Joschka Fischer, the former Foreign Minister for Germany has an OP/ED titled, “The Return of the Ugly German,” and it has to be read.

I will give you 2 paragraphs, and tell you to go read:

Germany has been the big winner of European unification, both economically and politically. Just compare Germany’s history in the first and second halves of the twentieth century. Bismarck’s unification of Germany in the nineteenth century occurred at the high-water mark of European nationalism. Militarism became intimately associated with German power. Indeed, Germany’s public philosophy, unlike that of France, Great Britain, or the United States, never incorporated a civilizing ideal to justify the use of military power.

The foundation of the second, unified German nation-state in 1989 was based on Germany’s irrevocable Western orientation and Europeanization. And the Europeanization of Germany’s politics filled – and still fills – the civilization gap embodied in German statehood. To allow this pillar to erode – or, worse, to tear it down – is a folly of the highest order. That is why, in the EU that emerged on the morning of July 13, Germany and Europe both stand to lose.

H/t Naked Capitalism.