Rulers Of The World

There have always been people whose lives have been dedicated to reaching an ultimate goal of ruling over huge parts of the world. All of these figures have been despotic dictators of some kind. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, Saddam Hussein, Gadhafi have been playing parts in recent history. Sooner or later their sick brutality-fed dreams collapsed, often in a sea of blood. War will never cease to exist on our planet as power-hungry leaders will always re-appear on the world stage. Right now the world is worried about Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin and his bold and unjustified move into a country which rather would be a part of a modern West-Europe. Germany has often played a role in various conflicts. If we go back far enough we read about the Roman Empire expanding their territory into central Europe. During the nineties I had the opportunity to see an excavated Roman Mansion. It was discovered under ongoing road construction in the city of Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Bea’s birthplace.                                  Excavated Roman Mansion   This is a model of the mansion how it must have looked Why was there a Roman Villa, equipped with a modern water-based floor heating system? Germania was the Roman and Greek term for the geographical regions inhabited mainly by the Germanic people. It was most often used to refer especially to the areas east of the Rhine and north of the Danube. The areas west of the Rhine were mainly Celtic (specifically Gaulish) and had already become part of the Roman Empire. Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler is located west of the river Rhine. Map over “Magna Germania”  Early 2.century “Magna Germania” means Great Germany. Did Hitler perceive his crazy ideas of the Roman Empire? Indeed, the map looks a lot like Hitlers dream of “Gross Deutschland”.            Above: The Roman Empire spanning around the Mediterranean Sea. As we can see the Romans never made it across the Rhine, but they must have had ambitions to proceed further. They even ventured onto the British Isle. However, what history teaches us is that no world-empire has ever managed to survive for ever. The British Empire collapsed and so did Napoleon Bonaparte’s Empire when his troops got stuck in the everlasting muddy flats of Russia. Let’s hope that  Mr.Putin will reconsider his imperialistic ideas and that peace will settle again in the Ukraine. He is threatening the peace in entire Europe.