Another way of putting it: German history since 1870 is series of attempts to recreate the Holy Roman Empire. Bismarck & the Kaiser's Second Reich, Hitler's Third Reich, and now the Merkel led EU imposing the ECB facilitated Eurozone diktat. To paraphrase von Clausewitz: finance is the continuation of politics by other means. Hence Merkel's ability to remove uncooperative heads of govt in Italy & Greece in recent years.