Germany's secret plan for a fight with Russia

The plan, known as OPLAN DEU, is a classified document of about 1,000 and 200 pages, drafted by a group of top German officers for more than two years at the Julius Leber garrison in Berlin.

The document outlines a huge logistics operation that would be centered German territory: the movement of up to 800 thousand German, American and NATO troops eastward in the event of Russian aggression.

It specifys ports, railways, highways, bridges and critical points that would be used to send forces to the front, as well as their ways of protecting them during transit.

According to the WSJ analysis, the plan marks Germany's return to a Cold War-era mentality, where the gap between the civilian and military spheres begins to fade.

In addition to the challenges of military capacity, Berlin must reuse or rebuild civilian infrastructure for possible military use from ports to highways once designed as emergency landing routes.

German officials warn Moscow may be willing to challenge NATO until 2029, while recent intelligence actions and sabotage acts in Europe raise concern that a collision could come even earlier.

The German government has already launched joint exercises with the civil sector, logistical testing and rapid infrastructure modernisation, while private firms such as Rheinmetall are being broadcast directly into new defence architecture.

The target is not war”, the Wall Street Journal quotes one of the plan's authors, “but its prevention, making it clear that an aggression against us will not succeed”.