What Is It That Makes The Germans So Attuned to Bloodletting?

Around 1992, I wrote this about Germany: “Xenophobia is part of the German BEING. Hatred and persecution of strangers is part of the German SOUL. As far back as the twelfth century, history tells us, Germans have been organizing attacks against foreigners. One such group was the ARMLEDER, members of which wore red leather and short jackets to roam the streets with nothing but lynching intentions. In 1298, a German Knight, Rindfleisch, organized a series of pogroms against Jews whom he accused of murdering little children. The story of Adolf Hitler, another product of Germany’s homophobia, is too well known to need recounting here.” - https://alaye.biz/on-germany/

That Europe suffers from selective amnesia is a known known. Another axiom is that Europe remembers its victims only when the dead are white. It mourns crimes only when Europe itself bleeds. The corpses of Africans, Arabs, and Asians are usually buried beneath footnotes, euphemisms, and academic conferences sponsored by the descendants of the executioners themselves.

And nowhere is this moral schizophrenia more visible than in Germany — that eternally restless warring nation which periodically dresses its appetite for domination in the fashionable costume of civilization.

Germans have mastered the art of political cosmetics. They speak softly, but hypocritically. They sanctimoniously build Holocaust memorials, have their politicians ceremonially bow their heads at museums, while their media sprouts and exports an image of sober democratic maturity.

But nations, like individuals, do not escape their deepest instincts through public relations campaigns. Under pressure, civilizations return to their oldest reflexes.

And Germany’s oldest reflex has always been militarized power sanctified by moral self-righteousness. Modern Germany has reverted to Bismarck on steroids.

This is why Berlin’s fanatical support for Israel’s annihilation of Gaza should surprise nobody familiar with history. Germany is not behaving anomalously; it’s behaving historically.

The mistake many people, especially Africans, make is to imagine Nazism as some mysterious eruption disconnected from European civilization. That is convenient nonsense concocted by European mythologists masquerading as historians. Hitler was not an alien accident. Auschwitz did not descend from the sky like volcanic ash. Nazism was merely Europe’s colonial barbarism returning home after centuries of rehearsal abroad.

Long before Jews were herded into camps in Europe, Africans were already being exterminated by European empires in the colonies. The Belgians did it in the Congo; the Italians did it in Ethiopia; the British did it in Nigeria, Kenya, and other places. But Germany distinguished itself early in this industry of organized savagery.

In Namibia, during the Herero and Nama genocide of 1904, German General Lothar von Trotha issued extermination orders with chilling bureaucratic precision. Men, women, and children were driven into the Omaheke Desert to die slowly of thirst. That was where the first concentration camps emerged, and crude Medical experiments were performed on Africans whose skulls were shipped to Germany for grotesque racial “science.”

The blueprint for later European horrors was already visible in Africa decades before Auschwitz.

That historical truth remains one of the greatest suppressed scandals of modern civilization. I chronicled it in my article: Who owns Papa’s Land, https://femiakogun.substack.com/p/who-owns-papas-land

German colonialism may have been shorter than Britain’s or France’s, but it was concentrated like industrial acid. The mentality mattered more than the duration.

In Cameroon, Tanganyika, and South West Africa, German colonial officers ruled with a mixture of racial arrogance and militarized sadism. The African was viewed not as a human being but as a source of labor — an expendable biological tool in the service of imperial ambition.

Europe tested fascism on Africans before applying it internally.

Because nations do not simply erase political psychology after military defeat, defeated instincts often go underground, mutate, and later re-emerge beneath newer slogans. We witness this in the current Germany’s unflinching, illogical, and totally insane provocations against Russia.

Modern Germany was forged in the furnace of Prussian militarism under Otto von Bismarck, where discipline became theology, and obedience became civic virtue. The state became sacred, as witnessed in the throaty national anthem - Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles.

Under this German martial discipline, human beings are reduced to mere state automatons, with efficiency rising above compassion and order superseding conscience.

These values helped produce Germany’s terrifying industrial capacity, but they also produced a civilization dangerously susceptible to mechanized brutality whenever ideology fused with state power.

And today, once again, Germany stands at the center of European militarization.

Observe what is happening across Europe. Under the pretext of the Ukraine war and “Russian threats,” Germany (forgetting its obligations under international laws) is rebuilding military capacity with remarkable enthusiasm. German elites now openly speak the language of rearmament, strategic autonomy, and continental military leadership. Europe’s old giant is awakening from its post-1945 restraints with frightening speed.

Per reports, the countdown to a 2030 war with Russia has begun. The memory of World War II has already faded. No lesson learned. International laws and obligations be damned.

The tragedy is not merely that Germany supports Israel. Many Western states do. The deeper obscenity lies in Germany’s moral posture while doing so. German politicians invoke “Never Again” while supplying diplomatic, political, and military cover for the real-time obliteration of Palestinian society. Hospitals flattened. Refugee camps bombed. Children were pulled from the rubble in pieces. Entire civilian populations starved under siege conditions — all rationalized as security necessities.

The same civilization that once classified human beings according to racial value now watches Palestinians being described as “human animals” and somehow hears no echo from its own past.

Unable to fully confront the colonial roots of its own historical violence, Germany has converted Holocaust guilt into unconditional support for Israeli state power.

The result is moral insanity masquerading as ethical responsibility. Berlin now treats criticism of Israeli atrocities almost as blasphemy. At the same time, police suppress pro-Palestinian demonstrations with the same cold bureaucratic efficiency that has always characterized the German state under ideological stress.

The uniforms change. The reflex survives. The band marches on.

Europe as a whole remains trapped inside this contradiction. The continent that colonized half the earth now lectures humanity about international law. The same Europe that destroyed Libya, shattered Yugoslavia, armed extremists in Syria, destabilized the Sahel, and supervised the economic suffocation of Africa suddenly speaks as guardian of civilization.

One almost admires the stunning audacity.
Germany occupies a special place in this theatre of hypocrisy because German elites continue pretending fascism was merely a temporary deviation rather than the logical culmination of European racial imperialism. By isolating Nazism from colonial history, Europe preserved the underlying mentality while condemning only its most embarrassing manifestation.

Thus, the virus survives beneath democratic vocabulary.

Look closely at Europe today. Russophobia saturates public discourse. Dissent is increasingly criminalized, and militarization is normalized. While European officials bellow human rights slogans, propaganda expands daily, and censorship intensifies under the noble slogans. Entire populations are conditioned psychologically for permanent geopolitical confrontation.

And Germany — twice the architect of catastrophic European wars — now again positions itself as the moral and military engine of the continent.

One would think the graveyards of Stalingrad and Berlin might have inspired a little humility. Unfortunately, imperial power rarely learns; it merely pauses.

And Africans must clearly understand the danger, because European crises never remain confined to Europe. Whenever Europe enters ideological convulsions, Africa eventually absorbs the consequences — through proxy wars, sanctions, economic extraction, military destabilization, or resource plunder disguised as partnership.

That is why we keep on calling on Africa to abandon its childish romanticism about Europe.

Too many African elites still approach Europe psychologically like colonial-era clerks seeking approval from imperial supervisors. They study European technology while ignoring European history. They memorize European rhetoric while forgetting the rivers of blood beneath Europe’s prosperity.

An African ruling class suffering from historical amnesia becomes easy prey for foreign manipulation.

Germany’s current behavior toward Palestine is not simply about Israel. It reveals something deeper about Europe itself — a civilization that still struggles to recognize the full humanity of those outside its moral tribe. European compassion remains selective. Its touted universal principles mysteriously become negotiable whenever the victims are Africans, Arabs, and other non-Europeans.

As we have stressed continuously, these are lessons that Africa must never ignore.

History is not dead; it migrates through institutions, instincts, and political culture. And civilizations carry memory in their bloodstream long after flags change and monuments are erected.

Germany changed governments. It changed constitutions. It changed slogans. But under sufficient geopolitical pressure, old habits of militarized moral absolutism are resurfacing at astonishing speed.

And that is why the world should pay attention when Germany speaks the language of rearmament while simultaneously defending industrial-scale destruction in Gaza.

We, in Africa, must be constantly aware that Europe has walked this road before.

And each time Europe loses its mind, humanity, especially Africans, pays in copious blood.

(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, Essayist, Satirist, Social Commentator, Geopolitical Analyst.)

Blog: https://femiakogun.substack.com