The Bundeswehr and the Tradition of Earlier German armies committed not just heroic acts but also war crimes. The defence Minister wants to regulate the maintenance of tradition of the Bundeswehr.
Almost exactly ten years after the end of the Second world war and the defeat of Nazi Germany, on 5. In may 1955, was founded in the German armed forces. With the choice of the Name of the new army, should be released from the unhappy shadow of its predecessor organization, the Wehrmacht, the Hitler state: a “Bundeswehr” said Daniel Friedrich Gottlob Teichert, officer and member of the Frankfurt national Assembly, in the year 1849, about 100 years were involved before the establishment of the Federal Republican army, and long before Wilhelmi African Military odds and ends, before the First world war and before the war crimes of the Second, in which soldiers of the Wehrmacht.
Now, the maintenance of military traditions is one of the practices in most armies. The Bundeswehr itself would not have been built without the contribution of former Wehrmacht officers so quickly. Possible this cooperation, among other things, the U.S. General and later US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was delivered in 1951, a Declaration of Honour for the soldiers of the Wehrmacht had made.
Military experts, but also Democrats?
In the newly founded Bundeswehr acquired officers from Hitler’s Wehrmacht were undoubtedly professionals. Not all, however, were flawless Democrats, which is why both inside and outside of the young army over the next ten years was discussed, in what Form and for what “tradition of trusted care” values in the force, and more should be given.
Only in 1965, the then Federal Minister of defense Kai-Uwe von Hassel gave a first tradition of adoption for the German armed forces, the decree remained for 17 years, the Directive of how the German army had with its Tradition and with the memory of German military history. In 1982 Hans Apel as head of the Department of defense after intensive discussions, the decree still applies today, and the Ursula of the Leyen now want to revise.
Hans Apel (left): editor of the current tradition decree
Clear words – with a couple of behind doors
The Apelsche decree contains the Leyens opinion “much Good”. This includes phrases such as “The basic law is a response to German history. It granted great freedom, but also clear boundaries. The representation of the value to be bound to the armed forces and their democratic self-understanding is the basis of the maintenance of tradition of the Bundeswehr.” The decree takes up the idea of consenting soldiers, from the “citizen in Uniform” and also takes on the unfortunate Tradition of the Wehrmacht reference: “In the Nazi armed forces were part of culpably entangled, some of them were in need of guiltless miss. An unjust regime as the third Reich cannot be the basis of Tradition.” Therefore, the Bundeswehr had to develop their Tradition “on the basis of a liberal democratic self-understanding”.
The words are clear. In the implementation, however, the Apel-adoption of the members of the Bundeswehr a lot of free space too much, like Minister von der Leyen says: The adoption leave “back doors”. He leaves specific decisions, often the supervisors of individual units and the act according to its own estimates, and the political setting is highly diverse.
Nazi generals, and the Legion Condor
Picasso’s indictment of the war: “Guernica”
In the Seventies, recruits of the Bundeswehr had to be a paratrooper in the baden-württemberg sing Calw the “song of the Condor Legion”; the Legion Condor fought in the Spanish civil war on the side of General Franco and was involved in the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica. Since 1998, she is in the armed forces officially as a “non tradition-worthy”. But until 2005, a squadron of the Federal air force bore the name of Werner molders, had made in the Legion Condor and later in the Second world war military career.
In the Nineties, the air-land and air transport school of the Bundeswehr in the Bavarian town of the old city into disrepute. Officers and crews of the training facility for paratroopers celebrated unofficially, but loud on 20. April, the birthday of Adolf Hitler; even officially, it was at 20. May of the “Crete-day” in memory of the landing of German paratroopers committed in Crete in 1941. Hitler and his propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, were on records talking. In 1997, the new commander of the school, Friedrich Jeschonnek on admitted, that the prohibition of the Crete-day, Nazi speeches, and posters, and made raids in the accommodation. A year later, Jeschonnek had to give up the command of the school, as he hesitated, a teaching room of the school, which was named in honor of the Nazi General Kurt Student, to rename.
Logo of the past: The Iron cross
The tradition of adoption records, of necessity, symbols, and values of former German armies; without it, the German armed forces had their own, just 62 years of history as a reminder. So the Big tattoo and the song of the Good comrades belong officially to the Tradition of the Bundeswehr. The tattoo was introduced as an honorary ritual by the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm III in 1813, the song of the Good comrades, since 1825 sung, in the case of critics, but also as an indiscriminate glorification of the heroic death. The Iron cross, part of the official Tradition and the basis for the Logo of the modern German armed forces, also goes back to the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm III and the year 1813. And in addition to many others, the corporal Adolf Hitler was in the First world war awarded the Iron cross.