Germany’s intelligence agencies drum up support for war against Russia

@JSternWSWS7 October 2026facebook iconGerman Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, center, and Sinan Selen, President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, center right, meet with staff and other members of the security apparatus in the control room of the newly inaugurated Joint Center for Countering Hybrid Threats (GAZ Hybrid), in Berlin, Tuesday June 16, 2026. [AP Photo/John Macdougall]The public hearing conducted by the heads of Germany’s intelligence agencies in the Bundestag on Monday was an undisguised propaganda event for preparations for a direct war against Russia and a massive expansion of the state apparatus of repression at home.

For three hours, the presidents of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) and the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) portrayed Germany as a country already under attack by Russia and therefore compelled to prepare militarily, politically and socially for war.

BND President Martin Jäger opened by describing Russia as Germany’s “most dangerous adversary.” The confrontation, he said, had reached a “new and more dangerous quality.” Germany was in danger of “entering into a violent conflict with Russia.” He then declared categorically: “We did not seek this confrontation. Russia is forcing it upon us.”

Later he went even further. Russia, he said, was waging a “shadow war against us.” Germany was not yet “in a state of defence,” but was nevertheless under attack. The BND therefore had to be capable of operating under “conditions of war and crisis” and regarded itself as “Germany’s first line of defence.”

For his part, BfV President Sinan Selen declared that Russia was expanding its “hybrid attacks” against Germany. In addition to espionage, there was, he said, a Russian “willingness to engage in sabotage and assassination operations.” Moscow was already prepared to “accept potential civilian casualties” and was deliberately planning acts of violence against individuals.

The statements were disseminated by the major media almost entirely without critical commentary. Jäger’s warnings of a “shadow war” and a possible “violent conflict” dominated Monday evening’s coverage.

This propaganda method has a long history in German imperialism. In his throne speech of August 4, 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II portrayed the First World War as “forced self-defence.” The German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 was likewise presented as a defensive action. Nazi propaganda claimed that the Wehrmacht had “struck into the massive deployment of enemy forces” in order “to ward off the threatening danger from the East.” In reality, Operation Barbarossa had long since been prepared as a war of conquest and annihilation.

The present-day narrative follows the same basic propaganda pattern: while Germany supplies Ukraine with ever longer-range weapons, jointly develops new weapons systems with Kiev, imposes far-reaching sanctions on Russia and officially intends to make the Bundeswehr “war-ready” by 2029, the confrontation is portrayed as something imposed unilaterally by Moscow. Anyone who questions the policy of war and rearmament is increasingly treated as susceptible to Russian “narratives” or “disinformation.” Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has repeatedly stated publicly that Germany must be “war-ready” by 2029.

Every incident is processed accordingly. Take, for example, the attempted attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport. An actual or alleged attack is torn out of its concrete context and presented as proof that Germany is the victim of a war imposed from outside. In this way, Germany’s own ongoing military escalation is presented as nothing more than self-defence.

Jäger’s remarks in particular show how far this logic has already advanced. Referring to the attempted attack in Leipzig, he declared that Russian responsibility in this case was “forensically very well demonstrable.” In the future, however, Germany might have to “attribute responsibility on the basis of plausibility.” To justify this, he offered the remarkable comparison: if something looked like a cat, meowed like a cat and moved like a cat, the most obvious conclusion was that it was a cat.

In other words, in the escalation of a confrontation between nuclear-armed powers, publicly verifiable evidence may in future be replaced by intelligence-service “plausibilities.”

This is all the more explosive because the claim that Germany did not seek confrontation with Russia turns the actual policy of the federal government on its head.

Only the weekend before the hearing, Chancellor Friedrich Merz had travelled to Kiev to further expand military cooperation. He announced another package of military support worth around €1 billion, including interceptor drones, combat drones, long-range weapons and satellite technology. He was accompanied by Economy Minister Katherina Reiche and a high-ranking business delegation from the defence and energy industries. Merz explicitly stated that Germany and Ukraine wanted to deepen their cooperation in the defence industry.

This took place only days after Moscow had once again warned NATO of a possible use of nuclear weapons should the alliance attempt to isolate Kaliningrad or cut it off from the rest of Russia. Against the background of increasing NATO military activity in the Baltic region, the Russian exclave has become one of the most dangerous potential flashpoints for a direct military confrontation between Russia and NATO.

The German government is systematically crossing one threshold after another. Arms deliveries have been expanded to include systems capable of striking targets far behind the front. Now the joint development and production of such weapons with Ukraine is being pushed ahead.

Against this background, Jäger’s claim that Russia is “forcing” confrontation on Germany assumes its real function. It is intended to shift responsibility for the consequences of this policy onto the opposing side in advance.

The aim of the campaign was stated openly during the hearing. Asked how the population’s alleged “fear of war” stirred up by Russia could be countered, Jäger declared that Germany had to strengthen its “will.” It had to be “absolutely clear” that the country was “prepared” to “fight and endure a conflict with all the consequences.”

Selen approvingly pointed to the Scandinavian and Baltic states. There, he said, the threat was socially present and was not constantly called into question. Germany had to bring precisely this attitude “more strongly into society.”

In other words, the population is not supposed to discuss the causes, aims and dangers of the war. It is to be convinced of the existence of a Russian threat and conditioned to accept sacrifice, military service and war.

This is directly connected to the second purpose of the hearing: the construction of a powerful intelligence and police apparatus.

In August, the federal cabinet adopted what it described as the “most comprehensive and fundamental overhaul” of the legal foundations of the BND and the BfV in the history of the Federal Republic. The services are to receive “more powers and additional operational capabilities.” Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt has explicitly described the reform as a transformation “toward genuine intelligence services.”

How does this German rearmament drive and expansion of surveillance powers compare internationally to similar measures being taken in the US, France, or other NATO countries right now?What role did German intelligence and military propaganda play in manufacturing public consent before the two world wars, and how closely does today's framing of Russia follow that pattern?Ask more questions at SocialismAI.comThe proposed powers are far-reaching. The agencies are to gain broader access to IT systems, including privately used mobile phones. The BND will be allowed to retain communications data for considerably longer periods. Above all, both the BND and the BfV are to receive so-called “active measures,” enabling them not merely to collect information but to intervene directly in events.

For the BND, the federal government explicitly lists as examples penetrating the IT systems of “chemical weapons laboratories or drone factories” in order to sabotage their production, as well as disabling servers. For the domestic intelligence service, the draft provides for intervention powers, among other things, when there is a threat of “significant unrest among large sections of the population.”

Jäger made no secret of the significance of these changes. “The new BND law will fundamentally transform our service,” he declared. “We will be a different, a new BND.”

Selen was even more explicit. Other European countries, he said, had achieved a “constructive interaction between police and intelligence powers” instead of “drawing artificial dividing lines that have no equivalent in the reality of the threat situation.”

These “artificial dividing lines” have a very concrete historical origin. Following the experience of the Gestapo and the Nazi dictatorship, the Western Allies insisted in 1949 that the newly established German domestic intelligence service should not possess police powers. This gave rise to the constitutional principle separating the police and intelligence services.

Now precisely this lesson of German history is being dismantled under the slogan of the “hybrid threat.” The background is clear: the strengthening of intelligence services permeated by far-right forces is taking place under conditions of growing social and political opposition to rearmament, conscription and austerity—opposition that is to be defamed and suppressed.

The hearing itself established this connection. Opposition to the government’s Ukraine policy was repeatedly treated as a possible success of Russian “information manipulation.” BfV President Selen complained that sceptical sections of the population no longer paid attention to publications by his agency or to the established daily newspapers. The security agencies therefore had to bring their messages more forcefully into social media and, in the future, into AI-based information systems.

This reveals the real character of so-called “resilience.” The entire social discourse is to be aligned with the requirements of rearmament and war. Criticism of the war and rearmament drive is slandered as the product of “Russian narratives,” while the intelligence agencies themselves are granted ever more far-reaching powers of surveillance, intervention and repression.

War abroad and the dismantling of democratic rights at home go hand in hand. The further the federal government escalates the confrontation with a nuclear power and pours hundreds of billions of euros into rearmament, the more it must discipline a population expected to bear the consequences in the form of austerity, job destruction and conscription.

The warnings of the intelligence chiefs must therefore be taken very seriously—but in a very different sense from that intended by them and their supporters in politics and the media. They show how far the political and state preparations for a direct war against Russia have already advanced and what authoritarian structures are being created at home to carry it out.