At the beginning of last year West England Bylines published my first article on Germany’s Social Democrats’ attitude towards Ukraine. At that time it was the question of Leopard 2 tanks, which after several weeks of “scholzing” – Timothy Garton Ash’s description of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’ behaviour – were finally delivered. Now it’s another weapon, the Taurus Air-Launched Cruise Missile with a range of some 500 km, which dominates the German debate and causes headshaking and frustration among its NATO allies.
After several politicians both from the CDU opposition party (such as Dr. Norbert Röttgen) and experts from the other parties in government (the Green Anton Hofreiter and the Liberal Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann) had called for the delivery of these weapons to support Ukraine in its battle for survival, Scholz publicly refused to do so. This was despite having (inadvertently) confessed that France and the UK were already delivering similar weapons and even have some military advisors on the ground to support the Ukrainian army.
Scholz’ refusal is strongly supported by leading SPD politicians, such as Rolf Mützenich, head of the SPD parliamentary group, and Ralf Stegner. A few days ago Mützenich even suggested in parliament to “freeze the conflict” in Ukraine, to allow for “peace negotiations” – which in reality would mean accepting the Russian annexation of Ukrainian territory using outrageous war crimes.
For British observers all this should sound quite familiar – it reminds them of Neville Chamberlain’s statement on 30 September 1938 of “peace for our time”, justifying the Munich Agreement on the Sudeten Germans and thereby trying to appease Adolf Hitler.
As is well known, this ‘peace agreement’ did not stop the war-hungry German dictator. A year later, after the Nazi army’s attack against Poland, the UK had to declare war on Germany and bring Winston Churchill into power.
Is Scholz the “Chamberlain of the 21st century”, as the former Airbus CEO Tom Enders suggested in early March 2024? I do agree – yes indeed! The question is why Germany’s Social Democratic Party is again denying the Ukraine means to defend itself against Putin’s ruthless aggression. It seems that there a several reasons, both domestic and international ones.
Domestic support for this betrayal
As recent opinion polls in Germany suggest, a majority of the population favouring the SPD’s attitude. At the moment only approximately a third supports the delivery of Taurus missiles. With several federal states’ elections looming in autumn this year and the next Bundestag election probably next year, the SPD’s “love for peace” is rather popular, particularly in the East, the “new Länder” (federal states). While the party presently gets the support of only some 15 per cent in opinion polls, running a “peace campaign” seems a promising strategy to stay in power.
79 years after WWII, Germany’s population still remembers the horrors of war, all the more since it was a war which the German dictator had started to gain “living space in the East” (Lebensraum im Osten) and to annihilate Europe’s Jewish population. It was a war which had inflicted millions of casualties, particularly in Poland and the Soviet Union (at that time including the Ukrainian Soviet Republic). Beneath the ‘normality of European peace and well-being’, there are still feelings of guilt and shame about German atrocities, as one can detect in two special cases:
- Germany’s absolute support of Israel, despite the acting Israeli government’s war against Palestinian civilians
- Germany’s ‘Russia first’ attitude since its unification in 1990.
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD), closely cooperating with Russia’s President Putin while neglecting Poland’s and the Baltic States’ warnings, was quite popular in Germany at that time. The SPD clearly gained public support from its ‘friendship with Russia’.
This might explain why the German public, and the SPD in particular, were so shocked when Putin started his grand aggression against Ukraine on 24 February 2022. However, that war had actually begun eight years before in 2014 with Russia annexing the Crimea and starting the hostilities in Ukraine’s Donbas region. Germany’s ‘grand coalition’ of the Conservatives (CDU/CSU) and the SPD, led by Chancellor Merkel, continued its close cooperation with Russia – as the building of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline clearly demonstrated.
For the SPD’s Scholz it was a particularly difficult turn-around, now calling Putin the aggressor and promising Ukraine “all necessary means” to defend itself. However, this turn-around does not seem to be complete. Despite some efforts to kick out former chancellor and ‘Putin’s friend’, Schröder, remains a member of the SPD. His former bureau chief, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, is still Germany’s president and SPD politicians such as Mützenich and Ralf Stegner continue to believe in German possibilities of influencing the Russian dictator and war criminal towards “bringing peace”.
International context of this betrayal
We will never forget the visits of French President Emmanuel Macron and Scholz to Moscow in February 2022, a few days before Putin stated his major aggression. Both were sitting opposite Putin at a very, very long table – allegedly because of Covid, but in fact symbolizing the huge rift. While we cannot know what had been discussed, it seems plausible that Putin had made a significant impression on the German Chancellor, reminding him of the fact the Germany has no nuclear weapons. The repeated warnings of Russian politicians of a potential use of nuclear weapons are clearly directed against Germany – which Putin and his cronies clearly regard as the ‘weakest link’ within NATO and the EU.
Indeed, the war in Ukraine has revealed the virtual impotence of the ‘civilian power’ Germany, which for two decades has neglected its military and would be virtually defenseless in a major protracted war against Putin’s Russia. This dilemma is all the more critical since the next US presidential election in autumn this year could bring back Donald Trump, which could remove Germany’s ‘US nuclear umbrella’. As Scholz’ visits to the US have demonstrated, he still believes in the American security guarantee. With President Joe Biden gone, this hope could disappear overnight.
As the recent public controversies between Macron and Scholz indicate, the Russian strategy of weaking the Western resistance by pressuring Germany is endangering the relationship between the two major EU countries. Already some time ago France had suggested to start talks about a European nuclear deterrence. Given Germany’s recent dilemma, one wonders why nobody in Berlin seems to be ready to reciprocate the French initiative. The UK’s nuclear arsenal could and should add to a European deterrence against Russia’s nuclear threats.
Conclusion
Scholz and his SPD were the appropriate German leaders or co-leaders (in the ‘grand coalitions’ with the CDU/CSU) in Europe’s period of peace from 1991 to 2014 or even to 2022. However, war has come back to Europe, and there is no longer a need for a ‘Chamberlain of the 21st century’. Unfortunately, many Germans still do not understand.
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