, " � , 

The Newport Papers 

'. ,' .. -" .. - " 

'The Buildini! of an ;\nnv in a I)ernocrac" 

j\ , " 1 

Mark E. Victorson 

Colonel, U.S. Army 

NAVAL WAR COLLEGE 

NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND 
MISSION IN THE EAST 
NAVAL WAR COLLEGE 

Newport, Rhode Island 

CENTER FOR NAVAL WARFARE STUDIES 

Newport Paper #7 

June 1994 

"The Newport Papers" series is a vehicle for distribution of substantial work 

by members of the Naval War College's teaching and research faculty and 

students as well as members of the broad international security community. 

Papers are drawn generally from manuscripts not scheduled for publication 

either as articles in the Naval War College Review or as boks from the Naval 

War College Press but that nonetheless merit extensive distribution. Candidates 

are considered by an editorial board under the auspices of the Dean of Naval 

Warfare Studies. 

The views expressed in The Newport Papers are those of the authors and not 

necessarily those of the Naval War College or the Department of the Navy. 

Correspondence concerning The Newport Papers should be addressed to the 

Dean of Naval Warfare Studies. Requests for additional copies or for permanent 

distribution should be directed to the President, Code 32A, Naval War College, 

686 Cushing Road, Newport, Rhode Island 02841-1207. Telephone (401) 

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Printed in the United States of America 
Mission in the East 

The Building of an Army in a Democracy 

in the New German States 

Mark E. Victors on 

Colonel, U.S. Army 
Acknowledgements . . 

Introduction . . . 

lnnere Fuehrung . 

The Bundeswehr and the NV A 

The Turning Point . . . 

The Legacy of the NV A 

Contents 

The Challenges for lnnere Fuehrung 

New Misions for lnnere Fuehrung . 

Notes .. 

Glossary 

The Author . 

Index .. .. 

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25 

27 

37 

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49 

51 

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Acknowledgements 

The research for and writing of this paper were completed while the author 

was a Senior Service College Fellow at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign 

Service, Georgetown University. I am grateful to the School of Foreign Service 

and the Center for German and European Studies for their institutional support 

and intellectual stimulation. I would also like to thank Thomas-Durrell Young 

and Donald Abenheim for their encouragement, assistance, and thoughtful 

criticism. 

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Introduction 

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T MIDNIGHT ON 2 OCTOBER 1990 the German Democratic Republic 

(GDR) ceased to exist. The following day the armed forces of the Federal 

Republic of Germany, the Bundeswehr, took control of the personnel, equipment, and installations of what had been the National People's Army (Nationale 

Volksarmee or NVA). By any reckoning this was a massive undertaking and 

one of great historical significance. It was massive because of the sheer amount 

of equipment, ammunition, and acreage for which the Bundeswehr found itself 

responsible in the new federal states, and it was historic because soldiers who 

had faced each other across a deep ideological divide for over thirty years would 

now be serving together. 

The six active divisions of the NV A, along with State Security and border 

forces, had been stationed in some 3,300 installations, and the GDR's military 

materiel legacy included 2,300 main battle tanks, 7,800 armored vehicles, 2,500 

artillery pieces, 100,000 wheeled vehicles, and 300,000 tons of ammunition. 1 

Securing, inventorying, and disposing of this materiel was to be a major mission 

for the Bundeswehr throughout its first years in the new states. Complicating 

this mission was the almost immediate need to support the liberation of Kuwait 

through materiel shipments and support of departing U.S.; units, the additional 

responsibility to assist the Western Group of Soviet Forces in an orderly 

withdrawal from German territory; and the longer-term requirement to reduce 

the Bundeswehr's size by almost 30 percent. 

Of more lasting significance, however, will be the human impact of the union 

of the two Germanys. It is difficult to predict how this will play itself out, as 

these two societies seek to become one. The people of the new states have gone 

through a roller coaster of emotions since refugees from the GDR first began 

seeking asylum in West German embassies in East Berlin, Budapest, and 

Prague in July of 1989, beginning the process that would lead to the "Turning 

Point" (die Wende) in German history. Since then the East Germans have 

experienced the fear and exultation of those October and November days when 

they chanted "We are the people" in Leipzig, Berlin, and elsewhere, as well as 

the euphoria of unification, and they continue to experience the uncertainty of 
The Newport Papers 

their economic future and a sense of second-clas citizenship. If the changes 

for West Germans have not been as dramatic, the effects have certainly been 

felt intensely. 

In the midst of the changes wrought by unification, the Bundeswehr took 

on missions for which its origin and history had uniquely qualified it. First, there 

was the self-imposed requirement to select former NV A officers and noncommissioned officers who requested active duty in the Bundeswehr and then train 

them to asume the functions of leaders in the armed forces of a democratic 

society. Second, the Bundeswehr would have to build legitimacy for the armed 

forces among an East German population that had learned to distrust the 

military. The concepts of Innere Fuehrung, or "Iner Leadership," which had 

stood the Bundeswehr in good stead in similar endeavors at its beginning and 

throughout its short history, were used again to meet these new challenges. 

This paper describes some of the ways these concepts aided in facilitating 

the dual processes of the integration of former NV A officers and noncommissioned officers into the Bundeswehr and the acceptance of the military in the 

new German states. It begins with a brief analysis of the concepts and their 

perceived strengths and weaknesses. It describes the essential differences 

between the Bundeswehr and the NV A leadership philosophy, political education, and outlook and also the impact the revolutionary political changes of the 

Turning Point and the consequent reunification had on both of these armies. 

After a brief discussion of the legacy of the NV A, this study describes how the 

concepts of Innere Fuehrung were applied to combat that legacy, the challenges 

faced in this endeavor, and prospects for the future. 

The thesis of this paper is that, despite their flaws and shortcomings, the 

principles of Innere Fuehrung played a key role in the early development of 

the Bundeswehr as an army in a democracy and in its acceptance by the civilian 

populace of the Federal Republic of Germany, and that these principles have 

promoted the same processes in the new Gennan states. Although the NV A was 

not the anny the Bundeswehr thought it was facing during the years of the Cold 

War, its true legacy is being sunnounted by leaders well-versed in Innere 

Fuehrung. Grave problems remain, however. A sensitive application of the 

concepts of Innere Fuehrung can help solve some of these problems, and, in 

fact, some of them mirror issues from the Bundeswehr's own history, while 

others, such as the economic conditions in the new states that adversely affect 

soldiers and civilians alike, are not amenable to correction by the military alone 

and therefore have the potential to undo the successes of the early pioneers to 

the East. The Bundeswehr can certainly lay claim to one of the few success 

stories of the unification, but the entire story has yet to be told. 

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Innere Fuehrung 

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IKE OTHER GERMAN WORDS that describe a whole complex of 

philosophical ideas, Innere Fuehrung has no adequate, concise English 

translation. Donald Abenheim, in what has become the standard work on the 

history of the development of the concept in both German and English, 

describes it as " ... military leadership appropriate to the modem world, which 

enables the soldier to carry out his mission while assuring his rights as a citizen 

... [It is the] attempt to reconcile the citizen with the soldier, and to overcome 

the traditional antagonism between democracy and the military in German 

history ... 2 

The need for such a concept became evident when, following the 

demilitarization of West German society after World War II, the leadership of 

the fledgling Federal Republic of Germany came under pressure to provide 

armed forces for the common defense of western Europe. The Allies had 

decided at Potsdam in August of 1945 that "the German educational system 

must be supervised so that Nazi and militaristic precepts are eliminated completely . . . ... 3 The aims of the occupation forces matched the natural inclination 

of the German population so well that in 1954 Paul Sethe could write in the 

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: 

The military tradition of the Gennans was broken off in 1945. In the nine years 

since, memories and sentiments have become overwhelming among young 

people that make it difficult to link up with this heritage. Two lost wars [caused] 

their terrible casualties; great parts of our cities will remain in rubble for long to 

come; the appeal to idealism and a sense of sacrifice have ben brutally abused 

and arouse today only bitterness among many; the long struggle of the occupiers 

against Gennan soldierly pride has not ben without effect; the division of 

Gennany paralyzes many.4 

The challenges that faced the founders of the federal armed forces were to 

overcome this distrust of all things military, which was a legacy of the military's 

misuse by the National Socialist regime, and to provide a raison d'etre for 

military forces in a democracy that would confer legitimacy on them in a 

modem pluralistic society. At the same time, they recognized that new concepts 
The Newport Papers 

of professionalism and leadership were needed within the military in order to 

protect the state and the individual soldier from the excesses of a reactionary 

military elite. In short, they were faced with the problem of the proper ordering 

of the military within their democratic society. 

This was not and is not today a peripheral question. As Samuel Huntington 

has noted: "The ordering of its civil-military relations ... is basic to a nation's 

military security policy. The objective of this policy on the institutional level 

is to develop a system of civil-military relations which will maximize military 

security at the least sacrifice of other social values ... 5 In other Western 

democracies the development of these relations, the growth of a military 

tradition supporting democratic social values, and the evolution of an officer 

corps that embodies ideals necessary to sustain these values in a military 

environment have generally taken place over an extended and unbroken national history. Even when controversy arises, it does so within the context of a 

general understanding of the utility of the armed forces and their proper place 

in society. 

In the 1950s the founders of the Bundeswehr faced the problems of defining 

these relations without benefit of history; of discovering a tradition that would 

encourage their proper development; and of providing leaders, most of whom 

would come at first from a military with anti-democratic rots, with the tools 

and the will to support the social values necessary for the proper functioning of 

a military within a democracy. They would have to do all of this in the glare of 

publicity and through dialogue with a public which, for the most part, had no 

desire to face the questions it was being asked. 

As early as 1948, upon drawing the necessary conclusions from the Berlin 

blockade, the United States began to consider with seriousness the need for 

German rearmament. Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer recognized the 

need for a common Western defense and understood as well that armed forces 

were part of a nation's claim to sovereignty. The chancellor originally thought 

that any new German troops would be part of a pan-European defense force, 

the European Defense Community. This idea died in 1954, but well before then 

Chancellor Adenauer and his advisors had recognized that German forces, 

whether part of a European force or independent, would need to be accepted 

by the German public as well as hy the Western AHL:s.6 

The concepts of Innere Fuehrung were developed along with the organizational and operational plans for the armed forces during the 1950s and early 

1960s in a series of meetings, seminars, and position papers. While a number 

of people, who included former Wehrmacht officers, academics, and 

politician'>, worked on the conceptualization of these ideas over the years, 

Innere Fuehrung became most closely associated in the public's mind with 

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Wolf Graf von Baudissin. Baudissin, who was a former Wehrmacht officer, 

provided some of the earliest input for the concepts that would become Innere 

Fuehrung, and he became its chief advocate, especially among civilians.7 

While the Federal Republic's constitution or "Basic Law" had to be amended 

to address the requirements of the armed forces, and separate legislation was 

enacted to clarify the legal position of the soldier, the basis for the concept of 

lnnere Fuehrung was stated in the first article of the Basic Law as it was written 

in 1949: "The dignity of man shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall 

be the duty of all state authority . .. 8 This personal dignity is not lost when one 

becomes a soldier. The soldier retains the rights of a citizen, narrowed only as 

necessary to carry out his military duties. The soldier is a "citizen in uniform" 

(Staatsbuerger in Uniform). Although not a revolutionary concept for an 

American soldier, the idea of treating a soldier as a citizen was a key agent for 

change in a military tradition which, while it had developed superb fighting 

men, had also subjected them to the harsh, often meaningless discipline of the 

drill square.9 As Theodor Blank, first Minister of Defense of the German 

Federal Republic, said: "Whoever is unable, as an officer, NCO, or reserve 

officer to impart his military skills and knowledge to recruits without treating 

them as free citizens will have no place with us .

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0 

The soldier also "has the duty to serve the Federal Republic of Germany 

loyally and to defend courageously the rights and freedom of the German 

people ... II He must acknowledge and accept the principles of democracy as 

expressed in the Basic Law and dedicate himself to their preservation. 12 These 

principles include civilian control of the military (Primat der PoUtik). Furthermore, the soldier is not to follow orders which assault human dignity or would 

otherwise be illegal.13 This places the responsibility on the soldier to keep 

himself informed, so as to be in the position to think critically about the orders 

he receives and act accordingly. The soldier is to be treated as a thinking 

indi vidual, worthy of respect, and capable of understanding the purpose behind 

an order. Indeed, he must understand its purpose if he is to carry out his duties 

as a soldier in a democratic society. This understanding goes beyond knowing 

how to complete a military mission and showing initiative in carrying it out, 

attributes which German soldiers displayed in pre-Bundeswehr armies. It 

includes the soldier's understanding of the moral and social consequences of 

his actions. Theodor Blank again expressed it best: "Democracy can be 

defended only by democrats, and freedom only by those who experience it 

themselves ... 14 

Baudissin wished to embed the soldier firmly in the democratic society and 

to leave as little as possible in the purely military sphere. The plan was to keep 

uniforms simple, with little in the way of medals and ribbons, and to keep 

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The Newport Papers 

ceremonies and parades to a minimum. Military tradition was a thorny matter, 

because although as Samuel Huntington has noted, " ... civil-military relations 

[in Germany] between 1871 and 1914 reflected an extraordinary degree of 

objective civilian control and military professionalism founded upon a high 

level and restricted scope of military authority ... ,',15 the armed forces' 

political manipulations during and after the First World War and their culpability in the National Socialist regime hardly furnished material for the 

tradition of an army in a democratic society. 

Traditions worthy of study and emulation were eventually found. These 

included the heroes of the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon and the General 

Staff officers who conspired to assassinate Hitler on 20 July 1944. However, 

these latter were not uncontroversial, and the whole question of what constitutes 

a valid tradition for the German armed forces still remains open today. 16 It 

should be noted that the leadership's decision that the Reichswehr and 

Wehrmacht had no traditions worthy of being honored by the Bundeswehr did 

not cause their memory to wither away, and this problem must be kept in mind 

when addressing the legacy of the NV A. 

Although problems with tradition are only one of its shortcomings, Innere 

Fuehrung did in fact, especially during the first years of the Bundeswehr, 

provide a framework within which the armed forces could grow. It gave them 

a mission-the defense of the democratic society within the framework of 

NATO, which was acceptable to the German public, if not highly popular. 

Indeed, this acceptance seemed to grow over time until, by the early 1980s, 80 

percent of the population favored German membership in NATOY Innere 

Fuehrung also defined the rights and responsibilities of leaders and soldiers to 

each other and to the society as a whole. It provided a humane and highly 

effective leadership philosophy. And finally, it helped assure West Germans 

that the armed services were under civilian control and were an instrument of 

a democratic society. 

In order to achieve acceptance, however, the armed services, through Innere 

Fuehrung, have tied themselves so closely to civil society that they are sometimes indistinguishable from it. This has opened them to conservative criticism 

that argues that armed forces who have accepted the values of a society that 

emphasizes personal, material prosperity, and who seek to avoid hard choices 

in international affairs, no longer have the necessary military ethos. 18 That this 

is not a peculiarly German concern is evident from the headline of an article by 

Harry Summers in which he expresses the worry that "Humanitarian Missions 

Could Signal Collapse of 'Fighting Spirit' .. for the U.S. armed forces. In the 

article he quotes T. R. Fehrenback favorably that "by the very nature of its 

mission, the military must maintain a hard and illiberal view of life and the 

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world. Society's purpose is to live; the military's is to stand ready, if need be, 

to die.,,19 Whether a society is described as being materialist or humane, it is 

necessary to recognize a tension between a society and its military, which the 

teachings of lnnere Fuehrung may have glossed over. 

This blurring of the distinctions between civil and military cultures may lead 

to soldiers' viewing their service as more a job than a profession. In tenns of 

Charles Moskos' institutional-occupational continuum of how militaries view 

themselves, the Bundeswehr is well over to the occupational side of the 

spectrum.20 This attitude is nurtured among the officers by a military university 

system that does not teach military science and does not require students to wear 

uniforms,21 and by a conscription system that does not require them to serve 

far from home. Many conscripted soldiers sleep at home and come and go from 

duty "just like civilian employees.,,22 While most officers and senior noncommissioned officers of the Bundeswehr have developed a professional view of 

themselves and their duties, most of the junior noncommissioned officers and 

soldiers retain a "nine-to-five" attitude that does not mesh well with the 

requirements placed on modem military establishments. 

Effective training is needed if lnnere Fuehrung is to be functional and, in 

actuality, the training available is largely inadequate. The courses in social 

science and education, which are provided by the military universities in 

Hamburg and Munich, are supposed to provide officers with the wherewithal 

to lead and train "citizens in uniform" effectively but are often considered 

make-work courses that get in the way of the officer-student's work in his major 

area of study.23 Political education is a command responsibility in the troop 

units, and soldiers are to receive twelve hours per quarter of instruction covering 

such topics as "Parliamentary Democracy," "The Bundeswehr in State and 

Society," "the Bundeswehr within the Alliance," and "Other Social Systems," 

but a 1979 study found that training was often canceled, not adequately 

prepared, and not always conducted by the company commander.24 Under 

normal conditions it is difficult for commanders to fit such training into 

schedules already crowded with normal duty and combat training requirements, 

and in the experience of at least one senior officer who served as deputy 

commander of a new home defense brigade in Brandenburg, in the early months 

after unification it was almost impossible to meet the formal requirements for 

political awareness training among the troops in the East, although informally 

a great deal of this was happening.25 

Possibly the harshest criticism of lnnere Fuehrung from the Left, and the 

least deserved, has been that it was essentially a hate campaign that used a 

distorted picture of the enemy as all things evil (Feindbild) to motivate the 

soldier. Such criticism sometimes more betrayed the critic's wishful thinking 

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about benign developments in the German Democratic Republic than 

demonstrated the plausibility of any conscious attempt on the part of the 

Bundeswehr leadership to distort the thinking of impressionable soldiers. Thus, 

in 1970, Siegfried Grimm took the armed forces to task for teaching soldiers 

that the GDR was a creature of the Soviet Union's political and strategic needs; 

that its leaders had no personal legitimacy; and that these unscrupulous leaders 

ruled through force and terror. He felt such oversimplifications disregarded the 

large part of the population which, while not supporting communist domination 

entirely, did support the structural changes to society that had occurred in the 

GDR since 1945. If people did want change, they did not want capitalism but 

merely a reform of the system. In any case the leadership had gained legitimacy, 

as it allowed citizens to take greater part in the decision-making proces, and 

moreover, " ... the economic growth in recent years has greatly changed the 

picture of the GDR ... 26 

Information presented to the troops in Bundeswehr literature and in training 

may have been simplistic-though it does seem to have described with greater 

accuracy conditions across the inter-German border than did its critics-but 

such information was not used to train soldiers to hate their opponents. In fact, 

the very absence of a view of the enemy as an evil entity may have been the 

single most effective element of lnnere Fuehrung in facilitating the Bundeswehr soldiers' acceptance of former NV A personnel into their ranks. 27 

8 
The Bundeswehr and the NV A 

DESPITE ITS PERCEIVED and some very real shortcomings, lnnere Fuehrung provided a foundation for the military in German society for almost 

forty years, and it played an essential role in making the Bundeswehr a very 

different sort of military than the National People's Army. Born of the West's 

need to have an ally against the Soviet Union and of Germany's to regain 

sovereignty, the Bundeswehr was unique in comparison to other militaries as 

well. As amended, the Basic Law provided armed forces for defense; established a Defense Commissioner of the Bundestag, or parliamentary ombudsman 

(Wehrbeauftragter), to protect civil rights in the armed forces and to assist the 

parliament in exercising civilian control of the military; established a civilian 

Administration of the Federal Armed Forces, which manages administrative 

and personnel matters often handled by uniformed personnel in other militaries; 

and severely limited the powers of military courts. It also laid out detailed 

instructions that authorized civilian leaders to determine when the country faced 

a threat that called for a military defense, at which time command of the military 

would be transferred from the defense minister to the chancellor.28 

From the beginning, the country's political leadership recognized that these 

armed forces would act only in concert with their allies in the North Atlantic 

Treaty Organization, and it also came to be accepted that this military's real 

mission was deterrence. It would be successful if it never actually had to fight 

the war for which it was constantly preparing. Thanks in large measure to its 

very success in this endeavor, as well as to the antimilitarist sentiments of the 

generations following the war, the Bundeswehr has faced recurring problems 

of public acceptance, beginning with the "without me" (Ohne mich) attitude of 

young men in the 1950s and extending through the attacks of the radicals in the 

sixties and the rearmament debate of the late seventies and early eighties. 

Throughout all the public debate has run the fear that the military has not learned 

its lesson and still threatens to become a state within a state. Aside from some 

foolish actions on the part of individual military men and equally foolish 

reactions in the press,29 there is little indication that this is a real threat. Across 
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the inter-Gennan border, however, another Gennan anny was a key element of 

a party organization that was in fact a state within a state. 

The single most important thing to understand about the National People's 

Anny is that, despite its name, it did not owe its loyalty so much to its people 

or its nation as to the Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei 

Deutschlands, or SED). The NV A had its beginnings in the Gennan People's 

Police, which in the summer of 1948, at the behest of the Soviet Union, began 

building so-called "garrisoned police" units. The leadership for the garrisoned 

police came from the officer corps of the defeated Wehnnacht, as did the 

original leadership for the Bundeswehr and by the end of 1950 there were over 

70,000 personnel in these police units. They were trained and equipped as 

military units so that when in January 1956 the Chamber of People's Deputies 

of the GDR pased the "Law concerning the Creation of the National People's 

Anny and the Ministry for National Defense," anned forces were already on 

hand. 3D 

When the Turning Point came in the fall of 1989, the NVA had an active 

force of 170,000 soldiers, sailors, and ainnen. Like the Bundeswehr, it 

depended on conscription, and young men were required to serve eighteen 

months. Unlike the Bundeswehr, the NV A was part of a society which itself had 

become regimented and militarized along the model of its Soviet big brother in 

arms. Beginng in kindergarten, extending through "pioneer organizations" 

for children between the ages of six and fourteen, and culminating in membership in the Free Gennan Youth and the Society for Sport and Technology, young 

people were exposed to ideological indoctrination and training in basic military 

skills.31 In 1976 the chainnan of the latter organization, a lieutenant general, 

could say, " ... nearly 95 per cent of all young men between 16 and 18 each 

year take part in the Society's pre-military courses.,,32 How effective the 

training and indoctrination were is open to question, but it did bring service in 

the NV A into the seamless whole of a world view shared by all the official 

leaders and organizations of the society. 

East Gennany's world view of itself was that of a state at the forefront of the 

socialist revolution, in alliance with the Soviet Union and its other allies of the 

Warsaw Pact, and envied and under attack by the reactionary forces of the West, 

especially the Federal Republic of Gennany, which the East considered to be 

the succesor state to Hitler's Third Reich. Because of the early collaboration 

of Gennan communist party members, such as Walter Ulbricht and Wilhelm 

Pieck, with the Soviet Union, and their subsequent coming to power in the GDR, 

the leadership of the country could downplay the history of national socialism 

and stress the GDR's connection to all the progressive aspects of Gennany's 

history. Through this interpretation of history, the GDR and its social system 

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became the ultimate goals of Gennan history, and anything that did not support 

this view became a non-event. 

This "world view" had the advantage of not forcing the citizens of the GDR 

to confront the uncomfortable recent events in Gennan history, and it allowed 

the NV A to make use of traditions the Bundeswehr would have found embarrassing. Thus, while the Bundeswehr consciously sought to break with the past 

in its selection of a modem, simple unifonn, the NV A's unifonn was strongly 

reminiscent of the Wehrmacht's. While Baudissin sought to fmd republican 

traditions among the Prussian refonners of the Wars of Liberation, the NV A 

brought the Prussian generals into its pantheon en mase on their reputations 

as military men who were part of the "progressive" tradition of the NV A. 33 In 

July 1990 Lieutenant General Klaus Juergen Baars, Deputy to the Secretary 

of Defense and Disannament for Military Refonn, still defended what he 

considered to be Prussian virtues, such as duty and honor, and Prusian features 

in unifonns and ceremonies. 34 

Such an understanding of history had the disadvantage that an unexamined 

past allowed old attitudes and activities to live on in the new anned forces. The 

introduction of Soviet military concepts of discipline and organization reinforced these attitudes. The soldier's welfare was not his commander's primary 

concern, and that famous first impression Bundeswehr officers had on their 

visits to NV A installations, that the tanks were kept in heated bays while the 

soldiers lived in run-down barracks without showers or any other amenities,3S 

had as much to do with the NV A's failure to overcome its past as it had to do 

with the general poverty of the society. The abusive harassment of the old drill 

square reemerged in the image of the "EK" system ("EK" is Entlasungskandidat or "candidate for discharge"), an approach similar to the Soviet An

y's 

in which the more senior conscript soldiers forced newer conscripts to work for 

them and to do demeaning make-work jobs. 36 This was allowed in the name of 

discipline. 

The acceptance of a world view of socialism under constant danger of attack 

also lent itself to the sort of hate campaign the Bundeswehr was accused of 

running. The NV A soldier swore not only to serve the GDR, but" ... to defend 

socialism against all enemies and to stake my life for the achievement of 

victory. ,,37 Thus, the enemy was not merely whoever infringed on the legitimate 

security interests of the state-the enemy and the interests being subject to 

change-but was a specific, unchanging social and economic clas and its 

lackeys. 

In published materials and political education classes, NV A personnel were 

told that in NATO they faced the strongest imperialist coalition in the world 

and that the Federal Republic with its Bundeswehr was its spearpoint. The 

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Bundeswehr was portrayed as a direct descendant of Gennan militarism: it 

secured the power of the monopoly capitalist clas within the Federal Republic 

and planned to undo the results of the Second World War through a war of 

aggression when the time was ripe. NV A soldiers were infonned that West 

Gennan children were raised on a diet of nationalism, revanchism, and 

anticommunism to prepare them for service as unthinking mercenaries in the 

Bundeswehr, and that lnnere Fuehrung, along with pastoral care of soldiers, 

prepared them psychologically and ideologically for the war against 

socialism. 38 

Such NV A indoctrination went so far that in some units and branch schools 

political officers set up rooms for "the political and psychological preparation 

of soldiers for war." Along with flashing lights, taped sounds of combat, and 

gruesomely realistic battle scenes, soldiers saw photo displays of the inequities 

and violence of the capitalist system (e.g., starving children, unemployed 

workers, strikes, riots) and of war scenes (e.g., Vietnam and Hiroshima). 

Sometimes these rooms were separated, one having to do with the stress of war 

(Stresskabinett) and the other dealing with only images of the enemy 

(Feindbildkabinett).39 

There is some question as to how effective this fonn of indoctrination was. 

The picture may have been painted so black that no one could accept it as 

reality.40 NVA soldiers, as do soldiers in all armies, may have ignored subjects 

that had little to do with their actual duties. It is difficult to believe, however, 

that the constant reiteration of these themes did not have some effect. Fonner 

NV A Rear Admiral Guenther Poerschel feels that the pictures and reports of 

United States' military action in Korea, Vietnam, and the Near East played the 

major role in validating one's choice of the military profession and that heavily 

edited reports from the Western media, which emphasized NATO's strength 

and were harshly critical of the socialist states, had a profound effect on those 

who were constantly exposed to such indoctrination.41 If nothing else, the 

NV A's mission to protect and advance the cause of socialism legitimized the 

anned services' close association with the Socialist Unity Party. 

In the eyes of the East Gennan populace, the officers' association with the 

Communist Party and their prior position.<; of leadership in "a privileged 

institution of the SED ruled state,,42 are what make the rehabilitation of even 

the small number of officers the Bundeswehr took over from the NV A so 

difficult. Practically all NV A officers (98 percent) were party members, as were 

many of the noncommissioned officers (56 percent of the career noncommissioned officers).43 They carried out political as well as military duties, and 

failure to carry out a military duty could be considered a political transgression; 

a political failing in tum could lead to loss of party membership and consequent 

12 
Victorson 

career failure. Less than total support for the SED and its policies could lead to 

dire consequences. For criticizing military intervention in Poland to put down 

the Solidarity movement, Lieutenant Colonel Klaus Wiegand, a history instructor at the Wilhelm Pieck Institute with twenty-five years of service, was 

summarily degraded to the lowest enlisted rank and thrown out of the party. 44 

For an officer, a career without membership in and support of the SED was 

virtually unthinkable.45 

On the Soviet model, the party had parallel structures for the various levels 

of the military hierarchy. The SED and the Free Gennan Youth had organizations down to the battalion level, and since soldiers came into the service out 

of the youth movement, the majority of them remained members of it while in 

unifonn.46 As noted above, officers were expected to be members of the SED 

and to take part in its activities. This career requirement has led to the present 

rationalization among many fonner NV A officers that since everyone belonged, 

membership is basically meaningless in detennining an officer's true beliefs. 

One made the decision to be a professional soldier and officer out of the desire 

to be in the military; party membership was merely a necessary condition of 

this service.47 

This may be so, or it may be one of a number of examples of these officers' 

attempts to rationalize their behavior in the light of what happened and what 

they now know about the regime they served. In any case, some of the more 

discerning of these officers note that, although membership was practically 

automatic and at first essentially a passive acceptance of the state of affairs, 

officers, especially the successful ones, tended to become functionaries in the 

party organizations at their levels of command, thus becoming ever more 

closely identified with the party and its aims as their careers progressed. By 

grooming the best officers, especially those in the command track, for party 

leadership, the SED achieved two objectives simultaneously: it identified the 

best officers with the party and its goals in the minds of their contemporaries 

and subordinates, and it provided an effective means for the party to control 

those in leadership functions.48 Thus, whether a fonner NVA officer wishes to 

admit it or not, membership in the SED takes on a significance beyond simply 

careerism. 

The SED and youth organizations were organized in parallel to the military 

apparatus. Within the military itself, party influence was represented by the 

political officers, who were to be found at every level in the company. To view 

these officers, of whom there were about 6,00 in the NV A, as being of the same 

mold as the Red Anny commissars of the Russian Revolution and its attendant 

civil wars would be inaccurate. They were of course, highly dedicated and did 

work to indoctrinate the troops politically. Although these officers were 

13 
The Newport Papers 

subordinate to their commanding officers, they carried a great deal of leverage 

in that they could always approach a political officer at a higher level of 

command than their own commanding officer and request intervention that a 

decision with which they disagreed be overturned. For that reason, and because 

a political officer was always in a position to report a commander's mistake as 

a party failing, commanders dealt very carefully with their political officers. 

The commanders also, however, depended a great deal upon their political 

officers. 

Far more important than his political activities, as far as the commander and 

the troops were concerned, the political officer in the NV A, as in other Warsaw 

Pact countries, provided for the morale and welfare of the soldiers in his unit. 

The political officer worked out the leave schedule. If a soldier was having 

difficulties at home or had a financial problem, he went to the political officer, 

and not to his commander, who was generally considered unapproachable. 

Matters that in Western armies are considered command responsibilities and in 

which U.S. Anny commanders at all levels are directly involved were relegated 

to individual political officers at company level, and to political staffs at 

battalion level and above.49 

Commanders were so dependent upon their political officers for the care of 

their troops that, as communist regimes died in the Warsaw Pact, the political 

officers underwent a slight metamorphosis and were kept on. They became 

responsible for "civics" instead of political indoctrination; the names of the 

schools where they were trained were changed (the Lenin Academy in Moscow 

to the "Humanitarian Academy" and the Wilhelm Pieck Military and Political 

Institute in Berlin to the "Institute for Civic Education"); and courses in 

Marxism-Leninism disappeared in favor of the social sciences. But officers 

with the duties of political officers, if not in name, have nonetheless remained 

in the armies of all fonner Warsaw Pact countries, except the fonner GDR. 

Russian Navy ships' captains have even been reported to refuse to leave home 

port without their political officers. 50 

Opinions differ as to whether these officers were political creatures who 

otherwise would have been failures in the military or were the cream of the 

crop, chosen precisely because of their intelligence and communications skills. 

There is evidence that they were among the first to understand the impact of 

the Turning Point on the NV A and to attempt to do something to bring the NV A 

into step with its changing society.51 Whether these officers were good or bad, 

it remains that the system insidiously integrated the SED, in the person of the 

political officer, into the most important relationship of trust-that between the 

commander and the soldier-consequently turning the soldier's loyalty toward 

the party and away from his chain of command. The consequence for the leader, 

14 
Victorson 

who had primarily to concern himself with the tactical mission and less with 

the well-being of his troops, was alienation from his soldiers. 

The NVA's leadership philosophy was patterned on the Soviet style of 

leadership. Mission-type orders, in which the soldier is given a mission and 

expected to use his own initiative to complete it, were not given; directives left 

little to the commander's initiative, much less the noncommissioned officer's 

or private soldier's. Part of this was due to a compartmentalized organizational 

structure in which staff officers had direct acces and command authority within 

their competencies over their counterparts in subordinate staffs. There were 

eighteen technical areas in which this "pipeline" leading past the commander 

to his own subordinates existed,52 and the system led to a lack of flexibility and 

initiative and to a swelling in the number of staff officers far beyond that of 

Western armies in comparable organizations. These officers had very circumscribed jurisdictions and often carried out duties performed by a noncommissioned officer in the West, such as running a dining facility or a supply room. 

Since rank was essentially only pay grade and was not asociated with specific 

duties or responsibilities, an officer could rise to senior rank and never change 

his job. Whether one was a commander or a staff officer, the opportunities to 

use one's own judgment and take independent action were few. 

Whatever personal frustration individual officers may have felt within such 

a system, the officer corps was a privileged clas within the society. It received 

priority for housing, a separate economy saw to its needs, and a system of 

monetary rewards and bonuses boosted officers' salaries above those of their 

contemporaries in the civilian economy.53 Other advantages, such as early 

retirement with a good pension, the opportunity upon retirement to cross over 

to comparable employment in the civilian sector, and more frequent access to 

state-run vacation resorts, all indicated the special status of the officer corps. 54 

This privileged status was paid for, however, by near-total isolation from the 

civilian community and from any source of information other than that provided 

or approved by the state, and also by long duty hours, extreme readiness 

requirements, and the knowledge that one's personal as well as one's professionallife was subject to intrusive observation. Military families usually lived 

in separate housing projects and were forbidden to watch West German 

television or to have contacts with West Germans. Although the rest of the 

population was not supposed to watch or listen to Western broadcasts either, 

this ban was normally broken by the civilian population, while many former 

NV A officers insist they felt duty-bound not to watch. In any case, for an officer, 

being caught conversing with information available only from the West, or 

being reported by one of the many State Security (Stasi) informers for having 

15 
The Newport Papers 

watched or listened to Western broadcasts would mean the end of one's 

career.55 

Bundeswehr leaders have been surprised at the number of Stasi informers 

within the officer corps alone. It is estimated that up to 20 percent of those 

selected for career or long-term service in the Bundeswehr will be forced to 

resign, as separate investigations by the Gauck commission, charged with 

examining all State Security files, uncover their connection with the StasL56 

The Stasi's Administration 200, the organization responsible for monitoring 

the NY A, had a formal presence down to the regimental level and informants 

throughout the companies and platoons. Even a soldier who was not an 

informant would feel the pressure to report infractions if someone else knew 

he was aware of them, fearing that the other person might be an informer who 

would lodge an accusation that the soldier did not report the incident. Electronic 

eavesdropping was also widespread and was facilitated by the concentration of 

officers in housing areas. Western observers were astonished at the complacency with which such eavesdropping was accepted. 

57 

The housing areas also facilitated the NVA's high degree of readiness. 

Eighty-five percent of the personnel of each unit in the NY A stood ready in the 

barracks at all times. Officers not on duty on the installation could be alerted 

by sirens in the housing areas and had to be in the unit within twenty minutes 

of the alarms' sounding. All vehicles were kept topped off with fuel and under 

full combat load of ammunition at all times, because the unit had to be able to 

depart the installation within one or two hours; most units could quit their 

barracks in less than the allotted time. Traffic signals were installed at the exits 

from the motor pools to allow split-second traffic coordination. There is no 

doubt that the NY A's ability to quit its installations on alert and reach its 

assembly areas rapidly and in good order would have been difficult for the 

Bundeswehr to duplicate, especially on a weekend or holiday, but this ability 

exacted a heavy price. 

The high degree of around-the-clock readiness meant little free time for 

soldiers, noncommissioned officers, or officers. Leaves were carefully planned 

and subject to last-minute cancellation should sickness or other absences reduce 

the unit's personnel strength below 85 percent. It was difficult to keep the 

soldiers gainfully employed with training and maintenance for such long 

periods of time, and the boredom and close quarters probably encouraged the 

harassment of young soldiers through the "EK" system. Moreover, since 

NATO's attack would come at the least expected moment, special emphasis was 

placed on readiness on such holidays as Christmas, separating families while 

soldiers waited for the attack that never came.58 

16 
Victorson 

Since NV A intelligence and thus the political and military leadership of the 

GDR knew that NATO, and particularly the Bundeswehr, were neither planning 

to nor were positioned to attack, there must have been other reasons for the 

insistence on constant readiness. The obvious reason, besides the fact that the 

Soviet forces insisted upon it, was that it was an integral part of the ideology. 

Socialism was under threat of attack from the forces of capitalism, and no 

sacrifice to protect it was too great. A more subtle reason is advanced by Frithjof 

Knabe, who feels that it was equally important to occupy officers and men 

totally with the day-to-day problems of maintaining readiness, so as to keep 

them from questioning the system that demanded these sacrifices. S9 It is 

certainly true that this emphasis on readiness perforce isolated the soldiers from 

the populace, as did the parallel insistence on extreme secrecy, which kept the 

installations closed to civilians and off the maps. Also, it facilitated the state's 

control of the information the soldiers received. Once on the installation, the 

troops were severed from all sources of information other than those sanctioned 

by the state. 

Two very different armed forces faced each other across the inter-German 

border. One had made a conscious effort to deal, however incompletely, with 

its past, and sought to be a part of the society that it defended. The other did not 

come to terms with its past or with its position of privilege within its society. 

The rapidity of events leading up to and following the fall of the Wall in 

November 1989, which led to unification, caught both armies unprepared but 

had their greatest impact on the army that had ben cut off from reality for so 

many years. 

17 

r 1 

• 

1 

I 

The Turning Point 

A

s THE EIGHTIES WORE ON and Premier Gorbachev's refonns took hold 

in the Soviet Union, events there and in other Warsaw Pact countries, 

especially Poland, began to raise questions in the minds of some NV A officers 

about the future of the GDR and its armed forces. For some of them the moment 

of truth seems to have arrived while attending the General Staff Academy in 

Moscow; for those who had attended courses there in the seventies, the decay 

of the system upon their return in the eighties was evident. In 1988 an NVA 

officer's wife wrote home from Moscow that the GDR had no more than one 

year left to exist. For others, the light of reality came with the NVA's role in 

putting down the riots in Dresden in September 1989, which took place as the 

trains with the East German refugees from the West German embassy in Prague 

passed through on their way to the Federal Republic.60 As the demonstrations 

grew in scope and took on the character of a revolution that could bring down 

the state, the NV A was placed in readiness for a so-called "Beijing solution." It 

became a point of pride among NV A officers that it did not come to such a 

solution, but there is a continuing debate about whether the NV A would have 

fired upon German civilians if so ordered.61 

On 7 November 1989 the government of Egon Krenz, Erich Honecker's 

successor of three weeks, resigned, and on 9 November the Berlin Wall was 

opened. The professional soldiers of the NV A, officers and noncommisioned 

officers, went through severe psychological shock as the regime to which they 

had dedicated their lives, for which they had made substantial sacrifices of time 

and effort, and not unimportantly, from which they had derived many privileges 

and benefits, feU without a struggle. They experienced further shock when they 

discovered that the Bundeswehr, against whose attack they had so long prepared 

and because of which they had made these sacrifices, had never planned to 

attack and that the regime they had served loyally had consistently lied to them . 

Compounding this severe blow to its morale and its understanding of itself, 

the leadership of the NV A was faced with the need to reform the armed services 

immediately in order to bring them in line with a state governed by democratic 

principles. Now the attempt had to be made to build a new relationship, without 
The Newport Papers 

socialist, internationalist content, between leader and led, to ftnd a tradition that 

supported "values like peace, freedom, and democracy, ,,

62 terms also now 

devoid of socialist, internationalist content, and make the military palatable to 

a newly empowered, anti-militarist citizenry. The logical source for information 

on such matters was the Bundeswehr, but the armies dealt warily with each 

other. Offtcial guidance concerning contact between the armed forces of the 

two states did not go into effect until 1 June 1 990.63 Personal, unofftcial contact, 

however, took place before that. 

In May 1 990, while on leave and dressed in jeans and leather jacket, Colonel 

Hans-Peter von Kirchbach appeared at an NV A installation in Dresden, showed 

his Bundeswehr identiftcation, and requested entrance. Although this ftrst 

encounter was met with hesitancy, the visit resulted in an exchange of correspondence, a plan to exchange visits of offtcers, and a request for a brieftng 

on Innere Fuehrung from the staff offtcers of the 7th NV A Armored Division 

in Dresden.64 Much earlier, in January 1 990, and at greater risk to himself, the 

NVA political offtcer, Major Frithjof Knabe, had taken the overnight train from 

Leipzig to Koblenz, placing his career and livelihood in the balance to search 

for the outside asistance he felt the NV A needed if it were to learn how to be 

an army in a democracy. 

Since he was part of a ftfty-man division of political offtcers on the staff of 

a corps-sized military district, Knabe took it for granted that a Bundeswehr 

corps would have an equivalent staff in its headquarters. In Koblenz he reported 

to the headquarters of the III Corps of the Bundeswehr and was taken to the G2 

(intelligence offtcer), who in tum sent him to the Center for Innere Fuehrung. 

As he had always been taught that Innere Fuehrung was the training that made 

soldiers amenable to manipulation by capitalists in their wars of aggression, he 

was more than a little concerned about being trapped in the center responsible 

for the dissemination of this doctrine. Knabe was surprised by the openness and 

helpfulness with which he was greeted, and he returned by train to Leipzig that 

night with a wealth of material and promises of assistance once he had digested 

the information. 

Upon reporting his contact with the Bundeswehr to his superiors, Knabe was 

relieved of duties and threatened with expulsion from the military. He fought 

this action by building a "citizens' initiative" and by threatening the NV A with 

adverse publicity. Members of this citizens' initiative and one of Knabe's 

superiors met with a small group of offtcers from the Center for Innere 

Fuehrung in March at Knabe's apartment. This was one of a number of 

spontaneous attempts on the part of NV A offtcers to learn how to reform their 

armed forces. Reforms were doomed to failure, however, because the leadership of the NV A did not change; it was precisely this leadership that had the 

20 
Victorson 

greatest interest in protecting the status quo for as long as possible.65 When the 

generals and senior officers were not released from service following the GDR's 

first free elections on 18 March 1 990, and the new Minister for Disarmament 

and Defense, Pastor Rainer Eppelmann, took no effective action, hopes for 

meaningful change in the armed forces ebbed.66 

From its inception, the new free German Democratic Republic was seen as 

a transition state to German unity. On 28 November 1989 Chancellor Helmut 

Kohl provided the Bundestag a ten-point program for German and European 

unity. However, even optimists thought in terms of years of slow, deliberate 

integration of the two states and that during this period a down-sized NV A would 

provide a bridge to the Warsaw Pact armies. In April 1990, Rupert Scholz 

suggested a "step-by-step" integration process in the "mid-term" through which 

the NVA first would leave the Warsaw Pact, then combine with non-NATO 

Bundeswehr units, and possibly become part of a European multi-national 

force.67 At an NVA commanders' conference in Strausberg on 2 May 1 990, 

Disarmament and Defense Minister Eppelmann said that as long as there were 

two military blocs, the NV A must continue to exist in order to avoid a "military 

vacuum" on the territory of the GDR.68 

Even as it became clear that unity was going to come more rapidly than 

originally expected, the hope remained alive within the NVA that it would 

somehow continue to exist as a separate entity, at least for a short time. As late 

as August 1 990 Minister Eppelmann was still talking about a separate army in 

the new states, even after unification.69 There is precedent in German history 

for annies becoming contingents of other armies rather than disbanding. It 

happened extensively during the wars of unification after 1866 and 187 1, and 

noble officers in the armies of the German states prior to unification often 

moved from army to army without giving up rank or privilege. This, however, 

was before the age of ideology, and thoughts of retaining the NV A or units of 

the NV A did not take into account that it had thoroughly discredited itself with 

both the political leadership in Bonn and the East German civilian population. 

The NV A had also become increasingly uncontrollable. Conscript service 

was cut from eighteen to twelve months, civilian substitute service was introduced, readiness requirements were cut from 85 percent to 50 percent, and 

soldiers took part in demonstrations and refused to carry out orders with which 

they disagreed.70 Without the authority of the state and party, officers and 

noncommissioned officers were hard put to discipline their soldiers. Citizens ' 

initiatives were organized to challenge military authority, as the concept of an 

"army in a democracy" was understood to mean a democratic army. Once it 

became obvious that the Germanys would be unified in October 1 990, and 

rumors that questioned the future of the NV A began to circulate, discipline 

21 
The Newport Papers 

became even more difficult to impose. By the time of unification, in the words 

of one fonner NV A officer, the NV A was little more than "a band of robbers." 71 

There were officers who prided themselves on having maintained some fonn 

of discipline and in handing over their units in good order to the new Bundeswehr commanders, although even they were ashamed at the indiscipline of 

many of their soldiers.

72 

The leaders of the Bundeswehr were also caught unawares by the Turning 

Point. According to Lieutenant General von Scheven, they were " ... making 

preparations for something completely different, namely improving their 

conventional defense capabilities, maintaining their peacetime strength and 

increasing their basic tenn of service from 15 to 18 months.'.

73 Although in 

mid-June Gerhard Stoltenberg, the Minister of Defense of the Federal Republic 

of Gennany, had called for "one state-one anny," the leadership was still 

thinking of Gennan unity in the long tenn and in any case had to refrain from 

fonnal planning for unity due to its diplomatic sensitivity. Then on 16 July 1 990 

Chancellor Kohl and Premier Gorbachev agreed on a fonnula which allowed a 

united Gennany to remain in NATO, reduced the Bundeswehr to 370,00 

troops, and cleared the way for almost immediate German unity and 

sovereignty.

74 In a curious parallel to the speed with which the Bundeswehr 

had had to develop in the 1 950s, cutting almost in half the six years that the 

buildup was supposed to take, the Bundeswehr in 1 990 was faced with the 

challenge of planning and beginning to execute its unprecedented mission in 

the East within less than three months.7s 

Following discusion with his chiefs of staff and other military advisors, 

Minister Stoltenberg laid down the guidelines for what was to happen after 2 

October 1990. The NV A was to cease to exist, and its soldiers would become 

for the time being soldiers of the Bundeswehr, subject to the regulations and 

federal laws under which it operated. The units of the NV A would stand down 

to be replaced by Bundeswehr units made up of a mix of old Bundeswehr and 

fonner NVA personnel. Approximately 20,00 career and long-tenn soldiers 

(i.e., officers and noncommissioned officers) of the NV A could be accepted to 

serve for two years in the Bundeswehr with the possibility of further service to 

be determined at a later time. Draftees who had been called into the NV A on 1 

September would be trained according to Bundeswehr standards. A provisional 

joint command, the Bundeswehr Command, East would initially have command and control of all anned forces in the new states and work directly for the 

Minister of Defense, thereby keeping these forces outside the NATO command 

structure, a prerequisite for troops serving in the new states until the departure 

of all Soviet forces by 1994. The commander of Bundeswehr Command, East 

would be Lieutenant General Joerg Schoenbohm.76 

22 
Victorson 

A small liaison group from the Bundeswehr took up its duties with the GDR' s 

Ministry for Disarmament and Defense on 20 September, to be followed after 

reunification by 693 Bundeswehr officers, who essentially took over command 

of NV A units down through division level. At least 30 percent of the commands 

at battalion level were to be in Western hands, including at least one company 

in each battalion. Although by this time the NV A had shrunk to approximately 

103,00 soldiers (including 32,00 officers and 20,00 noncommissioned 

officers), when one includes the key staff positions that had to be taken over by 

Bundeswehr officers from the West, there were comparatively few Bundeswehr 

officers for the number of positions to be filled. In some cases there was only 

one West German officer in a unit.77 Although additional help, especially 

noncommissioned officers, would later come from the West, the initial complement was kept small to avoid the imrression of a conquering occupation 

force dispossessing the vanquished foe.7 

Although they were volunteers, some of these officers had second thoughts 

about working with former NV A officers, and in some cases first impressions 

seemed to justify their misgivings?9 Their thoughts mirrored the internal debate 

within the armed forces, which had been going on throughout the summer, about 

the NV A and the nature of its soldiers.80 If the officers of the Bundeswehr 

thought they were going to meet automatons who had supported a communist 

system out of deep conviction and would now need to be de-programmed, they 

were mistaken. They son found that the legacy of the NV A was something else 

entirely. 

23 

The Legacy of the NV A 

B

y 3 OCTOBER the generals and admirals had already been dismissed from 

the NV A, as had been the political officers. Officers over fifty-five years 

of age had ben allowed to retire. Then, too, many officers and noncommissioned officers who had truly been convinced of the rightness of their cause and 

had no desire even to try to work with the Bundeswehr had already left as well. 

What the first cadre of Bundeswehr personnel found among the personnel and 

installations of the NY A and among the civilian population of the new German 

states was the true legacy of the National People's Army. 

The run-down barcks with twenty-man bays, furnished with cots, narrow 

lockers, and stools instead of chairs; the hoses and water buckets instead of 

showers; the unhygienic latrines and kitchens, often co-located-all were 

physical evidence of a system that treated the soldier as a cypher. The officers' 

practice of addres

ing soldiers up through senior noncommissioned ranks with 

the informal "du" was considered highly impolite in West German professional 

circles, and the hang-dog. sullen attitude of the conscripted soldiers who had 

begun their training under NY A standards testified as well to the system's lack 

of concern for personal dignity and worth.81 

The officers often lacked the basic elements of leadership expected of a 

Bundeswehr officer. In a controversial article in Truppenpraxis, the commander of one of the new home defense brigades described his subordinates 

from the NY A as ". . . soldiers, whose behavior was characterized by an 

unknown mixture of trust in authority [and a] paralyzing lack of drive •... who 

widely lacked initiative, elan and creative individuality. . . . They were indoctrinated with the deterministic Marxist philosophy and told it was science. 

This resulted in alarming educational deficits ... of former East German Army 

officers ... 82 One may argue whether Colonel Millotat should have made these 

remarks in so public a forum, but his observations coincided with the experience 

and perception of others.83 

Nor is it difficult to understand that having served in a system that did not 

reward. indeed would punish, the sort of traits Western armies look for in their 

leaders, coupled with the psychological shock of having served a failed society 
The Newport Papers 

and the need to adjust to a totally new set of rules of conduct would inhibit one's 

initiative and willingness to experiment. It must also be remembered that in the 

first months after unification, officers were waiting to see who would be 

accepted for two years of service with the Bundeswehr, and therefore, until the 

fall of 1992, officers faced the much tougher selection for career or long-term 

status. The presure not to make mistakes in both of these periods was enormous. 

Other legacies of the NV A among the soldiers were the "not my job" 

mind-set, caused by the severe compartmentalization of duties and specialties, 

a curious combination of lack of trust in the leadership, and the tendency to 

believe rumors and whatever appeared in the newspaper-arising, to some 

extent, from the absence of useful information from the chain of command 

during the waning months of the regime and previous access to only certain 

chanels of information. There was also a tendency to train to "stopwatch" 

standards: whatever could be timed was drilled, checked, and rewarded. This 

attitude toward training and training standards probably arose from a zerodefects philosophy in an army where error could be punished by the party, as 

well as by the military, and it led to outstanding performance in individual 

soldier skill training and in the ability to react to alerts already described; 

however, since the capacity to understand a commander's intent or to use 

originality in handling a mission could not be timed or checked easily and could 

lead to mistakes, these qualities were not inculcated in soldiers or leaders. 

Consequently, there is some question as to whether the NV A accomplished 

worthwhile training above the company level. 84 

The legacy of NV A among the civilian population was equally unfortunate 

and boded ill for the Bundeswehr's chances of securing support for the military 

among the citizens of the new states. Having closed themselves in their 

installations and housing areas away from the populace; having enjoyed visible 

privileges such as easier access to automobiles, televisions, and other consumer 

products; and having been perceived correctly as supporters of the SED and the 

socialist state, profesional military men had built a wall of antipathy and 

resentment between the armed forces and the civilian populace, which the 

Bundeswehr would have to break down.85 The decision to allow some officers 

and noncommissioned officers from the NV A to remain in the Bundeswehr did 

not help this proces.86 

26 
The Challenges for Innere Fuehrung 

I

N DISCUSSING THE ROLE of Innere Fuehrung in the Bundeswehr's mission 

in the new states, one must keep in mind that it addressed a number of 

audiences. It had to address those in unifonn on 3 October 1990, especially 

those in leadership roles; it had to deal with the attitudes and needs of the young 

men in the new states who would be conscripted or recruited into the Bundeswehr and those who would become its officers and noncommissioned officers; 

and it had to come to tenns with the civilian population. Innere Fuehrung was 

realized in two ways: first, through fonnal training at the Center for Innere 

Fuehrung, in the troop or branch schools, and in the field; and second, through 

the personal example provided by soldiers of the old Bundeswehr, who had 

lived with the principles of Innere Fuehrung throughout their professional lives, 

who honestly believed in them and their effectiveness in providing a compas 

for the military in a democratic society and had internalized them to such a 

degree that these principles informed their actions and attitudes. 

Fonnal classes on Innere Fuehrung began in both the East and the West prior 

to unification. Officers from the Center for Innere Fuehrung, in civilian clothes, 

went east, and officers and senior noncommissioned officers of the NV A, in 

unifonn, went west, as the attempt was made to teach at least the essentials of 

Innere Fuehrung in forty-hour courses held at all of the branch schools.87 These 

were carried on after 3 October 1990 with emphasis upon personnel in leadership positions. This was a rather chaotic time, because NV A officers were being 

given the opportunity and being encouraged to leave the service with a small 

severance payment or, if over fifty years of age, with a pension, in order to 

reduce the number who would have to be involuntarily cut at a later date. About 

60 percent of the 32,00 officers on hand on 3 October elected this option. 

Thanks to the uncertainties caused by the resignations, the schools would 

plan courses only to find that there were not enough officers left to support the 

class, or bus-loads of officers would appear for class that had not been 

scheduled. 88 The effort was made, however, because it was essential that the 

former NV A officers and noncommissioned officers who remained on active 

duty have some idea of the Bundeswehr structure, procedures, and discipline. 
The Newport Papers 

The emphasis was on their understanding that a military in a democracy did not 

mean a democratic military and that, although leadership styles were different, 

leaders still had authority. 89 

By the early spring of 1991, about 6,00 of the approximately 1 1,00 former 

NV A officers who had requested to serve a two-year probation period in the 

Bundeswehr were informed that their applications had been accepted.90 Those 

who were not accepted left the service in the following months. Those accepted 

had already experienced a reduction in rank (often as many as two pay grades) 

in order to bring them into step with the Bundeswehr's promotion system, which 

was a great deal slower than the NV A's had been. These officers could now 

request consideration for professional status in order to remain in the service 

indeftnitely. For these officers, much would depend on the single officer 

efficiency report they would receive from their commanders the following 

April, as well as on the fmdings of the independent Gauck commission, which 

was searching for evidence of Stasi collaboration. 

Officers in leadership positions and noncommissioned officers, the majority 

of whose requests for two-year service status had been accepted because of the 

shortage of noncommissioned officers in the new states, underwent "supplemental training," which consisted of courses at an officers' or noncommissioned officers' school to bring them up to the level of leadership ability 

corresponding with their ranks, courses at a branch school to become proftcient 

with the duties required by their positions, and practical experience with their 

sister units in the older states before returning for duty with their own commands. For fteld grade staff officers, however, this training consisted of a 

two-week course on Innere Fuehrung and on-the-job training.91 

A typical course would begin with an introduction to the principles of Innere 

Fuehrung, then concentrate on leadership for the next two days. Subjects 

covered under the heading of leadership included leading through mission-type 

orders and by example, providing for the welfare of the soldier, responsibility 

for subordinates, the tension between individual freedom and duty accomplishment, group dynamics, views of oneself and of others, and interpersonal 

communication. These officers were made familiar with their legal rights and 

duties as soldiers through clases covering the constitutional basis for the 

Bundeswehr, legal protections for the soldier (to include the parliamentary 

ombudsman and complaint procedures), the legal basis for giving orders and 

what constitutes a legal order, and the responsibilities of a superior officer. 

Finally, they learned the principles of political training in the Bundeswehr and 

about the resource of counseling and care, which they had not had available to 

them in the NV A. Much of this was done through practical exercises that forced 

the officers to take positions, think about them, and defend them.92 

28 
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In the new states, as time was found for political training in the units, it 

consisted largely of instruction on how to get along and survive in the chaos of 

democracy and capitalism. Here, former NV A company commanders were at 

a disadvantage, because they knew no more about their new society than their 

soldiers and had the added disadvantage of continually having to defend their 

past service. Even after attending leadership and Innere Fuehrung courses, 

officers and noncommissioned officers had difficulty understanding the principles and explaining them to others.93 An after-action report for one of these 

courses stated that the participants only half-heartedly adopted the principles 

and aims of Innere Fuehrung and that their acceptance was based on the 

pragmatic formula: "If it helps me, it's all-right.,,94 In any case, young soldiers 

from old and new states did not like to serve under officers and noncommissioned officers of the old NV A. 

Even if some soldiers were having trouble grasping the formal lessons on 

Innere Fuehrung, and even before things settled down enough in the units to 

conduct political training, these soldiers were witnessing the principles of 

Innere Fuehrung being lived by the soldiers who came from the old states. The 

very decision to send so few soldiers from the West was based on a desire not 

to insult the dignity and feelings of the officers and men of the old NVA any 

more than was necessary, and this desire was rooted in the central principle of 

Innere Fuehrung. The same was true of the decision of the Commander, 

Bundeswehr Command, East, concerning the uniform. There were enough 

fatigue uniforms to clothe everyone in his command, but not enough dress 

uniforms. Lieutenant General Schoenbohm, with permission of the Minister of 

Defense, ordered that all soldiers in the Bundeswehr East wear fatigues, to 

include himself and his staff officers. From the very beginning, visibly at least, 

there was to be no difference between soldiers of the old NV A and the old 

Bundeswehr; there were to be no second-clas soldiers.95 

NV A soldiers were repeatedly surprised by the openness and frankness of 

the Bundeswehr soldiers. For an army who had conducted its business behind 

closed doors and with highly formalized and rigid speech patterns, and whose 

officers were inaccessible to the enlisted men, the informality and accessibility 

of officers like Hans-Peter von Kirchbach and the commander of Bundeswehr 

East himself, Lieutenant General Joerg Schoenbohm, came as a pleasant 

surprise. This kind of working environment was encouraged within the Bundeswehr and was repeated often, at many levels. Most Bundeswehr commanders welcome questions from subordinates; if they have information, they 

pass it on; if they do not, they say so, and soldiers usually have no fear of asking 

tough questions or requesting assistance. This openness was a key asset for 

Bundeswehr soldiers in dealing with their counterparts from the East.96 

29 
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The openness extended to the public sphere and to people who had been 

enemies of the military during their entire professional lives. Bundeswehr 

commanders opened the installations for visits of civilians, and they visited 

mayors, pastors, priests, school principals, and other prominent citizens of the 

towns in an attempt to establish the sort of contact and support they enjoyed, at 

least to some extent, in the old states. They had public swearing-in ceremonies 

for the new conscripts and recruits and invited their families and the public. 

One local commander worked with his local chamber of commerce to set up 

retraining activities for his soldiers and find them jobs in the civilian economy 

as they left the military.

97 

As money began to flow in to upgrade barracks and other facilities, contracts 

went to local finns, providing jobs in the local economies. Although not usually 

considered part of the Bundeswehr's purview, where NVA installations had 

provided services to communities, that agreement continued for the time being. 

This included providing heat to homes from central boilers on the installation, 

running athletic halls and swimming pols, and even stationing units in areas 

where the economy had been dependent on the NY A units previously stationed 

there, whether or not there was an operational need to do 50.98 

This public relations work was generally well received. The swearing-in 

ceremonies were well attended, school children visited open houses hosted by 

the soldiers, and the Catholic church in the new states contracted to provide a 

ministry for soldiers in the installations, which is how the Bundeswehr has 

traditionally managed such care, rather than having a military chaplains' corps. 

The Protestant Church, however, has yet to agree to provide fonnal, pastoral 

support in the installations. Despite repeated attempts by local commanders as 

well as the Commander, Bundeswehr, East to bring the pastors into the military 

community, they have remained at ann's length. This attitude is not difficult to 

understand, since the Protestant clergy were among the leaders of the opposition 

to the GDR throughout its existence. As one pastor told General Schoenbohm, 

"You know, I have spent my entire professional life fighting the state; my family 

had to pay bitterly for this ... and now all of a sudden I should work for a state, 

that I don't even know ... you must understand, we need time.,,99 This is an 

unfortunate, if understandable, attitude, and one can only hope that the clergy 's 

opinion of the military will change through experience with the Bundeswehr, 

and that this will be the case as well with the rest of the popUlation in the new 

states.loo 

As far as draftees were concerned, little could be done with soldiers conscripted in January and May of 1990, but those conscripted by the GDR in 

September were to receive basic training to Bundeswehr standard. It was 

impossible for officers and noncommissioned officers of the old NY A to carry 

30 
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out this training effectively, so the units relied heavily on their sister units in 

the West for teams of trainers, especially noncommissioned officers, to support 

this training. The first soldiers conscripted by the Bundeswehr in the East, called 

up in January 1 991, all received their training in the West, thus raising the 

training standard and giving them a chance to meet soldiers in the old states. 

This changed rapidly so that while in the first quarter of 1991, 75 percent of the 

soldiers from the new states were trained in the West, by the third quarter the 

number was down to 49 percent and dropping, as training standards rose and 

more equipment became available for training in the East. 101 

By mid- 1992 a mixed training unit of 2 18 soldiers, 60 percent from the new 

states, 40 percent from the old, was fonned at an old NY A air force installation 

at Dietersdorf in Saxony-Anhalt. The basic and advanced individual training 

provided was considered successful, especially in terms of the ties of comradeship built among the young soldiers. 

\02 Combining Eastern and Western 

soldiers in this one training unit may have been done because of a concern about 

the Bundeswehr in the East's becoming a somewhat separate and second-class 

army in an armed force in which draftees would usually serve near home and 

have no opportunity to meet soldiers from somewhere else. Time will tell 

whether this was no more than just an experiment or is an answer to such a 

problem, but once the leadership personnel and equipment were available to 

the Bundeswehr in the new states, the training standards there rose quickly, and 

the conscript soldiers had experiences comparable to those of the soldiers in the 

West, such as training at the center at Shilo, Canada. 

For the officers of the old NY A, 1 992 was a difficult year. The two-year 

probation period would come to an end, and for those who wished to stay, the 

officer efficiency report they would receive from their commanders, any 

academic reports they received from Bundeswehr schools attended, and finally 

the decision of an independent, citizens' screening board would be key to their 

future careers. Commanders must have had a difficult time making recommendations. The officers were often away from the unit at training courses or in 

training with the sister units in the West; there were often two or three officers 

in one duty position, which made it difficult to know what they could do on 

their own and which also led to a great deal of one-upmanship among the 

officers being rated; and it was impossible to detennine who was really trying 

to come to terms with the new circumstances and what it meant to lead in an 

army in a democracy, and who was merely being opportunistic. Eventually, 

approximately 3,00

 officers, usually younger, lower-ranking officers, were 

selected for career or long-term (six to twelve years) service. When one 

considers that 32,00 officers had still been serving with the NY A on 3 October 

1990, this action amounted to a purge of the NY A officer corps. 103 That any 

31 
The Newport Papers 

officers were accepted, given the problems of downsizing the forces and the 

political baggage these officers brought with them, is a credit to the leadership 

of the Bundeswehr and its belief in the effectiveness of Innere Fuehrung in 

attacking the problematic legacy of the GDR and the NV A. 

Whether this faith is justified may still be an open question. Certainly Innere 

Fuehrung had special strengths which favored its use as a tool in this mission. 

First and foremost it attacked the broken relationship between leader and led in 

the NV A, which reflected broken human relations in the society of the GDR as 

a whole. By treating the soldier as an individual with dignity and rights as well 

as responsibilities, Innere Fuehrung forced officers and noncommissioned 

officers to try to understand and empathize with their troops. That difficulty in 

dealing with people, along with an understandable problem of grasping the 

soldier's responsibilities vis-a-vis a democratic state, were the two biggest 

hurdles the remnant of the NV A in the Bundeswehr had to overcome, and the 

concepts of Innere Fuehrung dealt specifically with them. 104 

Coming to grips with the principles of Innere Fuehrung also forced those 

who remained to confront their past and their role in supporting the SED regime. 

In doing this, they did not always receive the support they should have expected 

from the soldiers of the old Bundeswehr, many of whom were very judgmental 

of their Eastern counterparts and borish in dealing with them. But the overall 

extent of the Westerners' openness and willingness to work together usually 

became evident to the more perceptive officers of the old NV A when they 

considered what they would have done had history taken a different turn and 

the NV A had taken over the Bundeswehr105 

Innere Fuehrung's greatest strength may well be that it has become a central 

tenet of the Bundeswehr's world view and permeates so many aspects of its 

training and activities. Thus, if the clases were boring or not understood, one 

could still come to an understanding-through the actions of soldiers of the old 

Bundeswehr-of what it meant to serve in an army in a democracy. There were 

many examples of mere time-serving and arrogance among the officers and 

noncommissioned officers of the Bundeswehr who served in the new states, 

and this was certainly true when more than just volunteers were required, but 

by and large the principles of Innere Fuehrung were probably taught more 

effectively by example than through clasroom instruction. 

The Bundeswehr still faces problems in the new states, some that concern 

the tenets of Innere Fuehrung and some that threaten the very acceptance of 

these tenets by soldiers in the East, whether they are from the old NV A or are 

new conscripts or recruits. From its very inception in the 1950s, a central tenet 

of Innere Fuehrung has been that the only acceptable traditions for the Bundeswehr are those that support the ideals of an army in a democracy and that 

32 
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even soldierly virtues of bravery and loyalty have little meaning separate from 

the aims for which soldiers fight. Thus, in his letter of instruction of 24 

September 1990 concerning the establishment of unified Gennan anned forces, 

the Chief of Staff of the Bundeswehr wrote that as the NV A had been, until 9 

November 1 989, an "Any of the Party and instrument of a dictatorship," it 

would cease to exist and ... "Symbols, unifonns, and traditions of the NV A 

will not be transferred" to the Bundeswehr. 106 

The problem, as the Bundeswehr found in relation to the Reichswehr and 

Wehnacht, is that traditions do not die that easily; many who served in the 

NV A, whether they are still in the Bundeswehr or are now in the civilian world, 

feel that they served honorably in defense of their land and had certain virtues 

which it would behoove the Bundeswehr to acknowledge. They have disdain 

for what they perceive to be the Bundeswehr's nine-to-five attitude toward duty, 

and indeed, during the logistical support for the U.S. deployment to Saudi 

Arabia, young fonner NV A officers often demonstrated greater willingnes to 

endure long hours and hardship than did some officers of the old Bundeswehr.10

7 This sort of professionalism may be a quality that an an

y like the 

Bundeswehr, which has been criticized for being too "occupational" in its 

outlook and too closely tied to civilian society, should not dismis out of hand. 

Perhaps the right attitude here is General von Kirchbach's view that while 

the NV A's forty-year existence does not constitute tradition, it is part of Gennan 

history and should not be ignored. Indeed, as the experience of the GDR proved, 

to ignore portions of history merely because they are uncomfortable or do not 

fit into a preconceived story is very dangerous. As von Kirchbach notes, the 

NV A was a very professional and competent anny, at least in some areas, with 

experience in asistance to the civilian sector that included industrial production 

in the last years of the GDR, and these facts should be recognized as positive 

achievements in Gennan military history .

10

8 

In recognizing these positive aspects, however, the Bundeswehr must steer 

clear of encouraging a tendency for NV A veterans to deny complicity in the 

SED regime. Some of them are attempting to rationalize their previous actions 

in the light of infonnation now available to them. Thus, after an initial shock 

that their high readiness rate seemed to be for nothing, some veterans are now 

arguing that since the NV A was esentially a defensive anny, it had to remain 

constantly on guard against a Bundeswehr which could afford to take weekends 

and holidays off because, as the aggresor, it could pick the time and place of 

its attack.1OO This sort of argument and other myths, including those concerning 

the reasons for the NV A' s lack of action during the Turning Point, must be met 

with the hard truth both within the anned forces and in the public. This complex 

of problems, however, falls well within the competencies Innere Fuehrung has 

33 
The Newport Papers 

encouraged in the anned forces, and questions of denial and tradition have been 

previously dealt with in the Bundeswehr's short history. More intractable, 

because not amenable to solution by the military alone, is the problem of 

second-clas citizenship and the reSUlting danger of an anny within an an

y. 

Second-class citizenship, the feeling that one is being treated shabbily in 

one's own country, has been prevalent throughout the new states. Once the 

euphoria induced by unification wore off, East Gennans began to feel they were 

being annexed by the West and that their worth as people was being attacked. 

High unemployment rates and the failure of Bonn to deliver on what had semed 

to be a promise of instant prosperity, along with the arrogance and lack of 

empathy of many West Gennans, including members of the Bundeswehr, have 

caused some East Gennans to overlook the progres that is being made and to 

long for a security lost with the fall of the GDR. Within the Bundeswehr, these 

feelings were aggravated by a differential in pay between Bundeswehr East and 

West, and by what was perceived to be a por pension plan for NVA retirees. 

The pay for conscripts became unifonn in July 199 1 and is becoming equitable 

for the officers and noncommissioned officers. However, pay, por facilities, 

and career uncertainties led to many complaints to the parliamentary ombudsman, l

l

O and continued perceived inequities could play into the hands of 

NV A veterans who have their own agendas. 

Many of these veterans are members of the Bundeswehr professional association, the Association of the Gennan Anned Forces (Verband der 

Deutschen Bundeswehr), based on their short service as Bundeswehr soldiers 

in the months following unification. NV A officers who have left the service are 

still living in housing areas with active-duty fonner NV A officers, because there 

is nowhere else for them to go. Retired senior NV A officers are still in contact 

with their past subordinates, and very senior officers (i.e., generals and admirals) are essentially unreconstructed in their attitudes. III Although powerless 

now and probably more interested in pay and pension issues than anything else, 

they could still become a force to be reckoned with should the Bundeswehr in 

the new states become ingrown and provincial. 

In his present position as Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel of the Army, 

Brigadier General von Kirchbach does not believe this will happen to the new 

states. In April 1993, the first two hundred officers from the new states were 

transferred to duty in the old states, and nonnal rotations between old and new 

states will prevent the Bundeswehr in the East from becoming an anny within 

an anny. Newly commissioned officers from the new states attended basic 

courses in the West in 1993, as well, and in 1994 Eastern officers began 

attending staff officer courses. I

l2 There are still problems with housing for 

officers going in both directions: in the West housing is difficult to fmd and it 

34 
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is expensive; in the East it is substandard or non-existent. The problem, 

however, may not be with the officers but with the noncommissioned officers 

who do not move very much from duty station to duty station in the Bundeswehr, and the conscripts, who generally serve close to home. The distinct 

possibility that the Bundeswehr may become a volunteer army in the near future 

could obviate the problem, if volunteers are forced to move, it could, however, 

make the problem worse if the present policy of seldom moving noncommissioned officers and soldiers continues, because as volunteers, soldiers will be 

serving longer terms than would conscripts and might not move at all during 

their enlistments. 1 13 

Innere Fuehrung does not directly address economic difficulties and feelings 

of second-class citizenship, or the danger that part of a nation, and thus part of 

its armed forces, could become a backwater ripe for reactionary propaganda. 

In fact, Baudissin pointed out under similar circumstances in 1956 that soldiers 

who have problems with pay, facilities, and benefits are going to have difficulty 

dealing with the higher concepts of Innere Fuehrung. 1 14 The Bundeswehr 

leadership, however, found imaginative solutions to at least some of these 

problems. Soldiers from the new states who were sent on the United Nations 

mission to Cambodia, for example, were brought to the old states en route to 

Cambodia, making them eligible for comparable pay because soldiers from the 

East, when stationed in the old states, receive the same pay as their Western 

counterparts. There is some evidence of a sort of unofficial affirmative action 

program for soldiers from the new states, and if anything, these soldiers may 

be given the benefit of the doubt to ensure success in their new careers. lIS That 

the building of the Bundeswehr in the new states is regarded as a great peacetime 

challenge, and that it will be career-enhancing for a Western officer who 

serves1 16 in the East, should continue to attract officers of high quality from the 

old states to the new. 

35 

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T

HE PROBLEMS JUST OUTLINED pale in comparison to the civil-military 

challenges in countries to the east of Gennany. The countries of the 

Warsaw Pact, including those in Central and Eastern Europe and of the old 

Soviet Union, have all approached the Bundeswehr for infonnation about 

civil-military relations in a democracy. Over two hundred officers from the old 

Warsaw Pact countries have already attended courses at the Center for Innere 

Fuehrung in Koblenz, and the Center has a two-year memoranda of agreement 

with the defense establishments of these countries to provide a variety of 

courses, seminars, and familiarization visits on the theme of "The Soldier and 

the Anned Forces in and for Democracy." These countries have approached 

the Bundeswehr because of its proximity and, in the case of countries like 

Hungary, historical ties. The Bundeswehr is also a conscript anny like theirs 

and has had immediate experience in dealing with a socialist anny, the NV A, 

with similar organization, ethos, and problems. 

Yet another reason given for interest in the Bundeswehr and Innere Fuehrung is the belief that the Bundeswehr is an example, perhaps the only example, 

of an anny successfully growing out of totalitarianism and into the service of 

a democratic society. This is not true, however, because as we have seen, the 

Bundeswehr came into existence a decade after the fall of the Third Reich, and 

even so, its birth as an anny in a democracy was difficult enough. Whether the 

anned forces of the old Warsaw Pact can make the transition, especially facing 

problems such as the breakup of their countries and the need for soldiers to 

decide which state they will serve, is yet to be seen. I I? Given the failure of the 

NV A to refonn itself with its old leadership still in place, the prospects are 

doubtful. Perhaps the best one can hope for is that the need to reduce radically 

their militaries for budgetary reasons will act to some extent as a purge of the 

did guard in these countries. 

The United States is also assisting in the endeavor to establish proper 

civil-military relations in these countries, and an understanding of Innere 

Fuehrung in addition to our own traditions of civilian supremacy could only 

enhance these efforts. Moreover, the anned forces of the United States should 
The Newport Papers 

not be so smug as to believe they have nothing to learn in this area. A recent 

award-wing article in Parameters indicated that perhaps in light of the armed 

forces' changing relationship to civilian authority and growing isolation from 

the mainstream of American society, greater emphasis should be placed on the 

sort of training Innere Fuehrung has always stressed in the Bundeswehr. 1 1 8 

The principles of Innere Fuehrung were born in a difficult time, proved 

themselves in the old Bundeswehr against hard challenges in every decade 

leading to unification, and, if not the complete answer to the needs of the 

Bundeswehr in the new states, they have certainly provided a compass for the 

first soldiers who went East after 2 October 1 990. It has also been a basis upon 

which soldiers from the new states, whether former NV A or new recruits, can 

build their understanding of the meaning of their service and their relation to 

their society. Besides the challenges it now faces in the new states, the 

Bundeswehr and its guiding principles are confronted by major new challenges. 

With the waning of the Cold War and the inception of a dangerous and 

unknown new world, the Bundeswehr faces the challenge of preparing itself 

for missions outside the traditional framework of NATO. Whether the principles 

of Innere Fuehrung can be translated to cover the exigencies of out-of-sector 

missions may be open to debate, but the underlying principle that the soldier is 

a thinking individual who must understand the "why" even more than the "how" 

of what is asked of him is leading to discusion within the Bundeswehr, as well 

as the public, of what should in fact be asked of him. In the public this is being 

reflected in a record number of conscientious objectors, which peaked during 

the Gulf War. This negative response among young Germans called into 

question the basis for the Bundeswehr's personnel planning, even before it 

became evident that the armed forces will sink well below the ceiling of 370,00 

troops agreed upon between Chancellor Kohl and Premier Gorbachev, raising 

the spectre of a volunteer force. 1 19 

If the Bundeswehr does become a volunteer army, the concepts of Innere 

Fuehrung will more than ever have to tie the soldier to his society, because the 

link of universal military service, which bound the soldier and civil society 

together, will have ben broken. The idea of universal service, dating back to 

the Prussian reformers of the Wars of Liberation, according to which all 

able-bodied male citizens served their nation through a term in the military, has 

become more of a myth in recent years, as fewer soldiers have ben needed to 

fill the ranks, but it remains an important myth in a society seeking to avoid the 

creation of a military caste. Whether soldiers are recruited or conscripted, if the 

leadership of the Bundeswehr is to retain the fragile support of the German 

people, it will have to explain clearly and compellingly the need for a military 

to protect the interests of a sovereign state, even when those interests lie beyond 

38 
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its borders. If the Bundeswehr can meet these challenges, it will in no small part 

be due to the concepts of an army in a democracy enunciated in the principles 

of Innere Fuehrung and used so effectively in its mission in the East. 

39 

Notes 

1. Werner von Scheven, "The Merger of Two Formerly Hostile German Annies," 

A UHenpolitik, vol. 43, no. 2, 2nd Quarter, 1 992, p. 1 70. 

2. Donald Abenheim, Reforging the Iron CroH: The Search Jor Tradition in the West Gennan 

A nned Forces (New Jersey: Princeton Univ. Press, 1 988), p. 45. 

3. Potsdam Agreement, 2 August 1 945, quoted in Ralf Zoll, "The German Armed 

Forces," in The Political Education oj Soldiers, eds. Morris Janowitz and Stephen D. Wesbrook 

(Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1 983) , p. 213. 

4. Quoted by Gordon A. Craig in his introduction to Abenheim, p. xvi. For a modern 

refrain of this sentiment, see the remarks of an unidentified foreign ministry official 

concerning the present debate within Germany over out-of-area operations for the Bundeswehr: "Our national values were torn apart by the Nazis, and we have truly taken our 

post-war pacifism to heart. Moving away from that is and should be a painful process." 

Quoted in Marc Fisher, "Germans in Somalia: Combat Role Debated," The Washington Post, 

23 April 1 993, p. A18. 

5. Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics oj CivilMilitary Relations (Cambridge: Bellamy Press, 1 957), p. 2. 

6. In a survey conducted in 1 950, 70 percent of the male students at the University of 

Bonn said they would not serve in the military. In 1 955, the year in which the first soldiers 

were sworn into the Bundeswehr, 45 percent of the West German public polled in an opinion 

survey were opposed to having an army. This number rose to 71 percent among people who 

identified themselves with the Social Democratic Party. Wayne C. Thompson and Marc D. 

Peltier, "The Education of Military Officers in the Federal Republic of Germany, " A nned 

Forces and Society, vol. 16, no. 4, Summer 1 990, p. 589. 

7. Abenheim, chapters 2-4, pp. 47 ff. 

8. Article 1 (1), Basic LAw Jor the Federal Republic oj Gennany (Wolfenbuettel: 

Roco-Druck, GmbH, 1 990), p. 8. 

9. Donald Abenheim points out that this tradition of abuse died hard. In 1 956 fifteen 

paratroopers were kiled in needlessly harsh training in Bavaria, and in 1 963 a recruit was 

kiled near Stuttgart under a training regimen of forced marches and physical abuse. 

Abenheim, pp. 1 72-4, 202-3. 

1 0. Quoted in Abenheim, p. 82. 

11. Paragraph 7, "Gesetz ueber die Rechtsstellung der Soldaten (Soldatengesetz) " in 

Politische Bi/dung und Bundeswehr: Beitraege einer Fachtagung, eds. Hannelore Kaeber and 

Bernard Tripp (Bonn: Bundeszentrale fuer politische Bildung, 1 984), p. 261 . 

12. Paragraph 8, "Soldatengesetz," p. 261. 

13. Paragraph 11, " Soldatengesetz, ' p. 261 . 

14. Quoted in Huntington, p. 1 23. 

15. Huntington, p. 99. 

16. There have been two decrees to oucline what constitute acceptable traditions within 

the armed forces. One was promulgated in 1 965 and one in 1 982; both drew a great deal of 

criticism from within the military, and in 1 983 a White Paper was published preparatory to 

the promulgation of yet a third. This one has yet to appear. Abenheim, pp. 208-10, 281-6. 

17. "Approval of German membership in NATO has increased rather consistently, 

reaching peak, and not minimum, values in the 1 980s. In fact, support for NATO 

membership in the 1 950s and 1 960s usually was even lower than in the 1 970s, so that there 

has been a continuous upward trend for about three decades." Hans Rattinger, " Change 

versus Continuity in West German Public Attitudes on National Security and Nuclear 

Weapons in the Early 1 980's," Public Opinion Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 4, Winter 1 987, p. 500. 

See also Figure 3, p. 502. 

18. See for instance General Heinz Karst comments in Klaus Hornung, " Streitkraefte 

in Demokratien: zum Verhaeltnis von Militaer und Politik," in Kaeber a nd Tripp, pp. 3� 1. 

See also Hornung's own comments, pp. 29-30. 

19. Harry Summers, "Humanitarian Mission Could Signal Collapse of Fighting Spirit," 

A nny Times, 14 December 1 992, p. 35. 
The Newport Papers 

20. Bernhard Fleckenstein, " Federal Republic of Germany," in Charles C. Moskos and 

Frank R. Wood, The Military-

More ThanJus t aJob? (Washington, D.C.: Pergamon-Brassey, 

1 988), pp. 1 77-90. 

21 . Thompson and Peltier, p. 598. 

22. Fleckenstein, p. 1 88. 

23. Thompson and Peltier, pp. 596-7 . 

24. Zoll, pp. 221-2, 227. 

25. Discussion with Colonel Rieck, Director, Division 2, Center for Innere Fuehrung, 

Koblenz, 19 January 1 993. Colonel Rieck was Deputy Commander, 42d Home Defense 

Brigade, headquartered in Potsdam, from January 1991 to October 1 992. The 42d was 

formed from the remnants of the NV A's 1st Motorized Rifle Division, whose mission in 

wartime had been to cut off the western approaches to Berlin. 

26. Siegfried Grimm, . . . der Bundes republik treu zu dienen: Die geistige Ruestung der 

Bundeswehr (Duesseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1 970), pp. 1 20--5 . 

27. Discussion with Colonel Dieter Francke, Director, Division 3, Center for Innere 

Fuehrung, Koblenz, 1 8-1 9 January 1 993. Colonel Francke, who leads the Center's division 

responsible for political education, believes this to be the case. 

28. Articles 45b, 87a & b, 96(2), & 1 1 5a & b, Basic LAw for the Federal Republic ofGennany. 

29. Abenheim cites a number of examples of actions and words of military and political 

leaders raising fears of the military's falling back into the old ways. One of the more famous 

instances was the comment of the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army, Major General Hans 

Hellmuth Grashey, in March 1 969 to the effect that Innere Fuehrung had only been a "mask" 

to sell the military to the leadership of the Social Democratic Party and Protestant church. 

(Abenheim, pp. 50, 242) . See also the 1 964 comments of Parliamentary Ombudsman 

Hellmuth Heye: "The trend towards a state within a state is unmistakable ." (Quoted in 

Abenheim, p. 203). More recently Lieutenant General Werner von Scheven's official 

condemnation of an innocuous exhibition about the pacifist author Kurt Tucholsky in 

Rheinsberg, Brandenburg, as a "relic of the anti-capitalist battle" opened the Commander 

of the Corps and Territorial Command, East (the army command in the new states) to 

criticism that he is trampling on civil rights. ("Zensor mit drei Stemen," Der Spiegel, vol. 46, 

issue 42, 12 October 1 992, p. 1 50.) The Spiegel article about this incident is a good example 

of how the German press deals with these kinds of stories: the general is referred to as 

"aristocratic," and the article mentions that he was formerly responsible for Innere Fuehrung 

training in the West. See also, the Spiegel's reaction to proposals to set up a joint command 

structure as "The Megalomania of the Generals" (Groessenwahn der Generaele) , Der Spiegel, 

vol. 46, issue 15, 6 April 1 992, pp. 1 8-2 1 . 

30. Dietmar Schoessler, "Phasen der NVA-Geschichte," in Erbe NVA-Eindruecke 

aus ihrer Geschichte und den Tagen der Wende, eds. Volker Koop and Dietmar Schoessler 

(Waldbroel: Akademie der B undeswehr fuer I nformation und Kommunikation, 1 992), pp. 

259-4. The standard work in English about the history and organization of the NV A has 

been Thomas M. Forster, The East Gennan Anny: The Second Power in the Warsaw Pact 

(London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1 980). Portions of the book are now dated by 

infonnation available following union, but the leadership of the NV A itself considered 

Forester to be largely correct. See Manfred Backerra, ed., NVA-Ein Rueckblick foer die 

ZukunJt: Zeitzeugen bench ten ueber ein Stueck deutscher Militaergeschichte (Cologne : Markus 

Verlag, 1 992), p. 17. 

31. Forster, p. 51. 

32. Ibid. 

33. Forster, pp. 236-7; Abenheim, p. 1 53. See also Wilfried Hanisch, "In der Tradition 

von Muentzer, Scharnhorst, Engels und Thalmann?" in Backerra, pp. 255-68. 

34. Peter Lange, "Ab Oktober wird es keine NV A mehr geben," Truppenpraxis, no. 5, 

September-October 1 990, p. 436. 

35. For one example among many, see Joerg Schoenbohm, Zwei Anneen und ein 

Vaterland: Das Ende der Nationalen Volksannee (Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1 992), pp. 87-8. 

36. Hans Peter von Kirchbach, Manfred Meyers, and Victor Vogt, Abenteuer Einheit: 

Zum A uJbau der Bundeswehr in den Neuen LAendem (Frankfurt am Main: Report Verlag, 1 992), 

p. 73. 

37. Quoted in Forster, p. 276. 

42 
Victorson 

38. For examples of this sort of material, see Schoenbohm, p. 79; Dietrich W. 

Streitparth, "Das E thos der B undeswehr wird ve rletzt," Frankfurter A llgemeine Zeitung, 

17 August 1 990; and Joachim Nawrocki, "Jeder Tatbestand hat ein Gesicht," Das Parlament, 

11 September 1 992. 

39. Koop and Schoessler, pp. 20-4. Also, discussion with Lieutenant Colonel Bernhard 

Ickenroth, Center for Innere Fuehrurlg, Koblenz, 19 January 1 993. LTC Ickenroth had the 

duty of closing down the NV A's school for political officers, the Wilhelm Pieck Institute, 

Berlin. The ins titute had both a Stresskabinett and a Feindbildkabinett. 

40. This argument was advanced to me by Mr. FrithjofKnabe in a discussion in Leipzig, 

21 January 1 993. Mr. Knabe was formerly a political officer on the staff of the NV A's Military 

District III with headquarters in Leipzig, whose major units were two motorized infantry 

and one armored division in the southern part of the GDR (Forester, p. 116). 

41. Guenther Poeschel, "Seefahrt macht frei! Leider nicht immer .... : Ueber die 

Volksmarine der NVA," in B ackerra, pp. 1 61-2. 

42. Von Scheven, p. 165. 

43. The 98 percent figure is from Klaus-Juergen Engelien and Hans-Joachim Reeb, 

"Wer bist D u-Kamerad, " Truppenpraxis, no. 6, November-December 1 990, p. 65 1. A 

lower Party membership rate of 96 percent for officers is provided by Ruediger Volk and 

Torsten Squarr, "Zum Inneren Zustand der NV A," in Ein Staat-Eine A nnee: Von der NVA 

zur Bundeswehr, ed. Dieter Farwick (Frankfurt am Main: Report Verlag, 1 992), p. 236. 

According to the authors the tact that 100 percent of the officers were not party members 

may have been due to officers' waiting for membership-the alibi function of some to show 

one did not have to be a member of the party to be an officer, or the desire to be able to 

show an increase of members in later years. Volk and Squarr's total officer strength includes 

" Faehnriche," a sort of ensign rank which does not have an equivalent in Western armed 

forces and which draws its population from the noncommissioned officers. The comparatively low percentage of noncommissioned officers reflects their unimportance in the NV A 

leadership structure. Noncommissioned officers in the NV A were technicians and specialists , 

not the leaders found in Western armies. Only about 11 percent of the enlisted soldiers were 

party members. These percentages are also from Volk and Squarr. 

44. Koop and Schoessler, pp. 69-72. 

45 . Herbert Koenig, "Bericht aus einer anderen Welt, " Truppenpraxis, No. 3 , May-June 

1 992, pp. 235-6. 

46. See F orester, p. 165 for a diagram of the party structure in the military and 

pp. 1 67-70 for a discussion of the SED's and Free German Youth Association's activities . 

47 . See, for instance, Colonel Karl-Heinz Marschner's reminisces in Farwick, pp. 206 ff. 

48. Koenig, p. 235. 

49. A company with at least one hundred soldiers would have one political officer; at 

battalion level there were two; at the regiment there were four to six; and at division level 

there were fourteen to sixteen. At still higher headquarters there would be stafiS of forty-five 

to fifty officers, and in the Main Political Administration of the Ministry of National Defense, 

the table of organization called for ten generals, eighty-eight colonels, and seventy-one other 

officers, along with one hundred twenty enlisted and civilian workers . There were also many 

political officers who were involved in research, education, and editing a nd publishing the 

various publications dealing with political training, and assigned to cultural institutions, 

including some outside the armed forces. Kurt Held, Heinz Friedrich, and Dagmar Pietsch, 

" Politische Bi/dung ufJd Erziehung in der Nationalen Volksannee, " in Backerra, p. 209. 

50. Discussions with Francke, Knabe, and Lieutenant Colonel Klaus-J uergen E ngelien, 

Executive Officer, Division 3, Center for Innere Fuehrung. 

51. For an expression of the former position, see the views of former NV A officers in 

Engelien and Reeb, p. 65 1. Mr. Knabe, having been a political officer, argues of course, for 

the latter view and believes he himself was co-opted into the ranks of the political officers 

for having asked some difficult questions. LTC E ngelien's correspondence file for the period 

between the fall of the Wall and the unification of the Germanys contains numerous letters 

from political officers seeking assistance in preparing training for armed services in a 

democracy. See also, Held, Friedrich, and Pietsch in B ackerra, p. 215. 

52. Discussion with B rigadier General Hans Peter von Kirchbach, FueH I, 1, Bm Vg, 

Bonn, 1 9 January 1 993. 

43 
The Newport Papers 

53. Typical

y, the regimental commander had from 80,000 to 250,00 marks to give 

to his troops as bonuses for outstanding duty performance, to include political activities. 

Awards could be cash or consumer products not normally available on the civilian market, 

like power tools or coffee services, and they could be given more than once a year. In 

twenty-six years of service, one officer received fifty-three such awards, another received 

ninety-three awards in thirty-one years of service, and a third received one hundred fourteen 

awards and bonuses in thirty-four years of service. Schoenbohm, p. 1 30. 

54. Guenter von Steinaecker, Studie zum Thema: Nationale Volharmee und Wanchauer 

Pakt in der schrijtlichen und gegenstaendlichen historischen Dantellung und ihre Bedeutungfuer die 

Traditionspjlege det' Bundeswehr (Strausberg: Bundeswehrkommando Ost, 21 February 1991). 

This is an internal Bundeswehr study conducted by Brigadier General Doctor von Steinaecker, with an interesting addendum by his wife concerning her impressions of life in the NV A 

from conversations with the wives of former-NV A officers. See this addendum, p. 2. On 

the subject of pay, for instance, an average salary for a lieutenant colonel before bonuses and 

awards were added was about 1 ,800 marks per month. Someone in a comparable civilian 

position would have received approximately 900 marks. 

55. LTC Engelien tells the story of an NV A officer acquaintance who religiously 

followed the ban but was contacted by his children's teacher who indicated that they must 

be watching Western television because they talked about the programs at school. He found 

they were watching television at a neighbor's apartment and had to explain to them why it 

was important that they not watch. Such discoveries did not always happen accidentally. In 

some kindergartens children were shown postcards of popular Western cartoon characters 

to see who could recognize them and thus indicate that they were watching Western 

programs at home. See "Die Armee die dabeistand," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, no. 263, 

10 November 1 990. Personal security measures for watching Western TV in housing areas 

monitored by State Security and political officers, according to former-NV A Colonel 

Hans-Werner Weber, included always turning off the television before answering the 

doorbell and, when turning the television off, moving the dial to a GDR channel. See 

Backerra, p. 51. 

These stories illustrate the scrutiny one came under in all areas of life and the need, as 

Mr. Knabe puts it, to wear two faces in the GDR: a private one in the family and around 

only the most trusted friends, and a public one, which conformed to what society expected 

of one. This ability has troubling aspects for judging the sincerity of former NV A officers' 

conversion to the principles of Innere Fuehrung. 

56. Brigadier General von Kirchbach indicated that up to 20 percent of these officers 

might have to be released from service because of the Gauck commission findings. Some 

branches, like signal, had appreciably more Stasi informers than others. Al officers were 

required to cooperate with the Stasi. The ones who are being released from service are those 

who signed agreements to be informers. 

57. Discussion with Lieutenant Colonel Engelien. 

58. The high readiness rate and its effect on the morale of soldiers and officers is 

mentioned in most of the literature on the NV A and comes up in practicaly all discussions 

about it. See, for instance, Schoenbohm, p. 203; von Kirchbach, Meyers, and Vogt, p. 20; 

and Koenig, pp. 236-7. 

59. Discussion with Mr. Knabe. 

60. Nawrocki. See also, Weber in Backerra, p. 59. 

61 . Mr. Knabe points out that units had been ordered to their barracks and had only 

the information provided by the state . They tended to believe that the demonstrators were 

hooligans and probably would have followed orders until they realized their mistake. His 

own wife and children were on the streets of Leipzig trying to find out what was happening, 

while he was receiving misinformation in the barracks. Former-NV A Colonel Weber feels 

the NV A did not react because events came too quiclcly and that by November 1 989 the 

armed forces were themselves disorganized and impossible to lead. See Weber in Backerra, 

p. 61 . For an opposite view, see the remarks of former-NV A Major General Bernd Leistner 

in "Sie im Westen wussten mehr ueber uns al wir," Die Welt, no. 222, 22 September 1 990, 

p. 5. 

62. "Zur Traditionsptlege in der Nationalen Volksarmee," Militameform in der DDR, 

no. 24, 12 July 1 990, p. 3. 

44 
Victorson 

63. "Rahmenrichtlinie ueber dienstliche und ausserdienstliche Kontakte zwischen 

50ldaten der Bundeswehr und Angehoerigen der Nationialen Volksannee," Militaerreform in 

der DDR, no. 20, 7 Tune 1 990, p. 1. 

64. Von Kirchbach, Meyers, and Vogt, pp. 17-22. 

65. Discussions with Colonel Francke, Lieutenant Colonel Engelien, and Mr. Knabe. 

Citizens' initiatives were the means used to attack injustices and problems during the Turning 

Point, and one could organize and register an initiative with the authorities if seven people 

were wilng to support whatever t e initiative wished to promote. It is instructive that Knabe 

had to find two non-military members for his initiative, because he could only find four out 

of a staff offifty political officers who wished to go on record in support of refonns. According 

to Knabe, older officers were too involved with the system to have any reason to wish to 

change it, and many younger officers did not understand what was happening or wish to get 

involved. 

66. Weber in Backerra, pp. 62--6. 

67. Rupert Scholz, "Deutsche Frage und Europaeische Sicherheit," Europa-Arc:hiv, 

Folge 7, 10 April 1 990, p. 245. 

68. The speech is quoted in its entirety in Militaerreform in der DDR, no. 17, May 1990. 

69. In July 1 990 Eppelmannn made a statement to that effect to the Japanese press, 

noted in " General Schoenbohm will nicht Eppelmanns Nachfolger sein," Frankfurter 

Allgemeine Zeitung, 28 September 1 990. On 2 August he made a similar statement while on 

a visit to Bonn. See Donald Abenheim, German Unity and the Soldier: Problems of Command, 

Personnel, and the Stalinist Legacy, unpublished manuscript, pp. 29-30. 

70. "Ein Truemmerhaufen der Gefuehle," Der Spiegel, vol. 44, issue 10, 5 March 1 990, 

pp. 37, 45. 

71. Quoted in Christoph Bertram, " Kommt die allgemeine Dienstpflicht?" A ktuell, 

vol. 28, no. 79, 15 October 1 992, p. 3. 

72. Marschner in von Kirchbach, Meyers, and Vogt, pp. 50-4. 

73. Von Scheven, p. 1 67. 

74. Horst Teltschik, 329 Tage: Innenansichten der Einigung (Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1 99 1), 

pp. 323-4, and 334-8. See also Elizabeth Pond, Beyond the Wall: Germany's Road to Unijication 

(Washington, D.C.: The Twentieth Century Fund, Inc. , 1 993), pp. 221-3. 

75. Abenheim, Reforging the Iron Cross, p. 76. 

76. Schoenbohm, pp. 30-2. Having completed its initial transition mission, Bundeswehr Command, East stood down on 1 July 1 991 and was replaced by separate service 

headquarters. Despite the fact that the Bundeswehr is considered a single entity, the 

Bundeswehr Command, East was its first experiment with a joint headquarters in command 

of all t ree service components. 

77. Lieutenant Colonel Bernhard Ickenroth, for instance, single-handedly took command of the Wilhelm Pieck I nstitute in Berlin, which had a complement of eighty instructors 

and 572 students, and stood it down 21 December 1 990. The old commandant, who was 

stil

 on hand, and his staff, were uncooperative, and Ickenroth had to discover by himself 

such things as fonner Stasi operatives working as drivers, mechanics, and electricians for the 

institute and listening devices in the classrooms and his own office. For the original number 

of officers posted to the new states and where they went, see Edgar Trost, "Probleme der 

Personalauswahl ," in Farwick, pp. 176-80. 

78. Trost in Farwick, pp. 1 76-80. 

79. See for instance Lieutenant Colonel Manfred Meyers, "Umgeplant" in von 

Kirchbach, Meyers, and Vogt, pp. 27-30, and Major General Edgar Trost in Farwick, p. 171. 

80. See for instance Dietrich W. Streitparth, "Das Ethos der Bundeswehr wird verletzt, " 

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 17 August 1 990. This agreed with an earlier article by Guenther 

Gilessen, the tide of which summed up the position of those who felt t ere was no middle 

ground between the Bundeswehr and the NV A: "Disband-without a Remnant" (Auf]oesen 

ohne Rest), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 25 July 1 990). 

81 . Hannut Neumann, "Maerkische Heide, maerkischer Sand," part 1, Truppenpraxis, 

no. 1, January-February 1 992, p. 56. See also, Schoenbohm, pp. 62 and 87 and von 

Kirchbach, Meyers, and Vogt, pp. 92-7, 115. 

82. Christian Millotat, "Man ist sich fremd," Truppenpraxis, no. 5, September-October 

1 992, pp. 492 ff. English translation provided by Dr. Thomas-Durell Young, Strategic Studies 

45 
The Newport Papers 

Institute. U.S. Anny War College. Truppenpraxis. No. 1. January-February 1 993 had five 

pages of letters concerning the article. a number accusing Colonel Millotat of broad 

generalizations. lack of soldierly discretion. and of making the process of building an "anny 

of unity" more difficult. 

83. Hannut Neumann. "Maerkische Heide. maerkischer Sand." part 2. Truppenpraxis. 

no. 2. March-April. 1992. pp. 1 65--6. See also. von Kirchbach. Meyers. and Vogt. p. 81. 

84. Millotat and Francke believe it was not; Neumann describes the "stopwatch" 

mind-set he found when he took command of the 3d Motorized Rifle Regiment in 

Brandenburg (Part 2. p. 1 66). Rieck felt that in some individual soldier skills. NV A soldiers 

were both better trained and equipped than their Bundeswehr counterparts. 

85. For other sources of friction. see von Kirchbach. Meyers. and Vogt. p. 69. 

86. Some East Gennans believe that tigers do not change their stripes and that the 

retention of NV A officers and noncommissioned officers in the Bundeswehr is another 

example of the old cadres' retaining their positions of privilege in the new society. People. 

whether military or civilian. who make the change from communist to democratic principles 

too easily and quickly are tagged with the descriptive tenn " Wendehals, " as if. like the bird 

of that name. they could turn their heads around 1 80 degrees on their necks. A Berlin joke 

runs: "Why do so many people wear turtlenecks? So you can't see the screw threads on their 

necks" (quoted in Mrs. von Steinaecker's addendum to her husband's report. p. 5) . For an 

example of how this attitude affects the B undeswe hr. see General Schoenbohrn's own 

experience of being mistaken for a fonner-NVA officer (Schoenbohm. p. 138). An 

acquaintance in Auerbach. Saxony summed up the civilian attitude toward NV A officers: 

"They were all Stasi" (discussion on 22 January 1 993) . 

87. "Hans. das ist unsere Demokratie." Der Spiegel. vol. 44. issue 39. 24 September 

1 990. pp. 86-90. 

88. Discussion with Lieutenant Colonel Siegfried Frei. Gennan Army Liaison Officer 

to the Combined Arms Support Command. Fort Lee. Virginia. 30 October 1 992. 

89. Discussion with Colonel Francke. 

90. Trost in Farwick. p. 1 94. 

91 . Von Kirchbach. Meyers. and Vo�. p. 1 18. 

92. P rogram of I nstruction for ' Ergaenzungslehrgang Innere Fuehrung mit 

Stabsoffiziere." conducted at the Center for [nnere Fuehrung in Koblenz. 4-15 November 

1991. 

93. Schoenbohm. pp. 1 36-7. 

94. After Action Report for "Ergaenzungslehrgang 'Innere Fuehrung mit 

Stabsoffizier· ... conducted at the Center for [nnere Fuehrung in Koblenz. 4-15 November 

1 991 . 

95. Schoenbohm. pp. 33-4. 

96. Discussion with Colonel Francke. 

97. Schoenbohm. p. 178. 

98. This argument can be made for stationing the 41st Home Defense Brigade in Eggesin 

in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. previously home of the 9th NVA Armored Division. The 

anny is the largest employer in this economically depressed region. See Karl Feldrneyer. 

"Truppenalltag in Eggesin." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 11 September 1 992 

99. Quoted in Schoenbohm. p. 1 43. See also Lieutenant Colonel Neumann's frustrating 

attempts to provide pastoral services for his troops. and the opposition among the clergy. 

especially female pastors. to any connection with the military. Neumann caustically concludes 

that anyone who rejects his profession so totaly as does the Protestant clergy really has no 

business being on his installation. Part 2. pp. 166-9. 

1 00. See Chapter 7. "Bevoelkerungsgruppen" in Hans-Viktor Hoffinan. Demoskopisches 

Meinungsbild in Deutschland zur Sicherheits- und Verteidigungspolitik 1 991 (Waldbruel: Akademie 

der Bundeswehr fuer Information und Kommunikation. 1 992). pp. 167-80. which argues 

that on military and security topics the opinions of citizens in old and new states are very 

close but that citizens in the new states have yet to understand the importance of security 

questions for them and to understand the institutions of the Federal Republic. including the 

Bundeswehr. As of 1991 there were differences. however. For instance. 21 percent of East 

Germans would have had Gennany leave NATO versus 10 percent of the West Gennans. 

46 
Victorson 

Forty-six percent of East Gennans thought NATO was no longer important and 47 percent 

thought European annies in general were no longer important. p. 1 79. 

101. Koop and Schoessler, p. 311. 

1 02. Volker Gruss, "Kameradschaftlich der Vereinigung ein weiteres Stueck 

naehrgekommen," AktueJl, vol. 29, issue 5, 19 January 1 993, p. 3. See also, Manfred Meyers, 

"Ausbildung'" in von Kirchbach, Meyers, and Vost, pp. 114-16. 

103. This was the tenn used by Dieter Det1ce, Executive Director of the Friedrich Ebert 

Institute in Washington D.C. at a seminar at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown 

University, 1 March 1 993. The exact figures for the Any (not including the Air Force or 

Navy) are: 1 ,067 career commissioned officers, 598 career warrant officers, and 576 officers 

with six to twelve-year commitments, for a total of 2,241 officers. This total is stil

 subject 

to become smaller if more evidence of Stasi connections are found. Discussion with Brigadier 

General von Kirchbach. 

1 04. Discussions with Brigadier General von Kirchbach and Colonel Francke. 

105. Schoenbohm, p. 1 38. Answers to the question range from NV A officers saying they 

would not even have shaken hands with Bundeswehr officers to the problem of sha ing 

hands never coming up, because all the Bundeswehr officers would have been in prison 

camps. Discussion with Lieutenant Colonel Frei. 

106. Quoted in Farwick, pp. 1 80-1 . The Ztntrale DiellSlschrijt 10/1: Hiifenfuer die Innere 

Fuehrung, the regulation providing guidance to the troops on Innere Fuehrung, is presently 

under revision, but will almost certainly state that NV A traditions are unacceptable to the 

Bundeswehr. 

107. Discussion with Mr. Knabe and Abenheim manuscript, German Unity and the Soldier, 

p. 44. 

108. Von Kirchbach, Meyers, and Vogt. pp. 1 69-70. In his book. von Kirchbach goes 

on to say that traditions of Bundeswehr units disbanded in the old states should not be 

transferred to units in the new states. and that his own 41st Home Defense Brigade should 

remember that it was fonned out of the 9th NV A Annored Division, not out of love of 

tradition but because it is history. In discussion he mentioned that he had kept equipment 

from the 9th Division on hand, ignoring directives to turn it in, with the objective of 

eventualy establishing a unit museum. On the subject of NV A assistance in civilian 

production, it should be noted that as the GDR's economy collapsed, more and more soldiers 

were diverted from military duties to service in factories and mines, often doing work in 

conditions too dangerous for civilian workers, until 55,00 soldiers were wor ing in the 

civilian economy. The units stil had to remain at 85 percent readiness despite this loss of 

manpower. 

1 09. Discussion with Colonel Francke. 

1 10. Holger Arnold, " Zu neh mend sozialer Zuends toJ! in der Truppe, " Neue Zeit, 

1 8 September 1 992. 

1 1 1. Discussions with Lieutenant Colonel Frei, Lieutenant Colonel lckenroth, and Mr. 

Knabe. In connection with his doctoral work at the University of Leipzig, Mr. Knabe 

interviewed fifteen former-NV A generals and admirals. According to his findings the majority 

of them had not changed their views and felt that socialism had only been incorrectly 

implemented. Some of them also told him that they had considered a putsch at the time of 

the Turning Point but had decided not to carry it out after the Soviet Forces in Germany 

told them they would not support it and because they had no idea what they would do if 

they took power. Concerning membership of fonner-NV A officers in the "Verband 

Deutscher Bundeswehr," I found divided opinions among Bundeswehr officers. Some felt 

that since they had served, even if only two or three months, they had a right to be there. 

Others felt that membership gave them an air of respectability which they did not deserve. 

1 12. Discussion with Brigadier General von Kirchbach. 

1 13. For discussion of the possibility of a volunteer Bundeswehr, see " Wehrpj1icht am 

Ende?" Der Spiegel, vol. 47, issue 6, 8 February 1 993, pp. 36 ff. 

1 14. Abenheim. Reforging the Iron Cross, pp. 1 71-2. 

1 1 5. Discussion with Colonel Bernd Mueller, Anny Attache, German Embassy, 

Washington D.C., 1 8 December 1 992. In both his book and in discussion. Brigadier General 

von Kirchbach makes no secret of the fact that he is a "booster" of the soldiers from the new 

states, and takes every opportunity to present them in a favorable light. That he also 

47 
The Newport Papers 

understands the ongoing difficulties, which Innere Fuehrung must addres, is evident in a speech 

to the officers of the 41st Home Defense Brigade reprinted as "Offizier im Heer der Einheit," 

Truppenpraxis, no. 4, July-August, 1 992. 

1 16. Discussion with Colonel Rieck. 

1 17. Discusion with Colonel Francke. 

1 18. Charles J. Dunlap Jr. , "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 201 2," 

Parametm, vol. 22, no. 4, Winter 1992, pp. 1 0-11, 15. 

1 19. "Gewehr unterm Baum," Der Spiegel, vol. 47, issue 2, 1 1 January 1993, pp. 34 ff. 

48 
Glossary 

Image of the Enemy Feindbild 

Association of the German Armed Forces Verband der Deutschen 

Bundeswehr 

Citizen in Uniform 

Civilian Control of the Military 

Die Wende 

du 

EK 

GDR 

Innere Fuehrung* 

National People's Army 

NVA 

NCO 

Parliamentary ombudsman 

Primat der Politik 

Reichswehr 

SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei 

Deutschland) 

Stabuerger in Uniform 

Bundeswehr 

Armed Forces of the 

Federal Republic of Germany 

Statsbuerger in Uniform 

Primat der Politik 

Turning Point 

Familiar form of "You" 

EntlasungsluJndidat 

(candidate for discharge) 

German Democratic Republic 

Inner Leadership 

National Volksanee (NVA) 

Nationale Volksarmee 

(National People's Army) 

Noncommisioned Officer 

Wehrbeauftragter 

Civilian Control of the Military 

Imperial Army 

(Term for the German Armed 

Forces prior to 1935) 

Socialist Unity Party 

Citizen in Uniform 
The Newport Papers 

Turning Point 

Verband der Deutschen Bundeswehr 

WehrbeauJtragter 

Wehnacht 

Die Wende 

Association of the Gennan 

Anned Forces 

Parliamentary ombudsman 

World War n Gennan Any 

*See text referring to note 2 for Dr. Donald Abenheim's description of lnnere Fuehrung. 

50 
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The Author 

Colonel Mark E. Victorson is the Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans, Military 

Traffic Management Command, Falls Church, Virginia. He has served extensively in the Federal Republic of Gennany including a tour as u.S. Army 

Training and Doctrine Command Liaison Officer to the Gennan Army's School 

of Supply and Transportation. 

The author was promoted to the grade of colonel during the final production 

phases of this paper. 
THE NEWPORT PAPERS 

Index 

1991-1993 

1. " 'Are We Beasts?' Churchill and the Moral Question of World War 

II 'Area Bombing: " by Christopher C. Hannon (December 1 99 1). 

2. "Toward a Pax Universalis: A Historical Critique of the National 

Military Strategy," by Lieutenant Colonel Gary W. Anderson, U.S. 

Marine Corps (April 1992). 

3. "The 'New' Law of the Sea and the Law of Anned Conflict at Sea," 

by Horace B. Robertson, Jr. (October 1992). 

4. "Global War Game: The First Five Years," by Bud Hay and Bob 

Gile (June 1993). 

5. "Beyond Mahan: A Proposal for a U.S. Naval Strategy in the 

Twenty-First Century," by Colonel Gary W. Anderson, U.S. Marine 

Corps (August 1993). 

6. "The Burden of Trafalgar: Decisive Battle and Naval Strategic 

Expectations on the Eve of the First World War," by Jan S. Breemer 

(October 1993).