German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and German defense minister Boris Pistorius attend a formal inauguration of a German brigade for NATO’s eastern flank in Vilnius, Lithuania, Thursday, May 22, 2025. [AP Photo\/Mindaugas Kulbis]<\/p>\n
With the ceremonial establishment of the permanent combat brigade in Lithuania, the German government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has opened a new chapter in the revival of German militarism. In a militarist ceremony with Leopard tanks, howitzers, fighter planes and marching soldiers, Merz and Pistorius celebrated the first permanent deployment of German combat troops abroad since the Second World War in the \u201cservice of peace, freedom and security.\u201d In reality, it is part of comprehensive preparations for war against Russia.<\/p>\n
The symbolism of the location could not have been clearer: Lithuania, a former Soviet territory, just a few hundred kilometres from the Russian border. Eighty years after Hitler’s war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, German tanks manned by German soldiers are once again rolling eastwards. The historical and political break that the German elites were forced to carry out after the fall of the Third Reich is being systematically reversed. German imperialism is on the march again, returning to the scenes of its worst crimes.<\/p>\n
Lithuania in particular was a central scene of Nazi atrocities<\/a>. After the invasion of the Wehrmacht in June 1941, local collaborators actively participated in the extermination of the Jewish population. Within a few months, around 95 percent of Lithuanian Jews were murdered. Of the approximately 210,000 Jews who lived in Lithuania before the Nazi invasion on June 22, 1941, around 195,000 were murdered by the end of the war in 1945. The majority of them had already been killed at the end of 1941.<\/p>\n The SS Einsatzgruppen, supported by Lithuanian militias, not only killed tens of thousands of people in massacres such as the one in Ponary, but also brutally targeted communists, trade unionists and other members of the opposition. Now, German combat troops are once again being permanently stationed on Lithuanian soil. History is either being ignored or actively rewritten in order to justify new wars.<\/p>\n In his speech in Vilnius, Merz spoke of a \u201cnew era\u201d in which Germany must assume \u201cpermanent responsibility.\u201d He repeatedly referred to Russia as an \u201caggressor\u201d against which we must \u201cdefend\u201d ourselves together. This turns reality on its head. Even though the Russian invasion of Ukraine was reactionary, the imperialist powers are the main aggressors. They deliberately provoked the war in Ukraine. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy, NATO has encircled Russia militarily. Now the leading European Union states in particular\u2014above all Berlin\u2014are driving the escalation ever further.<\/p>\n The Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces) brigade is not just symbolic, but a fully equipped combat unit with heavy weapons, its own base and permanently stationed personnel. In the autumn of 2023, Pistorius spoke of the need for Germany to become \u201cready for war.\u201d With the recent adoption of comprehensive war credits amounting to around \u20acone trillion and the planned increase in the military budget to five percent of GDP, rearmament and the militarisation of society as a whole are the state\u2019s main concerns.<\/p>\n This policy is an expression of a profound change. The German ruling class is using the Ukraine war to push through a comprehensive military reorganisation and establish itself as the strongest European war power. In his first government statement as Chancellor, Merz announced that \u201cthe Bundeswehr will become the strongest conventional army in Europe.\u201d Even without taking into account the Turkish army with its 355,000 active soldiers and 379,000 reservists, strengthening the Bundeswehr to the desired level would require an increase in personnel from the current 181,000 to at least 300,000 soldiers. According to current plans, this is how large the Polish army should be in ten years’ time. Such an expansion cannot be realised without the reintroduction of compulsory military service.<\/p>\n Prior to his trip to Vilnius, Pistorius also backed the demand previously made by Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul (Christian Democrats) and originally made by the far-right Alternative for Germany to increase military spending to five percent of economic output in future. That would correspond to \u20ac225 billion per year! The official defence budget currently stands at just under \u20ac53 billion. Pistorius left no doubt that workers will foot the bill for the arms build-up. \u201cThis country cannot be defended with welfare benefits and education,\u201d he declared cynically on Deutschlandfunk radio.<\/p>\n The insane course of war is essentially supported by all parties in the Bundestag (German Parliament). The Greens, who once claimed to be pacifists, are now the most aggressive warmongers and openly celebrate the mobilisation of the Bundeswehr in the east. The Left Party has criticised the deployment of German combat troops in order to conceal and secure the government’s agenda and to control the enormous opposition to it. However, it also voted in the Bundesrat (Federal Council) in favour of the war credits amounting to \u20acone trillion and subsequently ensured Merz was quickly elected Chancellor in the Bundestag. <\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n