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Germany Risks Forgetting Its History In deciding to supply Leopard battle tanks to Ukraine, Olaf Scholz breaks the self-imposed constraints on the military’s role in German foreign policy that had been in place since the end of WWII. by Scott Ritter writing for Consortium News - [abridged] Two days before Holocaust Remembrance Day last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, under heavy pressure from Washington and pro-war members of his own government, announced that Germany would be sending 14 Leopard 2A6 main battle tanks to Ukraine. Answering media questions at the German Bundestag, Scholz declared: “It is right that we act closely with our international partners to support Ukraine — financially, with humanitarian aid, but also with weapons deliveries. Now we can say that, in Europe, it is us and Britain who have made the most weapons available for Ukraine. Germany will always be at the forefront when it comes to supporting Ukraine.” Two days later, at her own press conference, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova responded: “We all remember what are German tanks. These are machines which became a symbol, not only of death…not only of deathly ideology. They became a symbol of misanthropy, as a global existential threat to the planet. When you read about Nazism and fascism about those times in the Second World War, I think that these SS uniforms and these very German tanks and these symbols of the Third Reich had become a global symbol of the fall of the humankind into the abyss of hatred and horror and massacre.” Zakharova had more to say: “It was exactly the German tanks which became the symbol — the anti-symbol, I would say — which will stay in the memory of all humankind forever. Now these German tanks will once again be on our land. … So what does Berlin expect? That these armoured vehicles, with all their symbols back then and now, that they will cross our villages and settlements? We remember the end of those times. Does Berlin remember?” In the aftermath of the horrific atrocities inflicted on the world by Nazi Germany, there were many who believed that Germany no longer had the moral right to exist. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. was one of those people. In 1944 he promulgated a plan, subsequently known as the “Morgenthau Plan,” which called for the demilitarization and dismemberment of Germany after the Second World War. “It should be the aim of the Allied Forces,” Morgenthau wrote, “to accomplish the complete demilitarization of Germany in the shortest possible period of time after surrender. This means completely disarming the German Army and people (including the removal or destruction of all war material), the total destruction of the whole German armament industry, and the removal or destruction of other key industries which are basic to military strength.” In this speech, Sholz turned his back on the German experiences of both the First and Second World Wars, where unrestrained German militarism worked in concert with German industrialists to build massive military capability, which was then married to aggressive German foreign policies that turned into global conflict. Sholz was now proclaiming military-based deterrence as the national security model for Germany going forward, including a massive increase in defense expenditures that would dramatically increase the profit margins of companies like Papperger’s Rheinmetall AG [the company that manufactured German Tiger and Panzer tanks with slave labour during WWII]. Germany’s current foreign minister, Baerbock, has foregone all pretense as to what the true policy of Germany toward Russia is. During a keynote address last week to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, Baerbock declared, “We are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other.” SCOTT RITTER: Germany Risks Forgetting Its History (consortiumnews.com)