I.
At the beginning of the war, Putin called his invasion of Ukraine a 'Demilitarisation and de-Nazification operation'; he vowed to excise 'Drug addicts and Neo-Nazis' from the Ukrainian government. Of course he was misusing the word 'Nazi', and the misuse - not only by Putin but by others - threatens to make the word meaningless and confronts us with yet another instance of an underlying degeneration of modern language and thought.
(For another instance, given to us again by the Russians, read of this 'De-Nazification' manifesto by the Kremlin publicist Timofey Sergeytsev, a surreal and hallucinatory screed which has already earned for itself international notoriety).
So what does the word 'Nazi' mean? My answer is - among other things - German soldiers. Recently- the conservative YouTube star Tim Pool came under fire for calling the Bundeswehr's military tattoo, the Zapfenstreich, 'Nazi'. His detractors accused Pool of being ignorant of German history, but I believe he was on to something. One can see at once the correlations between the Bundeswehr's torchlit ceremonies and the Wehrmacht's; and surely the Wehrmacht qualifies as 'Nazi'?
I think what it is that American conservatives such as Pool object to (and have objected to for the past hundred years) is not so much 'Nazism' as (what used to be called) 'German militarism'. Pool is denigrating German soldiery, and he is doing so because this is what Americans have been doing for a long time. Right from the outset of WWI, English, American and Canadian propaganda sought to make Germany and her military, Germany and her allegedly bloodthirsty Wilhelmine Prussians, one and the same in the Anglo public's mind. The Anglos were by doing so making an attack on a German political institution: in German political life, the Prussian and then the German army possessed outsized power right up until 1945. And what made that army different from others that intervene frequently in civilian political life was that it had fought in actual wars - quite big ones - and had fought effectively. The Anglos feared the Germany army because it was strong; they would not have feared if it were weak.
The Allied effort to dismantle the institution of the German army after WWI failed; after WWII, it succeeded. So it is a great irony of history that Germany recently announced its intention to remilitarise (and with tacit American approval).
Last week, German Chancellor Olag Scholz made a shocking announcement, declaring that Germany would massively increase its defense spending in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
If Berlin carries this plan out, German rearmament may be the most significant geopolitical consequence of Russia’s unprovoked aggression.
Russia invaded Ukraine, and it appears to have transformed German security policy overnight.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared that Germany would increase its defense budget until it exceeded the 2% NATO benchmark, an increase of more than 30%. The announcement was greeted positively by the German public, which seems suddenly to have awoken to the threat of a hostile and resurgent Russia.
And thus far, fears of German rearmament in Europe appear invisible. Scholz has backed up the decision to rearm by taking steps to reduce German dependence on Russian natural gas and will allow the transfer of lethal arms to Ukraine.
At first sight, it seems odd for a man of the Left such as Scholz to be undertaking a 'militarist' course of action and one that could potentially shake modern Germany (which is supposedly pacifist) to its core. But a precedent does exist: we only need to consider German military history at time of the Weimar Republic; then - and this may be a surprise to many - the Germans went to war several times (at least three times against the Poles) even though the Republic was led by social democrats and liberal conservatives.
So history could be repeating itself. But the announcement of Germany's remilitarisation seems to have passed largely unnoticed by those on the dissident Right, even by those who proclaim themselves to be 'National Socialist'. Unfortunately, many on the Right (including myself at times) have fallen into the habit of discounting modern Germany; indeed, they often give the impression that they believe German history came an end in 1945. To them, the Bonn Republic (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) never existed. One consequence of this shortsightedness is that important political developments in Germany, Europe, the West, are neglected. Contrary to the point of view that says that nothing in recent German history is worthy of note, I believe that the implications the current war in Ukraine does hold for Germany are indeed important, and I shall be exploring these here.
II.
One of the themes of the present crisis is: political change only occurs through changes of the facts on the ground. War constitutes one of those facts, and the disruptions we are seeing in the present global order would not have occurred without the Russo-Ukrainian war: as the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, 'War is the father of all things'.
The corollary of the above is that political discussions, polemics, propaganda do not count for much. At least for the past eight years we have been subjected to what I call the 'Putin line', a line which has been disseminated far and wide through Western intellectual circles and media outlets. Arguments against the line so far have showed themselves to be useless; experience demonstrates that one cannot prove the line to be false through argument, discussion, intellectualising. The repeated failure of such attempts gives rise to the disturbing possibility that the Putin line can only be proven false through through great events - such as a war. That is, if Russia loses the current war, support for the Putin line in the West will erode. And the tragedy is that it took a war, and enormous suffering, to bring about that result.
So what is the Putin line? How does one detect it? Through a series of key words and phrases which appear ad nauseam throughout the 'alternative media' (and by extension the normal media - the lines between 'alt' and 'normal' media have become increasingly blurred). A certain script has been generated, almost as if by a bot, and it replicates itself, reproduces, spreads. Here is a sample. 'Victoria Nuland, 2014 Maidan coup, CIA coup, Neo-Nazis in Kiev, Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, Russia's geopolitical interests, Ukraine is not a real country, Crimea has always been Russian, the Donbas is filled with Russian speakers and so belongs to Russia, the Donetsk and Luhansk Republics are rebels who are seeking freedom from Kiev's oppressive rule, the Ukrainians are genociding the Russians of the Donbas, NATO has been provoking Russia, Russia is being encircled by NATO, Russia is fearful of Western depredations because of its past experiences with the Nazis in WWII, attacking Russia is suicide (ask Napoleon and Hitler), Russia needs a buffer against NATO expansionism, neocon warmongers are leading us to the abyss of WWIII, securing Russia's flank against NATO makes geopolitical sense, Putin makes good points...'
One discovers a rich lode of the Putin line at Unz.Org; there the purveyors are, among others, Philip Giraldi, John Mearsheimer, Andrew Anglin, Pat Buchanan, Pepe Escobar, Anatoly Karlin, Paul Craig Roberts, The Saker, Eric Margolis, the late Stephen F. Cohen, Eric Striker... But one even encounters proponents of the line at some of the sites which are more hard-edged than Unz.Org - that is, the radical white nationalist, racialist and anti-Semitic sites. Kevin McDonald has recently published a piece at the Occidental Observer with the title (surely generated by an artificial intelligence algorithm?) 'Neocons, Ukraine, Russia, and the Western Struggle for Hegemony'.
The first thing one observes in this rhetoric is that it is not racialist, nationalist, white nationalist, even populist; no, it is centered around a deracinated geopolitics. Perhaps because of its odd rootlessness, it wanders around and makes itself felt everywhere. You can find it in - to take two examples completely at random - the writings of Larry Johnson, a journalist for the conservative pro-Trump site The Gateway Pundit, and David Stockton, an economist for the Reagan administration. Doubtless the reader can think of his own examples.
To repeat, one cannot argue against the line on any of its points - against the theses (for example) of 'NATO expansionism', 'the Vicki Nuland / CIA / Mossad / Neo-Nazi EuroMaidan coup'; argumentation holds no sway. In that connection, a number of commentators have noted that the Russian people themselves, when the subject of the war in Ukraine is brought up, remain remarkably obtuse when presented with facts that contradict the Putin line. One cannot consider a discussion with them to be a discussion, for that term implies a willingness to change one's mind, and the minds of the Putin line's proponents cannot change. Arguing with them is akin to arguing with a computer.
III.
The intellectual is naturally biased towards argumentation, rationality, ideas. He therefore fails to understand - in instances such as the present war - why it is that the belligerents do what they do. The simple explanation for this complex behaviour is this truism: that nations and peoples over the course of a time show a propensity towards certain actions; that they travel in a certain groove.
Once an intellectual realises this, answers to some troubling political questions present themselves at once. Something that has puzzled me over the course of the past eight years is the number of Americans - some of them quite intellectually distinguished (see Kevin McDonald and John Mearsheimer) - who tout the Putin line. It seems that the deepest attraction to the Putin line is to be found among Americans. At first this strikes us as paradoxical: the most blistering invective of the Putin line's proponents is showered upon Americans and to a lesser extent other Anglo-Saxons. But the fact is that America and Russia have shared a long friendship. Twice in the last century they have allied themselves against the Germany and Germany's allies so as to ensure Germany's defeat. Yockey writes in Imperium (1948):
During the Second World War, for instance, freedom and democracy were used as terms to describe all members of the coalition against Europe, with an entire disregard of semantics... In the American press, for example, both during the 1914 war and the 1939 war, Russia was always described as a "democracy". The House of Romanov and the Bolshevik regime were equally democratic. This was necessary to preserve the homogeneous picture of these wars which this press had painted for its readers: the war was one of democracy against dictatorship; Europe was dictatorship, ergo, anything fighting Europe was democracy.
Yockey lists America and Russia, along with Japan, as the three major enemies of Europe at the turn of the 20th century. It is significant that the American enmity towards Europe and the alliance with Russia are over a hundred years old; this shows that the Americans have been at it for a long time. And, added to that, so have the Russians.
Much of what held true then (a century ago) holds true today for Ukraine as well as Russia. What we are seeing today in Ukraine is nothing new. Ukraine has been treated in an imperialist fashion by Russia for centuries. In order to understand the Russian political and military strategy of the present, we need to look to that of the past.
A hundred years ago, Russia invaded Ukraine because of disagreements with the ideology of the Kiev government:
The Bolsheviks invaded Ukraine from Kursk in late December 1918 where the new Ukrainian Soviet government was reestablished earlier in November of the same year. On 16 January 1919 Ukraine officially declared a war on Russia while the Russian Soviet government continued to deny all claims of invasion [emphasis mine; Russia today is denying that the 2022 invasion of Ukraine is an invasion]... On 5 February, the Bolsheviks captured Kyiv.
(Incidentally, the Russians had in 1917 invaded Ukraine from Belarus - just as they had in 2022).
An examination of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict of a hundred years ago brings to light the first use by the Russians of what became a time-honoured maneuver: the Russian setting up of a 'Independent People's Republic' on enemy territory and the Russian denial of all connection between that 'Republic' and Moscow.
All this [the Russian political tumult of 1917] led to the October Revolution in Petrograd, which quickly spread all over the empire. The [Ukrainian nationalist] Kiev Uprising in November 1917 led to the defeat of Russian Republic forces in the capital. Soon after, the Central Rada [Ukrainian nationalist council] took power in Kiev, while in late December 1917 the Bolsheviks set up a rival Ukrainian republic in the eastern city of Kharkov – initially also called the "Ukrainian People's Republic". Hostilities against the Central Rada government in Kiev began immediately. Under these circumstances, the Rada declared Ukrainian independence on January 22, 1918 and broke ties with Russia.
Thirty years later, Finland saw an iteration of one of the 'People's Republics': the Terijoki Government or Finnish Democratic Republic, which was founded by the Russians before the outbreak of the Russo-Finnish War (also known as the Winter War) in 1939; and a hundred years later, Ukraine saw another: the Donetsk and Luhansk 'People's Republics', founded after the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014. And now, in southern Ukraine in 2022, it appears that the Russians are planning to set up another 'Independent People's Republic' - in the captured region of Kherson.
IV.
To judge by history, the Russians do not make good neighbours; ask not only the Ukrainians, but the Finns, Poles, Georgians, Balts. But Germany has found it difficult to face this truth. The reluctance of Germany to acknowledge the affects Russia has upon its neighbours can be traced back to Germany's history. For over a hundred years, the Germans have felt a powerful attraction towards Bolshevism. The eastern half of Germany lived under communism for forty years, and the former DDR (German Democratic Republic) was sustained not only by force and fear but also the warm acquiescence of a significant proportion of eastern Germany's elite. In the post-communist era, Germany - along with France, another nation strongly attracted to Russia - numbered among one of Putin's enablers. And after the outbreak in 2014 of war with Ukraine, the Putin line worked its magic among the uppermost echelons of German state and society. Schönbach, the head of the German navy, was filmed spouting the Putin line at a conference in January this year and was forced to quit afterwards. (Ironically enough, Schönbach declared that the idea Russia wanted to invade Ukraine was 'Nonsense').
But one cannot lay all the blame at the door of Putin. Obviously, 'guilt for Germany's Nazi past' forms the biggest obstacle towards the German recognition of what Russia is. The social democrats and liberal conservatives who run Germany today do not want to be associated with anything 'Nazi'; this is to say, they do not want to be seen as belonging to the Germany of old, which fought two wars against Russia, one of which Germany won, the other Germany lost; for they believe that the Germans of those times were quite literally mad; they see the German militarists as being in the grip of fevered hallucinations. The German General Staff of 1914 and 1941 viewed Russia as the enemy; it ascribed negative qualities to the Russian character; it considered the possibility of Germans having to live under Russian rule, or even continuing to have Russia as a neighbour, most unpleasant. But it was wrong to think so; in fact, it had deluded itself - at least, that is what the German communist propaganda of the past hundred years has attempted to convince us. The leftist Germans of the Bundesrepublik here agree with the communists for the most part, but only because with the passage of time, the history of the German Left has been largely forgotten. It should be remembered that the German Social Democrats voted in 1914 for war credits to fund Germany's war against Russia and France, thereby placing themselves in what today would be called the 'Russophobe' camp. After the vote, Lenin denounced the Social Democrats for this 'betrayal of the working class' and accused them of splitting the Left. (But it was not so cut and dried: the Social Democrats have always talked out of both sides of their mouths: after Germany's defeat in WWI, they insisted that they had never, never supported 'Prussian militarism').
History shows us that powers such as Germany are bound by certain realities. Germany at the start of its two wars with Russia lived next door, or at least within marching distance, to Russia; it did not exist in isolation, in a vacuum. The reality of Germany's geopolitical situation helped determine Germany's peculiar national character: had the country been relocated somewhere else - to the moon, perhaps, or the planet Mars - it would not have been 'militarist'. Thus, the German General Staff, the 'Prussian militarists', were only responding to certain realities. In both WWI and WWII, the German behaviour can only be understood properly in relation to the Russian.
What if the above 'certain realities' held true for Germany in 2022 as they did in 1914 and 1941? The Ukrainians, Poles, Georgians, Finns, the Balts take a negative view of their Russian neighbour; what would happen if the Germans were to do the same?
One step may be (to follow Carl Schmitt) naming Russia as the enemy, and after that, remilitarisation and rearmament. From this it follows, almost inevitably, that any ideology of the past is to be swept aside as a change in ideas leads to a change in actions. Scholz, in his speech announcing what is in effect Germany's rearmament, made the usual praises of 'democracy' and implied that Russia was not 'democratic' (how so?). But we can dismiss this talk of 'democracy' as mere talk. The changes being made under the surface count more than the ideology being planted on the top. To put it another way, institutional structures determine, or at least, constrain, thought; a German who founds a monastery or convent would be forced, by circumstances, to think like a German Catholic monk or a nun; a German who founds an army, to think like a 'Prussian militarist'. And this is despite any reservations that the German may have felt beforehand towards Catholicism or militarism; he may even have been, prior to his career as a monk or a general, an atheist or a pacifist.
V.
Russians such as Dugin enjoy talking of geopolitics; let us, then, in order to indulge them, talk geopolitics. Before WWII, Germany, Italy, France, England, could be considered to be great powers, or at least sovereign nations; after WWII, each of them was reduced to a position of inferiority in relation to the two colossi America and Russia. As a consequence, it follows that if the European powers were to put up a successful defence against the Russian and American, they could only do so if they all stood together. A European unity, then, would need to be forged.
I am saying nothing new here, as the thesis of a necessity of European unity has become a cliché of post-war political thought - see the work of Yockey, Bardèche, Thiriart. It even appears earlier in the genuflections of two conquerors of Continent, Napoleon and Hitler. Both men, after they both had attained to the heights of success, could afford the luxury of pondering an age-old problem: how to unify Europe's fractured and squabbling nations.
It should not be forgotten of Napoleon and Hitler that their military triumphs underlay their lofty aspirations towards a pan-European unity; if France and Germany had not achieved victory on the battlefield, well, their leaders would have been in no position to spare a thought for the noble (and perhaps unworldly) idea of Pan-Europeanism. Military weakness translates into political weakness, so much so that the two can barely be separated. The grand cause of Pan-Europa around 1800 rode on the back of the French army, and around 1900, on the back of the German. In the respective epochs it was France and Germany that did the heavy lifting.
This forces us to confront a truth which some of us may not be comfortable with, and that is this: in any Pan-European State (present or future), all nations are not equal. Sweden does not count as much as Germany, Portugal not as much as France. Germany occupies a higher place in the hierarchy than Greece or Ireland. The conclusion to be drawn, then, is that some care and consideration should be accorded to Germany, given the fact that in any Pan-European State, Germany most likely will be contributing the bulk of the military and economic resources.
But after its defeat in two world wars, Germany was weakened politically and militarily. Considering the post-war amputations of Germany's territories alone, one can say that after WWI, one arm and one leg were torn off, and after WWII, the other arm and the other leg. (And this is putting to one side, for the moment, the questions of the Allied 'denazification' of the Germans after WWII, the war guilt inculcation for both world wars, the forced imposition of Holocaust propaganda...). Assuming that Germany does occupy a position of extreme importance in the European project, how, then, with a weak Germany, is the motor of Pan-Europa expected to run?
We must look to the past and ask ourselves what it is that made the Germany of 1922 so different to the Germany of 2022; the former was more 'based' (to use 4Chan parlance) compared to the latter - many aspects of it are far more desirable (and this is despite the fact that the Germany of 1922 was plagued with a multitude of woes, one of them being the notorious hyperinflation). Look at the many great thinkers that Weimar produced; Martin Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, Oswald Spengler and other 'Conservative Revolutionaries' are still admired and discussed on the Far Right a hundred years later.
It is fitting that the themes of conflict, war and death appear so frequently in the thinking of the Conservative Revolutionaries: at least three of them, Heidegger, Schmitt, and Jünger, served along with millions of other Germans in WWI. Moreover, the 400-year-old institution of the German army still existed (albeit in attenuated form) in the Weimar years. One cannot say that the Reichswehr was as 'pozzed' (again to borrow from 4Chan parlance) as the Bundeswehr: the Reichwehr, like the old Imperial Army, was led by patiots and 'German militarists', men such as von Seeckt, the archetypal Prussian general. (Spengler for a brief time worked as a political activist on behalf of von Seeckt; he wanted the general to become leader of Germany). So before, during and after WWI we find a continuity. That tradition - so despised by the Anglo world - persisted into WWII. As the British author Keith Simpson writes of Germany in WWI, 'The general staff, and in turn the German government, adopted an increasingly unrealistic policy of territorial annexation, and the occupation policy and behaviour of the army in Belgium, northern France, Poland and Russia was to give it a reputation for brutality which foreshadowed that of the Führerheer [Führer army] in the Second World War'. (History of the German Army, 1985).
On that note, Russia's invasion of Ukraine does present a few problems for German nationalists and self-proclaimed 'National Socialists'. We now hear moral condemnations of the Russians, statements of principles which ought to have been binding but have been violated in the Russian war against Ukraine: 'Bigger countries should not invade smaller countries'; 'Occupying powers should not behave in a high-handed manner'. But Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan, repeatedly violated these precepts in WWII and the years immediately leading up that war. If a big nation did not act contrary to these precepts, the pages of history, to borrow from Hegel, would not have been written. (In that connection, one ought to read the chapters in Imperium concerning America and how America won its colonial empire).
So, assuming that this realpolitik or machtpolitik perspective is right, the problem for the apologists of Russia, Germany, Japan becomes one of justification of these countries' conduct; this can become quite sophisticated and can extend into the fields of law, philosophy...
So one must resist the temptation, when writing on the present conflict, to borrow (consciously or unconsciously) the Anglo rhetoric of 1914 and compare Ukraine to 'brave little Belgium' or 'brave little Serbia'. This does bear on the problem we are considering, which is how Germany was in 1922. Then Germany in that year was not ashamed of itself, its strength, its upholding of valour, discipline, self-sacrifice, obedience, etc. as virtues. Five years of a relentless Anglo propaganda barrage, the opening salvo of which was a denunciation of the invasion of Belgium as the worst crime in the history of the world and one that should damn Germany for all time, had not budged the Germans one inch.
But in addition, much of modern Germany's aversion to the martial comes about from the fact that in the past 75 years, Germany has never had the opportunity - or the inclination - to stand up on its own, show its strength, fight. In short, Germany has lacked a real army. That army, and its ethos of 'Prussian militarism', underlay Weimar Germany - and the thought of the Conservative Revolutionaries. 'Prussian militarism' lay so deep in the foundations of German life that the Conservative Revolutionaries were unable to see it beneath their feet. All that is needed for a recovery of it in the 21st century is the rebuilding of the army.
Perhaps, too, another war is needed. In keeping with the past, that war would either be against France and England (now a distant possibility) or Russia (now a close possibility).
VI.
One beneficial outcome of the present war is that we are no longer paying attention to the Covidians. The Covidians had been waging their own war, a war against all of humanity, since 2020, but by the start of 2022, their offensive - which had been extraordinarily successful - was running out of steam, as all offensives do eventually; and the Russo-Ukraine war drove the final nail into the coffin. Human nature, long repressed, had reasserted itself. For two years, we had been forced to make 'safety' the supreme value; we had been locked in our homes, been made to take injections, etc., etc., all in the name of 'staying safe'. As a counter-reaction to this, now a sort of war fever has broken out. One of the phenomena that always accompanies such a fever is the sight of men who are rushing to the front, volunteering to fight, deliberately placing themselves in danger - all of which is the very reverse of the Covidian ethos. (Ironically, both Ukraine and Russia were in thrall to the Covidians before the war and had adopted a harsh Covidian regime (not dissimilar to the one that pervades in Australia and New Zealand), one which I imagine has been now largely swept away). Covidianism has been sidetracked, and much of that is due to the problem of scarce resource allocation, or economics, that surfaces at a time of war. The satisfaction of the wants of the Covidians clashes with those of the warriors. A soldier cannot be expected to wear a muzzle-mask and follow the injunction to 'stay safe' while coming under enemy fire; an army recruiter who is desperately short of manpower cannot be expected to bar the 'unvaxxed' from enlisting. In 2022, a nation can either allocate scarce resources to war or Covidianism; there is no middle ground.
So the war has already produced one beneficial outcome; and it may produce more. Let us look at the effects of a war upon Germany; suppose Germany was mobilised for what Ludendorff (the WWI German general) called 'total war'? The investment of scarce resources into war - and total war demands the investment of all of those resources - means that certain parasitic, anti-national elements in German life would be starved. It is almost as if there are two competing spheres, the 'militarist' and the 'anti-national', and if the former expands at the expense of the latter, then the latter is pushed out and made smaller. This principle - which only applies, perhaps, to the Germans - explains why it is that they were so 'unpozzed' before 1945. A military tradition had existed for hundreds of years, a distinctly Prussian one, which formed the backbone of the nation, and it had consistently - and effortlessly - repelled the 'anti-national' elements and forced them to the margins of national life.
Does that tradition exist today? Survivals did exist in the army of the Bonn Republic, as we have seen, and the army of the DDR. The East German army, the National People's Army (NVA), notoriously drew upon Wehrmacht dress and drill. One can see this in evidence in the many YouTube clips of the NVA marches; a snide person in the comments of one of these remarked that East Germany was so poor, it could not afford new uniforms and so had to use 'Nazi' ones (which was a low blow, but perhaps true). What is interesting is that the Russians, and the East German communists, allowed this. The survivals of the old, prewar German army in both East and West Germany indicate that either the Americans and the Russians could not extirpate the German military tradition completely or at least felt that a complete extirpation was not desirable.
VII.
I agree with the Russian white nationalist Wolf Stoner that the war represents a turning history in the West; and furthermore, it exposes certain underlying realities of human existence. As such, Stoner believes that a return to 'normiedom' is impossible - at least for now. The prospect of more war, and not less, looms on the horizon: Russia is slating Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Moldova and Kazakhstan (!) for 'de-Nazification' ('Besides Ukraine, Russia Must "De-Nazify" Six More Countries, Moscow Deputy Says'). Russia lacks the military capacity to make good on these threats, of course, but that hardly matters - what does is that the threats are being made and the world is taking them seriously.
What has concerned me here are not the consequences for Russia, or even Ukraine, but Europe. One of the consequences is that Germany has moved by a small increment to where it was a hundred years ago. This movement, small as it is, has proven too much for some, as this post by a German at 4Chan shows:
Supposing that Germany reintroduced conscription (which was abolished there in 2011), built up an army of up to a million strong, and threw into battle in 'the East'; the experience of war would permanently alter the lives of German men - and their ideology. The Freikorps sprang up after WWI because hundreds of thousands of German men were unable to return to civilian life.
Two ironies have emerged. Putin intended to prevent 'NATO expansionism' by force, but has only ended up NATO-ifying Ukraine; Putin intended to combat 'Nazism', but has only pushed Germany closer to 'Nazism' - the real 'Nazism', that is, not some hallucinatory construct - than at any time in the past seventy-five years.
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