A magical date is making the rounds in Germany these days. It’s around October 10, 1981, when 300,000 people gathered in Bonn’s Hofgarten to protest against NATO’s double decision and the support of Helmut Schmidt’s Social-Democratic-Liberal government (SPD). Dealing and modernizing with medium-range weapons was NATO’s motto in the shadow of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the time. By deploying medium-range nuclear weapons on German soil, it helped start the German peace and green movement. Famous intellectuals joined the entourage at the time. Writer Heinrich Böll was there from the beginning, Joseph Beuys followed him in the new edition of the demo in June 1982, having already crossed the Rhine in a boat to attract media attention.
In the winter of 2022/23, two prominent and contrasting women, Sahra Wagenknecht and Alice Schwarzer, seem to be reviving this German peace talk.
Monika Skolimowska / dpa / picturedesk.com Sahra Wagenknecht, Oskar Lafontaine and Alice Schwarzer at the “Uprising for Peace” on February 25, 2023 in Berlin
With their “Manifesto for Peace”, they ask the German government to support the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. At the moment, as the “Spiegel” (print edition) quotes the defenders of the manifesto, arms deliveries to Ukraine would only fuel the continuation of a war that Ukraine could not win against Russia’s nuclear energy. Once again, the threat of nuclear war is at the center of all concerns. What is missing, according to “Spiegel” – “a conclusive explanation of how negotiations should go with someone who obviously does not want to negotiate”. Last but not least, there has been another split in the Green camp, and not just since the manifesto – and it also reminds some of the split within the party when Germany took part in the NATO process in the Kosovo conflict. “Never again war, never again Auschwitz, never again fascism, never again genocide” is what the Greens’ then foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, told his party about the coordinates for its decision to intervene in 1999.
Berlin: demonstration for peace
Several thousand people gathered at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin for a rally for negotiations with Russia on the Ukraine war. German left-wing politician Sahra Wagenknecht and women’s rights activist Alice Schwarzer called for the demonstration. The police spoke of 10,000 participants some time after the demonstration began.
Images of divided mood in Germany
63% of respondents to a Civey Institute online survey commissioned by “Spiegel” (sample: 5,000, period: January 23 to February 22, 2023) would like the federal government to show greater commitment to the peace talks. 42% of respondents stated that the objective of the negotiations should be to restore Ukraine’s borders before the annexation of Crimea.
Schulz, Lothar / SZ-Photo / picturedesk.com Bonn Court Garden, October 10, 1981
The well-known Slovak author Hvorecky, who has also published in the German serial for years, considers precisely this demand for a ceasefire and the desire for negotiations to be a dangerous illusion. In a new text he warns against “total peace”, as he exaggerates: “Today, many people, including numerous leading European intellectuals, are demanding an immediate ceasefire, but this is a big and dangerous lie, a deceptive illusion I deny so-called total peace. A peace subordinated to the Russian aggressor’s intentions to use power and violence. A peace at the expense of free Ukrainians. Peace in the interests of a kleptocratic regime eager to get on with its dirty business.”
Shortly after the Wehrmacht’s defeat at Stalingrad, recalls Hvorecky, the German Reich’s Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, declared all-out war at the Berlin Sportpalast. Goebbels wanted to justify scorched earth tactics and endorse increasingly brutal war tactics. “Victory or defeat” was the motto, according to the author.
“Without the Battle of Kiev we would have a new neighbor”
“A year ago, Russia lost the battle in Kiev, and that came as a shock to Putin,” writes Hvorecky. across the European Union.”
Alice Schwarzer, Hanna Schygulla, Jürgen Habermas or Valie Export have no idea “that their signatures and calls to ‘stop the escalation of arms deliveries’ are being misused in the worst possible way on countless Eastern European fake news channels”: “They don’t understand foreign Slavic languages, they have never read or seen this uncontrolled social media disinformation that the Kremlin is massively spreading.”
Frank May / dpa Picture Alliance / picturedesk.com Author Hvorecky: “I lost the information war”
“Obviously, we lost the information war a long time ago. Western states hardly strengthened their unity among themselves against Russian hybrid threats”, says the author: “The total war of the Nazis was not a war, but a genocide. Total peace is not peace because it justifies the Russian genocide and allows it to continue. Total peace would be a betrayal of Ukraine.”
Wienfried Nachtwei, a former high school teacher and a founding member of the Greens from the beginning, understands what motivates many pacifists. He still sees himself as part of the peace movement, but he recently added, “There is also a desire not to be helpless anymore,” according to Nachtwei, still ignored by many pacifists.
“A Road of No Return”
The biggest breach of law in war is that “it’s a one-way street,” Austrian writer Marlene Streeruwitz said in an interview with Paul Jandl six months ago in the “NZZ”. And so it gets to the heart of the misery in the debate, despite all the well-meaning on the various sides in the West: “Actually, we were in a completely different place and now we are in this deadly state again.” deadly state with a peace deal ASAP, likely remains the subject of new debates — and politically exploited positional conflicts.