‘OH! What a Lovely War’, the title of a satire on the carnage of the Western Front, is seemingly what the establishment of Britain and the EU want. Since Donald Trump returned to the White House and made his intentions clear about pulling out of any responsibility for the defence of Europe, leaders on this side of the Atlantic have been burnishing their credentials as recruiting sergeants.
Germany, the initiator of the First and Second World Wars, is particularly keen to start another. Since the war in Ukraine began, the German establishment has sought to reintroduce conscription. A year ago, under the previous coalition, a defence ministry document given to Der Spiegel presented ‘options for a German military service model’. Defence minister Boris Pistorius of the Social Democratic Party wanted to make the country ‘fit for war’.
There has been little challenge to this rush to conscription. The only dissent comes either from the Russophile fringe on the right, or the old socialists who prefer welfare to warfare. The World Socialist Web Site (17 March 2024) decried the parties of the left for their gung ho reversal of decades of pacifism, noting that the Greens were ‘the most aggressive militants’.
Germany has a new government, with Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democrats as chancellor. His defence policy spokesman told Bild that ‘the first conscripts will have to walk through the barracks gates in 2025’. A force of three to four million is projected to face the might of the Russian army.
The traditional motive of patriotism will not be needed. Indeed, German politicians do not want nationalist AfD supporters signing up. The Bundeswehr will be filled with modern diverse youth, as urged by a recent article in Stern magazine. This latest media support for conscription was inspired by author Tilmun Gerwien, who tells younger compatriots (he being too old for active service) that they must ‘grow up’.
The message that youth will be fighting for freedom is particularly ironic, given the German establishment’s efforts to ban the AfD, which is the second-largest party in the Bundestag and on the latest opinion poll merely two percentage points from the leading CDU.
The marketing is aimed at woke youngsters. Females will be encouraged to fight for gender equality, homosexuals for LGBT rights, and brown-skinned incomers for a multicultural Germany. But the mantra ‘diversity is strength’ is heading for a reality check. An atomised and culturally rootless society does not engender a common purpose or patriotic fervour.
The front cover of Stern, however, features a white boy. As Remix website observed, when the duty to defend and die for your country arises, suddenly white men are prominent rather than women, Arabs, Blacks or Turks.
The world is becoming unsafe, our leaders warn, but it’s not Vladimir Putin who’s the biggest threat. Western governments are determined to put their citizens on a war footing, and that might not be as difficult or unrealistic as sceptics think. A Forsa poll showed that a mere 17 per cent of German people would be willing to fight for their country. But this will not be a matter of choice.
A facilitator for the drill halls will be unemployment, an inevitable fate of the policy of deindustrialisation. The Greens fully support the destruction of the great German powerhouse, but if you believe that is for ecological reasons (whether scientifically rational or not), how would that explain the lust for war with Russia? How green are the explosive projectiles, the tanks rumbling over muddy terrain, landmines, and aerial bombardment?
The answer, disturbingly, is that war is very much in tune with Green ideology. As I explain in my book Green in Tooth and Claw, depopulation is crucial to saving the planet for the predatory elite, for whom Green activists are useful idiots.
Germany’s strengths will be used against its people – the industrial core of Europe and its Teutonic orderliness – just as these attributes were exploited in the twentieth century wars. Bismarck’s bureaucratic state culminated in the trenches; the liberal Weimar Republic in the Third Reich, and now a progressive ‘citizens of the world’ culture in another likely global conflict and mass cull.
What the Cultural Marxists started in the 1920s is similar to the conditions created by the Green cult today. Millions of Germans might be maimed or killed for no better reason than the last time, and the time before that. Nihilism prevails.
