“Zeitenwende” An Historical Turning Point

 

“Zeitenwende”

An Historical Turning Point

“I’m a politician and not a psychiatrist, [but] people are afraid of war” and of their electricity bills.

Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister and a supporter of helping Ukraine’s defense.

Modern German history is rife with major turning points, starting with unbelievable force in the harsh Allied reparations heaped on Germany after losing World War I. The resulting decimation of the Germany economy, the massive inflationary destruction of her currency, allowed the rise of an Austrian housepainter, Adolph Hitler, as the despicable scourge of the planet, the killer of Jews, floating on a blame-filled promise of German supremacy and domination. By 1945, Hitler’s promise lay in the ruins of a much-despised Germany that rapidly adopted a new aversion to war… as the country split into Cold War feuding East and West Germany. Germany’s obsession against inflation became its dominating economic policy as it rose from the ashes to become the dominant economic power in Europe.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, the two halves of Germany became one. The great ogre of the Cold War, the Soviet Union, had crumbled. NATO became less relevant, and Germany’s aversion to war seemed to be vindicated. Europe and Russia were on better than speaking terms, prosperity exploded, and implementation of a true European Union seemed to propel Germany to new political and economic heights. Taking full responsibility for Hitler’s horrors – Germany is rare among nations for not attempting to rewrite its history books – Germany was prepared for a never-ending road to stability and economic success.

But on February 24, 2022, Germany faced another game-changing Zeitenwende, as Russia waged a war of conquest against Ukraine. Not the quiet annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea, an ultraviolent military invasion. As Steven Erlanger, writing for the October 25th New York Times observed: “[There] is little doubt that the collapse of Germany’s long-held assumptions — that security in Europe must include Russia; that Russia was a reliable supplier of cheap gas and oil; that war would never again touch Europe; and that trade with autocratic regimes like Russia and China had no geopolitical implications — has been disorienting.

“Germany is undergoing an economic and psychological shock, akin to an identity crisis, said Claudia Major of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs… ‘The fear here is the end of the promise of prosperity — of Wohlstandsversprechen — that each generation will be better off,’ she said. ‘And now that’s over.’” Perhaps as an expression of disbelief, Germany’s initial offer of aid, as a theoretical NATO power in a “unified” Europe, Berlin offered Zelensky a few thousand helmets for his troops. Seriously.

Indeed, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who rose from a successful labor law practice to succeed Angela Merkel as Germany’s new leader, simply wanted to continue his nation’s rejection of nuclear power, maintain working diplomatic ties to Moscow and continue to accept the reality that his country was completely reliant on Russian fossil fuels, particularly the piped-in natural gas seen as necessary source of keeping Germany warm in winter. That dream died hard. Pipelines were mysteriously destroyed, Putin promised to bring Germany to its knees after a freezing winter, and contrary to Scholz own expectations, Ukraine struck back viciously as Russia struggled.

Still reluctant to supply Kyiv with Germany’s best and most effective technology, Scholz was pushed kicking and screaming to upgrade the quality and effectiveness of its aid to Ukraine. While third in the economic value of its support for Zelensky’s efforts, Germany really shied away from providing the state-of-the-art arms that Kyiv needed to continue repelling Russian aggression.

“Although Germany has long been Europe’s de facto leader, it has been slow to provide serious military equipment to Ukraine. It has also subsidized its own citizens’ energy bills while working to water down a price cap on gas that could alleviate pain in poorer countries of the European Union.

“‘Can we trust Germany?’ Latvia’s outspoken defense minister, Artis Pabriks, asked bluntly last week at an open forum in Berlin, referring to NATO and the risks associated with the war in Ukraine. ‘You say ‘We are there for you.’ But do you have the political will?” He added: “We’re willing to die for freedom. Are you?’… Those criticisms are coming not only from countries that would be expected to push for a harder line against Russia, like Poland and the Baltic States, but even from Germany’s closest partners.

“It is ‘not good for Europe and for Germany that it isolates itself,’ France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, subtly chastised his German counterpart, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, before a European Council summit meeting [in mid-October]… Mr. Scholz and his advisers bridle at such criticism — and disagree.

“Germany is a force for pragmatism and the third-largest contributor of military equipment to Ukraine after the United States and Britain, they argue. Wolfgang Schmidt, the chancellor’s top aide, publicly compared German security policy to a teenager in a world of adults, finding its way with good intentions… If late and seemingly reluctantly, Germany has recently supplied advanced weapons to Ukraine, like Gepard armored antiaircraft guns, and at least one advanced mobile antiaircraft missile system, the IRIS-T [pictured above]. Germany rushed that delivery this month, promising three more systems down the road.” NY Times.

But Germany was forced to keep its “last” nuclear reactor online and is still struggling to reconfigure its expectations and economic policies in light of the extraordinary slam to its basic understanding of the world. Clearly, a Zeitenwende…. But as an increasing number of Republicans and Democratics Progressives question American support for Ukraine, are we too facing our own Zeitenwende? Did someone forget how letting Hitler take what he wanted for so long – UK PM Neville Chamberlin’s pre-WWII policy of “appeasement” – spurred Hitler to accelerate his annexations in Europe and encouraged Japan to push to annex much of Asia? Could WWII have been contained earlier? Putin is watching. Xi Jinping is salivating as he hungers to annex Taiwan.

I’m Peter Dekom, and forgetting the lessons of history may well condemn the United States and the rest of the Western world to repeat its mistakes.