Homelands: A Personal History of Europe

I give here the sources for all quotations in the text, apart from those that come directly from my notebooks, diaries and recollections. Almost all quotations for which I am the primary source were noted down at the time; only a very few are drawn from subsequent recollection. I also give sources for many of the more striking facts and figures in the text, together with some additional detail and occasional caveats. Book titles are given according to the Oxford 'short title' convention: full publication details at first mention, short title thereafter. References are keyed to a few words in the original English text. Numbers in brackets at the beginning of each line are page numbers for the UK edition published by Bodley Head in 2023. Wherever possible, I have given an online source to which the reader can go directly from a link in these notes. I'm most grateful to Josef Lolacher for his invaluable assistance in preparing these notes. TGA

Epigraph

'To write the genuine history of present-day Europe: there is an aim for the whole of one's life.'... This translation is by Isaiah Berlin. Isaiah Berlin, ‘The Hedgehog and the Fox’, in Henry Hardy & Roger Hausheer (eds.), The Proper Study of Mankind. An Anthology of Essays, Chatto & Windus, London 1997, p.445.

'It is quite true what philosophy tells us, that life must be understood backwards....'… Søren Kierkegaard, Journal JJ:167, in K. Brian Söderquist et al. (eds.), Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks. Vol. 2: Journals EE-KK, Princeton University Press, Princeton 2015, p.179.

Prologue: Our time

(xi) the Tintin book Explorers on the Moon... The French original, with the even more apt title On a marché sur la lune, was first published in 1954, and the British edition in 1959.

(xii) When Franz Kafka wrote in a letter to his fiancée 'basically I'm Chinese'... Postcard from Marienbad to Felice Bauer, mid-May 1916, in Franz Kafka, Briefe an Felice, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2009, p.657.

(xiii) 'he says Europe and means France'… As for so many famous attributed quotations, we have been unable to find a source for him saying exactly this. Hence ‘supposedly’.

(xiv) Thus, if there are today some 850 million Europeans… This includes Russia, Turkey and the Caucasus but not Central Asia. The figure is based on the most recent population data published by the World Bank (2021), see https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL

Destroyed (1945)

Westen

(4) Operation Gomorrah, which resulted in at least 900,000 people fleeing from the ruined city... Overy gives slightly different figures on pages 335 and 436, see Richard Overy, The Bombing War. Europe 1939-1945, Penguin Books, London 2014.

'On the first hour of my first day…'… 'The Beginner', from Kipling's Epitaphs of the War, see https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57409/epitaphs-of-the-war

(6) a detailed, carefully researched chronicle of Westen's history… Jan Osmers, Amt und Dorf Westen. Mit einer Häuserliste von Friedhelm Bluhm, Stint, Bremen 1997.

Eibia munitions factory which, amongst other things,… Osmers, Westen, p.145; and for full detail, Andrea Hesse, Prädikat Bestbetrieb – die Eibia GmbH für chemische Produkte in Bomlitz, LIT, Münster 1995.

The 'stench of putrefying flesh' and 'living skeletons with haggard yellowish faces'… Keith Lowe, Savage Continent. Europe in the Aftermath of World War II. Picador, New York 2012, pp.84-85.

'I looked down in the half light, and saw a woman crouching at my feet…'… quoted in William I. Hitchcock, TheBitter Road to Freedom. The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe, Free Press, New York 2008, p.302.

(7) 'sitting beside one of such corpses… eating flesh that I have no doubt was human flesh'... Lowe, Savage Continent, p.85.

'every trick that rigor mortis can play with the human countenance, every freakish posture that a sprawling human skeleton, thrown down at random, can assume'… From the testimony of Derick Sington, one of the first officers to enter the camp, quoted in Lowe, Savage Continent, p.85.

Hell

(8) some 18,000 people died in Bergen-Belsen in just one month, March 1945… Hitchcock, Bitter Road, p.301; Lowe, Savage Continent, p.85.

nearly 8 million forced labourers in Germany at the end of the war… Lowe, Savage Continent, p.27.

93% of living space in Düsseldorf was uninhabitable… Walter Lacqueur, Europe since Hitler. The Rebirth of Europe, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1982, p.16.

Or that Belarus lost some 2 million people out of a pre-war population of around 9 million, with another 3 million or more displaced?… Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands, Bodley Head, London 2010, p.251.

'a total of close to 90 million people were either killed or displaced in Europe between 1939 and 1948'… Mark Mazower, Dark Continent. Europe’s Twentieth Century, Allen Lane, London 1998, p.222.

Roughly one out of every six Europeans… In 1939, the population of Europe – excluding non-combatant countries (i.e., Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Andorra, and Vatican) but including the European republics of the Soviet Union – was roughly 503 million. The 90 million people who were killed or displaced thus correspond to about 18% of the European population. For a list of countries by population in 1939, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_in_1939

(9) 'unto the third and fourth generation'… Deuteronomy, Ch. 5, verse 9.

When I investigated the lives of the Stasi officers who had spied on me in east Germany in the late 1970s and early 1980s… see Timothy Garton Ash, The File: A Personal History, Atlantic Books, London 2009.

Osten

(11) In the village of Osten… This was one of three villages called Osten in the German Reich in 1911, according to Petzolds Gemeinde- und Ortslexikon. See Hermann Pelocke, Petzolds Gemeinde- und Ortslexikon des Deuschen Reiches, E. H. Petzold, Bischofswerda 1911.

(12) The Wągrowiec area well illustrates… see the useful local history Edmund Makowski, Dzieje Wągrowca, Wydawnictwo WBP, Poznań 1994.

(13) 'nearly all the women were raped – among the victims were old women of sixty and seventy-five and girls of fifteen or even twelve. Many were raped ten, twenty or thirty times.'… Mazower, Dark Continent, p.220, quoting Carl Tighe, Gdańsk. National Identity in the Polish-German Borderlands, Pluto Press, London 1990, p.197.

'shoot me! Just shoot!' 'Oh,' Lehndorff exclaims, 'how many envious looks the dead must endure!'… Hans Graf von Lehndorff, Ostpreussisches Tagebuch. Aufzeichnung eines Arztes aus den Jahren 1945-1947, DTV, München 1981, p.75 and p.77.

'the [Polish] local councillor here says he's sorry we have to leave our homeland in this way…'… Lehndorff, Ostpreussisches Tagebuch, p.302.

(14) 'I and the public know/what all schoolchildren learn'... W. H. Auden, 'September 1, 1939', see https://poets.org/poem/september-1-1939

If a child went missing from the group, the others would say, quite matter-of-factly 'oh, he is dead'.… quoted by Mazower, Dark Continent, p.225-6, from the very remarkable book by Dorothy Macardle, Children of Europe, The Beacon Press, Boston 1951.

Zero, recurring

(15) At least 8 million people died in the Russian civil war… Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Civil War, Allen & Unwin, Boston/London 1987 and see https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/highest-death-toll-from-a-civil-war

(16) In Estonia, the so-called 'forest brothers' went on fighting the Russian communist occupation from their camouflaged woodland hideouts well into the 1950s. The last surviving forest brother, August Sabbe, only died when the KGB tried to arrest him in 1978.… Lowe, Savage Continent, pp.340-58.

Stalin's gulag continued to inflict the torments described by Alexander Solzhenitsyn… see Anne Applebaum, Gulag. A History, Allen Lane, London 2003.

as the Czech dissident playwright Václav Havel kept pointing out,… Timothy Garton Ash, The Uses of Adversity. Essays on the Fate of Central Europe, Random House, New York 1989, pp.196-8.

Of fathers and fatherlands

(18) 'Run through the middle of his body by a German rifle…'… quoted in Alex Kershaw, The First Wave. The D-Day Warriors Who Led the Way to Victory in World War II, Caliber, New York 2019, p.263.

(19) At about 7.30 am… Captain John Garton Ash landed… I am drawing on interviews I conducted with my father in 2011. See also the obituary in The Daily Telegraph, 16 July 2014. My father's recollection was that the advance party of the Green Howards landed a few minutes after H-Hour, 7:25 AM. The local historian Jean-François Le Cuziat reconstructs from multiple British sources that it must have been sometime between 7:30 AM and 7:37 AM.

The memory engine

(21) It is 1942. In a tram rattling through Nazi-occupied Warsaw sits an emaciated, half-starved 10-year-old boy. Bronek.... detail from Gazeta Wyborcza, DF, 21 July 2008, supplemented by communications from Jarosław Kurski.

(24) 'a memory transfusion'... See, for example, https://www.bu.edu/jewishstudies/2017/07/10/elie-wiesel-a-retrospective-week-3/; This was also quoted by Pope Francis when receiving the Charlemagne Prize in 2016, https://www.agensir.it/europa/2016/05/07/the-pope-calls-for-a-memory-transfusion-for-europe-to-build-bridges-not-walls/

Divided (1961-1979)

Curfew

(27) The student occupation of the Polytechnic in Athens... Detail from Kostis Kornetis, Children of the Dictatorship. Student Resistance, Cultural Politics, and the “Long 1960s” in Greece, Berghahn Books, New York/Oxford 2016.

(28) 'Where? I wish this had happened!'… Kornetis, Children of the Dictatorship, p.259.

Europe of the Dictators… Elizabeth Wiskemann, Europe of the Dictators, Collins, London 1966.

If we include the European republics of the Soviet Union, then some 389 million Europeans lived under dictatorships whereas only 289 million lived in democracies... Own calculations based on 1973 World Bank data, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sp.pop.totl?end=1973&most_recent_value_desc=true&start=1960. The following countries were counted as dictatorships: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Georgia, Germany (East), Greece, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Soviet Union, Spain, Yugoslavia.

the Greek Colonels banned long hair, mini-skirts, and the study of sociology... Tony Judt, Postwar. A History of Europe Since 1945, William Heinemann, London 2005, p.507.

(29) 'similar to, if not trained by, the German Gestapo'… David Birmingham, A Concise History of Portugal, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1993, p.162.

would still raise and straighten their right arms in the fascist salute… Paul Preston, Franco, Fontana Press, London 1995, p.753. The unofficial use of the salute for political and military purposes was only repealed upon the resignation of the Franco-appointed Prime Minister Carlos Arias Navarro and the appointment of Prime Minister Adolfo Suárez by the King of Spain, Juan Carlos I, on 3 July 1976. See also Paloma Aguilar, Memory and Amnesia: The Role of the Spanish Civil War in the Transition to Democracy, Berghahn Books, New York 2002.

Franco was attending a memorial mass for the fascist hero Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera... ABC, 21 November 1973, p.27; ABC Sevilla, 21 November 1973, p.33.

'No sooner had we started to eat than…'… Jonathan Keates, personal communication to the author

(30) The post-Salazarist People's National Action… A detailed report on the 1973 legislative elections from the Inter-Parliamentary Union can be found here http://archive.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/arc/PORTUGAL_1973_E.PDF

476 political prisoners… The last time so many students were under arrest had been in 1956. Guya Accornero, 'A mobilização estudantil no processo de radicalização política durante o Marcelismo', Análise Social, 208, 2013, pp.572-591.

The punishment for a man who murdered his adulterous wife… see Art. 372 of the 1886 Penal Code (Código Penal 1868) https://www.fd.unl.pt/Anexos/Investigacao/1274.pdf

(31) the Yugoslav-German singer Bata Illic explained, with an irresistible twirl of his flared trousers... You can watch him strutting his stuff in 1973 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vQ0dTCU1x8 and in 1974: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_aKTXaweKc

into having unmarried sex on their first encounter... to be strictly accurate, he only says 'bleibst Du bei mir', which can mean 'stay with me' or 'stay at my place', but in context I think readers will agree that his lascivious intentions are fairly clear.

songs banned by the censor in Franco's Spain… Information on music censorship can be found on the homepage of the research project Devuélveme la Voz (give me my voice back) of the University of Alicante. https://devuelvemelavoz.ua.es/es/censura/la-censura-musical-durante-el-franquismo.html

Ricardo and Julia Cuesta do remember… In an interview with their granddaughter, they both said the reason for their nervousness crossing the border while listening to German music was that they had become accustomed to doing things freely. 'We weren’t sure what would be frowned upon and what wouldn’t be', said Julia, 'we were always careful, we didn’t want to get ourselves or our families in trouble unnecessarily.' Personal communication from Sonia Cuesta Maniar.

(32) Damanaki... Kornetis, Children of the Dictatorship, pp.257-8.

Barroso.... Detail in this paragraph from 'Durão Barroso: 40 anos de política intensa', SOL, 2 July 2015, https://sol.sapo.pt/artigo/400384/durao-barroso-40-anos-de-politica-intensa; and 'Despertei para a política com as críticas do "Paris-Match" à ditadura', Expresso, 7 August 2008, https://expresso.pt/dossies/dossiest_actualidade/dos_salazar_caiu_40anos/despertei-para-a-politica-com-as-criticas-do-paris-match-a-ditadura=f387525

'This photo is not taken from a film by Buñuel'... Paris-Match, 8 August 1970.

Solana... Javier Solana mentions in several interviews that the two arrests of his brother Luis, involved with the PSOE since the mid-1950s, made him understand the reality of Francoist political repression and were thus central to his political evolution. See, for example, 'Solana fought to stop Spain joining Nato – now he runs it', The Independent, 3 December 1995, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/solana-fought-to-stop-spain-joining-nato-now-he-runs-it-1523857.html and 'Entrevista a Javier Solana', Política Exterior, 21 September 2004, https://www.politicaexterior.com/articulo/entrevista-a-javier-solana/

(33) 'One does not say no to Plato'… Stephen Wall, Reluctant European. Britain and the European Union from 1945 to Brexit, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2020, fn. 4 on p.141. Wall confirms he had this directly from the source.

(34) 'How are things?' you'd ask, and the reply would be... Fintan O’Toole, We Don't Know Ourselves. A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958, Head of Zeus, London 2021, p.239.

Europes

(35) 'Le 6 Juin, les forces alliés libèrent l'Europe'... see Photo Gallery.

When Thomas Mann told an audience of Hamburg students in 1953… Thomas Mann, Schriften zur Politik, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1973, pp.204-6.

Italianieuropei… https://www.italianieuropei.it/

A Suburb of Europe... Jerzy Jedlicki, A Suburb of Europe. Nineteenth-century Polish Approaches to Western Civilization, Central European University Press, Budapest 1999.

(36) 'Silva ordered trout with almonds...' ... Antonio Tabucchi, Declares Pereira. A True Account, The Harvill Press, London 1995, p.39.

'Qui parle Europe à tort. Notion géographique'... see Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe's Name. Germany and the Divided Continent, Jonathan Cape, London 1993, p.606.

(37) The responsible European Commissioner in Brussels, Claude Cheysson, explained that Morocco was 'not geographically part of Europe'… The story is told in detail in Volkan Ipek, North Africa, Colonialism and the EU, Palgrave Pivot, Cham 2020, esp. pp.1-6 and p.106. Strictly speaking, the EC did not give this as the formal grounds for rejection of the application, instead citing concerns about the timing and difficult conditions within the Community.

There is a long history of west Europeans... see Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment, Stanford University Press, Stanford 1994.

(38) 'Western Europe and eastern Europe are... not equally civilised'… Gonzague de Reynold, Qu'est ce que l'Europe? La formation de l'Europe, Vol. I, Egloff, Fribourg 1948, esp. pp.54-55.

In the 1930s original of this classroom scene, which the Belgian artist-author Hergé later revised… see Michael Farr, Tintin: The Complete Companion, John Murray, London 2001, p.24.

Being there

(42) By 1973, Spain had more than thirty-four million foreign visitors… This figure stems from the Spanish Ministry of Commerce and Tourism’s 1993 Tourism Statistics AnnualReport, which contains official figures relating to tourism in Spain going back to 1950. See Carmelo Pellejero Martínez, Evolución de los movimientos turísticos fronterizos y de las demandas hotelera y extrahotelera en España a lo largo del siglo XX, https://www.usc.es/estaticos/congresos/histec05/b15_pellejero.pdf

'When Spaniards say "our Chartres", Englishmen "our Cracow", Italians "our Copenhagen"… quoted in Norman Davies, Europe. A History, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1996, p.1066. The complete protocol of the conference in The Hague is published in facsimile by the Council of Europe: Council of Europe, Congress of Europe. The Hague, 7-11 May 1948, Council of Europe Publishing, Strasbourg 1999.

Kaleidotapestry

(47) the Palio, the inter-communal horse race that was first recorded in 1239... Maria A. Ceppari Ridolfi, Marco Ciampolini, Patrizia Turrini (eds.), The Palio and Its Image. History, Culture and Representation of Siena’s Festival, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Siena 2001, p.32.

(48) 'Old earth'… 'Narrower in space but broader in time'… Mann, Schriften zur Politik, pp.204-6.

Hamlet and the Yellow Submarine

(49) estimates of the number of languages in Europe range from sixty-four to 234… Jürgen Trabant, 'Babel oder das Paradies – die Sprachen Europas', in Etienne François & Thomas Serrier (eds.), Europa. Die Gegenwart unserer Geschichte, Vol. II., wbg Theiss, Darmstadt 2019, p.449.

'our way of living, of speaking, of writing, yes even of thinking'… quoted by Trabant, 'Babel oder das Paradies', p.454.

This in turn was taken up by Slav scholars… expertly described in John Connelly, From Peoples into Nations. A History of Eastern Europe, Princeton University Press, Princeton 2020.

'Our language is our morality…'… Alija Isaković, Rječnik karakteristične leksike u bosanskome jeziku. Dictionary of characteristic words of the Bosnian language, Bambi, Sarajevo 1992, p.7.

(50) 'a language is a dialect with an army and navy'... Although often attributed to Max Weinreich, it appears that he himself was quoting from another source.

'the language of Europe is translation'... Umberto Eco reportedly said this at a lecture given at the conference of ATLAS Assises de la traduction littéraire in Arles, 14 November 1993.

Jacek Trznadel, wrote an entire book… Jacek Trznadel, Polski Hamlet. Kłopoty z działaniem, Libella, Paris 1988.

(51) Tsar Paul I became heir to the Russian throne because… for this entire paragraph, see Katya Rogatchevskaia’s 'Russian Hamlet(s)', https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2016/08/russian-hamlet-.html

'Germany is Hamlet!'… Ferdinand Freiligrath, 'Hamlet', http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Freiligrath,+Ferdinand/Gedichte/Ein+Glaubensbekenntnis/2./Hamlet. See also Ruth J. Owen (ed.), The Hamlet Zone. Reworking Hamlet for European Cultures, Cambridge Scholars, Newcastle upon Tyne 2012.

'Not only Germany, all of Europe is Hamlet,'... This comes in his 1949 lecture on 'Goethe and Democracy', originally delivered as a Taylorian lecture at Oxford. Thomas Mann, 'Goethe und Demokratie', in Thomas Mann, Über deutsche Literatur. Ausgewählte Essays, Reden und Briefe, Reclam, Leipzig 1975, p.116.

Eurobarometer opinion polls… see Special Eurobarometer 386: Europeans and their Languages, https://data.europa.eu/euodp/en/data/dataset/S1049_77_1_EBS386

Top of the class were the Luxembourgers, Latvians and Dutch, while the British were predictably close to the dunce's corner… see Special Eurobarometer 386, pp.13-5, https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/f551bd64-8615-4781-9be1-c592217dad83

nearly 4 out of every 10 continental EU citizens to speak English... 38%, to be exact, see Special Eurobarometer 386, p.19, https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/f551bd64-8615-4781-9be1-c592217dad83

(52) In 1939, Clement Attlee, the leader of Britain's Labour Party, sponsored a German Jewish child, Paul Willer… 'Attlee child refugee recalls ‘extraordinary love’ of family', The Guardian, 21 November 2018,https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/21/attlee-child-refugee-recalls-extraordinary-love-of-family?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

that the facts of the case were 'unclear'… Davies, Europe, p.1005.

(53) It has been called Globish or Worldspeak… Robert McCrum, Globish. How the English Language Became the World's Language, Viking, London 2010; for Worldspeak, Nicholas Ostler, The Last Lingua Franca. English Until the Return of Babel, Allen Lane, London 2010, p.269.

The language with the most native speakers is Chinese… Ostler, Last Lingua Franca, p.227.

(55) Both, he explained, are concentrated, intensified life... See 'The Magic Lantern', programme Three of my 1999 BBC TV documentary 'Freedom's Battle'.

Rome

(57) from a map known as the Peutinger table… see Richard J.A. Talbert, Rome's World. The Peutinger Map Reconsidered, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2010, and this excellent online version of the map https://peutinger.atlantides.org/map-a/

Aquis Sestis is Aix-en-Provence, Aquinco is Budapest,... see the index at https://www.tabula-peutingeriana.de/list.html?alfa=a#A

(58) with 'a melancholy remarkably similar to pride'… Mann, Schriften zur Politik, p.206.

'a second birthday, a true rebirth', because 'the wholehistory of the world attaches itself to this place'... Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italienische Reise, entry for December 3, 1786.

As a scholar, he had no doubt that it was the marriage of Rome and Christianity,Romanitas et Christianitas… see Bronisław Geremek, The Common Roots of Europe, Polity Press, Cambridge 1996, esp. ch. 3 and 4.

(59) Bartholomew I quietly welcomed us to a place 'where we have been for some 1,700 years'... This was on the occasion of a visit by our working group (embarrassingly called a Group of Eminent Persons) for the Council of Europe. See also our report: https://book.coe.int/en/european-debates/5822-pdf-living-together-combining-diversity-and-freedom-in-21st-century-europe-report-of-the-group-of-eminent-persons-of-the-council-of-europe.html#

a map entitled Europa Polyglotta... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europa_Polyglotta.jpg

'drawing inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe'...see text at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constitution_for_Europe/Preamble

There was by now a large proportion of non-believers...see this Pew polling done in 2017 https://www.pewforum.org/2018/05/29/being-christian-in-western-europe/pf_05-29-18_religion-western-europe-00-00/

(60) One Orthodox scholar slyly suggests... John Anthony McGuckin, quoted by Diarmaid MacCullough in ‘The Vitality of Orthodoxy’, New York Review of Books, 2 July 2020, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/07/02/vitality-orthodox-church/

living 'under the reign of the man of sin'...Alison Cunningham, quoted in James Mullen & Richard Munson, The Smell of the Continent. The British Discover Europe, Pan, London 2010, p.54.

'promised that, with God's help, he would uphold inviolably everything that previous Roman emperors had decreed'… see Julia M. Smith, Europe after Rome. A New Cultural History 500—1000, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2005, pp.257-8.

(61) 'the renewal of the Roman Empire'... see Smith, Europe after Rome, p.276.

neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire... Voltaire, ‘Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations’, in Louis Moland, Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, Garnier, Paris 1878, pp.539-43.

(62) 'an important date in European history'… see 'Rede von Bronisław Geremek', 21 May 1998, https://www.karlspreis.de/de/preistraeger/bronislaw-geremek-1998/rede-von-bronislaw-geremek

the Polish and Czech words for king, król and král, derive from Karl – that is, Charlemagne... Peter H. Wilson, Heart of Europe. A History of the Holy Roman Empire, Harvard University Press, Cambridge/Massachusetts 2016, p.33.

(63) 'I would have you know,' he wrote to his English subjects, while heading back to Denmark… Smith, Europe after Rome, pp.277-80.

'thou art the sole Emperor of all the Christians in the whole universe…'… Geoffrey Hosking, Russia: People and Empire. 1552-1917, HarperCollins, London 1997, pp.5-6.

When Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of France... detail in this paragraph from Wilson, Heart of Europe, pp.161-3, and Andrew Roberts, Napoleon the Great, Penguin Books, London 2015, pp.354-6 and pp.361-2.

(64) His 'il Duce' moniker was derived from dux... Wilson, Heart of Europe, p.21.

an heir to the 'universal civilisation' of ancient Rome... This in a speech in Trieste on 20 September 1920, quoted in Paul Betts, Ruin and Renewal. Civilising Europe After the Second World War, Profile Books, London 2020, p.228.

Adolf Hitler told dinner companions… Henry Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier, Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, München 1979, pp.58-9, pp.101-02 and pp.165-66. Heinrich Himmler marked the death of his Ottonian namesake Henry I with an annual SS Heinrichsfeier at Quedlinburg castle. Wilson, Heart of Europe, p.677 and plate 33.

'No place could be better suited than the Eternal City… for Spaak’s speech see https://www.cvce.eu/obj/discours_de_paul_henri_spaak_a_l_occasion_de_la_signature_des_traites_de_rome_rome_25_mars_1957-fr-0d9aa0d0-ac45-43af-afd0-6ab08ddd3590.html; for Luns’ address https://www.cvce.eu/en/obj/address_given_by_joseph_luns_at_the_ceremony_held_to_mark_the_signing_of_the_rome_treaties_rome_25_march_1957-en-897c0a02-4e66-445f-82ad-5939f78008f0.html and for Adenauer’s speech see https://www.cvce.eu/en/obj/address_given_by_konrad_adenauer_at_the_ceremony_held_to_mark_the_signing_of_the_rome_treaties_rome_25_march_1957-en-6dfd9f25-cae7-49b3-a932-023d40fc483c.html

largely coterminous with Charlemagne's empire in 800… see, for example, map 1. in Wilson, Heart of Europe. The main differences are that the European Community of the 1960s included southern Italy, but not Catalonia and adjacent parts of northern Spain (Charlemagne's Spanish march), nor a significant portion of central Europe in East Germany and Czechoslovakia.

(65) 'post-Roman polycentrism'…'Without polycentrism, no modernity'... Walter Scheidel, Escape from Rome. The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity, Princeton University Press, Princeton 2019, p.15 and p.501.

'a framework sustaining local and particular liberties…', 'success usually depended on compromise and fudge...'… Wilson, Heart of Europe, pp.685-86.

Cold War West

(67) Cold War – a term used by George Orwell already in 1945… see Timothy Garton Ash, Facts Are Subversive. Political Writing from a Decade Without a Name, Yale University Press, New Haven 2010, p.349.

France was bloodily suppressing a popular protest in Algeria on the very day victory was declared in Europe… see Betts, Ruin and Renewal, pp.223-4.

agreed the final lines for the division of Hitler's capital… Garton Ash, In Europe's Name, pp.8-11.

(70) New York had almost gone bankrupt… 'The Night New York Saved Itself from Bankruptcy', The New Yorker, 16 October 2015, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-night-new-york-saved-itself-from-bankruptcy

'Neither did Kerensky'… quoted in Walter Isaacson, Kissinger.A Biography, Simon & Schuster, New York 1992, pp. 673-74.

(71) 'a scientific and industrial base that matches that of the United States'… John M. Roberts, The Hutchinson History of the World, Hutchinson, London 1976, p.1063 and p.1081.

The 1977 World Bank Atlas said that in 1975… The 1977 World Bank Atlas (covering 1974 to 1976) claims that the GDR's per capita GDP in 1975 was higher than that of the UK at $3,910 compared to $3,780. https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/466511468739793087/pdf/multi0page.pdf

How Democracies Perish... first published, in both French and English, in 1983.

(72) They lived with their backs to the Wall...see Timothy Garton Ash, „Und Willst Du Nicht Mein Bruder Sein...“. Die DDR heute, Rowohlt, Hamburg 1981.

'We love Germany so much we are glad there are two of them.'… François Mauriac, 'J’aime tellement l’Allemagne que je suis ravi qu’il y en ait deux', https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/mav/116/

'under which we've lived quite happily for forty years'… ‘A minister in the midst of a storm – Douglas Hurd, The Foreign Secretary talks to Timothy Garton Ash’, The Independent, 22 December 1989.

Friedrichstrasse, East

(75) to 'get to know the enemy'.... Some more detail in the excessively lively article I wrote for The Spectator. 'Albania's theatre of the absurd', The Spectator, 30 September 1978, http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/30th-september-1978/11/albanias-theatre-of-the-absurd. Of little interest or value to anyone else, it has sentimental value for me as my first published article.

'Great Carthage...' ... Although set out as a poem, this actually comes from an 'Open Letter To German Artists and Writers' written in September 1951, which passionately endorses German unification and freedom of expression, except for glorification of war and ethnic hatred. See Garton Ash, "Und Willst Du Nicht Mein Bruder Sein...", p.33.

(78) 'I work in a society where…'… quoted in 'Philip Roth, Patriot', The New Yorker, 13 November 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/13/philip-roth-patriot

(80) The brilliant statisticians of the World Bank might conclude that… As mentioned above, in the 1977 World Bank Atlas (covering 1974 to 1976) it appears that the GDR's calculated per capita GDP in 1975 was higher than that of the UK at $3,910 compared to $3,780. https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/466511468739793087/pdf/multi0page.pdf

'My business is to record what people say, but I'm by no means bound to believe it'… Herodotus, The Histories, 7:152and see Mabel L. Lang, Herodotus: Oral History with a Difference, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 128(2), pp.93-103.

(81) 'We want God in books, in schools…' … see Timothy Garton Ash, The Polish Revolution. Solidarity, 3^rd edition, Yale University Press, New Haven/London 2002, p.32.

Rising (1980-1989)

Freedom's battle

(85) On Tuesday 19 August 1980, I walked... For this and subsequent paragraphs see the third edition of my The Polish Revolution, which I have checked against and supplemented by my original notebooks.

(87) 'How can a workers’ leader be religious?' exclaimed the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel… Garton Ash, Polish Revolution, p.321.

(88) To this makeshift wooden cross someone had pinned a small piece of paper... Garton Ash, Polish Revolution, p.49. The original source for this story is Kazimierz Nowosielski, a literary historian based in Gdańsk, see his 'Dwie kartki', 12 Punkt. Almanach Gdańskich Środowisk Twórczych, Gdańsk 1980, pp.273-9.

(90) 'Revolution', said Mao Zedong, 'is not a dinner party'... This comes in Mao's 1927 Investigation into the Peasant Question in Hunan, quoted in Adam Roberts and Timothy Garton Ash, Civil Resistance and Power Politics, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2009, p.376.

'there have been violent political upheavals as long as there have been…'… see Alan J.P. Taylor, Revolutions and Revolutionaries, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1981, p.17.

'Don't burn down committees,' concluded the dissident Jacek Kuroń. 'Found your own.'... quoted in Garton Ash, Polish Revolution, p.26.

'Taught by history,' the dissident Adam Michnik would later explain... This comes in a letter from prison written in 1985, see Adam Michnik, Letters from Prison and Other Essays, University of California Press, Berkeley 1985, pp. 86-7.

'Solidarność was European history's greatest movement for change that did not resort to violence'... quoted by Aleksander Smolar in Roberts and Garton Ash, Civil Resistance in Power Politics, p.136.

(91) 'People are tired of lies, of not having freedom of speech,' said Aleksandr... This and the subsequent quotation from the reporting from Minsk of Johnny O'Reilly in 'Belarus protests: Putin threatens to intervene as 200,000 gather to oppose Lukashenko', The Times, 17 August 2020.

(92) 'the stake to which we are all tied'... see https://lyricstranslate.com/en/lestaca-stake.html with a link to an audio recording of 'L'Estaca'.

'Mury'... see https://lyricstranslate.com/en/mury-walls.html-4

A Belarusian version of 'Mury'... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdNnxQSmqAI

(93) an essay about the concept of Europe in the writings of Jakub of Paradyż,... now chapter five in Geremek, The Common Roots of Europe.

'I'm coming closer to you… Chair for the Pope!'… see my eyewitness account in Garton Ash, Uses of Adversity, p.46ff..

1984

(95) There we all were, in grainy black-and-white, a gaggle of British journalists, notebooks dutifully raised,… see Pravda, 4 July 1984. One can see the falsification even more clearly on the front page of Izvestia, 4 July 1984.

In 1984, Soviet historians were still not allowed to admit the existence of this protocol... Even in a private conversation, the outspoken, relatively liberal Soviet historian Vyacheslav Dashischev would only say to me, with a twinkle in his eye, 'this document does not exist in our archives'.

(96) 'who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past'... For the purposes of historical research, by far the most useful edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four is the critical edition prepared by Bernard Crick and published by Oxford University Press under the Clarendon Press imprint in 1984. This famous quotation comes on p.186 and p.373 of that edition. George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Bernard Crick (ed.), Oxford University Press, Oxford 1984.

'Sometimes it was buttons, sometimes it was darning wool,…'… Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, p.198. The ironical use of 'free' is pointed out by Crick.

'Officially the change of partners had never happened…'… Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, p.185.

(97) a book called The Fate of the Earth... First published in 1982. In suitably apocalyptic fashion, my paperback edition has a cover that is almost entirely black. Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth, Picador, London 1982.

'Months later, Soviet investigators determined…'… Gordon S. Barrass, The Great Cold War. A Journey Through the Hall of Mirrors, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2009, pp.1-2.

(98) 'we may inadvertently have placed our relations with the Soviet Union on a hair trigger'… see Rodric Braithwaite, Armageddon and Paranoia. The Nuclear Confrontation, Profile Books, London 2019, pp.352-5.

'the most alarming time'… Braithwaite, Armageddon, p.355.

'An air of abstraction and bewilderment'… K. A. ('Tony') Bishop, 'A View of Chernenko', 4 July 1984, PRO PREM 19/1934, quoted by William Taubman, Gorbachev. His Life and Times, Simon & Schuster, London 2018, pp.192-3.

a book called Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?… First published in the US in 1970. Publishing the book abroad without permission constituted a crime under Soviet law and regulations.

'Amalrik is dead and the KGB is still here!'… see 'press conference with Natan Sharansky, Israel's minister for trade and industry,' Official Kremlin International News Broadcast, 29 January 1996.

Homo Sovieticus… see Alexander Zinoviev, Homo Sovieticus, Paladin, London 1985, published in French already in 1982.

(99) 'The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting'… Milan Kundera, TheBook of Laughter and Forgetting, Penguin Books, London 1983, p.3.

the German Democratic Republic was now diplomatically recognised by 132 countries (most recently, the Ivory Coast)... see Honecker's speech on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the GDR, 'In der DDR haben für alle Zeit Fortschritt und Frieden, Völkerverständigung und Solidarität eine sichere Heimstatt', Neues Deutschland, 08 October 1984.

Still more Orwellian, and certainly more brutal... In this paragraph I draw on Connelly, Peoples into Nations, pp.678-81, supplemented by Dennis Deletant, Ceauşescu and the Securitate. Coercion and Dissent in Romania, 1965-1989, Hurst, London 1995.

(101) 'the Soviet empire, despite all of its internal difficulties, is in good shape, not headed towards collapse'… quoted by Connelly, Peoples into Nations, p.708, from George Konrád, 'Wir schauspielern alle in ein und demselben Stück', in István Futaky et al., (eds.), Ungarn. Ein kommunistisches Wunderland?, Spiegel Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1983, p.12.

an 'Ottomanisation' of the Soviet empire… see Garton Ash, Uses of Adversity, pp.252-5.

68ers and post-68ers

(102) 'the mercy of a late birth'... see Maren Röger, 'Gnade der späten Geburt', in Torben Fischer & Matthias N. Lorenz (eds.), Lexikon der „Vergangenheitsbewältigung“ in Deutschland. Debatten- und Diskursgeschichte des Nationalsozialismus nach 1945, Transcript, Bielefeld 2015, pp.247-8.

(104) 'the baby boomers, accustomed to never being resisted…'… Bernard Guetta, Dans l'ivresse de l'Histoire, J'Ai Lu/Flammarion, Paris 2017, pp.53-9.

(105) By 1988, the sociologist Jürgen Habermas,… could announce… see his article 'Der Marsch durch die Institutionen hat auch die CDU erreicht', Frankfurter Rundschau, 11 March 1988.

(106) 'children in the next century...'… Hannah Arendt to Karl Jaspers, letter of 26 June 1968, quoted in the introduction to an excellent special section of the American Historical Review: ‘AHR Reflections: 1968. Introduction’, The American Historical Review, 123(3), 2018, pp.706-9. This comes on p.706.

Tony reflected: 'what does it tell us of the delusions of May 1968…'… originally in ‘Revolutionaries’, New York Review of Books, 10 February 2010, https://www.nybooks.com/online/2010/02/10/revolutionaries/ and now in Tony Judt, The Memory Chalet, William Heinemann, London 2010, pp.119-27.

(107) 'We have won culturally and socially while, fortunately, losing politically'... see Garton Ash, Facts Are Subversive, p.52.

'How comforting it is, once or twice a year,/To get together and forget the old times'... James Fenton, 'A German Requiem', https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-german-requiem/

'blessed act of oblivion'... For this quote see Winston Churchill’s 'Zurich speech', 19September 1946,quoted in Marco Duranti, '''A Blessed Act of Oblivion''. Human Rights, European Unity and Postwar Reconciliation', in Birgit Schwelling (ed.) Reconciliation, Civil Society, and the Politics of Memory. Transnational Initiatives in the 20th and 21st Century, Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2012, pp.115-140. This on p. 115-6. See also Timothy Garton Ash, History of the Present. Essays, Sketches, and Dispatches from Europe in the 1990s, Vintage Books, New York 2001, pp.258-9.

(108) 'Death was no longer seen as part of the social contract'… quoted in James J. Sheehan, Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe, Houghton Mifflin, Boston 2008, p.179.

Education, insisted the liberal thinker Ralf Dahrendorf, was a civil right.... see his 1965 book Bildung ist Bürgerrecht. Plädoyer für eine aktive Bildungspolitik, Nannen-Verlag, Bramsche/Osnabrück 1965.

(109) 'cyclists and vegetarians, who only want renewable energy'... interview with Polish foreign minister Witold Waszczykowski in Bild: 'Haben die Polen einen Vogel?', Bild, 3 January 2016. https://www.bild.de/politik/ausland/polen/hat-die-regierung-einen-vogel-44003034.bild.html

'the most influential framework for making sense of human existence that has ever existed'… Tom Holland, Dominion. The Making of the Western Mind, Abacus, London 2020, p.519.

'the collapse of a 1900-year old world order'… Holland, Dominion, p.446 – describing how things looked to the painter Otto Dix in the trenches during the First World War.

(110) 'he who sleeps with the same woman twice already belongs to the Establishment'... quoted in a very interesting work of systematic oral history, Robert Gildea, James Mark & Anette Warring (eds.), Europe's 1968. Voices of Revolt, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2017, p.333.

'I was struck by the number of men who used revolutionary ideology...'… Robert Gildea et al., Europe's 1968. Voices of Revolt, p.243.

Angelo Gotti

(115) Between 1950 and 1989, West Germany then received another two million ethnic Germans... see Garton Ash, In Europe's Name, pp.231-43, and the table on pp.660-1.

West Germany went on to sign agreements with… see Judt, Postwar, p.334.

for the Netherlands… see Geert Mak, In Europe. Travels through the Twentieth Century, Vintage Books, London 2008, p.686.

'Man hat Arbeitskräfte gerufen, und es kommen Menschen'… for the context, see 'Wie Menschen, nur anders', Zeit Online, 15 June 2016, https://www.zeit.de/kultur/2016-06/max-frisch-norbert-bluem-fluechtlinge-kiyaks-deutschstunde

(116) In 1964, a guide for French households employing Spanish maids helpfully explained… Françoise Rembauville-Nicolle, Guide bilingue ménager à l'usage des employées de maison espagnoles, Les Presses de la Cité, Paris 1964, quoted in Peter Gatrell, The Unsettling of Europe.The Great Migration, 1945 to the Present, Allen Lane, London 2019, p.222 and p.489.

(117) Talking to a close associate, Charles de Gaulle evoked... This was Alain Peyrefitte. See Alain Peyrefitte, C’était de Gaulle, Volume One, Fayard, Paris 1994, ch. 6.

the Haut-Marne had twelve mosques for fewer than 180,000 people... see https://www.trouvetamosquee.fr/mosquees/colombey-les-deux-eglises-52/

'Significant contribution to the Gross National Product'... Gatrell, The Unsettling of Europe, p.154.

(118) In 1974, one in every six children born in West Germany was the child of a 'foreigner'... This figure (to be precise, 17.3%) is given in Judt, Postwar, p.337.

made up 8% of the West German population… Patrick R. Ireland, 'Socialism, Unification Policy and the Rise of Racism in Eastern Germany', The International Migration Review, 31(3), 1997, p.547, fn. 5.

in Frankfurt, where more than 20% of the population… see Stadt Frankfurt am Main, Statistisches Jahrbuch Frankfurt am Main 1989, Bürgeramt Stadt Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt 1989, p.7.

(119) By 1989, it was estimated that 98% of the population was ethnically Polish… According to the sociologist Andrzej Sakson, in the 1980s 98% of the population was ethnically Polish. The largest minority groups were Germans, Ukrainians, Belarusians. Andrzej Sakson, 'Mniejszość niemiecka na tle innych mniejszości narodowych we współczesnej Polsce', Przegląd Zachodni, 1991, 47(2), pp.1-23. See also, Andrzej Gawryszewski, The Population of Poland in the 20^th Century, PAN IGiPZ, Warsaw 2005, p.265. In the 2011 Polish census, the figure for those identifying as ethnic Polish was still 97.1%. See 'Ludność. Stan i struktura demograficzno-społeczna – NSP 2011', https://stat.gov.pl/spisy-powszechne/nsp-2011/nsp-2011-wyniki/ludnosc-stan-i-struktura-demograficzno-spoleczna-nsp-2011,16,1.html

(120) Upwards of one in ten inhabitants of France and Belgium had been born abroad; in Czechoslovakia and Romania, the proportion was less than one in a hundred... Figures from UN Population Division data on international migrant stock, see https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/content/international-migrant-stock

Spectator Britain

(121) No. 48, where Charles Dickens wrote The Pickwick Papers,… see https://dickensmuseum.com/. To be strictly accurate, this is where Dickens finished writing The Pickwick Papers.

(122) 'Ian, tell me, which Bible do you use?'... in Ian Buruma, Voltaire's Coconuts or Anglomania in Europe, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1999, p.286.

'a useful foil, an earnest foreigner, the person always trying to get my English colleagues to stop making jokes…'… Anne Applebaum, Twilight of Democracy. The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends, Allen Lane, London 2020, p.67.

(123) Richer regions would get richer, Martin Jacomb argued… 'A union we should put money on', The Spectator, 10 June 1989, http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/10th-june-1989/24/the-economy

'is now, for the first time, being seriously discussed…'… 'The drawbacks of withdrawing', The Spectator, 5 April 1980.

(124) 'speaking for England'… 'Who speaks for England now?', The Spectator, 11 October 1980.

'put Britain on the road to Brexit... 'How Thatcher's Bruges speech put Britain on the road to Brexit', Financial Times, 31 August 2018, https://www.ft.com/content/0b0afe92-ac40-11e8-8253-48106866cd8a

'Up Yours Delors'... The Sun, 1 November 1988.

(125) 'Britain does not dream of some cosy, isolated existence…'… This and subsequent quotations from the authoritative text here: https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107332.

'When he had done so, he spoke out loud the thought that had come to my mind…'… Wall, Reluctant European, p.187.

(126) In her lecture to the Collège d'Europe in Bruges, in 2010, Merkel's tone… You can find Merkel's speech (in German as well as translated into English and French) here: https://www.coleurope.eu/events/mrs-angela-merkel-delivered-opening-address-opening-ceremony

The upward turn

(128) 'bouncing on the balls of his feet'... So described by her private secretary Charles Powell, quoted in Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher. The Authorized Biography. Volume Two. Everything She Wants, Allen Lane, London 2015, p.238.

(129) 'palpable human chemistry at work between them'… Moore, Margaret Thatcher. Volume Two, pp.240-41. There you can also find the 'do business with' phrase.

(130) 'morning again in America'… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUMqic2IcWA

'evil empire'… quoted in Barrass, Great Cold War, p.292.

'revolution from above'... The phrase was used by Chernyaev in his diary on 13 March 1985, see Anatoly Chernyaev, My Six Years with Gorbachev, Penn State Press, University Park 2000, p.23.

(131) 'dinosaur'... Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs, Doubleday, London 1995, p.406.

(132) 'don't dance on the Wall!'... Gorbachev himself referred to this in the 'Summit meeting' I chaired with him, Helmut Kohl and George H.W. Bush in 1999. See the note to page 147, below. See also Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed. A Study in Statecraft, Harvard University Press, Cambridge/London 1995, p.105.

'I believe we haven't studied Europe enough…' and 'This, comrades, is very complicated…'… see Chernyaev, Six Years with Gorbachev, p.105.

(133) 'is a giant rising in our neighbourhood'… quoted in Barrass, Great Cold War, p.329.

'Europe is our common home'… Gorbachev, Memoirs, p.428, where he also claims this was spontaneous.

Seeking a 'big idea'… see Charles Grant, Delors. Inside the House That Jacques Built, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, London 1994, pp.61-70.

(134) 'a true federation'… quoted in Grant, Delors, p.135.

a transition from Europe I to Europe II… Andreas Rödder, 21.0. Eine kurze Geschichte der Gegenwart, C.H. Beck, München 2017, p.282.

(135) His biographer William Taubman observes… Taubman, Gorbachev, pp.266-71 and pp.378-87.

(136) One of his key aides, Andrei Grachev, says... quoted and thus interpreted in Taubman, Gorbachev, p.382.

'a hero of retreat'… Hans Magnus Enzensberger, 'Die Helden des Rückzugs', Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 9 December 1989.

(138) This, Kohl told me, was 'the decisive moment', and he repeats the story at length in his memoirs... see Helmut Kohl, Erinnerungen. 1982-1990, Droemer, München 2005, pp.888-91.

the Soviet leader does not mention the 'decisive' conversation in his memoirs… Not at all in the English version, see Gorbachev, Memoirs, pp.520-22. In the full-length Russian version of the memoirs online, he makes a perfunctory mention of their nocturnal conversation.

'in fact the beginning of the process of German unification'… Chernyaev, Six Years with Gorbachev, p.223.

'Europe whole and free'… Harvey Sicherman…. see Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed. A Study in Statecraft, Harvard University Press, Cambridge/London 1995, p.31 and fn. on p.381.

Joachim

(140) The little boy I remembered… the little boy is captured for posterity, with me and his father, in a photograph taken by a concealed Stasi camera in 1980… see Photo Gallery.

an escape route near the pretty Hungarian town of Sopron... see https://www.viamichelin.ie/web/Maps/Map-Sopron-9400-Sopron-Hungary

Wall's fall

(144) 'So all those causes – myriads of causes –…'… Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, William Heinemann, London 1971, Part IX, Section 1, pp.654-7.

(145) 'at once, immediately'… For precise details of this well-known story, I follow Hans-Hermann Hertle, Sofort, Unverzüglich. Die Chronik des Mauerfalls, 2^nd edition, Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2019 and Mary Elise Sarotte, The Collapse. The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall, Basic Books, New York 2015. There also the details for the next two paragraphs.

'Herr Schabowski, what will now happen with the Berlin Wall?'… see his vivid account: 'Daniel Johnson: The Berlin Wall ... Seven Minutes that Shook the World', Standpoint, 30 October 2009, https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/119192

(146) At the control post, Werner's East German ID card was stamped 'Invalid'... This is reproduced in Werner Krätschell, Die Macht der Kerzen. Erinnerungen an die Friedliche Revolution, Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2019, p.24. I supplement the account he gives there (originally published at my suggestion by Bill Buford in Granta No. 30'New Europe!, 1990, https://granta.com/the-state-of-europe-christmas-eve-1989/) with further information from our subsequent conversations.

(147) chanting 'Open the gate! Open the gate!'... see the riveting video footage filmed by Georg Mascolo and the Spiegel-TV camera team who were actually at the Bornholmer Strasse crossing on the night: https://www.spiegel.de/video/mauerfall-neu-erlebt-kapitel1-m911-video-99009046.html

a 'summit meeting' in Berlin between Mikhail Gorbachev, Helmut Kohl and George H. W. Bush... for a copy of the Phoenix-TV recording of the entire debate I am most grateful to the Archiv für Christlich-Demokratische Politik. All quotations and visual details can be found in that recording.

Gorbachev's reaction was 'they did the right thing'... Taubman, Gorbachev, p.464. There are also the details about the Politburo.

(149) ecstatic chants of 'Yes We Can! Yes We Can!'... see my account in Garton Ash, Facts Are Subversive, pp.248-51.

'A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin,... for the full text of Barack Obama's victory speech, see https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-full-text-of-barack-obama-s-victory-speech-993008.html

Triumphing (1990-2007)

Post-Wall world

(153) that Germany and the Soviet Union wished 'to finally finish with the past'… 'Vertrag über gute Nachbarschaft, Partnerschaft und Zusammenarbeit zwischen der BRD und der UdSSR', 9 November 1990, https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/material/180429/vertrag-ueber-gute-nachbarschaft-partnerschaft-und-zusammenarbeit-zwischen-der-brd-und-der-udssr-9-november-1990

we were talking in his office in Bonn in autumn 1991… 1 October 1991, to be precise.

'Are we really dealing with the same old Huns?'… quoted in Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher. The Authorized Biography. Volume Three. Herself Alone, Allen Lane, London 2019, p.526.

(154) a map of central Europe on which were marked… see Photo Gallery. I am most grateful to Andrew Riley, senior archivist at the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge, for finding the map. Both Thatcher's private secretary, Charles Powell, and her biographer, Charles Moore, confirmed that this is the one.

'That damned map', her private secretary called it.… Charles Powell, quoted in Moore, Thatcher. Volume Three, p.502. An official note from Charles Powell to Stephen Wall confirms that she produced this map from her handbag at a meeting with François Mitterrand at the European Council at Strasbourg on 8 December 1989, where Mitterrand, by Powell's account, said 'he was fearful he and the Prime Minister would find themselves in the situation of their predecessors in the 1930s who had failed to react in the face of constant pressing forward by the Germans'. Patrick Salmon, Keith Hamilton & Stephen Twigge (eds.), Documents on British Policy Overseas. Series III, Vol VII. German Unification 1989-1990, Routledge, Abingdon 2010, pp.164-6.

'I'll be very nice to the Germans'… see the excellent summary in Moore, Thatcher. Volume Three, pp.525-9, my account in Garton Ash, History of the Present, pp.50-5, and also those by Gordon A. Craig, 'Die Chequers Affäre von 1990' in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 39(4), 1991, pp.609-623, Fritz Stern, Five Germanys I Have Known, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York 2007, pp.467-75, and George R. Urban, Diplomacy and Disillusion at the Court of Margaret Thatcher. An Insider’s View, I.B. Tauris, London 1996, pp.118-150.

In 1992, I visited him in Moabit prison in West Berlin… see my fuller account in Garton Ash, History of the Present, pp.83-6.

(155) as there had been at the end of the First World War… see the classic account by Margaret MacMillan, Peacemakers. Six Months that Changed the World, John Murray, London 2001.

'wartime and post-war agreements and decisions of the Four Powers'…see the official text deposited with the UN, https://treaties.un.org/Pages/showDetails.aspx?objid=08000002800b8042&clang=_en

the term 'New World Order', on a fishing trip off the coast of Maine… see George Bush & Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed, Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1998, p.353-6.

(156) 'a new world order of Soviet-American co-operation against aggression'… Bush & Scowcroft, A World Transformed, p.362.

which Churchill would soon describe as 'a fraudulent prospectus'… quoted in my essay 'From World War to Cold War', TheNew York Review of Books, 11 June 1987, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1987/06/11/from-world-war-to-cold-war/

'We undertake to build, consolidate and strengthen democracy…'… see OSCE, 'Charter of Paris for a New Europe', 21 November 1990, https://www.osce.org/mc/39516

(157) 'We moulded it so there were no losers, only winners,'… Bush & Scowcroft, A World Transformed, xiv.

'To hell with that!' the US President exclaimed. 'We prevailed, they didn't.'… Bush & Scowcroft, A World Transformed, p.253.

The enlargement of the West

(159) 'blatantly tricked' Russia by promising to expand 'not one inch eastward'… quoted in 'US and Russia to hold talks over Ukraine in early January, says Putin', Financial Times, 23 December 2021, https://www.ft.com/content/481d2685-733b-47fb-b74d-b452997b672e

'Would you prefer to see a unified Germany outside of NATO,…'… quoted in M.E. Sarotte, Not One Inch. America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate, Yale University Press, New Haven/London 2021, p.55.

'naturally NATO could not expand its territory…' and 'for us it is clear…'… Sarotte, Not One Inch, p.58. Sarotte's is by far the most exhaustive, detailed account, drawing on all available sources. For some of the original documents see: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early

Other analyses include Mark Kramer, 'The myth of a no-NATO-enlargement pledge to Russia', The Washington Quarterly, 32(2), 2009, pp.39-61 and, for a contrasting view, Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson, 'Deal or No Deal? The End of the Cold War and the US Offer to Limit NATO Expansion', International Security, 40(4), pp.7-44, https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/deal-or-no-deal-end-cold-war-and-us-offer-limit-nato-expansion

(160) ‘foreign armed forces and nuclear weapons or their carriers will not be stationed in that [i.e. the eastern] part of Germany or deployed there’… see Art.5(3) of the 'Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (with Agreed Minute)', official version deposited with the UN,
https://treaties.un.org/Pages/showDetails.aspx?objid=08000002800b8042&clang=_en

attaching to the treaty an ‘agreed minute’ which provided that the meaning of the word ‘deployed’... see 'Agreed Minute to the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany of 12 September 1990', official version deposited with the UN,
https://treaties.un.org/Pages/showDetails.aspx?objid=08000002800b8042&clang=_en

On the late-night last-minute negotiation… see Sarotte, Not One Inch, pp.102-4.

Robert Zoellick, the author of this piece of diplomatic finesse, recalls that… emails to the author of 15 and 19 April 2022.

In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum… see 'Memorandum on security assurances in connection with Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons', official version deposited with the UN, https://treaties.un.org/Pages/showDetails.aspx?objid=0800000280401fbb

in a bilateral friendship treaty with Ukraine signed in 1997… see 'Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation', text deposited with the UN by Ukraine, https://treaties.un.org/Pages/showDetails.aspx?objid=08000002803e6fae&clang=_en

(161) 'NATO and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries,'… see 'Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation signed in Paris, France', the official text can be accessed here, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_25468.htm

'it is hard for me to visualise NATO as an enemy'… BBC Breakfast with Frost, 'Interview. Vladimir Putin', 5 March 2000, http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/audio_video/programmes/breakfast_with_frost/transcripts/putin5.mar.txt

'Ukraine is an independent, sovereign nation state…'… quoted from George Robertson, 'Do we need a Grand Strategy?', Churchill Lecture, Royal College of Defence Studies, 10 March 2022.

Robertson recalls that in his nine meetings with the Russian president… private communication from George Robertson, 18 May 2022.

Condoleeza Rice … says that… conversation at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 31 August 2022.

(162) 'Including the Baltic states?'… All quotations from that meeting, on 31 May 2001, come either from my own notes or those made by Lionel Barber and Michael McFaul. We compared our notes and recollections. In April 2021, a Freedom of Information request was submitted by the Washington-based National Security Archive to the George W. Bush presidential library for the official record of this meeting, but as of February 2023 no document had been released.

Integration and disintegration

(164) delivered by Chancellor Kohl at Oxford on 11 November 1992… I quote from the 'redigierte Mitschrift' faxed to me by my friend Michael Mertes from the Bundeskanzleramt on 17 November 1992. Mertes, a gifted writer and eloquent European, wrote the speech. See Helmut Kohl, 'In der europäischen Einigung liegt unsere nationale Zukunft', 11 November 1992, https://www.bundeskanzler-helmut-kohl.de/seite/11-november-1992/

Good King Wenceslas

(169) 'of one's own accord, at one's own risk, on one's own responsibility'… quoted in Kieran Williams, Václav Havel, Reaktion Books, London 2016, pp.38-40, see also p.75.

'Use against the enemy every method that he does not expect…'… quoted in Michael Zantovsky, Havel. A Life, Atlantic Books, London 2014, p.117.

(170) 'a single shapeless fog'… Václav Havel, Disturbing the Peace. A Conversation with Karel Hvížala, Knopf, New York 1990, p.120.

'He gassed vermin like you right away,'… quoted in Havel, Disturbing the Peace, p.148.

(171) among the onions and carrots, a sign saying 'Workers of the World, Unite!'… Václav Havel, Power of the Powerless. Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe, John Keane (ed.), Hutchinson, London 1985.

(172) a project to support independent and samizdat publications in central and eastern Europe… see Timothy Garton Ash (eds.), Freedom for Publishing, Publishing for Freedom. The Central and East European Publishing Project, Central University Press, Budapest/New York 1995.

(173) his 'great work'… see Williams, VáclavHavel, p.170.

'That kings should philosophise, or that philosophers should become kings…'… Immanuel Kant, Zum Ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf, Reclam, Stuttgart 1984, p.35.

(174) 'A new wind, new spirit, a new spirituality,' he told them, should be injected… for Havel's speech in Japan, 23 April 1992, see Václav Havel, Toward a Civil Society, Lidové Noviny, Prague 1995, pp.195-204.

(175) 'Look, the united Europe is already being born…'… quoted in Zantovsky, Havel, p.35.

'looking into the workings of an absolutely perfect and immensely ingenious modern machine'… speech to the European Parliament, 8 March 1994, Havel, Toward a Civil Society, pp.291-303.

'I cannot rid myself of the sensation that all this may have been a train ride which began earlier…'… speech to the French Senate, 18 March 1999, http://old.hrad.cz/president/Havel/speeches/index_uk.html

(176) 'planetary civilisation'… see his speech to the French senate, 18 March 1999, http://old.hrad.cz/president/Havel/speeches/index_uk.html and speech to the European Parliament, 16 February 2000, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+CRE+20000216+ITEM-012+DOC+XML+V0//EN

Genocide again

(177) Close to 200,000 Serbs fled in the face of Operation Storm…see 'The crimes of others', Deutsche Welle, 8 March 2015, https://www.dw.com/en/anniversary-of-operation-storm-the-crimes-others-committed/a-18624692. See also 'Evicted Serbs remember Storm', BBC News, 5 August 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4747379.stm

(178) 'The actor/acts,/The singer/sings,…'… Dušan Radović, Razbojnik Kađa i Princeza Nađa, Svjetlost, Sarajevo 1989, pp.63-5.

(179) One of the killers, Dražen Erdemović… see Slavenka Drakulić, They Would Never Hurt a Fly. War Criminals on Trial in The Hague, Abacus, London 2004, pp.94-6; David Rohde, Endgame. The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe’s Worst Massacre Since World War II, Penguin Books, London 2012, and Erdemović's ICTY testimony https://www.icty.org/x/cases/erdemovic/trans/en/961120ED.htm

'Please let me live, I saved Serbs from Srebrenica, I have their telephone numbers'… quoted thus in Rohde, Endgame, p.311. A fuller account, in indirect speech, in Drakulić, They Would Never Hurt a Fly, pp.102-3.

'Mother! Mother!… Drakulić, They Would Never Hurt a Fly, p.104.

(180) The twentieth century had begun with a war in Sarajevo, the Polish Pope told Clinton… Bill Clinton, My Life, Hutchinson, London 2004, pp.674-5.

(181) 'Belfast in Yugoslavia'… 'Belfast in Yugoslavia', The Spectator, 13 August 1983, http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/13th-august-1983/9/belfast-in-yugoslavia

(182) Haradinaj would twice be tried in The Hague… see 'Former Leader in Kosovo Acquitted of War Crimes', The New York Times, 4 April 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/world/europe/04kosovo.html and 'War Crimes Court Frees Former Leader of Kosovo', The New York Times, 29 November 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/30/world/europe/un-court-frees-former-leader-of-kosovo.html

(183) 'an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States'… quoted in Timothy Garton Ash, 'Is There a Good Terrorist', The New York Review of Books, 29 November 2001, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2001/11/29/is-there-a-good-terrorist/

a 'bunch of murderous thugs'… see Garton Ash, 'Is There a Good Terrorist', https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2001/11/29/is-there-a-good-terrorist/

(184) 'Finally, after the rebellion against the Dahis, the time has come to take revenge on the Turks in this region.'… see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfInjlNoT4Q&ab_channel=ushmmfellows

(186) 'you too would have a war in five years'… quoted in Noel Malcolm, Bosnia. A Short History, Papermac, London 1994, p.252.

(186) 'ordinary men', to quote the title of Christopher Browning's remarkable book… Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men. Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, HarperCollins, New York 1992.

when he asked 'Where is Bosnia?' the Croatian leader replied 'No Bosnia'… quoted in Paddy Ashdown, Swords and Ploughshares. Bringing Peace to the 21^st Century, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2007, p.32.

(187) I talked to one 'Captain Dragan', who had just taken over the customs administration at gunpoint, on behalf of the opposition.… see Garton Ash, Facts are Subversive, p.5 and p.17 and more details on Dragan Vasiljković here https://web.archive.org/web/20071024091402/http:/www.trial-ch.org/trialwatch/profil_print.php?ProfileID=478&Lang=en

'This is the hour of Europe … if one problem can be solved by the Europeans, it is the Yugoslav problem.'… This is often slightly misquoted as 'the hour of Europe had dawned', see Josip Glaurdić, The Hour of Europe. Western Powers and the Break-up of Yugoslavia, Yale University Press, New Haven/London 2011, and 'Conflict in Yugoslavia; Europeans Send High-level Team', The New York Times, 29 June 1991, https://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/29/world/conflict-in-yugoslavia-europeans-send-high-level-team.html

(188) 'If you cut your finger, it doesn't hurt me.'… quoted in Garton Ash, Uses of Adversity, p.136.

chronicled it in a book called Welcome to Hell… This was the title of the French edition: Ozren Kebo, Bienvenue en Enfer. Sarajevo Mode d'Emploi, Nuée bleue, Strasbourg 1997.

Fish soup

(189) by 2010 there were twenty-four… NB this excludes the five Central Asian 'stans', although Kazakhstan claims to be in Europe because part of its territory is east of the Urals and all of them are members of the OSCE.

(190) 'revolutions of catching up'… Jürgen Habermas, Die Nachholende Revolution, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1990.

'Liberty, Fraternity, Normality'… quoted by Roger Cohen, 'The Accommodations of Adam Michnik', The New York Times Magazine, 7 November 1999, https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/07/magazine/the-accommodations-of-adam-michnik.html

'We are coming in as heroes, but in the end,…'… quoted in Zantovsky, Havel, pp.331-2.

(191) 'a neoliberal train was being put on track…'… Philipp Ther, Europe since 1989. A History, Princeton University Press, Princeton 2016, p.3

(192) 'Washington consensus', a term coined by a British economist in 1989… see 'Washington Consensus' in Encyclopædia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Washington-consensus

financialised… see Jürgen Kocka, Capitalism. A Short History, Princeton University Press, Princeton/Oxford 2016, pp.114-24.

(193) 'Speed is more important than accuracy'… quoted in Miloš Gregor & Alena Macková, 'Euroscepticism the Czech way: An analysis of Václav Klaus’ speeches', European Journal of Communication, 30(4), 2015, pp.404-417.

110 billionaires controlled some thirty-five per cent of Russia's wealth… Karen Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy. Who Owns Russia?, Simon & Schuster, New York 2014, p.1 and fn.3 on p.361.

Freedom and its discontents

(196) more than a third of Polish voters did not go to the polls… Włodzimierz Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, C.H. Beck, München 2010, p.397.

in 2001, turnout had been just forty-six percent… 'Poland. Parliamentary Elections Sejm. 2001', http://archive.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/arc/2255_01.htm

three quarters of those who turned out in the June 2003 referendum voted yes – but turnout was still only fifty-nine per cent… see Borodziej, Geschichte Polens, p.397.

(197) Between 1989 and 2019, it increased by more than 800 per cent…. Poland’s GDP per capita (in current US$) grew from 1,740 (in 1989) to 15,727 (in 2019) or by 803%. Calculation based on World Bank Data, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2021&locations=PL&start=1990&view=chart.

(197) According to a careful calculation of real purchasing power, in1955, Poland's GDP per capita… Data comes from the Maddison Project Database 2020, see https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/releases/maddison-project-database-2020. The project’s data on GDP is based on converting national income estimates from a national currency basis to a common currency using purchasing power parities. It calculates real GDP, thus factoring in inflation.

(198) one employee, Monika, talked about now being treated at work like a 'grey object'… see Elizabeth C. Dunn, Privatizing Poland. Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor, Cornell University Press, Ithaca/London 2004, pp.158-61.

the annual inflation rate would have been 1,395 per cent… Connelly, Peoples Into Nations, p.767.

'Nothing is so painful to the human mind…'… Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, chapter 23.

(199) 'web of false and superficial gratifications'… quoted in Garton Ash, History of the Present, p.316.

In a 2019 survey, four out of every five Polish respondents said their standard of living had improved… Pew Research Centre survey quoted in 'Thirty years of freedom, warts and all', The Economist, 2 November 2019, https://www.proquest.com/docview/2311165969/fulltextPDF/36DE9FA40D714A58PQ/2?accountid=13042

The social anthropologist Ernest Gellner called this 'the price of velvet'… Ernest Gellner, 'The Price of Velvet: Thomas Masaryk and Václav Havel', Czech Sociological Review, 3(1), 1995, pp.45-75.

In 1993, a study found that fifty-seven per cent of the elites in Poland's private economic sector came from the former nomenklatura…. quoted in Andreas Wirsching, Der Preis der Freiheit. Geschichte Europas in unserer Zeit, 2nd ed., C.H. Beck, München 2012, p.116.

(200) 'amnesty and amnesia'… This phrase comes from the writer Jorge Semprún.

(201) He had thought 'there'd be a reckoning with those who oppressed us.'… This and subsequent quotations from my 1999 BBC TV documentary, 'Freedom's Battle', Programme One, 'Icebreaker'.

(202) 'President of the Fourth Republic'… see 'The Twins' New Poland' in Garton Ash, Facts Are Subversive, p.115.

One coin to bind them all

(205) 'I still remember how Monnet came looking for me in summer 1957…'… quoted in Mak, In Europe, p.627.

'treason'… Jacques Attali, Verbatim III. 1998-1991, Fayard, Paris 1995, p.350.

(207) In polling by the Allensbach institute, a clear majority opposed replacing the DM… see Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann & Renate Köcher (eds.), Allensbacher Jahrbuch der Demoskopie, Vol 10. 1993-1997, K. G. Saur, München 1997, p.1176.

'I don't know how you will get the German people to give up the Deutschmark',… reported by Lamfalussy to David Marsh in a conversation in 2007, see David Marsh, The Euro. The Battle for the New Global Currency, Yale University Press, New Haven/London 2001, p.195.

'Europe began as an elitist project in which it was believed that…'… in The Independent, 26 July 1993, quoted in Mark Leonard, Rediscovering Europe, Demos, London 1998, p.18.

In 1998, the year a group of 155 economists declared 'the euro is coming too soon',… quoted in Ian Kershaw, Roller-Coaster. Europe 1950-2017, Allen Lane, London 2018, p.430.

an essay in the journal Foreign Affairs… reprinted in Garton Ash, History of the Present, pp.279-95.

(208) 'Europe will be forged in crises…'… Jean Monnet, Mémoires, Fayard, Paris 1976, p.488.

(209) By 2005, euro area banking assets had soared to nearly three times the combined GDP of Eurozone member states… see Ashoka Mody, EuroTragedy. A Drama in Nine Acts, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2020, p.159.

'a case of financial market mispricing on a colossal scale'… Marsh, The Euro, p.280.

'The euro has been a remarkable success…'… Jean-Claude Trichet, 'Address at the ceremony to mark the 10th anniversary of the European Central Bank and the European System of Central Banks', 2 June 2008, https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2008/html/sp080602.en.html

From 9/11 to 9/11

(211) with a last cry of 'Allahu akbar!' ('Allah is the greatest!'), crashed the plane into a field… see the detailed, authoritative account in The 9/11 Commission Report. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report, W.W. Norton & Company, New York 2004. This on pp.10-4. Also online at https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf

it could have reached the White House in about forty seconds… detail from Bob Woodward, Bush at War, Simon & Schuster, New York 2002, p.46.

(212) 'drunk with sight of power'… Rudyard Kipling's 'Recessional', https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46780/recessional

(214) 'America, still a European Power'… see Richard C. Holbrooke, To End a War, Random House, New York 1998, p.364.

sharing a house with Strobe Talbott,… 46 Leckford Road, see Photo Gallery.

'since Europe is an idea as much as a place, America also is a part of Europe'… quoted in Timothy Garton Ash, Free World. Why a crisis of the West reveals the opportunity of our time, Penguin Books, London 2005, p.112, and see Bill Clinton’s speech after receiving the Charlemagne Prize, 2 June 2000, https://www.karlspreis.de/en/laureates/william-jefferson-bill-clinton-2000/speech-by-bill-clinton

(215) 'On Saturday, 15 February, a new nation was born on the street.…'… Le Monde, 26 February 2003, quoted in Garton Ash, Free World, p.44.

'The way things are in the United States…'… quoted in Brendan Simms, Europe.The Struggle for Supremacy, Allen Lane, London 2013, p.515. And see Schröder's speech here, 'Rede von Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder zum Wahlkampfauftakt am Montag, 5. August 2002, in Hannover', https://docplayer.org/9043088-Rede-von-bundeskanzler-gerhard-schroeder-zum-wahlkampfauftakt-am-montag-5-august-2002-in-hannover-opernplatz.html

'not very well brought up…'… quoted in Philip H. Gordon & Jeremy Shapiro, Allies at War. America, Europe, and the Crisis over Iraq, McGraw-Hill, New York 2004, p.134, quoting his press conference at the European Council, 17 February 2003.

Muslims in Europe

(217) the more than fifteen million Muslims… for these figures and those in the next three paragraphs see Garton Ash, Facts are Subversive, pp.171ff., and Timothy Garton Ash, Edward Mortimer & Kerem Öktem, Freedom in Diversity. Ten Lessons for Public Policy from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, and the United States, Dahrendorf Programme for the Study of Freedom, Oxford 2013, https://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/related-documents/freedom_in_diversity.pdf

(219) 'I was just Nora. Then all of a sudden, I was a Muslim'… Garton Ash, Facts are Subversive, p.185, quoting from Ian Buruma, Murder in Amsterdam.

'Muslim' was pretty much equated with violent extremist… see the figures in Garton Ash et al., Freedom in Diversity, pp.58-9.

(220) 'without Muhammad, no Europe'… This celebrated but also contested formulation by Henri Pirenne is explained in his Mahomet et Charlemagne, Félix Alcan, Nouvelle Société d'Éditions, Paris/Brussels 1937.

(222) my 'enormous respect'… This and subsequent quotations are from 'Islam in Europe', The New York Review of Books, 5 October 2006, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2006/10/05/islam-in-europe/, reprinted in Garton Ash, Facts are Subversive, pp.171-87.

(223) at a public event in London with Ayaan Hirsi Ali herself… This was on 21 November 2007. See this brief account by John Lloyd, who organised and chaired the event, 'The Encounter of Islam with Europe', https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/risj-review/encounter-islam-europe

Cool Britannia

(228) produced a joint paper with the British prime minister… see the actual paper, Tony Blair & Gerhard Schröder, 'Europe. The Third Way / Die Neue Mitte', 1999, in English, https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/suedafrika/02828.pdf, and in German, http://www.glasnost.de/pol/schroederblair.html

'it really is as Tony Blair has put it. We are not about equal earnings.'… quoted in Philip Stephens, Tony Blair. A Biography, Viking, London 2004, p.133.

'Willy, you must get us in so we can take the lead!'… quoted in Garton Ash, Facts are Subversive, p.135, from Willy Brandt, Willy Brandt. People and Politics. The Years 1960-1975, Little, Brown and Company, Boston 1978, p.161.

'Britain should be bigger!'… quoted in Philip Stephens, Britain Alone. The Path from Suez to Brexit, Faber, London 2021, p.290.

(230) 'You are my friend'… see Blair, A Journey, p.552. Other details come from my conversation with him on 7 May 2021.

The governor of the Bank of England said the economy could use the extra workers… as reported by Ivan Rogers in Andrew Adonis (eds.), Half In Half Out. Prime Ministers on Europe, Biteback Publishing, London 2018, p.252.

(231) 'intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich'… quoted in Kershaw, Roller-Coaster, p.471.

about £16 billion, equivalent to more than forty per cent of… 'Bankers' £16bn bonus bonanza', The Independent, 18 October 2008, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bankers-163-16bn-bonus-bonanza-965445.html. Tombs says nearly half the defence budget (Robert Tombs, The English and their History, Allen Lane, London 2014, p.851), but the actual budget figure seems to be close to £39 billion, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_Kingdom_budget

valued at £2.2 trillion… Tombs, The English and their History, p.860 and 'Leaving the Old Lady', The Economist, 15 June 2013, https://www.economist.com/britain/2013/06/15/leaving-the-old-lady

at a cost of £45 billion, or more than £700 for each… 'Leaving the Old Lady', The Economist, 15 June 2013, https://www.economist.com/britain/2013/06/15/leaving-the-old-lady

'economic stability not boom and bust'… speech to TGWU manufacturing conference, 28 March 2002, quoted in 'No return to boom and bust: what Brown said when he was chancellor', The Guardian, 11 September 2008, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/sep/11/gordonbrown.economy. He used similar formulations many times.

'I am a passionate pro-European,'… See 'Tony Blair's speech to the European parliament', The Guardian, 23 June 2005, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/jun/23/speeches.eu

voted sixty-eight per cent for Brexit… see 'EU Referendum. Local Results. Walsall', BBC News, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/eu_referendum/results/local/w

(232) Of the nearly thirty-one million British daily newspaper readers in 2003… figures from the 2003 National Readership Survey, quoted in Garton Ash, Free World, p.31.

Boris Johnson, who had 'reported' such invented stories as that the Eurocrats proposed to ban prawn-cocktail flavoured crisps… see 'I was in Brussels when Johnson peddled his original Euro lies – nobody’s laughing now', The Irish Times, 10 December 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/i-was-in-brussels-when-johnson-peddled-his-original-euro-lies-nobody-s-laughing-now-1.4110760, 'How Boris Johnson’s Brussels years helped pave the way to Brexit', Financial Times, 30 June 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/ad141e8a-976d-11e9-9573-ee5cbb98ed36, and 'How Boris Johnson's Brussels-bashing stories shaped British politics', The Guardian, 14 July 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/14/boris-johnson-brussels-bashing-stories-shaped-politics

'Queen: Is Blair Out to Axe Me?'… Sunday Express, 19 October 2003.

'1588 – We Saw Off The Spanish Armada'… The Sun, 15 May 2003.

(233) 'we got the Sun to run an article by Blair the next day,…'… Philip Gould, The Unfinished Revolution. How New Labour Changed British Politics Forever, Abacus, London 1999, p.375.

even suggested to The Sun the headline 'Brown Saves the Pound'… see Andrew Rawnsley, Servants of the People. The Inside Story of New Labour, Hamish Hamilton, London 2000, p.81, and The Sun, 18 October 1997. In the event, The Sun went with 'Brown Says No to the Euro'.

'Of course, the fevered frenzy of parts of the British media don't exactly help….'… Tony Blair, 'Annual European Studies Centre Lecture', Oxford, 2 February 2006, https://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/tony_blair_transcript.pdf

'feral beast'… see full transcript of Blair’s speech delivered at Reuters headquarters in London in June 2007, https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-blair-speech-idUKZWE24585220070612

'I have always felt that the best answer for us was to be a kind of free-trade and non-interventionist "Singapore" off Europe…'… Letter to Sir Teddy Taylor, 14 October 1992, quoted in Moore, Thatcher. Volume Three, p.803.

(234) 'The show would not be over before the people spoke'… Hugo Young, This Blessed Plot. Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair, Papermac, London 1999, p.528.

'Then you're dafter than I thought.'… Tony Blair, A Journey, Arrow Books, London 2011, p.531.

Polling conducted for Britain in Europe… as reported by Stephen Wall, A Stranger in Europe. Britain and the EU from Thatcher to Blair, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2008, p.183.

(235) in the summer of 2012, the Conservative prime minister David Cameron had decided… as reported by Ivan Rogers in Adonis, Half In Half Out, p.230. Cameron's own memoirs, say he started 'mulling over the possibility' in January 2012, and had decided on it in the summer, David Cameron, For the Record, William Collins, London 2020, pp.339-41 and pp.398-407.

on the basis of a negotiated 'new settlement'… 'David Cameron's EU speech – full text', The Guardian, 23 January 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/jan/23/david-cameron-eu-speech-referendum

'There is no other way for Britain. Britain won't leave Europe…'… Tony Blair, 'Annual European Studies Centre Lecture', https://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/tony_blair_transcript.pdf

Hubris

(236) 'Young Ralf', it said, '… 16 years [old], meant for the NKVD'… quoted in Ralf Dahrendorf, Über Grenzen. Lebenserinnerungen, C.H. Beck, München 2003, p.89 – there also the context.

(237) an unwavering, passionate, lifelong commitment to individual liberty… 'Liberty above all is what I believe in', see Ralf Dahrendorf, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, Chatto & Windus, London 1990, p.154.

In January 1974, Freedom House counted seventeen free countries in Europe… figures come from Freedom in the World, 'Comparative and Historical Data. Country and Territory Ratings and Statuses', 1973-2023, provided by Freedom House, https://freedomhouse.org/reports/publication-archives, see also https://www.freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/Country%20Status%20%26%20Ratings%20Overview%2C%201973-2013.pdf.

Four years later, Freedom House reckoned that three billion people across the world now lived in free countries… Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2008. The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties, Rowman & Littlefield, New York 2008, https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/2020-02/Freedom_in_the_World_2008_complete_book.pdf

'common floor'… Ralf Dahrendorf, The Future Tasks of Liberalism. A Political Agenda, Liberal Institute, Potsdam 2001, p.17, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/71736606.pdf

(238) Martin Wolf argued that this financial crisis was even more severe… see the transcript in Timothy Garton Ash (ed.), On Liberty. The Dahrendorf Questions, St. Antony’s College Oxford, Oxford 2009. This on p.30.

(240) a bank that had just written of some $42 billion in reckless investments in sub-prime mortgages… see 'The Final Days of Merrill Lynch', The Atlantic, September 2009, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/the-final-days-of-merrill-lynch/307621

Paul Collier proposed a new crime of 'bankslaughter'… see Garton Ash, On Liberty. The Dahrendorf Questions, pp.34-5.

'liberalocracy'… see Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed, Yale University Press, New Haven/London, 2018, pp.186-89, and my discussion of this in my essay 'The Future of Liberalism', Prospect, 9 December 2020, https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/the-future-of-liberalism-brexit-trump-philosophy

'The great struggles of the 20th century between liberty and totalitarianism,'… see the introduction of 'The National Security Strategy of the United States of America', 17 September 2002, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/nsc/text/nssintro.html

Faltering (2008-2022)

Zweig and the Downward Turn

(245) 'the true homeland chosen by my heart'… Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von gestern. Erinnerungen eines Europäers, Europäischer Literaturverlag, Berlin 2015 [1942], p.8.

'Never have I loved our old earth more than in those last years before the First World War,'… Zweig, Welt von Gestern, p.128.

Daniel Kehlmann reflected that… Daniel Kehlmann, '"Die Welt von Gestern" in New York', Die Presse, 24 March 2019, https://www.diepresse.com/5600833/kehlmann-ueber-die-welt-von-gestern-in-new-york

One title he proposed to his Spanish translator was 'The Irretrievable Years'… George Prochnik, The Impossible Exile. Stefan Zweig at the End of the World, Other Press, New York 2015, p.254.

(246) adds a funereal edge to our reading of it… The critic Michael Hofmann wickedly writes of 'a thanatophile twinkle'. Michael Hofmann, 'Vermicular Dither', London Review of Books, 28 January 2010, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n02/michael-hofmann/vermicular-dither

(247) 'It seems that we are entering a martyr period … we must take fate as it comes'… Handwritten letter of 30 March 1938, from the Asch papers held at the Reed Library at Fredonia, State University of New York, catalogued as Asch 38:2. See also https://fredonia.libguides.com/specialcollections

Euro, Crisis

(248) 'trillion dollar weekend'… see Luke van Middelaar, Alarums & Excursions. Improvising Politics on the European Stage, Agenda, Newcastle upon Tyne 2020, pp.32ff.

'We shall defend the euro, whatever it takes' said Olli Rehn… quoted in Geert Mak, Große Erwartungen. Auf den Spuren des europäischen Traums (1999-2019), Siedler Verlag, München 2020, p.275.

(249) now more than thirteen per cent of GDP, and its public debt more than 120 per cent… Mody, EuroTragedy, p.250.

'as a French citizen'… as reported by van Middelaar, Alarums & Excursions, p.34.

'What Will Happen to Our Money?'… Die Zeit, 6 May 2010.

(250) Merkel declared 'If the euro fails, Europe fails'… Angela Merkel, 'Scheitert der Euro, dann scheitert Europa', 19 May 2010, https://www.bundestag.de/webarchiv/textarchiv/2010/29826227_kw20_de_stabilisierungsmechanismus-201760. She first articulated the thought in Aachen, during the Charlemagne Prize ceremony for Donald Tusk, see van Middelaar, Alarums and Excursions, p.40.

'whatever it takes' to preserve the euro… The so-called 'Whatever-it-takes-speech' was delivered by Mario Draghi on 26 July 2012 at the Global Investment Conference, see https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2012/html/sp120726.en.html. Not accidentally, he said it in London, then the capital of Europe's financial markets.

The Greek economy shrank by roughly one quarter… see my column 'With Angela Merkel's Germany at the helm, Europe will remain a tortoise', The Guardian, 25 September 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/25/merkel-germany-europe-tortoise-us-china, quoting 'If Europe's future is German, Greece has only one hope for salvation', The Guardian, 24 September 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/24/german-angela-merkel-austerity

In 2013, youth unemployment in Germany was just eight per cent but in Spain and Greece it was well over fifty per cent… quoted in '2014 is not 1914, but Europe is getting increasingly angry and nationalist', The Guardian, 18 November 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/18/europe-angry-nationalist-eu-elections. Youth unemployment in Greece peaked in 2013: 58% of 15-24 year olds were unemployed, see 'Greece: Youth unemployment rate from 2002 to 2021', Statista, 10 March 2023, https://www.statista.com/statistics/812053/youth-unemployment-rate-in-greece/

By early 2012, one in three Greeks lived below the poverty line… Kershaw, Roller-Coaster, p.493.

Suicides increased by a third… Evdoxios Doxiadis & Aimee Placas (eds.), Living under Austerity. Greek Society in Crisis, Berghahn, New York/Oxford 2020, p.238, give a figure of 35%. There also the figures on medical care.

(251) 'There was just an emptiness in front of him,'… see 'With Money Drying Up, Greece Is All but Bankrupt', The New York Times, 25 May 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/26/business/dealbook/with-money-drying-up-greece-is-all-but-bankrupt.html?_r=0, and my column 'Europe must save Greece to save itself', The Guardian, 15 June 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/15/europe-greece-greek-grexit

'You can intimidate everybody'… quoted in TheWall Street Journal, 25 February 1993.

'I would deplore a situation in which the policy of this great country…'… quoted in Roger Eatwell & Matthew Goodwin, National Populism. The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy, Pelican Books, London 2018, p.99.

(252) But changing the rules by stealth left everyone unhappy… Vivien A. Schmidt, Europe's Crisis of Legitimacy. Governing by Rules and Ruling by Numbers in the Eurozone, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2020, p.9.

Germany had exceeded the three per cent budget deficit limit for three successive years, 2001 to 2003,… Rödder, 21.0. Eine kurze Geschichte der Gegenwart, p.323.

an 'honest broker' and not 'the schoolmaster' in Europe… in Otto von Bismarck, 'Das Reich als ''ehrlicher Makler''', 19 February 1878, see Lothar Gall (ed.), Bismarck. Die großen Reden, Severin und Siedler, Berlin 1981, p.155. Also quoted in my 'The New German Question', The New York Review of Books, 15 August 2013, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/08/15/new-german-question/?pagination=false

(253) 'the Lady [i.e. Merkel] takes the decisions and the French president then gives a press conference to explain the decisions.'… see Claudia Sternberg, Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni & Kalypso Nicolaidis, TheGreco-German Affair in the Euro Crisis. Mutual Recognition Lost?, Palgrave Pivot, London 2018, p.68, quoting Die Zeit, 27 October 2011.

'swindlers'… see Sternberg, Greco-German Affair, p.49 and p.54.

'Sell your islands, you bankrupt Greeks,'… see 'Verkauft doch eure Inseln, ihr Pleite-Griechen… und die Akropolis gleich mit!', Bild, 27 October 2010, https://www.bild.de/politik/wirtschaft/griechenland-krise/regierung-athen-sparen-verkauft-inseln-pleite-akropolis-11692338.bild.html, and see picture gallery.

(254) a wheelchair-bound Kohl himself rebuked her indirectly for not doing it at his 80th birthday party… This on 5 May 2010, see the report by Marcus Walker and Matthew Karnitschnig, 'Zeal and Angst. Germany Torn Over Role in Europe', The Wall Street Journal, 8 May 2010, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703686304575228051536744986

'Today the German Bundestag will decide the fate of Greece'… Ulrich Beck, German Europe, Polity Press, Cambridge 2013, p.1.

(255) 'We should have taken the bigger steps towards integration earlier on…'… 'Wolfgang Schäuble: ''I’m pretty stubborn''', Financial Times, 22 March 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/97c49240-336c-11e9-bd3a-8b2a211d90d5

Clash of Empires

(256) 'that historically always belonged to Russia'… quotations from the stenographic record of the Bergedörfer Gesprächskreis Nr. 101 in St Petersburg, March 1994, https://koerber-stiftung.de/projekte/bergedorfer-gespraechskreis/archiv/

'In people's hearts and minds,'… quotations from his speech in the Kremlin, 18 March 2014, see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26652058

(258) the Millennium Message… summarised in Fiona Hill & Clifford G. Gaddy, Mr Putin. Operative in the Kremlin, Brookings Institution Press, Washington D.C. 2015, pp.39-49.

'a strong ally in the war against terror'… This at the G8 summit in Canada in 2002, 'U.S., Russia Continue Joint Efforts to Fight Terrorism', 27 June 2002, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/06/text/20020627-3.html and Michael McFaul, From Cold War to Hot Peace. The Inside Story of Russia and America, Penguin Books, London 2019, p.65.

'the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century'… This was the AP translation of his remarks to the Russian Federal Assembly in April 2005. The official Kremlin translation says 'a major geopolitical disaster of the century'. See this interesting review of slightly differing English translations: Politifact, 'Did Vladimir Putin call the breakup of the USSR ''the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century?''', 6 March 2014, https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/mar/06/john-bolton/did-vladimir-putin-call-breakup-ussr-greatest-geop/

'a made-up country'… quoted in McFaul, Cold War to Hot Peace, p.69.

(259) With my former doctoral student, Timothy Snyder,… see our article 'The Orange Revolution', The New York Review of Books, 28 April 2005, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2005/04/28/the-orange-revolution/. Reprinted in Garton Ash, Facts Are Subversive, pp.31-45.

(260) But this was outstripped by the scale of the funding and expert advice coming from Russia… This is also the conclusion of the leading Ukrainian expert Andrew Wilson in Roberts and Garton Ash, Civil Resistance and Power Politics, pp.347-51.

'these countries will become members of NATO'… see 'Bucharest Summit Declaration', 3 April 2008, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm

'the first ever attempt to build a liberal empire'… quoted in The New York Times, 24 June 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/24/world/europe/ukraine-eu-dmytro-kuleba.html, and see now my essay in Foreign Affairs, May/June 2023.

(262) Russian officials told Fiona Hill… see Hill & Gaddy, Mr Putin, p.388.

(263) by Putin’s own account it was only on 23 February 2014, after Yanukovych had fled …. By Putin's own account, the final decision was made at a dramatic meeting in his residence outside Moscow in the early hours of 23 February, two days after Yanukovych had fled his residence in apparent panic, see Robert Service, Kremlin Winter. Russia and the Second Coming of Vladimir Putin, Picador, London 2019, p.141. Timothy Snyder argues that Russia had decided to abandon the hopeless Yanukovych and proceed with Plan B even before he fled. See Timothy Snyder, TheRoad to Unfreedom. Russia, Europe, America, The Bodley Head, London 2018, pp.135-40,

'additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces'… see 'Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation signed in Paris, France', 27 May 1997, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_25468.htm

Novorossiya… For example, he referred to it in his marathon annual Direct Line phone-in on 17 April 2014, see the official English transcript http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/20796, and lectured the FT journalist Neil Buckley about it at the Valdai conference in October 2014. See John O’Loughlin, Gerard Toal & Vladimir Kolosov, 'The rise and fall of “Novorossiya”: examining support for a separatist geopolitical imaginary in southeast Ukraine', Post-Soviet Affairs, 33(2), 2017, pp.124-44.

The chairman of the board was the former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, by now a close friend of Putin’s'… Formally this was called a Verwaltungsrat, see 'Nord Stream 2. Neuer Job für Gerhard Schröder bei Gazprom-Tochter', Der Tagesspiegel, 5 October 2016, https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/nord-stream-2-neuer-job-fuer-gerhard-schroeder-bei-gazprom-tochter/14643886.html

(264) a missile launched by Russian-led insurgents from a Russian Buk missile launcher… detail in Snyder, Road to Unfreedom, pp.179-82.

(265) almost certainly originated in Russia… 'US pipeline cyberattack came from gang in Russia, Biden says', Al Jazeera, 13 May 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/13/us-petrol-pipeline-cyber-attack-originated-in-russia-biden-says, see also 'US agencies say Russia was likely behind massive cyber attack', Financial Times, 5 January 2021, https://www.ft.com/content/e61325da-a0ae-47fe-99bf-b10f61b2658f

Charlie Hebdo

(266) an online appeal for a 'week of solidarity'… see 'Against the assassin's veto', 8 January 2015, https://freespeechdebate.com/discuss/against-the-assassins-veto/ and the summary by Sarah Glatte in 'Charlie Hebdo cartoons: to republish or not to republish?', 19 May 2015, https://freespeechdebate.com/discuss/charlie-hebdo-cartoons-to-republish-or-not-to-republish/

(267) 'about half of my day'… This and quotations in the next two paragraphs from my account in 'Defying the Assassin's Veto', The New York Review of Books, 19 February 2015, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/02/19/defying-assassins-veto/

(268) 'At last,' he explained, 'we had the fucking front page…'… see the video embedded in, 'Charlie Hebdo: first cover since terror attack depicts prophet Muhammad', The Guardian, 13 January 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/13/charlie-hebdo-cover-magazine-prophet-muhammad. My translation.

'We will defend the freedom that you taught so well…'… see 'National tribute to the memory of Samuel Paty' – Speech by Emmanuel Macron at the Sorbonne, 21 October 2020, https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/french-foreign-policy/human-rights/freedom-of-religion-or-belief/article/national-tribute-to-the-memory-of-samuel-paty-speech-by-emmanuel-macron

(270) in the biographies of the Charlie Hebdo assassins, the brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi… see 'From Amateur to Ruthless Jihadist in France', The New York Times, 17 January 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/world/europe/paris-terrorism-brothers-said-cherif-kouachi-charlie-hebdo.html, Marc E. Vargo, The French Terror Wave, 2015-2016. Al-Qaeda and ISIS Attacks from Charlie Hebdo to the Bataclan Theatre, McFarland, Jefferson 2021, pp.35-49, and 'Cherif Kouachi ''met jihadist terrorists in Yemen''', BBC News, 10 January 2015, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-30758957

'It is because of the Jews'… quoted in Marc Weitzmann, 'A Rising Tide of Violence in France', The New York Review of Books, 11 February 2021, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/02/11/terror-after-charlie-hebdo/

a study by the Institut Montaigne… Hakim El Karoui, 'A French Islam is possible', September 2016, https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/publications/french-islam-possible

to show that it was not a 'Christian club'… see for example 'Recep Tayyip Erdogan: ''Taking part in the EU will bring harmony of civilisations – it is the project of the century''', The Independent, 13 December 2004, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/recep-tayyip-erdogan-taking-part-in-the-eu-will-bring-harmony-of-civilisations-it-is-the-project-of-the-century-24489.html

(271) depictions of King Louis Philippe as a pear and as a gross Gargantua,… https://www.wikiart.org/en/honore-daumier/gargantua-1831. The initial pear idea and drawings were Charles Philipon's, which earned him too a stretch in prison. See Patricia Mainardi, 'Of Pears and Kings', 9 January 2020, https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/of-pears-and-kings, and Philipon's original sketch from 1831, 'Métamorphose de Louis-Philippe en poire', https://www.photo.rmn.fr/archive/12-564739-2C6NU027NPA7.html

'Invaders'

(273) registered some 1.4 million 'irregular' arrivals in those two years… see figures in Hugo Brady's article 'Openness versus helplessness: Europe’s 2015-2017 border crisis', Groupe d’études géopolitiques, 28 June 2021, https://geopolitique.eu/en/2021/06/28/openness-versus-helplessness-europes-2015-2017-border-crisis/

after the Syrians' initially peaceful version of the 'Arab Spring'… see Raymond Hinnebusch, Omar Imady & Tina Zintl, 'Civil Resistance in the Syrian Uprising: From Peaceful Protest to Sectarian Civil War', in Adam Roberts et al. (eds), Civil Resistance and the Arab Spring. Triumphs and Disasters, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2016, pp.223-247.

(274) According to estimates by the Pew Research Center… Pew Research Center, 'Europe’s Growing Muslim Population', 29 November 2017, https://www.pewforum.org/2017/11/29/europes-growing-muslim-population/. This on p.17.

fence on the country's frontier with Serbia… 'Desperate migrants find holes in Hungary's razor-wire fence strategy', The Guardian, 26 August 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/26/hungary-migrants-razor-wire-fence-roszke

They were 'invaders', said Orbán… see 'Viktor Orbán: Hungary doesn’t want ''Muslim invaders''', Politico, 8 January 2018, https://www.politico.eu/article/viktor-orban-hungary-doesnt-want-muslim-invaders/

'parasites and protozoa',… quoted in Timothy Garton Ash, TheMagic Lantern. The Revolution of ’89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin & Prague, Atlantic Books, London 2019, p.164.

earning effusive praise from Donald Trump… see Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen. How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fail, Profile Books, London 2020, p.122.

close to five million Muslims and more than twelve per cent of its population being foreign-born… estimated sizes of Muslim population in 2016 from Pew Research Center, 'Europe’s Growing Muslim Population', p.4, and foreign-born population figures from UN Population Division data on international migrant stock, see https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/content/international-migrant-stock

(275) 'only' 10.6 million voters… see official results here, Ministère de l’intérieur et des outre-mer, 'Résultats de l'élection présidentielle 2017', https://www.interieur.gouv.fr/Elections/Les-resultats/Presidentielles/elecresult__presidentielle-2017/(path)/presidentielle-2017//FE.html

In a poll conducted in late 2016, French respondents said that thirty-one out of a 100 people… see Ipsos MORI, 'Europe hugely overestimates its Muslim population', 16 December 2016, https://www.statista.com/chart/7252/europe-hugely-overestimated-its-muslim-population/

'the politics of cultural despair'…. see Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair. A Study in the Rise of German Ideology, University of California Press, Berkley 1974.

(276) Sarazzin's book sold 1.2 million copies in less than nine months… see my 'Germans, More or Less', The New York Review of Books, 24 February 2011, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2011/02/24/germans-more-or-less

Sieferle's featured in Der Spiegel's bestseller list… see my 'It's the Kultur, Stupid', The New York Review of Books, 7 December 2017, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/12/07/germany-alt-right-kultur-stupid/

in a bestselling book called The French Suicide… Éric Zemmour, Le Suicide Français, Albin Michel, Paris 2014.

'Immigration has become an invasion,'… quotations are from the 2019 fifth edition of Le Grand Remplacement. See Renaud Camus, Le Grand Replacement, 5^th ed., published by the author, Plieux 2019, pp.491-2, where he reproduces the 2017 Appel de Colombey (Colombey being De Gaulle's home town), launched by him on behalf of his National Council of European Resistance and Karim Ouchikh's 'Resistance' group.

'literature, the major art form of Western civilisation,'… This and subsequent quotations from the excellent translation of Michael Houellebecq’s Submission by Lorin Stein. Michael Houellebecq, Submission, Vintage, London 2016, p.6, p.8, pp.57-8, and p.147.

(277) 'Islamism and the banlieue hordes'… see 'Pour un retour de l’honneur de nos gouvernants: 20 généraux appellent Macron à défendre le patriotisme', Valeurs Actuelles, 21 April 2021, https://www.valeursactuelles.com/politique/pour-un-retour-de-lhonneur-de-nos-gouvernants-20-generaux-appellent-macron-a-defendre-le-patriotisme/

'to join our action so as take part in the battle that is opening…'…'Marine Le Pen: ''Messieurs les généraux, rejoignez-moi dans la bataille pour la France''', Valeurs Actuelles, 23 April 2021, https://www.valeursactuelles.com/politique/marine-le-pen-messieurs-les-generaux-rejoignez-moi-dans-la-bataille-pour-la-france/

Muslims could be nearly thirteen per cent of the population of France by 2050 and around one in every ten… Pew Research Centre, 'Europe’s Growing Muslim Population', p.30, fertility rates on p.34. Data on (declining) birth rates in Europe (esp. Southern Europe) can be obtained from the UN Population Dynamics database, https://population.un.org/wpp/

Brexit

(279) 'History to the defeated/May say Alas but cannot help or pardon,'… W. H. Auden, 'Spain', 1937, https://sites.google.com/a/upr.edu/modernpoetry/Student-Blogs/ivan-andres-rodriguez/spainbywhauden

(280) what the philosopher Henri Bergson called 'the illusions of retrospective determinism'… see Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind. An Introduction to Metaphysics, Mineola, New York 2007, pp.109-11.

their 2015 manifesto promise to enfranchise British citizens who had resided abroad for more than 15 years… 'We will complete the electoral register, by working to include more of the five million Britons who live abroad. We will introduce votes for life, scrapping the rule that bars British citizens who have lived abroad for more than 15 years from voting.' The Conservative Party Manifesto, 2015, p.49, online at https://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/wmatrix/ukmanifestos2015/localpdf/Conservatives.pdf

'veering around like a shopping trolley'… 'Boris Johnson backs Brexit after ''agonisingly difficult'' decision – as it happened', The Guardian, 21 February 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2016/feb/21/cameron-marr-boris-johnson-eu-referendum-camerons-interview-on-the-marr-show-as-boris-johnson-prepares-to-declare-his-hand-politics-live?page=with:block-56c97d21e4b0f2fd18cafc0a

'Think of the rest of the EU. Think of the future.'… reprinted in Tim Shipman, All Out War. The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain’s Political Class, William Collins, London 2016, pp.616-8.

'a nation of shopkeepers'… see the useful discussion in 'Nation of shopkeepers', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_of_shopkeepers

(281) 'this realm of England is an empire'… text at 'The Act In Restraint Of Appeals', The History Learning Site, 16 March 2015, https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/tudor-england/the-act-in-restraint-of-appeals/

'We used to run the biggest empire the world has ever seen…'… see his column 'There is only one way to get the change we want – vote to leave the EU' in the Daily Telegraph, 16 March 2016, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2016/03/16/boris-johnson-exclusive-there-is-only-one-way-to-get-the-change/

(282) 'You can't fatten a pig on market day'… quoted in Shipman, All Out War, p.121.

'mix criticisms of the EU with talking about its very real achievements'… Cameron, For the Record, p.665.

'I want less Europe'… His former aide Daniel Korski recalls him saying this several times, see Daniel Korski, 'Why we lost the Brexit vote', Politico, 20 October 2016, https://www.politico.eu/article/why-we-lost-the-brexit-vote-former-uk-prime-minister-david-cameron/

In a survey conducted earlier in 2016,… Pew survey quoted by Korski, Politico, 20 October 2016, https://www.politico.eu/article/why-we-lost-the-brexit-vote-former-uk-prime-minister-david-cameron/

'had I not seen something similar all over western Europe?'… Mak, Große Erwartungen, p.467.

(283) 'What matters most to you when deciding how to vote in the EU referendum?'… see Chris Prosser, Jon Mellon & Jane Green, 'What mattered most to you when deciding how to vote in the EU referendum?', 11 July 2016, https://www.britishelectionstudy.com/bes-findings/what-mattered-most-to-you-when-deciding-how-to-vote-in-the-eu-referendum/#.YSZPqYVjDzA

'That's your bloody GDP, not mine'… Geoffrey Evans & Anand Menon, Brexit and British Politics, Polity Press, Cambridge 2017, p.62. The 'one of us' in this paragraph was Menon.

'As for the 19 countries locked into the catastrophic, one-size-fits-all single currency…'… Daily Mail, 22 June 2016.

(284) John Curtice concludes… John Curtice, 'Why Leave Won the UK's EU Referendum', Journal of Common Market Studies, 55, 2017, pp.19-37.

around thirteen per cent of Britain's population was foreign-born… see UN Population Division data on international migrant stock, https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/content/international-migrant-stock

from around one million in 2004 to at least 3.5 million in 2016… Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, 'EU Migration to and from the UK', 15 February 2022, https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/eu-migration-to-and-from-the-uk/

The official figure for net migration… 333,000… see Office for National Statistics, 'Migration Statistics Quarterly Report: May 2016', 26 May 2016, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/migrationstatisticsquarterlyreport/may2016, and Cameron, For the Record, p.670. The figure was subsequently revised slightly downwards to 329,000, see Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, 'Net migration to the UK', 20 December 2022, https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/long-term-international-migration-flows-to-and-from-the-uk/

'I think the people in this country have had enough of experts,'… full quote and context in Owen Bennett, Michael Gove. A Man in a Hurry, Biteback Publishing, London 2019, pp.333-4.

(285) 'Dave wants to give 75 million Turks access to your #NHS!'… quoted in Cato the Younger, Guilty Men, Biteback Publishing, London 2017, p.167.

'Instead of giving an extra 88 million people – more than our entire population –…'… quoted in Stephens, Britain Alone, p.373, citing a statement issued by the Vote to Leave campaign, 7 April 2016.

Britain's net contribution to the EU budget in 2016 was about £185 million a week… see the careful analysis done by Matthew Keep (House of Commons Library), 'The UK’s contribution to the EU Budget', 14 June 2022, esp. figures on p.9, https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7886/CBP-7886.pdf

'With the terrorism threat that we face only growing, it is hard to see how…'… quoted in 'Turkey EU accession poses security risk – Michael Gove', BBC News, 8 June 2016, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36479259

'Yet Another Load of Migrants Arrives in UK…'… quoted by Alan Rusbridger, Breaking News. The Remaking of Journalism and Why it Matters Now, Canongate, Edinburgh 2018, p.363.

(286) 'Leave were lying,'… Cameron, For the Record, p.669, referring to the statement by armed forces minister Penny Mordaunt.

'If Boris [Johnson], [Michael] Gove and Gisela [Stuart] had not supported us…'… Dominic Cumming’s Blog, 9 January 2017, https://dominiccummings.com/2017/01/09/on-the-referendum-21-branching-histories-of-the-2016-referendum-and-the-frogs-before-the-storm-2/. The whole blog, although long and rambling, is well worth reading.

(287) 'This Court has already concluded that the Prime Minister's advice…'… see House of Commons Library, 'Decision of the Supreme Court on the Prorogation of Parliament', 24 September 2019, https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/decision-of-the-supreme-court-on-the-prorogation-of-parliament/, and the actual judgement linked from there.

The proposal for a 'confirmatory public vote' failed by just twelve votes…. In a vote on 1 April 2019, see the helpful table of indicative votes in Daniel Kenealy, John Peterson & Richard Corbett, 'Brexit and the Future of Two Unions', 2021 supplement to Daniel Kenealy, John Peterson & Richard Corbett, The European Union: How Does It Work, 5^th ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford 2018.

'better than anything on Netflix'… see 'Brexit is just one front in Europe’s battle for its soul', The Guardian, 9 April 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/09/brexit-europe

(290) 'We have come to dread seeing old British friends…'… see The Observer, 4 August 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/04/how-does-the-rest-of-the-world-currently-view-the-uk-brexit-boris-johnson

Britain had made itself a laughing stock… see 'Wie sich eine Nation zum Trottel macht', Der Spiegel, 18 October 2018, https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/brexit-verhandlungen-wie-sich-grossbritannien

'We got rid of them! We kicked them out!…'… This and the next quotation from the documentary 'Brexit: behind Closed Doors', BBC 4, 8 May 2019.

(292) In 2021, in an EU without Britain, it was still twenty-eight per cent… see European Union, 'Standard Eurobarometer 96. Europeans' opinions about the European Union's priorities', 2022, pp.92-3, https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/2553. In 2022, it was still twenty-seven per cent. See European Union, 'Standard Eurobarometer 98. Public Opinion in the European Union. Annex', 2023, p.50, https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/2872

Demolition

(294) 'I recently had the opportunity to see an interview…'… Viktor Orbán, letter to the author dated 13 September 2021. See Photo Gallery.

'to spell out – in categories comprehensible for Western audiences… see his 'Samizdat No.12', 13 September 2021, https://abouthungary.hu/speeches-and-remarks/samizdat-no-12

(295) 'I don't think that our European Union membership precludes us…' see full text of Orbán's speech at Băile Tuşnad of 26 July 2014, https://budapestbeacon.com/full-text-of-viktor-orbans-speech-at-baile-tusnad-tusnadfurdo-of-26-july-2014/, and see the discussion in Zsuzsanna Szelényi, Tainted Democracy. Viktor Orbán and the Subversion of Hungary, Hurst & Co., London 2022, p.77ff.

members had to be younger than thirty-five… see Alliance of Young Democrats,

'Founding Act 1988', https://fidesz-orbanviktor.gportal.hu/gindex.php?pg=23872635

'We've been lying morning, noon and night'… quoted, with some important context, in Paul Lendvai, Orbán. Europe’s New Strongman, Hurst & Co., London 2022, pp.65-6.

(296) in the 2010 election Fidesz got more than two-thirds of the seats in parliament on just fifty-three per cent of the popular vote… see Péter Krekó & Zsolt Enyedi, 'Explaining Eastern Europe: Orbán's laboratory of illiberalism', Journal of Democracy, 29(3), 2018, pp.39-51, https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/explaining-eastern-europe-orbans-laboratory-of-illiberalism/

…in 2014, 2018 and 2022… see Krekó & Zsolt Enyedi, 'Explaining Eastern Europe',

https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/explaining-eastern-europe-orbans-laboratory-of-illiberalism/, and 'Orbán's victory in Hungary adds to the darkness engulfing Europe', The Guardian, 04 April 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/04/orbans-victory-in-hungary-adds-to-the-darkness-overshadowing-europe

(297) Muslim 'invaders'… see 'Viktor Orbán: Hungary doesn’t want ''Muslim invaders''', Politico, 8 January 2018, https://www.politico.eu/article/viktor-orban-hungary-doesnt-want-muslim-invaders/

'it's like we're twins'… quoted in Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen, p.122.

which rewarded it with generous subsidies… see this superb investigative report, 'How Orbán played Germany, Europe’s great power', Direkt36, 18 September 2020, https://www.direkt36.hu/en/a-magyar-nemet-kapcsolatok-rejtett-tortenete/, and 'How German automotive investment in Hungary exposes the dark reality of globalisation', Investment Monitor, 8 October 2021, https://www.investmentmonitor.ai/analysis/german-automotive-investment-hungary-orban

(298) close to one third of the country's industrial exports… The Economist, 31 August 2019, says 'up to 35%'.

it was easier to change countries than to change your own country… Ivan Krastev & Stephen Holmes, The Light that Failed. A Reckoning, Allen Lane, London 2019, p.32.

a nearly 200 per cent increase in the number of Hungarians residing in other member states… Daniel R. Kelemen, 'The European Union's authoritarian equilibrium', Journal of European Public Policy, 27(3), 2020, pp.481-499. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13501763.2020.1712455?journalCode=rjpp20. This on p.492. The figure is for Hungarian citizens between the ages of 15 and 64.

some 3.5 per cent of gross national income… Kelemen, 'The European Union's authoritarian equilibrium', p.490.

more than ninety-five per cent of public investments in Hungary were co-financed by the EU… Kelemen, 'The European Union's authoritarian equilibrium', p.490.

(299) 'We are of one blood!'… see 'Nélküled (Without You)' by Ismerős Arcok, https://lyricstranslate.com/en/n%C3%A9lk%C3%BCled-without-you.html-4

'Just as in 1849, 1920, 1945 and 1956, Europe's high dignitaries…'…This and the following quotation from the official translation of Orbán’s 'Commemoration speech on the 65th anniversary of the 1956 Revolution and Freedom Fight' at https://miniszterelnok.hu/prime-minister-viktor-orbans-commemoration-speech-on-the-65th-anniversary-of-the-1956-revolution-and-freedom-fight/

(300) 'We used to think that Europe was our future,' … see full 'State of the Nation' speech of Viktor Orbán, 19 February 2020, https://visegradpost.com/en/2020/02/19/full-state-of-the-nation-speech-of-viktor-orban-2020/

'have induced a Muslim demographic, political and economic flood…'… This and the following quotations from the text he sent me, also reproduced in 'Samizdat No.12', 13 September 2021, https://abouthungary.hu/speeches-and-remarks/samizdat-no-12

'BLM [Black Lives Matter] is not allowed to torch entire neighbourhoods in Budapest… see 'Hungary's Viktor Orban tells Tucker Carlson: ''Western liberals can't accept'' right-wing dissent', Fox News, 5 August 2021, https://www.foxnews.com/media/hungary-viktor-orban-tucker-carlson-western-liberals, and Carlson's subsequent comments on Fox News, August 2021. See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s01ZL5TnBNY, and 'How the American Right Fell in Love With Hungary', The New York Times, 19 October 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/19/magazine/viktor-orban-rod-dreher.html

(301) one of those narrow majorities… To be precise, 51.55% to 48.45%, see Wojciech Sadurski, Poland's Constitutional Breakdown, Oxford University Press, Oxford, p.1.

just 37.5 per cent of the vote – amounting to only 18% of those eligible to vote… Sadurski, Poland's Constitutional Breakdown, p.1.

'the Polish constitution against the German hegemon'… quoted in a tweet by Ben Stanley (@BDStanley), 10 October 2021, 19:27, https://twitter.com/BDStanley/status/1447267679686045700

'Brussels wants to forbid eating meat?', 'The opposition wants to Islamicise Poland?' and the magnificent 'Poles are not soulless'… see Gazeta Wyborcza, 29 December 2021, https://wyborcza.pl/7,75410,27954277,ostatnia-paroweczka-w-narracji-opozycji-nogas-i-rusinek-wybrali.html

(302) 'Experts have no doubt [that] the stream of money that currently flows…'… quoted in 'For a bitter taste of Polish populism, just watch the evening news', The Guardian, 25 June 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/25/polish-populism-evening-news-public-broadcaster-presidential-election. From my own notes from watching TVP evening news during the presidential election campaign in summer 2020. The quotation was checked against the video online.

(305) 'We are warning against the course of change in our country…'… quoted, also with more context, in Garton Ash, The Magic Lantern, p.160.

Iron Curtain

(308) well over six metres high, with a cylindrical fortification along its top… Although the height of the fence was 6m until 2018, in some critical places it was then made even higher, with the cylindrical or a comb fortification added. Most of the incursions over the fence are at places where it is still only 6m high. Email from Pablo Núñez Díaz, 23 December 2021.

(312) 'It's up to you. Go through. Go.'… '''Go through. Go,'' Lukashenko tells migrants at Polish border', Reuters, 26 November 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/lukashenko-tells-migrants-belarus-poland-border-he-wont-make-them-go-home-2021-11-26/

'The guards were kicking people like footballs,'… '''The guards at the Poland-Belarus border kicked us like footballs''', The Times, 13 November 2021, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-guards-at-the-poland-belarus-border-kicked-us-like-footballs-zbpzphgnp

(313) 'It's Europe or death,'… '''My town is in ruins and my friends are all dead. My only hope is to reach the EU''', The Times, 14 November 2021, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/my-town-is-in-ruins-and-my-friends-are-all-dead-my-only-hope-is-to-reach-the-eu-3m9pxpgsw

more than 21,000 people drowned while trying to cross the Mediterranean between 2014 and 2021… This is the figure given on the website of the UN affiliated International Organisation for Migration, https://missingmigrants.iom.int/region/mediterranean

12.39: 'The boat is sinking. I swear to you,…'… quoted in Gerald Knaus, Welche Grenzen brauchen wir? Zwischen Empathie und Angst – Flucht, Migration und die Zukunft von Asyl, Piper Verlag, München 2020, pp.27-9.

In 2021, an unprecedented number of people risked their lives… see 'Record number of migrant Channel crossings in 2021', InfoMigrants, 4 January 2022, https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/37620/record-number-of-migrant-channel-crossings-in-2021, see also the table in 'Priti Patel’s options for dealing with huge rise in Channel migrants', The Times, 25 November 2021, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/priti-patels-options-for-dealing-with-huge-rise-in-channel-migrants-wdklxwpnr,

in the early hours of 24 November 2021, at least 27 men, women and children died… In initial reporting, the number was given as 26 or 27, but an impressive BBC investigation concluded that at least 30 people died that night. See 'Channel migrants tragedy: Terrifying final hours of their fatal journey', BBC News, 21 December 2021, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-b7bd2274-88b1-4ef9-a459-be22e180b52c

(314) 'I'm going to try again'… see 'Migrant crisis: ''Mum, we must switch our phones off now. Pray for me''', The Times, 27 November 2021, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mum-we-must-switch-our-phones-off-now-pray-for-me-7030rc3sf

freedom of movement as the defining achievement… In polling done by eupinions for our 'Europe’s Stories' research team at Oxford University in December 2020, nearly three quarters (74%) of those asked agreed with the statement that 'If it did not offer the freedom to travel, work, study and live in other EU member states, the European Union would not be worth having', see https://europeanmoments.com/young-europeans/free-movement#fig-3

the metal fences around Ceuta… In large part paid for from EU funds, see Peter Gold, Europe or Africa? A Contemporary Study of the Spanish North African Enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, Liverpool University Press, Liverpool 2000, pp.130-1. Further information on the post-2005 fence from Pablo Núñez Díaz.

(315) I called this a 'reverse 1989'… 'Europe’s walls are going back up – it’s like 1989 in reverse', The Guardian, 29 November 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/29/europe-2015-walls-1989-paris-refugee-crisis

an Orbán-supporting tabloid even put the famous giant wire cutters into a photomontage of George Soros and opposition leaders… This was Lokál, see Garton Ash, The Magic Lantern, p.165.

external land frontiers of more than 13,000 km… This figure comes from the CIA Factbook (updated post-Brexit), https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/european-union/

Angela Merkel and Dutch prime minister Marc Rutte agreed with the Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoǧlu a staggering €6 billion… van Middelaar, Alarums and Excursions, pp.107-8, describes this as being an offer by Davutoǧlu, as does Knaus, Grenzen, pp.189-190, but Hugo Brady, in 'Openness versus helplessness: Europe’s 2015-2017 border crisis', Groupe d’études géopolitiques, 28 June 2021, https://geopolitique.eu/en/2021/06/28/openness-versus-helplessness-europes-2015-2017-border-crisis/, records that 'Surprised, the Turks agreed to present the plan as their own'.

(316) all were reliably reported by UN observers … 'Most refugees in Libyan detention centres at risk – UN', The Guardian, 31 May 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/31/un-calls-for-evacuation-of-libyan-refugees-amid-dire-conditions

'places of ignoble torture and slavery'… quoted in Sally Hayden, My Fourth Time, We Drowned. Seeking Refuge on the World’s Deadliest Migration Route, HarperCollins, London 2022, p.323.

(317) 'You're in British waters'…'call the French police'… see 'Exclusive: Migrant survivor says British coastguard ignored call for help', Rudaw, 29 November 2021, https://www.rudaw.net/english/world/28112021

The invisible maritime border… see the BBC investigation 'Channel migrants tragedy: Terrifying final hours of their fatal journey', BBC News, 21 December 2021, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-b7bd2274-88b1-4ef9-a459-be22e180b52c

with the loss of at least 339 lives … more than 150,000 migrants… Sally Hayden, My Fourth Time, We Drowned, pp.179-83.

the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia had published a photo… https://www.preda.org/photos-that-tell-the-truth/wppaspec/oc1/lnen/cv0/ab1/pt2

(318) 'It is a civilisational and legal duty not to let human beings drown'… see 'Koalitionsvertrag 2021–2025 zwischen der SPD, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen und FDP', 24 November 2021, https://www.spd.de/koalitionsvertrag2021/. This on page 142.

'The Tragic but Brutal Truth: They Are Not Real Refugees!…'… Daily Mail, 28 May 2016 quoted in Rebecca Hamlin, Crossing. How We Label and React to People on the Move, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2021, p.128.

'well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of…'… see the authoritative texts linked to from https://www.unhcr.org/uk/1951-refugee-convention.html

On average, around fifty per cent of asylum requests in the UK in the late 2010s were granted… see Figure 4 in Oxford’s Migration Observatory, 'Q&A: Migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats', 2 July 2021, https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/commentaries/qa-migrants-crossing-the-english-channel-in-small-boats/

Most of the people coming across the Channel in small boats between 2018 and 2020 were from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan… see Table 1 at Oxford’s Migration Observatory, 'Q&A: Migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats', 2 July 2021, https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/commentaries/qa-migrants-crossing-the-english-channel-in-small-boats/

Germany's economic need for immigrants was calculated at some 400,000 a year… SchengenVisaInfo, 27 August 2021, https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/news/german-labour-chief-says-germany-needs-400000-skilled-immigrants-yearly-to-tackle-skilled-workers-shortage/

The statues, created by the Ceuta-born artist Ginés Serrán-Pagán,… see http://www.serran-paganart.com/sculptures.html

War in Ukraine

(321) Boris Romanchenko… 'Russian attack on Kharkiv kills Holocaust survivor, 96', The Guardian, 21 March 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/21/russian-attack-on-kharkiv-kills-holocaust-survivor-96

old people in villages around Kyiv referred to the Russian invaders as nimtsi… see 'Sie nennen sie die Deutschen', Die Zeit, 16 April 2022, https://www.zeit.de/2022/16/ukraine-angriffskrieg-deutsche-nazis-russland, and tweet by Mattia Nelles, 10 April 2022, confirmed in an email to me, 16 August 2022. The investigative journalist Natalyia Gumenyuk also confirmed to me that she had personally heard this a number of times.

'Look at these faces around us,…'… see '''It might be the last chance to get out'': citizens flee Kyiv as assault intensifies', The Guardian, 1 March 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/01/it-might-be-the-last-chance-to-get-out-citizens-flee-kyiv-as-assault-intensifies

Nearly 8 million Ukrainians were internally displaced; more than 6 million became refugees outside the country… 7.7 million were internally displaced according to OHCHR, 5 May 2022, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/05/ukraine-millions-displaced-traumatised-and-urgently-need-help-say-experts, and 6.1 million refugees from Ukraine recorded across Europe according to UNHCR, 29 July 2022, https://data.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/94489

(322) the 64th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade… see 'The Dead Of The 64th: A Notorious Russian Army Unit And Its High Casualty Rate', Radio Free Europe, 10 August 2022, https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-army-casualty-rate-64th-brigade-bucha-deaths/31982194.html

'a role model in fulfilling its military duty… '… quoted in New Lines Institute For Strategy and Policy & Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, 'An Independent Legal Analysis of the Russian Federation’s Breaches of the Genocide Convention in Ukraine and the Duty to Prevent', May 2022, p.18, https://newlinesinstitute.org/an-independent-legal-analysis-of-the-russian-federations-breaches-of-the-genocide-convention-in-ukraine-and-the-duty-to-prevent/

'Two Russian soldiers had entered her house…' see New Lines Institute For Strategy and Policy & Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, 'Legal Analysis of the Russian Federation’s Breaches', p.32.

a photograph of the corpse of a Ukrainian woman lying on a street in Irpin… see 'Russian war crimes in Ukraine: So much for ''never again''', Politico, 6 April 2022, https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-war-crime-ukraine-never-again

(323) Putin's regime was, indeed, fascist… This has been powerfully argued by Timothy Snyder, see for example, 'We Should Say It. Russia Is Fascist.', The New York Times, 19 May 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/19/opinion/russia-fascism-ukraine-putin.html, and is most illuminatingly explored in a long essay titled 'Vladimir Putin is in thrall to a distinctive brand of Russian fascism', The Economist, 28 July 2022, https://www.economist.com/briefing/2022/07/28/vladimir-putin-is-in-thrall-to-a-distinctive-brand-of-russian-fascism

'anti-Moscow Russia'… see Article by Vladimir Putin 'On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians', 12 July 2021, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181

'Putin speaks truth:…'… Biermann speaking via video link to an Ukraine solidarity demonstration in central Berlin, 6 March 2022, 'Literaturfestival in Berlin: Kunstschaffende zeigen Solidarität mit Ukraine', RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland, 6 March 2022, https://www.rnd.de/kultur/berlin-kunstschaffende-zeigen-solidaritaet-mit-ukraine-TKQYO3XCAAUXI76QEGMUJWBHNA.html

'How can I be a Nazi? Tell that to my grandfather,…'… quoted in 'Russia’s Putin justifies war in menacing speech as Ukraine’s Zelensky appeals for peace', Financial Times, 24 February 2022, https://www.ft.com/content/0783ea10-b493-4889-8da8-5a5ea75cb977

'temporary Nazi deployment'… quoted in 'Civilians killed by Russian missile strike on city in western Ukraine', Financial Times, 14 July 2022, https://www.ft.com/content/cced66f6-9b33-46cf-ac24-93f743e407fa

(324) 'Our president is still in Kyiv and it's like a beacon… email from Lindsey Hilsum, 29 July 2022, quoting from her notes.

'Russian warship, go fuck yourself'… see 'Russia Retreats from Ukraine's Snake Island', VoaNews, 30 June 2022, https://www.voanews.com/a/russia-withdraws-from-ukraine-s-snake-island/6639386.html

'We used hunting rifles,' said Alexander, a local shopkeeper… for this and other details see 'Ukraine: The small town which managed to block Russia's big plans', BBC News, 22 March 2022, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60840081, and 'A Ukrainian Town Deals Russia One of the War’s Most Decisive Routs', The Wall Street Journal, 16 March 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-russia-voznesensk-town-battle-11647444734

(325) 'consequences you have never encountered in your history'… quoted in 'Russia’s Putin justifies war in menacing speech as Ukraine’s Zelensky appeals for peace', Financial Times, 24 February 2022, https://www.ft.com/content/0783ea10-b493-4889-8da8-5a5ea75cb977

'Do prove that you are indeed Europeans,'… quoted in 'In this moment of crisis, opening the door to Ukraine is one thing the EU can do', The Guardian, 4 March 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/04/ukraine-eu-membership-zelenskiy-european-values-war

(326) 'Now, thirty years later, comes the reckoning'… Biermann speaking via video link to an Ukraine solidarity demonstration in central Berlin, 6 March 2022, https://www.rnd.de/kultur/berlin-kunstschaffende-zeigen-solidaritaet-mit-ukraine-TKQYO3XCAAUXI76QEGMUJWBHNA.html

(328) in December 22, I travelled to Lviv in Ukraine… For more on this see my essay 'Ukraine in Our Future', The New York Review of Books, 23 February 2023, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/02/23/ukraine-in-our-future-timothy-garton-ash/. And for my February 2023 visit to Kyiv, which will be reflected in revised versions of this chapter for many editions of this book, see my article 'The need for speed in Ukraine: the West must be bold', The Spectator, 25 February 2023, https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-need-for-speed-in-ukraine-the-west-must-be-bold/

Delphi

(331) Half of the large rectangular stone has three holes… see Photo Gallery.

to convert it into the base for an olive press… Michael Scott, Delphi. A History of the Center of the Ancient World, Princeton University Press, Princeton/Oxford 2014, p.23 and fn. 43 on p.313. Much of the detail in these paragraphs comes from Scott.

(332) 'Croesus, having crossed the Halys, will destroy a great empire'… Michael Scott, Delphi, pp.83-5.

'did not understand what was spoken or make further enquiry…'… Herodotus, Histories, I.91, see http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0126%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D91

on the advice of the Tibetan State Oracle… as described by Michael A. Flower, ‘Understanding Delphi Through Tibet’, Greece and Rome, 65(1), 2018, pp.34-53. This on pp.45-6, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/greece-and-rome/article/abs/understanding-delphi-through-tibet/14F1EF1786A231F3E6C8B9517FD5F296

more than fifty per cent of respondents in France, Germany and Britain said they took astrology seriously… Peter Baldwin, TheNarcissism of Minor Differences. How America and Europe are Alike. An Essay in Numbers, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2009, p.174.

(333) 'of greater interest than anything else because it is a condition of all possible practice…'… Immanuel Kant, Anthropologie in Pragmatischer Absicht, 1.§33, English translation as quoted in Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History. Timing History, Spacing Concepts, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2002, pp.132-3.

'it is only a matter of time before a new pandemic appears…'… quoted in Ivan Krastev, Is It Tomorrow yet?Paradoxes of the Pandemic, Allen Lane, London 2020, p.3.

(334) 'Goodbye Schengen' declared an Italian newspaper… Il Sole 24 Ore, 16 March 2020, quoted in Luuk van Middelaar, Pandemonium. Saving Europe, Agenda, Newcastle upon Tyne 2021, p.67.

(335) In an essay on 'The Unknown Future and the Art of Prognosis',… reprinted in Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History, pp.131-47.

(336) The classical scholar Michael Scott persuasively argues that… Scott, Delphi, pp.29-30, also quoting a businessman who described the oracle to him as 'an ancient management consultant'.

(338) the population of Africa is expected to double again between 2020 and 2050, adding another 1.2 billion people… see Gideon Rachman, The Age of the Strongman. How the Cult of the Leader Threatens Democracy around the World, The Bodley Head, London 2021, p.184.

earth's temperature has increased by 0.5 degrees… '1. Is the climate warming?', The Royal Society, March 2020, https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/climate-change-evidence-causes/question-1/

fifty-three per cent of young Europeans… This was one of the most striking results from polling our 'Europe's Stories' project of the Dahrendorf Programme at Oxford University did with the eupinions survey project of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, see https://europeanmoments.com/within-europe/opinions/climate

(341) 'My own state of mind synthesises these two feelings and transcends them…'… Letter of 19 December 1929, quoted from Lynne Lawner's translation of Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison, Quartet Books, London 1979, pp.158-9.

'an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart'… Havel, Disturbing the Peace, p.181.

Epilogue

(347) more than a third of the votes cast in Ver-sur-Mer… Exact figures can be found here, https://www.interieur.gouv.fr/Elections/Les-resultats/Presidentielles/elecresult__presidentielle-2017/(path)/presidentielle-2017/028/014/014739.html. Marine Le Pen received the majority of the votes in some nearby towns/villages: https://www.lemonde.fr/data/france/presidentielle-2017/ (Click on 'Calvados' on the map, and you will see them).

In the 2022 election,… Official results for the 2017 Presidential election can be found here https://www.interieur.gouv.fr/Elections/Les-resultats/Presidentielles/elecresult__presidentielle-2017/(path)/presidentielle-2017/028/014/014739.html, and for 2022 here https://www.interieur.gouv.fr/Elections/Les-resultats/Presidentielles/elecresult__presidentielle-2022/(path)/presidentielle-2022/028/014/014739.html