Germany’s moral accountability for Nazi crimes means it owes Ukraine a greater debt than it does Russia. But the moral corruption of Germany today has the country siding with the invader, fascist Russia, over the defender, democratic Ukraine, in the war in Europe.
Ukraine was completely occupied by the Nazi German invaders. At least 8 million Ukrainians were killed in World War II. 95 percent of all Ukrainians who are Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. But after the war Ukraine wasn’t liberated as France was. It was reoccupied by Stalin.
Post-war Germany underwent denazification. Germans came to acknowledge a moral responsibility for the crimes of the Nazi era. But an “Ostpolitik” corruption took root in German elites that projected obligations to Russia and ignored Ukraine.
At the 2008 Bucharest summit, NATO allies promised Georgia and Ukraine membership. Germany blocked their entry. This betrayal precipitated Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014.
Since #RussiaInvadedUkraine Germany has given effective support to the Putin regime and none to Ukrainians defending Europe. Siemens provided generators to the Russian occupiers of Crimea. Germany won’t help Ukraine, refusing to send military trainers or to supply weapons.
Germany is an obdurate supporter of Russia’s #NordStream2 war project. German elites refuse to listen to peer democracies telling them to stop it: Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, the United States and others. Germany listens only to authoritarian Russia.
Russian imperialism has at its core the notion that Ukrainians are sub-human Malorossiyans or “Little Russians.” The heart of Naziism is that Ukrainians as Slavs are Untermenschen or “inferior people.” This racism comes together in the loose Russo-German axis at war with Ukraine.
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