Prominent Internal Opposition to the German CDU’s Militaristic Stance

To deliver a strong message on German Unity Day, at least 25,000 people gathered in Berlin on Oct. 3 for a major peace rally, with the participation of many organizations from both the traditional “left” and “right”, including the Civil Rights Movement Solidarity (Büso). Among the most prominent speakers were Sahra Wagenknecht, founder of the new BSW party, Peter Gauweiler of the CSU, one of the earliest signers of the Feb. 2023 Wagenknecht-Schwarzer anti-war petition, and Ralf Stegner of the SPD (cf. SAS 07/23).Wagenknecht, in her remarks, thanked Mikhail Gorbachev for making peaceful reunification in Germany possible, while blasting Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (of the Greens) for her enthusiastic support of NATO’s war policy, calling her the real “security risk” for Germany, in response to the minister’s comment on the BSW’s electoral gains.

The message running through all the speeches was loud and clear: stop the immediate escalation against Russia and in Southwest Asia, support negotiations, and prevent the stationing of U.S. long-range missiles in Germany.

The intervention by Peter Gauweiler was particularly important, coming from a well-known member of the conservative CSU (the sister party of the CDU in Bavaria), at a time when the CDU leader Friedrich Merz is threatening President Putin with wild ultimatums. “There is a fire burning in Europe and we have to convince the European Union and the political class in Germany that you cannot put this fire out with gasoline”, Gauweiler said. “Since the 1990s, Germany has been waging the so-called ‘wars for our values’ outside of any national defense. These began on March 24, 1999, with the bombing of the cities of Belgrade, Novi Sad and Podgorica and were still not over in August 2021 with the chaotic evacuation and withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Bundeswehr showed courage in the face of failure. But the complete uselessness of the missions was in inverse proportion to the number of victims. In the West’s wars for ‘our values’ since 1999, the total is over one million people. And now we have Crimea and the area along the lower reaches of the Don.”

Gauweiler further stressed that “I am not in favor of Germany being drawn more and more into the Russian-Ukrainian war by military means. I think it is sheer madness to let German missiles be fired at Russia now. The mere fact that responsible people are calling this an option is a further breach of the founding pledge of the Bundeswehr”, which states that the army will only be deployed to defend the country.