Leaked German Military Docs Warn of WWIII with Russia by 2025, Hundreds of Thousands of Troops Deployed in Europe

Leaked classified documents from the German military have warned of a potential full-blown war between Russia and NATO in which hundreds of thousands of troops are deployed in Europe.

Germany’s Bild, the largest circulation newspaper in Europe, has claimed to have obtained classified documents from the Bundeswehr labelled “Classified Information – For Official Use Only” in which the Defence Ministry lays out details for a possible “path to conflict” between Russia and NATO beginning as soon as next month.

Under the scenario laid out by the German military, the Kremlin would begin a mobilisation of 200,000 soldiers in February and launch renewed efforts to capture the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, which it failed to do so at the outset of the invasion in 2022. This would be followed by a series of cyber attacks and other forms of hybrid warfare waged by Moscow intended to destabilise the Baltic states.

Using the destabilisation and potential clashes in border regions as a pretence, Russia would then — the Gemran planning assumptions state — deploy 50,000 soldiers to western Russia and Belarus by September, with massive troop buildups along the Polish and Lithuanian borders as well as the deployment of medium-range missiles to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad between Lithuania and Poland to pre-empt an alleged NATO attack.

The German military then predicted that by December, when the United States will likely be in the transition period between presidents — assuming the defeat of President Joe Biden — a border conflict with “riots with numerous deaths” will be artificially sparked by Russia in the Suwałki Gap, a strategically important corridor between Lithuania and Poland that separates Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave.

The border crisis would be used as justification for Russia to send soldiers onto NATO territory to seize the Suwałki Gap while the United States will be in a state of flux. In the plans,  the German army predicted that this would ultimately spark a full-scale war between the West and Russia, with hundreds of thousands of troops being mobilised throughout Europe and fighting to break out by the summer of 2025.

Many major militaries wargame and plan for a variety of hypothetical scenarios and it is not clear to what degree the German military is treating this plan as a likely outcome. Nevertheless, Bild reports the plan is “apparently being taken seriously”.

The leak of the classified military documents comes amid increasing fears throughout Europe of a potential full-scale conflict with Russia. Earlier this month,
Swedish Civil Defence Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin bluntly told his citizens: “There could be war in Sweden.”

Despite his country still waiting to be admitted into the NATO alliance, Bohlin called for a nationwide effort to make preparations, saying that “individual citizens, employees, entrepreneurs and managers in public administration” must ready themselves for war.

Meanwhile, UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps announced on Monday that Britain would be deploying 20,000 troops as well as warships and fighter jets to Europe in the coming months for what is being labelled as the largest NATO military exercise since the end of the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

Shapps said the UK will seek to increase its defence spending to 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product and called on other allied nations to increase their defence spending as well, with countries such as Germany continuously failing to meet the NATO spending requirement of two per cent of GDP, a failure frequently criticised by former President Donald Trump.

The British defence secretary said that “2024 must mark an inflection point”, continuing: “In five years’ time, we could be looking at multiple theatres including Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. Ask yourself … is it more likely that that number grows or reduces? I suspect we all know the answer. It’s likely to grow.”

Even with growing concerns of a potential Third World War, with the notable exception of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, there has not been any concerted efforts in the West to push for peace in Ukraine, with power players in Washington, Brussels, Berlin, Paris and London instead doubling down on their support and pushing for more taxpayer dollars to be sent to Kyiv to prop up the faltering war effort against Russia.

At a so-called peace summit in Davos, Switzerland ahead of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, Ukraine rejected any notion of a potential ceasefire and reasserted its demands that Russia withdraw from occupied territories entirely before any negotiations are held.

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