The Fourth Reich

Europe has been given ten days to come up with a plan to save itself.

Any plan that will save the tattered Eurozone will require massive infusions of capital from one of the few fiscally responsible nations left in the Western world, Germany.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has named the price of German action. She wants member nations to cede sovereignty over financial affairs to a central commission. On the surface, this could be the only possible way to save the unified currency.

However, it would possibly bring horrific consequences. Germany will not hand out money and then step back. as the United States would. The price of Germany's help would be German control, at least indirectly. This is not meant to muster Nazi overtones. Merkel is more like Otto von Bismarck. She wants to protect Germany by stabilizing Europe with a German vision, not overturn civilization.

But each incarnation of a German Reich usually ends with violence. Each one, from the Holy Roman Empire to Hitler, drew upon a sense of a German mission to secure civilization through exercising order in Europe. European nations do not want German domination in any form and will fight if pushed.

The plans on the table call, whether they know it or not, for a Fourth Reich. Every Reich, no matter how well-intentioned, ends in war. European bureaucrats need to remember that.