Do the Poles know GERMANY?
This is something I don't understand about the whole "we need to join NATO because Russia has a history of attacking its neighbours" argument.
If I understand this argument correctly, it is that, in order to defend themselves from the horrible Russians, they want to take refuge in a military alliance which - in Europe - is dominated by Germany.
If I understand it correctly, the argument for NATO is no longer to "keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down". Rather, it is to "keep the Americans in, the Germans up, and the Russians down".
Am I getting this right?
Is it true that the purpose of NATO is to strengthen the Germans and make them the powerhouse "industrial heart" of Europe and the NATO Alliance, in order to defend against the Russians?
In other words, the "bad Germans" are a thing of the past, just an historical anomaly, one which will never repeat, whereas the "bad Russians" are a persistent, somehow genetically innate state of being, one which cannot be resolved, cannot be reasoned with, cannot be addressed through negotiation, commerce or dialogue, but only through military confrontation?
Am I correct in assuming that the Poles, the Baltic nations, the Romanians, the Czechs and everyone else clamouring to join NATO want to do so because they want Germany as a military ally against the evil Russians?
Am I correct in understanding that, taken in this historical context, what happened in Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Romania, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Yugoslavia, Norway, etc. etc. under the Nazis was NOTHING compared to the horror visited upon those peoples by the USSR?
If so, am I then correct in understanding that these same peoples are willing to "let bygones be bygones" when it comes to Germany because the Germans have changed, but the Russians, 30 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, are still all Stalinist totalitarian imperialists at heart?
And lastly, am I to understand that the best way to fight the "bad" Russians is to lock arms with the "good" Germans and fight them militarily?
I am an American. We are often accused - by Europeans - of having only a passing acquaintance with history and a profound lack of appreciation of history's significance and its influence of contemporary thinking in places outside America, and especially in Europe. We are, they say, too influenced by ephemeral modern media and pop culture narratives and iconography.
To me, however, it seems that the Europeans are now the ones who are all too willing to discard historical precedent in favour of current mainstream media narratives.
Am I wrong?
