On March 18, Germany’s Bundestag (parliament) held its first-ever trillion-euro-session. The emerging Grand Coalition of CDU and SPD, with the support of the Greens, got the two-thirds majority required to amend the constitution. Three days later, the Bundesrat (federal chamber), also approved the measure by a two-thirds majority.
The changes will keep the constitutional “debt brake” in place, which has mandated austerity since 2009. Except now, military spending will be exempted.
There are no concrete numbers, but a trillion euros for the military in the next decade is being discussed. The CDU wants to spend 3.5 percent of GDP on what they call “defense” — that would be roughly 150 billion euros per year, or three times the current level.
Die Linke
In the Bundestag, Die Linke voted against the constitutional amendments. Yet in the Bundesrat, where CDU, SPD, and Greens do not hold two thirds of seats, Die Linke voted in favor. The Left Party has ministers in the coalition governments in Bremen and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and they could have forced these governments to abstain. This is exactly what the hypo-neoliberal FDP and the social-chauvinist BSW did in their state governments. Yet these “left” ministers argued that since the military spending was coupled with a one-time fund of 500 billion euros for infrastructure, they needed to vote in favor.
This is an open betrayal of Die Linke’s program, principles, and structures, but it will have no consequences. Some members of the youth organization have demanded that the ministers resign. But party co-chair Inés Schwedtner, lead candidate Heidi Reichinnek, and other leaders replied that this difference of opinion should only be discussed internally.
In an interview with the German edition of Jacobin, Reichinnek said: “We always get attacked for supposedly not supporting the Bundeswehr,” the German army. “That is total nonsense. Of course we want the Bundeswehr to be well armed as a defensive army.”
This is a radical misunderstanding of what the German army is for. It has never been about defending the people living inside the country’s borders — it’s a capitalist army fighting for the interests of German corporations. Overtly capitalist politicians understand this much better than the ostensibly socialist Reichinnek. Former defense minister Peter Struck of the SPD once stated that “Germany’s freedom is defended on the Hindu Kush,” i.e. in Afghanistan. In the same vein, former federal president Horst Kohler of the CDU said: “In an emergency, military action is necessary to protect our interests, for example free trade routes.”
That is why German socialists going back to Wilhelm Liebknecht have stood firm: not one person and not one cent for militarism!
Echoes of 1914
The vote on March 18 was all about preparing for future wars. Yet it had strange echoes of the past.
Inside the Bundestag, members of Sahra Wagenknecht’s party BSW held up signs: “1914 and 2025: No to war credits!” (The person who demanded the signs be taken down was Die Linke’s Petra Pau, Bundestag Vice President and a fanatical supporter of Israel’s far-right government.)
This was in reference to the great betrayal of August 4, 1914. On that day the Reichstag, the German parliament at that time, was called together to vote on war credits. The Kaiser had already declared war, but still needed money to pay for it.
Many expected the largest party, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), to vote “Nein.” In the previous week, the SPD had mobilized hundreds of thousands of workers against the threat of war. Party founders Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel were still famous for opposing war in the same chamber 40 years before. Even Rosa Luxemburg, a sharp critic of the SPD’s bureaucratic deformation, thought in the worst case they might abstain.
Yet when party co-chair Hugo Haase got up to speak for the parliamentary group, he surprised his own rank and file: “In the hour of danger, we socialists will not abandon the fatherland.” Every single SPD representative voted in favor. They had fallen for the argument that Germany was simply defending itself from attack.
At an internal meeting the previous day, 14 MPs had voted no, including Haase. Yet they submitted to the long-established “faction discipline” and went with the majority.
It was only on December 2 of that year, when the government needed more money to continue the slaughter, that one member of the Reichstag broke with his party and voted no. Karl Liebknecht declared that this was no defensive war. “It is an imperialist war, a war for the capitalist control of the world market.” By the following March, a second MP joined him.
As the First World War dragged on, resistance grew inside Germany. Working-class women rioted at butter shops. Munitions workers went on strike. Soldiers and sailors began to organize. Eventually, there were public demonstrations despite the state of siege.
The very first demonstration took place on March 18, 1915 in front of the Reichstag. Several hundred, perhaps up to a thousand women gathered on the grass for International Women’s Day (before it was moved to March 8). They were there to cheer for Liebknecht, who had announced he would be voting against the third round of war credits two days later. After the women were dispersed by police, they regrouped several times in different parts of Berlin to continue the protest.
Resistance Today
By an astounding coincidence, exactly 110 years to the day later, in the exact same spot in front of what is now the Bundestag, once again 500 people were protesting against militarism. Following a call from Klasse Gegen Klasse, an alliance of several dozen left-wing groups organized the rally, including Migrantifa, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the MLPD.
With this new wave of militarism, the propaganda about “national defense” appears to be working for now, with about 70 percent of people in Germany approving of rearmament in surveys. Yet as the enormous costs of militarism build up, working people will start to wonder: why are we tightening our belts when arms manufacturers are uncorking champagne? Even a small protest can help channel tomorrow’s discontent.
In this context, Die Linke — with tens of thousands of fresh members after a dynamic election campaign — needs to campaign against militarism. A first step would be the immediate expulsion of the ministers who voted for war credits. Unfortunately, Die Linke has not organized any real protests yet, besides a quick photo op in front of the Reichstag on the morning of the vote. Only a handful of members, including the legendary Ferat Koçak, joined the protest in the early evening.
Leftists need to campaign against imperialist war, especially when it’s in the name of “defense.” It’s a terrible sign that Die Linke’s main star Gregor Gysi argued that everyone from conservatives to leftists, both chambers of commerce and workers’ unions, need to work together to “defend our democracy and freedom.” This is almost word-for-word what Haase argued in 1914. Then as now, it’s a slippery slope towards “socialist” support for imperialist slaughter.
These are historic times, with the German bourgeoisie launching its biggest rearmament program since the Nazi era. The growth of imperialist contradictions is slowly pushing the world towards a horrific conflagration. The lesson of the First World War is that only the working class, in alliance with all oppressed people, can stop the capitalists’ wars to control the world. We need a broad left-wing movement that is uncompromising in its opposition to imperialism and militarism. For this, we need to fight against the leaders of Die Linke who are open to giving the German army trillions in exchange for a pittance to repair bridges.
Red Flag is a weekly column on Berlin politics that Nathaniel Flakin has been writing since 2020. After moving through different homes, it now appears on Friday at The Left Berlin.