Germany militarizing its Society all-over Again

Recent German history is marked by two dates – 1918 and 1945 – that stand for extraordinary, catastrophic failures of, among other things, militarism. Most countries have militaries, many have substantial ones. But militarism is, of course, something else.

In essence, the term stands for a syndrome: a type of politics and culture – an integrated Zeitgeistpackage, if you wish – that harmfully exaggerate the public importance, social prestige, and political power of a country’s military.

Both pre-World War I and pre-World War II Germany were clear cases of this political pathology, and both paid dearly for it, with massive defeats in wars started – first with significant input from others, then entirely on its own – by Berlin.

History can be a harsh teacher, and in this case, the lessons that Germany brought on itself were not only painful, but they also got successively worse: 1918 was a severe setback that led to regime change, deep economic crisis, and lasting instability.

In 1945 was a total defeat that came with national partition and a robust geopolitical downgrading that was to last forever. Or so it seemed.

When the two Germany’s that emerged after 1945 united in 1990, everyone with any sense of history knew that things would change again.

It is true that in purely constitutional terms, the new Germany is merely a bigger version of the former West Germany; the former East Germany was simply absorbed.

Now, however, it’s 2024. Over a third of a century has passed since German unification.

Gerhard Schroeder and Angela Merkel, the quintessential leaders of that deceptively abiding phase-one version of post-unification Germany are history. We are in the long term now, and the contours of the new Germany are emerging.

The new Germany is destabilizingly submissive to its American hegemony, to the point of self-de-industrialization. Rather than a resurgence of traditional nationalism under right-wing governments, we are witnessing the rise of a new kind of national hubris.

The standard bearers of this Green neo-Wilhelminism, such as German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, combine a narrow-minded sense of “value” superiority with an aggressive refusal to treat countries that won’t fit their provincial standards as sovereign equals.

As Georgia has just experienced, whose government, Berlin is demanding, must take back a law that has been made and passed legally.

Finally, for better or for worse, the new Germany has not turned into a disruptive force of innovation and industrial competitiveness, as happened after that other German unification, that of 1871.

No doubt, the term may appear hyperbolic, at least for now. After all, the German Minister of Defense, Boris Pistorius has just been compelled to mostly – though not entirely – give up on plans to re-introduce compulsory military service which was abolished in 2011.

The German elites – in politics and the mainstream media – are clearly engaged in a persistent campaign to turn this positive disposition toward the military into something else altogether.

Take, for instance, Germany’s flagship news magazine Der Spiegel. Once a bastion of critical if moderate left-liberal journalism, Spiegel has long turned itself into a platform for NATO propaganda and extremist, war-addicted Centrism.

In addition, serving in the Bundeswehr is also sold as a tool of national unity, with the base commander declaring that on a tough night march with heavy kit, all differences between East and West (inside Germany, that is) fall away: a simile of darkness and sore feet that might have made Mao proud.

But finding a high German officer and a prestigious German newspaper linking what seem to be persisting anxieties over how united the new Germany really is with, of all things, the military is, to the historian, alarming: the army as the “school of the nation” and the emblem of unity? Really?

It may be too early to speak of the rise of a new militarism in Germany. Yet it would be naïve not to register an accumulation of tremors that may portend a larger seismic shift in the new Germany’s sense of itself.

Old inhibitions are mostly gone, and the sphere of things military has started bleeding into the realm of politics and the public again in a manner that is unprecedented in post-unification history. This may be a passing moment.

But it is more likely to be the beginning of a trend, especially since Germany’s mainstream media are almost perfectly, disgracefully united in doing their best to make Germans believe that there is no alternative.

RT.com / ABC Flash Point News 2024.