Time to build the German bomb?

Three years ago a public debate around whether Germany needs a nuclear bomb would have been unthinkable. But a lot has changed in the meantime.

Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash

Dear Reader,

I’m not sure that a doyenne of the 1960s hippie movement would appreciate me quoting her lyrics when it comes to support for nuclear weaponry.

But the classic Joni Mitchell line that “Don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone” seems to appropriately sum up the German attitude to the US warheads that have been stationed on their soil since the 1950s as part of NATO’s nuclear sharing strategy.

Germans have never been happy about the fact that these weapons of mass destruction are stored in bunkers in the south of the country ready for a potential war with Russia.

During the Cold War, millions took to the streets to call for their removal under the banner “better red than dead.” Since then, public protest has died down, but antipathy to the weapons of mass destruction remained.

As recently as 2009, the man who is now German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, described the nuclear weapons as “militarily obsolete…