Tag: germany

Trump Pulling 5,000 US Troops From Germany In Punitive Move Amid Merz Spat

In a huge late in the day Friday development, the Trump administration plans to pull some 5,000 troops from NATO member Germany, CBS is reporting. Citing senior defense officials, the Pentagon expects the troop draw down will happen over a six to twelve month period, Reuters has also separately reported, in what clearly appears a punitive measure aimed at Berlin by the Trump White House.

Over several years, and stretching back decades, the US has maintained the most number of troops on the European continent in Germany – currently estimated at over 36,000 active duty personnel. So the 5,000 – while significant – is still somewhat of a symbolic move and number.

The large US presence hearkens back to the post WWII division of Germany and post-war order, and is also a legacy of the Cold War. Ironically at this very moment European leaders have hyped a ‘new Cold War’ with Russia, as the Ukraine war continues raging.

“The officials characterized the move as a signal of President Trump’s discontent with the level of assistance that European allies have offered in the U.S.-Iran war,” CBS writes.

The significance of the planned move also lies in the fact that America’s German bases serve as headquarters of US European Command and Africa Command – with the historic Ramstein Air Base being the key hub.

The announcement via US reporting comes just a day after Trump again lambasted German Chancellor Friedrich Merz:

“The Chancellor of Germany should spend more time on ending the war with Russia/Ukraine (Where he has been totally ineffective!), and fixing his broken Country, especially Immigration and Energy, and less time on interfering with those that are getting rid of the Iran Nuclear threat, thereby making the World, including Germany, a safer place!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Merz had in a rare moment torched US foreign policy and the Trump administration’s Iran war gambit in Monday remarks given at a local event in Germany.

Included in that very head-on critique of Operation Epic Fury came in the following: “An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, especially by these so-called Revolutionary Guards. And so I hope that this ends as quickly as possible.”

Merz had also claimed, “If I had known that it would continue like this for five or six weeks and get progressively worse, I would have told ​him even more emphatically.” ​

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Germany Aims to Become EU’s Strongest Military Force by 2039

Germany has now openly declared its intention to become the dominant conventional military power in Europe by 2039. What Berlin is doing is a structural shift that has been building quietly for years, and now it is being formalized in plain sight. The plan calls for expanding the Bundeswehr to roughly 460,000 personnel, including reserves, with about 260,000 active troops, effectively doubling the scale of its usable force compared to today.

What stands out is that this is taking place at the same time Germany’s economy is stagnating, with growth forecasts collapsing toward just 0.5% while inflation rises due to energy pressures and geopolitical tensions. You are witnessing the classic historical pattern where governments shift resources toward military buildup as economic conditions weaken. This is precisely how capital is redirected during periods of rising geopolitical risk.

Germany’s military budget tells the real story. The Bundeswehr is now operating with roughly €108.2 billion in 2026, making it one of the largest defense budgets in the world, and a dramatic departure from the decades when Germany refused to even meet NATO’s 2% threshold. Just a few years ago, Germany was spending closer to €80–90 billion annually, and now projections show spending rising toward €150–160 billion by 2029, or roughly 3.5% of GDP.

This is a staggering transformation. For decades, Germany deliberately maintained a weak military posture as part of the post–World War II settlement. Now they are not only rearming, but they are also explicitly stating they intend to be the strongest conventional force in Europe. That would have been unthinkable twenty years ago.

From the perspective of the Economic Confidence Model and the war cycle, this fits perfectly into the timing window we have been warning about. The arrays have been showing a convergence of civil unrest and international war cycles into 2026–2027. What we are seeing in Germany is not isolated. It is part of a broader shift across Europe, where governments are preparing for sustained conflict risk, not a temporary crisis.

Germany has also moved beyond simply increasing spending. They are restructuring the entire military system, including technology integration, AI-driven warfare, and logistics infrastructure that can support rapid deployment across Europe. This is preparation for long-term engagement capability, not defensive posturing. Once governments begin investing at this scale, they are not planning for peace. They are preparing for confrontation.

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US “Being Humiliated” by Iran’s Leadership, German Chancellor Merz Says

A seemingly ever-widening rift between Europe and Trump’s America is emerging as the war with Iran drags on, exposing not only strategic confusion but growing skepticism among America’s closest allies.

What began as a show of force has increasingly come to resemble a costly stalemate—one that critics, of whom there is no shortage, argue lacks both clarity and direction. At the center of the latest criticism leveled at the direction of Trump is German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has sharply questioned his administration’s handling of the conflict.

Speaking publicly to students in Germany, Merz, who leads the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), warned that the United States appears to have entered the war without a viable endgame. “The Iranians are clearly stronger than expected and the Americans clearly have no truly convincing strategy,” he said.

“An entire nation [the United States] is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, especially by these so-called Revolutionary Guards,” the German Chancellor said, adding that he “hopes that this ends as quickly as possible.”

Merz’s comments reflect a broader unease across Europe, where leaders are now grappling with the economic fallout of a conflict they did not initiate. Energy prices have surged, supply chains have tightened, and the costs are being passed directly to European taxpayers.

Additionally, such language signals a dramatic shift from earlier European support for the campaign. While some leaders initially aligned with Trump’s stated objectives, the prolonged conflict and lack of measurable progress have eroded that backing.

It’s worth noting that Merz was one of the liberal-globalist EU leaders that initially baked Trump’s moves in the Middle East. The disruption of the Strait of Hormuz has proven particularly damaging. As one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints, its partial closure has driven oil prices above $100 per barrel, intensifying inflation across already fragile European economies.

Merz did not mince words about the consequences. The war, he said, is “costing us a great deal of money,” underscoring the growing frustration among European leaders who feel sidelined in decisions with global repercussions.

At the same time, diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict appear increasingly chaotic. Planned negotiations between American and Iranian officials have repeatedly stalled, including a high-profile meeting in Islamabad that was abruptly abandoned.

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Ruthless Taxation And The Hyperstate: How Germany Profits From Crisis

The Hormuz crisis offers us a profound insight into the real power structures in Germany. Nothing seems able to convince the Berlin monolith to partially shield its citizens from the consequences at gas stations through tax cuts.

It is now unavoidable that the Iran shock will translate into an inflation driver, working its way through economic value chains into consumer prices. These developments almost force a reduction of the tax burden on households and the middle class. It may sound strange to climate socialists, but wealth is created exclusively in the private sector, and certainly not in the state bureaucracy, which is currently profiting from the price surge at gas stations at the expense of citizens and enjoying a small special economic boost.

In March alone, the Finance Minister collected roughly half a billion euros more at gas stations. That makes him the winner of the crisis.

To dispel the impression of a secret profiteer, Klingbeil points to the generally precarious budget situation. In fact, his hands are essentially tied: the Merz-Klingbeil duo is driving the country’s public debt through the roof. Klingbeil is the skywalker among European debt makers. He has begun a catch-up race to place Germany in the top tier of debt states alongside neighboring France, Italy, and Spain. The German public debt ratio currently stands at 63 percent, but the debt spiral is accelerating. This figure will rise dramatically in the coming years.

Anybody should now be clear: The debt party of a state that burns its citizens’ capital in reckless fashion, whether in Ukraine or through the redistribution mechanism of the green transformation, must end. The state is an overfed glutton, extracting ever-higher tax revenues while sinking deeper into the debt spiral.

Yet the burden does not rest solely on debt. The state’s hyperactivity drains scarce resources from the private capital market, raises credit costs, and drives genuinely productive investments abroad. The damage has accumulated for years and is being made worse by the energy cost crisis.

One can only imagine the relief that the private sector needs to restart the prosperity engine and compensate for the ever-growing damage caused by the state bureaucracy. Germany’s plight urgently calls for reforms and an end to the failed eco-socialist transformation project.

In Germany, however, things are a little different. Economic rationality does not dominate. In the land of climate doomsayers and would-be world improvers, as former Economics Minister Robert Habeck once said, „all in“ — and all levers were set towards eco-socialism.

In fact: over 50 billion euros are pumped annually by the German state through the Climate and Transformation Fund (KTF) into the green wonder economy, which during the Hormuz crisis proved not to solve problems but rather to be their obvious cause.

The green wonder economy is leaving deep wounds in public budgets, whose deficits are spiraling out of control – in this year alone, another 180 to 190 billion euros of new debt will likely be recorded. https://www.tichyseinblick.de/daili-es-sentials/staatsverschuldung-rekord/

No one in Berlin is thinking about tax cuts anymore, regardless of how media artists around Chancellor Friedrich Merz try to pacify the public.

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Elon Musk Reveals COVID Vaccine Injury After Former Pfizer Official Admits Shots Likely Killed Tens of Thousands in Germany

In an X post that went viral Sunday, Elon Musk said he “felt like I was dying” and almost went to the hospital after taking his second COVID-19 vaccine.

Musk was responding to an X post about how Dr. Helmut Sterz, Pfizer’s former chief toxicologist, admitted last month during a German COVID-19 Inquiry that an estimated 60,000 people have died in Germany from Pfizer’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, Comirnaty.

According to Sterz, the Paul Ehrlich Institute, Germany’s regulatory and research institute for vaccines and biomedicines, has received 2,133 reports of death following Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

He said, “These spontaneous reports likely have a high number of unreported cases due to underreporting. The true number is therefore much higher.”

“In the U.S., it is assumed that there is an underreporting factor of 30 by which the registered cases would have to be multiplied. For Germany, this would correspond to 60,000 deaths from the vaccination,” Sterz said.

Sterz told the German commissioners that Pfizer’s post-marketing report mentioned 1,200 suspected deaths within just two months of the shot’s approval.

“At that point, Comirnaty should have been withdrawn from the market,” Sterz said.

Pfizer skipped key safety studies due to ‘time constraints’

Sterz also testified that “due to time constraints,” Pfizer didn’t conduct vital safety checks on its COVID-19 vaccine before rolling it out to the public. For instance, the vaccine maker skipped carcinogenicity studies that would have examined whether the shots had cancer-causing properties.

Pfizer also failed to study the vaccine’s impact on pregnancy.

Sterz called for a new and independent scientific review of the COVID-19 vaccines’ long-term effects. “We need proper independent safety studies to understand what really happened. Without full transparency, people will not trust the conclusions,” he said, according to GB News.

He said the high number of negative side effects associated with the vaccines warrants pausing them, and other vaccines that use similar technology, until independent studies show they are safe.

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ENERGY WARS: Russia Will Shut Flow of Druzhba Pipeline Oil Into Germany

Druzhba means ‘friendship’, which is nowhere to be found these days.

Today, Ukraine restarted the flow of Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia through the Druzhba pipeline that it kept shut to further boost the election of Péter Magyar.

In exchange for that, the EU was finally able to approve the long-awaited 90 billion Euro loan to Kiev – although it must be noted that both Budapest and Bratislava ‘opted-out’, meaning no Hungarian or Slovak money is part of it.

But there isn’t time to celebrate because, also today, Russia announced that it will close a major oil pipeline into Germany.

The Telegraph reported:

“Russia has announced plans to shut the Druzhba pipeline within nine days, cutting the Continent off from Kazakh oil as it faces supply disruption caused by the Iran war.

The planned closure poses a particular threat to Germany, where the Druzhba pipeline supplies 17pc of the crude oil processed by PCK refinery, which provides 90pc of the fuel used by Berlin’s cars.”

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THE OLD GUARD: War-Obsessed Germany Plans To Call Reservists Up to the Age of 70

70-year-old soldiers?

We have been closely tracking the rapid remilitarization of Germany in the context of the war in Ukraine, and now, with the fraying of NATO ties, the process has become almost frantic.

Early in 2025, we noted that The Bundeswehr Didn’t Have a Single Combat-Ready Division, Leaving Germany Totally Dependent of Stationed US Troops for Defense and Deterrence.

Since then, we reported that Germany Was to Purchase a Thousand Tanks To Try To Turn the Bundeswehr Into Western Europe’s Largest Fighting Force.

Early this year, Germany Approves Major Package of Attack Drones for the Bundeswehr, With a Half a Billion Euro Initial Purchase.

Besides all that rearming, it arose that now, fighting-age men need to register with the military when leaving the country for extended periods of time.

Now, as the militarization expands, we learn that the German Reservist Association is calling for a raise of the age limit for service members to 70 years.

The age limit for reservists is to rise because, according to the Association, many ‘remain productive for longer’.

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56-Million-Year-Old Fossil Found in Germany May Be Oldest Known Cannabis Plant

A fossil discovered in Germany may be the oldest known cannabis-related plant ever identified, potentially pushing the timeline of the genus back by about 30 million years.

The fossilized leaf, dated to between 56 million and 48 million years ago, was found in the Saxony-Anhalt region of Germany and is now being highlighted as a possible early relative of modern marijuana. That would make it far older than previous estimates suggesting the Cannabis genus emerged around 20 million to 28 million years ago.

According to researchers, the fossil had actually been sitting in a museum collection for around 150 years after first being described in 1883. Only recently was it reexamined in detail, leading to renewed interest because of how closely it resembles today’s cannabis leaves. Researchers say the shape of the leaf and its vein pattern are both strikingly similar to modern marijuana plants.

Even so, the fossil is not believed to be the same as modern Cannabis sativa or Cannabis indica. Instead, it appears to represent an extinct relative from much earlier in the plant’s evolutionary history. Researchers note that today’s marijuana varieties have been heavily shaped by human cultivation and selective breeding, likely over thousands of years.

The discovery is notable not just because of its age, but because of where it was found. For years, cannabis was widely believed to have originated in the Tibetan Plateau region of Asia. This fossil suggests the genus may have a far older and broader history than previously thought, and that its origin may not be tied only to high-altitude regions in Asia.

Researchers say they can’t determine whether the ancient plant contained THC because the fossil does not preserve the tiny structures where cannabinoids are produced.

Still, the fossil is offering one of the strongest signs yet that the history of marijuana may stretch back much further than once believed, while also opening the door to new questions about where the plant first emerged.

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New German search engine lets people check whether their relatives were Nazis

A new search engine that allows users to search Nazi party records in order to find out whether their ancestors were card-carrying members has been accessed millions of times since it was launched earlier this month.

The huge database has been made available by the German newspaper Die Zeit in a bid to “end the silence born of misplaced shame,” according to an editorial from the publication. It is run in conjunction with archives in Germany and the United States.

Founded after World War I, Hitler’s party did not really gain in popularity until the economic collapse of the Great Depression. There was a sharp rise in support for it during the 1930 elections, and when Hitler was elected three years later he abolished all other parties, creating a mass movement that controlled all aspects of German life.

By the late 1930s, the “vast majority of Germans supported Hitler and the Nazi state,” according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

According to Die Zeit, 10.2 million Germans joined the party in the 20 years from 1925 and at its height at the end of World War II it had about 9 million members.

In the final days of the war, the Nazis sought to destroy the party’s vast collection of membership cards but they were saved at the last minute and later handed to the Americans. They were then stored in the Berlin Document Center but were later transferred to the German Federal Archives, with copies also at the US National Archives, the newspaper reported.

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Prosecutors Open Criminal Investigation into German Christian YouTubers for Criticising Islam

From Apollo News:

The Hamburg Public Prosecutor’s Office is investigating two Christian YouTubers for criticising Muslim antisemitism and Islam in a video. …

Together, Niko and Tino run the Christian YouTube channel Eternal Life, where they post videos in which they talk with people about Jesus and his message. …

In February 2025, the public prosecutor’s office launched an ex officio investigation into Niko over statements in a video from 2024. … The Protestant newspaper Idea was the first to report on the investigation against Niko. Apollo News has now learned that the second YouTuber, Tino, is also under investigation for the same video.

Tino and Niko have taken down the offending video, entitled Islam is not peace (Der Islam ist kein Frieden), but reporters have seen it. Apparently it was posted in the context of the pro-Palestine protests that were unfolding in Hamburg at the time and features Niko editorialising on what he sees as the dangers of Islam. The video claims that “Palestinians are working towards the extermination of the Jews, according to the dictates of the Hadiths”, among them the Hadith proclaiming that “The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews and kill them” – a text which indeed is cited in Article 7 of the Hamas Charter. In the video Niko further claims that “hatred of Jews… is a demonic spirit and does not come from God” and that “Islam and the message behind it bring only hatred, power and murder”, concluding that “this religion is not peace, not joy and not life”.

Prosecutors believe these statements may violate Section 166 of the German Criminal Code, which prohibits the “revilement of religious faiths and religious and ideological communities”. Specifically, StGB §166 makes it illegal to publish content that disparages “the religion or ideology of others” or “a church or other religious or ideological community in Germany… in a manner suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace”. That last clause is the most important. I find it very hard to understand how confessional content like this could even potentially rise to the level of incitement. Since Covid, however, German prosecutors have deployed our speech statutes as maximally as possible in the hopes of proscribing all manner of discourse.

This is another in a long series of cases where we find the German state pursuing small-time content creators for posting the most benign things that would have attracted no attention had there been no criminal investigation. The YouTube channel Eternal Life as of today has only about 1,400 subscribers and 17 videos featuring nothing but bog-standard evangelical Christian content. What is more, the offending video had less than 1,000 views before it was removed. Apparently YouTube classified the video as “dangerous” before the prosecutor’s office came knocking, which probably means some internet censorship NGO was responsible for tipping off both prosecutors and the platform.

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