The Times: Europe’s muddled armed forces "could be washed away by Russia"

 

At a high-level defence conference in Berlin, several German generals also suggested that Nato might be unable to win the “first battle” in a defensive war on its eastern flank, because it would struggle to ship sufficient numbers of troops and equipment to the front line quickly enough.

 

Sönke Neitzel, professor of military history at Potsdam University and the leading academic authority on the modern German armed forces, described the logistics as a “nightmare” and said it could take at least 15 years before Germany was ready for war, The Times quotes them as saying.

 

He pointed out that troop numbers were in decline and fell at least 30,000 short of the 203,000 target strength, while the country needs another 60,000 reservists in addition to the 34,000 it has.

 

“We need more money. We need more personnel. And there are limits in politics,” Neitzel told the Berlin Security Conference. “We can’t exclude that the Bundeswehr [German armed forces] will have to fight.

 

“We are going to stand by the coffins at the soldiers’ graves and we are going to be asked: ‘What have you done?’ We will have to explain to the mothers and the fathers why the soldiers could not fulfil their jobs. And at the moment we can only die gallantly if there’s a war.

 

“It’s very clear: if our armed forces are going to fight, they will die without drones, air defences, without enough supplies. Are we now clear enough on our message [to Germany’s leaders]? They are going to die and it’s your responsibility.”

 

The Bundeswehr has been shaken by the Russian assault on Ukraine in February last year, which led the head of the army to lament that his soldiers had been left “naked” and unable to fulfil obligations to their Nato allies after years of cuts and muddled doctrines. In response, the government is spending €100 billion on fixing the gaps in its military and last week set out an ambition to become the “backbone” and chief logistical “turntable” of Nato’s efforts to deter a Russian invasion.

 

Boris Pistorius, the defence minister, has called for Germany to become kriegstüchtig (capable of war), a deliberately provocative term in a country where 71 per cent of voters reject the state’s new aim to assume a “leadership role” in the defence of Europe.

 

On Thursday he told the conference that the idea of creating a European army was “off the table”, as the continent’s powers try instead to take on a more serious role within Nato. “It’s time to lift the mental blockade that somehow Germany shouldn’t be a leader in defence and deterrence,” he said. “We all need to become kriegstüchtig. Deterrence is like oxygen: you don’t notice it until it’s gone. We want peace — we have to prepare for war.”

 

Admiral Rob Bauer of the Netherlands, Nato’s highest-ranking officer, praised Germany’s plans and urged it to stand by them despite the “deeply held anti-militaristic views” in its population.

 

A number of Bundeswehr generals and military experts pointed to deep structural problems standing in the way, including a shortage of troops, heavily depleted ammunition stocks and the difficulty of moving as many as 300,000 Nato soldiers up to a thousand miles from Germany to the front.

 

Some insiders also fear that regular military spending and arms deliveries to Ukraine could be cut back as the country’s political leaders struggle to resolve a budget crisis.

 

“We need to wake this country up, and probably not just this country. I think it’s true for most of the European democracies,” said Brigadier-General Tilo Maedler, chief of staff in the Bundeswehr’s homeland defence command. “We really must overcome our old optimistic view of the terminal peace [after the end of the Cold War in Europe]. It was a nice dream, but the dream is over and we have to face reality. This country, and not just this country, needs to do a lot more for the stability of peace and democracy.”

 

One of the toughest problems coming into focus is logistics. Many senior European commanders bemoaned the complexity of building up sufficient stocks of war materiel and moving soldiers and equipment through a legal system so tangled that armoured vehicles face separate rules and permits in each of Germany’s 16 states.

 

“If we have bureaucracy in place that prevents this agile movement, then we have a real problem not to lose the first battle [against Russia],” said Lieutenant-General Alexander Sollfrank, the German head of Nato’s new central logistics hub in Ulm. “And the other side knows exactly where our limitations are and what our obstacles are.”

 

Neitzel said he had visited Nato’s headquarters in Brussels last week and despaired at the way various allied states still had mutually incompatible ammunition. “This always reminds me of the story of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, how they had to react to Napoleon and they couldn’t agree on anything,” he said. “And they were washed away. Historical structures can be washed away. That’s the lesson from history.

 

“So we have to act and we have to enable Alexander Sollfrank [in charge of Nato logistics] to do his job, so that our soldiers are not going to die and we can win the first battle.”

 

Neitzel added that senior figures in Nato were increasingly pessimistic about Ukraine’s chances of winning back significant territory from Russia after the failure of its summer counteroffensive, and contemplating a plan for the unoccupied parts of the country to be admitted into the alliance.

 

Brigadier-General Vesa Valtonen, commander of the Finnish army’s Pori Brigade, said the situation in Ukraine bore a troubling resemblance to the final phase of his own country’s winter war against a Soviet invasion in 1939-40. After valiantly holding off a much larger and better-equipped force, the Finns were ground down and forced to sue for peace.

 

“We lasted alone for 105 days,” said Valtonen. “The last third of the war was looking like Ukraine is now: attrition. Our side didn’t have reserves. The other side has or had them.

 

“There are 40 million people in Ukraine. How are they going to [keep up] the mobilisation and such? Are we willing to produce enough ammunition so that they can keep on fighting? This is a long-term period. We can’t give up. You can’t win a war of attrition against Russia.”