The New German War Machine

After World War II, Germany embraced pacifism as a form of atonement. Now the country is arming itself again.

- ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER

The Bendlerblock is an imposing neoclassical building near the center of Berlinsevere and symmetrical, with a red-tile roof. It once served as the headquarters of the Wehrmacht, and it's where officers who plotted to kill Hitler in 1944 were executed by firing squad. Now the complex houses Germany's defense ministry, which oversees the armed forces.

I went to the Bendlerblock this past summer to meet with German military officials and see how they're responding to an aggressive Russia and a mercurial America. Two sergeants escorted me to the office of Lieutenant General Christian Freuding.

At the time of our meeting, Freuding was in charge of the ministry's Ukraine unit, but he had just been named the next chief of the army, a role he assumed in October. His actual, ambivalent-sounding title is inspector of the army. Freuding is gaunt and soft-spoken, with something of an aristocratic bearing. He doesn't come from a long line of military officers, he told me, but his grandfather served in both world wars and was imprisoned by Allied forces in 1945.

I told him about my own German family. A century ago, my great-grandfather Hans Salzmann was a soldier in the German army. He fought in the First World War and was wounded near Verdun and awarded the Iron Cross before returning home to practice medicine. But then his country turned on him. When the Nazis stripped him of his citizenship, he fled, sailing from Hamburg to Cuba and then to New York City, with a red J stamped on his passport.

Below: Lieutenant General Christian Freuding, chief of the German army

Freuding nodded. "So you have a very personal relationship to this topic as well," he said.