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| Can Germany Be a Great Military Power Again? | Can Germany Be a Great Military Power Again? |
| (32 minutes later) | |
| Under a blazing July sun, Anne Katrin Meister prepared to fire a Heckler & Koch G36, the standard rifle of the German military, or Bundeswehr. Dressed in fatigues, helmet and bulletproof vest, she crouched about 20 yards from two human silhouettes, stand-ins for a hypothetical threat to the German homeland. | Under a blazing July sun, Anne Katrin Meister prepared to fire a Heckler & Koch G36, the standard rifle of the German military, or Bundeswehr. Dressed in fatigues, helmet and bulletproof vest, she crouched about 20 yards from two human silhouettes, stand-ins for a hypothetical threat to the German homeland. |
| “Konzentration,” ordered her instructor, Oliver Maesmanns, articulating each syllable. Maesmanns, a former tank commander who is now a sergeant in Germany’s reserves and an electric-guitar teacher by trade, stood with a supportive hand on Meister’s back. “Don’t wiggle around so much!” he urged. “Thumb away from the breechblock!” | “Konzentration,” ordered her instructor, Oliver Maesmanns, articulating each syllable. Maesmanns, a former tank commander who is now a sergeant in Germany’s reserves and an electric-guitar teacher by trade, stood with a supportive hand on Meister’s back. “Don’t wiggle around so much!” he urged. “Thumb away from the breechblock!” |
| Meister, who is 34, works in human resources for a tech company near her home in Lower Saxony, where she serves on the local council as a member of the center-left Social Democratic Party. The closest she had ever come to firing an assault rifle was at a carnival shooting gallery. Now, as blasts from adjacent firing areas rang out, Meister took a few breaths to steady herself. She set her rifle’s sights to just above the sternum of her fictional enemy, having been instructed by Maesmanns to aim higher to account for the gap between the scope and the barrel, and pulled the trigger. Shock waves reverberated off the walls of the shooting range, and four shells landed in the gravel near her feet. Clouds of sunlit dust rose from the mound of sand behind the target. | Meister, who is 34, works in human resources for a tech company near her home in Lower Saxony, where she serves on the local council as a member of the center-left Social Democratic Party. The closest she had ever come to firing an assault rifle was at a carnival shooting gallery. Now, as blasts from adjacent firing areas rang out, Meister took a few breaths to steady herself. She set her rifle’s sights to just above the sternum of her fictional enemy, having been instructed by Maesmanns to aim higher to account for the gap between the scope and the barrel, and pulled the trigger. Shock waves reverberated off the walls of the shooting range, and four shells landed in the gravel near her feet. Clouds of sunlit dust rose from the mound of sand behind the target. |
| “Now, she’s awake again!” one of the trainers called out with a laugh. | “Now, she’s awake again!” one of the trainers called out with a laugh. |
| Meister had been doing well for a novice. But this time, she pulled the trigger too fast between shots, resulting in errant fire. In the end, she hit the enemy’s chest 16 times. She needed 18 hits to meet the goal set by her instructors. Her short lapse of Konzentration had cost her. | Meister had been doing well for a novice. But this time, she pulled the trigger too fast between shots, resulting in errant fire. In the end, she hit the enemy’s chest 16 times. She needed 18 hits to meet the goal set by her instructors. Her short lapse of Konzentration had cost her. |
| A few dozen of Meister’s new comrades in arms watched from beyond the shooting area. Like Meister, they were civilians with no previous military experience and had come to this military base in Nienburg, a medieval town in Lower Saxony, to train for “homeland protection” units in the country’s reserves. |