The NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia involve German forces in their first offensive action since the end of the second World War, and the mood in Germany is muted, almost solemn.
Normal political conflict was abandoned in the Bundestag yesterday as all parties except the ex-communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) expressed support for the air strikes.
Even the Greens are in favour of the action, although some members of the environmentalist party are expressing disquiet at Germany's involvement.
"War is going out from German soil once again. I am ashamed of my country, which is bombing Belgrade," said Mr Christian Strobele, a left-wing Green member of the Bundestag.
The conflict in Kosovo is receiving saturation coverage on German television, with public service channels broadcasting hours of special programmes about the air strikes.
The mass-circulation Bild newspaper devoted five pages to the conflict yesterday, including profiles of individual German soldiers and airmen involved in the strikes. "Come safely home - Germany worries about its sons," read the paper's main headline.
If Germany could have chosen the arena for its first offensive action in half a century, it would not have been in the Balkans, where Hitler's Wehrmacht left a particularly gruesome legacy of war crimes.
Until now, Bonn has shied away from active participation in NATO offensive operations, preferring to contribute to the cost of the Gulf War than to participate in it. The involvement of German forces in the air strikes against Belgrade are part of the country's attempt to behave as a normal western power and to be regarded as such.
But the German public remains unprepared for the prospect of casualties in the conflict, and even the popular press shows little relish for armed conflict. Most features focus on the fears of mothers or other relations of the German troops in action.
But Bild yesterday published an extraordinary commentary by a 71-year-old woman who compared her feelings today with those she felt more than half a century ago when her two brothers were called up for Hitler's war.
"It all looks like my grandchildren's computer games. But the truth is that, as in the last war, our soldiers are risking their lives and mothers are worried about their sons," she wrote.
