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

Comments

The Falklands have always been Argentine - Las Malvinas son Argentinas

"The Falklands have always been Argentine" is taught to every Argentine child as a matter of faith. What was Argentina during the time when it "always" possessed Las Malvinas? In this article I will trace the history of Argentina in the context of its physical and political relationship with "Las Malvinas", the Falkland Islands. The Argentine claim to the Falkland Islands dates from a brief episode in 1831-32 so it is like Canada claiming the USA despite two centuries of separate development. This might sound like ancient history but Argentina has gone to war for this ancient claim so the following article is well worth reading. For a summary of the legal case see: Las Malvinas: The Legal Case Argentina traces its origins to Spanish South America when it was part of the Viceroyalty of the Rio del Plata. The Falklands lay off the Viceroyalty of Peru, controlled by the Captain General of Chile. In 1810 the Falklands were far from the geographical b

Practical Idealism by Richard Nicolaus Coudenhove-Kalergi

Coudenhove-Kalergi was a pioneer of European integration. He was the founder and President for 49 years of the Paneuropean Union. His parents were Heinrich von Coudenhove-Kalergi, an Austro-Hungarian diplomat, and Mitsuko Aoyama, the daughter of an oil merchant, antiques-dealer, and huge landowner family in Tokyo. His "Pan-Europa" was published in 1923 and contained a membership form for the Pan-Europa movement. Coudenhove-Kalergi's movement held its first Congress in Vienna in 1926. In 1927 the French Prime Minister, Aristide Briand was elected honorary president. Personalities attending included: Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann and Sigmund Freud. Figures who later became central to founding the EU, such as Konrad Adenauer became members . His basic idea was that democracy was a transitional stage that leads to rule by a new aristocracy that is largely taken from the Jewish "master race" (Kalergi's terminology). His movement was reviled by Hitler and H

Membership of the EU: pros and cons

5th December 2013, update May 2016 Nigel Lawson, ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, recently criticised the UK membership of the EU , the media has covered his mainstream view as if he is a bad boy starting a fight in the school playground, but is he right about the EU? What has changed that makes EU membership a burning issue? What has changed is that the 19 countries of the Eurozone are now seeking political union to escape their financial problems. Seven further EU countries have signed up to join the Euro but the British and Danish have opted out. The EU is rapidly becoming two blocks - the 26 and Britain and Denmark. Lawson's fear was that if Britain stays in the EU it will be isolated and dominated by a Eurozone bloc that uses "unified representation of the euro area" , so acting like a single country which controls 90% of the vote in the EU with no vetoes available to the UK in most decisions. The full plans for Eurozone political union ( EMU Stage

Political Thoughts - the magazine

Search This Blog