Is Germany sleepwalking into another war debt spiral? That's what protesters in Berlin were asking on Friday as they told Chancellor Friedrich Merz to put down the tanks and pick up the schools and hospitals budget instead.

So, here's what went down at Mehringplatz in Kreuzberg on Friday — and it's pure Berlin.

The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance — BSW for short — turned a grey afternoon into a full-blown rally against the new Merz government. Footage via cbinews.tv shows a crowd gathered around a makeshift stage, placards up, speakers in full flow, all with one message: stop the rearmament.

And they didn't hold back on the rhetoric.

BSW constituency candidate Manaf Hassan called Friedrich Merz "probably the worst and most unpopular Federal Chancellor in the history of the Federal Republic," accusing him of pushing a "gigantic, debt-financed rearmament programme" that could drag Germany closer to war with Russia.

It's not just talk about tanks. Hassan also pointed to that eye-watering Ukraine figure — Germany has now provided more than €100 billion in bilateral civilian and military aid since the full-scale invasion began.

Then came BSW lead candidate Alexander King, who took aim at successive governments in Berlin. He said they’ve approved what he called the country’s largest war debt and war loans, paving the way for more guns and less butter — more military spending, cuts to social services. His line of the day? "It is expensive. It is dangerous. And we will not go along with it."

Party chairman Fabio De Masi went further, warning the risk of a major war in Europe is growing by the week as the Ukraine conflict grinds on, arguing the war could have been avoided and ended much earlier.

On the ground, supporters were saying the same thing in simpler terms: put the billions into schools, hospitals and social housing, not armour. One demonstrator told **cbinews.tv** it was time for Germans to vote Merz out.

Why this matters — the bigger picture:

This isn't happening in a vacuum. BSW is a brand-new force — only founded in January 2024 by ex-Left party icon Sahra Wagenknecht. It stunned everyone by grabbing 6.2% in the EU elections and then double-digits in Thuringia and Saxony last year. Now it’s trying to make a splash in Berlin, where a fresh state election is due on 20 September.

And Merz? He's only been Chancellor since May, but he's already rewritten the rulebook. Back in March 2025, lawmakers approved a historic tweak to the Basic Law to exempt defence spending over 1% of GDP from Germany's sacred debt brake. That unlocks what analysts are calling the most massive rearmament since the Second World War.

The numbers are dizzying. Germany's total defence pot was around €86bn in 2025, about 2.4% of GDP. For 2026, the plan is €117.2bn, or about 2.8% of GDP. The Merz government has floated spending nearly €650bn over five years to hit NATO's new 3.5% target, with spending set to hit €153bn by 2029.

For context: Germany only met NATO's old 2% target for the first time in three decades in 2024. It spent just 1.27% of GDP on defence in 2021. This is a proper Zeitenwende — turning point — on steroids. The old Olaf Scholz €100bn special fund? That was just the starter.

So, when BSW says "war debt," they're tapping into a very German fear — that rearmament means austerity elsewhere. Whether voters in Berlin buy it next month is the real test.

Source: cbinews.tv

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