Geography Archives: Germany

A leaked confidential strategy paper shows Germany is preparing for a potential war with Russia, as it boosts its budget and plans to become the world’s third-biggest military spender.

Most Germans conceive of nuclear warfare as an intercontinental battle between Russia (formerly the Soviet Union) and the United States, with ballistic missiles carrying nuclear warheads crossing the Atlantic or, as the case may be, the Pacific. Europe may or may not get hit, but since the world would anyway go under, there is no need really to think about any of this.

The first transgender singer to go number one in the U.S., German-born Kim Petras endured long rites of passage in her homeland before finding her voice abroad.

The witch-hunting and defamation campaign against British rock musician Roger Waters has also reached Berlin. Last week, Samuel Salzborn, the anti-Semitism commissioner of the Social Democratic-Left Party-Green Senate (state executive), called for the cancellation of a planned concert by the co-founder of the band Pink Floyd in the capital.

In 1990, on October 3rd, Germany could rejoice; unity at last, a single flag, a single anthem (“Deutschland über alles”), a single currency, a single foreign policy; in other words, freedom and democracy triumphant!

Conor: Germany’s swift demise reminds me of the German intelligence agent Bachmann in “A Most Wanted Man.” He’s led to believe he’s operating on an equal level with CIA and British intelligence only to realize too late he was being played the whole time.

Secret talks between Russia and Germany to resolve their Nord Stream 1 and 2 issues had to be averted at any cost.

For decades the U.S. opposed European projects to receive energy from Russia. It wants Europe to buy more expensive U.S. oil and gas.

I have argued that Germany must open the Nord Stream II pipeline which can bring Russian natural gas to Germany without crossing other countries’ territory.

Am I mistaken in hearing echoes of grating radio voices from my childhood, in 1938, frightening even without translation, and omens of the giant tragedy which descended upon the world just one year later? Today’s tones are smoother, the words more circumspect, but I see election results in Spain, Italy, France, even Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, the wrecking of the Labour Party in England and news from many regions of the USA—and I grow fearful.

Former Die Linke co-chair Sahra Wagenknecht, among the German Left Party’s most famous politicians, has accused the government of causing a “social and economic catastrophe” through its sanctions on Russia.

It’s a momentous day! Not for the world–for which it’s nothing special. But for me!

Marxism’s contributions to ecological literature and struggles is a rich and contradictory field of discussion. Marxism in diverse ways has fed into environmental struggles and broader ecological politics.

The unthinkable is happening for the second time in five months: Russian gas giant Gazprom writes to German gas companies announcing force majeure effective from June 14, exonerating it from any compensation for shortfalls since then. 

Finance ministers are the pangolins in the world of international diplomacy, solitary animals and predatory, unlike foreign ministers who are like glowworms, mesmerising and gorgeous animals that create light through their tail.

In 1307 in Switzerland, so goes the legend, the Habsburg rulers’ local bailiff, Gessler, stuck his hat on a pole and commanded every passerby to salute it. Wilhelm Tell refused. As fearsome punishment he had to shoot an apple from his own little boy’s head with his crossbow. His aim was sure, the boy was safe. But “Gessler’s hat” still means forced obeisance to some symbol. Or else!

The tide of public opinion in Germany is as overpowering–and changeable – as elsewhere: “Stop the Russian invasion!“ – “Defend Ukraine!”–“Send money”–“More, bigger, further-reaching weapons!”- “Defeat Russia!” Sustaining this tide is an all-encompassing media campaign.

Germany is playing an increasingly aggressive role in NATO’s war offensive against Russia. During his visit to Lithuania on Tuesday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced Germany would increase the number of its combat troops on the ground in that country.

I’ve been toiling on this Berlin Bulletin for weeks, altering it, agonizing, starting anew. Events are simply too complicated and bitter–in the world and in Germany, too. Most dreadfully in Ukraine.

After the most titanic, nightmarish war in modern history, after rivers of blood shed from Kiev to Moscow, from Stalingrad to Kursk, the workers and farmers of the Soviet Union had vanquished the most vile killing machine the world had yet seen.