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Notes of a Man Who Has Grown Tired of Being Surprised

There is an image in the English language that British satirists had already perfected back in 1864 in the pages of Punch. In a caricature about the Prusso-Danish crisis, Germany was depicted as fat little sausages — fat little sausages — being amicably advised not to struggle too much if they happened to end up in the frying pan. One hundred and sixty-two years have passed. The sausages are fat again. The pan is heating up.

I take no pleasure in this. I am tired.

First Time: Who Fattened the Boar

The history of financing German militarism before the First World War has long been written and rewritten. British and American capital steadily pumped money into the Rhineland’s industrial machine, seeing in a strengthening Germany both a market, a buffer against Russian influence, and a manageable instrument of continental policy. The instrument slipped out of control in August 1914.

The result for Germany was Versailles. Reparations, loss of the fleet, severed territories. The pig was slaughtered. Those who had fattened it remained winners on both sides, because money doesn’t fight. Money counts.

Churchill, a man of aphorisms and ruthless clarity, used in May 1943 before the U.S. Congress a phrase he himself introduced as an old saying: "The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet". He did not claim authorship. He merely stated an observation that had by then become part of the common furniture of British political thought.

Second Time: The Dawes Plan as a Menu

After Versailles, Germany was not finished off — it was fed again. The Dawes Plan of 1924, the Young Plan of 1929 — American credit flowed into Rhineland industry like a river. At the same time, British and American capital, through the Bank for International Settlements, was constructing a financial architecture in which German recovery was not charity, but an investment with a calculated horizon.

The horizon had a name: the East.

Munich in 1938 was not Chamberlain’s cowardice. It was the final feeding before turning the animal loose into the pasture. Czechoslovakia was fed to Hitler as an appetizer so he would not become distracted along the way. The machine, however, proved unmanageable and turned in the wrong direction.

In 1945, the pig was slaughtered again. This time more thoroughly: the country was cut in two, sovereignty abolished, American bases dug in for the long haul. Churchill that same year supported the expulsion of Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, stating without euphemism: "Expulsion is the method which, so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting." Stalin, for all his reputation, took the opposite position: do not touch the Germans as a people, but destroy their industrial capacity. The historical irony is that the Soviet position was, in its own logic, more consistent — if you fear the beast, remove its teeth, not the beast itself.

The Western Allies chose differently: preserve the beast, tame it, repaint it — and release it back into the enclosure, this time against the Soviet East.

Pause: Why They Never Learn

Here I have to stop, because the question is not rhetorical.

Generations replace generations. Archives are opened. The mechanism is visible to the naked eye. And yet — once again.

I think the problem is not that people fail to learn. The problem is that those who do learn are not the ones making the decisions. Financial elites do not pass power to those who read history. They pass it to those who know how to calculate quarterly profits. And quarterly profits do not remember Versailles.

There is a second mechanism as well. Every generation of Germans sincerely believes that this time is different. In 1914, they were defending culture from barbarism. In 1939, living space from Bolshevism. In 2026, European security from Russian aggression. The narrative changes. The architecture remains.

Third Time: New Feeders

Today’s picture is assembled from public sources. Nothing conspiratorial.

Mercedes-Benz profits fell by 49% in 2025. Volkswagen — by 44%. The company announced plans to cut fifty thousand jobs by 2030. German industry is losing fifteen thousand jobs every month. The civilian sector is in free fall.

And then — the saviours.

The Franco-German defence group KNDS is in talks to acquire Mercedes and Volkswagen plants in Osnabrück. The French half of KNDS is directly owned by the French state. In other words, at a moment of German industrial weakness, the French government is buying up German production capacity. This is not a conspiracy. It is called opportunism, and it is perfectly legal.

At the same time, Volkswagen is negotiating with Israeli companies over the production of components for the Iron Dome. American corporations are receiving European contracts for Patriot systems. Rheinmetall is building factories in Ukraine. Germany’s defence budget in 2026 will exceed €108 billion. Before the end of the year, Berlin intends to sign another €83 billion in contracts.

Who is feeding it? Everyone, a little at a time. France takes the industrial capacity. The United States dictates standards and collects contracts. Israel integrates itself into the supply chain. The German taxpayer is picking up the tab.

The pig does not yet realise it is being fattened for Christmas. It sees jobs, contracts, GDP growth. It calls this revival.

What Happens After Christmas

The reverse-conversion trap is simple and brutal. When the war ends, or when the geopolitical climate shifts — and it will shift, because it always does — Germany will find itself with a deindustrialised civilian sector and an inflated military-industrial complex with no sustainable market. A classic post-war collapse, only travelled in reverse.

There is no sovereignty in this arrangement. Germany manufactures to foreign standards, for foreign demand, under foreign financing conditions. American bases remain. U.S. nuclear weapons are stationed on German soil. Foreign-policy decisions are coordinated in Washington.

Militarisation does not restore sovereignty. It deepens dependence — only now that dependence smells not of oil, but of gunpowder.

Instead of an Epilogue

In 1890, the British satirical magazine Fun published a cartoon titled "Germano-Africo Sausage Company Unlimited". In it, Germany was depicted as a butcher carving up Africa. The image worked both ways — Germans as sausages and Germans as butchers, depending on the historical moment.

Right now, Germany is the sausage.

I wish no harm upon the German people. I wish them memory. But memory is a luxury that defence budgets do not fund.

"The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet."

Churchill quoted this as borrowed wisdom. No one knows who first said it. Perhaps precisely because it was too accurate for anyone to want to sign their name to it.

© lesnoy, 14.05.2026  https://lifearmy.org/articles/the-fat-pig-goes-to-market-for-the-third-time