A pair of red double-decker train cars still sit proudly in the yard of a factory in Görlitz, along Germany’s eastern border. They will be gone soon.
After 175 years making train cars, the Alstom factory is changing hands and shifting to produce tank parts. It is a small but illustrative step in Germany’s abrupt turn toward rearmament, spurred by fears of Russian advancement and an American pullback of security guarantees.
That does not mean that people in town are happy about it. But they say they’d be more unhappy with having no work at all.
The town’s ambivalent embrace of the factory makeover is a reflection of Germans’ conflicting feelings about the combination of a more threatening security environment and tougher economy.
Görlitz sits in a hard-pressed region of former East Germany where antiwar sentiment runs strong, along with sympathy for Russia. In elections this year, almost half of voters backed the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which openly courts Moscow and opposes supporting Ukraine.
But the town, workers and even the local AfD leaders have grudgingly accepted the new factory. With well-paying jobs scarce and economic frustration abundant, many vocal critics of the arms industry have made peace with the business of war.
Sebastian Wippel, who leads the AfD on the local City Council, called the sale of the factory “no reason to celebrate” in a Facebook post. But he also acknowledged the importance of keeping manufacturing jobs in town — and of reducing German dependence on foreign weapons manufacturers.
“That means that weapons production also has to happen in Germany,” said Mr. Wippel, who is deputy leader of the party in Saxony’s parliament. “And if it is now going to happen here, for that reason, I can’t really have anything against it.”
It’s a possible preview of compromises the AfD may be forced to make if it wants to broaden its support beyond its stronghold in the former East and rise further at a national level.
The party currently leads some national polls, but AfD leaders, who have criticized Chancellor Friedrich Merz for increasing military spending and supporting Ukraine, are out of sync with the majority of Germans on those issues.
For civic leaders — including otherwise war-skeptical AfD leaders — the tanks are the lesser of two evils.
“There are few large companies left that pay union wages, and it would be a catastrophe if this one went under as well,” said Heiko Nitschke, an Alstom engineer, as he sat one afternoon in a grocery store parking lot across from the factory gate. Still, he said, he would not work with the new owner, partly out of discomfort with building weapons.
The arms manufacturer that is converting the Alstom plant, KNDS, has agreed to take on more than half of the old factory’s 700 workers, many of them welders. The company declined to comment, but has said its investment will top $10 million.
What was once a sprawling manufacturing complex has been shrinking for years. Parts of one building became a police headquarters and a cultural center. Other parts sit unused, the windows smashed and the roof caved in.
Less than a decade ago, the factory employed more than 2,000 workers, before shifts in supply chains threatened it entirely.
When it became clear a few years ago that the factory was in danger of closing, the union, IG Metall, began looking into alternative goods it could make.
The conclusion: weapons. That was because of the workers’ expertise in welding and also the facility’s ability to lift heavy weights, said Uwe Garbe, lead union representative for IG Metall in eastern Saxony.
The union helped get politicians at both the state and federal levels involved in finding a buyer, hoping to stem the industrial decline that has left its mark on the pocketbooks and politics of the area.
Görlitz, which sits in a former coal-mining region along the Neisse River that separates Germany from Poland, has struggled since German reunification as multiple industries faltered and young people left.
Many in town say that economic frustration and the feeling of being left behind by politics pushed voters toward the AfD, which now garners more support than any other party in local and regional elections.
Alexander Schulz, 43, who said he works at a Birkenstock plant that is now the town’s largest manufacturer, said he, like many others, is unhappy about Görlitz moving into weapons production. But he also understood the broader concerns that led them to accept it.
“The majority of people in town do not find it cool,” he said, as he sipped a beer after work on a recent afternoon, adding that people fear becoming a target if war should come to Germany.
But, he added, “There are a lot of people here now who are really afraid. Work, money, can I pay my loans, can I continue to pay off my house? Those are the biggest fears people have.”
Jim Tankersley contributed reporting from Berlin.
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