"As for
(German Chancellor) Mr. Merz, he has repeatedly said amusing things, including
that his main goal is to once again make Germany the leading military power in
Europe. He didn't even choke on the word 'again'."
-Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, July 11th, 2025.
On Wednesday, May
14th, 2025, the German Chancellor Friedrch Merz made a statement
in the Bundestag asserting that he was intent on transforming the Bundeswehr
into “the strongest European army”. But while this policy announcement was
welcomed by the United States administration led by Donald Trump which insists
that its European partners within NATO take on more of the burden in military
spending, as well as by most of the political leaders in the EU who remain
steadfast in their resolve to weaken and destroy the Russian state, others, not
least the government of the Russian Federation, have responded with concern. Fears
that a militarisation of the German mindset would likely accompany the
implementation of the Merz plan are not without foundation given the end
results of two eras of German rearmament during the 20thcentury.
Both disasters were foretold by the German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
In his time Goethe had a relationship with the German people which transcended
a reverence for his literary genius. As was the case with many other giants of German
culture who operated in the spheres of philosophy, literature, poetry, art and
music, he was greatly inclined to examine the German soul.
A defining point in his relationship with his people came at the time of
the War of Liberation in the early 19th century when Napoleon Bonaparte
was reeling from the defeat of the Grande
Armée in Russia. A
coalition of armies which included the German states of Austria, Prussia, Mecklenburg-Schwerin,
Hanover, Bavaria, Saxony and Wurttemberg took up arms to expel the French.
But Goethe, a child of the Enlightenment and an admirer of Napoleon who
he believed embodied Enlightenment values, remained indifferent and cautioned
his people about their embrace of nationalism and militarism. He felt that
Germans could not be trusted to exercise restraint and rationality when
energised by military ambition because of what he understood to be the psyche
of a landlocked, 'claustrophobic' people. If they were stimulated to compete
with other powers in the arena of international politics and war, they would,
Goethe reasoned, seek to extend their frontiers and become embroiled in
militaristic endeavours that would lead to overreach and eventual, predictable disaster.
Thus, Goethe called on Germans to invest in "culture and the spirit".
What he meant by this was that they should focus on conquering the world with
their talents across the spectrum of music, philosophy, commerce and the
sciences.
But his people were uncomprehending. They interpreted his
anti-nationalist stance and renunciation of war as a form of betrayal. Goethe
himself felt aggrieved at their lack of understanding which also negatively impacted
on the well-being of his family. August,
his only child to survive to adulthood suffered from the accusation of
cowardice because his father took steps to discourage him from undertaking
military service.
Goethe was seemingly proven wrong when four decades after his death the
rise of Prussia provided the impetus for the near total unification of the
German-speaking people, and the creation of the German Empire at the time of
the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. But the subsequent
destruction of Germany in two consecutive world wars during the 20th century
provided strong validation of Goethe’s fears.
These fears persisted after the Second World War. The Morgenthau Plan,
which was drawn up in the latter stages of the war but later abandoned,
proposed to de-militarise and de-industrialise those parts of Germany that
would come under Allied control. Although the West created the Bundeswehr and
incorporated it into NATO, Lord Ismay’s often quoted raison d’être for the
North Atlantic Alliance being “to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in
and the Germans down” reflected the belief among its European allies of the
necessity of having German military power circumscribed.
Still later, the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opposed German
reunification because she believed that Germany would not continue to accept
the Oder-Niesse line as the border between Germany and Poland.
The present aspiration to build a powerful army is set against the backdrop
of a NATO-backed proxy war which pits Ukraine against Russia. In addition to
the anti-Russian sanctions regime in which Germany has participated as an EU
member state, the Germans have provided the Ukrainian military with weapons and
equipment including Leopard tanks. In 2024, several senior officers of the
Bundeswehr including the head of the Luftwaffe were recorded discussing
potential attacks in Crimea including one directed at the Kerch Strait Bridge.
Belligerent remarks by the German Minister of Defence Boris Pistorius
and Chancellor Merz have rattled the Russians. Pistorius claimed that German
troops were ready to kill Russian soldiers “if deterrence doesn’t work and
Russia attacks”, while Merz told the Bundestag in July that the “means of
diplomacy are exhausted.” And further to the announcement of plans to increase the
German military budget to €153 billion by 2029
was a call for a national debate on the introduction of universal conscription
by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
This state of affairs has led to a decision by Russia in July 2025 to
withdraw from the military-technical agreement it signed with Germany in 1996.
Today, there are few German philosophers who examine the German soul as
did the likes of Goethe, Friedrich Holderlin, Heinrich Heine, Thomas Mann and others.
Indeed, Thea Dorn (the pseudonym of Christiane Scherer), who co-wrote Die deutsche Seele (The German Soul) in 2011, bemoaned the present day lack of German thinkers soon after the publication of her book.
Yet, one need not rely on philosophical prognosis to understand the
implications of Foreign Minister Lavrov’s comments in May 2025 about Germany’s
direct involvement in the prosecution of the Russia-Ukraine conflict when he
warned that “Germany is sliding down the same slippery slope it already
followed a couple of times in the last century.”
©
Adeyinka Makinde (2025).
Adeyinka
Makinde is a writer based in London, England.
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