German chancellor Olaf Scholz appears now more on the offensive than defensive. Photograph: Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images A century ago German artist Käthe Kollwitz sketched a wide-eyed young man with two fingers aloft, swearing an oath: “Nie wieder Krieg”, no more war. A decade after she lost her 18-year-old son Peter after a week fighting in Flanders, the Kollwitz anti-war poster was displayed at a gathering of leftist and pacifist youth groups in August 1924 – an event the activist artist declared a flop. “Just one spark is needed for them to forget their pacifism,” she noted in her...