For instance, Eleftherios Basdekis has lived his entire life under a dark German cloud.

As a boy he escaped a Nazi massacre in his village, running barefoot through the Greek countryside for three days. As a businessman, he bought German-made Mercedes trucks, becoming heavily indebted in the process.

And, as an elderly man looking back on 83 years spent in this mountainous pocket of central Greece, he finds himself scarcely able to survive on his meagre pension — with German-led European Union politicians demanding yet more austerity.