March 18, 2025, will go down in Germanhistory as the day when a two-thirds parliamentary majority cleared the way for the country to take on unprecedented debt.

German lawmakers approved an infrastructure investment package worth billions, while also lifting the cap on national defense spending. The aim is to provide the necessary funds to make Germany and its armed forces, the Bundeswehr, "ready for war," as Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has repeatedly demanded since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Shortly after he took office as chancellor earlier this year, Friedrich Merz said he wanted to make the BundeswehrEurope's strongest conventional army.

This spending spree is great news for companies that build roads and bridges, lay rail tracks and manufacture high-speed fiber-optic internet cables. The German defense industry stands to benefit even more.

For decades, the sector had been losing economic importance. Who in Germany, after all, was interested in buying tanks? In 2020, shares in Rheinmetall, Germany's largest arms manufacturer, sold for €59 — by June 2025, they were trading between €1,700 and €1,800 ($2,116) each. Swiss........

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