In less than thirty years, once the unification of the Eastern provinces was successfully achieved, Germany has become the good if not the best pupil of the European Union. It could so set its conditions for the creation of the euro, bolstered by its foreign trade surplus, the rigorous management of its public finances and its low inflation. It revived the great principles which had made its prosperity. As far as back 1895, Paul Valery, the French essayist, had shown that it was coming from its ability “to make returning the maximum of wealth from all the places in the ...