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Germans head to the polls on Sunday for a national election. With President Trump calling for an end to the war in Ukraine and for Europe to step up its defense spending, many German voters are worried their country has not done enough to defend itself. NPR Berlin correspondent Rob Schmitz takes us to the port city of Hamburg, where the military is training German industry for war.
ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: In 1665, Hamburg was one of Europe's richest cities. It was filled with merchants conducting trade from the city's port near the North Sea. But that year, says the city's chamber of commerce CEO Malte Heyne, Hamburg's merchants were faced with a big problem - pirates arriving from present-day Algeria.
MALTE HEYNE: And the government wasn't able to protect this - the merchant vessels, so the merchants decided to set up the chamber.
SCHMITZ: Hamburg's merchants pooled their money together to purchase three warships that patrolled the port, establishing Germany's oldest chamber of commerce in the process. Three hundred and sixty years later, Hamburg's chamber of commerce has 187,000 businesses with more than a million members, and security is still top of mind. Heyne says his members are preparing for a variety of scenarios.
HEYNE: Russia is trying to attack the Baltic states, for example. What's happening then? So we need to be ready for that scenario, which hopefully won't happen.
SCHMITZ: Another institution preparing for this scenario - the Bundeswehr, Germany's military. Kurt Leonards is commanding officer of the Hamburg regional command of Germany's armed forces.
KURT LEONARDS: We see that the war industry in Russia is working. And part of it - of the products go to the Russian-Ukraine war.
SCHMITZ: And the rest of Russia's weaponry, says Leonards, is being put into storage.
LEONARDS: So that we think that Russia is, in four or five years, able to test NATO.
SCHMITZ: Leonards says NATO member states are already being tested through so-called hybrid attacks, like cyberattacks on German businesses. Leonards says he's advising companies in Hamburg how to prepare for these types of attacks and for scenarios involving Russian attacks on NATO allies. For example, he says, many logistics companies in Hamburg employ truck drivers from Eastern European countries that border Russia.
LEONARDS: And in a crisis, it could be that these people are also called by their forces and not anymore here in Germany.
SCHMITZ: For many Germans, this war prep might seem extreme. But according to Guntram Wolff, former CEO of the German Council on Foreign Relations, this is precisely the way Germans need to think when it comes to Russia.
GUNTRAM WOLFF: It has better trained forces. It has learned on the battlefield. And so imagine a scenario in which there was to be a ceasefire in Ukraine and Russia would essentially continue its production at the current rates.
SCHMITZ: In a report Wolff authored in September as a fellow at the Kiel Institute, he and his team discovered that Russian weapons production is so strong that it can match Germany's entire stocks of weapons from 2021 within just seven months. Wolff says if Russia and Ukraine were to agree on a ceasefire, Russia's firepower would grow.
WOLFF: I mean, if that were to happen, Russia would, within a short period of time, build a massive army that is really well-equipped and has lots of ammunition, and that would be a formidable challenge to European security.
SCHMITZ: Germany currently spends just above 2% of its annual GDP on its military, but Wolff says it'll need to spend well over 3% to deter Russia. President Trump has demanded NATO members like Germany spend at least 5%. Regardless of how the upcoming national election goes, experts say making the painful investment needed to bring the country's military up to speed will remain Germany's biggest challenge.
Rob Schmitz, NPR 瓜神app, Hamburg.
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