Germany raised its citizens to hate war. Now it wants us to enlist in the army – but we say no | Mithu Sanyal

The war in Ukraine is a crime. But European leaders should be working for peace, not preparing young people to fight and die

When I was growing up, the most German sentence imaginable was: “We’ve lost two world wars and we’re proud of it.” We were so anti-military, we even gave our policemen green uniforms, to make them look more like foresters than soldiers. Now, the chancellor, Friedrich Merz, wants our army to become the strongest in Europe. I mean, what could go wrong?

After we lost the second world war – or, as we prefer to say, after we were liberated by the allies – we swore “never again”: never again to war, and never again to Auschwitz. Admittedly, Germany rearmed in 1955, but just as “citizens in uniform”, not as soldiers following orders. Mind you, that didn’t mean that you could say “no” to an order; it just meant that we had conscription for most young men until 2011.