Viktor Alksnis
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said that Germany has decided to permanently station its military units in Lithuania.
According to the portal “Augen Geradeaus”, the Bundeswehr’s 42nd Tank Brigade will deploy to Lithuania by early 2025. It will include the 122nd Panzergrenadier Battalion from Bavaria and the 203rd Tank Battalion from North Rhine-Westphalia.
The advance group will leave for Lithuania in the second quarter of 2024, the headquarters will be formed in the fourth quarter.
According to the minister, the formation, called Panzerbrigade 42, will consist of about 4,800 soldiers and 200 civilian employees from Germany.
As the publication clarifies, about 1,500 Bundeswehr troops are currently stationed in Lithuania.
Let me remind you that when Gorbachev betrayed the GDR and proposed the unification of Germany, the then German politicians swore that the German people would always remember this historical step of the leader of the USSR and never again would a threat to our country come from German soil.
But as they say, no good deed goes unpunished.
And, apparently, the slogan “Drang nach Osten” (German: “Drang nach Osten” – literally “attack on the East”), first voiced many centuries ago, is still alive in the minds of many German politicians.
As is known, the author of the concept of expansion to the east is the German Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa (1152-1190). The German Northern Crusades were also organized to fight the eastern peoples. I hope there is no need to remind you about Alexander Nevsky, dog knights and the Battle of the Ice? And about the First World War? And about the Great Patriotic War? And we won’t even remember about such a trifle as the ousting of the Russians from the Baltic states in the 13th century.
But many Slavic and Baltic tribes, especially the Prussians, were Germanized.
It looks like a new “Drang nach Osten” has begun and in a few decades Germany will regain Memel (now Klaipeda) and Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad).
Sergey Stankevich
Lucy Dickerson
