report
Gone are the days when opponents of armaments demonstrated in front of the factory halls: With the war in Ukraine, Rheinmetall’s image has also changed completely. Insights into a company at the turn of the times.
At first glance the sight looks like an olive green fair stall. A tank top with a head sticking out of it rotates like a carousel, complete with a cannon barrel, sometimes to the left and sometimes to the right, as if the aim was to test the stamina of the occupant.
In reality, the man checks repaired weapon turrets from “Leopard” battle tanks before they make their way from the Rheinmetall plant in Unterlüß, Lower Saxony, to final assembly and finally to Ukraine.
At the Rheinmetall plant in Unterlüß: “Leopard” tanks for Ukraine are repaired here.
Does he follow the news of the war? “People are thinking more about it than before,” he confirms, “when it was still said: ‘You’re just doing your thing for the Bundeswehr’ and so on. Now what we do here has perhaps become a little more important. “
At the “heart” of the company
His superior Marius Meyering, responsible for “tactical vehicles,” calls the “Leopard” hall the “heart” of the company. Even if the news shows shot-up “Leos” at some point, that won’t worry him.
“The question then is whether the tank shot down five Russian T72s before the sixth one got it,” he says clearly. “And my belief is that the crew’s probability of survival in Western tanks is much higher.”
Never before has a television team received such a close insight into Germany’s most important weapons factory, from the Unterlüß site, including the tank firing range, to the boardroom in Düsseldorf, from where CEO Armin Papperger most recently led the company all the way up to the German DAX elite. “The employees were always convinced that they were doing the right thing,” says Papperger as he made his way to the Frankfurt Stock Exchange at the beginning of March this year, on the morning of his greatest success. “It’s nice to be seen like that sometimes.”
Group wants to “serve Germany now”
In fact, the workforce still remembers well all the years when anti-armament protesters demonstrated at the factory gates and activists stormed the stage at the annual shareholders meeting. “German weapons, German money are murdering all over the world,” they then chanted until the police dragged them out.
The first person to audibly bring Berlin’s turning point to Unterlüß was Defense Minister Boris Pistorius when he said to the cameras last February alongside Papperger at the factory entrance: “I have no fear of contact with the arms industry, we are partners.” He said this without anyone asking him, so he himself thought it was remarkable. Papperger then added more pathos. Rheinmetall, he also promised, “must now serve Germany.”
Has the changing times now reached the workforce? “From the outside, something happened,” confirms foreman Marco Cordes. “You no longer feel left out, like someone who works in the armaments sector. Now people in your circle of friends ask you with interest: Well, what’s new at Rheinmetall?”
New production line for “Cheetah” ammunition
New ammunition for the “Gepard” tank has recently been manufactured in one of the local factories, which Rheinmetall had to develop specifically because the “Cheetah” seemed to have long been written off as an old tank.
Today he provides Ukraine with valuable air defense services. The company built the new production line within a few months. At the large shooting range, shooters test the cartridges even in extreme cold. For this purpose, a sample is specially frozen to minus 46 degrees and then shot. Meanwhile, in the control room, computers record data, from the exit speed of the bullets to the length of the tracer trail.
Rheinmetall boss Armin Papperger (center) with Hungary’s Defense Minister Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky
Papperger sometimes appears at the same shooting range with his so-called “A-customers”. These are the ones that are particularly important to him. In April he received Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky, the defense minister of Hungary, which is expected to be the first country to purchase Rheinmetall’s new “Panther” main battle tank.
Projectiles with particular force
Here the customer gets into vehicles themselves and fires shots and has drones and high-tech equipment for soldiers demonstrated. Papperger also explains to those customers the new “ammunition family” that Rheinmetall has developed. Their projectiles contain an arrow made of heavy metal, surrounded by a solid fuel drive, which ultimately hits its target as a purely kinetic weapon.
“If you shoot it at a house, not much happens,” explains plant manager Harald Weismüller. “That creates a hole and then another hole on the other side.” However, if the arrow hits a tank, things are different. “Ultimately, immense energy is released upon impact. The arrow then eats through the material and we have splintering effects, heat effects in the vehicle, in short everything you can imagine.”
“You feel more valued”
Weismüller explains this in the same friendly matter-of-fact way that he would probably explain how special dowels work in a hardware store. Completely different from his colleague Meyering with his ex-soldier plain speaking. And yet both of them work through the new requirements with obvious passion – even in shifts when rail transport to Kiev is due.
And both of them, like their teams, are happy about the new recognition. “Despite all the tragedy of the war in Ukraine, society now feels more valued,” says Weismüller. “You’re no longer just a bogeyman in the press, but you’re also treated more neutrally.”
At the end, Meyering gives the most honest insight into the inner workings of a weapons manufacturer when, in front of the camera, he looks into the open hatch of a Marten tank that his people are currently preparing for front-line use. In Afghanistan he spent a lot of time in a tank. “To be honest,” he admits, “it’s really fun. That sounds stupid, I know, because it’s about war. But at first it’s like driving an excavator or something.” You have a large tracked vehicle with which you can simply race over anything. “The seriousness of the story only begins when you actually enter the battle.”
Klaus Scherer’s ARD story “Inside Rheinmetall: Between War and Peace” will be broadcast by Das Erste on Tuesday, October 24th, 2023, at 10:50 p.m. It can already be seen Film in the ARD media library.