A key part of the job of the politician in charge of defense in any country must surely be to ensure its army has enough ammunition.

Apparently German defense minister Christine Lambrecht failed to do that.

What happened (or didn't)

Lambrecht, a member of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's governing coalition in Berlin, is minister in charge of procuring equipment for the Bundeswehr, but she's now under fire for failing to secure enough ammunition for the German armed forces.

Lambrecht, who comes from Scholz's Social Democrats, was already facing criticism after what has been derided as a glacially slow rollout of defense spending following the Chancellor announcing around $105 Billion in new funds for the German military in March. This was part of the "Zeitenwende", or turning point in German military approach following the start of the conflict in Ukraine.

Disgruntled murmurings about Lambrecht boiled over into open condemnation this week after it started being widely reported in the German press that if a war broke out, the German military might only have enough ammunition for a few hours.

Big questions have been raised about why action wasn't taken earlier: When Lambrecht took office in December 2021 the situation was already apparent. Since then, Germany has donated weapons and munitions to Ukraine, depleting already precarious supplies.

A meeting about the ammunition situation has been set at the Chancellory in Berlin next Monday.

On Thursday, Chancellor Scholz was backing his defense minister. "I can assure you: She is doing everything she can to ensure that this succeeds, and it will succeed," he told reporters.

The politics

Embarrassingly for the defense minister, the kerfuffle has highlighted splits in the ruling coalition. 

The current scandal about ammunition came to light after correspondence between herself and German Finance Minster Christian Lindner was published in the press: Lambrecht of the Social Democrats (SPD) asks Lindner of the Free Democrats (FDP) to "immediately provide significant amounts of budget funds" for the purchase of new ammunition.

The reply from the finance ministry, part of which has been published in various media outlets, takes a quite cutting tone as it points out that the defense minister never raised this issue during budget talks last month and suggests that this was down to Lambrecht not being across her brief, adding, "the sluggish availability of ammunition and equipment … is not caused by a lack of budgetary funds, but by complicated, partly non-transparent and inconsistent planning and bureaucratic ordering processes."
 

FDP Leader Lindner isn't the only one looking to stick the knife into his SPD partner. The Green Party defense and budgetary spokespeople issued a joint press release slamming Lambrecht. "It is unclear why ammunition was not at the top of the Defense Ministry's to-do list after [Russia's invasion on] February 24 at the latest."

While the Social Democrats, Greens and Free Democrats continue to govern with Olaf Scholz at the helm, every week there seems to be another issue that the three quite ideologically different parties don't agree upon.

The defense ministry curse

This episode again poses the question: Who would be German defense minister? It does seem to be the most poisoned of chalices in the German cabinet. Over the last few years, the role has been beset by scandal and intrigue.

Annegret Kramp Karrenbauer went from "the new Merkel" and the heir apparent to replace the former chancellor when she stepped down, to now being retired from politics altogether after being defense minister between 2019 and 2021. 

It was during her time in the post that it emerged that most of the German military hardware was out of order.

Her predecessor as Commander In Chief of the Bundeswehr, which under the German constitution falls to the defense minister, was Ursula Von Der Leyen.

She left office embroiled in what became known as the "Berateraffäre", or Consultancy Scandal. 

It emerged that under her watch, from 2013-2019, the defense ministry had paid out tens of millions of dollars a year to outside consultancies, while publicly declaring far lower numbers.

In early 2020, in her new role as European Commission President, Von Der Leyen admitted that "mistakes have been made."

Two mobile telephones belonging to Von der Leyen and requested by the Bundestag committee investigating the consultancy scandal were wiped clean of all data when submitted to evidence. 

Green Party MP Tobias Lindner filed a criminal complaint over the deleted data that was ultimately dismissed by a Berlin court.

In June 2020, the German government issued findings that cleared Ms Von Der Leyen of any wrongdoing, saying the former defense minister "hardly ever signed a decision paper on the investigated cases herself."

It said that the mistakes had been made well below the ministerial level.