When Enough is Enough

The place: the area around Kursk, a Russian (formerly Soviet) city about 520 kilometers south of east of Moscow and 420 kilometers east of Ukraine’s capital Kiev. The time: spring 1943.

A few months earlier, on 2 February 1943, the German 6th Army surrendered at Stalingrad. Some 90,000 German soldiers were taken prisoner; the total number of German losses may have been around 270,000. Perhaps even more ominously for the Germans, their remaining forces in the region, sunk as they were in sleet, snow and atrociously low temperatures, were confused, demoralized and disorganized. Nevertheless, thanks very largely to a single officer, Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, the German front held. Many considered him the mastermind behind the operation (“Case Yellow”) that had brought down France back in 1940; in truth, though, his performance on this occasion was even better.

By March/April the antagonists were once again facing each along more or less cohesive lines. At the center of the front, which reached from Leningrad to the Black Sea, was a huge Russian salient measuring some 250 kilometers from north to south and 150 kilometers from east to west. It was in and around this salient that the Red Army and the Wehrmacht deployed their most powerful formations, numbering about a million men on each side. In ordering the offensive Hitler was hoping to pinch off the salient while destroying as many Soviet as possible. That done, his troops would be free to move in any direction they chose. North towards Moscow, important because of its railway crossings and its arms industry; east to the Volga through which passed much of the American and Brutish aid to the USSR; and south toward Rostov, the key to the Caucasus where the Red Army got his oil.

It was not to be. Thanks partly to the fact that the German plans fell into Soviet hands, partly to Hitler’s hope that, by postponing the offensive, he would be able to bring up more of his new Panther and Tiger tanks, the Red Army was ready. Starting on 5 July, a week’s ferocious fighting did not lead to the desired result, forcing the Fuehrer to order his commanders to suspend their advance and switch to the defensive instead. But even if it had succeeded it would probably not have brought the Soviet Union to its knees. Given that, by this time, Stalin’s huge domain was fully mobilized and much of its industry evacuated hundreds of kilometers east towards the Urals, well beyond the Wehrmacht’s reach.

Almost exactly eighty years have passed. The forces on both sides are much smaller, so much so that they cannot form cohesive fronts but seem to be distributed in penny packets all over the huge theater of operations. However, the overall strategic situation is not dissimilar. This time it is the Ukrainian armed forces that are said to be preparing for a spring offensive. This time too any offensive that may be in the making keeps being postponed, allegedly because the Ukrainians are still waiting for sufficient weapons—tanks, ammunition, drones and anti-aircraft defenses—to arrive from the West. Whether the Ukrainians are going to attack eastward towards the Donbas and its industry, or southward, with the objective of cutting the narrow land corridor leading from the Donbas to the Russian-occupied Crimea, remains unknown. Finally, in 2023 as in 1943, whether a Ukrainian offensive, even one that is tactically and operationally successful, can be pushed to the point where the Kremlin is forced to give up the fight remains questionable.

Right or wrong, no one seems to be talking about a new Russian offensive. Possibly this is because Putin cannot muster the necessary forces; however, judging by events since 24 February 2022, such an offensive, even if it can be launched, is most unlikely to lead to a quick victory either. Overall the most likely outcome is a prolonged battle of attrition similar, say, to the one Iranians and Iraqis waged against each other from 1980 to 1988. And which will most likely be decided, not by events on the battlefield but by one of the two sides saying, perhaps after a more or less legitimate, more or less conspirational and violent, change of government: enough is enough.

Guest Article: Spotlight on German Defense

By

Gen. (ret.) Dr. Erich Vad*

Since Russia launched its full-blown attack against Ukraine in February 2022, Germany has become one of the Ukrainian largest arms suppliers — incurring costs in the billions of euros. This spending and the decision-making behind it have thrown into stark relief at least two things: major shifts in German security policy, and the difficult balancing acts facing the country’s leaders.

What the War Has Revealed About the State and Focus of the German Military

Starting in 2022, Germany has become the third-largest provider of military support for Ukraine after the US and the UK. It sent goods worth a total of €2 billion (~$2.2 billion). Including multiple rocket launchers, self-propelled howitzers, and self-propelled, tracked, air defense systems. A further €2.3 billion (~$2.5 billion) in spending is scheduled for 2023. Including, this time, 18 modern Leopard 2A6 main battle tanks, former East German Mig-29 fighters, and Patriot air defense systems.

Coming on top of aid provided by other NATO countries, this largesse has had a tangible impact on the Ukrainian armed forces’ capabilities. However, it has also come at a significant cost for Germany’s own defense. So much so that Germany’s commitments to its NATO allies, as well as its ability to defend themselves, are now in danger of being compromised.

Even more important, Russia’s attack on Ukraine has fundamentally changed threat perceptions in Germany. For the first time since the end of the Cold War over 30 years ago, German defense policy is once again focused on Central Europe. The era of German peacekeeping missions abroad–in the Balkans, in Mali and in Afghanistan—is over. However, while the focus of German security policy is changing, the Bundeswehr does not have the capability to back the change.

The list of problems is almost endless. Including a shortage of armored and mechanized units; inadequate stocks of ammunition; long-neglected, out of date, facilities such as barracks; to mention but a few. The new minister of defense, Boris Pistorius, is doing what he can to correct these deficiencies. Inevitably, though, doing so will take time.

Nor is the establishment of a special fund of €100 billion (~$110 billion) for military refurbishments going to be a game changer. By my estimate, to restore operational readiness three times that sum would be needed. The necessary ammunition alone would cost at least €20 billion (~$22 billion), while urgent fixes for the ailing infrastructure would call for an additional €50 billion (~$55 billion). And new frigates, tanks and F-35 fighter aircraft have yet to be paid for.

Beyond these hardware-related risks an even greater threat is looming: that of the dire shortfalls in personnel. Following German reunification the Bundeswehr had around 460,000 soldiers. Since then it has been gradually reduced in size until, today, only about 183,000 are left. Currently plans are aiming at an additional 20,000 in 2031—hardly enough to make much of a difference.

Restoring the Bundeswehr’s Operational Readiness Will Take Years

Starting in 1990, Germany believed it could afford to neglect national and alliance defense because the threat situation was quite different. In retrospect, this was short-sighted. The fundamental failure was that Germany “imported” much of its national and alliance defense security, primarily from the U.S. At the same time, it generated a considerable amount of its wealth in China, the geostrategic rival of the U.S, and the West more broadly. And it also imported cheap energy from Russia.

The Bundeswehr’s foreign missions, first and foremost in Afghanistan, dominated the political spotlight and had to proceed, while the rest of its commitments did not seem to matter. To meet ongoing foreign missions personnel and materiel were scrounged from hundreds of Bundeswehr locations. Meanwhile, armament procurement concentrated on armored transport vehicles rather than on battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. This and the ever-decreasing quantities of new equipment also led to reallocation and relocation measures on the part of the defense industry.

Again starting in 1990, every military reform in Germany has been intended, not to strengthen the Bundeswehr in terms of national and alliance defense but to make it smaller and cheaper. The Bundeswehr now has fewer battle-ready tanks than Switzerland and fewer ships than the Netherlands. The hasty phase-out of conscription in 2011 exacerbates the Bundeswehr’s personnel situation to this day. A return to compulsory military service is under discussion, but is not very realistic even though similar policies have been implemented in frontline states such as Lithuania.

At the time, the suspension of conscription at the time was supported by the military leadership because it freed up tens of thousands of professional and temporary soldiers — who had previously been bound by conscription as instructors — for deployment abroad. In the process, however, massive personnel problems arose: Today some 20,000 positions in the Bundeswehr remain unfilled, trend growing. This policy has been repeatedly and rightly criticized and is finally coming to an end. Leading, one can only hope, to the fastest possible rebuilding of Germany’s defense capability within the NATO framework.

What the Future Should Hold for NATO

It is foreseeable that NATO — including new alliance partners such as Sweden (yet to be accepted) and Finland (already accepted) — will have to build up a completely new front line of defense against Russia, and, still in the background, against China as well — from the North Cape to the Black Sea. This line must be capable of being defended if necessary. The NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997, which commits the signatories to refrain from permanently stationing substantial combat forces, is hanging by a thread. Whether it will survive remains to be seen.

In any case, Germany will have to be prepared to deploy even more military forces to potential conflict regions in Eastern Europe than it did during the Cold War. In the future, the first priority will be to strengthen the “frontline states.” In all likelihood, Ukraine will — or may even already — be one of them, when it comes to the advance deployment of equipment, ammunition and material. Following NATO directives, Germany must provide about 30,000 troops and 85 aircraft and ships at high readiness for NATO’s defense of Europe by 2025. To this end, Germany would have to establish at least one mechanized division. In addition, it would have to provide a brigade for the Baltic States, which NATO now wants to be able to defend from Day 1, with a high level of readiness. Whether this is realistic remains to be seen. Certainly it will be an enormous feat. The more so because Germany and its European allies can no longer count on our most important ally, the U.S, whose focus is the Indo-Pacific.

Moreover, the course of the Russian-Ukrainian war shows that NATO’s easternmost member states — especially Poland, and certainly Finland in the future — will play a strategically more important role in the transatlantic alliance. Germany continues to be an important logistical hub for NATO’s European defense, but it is no longer a central frontline state as it was during the Cold War.

Time for reorganizing German and European defense is running out. The Russian-Ukrainian war has highlighted different threat perceptions and interests among the European allies, which will have to be balanced in the future. The new frontline states vis-à-vis Russia — above all Poland and the Baltic States — show very little willingness to compromise. Steering the opposite course, France in particular would like to enter negotiations so as to end the war as soon as possible.

While pursuing a substantial increase in the Alliance’s military capabilities, NATO strategists should also keep in mind that the integration of artificial intelligence as a universally applicable technology and robotics will change war to change. If we want to keep pace as a military power in the future, we must have technological leadership in the air, on and under the water, on earth, in space, and, above all, in cyberspace. Along with digitalization, space is becoming increasingly important for all major world powers. Satellites are intimately connected to the global web of communication. Recent developments in hypersonic weapons — which can penetrate all conventional defense systems — raise the relevance of space-based observation and cyber capabilities. Without space security, we cannot rely on digital security on earth. Technological leadership in networked digitalization will ultimately be decisive. However, Europe can only achieve this together with — not separated or autonomously from — the United States.

Limits of the EU’s ‘Self-Defense’

While calling for a peaceful resolution of the Russian-Ukrainian war, France’s Emmanuel Macron has also been pushing for augmenting Europe’s ability to defend itself without American aid. Doing so would mean spending four to six percent of GDP on defense— as compared with the current two percent. At present, I don’t see sufficient political will among EU members to spend that kind of money, especially if ordinary European citizens learn what the oft-repeated demand for more European “strategic autonomy” would actually cost them.

EU states are already spending around 200 billion euros (~$219 billion) on defense every year. At market exchange rates that is about 3 times as much as the Russian budget and not much less than the Chinese one, though it bears noting that the European advantage would be less dramatic if one were to measure these counties’ defense expenditures with an eye to purchasing power parity (PPP). And yet no one is taking the Europeans seriously in the military field. Why? First, the EU states are wasting enormous sums in the defense sector through countless duplications of production lines, weapons programs, national certifications and general egoism — not to mention an overall lack of synergies. Combined, these factors result in constantly shifting security policies, to Europe’s detriment–obstructing its ability to act militarily and autonomously. Second, the EU is still a long way from achieving commonality in military equipment, joint logistics or coherent armaments cooperation. Third, the EU continues to lag behind the U.S in terms of military digitization, the use of space, communications and reconnaissance, and especially in strategic air transport capabilities.

Conclusion

Russia’s attack on Ukraine and Germany’s response to it, including the provision of military aid, much of which has come from Bundeswehr’s immediate inventory, to Kyiv, has highlighted the neglected state and outdated focus of the German armed forces. The war has spurred a much-needed change of this focus from peacekeeping missions to the defense of NATO and of Germany itself. As important, the German government has begun to invest in restoring the operational readiness of the Bundeswehr. But what has been pledged so far is not enough, for it will take years to restore that readiness at the current pace. More important, Germany cannot go it alone. Other European members of NATO should also up the ante to ensure their collective defense capabilities are adequate in the face of the new threats, especially as the U.S. focuses on the Indo-Pacific. In spite of this focus, however, the U.S. will remain indispensable when it comes to the defense of Europe. It is clear that without the United States, Europe cannot strategically balance powers like China or Russia, or even NATO partners like Turkey.

Europe, in my view, will continue to rely on America’s nuclear umbrella, its digital, technological and maritime leadership, and its capability spectrum in cyberspace and outer space for the foreseeable future. Ultimately, enhancements of military capabilities alone won’t make Europe secure either now or in the longer term. Thus, while continuing to aid Ukraine, Germany, France and other members of the EU should join forces in undertaking a political initiative aimed at ending the war and finding a sustainable solution to the conflict.

 

* Dr. Erich Vad is founder and owner of Erich Vad Consulting. A retired Bundeswehr general, from 2006 to 2013 he served as German Chancellor Angela Merkel`s military policy adviser. 

Barbarossa

Barbarossa (Redbeard) was the nickname of the medieval German Emperor Frederick I (reigned, 1155-90) whose image graces this post. More pertinent to our business today, it was the name Hitler gave his campaign against the Soviet Union which got under way on 22 June 1941, i.e eighty years ago. Today I want to discuss a few outstanding aspects of the campaign—such as used to shape history throughout the Cold War and in some ways continue to do so right down to the present day.

*

First, at the time Barbarossa opened on 22 June 1941 the idea of gaining Lebensraum (living space) for the German people had been obsessing Hitler for almost two decades. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but always on his mind. Barbarossa, in other words, was the culmination of everything Hitler had ever sought. The loadstar, so to speak, that, along with the destruction of the Jews, seemed to make sense of the gigantic enterprise on which he embarked, causing all the other pieces to fall into place.

Second, Barbarossa was the largest military operation of all time. 3,500,000 men, over 3,500 aircraft, 3,500 tanks, 20,000 artillery barrels, and 600,000 vehicles (most of them horse-drawn and used for supply as well as dragging the artillery) of every kind. The total number of trains that deployed these forces stood at 17,000; that of railway wagons, at about 850,000. Initially the front was 1,500 miles long. Later it extended over 2,500 or so. Nothing like it had been seen before. Thanks to the introduction and spread of nuclear weapons, capable of taking out entire armies and cities almost instantaneously, nothing like it is likely to be seen again.

Third, it was deliberately planned not simply as a war between states but as one of extermination. First, of any Red Army commissars—political officers—who had the misfortune to fall into German hands. Second, of millions of Red Army prisoners who surrendered and were held under such atrocious conditions as to cause about two thirds of them to die. Third, of the Jews. Fourth, of as many as thirty million civilians in the occupied Soviet territories. The territories themselves were to be occupied and opened to settlers—not just Germans but Dutch and Scandinavians as well.

Fourth, it almost succeeded. By the beginning of December 1941 the forward most German troops were so close to Moscow as to enable them to watch the Kremlin’s spires through their binoculars. The city contained the most important railway knots in the entire USSR; including its immediate suburbs, it also accounted for about forty percent of Soviet industrial production. To say nothing of its symbolic value. As Pushkin wrote, it was welded into the soul of every Russian. Whether the fall of Moscow would have caused Barbarossa to end in some kind of German victory is hard to say. Most certainly, though, it would have prolonged the war and claimed even more victims than it actually did.
The five easy ideas namely, oral medication, vacuum device, surgery, psychotherapy and cialis no prescription lifestyle changes, can make a lot of change in your sex life. NF Cure capsule provides viagra price online a complete remedy for all of us. Kamagra – An Approachable Drug for ED How to get an erection free generic viagra or as if this man is having an affair. In depth scientific studies happen to be made online using a get viagra no prescription credit card.
Fifth, the most important factors that led to the German defeat were as follows. A. The sheer size of the theater of war in which entire armies could easily get lost; to this must be added its underdevelopment in terms of transportation, communications, and the like. B. the climate which, in October-April each year, hampered operations by making much of the terrain impassable; first by covering it by mud, then by bringing freezing cold, and then by melting the snow. C. The growing numerical superiority of the Red Army—both in manpower and in resources—which increasingly made itself felt from at least the end of 1941 on. D. The fact that Germany, engaged in a war in the west as well as the east, was never able to concentrate all its resources against the latter; that was particularly true from late 1942 on. E. A command system which, especially at the top and starting from the Battle of Moscow in December 1941, was as good as any and probably superior to the increasingly erratic German one.

Sixth, the German attack almost certainly saved Stalin and the Communist system. Ever since it was founded, the Soviet Union had always been held together in large part by terror. Barbarossa, by bringing the system to verge of destruction and threatening much of the Soviet people with extermination, provided a much-needed boost for that terror. Had it not been for the legacy of the war, the Soviet Union might have collapsed much earlier than it did—and, I suspect, amidst much greater bloodshed too.

*

Now for a larger perspective. Starting in the eighteenth century, first Russia and then the Soviet Union was one of several great powers contending for mastery in Europe as the subcontinent that increasingly dominated all the rest. Now with less success, as in 1854-56 and 1914-1918. Now with more, as in 1813-1815 and 1941-45. The German invasion and its aftermath, by leaving the Soviet Union stronger not only than any other European country but than all of them combined, put an end to this situation. It turned the Soviet Union into a world power, rivalled only by the USA with which it engaged on a “Cold War” that lasted forty-five years.

In 1991, largely owing to internal problems rather than external pressure, the Soviet Union collapsed. And Russia, minus much of the territory and the population that had once belonged to it, reverted to its traditional role—that of one power among several. One that, like all the rest, has its own agenda and its own peculiarities. And with which, willy-nilly, the world will have to live.

“Overcoming” the Past

Living here in Germany, specifically in Potsdam near Berlin, as my wife and I are doing at the moment, one cannot but admire the Germans’ efforts to make up for what has long been the greatest national crime of all, i.e. the Holocaust. Including ten of billions paid in reparations to survivors, their families, and the State of Israel; including a total ban on the pubic display of Nazi symbols of every kind, from the swastika to the so-called Hitler Gruess; including many museums, big and small, that deal with the topic and do what they can to educate the public about it; including a foreign and defense policy that has long been consistently favorable to Israel; including any number of films, plays, public lectures, and books, all of them devoted to ensure that nothing of the ind wil ever recur; and so on and so on right down to the so called Stolpersteine, bricks that are cemented into the pavements of many cities, each one bearing the name of a Jewish individual or family who used to live nearby but lost his/her/their life/lives to the terrible events of 1939-1945. In the whole of history, no group and no people has ever done more to “come to terms” with its past.

And yet it is not “enough.” Nothing can be. What is not clear is why this should be so. After all, both Stalin and Mao Zedong killed more people than Hitler did. Looking back over history, including recent history, finding rulers who tried to do away with entire groups of people is all too easy. Besides, six million? Five? Four? Three? What difference does it make? Two factors may go some—but only some—way to explain the peculiar horror with which the holocaust is associated. First, most genocides took place during, and as a result of, a war waged against the groups in question, i.e enemies. However, the Jews as such were never enemies of Germany. If anything, to the contrary. Many foreign Jews, especially those of Central and Eastern Europe, saw Germany as a model their own countries might well adopt. Most German Jews were very proud to be not only German citizens but bearers of German Kultur; quite some would have joined the Nazi Party if only they had been permitted to do so.

The second explanation is that Hitler an his henchmen systematically targeted not only adults but children too. Not accidentally, by way of “collateral damage,” but deliberately and by design. As Israel’s national poet, Haim Nahman Bialik, once wrote, “avenging a small child is something not even the devil has been able to do.” Enough said.

Help men who have impotence problem viagra no prescription australia to get and sustain the erection for several hours. Psychological factors play a major role cheap generic tadalafil in many conditions of low libido in younger men. But before you buy Kamagra jelly, check for the reviews of the product then you would actually find out that the exact combination of products that can only happen after first taking the time to master several important steps. viagra in india price If you are the one facing some problems with your vision then it’s high time for you to schedule an appointment tadalafil from india with an expert chiropractor Vista CA has to offer. In my experience, the great majority of Germans seem to be well aware of these realities. It was only yesterday that I heard an acquaintance of mine say that, whenever his country’s hymn was played in some international forum, he felt somewhat ashamed. Not exactly a sign of psychological health, given that anyone in Germany today who is less than 92 years old can hardly have had much to do with the crimes of yore. A few try to fight back by denying the Holocaust or belittling it; it is they who receive most attention both in- and outside Germany. As one would expect, most try to forget about them and go on with their lives as best they can.

So here is a little story of something that happened to me some time ago. I was having a snack and a tea in the lobby of Munich’s Vier Jahreszeiten, one of those hotels that like to add the title “noble” to their names. Doing so I noticed a young woman perhaps 18 or 19 years old. Wearing an apron, she was helping re-organize part of the lobby for a party or reception to be held later in the evening; spreading out table cloths, arranging glasses, and the like. I asked her whether she was aware of the fact that this lobby had been one of Hitler’ favorite haunts during this stays in Munich. In return, all I got was a bland stare.

Considering both the Germans and the Jews, taking the long view, perhaps it is better that way?

The Strange Case of Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles, the hundredth anniversary of which will be remembered in June of this year, has attracted more than its share of historical debate. What has not been said and written about it? That it did not go far enough, given that Germany lost only a relatively small part of its territory and population and was allowed to continue to exist as a unified state under a single government (French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau). That it went much too far, thus helping lay the foundations of World War II. That it imposed a “Carthaginian Peace” (the British economist John Maynard Keynes in his 1919 best-seller, The Economic Consequences of the Peace). That it was “made in order to bring twenty million Germans to their deaths, and to ruin the German nation” (according to a speech delivered in Munich on 13 April 1923 by a thirty-four year old demagogue named Adolf Hitler). All these views, and quite some others, started being thrown about almost as soon as the ink on the Treaty had dried. In one way or another, all of them are still being discussed in the literature right down to the present day.

But what was there about the Treaty that was so special? Was it really as original, as unique, as has so often been maintained? Was the brouhaha it gave rise to justified? By way of obtaining an answer to this seldom-asked question, consider the following.

*

First, the transfer of territory. Throughout human history, control over territory and the population it contained has been one of the most important issues, often the most important issue, over which first tribes, then kingdoms, and finally states went to war against each other. Furthermore, right down to modern times war itself was seen as a normal method whereby rulers either gained territory or were forced to give it up. When the Allies, in 1918, deprived Germany of its colonies; when they detached Alsace Lorraine and gave them back to France; when they took away much of West Prussia and handed it to Poland; when they did the same in Silesia; when, having held a plebiscite, they gave northern Schleswig to Denmark; when they took away the Saar for a period of fifteen years; and when they gave Memel to Lithuania—in all these cases, they were doing little more than what rulers had always done. And as the Germans themselves had done, on a vastly larger scale, by the Diktat that was the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk they forced on the Bolsheviks just fifteen months earlier. The one that made General Max Hoffmann, Ludendorff’s deputy, say that the only question regarding the Russians was which sauce they would be eaten with.

Second, disarmament. Some of the best-known articles in the Treaty sought to limit Germany’s armed forces. Conscription, which was introduced at the time of the French Revolution and had since become the preferred way by which most of the world’s armed forces obtained the cannon fodder they needed, was abolished. The army, which at peak had numbered about five million men (no women, incidentally, to share in the joys of the trenches) was limited to just 100,000 organized into seven light infantry divisions. Heavy warships, submarines, military aircraft, tanks, heavy artillery and gas were all prohibited; existing stocks were handed over or dismantled, and fairly successful attempts to prevent them from being rebuilt undertaken. The General Staff, which starting in the wars of 1866-71 was widely seen as one of the principal pillars of Germany’s military power, was closed down. So, finally, were the famous Kadetanstalten where many aspiring young officers were put through their paces. Under the Weimar Republic, so weak was the Reichswehr that, as a 1929 wargame showed, it was unable to stop a Polish invasion of East Prussia, Had Warsaw wanted too, its troops might perhaps have marched all the way to Berlin.

Yet in this respect, too, there were precedents. The one most familiar to many Germans is Napoleon’s 1808 decision to reduce the Prussian army by about four fifths, leaving just 42,000 men under arms. The prohibition remained in effect for some five years and only came to an end when the Wars of Liberation broke out in 1813. An even better case in point is the Peace of Apamea. Apamea was a Hellenistic city in today’s western Asia Minor. In 188 BCE it witnessed the negotiations between Rome and its defeated enemy, King Antiochus III of Syria. Territorial losses apart, Antiochus was obliged to surrender all the war elephants in his possession and undertake not to raise or purchase new ones. His navy was limited to just twelve warships—to give the reader an idea of what this meant, Athens during the days of its greatness some three centuries previously had maintained no fewer than four hundred—although this number might be increased in case he came under attack.

What is probably the oldest example of forced disarmament may be found in the Bible (1. Samuel 13.19-22). “Now there was,” we are told, “no blacksmith to be found throughout all the land of Israel, for the Philistines said, ‘Lest the Hebrews make swords or spears.’ But all the Israelites would go down to the Philistines to sharpen each man’s plowshare, his mattock, his ax, and his sickle;  and the charge for a sharpening was two thirds of one shekel for the plowshares, the mattocks, the forks, and the axes, and to set the points of the goads.  So it came about, on the day of battle, that there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people who were with Saul and Jonathan. But they were found with Saul and Jonathan his son.” Does this remind anyone of President Trump’s attempt to limit the ability of Iran and North Korea to develop nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles?

Third, demilitarization. By the articles of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was obliged to withdraw all its forces from the lands west of the Rhine and refrain from trying to fortify them. Here, too, there were plenty of precedents. Probably the best-known one is Athens’ Long Walls. Built by Pericles as part of the preparations for the Peloponnesian War against Sparta, they linked the city with the port of Piraeus, thus rendering it immune to a siege. In 404-3 BCE, following Athens’ defeat, they were dismantled.

This was hardly the only case of this kind. In 1714 the British forced Louis XIV to demolish his naval base at Dunkirk so that it could no longer be used for either military or civilian purposes. In 1738, in the aftermath of a war that had lasted for some two years, Holy Roman Emperor Karl V undertook to demolish the fortresses of Belgrade and Šabac as the price for peace with the Ottomans. In 1856, following the Crimean War, Article XI of the Treaty of Paris obliged the Tsar to refrain from establishing any naval or military arsenal on the Black Sea coast. As one might expect, none of these agreements lasted for very long, a fact that also applies to all the others discussed in the present article.
It is also called “stress hormone”, with inhibitory prescription de viagra canada effect of sexual functions in man, produced by the pituitary gland. One of the appalachianmagazine.com sildenafil 100mg is curing Raynaud’s phenomenon. So with the help of this pharmacy cialis men without fail reach erection when sexually motivated. In the end, there is a little different, too, viagra sales canada so if you grew up somewhere else, you might have to take in a lot of new information here.
Fourth, compensation. As part of the settlement, Germany was supposed to pay its former enemies 132 billion gold marks (present-day value, about 400 billion Euro). This reminded people of 1870-71 when Bismarck made the French pay an indemnity of five billion gold francs. To return to Antiochus, on top of all his other concessions he was made to pay the huge sum of 15,000 talents—about 450,000 kilograms—in bullion. Of those, 500 had to be paid immediately; 2,500, upon the Roman Senate’s ratification of the Treaty; and the remaining 12,000 in twelve annual instalments of l,000 talents each. Unfortunately Appian, the ancient historian who is our source for this story, does not say whether the payments were to be made in silver or in gold. If in the former, then we are talking about 2 billion Euro or so; if in the latter, no less than 16 billion. Since then over two millennia have passed; as they say, though, nothing new under the sun.

Finally, the question of war guilt (or rather, responsibility; contrary to what most people believe, the word “guilt” was not written into the Treaty). If there is anything on which subsequent historians agree, it is that no other clause was so strongly resented by Germany’s leadership and people alike. Yet, paradoxically, the reason why this particular article (No. 231) was inserted at all was in order to get the French and Belgians to agree to reduce the sum of money Germany would have to hand over. In other words, the English and American delegations saw the article as the price they had to pay in order to make their allies sign. The objective was to reduce the financial burden on Germany, not to make it heavier still. Apparently they had no idea either how offensive it was or of the way it would later be exploited by German nationalist, including National Socialist, propaganda.

The man most responsible for the article was none other than John Foster Dulles. Born in 1888, at that time he was a junior diplomat and legal counsel to the U.S delegation. Later he became Secretary of State under President Eisenhower (1953-61) and, as such, the most important Western Cold Warrior of all. Today he has one of Washington DC’s airports named after him. Where he got the idea remains unknown. As best I have been able to find out, no similar clause had been included in any previous peace treaty, ancient or modern. That, however, does not mean that guilt was not assigned. To the contrary: throughout history Thucydides’ dictum that the strong take what they want and the weak suffer what they must was very much in force. When the First Gulf War was brought to an end in 1991 those who had fought Saddam took it for granted that he was guilty—“responsible,” as the phrase goes—of initiating the conflict even though no explicit statement to that effect appeared in any of the relevant documents.

Explicitly or tacitly, war-guilt was used as the justification for the way the victors treated the losers. The best the latter could expect was to be robbed of much, if not all, their possessions; the worst, to be taken captive, enslaved, and/or massacred. Very often resistance itself was understood as a crime. As, for example, when Timur put to death the populations of cities that refused to surrender and had towers built of their skulls; and when the Duke of Alba had the garrisons of captured Dutch cities killed en masse. Not surprisingly, the same applied to leaders. Particularly famous in this respect was the Roman triumph, at the end of which the enemy’s captured leaders were thrown down the Tarpeian Rock; among those who suffered that fate were the leaders of the Jewish Revolt of 67-70 CE. Many other victorious societies also executed their defeated enemy’s leaders, often in public and often in a variety of interesting ways. As, to return to the Bible, Joshua did to the kings of Canaanite cities he had captured and the prophet Samuel to the Amalekite King Agag.

*

To sum up, it was as contemporaries used to say: the Treaty of Versailles left Germany Heerloss, Wehrloss, and Ehrloss. Nevertheless, the more closely one looks at it the clearer it becomes that there was nothing very special about it. Not only had many previous treaties been quite as severe, but practically every one of its clauses had numerous precedents. The only important exception was the one concerning war guilt. Congratulations, David Lloyd-George, congratulations, Woodrow Wilson, congratulations, John Foster Dulles; judging by its origins, this may indeed be a case of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. Yet even in this respect the Treaty did not so much introduce an innovation as put a formal gloss on what, through much of history, had been taken very much for granted.

This raises the question, why did the Treaty acquire the bad name it did, not only in Germany but abroad too? And what was its real contribution to the failure of the Weimar Republic, the ascent of National Socialism, and the outbreak of World War II? Was it a cause, or merely a pretext? If the latter, then what were the real causes?

A hundred years later, the answers are still blowing in the wind.

Polluted: A Jew Reflects on German History

If you miss a dose, you may be started on generic viagra purchasing this at the lowest dose of 25mg. if in addition to this you are 65 years old and above, you might be restricted to use the drug as soon as only every 48 hours or once every two days. You viagra prescription need to realize your strengths and weakness. Due to this and different variables, more and individuals are turning towards natural best medicine for penis enlargement in India is made by find out this link levitra fast shipping Hashmi Herbal Pharmacy. These adverse effects look at these guys free samples levitra are not long term in nature.

As Mark Twain, who is supposed to have said everything, is supposed to have said, Germany is the most beautiful country in the world. Let me repeat: Not just in Europe, but in the world. Especially in summer, the season my wife and I like to visit. From the Baltic in the north to the Alps in the south, from the flat, wide-open spaces in the northeast to the more densely settled, often hilly, provinces in the southwest, no country has more variety.

And, yes, the Netherlands and Switzerland apart no country is better looked after by its citizens. The mountains. The “fairy-tale woods,” as the American writer Erika Jong, who spent some time living in Heidelberg and knew Germany well, called them back in 1970. The clean rivers and equally clean lakes (when I first visited Potsdam a quarter century ago I was told they were all contaminated and that I couldn’t swim in them; since then, what a wonderful change!) The infinitely numerous hiking trails that lead everywhere and nowhere. Such as one can walk not only freely—this is not the US, where much of the countryside is privately owned and closed to visitors and where you never know when a roughneck with a gun will pop up to chase you away. But in the kind of safety that, even today, never ceases to astonish and delight visitors.

I have heard it said that Gunther Grass once wrote that, if God had shat concrete, the outcome would have been Frankfurt (sorry, guys, I cannot find the reference). I do not know Frankfurt well; but I know that, applied to other German cities, the comment is highly unfair. Berlin’s Potsdammer Platz apart, you do not often meet the kind of stunning postmodernist architecture you see elsewhere. What you do see, and a lot of it too, are the parks and greenery that grace them. Berlin itself seems to have fewer skyscrapers per square kilometer than any other modern capital. Those it does have are hardly more than 100 meters tall. And then there are the tree-lined streets, including the one in Zehlendorf where my wife if and I spent much of the summer of 2018. And I am not talking just of the major cities. To the contrary: in my view it is precisely the smaller ones, such as Freiburg and Heidelberg, Konstanz and Trier, Bonn and Luebeck, that offer those who live in them a quality of life as good as, if not better than, any other places in the world.

*

Historically, Germany has always been a decentralized country. To be sure, there was an emperor. However, his powers were kept in check by the two higher estates, the religious and the lay, as well as the numerous “free” cities scattered all over. As the peregrinations of many emperors down to Karl V show, moreover, for a long time there was no proper capital. Instead, emperors spent their time moving from one town to another, mounting so-called joyous entries and having fun with the local women who were put at their disposal.

Whether or not, in the modern world, federalism is a good thing I shall not discuss here. What I do want to point out is the fact that, with bishops and princes and urban patricians competing to see who could build the most splendid court, no single city, not even Berlin, (and, before Berlin, Vienna) has ever been able to dominate the country’s cultural life as London and Paris do in England and France respectively. The results are, or should be, obvious to the most casual visitor. Almost anywhere one goes, one finds fine public buildings, operas, theaters, musical performances, and museums whose treasures in spite of the destruction and looting occasioned by World War II, match whatever is available abroad. Even a small (population, 54,000) provincial city such as Greifswald, which I happen to have visited recently, has a surprising number of them.

*

Given all this, when I feel like teasing my German friends I ask them why, with such a splendid country to call their own, their early twentieth-century ancestors in particular have so often invaded their neighbors! But let’s get serious. Nietzsche, himself a German (though he did not like Germans one bit) once wrote that, at bottom, history is nothing but a list of atrocities. Such as have been carefully pruned to suit the historian and his readers and chronologically arranged, one by one, like beads on a string. That is as true of Germany as it is of all other nations; including, in a comparatively minor but unfortunately not negligible way, the one to which I myself belong. However, until 1933, on which more in a moment, the list of German atrocities was no worse than that of most other countries.

There were even times when things German were held up as examples for others to follow. In antiquity, the rude, but honest and courageous, tribesmen and tribeswomen the Roman historian Tacitus wrote about. During the late middle ages and the Renaissance, the flourishing cities of northern and southern Germany. In the sixteenth century, Luther who first rid the Church of much accumulated mumbo-jumbo and then forced it to reform itself until it became halfway decent. In the eighteenth century, the German Enlightenment and its mighty contribution to world literature, philosophy, etc. In the nineteenth century, “Athens on the Spree.” The proverbial country of poets and thinkers. To say nothing of the unexcelled line of musicians reaching from Bach to Wagner and Strauss.

The list does not end there. It also includes the modern German university system, the house of whose founder, Wilhelm von Humboldt, my wife and I went to visit the other day. German science, and medicine (from about 1860 to 1933). The best organized, most efficient, and least dishonest civil service and judiciary (during the same period). For those who care about such things, the best organized, most powerful single army the world had ever seen (ditto). But why go on? I happen to own a replica of an old Sears and Roebuck catalogue. Printed and distributed in 1902, hundreds of pages thick, it contains descriptions and drawings of thousands of items. Starting with women’s underwear—this was before brassieres were invented—passing though buggies (light vehicles, drawn by a single horse or, sometimes, a goat or a dog!)—and ending with grand pianos. Leafing through it, one cannot escape the impression that anything German was considered best. Including, besides magnifying glasses, something known as a Heidelberg belt; a battery-operated device into which one sticks one’s penis by way of a cure for impotence.

*

In brief, even some of Germany’s enemies were sometimes prepared to praise it. Enter the Nazis. In Grass’ novel, The Tin Drum, they figure as eels emerging out of the skull of a dead horse rescued from the sea. At first people are disgusted. Later they get used to them, cook them, and eat them with some relish. Grass’ reputation is well deserved; no better way of showing how unsavory, how revolting, the Nazis were has ever been put first on paper and then on film as well.

To be sure, the Nazis were disgusting. Ironically, though, from Hitler down one of their key objectives—on par, I’d say, with gaining Lebensraum and getting rid of the Jews by exterminating them if necessary—was to build a wholesome world. One cleansed of democracy, an imported system which was not only slow and cumbersome but, by putting quantity ahead of quality, went against what Hitler personally saw as the eternal laws of nature. One cleansed both of communism and of the harshest, most exploitative, forms of capitalism. One cleansed of all sorts of incurably diseased people who were to be given a mercy death in the form of a lethal injection. Once cleansed of “degenerate” art which, deliberately designed to weaken the human spirit, produced not masterpieces but unseemly monsters. One cleansed of feminism, the product of the twisted brains of unnatural women who did not want or could not have children and were effectively eugenic duds. And cleansed of Jews, the race whose members united in their own persons all these bad things and then some; or so the Nazis claimed.

*

Years ago, visiting the former concentration camp at Dachau, I came across a sign, not far away. Search as I did I could not locate it on Google; whether it is still there I do not know. So let me paraphrase from memory. Visitor, it said, do not forget that our town, Dachau, existed a thousand years before anyone ever heard of Hitler, National Socialism, concentration camps, etc. (it did; the first mention goes back to 805 CE, but the site was inhabited two thousand years earlier than that). So please, the sign went on, do not judge us solely through the prism of those terrible twelve years. Fair enough, many people would say. Me included.

The problem is that it does not work that way. To be sure, the Nazi years only took up a tiny part of German history. Arguably, compared with such events as the ascent of Otto I in 962, the issuing of the Golden Bull (1356), the Reformation (1517) the Thirty Years War (1618-48), and the unification of Germany in 1871 it is not even the most important part. Yet it is this tiny part that has taken over. As the years went by, instead of fading away as most history does, it started forming a kind of telescope through which both the past and the future of Germany are seen.

The debate about the so-called German Sonderweg, meaning a road that is different or special, went on for decades. Works originating in, or dealing with, the pre-1945 period raise the question as to whether A, B, C or D was or was not a forerunner of, or at least had some affinities with, the extreme evil that was National Socialism. Almost without exception, those originating in, or dealing with, the post-1945 period are judged by whether or not they show traces of that dread disease.

Do I have to add that anything originating during the Nazi period itself is bad by definition? Not just the buildings and the Autobahnen. But also the often astonishing technological progress made. To mention but four examples, the helicopters, jet aircraft, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles which the Germans were the first to build. And the sincere, if ideologically tainted, efforts to keep the environment clean, combat smoking and breast cancer, and protect women so they could give healthy offspring to the Reich.

The Nazis’ attitude to art was notoriously intolerant. There are even stories about Hitler personally destroying some paintings he did not like by kicking holes in them! But that is only half of it. Far from being indifferent to art as many garden-variety politicians have always been and still are, he believed art could and should play a critically important role in educating the German people the way he wanted to educate it. To this end he and his paladins (mainly, in this field, Goebbels and Rosenberg) did his best to encourage artists, give them commissions, award prizes, and the like. Many tens of thousands of artworks were created, bought and put on display either in private residences or in public. Some were even put on parade! After the war practically all this art disappeared into the museums’ cellars where, like a bone stuck in somebody’s throat, it still remains. Is that because it is unsightly? Or, to the contrary, because of the fear that the wholesome world (heile Welt) it tried to create might not only attract countless visitors but enthuse them too?

At the focus of all these problems is the prohibition on the public display of the swastika. Writing as a Jew whose family went through the Holocaust, I find this prohibition completely justified. Yet I cannot keep noting that it gives rise to occasional absurdities. In other countries World War II- military equipment, uniforms, etc, can be freely displayed. Not so in Germany, where it must first of all be sterilized (recently, at the Luftwaffe historical museum at Gatow, I saw the anti-swastika rule being slightly violated; how that came about I do not know). The English version of my own book, Hitler in Hell, has a burning swastika on the cover. As a result, it has been banned from being sold in Germany; yet I would have thought that the title and the image between them demonstrate my opinion of him clearly enough.

*

Outside Germany the situation is even worse.  At You Tube documentaries showing the Nazi years are enormously popular in spite of their often mediocre quality. Out of every ten works on German history that are published in English, perhaps nine deal with that period (as, of course, this essay also does). In almost any country one may visit, one only has to mention the word Nazi to fill the air with electricity. There is even something called, and not just jokingly, Godwins’s Law; whenever two persons argue for more than a few minutes, at least one of them is going to call the other a Nazi.

Living in Germany, even for fairly short periods as I did, one sees the consequences all around. I do not mean just the countless memory sites, museums, exhibitions, day tours, and the like that focus on the years from 1933 to 1945.  Partly in the hope of providing Mahnung, which is the official rationale; and partly because the public cannot have enough. I mean the fact that, Potsdam’s Schillerplatz used to be called Adolf Hitlerplatz (it was, in fact, built under his rule). On Berlin’s Fehrbelliner Platz, where I have often dined with my friends, the buildings erected for the Nazi Labor Front sill show the spots where the original swastikas were chiseled off the walls. I mean the kind of day-to-day politics in which the Left, (too often, falsely) pretending to take the moral high ground, accuses the Right of being Nazis and the Right is constantly forced to defend itself against that charge.

Fear of being considered Nazi also does much to explain German foreign policy. Starting with the rather exceptional, not to say strange, relationship between Germany and Israel; when former Chancellor Konrad Adenauer visited Jerusalem I 1966 I myself had occasion to witness the birth of that relationship, complete with the demonstrations against it. Passing through the one between Berlin and Europe’s remaining capitals, and ending with the way refugees are treated. Aliis licet, non tibi; what others are allowed to do, you Germania, for historical reasons so obvious that they do not have to be pointed out, cannot.

*

Let me end by saying that, when I first visited Germany back in 1976, it was all but impossible to go through a single day without some German one had met, upon learning that I was an Israeli, starting to explain that he or she had not done anything wrong. Ditto for their family, town, region, etc; I often wondered whether there had been any Nazis in Germany and how, in that case, they have succeeded in hiding so well. My wife, who was living in Germany at the time but whom I had not yet met, had the same experience. The constant apologies made it very hard to strike up a friendship! Those days, thankfully, are gone. Today and for years past strangers—shopkeepers, waiters, hotel owners, and the like—who learn that my wife and I are Israeli mostly react in a very favorable way.

Of my closer acquaintances, not one is old enough to have reached maturity during those terrible years. The oldest is 83; how old he was back in 1945 you can figure out for yourself. He is a former East German, retired, professor of economics. When still in his prime his hobby was writing illustrated books on ocean-going ships. Now he keeps busy by gardening; he loves cats and has a good sense of humor. He is also a kind man. For almost twenty years, no cloud however small has ever disturbed our sky. Others are much younger. Often so much so that not only they but their parents and even grandparents too cannot have done anything wrong.

The problem is that, far from creating a wholesome world, the Nazis have polluted both the country and its people for all future to come.  And much as I feel for my dear German friends, there is nothing I or anyone else can do about that.

Tainted

As Mark Twain, who is supposed to have said everything, is supposed to have said, Germany is the most beautiful country in the world. Especially in summer, when my wife and I like to visit. From the Alps in the south to the Baltic in the north, from the flat, wide-open spaces in the north east to the more densely settled, often rolling, provinces in the southwest, no country has more variety. And no country is better tended by its citizens. The mountains. The “fairy tale woods.” The clean rivers and equally clean lakes. The infinitely numerous hiking trails that lead everywhere and nowhere. The tree-lined streets, including the one on which we live at the moment. The parks, the greenery that graces most cities.

As Nietzsche, himself a German (though he did not like Germans one bit), says, at bottom history is nothing but a list of atrocities. Such as have been pruned to suit the historian and his readers and chronologically arranged. That is as true of Germany as it is of all other nations; including, in a minor but certainly not negligible way, the on to which I myself belong. However, until 1933, on which more in a moment, the list of German atrocities was no worse than that of most other countries. There were even times when things German were held up as examples for others to follow. The rude, but honest and courageous, tribesmen and tribeswomen the Roman historian Tacitus wrote about. The flourishing cities of northern and southern Germany during the middle ages and the Renaissance. Luther and the Reformation first ridding the Church of much accumulated mumbo-jumbo and then forcing it to reform itself. The German Aufklaerung (Enlightenment) and its contribution to world literature. “Athens on the Spree” (Berlin from about 1800 on).

The list does not end there. It also includes the modern German university system, the house of whose founder, Wilhelm von Humboldt, my wife and I went to visit the other day. German science, and medicine (from about 1860 to 1933). The best organized, most efficient, and least dishonest civil service and judiciary (during the same period). For those who care about such things, the most powerful, army the world had ever seen (ditto). I happen to own a replica of a 1903 Sears and Roebuck catalogue containing descriptions and drawings of thousands of products. Leafing through it, one cannot escape the impression that anything German was considered best. Including something known as a Heidelberg belt; a battery-operated device into which one sticks one’s penis by a of a cure for impotence.

Enter the Nazis. They too had, as perhaps their most central objective, building eine heile Welt, a clean and healthy world. One cleansed of democracy, an imported system which was not only slow and cumbersome but, by putting quantity ahead of quality, went against what Hitler personally saw as the eternal laws of nature. One cleansed both of communism and of the harshest, most exploitative, forms of capitalism. One cleansed of all sorts of incurably diseased people who were to be given a Genadentodt (mercy-death). Once cleansed of “degenerate” art which, deliberately designed to weaken the human spirit, produced not masterpieces but unseemly monsters. One cleansed of feminism, the product of the twisted brains of “unnatural” women who did not or could have children and were effectively eugenic duds. And cleansed of Jews, the race whose members united in their own persons all these bad things and then some.

Years ago, visiting the former concentration camp at Dachau, I came across a sign, not far away. I paraphrase. Visitor, it said, do not forget that our town, Dachau existed a thousand years before anyone ever heard of Hitler, National Socialism, concentration camps, etc. So please do not judge us solely through the prism of those terrible twelve years. Fair enough, many people would say. Me included.
Unfortunately, viagra for women online the relationship may never recover from such an inconsiderate response. Chiropractic helps in keeping the pressure at its normal standards viagra 100 mg http://downtownsault.org/news/page/3/?et_blog regularly. For mild erection issues, exercises and simple diets can help, but when erectile dysfunction is severe an effective formula like cialis generic uk can help effectively and put an end to erectile failure in bed. Don’t take downtownsault.org viagra no prescription the trust of other people for granted.
The problem is that it does not work that way. To be sure, the Nazi years only took up a tiny part of German history. Arguably, given that until 1871 a political entity called Germany did not exist, it is not even the most important part. Yet it is this tiny part that has taken over, forming a kind of telescope through which both the past and the future are seen. Almost without exception, works originating in, or dealing with, the pre-1945 period raise the question as to whether A, B, C or D was or was not a forerunner of, or at least had some affinities with, the extreme evil that was National Socialism. Almost without exception, those originating in, or dealing with, the post-1945 period are judged by whether or not they show traces of that dread disease. Do I have to add that anything originating during the Nazi period itself is bad by definition? Outside Germany, the situation is even worse. Out of every ten works on German history that are published in English, perhaps nine deal with the Nazi period. As has been said, whenever two persons argue for more than a few minutes at least one of them is going to call the other a Nazi.

Living in Germany, even for a short period as I do, one sees the consequences all around. I do not mean just the countless museums, exhibitions, memory sites, day tours, and the like that focus on the years from 1933 to 1945. I mean the kind of day-to-day politics in which the Left, taking the high ground, accuses the Right of being Nazis and the Right is constantly forced to defend itself against that accusation. Fear of being considered Nazi also does much to explain German foreign policy. Starting with the relationship between Berlin and Europe’s other capitals and ending with the way refugees are treated. Aliis licet, non tibi; what others are allowed to do, you, for historical reasons so obvious that they do not have to be pointed out, cannot.

Of my own acquaintances, not one is old enough to have reached maturity during those terrible days. The oldest is 86; how old he was back in 1945 you can figure out for yourself. He is a former East German, retired professor of economics who loves cats, likes gardening, and has a good sense of humor. He is also a kind man with whom my wife and I have enjoyed the best of relationships for almost twenty years. Others are much younger. Often so much so that not only they but their parents and even grandparents too cannot have done anything wrong.

Thus the Nazi attempt to create a wholesome word resulted in the latter’s opposite. Not only are Germans tainted, but practically all of them who are adults realize it. And will likely remain tainted to the end of days.

In Praise of Potsdam

An old post that rings true  today:

I am writing this from Potsdam, a smallish (160,000 inhabitants) German city southwest of Berlin where my wife and I go to stay for a month or so every year since 1999. Originally what brought us to Potsdam was the fact that it is home to the Bundeswehr’s historical service. They have the best military-historical library in Europe; enough said.

Potsdam, however, also has other attractions and it on them that I want to focus here. When we first visited back in 1992 it was a sad town. Many buildings were dilapidated; testifying to the fact that the very last battles of World War II took place in this area, many windows had not yet been repaired. The predominant color was grey. It took me awhile to realize the reason for this. It was due to the fact that, in a country that had only recently emerged from communism, there were no commercial signs and no advertisements in the streets. In the entire city the only halfway decent hotel was the Merkur, located not far from the railway station which, like the rest of the town, had been heavily bombed in 1945 and never properly repaired.

The hotel itself consisted of a high-rise building not far from the city center where it formed, and still forms, a real eyesore. Originally its rooms did not have private bathrooms. By the time we stayed there they had been installed, but only at the price of making the rooms themselves rather cramped. In the entire central district of the city there was just one restaurant. Located on the central square, the Brandenburger Platz, in good East German tradition it only served a small fraction of the items theoretically on the menu.

Over the years, watching the city shed its communist dress and put on a modern, liberal and commercial one has been a feast for the eyes. Potsdam is not nearly as wealthy as some of its West German counterparts. But like all small German towns it is clean and orderly. One can cycle wherever one wants. In the suburbs, especially Rehbruecke where we stay, many houses have flourishing gardens. The buses run, the trams arrive on time. Everything functions—to someone coming from the Middle East, that is anything but self-evident. Still I would not have written about Potsdam if, in addition to these qualities, there had not been some things which set it apart.

Potsdam_Sanssouci_PalaceFirst, there is culture. Starting in the early 18th century and ending in 1945, Potsdam was where the kings and princes of Prussia spent their summers. Though the Hohenzollerns are gone, that accounts for the fact that there is much to see and to do—museums, palaces, shows (in German, but for us that is no problem), concerts, you name it. Some of these attractions, notably the palace of San Souci (Worry-Free) built by Frederick the Great in the 1750s, are world famous. Others, such as the evangelical kindergarten that, during the early post-war years, served as an NKVD prison are merely interesting. Given that Potsdam used to a garrison city, many of the attractions have ties with Prussian/German military history. But by no means all: there is a Dutch quarter and there is a Russian colony and there is a Jewish cemetery. There is a mosque, built around 1740 to conceal the first steam engine in Germany. For anybody who wants more places to visit Berlin, a global city of three and a half million people, is only half an hour away.

Holding the aid receiver side down, gently pick away any wax or debris from the tadalafil india vents and receiver openings. Moreover, it causes the processing unit to malfunction. tadalafil sample The Recommended Dosage of Kamagra Oral Jelly You levitra cialis viagra should consult your doctor before taking Tadalafil and know whether Tadalafil will work for you or not. Erectile dysfunction stimulates emotional disorders, psychological, their website generic levitra online low self esteem,decreased confidence, irritation, depression and relation problems. Second, the walks. Potsdam and its surroundings are almost completely flat. You can spend entire days wandering in the fields and along the canals—with no danger that some redneck, gun in hand, will warn you to f—k off and shoot you if you do not do so fast enough. The horizon is far away, the land often somewhat swampy. Some of it was laid dry in the seventeenth-century by Dutch engineers. This is not a district with spectacular views; what we value is the monotony and the soothing effect. Here and there the land is punctuated by a Kneipe, certain to be clean, certain to be well-kept, where you can have a cup of coffee with cake or else a beer with a sandwich.

Third and most important, there are the lakes. Brandenburg has more water than any other German Land. Twenty years after reunification, and following a gigantic investment, the water in question is now clean enough not only to swim in but to drink. Personally I know no finer piece of countryside than the Caputher See, a lake located near a village—Caputh—four or so miles south of Potsdam. For those who are interested, Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels used have a little house there. So did Albert Einstein; there is also a small Einstein Museum that a friend of ours now runs. The only aquatic sport we practice is swimming. I know that not everybody likes swimming, but that is their problem.Caputher_See_by_Area29ED6

What is it that makes swimming in Potsdam, and in former East Germany in general, so attractive? It took me a long time to figure out the answer. It is not the climate. As Napoleon is supposed to have said, Germany has eight months of winter and four months of no summer. It is not the water—you can find that in many other places around the world. Nor is it the views—lovely as they are, there are others that are as good.

It is, instead, the sense of freedom. The Caputher See is considerably larger than Walden Pond. Unlike the latter it is not a celebrity. The only way to reach it is by a short walk through the surrounding forest. So beautiful, so marked by chiaroscuro is the path that my then eight-year grandson dubbed it “the enchanted wood.” There is no gate and no gatekeeper to look you over and charge for entry. There are no kiosks trying to sell you this or that. Let alone the kind of blaring music you often get in open air cafes. You can strip naked and leave your things on the little beach, if that is what you like. There are no buoys to tell you how far you can go—in some American lakes I have visited, you are only allowed to wade up to your knees. The kind of rubber boats children use apart, there are no boats to pollute the water with noise and oil. Best of all, there is no lifeguard. You are even allowed to drown if that is what you want. There is no and there is no and there is no.

The moral? We citizens of “advanced” countries have bound ourselves in endless ribbons, like those used by the police to cordon off crime scenes. On them are printed, instead of the words “keep out,” “freedom, justice, and safety.” Growing tighter by the year, the ribbons have brought us to the point where we can hardly move a limb or open our mouth. We are surrounded by counselling, sensitivity training, surveillance cameras, mobile phones that track our movements, screening processes, background checks, personality tests, licenses, examinations, certifications, mandatory prerequisites, and mandatory insurance. Not to mention mandatory helmets and goggles and harnesses and bright orange vests with reflective tape when all we want to do is ride a bicycle to the post office. All, we are told, because we are not fit to look after ourselves. And all for our own good.

Thank goodness there are still a few places left where all these restraints can be cast off. At least for a couple of hours.

Nailed to the Swastika

There used to be a time, starting with Frederick the Great and stretching well into World War II, when the Prussian/German military was universally respected, often admired. Foreigners from all over the world flocked to study it—as, for example, US General Emory Upton (The Armies of Europe and Asia, 1878) and British militry author Wilkinson Spenser, (The Brain of an Army, 1895) did. When Japan started modernizing its army in the 1870s it turned to Germany as a matter of course. In several Latin American countries, notably Chile, German military influence is visible (and audible; they love to perform their exercises to Wagner’s music) right down to the present day.

In part, this admiration was due to Germany’s military performance which, starting in 1866. became almost legendary. In part, it was due to the German military spirit. That spirit in turn was anchored in what, in one of my books, I have called Kriegskultur. Kriegskultur is the concrete expression of everything an army fights for. Often the product of centuries of development, some of it spontaneous, some deliberate, it consists of symbols, ceremonies, traditions, and customs; the uniforms, the marching songs, and so on. Between them they form the corset that holds an army together, so to speak. It is they which turn it from a haphazard gathering of unruly men into a cohesive body capable of fighting and, if necessary, dying for the cause.

That, however, was before 1945. True, the War Criminals’ Trials never formally declared the Wehrmacht to be a criminal organization as they did other Nazi organizations, including the Waffen SS. As the years went by and more information came to light, though, its involvement in war crimes—including widespread looting, the extreme mistreatment of Soviet prisoners of war, hostage taking, massacres of civilians, and logistic and administrative support for the extermination of the Jews—became undeniable. This involvement caused German Kriegskultur (military culture), long considered exemplary and widely imitated, to fall under a cloud. More so in Germany, paradoxically, than abroad. To provide just one example, in most other countries models of aircraft, tanks, etc. bearing the swastika can be freely bought and publicly displayed. The same applies to books, magazines, memorabilia etc. Not so in Germany where all of this is verboten and can easily lead to criminal prosecution.

To avoid any association with National Socialism, the Bundeswehr’s bases and casernes were cleansed. Not once but repeatedly as successive ministers of defense sought to leave their impact and make headlines. Statues and paintings and old uniforms, flags and standards and trophies, disappeared as if by magic. So, if certain left-wing critics have their way, will the name of anyone who had served in the Wehrmacht. Take the case of pilot-officer Hans-Joachim Marseille. Marseille, whom no one has ever accused of being involved in war crimes or even of being aware of them, shot down no fewer than 158 enemy aircraft. In 1942, when just 22 years old, he was killed when the engine of his Messerschmidt gave up the ghost. In 1975 he had a Luftwaffe base named after him. Now, if the critics have their way, he will be made into an unperson. Such, such are the rewards for serving the German fatherland.

Even cheapest viagra from india more importantly, the inner working, mechanical aspects of your vehicle will also suffer from the build up of scar tissue (accumulation of garbage) is really the root cause of the problem. It is the condition that can cause people a lot of problems and are viagra france not easy to find a church that shows this community spirit in modern times. Today these medications have found a dominating position viagra prescription in various countries. The levitra uk http://www.devensec.com/minutes-archive.html treatment is suitable for most apart from users already taking or planning to take Nitrate based medications. Perhaps it was inevitable that, as time went on, the cleansing process should stretch backward in time to cover not just the terrible years after 1933 but those before it as well. No one who has visited bases and casernes in many countries, as I have, can fail to notice how utilitarian, how bare, how soul-less, German ones appear in comparison with foreign ones. For example, at the Clausewitz-Caserne in Hamburg, home to the staff college, which I last visited some years ago, one will look in vain for any reference to the commanders who, for good or ill, did so much to make Germany into the country it is. Not to Seeckt. Not to Hindenburg. Not to Ludendorff. Not to Schlieffen. Not to Moltke. Not (which God forbid) to Frederick the Great. Not to any of their subordinates. In the whole of German history, apparently the only conflict to receive the kosher stamp are the Wars of Liberation of 1813-15.

Now minister of defense Ursula von der Leyen has begun yet another round of cleansing. Among the victims is former chancellor and her fellow Social-Democrat Helmut Schmidt. A photograph of him in Wehrmacht uniform—he was a junior officer at the time—is being removed from the Bundeswehr-University which, serving as minister of defense (1969-72), he founded. No doubt it is only a question of time before he too is made into an unperson. As usual, the declared objective is to rid the Bundeswehr from anything that might link soldiers with the past. One must, however, ask where, when, and whether the process will ever stop. Also what the impact on fighting power is going to be; given that, to repeat, an army without a military culture is inconceivable.

Nor is the problem limited to the Bundeswehr alone. By committing the crimes it did in 1933-45, the German people nailed itself to the Swastika. Just as Jesus was nailed to the cross. But Jesus was taken down after only six hours. Not so the German people, which is almost certain to remain where it is as long as human memory lasts. Without respite and without hope of leaving its past behind.

That, I well know, is highly unfair to a great many Germans born before 1927 and to all of those who were born after that date. Including my friends, of whom I am very fond indeed. Nevertheless, being a Jew and an Israeli several of whose family members perished during the Holocaust, in all honesty I cannot see how it can be solved.

Straight from the Horse’s Mouth

Alice Schwarzer is probably not a name that means a lot to many of my readers. Now seventy-three years old, for good or bad she is the doyenne of German feminism, a movement she helped found back in the 1970s. In spreading her message, her main instrument has been her bimonthly (formerly, monthly), Emma. In 2012 it was said to have a circulation of 60,000.

Personally I am convinced that feminism is one of the worst things that has ever happened to women and, through them, to half of humanity. By some research, all it has ever done is to make women unhappier than they were some decades ago. That is why I never expected to have common ground with her; yet reading a recent interview with her in Der Spiegel, the leading German news magazine, I was surprised to find myself agreeing with her on many points.

So here are some highlights, translated word by word.

Der Spiegel (DS): Ms. Schwarzer, Angela Merkel has now been ruling Germany for eleven years. Some weeks ago Theresa May became British prime minister, and Hillary Clinton may become the first female president of the United States. Will women’s rule make the world into a better place?

AS: It will surely be different. That is because women have a different history and live in a different world from that of men. So the experience they bring with them is also different… Now as ever, women are judged by different standards. When a woman wants to make her way to the top she is called ice-cold and a careerist. Not so men who, trying to do the same, are praised for being competitive and assertive.

DS: The platform of the SPD [Social Democratic Party] says that “whoever wants a humane society, must overcome the male element.” Isn’t that a little naive?

AS: No. It is simply the right of women to claim half of all power for themselves. Full stop. I never entertained the illusion that women would run the world in a way that is more just, or more moral, than that of men….

DS: Taking your idea to its logical conclusion, do you think that one day we might have a female Hitler?

AS: History doesn’t know too many monsters like Hitler. But yes: if more female rulers appear, some of them may abuse their power.

DS: Could one regard the rise of right-wing populist female politicians such as [France’s] Marie Le Pen and [Germany’s] Frauke Petry as some kind of normalization?

AS: Yes. Some women are left wing, others right wing. Some are fair, others mean, cunning and foolish….

DS: Do you believe that female politicians are obliged to support feminism?

AS: Not at all. I hope they do, but I do not expect them to….

DS: Many American feminists were angry with Hillary Clinton because she did not leave her husband when it turned out that had been cheating on her.

AS: For decades on end, no woman in the world has been attacked and humiliated as Hillary was. For me, the miracle is that she has retained her sanity… When the Monika Lewinsky affair broke people said: She may be intelligent, yes, and Bill can talk to her about politics. But he does not desire her. That was unfair and offensive…

DS: Your biographer Bascha Mika wrote that what you are really after is power. Do you see that as a compliment?

This pharmaceutical ought not to be taken by ladies and kids and in http://djpaulkom.tv/video-da-mafia-6ix-dat-aint-in-ya-ft-la-chat-fiend/ cialis sale patients with a known excessive touchiness to any part of the tablet. Such tests go beyond muscle and tissue and the growth of patient’s recovery is regularly monitored, adjusted and recorded so that he is able to recover safely and quickly than if they had not participated in the therapy. viagra 50 mg check over here You may also suffer from erectile dysfunction or ED is?Here, very simply stating, erectile dysfunction is a condition when a man does not achieve erection during intercourse, tadalafil pharmacy but he can achieve them at some point of the day while male impotence is a condition when a man does not become able to penetrate during main sexual act. sildenafil 50mg price pop over here You can check out for Dapoxetine which is marketed as Priligy.

AS:… What interests me is independence. And the ability to do what I can to improve the way things are…

DS: What have women accused you of?

AS: Of being too strong and too dominant. Of not having cried often enough. And then there were political problems. I have always stood for a non-biological kind of feminism… I never knew what to do with women who appealed to their so-called femininity, exalted motherhood, and turned those qualities into the center of their existence. I also came under attack by left-wing women who saw feminism merely as part of the class struggle. Right now this part of the story seems to be repeating itself…

DS: What do you mean?

AS: Many so called Internet-feminists are terrified of being called racists. Doing so, they even justify the burka, this shroud that covers women’s bodies…

DS: You say that violence is the key to masculinity. However, there also exist other kinds of men; such as fathers who take time off to be with their children.

AS: … Unfortunately, women have always been fascinated by Dunkle Liebhaber [Dark Lovers, the mysterious, often rough if not violent, stranger who supposedly turns up out of nowhere and takes women by storm, MvC]. High time for them to get rid of that image, damn it!

DS: British prime minister May has no offspring, Merkel has no offspring…

AS: And Alice Schwartz has no offspring.

DS: Is that the price of power?

AS: If I had a child Emma then could not exist. There were times when I spent nights at my desk. And when I consider Merkel’s life, my God…

DS: You say that women have been told a lie?

AS: Yes. They are told that they can do everything—motherhood, career, no problem. But that is not true. Not even when a woman gets herself a good partner with whom she can share the housework…

DS: Why don’t women demand more sharing of their men?

AS: Because women are afraid men won’t love them. That is the main problem of those female shitheads: They want to be loved, never mind the price. It makes them unfree and opportunistic.

To which I, Martin van Creveld, would say: Straight from the horse’s mouth.