{"id":228592,"date":"2023-02-06T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-06T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=228592"},"modified":"2023-02-02T06:53:10","modified_gmt":"2023-02-02T06:53:10","slug":"germany-risks-forgetting-its-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/02\/germany-risks-forgetting-its-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany Risks Forgetting Its History"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In deciding to supply Leopard battle tanks to Ukraine, Olaf Scholtz breaks the self-imposed constraints on the military\u2019s role in German foreign policy that had been in place since the end of WWII.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, left, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin, January 18, 2021.
(NATO, Flickr)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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31 Jan 2023 –<\/em> Two days before Holocaust Remembrance Day last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, under heavy pressure from Washington and pro-war members of his own government, announced that Germany would be sending 14 Leopard 2A6 main battle tanks to Ukraine.Answering media questions<\/a> at the German Bundestag, Scholz declared:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is right that we act closely with our international partners to support Ukraine \u2014 financially, with humanitarian aid, but also with weapons deliveries. Now we can say that, in Europe, it is us and Britain who have made the most weapons available for Ukraine. Germany will always be at the forefront when it comes to supporting Ukraine.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Two days later, at her own press conference<\/a>, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova responded:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all remember what are German tanks. These are machines which became a symbol, not only of death\u2026not only of deathly ideology. They became a symbol of misanthropy, as a global existential threat to the planet.<\/p>\n

When you read about Nazism and fascism about those times in the Second World War, I think that these SS uniforms and these very German tanks and these symbols of the Third Reich had become a global symbol of the fall of the humankind into the abyss of hatred and horror and massacre.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Zakharova had more to say:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was exactly the German tanks which became the symbol \u2014 the anti-symbol, I would say \u2014 which will stay in the memory of all humankind forever. Now these German tanks will once again be on our land. \u2026 So what does Berlin expect? That these armored vehicles, with all their symbols back then and now, that they will cross our villages and settlements? We remember the end of those times. Does Berlin remember?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Morgenthau Plan<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Henry Morgenthau, Jr., center, with FDR in Poughkeepsie, NY, Nov. 6, 1944.\u00a0 (FDR Presidential Library & Museum\/Wikimedia Commoms)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In the aftermath of the horrific atrocities inflicted on the world by Nazi Germany, there were many who believed that Germany no longer had the moral right to exist.<\/p>\n

President Franklin D. Roosevelt\u2019s Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. was one of those people. In 1944 he promulgated a plan, subsequently known as the \u201cMorgenthau Plan,<\/a>\u201d which called for the demilitarization and dismemberment of Germany after the Second World War.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt should be the aim of the Allied Forces,\u201d Morgenthau wrote, \u201cto accomplish the complete demilitarization of Germany in the shortest possible period of time after surrender. This means completely disarming the German Army and people (including the removal or destruction of all war material), the total destruction of the whole German armament industry, and the removal or destruction of other key industries which are basic to military strength.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morgenthau singled out the Ruhr Area for particular attention. \u201cHere lies the heart of German industrial power, the cauldron of wars,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThis area should not only be stripped of all presently existing industries but so weakened and controlled that it cannot in the foreseeable future become an industrial area.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morgenthau didn\u2019t just target the industrial capabilities, but the human potential to sustain them. \u201cAll people within the area should be made to understand that this area will not again be allowed to become an industrial area. Accordingly, all people and their families within the area having special skills or technical training should be encouraged to migrate permanently from the area and should be as widely dispersed as possible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

New Security Model<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Leopard 2A4 tank in Singapore, 2010. (CABAL, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This history seems lost on Armin Papperger, the CEO of Rheinmetall AG, the producer of the Leopard 2 tank. The headquarters of Rheinmetall AG is in Dusseldorf, the capital of North Rhine\u2013Westphalia Land, the epicenter of the Ruhr Area targeted by the Morgenthau Plan. Papperger and his armaments company are the benefactors of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz\u2019s Zeitenwende<\/em><\/a> (\u201cwatershed\u201d) policy, announced with great fanfare on Feb. 27, 2022 \u2014 three days after Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

In this speech, Sholtz turned his back on the German experiences of both the First and Second World Wars, where unrestrained German militarism worked in concert with German industrialists to build massive military capability, which was then married to aggressive German foreign policies that turned into global conflict.<\/p>\n

Sholtz was now proclaiming military-based deterrence as the national security model for Germany going forward, including a massive increase in defense expenditures that would dramatically increase the profit margins of companies like Papperger\u2019s Rheinmetall AG.<\/p>\n

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Rheinmetall headquarters in D\u00fcsseldorf, Germany. (Dacse, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

According to Papperger, Scholz\u2019s Zeitenwende <\/em>has indeed been a watershed moment for Germany, allowing many Germans to see past the self-imposed constraints on the German military\u2019s role in German foreign policy that had been in place since the end of the Second World War.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn former times we were insulted and sometimes threatened,\u201d Papperger told a reporter. \u201cToday people say and write to me: \u2018Thank God you\u2019re around.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Papperger appears unapologetic about the role that he and his company have played in the dispatch of German tanks to Ukraine. \u201cI think about what weapons can do,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I also think about what can happen when you don\u2019t have weapons. You can see that right now in Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scholz, Papperger, and their ilk would do well to reflect on the example set by former German Chancellor Willie Brandt.<\/p>\n

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Memorial plate in Warsaw commemorating Willie Brandt\u2019s \u201cWarsaw genuflection.\u201d \u00a0(Szczebrzeszynski, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

On Dec. 7, 1970, Brandt travelled to Poland<\/a> where, some 25 years after the end of the Second World War, he was seeking to sign a treaty on the mutual renunciation of the use of force and the recognition of the country\u2019s post-war borders.<\/p>\n

Cognizant of the moral responsibility he bore toward Germany\u2019s history with the Poles, he laid a wreath at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw. But Brandt did not go through the motions of simply bowing his head; he fell to his knees in what is now known as the \u201cWarsaw Genuflection,\u201d where he remained for more than a minute.<\/p>\n

From the symbolic action of the \u201cWarsaw Genuflection\u201d emerged what became known as Ostpolitik<\/em>, the process of normalizing relations and openness between West Germany and \u201cthe East\u201d \u2014 Russia and the nations and territories which, in their totality, represented the major victims of Nazi Germany\u2019s lawless wars of aggression.<\/p>\n

Elements of Ostpolitik could be found in the policies of long-time German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who headed the German government for 16 years, finally stepping down in 2021 following elections which saw her Christian Democratic Union party defeated by a coalition led by Social Democrat Scholz and Green Party leader Annalena Baerbock.<\/p>\n

Merkel, a fluent Russian speaker, openly promoted policies built around the notion of supporting trade with Russia, noting that given its size, Germany simply could not get away with ignoring their large neighbor to the east.<\/p>\n

Merkel\u2019s Betrayal\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

But there was a darker side to Merkel\u2019s Russia policy, one which manifested itself in the form of deceit and betrayal of both Brandt\u2019s Ostpolitik<\/em> and Russia\u2019s seeming sincere search for a peaceful resolution to violence that had broken out in the Donbass in 2014 following the removal by a pro-Western coup of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his replacement by a hand-picked government dominated by Ukrainian nationalists.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 2014 Minsk agreement,\u201d Merkel recently admitted to the German media, referring to a ceasefire agreement she had brokered together with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, French President Francois Hollande and Russian President Vladimir Putin, \u201cwas an attempt to give Ukraine time\u201d to become stronger.<\/p>\n

Merkel\u2019s confession has been mirrored by both Poroshenko and Hollande, both of whom admit that the Minsk Accords were little more than a sham to buy NATO time to build a Ukrainian military capable of defeating Russian-backed forces in Donbass.<\/p>\n

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Oct. 17, 2014: Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, in talks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, right, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Fran\u00e7ois Hollande.
\n(Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Seen in this light, the announcement at the 2014 Munich Security Conference by then-Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier that \u201cGermany must be prepared to get involved earlier, more decisively and more substantially in foreign and security policy,\u201d seems to be little more than the declaration of a policy designed to lead Germany and Russia down a path toward war.<\/p>\n

Germany\u2019s current foreign minister, Baerbock, has foregone all pretense as to what the true policy of Germany toward Russia is. During a keynote address<\/a> last week to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, Baerbock declared, \u201cWe are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baerbock was seeking to defend law, democracy and human rights in response to \u201cRussia\u2019s murderous attack on the people of Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe are fighting a war against Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s official. The EU and Germany are at war with Russia according to @ABaerbock<\/a>, Foreign Minister of Germany. pic.twitter.com\/91SLGWxm45<\/a><\/p>\n

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) January 25, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n