Germany

nation state

Germany  link Sourcewatch Wikiquote
Capital city	Berlin
Location	Europe
Leader	Chancellor of Germany
Type	nation state
Subgroups	Bundesnachrichtendienst,German Federal Foreign Office
"The economic powerhouse of Europe" - Germany dominates the European Union.

Germany is a nation state in Europe. In 2020, it was #7 in the world in terms of military expenditure. Germany ranked 5^th worldwide as regards arms exports in 2018-2022, after 4 UN Security Council members, US, Russia, China and France.

History

Following defeat in World War I, Germany lost control of its colonies. To this day, Germany refuses to compensate directly the descendants of people that were murdered during German colonial rule in Africa.

Under Hitler's rule, Germany quickly became a totalitarian state where many aspects of life were controlled by the government. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", referred to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945, after only 12 years, when the Allies defeated Germany and entered the capital, Berlin, ending World War II in Europe.

Full article: Kanzlerakte

Following defeat in 1945, it was partitioned into two separate states, East (German Democratic Republic) & West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany) and became a frontier state in the Cold War. {{#subobject: |Has superobject=Germany |Has objectClass=Quotation |Has author=Wolfgang Schäuble|+sep=, |Has text=“And we in Germany have not been fully sovereign at any time since May 8, 1945.” |Is about=Germany,|+sep=, |Has wikipediaPage= |Has location=|+sep=, |Has publicationDate=2011 |Sourced from= |Has sourceDetails=https://www.hna.de/politik/eine-rede-brisanz-1501143.html |Has sourceTitle= |Has sourceName= |Has sourceURL=

}}

“And we in Germany have not been fully sovereign at any time since May 8, 1945.”
Wolfgang Schäuble (2011) 

Parliamentary inquiries by The Left in 2015 about the status of Germany under international law, led to the following official answer:

"The Federal Constitutional Court has consistently ruled that the subject of international law "German Reich" * has not ceased to exist and that the Federal Republic of Germany is not its legal successor, but is identical to it as a subject of international law."

(*referring to the period of 1871 to 1945 [1])

All governments of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1989 consistently advocated the release of German war criminals and other Nazi criminals in other Western countries.

Social policies

After the reunification in 1990, when there was no competition between the two parts of Germany anymore, in which one defined itself as the "workers state" (east Germany), and the other tried to match the talk with social policies (west Germany), there was no incentive in the unified Germany to keep up welfare of prior times. Starting with Agenda 2010, and from there on more progressively, working conditions have worsened in many areas of the economy. The part of the society that is described as the working poor has increased in size.

Deep state

Full article: Germany/Deep state

File:Germany Deep state.jpg

After World War II, the US and UK deep states took the opportunity to try to establish clandestine control of the country, while also creating a plausible democratic process behinds which to hide their influence. The extent to which Operation Gladio was/is used is uncertain. Le Cercle has been an important deep state milieu for the post-WW2 German Deep state.

Policies

Deep Lobbying

Germany had a strange cooperation with Nuclear power in the 2020s. Germany closed its last nuclear power plant, a culmination of a wish following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. A strange form of deep lobbying as Germany had very little to do with the plant, no severe accidents have happened, and Germany was vital in not banning gas-fuelled cars in the EU.

Mass surveillance

Full article: Mass surveillance

In 2015, Germany signalled that it intended to ease laws that make it hard for organisations to operate open access public WiFi.

In 2016, a report indicated that the BND was planning a large increase in its mass surveillance capabilities.

In 2017, German authorities were revealed to be "preparing a law that will force device manufacturers to include backdoors within their products that law enforcement agencies could use at their discretion for legal investigations. The law would target all modern devices, such as cars, phones, computers, IoT products, and more."

Covid

At the beginning of 2020, the WEForum on their website mentions Germany as an example for how to fight the "epidemic" properly. By early 2021 some voices (like former Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière) call for changes in the constitution to enable a state of emergency more easily in the future.

Unvaccinated MPs are banned from attending the Bundestag (German Parliament).

Nuclear power

Germany closed its last nuclear power plant, a culmination of a wish following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. A strange form of deep lobbying as Germany had very little to do with the plant, no severe accidents have happened, and Germany was vital in in not banning gas-fuelled cars in the EU.

Freedom of speech

Full article: Freedom of speech

A poll conducted in 2019 found that only 18 percent of Germans feel free to express their views in public, over 31 percent of Germans did not even feel free expressing themselves in private among friends. Just 17 percent felt free to express themselves on the Internet and 35 percent said that freedom to speak is confined to the smallest of private circles.

The Chancellery and other ministries have, since 2018, paid journalist (from private sector and public broadcasters) high salaries for relative short time engagements. After initial redacted release and the uncovering of a portion of the names, the files have been classified.

Media

The commercially-controlled media in Germany is in the hands of a few families: Springer, Mohn, Burda, Madsack, Schaub, Funke, Ströer

Anonymous denunciation

In July 2023, an Orwellian named "Whistleblower Protection Act" came into force. The Act requires companies and institutions that employ more than 49 people to set up reporting points, in total more than 100,000 of these. The formal pretext is to let anyone who observes crimes or other offenses among their work colleagues can report them there, enabling whistleblowers to report grievances more securely.

The real purpose is to allow political denunciation of coworkers, since Act also applies "to the notification (...) and the disclosure (...) from information about (...) statements that constitute a violation of the obligation to adhere to the Constitution". The "whistleblower" can submit his report anonymously. Although the "whistleblower" might also submit "false reports", it is "forbidden" to sanction him on the basis of this. Anyone who nevertheless does this, has to expect a "fine of up to 50,000 euros".

Courts

Judges at the Federal Court of Justice (and other courts on that level: Federal Fiscal Court, Federal Labour Court) can earn substantial amounts of money on the side. The highest court in Germany, the Federal Constitutional Court, also does allow for casual earnings (but most judges there earn far less than some of the former courts).

Election fraud

Professor Jochen Renz pointed to several anomalies in multiple elections, especially in postal voting, concluding that they were because of election fraud:

• Postal voting in the 2004 Bundestag election tipped the result to the CDU, leading to Angela Merkel becoming Chancellor.

• In the 2013 Bundestag election, there was another significant impact of postal votes. Thus, the AfD received almost 5% of the votes (4.97%) in the primary election. If the AfD only gained slightly in the postal vote, it would have made the jump over the 5% hurdle and would have entered the Bundestag as early as 2013. In this election, the Greens benefited the most from the postal votes, which accounted for 10% of the postal votes, but only 7.9% of the electoral votes.

• In 2017, as in the 2013 Bundestag election, the AfD lost very badly due to the postal vote.

In the 2021 German parliamentary election, "widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome".

In the 2025 Bundestag election, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), opponents of German rearmament, failed at the five percent hurdle with 4.981 percent. 9,529 votes were missing nationwide. According to its own account, the BSW found incorrect assignments and plausibility problems in several electoral districts, including confusion with similar-sounding parties, inconsistent ballot control chains, and deviations between preliminary and official results, which would have led to it sitting in parliament with 35 deputies.

Continuity of elites

The sociologist and elite researcher Michael Hartmann concluded that in Germany, an elite of about 4,000 people dominates all major economic, political and legal decisions. The majority of this elite comes from the richest 4 percent of the population, and in impressive continuity since the imperial era long before World War 1.

References