On 22 June 2026, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius landed in Vilnius. He drove to the training ground at Pabrade, twenty kilometres from the Belarusian border, and watched tanks from inside a Boxer armoured vehicle. "I am really impressed," he said. "A clear signal of our strength and determination."
Exercise Freedom Shield 2026: 2,900 soldiers, 2,300 of them German, 800 vehicles, eight NATO nations, more than 300 drones.
On 22 June 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa.
The Lithuanians are glad to have the Germans back. Thousands attended the activation ceremony on the Cathedral Square in Vilnius. It was broadcast live on Lithuanian television. Chancellor Merz's words were engraved on the wall of the historic city hall: "The security of Lithuania is also our security. The protection of Vilnius is the protection of Berlin."
The brigade has already appeared in Lithuanian school textbooks.
This is the second time Germans have received this welcome in Lithuania. In June 1941, the Wehrmacht arrived from the west. In Kaunas, Lithuanians had already risen against Soviet rule two days before the Germans arrived, establishing a provisional government that Germany dissolved after six weeks.
In Latvia and Estonia the pattern was the same. Local populations greeted German forces. Latvia and Estonia subsequently provided divisions to the Waffen-SS. Latvia commemorates them annually on 16 March at the Freedom Monument in Riga. Members of parliament attend.
The justification: hatred of Soviet rule. Fighting communists.
Russian nobles who fled to Paris after 1917 had lost more to the Soviets than anyone in the Baltic states had lost in a single year of occupation. They had lost estates, family members, their country. They had lived in exile for two decades. They had, by any measure, more reason to hate the Soviet system.
Some of them joined the Allies. Alexander Stakhovich was born in St. Petersburg in 1914, into a noble family that left Russia in 1917. He joined the Free French in London in 1941 and went to the Eastern Front as a translator for the Normandie-Niémen regiment. He taught the pilots Russian. He flew on frontline missions to confirm kills.
Once, flying over the Yelets region, he said to a fellow translator: "You know, that land down there -- it belonged to our family." He paused and added: "But that does not matter now. This is my country, and I am happy it is winning the war."
Anna Marly was born in Petrograd in 1917. Her father was shot by the Bolsheviks before her first birthday. She fled to France and then to London. She wrote "Le Chant des Partisans" -- the anthem of the French Resistance, broadcast on the BBC. De Gaulle told her: "You turned your talent into a weapon for France."
Konstantin Feldzer was born in Kiev in 1909. His Jewish family left in 1918. He became a French fighter pilot. In 1942, arrested in Tunisia, he was offered release from prison if he joined the French volunteer legion fighting for Germany on the Eastern Front. He refused. He served his sentence. He flew with Normandie-Niémen in the Soviet Union.
Russian émigré volunteers served under de Gaulle's command. Several concealed their origins: a Russian name could attract the attention of Soviet security services. They fought for the Allied cause while hiding who they were.
They did not collaborate. They do not have annual commemorations at national monuments.
The Germans who arrived in 1941 went on to kill more than 90 per cent of Lithuania's Jews. They administered the territory from which the Ukrainian Insurgent Army conducted the Volhynia massacres in 1943. They did not stop the massacres. The victims were Polish and Jewish civilians. Approximately 100,000 were killed.
On 25 May 2026, President Zelensky presided over the state reburial of Andriy Melnyk at Kyiv's National Military Memorial Cemetery. Melnyk led a faction of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists that sought cooperation with Nazi Germany. Zelensky called him "a hero."
Zelensky is himself Jewish. His great-grandfather's brothers were killed in the Holocaust.
Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a statement: "We regret the decision to hold an official state reburial ceremony for OUN leader Andriy Melnyk, who collaborated with the Nazis." Yad Vashem described the ceremony as deeply troubling.
The following day, Zelensky signed Decree 440/2026, granting a special forces unit the honorary title "Heroes of the UPA." The UPA conducted the Volhynia massacres. Poland recalled that the UPA also killed Jews in the same region.
The justification: the UPA was fighting for Ukrainian independence from Soviet rule. The same one.
Poland's president stripped Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honour. Zelensky returned it by post. Three former Ukrainian presidents returned their own in solidarity.
On 25 June 2026, Chancellor Merz and EU Commission President von der Leyen attended the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Gdańsk. Von der Leyen announced three billion euros for Ukraine. Merz told Moscow to start negotiations and freeze the front line.
A business fair ran alongside the conference. German technology companies, industrial service providers, and drone manufacturers attended. They are interested in Ukraine's reconstruction.
In 1941, Germany also had plans for Ukraine. Generalplan Ost designated Ukraine as Lebensraum -- living space -- and specified the removal of 65 per cent of the western Ukrainian population. German companies were expected to follow the army east.
Zelensky did not attend the conference. The Polish-Ukrainian dispute over the UPA decree had not been resolved. The Polish president also did not attend.
Germany has described Israel's security as a matter of German Staatsräson -- reason of state -- since October 2023. Germany voted against UN ceasefire resolutions. Germany is among Israel's most reliable partners in Europe. Whether Germany communicated the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs' concerns about the UPA decree to its ally in Kyiv is not recorded.
On 1 September 1939, the first shots of the Second World War in Europe were fired at Westerplatte, in the Free City of Danzig. On 3 September, the United Kingdom declared war on Germany. The stated reason: the invasion of Poland, which had begun in Danzig.
The United Kingdom was not among the conference's headline partners.
The 45th Armoured Brigade currently numbers approximately 1,800 of its planned 4,800 personnel. Pistorius expects the remainder to come voluntarily. General Freuding was more direct: "We will be ready by end of 2027. Period."
Filed from Sussex. E. Halberd