Why Germany is racing to rebuild its army

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:09Today, Germany's race to rebuild its army.

0:22Not so long ago, to be a German soldier dressed in German uniform was quite a difficult role to embody. I mean, you could be going down the street and you could be spat on or you could have names called at you, what have you. I've recently seen people get into conversation with soldiers, which I hadn't seen in the past. Recently, somebody going up to a soldier and getting him into conversation about what his role was. And then at the end of the conversation, thanking him. Kate Connolly, The Guardian's Berlin correspondent, has lived in Germany for decades. She's become used to living in a country that has defined itself around pacifism, trade and diplomacy.

0:58A generation ago, the idea that Germany was rearming and fast would have created alarm, even panic, both outside and inside the country. But the world has changed since then. You might be on a beach on the Baltic coast and see planes going over. You might be behind a convoy of army trucks on the motorway and suddenly think, well, what's going on?

1:26The Russian war machine is up and running And the United States under Donald Trump Is no longer going to guarantee the security of Europe I love Europe and I want to see Europe go good But it's not heading in the right direction Germany now says it intends to build The biggest conventional land army on the continent But can it bring its people with it? From The Guardian, I'm Annie Kelly. Today in Focus. From laughing stock to fighting fit. The return of the German army.

2:07Kate Connolly, you're The Guardian's Berlin correspondent. Welcome back to Today in Focus. Now, we're speaking to you in the wake of what was a very charged Davos conference, where European leaders, including the German Chancellor, Frederick Merce, who declared that we were living in an era of great powers, warned that Europe needed to invest massively in security and defence. So could you start by telling us about the scale of this really ambitious remilitarisation programme that Germany is embarking on? Yes, so it basically started off in 2023, where we had Olaf Scholz, the then-Chancellor announcing that there would be this big spend of 100 billion euros.

2:55Which everybody was flabbergasted about at the time, until we found out that this was money that would basically fill the potholes, the underinvestment of the military. Then we had the new Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, coming into power earlier this year, And he announced even before he had taken the reins that he was going to release a lot more money to finance the military. We're talking probably at this stage about a trillion to be spent over the next few years. It's a huge amount of money. And obviously this intention to become the biggest conventional army in Europe seems to be propped up by billions and billions and billions of euros of investment.

3:37Can you just explain to us why it is that the German government feels like it has to do this now? Well, I mean, the most obvious answer to that is a 2022 full-blown invasion of Ukraine by Russia. And Germany basically being told that this was the moment that it had to take the stage and take responsibility to deal with this threat. After decades in which the German position was very comfortably pacifist, obviously, after the years of World War II. And as it was conveyed in the word Zeitwende by Olaf Scholz at the time in 2023. Wir erleben eine Zeitwende. Which you can variously translate as a turning point or a watershed moment, changing the mindset.

4:21So Germany obviously believes that it has to play an important role now in the defense of its own country. But is it also about its role in the defense of Europe and across the continent? Yeah, absolutely. The EU, the European Union being European is extremely important for the post-war order in Germany. Germany does not want to just stand for itself because that would hark a return to its nationalist past. And gradually, the reality of the situation is that it is now having to really turn itself into a positive force that is defending Europe, looking after its own interests. but also in a way you might say making up for its own past.

5:07I know from this operational plan leaked last year, it showed that just geographically and strategically it saw itself as potentially kind of playing this vital role in being this transit country in which NATO troops would have to move through Europe towards a potential Russian aggression. Do you know also if there's that sense of the part that it would play in being able to move an armed force through Europe to meet Russia. Yeah, I mean, just from a logistical point of view, the bridges, the roads, these are all part of their investment plans, which is also quite useful because a lot of these bridges and roads are quite dilapidated.

5:42Tanks will be on trains. You need to have heavy trucks going through the country. You need to have military manoeuvres taking place. You've got then this big move that will take place over the next few years of Germany sending a battalion to Lithuania to protect NATO's eastern border. They will have about 5 ,000 troops within the next two or three years. Already there are a lot there. Whole families going over, setting themselves up there and being part of that flank of troops that are protecting Eastern Europe as well. So the biggest deployment of German troops abroad since the war. And Germany obviously isn't alone in undertaking this huge defence spending.

6:22UK countries across Europe also investing heavily in rebuilding their armed forces for the same reasons. But as you mentioned, Germany, they did have a lot of work to do, didn't they? I mean, I understand that the German armed forces were something even a bit of a laughingstock over the last couple of decades. Just how depleted did the country's armed forces become before this massive investment? Well, there are lots of jokes that do the rounds. And this isn't so much a shortfall, but it's almost sort of shows you how modern Germany doesn't fit in with this need to have a speedy and efficient and up-to-date army, but there were things that made headlines, like when they've tried to fit the tanks to make sure that a pregnant woman could fit in the driving seat and that type of thing.

7:03You know, things that have always drawn ridicule. It's not to do so much with the state of the army as the state of the mentality. When Germany was asked to increase its contribution of arms to Ukraine in February 2022, the first thing it did was send a truckload of helmets. It just seemed like a pathetic gesture. And it has since become the biggest European provider of weapons and is gradually taking over the role of Washington as being the lead contributor to Ukraine's war effort. How has this re-militarisation campaign then been received inside the country by the public? I think most people are highly uncomfortable about the idea of being seen as a huge military power.

7:45People are very uncomfortable about this fear that they will be accused of being over dominant. It's a very interesting, almost like a campaign that's going on to try and convince Germans that this is the only way to go. We need to be Kriegstuchtig, which means war ready. And these are now words a bit like Zeit und Wende, the turning point that have entered the national vocabulary, I think you could say. What they are trying to convince people of is that there is no choice and that pacifism equates to appeasement. So in that way, they are slowly, slowly bringing the public with them. I think what is also really important in this are the visuals.

8:25So the defence minister before Boris Pistorius, she introduced the rule that if people joined the military, they would get free train travel when they were travelling between their barracks and home, if they travelled second class, if they wore their uniforms. So you'll see them on railway stations and you'll see them in train carriages helping elderly women with their baggage and what have you. Polls show amongst ordinary Germans that there is growing acceptance for the military to take on this role, growing acceptance for ways in which the German army can take on this role at the same time as young people being quite sceptical about it.

9:10and Kate as well as the Russian invasion of Ukraine another major driver of this German militarization campaign is the deteriorating relationship with the United States a major ally that Germany's always relied on to keep peace and security in Europe and this last year has been particularly choppy. So could you just talk us through what's happened? We had in February, J.D. Vance addressing the Munich Security Conference. He stunned the audience by basically saying all the European leaders were failures. If you're running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. Nor for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump.

9:53It was a huge departure from this consensus that there had been between Washington and Berlin. People were referring to those candy bomber moments. No wonder these Berlin children greet these US planes so joyously. When the planes flew over during the blockade in the Cold War and threw sweets down. That's candy from the men who fly the planes floating down on handkerchief parachutes. An act of kindness pays unforeseen dividends in the battle for Berlin.

10:25These heartfelt moments basically had evaporated in that second. And then, of course, we had that excoriating meeting when Zelensky went to the Oval Office and was treated appallingly. Don't tell us what we're going to feel. We're trying to solve a problem. Don't tell us what we're going to feel. I'm not telling you. Because you're in no position to dictate that. Remember, you're in no position to dictate what we're going to feel. And then we've had the discussions over Greenland, which seemed like they were being plucked from some fantasy world. But now increasingly Berlin is recognising that there could be a lot more at stake than people have thought.

11:06And from a German perspective, for Germany, just how significant is it that the US has signalled over the last couple of years, especially, you know, in the Trump era, that it can no longer be relied on to guarantee security in Europe? and more than that it's almost kind of becoming like an adversary in terms of its designs on Greenland. So could you talk a little bit about that relationship between Germany and the US and what the US is kind of turning away from that NATO alliance might mean for Germany? The military relationship between the US and Germany has been very tight. You know Germany has more US troops based in the country than any other European country.

11:45It's sheltering nuclear bombs from the US. This year, the US is expected to base some long-range conventional missiles in Germany in order to help NATO defend its eastern flank. And you've got this very tight relationship that goes back to the Second World War and the fact that it was US troops who helped liberate Germany from the Nazi dictatorship. And that, interestingly, was a topic during a conversation when Matt in June went to the Oval Office. And may I remind you that we are having June 6th tomorrow. This is D-Day anniversary when the Americans once ended a war in Europe. And Trump saying, well, that wasn't a very pleasant day for you, was it?

12:32That was not a pleasant day for you? No, that was not a pleasant... Well, in the long run, Mr. President, this was the liberation of my country from Nazi Nazi dictatorship. But he kept his calm and he stopped that argument dead in the water that it was anything other than something positive. But also Trump did say giving arms to Germany, that's a bit of a joke, isn't it? Because we've always said we shouldn't be giving the arms to Germany. And there might come a point where we say you've had too many arms and now stop. I think it's a good thing. But, you know, at least to a certain point. There'll be a point when I'll Please don't arm anymore if you don't mind.

13:10We'll be watching him. This is always this bind that Germany is in. You know, you take a responsibility, you stick your neck out, and then you could be accused of wanting to go back to the time when Germany was looking to steal territory and doing awful things.

13:33And so it is moving forward with this huge rearmament program. Can you tell me a bit about what that might look like? Are all of these weapons, these armaments can be made in Europe or even inside Germany? Well, a lot of it will have to come from Germany or from Europe. And I think that's the whole idea that if Europe is working together, that's going to make much, much more sense than if this rearmament is seen as something just to boost the German economy. So we'll be seeing lots of new equipment, drones, a lot of cyber equipment, and this shift from US to European arms manufacturers. knocking heads together to ensure that if a screw comes from this place and the nut comes from there, that, you know, actually you can work together and you can standardise things.

14:14I think that's a massive discussion at the moment between European partners. They need to basically standardise a lot, but that's sort of obviously easier said than done. How you finance it without burdening your already burdened population. There are moves to try to bankroll this without it affecting your education system or your health system. That's a big question mark. And I guess the heart of all of this is the transformation of the armed forces themselves. So needing to recruit very large numbers of soldiers and at the same time to retain them because recruitment numbers are higher than they've been for 12 years and about 25 % of them are dropping out.

14:53So the question is, how can you stop that? And they need to recruit a huge amount of people, don't they, to meet their targets. I think I read somewhere it was something like 70 ,000 a year. Yeah. How is this kind of big recruitment campaign rolling out? What's their plan? So since January the 1st, 18-year-olds have been told they have to fill out a questionnaire, which signals their readiness to join the army. And this will sort of be put on file. And within a couple of years, they're also going to be having a health check. So they would then have on record who is eligible from a health point of view and who is not.

15:29I was at the dentist yesterday, the woman behind the counter and one of the patients, they have 18-year-olds, and it was the big topic that they wanted to vent their spleen about. Should I send my child travelling so that he can hopefully avoid joining up? So it's very, very present in people's lives. The big debate has been, should we have conscription or not? So Germany had this model of conscription until 2011, when it was deemed unnecessary. So they didn't abolish it, they suspended it. So that means it's easier to bring it back, because you don't need to change the laws. So they haven't reintroduced conscription.

16:06But I think that it is the hope that this sort of growing acceptance of the reality will also come to bear fruit in terms of getting people on board. So if you can prove to people that it's more like we're looking for citizens in uniform who are there to protect you, the hope is that you will therefore end up naturally recruiting people. And the numbers we're seeing at the moment would seem to back that up. They're also offering some quite nice incentives, aren't they? Can you talk about how it is that they're trying to lure people into the recruitment centres that they've set up? Yeah, so they're boosting the wages to quite a nice looking wage package for sort of an 18 to 26-year-old.

16:46Free public transport if you're travelling in your uniform. Free driving licence, which might sound like a small thing, but driving licences in Germany are really, really expensive. You know, cost a few thousand euros. They're talking about helping people with housing costs. Also, things like allowing you to have a career in the army, which actually isn't anything to do with the military as such. My 14-year-old daughter in school recently was told that if she wanted to be a psychologist, she could also take a career path through the military. But it's quite a structured way of looking at it where you get a lot of support.

17:20And then after you've done your 15 or 20 years of service, you could then go out into the civil world. And do you think it's working? I know you've done some reporting from some of these recruitments. centres. What were they like? What was the atmosphere like then? I was sent to the Essen Motor Show, which based on soldiers being mainly male and of a certain age, you could say it was sort of almost like a captive audience for them. So they were one of hundreds of exhibitors at this fair, the German military. They had a huge Habitser Panzer there, a tank, which visitors were allowed to clamber into and find out about what it was capable of doing.

17:56There's a lot of VR as well. So you could be in this tank and have a sort of VR stumble around in the undergrowth on the North German moors. Did you give that a go? Yeah, I gave it a go. It almost fell down because your balance goes. And you could do your press-ups. You could prove how many press-ups you could do. There was one chap who did about 80 press-ups. I asked him, you know, are you keen in joining up? And he said, well, I think being a soldier is much more than just being able to do press-ups. But he clearly enjoyed the fact that he had an audience of people admiring his prowess. They're particularly keen to talk to mothers who they say are maybe more sceptical about their sons getting involved in the army.

18:35So these recruitment drives happening all around the country, they're going into schools, they're going to kindergartens, they're going to fairs for horse lovers, trying to recruit women, they're going to sport congresses and that type of thing, just sort of trying to reach out to anyone and everyone. And they said they've been doing it for several years, but that the resonance they're getting now is much greater and people are much more curious. And I think that they're using it as this way in which they can really help to ease Germany into some sort of new era in terms of how it views its military.

19:08And do you think it's working from the young people that you spoke to at the fair? Does that message seem to be getting through? One chap I spoke to, an IT specialist who was in his early 20s, He said he wouldn't be able to be a conscientious objector, but he didn't think that you could force people to join up. And he thought that if people did join up, the focus should be on protecting Germany and not sending them abroad. And by that, I think there's an undertone of this recent announcement that if troops were sent to Ukraine to protect it, if some deal was struck, German soldiers could be part of that.

19:46It's obviously something that's touched nerve with younger Germans. A massive culture shift that the government has to take then. Yeah, and a lot of parties who are very much voicing their opposition on the left and on the right to what is going on.

20:03Coming up, the bank heist that revealed how Germans are really feeling.

20:19So Kate, tell me about how this is playing out politically inside Germany. What are the German government's biggest political challenge in making this dream of, you know, having the largest conventional army in Europe an actual reality? Has there been much of a pushback? There hasn't been maybe as much of a pushback as one might have thought. I mean, the AFD, the Alternative for Germany, Far Right Party, they have criticised the way in which the government is trying to make these changes. At the same time, they have long themselves said that the military needs to reform and that to have a strong military is also part of what they believe in in terms of having a strong state, which is what jars with a lot of people when they think of a German army.

21:03Whereas that is the far right's idea that we need to have more pride in our country. We need to stand up for ourselves and not be so ashamed of our past, basically. and I think they think that it's pussyfooting around a bit what the Mets government is doing and they also say that Moscow should be our friend, we should take Russian gas and all of that. So that complicates the issue. And then you've got on the far left the Dilinka party who think that young people will become lambs, you know, the victims of this and they also criticise the fact that they say that there's not been enough diplomatic effort to resolve this.

21:39And then you've got the Greens who were part of government and there's a very strong pacifist element within the Greens. But also the Greens have been very big defenders of Germany's attempts to help Ukraine. But it doesn't sound like Mertz has got a huge political problem on his hands internally in terms of pushing this kind of militarisation campaign through. I think a major challenge that he has is ensuring that people don't suffer in terms of standards falling, education not being up to scratch. There's already big debates about health care. Bridges are falling down and roads are crumbling.

22:17So I think what he's got to ensure is that he keeps people on side very much in terms of this being something that is going to boost the economy and also boost German safety and not be to the detriment of ordinary Germans, which is probably easier said than done. There was also a huge bank heist just after Christmas. And it turned out that in this quite small city, there's probably about 300 million euros of valuables that people were holding in a safe below the bank. And a lot of people who are now trying to get the bank to pay them insurance for this said that they were holding bars of gold and cash down there because they thought it was safer in case Germany going to war.

22:59So we're seeing a lot of this. By chance, you'd get insights into the German psyche and realise how really quite scared a lot of people are. And you've been in Germany a long time. I mean, what you've just said, really, really interesting. You've presumably seen attitudes towards the military, towards people's sense of safety change during that time. Could you just describe what this moment feels like, you know, for the kind of identity or for the soul of Germany? Yeah, I mean, I do think it's very, very interesting, this transition you're seeing, and it's something you notice in conversations you have with people.

23:34It's this transition from feeling a sense of guilt about being German to feeling we need to take on this responsibility. We need to step up and shed ourselves of this idea that we're invincible through our economic strength because that is also fading. The economic figures are not looking good. Germany is effectively in a recession. So there's not much confidence around at the moment in what it means to be German, I think. And that is being exploited by the political extremes. It does feel like this is a moment in which it could go either way, that if the people who are in a position of power do not give the impression that they're going to turn things around for the good and keep people safe and keep the economy growing.