For decades, Germany’s arms industry was the country’s dirty little secret. On one hand, the defense sector is sizable: Germany is the world’s fifth-largest arms exporter, after the U.S. (which dominates with a whopping 43 percent market share), France, Russia and China. On the other, Germany’s relationship with its arms-producing companies has long been a fraught one, similar to its post-1945 and post-1989 relationship with military and defense issues in general. An often-used term to describe the arms industry is Schmuddelkinder, meaning street urchins to be avoided.
As with many things, this is changing in the context of the war in Ukraine and the Zeitenwende, or turning point, as Germans refer to the reckoning with the changed geopolitical climate since 2022. In February 2024, when Germany’s largest arms producer, Rheinmetall, began construction for a new ordnance factory able to produce 200,000 rounds of artillery ammunition per year, then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz was there for the ground-breaking ceremony, something that would have been unusual before.
Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has said he has “no reservations” working with the arms industry that many of his predecessors held at arm’s length, at least in the public eye. And beyond the shift among the political leadership, German defense firms report a massive increase in the number of job applications they receive, suggesting greater acceptance among the general public as well.