If Mr. Draghi and the E.C.B. take insufficient action and the eurozone economy indeed stagnates or falls into a long recession, it could mean a lost generation of Europeans living with high unemployment and declining living standards. We can’t know for sure whether Europeans would react to this outcome by being content to muddle through, or if they would elect radical politicians who might endanger the era of a Europe united around liberal democratic ideals. So far Europeans have been O.K. with muddling along amid high unemployment, but it’s a really bad result either way.

If Mr. Draghi and the E.C.B. take aggressive action that alienates Germany too severely, you could see sharp challenges to the central bank from within its largest member. Already, German officials are challenging in the European Court of Justice an earlier E.C.B. program to stand ready to buy bonds. A ruling is expected next year. And that’s for a program that hasn’t actually bought a single dollar’s worth of government bonds! If the central bank begins large-scale quantitative easing, expect more legal challenges to the E.C.B.'s authority, and even calls within Germany to break off from the eurozone entirely and go back to using the German mark.

There are two ways this could go for a happier outcome.

Maybe the European economy will heal itself. Maybe growth will return and inflation will get back to the 2 percent the E.C.B. aims for without much further action out of the central bank. If this happens, the strategy of austere fiscal policy and cautious monetary policy will be vindicated. Then again, we’ve been waiting for that self-generated recovery to come along for four years or so now, and they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing but expecting different results.

And the final possibility is that Mr. Draghi will display sufficient political savvy to encourage policies that jolt the eurozone economy into a better place while tamping down the blowback. Germans may squawk, but if Mr. Draghi can show both the independence and resolve to take an unpopular action, and the subtle touch to avoid any concrete consequences (like adverse legal rulings or Germany threatening to leave the euro), then his independence will be rewarded.

What the latest reporting shows, though, is just how deep the anger over E.C.B. policies runs in Germany and how tricky this task will be for Mr. Draghi.