Meanwhile, German Generals Speak of 'Eastern Flank' Again

Troops are moved eastwards, with the country's top generals clamouring for 'civil society' to get 'ready for war'

Editorial prelim: here follows a bit of background on Alice Schwarzer and, once again, propaganda vs. reality on a few of her core beliefs. If you wish to skip this part, scroll down to my translation of her recent article in Emma.

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Who is Alice Schwarzer (*1949)?

When ‘even’ one Alice Schwarzer, West Germany’s foremost second-generation feminist, comes out against the mad régime in Berlin, one better listens. Ms. Schwarzer is a quite ‘controversial’ (sic) character, and the de facto official version of her positions is conveyed by Wikipedia:

Beginning in France, she became a forerunner of feminist positions against anti-abortion laws, for economic self-sufficiency for women, against pornography, prostitution, female genital mutilation, and for a fair position of women in Islam.

More recently, her positions became a bit more ‘unpalatable’ to the self-righteous loons on the leftish fringe that today run Germany and with whom she travelled quite a fair bit of the road.

As the German-language Wikipedia explains—but is omitted in the English-language version—Ms. Schwarzer ist now the kind of ‘Voldemort’ of the juste milieu because (references omitted, here and in the following my translation and emphases):

She is a co-initiator of the open letter to Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) published by Emma on 29 April 2022, which speaks out against the supply of further heavy weapons to Ukraine out of concern about a world war in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, among other things. At a May rally in Düsseldorf, Scholz countered criticism from the open letter, saying that demanding that Kiev defend itself without weapons was ‘out of date’. Her view expressed on Maischberger [a TV ‘debate’ formate running on state TV] that the Ukraine war was ‘of course also a proxy war between America and Russia’ was met with sharp opposition both on the programme—from ARD correspondent Vassili Golod—and in the media.

In February 2023, she and [main left-ish, German half-opposition party leader] Sahra Wagenknecht wrote a manifesto for peace in which they warned against an escalation of the war in Ukraine and called on Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz to ‘stop the escalation of arms deliveries’ and called for negotiations ‘with the aim of preventing further hundreds of thousands of deaths and worse’.

Full disclosure: I signed on to that manifesto because I consider all of what Ms. Schwarzer (and, partially, Ms. Wagenknecht) said accurate. Prof. Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia) and John Mearsheimer (Chicago), as well as a number of other reputable ‘establishment renegades’ hold similar views, by the way. I’ll add that this shows the utter absurdity of (still) using the conventional left-right distinctions.

This was Ms. Schwarzer’s ‘fall from grace’, so to speak, even though she had always been quite a ‘controversial’ public persona. That said, Ms. Schwarzer once was cherished by ‘the Left™’ because of the presumption that feminist positions are, somehow, ‘progressive’.

Assassinating the Character of Alice Schwarzer

Perhaps it’s a function of age—Alice Schwarzer was born in 1949—but I’d consider an issue related to sanity and soundness of mind (and soul/spirit) rather to call out the worst depravities of our time, which incl., as the German Wikipedia also explains…

In 2021, Schwarzer called for the abolition of International Women’s Day on 8 March, which she described as a ‘socialist invention’ and ‘symbolic flattery’. She traced this day of remembrance back to a strike by female textile workers, although there is no historical evidence of this.

Look, I’m a historian and I’m very well aware that Wikipedia is a kind of (extremely successful) psy-op, and that second sentence in this brief paragraph from the German-language Wikipedia is as good an example of this as any other because, among other things—

‘Even’ the English Wikipedia entry on the Int’l Women’s Day explains the origins of the IWD as follows

The earliest version reported was a ‘Women's Day’ organized by the Socialist Party of America in New York City on February 28, 1909. This inspired German delegates at the 1910 International Socialist Women's Conference in Copenhagen to propose ‘a special Women's Day’ be organized annually, albeit with no set date;[fn. 8] the following year saw the first demonstrations and commemorations of International Women's Day across Europe. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, IWD was made a national holiday on March 8; [fn. 9] it was subsequently celebrated on that date by the socialist movement and communist countries. The holiday became a mainstream global holiday following its promotion by the United Nations in 1977…[fn. 10]

The earliest reported Women's Day event, called ‘National Woman's Day’ [fn. 11], was held on February 28, 1909, in New York City. It was organized by the Socialist Party of America [fn. 12] at the suggestion of activist Theresa Malkiel [fn. 13]. There have been claims that the day was commemorating a protest by women garment workers in New York on March 8, 1857, but researchers have described this as a myth [fn. 14, 15, 16].

• Footnote 8 leads to an (archived) document from that socialist meeting in 1910.

• Footnote 9 leads to this article on the ‘History Channel’ website by Sarah Pruitt that, interestingly, declares the American roots of the IWD as the ‘correct’ version, explaining that ‘research that emerged in the 1980s suggested that the origin myth was invented in the 1950s, as part of a Cold War-era effort to separate International Women’s Day from its socialist roots’. So far, so good, with the little problem of omitting the above-cited document from 1910, for Ms. Pruitt then explains

  The concept of a ‘woman’s day’ caught on in Europe. On March 19, 1911 (the 40th anniversary of the Paris Commune, a radical socialist government that briefly ruled France in 1871), the first International Woman’s Day was held, drawing more than 1 million people to rallies worldwide.

• Footnote 10 leads to this website of the IWD, which clearly explains (although getting the chronology quite a bit ‘messed up’:

  In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first National Woman's Day (NWD) was observed across the United States on February 28. Women continued to celebrate NWD on the last Sunday of February until 1913…

  In 1910 a second International Conference of Working Women was held in Copenhagen. A woman named Clara Zetkin (Leader of the 'Women's Office' for the Social Democratic Party in Germany) tabled the idea of an International Women's Day.

• Footnote 11 leads to this since-deleted (archived) website of the U of Chicago, which explains:

  However, in her book On the Socialist Origins of International Women's Day, Temma Kaplan (1985) argues that these demonstrations might not have actually taken place and that their myth was created during the Cold War to displace the socialist roots of International Women’s Day [set aside the above-cited evidence from the meetings in Copenhagen in 1910]…

  Officially adopted by the Soviet satellites, and by China in 1949, International Women’s Day was celebrated primarily in socialist countries until the mid-1970s…
  1975 was International Women's Year. That year, the United Nations (UN) began celebrating International Women's Day on March 8. Only two years later, in December 1977 the General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming a ‘United Nations Day for Women's Rights and International Peace to be observed on any day of the year by Member States, in accordance with their historical and national traditions.’

• Footnote 12 leads to this (archived) ‘timeline’ of the UN, which holds that ‘Women’s Day is celebrated on March 8th is strongly linked to the women’s movements during the Russian Revolution (1917)’. Meant here is the so-called ‘February Revolution’, which commenced on 8 March, as opposed to the Bolshevik Revolution.

I’d better put an (under)graduate student on the subject to disentangle this with a bit more attention to detail. We do know that women began organising demanding the right to vote and equal treatment under the law ‘around 1900’.

There is plenty of evidence of these—‘first-wave feminism’, as it has been later christened—movements. Some of the protagonists were clearly socialists while others were not. Moreover, IWD was primarily a Socialist thing in the third quarter of the 20th century—when Alice Schwarzer came of age—before the UN adopted it. None of these ‘distinctions’ are unfounded or undocumented, yet the German Wikipedia uses them to smear Ms. Schwarzer’s character and credibility.

One last side-note about yet another ‘controversional’ position taken by Ms. Schwarzer concerns her criticism of ‘Transgender’ policies in Germany, and it is well worth citing, too:

In an article from December 2019, Schwarzer formulated the ‘liberation from gender roles—and the liberation of sexuality’ as the goal of feminism. The desired ‘abolition of the gender roles’ of ‘women’ and ‘men’ is countered by a splitting and multiplication into numerous new identities, which is represented by intersectional feminism. In the meantime, these ‘sectarian absurdities of a minority’ have become mainstream. She describes trans activism as ‘propaganda.’ This can encourage insecure girls to ‘reject or even mutilate’ their bodies just to escape the traditional gender role. In ‘true’ transsexuals, ‘[t]he soul…is stronger than the body’ and only by adapting the latter can the inner conflict be healed. She therefore also assumes that there is a minority of ‘real’ transsexual people. Alice Schwarzer was criticised by left-wing activists for her stance and labelled a ‘trans-exclusive radical feminist’ (TERF).

I’ll leave Ms. Schwarzer’s positions on the ‘Trans’ phenomenon uncommented for time being. The main point I’m including them is that, although ‘of the left’, widely understood, and one of (West) Germany’s leading feminists, she is now smeared with labels (‘TERF’), called a nut-job (‘no evidence’ for the ‘socialist origins’ of the IWD), and, of course, she’s also a ‘Friend of Putin’ (Putinfreund), one of the common libels thrown at anyone in German-speaking countries that isn’t 112% behind NATO’s war vs. Russia.

Those who don’t read German need to know these aspects of Alice Schwarzer’s quite recent positions, if only because it otherwise becomes nigh-impossible to understand the quite explosive content of the below piece she penned on 23/24 April 2024 on the immediate future of, well, us all, to which we now—finally—turn.

As a reminder, this is my translation, with emphases added.

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Operations Plan for Germany

A 1,000-page plan from the Ministry of the Interior provides for the following: the German civilian population is to be actively involved in the (apparently expected) event of war, for example, when US divisions move eastwards through Germany. After all, they have to be catered for. Meanwhile, German soldiers are already at the front.

By Alice Schwarzer, Emma Magazine, 23/24 April 2024 [source]

Does every citizen actually know this? Germany is actively preparing for war, even [sic] within our country. On behalf of the Ministry of the Interior, Lieutenant General André Bodemann has spent the past twelve months working together with 150 experts to draw up an ‘Operation Plan Germany’. This is about ‘civil defence’. Because, according to the lieutenant general interviewed by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ): ‘The Bundeswehr cannot do this alone, which is why we need the support of the civilian side.’

For example, ‘in the event that a US division moves through Germany towards the east, thousands of vehicles, thousands of soldiers. Then they need to be catered for.’ By Germans, who else? ‘We then need maximum civilian service provision.’

Should we start making coffee and practising waving for the US soldiers heading east?

In the meantime, the general says, our soldiers are already ‘tied up’ [orig. gebunden] at the front.

The general’s 1,000 pages will be published soon. Not completely, of course. There will be an ‘explanatory essay’. It will explain to us, the people, how we should behave in times of war. This is not meant as a joke.

The people are already familiar with this from the First World War, 1914-1918, when the overwhelming majority cheered on. Even my grandmother, who later became so peace-loving, gave ‘gold for iron’, her young girl’s jewellery for the war chest. And my 19-year-old grandfather, who was so sensitive at the time, wanted to ‘shoot all the French in their red trousers’. The result: 17 million dead, including 2 million German soldiers, and the dead civilians. For nothing.

And then there was the Second World War, 1939-1945, when the civilian population predominantly took part while the soldiers died at the front. The result: 70 million dead, including 6 million Germans [OMG, another one of these dreadful ‘6 million’ dead counts…really?].

There will be an ‘explanatory essay’. It will explain to us, the people, how we should behave in times of war.

And now we are preparing for the Third World War in a disciplined manner? Seriously?

According to the general, this is not only a task for the state as a whole, but also for society as a whole. Keyword: ‘Operation Plan Germany’. The General is already ‘looking forward to the great task’ and is pleased that he has met with approval everywhere so far. With the ‘16 federal states and all federal ministries’. And also with the ‘blue light organisations [first responders], from the Red Cross to the police’. The same goes for civilian companies, ‘whether it’s the Port of Hamburg, Deutsche Telekom or Deutsche Bahn’. They're all ‘beating down my door’. Hooray, finally war again!

‘In the end, it also depends on every single citizen’, says Lieutenant General Bodemann [transliteration: ‘Do you want the total war’, is how Joseph Goebbels’ once infamously phrased this]. That is true.

It depends on everyone. Demand peace negotiations now! Immediately! Because it’s no longer just about the lives of others, but also about our own lives.

Update, 24 April 2024

The previously secret ‘Operation Germany’ is already in full swing. An in-depth interview with Brigadier General Bernd Stöckmann in the FAZ newspaper details the operation using the example of the federal state of Hesse. The general now needs around 1,000 volunteer reservists. According to him, around 2,500 have already signed up in Hesse alone. And not just young men, but also those ‘between 40 and 50’. This includes men who have not previously been in the Bundeswehr. There is no longer any talk of female soldiers.

Weiterlesen

Interview mit Lt.-General Bodemann in the FAZ [in German]; Interview with Brigadier-General Stöckmann in the FAZ [in German]

You may sign the ‘Manifesto for Peace’, too.

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Bottom Lines

How dreadful is the overall situation when ‘even’ someone as credentialed on the second-wave feminist (what used to pass for) ‘left’ like Alice Schwarzer calls out the utter insanity, and equally large depravity, of the political establishment?

In the meantime, Norway’s state broadcaster NRK re-ran a piece by foreign correspondent Joakim Reigstad who, in summer 2023, travelled to the infamous ‘Suvalki Gap’—that is, the stretch of the Polish-Lithuanian border separating, as it were, the Russian Kaliningrad Oblast (the northern part of former German East Prussia) from Belarus.

• Here’s Mr. Reigstad’s piece dated 9 July 2023, entitled ‘Is this NATO’s Weak Spot?

• Here’s his piece from 22 April 2024, entitled ‘Here the Big War May Start’.

• You may check out the English Wikipedia entry on the Suvalki Gap, or Corridor.

Speaking about the corridor, remember that ‘special access’ across the so-called Polish Corridor between German Pommerania and East Prussia was one of the contentious topics prior to the German attack on their eastern neighbour on 1 Sept. 1939.

Here’s a sobering reminder about the intricate issues related to the Suvalki Corridor (from the above-linked English Wikipedia entry):

The topic [of visa-free transit of Russian citizens residing in the Kaliningrad Oblast] returned in 2001–2002 when Poland and Lithuania were negotiating accession to the European Union. Russian citizens in Kaliningrad were facing the prospect of having to use passports and apply for visas to cross the border of the new EU member states, which sparked outrage in the Russian press. Therefore, Russia suggested that the European Commission grant a right to a 12-hour free transit for the citizens of the oblast through special corridors in Poland and Lithuania, but this proposal was rejected. Another proposal, with sealed trains, also failed to gain traction; it was ultimately agreed to introduce special permits for Russian citizens travelling to/from Kaliningrad Oblast for transit through Lithuania (but not Poland), known as Facilitated Rail Transit Document (FRTD) and a Facilitated Transit Document (FTD) for rail and road trips, respectively.

Two issues here, in all brevity: I do see and understand the Russian concerns about the required administrative-financial things. There’s a whole other (unwholesome) debate about visa-free travel from one country to another, but if, as Russia argues (selectively), if countries are ‘sovereign’, then they may both associate with whom they wish—and the principle in question here is essentially the same as with Ukraine’s or Georgia’s (theoretical) accession to NATO—it is, of course, ‘unfortunate’ that Russian citizens would need to apply for a visa (and pay the corresponding fee) to move from, say Kaliningrad through another country to Russia (via Belarus).

So, Russia didn’t like Poland and Lithuania joining the EU (and later the Schengen Agreement), which I consider understandable to a certain degree. There’s more (from the same Wikipedia page), though:

Kaliningrad Oblast has since been generally supplied by freight trains transiting through Lithuania. However, on 17 June 2022, in retaliation for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Lithuania started blocking supplies of sanctioned items to the enclave via road or rail, citing EU's sanction guidance. That guidance was then clarified in a way that exempted rail traffic from the restrictions so long as the volume of deliveries remained within prior consumption volumes, but then Šiaulių bankas, the bank servicing the transit payments, announced it would refuse to accept ruble payments from 15 August and any payments from Russian entities from 1 September. Transit remains possible via payments to other banks but, in September 2022, was expected to become more burdensome as payments for each freight service will be processed separately to comply with Lithuanian anti-fraud regulator’s guidance. Another possibility remains for ships to go from St. Petersburg to Kaliningrad, but this route may be unavailable in winter because the more northerly port may freeze.

One may interpret these quabbles as anti-Russia, pro-NATO, or whatever. At the core is the (age-old) problem of non-contiguous territorial possessions, which is one of the factual analogies to the years before 1939.

I have, incidentally, written about the selective blindness on all sides (setting aside the ‘whodunnit’ first for a moment) at-length some time ago:

Putin = Hitler and Other Moronic Activities: An Enquiry into 'Historical Analogies' and Legacy Media Gaslighting

I’ll conclude this long-ish piece with a quote ascribed to Hermann Göring, Hitler’s second-in-command, as recorded by his US Army interlocutor, Gustave Gilbert, in the Nuremberg prison (my emphases):

‘Why, of course, the people don’t want war’, Goering shrugged. ‘Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.’

‘There is one difference’, I pointed out. ‘In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.’

‘Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.’

And this, finally, brings us to an insight Alice Schwarzer understands as well as her military interlocutors:

Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

What the German generals are doing is—despicable at-best. Cheering on the US troops marching east, giving them ‘free hugs’, and ‘offering coffee’ while they are assured, by the German ‘leadership’ (sic) that this is all that’s required.

This is delusional, and, I’d argue worse than the Covid shenanigans, as whatever happens ‘at the front’ will not stay there.

Behold the next massive psy-op.