{"id":487249,"date":"2025-10-10T02:49:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T02:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/487249\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T02:49:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T02:49:14","slug":"nazi-legacy-complicates-germanys-efforts-to-fight-russian-drones-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/487249\/","title":{"rendered":"Nazi legacy complicates Germany\u2019s efforts to fight Russian drones \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWe need to amend the laws so that the only ones able to take care of this \u2014 namely the Bundeswehr \u2014 are also given the authority to do so,\u201d Thomas R\u00f6wekamp, the chair of the defense committee in the German Bundestag and a member of Chancellor Friedrich Merz\u2019s conservative bloc, told POLITICO.<\/p>\n<p>While the Bundeswehr is theoretically able to pick up arms domestically in the event of a major invasion, the drone incursions thus far don\u2019t qualify as sufficiently grave attacks, according to legal experts. The Bundeswehr, based on current law, is only able to shoot down drones over military bases.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s no evidence that any of the drones that have recently entered German airspace carried weapons. Yet the Kremlin does appear to be using the drones for espionage, according to German authorities. Last year <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/panorama\/justiz\/spionage-drohnen-ueber-ramstein-rheinmetall-und-basf-gesichtet-a-e97bfa4c-e7fb-4d33-9a69-9e109968787b\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">there were reports of unexplained drone sightings<\/a> over facilities belonging to arms manufacturer Rheinmetall and chemicals group BASF.<\/p>\n<p>Germany\u2019s police have the legal right to shoot down such drones if deemed necessary, but they don\u2019t have the technical capability. \u201cThe federal police, and also almost all state police forces, currently have no capabilities whatsoever for drone defense,\u201d said defense committee chair R\u00f6wekamp.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/GettyImages-2238769128-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7305918\"  \/>Its forces can, for example, help identify drones or pass on information if requested \u00a0\u2014 as happened recently when drones were spotted over Munich Airport. | Armin Weigel\/Picture Alliance via Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>The military has more of those capabilities, but is largely unable to act due in large part to the country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n<p>In Imperial Germany and in the pre-World War II Weimar Republic, the German army \u201cwas deployed frequently and ruthlessly, usually to strike Social Democrats and left-wing governments,\u201d said public law professor Kathrin Groh of the University of the Bundeswehr Munich. \u201cA repeat of such measures had to be avoided in the 1949 constitution, which is why we have these strict rules for the Bundeswehr today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe need to amend the laws so that the only ones able to take care of this \u2014&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[4328,18992,10592,30,7694,2814,473,365,2595,95665,1105,1945,1824,6084,2817,660,2597,770,48,332,5549,811],"class_list":{"0":"post-487249","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-airports","9":"tag-airspace","10":"tag-alexander-dobrindt","11":"tag-courts","12":"tag-critical-infrastructure","13":"tag-data","14":"tag-defense","15":"tag-denmark","16":"tag-drones","17":"tag-far-left","18":"tag-far-right","19":"tag-friedrich-merz","20":"tag-germany","21":"tag-infrastructure","22":"tag-intelligence","23":"tag-kremlin","24":"tag-military","25":"tag-poland","26":"tag-rights","27":"tag-russia","28":"tag-safety","29":"tag-security"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487249","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=487249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}