Notes from Germany: translated by Pat Turnbull

The March editorial of German monthly journal RotFuchs (Red Fox) was written by Arnold Schoelzel and entitled ‘Militarisation even without Fascism’. These are some of the key points he made.

MILITARISM  

Only ten years after 1945 a new German army directed against the Soviet Union was created, and the western allies allowed the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG - West Germany) to begin exporting armaments again. The annexation of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and the collapse of the Soviet Union gave the German arms industry not an end, but a new beginning. Since 2004, SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) has counted Germany among the major arms exporters. The rise in German weapons production is similar to only one other economic period, the 1930s. However, comparisons between the FRG and the fascist dictatorship are wrong because they minimise the nature of fascism in power. But the rises are worth comparing. Military spending as a proportion of the economy rose annually from 1925 to 1.5% in 1932, similar to the FRG before 2022. After the transfer of power to the fascists, military spending climbed steeply year on year until in 1939 it was 18.1%. The onslaught could begin.

On 14 February 2024, the FRG announced proudly that for the first time since 1992 it would be spending 2.01% of GDP (gross domestic product) on arms – 73 billion US dollars, almost double the figure of 2015, and 18 billion dollars more than 2022. Two days before the announcement, Chancellor Olaf Scholz had symbolically dug the first hole for a new munitions factory belonging to the arms concern Rheinmetall, in Unterluess in Lower Saxony.  At the end of the Second World War, roughly 5,000 foreign forced labourers and prisoners of war were liberated from the Unterluess works by British troops. Between 1944 and 1945 Rheinmetall-Boersig took on trusteeship of the home for the children of foreigners there, which was also a maternity home for forced labourers and a place of death for their children. From August 1944 Rheinmetall also employed Hungarian Jewish women from the Tannenberg external camp of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. 

Scholz was accompanied by Danish President Mette Frederiksen, a top grade social-democratic Russia-hater. She ruled between 2015 and 2019 with the Danish People’s Party, then more right wing than the AFD (Alternative fur Deutschland - Alternative for Germany) – in other words, neo-Nazis. Neither of them said a word about the history of the place – after all, the enemy is the same one as it was then.

The past two years have once again, as in the 1950s, taught us that for a war against Russia fascism doesn’t need to be in power and for there to be huge rises in arms production and profits for the war industry in Germany. Together with IG Metall, the metal workers’ union, the arms concerns and the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) Economic Forum had already announced on 9 February that this was all too little. The leading media say likewise.

WAR AND CLIMATE CHANGE  

Another article in the same issue of RotFuchs, ‘On the Hypocritical Morality of German Climate Policy’, by Dr Doerte Hansen, also dealt with the question of armaments. The writer asserts that in Germany ‘climate protection’ has taken on the form of a regular pseudo-religion to which everyone and everything must be subordinated. But the same politicians in the same breath demand more and more military support for the ‘freedom fight’ of Ukraine against the ‘brutal aggressor’ Russia.

The Leopard IIa5 tank delivered to Ukraine uses on average 414 litres of diesel per 100 km. Compare this with the 12.11 litres per 100 km of an Audi Q8. Other armed vehicles are similar. Then there are the CO2 emissions of the armed vehicles. In the war against Russia even ‘bad’ greenhouse gases are suddenly ‘good’.

The numbers relating to militarily produced CO2 are rare and not only because of secrecy.  Most emissions are not even measured. Why bother, when a clause in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, included under pressure from the USA, means military emissions are not added to the national emissions of signatory states?

The CO2 footprint of the NATO military rose from 196 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2021 to 226 in 2023. That’s not including wars. In 2021 only six NATO countries had reached the two per cent military spending goal. What if every member fulfilled this plan by 2028? It would mean a 50% rise in the CO2 footprint compared to 2021. And NATO leader Jens Stoltenberg says a two per cent increase should be a minimum.

Since February and through to June 2024, NATO is conducting its biggest manoeuvres for decades. 90,000 soldiers, more than 1,000 battle vehicles, 50 ships and many fighter planes will be doing their best to drive greenhouse gas emissions to ever new heights. The F-35 has considerably higher emissions than the old F-16. A single F-35 uses up 5600 litres per hour and emits greenhouse gases corresponding to a CO2 equivalent of 2.2 metric tons.  

 

The rise in German weapons production is similar to only one other economic period, the 1930s.

Leopard Tanks – more than one way to destroy the planet. Photo by 7th Army Training Command