Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s decision to give weapons to Ukraine overturned decades of tradition.
Unlike other European countries, Germany and Russia fought a war with each other in Ukraine 80 years ago. In the course of that war, which was also fought throughout what historian Tim Snyder has called the “Bloodlands” of Eastern Europe, Germany lost an estimated 4.3 to 5.3 million soldiers and the Soviet Union an estimated 8.7 million. In the Battle of Stalingrad alone, Germany and Russia each lost far more soldiers fighting one another than the United States lost in all theaters throughout the entire war.
Hence Germany’s special sensitivities regarding Russia and military intervention in Ukraine. Given West Germany’s thorough effort after World War II to atone for its sins and set in place strict rules to prevent a repeat of the tragedies that Germany inflicted and suffered, it never fully rearmed and subsumed itself within NATO. Since German reunification in 1991, facilitated by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the united Germany has acted with extreme care and even solicitude toward Russia. In doing so, it was willing to overlook a lot of bad behavior on the Russian side.
Germany only began to wise up in 2011-2012, when Russia repressed the Bolotnaya protests and Putin returned to the presidency. Merkel and other European leaders seemed shocked and disappointed. However, it was only really after Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and downing of the civilian airliner MH-17 that Merkel declared Putin to be “living in another world” and initiated economic sanctions on Russia in the context of the European Union. Even then, Germany did everything it could to reduce the possibility of a conflict in Ukraine by negotiating and endorsing the absurd Minsk protocols, which were extremely unfavorable to Ukraine, but seemed a reasonable price to pay for peace—at least to Germany.
Until yesterday, Germany remained extremely reluctant to create even the faintest appearance that it was threatening Russia militarily—hence its refusal even to allow overflight rights to NATO allies exporting arms to Ukraine. For its own domestic and moral reasons, Germany needed to be a peacemaker to the last.