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Guest Article: Spotlight on German Defense

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By

Gen. (ret.) Dr. Erich Vad*

Since Russia launched its full-blown attack against Ukraine in February 2022, Germany has become one of the Ukrainian largest arms suppliers — incurring costs in the billions of euros. This spending and the decision-making behind it have thrown into stark relief at least two things: major shifts in German security policy, and the difficult balancing acts facing the country’s leaders.

What the War Has Revealed About the State and Focus of the German Military

Starting in 2022, Germany has become the third-largest provider of military support for Ukraine after the US and the UK. It sent goods worth a total of €2 billion (~$2.2 billion). Including multiple rocket launchers, self-propelled howitzers, and self-propelled, tracked, air defense systems. A further €2.3 billion (~$2.5 billion) in spending is scheduled for 2023. Including, this time, 18 modern Leopard 2A6 main battle tanks, former East German Mig-29 fighters, and Patriot air defense systems.

Coming on top of aid provided by other NATO countries, this largesse has had a tangible impact on the Ukrainian armed forces’ capabilities. However, it has also come at a significant cost for Germany’s own defense. So much so that Germany’s commitments to its NATO allies, as well as its ability to defend themselves, are now in danger of being compromised.

Even more important, Russia’s attack on Ukraine has fundamentally changed threat perceptions in Germany. For the first time since the end of the Cold War over 30 years ago, German defense policy is once again focused on Central Europe. The era of German peacekeeping missions abroad–in the Balkans, in Mali and in Afghanistan—is over. However, while the focus of German security policy is changing, the Bundeswehr does not have the capability to back the change.

The list of problems is almost endless. Including a shortage of armored and mechanized units; inadequate stocks of ammunition; long-neglected, out of date, facilities such as barracks; to mention but a few. The new minister of defense, Boris Pistorius, is doing what he can to correct these deficiencies. Inevitably, though, doing so will take time.

Nor is the establishment of a special fund of €100 billion (~$110 billion) for military refurbishments going to be a game changer. By my estimate, to restore operational readiness three times that sum would be needed. The necessary ammunition alone would cost at least €20 billion (~$22 billion), while urgent fixes for the ailing infrastructure would call for an additional €50 billion (~$55 billion). And new frigates, tanks and F-35 fighter aircraft have yet to be paid for.

Beyond these hardware-related risks an even greater threat is looming: that of the dire shortfalls in personnel. Following German reunification the Bundeswehr had around 460,000 soldiers. Since then it has been gradually reduced in size until, today, only about 183,000 are left. Currently plans are aiming at an additional 20,000 in 2031—hardly enough to make much of a difference.

Restoring the Bundeswehr’s Operational Readiness Will Take Years

Starting in 1990, Germany believed it could afford to neglect national and alliance defense because the threat situation was quite different. In retrospect, this was short-sighted. The fundamental failure was that Germany “imported” much of its national and alliance defense security, primarily from the U.S. At the same time, it generated a considerable amount of its wealth in China, the geostrategic rival of the U.S, and the West more broadly. And it also imported cheap energy from Russia.

The Bundeswehr’s foreign missions, first and foremost in Afghanistan, dominated the political spotlight and had to proceed, while the rest of its commitments did not seem to matter. To meet ongoing foreign missions personnel and materiel were scrounged from hundreds of Bundeswehr locations. Meanwhile, armament procurement concentrated on armored transport vehicles rather than on battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. This and the ever-decreasing quantities of new equipment also led to reallocation and relocation measures on the part of the defense industry.

Again starting in 1990, every military reform in Germany has been intended, not to strengthen the Bundeswehr in terms of national and alliance defense but to make it smaller and cheaper. The Bundeswehr now has fewer battle-ready tanks than Switzerland and fewer ships than the Netherlands. The hasty phase-out of conscription in 2011 exacerbates the Bundeswehr’s personnel situation to this day. A return to compulsory military service is under discussion, but is not very realistic even though similar policies have been implemented in frontline states such as Lithuania.

At the time, the suspension of conscription at the time was supported by the military leadership because it freed up tens of thousands of professional and temporary soldiers — who had previously been bound by conscription as instructors — for deployment abroad. In the process, however, massive personnel problems arose: Today some 20,000 positions in the Bundeswehr remain unfilled, trend growing. This policy has been repeatedly and rightly criticized and is finally coming to an end. Leading, one can only hope, to the fastest possible rebuilding of Germany’s defense capability within the NATO framework.

What the Future Should Hold for NATO

It is foreseeable that NATO — including new alliance partners such as Sweden (yet to be accepted) and Finland (already accepted) — will have to build up a completely new front line of defense against Russia, and, still in the background, against China as well — from the North Cape to the Black Sea. This line must be capable of being defended if necessary. The NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997, which commits the signatories to refrain from permanently stationing substantial combat forces, is hanging by a thread. Whether it will survive remains to be seen.

In any case, Germany will have to be prepared to deploy even more military forces to potential conflict regions in Eastern Europe than it did during the Cold War. In the future, the first priority will be to strengthen the “frontline states.” In all likelihood, Ukraine will — or may even already — be one of them, when it comes to the advance deployment of equipment, ammunition and material. Following NATO directives, Germany must provide about 30,000 troops and 85 aircraft and ships at high readiness for NATO’s defense of Europe by 2025. To this end, Germany would have to establish at least one mechanized division. In addition, it would have to provide a brigade for the Baltic States, which NATO now wants to be able to defend from Day 1, with a high level of readiness. Whether this is realistic remains to be seen. Certainly it will be an enormous feat. The more so because Germany and its European allies can no longer count on our most important ally, the U.S, whose focus is the Indo-Pacific.

Moreover, the course of the Russian-Ukrainian war shows that NATO’s easternmost member states — especially Poland, and certainly Finland in the future — will play a strategically more important role in the transatlantic alliance. Germany continues to be an important logistical hub for NATO’s European defense, but it is no longer a central frontline state as it was during the Cold War.

Time for reorganizing German and European defense is running out. The Russian-Ukrainian war has highlighted different threat perceptions and interests among the European allies, which will have to be balanced in the future. The new frontline states vis-à-vis Russia — above all Poland and the Baltic States — show very little willingness to compromise. Steering the opposite course, France in particular would like to enter negotiations so as to end the war as soon as possible.

While pursuing a substantial increase in the Alliance’s military capabilities, NATO strategists should also keep in mind that the integration of artificial intelligence as a universally applicable technology and robotics will change war to change. If we want to keep pace as a military power in the future, we must have technological leadership in the air, on and under the water, on earth, in space, and, above all, in cyberspace. Along with digitalization, space is becoming increasingly important for all major world powers. Satellites are intimately connected to the global web of communication. Recent developments in hypersonic weapons — which can penetrate all conventional defense systems — raise the relevance of space-based observation and cyber capabilities. Without space security, we cannot rely on digital security on earth. Technological leadership in networked digitalization will ultimately be decisive. However, Europe can only achieve this together with — not separated or autonomously from — the United States.

Limits of the EU’s ‘Self-Defense’

While calling for a peaceful resolution of the Russian-Ukrainian war, France’s Emmanuel Macron has also been pushing for augmenting Europe’s ability to defend itself without American aid. Doing so would mean spending four to six percent of GDP on defense— as compared with the current two percent. At present, I don’t see sufficient political will among EU members to spend that kind of money, especially if ordinary European citizens learn what the oft-repeated demand for more European “strategic autonomy” would actually cost them.

EU states are already spending around 200 billion euros (~$219 billion) on defense every year. At market exchange rates that is about 3 times as much as the Russian budget and not much less than the Chinese one, though it bears noting that the European advantage would be less dramatic if one were to measure these counties’ defense expenditures with an eye to purchasing power parity (PPP). And yet no one is taking the Europeans seriously in the military field. Why? First, the EU states are wasting enormous sums in the defense sector through countless duplications of production lines, weapons programs, national certifications and general egoism — not to mention an overall lack of synergies. Combined, these factors result in constantly shifting security policies, to Europe’s detriment–obstructing its ability to act militarily and autonomously. Second, the EU is still a long way from achieving commonality in military equipment, joint logistics or coherent armaments cooperation. Third, the EU continues to lag behind the U.S in terms of military digitization, the use of space, communications and reconnaissance, and especially in strategic air transport capabilities.

Conclusion

Russia’s attack on Ukraine and Germany’s response to it, including the provision of military aid, much of which has come from Bundeswehr’s immediate inventory, to Kyiv, has highlighted the neglected state and outdated focus of the German armed forces. The war has spurred a much-needed change of this focus from peacekeeping missions to the defense of NATO and of Germany itself. As important, the German government has begun to invest in restoring the operational readiness of the Bundeswehr. But what has been pledged so far is not enough, for it will take years to restore that readiness at the current pace. More important, Germany cannot go it alone. Other European members of NATO should also up the ante to ensure their collective defense capabilities are adequate in the face of the new threats, especially as the U.S. focuses on the Indo-Pacific. In spite of this focus, however, the U.S. will remain indispensable when it comes to the defense of Europe. It is clear that without the United States, Europe cannot strategically balance powers like China or Russia, or even NATO partners like Turkey.

Europe, in my view, will continue to rely on America’s nuclear umbrella, its digital, technological and maritime leadership, and its capability spectrum in cyberspace and outer space for the foreseeable future. Ultimately, enhancements of military capabilities alone won’t make Europe secure either now or in the longer term. Thus, while continuing to aid Ukraine, Germany, France and other members of the EU should join forces in undertaking a political initiative aimed at ending the war and finding a sustainable solution to the conflict.

 

* Dr. Erich Vad is founder and owner of Erich Vad Consulting. A retired Bundeswehr general, from 2006 to 2013 he served as German Chancellor Angela Merkel`s military policy adviser. 

The General in General

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I’ve just learnt that the new German government is preparing to put a former Bundeswehr general (he used to command a tank brigade) in charge of the country’s COVID-19 Crisis Staff. As a fairly well known military historian, it has been my good (or bad?) fortune to meet quite some generals in many of the world’s countries where I was invited to speak. Germany included. So when my editor, Andreas Rosenfelder, asked me to do a short article about generals—a sort of Jungian analysis of the architype, I suppose—I jumped at the opportunity.
Some members of the species I met were polite, thoughtful, soft-spoken and possessed of a fine sense of humor. As, for example, the late Colin Powell, who during the first Gulf War served as Chief of the Joint Chief of Staffs and later became President Bush Jr.’s secretary of state, did. Others, who in this essay will remain unnamed, were unpleasant and even offensive. At least one was a real bastard. Perhaps that was because, at the time we met, he had just been told that, contrary to his expectations, the post he was then holding would be his last. Too much of a roughneck, not sufficiently good as a diplomat, people said. Understandably, he was in a bad mood.
To generalize from this, on day X you are a great man. With thousands and even tens of thousands of soldiers obeying your orders and a staff that laughs at every joke you make. One general told me that, before he was promoted, he did not know what a good sense of humor he had. If you live on base, on day X+1 everyone can watch you as, having retired, you are evicted from your nice government-owned quarters. Trailed by your wife, you find yourself carrying your belongings to a waiting van. Some onlookers, especially those who took your place, enjoy the spectacle. But for you it is not fun.
Generals I met tended to have several things in common. First, they had big egos—they have to. Second, many of them look down on their civilian opposite numbers. In Germany in the bad old days before 1945, General Staff officers sometimes referred to the foreign ministry as The Idiot House. Not always without reason, I should add. One former Israeli general, a bona fide genius in fields such as math, computers and operations research, told me more or less the same about the Knesset of which, following his retirement, he was briefly a member. Only to run for his life as soon as he could.
Third, though there are exceptions (with, at their head, Helmut von Moltke Sr.) very few generals are scholarly types. I even suspect that the reason why some of them embarked on a military career was precisely because they thought, often mistakenly, that it would not involve them in much reading and writing. Some went so far as to express their contempt for scribblers such as myself. But not all. I vividly remember an evening I spent at Camberley, England, the base where the British Army’s Staff College was located. It being dark and foggy, like some figure out of a Brothers Grimm tale I lost my way. Blindly, I wandered about the base until I saw a light. I went up, and knocked at the door. It opened and I found myself standing in front of the commander of the Army’s officer education system, General Sir Charles Waters.
It was winter and, instead of shoes, he was wearing white socks. He recognized me and asked me to come in. He sat me down, gave me a glass of sherry, and pointed to the eight books he was reading at the same time—if memory serves me right, most of them about nonmilitary subjects. Then he told me that his next job would be that of commander in chief, British Army, Northern Ireland (I think this was in 1989, and the struggle with the IRA terrorists was still ongoing). In this post, he said, he would try to make sure that as few people as possible would die. On both sides. I thought then, and think now, that it was a very sensible approach indeed. As became clear some years later when, during the watch of another British general I knew, Sir Rupert Smith, a peace agreement was signed.
Fourth, given how rapidly complex modern technology changes, generals are used—as they have to be–to dealing with things they do not understand. Is that the reason why Germany’s new government is considering General Carsten Breuer for the job? Makes you wonder.
There is only one specific drawback of the disorder and the pill, which is that one, cannot really get over the problem completely from their life by the use of uk cialis . This is downtownsault.org levitra online sales true about everything, including driving. Eight of his twenty years, he served as the San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs’ Association President; bettering work related conditions in the Sheriff’s Department, representing deputies in work related incidents, contract negotiating, changing the employee status in the levitra generic cheap charter and elevating deputy sheriff’s status in the community. Adolescence to Age best price on viagra 40 When you are young or an old adult, all men need sexual stamina and libido. Fifth, my favorite generals are Brits. They tend to be more relaxed and more civilized than either American or Israeli ones. German generals are also OK—except that, as one of them once said, they and the army in which they serve are part of “a broken nation.” Wrong if they do, and wrong if they don’t. No wonder the Bundeswehr smells like a mixture of bureaucracy and political correctness. Please excuse me for existing, is what they say. The higher one gets, the more true that is.
There are also a few female generals. A close friend of mine, himself a former general, prefers them to male ones. Why? Because some of them have nice legs. Much better than beer bellies, he says
Here are some other considerations that people may find interesting.
First, generals are used to move from one job to another (starting with Napoleon, in all modern armies, officers, to gain promotion, are rotated between commanding units, staff work, and training).
Second, they tend to be good organizers. As, for example, Leslie Groves, the general who ran the Manhattan Project, was.
Third, they tend to be very hard workers. As a rule modern armies, with the American one at their head, do not tolerate layabouts. If there is no work to be done, sure as hell they will create it. Neither Kutusov, who commanded the Tsar’s armies against Napoleon in 1812, nor “Pere” Joffre, who saved France from the 1914 German invasion, would have made it today.
Fourth generals, assigned to a civilian job, may do very well. As, for example, Dwight Eisenhower did. Or take two of my own country’s generals, Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon. Rabin played a crucial part in the great Israeli victory of June 1967; later he became a good prime minister. Sharon was perhaps the greatest warrior Israel ever produced, and he too turned out to be a good and courageous prime minister. By contrast Ehud Barak, a protégé of Rabin’s and a superb soldier (special forces), made a less than mediocre one.
Finally, never forget that generals have the hardest job of all. To wit, sending men to their death. America’s general George Patton was not exactly known for his delicate feelings. Yet on one occasion, visiting the wounded in hospital, he broke down and said that, if only he had been a better general, these poor people would not have been where they were. Even if the story is fake, which it may well be, still it shows what being a general is really like.
Briefly, generals are a tribe of their own. There is no saying what a general may do; in that respect they are much like the rest of us. To repeat, I do not know why the German Government chose General Breuer for the job. So all I can say is, good luck.

Fighting Power

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Note: This is a somewhat edited version of an article I did for a German magazine. While aimed at German readers and focusing on the state of the German Bundeswehr, I hope it will interest some non-German readers as well.

*

War is the most important thing in the world. When hard meets hard it rules over the existence of every single country, government, and individual. As current events in Tigray are showing once again, neither the old nor the young are immune against its horrors. That is why, though it may come but once in a hundred years, it must be prepared for every day. When the bodies lie cold and stiff and the survivors mourn over them, those in charge have not done their duty, said the ancient Chinese commander/philosopher Wu Zu.

To accomplish anything great the cooperation of many people is required. As, for example, when 100,000 men spent twenty years erecting the great pyramid at Giza. To be sure, the requirement for cooperation is similar in peace and war. However, war is not like building a pyramid. Ancient or modern, what sets war apart is that this cooperation must be achieved and maintained in the face, not just of every kind of hardship but of an enemy who is deliberately trying to kill you.

Organizing, equipping, supplying and training an army is difficult enough. Yet motivating the troops to the point where they are ready to give their lives for the Cause, as well as each other, is much more so still. Unless it is imbued with this spirit, an army is but a broken reed. From the Greek victory over the Persians at Marathon in 490 BCE to the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War, countless are the cases when small but determined forces clashed with larger, stronger, better armed enemies—and defeated them.

War is a chameleon; everything in it keeps changing all the time. Including technology—from stones and clubs to laser weapons—tactics, strategy, logistics, communication, intelligence, the lot. By contrast, the prerequisites of fighting power being rooted in human nature, have remained always the same. Caesar had his troops decorate their scabbards with gold and silver studs. Napoleon said that it is with colored ribbons that soldiers are led.

The ancient Greeks had a saying: X, or Y, was brave that day. Meaning that a person’s record in war is of limited use in predicting his future performance. The same applies to fighting power of an army. The fact that it fought well in the past does not necessarily mean it will do so again. And the other way around.

*

The role of fighting power in war cannot be exaggerated. But how is it created and, which is even more difficult, maintained over time? The following is a very short list of the principles involved.

* War is the continuation of politics with an admixture of other means. Nevertheless fighting power is only partly dependent on politics. Historically speaking, some despotic societies have possessed it to a very high degree. On the other hand, as France in 1939-40 showed, democracies are not necessarily immune against defeatism.

* Whatever the political regime, it is essential that the troops have the support and respect of civilian society. Above all, male soldiers—even today in every army, practically all combat troops are male—must enjoy the support and respect of their womenfolk. The right to “kiss and be kissed,” as Plato puts it. Or else why should they fight?
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* The cause for which troops are called upon must be, or at any rate must be experienced as, just. Why? Because no soldiers are so foolish as to lay down their lives for a cause they consider unjust.

* Turning recruits into an army prepared to fight and die if necessary requires that they know and trust both their commander and each other. However, such knowledge and trust are not born in a day. That is why the authorities should do everything to make the troops stay together for as long as possible. As, for example, by returning those who have recovered from their injuries to their own units rather than to some centralized pool.

* Another indispensable prerequisite of fighting power is discipline. Both trust and discipline require that the troops be treated in a way that is, and is seen to be, just. Rewards and punishments must be distributed in proportion to each soldier’s merits, the risks he is made to take, and the responsibility he carries. They must also be timely; or else they are going to lose much of their force.

* The first concern of commanders must be to accomplish their mission. The second, to look after their troops; to do so they must live with them and share joy and sorrow with them. Overall, the best way to command is by example.

* Fighting power is the outgrowth of shared effort, suffering, and risk-taking.  Conversely, any training that does not involve at least some danger will end by degenerating into a childish game.

* Finally, the form manifest of fighting power is what, in one of my books, I have called the culture of war. Including certain forms of shared bearing, discipline, dress, symbols, language, music, ceremonies, etc. As with trust, these things, if they are to mean anything, cannot be stamped out of the ground. They can only emerge from a long tradition, and, ultimately, history. To be sure, spit and polish, as it is known, can be overdone. In case it is it may turn a military into an army of soul-less robots; as, for example, happened in the Prussian Army between 1786 (the death of Frederick the Great) and 1806 (the disastrous battle of Jena). On the other hand, a military that cannot look on its history with pride is, in reality, not a military at all.

*

I am not a German and I do not live in Germany. Though I have studied German military history in some depth, present-day German security is only of marginal interest to me. It is not I but Germans who should answer the following questions: does the Bundeswehr have the fighting power it needs to fight? If not, why? What can be done to change the situation? How to deal with the, how shall I put it, not so glorious past?

The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind.

Nailed to the Swastika

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There used to be a time, starting with Frederick the Great and stretching well into World War II, when the Prussian/German military was universally respected, often admired. Foreigners from all over the world flocked to study it—as, for example, US General Emory Upton (The Armies of Europe and Asia, 1878) and British militry author Wilkinson Spenser, (The Brain of an Army, 1895) did. When Japan started modernizing its army in the 1870s it turned to Germany as a matter of course. In several Latin American countries, notably Chile, German military influence is visible (and audible; they love to perform their exercises to Wagner’s music) right down to the present day.

In part, this admiration was due to Germany’s military performance which, starting in 1866. became almost legendary. In part, it was due to the German military spirit. That spirit in turn was anchored in what, in one of my books, I have called Kriegskultur. Kriegskultur is the concrete expression of everything an army fights for. Often the product of centuries of development, some of it spontaneous, some deliberate, it consists of symbols, ceremonies, traditions, and customs; the uniforms, the marching songs, and so on. Between them they form the corset that holds an army together, so to speak. It is they which turn it from a haphazard gathering of unruly men into a cohesive body capable of fighting and, if necessary, dying for the cause.

That, however, was before 1945. True, the War Criminals’ Trials never formally declared the Wehrmacht to be a criminal organization as they did other Nazi organizations, including the Waffen SS. As the years went by and more information came to light, though, its involvement in war crimes—including widespread looting, the extreme mistreatment of Soviet prisoners of war, hostage taking, massacres of civilians, and logistic and administrative support for the extermination of the Jews—became undeniable. This involvement caused German Kriegskultur (military culture), long considered exemplary and widely imitated, to fall under a cloud. More so in Germany, paradoxically, than abroad. To provide just one example, in most other countries models of aircraft, tanks, etc. bearing the swastika can be freely bought and publicly displayed. The same applies to books, magazines, memorabilia etc. Not so in Germany where all of this is verboten and can easily lead to criminal prosecution.

To avoid any association with National Socialism, the Bundeswehr’s bases and casernes were cleansed. Not once but repeatedly as successive ministers of defense sought to leave their impact and make headlines. Statues and paintings and old uniforms, flags and standards and trophies, disappeared as if by magic. So, if certain left-wing critics have their way, will the name of anyone who had served in the Wehrmacht. Take the case of pilot-officer Hans-Joachim Marseille. Marseille, whom no one has ever accused of being involved in war crimes or even of being aware of them, shot down no fewer than 158 enemy aircraft. In 1942, when just 22 years old, he was killed when the engine of his Messerschmidt gave up the ghost. In 1975 he had a Luftwaffe base named after him. Now, if the critics have their way, he will be made into an unperson. Such, such are the rewards for serving the German fatherland.

Even cheapest viagra from india more importantly, the inner working, mechanical aspects of your vehicle will also suffer from the build up of scar tissue (accumulation of garbage) is really the root cause of the problem. It is the condition that can cause people a lot of problems and are viagra france not easy to find a church that shows this community spirit in modern times. Today these medications have found a dominating position viagra prescription in various countries. The levitra uk http://www.devensec.com/minutes-archive.html treatment is suitable for most apart from users already taking or planning to take Nitrate based medications. Perhaps it was inevitable that, as time went on, the cleansing process should stretch backward in time to cover not just the terrible years after 1933 but those before it as well. No one who has visited bases and casernes in many countries, as I have, can fail to notice how utilitarian, how bare, how soul-less, German ones appear in comparison with foreign ones. For example, at the Clausewitz-Caserne in Hamburg, home to the staff college, which I last visited some years ago, one will look in vain for any reference to the commanders who, for good or ill, did so much to make Germany into the country it is. Not to Seeckt. Not to Hindenburg. Not to Ludendorff. Not to Schlieffen. Not to Moltke. Not (which God forbid) to Frederick the Great. Not to any of their subordinates. In the whole of German history, apparently the only conflict to receive the kosher stamp are the Wars of Liberation of 1813-15.

Now minister of defense Ursula von der Leyen has begun yet another round of cleansing. Among the victims is former chancellor and her fellow Social-Democrat Helmut Schmidt. A photograph of him in Wehrmacht uniform—he was a junior officer at the time—is being removed from the Bundeswehr-University which, serving as minister of defense (1969-72), he founded. No doubt it is only a question of time before he too is made into an unperson. As usual, the declared objective is to rid the Bundeswehr from anything that might link soldiers with the past. One must, however, ask where, when, and whether the process will ever stop. Also what the impact on fighting power is going to be; given that, to repeat, an army without a military culture is inconceivable.

Nor is the problem limited to the Bundeswehr alone. By committing the crimes it did in 1933-45, the German people nailed itself to the Swastika. Just as Jesus was nailed to the cross. But Jesus was taken down after only six hours. Not so the German people, which is almost certain to remain where it is as long as human memory lasts. Without respite and without hope of leaving its past behind.

That, I well know, is highly unfair to a great many Germans born before 1927 and to all of those who were born after that date. Including my friends, of whom I am very fond indeed. Nevertheless, being a Jew and an Israeli several of whose family members perished during the Holocaust, in all honesty I cannot see how it can be solved.