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That's all really interesting.
I think historical context has a huge impact, but it will deminsh with time.
hugo7-
I think historical context has a huge impact, but it will deminsh with time.
Inevitably. It has been doing that for decades, of course.
You have to remember that just after the war there was serious debate in Germany about whether there should be any re-armament at all. Adenauer then brought that about (Wiederaufrüstung).
One partial reason for Hitler was the weakness of the Weimarean Republic's army (the Reichswehr), which had been limited by the Versailles Treaty to 100,000 for fear of future repeated aggression. That not only meant the local army forces were often unable to stand up to the bullying by Hitler's SA (and, indeed, to its Communist equivalents), it also meant that the Reichswehr was not fully committed to the state.
The Federal Republic of Germany under Adenauer then set up a fairly large Bundeswehr which was only reduced in size when Germany was groaning under the cost of the annexation of East Germany and the wilful destruction of its economy. Conscription in Germany was cut back and the time that recruits had to serve went down. (This also affected us who had elected to do civilian service instead of army duty, as our time was cut short in a similar way.)
Throughout all this, the doctrine encapsulated in a beautiful sentence by Willy Brandt ...
Von deutschem Boden darf nie wieder Krieg ausgehen
'Never more may war proceed from German soil.'
... and stated, in a different form, in the Grundgesetz
(1) Handlungen, die geeignet sind und in der Absicht vorgenommen werden, das friedliche Zusammenleben der Völker zu stören, insbesondere die Führung eines Angriffskrieges vorzubereiten, sind verfassungswidrig. Sie sind unter Strafe zu stellen.
'Actions suitable or intended to disturb the peaceful co-existence of the world's peoples, especially for the purpose of preparing a war of aggression, are unconstitutional. They are to be subject to punishment.'
This remains an immovable pillar of German law.
In 1995, Joschka Fischer, a leading Green politician, took a delegation of Green colleagues to Bosnia to show them what was going on, saying that Germany could not remain uninvolved. When he became foreign secretary under Gerhard Schröder as part of his Red-Green coalition in 1998, he advocated participation in the war in Kosovo and German warplanes flew missions there. This remains extremely controversial.
We can only hope that Germany's relatively small participation in wars becomes the default mode for all other countries, but it's obviously unlikely.
Oliver Schick
It's not only about pressure. Germany has very restrictive constitutional (well, it doesn't have a constitution, but that's a different story) provisions against entering conflict. There has been a slippery slope in which this has been changed since the 1990s, but it's still substantially in place.
There is obviously the historical background. However, there has been quite a lot of pressure placed on Germany in the recent past because its defence spending is relatively lower than that of other NATO countries.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/466167/20151006-KE-International_defence_2015_FINAL.pdf
What the map on page 4 doesn't show is that Germany has the largest population of any country in Europe, at about 80 million, and is apparently now accepting up to a million Syrian refugees.
I don't know much about Italy, but it is interesting that it appears to have a similar level of spending to Germany. Perhaps this is likewise quite low because of its history of alliance with Nazi Germany.