Germany's Renewed March of Folly

Berlin's Zeitenwende breeds militarism, which is neither new nor a genuinely German article; in fact, there being nothing new under the sun, the spectre of an unpleasant past is haunting Europe

In other news™, the Berliner Zeitung now translates a piece that appeared in The Economist talking about stuff™ that’s important: Germany is, apparently, moving ahead with a massive spending binge on the Bundeswehr.

Thus, today we’ll continue keeping stock of earlier postings, such as:

Germany Ramps Up Mobilisation Efforts

To understand what’s happening, I’ll preface the below translation with the opening paragraph from Barbara W. Tuchman’s The March of Folly (Ballantine Books, 1984)

A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests. Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any other human activity. In this sphere, wisdom, which may be defined as the exercise of judgment acting on experience, common sense and available information, is less operative and more frustrated than it should be. Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests? Why does intelligent mental process seem so often not to function?

Translation, emphases, and [snark] mine.

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Fourth-Largest Military Budget in the World—Merz Plans Europe’s Strongest Army

Germany already has the fourth-largest defense budget in the world—and is permanently stationing troops abroad for the first time since World War II. The Bundeswehr’s restructuring is historic.

By Alexander Schmalz, Berliner Zeitung, 7 Aug. 2025 [source; archived]

By stationing an armored brigade in Lithuania, Germany is implementing the most profound change in its security policy since the end of the Cold War. Around 5,000 soldiers are to be permanently stationed in the Baltic NATO partner country by 2027 – the first foreign deployment of this kind since World War II. The measure is part of a comprehensive realignment of the Bundeswehr, which, according to Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU), is to be developed into "the strongest conventional army in Europe."

As The Economist reports [with the absolutely neutral header ‘Germany is building a big scary army’, asking ‘Its allies are ready. But are the Germans?’—and then the paper goes off the rails introducing the topic with ‘this time they were invited’ (as if the Soviets were, you know, back in 1940), but the piece is really worth your time in terms of beans spilled: choice excerpts in the footnote¹] the brigade in Lithuania is the most visible symbol of the security policy shift [orig. Zeitenwende], which was initially initiated in 2022 by Merz's predecessor, Olaf Scholz, following the Russian attack on Ukraine. While Scholz initially treaded cautiously, Merz is now aggressively pushing forward the modernisation of the armed forces, the report states.

Germany has the Fourth-Highest Defence Budget in the World

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Germany already has the fourth-highest defence [sic] budget in the world. With the planned increase in defence spending to 3.5 per cent of gross domestic product—plus 1.5 per cent for military infrastructure—the annual appropriations are destined to rise to over 200 billion euros. This is based on a relaxation of the debt brake [orig. Schuldenbremse, i.e., Germany’s debt ceiling], which Merz justified as a security policy necessity.

‘I will do everything necessary to ensure peace and freedom in Europe’, the magazine [The Economist] quoted the Chancellor as saying. Investments are primarily intended to strengthen air defense, ammunition stockpiles, and capabilities for precise long-range strikes. Germany should become the ‘critical backbone of NATO’, said Inspector General Carsten Breuer.

Criticism of Bureaucracy and Procurement

At the same time, there is criticism of the implementation. General Alfons Mais, Inspector General of the Army, complains about lengthy planning and procurement processes. While contracts are concluded quickly, deliveries to the troops are slow. The Bundeswehr is ‘over-managed’, the Federal Audit Office [orig. Bundesrechnungshof] also concluded in a recent report. ‘Time is of the essence’, Mais continued. He encourages the German arms industry to focus on mass production.

The German defence industry has been accused of reacting too slowly to modern threats such as drone technology. According to The Economist, start-ups like Helsing are calling for an innovation-driven defence industry that is privately financed and responds more quickly to changing threat situations [check out Helsing’s flashy website (‘Ethics at the core’) and take note of Helsing’s Wikipedia entry, which reads:

According to [co-founder Torsten] Reil, part of the motivation for starting the company was Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014. The company pledges to only sell to democratic governments.^[2]

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Helsing established partnerships with Rheinmetall in September 2022 and Saab in September 2023 to integrate Helsing’s AI into their existing weapons systems.^[2][9][10] and continued to develop AI systems for Ukraine as the war carried on.^[11][12]

Repeat after me: Ukraine has a democratic™ government].

Conscription and Social Support

Personnel remains a long-term bottleneck. The current troop strength is around 182,000—the target is 203,000, possibly more after the NATO summit. According to General Breuer, Germany needs an additional 100,000 soldiers and reservists by 2029. This corresponds to the figures cited by Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) in early July. In this context, the minister announced that the Bundeswehr intends to recruit around 114,000 military personnel by then [good luck; here’s what The Economist writes:

The Bundeswehr is struggling to get troop numbers over 180,000, well short of the current target of 203,000, itself likely to be lifted after the nato summit. Given Germany’s nato commitments, General Breuer thinks Germany will need 100,000 extra troops, including reservists, by 2029.

‘Well short’ means: there ain’t nearly enough soldiers].

In preparation, the federal government is currently reviewing mandatory questionnaires for 18-year-old men. A return to conscription—suspended since 2011—is increasingly being discussed. According to The Economist, a majority of the population, especially older generations, supports this step.

Societal perceptions of the Bundeswehr are also changing. According to the report, soldiers report increased appreciation—for example, through expressions of gratitude in public spaces. Nevertheless, the new security policy orientation remains controversial: at an event in Görlitz, eastern Germany, many citizens expressed skepticism about NATO and rearmament, while others emphasised their support for the new security policy identity [see, being pro-NATO/militarism is now an—identity].

Chancellor Merz emphasised in Lithuania: ‘Lithuania’s security is also our security’. For many Germans, according to The Economist, this message has only now truly sunk in.

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Bottom Lines

I could go on quoting at-length from Tuchman’s The March of Folly, but the following paragraph from the introduction will have to do for time being:

Misgovernment is of four kinds, often in combination. They are: 1) tyranny or oppression, of which history provides so many well-known examples that they do not need citing; 2) excessive ambition, such as Athens’ attempted conquest of Sicily in the Peloponnesian War, Philip II’s of England via the Armada, Germany’s twice-attempted rule of Europe by a self-conceived master race, Japan’s bid for an empire of Asia; 3) incompetence or decadence, as in the case of the late Roman empire, the last Romanovs and the last imperial dynasty of China; and finally 4) folly or perversity. This book is concerned with the last in a specific manifestation; that is, the pursuit of policy contrary to the self-interest of the constituency or state involved. Self-interest is whatever conduces to the welfare or advantage of the body being governed; folly is a policy that in these terms is counter-productive.

And now I shall present Exhibit A, that is, a paragraph from The Economist piece cited above:

Germans are now being asked to make sacrifices on behalf of foreign lands. In Vilnius, Mr Merz said: “Lithuania’s security is also our security,” a plain statement of his country’s NATO commitments that also implies tough demands of ordinary Germans.

And I’ll round this off by citing a few more words from Ms. Tuchman’s book:

Folly’s appearance is independent of era or locality; it is timeless and universal, although the habits and beliefs of a particular time and place determine the form it takes. It is unrelated to type of regime: monarchy, oligarchy and democracy produce it equally. Nor is it peculiar to nation or class. The working class as represented by Communist governments functions no more rationally or effectively in power than the middle class, as has been notably demonstrated in recent history…

It may be asked why, since folly or perversity is inherent in individuals, should we expect anything else of government? The reason for concern is that folly in government has more, impact on more people than individual follies, and therefore governments have a greater duty to act according to reason. Just so, and since this has been known for a very long time, why has not our species taken precautions and erected safeguards against it?…

Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts…

Wooden-headedness is also the refusal to bene t from experience, a characteristic in which medieval rulers of the 14th century were supreme. No matter how often and obviously devaluation of the currency disrupted the economy and angered the people, the Valois monarchs of France resorted to it whenever they were desperate for cash until they provoked insurrection by the bourgeoisie. In warfare, the métier of the governing class, wooden-headedness was conspicuous. No matter how often a campaign that depended on living off a hostile country ran into want and even starvation, as in the English invasions of France in the Hundred Years’ War, campaigns for which this fate was inevitable were regularly undertaken…

In the late 20th century it begins to appear as if mankind may be approaching a similar stage of suicidal folly. Cases come so thick and fast that one can select only the overriding one: why do the superpowers not begin mutual divestment of the means of human suicide? Why do we invest all our skills and resources in a contest for armed superiority which can never be attained for long enough to make it worth having, rather than in an effort to find a modus vivendi with our antagonist—that is to say, a way of living, not dying?…

Because individual sovereignty was government’s normal form for so long, it exhibits the human characteristics that have caused folly in government as far back as we have records…

A principle that emerges in the cases so far mentioned is that folly is a child of power. We all know, from unending repetitions of Lord Acton’s dictum, that power corrupts. We are less aware that it breeds folly; that the power to command frequently causes failure to think; that the responsibility of power often fades as its exercise augments. The overall responsibility of power is to govern as reasonably as possible in the interest of the state and its citizens. A duty in that process is to keep well-informed, to heed information, to keep mind and judgment open and to resist the insidious spell of wooden-headedness. If the mind is open enough to perceive that a given policy is harming rather than serving self-interest, and self-confident enough to acknowledge it, and wise enough to reverse it, that is a summit in the art of government.

If you now wish to re-read the above-reproduced pieces from The Economist and the Berliner Zeitung, taken to summarise the current, if accelerating, March of Folly of our own time, well, go ahead.

In the meantime, I’ll point you to my side-project deriving from my grandfather’s vintage postcard collection and his personal papers, which, in case you’re interested, you may find linked below:

All Souls

Amidst them, I found out that he wrote poems, partly to deal with his own inner daemons after having spent a few years fighting on Germany’s Eastern Front (from August 1942 through December 1944) during the Second World War:

‘The Black Veil’, a Poem by Erich Sonntag

Do you hear the rumbling
all around?
Do you hear the whisper
from deep gorges?

Don’t you feel
the breath of Death,
cold and full of dread,
in your face?

Do you feel the passion
in your heart,
a passionate yearning
of raging anguish?

Can you hear the music
of the organ?
In excruciating hours
a heart breaks in two.

Do you hear the song?
It soundeth from afar.
It is the great lament
of war and suffering.

The echoes of follies—and tragedies—past reverberate in the present.

I can sense, palpably, the shape of things to come in my grandfather’s lines.

Let’s not repeat that folly, shall we?

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Friedrich Merz, the chancellor, says he intends to make the Bundeswehr the “strongest conventional army in Europe”…Like the Lithuanians, almost all of Germany’s allies are delighted by the country’s belated commitment to European security. Haltingly, and not without a degree of historically inflected torment, Germans themselves are getting there too.

Mr Scholz’s fund largely “filled in the potholes”, as General Carsten Breuer, the head of the armed forces, has put it, but much remains to be done. The coming wave of spending will aim to bolster Germany’s role as nato’s “critical backbone”. Priorities include reinforcing air defence, refilling ammunition stocks and building long-range precision-strike capabilities [I’m so glad no-one needs to do some physical fighting here]…

Insiders are sceptical about building up domestic or European industry at the expense of off-the-shelf solutions from elsewhere, such as America, in the name of “strategic autonomy”. “If we face delays or delivery challenges at home,” says General Mais, “it’s better to take a broader approach and look at who can deliver.”

Some worry that Germany is failing to learn from Ukraine, with its drone swarms and “transparent” battlefields. “Tech in Germany is amazing,” says Nico Lange, a former defence-ministry official. “But the political side does not know how to use it.” No one wants to fight the last war by building up stockpiles of drones that quickly become obsolete. But planners also need to ensure Germany is not left over-reliant on legacy systems. “We need a market-driven industry that innovates, fails in one place and succeeds elsewhere, using private capital,” says Gundbert Scherf, the co-ceo of Helsing, a startup with a focus on ai-enabled land, air and maritime systems.