Bild newspaper forgets past and insults Italians

With the possible appointment of Italian banker Mario Draghi to replace Jean-Claude Trichet at the helm of the European Central Bank, German tabloid Bild newspaper has commented that 'inflation and Italians' go together 'like tomato sauce and spaghetti'. Bild is 'demanding' a German be appointed to the top job.

It's a coincidence that a German newspaper should make such an insulting 'demand' on the anniversary date of the founding in 1939 of the Gestapo.

'Tomato sauce and spaghetti' has never done to mankind what Germany's Secret Police did. And the Gestapo also 'demanded' much from far too many people. Bild talks about Italians and inflation. The Gestapo helped the Germans inflate their coffers.

It was ordinary Germans by their willingness to denounce one another who supplied the Gestapo with the information that determined whom the Gestapo arrested. The popular picture of the Gestapo with its spies everywhere terrorising German society has been firmly rejected by most historians as a myth invented after the war as a cover for German society's widespread complicity in allowing the Gestapo to work.

So please, Bild, think again, before you make your nasty comments.

Remember too that this is the week 66 years ago that the Soviet Army freed Berlin. Many of the 1,000,000 soldiers who poured into Berlin in 1945 began their long march at the Volga. They too had been gratuitously insulted by the Germans and called terrible names.

Remember? Nor can we ever forget.

Name calling is never appropriate. Is that not what the founding memebrs of the European Union had in mind?

It had been expected that the ECB job would go to the current Bundesbank chief, Axel Weber, but Mr Weber pulled out of the race. Rumour has it that he does not approve of the monetary policies of Angela Merkel.