Speaking at the Welt Security Summit on July 2, Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperge recounted that Merkel had told the arms sector: “We don’t really need you, if there is a problem we call the Americans.” The dependence on Washington, he suggested, had been a deliberate choice.
He added that prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, there was “no great need for weapons systems in Germany itself” and that companies like Rheinmetall had been pushed into a “dirty corner” because they exported arms.
“They actually didn’t want us here in Germany,” he remarked.
