When Russia launched its February 24th invasion of Ukraine, Germany was one of the nations that experienced a dramatic, near overnight political shift. Germany turned its eyes to rearmament after decades of reduced defence spending, while outside commenters criticised the limited number of heavy weapons the great Central European industrial power was able and willing to provide. The reality is that Germany’s military is both one of the best funded in the world, and also one of the least prepared for action with much of its military reduced to scrounging from other units while equipment is out for maintenance. It is a military hampered by deep budgeting and procurement difficulties that have caused its readiness rates and equipment to run down to dire levels. German defence industry is among the world’s best. It’s capable of developing world beating products (especially when working with other European powers) but it operates at production levels, and in a procurement environment, that mean it has often been foreign militaries, not the Bundeswehr, that benefit most from German military-industrial potential. In this video, I go through some history of how the Bundeswehr came to be so run down. I go after the myth that the Bundeswehr has been poorly funded (there’s both a yes and no answer there) and go through some of the reasons I think Germany’s planned 100 billion Euro equipment spend could go horribly wrong if proper reforms and plans aren’t put in place. To my German viewers, please take this as the friendly (if often critical) view of an ally across the sea.