Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen has said Germany must rename all barracks honoring WWII-era soldiers. The Bundeswehr has been engulfed in a series of scandals - from reports of sexual abuse to right-wing extremism.
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German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said on Sunday that the military must rename about a half dozen Bundeswehr barracks that still bear the name of WWII-era officers.
"The Bundeswehr has to send signals both internally and externally that it is not rooted in the tradition of the Wehrmacht (Germany's Nazi-era military)," von der Leyen told Germany's Bild am Sonntag newspaper. "It needs to confidently put more of an emphasis on its own 60-year history. Why not rename those barracks?"
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.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Sauer
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."
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/G. Fischer
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.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Sauer
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Among the major barracks named after Nazi-era officers are the Marseille barracks in the northern municipality of Appen, named after the famed Luftwaffe fighter pilot, Hans-Joachim Marseille, and the Feldwebel-Lilienthal barracks in Delemnhorst named after Diedrich Lilienthal, a non-commissioned officer who led a number of the Wehrmacht's anti-tank artillery divisions into the Soviet Union.
Created in 1955 for the defense of West Germany, Germany's Bundeswehr does not consider itself as a successor to the Wehrmacht. However, the German military has this year been plagued by a series of extremist scandals. The most notable incident saw the arrest of a lieutenant who posed as an asylum seeker to carry out an attack on a migrant center.
Last month, von der Leyen opened an investigation into whether there are right-wing extremists in the German military. In a related move, the head of the armed forces last week called for an inspection of all Bundeswehr barracks after investigators discovered Nazi memorabilia in a garrison in Donaueschingen.
The scandals have piled pressure on von der Leyen, a senior figure in the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and a close ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, less than five months before the German election. The defense minister drew criticism from an army association after she called out the armed forces for supposed "weak leadership." She later apologized for her criticism of the military but also warned there could be further revelations.
The German defense minister's handling of the probe into extremist factions within the military has prompted criticism. Former Defense Minister Volker Rühe (CDU) told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that it was "completely inappropriate and absurd to place the whole Bundeswehr under suspicion of being an extension of the Wehrmacht." Von der Leyen's response to the scandal had created a "distorted picture of the Bundeswehr," he added.
Germany's parliamentary commissioner for the armed forces, Hans-Peter Bartels, a Social Democrat, said that "the issue of ties to the Wehrmacht and its traditions are now largely behind the Bundeswehr." Speaking to the Frankfurter Allgemeines Sonntagszeitung newspaper, Bartels said that von der Leyen's probe was merely about excluding a handful "problematic remaining devotees" but that her disproportionate response to the problem had spurred resentment among many soldiers.
