A little history will suffice to conclude that Germany has been a problem for Europe for more than a century. The greatest attacks on Europe’s peace have come from Germany. Let us not forget that NATO was created to defend the “free world” from both the Soviet Union and Germany’s authoritarian aggression. At the time, Germany was defeated and divided, but the danger of a change in the status quo was latent. The creation of the European Union was dominated by the same distrust of Germany. Germany’s post-war leaders went to great lengths to give credibility to the idea of Germany as a peaceful country and the EU benefited enormously from Germany’s economic reconstruction, making it the economic engine of Europe in a relatively short space of time. In addition to its economic prosperity, Germany has established itself as an ethical country. Angela Merkel’s initial policy in the face of the immigration wave was a memorable lesson in historical responsibility. All this has happened without us realizing that two ghosts haunt Germany.

The first ghost is Russia and the defeat inflicted by Russia (then the Soviet Union) on Germany in World War II. With Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik, this ghost seemed to have been neutralized forever, but it only took the war in Ukraine to see that this was not the case. The geostrategic objectives of the United States, which include neutralizing Russia in order to reach out to China, have found in Germany the most enthusiastic or slavish support. The genuine desire for peace quickly disappeared and Germany began to prepare for a war that goes far beyond supplying arms to Ukraine. The recent revelation of German military plans for Crimea are indications of this.The Defense Minister Boris Pistorius recently stated that “the EU must be ready for war before the end of the decade.” Germany has convinced itself that it is in good company, since it has as an ally one of the powers that defeated it in World War II. Victory would be certain, and that is why the Minsk 1 and 2 Agreements were just smoke screen to give Ukraine time to prepare for war. In the end, the foresight failed and, despite all the propaganda to the contrary, Russia is winning the war and the conditions that ensured Germany’s post-war prosperity will take a long time to rebuild, if ever. The U.S. will withdraw from Ukraine when it suits it, just as it did in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, but Germany and Europe will be held hostage to the consequences of such withdrawal. Germany thought it was finally on the right side of history and has yet to realize that, for better or worse, history has turned back to the East, where it has actually been the longest in history. Germany and Europe itself will only wake up from this madness when they have to explain to their citizens that defending Taiwan militarily is part of European security.

The second phantom is the Holocaust. What is happening in Germany after October 7 is something very strange. Understandably, historical guilt over the horrendous crime Germany committed just ninety years ago compels it to unequivocally affirm Israel’s right to defend itself, and even to assert that Israel’s security is Germany’s raison d’être. After all, Israel’s existence is the result of that crime. What is incomprehensible is the extremism with which it does so. Any criticism of Israel is considered anti-Semitism.The German Chancellor repeats ad nauseam, against all the daily televised violence, that Israel’s behavior is guided by “the most humanitarian principles”; any protest against the genocide (a proscribed word) in Gaza is banned; German Jews themselves,who demonstrate against Israel’s policy, are censured; immigrants risk deportation, if they demonstrate in favor of Palestine, many such immigrants coming from the region that Israel’s aggressive territorial occupation policy, contravening UN resolutions, has in large part destabilized; foreign visitors who participate in talks in which the Palestinian problem is addressed with some impartiality are forbidden to enter or banned.

The fight against anti-Semitism is more than legitimate and necessary, but to defend it in this way meansto feed authoritarianism, xenophobia and Islamophobia and, ultimately, anti-Semitism. It means to agree with the common sense of the Israeli state that Palestinians are inferior beings, “human animals” who deserve nothing but extermination, ethnic cleansing. It means to give a blank check to a very unpopular Prime Minister of Israel who, in the face of the crimes of which he is accused, sees in the continuation and extension of the war a condition for his survival.

The complicity in the Gaza genocide is being taken to such an extreme that, ninety years later, we can see that the Germans are once again normalizing a horrendous crime against people they consider inferior, a crime this time not committed by them, but by their former victims, of whom they consider themselves unconditional allies. The perplexity is such that German extremism leads us to wonder whether support for the Gaza genocide is explained less by a desire to atone for a horrendous crime than by an insidious and unconscious desire to justify it. The collective unconscious has reasons whichreason knows nothing of.

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