June 4th 2025|BERLIN AND GÖRLITZ
THIS TIME they were invited😄. On May 22nd locals cheered as German tanks rolled through the streets of Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital once occupied by the Nazis. City buses flashed tributes to the fraternal bonds linking the nato allies. Even so, when the Bundeswehr’s brass band struck up a rendition of “Prussia’s Glory”, some of the German dignitaries assembled for the inauguration of their army’s 45th Panzer brigade felt a twinge of unease. It wasn’t until they saw the beaming faces of their Lithuanian counterparts that they were able to enjoy the show.
The armoured brigade, which will number 5,000 by 2027, is Germany’s first permanent deployment abroad since the Second World War. It is also the starkest sign of the extraordinary turn taken by a country that took full receipt of the peace dividend after 1990, sheltering under American protection as its own army withered and its commercial ties with Russia strengthened (see chart 1). The Lithuania decision was taken in 2023 as part of the Zeitenwende, or “turning-point”, in security policy instigated by Olaf Scholz, the then-chancellor, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The €100bn ($114bn) spending spree he unleashed has already given Germany the world’s fourth-biggest defence budget, reckons the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Mr Scholz’s fund largely “filled in the potholes”, as General Carsten Breuer, the head of the armed forces, has put it, but much remains to be done. The coming wave of spending will aim to bolster Germany’s role as NATO’s “critical backbone”. Priorities include reinforcing air defence, refilling ammunition stocks, and building long-range precision-strike capabilities.
Officials’ priorities are clear. “Time is of the essence,” says General Alfons Mais, the head of the army, encouraging Germany’s defence industry to focus on mass production. Insiders are sceptical about building up domestic or European industry at the expense of off-the-shelf solutions from elsewhere, such as America, in the name of “strategic autonomy”. “If we face delays or delivery challenges at home,” says General Mais, “it’s better to take a broader approach and look at who can deliver.”
Some worry that Germany is failing to learn from Ukraine, with its drone swarms and “transparent” battlefields. “Tech in Germany is amazing,” says Nico Lange, a former defence ministry official. “But the political side does not know how to use it.” No one wants to fight the last war by building up stockpiles of drones that quickly become obsolete. But planners also need to ensure Germany is not left over-reliant on legacy systems. “We need a market-driven industry that innovates, fails in one place and succeeds elsewhere, using private capital,” says Gundbert Scherf, the co-ceo of Helsing, a startup with a focus on AI-enabled land, air, and maritime systems.
Upgrading the Bundeswehr also means tackling a sluggish planning and procurement bureaucracy. When Mr Merz proposed his change to the debt brake, he said he would do “whatever it takes” to protect peace and freedom in Europe. Yet turning the money taps on first inevitably reduces the pressure to reform, notes Claudia Major of the German Marshall Fund, a think-tank. Germany’s federal audit office recently called for “far-reaching changes” to a Bundeswehr it said had become “top-heavy” with management. Many experts share this analysis. “Procurement takes too long,” laments General Mais. “Signing a contract is one thing, getting the stuff to the troops is another.”
A common grumble is that Germany “gold-plates” its processes, imposing onerous requirements such as ensuring tanks are suitable for pregnant women. “The 80% solution now is better than the 100% one in five years,” says Matthias Wachter, head of security policy at the Federation of German Industries. The German Iris-T air defence system, which has proved itself in Ukraine, is nevertheless still undergoing testing for domestic use.
Tackling these roadblocks falls to Boris Pistorius, the defence minister, whose plain speaking has made him Germany’s most popular politician. Despite that, not everyone is convinced he has the patience to grapple seriously with the Bundeswehr’s bureaucracy. “He is the best minister we’ve had for years,” says Sara Nanni, a Green MP on the Bundestag’s defence committee. “But he can be a bit superficial.” A new law, the imperiously named Planungs- und Beschaffungsbeschleunigungsgesetz (Planning and Procurement Acceleration Act), aims to relax some regulations. But merely tweaking the system may not be enough.
Are Germans ready to make themselves kriegstüchtig, or “war-ready”, as Mr Pistorius has demanded? Paranoid about reopening the social rifts of the COVID-19 years in a country that retains a scepticism about military force, Mr Scholz was cautious in his rhetoric and halting in his help for Ukraine; Mr Merz strikes a sharper tone. Vestiges of the old attitude remain, such as the self-imposed bans at dozens of universities on accepting government money for military research. Ms Major worries that if Ukraine is forced into a “dirty ceasefire”, the momentum of recent years may be squandered as calls for diplomacy and détente with Russia gather steam.
So far, perhaps because skirting the debt brake has allowed Germany to avoid guns-or-butter trade-offs, voters have by and large backed the changes (see chart 2). Attitudes towards the army are changing, too. Soldiers marvel at the esteem they now encounter in daily life. “Sometimes when I’m on the street, people stop me to say, ‘Thank you for your service’—like in America!” exclaims one cadet officer.
A trickier test will come when Germany begins a serious debate over restoring conscription, which was suspended under Angela Merkel in 2011. The Bundeswehr is struggling to get troop numbers over 180,000, well short of the current target of 203,000, itself likely to be lifted after the nato summit. Given Germany’s NATO commitments, General Breuer thinks Germany will need 100,000 extra troops, including reservists, by 2029.
For now, Mr Merz’s government hopes to get there with compulsory questionnaires for 18-year-old men (an extension to women would need a constitutional change). That will at least buy time to rebuild Germany’s crumbling barracks and hire the military trainers a bigger army needs. But hardly anyone thinks an element of compulsion can be avoided. “I’m absolutely convinced we will have this debate,” says General Mais. Polls find a majority of Germans in favour of restoring conscription; support is predictably lowest among the young.
A long march ahead
Germany’s various agonies found expression at a recent “Zeitenwende on Tour” event in Görlitz, an eastern German town on the Polish border where nearly half of voters support the hard-right, pro-Russia Alternative für Germany party. Mr Lange, the former defence official, led a discussion on rearmament in front of a disputatious audience. Some angrily blamed nato enlargement for the Ukraine war, or issued jeremiads against profiteering arms companies. Others pushed back. Andre, a hospital worker who had driven from Dresden to support the case for rearmament, says the issue splits his colleagues 50-50.
“The government should have been doing this from the start,” says Mr Lange, who has been taking his message to Germans for over three years. It is grinding work, especially since Germans are now being asked to make sacrifices on behalf of foreign lands. In Vilnius, Mr Merz said: “Lithuania’s security is also our security,” a plain statement of his country’s nato commitments that also implies tough demands of ordinary Germans. Only now, perhaps, is that message beginning to get through. ■
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