Less than 400 meters (a quarter mile) from the seat of the German government sits a Russian tank. The “Reichstag,” or “Imperial Diet,” was completed in the late 19th century, and today houses the country’s two most important legislative assemblies under an impressive glass cupola. The tank, a model T-34, occupies a strategic position, separated from the Reichstag — as well as the nearby residence of Germany’s chancellor — by two lanes of traffic and a thin strip of surrounding park. Despite its proximity, it is likely not an immediate threat — it has occupied its position for some 80 years.
The T-34 tank is the central piece of a “Soviet Honor Monument,” a category of public installations strewn across Germany that commemorate the Red Army’s role in the country’s liberation in 1945. In Berlin, now so firmly associated with the Western Hemisphere, the sudden appearance of massive statues of soviet soldiers adorned with communist emblems around the bend of a park can be jarring. However, they are simply a particularly strong indicator of the forces that shaped the city’s geography. In many residential areas, stuccoed tenement buildings from the turn of the century are sparsely distributed between long rows of simple apartment blocks that were quickly constructed in the 1950s and 60s to replace what bombing raids and shelling had destroyed. Berliners today continue to categorize the city’s housing stock into “new” and “old” buildings, in a tacit, continual reminder of the conflict. The Reichstag itself, once and present seat of German legislative power, lay in ruin for decades before it was renovated and put back into use. Its glass cupola is less an architectural update than a clever repair for artillery damage. The geography of modern Berlin is shaped by heavy guns.
The powers that eventually pummelled Berlin into its modern iteration were of course the very same ones that it unleashed into the world. Germany was and remains a major manufacturer of tanks and weapons. In 1933, “Panzers,” an early type of battle tank that had been clandestinely developed in the 1920s, and other tracked vehicles swept out in every direction from Berlin and other military cities of the Reich. Tank divisions from Berlin were instrumental in the invasion of Poland that marked the beginning of the Second World War and would go on to terrorize civilian populations as far as Greece, Ukraine, and northern Africa. Early iterations of the Panzer had been deployed for testing during the Civil War in Spain, and would remain in use by the Franco dictatorship until the 1950’s.
The European dictatorships of the 20th century are relegated to the historical record. But, in a back to the future moment, the heavy machines and big guns that created not just the shape of Berlin, but that of modern Europe, are once again playing a formative role in the continent. In Ukraine, tracked vehicles, trenches and artillery maneuvers are integral to the fighting in a way not seen this close to Berlin since 1945. And with those heavy weapons, industries that powered the rise of the Third Reich are seeing record profits.
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“After the end of the Cold War and during the War on Terror, one could get the impression that the era of the tank was over,” said Lukas Mengelkamp, a researcher with the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy, a German think tank. “During the War on Terror, the focus was on so-called Counterinsurgency Warfare, for which you needed more light infantry and special forces than tanks and artillery.” The fighting in Ukraine does not fit the parameters of the asymmetrical War on Terror. More often than not, it involves larger contingents of troops and vehicles fighting on long, defined stretches of front. Where counterinsurgency tactics in Afghanistan left little space for artillery and tanks to maneuver, Ukraine certainly does. For Mengelkamp, this spells something more than just the return of the tank to Europe, however: “What we see today is not simply the comeback of the tank but the comeback of combined arms warfare, meaning the integration of different capabilities to reach military objectives.”
In Ukraine, tracked vehicles, trenches and artillery maneuvers are integral to the fighting in a way not seen this close to Berlin since 1945.
In Berlin, the placement of the Russian monument in proximity to the Reichstag is not a coincidence. The building was the final objective of the Soviet invasion of Berlin and its fall would mark the defeat of Nazi Germany. The image of a Soviet soldier mounting the flag of the USSR on its smoking ruin is as iconic in Germany as that of Iwo Jima in the US. For decades the building sat as a disused shell on the militarized border between the two Germanys. Its rebirth as a government building for a unified Germany only became possible after the dissolution of the German Democratic Republic in 1990.
The defeat at the Reichstag also laid the groundwork for the founding principles of post-Nazi statehood. It would be an inversion of the aggressive militarism that had been a German throughline long before the Third Reich became a near-dogma in the country’s politics. The defensive role of its armed forces was tightly proscribed by the Allied forces, and eventually by German voters as well. Military expenditures were kept low after the fall of the Wall, and foreign deployments almost completely limited to humanitarian and peacekeeping efforts. The center-left government’s decision in 2001 to send a small contingent of troops to join The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan is still considered a wrenching point of inflection in the country’s politics.
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Germany’s post-war history is not solely marked by points of departure from the Nazi military machine, however. As tacit and careful as its governments have been in sending its own soldiers abroad, it has been much less reserved with the distribution of its weapons. While the process of obtaining a license to own a firearm within the country is lengthy, German small arms are found in gun shops and conflict zones across the world. Its heavy weapons are exported both to other NATO members as well as to states such as Saudi Arabia and Israel. As Mengelkamp explains, there are similar throughlines to the “Wehrmacht,” or Nazi military forces: “The relationship between the Bundeswehr and the Wehrmacht has always been contested. You always had those who argued that one could quote unquote learn from the experience of the Wehrmacht, and that one should therefore differ between the fighting force and those who committed atrocities.”
The sentiment is not limited to Germany. Admiration for the tactics or supposed prowess of the Nazis is common among World War II hobbyists across the world. However, Mengelkamp says “it’s a deeply flawed reading of history that unfortunately never dies out. Even the dominating strand in Western military thinking today — so-called maneuver theory or maneuverism — can be traced back to a poor reading of the Wehrmacht’s successes during the war.” Mengelkamp not only calls into question the efficacy of maneuver theory, which emphasizes mobility and surprise, but the position of its original proponents. “It takes at face value self-serving accounts by former German generals about the war, who exculpated themselves from their responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity and blamed their failure to win the war on interventions into military matters by Adolf Hitler.”
When it comes to German arms, the continuities between then and now are unambiguous. The same companies that provided tracked weapons and artillery for the Wehrmacht now continue to do so for the German military, as well as for international markets. One example is Rheinmetall, founded in 1889 near the river that gave it its name. Within a decade of erecting its first plant, Rheinmetall introduced the first machine gun capable of field use. Its production lines supplied Kaiser Wilhelm the Second’s troops in the First World War, survived the occupation of the Rhineland by Allied troops following its end, and would produce arms and ammunition for the Nazis until the final throes of their regime. After a 13 year period in which the conditions of Germany’s surrender forbade Rheinmetall from making weapons, it once again stepped into its original trade. It is now one of the world’s largest producers of ammunition, tanks and tracked vehicles. The value of its stock has increased tenfold since the onset of the war in Ukraine, and it has been contracted to produce updated battle tanks (MBTs) for the German military.
Rheinmetall will be working closely on this project with KraussMaffei, a concern founded in Munich in the early 1830s that produces armored vehicles and Panzers for the Wehrmacht. Like Rheinmetall, KraussMaffei made extensive use of forced labor during World War II and faced the same forced hiatus after its end. Back in action, KraussMaffei went on to produce the “Leopard” series of main battle tanks which are still in operation by the Bundeswehr today. Now held in a joint partnership with the government of France under the name KNDS, the company announced 130% growth for fiscal year 2023.
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The subject of arms exports is not without contention in Germany. In the past, sales of Leopard battle tanks to Saudi Arabia have been hotly debated. More recently the delivery of shells and other munitions to Israel have pulled the industry into mainstream political discourse. Undoubtedly, however, Germany itself is the biggest germinator in the growth of its military-industrial complex. The proximity of the war in Ukraine and the shaky future of NATO are not lost in Berlin: “The reorientation of US foreign policy priorities away from Europe and towards Asia is a fairly consensus view in Washington. So is the perspective that allies should do more for their own security and rely less on the United States,” said Tim Thies, another researcher at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy.
Incoming US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s recent appearances on the continent, in which he essentially rang the death knell of the old transatlantic order, will only accelerate the process. “The need for Europe to organize its security without the United States will not go away,” said Thies, regardless of who occupies the White House. “At the same time, Trump and especially his transactional approach to alliances leads to a great deal of uncertainty for European policymakers.”
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The Russian T-34 that sits near the Reichstag in Berlin will likely remain the only tank in the area for the foreseeable future. But it is far from the only fighting vehicle in the country. In July 2024, Rheinmetall announced a contract worth 3.5 billion euros ($3.8 million) to furnish the German military with up to 6,500 military transport trucks. Barely a week before, the two parties had signed another agreement for the purchase of 8.5 billion euros ($9.2 million) worth of 155 Millimeter artillery shells for Germany and its neighbors. Ukraine alone fires thousands of the heavy shells a day, a munition that has not changed significantly since they permanently altered the shape of Berlin.
The fall of the Reichstag marked the end of the Nazi dictatorship and the beginning of a school of security thinking deeply informed by this victory. Mengelkamp reminds us, however, that the official end of the war came a few months later in Japan. “I see problems with the way conventional war is conceived,” he says. “It often seems to me that current strategies and doctrines are made for an imagined non-nuclear world.” In this imagination, arming for the next generation of major land battles with tracked vehicles and heavy artillery is only logical. In the nuclear world, however, the question of how long this type of warfare will continue is fuzzy. “Conducting large scale land operations inside Russia might very well lead to nuclear escalation,” says Mengelkamp. In that case, even the big guns won’t be enough.
*Editors note Mar. 13, 2024 : the following quotes were incorrectly attributed in an earlier version of the piece. It is Tim Thies who said the following: “The need for Europe to organize its security without the United States will not go away,” and “At the same time, Trump and especially his transactional approach to alliances leads to a great deal of uncertainty for European policymakers”. The piece has also been updated slightly for clarity.
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