The Bundesgrenzschutz: Re-civilizing Security in Postwar West Germany, 1950-1977
Journal: eScholarship (California Digital Library)
Year: 2018

This dissertation investigates West Germany’s Federal Border Police, the Bundesgrenzschutz, and seeks to connect its development to the broader questions surrounding democratization. Why did the democratic government re-establish and sustain a militarized national police force? Existing scholarship connects the return of militarized policing to Cold War politics and rearmament. But these findings fail to explain why the Bundesgrenzschutz endured after the Federal Republic established a new army.