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The next step: "Bomb Vienna"? Pangermanism yesterday and today We all hope that no responsible policy maker will ever pronounce these words. Yet hardly a year ago another European capital, Belgrade, was bombarded with a variety of "smart" and not so smart weapons. Granted, the human rights violations perpetrated by Serbia’s president and his patently undemocratic entourage are a far cry from what are up to now just the electioneering speeches on "Austria for the Austrians" of Joerg Haider, leader of the country’s "Freedom Party", recipient of an unprecedented censure by European Union governments. Yet there are ominous parallels: Milosevic was presented to public opinion as a "communist", "racist" and promoter of "ethnic cleansing", and therefore deserving to be bombed into submission, while a veil of silence was drawn over the ferocious acts committed by other protagonists in the Balkan scenario. Now the scene is being set for Haider: a "neo-nazi", "racist" and, "Euro-skeptic", the latter being a new category of the "political incorrect" in today’s Europe. What is worrying is not so much (or not only) when Haider says things like "we were all nazis then" when referring to Austria in the 1930s; a statement which unfortunately is historically true, though, as in Germany, anti-nazi resistance did develop. It is disturbing that hardly any mention is made of the real roots of Haider’s policy, i.e. Pangermanism, a doctrine which developed long before nazism and has continued since. Its present-day from is regionalist Europeanism promoted by a variety of movements, mostly in the German-speaking countries but with allies such as Italy’s Northern League (see "I confini dell’odio" by Bruno Luvera’, Rome, 1999). Pangermanism is a German version of the expansionist doctrines developed by the other major powers in the nineteenth century. Unlike other imperial policies, however, it does not view Europe or the world simply as a community of nations ranked by strength and resources, but rather as a "great chessboard" (to use Z. Brzinski’s expression) where the players are not so much states but ethnic or racial groups. One of the best known early promoters of this view of history was Arthur-Joseph De Gobineau, the French aristocrat who liked to boast descent from a Viking pirate. With the failure outright military expansion in the two world wars, this world view sees Europe as a constellation of "minorities" (since the word "race" is taboo) orbiting around what is essentially the historical core of the German Reich. Pangermanism was formally organized in 1890 as the "Alldeutscher Verband". The theory had two major currents: the "grossdeutsch" ("great German") one aspiring to restore the hegemony of Catholic Vienna, and the "kleindeutsch" ("small German") one looking to Prussia and Berlin. After the defeat of the Central empires in 1918, Vienna was definitely relegated to a satellite role. Paradoxically, Austrian Pangermanism tended to be more virulent than in Germany proper. (To be continued)
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