From Bremen: News media coverage from state-owned media like the ABC and BBC can’t be trusted. There is enough evidence of bias and fabrication that suits their state propaganda narrative for an independent spectator to be wary.

So, when I watched a news story where young German men were protesting against compulsory military service, I couldn’t be sure whether the broadcaster had hand-picked interviewees or whether young German men have been completely brain-washed by Woke ideology.

There are three things that really annoy me about the situation in Germany. First, the necessary apologies for the atrocities of the second world war have morphed into a kind of stupor where any talk of defence is somehow connected with there being ‘a different way’ to deal with dictators like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jingping. Of all people, Germans should know that an appeaser is easy pickings.

Second, Germany appears to be re-writing history at every opportunity. I suspect that this is where, in large part, Woke ideology sprang from in Europe. Germany had to reconstruct its identity several times including after the second world war, during the Cold War, and then again after reunification. It’s hard to put a positive spin on Germany’s history or to carve a respectable post-Westphalian Germanic identity without skipping over the first and second world wars. Yet that seems to be what Germany is trying to do.

Third, for all of Germany’s crapping on about gender ideology, it’s ironic that only young men will be required to ‘take a medical exam to assess their fitness for possible military service’. Immediately there were planned protests all over Germany.

I did not hear one self-identified trans person jumping up and down about being excluded from the requirement. It will also be interesting to see whether those who self-identify as men will also attend be required to attend the medicals.

Following perceived threats from Russia and under pressure from the US, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has ‘pledged to rebuild the Bundeswehr [Germany Armed Forces] into Europe’s strongest conventional army’. Military service will be voluntary at first, but the universal medical testing would enable Germany to quickly decide ‘who is operationally capable as a homeland protector and who is not’.

Angela Merkel cancelled compulsory military service in 2011.

On hearing the story while in Hamburg, I noticed a statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I which has been defaced with a weird gender ideology symbol. No attempt to remove the graffiti has been made, and I am pretty sure the offending criminal has no idea how the lives of others created a political system that allows them to be ignorantly protected (socialist activists in the 1890s and 1930s in Germany had no such protection) and to deface public property with no consequence.

But when it comes to defending such rights?

The young men protesting about military service said in interviews:

‘We’re here today because we’re fighting against the military service and against war. We as … youth don’t want to die in wars because of Germany.’

‘They’re saying its voluntary, but they also announced that if there aren’t enough volunteers, which there will be not, they will go back to the mandatory service. So that’s why we’re protesting now instead of when it’s too late.’

‘I personally do not think that military is an answer to anything. War is like always the worst thing you could even do’.

‘I believe it’s very important that we, the young people, can stand up for our interests and tell the old people that have all the powers to decide about a lot of things, that we still exist. We are the future of this nation. We are the future of the world entirely. I don’t want to be part of this war machine, so I’m definitely protesting that we will not be forcibly included into the army.’

From the mouths of babes. The naivety is beyond all reason and any sense of history.

When Germany attacked its unprepared neighbouring states in 1914 and again in 1939, such bold optimism spoken at student protests would have been washed away by the defenders’ own blood and sweat and tears.

While it is easy to criticise young people, they have been brainwashed by ongoing (albeit well-meaning) attempts to rewrite history throughout the West.

We stumbled upon one such example in Bremen, a memorial statue known as Der Elefant (The Elephant). The statue is now connected to the work of Nelson Mandela and celebrates anti-colonialism. But nothing could be further from its historical purpose.

The monument was built in 1932 by the Bremen Colonial Society as a memorial for ‘German soldiers who died in Germany’s colonies during the first world war’. The memorial was built as a reaction to the Treaty of Versailles which had stripped Germany of all her colonies, not to mention caused such economic hardship in Germany that the conditions were created for a madman to become chancellor.

At the opening of the monument, Chair of the Bremen section of the German Colonial Society, Eduard Achelis, said:

‘In this solemn hour dedicated to our colonies, may the whole German people step up … and unanimously shout to the world: Away with the events of the past, with lies and slander. We Germans demand our rights.’

Under the National Socialists, and following the unveiling of the monument, Bremen became known as the ‘Capital of the Colonies’.

Der Elefant was officially rededicated as an anti-colonial monument in 1990. Ironically, a plaque at the monument now reads:

‘This monument is a symbol of the responsibility we have inherited from history.’

I say ironic because the mistakes of the Treaty of Versailles were not entirely Germany’s fault. Acknowledging lessons from history, the American-led rapid redevelopment of Europe (and later Japan) after the second world war helped to prevent the levels of animosity evident at the end of the first world war.

(This was applicable to Australia, too. For example, Sir Robert Menzies signed the 1951 Japanese Peace Treaty, paving the way for the Anzus treaty. These treaties arguably enabled the historical conditions for today’s Quad relationship which includes Japan.)

If Germany and indeed the world are to learn anything from history it is that peace is created by being capable of great violence but acting with restraint. Being harmless means that you are just, well, harmless. Regrettably, that is how Western youth are shaping up to be, especially given the preparations currently being made by Russia and China, neither of which has a history of showing restraint.

One statue in Bremen that solves the problem of Germany identity (despite its twentieth-century legacy of crimes against humanity) is the Bremen Roland, erected in 1404.

Roland was one of Charlemagne’s legendary Twelve Peers (a continental version of King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table), a knight who was killed at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in 778 AD. He was the quintessential knight and came to symbolise the code of chivalry, and was romanticised in the oldest work in French literature, The Song of Roland.

In German cities, Roland came to symbolise civic liberty and freedom. The Bremen Roland is the oldest surviving example. The Grimm Brothers’ famous fairy tale, The Bremen Musicians, recalls the free spirit of the city in a story about a donkey, dog, cat, and rooster that are past their prime and mistreated by their owners. The story tells of their adventures on the way to Bremen to become musicians and enjoy the city’s freedoms.

My point is that Germany has a rich history that is worth defending. The trouble with revising history to suit modern senses of compassion or morality is that we effectively brainwash our young people into thinking that you can end war by not participating.

Non-participants that end up at the wrong end of a bayonet end up dead.

Aristotle’s ‘Golden Mean’ is a key lesson here, where extremes at either side of a virtue are harmful. Being a coward is equally as bad as being reckless, therefore courage is measured. Being a berserker is not courage.

Thomas Hobbes recognised that a strong government distinguishes human society from animal society where life is ‘brutish and short’. The Wild West is hardly congruent with longevity.

But being harmless in the Pacifist West is as morally bankrupt. If you are capable of great violence yet exercise constraint, then an enemy will think twice before acting. But if you are harmless, don’t expect a glorious memorial celebrating the aftermath when someone from the Wild West pays you a visit.

Dr Michael de Percy @FlaneurPolitiq is the Spectator Australia’s Canberra Press Gallery Correspondent. If you would like to support his writing, or read more of Michael, please visit his website.