Achtzig Jahre nach dem Holocaust bewaffnet Israel Deutschland

**From The Telegraph:**

It was the moment that hailed an extraordinary new partnership between the descendants of a genocidal regime and its victims.

At the G7 summit in June, Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, was challenged by a reporter about Israel’s ferocious bombardment of Tehran in the Israel-Iran war, as it raged on 6,000 miles away.

“Das ist die Drecksarbeit, die Israel macht, für uns alle,” Mr Merz replied, with a stony glare at his interviewer: “Israel is doing the dirty work for all of us.”

To German ears, it was an unusually blunt and bellicose remark for a postwar chancellor. But it revealed something quite profound about Mr Merz’s world view: that Germany’s security now depends on Jews, the very people it once sought to annihilate.

Mr Merz, the centre-Right Christian Democrats [CDU] leader, has vowed that Germany is “back” as he draws up plans to build “the strongest conventional army in Europe” to confront Russia.

The former banking executive has reversed decades of underinvestment in the Bundeswehr [German armed forces], which once sent soldiers on an exercise with broomsticks instead of guns, by passing reforms that allow potentially unlimited defence spending.

His coalition is also trying to pass a new law conscripting young men into the army by lottery, and is working through a €377bn (£330bn) “wish list” of new equipment for the Bundeswehr.

But what is perhaps most striking about Germany’s rearmament strategy is the extent to which it will rely on missiles, drones and air defence systems provided by Israel.

Eighty years on from the Holocaust, senior Israeli defence officials have told The Telegraph they are not only playing a key role in Germany’s new rearmament policy, but are “proud” to do so.

MPs in Mr Merz’s CDU party also told The Telegraph that Germany had become “hugely dependent” on Israeli defence technology, as it faces increased aggression from both Russia and the Iranian regime.

Leaked copies of the German wish list for rearmament state that €700m (£600m) has been earmarked for self-detonating drones produced by the Israeli arms firm Elbit. A further €100m (£88m) is also being set aside for Israeli ammunition to be used in Germany’s fleet of Heron drones, made by Israel Aerospace Industries.

**Read more here:** [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/11/15/eighty-years-after-the-holocaust-israel-is-arming-germany/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/11/15/eighty-years-after-the-holocaust-israel-is-arming-germany/)