Germany 2024 – capable of war or capable of peace?

When Minister Boris Pistorius formulated the demand in early November 2023 that Germany must “become capable of war,” he notably deviated from the language convention that had been customary in the country for decades. Although he attempted to appease later, stating that he did not “intend to wage a war,” but rather to “be able to withstand”¹ one – for Pistorius, the “enemy” is always Russia, the “aggressor.” However, what is the intention behind this new choice of words? Why is there no longer talk of preventing wars or ending them as quickly as possible? The following text sheds light on what Germany faces if it becomes “capable of war,” even before an actual war.

In a comprehensive interview published by the German Nachdenkseiten on 21 December 2023², the Israeli-British historian Avi Shlaim stated:
  “The blind support for Israel is a colossal moral failure. […] The West is an accomplice to Israel. Support for Israel is permission for ethnic cleansing, for mass murder of civilians on an industrial scale. […] The contrast between Ukraine and Palestine illustrates Western double standards. Now we witness before our eyes the political and moral bankruptcy of the Western supporters of the state of Israel.”
  German politics is also part of these “Western supporters of the state of Israel.” While this is often explained (and justified) by Germany’s guilt for the murder of millions of European Jews and the resulting and enduring German guilt, this is only part of the truth.
  The connection between this “support” (not every post-war German government followed Israeli policy as unconditionally as the current one), the geopolitical goals of German Middle East policy within the new West-East confrontation, and the German political plan to make Germany “capable of war” is still inadequately examined. In other words, it is high time to address what it actually entails when German politicians demand that Germany must become “capable of war.” Is everyone aware that it involves much more than just allocating more money to the Bundeswehr?

Hitler’s secret
memorandum of August 1936

Once before, a German politician exerted all his energy to make Germany “war-ready.” This was formulated by Hitler in August 1936 in a secret memorandum about a Four-Year Plan for Nazi Germany:
  “The purpose of this memorandum is not to prophesy the time when the untenable situation in Europe will become an open crisis. I only want to express my conviction in these lines that this crisis cannot and will not be avoided and that Germany has the duty to secure its own existence in the face of this catastrophe by all means and to protect itself from it. This compulsion results in a series of consequences affecting the most important tasks ever faced by our people. Because a victory of Bolshevism over Germany would not lead to a Treaty of Versailles, but to a final extinction, indeed, extermination of the German people. The extent of such a catastrophe cannot be foreseen. Just as the densely populated West of Europe (including Germany) would experience the most horrendous catastrophe ever visited upon humanity after the collapse of Bolshevism. In the face of the necessity to defend against this danger, all other considerations must be completely irrelevant!”
  Therefore, it applies: “The extent and pace of the military exploitation of our forces cannot be chosen large and fast enough! It is a capital error to believe that there could be any negotiation or weighing of these points with other vital necessities. As much as the overall life picture of a people should be balanced, certain one-sided shifts must be made in certain times to the detriment of other, not so vital tasks.”  In concrete terms: “If we do not succeed in the shortest time in developing the German armed forces in training, in formation, in equipment, and above all in mental education to the first army in the world, Germany will be lost! The principle applies here that what has been neglected in months of peace cannot be made up for in centuries. Therefore, all other wishes must unconditionally subordinate themselves to this task. Because this task is life and life preservation, and all other desires – no matter how understandable they may be in other times – are irrelevant or even life-threatening and therefore to be rejected.”³

Structural parallels

This excerpt from Hitler’s memorandum is the subject of history lessons for German upper-secondary students. The students should recognise that Hitler formulated his war plans long before 1939, how he tried to justify them with an enemy image, and what consequences these war plans should have for the Germans themselves.
  It is not claimed here that today’s German politics are Nazi. And transferring Hitler’s formulations one-to-one to our present is not possible. But there are structural parallels:

1. An enormous (then, as now, completely unrealistic) threat, a frightening enemy image is painted: then, the Bolsheviks of the Soviet Union; today, Russian President Putin and the Russians. The war is justified as “defence.” We know that Hitler was actually aiming for the conquest of “living space in the East” and the extermination and enslavement of “Slavic subhumans.” What do today’s serious geopolitical analyses tell us about the real goals of the USA and its allies? However, it must also be remembered how Hitler’s war ended. Do German politicians still know this?
2. Hitler wanted the everyday needs of Germans to be subordinated to war preparation. War preparation leaves no other choice. And what about Germany today? The restrictions on human rights, legal achievements, and democratic principles are becoming increasingly visible. A recent survey by the Allensbach Institute concludes that only a large majority of Green supporters (over 70 per cent) now believe that one can speak freely in Germany. All others see this differently, with fewer people than ever in German history since 1953 believing that one can speak freely in Germany.⁴ And according to the judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court on the budget management of the German government, savings are not made in the war budget but where it directly affects citizens.⁵

War capability and totalitarianism

We know what it meant for people to live in a totalitarian, war-fighting system in the years 1933–1945. They not only suffered death and destruction through the war but also great emotional and human damage even before the war and as survivors during the war.  Because war and war preparation also involve massive political and social pressure to submit to the war effort; reality-denying through constant massive propaganda; denunciation and mutual distrust; fear of independent thinking; threats of violence and political terror against divergent thinkers; massification and isolation instead of individuality and community formation … Yet, Germany does not look like that again. But what can be expected if more and more totalitarian tendencies take hold? With the core goal: making Germany “capable of war” again! What are the human costs of a policy that no longer aims for peace but for war?

Capable of peace

Can Germans oppose the demand of politics that the country must become “capable of war” again? How strong are the forces who do want a Germany capable of peace, not war? And how can everyone, whether German or a friend of Germany, support these forces? And what does “capable of peace” mean?
  A reader’s letter summed it up perfectly. On 6 November 2023 a small southwestern German newspaper published the following text⁶: “‘We must become capable of war again!’ What a demand from defence minister Pistorius: Does he and many other responsible figures have nothing else to suggest in the face of the horrors in the world than to cry out for violence? I wonder, what does it mean to win a war? In the war diaries of my father, who fought/had to fight in the Wehrmacht for six years, I read about the brutalisation of the combatants, the guilt feelings of soldiers who became murderers, the dirt and mud, the cold, the pain, the homesickness, the agonising, slow dying, the anger and hatred, and the numbness to apathy, and the despair of the bereaved. This is roughly what the reality of war looks like, no matter who ‘wins.’ Do we have to become capable of war for this? Let’s imagine if we were to learn to become capable of peace, to meet to think about nonviolence, peace education, nonviolent actions, civil conflict resolution, and actively work for them, and we would spend hundreds of billions of euros for global well-being, health, education, infrastructure, protection of the ‘environment,’ instead of for combat aircraft, weapons of mass destruction, warcraft training, destruction of natural resources, and killing people?”
  That’s all that needs to be said. These are our alliance partners!

And what about the youth?

The generational question remains. The letter writer, as his lines make clear, belongs to those born in the years after 1945 and is now around 70 years old. This is also reflected in the remaining upright remnants of the German peace movement: a relatively high average age.
  And what about the youth?
  More than 60 years ago, in 1962, the then French President and former World War II general Charles de Gaulle spoke at the conclusion of his extensive Germany tour to tens of thousands of young Germans in the courtyard of Ludwigsburg Palace.⁷ Unlike the hesitation of the German politicians then in power – who were reluctant to approach France more closely than they already had⁸ – de Gaulle was welcomed by German youth with enthusiastic applause, and his speech was repeatedly interrupted by standing ovations.

De Gaulle’s address
to the German youth

Why was de Gaulle so popular with the German youth? What did de Gaulle say that was so appealing? And how did he say it? De Gaulle spoke to the youth in German: in an impressively determined and compelling manner. He showed genuine enthusiasm for the passionate commitment of German youth after the war. He assigned them the noblest task of being “masters of life and the future.” Despite their wrong-doings throughout history, he called the German people a “great people”: “A people that [...] has given the world waves of intellectual, scientific, artistic, and philosophical thought, a people that has enriched the world with countless products of its ingenuity, technology, and labour; a people that, in its peaceful work as well as in the sorrows of war, has unfolded true treasures of courage, discipline, and organisation.” De Gaulle welcomed technological progress but also assigned the youth the task of ensuring “that progress becomes a common good, so that it contributes to the promotion of the beautiful, the just, and the good” – and also to help “the billions living in the developing countries” to overcome “hunger, poverty, and ignorance and attain their full human dignity.” Progress has only one legitimate purpose: to make life “freer, more dignified, and better.” And especially regarding the great concern of German-French friendship, de Gaulle said: Giving this friendship a “viable content” should be the “work of youth in particular.” It is up to German and French youth to “urge all circles among you and among us to come closer together, get to know each other better, and forge closer ties.”
  That was the invitation to active, responsible, youth-driven international understanding – 17 years after the end of World War II and after centuries of enmity between Germans and French.
  The youth back then understood what de Gaulle meant, they felt understood by him and they got to work.  •

¹ Vorwärts of 15 November 2023
² https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=108660 of 21 December 2023
³ German original cited from http://www.kurt-bauer-geschichte.at/PDF_Lehrveranstaltung%202008_2009/14_Hitler-Denkschrift_Vierjahresplan.pdf
⁴ See https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2023-12/meinungsfreiheit-zensur-studie-freiheitsindex-deutschland-2023 from 19 December 2023 and https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=108614 of 20 December 2023
⁵ see “Federal Cabinet launches savings plan”; https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/aktuelles/haushaltsfinanzierungsgesetz-kabinett-2213080 of 15 December 2023
⁶ https://www.teckbote.de/nachrichten/leserbriefe_artikel,-friedensfaehig-werden-_arid,323503.html of 6 November 2023
⁷https://degaulle.lpb-bw.de/rede-wortlaut
⁸ cf. in detail: https://degaulle.lpb-bw.de/rede-deutschlandreise-1 and the following parts 2–6