The German defence ministry is not known for being funny. But it did draw chuckles on March 3rd, emailing journalists an official statement by Boris Pistorius, the defence minister, that could only be opened using the baby password 1234.

The self-deprecation was appropriate. Three days earlier, Russia had leaked the tape of an intercepted call between four senior German air-force officers discussing the militarily critical and politically hyper-sensitive matter of supplying German-made Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine. Aside from exposing a few (luckily minor) secrets, the leak infuriated NATO allies and reignited a fierce domestic debate over the Taurus issue. Making things worse, it followed shortly after another embarrassing incident, this time in the Red Sea, where a German frigate nearly shot down an American Reaper drone, missing only because two of its interceptor missiles crashed.

The immediate damage has been to Germany’s reputation. As Mr Pistorius explained on March 5th, the cause of the phone leak was not systemic but a single error: one officer joined the call from a hotel in Singapore while attending an air show—just the sort of place Russia would bug. The conversation itself revealed little that Russia does not already know about the Taurus, and the generals’ frank talk about waiting for political decisions should in fact reassure Germans that their soldiers respect democracy and are in no rush for war. The naval mishap, meanwhile, was partly the Americans’ fault. They failed to alert an allied ship that the approaching killer drone was friendly, and not an attack by militant Houthi rebels. The German frigate did in fact block a couple of those a day later.

Even so, Mr Pistorius is right to be what he described as “very, very angry”. The Kremlin trumpeted the call as proof that Germany plans to attack Russian civilian infrastructure (the generals had chatted about the technicalities of using Taurus to destroy the Kerch bridge, linking Russia to occupied Crimea). This fits into a Russian propaganda narrative that paints its war on Ukraine as a righteous struggle against Western perfidy. It also bolsters images that Vladimir Putin likes to project, of being a patriotic protector and also a brilliant spymaster, just days before he is scheduled to be re-elected president.

The longer-term fallout from the mess-ups may be domestic. They show that despite declaring a Zeitenwende to meet the challenge of a belligerent Russia, Germany’s security culture and military capacity remain deficient. The focus on Taurus also revealed a painful truth. The leaked phone call took place on February 19th, as pressure mounted on Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, to supply the cruise missiles, which have a longer range and pack a bigger punch than similar systems that France and Britain have already given to Ukraine. In the event, Mr Scholz said no, because Ukraine might fire the missiles at Moscow and because German soldiers would have to program the targets, making Germany “a party to the war”. But his own generals mentioned no such qualms, suggesting workarounds such as letting allies do the targeting. “No one really knows why the chancellor is blocking,” shrugs one of the generals in the chat. ■