Schoolchildren Should be Prepared For War Emergency, Says Germany

Fear of Russian revanchism may set back decades of work by European governments to erode individual responsibility in favour of a more collectivist model, with the public now increasingly told to be ready to take control for their own survival.

The German Interior Ministry led by social democrat-left caretaker minister Nancy Faeser is intervening to introduce civil defence into the school curriculum, a report by the Handelsblatt newspaper states. In Germany, education is the responsibility of individual states but the Federal government wants to push this matter and will prepare education material to be distributed to the states, it is said.

A ministry spokesman cited in the report said of the decision to introduce emergency preparedness to children: “Given the recent developments in the security situation, a greater focus should be placed on civil defence, including in school education… [it is] important that citizens have emergency supplies at home to deal with various emergency situations, so that they can help themselves, their families, and those around them, and even save lives in an emergency”.

The perceived threat of Russia invading its neighbours or a hot war with NATO suddenly breaking out are cited as the reason for this change in policy, with better preparedness for natural disasters like floods named as a convenient bonus.

The German government moving to a more prepared state is only the latest such manifestation of wider European political concern about war. In recent months Sweden has issued an updated version of its Cold War-era survival handbook, the United Kingdom has told citizens to have a battery powered radio and a flashlight at home, and NATO has green-lit the public stockpiling bottled water.

Last month, the European Commission appealed to the people of the continent to take similar precautions, and this communication was specifically cited by the German government as informing their own thinking. European crisis management Commissioner Hadja Lahbib heralded this change with a slick social media video, saying that preparedness must be a new way of life for Europe, and listing recommended every-day-carry items like bottled water, a pocketknife, and cash.

While the government telling the public they should take steps to ensure their own survival, conceding that the cashless society isn’t resilient, and even encouraging people to carry a pocketknife may all we welcomed by the liberty-minded, it also comes as an admission of failure. Europeans are ultra-taxpayers, the social contract justifying earners losing a considerable slice of their income in return for a cossetting welfare state, but one which is now tacitly admitted to be fragile and unable to step up in a crisis.

Some of these messages very directly contradict long-honed government narratives. Official European Union advice to carry a pocketknife daily — “a must have” — would cause abject horror in London, for instance, where the government is working hard to stamp out knife carrying altogether with strict, restrictive laws and tough penalties in preference to tackling knifemen as the cause of knife crime.

The shift to a cashless society, made government policy across Europe during the coronavirus lockdown era and strongly objected to by right wing activists worried about loss of liberty is also undermined by the admission that in an emergency, payment cards can’t be relied upon.

Commissioner Lahbib, for instance, said to always carry “some cash. In the middle of a crisis, cash is king, and your credit card might just be a piece of plastic”.

As for Germany, launching preparedness in schools has reasonably broad cross-party support, with opposition coming from the hard-left, for instance, which argues such moves are actually intended to militarise society for future war. In other cases, the Euro leadership-adjacent media has accused the “far right” of attempting to undermine such initiatives.

Establishment conservative CDU party defence spokesman Roderich Kiesewetter told Handelsblatt of the plan that he found it “absolutely necessary that emergency situations be practiced, because students are particularly vulnerable and particularly affected in an emergency”.

He said Germany is far less prepared for emergencies than other European states which actually border Russia. Finland, which never gave up its 20th century system of near-universal conscription and military service for teenagers and which has extensive Civil Defence preparedness was cited as a particular example to follow.

Kiesewetter said: “Compared to our Nordic and eastern neighbours, Germany has very little resilience, and our crisis preparedness structures are backward”, saying Germany has ‘hardly any state stockpiles, shelters, or resilient crisis communication technology’, states the paper.

Germany engaged in a such an enthusiastic post-Cold War selloff of old bunker sites the country no longer knows how many still exist, and could be pressed back into use in an emergency. It is presently starting up a ‘bunker plan‘ to survey the country and rediscover this information, inspired by the Ukrainian experience of war.

Even so, Germany is massively more prepared than some countries, like the United Kingdom for instance, which suspended all Civil Defence preparedness in the 1960s on the logic that spending finite defence money on the nation’s nuclear deterrent was more effective.