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I guess the tricky thing about a military, as german history shows, is its cultural impact. Would the Nazi regime have been possible without Hindenburg? Would H

I guess the tricky thing about a military, as german history shows, is its cultural impact. Would the Nazi regime have been possible without Hindenburg? Would Hitler have become prominent without Ludendorf? Ludendorf and Hindenburg essentially created the stab-in-the-back idea. The outsize respect given to military figures, the allure of uniforms, the outsize rights and trust given to ex-soldiers - all these things made the nazis and their precursors very hard to push back on. When you think of organizations like the Freikorps, it's hard to avoid noticing the radicalizing effect of military service. I would be more of a fan of a pan-EU force than a return to traditional national militaries.

trashtester 5y ago
I suppose there were plenty of cultural ties between the Imperial German Army and the rise of Hitler. But for Germany to still not possess a credible defence force due to those ties is hard to justify, especially if the US no longer can be relied upon. Personally, I don't care much whether there is a pan-EU force or national militaries (tied together by both the EU and Nato) that fills this role, but I see it is a problem if Europe lacks the strength to properly defend countries such as the Ukraine. If Putin is, through military aggression, able to eventually gain full control of the Ukrain, I expect other "leaders" with similar dispositions will try similar actions in the future.
- pasabagi 5y ago
  Well, I think part of the problem is that the kind of people that were in the german army after the war were Nazis in the literal sense, and the kind of people that prospered in the environment these Nazis created were Nazis in the contemporary sense. This is amply illustrated by the endless slew of scandals that come out of the Bundeswehr around this issue[0]. I imagine these days it's a little better, but it's still a bit of a magnet for the hard right in germany, for all the obvious reasons. [0] https://ctc.usma.edu/the-insider-threat-far-right-extremism-in-the-german-military-and-police/ https://ctc.usma.edu/the-insider-threat-far-right-extremism-... PS: I think in general it's germany's ongoing far-right problem that makes nationalist-adjacent careers and institutions far less attractive to normal people, so it's sort of a vicious circle.

trashtester 5y ago

I suppose there were plenty of cultural ties between the Imperial German Army and the rise of Hitler. But for Germany to still not possess a credible defence force due to those ties is hard to justify, especially if the US no longer can be relied upon. Personally, I don't care much whether there is a pan-EU force or national militaries (tied together by both the EU and Nato) that fills this role, but I see it is a problem if Europe lacks the strength to properly defend countries such as the Ukraine. If Putin is, through military aggression, able to eventually gain full control of the Ukrain, I expect other "leaders" with similar dispositions will try similar actions in the future.

pasabagi 5y ago
Well, I think part of the problem is that the kind of people that were in the german army after the war were Nazis in the literal sense, and the kind of people that prospered in the environment these Nazis created were Nazis in the contemporary sense. This is amply illustrated by the endless slew of scandals that come out of the Bundeswehr around this issue[0]. I imagine these days it's a little better, but it's still a bit of a magnet for the hard right in germany, for all the obvious reasons. [0] https://ctc.usma.edu/the-insider-threat-far-right-extremism-in-the-german-military-and-police/ https://ctc.usma.edu/the-insider-threat-far-right-extremism-... PS: I think in general it's germany's ongoing far-right problem that makes nationalist-adjacent careers and institutions far less attractive to normal people, so it's sort of a vicious circle.