The United States has stationed nuclear weapons in Germany since 1955, currently numbering 10 to 15 tactical nuclear gravity bombs. Germany is not believed to currently possess or host chemical or biological weapons. Germany is party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Biological Weapons Convention, and Chemical Weapons Convention. Under the Two Plus Four Treaty, nuclear weapons may not be stored in the former territory of East Germany or West Berlin. 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
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.
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