A Mnemonic Zeitenwende? Memory Narratives and German Foreign Policy in the Wake of Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine

Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been a watershed for German foreign and security policy, accompanied by heated debate about whether government policies to cut economic ties with Russia, militarily support Ukraine, and strengthen German defense capacities really match the notion of Zeitenwende proclaimed by former chancellor Scholz. In this article, I demonstrate that this has also entailed a significant transformation of the nexus between memory discourses and German foreign policy. While highlighting the continued presence of the traditionally dominant World War II-related narratives of “never again,” I argue that these narratives became more disjointed and contested in terms of their political relevance, especially if compared to the 1990s. At the same time, the article traces the parallel rise of Cold War discourse to become the new dominant mnemonic framework—however, not as a single hegemonic narrative, but as a crucial point of reference that came to inform key foreign policy controversies on how to respond to the war, and on wider questions related to Germany’s place in the European security order. The article embeds these findings in a significant contribution to broader conceptual debates, arguing that more systematic attention to plurality, contestation, and change is crucial to improve our understanding of the relationship between collective memory and foreign policy in liberal democracies.