Why were France and Germany so ruinous for Europe?

Aldarion

Neoreactionary Monarchist
So let's see...
  • French Revolution - began in France
  • Revolutions of 1848 - began in France
  • Communism - began in France (the Paris Commune)
  • Marxism - began in Germany (Karl Marx)
  • Soviet Union - created in Germany
  • Nazism - started in Germany
  • World War 2 in Europe - started by Germany and USSR
  • European Union - France and Germany
So why did all the progressive genocidal BS originate in France and Germany? What was / is so special about these two countries?
 
The root cause is not that they were the most powerful states. Having power is why they could throw their weight around so much, but that applied to other powers as well, at various points. (England, but also the Holy Roman Empire at times, as well as Poland at one point; not to mention that time Sweden went all-out...)

This isn't about which state has power to throw around. It's about why Germany and France in particular produced so many terrible ideas. The power they had was merely the means to apply these ideas, not the cause of them.

Note that all these ideas are fairly recent. The real question here is: "why are France and Germany seemingly so disproportionally responsible for all the shittiest aspects of so-called Modernity?"

Obviously, a hopeless modernist could never really understand this problem, so the incurable modernist will always point to materialist reasons as the supposed relevant factor. This is itself part of that warped intellectual legacy that has so badly deformed the social and cultural landscape of Modernity. The true cause, which no modernist can identify due to being a modernist, is not materialist but intellectual and cultural.

Aldarion starts with the French Revolution, but that's a case of looking for the highly visible explosion, while not looking at the fuse being lit. I'll leave aside the historical antecedents caused by the Protestant Reformation (which was chiefly of German origins, incidentally) and begin instead with the more proximate and direct cause: the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment was never one coherent intellectual movement, and it embodied many different strains of thinking. The strain that became dominant on the European continent, and most strongly so in France, was by far the worse strain. It was the typical French Enlightenment thinking that produced the fundamental(ly horrible) notions underpinning the genocidal terror of the French Revolution and its despotic aftermath.

One of these ideas is that rights are given to people by the state. (Conversely, in the Anglo-Scottish tradition, rights are held to come from God, and the state can only recognise this and thereby be just, or deny these rights and thereby be tyrannical.) Another of these ideas is that power should be centralised, and all systems should be homogenised. (Conversely, the Anglo-Scottish tradition produced federalism and holds that local communities should be sovereign over their own affairs.) Yet another of these ideas is that the state should be involved in most if not all aspects of life. (Conversely, the Anglo-Scottish tradition holds that the state should do no more than is truly needed, and that most problems should be addressed by citizens acting through self-organisation.)

The terrible ideas of the French Enlightenment, although nowhere so horribly developed as in France, were at least partially reflected in the Enlightenment thought of many other continental countries. Moreover, Napoleon imposed the French ways on all conquered nations, where power-hungry elites eagerly adopted them. Dissenters, either traditionalists or Enlightenement thinkers more in line with the Anglo-Scottish example, were brutally purged by French-leaning centralists. (This happened, for instance, in my own country, which was a confederal republic, used a form of common law, and intellectually had much more in common with England before the French occupation; but which became a centralised monarchy, used the Napoleonic legal code, and was steeped in continental Enlightenment ideas thereafter-- and regrettably, to this very day.)

Germany was particularly vulnerable to this "intellectual co-opting" by French ideas, because Napoleon had dismantled the Holy Roman Empire. He basically murdered Germany-that-was, leaving the German intellectuals to seek a new identity. They merged French ideas about centralised power and activist states with a German romanticism, which proved a dangerous mix. When overcooked, it produced the frothing scum of Nazism. (Even before that, though: the German Kaiserreich was never a thing embodying a real German tradition: it was Prussians emulating Napoleon. This "German" Empire was founded in Versailles, of all places!)

All the terrible things listed further on by Aldarion derive directly from the developments I have sketched above. It was the continental Enlightenment, and most especially the French Enlightenment, that produced all the horrible aspects of Modernity.
 
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One of these ideas is that rights are given to people by the state. (Conversely, in the Anglo-Scottish tradition, rights are held to come from God, and the state can only recognise this and thereby be just, or deny these rights and thereby be tyrannical
I've got three words for you: "Universal Human Rights"

Nothing has changed, because nothing ever changes. There's no practical difference between the rationales of a modern communist, a premodern revolutionary, and a medieval crusader. Don't waste your time trying to figure out "when it went wrong".

And for God's sake, present some proofs and references if you want to throw out so many accusations.
 
So let's see...
  • French Revolution - began in France
  • Revolutions of 1848 - began in France
  • Communism - began in France (the Paris Commune)
  • Marxism - began in Germany (Karl Marx)
  • Soviet Union - created in Germany
  • Nazism - started in Germany
  • World War 2 in Europe - started by Germany and USSR
  • European Union - France and Germany
So why did all the progressive genocidal BS originate in France and Germany? What was / is so special about these two countries?
French Revolutions were good They went too far in some ways. But the Ancien Regime was shit, the ONLY reason they were better than our oligarchs is because they were nominally Christian. But the king and nobility were idiots, they needed to be removed. Napoleon was a much better leader. He was the pinacle and one of the greatest leaders on par with Caesar or Alexander the Great Simping and cucking for early modern monarchs is the epitome of cuckoldry if they fell they did not have divine right or God's protection. But some people who suck off Anglo/Protestant/German culture whine about Napoleon who was unambigious good.
Revolutions of 1848 were also good they NATIONALIST. If you whine about them, why do you also whine about modern oligarchs who want to bring in various groups into countries. Because here is the thing the Austrians they were a multi ethnic mess, just like what the EU wants.

Communism I won't defend the Paris commune, don't want to look it up now. I'll grant it too you.

For Karl, him being born in Germany means almost nothing he fled from there to avoid persecution he was able to go to England with it's love of freedom that allows anykind of subversion and create the worst ideas known to man. So if any nation should be blamed it should be the British Empire.
The Soviets, well Germany wanted to weaken and destroy a nation. Communism is a good way to do that.
Nazis yes,
WW2 you can say that it would have happened regardless of anything because of what France and the UK did to Germany.
The EU you do know the bad parts about the EU are the same as bad parts of America or the UK or other western liberal nations.
 
French Revolutions were good They went too far in some ways. But the Ancien Regime was shit, the ONLY reason they were better than our oligarchs is because they were nominally Christian. But the king and nobility were idiots, they needed to be removed.
French revolutions were much like all other revolutions: good intentions that led to disastrous consequences.

Yes, the French monarchy of the time was indeed shit. But the Republican government was even worse. Napoleon was basically savior of France... pity other monarchs didn't want to work with him.
Napoleon was a much better leader. He was the pinacle and one of the greatest leaders on par with Caesar or Alexander the Great Simping and cucking for early modern monarchs is the epitome of cuckoldry if they fell they did not have divine right or God's protection. But some people who suck off Anglo/Protestant/German culture whine about Napoleon who was unambigious good.
Napoleon was not unambigious good nor were the absolute monarchs unambigious evil. Napoleon was a self-centered egomaniac with a lot of decent ideas and some terrible ones. Most of the absolute monarchs of the time were simply flawed people trying to do their best... but here is the thing: centralization is evil, and absolute monarchy was the beginning of the modernist centralized states.
Revolutions of 1848 were also good they NATIONALIST. If you whine about them, why do you also whine about modern oligarchs who want to bring in various groups into countries. Because here is the thing the Austrians they were a multi ethnic mess, just like what the EU wants.
No, they were not. You clearly do not understand shit about the revolutions of 1848 if you think they were some kind of pure nationalism. Nor do I see nationalism as a prerequisite of survival of an ethnic corpus. But let's tackle these one by one...

1) There is a reason why basically everybody sided with Austrian throne against Hungarians... except, ironically, Austrians themselves. Marx and Engels would proceed to whine about it, and even say that Croats deserve to be genocided for our role in crushing the Hungarian revolution, but matter of the fact is that Hungarians wanted to replace Austrian Empire with their own Hungarian Empire. And unlike Austrians, who did allow a degree of self-governance and respect for local culture and customs, Hungarians of the time were only interested in turning everybody else into Hungarians. Hence this.

2) Austrian Empire was indeed multi-national, but it was far from being a mess. Austria-Hungary was far worse of a mess than the Austrian Empire ever was, and its formation was a direct consequence of revolutions of 1848. And nobody was happy with the outcome. Not the Austrians, who had lost half the Empire; not the Hungarians, who had less freedoms than before; and definitely not smaller ethnic groups, whose freedoms were even more curtailed than before.

3) While Austrian-Empire was a multi-national empire like the European Union, unlike the European Union, it was not busy promoting the genocide of literally every single ethnic group within its borders. Will it have started to do so had it survived until today? Possibly so, but modern-day ideologies of multiculturalism, globalism, cosmopolitanism and other such genocidal bullshit only appeared as a consequence of the Second World War... which will not have happened had Austria-Hungary survived.

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4) Revolutions in Italy also led to Italy wanting to take Croatian coast, which led to Fascism and the Ustashi regime.

5) Galicia had no revolution, and their demands were in fact perfectly reasonable.
For Karl, him being born in Germany means almost nothing he fled from there to avoid persecution he was able to go to England with it's love of freedom that allows anykind of subversion and create the worst ideas known to man. So if any nation should be blamed it should be the British Empire.
It means everything, because his ideas were formed during his life in Germany:
Marx was educated from 1830 to 1835 at the high school in Trier. Suspected of harbouring liberal teachers and pupils, the school was under police surveillance. Marx's writings during this period exhibited a spirit of Christian devotion and a longing for self-sacrifice on behalf of humanity. In October 1835 he matriculated at the University of Bonn. The courses he attended were exclusively in the humanities, in such subjects as Greek and Roman mythology and the history of art. He participated in customary student activities, fought a duel, and spent a day in jail for being drunk and disorderly. He presided at the Tavern Club, which was at odds with the more aristocratic student associations, and joined a poets' club that included some political activists. A politically rebellious student culture was, indeed, part of life at Bonn. Many students had been arrested; some were still being expelled in Marx's time, particularly as a result of an effort by students to disrupt a session of the Federal Diet at Frankfurt. Marx, however, left Bonn after a year and in October 1836 enrolled at the University of Berlin to study law and philosophy.
But yes, British Empire certainly played a part in allowing him to develop and spread his ideas.
The Soviets, well Germany wanted to weaken and destroy a nation. Communism is a good way to do that.
Agreed.
WW2 you can say that it would have happened regardless of anything because of what France and the UK did to Germany.
That is a myth, I'd say. What France and UK did (dissolution of German Empire, putting blame on Germany, reparations) certainly did help, but I don't think they were the key. Reparations were in fact comparatively lenient, compared to reparations France was forced to pay in 1878. 1 2 And most of said reparations ended up being paid... by the United States.

Main reason why Hitler rose to power was... the threat of Communism created by USSR and its continual support for Communist revolutions abroad.

World War 2 was caused by USSR and Communism, both of which had originated in Germany.
The EU you do know the bad parts about the EU are the same as bad parts of America or the UK or other western liberal nations.
You know the EU was formed by France and Germany?
Prosperity breeds free time.

Free time breeds intellectuals.

Intellectuals have done nothing, but believe they know everything.

This intellectualized inexperience breeds really dumb decisions.

Dumb decisions lead to what we've gotten.

A prosperous society has to be willing to smother the intellectuals' stupid ideas in order to stay prosperous.
AGREED!
 
Galicia had no revolution
That's because two years previously the Austrian authorities had unleashed local serfs - whose treatment by the freedom loving szlachta was out of Uncle Tom's Cabin or worse - and had them burn down a few manors and lynch a few dozen landowners. The landowners had been plotting an uprising to bring freedom to Poland and Europe, of course ...
 
World War 2 was caused by USSR and Communism, both of which had originated in Germany.
The European theater of WW2 was, the Pacific Theater was in many ways it's own war that happened to happen at the same time, with separate causes and was much more of an sphere of influence power struggle between a rising power (Japan) and the established powers (UK & US). If nothing had happened in Europe, I think there still would have been some sort of Pacific War that involved Japan and the US/UK, as the Japanese rise to power demanded the removal of their involvement.
 
Germany was particularly vulnerable to this "intellectual co-opting" by French ideas, because Napoleon had dismantled the Holy Roman Empire. He basically murdered Germany-that-was, leaving the German intellectuals to seek a new identity. They merged French ideas about centralised power and activist states with a German romanticism, which proved a dangerous mix. When overcooked, it produced the frothing scum of Nazism. (Even before that, though: the German Kaiserreich was never a thing embodying a real German tradition: it was Prussians emulating Napoleon. This "German" Empire was founded in Versailles, of all places!)
This take on Nazism as some sort of super-Prussianism or hardcore Kaiserreichism isn't true IMO - if you look at the deep origins of Nazism as an ideology, the seeds were sown in Belle Epoque Austria-Hungary. Hitler himself, Rudolph Jung (who wanted to be known as the ""Nazi Karl Marx" and founded the first Nazi Party in Austro-Hungarian Bohemia), Lanz von Liebenfels, even H. S. Chamberlain, the forerunner of Alfred Rosenberg, worked for the A-H government.
 
The European theater of WW2 was, the Pacific Theater was in many ways it's own war that happened to happen at the same time, with separate causes and was much more of an sphere of influence power struggle between a rising power (Japan) and the established powers (UK & US). If nothing had happened in Europe, I think there still would have been some sort of Pacific War that involved Japan and the US/UK, as the Japanese rise to power demanded the removal of their involvement.
That is incorrect, at least insomuch as far as it concerns the development of the war. Japanese initial conquests and aims were limited to China only, in an attempt to secure resources their economy required. Plans for conquest of Pacific were only made once the war in Europe had began, and only in the mid-1940, following the fall of France, did Japan request the right to occupy French Indochina.

As aggressive the Japanese were, they were not entirely stupid. Japanese leadership was well aware that they did not stand a snowball's chance in hell if the British Empire and the United States were allowed to bring their full forces to bear. As a result, the first Japanese plan, made in 1938, involved only a war against the Netherlands to take over the Dutch East Indies. Any fleet movements with regards to the British Empire and United States were purely defensive, relying on the fact that the two navies would be fighting basically at the end of their respective logistical chains. It was only in late 1940 and early 1941 that the Japanese started talking about expanding their conquests to Malaya, Burma, Siam, Indonesia and the Philippines. Powerful Japanese capitalists were very much in favor of these conquests as were the Army generals, but Navy was still reluctant.
This take on Nazism as some sort of super-Prussianism or hardcore Kaiserreichism isn't true IMO - if you look at the deep origins of Nazism as an ideology, the seeds were sown in Belle Epoque Austria-Hungary. Hitler himself, Rudolph Jung (who wanted to be known as the ""Nazi Karl Marx" and founded the first Nazi Party in Austro-Hungarian Bohemia), Lanz von Liebenfels, even H. S. Chamberlain, the forerunner of Alfred Rosenberg, worked for the A-H government.
So which elements of the Belle Epoque A-H you think were the most influential in creation of Nazism?
 
This take on Nazism as some sort of super-Prussianism or hardcore Kaiserreichism isn't true IMO - if you look at the deep origins of Nazism as an ideology, the seeds were sown in Belle Epoque Austria-Hungary. Hitler himself, Rudolph Jung (who wanted to be known as the ""Nazi Karl Marx" and founded the first Nazi Party in Austro-Hungarian Bohemia), Lanz von Liebenfels, even H. S. Chamberlain, the forerunner of Alfred Rosenberg, worked for the A-H government.

"Nazism as some sort of super-Prussianism or hardcore Kaiserreichism" isn't what I was arguing, although I see that I have been unclear. ( I sometimes forget that my established ideas aren't actually known to everyone reading what I write at any given moment. :p )

My view is that they are expressions of the same broad development, although different expressions, and not equally extreme. So... I'm not suggesting so much a direct succession, as stating that the unique traits of the Kaiserreich and the unique traits of Nazism represent different branches of the same tree. Various other things, like Hegelianism and Marxism, are also sprouted from that tree, for instance. And the roots of the tree are found in the Continental Enlightenment.



To the point specifically, I'd like to note that Hitler despised Austria and considered himself a German. This tendency is broadly present among Austrian Nazis and Nazi-sympathisers. They are carriers of the Great German / Pan-German ideal, which is itself a nationalist notion that derived from the death of the old encompassing structure, i.e. the distinctly non-nationalist Holy Roman Empire.

The meaningful link that I'd draw between the Kaiserreich and the Nazi state is that both espoused a tendency towards greater centralisation and top-down organisation, as well as in increase in militarism and a preference for industrial power over traditional agrarianism. They were also both concerned with a unified German nationality and nationalism, as opposed to the localism that had been the universal norm everywhere before the French revolutionaries began to make it a point to exterminate local cultures and impose a generalised "national" culture.

To various degrees, this puts both the Kaiserreich and the Nazi state at odds with the habsburg monarchy, which remained a dynastic, non-nationalist structure; which retained regionalism and localism as core principles within its organisation; which was distinctly less militarist and less purposely industrialist; and which retain a pluriform culture in which the monarchy itself (and not some imposed "central nationality") was the uniting factor.

In short: the Austrian Habsburg state was in many ways the last remnant of what had been the old Holy Roman Empire, whereas the Kaiserreich was one of the products of the "modern", post-Enlightenment world. It was not the Kaiserreich that produced Nazism, no. It was Modernity which produced the Kaiserreich and Nazism. (And Marxism. And many other dubious things.)
 
This take on Nazism as some sort of super-Prussianism or hardcore Kaiserreichism isn't true IMO - if you look at the deep origins of Nazism as an ideology, the seeds were sown in Belle Epoque Austria-Hungary. Hitler himself, Rudolph Jung (who wanted to be known as the ""Nazi Karl Marx" and founded the first Nazi Party in Austro-Hungarian Bohemia), Lanz von Liebenfels, even H. S. Chamberlain, the forerunner of Alfred Rosenberg, worked for the A-H government.

This. I would also recommend checking out Iron Kingdom by Christopher Clark, who pretty thoroughly dismantles the WW1 era caricature of Prussia/Imperial Germany as a "termite-state".
 
This. I would also recommend checking out Iron Kingdom by Christopher Clark, who pretty thoroughly dismantles the WW1 era caricature of Prussia/Imperial Germany as a "termite-state".
Somehow people never see early Third Republic France, a country where schoolboys trained with weapons and earned military-style medals for classroom achievements, where geography class went on about the need to reconquer Alsace-Lorraine and language class had sample sentences like "I will grow up to be a soldier" to teach future tense, as a "militaristic" state.
 
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Somehow people never see early Third Republic France, a country where schoolkids trained with weapons and earned military-style medals for classroom achievements, where geography class went on about the need to reconquer Alsace-Lorraine and language class had sample sentences like "I will grow up to be a soldier" to teach future tense, as a "militaristic" state.

But it certainly was! Here, too, we see the centralist "state-power over all" legacy at work. We can also point to the way that local languages and dialect were literally beaten out of schoolchildren, because to be a good Frenchman, one must speak Parisian French and obey the Parisian government without question or hesitation.

Never forget that the French anthem -- a product of the revolutionary era -- starts with an injunction to drench the soil with the "blood of the impure".
 

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