Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
One in four new recruits to the German armed forces drops out within six months of joining, according to the nation’s military watchdog who warned that personnel shortages were pushing troops “to breaking point”.
Eva Högl, the commissioner for the armed forces in the German parliament, said that despite some success in recruitment, poor retention meant that the armed forces had come no closer to meeting their target of having 203,000 soldiers by 2031.
Instead, the total force size had fallen slightly to just over 181,000 at a time when Germany is pledging to do more to bolster Europe’s own defences in the face of a potential US retreat from the continent.
“The Bundeswehr is shrinking and getting older,” Högl said as she presented her annual report on the state of the Bundeswehr, noting that the average age had risen to 34 years — up from 33.1 years in 2021. “This development must be stopped and reversed as a matter of urgency.”
She added: “I said the troops are challenged, but they are also very overburdened. I’ll go as far as to say they’re at breaking point. When we look at where our Bundeswehr is needed — for national defence, [Nato] alliance defence, international crisis management — it is a lot. And it really is at the limit.”
Högl’s warning comes as Europe reckons with US President Donald Trump’s decision to end support for Ukraine — and faces the prospect that Washington could end its postwar commitment to providing security guarantees for the continent.
Speaking as US and Ukrainian diplomatic delegations met in Saudi Arabia to discuss ending the war with Russia, Högl said that it was “premature” to talk about sending troops to Ukraine to police a possible future ceasefire between Kyiv and Moscow.
But, adding that Europe’s largest and richest nation would want to take responsibility, she said that it was important for politicians to consider what the Bundeswehr could actually handle and what was “no longer possible”.
Högl said that, despite the alarming personnel picture, the German armed forces had made significant progress in the past few years after decades of under-investment.
She heaped praise on Boris Pistorius — the popular German defence minister who like her is a member of the Social Democrats — for his efforts to drive reform. She said that, after years of endless delays, some things were finally improving thanks to outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s 2022 announcement of a “watershed moment” (Zeitenwende) in German security and defence and the unveiling of a €100bn fund for the armed forces. Friedrich Merz, the winner of last month’s federal elections, last week announced a plan to allow unlimited borrowing to finance higher defence spending in order to continue that overhaul.
As evidence of the improvement, Högl said that the German navy’s elite diving force Eckernförde “finally have their diving practice hall” after 13 years of waiting for it.
Soldiers had received a new 110-litre backpack, she said. And the military had successfully procured 60,000 hearing protection headsets that muffled the noise of gunfire and enabled troops to communicate while shooting.
After “considerable delays” in the introduction of the new digital radio system, several battalions in 2024 successfully adopted the new tool, the report said.
However, the roughly 700 German soldiers currently serving as a part a multinational battlegroup in Lithuania — a key plank of protecting Nato’s eastern flank from Russian aggression — still did not have the system at the end of last year. Instead they were having to use a workaround involving encrypted satellite-supported communications.
Högl said that this was one of many problems that continued to blight the Bundeswehr, including lack of digitalisation, overbearing bureaucracy that “strains the patience and nerves of everyone involved” and the “disastrous state” of some barracks.
She gave the example of a defective set of hall doors at a military base in Koblenz that had caused serious injuries, including the loss of fingertips. But the replacement of the doors, which has been needed since 2017, did not take place in 2024 and was only scheduled to begin this year.
Read the full article here
