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 “service of peace, freedom and security.” In reality, it is part of comprehensive preparations for war against Russia.
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.
Lithuania in particular was a central scene of Nazi atrocities. 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.
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.
In his speech in Vilnius, Merz spoke of a “new era” in which Germany must assume “permanent responsibility.” He repeatedly referred to Russia as an “aggressor” against which we must “defend” 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—above all Berlin—are driving the escalation ever further.
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 “ready for war.” With the recent adoption of comprehensive war credits amounting to around €one 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’s main concerns.
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 “the Bundeswehr will become the strongest conventional army in Europe.” 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.
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 €225 billion per year! The official defence budget currently stands at just under €53 billion. Pistorius left no doubt that workers will foot the bill for the arms build-up. “This country cannot be defended with welfare benefits and education,” he declared cynically on Deutschlandfunk radio.
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 €one trillion and subsequently ensured Merz was quickly elected Chancellor in the Bundestag.
Under the leadership of the new German government, the war in Ukraine provoked by the NATO powers is increasingly developing into a European war. In view of a possible US withdrawal under Donald Trump, the leading European powers—above all Germany—are determined to continue the war offensive against Russia without Washington's support if necessary. They are accelerating their rearmament and war plans enormously in order to become more militarily independent and assert their own imperialist interests by force.
What is unfolding here is a road towards a third world war. As the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) declared at its last party congress, the German ruling class is “seamlessly continuing its old world war policy. Already in the First World War, one of the war aims was the creation of a Ukrainian vassal state dominated by Berlin. Hitler continued this policy in the Second World War: the subjugation of Ukraine was a central component of the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union. Today, German tanks are once again rolling towards Russia, and the Bundeswehr is working closely with the heirs of the Ukrainian Nazi collaborators to enforce the predatory interests of German imperialism.”
The parallels with history are obvious. Despite all ideological differences, the Wehrmacht marched east in 1941 under similar auspices as the Bundeswehr today: in the name of defending the “European order” against the “Bolshevik enemy.” Today, the enemy is called “Russian imperialism,” but the goals—geostrategic dominance and access to resources, zones of influence and sales markets—remain the same.
While the ruling elite uses war rhetoric and nationalism to prepare the population for a devastating and potentially catastrophic direct military conflict with the nuclear-armed power Russia, the working class is already being asked to pay. The billions spent on tanks, drones and fighter jets are being financed by social spending cuts, mass redundancies and the rising cost of living. Schools are falling into disrepair and hospitals are overburdened, but there is always money available for new rearmament projects. Added to this is the de facto forced recruitment of young people, especially from the working class, to be used as cannon fodder at the front.
This development can only be stopped by a conscious movement of the international working class. The SGP is the only party in Germany that has consistently fought against rearmament, the NATO war and the return of militarism. In the Bundestag election campaign, the SGP warned of the danger of a third world war and focused on building a new, international anti-war movement. This is now the all-important question. The return of German combat troops to Eastern Europe is a declaration of war on humanity. Workers and young people must oppose it resolutely on the basis of a clear socialist perspective.