A Sunday or two ago I was 'building' the mornings papers (ie adding the inserts etc wich is done by the retailer, not the publisher) when a particular feature in the Sunday Times review caught my attention. Eminent historian Niall Ferguson was giving his view on the likely outcome of the current crisis in the Eurozone which he saw as follows. The euro he said will survive as a currency and Europe will become a Federation of states with Germany at it's head. The UK will leave Europe and will not be part of this Federation.

I turned to my work mate, a 20 yo lad who I like very much and said "You probably don't realise it but you come from a very tough nation of people. Few of your (or even my) generation would realise this - and it might be burried pretty deep at present - but when the chips are down the British are a pretty hard lot. Even though we do not think so, the rest of the world do. You come from a warrior people and it is in your blood.
Do you realise that had it not been for your grandfather and his father, this country and the rest of Europe would to this day be living under the tyrany of a Nazi jackboot on its neck."

The boy looked up. "Surely it was the Americans who won the war for us - or at least had something to do with it" he said. "Rubbish", I replied. "The Americans certainly supplied the men and equipment that brought about the final defeat of Hitler's armies, but if it hadn't been for the British, who for two years stood alone against the might of Germany, refusing to surender as the rest of Europe had done, then there would have been no final war in Europe in which the axis forces were defeated. The Americans would have co-existed just as easily with a Europe under the controll of Germany as they do now with us. It was only because at the time of Pearl Harbour, Britain was still holding out against Germany that a second battle in the European theatre was held at all. Had we surrendered as the rest of Europe did two years earlier, Germany would have been left alone to run Europe and America would have gone to war in the Pacific with Japan with no further involvement in Europe."

I held up the paper with Niall Fergusons predictions about Germany running a federal Europe in it. "At the end of the day this was all they ever wanted in the first place. They may have lost the wars but they sure as hell won the peace. Shame two hundred million people died in the peocess."