‘Zeitenwende’: where does Germany now stand on Ukraine war?

In September 2021, as Germany went to the polls to elect a successor to Angela Merkel, the prospect of a candidate proposing a €100bn (£83bn) increase in defence spending seemed unthinkable.

But two months and one Russian invasion of Ukraine later, new Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that he was giving the green light for a massive injection into the nation’s defence budget, while describing the conflict as a “zeitenwende” (“watershed moment”) for Europe.

Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked assault has prompted a sea change in German foreign policy and overturned almost a century of national consensus. So where does Berlin now stand on the conflict – and has it truly triggered a “zeitenwende”?

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‘Dawn of the deterrence era’

While Germany is not alone in funnelling more funding towards defence in light of Putin’s war, Berlin’s “turnabout is the most dramatic”, The New York Times said.

Scholz, the leader of the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) who was previously Merkel’s deputy, has committed to spending above 2% of the country’s economic output on defence, “a level not reached in more than three decades”.

The chancellor also pledged “an immediate injection” of €100bn (£83bn) into the nation’s “notoriously threadbare armed forces”. In his speech, he told German lawmakers: “We need planes that fly, ships that sail and soldiers who are optimally equipped”.

Such a sudden increase in funding “is a watershed moment” for Germany, a country that has for decades “sought to leave behind an aggressive military stance that contributed to two devastating world wars”, the paper added.

Mapped onto Germany’s 20th-century history, Scholz’s sea-change marks a “seismic shift from post-war pacifism”, the i news site said.

A “beacon of stability and prosperity” within the European order since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the spending injection suggested Berlin recognised the need to “adapt quickly to a new world shaped by Russia’s aggression”.

Germany had “initially refused to send arms to Ukraine as Russian troops massed ahead of the 24 February invasion”, the site reported. Instead, it offered helmets, prompting Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko to ask: “What will they send next? Pillows?”

Once the invasion began, however, “a swift rethink and a decision to send defensive weapons such as anti-tank missiles” meant “change came fast”, the site added.

Russia’s invasion has ushered in “the dawn of the deterrence era” in German politics, said Rachel Tausendfreund, editorial director of the Washington-based German Marshall Fund think tank.

The “shock” of Putin’s war has “turned the geopolitical times for Germany”, she explained, continuing that prior to the invasion, Berlin was “unique in the West for having a strategic logic still shaped primarily by the lessons of the First World War”.

This meant that “the logic of military deterrence” that “formed the backbone of Western military posture since the Second World War never penetrated beyond small foreign-policy circles and the centre-right in Germany”.

But in the midst of a war on European soil “the logic of deterrence” is gaining “currency across the mainstream party spectrum in Germany”, she added. And this means “the path to a completely different European security order could be open”.

Too little, too late?

While the shift in German foreign policy has been widely welcomed by its European and Nato allies, critics have suggested that it will take more than €100bn “to restore the country’s rusting armed forces to their former strength”, The Telegraph said.

Scholz’s spending injection is a “momentous announcement for a country that has long been synonymous with underfunding its military”. But it comes at a time when “Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, has a smaller military to that of Ukraine”.

Berlin “relies entirely on Nato for its defence”, the paper added. “Without the alliance it would be there for the taking.”

Germany has long been considered Europe’s “most notorious defence free rider”, The Wall Street Journal said, prompting criticism by former US president Donald Trump who repeatedly called for Berlin to increase its defence budget. And even now, post-zeitenwende, Scholz is causing divisions in the West’s response.

He was yesterday forced to defend “his decision not to export heavy weapons to Ukraine”, the Financial Times reported, claiming that “Berlin’s closest allies had also concluded that supplying such arms at the present time made little sense”.

His intervention came amid “mounting domestic pressure to supply tanks and armoured personnel carriers” to Kyiv, the paper added, which is “bracing for a big Russian offensive in the eastern border region of Donbas”.

According to Der Spiegel, Scholz is “coming under increasing pressure for his restrained Ukraine policies” in Brussels and Berlin. And “he has massive public support” for boosting defence spending and making Germany a more muscular force, The Telegraph said.

“A recent poll found 76% of Germans back his move to rearm,” the paper added. What remains to be seen is “whether all this enthusiasm can translate into real action”.