In other words, making difficult foreign policy decisions requires taking moral risks. But when your self-image is wobbly and your primary goal is to stay clean, such decisions are the last ones you want to take. For Germany’s brittle psyche, these kinds of compromises constitute a grave danger. They are not just reminders of historic failure, they also threaten to damage the carefully constructed and hard-won sense of post-war righteousness. They basically threaten to destroy what little confidence there is on hand. The kind of small and not-so-small moral compromises that keep a country handlungsfähig (capable of acting), especially in military affairs, need decision-makers and a wider public that has sufficient trust in its own good intentions. With that being absent, political paralysis follows.

https://www.the-american-interest.com/2019/10/04/no-trust-in-self-no-money-for-defense/