The World in Fever

On 22 November 1983 the Bundestag approved the stationing of new US intermediate-range missiles in West Germany. Several hundred thousand people, among them Bundeswehr soldiers in uniform, protested on 22 October 1983 on the Hofgarten lawn in Bonn against the NATO Double-Track Decision. The Greens, who back then still stood for disarmament, gained massive support, entered the Bundestag in March 1983 and established themselves as a new political force at federal and state level. A few years later, as a governing party, the Greens set in motion the first German military deployments since the end of the Second World War.

On 6 and 9 August 2022 the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked their 77th anniversary. On the morning of 6 August 1945, US bombers detonated an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima – supposedly to force the country to surrender in the Second World War. 78,000 people were dead on the spot, a further 122,000 died from the consequences of the explosion. Three days later the second bomb destroyed the city of Nagasaki and killed 70,000 people. To this day, former residents and their descendants die of cancer as a long-term consequence of the radiation. According to one study, 9 percent of the cancers that occurred among survivors between 1950 and 1990 were a consequence of the bombing. The deaths and the long-term damage among newborns, too, continued over decades.

To this day, no US president has apologised to the Japanese for the dropping of the atomic bombs.

The greatest conceivable real danger with regard to nuclear terrorism has so far come from the USA. For decades they have carried out nuclear, outlawed and conventional attacks on civilian targets on an unprecedented scale, wrought irreparable devastation in nuclear tests in the Pacific, and staged pretexts for war like no other country ever before.

Between 1946 and 1958 the USA detonated 66 nuclear devices on the Marshall Islands – the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshimas every single day, for twelve years. Bikini is dead today, mutated and irradiated. The palm trees grow in a strange pattern. Nothing moves. There are no birds. The gravestones in the old cemetery are radioactive.

The Obama administration had even more nuclear weapons built – more nuclear warheads, more nuclear delivery systems, even more nuclear facilities. Spending on nuclear warheads alone rose higher under Barack Obama than under any other president. Over 30 years the costs amounted to more than a trillion dollars.

With the approval of the Bundestag, B61-4 bombs have been modernised since 2020 and are being brought into service step by step until 2025. By 2020 the first of the B61-12 was to be completed; four years later production was to be finished and the old bombs replaced – in the USA, in Europe and in the German Eifel village of Büchel, on whose air base up to 20 US atomic bombs of the B61 type are still stored.

When states that do not actually possess their own nuclear weapons practise the use of these weapons on their own territory within the framework of NATO’s practice of nuclear sharing, this constitutes a violation of Articles 1 and 2 of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. In the Two-plus-Four Treaty, reunified Germany had reaffirmed its intention to renounce the manufacture and possession of nuclear weapons.

Article I

Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; and not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, or control over such weapons or explosive devices.

Article II

Each non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to receive the transfer from any transferor whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; not to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices; and not to seek or receive any assistance in the manufacture of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.

In mid-June 2017, by contrast, Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel reaffirmed the stationing of nuclear weapons in Germany as well as a balanced nuclear deterrence vis-à-vis Russia. Honestly, he said, one could not then stand behind a ban on nuclear weapons.

In the coalition agreement of March 2018 for the Merkel IV cabinet, this political line is continued:

“We are resolutely committed to the worldwide verifiable disarmament of all weapons of mass destruction (…) As long as nuclear weapons play a role as an instrument of deterrence in NATO’s Strategic Concept, Germany has an interest in taking part in the strategic discussions and planning processes.”

Before she had even properly taken office, the Green foreign minister Annalena Baerbock summed up her militaristic ambitions in an interview with the taz:

“This very question of nuclear weapons makes clear that in future we will once again pursue an active German foreign policy that faces up to the dilemmas of global politics. We stand by our responsibility within the framework of NATO and the EU, and also by nuclear sharing.”

And added:

“In the longer term, however, we will only make the world safer if we achieve a reduction of nuclear weapons. That is why we, as a future government, want to support the disarmament negotiations between the USA and Russia and to accompany the content of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons constructively as an observer.”

Germany’s “observer status” of course renders Baerbock’s grand announcement null and void, for not a single nuclear power has ratified this treaty, nor has “nuclear-sharing” Germany. For the signatories commit themselves not only to neither developing nor accepting nuclear weapons, but also not to station them on their territory, to threaten with them, or even to use them. The coalition agreement of the “traffic-light” coalition of November 2021 therefore also states that, as an observer at the conference of states parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, it would constructively accompany the treaty’s intention. Baerbock reaffirms the traffic-light coalition’s demand for the procurement of new nuclear-capable combat aircraft:

“We have to procure the successor system for the Tornado, because the conventional capabilities have to be replaced. So it is not solely a matter of so-called nuclear bombers. We will then have to talk further about the question of nuclear certification.”

Within the framework of the 100-billion-euro rearmament programme for nuclear sharing, Germany is now buying from the USA the most modern nuclear delivery weapons available, the F-35 stealth bomber. Both the USA and Germany violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty the moment pilots of Fighter Wing 33 in Büchel take over the US nuclear weapons stationed there. Under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the USA is forbidden to hand over nuclear weapons to a non-nuclear-weapon state, and Germany, as a non-nuclear-weapon state, is forbidden to accept them.

This apocalyptic journey through time shows that today we are further from peace and disarmament than 40 years ago, and that the “Blue Planet” is in greater danger than ever.

The Greens – once founded as a pacifist party – are revealing themselves more and more as a bellicose and destructive force that is once again leading Germany into irresponsible armed conflicts.

Out of the devastating experiences of the Third Reich, the founding fathers wanted to make the Federal Republic of Germany a state under the rule of law, coexisting peacefully with other countries. Never again was a war to start from German soil.

The main burden of the last German war of annihilation was borne by the peoples of the Soviet Union. Around 13 million soldiers lost their lives on the Soviet side. Of more than five million Soviet prisoners of war in total, three million died in German captivity by the end of the war. Added to this are more than two million murdered Soviet Jews and six to ten million further civilians. The figure of 27,000,000 Soviet war dead is documented in historical records. An immense order of magnitude and a gigantic guilt.

The total value of the individual export licences granted by the Federal Government in the period from 1 January 2022 to 1 August 2022 for the export of armaments in support of Ukraine amounts to 661,226,068 euros.

No god helps us to preserve our world …