Whether they knew it or not, the Germans and others who crowded onto the streets and platforms of their country to celebrate these new arrivals were taking part in a historical process far beyond them. Even this emotional act came, when needed, with the same intellectual ballast as every other argument in post-war immigration. Among those interviewed on the television news a number explained that because of Germany’s demographics and labour shortages it ‘made sense’ for the country to bring in these hundreds of thousands of new people. But these rationales appeared to be secondary. They were explanations to back up a decision that had already been taken. The original instinct of a section of the population and their political representatives was the more significant one, and just the latest and most visible expression of a historical burden that many Europeans felt themselves to be carrying.

THE STAIN OF EUROPE

Contemporary Europeans may not be the only people in the world to feel they have been born into original sin, but they certainly appear to suffer from the worst case of it. Today’s Europeans expect themselves, long before anybody else raises it, to bear specific historical guilt that comprises not only war guilt and Holocaust guilt, but a whole gamut of preceding guilts. These include, though are by no means limited to, the abiding guilt for colonialism and racism. And although all of this adds up to a hefty burden, it is no longer one we are expected to bear alone. In recent decades the same blackmail from history that has afflicted modern Europe has also been assumed by a group of noticeably homogeneous nations. What is striking is that all of the other countries expected to suffer for the same sins are countries for whose creation Europe is blamed, so that the impression appears to be that the stain of the Europeans criss-crosses the whole world.