Nothing better illustrates the German political establishment’s lack of seriousness about strategy and defense than Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s reelection campaign. He portrays himself as a friedenskanzler, or chancellor of peace, who has successfully kept Germany out of the Russia-Ukraine war. To emphasize the peacemaking theme, one of his first acts after launching his campaign was to call Russian President Vladimir Putin—to the consternation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Germany’s Western allies, who have begun to exclude Berlin and its lame-duck chancellor in their deliberations.
This article is adapted from Die Rückkehr des Krieges: Warum wir wieder lernen müssen, mit Krieg umzugehen (The Return of War: Why We Must Learn How to Deal With War Again) by Franz-Stefan Gady (Quadriga Verlag, 368 pp., 24 euros, October 2024).
The conversation with Putin went nowhere, of course. Almost three years since the start of the war, Scholz and his circle of advisors appear unwilling to face a simple truth: Confronting aggressors and getting them to the negotiation table requires both carrots and sticks—in other words, diplomacy and military power. For many decades, Germany’s leadership, opinion-makers, and much of the policy establishment have primarily seen security policy through the prism of diplomacy, dialogue, and economic exchange. This remains a profound problem for Germany because it impairs Berlin’s readiness for the return of large-scale war to the continent—both the hybrid war that Moscow is already fighting against Europe today and the hot war that Western intelligence chiefs consider increasingly possible.
This raises the risk that Berlin reaps the opposite of what it intends. By avoiding any semblance of preparation for the eventuality of war, Germany has stripped itself of the ability to deter one. That makes war in Europe more likely, not less.
A Norwegian soldier rests atop a battle tank while Czech soldiers chat in the background during a training exercise in Schnöggersburg, Germany, on April 8, 2024.Omer Messinger/Getty Images
Scholz and much of the German elite seem to have precious little understanding of what a future war with Russia could look like. They appear to grasp neither how a war would be fought, nor the need for preparedness on the home front. This includes dealing with everything from the effects of missile and drone strikes to cyberattacks, assassinations, and widespread sabotage against German civilian and military infrastructure.
Least of all is there an understanding about the destructive potential of any future war. A Russian attack on the Baltic states or Poland, for example, could produce tens of thousands of casualties in the first few days. A war would likely wreak havoc on German seaports, railroads, the power grid, and other critical infrastructure, given Germany’s position as NATO’s central logistics hub and strategic rear area for any war in Eastern Europe.
When it comes to military capabilities, Germany’s leadership does not seem to recognize the changing character of modern warfare. A serious drone program, for example, was only begun after more than a decade of tortuous public debate. Today, warfighting is marked by the proliferation of precision-strike weapons, such as cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and drones; these are supported by extensive intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities such as satellites and surveillance drones. This shift has major implications for military operations and deterrence.
The public debate in Germany around the potential deployment of new U.S. long-range strike capabilities in Europe neatly illustrates the confusion. There has been a knee-jerk reaction against these deployments by senior members of Scholz’s Social Democratic Party, reflecting an understandable uneasiness with embroiling Germany in a shooting war with nuclear-armed Russia. But the critics miss the broader purpose of these deployments: to provide conventional long-range precision fires as an integral part of NATO’s operational concepts for degrading Russia’s offensive potential in a high-intensity war. The reality is that the German Bundeswehr will need similar long-range strike capabilities in the future to effectively deter and, if necessary, defeat Russia in a conflict. Deterrence inherently requires some calculated risk-taking, but this would require German politicians to engage with military strategy and operational preparations for war.
In terms of capacity, the German government is also profoundly unserious about the size of the armed forces. Internal Bundeswehr calculations call for an active duty force of at least 270,000 and a reserve of around 200,000. But with the existing volunteer system, Germany will never get there; by the end of 2024, the shrinking Bundeswehr likely had fewer than 180,000 troops. Most leading politicians lack the stomach to seriously consider the reintroduction of a military conscription model to quickly build up a reserve force that could replace inevitable losses. These politicians still do not grasp that in a shooting war with Russia, it will ultimately depend on who can mobilize larger reserves to prevail—if escalation to the nuclear level can indeed be avoided.
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Historical comparisons illustrate this deficiency. During the Cold War, West Germany could mobilize up to 2.3 million reservists, while today’s Bundeswehr barely has any immediately deployable reserves to make up for casualties. In a shooting war akin to that in Ukraine, Germany might struggle to sustain operations beyond a few days. Germany might take a cue from Sweden, which reinstated conscription in 2017, which not only bolstered national defense but also reinforced a society-wide commitment to military readiness.
For Germany, establishing the political, societal, legal, and infrastructure foundations for conscription and a viable reserve would take years and entail substantial costs. Yet little has happened to date, despite valiant efforts by German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius to push the issue with his colleagues in the government. Here, too, Berlin has preferred to keep its head in the sand.
Moreover, Germany lacks the readiness to deploy what little military capability and capacity it has, including the forces to be dispatched to NATO’s eastern flank in the event of war. Although Germany is no longer a frontline state like it was during the Cold War, it remains exceptionally vulnerable to precision airstrikes and other attacks in a war with Russia. The Kremlin would likely focus its efforts on degrading Germany’s critical infrastructure to disrupt the logistics supporting NATO forces in Poland and the Baltic states.
In a scenario of sustained precision attacks against Germany, targets would include airports, seaports, rail hubs, and energy infrastructure. These assaults would likely be large, repeated, and prolonged rather than isolated strikes. Covert operations by Russian agents or special forces could engage in sabotage missions across the country, derailing trains, damaging munitions factories, or destroying vital transportation links. Cyberwarfare operations could incapacitate mobilization efforts, while a barrage of Russian disinformation could fracture societal unity and erode public trust in Germany’s military and political leadership.
A few pieces, at least, have begun to move. The Bundeswehr is working on a new Operations Plan Germany, which takes a holistic approach to national defense and emphasizes homeland security. Still under development as of now, the plan delineates processes, roles, and coordination strategies among various government and civilian entities to protect Germany’s territorial integrity and citizens, safeguard critical infrastructure, and facilitate the effective deployment of allied military forces through German territory. The plan also envisions the establishment of six homeland defense regiments by the end of 2026, tasked with securing vital defense-related infrastructure within German borders.
Much more is needed. Six regiments will not be sufficient to defend Germany’s critical defense-relevant infrastructure in the event of war, according to high-ranking German military officers. Germany has yet to step up training to increase preparedness of homeland defense and civilian emergency services. To date, there have only been a few small-scale exercises to test the home front’s readiness for war and no large-scale exercises simulating complex, multipronged Russian attacks on infrastructure across multiple German federal states.
Scholz speaks at the Todendorf military base in Panker, Germany, on Sept. 4, 2024. Gregor Fischer/Getty Images
Deterring a Russian attack on Europe requires Germany to be prepared for one—by enhancing its military capabilities, capacity, and readiness. This will require the German political class to fundamentally redefine its relationship with military power and genuinely commit to engaging seriously in matters of defense. This means debating not only how to reduce the risk of escalation and war, but also how to fight and win one should the necessity arise—an idea that remains strangely sacrilegious in Germany’s political culture, considering that a massive land war is raging only a few hundred miles away.
The inability or unwillingness to conceptualize war at a time when Europe’s post-1945 security order is already unraveling permeates German society as a whole. Indeed, fears of escalation have reached unprecedented levels as the country’s leadership seems to prefer the role of passive observers with little agency. For large swathes of the general public, the distinction between rearming with the intent to fight a war and rearming to deter one is often difficult to grasp. The good news is that the German public seems to be much further along than the political elite. According to a number of polls conducted in 2024, a majority of Germans support the need to rearm.
The German government made a deliberate choice in the early 2000s to diminish the Bundeswehr’s capacity for conducting conventional land warfare in Europe, depriving it of the essential equipment, personnel, and other resources necessary for large-scale land operations. Given Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and repeated public threats against other Eastern European countries, it’s overdue for Berlin to reassess this decision. If the German leadership is serious about wanting peace, it will have to significantly increase the Bundeswehr’s capability, capacity, and readiness to engage in high-intensity warfare against Russia.
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