German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/48, pp. 5614-5615.
Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.
The coalition’s defense service modernization law is discussed for weeks in the context of the general conscription [Wehrpflicht] as a kind of preliminary stage thereof; yet it is not. The core of the law only foresees that the attraction of voluntary service in the Bundeswehr shall be increased – and that, now for the umpteenth time. With the defense service modernization law, the Federal government does what it always does when it does not want to get at the root of the problem: It pours on more money. That is Merkel Politik, and it comes to its end.
Yet in regards the defense service modernization law it is not only about money; it is about something fundamental. The Defense Ministry in the future pays to each new recruit 2,700 euros gross – a lot of of money for one leaving school. For the Federal government, attraction means money. To it, something else does not come to mind. Yet soldiers who come on account of the pay have no strong basis for the service. That does not suffice.
The antithesis is the soldier who serves out of conviction. It is the German soldier who knows what he fights for, who bears within the inner bond [der das innere Band in sich trägt] – the born defender of his country, the German common destiny [Schicksalsgemeinscahft]. Theodor Körner, Lützow, Roon, Moltke, Hindenburg, Jünger, Rommel, Stauffenberg, Heusinger, Hartmann, Topp, Förtsch, Kammhuber – there are hundreds of thousands of names of German soldiers who carry this bond and pass it on. And, ladies and gentlemen, the Bundeswehr consists of these soldiers. In no other institution of Germany is the consciousness of one’ own, for what is worth protecting, for our country, so present as in the Bundeswehr. The soldiers who serve in it are the daughters and sons of our people. To them, they perform their oath.
Lamya
Kaddor (Greens): Yet without völkischen
language!
And they are thereby not soldiers of this government, but Germany’s soldiers.
The Bundeswehr thus stands in a 200 year tradition, a tradition of the true, the dutiful, and of the bond to Germany, regardless under which government. Lützow’s riflemen did not fight for the king, but for the freedom of the Germans.
Sara Nanni
(Greens): That is abysmal! Really!
The Heeresgruppe Kurland fought not for the wretched regime in the bunker. Its soldiers withstood the Red Army so as to save 1.5 million East Prussians. And the soldiers of the NVA [National People’s Army, East Germany], a German conscript army,
Jens Spahn
(CDU/CSU): Where have you landed, actually?
placed themselves in a decisive moment of their history in the service of this German tradition.
Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Please do not speak of the Bundeswehr!
Christian
Görko (Linke): You have no idea!
As namely the SED planned to fight the 1989 freedom movement with military means, the soldiers of the NVA refused the mission order. German soldiers do not shoot Germans. The German bond blocked the mission order.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Thüringen chairman of my own party gave a speech on conscription on Wednesday in the Erfurt Landtag. In this speech, he came to the conclusion that Germany is no longer worth fighting for. What would the men and women of the Wars of Liberation have said to that? They would never have followed that diagnosis. Dear countrymen in Thüringen and everywhere: The fight for Germany’s salvation is the basis for the founding of the AfD.
Jens Spahn
(CDU/CSU): How low have you sunk?
Where shall I at all begin? Our culture, our children – Goethe, Schiller, Eichendorff, Wagner – Potsdam, Dresden, Munich, the Rheingau, the Swabian Alb, the Alps, our forests and lakes, the German food,
Britta
Haßelmann (Greens): Na, there, you’ve
finally positioned yourself!
the North Sea, the greatness, the tragedy, the ever again arising can do.
We are the West and, for that, it always pays to fight.
[trans: tem]
