Why hasn't Germany got nukes?

Germany is more than capable of developing nuclear weapons so why havn't they got any yet? Even South Africa has developed them.

Well...post-WW2 they didn't have the money (or probably the will) to develop them.

Once there economy began to recover, they have taken the unilatteral decision to develop only Power requirements and have since signed the NPT.

Germany now is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Although it has an advanced science and technology infrastructure and would be capable of creating a nuclear weapons program (and could probably be considered a "nuclear capable" state), the government has decided to decrease even the civil use of nuclear energy.
Source

As you can see, they even disregard the use of nuclear power now, so it is something that they do not wish to waste billions on, especially now, when they have a sluggish economy and no real need.

EDIT: South Africa HAD a nuclear program, but gave it up.

Produced six nuclear weapons in the 1980s but disassembled them in the early 1990s, and is thus the only nation known to have willingly given up nuclear status after developing their own weapons. Possibly tested a low yield device in 1979, perhaps with Israel, over the southern oceans in the Vela Incident. Signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. [16]

EDIT 2: Adding link to possible SA nulcear test:

en.wikipedia.org...

[edit on 10/9/05 by stumason]

Well during the cold war, the Soviets would have never stood for a Germany with her own nuclear weapons. They were still fearful of a powerful Germany even after her defeat in WWII, and nuclear weapons would have been the straw that broke the camels back.
Also during the cold war Germnay was protected under the US nuclear umbrella, negating the need for her to spend the time and money necessary for a nuclear weapons program.

in addition to the previous replies you must consider the post war charter of the federal german armed forces , and post war consitutution of the government .


i would have to look it up to find a cite to confirm this - but i strongly suspect that the FDR had very finite limints on its military spending and research

YRS - APE

Originally posted by ignorant_ape
in addition to the previous replies you must consider the post war charter of the federal german armed forces , and post war consitutution of the government .


i would have to look it up to find a cite to confirm this - but i strongly suspect that the FDR had very finite limints on its military spending and research

YRS - APE

I see where your going with this one, but I don't think that the FDR had the same limitations imposed on it as Japan did with their Pacifist constitution, being unable to have an "Army", banning the Government owning Gold etc.

Although the Japs do have some ways of getting round this....for example, they have no Army/Navy/Airforce, but what they do have is a very well equipped "Defense Force" and they have the worlds largest stash of Platinum...same bollocks at the end of the day.

I think, as Germany was overun and occupied, that the FDR was setup with free reign on its defense policy, due to it being setup by the Allies and having to border the Warsaw Pact countries. Japan on the otherhand, surrendered without invasion and suffered a humiliating capitulation.



[edit on 10/9/05 by stumason]

It might be that they sometimes have a tendancy to embark on world-wide wars bent on global conquest....but that's probably a minor reason...

While it may seem like ancient history to us, to most of Europe, the idea of Germany with nukes is well...scary as hell.....

Why make Nukes? It only to show not to # with the country? Look it works
2 ways with nukes, If one country has them and threatens with it, the other
country will make one too to do the same back. Once one of those countries
confirmed they fired a nuke, the other will respond by doing the same....
Do you have any idea what nukes will do to the entire world? Nowadays we
(the entire world) have enough bombs and nukes to blow our planet up 10 times.
Conclusion: Having nukes is useless because no one even thinks about firing one.
They are just to be tough like the USA (US Government is cocky, they think
they are an example to every other country out there. As a 'foreign' people I can
tell you we all # on your US Stupidity and your will to conquer the world by showing
their most powerfull forces and bombs, USA is such a superficial country with
their superficial thoughts, and I hope more of you USA people have common
sense and disgusses it's country

Besides, The Netherlands can also make nukes but we don't see a reason to do so....
And we already have a few US Nukes here.

Originally posted by Gazrok
It might be that they sometimes have a tendancy to embark on world-wide wars bent on global conquest....but that's probably a minor reason...

Right. That would be as scary as letting Japan keep aircraft carriers full of torpedo bombers anchored near Hawaii. We forgive and forget, but the forgetting part just takes a bit longer than the forgive part. Well actually we Nuke'em, fogive, and then forget. (Almost forgot the important first step)

Well, many countries supposedly have the capability to develop nukes, but making one is alltogether different..
Case in point:

Many countries have the capability to develop ICBMs..
Take Japan, Israel and India for example.. With Geosynch launch capability, you'd think building an ICBM would be a piece of cake..
But actually going ahead and allocating sums of money to do just that is much more tedious..
Infrastructure-wise and politically also of course..

Simple (real) answer they tried to take over the world twice already. Nobody is going to let them develop nuclear weapons.

Long answer They signed the N.P.T UN treaty. Stating they would not try to develop or try to purchase any type of nuclear weapon.

[edit on 10-9-2005 by ShadowXIX]

Well I for one don't know that Gemany doesn't have nuclear weapons. But their neighbors do. Seems to me neighbors who for now have no ambition to control the world. Neighbors who could check-mate any German nuclear future ambitions..

Dallas

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
Simple (real) answer they tried to take over the world twice already. Nobody is going to let them develop nuclear weapons.

Long answer They signed the N.P.T UN treaty. Stating they would not try to develop or try to purchase any type of nuclear weapon.

[edit on 10-9-2005 by ShadowXIX]

I'm sorry, but I'm far more concerned about the US having Nuclear Weapons...
Fact is that Germany attempted twice to conquer the world, Thats true!
On the other side, USA nuked hiroshima and that other place next to it.
And they tested Nukes on islands were people lived. Just to see what effect it
had on both people and the land were it was dropped. Can you see my concern
about USA and having Nuclear Weapons? Every country can develop nuclear
weapons but since noone will really use them due to counterattacks its useless
to make them just to have them....

Would we mind staying on topic, please?

No nuclear weapons due to the following reasons:

An important footnote to the German nuclear effort is that as part of the the Paris Treaties of 1955 and Adenauer's "non-nuclear pledge", Germany has perpetually forsworn nuclear (as well as chemical and biological) weapons. It was this pledge that ultimately cleared the way for West Germany's entry into NATO.

www.answers.com...

Ok good thing we cleared that thing up. Topic finished I guess?

Originally posted by UK_05_XM29
Germany is more than capable of developing nuclear weapons so why havn't they got any yet? Even South Africa has developed them.

What happens when the North German Plain is overrun within the span of a day by some 30-45,000 WARPAC tanks (out of 70,000 total AFV) and the FRG decides it's time to turn up the thermostat on Central Heating as an alternative to having half their most populated cities behind enemy lines when the ceasefire is declared?

You see, as long as the U.S maintains key on these things, WE decide whether we want to roast Europe, selectively. Roast /for/ Europe in a full up SIOP response. Or plan for a second coming ala MacArthur out of France or Spain.

As alternatives to wimping out completely.

The reality being that the combination of overwhelming numbers (five times what we spent 6 months amassing in Saudi during Desert Shield), inter-theater rail vs. external REFORGER (the 60mph vs. 20 knot math problem on reinforcement by SLOC) and Hitler's Highway network, along with FORTY YEARS to plan for 'every contingency; the Russian Bear would have rolled NATO Europe like a hooker doing a gutter drunk.

Probably within 18hrs.

Since the POTUS is empowered to protect the U.S. Constitution, civillian population (though Katrina, atop 9/11, makes that something of a joke) and only /then/ forces in the field (ours, allied or neutral/civillian); it makes no sense to 'allow' the FRG an independent nuclear option which puts THEIR people ahead of his voters (though again, under our key, I believe they did have some Lance and I believe B43 or B61 for awhile).

Any of which 'Germans out of control again' the Russians could use as an excuse to expand a nuclear threshold excession to the inter-Continental level.

That being the ultimate deterrent to both sides in the sillyness of CentFront planning to lose:

1. You pop sunshine over our armored spearheads and we WILL instantly take the war over the Pole.

2. You put us in a situation where we /think/ we are going to lose Europe and we will razed-earth destroy it just so you can't have it and, if need be, YOU (Moscow is within P2 and probably Gryphon range) will die, 20 minutes sooner that we do (SS-20 was a stupid mistake on their part because we we largely Victor Alert restricted to long, slow, vulnerable deliveries before 1979).

All as a function of taped-sword self inhibiting brinksmanship.

ARGUMENT:
The REAL question of course is whether the Cold War was intended to have real meaning while the two competing economic systems played out their hands (properly run, Russia was miles and yards beyond our strategic resource capability to maintain a direct commercial competition, especially after the waste that was WWII).

Or if this was simply the way in which _Europe_ was 'contained' so that there was no three-way struggle for trade and oil and navigation rights dominance through a reinvigorated colonial vice client state system.

Some of you may have done the 'lets play England and the Colonies' social sciences game back in junior high school and if you did, you will have noted how the weakest, most trade driven, intra-theater proto States always end up in a position of market control, simply because they operate on a shorter decision cycle at close range than the massive 'Sun Never Sets' Empire to the east. Even as they are driven to succeed by having little to offer from their own local landed resources (think New England) in comparison with the greater Southern States.

This is in fact typical of trade based economic structures /everywhere/ in that, if you don't boot-on-necks overrun occasionally with military force and/or deny the influx of modern production methods (steel tooling etc.) to spoil their infrastructure and industrial base; they inevitably do better with cheaper agro labor if not more area under the plow for subsistance crops while shifting towards mechanized, industrialized, trade frees up said populace for purely 'growth' driven economic system changes.

OTOH, if you are trading as an 'equal partner' with a similarly advanced society, you tend to stagnate in litigated technology release and export trade ratio conflicts of interest.

From this triple-threat standpoint, in 1939; industrialized, trade-savvy, resource depleted, **Europe**, not Russia, was the principle danger to U.S. world dominance and always would be. Just as she was to the USSR (though more for strategic blue water access to markets than anything).

As such, the entire Cold War could be seen as an exercise in 'Romanizing' a powerblock system which denied our reverse-Colonial dependents in NATO as much as any vague 'Carthaginian' threat a chance to advance up the ladder.

In some ways, it's a shame really. For if the U.S. hadn't interfered in WWI, it is almost certain that both sides would have stalemated out to a point where a semi-feudalist view of 'states rights' driven micronationalist politics would have been rejected by a socialist populace driven to the brink of economic dead-short.

While the argument that butchering 10-12 million Jews, Slavs and Assorted Cosmopolitans is a 'new low' in human behavioral justification for WWII's 'total surrender' doctrine compared to the 60-70 million Native Americans we put to the sword or 'relocated' in amalgamating CONUS under one flag.

Yet, the fact remains that the latter is a fact buried in one liner references at best in most history books. While the former was a condition of admitted demerit by which a madman (as all great conquerors are) demonized one segment of populace to MOTIVATE THE REMAINDER into the very same kind of Manifest Destiny quest for a Western Sea that drove our own Go West Young Man dreams.

At which point, one has to ask:

CONCLUSION:
If the 19th century was OUR time to grow to a federalized nation, forged and tempered by the preeminent question of Union vs. Partisan factionalism that was the Civil War. Was the 20th supposed to be Europe's? And if so, would we have trusted a /Kaiser or a Hitler/ followon (cult of personality or no, it would have happened, by 1950 with the latter's syphilis and the former's history of mental illness in the family) with nukes?

Certainly from the moment our blatant exploitation of the Vae Victis Vickers arms market requirement influenced without moral need the outcome of the Great War; it can be said that we as much retarded as assisted with the development of Europe's unification by social Darwinism. Even as we utterly obliterated all the elegance of what came before AND made them vulnerable to the greater danger of Leninist Communism out of the East.

How convenient. And of course how /interesting/ now that Force de Frappe (sp.) is now basically representative of EU power while Brit SSBN's sit 'neutral' so long as Blightey is in bed with the Uncle Sugar.


KPl.

I know the germans was storing nuclear weapons in different bunkers around the country for the states and none nuclear neightbor countries was training with weapons who could be fitted with nuclear warheads with in a few hours and also was training to fit and to transport the nuclear warheads from germany to them selfs.

Germany had no need for a nuclear arsenal, as the Americans had enough there for a deterrent against Soviet aggression.

But, they were not only in Germany, but also in Italy, Greece, Turkey, the Netherlands, England and Belgium.

But they still had them