(CN) — These are not easy times for Germany.
Following the shock of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, German society, economy and politics are going through a period of profound change and uncertainty as long-held assumptions are cast overboard and the country embarks on a new route toward rebuilding its military, turning its back on Russia and girding for a future defined not by global free trade but great power rivalry.
“It's been a period of soul-searching,” said Ed Turner, an expert on German politics at Aston University in Birmingham, England.
The changes taking place in Germany cannot be overstated: Perhaps more than any other European Union country, the war in Ukraine is affecting Europe's economic powerhouse the most.
Only three days after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz went before the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, and delivered what is known as the “Zeitenwende speech,” named for a German word to describe a historic turning point.
“We are living through a watershed era,” Scholz said. “And that means that the world afterwards will no longer be the same as the world before.”
Germany's history was distilled at that moment. In his trademark mechanical voice, the new 64-year-old centrist Social Democrat, who'd identified as an anti-NATO Marxist in his youth, became the person to deliver the bad news: Germany's delusions about a future of inevitable peace, expanding liberalization and prosperity were over.
Standing in the starkly modern plenary chamber of the Reichstag, Scholz announced it was time for Germany to confront a more dangerous future and rebuild its military in order to “protect our freedom and our democracy.”
For a nation rebuilt from the ashes of its Nazi past, talk of mass rearmament had been unthinkable, a kind of taboo, for large segments of German society and the political class only three days before.
In the speech, Scholz pledged to spend 100 billion euros (about $106 billion) to restore Germany's long-neglected military, the Bundeswehr; and he vowed to nearly double Germany's annual military budget to meet a NATO target of spending 2% of Germany's $4 trillion gross domestic product on defense.
The speech broke another taboo: The chancellor said Germany would send weapons to Ukraine, a decision that swept aside a longstanding rule to not allow German-made arms to get shipped into a war zone where two nations were fighting each other.
“The issue at the heart of this is whether power is allowed to prevail over the law,” Scholz told the Bundestag. “Whether we permit Putin to turn back the clock to the 19th century and the age of the great powers. Or whether we have it in us to keep warmongers like Putin in check.”
Fast forward a year and Germany has become the fourth biggest supplier of arms to Ukraine and it's taken an increasingly prominent role in the escalating war.
But getting to this point has been extremely fraught because sending German-made cannons and tanks into a war against Russian troops triggers a particularly sensitive historical memory for a country that killed millions of Russians during World War II. Before the Russian invasion, Germany was reluctant to even send combat helmets to Ukraine.
In the same speech, Scholz also promised to end Germany's reliance on Russian oil and gas and cut off trade with Moscow, a major market for German goods.
These were major shifts. Most of the Bundestag – except parliamentarians on the far left and far right – rose in applause at the end of his speech.
Before the war, Germany received about 55% of its natural gas from Russia and its impressive industrial and economic gains since reunification in 1991 were fueled in part by the flow of cheap Russian gas and oil and the emergence of new markets following the breakup of the communist bloc.