The Heer operated an impressive 12 combat divisions, including five panzer (armored) and four panzergrenadier (mechanized infantry) divisions, as well as several reserve mechanized brigades, for a total of 5,135 tanks.Ī Leopard 2A5 fires its Rh-120 main gun during exercises in Bergen, Germany, 2014. While the United States for a time planned to offset Soviet superiority in tanks, aircraft, and manpower with nuclear weapons, West Germany’s policy was to build up a powerful land army to deter, and if necessary defeat, an invasion after all, if either side used nuclear weapons, they would almost certainly be used on German soil.

West Germany was a frontline NATO state, facing down the numerically superior armies of the Warsaw Pact. West Germany established the Bundeswehr, or Federal Armed Forces, and under it, the Heer, or German Army. At the time, Germany was split in two: West Germany, an ally of the United States and a member of NATO and East Germany, an ally of the Soviet Union and a member of the Warsaw Pact. In 1955, a decade after World War II, Germany reconstituted its armed forces. To understand what made the Leopard 2 the most popular tank in the world, we have to go back to the Cold War itself.

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