Just what is Germany’s Zeitenwende, the latest coinage in a language famous for its compound nouns? The “change in times” announced by the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year rolled like a thunderclap across a country that, since unification in 1990, had flourished on the benefits of the post-cold-war peace dividend, its status as Europe’s powerhouse economy and being de facto regulator of the single currency, calling the shots in eurozone squeezes.
For obvious reasons of 20th-century experience, today’s federal republic is an entity more comfortable with its role as a proponent of restraint and cautious multilateralism than decisive action. The Ukraine crisis blew up that placidity, leaving it internally fraught on how to respond and at what cost. Last week, a newspaper leak revealed that a pledge by Scholz to supply a fully equipped army division to Nato in response to Russia’s war on Ukraine by 2025 is coming unstuck. A memo from the head of the army cast doubt on whether his forces could “hold its own in high-intensity combat”, saying it will only be able to “fulfil its obligations to Nato to a limited extent” (a masterful understatement in the context).
Spending the past few weeks exploring the jolts to political and economic security arrangements on a road trip for a Radio 4 documentary, I find Germans are living the Zeitenwende, not just in speeches and policy navel-gazing in the capital but in visible changes, challenges and shifting expectations.
In Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea coast, we’re welcomed by wild swimmers, whose bracing dips now take place in sight of the Höegh Esperanza, a 300-metre “floating storage and regasification unit” – or, more plainly put, the ship that furnishes a huge liquid natural gas (LNG) terminal, bringing gas (from sources including US fracking) to replace the energy until recently supplied via deals with Kremlin-backed companies.
A local Social Democrat politician enthuses about the way German gradualism has given way to speed when a coalition government (Social Democrats, Free Democrats and the Greens) acts decisively. The environmentalists we encounter are furious at the “betrayal” by the Greens who supported the policy shift. They worry about water contamination and claim, with some justification, that a lot of the usual conservation hurdles have been swept away.
The country’s military past and future demands collide, often awkwardly but in a way that reminds us that one “change in times” is often soon succeeded by another emergency. The museum ship in the port is named after Werner Mölders (the first pilot in aviation history to shoot down 100 enemy aircraft while supporting Franco in the Spanish civil war and against France in the Second World War). It’s a bit unclear in the presentation whether he is seen as a dashing military ace or a legacy embarrassment.
The present head of the German navy is a modest technocrat who trained in a partnership with the Royal Navy in Portsmouth and tells me that there is, so far at least, no active role for his force than its existing Nato peacekeeping presence in the Baltic. But he worries that Germany won’t be able to meet the new demands of manpower to meet rising expectations from Nato without a return to a degree of conscription, abolished in the Merkel era, and a row politicians would rather avoid.
In so many ways, Germany has been the Dornröschen of the Grimm fairytales – the Sleeping Beauty of bounty, resources and talents in everything from car production to its reliable medium-sized businesses and tech startups. At the same time, it slumbered through the incrementalism of Angela Merkel’s long reign while pursuing value-neutral (to put it politely) dealings with Moscow and Beijing to keep trade flowing and the Wohlstand (prosperity) model on track. I talk to senior civil servants serving top ministers who think they can “do ethical policy on Russia or China, but not both at once”.
For now, it’s about Ukraine. Scholz has been forthright on the strategic errors that preceded him – the “Merkel reckoning” left the former German leader closeted away, working on her memoirs. “My Excuses” is the pithy title suggested by one of her party foes.
Yet I left a country I have long admired as a “sceptical Germanophile” giving Scholz and co some benefit of the doubt too. Germany has been asked to change further and faster than any other European power since the invasion. It has had to do so in the face of public opinion reluctant to leave days of ease behind and, in many cases, hoping that an unfindable fudge will restore the status quo.
A recent Forsa opinion poll on “whether the problems of Ukraine matters for Germany and if it should get involved” shows only 43% agreeing (down 11 points from this time last year). Too little happened last year to address the woeful defence gaps (an oddity of this is that, as one official put it, “we have actually forgotten how to spend money on defence and proper supplies … we are learning to do this all over again”.)
The wheels do turn though. A new defence minister, Boris Pistorius, announced last week that Berlin had quickly approved Poland’s request for permission to send to Ukraine five cold war-era MiG-29 fighter jets it acquired from Berlin in 2004, an unintended “leaving present” of East Germany after unification, ironically. “Proof that Germany can be relied on!” observed Pistorius, and a bold move, given the delay in sending tanks. But all this is third-party nuance, and Poland might well have gone ahead anyway, as events shift Europe’s balance of power.
It only deepens the puzzle: what exactly can Germany be “relied” on to do and when? Conflicts do not wait for long soul-searching. Zeitenwende happened by necessity not choice. As the stakes rise, so will the risks and rewards. The “turns” are only just beginning.
• Anne McElvoy is executive editor at Politico and presents The Reinvention of Germany on 18 April at 8pm on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds
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