If further proof were needed that Germany’s ruling class is capable of the same criminal methods as the American one, it was provided by the servile and repulsive appearance of Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) at the White House on Tuesday. Merz quite literally kissed the ring of the fascistic gangster and warmonger Trump.
Before the cameras, Merz could not move quickly enough to assure US President Donald Trump of his full support for the illegal war of aggression waged by the United States and Israel against Iran. He began his opening statement with the words:
Thank you, Mr. President for having me here in this Oval Office for the third time now. ... I’m really happy to have the opportunity to speak with you in these challenging times. We are on the same page in terms of getting this terrible regime in Tehran away and we will talk about the day after what will happen then if they are out.
This is unmistakable. Berlin supports the US-Israeli campaign of destruction against Iran in order to secure its share of the imperialist spoils. Merz did not mention a single one of the war crimes already committed—including the attack on a girls’ school that killed more than 150 people. On the contrary, he repeatedly grinned approvingly at the cameras as Trump, in the manner of a fascistic strongman, boasted about the destruction of Iran and the targeted assassination of its political leadership.
At the beginning of the press conference, Trump explicitly thanked Merz for his “support” and openly expressed his lust for killing and destruction: “They have no navy. It’s been knocked out. They have no air force, that’s been knocked out. They have no air detection, that’s been knocked out. Their radar has been knocked out. And just about everything’s been knocked out.”
Later, when asked about possible negotiations, he replied:
Well, most of the people we had in mind are dead. So, you know, we had some in mind from that group that is dead. And now we have another group. They may be dead also based on reports. So I guess you have a third wave coming and pretty soon we’re not going to know anybody.
These statements are nothing less than open declarations of state-organized murder. The fact that the German chancellor listened without objection and nodded in agreement exposes the German government as a direct accomplice to a crime comparable to those of the Nazis. Waging a war of aggression was condemned in the Nuremberg Trials as a “crime against peace” and is also a criminal offense under Germany’s Basic Law.
The entire meeting in the Oval Office had the character of a Mafia gathering. While the capo di tutti capi Trump launched into endless monologues full of threats—including against nominal allies such as Spain and Britain—the delegations sat silently before him. Merz used every opportunity to voice his agreement.
When a reporter asked Merz what he thought about Trump’s intention to punish Spain for failing to meet NATO spending targets and for refusing to provide Spanish military bases for the war, the chancellor openly sided with Trump:
Well, the answer on that is quite simple. We are trying to convince Spain to catch up with the 3% or 3.5%, which we agreed on in NATO. And as the president said, it’s correct, Spain is the only one who is not willing to accept that. And we are trying to convince them that this is part of our common security, that we all have to comply with these numbers. And this is 3.5 for military and another 1.5 for our military infrastructure. So Spain has to comply with that.
Such threats against a European partner state underline that German imperialism, just as in the first half of the 20th century, is once again prepared to ruthlessly assert its dominance in Europe. Merz and the German government have openly declared their aim of building up the Bundeswehr into the strongest military force in Europe and making the entire country “kriegstüchtig” (ready for war).
This is why Merz and Germany’s ruling class, despite all transatlantic tensions, feel a distinct fascination with the fascist in the White House. They know that the realization of their own great-power ambitions, as in the past, requires the establishment of a fascistic dictatorship at home. Trump’s construction of a brutal police and military state is not regarded as a warning but as a model.
Merz nodded approvingly as Trump railed against “illegal migration” and berated former Chancellor and CDU leader Angela Merkel for her supposedly overly soft immigration policy.
At the same time, the former BlackRock banker adopted the mafia-like language of the US president himself. One also had to speak about Ukraine, he declared, because there were “actually too many ‘bad guys’ in this world.” After the killing of the Iranian “bad guy” Khamenei, this amounts to a barely veiled threat to place other heads of state—above all Russian President Vladimir Putin—in the crosshairs.
The concern driving Merz is not the war against Iran, but whether the United States will continue the NATO war against Russia with the same aggressiveness. Berlin has closely tied its strategic fate to the escalation of the war in Ukraine and the subjugation of Russia, using the conflict to massively rearm and aggressively pursue its geopolitical and economic interests.
The war fronts in Ukraine and the Middle East are expressions of the same global development: the desperate attempt by the imperialist powers to secure their dominance through military force amid the deepest crisis of world capitalism since the 1930s. The attack on Iran is not an isolated event but part of an imperialist redivision of the world through war.
Only in this context can Merz’s aggressiveness and simultaneous subservience toward Trump be understood. As long as German imperialism is not yet militarily capable of openly confronting the United States, it seeks to realize its aims as Washington’s junior partner. The interests it pursues are no less reactionary—and the methods no less barbaric.