Germany’s new old nuclear dilemma

The nuclear question has always been central to Germany’s position in Europe and within the transatlantic alliance. After 1945, West Germany stood at the epicentre of the Cold War – geographically exposed to the Soviet threat, politically dependent on the United States, and grappling with its Nazi past. German leaders wrestled with questions of sovereignty, deterrence, and status, as they navigated the nuclear dilemma. While Germany never crossed the threshold into active nuclear weapons development, successive German policymakers often contemplated the necessity of possessing nuclear arms. Bonn’s nuclear diplomacy operated on a delicate balance. On the one hand, West Germany committed to the non-proliferation regime, signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and embedding itself firmly in NATO structures. Meanwhile, civil society rejected nuclear weapons and vocally protested against them. On the other hand, the West German government never forgot about the incredible power of nuclear weapons. It insisted on nuclear sharing mechanisms and used nuclear latency as a bargaining tool, thereby maintaining the image of a country that could not be permanently excluded from the nuclear domain.

Today, as Germany once again confronts an assertive Russia and debates the future of NATO’s nuclear deterrent, its nuclear history offers rich lessons. Germany faces renewed difficulties in managing its dependence on the US nuclear umbrella. Germany’s Zeitenwende has prompted debates over possible alternatives, including nuclear-sharing arrangements with the UK and France. At the same time, Germany is making major investments in deep-strike and missile-defence capabilities – systems that did not exist during the Cold War – which can deliver strategic-level effects without turning (or threatening to turn) nuclear itself.

West Germany’s nuclear ambitions after 1945 were shaped by a complex combination of security imperatives, status anxieties and alliance dynamics. The early Cold War was characterised by acute perceptions of the Soviet threat, and West Germany’s geographic location at the faultline of East–West confrontation gave its leaders special cause for alarm. German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer described the Soviet Union as the state’s primal fear, while Defence Minister Franz Josef Strauss warned that Soviet influence would inevitably extend ‘over all of Germany’, whether by overt military attack or by political subversion.

The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 increased these fears. German leaders assumed that the Soviet Union might exploit western weakness in Europe by launching an invasion of the Federal Republic. By 1949, the USSR had already tested its first atomic bomb, leaving NATO Europe at a stark conventional and nuclear disadvantage. Adenauer drew the logical conclusion: deterrence, especially nuclear deterrence, was indispensable for preventing a Soviet attack. German Bundeswehr generals largely concurred. NATO’s operational strategy in the mid-1950s contemplated a forward defence far to the west, at the Rhine, rather than a robust conventional defence in Central Europe. This meant that in the event of war, German territory would probably serve as the main battlefield and German troops as cannon fodder. Within this framework, the Bundeswehr argued that only access to nuclear weapons could balance Soviet superiority and spare Germany intolerable losses.

Adenauer’s preference rested in principle on access to the US nuclear arsenal. In 1957, he remarked: ‘Here in Germany we owe the peace we have only to the fact that the nuclear weapon of the United States is extraordinarily powerful.’ Yet this dependence also generated profound unease. For one, the Suez Crisis of 1956 demonstrated that American and European strategic priorities could diverge. For another, US strategic doctrine itself was unstable. Initiatives such as US Admiral Radford’s proposals to reduce conventional forces in Europe and rely more heavily on nuclear deterrence suggested that the United States might lower its threshold for nuclear use.

Such a posture threatened Germany directly, since any early nuclear exchange would almost certainly occur on German soil. Moreover, Adenauer was deeply troubled by the fact that the authority to employ nuclear weapons resided with one person alone: the US president. He described this as the ‘awful’ problem of Germany’s dependency on the judgment of a single foreign leader. Eisenhower himself reinforced German doubts, noting that, in the long run, America could not act as ‘a modern Rome guarding the far frontiers with [US] legions’. The implicit message was that Washington might ultimately refuse to risk American cities to save Bonn.

Beyond security, West German leaders also linked nuclear weapons to international standing. Adenauer feared that without nuclear arms, Germany would be relegated to the rank of a ‘discriminated third-rate power.’ Within NATO’s ‘nuclear hierarchy’, the United States occupied the apex, with Britain and later France as junior nuclear powers. Germany, by contrast, risked political marginalisation. Adenauer worried that exclusion from the ‘atomic club’ would limit Bonn’s influence within the alliance and erode its ability to shape détente negotiations with Moscow. His hypersensitivity to perceived slights was evident in his angry reaction to Washington’s decision in 1962 to provide Polaris submarine-launched missiles to Britain but not to West Germany. For Adenauer, this exclusion marked the destruction of NATO’s equality and reduced the country to third-class status.

Interestingly, despite elite concerns, German society offered little support for nuclearisation. Public opinion was ambivalent about rearmament in general, and strongly resistant to nuclear weapons in particular. The early ‘Ohne mich’ (‘Without me’) movement opposed conventional militarisation, and by the late 1950s broader anti-nuclear campaigns such as Kampf dem Atomtod mobilised mass protests. Likewise, the scientific community expressed vocal opposition. The Göttingen Manifesto of 1957, signed by 17 leading German nuclear physicists, publicly rejected nuclear weapons for Germany, reinforcing anti-nuclear sentiment and legitimising the broader peace movement.

For the Soviet Union, the possibility of a nuclear-armed West Germany was a nightmare scenario. Soviet leaders repeatedly warned that any West German nuclear ambitions would destabilise Europe. They used Adenauer’s rhetoric about nuclear weapons as justification for coercive diplomacy during the Berlin crisis of 1958-61. And they would find an ally in their quest to prevent the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from ever acquiring nuclear weapons in John F. Kennedy.

Indeed, Eisenhower had been relatively permissive, supporting European nuclear cooperation projects such as the FIG initiative linking France, Italy and Germany, and entertaining the idea of greater nuclear sharing within NATO. His vision of burden-sharing meant that the United States might tolerate Germany moving closer to nuclear control. Kennedy, by contrast, drew the opposite lesson from the Berlin Crisis. To manage East-West tensions, he sought détente with Moscow and ruled out West German nuclearisation. In his view, German access to nuclear weapons would make Europe more volatile, not less. By 1961, Kennedy was making clear to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that the United States opposed any West German nuclear buildup.

American opposition grew more determined with time. Washington coordinated with Britain and France to pressure Bonn into accepting a permanent non-nuclear role within NATO. The United States reinforced its stance by insisting on nuclear custody rules that guaranteed US control over any nuclear warheads deployed in Europe, even if they were stationed on German soil. In effect, Germany was denied access to operational control, locking it into a dependent position beneath the US nuclear umbrella.

The second Berlin Crisis and subsequent developments did not end the nuclear question in Bonn. Instead, German leaders discovered the strategic utility of ambiguity. By keeping alive the possibility that Germany might develop nuclear weapons on its own if its security needs were not met, the Federal Republic was able to use its nuclear latency as a bargaining tool. What did they do? German leaders strategically exploited the dual-use nature of civilian nuclear technology. They highlighted their advanced reactors and enrichment facilities as potential stepping-stones to nuclear weapons. Moreover, they pursued rhetorical ambiguity: Adenauer, in particular, insisted that the Paris Treaty of 1954, which required West Germany never to produce nuclear weapons, could be reinterpreted under the principle of ‘clausula rebus sic stantibus’ – that is, if circumstances changed.

The historical record depicts three key instances when German chancellors used nuclear latency as an instrument of German diplomacy. Adenauer was the first to employ it. From 1961 to 1963, he pursued the NATO Multilateral Force, which would have created a joint nuclear fleet manned by several allies, including Germany. For Adenauer, this was not simply about collective defence but also about enhancing Germany’s status and influence within NATO. He hoped that by introducing the possibility of an independent German nuclear programme, the United States would agree to establish the joint force. He also intended to extract concessions from the Soviet Union regarding recognition of East Germany and prospects for eventual reunification using German nuclear latency. In both respects, his efforts failed. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Bonn still lacked advanced fissile material production capabilities. For these reasons, Adenauer’s implicit threats were not fully credible.

The second episode came under German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard between 1963 and 1966. Erhard revived talk of the NATO Multilateral Force to gain western concessions as negotiations on a global non-proliferation treaty advanced. The Federal Republic did not like the idea of the NPT. West Germany thought it would restrict its sovereignty, threaten the NATO nuclear-sharing concept, and lock in German inferiority in both military and political terms, all while they still faced the unresolved issue of German division. By this point, West Germany’s civilian nuclear sector had grown rapidly, and German scientists had acquired considerable expertise in reactor technology and enrichment methods. Observers believed that Bonn could, if it chose to, now produce a nuclear weapon within a few years. This technical capability made Erhard’s hints about nuclear independence more credible, giving his threats more weight. Yet despite the credibility of its technological base, Erhard did not fully achieve his objectives. The Multilateral Force did not get revived, but Germany was allowed to join the NATO nuclear planning group (NPG), which gave it a say in allied nuclear discussions.

A third effort emerged during the grand coalition of German Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger and the Social Democrats between 1966 and 1969. As the Non-Proliferation Treaty took shape, the German government sought to dilute its restrictive provisions. Bonn worried that the treaty might limit its civilian nuclear industry, expose it to Soviet espionage through intrusive inspections, and preclude nuclear sharing within NATO. By signalling that Germany now possessed the capacity to move towards nuclear weapons, Kiesinger’s government aimed to force Washington to accept amendments safeguarding German prerogatives. The United States ultimately conceded on some issues of verification and consultation, but the core articles of the NPT remained intact, ensuring Germany’s permanent non-nuclear status. Latency had provided leverage, but not enough fundamentally to alter the bargain.

Interestingly, it was not only Germany that saw value in using German nuclear ambiguity as a bargaining tool. The United States itself sometimes invoked the possibility of German proliferation as a bargaining chip with the Soviet Union. During the Berlin Crisis, American officials suggested that if the USSR pressed too hard, Washington might have no choice but to permit Bonn greater control over nuclear weapons. Similarly, in the early 1990s, as negotiations over German reunification unfolded, US Secretary of State James Baker reassured Moscow that a unified Germany firmly embedded in NATO would not seek nuclear weapons, but he also hinted that a neutral Germany outside the alliance might do so.

Germany’s Cold War nuclear history continues to resonate in contemporary debates about nuclear security, deterrence, and Europe’s security order. The dilemmas of dependence, credibility, and restraint that Adenauer wrestled with in the 1950s and 1960s have not disappeared; they have simply re-emerged in new forms.

Indeed, now a united Germany feels once again threatened by Russia. A leaked strategy paper from the Bundeswehr described Russia as an ‘existential risk’ to Germany and Europe. Public opinion and official commentary also show sharply deteriorated trust in Russia: Germany is among the EU states with the highest levels of mistrust towards President Vladimir Putin’s regime.

The ‘awful problem’ – as Adenauer called it – of German dependency on the judgment of a single foreign leader, i.e. the US president, has also never sounded more relevant. Germany has thus engaged in a massive rearmament plan. Under German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s leadership, the goal is for the Bundeswehr to become ‘the strongest conventional army in Europe’. The plan emphasises not just more money, but modernisation: new equipment, improved readiness, stronger domestic arms production and reduced reliance on external suppliers. Germany plans to spend 3.5 per cent of its GDP (or approx. €158bn) annually on defence by 2029-30.

The nuclear dimension has been part of the Zeitenwende discussion, but developments are muted compared to the conventional field. Friedrich Merz explicitly stated that ‘Germany cannot and should not have its own nuclear weapons’ because of Germany’s treaty commitments and international law. Nevertheless, Merz has said Germany should open discussions with the two European nuclear powers – France and the United Kingdom – about shared or extended nuclear deterrence for Europe, beyond just the US umbrella. He emphasises that such arrangements would be supplementary to the US nuclear shield, not a replacement.

With regards to nuclear latency, Germany still has the technical capacity to develop a nuclear weapon if it wants to, but this window is getting increasingly smaller. Germany closed its last civilian nuclear power plants in 2023 thus drastically reducing the infrastructure that once gave credibility to latency threats. Nevertheless, for the time being, Germany could arguably still build a small nuclear arsenal – if it absolutely wanted to. Its industrial and technical base could be restarted. Regarding delivery vehicles, Germany co-developed the Eurofighter Typhoon and the Taurus air-launched cruise missile. Both platforms could be adapted to carry nuclear payloads. Of course, transforming weapons-grade fissile material into reliable and deliverable nuclear warheads constitutes a formidable challenge and Germany would need to rely on high-fidelity simulation and sub-critical experimentation to certify designs.

Still, a small arsenal based on modified existing delivery platforms and repurposed enrichment infrastructure could plausibly be fielded in three to five years, assuming full political commitment. Nevertheless, such commitment is currently nowhere to be seen – not even the willingness to use the still-existing nuclear latency as a bargaining tool – as Bonn did in the 1960s. One of the reasons might be strong public opposition. Some 64 per cent of Germans are against the construction of a German atomic bomb, while only 31 per cent are in favour and five per cent have no comment on the issue.

Indeed, discussions in Germany are evolving in a different direction. Germany is increasingly exploring conventional means of deterrence, such as deep-strike capabilities, cyber defence, and missile defence systems with the aim of reducing total dependency on allies. Especially deep-strike capabilities could be used for strategic missions. Very accurate, fast conventional long-range strikes, such as Germany’s Taurus missile system can — at least in theory — damage or degrade an adversary’s nuclear silos, C3, or launchers. That makes them strategically relevant and could fulfil a damage limitation function.

Germany is seeking once again a careful balance between demonstrating reliability as a NATO ally and developing the sovereign capacity to safeguard its own interests and security.