The Daily - The Re-Militarization of Germany

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

In the decades after World War II and the atrocities of the Holocaust, Germany deliberately underinvested in its military. But that’s about to change.Katrin Bennhold, a correspondent in Europe and former Berlin bureau chief, explains why Germany is re-entering an era of militarization, and what that will mean for its national identity.Guest: Katrin Bennhold, a Germany and Europe correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: Germany adopted a more muscular security plan in an attempt to set priorities, especially since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but politics may have weakened it.German leaders are vowing to transform the country into a military power capable of taking responsibility for Europe’s security. Can they — and a hesitant German society — follow through on that promise?For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. In the decades after World War II and the atrocities of the Holocaust, Germany has deliberately under-invested in its military. But that's about to change. Today, my colleague Katrin Benhold, a correspondent in Europe and a former Berlin bureau chief, on why Germany is re-entering an era of militarization and what that will mean for its national identity. It's Wednesday, June 21st.

Katrin, it is a rare treat to have you in the studio. So thank you for being here. Glad to be here. You're not technically supposed to be here. I mean, you're a European-based reporter at The Times. And the reason you're here is because you're going to be filling in for my co-host, Sabrina Tabernisi, who's on vacation. But instead of posting,

we're going to begin this experiment with you as guest because you came to us a couple of days ago and said that something that had happened in your home country, Germany, was a big deal. And I didn't see it right away. But I want you to explain what you meant by that. Yes. So last week, for the first time ever, Germany published a national security strategy. Which sounds like something a country does, right? It sounds kind of routine. Totally. And in a way, that's the point. The U.S. produces them all the time.

Most countries have them. It's basically kind of the government's assessment of the main risks a country is facing and how to deal with them. But Germany, even though it's the biggest country in Europe, has never had one. Not once, not ever. Not once, not ever.

How can that be? So, Michael, this being Germany, you know, you have to go back to World War II. You know, Germany is the country that started the Second World War. It's the country that brought destruction all over the continent. It's the country that committed the Holocaust. So after the war, after Germany was defeated, and remember, it was now divided into East and West. The Eastern part was now under the Soviet sphere and maintained a military.

But the Western part was basically told by the Western allies, we don't the Soviet sphere and maintained a military. But the Western part was basically told by the Western allies, we don't even trust you to have a military. So the military was disbanded. And for a whole decade, West Germany didn't have an army. At all. At all. And in a way, that's kind of perhaps the origin of this cultural unease that Germans have long felt, until very recently, with their military. Germany was on the wrong side of history, and that became very much part of this sort of national DNA and the kind of national identity, I would say, that explains this cultural unease. You know, 10 years after the war,

they were actually allowed to build up an army again, a new military, a much more tightly regulated one. West Germany is essentially the front line of the Cold War and is providing help to the Americans and is building up quite a significant military, but it's a military that is basically foot soldiers to America and to NATO. It's not a military that in any meaningful way was leading. So the outside world and internally within Germany, nobody yet wants a full-fledged military that's seen as in support of Germans' national defense. That's right. After the war, nobody really trusted Germany to have a military. And later on, you can say the Germans didn't really trust themselves to have a military.

have a military. So this reluctance to lead militarily, in some ways, it actually becomes reinforced after the Cold War ends, the Berlin Wall falls, and suddenly Germany goes from being like a frontline state in this Cold War to being surrounded by friendly nations. You know, the Soviet Union no longer exists. There's now Russia. There's now a sense that war in Europe has become almost unthinkable. So why spend on the military? So not only is Germany not thinking about leading militarily, it's actually now starting to cut military spending for like, you know, 15 years. So Germany's kind of starving its military. Yeah, to a point where Germany's military kind of becomes a national joke.

There's annual reports about how many helicopters don't fly, how many submarines don't swim, how many tanks are not operational. There were jokes about, you know, these soldiers, basically in a military exercise, using broomsticks instead of actual guns because the shortages were so bad. I mean, thermal underwear, everything was kind of in short supply. Meanwhile, Germany basically in the post-war decades has become this kind of economic powerhouse. And its economy is very much built on this idea of exports and trade.

And that only becomes a bigger deal after the wall falls and, you know, the world opens up. You know, Germany has this business model that grows over time where it imports cheap energy, especially gas from Russia, and exports a lot to China. And remember, this is also the time when China's middle class expands like crazy. And they start buying a lot of German cars, all these Mercedes Benses and BMWs, you know, and this represents a huge economic force propping up the German economy. So you have the situation where, you know, Germany's power is very much associated with its economy. It's an economic power. Right. And as we've learned throughout the many decades,

the more trade you do, in theory, the more peace you seed. Trade tends to prevent countries from invading each other and going to war with each other. So it makes sense from what you're saying that Germany has another reason to think, what do we need a big military for? That was the theory. But it turned out very differently. Right. Because one of its neighbors did the kind of unthinkable. Absolutely. Invaded Ukraine. Exactly.

And that's when the whole model collapsed. So that's the moment when Germany sort of has to realize that it had kind of been living in an illusion. And what's interesting is that they then jump into action. The 24th of February 2022 marks a turning point in the history of our continent. And three days after the invasion,

the Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, stands up in Parliament and describes the war as basically the beginning of a new era. We are experiencing a new era. He calls it Zeitenwende, which in English means a change of an era. Zeitenwende. That's not bad, Michael. It's pretty good, almost as good as the American ambassador to Germany.

And just translate that again? So Zeitenwende technically means change of the times. It's basically a turning point. And everybody in Germany now uses that phrase. Zeitenwende. Erwartung an die Zeitenwende. Zeitenwende. Der Zeitenwende. It has kind of become almost like a meme.

It was the German word of the year in 2022. It speaks to a realization that Germany basically has to change fundamentally because the world has changed fundamentally. There is a before and an after. And so all these certainties about what Germans thought they and their country were, this idea of kind of, you know, we're a peaceful post-war trading nation and we don't need to be anything else,

that broke away. We'll be right back. So, Katrin, what does this change of an era, I'm not going to try to dabble in German once again, what does it actually look like? So basically, since that speech, since the chancellor addressed parliament three days after the war started, all these very powerful German taboos just tumble. Germany has acknowledged its safety shortcomings are a problem that down the line could turn into a crisis. Europe's leading economy is now looking to also lead in regional security. So on the one hand, they commit 100 billion euros to basically rearm. They commit 100 billion euros to basically rearm. German lawmakers say it will go towards major equipment purchases to strengthen the country's combat readiness. That's a big deal. It's like two years worth of military spending.

To really start to invest in the military. Yeah, to really go for it and make it operational again. Issues that perhaps didn't seem crucial to Berlin a few years ago are now seen as potential problems. They also overturned this idea that you cannot send offensive weapons to a conflict area. It takes some time and there's a lot of foot dragging initially. I mean, they start out by offering Ukraine just 5,000 helmets, literally. But eventually... Well, this week, Germany also announced the arrival of 18 Leopard 2 tanks in Ukraine.

They do end up sending serious things like battle tanks and howitzers to Ukraine. And now they're the second biggest military donor to Ukraine after the United States. Germany says its overall goal is to send two tank battalions, each with about 14 tanks apiece. This is a big change, a big deal. And perhaps an even bigger deal is that they end up weaning themselves off of Russian gas. Germany has managed not only to replenish its stored gas, but has also built its first terminal for imported liquefied natural gas. And that was basically the kind of lifeblood of Germany's export economy.

Right. And they take this very seriously. Right, we talk about that a lot. Yeah. And, you know, all these changes basically go to the heart of Germany's post-war identity as essentially this kind of pacifist exporting nation that was quite happy to leave military leadership to others. And all this culminates a few days ago.

Germany has unveiled its first national security strategy. With the publication of this first national security strategy. A new security strategy for a new era. And Katrin, what does this national security strategy envision beyond the things that you have just detailed that Germany has done to bolster its national defense since Russia invaded Ukraine? So for the first time, and I think this is significant, Germany sort of acknowledges that you can't think about national security in a vacuum. You have to think about it holistically. It matters who you trade with. It matters where you buy your energy.

It matters who you're dependent on strategically because it might tie your hands in the future. And this is, of course, a lesson that Germany learned very painfully with this war in Ukraine because there was a very significant strategic vulnerability there. And it sort of, you know, in a way, the country had laid the trap for itself by becoming very dependent on Russian gas. Right, which meant that Germany was, in a sense, funding the war in Ukraine by paying

for Russian gas and made it really hard to suddenly come to Ukraine's defense because Russia could punish it by turning off the gas. Which it did. Right. But in a way, whether that lesson has been fully absorbed may really be tested elsewhere, and that's in China. And that's kind of one of the big parts of this report where, you know, some of the details we don't know yet because there's going to be a whole section on China that will come later. But this is the big question now in the

room is how can Germany avoid making the same mistake again? There's a recognition that it's overly dependent on China. More than a million German jobs depend directly on China, many more indirectly. Almost half of all European investments in China are from Germany. And almost half of German manufacturing businesses actually rely on China for some part of their supply chain.

And in some ways, it's a much more complex dependency than that on Russian energy. There's China's export market, which is huge. Remember all those German cars going to the Chinese middle class. But also, German industry relies on China for a lot of raw materials and technologies that are very critical for that transition to a carbon neutral economy that everybody's now committed to. What's the specific fear that Germany has that China will do and under what circumstances? So, you know, very concretely, there's a scenario in which China invades Taiwan, which would be very analogous in a way to Russia invading Ukraine.

Germany would want to come to Taiwan's defense. Well, this is the big question. If you're very dependent on China, can you agree to economic sanctions that will cripple your economy? If China decides to punish you. Well, yeah. I mean, it would punish you. I mean, you are so dependent on trade with China that if you impose sanctions on China, you are crippling your own economy.

Right. This is the trap that Germany wants to, you know, escape, if you like. But that's a tall order, given those dependencies. And Germany is now realizing that is as big a national security question as what kind of bullets are in the guns. Exactly. This question of how can other powers weaponize our dependencies and what does that do to our ability,

for example, to live up to our values, but also to protect our population and to protect our prosperity. So this is a big deal. Okay, and what about further building up Germany's military? What does this strategic plan say about that? So at the most basic level, basically, Germany wants to have a functioning military again. I

mean, it's interesting that the chancellor himself in that speech to parliament, when he first kind of declared this turning point, he actually said himself, you know, our planes must fly, our helicopters must fly, our submarines must swim, our tanks must work. So, you know, there's a recognition that, you know, we're starting from a very low base here. Basically, Germany is, you know, if you would summarize this paper, shifting from disarmament to kind of a doctrine of deterrence. And it wants to be serious about becoming a military leader that is kind of proportionate to its economic size. And it sees itself as having a responsibility, being Europe's biggest democracy, biggest country.

It wants to be able to defend Germany, but also Germany's allies within NATO. Right, the concept of deterrence is your military is so big that your potential enemies think twice about doing something. They are literally deterred from doing it by your military might. Until now, it sounds like Germany doesn't have that deterrent power. It doesn't on its own. But they now have ambitious targets to change that, right?

They have finally committed to spending 2% of their GDP on the military, something that they had promised NATO allies, but that they had never done before. And the other thing they've committed to is to kind of, you know, provide NATO with three army divisions, fully operational army divisions. And, you know, one division is 20,000 men by 2031. So this is, again, quite an ambitious target for Germany. It's not something that it would be able to do now. Right, because it's 60,000 soldiers. Exactly. Yeah. There is one wild card, of course, and that is that when it comes down to actually

drawing up those military budgets in the years to come, there's no certainty that Germany will be able to deliver on all that it's promised. We'll have to wait and see. But the commitment and the sheer ambition that it's stated now, those in itself are remarkable. are remarkable. So this is a very big shift that Germany is outlining and planning. And I'm curious, Katrin, how Germans see this new mandate and identity for the country, given the history and the reluctance and the pacifism we've been talking about, and how much it feels to Germans like a worrying development, or perhaps it's welcome as a decision that kind of liberates Germany from that past? It's a really interesting question. What's striking is that there's been very solid support, not just for Ukraine in this war with Russia, but also for the need of a reinforced German military. And opinion polls very clearly show this. So Germans,

again, almost overnight with that invasion, have collectively kind of become more comfortable with that idea, I would say. Still, it is a kind of cultural challenge. And I would say that there still are a lot of Germans that are on the fence. There are some that are reacting with concern. But overall, there is support for this. And I grew up with this. You know, I see when I'm in the United States how the military is feeded and celebrated and revered. I see that at sport games, you know, you guys have like a minute of silence that, you know, veterans or even soldiers get discounts in shops. They're the earliest to board a flight. They're the earliest to board the flight. Well, that would not happen in Germany,

partly because there's very few soldiers that actually show themselves in uniform. And that's changing now. It's beginning to change. But I certainly remember growing up and soldiers were being told not to wear uniform when they exit their base because it was just not popular.

They were kind of invisible in society. I remember graffiti when I was growing up. You know, soldiers are murderers. All soldiers are murderers. That culture ran very deep and that unease. And the government has been trying to sort of rebrand the military for some time. for some time. Like a few years ago, for example, soldiers who were, you know, walking around in uniforms were actually allowed to take trains for free. And that was kind of an effort to make them more visible in society and perhaps more normal. I'm not sure things shifted that

much at that point, but it was after the invasion when suddenly perceptions did shift. And I had this interesting moment about a year ago when I was dispatched by the Times to Lithuania, and I went to the NATO external border. Lithuania is one of the three small Baltic states bordering Russia and Belarus, which is a Russian ally. And there are some German forces there as a deterrent, if you will. And I was going there to watch a tank exercise.

And as somebody who's never been a deterrent, if you will. And I was going there to watch a tank exercise. And as somebody who's never been a war correspondent, this was a very kind of striking experience. I mean, you're in the forest, you're watching this real-time war game where they're practicing for a potential Russian breach of this NATO external border. Men in fatigue running out of caves and shooting and, you know, these very impressive vehicles, including tanks. And I remember looking at this and thinking to myself, wow, I'm feeling sort of grateful to these soldiers, these German soldiers protecting the NATO border. And it was such a surprising feeling because having grown up with this unease myself towards military uniforms, especially Germans in military uniforms, it was sort of a striking experience. And this may seem strange for Americans, but it was a real feeling.

What you're explaining here, and tell me if I have this right, is that this invasion of Ukraine by Russia, it has inspired Germany to rethink the kind of national defense it needs and the kind of military it needs. And it sounds like it's also changing the way Germans feel about the very concept of a military and a soldier. And the shame that defined that for so long is giving way to, it sounds like a pretty unfamiliar feeling of pride. it sounds like a pretty unfamiliar feeling of pride. Yes. I think we're heading that way, and that is definitely new. You know, the last time German troops were in Lithuania before that was during World War II.

As an invading force. Absolutely, and they killed 90% of the Jewish population there. So this is kind of where we've come from, and in many ways this is how far we've come as a country. Okay, there's a huge butt looming, as you can imagine. And that big butt is that you, yourself, Katrin, have done a tremendous amount of reporting about extremism in the German military culture. You've reported on raids that the German government has done with groups that include former members of the military who were attempting to overthrow the

German government. You've done reporting on Nazi culture within the German military and extremism within the German military that has prompted the German government to disband several units of the German military. So I have to ask if Germans, and if you as someone who's covered this so closely, are wary about the kind of reemergence and the strengthening of the German military given this, it feels like kind of never quite ending tendency of extremism to creep into the German military culture. So I can totally see why people might be nervous about this. And there's no question that Germany does have a problem with far-right extremism. I mean... In the military. It does. I would say Germany has a problem with far-right extremism, like most liberal democracies at the moment. And the intelligence service calls far-right extremism and far-right terrorism the biggest threat to German democracy. It is particularly worrying when that infiltrates the armed forces and the police. And we have done a lot of reporting on this. And it's a serious threat. It's mainly a terrorist threat.

And it's a serious threat. It's mainly a terrorist threat. It's not really a threat to the government in the sense that none of these groups that, you know, we've written about and reported on But the vast majority of German soldiers are loyal to Germany's constitution, are ready to defend the country. And the same intelligence services that call far-right extremism the biggest threat to democracy are also saying that the vast majority of Germany's military is absolutely trustworthy. So I would say when it comes to external threats, even Germany's immediate neighbors, countries like the Central and Eastern European countries that were devastated by the Nazis, they are now, if anything, angry at Germany for not doing enough military. They want Germany to lead. They're not scared. They want more German military. They're scared of less Germany. They want more Germany. In other words, you know,

I remember the former Polish foreign secretary, Radek Sikorski, putting it this way. He basically said, I fear German power less than German inaction. So this also signals to Germany

that it just can't hide behind its history anymore when it comes to military power. And, you know, if you want to go one step further, you could say, look, I mean, it took hard military power to defeat Germany when Germany was the bad guy in World War II. And Germany was the bad guy in World War II. And now Germany sort of sees itself as a power that has a responsibility to help defeat the bad guys. And for that, it needs military power. Well, Katrin, thank you very much. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today.

After a years-long investigation, federal prosecutors have reached an agreement with Hunter Biden, the president's son, over tax crimes and a gun charge that will probably keep Biden out of prison. Under the deal, Biden will plead guilty to two tax crimes for failing to pay his taxes in 2017 and 2018 and admit to buying a handgun during a period when he was using drugs. His guilty plea, which is expected in the coming days, will likely end Hunter Biden's legal woes, but not the congressional investigations into his behavior. House Republicans still claim that Hunter Biden committed a variety of crimes, and one of them, Representative James Comer of Kentucky, denounced the agreement with Biden as a, quote, slap on the wrist. with Biden as a, quote, slap on the wrist. And on behalf of all the men and women of the United States Coast Guard and our search partners, we offer our most heartfelt thoughts and prayers for the five crew members, their

families and their loved ones. The U.S. Coast Guard has searched an area the size of Connecticut to find a submersible vessel that vanished in the Atlantic Ocean over the weekend with five people on board. The 21-foot vessel, which was on a deep-sea dive to explore the wreckage of the Titanic, will run out of breathable oxygen in about 25 hours. These search efforts have focused on both surface with C-130 aircraft searching by sight and with radar, and subsurface with P-3 aircraft were able to drop and monitor sonar buoys. To date, those search efforts have not yielded any results.

Even if the vessel is found, it will be difficult to retrieve because it may be two miles from the water's surface and require the use of a remote-controlled rescue vehicle that's unlikely to reach it in time. Today's episode was produced by Eric Krupke, Will Reed, and Luke Vanderplug, with help from Shannon Lin and Rochelle Banja. It was edited by Paige Cowett, with help from Michael Benoit, Thank you. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.