D Day

On this day 68 years ago, the landing of Allied troops on the Normandy beaches saw the beginning of the end of German occupation of Europe.

An opportune time to cast our minds back even further.
On 10 October 1914, a few weeks after the outbreak of the First World War, the industrialist in charge of the German war production, Walter Rathenau, proposed that Germany should not fight the war. Instead, he suggested that German ambitions for European domination could be achieved by forming a European economic system. He believed that such a system would be rapidly followed by a political union and that a combination of the two would achieve far more for Germany than a war.

With Germany at the heart of the struggle to resolve the current eurozone crisis, I wonder how much of Rathenau's vision has come true!