-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.
Germany was a young nation and one that, in its origins, did not know stability.
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