“The wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of kings,” Winston Churchill warned Britain’s House of Commons in 1901, correctly forecasting the horrors of World War ii. The thrust of his message: “Democracy is more vindictive than cabinets.”

A king can lose many thousands of people in war, but still he and his cabinet would gladly sit down with their former enemies to calmly and rationally form a peace deal.

The wars of democracy are not like that. When the populous thoroughly throws its support behind a war, it will not forgive an enemy so quickly.

Churchill’s insight also explains the growing hatred in Europe today. If the solution to the Greek crisis was up to bureaucrats, it would still be tricky, but emotions would be much more subdued. Few people get too emotionally invested into what happens with other people’s money.

But it’s not up to bureaucrats, meaning a tide of anger threatens to drown Europe.

This anger is old news in Greece. Since 2008, it has kicked out the entire political class that has ruled the country for a generation. Its government is now led by a party that won only 3.3 percent of the vote before the crisis. It’s clear that Greek voters are angry with their old leaders, with the bureaucrats at the European Union, and with Germany.

Greece’s new leaders reflect this hostility. “If Europe leaves us in crisis, we will flood it with migrants,” threatened Greece’s new defense minister. He promised that if the EU inflicted any harm on Greece, he would retaliate by giving illegal immigrants official documents that would allow them to travel almost anywhere in mainland Europe. “Too bad for Berlin if there are some jihadis from Islamic State in that wave of millions,” he said.

More recently the German government has made headlines with angry statements directed at Greece, but that’s nothing compared to the anger of the German people.

While Germany’s parliament voted to extend Greece’s bailout program by 542-32, the nation’s bestselling newspaper, Bild, vehemently disagreed. “NO! No more billions for the greedy Greeks!” read the paper’s headline as it called on its readers to support its campaign by sending in selfies with the page.

https://twitter.com/BILD_Nuernberg/status/570896231465156608/photo/1

While Germany’s leaders scramble to ensure Greece isn’t forced out of the union, opinion polls indicate that Germans would be quite happy if the Greeks quit. A political barometer survey published March 13 by zdf found that 52 percent of Germans want Greece out of the eurozone. Another poll found that 80 percent did not want to send any more money to Greece.

The result is a series of angry clashes between Greece and Germany. The most bitter one is over Greece’s claim that it deserves more World War ii compensation from Germany. It’s claiming €341 billion (us$367 billion), enough to pay off nearly all government debt and solve Greece’s financial problems.

But responding to its economic problems by bringing up World War ii is a sure way to anger Germans.

“The government of [Alexis] Tsipras positions the lever where Germany is most vulnerable—the crimes committed by Germany in the first and second world wars,” Bild editor Bela Anda said, according to The Guardian. “It’s moral blackmail.”

“They won’t get their debts paid by conjuring up German obligations from World War ii,” said German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, warning that trust in the Greek government had been “destroyed.”

Now the Greek government is threatening to seize German properties—including holiday homes owned by individual Germans—to recover the money.

It doesn’t take much to spark a row in such a climate. The latest revolves around Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis and “fingergate.” The German media discovered a video of Varoufakis addressing a group of Croatian radicals in 2013, where Varoufakis said that Greece should have defaulted on its debts in 2010 “and stuck the finger to Germany.” The row revolves around whether or not Varoufakis accompanied the statement with the relevant gesture. “German Media Want Greek Finance Minister’s Head Over ‘Fingergate’” ran the New York Times’ headline.

“Relations have reached a new low,” warned think tank Open Europe director Mats Persson. “It’s turning into an arms race.”

“If it were a marriage, we would probably be talking about divorce or a last-ditch effort at marital therapy,” wrote cnbc.

That is exactly where Europe stands right now. Germany and Greece are the extreme ends of the divide, but other nations in the union are also split between debtors and creditors. The EU is reaching the point where it will have to either get it together or split apart.

At the moment, the relationship can still be fixed. Prominent leaders in Germany, for example, have agreed that Germany may need to pay Greece more World War ii compensation, and Chancellor Angela Merkel is still able calm things down with a few phone calls.

But that won’t last much longer. When a Greek government minister threatens to send terrorists to Germany, you’re close to the point of no return. European bureaucrats are excellent at kicking the can down the road, but they may not be able to do that much longer without irreparable damage to the union.

If it is not fixed soon, more than the euro is at risk. The emotions involved are strong enough to tear apart the EU itself. If Greece followed through with its threat to flood the EU with migrants, for example, its EU membership would not be tolerated for long.

“Watch closely. Germany will use this crisis to force Europe to unite more tightly,” wrote Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry in 2011. “In the process, some eurozone countries will be forced out of the union. When that happens, the pundits will say European unification is dead, that the European Union has failed. Don’t listen to them!”

The euro crisis was designed to force a group of EU nations to come together as a superstate, sharing the government necessary to make the common currency work. The growing anger in Europe merely increases the pressure on the eurozone to make that happen. That pressure may break some nations out of the eurozone, but it is confronting Europe’s leaders with a stark choice: Either make the changes that will make the euro work or see their beloved project disintegrate.

For more on how this crisis was designed to force Europe to unite, read Mr. Flurry’s article “Did the Holy Roman Empire Plan the Greek Crisis?”