Seldom if ever in politics do the consequences of poor economic or political judgement force a humiliating volte face as abrupt and as dramatic as the one that the Greek Prime Minister has just had to endure this week. What does it mean for Greeks? Is it emblematic of realpolitik in action?

Like humans across the globe whenever bad things happen to them their response is always to blame a third party. In the case of the Germans after WW1, it was the perfidious Jews who had “stabbed Germany in the back” as they articulated it. In fact this idea was first propagated by General Erich Ludendorff even before the Armistice was signed. Even though it was his personal miscalculations that had resulted in Germany’s defeat, even somebody as resilient and as obdurate as Ludendorff could not utter the words mea culpa – I am to blame. Instead he insulted the virtues of the ardent patriotic Jewish population!

Main picture: Greeks vent their anger against austerity in general and the Germans in particular
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