A review of Franco-German relations after the Second World War reveals a consistent thread: it has always been the personalities at the helm of our two countries who, with their experience and charisma, have shaped and advanced these special neighborly relations. It was, as is well known, the French President Charles de Gaulle and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer who, based on their personal experiences in the Second World War, laid the foundations for the special Franco-German friendship from the mid-1950s onwards. This friendship reached its first institutional peak with the signing of the Élysée Treaty in January 1963. Even then, a chapter on defense cooperation and a sentence on armaments cooperation were included. This read: “In the field of armaments, the two governments will endeavor to organize joint work from the stage of developing suitable armaments projects and preparing financing plans.” (Deutscher Bundestag 1963). This declaration of intent, as general as it is programmatic, contains several elements that remain significant for armaments cooperation between the two countries to this day: First and foremost, the success of bilateral armaments cooperation depends on the efforts of the two governments, for without their political will, there can be no successful “joint armaments work.” It is always necessary first to clarify which projects appear suitable for cooperation from a political perspective and how they can be financed in concrete terms. Ultimately, it is the governments—each also involving their national industries—that must organize the “joint work.” The insight expressed here, that armaments cooperation can only succeed where there is a certain degree of political alignment between the partner countries, may explain why, in the period that followed, there were initially no particularly notable successes in Franco-German armaments cooperation. On July 1, 1966, France withdrew from NATO’s military bodies; thereafter, Germany moved closer to the USA in military and armaments policy terms. In the immediate aftermath, cooperation was primarily civilian, including the signing of the agreement to establish the Franco-German aircraft manufacturer Airbus, which came about largely through the initiative of Ministers Franz-Josef Strauß and Karl Schiller during the Grand Coalition government in Germany in 1969. Nevertheless, the Élysée Treaty—albeit with some delay—did lead to several initiatives for concrete Franco-German armaments cooperation: For example, the companies Aerospatiale and Messerschmidt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB) established a consortium under the name Euromissile G.I.E. for the development and production of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles of the MILAN, HOT, and ROLAND types, which would become one of the forerunners of the European joint armaments company MBDA. The key to this cooperation was the deployment of the respective weapons in both the French and German armed forces, as well as the very pragmatic German approach to exporting these cooperative products. For France, arms exports have always been a defining motive, whereas in Germany, political restrictions have tended to be decisive. Against this background, the so-called Schmidt-Debré Agreement of 1972—again the result of the collaboration between two influential political figures who at the time held the office of defense minister in their respective countries—created a pragmatically manageable basis for coordinating export decisions, with Germany promising to refuse French export decisions only in narrowly defined exceptional cases. In the following decades, Franco-German relations were repeatedly shaped by the interaction of the personalities at the top of the two countries. We recall the duo of Helmut Schmidt and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who set important milestones, especially in economic and financial policy. Unforgettable is the more than merely symbolic show of unity between President François Mitterand and Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who—much like the relationship between the founding fathers de Gaulle and Adenauer—repeatedly emphasized the deep historical dimension in light of the horrors of the First and Second World Wars. On the 25th anniversary of the Élysée Treaty, President Mitterand and Chancellor Kohl decided in 1987 to establish a Franco-German military unit in the form of the Franco-German Brigade. This was intended to usher in a new phase of military cooperation and to create a basis for greater interoperability between the two armed forces. Chancellor Kohl also maintained a close partnership with French President Jacques Chirac. Finally, it is worth recalling the distinctly more sober, yet very deliberate and again close working relationships between Chancellor Merkel and Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, for example in overcoming the financial crisis of 2008/2009, the subsequent euro crisis, and also in response to Russian aggression against Ukraine (see Minsk Agreement). The Franco-German security and defense partnership was expected to receive a significant boost with the inauguration of Emmanuel Macron in 2017. In his famous speech at the Sorbonne University on September 26, 2017, he offered Germany a special partnership and a renewal of the Élysée Treaty. He said verbatim: “We will not agree on everything, not even at first, but we will talk about everything. To those who say this is an impossible task, I reply: You may be used to giving up; I am not. To those who say it is too difficult, I say: Think of Robert Schuman five years after a war whose blood had barely dried. On all the issues I have addressed, France and Germany can provide decisive, practical impetus.” In this spirit, on January 22, 2019, President Macron and Chancellor Merkel signed the “Aachen Treaty,” which in particular provides for a deepening of relations in the area of joint foreign, security, and defense policy. Article 4 (3) of the treaty states: “Both states undertake to further strengthen cooperation between their armed forces with a view to a common culture and joint operations. They will intensify the development of joint defense programs and their extension to partners. In this way, they intend to promote the competitiveness and consolidation of the European defense technological and industrial base. They support the closest possible cooperation between their defense industries on the basis of mutual trust. In joint projects, both states will develop a common approach to arms exports.” (Auswärtiges Amt 2019).