Alexander Gauland, April 28, 2022, Ukraine, Russia and Weapons

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/31, pp. 2732-2733.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

It is ever a thankless task to seek explanations for a situation which kills women and children and lays cities in rubble and ash. And when it has to do with freedom, democracy and Western values, one must in a country like Germany stand on the right side of history.The moral always beats the geopolitics.

For long we know that NATO is a defensive alliance and Putin, if he was not afraid of freedom, need not fear NATO. So simple, so unterkomplex! Unless it does not depend simply on our estimate of NATO, but on the Russian viewpoint. And here since the German reunification, the Russians witness an uninterrupted advance towards the Russian borders of a military alliance opposed to them.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is not only a confrontation of autocracy and democracy but also a clash of political, military and economic interests. And therefore it is also wrong to heat up this conflict with heavy weapons. Since – thus, Angela Merkel’s earlier military advisor, Erich Vad – “Every military solution leads to catastrophe.” When German politicians – and it again occurs today – postulate “Russia is not allowed to win”, it must then be added: It is also not allowed to lose, for an atomic power can employ the means of the 20^th and 21^st Centuries in a war like that of the 19^th Century. And that, hopefully, we also do not want!

In the case of Russia, there is added a further dilemma. Decrees according to the norms of international law have in history only proved tenable when the defeated side was included as an equal. The best historical example is the Vienna Decree of 1815 following the victory over Napoleon. In that France could play a role as an equal, the participants in Vienna avoided an enduring, revolutionary discontent of the defeated. The complete opposite of that was Versailles 1919. And precisely that, ladies and gentlemen, is today the Russia problem: It never really accepted internally the one-sided changes following 1989. They would have been better accomplished working with Russia, and not against a passed-over, weakened power under Yeltsin.

Comparisons are always imperfect – however, the eastward expansion of NATO was more Versailles than Vienna. A weakened Russia swallowed that. Now, where in the Ukraine it touches on the core of the Czarist Empire, like that of the Soviet Union, the Russian elites see a red line overstepped. As long as Russia is a great power and an atomic power, an arrangement only becomes durable when the country internally shares in it. A Western Ukraine is not it. It consequently can only be a compromise – only a compromise! – to end this war, not however a victory of one side or the other. The delivery of heavy weapons to the Ukraine is thus no sensible contribution, ladies and gentlemen.

            Vice-president Katrin Göring-Eckardt: Herr Gauland, come to a                                                conclusion, please.

A diplomatic initiative by Germany would be much more sensible and important.

I am grateful.

 

[trans:tem]

 

 

 

 

Rüdiger Lucassen, April 28, 2022, Weapons Deliveries to the Ukraine

AfD Kompakt, April 28, 2022.

The Gepard is a solid, near-range anti-aircraft system, but only with a high state of training for the crew in specific conjunction with other troop elements, and when sufficient munitions and maintenance have seen secured. These prerequisites for the mission in the Ukraine armed forces are at the moment not, or not sufficiently, at hand. I thus venture the prognosis that the Gepard will not be employed in the Ukraine war. In my view, it is a question of a placebo so that the Federal government need not appear with empty hands at the donors conference in Ramstein. This confirms the AfD delegation’s basic scepticism in regards weapons deliveries to the Ukraine.

 

[trans: tem]

Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, April 26, 2022, Weapons for the Ukraine

AfD Kompakt, April 26, 2022.

The motion of the CDU and the CSU for the delivery of heavy weapons to the Ukraine is incendiary. It is a further step in a dangerous over-bidding competition which threatens to ever further draw Germany into the war. At the same time, the implementation of the Union’s motion would additionally weaken the Bundeswehr, since many of the demanded weapons shall initially be delivered from the Bundeswehr’s stocks.

The AfD’s position is clear: We fundamentally reject the delivery of weapons to the war zone. We must avoid all which contributes to that the war in the Ukraine becomes a widespread conflagration, and a military and thus an atomic confrontation of NATO with Russia.

Instead of always speaking of new weapons deliveries, the Federal government needs to now start a broadly disposed diplomatic initiative, the purpose of which must be peace talks between the Ukraine and Russia under international mediation.

 

[trans: tem]

 

Beatrix von Storch, April 25, 2022, Anti-semitism in Germany

AfD Kompakt, April 25, 2022.

Such offensive anti-semitic hate demonstrations as now again in Berlin are the result of the “imported anti-semitism” of the old parties. The on-going failures of the government in the area of asylum and migration policy have enabled such excesses and continue to enable them. “In our society is no place for enmity towards Jews”, twitters SPD Interior Minister Faeser. Only it changes nothing. And in this society, under such governments as in the Bund and in Berlin led by the SPD, there is always a place for anti-semitic hate demonstrations, be it in the Hermannplatz in Berlin.

We of the AfD hold: Who wants to fight anti-semitism in Germany, without stating the truth that this proceeds particularly in its aggressive and violent form overwhelmingly from Moslems, must fail. Who wants to change something must be honest. For that, this government is noticeably unprepared.

 

[trans: tem]