Germany and weapons of mass destruction

As of 2025, the United States Air Force has custody of 10 to 15 B61 nuclear bombs, stored at Büchel Air Base, intended for delivery by German Air Force Panavia Tornado IDS fighter-bombers. The weapons are under NATO's nuclear sharing operations. The aircraft will be replaced by German F-35A Lightning II aircraft and the bombs are being upgraded to the B61 Mod 12.

During the Cold War, West Germany hosted a wider range of US nuclear weapons, peaking at around 3,500, including the Pershing ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, nuclear artillery, and the Nike Hercules surface-to-air missile. It also hosted US chemical weapons in the form of approximately 100,000 sarin and VX nerve agent munitions, until their 1990 removal. East Germany hosted Soviet nuclear weapons from 1969 to 1991, including the RSD-10 Pioneer for a period, as well as briefly in 1959 during the Second Berlin Crisis.

During World War II, Nazi Germany used toxic gases to kill millions of Jewish people and other victims, as part of the Holocaust. Germany stockpiled battlefield chemical weapons and investigated nuclear and biological weapons. During its rearmament in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany discovered the first nerve agents, stockpiling tabun, sarin, and soman, but did not use them for fear of Allied retaliation. Kurt Blome was a leader of biological agent experiments on prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. German nuclear research was limited to laboratories and industrial production of heavy water; physicists carried out 19 major nuclear experiments but did not achieve a critical nuclear reactor.

During World War I, the German Empire was the first country to use lethal chemical weapons, with chlorine at the 1915 Second Battle of Ypres. Germany also made first use of mustard gas in 1917 and used phosgene.

Germany is considered a nuclear latent state. Under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and Two Plus Four Treaty, Germany is forbidden from developing nuclear weapons. US nuclear weapons in Germany were a contentious political issue prior to the Russia-Ukraine war. The Social Democratic Party and Greens had called for their removal and accession to the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, but the 2021 Scholz cabinet including both parties rejected this.

Alongside other countries, German companies sold chemical precursors to Ba'athist Iraq utilized by the Iraqi chemical weapons program, including chemical attacks against Iran during the Iran–Iraq War. German companies were also accused of assisting Iraqi ballistic missile development. Due to 1991 Iraqi missile attacks against Israel, Germany agreed to construct for Israel and partly subsidize its six Dolphin-class submarines, widely believed to carry Israeli nuclear cruise missiles.

Nuclear weapons

World War II

Nazi Germany undertook several research programs relating to nuclear technology, including nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors, before and during World War II. These were variously called Uranverein (Uranium Society) or Uranprojekt (Uranium Project). The first effort started in April 1939, just months after the discovery of nuclear fission in Berlin in December 1938, but ended shortly ahead of the September 1939 German invasion of Poland, for which many German physicists were drafted into the Wehrmacht. A second effort under the administrative purview of the Wehrmacht's Heereswaffenamt began on September 1, 1939, the day of the invasion of Poland. The program eventually expanded into three main efforts: Uranmaschine (nuclear reactor) development, uranium and heavy water production, and uranium isotope separation. Eventually, the German military determined that nuclear fission would not contribute significantly to the war, and in January 1942 the Heereswaffenamt turned the program over to the Reich Research Council (Reichsforschungsrat) while continuing to fund the activity.

The program was split up among nine major institutes where the directors dominated research and set their own objectives. Subsequently, the number of scientists working on applied nuclear fission began to diminish as many researchers applied their talents to more pressing wartime demands. The most influential people in the Uranverein included Kurt Diebner, Abraham Esau, Walther Gerlach, and Erich Schumann. Schumann was one of the most powerful and influential physicists in Germany. Diebner, throughout the life of the nuclear weapon project, had more control over nuclear fission research than did Walther Bothe, Klaus Clusius, Otto Hahn, Paul Harteck, or Werner Heisenberg. Esau was appointed as Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring's plenipotentiary for nuclear physics research in December 1942, and was succeeded by Walther Gerlach after he resigned in December 1943.

Politicization of German academia under the Nazi regime of 1933–1945 had driven many physicists, engineers, and mathematicians out of Germany as early as 1933. Those of Jewish heritage who did not leave were quickly purged, further thinning the ranks of researchers. The politicization of the universities, along with Wehrmacht demands for more manpower (many scientists and technical personnel were conscripted, despite possessing technical and engineering skills), substantially reduced the number of able German physicists.

Developments took place in several phases, but in the words of historian Mark Walker, it ultimately became "frozen at the laboratory level" with the "modest goal" to "build a nuclear reactor which could sustain a nuclear fission chain reaction for a significant amount of time and to achieve the complete separation of at least tiny amounts of the uranium isotopes". The scholarly consensus is that it failed to achieve these goals, and that despite fears at the time, the Germans had never been close to producing nuclear weapons. The final attempt at constructing a reactor, the 1945 Haigerloch research reactor, did not achieve criticality. With the war in Europe ending in early 1945, various Allied powers competed with each other to obtain surviving components of the German nuclear industry (personnel, facilities, and materiel), as they did with the pioneering V-2 short-range ballistic missile program. The Western Allied effort was the Alsos Mission and the Soviet effort was Russian Alsos. Due to the success of the Manhattan Project, the Western Allies prioritized denying German nuclear scientists and resources to the nascent Soviet atomic bomb project.

Cold War

As part of the accession negotiations of West Germany to the Western European Union at the London and Paris Conferences, the country was forbidden (by Protocol No III to the revised Treaty of Brussels of 23 October 1954) to possess nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. This was reiterated in domestic law by the Kriegswaffenkontrollgesetz (War Weapons Control Act). During the Cold War, nuclear weapons were deployed in Germany by both the United States (in West Germany) and the Soviet Union (in East Germany). Despite not being among the nuclear powers during the Cold War, Germany had a political and military interest in the balance of nuclear capability. In 1977, after the Soviet deployment of the new SS-20 IRBM, West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt expressed concern over the capability of NATO's nuclear forces compared to those of the Soviets. Later in the Cold War under the chancellorship of Helmut Kohl, the West German government expressed concern about the progress of the nuclear arms race. Particularly, they addressed the eagerness of Germany's NATO allies, the United States and United Kingdom, to seek restrictions on long-range strategic weapons while modernizing their short-range and tactical nuclear systems. Germany wanted to see such short range systems eliminated, because their major use was not deterrence but battlefield employment. Germany itself, straddling the division of the Eastern and Western blocs in Europe, was a likely battlefield in any escalation of the Cold War and battlefield use of nuclear weapons would be devastating to German territory.

In 1957, the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) was created to promote the use of nuclear energy in Europe. Under cover of the peaceful use of nuclear power, West Germany hoped to develop the basis of a nuclear weapons programme with France and Italy. The West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer told his cabinet that he "wanted to achieve, through EURATOM, as quickly as possible, the chance of producing our own nuclear weapons". The idea was short-lived. In 1958 Charles De Gaulle became President of France, and Germany and Italy were excluded from the weapons project. Euratom continued as the European agency for the peaceful use of nuclear technology, falling under the institutions of the European Economic Community in 1967.

Germany ratified the Geneva Protocol on 25 April 1929, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty on 2 May 1975, the Biological Weapons Convention on 7 April 1983 and the Chemical Weapons Convention on 12 August 1994. These dates signify ratification by the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), during the division of Germany the NPT and the BWC were ratified separately by the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) (on 31 October 1969 and 28 November 1972, respectively).

Before German reunification in 1990, both West and East Germany ratified the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany. Germany reaffirmed its renunciation of the manufacture, possession, and control of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. In addition to banning a foreign military presence in the former East Germany, the treaty also banned nuclear weapons or nuclear weapon carriers to be stationed in the area, making it a permanent Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone. The German military was allowed to possess conventional weapons systems with nonconventional capabilities, provided that they were outfitted for a purely conventional role.

Construction of Israeli submarines

Germany constructed the Dolphin-class submarine for Israel, widely believed to carry the nuclear-armed long-range Popeye Turbo cruise missile of the Israeli nuclear weapons program.

First budgeted in July 1989 and ordered in January 1990, by November the order for the submarines was cancelled. This was due to budget reallocation aimed at countering Iraqi threats made against Israel following the Iraqi invasion and annexation of neighboring Kuwait during the leadup to the 1991 Gulf War. Funding for the first two boats (Dolphin and Leviathan) was fully subsidized by the German government to restart the construction program and the third (Tekumah) received a 50% subsidy. During the First Gulf War, it was revealed that German firms had assisted Iraq with modernizing its ballistic missile and chemical weapon programs, thanks in part to lax enforcement by German customs, in violation of the Missile Technology Control Regime protocols which West Germany had acceded to in 1987. These enhanced missiles brought Israeli cities into Iraqi targeting range for the first time, and the Iraqi weapons research program included factories and necessary supplies for the creation of weaponized mustard and nerve gas. Though not a belligerent in the Gulf War, Israeli cities were nevertheless bombarded by these upgraded Iraqi missiles. To compensate Israel for war-related damage and economic losses and keep German shipyards occupied with a high profile project in the post Cold War defense spending downturn, then Chancellor of Germany Helmut Kohl approved an assistance package to German industry including the construction of two Dolphin-class submarines.

Post-Cold War

As of 2025, the United States Air Force has custody of 10 to 15 B61 nuclear bombs, stored at Büchel Air Base, intended for delivery by German Air Force Panavia Tornado IDS fighter-bombers. The aircraft will be replaced by German F-35A Lightning II aircraft and the bombs are being upgraded to the B61 Mod 12.

As well as being a breach of the Protocols to the (revised) Treaty of Brussels (terminated in 2010), many countries believe this violates Articles I and II of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), where Germany has committed:

"... not to receive the transfer from any transferor whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly ... or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices ...".

The U.S. insists its forces control the weapons and that no transfer of the nuclear bombs or control over them is intended "unless and until a decision were made to go to war, at which the [NPT] treaty would no longer be controlling", so there is no breach of the NPT. However German pilots and other staff practise handling and delivering the U.S. nuclear bombs. Even if the NATO argument is considered legally correct, such peacetime operations could arguably contravene both the objective and the spirit of the NPT.

In 2007, former German defence secretary Rupert Scholz stated that Germany should strive to become a nuclear power. In September 2007 the French president Nicolas Sarkozy offered Germany the opportunity to participate in control over the French nuclear arsenal. Chancellor Merkel and foreign minister Steinmeier declined the offer however, stating that Germany "had no interest in possessing nuclear weapons". Due to concerns over Vladimir Putin's actions, Merkel reversed her position, stating to the German press, "As long as there are nuclear weapons in the world, we need to have these capabilities, as NATO says."

NATO member states, including Germany, decided not to sign the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, a binding agreement for negotiations for the total elimination of nuclear weapons, supported by more than 120 nations.

German economist and politician Tobias Lindner called Germany's nuclear sharing agreement "an expensive, dangerous and antiquated symbolic contribution to have a say within NATO."

In October 2021, German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer had talked about the possibility of deploying nuclear weapons against Russia. She noted that nuclear weapons are a "means of deterrence."

In regards to the relationship with the United States, the 2021 government under then-chancellor Olaf Scholz agreed with a longstanding agreement that allows American tactical nuclear weapons to be stored on American bases in Germany. This came after claims made by Rolf Mützenich in November 2021 that he wants to move NATO B61 nuclear bombs out of Germany.

In 2022, some factions in Alternative for Germany (AfD) supported calls for Germany to acquire nuclear weapons.

In 2024, German chancellor Friedrich Merz stated his intention to begin talks with France and the UK to supplement the US-owned nuclear weapons with French and British ones.