Rising German ambitions for treaty-change pile the pressure on David Cameron

By Bagehot

THE DAILY Mail carries a cartoon of Angela Merkel this morning sporting a Hitler moustache, jackboots, riding breeches and doing the Nazi salute. It is all a terrific joke, apparently, a parody of the Mel Brooks comedy „Springtime for Hitler“ (adapted by the Mail to add such chortling touches as a „Greek President Stavros“ character, David Cameron as Neville Chamberlain and Nick Clegg as a Hitler youth). This follows columns by the Mail’s chief political thinker, Simon Heffer, accusing Germany of trying to found a „Fourth Reich.“ Over at ConservativeHome, a website not known for slavish pro-Europeanism, a sighing Tim Montgomerie asks: „Can we talk about Germany without resorting to WWII imagery?“