The water temperature in the Baltic Sea sits below 2°C. Swept by an icy wind, the beach remains completely covered in snow, despite the winter sunlight. “I’m from around here, so I was prepared, but the Spanish divers had to get used to it,” joked Lieutenant Benedikt Hoff, a member of the aerial unit of Germany’s Bundeswehr (Federal Defense Force) and an attaché of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), standing on the shore.
Benedikt Hoff, a lieutenant from the Bundeswehr air force and attaché to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), in Putlos, Germany, on February 18, 2026. MAXIMILIAN MANN/DOCKS FOR LE MONDE
It was here, on Germany’s northern coast facing Denmark, that the maritime phase of one of NATO’s major annual exercises took place on Wednesday, February 18. Nearly 11,000 soldiers from 11 countries participated, and for the first time, a Bundeswehr general, Ingo Gerhartz, led the exercise. The goal was to test the North Atlantic Alliance’s ability to defend itself in the event of an attack, with soldiers from NATO’s rapid-response Allied Reaction Force (ARF) mobilized for the exercise. “They’re a bit like NATO’s firefighters,” Gerhartz said, explaining that the unit must be able to intervene in less than 10 days.
This year, however, a major component of the operation was missing: the US military. Although the activity had been planned for a long time, “it shows that Europeans can defend themselves on their own,” said Matthias Boehnke, a NATO spokesperson who also comes from the Bundeswehr. The entire exercise runs for just over two months, with the maritime phase organized at the Bundeswehr’s Putlos military training base near Kiel.
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