Can Germany Really Become Europe's Great Military Power?

It was perhaps the most significant speech given by a German chancellor in decades. On February 27, 2022—three days after Putin’s tanks rolled into Ukraine—Olaf Scholz stood before the Bundestag and declared a Zeitenwende: a turning point. Faced with a newly aggressive Russia on the EU’s doorstep, Scholz committed to overhaul Germany’s military, to surge defense spending to levels not seen since the Cold War, and to transform his nation into the continent’s greatest military power.

At the time, Zeitenwende was hailed as a historic watershed—a moment when Germany finally awoke from its long slumber to assume the mantle of Europe’s natural leader. While things are slowly moving in the right direction, analysts are starting to wonder if hitting Scholz’s targets is even possible—if Germany really has what it takes to fulfill the promise of Zeitenwende, and at last step out from America’s protective shadow.

The Shattering of Europe’s Post-Cold War Peace

In terms of historical break points, few have been quite so clean as the shattering of Europe’s post-Cold War peace. On February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin launched his all-out assault on Ukraine—a brutal, genocidal war of conquest that is still continuing. For every politician waking up in Europe’s capitals that cold winter morning, it was clear that something momentous had happened, that life on the continent would never be the same again.

Yet for all the full-scale invasion may have shaken places like Tallinn or Warsaw, one could argue that—at least initially—nowhere felt the impact as deeply as Berlin. For decades, Germany had lived under the comforting assumption that great power conflict would never return to Europe, that the end of the Cold War had created a peace that was indestructible. This was the era in which German politicians spoke of being “surrounded by friends,” when Wandel durch Handel, or “change through trade,” was Berlin’s unofficial motto—a motto that suggested one could nudge autocratic regimes like Russia or China toward democracy simply by cultivating economic ties.

Hence the existence of things like Nord Stream, a pipeline that pumped Germany full of cheap Russian gas. Hence, too, things like former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder being paid $1 million a year to sit on Gazprom’s board of directors. In the world of Wandel durch Handel, Germans could tell themselves this was just a way of ensuring the Kremlin played by the rules.

And even if it didn’t work, it’s not like Berlin had anything to fear. Surrounded by friends, Germany could afford to let its military fade, to decay into a shadow of what it once had been. With the United States effectively acting as the nation’s security guarantee—in the form of NATO—successive governments could redirect that military money elsewhere, to social programs and a welfare state Americans could only dream of.

It was, in short, a dream-like era of prosperity. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine not only acted like a gigantic bucket of icy water dumped atop Germany’s comfortable illusions, it also threatened to destroy everything the country stood for. Internationale Politik magazine has said the assault created an almost-existential threat for Germany, writing: “Berlin has understood this war as an attack not only on Ukraine’s sovereignty, but on core constituents that make up Germany and Europe: that is, as an attack on the security order, the European Union, on a rules-based international order; an attack on Germany’s success model.”

Scholz’s Zeitenwende Speech and the Promise of 100 Billion Euros

Given such a massive shock, it was perhaps only natural that Berlin would be forced into an equally massive reaction. Taking place on February 27, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s speech to the Bundestag came at a moment when things couldn’t have looked bleaker. While reports of problems in the Russian force were beginning to leak out, the operating assumption was still that Ukraine would be defeated in days, that Putin’s army would soon be at the gates of NATO.

So Scholz had a lot riding on his speech. To his credit, he more than delivered. Declaring Germans were “living through a Zeitenwende,” the chancellor denounced Putin’s war before making his centerpiece announcement.

No longer would the German military be underfunded. Instead, a 100-billion-euro special fund would be created to rearm and turn it into a world-class fighting force. The government later briefed reporters: “Germany is to become Europe’s leading military power.”

It was a dramatic pivot. Combined with a new commitment to pull defense spending up to two percent of GDP, the NY Times noted the speech meant Germany “would become the third- or fourth-biggest military spender in the world.” Amazingly, the public seemed to back this.

Polls after the speech claimed 69 percent of Germans were onboard with Zeitenwende. After decades of default pacifism, Berlin would suddenly oversee one of the greatest armies on Earth. Or would it?

In the year and a half since Scholz’s speech, the Zeitenwende seems to have stalled—a turning point that never quite finished turning. When Germany published its first-ever national security strategy in June, the Economist declared: “While the strategy usefully clarifies Germany’s perceptions and goals, it is less clear about whens and hows,” and noted it didn’t advocate for the creation of a much-needed equivalent to America’s National Security Council. Internationale Politik meanwhile said the government “seems to have lost momentum.”

Public opinion, too, has failed to stay behind Zeitenwende. When the Körber Foundation polled Germans in August of 2022 as to whether their nation should become a leading military power in Europe, 68 percent responded with a firm “nein.” Despite these headwinds, rearmament remains official policy—a vision for the future that Scholz hopes to fully embrace.

Decades of Neglect: From 5,000 Tanks to 300

As the 1990s dawned, they did so on a West Germany that fielded one of the best militaries on the planet. Up to half a million soldiers were serving in the Bundeswehr. At the drop of a hat, it could summon 215 combat battalions to fight.

This made it one of the largest militaries in the whole of NATO. Nor was it just manpower where West Germany triumphed. With 5,000 main battle tanks, over 2,000 armored personnel carriers, 24 submarines, and 520 combat aircraft, the Bundeswehr was Western Europe’s powerful first line of defense—an army that could maul the forces of the Warsaw Pact if they ever tried to march across the continent.

Sadly, a lot has changed in the past 30 years. As of January 2023, Der Spiegel reported that those 5,000 main tanks had been reduced to just 300, those 2,000-plus armored personnel carriers to 500, and that fleet of two dozen submarines to just six. And those are the on-paper numbers—including all those vehicles that are undergoing maintenance or otherwise unavailable.

If Germany were to be invaded tomorrow, it’s estimated only 60 percent of its tank fleet could be utilized, and only around a third of its helicopters and fighter jets. A full 1,000 of Berlin’s 2,000 artillery pieces can’t be activated at short notice. Not that they’d be all that useful anyway.

Germany currently has only enough ammunition stockpiled for a maximum of three days of combat, and perhaps as few as only two. As for the soldiers who would do the fighting, things are hardly in a better state. Foreign Policy reports the Bundeswehr can today quickly field a mere 34 battalions, from a total pool of 183,000 soldiers.

According to the military’s own “capability profile,” the Bundeswehr needs a minimum of 203,000 soldiers to be capable of fulfilling all its functions by 2031. Since 2018, they’ve been on a recruitment drive—but have only succeeded in plugging gaps filled by retiring servicemembers. With roughly 20,000 leaving each year, the German military is having to swim as hard as it can just to stay afloat.

In 2021, the NY Times reports that 17.5 percent of all posts above enlisted rank were empty. Meanwhile, the Air Force is lacking nearly half its jet pilots. In late 2022, Berlin staged a training exercise with 18 Puma infantry fighting vehicles, only to abandon it when all 18 broke down.

The end of the Cold War played a major part in this decline. With it seemingly no longer necessary to keep funding the Bundeswehr at its previous levels, politicians could cash in a “peace dividend.” The end of conscription in 2011 doubtlessly didn’t help with manpower issues.

But the real culprit is the 2008 financial crisis—or, at least, the government’s reaction to it. According to Der Spiegel, Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg committed to reducing the military’s budget by 8.3 billion euros over four years. A cut so deep that it didn’t so much slice away the fat as saw right through the bone.

As part of the savings drive, the Bundeswehr was forced to switch to “just in time” logistics—a form of delivery used by supermarkets to eliminate the need for expensive storage space by having goods turn up only when they’re needed. If those goods are imported strawberries, there’s a lot to be said for this system. But if they’re shells for howitzers, the likely result is a military incapable of fighting a regular war.

The Special Fund’s Shrinking Promise and the Two Percent Illusion

To rearm, Germany will first have to spend enough money to return to where it was before all these cuts. This is where Scholz’s specific pledges come in: both raising defense spending to two percent of GDP and the creation of the 100-billion-euro Special Fund for modernization. When talking about his government’s rearmament drive, Scholz has been very clear about his goals, including making the Bundeswehr “the best-equipped force in Europe.”

With the equivalent of $107 billion set aside specifically for purchasing new kit, the intention is for a sharp modernization drive that brings Germany’s forces up to scratch. But there’s a big difference between intentions and actions. The recent actions of the government suggest the Special Fund may not live up to its hype.

This year’s official defense budget, set at almost 52 billion euros, is a notable increase from previous years. However, it still only accounts for 1.57% of Germany’s GDP—far below the NATO goal of two percent. The reason Berlin is able to say it’s abiding by the two percent rule is thanks to the government raiding the Special Fund to make up the shortfall.

In 2023, that included taking almost 20 billion out and redirecting it to the regular Bundeswehr budget. The Special Fund was sold as coming on top of a defense spending jump to two percent of GDP—an amount that really would have turbocharged Germany’s military. Instead, the finance ministry has resorted to tricky accounting.

Assuming the Special Fund is likewise raided in subsequent years, Bloomberg predicts it will run dry by 2026, leaving a 25-billion-euro hole in the Bundeswehr’s finances. The current government has effectively ruled out most methods of filling it. Finance Minister Christian Lindner has said his department will abide by Germany’s debt brake rules, which limit federal deficits to 0.35% of GDP.

So borrowing won’t make up the shortfall. Tax hikes, too, have been ruled out. In effect, the Special Fund may be little more than a fig leaf for continued underinvestment in the armed forces—one that will remain in place for the life of this government, leaving it up to whoever wins the next election to deal with.

The inflation that gripped Europe over 2022 has already eaten into the Fund’s spending power. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has called for an additional 10 billion euros to make up the shortfall. Politico reports that Pistorius’s predecessor, Christine Lambrecht, was informed she needed to start spending or watch the fund’s value shrink.

Rather than move ahead with new orders, her ministry instead scrapped two navy frigates the fund was supposed to deliver. Still, not all is doom and gloom. Boris Pistorius is at least a sensible, methodical figure who is serious about Zeitenwende.

Back in March, Pistorius brought in Annette Lehnigk-Emden as the new head of the military procurement agency with a mandate to get things moving. Since then, Lehnigk-Emden has been striving to use as much of the Special Fund as possible for its original purpose. In June, Reuters quoted her as saying two-thirds of the fund is already contractually bound to new purchases, with yet more contracts due to be signed soon.

Her agency this year is set to submit 91 procurement proposals for approval—a modern German record. Some analysts contend this is a sign that, after a long delay, the Zeitenwende might be beginning to turn.

Bureaucratic Hoops and Kafkaesque Procurement

The Bundeswehr is an organization seemingly designed to turn straightforward military procurement into a Kafkaesque nightmare. The examples are legion. Among the most cited are the decade-plus it took fighter pilots to get new helmets, and an ongoing struggle to replace faulty infantry rifles that began back in 2015.

More revealing, though, might be the state of communications equipment among the German soldiers seconded to NATO. The leaders of their unit, the Germans oversee a force comprised of Dutch, Norwegian, and Czech troops, all of whom use modern military-standard devices to communicate with one another over secure channels. The Germans, by contrast, use what Army Technology has called “legacy analogue radios and communications equipment dating back 40 years”—equipment that just happens to be incompatible with that being used by their fellow NATO fighters.

This isn’t just a dangerous situation—analogue radio chatter can be easily intercepted—but also an absurd one. The German economy is roughly fifteen times bigger than the Czech one, yet the Czechs are able to securely communicate on modern devices while German soldiers flounder. German defense procurement involves painstaking, multi-year negotiations over even the simplest purchases and allows companies to use regulation and competition rules to challenge ministry decisions.

It’s not for nothing that Foreign Policy has called the procurement agency the place “where defense programs usually go to die a slow, bureaucratic death.” The good news is that recent legal changes have temporarily suspended some of the more onerous requirements. The appointment of Annette Lehnigk-Emden to overhaul the agency is another positive sign.

Still, the red tape swirling around the military is a symptom of the divided, overly legalistic structures forced on it by bygone defense ministers. Thomas de Maizière famously broke it into three separate departments with conflicting responsibilities, creating a bloated bureaucracy that wastes time mandating things like the grain size for sand at shooting ranges. As Internationale Politik put it: “Trapped in a regulatory and bureaucratic frenzy, everything is done by the book, but the result is not greater defense capability.”

The mindset behind these rules and regulations was not necessarily a bad one. It was simply one that assumed Europe would forever be at peace, and therefore doing things carefully was better than doing them quickly or at scale. According to defense expert Sophia Besch: “The reality is that the German defense procurement system has been set up for peace time… But the blanket adoption of rules and requirements from civilian life often is not appropriate for regulating the processes, procedures and workflows inside the defense sector.”

Rearmed, Rejuvenated? Germany’s Defense Industry and New Acquisitions

Back in the 1970s, one of Australia’s biggest military purchases was when Canberra placed an order with Berlin for roughly 100 Leopard tanks. Nearly half a century later, the two capitals announced a brand-new deal to ship a similar number of vehicles. Only, this time, it wasn’t the Aussies doing the buying.

At a price of roughly 600 million euros, Berlin had secured 100 Boxer armored fighting vehicles from Down Under. This comes on the heels of a different deal inked with America in December to purchase 35 F-35 Lightning II aircraft for 8.3 billion euros, as well as another recent 1.5-billion-euro deal with domestic suppliers KMW and PSM for 143 Puma infantry fighting vehicles. And this is just a drop in the ocean compared to other contracts Berlin has been inking—contracts that will boost the equipment and capabilities of multiple Bundeswehr branches while showing the world, and particularly NATO allies, that the Germans really mean it.

Of course, that statement comes with a caveat: more work still needs to be done. Army Technology has noted that the order for new Pumas needs to be at least doubled to complete the modernization drive among mechanized forces. Still, as signaling goes, it’s doing its job.

No longer do comments about the German military automatically result in rolled eyeballs among defense experts. Yet it’s not where international purchases are concerned that the Bundeswehr has the most going for it. That would be in Germany’s local defense industry.

For all the German military may be bloated, bureaucratic, and perpetually starved of funds, it’s a whole different story with the private sector. Within the country alone, some 135,000 people work in a sector that’s not just worth $30 billion annually but also home to some of the world’s most important defense companies. Rheinmetall, KMW, Heckler & Koch, MBDA’s German subsidiary—for fans of military hardware, those names together represent an Olympic podium of the greatest, most hi-tech producers in their fields.

Rheinmetall alone can produce nearly half a million artillery shells a year. MBDA’s missiles are in use around the world. Even smaller companies like Rohde & Schwarz can produce military-applicable gear—in their case, world-beating encryption systems.

Foreign Policy recently published a major article titled “German Defense Companies Could Be Europe’s Arsenal of Democracy,” noting the German defense sector’s key products include “air defense systems (mobile, short-range, and medium-range); ground-based electronic warfare systems; loitering munitions; precision-guided munitions of all ranges and advanced artillery rounds; artillery systems, main battle tanks, armored personnel carriers, and next-generation armored vehicles; diesel-electric submarines; digitally encrypted communications; and networking and cloud capabilities for modern battle management.” The article mostly argued that Germany wasn’t taking advantage of these capabilities, but that giant list still shows just how much capacity and talent Berlin could harness if it wanted to. In the days before Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion, Germany was so worried about upsetting the Kremlin that the most Berlin was willing to do was send Ukraine 5,000 helmets.

Since then, Scholz’s government has come around to supplying main battle tanks, air defenses, self-propelled howitzers, munitions, and more. At home, they’ve slowly begun a new defense spending spree. Onerous rules have been targeted for loosening.

There’s been a new willingness to engage with the challenges of rearmament—both financial and psychological.

A Generational Choice: Leadership or Stagnation

The central question remains whether Germany is witnessing a Zeitenwende gradually beginning to turn, or merely observing inertia—a pivot point so corroded by decades of peace that it’s become impossible to shift. Which of those interpretations is true is something that will only become clear over the next couple of years. Germany may be on the cusp of a generational change, a transformation into a great military power.

That is an uncomfortable thought for many Germans who are still haunted by their nation’s past. Uncomfortable, too, for those who wished to get back to how things were before the war—when it seemed like the soft glow of peace over Europe would never fade. Yet fade it did.

Now Berlin is faced with a choice: to become the natural leader much of Europe wants it to be, or step aside and let a new, rising power like Poland take the reins. Whatever the people of Germany decide, it is a decision that will reshape European security for decades to come.

Sources

1. https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/06/germany-bundeswehr-defense-industry-zeitenwende-weapons-arms-exports-rheinmetall-leopard-tanks-drones/
2. https://www.army-technology.com/comment/german-defence-speech/#catfish
3. https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-bad-news-bundeswehr-an-examination-of-the-truly-dire-state-of-germany-s-military-a-df92eaaf-e3f9-464d-99a3-ef0c27dcc797
4. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/24/magazine/germany-military-army.html
5. https://ip-quarterly.com/en/no-time-lose-how-germanys-zeitenwende-defense-can-succeed
6. https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-zeitenwende-defense-spending-nato-gdp-target-scholz-ukraine-war-russia/
7. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/german-defense-spending-shortfall-puts-nato-goal-in-doubt-ifo-institute-says-1.1943571
8. https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/06/15/germanys-new-national-security-strategy-is-strong-on-goals-less-so-on-means
9. https://theconversation.com/whats-behind-australias-1-billion-defence-deal-with-germany-209490
10. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/german-defence-procurement-chief-sees-boom-equipment-orders-table-media-2023-06-05/
11. https://fourninesecurity.de/2023/01/18/to-really-modernize-its-armed-forces-germany-needs-a-long-term-increase-of-the-regular-defense-budget