Hey, it's Andrew Limbong. Angela Merkel was Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. That's a long time, and from her perch, she was privy to so many world-changing events: a migrant crisis, military aggression, and of course, a pandemic. She writes about it all in her new memoir, Freedom. And in this interview, through a translator, with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly, Merkel talks about going toe-to-toe with leaders such as Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, and what she thinks a second Trump term means for America's role on the world stage. That's up ahead.
In her new memoir, Angela Merkel writes about the many dilemmas she had to navigate as Chancellor of Germany—dilemmas her male colleagues never had to sweat, like, can you wear a pantsuit instead of a skirt in the Bundestag, Germany's Parliament? She decided the answer was yes. Well, Merkel is the only woman ever to rise to the most powerful political post in Germany. She served as Chancellor from 2005 to 2021. When she joined me from Berlin to talk about her memoir, Freedom, there were so many things we wanted to ask about her record on everything from the economy to energy to Europe's migrant crisis, but we were given just 11 minutes, no edits, and so we focused on a few key things: U.S.-German relations, Vladimir Putin, and female leadership.
But you describe a moment in 2017. You were on stage at the G20. You were asked, 'Do you see yourself as a feminist?' And you had to really think about it. Why?
Well, it was a sort of preparatory meeting for the G20 meeting in Germany, in Hamburg, and I was asked that question. I had to think about that for a moment because with classical feminism in Germany, I link up something that means that there were real activists, female activists for women's rights, and I was not part of them. And I thought about that, and in the course of my political career, I got to the conviction that equality, the participation of women, is not something that comes about automatically, and that therefore I have to stand up. And I have stood up and become active for women's quotas, for the promotion and development of women. And therefore, in my book, in my way, I write now that I have been a feminist because I have always advocated the equal participation of women and men in the world.
So if I ask you today, in 2024, do you see yourself as a feminist? What's the answer?
Yeah, in my way, I feel as a feminist, yes.
One of the many male leaders you have wrangled with is Vladimir Putin, and I want to spend a little time on him and what you have learned from dealing with him. You are famously afraid of dogs. Putin knows this. Would you tell me what happened in Sochi in 2014?
Well, he knew about it. I already told him when I first saw him officially. Nevertheless, when I came to the official visit in 2006 in Moscow, he already gave me a puppy dog as a gift. And in Sochi, I saw his real dog, a large dog, right? And it was large, and this was an attempt to really try to sort of inspire fear into me in a certain way. But I tried not to let him know and not to let him sense it, and well, I tried to go on business as usual, and we started our talk.
You said you tried not to show fear. Did you feel fear?
No, in that very moment, I was not fearful. I was absolutely confident that President Putin already knew that nothing aggressive could have happened, and therefore I didn't feel any fear.
So with this as backdrop for the way that you two have interacted, you write at length in the book about Russia, about Ukraine, and I want to focus on one moment: 2014. Little green men have appeared to occupy Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula. And you write, Chancellor, that you confronted Putin on the phone. Your word, that you confronted him, not that you called him with your suspicion that these armed men wearing green uniforms were in fact Russian soldiers. And you say he replied with a barefaced lie. What happened in that call?
Well, already when he called me up, I was fully aware that it was most likely that these were military forces from Russia on Crimea. And that, of course, has changed my relations with Putin. We had controversies always, we had controversial talks, discussions always, but up until then, it was my feeling that he didn't tell any lies. And this was a lie, and he admitted to that later on. And that has fundamentally changed our relationship because I always had to be very cautious not knowing whether he was telling the truth or not. And that's what I describe in the book.
And you write, and I'm quoting, 'The rule breaker was setting the terms. He had to be stopped.' I'll make the obvious point: that was 10 years ago. He hasn't stopped. He kept going, and here we are a decade later. With the benefit of hindsight, should Germany, should NATO, have done more?
Of course, when writing the book, I have asked myself that very question. And looking back, I think it was good and right to try everything to find a peaceful solution to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, because we see the high number of victims now. That has not been successful. And I also write in the book that, from my perspective, the COVID pandemic has made it even more difficult to find solutions to the problem because over a very long period of time, we have not been able to get in touch personally. We only had contacts via telephone. Russia's war of aggression in February 2014, Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, the world has fundamentally changed, in particular for us, the Europeans. And now we need to show military strength to respond to this. And in the midterm, of course, we also need to find ways to put an end to this war, but in a way that Ukraine remains a sovereign state, a state that can make its own choices and decisions.
