Niall Ferguson: Germany, Rearm!

BERLIN and KIEV — It felt a little strange for a British historian to fly to Berlin to tell the Germans, of all people, to rearm. That’s not a role I ever imagined I’d play when I was a graduate student in the divided Berlin of the 1980s, where the buildings in the Soviet sector still bore the scars of World War II. 

But times change. And so I recently found myself in the German capital addressing a hall full of conservative parliamentarians urging them to double their defense budget.

Urging Germans to rearm might seem a rather counterintuitive thing to do—and not just because of Germany’s past. This year, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland has achieved a string of successes in regional elections, coming first in Thuringia and second in Saxony and Brandenburg.

Deutschland den deutschen, Ausländer raus!—“Germany for the Germans, foreigners out!”—is a popular chant in Germany these days, and not only amongst the disgruntled, underachieving inhabitants of the formerly East German states that are the AfD’s electoral strongholds. German media briefly went berserk back in May, when a viral video captured preppy partygoers at a club on the North Sea resort island of Sylt gleefully chanting the taboo five words. The young man leading the chorus even gave a mock Nazi salute, his left hand supplying a virtual Hitler mustache. 

What would the American equivalent be? The members of a Harvard final club donning Ku Klux Klan hoods on Martha’s Vineyard, perhaps. 

You may insist, “But it was ironic! They were chanting Deutschland den deutschen over the Italian DJ Gigi D’Agostino’s track ‘L’amour Toujours’!” Still, I can see why the average American might be mildly freaked out by my arguing for German rearmament at a time like this. But, as I said, times change. Back in the ’80s, I didn’t expect to witness a Russian invasion of an independent Ukraine either.