Germany was hit with a double whammy this week as proof of the ruinous price its people are paying for their feckless government’s role as the United States lapdog.
Germany was hit with a double whammy this week as proof of the ruinous price its people are paying for their feckless government’s role as the United States lapdog.
First, there was the political bombshell of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition parties receiving a drubbing in elections. Then there was the shocking economic news that Volkswagen, the country’s flagship automaker, is planning to close down factories as a result of crippling production costs.
The reverberations are shaking the political and economic foundations not just of Germany but the entire European Union.
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Both of these body blows to Germany stem from the same root cause: the Scholz government’s slavish following of U.S. foreign policy. (To be fair, the lackey syndrome pre-dates Scholz and was manifest too under his predecessor Angela Merkel. And again to be fair, it is not just a German condition. The whole of Europe is a lapdog to Uncle Sam – and paying a painful price for that dubious role.)
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) came first in the state election for Thuringia in what was seen as an embarrassing thrashing for Scholz’s Social Democrat Party and its coalition partners. The AfD made big gains, albeit coming second to the Christian Democrat Union, in elections for neighboring Saxony.
A lot of hysteria has accompanied the election breakthrough for the AfD which is invariably described as “far-right” and compared with the historic Nazi party. Tempering that hysteria, however, is the fact that the new leftwing party BSW also made impressive gains in the elections.
A more accurate reading of the results would be that the German people have used the elections to express deep disillusionment and anger at the established parties on a range of issues, including economic hardship, uncontrolled immigration and a strong anti-war sentiment.
The AfD and BSW based their election appeals on ending Germany’s huge military aid to Ukraine (over €23 billion, the second largest after the U.S.). They are also calling for an end to hostile economic sanctions against Russia and a return to normal, friendly relations between the two countries.
Both parties have also been critical of Berlin’s agreement to reinstall U.S. ballistic missiles on German soil – a return to Cold War days – which are aimed at Russia and which would make Germany a target for any Russian retaliation strikes. The way tensions are being ratcheted up by NATO in Ukraine and the invasion of Russia’s Kursk region such German fears are not far-fetched.
It seems obvious that the political revolt in the recent German elections was a strident protest against Berlin’s conformity with Washington’s anti-Russia policy.
Ironically, the German media mention this factor in the rise of the alternative parties, but their reports claim that the grievances are simply fueled by “Russian propaganda”. Talk about the political class being in denial. The people vote against the establishment’s policies and then the protest is dismissed as Kremlin manipulation. Such condescension only reinforces revolt.
So, we might ask, is it just Russian propaganda that the German economy is in crisis?
Germany’s Volkswagen announced this week that it is being compelled to consider drastic cost-saving measures. Mass layoffs of its 300,000 German workforce (nearly half of its global workforce) are on the cards. Not only that but the auto giant said it is looking at shutting down some of its factories to rein in crippling production costs. This would be the first time the company has ever considered plant closures in Germany in its 87-year history.
CEO Oliver Blume told the media the emergency retrenchment was about “costs, costs, costs”. He said the car manufacturer – one of the world’s largest and most iconic – was no longer competitive in pricing of its vehicles.
It’s hard to overstate the significance. Historically, the German economy – the biggest in Europe – has been driven by car exports to the rest of the world and in particular those of the Volkswagen group and its 10 car brands.
A vital part of the German economic success for decades was due to the supply of relatively cheap and abundant energy (gas and oil) from Russia – the world’s biggest supplier of hydrocarbon fuels.
Volkswagen bosses had warned two years ago that soaring energy costs were threatening the viability of their industry. And thereby, the viability of the entire German economy.
That warning in November 2022 came only weeks after the U.S. covertly blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea, thus severing Germany and the European Union from Russian energy supply. Combined with EU sanctions against other Russian energy supply routes, the result is a European economic recession. The German and European political elite have perversely followed the U.S. agenda of hostility towards Russia (using Ukraine as a proxy) – all for the Americans to boost their more expensive energy exports in place of Russia’s as well as boost the American military-industrial complex from unprecedented weapons sales.
Berlin has refused to carry out a proper criminal investigation into the sabotage of its Nord Stream gas pipes for the simple reason that it would expose the American perpetrators and in that way expose Berlin’s servile complicity. It has rebuffed Russian offers of cooperation, even though Russia and Germany were joint partners in the ambitious pipeline project that ran more than 1,222 kilometers under the Baltic Sea and took a decade to construct at the cost of €11 billion. If it had operated, Europe’s economies and households would have been guaranteed abundant affordable energy – not savage bill hikes.
It couldn’t be more tragic and farcical. America’s so-called European allies have willingly destroyed their own economic foundations through a treasonous adherence to Washington’s self-serving agenda. The irony is that the United States promotes itself as a “protector” of Europe when in reality it is nothing but a huge parasite living off European largesse and the foolishness of European governments serving as lapdogs for Uncle Sam.
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The countless American illegal wars that Europe has indulged for decades across the Middle East, Asia and Africa – and the latest proxy war in Ukraine, the largest in Europe since the Second World War – have created an intractable immigration crisis across Europe. This has again driven a furious political reaction whereby establishment parties in Germany, France and other EU states are being punished in the polls. The EU’s political crisis of shaky governments over uncontrolled immigration is a direct result of following America’s imperialist wars.
The EU establishment is a lapdog because it is part of the same Western imperialist order and mindset. It is ideologically programmed to follow – lemming-like – its own destruction. The revolving door of political and corporate careers as well as CIA blackmail against corrupt politicians are other factors.
The German people as with other European populations are finding out the hard way in their daily lives what it means for their so-called political class to be American vassals.
Volkswagen – the People’s Car Company – was created by German imperialism in 1937 under the Nazi Reich. The founding of the industry was a pet project of Adolf Hitler. The company’s early economic success was due to the use of cheap labour from concentration camps set up for the Final Solution, including the exploitation of slave labour from Russian POWs who were often worked to death. Today, VW is losing its prowess because it no longer benefits from access to cheap Russian gas.
Germany and its flagship industries are still a plaything of imperialism. This time, however, American imperialism is driving it to ruination.
The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.
