With the ceremonial commissioning of the permanent combat brigade in Lithuania, the German government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) has opened a new chapter in the revival of German militarism.

In a martial ceremony with Leopard tanks, howitzers, fighter planes and marching soldiers, Merz and Pistorius celebrated the first permanent deployment of German combat troops abroad since the Second World War - as a “service for peace, freedom and security”. In reality, it is part of comprehensive preparations for war against Russia.

The symbolism of the location could not have been clearer: Lithuania, a former Soviet territory, just a few hundred kilometers from the Russian border. 80 years after Hitler's war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, German tanks manned by German soldiers are once again rolling eastwards.

The historical and political break that the German elites were forced to make after the fall of the Third Reich is being systematically reversed. German imperialism is on the march again, returning to the sites of its worst crimes.

Lithuania in particular was a central scene of Nazi atrocities. After the invasion of the Wehrmacht in June 1941, local collaborators actively participated in the extermination of the Jewish population.

Within a few months, around 95 percent of Lithuanian Jews were murdered. Of the approximately 210,000 Jews who lived in Lithuania before the Nazi invasion on June 22, 1941, around 195,000 were murdered by the end of the war in 1945. The majority of them had already been killed at the end of 1941.

The SS Einsatzgruppen, supported by Lithuanian militias, not only killed tens of thousands of people in massacres such as the one in Ponary, but also brutally targeted communists, trade unionists and other members of the opposition.

Now German combat troops are once again being permanently stationed on Lithuanian soil. History is either being ignored or actively rewritten in order to justify today's war policy.

In his speech in Vilnius, Merz spoke of a “turning point” in which Germany must assume “permanent responsibility”. He repeatedly referred to Russia as an “aggressor” against which we must “defend” ourselves together. This turns reality on its head.

Even if the Russian invasion of Ukraine is reactionary, the imperialist powers are the main aggressors. They deliberately provoked the war in Ukraine. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy, Nato has encircled Russia militarily. Now the leading EU states in particular - above all Berlin - are driving the escalation ever further.

The Bundeswehr brigade is not just a symbol, but a fully equipped combat unit with heavy weapons, its own base and permanently stationed personnel. Back in the fall of 2023, Pistorius spoke of the need for Germany to become “ready for war”. With the recent adoption of comprehensive war credits amounting to around one trillion euros and the planned increase in the military budget to five percent of GDP, the armament and militarization of society as a whole is becoming a central state policy. 

LITHUANIA - After 80 years, the Nazis are back again

This policy is an expression of a profound change. The German ruling class is using the Ukraine war to push through a comprehensive military reorganization and establish itself as the strongest European war power. In his first government statement as Chancellor, Merz announced that the Bundeswehr would become “the strongest conventional army in Europe”.

Even without taking into account the Turkish army with its 355,000 active soldiers and 379,000 reservists, upgrading the Bundeswehr to the desired level would require an increase in personnel from the current 181,000 to at least 300,000 soldiers. According to current plans, this is how large the Polish army should be in ten years' time. Such an expansion cannot be realized without the reintroduction of compulsory military service.

Prior to his trip to Vilnius, Pistorius also backed the demand previously made by Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul (CDU) and originally made by the AfD to increase military spending to five percent of economic output in future. This would correspond to 225 billion euros per year!

The official defense budget currently stands at just under 53 billion euros. Pistorius left no doubt that workers will foot the bill for the rearmament. “This country cannot be defended with social benefits and education,” he declared cynically on Deutschlandfunk radio.

The insane course of war is essentially supported by all parties in the Bundestag. The Greens, who once claimed to be pacifists, are now the most aggressive warmongers and openly celebrate the mobilization of the Bundeswehr to the east. The Left Party criticizes the deployment of German combat troops in order to conceal and secure the government's course and to control the enormous opposition to it. However, it also voted in favor of the war loans amounting to one trillion euros in the Bundesrat and subsequently helped Merz to be quickly elected Chancellor in the Bundestag.

Under the leadership of the new German government, the war in Ukraine provoked by the NATO powers is increasingly developing into a European war. In view of a possible US withdrawal under Donald Trump, the leading European powers - and Germany in particular - are determined to continue the war offensive against Russia without Washington's support if necessary. They are accelerating their rearmament and war plans enormously in order to become more militarily independent and assert their own imperialist interests by force.

What is unfolding here is a course towards the third world war and the German ruling class is “seamlessly continuing its old world war policy”. Even in the First World War, one of the war aims was to create a Ukrainian vassal state dominated by Berlin.

Hitler continued this policy in the Second World War: the subjugation of Ukraine was a central component of the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union. Today, German tanks are once again rolling towards Russia, and the Bundeswehr is working closely with the heirs of the Ukrainian Nazi collaborators to enforce the predatory interests of German imperialism.”

The parallels with history are obvious. Despite all ideological differences, the Wehrmacht marched east in 1941 under similar auspices as the Bundeswehr today: in the name of defending the “European order”, against the “Bolshevik enemy”. Today, the enemy is called “Russian imperialism”, but the goals - geostrategic dominance and access to resources, zones of influence and sales markets - remain the same.

While the rulers use war rhetoric and nationalism to prepare the public for a devastating and potentially all-destroying direct military conflict with the nuclear power Russia, the working class is already being asked to pay.

The billions spent on tanks, drones and fighter jets are being financed by social cuts, mass redundancies and the rising cost of living.

Schools are falling into disrepair, hospitals are overburdened, but there is always money available for new armaments projects. Added to this is the de facto forced recruitment of young people, especially from the working class, to be used as cannon fodder at the front.