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Monday 25 February 2019

We must plan Germany's survival

The sheer aggression and hatefulness exhibited in spades by Brussels over Brexit - including words and actions that would not be inappropriate if directed at an enemy in war - have been borne with remarkable tolerance by the British people. But the impact of this louche, amateur, vulgar and unstatesmanlike behaviour has not been lost on the country. When Germany sent us Ribbentrop, pumped with hubris and vanity and claiming a Waltish 'von', he was dismissed by the British as a champagne salesman. Now we are sent a stumbling comical drunk, an angry little Polish dwarf who can't control his mouth and a sinister German Grand Vizier, every one of them ill-mannered, dishonourable and untrustworthy. Just more champagne salesmen. Is Europe so impoverished of talent that from a population of 430m it cannot produce three persons with any vestige of international class or even basic diplomatic competence?

It is important that we overcome our dislike of this unattractive and boorish shudder of clowns, for it is becoming clear that Germany is increasingly in trouble and it is more and more likely that we must assist in her survival in the months and years to come. Mogenthau was wrong then and any revivalists of his inane retribution are mistaken now. We might need another Marshall Plan, and this time we might have to do it without the USA.

Germany is horribly exposed to Italian debt and risk of default. Two of her largest banks, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, are not only on the ropes but slipping unconscious from the ring. With the Eurozone now slipping inexorably into recession, the fall of these giants will reverberate throughout Europe.

Germany's auto industry is a late 20th century rustpile. The diesel emissions frauds, crash in diesel sales, Brexit and US tariffs will be a hammer blow to Germany's car plants and the EU-Japanese trade treaty will halt and reverse any compensating Japanese direct investment, for the same reasons as Honda closed in the UK.

The globalists have hoodwinked the Germans into taking a million migrants - to become two million once they have established themselves and dependents join them - on the false and spurious grounds of 'demographics' - an ageing population no longer capable of standing on the production line. These same globalists must have known what is now in the public realm - that Germany will see some 37% of jobs going in the next 15 years as the effects of AI bite. The UK's figure from PwC is 30%. Training a million migrants in basic numeracy and literacy is one matter; retraining twenty million Germans in computer skills is another. My resentment of the loathsome Peter Sutherland is renewed each time I read his weasel words to the HoL select committee in 2014. The real reason for these migrants, as he makes clear, is to help destroy German national identity and cultural congruence
"If one looks at the key arguments and issues relating to the need for migration, the demographic is the most fundamental for many countries of destination. The demographic challenges in a number of European Member States, however difficult it may be to explain this to the citizens of those states, are absolutely unquestionable. They are vital in terms of a crucial dynamic for economic growth. A declining and ageing population is destructive of prosperity—forgetting entirely about the moral aspect of migration. That is particularly relevant to a number of countries in central Europe—Germany has a major issue—and some southern Member States. So demographics are a key element of the debate, and a key argument for the development of—I hesitate to use the word because people have attacked it—multicultural states. It is impossible to consider that the degree of homogeneity which is implied by the alternative argument can survive, because states have to become more open in terms of the people who inhabit them, as the United Kingdom has demonstrated."
In terms of electric vehicle technology and battery production, Germany is lagging behind the rest of the world. It is unlikely that she will be able to recover her lost lead in auto-technology for the years ahead.

German manufacturing has sunk to a six-year low. Jan von Gerich of Nordea Bank called the German manufacturing economy 'scary'
The bad news is that there are no signs that the weakness in the more cyclical German manufacturing sector would be temporary, and the outlook is frankly scary. In light of these numbers, it is crystal clear that the challenges currently facing the German economy go well beyond the car sector.
All the signs are that Europe's largest economy is sleepwalking into disaster. It may be that a change of Chancellor, a fresh administration and a range of new voices breaking the stranglehold of the old political elites on Germany's various parliaments, national and state, will head-off disaster, but we cannot bank on it. A stable and democratic Germany tied strongly to France is the guarantee of peace and security in Europe - and we must be prepared to step in to assist if Germany, once again, fails to find her own way.

31 comments:

jack ketch said...

Hmm all sounds rather familiar if I'm honest, i was hearing all that back in the early 90s during and after the Reunification (which admittedly was, on the face of it, Economic Suicide ). What the Doom Sayers missed then and what I think your piece misses (although I know you know) is the incestuous corrupt relationship between the German State and Big D-Industry-the Fx of which mean the German government will always do what needs to be done to keep Germany GmbH's share price solid (where, for example, are pretty much all the batteries for E cars going to built? A clue; not in GB but in the AfD homeland...strangely enough *cough*...'Brot und Zirkusse, Brot und Zirkusse). Until this last week that relationship was a '3er Pasch' ('a threesome') with the German Civil Judicial system but the Supreme Civil Court issued a finding which may do more to rock the good ship Germania than many realise and which was badly unreported.

Anonymous said...

Nobody on the Mainland is reading this fiction.

Only Raed's fellow deluded thralls attach any credibility to it here.

Just because fellow madmen say that you are correct is no reason for comfort, old chap.

DiscoveredJoys said...

I think we need to ask some deep and long ranging questions before we rush forward with the first aid. If Germany does get into deeper trouble and the rest of the EU can't or won't help (surprise) what is in it for the UK in the longer term?

Will a rescued Germany thank us later? They have not been anything other than self-regarding in the past. Nation states still work on a dog-eat-dog basis. Germany has been happy to shelter within a protectionist trade environment, propped up by the euro, yet still export to the rest of the world. But globalism is driven by big trade and is not a reliable guarantee for future performance.

So our first question is "What is in it for us?". Should we send them some of our bureaucrats, again?

Anonymous said...

"The euro will be dead and buried by Christmas 2012" - Nigel Farage.

Raedwald said...

Anon, it's true that of our 4k pageviews a day (excluding RSS) only 30% are non-UK, and of that 30% a third are from the US, but that still leaves plenty of readers from EU27 nations.

But you're right in saying "No-one from the mainland is reading fiction" for of course it's not an EU brand of lies and fantasy but fact and opinion.

terence patrick hewett said...

I am a professional engineer: I have 4 degrees and membership of 2 professional institutions: I have worked in 15 countries and 4 continents and what Radders says about the auto-industry is 100% correct - the automobile industry based on the Internal Combustion Engine is heading for the rust-heap.

China and Asia are going for electric/driverless big time: companies like Rolls Royce Plc have got out of the car industry a long time ago because they could see the future better than most.

The auto companies which will survive will have to diversify or go to the wall.

wg said...

I agree with Raedwald - leaving the EU out of the equation, we are all in this together.

I don't wish to see Germany in decline any more than I wished to see Greece being
humiliated - and therein lies the problem.
I don't ascribe the same sentiments to all Germans, but there were quite a few who
believed that Greece should be punished for making the mistake of taking up the EU club card.

As for the Sutherland thing: I remember an argument between Nigel Farage and Graham Watson (Lord now!)
concerning the EU's plan to bring in 75million people from outside the EU - citing Europe's demographic ageing.

There are two questions that I would ask:

If Europe's population is in decline, shouldn't that be a good thing environmentally?
I remember when I was young, large families were seen as something to be avoided.

The second thing that I would ask is - why do we need people from outside of the EU when our own young people
are not being adequately educated and trained?
Youth unemployment in the EU is testament to the EU's lack of care for its own people.

Stephen J said...

@WG:

Why?

It only makes sense if you have a globalist view of the world.

Break the nation state and you break the power of people to make their own decisions, you have effectively corralled them into the status of slavery.

It is the foundation of the new socialism...

What has been described by this nasty piece of work called Amitai Etzioni as "COMMUNITARIANISM".

And George Bush Snr., as "The new world order".

jack ketch said...

and claiming a Waltish 'von', Raed

Waltish? Hardly. As far as I can see from a quick google, he 'persuaded'(one assumes bribed-which Goering hints at I think) an ennobled aunt to adopt him. In which case he was (and still would be even today) perfectly entitled to carry a 'von'.I assume that is also why all serious sources refer to him as such.



Raedwald said...

Ah, but he wasn't born a von and life peerages and the like were unknown, so it was a terribly naff thing to do.

Of course, had he been adopted by his aunt and then declined to use the honorific it would have been quite classy.

Ribbentrop's predecessor at the court of St James was a real well respected old fashioned German diplomat - Leopold von Hoesch. The old German embassy was on carlton House Terrace, and I often used to walk up the Duke of York steps, past the memorial stone to his dog Giro (key-ro in German of course, jiy-row in English). I'm surprised Ribbentrop didn't have it removed after 1936, but the nasty little shit was probably too drunk to have noticed it.

jack ketch said...

so it was a terribly naff thing to do. Raed

In German eyes it would be seen/have been seen as less naff than say some American buying a 'Laird' title. Even today impoverished 'von's will sell their 'von', and the buyer has every right to use it. A 'von' resulting from an 'adoption' by a noble is regarded as even less naff than buying one. One of my colleagues in a McJob was a 'von' and scarcely a month went by, he said, when he wasn't offered insane sums for his 'von'. To Germans what would be truly naff (and possibly a criminal offence i think) would be to call yourself a 'von' without having one.

Also one should bear in mind that Ribbentrop was a rather successful international seller of Sekt (in 1928, Ribbentrop was introduced to Adolf Hitler as a businessman with foreign connections who "gets the same price for German champagne as others get for French champagne"-so wiki) and when he acquired the 'von' in 1925 it was no doubt , in part, to help his business...if you're flogging sekt globally it helps to be a 'von' I assume.

jack ketch said...

Giro (key-ro in German of course, Raed

DoppelUtF mate? or did you mean to say 'rhymes with 'key-ro'?

Anonymous said...

Yes, problems arise in life.

People often solve them, however. The EU has quite good form on that, as does Germany.

The UK seems to be outstanding at creating them just now, on the other hand.

Domo said...

The UK is unlikely to have the resources to save Germany, we'll be hard pressed to save ourselves.
The world is simply moving on, Europe is becoming South America.

Anonymous said...

Germany is a proud nation, and unlikely to accept a Marshal Aid plan help from Britain or any nation accept the USA. That is, if such aid was required. Germans are an inventive people, are likely to invent their way out, which BTW, the Chinese will emulate.

Dave_G said...


China/the far East have very different incentives for EV's as they are not constrained by the idiotic CO2 regulations when it comes to providing the infrastructure to power/run them.

Germany's car industry won't go EV but will turn Hybrid as the EU/Europe and the UK don't - and potentially won't ever - have the generating capacity for full EV manufacture.

I don't think Germany will ever fall so far as to require Marshall Aid but the EU/Europe in general will suffer badly - and we may even get some backlash from it ourselves - when the Euro finally goes mammaries skywards. The Euro issue is why I think the EU are so keen to get their own Army going - they can keep printing the money needed to pay for it and whilst the money is flowing the collapse is avoided.

jack ketch said...


Germany is a proud nation,
-Anon

Not sure I would agree-except when they are winning at that football-thing (I'm amazed their World Cup Trainer hasn't been publicly lynched)then they can be overly-proud. Mind you, when Merkel's recent flight to Rio (I think) was delayed because the German equivalent of Airforce One, made in Germany, broke down it made headline news and the shock was palpable.

Anonymous said...

Dave, temperatures hit 20.6C this afternoon.

That has NEVER happened before in the UK in February.

It proves nothing absolutely conclusively, but only a total idiot would ignore such phenomena.

Dave_G said...


Anon - Only a total idiot would attribute todays temperature to MMGW. It 'never happened before in the UK' eh? How do you know? How long is 'never'? And the 'high' happens to be very, very local, not country-wide so as a measurement it is totally useless and irrelevant.

I note that not-a-lot has been said about the extensive and extended cold weather events across the USA...... can't be exposing the fraud to the truth can we?

The on-topic point I was making was that many issues that are affecting not just Germany but Europe and the UK are of our own making and financial catastrophe is more likely than any (so far unproven) catastrophe the climate may evolve.

Industry has been decimated by adherence to policies that are brought about by a fantasy-belief in CO2. The EU/UK/Europe need to COMPETE in this world and competition can't be enjoined if the dice are loaded against us. Cheap, reliable and plentiful energy is key to industry, growth and wealth (not to mention health and environmental improvements).

What do we do? - allow German industry to collapse? Or start acting on FACTS and not fantasy and start rebuilding our competitiveness in a global marketplace?

Ask the German people whether they'd want their industries to continue or if they'd like to mitigate global temperature rise by 1/20th of ONE DEGREE by adhereing to policies costing £trillions?

Mark said...

It's not Germany that will require saving but the Euro. Why would we want to do that even if we could? Who else is going to?

A temperature of 20.3C has never been recorded in the UK before but that's not the same as it never having happened.

Look up "great Tudor drought 1540/41". I would be fascinated to know what modern meteorological instruments would have recorded.

Anonymous said...

No, if you run blindfold across the M25 then you are not 100% certain to be killed.

Only a Leave voter or science denier would be so pathetically weak-minded to be persuaded actually to do it on that basis, however.

Domo said...

@Dave
The EU has suffered a 5% economic contraction over the last decade, which has been a global boom.
When the downturn hits, and it's coming like a freight train, Europe is going to be in very very serious trouble

Dave_G said...


Domo - we can only conclude that forces are arrayed that are hostile to not just Europe but the global economies as a whole.

Immigration, CO2, fiat currencies and market manipulation (via sanctions or Corporatist collusion etc) are being used to steer people in directions they don't want (or need) to go.

There is nothing (basically) wrong with global markets, trade, technological advancement or individuals desire to 'own' - the problems stem from interference in the normal way things should be happening.

This interference comes from known sources - sources that could be admitted to, exposed across the media and tackled. But they aren't and won't ever be whilst we allow them to manipulate us in the way they do.

Brexit is a step towards breaking that hold/control (albeit a minor start with limited effect) but under the collective name of populism similar attitudes are prevailing and those that seek to steer us are being shunted off course.

What we need to be wary of is what methods they would employ to regain their impetus - I have no difficulty in believing they would deliberately collapse the global economies or start WW3 to achieve their end.

Just by dropping (for example) the CO2 constraints would redirect £trillions and boost business almost overnight. Immediate reduction in energy bills (no subsidy add-ons), no 'carbon taxes' etc but 'they' won't countenance such common sense. Why? 'They' would rather see Europe beggared, hamstrung, co-opted, diluted and, ultimately, destroyed. All for a manufactured con trick.

It's not just Germany that needs saving.

jack ketch said...


Ask the German people whether they'd want their industries to continue or if they'd like to mitigate global temperature rise by 1/20th of ONE DEGREE by adhereing to policies costing £trillions
-Dave G

You'd possibly be surprised by their answer. Germans have the 'Green virus' but badly. Only this last week they announced the closure of all the brown coal mines and also the laying of a cable costing fuck knows how many million euros to transport electricity from the North Sea Wind farms down the entire length of the country to Bavaria I think.

jack ketch said...

It's not just Germany that needs saving from itself. - Dave G

Pat said...

I see no possibility of Britain having the money to save Germany should it fall in hard times. Perhaps Christian Aid could return to its original mission of alleviating the poverty in Europe, but that is at least one order of magnitude less than would be required.
Furthermore it would be pointless unless the Germans abandoned crony capitalism and also their green obsession, and unnecessary if they did.

Anonymous said...

If the Germans were building some nuclear power stations, they could transition to all-electric transport and reduce CO2 output. If they think they can go all-electric on a basis of wind-and-solar, they are as crazy as they were in the 1930s.

The successful economies in 20 years from now will be those with the most nuclear power.

Don Cox

Span Ows said...

Don Cox, indeed, so that's just France then! Of 125-130 operational nuclear reactors in the EU 58 are in France. UK has 15 and Germany 7 (Belgium also has 7!)

Anon "science denier" is anyone who questions, i.e. every single scientist EVER. Perhaps you mean ACGW denier.

Stephen J said...

@Don Cox:

"The successful economies in 20 years from now will be those with the most nuclear power."

Are you serious? Would you really trust this the UK's government (and deep state) with even more radioactive material than they are already "looking after"?

mongoose said...

That is not how science works, anonyweed.

Budgie said...

Anon 17:52, Leave is not equivalent to running across the M25 blindfolded. Most of the world is not in the EU; and they are not running across the M25 blindfolded either. Your trying to say the UK cannot be independent of the EU is just silly.