Germany: Free at last?

03/08/2020
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Germany, like the rest of Europe during the Yalta summit, was divided in two. One half under US military occupation and the other half under Soviet occupation.

 

The Soviet occupation lasted 45 years, from 1945 to 1990. In 1990, during the collapse of the Gorbachev Soviet Union, Soviet troops withdrew within the Russian Federation. The United States militarily occupied the space liberated by the Soviets, with the pretext of expanding NATO.

 

An alliance whose objective was, according to Lord Hastings Ismay, its first general secretary: “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”. This definition of NATO policy is coherent with the origin of the alliance as an alliance of the Anglophone countries to wage war against Germany.

 

The U.S. started its military occupation of Europe with the landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944. A military operation that US is proposing to recognize as a founding celebration of Europe.

 

That famous Normandy operation was successful only because of the tactical stupidity of Hitler, who refused to counter attack with 12 divisions he kept idle nearby, at the Belgian border; Field Marshal von Rundstedt requested them urgently. But Hitler was adamant about keeping them idle, in reserve; just in case the landing in Normandy was only a feint by the Anglophone countries. You would need Hitler’s stolid stubbornness to believe that the Anglophones could make such an enormous deployment of means only for a feint and still keep reserves for a second assault on Europe.

 

The attempt to turn the D-Day landing into the key moment for the defeat of Nazi Germany is sheer manipulation of history.

 

The truth is quite different. The key and definitive victory to liberate Europe from Hitler, had been won a year earlier by the Russians.

 

At Kursk, the greatest battle in world history had been fought.

 

It lasted a week, involved 3 million soldiers, 10 thousand tanks and hundreds of airplanes.

 

After Kursk (08/23/1943) the German Wehrmacht armies fought only defensively until the fall of Berlin, Hitler’s suicide and finally the German surrender to Marshal Georgy Zhúkov on May 2, 1945.

 

The landing in Normandy is important because until then the main Anglophone military action consisted in aerial bombing of the defenseless German civilian population with little risk for their airmen and few losses. The decisive war was fought on land and most of the weight was carried by the Russians.

 

Normandy is quite a long way from Berlin.

 

Since 1945 there have been American occupation troops in Germany enjoying privileges and immunities that must be paid for by the Germans.

 

We just learned that, in a lucid moment, President Trump had ordered the planned withdrawal of the US occupation troops from Germany.

 

For now, the removal is only a matter of 12,000 men. Some people get so used to being serfs that they enjoy being docile, an unexpected incident happened when Norbert Roettgen, head of the Bundestag (Parliament) foreign affairs committee, complained about the American occupation troops departure

 

Perhaps, Herr Roettgen is unaware that, in the current legal state of affairs, since there is no peace treaty, the commander of the American garrison in Berlin can summarily order his detention under arrest, without the puppet government of Frau Angela Merkel being able to order his release.

 

The withdrawal of US occupation troops from German territory is regarded positively by citizens of the regions that formed the DDR. That part of Germany, known as East Germany, which was allied with Russia, the only remaining Great power from a European cultural heritage.

 

The DDR was actually the legitimate successor to the Reich, it continued to have Berlin as its capital, its troops wore the usual German military uniform. DDR policies maintained with pride the dismembered German cultural traditions.  Quite a different policy from that of the of Americanized West Germany, where they mimicked American behavior.

 

West Germany is the region where, like hyenas, American investors came to buy up reputed German companies at discount sale prices under the American investment rules of the Marshall Plan. Thus, US firms got to control much of that industrial part of Germany, whose capital was Bonn (a small city until then known mainly as the birthplace of Beethoven).

 

The eviction of the US troops, after 76 years of occupation, ordered by Trump, is his way of complaining about the continuity of work on the North Stream2 pipeline that will bring cheap Russian gas to the heart of Europe.

 

The demonization of Russia’s by the US is caused by the fact that it is a European country whose wells happen to be closer to Germany than those of the United States. That is a strategic geographic fact confirmed by history and economics.

 

In case of conflict, those twelve thousand soldiers Trump is planning to withdraw, with modern weapons, are not useful to defend anything and in a matter of minutes they could go from being guardians to being hostages.

 

Otto von Bismarck's most admired legacy was the alliance between the Russian Empire and the German Empire. An alliance that was so powerful that it immobilized Anglophone machinations and gave the world half a Century of peace, in which the arts, sciences and economics flowered to such great extent that it is remembered in Europe as La Belle Époque (the Beautiful Era).

 

Almeria 07/31/2020

 

 

https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/208227
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