Overview
- On September 11, 2001, 19 Al Kaida hijackers seized four airliners and crashed two into New York’s World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon, killing 2,977 people.
- Within a week the U.S. Congress passed a broad authorization for the use of military force and President George W. Bush declared a global 'war on terror' that provided legal cover for years of U.S. military action.
- U.S. and NATO forces invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban and pursue Al Kaida, a campaign that lasted about 20 years and ended with the Taliban’s return to power in 2021; the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 followed the shift to a preventive-war stance.
- The post‑9/11 campaigns produced heavy human and fiscal costs, including thousands of U.S. military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, tens of thousands wounded, and an inflation‑adjusted rise in defense spending of roughly 50 percent since 2001.
- Germany responded with immediate political solidarity, a deployment to Afghanistan, and domestic security reforms that criminalized support for foreign terrorist groups, increased banks’ reporting duties, and added about 2,300 posts for police, intelligence and the Bundeswehr.