One of the most iconic artistic expressions of anti-war sentiment in Germany is a 1924 poster by expressionist painter and printmaker Käthe Kollwitz.

Created for a Youth Day organised by pacifist organisations on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the beginning of World War I, the lithographic artwork depicts a young man with a raised hand doing a three-finger salute under the words “Nie Wieder Krieg” (Never Again War).

A century later, Germany is further away from swearing off armed conflict than at any point in its post-World War II history.

Merchant of death

Berlin in 2025 is fuelling both NATO’s anti-Russian proxy war in Ukraine and "Israel’s" colonial holocaust in Palestine through massive military support.

According to the Report on Military Equipment Exports for 2024 presented on August 27 by the federal cabinet under right-wing conservative chancellor Friedrich Merz, the German government greenlighted a record 12.8 billion euros of weapons exports last year, with the lion’s share (64%) of approved exports destined for Ukraine.

This makes Germany, already the second largest supplier of killing machinery to "Israel’s" genocidal war machine after the US, Europe’s foremost “merchant of death.”

Drastically increasing its defense budget is another symptom of Germany’s virulent anti-Russian war hysteria.

In June, the government approved a draft budget that promises to double military spending by the turn of the decade.

Forced conscription

Merz’s pipe-dream of turning the Bundeswehr, Germany’s armed forces and the successor of the Nazi Wehrmacht, into “Europe’s strongest conventional army” has also become a top government priority on the path towards reestablishing German military hegemony.

But transforming an outfit that former Defence Minister Volker Rühe in 2018 described as “a hollow army in a desolate condition” into a combat-ready force that can take on Russia, a country currently ranked at second place on the Global Firepower Index, is no easy feat.

Therefore, also on August 27, the cabinet passed a draft law which shrewdly creates the prerequisites for bringing back compulsory military service because Russia allegedly “remains for the foreseeable future the greatest threat to the security of Europe.”

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Starting in 2026, all 18-year-old men will be forced to fill out a questionnaire with regard to their “willingness and ability to do military service, as well as their educational degrees, other qualifications and interests.”

From 2027 onwards, they will also be required to undergo a medical exam to determine suitability for military service.

In addition, the law allows for the government to activate “mandatory conscription for basic military service” even in times of peace, albeit only with parliamentary approval.

National Security Council

Also on August 27, a busy day in the federal cabinet's warmongering calendar and a little over a week before elected US despot Donald Trump restored the original name of the Department of Defense, renaming it “Department of War”, Uncle Sam’s transatlantic German vassal established an American-style National Security Council for the first time in its history.

The council’s purpose is “to form a bridge between the departments in order to bring together overarching issues as well as knowledge and expertise from internal, external, economic and digital security policy”, explains the government’s website.

Chaired by the chancellor, the council consists of various cabinet ministers and additional members of government who “may be consulted on an ad hoc basis.”

In securitisation theory, labelling something a security problem legitimises the use of extraordinary means to deal with a perceived threat, such as declaring a state of emergency, martial law, or even attacking another country.

The ploy of setting up a needless National Security Council is Germany’s shrewd way of laying the organisational groundwork for sanctioning future warfare and any corresponding anti-democratic actions it may need to take against its own public in the interest of safeguarding “national security.”

The world’s largest arms factory

August 27 also marked the day when Düsseldorf-based weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall opened what its CEO, in true megalomaniacal German fashion, heralded as “the largest ammunitions plant in Europe, if not the world.”

350,000 artillery shells are set to be mass produced there every year in order to meet the alleged “urgent needs of the armed forces in Europe”, the company press release says, while failing to mention the manufactured and therefore wholly fictitious nature of said urgency.

At the plant’s ceremonial opening, Social Democratic Defence Minister Boris Pistorius almost broke his back heaping praise on Rheinmetall, whose tank guns and ammunition the Israeli military uses in its genocide in Gaza, says the Stop Arming Israel campaign.

“We want you to be successful, because your success means security for our country”, said Pistorius in words that reinforce what many in Germany already believe: That their elected government officials are nothing more than PR specialists for the national for-profit arms industry.

World War III

August 27, 2025, marks a dark day in Germany’s 21^st century history, already (blood-) stained beyond redemption due to Berlin’s continued support for "Israel’s" full-scale destruction of Gaza and the annihilation of its people.

Future historians studying why the disaster continent of Europe was once again ravaged by war will point to this date as a key, preconditional milestone.

The possibility of armed conflict on a regional or even global scale is not a remote one, at least not in the minds of the German public.

According to a new poll, 41% of Germans are afraid that it will come to World War III.

Hopefully, their fears will not become reality. May saner minds and purer hearts than those within Germany’s villainous military industrial complex prevail and stop this menace to regional and world peace that is unfettered German militarism.