History and politics professors have disagreed with comments from Independent presidential candidate Catherine Connolly likening current military spending in Germany to that of the 1930s.<\/p>\n
They said the contexts were \u201cfundamentally different\u201d, with foreign aggression behind the rearmament under Adolf Hitler, while defence was the purpose of Germany’s current spending increase.<\/p>\n
Ms Connolly told the UCD Politics Society on Wednesday that people were \u201cabsolutely championing the cause of the military industrial complex Germany\u201d as a way to boost the economy, and said there were \u201csome parallels with the \u201830s\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ms Connolly, backed by parties on the left, agreed with People Before Profit representative Kieran Allen, who said the current situation in Europe was a \u201cdrive to war\u201d.<\/p>\n
Professor Robert Gerwarth, director of the UCD Centre for War Studies, said similar comments about German rearmament were being made by the German left and parts of the pro-Russia far-right in eastern Germany.<\/p>\n
But he said: \u201cObviously, both the context and the level of rearmament are very different in the 1930s. The current situation is born out of uncertainty \u2014 deliberately caused by Trump \u2014 as to whether Europe can rely, as it did for a very long time \u2014 during the Cold War and after 1990 Helmut Kohl’s “peace dividend” \u2014 on unconditional US military support in the event of a Russian attack on Nato countries.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said due to \u201cvery low investment\u201d in the German armed forces since the 1990s, the Bundeswehr today is \u201cin tatters\u201d, and one senior general said it could barely muster one functional division for defence purposes.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the planned increase to 5% of GDP investment in defence is probably needed to build a defensive army worth that name \u2014 but with very limited capacity for offensive wars,” he said.<\/p>\n
Prof Gerwarth added: \u201cIn the 1930s, of course, a regime determined to revise the Paris Peace settlement through war massively increased its spending \u2014 some estimates are as high as 20% of German GDP \u2014 in preparation for an offensive war which nobody in Germany \u2014 from the far left to the far right \u2014 today wants.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rory Finegan, assistant professor of military history at Maynooth University, said the situation now in Germany and in the 1930s were \u201cfundamentally different\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said Hitler\u2019s rearmament was based on an \u201caggressive foreign policy\u201d, linked with a \u201cracist doctrine\u201d which led to the final solution and the genocide of Jews.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rationale for increased defence spending today is the geopolitical tectonic shift and rupturing caused by the Ukrainian war and the realisation to robustly respond to this security challenge and the plethora of hybrid\/grey zone tactics employed by Russia,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said Germany had also been a major pillar in bulwarking the Ukrainian military with the supply of military material.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn essence, this is already part of a broader trend among Nato countries in enhancing their defence capability on foot of the illegal, unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Donnacha \u00d3 Beach\u00e1in, professor of Politics in DCU, said Nazi Germany’s massive rearmament was driven by expansionist motivations \u201cfundamentally different\u201d from those of contemporary Germany\u2019s military build-up following Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Nazi regime’s rearmament during the 1930s was inseparable from autocracy, aggression, and fascism, whereas Modern Germany\u2019s military spending is reactive, defensive, and institutionally constrained, born from necessity and alliance solidarity following Russia\u2019s attempts to redraw the map of Europe by force and subvert European democracies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Prof \u00d3 Beach\u00e1in said the historic memory of the Second World War and aversion to unilateral militarism was \u201cstrong\u201d in Germany.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cTherefore making any direct comparison with Nazi-era rearmament is not only misleading but fundamentally inaccurate.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Prof \u00d3 Beach\u00e1in said Nazi Germany\u2019s rearmament was designed to enable territorial conquest and genocide.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of militarisation and economic subordination to war aims, it is Putin\u2019s Russia \u2014 not today\u2019s Germany \u2014 that most closely resembles the dictator-led expansionism of the 1930s,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Germany\u2019s increased defence spending aligns with other European states facing direct threats from Moscow, including Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, and Sweden, which have revised their security policies in response to Russian aggression.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"History and politics professors have disagreed with comments from Independent presidential candidate Catherine Connolly likening current military spending…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,550,7,8,551,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-88782","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-latest-news","14":"tag-latestnews","15":"tag-main-news","16":"tag-mainnews","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-russia","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-topstories","21":"tag-ukraine","22":"tag-world","23":"tag-world-news","24":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}