Georg Löfflmann

The German army has far bigger problems than funding

More money alone isn’t enough to turn the army into a credible fighting force

(Photo: Getty)

In a historic speech to the German parliament last month, the chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a €100 billion investment fund for the German army and a permanent increase in defence spending to above 2 per cent of GDP.

He also promised that Germany would send hundreds of Stinger man-portable air-defence systems and Panzerfaust-3 anti-tank weapons to Ukraine to aid the country in its fight against Russian aggression. In the Reichstag – that still bears the graffiti of Soviet soldiers that stormed the building in May 1945 – Scholz announced a radical departure, or ‘Zeitenwende’, from decades of German post-war foreign policy doctrine. Germany’s military reticence would end – as would its strategic diplomatic and economic engagement with Russia.

At the centre of this historic turning point are Germany’s armed forces, the Bundeswehr. After decades of underfunding, cutbacks, public disinterest and political neglect it is no longer a credible fighting force. In a rare public intervention as Russia invaded, Alfons Mais, the head of the German army, expressed a deep sense of frustration that he had almost no options to bolster Germany’s military presence in eastern Europe to reassure Nato allies, because the Bundeswehr was ‘more or less bare’ in its capabilities. But how did we get here?

The Bundeswehr was established in November 1955. Less than ten years after the second world war, and with the West fearing a Soviet attack on western Europe, Germany rearmed. The Federal Republic of Germany was integrated into Nato and the sole task of the Bundeswehr was the territorial defence of west Germany alongside US, British, Canadian, Dutch and Belgian forces.

To do so the Bundeswehr would field an army of 500,000 men with 12 divisions. By the end of the Cold War, Germany had an impressive arsenal of thousands of modern Leopard tanks, Marder infantry fighting vehicles and one of the best ground-based mobile air defences in western Europe with the Gepard anti-aircraft tank, plus hundreds of Luftwaffe fighters and fighter bombers.

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