The Zeitenwende speech was an address delivered to the Bundestag by Olaf Scholz, the Chancellor of Germany, on 27 February 2022. His speech was a reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February. Scholz described the attack as a "historic turning point" (German: Zeitenwende, literally: "times-turn", referring to the change from one age or era to another) and announced that in ...
The Zeitenwende is arguably the opening move in this process, the outcome of which has enormous significance for Europe as well as for the United States. This multiauthor study seeks to understand how far Germany has advanced since 2022 toward achieving the goals set out by Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the German government.
The Zeitenwende also led my government to reconsider a decades-old, well-established principle of German policy on arms exports. Today, for the first time in Germany’s recent history, we are delivering weapons into a war fought between two countries.
- Inscribe the Zeitenwende in strategy Germany’s national security strategy, due early next year, should be used to forge an inter-party and inter-ministerial consensus on the direction of the Zeitenwende. It is the first time that Germany will formulate a comprehensive strategy.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Zeitenwende speech on 27 February felt like the beginning of a new era for Germany’s security and defence policy. Indeed, for many observers, his announcements heralded a complete overhaul of German foreign policy. Six months on, however, there is little evidence ...
While Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine represented a shock to countries across Europe, it was perceived as a particularly fundamental challenge in Germany – a ‘ Zeitenwende ’ as Chancellor Olaf Scholz called it. This article argues that the Russian invasion undermined widely shared foreign policy ideas, triggering a foreign policy identity crisis. This crisis allowed for ...