Germany's Military Budget Will Soon Exceed Britain and France Combined. Europe Isn't Sure How to Feel.

Germany is about to spend more on its military than Britain and France combined.

Not in some distant future. By 2029. The country that built its entire postwar identity on pacifism has committed to spending 3.5% of GDP on defense — roughly $189 billion a year. All of it on conventional forces. No nuclear deterrent to share the bill.

For context: France and the UK each spend around $60-70 billion. Germany's budget will dwarf them both. And in Paris, Rome, and Warsaw, people are starting to ask a question nobody expected to hear again: what happens when Germany becomes Europe's military giant?

How We Got Here

In February 2022, two days after Russia invaded Ukraine, then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz stood before the Bundestag and declared a "Zeitenwende" — a turning point. He announced a one-off €100 billion special defense fund. Germany would finally meet the NATO 2% target it had dodged for decades.

That was the easy part.

The Bundeswehr — Germany's armed forces — had spent 30 years shrinking. After the Cold War ended, Germany slashed its military so aggressively that soldiers were training with broomsticks instead of rifles. That's not a metaphor. It happened during a 2015 NATO exercise.

The €100 billion fund started flowing. Then Friedrich Merz replaced Scholz and did something even more dramatic: he amended the German constitution's "debt brake" — the borrowing limit that had constrained military spending for years — specifically to allow more defense investment.

Germany's now on track to spend €650 billion on its military over the next five years. That's more than double what it spent in the previous five.

A new conscription law aims to grow the Bundeswehr from 180,000 to 260,000 soldiers and build a reserve force of 200,000. Women can volunteer but aren't required to register.

The Problem Nobody Expected

Macron has been calling for European "strategic autonomy" since 2017. The pitch: Europe can't rely on the US forever. It needs its own defense capabilities.

Europe heard the message. But there's a catch Macron didn't anticipate.

When you tell Europe to spend more on defense, and Europe's largest economy — one with an industrial base geared for exactly this — actually does it, the result isn't a balanced European defense coalition. It's German dominance.

Much of Berlin's spending goes straight to German companies. Rheinmetall, the defense giant, has seen its stock price multiply as orders flood in. Germany's buying F-35 fighters, Chinook helicopters, upgraded Leopard 2 tanks, and a new generation of naval vessels. The industrial base is scaling rapidly.

France's fear: "strategic autonomy with a German accent." If Berlin outspends everyone else by this margin, European defense policy follows German procurement decisions, German industrial priorities, and German strategic thinking. Paris, which has long seen itself as Europe's military leader, suddenly looks like a junior partner.

Poland's frustration is different. Warsaw has been spending aggressively on defense too — 4.2% of GDP, the highest rate in NATO. But Polish officials complain about the EU's SAFE defense spending program: "We pay together, the Germans earn." The money flows to German manufacturers, not Polish ones.

Italy sees it similarly. The three countries — France, Poland, Italy — fear that European defense cooperation will become a German procurement exercise with everyone else footing part of the bill.

The History Problem

This is where it gets complicated. Germany rearming at this scale triggers reflexes that no spreadsheet can calm.

Eighty years after WWII, German society still wrestles with its military identity. Considerable majorities support increased spending. Over half favor enlarging the army. But the consensus isn't complete. The far-right AfD and the far-left Linke both oppose parts of the buildup — from opposite directions.

Washington Monthly's Sönke Marahrens, a retired colonel now at Kiel University, describes decades of embedded pacifism. Popular guilt built through the 1950s and 60s as the full truth of Nazi militarism emerged. The Bundeswehr existed, but society kept it at arm's length.

Now Germany's asking citizens to accept not just a military, but Europe's largest one.

The neighbors feel it differently. For France, it's about influence. For Poland and the Baltics, Germany rearming is mostly welcome — Russia is the immediate threat, and any NATO muscle helps. But the economic dimensions create friction. A rearmed Germany that also dominates European defense industry becomes a different kind of power.

The Clock

European intelligence agencies have warned that Russia could be ready to attack a NATO member by 2029. That's the same year Germany's supposed to hit $189 billion in annual defense spending.

The Bundeswehr's closed recruiting office in downtown Berlin — lights off, doors locked on a weekday afternoon, as Washington Monthly found during a November visit — captures the gap between ambition and execution. Money's flowing. Equipment orders are in. But F-35 deliveries won't arrive until 2026 at the earliest. Training pipelines take years. Culture shifts take longer.

Germany's committing enormous resources to catching up. The question is whether it can rebuild fast enough to matter — and whether, in doing so, it reshapes Europe's power balance in ways nobody intended.

What the World Sees

Here's where the perception gap opens.

In the US, German rearmament gets covered as "finally, allies paying their share." Washington pushed for this for years. From an American lens, it's simply overdue.

In Western Europe, particularly France, it's more anxious. Strategic autonomy was supposed to be a French-led project. Germany writing the biggest checks changes the equation.

In Eastern Europe, it's complicated. Poland and the Baltics want a strong NATO eastern flank. German tanks help. But the money flowing to Rheinmetall rather than eastern European manufacturers stings.

In Russia, German rearmament validates the narrative that NATO is an offensive alliance preparing for conflict. Moscow's propaganda apparatus has been pointing at German military spending as proof that the West is the aggressor.

Same military budget. Four completely different stories about what it means.

The Bigger Picture

Europe hasn't seen a military transformation this fast since the early Cold War. Germany went from broomstick exercises to a $189 billion defense commitment in under four years. The trajectory is real. The money is real. The constitutional amendments are real.

But Europe's having to figure out, in real time, what a militarily powerful Germany means for the continent's balance. Not because Germany is a threat — but because a defense alliance where one non-nuclear member outspends the two nuclear members combined creates dynamics nobody planned for.

Macron asked Europe to stand on its own. Germany took him seriously. Now everyone's adjusting to what that actually looks like.