It was a chance, they thought, to capitalise on the city\u2019s storied airfield \u2013 home to the Red Baron in World War I, the Nazis in World War II and the Soviets in the decades that followed \u2013 to bring in hundreds of jobs and a slice of a huge infusion of federal funds to rebuild Germany\u2019s depleted armed forces.<\/p>\n
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A fighter jet and a missile on display at the airfield in Grossenhain, Germany.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Ingmar Nolting\/The New York Times<\/cite><\/p>\n Some in the chosen city of Grossenhain, with a population approaching 20,000, saw it differently.<\/p>\n Sixteen of 22 members of the City Council signed a letter to Chancellor Olaf Scholz urging him to block the project. The local wing of Alternative for Germany, or AfD, the resurgent far-right political party, held a rally in June where speakers railed against arms sales to Ukraine. Residents lined up to sign a petition circulated by the city\u2019s Left Party.<\/p>\n \u201cWe reject a further economic-military use after years of military use,\u201d the petition read. \u201cWe do not want to be involved in wars all over the world in a roundabout way.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps easily dismissed as small-town politics, the revolt in tiny Grossenhain in fact reveals far larger unease among some Germans, particularly in the former communist East, about their country\u2019s commitment to arming Ukraine, despite the chancellor\u2019s professed Zeitenwende<\/em>, or turning point, toward a more assertive foreign policy.<\/p>\n A street in Grossenhain, Germany, where 16 of the 22 City Council members signed a letter to Chancellor Olaf Scholz urging him to block a munitions factory.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Ingmar Nolting\/The New York Times<\/cite><\/p>\n Support for that pivot has been muted by the decades East Germany spent as a Soviet satellite during the Cold War, which left the region with both a lingering fear of Russia and an affinity for it.<\/p>\n More broadly, many Germans still hold a deep aversion to war and to defence spending in a country whose Nazi past has made it reluctant to invest in military power. The view from Berlin is one thing; the political realities on the ground are another.<\/p>\n \u201cLots of people are coming from the \u201980s, or the \u201970s, or the \u201960s \u2013 that, \u2018We don\u2019t want weapons any more. We don\u2019t want an army any more. This is not needed any more. We want to live in peace with Russia\u2019,\u201d said Sebastian Fischer, a member of Saxony\u2019s state Legislature who held listening sessions with voters about their concerns regarding the factory. \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to explain to people why we should defend Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n An old helicopter at the airfield in Grossenhain, Germany.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Ingmar Nolting\/The New York Times<\/cite><\/p>\n The opposition to a proposed factory in Grossenhain began almost immediately after Rheinmetall\u2019s CEO, Armin Papperger, said in an interview in January that he was in discussions with the federal government about building a powder munitions plant in Saxony to meet a surge in demand caused by the efforts of Kyiv and its Western allies to resist the Russian invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n Some in Grossenhain feared that the factory would anger Russian President Vladimir Putin, who spent nearly five years as a KGB agent in nearby Dresden, and make their city a military target.<\/p>\n \u201cHe knows exactly where the airfield is,\u201d Kerstin Lauterbach, the city councillor from the Left Party who led efforts to protest the factory, said of Putin. \u201cThe population is very, very sensitive to such arguments. The history and the powder factory \u2013 it\u2019s inseparable.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, the 360-hectare airfield, the largest tract of industrial-use land in eastern Germany, is home to warehouses and a small flight club, but old Soviet helicopters and jets still rest at the edges of the runways.<\/p>\n Kerstin Lauterbach, a city councilor for the Left Party, displays signed petitions and leaflets opposing a munitions factory in Grossenhain, Germany.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Ingmar Nolting\/The New York Times<\/cite><\/p>\n Grossenhainers remember the Soviet presence as sometimes menacing, recounting stories of the base siphoning residents\u2019 electricity and generating a persistent din of jets roaring overhead. But the base\u2019s very existence also instilled fear.<\/p>\n Caught between two nuclear powers, the Soviets to the east and the Americans to the west, Grossenhainers fretted that the air base would put them on the front lines if nuclear war broke out. Records later released by the CIA show that Americans did, in fact, scrutinise the city and base in the early 1950s, with officials filing reports on the activity there.<\/p>\n Lauterbach was horrified by the idea that the airfield would return to military use. When the Soviets left, residents \u201cwere relieved that there was no longer a military there,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n As a leftist, Lauterbach said that she was opposed to all arms sales \u2013 not just ones to Ukraine \u2013 and that she condemned \u201cthe war of aggression\u201d by Russia.<\/p>\n Yet Lauterbach said she placed some blame with European and US leaders for failing to resolve the conflict \u201cpeacefully\u201d before it turned into a hot war. \u201cI can imagine that Putin is feeling squeezed,\u201d she said, \u201cbecause NATO is slipping closer and closer\u201d.<\/p>\n Armin Benicke, a former pilot, became a prominent voice opposing the factory, arguing that it was unsafe to build a plant producing chemicals so close to the city. He said he supported efforts to rearm Germany but was unhappy to see Berlin send so much aid to Ukraine when Germany\u2019s own economy was struggling.<\/p>\n \u201cThis special fund for the Bundeswehr \u2013 100 billion so that you can now buy a decent amount of weapons,\u201d Benicke said, using the name for the German armed forces and referring to euros. \u201cI say that\u2019s a mistake, because the weapons you buy go to Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n Jens Lehmann, who represents Saxony in the German parliament, said in an interview that decades of trade and \u201csocialisation\u201d with the Soviets during the Cold War had left many East Germans with a \u201cpragmatic\u201d view of Russia.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople have been trading with Russia since the end of\u201d World War II, Lehmann said. \u201cEven after German reunification, we always got cheap and reliable Russian gas. That\u2019s why people say about the war, \u2018We have to negotiate, we have to find a diplomatic way\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Little information was made available to the public about what a factory in Grossenhain would look like, allowing rumours to run rampant. Dirk Diedrich, Saxony\u2019s commissioner for strategic investment projects, said that he and other state leaders were shut out of discussions with Rheinmetall.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat made it very difficult for us is that we could not put facts into the discussions,\u201d Diedrich said. \u201cNo one could say what exactly are the plans of the company.\u201d<\/p>\n If those discussions had taken place, he said, \u201cWe could have convinced the majority that this is a good investment.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, the AfD party, classified in Saxony as a suspected right-wing extremist organisation, seized on the debate. Nearly 200 people attended its rally, carrying cardboard hearts in the party\u2019s signature blue that read \u201cPEACE!\u201d<\/p>\n Andr\u00e9 Wendt, an AfD member of Saxony\u2019s state parliament, accused Western governments of \u201cputting us all at risk\u201d and \u201cmobilising for war\u201d by sending arms to Ukraine.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is scandalous and ahistoric when the media celebrates the move of German Leopard tanks against Russia in newsreel fashion and critics of these arms deliveries and this war are portrayed as extremist,\u201d Wendt said in a speech at the rally.<\/p>\n The scene prompted fuming from politicians who saw the prospect of a multimillion-euro factory as an opportunity to attract Western companies that are increasingly building in eastern Germany. Early estimates suggested that Rheinmetall\u2019s factory would have brought an investment of about $US840 million ($1.3 billion) and as many as 600 jobs to the region.<\/p>\n In the end, Rheinmetall decided against building a factory \u2013 at least for now \u2013 in favour of expanding its existing plant on Germany\u2019s southern border. It was an economic decision, Papperger said, concluding that a new plant would be commercially viable only with a huge new contract or a major infusion of state aid.<\/p>\n Lehmann said that was a shame. \u201cThe big companies are in Munich, in North Rhine-Westphalia, in Berlin, in northern Germany, somewhere on the coast. But in the east, there are relatively few defence and security companies.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWith the Zeitenwende, there is a political will to develop the security and defence industry,\u201d he added. \u201cIt would be a pity if this did not happen somewhere in eastern Germany.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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