German towns call for new air-raid bunkers and sirens

During the Cold War, Germany had over 2,000 bunkers, but there are only 600 left

Germany’s local councils are calling for billions of euros to spend on building a new system of bunkers and air-raid sirens to protect the population in case of war.
“We need at least €1 billion [£850 million] for each of the next 10 years to protect the civilian population,” said André Berghegger, head of the Association of German Councils.
During the Cold War, Germany had over 2,000 bunkers, but there are only 600 left that can offer shelter to around half-a-million people, he said.
“We urgently need to put disused bunkers back into operation and we need to build new, modern shelters,” Mr Berghegger told the Funke newspaper group.
The years of peace after the Cold War had “made us a bit carefree”, he said.
He added that the level of threat had changed and that this was shown by “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine”.
In 2007, Germany decided to dismantle all of its remaining bunkers, saying that they were of no use against new threats such as terrorism and climate change.
Of the roughly 600 that have not been dismantled, none is currently in a position to be used, according to a government agency tasked with managing them. Germany’s defence minister also called for more investment in infrastructure to protect civilians against bombs.
On a visit to Helsinki in Finland on Friday, Boris Pistorius said that “protection of the population, civil defence, is always the flip-side of a military threat and defence capability”.
During his trip to the Nordic capital, Mr Pistorius visited a sports hall that has a dual use as a bunker.
Helsinki has bunker space for 900,000 people, more than its population of 600,000.
Of all the ministers in Olaf Scholz’s cabinet, Mr Pistorius has been most direct in his appeals to the German public to take the threat of war seriously.
Speaking late last year, the Social Democrat politician said that it was his job to modernise the country’s armed forces to make them “war-ready”.
His rhetoric has not gone down well in all quarters, with some in his party worrying that his choice of words is too martial.
SPD leader Ralf Mützenich responded at the time that “we shouldn’t just be concerned with war, but also with how wars can be ended”.