#Militarism
#Patriarchy
#Armee
#Germany
#Veterans
#Anarchism
#Berlin

>Contribution to Veterans Day in Germany from an anarchist perspective

We believe that the significance of the upcoming National Veterans Day in Germany has not yet fully registered, not least because many anarchists have lost touch with the "soldierly," militarism, and "veterans." Radical antimilitarism, which rejects any military and encourages desertion, conscientious objection, and sabotage worldwide, has already had a difficult time. If the fight against the military is further coupled with the necessary fight against patriarchy, the field of those willing to take antimilitarist action becomes even more limited.

The Bundeswehr has it easier. At the Veterans Office, ten assigned soldiers coordinate the 60 events planned nationwide for Veterans Day on June 15, 2025. They coordinate with politicians, reservists, and veterans' associations in an effort to make veteran culture socially acceptable. Because the population needs to be taught and instilled in them by all means and by all means. Therefore, the first event, disguised as a family celebration, will take place at the Berlin Reichstag, featuring a veterans' village, a bouncy castle, food stalls, and many politicians, senior soldiers, and court reporters. In Hamburg, a public promotion of new officers will take place on that day.

We want to seize the opportunity to make Veterans Day a "flop" right from the start. We want to write about the fact that a Veterans Day that turns into a political flop has far greater consequences than we realize upon first thinking about it. We are on the path to a global militarization unprecedented since the end of World War II in Europe, at the end of which awaits us not peace, but war. As long as we still have freedom of movement, we should relate all our struggles to a radical antimilitarism that stops at no national border, no ideology, and no religion.
There are still groups that proclaim that the main enemy is within one's own country. Regardless of whether this slogan was ever true, it ignores reality today: The struggles over distribution and the shifting power constellations, the consequences of global warming with its famines, catastrophes, and wars, are currently leading to a global militarization. With this slogan, usually put forward for ideological reasons, people are shirking a social-revolutionary definition of the anti-militarist struggle, which welcomes deserters from all countries and knows no borders.

We constantly observe and experience contradictions in our environment and therefore ask the following questions: Why are there still contexts/positions/people who see NATO as the main enemy, thus relativizing, for example, Russia's attack on Ukraine and/or legitimizing it as self-defense? Why is a war logic being reproduced in many (authoritarian) communist camps and a dusty Leninist concept of anti-imperialism being spread, which distinguishes between good and bad military? And why are there even people who claim to be anarchists but put on a Ukrainian uniform to murder others they don't know, or to be murdered by them?
Apparently, this is because our clear position beyond all polarization and war logic has not yet been understood.
Is it because there is no significant organization beyond individual events that has agreed on common goals in the area of ​​radical antimilitarism? Is it because of the fractures outlined above, which are leading to a breakup and require us to first find ourselves anew on a small scale?

If all brotherhood in arms is to be ended – no matter where – then it must be done by thwarting the polarizations and logics of war listed above. Veterans Day, even if there isn't much time left, can become a signal from those who want to spoil every military's olive-brown soup. Time for new alliances and experiences is upon us. Veterans Day in Germany is a further step toward the global militarization that we want to interrupt – because we want to get ahead of the wars.
The main enemy is in every country, maintains military and militias, likes to wear uniforms, and follows chains of command. Command and obedience and a pronounced hierarchy guarantee military operations on a large scale. The military in every country is capable of keeping its own population in check and, if necessary, suppressing it. As well as of wrestling the external enemy when doing so serves economic, religious, and/or ideological interests. The military forces people who were socialized as men into uniforms and to bear arms, drilling their psyche until they are capable of killing people they have never seen before. These men, trained in the soldierly virtues so that they can wield violence against their potential opponents, are then prepared to die painfully but heroically "for the cause." They are then given a posthumous grave of honor.
The military and patriarchy are clearly intertwined. The real main enemy of radical antimilitarism is therefore patriarchy – it exists in every country and must be fought everywhere.

In November 2024, in the article "How do we take the initiative? Against every war – disarming the patriarchal command" in GWR 493, we argued: Access to male-read bodies that undergo patriarchal formation is the prerequisite for a militarized, soldierly-trained characteristic that creates the basis for the willingness to murder in the first place. Toxic masculinity does not fall from the sky; it is developed along biological differences as a relationship of domination that implies the willingness to rape as a weapon of war – in war as well as in peacetime. See also our article "Mobilizing against Veterans Day!" in GWR 496 from February 2025. If Veterans Day is to become a political disaster, new alliances are needed. The silent majority, which rejects the logic of war and would not take to the streets for Hamas, Netanyahu, or German raison d'état, is currently unlikely to find groups that visibly embody radical antimilitarism.

For us, therefore, the preparation and implementation of actions against Veterans Day is an opportunity to form sustainable alliances in order to act with clear positions when the next wave of militarization hits.
That is why we made it non-negotiable: “Against all war, against all military.”

Because even if this sounds like a trivial position on the surface, it will be more helpful than expected in the face of further military polarization. This slogan is already separating the wheat from the chaff, because it often shows how much we ourselves are trapped in the logic of war, taking sides with one side or the other in a conflict instead of urging soldiers and militiamen, across all national borders and ideologies, to destroy their weapons, turn against their own masters, or desert.
In Germany, veterans are not just soldiers who have been deployed abroad or returned from the front. The federal government expanded the term to include everyone who has been or is a soldier in the Bundeswehr since 1955. This includes war criminals who left the Wehrmacht, temporary and professional soldiers, conscripts, and even those currently active. National Veterans Day is therefore a day of remembrance for soldiers. Its purpose is to make the Bundeswehr and veteran culture as socially acceptable as possible in society. After all, this is part of preparing for war. The population should perceive soldiers as normal: on the streets, in social networks, and in debates.

Not without us! We will be the shrill counter-voice to militarization. We will be all the louder if you, who are reading this, join us in the
Join the radically anti-militarist canon—on Veterans Day and beyond. If you're committed to giving all deserters the opportunity to explain why they left, if you have contacts with veterans against war, please let us know.
We want to create public visibility against all war, against all military activity. We want to transform Veterans Day into a fortress.
Let them barricade themselves behind barriers, police, and military police. Because Veterans Day neither speaks for everyone living in Germany, nor does it speak for all veterans. The fact that at least a third of conscripts found the Bundeswehr anything but great disappears under this leveling.
We want to develop a sustainable network to counter these militaristic gatherings, one that does not have to reinvent itself with every new war, unsettled by counter-propaganda, confusion, and the militarized logic of war.
We want to rock this together! There's still time to forge an alliance that will pave the way for a radical, anti-patriarchal, anti-fascist, anti-militarism. We will certainly make mistakes, but our diversity and unpredictability are also a strength.
Veterans Day is meant to be a political disaster! And thus an international signal against all war and all military forces.
Feel free to join us. The more of us there are, the louder the "no" to Veterans Day will be.

Provisional anarchist
Anti-War Council

translated from German