05/31/2026: Germany Rearms, Freezing the Biological Clock

0:00Ready to level up? Chumba Casino is your playbook to fun. It's free to play with no purchase necessary. Enjoy hundreds of online social games like Blackjack, Slots and Solitaire anytime, anywhere with fresh releases every week. Whether you're at home or on the go, let Chumba Casino bring the excitement to you. Plus, get free daily login bonuses and a free welcome bonus. Join now for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. Play Chumba Casino today. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Void war prohibited by law. 21+. TNCs apply. Summer routines live or die by how easy they are. And honestly, if something takes too much effort, I'm out.

0:35That's why Grooms is my go-to. It's one daily pack of gummies covering my greens, vitamins, and minerals. Plus, it has six grams of prebiotic fiber, which is more than two cups of broccoli. No mixing powders, no giant pills, no hassle. Just rip open the pack, and I'm done. They taste good, and it makes it easy to stay on top of my health, even when life gets busy. Save up to 52 % off with code podcast at Grooms.co. That's code podcast at gruns.co.

1:08This past November, we were invited by the Bundeswehr, the German military, to observe basic training as a squad of recruits ran punishing drills, honing the skills they would need to defend against an enemy assault. Everything we are training here for could be one day real. We don't hope that, but we're preparing exactly for that. Because of the war in Ukraine? Yes, of course. Let's get some eggs. Let's go. Let's get some eggs. More and more American women are freezing their eggs to preserve their fertility. Those are the eggs. Could egg freezing offer what previous generations only dreamed of?

1:49the chance to put the biological clock on ice. There definitely is that TikTok clock, and I'm not ready quite yet. I think that egg freezing is as revolutionary as the pill was in 1960s and 70s. It's as revolutionary as the pill. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes.

2:49Play now at ChumbaCasino.com. Let's Chumba! Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW group order prohibited by law. 21 plus terms and conditions apply. Summer routines live or die by how easy they are. And honestly, if something takes too much effort, I'm out. That's why Groons is my go-to. It's one daily pack of gummies covering my greens, vitamins, and minerals. Plus, it has six grams of prebiotic fiber, which is more than two cups of broccoli. No mixing powders, no giant pills, no hassle. Just rip open the pack and I'm done. They taste good, and it makes it easy to stay on top of my health, even when life gets busy.

3:21Save up to 52 % off with code podcast at gruns.co. That's code podcast at gruns.co. U.S. troops have been stationed in Germany since the end of World War II, providing critical support for our NATO ally. This month, just days after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz criticized the war in Iran, the Pentagon announced plans to withdraw 5 ,000 troops from Germany. Spurred by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and persistent pressure from President Donald Trump for Europe to shoulder more of its own defense, European nations are beefing up their militaries. Nowhere is the impact more profound than in Germany.

4:06Scarred by their country's Nazi past, Germans embraced pacifism after the Cold War, Defense spending collapsed to the point some soldiers were buying their own gear. But as we first reported in December, the landscape has transformed. Today, Germany is racing to rearm. In November, we were invited by the Bundeswehr, the German military, to observe basic training at the Munster Army Base in northwest Germany.

4:42A squad of recruits ran punishing drills, honing the skills they would need to defend their position against an enemy assault. The major in charge has been training troops since 2018. The Bundeswehr won't reveal his name to shield his identity from hostile actors. So have you seen a difference in the recruits of today versus years past? Yes, I think there's a huge difference. They know what they're here for, and it's getting more clear to them that everything we're training here for could be one day real. We don't hope that, but we're preparing exactly for that. Because of the war in Ukraine? Yes, of course, yeah.

5:35The war in Ukraine has shaken Germany's sense of security. But the country is also shaking off the shadows of its brutal military past. This Holocaust memorial in Berlin, a stark reminder of that history, stands close by the Reichstag, where the national parliament is moving to restore Germany's military as Europe's most powerful force. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has overseen a 23 % uptick in enlistments over last year. How is the war in Ukraine changing Germany's view of its own security? I grew up in the Cold War, and since February 2022, we all experienced in Germany and in Europe that the war is back.

6:25We never expected that, and we were so hopeful that it would never happen again. But it does, and we have to do everything to be able to deter and defend. Pistorius was appointed defense minister in 2023, almost a year after Russia's large-scale assault on Ukraine. When conservative Friedrich Merz became chancellor last May, he kept Pistorius, the blunt-talking social democrat, in his post. I mean, you have to be clear on what you want, what you are standing for. We met him at the Bendler Block, the Berlin building complex once housed the Nazis' army high command. Today, it's Germany's equivalent of the Pentagon.

7:08When we spoke with Pistorius in November, he didn't pull any punches on Russian President Vladimir Putin's ambitions. There is not only the war against Ukraine. This is a war against the root-based international order. and at the same time he does not stop stressing what he's really longing for, like a renaissance of the Soviet empire. He wants to be the dominant power in Europe and he wants to be the third of three world powers like China and the U.S. This is what he is heading for. Pistorius warns Putin is rapidly rebuilding Russia's military and he told us Russia could be in position to attack the West by the end of the decade.

7:55When does Germany need to be ready for war? We should do everything to be that in 2029. This is our objective. This is still a way to go. Three days after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz told the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, the incursion marked a Zeitungbinde. a turning point for Europe. He announced a special 100 billion euro fund to kickstart Germany's military build-up. Three years later, in the run-up to his election as chancellor, Friedrich Merz said he was troubled as well by President Trump's threats to pull back from NATO. My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA.

8:49You're gambling with World War III. After this contentious Oval Office meeting with President Zelensky in February 2025, Friedrich Merz posted, we must never confuse aggressor and victim in this terrible war. And he pushed Parliament to exempt defense spending from Germany's debt break, the constitutionally mandated spending cap. The money started flowing. The defense budget is projected to rise almost 80 % by 2029. How big should the German military be? Germany is the third biggest economy in the world. And the biggest one in Europe, of course. So everybody in Europe expects us to be the strongest ally in NATO in Europe.

9:38With the surge of federal funding, the long, moribund German defense industry is springing back to life. The drones are the future of warfare. We met Sven Krug in Berlin. He is co-CEO of drone manufacturer Quantum Systems. The company, with factories in Germany and Ukraine, landed a 25 million euro contract with the Bundeswehr to produce up to 750 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance drones, ISR for short. We have now more than 1 ,500 at the battlefront, day by day in use. 1 ,500 drones? Drones, in use in Ukraine, day by day, night by night. Drones, including Quantums, have helped reshape the battlefield.

10:27A few months after the 2022 invasion, Russian forces tried to cross the Donets River in eastern Ukraine. Explosions and smoke obscured their movements. A quantum drone equipped with a thermal camera helped Ukraine see, target, and stop the advance. And this actually was our moment where everybody has seen quantum systems and especially ISR drones can make a difference. Krug told us Germany isn't investing enough in cutting-edge technologies. But we saw evidence the defense ministry is thinking outside the box, way outside the box. It's funding tests to see if these giant Madagascar hissing cockroaches can be repurposed from repulsive pests to miniature battlefield assets.

11:18This is a left turn and this is a right turn. Stefan Wilhelm's fledgling startup Swarm Biotactics in central Germany is working with the Bundeswehr to develop technology that can steer the creepy critters autonomously and send them on reconnaissance missions. He let me take control. Wow. They're super resilient, and as you can see, I mean, they can crawl through tiny spaces, can go up the wall, into pipes, like underground in rubble. You know this is really bizarre. Is it? Swarm's insect neuroscientists attach electrodes to the roach's antenna. They insist this doesn't hurt, stimulating their natural ability to navigate.

12:05The electrodes are hidden in these bug-sized backpacks, along with a battery and microchips. They're working to shrink the technology to soon look like this. Swarm's AI-generated video shows how they might be deployed, carrying cameras, microphones and Doppler radar into war zones. Right now we're hearing that Russia is rearming itself. They've got more tanks, more armaments. How does this compete? We have to be smarter. We have to use intelligence. We have to use autonomy, because we wouldn't have enough personnel or enough equipment if you look at what Russia produces right now. So I think this is a shift we see in the German startups.

12:51Still, Germany is placing a big bet on its biggest defense contractor, Reinmattahl. A major arms supplier to German troops in both world wars, Rheinmetall and its subsidiaries have won a commanding share of recent government contracts. We are the fastest growing defense company in Europe at the moment. Armin Paperger has been CEO since 2013. Pragmatic, forceful, strategic, he built Rheinmetall into a pillar of NATO rearmament. Rheinmetall was an ammunition company. is going from ammunitions to vehicle platforms. But now we go to digitization, we go to satellite business, we go to naval business.

13:34His company's success and support of Ukraine made him the target of a Russian assassination plot. But that didn't slow him or the company down. Reinmattal is building and expanding 13 arms factories across Europe. We educated two generations. If something happens in the world, we call Washington and Washington will help us. That changed. President Trump said it very clear. America has her own problems. The Europeans have to help themselves. And now, with the Ukrainian-Russian war, it's very clear about that, that we have to do more. In 2024, Germany began sending its 45th armored brigade, 5 ,000 troops, to Lithuania, once brutally occupied by the Nazis.

14:23Lithuania now welcomes German troops bolstering NATO's eastern flank, Germany's first permanent deployment of a combat-ready brigade abroad since World War II. Despite the uptick in enlistments, the Bundeswehr faces a manpower challenge. It wants to add about 75 ,000 active-duty troops to its all-volunteer force by 2035. History weighs on recruitment. The issue still sparks protests. A recent poll found an overwhelming majority of 15 - to 25-year-olds would not take up arms. If volunteer numbers fall short, the government may reintroduce the draft. Soldiers we met in basic training told us they find the reluctance of their generation to volunteer troubling.

15:16I think a lot of it must have to do with the history of World War II. Yes, of course. Private Lasse told us he's proud to serve. Nobody wants to go to war. But if it happens, you have to be there to defend your country.

15:39The week before we spoke to Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, he presided over a public swearing-in of new recruits in Berlin.

15:51Deutschland! Deutschland, they shouted. The world hasn't heard Germany assert itself like this since World War II, but times have changed. When you talk about rebuilding the German military, there are many people who recoil at that thought. I try to explain to them, if you want to live in peace, in freedom, security, with the right to go on the street and to demonstrate against or for whatever you want, to love however to want, and to believe in any God you want, then you need to be willing to defend it, because otherwise there might be people like Vladimir Putin who will take that kind of living away from us.

16:43The Second World War is the largest event in human history. A 20-part series with Tom Hanks. No part of the globe was untouched. No life unchanged. Experience the ultimate account of World War II. Every single person had a story. These are the stories that make us who we are. Listen to World War II with Tom Hanks on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Yo, it's Jey Uso from WWE. And I'm Jimmy Uso. Chumba Casino and WWE are hyped for the biggest event of the summer. SummerSlam. I know. I can't wait. There's nothing better to do while we're waiting than playing Chumba Casino. Sign up today and you can win a VIP experience with Chumba Casino and WWE for SummerSlam.

17:33So what are you waiting for? Play Chumba Casino and enter for your chance to win. Let's Chumba. New purchase necessary. PGW Group. Void for prohibited by law. CTs and Zs. 21+. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. summer routines live or die by how easy they are and honestly if something takes too much effort i'm out that's why grooms is my go-to it's one daily pack of gummies covering my greens vitamins and minerals plus it has six grams of prebiotic fiber which is more than two cups of broccoli no mixing powders no giant pills no hassle just rip open the pack and i'm done they taste good and it makes it easy to stay on top of my health even when life gets busy save up to 52 percent off with code podcast at gruns.co.

18:09That's code podcast at gruns.co. Fertility rates in the U.S. are near historic lows. One reason is a sharp decline over the last three decades in the number of American women having babies in their 20s. And yet there's been no change in women's biology or the age at which fertility declines. Unsolvable problem? Enter egg freezing. As we first reported last year, freezing embryos for in vitro fertilization, IVF, has been possible for decades. But freezing unfertilized eggs was a tougher scientific challenge, used initially for patients with cancer and other conditions that threaten fertility. Egg freezing, for non-medical reasons, became an accepted practice 13 years ago.

19:06And since then, demand has skyrocketed, with hundreds of thousands of eggs now frozen, raising big money, big hopes, and big questions. Could egg freezing offer women what previous generations only dreamed of, the chance to put that dreaded ticking of the biological clock on ice. Early one rainy Tuesday, Kate Sonderreger came to a fertility clinic in midtown Manhattan to undergo a minor surgical procedure to harvest and then freeze her eggs. The next morning, at a different fertility center, we scrubbed up and met another egg freezing patient, Catherine Schneider. How are you feeling? Excited.

19:58Her doctor, Tomer Singer, head of Northwell Health's fertility practice, escorted her into the OR. Let's get some eggs. Let's go. Let's get some eggs. Egg retrieval is the culmination of an arduous process, nearly two weeks of daily self-administered hormone injections, sometimes several a day. The shots induce the ovaries to ripen multiple follicles, the sacs that contain eggs, so that a surgeon can go in with a tiny needle and drain the fluid in those follicles, which is then run into an adjacent embryology lab to search for the eggs. So the patient is right around the corner? Correct. We watched as a pair of embryologists did the delicate work of maneuvering tiny pipettes under a microscope to find and isolate Catherine's egg cells in the fluid.

21:00And here are all the eggs together. See? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Those little black balls are... Yeah. Those are the eggs. Those are the eggs. Oh, my goodness. After a few hours, the eggs are put onto tiny special straws, then plunged into liquid nitrogen, and stored in tanks at negative 320 degrees, where they will stay, possibly for years, until their owner is ready to thaw them, add sperm, and turn them into embryos, embryos, which is effectively the second half of IVF. According to the data thus far, as with IVF, there are no differences in the health of babies born from frozen eggs.

21:49I think that egg freezing is as revolutionary as the pill was in 1960s and 70s. It's as revolutionary as the pill? Yeah. And that changed everything, as you know. I know. Women had the option of choosing who to be with and not to accidentally get pregnant with the wrong guy. Egg freezing took it an extra level. So you don't have to have a baby at 30 because you're 30 or 35. You can delay fertility into your 40s. You'll have women having kids in their late 40s with their own eggs that were freezing in their 20s and 30s. There's a famous painting of the young woman with tears going down her face.

22:27Oops, I forgot to have a baby. That won't be true anymore. Correct. I think that we're pushing the envelope. I'm currently 40. I froze my eggs when I was 35. The first time I did it, I was 34 years old, and the second time, I was 36. I did two cycles last year when I was 34. We spoke to a group of women about their decision to freeze their eggs. Why is it a good idea? I 100 % know that I really would love to have children. Yasmin Higbee is 30, works in consulting, and has a serious boyfriend. I'll be able to enjoy these times with my partner a bit more instead of rushing to have kids because there definitely is that tick-tock clock that started and I'm not ready quite yet.

23:16It's an insurance. I know that, you know, I'm going to be an older mother. Namitha Jacob, 38, a health care administrator and strategist, isn't ready yet because she hasn't found the right partner. It takes the stress away from dating. You're not pressured to find someone and settle down and get married. You don't hear the ticking. That damn biological clock. It ticks in every woman's head. Amazing. Like it or not, says Dr. Lucky Seacon of Fertility Clinic RMA of New York, that damn clock is very real. We're born with all of the eggs that we're ever going to have, and we don't make new eggs, and we can't fix or repair them.

24:04It's always decreasing over time. So you're born with a number. Yes. And it starts decreasing right away? It pretty much starts decreasing even before you're born. You're a fetus in your mother's womb at 20 weeks, and that's when you have the peak number of eggs, 6 to 7 million. You have eggs at 20 weeks? Yes. And from then on, the number keeps going down, and the eggs keep aging. So when you freeze an egg, you are stopping it from aging any further. Correct. So if you remove the egg and freeze it when you're 28, that egg is 28 years old. Yep. Until you thaw it. Yes, it's incredible. Because it's not just the quantity of women's eggs that decreases with age, it's also their quality, meaning their likelihood of becoming a baby.

24:56Even at peak fertility in women's 20s, some 25 % of eggs, when combined with sperm, will create embryos that are chromosomally abnormal and will likely lead to miscarriages, and the percentages rise from there. As you get to 35, that number has steadily increased to about 30 to 35 % of embryos being abnormal from your 35-year-old eggs. At 37, 38 years of age, 50%. That's a turning point. Things start to move more rapidly. And at 40, you're looking at 60 to 70 percent of embryos being abnormal. By 45, 90 percent. 90 percent. Correct. A lot of times people think that if they've done all the right things, if they've led a healthy lifestyle, they do yoga, they've never smoked a cigarette in their life, they feel younger than their age, and they feel like their eggs will be younger than their age.

25:51And I have to explain to them that we have no data to suggest that you can influence your egg quality in that way, unfortunately. Is there an optimal age to freeze your eggs? Yes, your 20s, because that's when you're at your lowest possible rate of genetic errors in the embryos that result from those eggs. And you also have a lot more eggs at that age. Kate decided to freeze her eggs at the unusually young age of 22 because she's going to medical school and knows she has a long journey ahead of her. You know, education for four years, training for anywhere from four to seven years after that. And so I'm not even going to think about building a family personally until after I'm done with all of that.

26:40Younger and younger women are beginning to freeze their eggs. When I started doing egg freezing in 2012, most of the women were 40, 41, 42. When I see patients today, most of them are late 20s, early 30s. He says there used to be a stigma, as though freezing eggs meant something hadn't worked out in a patient's life, but not anymore. It became a common thing. It's almost empowering. You come in, I'm in my 30s, I'm not ready for a baby, I want to freeze my eggs, I'm not going to compromise on the wrong guy. Freezing eggs is expensive. A single cycle, including medication, costs an average of$12 ,000 to$15 ,000, plus another$500 to$1 ,000 each year for storage.

27:30To thaw and fertilize the eggs later on costs an additional$10 ,000. Back in 2014, Apple and Facebook made headlines when they started offering egg freezing as a covered benefit for their employees. Today, nearly half of the largest corporations in the U.S., those with 20 ,000 or more employees, cover egg freezing. Our parent company, Paramount, among them. When I was job searching, it was something I was really looking for. Carissa Simic changed jobs three years ago. More and more companies started to offer it, or I was seeing it. So that was a consideration? Absolutely. As to where you worked?

28:15Yes, absolutely. Her egg freezing cycles were covered, as were Nemeatha's. But there's also been criticism of those companies' motives. There are some people who feel that the companies do that to keep you at work so that you won't have a child and leave. Not to make you happy, but to keep you at your desk. I personally don't see it that way. When I learned about the fact that they're offering this really wonderful benefit, it made me more dedicated and committed to my company, actually. It's a good way to retain top talent. My insurance did not cover egg freezing at the time. Tina Rampino, 46, learned about egg freezing in its early days when she went for a routine doctor's visit at age 35 and got a message she wasn't expecting.

29:08My gynecologist said to me, have kids now. You're running out of time. You can get married whenever you want to get married, but you can't have kids forever. Whoa. And I went home, and I think I cried, and I was like, what should I do? The doctor had mentioned egg freezing. And I said, you know, this is kind of scary, but I decided to do it. Paying out of pocket, she froze 10 eggs, which she considered her backup plan. I did not have a partner. Lindsay Smithson Stanley also paid out of pocket when she froze her eggs at 35. A few years later, she got engaged to Paul. They want children, but not until they're married and Lindsay finishes her PhD.

29:58There's a very good chance that we'll get another... So Dr. Singer recommended thawing her 18 frozen eggs, fertilizing them with Paul's sperm and then doing genetic testing to assess viability. That's a day five hatching. Which is possible once fertilized eggs grow into five to seven day old embryos. The results? Lindsay and Paul have four chromosomally normal embryos on ice waiting for them. Did they tell you the gender? We have two boys and two girls. You can't stop grinning. It's exciting. Tina's story took a different turn. After the pandemic, still single, she decided to become a single mother by choice and selected a sperm donor.