When war is no longer fought with weapons and tanks, but through an invisible network of manipulation, disinformation, and sabotage, the “silent war” takes shape. The concept of hybrid warfare has now become common knowledge, no longer reserved only for insiders.
And this is the central theme of the book “Der stille Krieg: Wie Autokraten Deutschland angreifen” (The Silent War: How Autocrats Attack Germany), written by journalists Reinhard Bingener and Markus Wehner and published by C.H. Beck. The volume reveals how autocratic powers such as Russia, China, Iran, and Turkey are waging a modern form of conflict against Germany, played out on the ground of Western democracies through hybrid strategies and insidious actions.
BIRTH OF THE NEW THREAT
After the success of their previous book “Die Moskau-Connection” (The Moscow Connection), which highlighted the ties and complicities between figures of German social democracy and the Kremlin, Bingener and Wehner broaden the analysis to a wider panorama. Their work demonstrates how Germany is a prime target of a systematic and silent attack, where old military threats are combined with new hybrid warfare tactics, including disinformation, sabotage, political pressure, and influence campaigns. Their investigation involves not only Russia but also China and other authoritarian countries pursuing similar objectives in an attempt to weaken liberal democracies.
HYBRID WARFARE STRATEGIES AND DISINFORMATION
The core of the text explores the ways in which these powers use a range of tools to destabilize German society and institutions. Cyberattacks, propaganda campaigns orchestrated through controlled media, support for extremist political forces, as well as instrumental use of migration flows are described.
The authors emphasize how widespread anti-Americanism and historical memory have made Germany somewhat more vulnerable to Russian penetration, exposing it to a complex system of manipulation and corruption aimed at undermining trust in institutions.
THE CHINESE THREAT AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHALLENGES
Equally important in the narrative of the two authors, journalists of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, is the Chinese dimension, marked by sophisticated data collection and targeted digital attacks. Bingener and Wehner highlight how Beijing exploits its economic and technological weight to infiltrate critical infrastructures and gain a position of strategic control. In recent years, security experts’ alarms and some arrests of suspicious Chinese students and journalists have proven ineffective.
The parallel with Russian tactics highlights the convergence of interests of autocratic systems aiming to politically and economically surpass the West, fueling a global competition that transcends mere traditional military confrontation.
WESTERN VULNERABILITY AND THE NEED FOR RESILIENCE
Finally, the book addresses the consequences of this “silent war” for Western democracies, highlighting the delicate vulnerability of open and pluralistic systems in the face of hybrid threats. Bingener and Wehner call for the urgent development of more effective defense tools, both on the military and civilian fronts, aiming “for greater resilience of infrastructures and a collective awareness of new forms of attack.” Their analysis concludes with an appeal for a coordinated response at the European level, emphasizing that the “Zeitenwende” – the epochal turning point – requires strong and sustained commitment from democracies to protect themselves from threats as pervasive as they are insidious.
“Der stille Krieg,” which in bookstores is replicating the success of the previous investigative work and has been at the top of nonfiction book sales for weeks, thus establishes itself as a key work to understand the complexity of contemporary geopolitical confrontation. The two authors offer not only a detailed snapshot of autocrats’ aggression tactics but also propose insights to effectively face emerging challenges in a world increasingly confronted with undeclared wars and “soft” but extremely insidious conflicts.
Reinhard Bingener and Markus Wehner, Der stille Krieg: Wie Autokraten Deutschland angreifen (The Silent War: How Autocrats Attack Germany), C.H.Beck, Munich 2025.
