A franker and more public examination of Berlin’s past relationship with Putin’s Russia is now justified
Russia’s president Vladimir Putin presenting a historical lithograph to Germany’s former chancellor Angela Merkel after their meeting at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum in St Petersburg in 2021: the SPD's relationship with Russia is now under new scrutiny. Historian Heinrich August Winkler has written many standard works on Germany’s past. So, when he speaks out, many listen.
They reserved the greatest criticism for Rolf Mützenich, the SPD’s Bundestag leader, for asking, rhetorically, if the time had come to think about how to “freeze” the conflict. Such logic meant an effective end to the war, they warned, “in favour of the aggressor”. Such swipes against the SPD are not new and Berlin has answers ready for most critics.
Grafton Street’s story: How a downbeat country lane became an upmarket home for A-listers, hotels, Turkish baths and shopsWinkler is just the latest critic to suggest that many in Germany happily distorted this legacy to justify a profitable push into post-1989 Russia. In this argument, emotion and sentiment – in particular lingering war guilt – compounded a blindness to the risks of Russian energy dependence.
Similarly, Rolf Mützenich conceded he had “underestimated completely” Putin’s imperialist thinking – but did not explain Berlin’s wilful deafness to warnings from its eastern neighbours, including those whose territory Putin began carving off.
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