Putin surprised some observers by recently expressing his opposition to blaming today’s Germans for their ancestors’ crimes. According to him, “Today’s German society has nothing to do with it. Indeed, the historical memory exists, it is important to remember it, one cannot forget about it, but I don’t think that it is fair to put blame for what happened in the 1930s and the 1940s on today’s generation of Germans.” This is a pragmatic position for the three reasons that’ll now be explained.
For starters, an estimated 26 million Soviets were killed by the Germans during World War II, whether directly or through indirect means such as starvation and disease caused by their invasion of the USSR. It would therefore be understandable if Putin, who leads the Soviet Union’s successor state, might still hold a grudge against that ethno-national group. He doesn’t, however, and this is meant to set a positive example as regards the grudges that other ethno-national groups hold against Russia.
Segueing into the second reason, most Central & Eastern European peoples have a negative view towards at least part of their respective histories with Russia, whether during the Imperial and/or Soviet periods. The Baltic States and Poland are infamous for this. Accordingly, by showing that he holds no grudge against today’s Germans for the crimes that their Nazi ancestors committed against his people, Putin wants to encourage comparatively moderate Balts, Poles, and others to follow suit vis-a-vis Russia.
And finally, Putin likely expects that Germany’s CDU will win this month’s early elections, after which they might adopt some of the populist-nationalist AfD’s policies, including towards Russia. The AfD’s co-leader wants to restore Russian gas imports through the one undamaged Nord Stream pipeline, while the Financial Times recently reported that other unnamed German officials are considering the same as part of a Ukraine peace deal. Putin therefore understandably wants to get on Germans’ good side.
This was a bold move considering that Elon Musk was criticized by the ADL for saying pretty much the same thing during his video appearance at an AfD event late last month. Nevertheless, Putin is a proud lifelong philo-Semite whose track record of fighting anti-Semitism and maximally ensuring remembrance of the Holocaust was touched upon here in late December, which debunks politicized accusations of him supposedly hating Jews. He thus felt confident enough to say almost exactly what Musk just did.
Putin is the consummate pragmatist who always very carefully chooses every word that he uses. Nothing that he ever says is by chance or due to him losing control of his emotions. It’s no different with what he just said about how today’s Germans shouldn’t be blamed for the crimes of their ancestors. This pragmatic position is meant to most immediately advance Russia’s soft power interests in Central & Eastern Europe while possibly furthering its economic-political ones after the next German elections.
