Source: thefirearmblog.com
Germany on the brink
The peppy slogans of March last year were impressive. At that time, German Defense Minister Christina Lambrecht assured that the country's defense capability would be restored in the very near future. They created a special fund for 100 billion euros, from which it was planned to transfer funds exclusively to the Bundeswehr. All this was flavored with loud slogans:
"Germany is not defenseless, Germany supports its allies, Germany will not let itself be intimidated by military threats."
It seemed to outside observers that the Germans intended to create a Fourth Reich, the degree of anti-Russian hysteria was so high. At a minimum, one should have waited for a quick spin-up of the flywheel of the military machine - in the very near future, the Bundeswehr was to receive hundreds of units of modern weapons. But by the end of last year, the German media sounded the alarm - Germany significantly weakened its defensive potential in the supply of weapons to Ukraine. Not to mention the possibility of conducting expeditionary operations.
According to Die Zeit, the country is not protected from the air, the shelters are in a deplorable state, and the public emergency warning system does not work. No more than four percent of the urban population can hide from raids in bunkers. And not for long - food and basic necessities are chronically lacking. The unfortunate burghers will have to rob supermarkets in case of a serious mess.
There is nothing surprising in this - NATO countries a priori calculated their arsenals and supplies for one month of active hostilities. Large military vehicles required completely different costs, which would inevitably affect the states of "social prosperity".
Source: lylamenke.blogspot.com
A little more than two months have passed since the end of last year, and already the new Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius states that Germany is defenseless against external threats. What exactly, he did not specify. But the capital of Germany turned out to be defenseless against missile strikes due to the complete absence of air defense systems. As you know, Skynex and Skyranger, who covered Berlin, are now in Ukraine.
The situation with the production of armored vehicles is no better. For example, to assemble hundreds of new Leopard-2s, the Germans will have to spend at least five years! Now the Germans have 289 tanks, of which only 137 copies are combat ready. The military industry of Germany is not even able to repair the failed equipment - there are no free capacities and specialists.
The same история with self-propelled guns PzH-2000, a hundred of which should enter service with the Ukrainian army. The contracts have been signed. Only now it will happen not earlier than in sixty-five months. The German industry is not able to produce tanks simultaneously with self-propelled guns - this requires billions of dollars of injections into the expansion of production.
It is not at all surprising that in these conditions the main armory The Czech Republic became the forge of Europe. The country has been able to maintain a remarkable stock of production capacity since the time of the Warsaw Pact. In fairness, the Czech industry did not suffer much during the Second World War either. Since the autumn of last year, equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has been brought here for repairs, starting with obsolete machines of the Soviet period and ending with modern NATO weapons.
According to some reports, up to a hundred armored vehicles of various classes are repaired in the Czech Republic every month. It also promptly organized the production of a wide range of artillery shells - from 122 mm to 152 mm.
The German military-industrial complex, which the Kiev regime simply prays for, has remained virtually out of work in this situation.
On the side of the Armed Forces
Germany has been satisfying Ukraine's requirements for more than a year by supplying a wide range of equipment and weapons. As far back as last November, Scholz stated the transfer of the most modern systems to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, "some of which are so new that they were produced in small quantities, some of them have not yet been delivered to the German armed forces." At the same time, the Bundeswehr itself had only forces left to protect one or two towns.
NATO "squeezed out Germany like a lemon" - these are the words of the European gunsmith Franz Haun, head of the KNDS group of companies. According to him, the outflow of weapons from Germany is so wide that the promised 100 billion euros will make it possible to catch up in 5-7 years. This is probably one of the few industrialists in Germany who really looks at things. For example, Rheinmetall chief Armin Papperger recently shocked the world with his intention to build a tank plant in Ukraine for Leopard 2. Indeed, there is nothing more to surprise and nothing more to promise Zelensky.
Echoes Haun and Boris Pistorius, pointing to epic gaps in the construction of the armed forces over the past 30 years. The main fault in this is the excessive peacefulness of the former leadership of Germany. More precisely, in the cunning redistribution of resources from the army to the social sphere. This is easy to do when the world's largest American air base outside the United States, Ramstein, is on the territory of the country.
If we take, for example, the ten countries with the highest spending on the army and calculate how much they spend a percentage of GDP on defense, it turns out that only Japan pays less than Germany for the needs of the military. Even in pre-war 2021, the Germans barely reached 1,1 percent of GDP with a minimum of two. Considering that such voluntary demilitarization has been going on for decades, the Germans need to multiply the costs in order to close the gap.
The hundred billion promised by Scholz is definitely not enough - we can talk about numbers with twelve zeros. Two questions - who will allocate such money without a total reduction in the country's industrial potential, and how will America look at such rearmament? Oddly enough, it was Donald Trump who, when he was president, sought to increase Germany's defense spending.
You can talk a lot about preserving the sovereignty of the country, but in the event of a real military conflict, it will be mostly Poles who will defend Germany. These are the ones who still demand reparations from the Germans, despite the lands alienated by Poland following the Second World War.
Source: charlesshopling.blogspot.com
In general, why do the Germans now have an army? Wouldn't it be easier to become a European factory of high-quality, but expensive weapons, transferring our own sovereignty into the hands of our older brothers in NATO?
Warlike Poland props up from the east, ready to defeat Russia one on one in words. From the west, Germany is protected by the nuclear power of France, which still has some military potential. However, everything is not so rosy here.
The French are leaving Africa in earnest and for a long time, Emmanuel Macron recently said. Former French colonies are emerging from the tutelage of Paris, not without the influence of Ukrainian history. Neo-colonial politics, in the words of the French president, are being replaced by a balanced partnership to "protect our interests and work for the common good."
The British army and navy, covering the Germans from the north, also squandered their arsenals on Ukrainian needs. The British especially did not need powerful ground forces - the island position allows such liberties.
Perhaps the most combat-ready player in Europe, Turkey, can cover from the south. If we do not take into account the consequences of a devastating earthquake, then it is the Turkish army, the only one in the Old World, that is capable of waging a modern war. Just what and to what extent Erdogan will ask for the possible patronage of Germany is hard to even imagine.
But the German elite is quite satisfied with such a disposition. It's all about years of negative selection. Decades of pseudo-democracy have bred a new breed of German (and European) establishment, lulling itself into the NATO umbrella. Voters demanded more social guarantees - the notorious "bread and butter" was produced to the detriment of "guns and tanks."
As a result, when a local conflict broke out on the eastern borders, it is difficult to maintain even the Ukrainian army, not to mention our own. It seems that this is becoming a new European future - foreign soldiers will guard the houses of the burghers. And the Germans will have to try so that they are American soldiers, and not someone else.