Germany Is Arguing With Itself Over Ukraine

Last February, three days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Chancellor Olaf Scholz stood up in the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, and made a remarkable speech. Scholz, a Social Democrat without much of a track record on military issues, told his country—conditioned since the 1990s to believe that it no longer needed a real army—that he would add 100 billion euros to the defense budget this year. Germany, he said, needed “airplanes that fly, ships that can set out to sea and soldiers who are optimally equipped for their missions.” He declared that decades of increasing dependence on Russian energy would cease and that Germany would begin preparing alternatives. And after weeks of refusing to send weapons to Ukraine, he declared that Germany would now be sending anti-tank weapons and Stinger missiles.

Scholz called this a , or historical turning point, and not everybody was ready for it. Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, the chair of the Bundestag’s Defense Committee (and a Free Democrat, part of the government coalition) watched the faces of politicians from Scholz’s own party. She could see that many were stunned. Still, she