The European Mentality of Revenge and Retribution

Faced with the task of writing on such a large book, I decided to write on the chapter that interested me the most, "Retribution." It seems to me that cultural conflict and the idea of retribution is much more central to European politics than most people think about. After all, the same ethnic and national groups have been fighting over the same space of land for more than a thousand years. Throughout European history, territories of a certain ethnic makeup have been controlled by nations of conflicting ethnicity. Places such as the Rhineland, Alsace and Lorraine have bounced between Germany/Prussia and France, and have been sources of conflict for the two nations on multiple occasions. Even the city of Strasbourg (protip: German name) is located in France today. After the first World War, the British and French imposed much harsher penalties on the Germans than necessary. Yes, the Germans were indeed the aggressors in World War I, but that fact alone did not justify the reparations and regulations set on Germany. It would seem that some cultural retributive factors, not simply practical peace-keeping measures, were involved in these proceedings. These harsh sanctions inflicted on the Germans did not go over well with the German population, leading to a very anti-ally, pro-german nationalist mentality. This sentiment played nicely into the super-nationalist facist policies of Adolf Hitler. Fascism depends strogly on extreme nationalism, and it was easy to secure this with the "everyone is trying to keep us down" mentality that was prevalent after World War I. Hitler used this to justify his expansionist policies of liebensraum and reclaiming territoties with historically German populations. After the Second World War, it's not surprising that a similar retributive mentality was in place. Judt discusses at length the different countries and their treatment of Nazi sympathizers. People in invaded countries were very angry and bitter about the Nazi regimes, and felt the need to punish those who contributed to it. In rebuilding Germany, however, Judt says they ran into a problem. Nazi sympathizers were everywhere: in civil service jobs, teachers, doctors etc. People necessary to the functioning of society were, for the most part, Nazis. The subsequent "denazification" of Germany understanably did not go over well with the Germans, and within several years, people were villifying the new regime and glorifying nazi ideals. This is why the EU is such a positive step. By providing a forum for cooperation and arbitration and making the nations more cohesive, it makes these cultural attitudes much more mild.