German military aid to Poland to stop tanks on its eastern borders

Germany and Poland, once enemy nations, are now allied countries within NATO, and that alliance takes many forms.

The tests of the anti-tank obstacles that Latvia has placed on its border with Russia
The military obstacles Latvia is putting up to stop a Russian invasion

The German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) today released a video showing the construction of anti-tank barriers on Poland's eastern borders, at an undisclosed location for security reasons. The video shows military engineers from the Polish and German Armies collaborating on these tasks:

In this Bundeswehr video, we can see this map with Poland's eastern borders marked in red. To the east, we see the border with Belarus, a country ruled by a Moscow-backed dictatorship, and to the northeast, we see the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which was part of former East Prussia, a German territory annexed by the Soviets after World War II. Between these two borders lies the Suwalki Corridor, the border between Poland and Lithuania, a place of great strategic importance for NATO, since its occupation by Russia and Belarus could isolate the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia), hindering their defense:

The Bundeswehr has specified the types of barriers being constructed: anti-tank trenches, additional anti-tank barriers, and border fortifications. It has also indicated that in the event of a crisis, these measures are designed to delay a potential attack and give Polish and NATO-allied forces additional time to react and defend themselves. They are not intended to be an impassable line in the event of Russian military aggression.

Four weeks ago, the Polish Army General Staff released this video about these fortification tasks. At the beginning, we see a German officer explaining in Polish (a nice touch) that these tasks are part of a cooperative effort to reinforce NATO's eastern flank. The video ends with a scene of a German soldier and a Polish soldier shaking hands, the beautiful image that heads this article.

In this other video published on July 31, the Polish Army General Staff indicated that it already has 16 anti-tank obstacle storage locations (in the video we see thousands of concrete tetrapods or hedgehogs, like the ones you can see in the following image) and that the Polish Army Corps of Engineers will soon begin construction of seven more. These locations are receiving 1,000 tetrapods every day.

By mid-October, Poland expects to have 300,000 of these concrete barriers in place, which will involve more than 10,000 transports between storage locations and the borders with Russia and Belarus. It's an immense logistical undertaking.

Currently, these obstacles already cover about 100 kilometers of Poland's eastern borders, and the forecast for the end of the year is that more than 200 kilometers will be fortified. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are also building anti-tank barriers on their borders with Russia and Belarus. We saw the Latvian barriers here two years ago.

Of course, an invasion cannot be stopped with physical barriers alone. NATO maintains a multinational military force deployed in the Baltic states and Poland, with the aim of acting as a deterrent and halting a potential invasion should it occur. Furthermore, Germany has permanently deployed an armored brigade in Lithuania, the Panzerbrigade 45 "Litauen" (PzBrig 45). This is the first permanent tank force that Germany has deployed to another country since the end of World War II.

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Images: Sztab Generalny Wojska Polskiego / Bundeswehr.