One year after the Chancellor’s turning point speech: Where does the Bundeswehr stand?

Berlin As chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) gave his famous “Zeitenwende” speech a year ago, the Ukraine war was only three days old: You need your own strength if you want to fight warmongers like the Russian President Wladimir Putin Wanted to set limits, said the head of government at the time in the Bundestag.

And he repeated a formulation that he had spoken a few days earlier at the Munich Security Conference had used: “We need planes that fly, ships that set sail and soldiers who are optimally equipped for their missions.”

To the armed forces Scholz announced a special fund with a volume of 100 billion euros to make it suitable for national and alliance defense again. And he promised that “from now on, the government will invest more than 2 percent of the gross domestic product in our defense every year”.