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Europe's collective memory shapes euro zone crisis

Posted on 25 February 2013

Wartime scars are driving European countries’ responses to the financial crisis, University of Cambridge Professor Richard J Evans said at the EUI last week.

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“Since the Second World War, Germans have been very averse to using their political power because of the Nazi experience and what they saw that as leading to in Germany itself: destruction of German cities, total defeat and ruin, mass death,” said Evans, Regius Professor of History at Cambridge and author of a series of books on the Third Reich. The professor was speaking at the EUI on 22 February, following a debate on Germany’s place in Europe.

He argued that the German government had reluctantly taken a lead on the euro zone crisis due to its economic power and paranoia of economic instability, which stems from the inter-war period. “It is partly driven by a kind of cultural memory of the hyperinflation of 1923, which was an absolute trauma for the Germans and has remained in the political culture,” said Evans, stating that economic depression and mass unemployment resulted in the rise of the Nazi party in 1930s Germany.

The growth of anti-German sentiment in struggling euro zone states today is the result of collective memory, he said: “If you look at Greece, you see that there is a neo-fascist movement, ironically because [far-right party] Golden Dawn uses quasi-Nazi symbols. While there’s a huge sentiment against Germany, accusing the Germans of behaving like Nazis, which goes back to the public memory of the German occupation of Greece in the Second World War.”

The unemployment rate in Greece and Spain are the highest in Europe, at 27 and 26 per cent, yet political instability and the rise of the far-right has been notably more prominent in Greece. For Evans, the relatively stable situation in Spain is due to the country’s own experiences of war in the 20th century: “Spanish democracy doesn’t seem to be threatened by this; I think that’s probably down to the very deep scars caused by the Spanish civil war [from 1936 to 1939]. Nobody can really countenance an over-revival of Francoism which a far-right would be in Spain, so it simply doesn’t happen.”

While Germany may have been a reluctant leader in the euro zone crisis, Evans described a country proud of its post-war economic recovery and model of great prudence and caution. “This kind of self-satisfaction and the belief that the German way is the right way in economics has led to the Germans trying to export this to other parts of Europe. Not in a conscious desire to dominate, but as the right way to do things,” he said.

Although historical parallels can be drawn, Evans stopped short of suggesting a widespread crisis in European democracy. But he saw Germany’s responses to the euro zone crisis, conditioned by the country’s history, as problematic: “If you have austerity programmes it leads to a kind of downward spiral; increasing unemployment, increasing economic difficulties, lower tax income for governments and increased need for borrowing, so it’s not a solution. I think the German aversion to reflating and pumping up the economy again is causing a lot of damage.”

(Text by Rosie Scammell)

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