Such factors are not only influential on the old-school pacifist left, but also among the corporatist bastions of Germany’s export industries and their political allies, and among older Germans who grew up in the shadow of Nazism’s evils. The collapse of the seemingly peaceful global order in 1914 feels resonant in a Germany that has thrived in the second, post-1989 era of globalisation which now seems to be buckling. The First World War by contrast plays a less complex role in the country’s remembrance culture, so is more easily appropriated for debates today.
The Second World War is also complicated by a sense among some Germans of Russia as both victim and liberator in that conflict (a perspective that overlooks Ukraine’s horrific oppression at the hands of both Hitler and Stalin). Why is it that these historical lessons seem to eclipse those of the 1930s for so many influential Germans? One explanation is the federal republic’s postwar tradition of treating Nazi crimes as an incomparable evil untethered from the “ordinary” flow of history. Various writers cite Max Weber’s 1919 distinction between a “ Gesinnungsethik” (a purist ethics of conviction) and a “ Verantwortungsethik” (an ethics of pragmatic responsibility) to criticise what the leftist historian Gerhard Hanloser calls “ Gesinnungs-ethical warmongers” promoting greater support for Ukraine.
We know the consequences.” Others raising this point include Stefan Aust, the former editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel, who has insisted only a compromise giving Putin an off-ramp can supply a lasting peace. “Humiliated men and humiliated nations are dangerous,” argues the feminist Alice Schwarzer: “Germany felt itself extremely humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles after 1919. The third supposed parallel concerns the severe terms imposed on the defeated. “This is fatally reminiscent of the bloodbath of the First World War.” “Soldiers holding out in muddy trenches and trying to destroy each other’s positions with the help of mortars,” ran a recent commentary for the Bavarian broadcaster BR. Some German observers thus fear that arming Ukraine could lead to a yet more catastrophic attritional war in which neither Kyiv nor Moscow is capable of forcing the other to the negotiating table. The second “lesson” is the danger of a Europe destabilised by prolonged conflict. To grasp the three main lessons they draw from the 1914-1918 conflict is to better understand the country’s actions – and inaction. It is clear that parts of the German elite see not the Second but the First World War as the more relevant parallel to the present moment. Odd though it seems, his Kaiser Wilhelm comment sheds some light on this. Its weapons deliveries are slow and patchy, the country continues to pay for Russian energy in roubles and Scholz appears unwilling to utter the phrase “Ukraine must win” in public. Since then, Scholz’s government has stepped up in certain areas (agreeing to send Ukraine heavy weapons and backing an oil embargo) but it is still providing less leadership, support and impetus than Germany’s size and professed values ought to dictate. In early April I puzzled in these pages over why Germany – with its intensive culture of commemorating the Second World War – was not applying the lessons of appeasement to Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. His point: unlike Wilhelm II in 1914 he will not let Germany slide into a major European war.
Not only was it later confirmed, however, but Scholz has gone on to repeat it, including in discussions with journalists during a recent trip to Africa.
Had Olaf Scholz misspoken or had he been misheard? When Der Spiegel reported that Germany’s chancellor had declared “I am not Kaiser Wilhelm” at a private government meeting in April, it seemed an improbable quote.
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