German Magazine Proposes Increased Shedding Of “German Guilt”, Greater Bundeswehr Role Abroad
It could be said that historically speaking, there are two modes of German history and self-perception. One is a mode of self-abuse and suicidal inclinations. The other mode is one of abusing one’s neighbors and murderous behavior. Certainly there are many examples behavior in between, but the fact is that these two strong passions give a ‘clocklike’ feel to Germanic history, where one can almost predict with great accuracy when Germany is going to swing between these two extremes, and in doing so cause war and chaos in Europe and in the whole world. This pattern can be seen going back to Roman times and the struggles between Rome and Germania.
Right now, and for most of the “post-World War II era”, Germany has been in a state of continual ‘guilt’ for what were the serious crimes she committed in the name of nationalism against her neighbors, especially Poland, who survived a serious attempt by Germany to commit genocide against the Poles and resulted in the death of at least six million, or fully twenty percent, of the Polish population. This does not include the rest of her wars that caused the loss of at least twenty million Russians and many more peoples.
Shoebat.com has noted very cautiously the quiet return of Germanic nationalism, going back to the reunification of Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, but how in recent years, Germany has become a much more aggressive presence in Europe. She is and always has been the primary economic power on the European continent, and since economics precedes politics, it has been largely the US-lead NATO and the structure of the EU that has allowed Germany to “keep” her place as the economic king of Europe but while also keeping her militaristic tendencies under control, yet never abolishing them, since they have never gone away.
with the economic and cultural decline of the US, especially evidenced by the recent calls by Trump for European nations to ‘take more responsibility’, this has helped create a power vacuum where Germany can grow into, with the permission of the US. The rise in Germanic nationalism has also been coupled with a rise in militarism, and we have been noting this with the building up of the German Bundeswehr and the resupplying of the army with new contracts and trade decisions made in favor of weapons manufacturers such as C.G. Haenel, Airbus, and Rheinmetall.
Now according to a German publication, “New Germany”, it calls for the shedding of “German guilt” and for the Bundeswehr to take a more global view in international affairs.
The closer the next federal election approaches, the greater the waves of discussion about an old but unfinished topic: How is the left doing with the Bundeswehr deployments abroad? After heated discussions in 2011, the Left came to a clear position in its Erfurt program: renouncing any involvement of the Bundeswehr in foreign missions of any kind and regardless of whether a resolution by the UN Security Council was available or not, as well as bringing the almost 1,300 Bundeswehr members home from ongoing operations.
It has to stay in this position. The renunciation is an ineradicable and non-statute-barring consequence of the guilt of fascist Germany for the crimes of the Second World War with 70 million war dead and probably 100 million further deaths of the fascist German murder regime. The numbers are so monstrous that there is actually no need for any further justification for the demand for rigorous military abstinence by the FRG. Germany should meet its increased responsibility for peace not by force of arms, but by using its great civil potential,
With the end of the Second World War, the killing of people in wars and other military conflicts between and increasingly also within states did not stop and this continues every day: in 2019, 23 wars and armed conflicts were counted. The death toll from armed violence since 1945 is likely to be in the staggering order of tens of millions.
The main culprit has a name: imperialism. The Vietnam War killed 7 to 8 million people, including those in Laos and Cambodia, and the Korean War about 4.5 million. A reasonably reliable estimate of the total number of fatalities in the ongoing armed conflict in Afghanistan since the overthrow of 1978 to the present day does not yet exist. It’s probably in the millions. Of course, we must not forget the fatalities from natural disasters and epidemics, crises that the Bundeswehr could help to overcome.
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The UN Charter’s prohibition of violence formally relates to interstate relations. But in reality, without the action or non-action of states, domestic and non-state armed conflicts are hardly conceivable and hardly possible today. States are and will remain the real main actors in matters of war and peace, in the use of military force, in threatening it and in failing to do both. This is not a negation or degradation of non-state peace struggles and movements. These struggles and movements must also be aimed at ensuring that the states, first and foremost their own, behave in a peaceful and peace-promoting manner.
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But the Security Council is needed. The five permanent members could meet once a year and if necessary as an informal club of the five permanent members at the highest level of heads of state and government to discuss current issues of world peace and security. Such meetings can perhaps revitalize the UN’s on-paper security system. The approval of all five permanent members gives a Security Council resolution a high degree of authority and prospect of effectiveness. There is no danger that a club of the five permanent members will develop into a kind of world government in view of the continued existence of the veto right. (source)
The talk that the ‘culprit’ for conflict after World War II is a direct criticism of the US. Of course, this does not mean that Germany would be any better. Rather, she is upset because she is not the primary actor. The same can be said about many nations.
Likewise, the allusions that the Bundeswehr could “help” in major conflict, and that she is also criticizing the UN and alluding to ‘reform’ at it means that Germany is also upset she is not a permanent member of the Security Council with equal power to the US, UK, France, China, and Russia.
In other words, Germany is rumbling again, and as history shows, whenever she rumbles, it means she is getting to ‘explode’ onto the world scene again.
Currently, and it is not inaccurate, Germany is in a “suicidal” mode. However, this sentiment, consistent with her leanings toward paganism that she has consistently had to fight against and the “Ragnarok” concept of a day of judgement, where in pagan mythology Germany is surrounded and then dies in violent battle only to be reborn again from the ashes of war to her renewal amid the destruction of the rest of humanity, there is a dangerous possibility she is turning again to a ‘war of all against all’ such as what happened last century in the First and Second World Wars.
It is not good that Germany should feel or behave in suicidal ways. It is equally bad for her to behave in genocidal ways too, and given her history, while one must hope for and seek the best- which is a balanced approach -it is historically speaking less than likely to happen, and so the only wise option is to prepare for a repeat of the past but with more troublesome weapons.
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