by Sabiene Jahn//
History is not returning as a farce, but as calculated madness in a tailor-made suit. Friedrich Merz, the designated German Chancellor, is staging himself with growing determination as a Western-style warlord. His latest proposal to supply the high-precision German Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine is not only militarily explosive, but possibly civilizationally explosive. Brussels-based Russia expert and historian Gilbert Doctorow finds clear words: "Friedrich Merz is the most dangerous German leader since Adolf Hitler."
An opinion piece by Sabiene Jahn
A sentence that was not said lightly - and whose implications only become apparent on closer inspection. Even under Chancellor Scholz, there was still a lot of maneuvering, slowing down and hesitation. Taurus, the "masterpiece" of German weapons technology, remained under lock and key. Why? Because, as leaked air force protocols showed, this weapon could only be used with German target programming and personnel - and that would make Germany a direct party to the war. But Friedrich Merz doesn't just seem to be ignoring this red line - he is crossing it with a running start. "Merz is prepared to deliver Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine - and even publicly recommends bombing the Kerch Bridge," warns Doctorow. This bridge connects Russia with Crimea and is considered a neuralgic point for Russian logistics. Its destruction would be a direct attack on Russian territory - with unforeseeable consequences for Germany.
Little risk involved
Doctorow puts the scenario in a nutshell: "If Germany delivers and targets, Russia will not hit Ukraine - but Germany." The Russian leadership could not afford to leave this step unanswered. Not reacting would be seen as weakness in Moscow - with possible domestic political consequences for Putin himself. "A Russian retaliatory strike on the Taurus plant" - Taurus System GmbH in Schrobenhausen, which was founded in 1998 by its shareholders, MBDA Deutschland GmbH and Swedish Saab Dynamics AB - "or military infrastructure in Germany would not even be ruled out under international law under these conditions," says Doctorow, pointing out that Washington itself has long been a party to the war. But striking at Berlin is geopolitically and strategically much easier - and politically less risky.
Doctorow considers the assumption that a Russian counterattack on Germany would be reliably answered by Article 5 of NATO to be extremely dangerous: "The new reality with Trump is causing the protective shield to crumble." Doubts are also growing in the USA. Although Donald Trump is rhetorically playing the great peacemaker, he is dithering, hesitating and shifting responsibility. "Trump doesn't have the courage to put Europe in its place - and without this step, there will be neither a ceasefire nor a peace agreement," Doctorow judges harshly.
Military worthless
The neoconservatives around US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Keith Kellogg have long had Trump's ear, as discussed in Russian talk shows such as "The Great Game" - they want to prolong the war, not end it. Their natural allies? Europe - with France, the UK and Germany in the lead. The common goal is to weaken Russia, if necessary at the expense of its own population. In Ukraine, the West has its eyes particularly on Odessa. For France, the city is a nostalgically charged stage, for the UK a strategic military bridgehead near Crimea. "The 'coalition of the willing' around Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer is militarily worthless, but politically dangerous," says Doctorow. Because where there is a lack of substance, the temptation to engage in symbolic politics grows - at the expense of the security of Europe as a whole.
And Merz? He celebrates Germany's resurrection as a leading military power - with phrases such as: "Germany is back." What sounds like a proud sentence is, for Doctorow, a "reconfiguration of the anti-Russian coalition of 1941". Only with different means - but the same ideological reflexes. According to Doctorow, Donald Trump has set April 20 as the deadline for a ceasefire. But the clock is ticking - and neither Trump nor Europe are moving. "The Russians will continue the war until the objectives of their special operation are achieved," Doctorow explains matter-of-factly. And if German Taurus missiles play a role in this, Europe could become a direct theater of war. In the midst of all this, German media remain silent for the call to order, a large part of the population remains silent - paralyzed by fear, ignorance of the igniting realities or ideological blindness. But the question of the hour is not: who will deliver what? How long until the first Taurus is aimed at Moscow - and something comes back?
Tragedy last part
If Friedrich Merz wants to send the Taurus cruise missiles eastwards, there is really only one logical conclusion: we don't need any more schools, we need call-up notices. Austrian cabaret artist Lisa Eckhart sums it up in her own unique way: "If they really believe in war, they won't need a cent more for education. Compulsory military service instead of compulsory schooling." Because, she concludes, knowledge makes work - and dirt. "One academic here, then there it is, the alphabet soup. Before that, the big whine: I don't want to fight, I'd rather read Goethe. Goethe, yes - we have his latest work here: Der Panzer-Faust. The last part of the tragedy."
While intellectuals are still lost in footnotes, Eckhart is already hitting the moral façade architecture of the new war society with a sarcastic hammer. Because when the war comes - and the rhetoric of many members of the government leaves no doubt about this - the educational mission will have been abolished for good. The hollow beet will be blown away - cleanly, efficiently, acid-free.
Eckhart finds it revealingly paradoxical that Friedrich Merz, of all people, is investing in armaments and infrastructure: "It's like cleaning the house before the rubble woman arrives. Who is going to have their teeth whitened on their deathbed?" Really - why renovate when the area bombing is coming soon? Why repair bridges if you hope that Russian tanks will never get over them anyway because they will fail due to ruined buildings in Germany? "They'll never dare cross our bridges with their tanks. They'd have to change trains - and then they'd say: The Russians are coming. Yes, but with the ICE." Eckhart also has an idea about the much-vaunted special fund for the Bundeswehr: "We could simply divide this special fund among the population. Everyone gets the same amount. Except for members of the Left Party - they get twice as much. Then we see if they want to opt out."
Only silence
The tough woman from Styria, who has long been known as the banshee of bourgeois double standards, also dissects the relationship between gender, class and capital. "The upper class doesn't need gender. It is a gender." The final point of this brilliant escalation is an early animal experiment from Eckhart's childhood: "I expropriated vineyard snails and put their houses on slugs. Result: they all died. Interestingly, the slugs died first. That's when I learned that ownership is a burden."
If Lisa Eckhart is right - and she almost always is in her sarcastic, analytical way - then we are on the eve of the Third World War with a government that is replacing Goethe with bazookas, compulsory schooling with compulsory military service and education with "ballistics for beginners". But maybe there will still be enough time for an evening at the theater. Before the bridge falls. Or the next tank comes - with the ICE.
The war is raging in Ukraine. Reports from the province of Sumy, which the German mass media now only describe as a deadly corridor between the Russian advance and the Ukrainian defenders, are piling up. In the USA, the Trump administration is blocking an official condemnation by the G7. No condemnation of the Russian attack. Why? Because Trump wants a deal with Putin. Business instead of weapons, dollars instead of threats. His envoy Steve Witkoff has already been to the Kremlin three times. It wasn't about human rights - but about raw material supplies, economic cooperation, a new division of the Eurasian world. Ukraine? Ballast. They want to get rid of it without making a fuss. So no G7 condemnation. No Taurus storm. No Article 5 fireworks. Just silence. And negotiations. They don't want to "unnecessarily pollute the climate with Russia" because there is great interest in negotiating ceasefire deals and possibly positioning Russia against China.
Generously delegated
The fact that the war, which is glorified by the media, is real and bloody, with all its dramatic casualties, is ignored. And also the certainty, according to a Ukrainian administrative employee, that the Ukrainian military also uses civilian infrastructure to camouflage military activities, including in Sumy on Palm Sunday, as he recounts. Ukrainian soldiers held an event there, which was also publicly advertised.
Sumy is increasingly becoming a military focus for the Kremlin. The Russians are using FPV drones, fiber optic control and new tactics to push the Ukrainians out of the Russian heartland in Belgerod and Kursk - and at the same time advance towards Sumy. Foreign-policy hardliner Johann Wadephul (CDU) may get excited about the supposed "necessity" of German cruise missiles, but who will explain to the people in Sumy that Europe is continuing to fuel its military ammunition - and thus possibly a conflagration?
With every new missile attack, with every missed diplomatic initiative, Europe gets deeper into a conflict that it is fueling. While Russia fights over Sumy, Kiev mourns and Washington maneuvers, Friedrich Merz may be pulling Germany directly into the line of fire. Germany is back - and no one has missed it. Merz's sentence in the Bundestag - "Germany is back" - could have come from the mouth of a general in April 1941. Except that today there are no marching orders, but an arms tinder for NATO states, where every government is allowed to swipe once: Taurus, F-16, HIMARS, Leopard. Swiping until nuclear war? Nobody seems to care that these Taurus weapons can only be used under German control. Because control means shared responsibility - and this is currently being generously delegated in Berlin: to Rheinmetall, to the Ministry of Defense, to historical oblivion. Scholz still knew, that's why he hesitated. Merz wants to know - whatever the cost.
Politically gutted
While Europe continues to stand in awe of Zelensky's T-shirts, he is turning his democracy into a dictatorship - and nobody notices. Petro Poroshenko, ex-president, was expropriated and charged - without trial. The commander-in-chief, Valery Salushny, was disposed of and deported to London. Foreign Minister Kuleba, Infrastructure Minister Kubrakov - suspended. A shadow cabinet is in power: Yermak, Litvin, Tatarov. "If Poroshenko can simply be deposed, then it can happen to anyone," says MP Goncharenko. A regime that is politically gutted, purging the opposition and calling itself democratic while demanding weapons for freedom. And Europe?
Ready for delivery. With a full magazine. And apparently little sense. And Merz delivers. No doubt about it. But no one asks where. Doctorow warns, "A counterattack on German territory would be almost impossible to prevent under international law. And Article 5? An illusion in Trump's world."
What if Putin is not bluffing? What if Germany is actually "there" again - but in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong attitude? What if what starts out as "support for Ukraine" ends up as a bomb hopper in Upper Bavaria or a Hessian state capital?
What we are experiencing is no coincidence. It is the result of years of disorientation, ideological bondage and moral arrogance. "Possessions are a burden," says Lisa Eckhart. And if these possessions soon contain missiles, they won't just be a burden - they will explode. A bazooka instead of a fist? Not as a didactic play - but as the final scene of a drama that no one wants to stop. But woe betide anyone who thinks the audience will be spared this time.
Powder vapor in the suit
On April 17, 2025, Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, issued an unmistakable warning: "The delivery and deployment of Taurus missiles means Germany's direct involvement in the war - with all the consequences." Such clarity is rare in diplomatic rhetoric - and yet it is indicative of the situation. The Taurus cannot be deployed by remote control from Kiev. It needs German soldiers. It needs programming, target allocation and technical coordination. It needs a political decision to enter the war.
The SPD is divided. Ralf Stegner warns: "There are now efforts for a ceasefire - from France, from England, even from Trump, albeit in his own way. We shouldn't be debating individual weapons in public." Even Defense Minister Pistorius, who is likely to remain in office, is showing increasing restraint. And there is a reason for this that Merz has so far underestimated: the mood in the country.
According to a recent Civey survey, 48% of Germans are against the supply of Taurus. In the east, the figure is as high as 76 percent. Only 24 percent there are in favor. And Merz knows that there will be elections in 2026 - in Saxony-Anhalt, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, in regions where the AfD could gain even more interest. So anyone who believes that Germany can deliver Taurus while avoiding the social, political and diplomatic price is not living in reality.
Friedrich Merz presents himself as determined. But his determination is not security policy - it is a substitute for emotion. It is not based on analysis, but on defiance. Not from negotiations, but from polemical toughness. "If the Russians keep bombing, we'll deliver Taurus." This is not diplomacy. This is gunpowder in a suit. And that is precisely why Gilbert Doctorow's sentence, as exaggerated as it may seem at first glance, is so frighteningly true: "Merz is the most dangerous German leader since Hitler."
Reminder
Because Hitler also believed that he had to show strength, whatever the cost. Merz believed that too.
But this time, we could all be the price. In the end, a question arises that no one in Berlin dares to ask out loud - but which suggests itself like a marching order from times gone by: Is Friedrich Merz a chancellor - or a gambler fanning the flames of history? His demeanor is not statesmanlike - but pompously calculated, his style not responsible - but emotionally aggressive. He talks about deterrence, but means escalation. He talks about protecting Europe, but is dragging Germany into a war that it does not want to survive and cannot survive.
Those who talk like this do not lead - they rule. And with the means of fear. If Merz believes that determination means ignoring warnings from Moscow, pushing weapons into the abyss and educating the population with testosterone-laden rhetoric, then he is not showing leadership. Then he is showing leadership qualities - of the worst kind. History knows such figures.
They burn brightly - and leave ashes behind.
I am not writing this text from the distance of theory, but with the gravity of a memory that will not fade. I was in Donetsk in the spring of 2018. I saw what war does to people who don't sit in political talk shows but sleep in the basement because shells are hitting above them. I spoke to them, listened to them when they told me what they had been through back then - four years after the war began. I felt the grief, the exhaustion, the pride with which they tried to preserve their dignity. I came back - whole on the outside, changed on the inside. Perhaps traumatized too. But certainly shaken up by the arrogance with which this war was talked about in Germany...as if you could "create momentum" with Taurus missiles. I know what this dynamism means. It has a face. It has voices. It has graves.
What nobody in Berlin wants to say
I am an East German woman, rational, shaped by the stories of my grandmother, who survived the Second World War as a young woman. Her stories of hunger, fear, of burning cities - They have taught me that nothing is more valuable than peace. And nothing is more dangerous than political arrogance. I think I know why the Russian soul needs to protect itself. From the omnipotence of a West that believes it can determine everything, interpret everything, condemn everything. In Donetsk, I felt how much this hatred hurts. And today, I am increasingly concerned to see how it is returning - in media armor, in political tirades, in the form of German cruise missiles.
And that is why I say what no one in Berlin wants to say: anyone who prolongs this war is guilty. Those who mock it betray humanity. Whoever forgets it invites it again. I will not remain silent. Not as long as German politicians believe they can shoot for peace.
"In the hour of barbarism, thinking is the last refuge of the human." Stefan Zweig
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One Response
Frankreich und Deutschland können militärisch nicht viel mehr als weitgehend wehrlose Stammesmilizionäre verängstigten, wenn man sich entschließt, mit Bodentruppen einzugreifen, läuft es dann meist nicht so gut. Afghanische Kämpfer haben mit Vorderlader Gewehren (technischer Stand 1860) auf 700m westliche Soldaten bekämpft. Hätten Sie die Ausrüstung der Houthi im Yemen gehabt, nicht auszudenken. Jetzt gerade wurde ein amerikanischer Flugzeugträger bei einem Raketenangriff der Houthi zu so heftigen Ausweichmanövern gezwungen, dass eine F-18 für sechzig Millionen Dollar in den Bach gefallen ist. Da waren tausende Soldaten und Waffensysteme für dreißig Milliarden Dollar in akuter Gefahr. Ein deutsches Schiff ist nach einem Angriff nach Hause gefahren, weil alle Flugabwehrraketen verbraucht waren. Schon im kalten Krieg war die Nato so schwach, dass es nach konventionellen Gefechten recht bald seitens der Nato zu einem Nuklearschlag gekommen wäre, der Deutschland und Polen dem Erdboden gleichgemacht hätte. Mir stellt sich die Frage, ist Merz oder auch Macron überhaupt noch von Bedeutung? Trump und Putin kennen die Antwort und wir werden sie vermutlich auch sehr bald erfahren.