It’s hard to imagine a major American talk show spending an hour talking about whether or not to send tanks to Ukraine, but one German talk show recently did (I know, because I was on it). Even as more and more German weapons have flowed to Ukraine, the argument about them remains far more contentious in Germany than anywhere else. Instead, she told me, it was as if Scholz “said these big words and then had to sit down and rest.”Īnd this is where we are now: Ever since the speech, Germans have been arguing over what helping Ukraine really means, which weapons can be sent and which cannot, which might provoke some kind of extreme reaction from Russia and which might help win the war. Still, she thought that the “turning point” would begin right away. Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, the chair of the Bundestag’s Defense Committee (and a Free Democrat, part of the government coalition) watched the faces of politicians from Scholz’s own party.

Scholz called this a Zeitenwende, or historical turning point, and not everybody was ready for it. And after weeks of refusing to send weapons to Ukraine, he declared that Germany would now be sending anti-tank weapons and Stinger missiles. Germany, he said, needed “airplanes that fly, ships that can set out to sea and soldiers who are optimally equipped for their missions.” He declared that decades of increasing dependence on Russian energy would cease and that Germany would begin preparing alternatives. Scholz, a Social Democrat without much of a track record on military issues, told his country-conditioned since the 1990s to believe that it no longer needed a real army-that he would add 100 billion euros to the defense budget this year. Last February, three days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Chancellor Olaf Scholz stood up in the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, and made a remarkable speech.

Germany tanks the modern age