Germany's Zeitenwende is being put to the test in Lithuania

As Berlin builds its first permanent brigade-sized formation abroad since the Second World War, German soldiers on NATO’s eastern flank are being welcomed not as symbols, but as protectors.

It’s not a scene you often see in Germany: complete strangers buying coffee for Bundeswehr soldiers in uniform as a gesture of gratitude.

But this, according to Lithuanian foreign-policy analyst Linas Kojala, is exactly what is happening in cafés in his country’s capital, Vilnius.

“People are welcoming [the Bundeswehr] with open arms,” Kojala, CEO of the Geopolitics and Security Studies Center, told The German Review.

The gesture stands out precisely because it remains unusual at home. In Germany, support for the Bundeswehr has grown since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but spontaneous displays of gratitude toward soldiers remain rare.

In Lithuania, by contrast, German troops are arriving in a country where the threat feels immediate -- and where Berlin is turning what began as a rotational NATO presence in 2017 into a long-term brigade of around 4,800 soldiers and 200 civilian personnel by 2027, the first German combat brigade stationed abroad since the Second World War.

Lithuan…