Anne Will surprises with tough questions

There is hardly a topic of debate in Germany that is as likely to confuse the political fronts as the war in Ukraine. This was shown in spectacular form at the book premiere of Angela Merkel’s recently published autobiography “Freedom”.

The former Chancellor presented her work to a friendly audience and hand-picked journalists at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin on Tuesday evening. The former CDU chairwoman was asked about her memories by TV journalist Anne Will. Merkel had often been a guest on Will’s public broadcast when she wanted to tell the nation something as unmolested as possible.

This experimental setup led us to expect a very specific course of the conversation: Will as the keyword, who would largely agree with Merkel on climate protection, women’s policy, Corona measures and the German “welcome culture”. Feel-good talk for the Juste Milieu. That’s certainly how the author and her publisher would have liked it.

Devastating verdict on Merkel’s Ukraine policy

And the moderator began, as expected, with a cascade of pleasantries, calling Merkel’s book “insanely precise” and “totally hard-working.” The connections, which the author describes in a wonderfully understandable way, are “highly complex” and “super complicated”.

But after this nice introduction and comparatively harmless chat about Merkel’s GDR past, about her relationship to power and about the men in the CDU, Will suddenly attacked her interview partner head-on. Apparently the conversation had been prepared the evening before; Nevertheless, in the second round, Merkel appeared astonished by the severity of the questions she was confronted with. Anne Will’s harshness seemed to stem from her apparently devastating judgment on Merkel’s Ukraine policy.

Will asked whether it wasn’t the case that Merkel admitted small, inconsequential mistakes in her book, but remained silent about the big mistakes of her time in office. Merkel didn’t think so. But then she spoke neither about her refugee policy, which is controversial in Germany, nor about her possible contribution to the strengthening of the right-wing party “Alternative for Germany” nor about her – in retrospect – problematic Corona regime. Rather, the ex-Chancellor tried to get out of the affair with, of all things, reference to climate policy: she was unable to achieve enough through democratic means.

Never-ending questions

But Will didn’t want to hear anything about the climate at this point: she was concerned with Merkel’s relationship with Russia and Russian President Putin. About whether it was right that Merkel opposed Ukraine’s accession to NATO in 2008 and played a key role in preventing it. Will was concerned with Germany’s dependence on Russian gas; about the Nordstream 2 pipeline, the construction of which the Chancellor insisted on, even in the knowledge of Russian aggression against Ukraine.

Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has now admitted that Nordstream 2 was a mistake, Will said: “What would it have cost you to admit that?” Merkel answered tortuously that she would then admit something that “if I were to go back to that time, I wouldn’t believe it.”

Will asked: “Did you abandon Ukraine in 2008? Brought the country into existential distress?” And didn’t Merkel react “insensitively” to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s request to get an impression of the Russians’ rampage at the site of the Butcha massacre?

Merkel, who was becoming less and less able to handle the never-ending tough questions, answered increasingly irritably and less “precisely” than Will had initially praised. She indicated that with the pandemic the thread of international conversation, the thread of conversation with Putin, had also been broken; otherwise – perhaps, perhaps – a different course of history would have been conceivable.

A polite separation?

“It’s not appropriate that you write or talk in what-if categories,” said Will. “Is that an excuse?” Merkel said Putin should not win the war. She said Ukraine would not lose the war. She said that she was against joining NATO in 2008 out of “concern for Ukraine” because Putin would not have accepted it passively, but Ukraine could not be protected as a candidate country. She said that Finland (which of course was never attacked by Russia) had not wanted to join NATO for a long time. She said that it was out of the question for her that “we would send troops” (which, of course, was never up for debate). No doubt: Merkel was swimming.

“Looking back, you don’t see any mistakes?” Will asked. No, said Merkel. There was applause from the friendly audience. Merkel asked whether there was a kind of seal of approval for admitting mistakes and added to Will: “I note that you cannot follow the argument.”

The fact that Will and Merkel managed to part ways politely after this exchange spoke for both of their self-control. History will show whether Merkel’s appearance serves her posthumous fame.