Helmut Kohl

But, you know, the reality is, uh, I'm not suggesting people need to look positively on this or something, but, you know, in, in context, it was a situation where, uh, a basic callousness and brutality was characteristic of decision-making, but also too, I mean, again, the, uh, I think the point of people again and again, you know, one of, uh, you know, the NBH, you know, Croatia, first of all, I mean, the Germans and the Croats are always thick as thieves.

I mean, they always have been, they were in the 30 years war, uh, Helmut Kohl immediately recognized Tudman's independence in 1991.

You know, the Croats are very Slavic, and who are the only people who were not just formally assimilated into the Wehrmacht, but they were the only non-German element constituting the lead assault group at Stalingrad.

It was a bunch of Croatians.

You know, this is why, like, the leadership cast seems so, like, flagrantly, like, either just corrupt or disengaged.

You know, this is why at that time in Europe, too, like, you know, Tudjman's Croatia, like, Helmut Kohl in a kind of one of the most singularly patriotic acts post-war by a German chancellor, he immediately recognized the independent state of Croatia as and Bush and Baker hit the roof when he did that, but that's what prevented some kind of contrivance of democratic Yugoslavia from enduring.

The two-month Croatian was a national socialist state, literally.

That came into perspective, too, and why that like that was that was quite literally unfinished business you know from 1945 um so i mean that's kind of how i mean that's pretty much like how i came to yaki and then i um from there uh i've uh i've kind of moved beyond like based just about everything i've read i was reading when i was a teenager except for stuff like obviously like aristotle and and and like hegel but You know, I continue to defend Yaki, particularly, and I found, I don't believe these, like, internet guys, especially university types.

in the, um, in the political spectrum that for the last 70 years, 80 years, has been wholly monopolistically effectively dominated by the CDU.

The, the party of Helmut Kohl, uh, the, the party of Angela Merkel is now disintegrating, like the British Conservative Party.

Now, um, w- just to come back to this point, uh, and we'll discuss it again in just a, a, a few moments, and the implications of where this leaves the Chancellor Merz right now.

But just holding the, uh, his political future aside just for a couple of minutes, the important thing here is that because the s- the, in, in this la- local state elections in Mecklenburg, the CDU vote fell below 5%.

Vadim, correct me if I'm wrong, this could not be, as I said, there aren't any n- now key state elections for the, for the next year or so.

That result last weekend could not be more important and terrifying for the German political class now.

The CDU, the, the party of Angela Merkel, the party of Helmut Kohl, has pretty much imploded in the, in the most recent state election.

It, it has for the first time since the Second World War, for the first time since the Second World War, the CDU does not have a single-

You know, we had the, uh, NATO was running the, the, uh, Operation Gladio, uh, against, against, you know, we had the kidnapping of the Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro.

We had, uh, terrorist attacks in Belgium and Germany, in, um, in, uh, in, in Italy, um, because there was the fear that, um, nations might turn to the, quote-unquote, "socialism or communism." And, uh, then we also saw the, uh, the assassination of, uh, Deutsche Bank President Alfred Herrhausen because as the Berlin Wall was about to come down, he was a chief economic advisor to Helmut Kohl, and he was, you know, he was advising for, uh, making a deal with Russia to say, 'Hey, you know, German technology and industry, Russian resources, uh, we partner up and, uh, that, you know, fuels Germany's development and, and, um, to the, to the, you know, to the mutual benefit of Germany and Russia.' Well, he was assassinated for, for, for those ideas, and instead we had to expand NATO and, and, uh, s- create conditions for the, for the war that we are now on the verge of.

So I think that the E-E-Europe has a very rough patch, a very difficult transition, but it's very important that we, um, we keep all these lessons of history and economics in mind so that, you know, we can direct the future of Europe's development towards positive ends rather than, you know, splitting into two camps, one camp pushing for socialism, one camp pushing for, you know, free trade capitalism, and then, you know, in the end, uh, falling probably somewhere in between, and then continuing back from the, in the, uh, applying the same pattern from, from, from the beginning.

Now all the, the need, uh-- Well, I keep thinking as well that if instead of these colonial possessions, if the Eu- if the Europeans wanted to revert back to something more sustainable, uh, imagine if they had partnered with, uh, the Russians [chuckles] after, after the Cold War, how different that would be.

You could...

Helmut Kohl afforded the 80 billion U.S. dollar equivalents it was going to cost you to reunite the Germans.

It actually cost twice that.

That's what Kohl was mainly worried about was how much it would cost.