As he takes office, Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, faces a delicate test: dealing with a Russia willing to flex its muscle on its eastern flank, and with an American president intent on making NATO allies bear more of the burden for their own defense.
Squeezed by the two sides, Mr. Merz has been trying to juggle how to move Germany toward more of a leadership role in NATO — without antagonizing a more militaristic Russia.
Last week, Mr. Merz traveled to Lithuania to preside over the activation of a German tank brigade that could serve as a bulwark against any Russian invasion through neighboring Belarus, which is seen as a potential staging ground for military action by Moscow.
Hundreds of Lithuanians turned Vilnius’s famous cathedral square into something akin to a militaristic county fair last week to celebrate the activation of the new brigade, a historic change for a country that the Nazis brutally occupied eight decades ago. The unit, the first fully armored German brigade permanently based outside the country since the end of World War II, also signaled Germany’s changing posture.
“Throughout the years of the Cold War, Germany could rely on our allies standing by our side at any emergency — today, we are here, the ones who have a duty,” Mr. Merz told the roughly 700 German soldiers standing in formation in the square.
Mr. Merz has made military spending a cornerstone of his agenda, taking out huge loans to finance his effort to rebuild an aging military starved for resources. During his inaugural speech to lawmakers this month, Mr. Merz vowed to make Germany’s army the strongest conventional military force in Europe, a pledge that he repeated in Vilnius last week.
He also wants Germany to step up on the global stage as the region faces a growing threat from Russia and President Trump pushes for Europe to bear more of the burden for its defense. Mr. Merz is set to meet on Wednesday with President Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine to discuss, among other things, European aid for the war.
The modernization effort has been shouldered by Germany’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius, who was given an exceedingly rare second term as minister, even as the entire government around him changed hands.
Before Mr. Merz was sworn in as chancellor, he coordinated a vote to change the country’s Constitution to decouple military spending from Germany’s borrowing limit. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Mr. Merz’s predecessor, Olaf Scholz, took out a loan of 100 billion euros (about $114 billion) to face what he called a Zeitenwende, or “change of era.” Now freed of debt limits, Mr. Merz’s government is poised to spend nearly five times as much on the military.
Both Mr. Pistorius and Germany’s foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, have recently signaled that Germany is ready to increase spending to up to 3.5 percent of its economic output on defense and another 1.5 percent on critical defense infrastructure. (Mr. Trump has urged NATO allies to commit 5 percent of their economic output to military spending.)
The commitment is expected to be a main topic when NATO members meet next month, and it reflects a momentous change for a country that has for years had problems reaching a military spending target of 2 percent of economic output.
“Russia’s war has changed everything, especially for the Bundeswehr,” Mr. Pistorius told lawmakers the day before politicians traveled to Lithuania, referring to Germany’s armed forces.
Those armed forces are in need of much repair and reform.
A recent report by Eva Högl, the parliamentary commissioner of Germany’s armed forces, found that many military barracks were dilapidated, that some training facilities — like gyms — were permanently closed and that even basic fencing around some military bases required repairs. Some highly trained military staff, like doctors and helicopter pilots, were stuck working administrative jobs and unable to work in the fields they had trained for, it found, and many units were not operational because of staff shortages.
And although defense officials have been allocated the €100 billion to, among other things, buy new high-end weapon systems, many units have had to do without sufficient equipment like tanks or howitzers, because so many armaments have been sent to Ukraine. Munitions and spare parts remain too sparse to sustain the army for any length of time in case of an attack.
Another problem is the number of soldiers. Even after a banner year in recruitment, the German army currently has 180,000 uniformed troops and about 20,000 unfilled spots. While Mr. Merz’s Christian Democrats have been pushing for some form of a draft, their coalition government partners, the Social Democrats, continue to resist the idea.
Mr. Pistorius, who was criticized for warning that Germany has to be ready for war, has tried to push party colleagues into a Swedish-style draft model, in which all young people would be registered, giving recruiters a chance to reach out to individuals with personalized offers.
Sönke Neitzel, a military historian who has written several books on Germany’ military, said that besides staffing shortages, one major problem was that there are too many high-level officers and not enough recruited soldiers to do the actual fighting.
“The German armed forces are still a peacekeeping force that is completely overburdened with bureaucracy and whose personnel structure needs to be fundamentally changed,” Mr. Neitzel said.
He and others have been warning that Germany needs to be ready before a potential attack on NATO partners.
“We in Europe must be clear that the hunger for power will not be satisfied, that Vladimir Putin has no qualms about invading Moldova or Georgia next,” said Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, a European Union lawmaker who is an outspoken advocate of German rearmament.
The 45th tank brigade that Mr. Merz and Mr. Pistorius activated in Vilnius last week will encompass as many as 4,800 German soldiers once it is at full force in 2027.
When Mr. Pistorius announced the brigade’s formation two years ago, experts questioned whether it could be done quickly. But Mr. Pistorius made it his personal project, traveling dozen of times to Lithuania, helping to set up not just the military bases, but also German schools and day care centers for soldiers’ families, to encourage Germans to volunteer to move to Lithuania.
Edmund Kulikauskas, 87, fled German-occupied Lithuania when he was 6. After nearly five decades in the United States, Mr. Kulikauskas returned to his native country in 1994 to help rebuild it. Last week, he braved rain showers at Cathedral Square to enthusiastically applaud Mr. Merz and Mr. Pistorius.
“We’ve been living peacefully and satisfied, but now sense a real danger,” he said, noting that 5,000 German soldiers stationed in Lithuania would help deter a Russian attack.
Asked whether he worried that Germans were once again stationed in his country, he said, “These are a different kind of Germans.”
Christopher F. Schuetze is a reporter for The Times based in Berlin, covering politics, society and culture in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
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