Supplement: …blah-blah on German Arms for Ukraine
As usually when ‘covering’ modern-day-wars, both the mainstream media and the social media are busy with spreading hysteria. In the first few days of Ukraine War, there was that ‘Ghost of Kyiv’ hysteria; then the ‘deliveries of Polish/Slovak/Bulgarian MiG-29s to Ukraine’ hysteria; replaced by ‘imminent Russian assaults on Kyiv and Odessa’ hysteria; then the ‘Bucha Massacre’ and the ‘Kramatorsk Railway Station Massacre’ hysteria, and now it seems there’s something like ‘German government prevents deliveries of heavy arms to Ukraine’ hysteria…
Supposedly, there’s a ‘German failure/refusal’ to deliver heavy arms to Ukraine. Correspondingly, Chancellor Scholz is ‘guilty’ of refusing to deliver tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, self-propelled artillery….sigh… perhaps also battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz, and few B-61 nuclear bombs from US stocks at Rammstein AFB to Ukraine….?
Problem is this: Germany has, de-facto, disarmed over the last 30 years. The Bundeswehr, Luftwaffe and Marine were reduced to a bare minimum of capability. Facilities like the ‘Tank Graveyard’ in Rockensußra have disassembled about 15,000 armoured vehicles in that period…
Ironically, especially the CDU/CSU government (‘conservatives’) of the last 16 years (see: Merkel) has disarmed the Bundeswehr so badly, it hasn’t even got any significant stocks of ammunition left, not to talk about spare tanks and other heavy equipment. Its logistics was degraded down to the ‘just in time’ delivery of spares and other necessities, while reserve stocks of semi-modern equipment, like Leopard 2 main battle tanks (MBTs) were all sold out.
What’s left are ‘big stocks’ of old Leopard 1 tanks (thinly armoured and considered obsolete already in the 1980s), Marder infantry fighting vehicles (no ‘tanks’ or ‘light tanks’ as described by most of the mass-media), and similar ‘stuff’ — all of them disarmed decades ago, and in need overhauls before being of any use again: in need of so much work, it’s going to take between three and six months to make ‘even’ selected vehicles operational again.
That’s why, right now, Berlin cannot give away anything — at least not without weakening the Bundeswehr even more.
Characteristically, now it’s the representatives of exactly the same German political party that was crucial for this disarmament (and for making the country overdependent on Russian oil and gas) — the CDU/CSU — that are the loudest in complaining about the ‘failure’ of the government run by Chancellor Scholz (consisting of SPD, the Green Party, and FDP), to ‘deliver’. Actually, Scholz eventually said, essentially: ‘OK; we can’t deliver, but ask our industry; if they can, they have our amen’.
At least as loud are all the possible ‘good-people’ from abroad — where exactly the same has happened over the last 30 years: see UK (where last two years there was a discussion about wholesale scrapping of all the remaining Challenger tanks), France, Italy, and, of course, the ‘I-told-you-so-USA’ — which actually also sold-out most of its MBT-fleet because it was ‘busy’ fighting endless COIN-wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and about 20 other places around this planet…
People, please get serious.
Replacing such items like tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, or heavy artillery cannot be done ‘over the night’: alone getting ‘lead items’ for their production is taking 10–12 months. Foremost: venting out your frustration by ‘blaming Germany for everything’ is not going to make anything better. After all, and as pointed out time and again in my posts, it’s ‘not only Germany’ that screwed up: the oligarchy of the entire West did so — and always for the same reason: profit — from ‘business’ in Russia, in PR China etc., etc., etc.
Bottom line: stop paying attention at ambient noises. Focus on important things and finding solutions. And, if you have to be angry, be angry about those who are responsible for this situation, not about those who have to find a solution.
