ROSTOCK, Germany — Germany has committed billions to beefing up its military’s equipment after years of neglect. Now it’s trying to persuade more people to join up and serve.
More than 3½ years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine kick-started efforts to revitalize the Bundeswehr, the challenge of strengthening the German military has grown along with fears of the threat from Moscow.
Alongside the higher military spending that Germany and NATO allies agreed on this year, the alliance is encouraging members to increase personnel numbers. Berlin wants to add tens of thousands of service members.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz says that “because of its size and its economic strength, Germany is the country that must have the strongest conventional army in NATO on the European side.” He hasn’t defined that goal in detail, but the tone underscores a shift in a country that emerged only gradually from its post-World War II military reticence after reunification in 1990.
Earlier this month, the military’s top brass watched as a ferry packed with armored vehicles was escorted out of the Baltic port of Rostock, drones were intercepted in the air and on the water and fighter jets circled above. That was part of an exercise focused on moving troops and equipment to Lithuania — an ally on NATO’s eastern flank where modern Germany is stationing a brigade abroad on a long-term basis for the first time.
“Credible deterrence requires operational readiness,” said the Bundeswehr’s chief of staff, Gen. Carsten Breuer. “And operational readiness requires matériel, personnel, training and … exercising, exercising, exercising.”
There’s plenty to do on both matériel and personnel, in a country where the military was often viewed with indifference or suspicion given the legacy of the Nazi past.
Germany suspended conscription for men in 2011 and subsequently struggled to attract large numbers of short-term volunteers. In recent years, the number of military personnel has hovered just above 180,000 — compared with 300,000, more than a third conscripts, in 2001. Now the government wants to raise it to 260,000 over the next decade, and says it will also need around 200,000 reservists, more than double the current figure.
Better pay is one way to make the Bundeswehr more attractive, said Thomas Wiegold, a defense policy expert who runs the Augen geradeaus! military blog. But a key issue is fixing the military’s longstanding equipment problems, “because a force that doesn’t have enough tanks, that doesn’t have enough ships, that also doesn’t have enough barracks, is not particularly attractive for applicants.”
F-35 fighter jets, Chinook transport helicopters, Leopard 2 tanks, frigates and other hardware are on order after a 100 billion-euro ($117 billion) special fund was set up in 2022 to modernize the Bundeswehr,