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Zeitenwende: How war in Ukraine has sparked a historic shift in Germany

Driven by its violent history, post-1945 Germany has traditionally had pacifist tendencies. In just one week, the Ukraine invasion has changed that dramatically. Politicians - and the public - look ready to take a newly assertive role on the world stage.

Published: 2 March 2022 17:26 CET
Ukraine protests in Berlin
Over 100,000 people demonstrate in Berlin on Sunday, February 27th, 2022, condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine. German public opinion has shifted decisively in favour of supporting Ukraine with weapons in the last year. Photo: Paul Zinken/DPA

It was an address that will likely be studied for years to come by everyone, from German residents to pollsters, journalists, and fellow politicians.

On Sunday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz gave a watershed speech to the Bundestag, announcing that Germany would break with decades of its trademark restraint on military matters – a policy linked to its WWII legacy – by sending German weapons to arm Ukraine against invading Russian soldiers.

It was a policy Scholz’s government had previously taken great pains to avoid, frustrating both the Ukrainian government and Germany’s allies in NATO, including Poland and the United States.

But Scholz was only getting started.

Not yet in office three months, the Chancellor also announced the government was going to immediately spend €100 billion to modernise the German military and increase annual defence spending to more than two percent of German GDP.

READ ALSO: Germany’s Scholz calls on Russia to end Ukraine ‘bloodshed’

In the past, that’s been an unpopular policy with the German public, even though all NATO members committed to that target in 2014. Only a year ago, Annalena Baerbock (who is now Foreign Minister) had called the debate over the two percent target “absurd,” saying it was an arbitrary target.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz gives a speech in the Bundestag on Sunday.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz gives a speech in the Bundestag on Sunday. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Bernd von Jutrczenka

‘Revolutionary’

Scholz in his speech said that the war marked a “Zeitenwende”. Roughly translated, this word means a huge turning point or a sea change.

“This is one of the biggest shifts in German foreign policy since 1945,” political scientist Dr. Marcel Dirsus with Kiel University’s Institute for Security Policy told The Local.

“Olaf Scholz didn’t just end decades of his own party’s positions within a single speech, he brought the public along with him. What we’re seeing now is nothing short of revolutionary.

“Even months ago, the idea of Germany delivering weapons that might be used to kill Russians would have been unthinkable. Now Germans are sending Panzerfausts (anti-tank weapons) to Ukraine with the explicit aim of taking out Russian tanks.”

Other commentators have also spoken of the dramatic change. 

Der Spiegel’s Christian Teevs called it a “complete 180 degree turn for German politics,” and that Scholz’s speech “throws years of certainties overboard”.

Berthold Kohler with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said that Scholz had given notice of a fundamental change in German politics “not seen since reunification”.

READ ALSO: Boring to ‘historic’: the awakening of Germany’s Olaf Scholz

As Scholz spoke in the Bundestag in Berlin, over 100,000 people gathered mere blocks away with “Stop Putin” signs and Ukrainian flags. Some even drew the flag on their FFP2 masks.

It was one of the largest such anti-war protests in the world that day. But would the wider German public support Scholz’s unprecedented moves to help the Ukrainians with actual weapons?

On Tuesday, a new poll dropped suggesting the answer was an emphatic “Ja.”

U-turn in public opinion

The Forsa poll, conducted for German broadcaster ntv, found that 78 percent of those surveyed supported both sending weapons to Ukraine and the federal government’s decision to immediately spend €100 billion on modernising the German military. Before Russia’s invasion, both steps were considered highly controversial in Germany.

Support for arming Ukraine directly signals the strongest shift in German public opinion – with 78 percent now in favour. Only about a month ago, about 73 percent were opposed.

That previous result was well in keeping with Germany’s post-war stance. Even Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, a who advocated a more values-based foreign policy that would be tougher on authoritarian regimes like Russia and China, originally came out against arming Ukraine, citing Germany’s violent past.

“Our restrictive arms export policy is based on our history,” she said at the time. Scholz originally wouldn’t even let Estonia send German-made artillery.

Tuesday’s poll appeared to confirm that not only had the government done a complete U-turn from the month before, but the public had as well.

READ ALSO: OPINION: This is Russia’s war, but we Europeans need to learn fast from our mistakes

Marking another – albeit smaller – shift in public opinion, the same poll found that around half of Germans are now in favour of Ukrainian membership in both NATO and the EU. To put that in context, another survey carried out just before Russia’s invasion found that over half were in favour of offering Russian President Vladimir Putin assurances that Ukrainian membership in NATO was off the table.

So what explains the German public’s sudden willingness to break with decades of its traditionally peaceful, militarily pacifist self-image? There’s unfortunately been many other wars and conflicts in the world since 1945. What is different about this one that made Germans make such a drastic change?

For Dr. Mareike Kleine, an Assistant Professor of EU Politics at the London School of Economics, the result isn’t as surprising as one might think at first.

“We’re dealing with an obvious and flagrant violation of public international law,” she told The Local. 

“Emotionally, it is [also] a war at Germany’s doorstep, an invasion of a much weaker, more democratic and pro-EU state by a powerful, autocratic one that openly defies liberal values. It bears striking similarity to Germany’s attack on Poland in 1939. In other words, [response to] the war combines all the elements that Germany can rally behind.”

‘Dramatic change’

The change isn’t just evident in how Germany is now seeing itself militarily. Russia’s war in Ukraine has also seen the end of another controversial German foreign policy – the Nord Stream 2 pipeline designed to bypass eastern European countries to supply Russian gas directly to Germany through the Baltic Sea.

Around 60 percent of Germans supported its continuation only about a month ago. Before last week, few high-ranking German politicians were ready to admit it was a project with geopolitical implications that might help Putin isolate eastern European countries economically and politically. Instead, many German politicians – including previous Chancellor Angela Merkel – stressed that Nord Stream 2 was purely a commercial project, a line Germany’s NATO allies never bought.

And then last week, Chancellor Scholz suspended it as part of German government responses to Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Given Germany’s history, Scholz’s newly assertive brand of German foreign policy was a tremendously risky leap to taking initially.

So far, his decision is translating into Merkel-like approval ratings – which the Forsa poll currently pegs at 56 percent. His leadership is most strongly supported among voters for his own Social Democrats – a party previously known for its close relationship with Russian elites.

Yet, even a majority of voters for the opposition Christian Democrats – a party that previous Chancellor Angela Merkel led for nearly two decades – currently approve of Scholz’s performance.

READ ALSO: OPINION: Germany is in a muddle over Russia – and it only has itself to blame

But could this shift be temporary?

Dr. Ursula Münch, Director of the Academy for Political Education in Tutzing, says there’s a good chance it could continue.

“[Scholz] presented himself very differently in his speech to the Bundestag [on Sunday] than in the first few weeks of his term,” she told The Local.

“He spoke much more clearly and forcefully than before.

“Crises are the hour of the Executive, and a security crisis as serious as this one increases the demand for effective politics and assertive politicians.

“At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, we saw even higher approval ratings for the federal government; I’m assuming that the poll numbers will continue to go up.”

Vocabulary

Poll or survey – (die) Umfrage

Politician approval rating – (die) Politikerzufriedenheit

Weapons delivery – (die) Waffenlieferung

Historical turning point – (die) Zeitenwende 

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GERMANY AND RUSSIA

Germany, Czech Republic accuse Russia of cyberattacks

Germany and the Czech Republic on Friday blamed Russia for a series of recent cyberattacks, prompting the European Union to warn Moscow of consequences over its "malicious behaviour in cyberspace".

Published: 4 May 2024 10:29 CEST
Germany, Czech Republic accuse Russia of cyberattacks

The accusations come at a time of strained relations between Moscow and the West following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the European Union’s support for Kyiv.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said a newly concluded government investigation found that a cyberattack targeting members of the Social Democratic Party had been carried out by a group known as APT28.

APT28 “is steered by the military intelligence service of Russia”, Baerbock told reporters during a visit to Australia.

“In other words, it was a state-sponsored Russian cyberattack on Germany and this is absolutely intolerable and unacceptable and will have consequences.”

APT28, also known as Fancy Bear, has been accused of dozens of cyberattacks in countries around the world. Russia denies being behind such actions.

The hacking attack on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD party was made public last year. Hackers exploited a previously unknown vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook to compromise e-mail accounts, according to Berlin.

Berlin on Friday summoned the acting charge d’affaires of the Russian embassy over the incident.

The Russian embassy in Germany said its envoy “categorically rejected the accusations that Russian state structures were involved in the given incident… as unsubstantiated and groundless”.

Arms, aerospace targeted: Berlin 

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said the cyber campaign was orchestrated by Russia’s military intelligence service GRU and began in 2022. It also targeted German companies in the armaments and aerospace sectors, she said.

Such cyberattacks are “a threat to our democracy, national security and our free societies”, she told a joint news conference in Prague with her Czech counterpart Vit Rakusan.

“We are calling on Russia again to stop these activities,” Faeser added.

Czech government officials said some of its state institutions had also been the target of cyberattacks blamed on APT28, again by exploiting a weakness in Microsoft Outlook in 2023.

Czech Interior Minister Rakusan said his country’s infrastructure had recently experienced “higher dozens” of such attacks.

“The Czech Republic is a target. In the long term, it has been perceived by the Russian Federation as an enemy state,” he told reporters.

EU, NATO condemnation

The German and Czech findings triggered strong condemnation from the European Union.

“The malicious cyber campaign shows Russia’s continuous pattern of irresponsible behaviour in cyberspace, by targeting democratic institutions, government entities and critical infrastructure providers across the European Union and beyond,” EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said.

The EU would “make use of the full spectrum of measures to prevent, deter and respond to Russia’s malicious behaviour in cyberspace”, he added.

State institutions, agencies and entities in other member states including in Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia and Sweden had been targeted by APT28 in the past, the statement added.

The latest accusations come a day after NATO expressed “deep concern” over Russia’s “hybrid actions” including disinformation, sabotage and cyber interference.

The row also comes as millions of Europeans prepare to go to the polls for the European Parliament elections in June, and concerns about foreign meddling are running high.

Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky told AFP that “pointing a finger publicly at a specific attacker is an important tool to protect national interests”.

One of the most high-profile incidents so far blamed on Fancy Bear was a cyberattack in 2015 that paralysed the computer network of the German lower house of parliament, the Bundestag. It forced the entire institution offline for days while it was fixed.

In 2020, the EU imposed sanctions on individuals and entities linked to the APT28 group over the incident.

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