Germany restores rusting armed forces in face of Russian threat
TODAY Checkpoint Charlie in central Berlin is a slightly tacky tourist site, with a few sandbags and a recreation of a US military post, complete with stars and stripes flags and a sign warning: “You are now leaving the American Sector.”
But 33 years ago this was the front line in the Cold War, where Nato and the Soviet Union stared at each other down a few yards of Berlin street, each with enough nuclear weapons to wipe out civilisation at their call.
It feels as if those times are returning in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Days after the invasion began, Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, stunned allies and critics alike by announcing that Germany is to rearm, reversing decades of a more pacifist policy.
He pledged to spend €100 billion (£84billion) restoring Germany’s longneglected armed forces over the next two years and promised that from now on the country will meet Nato’s spending commitment of 2 per cent of GDP.
“We are experiencing a turning point,” Mr Scholz told the German parliament. “That is to say, the world after is no longer the same as it was before.”
It was a momentous announcement for a country that has long underfunded its military. Germany is Europe’s biggest economy, yet has a smaller military than Ukraine and relies entirely on Nato for its defence.
It wasn’t always like this. During the Cold War, West Germany was the backbone of Nato’s land forces in Europe. With more than 500,000 active troops in 1989, 12 army divisions, 7,000 tanks and 1,000 combat aircraft, it was the second largest Western military in Europe after the US, considerably larger than the British or French armed forces.
That fell away in the wake of German reunification. Successive governments under Helmut Kohl, Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel were all too eager to reap the peace dividend and slashed military spending, convinced there was no threat to Germany.
The results were parlous. In 2015, equipment shortages became so severe that German troops taking part in a Nato exercise used broomsticks painted black instead of guns and civilian vans to stand in for armoured vehicles.
By 2018, things had got so bad that Hans-Peter Bartels, the German parliament’s official military watchdog, warned that Germany could not meet its Nato obligations. That year an official report admitted that none of Germany’s six remaining submarines were seaworthy. In 2019 all of Germany’s 52 Tiger attack helicopters were grounded.
But still Mrs Merkel resisted increasing military spending – an attitude that was echoed in polite German society, where the reaction was to recall the Nazi era and insist: “Never again.”
No more. “You wake up in the morning and realise: there is war in Europe,” Gen Alfons Mais, the chief of staff of the German army, posted on social media.
“And the Bundeswehr, the army that I have the duty to lead, is more or less empty-handed.”
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Mrs Merkel’s last defence minister, tweeted: “After Georgia, Crimea, and Donbas, we have not prepared anything that could have really deterred Putin.”
A recent poll found 76 per cent of Germans back the move to rearm, but it remains to be seen if this translates into action. There have been false dawns with German military spending before.
Experts say it will take more than €100billion to restore Germany’s rusting armed forces to their former strength.
Germany reportedly wants to buy 35 F35 stealth fighters from the US, plus an unspecified number of the latest Eurofighters, to replace its decrepit fleet.
More strikingly, Mr Scholz has confirmed that Germany is in talks to buy Israel’s Arrow 3 anti-missile shield – a potential defence against mediumrange Russian missiles.
Mr Scholz is making bones over the cost: around €2 billion. But Germany may have to get used to spending if it wants to return to being a military power to be reckoned with.