Europaische burgerkrieg anyone?

Things are very different in Europe. Few people in the UK realise that the Germans and Italians have entirely revised European history to make it seem as if the wars of the first half of the twentieth century were just a natural hiccough on the path to full European Union.

The new European interpretation is called "Europaische burgerkrieg" - stick these words in Google then look at the translated texts. Europaische burgerkrieg means "The European Civil War".

It might appear that this revisionism is just a peripheral issue but consider the article in The Independent by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto: There's magic in a crisis – and good reasons for hope amid the gloom:

"All emerged from internecine wars – in Spain's and Britain's cases from dynastic conflicts, and in that of the US from the "Revolutionary War", the power struggle among colonial elites. The European Union, similarly, emerged from a period of furious internal conflict that German historians call the Europäische Bürgerkrieg – literally, the European civil war, which ended in 1945 and directly inspired our drive for unification."(Independent 12/11/11)

Our newspapers and media are either parochial or looking out beyond Europe, perhaps it is time that they examined what is happening on our own doorstep. These revisionists have in mind a shared culture within Europe that is under tension. They daintily sidestep the origin of this culture.

I can't imagine what historical entity the stable parts of the Eurozone might represent, that these European Civil War revisionists think is being reborn. Can you? The Welsh want back a country from 700 years ago and the Scots want one back from 1700 AD but surely 1600 AD is too long ago...

Click on map to enlarge it

Spain and Britain arise separately from "Europe" so what is this Europe that is to be reborn?

Here are some links for your delectation:

Wikipedia: the European Civil War
European Civil War as a Fundamental Crisis
Inkultura Online - review of Nolte
The European Civil War

Needless to say these revisionist texts do not mention the heroic efforts by the British to preserve democracy when the whole world turned against it. The Germans don't even notice that it was ideologues who started WWII and nation states that stopped them. The British are rather seen as a fading power that acted to prevent the inevitable for a few years.

The Habsburg Empire, European Union in 1700

Use TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/ldmwo6w to link to this article.

See also:

France, the third axis power

Laying up treasure from overseas

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