Majority of Germans find defense industry investments justifiable

More than half of Germans are said to have no issue with profiting from the arms industry, a sentiment that has grown since the start of the war in Ukraine and the reelection of U.S. President Donald Trump, the results of a new poll showed on Sunday.

Over 56% of respondents polled by the opinion research institute Innofact said private investments in the arms industry were justifiable.

Of these 21.4% think they are “definitely justifiable” and 34.9% “somewhat.”

By contrast, almost 31% found such investments “rather reprehensible” and almost 13% were firmly opposed in the survey of 1,012 people conducted in May.

The poll was commissioned by Verivox, a portal that helps consumers compare financial products, and was made available to Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) on Sunday.

“Whether it is legitimate for private investors to want to earn money themselves by investing in arms manufacturers is still controversial today,” said the portal’s managing director Oliver Maier. “But the majority situation has changed.”

In a Verivox survey conducted in 2022 before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, 53% of respondents still had reservations about investing in defense companies.

Since then, shares in defense companies have risen immensely. The prospect of higher government defense spending in Germany and many other countries has driven many stocks to record highs.

The U.S. has for months been pushing Europe to invest more money in defense.

At the NATO summit in The Hague that starts on Tuesday, under pressure from Trump, it is to be agreed to invest at least 3.5% of national gross domestic product (GDP) in defense in the future, with a potential extra 1.5% earmarked for infrastructure that can be used for defense purposes.

Uncertainty as to whether the U.S. would stand by a NATO country under attack also influences the issue.

Around 30% of respondents find private defense investments more justifiable than before the Trump administration, while 18% consider them more problematic.

The survey shows that German men often find investments justifiable, around 64%. Women in favor are in the minority.