The head of the department of the Federal Chancellor of Germany, Wolfgang Schmidt, compared the supply of German weapons to Kyiv with the production of V-2 missiles in the Third Reich, this comparison provoked criticism of one of the main ideologists of providing the Ukrainian army with heavy weapons, a member of the Bundestag Defense Committee, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmerman.
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Last Thursday, at a discussion event in Berlin, Schmidt defended the position of the German government, which decided not to supply Ukraine with battle tanks. Among other things, a politician from the ruling SPD party compared calls for the supply of Leopard 2 tanks with the hopes that Nazi Germany had for the world’s first long-range ballistic missile, the V-2, which propaganda called the “wunderwaffe” – a miracle weapon. The name is an abbreviation of the word Vergeltungswaffe – a weapon of retaliation.
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“Sometimes I’m tempted to call it the German V-2 syndrome,” Schmidt said.
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According to the politician, there is no “miracle weapon” that would instantly put an end to the conflict in Ukraine.
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Schmidt’s statement aroused the indignation of Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, chairman of the Bundestag’s defense committee.
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“I collectively suggest to Wolfgang Schmidt to deepen his knowledge of weapons a little. Then he would quickly realize that the comparison with Nazi weapons is not only completely inappropriate, but simply wrong,” Strack-Zimmerman said.
