Bundestag Member Slams German Minister Over 'Nazi Wonder-Weapon' Remarks on Kiev Arms Supplies

In September, the German Defense Ministry said that it doesn’t plan to deliver its battle tanks to Kiev. Russia has repeatedly cautioned the US and its allies against providing Kiev with more weapons, which the Kremlin says may further escalate the Ukraine conflict, as Moscow continues its special military operation in the country.

Germany’s Minister for Special Affairs Wolfgang Schmidt has come under fire from a hawkish Bundestag member over his vision of Berlin’s recent move not to provide Kiev with German battle tanks, according to the German news outlet n­-tv.

Speaking at a government gathering earlier this week, Schmidt upheld the position of the German government on the matter, comparing calls for the supply of the Leopard 2 tanks to Kiev with Nazi Germany’s desperate hopes that its long-range V-2 ballistic missiles, also known as “Wunderwaffe” (“wonder-weapon”), would have helped them win WWII.

“Sometimes I'm tempted to call it the German V-2 syndrome,” Schmidt claimed, insisting that there is no “wonder-weapon” that may swiftly put an end to the Ukraine conflict.

Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, chairwoman of the Bundestag's Defense Committee and member of the liberal Free Democratic Party, was quick to balk at Schmid, saying that she “collegially” urges him “to deepen his knowledge of weapons a little bit”.

“After he does so, he will quickly realize the fact that the comparison with Nazi weapons is not only completely inappropriate, but simply wrong,” she argued.

The remarks came after German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht made it clear last month that Berlin’s new batch of weapons to Ukraine, including MARS II multiple rocket launchers and Dingo armored vehicles, will not include the battle tanks that Kiev requested.

Russia Raps West Over Its Arms Supplies to Ukraine

Moscow has repeatedly slammed the West for its weapon supplies to Kiev amid the ongoing Russian special military operation in Ukraine, warning that western countries “are playing with fire”. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov cautioned that "any weapon [and] any arms shipment on the Ukrainian territory" would be considered “a legitimate target” by the Russian military.

For her part, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has recently stressed that “Washington has once again demonstrated how much it has lost touch with reality, having actually become a party” to the Ukraine conflict. According to her, “further evidence of this is the US Congress recently agreeing on the allocation of a new assistance package to the Kiev regime worth almost $12 billion.”

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, for his part, underlined that the Ukraine conflict had become another pretext for the US and its allies to unleash an economic and information war against Moscow in order to deplete it strategically. “Ukraine has been picked [by the West] as an instrument of a hybrid war against Russia,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin highlighted in his address to the nation in late September that the West’s current goal is “to weaken, divide and ultimately destroy” Russia. Putin referred to “some irresponsible politicians in the West,“ who “talk about plans to organize the supply of long-range offensive weapons to Ukraine, systems that are capable of launching strikes against Crimea and other regions of Russia”.

The Russian Foreign Ministry warned that the West’s supplies of such weaponry to Kiev would become “red lines” for Moscow, which the ministry said had enough instruments to retaliate.

The world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile, the V-2, was developed during the Second World War in Nazi Germany as a "vengeance weapon". The weapon was designed to attack Allied cities as retaliation for the anti-Hitler coalition’s bombings of Germany.