Battle Lines Germany is finally rearming against Russia. Can it go fast enough?
Nov 7, 2025
James Rothwell, the Berlin correspondent for The Telegraph, and Ulrike Franke, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, discuss Germany’s rapid rearmament in response to the Russian threat. They explore the historical underinvestment in the Bundeswehr and the critical turning point in 2022 under Chancellor Scholz. The guests also address the challenges of rebuilding Germany’s defense capabilities, including procurement priorities and public opinion shifts, highlighting a new mindset towards military responsibility in Europe.
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Broomsticks Symbolised Military Decay
- In 2014 a Bundeswehr unit used broomsticks painted black instead of machine guns during an exercise to illustrate equipment shortages.
- James Rothwell uses this story to show how recent Germany's military problems were and why rearmament feels dramatic.
Rhetoric Outpaced Action In 2022
- Olaf Scholz's 2022 Zeitwende speech marked a rhetorical watershed but many pledges initially stalled in implementation.
- James Rothwell and Ulrike Franke stress that rhetoric alone didn't solve procurement or readiness gaps immediately.
US Unreliability Drove German Rearmament
- Realising the US may no longer reliably guarantee European security triggered a deeper, lasting shift in German defence thinking.
- Ulrike Franke argues this strategic reassessment matters more for rearmament than even Russia's invasion.