Germany Now World’s Third-Largest Arms Exporter

The total value of German arms exports has more than doubled since 2005, making Germany the world’s third-largest weapons exporter, behind just the United States and Russia. German weapons sales now make up 11 percent of world trade according to the 2009 annual report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Most of these exports are armored vehicles, with submarines and warships also making up a large percentage. Turkey is the largest importer of German weapons, followed by Greece—despite its economic troubles—South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Austria and Italy.

Many in Germany are surprised by their nation’s sudden growth in arms manufacturing. But this growth is no accident. The German government has been working to beef up the country’s arms manufacturing. The government “has been providing behind-the-scenes assistance to make sure industry goes in the right direction,” wrote MarketWatch columnist David Marsh in January. There is a “long-held German desire to build industrial companies with world scale in the defense field,” said Marsh.

Toward the end of World War ii, Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin said, “It is our inflexible purpose to destroy German militarism and Nazism and to ensure that Germany will never again be able to disturb the peace of the world. We are determined to disarm and disband all German armed forces; break up for all time the German General Staff …; remove or destroy all German military equipment; eliminate or control all German industry that could be used for military production ….”

Now Germany is once again a major arms producer, with the government having implemented deliberate policies to build up weapons production.