1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. On February 26, 2022, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that was what Germany would send to Ukraine, and with that Berlin dropped a rule it had kept for decades: no arms into conflict zones.
“The Russian invasion marks a turning point,” Scholz said. “It is our duty to support Ukraine to the best of our ability in defending against Putin’s invading army.” Foreign Policy noted the same week that Germany had also cancelled the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline with Russia. The United States had approved $350 million in military aid the day before, though its package did not yet include Stingers.
Rachel Rizzo of the Atlantic Council put the weight of the decision in plain terms: “German pacifism is an ideology that pulses through the country.”
The speech to the Bundestag
A day later, on February 27, Scholz laid out the wider shift to the Bundestag, three days after Russia’s invasion began. The German Marshall Fund’s J.D. Bindenagel summarized it: a 100 billion euro special fund for security capabilities, and a pledge to spend 2 percent of GDP on NATO defense. The government also moved away from free-riding within NATO and from leaning on Russian energy.
By April, Bindenagel wrote, 2,700 Soviet-era Strela missiles and antitank weapons had reached Ukraine. Berlin had proposed sending 58 infantry fighting vehicles from former East German stocks. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock pushed for more. “Ukraine needs further military material, especially heavy weapons,” she said, adding: “Now is not a time for excuses; now is a time for creativity and pragmatism.”
Promises versus deliveries
The gap between announcement and delivery showed quickly. Sam Denney, writing for the Center for European Policy Analysis in August 2022, counted what had actually arrived: 10 self-propelled armored howitzers, 3 of 15 promised anti-aircraft tanks and 3 MARS-II rocket launchers. The ring exchange program had produced no tanks from Germany at all.
Part of the problem was the Bundeswehr itself. It owned around 2,000 Leopard tanks in the late 1980s. Denney put its capacity at 200 tanks, plus 100 awaiting technical upgrades. Bindenagel had already flagged shipment delays and disagreement inside the government over how urgent the job was.
Public opinion was ahead of the hardware. A July 2022 Die Zeit poll found 60% support for heavy weapons deliveries. Another 46% thought weapons would help force negotiations, 30% thought they would prolong the war, and 24% were undecided. Denney was candid about the cultural hurdle. Germans, he wrote, had to give up “the notion that the world of military force had been successfully left behind,” and that would be “difficult.”
Sources
- Germany Sending Weapons to Ukraine to Fight Russia
- An Early Assessment of Germany's Zeitenwende in Security Policy
- Germany's Zeitenwende: Be Patient, It's Early Days
