Following recent revelations of far-right extremists within its ranks, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen has moved to ensure that the Bundeswehr fighting forces distance themselves from their tainted past.
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On Wednesday, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen signed a new "Traditionserlass" at an army barracks in Hanover. It is a loaded term, and one with no simple English, French or Spanish translation. Essentially, it is an "edict" outlining the "traditions" that a soldier in Germany's Bundeswehr – the country's federal armed forces – can refer to and which he or she cannot. Indeed, the whole seems like a particularly German conundrum.
Then again, such complications come as no surprise considering the crimes committed by the Nazis during World War ll and the support that was given to them by the Wehrmacht, as the army was known at the time. The Nazi-era Wehrmacht was created in 1935 from what had been the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic. Wehrmacht solders swore an oath to Adolf Hitler himself, and to no other authority.
A few weeks ago, Catholic military bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck defended the new Traditionserlass by pointing out that no one can live without a past. He said soldiers must be made aware of the past – as well as the scars that are part of it.
Bundeswehr scandals: Von der Leyen on the defensive
For German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, 2017 has so far been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year. She's had to weather numerous Bundeswehr scandals and is under fire for not supporting her own troops.
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Von der Leyen under fire
Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen wanted to show she's not blind to problems among her own troops. In light of the most recent scandal, she openly criticized army leadership, saying the Bundeswehr had an "attitude problem." But Bundeswehr officials found her comments to be outrageous. Their response to the defense minister's criticism: "Leadership goes from the top down."
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A fake Syrian refugee
The story causing the uproar: Bundeswehr lieutenant Franco A. was allegedly planning a terrorist attack and led a double life, pretending to be a Syrian refugee. He was granted partial asylum status as a war refugee in December 2016. His alleged goal: another attack blamed on a refugee. Bundeswehr officials are said to have known about Franco A.'s right-wing tendencies since 2014, but did nothing.
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Abuse in Bad Reichenhall mountain rangers unit
The Bundeswehr is currently investigating 275 cases of suspected right-wing extremism. But they're also dealing with other types of scandals. In March 2017, the public learned about the case of a lance corporal who had suffered months of abuse in a Bavarian mountain rangers unit. The victim reported being threatened and sexually harassed in 2015 and 2016. Prosecutors investigated 14 people.
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Female recruits forced to pole-dance
The biggest scandal of von der Leyen's term so far: the horror stories coming out of the Staufer army base in Pfullendorf. In January, it was revealed that superior officers there forced recruits to undress and perform sexually-motivated acts and filmed them. Female recruits were forced to pole dance as part of an "entrance exam." The top Bundeswehr training commander was fired as a result.
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Many cases of right-wing extremism investigated
According to a report from Germany's federal parliamentary commissioner for the Bundeswehr, Hans-Peter Bartels, 2016 wasn't a great year for the Bundeswehr, either. There were around 60 incidents related to alleged right-wing extremism or "violations against the bases of Germany's free democratic constitutional structure." Troops shared anti-Semitic images and music or did the Nazi salute.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Sauer
Death on board the Gorch Fock
The Bundeswehr wasn't immune to scandals before von der Leyen became defense minister in December 2013. One that garnered significant public attention was the death of a 25-year-old recruit on the Navy training vessel Gorch Fock in 2010. The woman fell from the rigging during an exercise. As a consequence, other cadets refused to climb the rigging. Officer training on the ship was suspended.
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The birth of the Bundeswehr
Directly after World War II, Germany was not allowed to have an army. The Bundeswehr had its start in West Germany in 1955. After reunification, the Bundeswehr took in 20,000 soldiers from East Germany's armed forces. A big change came in 1999, when the Bundeswehr first participated in an international conflict: the Kosovo War. Before that, they had only gone abroad for peacekeeping missions.
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No more mandatory service
Today the Bundeswehr has roughly 178,200 active soldiers. As of March 2017, 11.4 percent of them are women. Until 2011, men were required to do mandatory military service, the length of which varied between nine and 18 months. Today, the Bundeswehr has to appeal to young people to recruit soldiers. The most recent scandals are making that that more and more difficult.
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Existing traditions
The scars Overbeck referred to have yet to completely heal. Certainly not to the degree one would have hoped for after more than seventy years. Put bluntly: It has become clear that a critical assessment of German history cannot simply be viewed as the responsibility of academics. It seems that even today soldiers find some form of strength in their organization's history between the years of 1933 and 1945.
The debate over that past was reignited last spring when the case of Lieutenant Franco A. came to light. The case was also what motivated von der Leyen to push forward with the Traditionserlass. The soldier is accused of having planned a terror attack in such a way as to direct suspicion toward Syrian refugees. When authorities searched his barracks they found painted swastikas and Wehrmacht souvenirs. That prompted officials to conduct searches at all of the Bundeswehr's barracks. As a result, hundreds of items such as Nazi-era helmets, carbines and insignia were found.
A quick glance into the past may shed light on why such items are collected in the first place. It was, after all, former Wehrmacht officers who organized the Bundeswehr in the 1950s. Military historian Wolfram Wette says those "traditionalists" had no desire to deal critically with the past.
German defense minister shares findings on neo-Nazis in military – DW's Simon Young
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He says it was they who created the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht" – that is, they claimed chain of command and innocence when it came to war crimes, deflecting all of the blame to Hitler and his henchmen.
One motivation for that act of historical revisionism was no doubt to exonerate themselves. But another was that it allowed them to maintain the Wehrmacht's popular ideology of the "warrior cult," of brave men willing to fight to the death in order to achieve "final victory," according to Wette.
Nevertheless, she is determined to denazify the army where others have failed. The new Traditionserlass is designed to help her successfully complete that task.
The German National Socialist Workers' party profoundly affected the course of 20th-century world history with their ideology, propaganda and crimes. Who were the key leaders of the movement?
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Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945)
As Hitler's Propaganda Minister, the virulently anti-Semitic Goebbels was responsible for making sure a single, iron-clad Nazi message reached every citizen of the Third Reich. He strangled freedom of the press, controlled all media, arts, and information, and pushed Hitler to declare "Total War." He and his wife committed suicide in 1945, after poisoning their six children.
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Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)
The leader of the German National Socialist Workers' Party (Nazi) developed his anti-Semitic, anti-communist and racist ideology well before coming to power as Chancellor in 1933. He undermined political institutions to transform Germany into a totalitarian state. From 1939 to 1945, he led Germany in World War II while overseeing the Holocaust. He committed suicide in April 1945.
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Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945)
As leader of the Nazi paramilitary SS ("Schutzstaffel"), Himmler was one of the Nazi party members most directly responsible for the Holocaust. He also served as Chief of Police and Minister of the Interior, thereby controlling all of the Third Reich's security forces. He oversaw the construction and operations of all extermination camps, in which more than 6 million Jews were murdered.
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Rudolf Hess (1894-1987)
Hess joined the Nazi party in 1920 and took part in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, a failed Nazi attempt to gain power. While in prison, he helped Hitler write "Mein Kampf." Hess flew to Scotland in 1941 to attempt a peace negotiation, where he was arrested and held until the war's end. In 1946, he stood trial in Nuremberg and was sentenced to life in prison, where he died.
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Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962)
Alongside Himmler, Eichmann was one of the chief organizers of the Holocaust. As an SS Lieutenant colonel, he managed the mass deportations of Jews to Nazi extermination camps in Eastern Europe. After Germany's defeat, Eichmann fled to Austria and then to Argentina, where he was captured by the Israeli Mossad in 1960. Tried and found guilty of crimes against humanity, he was executed in 1962.
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Hermann Göring (1893-1946)
A participant in the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Göring became the second-most powerful man in Germany once the Nazis took power. He founded the Gestapo, the Secret State Police, and served as Luftwaffe commander until just before the war's end, though he increasingly lost favor with Hitler. Göring was sentenced to death at Nuremberg but committed suicide the night before it was enacted.
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New reference points
Yet Von der Leyen's is not the first such Traditionserlass. Back in 1982, Defense Minister Hans Apel sought to distance the Bundeswehr from its historical predecessor organization with a similar edict.
The new version picks up where Apel's left off, by drawing a clearer distinction between the Bundeswehr and the history of the Wehrmacht as well as shifting the Bundeswehr's own historical perspective: The dominant historical reference point for the Bundeswehr will now be its own history, according to a press release from the Ministry of Defense.
The statement, however, goes on to say that the Traditionserlass will also allow the freedom to refer to the historical heritage of all epochs of German military history as long as these serve as purposeful examples and conform with the values upon which the Bundeswehr was founded.
One historical chapter that was discussed during the creation of the new Traditionserlass was that of the NVA, the armed forces of former East Germany (GDR). During German reunification, a number of NVA bases and personnel were integrated into the Bundeswehr. Now critics say the NVA has no place in the history of the Bundeswehr because it served a dictatorship. The edict makes exceptions in this instance as well. Individual NVA personnel can be singled out as exemplary, for instance those who played a role in German reunification.
How binding is the new edict?
As authoritative as the word "edict" may sound, no one knows what it really means in the Bundeswehr. That goes firstly for its implementation. "The guidelines for understanding and maintaining traditions," as the Traditionserlass says, were widely discussed among researchers, military members, foundations, media outlets, associations and parliamentarians.
The Ministry of Defense praised the "dynamic" feedback process that took place after discussions were concluded and in which it received much input and commentary after the release of the first draft of the edict. That input was then used to help the Ministry edit the original draft before presenting its final Traditionserlass.
Yet, even though the Traditionserlass is valid, it is not a law but rather a "document for instruction." That means it is designed to provide orientation, support and aid in everyday life in the Bundeswehr. It helps to that end by clearly defining how soldiers and officers are to deal with history. It will be attached to staff regulations as an annex.
The defense minister also wants to deal with the problem of barracks' names. At the same time she signs the Traditionserlass, the name of the barracks where she will do so will also be changed. Until today, the Hanover barracks had been named after a Prussian World War l general (there was no German army before 1919) and an occupied French city: Emmich-Cambrai Barracks. Now it will be known as Master Sergeant Langenstein Barracks. Tobias Langenstein was killed in a Bundeswehr deployment in Afghanistan in 2011.
