Marc Jongen, May 14, 2020, German War Victims Memorial

Marc Jongen

German War Victims Memorial

German Bundestag, May 14, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/160, pp. 19942-19943

[Marc Jongen is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the western German state of Baden-Württemberg. He is a philosophy professor. He here presents an AfD motion (Drucksache 19/19156) proposing the creation of a memorial dedicated to the German victims of the Second World War.]

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

May 8 is the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Corona urgencies, fine and well; yet it cannot be that the German Bundestag cannot find a half hour to discuss the proper relations of a date so important to remembrance policy.

Since nothing came from the government coalition, the AfD placed the theme in the orders of business. And in the meantime, ja, Bündes-president Frank-Walter Steinmeier, standing lonely as a ghost before the Neue Wache in Berlin, named May 8, 1945, as a “Day of Liberation”.

            Kathrin Vogler (Linke): He is right!

And he added: “Then we were liberated. Today we must liberate ourselves.” He then recounted of the “assay of a new nationalism”, of “partition” and of “hate and incitement”, which were nothing other than – quote – “the old, evil spirit in new clothes”.

This political exorcism by the Bündes-president culminated in the adage: If Europe fails, then fails the “never again”.

Ladies and gentlemen and worthy Herr Bündes-president, I call out to you from this podium! You are misusing the remembrance of a historical date to suppress necessary and legitimate debate in the present. Anyone who defends the nation as the guarantor of democracy, who rejects the scandalous policy of open borders, or does not want a centralized governing EU superstate, will be placed by you under the general suspicion of being a Nazi.

Marianne Schieder (SPD): No, no. That was much more differentiated. You quite well know that!

That is historically and politically perverse, it divides the society and it is unworthy of a Bündes-president!

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): What you are doing here is unworthy of a member!

And one thing more: You can certainly be of the opinion, Herr Bündes-president as well as many here in the hall, that Germany can “be loved only with broken hearts”.

            Martin Rabanus (SPD): Such rubbish!

I say to you: There are Germans – and not a few – who love their country with full hearts

            Armin-Paulus Hampel (AfD): With whole hearts!

and they will permit no other prescription from you.

            Martin Rabanus (SPD): Then who wrote down this idiocy?

We come to the key phrase “Day of Liberation” which Richard von Weizsäcker

used in his famous speech of 1985, though with more differentiation. The SPD and the Greens want such a holiday, as one hears; the Linke also, in the best DDR tradition whereby the day of liberation distracts from the un-free character of the SED dictatorship.

Yes, of course, ladies and gentlemen, Germany and the world were liberated on May 8, 1945: From the criminal NS [National Socialist] regime and from the emergency state of destruction which it unleashed in Europe. It was without mitigation a day of liberation for those of groups persecuted by the Nazis: The Jews of Europe, the conquered and abused neighboring peoples, and for broad portions of our own people as far as they found themselves safe.

However – and this historical ambivalence is worthy of being endured – it was plainly no liberation for the 2 to 3 million Germans who in the former German eastern territories died in 1945 on account of expulsion, flight  and deportation. It was no liberation for the nearly 11 million German prisoners of war, of whom 1.6 million were no more to return and most of the others only after years of inhuman captivity.

Marianne Schieder (SPD): That no one has maintained besides you.

And it was definitely no liberation for the estimated 2 million German women and girls raped after May 8, of whom 10 percent died, a portion of the remaining being severely traumatized.

Kathrin Vogler (Linke): When you present yourself here as women's rights advocate! That is really offensive!

For these who were in no way liberated, piety alone forbids elevating May 8 to a holiday, ladies and gentlemen, and it may then be that a collective guilt of all Germans, which had massive, cynical implications, comes to an end. It is in any case contradicted by Richard von Weizsäcker's dictum – listen, for once – which said, namely: “There is no guilt or innocence of an entire people. Guilt, like innocence, is personal.”

Allow yourselves therefore to take this anniversary as an occasion to finally raise up a memorial to the German victims of the Second World War. Located in the center of the capital city, it should tell of the several victims’ groups which I have previously named, but also of the victims of the bomber war, in a documentation center inclusive of the present-day state of research. A competition should be announced and an experts committee set up which is legally obligated to the German Bundestag.

This memorial should expressly be not in rivalry to but in a relation of fulfillment with the existing memorials to the victims of the NS regime, primarily with that for the murdered Jews of Europe, quite in the sense of the words of the former Bündes-president Herzog: “…Neither peace nor reconciliation can be found if the whole history is not presented.”

Marianne Schieder (SPD): That is what you should do for once, present the whole history!

We are doing that, in contrast to you. We also believe – I come to conclusion – that the friendship with the former wartime opponents has in the meantime been sufficiently strengthened so that this also may pertain to the Germans’ mourning for their own war victims if we adhere prudently, worthily and coherently to the historical facts. Our motion demands nothing more and yet nothing less.

Many thanks.

[Translated by Todd Martin]

René Springer, May 13, 2020, Working Conditions in the Meatpacking Industry

René Springer

Working Conditions in the Meatpacking Industry

German Bundestag, May 13, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/159, p. 19730

[René Springer is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the eastern German state of Brandenburg. He is an electrician and navy veteran and here responds to a motion concerning working conditions in the meatpacking industry. Hubertus Heil (SPD) is the German Minister for Labor and Social Affairs. Hartz IV is a large-scale unemployment compensation program.]

Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

In some slaughterhouses in Lower Saxony up to 50 percent of the workers are ill, not with Covid-19 but with tuberculosis, and not just in recent weeks but since 2018. Thus the problem of working conditions in the meatpacking industry being hazardous to health is no new problem and the Federal government has been aware of it for years. With respect, Herr Minister Heil, the preceding helps no one out of a bad situation.

In past years our neighbors Belgium, France and Denmark have spoken critically of the prevailing pay and working conditions in our meatpacking sector in Germany. Not just anyone mentioned that; the Federal Labor Ministry said that in its answer to a minor inquiry from the year 2017. The present Corona outbreak in the plants of the meatpacking industry is thus the consequence of an inveterate failure of the Federal government.

The workforce, especially from eastern Europe, for years was exploited in German slaughterhouses. They had to live and work under conditions in part inhuman and hazardous to health. That – as expressed by a pastor at a recent demonstration in Coesfeld – is nothing other than modern slavery. Yet thousands of the single and the independent, predominantly from eastern Europe, were employed with dubious work contracts and at low wages. Thereby was the state not only relieved of millions in social spending but the domestic and foreign workforces were played off against one another as to wage levels. Employees in the meatpacking industry today earn approximately 36 percent less than in the overall economy. Consider for yourself what one third less in the pocket is.

Where do the low wages come from? Perhaps it is coherent with the 20 percent decline in the number of the German workforce in the meatpacking industry in the past ten years while the number of the foreign workforce has increased over 270 percent. This mostly eastern European workforce unfortunately figures this exploitative labor situation to be abundant because they do not have to pay rent, being crowded together in collective housing, but also because they have a claim to child support [Kindergeld] in Germany

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): That just had to come up again!

            Matthias W. Birkwald (Linke): Underground!

and at fixed benefits, Hartz IV. On the whole, it provides an income far beyond that available to people in their home country. This form of self-exploitation is primarily made possible by the freedom of movement in the European Union and the Federal government’s consequent turning a blind eye [konsequente Wegschauen] and it will continue to suppress wages. And the taxpayer – and this is the idiocy of the whole thing – subsidizes the new form of slavery with social benefits.

That needs be the social Europe of which you are always speaking, as you do, Herr Heil. You speak of a social Europe but intend the dissolution of the sovereignty of the nation-state into an EU super-state on the backs of the employed. You therefore tolerate, Herr Minister, therefore tolerates the Federal government and the overwhelming portion here in parliament, all that is cheap, and not only in the meatpacking industry. For years we see the common practice of wretched working conditions and wretched wages in agriculture, in the security business, in the construction industry, in the packaging branch. We all still well remember the debate we conducted at Christmas.

Thereby lie at hand the solutions which are in the interest of all. First of all, there ought not to be any cheap imports, no cheap foreign meat. We must reconsider a sensible formation of globalization by means of a limitation of the EU’s freedom of movement. We must regionalize agriculture and we need a stronger and closer control of plants by public officials, not only at the federal but also there where the responsibilities lie, at the state and local levels.

When 80 percent of the employees in the meatpacking industry have a work contract, and thus are independent, then it must be asked whether it would be suitable to forbid this instrument in this branch.

Let us do nothing prematurely. Ultimately there will be fair working conditions and fair wages when the product has a justified price. This is a matter where each must look in the mirror [an seine eigene Nase packen muss]. Wage dumping and bad working conditions can be prevented not with words but actions. Herr Heil, action has often been announced; this time yet again. Finally clean up your own act [Räumen Sie endlich auf]!

Thank you very much.

[Translated by Todd Martin]

Gerold Otten, May 7, 2020, Healthcare and Nuclear Weapons

Gerold Otten

Healthcare and Nuclear Weapons

German Bundestag, May 7, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/158, pp. 19667-19668

[Gerold Otten is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from Bavaria. He is an aerospace industries sales manager and has a number of years’ experience as a Bundeswehr pilot, experience which includes flying the Tornado fighter-bomber. He here responds to motions by the Linke party calling for a shift of government spending from nuclear weapons to healthcare.]

The Federal government for some time has not questioned the nuclear participation. It is a concept within NATO’s deterrence policy. It is basically defensive and includes four essential elements. First, it makes clear that the will and wealth of the USA, with its nuclear weapons, is to stand up for those NATO members which are not nuclear powers. Second, it entitles participants to consultation on the commitment of nuclear weapons and the participating states declare themselves – third – ready to deploy [vorzuhalten] the corresponding delivery system [Trägersystem]. Fourth, the states oblige themselves to the stationing of atomic weapons on their state territory.

In a peace-loving society like ours, there is not much political profit in this theme. However, that a political question is not popular has for long not meant that it need not be answered. And it is most closely bound up with the delivery system, which in Germany is the Tornado fighter aircraft. The question of a successor has been an open question for years. Now, the Defense Minister quietly and lightly lets fall a procurement decision for 93 Eurofighters and 45 American F-18s. How nice for her defense zone project in northern Syria that this also occurs without consultation with coalition partners and without previously informing the Bundestag. That might be taken for daring, but for me that is dilettantism.

The decision was also the occasion for the present motions of the Linke. It basically means the end of Germany’s nuclear participation.

            Tobias Pflüger (Linke): Well discerned!

Those bringing the motions base this demand upon allegedly striking deficits in the healthcare infrastructure of Germany, Europe and the world. And since the Linke do not wish to incur the suspicion of acting nationally, the freely resourced tax money shall not only benefit the German healthcare system but that of the entire world.

            Sevim Dağdelen (Linke): No, the WHO!

The Linke plead that, as we have just heard from Herr Gysi, with a motion from the year 2010 of the Union, FDP and SDP. They assert that at that time the Bundestag decided on a withdrawal of atomic weapons – only, that is fake news, Herr Gysi.

Impressed by Obama’s declaration of wanting to commit himself to a world free of atomic weapons, the Bundestag then demanded that the Federal government undertake all efforts for the withdrawal of atomic weapons from Germany and that the world be made free of nuclear weapons.

            Gregor Gysi (Linke): Yes, just so!

On this question, the AfD has a clear position: We are in favor of nuclear disarmament and – I say this here quite clearly – that includes the withdrawal of U.S. atomic weapons from Germany.

Can one thus vote for the transparent motions of the Linke? Quite clearly not. For the AfD wishes that the states of the world resolve their conflicts peacefully. The condition of a peaceful world will occur when all states abandon a violent enforcement of their demands and instead go the way of exchange of interests and mutual advantage. Yet the world is far away from this desirable condition and I fear will never attain it. Politics must again re-orient itself to what is politically sensible and feasible, thus to how the world is and not to however one may happily desire it to be. We therefore represent the way of Realpolitik and not that of alien utopias.

A one-sided renunciation of the nuclear participation would not in the least improve the present security situation of Germany and the world; the opposite would be the case. NATO would then not only be brain-dead, as per President Macron’s opinion, it would actually stand at death’s door. In our view, an atomic disarmament is only possible if all nuclear powers agree to a gradual reduction of their nuclear weapons arsenals. To persuade the nuclear powers of this goal was the intent of the Bundestag’s resolutions, and nothing other. This goal today is of even greater priority, and certainly before the background of the giving of notice of the INF treaty. The AfD will pursue this goal at all times and with all power. The utopias of the Linke we decisively reject.

I thank you for your attention.

[Translated by Todd Martin]