This year’s Leipzig Book Fair, held from March 27 to 30, 2025, took place at a historic turning point. A few days before the opening of the fair, both houses of the German parliament passed a constitutional amendment enabling the government to take out war credits of more than €1 trillion, paving the way for the most extensive rearmament since Hitler. 

The question of war also shaped the programme of the book fair. On the one hand, warmongers like the political consultant Herfried Münkler were given a stage for their great power propaganda, while on the other hand, an increasing anti-war sentiment could be seen among many visitors. A clear politicisation could already be observed at the fair last year. 

The book fair attracted a particularly large number of young people and ended with a total of almost 300,000 visitors. Despite a first-time restriction on ticket sales, the exhibition centre was bursting at the seams.

With the publication in German of Sounding the Alarm: Socialism against War by David North, Mehring Verlag was the only publishing house to present a book that provides a socialist answer to the global development of war and the arms race. The comprehensive selection of Marxist literature offered by Mehring Verlag at the exhibition stand also attracted a great deal of interest.

German militarism and propaganda for the war in Ukraine

Two book prizes went to authors who are fuelling the anti-Russian campaign in the war in Ukraine: the non-fiction book prize went to Irina Rastorgueva, an exiled Russian, for a book criticising the propaganda of the Putin regime, and the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding went to the Belarusian writer Alhierd Bacharevič for his book Europe’s Dogs (first published in 2017, translated in 2024). 

According to the taz newspaper, “in the final chapter, Bacharevič sketches the vision of a new Russian empire in 2050, which has completely incorporated Belarus.” Bacharevič believes that since Putin came to power, Belarusians and Ukrainians have been living “in the shadow of the monster Russia.”

At the Ukrainian stand at the Leipzig Book Fair, former NGO activist Maksym Butkevych, who volunteered to join the Ukrainian army and became a commander, presented his book—cynically titled Am richtigen Platz, Ein ukrainischer Friedensaktivist im Krieg (In the Right Place. A Ukrainian peace activist at war). An event for the volume Für Deine und meine Freiheit (For Your and My Freedom) by Konstantin Sigov—with a foreword by the right-wing historian Karl Schlögel—was dedicated to fallen Ukrainian soldiers. 

The official mantra of the ruling class in Germany and the other NATO countries is that the war in Ukraine is being waged in defence of “freedom” and “peace” against the Russian aggressor. This has nothing to do with reality. It serves the German elites as a pretext for massive rearmament spending and to justify a return to the old great power politics of the Nazis.

This was most clearly expressed by the well-known militarist and government adviser Herfried Münkler. At the taz forum, the emeritus professor at Berlin’s Humboldt University discussed his new tome Macht im Umbruch. Deutschlands Rolle in Europa und die Herausforderungen des 21. Jahrhunderts (Power in Transition. Germany’s Role in Europe and the Challenges of the 21st Century), published by Rowohlt Verlag. According to Münkler, in view of Trump’s election, Europe would have to “assert itself” in the future. The support of the German government for Ukraine was “too little, too late.”

Jan Fedderson, an editor at the taz newspaper and an ex-Maoist who otherwise writes about identity politics, was just as forthright about militarism as Münkler. He said that there was strong support in the editorial office of taz (which generally supports the Greens) for the Taurus cruise missiles and air support for Ukraine. He said that people wanted a “tougher line.” Was it even possible to live in the “post-heroic society” proclaimed by Münkler? 

Münkler pointed to the low birth rate and the “sensitivities of German society,” by which he means that too few people in Germany want to be used as supposed heroes in a war. However, the lack of “manpower” (sic) could be compensated for by more “equipment,” according to Münkler. “Combat drones are the rollators [wheeled mobility aid] of post-heroic societies,” he had said earlier to the Greens.

Fedderson interjected that Germany had also recruited incorrectly and relied too heavily on white middle-class men. He said that “an incredible number of young men and women with migrant backgrounds would very much like to join the [armed forces].”

The grey-haired war propagandists then debated why the Bundeswehr should use young refugees as cannon fodder. Münkler said that years ago, he had discussed with former finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) and the then chairman of the Munich Security Conference, Wolfgang Ischinger, at Café Einstein in Berlin whether “integration via the military” would be possible in Germany, as it is in the United States. After all, the refugee crisis of 2014–2016 saw “a relatively large number of young people with an obviously high level of ability—otherwise they would not have made the long journey—come to Germany.” German politicians did not follow his advice at the time, but “what is not, can still come to be,” Münkler said, calling for a “change of mentality in the political class.”

A new generation of German imperialists also appeared at the book fair: Timo Lochocki, born in 1985, a political scientist and visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, presented his nationalist book Deutsche Interessen. Wie wir zur stärksten Demokratie der Welt werden – und damit die liberale Welt retten (German Interests. How we become the strongest democracy in the world—and thus save the liberal world, Herder Verlag). 

At the event, Lochocki argued in favour of Germany having its own nuclear weapons and for the country’s necessary independence from the United States. “Our country can and should become the new America,” he demands in his book, citing the pacifist Käthe Kollwitz, of all people, to justify his plea for war. He says his basic idea is the Latin saying: “If you want peace, prepare for war.”

Anti-war sentiments

The incessant war cry that has gripped the establishment media and publishers is a reaction to the seething anti-war sentiment among the population, which has not yet manifested itself in mass protests, but which was also evident at the fair. 

The presentation of the bestseller Warum ich niemals für mein Land kämpfen würde. Gegen die Kriegstüchtigkeit (Why I would never fight for my country. Against Combat Readiness, Rowohlt Verlag). In it, the 27-year-old author Ole Nymoen speaks out against rearmament and “spiritual mobilisation” in Germany.

He regarded his book as a general critique of the competing nation-states that had emerged as a result of centuries of war. In war, people were helplessly at the mercy of their state and were set against each other. When asked by the moderator, he described himself as a socialist and advocated a “socialist world republic” as the ideal form of government. 

In his introduction to the book, Nymoen emphasises the widespread rejection of compulsory military service among young people in Germany: 59 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds are against a new compulsory military service. When asked if they would defend Germany with a weapon, only 19 percent answered “definitely” according to pollsters Forsa, and only 5 percent according to YouGov.

The German translation of the book Feuerdörfer. Wehrmachtsverbrechen in Belarus–Zeitzeugen berichten (Fiery Villages. Wehrmacht [Army] Crimes in Belarus—Eyewitness testimonies, published in English translation as I am from the Fiery Village) by Ales Adamovich, Janka Bryl and Uladzimir Kalesnik, for which Thomas Weiler was awarded the Book Fair Translation Prize, is also a significant counterpoint to the current warmongering. This important work is only becoming available to German readers for the first time 50 years after its publication in the Soviet Union.

The eyewitness accounts of the horrific Nazi crimes in Belarus collected here could not be timelier. Adamovich and the director Elem Klimov also wrote the script for the well-known Soviet anti-war film “Come and See” (Иди и смотри) based on these reports. 

An unforgettable scene in one of the “fiery villages” depicts villagers being driven into a barn by the SS and burned alive. Some 149 people, including 75 children, died in the flames of this massacre in Khatyn in March 1943.

The publishers’ preface in 1975 begins with the haunting words:

Everything seems to have been said about fascism. The ashes of millions of its victims weigh heavily on people’s hearts.

And yet, here and there, attempts are repeatedly made to present this scourge of the 20th century in a more benign light for future generations who did not experience the horror of the Second World War themselves. How many “scholarly treatises” are published in the West about Hitler and his gang, how many books and essays whose authors are eager to give Nazism human traits and to replace the memory of the peoples with revanchist desires of generals and former henchmen of the ‘Führer.

But the memory of the people still exists, it lives—the incorruptible memory of Gestapo, concentration camp and Khatyn fascism. The Tribunal of the Peoples did not end with Nuremberg. It continues—in the memory of the people. And this tribunal is not only a matter of historical justice. It is essential for survival. It is not for nothing that it is said that those who forget their past are condemned to relive it.

Socialism against war

Eighty years after the end of this bloody war of extermination against the Soviet Union, German tanks are once again on the Russian border. With the book Sounding the Alarm: Socialism Against War by David North, the Mehring Verlag publishing house presented a clear political perspective at the fair to stop a third world war. 

Numerous visitors to the Mehring Verlag stand reacted angrily to the rearmament of the Bundeswehr and the approval of the Left Party for the war credits. They expressed their concerns about the international pro-war policy and the establishment of a dictatorship under Donald Trump in the US. An American visitor who was interested in David North’s volume A Quarter Century of War: The US Drive for Global Hegemony 1990 – 2016 said he had emigrated because of US war policy and was now shocked to see Germany pursuing a similar war agenda.

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The second new publication by David North also attracted a great deal of interest: The Logic of Zionism: From Nationalist Myth to Genocide in Gaza. A young man who bought the book said, “At last someone is talking about the genocide in Gaza!” 

The lively discussions at the Mehring Verlag stand made it clear that there is a strong need to understand the rapid political development in its historical context. What does “socialism” mean against war and why were the Stalinist regimes of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and the Soviet Union not socialism? What are the causes of the war in Ukraine? How can the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) be explained, and what are the differences and parallels to the 1930s? 

This question is particularly central in eastern Germany, where Leipzig lies and where the AfD recently achieved record results in the federal elections. That is why numerous visitors to the stand picked up a copy of the book Why Are They Back? Historical Falsification, Political Conspiracy, and the Return of Fascism in Germany by Christoph Vandreier, chairman of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party).

Young readers in particular were looking for books on Soviet history and discussed with us the significance of the October Revolution and the struggle of the Left Opposition under Leon Trotsky against Stalinism. A student of Slavic studies purchased a whole stack of books, including The Revolution Betrayed and Fascism. What it is and how to fight it by Trotsky, as well as the first volume of the series Was There an Alternative? by Vadim Rogovin. 

A history student at Berlin’s Humboldt University wanted to learn more about the 1917 Russian Revolution, bought John Reed’s Ten Days that Shook the World and left her contact details to become active in the IYSSE (International Youth and Students for Social Equality).

On Saturday, Mehring Verlag presented its new publication Sounding the Alarm: Socialism against War at the non-fiction book forum. In his remarks, David North, author and editor of the World Socialist Web Site, explained:

My book, as the title makes clear, is an attempt to sound the alarm. Humanity is facing the danger of descending into the abyss. The only way out of this crisis is the end of the capitalist system. The alternative formulated by Rosa Luxemburg—”socialism or barbarism”—now confronts us all. The alarm bell has been rung. Now we must respond.