. at the heart of the continent eventually European state system since at overturned the whole European and then least the 16th century. Its central Germans repeatedly the global balance of power. It required a Ggeographical location made it the cockpit of coalition of the world’s strongest powers Europe, a territory on which foreign armies refused to be objects of to crush both the Kaiser’s Germany and – Ottoman Turk, Spanish, French, British, Hitler’s Third Reich in the two world wars. Russian, French, Swedish, to name only the the state system After each contest, the German Ques- most prominent – contested for mastery of tion posed itself anew: how to order the the continent. Its sheer populousness, the The result was a German political cul- European centre in such a way that it was industriousness of its inhabitants and the ture preoccupied with precedence, legality, robust enough to master domestic and ex- prowess of its soldiers made Germany the rules and procedure to the point of paraly- ternal challenges without at the same time most valued prize in the state system. sis. Two of the American founding fathers, developing hegemonic tendencies. The For much of the past 500 years, the fear James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, Versailles settlement of 1919 spectacularly was not that Germany itself would disturb diagnosed this condition more than 200 failed to do so, primarily because it was re- the European balance of power but that an years ago. They looked at the “federal sys- sented as an attempt to turn Germans back outside force would use the Germans to do tem” of the “Germanic empire” and found into mere objects of the state system. so. This was because their political com- it to be “a nerveless body, incapable of regu- The solution arrived at after the Second monwealth, the “Holy of lating its own members, insecure against was far more successful. Ger- the German Nation”, was bitterly divided, external dangers, and agitated with unceas- many was partitioned territorially into a between the and the leading princ- ing fermentations in its own bowels”. “Mil- communist east and a democratic west, es, and between Catholics and Protestants. itary preparations,” they noted, “must be and underwent a change of heart. It was This created a vacuum at the heart of Europe preceded by so many tedious discussions, widely accepted that what was needed, as which exported instability and attracted the arising from the jealousies, pride, separate the writer argued, was not predatory attention of its neighbours, most views, and clashing pretensions, of sover- “a German Europe but a European Germa- catastrophically during the Thirty Years eign bodies, that before the diet can settle ny”. The project of European integration War (1618-48), but also during the Turkish the arrangements, the enemy are in the was thus intended to contain Germany by invasions of and the revolu- field . . .” By contrast, the federalists praised rendering her structurally incapable of and tionary and . the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707, by culturally indisposed towards military ag- For this reason, European statesmen which the two parties, formerly so divid- gression. It was also conceived as a way of tried to refashion Germany in a way that the ed, had come together to “resist all [their] mobilising Europe’s, and especially Ger- Germans were not always at each other’s enemies” by creating a common debt, many’s, huge military and economic po- throats, or at the feet of their neighbours. ­common parliamentary representation and tential for the western cause against the This required institutions that defused in- common foreign and security policy. This ­Soviet threat. The reintegration of Germa- ternal tensions, if necessary through out- served as the model for the . ny into the western comity of nations, in- side intervention, and mobilised the com- The Germans were well aware of their own cluding the generous forgiveness of many mon energies in defence of the empire’s weaknesses, and tried to overcome them of her debts in the 1953 London agreement, external borders. German politics was through an interminable but ultimately in- was conducted on this basis. therefore characterised by a sophisticated effectual “imperial reform debate”. Yet while pacifying Europe, and contain- ing Germany, required a constitutional ar- rangement and political culture similar to those of the old , keep- ing the Russians out demanded a mighty union comparable to that created by the British and the Americans. 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On the other hand, the European Coal and t

Untitled-1.indd 1 21/01/2015 11:20:09 24-30 JULY 2015 | NEW STATESMAN | 25 The Germans accepted all this under by reunification. The , it no more to blame for this than anybody else international markets, remains acute. The three conditions. First, as the price to be ­appeared, had been solved by Germany’s in the eurozone. markets know that, as it is configured, the paid for the ending of . Second, as integration into the west. To be sure, critics are right to source euro defies the laws of political and eco- part of what hoped In behavioural terms, this was perfectly much of the present European malaise in nomic gravity and some day will fall. They would be a much broader and deeper politi- true. The Germans had indeed changed, but the German imperial legacy, but the em- will not – cannot – rest until the common cal unification of Europe. Third, on the un- Europe had not, or not enough. First, the pire in question is not that of the Kaiser currency either dissolves or shrinks to a derstanding that there would be no bailouts German economy recovered: the talk was or Hitler but the old Holy Roman empire, smaller core, or until there is a credible gov- between members of the common cur- of a new “Modell Deutschland”. Then the whose strengths and weaknesses live on ernment that takes responsibility for the rency, who would adhere to strict “rules” bubble caused by currency union exploded in the European Union of today. Instead of entire sovereign debt of the eurozone by on deficits and other economic criteria. The on the western and southern periphery, and anchoring the common currency in joint creating full federal . then finance minister, , assured Europe found itself without the necessary parliamentary representation and a strong The third possibility, namely a German Germans that “we are bringing the D-Mark instruments to respond beyond the nation- state capable of efficient revenue extraction exit from the euro to allow a looser mon- into Europe”. But as it turned out, currency al level. The confederal political structure as is the case in the United Kingdom and the etary policy by the ECB, or the creation of union was not accompanied by full political of the currency union favoured its biggest United States, Berlin is attempting to run it a much smaller “core” eurozone with Ger- union; the EU retained its loose, confederal member. As the largest and healthiest econ- through the acceptance of German “rules” many, might or might not solve the eco- governance structure. The French believed omy, not only was Germany well placed and political culture. Instead of a single for- nomic problem, but it would completely that they had neutralised the German eco- to weather the storm, but she increasingly eign policy and military capable of deterring frustrate the political purpose of the whole nomic threat, while retaining their political dominated the pan-European response. Ber- exercise, which was to contain Germany sovereignty and military autonomy. The lin has been reluctant to empower the Euro- within a larger whole. This, rather than British, who knew that currency union pean Central Bank to embark on the bond- The markets will not any sense of solidarity among the fiscally meant the end of national sovereignty, and buying mission the bankrupt periphery so rest until the euro either profligate, is what has driven the French feared that greater European integration desperately craves, and has prescribed a diet determination to keep Greece and all the would strengthen rather than contain Ger- of unpalatable fiscal “rules” instead. This is dissolves or shrinks other struggling states in the eurozone. It Victory of democracy: Helmut Kohl at the Gate on reunification night, 3 October 1990 many, stayed out of the euro. because, in the absence of full political un- is also what underpins President François This political halfway house was not ion, any significant debt forgiveness or in- aggressors, we have a perpetual palaver Hollande’s very recent call for the establish-

t Community, which established a s Germany’s industry recovered what Chancellor Kohl had intended but it tentional inflation would be at the expense that reminds one of nothing so much as the ment of a eurozone with budg- joint administration of French and German there were growing fears in Paris suited his compatriots perfectly well. They of the fiscally prudent, and only encourage equivocations of the Holy Roman empire in etary powers. This is, in fact, the fourth and coal and steel resources from 1951 onwards, and elsewhere in Europe that uploaded much of their premodern political the beneficiaries to incur new obligations. the face of Turkish or French threats. the only really plausible option: the crea- was ostensibly a form of economic ration- the mighty Deutschmark, which culture into the EU, especially a penchant Then the European security bubble ex- The future holds four possibilities. The tion of a complete political union in which alisation, but really a device to bring the gave the Bundesbank de facto for the legalisation of political disputes, in- ploded as well. In March 2014 Russia’s ag- first and most likely, in the short term, is the common debt and the common foreign war-making potential of Germany under Acontrol over European interest rates, consti- terminable debate and due process, so that gression in raised the question of more of the same, in which Germany en- policy are the responsibilities of a com- multilateral control and thus defang her. tuted a kind of German “nuclear weapon”. the Union began increasingly to resemble the extent to which the Germans, snug in forces the eurozone “rules” and everyone mon parliamentary representation. It can The planned European Defence Com- Even before German unification was on the the old Holy Roman empire. The French their central European idyll, far from the else acquiesces to them. Even under the only work if Hollande carries this thought munity of the 1950s was an attempt to agenda, the French president François Mit- interior minister and some-time defence centre of the crisis, desirous of good trad- best-case scenario the result will be the slow through to its logical conclusion, which is embed the military mobilisation of Ger- terrand warned: “Without a common cur- minister Jean-Pierre Chevènement even ing relations with Moscow and thirsting strangulation of states such as Greece, which the final transfer of sovereign powers from many in a wider political union. It sought rency we are . . . already subordinate to the ­accused the Germans of trying to dilute for Russian energy, are capable of thinking lack the native strength to push through or the national to the European Parliament. “the complete merger of men and equip- Germans’ will.” When the Berlin Wall fell the power of the national states, and thus of the geopolitical good of Europe, benefit from the reforms required to make That will require the French to give up one ment [including Germans] under a single in November 1989 the process of introduc- the barriers to their dominance, by holding now that their own immediate security does them competitive again. The eurozone will of their most cherished policies, which is to ­European political and military authority”. ing monetary union gained new urgency, up the Holy Roman empire as a model for not depend on it. Yet their disengagement continue to stagger from crisis to crisis. In so insist on a European arrangement for Ger- This was to include not only an execu- European constitutional development. He was no more selfish than that of, say, the far as this process is supported by individual many, but a French one for France. tive council of national prime ministers, a was only half right, in the sense that much even more remote Spaniards and Italians, elected governments, it enjoys a democratic Whatever the solution, it will have to al- court of justice and an Economic and Social They uploaded their of the authority lost by the member states in and it was not only enabled, but facilitated legitimacy of sorts, but leaves unresolved low the Germans to continue to act as sub- Council, but also a two-chamber European premodern political the crucial areas of fiscal, foreign and mili- by the flawed political design of the EU, the matter of which voters are actually re- jects of the European system, without turn- parliament: one chamber made up of depu- tary policy was not so much arrogated as at- which has dissipated the continent’s vast sponsible for the European debt. ing most other peoples on the continent into ties, directly elected from the people of the culture into the EU omised. Like the old empire, the European economic and military potential rather than As such, the second possibility, namely objects. It will have to avoid a “Versailles” community, and another of senators, repre- Union was based on the diffusion rather bringing it to bear on the common enemy. a catastrophic blowout of the euro on the for both Germany and everyone else. It will senting the “peoples” of all the participat- and the common currency was agreed by than the concentration of power. also have to mobilise the collective energies ing states. This was, in effect, a European the early 1990s. This did not much bother Germans, es- n short, the present mess is the fault of Europe, including those of Germany, to government-in-waiting with the potential France rejoiced as the Deutschmark was pecially after the collapse of communism, not of the Germans, specifically, but deal with the enormous challenges posed to develop into a full parliamentary union decommissioned, with some commentators because the expansion of the EU and Nato of the German problem, which is not by the growth of Russian power, and to on Anglo-American lines, but it was still- openly describing the settlement – ironi- eastwards left Germany, for the first time the same thing. European integration compensate for the relative decline of the born thanks to the opposition of the French cally, in view of Varoufakis’s more recent re- in her long history, surrounded only by was designed both to contain and to United States. It will have to close the gap parliament. Henceforth, European integra- marks – as a new Versailles. “Germany will friends; her interest in security matters, Imobilise Germany. Its centrepiece to date that opened up between politico-military tion excluded defence and was confined to pay,” they crowed, echoing another slogan especially the problem of Russian power, is the euro, but, given the unwillingness of and socio-economic integration in Europe economic, cultural and political matters, from 1919. A veritable torrent of cheap cred- began to lapse. Indeed, rather than attempt- the rest of Europe to enter into a matching in the 1950s. In short, it must once and for exemplified by the Treaty of Rome of 1957, it, uncorked by the euro and the reduced ing to throw her weight about in Europe full political union, the EU faced the result- all settle the German and European ques- which established the European Economic sense of sovereign debt risk it engendered, militarily after 1989, Germany refused to ing sovereign debt crisis and the Russian tions at one stroke, for to settle the one is to Community, the forerunner of the EU. slowly began to engulf the continent, espe- participate in the first Gulf war, and only challenge without the governmental appa- settle the other. l ­Defence integration remained the purview cially its southern and western periphery. involved herself in the subsequent Yu- ratus it required in order to end the crisis. Brendan Simms is Professor in the History of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Europe boomed, though Germany itself – goslav wars and the US-led war on terror Instead, the European project as now con- of International Relations at Cambridge This disjuncture proved fatal to prospects which was grappling with the costs of ab- within a firmly multilateral framework. structed, and especially the currency un- and the president of the Project for for full political integration, although sev- sorbing the former German Democratic One way or the other, it seemed, the Ger- ion, originally designed to contain German Democratic Union (democraticunion.eu). eral attempts were made over the following – struggled economically in the man behavioural transformation since 1945 power, has increased it, just as the British “Nice one, Humpty, mate. His books include “Europe: the Struggle for THOMAS IMO/PHOTOTHEK VIA GETTY IMAGES three decades to restart the process. first decade after unification. had neutralised the structural shift wrought GEORGE LEIGH Eurosceptics warned it would. Germany is You smashed it” Supremacy” (Penguin)

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