On soldiers.
Due to current tragic events I remembered that I promised to blog about Germans and their very difficult relationship to everything military as a third installment to the "On...Germans." tag, which incorporates so far:
On elections.
On heroes.
Like I said above, the reaction in my immediate surroundings to the news linked to above (another three soldiers were killed in Afghanistan... I know that for example for Britons or Americans it appears to be a bit ridiculous to make such a hullaballoo over just three dead soldiers, but remember that the German part of the ISAF is only about 3700 soldiers out of 253,430 actively serving personnel and 355,000 reserve personnel, compared to an overall number of 1,473,900 of actively serving personnel and 1,458,500 reserve personnel of the US Armed Forces and 26,215 of them serving in Afghanistan or 8,600 British troops serving in Afghanistan - if anyone is interested: German Armed Forces und Police casualties in Afghanistan since 2002) made me remember that in "On heroes" I mentioned blogging about Germans and their relationship to their country's Armed Forces, the Bundeswehr.
Before I come to the very difficult topic of trying to describe a very complicated and sometimes maybe not easily to understand relationship, I'd like to give a very short overview about the Bundeswehr (I'll only concentrate on the Bundeswehr since it would probably take up much too much space if I also tried to give an overview over the GDR's Armed Forces, the NVA - my fellow East Germans may forgive me please):
It was founded in 1955 and even back then the Bundeswehr and the government had to face fierce criticism from wide parts of the German people, for example because leading Wehrmacht personnel had been among the founders and leading early Bundeswehr personnel. Remember, WWII ended only ten years ago and "No more war, no more fascism!" ("Nie wieder Krieg, nie wieder Faschismus!") was very, very present in the public. Another event that enraged the German public was the German admission to NATO, also in 1955 because people were afraid it would drag Germany into another war. Again, remember WWII only ended ten years ago.
Basically, it's divided into five service branches: Heer (Army), Marine (Navy), Luftwaffe (Air Force), Streitkräftebasis (Joint Support Service, SKB) and the Zentraler Sanitätsdienst (Joint Medical Sercive), with the Army being the biggest (and note that there is no Marine Corps). The Streitkräftebasis is comprised of soldiers from all three other branches and incorporates all the units that serve as support units, such as logistics, MP, signals corps and the Truppe für Operative Informationen OpInfo (PSYOPS, where I served for six months in 2001, BTW) and the Zentraler Sanitätsdienst incorporates soldiers of Heer, Marine and Luftwaffe under one centralized command. Headquarters of the Bundeswehr are Bonn, Berlin and Postdam (Hardthöhe in Bonn and Bendlerblock in Berlin as offices of the Federal Ministry of Defense and Potsdam serving as HQ for the Sanitätsdienst with the Bundeswehr's biggest military hospital).
Since 1955 the Conscription has been installed with a conscription time of now 9 months. Conscriptees are not allowed to be deployed. Only Soldaten auf Zeit (SaZ, soldiers that enlist for a certain amount of time, with the range being from two years (enlisted), four years (enlisted and NCOs), eight years (very few enlisted, NCOs, mostly above Feldwebel, which roughly translates to Sergeant paygrade), twelve years (NCOs above Feldwebel and officers) and 15 years (medical officers: doctors, apothecaries and veterinaries, no officer ranks for nurses) to 17 years (officers: pilots) and Berufssoldaten (soldiers that serve out their entire working life until they are pensioned, comparatively few reach this) are allowed and required to deploy.
Women have been allowed to serve as soldiers since 1974. Until 2001, they were only allowed to serve as medics (BTW, today, women make 24% of overall medical soldiers serving in the Bundeswehr) or in the Music Corps due to the German constitution forbidding women to serve under arms (ie. as combatants). In the late 90ies Tanja Kreil filed a lawsuit against the Bundeswehr for not being allowed to serve as a mechanic and in 2000 the European Court made he German government change the constitutional amandment into saying that women can't be forced to serve as combatants. Subsequently, in 2001 the first female volunteers to serve in combat and support units other than medical joined the Bundeswehr (back then I was among the roughly 338 first female officer candidates to serve in a non-medical and non-musical unit). Today, women are allowed to serve in every branch and every unit (even combat units, Special Forces units and on submarines), if they fulfill the respective requirements and there are at least five women willing and able to serve in the respective units.
There is no such thing as non-frat regulation in the Bundeswehr. Soldiers of the same unit that enter a relationship are urged to tell this to their units commanders but, as far as I know, not required to. Of course, unit commanders are entitled to talk to their soldiers if a relationship becomes apparent but usually no legal action is to follow. In fact, when I was in basic, we had at least two relationships between recruits (female) and instructors (male). None of the instructors were the recruits' superiors and as far as I know only one had to appear before the Lt. Col. that commanded the company. As for DADT... I think since the late 90ies, the Bundeswehr has been overthinking their approad to homosexual soldiers. As far as I know there are no legal repercussions but of course it's still a men's world and we all know how strongly male dominated environments like the military, the police, the fire departments etc. tend to be homophobic. I'd say that it's still difficult for homosexual soldiers, most of all if they're male but they don't have to fear any legal difficulties.
Okay... so now that we are finally done with the facts, we can get to the difficult part. If you come from the US or the UK, you may find some of the things I'll tell you know very difficult or maybe even impossible to understand, so I recommend you to keep in mind that Germany is the nation that started and lost two world wars and is responsible for maybe the most horrible genocide in human history. I know I keep mentioning this again and again but I just want you all to understand that these events and their results have shaped the collective German identity so firmly that probably my generation's grand-children will still be influenced by it. If you always remember this, it might probably not explain everything about us but it will certainly explain a lot. Another thing that explains a lot is that for 40 years, Germany was a separated state, with two almost completely different kinds of societies on both sides of the Wall and in the focus of the Cold War. If the Cold War would have turned into a hot war in Europe... Germany would have been the major battlefield. Just remember this.
Anyway, where was I? Oh right... so... I was telling you about three new German casualties in Afghanistan, right? Right. If these soldiers would have been Americans or even Britons or Canadians... they would be considered heroes, at least by wide parts of the populace. In Germany... these news either don't draw a lot of interest (although being publicized in all major radio stations, news shows, newspapers, news magazines...) or people just shrug their shoulders. Soldiers that deploy (ie. Soldaten auf Zeit and Berufssoldaten, people who volunteered for service in the Armed Forces and weren't forced to it) aren't considered to be men and women fighting for freedom and democracy... rather, they are considered to be adventurers, weapon-crazed lunatics or mercenaries and quite often simply pretty stupid for risking their lives for what most people think is just love of adventure and greed (or at least the promise of fast and easy money).
They are also thought to be supporting a war we have no place in and we should have never entered (in this regard, I will never forget former Secretary of Defense Peter Struck's stupid, stupid line that "Germany's saftey is also defended in the Hindukush" ("Deutschlands Sicherheit wird auch am Hindukusch verteidigt.")). A lot of people don't see why we should send soldiers to Afghanistan and those with a better memory also like to point out that the Kosovo war was basically a war of aggression and that waging one or taking part in one is actually forbidden by the German constitution.
Another thing is that the image Germans have of soldiers is very different from the one people for example in Englishspeaking countries. Here, a soldier is someone who's not exactly the brightest crayon in the box ("Panzerfahrer - breit fahren, schmal denken." - "Tankies - broad tires, small brains.")... basically, a "Zivilversager" (someone who sucks at civilian life and would have never gotten very far if he or she hadn't volunteered for the Bundeswehr). And we just can't get the image of the Wehrmachtssoldier out of our heads, either (quite understandably if one sees the Luftwaffe's NCO and officer Class A Dress Blues...).
The Bundeswehr also doesn't have such a glorious history as the US Armed Forced or other Armed Forces of countries that fought on the Allied side in WWII have. I think even today we're just a little bit ashamed (yeah, well, and in left-side circles more than just a little bit) that it's almost directly descended from the Wehrmacht... an army that didn't only lose a war but that was also responsible for hundreds of horrible crimes, acts of cowardice, of cruelty... (we always like to conviniently forget that a very vital part of German resitance in the Third Reich was played by officers and soldiers of this army, as well). It's hard to see a hero in a dead soldier who served in an army that is the successor to such an institution.
Germans also have this very strange and ambiguous relationship towards authoritarian instutions and strict hierarchies - on the one hand there's a certain general distrust for anything and anyone authoritarian but on the other hand we'll probably never be able to denounce the legacy of the times under the Kaiser and also Hitler. We are, as you could say, repulsed by authoritarian institutions and strict hierarchies because we always have the almost immediate reflex to remember the Kaiser and the Nazi regimes but also feel strangely drawn to them and fascinated by them because we always had a tendency for them. It's dfficult to understand... but it's even more difficult to explain it.
We also don't exactly hate the Bundeswehr (well, apart from the usual left-side hardliners...) but we feel wary of it and we don't really know what to do with it. We do feel fascinated by it (and the military in general) and I for one do feel a little proud when I hear of international joint operations and exercises that German soldiers are part of but in general we are afraid of showing and admitting it because we all learned from a very early age that Germans plus uniforms, weapons and the rest of the whole nine yards never equals a good thing.
So, with all of this in mind - WWII, separation, screwed up national identity - does it become clear why the usual reaction to a Bundeswehr casualty is rather a shrug or "So what? Should have chosen another profession, then." than sympathy for the family and the soldier? And also why you won't find anyone here wearing an equivalent to the "Support Our Troops" ribbons... why such an equivalent doesn't even exist? And why there's no such thing as Arlington National Cemetery here? Why people aren't exactly jumping for joy over the monument for fallen Bundeswehr soldiers that government is currently building in Berlin? Or did I just raise much more questions than I answered?
Edit: Incidentally, today the Wehrbeauftragte des Bundestages (a civilian who is responsible for representing the soldiers to the politicians and serves as a kind of "attorney" for them) Reinhold Robbe demanded that the "friendly disinterest" Germans have for the Bundeswehr change into real support for the troops and what they are doing in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the interview is only avaible in German ATM.
On elections.
On heroes.
Like I said above, the reaction in my immediate surroundings to the news linked to above (another three soldiers were killed in Afghanistan... I know that for example for Britons or Americans it appears to be a bit ridiculous to make such a hullaballoo over just three dead soldiers, but remember that the German part of the ISAF is only about 3700 soldiers out of 253,430 actively serving personnel and 355,000 reserve personnel, compared to an overall number of 1,473,900 of actively serving personnel and 1,458,500 reserve personnel of the US Armed Forces and 26,215 of them serving in Afghanistan or 8,600 British troops serving in Afghanistan - if anyone is interested: German Armed Forces und Police casualties in Afghanistan since 2002) made me remember that in "On heroes" I mentioned blogging about Germans and their relationship to their country's Armed Forces, the Bundeswehr.
Before I come to the very difficult topic of trying to describe a very complicated and sometimes maybe not easily to understand relationship, I'd like to give a very short overview about the Bundeswehr (I'll only concentrate on the Bundeswehr since it would probably take up much too much space if I also tried to give an overview over the GDR's Armed Forces, the NVA - my fellow East Germans may forgive me please):
It was founded in 1955 and even back then the Bundeswehr and the government had to face fierce criticism from wide parts of the German people, for example because leading Wehrmacht personnel had been among the founders and leading early Bundeswehr personnel. Remember, WWII ended only ten years ago and "No more war, no more fascism!" ("Nie wieder Krieg, nie wieder Faschismus!") was very, very present in the public. Another event that enraged the German public was the German admission to NATO, also in 1955 because people were afraid it would drag Germany into another war. Again, remember WWII only ended ten years ago.
Basically, it's divided into five service branches: Heer (Army), Marine (Navy), Luftwaffe (Air Force), Streitkräftebasis (Joint Support Service, SKB) and the Zentraler Sanitätsdienst (Joint Medical Sercive), with the Army being the biggest (and note that there is no Marine Corps). The Streitkräftebasis is comprised of soldiers from all three other branches and incorporates all the units that serve as support units, such as logistics, MP, signals corps and the Truppe für Operative Informationen OpInfo (PSYOPS, where I served for six months in 2001, BTW) and the Zentraler Sanitätsdienst incorporates soldiers of Heer, Marine and Luftwaffe under one centralized command. Headquarters of the Bundeswehr are Bonn, Berlin and Postdam (Hardthöhe in Bonn and Bendlerblock in Berlin as offices of the Federal Ministry of Defense and Potsdam serving as HQ for the Sanitätsdienst with the Bundeswehr's biggest military hospital).
Since 1955 the Conscription has been installed with a conscription time of now 9 months. Conscriptees are not allowed to be deployed. Only Soldaten auf Zeit (SaZ, soldiers that enlist for a certain amount of time, with the range being from two years (enlisted), four years (enlisted and NCOs), eight years (very few enlisted, NCOs, mostly above Feldwebel, which roughly translates to Sergeant paygrade), twelve years (NCOs above Feldwebel and officers) and 15 years (medical officers: doctors, apothecaries and veterinaries, no officer ranks for nurses) to 17 years (officers: pilots) and Berufssoldaten (soldiers that serve out their entire working life until they are pensioned, comparatively few reach this) are allowed and required to deploy.
Women have been allowed to serve as soldiers since 1974. Until 2001, they were only allowed to serve as medics (BTW, today, women make 24% of overall medical soldiers serving in the Bundeswehr) or in the Music Corps due to the German constitution forbidding women to serve under arms (ie. as combatants). In the late 90ies Tanja Kreil filed a lawsuit against the Bundeswehr for not being allowed to serve as a mechanic and in 2000 the European Court made he German government change the constitutional amandment into saying that women can't be forced to serve as combatants. Subsequently, in 2001 the first female volunteers to serve in combat and support units other than medical joined the Bundeswehr (back then I was among the roughly 338 first female officer candidates to serve in a non-medical and non-musical unit). Today, women are allowed to serve in every branch and every unit (even combat units, Special Forces units and on submarines), if they fulfill the respective requirements and there are at least five women willing and able to serve in the respective units.
There is no such thing as non-frat regulation in the Bundeswehr. Soldiers of the same unit that enter a relationship are urged to tell this to their units commanders but, as far as I know, not required to. Of course, unit commanders are entitled to talk to their soldiers if a relationship becomes apparent but usually no legal action is to follow. In fact, when I was in basic, we had at least two relationships between recruits (female) and instructors (male). None of the instructors were the recruits' superiors and as far as I know only one had to appear before the Lt. Col. that commanded the company. As for DADT... I think since the late 90ies, the Bundeswehr has been overthinking their approad to homosexual soldiers. As far as I know there are no legal repercussions but of course it's still a men's world and we all know how strongly male dominated environments like the military, the police, the fire departments etc. tend to be homophobic. I'd say that it's still difficult for homosexual soldiers, most of all if they're male but they don't have to fear any legal difficulties.
Okay... so now that we are finally done with the facts, we can get to the difficult part. If you come from the US or the UK, you may find some of the things I'll tell you know very difficult or maybe even impossible to understand, so I recommend you to keep in mind that Germany is the nation that started and lost two world wars and is responsible for maybe the most horrible genocide in human history. I know I keep mentioning this again and again but I just want you all to understand that these events and their results have shaped the collective German identity so firmly that probably my generation's grand-children will still be influenced by it. If you always remember this, it might probably not explain everything about us but it will certainly explain a lot. Another thing that explains a lot is that for 40 years, Germany was a separated state, with two almost completely different kinds of societies on both sides of the Wall and in the focus of the Cold War. If the Cold War would have turned into a hot war in Europe... Germany would have been the major battlefield. Just remember this.
Anyway, where was I? Oh right... so... I was telling you about three new German casualties in Afghanistan, right? Right. If these soldiers would have been Americans or even Britons or Canadians... they would be considered heroes, at least by wide parts of the populace. In Germany... these news either don't draw a lot of interest (although being publicized in all major radio stations, news shows, newspapers, news magazines...) or people just shrug their shoulders. Soldiers that deploy (ie. Soldaten auf Zeit and Berufssoldaten, people who volunteered for service in the Armed Forces and weren't forced to it) aren't considered to be men and women fighting for freedom and democracy... rather, they are considered to be adventurers, weapon-crazed lunatics or mercenaries and quite often simply pretty stupid for risking their lives for what most people think is just love of adventure and greed (or at least the promise of fast and easy money).
They are also thought to be supporting a war we have no place in and we should have never entered (in this regard, I will never forget former Secretary of Defense Peter Struck's stupid, stupid line that "Germany's saftey is also defended in the Hindukush" ("Deutschlands Sicherheit wird auch am Hindukusch verteidigt.")). A lot of people don't see why we should send soldiers to Afghanistan and those with a better memory also like to point out that the Kosovo war was basically a war of aggression and that waging one or taking part in one is actually forbidden by the German constitution.
Another thing is that the image Germans have of soldiers is very different from the one people for example in Englishspeaking countries. Here, a soldier is someone who's not exactly the brightest crayon in the box ("Panzerfahrer - breit fahren, schmal denken." - "Tankies - broad tires, small brains.")... basically, a "Zivilversager" (someone who sucks at civilian life and would have never gotten very far if he or she hadn't volunteered for the Bundeswehr). And we just can't get the image of the Wehrmachtssoldier out of our heads, either (quite understandably if one sees the Luftwaffe's NCO and officer Class A Dress Blues...).
The Bundeswehr also doesn't have such a glorious history as the US Armed Forced or other Armed Forces of countries that fought on the Allied side in WWII have. I think even today we're just a little bit ashamed (yeah, well, and in left-side circles more than just a little bit) that it's almost directly descended from the Wehrmacht... an army that didn't only lose a war but that was also responsible for hundreds of horrible crimes, acts of cowardice, of cruelty... (we always like to conviniently forget that a very vital part of German resitance in the Third Reich was played by officers and soldiers of this army, as well). It's hard to see a hero in a dead soldier who served in an army that is the successor to such an institution.
Germans also have this very strange and ambiguous relationship towards authoritarian instutions and strict hierarchies - on the one hand there's a certain general distrust for anything and anyone authoritarian but on the other hand we'll probably never be able to denounce the legacy of the times under the Kaiser and also Hitler. We are, as you could say, repulsed by authoritarian institutions and strict hierarchies because we always have the almost immediate reflex to remember the Kaiser and the Nazi regimes but also feel strangely drawn to them and fascinated by them because we always had a tendency for them. It's dfficult to understand... but it's even more difficult to explain it.
We also don't exactly hate the Bundeswehr (well, apart from the usual left-side hardliners...) but we feel wary of it and we don't really know what to do with it. We do feel fascinated by it (and the military in general) and I for one do feel a little proud when I hear of international joint operations and exercises that German soldiers are part of but in general we are afraid of showing and admitting it because we all learned from a very early age that Germans plus uniforms, weapons and the rest of the whole nine yards never equals a good thing.
So, with all of this in mind - WWII, separation, screwed up national identity - does it become clear why the usual reaction to a Bundeswehr casualty is rather a shrug or "So what? Should have chosen another profession, then." than sympathy for the family and the soldier? And also why you won't find anyone here wearing an equivalent to the "Support Our Troops" ribbons... why such an equivalent doesn't even exist? And why there's no such thing as Arlington National Cemetery here? Why people aren't exactly jumping for joy over the monument for fallen Bundeswehr soldiers that government is currently building in Berlin? Or did I just raise much more questions than I answered?
Edit: Incidentally, today the Wehrbeauftragte des Bundestages (a civilian who is responsible for representing the soldiers to the politicians and serves as a kind of "attorney" for them) Reinhold Robbe demanded that the "friendly disinterest" Germans have for the Bundeswehr change into real support for the troops and what they are doing in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the interview is only avaible in German ATM.