On Monday morning at the breakfast table, my husband said he would go down to the basement and pack an emergency kit. If war comes. Soon – tomorrow – the day after tomorrow – it doesn’t matter. At first I didn’t know what to say about it. That he exaggerates? Completely absurd? That he should calm down if it calms him down?
So that’s where we are. People pack for emergencies. Not somewhere in a remote war zone, but right here among us, in Europe, in Germany, in the German capital.
Is the identity card enough?
The more I think about it, the more meaningful I find his reaction to the Russian President’s saber-rattling. Not because it would do any good. Where would we go with the packed suitcase if Berlin was attacked? And what should we put in there? Canned goods? Clothes? Documents? Or maybe Grandma’s gold bracelet? We don’t even have valid passports for all family members. The idea of having to be ready at all times seemed so absurd to us. In a united Europe, the identity card is enough.
Enough so far. I wouldn’t give any more guarantees for the future. Everything seems to be in question now. In his government statement in the German Bundestag on Sunday, the Federal Chancellor called this a turning point. It seems to be getting comprehensive. There has been no certainty since Thursday, when Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.
Too much just broke for that. There will never be war in Europe again, I told my children, the connections were far too friendly for that, the economic ties too close, and the desire for peace after the turmoil of the Second World War was too great. They grew up with the implicitness of absolute freedom to travel, the cosmopolitanism and liberal international ties, the idea of a completely superfluous Bundeswehr and that weapons should not be delivered to war zones.
Now European airspace is partially closed. The idea of peacekeeping through the Organization for Security and Cooperation has been dented. We may soon be turned off the gas tap and the first politicians are thinking aloud about a new conscription. Beliefs such as change through rapprochement begin to falter. We see that economic dependencies mean nothing in an emergency. The countries are back to self-sufficiency.
And all this after five days. So many certainties have been lost within a very short time that now nothing seems to hold up.
When Putin threatened to use nuclear weapons at the weekend, it catapulted me back to the 1980s. I would not have thought that the shocks of that time were so deep.
The 80s are my teenage years. I still remember 1983 very well, supposedly the most dangerous year in world history, as Deutschlandfunk once called it. At that time, the USA had decided to station medium-range missiles in Germany. I remember the back and forth of mutual threats. At some point, the American President Ronald Reagan joked, without knowing that the microphone was open, that the bombing was going to happen soon. what was going on I remember the martial behavior of the Kremlin leaders, military parades with rockets in Eastern bloc countries.
Blow up the earth 36 times
We knew all about Pershings and SS-20 missiles back then. We drew tally lists with chalk on the asphalt in the schoolyard, showing who had how many nuclear warheads and calculated that the two superpowers could blow up the earth 36 times. But we also danced to Udo Lindenberg’s “The Russians will be on Kurfürstendamm in 15 minutes” and sang at peace demos. So why not pack an emergency kit? If it helps to channel fears.
Hundreds of thousands attended peace demonstrations in Germany on Sunday. Of course, the first thing to do was to demonstrate solidarity with Ukraine. But it’s also about taming your own fear of war. Not having to remain idle. do something, no matter what. Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit was asked at the government press conference on Monday how many nuclear warheads the Russians had and whether the Patriot defense system was up to the task. The question alone reveals a lot about fear. Hebestreit said he learned it all as a kid in the ’80s, but then forgot it. He no longer needed the knowledge. Welcome back to a dark time.