Zeynep ConkarTalks are reportedly underway between Volkswagen and Israel's state-owned Rafael Advanced Defence Systems to repurpose the German carmaker's Osnabruck plant for the manufacture of components linked to Israel's Iron Dome air defence system.
The facility would manufacture support infrastructure: heavy-duty transport trucks, launch units, and power generators. Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume has confirmed that the company is engaging with defence companies, Rafael being one of them.
During the Second World War, Volkswagen halted civilian car production and converted its factories to arms manufacturing for Nazi Germany.
German historians have estimated that as much as 80 percent of Volkswagen's wartime workforce consisted of forced labour, with many workers supplied directly from concentration camps at the request of plant managers. The Volkswagen complex housed four concentration camps and eight forced-labour camps.
Against this backdrop, the car giant born under the Nazi regime and complicit in its crimes, is now prepared to bind itself to another state accused of mass atrocities.
It's particularly difficult to reconcile Germany's historical commitment to "Never Again" with the fact that Volkswagen, a cornerstore of German economy, is now going to be directly be enabling Israel's ongoing genocide and atrocity crimes against the people of Palestine, according to human rights lawyer and writer Maria Kari.
“ICJ cases concern state responsibility, under Art. I of the Genocide Convention states not only have an obligation to punish genocide but to prevent genocide by using all reasonably available means to prevent genocide when there is a serious risk,” Kari tells TRT World.
“When it comes to international criminal liability for corporations, that's an area that's still developing but the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which is widely accepted standards under customary international law, make it clear that companies must avoid contributing to human rights abuse and have to conduct heightened due diligence in conflict settings.”
Volkswagen is currently contending with its worst financial performance in nearly a decade, with operating profit collapsing over 53 percent in 2025 to around $9.63 billion USD, and net profit falling 44 percent, its lowest since the Dieselgate scandal.
With around 2,300 jobs on the line at Osnabruck, the company is under enormous pressure to find a lifeline. But the proposed solution carries a weight of history that cannot be brushed aside.
In 1944, a company engineer travelled to Auschwitz and personally selected hundreds of skilled Jewish metalworkers from deportation transports. The company would later acknowledge these crimes and establish reparations funds, but the record stands.
Now, for the second time in its history, Volkswagen is weighing a return to arms production in the service of a genocidal state, Israel.
Complicity in plain sight
Left Party lawmaker Mirze Edis has stated that any defence cooperation with Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unacceptable, citing the ongoing wars across the Middle East and the genocide in Gaza.
The Osnabruck Peace Initiative too has urged Volkswagen to abandon the deal entirely and keep the plant focused on civilian production.
Producing arms components for Israel, even under the framing of "defensive" equipment, could constitute a violation of international law given the current legal proceedings at the International Court of Justice.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Germany provided 30 percent of Israel’s major arms imports between 2019 and 2023, making it the second-largest arms exporter to Israel after the United States.
In the immediate aftermath of October 7, Germany shipped roughly $350 million worth of arms to Israel in 2023 alone, followed by a further $150 million in 2024, including thousands of portable anti-tank weapons, half a million rounds of ammunition, armoured vehicles, and military trucks.
The scale of that support has drawn legal scrutiny.
Nicaragua filed a case at the court in 2024 stating that Germany had violated its obligations under the Genocide Convention through its political, financial and military support for Israel.
Nicaragua requested provisional measures against Germany, citing its “participation in the ongoing plausible genocide and serious breaches of international humanitarian law and other peremptory norms of general international law occurring in Gaza.”
While the ICJ declined to order emergency measures against Berlin, it allowed the case to proceed.
“The Nicaragua case will be an interesting case to watch now - especially if it can be shown that Volkswagen is essentially a state actor and that Volkswagen/Germany provided components to sustain military operations despite credible organisations deeming this a genocide,” Kari says.
On the wrong side of the history
The legal pressure has visibly rattled Berlin. Germany, which had initially rushed to Israel's defence when South Africa filed its genocide case in December 2023, dismissing the allegations as "baseless" has since quietly withdrawn its pledge to intervene on Israel's behalf at the ICJ.
Germany's retreat is widely interpreted as an attempt to limit further legal and political exposure as international scrutiny over its role in the Israeli war in Gaza continues to mount.
“It's a shameful move and yet another dark spot on the nation's history of turning a blind eye to genocide. At this point, 2+ years into the genocide and 72k+ people murdered by Israel, all states that continue to authorise or facilitate arms deals are engaging in the kind of conduct that legally croses into aiding and/or assisting war crimes, genocide and atrocity crimes,” says Kari.
“Knowledge plus material support is the legal test under Article I of the Genocide Convention and even my 6 year old could explain why both elements are increasingly difficult to deny here,” Kari adds.
“Instead, Germany appears to be doing the opposite of the right thing. And that, to me, is more than likely a breach of its obligations under the Genocide Convention.”
Today Germany is an arms supplier to a genocidal state, defendant at the international court for complicity, and now potentially a manufacturing partner in that very crime.
History is repeating itself, and once again, Germany is choosing the wrong side.
