Sunday, May 23, 2010

Q: What is the Primary Component of Infantry?

A: Infants! If you're not having any now, you don't get to march your infantry all over Europe later.

Victor Davis Hanson and Theodore Dalrymple, both writers that I usually quote with flushed cheeks and a rapid heart rate, are yelping about rising German nationalism and are drawing parallels with the Wehrmacht's misadventures in the last century. That's a bit of misplaced paranoia. For the modern Wehrmacht, there's no "wehr" there. Germans aren't having any kids - their birth rate is well below replacement even before considering battlefield losses - so there's no chance at all of German militarism returning.

Calm down, boys.

4 comments:

Tim Eisele said...

Well, maybe the Germans could just build Menschenjägers instead of having kids.

ligneus said...

Someone observed that the Germans had changed from Romantic Militarism to Romantic Pacifism.
It took catastrophic defeat to effect the change, would a feeling of being conned by the other European countries be enough for them to revert to their former state? Probably not, but if I was a German today I'd be mightily pissed off. I don't know why the two old antagonists, Germany and Britain, don't just quit the EU, it isn't good for either of them, particularly not in the long term.

K T Cat said...

Tim, I scanned the story. I love it! I'll go back and read it when I have time. Thanks!

K T Cat said...

ligneus, the only part that worries me is the possibility of European eugenics returning as the EuroSecularHumanists realize they're handing their countries over to the Moslems. Maybe pacifism has reduced them to being harmless drones content to get baked on weed and visit sex shops for more toys, but then again maybe not.