In modern Germany, where even discussion of political ideology is a matter which has to be treated with extreme circumspection, political debate centers on the safer area of financial management, and in recent years the main purpose of financial management in Germany has been to ensure a smooth path toward full European unification. Since the currency reform of 1948 and the Marshall Plan, the citizens of the German Federal Republic have been bribed with the carrot of constantly increasing living standards in return for their political acquiescence to the Western world order, a formula summed up in Churchill’s unforgettable postwar wish that the Germans stay “fat and impotent.” The German Federal Republic became the milk cow of numerous costly projects, including the establishment of the state of Israel, financial assistance to the East, the financing of the Gulf War, and, not least, the Common Market; Germany pays 80 percent of the European Union’s budget.

Germany’s lack of political clout has been tolerated by her citizens because of a standard of living which until recently was the envy of her neighbors. The citizens of the “strawberry Reich,” as Ulrike Meinhof called the Federal Republic of Germany, accept the loss of national pride and sovereignty because they see that the international order ensures them security and wealth. The fate of Carthage and the outcome of the Third Punic War is deeply imprinted in the German psyche. National arrogance or feelings of superiority toward the Poles or Russians are channeled into an exclusively economic superiority. This superiority was embodied in the Deutschmark. The mark is the proof both of German success and of acquiescence to the postwar order.

This is the background to the growing German unease about the common currency project, and in particular the shock which has accompanied recent admissions from the government that all is not well financially. Theo Waigel, the finance minister, has had to come to terms with a projected shortfall in the national budget. Of course, as a master of diplomacy, Waigel does not use such emotive words as “bankrupt,” but one does not have to be a financial wizard to understand the meaning of an eight billion mark gap in the state budget this year. Since the deficit is over three percent of GNP, Waigel had intended to revalue Germany’s gold reserves in order to meet the criteria for financial union, which his own administration has insisted on as the sine qua non of monetary union. The German central bank was reluctant to cooperate in the government’s financial prestidigitation, and in the debate that followed, Germans finally learned details about the country’s financial responsibilities: while Germany pays 80 percent of the E.U. budget, Spain receives 21,000 marks every minute from Brussels (11 billion marks last year and likely more this year).

The Germans are effectively the paymasters of European union, but they have not even been asked whether they want monetary union. The country’s four major parties, however, are all in favor of European unity. A referendum on monetary union could go either way, and most commentators agree that a rejection of, say, the Maastricht Treaty in a referendum would jeopardize the E.U. itself.

Outsiders may wonder how the governing party, the Christian Democrats, can soldier on in the face of its abysmal record of growing unemployment (now 4 million), declining educational standards, environmental degradation, mounting criminality, the near certainty that the state cannot guarantee national pensions in 30 years time, national self-humiliation on an unparalleled scale, a grotesque abuse of public funds, and a mounting national debt. There are several reasons: first, the use by the ruling government of the constitution to silence its more radical critics. Opposition that threatens to undermine the constitution (as defined by the mainline political parties themselves) is subject to harassment and observation by the state; calls for a referendum on the single currency are denounced as unconstitutional. Second, the tradition of compromise and non-ideological opposition is ingrained in the German constitution and postwar German political life. Third, there is the German tendency to take authority on trust. Alles ist gut was von oben kommt. Authority, as the saying goes, is an argument half won in Germany, and Kohl exudes plenty of it. The opposition SPD is chary of any breath of nationalism and has been unable to come up with an effective challenger to Kohl. It still has one foot in the tarpits of macroeconomic state planning, and this divides those opposed to Kohl between the state planners and the economic liberals. All the mainstream political parties support Kohl’s chief political ambition: the merging of Europe’s leading nations in a financial and political bloc dedicated to making the world a better place for the rich.

What is the alternative? The communist PDS (the former SED of East Germany) and the nationalist Republicans have declared their principled opposition to the project for monetary union, but both are personae non gratae in the mainstream press and fear being labeled Verfassungsfeindlich (an enemy of the constitution), which is political suicide in a country where political respectability is next to godliness.

Most Germans realize that Kohl’s ambition is not to fulfill his inaugural oath to “serve the German people” but to become the man who restores the empire of Charlemagne and destroys the European nation-states. Germans have indicated that they are able to live with the postwar system and Kohl’s political ambitions, but they are now beginning to ask themselves if they can continue to live with his economic agenda. The Bundesbank is finding itself in the unlikely role of speaking for the common people against the machinations of a government which many Germans believe represents a self-serving, antidemocratic clique. If the criteria for monetary union are weakened, the new money which will replace the beloved Deutschmark will bring Germans down economically to the level of Spain or Greece. Ominously for Germans, the mark has lately been slipping against the pound and dollar. The strong Deutschmark has enabled Germans to enjoy package tours all around the world and to impress underprivileged aborigines with their bulging beer-bellies and gold bangles. The luxury holiday has become a way of life for them. Not being able to afford package holidays would be an unthinkable blow to the German Wohlstand.

Germans dare not lose their living standard because they have nothing else. (Appearances of prosperity are somewhat deceptive: for example, Germany has the lowest percentage of owner-occupied property in Western Europe, and there is a large black market of foreign laborers who take or send their untaxed wages home.) The danger for the Bonn establishment is that, if the German people are no longer allowed to be fat, they may begin to wonder why they have to remain impotent.