When I was a little girl my mother had a book on a shelf in the basement called Germany Will Try It Again. It was written between the wars and published I think in the 1930’s. And Germany indeed did try it again. Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist cohorts created the Third Reich and brought Germany into the Second World War, which they lost big time.

If anyone thought that Germany would succumb to occupation and invasion, firebombing, and the Nuremberg Trials, they were clearly wrong. By the 1960’s and 70’s Germany’s economy was in full flower once more, even more so than it had been in the 1930’s under Adolf Hitler. And the German mark became one of the most stable, sought after currencies in the world.

This was so true that after the reunification of Germany in the 1990’s and the signing of the treaty that formally ended World War II forever, Germany promoted its sterling currency as the currency of continental Europe — the euro.

There were many takers. For when it comes to money there is no political correctness. What is — is. And no one could deny that the Germany economy and the German stock market was one of the Big Four and had been so for two hundred years: Germany, Japan, Great Britain, and the United States. Now there are seventeen member nations that call the euro theirs.

But in 2010 and 2011 the euro is meeting its first big crisis — the Greek Debt Crisis and possibly a crisis that will involve all the pigs — Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and Greece. It is possible that if not dealt with correctly the currency union will dissolve and Germany’s latest attempt at expansion will be squelched, especially if it expands to involve Italy.

So when Germany says let Greece default and then we’ll get over it, listen. It may be the right thing to do. Don’t carry on the debt crisis forever and let it capture headline after headline. Don’t let journalists make all the investors jittery. Get past it. Then write new history in the expansion of the euro and of German economic influence in Europe.