Like many good Veterans Day celebrations, the one in central Berlin on Sunday featured feats of strength. A former Naval boatswain named Peter Christian Duszynski, 35, pulled on a heavy bulletproof vest and reeled off nine flawless chin-ups. When he got stuck on the 10th, the crowd laughed and cheered him on.
For Mr. Duszynski, the reception was welcome. Unlike Americans, British and others, Germans rarely show warm public support for former or active service members. The nation remains deeply ashamed of its Nazi past. Until Sunday, it had not celebrated an official Veterans Day since it reunified at the end of the Cold War.
That reticence has been an obstacle as German leaders try to rebuild military strength, in order to counter a hostile Russia and hedge against a shrinking American security umbrella. Officials are now trying to recruit 60,000 new soldiers on very short notice. They need more than money to do it.
They need the country to start appreciating its armed forces again.
That is why, in the shadow of Berlin’s Parliament building, officials staged a main-event veterans’ celebration on Sunday. Across Germany, there were hundreds of related festivities, including more street fairs, communal breakfasts, bicycle races, hiking treks and photo exhibitions.
“The soldiers are there, but they are usually not seen,” said Mr. Duszynski, 35, who had missions in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. “I think it’s important that we take steps to become more visible.”
Boris Pistorius, the defense minister, told revelers on Sunday night in Berlin that support for veterans had been “seriously neglected in our country in recent decades, if not completely ignored.”
Mr. Pistorius said it was important to create a “framework for showing appreciation, gratitude, and respect to those who are willing, when it matters, to risk the greatest good, their health or even their lives, so that we can continue to live in freedom, peace, and security in this country in the future.”
German leaders are poised to dramatically increase security spending in the years to come, reaching as high as 5 percent of the country’s annual economic output — the level that President Trump has pushed NATO allies to hit.
Still, the Defense Ministry sees public buy-in as essential in finding the additional recruits the Bundeswehr, or armed forces, will need to meet a new NATO commitment.
“The women and men who serve or have served in the armed forces deserve our gratitude, recognition and respect,” the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said in a written statement on Sunday, though he missed the celebrations to travel to a Group of 7 summit in Canada.
“This service to our country belongs at the heart of our society,” Mr. Merz said.
That sentiment was widely echoed on a hot and humid Sunday in Berlin, where many current and former soldiers and their families gathered to show their pride, talk shop and just hang out.
Germany’s military has mostly been involved in international peacekeeping since reunification in 1990. It has lost only 119 soldiers since then, a small fraction of America’s military casualties in that time, but painful nonetheless for the nation and its service members.
Bodo von Henning auf Schönhoff, 42, who served 10 years as a military police officer, rode in a motorcycle tribute convoy honoring fallen soldiers. He drew a name of a solder to honor, and it was someone he knew: Daniel Wirth.
“That name had been with me for years,” Mr. von Henning auf Schönhoff said.
Besides the chin-up competition, the festival on Sunday included speeches, dance numbers and musical acts. It also called in some big-name help from countries with more experience honoring their veterans.
There was an interview with the Canadian singer and photographer Bryan Adams about his photos of British service members who had been wounded in combat. The pictures were exhibited in the halls of Parliament.
Organizers also showed a short video from Prince Harry, who founded the Invictus Games, in which wounded veterans compete internationally. He commended Germany for showing “the world how memory, accountability and unity can be turned into strength.”
A small group of protesters briefly interrupted the celebration, but were quickly shut down.
Many veterans avoided the loud front-stage area in Berlin, instead preferring the relative quiet of the fair away from the official program.
Former and active soldiers at the festivities often said that they had noticed a general positive shift in public attitudes toward the military that went well beyond the official celebrations.
“Of course there is a different appreciation today because now the general public is naturally more concerned that their freedom could be attacked by external influences,” said Matthias Gillet, 53, a former officer in the military who enlisted shortly after Germany unified in 1990, and who remained in the reserves after he retired.
Joel Weissenborn, 29, who spent years as an elite paratrooper in almost every conflict the army has been involved with, says he notices a difference in attitudes when he goes around Germany in uniform.
“Sometimes,” he said, almost incredulously, “people will actually thank me for my service.”
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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