<Αθηνών σε λίγη ώρα δε θα είναι Ελληνικός!>

Dr George Savvanis on the Ano Korakiana website:

ΕΡΤέλος...

Γράφει ο/η Γιώργος Σαββανής
11.11.13
 "Κάποιοι θα ντρέπονται εσαεί και θα λογοδοτούν στις επόμενες γενιές», είπε χαρακτηρίζοντας «ενέργεια εκτροπής» την έφοδο της αστυνομίας."
Αυτά δήλωσε κάποια βουλευτής το πρωί έξω από το ραδιομέγαρο της Αγίας Παρασκευής. Θα μου επιτρέψετε να αμφιβάλλω πολύ, αν ανάμεσα στους «κάποιους» υπάρχει έστω και ένας που να είναι σε θέση να ντρέπεται. Το αίσθημα της ντροπής, από όλο το ζωικό βασίλειο διαθέτει μόνο ο άνθρωπος.. Όσο για τη «λογοδοσία», εδώ πια δεν έχω την παραμικρή αμφιβολία! Θα λογοδοτήσουν και αυτοί όπως λογοδότησαν όλοι οι κατά καιρούς απατεώνες και δοσίλογοι πλην ελαχίστων εξαιρέσεων. Έτσι λοιπόν απλά μπήκε η ταφόπλακα στην ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗ ΡΑΔΙΟΦΩΝΙΑ ΤΗΛΕΟΡΑΣΗ και στην ογδοντάχρονη ιστορία της. Έτσι απλά έσβησε η φωνή της Ελλάδας. Ο «τσοπανάκος» δεν θα ξανακουστεί στον αέρα. Η μοναδική ελεύθερη και ανεξάρτητη φωνή στους τελευταίους πέντε μήνες σίγησε. Τα σκύβαλα των ιδιωτικών καναλιών θριάμβευσαν. Το απόλυτο μαύρο κυριάρχησε. Οι εργαζόμενοι της ΕΡΤ που άντεξαν, υπέστειλαν τη σημαία τους και βγήκαν με αξιοπρέπεια. Τώρα στις ίδιες συχνότητες ραδιοφώνου και τηλεόρασης εκπέμπει το κυβερνητικό «μόρφωμα». Πόσο επίκαιρα ακούγονται τα λόγια του εκφωνητή Κ Σπυρόπουλου στις 27 Απριλίου 1941 από το «ραδιοφωνικό σταθμό Αθηνών»: "προσοχή! Ο ραδιοφωνικός σταθμός Αθηνών σε λίγη ώρα δε θα είναι Ελληνικός! Θα είναι Γερμανικός! Και θα μεταδίδει ψεύδη!"
 Γιώργος Σαββανής (Γιατρός)  (my earlier blog reference - scroll down)

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«Η αλαζονεία, όταν ακμάσει υπερβολικά, δίνει στάχυ γεμάτο καρπό συμφοράς»  Αισχύλος, Πέρσαι  821

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And from our friend Richard Pine…a fascinating archeological dig down eight decades:

12 November 2013
Germany and Greece
I offer this article to members of the Hellas-Greece discussion group in the belief that the intentions of Germany in 1942, as expressed in the following text, find significant echoes in the views of the European core states today, regarding the economic and political future of smaller, peripheral states such as Greece and, indeed the whole of the Balkans, and that this raises issues concerning the status of the smaller states vis-à-vis the dominant powers in Europe today. I would welcome comments either through this channel or to my e-mail <rpinecorfu@yahoo.com>:

I recently read the transcripts of ten lectures delivered in Berlin by senior German officials (bankers, academics, most of them economists), which envisage the transformation of the European economy and, as a result, of its social structures. Strategies include a massive investment in infrastructure, sweeping agricultural reform, industrialisation of south-east Europe, and a rationalisation of fiscal conditions among the member states.
But this wasn’t yesterday. The year? 1942, when Germany was still confidently anticipating victory in the second world war. Not only continental Europe was involved, but also Russia which, at that time, had a massive food surplus which would be used to supply net importers of foodstuffs. German military might would prevail and create the conditions for economic peace and growth.
Britain, of course, would be excoriated and cut adrift, and would have to pursue its fate in the company of the USA, which, it was argued, had brought about the economic malaise of the continent, through 'estrangement from the European continent' in the pursuit of imperial interests.
The giveaway is that the entity to be summoned into existence would be known as the 'European economic community' (EEC) – a body which of course did not actually come into existence until 1957 and is now the EU. The guiding principle would be a 'coalition of the countries of Europe', 'a community sharing one destiny', founded on economic integration, and a 'unity of political order'. To create such a unity would be 'an act of European self-determination immune to Europhobic influences' – by which it meant the British attitude. Germany’s role was 'to recreate a natural situation whereby Europe’s natural focus is the centre of the continent'.
The overall intention was, in the sentimental words of one speaker, to recreate the trading conditions which flourished in Europe from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, in German cities such as Lübeck, Cologne and Hamburg, which developed control first over the Baltic and later established trading posts throughout Europe including London and Paris - known collectively as the Hanseatic League. The League provided the economic hub of European trading, and the 1942 vision of a new Europe under German control envisaged a modern-day linking of the chief producers by the creation of an autobahn system for faster transit of goods and services.
How this unity would also be capable of demonstrating 'respect for the independence of the nations concerned' is difficult to imagine, since those nations would be bound together by irrefragable economic treaties and their independence would be subject to 'the destruction of these monocultures: Europe has to be dragged out of its romanticized backwardness'.

'Europe has to be dragged out of its romanticized backwardness' - cover page of the original collected lectures

The smaller nations, especially those of the east and south, would be satellite clients of this centrist system. They 'must never remain in any doubt that they are dependent on their neighbours...The spirit of the individual economies may not be allowed to go against the spirit of neighbourly co-operation'. In terms of citizenship, we would see 'the subjugation of the individual to the primacy of the economy' which is 'the ultimate goal': 'there will be victims here and there but the end result will benefit all the peoples of Europe'.
Curiously, the one feature of today’s eurozone, which the German economists of 1942 did not consider necessary, was the establishment of a single currency, since the Deutschmark would be the controlling currency to which all other currencies would be subservient.
As an adolescent in 1960s Britain, I vividly recall the cliché “they may have lost the war but they have won the peace”.  As Winston Churchill acknowledged in 1949, at the foundation of the Council of Europe, “a united Europe cannot live without the help and strength of Germany”, since “we are engaged in the process of creating a European unit”. A defeated Germany, divided between east and west, as it was until 1990, could not have exerted the economic or administrative muscle necessary to develop that strength. But over sixty years after Churchill spoke, we now see a form of domination by Germany of the fiscal system which keeps the eurozone afloat. The spirit of these lectures, delivered by top-ranking academic figures, including the president of the Reichsbank and the minister for economic affairs, is widely perceived to be the issue confronting Europe today.
It is not far-fetched to suggest that many persuasive figures in Germany today, including Chancellor Angela Merkel and her finance minister Wolfgang Schaüble, though they have entirely different motivations, have a similar vision of a united Europe, with Germany overseeing and guaranteeing the fate of the euro.
Recently Jean Asselborn, the Luxembourg foreign minister, warned of the dangers of a “German hegemony” – a clear indication that, in some quarters (especially the 'smaller' states), direction by Germany of the economic fate of Europe is seen as a move towards rather more extensive control of the domestic affairs of member states.
But what is remarkable about these lectures, and the economic vision they propose, is not so much that the same blueprint seems to exist today, but that seventy years ago they so accurately predicted key factors in today’s economic and social scenario, such as the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties, the British 'eurosceptics', and the near contempt with which the European centre regards the peripheral newcomers to the EU.
To a hankering after the glories of the Hanseatic League have been added the diminution or eradication of economic and political sovereignty, while all the time the EU’s cohesiveness and solidarity are being threatened by citizens’ apathy, anger and indignation.

Richard Pine lives and works in Greece

Lectures presented in 1942 under the title 'The European Economic Community' by the Society of Berlin Industry and Commerce in conjunction with the Economic Advisor to the Berlin Committee of the NSDAP and The Chamber of Trade and Industry:

Walter Funk, Reichs Economic Minister and President of the Reichsbank: The Economic Face of the New Europe

Dr. Horst Jecht, Professor at The Berlin School of Economics: Developments towards the European Economic Community 

Dr. Emil Woermann, Professor at Halle University: European Agriculture 

Dr. Anton Reithinger, Director of the Economics Department of I.G.
Farbenindustrie A.G., Berlin: The European Industrial Economy 

Dr. Philipp Beisiegel, Ministerial Director of the Reich’s Labour Ministry: The Deployment of Labour in Europe 

Gustav Koenigs, Secretary of State, Berlin: Questions about European Transport

Dr. Bernhard Benning, Director of the Reich’s Credit Company, Berlin: Questions about Europe’s Currency 

Dr. Carl Clodius, Ambassador of the Foreign Office: European Trade and Economic Agreements 

Professor Dr. Heinrich Hunke, Economic Committee Advisor of the NSDAP, President of Germany’s Economic Publicity Agency and the Berlin Society of Industry and Commerce: The Basic Question: Europe - Geographical Concept or Political Fact?

My email to Richard today:

Dear Richard. You're a troublemaker. Thank goodness! I’ve made your words prominent on my blog. As one of many who has maintained high hopes for the 'unification of Europe' as an antidote to the worst of the 20th century, this kind of revelation is an affliction. I doubt it will sink in to most readers, confirming the prejudice of knee-jerk anti-Europeans. And I don't think for one moment that Merkel is a neo-Nazi any more than you do. That's not what this is about. In fact the irony is that Hitler ignored the advice in these lectures - using Nazi occupied Europe as a granary, a reservoir of raw materials and slave labour (see Mark Mazower’s Dark Continent). Had Hitler implemented the toxic vision contained in these seminars, he might have undermined the US-UK alliance that became his nemesis. Stalin made the same mistake with the satellite countries of the so-called Soviet Union. I resent and detest the notion of Greece being 'dragged out of its romanticized backwardness' and I do not look forward to its industrialisation and - so-called - ‘modernisation', for all that  corruption needs to be dealt with so urgently.
I'm so glad you posted this - depressing as it is. Academically these papers are fascinating in their prescience. But I do not believe Merkel is trying to repeat history. I have to believe her agenda is closer to that described by Roger Cohen in the NYT. What do you think?
I’d heard about these lectures from you and others last year but it’s quite something to be reading them 70 years later (1942 being the year I was born)
I guess some editors would be chary of publishing these revelations. Best, Simon

Ευρωπαϊκή Οικονομική Κοινότητα 1980 - Aristedes Metallinos, Ano Korakiana's great sculptor, 
depicts the EEC as a broody chimaera

[Back to the future - from Jim Potts' Corfu Blues a piece about the origins of democracy asking why modern Germany seems to be promoting the same policies in Greece that ended its own democracy in the 1930s;  'Που γεννήθηκε, ή που πέθανε η δημοκρατία;' in Το Βιμα by George P Malouchos Γεώργιος Π Μαλούχος - last para:

...Το ερώτημα λοιπόν είναι το γιατί σε πείσμα κάθε λογικής το Βερολίνο επιμένει με κάθε τρόπο να δημιουργήσει σήμερα στην Ελλάδα εκείνες τις συνθήκες που θυμίζουν το θάνατο της δημοκρατίας στην ίδια τη Γερμανία στο Μεσοπόλεμο, στη Βαιμάρη. Δυστυχώς η απάντηση είναι απλή: γιατί αυτό είναι το τίμημα της νέας ευρωπαϊκής ηγεμονίας της. Και το Βερολίνο αδιαφορεί παντελώς για το ποιος θα το πληρώσει και πόσο ακριβά. 

...So the question is why, despite all logic, Berlin persists in creating in Greece those conditions reminiscent of the death of democracy in Germany itself during the interwar period. Unfortunately, the answer is simple: because it is the price of the new European hegemony. And Berlin is completely indifferent as to who will bear the high cost of these policies - my translation.]