Debt Brake Axed—War Machine Rises

Silhouettes of soldiers walking through smoke at sunset

Germany spent 30 years gutting its military — now it wants to build the most powerful army in Europe, and the price tag is staggering.

Story Snapshot

Germany plans to raise its defense budget from €86 billion in 2025 to more than €150 billion by 2029 — soon surpassing Britain and France combined.
The goal is 460,000 combat-ready soldiers and the strongest conventional army in Europe by 2039, driven directly by the Russian threat.
A long-term modernization plan worth €350 billion runs through 2041, covering ammunition, tanks, aircraft, and naval ships.
Deep political divisions and a broken procurement system threaten to slow the whole effort before it gets off the ground.

Decades of Neglect Left Germany Defenseless

After the Cold War ended, Germany made a choice that now looks very costly. It slashed defense spending year after year, letting its military — the Bundeswehr — decay. Equipment sat broken. Troop numbers shrank. By the time Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Germany could barely field a credible fighting force. The invasion was a wake-up call. Germany’s leaders admitted that decades of betting on diplomacy and trade to keep the peace had left the country dangerously exposed.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz has now committed to fixing that. He scrapped Germany’s constitutional “debt brake” — a rule limiting government borrowing — specifically to free up money for defense. The move was controversial. Merz had promised not to touch the debt brake while campaigning, then reversed course after winning. Critics called it a broken promise. But Merz argued the Russian threat left no choice, and the governing coalition backed the change.^[2]

The Numbers Behind the Buildup

The scale of Germany’s rearmament plan is hard to overstate. Defense spending is set to climb from €86 billion in 2025 to roughly €152 billion by 2029.^[1] A longer-term modernization plan worth €350 billion runs all the way to 2041. Priority spending targets ammunition at €70.3 billion, combat vehicles at €52.5 billion, naval assets at €36.6 billion, and aircraft and missiles at €34.2 billion.^[1] Germany also wants to more than double the size of the Bundeswehr — from about 182,000 soldiers today to 460,000 combat-ready troops, including reserves, by 2039.^[3]

Germany’s April 2026 defense strategy spells out why. The document mentions Russia 17 times and sets a clear goal: become the “strongest conventional army in Europe” by 2039.^[5] By next year, Germany’s defense budget will already equal what France and Britain spend together.^[8] France is already nervous. A French general warned a Senate hearing that France risks falling “behind” Germany in defense within five years — a sector France has long led.^[9]

Big Plans, Real Problems

The ambitions are bold. The execution is another story. Analysts at the Bruegel think tank point to three serious weaknesses in Germany’s strategy. First, the plan leans heavily on North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) leadership rather than building true European independence. Second, the technology goals — drones, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems — are pushed out to 2035–2039, leaving a long gap. Third, and most damaging, Germany cannot reliably track what it has ordered or received. About 70% of German defense contracts have no published delivery date.^[5]

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Political fights are adding to the trouble. The governing coalition — Merz’s Christian Democrats and their Social Democrat partners — collapsed a planned conscription bill after the Social Democrats blocked mandatory military registration and a draft lottery for 18-year-old men.^[4] Germany wants to grow its army, but the two parties cannot agree on how to find the soldiers. Deep divisions over pacifism, ties to Russia, and the role of the United States run through German political culture and keep resurfacing at the worst moments.^[4] The money is real. Whether the will and the machinery exist to spend it wisely remains an open question.

What This Means for America and NATO

For American conservatives, Germany’s rearmament carries a clear lesson: weakness invites aggression. Thirty years of Europe’s “peace dividend” — cutting defense while leaning on U.S. protection — produced a continent unprepared for real threats. Trump’s pressure on NATO allies to pay their fair share helped force this reckoning. Germany’s own strategy even describes rearmament as a path to being a “stronger military ally of the United States.”^[5] That is progress, even if it is overdue.

The broader picture matters too. European Union defense spending doubled between 2021 and 2025, rising from €218 billion to €392 billion across member states.^[19] Germany alone accounts for a quarter of that growth. Some German car factories are already converting to weapons production.^[8] If Germany can fix its procurement problems and hold its political coalition together, Europe could finally pull more of its own weight — reducing the burden on American taxpayers who have subsidized European security for generations. That outcome would serve U.S. interests, regardless of how Europe gets there.