This train of thought has probably occured to all of us during the past weeks but it is well expressed here.

The Rise of Germany

by Victor Davis Hanson

HooverInstitution, Stanford University

The rise of a German Europe began in 1914, failed twice, and has now

ended in the victory of German power almost a century later. The

Europe that Kaiser Wilhelm lost in 1918, and that Adolf Hitler

destroyed in 1945, has at last been won by German Chancellor Angela

Merkel without firing a shot.

Or so it seems from European newspapers, which now refer bitterly to a

"Fourth Reich" and arrogant new Nazi "Gauleiters" who dictate terms to

their European subordinates. Popular cartoons depict Germans with

stiff-arm salutes and swastikas, establishing new rules of behavior

for supposedly inferior peoples.

Millions of terrified Italians, Spaniards, Greeks, Portuguese and

other Europeans are pouring their savings into German banks at the

rate of $15 billion a month. A thumbs-up or thumbs-down from the

euro-rich Merkel now determines whether European countries will limp

ahead with new German-backed loans or default and see their standard

of living regress to that of a half-century ago.

A worried neighbour, France, in schizophrenic fashion, as so often in

the past, alternately lashes out at Britain for abandoning it and

fawns on Germany to appease it. The worries in 1989 of British Prime

Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President François Mitterrand

over German unification -- that neither a new European Union nor an

old NATO could quite rein in German power -- proved true.

How did the grand dream of a "new Europe " end just 20 years later in

a German protectorate -- especially given the not-so-subtle aim of the

European Union to diffuse German ambitions through a continent-wide

super-state?

Not by arms. Britain fights in wars all over theglobe, from Libya to

Iraq . France has the bomb. But Germany mostly stays within its

borders -- without a nuke, a single aircraft carrier or a military

base abroad.

Not by handouts. Germany poured almost $2 trillion of its own money

into rebuilding an East Germany ruined by communism -- without help

from others. To drive through southernEurope is to see new freeways,

bridges, rail lines, stadiums and airports financed by German banks or

subsidized by the German government.

Not by population size. Somehow, 120 million Greeks, Italians,

Spaniards and Portuguese are begging some 80 million Germans to bail

them out.

And not because of good fortune. Just 65 years ago, Berlin was

flattened, Hamburg incinerated and Munich a shell -- in ways even

Athens , Madrid ,Lisbon and Rome were not.

In truth, German character -- so admired and feared in some 500 years

of European literature and history -- led to the present Germanization

of Europe . These days we recoil at terms like "national character"

that seem tainted by the nightmares of the past. But no other

politically correct exegesis offers better reasons why a booming

Detroit of 1945 today looks like it was bombed, and a bombed-out

Berlin of 1945 now is booming.

Germans on average worked harder and smarter than their European

neighbours -- investing rather than consuming, saving rather than

spending, and going to bed when others to the south were going to

dinner. Recipients of their largesse bitterly complain that German

banks lent them money to buy German products in a sort of 21st-century

commercial serfdom. True enough, but that still begs the question why

Berlin , and not Rome or Madrid , was able to pull off such lucrative

mercantilism.

Where does all this lead? Right now to some great unknowns that

terrify most of Europe . Will German industriousness and talent

eventually translate into military dominance and cultural chauvinism

--as it has in the past? How, exactly, can an unraveling EU, or

NATO, now "led from behind" by a disengaged United States, persuade

Germany not totranslate its overwhelming economic clout into

political and militaryadvantage?

Can poor European adolescents really obey their rich German parents?

Berlin in essence has now scolded southern Europeans that if they

still expect sophisticated medical care, high-tech appurtenances and

plentiful consumer goods -- the adornments of a rich American and

northern Europe lifestyle -- then they have to start behaving in the

manner of Germans, who produce such things and subsidize them for

others.

In other words, an Athenian may still have his ultra-modern airport

and subway, a Spaniard may still get a hip replacement, or a Roman may

still enjoy his new Mercedes. But not if they still insist on daily

siestas, dinner at 9 p.m., retirement in their early 50s, cheating on

taxes, and a de facto10 a.m. to 4 p.m. workday.

Behind all the EU's 11th-hour gobbledygook, Germany 's new European

order is clear: If you wish to live like a German, then you must work

and save like a German. Take it or leave it.