When I was a girl – shortly after the repeal of the Corn Laws – a common rhetorical question was ‘Who won the bloody war anyway?’ whenever the Germans came up in conversation. We were The Sick Man Of Europe; they were My Perfect Cousin. Not any longer: German politics now looks rather chaotic compared to ours. Their chancellor Friedrich Merz stumbled into office this week on the second go. So terrified is the paternalistic, pompous German establishment that they are considering banning the AfD: that notorious fascist party led by a lesbian in a relationship with a Sri Lankan woman. Where did it all go so wrong for our German cousins?
No one blames the Germans for wanting to stay in the EU. They co-own it, for a start
You have to go back to the the 1966 World Cup, when England beat West Germany in the final, for the last time that the natural post-War order between the two nations was intact; back then, the echoes of World War Two were nourished with England football fan chants of ‘Two World Wars and One World Cup’ to the tune of Camptown Races, and ‘Stand up if you won the war’ to the tune of Go West. In more recent years, the attempts to quell this healthy and humorous patriotism on the part of the globalist establishment became comical in their pomposity, as when the Foreign and Commonwealth Office earnestly attempted – and failed – to dissuade England fans from singing these charming and harmless ditties while attending the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany.
I can’t even think of Britain’s behaviour during WW2, its boldness and braveness, so David and Goliath, without coming over all emosh. Our determination to defeat the Nazi war machine was even more impressive when you discover that Hitler had quite the crush on us. He was said to have complained when we declared war on Germany that Britain was not Germany’s natural enemy, and was keen to court us into an alliance by praising our ‘Aryan’ character, whatever that means. But from the moment we stepped up to defend Poland, that all changed.
In the decades after the war, Britain had an uneasy relationship with Germany. But after the EU referendum, the great and the good seemed desperate to suck up to Germany. When the Brexit vote came in, a sickening series of pieces appeared in the Guardian – where else? – almost audibly smirking about the crowds of Britons applying for German citizenship: ‘The number of Britons who gained German citizenship last year was up by approximately 2,300 per cent compared with the year before the Brexit referendum, driving up the number of naturalisations in the country to a 16-year high,’ they smarmed in 2020.
Even stranger for me to comprehend was the small number of British Jews who were seeking to move there: ‘Descendants of the tens of thousands of German Jews who fled the Nazis and found refuge in Britain are making use of their legal right to become German citizens following the Brexit vote,’ the Guardian panted in 2016.
Thank goodness for the likes of Harry Heber, 85, who was born in Austria but came to Britain at the age of seven in December 1938. He was appalled at the suggestion that he might apply for the restoration of his Austrian passport. ‘I think people who are doing that need their brains examined,’ said Heber, who has vivid memories of German troops marching into Austria when it was annexed to Germany in March 1938. ‘The proposition of seeking sanctuary in the very place that murdered my relatives absolutely appals me, and not least because for the last 78 years, my loyalties have been to Britain.’
No such qualms for Natasha Walter: ‘My great-grandparents died in the Holocaust but now I want German citizenship’ went the Guardian headline to her surprising confession.
Of course, it would have to be a Guardian writer – one John Kampfner – who went the whole hog and wrote a book in 2020 called Why The Germans Do It Better. Reviewed in the Guardian, naturally, the headline smugged: ‘Notes from a grown-up country…in praise of a rich, cultured and often progressive nation that makes Brexit Britain look bad and sad.’
All of the review is a horrible brown-nosing, but some of it is just plain weird: ‘Kampfner tells us that in an interview shortly before becoming chancellor, Angela Merkel was asked what Germany meant to her. She replied: “I am thinking of airtight windows. No other country can build such airtight and beautiful windows.” German windows are indeed something to be proud of.’
I finally went to Germany in 2019, when I visited Berlin for a travel piece. I adored it: ‘We love the English,’ one waitress told me. ‘Always you’re drinking, laughing and making fun!’
‘I’m so ignorant – I didn’t even try to learn another language until I was 50,’ I confessed to the charming man from the Berlin tourist board. He laughed; ‘But you’re English – you don’t need to!’
A beggar twinkled at me: ‘You have beautiful eyes and I accept all major currencies!’ But as Berliners never tired of reminding me, Berlin is not Germany.
One thing struck me as odd during my trip; whenever I mentioned the word ‘Brexit’ a look of physical pain swept over their faces, like I’d actually struck them. No one blames the Germans for wanting to stay in the EU. They co-own it, for a start, with their French friends. Without it, as we were sometimes oddly warned by Remainers during the campaign, they might get an overwhelming desire to start a third world war. But for a Briton to grovel to Germany, as best summed up by Kampfner’s book – after all we went through due to their twentieth century antics – is truly shameful.
Kampfner’s book, which is only five years old, now looks dated and deluded, considering that Germany – such a ‘grown-up’ country! – is going through exactly the same populist revolution/peasants revolt that the UK is, only more so.
As I wrote in The Spectator last year, one can only imagine what these poor befuddled Remainers are going through now, with the right (which these days pretty much refers to anyone who doesn’t believe in literally limitless immigration) on the up throughout mainland Europe. In extreme cases, Brits suffering from the terminal stage of Brexit Derangement Syndrome have even left these sceptered isles in order to seek ‘refuge’ in France and Germany from the alleged crypto-fascism of Brexit Britain. I can’t imagine anything more delicious than hearing these hysterics now trying to justify why they’re living in countries which (by their definition, not mine) are, or are about to be, ‘right-wing’ while back here in deplorable old Blighty a Labour government is in charge. An octopus playing Twister would look straightforward compared to this lot: idiots whose fealty to the EU is so hopelessly devoted that I honestly believe that if a united European army of fascists crossed the Channel on u-boats and goose-stepped from Land’s End to John o’ Groats – flying the EU flag – Remainers would still be bleating ‘O, why can’t we rejoin the EU? It’s so civilised!’
For all the tension that exists between Britain and Germany, I’ve never met an actual German who wasn’t charming. But that doesn’t mean that, after all those years of being told how much better than us they are, we wouldn’t be human if, surveying the current uproar over there, we didn’t enjoy their confusion of their political class just a little bit.
Comments