How Angela Merkel Made Her Peace with Power

Imperialistic conspiracy theorizing aside, there is a way to explain what is motivating Germany's use of power. German attitudes of today are the product of a peculiar postwar success story. When American soldiers and diplomats made the postwar settlement, they believed that German political life had been destroyed because of inadequate constitutional guarantees. Adolf Hitler had used the emergency powers of the Weimar Republic's federal constitution to destroy the power (which included control of the police) of individual German states, and also to stimulate the economy through monetary inflation. So Germany needed extremely secure bulwarks to secure constitutional and monetary stability. The two creations of the postwar era that have been most successful - and which also are regularly rated in opinion polls as commanding the greatest respect from Germans - are the Federal constitutional Court and the independent central bank, the Bundesbank.