Opinion | Germany's toughness on Greek debt is unseemly, given its own experience with war reparations
Peter Kammerer says with her tough demands on Greece, Angela Merkel has apparently forgotten her country's experience of crippling war reparations
Germany got what it wanted in talks to force Greece to pay back its debts. In return, though, the strong-arm tactics of Chancellor Angela Merkel and her negotiating team have split Europe and damaged the reputation of what had arguably been the continent's most respected nation.
The manner in which the country dealt with its wartime past won plaudits; its apologies for atrocities are a model that others can admire. Yet that was ignored as the German leader put politics first.
It didn't have to be that way. Merkel could have sided with France and Italy and gone easier on the Greeks. Knowing that Greece owed an amount it may never be able to repay, she could have opted for a waiving of looming repayments for a year or more, even cancellation of a proportion of the amount.
Instead, she chose a strategy of deepening austerity that has already made life miserable for the Greek population. The dislike of Germany for the Nazi regime's invasion and occupation during the second world war has never gone away there; now the "do as we say or else" approach has, for some, downgraded it to hatred.
Thomas Piketty contended that Germany had never fully paid its external debt from the two world wars, yet had other nations pay up.
It is a disconcerting feeling for me, the son of a German father. Despite Germany's heartfelt apologies for starting a war that claimed more than 20 million lives, six million of them Jews, the country is still the butt of jokes and snide insinuations. The war seems to come up each time Merkel holds a press conference.