The best profile of Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel in the English language is this one.  This is no doubt she was very sympathetic to the Soviets growing up. Her parents moved from West Germany to East Germany in 1954, soon after she was born. She literally got her communism with her mother’s milk. At 1970 at the age of 16 she won the national prize in East Germany for her Russian-speaking ability. At Leipzig University she devoted a year to studying Marxist-Leninist thought. She attended a university in Leningrad for a year in 1977, away from Stasi and available to the KGB without the Stasi being aware. Coincidentally, Vladimir Putin was a KGB officer in Leningrad in 1977.

Being such a devout communist and so sympathetic to the Russians, it is inconceivable that she was not approached by the KGB during this period. Which explains a lot about the way she has governed Germany for the last 14 years. And why nothing about her was found in the Stasi archives after reunification – she wasn’t one of theirs.

Two hundred years ago France was the country most feared in Europe. Then Germany won three wars in 1864, 1866 and 1870-71. The rest of Europe started to ally against Germany. These fears were well founded because Germany started a couple of civilisation-destroying wars in 1914 and 1939. After the first of these some of the victors thought that Germany should be de-industrialised so that it would no longer be a military threat. After the second, Drexler-White, a high ranking agent of influence in the Roosevelt administration, proposed the Morgenthau plan to that end. The Russians in particular suffered badly in the Second World War with 20 million dead. In the end the Truman administration chose the Marshall plan to rebuild Germany.

De-industrialising Germany today reduces Russia’s military threat on its western flank. This has been an ongoing project of Merkel’s in her years as Chancellor. The Fukushima disaster was an excuse for Merkel to close Germany’s nuclear reactors. The influx of Syrians a couple of years ago was designed to reduce social cohesion.

De-industrialisation of Germany using the global warming hoax as the excuse is ongoing. In Germany it is now called the “climate catastrophe,” even under blue skies with the weather unchanged. Last week the German cabinet had a 15 hour meeting on the subject with the result that a carbon tax has been introduced along with a slew of other measure that will further impinge upon Germany’s economic competitiveness.

Defanging the German military has not been neglected. Germany spends 1.2% of its GDP on defence, well under the NATO minimum of 2%. What is spent is largely wasted. It is certainly not spent on equipment. A German Defense Ministry report of June 2018 listed the major weapons systems ready for action as:

• Typhoon jets: 39 of 128
• Tornado jets: 26 of 93
• CH-53 transport helicopters: 16 of 72
• NH-90 transport helicopters: 13 of 58
• Tiger attack helicopters: 12 of 62
• A400M transport aircraft: 3 of 15
• Leopard 2 tanks: 105 of 224
• Frigates: 5 of 13
• Submarines: 0 out of 6

The German Navy had one operating submarine in October 2017 but that vessel damaged its rudder on a rock off Norway. German operational readiness is stuck around 30%. Thus morale in the Bundeswehr is at rock bottom.

Apart from a bloated procurement bureaucracy of 11,000 souls and general ineptitude, the German military has also been afflicted by sheer looniness. This article reports that the delivery of 350 Puma armored personnel carriers was delayed because they had to be suitable for heavily pregnant female soldiers (the use of the word female to describe someone pregnant is no longer a tautology in this day and age). To expect heavily pregnant soldiers to make a positive contribution in battle is delusional. Sadly that is also something that needs to be said.

As was said of the former Soviet forces when communism fell apart in 1991, the Germany Army couldn’t invade a soccer pitch now. As this article says, “the Bundeswehr is now a successful disarmament project.” The German defense minister who achieved this state of affairs over the last five years, Ursula von der Leyden, is now President of the European Commission.

The destruction of the Catholic Church in Germany has not been neglected, either. The first non-Italian Pope was Pope John Paul from Poland. John Paul was very popular with the Catholic laity, but not with the German left because of his anti-communism. The German left called Josef Ratzinger, once Archbishop of Munich and prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,  the “Pope’s Doberman.”  Ratzinger went on to become Pope Benedict, also popular and effective.

Merkel made a speech in 2009 in which she deplored the activities of pedophiles in the Church. Pope Benedict retired in 2013, the first pope to do so. Normally popes died in harness. Benedict was a theologian who had written a lot of books and was not good at intrigues. His decision to step down was partly due to his age but also because his brother, a cleric who had spent 30 years in charge of a boys’ and men’s choir in Regensburg, had been accused of pedophile activity.           

Benedict was replaced by Pope Francis, who has embraced all the fashionable loony lefty notions, chief of which of course is global warming. Francis is also appointing mostly left wing cardinals. Any conservative ones he is appointing will be over 80 by the time of the next convocation and thus ineligible to vote.

In 2018 the Chines communist regime donated a 14 foot bronze statue of Karl Marx to the city of Trier in Germany to mark the 200^th year since his birth there. There is another Marx in Germany now who is furthering lefty causes. Cardinal Reinhardt Marx is the Archbishop of Munich and Freising. He is all in favor of gay marriage and African and Islamic migrants in Europe. Being a true lefty, he is untroubled by directing Church funds to his own wants and needs, including around $11 million renovating the archbishop’s residence and another $13 million for a guesthouse in Rome.

Cardinal Marx was the youngest member of the College of Cardinals when he was appointed in 2010. There is a good chance he will be the next Pope. Believe it or not, Pope Francis isn’t left wing enough for the German lefties.

While in Italy recently, I drove briefly along Via Antonio Gramsci, the one near Arezzo. Gramsci’s march through the institutions has captured the throne in the Catholic Church. Catholics around the World should brace themselves for the horrors to come for their beloved institution.

There is one ray of hope in all the gloom for Germany. The political party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is now the most popular party in the younger age groups in the former East Germany. Witness this graphic of voting by age group in the recent election in Saxony:

Source

Younger Germans are now far less afflicted by guilt over the Second World War than their parents. Therefore they do not see the need to atone for their sins by acts of stupidity. In time they may also see through the cant of the global warmers. The AfD is the only party that doesn’t believe in global warming. Of course the other German political parties treat them as pariahs. Germany may yet return to being the neat, clean, efficient and orderly country that it should be.

David Archibald is author of American Gripen: The Solution to the F-35 Nightmare