September 10, 2026: Germany is responding to events in Ukraine. There is a new way to make war, and the Germans are learning from the Ukrainians as well as producing drones for Ukraine and the German armed forces. Ukraine demonstrated how weapons, not just drones, could be developed and put into production within months, weeks or, in the case of new drone technologies, days.

The German military, known as the Bundeswehr, was upgraded and expanded. Within two years, Germany had, for the first time, reached the NATO goal of two percent of GDP spent on defense. That’s more than $75 billion. This pays for an army brigade to be created and stationed in Lithuania, which borders Russia. The Bundeswehr is buying the Israeli Arrow air defense system to shoot down any Russian missiles aimed at Germany. Another air defense system deals with drones and aircraft.

At sea, the naval branch of the Bundeswehr sent a frigate to help deal with the situation in the Red Sea. The Houthi rebels in Yemen were trying to halt shipping moving north to the Suez Canal or an Israeli port in southern Sinai. For the first time since World War II, a German warship opened fire on an armed enemy. This was part of a multinational effort to suppress the Houthi threat. All that firepower worked, as the Houthis declared a ceasefire because they had run out of missiles, men, and militancy.

Unfortunately, the Bundeswehr has come up short on manpower. While the German government supports and pays for rearmament, many military-age German men are reluctant to commit. The Bundeswehr is short a quarter of the personnel it needs to operate all these weapons. One problem is that the Bundeswehr is supposed to have 203,000 active troops but can only attract 186,000. This may change if Russian forces advance on Germany rather than just threaten to. The last time the Russians invaded in 1945, the Germans fought to the end. That cost Germany six million troops, while the Russians lost nine million soldiers and 18 million civilians.

To one degree or another, Germany has been preparing for this since 2009. Ten years ago, for the first time since the end of the Cold War (and the threat of Soviet invasion) in 1991, Germany prepared a civil defense plan. Unlike the pre-1991 plans, which had to deal with a major invasion from the east, the 2016 plan is for dealing with domestic terrorism on a wide scale. Civilians are urged to stockpile emergency food supplies for ten days and water for five days. Few other details have been released so far, although indications suggest some Cold War-era measures will be revived, such as using the military (active duty and reserves) for counter-terror operations. Cold War plans also relied heavily on civilians organized and trained to help out.

Since 1950, the primary German disaster relief organization has been the Bundesanstalt Technisches Hilfswerk (THW for Federal Technical Relief). Originally, THW was only for West Germany, as East Germany was under Soviet occupation until 1990. East Germany had a much larger and more militarized civil defense organization. This was needed to support the dozens of Russian combat divisions in East Germany (or nearby countries) that would move west to fight NATO. West Germany also had a lot more military personnel (active duty and reserve) assigned to “rear area security” and civil defense. By the 1980s, both Germanys were trying to prepare for heavy use of small (“tactical”) nuclear weapons in wartime, as well as chemical and biological weapons. Europeans on both sides of the Iron Curtain (separating Western Europe from Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe) were appalled by this prospect, and that was a major reason for the communist dictatorships collapsing in Eastern Europe and Russia between 1989 and 1991. Currently, THW has about 80,000 staff, most of them volunteers.

While Russia is again making threats of invasion and nuclear warfare, the main threat now is civil disorder triggered by the growing number of Muslim refugees. German intelligence has known about this danger for over a decade. In 2006, for example, German intelligence estimated that about 3,000 of their 3.5 million Muslim residents would commit terrorist acts to further the al Qaeda cause. The Germans also noted that there were 24 active Islamist groups in the country, with over 31,000 members altogether. Many of those young al Qaeda enthusiasts lack the leadership and technical knowledge to pull off a major attack. While these 3,000 men are all for terrorist actions, only a few are willing to kill themselves doing it. The situation has gotten worse over the last decade, and now Germany has over 20,000 potential Islamic terrorists to monitor. German law prohibits preventive detention, so the best the Germans could do was try to identify the most likely terrorists and keep an eye on them.

Britain thought they had a similar situation but had it under control. The July 7, 2005, bombing made it clear that some British Muslims were actually very eager to act, and the government surveillance program had not caught them. After the 2005 attacks, an opinion survey found that some 18 percent of British Muslims felt little or no loyalty towards Britain. Worse yet, about six percent of British Moslems (largely males, and younger ones) are in favor of the attacks. That's over 100,000 people. This percentage was later found to be similar in France and Germany.

German politicians are now sufficiently alarmed to allow preparations for a worst-case scenario. But some have pointed out that this would require reviving conscription, and that is still political poison.

Back in 2009, Germany changed its Rules of Engagement (ROE) for its troops in Afghanistan. While the 3,400 German troops in Afghanistan have not been allowed to go looking for a fight, they were increasingly getting attacked by the Taliban, or whoever the enemy is where the German troops are. That was because the Afghans were becoming aware of the German ROE and taking advantage of it. But with five German soldiers killed in Afghanistan so far this year, compared to three for all of last year, the ROE was changed. German soldiers may now attack hostile forces without waiting to be fired on first. The previous ROE also required German troops to let the enemy go if they were no longer being fired on.

While many Germans oppose the presence of their troops in Afghanistan, the restrictive ROEs had become a growing embarrassment. The thousands of German soldiers who had served in Afghanistan continued to complain about that when they returned home. And then there was the growing number of soldiers coming back suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Shortly after returning, 245 German soldiers, who had served in war zones (including Afghanistan), were classified as PTSD casualties. The year before, there were only 83 PTSD casualties. This causes stress. Just thinking about it can be stressful. In the last three years, some 62,000 German troops have been stationed in combat (or peacekeeping) zones, where they can be exposed to traumatic events.

The wording of the new ROE wasn't much different, to make the changes more politically palatable at home. But the commanders in Afghanistan have been told that they can do whatever they need to do to accomplish their peacekeeping mission and safeguard their own troops. That no longer includes avoiding contact with the enemy.