Ukraine<\/a> in February 2022 and the game changed.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/SW2CP2CFSIJ7NSS6QAL3GAUTHA.jpg\")
A Panther KF55 main battle tank at the opening of the new Rheinmetall factory in Unterluss, Germany, on Wednesday. Photograph: Morris MacMatzen\/Getty Images <\/p>\n
Days later Berlin announced the \u201cZeitenwende\u201d, a watershed shift towards huge military support for Ukraine and staggering defence and security spending at home.<\/p>\n
By 2030 Germany will have spent at least \u20ac250 billion rearming \u2013 and Rheinmetall expects a large slice of pie.<\/p>\n
Almost 1,300 days on from Putin\u2019s invasion, company shares have jumped 17 times in value. This new factory may be filled with weapons of war, but Rheinmetall insists its main offering is peace.<\/p>\n
As guests take their seats, a slogan \u2013 \u201cTaking responsibility in a changing world\u201d \u2013 vanishes and is replaced by a corporate film.<\/p>\n
Tanks move around fields and fire at things. A Fiat Panda explodes. Clients are promised an \u201cend-to-end ammunition ecosystem\u201d and a boost to \u201cindustrial resilience and … national security\u201d.<\/p>\n
Papperger takes to the stage, telling his audience: \u201cWe are investing in our own security, and this plant is an important signal.\u201d<\/p>\n
He is followed by Rutte. With Russia and China ramping up their own arms spending, this factory \u201cis exactly what we need to ensure the prosperity and security of our societies across Europe … and turn the tide\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow there\u2019s cash on the table,\u201d adds Rutte, nodding to German federal finance minister Lars Klingbeil, who is bankrolling Germany\u2019s unprecedented military investment.<\/p>\n
The centre-left Social Democratic (SPD) co-leader knows his party is traditionally wary of the military. Many who refused to believe Russia would invade Ukraine \u2013 until it did \u2013 have been on a journey ever since.<\/p>\n
The more centrist Klingbeil is not a SPD Putin apologist. Just back from Kyiv, he tells the audience how seeing the ruins of a residential block, bombed at dawn last week with 24 deaths, \u201cmake you see the war is real\u201d.<\/p>\n
Germany\u2019s rearming is preventive, he insists, \u201cso no child born [here] today should experience war\u201d.<\/p>\n
Klingbeil would like Germany to become as pragmatic as his home constituency, which begins five minutes from this Lower Saxon factory.<\/p>\n
The military and Rheinmetall are major employers here, he says, and soldiers and arms production are \u201cthings we have never hidden\u201d.<\/p>\n
Following up is Boris Pistorius: another Lower Saxon native, SPD politician and Germany\u2019s defence minister. He insists that, with war returning to Europe, pacifist moral high ground is no longer an option for his party \u2013 or country. <\/p>\n
In the past he has argued that Germany needs to become \u201cwar-ready\u201d. Today he speaks instead of \u201cdefence-readiness\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is really worth celebrating,\u201d said Pistorius, looking at the hall filled with tanks and missiles, \u201cthough we \u2013 I certainly \u2013 would prefer to live in a world where all of this wasn\u2019t necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rheinmetall is not a household name around the world but it has been a major player \u2013 and employer here in Unterluss \u2013 for 125 years, including in both world wars.<\/p>\n
Seamless steel tubes were its innovative contribution to the first World War while, in the second, Rheinmetall kept wartime arms production going here with about 3,700 forced labourers.<\/p>\n
At a factory mother-and-baby home for \u201cracially inferior\u201d prisoners, the infant mortality rate was 47 per cent. By the war\u2019s end, the company was owned by the Nazi state.<\/p>\n
Today Rheinmetall is number five in Europe\u2019s arms industry with about 40,000 employees worldwide and 3,200 working here in Unterluss on artillery shells and battle tanks.<\/p>\n
Although Klingbeil speaks here of \u201cflicking the switch\u201d \u2013 on a new factory and German attitudes to its military build-up \u2013 leading party leftist Ralf Stegner lodged a protest.<\/p>\n
He has urged Germany to lead new, UN-based international initiatives that include the Global South and \u201cavoid the impression of western hegemony and arrogance\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe basis must be democracy, freedom and universal human rights,\u201d he argued in an essay, \u201cnot the balance sheets or interests of the arms industry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The gathering feels like the opening of an upmarket car showroom. There\u2019s free food and drink and guests…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[1395,2000,299,1824,69751,332,9041],"class_list":{"0":"post-380500","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-china","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-germany","12":"tag-north-atlantic-treaty-organisation-nato","13":"tag-russia","14":"tag-ukraine-crisis"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115106961411180510","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}