Rearming Germany

Rearming Germany
History of Warfare
Editors
Kelly DeVries
Loyola College, Maryland
John France
University of Wales, Swansea
Michael S. Neiberg
University of Southern Mississippi
Frederick Schneid
High Point University, North Carolina
VOLUME 64
Rearming Germany
Edited by
James S. Corum
LEIDEN BOSTON
2011
Cover illustration: Photo of German maneuvers 1960 MHI.
With kind permission of the US Army Military History Institute,
Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rearming Germany / edited by James S. Corum.

p. cm. -- (History of warfare, ISSN 1385-7827 ; v. 64)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-20317-4 (hbk. : acid-free paper)
1. Germany (West)--Military policy. 2. Germany (West)--Defenses--History.
3. Germany (West)--Armed Forces--History. 4. National security--Germany
(West)--History. 5. Germany (East)--Military policy. 6. Germany
(East)--Defenses--History. 7. Germany (East)--Armed Forces--History.
8. National security--Germany (East)--History. 9. Cold War. 10. Germany--
History, Military--20th century. I. Corum, James S. II. Title: Re-arming
Germany. III. Series.
UA710.R372 2011
355'.033543--dc22
2011000826
ISSN 1385-7827
ISBN 978 90 04 20317 4
Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

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CONTENTS
List of Abbreviations .................................................................................vii
Introduction ................................................................................................ix
THE BEGINNING OF REARMAMENT
The Himmerod Memorandum and the Beginning

of West German Security Policy
Thomas Vogel ........................................................................................ 3
Adenauer, Amt Blank, and the Founding of the

Bundeswehr 19501956
James S. Corum ......................................................................................29
THE DEBATE WITHIN GERMAN SOCIETY
A Reasonable Yes: The Social Democrats and West

German Rearmament, 19451956
Adam Seipp ............................................................................................55
THE ALLIED POWERS AND THE CREATION OF

A NEW GERMAN ARMED FORCERS
The European Defense Community

Jonathan M. House ................................................................................73
American Assistance to the New German Army

and Luftwaffe
James S. Corum ......................................................................................93
Establishing the Bundesmarine: The Convergence

of Central Planning and Pre-existing Maritime
Organizations, 19501956
Douglas Carl Peifer ..............................................................................117
vi contents
THE ECONOMICS OF GERMAN REARMAMENT
German Industry, the Cold War, and the Bundeswehr

Oliver Haller...................................................................................... 145
Reasons of State: A Military and Foreign Trade Necessity.

The International Mix of Armaments in the Build-up
Phase of the Bundeswehr 19531958
Dieter H. Kollmer.............................................................................. 177
DEBATES WITHIN THE BUNDESWEHR ABOUT

ORGANIZATION AND DOCTRINE
The Battle Over Innere Fuehrung

Klaus Naumann ................................................................................ 205
The Service Staffs Struggle over Structure.

The Bundeswehrs Internal Debates on Adopting
NATO Doctrine 19501963
Martin Rink....................................................................................... 221
THE OTHER GERMANY. CREATING THE

DDRS ARMED FORCES
Failure to Command: The Political Underpinnings

of the Failure of the Nationale Volksarmee
as a Social Institution
Dan Jordan ........................................................................................ 255
Rearming Germany: An Essay on Books and Sources .......................273
Index .........................................................................................................281
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ACC Allied Control Council

Amt Blank The Blank Office
CAS close air support
CDU Christian Democratic Union
CINCENT Commander in Chief, Allied Forces, Central
Europe
COMLANDCENT Commander of Allied Land Forces Central
Europe
COMNAVFORGER Commander of U.S. Naval Forces Germany
CSU Bavarian Christian Social Union
ECSC European Coal and Steel Community
EDC European Defense Community
ERP European Recovery Program
EUCOM European Command
FDP Free Democratic Party
FEA Foreign Economic Administration
FRG Federal Republic of Germany; West Germany
GB/BHE Gesamtdeutscher Block/Bund der Heimatver-
triebenen und Entrechteten (All-German Bloc/
League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights)
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GDR German Democratic Republic; East Germany
IFV infantry fighting vehicle
JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff
JLC Joint Logistics Committee
KPD Communist Party
LANDCENT NATO Land Forces Commander
LSU Labor Service Unit
MAAG Military Assistance Advisory Group
MfNV Ministerium fr Nationale Verteidigung
MGFA Militrgeschichtliche Forschungsamt
NCO non-commissioned officer
NHT U.S. Navys Naval Historical Team Bremerhaven
NSRB National Security Resource Board
NVA Nationale Volksarmee
viii list of abbreviations
NVP Nationale Volkspolizei

OMGBS Office of Military Government, Berlin Sector
PHV Politische Hauptverwaltung
RAF Royal Air Force
SACEUR Supreme Allied Commander, Europe
SED Socialistische Einheits Partei
SPD Social Democratic Party
SED Socialist Union Party
UNC United Nations Command
USAF U.S. Air Force
USAFE U.S. Air Force, Europe
USAREUR U.S. Army, Europe
VOL Regulations for Performance
WEU Western European Union
INTRODUCTION
By any version of historical accounting, the Cold War ranks with the
two World Wars as one of the great events of the 20th century. In its
effects upon the worlds political structure, the Cold War equals the
effects of the World Wars. One of the seminal events of the early period
of the Cold Warfrom 1945 to 1960was the rearmament of Germany
and the incorporation of West Germany as a formal member of the
Western military alliance system.
The reestablishment of Germany as a major military power, and its
post-war partnership with the United States, Britain, and the West,
gave enormous credibility to the Western deterrent against the Soviet
Block and helped ensure the stability of Europe for the next 45 years. In
turn, the strong security alliance system created by the West played a
central role in the Cold War and was one of the primary factors that
brought about the downfall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
With the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, we again
saw a wholesale reshaping of the European political and economic
scene on a scale not seen since the end of World War II.
Although the end of the Cold War was a relatively recent event,
enough time has passed to allow historians to initiate some studies of
major issues with a degree of necessary distance and objectivity.
Although far too much material remains hidden in national archives,
enough has been released to the public in the 20 years since the end of
the Cold War to allow for a thorough analysis of some of the pertinent
issues. The Cold War is now being studied in many universities as a
separate field of history. This is a positive step. Yet one of the problems
in studying the Cold War as a distinct subject is a lack of basic course
texts. Therefore, this book is intended to fill one of the gaps in the cur-
rent historical literature by providing a general review of one of the
seminal events of the Cold Warthe rearmament of the Germany in
the 1940s and 1950s.
Germany, notably West Germany, was one of the pivotal nations in
the Cold War. Indeed, the start of the Cold War began largely as a dis-
pute among the victorious Allied powers of World War II about the
status and post-war relationship the defeated German nation would
assume. Both the Western powers and the Soviet Union had strongly
x introduction
differing views as to the status of Germany in the post-war world.

Before World War II, Germany had been a world power of the first
rank and had possessed Europes largest economy. Yet even the devas-
tation of the World War and the loss of some valuable territories had
not significantly diminished Germanys potential to again become the
primary economic and political power of Europe. As the Cold War
intensified between 1946 and 1950, it became clear to both sides that
Germany would again be a major player in European politics. West
Germany was well on its way to being established as a separate political
entity when the Americans and British merged their occupation zones
into one economic unit in 1947. The march to establish a separate West
German state proceeded apace and resulted in the creation of the
Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 with the full support and bless-
ing of the Western Powers.
The Soviet-backed coup in Czechoslovakia in 1947 and the Soviet
blockade of West Berlin in 19481949 ended the possibility of any
friendly cooperation in post-war Europe between the Western powers
and the emerging Soviet block. The aggressive Soviet actions against
Berlin failed to intimidate the Western powers as intended. Instead,
Stalins policies served to encourage the concept of a new Western
security system, which culminated in the formation of NATO in 1949.
As a prosperous and democratic West Germany emerged from the
devastation of the World War in 1949, it was clear that Germany would
align itself in some way with the West. However, the idea of a rearmed
Germany only four years after the end of the Third Reich was some-
thing that was extremely difficult for the Western Powers to accept.
Indeed, in the post-war mood of a new democratic Germany, the idea
of reestablishing German armed forces was a very difficult concept for
many Germans to accept, even though the Germans faced a palpable
threat from the Soviet Union.
The Korean War provided a new urgency to the security predica-
ment of the Western powers, and in 1950 the debate about German
rearmament began in earnest. It took five years of debate among the
Germans and negotiations among the Western powers to establish a
framework by which a rearmed Germany would again take its place
among the nations of the world as a major military powerthis time as
a member of the NATO alliance. Moving the German Bundestag to
pass the necessary laws, recruiting a cadre force from among the veter-
ans of the Wehrmacht, and negotiating an appropriate role for a new
German armed forces with the Allied powers was only the beginning.
introduction xi
Although the Bundeswehr was formally established in 1955 it would

take several more years for the West German armed forces to be con-
sidered as a credible and effective deterrent force for western Europe.
In the meantime, the doctrine that the force would employ, the equip-
ment for the force, the organization of the Bundeswehr, and the rela-
tionship the Bundeswehr would have with the military past of Germany
were all subjects of intensive debate within the German government
and within the officer corps of the new West German armed forces.
What emerged was something radically different from the past in terms
of its sense of tradition, but sometimes very close to the Wehrmacht in
terms of its unit organization and doctrine. The role that the new tech-
nology of nuclear weapons would play in the doctrine of the new
German armed forces was also a subject of intensive debate within the
NATO alliance and within the German military leadership.
This book is intended to introduce a university student to all these
basic issues and to provide a guide for further research on the subject
of Germany and the Cold War. The authors have taken a broad view of
the rearmament of Germany in that it was much more than a military
or political issue. Indeed, several major themes emerge from an analy-
sis of the rearmament of Germany, and these are dealt with by the
authors in turn. The book begins with a review of the early debates
about the establishment of the Bundeswehr and the organization
that the new force might take. The second major theme to be discussed
is the debate within West Germany, especially the long discussions
about the morality and practicality of rearmament that took place
within the Social Democratic Party. The third major theme to be dis-
cussed is the relationship that Germany had with the Western Powers
on defense issues. This section begins with a review of the negotiations
between the Germans and Western powers over establishing a European
military force. When the plan for a European military force fell through,
West Germany would join NATO. As a new NATO nation, Germany
was heavily dependent upon the Western powers, notably the United
States and Great Britain, in standing up the first units of the Bundeswehr
between 1955 and 1957. The next section of the book discusses the
often-ignored economic aspects of rearmament. As the authors point
out, it was not just a matter of German rearmament and spending but
also an issue of European trade policy and technology transfer. Section
five of the book covers the major internal debates within the officer
corps of the Bundeswehr. From the very beginning of the discussion
on rearmament in 1950 there were strong splits between factions of the
xii introduction
German officer corps over the proposed organization of the force, the
doctrine the force ought to employ, and the traditions that the new
Bundeswehr ought to adopt from the Germany armed forces of the
past. Finally, the issues of the East German armed forces ought not to
be ignored, so the early years of the Volksarmee of the DDR are exam-
ined as well.
Because this book is meant to serve the reader more as a general
introduction and course text, the final chapter is a bibliographical essay
that outlines the major sources of original documents for the student
as well as the most useful secondary sources.
THE BEGINNING OF REARMAMENT
THE HIMMEROD MEMORANDUM AND THE BEGINNING
OF WEST GERMAN SECURITY POLICY
Thomas Vogel
The Himmerod Memorandum stands as the Magna Charta of the

armed forces (Bundeswehr) of the Federal Republic of Germany.1
It was the product of a conference of German military experts carried
out at the request of the German chancellor Konrad Adenauer in
October 1950. The Allied occupying powers also endorsed the mis-
sion of the conferees conducted at the monastery at Himmerod. The
Memorandum laid out the basic concepts for rearming West Germany
after the Second World War.
The full title of the document was A Study Concerning the
Establishment of a German Contingent in the Framework of a
Supranational Force for Western European Defense.2 The memoran-
dum itself was more than 50 typewritten pages long, and four complete
copies were prepared. In 1977 an annotated version with a commen-
tary was published.3
Prehistory of HimmerodThe Political Situation
The title of the document makes it clear that the mission of the confer-
ence had already been assigned to the participants. Yet neither the con-
ference nor the Memorandum marks the real beginning of West
German security policy. In fact, some would date the real beginning of
1
Characterizing the Memorandum as the Magna Charta of German Rearmament
can be directly attributed to Count Gerhard von Schwerin. See Aspekte der deutschen
Wiederbewaffnung bis 1955, ed. Militrgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Boppard am
Rhein: Boldt, 1975), 142.
2
A copy is found in the Bundesarchiv Abteilung Militrarchiv in Freiburg
i. Br. under File Number BW 9/3119.
3
Hans-Jrgen Rautenberg and Norbert Wiggershaus, Die Himmeroder
Denkschrift vom Oktober 1950. Politische und militrische berlegungen fr einen
Beitrag der Bundesrepublik Deutschland zur westeuropischen Verteidigung, in
Militrgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 21 (1977), 135206.
4 thomas vogel
West German security policy back to the foundation of the Federal

Republic a year and a half before the Himmerod Conference. Others
would give an even earlier date, beginning with some statements made
by Konrad Adenauer long before he became the Federal Republics first
chancellor and the official proponent of a policy of West German
rearmament.
How did the Germans come to Himmerod? The world had just
found itself in a Cold War, and the confrontation between the west-
ern and eastern power blocks was especially dramatic on the European
front. The Iron Curtain ran through the middle of Germany. The
powerful Soviet presence within the borders of greater Germany was
seen as a serious threat to the Western Powers, which had united their
occupation zones and encouraged the formation of the West German
state in May 1949.
The Western states had underestimated the growing threat from the
East. Before 29 August 1949, the date the Soviet Union detonated its
first atom bomb, the West thought it could be secured and protected by
the shield of the atomic bomb monopoly of the United States. However,
it was the Soviet superiority in conventional weapons that alarmed the
Western Powers. The increasingly aggressive strategy of the Soviets, as
demonstrated by the Berlin Blockade, which lasted from June 1948 to
May 1949, compelled the Western Powers to form a defensive alliance.
In April 1949 most of the Western democracies joined together to form
NATO. Yet in central Europe, the Western Powers lacked the necessary
military forces to provide an effective defense against the expected
Soviet main attack. On the central European front the Eastern Block
forces had a numerical superiority of 3:1 in ground forces and 5:1 in
aircraft strength.4 Due to the massive debts just incurred by the Western
Powers during World War II and the need to pay for various colonial
conflicts, the financial condition of the Western states was precarious.
Additional military spending was not possible.
Although their motivations were quite different, the Allied Powers
and the Germans were coming to the same conclusion, namely, that
the new West German state should contribute to its own defense and
to the defense of the West. In the Western press the issue was being
4
Norbert Wiggershaus, Die Entscheidung fr einen westdeutschen
Verteidigungsbeitrag 1950, in Anfnge westdeutscher Sicherheitspolitik 19451956,
vol. 1, ed. Roland G. Foerster et al. (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1982), 339 [hereafter cited
as Foerster, Anfnge].
the himmerod memorandum 5
seriously discussed starting in the Fall of 1949.5 The Western Powers

took no official note of the issue, but within the inner circles of the
British and American governments the issue of West German rearma-
ment was frankly discussed.
Among the military leaders the view was universal that Europe could
not be defended against a Soviet attack without a military contribution
from the Germans. The Western Powers also had an interest in spread-
ing the burden of the common defense. One planning group in the U.S.
Army General Staff began planning for creation of a West German
army in the Fall of 1949.6 Only the French refused to consider the
creation of a German military force, because the memory of the
German occupation of 19401944 was still too fresh and painful in
their minds.
Adenauers Early Position on Security Policy and the Attitude

of the Western Powers
In West Germany there was another kind of resistance to be overcome.

In the years just after Germanys catastrophic defeat, a broad section of
the public rejected the establishment of any form of military service on
pacifistic grounds. Just as the Berlin Blockade initiated a public debate
about external security, it also provoked a strong protest movement,
the without me (Ohne Mich) movement, that soon became a signifi-
cant factor in Germanys internal politics. This political movement saw
a concrete danger to rearmament in that the Soviet Union might be
provoked to attack. Not a few Germans feared that rearmament and
formally binding the Federal Republic to the Western Alliance would
make the division of Germany permanent.
Konrad Adenauer was willing to pay the full political price to fur-
ther his policy aims. Since becoming the first head of government
(Federal chancellor) in September 1949 he never wavered in his deter-
mination to chart Germany on a course of full integration with the
Westwhich had been one of the conditions of the establishment of
the West German state. Adenauer wanted Germanys former enemies
5
Gerhard Wettig, Entmilitarisierung und Wiederbewaffnung in Deutschland 1943
1955. Internationale Auseinandersetzungen um die Rolle der Deutschen in Europa
(Munich: Oldenbourg, 1967), 27780.
6
Ibid., 274.
6 thomas vogel
to trust the West German government to clear the way for the young
state to progress from the status of a legally occupied country to that of
full state sovereignty. Achieving full sovereign status for the Federal
Republic was, in fact, Adenauers primary goal. If Germany contrib-
uted militarily to the Western Security alliance, then he expected that
political partnership and a status of full equality would follow. In addi-
tion, he was himself convinced of the need for such a contribution, as
the danger of war had increased dramatically since the start of the
Berlin Blockade.7
The Federal chancellor had little political maneuver room to craft
his position on security policy. In his own country he had to take into
account strong resistance to his initiatives, some of which came from
the leaders of his own party.8 The foreign policy situation and legal
status made for other difficulties. The occupation statute of 1949 still
required the Federal Republic to carry out disarmament and demilita-
rization measures. One notable feature of the Federal constitution is
that it made no provision for armed forces. Even unofficial political
agitation for rearmament was criminalized; a December 1949 decree of
the Allied High Commission threatened anyone participating in secret
military activities with lifelong imprisonment.9
Adenauer began with extreme care and circumspection, taking slow
steps and constantly gauging the degree of public acceptance for the
creation of a West German defense force. Already in early 1949 he
made some general statements that did not directly raise the issue but
opened the way for a public discussion. When he raised the possibility
of Germany participating in the newly formed NATO Alliance, the
possibility of a military contribution was also implicit. In late 1949, as
a Federal chancellor only a few months in office, Adenauer mentioned
the possibility of West German armed forces in a discussion with for-
eign journalistsmaking very clear that such a force could only exist
as a part of an integrated European army.10 The public outcry against
such a position was surprisingly strong and was damped down only by
some quick political backpedalling.
7
Henning Khler, Adenauer. Eine politische Biographie (Frankfurt/Main, Berlin:
Propylen, 1994), 61213.
8
Adenauers most prominent opponent on this issue was Gustav Heinemann, who
resigned over this issue on 9 October 1950 as Minister of the Interior. He later even
resigned from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
9
This refers to Law Number 16 of the High Commission, published 19 December
1949.
10
See Adenauers interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer, 3 December 1949.
Powerful opposition within and outside of Germany pushed

Adenauer in early 1950 to change his tactics. He avoided any direct
reference to the theme of a West German defense contribution. In dis-
cussions with the Allied High Commission and also in his public state-
ments, he asked only for stronger security guarantees for German
territory in case of an attack by the Soviet Union. The Western Powers
understood well Adenauers concerns, but they also knew that they
could not mount an effective defense on the German border because of
weak Western troop strength.11 Adenauer knew this and also knew that
the Western Powers understood the subtle message for a stronger secu-
rity system that he was communicating. Still, the old concerns about
the revival of German militarism were still present in the conscious-
ness of the Allied nations. In addition, some also feared that in their
desire to reunify their country, the West Germans might move to the
Soviet side. Another fact that worked against German rearmament
were the legal restrictions against rearmament that the Allied powers
reaffirmed in May 1950.12
In early 1950 the previously uncompromising attitude of the Allies
towards Adenauer on the question of rearmament was about to be
undermined. The high commands of both the British and American
armed forces carried out their own analysis and soberly concluded that
West German armed forces were indispensible for the defense of the
West. Yet this pragmatic approach to grand strategy could not be publi-
cally expressed, partly out of consideration for public opinion in
Western nations. Adenauer had to face Allied disapproval on 28 April
when he recommended to the Allied High Commission that a Federal
police gendarmerie of 30,000 men be created. The justification for such
a force was the weakness of the existing internal police forces of the
Federal Republic which were simply too weak to provide internal secu-
rity in time of crisis. In addition, the creation of large paramilitary
forces in East Germany deeply disturbed Adenauer. The Federal chan-
cellor viewed West Germany as virtually defenseless in any internal
German-versus-German conflict pitting the East German Peoples
11
Due to the lack of ground forces, Allied planners believed that the earliest a Soviet
offensive could be halted was at the Rhine River and that a large part of West German
territory would have to be sacrificed if the Soviets attacked. Adenauer was not sure that
the Western Powers would employ their nuclear deterrent to defend West Germany,
even though conventional military power was so weak.
12
This refers to Law Number 24 of the Allied High Commission, published 8 May
1950.
8 thomas vogel
Police against the West Germans. If the Western Powers refused to

escalate the conflict and intervene, then the West German state would
face defeat. For Adenauer, the fundamental problems of internal secu-
rity were directly linked to the provision of external security. Of course,
the possibility that a Federal gendarmerie might become the core of
future armed forces was also behind Adenauers thinking.
Count Schwerin and the Road to Himmerod
The Allies responded cautiously to Adenauers recommendations and

finally refused them at the end of July 1950. At this time the Allies had
already obliged Adenauer in another, but more decisive, way. Notably,
the British High Commissioner Sir Brian Robertson and his deputy Sir
Christopher Steel by early 1950 had become advocates for Adenauers
political agenda. In the person of the retired General Count Gerhard
von Schwerin they had identified someone in whom both Adenauer
and they could have confidence to serve as the chancellors first official
security advisor.
Count Schwerin was not the first choice of the Federal chancellor.
Even before Schwerin became military advisor, Adenauer had infor-
mally sought out former Wehrmacht generals to advise him on mili-
tary and security issues. Foremost among these informal advisors was
Lieutenant General (ret.) Hans Speidel, who had established a good
rapport with Adenauer in the latter part of 1948. Later, the Americans
favored Speidel for the position of advisor to the chancellor.13 But in
early 1950 he was not available to assume the post. So, based partly on
the recommendation of the British, on 24 May 1950 Count Schwerin
became the Advisor to the chancellor for Security Issues.14 Although
the title failed to clearly differentiate between internal and external
security, the selection of a panzer general indicated Adenauers intent
for the position.
Count Schwerin required several weeks to assemble a small staff and
move into an office next to the chancellor. On 1 August 1950 he opened
a small office under the cover name Central Office for Homeland
Service. Although the Allied Powers approved of the action, the
13
Also fully involved was Major General (ret.) Reinhard Gehlen, who ran a secret
intelligence organization for the Americans.
14
A good account of this is Roland G. Foerster, Innenpolitische Aspekte der
Sicherheit Westdeutschlands (19471950), in Foerster, Anfnge, 1:45859.
Central Office still occupied a grey zone under the occupation laws.
So, at first, the official government spokesmen and the press remained
quiet about the action, and the existence of the office was not publically
announced before 12 September.
What also remained a secret to the public were the German/Allied
Powers discussions on security issues, which began on 12 July 1950, in
which Count Schwerin took part. George P. Hays, representing the
American High Commissioner John S. McCloy, was not yet ready to
accept the idea of German armed forces and proposed instead that
German personnel in the form of the so-called labor units or other
volunteer units be added as reinforcements to existing Allied military
units.15 At the meeting it was decided to establish a committee of
German defense experts who could provide advice about the German
defense contribution. The British and Americans approved the pro-
posal on 8/9 August. This action set the stage for the later conference
at Himmerod.
Policy Changes Following the Invasion of Korea
Of the three Western Powers, Britain remained the most friendly

towards Adenauer. The German chancellor therefore cultivated his
contact with Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, who had become the new British
High Commissioner at the end of June. Still, the official British view
lagged far behind the position of the British military chiefs. The British
military leaders surprised their civilian superiors with a policy paper
in early August 1950 that proposed the establishment of German land,
sea, and air forces to be integrated within NATO. The former British
prime minister Winston Churchill supported this position in a speech
before the European Council on 11 August 1950. Most of the European
Council members favored Churchills suggestion for a European army
that would include German participation.
In the meantime, the world political environment had dramatically
changed as a result of the North Korean attack on South Korea, initi-
ated on 25 June 1950. The Western Powers correctly saw the Soviet
Union behind the aggression. Events in the Far East provoked intense
anxiety in Western Europe, not the least because of the tactical defeats
15
In the service of the Allied Powers there were various labor and security units
manned with German personnel.
10 thomas vogel
experienced by the American forces in their early battles in South

Korea.
Adenauer saw the developments in Korea in a different light. On the
one hand, the security threat to the Federal Republic had increased. On
the other hand, the chances that the Western Powers would accept a
West German defense force were better than before. So on 16 August
he renewed the initiative to establish a German Federal police gendar-
merie, a proposal that the Allies had tabled in April. Speaking more
openly than ever before, in an interview with the New York Times
Adenauer expressed the hope that in the near future a West German
defense force could be integrated into a European army. The next day
he sent the Allied High Commissioner a proposal for the creation of a
150,000 Federal protection police, a proposal that had been modified
to conform more closely to French sensibilities. The police proposal
was linked to the concept of a future European army.16
As one might have expected, Adenauers proposal was rejected by
the French High Commissioner Andr Franois-Poncet. But McCloy
and Kirkpatrick reacted differently. The latter travelled to London to
consult with the government and returned with an agreement for the
creation of a 100,000-man strong gendarmerie that would be the first
step towards the establishment of a future army. A fundamental agree-
ment on these issues would be decided at the conference of Western
foreign ministers and by the NATO council, which would meet in New
York at the end of September.
McCloy did not immediately respond to Adenauers proposals
because Washington had decided to completely reconsider its security
policies in light of the Korean War. This had consequences for the pol-
icy of the Western nations. Discussions with European allies quickly
led to the conclusion that their rearmament efforts were not sufficient
to meet the threat. The earlier recommendation of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff to have German soldiers was a deciding factor. At the end of
August the Pentagon proposed to Secretary of State Dean Acheson the
single package concept in which the Western European allies could
count on a significant reinforcement of the U.S. forces in Europe only
if they accepted the creation of a West German contingent to be part
16
This recommendation was related to a memorandum to the Allied High Commis-
sioners of 29 August in which Adenauer accepted the notion of eliminating national
armed forces in the framework of a single European army.
of NATO. After President Truman approved the policy on 9 September

the Americans went to the conference with a clear objective.
In New York it was relatively easy to win British approval for the
American plan. However, the French foreign minister Robert Schuman
was expected to resist strongly. Still, the Americans had some powerful
advantages in dealing with the French. The French were strongly
dependent upon the Americans to maintain their national finances,
armament program, and military policy. This support could be lever-
aged to push the French to accept an agreement. On 19 September the
three foreign ministers came to an important agreement about the
German Federal Republic. Although the Allies did not meet all of
Adenauers expectationsnamely the desired peace treaty and the end
of the occupationsignificant progress was made. The most contested
issue, the German military contribution to NATO, was tabled. However,
the conferences summary statement noted that the question of rear-
mament and the status of German equality were directly linked. One
week later the NATO Council promised that, in principle, the basic
concept of a German defense contribution could be acceptable,
although bound by some restrictions. The final breakthrough came
with the acceptance of the modified French Pleven Plan (also called
the Spofford Compromise) in December 1950.
The Himmerod ConferencePreparation
It is important to note that even before the Korea conflict provoked an

international strategic reassessment, the institutional apparatus to cre-
ate a security policy was already being prepared in the Federal Republic.
In his office, one that was directly subordinate to the Federal chancel-
lor, Count Schwerin had already assembled a small staff from his ear-
lier military circle as he began operations on 1 August 1950 in the
Central Office for Homeland Service. The small staff provided Schwerin
with excellent support, and he was able to effectively advise and pre-
pare the chancellor for his discussions with the German political oppo-
sition leaders and negotiations with the Allied High Commissioners.
In order to help him keep abreast of developments in the eastern part
of Germany, and throughout the whole of the Soviet-occupied Eastern
Block, Schwerin had a small but highly effective intelligence service.
Yet Schwerin lacked the specialist staff that could help him pre-
pare a comprehensive plan for the development of West German
12 thomas vogel
military forces. Indeed, that was not exactly the mandate that Adenauer
had given him. Schwerin concentrated his efforts on developing
Adenauers preference for mixing internal and external security and on
developing a paramilitary West German police force as an intermedi-
ate step towards building a cadre for new armed forces.17 With the start
of the Korean War Schwerin understood that the moment had come to
organize a first-rate expert staff who could systematically build German
armed forces. Schwerins discussions with the Allied High Commission-
ers, which began in mid-July, convinced him of the need for such a
staff. With Adenauers approval Schwerin proceeded, and by the end of
July he had recruited Colonel General (ret.) Heinrich von Vietinghoff-
Scheel to take over as chairman of a group of experts.
Per Adenauers wishes, Schwerin began to assemble a group of mili-
tary experts for a conference to take place in August 1950. At the same
time, Schwerin came into a political conflict with the housing minister,
Eberhard Wildermuth, who, as a highly decorated former colonel,
believed that Adenauer would be better served if he himself was the
chancellors military advisor and, perhaps, even the Federal Republics
first defense minister. The open rivalry between his two subordinates
was a considerable irritation to Adenauer.
The actual victor in this internal fight was a small group of experts
that formed around retired Lieutenant General Speidel. This group had
already created a network of former senior Wehrmacht officers and
had laid out their own concepts for a German security policy. Their
views fit well with Adenauers, whose primary interests supported rear-
mament as a means of political emancipation for the Federal Republic.18
Even before he had become chancellor, Adenauer had established con-
tact with Speidel and sought his advice. Two other major figures aligned
with Speidel were General (ret.) Hermann Foertsch and Lieutenant
General (ret.) Adolf Heusinger.
With Wildermuths encouragement, Speidel, Foertsch, and Heusinger
prepared a memorandum on 7 August 1950, titled Thoughts on the
Issue of External Security for the Federal Republic. Adenauer
accepted the memorandum on 14 August and was so impressed with
17
See above, footnote 4.
18
Count Schwerin did not want to link the West German agreement to rearmament
completely to political terms addressed to the Allies. This is one of the issues that
caused some conflict between Adenauer and Schwerin and later led to Schwerins
firing.
the document that he put it before the cabinet the next day. The chan-
cellor noted that the military situation and the threats facing the Federal
Republic were even more dangerous that he had previously thought.
The security assurances of the Western Powers would not be sufficient
to keep West Germany safe and free. In addition, the memorandum
argued that the goal of West German rearmament was to achieve mili-
tary and political equality. Essentially it proposed to commit West
German army contingents in corps-sized formations, as well as a tacti-
cal air force, to serve under the command of an integrated military
staff. The Western Powers should end Germanys occupation status and
allow the Federal Republic full sovereignty. Finally, the memorandum
wanted NATO to provide defense guarantees and be prepared to sta-
tion more troops in West Germany.
Thus, Speidels group definitively offered its services for the intended
conference of experts to thrash out the details. The memorandum,
along with the most recent decision of the European Council,19 pro-
vided encouragement for Adenauer to lay out a new security policy
initiative. Per Adenauers wishes, in mid-August Count Schwerin
began putting together a meeting of experts. For several weeks his
office had been busy recruiting and selecting military experts. They
were invited to an organizational meeting on 29 August 1950.
Consulting with Herbert Blankenhorn, the foreign policy advisor in
Adenauers office, Schwerin drafted the instructions for the experts
on 25 August. The expert committee was also seen as the likely mem-
bers of a future team that could work together with their Allied coun-
terparts on a larger joint committee. It was also noted that the military
committee pledged to follow the directions laid down by their civilian
political leaders.
The High Commissioners had already agreed to the project when,
on 26 August, Adenauer ordered the cancellation of the expert meeting
in consideration of the upcoming Allied foreign ministers conference
in New York.20 He did not want to irritate the Allied foreign ministers
or risk any negative consequences for the German Question, and he
feared that the Allied ministers might reverse any German initiative.
19
See above, footnote 9.
20
The agreement of the High Commission was necessary because they had decreed
under Occupation Law Number 16 that the political involvement of Germans in mili-
tary issues was subject to prosecution. See footnote 9.
14 thomas vogel
In any case, Adenauer wanted to avoid giving the impression that

Germany had already begun rearmament planning.
Upon his return from New York, McCloy personally briefed the
German chancellor on 24 September as to the decisions of the con-
ference. Adenauer was somewhat disappointed by the results. Already
on 17 September he had been told that his recommendation to build
up the Federal German police as a step towards creating a West German
military force had been set aside, despite support for the measure
from the British.21 Adenauer felt compelled to take a more forceful
stance towards pushing the consideration of a West German military
contribution. Immediately, he instructed Count Schwerin to prepare
to call the experts committee together right away. Their conference
was to take place in the Benedictine monastery at Himmerod, about
100 kilometers south of Bonn in the Eifel Hills. The location was
chosen to preserve the privacy of the discussions.22 On 26 September
the committee members who had been selected to attend the confer-
ence were officially notified. They would begin with a conference
dinner on 5 October, and the committee would meet from 6 to 9
October.
Just before the beginning of the conference, Count Schwerin made
an important decision concerning the committee membership. In late
September he had convinced General Staff Colonel (ret.) Count Johann
Adolf von Kielmansegg to serve as the committee secretary. Coordinating
with Schwerin, Kielmansegg had made all the necessary preparations
by the start of October. Along with Schwerin and the committee chair-
man, Vietinghoff-Scheel, Kielmansegg organized the experts into four
subcommittees. Meanwhile, in Schwerins Central Office, some detailed
instructions for the subcommittees were prepared.
Schwerins withdrawal from direct participation in the conference
he had organized was symbolic of his sinking political position on
the chancellors staff. The concept of using the Federal police as an
intermediate means to reach rearmament had made no progress.
Adenauer had come to prefer the direct solution proposed by Speidels
21
Foerster, Innenpolitische Aspekte, 560, 330. See also Rolf Steiniger, Wiederbe-
waffnung. Die Entscheidung fr einen westdeutschen Verteidigungsbeitrag: Adenauer
und die Westmchte 1950 (Erlangen, Bonn, Wien: Straube, 1989), 21314.
22
The decision to hold the conference at Himmerod was made because Adenauer
personally knew the abbot and had made a personal appeal to hold the conference
there. See Foerster, Innenpolitische Aspekte, 142.
circle. Adenauer had taken Speidels security policy memorandum

of 7 August as the preferred direction for Germany. On 4 October
Adenauer personally told Speidel that his memorandum should form
the basis of the committee discussions that would begin at Himmerod
in two days.23
Participants and the Events of the Conference
Lieutenant General (ret.) Speidel was one of 15 senior officers of the

former German Wehrmacht who were invited to participate at the con-
ference at Himmerod. The complete list of the participants is as
follows:
Colonel General (ret.) Heinrich von Vietinghoff-Scheel (army: con-
ference chairman)
General of Infantry (ret.) Hermann Foertsch (army)
General of Panzer Troops (ret.) Hans Rttiger (army)
General of Panzer Troops (ret.) Friedo von Senger and Etterlin
(army)
General of the Air Force (ret.) Dr. Robert Knauss (air force)
General of the Air Force (ret.) Rudolf Meister (air force)
Admiral a.D. Walter Gladisch (navy)
Lieutenant General (ret.) Dr. Hans Speidel (army)
Lieutenant General (ret.) Adolf Heusinger (army)
Vice Admiral a.D. Friedrich Ruge (navy)
Colonel of the General Staff (ret.) Count Johann Adolf von Kiel-
mansegg (army)
Colonel of the General Staff (ret.) Count Eberhard von Nostitz
(army)
Naval Captain (ret.) Alfred Schulze-Hinrichs (navy)
Major of the General Staff (ret.) Count Wolf von Baudissin (army)
Major of the General Staff (ret.) Horst Krger (air force)
The selection of experts by Count Schwerin was based on several
criteria. First, all committee members had to be acceptable to the
23
Cited in Hans Speidel, Aus unserer Zeit. Erinnerungen (Berlin, Frankfurt/Main,
Wien: Ullstein/Propylen, 1977), 272.
16 thomas vogel
Western Allies and to the German public as well. At the very least,
committee members had to be free from any direct involvement in the
crimes of the Third Reich. Even better would be the selection of people
who had been known to be critical of National Socialism. Speidel,
Heusinger, Knauss, and Kielmansegg were considered in the latter
category, as men who had belonged to the circle of military opposition
to Hitler. (Extending the invitation to Foertsch, who in the 1930s had
openly supported National Socialism, had simply been a mistake.)
It was expected that each officer would have shown correct behavior
during the war and would have a positive view of the Allies. Meeting
this criteria were Vietinghoff-Scheel, Senger und Etterlin, Rttiger,
Speidel, Heusinger, Ruge, and Knauss.
Furthermore, military experience and professional relationships
certainly played a major role in selecting the group of experts. The tra-
ditional identities and specific needs of the army, navy and air force
were taken into account by providing an appropriate numerical pro-
portion among the representatives of the different service branches.
Both highly effective field commanders and officers with a General
Staff background were represented. Lastly, it was seen as important to
ensure a mix of regional backgrounds as well as age groups. The differ-
ence between the youngest member of the committee (Krger, born
1916) and the oldest (Gladisch, born 1884) spanned several genera-
tions of officers.
It must also be noted that several people took part in the conference
without being involved in the committee proceedings. For example,
Count Schwerin greeted the conference participants on 6 October, out-
lined the purpose of the conference, and presented the official message
of the Federal chancellor. After Schwerins talk, Blankenhorn provided
a general overview of the security conditions facing Germany. He spec-
ified the primary goals of the foreign and security policies of the Federal
Republic, which included the integration of the Federal Republic with
the West to include a rapprochement with France. The question of how
Western security would be organized remained open. Rather than an
international army under the framework of NATO, the Federal Republic
preferred the model of an integrated European army as a means to fur-
ther the process of European unity. The hoped-for integration would
have to lead to full equality of the West German state. Blankenhorn
concluded that, in consideration of German internal politics, the new
armed forces could not take its inspiration from the Wehrmacht or ear-
lier German military traditions.
After Blankenhorn, a legal expert, Dr. Erich Kaufmann, spoke on

The Problems of National and International Law.24 Following him
was former General Staff Major Achim Oster, chief of the information
and intelligence office of the Central Office for Homeland Service. He
spoke of the current threat posed by Soviet military power and about
the Peoples Police Force established by the East Germans. Finally,
Major General (ret.) Hellmuth Reinhardt spoke about the German
Labor service personnel employed by the Allied armed forces as a pos-
sible cadre for a new German armed forces.
The conference work was divided into four subcommittees. The
Military/Political committee was chaired by Speidel and included
Ruge, Meister, and Nostitz. They would address the political and mili-
tary requirements of the Allies. The General Committee under Foertsch
as chairman included Knauss, Baudissin, and Krger. This group dealt
with the issue of the relationships among state, the people, and the mil-
itary. They were tasked to recommend ethical and moral principles for
the new German soldier. The Organization Committee had Heusinger as
the chair and Rttiger, Meister, Gladisch, and Kielmansegg as members.
They were to provide an analysis of the operational requirements that
would form the basis for recommendations about the type and number
of military formations and the equipment they would require. In addi-
tion, the committee would provide a timetable for standing up units.
The Training Committee under Senger und Etterlin as chair included
Schulze-Hinrichs and Krger. This committee would establish the
principles, methods, and goals of a military training program. It would
also provide recommendations for the establishment of the military
infrastructure and the manning system. The written reports of the sub-
committees were combined into one memorandum at the end of the
conference. After some internal disputes were resolved, a final report was
produced by the committee secretary Kielmansegg on 11 October.
The Memorandum
The Himmerod Memorandum was divided into five sections and con-
cludes with comments by the committee chairman. Each section will
be examined in turn.
24
Ibid., 273. It may be that Kaufmann played only the role of a passive observer at
the conference. See Rautenberg/Wiggershaus, Die Himmeroder Denkschrift, 150.
18 thomas vogel
Part 1. The Military-Political Principles and Assumptions

In military/political terms, Germany finds itself in the most unfavour-
able Position in its modern history. The security guarantees of the
Western Powers are more theoretical than real as long as the Allied
forces available for the defense of Germany and Western Europe are
insufficient. The defense forces must be strengthened to the point that
the Soviet Union will be deterred from attack by the higher level of
risk. The German peoples willingness to defend their country is prob-
ably sufficient to fill the gap in the defense of Western Europe. Yet the
readiness of the Germans to fight if necessary has eroded dramatically
since 1945. Some means must be found to bolster the self-confidence
of the Germans.
To build this self confidence the Western Powers will need to return
to Germany full sovereign rights and powers and then integrate
Germany fully into the Western alliance. An important part of achiev-
ing military equality would be the creation of a German army corps,
a German tactical air force, and a German navy for coastal defense.
It is also psychologically important for the national morale to have
the rehabilitation of former German soldiers carried out through an
official declaration by the Western Powers. This would include releas-
ing German military personnel who have been imprisoned as war
criminals as long as they have not also violated laws that existed before
the Nazi takeover. In general, the Western Powers will have to avoid
characterizing soldiers of the wartime Wehrmacht and Waffen SS as
criminals.
To win the support of the German population for a program of
national defense the West German government needs to adopt the fol-
lowing measures:
Promise that every German soldier will owe his service to the
German people until a federal European state is formed.
Stipulate that German soldiers will serve only within Europe.
Win the support of the opposition parties and the labor unions
for rearmament.
Keep the population fully informed on all issues regarding rear-
mament.
Distinguish clearly between internal and external security as well
as between military forces and police.
Provide a declaration by the government and parliament that for-
mer German soldiers have served their country with honor.
Provide reasonable support for former and future German sol-

diers and their families and survivors.
Part 2. Basic Operational Considerations Facing the

Federal Republic
The operational situation facing the Federal Republic and which will
form the basic direction for German rearmament planning is deter-
mined by a significant military superiority of the Soviet Union in
Europe. The immediate threat is posed by the 22 Soviet divisions based
in Germany, all of which are full-strength armored or mechanized
divisions, as well as a further eight to nine Soviet divisions in Poland,
Austria, and the Balkans. One can add to these approximately 50 units
of the Soviet satellite states that are in various stages of manning and
readiness.
The enemy superiority is increased by 60 divisions when one counts
units that are available in Russia. In a few days they could reinforce any
Soviet attack against Western Europe or the Balkans. The Soviet numer-
ical superiority on land is mirrored in the air, where the Soviets have
approximately 25,000 operational aircraft, 1,800 of which are stationed
in East Germany.25 Furthermore, one must take into account the use of
strong airborne formations. At sea the Soviets have built a strong sub-
marine force with approximately 300 submarines, a number that
includes obsolete and training boats. Of these, approximately 200 are
committed to the North Atlantic and the Baltic.26
In summary, the Soviet Union is in a position to attack Western
Europe at any time. However, the Soviets also have to contend with
certain limitations. They must consider the possibility of Allied air
attacks against their logistics lines, their fuel supplies, and their troop
reinforcements. Any Soviet attack against Western Europe would have
the objective of reaching and occupying the Atlantic coast, from Norway
to the Pyrenees, as well as the Mediterranean line from Corsica-Sicily
and Suez. The Soviets will have to reach their objectives as quickly as
possible to prevent the Allies from establishing a bridgehead that would
form the base for a counterattack. If the Soviets cannot succeed quickly,
25
The number of 25,000 aircraft was not necessarily accurate, as it included training
planes as well as surplus aircraft left over from the World War.
26
From information available today we know that the number of operational sub-
marines in the North Sea and Baltic was considerably lower.
20 thomas vogel
in the short and long run they will be at a disadvantage when facing the
greatly superior military-industrial potential of America.
In the face of superior Soviet numbers, Western efforts are insuffi-
cient. An integrated operations plan for the defense of Western
Europe is necessary. The goal of such a plan would be to defend Western
Europe as far eastwards as possible, to make the defense as mobile as
possible and aggressive as possible, and to be ready to push the fight
into East Germany. It will take two years for Germany to build such a
capable defense force. In the meantime, the nuclear superiority of the
United States will make a Soviet attack unlikely.
To support the Allied operational planning in central Europe, 25
divisions are necessary. This number includes the 12 German armored
divisions, which must be ready and immediately available for the West
German defense.27 That Allied force would have to stop any Soviet
attack and hold a defense line on the Rhine until a further 30 Allied
divisions, stationed west of the Rhine or brought as reinforcements
from America, could arrive to do battle. Because the enemy would
want to reach the Atlantic Coast as quickly as possible, the very exist-
ence of an Allied defense force might deter the enemy from attacking.
If the Soviets do attack, the immediate Allied objective should be to
win enough time in their defense of Germany to enable the planned
reinforcements from Western Europe and America to move into posi-
tion. Then a counterattack would be possible.
Part 3. Organization of the German Contingent

Special attention is paid to the issue of command authority of the
military in peacetime. Because historical experience has seen the
German armed forces unable to create a unified high command,
the three service branches together will be headed by an officer with
the title of Inspector or Chief of the Defense Office. The command
authority of the Inspector and the armed forces should be exer-
cised by the Federal president. The political/parliamentary control
of the armed forces should be exercised by a civilian Minister of
External Security. A civilian state secretary should head the politically
27
The requirement for 12 divisions is older than the Himmerod memorandum.
In July 1950 a memorandum of Count Schwerin gave the number of necessary divi-
sions as 12 motorized and armoured divisions. See Rautenberg/Wiggershaus, Die
Himmeroder Denkschrift, 202, Annex, 190.
important departments of the ministry, above all the personnel

department.
Recommendations for unit organization and equipment procure-
ment of the West German armed forces are based on the assessment
that the German contribution will consist mainly of land forces. This is
expected and considered necessary. Per the guidelines laid down in
part 2 of the Himmerod Memorandum, the army will need at least 12
panzer divisions with six corps staffs and assorted additional support
units. Only armored forces will have the required mass, fighting power,
and mobility to fulfill the envisioned mission. The committee estimates
that the army will need a total of 250,000 soldiers, a number that is
likely the largest that the Federal Republic can effectively field. The
leadership cadre should be recruited primarily from volunteers. The
introduction of compulsory duty will come later, when it will be nec-
essary to flesh out the armys units. It is unlikely that conscription can
be avoided.28
One must begin the process of standing up units in November 1950,
to have the first trained units combat ready by the Fall of 1952.29 The
most modern equipment is required for the force, and obsolete equip-
ment from the surplus and reserve stocks of the Western Allies are not
wanted. Standardization with American weapons and equipment is
considered desirable, and such weapons might be built in Germany
under license. The amount of equipment required is approximately
3,600 battle tanks and 1,000 artillery pieces.
It is not necessary for Germany to have its own Luftwaffe. Allied
fighter units could take over the defense of West German airspace. This
mission can only be accomplished in the framework of an integrated
air defense system for all of Europe. Instead of an independent air
force, Germany should build an army air corps that would be oriented
towards supporting the army with reconnaissance and close air sup-
port. The army aviation branch will need to protect its reconnaissance
and fighter bomber aircraft with its own fighter-interceptor units. The
number of aircraft needed is estimated at 831 reconnaissance, close
support, and fighter planes. The number of flying and technical
personnel will have to be decided by early 1951 if training is to begin
28
The important but politically sensitive question of universal military service was
only briefly mentioned.
29
The date of Fall 1952 as the goal date for setting up units was set forth in part 2 of
the Memorandum, as a Soviet attack within two years was seen as unlikely.
22 thomas vogel
overseas in Allied training facilities in the Fall of that year. As soon as

the training of individuals is completed, units could be formed and
joint training could begin with the ground forces.
The weak NATO naval forces in the Baltic must be reinforced by a
German naval contingent. Together with Allied naval and air forces,
control of the sea in at least the western reaches of the Baltic is a realis-
tic goal. To carry out the missions of attacking Soviet naval forces and
interdicting Soviet logistics lines, to conduct naval landings in the
enemy rear, and to protect from Soviet amphibious landings in NATOs
rear, the German navy requires numerous small units and its own naval
air arm.
A number of older minesweepers and escort ships with German
crews are already in service with the Allied occupation governments
and could be immediately taken into German service. Other demilita-
rized vessels of the former German navy are in Allied or private hands
and could be reactivated for navy service. Smaller ships and wooden
vessels could be supplied by German shipyards.
Part 4. Training
The training of soldiers for new armed forces is a formidable endeav-
our under any circumstances. From the large number of German mili-
tary and combat veterans, only a minority can be used effectively in a
new military force, as training in the Wehrmacht in its last years was
deficient. In any case, new German soldiers will have to learn to use
new weapons and equipment provided by the Western Powers. It is
also necessary to create a system that can provide a high level of indi-
vidual training. Only with well-trained, confident, capable and think-
ing soldiers can Germany hope to fight on roughly equal terms when
facing the numerical superiority of the Soviet forces. In the interest of
integration and standardization with Germanys allies, the training
program will have to depend on the Western Powers. From the armys
viewpoint, this means that only the Americans are in the position to
provide an acceptable model and to support the Germans. However, a
German air force could be oriented on both the U.S. and British
models.
If the training of German soldiers is to begin before the end of 1952,
West Germany would first have to receive the necessary weapons,
equipment, and training teams from the Western armed forces. The
leadership cadre, as well as flying and technical personnel for the air
force, will have to be trained overseas in Allied bases. A further major

issue will be creating a modern infrastructure for the new armed forces
inside Germany.
Part 5. The Internal Orientation of the Military

Of equal importance to the purely military side of training is the char-
acter building and education of new German soldiers, to be carried
out with special regard for the internal orientation of the new mili-
tary force. For political reasons, it is essential that the orientation of the
new armed forces not follow the cultural forms of the old Wehrmacht.
A balance should be found between the necessary orientation towards
the Western armed forces and consideration for the German soldierly
experience and traditions.
With his commitment to the defense of freedom and social justice,
the new German soldier will stand for a new European idea that will
supersede the traditional national ties. However, the new ethic does
not rule out a healthy patriotism, which will provide the soldier with
a direct link to his family and home town.
The culture of the military services will encourage every single sol-
dier to personally accept and internalize the democratic state and civil
life. Another issue is the encouragement of the view that soldiers ought
to be above party politics as a means of furthering the internal unity
of the forces. In practice this means that the rights of the individual
should be limited for the duration of military service. These rights
include voting rights, membership in political parties and unions, the
right to speak and meet within military facilities, and the right to join
organizations. One will retain the right of petition, however.
Every soldier should make a formal and public oath, which con-
tains a commitment to Europe and the German democratic state. With
the oath each soldier acknowledges his soldierly duties as stipu-
lated by law. The source of command authority is the head of state
(Federal president) and the constitution. The military will differenti-
ate between civil and military offenses so that the civil courts will deal
with the former and the military courts the latter. One stipulated duty is
the responsibility to disobey orders that will cause crimes against
humanity or violate international law as well as the civil and
military law.
The disciplinary system of the military will be reintroduced in a
modernized form. One issue in this regard is whether it makes sense to
24 thomas vogel
have a committee of ombudsmen within each military unit. This might

prove useful in controlling the system for the enlistment of officers in
the sense of self-purification, especially if there is any suspicion
against officers because of their service in the last World War.
The education of soldiers is envisioned as something that includes
political and ethical training as well as military training. The objective
of such training is to create a committed citizen and European soldier
and to combat any anti-democratic influences. Each soldier should
learn to be part of society without being part of a separate caste. The
batman, the orderlies of the officers clubs, or the requirement to wear
uniforms at all times are all to be things of the past.
The defense mindedness of the whole population will have to be
reinforced through a planned public-relations campaign and a public-
education program. Sensitive themes such as pacifism, militarism,
conscientious objection to military service, and the thorny issue of a
German versus German conflict will need to be addressed.
Part 6. Summary Comments by the Committee Chairman

If the political decision is made to create German armed forces, then
the following measures will have to be put into effect under high
priority:
As early as November 1950 the working staff already recruited
should be expanded and begin serving as a standing committee
to begin the practical work of standing up armed forces.
The Allied High Commission must legalize the work and the
existence of the current committee and allow an increase of the
working staff.
Western nations must take public measures against the prejudi-
cial characterization of the former German soldiers and must
distance the former regular armed forces from the war crimes
issue. This is needed in order to build an attitude of mutual trust
so that cadre personnel for the new armed forces can be recruited
and also can be accepted by the broader population.
Later History of the Conference and the Memorandum
The conference memorandum that was signed by all the conference

participants was not immediately sent to the Federal chancellor for
approval. At the urging of Count Kielmansegg, Count Schwerin on

28 October provided a broader commentary to the Memorandum.30
In careful language, he took a somewhat critical tone. For example, he
agreed with the recommendation for fundamental internal reforms but
did not see that the conditions existed to quickly build armed forces
from the rehabilitated expertise of the past. Along with Schwerins
commentary, Kielmansegg presented the Memorandum on 2 November
to the responsible department chief in the chancellors office, Hans
Globke.
One cannot be sure, yet it is very probable, that Federal chancellor
Adenauer personally did read the document. In any case, Speidel,
Heusinger, Major General (ret.) Reinhard Gehlen, Theodor Blank and
Globke briefed Adenauer that very day on the findings of the confer-
ence. The summary of this briefing indicates that, in the three weeks
since the Himmerod conference, the political and organizational con-
ditions for preparing and creating West German armed forces had fun-
damentally changed. Count Schwerin did not take part in the briefing,
as Adenauer had relieved him from his position as military advisor on
28 Octoberan action that had long been anticipated.31 The ostensible
reason for the firing was a press interview given by Schwerin that
caused the chancellor some political embarrassment.32
The participation of Theodor Blank in the briefing was a harbinger
of the future. In Adenauers view, it was politically better to have a civil-
ian, a Christian Democratic Union (CDU) representative, a Christian-
Democratic labor-union leader, and a former reserve army lieutenant
(Blank) than a highly qualified military professional (Schwerin) when
it came to piloting the rearmament of Germany through the rocky
waters of parliament and public opinion. In fact, Blank was not offi-
cially Schwerins replacement but was appointed to fill a newly created
office. To provide an ongoing cover before the public for West Germanys
rearmament activities, Blank was officially named the Pleponitary of
the Federal Chancellor for Coordination of Issues Concerning the
Increase of the Allied Forces. In reality, Amt Blank (The Blank
30
The commentary is provided in Rautenberg/Wiggershaus, Die Himmeroder
Denkschrift, 19092.
31
Ibid., 68.
32
Adenauer had no desire to see publicity about his policy for rearmament, as evi-
denced by the resignation of Interior Minister Heinemann on 9 October demonstrates.
See footnote 8.
26 thomas vogel
Office, as it came to be called) was given the duty of directing the prep-
arations for the creation of West German armed forces when officially
beginning operations on 23 November. Amt Blank would evolve into
the Federal Defense Ministry in 1955, and Blank would become the
first Minister of Defense.
The establishment of Amt Blank represented the end of the Central
Office for Homeland Service and of the committee of experts as well.
Neither was needed any longer. Upon assuming his new office on 8
November, Blank abolished the old Central Office for Homeland
Service. Some of the essential personnel of the old Central Office, such
as Kielmansegg and Oster, were readily taken into the new organiza-
tion. Members of the committee of experts were told by Blank in mid-
December that their work was complete and that committee operations
would end. Some committee participants were offended by the curt
manner in which Blank summarily dissolved the Central Office and
committee of experts.
The historical significance of the Central Office and the committee
of experts, as manifested in the Himmerod Memorandum, is not dis-
puted. However, from todays perspective, there remains the issue of
some criticism of the participants and their work. The idea that capable
armed forces could be created from nothing in only two years was
highly unrealistic. It would actually take ten years to create a truly
effective Bundeswehr.33 The recommendations for dividing the com-
mand responsibilities for the military were more idealistic than realis-
tic. To confer supreme military command authority on a soldier and
put the armed forces under the overall command of the Federal presi-
dent was also unrealistic; the experts misjudged the political and con-
stitutional leeway of the young republic.
As already recognized by Schwerin, other considerations and rec-
ommendations revealed a serious lack of knowledge about Allied plan-
ning and requirements. For example, the proposal to establish the
German army as a pure armored force represented some extreme
thinking and therefore did not find acceptance among the Allies.
NATOs operational planning demanded strong infantry forces, which
mandated a compromise of a mixed armor-infantry force. And, it was
33
The 12th and last division of the Bundeswehr was stood up and assigned to NATO
in 1965.
essential to win the acceptance of the French, who continued to fear an

too-powerful German offensive capability.34
Much of the thinking behind the Himmerod memorandum was
clearly based on Germanys experience of the Second World War. Yet
the Memorandum is free from suspicion as an attempt to restore
Germanys military tradition. Instead, it sought solutions among some
of the current ideas under the political and social pressures of the time.
From the German tradition, the idea of unified armed forces was
almost revolutionary. But the lesson had certainly been learned that
Germanys past experience of rivalry among the military services had
been disastrous.
The Himmerod committee was amazingly successful in setting the
requirements for the army with their proposed force of 250,000 men to
man 12 divisions. This is exactly what the Western military planners at
the time were arguing was the necessary force to close the central
European force gap. The Himmerod force strength figures turned out
to be exactly right to meet the internal and external requirements for
Germany. The numbers also were practical in setting the personnel,
financial, and economic burdens that Germany could support.35 With
the recommendation that western Europe be defended as far eastward
as possible, the Himmerod planners echoed the actual planning for
NATO at the time. Indeed, in October 1950 NATO began development
of the new forward strategy concept, a strategy that set the stage for
the Allies to request German military participation in NATO. The
Memorandum made it clear that it was in the obvious self-interest of
the Germans to support a NATO policy of forward defense.
A notable willingness to reform was found in the call for Inner
Orientation. The Memorandum made clear that military forces
and soldiers should stand firm in defense of democracy and a free
34
Helmut R. Hammerich, Kommiss kommt von Kompromiss. Das Heer der
Bundeswehr zwischen Wehrmacht und U.S. Army (19501970), in Helmut
R. Hammerich et al., Das Heer 1950 bis 1970. Konzeption, Organisation, Aufstellung
(Munich: Oldenbourg: 2006), 79.
35
There had been many personal contacts between Speidel and Schwerin and the
Western representatives. This assured that the major assumptions of the Himmerod
Memorandum were in agreement with Allied concepts and assumptions. The German
requirement for forces was mirrored in the requirement provided by the U.S. Army
Staff in October 1950 that between ten and 13 German divisions were needed to fill
the gap. See Christian Greiner, Die alliierten militrstrategischen Planungen zur
Verteidigung Westeuropas 19471950, in Foerster, Anfnge, 1:31115.
28 thomas vogel
societyyet could do so without weakening the military need for

discipline. These recommendations were at the origin of an often-
misunderstood debate between the modern and traditional approaches
to military discipline. Major (ret.) Count Baudissin, in a later staff posi-
tion in Amt Blank, would take these ideas and develop them into
the concept of the Innere Fuehrung (Leadership Development and
Civic Education) requirement and would later express them as the
citizen in uniform concept.
In many ways the Himmerod Memorandum was a milestone along
the path of West German rearmament. Some of the spiritual fathers of
the Memorandumnamely, Heusinger, Speidel, Kielmansegg, and
Baudissinused it as a blueprint for planning while they worked on
the staff of Amt Blank.36 From the years-long process of internal and
external debate there emerged many concepts first stated by the
Memorandum that would form the Bundeswehr, starting with the
foundation of the first units in early 1956.
36
Among the personnel involved with the Himmerod Conference were seven who
achieved high general rank in the Bundeswehr: one Chief of the Joint Staff
(Generalinspekteur) (Heusinger), one Inspector (Inspekteur) of the Army
(Rttiger) and Navy (Ruge), and two commanders of NATOs Central Front forces
(Kielmansegg, Speidel).
ADENAUER, AMT BLANK, AND THE FOUNDING OF THE
BUNDESWEHR 19501956
James S. Corum
The establishment of the Bundeswehr between 1950 and 1965 offers a

case study in overcoming obstacles of all types. There were external
obstacles in the form of negotiating a new status with the Western
powers. There were political obstacles in the form of a large German
peace movement that opposed the rearmament of Germany. There
were economic obstacles in the form of raising the funds and develop-
ing the industries to produce modern armaments. The various obsta-
cles to rearmament meant that a process that was supposed to be mostly
complete in three years took a full decade. The German Federal
Republic finally got its armed forcesand forces that were very capa-
ble. But it only came at the end of a process far more difficult than
anyone had anticipated.
What is especially interesting about the creation of the Bundeswehr
and the exceptional birthing problems it experienced are not the out-
side problems that had to be overcome but the internal ones. While
many different actors played their role in building or delaying the
establishment of the Bundeswehr, the most important playersand
sometimes the greatest obstacles to the creation of the forcecame
from inside the Bundeswehr. In many respects, the early years of the
Bundeswehr provide excellent material for a study on institutional
dynamics and organizational leadership. This chapter will focus on the
leadership of the Bundeswehr in its first years, 1950 to 1956from
the time that the German Federal Republic possessed only a shadow
defense staff and defense minister to the creation of the Bundeswehr
and its first official defense ministry.
The Beginning of RearmamentAllied Thinking
With the Berlin Crisis of 194849 and the founding of NATO and
establishment of the Bundesrepublik in 1949, German rearmament
became a critical issue for the Western alliance. It would be impossible
30 james s. corum
to meet NATO defense goals without a major German rearmament

program. The first chancellor of the German Federal Republic, Konrad
Adenauer, started thinking about Germanys defense relationships
when he assumed office in 1949. With the establishment of NATO and
the German Federal Republic in 1949, the lines of the Cold War were
being drawn ever more clearly. However, a central aspect of Adenauers
policy and personality dominated the whole of the early discussion on
German rearmament. As the first chancellor of the Federal Republic,
Adenauer was primarily concerned with Germany regaining its posi-
tion in the world as a major European power, regaining full sover-
eignty over its own affairs, and taking its place as a respected member
of the Western nations. Rearmament and full German participation in
the defense of western Europe were essential parts of Germany regain-
ing its position in the world, and this is how Adenauer approached
the problem.1
One must remember the salient fact that Adenauer was very much a
civilian politician all his life, and he was one of the few Germans of his
generation with little direct contact with the military in his formative
years.2 Although, by any standard, one can call Adenauer a brilliant
man with a great breadth and depth of knowledge of politics, literature,
art, and culturehis knowledge did not extend to military matters.
Indeed, his understanding of military organization, tactics, and equip-
ment was quite shallow. Adenauer had few opinions on how new
German armed forces might be equipped or organized, or how a future
war might be fought. His only concern was that Germany would have
armed forces and that they be significant enough to establish Germany
in its rightful place as a major Western power. Adenauers lack of a
military background was sometimes beneficial to the process, some-
times not. He showed little interest in such details of rearmament as
the size of the military and its armament and organization, and he
1
For Adenauers views on German rearmament, see Konrad Adenauer, Memoirs
194553 (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1965), 28687, 296300, 31015, 34445.
2
Normally someone of Adenauers backgroundAbitur holder and law student in
the universityin Wilhelmine Germany of the late 19th century would have done one
year of volunteer service as a kind of officer cadet and, upon completion of his volun-
teer training year, would have been given a commission as a reserve officer. However,
when Konrad Adenauer was 19, the year in which he would have done his year of mili-
tary service, the military doctors determined that he had weak lungs and deferred
him from military service. Thus, without the year of service done by most of his class
and generation, Adenauer proceeded directly to the university, where he took a degree
in law and progressed to as a member of the Prussian civil service.
the founding of the bundeswehr 19501956 31
delegated such issues to experts. His refusal to micromanage the

process was a good thing in that he allowed German military experts
free rein to develop some very good plans for German rearmament
with some very innovative concepts. At the same time, Adenauers
consistent detachment from practical military issues meant that when
problems arose he was reluctant to intervene too early if he thought a
practical solution might be found later. His refusal to intervene in mili-
tary issues sometimes allowed serious problems to fester and grow
and these problems later required much more painful and drastic
solutions.
From the initial disagreements over the status of Poland in 1944
to the Soviet-supported coup of 1948 that destroyed a democratic
government in Czechoslovakia to the Berlin airlift of 194849, the
Cold War steadily intensified. By the time the Federal Republic of
Germany was established in 1949 it had become clear to some Western
leaders that the new democratic West German government, leading a
nation that was making rapid strides in economic and social recon-
struction, might play a role in Western defense against the Soviet
Union. The British military staff broached the subject in early 1950 and
considered the idea of German rearmament. In the summer of 1950,
Winston Churchill, as Conservative Party leader, argued for German
rearmament in the context of a European defense force.3 Yet even after
the establishment of NATO in 1949, most Western political leaders
were still reluctant to take a further step and openly advocate German
rearmament, even in the face of an aggressive Soviet Union. The World
War was still fresh in peoples minds, and there was little public support
for such a plan. While Churchills thinking received respect, he was
still an opposition leader and would not be called to be prime minister
until the next year.
In early 1950 the U.S. government was skeptical about German
rearmament. The Germans already made a monetary contribution to
Western defense by paying for some of the costs of stationing Allied
troops in Germany. The U.S., British, and French troops in West
Germany were officially there as occupation forces, but ever since the
founding of NATO and the Federal Republic in 1949 the Allied forces
had been far more concerned with the European defense mission than
3
Donald Abenheim, Reforging the Iron Cross (1988; Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1998), 43.
32 james s. corum
in occupation duties. In early 1950 the U.S. High Commissioner to

Germany, John S. McCloy, remarked that, given the U.S. nuclear capa-
bility, as long as the U.S. maintained a token force on the ground, that
alone would be deterrent enough.4 Yet other Americans found the
build-up of Soviet forces in East Germany to be especially alarming.5
It took the invasion of South Korea by Soviet-backed North Korea
on 25 June 1950 to trigger a fundamental change in American and
Western attitudes towards rearmament. At the time, the invasion of
Korea was seen as the initial phase of a general Soviet offensive against
the West. In a matter of weeks attitudes changed quickly, and during
July and August 1950 Adenauer and members of his staff began dis-
cussing the issue of West German rearmament with the same Americans
who had been skeptical about the subject only weeks before. Now
Adenauer had a supportive and willing audience to begin serious plan-
ning for rearmament, for which he required Western, especially British
and American, support. Officially, any discussions about German rear-
mament were completely illegal under the terms of the Allied occupa-
tion decrees still in force in 1950; they forbade any efforts to establish a
military force or train forces or even produce weapons in West
Germany. Yet, despite the occupation laws, the American and British
high commissioners gave the Adenauer government the green light to
begin planning for rearmament. For his part, Adenauer made it very
clear that any national defense efforts made by West Germany would
only be carried out as part of a collective defense effort in full partner-
ship with the Western allies and that the Allied powers would be kept
fully informed of all German plans and efforts. For their part, the
American leaders promised to broach the subject with the French and
encourage their support of West German rearmament efforts.
By early 1951 even the French were slowly coming on board to
support German rearmament. In a joint statement following discus-
sions with Prime Minister Ren Pleven of France on 30 January 1951,
President Harry Truman expressed strong support for German rear-
mament and noted that the U.S. and French governments reaffirmed
their conviction that German participation in the common defense
effort as envisioned last month at Brussels would strengthen the
security of Europe without altering in any way the purely defensive
4
Militrgeschichtliches Forschungsamt [hereafter MGFA], ed., Anfnge westdeut-
scher Sicherheitspolitik 19451956, vol. 1 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1982), 35863.
5
Ibid. 36880.
character of the North Atlantic treaty Organization.6 In late 1950 the

NATO Council began serious discussions to outline the form that a
German contribution to NATO or a common European defense organ-
ization might take. For the next three years NATO and European
discussions focused on the details of the organization and command
structure of proposed German forces. From late 1950 to 1953 the
Western Alliance focused on a French proposal, the Pleven Plan, to
create a multinational European army.7 But in the end, the concept of
rearming Germany within the NATO command framework won out.
While there was debate about the details, there was no disagreement
on the fundamental principle that the German contribution was
expected to be substantial and would take place within a NATO or
European army framework, as was clearly the wish of Adenauer and
the only politically acceptable route.8
The Germans Begin Thinking About Rearmament
Adenauers interest in West German rearmament predates the estab-

lishment of the Federal Republic. In the fall of 1948, Adenauer, then
the president of the parliamentary committee that was in the process of
preparing the new German Federal constitution, requested a briefing
by military experts on the military security situation facing West
Germany. One of Adenauers staff recommended that he meet with
retired Lieutenant General Hans Speidel, a brilliant former General
Staff officer who had been chief of staff of Rommels army group in
the summer of 1944 and had been arrested by the Gestapo in the wake
of the 20 July plot against Hitler. So, as an accomplished officer and
a known anti-Nazi, Speidel was an excellent pick to advise West
Germanys leading democratic politician. Speidel was, like Adenauer,
6
Joint Statement Following discussions With Prime Minister of France, January
30, 1951, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman,
1951 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1965), 12830. See also
Statement by the President on German Steps Towards Acceptance of the European
Defense Community Agreements, 6 December 1952, in Public Papers of the Presidents
of the United States: Harry S. Truman. 195253 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1966), 1072.
7
For a recent view of European concepts and the European army, see Jean-Pascal
Lejeune, Das Projekt Europaarmee: Deutschland, Frankreich und die EVG 1950
1954, Militrgeschichte, Heft 4 (2007), 1013.
8
Adenauer, Memoirs, 31011.
34 james s. corum
a highly educated and eloquent man who was widely read in history
and politics. He made an excellent impression on Adenauer, who had
not known many generals but certainly did not expect a level of educa-
tion and thought equal to his own. Over the next year Adenauer came
to meet several other former Wehrmacht generals, one of them, Adolf
Heusinger, also making an excellent impression. Heusinger was more
easy-going than Speidel and not as eloquent, but he was also a man of
exceptional intelligence and good education. Adenauer came to like
several of the military men he worked with, but Heusinger would
remain his favorite.9
Adenauer, however, maintained a solid distrust of soldiers. He had
been a staunch opponent of the Nazis and had been deposed as lord
mayor of Cologne in 1933 for his open hostility to the new regime and
sent into internal exile. In 1944 he had been arrested and held by the
Gestapo for several weeks before being released. Adenauer was well
aware that many of the senior officers had been staunch Nazis, and he
therefore always maintained some reserve about soldiers. While he
could form close bonds with some soldiers, he also recognized the
heavy burden of German history. In 1954 he confided to U.S. Secretary
of State John Foster Dulles that he was concerned about a return of the
Prussian Military Caste, so he would therefore ensure that a system of
clear civilian control over the military was established that would be
partly based on the American model.10
With talk of German rearmament rising in the spring of 1950,
Adenauer established a special office under his direction to deal with
security and rearmament planning. General Count Gerhard von
Schwerin was chosen as the head of the special office and was given the
title of Adviser for Military and Security Issues (Berater fr militr-
und Sicherheitsfragen). Schwerins pet idea was to create and build a
large national security police force and use this as a foundation for a
new armed forces. It was essentially a similar method to the East
German approach to rearmament. The office under Schwerins direction
was given the title of Central Office for Homeland Service (Zentrale fr
Heimatdienst).11 Schwerin was a good choice to serve as the chancellors
9
Rolf Friedemann Pauls, Adenauer und die Soldaten, in Vom Kalten Krieg zur
deutschen Einheit: Analysen und Zeizeugenberichte zur deutschen Militrgeschichte
1945 bis 1995, ed. MGFA (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1995), 3742, here 3738.
10
Ibid., 39.
11
On early rearmament efforts, see Bundesministerium der Verteidigung, ed., Von
Himmerod bis Andernach. Dokumente zur Enstehungsgechichte der Bundeswehr
(Streitkrfteamt: Medienzentrale der Bundeswehr, 1985), 9781.
initial military advisor. He had an outstanding military resume and

was also well known for his bad relations with the Nazi regime. Born in
1899 he had served as a lieutenant in World War I and had been deco-
rated with the Iron Cross for fighting on the Western Front. After the
war he was retained by the Reichswehr and admitted to the rigorous
general staff course. During World War II he served with distinction as
a panzer force commander in Africa, Russia, France, and Italy. In 1944
he was given command of the 116th Panzer Division, which he led in
the Normandy campaign. In September that year, when he was given
the mission of defending Aachen from the American advance, he
earned the ire of the Nazi leadership by requesting permission to
evacuate civilians from the city. He was relieved of command of his
division. A few months later he was called back to command a division
in Italy and ended the war there as a corps commander with the rank
of General der Panzertruppen. Schwerin began forming a small staff
and brought some ex-military men into his office to include former
generals Adolf Heusinger, Hans Speidel, and Colonel Adolf Graf von
Kielmansegg. These latter men would all play a central role in estab-
lishing the Bundeswehr.
Yet Adenauer did not rely solely on advice from Count Schwerin. In
the spring and summer of 1950 he met with retired General Hans
Speidel, who briefed the chancellor on a different approach to rearma-
ment that he and a small circle of ex-officers around Speidel favored.
Speidel saw an urgent need to respond to the Soviet initiatives and the
rapid buildup of the East German forces. He believed that Germany
needed to quickly build its own armed forces and rejected the idea of
an intermediate solution such as developing a national police as a foun-
dation for armed forces because it would simply confuse and slow
down the process. Instead, Speidel argued that Germany ought to go
directly to the step of building a new armed forcesof course with the
full permission of the Western Allies and a transparent plan before the
public to make it clear to all that the West German armed forces would
operate only in the context of a European army.
After the invasion of South Korea in June 1950 ratcheted up the ten-
sions of the Cold War, rearming Germany was no longer an issue for
abstract discussion by the Western Powers. With encouragement from
the British and Americans, Schwerin organized a group of 15 former
Wehrmacht senior officers to meet at Kloster Himmerod in the Eiffel
Mountains to develop a program for German rearmament within the
context of the Western Alliance. The four-day Himmerod conference,
chaired by Heusinger, turned out a report with a concept plan for
36 james s. corum
German rearmament that was in keeping with Germanys ability to

develop a modern West German armed forces and to meet NATOs
requirements for an expanded deterrent force in Europe.
The report that came out of the conference was called the Himmerod
Denkschrift and was edited and amended by Heusinger and Count
Kielmansegg. The report outlined a plan to create an army of 12 armored
and mechanized divisions for the Bundesrepublik. There would be a
small navy of approximately 200 vessels to defend the Baltic and North
seas, and a tactical air force to support the army consisting of 800900
aircraft. The final version of the new German military would be between
400,000 and 500,000 men. With the exception of the air force, which
was later expanded to a force of more than 1,300 planes and 80,000
personnel, the report was remarkably prescient on the final form that
the Bundeswehr would achieve. The report was almost exactly on tar-
get as to the eventual organization and personnel requirements of the
army and navy. It was an impressive bit of military planning that dem-
onstrated that the former Wehrmacht general staff officer had not lost
their talent for planning and organization. The Himmerod Conference
Denkschrift, and the office that Count Schwerin had organized, gave
the Adenauer government a sound foundation to begin West German
rearmament.12
German Internal Attitudes Towards Rearmament
While the West Germans enjoyed strong support for rearmament

efforts from the Western Powers, especially from the United States and
Britain, there was considerable internal opposition to rearmament.
After the devastating experience of the World War, most Germans were
skeptical about rearmament and suspicious of their own armed forces
as a national institution. While the Christian Democrats and Free
Democrats were cautiously supportive of building a new German
armed forces, most of the Social Democrats disapproved of rearma-
ment. It was partly the deep suspicion that all the Social Democrats
12
The strategic and political issues dealing with German rearmament are well cov-
ered in David Clay Large, Germans to the Front: West German Rearmament in the
Adenauer Era (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1996); and Hans-
Martin Ottmer, Die Entwicklung Deutscher Sicherheitspolitik und die Geschichte der
Bundeswehr (Berlin: E.S. Mittler und Sohn, 1995).
had after facing the open hostility of the military in both Wilhelmine
and Nazi Germany, and the more subdued hostility of the Reichswehr
or the Weimar Republic. Opinion polls of the 1950s show a German
populace that was deeply ambivalent about rearmament. However, this
attitude was not so much driven by pacifism as by a rejection of the
blatant militarism of Germanys recent history. On the several issues of
rearmament, which included establishing an armed forces and manning
it by conscription, German public opinion fluctuated considerably
between 1950 and 1954. In those years a plurality of between 30 to 50
per cent of the West Germans supported rearmament within a European
defense system, and a large number, which fluctuated between 25 and
33 per cent of the public, was opposed to rearmament. The opponents
were largely formed around the hard core of the hard core of the Social
Democratic party (SPD), but early in the debate many in the Christian
Democratic Union (CDU) also were inclined to pacifism.13
The CDU members who opposed rearmament in 1950 gradually
came around to support it as the Cold War intensified and there existed
less and less hope of any reconciliation between the two Germanies. To
a large degree, much of the SPD opposition to rearmament was over-
come through the work of Adenauers military committee, which kept
the Bundestag well informed of military plans. The military planners
sensibly included the Social Democratic leaders as well as the Christian
Democrats in their discussions. While the SPD remained generally
opposed, a few of the SPD leaders were willing to support rearmament
under certain conditions. One means of disarming the opposition to
rearmament was the clear commitment made by Adenauers military
advisers to build a new German armed forces that would not resemble
the old Prussian army but would be democratic and fully under control
of the civilian government. All of the major parties also agreed that any
German armed forces would operate within the context of NATO or a
European defense organization.
By 1954 public opinion in West Germany had shifted firmly to the
pro-rearmament side. In the 1953 elections, Adenauers conservative
Christian Democrats won an absolute majority in the Bundestag,
13
For a thorough study of the German public opinion polls and rearmament issues,
see Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Zur Rolle der ffentlichen Meinung bei der Debatte um die
Wiederbewaffnung 19501955, in MGFA, Hans Buchheim, and Kurt Fett et al., eds.,
Aspekte der deutschen Wiederbewaffnung bis 1955 (Boppard am Rhein: Harald Boldt,
1975), 6198.
38 james s. corum
so the government had the votes for any rearmament issue that came
before the parliament. By then the issue was no longer whether to
rearmbut how to rearm. The several crucial Bundestag votes between
1954 and 1956 on establishing an armed forces, joining NATO, and
establishing conscription were all passed with very large majorities.
Creation of Amt Blank1950
Although Count Schwerin was a skilled strategist and very competent

commander and staff officer, he lacked a certain degree of political dis-
cretion. With the admirable intent of keeping the press informed of
defense thinking within the Federal government, a very necessary
thing in a democracy, in October 1955 he talked frankly to the press
about the state of rearmament thinking and admitted that conscription
would probably be necessary to realistically meet the force requirements
of a new German armed forces. At the time the rearmament issue was
highly sensitive, and the conscription issue even more so. There was
strong SPD opposition to rearmament at this time, and many CDU
members were skeptical on the issue as well. Therefore, the very men-
tion of conscription set off a minor furor. Adenauer might have ridden
out the crisis and kept Count Schwerin, but it is clear that the chancel-
lor was becoming more and more disenchanted with his official mili-
tary advisor. Adenauer did not like Schwerins idea of creating a large
new police force as a step to rearmament and preferred the advice of
Hans Speidel to go directly to creation of an army. But, having decided
that an army had to be created, Adenauer realized that the first military
chief ought not to be a military man. As liberal as Count Schwerin
might appear, the very fact that he was a former general conveyed the
wrong impression to members of parliament. Members of the parlia-
ment, and not just the SPD, needed assurance that any future West
German military force would be completely under civilian control.
Therefore, Count Schwerin had to go. Rather than ride out the minor
crisis of the press interview, Adenauer asked Schwerin for his resigna-
tion on 1 November 1955.
Adenauer replaced Schwerin with a member of the Bundestag,
Theodor Blank, as coordinator for all defense-related issues. Schwerins
job title as advisor for military and security issues was changed to
something a little less militaristic and a lot more bureaucraticDer
Beauftragte des Bundeskanzlers fr die mit vemehrung der Allierten
Truppen Zusammenhangenden Fragen (Pleponitary for the Federal

Chancellor for Questions Concerning the Reinforcement of Allied
Troops). Since this title was too windy even for a German bureaucrat,
Blanks bureau was simply referred to as Amt Blank (The Blank
Office). But there was no doubt about Blanks status or the purpose of
his office. Like Count Schwerin, Blank was to serve as the shadow
defense minister with the mission of building a military staff and plan-
ning for rearmament within the context of NATO or a European
defense organization.
Blank was an interesting choice for such an important job. Neither
Adenauers nor Blanks papers offer any clear insights as to why Blank
was selected as Germanys shadow defense minister.14 Blanks expertise
was in trade unions and economics. Born in 1905, as a youth he had
been connected to the Catholic trade-workers unions sponsored by the
Center Party, the Catholic political party of Weimar Germany. He
showed considerable administrative talent and in 1930 became the
general secretary of the Central Group of Christian Factory and
Transport Workers Union. With the destruction of the German trade-
union movement upon the Nazi accession to power, Blank was pushed
out of his job and went on to university studies. Remaining true to his
Center party principles, he never joined the Nazi Party. He served as a
reserve first lieutenant in the army during the war. Released as a POW
just after the end of the war, he immediately went to work to reestablish
the Catholic trade-union movement within the framework of the new
CDU, formed partly from the members of the old Center Party such
as Adenauer. Elected a CDU state representative in North Rhine
Westphalia in 1946, Blank rose quickly through the ranks of the CDU
leadership. However, he was not even part of the inner circle of the
CDU nor was he very close to Adenauer. As a lifetime trade unionist,
Blank was considered to be very much on the left wing of the CDU, and
this is probably why he appealed to Adenauer as a shadow defense
minister in 1950. A leftist and trade unionist would have considerably
more appeal in dealing with an SPD that was notoriously suspicious of
all things military than a noble and former general such as Schwerin.
However, aside from being politically reassuring, Blank did not have
many other attributes to bring to the job. He possessed little knowledge
14
Theodor Blanks papers are found in the Adenauer Stiftung, Sankt Augustin,
Germany. See Archivale Theo Blank, 098005/1.
40 james s. corum
of the military, few political skills, and almost no ability to deal with
the press. At a time when the nascent defense ministry needed very
clear and firm organizational leadership Blanks weak managerial skills
allowed for a breakdown at some of the critical stages of rearmament.
The structure of Amt Blank changed and grew rapidly. It was basi-
cally divided into three main divisions. The first was the administrative/
personnel/financial division that was managed mostly by career civil
servants. The second was the legal office to draw up legislation, mili-
tary regulations, and so on. Of course, this was manned by lawyers.
The largest section was the military planning division, subdivided into
several departments. The last section was manned mostly by former
Wehrmacht officers. Blank, with no military experience beyond the
company officer level, would have to rely upon this small group of top
military specialists to see the military planning for the Bundeswehr
was done right. Blank was lucky to have some superb talent in the mili-
tary branch. The problem was that no single military officer was clearly
in charge, and the effort became disjointed.
Internal Debates Within Amt Blank
With several semi-independent boards and officers within the military

planning staff, a small staff for each of the services, and no single con-
trolling military staff at the top, the officers and departments and serv-
ice staffs were soon working at cross purposes. Debate is a healthy
thing in a military organization, and there was a great deal of debate
within the Bundeswehr about the ethos of the armed forces. The small
defense staff soon organized itself into two groupsthe traditionalists
were opposed by a group roughly called the anti-traditionalists, under
General Heusinger and Count Baudissin. The Heusinger/Baudissin
faction wanted a clean break from past German military tradition and
wanted an armed forces built on solidly democratic principles. The tra-
ditionalists wanted to keep as many of the old traditions of the German
army as possible, although both sides were agreed that Nazi ideology
had no place in a new German armed forces. The debate between the
two factions became quite emotional at times, with officers threatening
to resign unless their views were accepted. Looking back, many of the
issues that were debated so relentlessly from 195055 seem to be
tempests in a teapotviolent arguments over the subtle meaning of
words and phrases. Yet in a nation that produced Immanuel Kant, such
philosophical battles might have been expected. The problem was not
that the battles occurred but that Blank was unable to exercise any con-
trol over the process. Nor was there a single chief military officer to
settle the matters. As a result, the debates dragged on for years and took
up a considerable amount of energy that the overworked military staff
ought to have devoted to working out the details of organization, train-
ing, and equipment.15
One of the most notorious examples of the lack of control and severe
factionalism within the military staff of Amt Blank was the dispute
over Bundeswehr doctrine initiated by the head of the military plan-
ning staff from 1952 to 1955, Colonel Bogislaw von Bonin. Von Bonin,
a former army colonel and general staff officer, had been brought into
Amt Blank in early 1952 and took over as chief of the operational plan-
ning staffthe largest and most important of the staff sections of the
military staff. Von Bonin was regarded as a brilliant officer and was
regarded as a staunch traditionalist, which put him in conflict with
the reformist and anti-traditionalist faction led by Count Baudissin.
General Heusinger, who was emerging as the leading military advisor
to Theodor Blank, favored the reformist faction but also defended von
Bonin because of his reputation for brilliance.
Von Bonin immediately began a study of NATO operational doc-
trine and fundamentally rejected it. NATO doctrine, to which Germany
was firmly committed, was based on mobile defense and counterat-
tack operations by powerful armored and mechanized divisions. The
12-division force that West Germany committed itself to was specifi-
cally structured around the NATO operational doctrine. But von Bonin
decided that the NATO approach yielded too much German territory
to a Soviet invasion and was therefore unacceptable. He put his staff
to work developing a completely different German army structure
and defense plan based on a fixed defense at the border and relying
heavily on Swiss-style reserve forces instead of heavy armored divi-
sions. In July 1954, von Bonins staff section produced an extensive
study attacking NATO operational doctrine at the same moment that
15
The documentary materials on the early years of Amt Blank, 195054, are rather
thin. For the most complete account of Amt Blank, see Anfnge Westdeutsche
Sicherheitspolitik (note 4 above).
42 james s. corum
West Germany was committing itself to NATO membership and

NATO structure and doctrine.16 Von Bonin proposed that NATO
accept his alternate defense plans for Germany. In fact, there was not
the slightest chance that NATO would accept his ideas.17 Von Bonin,
however, would not let the issue rest. He took his objections to NATO
doctrine to the press, giving interviews in the Frankfurter Rundschau
and Der Spiegel in 1954 and 1955. The story of a NATO operational
concept that would allow much of West Germany to be overrun in the
first phase of a war, and of open disagreement with NATO doctrine
among the top staff officers of the new German armed forces, was big
news in 1954 and 1955. Von Bonins views provided considerable
ammunition to critics of both the Adenauer government and the con-
cept of rearmament itself. Combined with other stories concerning
debates occurring within the military staff, the von Bonin articles and
interviews did not help the image of a Bundeswehr that was just begin-
ning to recruit its first major cadre. In April 1955 a reluctant Heusinger,
then tapped to be the first chief of staff of the German army and still an
admirer of von Bonin, was forced to ask for von Bonins resignation
from Amt Blank.
Essentially, von Bonin had tied up the most important staff section
of the Bundeswehr for almost two years in a futile effort to develop a
doctrine to override NATOs. In the meantime, many of the most
fundamental tasks for developing the German army were neglected.
Issues such as logistics, building barracks and basing forces, and accept-
ing the turnover of Allied equipment are all very mundane matters,
but these were the kinds of planning issues with which a brand new
armed forces needed to deal at the beginning of the force-building
process. When the Bundeswehr was formed in 1955 it lacked a logistics
system, the turnover of Allied equipment was in a bureaucratic mud-
dle, and there was a shortage of barracks and facilities for the new sol-
diers. Von Bonin had reproduced the greatest faults of the Wehrmacht
general staffhe had ignored grand strategy (the centrality of coordi-
nating efforts with NATO), given logistics a low priority, and concen-
trated on developing operational thinking and excellence to the highest
degree. The problem was, the most brilliant defense concepts are
16
See Dr. Heinz Brill, Bogislaw von Bonin in Spannungsfeld zwischen
Wiederbewaffnung- Westintegration- Wiedervereinigung (Baden-Baden: Nomos
Verlagsgeschellschaft, 1987), 11822.
17
Ibid., 12223.
irrelevant if there are no barracks for the soldiers and no supplies

for the army. Essentially, von Bonin wasted almost three years of
planning effort by the time the Bundeswehr was officially stood up in
1955.
The von Bonin affair was only one symptom of a much broader
problem within Amt Blank. The problem underlying all others was the
severe shortage of expert military staff that plagued Amt Blank from its
inception in 1950 through its transformation into the Federal Defense
Ministry. The initial recruiting of the military staff for Amt Blank was
simply by word of mouth through an old boys network of former
officers. Recruiting a military staff in such a manner was necessary
at the start, but such recruiting methodologies remained the norm
until 1954, when a systematic personnel recruitment system was finally
set up.
The Personnel Problem
Amt Blank was grossly undermanned for the multitude of tasks that it
had to perform to create new armed forces virtually from scratch.
Donald Abenheim argues in Reforging the Iron Cross that the chronic
personnel shortage was the worst organizational problem of the
Bundeswehr in its early years.18 At a time in which Amt Blank had to
maintain a military staff in Bonn to begin planning to stand up the
Bundeswehr, it also had to maintain an expert military staff in Paris for
ongoing discussions with NATO and the European community. Yet in
1952, the year planning moved from the concept phase to the practical
details, there were only 100 military personnel (former Wehrmacht
officers) in Amt Blank. In 1953 this rose to just over 200, and in
1954 there were 300.19 At a time when Germany had committed
itself to rearmament and NATO membership, a military specialist
staff of 300 was simply overwhelmed by the necessary effort. For exam-
ple, on the eve of rearmament in November 1954, the Luftwaffe staff
had 28 sections in its organization table, yet six of theseincluding
the very important organization, personnel, and communications
18
Abenheim, Reforging the Iron Cross, 8586.
19
On personnel strength in Amt Blank, see Kurt Fett, Die Grundlagen der militr-
ischen Planungen, in Aspekte der deutschen Wiederbewaffnung bis 1955 (note 13
above), 16984.
44 james s. corum
sectionshad no section leader.20 In January 1955, on the eve of formal

German rearmament, the German air staff admitted to the Americans
that they had neither the time nor personnel to prepare their own plan
for Luftwaffe logistics, basing, and support structure. Luckily for the
Germans, NATO air commander General Lauris Norstad had carefully
followed the disorder of the shadow defense ministry and had antici-
pated a planning breakdown. Norstad and his staff had already been
working on the issue for more than a year and were able to present the
German military staff with a complete basing and logistics plan for the
Luftwaffe. The German defense ministry was glad to get ready-made
plans for their air force, and the U.S. plans were approved by the
German government without any debate or modification.21
The shortage of qualified staff officers to meet the planning needs of
the shadow defense ministry was solely a self-inflicted wound. The
Allies left the choice of building staffs and cadre organizations to the
Germans themselves and placed few restrictions upon the personnel
that Amt Blank could recruit. All German adults had gone through the
de-nazification program in 194648 and had been examined by boards
designed to separate the staunch, committed Nazi believers from the
average German who went along with the Party for career reasons.
About 10 per cent of the adults in West Germany had some restrictions
placed upon them for their past support of Nazi ideology. Those sanc-
tioned by the de-nazification boards could not hold management posi-
tions or public office. As far as the military was concerned, former
SS officers were not allowed to apply to join Amt Blank. Other officers
had been investigated for war crimes or had been identified by the
de-nazification boards as being strong Nazi believers, and these were
automatically excluded from consideration as officers of the new
Bundeswehr. However, the Allies also understood that it would be
impossible to rearm Germany without employing former Wehrmacht
officers. So, aside from the former SS officers and those connected with
war crimes, the Allies placed no restrictions on former officers work-
ing for Amt Blank or jointing the Bundeswehr. All of the restrictions
20
For organization charts of the Luftwaffe planning staff of the early 1950s, see
Dieter Krger, ed., Dienststellen zur Vorbereitung des Westdeutschen Verteidigungs-
beitrages, 1, Findbcher zu Bestnden des Bundesarchivs, 40 (Koblenz: Bundesarchiv
Koblenz, 1992), xciixciii.
21
HQ USAFE, USAFEs Assistance to Create a New German Air Force (Wiesbaden,
1956), Doc. K 570.04M, 19521955, in USAF Historical Research Agency [HRA],
7083.
and sanctions placed on former German officers in the mid-1950s were

the choice of the Germans themselves.
Although a great part of the German effort seems to have been
geared toward reassuring the Western Allies that former Nazis would
have no place in the Bundeswehr, this was never a major concern
among the U.S. or British military staffs. The Americans and British
military had been working closely with the Germans for several years
at this point, in compiling the historical studies, in planning together,
and in the negotiations in Paris. The Americans in particular seemed
to have formed a close working relationship with the Germans. None
of the Americans who worked with the German shadow military staff
on a regular basis had any questions about Nazi mentality or influence
entering the Bundeswehr. In fact, in all the U.S. military records of the
era, there is only one case of U.S. intervention to prevent a perceived
Nazi from being given a position in the Bundeswehr. In May 1955 the
United States Air Force (USAF) chief of staff, General Nathan Twining,
send a secret message to General Tunner, commander of the United
States Air Force in Europe (USAFE) concerning rumors that Amt
Blank was considering Lt. General Adolf Galland, the World War fighter
ace and hero, as the Bundesluftwaffes first chief of staffor Inspekteur.
General Twining pointed out that Galland had associated with known
Neo-Nazis to include Hans Ulrich Rudel and that Galland had worked
in 1948 as an air advisor to the Pern dictatorship in Argentinaa
government on especially bad terms with the United States. While
reminding Tunner to make it clear to the Germans that its completely
their choice, he added that Galland would not be acceptable to the U.S.
Twining added, Suggest you hint broadly to German Planning Group
that we welcome another choice.22 The documents on the early rear-
mament era of the Luftwaffe are pretty thin, and there are no records of
how the U.S. concerns were brought to Amt Blank, although there were
constant informal meetings between senior Americans and Germans.
However, we do know the reaction to the American hints. Amt Blank
soon announced that Lt. General Josef Kammhuber, a former Luftwaffe
general who had masterminded the air defense of Germany in 1943
44, would become the Luftwaffes first chief.
22
HQ USAFE, Historical Division, History of the Headquarters United States
Air Forces in Europe, 1 January31 Dec. 1955, p. 83 in USAF NRA Doc. K570.01
Jan.Dec. 1955, vol. 2, Letter of Gen. Twining to Gen. Tunner 2 May 1955.
46 james s. corum
Faced with the need to quickly build a cadre for a new armed forces,
in 1954 Amt Blank set up two organizations to screen volunteers. The
first was a special personnel board of 25 members, which would screen
senior officers, colonels and above, who applied for commissions in the
new Bundeswehr. The special personnel board consisted mainly of civil
servants and contained few ex-officers. The other, and much larger,
organization was called the Acceptance Organization (Annahme
Organization) and was also headed by civil servants. This organization
would be responsible for reviewing the applications of mid-ranking
and junior officers and of NCOs who applied to join the new Bun-
deswehr. It would also review the applications of young Germans who
had not served in World War II but who wished to join the Bundeswehr
as volunteers. It was soon evident that the Acceptance Organization
was far too small for the task. As the Bundeswehr moved closer to
becoming real, the Acceptance Organization was flooded with applica-
tions to join the Bundeswehr. From 1954 to 1956 more than 200,000
Germans applied to join the Bundeswehr. In the first weeks of 1955
more than 25,000 men applied. The Acceptance Organization was una-
ble to properly process the mass of applicants, so when the Bundeswehr
was formally established in June 1955, only a few personnel of the
expected initial cadres of several thousand men were able to report to
the training centers. Amt Blank, now the Federal Republics defense
ministry, had not been able to process the mass of applicants yet.23
The Acceptance Office was not merely slow; its procedures for per-
sonnel screening and selection proved to be highly defective. Despite
five years to plan for rearmament, the personnel screening system
broke down at the outset. This frustrated the careful plans made by
Germanys allies, notably the U.S., to support the establishment of the
Bundeswehr. The USAFE had prepared its training staff and bases to
take in the first influx of Luftwaffe training cadres in mid-1955.24
However, the new defense ministry had not completed personnel
screening for the initial cadre of 660 Luftwaffe personnel to be trained
by the Americans. E-Day, the day to start training the first Bundeswehr
cadres, was set back to January 1956.25
23
24
On USAF training efforts, see History of the Headquarters (note 22 above),
vol. 1, p. 83.
25
HQ USAFE, CINCUSAFEs Monthly Summary, August 1955, para. 9 in History
of the Headquarters (note 22 above), vol. 2.
When the training program got underway in earnest in mid-1956,

the Americans noted that the German screening process had been
haphazard. Many men selected for pilot training in U.S. schools did not
speak English to the required standard. What was even more trouble-
some was that a large number did not meet the high physical standards
for pilot training. This resulted in a higher than planned washout rate
in the first classes of German pilots that were trained, and a consider-
able waste of money and training resources.26
The personnel board of Amt Blank had to deal with relatively small
numbers of officers, but these were to be the critical senior leaders of
the new armed forces. Unfortunately, the contribution of the personnel
board in the formation of the Bundeswehr was mostly negative. The
special personnel board was highly secretive and did not allow appli-
cants to review their files or challenge information in the files. The
system that the board employed for selecting the higher-ranking offic-
ers was apparently completely subjective. Of 600 officers in the rank
of colonel and above who applied to serve in the Bundeswehr in 1954
55, 428 were accepted and the others rejected outright or put under
special sanctions. What was especially surprising, and the cause of a
great deal of dissatisfaction within Amt Blanks military staff, was
the rejection of some senior officers who had served competently in
Amt Blank from its inception. It came as a considerable shock to the
senior staff officers of Amt Blank when Colonel Fett, who had been
chief of planning before von Bonin, was denied a commission in the
Bundeswehr. Two other senior officers who had led the German team
negotiating with the Allied powers in Paris were also summarily dis-
missed from the Bundeswehr. These were not only officers with general
staff training but were also among the few Bundeswehr officers who
had an extensive background in the staff methods and planning of
Germanys NATO allies. At a stroke, the civil servants of the special
personnel board had removed several men who had been key in the
development of the Bundeswehr.
As ought to be noted, these removals came at a time when the
Bundeswehr was terribly understaffed. Even more demoralizing for
the remaining officers was that no concrete reasons were given by the
personnel board for removal of these highly experienced officers.27
26
History of the 7330th Flying Training Wing, in USAF HRA Doc. K-WG-7330-HI,
Jan.June 1956, 10.
27
48 james s. corum
The actions of the personnel board caused considerable pain and anxi-
ety within the military staff. At a time when a grossly undermanned
staff was trying to build a new armed forces it was deprived of highly
experienced personnel.
1955The Financial Breakdown
The former officers estimated that, with proper funding and support,
most of the force could be stood up in three years after the decision to
rearm was made. The general concepts of the plan met with the approval
and support of the Western powers, which had made a major conven-
tional rearmament of western Europe a primary goal of NATOs Lisbon
conference that year. The general outline of the German concepts fit
well within the NATO defense concepts.28 The Bundeswehr cadre was
to start training in 1955, and most of the force was to be organized and
battle ready. It was an ambitious scheme, but doable if the resources
had been provided by the Germans. The U.S. and U.K. stood up train-
ing programs to assist in the building of the new German navy and
Luftwaffe and were ready to train thousands of Germans who would, in
turn, teach the mass of new recruits to be inducted.
As if the personnel and planning problems were not enough to ham-
per the development of the Bundeswehr, the nascent force faced an
enormous funding shortage just as the force was ready to be formally
established in June 1955. The Adenauer government had told the
Bundestag that rearmament would cost no more than 9.26 billion
Deutschmarks per year (approximately $2.3 billion dollars). That was a
highly unrealistic figure, and even before the Bundeswehr was formed,
financial problems were on the horizon.
During the 1954 negotiations, the Germans had promised to pay for
a host of U.S. facilities that were being refurbished and turned over to
the Germans. In 1954 and 1955 the U.S. had undertaken millions of
dollars worth of construction projects to prepare bases for the new
Bundeswehr. The Germans had formally agreed to pay for the new
construction. As the turnover date came close, the money simply was
28
The complete text of the Himmerod Conference is found in Die Himmeroder
Denkschrift vom Oktober 1950, ed. Hans-Jrgen Rautenberg and Norbert Wiggershaus,
(Karlsruhe: Braun, 1985), 3656. This work also contains an extensive commentary on
the Denkschrift and the text of other documents relating to German security planning
in 1950.
not there. Part of the problem was a simple funding shortage, and part
of the problem was a highly inefficient bureaucracy in Amt Blank that
had not worked out the details of service budgeting and accounting.
Through 1955 and 1956 the U.S. forces were stuck with the construc-
tion and base bills that the Bundeswehr could not pay. Some senior
U.S. officers in the U.S. military group working to train the new
Bundeswehr prophesied the collapse of the German rearmament effort
due to the inability to pay the bills.29
However, despite some very irritated U.S. officers, the American
military group working with the Bundeswehr understood that the
problem was not bad German faith but an incompetent bureaucracy
and confusion at the top of the new German defense ministry.30 To
prevent a breakdown of the German rearmament effort, U.S. com-
manders temporarily absorbed many of the construction costs by shift-
ing budget funds around. In late 1955, in order to get the effort for
training the Luftwaffe started, the U.S. came up with $11 million to
fund training programs necessary to build the first cadre of the Bun-
deswehr.31 The U.S. attitude was that the Germans would eventually
sort out their mess and the bills would be eventually paid. In the mean-
time, the U.S. forces were forced to carry out a good deal of creative
bookkeeping to get the training of the Bundeswehr cadres started.
When Theodor Blank became the Federal Republics first defense
minister on the establishment of the Bundeswehr in June 1955, the
various breakdowns in the rearmament program were already evident.
With too little money available to get rearmament started, Blank was
reluctant to go to the chancellor and Bundestag and ask for more. On a
matter such as aircraft procurement, Blank was ready to ignore profes-
sional military advice rather than displease Adenauer. Blank might
have gone to the press and built a case for a more robust rearmament
effort, or at least an effort large enough to fulfill some of Germanys
treaty obligations. But Blank disliked and distrusted the press. Von
Bonin had recently been relieved of his position and was very active
before the press, attacking the Bundeswehrs policies and doctrine.
29
James S. Corum, Starting from Scratch: Establishing the Bundesluftwaffe as a
Modern Air Force, 19551960, Air Power History 50 (Summer 2003), 1629, here 24.
30
See USAFEs Assistance to Create a New German Air Force (note 21 above).
31
James S. Corum, Building a New Luftwaffe: The United States Air Force and
Bundeswehr Planning for Rearmament, 195060, Journal of Strategic Studies 21.1
(March 2004), 10506.
50 james s. corum
In the face of this open challenge, Blank simply refused to hold press
conferences and make his case to the public. In reviewing the Bundestag
debates of 1955 and 1956, Franz Josef Strauss, an aggressive young
member of the Bundestags defense committee, emerged as a far more
effective public spokesman for rearmament polices than the defense
minister.
By April 1956 the rearmament program had fallen far behind. By
that point the master plan for the German army called for 96,000 train-
ees to be already in the system, but, in fact, only 44,000 men had been
brought into service, a delay due to a lack of barracks space.32 As the
year progressed it became evident that Germanys first defense minis-
ter was neither a very competent politician nor an effective bureau-
crat. Blanks press relations remained abysmal.33 Moreover, he refused
to provide details of rearmament plans and spending to Bundestag
committees. With a solid Christian Democratic majority, it would not
have been hard to have received greater funding. But, kept in the dark,
the Bundestag was reluctant to appropriate funds to Blank to avert
the defense budget crash of 1956.34 The Western Powers were clearly
dissatisfied with Blank and the slow pace of German rearmament in
1956, and complaints from NATO allies mounted.35 In October 1956
Adenauer asked for Blanks resignation and replaced him with Franz
Josef Strauss, who had already proven himself an effective spokesman
for German rearmament and who possessed considerably greater
political and managerial skills than Blank. The hapless former defense
minister was kept in the cabinet for another ten years as minister
for labor relationsa much more appropriate job considering his
background.
Strauss Tackles the Internal Disorder in the Ministry
In any case, with a strong consensus that rearmament was necessary

and with a CDU majority in the Bundestag, the SPD was now more
32
Archivale Theo Blank, Adenauer Stiftung, Memo from the Defense Minister, 10
April 1956.
33
Montescue Lowry, The Forge of West German Rearmament: Theodor Blank and
Amt Blank (New York: Peter Lang, 1990), 20203.
34
Ibid., 290.
35
Large, Germans to the Front, 261.
willing to compromise and accommodate the Bundeswehr. Blanks

main advantage was that he was on the left of the CDU and was seen as
something of a bridge to a recalcitrant SPD. With the SPD on board on
rearmament, it was possible to have the more dynamic Strauss, on the
right of the CDU, take charge of the defense ministry. In 1956, manage-
rial skill, which Strauss possessed in abundance, counted for more than
political alliance building.
Strauss went on to serve as West Germanys defense minister for 11
years. One of his first tasks was to sort out the leadership problem in
the defense ministry. As it was originally created, the office of the
defense minister stood directly above the three service chiefswho
were all of equal stature. When dealing with the military chiefs, Strauss
had to deal with three competing bureaucracies and agendas. He
immediately drew up legislation to establish the post of General
Inspector of the Bundeswehr, essentially an officer to serve as the
chairman of the joint chiefs and a military man to rank above the serv-
ice chiefs. Within six months the law was passed, and the very able
General Heusinger appointed to the post. Now the defense minister
had one military office to coordinate with and to work with in sorting
out the various inter-service agendas and agreements. The new General
Inspector of the Bundeswehr had the authority to sort out the bureau-
cratic muddles that plagued the first year and a half of the Bundeswehrs
existence.
Strauss realized that the time frame of three years for rearmament
was clearly impossible to reach and finally made that clear to Adenauer
and the Bundestag. It was already clear to Germanys NATO allies that
the plan had failed. Now Germanys allies wanted an alternative plan,
something that they could support and work with. Strauss put his staff
to work identifying the core problems and deficiencies and developing
a new plan. Within four months the defense ministry had a new master
plan to stretch out the rearmament process to roughly five years. Some
issues required immediate action. The initial recruit screening process
had broken down. Strauss put the staff to work organizing a revamped
process. By the end of 1956 a more efficient system was in place, and
new teams were established to sort out the bureaucratic problems that
had slowed the troop intake.36
36
History of the 7330th Flying Training Wing (note 26 above), 14.
52 james s. corum
When he took office in October 1956, Strauss immediately announced

to an unhappy NATO that the new policy for rearmament would
be quality over quantity. The three-year build-up plan was scrapped,
and the pace of rearmament was appreciably slowedin fact the
Bundeswehr took seven years to reach it original force goals. However,
new German units would have the best equipment and would be fully
equal to any other NATO units.37 Strauss was a huge improvement over
Blank, as he enjoyed far better press relations and was the better politi-
cian. Under Strausss leadership the German defense budget grew from
3.4 billion Deutschmarks in 1956 to 7.970 n 1958.38
Under Strauss the financial problems of the Blank era were over-
come and the build-up of the Bundeswehr funded adequately. The
slowed-down rearmament schedule proved much more manageable,
and the Federal Republic of Germany finally built up the Bundeswehr
to its planned level and fielded high-quality armed forcesbut the
completed force missed the planned deadline by five years. The slow
pace of West German rearmament was partly due to internal politics
and the slow pace of negotiating Germanys entry into NATO. But once
the decision had been made to include Germany as a full member
of the European Defense system, virtually all of the problems and
delays were due to bad planning and bad management on the part of
Germanys first defense minister and his staff.
37
Julian Lider, Origins and Development of West German Military Thought, 2 vols.
(Brookfield, VT: Gower Publishing Co., 1986), 30405.
38
Ibid., 30430.
THE DEBATE WITHIN GERMAN SOCIETY
A REASONABLE YES:
THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATS AND WEST GERMAN
REARMAMENT, 19451956
Adam Seipp
On a May evening in 1950, the assembled party congress of the West

German Social Democratic Party (SPD) waited to hear from their
leader. The man who walked onto the stage was one of the most famil-
iar faces in German politics and one whose body bore the scars of a life
spent in opposition. Kurt Schumacher was only 55 but looked a great
deal older. Badly wounded on the Eastern Front during World War I,
he had only one arm. Two years before, doctors had amputated a leg
damaged during nearly 11 years in the camps and prisons of the Third
Reich. Aging and broken in body, there were few politicians in the
young Federal Republic more formidable, courageous, or self-assured.
In a country full of tangible reminders of war, Schumachers physical
status seemed to give him a special legitimacy.
The dominant figure of the post-war center-left, Schumacher came
to Hamburg ready to do battle. The Social Democrats found them-
selves in retreat, bested by their rivals in parliamentary elections the
year before. Unable to block legislation that he believed endangered
the future of Germany, Schumacher delivered a blistering attack on
the government of Konrad Adenauer, on the Soviet Union, and on the
western Allies that until recently had occupied western Germany.
Our critics say that the Social Democrats are negative. Indeed, the
Social Democrats have said No, but we have always also offered a real-
istic, positive, reasonable yes. No, said the party, to the post-war
division of Germany and Poland at the line of the Oder and Neisse riv-
ers, to the Soviet suppression of the Social Democrats in the east, to the
German loss of the Saarland, and a stout no to the Petersberg Agreement
that set the terms of West German (Federal Republic of Germany;
FRG) relations with the western Allies. We say yes, Schumacher
thundered, with all our hearts, to a Europe of equal and free people.1
1
Willy Albrecht, ed. Kurt Schumacher: Reden, Schriften, Korrespondenzen, 1945
1952 (Berlin: Dietz, 1985), 77778.
56 adam seipp
The Hamburg speech encapsulated the extraordinary transforma-

tion of the German left in the years after the war. Intransigent, nation-
alistic, and defiant of the coalition of Allies responsible for Germanys
defeat in 1945, Schumacher and the party he helped to build before his
early death in 1952 played a critical role in fashioning a workable
democracy in West Germany. One of the most contentious issues fac-
ing West Germanys government was the future role of the country in
military affairs. The SPD in 1950, while divided on the issue, played an
important role in shaping the terms of the debate. In turn, the same set
of debates transformed the SPD, fashioning a new generation of lead-
ers who later helped govern the Federal Republic.
West Germanys Social Democrats eventually emerged from this
period of intra-party squabbling with a commitment to rearmament.
The painful process through which this reversal took place happened
less for ideological reasons than as a response to the political situation
in the Federal Republic. This battle between pragmatism and principle
drew from the specific historical experiences of the SPD in the previ-
ous decades, the personal experiences of its leadership cohort, and the
limits imposed by the Cold War. For the SPD leadership, the rearma-
ment debate was a subset of the much larger issue of the place of
Germany in post-war Europe. This chapter will explore the relation-
ship between these two related problems and the ways in which these
competing visions transformed the SPD as a party and West German
politics more broadly.
The legacies of Germanys recent past helped to distort the post-war
political landscape, shifting ideologies and creating odd constellations.
The center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its allies,
dominated by the towering figure of Konrad Adenauer, spoke the lan-
guage of normalization and integration into a Western and west
European community. While nationalism had not been the exclusive
property of the right in interwar Germany, it was still remarkable that
the CDUs opponents in the center-left SPD emerged from the war as
fierce nationalists. Since German nationalism would not be palatable
to Germanys neighbors and occupiers, Social Democratic nationalism
coupled with a deeply held opposition to rearmament. Even this was
not straightforward, as it combined the anti-militarism of the partys
rank-and-file with the pragmatic nationalism of the partys leadership.
The fearsome battles over rearmament in the early 1950s, which the
SPD eventually lost, make sense only in the context of a deepening
Cold War confrontation. The SPD tried to operate in the narrow
a reasonable yes 57
window of opportunity seemingly afforded by the fluid politics of the

post-war decade. By the time the rearmament debates ended in 1956,
that window was all but closed.
To understand the story of the post-war SPD and its battle over the
rearmament question, it is necessary to consider the partys history and
its role in the troubled history of Germany after 1871. The socialist Left
faced the regular problem of squaring its internationalist ideology with
a pragmatic and sufficiently patriotic electoral appeal. The Social
Democrats who shaped the party in the post-war period were products
of the interwar period, a time when the party both governed at the
head of a grand democratic experiment and found themselves out-
lawed and forced into exile. That portion of the leadership cohort who
escaped or survived persecution returned scarred by their experience
and convinced that they needed to build a new kind of party.
The SPDs path through the first decades of the 20th century was
inseparable from the problems of war and peace. A product of an
increasingly assertive German workers movement in the 1860s, the
SPD spent much of the end of the 19th century under ban. Two years
before the outbreak of war in 1914, the SPD won a resounding victory
in the Reichstag elections. Now the largest party in parliament, they
might have been able to act as a firebreak against the conflagration that
followed. Instead, SPD leaders and many of the rank-and-file gave their
more or less enthusiastic support for the war. The war, as one leading
historian of the German Left put it, promised the lasting basis of the
labor movements acceptance into the nation.2
The party split badly over the conflict, but emerged after the war as
a cornerstone of the fragile edifice that was the Weimar Republic.
Friedrich Ebert, a saddle-maker from Heidelberg, served as the
Republics first President until his death in 1925. The SPD managed to
engineer several governing coalitions during the tumultuous 1920s,
ending with the collapse of Hermann Mllers government in March
1930. The Social Democrats had powerful enemies on the Left and
Right. To the Communists, they were social fascists who betrayed
their class origins. For the Right, they represented the stab-in-the-
back of the Treaty of Versailles. When the future Nazi propaganda
chief Josef Goebbels attacked the Social Democrats in parliament
2
Geoff Eley, Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 18502000 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 126.
58 adam seipp
in 1931, he encountered an energetic young war veteran named Kurt

Schumacher. The one-armed firebrand told the audience that Nazism
had for the first time in German politics achieved the total mobiliza-
tion of human idiocy.3
The SPD quickly found itself on the defensive after Hitlers 1933
assumption of power. Now armed with quasi-legality, squads of para-
military Brownshirts joined with law enforcement to incarcerate, tor-
ture, and sometimes murder leftists of all stripes. Having failed to
mount a challenge to the Nazi ascendancy, the party now fell into
eclipse. Part of its core leadership fled into exile, a journey made grim-
mer by the relentless march of the German war machine. The Social
Democrats in exile (Sopade) made its home successively in Prague,
Paris, and London. Along the way, their Reports from Germany
helped to keep the outside world informed on the progress of the war
from within Fortress Europe.
Kurt Schumacher had no intention of fleeing. He remained an active
opponent of the new regime. During the summer of 1933, the net
closed around him. Schumacher spent virtually the entire length of the
12-year Reich in concentration camps like Flossenbrg and Dachau.
Just as persistent inside the camps as outside, Schumacher led hunger
strikes that shrank his frame to less than 100 pounds.4 British troops
liberated him and the other inmates of the Neuengamme camp in 1945.
Now free, Schumacher emerged from the war with the certainties of a
clearly anti-Nazi resume that gave him immediate legitimacy after the
German collapse. Just 50 years old, his health never recovered. While
his body was failing, his will proved indomitable.
Now freed from captivity, Schumacher quickly reformed the SPD in
the British and American zones of occupation. Not long thereafter,
Sopade leaders like future party chief Erich Ollenhauer returned from
London. Others trickled back from their places of exile, including a
tough and ambitious German-born naturalized Norwegian named
Willy Brandt, who would go on to be one of the most successful Social
Democrats of the post-war period. Carlo Schmid, an academic and
later one of the partys most eloquent speakers on rearmament, did not
have to come as far. He had spent the war serving as legal advisor with
3
Peter Merseberger, Der schwierige Deutsche: Kurt Schumacher, Eine Biographie
(Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1995), 120.
4
Merseberger, Der schwierige Deutsche, 164, 191.
a reasonable yes 59
German occupation forces in France. From this group and their very
different wartime experiences, a new political party began to emerge.
The SPD intended to resume its status as a national working-class-
based party, a goal that required it to shed much of the baggage of its
recent past.
The new SPD intended to learn from its mistakes. Schumacher real-
ized that any ambiguity toward communism would cost votes in future
elections in the western zones. During a period of writing and travel-
ling as he brought the party back together, Schumacher drafted clear
guidelines intended to demonstrate the SPDs commitment to national
unity and to draw sharp distinctions between themselves and the
Communist Party (KPD). The KPD, he argued, served one of the vic-
torious allies, while the SPD wanted only to alleviate the political and
social crises facing the working masses of Germany.5
The post-war SPD had a strong pacifist component, which dove-
tailed with its Marxist orientation to produce a strong moral and polit-
ical opposition to war and military institutions. Nazism was, in the
minds of the partys leaders, closely linked with the Prusso-German
military tradition. Both needed to be neutralized if Germany had any
hope of restoring itself to the community of nations. As an SPD pam-
phlet published in Karlsruhe argued in 1945, Nazis and militarists can
no longer play a role in Germany. If they wish to do anything, they
should be in the front rank cleaning up the rubble in which they have
left the people of Germany.6 As a party with a relatively consistent
record of opposition, or at least persecution, under the Nazis, this argu-
ment carried a good deal of weight.
The SPDs antimilitary attitude also drew from a strong popular
aversion to the threat of another war. Opposition to the use of armed
force had broad appeal across the political spectrum. Conservative
Protestants like Martin Niemller became the public face of pacifism
and war guilt. Given the post-war ascendancy of Catholic politicians
like Adenauer, Lutheran pacifism also spoke to the historic divisions
5
See the pamphlet Politische Richtlinien fr die SPD in ihrem Verhltnis zu den
anderen politische Faktoren (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Bonn, Archiv der Sozialen
Demokratie [hereafter AsdD], August 1945), http://www.fes.de/archiv/adsd_neu/
index.htm. My thanks to Jason Smith for helping me find some of the source material
cited herein.
6
Der Weg in die Zukunft, Referentenmaterial der SPD Karlsruhe, December
1945.
60 adam seipp
within German politics. In 1945, Niemller and other prominent

Lutheran leaders issued the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt (Stuttgarter
Schuldbekenntnis), which acknowledged German responsibility for the
Nazi war of aggression. Niemller and other conservative Protestants
such as Gustav Heinemann were not only ideologically opposed to war.
Like Schumacher, they realized that talk of rearmament might harm
efforts toward reunification. In 1950, reacting to rumors of negotia-
tions over the future shape of a West German army, Niemller publicly
suggested that the rearmament in Germany pending the present state
of division cannot amount but to suicide.7 Among the SPDs core sup-
porters in organized labor, the message came across with stark simplic-
ity. If war came again, thousands of posters and voices repeated, it
would be ohne mich (without me). Schumacher was not naturally
inclined toward the rejectionists. He preferred to see military ques-
tions within the framework of the larger issue of the future shape of a
German state. The issue of rearmament could wait until a successful
resolution of the larger challenges came into view.
However, the internal politics in the Western zones developed simul-
taneously with the changing and varied policies of the occupying Allies.
While German parties in the east and west rushed to reform, the occu-
pation regimes played an outsized role in the shaping politics. For the
Americans, priorities included rebuilding the devastated economy,
maintaining order, and ensuring that radicals on the Left and Right
had no place at the table. To that end, political parties were tightly reg-
ulated within and between occupation zones. While the Allies agreed
before the end of the war that Germans should have political parties,
they explicitly restricted Nazi, militaristic, or pan-German doctrines.8
While military officials readily used this prohibition against fringe par-
ties or even local branches of the CDU, the SPD found itself regularly
scrutinized for its nationalist activities.
Schumacher and the SPD began making nuisances of themselves
very quickly. Having rejected communism, they adopted a leftist
nationalism that looked at times not unlike the right-wing variant. SPD
leaders roundly criticized the occupation regimes, so much so that
7
Quoted in James Bentley, Martin Niemller (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1984), 211.
8
Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) 1067, April 1945. Reprinted in Beate Ruhm von Oppen,
ed. Documents of Germany Under Occupation, 19451954 (London: Oxford University
Press, 1955), 19.
a reasonable yes 61
the French all but banned Schumacher from their zone until 1949. The
curious formation of the party system in West Germany began with
these varied and sometimes contradictory responses by the Allies.9
In eastern Germany, the Soviet occupation regime pursued a course
that had serious implications for the SPD in the west. They clumsily
compelled the union of the SPD in the east with the KPD in April 1946,
forming the Socialist Unity Party (SED) that dominated the GDR until
its dissolution. Despite Schumachers angry protestations, this gave the
western SPDs opponents a valuable weapon that could be used to ques-
tion the loyalty of Social Democrats anywhere.
The Soviets were also not nearly as concerned about arming Germans
in their zone. As early as 1945, the Soviets began a de facto remilitari-
zation of their zone of occupation through the creation of a Peoples
Police (Volkspolizei). These armed formations, which grew increas-
ingly well armed and sophisticated, seemed to belie Soviet claims about
their peaceful intentions in the region. By the end of 1948, the
Volkspolizei looked increasingly like an army in all but name.
Schumachers intransigence also put him at odds with the other
great figure to emerge from the war, Konrad Adenauer of the CDU.
Adenauer came from another political generation, having risen through
Rhineland politics to become mayor of Cologne in 1917. He spent the
years of the Third Reich in retirement, avoiding politics as much as
possible. The conflict between the CDU and SPD shaped the founding
years of West Germany, not least because of their fierce disagreements
on issues of national sovereignty and national security.
For the SPD, the most important consideration in the wake of the
war remained the uncertain geographic position of Germany within
central Europe. Two experiences, partition and division, influenced
the partys thinking about a future German role in any defense com-
munity. For Schumacher, all questions about the future role of a
German state within post-war Europe, including those centered on
rearmament, had to wait until fundamental questions of boundaries
could be settled.
Following the war, the Allies awarded large tracts of eastern Germany
to Poland, while the Soviets seized a small portion around Knigsberg
(Kaliningrad) for itself. The new boundary along the lines of the Oder
9
Daniel Rogers, Politics After Hitler: The Western Allies and the German Party
System (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 114.
62 adam seipp
and Neisse rivers divided Poland from the Soviet zone of Germany.
As ethnic Germans fled or were expelled from this belt of territory,
the heart of old Prussia ceased to be German.10 This raised both diplo-
matic and personal problems for German political leaders. Could the
transferred territories play a role in a future diplomatic settlement?
How could politicians in the west manage the strident demands of mil-
lions of Germans expellees (Heimatvertriebene) from the east? Since
the FRG saw itself as the legitimate heir to pre-Nazi Germany, could it
have a voice on a boundary issue that technically did not touch on its
territory?
For Schumacher, such questions were far from academic. As a West
Prussian, his childhood home now fell outside the new borders of
Germany. While Adenauer was a man of the west, his SPD opposite
number had his feet firmly planted in the east. The SPD under
Schumacher expressed keen interest in peaceful reunification. Any
serious discussion of rearmament might scupper meaningful dialog on
inter-German questions.
The SPD under Schumacher made German unity the lodestar of its
political vision. Germany could only be a constructive part of European
reconstruction if it acted as a unified state. There is no German prob-
lem, suggested a party brochure in 1947, that is not at the same time
a European problem. The east, suggested the pamphlet, was a foregone
conclusion. A new conception of the state needed to emerge. The SPD
set itself against the federalism of the right and the distinct policies of
the occupiers. Both of which, they argued, made it less likely that
Germany would ever recover from the war. Forging the unity of the
Reich (Reichseinheit) must stand above the petty politics of the states.
This appeal was both nationalist and cosmopolitan, reflecting the con-
tradictory and competing impulses within the party. Social Democracy
cannot put forth a nationalist and isolated Germany. It can only imag-
ine Germany as part of Europe. Germany cannot be a pariah, but an
equal.11
In 1948, at the urging of the Allies, a council representing the states
(Lnder) met at the palace of Herrenchiemsee in Bavaria to draft a
founding document for the new western state. Grudgingly, even those
10
Carsten Lilge, Die Entstehung der Oder-Neisse-Linie als Nebenprodukt alliierter
Grossmachtpolitik whrend des Zweiten Weltkrieges (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1995).
11
Pamphlet Was will die Sozialdemokratie? (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Bonn, AsdD,
1947.
a reasonable yes 63
who feared that such a move would guarantee the permanence of the
post-war division acceded to the meetings. Because of the looming
partition and the hope of eventual reunification, the framers agreed
that they would negotiate a temporary Basic Law (Grundgesetz) in
place of a constitution. The visions of the two largest parties of the
post-war period, the CDU and the SPD, collided at the meeting.
The framers of the Grundgesetz faced a whole host of legal and lin-
guistic obstacles. The SPD and CDU clashed over the question of
whether this new semi-sovereign German state could posses an army
of its own. Caught between radically different visions of the potential
future role of a military, the final document reflected a compromise
between the two. Article 26 forbid acts threatening to peace, especially
preparation for aggressive war.12 This ambiguity in the Grundgesetz
threw the question of a future security role back to the voters.
The election of August 1949 brought the SPD tantalizingly close to
a leadership role but also consigned it to more than a decade in the
wilderness. They gained 29.2 per cent of the vote, not far below the
31 per cent of the CDU and its sister party, the Bavarian Christian
Social Union (CSU). The SPDs continued focus on oppositional class-
based politics all but ensured that other middle-class parties, such as
the Free Democrats and the German Party, would work with Adenauer.
Schumacher ran for President but was defeated by the Free Democrat
Theodor Heuss.
The two years after the drafting the Grundgesetz saw the sharpening
of SPD opposition to Adenauers European and security policy. The
partys efforts to stop Adenauer must be understood in the context of
three factors. First and most important was the leaderships fixation on
reunification and their fear that any diplomatic or military initiatives
would only harden the post-war division. Second was a reflection of
the genuinely pacifist sentiment among many of the partys rank-and-
file. The leadership might not have shared this view, but they could not
afford to ignore it. Finally, the SPD retained much of its historic class-
based rhetoric and remained committed to attacking the pro-business
climate of Adenauers West Germany. During the Federal Republics
first decade, these issues were often intertwined.
In the Spring of 1950, the CDU threw itself behind the efforts of
France and its Foreign Minister Robert Schuman to build a partnership
12
http://www.bundestag.de/parlament/funktion/gesetze/gg_jan2007.pdf
64 adam seipp
across their recently militarized frontier. His plan for joint Franco-
German administration of coal and steel resources offered to resolve
one of the proximate causes of antagonism between the two countries.
For Adenauer, who hoped to add structure to his western vision,
Schumans proposal offered legitimacy and tangible proof of the Federal
Republics good intentions. For the SPD, these agreements weakened
the Federal Republics chances of favorably resolving either the ambig-
uous position of the Saarland or the more vexing problems of Germanys
eastern borders. Schumacher never sounded as nationalistic as when
he attacked the plan put forward by Schuman, who had been born in
then-German-occupied Lorraine in 1886. The plan, Schumacher wrote
in the Hamburger Echo, was little more than Louis XIV under a new
guise. It is the continuation of traditional French claims to dominance
phrased in European terms.13
Ultimately, the SPD failed to block Adenauers relentless drive west-
ward. By early 1952, the Bundestag put its stamp on the European Coal
and Steel Community (ECSC) and West German integration into the
increasingly borderless markets of western Europe began in earnest.
Schuman sold the ECSC on the promise of a safer and more prosper-
ous tomorrow. Franco-German armed conflict was now not merely
unthinkable, but materially impossible.14 The ratification of the treaty
was a triumph for Adenauer, Schuman, and the network of Catholic
conservatives who now dominated western Europe. On economic
issues, the Christian Democratic consensus that evolved across the
region in post-war period proved too powerful for the Social Democrats
to check.
At the same time, discussions began between Adenauer and Allies
about the possibility of a West German contribution to the evolving
western military presence in Europe. The Social Democrats mobilized
in opposition, but again found themselves in a position of weakness.
The deteriorating security situation and an internal leadership change
combined to change the face of the debate and led eventually to both a
political victory for the government and the transformation of the SPD
from within.
13
John Lewis Gadds, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin, 2005), 105;
Charles Williams, Adenauer: The Father of the New Germany (New York: Wiley, 2000),
37779; Albrecht, Kurt Schumacher, 806.
14
Quoted in John McCormick, The European Union: Politics and Policies (Cambridge:
Westview, 2004), 64.
a reasonable yes 65
As a party, the SPD was already familiar with the dangers of living
close to the Iron Curtain. Berlin, the symbol of Europes Cold War divi-
sion, also happened to be the reddest place in the western zones. In
1948, Berlins future SPD mayor Ernst Reuter, an avid reunification
advocate and opponent of rearmament, gave one of the most impor-
tant speeches of the post-war period. Facing a Soviet blockade, Reuter,
who ironically joined the Red Army while a POW in Russia during
World War I, demanded that the world look upon this city. When he
won a resounding victory in municipal elections a few weeks later, the
party took responsibility for one of the most strategically significant
flashpoints in Europe. Clearly, someone would have to defend western
Germany. Questions remained as to whether the Germans themselves
would play a role in that defense.
Events on the other side of the world further weakened the ohne
mich idea. In June 1950, North Korean troops poured across the bor-
der into their southern neighbor. People living along Europes fault
lines saw a frightening vision of the future. Particularly in the first days
of the war, Korea looked like a template for a Red Army victory in cen-
tral Europe.
The American Resident Officer in the Franconian district of
Hammelburg saw these fears reflected in a weekly report, assembled
for him by the Landrat, on political opinion in the district. Even taking
into account the biases of the conservative bureaucrat collating these
reports, what emerges is a profoundly uneasy community uncomfort-
ably close to the probable main line of attack. The concern that the
Korea model could have an impact on West Germany continues to be
strong. The captions the Electrifying Victories of the North Koreans
reminds the Germans of similar headlines from a bygone age.15
Germans in 1950 were just five years removed from a devastating war
and the experience of defeat and ruin.
Developments in Korea strongly influenced public opinion in West
Germany, a fact starkly highlighted in public surveys at the time. In
Fall 1948, during the Berlin blockade, 24 per cent of respondents indi-
cated that they feared an internal or external military threat from the
communism. Such anxieties decreased markedly with the end of the
blockade and the march toward limited sovereignty. By June 1949,
15
Wochenbericht, July 28, 1950. Staatsarchiv Wrzburg, Landesratsamt
Hammelburg, 2399.
66 adam seipp
this number slipped to 16 per cent. Public opinion generally opposed

any move toward the creation of an independent military. The war in
Korea provoked a tremendous amount of anxiety that at least made
such proposals more imaginable. In December 1949, 62 per cent of
respondents opposed rearmament, with 29 per cent in favor. Shortly
after the outbreak of war in Asia, opposition fell to 45 per cent and sup-
port rose to 43 per cent. Making matters more complicated, most of
those opposed to rearmament agreed that West Germany could not
be defended without German help. Support grew among the popula-
tion if a German military could be integrated into a larger Western
alliance. In short, total opposition to rearmament grew increasingly
marginal, and the debate came to center on the circumstances under
which rearmament would happen rather than on the question of
whether it would.16
For the SPD, this anxiety posed large problems. In anxious times,
continued opposition to defense fell increasingly outside of the main-
stream of political opinion. As the center-right moved more or less
comfortably into a policy of orientation toward the West, their oppo-
nents on the left faced electoral oblivion if they could not find a reason-
able way to challenge the emerging Adenauer consensus.
A younger generation of Social Democrats grew frustrated with the
impasse of the early 1950s. Willy Brandt later wrote with frustration
that the FRG created a straightjacket for itself during this period. His
position on rearmament was scarcely less tentative, however. He
favored a limited remilitarization focused on mirroring the develop-
ment of the GDRs Volkspolizei. I was not guided in this by the pacifist
dreams of my early youth Some of us [Social Democrats] had learnt
that you must be able to handle armed force if you dont want it to han-
dle you.17
In Spring 1952, the continuing uncertainty over the future map of
central Europe deepened with Soviet leader Joseph Stalins public note
offering to consider a unified neutral Germany. For many, including
Adenauer, it was either a somewhat desperate attempt to undermine
U.S. security commitments in the region and undo NATO or an insin-
cere ploy designed to test western resolve. Schumacher embraced the
16
Anna J. Merritt and Richard L. Merritt, eds., Public Opinion in Occupied Germany:
The OMGUS Surveys, 19451949 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970), 310;
Public Opinion in Semisovereign Germany: The Hicog Surveys, 19491955 (Urbana:
University Of Illinois Press, 1980), 20.
17
Willy Brandt, My Life in Politics (New York: Viking, 1992), 146.
a reasonable yes 67
possibility, urging the Chancellor to quickly call a Four-Power confer-

ence as a first step toward a free election for the whole of Germany.18
Effectively, the summary rejection of the note represented a last oppor-
tunity to tie rearmament, Adenauers western orientation, and the
question of German unity together in a single package. Even assuming
the sincerity of Stalins offer, it pointedly did not include the territory
ceded to Poland at the end of the war. Schumachers vision of a German
future was not to be.
In August 1952, Kurt Schumacher died. Party leadership passed to
his reliable deputy Erich Ollenhauer. This began a shift leftward in
which the ruthless pragmatism of Schumacher gave way to a more pas-
sionate objection to rearmament. For reformers within the party who
yearned for electoral victories, and for the increasing number of
Germans who feared communist intentions in central Europe, this
transition boded poorly for the SPDs political prospects.
Confined to the opposition, the SPD found itself forced to play a
constructive role in the long and tortured debates over rearmament.
With little chance of halting the creation of a German armed force dur-
ing the debates over the European Defense Community (EDC), SPD
parliamentarians urged, often successfully, the creation of structures
and rules that assured the rights of soldiers and constitutional protec-
tions for those in uniform. SPD leaders such as Carlo Schmid, who had
previously opposed rearmament, now sought to shape the likely out-
come into a form they found acceptable rather than reject it completely
and face defeat.19
The party under Ollenhauer retained its commitment to a negoti-
ated reunification of divided Germany but also still lacked the power to
force a deviation from Adenauers focus on integration with the West.
After the collapse of the EDC in 1954, the problem only worsened as it
became clear that some form of rearmament was all but inevitable and
that it would not happen under international administration. The
negotiations over the Paris Accords in 1955 brought the tensions within
the party out into the open as the more radical wing began a public
campaign against ratification.
The Paris Accords debate culminated in a January 1955 meeting at
the Paulskirche in Frankfurt. The church, resonant with the history of
18
Albrecht, Kurt Schumacher, 963.
19
David Clay Large, Germans to the Front: West German Rearmament in the
Adenauer Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 228.
68 adam seipp
the 1848 disturbances and the abortive National Assembly that met
there, proved to be a last-ditch effort to block a treaty whose passage
was all but certain. The German Manifesto passed by the Frankfurt
delegates urged only the continuation of talks on reunification as a pre-
condition for rearmament.
While the Bundestag ratified the agreement shortly thereafter, the
Paulskirche meeting set an important precedent. Particularly for the
SPDs supporters in organized labor, efforts to find parliamentary solu-
tions continued to fail against the governments electoral strength.
Extra-parliamentary opposition seemed to offer a better forum to make
their case. If the Social Democrats proved unable to stop rearmament,
their advocacy had important repercussions in shaping the political
culture of the republic.
If the question of rearmament seemed settled, there were still areas
in which Social Democrats could draw upon popular support to criti-
cize the governments defense policy. This was probably most clear in
the area of nuclear weapons. After the introduction of nuclear-capable
weapons to West Germany in 1953, Germans from across the political
spectrum began to question an evolving NATO strategy that placed
them squarely in the crosshairs of a future conflict. The Gttingen
Manifesto of April 1957 reflected the deep ambivalence of many in the
region about the dangers of tactical atomic weapons. For a country
as small as the Federal Republic, wrote 18 leading German nuclear
scientists, we believe that the best way to protect ourselves and pro-
mote world peace is to voluntarily give up nuclear weapons.20
The SPD and its organized labor constituency played an important
organizing role in the vocal Campaign to Stop Atomic Death (Kampf
dem Atomtod). The campaign drew from earlier SPD positions on
national unity and the need to demilitarize east-west conflict. We
demand of the Bundestag and Federal government not to participate
in the nuclear arms race, proclaimed the campaigns 1958 manifesto,
and instead to support an atomic-weapon free zone in Europe as a
contribution to the relaxation of tensions. This grassroots move-
ment left important legacies, not least of which was the growing self-
assuredness of a new generation of activists who took to the streets in
the late 1960s and early 1970s. The SPDs troubled and ultimately failed
opposition to rearmament arguably had its most durable impact in the
20
Gttinger Erklrung, April 12, 1957.
a reasonable yes 69
creation of the New Left more than a decade after the Bundeswehr
debates.21
The story of the SPD and the rearmament debate did not end with
the founding of the Bundeswehr. As a central facet of a whole range of
political disagreements during the first decade of the Federal Republic,
rearmament did as much to transform the SPD as the party did to try
and influence the debate itself. By the late 1950s, the party emerged
from its re-foundation struggles faced with the enormous task of dem-
onstrating its fitness to govern. After another disappointing election in
1957, which saw the CDU/CSU gain a slim but absolute majority in
parliament, it became clear that the SPD had to change course. With a
rising new generation of politicians, including Brandt and future
German President Johannes Rau, the SPD looked to shed its class-party
image.
An Extraordinary Party Congress at Bad Godesberg in 1959 pro-
vided the reformers a platform. Delegates overwhelmingly approved a
program free of the overtly socialist language of the partys past.
National defense, and with it a commitment to institution building, lay
at the heart of the Godesberg Program. While continuing to affirm the
partys desire to see the banning of implements of mass destruction
under international law, the new party program made great efforts to
showcase a commitment to responsible national defense. Provided that
democratic controls remained in place, that the armed forces be used
only for national defense and that soldiers continued to be treated as
citizens, the program bluntly asserted that the Social Democrats sup-
port national defense.22
The partys ideological reorientation yielded rapid results. By the
mid-1960s, the SPD significantly extended its electoral mandate. Willy
Brandt assumed leadership of the party after Ollenhauers death in
1963. In 1966, they joined a Grand Coalition, coming back to govern-
ment for the first time since the Weimar Republic. In Fall 1969, Brandt
became Chancellor. The prize that had eluded the Social Democrats of
21
Mark Cioc, Pax Atomica: Nuclear Defense Debate in West Germany During the
Adenauer Era (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 119. See also Holger
Nehring, Americanized Protests? The British and West German Protests Against
Nuclear Weapons and the Pacifist Roots of the West German New Left, 195764, in
Jessica C.E. Gienow-Hecht, ed. Decentering America (New York: Berghahn, 2007),
21054.
22
Grundsatzprogramm der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands, 1959, 11.
70 adam seipp
the post-war period now fell to a new generation. The SPD now faced
the task of governing a country entrenched in the Western alliance,
while simultaneously trying to reach out to Eastern Europe and bridge
the chasm left by the end of the Second World War.
In the decade after the Second World War, the SPD in West Germany
learned to be a mass party in large part through debates over the future
role of Germany in Europe. While there was widespread consensus
within the party over the need for peaceful reunification, this masked
much more important splits between pragmatists and ideologues that
kept the party confined to the opposition during the long Adenauer
years. While pacifists played an important role in the party, they rarely
held leadership positions, and many of the partys leaders who held
anti-rearmament positions eventually softened them in the face of
political reality. In the end, the party embraced Schumachers reason-
able yes as a reflection of the difficult and dangerous circumstances
facing West Germany in the early Cold War. But the SPDs role in the
rearmament debate had an importance far beyond the partys internal
divisions.
The rearmament of West Germany, coming so soon on the heels of
the catastrophic defeat of the German armed forces in the Second
World War, proved to be perhaps the most contentious issue in the
political life of the new Federal Republic. Adenauer and Schumacher
held positions on this issue that irrevocably marked the ideologies and
identities of the parties that they founded. The political titans of the
post-war period and their successors created West German politics
and shaped political culture in the republic in large part over the ques-
tion of the future of national security. While the parties diverged on
many of the specific issues under consideration, the western orienta-
tion of the CDU and the left nationalism of the SPD intertwined to
create the conditions under which West Germany emerged as a part-
ner in the Western Alliance. More important, the SPDs role in the
opposition helped to facilitate a new style of politics in the new repub-
lic. Unlike the Weimar period, during which democracy collapsed
under the weight of its own structural dysfunction, the FRG proved
durable under a small constellation of parties defined in large part by
their stance on national security. By reinventing itself after the war,
then proving flexible during the early Cold War, the SPD created a
durable role for itself within the West German party system and helped
to foster the remarkable success of a parliamentary democracy born
out of the horrors of Nazism and defeat.
THE ALLIED POWERS AND THE CREATION
OF A NEW GERMAN ARMED FORCERS
THE EUROPEAN DEFENSE COMMUNITY
Jonathan M. House
Reviving Germany: The Schuman Plan
Germany invaded France three times between 1870 and 1940. Twice,
the Germans conquered, occupying northern France and extorting
extensive reparations. The third time, during World War I, France won,
but only with the help of major allies and at the ruinous cost of 5.4 mil-
lion Frenchmen killed, wounded, and missing. In the wake of this
Pyrrhic victory, the French discovered that without major allies they
were too weak to prevent German resurgence.
At the end of World War II, therefore, France sought security in the
form of alliances against the perennial foe. Even though Germany was
momentarily prostrate, no French official expected that situation to
endure. Despite his life-long opposition to communism, Charles de
Gaulle had traveled to Moscow in December 1944 to sign a long-term
anti-German alliance with Joseph Stalin. More practically, in March
1947, France and Britain concluded the Dunkirk Treaty, explicitly
intended to establish mutual assistance in the event of any renewal of
German aggression.1 One year later, London and Paris joined with the
three low-country governments in the Brussels Treaty, which again
provided for collective defense against Germany. To this end, the agree-
ment established the Western Union (later the Western European
Union or WEU) with the rudiments of an integrated command struc-
ture to coordinate defense.
During the later 1940s, growing friction with the Soviet Union, the
Viet Minh in Indochina, and the French Communist Party at home
forced the constantly changing governments of the Fourth Republic to
recognize that Germany might not be the only threat to French secu-
rity. As time passed, some French politicians also came to understand
that Europe could not recover economically without German involve-
ment. Even with France administering the vital mineral deposits of the
1
Quoted in Edward Fursdon, The European Defence Community: A History
(London: Macmillan Press, 1980), 29.
74 jonathan m. house
Saar region, Europe in general and France in particular could flourish

economically only with German industrial participation. In 194748,
therefore, the French reluctantly accepted British and American plans
to restart the West German economy.
The Fourth French Republic was an inherently unstable structure,
because the French popular vote was divided among so many political
parties, large and small, that every cabinet was of necessity a coalition
of conflicting viewpoints. Whenever a major issue arose, that issue
could well fracture the coalition and re-align the parties into another
cabinet. Except for the communists, who followed Moscows line
against any rejuvenated Germany, no party was completely unified
about the German issue. Right-wing parties were generally strongest
in their advocacy of French power and German weakness. Charles de
Gaulles Rally of the French People, which embraced a broad political
spectrum in its goal of a revised constitution, was equally skeptical
about a revived Germany. Only the various socialist and moderate
parties were willing to make significant compromises to re-integrate
Germany into Europe. Among these parties was the Popular Republican
Movement (Mouvement Rpublicain Populaire), the party of
Robert Schuman, a strong supporter of European integration.2 Yet,
in the immediate post-war era, even politicians who favored eco-
nomic integration were unwilling to discuss the possibility of German
rearmament.
The Berlin Blockade of 194849 reinforced the specter of Soviet,
rather than German, aggression. France cooperated in countering
this blockade and signed the North Atlantic Treaty on 4 April 1949.
However, building a realistic deterrent required much more than
mere treaties. Geographically, France wanted to halt any Soviet aggres-
sion as far to the east as possible, but the emerging Federal Republic
of Germany, formed from the French, British, and American occupa-
tion zones, was not part of the new alliance, nor were the British
and Americans obligated to defend that territory as part of NATO.
Politically and economically, the new alliance could not field sufficient
forces to defend this glacis. Western military planners estimated that
defending Germany would require up to 54 divisions, but in 1949 the
three occupying powers had fewer than ten divisions to do the job.
2
See Arnold Kanter, The European Defense Community in the French National
Assembly: A Roll Call Analysis, Comparative Politics 2.2 (January 1970), 2063228.
the european defense community 75
The U.S., for example, had the equivalent of two divisions (one infantry
division plus three light armored regiments of the Constabulary) with
two fighter-bomber groups.3 Secretly, American planning for a possi-
ble conflict with the Soviet Union assumed that its occupation troops
would have to evacuate the continent, returning only at a much later
stage of the war.
This left the Europeans on their own. The depleted states of western
Europe could not simultaneously rebuild their economies, deal with
their rebellious colonies, and field enough troops to deter a Soviet
advance. The only solution to this problem, however unpalatable, was
to tap the economic and military resources of West Germany.
Integrating the German economy was by no means easy, but it was
certainly the simpler aspect of the problem. For decades, a number of
politicians, most notably Jean Monnet of France, had considered the
nation state to be outmoded and had instead advocated a supranational
economic organization to create an efficient, multi-national Europe.
Secretary of State Dean Acheson and other American diplomats
encouraged the idea, seeking to accelerate European economic recov-
ery and reduce friction among potential allies and aid recipients.
In April 1949, Monnet proposed to then-Foreign Minister Robert
Schuman a plan for multi-national supervision of coal, iron, and steel
production.4 This so-called Schuman Plan, which became the European
Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951, would permit the partici-
pantsFrance, West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg,
and Italyto cooperate economically by establishing a High Authority,
Common Assembly, Council of Ministers, and Court of Justice. At the
same time, by administering heavy industry internationally, the par-
ticipants hoped to prevent Germany from secretly manufacturing
arms. The chancellor of the new Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),
3
Samuel F. Wells, Jr., in Olav Riste, ed., Western Security: The Formative Years (Oslo:
Universitetsforlaget, and New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 186.
4
Quoted in Jean Monnet, Memoirs, trans. Richard Mayne (Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday, 1978), 298. Monnet (18881979) spent much of his life outside of France
as a businessman, League of Nations official, and arms purchaser working in the U.S.
during the two World Wars. He originated both the Schuman Plan for economic inte-
gration and the Pleven Plan that led to the European Defense Community (EDC). He
was the first president of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and a life-
long advocate of European unification. Although he had been de Gaulles economic
recovery head immediately after World War II, Monnet never held elected office in
France, and his views on integration were far more liberal than those of de Gaulle.
Konrad Adenauer, embraced Monnets concept, not least because it

placed the resources of the Saar under supranational control, reducing
a major issue in Franco-German relations.
Rearming Germany: The Pleven Plan
The problem of German military participation in the Western alliance

remained, however. Beginning in mid-1948, a former Wehrmacht
officer, Lieutenant General Hans Speidel, produced a series of memo-
randa for Adenauer on the problem of West German defense. Speidel
recognized that neither the West Germans themselves nor the govern-
ments of the Western Powers were prepared to rearm Germany at that
time. Instead, he argued that the Western Powers needed to create a
more effective defense of Germany in their own self-interest.5 Adenauer
had little desire to recreate an autonomous German Army, fearing a
resurgence of militarism. The constitution of the FRG did envision
German participation in some form of collective defense agreement,
but Adenauer opposed either an autonomous Federal Army or the
service of West Germans in other armies. Initially, therefore, the chan-
cellor asked the occupation authorities to sanction only a Federal police
force for internal security. Thus, while the possibility of German troops
was openly discussed in 194950, there was too much opposition (and
German reluctance) to resolve the issue.
The outbreak of the Korean conflict in June 1950 brought a new
sense of urgency to the defense of western Europe. For the Truman
Administration, this conflict reinforced the recommendations of
National Security Document 68 (NSC-68), written in the spring of that
year, which foresaw a prolonged confrontation with a Soviet Union
intent on dominating the Eurasian land mass. On 13 July 1950, an
American expert on the Soviet Union, Charles E. Bohlen, argued to the
Truman Administration that the initial defeats in Korea had caused
Europeans to doubt the validity of American deterrence in Europe.
Paradoxically, therefore, the war in Korea motivated Harry Truman to
deploy more troops to Europe and to provide more military aid to allies
5
Christian Greiner, The Defence of Western Europe and the Rearmament of West
Germany, 19471950, in Riste, ed., Western Security, 16270. Adenauers concerns
about rearmament are expressed in his own account, Memoirs 194553, trans. Beate
Ruhm von Oppen (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1966), 299304.
both on that continent and in the ongoing counter-insurgencies in

British Malaya and French Indo-China. Indeed, the kind of protracted
struggle foreseen by NSC-68 argued that the U.S. should arm and train
local allies wherever possible in order to limit its own military commit-
ments. By the fall of 1950, the Truman Administration had begun to
increase the American garrison of Germany to five divisions, while
earmarking 3.5 billion dollars in additional defense aid to the
Europeans.6
More practically, the U.S.-controlled United Nations Command
(UNC) in Korea became a test bed for multinational military forces.
Although Britain and its Commonwealth eventually fielded a com-
plete division between them, most of the national contributions to the
UNC were in the form of battalions of perhaps 1,000 men each, inte-
grated under American division and regimental commanders. Among
these contributions were battalions from France, Greece, and the
Netherlands, as well as a combined Belgian/Luxembourg battalion.
As a practical matter, however, many of these troops had previously
fought alongside the Americans, and the UNC simplified logistics by
insisting that all non-Commonwealth contingents use American weap-
ons and equipment.7
The Korean conflict was equally significant to the foreign policy of
the Federal Republic of Germany. The North Korean example sug-
gested that the Soviet Union might use the paramilitary East German
Alert Police as a surrogate to seize West Germany while denying
Soviet responsibility for the invasion. Adenauer reluctantly concluded
that some form of German rearmament might be necessary. The British
government, which was itself over-extended by various defense com-
mitments, encouraged Adenauer in this idea.8 Adenauer still wanted to
avoid a resurgent German Army, but saw German contributions to
Western defense as a key means to regain sovereignty and international
status.
6
On NSC-68 and the U.S. response to Korea, see Doris M. Condit, History of the
Office of the Secretary of Defense, vol. 2, The Test of War: 19501953 (Washington, D.C.:
Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1988), 610, 5565. On Bohlen, see Riste, ed.,
Western Security, 18788.
7
Condit, The Test of War, 5565.
8
U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, vol. 4:
Central and Eastern Europe; The Soviet Union (Washington, D.C.: Department of State,
1980), 68495. On Adenauers role and the politics of German rearmament, see also
John A. Reed, Jr., Germany and NATO (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University
Press, 1987), esp. 3646.
France was trapped by the logic of the situation. On 20 July 1950,

Premier Ren Pleven hosted a meeting of the WEU defense ministers
at Fontainebleau, all seeking to increase their defense forces without
sacrificing their economies. Within a month, Pleven had promised the
U.S. an expansion of the French Army from five to 20 divisions,
although he sought additional aid for rearmament. He made good on
that promise by persuading the French Assembly to increase the length
of conscripted service from 12 to 18 months. This meant that the
French Army in Europe would grow from 580,000 to 642,000 by 1952.
At the same time, however, the cream of the French army, including
thousands of its best commissioned and non-commissioned officers,
was engaged in an open-ended struggle in Indo-China. This situation
not only made it difficult to provide cadres and training for the army at
home but also raised the possibility that a resurrected German Army
might rapidly become too strong for the homeland security of France.
Thus, when American, French, and British officials met in New York
City that September, Foreign Minister Shuman resisted a U.S. move to
create six German divisions. Defense Secretary Marshall and other
officials followed up in private discussions, offering the French safe-
guards against German aggression while emphasizing the Soviet threat,
but the Pleven government continued to resist.9
Once again, the author of a multi-national solution to the German
issue was Plevens former mentor, Jean Monnet. In both world wars,
Monnet had worked to integrate the economies of Britain, France, and
the United States. During May and June 1940, when France was on the
verge of collapse in front of the German Blitzkrieg, Monnet, with
Plevens assistance, had attempted to create a union of the British and
French states, including their armed forces. As Monnet later remarked,
when peoples are threatened by the same danger, it is no good dealing
separately with the various interests that determine their future.10
Thus, it was no surprise that Monnet should quietly suggest to Pleven
that France use the model of the Schuman Plan to create a pan-
European army. This army, under international control, would maxi-
mize the use of all available resources, including those of West Germany,
without permitting the Germans to have independent major units or a
9
Christian Bougeard, Ren Pleven: Un Francais libre et politique (Rennes: Presses
Universitaires de Rennes, 1994), 20607. For American efforts to convince the French
in the fall of 1950, see Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, vol. 3: Western Europe
(Washington, D.C.: Department of State, 1977), 13831424.
10
Monnet, Memoirs, 35.
revived general staff. Inspired by Monnet, Pleven and his cabinet

quickly cobbled together what became known as the Pleven Plan,
announced publicly on 24 October 1950. This plan envisioned a
European army under a European defense minister, answerable to the
kind of supranational body being developed at that time to control
the ECSC. German troops would participate in this army, but only at
the smallest possible unit level; by implication, the largest purely
German unit would be a battalion of 1,000 soldiers, integrated within
multi-national divisions and corps. Such a plan meant that there would
be no separate German headquarters. At the same time, other partici-
pants in the new army would retain control of those portions of their
military forces that were not assigned to the new European Army.11
The French Assembly endorsed the basic concept of the Pleven Plan
but also voted another motion explicitly disapproving the creation of a
separate German Army or general staff.12 Thus, from the very begin-
ning, French politicians were skeptical of Plevens idea. Even Monnet
and other supporters of European integration wanted to complete the
negotiations for the ECSC before focusing on the military issue.
Frances allies were even more critical, arguing that this European
Army would take too long to develop and that mixing multiple nation-
alities within a single division was impractical militarily. No German
government could honorably accept the plan as written, with its obvi-
ous intent of using German troops but not granting political equality.
In December 1950, the U.S. deputy representative to the North Atlantic
Council, Charles M. Spofford, engineered the first of many tortuous
compromises on the matter. In effect, France agreed that the Bonn gov-
ernment could take the initial steps to recruit German soldiers.
Meanwhile, the Council would follow a dual track, discussing future
defense arrangements with the FRG while taking official notice of the
French intent to call a conference concerning a European Army.13
Negotiations
On 9 January 1951, the high commissioners of the British, American,

and French occupation authorities met in Petersberg, Germany, with
11
Riste, ed., Western Security, 20809.
12
Joseph T. May, John Foster Dulles and the European Defense Community
(Ph.D. diss., Kent State University, Ohio, 1969), 34.
13
Fursdon, The European Defence Community, 9698.
Adenauers de facto defense minister, Theodor Blank, seeking some

means to bring German forces into the NATO defense framework.
Aside from France, most NATO members believed this to be a far sim-
pler solution than the proposed European Army, but in practice politi-
cal as well as military problems thwarted progress. Despite its military
helplessness, the German government could not hope to sell rearma-
ment to a reluctant public except on a basis of complete equality with
the other NATO powers. Blank therefore insisted on equal treatment
for Germany, right down to the same type of reserved parking as the
high commissioners. The German government particularly wanted
admission to the North Atlantic Pact and a separate German defense
ministry for administration. Meanwhile, for security reasons the North
Atlantic Council had not authorized the commissioners to divulge
their specific plans for defense in general or German participation in
particular. Kept in the dark, the German delegation had to grope its
way forward to find mutually acceptable solutions.14
Eventually, therefore, the Truman and Adenauer administrations
came to regard the French proposal as a more effective means of obtain-
ing their goals. In July 1951, Acheson persuaded his president to sup-
port the emerging French solution over the Petersberg process. For
Adenauer, this European Army was the key to equality, partnership,
and sovereignty on the part of the West Germans.15
On 15 February 1951, the Conference for the Organization of the
European Army opened in Paris, chaired by Schuman. Only five
statesFrance, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Luxembourgwere
full participants in the conference, although the remaining NATO
members sent observers and the Dutch eventually decided to join the
treaty. The unprecedented complexity of the Pleven/Monnet concept
led to prolonged and difficult negotiations in a number of committees.
The questions were not simply about military field organization; the
new army obviously had to report to some civilian authority, which in
turn implied the type of supranational government that had just been
included in the ECSC treaty. Again, the German government insisted
on total equality within the new organization, while the Low Countries
14
Ibid., 10708; Daniel Lerner and Raymond Aron, France Defeats EDC (New York:
Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1957), 45.
15
Adenauer, quoted in Kevin Ruane, The Rise and Fall of the European Defence
Community: Anglo-American Relations and the Crisis of European Defence, 195055
(New York: St. Martins Press, 2000), 17.
feared that their interests would be overshadowed by those of the larger

states. The professional soldiers at the conference agreed that language
and other barriers made it far more efficient to have national units of
division size (13,000 to 16,000) rather than battalion size, and they
even drew up a table of organization for such a division. However,
French political opinion adamantly opposed the idea of German
divisions. General Dwight Eisenhower, the first Supreme Allied
Commander, Europe, achieved a successful compromise by simply
labeling the new organization a groupement rather than a division!16
As negotiations dragged on for months, France had numerous dis-
tractions from the job at hand. Retail prices rose by 38 per cent during
1951, while the war in Indo-China swung between victories and defeats.
Elections in June 1951 weakened the moderate parties in favor of the
communists and Gaullists, both of whom opposed the European Army.
The Soviet government launched a diplomatic peace offensive, seeking
to prevent German involvement in NATO. Finally, that great game of
musical chairs known as the Fourth Republic made Ren Pleven the
defense minister in March 1952, a position that allowed him to shep-
herd his plan for the next two years.17
In February of that same year, Premier Edgar-Jean Faure had per-
suaded the French Assembly to renew its approval in principle of the
new army, but even this approval came with numerous caveats. The
French socialists wanted not only an American commitment to main-
tain troops in Europe but also close British participation in the new
defense structure. In short, even supporters of the European Army
sought American and British counter-weights to any increase in
German influence. Once again, the Assembly condemned the possibil-
ity of a separate German Army and insisted that the government reach
a solution with Bonn about the Saar.18
By this point, the Anglo-American governments were determined
to avoid any further delay in rearming Germany. They therefore readily
agreed that, as part of the emerging treaty, the two powers would
jointly promise to maintain troops on the continent for as long as nec-
essary, and they promised to consider a threat to the new European
Defense Community (EDC) to be a threat to NATO itself. Britain signed
16
17
Bougeard, Ren Pleven, 213, 22022, 24755.
18
Lerner and Aron, France Defeats EDC, 79.
a convention with the EDC members extending the original guaran-

tees of the 1948 Brussels Treaty to include all members of the commu-
nity, especially Italy and Germany.19
The EDC Treaty
The long negotiations finally came to fruition in May 1952. On the

26th, Britain, France, the United States, and the Federal Republic of
Germany signed the Bonn Conventions, contractual agreements that
granted Germany sovereignty in return for its participation in collec-
tive defense. The next day in Paris, the six continental governments
initialed the treaty creating the EDC. This treaty was far more detailed
and complex than the Dunkirk, Brussels, or North Atlantic Treaties: it
consisted of 132 articles, 12 protocols, and several other common dec-
larations. General Edward Fursdon, a noted historian of the EDC, has
observed with some justification that this complexity reflected the fact
that the treaty was drafted by countries familiar with Napoleonic rather
than Roman and Anglo-Saxon law.20 It would also be accurate to say
that the participants were surrendering far more sovereignty than was
involved in the previous treaties and that there was much less unanim-
ity of agreement about the entire project.
Although Germany was still not recognized as a member of NATO,
the new treaty included many specific interrelationships with that
organization.21 The NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe
(SACEUR), had general powers both to ensure that the new EDC units
were created in a satisfactory manner and had power to operationally
command all such units as soon as they became combat ready. The
European Defense Forces would be a quasi-federal army wearing a
common uniform. The army would eventually total 43 groupements/
divisions, of which 14 would be French and 12 German, under multi-
national corps and army headquarters. Air force groups of 1,300 to
2,000 men each, equipped with fighter, reconnaissance, bomber, or
transport aircraft, would also be formed on a national basis.
19
Ruane, Rise and Fall of the European Defence Community, 3334.
20
Fursdon, The European Defence Community, 151, 192.
21
This analysis of the EDC Treaty is based on ibid., 15188, and on Josef L. Kunz,
Establishing the European Defense Community, American Journal of International
Law 47.2 (April 1953), 27581.
Politically, the member states would not maintain national armed

forces within Europe, a proviso that permitted France to still keep
national troops in its overseas possessions. A nine-member board of
commissioners would control the EDC armed forces, functioning as a
sort of collective defense minister and responsible to the same supra-
national assembly and court that had just come into existence to
administer the coal and steel community. As an intermediary between
the commissioners and this ECSC government, an EDC Council
would make decisions by weighted voting, ranging from three votes
each for Germany, France, and Italy to one for Luxembourg. At Italys
suggestion, Article 38 foreshadowed the eventual establishment of a
European political union, as a gesture to reassure the smaller partici-
pants against domination by the larger ones. The EDC commissioners
would also standardize weaponry and equipment and issue all con-
tracts. The controversial Article 107 required the commissioners to
issue licenses for any arms production not directly related to EDC.22
Fatal Delays
Signed treaties mean nothing until they are ratified; indeed, one of the
French provisos had been that no German troops should be conscripted
until all the other signatories had ratified the treaty. The Netherlands,
which had initially been skeptical of the entire process, was the first to
ratify the result. Adenauers government faced unique constitutional
and political issues in committing West Germany to rearmament but
gradually made progress. The Italian government also had serious
domestic opposition to the plan. Yet the biggest obstacle became France
itself, where Robert Schuman, the man so closely identified with
European integration, did not even forward the treaty to the Assembly
until 29 January 1953, more than eight months after signing. Although
Schuman never explained the reason for this delay, it was obvious that
the EDC Treaty was very unpopular in France for a number of
reasons.23
First, the new agreement was a classic example of the clichd warn-
ing to be careful what you wish for. The original Pleven Plan had
22
23
Lerner and Aron, France Defeats EDC, 8.
envisioned forming German units but not a German Army, placing the
new troops under supranational control that would also restrict
German arms production. The final treaty did that, but extended the
same rules to all participantsa strict interpretation of Articles 9 and
10 meant that France would have no control over its armed forces
except for overseas and UN commitments. For a nation struggling to
maintain its great power image, the thought of surrendering the emo-
tional symbol of its great army was appalling. Critics argued that, in
effect, the new treaty rearmed Germany while disarming France. Such
an action, they contended, would give the appearance that France was
weakening itself to become part of Europe, turning its back on the
French Union that it was trying to defend in Indo-China.24
This criticism was strongest in the French Army. The opposition was
led by Marshal Alphonse Juin, who held a number of positions as the
senior officer in the French military and as NATO commander for
troops on the central front. After Juin became more and more outspo-
ken, Defense Minister Pleven sent him a memorandum reminding
him of the obligations of military discipline, to which the marshal
replied simply I am not a corporal.25 After exhausting all other
options, on 31 March 1954, Pleven reluctantly persuaded the cabinet to
relieve Juin of all his positions. Coming at the same time as the crisis of
Dien Bien Phu, this civil-military confrontation inflamed opposition
to the treaty.
A related issue was that not all Frenchmen supported the idea of
European integration. Even if one were willing, grudgingly, to accept
German rearmament against the Soviet threat, that did not mean that
one would feel able to compete economically with other strong nations,
especially Germany, in a multinational arena. Pleven and other advo-
cates of unification, many of whom came from the industrialized,
wealthy northern and eastern portions of France, could accept
European union, but the more conservative and traditional areas of
southern and western France feared competition.26 For such people,
24
See, for example, Edgar S. Furniss, Jr., French Attitudes Towards Western
European Unity, International Organization 7.2 (May 1953), 203.
25
Bougeard, Ren Pleven, 262.
26
Lerner and Aron, France Defeats EDC, 3132. For a discussion of the French
sense of inferiority, see Nathan Leites and Christian de la Malene, Paris From EDC to
WEU, Research memorandum RM-1668-RC (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation,
1956), vivii, 1519.
the EDC combined two repulsive ideas: German rearmament and fur-
ther economic integration with Europe.
Even politicians who were willing to ratify the EDC Treaty wanted
to ensure that France was not left alone to compete with a resurgent
Germany inside a newly integrated Europe. To this end, Paris repeat-
edly demanded further protocols to accomplish two contradictory
goals. On the one hand, France wanted to limit the provisions of EDC
by, for example, permitting it to withdraw troops from EDC control if
they were needed overseas. On the other hand, however, France wanted
to bring more players into the treaty as counterweights to German
dominance.27
The key to this latter goal was Britain. Indeed, in August 1950,
Winston Churchill had been one of the first to propose a European
Army. Yet Britain had never said that it would join such an army, and
the British government, whether Labor or Conservative, had no inten-
tion of becoming fully integrated into the EDC. Churchill privately
described the new treaty as a sludgy amalgam; he considered the pro-
posed multinational army to be an impractical bucket of wood pulp.28
Just as in the case of the ECSC, Britain wanted to associate itself with
the new structure while still retaining full sovereignty. To some extent,
the reasons for this attitude were similar to those of France. While
France was pinned down in Indo-China, the British had even greater
obligations in Malaya and elsewhere. Under those circumstances, the
British, like the French, were hard pressed to meet their NATO com-
mitments in Europe and did not wish to deal with the restrictions in
the new treaty. Economically, Britain placed as much stress on its rela-
tions with the Commonwealth as France did on interactions with the
French Union. This issue ultimately delayed British involvement in the
ECSCs successor, the European Economic Community, until 1973.
Given these national interests, Britain went as far as possible to sat-
isfy France by entering into a convention that committed it not only to
maintain troops on the continent indefinitely but also to maintain the
integrity of the EDC against all threats, a not-so-subtle reference to
German aggression. Yet even this generous promise was insufficient
27
Furniss, French Attitudes, 201.
28
John W. Young, Churchills No to Europe: The Rejection of European Union by
Churchills Post-War Government, 19511952, The Historical Journal 28.4 (December
1985), 924. The wood pulp comment is quoted in Ruane, Rise and Fall of the European
Defence Community, 20.
for critics who had expected London to join the EDC and felt aban-
doned as a result. French nationalists considered it an admission of
inferiority for France to join the EDC while Britain remained aloof.
The other potential counter-weight to Germany was the United
States. Throughout 1952, the Truman Administration tried in vain to
accelerate ratification of the EDC Treaty. Ren Mayer, who became
premier of France in January 1953, finally introduced the treaty to the
National Assembly, but announced that he would not make ratification
a vote of confidence on his governmenthe was not willing to risk
defeat on the issue. Dwight Eisenhower inherited the question when he
became president later that same month. As president, however,
Eisenhower had to accommodate the neo-isolationist wing of his party,
led by Senator Robert Taft. Thus the new administration had to dem-
onstrate that the Europeans were assuming the burden of their own
defense, which meant implementation of the EDC.29
Eisenhowers new secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, was a
Wilsonian idealist who believed strongly in the economic and military
integration of Europe; he later told Pierre Mendes-France that the
supranational aspect of EDC [is] far more important than twelve
German divisions.30 As soon as he took office in late January 1953,
Dulles toured the capitals of Europe, trying to hasten ratification.
Although Adenauer assured Dulles that German ratification would
happen in the near future, Premier Mayer raised the issue of further
concessions concerning British participation, the Saar dispute, and
other unspecified questions. In effect, Mayer asked the U.S. to support
France without interfering openly.31
On 18 February 1953, Dulles took the first step in a more supportive
approach by asking Eisenhower to name David K. E. Bruce, a former
ambassador to Paris and under-secretary of state, as United States
observer to the yet-unratified EDC and representative to the ECSC.
Dulles argued that this action would be the clearest indication we
could give of our close support for and belief in their [European] efforts
towards unification.32
29
May, John Foster Dulles and the European Defense Community, 8083.
30
Quoted in Richard H. Immerman, ed., John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of
the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 34.
31
May, John Foster Dulles and the European Defense Community, 8694.
32
John Foster Dulles, Memorandum to the President, Subject: Recommended des-
ignation of Mr. David K.E. Bruce as United States Observer to the European Defense
Dulles also had to deal with the Soviet peace offensive of 1953,
renewed after the death of Stalin and clearly aimed at creating a neu-
tralized Germany. On 16 August 1953 the new Soviet leadership sent a
diplomatic note, calling for a settlement on Germany while condemn-
ing the EDC because it would lead to West German armed forces
led by Hitlerite generals.33 Certainly, the Cold War atmosphere of
1953 was far less dire than that of 1950, causing many Europeans
to question the necessity for a radical defense effort such as the EDC.
To deal with this sentiment, Dulles invited the Soviets to meet with
Britain, France, and the U.S. in September 1953. Predictably, however,
the Soviets rejected Dulles offer of a limited agenda concerning
Germany and Austria, thereby incurring the onus for the failure to
hold a conference.34
Despite Dulless considerable efforts, the EDC Treaty languished in
French legislative committees throughout 1953 and well into 1954.
Joseph Laniel, who was premier during most of this period, clearly
lacked the votes to pass the treaty. In December 1953, Dulles told a
NATO meeting that a failure to establish the EDC would compel an
agonizing reappraisal of basic United States policy.35 Four months
later, Douglas MacArthur II, Dulles assistant and a nephew of the
famous general, told Laniel privately that other states doubted whether
France would ever approve the EDC and were therefore looking for
alternatives to rearm Germany. Having known Laniel for many years,
MacArthur bluntly remarked that it would be infinitely sad if [Laniel]
were Prime Minister responsible for France losing its position as a
leader of the free world and becoming in effect another Belgium.36
Community and United States Representative to the European Coal and Steel
Community, dated 2/18/53. Dwight David Eisenhower Library, John Foster Dulles
Papers, White House Memoranda Series, Box 1, File White House Correspondence,
1953.
33
Department of State translation of Soviet note dated 16 August 1953, in
Eisenhower Library, Whitman Files, International Series, Box 14.
34
Rolf Steininger, John Foster Dulles, the European Defense Community, and the
German Question, in Immerman, ed., Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War,
8384.
35
Quoted in ibid., 86.
36
Memorandum of Conversation, Douglas MacArthur II with Prime Minister
Laniel, Paris, 10:15 p.m. to midnight, April 13, 1954. Classified Top Secret; declassified
15 December 2006. Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, White House Memorandum
Series, Box 1.
Yet Laniel could not achieve ratification. A major reason for this
prolonged delay was the death throes of the French expeditionary force
in Indo-China. As defense minister, even Pleven, the originator of the
EDC concept, had to focus on the impending disaster, a disaster which
made it difficult for anyone in French politics to muster political sup-
port on the question of military integration. In February 1954, Foreign
Minister Georges Bidault attempted to use EDC ratification as a bar-
gaining chip to get more international involvement in Southeast Asia.
As French requests for aid became increasingly importunate, Dulles
reluctantly recognized that the EDC issue could not be resolved until
after the Geneva talks on Indo-China.37
Failure of Ratification
The fall of Dien Bien Phu on 7 May 1954 brought with it the fall of the
Laniel government. Laniels successor, Pierre Mendes-France, had
established a reputation as a thoughtful critic of government policy; he
gained office solely because he promised to resolve the Indo-Chinese
situation decisively within a month. Mendes-France needed the broad-
est possible political support to achieve this goal, and he did not wish
to become sidetracked by the EDC Treaty. To this end, he deliberately
formed a cabinet that was divided between pro- and anti-EDC politi-
cians, but he omitted some of the plans strongest supporters. Critics
later claimed that Mendes-France made a deal with Soviet Foreign
Minister Vyacheslav Molotov at Geneva, offering to kill the EDC in
return for Soviet assistance in obtaining an armistice in Indo-China.38
However, there is no evidence that this was an explicit trade.
After the Geneva Accords partitioned Indo-China in July, Mendes-
France turned to the EDC. He had never accepted the treaty even with
various additional promises to France, but he recognized that Frances
allies would take great offense if the originator rejected the plan. He
also acknowledged that he lost sleep over the possibility that, if the
37
Alexander Werth, Lost Statesman: The Strange Story of Pierre Mendes-France
(New York and London: Abelard-Schuman, 1958), 125; Steininger, John Foster Dulles,
the European Defense Community, in Immerman, ed., Dulles and the Diplomacy of
the Cold War, 87.
38
Werth, Lost Statesman, 126; Lerner and Aron, France Defeats EDC, 1618.
EDC failed, the U.S. would negotiate a rearmament deal directly with
Adenauer, excluding France.39
Thus, two years after the agreement had been signed, Mendes-France
set out to change radically the nature of that agreement in order to get
it through the Assembly. On 19 August 1954 he met in Brussels with
Adenauer and leaders of the other four signatory states. The French
premier bluntly told them that the EDC Treaty as it currently existed,
even with additional protocols to give France flexibility about moving
troops overseas, had no chance of ratification. Instead, Mendes-France
proposed a long Protocol of Application that would eliminate most of
the supra-national aspects of the treaty. The Board of Commissioners
would make only technical decisions, leaving any political decisions to
the member states and to joint meetings of the North Atlantic and EDC
Councils. For the first eight years after ratification, any member state
could in effect veto a decision by the Board or by the EDC Council. The
Board of Commissioners would draft a yearly budget, but each national
legislature would determine how much it would contribute to that
budget. For the first four years, the member states that had armed
forces prior to ratificationin other words, everyone but Germany
would still make all decisions concerning the promotion of their flag
officers. Most striking of all, the integration of troop units would apply
only to forces in the forward or covering zone. In effect, this meant a
return to the original proposal, whereby only Germany was completely
integrated into the EDC, while the other states retained control over
their national armies and budgets.40
Predictably, the other five states rejected such a radical change. Paul-
Henri Spaak, the Belgian premier, attempted to arrange a compromise,
and in fact the other states conceded many of the French demands but
could not reach agreement. Mendes-Frances subsequent meeting at
Chartwell with Churchill and Eden accomplished little. Although
Churchill had never liked the EDC, he had promised the Americans
his support for the idea and would not consider alternatives so long as
the treaty remained on the table.41
39
Pierre Mendes France, Choisir: Conversations avec Jean Bothorel (Paris, ditions
Stock, 1974), 71.
40
41
Ibid., 28593.
The French premier concluded that he could rely on the British to

help him reach a solution once the EDC Treaty was defeated. Returning
to Paris, he suddenly brought the treaty to a vote in the Assembly,
announcing that his cabinet would not take a position on the mat-
ter. Even at this late date, no substantive debate ever occurred. On
30 August 1954, opponents of the treaty introduced a procedural
motion to adjourn debate, and on this basis the treaty died by a vote of
319 to 264.42
Most of the reasons for this defeat have already appeared in this
chapter. In addition, however, the four years of delay between the ini-
tial discussion of German rearmament and the final vote on the EDC
Treaty had caused French public opinion to misunderstand the con-
nection between the two. Opponents had come to believe, naively, that
defeating the EDC would also prevent German rearmament, whereas
in fact that defeat led directly to the creation of a separate German
Army with far fewer safeguards than the EDC might have provided.
Forgetting that the rest of NATO had bowed to French wishes on this
matter, some opponents illogically complained that the U.S. was forc-
ing France to sacrifice itself by joining the EDC! Moreover, 30 per cent
of those who had originally endorsed the Pleven Plan opposed the
EDC Treaty, probably because they wanted to control German rearma-
ment without surrendering French military sovereignty.43
With the EDC Treaty effectively dead, the logical alternative was to
allow independent German armed forces, the very event that the Pleven
Plan and all the subsequent agreements had tried to prevent. The mov-
ing force behind this alternative was British Foreign Secretary Anthony
Eden, who had to convince not only the French but also his own prime
minister, Churchill, of the need to begin German rearmament without
further delay. After touring the European capitals in September, Eden
brought together representatives of Germany and the NATO members
in London at the end of the month. Once again, the French asked for
further safeguards and especially wished to avoid German member-
ship in NATO. An irritated Eden replied that Mendes-France had
ruined the EDC, and he demanded that the French think in terms of
42
Mendes France, Choisir, 7576; Kanter, The European Defense Community,
206.
43
Kanter, The European Defense Community, 20611.
European rather than French security.44 Nonetheless, Foreign Secretary

Eden provided solutions to the basic French concerns. First, on 26
September he made a detailed public commitment to maintain indefi-
nitely the four British divisions and tactical air units then assigned to
NATO on the continent. Except in case of some acute overseas emer-
gency, London would not remove these troops without the agreement
of a majority of the states in the WEU.45 Dulles made a similar, if far
less specific, statement of support. Second, Eden and other leaders col-
lectively devised a plan to modify the WEU, bringing Germany and
Italy into that organization and then making the resulting forces avail-
able to the SACEUR. Member nations would field national divisions
and corps, but SACEUR control of logistics and multinational field
army headquarters would limit the freedom of action of individual
read Germanarmies. This would allow German forces to serve under
NATO command without the FRG actually joining the North Atlantic
pact. At the same time, the three western powers would officially ter-
minate their occupation of the FRG. This convoluted plan was embod-
ied in a Protocol on Forces of Western European Union signed in Paris
on 23 October 1954. Two months later, when the French Assembly still
balked at ratifying this agreement, Eden calmly stated that German
rearmament would continue regardless, but that his guarantee of
British forces depended on all members of the WEU ratifying the
agreement. At this stage, Mendes-France realized that France had iso-
lated itself to such an extent that it could not reject a reasonable alter-
native. Moreover, the WEU plan, however unpalatable, did not include
the loss of French sovereignty involved in the EDC. On 30 December
1954 the National Assembly finally ratified the agreement, and Germany
was officially free to rearm. The next year, by which time much of the
French Army had returned from Indo-China, the Federal Republic of
Germany became a full member of NATO.46
Might have been is a dubious concept for historians, especially
when dealing with stillborn agreements such as the EDC. In retrospect,
however, it seems clear that French ratification of the EDC Treaty
44
Quoted in Fursdon, The European Defence Community, 324.
45
Edens statement is quoted in Allan Hovey, Jr., Britain and the Unification of
Europe, International Organization 9.3 (August 1955), 331. On Edens role in this cri-
sis, see Ruane, Rise and Fall of the European Defence Community, 15265.
46
Fursdon, The European Defence Community, 32935. See also Leites and de la
Malene, Paris From EDC to WEU, 1112, 171.
would have had numerous consequences. First, it would have acceler-

ated the development of the European Union by several decades.
Second, French involvement in the EDC would have made it very dif-
ficult for Charles de Gaulle to withdraw French forces from NATO
command and control, as he did in 1966. Finally, NATO itself might
well have evolved in a different direction, with more continental and
less American influence, and with a Germany that was slow to regain
its full sovereignty because its forces remained under supranational
control.
AMERICAN ASSISTANCE TO THE NEW GERMAN ARMY
AND LUFTWAFFE
James S. Corum
This chapter aims to examine the political, technical, and personnel

problems in the creation of the Bundeswehr between 195058 and the
role the U.S. Army and Air Force played in assisting the formation of
their German counterparts. The assistance that the U.S. military
provided to the Germans was hardly a straightforward process. Both
the Germans and the Americans could have very different visions
of an ideal army and air force, and there was considerable debate
among the service staffs of the two nations throughout the whole proc-
ess. Yet, while there was considerable debate and friction, the story is
mostly one of very effective cooperation between the two nations. The
build-up phase of the Bundeswehr resulted in a German force of which
both the Germans and Americans generally approved. However, reach-
ing the goal of an effective Bundeswehr meant overcoming numerous
obstacles.
The Himmerod Conference
By 1949, after the Berlin Crisis and the founding of NATO and the
establishment of the Bundesrepublik, the Western alliance realized that
a major German rearmament program was essential in order to meet
NATO defense goals. As Cold War tensions increased, a group of
former Wehrmacht senior officers acting as military advisors for the
Federal Government met in October 1950 at Kloster Himmerod to
develop a program for German rearmament within the context of the
Western Alliance. The Himmerod Conference, chaired by retired
General Adolf Heusinger (who became the first Generalinspekteur of
the Bundeswehr), laid the foundations for developing armed forces for
a democratic West Germany.
The study that came out of the Himmerod conference served as
a basis for planning new German armed forces, armed forces that
would be formed and conceived only in full cooperation with the
94 james s. corum
Western Allies. When the Germans spoke of the Western Allies in

1950and through the whole decade of the 1950sthey meant first
and foremost the United States. From the start of the process in 1950
it was clear to all participants that the rearmament of West Germany,
at least in the build-up phase, would be dependent upon receiving
extensive support from the Allies. While German and Allied planners
looked at procuring some of the heavy equipment and major weapons
systems for the Bundeswehr from European allies, only the United
States had the funds, industrial capacity, and the large stocks of reason-
ably modern surplus equipment to be able to provide the West Germans
with the degree of support they would need. From the start of the proc-
ess, the first Germans on the nascent military staff of the Konrad
Adenauer government understood that the United States would play
the key partner at every step of the process.
The American program to train and equip the Bundeswehr was not
a truly unified program or strategy but, rather, separate plans developed
by each American military service to support the foundation of their
West German counterpart services. From the start of the process, each
American service formed a unique relationship with its German
counterpart. Indeed, in the formative years of the Bundeswehr, the U.S.
Army relationship to the West German Army and the U.S. Air Force
relationship to the Bundesluftwaffe took on very different natures. The
West German Air Force readily and voluntarily embraced American
doctrine, equipment, organization, and methods. From the start, U.S.
and West German air force officers developed a remarkably close
and cordial relationship. This was in contrast to the U.S. Army and
the West German Army, where the relationship was somewhat less
harmonious.
Early German Thinking on Army and

Air Force Organization
In looking at the first comprehensive German rearmament plans that

came out of the Himmerod conference in 1950, one must first under-
stand that the dominant figures in early West German defense plan-
ning were all army officers. Adenauers first defense advisor was former
panzer force commander General Count Gerhard von Schwerin.
Adenauers two favorite military advisors, men who would go on to
hold top positions in the Bundeswehr and NATO, were former army
generals Adolf Heusinger and Hans Speidel. A key figure and editor of
american assistance 95
the Himmerod Study was retired Colonel of the General Staff, Count
Johann Adolf von Kielmansegganother army officer. The Luftwaffe
and navy were represented at Himmerod by former Luftwaffe generals
Robert Knauss and Rudolf Meister and vice admiral Friedrich Ruge.
Still, most of the 15 members of the committee that produced the key
military plans and documents for Adenauer between 1950 to 1953
were army officers, and all the documents of the era have a distinctly
army flavor to them.
The Himmerod Memorandum, which is discussed in detail else-
where in this book, outlined a plan for an army of approximately 12
divisionsall to be fully armored or mechanized units equipped with
the best weapons and vehicles available. Such a force would be capable
of fighting the kind of mechanized modern war in which the Germans
had excelled during World War II. The navy would be a small force,
specifically designed for German coastal defense and Baltic and North
Sea operations.1 The officers at Himmerod proposed that a German air
force ought to be created and equipped with American aircraft. They
rejected the old Luftwaffes squadron and wing organization and rec-
ommended copying the American air force logistical and organiza-
tional structure. This made perfect sense because if the new Luftwaffe
were to have American equipment, also having the same unit structure
would simplify the logistics and maintenance support for the force.
From the start, the American military staff in Europe liked the look
of the armor-heavy, 12-division West German army. From 1950 to
1952 the base figures and organizational concepts for the West German
army that were set at the Himmerod conference became the basis of
Allied defense planning. Indeed, at NATOs Lisbon Conference in
1952, the goal of 12 German divisions was set and locked in as a funda-
mental NATO objective. In contrast, the proposal for a new German
air force made by the army-heavy Himmerod committee was a radical
departure from the British and American approaches to air warfare.
The former German officers at Himmerod proposed a plan for a
German air force of approximately 831 aircraft, with 180 reconnais-
sance planes, 279 fighter-bombers, and 372 interceptors that would
serve as the armys air corps rather than as an independent service.2
1
2
The complete text of the Himmerod conference is found in Die Himmeroder Denk-
schrift vom Oktober 1950, ed. Hans-Jrgen Rautenberg and Norbert Wiggershaus
96 james s. corum
Air groups would be directly attached to the army divisions and corps
and under direct army command.3 Moreover, the German officers
did not envision a balanced air force capable of strike missions and air
defense. The role of the air force in national air defense was virtually
ignored by the German planners, who assumed that the air defense of
Germany would be primarily handled by the air forces of the Western
Powers. From a British and American perspective, the German views
on the development of the army and navy were sound. The idea of
creating a German army air corps rather than an independent air
force found favor with some U.S. Army officers. But the idea of form-
ing an army air corps rather than a multi-purpose, tactical air force
was completely unacceptable to the British and American air force
leadership.
In the fall of 1950, Chancellor Adenauer accepted the Himmerod
conference proposals as a basis for rearmament planning. Theodor
Blank, appointed Adenauers shadow defense minister in October 1950,
began building a defense ministry staff to work with the Allied Powers
and Bundestag to prepare the groundwork for German rearmament.
A small staff of mostly former officers was functioning in Bonn under
Blanks direction by early 1951. From the start, the U.S. government
was kept informed of West German defense thinking, and through
1950 and 1951 the U.S. government negotiated quietly with Bonn on
rearmament policy.
U.S. Support for German Rearmament

under Eisenhower
A key factor in the U.S. support for German rearmament was the heavy
burden that the U.S. faced in defending Europe as Cold War tensions
increased. The U.S. dramatically increased its force commitment to
Europe at the start of the Korean Warindeed, more U.S. troops were
sent to Europe in 195053 than were sent to Korea. At the start of the
Korean War in 1950 there was only one U.S. Army division stationed in
Europe. By the end of 1952 there were five U.S. army divisions in
(Karlsruhe: G. Braun, 1985), 3656. This work also contains an extensive commentary
on the Denkschrift and the texts of other documents relating to German security
planning in 1950. On the German air force, see Section 2, Luftwaffe, paragraphs af,
pages 4548.
3
See Large, Germans to the Front, 9899.
Germany, and the U.S. logistics and support system had been built up
in France and the other NATO countries. The increase in the U.S. Air
Force commitment to Europe was equally dramatic. The U.S. Air Force
in Europe (USAFE) grew from 15,146 military personnel assigned,
supported by 19,425 civilian employees, in 1950 to 91,000 officers
and airmen, 5,159 U.S. civilians, and 39,882 foreign national civilians
in 1953.4
The outbreak of the Korean War and the increase in tensions in
Europe were the initial motivations for getting the U.S. to change its
view on West German rearmament and come to support the creation
of German armed forces. Yet there were other factors as well that drove
American policy. The most important of these was the defense strategy
of the Eisenhower administration, announced shortly after Eisenhower
assumed the presidency in January 1953. When Eisenhower became
president, one of his major strategic concerns, after ending the Korean
War, was to cut U.S. defense spending, which had climbed to more
than 10 per cent of the American Gross Domestic Product (GDP) dur-
ing the Korean War and was threatening the long-term health of the
U.S. economy. Eisenhower understood that such high defense spend-
ing levels could not be maintained indefinitely. Therefore, the huge
conventional army that had been expanded more than threefold
between 1950 and 1953 would be drastically reduced. Although the
U.S. would keep some capable conventional forces, the new look
defense policy would rely primarily upon nuclear weapons to deter
communist aggression.
Although the Soviets had developed their own atomic bomb by
1949, the U.S. still has a significant superiority in nuclear weapons and
delivery systems in the 1950s. Compared to conventional forces,
nuclear weapons were relatively cheapso the Americans would
replace one with the other. In mid-1953, Eisenhower formally
announced the new look policy, which included huge cuts in U.S.
Army troop strength.5 Indeed, the whole Eisenhower presidency was
a period of major conventional force cuts. The U.S. Army personnel
4
Richard Emmons, USAFE Profile: Personnel Strength and Organizational Change
19451985, Report from USAFE History Office, 89, USAF Historical Research
Agency [cited hereafter as HRA] Doc. K 570.0413 19451985, 89, 11.
5
For a good overview of Eisenhower and his position of the Army and defense
strategy, see Ingo Trauschweizer, The Cold War U.S. Army: Building Deterrence for
Limited War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008), 28.
98 james s. corum
strength fell from 1.6 million soldiers in 1952 to 860,000 men by

1959.6
Yet Eisenhower saw no need to eliminate conventional forces alto-
gether. A strong conventional force in Europe would add considerable
credibility to the nuclear deterrent. But there was no need for the
conventional force to be composed of American troops. Eisenhowers
preference was to build up the western European forces so that the
Europeans would be able to look after their own defense. A strong West
German army could provide NATO with an effective conventional
deterrent force that would also allow the U.S. to reduce its force strength
in Germanywhich had grown to over 400,000 men by the end of the
Korean War. While the Truman administration had initially been
reluctant to rearm Germany, the Eisenhower administration was posi-
tively enthusiastic.
The Americans realized that the initial costs of helping stand up
West German military forces might be high but that, once equipment
was handed over and a period of training completed, the Germans
could take over much of the conventional deterrence mission from the
Americans. The U.S. looked to the model of Korea where, by the end of
the Korean War, the U.S. government had poured more than $2 billion
worth of military aid and training into building up the Korean forces,
which allowed the Americans to quickly withdraw most of their ground
troops. Although the initial expense had been very high, the payoff in
the form of U.S. troop reductions also came pretty quickly. The
Americans figured that if the West German army could be build up in
a similar fashion, then most of the U.S. Army could be withdrawn from
Europe.
As the Eisenhower administration settled in, planning for German
rearmament from the U.S. side accelerated quickly, as large planning
groups in both the U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR) and USAFE head-
quarters were stood up. As a first step they went to work identifying
U.S. facilities, equipment, and supplies that might be turned over to the
Germans. At the same time, the type of training programs the Germans
might need were assessed, since the Germans would likely be equipped
with U.S. equipment at first. The Americans needed to prepare the
6
Donald A. Carter, Eisenhower Versus the Generals, Journal of Military History
71.4 (October 2007), 116999. On Eisenhower and the new look strategy, see
117678.
necessary training courses, which much often simply meant translating

U.S. documents and lesson plans into German.
Rearming Germany was also seen as a great boon to NATOs strategy
for defending western Europe. The NATO defense strategy of the early
1950s relied on holding any Soviet attack at the line of the Rhine River,
behind which the U.S. and NATO forces would receive reinforcements
and prepare a counterattack. However, the preferred solution was to
defend as far east of the Rhine as possible, because every delay to the
Soviet forces gave NATO additional time to prepare the defenses and
bring reinforcements. Therefore, a strong German ground force would
serve the NATO strategy very effectively by enabling a forward defense.
General Gruenther, NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe
(SACEUR) from 1953 to 1956, was a key player in the rearmament of
Germany and was especially eager to facilitate the creation of a German
army that would make the defense strategy more practicable.7
West German Influence on the U.S. Army
Yet another factor that favored U.S. support for the rearmament of
Germanyand not an inconsiderable onewas the relationship that
the U.S. Army had formed with its erstwhile Wehrmacht enemies.
Between 1947 and 1955 the U.S. Army progressively came to view the
former Wehrmacht in a positive light, as very useful allies against the
Soviets. Between 1947 and the early 1960s the U.S. military history
program, financed by the U.S. Army, employed hundreds of former
German officersin every rank from lieutenant to field marshalto
write extensive historical studies and analyses of World War II opera-
tions. Of primary interest to the Americans was the vast experience the
Germans had gained in fighting the Soviets on the Eastern Front from
1941 to 1945. Generals Eisenhower and Bradley, as leaders of the post-
war U.S. Army, strongly supported establishment of the military history
program that could glean valuable information and insights from the
men who were expert in fighting the Soviets.
Detailed monographs on Eastern Front operations began to be pub-
lished in 1949 as the German Report series. As soon as they were pub-
lished they began to have a major impact on the content of U.S. Army
operational doctrine. On the Eastern Front, the Germans had almost
7
See Trauschweizer, The Cold War U.S. Army, 4244.
100 james s. corum
always fought outnumbered; the Wehrmacht forces had developed

some sophisticated defensive tactics to cope with the Red Armys supe-
rior manpower and armament. The U.S. Army saw such experience as
relevant and valuable in developing a new operational doctrine that
had the Soviets in mind. Colonel General Franz Halder and six former
German General Staff officers were set to work by the U.S. Army in
1952 to conduct a year-long study of U.S. Army doctrine and to recom-
mend revisions in the light of their experience in fighting the Soviets.
The German generals produced a study that was highly critical of U.S.
doctrine and recommended large-scale revisions, especially in the
areas of defensive doctrine, delaying tactics, and anti-tank tactics.
Through the 1950s the German studies were a major influence on all
the U.S. Armys tactics and operational doctrines, as the U.S. Army
revised its force structure and tactics in light of the Soviet enemy. The
U.S. Army valued Halders critical thinking so highly that he remained
in the employ of the U.S. Army until 1961.8
Moving to a Nuclear Defense Doctrine
From 1953 onward, U.S. policy was to pare its own defense budget and
cut back conventional forces from the high point of the Korean War.
For West Germany, this meant that the U.S. would strongly encourage
the West Germans to rearm and would lead the way in negotiations
with other NATO powers to get their approval and support for German
rearmament.9 Eisenhower looked forward to a time when a strong
western Europe would be able to provide for its own defense with little
contribution from the U.S. Therefore he viewed favorably, and would
lend personnel and financial support to, any means of supporting
increased European forces and efforts. With a whole career of military
experience behind him, Eisenhower knew that an initial U.S. expendi-
ture to provide Germany with equipment, training personnel, and
the like would pay off quickly in terms of replacing U.S. troops with
8
Kevin Soutor, To Stem the Red Tide: The German Report Series and its Effect on
American Defense Doctrine, 19481957, Journal of Military History 57.4 (October
1993), 65388.
9
Militrgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, ed., Anfnge westdeutscher Sicherheitspolitik
19451956, vol. 2 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1990), pp. 2731. A good overview is pro-
vided by Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European
Settlement 19451963 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).
capable foreign troops. Indeed, Eisenhower had served as the first

SACEUR and was intimately familiar with the European military and
political leadership. As one of his first major policy steps after becom-
ing president, Eisenhower endorsed a large and expensive plan to pour
military aid and training into the South Korean army as a means of
enabling the South Koreans to take over the job of defending their
country as quickly as possible. In Korea the initial costs were high, but
the payoff also came quickly in an accelerated program to withdraw
most Americans from South Korea between 1953 and 1955. Eisenhower
saw the same possibilities for a similar policy in Germany, where a
U.S. aid program would enable the U.S. to pull troops out of Europe.
However, Eisenhowers defense policy relied on very deep cuts in the
size of the U.S. Army, and this led to considerable friction between him
and some of his former close colleagues such as General Ridgeway,
who also served briefly as SACEUR (195253) before becoming the
U.S. Army chief of staff.
Along with Eisenhower, several other men in the American military
leadership would play key roles in developing the German armed
forces. Following General Ridgeway as SACEUR was General Alfred
Gruenther (SACEUR 195356). Gruenther was a highly conventional
army general and an obsessive micro-manager, but, like Ridgeway, he
was strongly committed to the policy of rearming the West Germans.
The U.S. and the Germans were lucky to have highly dedicated officers
who were ready to put their staffs to work to support the German
efforts. This support was vital because the shadow defense ministry
of the Adenauer government was terribly understaffed. Throughout
the whole process, in fact, the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force staffs in
Europe carried out a great deal of the basic planning for the new West
German forces.
General Norstad and the Shadow Luftwaffe
One of the central figures in the creation of the Bundeswehr was

General Lauris Norstad, who served as commander of U.S. and central
European NATO air forces from 1951 to 1956 and as commander of
all NATO forces in Europe from 1956 to 1962. Norstad had served in
the Mediterranean with Eisenhower during World War II, and then
served on the army staff. Eisenhower had high respect for Norstads
intelligence and ability to plan. Like his predecessors Ridgeway and
102 james s. corum
Gruenther, Norstad as SACEUR took a strong interest in the German

rearmament efforts and made supporting the effort a priority. From the
time he arrived in Europe as NATOs central Europe air commander in
1951, Norstad took a keen interest in every aspect of German aerial
rearmament. Throughout his tenure as U.S. air commander and then
later as NATO commander, he worked to influence the organization,
training, equipment, and doctrine of the Bundesluftwaffe.10
One of Norstads first tasks as NATO air commander was to assess
the German concept of defense presented by the Himmerod Memoran-
dum. The idea that Germany ought to have an army air corps rather
than a true air force was completely unacceptable to Norstad and the
USAF leadership. The USAF staff called the views on air power
expressed by the former German officers at Himmerod the doctrine
of a defeated enemy.11 From his wartime experience, Norstad believed
that air units ought to be under the centralized command of an air
commander who would cooperate with, but not be directly tied to, the
army. For the U.S. Air Force, flexibility was the greatest advantage to
airpower. Because of the range and speed of aircraft, air units could be
dispatched to operate all across a war theater as neededable to mass
aircraft for decisive effects at the order of the theater commander.
Norstad wanted to see a large German air force that would be capable
of a variety of missions including air defense, tactical transport, and
tactical interdiction as well as close support of the army. The American
concept of a German air force emphasized flexibility. The Americans
and the Royal Air Force (RAF) wanted to have full German integration
into the two Allied tactical air forces in Germany and wanted the
Germans to be able to provide air support to any NATO mission along
the entire front.
Norstad was concerned about the German defense thinking on
airpower and in July 1952 wrote to General Thomas White, Air Force
Deputy chief of Staff (later USAF chief of staff ) for permission to form
an air force permanent military assistance group to the West Germans
to replace the informal contacts that already existed. Norstad pointed
out the importance of directly influencing German rearmament
planning in order to ensure a position more acceptable to American
10
On Norstad, see the biography by Robert Jordan, Norstad: Cold War NATO
Supreme Commander: Airman, Strategist, Diplomat (New York: St. Martins, 2000).
11
Wolfgang Schmidt, Von der Befehlsausgabe zum Briefing: die Amerikanis-
ierung der Luftwaffe whrend der Aufbauphase der Bundeswehr, Militrgeschichte 3
(2001), 44.
doctrine. Norstad wrote, One of our greatest concerns in the matter

has been in seeing that the German Air Force, when it is formed, is pat-
terned along lines that will permit its effective use as part of the defense
forces of the Western Powers rather than see it parceled out by direct
assignment to ground units for limited objectives. We have been dis-
turbed that this might happen unless qualified advisors were on hand
to work directly with the Germans in their early planning.12
In February 1951 the USAF War Plans Division prepared a study of
German aerial rearmament for Norstad. It outlined a German air force
with at least 750 front-line combat aircraft for air defense and ground
attack. At least ten fighter wings should be organized, and the German
air force should be equipped by the U.S. under a military aid program.
The training of German air force personnel should take place outside
of Germany.13 At this point, Germans and American military staffs
were working on parallel courses; the only official coordination was at
the highest political levels. The military planners in Amt Blank (The
Blank Office, precursor to Germanys Federal Defense Ministry and
headed by Theodor Blank) were not yet authorized to communicate
directly with their American and Allied military counterparts, even to
share vital information about equipment capabilities or discuss shared
logistical concerns.
In April 1951 the first official German proposals on developing an
air force and army for the Bundesrepublik were set forth at the Allied
Rearmament Conference sponsored by the NATO Council and held in
Bonn. The German air rearmament proposals were set forth by former
army generals Heusinger and Speidel. The German planners outlined a
German proposal for an air force of 1,900 first-line aircraft including
fighters, fighter-bombers, reconnaissance planes, and light bombers,
with the largest part of the force to consist of fighter-bombers for
ground support. The USAF tables of organization would be duplicated,
and the fully mobilized force would consist of about 88,000 personnel,
including 3,000 flight personnel. The air force would be parceled out,
and flying units would be assigned to specific divisions and corps of the
army. The last part of the plan, as one might expect, met with strong
opposition from the USAF.14
12
Letter from Gen. Norstad to Lt. General White, 7 July 1952, USAF HRA Doc.
K 570.0413, 19451985.
13
HQ USAFE, USAFEs Assistance to Create a New German Air Force (Wiesbaden,
1956), Doc. K 570.04M, 19521955, in USAF HRA, 5.
14
Ibid., 710.
104 james s. corum
Debates on Equipment and Doctrine
From the very beginning of the formal rearmament process in 1950 the
German army and air force staffs exhibited a very different attitudes
towards adopting the equipment, organization and tactical doctrine
that the Americans were offering. The Bundeswehr generally rejected
US Army organization, equipment and tactical doctrine.
The Bundesheer (German Army)

As rearmament plans were finalized, the army planners consistently
found fault with the U.S. Armys infantry weapons, especially the
American rifles and machine guns. These, the former officers observed,
were still of the World War II pattern and were generally obsolete,
indeed inferior to the weapons the Germans had developed during the
World War. American tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment
were all criticized by Amt Blanks army members as outdated and gen-
erally unsuitable for the German Army.15
The foundation of the U.S. military assistance to the Bundeswehr in
its formative years was a grant of heavy equipment worth $950 million,
arranged by U.S. Secretary of Defense Frank Nash. The U.S. agreed to
deliver to the new German forces 1,100 battle tanks, 152 light tanks,
300 artillery pieces, mortars, armored personnel carriers, and enough
aircraft to equip 24 air force squadrons. As far as the West German
army was concerned, it was enough equipment to equip four mecha-
nized divisions and two armored divisions.16 However, even though
the West Germans were assured of enough equipment to equip half of
the planned 12 divisions of the army, the German military planners
wanted to equip their army as quickly as possible with German weap-
ons. The core issue was simply that the Germans found much of the
U.S. equipment unsuitable for their conditions and doctrine. For exam-
ple, the Germans initially planned a battle doctrine around armored
personnel carriers for the infantry and did not like the design of
the M-59 armored personnel carriers supplied by the Americans.17
The early German force planning focused on a doctrine very different
15
Anfnge westdeutscher Sicherheitspolitik, vol. 4 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1997),
7477, 16468.
16
See Ingo Trauschweizer, Learning with an Ally: The U.S. Army and the Bundeswehr
in the Cold War, Journal of Military History 72.2 (April 2008), 477508, here 480.
17
Ibid., 48081.
kind than the American one. For example, the army planners in Amt
Blank proposed a force of 6,000 battle tanks, built for European condi-
tions, supported by 8,000 armored personnel carriers for the infantry,
and backed up by armored anti-tank gunsa piece of equipment that
had proven exceptionally effective in the recent World War.18 The first
divisions organized by the West German army had to follow American
organizational lines mainly because it made logistics easier: the U.S.
had already worked out all the necessary support and logistics require-
ments for its heavy weapons. Yet the German plan was to build their
own divisions, with their own organizations, as quickly as possible in
the rearmament process. The West German officers firmly believed
that they could build better equipment than the Americans, and when
one sees high-quality equipment such as the Leopard 1 tank designed
in the late 1950s, one can see that they had a valid point. While the
West Germans agreed to follow NATO operational level doctrine when
they joined NATO, at the tactical level the German doctrine differed
considerably from the American and British ideas. In short, the new
West German army did not feel any need to copy American practice
and never viewed itself as a junior partner of the U.S. Army.
The Bundesluftwaffe (German Air Force)

The West German Air Force, from the earliest planning days, had
exhibited a very different attitude towards its American counterpart.
At the beginning of the rearmament planning the small group of air
force planners came to the conclusion that the most practical way for
Germany to develop a sizeable and modern air force was to copy the
equipment, tactics, training, and organization of another air force, and
clearly the best model was the U.S. Air Force. In the early years almost
all of the Bundesluftwaffes equipment would be American. Indeed, the
Luftwaffes first leaders were frankly eager to copy the American model.
Luftwaffe air groups would be organized on American lines, and the
American training system would be adopted in toto.
Bundesheer vs. Bundesluftwaffe

There were two reasons for the different relationships of the two services
towards their respective American services. The first was psychological.
18
Adenauer Papers, Briefing to Adenauer from Amt Blank, Anlage 1, 6 January
1955. Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Akt N/4/55.
106 james s. corum
The former army officers who built the Bundesheer did not feel any
inferiority towards their American counterparts. Their attitude was
generally that the German army of World War II had been, man for
man and unit for unit, the better army. They believed that German
training, tactics, unit leadership, and equipment had been generally
superior in battle and that the German army had suffered defeat pri-
marily due to the overwhelming superiority in numbers of men and
material of the Allied forces. Therefore, they needed little coaching or
foreign tutelage in forming, training, and equipping a modern mecha-
nized army.
There was, indeed, a strong basis in fact for the views of the former
army officers. Many in the U.S. Army agreed that the German army
had performed superbly on the battlefield and had indeed been superbly
professional at the tactical level of war.19 In fact, immediately after the
war the U.S. Army employed several dozen German generals to write
monographs on specific campaigns and on their combat lessons, many
of which were published and greatly influenced U.S. Army doctrine.
After all, the German army had acquired four years of experience in
fighting the Soviets, and the U.S. Army was eager to learn from the
German experience.
The attitude of the early Bundesluftwaffe officers towards their war
experience was quite different. The Luftwaffe had been decisively
defeated in the air over Europe long before the end of the World War.
By 1943 the Luftwaffe had lost the ability to provide effective support to
the ground armies while the Western Allies could provide massive,
accurate, and devastating air support to their front line troops. By early
1944 the Luftwaffe had lost air superiority over Germany, and this
allowed the Allies to bomb any target in the Reich with relatively low
losses. While the Germans had been the first to fly jets in combat, most
Luftwaffe pilots were flying clearly inferior aircraft by the end of the
war. The former Luftwaffe officers of Amt Blank knew that, in the years
since the end of the World War, aerial warfare had been almost com-
pletely transformed. A variety of aircraft-delivered atomic bombs been
developed by the Russians and Americans, and by the end of the Korean
War the USAF had become an almost all-jet air force. Even the few
19
See Trevor N. Dupuy, A Genius for War: The German Army and General Staff,
18071945 (McLean, VA: The Dupuy Institute, 1984); and Martin Van Creveld,
Fighting Power: German and U.S. Army Performance, 19391945 (Westport: Green-
wood, 1982).
German pilots who had flown the Me 262 in the latter part of World
War II knew that their experience was largely irrelevant in the techno-
logical terms of the 1950s. The Americans had already gone through
two generations of jet aircraft technology and were ready to field their
third generation of jets (the F-100 century series) at the end of the
Korean War. Development had begun on a fourth generation of jets
(F-104, F-4) by the mid-1950s. In short, the former Luftwaffe officers
realized that the only way they could catch up technologically and
learn how to fight a modern air war would be to copy the Americans.
Another reason for the different attitudes of the German army and
air force towards the U.S. military model was economic. By the
mid-1950s German industry had recovered from the war, and the
economy was booming. It would not be difficult for German firms to
produce high-quality modern arms for the army. For example, the
vehicle industry had grown rapidly in the 1950s and was capable of
producing superior armored vehicles, trucks, and jeeps of German
design and manufacture by mid-decade. If the Bundeswehr might
require some surplus U.S. weaponry to equip its first units, this situa-
tion would not last for long.20 By 1960 German industry was able to
produce prototypes of the superb Leopard I battle tank and a missile-
armed tank destroyer.21
In contrast, the German aircraft industry had not yet recovered from
the World War. Under strict post-war regulation by the occupying
powers, the German aircraft firms that survived in the early 1950s were
small operations that produced small quantities of light utility planes.
The German aviation industry might be able, in a few years, to build
basic jet trainers and transport aircraft. However, the West German
aviation industry in the early 1950s did not have the capital, trained
20
See Anfnge westdeutscher Sicherheitspolitik, 4:15670. Many items of American-
made army equipment, such as the U.S. M-47 tank, were criticized by the German
army as mediocre. They were accepted by the defense ministry as a short-term meas-
ure until German tanks could be produced. The German army in the 1950s was able to
produce rifles and machine guns of their own design. The Bundeswehrs jeeps and
motor vehicles were all new German-made models. The Bundeswehrs first armored
personnel carrier was of Swiss design and license, built by Hanomag and Rheinmetall.
Much of the armys equipment, such as rifles, machine guns, mortars, etc., was of
European design and was built under license. The German Army developed the
Leopard I battle tank in 196061, even before all of the armys mechanized divisions
had been organized.
21
Bruce Quarrie, Encyclopedia of the German Army in the 20th Century
(Wellingborough: Patrick Stephens Ltd., 1989), 33639.
108 james s. corum
workers, plant capacity, or research facilities to build modern jet air-

craft. Moreover, the German aviation industry was generations behind
the Americans and British in terms of designing and building modern
planes. At first, and for the foreseeable future, the new West German
air force would be almost completely dependent upon buying aircraft
from its allies. There was an option for building planes under license in
Germany, although the countrys first major attempt to produce com-
bat aircraft at home (F-104 Starfighter) proved that Germany should
have been much more careful in making the jump from simple trainers
to one of the most complex aircraft of the era. Indeed, the best solution
for a long time was to buy American. The American aircraft industry,
thanks to the increase in fighter production brought by the Korean
War, was able to promise a large number of modern jet fighters to be
delivered in a short (2436 month) timeframe.22
Opening Official Military Relations
With German rearmament issues stuck over the negotiations in Paris

between 1951 and 1954, there was no framework to allow direct military-
to-military contact between the staff of Amt Blank and the U.S. forces
in Germany. At the start, contacts between the Americans and the
Germans were almost all army-to-army contacts. In the early days of
Amt Blank, the air forces had been almost left out of the discussions.
The first actual contact between the air staffs came from an informal
memo from the chief of the German air planning group in Amt Blank,
Colonel Eschenauer, to the staff of USAFE at Wiesbaden in November
1951. Eschenauer wanted to initiate meetings with the Americans to dis-
cuss reconstruction of airfields, deployment of German air units, and
training for the new air force.23 However, both Germans and Americans
had to be discreet about such early contacts, because U.S. forces were
not officially authorized to set up direct relations with the German
military staff. Until a formal plan for rearmament could be agreed upon
between the Allied Powers and Germany, official military-to-military
contacts were out of the question, as Germany had no armed forces
recognized under law. Yet it was impossible for Germany and the Allies
come up with coherent rearmament plans unless their military experts
22
Ibid.
23
USAFEs Assistance to Create a New German Air Force (note 13 above), 910.
exchanged ideas and information. Thus, in 1950 and 1951 the first U.S./
German military discussions took on a clandestine appearance.
However, by 1952 U.S./German military relations became more
open. In early 1952, the U.S. army and air forces in Europe appointed
officers to be responsible for liaison and planning with the Germans.
Since the Americans still could not send a liaison team to Bonn to
work with the German planners of Amt Blank, various discreet means
were proposed, such as using the cover of the historical research
programwhich was a major means of U.S. Army and German army
communication and contact between 1947 and 1960. Finally it was
simply decided to not have formal military relationswhich would
upset the French. Instead, the U.S., which had officially appointed liai-
son staffs to deal with the Germans, would carry on with informal
discussions with their German counterparts. Thus, a series of infor-
mal discussions began with Germans from Amt Blank, and Americans
from USAREUR and USAFE headquarters would regularly visit each
others headquarters and discuss issues.24
At first the Germans received some very conflicting advice from
senior officers of the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force. One of the initial
issues for German/American discussion was the role of the new
German Luftwaffe. Between 1950 and 1952 this was a major point of
conflict between the two U.S. services and the German shadow mili-
tary staff. The U.S. airmen were staunchly opposed to the plan, devel-
oped at Himmerod in 1950, to subordinate the German air force to the
army. General Landon of the USAFE staff noted in a memo to General
Norstad that this view of the former German army officers was proba-
bly being reinforced by the U.S. Army advisors assigned to the U.S.
High Commissioners office:
the only formal contact the Germans have had with U.S. military
forces has been through the High Commissioners office to his advisors,
who are army officers from EUCOM (European Command). We have
feared, and some of our early reports concerning the overall plans being
formulated by the Germans have indicated, a possibility of subordination
of the air arm to ground control to an undesirable degree.25
Thus the creation of new German armed forces also became a battle-
ground for different conceptions of modern fighting doctrine between
24
Ibid., 1112.
25
Ibid., 15.
110 james s. corum
the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army. In July 1952 General Norstad
expressed his concerns to the Air Force deputy chief of staff, General
Tommy White:
One of our greatest concerns in this matter has been in seeing that the
German Air Force, when it is formed, is patterned along lines that will
permit its effective use as part of the defense forces of the Western Powers
rather than see it parceled out by direct assignment to ground units for
limited objectives. We have been disturbed that this might happen unless
qualified advisors were on hand to work directly with the Germans in
their early planning.26
The informal German/American staff contacts continued and increased
in frequency and in the variety of subjects discussed through 1952 and
1953. While German and American officers were able to carry out
some of the basic planning for rearmament, the effort remained ham-
pered by political restrictions imposed by the EDC and bureaucratic
restrictions imposed by NATO and the U.S. Defense Department. For
example, air defense planning required developing an extensive com-
munications and radar network. Yet security regulations precluded
sharing classified information about Allied aircraft control and warn-
ing centers with the German planners. Eventually, however, with offic-
ers such as Norstad pushing the process, the U.S. planners had strong
support at the top to remove the bureaucratic obstacles. In December
1953, at the urging of USAFE, the Air Force staff granted an exemption
to the security regulations and allowed the USAFE planners to share
classified defense information with accredited German military per-
sonnel.27 Other similar changes were made in U.S. regulations to
smooth the way for the transfer of information to the Germans and
allowing them to train on the latest U.S. equipment.
The system of informal planning had some effect. In the backroom
battle for the doctrine of the future German armed forces, the U.S. Air
Force won some battles. The key battle was over the very existence of a
proper West German air force. In August 1952, American military
observers at the EDC Commission were told that Amt Blank had
dropped the concept of creating the Luftwaffe as an army air corps and
that it had decided that any future Luftwaffe would be a fully inde-
pendent service, fully integrated into Allied air operations.28
26
Ibid., 16.
27
Ibid., 13.
28
Schmidt, Von der Befehlsausgabe zum Briefing, 44.
Finalizing the Defense Plans
In November 1953 the cadre for a U.S. military assistance group was
formed in EUCOM and charged with direct liaison with Amt Blank,
which had grown to about 800 personnel by this time. In the summer
of 1954 the U.S. military assistance group to Germany was moved to
Bonn, where it could work on a daily basis with Amt Blank to finalize
German rearmament plans.29
Theodor Blank and his staff developed a series of final plans, based
on NATOs Lisbon Conferences 1952 force requirements, to mobilize
an army of 12 divisions and an air force of approximately 20 wings with
more than 1,300 first-line aircraft (fighter-bombers, interceptors, recon-
naissance, and transports), as well as several hundred training aircraft
and a small navy of a destroyers, minesweepers, and patrol boats. Blank
and his staff proposed a four-and-a-half-year rearmament period to
build the Bundeswehr to full strength. Adenauer rejected this plan
out of hand and insisted upon a three-year rearmament program.30
Adenauers unrealistic demand put Blank and his staff under enormous
pressure to speed up what was already an overwhelming task. Indeed,
the rearmament program came very close to collapse as a result of
Adenauers unrealistic demand.
The army had a cadre of well-trained former Wehrmacht officers
and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) under arms in the Bundesgren-
zschutz. So at least the army was ready to begin recruit training. The
main thing the army would need in order to build effective units was
heavy equipmentand the American Nash Plan had assured Germany
of enough equipment to begin building large units. The professional
officers and NCOs from the old Wehrmacht would not require a long
period of training to get back in form, so the main requirement for sup-
port from the U.S. was to have teams train Bundeswehr soldiers on the
U.S. equipment. The USAREUR provided 34 training teams to train the
German soldiers in the use and maintenance of American equipment,
and more than 900 U.S. soldiers were assigned to the U.S. Armys Advisory
Group in Germany between 1955 and 1957. By that time the West
German army was fully able to manage their own training efforts.31
29
USAFEs Assistance to Create a New German Air Force (note 13 above),
1721.
30
Montescue Lowry, The Forge of West German Rearmament: Theodor Blank and
Amt Blank (New York: Peter Lang, 1990), 327.
31
Trauschweizer, Learning with an Ally, 48081.
112 james s. corum
In contrast to the Navy and Army, which had operational cadres in

the form of organized units of the Grenzshutz (Border Police) and
Minesweeping flotillas, the only cadre for a German air force, aside
from the small air staff in Amt Blank, was German employees of
the USAF. Although the USAF in Germany employed thousands of
German workers in airfield support positions such as air traffic con-
trollers, firemen, air base engineers, mechanics, and machinists, these
were still only support positions. Such personnel could staff an air base
and provide necessary services, but the nascent Luftwaffe had no cadre
of pilots trained in high performance jetsnor were any Germans
trained in the current radar systems or electronic gear essential to
operate a modern air force. The air force not only would need to acquire
all new equipment but also would need to provide a long training
period for its personnel who would operate the equipment.
General Norstad made building a new Luftwaffe a top priority
for the USAFE. In 195455 the USAFE developed a large-scale train-
ing program for the new Luftwaffe. On 6 May 1955 the USAFE and
Amt Blank approved a 62-page contract setting up the goals, obliga-
tions, and financial arrangements for the USAF training of the new
Luftwaffe.32 The USAF training establishment in Germany was well
prepared to take on the mission. It had been building up since 1953
in anticipation of German rearmament. To oversee the whole effort for
training the German Air Force, Norstad put the training wings under
a single headquarters (USAF Training HeadquartersProvisional)
commanded by a general who reported directly to Norstad.33 The
Bundeswehr staff under General Heusinger was so army dominated,
and the air staff so undermanned, that while staff planning for the
army proceeded, planning for the West German air force was largely
overlooked.
When the Germans and American staff met in January 1955 to talk
about German organizational concepts, the German staff admitted to
the Americans that they had not the personnel to carry out serious
planning for the logistics and support structure of the German Air
Force. So the USAFE staff developed a complete logistics and basing
plan for the German Air Force.34 By June 1955, Norstad was able to
32
CINCUSAFE, Technical Agreement for Joint Tenancy of USAFE 3-Base Training
Complex, in USAF HRA Doc. KWG-7330-HI, Jan.Jun. 1955.
33
History of the 7330th Flying Training Wing, in USAF HRA Doc. K-WG-7330-HI,
Jan.June 1956, 24.
34
Ibid., 6970.
present a complete plan at his first formal meeting with the German air
staff. The German air staff passed on the U.S. plans to Defense Minister
Blank, who approved them without any debate or modification.35
Thanks to Norstads personal intervention, by mid-1955 the not-yet-
existing German Air Force at least had a comprehensive training
plan and a program for unit basing and logistics that met with NATO
approval.
Birth of the Bundeswehr
When the Bundeswehr was officially born in 1955, the plan for training
and standing up new units was six months behind.36 The navy was best
prepared to begin forming units. The army was in a muddle but was
able to form small cadres and begin training. In contrast, the Luftwaffe
was completely unprepared. The first Luftwaffe cadres had not been
well screened for the high physical standards of pilot training or for
English proficiency. This resulted in a higher than expected washout
rate for the first classes of German pilots and technical personnel. Since
there was a shortage of trained German cadre, the USAF instructor
personnel had to remain at their posts longer than planned.37
The Luftwaffe training and formation program managed to get mov-
ing because of Norstads personal involvement. The Germans were
also fortunate to have an exceptional German Air Force leader to move
the program. The first chief of the Luftwaffes Training Command was
Colonel Werner Panitzki, who had led the Luftwaffe staff in Amt Blank
since 1954. Panitzki was an excellent problem solver, and as training
and personnel problems arose he responded quickly with new tests,
more thorough screening, and better English-language preparation.
The initial training problems were quickly overcome, and one hears of
few complaints from the American side on the quality of the German
Luftwaffe personnel reporting to U.S. bases and units for training.
All of the American accounts of the 195657 training program men-
tion the close and very friendly cooperation between German and
American air force personnel. The Germans saw the Americans as
35
Ibid., 7083.
36
HQ USAFE, CINCUSAFEs Monthly Summary, August 1955, para. 9 in USAF
HRA Doc. K. 507.01, vol.2, Jan.Dec. 1955.
37
History of the 7330th Flying Training Wing (note 33 above), 10.
114 james s. corum
helpful and highly competent teachers. The Americans saw the German
officer and NCO staff and instructors as cooperative and highly dedi-
cated to the mission of building a new air force.
The most serious problems in building the Bundeswehr originated in
the German Defense Ministry. No sooner had the German government
signed agreements with the Americans on paying for bases, training,
and equipment than it began to try to renege on scheduled payments
and renegotiate the terms. The government had promised that rearma-
ment would not cost more than 9.26 billion Deutschmarks per yeara
wholly unrealistic figure. The USAF had initiated 32 major construction
projects for the first Luftwaffe bases that involved millions of dollars,
and by the end of 1955 the defense ministry was millions of dollars in
arrears to the U.S.38 The biggest problem was the unrealistic limits for
rearmament costs set by Chancellor Adenauer. General Norstad, the
new SACEUR in 1956, found many imaginative ways to shift funds and
cover the German rearmament effort through 1956 until the German
Defense Ministry could sort out its bureaucracy and funding.39 A start
to solving some of the problems came in October 1956, when Adenauer
fired his defense minister and replaced him with the eager and ambi-
tious young Bavarian politician, Franz Josef Strauss. Strauss immedi-
ately announced to NATO that the new policy for rearmament would
be quality over quantity. The three-year build-up plan was scrapped,
and the pace of rearmament was appreciably slowed. Although the
Bundeswehr took seven years to reach it original force goals, there was
some consolation in that the new German units would have the best
equipment and would be fully equal to any other NATO units.40
Finally Resolving the Doctrine Debates
From the start of the rearmament process, Wet German soldiers

expressed some unease with American doctrinal concepts. One of the
West German armys most capable thinkers, General Hans Speidel,
who became NATO Land Forces Commander (LANDCENT) in early
38
USAFEs Assistance to Create a New German Air Force (note 13 above),
8990.
39
Ibid., 8993.
40
Julian Lider, Origins and Development of West German Military Thought, vol. 1
(Brookfield, VT: Gower, 1986), 30405.
1957, had long expressed his unease with the American defense doc-
trines of the early 1950s that relied, in his view, far too much on nuclear
weapons and massive retaliation. As chief of NATOs land forces,
Speidel pushed for a doctrine that relied more on highly mobile ground
forces, equipped with heavy firepower and tactical nuclear weapons.
Speidel supported a European version of the flexible response
doctrine that some U.S. officers such as Maxwell Taylor were beginning
to advocate.41
Even as the first Bundeswehr units were formed in 1955, Cold War
realities made the Americans and Germans rethink their organiza-
tional and doctrinal assumptions. The development and proliferation
of small, tactical nuclear weapons in the early 1950s required the major
powers to rethink their battle doctrines. Both the West Germans and
the Americans believed that any future conflict would almost certainly
involve large numbers of tactical nuclear weapons. The future nuclear
battlefield became a central concern of U.S. and German military
leaders as they grappled with the doctrinal implications of tactical
nuclear weapons. In the mid-1950s the U.S. Army initiated several
studies of the nuclear battlefield and determined that the U.S. divisional
organization was much too large and clumsy to function effectively on
the future battlefield. In 1955 and 1956 the U.S. Army began experi-
menting with a smaller, more flexible divisional organization known as
the pentomic division, which was composed of several battle groups
essentially reinforced battalionseach capable of operating as a semi-
independent force under conditions of the nuclear battlefield. In 1956
the U.S. Army shared these classified studies with the German army
staff.42 The U.S. studies were discussed at the ministerial level and with
the top staffs at the very moment that Theodor Blank was forced to
resign and hand his office over to Franz Josef Strauss. The American
studies provided considerable support to officers such as Speidel, who
were reconsidering the whole process of unit organization of both the
army and the air force.43
41
A good overview of these debates is provided in Speidels memoirs, Hans Speidel,
Aus unserer Zeit: Errinerungen (Berlin, Frankfurt a.M.: Propylen, 1977), 359411.
42
Studie ber die neuzeitliche militrische Entwicklung, translation of a U.S.
Army Study From Major General Clark Ruffner, Commander of the U.S. Military
Assistance Group Germany, to General Speidel, 2 October 1956, Konrad Adenauer
Stiftung Archiv, St. Augustin, Akt I 098005/1.
43
Notes for the Defense Committee and Minister, Meeting of 3 October, 1956. See
Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Archiv, St. Augustin, Akt IV/ IV C-693105.
116 james s. corum
In its idea of a smaller and more flexible divisional organization, the

U.S. Army had come around to the Bundeswehrs preferred way of
thinking. In 195657, even as the West German Army was still in its
early formative stages, the West German Army staff developed a new
divisional organization built around smaller, all-arms brigades. In fact,
the German approach was greatly appreciated by NATO and the U.S.
Army as a sound solution to the nuclear battlefield problem and was
quickly adopted. In only two years from its foundation, the West
German army had evolved very rapidly in terms of doctrine and organ-
ization. The Luftwaffe organization, like the armys, was changed and
adapted to a more long-range and offensive force than had been envi-
sioned at first, with a primary Luftwaffe mission being delivery of tacti-
cal nuclear weapons.
By 1957 the Germans and Americans were marching along the same
lines in terms of doctrine and unit organization. By the end of 1957 the
German Army had created five divisions and had held its first large
maneuvers, in which it had performed creditably. In 1958 the Luftwaffe
activated its first jet fighter bomber unit equipped with F-84Fs
(Thunderstreaks).44 There was some friction in the process, as one
might expect when officers representing two great military traditions
come into contact. Indeed, the origin of many of the disputes came less
from nationality than from service perspective. American and West
German airmen saw eye to eye and joined together to oppose the views
of their U.S. and West German Army counterparts. The inevitable
problems of politics and bureaucracy slowed the whole process down,
but those problems were finally overcome by good leaders on both
sides. Generals Speidel, Norstad, and Panitzki were especially effective
in working with their allied counterparts to solve training problems
and doctrinal disputes. In the long term, the story is largely about how
the different armed forces interacted with each other in a productive
manner. American military planning and equipment made it possible
for the West Germans to get their rearmament effort up and running.
Yet the process of West German rearmament was not a one-way street.
Beginning with the post-war historical studies, West German soldiers
had an especially strong influence upon U.S. army doctrine in the first
half of the Cold War.
44
Lider, Origins and Development, 30409; see also Anfnge westdeutscher Sicher-
heitspolitik, vol. 3 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1993), 834.
ESTABLISHING THE BUNDESMARINE: THE CONVERGENCE
OF CENTRAL PLANNING AND PRE-EXISTING MARITIME
ORGANIZATIONS, 19501956
Douglas Carl Peifer
The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 proved pivotal to the
ongoing debate within the western camp about German remilitariza-
tion. Western leaders feared that the Soviet Union would exploit the
diversion of American resources in order to shift the balance in Europe,
either by directly attacking western Europe or by using East Germanys
Peoples Police as a proxy force to occupy the Federal Republic. By
September 1950, the United States was publicly and officially advocat-
ing West German rearmament within the context of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance. The French prime minister, Ren
Pleven, alarmed at the prospect of a remilitarized Federal Republic,
countered with the suggestion of organizing a common European
Defense Force, which would draw on German manpower without
generating German national armed forces. Konrad Adenauer, the
chancellor of the young Federal Republic, realized an opportunity was
at hand. He was willing to push an unenthusiastic West German popu-
lace along the path to remilitarization in exchange for concessions in
the area of German sovereignty. Adenauer established closer contact
with a number of former high-ranking German officers, appointed
Bundestag parliamentarian Theodor Blank as head of an office charged
with coordinating security planning, and by January 1951 was negoti-
ating with the Western powers about the desirability and feasibility of
West German rearmament.
The deliberations and negotiations leading to West Germanys
accession to NATO (5 May 1955) and the creation of the Bundeswehr
proved far more protracted and difficult than any of the participants
envisioned in early 1951. Preparations for setting up West German
naval forces proceeded at two levels. On the periphery, a team of
former Kriegsmarine admirals assembled by the United States under
the innocuous cover of a Naval Historical Team played a key role
118 douglas carl peifer
in sounding out fellow Kriegsmarine veterans about their willingness

to serve in a future West German navy. Additionally, the Americans
and Germans founded two maritime organizations, the Labor Service
Unit Bravo and the West German Seegrenzschutz, which enabled
them to assemble boats, establish maritime facilities, and begin non-
military nautical training while diplomats hashed out the details of
Germanys role in NATO and the establishment of a West German
military.
The naval section of Amt Blank (The Blank Office, precursor to
Germanys Federal Defense Ministry and headed by Theodor Blank)
and the German naval delegate to the Paris European Defense Commu-
nity (EDC) negotiations stood at the center of the process leading up to
the establishment of the Bundesmarine. These midlevel naval veterans
received generous support, advice, and assistance from a variety of
groups, with admirals from the Naval Historical Team Bremerhaven
and a naval veterans group known as the Meisel Circle playing a par-
ticularly prominent role. The leaders of the Bundesmarine assumed
their posts only in 1956 and 1957, but many had been engaged in plan-
ning for a new West German navy since the early 1950s.
The convergence of the materiel and manpower of the periphery
with the leadership and planning of the center in 195556 enabled
West Germany to organize naval forces rapidly once the diplomatic
framework for the Bundesmarine had been established. The West
German Bundesmarine showed none of the direct organizational con-
tinuity that characterized the shift from Peoples Police-Sea to Volks-
marine in East Germany, but the Bundesmarine owed much to the
multiple maritime organizations that preceded it.
Gathering the Personnel, Vessels, and Infrastructure of a New West

German Navy: The Naval Historical Team Bremerhaven, the Labor
Service Unit Bravo, and the Seegrenzschutz
The innocuous sounding Naval Historical Team Bremerhaven illus-

trates how the U.S. Navy began to co-opt a select group of Kriegsma-
rine admirals even before negotiations about German rearmament
had formally commenced. The Royal Navy, the U.S. Army, and the
U.S. Navy had all sponsored a number of historical projects employ-
ing Kriegsmarine veterans during the post-war period and had
recruited a small number of Kriegsmarine veterans to support their
establishing the bundesmarine 119
intelligence activities.1 The U.S. Navys Naval Historical Team Bremer-

haven (NHT) constituted more than a historical research endeavor,
however. The team was formed because of mounting alarm about
Soviet intentions during the period of the Berlin blockade, with its
studies drawing upon the Kriegsmarines wartime experience with the
Soviet navy but addressing issues of current rather than historical
relevance.
Captain Arthur H. Speed Graubart, Chief of Naval Intelligence in
Germany, was the father figure and organizer of the NHT. Graubart
and his assistant, Lieutenant Commander Edward R. Riedel, approached
Kriegsmarine Admirals Konrad Patzig and Friedrich Ruge about
assembling a team of Kriegsmarine experts to assist the Americans.
Patzig, a former head of the Abwehr service (German military intelli-
gence), combined a superb knowledge of the Kriegsmarine personnel
system with a critical stance to National Socialism.2 Ruge, the Kriegsma-
rines leading expert in mine warfare, had come to the attention of
the Americans during his POW captivity, having volunteered to con-
tribute to the U.S. Army and U.S. Navys historical writing projects.
Both men were well connected and proved invaluable in tapping
the Kriegsmarine veterans network for the skills and knowledge the
Americans sought. Among the Kriegsmarine veterans they assembled
under the cover of a Naval Historical Team Bremerhaven were: Otto
Schniewind, former Chief of Staff; Hellmuth Heye, former Admiral for
Midget Weapons; Gerhard Wagner, Head of the Operations Department
of the Naval War Staff; and Eberhardt Godt, Chief of the Operations
Department of the U-Boat Command.3
The German Naval Historical Team assembled for its first session
under the cloud of the Berlin Blockade, meeting in the U.S. Port
of Embarkation in the Bremerhaven enclave on 9 April 1949. U.S. Naval
intelligence put a small villa in Spekenbttel at the teams disposal,
1
For details on the Naval Historical Team Bremerhaven and other precursors to the
Bundesmarine, see Douglas Carl Peifer, The Three German Navies: Dissolution,
Transition, and New Beginnings, 19451960, New perspectives on maritime history
and nautical archaeology (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002), 10713, 170
75 [Drei Deutsche Marinen. Auflsung, bergnge Und Neuanfnge, trans. Eva Besteck,
ed. Jens Graul, Jrg Hillmann, and Stephan Huck, Kleine Schriftenreihe Zur Militr-
und Marinegeschichte (Bochum: Winkler, 2007)].
2
Graubart, Patzig, and their wives played bridge together. Graubart to author,
interview 18 Jan. 2002; interview between Gth and Patzig, 10 Jan. 1975. Bundesarchiv-
Militrarchiv (henceforth BA/MA), Wagner Papers, N539/42.
3
See BA/MA ZA 4 for records and correspondence dealing with the NHT.
even arranging for a cook and orderly for the admirals. Naval intelli-
gence paid the team members, with the entire program operated on
American initiative without the knowledge or input of the fledgling
West German government in Bonn.4
The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 spurred serious discussion
about German rearmament, and the admirals in the NHT gradually
transformed the team from an analysis group operated by the U.S. Naval
Intelligence into an unofficial coordinating staff exploring possibilities
for a future German navy. Much of the planning for the Bundesmarine
originated in the NHT rather than within the naval section of Amt
Blank: when the head of the military office of Amt Blank, Gen Adolf
Heusinger, required naval assistance, he contacted the NHT for recom-
mendations, with the NHT forwarding names for his consideration.5
Wagner and the NHT, working closely with their American sponsors,
set the agenda for the naval section of Amt Blank, whose members had
been selected on their recommendation in the first place.
While the NHT played the role of an unofficial planning staff for
a future German navy, two other organizations did much to assemble
the personnel, boats, and equipment necessary for naval effective-
ness. These were the Labor Service Unit Bravo and the Seegrenzs-
chutz. Neither constituted a proto-navy per se, as they lacked military
equipment and training, but both later served as reservoirs for the
Bundesmarine.
The U.S. Navy established three German Labor Service Units (LSUs)
in November 1950 to assist in manning the ships, craft, and shore
facilities of U.S. Naval Forces, Germany.6 The move seemed unremark-
able. After the Second World War, the U.S. Navy had utilized a number
of German Marine Dienstgruppen to help clear the Bremerhaven
area, prepare Kriegsmarine assets for disposition, and provide harbor
and support services. The U.S. Navy could claim that it was merely
organizing a number of new units to meet its present needs. A closer
4
Heinz-Ludger Borgert, Der Einfluss verschiedener Marinekreise (Naval Historical
Team, Meisel Kreis etc.) 19451955 auf die Marineplanungen der Dienststelle Blank
unter besonderer Berucksichtigung der Marinedienstgruppen (Freiburg: unpub-
lished Militrgeschichtliche Forschungsamt study, 1976), 11; Friedrich Ruge, In vier
Marinen: Lebenserinnerungen als Beitrag zur Zeitgeschichte (Munich: Bernard & Graefe,
1979). 279.
5
Karl-Adolf Zenker, Aus der Vorgeschichte der Bundesmarine, Marine Forum 55
(1980), 97. Wagner to Zenker, 1 November 1951, BA/MA, MSG 1/2061.
6
COMNAVFORGER Order 2050, BA/MA, ZA 6/89.
look at the Bremerhaven Labor Service Unit reveals that it came to

serve an entirely different function than had the post-war Marine
Dienstgruppen. Indeed, most jobs that had been entrusted to the
Marine Dienstgruppen had been completed, and the civilian Cuxhaven
Minesweeping Group was doing a fine job finishing the one major
remaining task, sweeping up mines left over from the war. The estab-
lishment of the Bremerhaven Labor Service Unit must be interpreted
as a first step by the U.S. Navy toward building up West German naval
forces. The U.S. Navy anticipated that diplomatic efforts would proceed
at a faster pace than they did, and quietly began to assemble personnel,
equipment, and facilities to put at the disposal of the EDC or the
Federal Republic once Western politicians had agreed upon the exact
form and nature of West Germanys military contribution to NATO.
Little did they anticipate that the process of negotiating Germanys role
in the Western security system would drag on for five more years.
The Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Germany (COMNAVFORGER)
acted proactively, informing the Kriegsmarine admirals on the NHT of
his intention to establish Labor Service Units in Bremerhaven and
Schierstein on the Rhine in late September 1950. He explained that the
Americans would equip the units with minesweeping boats and river
patrol craft and that he anticipated transferring the units to the Federal
Republic. COMNAVFORGER requested the NHTs assistance in find-
ing suitable mid-level German naval veterans who would consider
service in the LSUs. Friedrich Ruge, the NHTs mine warfare expert,
contacted Hans John and Walter Berger. Both had proven themselves
in the minesweeping forces of the Kriegsmarine and seemed to fit the
job description.
Berger (and presumably John) received an invitation to visit
COMNAVFORGER in Heidelberg at the beginning of October.
According to Berger, the Americans posed all sorts of questions. They
asked about the size and composition of a German minesweeper crew,
the pay scale utilized by the Kriegsmarine, and the type of equipment
with which German minesweeping personnel were familiar. Berger
provided detailed written responses but received little information in
response. The Americans noted that the planning was preliminary,
explained that the French and British had been informed, and told
Berger that they would be in touch.7
7
Berger to Ruge, 5 October 1950, BA/MA, ZA 6/89.
COMNAVFORGER moved more rapidly than expected. Orders

pertaining to the creation of three German naval LSUs were issued on
15 November 1950, and within eight months all three LSUs were oper-
ational. COMNAVFORGER established LSU (A) as a German liaison
office at its headquarters in Heidelberg, with Hans John serving as the
German liaison officer. On 1 February 1951, LSU (B) was activated at
the U.S. Naval Advance Base, Bremerhaven. The tugs and roughly 150
personnel of the Bremerhaven Marine Technical Unit were transferred
to the new organization, and Walter Berger was appointed as senior
German officer. Hans John later transferred to LSU (B) from Heidelberg,
becoming its senior German officer in light of his seniority.
The Americans believed that the LSU (B) should constitute more
than a training establishment and should have operational utility. In
early 1951 the U.S. Navy indicated that it intended to reclaim the mine-
sweeping boats it had leased to a German civilian minesweeping organ-
ization in Cuxhaven. Despite the intervention of the NHT and West
German officials, the U.S. Navy insisted on reclaiming its minesweep-
ers. LSU (B) benefited from the accession of experienced personnel
from Bremerhavens Marine Technical Unit and the Cuxhaven Mine-
sweeping Group, though the influx only partially satisfied the person-
nel requirements of the new unit. Additional personnel were recruited
directly from civilian life, with 60 percent of LSU personnel having
prior service in the Kriegsmarine and the rest lacking naval experience.8
Entry guidelines mandated that candidates be between 18 and 35 years
of age, pass an entry examination, and meet the same physical, mental,
and moral standards prescribed for members of the U.S. Navy. All
candidates had to present their identity cards in order to prove that
de-nazification courts had classified them as either category 4 (fol-
lower) or 5 (exonerated) persons or had politically screened them. In
addition, applicants had to present a Police Good Conduct Certificate
from their local police station, and they had to submit to a security
check from the local office of the U.S. Counterintelligence Corps.9 The
process, while onerous, was intended to weed out those who sympa-
thized with either the far right or the far left, ensuring that democrats
and politically inactive personnel dominated the ranks. U.S. naval
8
Josef Zienert, Entwicklung, Aufgaben und Organisation der Dienstgruppen
19451956 (research paper, Militrgeschichtliche Forschungsamt, n.d.), 142.
9
COMNAVFORGER Order 2050, BA/MA, ZA 6/89.
officers selected the first generation of personnel but subsequently del-

egated the task to Hans John and his German staff. The personnel
officer of LSU (B), Karl Peter, later rose to become an admiral in the
Bundesmarine.10 Recruitment proved relatively easy, and little effort or
money had to be expended on advertising openings. By 1956 approxi-
mately 850 Germans were employed by LSU (B).11
During the early 1950s, COMNAVFORGER maintained that LSU
(B) had been organized mainly for the purpose of clearing residual
World War II mines. The press and public were reassured that LSU (B)
personnel had signed civilian contracts, and allegations that the U.S.
Navy had ulterior purposes were brushed aside. The rationale behind
disbanding one civilian minesweeping organization in order to replace
it with another baffled skeptics, but the U.S. Navys emphasis on the
utilitarian nature of LSU (B)s mission helped allay public concern.
LSU (B) personnel and boats were put to work clearing mines, sweep-
ing more than 400 square miles of water between 1951 and 1956.12
The ratification of the General Treaty and the EDC treaty by the
Bundestag and Bundesrat in March and May 1953 seemed to indicate
that the time had arrived to ready LSU personnel for their transfer to
West German control. The U.S. Navy shifted gears and began to empha-
size training over operations in LSU (B). The French parliaments rejec-
tion of the EDC the following year forced Western politicians and
military experts back to the drawing board, but American and German
naval personnel in Bremerhaven continued to assume that LSU (B)
would serve as a ready source of personnel for whatever German naval
organization was devised. The U.S. Navy put classrooms and equip-
ment at the Germans disposal and encouraged LSU personnel to
take advantage of the numerous courses offered through the Educa-
tion Department. Minesweeping boats were dry-docked in order to
free more personnel for training opportunities, and by 1955 fully one-
third of LSU personnel were attending courses covering topics such
as naval weaponry, sonar, navigation, electronics, and engineering.
10
Karl Peter, Acht Glas. Erinnerungen eines Seeoffiziers der Crew 38 (Berlin:
Preussischer Militrverlag, 1989/90); Karl Peter, Labor Service Unit (LSU) (B) und
(C) und Einbau von Personal und Material in die Bundesmarine, Truppenpraxis 11
(1965).
11
Zienert, Entwicklung, Aufgaben und Organisation der Dienstgruppen 1945
1956, 142.
12
Gerhard Freiherr von Ledebur, Die Rumung von Seeminen in den Gewssern
von Nord-, West- und Osteuropa nach 1945, Marine Rundschau 67 (1970), 463.
While minesweeping work was emphasized for political reasons in

195152, training and professional development became the top prior-
ity by 195355. The broad range of courses offered to LSU personnel by
the U.S. Navy makes it clear that they were being groomed for tasks
that went beyond minesweeping.
The U.S. Navy equipped LSU (B) with Kriegsmarine vessels that had
been assigned to the United States by the Tripartite Naval Commission.
The boat complement was meager and motley at the outset. While
many boats had been scrapped or sold by 1950, four Kriegsmarine
minesweepers remained in mothballs. These Type 40 minesweepers, in
addition to several tugs and harbor craft, were assigned to LSU (B) in
early 1951. The July 1951 arrival of 12 minesweepers previously leased
to the Cuxhaven Minesweeping Group doubled the number of vessels
assigned to LSU (B). The boat pool continued to expand, as mine-
sweepers which had been chartered out to civilian maritime groups
were reclaimed by the U.S. Navy and transferred to LSU (B). The U.S.
Navy assembled sufficient vessels to organize three minesweeping flo-
tillas, with 32 minesweeping boats, three fast patrol boats, one coastal
ASW boat, four tenders, one tanker, one floating barrack, and assorted
small craft making up the entire boat pool of the organization.13 The
boats were American property, sailing under the American flag.
U.S. naval officers and the naval section of Amt Blank began to nego-
tiate the transfer of the American LSUs to German control six months
before the West German Ministry of Defense was created in June 1955.
American officers and their German employees discovered that their
German negotiating partners were eager to acquire LSU boats and
equipment but unbending when it came to personnel guidelines for
joining the new Bundesmarine. Bonn insisted that LSU personnel be
treated like all other candidates for the Bundesmarine and declined to
honor promotions given out by the U.S. Navy. The implications for
young LSU personnel were severe: a young sailor who had advanced to
petty officer rank by dint of hard work and study would have to enter
the Bundesmarine as a seaman. Gerhard Wagner, acting as an unoffi-
cial spokesman for Amt Blank, explained to his American contacts that
veterans who had returned to civilian life would object to any arrange-
ment indicating special treatment for LSU personnel.14
13
Ibid., 343.
14
Wagner to Admiral [Orem], 6 January 1955, BA/MA, Wagner Correspondence,
MSg 1/2061.
The naval section of Amt Blank and the U.S. Navy remained com-
mitted to transferring the unit to German control despite this disagree-
ment. The U.S. Navy indicated that it would transfer the boats and
materiel of LSU (B) to the Germans as soon as Amt Blank finished
screening LSU (B) personnel for entry to the Bundesmarine. A screen-
ing committee arrived in Bremerhaven in March 1956 and verified that
LSU personnel met the requirements. On the whole, LSU personnel
without prior service in the Kriegsmarine declined to transfer to the
Bundesmarine, but those with prior service proved willing to join the
Bundesmarine at their former rank.
The U.S. Navy began to transfer the boats and assets of LSU (B) to
the Bundesmarine as soon as the personnel question had been resolved.
The first transfer proceedings began in June 1956, and further transfers
placed the entire material assets of the organization under Bundesmarine
control by July 1958. The Bundesmarine acquired a fully equipped
naval facility in Bremerhaven, three minesweeping squadrons (the 1st,
2nd, and 3rd), and some 560 officers and men as a result.15
The Federal Republic established its own maritime organization, the
Seegrenzschutz (Maritime Border Guard) as part of the Bundesgrenzs-
chutz (Federal Border Guard) set up in March 1951. Adenauer had
been greatly concerned over North Koreas lightning attack against
South Korea the preceding summer, and he broached the idea of form-
ing a West German border guard in October 1950. He was alarmed at
the growth of East German paramilitary units and envisioned the
organization as a stopgap measure while negotiations determined the
form and manner in which the Federal Republic would be drawn
into NATO. Like the U.S.-sponsored Labor Service Unit, the Seegren-
zschutz served as a precursor organization to the Bundesmarine, with
most of its personnel, equipment, and facilities put at the disposal of
the West German Navy in 1956. Yet unlike the U.S.-organized unit,
the Seegrenzschutz was formed, administered, and organized by West
Germans from its inception.
In October 1950, Adenauer first proposed establishing a Federal
Border Guard. Hermann Knuth, an Iron Cross recipient, a veteran of
the Kriegsmarines minesweeping forces, and then chief of Schleswig-
Holsteins Waterways Police, seized upon the concept. Distressed at the
15
Peter, Labor Service Unit (LSU) (B) und (C) und Einbau von Personal und
Material in die Bundesmarine, 932.
inability of his provincial maritime police to stop smugglers, catch ille-

gal fishers, or apprehend saboteurs from the East, Knuth offered to
help organize a maritime component to the Federal Border Guard,
explaining that his work in Schleswig-Holsteins Waterways Police had
made him well aware of the problems a Federal maritime unit would
encounter in the Baltic.16
Knuths idea was received favorably at the Ministry of the Interior,
and the prospective inspector of the Federal Border Guard concurred
that the organization should include a maritime detachment of 500
men. Knuths offer to help organize the contingent, however, was for-
gotten in the flurry of activity that preceded the Bundestag vote estab-
lishing the Federal Border Guard. Bonn officials instead contacted the
former Kriegsmarine admirals at the NHT for suggestions concerning
personnel and equipment. They forwarded the name of Fritz Poske to
the Ministry of the Interior, with Poske reporting for duty in Bonn on
9 May 1951. Poske was given a desk, a pencil, and the vague guideline
to organize a maritime border police component not to exceed 500 men
in strength. With the assistance of a fellow Kriegsmarine veteran (the
head of the recently disbanded Cuxhaven minesweeping group) named
Adalbert von Blanc, Poske worked furiously to draw up manpower and
equipment proposals for the Seegrenzschutz. Their draft plan proposed
establishing a staff unit of 48 personnel, three flotillas (18 boats total)
of 122 personnel each, and a training and repair division of 86. Ministry
of Interior officials and the prospective inspector of the Federal
Border Guard approved the plan with little comment, merely checking
to see that the limit of 500 men had been observed.17
The new organization recruited heavily from veterans who had
worked in the various post-war minesweeping organizations. Additional
personnel were recruited from the civilian sector. By the end of 1951
the Seegrenzschutz had reached its authorized strength of 500. When
the Bundestag authorized an increase in the overall strength of the
Federal Border Guard from 10,000 to 20,000 men in June 1953, the
Seegrenzschutz tripled in size to 1,550 men.
The process utilized to select additional officers hearkened back to
the highly competitive selection procedure used by the Reichsmarine.
Following initial screening for minimal qualifications, select candidates
16
Fritz Poske, Der Seegrenzschutz 19511956. Erinnerung, Bericht, Dokumentation
(Munich: Bernard & Graefe, 1981). 30.
17
Ibid., 26.
received invitations from the Federal Border Guard to attend five-day

evaluation sessions in Lbeck. The candidates, divided into small groups
of 15 to 20 men, were put through a series of exercises and tests, rang-
ing from impromptu speaking to physical tests to group exercises. An
official Bierabend (garden party with beer) concluded the examination
period. Though segments of the veteran population maintained an
ohne mich (without me) attitude in light of the ongoing imprisonment
of Grand Admirals Raeder and Dnitz, the Seegrenzschutz apparently
had little difficulty attracting Kriegsmarine veterans: Two out of three
applicants for officer vacancies had to be turned away. Competition at
the petty officer and enlisted level was even fiercer, with only one out of
five candidates accepted for service in the Seegrenzschutz.18
The 1,550 officers, civil servants, and enlisted men of the Seegrenzs-
chutz were the crme de la crme of a large pool of applicants. Former
Kriegsmarine officers supervised the selection process and claimed
to measure candidates strictly on the basis of performance, fitness,
and experience. Political affiliation and class criteria played no out-
right role in the selection process, though the practice of drawing on
former Kriegsmarine officers and petty officers in effect perpetuated
the social structure of the Kriegsmarine or, more precisely, the small
Reichsmarine.
The training, operations, and equipment of the Seegrenzschutz
reflected a limited charter. Schools provided training in seamanship,
maritime law, communications, engineering, and so forth, but very lit-
tle in the way of tactics, naval weapons, and military operations.
Civilian supervisors at the Ministry of the Interior warned against
utilizing barrack yard methods of instruction and drill, indicating
that new training procedures must guard against assaults on human
dignity.19
By 1952, ongoing negotiations over the EDC caused influential West
German Kriegsmarine experts to advocate transforming the Seegrenzs-
chutz into a West German coast guard. The outlines of the EDC plan
indicated that West Germany would have no national naval force
but would contribute ships to a common European navy. Former
Kriegsmarine admirals Heye, Ruge, and others pointed out that Britain
18
Adalbert von Blanc, Der Bundesgrenzschutz-See und seine Eingliederung in die
Marine, Truppenpraxis 11 (1965), 92526.
19
Poske, Der Seegrenzschutz 19511956, 140.
and France planned to retain naval forces outside the framework of

a unified West European navy, and they advocated modeling the
Seegrenzschutz after the U.S. Coast Guard. In times of peace, it would
fall under civilian control and perform various duties currently divided
up among West Germanys numerous ministries, whereas in the event
of war it could take over the mission of coastal defense. Poske gained
the support of his superiors in the Ministry of the Interior for this
scheme but ran into problems when he spelled out the benefits of con-
solidating all maritime affairs to officials at the Ministries of Finance,
Transportation, and Agriculture. Their representatives refused to con-
sider the proposal due to an aversion to men in uniforms that bordered
on outright hostility.
Despite initial reservations about the Seegrenzschutz on the part of
the British and French, the Seegrenzschutz began to procure boats and
facilities in late 1951 and throughout 1952. The boat pool gradually
expanded, and by 1955 the Seegrenzschutz had assembled more than
40 patrol boats. While training, equipment, and foreign supervision
show that the organization was far from being a covert West German
navy, the first armed vessels to operate under the West German flag
belonged to the Seegrenzschutz.
The Second Law regarding the Federal Border Guard, passed
by the Bundestag on 30 May 1956, transferred the personnel of the
Seegrenzschutz to the Bundesmarine. Personnel who wished to
decline their transfer to the Ministry of Defense were entitled to do so,
while the Ministry was empowered to reject unsuitable members of the
Federal Border Guard. Transferred personnel retained their rank and
seniority but had to undergo the same screening criteria as other can-
didates entering the Bundeswehr and Bundesmarine; 877 Seegrenzschutz
personnel elected to make the shift to the Bundesmarine.20 The transfer
took effect precisely five years after the Seegrenzschutz had been estab-
lished. Seegrenzschutz assetsincluding 30 boats and facilities at Kiel,
Neustadt, and Cuxhavenbecame the property of the Bundesmarine
on 1 July 1956.
The NHT, LSU (B), and the Seegrenzschutz all contributed critical
personnel, materiel, facilities, and institutional memory to the Bundes-
marine. Yet they played only a peripheral role in planning how a new
20
Ibid., 17879.
West German navy would contribute to the security of the Federal

Republic of Germany (FRG). The parameters defining the Bundesma-
rines mission, organization, and purpose were defined in Bonn follow-
ing negotiations in Paris, London, and at NATOs headquarters.
Defining the Mission, Structure, and Processes of a West German Navy:

Amt Blank, EDC Negotiations, and the Ministry of Defense
Individuals who joined LSU (B) and the Seegrenzschutz were objects
of negotiation rather than participants in the diplomatic process lead-
ing to the foundation of the Bundesmarine. They stood at the periph-
ery and had little input into the shifting diplomacy concerning West
Germanys security role in the Western alliance. Amt Blankthe
chancellors advisory office for security and defense issuesstood at
the center of the process. Theodor Blank and his organization worked
out the specifics of how to translate treaty commitments into reality,
and they developed the proposals, plans, and personnel policies for
Germanys contributions to the EDC and (after the collapse of the
EDC) to NATO.
In 1951, Amt Blank recruited several mid-level Kriegsmarine veter-
ans to provide assistance in naval force planning and personnel issues.
The head of the military department of Amt Blank, General Adolf
Heusinger, had worked closely with Admiral Gerhard Wagner during
the Second World War. He contacted Wagner at the NHT and asked
for recommendations of some mid-level naval representatives for posi-
tions in his departments personnel section (II/3) and planning section
(II/Pl). Wagner recommended two individuals he knew and trusted
from the war: former captains Wolfgang Khler and Adolf Zenker.
Khler and Zenker, later joined by Heinrich Gerlach, became the naval
specialists in Amt Blank and in the German delegation to the EDC
negotiations.21 These insiders at Amt Blank and in the German dele-
gation to the EDC negotiations maintained close contact with Wagner,
the NHT, and another group of senior Kriegsmarine veterans loosely
known as the Meisel Circle.22
21
See note 5 above.
22
For further information about the naval section of Amt Blank, see Dieter Krger,
Die Anfnge der Bundesmarine 19501955, Marine Forum 1/2.3 (1995).
The naval section of Amt Blank, the Meisel Circle, and the admirals
of the NHT cooperated in playing a delicate game of working toward
German remilitarization while claiming that the grand admiral ques-
tion stood in its way. They succeeded in convincing many of their con-
tacts in the U.S. Navy, the Royal Navy, and in Bonn that Raeder and
Dnitz had been unjustly sentenced, but the American admiral in
Heidelberg, the British flag officer in Cologne, and the West German
chancellor all lacked the authority to release the grand admirals. The
issue loomed like a dark cloud on the horizon, only to disappear with
Raeder and Dnitzs release from Spandau in July 1955 and September
1956, respectively. By then, planning for the next German navy had
been in progress for five years.
The NHT drew up the first plans for a West German navy in prepa-
ration for the Himmelrod Conference of October 1950. Following the
outbreak of the Korean War, Adenauer had asked three trusted military
expertsformer generals Adolf Heusinger, Hans Speidel, and Hermann
Foertschto examine the Federal Republics strategic and military
situation. Heusinger, Speidel, and Foertsch convened a select group of
military experts for a secret conference at the Himmelrod monastery
in the Eifel Mountains. While army and air force experts predomi-
nated, three naval experts were invited to attend: Schulze-Hinrich from
the Gehlen organization, Friedrich Ruge from the NHT, and Walter
Gladisch, who had been Fleet Commander before the war. Ruge came
prepared with an NHT position paper, which stated that West Germany
would soon join NATO and that its naval forces would operate within
the context of the Western alliance. Ruge and the NHT, well aware that
large surface ships had proven of limited value during the Second
World War, ruled out the possibility of establishing any new High Seas
Fleet. They still maintained, however, that German naval forces were
essential to defending the number one strategic position in North-
west Europe, the Baltic Approaches. Ruge explained that a future West
German navy should be able to defend the Baltic approaches, secure
sea lines of communication and supply in the North Sea, and operate
offensively in the Baltic. In order to accomplish these missions,
the NHT recommended a minimum force of 12 large torpedo boats,
36 fast attack boats, 24 small U-boats, 12 convoy escorts, 60 mine-
sweepers, 12 small ASW boats, 36 patrol boats, 36 landing craft, and
144 naval aircraft. Given that personnel requirements would vary
depending on the exact class of boats selected, the NHT estimated that
West Germany would need to assemble between 15,100 and 19,600

naval personnel.23
The rough draft that Ruge presented at the Himmelrod Conference
was subsequently revised by the NHT at the request of Heusinger and
Speidel. Wagner, who had spent the entire war in the operations depart-
ment of the Kriegsmarine, shouldered the task and wrote an 18-page
study in March 1951. He analyzed the strategic situation in Europe, the
future missions of a German navy, the number and disposition of its
units, their organization and training, and the shore facilities that
would be needed to support the projected force. His study was reviewed
and accepted by other members of the team. The final proposal was
ambitious, given the limited missions of the proposed navy. Manpower
estimates had soared to more than 20,000 persons, and the following
units had been added to the Himmelrod estimate: two minelayers, one
netlayer, nine escort vessels, 30 airplanes, 30 helicopters, three air bases,
three weapon depots, two coastal artillery sections, one signals section,
and a headquarters.24 The Wagner paper, originating outside of Amt
Blank, was adopted by the naval section of Amt Blank and became the
basis of Germanys negotiating position during discussions between
the Allied high commissioners and the German government (Petersberg
Conference, JanuaryJune 1951) and among France, West Germany,
Belgium, Italy, and Luxembourg (Paris Conference on the EDC,
February 1951May 1952).25 Wagner and the NHT set the agenda for
the naval section of Amt Blank, whose members had been selected on
the recommendation of the NHT admirals in the first place.26
Amt Blank adopted the Wagner proposal, but by mid-1951 it became
clear that the NATO option favored by the Americans and British had
been abandoned. The French, who opposed the idea of setting up
23
Ruge, In vier Marinen, 281; Karl-Adolf Zenker, Aus der Vorgeschichte der Bun-
desmarine, in Die deutsche Marine. Historisches Selbstverstndnis und Standortbes-
timmung, ed. Deutschen Marine Institut (Bonn and Herford: Mittler, 1983), 96; BA/
MA, BW 9/3102.
24
Zenker, Aus der Vorgeschichte der Bundesmarine, 96 [as cited in note 23].
25
For a detailed discussion of the formal negotiations dealing with the EDC project,
see Roland Foerster, Carl Greiner, Hans-Jrgen Rautenberg, and Norbert Wiggershaus,
Von der Kapitulation bis zum Pleven-Plan, ed. Militrgeschiliches Forschungsamt,
Anfnge Westdeutschersicherheitspolitik 19451956, vol. 1 (Munich: Oldenbourg,
1982); and Edward Fursdon, The European Defence Community: A History (London:
Macmillan, 1980).
26
Heinrich Gerlach, Aus den Anfngen der Bundesmarine (paper presented at the
11. und 12. Admiralstabsoffizierlehrgang, 1971), 9.
German military contingents within NATO, pushed forward with their

EDC alternative. The army and air force committees made progress
during the fall, but grave differences soon brought the naval committee
of the EDC conference to a standstill. The French (and to a lesser degree
the Belgians, the Dutch, and the Italians) were uninterested in the idea
of subordinating their national naval forces to the EDC, explaining
that their overseas commitments and the lack of a common European
foreign policy made this impossible.
Speidel, the chief German military expert, backed his naval special-
ists and insisted that the EDC include a maritime component. The
Germans realized that they would have no naval force at all if the EDC
was limited to land and air units, and they argued that coastal protec-
tion fell within the framework of the EDC. The impasse was solved
only by appealing to NATO arbitrators at the Supreme Headquarters
Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE). Admiral Wagner, neither a member of
Amt Blank nor part of the German negotiating team, presented the
German position to Captain George Anderson, U.S. Navy, in February
1952. The American arbitrator supported the German strategic argu-
ment but suggested a smaller force than was set forth in the Wagner
proposal.27 While less than everything the Germans had hoped for, the
American recommendation seemed to ensure that some sort of German
naval force would be organized within the framework of the EDC.
German naval negotiators found the NHTs connections to Speidel,
Heusinger, and the Americans invaluable.
The German naval delegation in Paris and the naval section of Amt
Blank spent the remainder of 1952 and most of 1953 devising plans
based on the EDC project. Once agreement had been reached on num-
bers and armament, the French naval representative to the EDC Interim
Committee shifted gears and did everything in his power to assist the
Germans. He and the Germans worked closely on the details of the
plan, often presenting a common front against interference from army
personnel.28 Their plans, however, were never implemented. In August
1954, the French Parliament refused to consider the EDC treaty with-
out major revisions, effectively ending the project.
Negotiations began again but moved more rapidly than before.
At the London and Paris conferences (September 28October 3,
October 2123), representatives from the United States, the United
27
BA/MA, BW 9/3059, 3291.
28
Gerlach, Aus den Anfngen der Bundesmarine, 17.
Kingdom, and Canada joined with the foreign ministers of the six
nations of the now-defunct EDC (West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium,
Netherlands, and Luxembourg). The Western occupation powers, the
Federal Republic, and the combined Nine Powers concluded a series
of agreements under which West Germany would become sovereign,
join a reconstituted Western European Union, observe certain arms
limitations, and enter NATO. Adenauer paid little heed to the particu-
lar interests of his naval advisers during the proceedings, pledging that
the Federal Republic would not manufacture atomic, chemical, or bio-
logical weapons or acquire guided missiles, magnetic/influence mines,
warships over 3,000 tons, or submarines over 350 tons.29 Kriegsmarine
veterans and the naval section of Amt Blank took these restrictions in
stride, well aware that the London and Paris agreements opened the
way to a larger navy than West Germany would have been permitted
under the framework of the EDC.
The Bundestag ratified the Paris treaties in February 1955, West
Germany became a member of NATO in May, and Amt Blank became
the Federal Ministry of Defense in June. Naval planning, disrupted by
the collapse of the EDC, began anew. The naval section of Amt Blank
resurrected the Wagner Proposal, reworked the plan, and submitted it
to SHAPE. They hoped that SHAPE would return their plan in the
form of a recommendation which could then serve as the basis for
discussion within the Ministry of Defense and with the Bundestag.
Although reluctant to prepare recommendations regarding the mag-
nitude of national contributions to NATO, SHAPE sent a tentative
and informal proposal incorporating the main themes and recommen-
dations of the reworked Wagner plan. SHAPE summarized the main
missions of the Bundesmarine as follows:
to assist in preventing enemy naval forces from penetrating into
the North Sea through the Baltic Exits and the Kiel Canal;
to interdict to the maximum extent Soviet sea lines of communi-
cation in the Baltic;
to participate in the Allied defense of the North German Baltic
coast and the Danish islands; and
to assist in maintaining Allied sea lines of communication in the
German coastal waters and adjacent waters.
29
London and Paris Agreements, SeptemberOctober 1954 (Department of State
pub. 5659), 929. The Western European Union (WEU) lifted the restrictions govern-
ing the displacement of German naval vessels on 21 July 1980.
SHAPEs tentative and informal proposal included a rough sketch of

the naval forces that West Germany would need if it was to accomplish
these missions. The recommended force was remarkably similar to that
suggested by the NHT five years earlier and included 18 small fast
destroyers, ten escorts, six ocean minesweepers, 24 coastal minesweep-
ers, 24 inshore minesweepers, 12 coastal submarines, 40 fast patrol
boats, two coastal minelayers, 58 maritime aircraft and helicopters, 36
landing craft, ten harbor defense craft, and one coastal artillery regi-
ment.30 The projected force would require a sea and shore establish-
ment of approximately 3,600 officers and 26,400 enlisted personnel.31
The small naval section at Amt Blank and their admiral advisers could
be well pleased: SHAPE was supporting a Bundesmarine that would
have twice as many officers and men as had the Reichsmarine.
The Bundesmarine Subdepartment II/7 (Naval Office) of the
Ministry of Defense forwarded SHAPEs military requirements to
the appropriate civilian department heads in the Ministry of Defense.
The Bundestag approved the Ministrys budget request in 1955, and
all that remained was to bring together the scattered naval potential
present in the Labor Service Units, the Seegrenzschutz, and vari-
ous British and American intelligence organizations (the British
sponsored the Klose group and the American sponsored the Gehlen
organization).
The key challenge facing the Ministry of Defence lay in the area of
personnel selection. Adenauer, Blank, and the Bonn establishment
ensured that this matter would be strictly under civilian control, to
prevent any repeat of the Weimar model. Blank created five depart-
ments and put civilians in charge of four of them. The Ministrys senior
naval officer presided over a subdepartment for naval planning and no
longer had control over legal matters, personnel selection, or logistics.32
In late 1955 the Ministry of Defense was reorganized and, at Heusingers
insistence, the military chiefs were granted equal status with civilian
department heads (administration, finances, personnel, legal, etc.).
Nonetheless, civilians retained their grip over these essential areas,
sharply limiting the role of military officers within the organization.
30
Gerlach, Aus den Anfngen der Bundesmarine, appendix.
31
Krger, Die Anfnge der Bundesmarine 19501955, 2930.
32
Hans Ehlert et al., Die NATO Option, ed. Militrgeschichtliches Forschungsamt,
Anfnge westdeutscher Sicherheitspolitik, 19451956, vol. 3 (Munich: Oldenbourg,
1993), 68287.
This structure signified a dramatic break with German naval precedent,

decisively shifting power within the Ministry of Defense away from
career officers and toward civilian bureaucrats.
Kriegsmarine veterans nevertheless bombarded the new Ministry of
Defense with recommendations. Engineers weighed in with ideas
about a unitary officer corps, naval aviators noted that the Bundesmarine
needed to have its own air support, and chaplains took up the problem
of spiritual care in the military.33 Khler, the adviser for naval person-
nel affairs, and Zenker, head of the naval planning group, received
detailed suggestions from Ruge, Wagner, and the Meisel Circle.
These former admirals were very concerned that the Ministry of
Defense might select officers for the Bundesmarine without their input.
Ruge counseled Zenker and Khler to discuss Bonns decisions with a
small circle of respected older officers in order to avoid criticism.
Ruge suggested sounding out Admirals Schniewind, Backenkhler,
and Ehrhardt, all of whom lived in the Rhineland area.34 Wagner and
the Meisel Circle took the liberty of providing the Bonn naval group
with some Guiding Thoughts for the New Foundation of the Officer
Corps.35 Their position paper, worked up by former admiral Bernhard
Rogge in association with other members of the Meisel Circle, recom-
mended that the Ministry select officers who had accommodated
themselves to West Germanys parliamentary democracy. Rogge noted,
however, that integrity and character are more important than the
question of previous political convictions. Rogge suggested that integ-
rity, character, education, political sensibility, performance during time
of peace, performance during time of war, and conduct since the war
were appropriate criteria for evaluating candidates. His guidelines
warned the Ministry against relying on so-called democratic officers,
claiming that they were opportunists and recent converts to
democracy.36
Wagner and the Meisel Circle hoped that these recommenda-
tions would provide the Ministry of Defense with a measuring rod for
33
See, for example, Werner Brckow, Die Geschichte des deutschen Marine-
Ingenieuroffizierkorps (Hamburg: Oldenburg, 1974); and Jrg Duppler, ed., Marine-
flieger. Von der Marineluftschiffabteilung zur Marinefliegerdivision (Herford: Mittler,
1988).
34
Ruge to Zenker, 2 August 1955, BA/MA, MSg 1/ 2060.
35
Ehlert et al., Die NATO Option, 1137.
36
Besprechungspunkte fr Zusammenkunft mit Dienstelle Blank betr. Person-
alauslese, 10 September 1954, BA/MA, MSg 1/586.
selecting the best candidates for service in the Bundesmarine. The

drift of their thinking was clear: Kriegsmarine veterans who had sup-
ported the Third Reich should be evaluated on the basis of their profes-
sional competency, but those who had betrayed their Kriegsmarine
comrades during or after the war should be barred from entering
the Bundesmarine. Khler, specialist for naval personnel questions in
the personnel department at the Ministry of Defense, appears to have
followed the Rogge papers recommendation, winnowing out appli-
cants who had acted objectionably during or after the war. Khlers
responsibility for selection consisted only of evaluating the profes-
sional and military accomplishment of candidates, and others were in
charge of evaluating their political suitability. Professional accom-
plishments, however, could be construed broadly. Wagner, Meisel, and
other grey eminences provided damning information about person-
nel who had broken ranks with their Kriegsmarine comrades, and
Khler could justify excluding certain individuals on the basis of their
poor professional reputation. Those who had refused to sign petitions
for the release of the grand admirals, had criticized them while in
confinement, or had turned against the Kriegsmarine in its final agony
were blacklisted and stood little chance of ever making it before a
screening committee.37
Knights Cross recipients, in contrast, stood an excellent chance of
becoming candidates. Fully 25 per cent of the Kriegsmarines surviving
Knights Cross recipients joined the Bundesmarine, clearly showing
that Khler made an effort to find an opening in the new navy for those
who had proven themselves. Former rear admiral Rolf Johannesson,
who had earned a Knights Cross during the war but had fallen out with
his superiors toward its end, was unsure where he stood in the eyes of
his peers. He was not closely associated with the Wagner-Khler-Meisel
group, and he grew worried that his difficulties with Dnitz might
harm his chances for selection. He demanded clarification from Wagner
(not Khler!), who replied that Johannessons name was always men-
tioned when discussion turned to selecting personnel for the German
navy. Wagner added that Johannesson had no reason to be con-
cerned about Ewig-Gestrigen (old diehards) dominating the new navy.
37
See, for example, Wagner to Rogge, 17 October 1952; Wagner to Machsens, 28
January 1953; and Wagner to Reinicke, 9 October 1956, BA/MA, Wagner Papers N
539/5,69.
One or two individuals might cling to the past, but most Kriegsmarine
veterans now rejected Hitler and National Socialism.38 Johannesson
was indeed recommended for consideration; he passed the screening
process and served in a number of flag rank billets.
Bonn politicians were unwilling to delegate the process of selecting
West Germanys first generation of military officers to an inner circle of
civil servants and veteran advisers. The executive and the legislative
branches shared Johannessons concern that diehards might flood into
the new military, and they wanted to avoid a repetition of the Weimar
Republics civil-military experience. In June 1955, Blank promised the
Bundestag that he would establish a personnel screening committee
composed of respected public figures to review the candidacy of every
officer above the rank of colonel (naval captain). The major parliamen-
tary parties (Christian Democratic union [CDU]/Bavarian Christian
Social Union [CSU], Social Democratic Party [SPD], Free Democratic
Party [FDP], and Gesamtdeutscher Block/Bund der Heimatvertriebenen
und Entrechteten (All-German Bloc/League of Expellees and Deprived
of Rights) [GB/BHE]) pushed the concept further and established an
independent personnel screening committee whose members had been
selected and approved by the Bundestag.39 The Bundestag instructed
the personnel screening committee to devise screening criteria to guide
the Ministry of Defense in selecting officers and men below the rank of
colonel and tasked it with scrutinizing all candidates for the position of
colonel and above.
The screening committee convened in late August 1955. Its mem-
bers represented a broad range of political persuasions, including
former career officers and nonmilitary personnel. Admiral Konrad
Patzig, who coupled excellent connections with the U.S. Navy with an
unparalleled knowledge of the Kriegsmarine community, was the sole
former Kriegsmarine officer involved. The screening committee began
by grappling with the problem of appropriate evaluation criteria. By
October 1955, it had approved a set of guidelines which specified that
veterans wishing to join West Germanys military had to be uncondi-
tionally committed to the democratic form of government, had to
38
Johannesson to Wagner, 24 January 1953; Wagner to Johannesson, 25 February
1953, BA/MA, Wagner Papers, N539/5. See also Johannessons discussion of
conservative influences in Rolf Johannesson, Offizier in kritischer Zeit (Herford:
Mittler, 1989).
39
have a clear recognition of the value of individual freedom, and had

to be willing to defend freedom and law.40
The screening committee then went about evaluating candidates
files. The Ministry of Defense forwarded 553 applications for review,
and the Ministry of the Interior forwarded 47 applications, with the
latter group consisting of personnel serving in the Federal Border
Guard and Seegrenzschutz who wished to transfer to the Bundeswehr
and Bundesmarine. The files were distributed by lot to one of four
working groups. These working groups reviewed the files, conducted
outside inquiries if appropriate, and then invited candidates for a per-
sonal interview. The working groups utilized the interview sessions to
verify that candidates met the selection guidelines outlined above.
They posed questions about candidates attitudes toward the 20 July
assassination attempt, asked them to describe the appropriate relation-
ship between the Bundesmarine and the grand admirals, and interro-
gated them about their perception of the role of the military in a
parliamentary democracy. Following the interviews, the working
groups met behind closed doors to evaluate the overall suitability of
the candidates and then communicated their recommendation to the
screening committee as a whole. The screening committee approved or
rejected candidates, and its findings were final and could not be
appealed. It completed its work in December 1957, and records per-
taining to the evaluation process were destroyed.
Ruge, one of the least controversial candidates for a flag level posi-
tion in the Bundesmarine, provided a glimpse into the selection process
in his memoirs. In November 1955, Ruge received a letter from Theodor
Blank inviting him to appear at the Ministry of Defense the following
month. At the Ministry, the head of the personnel department went
through the formality of posing several questions before ushering
Ruge into the office of the defense minister. Blank asked Ruge a few
additional questions about his military background, and then without
further ado inquired whether he would be interested in becoming the
head of the naval division in the Ministry of Defense. Ruge agreed,
but like all others, he had to appear before the personnel screening
committee before his appointment became effective. The working
group reviewing his files arranged to interview Ruge over dinner, and
while Ruge claimed that his interviewers didnt make it easy for
40
Ibid., 1096.
him, the entire process seems to have been structured to be as non-

confrontational as possible.41
Admiral Johannesson, who appeared before a different working
group, believed that the screening process allowed some candidates
with questionable political attitudes to slip through the net.42 The
committee as a whole may have been influenced by former admiral
Konrad Patzig, who argued that the German Navy had been largely
nonpolitical and that National Socialism had made few inroads.43
Admirals Wagner and Rogge, along with some very conservative
captains, passed the screening process by downplaying their enduring
personal loyalty to Grand Admiral Dnitz. The screening committee,
however, only granted the head of the Seegrenzschutz, Fritz Poske, a
conditional approval. The committee felt that his insistence on hanging
a picture of Grand Admiral Dnitz behind his desk did not constitute
reason to reject his candidacy outright, but felt it precluded Poske from
assuming an admiralty billet in the new Bundesmarine.44 Statistics
indicate that few candidates for Bundesmarine billets were rejected by
the screening committee. More than 85 per cent were approved.45
The screening process for officers below the rank of captain and
colonel proved selective, although age and physical disability ruled out
far more candidates than did political criteria. As of August 1956, 2,934
former Kriegsmarine officers and men had applied for entry into
the Bundesmarine, and additional applications trickled in over the
ensuing years. These Kriegsmarine veterans provided the Bundesma-
rine with its first generation of officers and petty officers. Their
professional competence and combat leadership were superior, but the
psychological baggage that many brought into the new institution
proved problematic.
Theodor Blank selected the top leader of the Bundesmarine very
carefully for this precise reason. Although Gerhard Wagner had been
the driving force behind conceptualizing the new naval section, Blank
and Adenauer chose Friedrich Ruge to lead the Bundesmarine. He fit
the billet for a number of reasons. From a military perspective, Ruges
41
Ruge, In vier Marinen, 299.
42
Johannesson, Offizier in kritischer Zeit, 123.
43
44
Poske, Der Seegrenzschutz 19511956, 182.
45
Statistischer Bericht Bundesministerium fr Verteidigung (PIII 3), 15 August
1956, BA/MA, BWD 13/3.
experience in mine warfare reflected the more limited mission and

composition of the future Bundesmarine. His selection would be
reassuring to West Germanys new allies. Domestically, Ruge had
credentials with both supporters of the assassination attempt and its
opponents. His neutral position suggested that he would be able to
bridge the gap between both groups, and his selection as senior naval
officer would alienate few. Personally, Ruge possessed traits that would
prove of great importance. He was multilingual, behaved diplomati-
cally, exhibited flexibility, and had shown that he could work with vari-
ous political parties as a member of Cuxhavens town council from
1952 to 1954. Furthermore, Ruges well-established ties to the U.S. Navy
promised to be useful, and he had made it clear that he shared
Adenauers commitment to strengthening the Federal Republics ties
with the West. Ruge had worked closely with the Americans from the
outset, and his service in the NHT had not escaped Bonns notice.
Adenauer had talked with Ruge after the admirals trip to the United
States and apparently concluded that Ruge would make an excellent
leader for the new Bundesmarine.
Blank selected Wagner as Ruges deputy in recognition of his invalu-
able role in the planning and negotiation process. Wagners 1951 con-
cept paper for a future German navy had guided German negotiators
during the EDC talks and had been revived in late 1954 as the basis for
discussion with SHAPE. While Wagners close connection to Dnitz
ruled out appointing him to the top post, more than any other
Kriegsmarine veteran he had conceptualized the Bundesmarines mis-
sion. Wagner, who in May 1945 had accompanied the last head of the
Kriegsmarine to Montgomerys headquarters to negotiate Germanys
surrender, became the second-ranking Bundesmarine admiral a dec-
ade later.
The Ministry of Defense appointed Zenker and Gerlach, the head
of the naval section of Amt Blank and the chief German negotiator
for naval matters, to the posts of Commanding Admiral North Sea
and Commanding Admiral Baltic Sea in 1957. Their hard work in Amt
Blank gave them an advantage over other contenders. The Ministry
made an effort to reach outside Amt Blank and the NHT as well,
appointing Rolf Johannesson to be commander of naval forces and
Bernhard Rogge to be commander of Military District I. However, the
top leaders of the new Bundesmarine consisted largely of veterans
who had been planning and preparing for its creation since the early
1950s.
The process leading toward the creation of West Germanys navy

was complex and dispersed. In East Germany, a covert navy had been
formed already in 1950, under the cover of a police organization. The
creation of the East German Navy in 1956 entailed little more than
renaming an organization already in existence. In West Germany, the
path to the creation of a new navy proceeded at two levels. Officially,
the effort centered on the negotiations in Paris, London, and elsewhere
between the Adenauer government and the member states of the North
Atlantic Alliance. Once the political framework for German rearma-
ment was finally hammered out in 1955, the newly created Ministry of
Defense, under the tight supervision of the Bundestag, commenced
the task of creating a new, democratically rooted Bundeswehr and
Bundesmarine. Yet if one delves a little deeper, one uncovers a parallel
story. The Bundesmarine was formed by drawing upon preexisting
maritime organizations which had already assembled a core of experi-
enced officers, trained enlisted personnel, boats, staffs, and facilities. At
the top, the Bundesmarines first chief and his deputy had discreetly
shaped planning for the Bundesmarine as members of the NHT, as had
various other veteran groups such as the Meisel Circle. And at the
ground level, the Seegrenzschutz, the LSU (B), and other pre-existing
maritime organizations formed a reservoir of talent, personnel, and
equipment that allowed the Bundesmarine to emerge quite rapidly in
1956. The Bundesmarine was a new creation, but a good portion of its
people, boats, equipment, and facilities were already in place along the
North Sea and Baltic prior to its official foundation.
This article draws on chapters in Douglas Carl Peifer, The
Three German Navies: Dissolution, Transition, and New Beginnings,
19451960 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002); From
Enemy to Ally: Reconciliation Made Real in the Post-War German
Maritime Sphere, War in History 12.2 (2005); and Forerunners to the
West German Bundesmarine, International Journal of Naval History
1.1 (April 2002).
THE ECONOMICS OF GERMAN REARMAMENT
GERMAN INDUSTRY, THE COLD WAR,
AND THE BUNDESWEHR
Oliver Haller
Introduction
On a foggy morning in early February 1951, a group of 29 German war

criminals was released from Landsberg prison in Bavaria. The U.S.
High Commissioner for Germany, John McCloy, had a few days ear-
lier granted amnesty to this eclectic group of industrialists, politi-
cians, doctors, and Nazi officials. One of those released, Alfried Krupp
von Bohlen, drove off with his brother and celebrated the end of his
prison term with a champagne breakfast. Before leaving, Alfried uttered
a politically loaded comment to the assembled group of journalists.
I hope, he stated dryly, it will never be necessary to produce arms
again.1 A few years later, Krupp and other German firms were either
producing many of the same weapons used during the war, such as
the MG-42, or other necessary components for the newly founded
Bundeswehr and NATO members. This chapter briefly outlines the fate
of German heavy industry after 1945. The survival of certain arma-
ment production facilities and, more importantly, the American hus-
banding of considerable dual-use manufacturing potential, influenced
overall U.S. policy in Germany, especially the turn towards supporting
rearmament during the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The historiography of post-war Germany tangentially asserted
for decades that the Allies tore out the sinews of war from German
heavy industry. This interpretation typically rests alongside general
1
A number of historians have dealt with the amnesty, including Frank M. Buscher,
The U.S. War Crimes Trial Program in Germany, 19461955 (New York: Greenwood
Press, 1989), 4964; Kai Bird, The Chairman: John J. McCloy, The Making of the
American Establishment (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 33236; and Thomas
Alan Schwartz, Americas Germany: John J. McCloy and the Federal Republic of Germany
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 15684; see also Reprieve, Time,
12 February 1951.
146 oliver haller
examinations of decartelization, democratization, and denazification.2

The evidence supporting this conclusion generally cites the disman-
tling of such major German armaments factories as the Mauser
Oberndorf factories or the Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken
Aktien-Gesellschaft and Alkett GmbH facilities in Berlin. The bulk of
the literature dealing with the subsequent reactivation of a German
military in the 1950s consequently skirts any links with the Nazi rear-
mament period. The intense political debates within Germany between
the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Christian Democratic
Union (CDU) concerning a military contribution raise the most aca-
demic curiosity. Cultural demilitarization is thereby somehow linked
to industrial demilitarization.3
Echoing the post-war narrative of the German industrialists them-
selves, whose organizations worked hard to salvage an image seriously
tainted by a close association with Nazism, a complete shift towards
civilian production has been portrayed as offering a significant peace
dividend that resulted in the Wirtschaftswunder.4 New or converted
2
For an overview of this traditional interpretation, see the introduction of Roland
G. Foerster et al., Von der Kapitulation bis zum Pleven-Plan (Munich: Oldenbourg,
1982), xiii.
3
A host of analyses deal with the fate of German soldiers and generals, the overall
political contours of remilitarization, and the controversies surrounding a military
contribution that exist to the present day. These texts do not assist in the investigation
of post-war German military industrial capacities and, in fact, help cultivate the image
that Germany was in fact demilitarized in terms of societal attitudes. Alaric Searle,
Wehrmacht Generals, West German Society, and the Debate on Rearmament, 19491959
(Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003); Detlef Vogel and Wolfram Wette, eds., Andere Helme-
Andere Menschen? (Essen: Klartext, 1995); Erich Maschke, ed., Zur Geschichte der
deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges: Beiheft (Munich: E.u.W. Gieseking,
1967); Guido Knopp et al., Hitlers Krieger (Munich: Bertelsmann, 1998); Hans-Gnther
Thiele, ed., Die Wehrmachtausstellung: Dokumentation einer Kontroverse (Bremen:
Temmen, 1997); Hans Poeppel et al., Die Soldaten der Wehrmacht, 5th ed. (Munich:
Herbig, 1998); Heribert Prantl, ed., Wehrmachtsverbrechen: Eine deutsche Kontro-
verse (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1997); Klaus Latzel, Deutsche Soldaten-
Nationalsozialistischer Krieg?: Kriegserlebnis, Kriegserfahrung 19391945 (Paderborn:
Schningh, 1998); Klaus-Jrgen Mller, Das Heer und Hitler; Armee und national-
sozialistisches Regime 19331940 (1969; Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1988);
Omer Bartov, Hitlers Army: Soldiers, Nazis and War in the Third Reich (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1991); Rolf-Dieter Mller and Hans-Erich Volkmann, eds.,
Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realitt (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1999); Stephen E. Ambrose
and Gnter J. Bischof, Eisenhower and the German Pows: Facts Against Falsehood
(London: Louisiana State University Press, 1992); Stephen G. Fritz, Frontsoldaten: The
German Soldier in World War II (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995).
4
S. Jonathan Wiesen, West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past,
19451955 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 2.
german industry, the cold war, and the bundeswehr 147
equipment supposedly replaced the hammers and anvils of war. For

example, inveterate armaments producers such as Rheinmetall-Borsig
set to work producing office equipment, trains, and machine tools.
That Rheinmetall would later return to armaments production and
become one of Europes most successful arms merchants should of
course spark interest as well as serious doubt. The anomalies of indus-
trial demilitarization, for example the immediate contradiction of the
European Recovery Plans focus on industrial reconstruction, do not
lead historians to depart from the central doctrine that the full indus-
trial demilitarization of Germany transpired.5 Why? Did a gulf between
civilian and military forms of production even exist?
Even more serious anomalies abound. David Clay Large draws atten-
tion to the extreme variations within Allied policy and how each of the
four victorious powers defined matters differently. No single under-
standing of demilitarization ever existed.6 No clear definition can
therefore be applied. Without a definition, only studies of individual
firms such as Alkett can assist in the evaluation of industrial demilita-
rization. But it should come as no surprise, as this chapter points out,
that the program was far from successful. By 1949, U.S. State Department
officials described the German Ruhr region as the greatest concentra-
tion of economic power in the continent.7 American policymakers
clearly understood the industrial importance of Germany, and they
made defense of the Rhine economy a central plank of their post-war
policy and containment strategies. Scholars such as Samuel Huntington
have tried hard to convince academic circles that economic power
really does mean hard military power.8
Interpretations of Industrial Disarmament
This chapter focuses on German dual-use capacities after 1945.

Historians have generally understood McCloys decision to release
5
Donald Abenheim, Bundeswehr und Tradition. Die Suche nach dem gltigen Erbe
der deutschen Soldaten (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1988), 2930.
6
7
Carolyn Woods Eisenberg, Working-Class Politics and the Cold War: American
Intervention in the German Labor Movement, 194549, Diplomatic History 7.4 (1983),
283306.
8
Economists are blind to the fact that economic activity is a source of power
and, in a world in which military conflict between major states is unlikely, economic
148 oliver haller
the industrialists and rearm Germany as part of the logic of the Cold
War.9 This chapter, however, posits that this interpretation puts the cart
before the horse. An inversion of this logic would argue that the con-
tinued existence of German dual-use capabilities drove the desire to
keep West Germany out of the Soviet orbit and that the extremely
negative Soviet reactions to this policy kick-started containment and
the movement towards collective security. Of course, some historians
have recently moved away from the orthodox post-war narrative that
emphasized the success of industrial demilitarization. This old narra-
tive depended on an artificial distinction between civilian and military
production that was mobilized in order to reduce the pressures on
Germany from within and without. For example, Time Magazine
reported in 1957 that more than 60 Krupp factories were busy churn-
ing out locomotives, ships, trucks, airplanes, industrial machinery,
giant bucket diggers, false teethalmost everything but guns.10 The
writers failed to mention that the Allies had originally demanded an
end to the production of precisely these commodities as part of indus-
trial demilitarization.
Before turning to the brief examination of the course of industrial
demilitarization and the state of German dual-use capabilities on the
eve of rearmament, three issues require clarification. First, why have
historians so readily accepted the success of post-war industrial demil-
itarization? Here the nobility of the enterprise has obviously colored
analysis. Wilfried Mausbach points out that the dismantling plans of
the American Foreign Economic Administration represented rational
power will be increasingly important in determining the primacy or subordination

of states. Samuel Huntington, Why International Primacy Matters, International
Security 17.4 (Spring 1993), 72.
9
S. Jonathan Wiesen points out that historians agree on a number of factors influ-
encing the clemency decisions in 1951: the powerful effect that the Cold War exercised
on U.S., and certainly McCloys, thinking; the desire to appease a German public highly
critical of Nuremberg and the concept of collective guilt; and McCloys own belief that
many of the sentences had been arbitrarily harsh. Wiesen, West German Industry and
the Challenge of the Nazi Past, 20203. See also Thomas Alan Schwartz, John McCloy
and the Landsberg Cases, in American Policy and the Reconstruction of West Germany,
19451955, ed. Jeffry M. Diefendorf, Axel Frohn, and Hermann-Josef Rupieper (New
York: Cambridge University Press, Publications of the German Historical Institute,
1993), 43354.
10
The House That Krupp Rebuilt, Time, 19 August 1957. For one of the few books
dealing with the Krupp empire, see also William Raymond Manchester, The Arms of
Krupp, 15871968 (Boston: Back Bay Books, 2003).
strategies based on understandable national security concerns.11

Academic criticism of the 1950s rearmament process has furthermore
ranged from benign support to open hostility. Linda Hunt argues that
American policy towards Germany led down a slippery slope that ulti-
mately resuscitated and then assimilated some of the most odious
characters and aspects of the Nazi regime. For example, Alfrieds group
of freed war criminals included a chemist who went on to use his
Auschwitz research results to conduct poison gas experiments at
Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland.12 But this debate misses something
important. The questionable morality of the decision should not
obscure the simple fact that Germany could and did rearm because of
the survival of significant dual-use capabilities.
Furthermore, the Korean War can be viewed as the Pearl Harbor of
the Cold War.13 The summer of 1950 witnessed extreme pressure on
the part of Washington to secure a German military contingent and
authorize a return to armaments production. Konrad Adenauer, as will
be shown, used the opportunity to secure a better deal for his country.
But none of this political maneuvering makes any sense unless German
industry could in fact make a real contribution to Western defense.
In fact, much of the discussion concerning a West German military
concerned political issues and how fast a military should be reacti-
vated.14
Lastly, although beyond the scope of this chapter, it is important to
understand that the German ability to recover after 1945 was highly
dependent on the investments in infrastructure made during the 1930s
and the war itself. Analysis of the German war economy, Werner
Abelshauser writes, is also essential to understanding the economic
dynamism of West Germany after 1945.15 For example, the Nazi period
had substantially enhanced the depth of the German machine-tool
sector and also injected the flexibility to adapt to changing circum-
stances as later demanded by the strategic bombing campaign.
11
Wilfried Mausbach, Zwischen Morgenthau und Marshall: Das wirtschaftspolitische
Deutschlandkonzept der USA 19441947 (Dsseldorf: Droste, 1996), 20.
12
Linda Hunt, Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and
Project Paperclip, 1945 to 1990 (St. Martins Press: New York, 1991), 13032.
13
Schwartz, Americas Germany, 124.
14
There was then a real danger in having the West Germans establish their armed
forces too quickly. Abenheim, Bundeswehr und Tradition, 7273.
15
Werner Abelshauser, The Dynamics of German Industry: Germanys Path
toward the New Economy and the American Challenge (New York: Berghahn Books,
2005), 14.
150 oliver haller
A Flawed Industrial Demilitarization Policy
Why did West German heavy industry survive? After all, a near-
universal desire to destroy all German military industrial capacities
dominated the halls of Allied governments immediately prior to and
after German defeat. The policy appeared straightforward. Our objec-
tive in handling Germany is simple, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
declared in March 1945; it is to secure the peace of the rest of the
world now and in the future.16 From the presidents perspective, peace
required the industrial and societal restructuring of Germany. This
putative solution formed the core element of initial American policy in
Germany. Enshrined in the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) Directive 1067,
the American military was ordered to localize and eliminate all aspects
of armaments production including excess capacities in the purely
civilian sectors.17 Even fertilizer manufacturing was targeted.
By way of comparison, Whitehall rejected JCS 1067 as any proper
basis for occupation policy. The British military believed that German
militarism ended with the destruction of Prussia and refused to view
Nazism as an extremely broad social phenomenon spanning every
aspect of German society. Thinking pragmatically about the adminis-
tration of their occupation zone, the British authorities baulked at a
massive and expensive program of industrial restructuring in order to
save British taxpayers from the severe burden of having to support the
German population.18 Companies such as Volkswagen were therefore
spared and permitted to recover and flourish. The American military,
despite their directive, ultimately shared this belief.
JCS 1067 targeted sectors of the economy such as the traditional
chemical industries that did not accord with a simple definition of
16
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Address to Congress Reporting on the Yalta Conference,
1 March 1945, in Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin
D. Roosevelt: With a Special Introduction and Explanatory Notes by President Roosevelt,
vol. 13: Victory and the Threshold of Peace, 194445, ed. Samuel I. Rosenman (New
York: Russell & Russell, 1969), 576.
17
Directive JCS 1067, 26 April 1945, Part II, Section 16, 1945 Directive to the
Commander in Chief of the U.S. Forces of Occupation (JCS 1067), in Germany 1947
1949: The Story in Documents, ed. Velma Hastings Cassidy (Washington, D.C.:
U.S.G.P.O, 1950), 2327.
18
Llewellyn Woodward, British Foreign Policy in the Second World War, vol. 5
(London, H.M.S.O., 1970), 225; Janis Schmelzer, Die Geheimdirektive JCS 1067,
Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Martin-Luther-Universitat Halle-Wittenberg 8 (1959),
94553.
armaments production. American wartime experience had demon-

strated the importance of converted civilian industries such as cutlery
fabrication for war production. The American tableware producer
International Silver had shifted to armament production and
manufactured a range of products that included rifles, shell casings,
machine-gun clips, and magnesium bombs.19 Dual-use industries mat-
tered in war. American conceptions of industrial demilitarization
departed from any strict logic. The work of Werner Abelshauser dem-
onstrates that Roosevelt and his supporters in the Treasury Department
were motivated by much more than national security issues. Harry
Dexter White, a hard-line supporter of Henry Morgenthau, wanted to
force the American version of Capitalism or the liberal market econ-
omy on the rest of the world. The German Capitalist model of a coor-
dinated market economy or business-coordinated market economy
represented a target far more important than the actual armaments
industry. The Americans hoped to eliminate Rhine Capitalism by slash-
ing German productive output and re-establishing Britain, a Capitalist
partner, as the primary European industrial state. The global market
economy heralded by Bretton Woods represented Whites vision.20
Seen in this way, the German Capitalist variant somehow repre-
sented a graver threat to the New Dealers than that of Communist
collectivization.
The primary task in Germany, the State and War Department
experts believed, was the return of the German economy to a pre-
Hitler peacetime basis. Germany would never again becoming a threat
to the peace of the world.21 Precisely how this program would move
forward remained unclear.22 The State and War Departments rejected
the ideological vagaries of the Treasury as fantastically destabilizing.
19
Alan L. Gropman, Mobilizing U.S. Industry in World War II: Myth and Reality
(Washington, D.C.: Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense
University, 1996), 60.
20
Abelshauser, The Dynamics of German Industry, 14.
21
Memorandum No. 1. Instrument of Surrender; Orders to German Military
Authorities to Supplement Instrument; Sanctions in Event of Delinquency,
25 November 1944, in Eclipse: Appreciation and Outline Plan. Section VI Tasks of
the Supreme Commander, quoted in Earl F. Ziemke, The U.S. Army in the Occupation
of Germany, 19441946 (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, United States
Army, 1975), 15877.
22
Germany: General Objectives of United States Economic Policy with Regard to
Germany, 14 August 1944, Foreign Relations of the United States [hereafter FRUS],
1944, vol. 1, 285.
152 oliver haller
This rejection reflected entrenched bureaucratic concerns and norma-

tive attitudes. The State Department discouraged radical solutions that
advocated the type of industrial restructuring characterized by the
comprehensive reparations program of the Versailles Treaty. Excessive
manipulation of established industrial patterns was seen as counter-
productive.23 The War Department worried about the more mundane
matters of civil-military occupation policy in a vanquished and deso-
late wasteland.24 The bombscape mattered.25 A belief in the efficacy of
strategic bombing induced the military to try and wash its hands of
overall responsibility for German civilians in the immediate aftermath
of the war.26 Until Washington relieved the military of occupation
duties, JCS 1067 permitted operations to protect the safety and meet
the needs of the occupying forces and assure the production and main-
tenance of goods and services required to prevent starvation or such
disease and unrest as would endanger these forces. This provision
meant that the occupation authorities could suspend harsher policies
according to the realities in Germany.27 The perception of imminent
disaster was obviously influenced by the images of destruction that
confronted the military everywhere in Germany. Industrial reconver-
sion nevertheless remained a high priority. Historians have therefore
characterized JCS 1067 and other military policy papers as a set of
documents with draconian prohibitions and clever escape hatches.28
A structural factor also worked against the superficially straightfor-
ward pursuit of industrial demilitarization. The threat of regional
economic breakdown and the resultant political instability was com-
pounded by the inherent difficulty involved in removing military
productive potential from any advanced economy. How could the
occupation authorities sanitize industry if even cutlery producers
23
U.S. Proposal with Regard to the Treatment of Germany, 25 November 1943,
FRUS, 1943, vol. 1, 72023; Germany: General Objectives of United States Economic
Policy with Regard to Germany, 14 August 1944, FRUS, 1944, vol. 1, 285.
24
See Ziemke, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany.
25
G.D.H. Cole, Reparations and the Future of German Industry (Nendeln,
Liechtenstein: Kraus-Thomson Organization Limited, 1945), 5.
26
John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 19411947
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 96102.
27
Directive to Commander in Chief U.S. Forces of Occupation Regarding the
Military Government of Germany in the Period Immediately Following the Cessation
of Organized Resistance, FRUS, 1945, vol. 3, 5.
28
Carolyn Woods Eisenberg, Working-Class Politics and the Cold War, 30506.
represented potential armaments manufacturers? The American histo-

rian Carl L. Becker, writing for the military prior to the end of the
war, emphasized the challenge in Germany. Every new machine,
he wrote,
creates a need for other machines to make it, other tools to keep it in
order. Thus machines breed machines and industries breed industries, so
that much of modern industry is devoted, not to making things people
consume directly, but to making the machines that make machines that
make the things they consume. The story of modern industry is like the
story of the house that Jack built.29
Lucius D. Clay, whose experience with wartime procurement under-
lined the complexities of industry, understood the problems of balanc-
ing the logic of demilitarization with the needs of the German popula-
tion.30 Until Washington relieved the military of occupation duties,
Henry L. Stimson argued at the Potsdam Conference in 1945 that the
central problem represented, how to render Germany harmless as a
potential aggressor, and at the same time enable her to play her part
in the necessary rehabilitation of Europe.31 This demilitarization-
rehabilitation conundrum characterized American and inter-Allied
debates until the Korean War kick-started German rearmament.
The general failure to provide a satisfactory or rational definition of
dual-use military industries forced other American organizations to
unwillingly followed suit. On 28 September 1944 a detailed study of
industrial demilitarization began. Roosevelt had directed Leo T.
Crowleys Foreign Economic Administration (FEA) to study post-war
issues such as what should be done after the surrender of Germany to
control its power and capacity to make war in the future. Under the
direction of Henry H. Fowler, who was well acquainted with arma-
ments manufacturing, the Enemy Branch received the responsibility
29
Carl L. Becker, History of Modern Europe. Course Two: Democracy, Nationalism,
and the Industrial Revolution, War Department Educational Manual no. 205 (14
September 1944) (Washington, D.C.: Silver Burdett Company, 1945), 257.
30
Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation. My Years in the State Department (London:
Hamish Hamilton, 1969), 22035; Lucius D. Clay, Decision in Germany (Garden City,
N.Y.: Doubleday, 1950), 1819; Wolfgang Krieger, General Lucius D. Clay und die
amerikanische Deutschlandpolitik, 19451959 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1987), 98101;
Jean Edward Smith, Lucius Clay: An American Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1990),
35695.
31
The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference) 1945, FRUS, 1945, vol. 2,
756.
154 oliver haller
of formulating the methods by which a German capacity to wage war

would be neutralized. The Enemy Branch composed 32 studies touch-
ing on a comprehensive list of industrial subjects.32
The task forces Industrial Division examined the German machine-
tool sector and published their findings in May 1945. The report con-
cluded that the German military-industry system would continue to
maintain significant war-making potential, unless capacity in every
branch of the machine industry is fundamentally curtailed and its use
is strictly controlled. The group pointed out that the war had demon-
strated a strong German ability to repair damage caused by strategic
bombing. This flexibility invalidated general downsizing. The final
report stressed the ease with which the civilian sector was converted to
military purposes. The strong German capacity to produce the tools
that built the tools that built dual-use commodities represented the
most significant dilemma. Only severe cuts to this sector would guar-
antee long-term compliance with industrial demilitarization.33
Excessive tampering with this industry, the report argued, would
ruin German society and destabilize the occupation. Germanys most
important basic industry employed 13.7 per cent of all industrial
workers. Other methods consequently seemed more agreeable. James
E. Cassidy, an American engineer analyzing demilitarization for the
War Department, informed Assistant Secretary of State William L.
Clayton on 26 April 1945 that controlling copper and iron imports
would alone seriously restrict the German armaments industry. Close
observation over a protracted period limited the possibilities of
military revival without destroying German society. The Industry
Division emphasized the contradiction of dismantling and simultane-
ously maintaining a self-sufficient civilian industrial system. The study
32
Foreign Economic Administration, Enemy Branch: Study by Interagency
Committee on the Treatment of the German Chemical Industries from the Stand-
point of International Security, 8 October 1945, U.S. State Department, Central
Files, Germany, Internal Affairs, 19451949, Part 2: Social, Economic, Industrial,
Communications, Transportation and Science Affairs [hereafter Internal Affairs:
Social], reel 11.
33
The Foreign Economic Administration, Enemy Branch, Industry Division, The
German Machine Industry, May 1945, Internal Affairs: Social, reel 36; James E.
Cassidy (Engineer) to William L. Clayton (Assistant Secretary of State), 26 April 1945,
Internal Affairs: Social, reel 11; Foreign Economic Administration, Enemy Branch:
Study by Interagency Committee on the Treatment of the German Chemical Industries
from the Standpoint of International Security, 8 October 1945, Internal Affairs: Social,
reel 11.
groups therefore questioned the utility of downsizing. Long-term con-

trol would come to represent the only essential point of agreement.34
The War Department itself clearly understood the dangers of down-
sizing or sector elimination. The link between removal of synthetic fuel
facilities and global starvation became apparent. In order to maintain
the minimum peacetime requirements of Germany, ward off the
threat of mass starvation in Europe, and create good export markets
for the United States, the Americans in Germany found it necessary to
continue the operation of the same fixed nitrogen facilities that had fed
synthetic fuel synthesis and explosives manufacturing during the war.
The world suffered from an acute shortage of fertilizers, and the Allied
Control Council (ACC) decided in September 1946 to delay the dis-
mantling of all industries required for food production and other vital
civilian commodities.35 Under these conditions, the work of the FEA
hardly merited Mausbachs use of the word rational. As pointed out,
the occupation authorities realized that any disarmament program
might have to be adapted to the other three economic requisites. These
included the economic well-being of Germany, European reconstruc-
tion, and the domestic prosperity of the United States.36
The lack of a precise industrial demilitarization plan, one that
balanced multiple policy aims, did not stop the ACC located in
Berlin from attempting to find a quadripartite solution and setting
the future levels of German industry in March 1946. Interestingly
enough, the ACC itself recognized many of the same problems
that afflicted the preparation of a workable American demilitariza-
tion program from the start. The Coordinating Committee of the ACC,
for example, discounted the viability of sufficient food imports for fis-
cal reasons. Only a significant increase in fertilizer manufacturing,
they believed, could return German agriculture to subsistence lev-
els. This basic need demanded continued support of fixed nitro-
gen facilities.37 Disregarding these calculations, however, the ACC
34
Ibid.
35
Edith Hirsch, Food Supplies in the Aftermath of World War II (New York: Garland
Publishing, 1993), 4 and 6869.
36
Marshall Dodge (Chief TIDC Staff ) to Clair Wilcox, Technical Industrial
Committee Reports, 22 October 1945, Internal Affairs: Social, reel 36.
37
Coordinating Committee, Draft Cable to Combined Food Board on Fertilizer
Requirement for 1946/1947, 12 April 1946, in Allied Control Authority (Germany),
Enactments and Approved Papers of the Control Council and Coordinating Committee
[hereafter ACC], vol. 3 (Berlin: Legal Division O.M.G.U.S., 1945), 8790.
156 oliver haller
nevertheless moved forward to implement demilitarization. Keeping

matters as straightforward as possible helped address the difficulties
involved in securing coalition support. Slashing military industrial
capacities, they therefore argued, would suffice to remove the capabil-
ity to wage war.38 The directorates of the ACC targeted factories, and a
long list of regulations was established. In a display of peculiar confi-
dence, they proclaimed that after all these measures have been actu-
ally carried out, the industrial basis for Germanys aggressive war
actions will have been destroyed. The ACC divided German industry
neatly into four categories that reflected, as they believed, the range
between direct war potential and purely civilian production. These cat-
egories distinguished between so-called pure armaments factories and
those which produced commodities of various degrees of military
importance.39 These categories, like those of the FEA, did not recognize
the complex economic and political repercussions brought by sweep-
ing change. Their own reservations, however, indicated that the trans-
lation of planning into reality would face the arduous task of balancing
incongruent post-war aims.
The Survival of Industrial Capacities
The brief post-war interval between demilitarization and rearmament

demonstrated that the definitions of armaments potential were any-
thing but logical or systematically applied. Several large companies
such as Volkswagen, Daimler, and BASF survived and continued estab-
lished patterns of production. The Volkswagen plant in Fallersleben
itself represented an obvious target for the dismantling teams, owing
to the recognized dual-use potential of automotive manufacturing.
38
Michael Balfour, Four-Power Control in Germany and Austria 19451946
(Dsseldorf, 1956), 253.
39
Coordinating Committee, Committee for Liquidation of Military Potential in
Germany, 3 October 1945, ACC, vol. 1, 12930; Coordinating Committee, Military
Directorate, Responsibilities of the Military Directorate in Relation to the Conclusions
of the Tripartite Potsdam Conference, 22 September 1945, ACC, vol. 1, 10809;
Coordinating Committee, Committee for Liquidation of Military Potential in
Germany, 3 October 1945, ACC, vol. 1, 12930; Control Council, Law No. 9: Providing
For the Seizures of Property Owned by I.G. Farbenindustrie and the Control Thereof,
30 November 1945, ACC, vol. 1, 22526; Control Council, Directive No. 39:
Liquidation of German War and Industrial Potential, 2 October 1946, ACC, vol. 5,
16.
The American disarmament groups who first moved into the area prior
to the subsequent transfer to British control understood this impor-
tance. The major US automobile producers had generally been respon-
sible for a disproportionate percentage of American weapons systems.
The vehicle industry, Allied policymakers constantly repeated during
this period, is a major force for war.40
Volkswagen recovered quicker than most German firms. The same
crews that had labored to mitigate wartime bombing damage contin-
ued their efforts in the immediate post-war. These men and women,
under the watchful eyes of Anglo-American military government offi-
cials, rebuilt the Fallersleben plant and repaired damaged industrial
equipment in the months after defeat. This intrinsic German ability to
rebuild is well-documented by historians such as Werner Abelshauser.41
The demands of the occupation determined that military officials cut
themselves loose from official policy. The economic problems that
gripped Germany and the foreign need for German production invali-
dated previous thinking. Volkswagen returned to production and
managed to build 10,000 automobiles by the end of 1946. Output
soared even higher the next year.42 The millionth Kfer or Beetle
rolled off the production lines in 1954. Western German automobile
manufacturers, led by Volkswagen, ultimately surpassed the produc-
tion levels of Hitlers Reich by the end of the 1940s. The dual-use capac-
ities of this important sectora major force for warremained
intact despite demilitarization.
The western Allies also spared armaments facilities on the same
grounds. The post-war survival of Alkett GmbH in the Berlin
Borsigwalde represented a clear breach of any commitment to demili-
tarization. Alkett, the major tank producer of Hitlers Reich, had repre-
sented a natural target for the dismantling teams. The military nature
of the tank producer excluded it from the type of defense mobi-
lized by Volkswagen or BASF for automobiles or chemical products.
40
U.S. Technical Industrial Disarmament Committee, Study by Interagency
Committee on the Treatment of the German Automotive Industry from the Standpoint of
International Security, T.I.D.C. Report No. 12 (Washington, D.C.: U.S.G.P.O., 1945).
41
Abelshauser, The Dynamics of German Industry, 98104.
42
The Kfer production statistics were: 1945: 1,785; 1946: 10,200; 1947: 8,987; 1948:
19,244; 1949: 46,146; 1950: 81,979. A total of 168,161 were built between 1945 and
1950. On 8 May 1945, surprising as it might seem, an American film crew set to work
recording the first trucks produced in post-war Germany. Reinhold Billstein et al.,
Working for the Enemy: Ford, General Motors, and Forced Labor in Germany during the
Second World War (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000), 119.
158 oliver haller
Alkett had been constructed in conjunction with Hitlers rearmament

drive in the late 1930s and was therefore never an organic part of the
civilian economy. Alkett was a clear example of an armaments factory
complex. The ACC Economic Directorate in November 1945 conse-
quently classified Alkett as a Category I plant and provided the
number 2045.43
Since Alkett was in the French sector, that countrys dismantling
teams set to work organizing the destruction of the complex. The ACC
demanded preliminary valuation of all firms on the dismantling lists,
in order to establish overall manufacturing levels and for claims pur-
poses, so the French in Berlin desisted from immediate dismantling
and assisted recovery efforts in order to siphon off production for the
French economy.44 Dismantling was complicated by the pre-war struc-
ture of Alketts parent company. Alkett itself was a subsidiary of the
Rheinmetall-Borsig empire. Borsig had been British-ownedpart of
Babcock & Wilcoxprior to Nazi nationalization. The ACC had deter-
mined that factories belonging to United Nations members should be
approached differently than purely German holdings. The French
authorities eventually became nervous that a significant prize was
being lost. Seizing their chance, dismantling teams blocked valuation
and moved forward in early 1946. German workers began cutting
down equipment and loading them into crates.
This work was interrupted by Lucius Clays reparations stoppage in
May 1946. Clay was angered by the failure of the ACC to adequately
account for German peacetime requirements on the basis of a unified
economy. Unilateral seizures by the French and Soviet occupation
authorities, he believed, threatened to derail any rational industrial
demilitarization scheme. The discord that characterized four-power
control in fact prompted Clay to suspend all reparations deliveries
from the American zone on 3 May 1946. He worried in particular that
43
Allied Control Authority, Directorate of Economic Industry Committee,
Reservations, 16 May 1946, Landesbibliothek Berlin [hereafter LAB] B036, Office of
Military Government, Berlin Sector [hereafter OMGBS] 4/651/15, NARA RG260/
OMGUS: Borsig Plant, Shipment 4 Box 651, folder 15, OMGBS Econ Br. Ind Comm
Br. 4/6365 (vol. 9) NARA 260/OMGUS, Borsig Plant, shipment 4, box 651, folder
15, 19461950.
44
Raymond G. Stokes, From the IG Farben Fusion to the Establishment of BASF
AG (19251952), in German Industry and Global Enterprise BASF: The History of
A Company, ed. Werner Abelshauser et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004), 349.
the costs of occupation would spiral out of control.45 While we are

prepared to continue the paper allocation of plants for reparations,
Clay reported, we do not propose to take any further physical efforts
to carry out the reparations program until major overall questions are
resolved and we know what area is to compose Germany and whether
or not that area will be treated as an economic unit.46 Clays action
resulted in two important consequences for Alkett. First, the valuation
efforts of the Economic Directorate were suspended. More important,
American pressure convinced the French authorities to initially desist
from further operations in the Borsigwalde. The crates collected dust
while reparations issues were discussed at the highest levels of quadri-
partite administration.47
During this interlude, the French authorities changed course. On 10
November 1946, Alkett employees were encouraged to initiate repairs.
The workers unloaded the crates and began to rebuild the machine
shops and assembly lines. Alkett executives were encouraged to plan
for civilian production. ACC Law No. 5 dictated that the individual
military authorities retain the power to operate, control and otherwise
exercise complete dominance over all such property, including where
this was essential to the preservation of the value represented by the
property. The French authorities even provided loans to encourage
this process. The short rebuilding period continued until the spring of
1947.48 After that date, a major policy shift would save German compa-
nies from the brunt of dismantling policy.
At the 1947 Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in Moscow,
George C. Marshall, as new U.S. Secretary of State, denounced the
concept of industrial demilitarization. He pointed out that the termi-
nation of production in Europes industrial heartland worked against
the overall goal of European peace and security. The global economic
situation looked grim after the coal and food shortages of the previous
year. Harry Truman, in a shift from the policies of his predecessor,
accepted the War and State Departments position that the re-creation
45
Bruce Kuklick, American Policy and the Division of Germany: The Clash with
Russia over Reparations (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1972), 17274.
46
Smith, Lucius Clay, 351.
47
Control Council Law No. 5: Vesting and Marshalling of German External Assets,
20 October 1945, ACC, vol. 1, 17680; Reports & Statistical Analysis Section,
Rheinmetall Borsig Plant at Berlin-Tegel, 1949, LAB, B036, OMGBS 4/651/15 NARA
RG260/OMGUS: Borsig Plant.
48
Ibid.
160 oliver haller
of a politically and economically stable Europe required the German

industrial system.49
During the meeting in Moscow, French military officials realized
that time was running out, and they decided to take matters into their
own hands. Alkett workers were ordered to stop their recovery efforts
and return to dismantling.50 The companys executives protested. They
pleaded their case to the Office of Military Government, Berlin Sector
(OMGBS) and resorted to a strategy that would become standard prac-
tice in western Berlin. The Soviet military, they argued, had already
seized most of their capital equipment as booty. The remaining
general-purpose machine tools, and those rebuilt for civilian produc-
tion lines, were incapable of producing armaments. In this way, Alkett
executives reversed the original Allied understanding of dual-use
capabilities.51 For exactly this reason, and because Alkett had never
produced civilian goods, the Americans in Berlin should have closed
ranks with their French ally.
The Americans instead moved to defend Alkett in early Summer
1947. Frank Howley, who commanded the first detachment of
Americans to enter Berlin in July, in fact appeared convinced of the
accuracy of German claims and started to openly challenge the direc-
tion of ACC policy in Germany itself. Like the Alkett executives,
Howley pointed to the levels of wartime destruction and post-war loot-
ing. He reported to Clay that Berlin, and especially eastern Germany,
needed Alketts heavy industrial equipment to repair or produce com-
modities for all aspects of the economic infrastructure, including agri-
culture, public utilities, coal mining, and general public health. Howley
therefore invoked the escape clause in direct support of a war plant.
To discourage against partial dismantling, he even claimed that Alketts
entire capacity does not meet the present demand. Furthermore, dur-
ing the summer that witnessed the development and proclamation of
the European Recovery Plan, Howley warned that Alketts destruction
would have a serious effect on industrial recovery. He therefore rec-
ommended that the removal of the plant be strongly opposed.52
49
The Secretary of State to the President and the Acting Secretary of State, 11
March 1947, FRUS, 1947, vol. 2, 24244.
50
Reports & Statistical Analysis Section, Rheinmetall Borsig Plant at Berlin-Tegel,
1949, LAB, B036, OMGBS 4/651/15 NARA RG260/OMGUS: Borsig Plant.
51
Lbke to Frederick Pope, 21 January 1948, LAB, B036, OMGBS 4/651/15
NARA RG260/OMGUS: Borsig Plant.
52
Frank L. Howley, OMGBS, Report on Borsig, Tegel plant, 27 March 1947, LAB,
B036, OMGBS 4/651/15 NARA RG260/OMGUS: Borsig Plant; Frank Howley,
Pressured by the American military government in Berlin, the

Economic Directorate decided to suspend the dismantling of Alkett.
Nevertheless, the ACC exhibited considerable foresight and warned
that the survival of Alkett might create a strong precedent against
future dismantling projects.53
Howleys new course allowed Alkett and other firms to stop renewed
French attempts to seize assets. On 11 January 1950, at the second
meeting of the reorganized Economics Committee, a new French
approach emerged. Called to discuss the future of Alkett, the French
representatives attempted to turn the wartime destruction argument
against itself. The discussions began with expressions of French sympa-
thy for the argument that German industrial resources should be
directed to increasing output for Europe and the United States.
However, they underlined Howleys conclusion that the Soviets had in
fact plundered the machine park and taken everything of value. The
remaining stocks of equipment and materials, they argued, consisted
of ruined lathes, semi-finished cannon barrels, stolen foreign machines,
and general scrap. At this point, the British and Americans appeared
tired of any further debate. They rebuffed the French argument in a
manner that illustrated the death of demilitarization as a policy aim.
The British representatives interjected that Alketts so-called scrap junk
contained a high percentage of carbon and was therefore of no value
in industry and should not be moved.54 In other words, Alketts his-
tory as a war plant was now mobilized to shield it from dismantling
and reparations. Logic disappeared from the debate. Only the Anglo-
American resolve to husband German assets remained. The world had
certainly changed.
American Perceptions of German Industry
After 1945, Anglo-American intervention saved many of the German

industrial firms that had equipped Hitlers armies. This retention of
strong dual-use capacities obviously represented an issue of interest
OMGBS, Importance of the Borsig Works for the Public Utilities in Berlin, 2 July
1947, LAB, B036 OMGBS 4/651/15 NARA RG260/OMGUS: Borsig Plant.
53
Approved Paper No. 27: Allocation of General Purpose Equipment from
Category I War Plants in the French Zone, 14 November 1947, ACC, vol. VIII,
9096.
54
Extract of Minutes of the Second Meeting of the Economics Committee,
11 January 1950, LAB, B036, OMGBS 4/651/15 NARA RG260/OMGUS: Borsig Plant.
162 oliver haller
to American politicians and military planners. The Joint Logistics

Committee (JLC) and the National Security Resource Board (NSRB)
looked at these capacities between 1947 and 1950. These organizations
examined global economic issues in significant detail. They focused
on every conceivable element of dual-use industry including sewing
machines and lamps as well as a long list of critical commodities such
as aluminum and coal. The work was based on the firm belief that
civilian industrial resources represented the starting point of mili-
tary procurement. In many ways, these studies of Germany under-
lined the older hypothesis that German industry was of central
importance to overall global reconstruction efforts. Furthermore,
the data emphasized the generally intact nature of heavy industry
despite wartime dislocation. For this reason, the intrinsic strength of
dual-use capacities in turn accentuated the dominating geostrategic
importance of German industry in any calculations of European mili-
tary strength.55
The survival and expansion of the German machine tool sector after
1945 represented an important example of enduring dual-use capaci-
ties. The ACC had originally planned a significant reduction in the
number of machine tools. The effort aimed at slashing the ability to
divert excess capacities to armaments production. In general, the vic-
torious powers agreed to cut machine tool production in some sectors
by half and fully expunge output in others.56 Certain realities such as
the interdependency of national economies conflicted with this ideal.
Dependence on coal stood in the way.
The Economic Working Group on Economic Aid estimated at the
beginning of 1947 that the maintenance and development of coal mines
for Germany, Poland, and the United States (the three most important
coal exporters for the European market in the immediate post-war
period) required $1.565 billion in new capital equipment. Poland rep-
resented an interesting problem, owing to the expansion of territorial
55
See, in particular, U.S. Department of Defense, Chemical Division, National
Production Authority, Survey on Soda Ash: Compiled for the Materials Office National
Security Resources Board, December 1950, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Records of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, Part 2: 194653, Strategic Issues [hereafter JCS: Strategic Issues], Section
2, reel 4.
56
Economic Directorate, The Plan for Reparations and the Level of Post-War
German Economy in Accordance with the Berlin Protocol, ACC, vol. 1, 3450.
boundaries and the acquisition of coal mines in Silesia formerly sup-

ported by Germany. Recognizing pre-war trade patterns, the Economic
Working Group argued that only the Ruhr, the largest supplier of such
equipment, could provide Poland and other coal-mining states with
the heavy machinery they needed.57 The State-War-Navy Coordinating
Committee supported this conclusion.58 The committee understood
that only Germany and the United States could export substantial
quantities of mining equipment. For these reasons, and in order to
reduce pressure on the United States, the committee demanded that
the European economy free up raw materials for the breadth of German
industry.59 They entertained a new vision of industry in the central
European state that rejected an important element of post-war policy
and had more in common with Grossraumwirtschaft than with the
Potsdam Agreement. When present plans are completed, the com-
mittee stated, production capacity in Germany will be greater than
[during the] prewar.60 They hoped to use indigenous German dual-use
capacities as the starting point.
This decision, along with a currency reform intended to stabilize
the western German economy, soured relations with Josef Stalins
empire and helped encourage the Soviets to blockade Berlin in June
1948. In a State Department analysis of the reasons behind the Soviet
pressure on the beleaguered German capital, a link between indus-
trial and military issues surfaced. The Soviets were perceived as follow-
ing a strategy of interference in order to weaken Europe and make
the continent more pliant and susceptible to Communist infiltration.
On initial inspection, the link between Berlin and the rest of Europe
appeared contrived. However, the Americans predicated economic
recovery on a major German industrial contribution. From this per-
spective, the Soviets had therefore struck at the lynchpin of the
57
Economic Working Group on Economic Aid, Foreign Needs for United States
Economic Assistance During the Next Three to Five Years. Report of the Special Ad
Hoc Committee of the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee, 1 July 1947, JCS:
Strategic Issues, Section 1, reel 7.
58
Appendix E, Section VI: Transportation and Industrial Equipment, JCS 1769/4,
State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee Memorandum for Information No. 79:
Study on Economic Aid, Note by the Secretaries, 2 May 1947, JCS: Strategic Issues,
Section 1, reel 7.
59
JCS 1769/4, State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee Memorandum for
Information No. 79: Study on Economic Aid, Note by the Secretaries, 2 May 1947,
JCS: Strategic Issues, Section 1, reel 7.
60
Ibid.
164 oliver haller
European Recovery Program (ERP). If they can prevent the recovery

of Western Germany, the document explained, they can probably be
assured that the European Recovery Program will fail for psychological
and political, as well as material, reasons. The State Department held
to the belief that German industrial production was essential to the
economy of Western Europe and that a retreat in Berlin would have
lost the cold war. 61
On 11 January 1949, William Draper, a former banker and direc-
tor of the Economics Division of the ACC, ordered the Plans and
Operations Division to prepare policy drafts for new negotiations with
British and French officials. These drafts focused on the unresolved
problems concerning western Germany. They aimed at a significant
transformation based on the idea of German industry acting as eco-
nomic lynchpin. Draper placed the project under the supervision of
the Assistant Secretary of the Army. The matter was to be treated with
urgency. Six draft position papers were quickly composed by the Civil
Affairs Division and reviewed by the Plans and Operations Division.
The six papers addressed the occupation statute for western Germany,
the Trizonal Agreement, the issue of a constitution, the Ruhr Control
Plan, prohibited and restricted industries, and, lastly, reparations.
Considering the serious erosion of relations with the Soviets, it was
also considered necessary to add a paper that dealt with the stormy
matter of currency reform. Other important issues, such as European
economic assistance and the formation of NATO, were made contin-
gent on first pushing through the new economic policy in Germany.62
During the Berlin Crisis of 194849, the American Civil Affairs
Division in conjunction with the Army Staff had formulated a series of
contingency plans and long-term plans concerning the fate of the
former Nazi capital and western Germany as a whole.63 They evaluated
61
State Department Memorandum for Civil Affairs Division General Draper, Brief
Analysis of Current US-Soviet Relations, LAB, B Rep 037, acc. 2919 nr. 2528,
9 August 1948, 2.
62
Ray T. Maddocks (Major General, GSC, Director of Plans & Operations) to Mr.
Voorhees (Assistant Secretary of the Army), Memorandum: Proposed American
Policy re: Problems Affecting Germany which Require Negotiation for their Solution
with the British and French, LAB, B Rep 037, acc. 2919, nr. 6669, 14 January 1949,
12.
63
The State Department had issued a memorandum to the Civil Affairs Division
calling for the elimination of reparations and for increasing German industrial output
using manufactured goods to subsidize the import of raw materials. Any pretenses of
industrial demilitarization were gone. The Americans had returned to the notion of
the potential impact of both a Soviet or Anglo-American victory.

A short document dated 14 January 1949 titled Western Germanys
Long Range Economic Program stood out. The document singled out
the salient problems of western German economic recovery. In order
to address such problems as the growing balance of payments crisis
and the need to increase the flow of capital for resource allocation and
investment, the document argued that productivity must be raised
above pre-war levels and that exports alone should be expanded by
400 per cent. A series of five minimum points were established that
should, in the view of the authors, become the basis of policy. Two
points had an impact on industrial demilitarization and stood out
starkly. The authors first called for an all out effort in the production,
organization, and pursuit of foreign trade that will permit solid eco-
nomic recovery. Second, the document further specified that eco-
nomic recovery was best facilitated by a three-pronged program that
called for expanded production through improved resource allocation,
the binding of western Germany to other states through the International
Trade Organization, and giving the region most favored nation treat-
ment through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. An addi-
tional element was added. Any agreed regulations necessary during
the control period, it was argued, are to be used only to back up agreed
security restrictions on Germany and are not to be utilized by the
controlling countries to promote economic advantage for their respec-
tive countries, to discriminate against German economic develop-
ment or to curtail free competition of German products in world
competition.64 With these restrictions, industrial demilitarization was
only a facade.
Two of Drapers policy papers demonstrated how far things had
come. In terms of reparations, the policymakers wanted a quick end to
this kind of interference. The German thirst for resources took prece-
dence. All future reparations were linked to the fulfillment of recipro-
cal trade obligations. The failure to ship raw materials to Germany was
four-power control and inspection schemes to assure that western Germany would not
mobilize its assets and rearm. State Department Memorandum for Civil Affairs
Division General Draper, Brief Analysis of Current US-Soviet Relations, LAB, B Rep
037, acc. 2919, nr. 2528, 9 August 1948, 6.
64
Civil Affairs Division and Plans and Operations Division, Western Germanys
Long Range Economic Program, LAB, B Rep 037, acc. 2919, nr. 6669, 14 January
1949, 12.
166 oliver haller
penalized by a simple halt to promised reparations. Furthermore, repa-

rations were restricted to non-strategic items. As seen in the example
of Alkett, this decision shielded a wide range of German industrial
firms.65 But the changes in policy relating to prohibited and restricted
industries represented the most revolutionary of all shifts. As directed
by the American military on 24 December 1948, official policy argued
for a steel limitation of 10.7 million tons, with capacity to be retained
until the Humphrey Report would clarify matters. This report would
also determine the production capacities of such vital commodities as
ball and roller bearings, ammonia, chlorine, coal distillation, calcium
chloride, copper refining, zinc refining, and fabrication of non-ferrous
metals. Until that moment, present capacity in these areas would be
maintained as specified by the August 1947 Bizonal level of industry
agreementan agreement with which few were happy. Now the
Americans began pushing for the conclusion of a peace treaty in order
to officially lift the restrictions.66
West German Industry and the Cold War
During the final weeks of 1949, the Allied High Commissioners Brian
Hubert Robertson, Andr Franois-Poncet, and John J. McCloy met
with the newly elected Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to discuss West
German sovereignty. The protocol that resulted from the meeting,
signed on 22 November 1949 at Petersberg near Bonn, stressed the
resumption of normal consular and trade relations within the new
transatlantic community. The commissioners bound West Germany to
the ERP and declared an end to reparations deliveries. Adenauer paid
a small price. He accepted the underlying principle of international
control of the Ruhr and agreed to the further dismemberment of car-
tels. Adenauers government saw these measures as the price for greater
control over industry. While dismantling was not officially ended until
the signing of the Germany Treaty on 26 May 1952, the example of
Alkett demonstrated the gulf between reality and official policy. The
Allied high commissioners did not fully relinquish their theoretical
65
Civil Affairs Division and Plans and Operations Division, Proposed U.S.
Minimum Requirements with Respect to German Reparations, LAB, B Rep 037, acc.
2919, nr. 6669, 14 January 1949, 10.
66
Ibid.
powers over disarmament and demilitarization issues until after the

western democracies granted West Germany full sovereignty during
the Nine-Power Conference in London in the autumn of 1954.67
Like Roosevelt, Adenauer exerted a dominating influence over
foreign policy. In fact, the chancellor took personal control over the
formulation of foreign policy.68 The foreign policy of a country, he
believed, is primarily derived from their real or alleged interests.69
The search for increased sovereignty dominated Adenauers thinking
during his first years in office. Considering the direction of American
policy, it was hardly surprising that he wholeheartedly supported bind-
ing West Germany to the United States as the means to ease occupation
restrictions, return his country to the international negotiating table,
and thereby provide for domestic stability and national security.70
Washingtons strenuous efforts after the war to protect the German
heavy-industrial system influenced Adenauers perspectives con-
cerning dual-use industry. The chancellor, like the Americans, ques-
tioned whether military capacities could be removed from the overall
industrial system.71 But only Washington appeared willing and able
to neutralize the post-war constraints placed on industry and society
and bring the defeated state back into the international order.72
Bonn therefore supported the stationing of additional American
forces on German soil and embraced the overall anti-Soviet focus
of the Truman administration in exchange for reduced interference in
German industrial affairs.73
67
Abenheim, Bundeswehr und Tradition, 7273; Donald Abenheim, Convention
on Relations between the Three Powers and the Federal Republic of Germany, The
American Journal of International Law 49.3 (July 1955), 5769.
68
West German conceptions centered largely on those of Adenauer. Christoph
Klemann, Die doppelte Staatsgrndung: Deutsche Geschichte, 19451955 (Bonn:
Bundeszentrale fr Politische Bildung, 1991), 227.
69
Konrad Adenauer, Erinnerungen, vol. 1: 19451953 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-
Anstalt, 1965), 245.
70
Carl C. Hodge points out that this policy represented a form of pragmatism.
Carl C. Hodge, Active at the Creation: The United States and the Founding of the
Adenauers Republic, in Shepherd of Democracy? America and Germany in the
Twentieth Century, ed. Carl C. Hodge and Cathal J. Nolan (Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1992), 87103.
71
Hanns Jrgen Ksters, The Art of the Possible, in Western Europe and Germany:
The Beginnings of European Integration, 19451960, ed. Clemens Wurm (Oxford: Berg
Publishers, 1995), 5586.
72
Adenauer, Erinnerungen, 1:17781 and 18292.
73
Christian Hacke, Weltmacht wider Willen: Die Aussenpolitik der Bundesrepublik
Deutschland (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1993), 67; John Orme, The Unexpected Origins
168 oliver haller
The outbreak of the Korean War in mid-1950 further changed the

pace and direction of industrial policy in West Germany. The North
Korean assault against poorly trained and ill-equipped American for-
mations in the southern half of the peninsula unleashed a war scare
that swept through the western world.74 What would happen, people
wondered, if Stalin chose to take advantage of the opportunity to
launch an invasion against his enemies in Europe? If the Russians
choose to risk all-out war with the U.S., an American journalist specu-
lated, they can roll through Western Europe like a color guard cross-
ing a parade ground.75 The implications of losing the Ruhr and other
industrial regions seemed earth-shattering.
American military officials agreed with these sentiments and once
again pondered the geostrategic implications of losing West German
industry to the Soviets. Only a single option existed. If we are to defend
Western Europe, the JCS declared in June 1950, German manpower
and industrial resources must be employed; and the defensive position
must be established east of the Rhine River.76 The potential loss of
German industrial resources threatened the entire post-war American
economic and national security system with ruin. This focus on
Germany, hardly unusual considering the entire premise of previous
economic policy, dominated strategic calculations.77 But belts would
first of all have to be tightened at home. Military officials in
Washington demanded manpower and resources. Trumans govern-
ment responded with the introduction of sweeping controls on the
of Peace: Three Case Studies, Political Science Quarterly, 111.1 (1996), 10525; Norbert
Wiggershaus, Adenauer und die amerkanische Sicherheitspolitik in Europa, in
Adenauer und die USA, ed. Klaus Schwabe (Bonn: Bouvier, 1994), 1346.
74
Despite the fears, the United States military nevertheless mustered considerable
strength in Korea. American intelligence estimated that the 110,000 men of MacArthurs
8th and 10th Corps faced roughly 100,000 North Korean and, later, 256,000 Chinese
soldiers. Nevertheless, the Soviet acquisition of nuclear weapons, together with the
large standing army in central Europe, complicated matters. The Joint Chiefs of Staff
speculated at a later date that the Soviet nuclear arsenal included 120 atomic weapons
and approximately 1,000 bombers that could strike targets throughout Europe and
Asia and even hit the United States, provided the pilots flew a one-way suicide mission.
Rosemary J. Foot, Anglo-American Relations in the Korean Crisis: The British Effort
to Avert an Expanded War, December 1950January 1951, Diplomatic History 10.1
(1986), 4357; Report of the Special Evaluation Subcommittee of the National Security
Council, undated, FRUS, 195254, vol. 2, 33435.
75
Frightening Truth, Time, 14 August 1950.
76
Melvyn P. Leffler, The United States and the Strategic Dimensions of the Marshall
Plan, Diplomatic History 12.3 (1988), 277306.
77
Walter G. Hermes, The United States Army in the Korean War: Truce Trent and
Fighting Front (Washington D.C.: U.S.G.P.O, 1992), 1014.
strategic raw materials and natural resources needed by the transatlan-

tic military-industrial system. American expenditures on armaments
more than tripled and reached $50 billion by 1952.78 This strain only
further accentuated any feelings of dependency on German dual-use
industry and intensified the push for outright remilitarization.
The American military had pushed the rearmament issue in Spring
1950 prior to the Korean War. The previous year had witnessed the
detonation of a Soviet nuclear device and the victory of Communism
in China. The State Department and occupation authorities in Germany,
concerned about the fragility of the European economy, expressed
doubts until the panic brought by the Korean crisis.79 Initially, studies
emphasized the potential strains brought by rearmament. The shift
towards military goods, it was believed, would create bottlenecks in
strategic commodities and resources that might paralyze the overall
economies of Europe. The war forced a re-evaluation of priorities. The
deepening military-industrial dependency on Ruhr steel and German
machine tools in general actually induced a degree of American dis-
satisfaction with Bonn. Instead of the previous West German concen-
tration on consumer goods, part of Economics Minister Ludwig
Erhards social market economy model, the American military wanted
a focus on military output. These pressures meant large increases in
such areas as steel manufacturing to meet the demands of the military-
industrial sector.80 Ultimately, fears of economic paralysis proved exag-
gerated. The British rearmament phase, for instance, was ultimately
too short to seriously damage the economy, and any immediate dislo-
cation was temporary.81 Nonetheless, the Americans believed that only
West Germany could muster the excess capacities needed for the rear-
mament effort. Dean Acheson, as Secretary of State, informed President
Truman that the State Department now even considered the creation
of German ground units unavoidable.82
78
79
NSC 71/1: Views of the Department of State on the Rearmament of Western
Germany, 3 July 1950, FRUS, 1950, vol. 4, 69195.
80
Werner Abelshauser and Walter Schwengler, Wirtschaft und Rstung, Souvernitt
und Sicherheit (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1997), 14.
81
Kenneth Harris, Attlee (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1995), 454; Foot,
Anglo-American Relations in the Korean Crisis; Jihang Park, Wasted Opportunities?
The 1950s Rearmament Programme and the Failure of British Economic Policy,
Journal of Contemporary History 32.3 (1997), 35779.
82
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Secretary of State, 31 July 1950, FRUS,
1950, vol. 4, 70203.
170 oliver haller
The attitudes of the American High Commissioner in Germany

demonstrated this shift. McCloy had originally delayed action in
regards to the JCS demand for open German rearmament. In early
February 1950 his Stuttgart speech challenged remilitarization. McCloy
expressed doubts that the rebirth of German military formations would
help turn the defeated state into a liberal constructive element in
Europe.83 Actual capabilities did not matter. McCloy understood that
the strength of West German industry permitted the mobilization of a
substantial military within a year or eighteen months.84 He there-
fore clearly recognized the underlying strength of German indus-
trial capacities but argued against swift changes to official policy. The
pressures arising from the Korean War caused McCloy to reject
the previous concept of incremental change. Social reform became less
important than national security.85 McCloy sent a military advisor to
meet with a representative from Adenauers government. The German
representative demonstrated how so much had changed. Graf von
Schwerin, a former Wehrmacht general and now national security
advisor to Adenauer, helped start the discussions that led to rearma-
ment and the creation of the Bundeswehr.86
West German Rearmament
West German military experts, veterans of Hitlers war, started think-

ing about armaments procurement, strategy, and tactics.87 The sub-
stance of these discussions demonstrated the high residual dual-use
industrial strength of the West German state. Prior to summarizing
the work of the committees involved, it must be emphasized that
Adenauers government recognized the reservations of their transat-
lantic partners. Adenauer himself addressed these fears in an August
1950 memorandum. The chancellor declared his unwillingness to form
a sovereign military that would raise the specter of German militarism
83
84
Ibid., 131.
85
High Commissioner to Secretary of State, 3 August 1950, FRUS, 1950, vol. 3,
18182.
86
Der dritte Weltkrieg steht vor der Tr; wir mssen sofort mit der Aufstellung
deutscher Verteidigungskrfte beginnen, in Hans Buchheim et al., Aspekte der deut-
schen Wiederbewaffnung bis 1955, vol. 1: Militrgeschichte seit 1945 (Boppard am
Rhein: H. Boldt, 1975), 134.
87
Abenheim, Bundeswehr und Tradition, 38.
from the dead. The defense of West Germany, he emphasized, lies

primarily in the hands of the occupation troops.88 This support of
foreign military forces stationed in West Germany would soothe the
sensibilities of European states and free the post-war shackles that still
remained.89
The committees discussing rearmament during the early 1950s
quickly came to the same conclusions derived much earlier by the
Americans. The initial assessments, following from meetings held
in summer 1952, stressed that weapons construction would further
stimulate increases in industrial capacities, fight unemployment, and
generate wealth. The growth rate of the national product should be
sufficiently large, a committee of the Finance Ministry argued, to
enable ever larger support for defense in addition to maintaining the
net increase of investments and consumption necessary for the main-
tenance of the growth.90
This conclusion was debated by another committee in October 1952.
Meeting at the Bundeshaus in Bonn, the Committee on Economic
Policy fought a pitched battle over the dual-use issue. Composed of
politicians drawn from various political parties and assisted by experts
from the Amt Blank, an organization directly responsible for the more
complicated aspects of rearmament, the battle lines were drawn
between left and right and hinged on what actually constituted arma-
ments and military-industrial potential. The Socialist ministers of the
SPD immediately criticized their more conservative CDU counter-
parts for having provided foreign troops stationed on German soil
with industrial goods and labor. Even prior to discussing rearma-
ment, the Socialists interjected that these contributions already
violated demilitarization policy. Worse than the blatant disregard for
88
Adenauer Memorandum: Sicherung des Bundesgebietes nach innen und auen,
29 August 1950, in Rolf Steininger, Deutsche Geschichte seit 1945: Darstellung und
Dokumente in vier Bnde, vol. 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1996),
16567.
89
Christian Hacke argues that Adenauers acute understanding of foreign fears con-
cerning a resurgent Germany meant that security conceptions were built on the con-
cept of security from and not with West Germany. Hacke, Weltmacht wider Willen,
66.
90
Vernichtet der Verteidigungsbeitrag auf die derzeitige unsere Wirtschaft?
Die Volkswirtschaftliche Gruppe des Bundesministeriums der Finanzen macht
dazu folgende Ausfhrungen and Welche Auswirkungen wird ein deutscher
Verteidigungsbeitrag auf die derzeitige Wirtschaftsverfassung ausben und wie ist
dieser Wirkung Rechnung zu tragen? Auswrtiges Amt [hereafter AA], B86 Referat
506/507 v. 7/230: Behandlung im Deutschen Bundestag. 19521954.
172 oliver haller
occupation policy, they believed that rearmament would jeopardize

the program of economic reconstruction. This last claim was easily dis-
missed. The real industrial problem, conservatives countered, related
to resource allocation and not the quantity of machine tools or overall
industrial capacities. Access to raw materials, a constant problem run-
ning throughout modern German history, represented the issue of
importance. Participation in the defense against the Soviet Union
would in any case help cure their chronic resource problem by allow-
ing access to foreign markets. Furthermore, the conservatives pointed
out that rearmament required goods that would strengthen both civil-
ian and military sides of dual-use industry. Vehicles and electrical
products were just as important as guns.91
The Socialists, in a strange display of ideological short-sightedness,
then took up the stance of certain Allied policymakers in 1945. They
drew attention to the fact that all machine tools intrinsically consti-
tuted military potential and were therefore illegal according to the
ACC. In my opinion and based on the experiences from the war, one
member explained, the danger still exists that that which is required
for civilian demand is also required for war and vice versa. What they
intended to accomplish with this argument is beyond comprehension.
The impasse that resulted could only be overcome by a bizarre defense
on the part of the conservatives. Because no truly military machine
tools exist, they pointed out, the civilian element of their nature deter-
mined that they were legal according to the new West German consti-
tution or Basic Law that had been drafted with American assistance.
Somehow pacified by this interpretation, the Socialists relented, and
other issues were addressed.92
For example, Theodor Blank challenged the question of what weap-
ons systems could be produced by dual-use industry. Referring to
French politician Ren Plevens plan of 24 October 1950, a plan that
advocated a unified European armed force commanded by a central
authority and employing standardized military hardware, Blank
asked an important question.93 The question that plays a role here,
91
Stenographisches Protokoll ber die 161 Sitzung des Ausschusses fr
Wirtschaftspolitik, 22, Oktober 1952, Bonn, Bundeshaus, AA, B86 Referat 506/507 v.
7/235: Ausschu fr Wirtschaftspolitik.
92
Ibid.
93
Military policymakers outside of France ultimately rejected the Pleven Plan con-
cept of a united European military, partly owing to the immense impracticality of
he queried, is what armaments orders await us. Blank hastened to

add that German industry could cope with multiple scenarios. The
research of his department underlined the fact that West German
capacities permitted the production of most weapons systems includ-
ing armored fighting vehicles. The real procurement problems related
to solving political battles over standardization.94 The ability of West
Germany to produce tanks, hardly surprising owing to the rapidly
expanding automotive production capacities of the early 1950s, was
beyond question.95
Conclusion
Alkett, the major tank producer of Hitlers Reich, did not return to
assembling weapons systems after 1950. However, the firms parent
company, the Rheinmetall AG, built new facilities in Dsseldorf that
relied on capital equipment from its Berlin subsidiary. It did not make
much sense to concentrate military-industrial production in an island
surrounded by the enemy. However, Alkett used its intrinsic capa-
bilities to produce a range of dual-use items such as machine tools
and component parts such as tracks for armored fighting vehicles.96
In any case, Rheinmetall itself returned to prominence as an arms pro-
ducer by the mid-1950s. Today that firm represents one of Europes
most successful defense industries.
forming a working military organization from disparate nations and military indus-
trial systems. See Paul Noack, Das Scheitern der Europischen Verteidigungsgemeinschaft:
Entscheidungsprozesse vor u. nach d. 30. August 1954 (Dsseldorf: Droste, 1977).
94
Deutscher Bundestag. 13. Ausschu. 162 Sitzung des Ausschusses fr
Wirtschaftspolitik, 23. Oktober 1952, Bonn, Bundeshaus, AA, B86 Referat 506/507 v.
7/235: Ausschu fr Wirtschaftspolitik.
95
Other problems existed, of course. The new German Army of 1955 was forced to
redevelop or indeed develop military concepts and techniques in light of the strategic
and tactical changes brought by the nuclear revolution and the revolution in conven-
tional weapons primarily brought on by wartime German developments in airpower
and rocketry. The problems for the German military were the incorporation of techni-
cal changes into the new military structure. The Bundeswehr faced substantial costs in
acquisition, research, and development and in infrastructure. Abenheim, Bundeswehr
und Tradition, 23; Johannes Gerber, Die Bundeswehr im Nordatlantischen Bndnis
(Regensburg: Walhalla u. Praetoria, 1985), 916.
96
Wi. II B/6 (Tilch) an das Referat Wi. III C/1, Prolongation eines
Betriebsmittelkredites fuer die Firma Alkett, LAB, B Rep 010 Nr. 2432, 6 Oktober
1954 and Rheinmetall hlt von Bilanzoptik wenig, Handelsblatt, LAB, B Rep 010,
Nr. 2432, 31 October 1958.
174 oliver haller
The survival of Alkett did not escape the attention of the East
German press. Adopting the usual techniques of accusation, the
East Germans argued that the western Allies had been far too lenient
on German businessmen and had allowed Nazis to return to positions
of prominence in West German firms such as the technical director of
Alkett. As elsewhere, journalists focused their attention on the dual-
use nature of machine tools. Neues Deutschland pointed out that
Alketts machine park was busy producing thousands of machine tools
necessary for the production of gun barrels and other components of
war. The press correctly surmised that these tools and semi-finished
goods were used for the production of military equipment used by
both the Bundeswehr and the French military.97
These attacks skirted the basic issue of whether Alkett should
have survived at all. As an archetypical war plant, the firms early his-
tory demonstrated an exclusive devotion to weapons of war. What does
Alkett therefore teach about the success of Allied industrial demilitari-
zation policy? Conversely, how important were any residual military-
industrial capacities to the origins of the Bundeswehr or the subsequent
rebirth of the West German armaments industry? This chapter has
wrestled with these questions. Satisfying answers are certainly hard to
find. As pointed out, the policy of industrial demilitarization is men-
tioned in a large number of analyses of post-war Germany. These
include specific examinations of Allied occupation policy and explana-
tions of the seminal events of the immediate post-war, such as the ERP
or the origins of the Cold War rupture. The standard response that
Germany was industrially demilitarized, when we understand the
complex meaning of dual-use industries, sits uncomfortably alongside
the obvious American devotion to German economic rehabilitation
after the war. Contradictions such as Alkett do serious damage to the
supposed military-industrial tabula rasa that existed in West Germany
at some mystical moment between 1945 and 1955.
This chapter demonstrates that the Americans on the ground in
Germany jettisoned industrial demilitarization long before its death
was officially sanctioned in the halls of government. A poorly worked
out definition or conceptual basis represented the dominant rea-
son why. The Americans in particular experienced great difficulty
97
Schlagdorne von Alkett, Neues Deutschland, LAB, B Rep 010, Nr. 2432, 25
January 1959.
in determining whether particular industrial facilities were of impor-

tance to the general German economy. Owing to the intertwined nature
of modern economies, it became difficult to pursue dismantling with-
out harming overall recovery. And this recovery depended on what
was often classified as military-industrial. The survival of German syn-
thetic facilities owed a great deal to this problem. For Alkett, the com-
plexity of modern economies, the American dedication to European
recovery, and the growing Cold War divide saved the company from
extinction.
The documentary record literally bombards the historian with evi-
dence that seriously questions the success of industrial demilitariza-
tion in Germany. Instead, the strength of western German dual-use
capacities is underlined. Industrial demilitarization was itself a depar-
ture from normal post-war policy goals. It was first of all radically dif-
ferent from disarmament. The German armed forces were demobilized
after 1945, and the bulk of the remaining Nazi arsenal was destroyed
or placed under quarantine. Moreover, the Allies stopped the output of
new armaments at the assembly points and initiated a number of sup-
plementary measures to ensure the cessation of hostilities. These meas-
ures did not imply the eradication of military industrial potential,
however, and only represented the initial steps taken by the military to
secure the occupied territories. The plans that followed were different.
The desire to remove the sinews of warthe war plants and even dual-
use capacitiesrepresented something more significant. The program
failed because the revival of German industry was more important to
the economies and overall national security of the emerging transat-
lantic community.
REASONS OF STATE: A MILITARY AND FOREIGN TRADE
NECESSITY. THE INTERNATIONAL MIX OF ARMAMENTS IN
THE BUILD-UP PHASE OF THE BUNDESWEHR 195319581
Dieter H. Kollmer
The procurement of defense material can be regarded, first, as a self-

evident technical process in a security environment or, secondly, as an
economic policy measure that is part of a governments fiscal frame-
work. The first approach is obviously of vital importance for evaluating
the military efficiency of defense material. However, if we want to
understand why certain armaments are procured, we also have to take
a closer look at the second aspect.
From the very beginning, procurement of armaments has been
influenced by various fields of politics. In the Federal Republic of
Germany, the main fields of government involvement include foreign
and security policy, home affairs, fiscal policy as well as economic, for-
eign trade, and regional policy. Of course, military factors also matter,
but they have often been subordinated to civilian affairs. Another
aspect of the period under review was the particular situation sur-
rounding Germany. As it triggered and lost World War II, the Federal
government, amidst reconstruction, was concerned to integrate the
country into the Western alliance in order to achieve true sovereignty
in foreign policy matters.2
1
Modern military history is overwhelmingly concerned with political/strategic/
operational issues and leadership. Yet, without adequate equipment, soldiers would
never be able to carry out the military plans of and missions given to them by their
political leaders. There has been some serious discussion of the effect of technology
and equipment production upon military affairsfor example, one can point to the
excellent studies on the effect of steel production upon warfare in World War I, or
studies of motor vehicle and tank production in the interwar period and its effect upon
the operations in World War II. Nonetheless, the issue of military equipment, its pro-
duction, and its procurement as a central variable in warfare is a subject that has not
been thoroughly studiedand certainly needs more attention.
2
See Dieter H. Kollmer, Rstungsgterbeschaffung in der Aufbauphase der
Bundeswehr. Der Schtzenpanzer HS 30 als Fallbeispiel (19531961) (Stuttgart: Steiner,
2002), 2347.
178 dieter h. kollmer
In early 1955, when the decision was finalized that the Federal
Republic of Germany would establish its own armed forces within the
framework of NATO, it became quickly obvious that one of the tough-
est problems would be to quickly and efficiently provide the major
items of equipment for Germanys defensenamely, tanks, aircraft and
warships.3 There were several reasons for Germanys difficult position
of the time. First were the fundamental economic issues of budgeting
and adapting the national economy, which were essential if Germany
wanted to keep the promise to the alliance to stand up a military force
of 500,000 men in the shortest possible time. Another reason was the
lack of essential knowledge. In the years following the Second World
War, Germany lacked the know-how to build the latest weapons, and
German industry was, on the whole, poorly prepared to begin renewed
arms production. It would all be very expensive. The Federal Republic
wanted to build its own armed forcesbut not at any price. The
Germans faced some further daunting problems that illustrate the
complexity of creating a conventional military of a half million men
from virtually nothing. Yet this force was needed to contribute to the
defense of freedom and democracy right on the front line of the border
separating east and west. To carry out this mission required the crea-
tion of a new and elaborate procurement system. Yet there were factors
unique to Germany that also inhibited the development of a true mili-
tary-industrial complex on the model of the Americans.4
Essentially, the procurement of weapons serves as a means by which
states can exercise their sovereignty. States defend themselves through
deterrence or, when necessary, by waging war. Yet other factors some-
times play a significant role in the decisions to produce or not to pro-
duce weapons. Some of the most important factors to consider are the
general level of economic prosperity of the nation and the military
3
For a basic work on the problems of financing the military in Germany, see Lutz
Koellner, Militr und Finanzen. Zur Finanzgeschichte und Finanzsoziologie von
Militaerausgaben in Deutschland (Munich: Bernard und Graefe, 1982). For useful
background to the special situation in the Federal Republic in the build-up phase of
the Bundeswehr, see Werner Abelshauser, Wirtschaft und Rstung in den fnfziger
Jahren, in Anfnge westdeutscher Sicherheitspolitik 19451956. Vol. 4: Wirtschaft und
Rstung, Souvernitit und Sicherheit, ed. Militrgeschichtliches Forschungsamt
(Munich: Oldenbourg, 1997), 88127; and Kollmer, Rstungsgterbeschaffung, 3047.
4
On this, see Kollmer, Rstungsgterbeschaffung, 73. On the thinking about the
military-industrial complex in this period, see, e.g., Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White
House Years: Waging Peace, 19561961 (Garden City: Doubleday, 1965), 614.
reasons of state 179
potential of the state. Attaining both prosperity and military capability

are goals of the modern industrial state. Both goals are closely related.
Economic efficiency is one of the fundamental requirements of mili-
tary power. The demands of the state can also serve as a means of steer-
ing the economy. The budgets that the state devotes to the armed forces
are not necessarily oriented solely to attaining the maximum military
benefit.5 Indeed, many other factors come into play in the decision to
produce military equipment, and some of the most important are for-
eign policy, security policy, economic policy, and foreign-trade policy.
At the same time, the military-equipment industries serve a legitimate
secondary goal of the state in building up and supporting certain sec-
tors of its economy.6
The Framework: Foreign Policy Principles = Reasons of State
Some of the reasons inherent in the process for choosing equipment

for the armed forces, indeed, sometimes the deciding reasons, are the
foreign and security policies of the national government. Among a
variety of principles, relationships, and requirements in international
relationships, the fundamental foreign and security policies are the
foundation for a national governments decisions. An excellent exam-
ple of the extraordinary influence of these political factors upon the
rearmament polices in the early year of the Bundeswehr is Konrad
Adenauers ready acceptance of the Allied timetable for the build-up of
the West German defense forces. The first West German chancellor
promised the Allies that Germany would stand up a 500,000-man mili-
tary force in only three years.7 Adenauer accepted this goal, but not
5
In other words, military goals must be achieved within the limits of technology
and financial outlays. On this subject, see Hans-Guenther Bode, Politische, militr-
ische und wirtschaftliche Rahmenbedingungen und ihr Einfluss auf die Rstung der
Bundesrepublik Deutschland, in Theodor Benecke and Guenther Schoener, eds.,
Wehrtechnik fr die Verteidigung. Bundeswehr und Industrie25 Jahre Partner fr den
Frieden (Munich: Bernard und Graefe, 1980), 1338.
6
On the issue of the factors that influence equipment production, see the comment
on basic literature on the subject in Kollmer, Rstungsgterbeschaffung, 2377.
7
Adenaurs promise to NATO meant that he agreed to grow the Bundeswehr at a
faster rate than Hitler had built the Wehrmacht between 1933 and 1939. On this,
see Dieter H. Kollmer, Die materielle Aufrstung der Bundeswehr von den Anfngen
bis heute, in Klaus-Juergen Bremm, Hans-Hubertus Mack, and Martin Rink, eds.,
Entschieden fr Frieden: 50 Jahre Bundeswehr 1955 bis 2005 (Freiburg: Rombach, 2005),
216.
with the primary intent of creating a battle-worthy military force

for Germany. Adenauers first priority was to establish the sovereignty
of the Federal Republic with full recognition and acceptance by the
West. In short, foreign-policy factors played the primary role in the
creation of the Bundeswehr, not Germanys security policy or military
objectives.
Requirements of Security Policy
The security policy of the Federal Republic was irrevocably bound to

NATO in the Paris Treaties of 1954/55. The goal of the large-scale rear-
mament effort was to build an effective military force as quickly as pos-
sible in order to support NATOs conventional defense capability,
secure NATOs vital Central Front, and also provide for West Germanys
defense. In a period of rapid technological change, NATOs strategy
underwent constant revision to meet the new challenges.8 By the end of
the 1950s, West Germanys top political leaders would request nuclear
weapons for the Bundeswehr so that the German military could prop-
erly fulfill its role in NATOs new Sword-Shield-Sword strategy as
expressed in NATO document MC 14/2. One reason why the
Bundeswehr wanted nuclear weapons was to ensure that any use of
force in the future would be carefully tied to the political decision mak-
ers and not left solely in Allied military hands.9
Financial Handicaps
The reach and effectiveness of a nations security policy exists in a direct

relationship to the national income. Until the end of the 19th century
the great part of any governments expense was for the military. But
despite such commitments, providing adequate financing for the armed
forces still remains one of the central problems of any major power.
8
See Dieter H. Kollmer: Nun siegt mal schoen! Aber womit?Die Aufrstung
des Heeres der Bundeswehr 1953 bis 1972, in Frank Naegler, ed., Die Bundeswehr 1955
bis 2005. Rckblenden, Einsichten, Perspektiven (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007),
397405.
9
On the efforts made by West Germany to acquire atomic weapons at the end of the
1950s, see Hans-Peter Schwarz, Adenauer und die Kernwaffen, Vierteljahrschrift fr
Zeitgeschichte 37 (1989), 56793; and Peter Fischer, Das Projekt einer trinationalen
Nuklearkooperation, Historisches Jahrbuch 112 (1993), 10532.
From the start of the process, the political leadership in Bonn was well
aware of the dilemmas they faced in financing West Germanys rear-
mament. The national policy was to keep the cost of rearmament at a
moderate level because high defense costs could easily threaten the
internal stability of the Federal Republic. The social programs of the
Federal Republic would, under no circumstances, be sacrificed in favor
of national defense. Thus, the German leadership had to manage a very
capital-intensive armaments and procurement program in a manner
that did not affect the economic development process and social pro-
gram expenditure.10 In short, a balance had to be found.
The one positive aspect of the German governments policy was a
firm commitment of nine billion Deutschmarks per year to be devoted
to the rearmament budget. It was a tough battle to pry even that much
out of the Federal Finance Minister Fritz Schaeffer, who served as the
guardian of the West German prosperity. It was thought at the time to
be a reasonable sum, but in fact, it was quite insufficient for the needs
of the Bundeswehr. The result was a series of crises in the attempt to
produce major military equipment items. The solution was finally
made to select equipment offered at a lower pricebut the less expen-
sive equipment was also much less effective in serving the national
defense. Despite such drawbacks, the Bonn politicians held to the prin-
ciple that the new armed forces had to be created and equipped with-
out increasing the governments debts.11
The National Economy Factor
In the Western concept of government, the first objective of the state is

to maximize the general economic prosperity of the whole community,
the so-called general welfare. However, such a goal can only be achieved
by the best possible allocation of available resources. The optimal divi-
sion of productive capacity is always dependent upon the political
structure and the long-term goals of the broader society. In a demo-
cratic state, the procurement of military equipment is a process of par-
liamentary negotiation and compromise. That means that a nation can
10
On the fundamental financial policies that frame the production of equipment in
the Federal Republic of Germany, see Koellner, Finanzen.
11
On details of the financial aspects of equipping the Bundeswehr, see Kollmer,
Rstungsgterbeschaffung, 3047.
normally only make considerable resources available to the defense

budget if the resources are truly to be used for military purposes. The
condition of the economy basically decides which financial resources
can be made available to the defense budgets. One consequence of the
Second World War was a somewhat unique evolution of the West
German economy. In the Germany of the early 1950s, the industrial
firms had full order books and, therefore, had only a limited interest in
manufacturing military equipment in their own factories.12 The preju-
dice against military arms production after the Second World War was
reinforced by the ban on such production that the Allied powers had
decreed. In addition, any interest in arms production was discouraged
by the arrest and conviction by the Allies of some of the German indus-
trialists who had supported Hitler.13
Only a few of the smaller firms showed an interest in producing
weapons or military equipment. However, some of the regional indus-
tries that produced civilian goods, such as kitchen equipment, were
interested in supplying the Bundeswehr and selling to the military.
Contracting firms were interested in building the new barracks and
bases the armed forces would need. Basically, the state of German
industry was such that the Federal Defense Ministry would have to
import 60 per cent of the Bundeswehrs major equipment items
from overseas during the first decade of its existence.14 Yet, as a result
of the deceleration of the economic miracle, a number of West
German industries became interested in doing business with the
Bundeswehr. From that point on, the production of military equip-
ment was also seen by the government as a means of steering economic
demand. Large firms became interested in having a line of military
equipment in production as a means of keeping the company busy in
times of recession.15
12
See Werner Abelshauser, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte seit 1945 (Munich: DTV,
2004), 18186. Note: This is the primary textbook on German economic history since
1945.
13
On these issues, see Abelshauser, Wirtschaft und Rstung, 6466; Kollmer,
Rstungsgterbeschaffung, 8490; and Lothar Gall, Von der Entlassung Alfried Krupp
von Bohlen und Halbachs bis zur Errichtung seiner Stiftung 1951 bis 1967/68, in
Lothar Gall, ed., Krupp im 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Seidler, 2002), 475511.
14
Since 1961, the official title has been Federal Ministry of Defense.
15
See Kollmer, Die materielle Aufrstung, 21718.
Weapons Procurement as Part of the Balance of Payments Question
In the lengthy build-up phase of the Bundeswehr, the procurement of

military equipment was also an element of foreign trade policy. As the
German economic miracle took off in the early 1950s, a strong imbal-
ance in the trade accounts occurred in the case of several European
nations. Great Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, and Turkey, for example,
imported goods valued considerably higher than the value of goods
they exported to Germany. These imbalances could be equalized
through carefully targeted joint procurement agreements with some of
Germanys allies.16 At the same time, however, all of theses states had to
overcome many serious post-war economic conditions. One major
problem these states had to contend with was the weakness of the heavy
industry sector and of the vehicle manufacturers. The idea that the
Bundeswehr was ready to place major orders with its new European
allies was well received. Several western European nations were hope-
ful that equipment orders from the new West German armed forces
could help revive their own industries. In this way the Federal Republic
could also assist some of its allies with their balance of payments
difficulties.
But while this policy of European procurement supported the for-
eign relations of the Federal Republic, it also served to push down the
quality of the equipment that the Bundeswehr actually received. One of
the best examples of the unintended consequences of the Bundeswehrs
overseas weapons acquisition program was the decision to acquire the
Hispano Suiza HS-30 infantry fighting vehicle (IFV). This armored
vehicle was developed by the Swiss firm Hispano Suiza and assembled
by a British company. For a time it served as the primary IFV of the
German Army, where it earned a notorious reputation for its poor reli-
ability and generally bad design.17 Still, in the 1950s it was not a case of
acquiring the best weapons for the money but rather finding as many
minimally acceptable weapons systems as possible, at the lowest pos-
sible price. Although this policy made for mediocre national defense
16
For a detailed discussion of the balance of payments issue and the solution
through weapons production in Europe, see Kollmer, Rstungsgterbeschaffung,
8790.
17
For a detailed discussion of the acquisition of the HS-30 armored infantry vehicle
by the Bundeswehr, see Kollmer, Rstungsgterbeschaffung, 131270.
capabilities, it made for a good foreign policy and greatly helped the
ongoing program of European integration.18
Armaments Procurement Strategies
Since the founding of the Bundeswehr, some very diverse strategies for
the acquisition of military equipment have been followed. In the 1950s
the speed of the build-up of the forces was the deciding factor. To
achieve rapid procurement, the Federal Defense Ministry set contracts
for equipment that could be produced and delivered in time to equip
the first Bundeswehr units. Yet the producers were not always able to
produce the contracted equipment in time, or in the amount ordered.
When firms were not able to deliver the promised goods on time, the
orders had to be split and sent to more than one contractor, so produc-
tion of some single major pieces of equipment was shared between
competitors. Therefore, to fill some of the requirements quickly, the
government turned to the expedient of acquiring equipment at favora-
ble prices from Germanys new NATO allies. The result of such a pur-
chasing policy was that the Bundeswehr ended up with a wide variety
of different equipment. The rather chaotic mix of weapons and systems
is called broad armament. In was only in the 1960s that the major
armaments projects begun in the Bundeswehrs first years finally bore
fruit and consolidated equipment purchasing programs were set out
on a long-term basis.19 By the 1960s, for every actual mission of the
Bundeswehr there was a minimum of equipment models to fulfill the
mission. This approach is called deep armament. The advantages of
this approach are simplicity of purchase and supply, lower maintenance
costs, the requirement for fewer maintenance personnel, and a broad
interoperability between aircraft and vehicles as well as the personnel
needed to support them.
18
Florian Seiller, Zusammenarbeit kann man das nicht nennen! Die Anfnge der
deutsch-franzsischen Rstungskooperation im konventionellen Bereich 19551966,
in Militrgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 67.1 (2008), S. 5663.
19
The best known examples are the IFV Marder (development beginning in 1959)
and the legendary Leopard main battle tank (development beginning in 1960). On
this, see Dieter H. Kollmer, Klotzen, nicht kleckern! Die materielle Aufrstung des
Heeres von den Anfngen bis Ende der sechziger Jahre, in Helmut R. Hammerich,
Dieter H. Kollmer, Martin Rink, and Rudolf J. Schlaffer, Das Heer 1950 bis 1970.
Konzeption, Organisation und Aufstellung (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006), 56475.
The Procurement System and Process20
In order to coordinate the necessary steps and find the best means to
build up the new German armed forces, the whole armed forces con-
cept became the guiding principle of the Bundeswehr during its plan-
ning and initial build-up phase.21 The concept was emphasized in order
to avoid the danger of service egoism from emerging among the
branches of the Bundeswehr. This inter-service rivalry had been a
notable feature of the Third Reich and had greatly affected the produc-
tion of armaments. Therefore, the Bundeswehr developed other funda-
mental all-services concepts, including a single military law system, a
personnel system, a budget system, and other administration systems.
The basic ideas of these initial concepts have, in fact, remained with the
Bundeswehr to the present day. After a few early disputes, the branches
of the Bundeswehr overcame their service differences and oriented
themselves to the same goals so they could all make an effective contri-
bution to western European defense. The service branches then deter-
mined what materiel they would require to carry out their basic mis-
sion. In cooperation with the materiel procurement department of the
Defense Ministry, the services established the necessary equipment
requirements and methods of control.
To meet the requirements of the time that were to be established by
contract, the procurement process would follow the constitution of the
Federal Republic as well as the free-market principles that were man-
dated by the senior defense officials. In fact, one of the first major chal-
lenges faced in the first year of the Bundeswehr was simply establishing
a coherent procurement system. It was, and still is today, the specifi-
cally European view that the government, as the only contractee for
military goods, cannot operate in the open market like a private com-
pany. The contracting entity is controlled by officials and strictly regu-
lated in every detail. They also work under the supervision of the
Federal Accounting Office. Every expenditure was, and still is, carried
out in accordance with the Federal budget plan 14, which was approved
by parliament. Contracts given to private companies were controlled
by the Regulations for Performance (VOL). Every contract had to be
20
On the procurement process and system in the build-up phase of the Bundeswehr,
see Kollmer, Rstungsgterbeschaffung, 4765.
21
On the total force thinking, see Abelshauser, Wirtschaft und Rstung, 10.
carefully reviewed and sorted into one of three categories when calls
for tenders were published. The open call for tender was the norm.
Any company could bid to participate in such contracts. Per the VOL,
the contract would be awarded upon consideration of all the economic
aspects. Under a limited tender, as issued under the VOL, the pro-
ducer had to meet special requirements, standards, or have production
expertise required for the contract; and was to be used if there were a
limited number of firms capable of effectively fulfilling the contract.
The open award was given for special exceptions in which there are
special conditions on the contract announcement as to how the con-
tract would be awarded.22
To prevent the large firms from pushing out the medium-sized and
small companies in the contract competition by means such as price
dumping, new regulations were put into place in early 1956. The new
regulations ensured that a certain percentage of Bundeswehr contracts
would be awarded to the medium-sized firms. The tender for contract
procedures, many in place to this day, were put into place to reduce the
problems of firms creating a monopoly of supplies and gaining a
monopoly of the market. Nonetheless, some politicians tried to water
down the system of protections. Under pressure to find a quick solu-
tion, in 1955 the Bundeswehr unofficially suspended its regulations for
the purchase and fielding of military equipment. If the Bundeswehr
had complied with its own regulations, every piece of equipment would
have been thoroughly tested for as long as three years before being put
into service with the troops.23 Under the framework of the new rules,
those competing for open-tender contracts had to fulfill additional
requirements and were mandated to carry out a three-year testing
and development program on new equipment. This type of contract
competitive bidding also included social and political considera-
tions.24 However, the Defense Ministry had only three years to com-
pletely stand up and equip the armed forces. The open-contracting
process took up considerably more time than expected. Therefore,
the majority of contracts in the first years were awarded under the
limited-consideration bid rather than the open-contracting rules.
22
Kollmer, Rstungsgterbeschaffung, 64.
23
On the particular problems of contracting in the build-up phases of the
Bundeswehr, see Kollmer, Klotzen, nicht kleckern! 51114.
24
See Abelshauser, Wirtschaft und Rstung, 141.
The open-tender process had often resulted in the government issuing

contracts to unqualified companies that could not often deliver equip-
ment or services on time or to acceptable quality standards.25
A chronic shortage of personnel in the Defense Ministrys procure-
ment department exacerbated the situation. The means did not exist
to carry out all the administrative procedures in a timely fashion.
The approximately 200 members of the procurement department
had to oversee more than 200,000 contract items. Already in 1956 the
Procurement Department had to administer the contracting of 9,000
major equipment items as well as 3.5 million individual items required
for equipping the Bundeswehr. To be able to ensure that the
Bundeswehrs first soldiers could be equipped quickly, a large number
of equipment articles had to be immediately bought off the shelf
along with a large amount of materiel that was soon made available by
the allied powers. There was rarely enough time to develop new
equipment.
Implementation: The International Mix of Weapons 19531958
The first phase of the Bundeswehrs build-up actually begins some

years before the first Bundeswehr military unit was formed. Because of
the particular situation of the Federal Republic, at first the Amt Blank
(Blank Office), the predecessor of the Federal Defense Ministry, was
given responsibility for ordering equipment for the new armed forces.26
At this time the whole focus of the German economy was on rebuild-
ing Germany in the aftermath of the World War. In the immediate
post-war years only a few industrial firms had any serious interest in
competing for contracts from the Defense Ministry. The result of this
situation was that much of the heavy equipment for the Bundeswehr
would have to be manufactured overseas.
To move the rearmament process along, several of Germanys allies
declared themselves ready to support West Germany by providing sur-
plus material. The first significant assistance to the German Federal
25
Cited in Kollmer, Klotzen, nicht kleckern! 512.
26
For general background on the establishment and activity of Amt Blank, the
predecessor office of the Federal Defense Ministry, see Dieter Krger, Das Amt Blank.
Die schwierige Grndung des Bundesministeriums fr Verteidigung (Freiburg: Rombach,
1993).
government in this regard was provided by the United States of

America. This was arranged so that the Germans could quickly provide
a German contingent to the projected European Defense Community
(EDC) through the program announced in Bonn by the Deputy U.S.
Secretary of Defense, Frank Nash, on 7 April 1953.27 Eventually, the
so-called Nash Program committed the United States to provide
approximately 3.8 billion Marks (almost $1 billion dollars) worth of
heavy military equipment to Germany. This grant would be enough to
equip the first six divisions of the German Army and 24 squadrons of
the new German Air Force (Luftwaffe). The first delivery of equipment
would be passed through the U.S. forces stationed in Germany, which
would turn over surplus equipment directly to the Bundeswehr.28 Still,
the German Federal government did not find this level of support suf-
ficient and during the next few months would make several diplomatic
approaches to the Americans trying to negotiate additional aid. Try as
the German government would, the Americans would not agree to
increase an already generous offer.
Irritated by Germanys position, Washington modified the Nash
List and limited its deliveries in early 1956 to mainly supplying equip-
ment to the new German Army. In Bonn the West German Defense
Ministry decided to import some of the most urgently needed army
weapons from European allies, although the costs of this approach
were quite high.29 That said, some particular conditions of the post-war
period worked to the advantage of the Federal government. The high
levels of the foreign trade surplus that West Germany had amassed
since the late 1940s had to be reduced. Thus, the Germans turned
largely to nations with large trade-balance deficits to procure some of
the most urgently needed equipment for the army. In the next few years
the armys aviation corps would be equipped with Alouette helicopters
27
On the Nash Program and Nash List and their effects on German rearma-
ment, see Kollmer, Klotzen, nicht kleckern! 52338.
28
At the start of the 1950s, the U.S. Army began a program to re-equip its forces in
Germany with new weapons systems, thereby providing an large and inexpensive sur-
plus of older but usable weapons right in Europe. It was an excellent opportunity to
provide start-up help for U.S. allies. See Kollmer, Klotzen, nicht kleckern! 524. See
also Ingo W. Trauschweitzer, The Cold War U.S. Army: Building Deterrence for Limited
War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008).
29
The Nash List was the name of the list of weapons and equipment which were
declared surplus by the Pentagon and made available at no cost to help equip the
Bundeswehr. For more about the Nash List, see Kollmer, Klotzen, nicht kleckern!
52338.
built in France, armored reconnaissance vehicles built by the French

Hotchkiss firm, and the HS-30 armored personnel carrier that was
produced in Switzerland and Britain. The whole of the Bundeswehr
would be equipped with the G1 and G3 rifles as well as Uzi submachine
guns, all made in Belgium. The Air Force received aircraft from both
Italy and America, and the Federal German Navy obtained ships mainly
from Britain and France.
The governments of Turkey and Israel needed economic support to
assist them to overcome external and internal conflicts. So the West
German government considered every possibility to improve its trade
relations with these countries. One means to better relations was to
import military equipment. It was decided to order mortars from Israel
and ammunition from Turkey. The Israeli mortars proved to be very
effective, but the Turkish ammunition had noticeable quality-control
problems. The case of the so-called Turkish ammo scandal made it
obvious that the Defense Ministry was not always looking for military
efficiency but instead gave other national interests a higher priority.30
The goals set by the German procurement policy included equaliza-
tion of trade imbalances, development of better bi-lateral relations, a
contribution to the financial support of the military forces stationed in
Germany, and support for the economic growth of friendly nations. Of
course, the increasing tensions brought about by the Cold War were
clearly the primary issue that drove the politicians in Bonn to support
its Western allies at the end of the 1950s.31
From Rapid Rearmament to the Quality Army
During the early phases of rearmament in the Bundeswehr, consider-

ably more problems arose than had been expected. Due to the
Bundeswehr budget limitations, and with only 9 billion Deutschmarks
for the military budget, gaps quickly appeared in the infrastructure.32
30
On Turkeys difficulties with ammunition production, see Kollmer, Klotzen,
nicht kleckern! 59195.
31
On the objectives of the production policies of the German Federal government
in the 1950s, see Abelshauser, Wirtschaft und Rstung, 13946; and Kollmer,
Rstungsgterbeschaffung, 9699.
32
After tough negotiations, the German Treasury Secretary Fritz Schaeffer reached
an agreement with the U.S. government that West Germany did not have to spend
more than 9 billion Deutschmarks per annum to build up the Bundeswehr. This, and
The budget limits had allowed for too few maintenance support per-
sonnel for an armed forces equipped with complex modern weapons.
Budget limits and the other problems discussed earlier led to a far
slower rearmament process than Chancellor Adenauer had promised
to NATO. The first defense minister, Theodor Blank, had been handed
an unsolvable problem by Adenauer and was eventually forced out of
office. In the meantime, in its urgency to find any usable equipment at
all, the Defense Ministry bought inferior equipment at inflated prices.33
Blanks successor, Franz Josef Strauss, convinced Adenauer to slow the
rearmament process. Strauss turned to the new NATO strategy laid out
in NATO document MC 14/2, a strategy that set the requirements for
Allied contributions to NATO under the framework of building capa-
ble conventional forces, and he used it as the justification for proposing
a new strategy to build up the Bundeswehr.34 Strauss negotiated a new
rearmament program with the major players in Washington, Paris, and
NATO under the slogan The Quality Army while working diligently
to quiet West Germanys irritated allies, who had lost confidence in the
Bundeswehr due to the many failings of the first months of the rearma-
ment process. Strauss goal was to build an atomic war capable
Bundeswehr. Old weapons projects were to be scrapped, and wholly
new weapons were to be developed and fielded.35
Even though the greater proportion of the Bundeswehrs equipment
was acquired overseas in the first years of its existence, almost 50 per
cent of the budget for force infrastructure remained in Germany. In the
build-up phase of the Bundeswehr most of the funds for infrastructure
the so-called Annuality of the budgetwhich means that the money of a certain
budget (e.g., military) must be spent within a year or it will fall back to the Federal
budgetled eventually to insufficient procurement measures. See also Lutz Koellner,
Militr und Finanzen. Zur Finanzgeschichte und Finanzsoziologie von Militaerausgaben
in Deutschland (Munich: Bernard & Graefe, 1982); and Kollmer, Rstungsgter-
beschaffung, 3647.
33
See Abelshauser, Wirtschaft; and Kollmer, Rstungsgterbeschaffung.
34
On the slowdown of the Bundeswehr force planning, see Bruno Thoss, NATO-
Strategie und nationale Verteidigungsplanung. Planung und Aufbau der Bundeswehr
unter den Bedingungen einer massiven atomaren Vergeltungsstrategie 19521960
(Munich: Oldenbourg 2006), 17381.
35
Examples of off-the-shelf materiel were the IFV HS-30 and the M 48 battle tank.
The new weapons systems that began development at this time were the Marder IFV
and the main battle tank Standardpanzer 30later called the Leopard tank. See
Kollmer, Klotzen, nicht kleckern! 613.
and equipment went to building new military vases and renovating

old ones. The national infrastructure plan involved everything from
grand building projects to building washstands for the Bundeswehrs
tanks.36 In its early spending plans the Bundeswehr was concerned less
about utilizing the current capabilities of German firms and more
about developing a German armaments industry and armaments man-
ufacturing competence over the middle and long term.37 A considera-
ble number of medium-sized and small companies were involved in
this process, and these remain, even today, the backbone and the engine
of the German economy.
Washington hoped that the new NATO strategy would allow it to
reduce the American conventional forces stationed in Europe by the
end of the 1950s. Other allies also took this view and looked to with-
drawing some forces from Germany and having them replaced by the
Germans. The Bonn Defense Ministry saw this as an opportunity to
propose fundamental changes to Western policy and used the new
security situation to request that the limitations placed on German
industry in the aftermath of the World War be removed. The Allies
complied and ended the restrictions that had denied Germany the
right to build certain heavy military equipment. At the same time,
Defense Minister Strauss requested that the Bundeswehr be allowed to
obtain nuclear weapons. Although he wanted to acquire complete
nuclear delivery systems, after a negative reaction from the press and
from some of Germanys allies, he scaled down his requests to include
only atomic artillery munitions. In the end, Strauss would settle for
equipping German corps artillery units with atomic-capable systems.
The result was that the responsible departments of the Defense Ministry
concentrated on the development and production of a new generation
of conventional weapons systemsvery much along the lines of the
defense ministers Quality Army policy.
36
On building the Bundeswehrs infrastructure, see Wolfgang Schmidt, Integra-
tion und Wandel. Die Infrastruktur der Streitkrfte als Faktor soziokonomischer
Modernisierung der Bundeswehr in der Bundesrepublik 19551975 (Munich: Oldenbourg
2006).
37
In Germany, the know how to build heavy weapons began with producing
small all-terrain vehicles, light weapons, and various items of special equipment. By
the end of the 1950s, German industry was ready to design and build main battle
tanks.
The Branches of the Bundeswehr
In order to meet NATOs goal of a speedier build-up process, the

Bundeswehr was largely dependent upon foreign military aid. During
its build-up phase the Federal Navy was primarily provided with ves-
sels from the American and British navies. A few vessels from the Third
Reichs navy were still in good condition, and these were also trans-
ferred to the Germans. Only through the assistance programs of the
Allies were the Bundeswehrs men in blue the first branch of the
armed forces able to report to the defense minister that they were ready
for duty. Even so, this fast build-up that brought the West German
Navy to readiness quickly also meant that in the 1970s almost the
whole fleet had to be replaced at one time.
The army had to follow a similar path to obtain equipment. Because
the army required a vast amount of equipment to be supplied as soon
as possible, a large purchasing and procurement program quickly came
into being. Washingtons clear message to Bonn was that Germany
needed to field operationally ready forces as soon as possible. Thus,
much of the early equipment procured for the Bundeswehr was pro-
vided by Washington to Bonn. Germanys western European allies
delivered supplements to offset their balance-of-payments deficit with
Germany. However, to transform the broad armament into a deep
armament, the Germans began planning to field their own weapons
systems, to be built in Germany, by the late 1950s.
In its build-up phase the Air Force was even more dependent upon
equipment supplied by allies. Some aircraft were obtained from France,
Britain, and Italy. But the vast majority of the equipment for the Air
Force came from the United States. The heavy dependence upon the
American aviation industry was only broken in the 1970s as the result
of a concentrated European investment program.
Ready to Sail: Why the Federal Navy Built an Improvised Force
At the start of the 1950s the naval threat from the Warsaw Pact was
minimal. Thanks to the naval superiority of the Allies, NATO assigned
the West German Navy some low-priority coastal-defense duties. The
Federal Navys mission was to prevent the Warsaw Pact forces from
breaking out of the Baltic into the North Sea, to attack the Soviet sea
lanes in the Baltic, and to protect the West German coastline and the
Danish islands. However, the mission was soon broadened by NATO

to include support for the Allied naval forces opposing Soviet naval
efforts to seize the straits between Denmark and Norway.38
To carry out these narrowly crafted missions the West German Navy
would need an array of smaller ships. The larger vessels would actually
be large torpedo boats. German military leaders planned to build
patrol boats, submarines, minesweepers, landing craft, and coastal-
defense boats. The Federal Navy, however, considered destroyers an
essential part of the fleet planning because it would need to carry out a
variety of missions, in every weather, and for long duration. So, to meet
the requirements of the fleet, in 1955 the Defense Ministry recom-
mended a naval force of 18 small, fast destroyers, 10 escorts (later
named frigates), 40 torpedo boats, 54 minesweepers, 36 landing craft,
12 smaller patrol boats, and almost 60 aircraft.39 These force levels were
achieved only in the early 1960s. Because the Federal Navys equip-
ment demands were relatively modest in comparison to the army and
air force, the first units of the navy were deployed fairly quickly. Already
in June 1956, former British torpedo boats with German crews and
under British higher command took over patrol duties in the Baltic.
At the same time, 24 minesweepers, four tugs, one tanker, and three
rescue boats of the American Labor Service units40mostly former
World War II German vessels manned by veterans of the old German
navywere readied to be turned over to the Federal Navy. These ves-
sels had been used to clear mines in the Baltic and North Sea. A few
weeks later the Federal Border Police sea unit, with 26 boats, one
tanker, and one tug all officially joined the West German Navy. At the
end of 1956 the French turned over five large minesweepers, former
German navy vessels that had been taken into French navy service at
the end of World War II. As a result of these efforts, at the end of 1959
38
On the planning to create the Federal German Navy and the ships and aircraft
used by the navy, see Siegfried Breyer and Gerhard Koop, Die Schiffe, Fahrzeuge und
Flugzeuge der deutschen Marine von 1956 bis heute (Munich: Bernard und Graefe,
1996).
39
On equipping the German Navy, see Johannes Berthold Sander-Nagashima, Die
Bundesmarine 19551972 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006); and David R. Snyder, Arming
the Bundesmarine: The United States and the Build-Up of the German Federal Navy,
19501960, The Journal of Military History 66.2 (April, 2002), 477500.
40
For more about the American Labor Service Units in Germany after World
War II, see Helmut Hammerich, Kommiss kommt von Koompromiss, in Hammerich
et al., Das Heer 1950 bis 1970, 5962.
NATO could deploy two minesweeping squadrons as the Federal

German Navys first operational fleet unit. In July of that year an addi-
tional minesweeping squadron joined the NATO forces. These German
naval units were the first military forces of the Federal Republic to rou-
tinely take part in NATO maneuvers.
In addition to these significant steps, the naval staff of the Defense
Ministry decided to initiate an even larger shipbuilding program.
During 1957 the Defense Ministry planned to acquire eight destroyers,
six escorts, 30 torpedo boats, 54 minesweepers, and 60 smaller vessels
for the fleet. The first submarine built for the defense of German
waters came into service in March 1962 and was appropriately named
the U-1.
Early in the rearmament process there were generous donations of
ships and materiel from America and Britain. But the Allies usually
only provided material that was older and surplus to their needs. Thus,
at the very beginning of the Bundeswehr, an unsatisfactory mix of
weapons came into being. The goal of the procurement branch of the
Defense Ministry was to work with German industries on a long-term
plan to create a deep armament. The main build-up phase of the
Federal Navy ended in the early 1960s. All branches of the armed serv-
ices had the same problem: Most of the available weapons systems had
not been designed to accomplish the tasks of the Bundeswehr.
Nevertheless, the West German Navy staff was able to assign its first
units to NATO quickly, due to its modest requirements and the help of
its new allies.41
The Force of CircumstanceThe Army Adopts Broad Armament
For the former German generals and general staff officers who had
served on the Eastern Front from 1941 to 1945, the operational lessons
of how to defend the western European states from Soviet aggression
were clear. The most important lessons learned in the campaign against
the Red Army in World War II were the significant vulnerability of the
Soviet leadership and planning a defense that employed highly mobile
tactics as well as operational methods. The Soviet military structure
41
For more on procurement for the German Navy, see Sander-Nagashima,
Bundesmarine; Snyder, Arming; and Kollmer, Die materielle Aufrstung, 22022.
made it often difficult for them to react to such an opponent. Indeed,

German officers were convinced that they could even halt a massive
conventional attack by Soviet forces. They had learned that one could
not leave the initiative in the campaign to the attacker for long and that
the defender had to fight a highly mobile and offensive campaign that
aimed to disrupt the enemy plans.42
The result of this thinking was a new German force model that was
disproportionately heavy with armored units. Even the infantry sup-
porting the armored units would be fully motorized and equipped with
cross-country capable armored vehicles that provided full protection
to the infantry soldiers.43 In order to achieve the highest possible mobil-
ity in all terrain conditions, the armys armored vehicles would all have
to be fully tracked. Around the world there existed a large number of
proven battle tanks that could be easily purchased. However, it would
be harder to fulfill the requirement for fully tracked, fully armored
IFVs. In the early 1950s such vehicles simply did not exists. Either the
West German Army would have to give up its plans to equip its armored
infantry force with such vehicles or it would have to develop its own
vehicles. A new family of tactical armored vehicles would take more
time to develop than the Federal Republic could allow for rearmament.
There were also similar difficulties of finding the appropriate vehicles
for reconnaissance units, air defense units, and anti-tank units.
Developing fully armored command vehicles for leaders and tactical
staffs was yet another problem to be solved.44
Meanwhile, until Germany could develop and produce its own IFV,
some short-term solutions had to be found. Some of the armys require-
ments were met by manufacturing the small French Hotchkiss armored
infantry tank45 and the newly developed Swiss Hispano-Suiza HS-30
42
The first General Inspector of the Bundeswehr (equivalent to the U.S. Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs) was Adolf Heusinger. Cited in Christian Greiner, Die militrstrat-
egische Lage Westeuropas aus der Sicht westdeutscher Militrs 19451949, in Franz
Knipping and Rolf-Jrgen Mller, eds., Aus der Ohnmacht zur Bndnismacht. Das
Machtproblem der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 19451960 (Munich: Schningh, 1995),
162.
43
Ferdinand M. von Senger und Etterlin, Gedanken ber die Panzerinfanterie,
Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau 3 (1953), 12633.
44
On the armys equipment requirements, see Kollmer, Klotzen, nicht kleckern!
599611.
45
On the production of the Hotchkiss armored personnel carrier and its use by the
Bundeswehr, see Ibid. 59598.
IFV that seemed to be ready for serial production.46 Other needs of the
army for tactical weapons systems could be provided by purchasing
equipment already in production. This was the case for helicopters for
the army. Both the French Alouette II light helicopters and the
American Sikorsky H-34 helicopters were in production and fully met
the armys needs.
In fact, the greater part of the German Armys initial procurement of
heavy equipment was received from the United States under the so-
called Nash Program. After protracted negotiations and numerous
misunderstandings, an agreement was reached in early 1956, and the
Pentagon made available $3.8 million worth of surplus U.S. military
equipment that was either shipped from depots in the United States or
directly transferred to the Bundeswehr from U.S. military stocks in
Germany. Per the Nash List of 24 February 1956 and the follow-on
agreement of 28 June 1956, the following American equipment was
made available for the German Army: 1,110 medium M-47 tanks, 152
light M-41 tanks, 100 M-39 armored personnel carriers, 192 M-16
Halftracks, 186 40mm M-42 armored anti-aircraft guns, 300 M-74
armored recovery vehicles, 127 105mm self-propelled guns, 350 artil-
lery pieces of various calibers, 350 81mm and 120mm mortars, 34,132
U.S. M-1 carbines, 10,300 .45 caliber pistols, 8,188 .45 caliber subma-
chine guns, and 2,450 .30 caliber machine guns, as well as various trac-
tors, trucks, and assorted communications equipment.47
The assistance from the United States was extremely useful to the
Bonn Defense Ministry because much of the equipment from the U.S.
would still equip units of the Bundeswehr up to the early 1970s. The
Americans also gained substantial advantages from this armament
deal. Most of the equipment was obsolete but still usable, and it pro-
vided a welcome reinforcement to support the defense of western
Europe. By being generous with its military aid program, the Americans
built a close relationship with the German Army from the start, and
this eventually worked greatly to the advantage of the American arma-
ments industry. From the 1950s to the 1970s the German Army would
order several billion Deutschmarks worth of heavy equipment from
U.S. manufacturers. These purchases included the M-48 main battle
46
On the production problems of the HS-30 and its reputation in the Bundeswehr,
see Kollmer, Rstungsgterbeschaffung, 131284.
47
Kollmer, Klotzen, nicht kleckern! 532.
tank, various self-propelled guns and howitzers, the M 113 armored

personnel carrier, and the Bell UH-1D utility helicopter that equipped
the armys aviation units and is still in use today. By the early 1970s the
net worth of the Americans initial contribution to the Bundeswehr
had paid for itself many times over in later weapons exports to West
Germany.
The Bundeswehrs solution had its advantages and disadvantages.
On one hand, the Bundeswehr received fully developed and tested
equipment. The use of large amounts of American equipment also sim-
plified interoperability with Germanys main ally. On the other hand,
the Bundeswehrs procurement strategy of the 1950s prolonged
Germanys position of dependence upon the Americans and slowed
the growth of Germanys indigenous capacity to build arms. Still, at the
time, the willingness of Washington to financially support the rearma-
ment of their German ally was very welcome news for the Federal
German government. In the mid-1950s the top leadership in Bonn was
not yet enthusiastic about building up West Germanys armaments
production.
The Americanized Branch of the BundeswehrEquipping

the Luftwaffe
Very soon after it was established, the German Air Force became
known as the Americanized branch of the Bundeswehr. Even though
the other branches of the Bundeswehr received large quantities of
American equipment, the influence of the U.S. Air Force upon the
organization and equipment of the Federal German Air Force was
exceptionally high. Although Great Britain offered to assist the Germans
in building and equipping a new Luftwaffe, early in the process the
German Defense Ministry found that the Nash program was the most
sensible basis for incorporating foreign equipment and to support into
the new Bundeswehr. The problem with the British offer was that any
cooperation and equipment purchase from the British was likely to be
very expensive. Furthermore, in the 1950s only the United States had
the infrastructure to train and equip a large new German Air Force
without undue strain.48 Given the pressures of time and the financial
48
On the establishment of the Federal German Air Force between 1956 and
1960, see Heinz Rebhan, Aufbau und Organisation der Luftwaffe 19551971, in
realties the Germany faced, the political leadership had limited options,
and the government chose the North American option while keeping
the British engaged by offering to buy 120 aircraft from them to equip
the air arm of the West German Navy. In fact, approximately 650 air-
craft were received, at no cost, from the United States and Canada in
the course of the 1950s, and another 300 aircraft were purchased from
across the Atlantic.
At the same time, a training agreement was completed that granted
the West German pilots and aircrew access to complete training pro-
grams in the United States and Canada, plus the opportunity to be
trained on the latest American aircraft models. In addition to the
American aid and purchases, during the build-up phases of the German
Air Force approximately 1,200 transport and training planes were
acquired from France and Italy as well as from Germanys Dornier
Aircraft Company. The costs to build airplanes for the Luftwaffe came
to 2.166 billion Deutschmarks spread over four years. The delivery of
new aircraft through the military assistance program proceeded
quickly. By the end of 1958 the Americans had shipped to Germany
412 aircraft that included F-84 Thunderstreak fighter bombers, RF-84
Thunderflash tactical reconnaissance aircraft, and F-86 Sabre fighter
interceptors. The Luftwaffe soon had the problem of having more oper-
ational aircraft than it had pilots trained to fly them.49
In addition to producing or acquiring the transport and training air-
craft, a number of foreign trade and industrial issues were also part of
the build-up of the German Air Force. Foreign trade imbalances were
to be evened out whenever possible. As part of this policy the Italian
Piaggio P 149D trainer aircraft was acquired in large numbers, but then
only used for three years. The French Noratlas N 2501 D1 was plagued
with design and production problems, but it was bought nonetheless
and became the primary transport aircraft of the Bundeswehr. The
procurement of the Dornier D 27 training and liaison plane was
decided upon primarily as a means of helping the young German air-
craft industry.
In the mid-1950s NATO determined that there were numerous gaps
in the ground-based air defenses of central Europe. To fill the gaps,
Bernd Lembke, Dieter Krueger, Heinz Rebhan, and Wolfgang Schmidt, eds., Die
Luftwaffe 19501970, Konzeption, Aufbau, Integration (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006),
565604.
49
See Ibid. 56971.
beginning in 1957 the German Army and Air Force air-defense bat-
talions were equipped with the M-42 40mm armored flak guns and
with the new radar-controlled 75mm Skysweeper anti-aircraft guns.
Later the Bundeswehr added the NATO standardized Bofors 40mm
radar-controlled L/70 anti-aircraft gun to combat low-flying enemy
aircraft. In any case, the limited effectiveness of such weapons against
targets at medium and high altitudes was already an issue in the latter
half of World War II. To address this issue the Bundeswehr planned to
employ the Nike Ajax anti-aircraft missile system as well as the
improved Nike Hercules and Hawk missiles and to introduce these
weapons to the forces at the start of 1959.50
Planning for the development of the German Air Force was made in
close coordination with NATO, as the West German air units were to
operate directly subordinate to the NATO air forces. The willingness to
centralize and coordinate with the Allied air forces came from the
understanding that in any air war, the Soviets would have a significant
numerical superiority and that, to counter this, NATO air units needed
a flexible command structure that would enable them to quickly shift
forces.51 Although NATO members could not afford to quickly exchange
their available aircraft with the latest advanced American models,
through the 1950s there were a series of negotiations about force mod-
ernization that ended up in the decision for the West German Air Force
to acquire the F-104 Starfighter G-Model.52 Parallel to the discussions
over the F-104, the Federal Defense Ministry decided to buy the Fiat
G-91 fighter plane for the close air support mission. Because of its sim-
plicity and light weight, the G-91 could be easily operated from short,
auxiliary airfields close to the front. Another reason for the purchase of
the Fiat was the request of the Federal Economics Ministry to use the
procurement of materiel to even out the balance of payments with
Italy. A total of 344 Fiat G-91 fighters and 66 G-91 trainers was bought
by Germany. These numbers include those aircraft built under license
50
Ibid., 58694.
51
On the strategic direction of the Luftwaffe in its build-up phase, see Heiner
Mllers, 50 Jahre LuftwaffeVon Himmerod zum Hindukusch, in Klaus-Jrgen
Bremm, Hans-Hubertus Mack, and Martin Rink, eds., Entschieden fr Frieden: 50
Jahre Bundeswehr 1955 bis 2005 (Freiburg: Rombach, 2005), 15582.
52
For more on the procurement of the F-104 Starfighter for the German Air Force,
see Bernd Lembke, Konzeption und Aufbau der Luftwaffe, in Lembke et al., Die
Luftwaffe 19501970, 32731.
by the German Dornier, Messerschmitt, and Heinkel aircraft compa-

nies. Yet, despite these efforts to buy European, up into the 1970s,
well over 70 per cent of all the Luftwaffes aircraft purchases were U.S.
aircraft.53
Conclusion
Equipping the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany in the

1950s was driven by various external factors that led to less than opti-
mal results in the production and procurement programs. The acquisi-
tion of equipment was driven by national policy decisions to build,
equip, and train a 500,000-man armed forces as a contribution to
NATOand to do it as quickly as possible. The force would be designed
to secure the German border and to meet the security policy require-
ments and strategy as set out in the NATO policy documents MC 14/1
and MC 14/2. But the German armaments policy would also fulfill
other requirements set by the national government that included
evening out the payments imbalances with Germanys European allies.
As much as possible, the Bundeswehr would purchase equipment with
such considerations in mind. These considerations, in turn, lengthened
the time requirements and increased the financial costs it took to build
the Bundeswehr. The case of the Bundeswehr illustrates the problems
of any democracy that must consider its national interests in terms of
broad national and international factors. The West German govern-
ment knew that the economic capability of the country in the early
1950s was not stable enough to go it alone. The prosperity generated
by private industry was still in a fragile state, and keeping economic
progress secure stood at the forefront of the governments policy.
Building capable armed forces was not a high priority for the leaders of
German industry or the heads of the labor unions at this time.
Fortunately, the balance of terror worked to convince the Germans of
the need to rearm. The East German uprising of 17 June 1953, the
Hungarian Revolt of 1956, and the Suez crisis that year illustrated the
threats to West Germany and its prosperity in dramatic fashion.
53
On equipping the Federal German Air Force during the build-up phase, see
Lembke, Konzeption und Aufbau, 321424; and Rebhan, Aufbau und Organisation,
557644.
The creation of the Bundeswehr was accomplished only by the

receipt of considerable support from the United States and the incor-
poration of Germany into NATO structures. By 1963 the process of
building the Bundeswehr was finally completed. The play of numerous
factors had turned a process planned for three years into am eight-year
drama.
DEBATES WITHIN THE BUNDESWEHR ABOUT
ORGANIZATION AND DOCTRINE
THE BATTLE OVER INNERE FUEHRUNG
Klaus Naumann
One of the most interesting and unique aspects of the creation of the
Bundeswehr was the introduction of a new philosophy of military
leadership and soldierly behavior. Innere Fuehrung, the name of the
new concept, is one of those German terms that encompasses a broad
spectrum of ideas and is exceptionally hard to render into English.
Indeed, even the Germans have considerable trouble in discerning the
clear meaning and intent of the term. Literally translated, the term
means inner leadership. However, this only captures part of the
meaning. One proposed translation is code of military service. This
expression captures some of the philosophy of Innere Fuehrung, but
not all, because it makes it sound like an externally imposed code.
Another proposed term, internal moral compass, comes a bit closer
but still fails to capture the full meaning of Innere Fuehrung. There-
fore, throughout this chapter, the author uses the term Innere Fue-
hrung in the expectation that the reader will glean an understanding
of the concept from the context of the discussion.
The battle over the concept and policy to make Innere Fuehrung
part of the official culture of the Bundeswehr was not a single grand
campaign ending in a decisive victory. Instead, it might best be
described as a series of skirmishes that neither side of the debate clearly
won. Thus, it is no surprise that the controversy lasted from the foun-
dation years of the Bundeswehr into the 1970s. The battle over Innere
Fuehrung was a product of the very particular aspects of the German
military culture. At the center of the debate was the issue of which
organizational principles and philosophy would guide the inner cul-
ture of the new military forces of the Federal Republic. These were
not marginal issues, as they led to numerous other questions that
involved West German society, the government, the military, and the
Allied Powers.
In the 1950s and 1960s, when one heard about Innere Fuehrung
being discussed, the public debate was always centered on the funda-
mental issue: What should the relationship among the military, the
206 klaus naumann
government, and the society ideally look like? The keys to unlocking
the problem were control and integration. The new Wehrmacht,
as the public commonly described the military until the introduction
of the term Bundeswehr in 1955, should no longer be a state within a
state like the Reichswehr had been in the days of the Weimar Republic.
The officially nonpolitical stance of the Reichswehr had, in reality,
worked to the advantage of political movements hostile to the republic.
There was consensus that the Bundeswehr needed to avoid the authori-
tarian training practices of the Wehrmacht, which had produced an
ethic of absolute obedience to superiors and a willingness of the mili-
tary leadership to support the National Socialist regime without ques-
tion. Yet even on these fundamental issues of military ethics there were
voices in the post-war society that took a different position.
The disappointment and bitterness resulting from the defeat of
1945, especially for those who had worn the field grey uniform, was
not directed primarily towards the Wehrmacht itself; for many, that
institution stood for the unbroken military potential of the German
nation. Instead, responsibility for the defeat, so eloquently described
by Field Marshal von Manstein as Lost Victories, war crimes, and
destruction of much of Germany was placed primarily upon the
National Socialist regime and its Fhrer. From this understanding, a
thorough de-nazification of the heirs of the Wehrmacht was desirable,
although this also came into conflict with the war-crimes trials that
were carried out by the Allied Powers not only against the National
Socialist leadership but also against representatives of the conservative
elite and senior officers of the Wehrmacht. As a first consideration, the
occupation governments that the four Allied powers created to govern
Germany forbade any development of military organizations as well as
any revival of the German Wehrmacht.
The Allies themselves had differing opinions about the military
effectiveness of the Wehrmacht and its organizational and operational
doctrines. Even as the Allies insisted that the tradition of Prussian-
German militarism be suppressed, they also expressed their admira-
tion for the combat effectiveness of the German Wehrmacht. It was
also important that the former Wehrmacht officers were the only group
that could potentially offer the Western Powers considerable experi-
ence about fighting the Soviet Union, an experience that became more
important as the Cold War between the eastern and western blocks
deepened. The Germans, for their part, understood the conflicting
views that the Allies had of the Wehrmacht, offering a series of
the battle over innere fuehrung 207
sometime conflicting messages and positions and political proposals to

address the questions of what core principles ought to guide the armed
forces of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG).
One of the primary points of conflict was the attempt to understand
the significance of the revolution in military affairs that had been initi-
ated by the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
August 1945 and how the further development of the atom and hydro-
gen bombs in the Soviet Union would affect international security
relations. At one level, the atom bomb was seen as simply another and
more deadly form of artillery. Yet at the same time, many understood
that the existence of atomic weapons had dramatically altered the pub-
lics conception of war and of the role of the soldier.
The disputes about Innere Fuehrung included a whole series of
contradictory expectations and experiences, convictions, and visions.
It is all these contradictory factors that make the debate so difficult to
analyzeand difficult to expressas one tries to grasp the process of
creating the Bundeswehr. In reviewing the issues of the debate there
are four core problems to consider. I will examine each in turn.
1. What role did the Allies playforemost among them the Ameri-
cansin the formulation of Inner Fuehrung? Was the new com-
mand and organizational philosophy a foreign importor did
they originate from a particular German historical tradition?
Explaining these questions is useful not only in understanding
the dispute at the time but also in understanding the interpreta-
tions of this made by West Germanys alliance partners.
2. What was the significance of tradition and history of the Weh-
rmacht in the foundation of the Bundeswehr? Were the new
armed forces to inherit and carry forward an unbroken tradition,
or did the founders operate from the conviction that they were
creating something new? Explaining this issue is important
because understanding the relationship between continuity and
the break with the past have become central themes in German
social history as well as in German military history.
3. What do the terms control and integration mean for the inter-
nal understanding of the Bundeswehrs roles and missions?
How do the military, societal, and political structures relate
to each other? And how does the major theme of German mili-
tary reformthe citizen in uniformcolor these relationships?
If one looks at these problems and conflicts with the intent of
208 klaus naumann
developing some themes, one has the distinct impression from

the contemporary sources that these questions were central to
understanding the internal military relationships as well as the
civil/military relationships.
4. Did Innere Fuehrung truly correspond to what we today refer
to as a revolution in military affairs? Were the Bundeswehrs
reforms essentially an attempt to develop concepts that would
answer the social and internal German questions of the time? Or
did the reforms also orient their actions towards the requirements
of nuclear warfare and the strategic concept of deterrence? At this
level one sees Innere Fuehrung as one of the fundamental issues
of how concepts of conflict and the military related to the nuclear
threat that faced central Europe.
The WestGodfather of Innere Fuehrung?
The initiative of the Western Powers in creating new West German

armed forces found its origin in the outbreak of the Korean War in
1950. At a conference of the major western foreign ministers in New
York in September 1950, the governments decided in confidence that
the rearmament of Germany was necessary. Officially the Allied occu-
pation powers held to the course of demilitarizing Germany. By this
policy the Western Powers, primarily the United States, were placed in
a tough situation. On one hand they were obligated to carry out the
strict policies of the Allied Control Commission (ACC), which forbade
the existence of any German military organization. On the other hand,
the Western Powers had preserved the German war experience by
employing an elite group of former German officers to record this
experience. Finally the Western Powers accepted, or at least tolerated,
the first steps taken by the German Federal government towards plan-
ning for a German contribution to the defense of the West. During this
period the American effort to learn from the German military experts
had important consequences. From 1945 onwards, the U.S. Army
European Theater Historical Division (German Section) employed
hundreds of former Wehrmacht officers up to the rank of field marshal
to carry out studies on the German war experience. As the Cold War
grew progressively colder, it became more important to understand
the German operational experience of fighting the Soviets. Thus the
former German officers provided an indirect contribution to the defense
of the West. But even more important was the symbolic message of this
quiet cooperation.
Even as the official war crimes trials were being carried out, the
former Wehrmacht officers working with the Allies were winning a
high reputation. Raising the reputation of the Wehrmacht was certainly
in the interest of German politiciansfirst among them Chancellor
Konrad Adenauer, even though he had considerable mistrust of the
old Wehrmacht crowd. To avoid their influence he sought the assist-
ance of the former enemy. First of all, the Germans could count on the
help of the United States. The later defense minister Theodor Blank
went so far as to publically assure the Americans that the traditional
type of Prussian Wehrmacht would not be reborn. The future German
armed forces will, instead, be patterned after the more flexible American
model.1 But reality was something else. For example, from the German
viewpoint everything was seen differently. As the Germans looked for
assistance to build a new armed forces, they also looked for advice
about how a nation could build an Army under Democracy. American
assistance in this field came through the Military Assistance Advisory
Group (MAAG), which provided practical advice (training with new
weapons etc.); conceptual help in developing a military system using
the Innere Fuehrung doctrine was of far less importance. An American
reply to German questions noted that, The essential goal of the train-
ing program for the army of a democratic nation is not fundamentally
different from the training program of any other nationit is victory
in battle. Later requests for assistance on this issue also went largely
unheeded. In 1954 the Pentagon promoted several studies about the
democratic question in the armed forces. The noted sociologist
Morris Janowitz was hired to develop recommendations for exchanges
on this issue, likely in the framework of the MAAG. But nothing
concrete came of this.2
Diplomatic considerations were not the only concerns. The American
High Commissioner was ready to intervene in German politics
especially when it concerned rearmament issues. He recommended
that participants in the military resistance (July 20 plot) against Hitler
be accepted into the proposed new armed forces and that former offic-
ers of the Waffen SS not be considered for positions in the new armed
forces. An even more important act affecting the American security
interests was played out in the debate over the military culture of the
1
Newsweek, 12 July 1954.
2
Andrew Birtle, Rearming the Phoenix: U.S. Military Assistance for the Federal
Republic of Germany, 19501960 (New York and London: Garland, 1991), 280, 310,
n. 147.
210 klaus naumann
two nations. Janowitz warned the Pentagon in his study that there is
no reason to believe that merely issuing arms to Germany will be
enough to guarantee the U.S. strategic goals. However, this opinion
still did not result in America becoming involved in the internal organ-
izational issues surrounding the establishment of the Bundeswehr.3
Aside from some special issues, the high commissioners limited
their control to work with the framework provided by the German
constitution of 1949 and the military laws passed between 1954 and
1956. The Allies, as the victorious powers of the war, still maintained
specific military controls over the Federal Republic, which included
enforcing the ban on the production of atomic, biological, and chemical
weapons. American policy was less concerned about whether the pro-
posed German army would be democratic than about whether the
new force would attain the military efficiency of the earlier Wehrmacht.
There were doubts about the new style of leadership and what the dem-
ocratic ideals of the Bundeswehr founders might really mean. Samuel
Huntington concluded:
Now the proposal was to create a democratic army, an ideologically
motivated force embodying subjective rather than objective civilian con-
trol Inevitably they will foster the permanent embroilment of the
German military in politics and reduce the fighting effectiveness of the
new army Despite what Herr Blank had to say, a democratic state is
better defended by a professional force than by a democratic force.4
Politicization of the military and the likely limitation of its fighting
power as a result were the primary issues brought up by the American
critics who observed the creation of the Federal Republics armed
forces.
Finally, at the same time, there was a series of negotiations in Paris
concerning the creation of a European Defense Community (EDC).
Yet the Europeans could offer no better perspective on the German
experiment in reform. When the Germans presented their proposals to
the EDC, on issues such as the liberalization of military discipline laws,
they were met with skepticism and resistance from their European
partners. In fact, there was so much resistance to the German ideas
that when the EDC negotiations collapsed in 1954, the news was met
3
Ibid., 310, n. 148.
4
Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of
Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press,1957), 123.
with some sense of relief in Bonn. The Germans could now carry their
reform concepts forward on their own internal initiative. Still, the for-
eign reaction in the meantime was sobering. Neither the Americans
nor the western Europeans welcomed German recommendations for
the reform of the military order. Yet the reformers in Amt Blank, the
predecessor office of the Defense Ministry (sometimes also called The
Blank Office after its head, Theodor Blank), made Western resistance
to their concepts into a virtue. The former officers in Amt Blank saw
their reform efforts as a national endeavor grounded in national his-
tory, and they modeled themselves on the great Prussian reformers of
the Napoleonic era. They were attempting to take Germany through a
middle course and revive the civil-military reform program that had
begun during the Prussian/German War of liberation against the
French empire of Napoleon I and had eventually collapsed.
The Inheritance of the Wehrmacht and Innere Fuehrung
It is significant that the controversy around the term later known as

Innere Fuehrung emerged originally at the secret meeting of military
experts at the Himmerod Abbey in October 1950. There one had the
beginning of a conflict among the former Wehrmacht officers on how
they would understand their past relationship with the Wehrmacht.
The majority of officers at Himmerod wanted to retain many of the
old military customs that had made the military structure of the
Wehrmacht so effective; they wanted to make only moderate changes
in the German military traditions. Yet the man who is credited as the
inventor of Innere Fuehrung, former Major Count von Baudissin, was
also at Himmerod, and he pushed for a much more open discussion
that looked more to the future than to the past. In the conference report
he would point out that only without borrowing from the forms of the
old Wehrmacht we can get started. But exactly what he meant by this
was not clear to all in those early days of West German rearmament.
The dispute about the meaning of the Wehrmacht experience in the
context of Innere Fuehrung can be developed as three themes. First
were the representatives of a Christian-Humanist ideology of the West,
notable among them the military commentator Werner Picht. This
group wanted to portray Hitler, the Nazi regime, and Nazi criminal
behavior as something very separate from a clean Wehrmacht. They
started with the conviction that the soldierly life was a worthy and
212 klaus naumann
moral attainment and could be properly understood as a rejection of

National Socialism. In the comradeship of fellow soldiers one found a
rejection of the rootlessness of the modern world that believed in little
more than the superiority of technology. On the second theme the
younger military writers such as Adalbert Weinstein took a different
tack. In his 1950 work Army without Pathos, he depicted the Wehr-
macht as a model that might prove successful if reformed and modern-
ized and freed from the old conventions. Then one could have a truly
new Wehrmacht. The third theme involved a radical change in the
relationship with the past. The one who eventually went furthest in his
convictions and in rejecting the inheritance of the Wehrmacht was
Count Baudissin, who held senior positions in Amt Blank and later in
the defense ministry; he was the man with responsibility to develop
Innere Fuehrung. The view of most of the old officer corps towards the
establishment of a new Wehrmacht can be largely summed up as basi-
cally nothing new. But for others, like Baudissin, the model of the
Bundeswehr could be best found in the military resistance to Hitler.
The Wehrmacht, as such, could not be a proper foundation for a new
military tradition. This was a view that was maintained through a long
intellectual struggle and would become a Bundeswehr tradition that
was fulfilled only in the 1980s and 1990s.
The ideal of the new soldierone that Baudissin would develop dur-
ing the foundation phase of the Bundeswehrwas one that had little to
do with the Wehrmacht soldier. This lesson was one that old soldiers
had great difficulty in accepting. Many former officers had set up the
theoretical ideal of the apolitical soldier as a means of distancing
themselves from Germanys responsibility for having conducted a war
of aggression, war crimes, and other criminal acts. But as a reformer,
Baudissin proposed a new ideal, that of the politically conscious and
engaged citizen in uniform. It could easily have been taken as an
affront against old comrades, or as a simplistic means of politicizing
the militaryas the American scholar Samuel Huntington argued. Yet
Baudissins fundamental conception was easy to understand. It was a
position grounded in the Kantian-Protestant understanding of freedom
and was not to be confused with volunteerism or party membership; it
was a personal value established in education, acceptance of responsi-
bility, and an interest in furthering the common good.
In his statement made in the Handbook of Innere Fuehrung (1957),
the first official document of the new leadership curriculum of
the Bundeswehr, Baudissin provided readers with a brief overview of
his concept. He made it clear that the goal of the new leadership cur-
riculum was to develop the greatest fighting power for the armed
forces.5 But what exactly did that mean in terms of a questionable mili-
tary tradition, a parliamentary democracy, a modern pluralistic soci-
ety, and the confrontation with the forces of a totalitarian block?
Baudissin explained the fundamental unity of the person of soldier
and citizenwho served as two parts under the concept of a full citizen.
Under this model, the two social aspects of the individual both found
their place and their role. With his usual optimistic approach, which he
expressed as democracy as a way of life, Baudissin differentiated him-
self from the contemporary cultural critics of the 1950s who argued
that the process of social modernization was actually leading to crisis
and downfall. During this time the military reformer promoted the
progressive aspects of the newly consolidated postwar society. These
observations led Baudissin to break out of the traditional boundaries
in understanding German military historynamely, he proposed that
the fundamental unity of modernity, democracy, and the military was
possible and even advantageous. From this conviction he came to
understand that the concepts of integration and congruence would
have to serve as fundamental principles of Innere Fuehrung. The sol-
dier would stand as a member of a pluralistic society, grounded in the
rule of law, in spirit, and in reality. Under the new concept, the time of
the army as a state within a state was over. No longer would a soldier
forfeit his rights as a citizen, and military training would no longer be
characterized by the drill fields where corpse like obedience and
martinet leadership were the order of the day. Against this model, the
reformers set out their own model of the responsible citizen who
accepted a willing discipline and was led by a functioning hierarchy
that followed clear lines of behavior that was codified in law. All this
stemmed from a healthy work climate that would be equally at home
in an industrial concern or in the barracks.
Critics had two views of the matter. Some suggested that Baudissin
wanted to institute radical changeswhich they characterized as
a sloppy and soft training program. Others maintained that the prin-
ciples of Innere Fuehrung had always been present as essential
principles of the Wehrmacht and Reichswehr and needed no dramatic
5
Bundesministerium frVerteidigung, Handbuch Innere Fhrung. Hilfen zur
Klrung der Begriffe (Bonn: Bundesministerium frVerteidigung, 1957), 15.
214 klaus naumann
new restatement. This latter group acknowledged that the general

approach of the recommendations for reform were sound, but did not
want Innere Fuehrung to be adopted as a stopgap measure or employed
an attempt to bring the values of the business world into the military.
Still, its critics had pointed out a sensitive point in the initiation of
Innere Fuehrung. Where Baudissin wanted to stand up a fully new
military with new values and a new ethic, some of his criticsamong
them some officers who had been his close associates earlier, such as
General Heinz Karst, who later became chief of army trainingsaw
the problem in a different light. For them the question was how to
maintain consistent professional ethics and build a practical tradition
for the force in changing political conditions. This question was even
more critical than the question about what kind of inheritance the
Bundeswehr would accept from the old Wehrmacht. Along with ques-
tions of guilt and responsibility there were the issues of honor and rec-
ognition. There was a sustained and bitter debate on these issues
concerning the Bundeswehrs relationship to the Wehrmacht, and even
today the debate lingers when the question of defining various military
norms and traditions is considered in view of values such as loyalty to
the constitution, which is one of the central ethics of the Bundeswehr.
The Citizen in UniformThe Key Figure of Innere Fuehrung
In the year 1953, well before the founding of the Bundeswehr, the term
Innere Fuehrung was coined in a decree issued by Amt Blank as it
laid out the mission of the incipient military staff. The decree acknowl-
edged that all of the studies on the subject of Innere Fuehrung had the
goal of developing and educating the modern soldier, and that the
modern soldier is a free individual, and that being a full citizen and a
dedicated soldier was completely consistent.6 With this decree the
major themes of Baudissins concept were given official acceptance. The
core issues were integration and compatibility, and the challenge was to
use these means to develop the true citizen soldier. Yet all of the
themes mentioned in the decree did not have the same value. The terms
individual and soldier were roughly equated to national citizen.
And thus began some of the interpretive problems. While some
6
Regelung Innere Fhrung, 10 Jan. 1953, Dienstelle Blank [Amt Blank]
(Bundesarchiv-Militrarchiv Freiburg, Doc. BW 9/411).
doubted the essential compatibility of the terms citizen and soldier

and this was the case for some conservatives as well as pacifistsothers
saw the ideal of the national citizen as illusionary. Could one really
bring a committed and educated citizen into the Bundeswehr as a
conscript? Or would the Bundeswehr have to turn the conscript into a
citizen? And if that were the realitythen wouldnt the Bundeswehr
again be the School of the nation, just as is was in Bismarcks time?
Baudissin had a very different view. It was clear to him that one did
not come into the Bundeswehr as a fully developed citizen. Yet it was
equally clear that the spiritual and moral requirements of serving in an
army under an immediate threat and under nuclear deterrence could
not be achieved without a strong conviction that the soldier was serv-
ing as a citizen. Thus for him, Innere Fuehrung was not the obscure
academic pursuit of a few specialists but was conceived as a program
for the average man. But this did not make the realization of such an
ambitious program much easier. Rather than becoming characterized
as an unworldly idealistic program, the intermediate goal in the foun-
dation phase of building the Bundeswehr was to address these issues in
a practical manner. In order to promulgate these new concepts and use
them to improve the training effort in the new armed forces, and to lay
the necessary foundations for the further development of the program,
the reformer and his colleagues had to reckon with some strong resist-
ance from Amt Blank. Thus the new organizational and leadership phi-
losophy was, for a time, consigned by such men to the fringes of the
Bundeswehrs efforts. One problem was that there were few in politics
who were really interested in the concrete problems of military reform.
Some saw the main value of Innere Fuehrung as a useful political
excuse to justify their anti-military attitudes. Others had the impression
that Innere Fuehrung was somehow not the real thing. In 1969 a con-
servative general argued that once West Germany was politically con-
solidated it was time to remove the mask of Innere Fuehrung from the
face of politics. This statement led to the retirement of this general
from service. Yet the question remained: just how seriously did people
take Innere Fuehrung?
The most important accomplishments of Baudissin in the short term
lay in seeing the ideals of Innere Fuehrung recognized and, in attaining
this recognition, laying the groundwork to institutionalize the new
leadership principles and concepts related to Innere Fuehrung through-
out the doctrine and regulations of the Bundeswehr. It was, so to speak,
a form of investment in the future, which began to pay profits in the
216 klaus naumann
early 1970s when another program of reform was introduced. The first
years of the Bundeswehr saw a series of core laws and policies enacted
that included: the Soldiers Law (1956), the establishment of a parlia-
mentary military oversight committee (1959), the creation of the
Advisory Office for Innere Fuehrung (1958), and the establishment of
a School for Innere Fuehrung (1956). From these different laws and
institutions, more could be learned about Innere Fuehrung than from
the various interpretations and definitions of the concept. The accom-
plishments of these laws and institutions were significant. Thanks to
the Soldiers Law, for the first time in German historyand not just the
first time in a German democracythe rights and duties of a soldier
were clearly established. The core concept of the law was the assertion
that a soldier retained his fundamental rights of citizenship even when
he is performing his military service, and any limitations placed upon
his rights have to be clearly specified by law or directive (Soldiers Law
para. 6). Another core concept was the policy concerning the limits of
soldierly obedience. Any order that damaged fundamental human
rights or could not be viewed as having a military purpose was con-
sidered beyond the proper boundaries of military obedience (para. 11).
This core concept of Innere Fuehrung was expressed in the mission
statement of the parliamentary committee that had oversight responsi-
bility over Innere Fuehrung and violations of the basic rights of sol-
diers or against the requirements established by the Innere Fuehrung
program (Law of the Defense Committee, para. 1). A yearly report to
parliament on these issues was mandated. With the establishment of
this office, the Bundestag established a form of early warning system
to serve as an aid in overseeing the internal mood and conditions of the
Bundeswehr. Complementing the work of the parliamentary commit-
tee was the establishment of the office of Advisor for Innere Fuehrung
in which persons in public lifepoliticians, scientists, and church
leaderscould have a venue to study and comment on the standard
practices of the Bundeswehr and bring all these issues to the attention
of the public if it were deemed necessary. In order to realize the theory
of Innere Fuehrung in the daily life of the armed forces, the Bundeswehr
established the School of Innere Fuehrung, today the Center for Innere
Fuehrung in Koblenz. In this school there were courses for both officer
and NCO troop leaders in which men were trained in the basic theory
of the new leadership and organizational philosophy.
The most common critique of Innere Fuehrung was that it was
unclear and impracticalarguments that were made for decades.
But one finds little to support such criticisms in the education program
of the Bundeswehr. Nonetheless, the introduction of the Innere Fuehrung
training program for leaders initiated an internal conflict that would
last a long time. The causes of the conflict were not to be found merely
in common prejudice or adherence to old habits. Rather, other
issues were at play. One of the real causes of the ensuing friction was
the relatively low level of education of some of the officers taken into
the Bundeswehr from the ranks of former front-line officers of the
Wehrmacht. One should not underestimate the influence of a long and
hard war that left its imprint on these old soldiers. Another issue that
affected the Bundeswehr and its perceptions of Innere Fuehrung
was the overly rash tempo of the training program (build the force at
any cost!), which made for many problems and reminded many old
soldiers of the experience of the Wehrmachts overly-rapid expansion
of the force in the 1930s. The evaluation of the Bundeswehrs trainees
carried out by the School for Innere Fuehrung in the late 1950s and the
start of the 1960s spoke precisely about some of the difficult problems
in introducing these new concepts into the military. Innere Fuehrung
was broadly mistrusted by many of the old soldiers as a concept that
undermined the prized traditions of the past and even as a theory that
tended to renounce the essence of the soldierly life. The former Wehr-
macht officers could only be brought into the new cooperative manner
of leadership with considerable effort. National Socialist ideas had
been embedded deep in a generation of German soldiers, and these
concepts put more worth in feeling and faith than thinking and
discussingthe latter actions being tied to the values expressed in
Innere Fuehrung. Even into the late 1960s one could find many inside
the Bundeswehr who were skeptical about the value of democracy.
So it came as no surprise that Innere Fuehrung was not seen as a
great success towards the close of the Bundeswehrs build-up phase in
the late 1960s. In one sense, it was the last battle of the war generation
against the new spirit of the Bundeswehr. In June 1969 a memo written
by the Army Inspector Albert Schnez paid tribute to Innere Fuehrung,
but the tribute was, in fact, a complete misunderstanding of the origi-
nal concept. In his memo the inspector argued that the concept of sol-
diering included the warrior ethic, that service as a soldier was an
exceptional profession in comparison to other professions. The inspec-
tor regretted the loss of tradition and the lack of battle drills. He
argued for pride in ones service branch and in ones unit. The inspector
turned the concept of political responsibility on its head as he argued
218 klaus naumann
that only through a reform of the political body could the goals of the
Bundeswehr be met and the fighting power of the force enhanced. The
inspectors memo ended with a fanfare. The mission of the political
leadership must be to provide the army with what it requires.7 It was
no surprise that in 1969 the now-retired Baudissin believed that his
attempt at reform had largely failed.
Innere Fuehrung and the Nuclear Revolution in Military Affairs
If one takes the institutional, legal, and educational reforms of the

Bundeswehrs founding period as a whole, it turns out that Baudissins
pessimistic assessment of the late 1960s was unfounded. But the ques-
tion remains whether Baudissins highest goaldeveloping first rate
soldiers and achieving maximum fighting power (Baudissins memo
of 1953)had actually been reached. In the circles of the old soldiers
and many of their new colleagues, the whole reform movement was
watched with considerable skepticism. But the question also remained
as to whether they were prepared for the new demandsa defense of
the nation and Western alliance based on nuclear weapons. The con-
cept of Innere Fuehrung pushed the boundaries towards new perspec-
tives and finally came full circle after 1990, when the Bundeswehr had
to evolve into a force oriented towards foreign intervention missions.
In the early years of the Bundeswehr, the force was seriously shaken
by some major training scandals. During the 1962 NATO maneuvers,
observers issued the damning judgment that the army demonstrated
only limited operational capability. But such breakdowns did not
stop the new leadership concept. In fact, the failures in the training
programsome of which resulted in soldier deathswere blamed on
the application of the old training methods of the Wehrmacht. Indeed,
a much more serious concern was the fighting power of the new forces.
The cause of the deficiencies did not lie in the structural problems of
the Bundeswehr, which at one time included a too-rapid training
tempo. Instead, the problem of fighting power had its origin in some
of the fundamental security-policy dilemmas of the Federal Republic.
7
Gedanken zur Verbesserung der Inneren Ordnung des Heeres (known as the
Schnez-Study), June 1969, cited in Klaus Hessler, ed., Militr, Gehorsam, Meinung.
Dokumente zur Diskussion in der Bundeswehr (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1971),
5092, here 9091.
If the deterrence strategy failed, then the Federal Republic would be

turned into a nuclear theater of war, with the destruction of the whole
country as a likely result. The national defense stood in a paradox. The
deterrence capabilities of the forces had to remain high because the
price of failure was too much to pay.
One of the strongest concepts of Innere Fuehrung was that it allowed
itself to be adapted to new situations. In the 1950s the military reform-
ers insisted that the only true goal and focus for the forces was to pro-
duce the highest fighting power. The popular paradoxical saying
went: We will be able to fightso that we dont have to fight. Yet the
military planners were not so naive as to believe that, if deterrence
failed, the defense mission of the army was outdated. In fact, the new
strategic requirements acted in parallel with the new organizational
and leadership philosophy as the discussion within the alliance revolved
around changing the strategy to flexible response. Behind the crisis
and conflict plans lay the goal of restoring the previous status quo
namely the restoration of security, territorial integrity, and establishing
peace. And all this without risking the destruction of ones own land.
Thus, the fighting power and readiness goals of the Bundeswehr were
not always oriented to the same goals as laid out by the American
advisors in the early 1950s, such as victory in war. Concepts such
as victory decisive battles or battle of annihilation were seen as
doubtful formulas in the modern context of conventional/nuclear war-
fare. The reformer Baudissin made the dramatic declaration: No more
victory! He explained that victory in the classical sense is no longer
possible. Its now all about not losing.8 In this statement he meant that
the best means of resolving a conflict favorably was to apply military
force in stages, and in proportion to the enemy actions, so that the two
sides could establish conditions for peace negotiations. The point of
this strategic thinking was to imply the basic principles of the new
leadership teaching and make them practical on the battlefield.
Baudissin noted, We must avoid as much as possible the dangerous
trait of automatic thinking characteristic of the soldier and instead
insist that the primacy of politics serve as a guiding principleeven
down to the tactical level.9 This simply meant that the political
8
Count Wolf von Baudissin, Nie wieder Sieg: Programmatische Schriften 19511981
(Munich: Piper, 1982), 100.
9
Ibid., 105.
220 klaus naumann
soldier remained a full and responsible citizen even on the battlefield.

The soldier had to know what he was fighting for and the limits of mili-
tary duty, as well as the mission to establish a just peace at the end of a
conflict. Hard training, the limits of obedience, and the relevance of
the military hierarchy were all to be laid out so that the overarching
goals were achieved.
One could call this approach pure idealism, and the critics of
Innere Fuehrung did precisely that. But equally subject to a criticism
was the military planning for a nuclear defense strategy that would
leave Germany a total ruin in case of war. Indeed, there was in this
comparison of concepts a blind spot in the training program. The goal
of integration was pursued so enthusiastically that there was scarcely
room to teach the particular conditions of military culture and prac-
tice. Thus the desire for peace that lay behind the commitment to the
national defense was emphasized so stronglyas in the soldier for
peace sloganthat the realities of death and killing, the suffering of
wounded soldiers and prisoners, were hardly mentioned under
Baudissins formula. There was too little open discussion among the
public or in the military that tied training to the existential problems of
going to war and using the military and violent means to defend soci-
ety. So the military profession could be described as just another job,
and it would be considered that way by a great part of the public.
In fact, this was one of the strongest arguments made by the conserva-
tive critics of the Innere Fuehrung.
Summary of the Debate on Innere Fuehrung
Under the concept of Innere Fuehrung and the citizen in uniform,

the military policy of the Federal Republic made significant strides in
becoming an integral part of the western Alliance. The meaning of the
concept was, and remains, in dispute. But it always retained its rele-
vance and vitality. It was exactly these characteristics that a forward-
thinking and imaginative thinker like Baudissin wanted to pass on to
the new armed forces of Germany. As a leadership and organizational
philosophy it caused considerable friction and tension between appear-
ance and reality. Yet the cognitive dissonance provoked a healthy debate
that, in the end, made a positive contribution to the Bundeswehr.
THE SERVICE STAFFS STRUGGLE OVER STRUCTURE.
THE BUNDESWEHRS INTERNAL DEBATES ON ADOPTING
NATO DOCTRINE 19501963
Martin Rink
Integration in the Alliance/Integrated Military ServicesReally

the Trademark of the Bundeswehr?
Few other NATO armed forces in the Cold War were as strongly com-
mitted to the concept of integration, as was the Bundeswehr. Indeed,
the creation of new West German armed forces was made possible only
under the condition that they be, from the very first, fully integrated
into the Western alliance.1 Accordingly, the Bundeswehrs military
organization, as well as the mindset of its military commanders, should
have evolved into a mirror image of NATOs strategy.
It is important to note that in the very beginning of the discussion
about a West German military contribution, its prospective founders
laid out the integration principle in its founding document. The prin-
ciple was established that the rebirth of a new German Wehrmacht
(a term which at that time referred to armed forces in general) could
only be accomplished if carried out as a contingent force of the
European/Atlantic defense effort.2 This principle, laid out at the secret
1
For a good overview, see Rdiger Wenzke und Irmgard Zndorf [with Eberhard
Birk], Ein Eiserner Vorhang ist niedergegangen. Militrgeschichte im Kalten Krieg 1945
1968/70 in Grundkurs deutsche Militrgeschichte, vol. 3: Die Zeit nach 1945. Armeen im
Wandel, ed. Volker Neugebauer (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2008), 1149, see 3865, 9096.
See also Beatrice Heuser, Die Strategie der NATO whrend des Kalten Krieges, in
Entschieden fr Frieden. 50 Jahre Bundeswehr, ed. Klaus-Jrgen Bremm, Hans-Hubertus
Mack, and Martin Rink (Berlin: Rombach 2005), 5162, see 5356, esp. 53; Bruno
Tho, NATO-Strategie und nationale Verteidigungsplanung. Planung und Aufbau der
Bundeswehr unter den Bedingungen einer massiven atomaren Vergeltungsstrategie,
Sicherheitspolitik und Streitkrfte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 1 (Munich:
Oldenbourg, 2005), 4f.
2
Hans Speidel, Die Sicherheit Europas und Ergnzung zu den Bemerkungen fr
ein Gesprch ber die Sicherheit Europas [1947], in Hans Speidel, Aus unserer Zei:
Erinnerungent (Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Vienna: Propylen, 1977), 45465, see
467f. Also cited in Hans-Jrgen Rautenberg and Norbert Wiggershaus, Die Himmeroder
Denkschrift vom Oktober 1950. Polititische und militrische berlegungen fr einen
Beitrag der Bundesrepublik Deutschland zur westeuropischen Verteidigung, 2nd ed.
(Karlsruhe: Braun, 1985), 37.
222 martin rink
Himmerod Conference in October 1950, was repeated in the primary

manuals and regulations of the Bundeswehr in following years. Twelve
years after Himmerod, the Bundeswehr armys command doctrine
would declare, Only with the unified force of all the NATO states can
a defense be successful.3 This principle was applied in general. It was
maintained up to the end of the Cold War as Bundeswehr official pol-
icy, for instance in the Bundeswehrs White Books that were regularly
published and which provided guidance concerning national policy
and the mission and structure of the Bundeswehr.4 Another theme
along these lines was also repeated from the very beginning: A mean-
ingful cooperation of all branches of the armed forces is required
for success in waging war. No single branch of the armed forces can,
by itself, win victory.5 But how compatible was this principle of joint
forces integration with the other one of close integration into the
alliance?
All this thinking about the new army stood in clear contradiction to
the Wehrmachts actual experience of past warfare. Yet these ideas
were, ironically, put into place by former Wehrmacht officersthough,
of course, it could have hardly been otherwise. Indeed, the spirit of
the Himmerod Conference served to turn around some of the most
noteworthy tendencies of the Prussian/German military traditions of
the last two centuries. The concept of isolating the military aspects of
war from national policy as well as from the broader societyand the
isolation of the branches of the military from each otherwas some-
thing that the Bundeswehr intended to push into the past. According
to Ulrich de Maizire, one of the founding fathers of the Bundeswehr
and its later military chief, the new ideal for the new army would be for
each part to understand the vision and purpose of the whole.6 He set
3
Army Field Manual Heeresdienstvorschrift HDV 100/1 Truppenfhrung, October
1962, 3.
4
See the following, published by Presse-und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung
in Bonn: Weibuch 1970 Zur Sicherheit der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und zur Lage
der Bundeswehr (1970), 3740; Weibuch 1971/72 Zur Sicherheit der Bundesrepublik
Deutschland und zur Entwicklung der Bundeswehr (1971), 2427; Weibuch 1973/74.
Zur Sicherheit der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und zur Entwicklung der Bundeswehr
(1974), 3, 1821; Weibuch 1975/76. Zur Sicherheit der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
und zur Entwicklung der Bundeswehr (1976), 7f., 51f.; Weibuch 1983. Zur Sicherheit
der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (1983), 122, 126; Weibuch 1985. Zur Lage und
Entwicklung der Bundeswehr (1985), 99f., 11215.
5
HDV 100/1 (above, note 3), 14.
6
The later General Inspector of the Bundeswehr, Ulrich de Maizire (196672)
was also a member of Amt Blank from 1952. See Ulrich de Maizire, Was war neu
the service staffs struggle over structure 223
out four determinations as the fundamental principles for the military

and political requirements for the new West German armed forces.
First, the armed forces would be responsible only to the parliamentary
government. Second, Germany would have armed forces based on com-
pulsory military service and a military that would be closely integrated
into the broader society. Third, the German military would be an alli-
ance force, closely bound to Western partners. Fourth, the planners
wanted fully unified armed forces. This was called a Wehrmacht
solutionin order to avoid separate army, air force, or navy solutions.
In February 1956, when the new-born armed forces had been officially
instituted, planners began referring to the Bundeswehr solution.7
The experience of the Second World War was a collective experi-
ence so strong that Germans simply called it the war. Thus, though
Germanys new allies had a different strategic/political experience, the
military thinking of the first generation at the helm of the Bundeswehr
often referred back to their war experience. However, the manner in
which German military leaders remained faithful to their former oper-
ational inheritance, or adapted themselves to the new integrated strat-
egy, differed significantly. In the Bundeswehrs first decade this led
to serious conflicts among its branches, the most notable concerning
different operational visions of the army and the air force. This was
also due to legal restrictions placed upon the military organization
and national policy: The Potsdam Agreement prohibited any re-
establishment of a new German General Staff. Thus, until 1970 (and in
a way, until a new organizational outline in 2005), no command and
control structure in the West German armed forces could claim to
define an overarching joint services doctrine. Instead, besides the
Armed Forces Staff (Fhrungsstab der Bundeswehr, later on
Fhrungsstab der Streitkrfte), there existed Army Staff (Fhrungsstab
des Heeres), Air Force Staff (Fhrungsstab der Luftwaffe) and Navy
Staff (Fhrungsstab der Marine)each under their respective
an der Bundeswehr? Betrachtungen eines Zeitzeugen, in Entschieden fr Frieden

(above, note 1), 1116. Similarly another General Inspector of the Bundeswehr from
(19861991): Dieter Wellershoff, Das Ganze vor den Teilen sehen. Zur inneren und
ueren Integration unserer Bundeswehr in ihrer fnfzigjhrigen Geschichte, in Ent-
schieden fr Frieden (above, note 1), 1938.
7
Hans-Jrgen Rautenberg, Streitkrfte und Spitzengliederungzum Verhltnis
von ziviler und bewaffneter Macht bis 1990, in Entschieden fr Frieden (above, note 1),
10722, see 11214; Rautenberg/Wiggershaus, Die Himmeroder Denkschrift (above,
note 2), 40.
224 martin rink
Inspectors with a very particular vision of the mission and doctrine

of its service. These staffs were at first only loosely coordinated by the
Chief of Federal Armed Forces Staff (Generalinspekteur der
Bundeswehr) in the Military Command and Control Committee
(Militrischer Fhrungsrat).8 Given his lack of formal authority, Adolf
Heusinger, the first Bundeswehrs first Inspector, could only rely on his
personal authority, which was indeed considerable. However, in the
context of the Alliances nuclearization of strategy and tactics in the
mid-1950s, fundamental debates emerged concerning the Federal
Armed Forces overall concept. They reached their apogee in the end of
that decade. Thus, the service staffs struggle over structure reflected
different military world-views.
Strategy defines structure, system, organization, and equipment of
a military forceall of which is influenced by the national military
tradition. Such traditions play out at the tactical, operational, strate-
gic, and military/political levels.9 From the start, the Bundeswehr had
to consider NATOs overall strategy as it developed the organization of
the military services and of the large military units. For this reason,
in the middle of the buildup of 195859, the German Federal Army
radically altered its fundamental military organization. Then, from
the early 1960s on, it would again undergo continual organizational
restructuring. The air force also developed very differently from the
original force planning directives. Until 1956, the air force was dwarfed
by the organization plans, which were centered entirely on the ground
forces. Then the air force faced major changes concerning its role and
equipment. In the winter of 1956/57 the decision was made to pur-
chase the F-104G Starfighter as a fighter bomber that could carry out
nuclear strike missions. This decision reflected fundamental changes
of the air forces operational thinking. Accordingly, the branch assumed
a technically focused appearance. Yet only ten years later, the air force
again had to change this somewhat single-minded focus and broaden
its operational concept. Given these very different directions that
8
Hans-Jrgen Rautenberg, Streitkrfte und Spitzengliederungzum Verhltnis
von ziviler und bewaffneter Macht bis 1990, in Entschieden fr Frieden (above, note 1),
10722, see 11216.
9
On the military organization and related issues, see Martin Rink, Strukturen
brausen um die Wette. Zur Organisation des deutschen Heeres. In Helmut R. Hammerich,
Dieter H. Kollmer, Martin Rink, Michael Poppe, and Rudolf J. Schlaffer, Das Heer 1950
bis 1970. Konzeption, Organisation, Aufstellung, Sicherheitspolitik und Streitkrfte der
Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 3 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006), 353483, see 35966.
developments had taken, it is no wonder that almost ten years after the
Himmerod Conference, the Bundeswehr senior staff could still not
speak of a truly integrated defense concept that effectively united all
the branches of the Bundeswehr.
In an organization such as the Bundeswehr there were divergent
views concerning NATO strategywhich was anyway in flux at the
timeand the most practical means to approach it. In the late 1950s,
much of the discussion was dependent upon the general preference as
to whether the priority ought to go to conventional or nuclear forces
and which service branches would play the primary role in the defense
of central Europe. The tough question was about the direction that
the West German forces should follow in this regard. Another factor
of the equation was the limited understanding that the top leadership
of the new Bundeswehr had of the NATO strategy at this point.10 In
their role as former Wehrmacht officers and later participants in the
founding of the Bundeswehr from 1950 to 1955, the future senior offic-
ers of the new West German armed forces had not played any role in
the formulation of NATO strategy by the time the Federal Republic of
Germany became an active member of the alliance. Despite their pre-
vious exclusion, German officers were soon placed in NATOs top lead-
ership ranks. In April 1957 Hans Speidel was promoted to Command
of Allied Land Forces Central Europe (COMLANDCENT).
The papers of the military planning groups in Bonn in this period
reveal that all the military planners wanted to see the Bundeswehr
develop as an integrated force. Yet the command staffs of the three
services held very different visions of how the Bundeswehr could reach
this goal. In any case, the goal of an integrated Bundeswehr was not as
easily reached as had been assumed at the beginning of the process.
In fact, there were two competing organizational concepts at work.
One approach was to rely primarily upon one service as Germanys
contribution to European defense. This was the position of the initial
planners at the Himmerod Conference and remained the fundamental
position of the representatives of the German Army for a long time.
Another approach was to develop a system of close cooperation with
the western Alliance. This was the preference of the Luftwaffe staff, and
it was based on the requirements for NATO air forces to have compat-
ible technology and logistics as well as common procedures, training,
and tactics.
10
Tho, NATO-Strategie (above, note 1), 375f.
226 martin rink
The conflicting concepts of war promoted by the army and the air
force reflected multiple dilemmas for West German defense planning.
One was that, in order to deter a possible aggressor, Germany would
have to participate in a strategy of nuclear deterrence. The second was
how to face the creation of a capable force that could win a conven-
tional war. But this led to a third dilemmahow could one successfully
defend Germany without seeing the country completely destroyed in
the process? These were the central issues that also concerned the
NATO staffs in the mid-1950s as they grappled with developing new
strategies. New conditions required new strategic plans at the time
Germany joined the alliance. A great deal of initial work had already
been donebut conditions changed more rapidly than the planners
could deal with.
In general, the question of the structure and form that the German
forces ought to take was an ongoing concern from the first rearmament
proposals in 1950 to the end of the era of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer
in 1963. Indeed, the structural debates about Germanys role in alliance
defense planning, as well as the strategic and tactical issues associated
with this, were central questions. It took until the 1960s to develop a
working synthesis, one that remained in force until 198990. In trying
to understand the first 12 years of the Bundeswehrs (pre) history it is
best to cut the period into two partswith the division right at the
mid-way point of October 1956, when Franz Josef Strauss took over
from Theodor Blank as Germanys defense minister. Strauss found that
his predecessor had left Bundeswehr planning in a state of crisis. In
fact, this worked somewhat to Germanys advantage, as the situation
gave Strauss the opportunity to rethink the Federal Republics position
and resolve some of the differences between earlier concepts and new
strategic thinking. The second half of the 1950s saw a series of disputes
over German strategy that was a feature of the Bundeswehr from this
time to the end of the Cold War.
The Experience of the War and the Himmerod Concepts
In the immediate period after the beginning of the occupation of

Germany, the four Allied Powers issued decrees stating that all actions
and preparations towards establishing German armed forces were
expressly forbidden. Yet, despite such regulations, there were circles of
former higher officers who discussed precisely such issuesand who
did so with the knowledge and tacit permission of the Western occupa-
tion powers. As early as 1947, retired Lieutenant General Hans Speidel
began discussions with a small group about making a German contri-
bution to the defense of the West. Such discussions were carried on
with former Lieutenant General Adolf Heusinger, who also carried out
studies under the cover of operational analysis for the Gehlen Orga-
nization. This organization was the cadre of the future West German
intelligence service that had been set up by the Americans with the
mission of analyzing the Soviet threat. The Gehlen Organization pro-
vided information and analysis to the CIA and, after the creation of the
Federal Republic of Germany in May 1949, also to its government.11
Speidel drafted out a commentary on three conditions for planning,
under the assumption that Germany would become formally allied
with the West. These conditions became the practical foundation for
planning, organizing, and building up the Bundeswehr.
First of all, a German Wehrmacht could only be established as a
contingent of a European/transatlantic defense effort. Second, Germany
should field division-sized units in such an effort. Third, the main bat-
tle tank had to be the primary weapon of the German force. With this
analysis, Speidel and Heusinger established a definitive blueprint for
the foundation and buildup of the Bundeswehrto be more precise: to
its army. Between 1957 and the early 1960s these two officers would
hold the Bundeswehrs top posts, and both reached positions in which
they could turn their ideas into reality. Both played a central role in
writing the Himmerod Memorandum, a document that was only made
possible by the agreement of the Allied Powers which, in turn, were
driven by the strategic requirements of the Cold War.
The shock of the Korean War, which broke out on 25 June 1950,
opened the way for discussions about a West German defense contri-
bution. From this opening, Federal Chancellor Adenauer authorized a
secret meeting of defense experts, which took place in October 1950 in
the Himmerod Abbey in the Eifel Hills. The memorandum that came
out of the meeting proposed for the first time an organizational frame-
11
On Heusingers study, see Georg Meyer, Adolf Heusinger: Dienst eines deutschen
Soldaten, 1915 bis 1964 (Hamburg, Berlin, Bonn: Mittler, 2001), 35477, esp. 372.
On organization Gehlen, see Dieter Krger, Reinhard Gehlen (19021979). Der
BND-Chef als Schattenmann der ra Adenauer, in Konspiration als Beruf. Deutsche
Geheimdienstchefs im Kalten Krieg, ed. Dieter Krger and Armin Wagner (Berlin:
Links, 2003), 20736, see 207f., 219f., 224.
228 martin rink
work for creating West German forces.12 The core force of the planned
German contingent would be 12 army divisions. The German experts
predicted the German and the Allied requirements and capabilities
with amazing accuracy, although this was true only with regard to the
army.13 The air and naval forces remained largely side issues. The latter
were seen as coastal defense forces which were to serve in the Baltic
and North Seas in order to defend the Schleswig-Holstein bridge-
head. The air force was to serve as an air defense force and as a tactical
support aviation force of the army. Yet, later on, from these minimal-
ist concepts the armys sister services would evolve, and both would
become major branches and play a much larger role in German defense
than anticipated. To even think about nuclear weapons for German jet-
propelled aircraft and missiles in 1950 was out of the question. Still,
there was one principle that could not be challenged: that the German
armed forces would be integrated into the Western alliance and that
they would serve only within a close partnership with the Allies.14
At the end of 1950 two political milestones were reached. On
24 October the so-called Pleven Plan was publically announced.
On 19 December the sixth NATO Council meeting approved the so-
called Brussels Agreement.15 This agreement stated that West
Germany would be closely integrated into the Western alliance system
and the Germans would be allowed to rearm. Per the Pleven Plan,
national contingents would be combined into operational contingents
with complete integration of personnel and equipment. It was a mili-
tary model that had never existed before. This meant that the forces
would be integrated at the lowest level possible. From the German side
this looked very much like using the Germans just as the Germans had
used their eastern European auxiliaries during the Second World War.16
To the Germans, this plan seemed to have been drafted in order to
ensure that the Germans would pose no serious military threatin
12
Rautenberg/Wiggershaus, Die Himmeroder Denkschrift (above, note 2), S. 41.
13
Kurt Fett, Die Grundlagen der militrischen Planungen, in Aspekte der deut-
schen Wiederbewaffnung bis 1955, ed. Militrgeschichtliches Forschungsamt [hereafter
MGFA], Militrgeschichte seit 1945, 1 (Boppard: Boldt, 1975), 169200, see 173.
14
Rautenberg/Wiggershaus, DieHimmeroder Denkschrift (above, note 2), 4548.
15
FRUS 1950 III, S. 53147, 54864, 586; Anfnge westdeutscher Sicherheitspolitik
19451956 [hereafter AWS], ed. MGFA, 4 vols (Munich: Oldenbourg, 198297),
2:60711, 64954 (Contribution Meier-Drnberg); 2:2729 (Contribution Klaus
A. Maier).
16
Rolf-Dieter Mller, An der Seite der Wehrmacht. Hitlers auslndische Helfer beim
Kreuzzug gegen den Bolschewismus 19411945 (Berlin: Links, 2007), 213215.
fact exactly what the French had in mind. Until the Pleven Plan was
officially abandoned on 30 August 1954, this concept stood in the
background of German defense planning. Still, the preferred approach
was to follow the Brussels Agreement, which, in contrast to the
European Defense Community (EDC) Concept, opted to organize
forces under the principle of including the largest possible troop units.
According to the Brussels agreement of December 1950, a ban on West
Germanys acquisition of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons pro-
tected against a possible German threat. The navy and the air force
were to be limited in size, and a further restriction was proposed to
forbid West Germanys possession of heavy armored units. This final
point was stronglyand eventually successfullyresisted by the
German negotiators.
In the first six years of Bundeswehr (pre)history, the focus on plan-
ning was the land force. Equality for the Germans meant modern units
organized into national army corps. Their force would be a tactical
support force and the navy would be relegated to coastal defense duties
under European/Atlantic Command.17 Chancellor Adenauer consid-
ered a West German national defense contribution under European/
Atlantic Command to be a political trade off as a step towards achiev-
ing national sovereignty for the Federal Republic. To further this goal,
Adenauer needed a military force to be built as quickly as possible. His
shadow defense minister, Theodor Blank, spoke of the largest possible
German investment that the Germans should offer to the Alliance as
a means to set the best possible negotiating conditions. The restrictions
on the equipment that Germany was allowed to produce also clearly
contradicted the Alliance policy of building the largest possible German
force.
By the start of 1951, Blank was able to report on successful talks with
the Allied high commissioners at their residence on the Petersberg
Hill above Bonn. These talks produced an agreement for new
German armed forces in the framework of an Atlantic army, with
Germany renouncing completely the possession of a strategic air
force. Heusinger noted that this was the first occasion in international
negotiations where support was expressed for a possible German con-
tribution of ten to 12 divisions.18 During the Petersberg negotiations
17
Rautenberg/Wiggershaus, DieHimmeroder Denkschrift (above, note 2), 37.
18
Notes on a discussion with General Hays, 05.01.1951, Bundesarchiv-Militrarchiv
Freiburg [hereafter BA/MA] Bw 9/2050, Bl. 3443.
230 martin rink
in January 1951, the question of size and employment of German

units was thoroughly discussed.19 In the discussion, Blank stressed the
experience of five and a half years of war. This experience lay in the
background of all German recommendations on the tactics and organ-
ization of a future defense force. However, it was an army-centered
standpoint.20
Given the German experience of war and the nature of the conven-
tional Soviet threat, the battle tank became the primary weapon of the
German armed forces. This clashed with some of the concepts of
the Allies, who initially preferred to employ the Germans as a mostly
light infantry defense force that would serve as a covering force for the
Iron Curtain line. In any case, the German desire to achieve a status of
international equality was behind the insistence that Germany field its
own homogenous national divisions and even army corps. Another
important consideration centered on the magic number of 12 divi-
sions, which became very important in the development of the German
military organization.21 This number of divisions as the expected
German contribution to Western defense was set by the Lisbon confer-
ence of 1952. It was set with the understanding that the Allies urgently
needed the Germans to make up for serious deficiencies in the Allied
forces. The Korean crisis had shown the Western Powers the necessity
of using German forces to restore some of the conventional balance in
central Europe.
As a reassurance to Germanys future allies, and to demonstrate that
Germanys new forces would not become a new threat to European
peace, the Allies, notably the French, insisted that German forces be
closely bound to the western Allies and that they would serve only
under multinational control. The plans developed by the western
European defense organizations as security for Germany were also
understood by many as a program to provide security from Germany.
19
Ausfhrungen zu der Frage der Grsse und der Zusammensetzung der deut-
schen Einheiten, 26.01.1951 Memo of Graf Kielmansegg; further memo, 25.01.1951,
in BA/MA Bw 9/2050, Bl. 14858, 16672.
20
Christian Greiner, Die militrische Eingliederung der Bundesrepublik
Deutschland in die WEU und die NATO 1954 bis 1957, in Anfnge westdeutscher
Sicherheitspolitik, vol. 3 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1993), 561850, see 653. Cf. the foun-
dation and organization of the land forces in BA/MA Bw 9/2766, Bl. 70.
21
On the magic 12-division requirement, see Franz Josef Strau, Die Erinnerungen
(Berlin: Siedler, 1989), 283; Greiner, Die militrische Eingliederung der Bundesrepublik
(above, note 20), 846; F H III 1, Tgb.Nr. 178/62, 27.08.1962, Bl. 71, in BA/MA BH
1/9498; Amt Blank, Abt. Heer, 10.12.1955, in BA/MA BH 1/3685.
In the course of discussions over the EDC, the Germans were able
to broaden their options. During intense negotiations, the German
delegation pushed their future allies to accept the concept of large
German armored formationse.g., divisionsunder German natio-
nal control.
With the breakdown of the EDC plan on 30 August 1954, the German
military planners, especially those from the army, saw their opportu-
nity. At the end of November 1954, Minister Blank approved the plans
for six armored divisions and six mechanized infantry divisions, along
with a plan to create additional army supporting units. In sharp dis-
agreement with some of the Allied proposals, the German army plan-
ners designed a fully armored/mechanized army with the largest possible
strength in armored fighting vehicles. The armored and mechanized
combat forces would constitute 400,000 men of the total 605,000-man
army. Until April 1956 these plans remained a base point for standing
up new German military units. Quite soon, however, it was discovered
that this planned force strength was wholly unrealistic.
As a result of the London Conference of October 1954, the Federal
Republic joined the ranks of the NATO nationsthe official entry of
Germany into NATO being 9 May 1955. The planned total strength of
the German armed forces, 500,000 men, was taken over from the plan-
ning done for the EDC. Force levels were still closely tied to the
12-division force. No country was allowed a larger number of divisions
than had been previously agreed upon by the Alliance members, and
the division slicethe number of total soldiers per divisionwas not
to exceed 41,500 men. This number had little to do with any opera-
tional requirements but instead was justified by a kind of political
numbers game designed to keep Germany from becoming too strong.
These figures demonstrate clearly that, from the start, the West German
defense planningnational and within NATOwas focused on army
armored divisions.22 Ironically, what had started out as the upper limit
of forces to be allowed the Germans became in later years the mini-
mum figure that the Alliance members would expect from Germany.
To properly create armed forces of this magnitude in just a few years
presented some formidable problems for the Bundeswehr planners.
In fact, they completely failed to meet the first major objective within
22
Greiner, Die militrische Eingliederung der Bundesrepublik (above, note 20),
583f.
232 martin rink
the time plan. The first 101 Bundeswehr volunteers took the oath of
allegiance in a hurried and improvised ceremony. Still, it was a matter
of luck that this milestone could be tied to the 200th birthday of the
great reformer of the Prussian army, Gerhard von Scharnhorst (1755
1813). The official birthday of the Bundeswehr could thus also sym-
bolically be tied to a proverbial new beginning. The establishment of
the first units was set for 20 January 1956, also known as Andernach
Day. On that day Adenauer visited the first 1,500 volunteers of the
training unit at their garrison on the Rhine, south of Bonn. From here
the first elements of the forces branches emerged. The training base for
the armys first cadre units remained at Andernach, while the air force
and navy volunteers later trained at Nrvenich near Cologne or at the
seaport at Wilhelmshaven respectively. All the new volunteers had to
contend with serious problems. There were shortages of equipment,
uniforms, and weapons.23 There was insufficient housing, and not even
a minimal administrative and troop support infrastructure. Many of
the old bases of the Wehrmacht had been taken over for use by the
Allied forces at the end of the World War, and other bases had been
turned into refugee or displaced person camps. But the Bundeswehrs
worst problem was a simple lack of volunteers. Its build-up took place
at the exact moment that the West German economic growth reached
its apogee. The years 1948 to 1964 were commonly called the eco-
nomic miracle years. Not only did the economy work against recruit-
ment but, further, a large part of the population was fundamentally
opposed to any involvement with the military and war. In short, the
armed forces lacked human resources.
The Modern Branch of the Bundeswehr: The Air Force

in the Era of Strauss/Kammhuber
In the first half decade of the Bundeswehrs existence, Adenauer and

his ministers set the goal of creating a militarily capable alliance part-
ner so that West Germany could have a full seat at the Alliance table.
Thus, for the very same reason that West Germany had set out to create
23
Wolfgang Schmidt, Kontinuitt und Wandel. Die Infrastruktur der Streitkrfte als
Faktor soziokonomischer Modernisierung in der Bundesrepublik 1955 bis 1975,
Oldenbourg, 2006).
its first armored units from 1951 onward, five years later it set out to
create a nuclear force.
In any case, the large conventional force that would reinforce the
status of the Germans in the Alliance failed to be developed according
to plan. In reality, in its first two years, the Bundeswehr was in crisis.
The army-heavy force concept developed under Blanks planners
seemed obsolete. With Franz Josef Strauss named as defense minister
in October 1956, some fundamental changes in West Germanys
defense policy were indicated. Earlier, as Minister for Special Affairs in
1953, and later, as Minister for Atomic Affairs, Strauss had made it
known publicly that he felt he had a better grasp of defense policy than
the luckless current inhabitant of the office. Strauss time in office is
tied to a radical modernization movement. Soon after his inauguration
he told the Allies frankly that the earlier plans had turned out to be
unsound and that a radical rethinking of policy was required. This led
to a dramatic reduction of the Bundeswehrs planned strength, from a
500,000-plus force to a total force with 342,000 men. Compared to the
pre-Strauss plans, the strength of the army was cut in half to 195,000
men. However, to keep NATO obligations, the promised number of 12
divisions could not be reduced. Thus, the unit activation timeline was
now lengthened, and two of the planned armored divisions were con-
verted to less expensive light infantry formations. The result was an
army force organized into ten armored or armored infantry divisions,
a mountain division, and a airborne divisionbut the latter one had
neither the equipment nor the manning of a real division. This over-
all force structure would remain in effect up to the end of the Cold War.
Another result of the dramatic force cuts was a major reduction of the
support troops allocated to the army corps.24 Per Strauss motto, qual-
ity over quantity, the priority units for equipment and training were to
be those with the greatest potential to be equipped with nuclear weap-
ons. Thus the atomic capable army corps artillery, and especially the air
force, was subject to only minimal cuts.
The new approach by the Federal Republic had a parallel in the con-
cept of development carried out by Germanys American ally five years
earlier.25 At the start of the Cold War, the lead planners for the largely
24
Document: Neuplanung Heer, 6.11.1956, BA/MA BH 1/16959; Strau, Die
Erinnerungen, 27079, 283.
25
Tho, NATO-Strategie (above, note 1), 24f.
234 martin rink
demobilized U.S. forces had faced the threat of an overwhelming Soviet

numerical superiority. Rather than create a large and prohibitively
expensive conventional force to counter the Soviets, the Americans
decided to use the Wests nuclear superiority to their advantage. For
want of other forces, strategic air power replaced the lacking ground
forces. The British were thinking along the same lines. Especially Field
Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, Deputy Supreme Allied Com-
mander Europe (DSACEUR), who advocated this policy. In December
1952 the guidance of NATO Document MC 14/1 was approved. The
end of the Korean War in July 1953 also made it clear that implement-
ing a nuclear strategy was preferable to a repetition of this bloody,
expensive, and ultimately indecisive conflict. On 12 January 1954 the
new U.S. President Eisenhower announced his massive retaliation
concept through a speech by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. This
amounted to replacing the conventional war fighting concept with a
nuclear defense strategy. This gave the armed forces organizational
design a New Look. Thus, the force ratios for West Germanys most
important ally changed dramatically: The U.S. Armys budget was cut
in half between 1953 and 1959.
At the end of 1954, the military committee of NATO produced its
Strategic Guidance Document MC 48. This conceived of a possible
conflict in two phases. In the first phase there would be an exchange of
nuclear weapons, which would be followed up by the surviving con-
ventional forces, which would then decide the outcome of the conflict.
This new concept was tested in the NATO Carte Blanche maneuvers
carried out in June 1955 in central Europe. Its scenario generated con-
siderable public doubt in West Germany about the strategy of the
Alliance, which Germany had joined just a month ago.26 In February
1957 the Western Alliance issued a new Overall Strategic Concept for
the defense of NATO nations in Document MC 14/2. This document
presented a strategy that included different reaction phases. It presented
a Sword/Shield Concept in which the defensive shield of conven-
tional forces would elevate a conflict thresholdin other words,
the few ground forces would trigger an overall nuclear reaction. In the
26
Bernd Lemke, Die Bedeutung der strategischen Entwicklung fr den Aufbau der
Luftwaffe, in Bernd Lemke, Dieter Krger, Heinz Rebhan, and Wolfgang Schmidt, Die
Luftwaffe 1950 bis 1970. Konzeption, Aufbau, Integration, Sicherheitspolitik und
Streitkrfte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006), 1740,
see 3133.
meantime, the Wests technological development was soon matched by

developments in Soviet weaponry so that both sides could be expected
to use tactical nuclear arms. Accordingly, the Massive Retaliation con-
cept was Europeanized, as was outlined in the Strategy Paper MC 70
of April 1958. The core of the thinking in the new concept was the
reinforcement of the Shield with tactical nuclear weapons.27
This evolution of strategic and technological concepts meant noth-
ing less than a fundamental change in the nature of the West German
defense contribution. The planners in Amt Blank (The Blank Office,
the precursor of the future Federal Ministry of Defense) had worked to
develop the concept of conventional German armed forces to support
the NATO force levels set by the 1952 Lisbon Conference. But now
events had overtaken the German planners and their initial
conventional-arms-centric concepts. The issue was no longer a ques-
tion of fielding armored forces in the manner of World War II; it was
now also about employing nuclear weapons. At the higher political lev-
els, the German position was steered by Adenauers two-tracked strat-
egy, to stand with the American military position while also deepening
West Germanys relationship with France. Propelled by the energetic
Minister Strauss, in 195758 a trilateral project for the joint use of
atomic power was concluded by West Germany, France, and Italy. Yet,
because the French withdrew from the project, this cooperation failed;
so did this concept of a nuclearized Bundeswehrthe planners had to
turn to other solutions to achieve this goal.
NATO Document MC 48/2 of April 1957 revoked the operational
concepts of previous strategic policy documents under which the
German air force had operated. Under the strategy of massive retalia-
tion, the previous primary air force missions of air defense and close
air support for ground troops assumed a lower priority. The mission of
air interdiction of enemy forces was set as the new high-priority assign-
mentand it was a mission that included the use of nuclear weapons
against enemy air bases and other vital infrastructure.28 At the time
27
Wenzke/Zndorf, Ein Eiserner Vorhang (above, note 1), 9296; Georges-Henri
Soutou, La guerre de Cinquante Ans. Les relations Est-Ouest 19431990 (Paris: Fayard,
2001), 28083; Heuser, Die Strategie der NATO (above, note 1), 5356. Details in
Christian Greiner, Die Entwicklung der Bndnisstrategie 1949 bis 1958, in Die NATO
als Militrallianz. Strategie, Organisation und nukleare Kontrolle im Bndnis 1949 bis
1959, ed. Bruno Tho (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2003), 19174.
28
Dieter Krger, Die Entstehung der NATO-Luftverteidigung, in Lemke et al.,
Die Luftwaffe (above, note 26), 485556, see 494.
236 martin rink
it was a noticeable readjustment of the focus of German defense strat-

egy from the ground forces to the air forceswith the air strike forces
being the main beneficiaries of the new strategic policy. It is no coinci-
dence that the Strauss era, from 1956 to 1962, coincided with the form-
ative era of the West German Air Force. It is also no surprise that the
introduction of the F-104G Starfighter came at this time. The Germans
also decided that they would manufacture the plane and deploy their
own F-104 squadrons. At this time the Germans also strongly advo-
cated a German role in the nuclear strategy of the Alliance.29 This
period was also the era of Josef Kammhuber, who served as Inspector
of the Luftwaffe from 1956 to 1962. As the top ranking officer of his
service he received his fourth generals star. As this customarily was
only a three-star generals post, this promotion indicated clearly the
importance gained by the general and his branch.
Strauss and Kammhuber emancipated the Luftwaffe from its former
role as provider of close air support for the army. Instead, the air force
took a modern approach. From its birth and initial training it adopted
an American model with a technological orientation towards warfare
and a rather technocratically inspired leadership. In the air force the
role of multinational integration played a much stronger role than in
the German Army. In the air force, technological know how mat-
tered more than in the other services, but it is exactly there that, in
Germany, mastery of the technology to build jet engines and rockets
lagged far behind the western Allies. The same was true for nuclear
technology. To gain such experience was top priority for the air force
leaders, and it apparently could only be gathered through co-operation
with the allies.
The experience of the war played a much smaller role in air force
thinking than in the army. Indeed, one of the wars primary lessons was
the failure of Hermann Grings air force to carry out an effective
strategic air offensive against the enemys territory and, especially, to
defend the homeland. In the thinking of the Federal German Air
Force of the 1950s, the German war experience in many respects
had become obsoleteparticularly when one considered the state of
29
On strategy and rearmament, see Bernd Lemke, Konzeption und Aufbau der
Luftwaffe, in Lemke et al., Die Luftwaffe (above, note 26), 71484, see esp. 8088, 173,
32155, 37477.
modern technology.30 Yet, there was still considerable mental baggage

residing in the Luftwaffe, most notably fueled by the Allied admiration
for the German wartime fighter aces. In any case, the American model
and its influence over the training, equipment, and culture of the
Luftwaffe were far stronger than in the other branches of the Bundes-
wehr.31 Due to the common methods of training the air units, and
despite some problems in developing a common communications
system, European air forces were only able to function as part of an
alliance air force, especially the German one. By 1957, in Supreme
Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) planning, the Germans
were assigned 40 per cent of the fighter units on the central European
front and almost half of the anti-aircraft forces. By this time, the
Luftwaffe had already assigned 50 attack aircraft to serve the SACEUR
as a strike force.32
So the air force evolved as a more modern, American-oriented
force and a bit more Federal Republican than its sister services, given
the fact that West Germany had acquired its status of sovereignty only
as a trade-off for political and military integration. Thus the current
service name, Federal Air Force (Bundesluftwaffe)a name that
was never the official namewas a symbol of a new beginning. In con-
trast, the senior staff officers of the armythough of course West
Germans as wellpreferred to call their force the German army
(deutsches Heer). This hints at the prevailing tendencies and prefer-
ences concerning tactical thinking and operational doctrine. Likewise,
the mental inheritance of former German armies (and especially the
Prussian one) maintained its vigor for roughly two decades; even to the
popular, and false, conception that the term army basically meant
armed forces in general. The navy was commonly referred to as the
30
On the Americanization of the Luftwaffes training and culture, see Wolfgang
Schmidt, Briefing statt Befehlsausgabe. Die Amerikanisierung der Luftwaffe 1955 bis
1975, in Lemke et al., Die Luftwaffe (above, note 26), 64991. On the Culture Shock
experience of the naval aviation trainees during their training in the USA, see Johannes
Berthold Sander-Nagashima, Die Bundesmarine 1950 bis 1972. Konzeption und Aufbau,
Oldenbourg, 2006), 98109.
31
For a general background, see Lemke et al., Die Luftwaffe (above, note 26); see
esp. Dieter Krger, Der Strategiewechsel der Nordatlantischen Allianz und die
Luftwaffe, 4168, and Lemke, Konzeption und Aufbau der Luftwaffe, 151222.
32
Dieter Krger, Schlachtfeld Bundesrepublik? Europa, die deutsche Luftwaffe
und der Strategiewechsel der NATO 1958 bis 1968, Vierteljahrshefte fr Zeitgeschichte
2 (2008), 171225, see 185.
238 martin rink
Federal Navy (Bundesmarine), although the key personnel remai-

ned faithful to the tradition and mentality the German navies which
had been established since 1871. In one respect the navy was similar to
the Luftwaffe: both had to adopt much of the viewpoints of the Alliesa
trend that became clear through the 1960s but that was less evident
than the air forces Americanization. Although many integration
measures were implemented in joint-forces staffs, and despite the
over-all joint Bundeswehr concepts, the branches kept many aspects
of service individuality in the following decades. These differences
based on war experience, concepts of operations, different degrees of
multinational integration, and the ever changing process of defining
doctrine.
The German Army from Initial Planning to Natos Model

for Central European Defense
Though it preferred a rather traditional approach to waging war, the

army, just like the rest of the Bundeswehr, had to develop new concep-
tual models in the second half of the 1950s. However, the army took a
different direction from that which was initially conceived. Even as the
army was setting up its first operational units between 1956 and 1958,
its organizational system seemed increasingly irrelevant to many com-
manders and staff planners. In the first half of the 1950s, substituting
armored and motorized Grenadier divisions for the former light
infantry force favored by the European Union had been a genuine suc-
cess for the German negotiating team that settled the conditions for
Germanys entry into NATO. Like other NATO forces, the Germans
initially were also supposed to organize their army units along the
American models of structure and equipment. Yet as army units
came into being since 1956, more the faults in the organizational struc-
ture became evidentperceived as in contrast to the German war
experience. The record of the first 1957 Fall maneuvers confirmed
these doubts. At the same time that reorganization of the force was
being reconsidered, the strategy planners at NATO headquarters and
in London and Washington, the capitals of the nuclear powers, were
also discussing new strategies and force structures. In the meantime,
the army increasingly oriented itself based on the German experience
of the World War. The concepts of Colonel General (ret.) Heinz
Guderian and Field Marshal (ret.) Erich von Manstein were especially
influential in army circles. The two generals favored an army organiza-

tion with smaller, but heavily armored, units. The nuclear threat also
provoked new discussions in 1955 about the best force organization for
waging nuclear war. In some contemporary professional journal arti-
cles and books it was referred to as a divisional organization crisis.
The divisions that Germany had organized on the American model
were seen as too large and clumsy to operate effectively on the battle-
field under nuclear conditions.33
In the summer of 1957 the army chief Lieutenant General Hans
Rttiger ordered a study group to develop new unit structures suitable
for atomic warfare. The new organizations were to be tested in maneu-
vers in the following year by the Troops Office (later called the Army
Office), which was in charge of developing army structure, doctrine,
and field manuals. The result of the study was Division 59. It was
openly fielded in the training and testing exercise LV 58 in September
1958 at the Bergen-Hohne proving ground.34 In his address to the
troops and a prominent civilian audience, Rttiger noted that the new
organization had been crafted with the Soviet nuclear threat in mind
and, just like the American Pentomic division, had been optimized for
atomic warfare. But the main reason for the organizational changes
were to be found elsewhereespecially in the wartime or even pre-war
experience. Rttiger remarked that in the 1930s the army had deci-
sively oriented itself towards motorization and mechanization, and he
referred to maneuvers in which he had participated as a young general
staff planning officer.35
Instead of the American-bred battle group (or combat team)
organization for the army division, a flexible system that lacked a fixed
organization, the brigade-oriented organic organization of the army
division, became the trademark of West German unit structure for the
next 50 years. This meant that the tactical and administrative leader-
ship of the unit, whose functions had been previously divided between
the division and the combat team levels, were combined under the new
33
Ferdinand Otto Miksche, Atom-Waffen und Streitkrfte mit 9 Skizzen im Text
(Bonn: Verl. Westunion/Offene Worte, 1955), 13571. This includes the discussion on
the crisis of the division system; cf. the statement of the Bundeswehr General Staff s
atomic expert, Albert Schindler, in BA/MA Bw 2/1943.
34
On the new organization of the army, see Rink, Strukturen brausen um die Wette
(above, note 6), 41366.
35
Inspector of the Army, Begrssung der Gste; Schlussbesprechung LV 58,
26.09.1958, in BA/MA BH 1/10932.
240 martin rink
brigade organization. The new core elements of the army at the tactical
level were the armored and armored infantry (Panzergrenadier) bri-
gades, which were planned to be organized as truly homogenous units.
The organization of these units embodied the principle of train and
organize how you fight.36 The armored divisions consisted of three
armored or armored infantry brigades in a ratio of 2 to 1with the
more numerous arm determining the designation of the unit as a
Panzer or Panzergrenadier division. The army even organized its
mountain division to play a role in combined armed mechanized war-
fare and added an armored brigade to its two mountain infantry bri-
gades. The Bundeswehrs one airborne division was the only division
not oriented towards armored warfare. In fact, it existed largely on
political grounds, as it made up NATOs goal of 12 German divisions.
The transition to the second Federal Army structure was not carried
out without some debate in the military and defense ministry staffs.
In the Armed Forces Staff (Fhrungsstab der Bundeswehr), even army-
bred officers questioned whether their colleagues of the Army Staff
(Fhrungsstab des Heeres) were still mentally too closely attached to
the model of World War II, unable to meet new challenges in an up-to-
date fashion. A valid critique was also raised that the restructuring of
the army was initiated even before the concept had been tested.37 Thus
many of the Bundeswehrs operational experts did not agree that the
direction the army was taking was the right one. Experts for nuclear
warfare of Armed Forces Staff maintained that the army was not mech-
anized enough but should be able to employ infantry units also in a
kind of atomic guerrilla warfare. Ulrich de Maizire, later General
Inspector of the Army (and after that of the Bundeswehr) and at this
time chief of one of the Armed Forces Staff sections, noted that
the army thinks far too little about the conditions of modern atomic
warfare. Everything is narrowly conceived in terms of conventional
warfare.38
In 1957, NATOs SHAPE headquarters and the headquarters of
NATO Land Forces Central Europe (LANDCENT) considered a new
36
Army Field Manual HDv 100/1 Truppenfhrung, August 1959, BA/MA BH
1/439, 5059.
37
F B III, BG Cord v. Hobe to the General Inspector, Bonn, 15.09.1958, BA/MA
BH 1/1943, 2.
38
Office Diary of de Maizire, BA/MA N 673/v. 22, Entry 16.08.1956. Also cited in
Greiner, Die militrische Eingliederung der Bundesrepublik (above, note 20), 741.
organization for operational forces that paid close attention to the issue
of organic division structure.39 A series of questions was put to the
NATO alliance partners, and the idea was proposed to create a stand-
ard unit organization throughout NATOan idea oriented along the
lines of the brigade organization concept that the Germans had just so
recently introduced. In further discussions in LANDCENT under the
chairmanship of General Hans Speidel, the other central European
NATO partners generally supported this standardized unit approach.
Eventually, an official LANDCENT memo of 44 June 1959 recom-
mended that the NATO forces in central Europe be organized along
the lines of the new German divisional organization.40 The young
German army had convinced its allies of the soundness of its approach,
and this was an impressive victory for the newcomer. Still, the opera-
tional doctrine to be used remained subject to a broad debate within
the Bundeswehr.
The Service Staffs Struggle over Structure, 195759
Despite the upheavals of 195859, the army remained fairly stable in its
conceptual development. Basically, the core concepts were rooted in
the armored war doctrines of the 1930s and 1940s and were now
applied to the idea of fighting under atomic conditions. Indeed, the
structure and main concepts that lay behind army operational doc-
trine, which were established in the late 1950s, remained constant right
to the 1990s with only a few minor changes. However, in the late 1950s
the Luftwaffe oriented itself completely on the concept of the use of
latest technology. Thus, between 1957 and 1959, the Bundeswehr could
not speak of an integrated organizational or operational doctrine.
Not for the first or the last time did the services argue from notice-
ably different doctrinal positions in the period between September and
November 1959. One Armed Forces Staff report from March 1958
summarized the various trends of thinking among the serv-
ices: The Sword would be defined as it had been earlier. Basically,
its forces had to be the American Strategic Air Commands bomb-
ers, which now would be reinforced with mid-range, and later
39
SACEUR, Studie ber die Gliederung der Landstreitkrfte Europa-Mitte
(Nr. 2000/2/28/CINC/241/57), in BA/MA Bw 2/1943; see also BA/MA Bw 2/2483.
40
SHAPE-History 1959, IV-43 to IV-48.
242 martin rink
intercontinental, missiles. But also the Shield forces had to be rein-

forced with more modern (meaning nuclear) weapons. An additional
mission was to establish a force at the most forward lines possible so as
to stop limited incursions and prevent such an attack from growing
into general war.41
In considering the NATO Strategy Document MC 70, General
Inspector Heusinger tasked the three service chiefs in September 1959
to estimate the situation and to draft their services possible mission
that arose from it. According to Heusinger himself, the Bundeswehr
was to serve as a deterrent and retaliation force, to serve as the strong
shield and hold the first wave of the Soviet attack and to follow up as
quickly as possible with the sword of atomic counterattack in the hope
that such action would decide the war.42 The new formulation of the
strategy was one of hold and risk. Yet such a strategy posed a risk that
the armed forces would lose all initiative and fall into a purely defen-
sive mindset. They might also reject the approved defensive strategy of
the alliance, which was to minimize reliance upon the conventional
forces and to defend Western Germany on the Rhine-Ijssel line and,
after 1958, on the Weser-Lech Line. But such static concepts stood in
clear contrast to classical German operational thinking. Indeed, this
mind-set lay in the background as Heusinger drew his outline of the
Bundeswehrs mission. Further, the General Inspector noted that
NATO had no real strategy for carrying on a conflict after the first
atomic strike was initiated.
In response to Heusingers request, Rttiger explained that the
German Army viewed its role as part of the Continental sword serv-
ing alongside the international strike forces of the Allied powers.43 The
decisive force of the continental forces was primarily the German
army, he remarked. His words remind one of Frederick the Greats role
of the Continental sword at a time when Prussia had allied itself
with Britain against France, Austria, and other German states 200 years
earlier. Other statements by Rttiger showed that his thinking, and
41
Cited in Greiner, Die Entwicklung der Bndnisstrategie (above, note 20), 174.
42
General Inspector of the Bundeswehr, Gedanken zur weiteren Entwicklung
strategischer Plne und ihre Auswirkung auf die Aufstellungsplanungen der Bunde-
swehr, FB III, 7.9.1959, Tgb.Nr. 337/59, in BA/MA, BH 1/9487.
43
Inspector of the Army Hans Rttiger, Auffassung des Heeres zur weiteren
Entwicklung strategischer Plne und ihre Auswirkung auf die Aufstellungsplanungen,
FH II, 16.10. 1959, Tgb.Nr. 300/59, in BA/MA, BH 1/9487.
that of the army, lay completely within the tradition of Prussian/

German military thinking. The massive onslaught of the Soviet
armored armies will not be stopped by strategic weapons, but only by
land forces. After Rttigers major reorganization of the German army
in 1957, the armys large armored foundations was seen as a force
designed to fight in the context of a nuclear war. In fact, the ground
forces were also intended to have their own nuclear weapons, which
meant that the Bundeswehr army needed to procure land-based
medium-range tactical nuclear weaponssuch as the American
Pershing missiles. Although it had already been decided by this point
that these weapons should be provided to the Bundeswehr, it had not
been decided which service would receive them.
While conducting a threat analysis, Rttiger expressed concern that
in the following decades the strike force would require flexibility
which essentially meant that the army would need to maintain a strong
conventional force capability as well as a nuclear one. He noted that
the Soviets will attempt to avoid a big war and will try to attain their
objectives by a small war. The conventional battle would complement
and support a defensive plan based on using nuclear weapons. This
also meant that the ground forces needed to avoid being pinned to
static defense lines. This position also reflected Heusingers view. One
could not prevent the destruction and enslavement of the whole
German people if the military plans envisioned a retreat to set lines
deep in the rear of the country, behind which a counterattack might be
prepared and launched. In a clear rejection of the concept of a defense
from prepared lines far in the rear, and in consideration of the recent
success of the young army in having its concepts accepted as the doc-
trine for NATOs large unit organizations, the Inspector of the Army
declared that the battle itself will be primarily oriented on the tank
working in cooperation with other armored forces. Before enemy
forces could act aggressively against the Federal Republic, they should
be attacked themselves, even before assembling their whole force prior
to their attack. In complete accord with his earlier experience of war,
Rttiger argued for a preventive strikean attack with armored forces
that would strike out from the inner German border through East
German terrain to Magdeburg on the Elbe, and perhaps even further
eastwards. Thus, between Schleswig-Holstein and the Alps, the Allies
should have 40 divisions with 123 brigades. However, given the very
few combat-ready forces in the central sector by this time, the desire
to conform to the NATO shield concept in this way rendered
244 martin rink
the armys concept highly unrealistic.44 Soon, however, the ground

forces conception became more sober. It relied on Panzer warfare but
also envisioned a highly mobile forward defense along the inner
German border. Only after 1963 would this draft become officially
accepted by the Allies, and only much later, in the 1970s, would there
be enough forces to implement it.
The Luftwaffe Inspector Kammhuber pushed a concept that was dia-
metrically opposed to the position of its sister service.45 Kammhuber
considered the army thinking outdated. The nuclear force balance of
the superpowers had fundamentally changed the strategic landscape.
He pointed out, I am not very sure that the two great atomic powers
of the West, the United States and Great Britain, would be ready to
employ their strategic nuclear forceswith the possible consequence
of the destruction of mankindsolely to defend the German Federal
Republic in the case of a small or limited war. In such a case the smal-
ler European powers, such as the Federal Republic, ought to be capable
of dealing with such a potential event themselves. No doubt Kamm-
hubers concept reflected the recently adopted technical orientation of
the Luftwaffe, which was to provide nuclear deterrence at the lowest
level. Kammhuber also worried that America might decouple its
nuclear umbrella over Europe as a result of making its strategy more
flexible. He bluntly expressed his assumption about nuclear deter-
rence: Conventional weapons have no real deterrent effect. They have
had no such effect in the past and will have none in the future. Indeed,
they actually serve to promote conflict. As a result of this thinking,
Kammhuber came to consider the classic theories of war as outdated
even the works of the great masters of strategy. The employment of
atomic power is nothing that can be calculated in a coherent manner.
One cannot truly consider their effectswhich mean that all the art of
war has become irrelevant. The Inspector of the Luftwaffe formulated
his own doctrine of modern weapons. On account of their range,
44
On the development of the forward defense doctrine, see Helmut R. Hammerich,
Kommiss kommt von Kompromiss. Das Heer der Bundeswehr zwischen Wehrmacht
und U.S. Army (1950 bis 1970), in Hammerich et al., Das Heer 1950 bis 1970 (above,
note 8), 17351, see 13154; For detailed information, see Tho, NATO-Strategie
(above, note 1), 555601, see esp. 573.
45
Inspekteur der Luftwaffe (Josef Kammhuber), Gedanken zur weiteren Entwicklung
strategischer Plne und ihre Auswirkung auf die Aufstellungsnlne der Bundeswehr,
16.10. 1959, Tgb.Nr. 192/59, in BA/MA, BH 1/9487. The citations are also in this
document.
speed, and destructive power, traditional command doctrines had

been rendered useless. Indeed, Kammhuber knew what he was talking
about: he had formerly served as an infantry officer in the Bavarian
Army, then in the Reichswehr. All this experience, he claimed, had
now become obsoletebut, it seems, he had also sharpened his argu-
ment in order to confront the armys view. Kammhuber concluded, if
you seriously want to prevent a small or limited war, and not win the
war, then there is only no other practical solutionyou arm yourself
with nuclear weapons.
The conceptual alternative that the New Look strategy had pre-
sented for the U.S. forces in preference to conventional warfare also
had supporters in the Bundeswehr. One could accept the strategy of
deterrencealso on the tactical levelby threatening nuclear conflict.
This was certainly the most common opinion among Luftwaffe officers.
Another view was to have strong conventional forcessupported by
tactical nuclear weaponsin order to establish a credible defense. This
latter view was the most common thinking in the German army. Both
positions presented a dilemma. Either one was ready to employ an
atomic strike in case of a limited provocation and was hence ready to
use massive retaliation as a response for a small war, or one could not
react at all. The other alternative would be to reply to the provocation
with conventional forces using a classic land defense strategy. But to
carry out this plan Germany and NATO were in a poor position, with
conventional forces far inferior to those of the prospective enemy; and
consequently this conventional defense would soon become nuclear
as well. In each case, the use of nuclear weapons might destroy the
defenders as well as the attackers.
Finally it came down to a choice between the atomic-oriented
Anglo-Saxon and the Continental-Conventional war-fighting con-
cepts and even mentalities. In fact, on the one hand, the latter did not
have a strong voice in the Alliances inner circle. However, among many
Europeans (and U.S. army officers) there were also good reasons not to
forget about aspects of the traditional Prussian/German way of war
in order to win a war before it became nuclear and thus out of control.
Certainly the 1959 German divisional organization followed this path,
and the new organization was favored by LANDCENT. On the other
hand, one could accept the absolute strategic defense doctrine that
employed the U.S. and British air forces as the primary means of deter-
rence and war. In the Federal Republic, this issue was, in a way, a truly
strategic onestrategic not in terms of the range of the weapons
246 martin rink
but in terms of the Clausewitz definition that emphasized strategy as

the employment of military action for political goals. For the Federal
Germans, as well as for the West Europeans, all thought of tactical
use of nuclear weapons in this regard contained an essentially strate-
gic dimension.46
By its position on the geographical fringe of the likely theater of war,
the Federal German Navy avoided some of the strategic dilemmas that
faced the army and air force. The Inspector of the navy, Vice Admiral
Gerd Ruge, focused on his mission of securing the entrance of the
Baltic Sea. But he also argued for an expansion of the roleand thus
the size and modernityof his navy.47 Ruge railed against the anach-
ronism of NATOs policy having minimal reliance on naval opera-
tions, and the Western European Union (WEU) policy that stated that
no nation should extend its military forces beyond its borders. Ruge
argued that his force was too weak to carry out its mission. He there-
fore requested an impressive number of 100 patrol boats, along with 18
destroyers, a naval air arm of 150 to 180 combat aircraft, and a tactical
nuclear weapons capability. Ruge wanted larger ships and wanted to
see the German navy as a blue water navy that could cast off the
brown waters of the Baltic and North Seas. However, he stressed the
necessity of joint thinking:
The dependence of the services upon each other is to be put in a nutshell:
A strategic air war can only be conducted if the army and navy secure the
land territory and the flanks Territory can only be occupied and held
by the army. But army operations require the support of the air force as
well as flank protection by the navy. The navy, in turn, requires the sup-
port of the air arm. But no single service can do it all alone, no one serv-
ice has the ability to succeed even in a limited offensive or in a steadfast
defense without support.48
In contrast to the radical conceptions of war promoted by the army and
air forceboth of which favored either an immediate use of nuclear
weapons or a preventive strike with armored ground forcesthe Navys
46
Carl von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege: hinterlassenes Werk, edited and commented by
Werner Hahlweg, 18th ed. (Bonn: Dmmler, 1973), Book 3, chapter 1, p. 345.
47
F M II, Tgb.Nr. 146/59, Inspekteur der Marine, Friedrich Ruge, Gedanken
zur weiteren Entwicklung strategischer Plne und ihre Auswirkung auf die Aufstellung-
splanungen der Bundeswehr, in BA/MA BH1/9487. For general background, see also
Sander-Nagashima, Die Bundesmarine (above, note 30), 49187, see esp. 8198,
12931.
48
F M II, ibid., 25.
Inspector was less optimistic with regard to the strategys implementa-

tion. He pointed out that none of the services would be able to carry
out its mission as laid out in MC 70 before the end of 1963. However,
Ruges assumption that a unified campaign and defense strategy
existed only in the continental area in the central Europe theater of
CINCENT (Commander in Chief, Allied Forces, Central Europe) was
not shared by his counterparts in the respective sister services. By the
late 1950s the experts who dealt with co-ordination of doctrine in the
joint forces argued that, mentally, the service branches lived on differ-
ent planets.
From Limited Defense Readiness to the Cornerstone of the Alliance
The discussions among the service staffs in the autumn of 1959 reflected
clearly the divergent concepts that the branches leaders advocated. Yet,
in between the two poles favored by the army and the air force staffs,
there lay a compromise solution that was eventually put into practice.
As the Federal German armed forces grew up, the existing gaps in the
capability both to carry out conventional war and to deal with a tacti-
cal/nuclear conflict were slowly filled. Only in this way could forces be
deployed for a forward defense of West Germany instead of the planned
defensive lines deep in, or even behind, German territory. But with the
start of the new decade some problems remained. The Federal Republic
was now firmly in the Alliancein reality as well as in word. This
meant that the West Germans had to be true to their promise of set-
ting up 12 ground force divisions. But in the years 196065 the
armys top leadership feared to publicly disclose unfavorable realities to
their American ally.49 The German Army anxiously kept secret any
deficiencies. However, the Bundeswehrs deplorable state of unprepar-
edness for waging war became public in October 1962. Just a week
before the Cuban Missile Crisis reached its apogee, an article in the
Hamburg news magazine Der Spiegeltraditionally bitterly opposed
to Defense Minister Straussfocused on the limited defense readi-
ness of the Bundeswehr.50 The succeeding Spiegel Affair became a
49
F H III 1, Notiz fr Leiter F H III, 10.10.1963, in BA/MA BH 1/72 a. It is
confirmed that this affidavit was given by deputy inspector of the army Thilo. See
Aktennotiz fuer Inspekteur [Heer], 15.10.1963, 1, in BA/MA BH 1/72 a.
50
Conrad Ahlers (though published anonymously), Bedingt abwehrbereit, in Der
Spiegel, 08.10.1962. On the situation of the Bundeswehr at this time, see Bruno Tho,
248 martin rink
major political scandal for the Federal Republic. Indirectly but clearly,
it led to the dismissal of Strauss as Defense Minister (though by no
means did it end his political career). In a way, the affair even caused,
though more indirectly, the retirement of Adenauer as chancellor of
the Federal Republic of Germany in October 1963.
A central aspect of the Spiegel Affair concerned Germanys partici-
pation in NATOs nuclear strategy. The article Limited defense readi-
ness (Bedingt abwehrbereit) reflected the unease of a large part of
the population with the nuclear strategy in general and of Strauss pol-
icy in particular. This in turn affected the German Air Forces newly
acquired role. Central to this service was the strike mission by fighter
bombers and, by 1963/64, also by mid-range Pershing missiles. The
emphasis on these weapons systems signaled the strategy of the
Bundeswehr. At this time, four of the five operational fighter wings
were assigned to NATO command. Supporting them were four fighter/
interceptor wings and three reconnaissance wings, of which only one
was assigned to NATO. If one were to compare the different services in
the early 1960s to that of the previous planning of the Blank era, in
terms of status and importance the Luftwaffe would clearly have
appeared as the winner. Yet the initial goal, laid out in 1950, of 831
operational combat aircraft was only reached almost 20 years later. All
this was the result of technical progress, which pushed up the costs, as
well as major changes in Alliance strategy and operational doctrine.
The one-sided thinking of the time led the Luftwaffe into the Starfighter
crisis with the newly introduced F-104G. This finally culminated in
the middle of the decade and led to a comprehensive restructuring of
the Luftwaffe. Although there had already been previous considera-
tions about adopting a more flexible strategy, only after the newly
elected president John F. Kennedy called for NATO to adopt a flexible
response strategy did the operational doctrine change. Accordingly,
the Federal German Luftwaffe had to likewise change its doctrine and
equipment. Where the F-104G and Pershing 1A had previously been
seen as the primary strike forces, the new goal was to adapt the force to
be a more all round generalist air force. This affected especially the
previously downplayed mission of close air support, but also air defense.
Bedingt abwehrbereit. Auftrag und Rolle der Bundesweehr als NATO-Mitglied

whrend der Kuba-Krise, in Vor dem Abgrund. Die Streitkrfte der USA und der UdSSR
sowie ihrer deutschen Bndnispartner in der Kubakrise (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2005),
6584, see 7881.
However, both the air units and the forces committed to air defense
certainly became the most internationally integrated service compo-
nents of the Bundeswehr, and probably of the Alliance. But a price was
paid in the form of a divide between the organization and operational
doctrine of the air force and the army. Whereas the Luftwaffe under-
went a process of Americanization, the army stayed German.
Conceptually, the Bundeswehrs overall structure settled down in
compromise between the positions of Rttiger and Kammhuber
although the two ideals were certainly not easy to combine. Part of the
solution lay in a definition of responsibilities. The ongoing disputes
between 1958 and 1960 of whether air defense and missiles should
belong to air force or army no doubt reflected and fueled the quarrels
within the top levels of the services. Compromise solutions were finally
created after long discussions.51 Air defense responsibilities above the
army corps level came under the Luftwaffe, which therefore provided
half of the static and comprehensive NATO integrated air defense sys-
tem. Under this level lay the air defense forces of the armys divisions
and corps. German nuclear participation was most closely integrated
with U.S. forces: the Bundeswehrs nuclear weapons were controlled by
a two key system. German forces controlled the nuclear delivery sys-
tems and maintained complete unitsarmy and air forcebut the
warheads remained under American control.
At this time the army had to initiate severe economy measures, and
the available resources did not fit the needs created by the army plan-
ners tank concept. This was resolved by the creation of cadre units
normally in the support and corps elementsthat could be filled out
by reservists. However, this solution actually thwarted the concept that
Rttiger had strived for so boldly between 1957 and 1959. As with the
Luftwaffe, the driving force of the army was technology. Yet techno-
logical developments required more and larger support units as well as
command and control elements and rear security forcesespecially if
the hard core of the army consisted of mechanized forces. In the earlier
concepts of the 1950s, the planners had paid little attention to the
51
Study: Einheitliche oder getrennte Truppengattung Flugabwehrtruppe,
11.07.1956, in BA/MA Bw1/16104; Chairman of the Military Leadership Council
(Heusinger), 09.08.1956, in BA/MA BH 1/640; Documents from July 1958 to April
1961, including the inquiry of Bundestag representative and later defense minister and
Federal chancellor Helmut Schmidt in BA/MA Bw 2/20027, see esp. the documents
from July to December 1959: Umorganisation der Heeres-Fla, 31.12.1960, in BA/MA
BH1/594.
250 martin rink
follow-up costs of technology. Now, at the start of the 1960s, this omis-
sion required the army to undergo its third major restructuringa
process that would only be complete in 1968. Nonetheless, thanks to
progress in developing her own conventional forces, the Federal
Republic was able in September 1963 to make her allies accept the
long-called-for forward defense doctrine. But to defend Germany right
on the border required forces, and only in 1965 did the West Germans
finally succeed in setting up their 12th division. Still, the divisions
could not be truly effective without a nuclear component. The German
forces were supported by nuclear weapons in the form of artillery, mis-
siles, and atomic demolitions designed to create obstacles.52 The full
integration of the German army had by 1965 been established within
NATO. But unlike the air force, whose wings and air defense regiments
operated in an integrated manner within the Alliance, the army
units stayed German up to the army corps level. The Bundeswehrs
three corps had their positions covering the Inner German and
Czechoslovakian borders. The deployment alongside the Iron Curtain
was referred to as the layer cake: the German forces deployment
areas lay between two American corps, a British corps, a Belgian corps
and a Dutch corps.
With these overall developments, the Bundeswehr and its services
all settled into their roles in the 1960s. However, even as the principal
debates of the late 1950s had been settled, under the surface a variety of
disputes were played out in the 1960s. Most of these reflected the dis-
cussions that had ensured since October 1956. Some of the disputed
issues were resolved by the de facto integration of all the branches of
the Bundeswehr with their corresponding allied services in NATO.
The price that had to be paidand the opportunity that could also be
seizedwas sacrificing the initial design of a joint-forces concept of a
single German contingent. Instead there emerged several contin-
gents, each with a different level of integrationboth with the allies
and with the other German services. The force that arose in reality was
the largest conventional one in central Europe, and it was certainly the
best integrated force in the Alliance. By the time the Bundeswehr
52
Helmut R. Hammerich, Der Fall Morgengruss. Die 2. Panzergrenadier-Division
und die Abwehr eines berraschenden Feindangriffs westlich der Fulda 1963, in Die
Bundeswehr 1955 bis 2005. RckblendenEinsichtenPerspektiven, ed. Frank Ngler,
Oldenbourg, 2007), 297311.
reached its maturity in the 1970s, it provided half the land forces and
half the ground-based air defense forces in central Europe. It was a
significant contribution to the Alliance even though there had also
been significant delays in reaching this point. The achievements were
visible in the statistics of the force structure. By the 1970s the Germans
manned over 60 per cent of NATOs tanks in central Europe and 70
per cent of the naval forces in the Baltic Sea. The German naval air arm
was the only such force in the region.53 At the same time, the German
Air Force provided only 30 per cent of NATOs combat aircraft in cen-
tral Europe. The much closer integration of the Luftwaffe in NATOs
structure represented a proportionately smaller voice in the Alliance
but also a higher degree of Americanization.
There still remained the double dilemma in which a winnable con-
ventional war was as unlikely as maintaining a completely credible
nuclear deterrent. On the one hand, the massive retaliation doctrine in
its pure form was scarcely likely to succeed, due to political, psycho-
logical, and financial reasonsand a truly credible deterrent remained
an elusive goal; moreover, it could lead to self-deterrent. On the other
hand, proponents of the nuclear strategy could argue that the greater
flexibility in German strategy did not necessarily lead to improved
security.54 Though the concepts of war-fighting and conflict-deterrence
had led to compromise among the different branches of the Bundeswehr,
their staffs continued to produce a polyphony of views.55 But perhaps it
was exactly this range of concepts which contributed to a remarkable
degree of securitydespite all crises.
53
Weibuch 1983 (above, note 4), 126; Weibuch 1985 (above, note 4), 113.
54
See Krger, Schlachtfeld Bundesrepublik? (above, note 30), 172, 208, 22325.
55
See Tho, NATO-Strategie (above, note 1), 482, 740.
THE OTHER GERMANY: CREATING THE DDRS
ARMED FORCES
FAILURE TO COMMAND: THE POLITICAL UNDERPINNINGS
OF THE FAILURE OF THE NATIONALE VOLKSARMEE AS A
SOCIAL INSTITUTION
Dan Jordan
Truppenfhrung Ist Menschenfhrung.1
Socialism is not an empty delusion It is not a cold formula, but rather

a living power.2
As a fighting force, the history of the Nationale Volksarmee (NVA), the
armed forces of German Democratic Republic (GDR), was brief and
undistinguished.3 The NVA was a heavily armed and mobile national
police force, created in the late 1940s, that transformed in 1956 into a
120,000-man army organized, trained, and equipped after the Soviet
model. Yet, except for a few relatively minor operations, they were
never directly employed as a military force. Even at the height of the
Cold War, they were never anything but a reserve to the Operational
Maneuver Groups of the Soviet Group of Forces in Germany. In other
words, we remember the NVA more for its military potential than what
it actually accomplished as a military force in the Warsaw Pact.
Nevertheless, the NVA as a social institution had a profound, and
largely unexplored, role in the development and demise of the
1
Auswertung des Polit-Moralischen Zustandes sowie der Politischen und Gefecht-
sausbildung der Truppenteile und Enheiten der 7. Panzer-Division im Ausbildungsjahr
1962, ed. Waldemar Verner, Vizeadmiral (Stellvertreter des Ministers und Chef der
Politischen Verwaltung) (Dresden: Ministerium fr Nationale Verteidigung [MfNV];
MBIII; 7PD, 1962), 14.
2
Reden zu Parteiorganisationen ber Sozialistiche Erziehung, in SED
Parteiversammlungen, ed. Ministerium fr Volksbildung; Betriebsparteiorganisation
(Berlin: Bundesarchiv Berlin, 1957), 18.
3
The term Nationale Volksarmee is really a misnomer, as the army in this context
also included the air force and the navy and therefore should have been more correctly
labeled the Armed Forces of East Germany. Nevertheless, as a nod to the original
nomenclature, I use continued references to army terminology, such as soldiers and
generals, while my intent is to also include the thousands of airmen and sailors in other
branches of the NVA.
256 daniel jordan
East German state. In fact, the NVA, in spite of its obvious mission to
defend the East German state, was organizationally and bureaucrati-
cally dysfunctional from its inception to its demise in 1990, and it made
major contributions to undermining the very socialist state it was cre-
ated to protect. Put another way, the NVA became a huge anchor that
helped sink the GDR. The cause of that dysfunctionality was multifac-
eted but lies essentially in the governments implementation of Marxist
ideology through such policies as the leading role of the party in the
NVA and the concept of individual leadership, or Einzelleitung. These
policies represented the GDRs obstinate reliance on ideology, which
caused unfortunate deleterious effects on everyday bureaucratic actions
within the NVA, particularly on the development of the army as both a
fighting force and a socializing agent for the country. Those same effects
cut a wide swath across organizational, administrative, and tradition-
ally military domains. Examples include an inability to successfully
define a leadership philosophy for its commanders, a chronic need to
self-criticize, and the unconscionable failure of the officer and NCO
corps to take care of their soldiers.
In making these arguments, I offer opposing points to traditional
views that have attributed the demise of the GDR exclusively to
economic, social, or political causality. Instead, I suggest that the
GDRs most serious problem was neither economic nor social but,
rather, the incomprehensible inability of its institutional bureaucracy
to fix problems staring it in the face. As a case study of social structures
in a closed society, East German Army records offer researchers a
unique view into these party-government interactions, the influence of
the party at all levels of administration and command, and the imple-
mentation and enforcement of both military and party disciplinary
issues. More specifically, the archives hold records and reports of
competing military and political chains of command within the
NVA that give us a more accessible view of bureaucratic dysfunctional-
ity than appears to be available from other government organs of
the GDR.
The Leading Role of the Party
In January 1958 a decision by the Security Commission of the

Socialistische Einheits Partei (SED) (Sicherheitskommission) affirmed
failure to command 257
the Leading Role of the Party in the NVA.4 The decision, under the
guise of the aggressive preparations of NATO and the Bonn Govern-
ment, effectively put the commander in his place vis--vis the politi-
cal officer.5 The policies that Walter Ulbricht and his Politbro created
in the 1950s to create and shape an armed force for the East German
state were no doubt well intended and clearly based on lessons they
had learned from their Soviet masters. By 1956, the leading role of the
SED had been clearly established in the GDR and, in particular, the
national police force (Nationale Volkspolizei; NVP). However, two
years after the NVA was officially established by the East German
Volkskammer, the party leadership was still disappointed, if not frus-
trated, at the lack of influence the party had within the newly formed
army. The clarity of the partys intent to fix this problem can be seen in
the minutes of one 1958 Politbro meeting:
The most important task of party organizations in the NVA is the
political-ideological and moral education of [party] members and candi-
dates as well as all army members in the spirit of Marxism-Leninism and
the security of the unity of the political and military education of all army
members [emphasis added].6
There are two specific tasks in this statement. We should not be sur-
prised by the first one, the ideological and moral education of party
members and candidates in the army itself. Clearly, a politically reliable
army is the first requirement for any state, and to ignore that prerequi-
site is to risk having the army turn on its political masters. In this case,
party members had to be reminded what their priorities were: not just
their political reliability through political-ideological education but
also their moral education and consequent moral behavior as party
members. Notably, the government dictated that their political-officers
4
Abteilung fr Sicherheitsfragen, Beschlu der Sicherheitskommission vom 14.1.1958
ber Die Rolle der Partei in der Nationalen Volksarmee, ed. Zentralkomitees
[ZK] Abteilung Sicherheitsfragen (Berlin: Bundesarchiv Berlin, 1958). The
Sicherheitskommission was the predecessor to the Nationaler Verteidigunsrat der DDR,
the National Defense Council of the GDR, formed in 1960.
5
Ibid., 36.
6
Protokol Nr. 26/58 der Sitzung des Politbros des Zentralkomitees Am Dienstag,
dem 17.Juni 1958 im Zentralhaus der Einheit, Grosser Sitzungssaal, in Bestand:
Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands; Zentralkomitee; Stiftung Archiv der Parteien
und Massenorganisationen der DDR am Bundesarchive (SAPMO-BArch) (Berlin:
SAPMO-BArch, 1958), 48.
258 daniel jordan
priorities were not to the state but, rather, to the party. Their priorities
were not to the defense of the homeland but, rather, to their own politi-
cal, ideological, and moral education. While we should not conclude
that the party ignored the state and its defense, their lack of specificity
of these competing interests became problematic over time.
The second task is particularly instructive to our purposes: to insure
the safety, or preservation, of the unity of political and military educa-
tion. No matter the cost, political and military education (and, by
extension, military training) were to be inextricably intertwined. The
means by which the party would ensure this unity of political and mili-
tary education was through a comprehensive policy that directed the
Leading Role of the Party in the NVA.7 As many students of socialism
might conclude, this policy should have been self-evident in a socialist
state: the party must have a leading role in every aspect of society, and
the army would have been no exception. It seems, however, that this
policy was so pervasive in the NVA that it trumped all other military
policies and decisions; therefore, to gloss over its importance would be
a historical misjudgment. Ultimately, the evidence suggests that the
policy presented such difficult challenges to the chain of command
that it effectively reduced the combat effectiveness of the army on a
day-to-day basis while also adversely affecting life in the barracks for
the common soldier.
In order for the party to have an effective leading role in army
affairs, it was essential that bureaucratic mechanisms be in place to
administer policy and enforce its rules and regulations. By May 1957,
the Politbro had already designated the Politorgane der Nationale
Volksarmee as the leading organs of the SED for its political work within
the army.8 The political organs, or party offices, were those organiza-
tions and political officers that were based at every level of command
down to the lowest units of the NVA; even companies averaging
100 men or fewer were provided a part-time political officer. It is
7
Rudolf Dlling (Generalmajor) and Major Herbst, Beschlu des ZK der Sozialis-
tischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands ber den Zeitweiligen Einsatz der Generale, Admirale
und Offiziere Als Soldat in der Truppe (Berlin: MfNV; Politische Hauptverwaltung,
1959), 5.
8
Protokoll Nr. 22/57 der Sitzung des Politbros des Zentralkomitees Am Dienstag,
dem 21.5.57 im Zentralhaus der Einheit, Grosser Sitzungssaal, in Bestand: Sozialistische
Einheitspartei Deutschlands; Zentralkomitee; Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und
Massenorganisationen der DDR am Bundesarchive (SAPMO-BArch) (Berlin: SAPMO-
BArch, 1957), 48.
important to note here that, as in the Soviet Army, the majority of

political officers above the rank of captain served as deputy command-
ers for their units, regardless of the tactical expertise that officer
possessed. Even the ministers of national defense had political dep-
uty commanders in Generalmajor Rudolf Dlling and Vizeadmiral
Waldemar Verner.
It appears, however, that the mere existence of a political arm was
not sufficient to communicate its importance, nor were its most impor-
tant tasks self-evident. The Politorgane needed to be told explicitly and
comprehensively which policies and instructions they were to follow.
For example, the Politbro directed that
the political work in the NVA be organized and executed on the
basis of Marxism-Leninism, the statutes of the SED, the decisions of the
Party Meetings and the Central Committee of the SED, the decisions of
the Government of the GDR, as well as the Orders and Directives of the
Minister for National Defense and the Office of Main Political
Administration for the NVA (Politische Hauptverwaltung [PHV]).9
Clearly, party instructions were first in priority, then government direc-
tives and laws, and finally instructions from the defense ministry. By
ordering such comprehensive guidance, the Politbro effectively elimi-
nated any possibility that the military itself could become a power base
on its own, in many ways a repeat of Joseph Stalins actions vis--vis the
Soviet Army in the 1930s.
Of particular note was the prescribed relationship between political
work and the military work of the Army, thus foreshadowing the
decision to unify political and military education by the Politbro a
year later:
Total political work must serve the fulfillment of those posed tasks pur-
suant to the Training Orders of the MfNV [Ministerium fr Nationale
Verteidigung] It must be aimed at the systematic elevation of combat
readiness, the consolidation of discipline, the incremental rise of political
consciousness, and the morale of the service members of the NVA.
The Political Organs raise all members of the NVA to a higher vigilance,
in pursuit of complete mastery of weapons and technical combat equip-
ment and to the unshakable pursuit of victory. They train them in such
high moral-fighting qualities as mission-readiness, courage, and stead-
fastness [emphasis added].10
9
Ibid., 7.
10
Ibid., 8.
260 daniel jordan
Read literally, it was the partys role and duty, not the commanders, to
train all army members to complete mastery of their weapons and
tactical skills, a key task that clearly compromised the commanders
traditional responsibility to improve combat readiness. Similarly,
the party was to be involved in questions of discipline, another respon-
sibility that was traditionally possessed by commanders and their
non-commissioned officers (NCOs), even in previous versions of the
German Army such as the Wehrmacht and the Reichswehr. On its face,
it appears that political officers within the NVAs political organs had a
special and unique role within the army: it was the partys role, and not
that of the commanders, to contribute to a systematic elevation of
combat readiness.
Combat readiness is a comprehensive and ubiquitous military
term which implies that a military unit is ready for action, in all
respects. It implies that the unit is sufficiently manned and equipped
to accomplish its mission, that its soldiers are trained to operate mod-
ern weapons on a complex battlefield, and that the chain of command
within that unit is functionally able to accomplish its orders. Judgments
about the combat readiness of a military unit are generally binary; a
unit either is or is not ready for combat. In most armies, then, the com-
mander has a unique responsibility with which no one can, or should,
interfere; it has been the commanders traditional duty and responsi-
bilityregardless of service, ideology, or even nationalityto ensure
the combat readiness of his unit. A close reading of the government
policy, however, would lead the reader to a much different conclusion
about the leading role of the party in the NVA; traditional command
responsibilities were upended.
Students of civil-military relations might conclude that these mat-
ters were still of no consequence. They would argue, for example, that
because the army was an arm of the state, the state could dictate the
framework within which that army functioned. They would be right.
The policy above gives the unambiguous appearance of a definitive
framework within which the NVA was to function. There was a signifi-
cant problem however. In spite of this extraordinarily clear policy, it
was not, nor would it ever be, incumbent on the political organs to
actually train their soldiers. Nor, it seems, did the political arm have a
firm grasp on solving the disciplinary problems in the NVA; instead,
the party processes quickly devolved into the enforcement of party
infractions as differentiated from military infractions. Drunkenness
and immoral behavior, for example, were party crimes to be dealt with
by the party, not by the military chain of command. Even purely mili-
tary infractions, such as vehicular accidents due to negligence, had a
distinctive ideological tone that was difficult to separate from party
processes. The NVAs inability to resolve these inconsistencies would
eventually lead to much bigger problems, particularly relative to the
question of the integrity of individual command and the principle of
Einzelleitung.
Einzelleitung
In 1957 the Politbro directed that work of the political organs must
be directed at the strengthening of individual performance in the
formations and troop units of the NVA and, as well, the consolidation
of authority of the commanders and superiors [emphasis added].11 Now
we see one of the basic problems with the partys desire to control the
army. It was not enough to control the leadership of the army; the party
also directed its political officers to strengthen the authority of the
commanders and superiors by strengthening the individual perform-
ances of the soldiers. The obvious problem was that the only way the
political officers could strengthen the authority of the commanders
was to circumvent that same authority by interfering with the traditional
responsibilities of the commander. In other words, the SED understood
the need for commanders to command, but it wanted that responsibil-
ity to be shared with the peoples representative as embodied in the
political officer. The party labeled this amalgamation of conflicting
objectives as Einzelleitung, or individual leadership, their best attempt
to tell military commanders that they were still, really, in command.
According to the commanders, the traditional view of Einzelleitung
was historically based on their rights and responsibilities to command
and lead their military units without interference from outside agen-
cies. The party would have none of that. Instead, the main political
office of the NVA (PHV) defined Einzelleitung as follows:
Individual Leadership in the army, the unity of political and military
leadership, is to be guaranteed through the collective consultation of all-
important political and military measures of the commanders with the
political-organs and political-leadership. The work of the political-organs
[is to] be guided by the strength of individual leadership in the formations
11
Ibid.
262 daniel jordan
and troop units of the NVA and the consolidation of the authority of the
commanders and their superiors [emphasis added].12
Therefore, the party insisted, commanders were still in command,
but all important decisions would be made in consultation with the
political organs. Their authority was not diminished, the party empha-
sized, yet commanders still had to confer with their political counter-
parts. Party policy directed the consultative nature of command. By
characterizing the political organs as the product of the leaders strength
and the consolidation of command, they essentially declared that the
political arm would not be worthy of consultation were it not for the
moral strength of the commander himself! Indeed, individual leader-
ship was not individual at all but, rather, a forced marriage of military
and political leadership that conjoined like oil and water.
Not surprisingly, the concept of Einzelleittung was controversial. The
director of the PHV, Generalmajor Rudolf Dlling, observed that some
officers had the false impression that the principle of Einzelleitung
and the structure of the army, are not in agreement with the overall
principles of party work and inner-party-like democracy.13 In other
words, the party faithful were not in agreement with the Armys struc-
tural solution, much less its concept of individual leadership. Dlling,
the chief political officer of the NVA, later expressed his disappoint-
ment that there were still officers who either did not understand the
concept, or worse, did not understand their dual roles as both officers
and party members.14 Most of the complaints, it seems, were not from
the commanders who had their authority watered down but, rather,
from the political arm, who wanted more authority. Nevertheless,
the policy of the leading role of the party in the NVA was still confus-
ing to those commanders who struggled with how to perform their
duties. A parallel report by the Sicherheitskommission noted that espe-
cially with [respect to] commanders, a seemingly wide reversal and
12
Appendix 10 to Protokoll Nr. 26/58 (note 6 above), 61. The phrase formations
and troop units was one way of insuring that directives were applied to all armed
forces units regardless of their function, not just combat formations or their support-
ing units.
13
Sicherheitsfragen, Rolle der Partei in der NVA (note 4 above), 38.
14
Rudolf Dlling, Chef der Politischen Verwaltung, Ministerium fr Nationale
Verteidigung, Bericht ber Die Durchgefhrten Delegiertenkonferenzen und Vollver-
sammlungen der Parteiorganisationen im Dienstbereich der Nationalen Volksarmee, ed.
Ministerium fr Nationale Verteidigung, Politische Verwaltung (Berlin: Bundesarchiv
Berlin, 1958), 44.
unclarity exists in the course of the principal of individual leadership

(Einzelleitung).15
Clearly, the essence of the conflict was over the tension between the
commanders and political officers over the role of the party. The
questionable performance of many commanders had given the party
reason to rein in their authority. In the 12th Motorized Rifle Regiment,
for example, the commander apparently had acted in an arrogant and
overbearing manner. Therefore the leadership of the party organiza-
tion of the regimental staff (but not the regiment itself) forbade and
sharply criticized the manner in which he led his unit. The conclu-
sion, therefore, was that there could be no command in party work
[emphasis added].16 In other words, commanders should not have the
total responsibility that the official concept of Einzelleitung implied.
Commanders were indeed disenfranchised from command of their
units, and there could be no place for the commander in military or,
for that matter, political affairs. If true, then the opposing premise had
become even more validthat the party really was in command. If
the reader is confused by this circuitous double talk, why would we be
surprised that the commanders themselves were confused?
Obviously, the SED leadership had to resolve its decision to increase
the Role of the Party in the NVA at the expense of the traditional roles
of the commander. In May 1958, Erich Honecker, in an obvious attempt
to set the record straight and come out squarely on the side of the party,
spoke to a meeting of party delegates from the NVA about his perspec-
tive on the concept of Einzelleitung:
It is no secret that in connection with the decision of the Politbro [of
14.1.1958] that different comrades think that the general development
of the leading role of the party in the units of the NVA would lead to a
weakness of the concept of individual leadership in the army. Experi-
ence shows that these comrades are not right The Central Committee
of our party will not permit a weakness of individual leadership in the
army.17
There was no conflict between the leading role of the party and
Einzelleitung, according to Honecker. No matter what, he argued, the
15
Information ber Die Bisherige Auswertung des Beschlsse des 35. Plenums des Zk
und des Beschlusses des Politbros Vom 14.1.1958 in der Nationalen Volksarmee, ed.
Sicherheitskommission (Berlin: Bundesarchiv Berlin, 1958), 47.
16
17
Erich Honecker, 35 Diskussionsbeitrag (Berlin: Bundesarchiv Berlin, 1958).
264 daniel jordan
pervasive effects of the policy of the leading role of the party would
not reduce the authority of the commander in the NVA. Despite the
objections of commanders, the party had reaffirmed its leading role
in every aspect and had successfully redefined Einzelleitung to fit its
paradigm. It was, after all, the classical reinterpretation of the discourse;
individual leadership reflected not the independence of military
command as found in other armies but, rather, the unity of political
and military leadership.
The Solutions
The SED did try to correct these problems. However, rather than trying
to differentiate between political and military problems, they actually
made the situation worse by confusing the issues. They started by try-
ing to define the duties of the political deputy:
The political deputies of companies, battalions, and regiments are
responsible for the conscientious execution of orders and directives of
the Minister of National Defense and their superior commanders in the
areas of political work of the masses, of cultural work, of political classes
etc., and have the duty to publicly account for that work.18
This directive required political officers to follow the political instruc-
tions of the MfNV and the Politbro, an obvious task that was surely
uncontroversial. It was not the political duties that were problematic,
however, but the extension of those political duties into military ones.
Party members in uniform also carried a high responsibility for
strengthening the leading role of the party as well as the elevation of
its authority and reputation.19 In and of themselves, these tasks and
responsibilities were sensible and rationale within the framework of a
socialist army.
The above instruction, however, was conspicuous by what was not
specified. One might argue that political officers were only required to
follow political directives, not military ones. We might also conclude
that while they were publicly accountable for political work, they
were not explicitly accountable for their military work. The duties of
political officers, however, became even more convoluted when their
18
19
Ibid.
professional success was equated to the military success of their respec-

tive units: By demanding a higher activity of all party members, the
enforcement of these decisions will contribute to still larger success in
the increase of the combat strength of the NVA (emphasis added).20
There can be only one conclusion: enforcement of political ideol-
ogy was equal to, and synonymous with, the achievement of combat
capability.
Significantly, and not surprisingly, the Abteilung fr Sicherheitsfragen
also directed party members of the NVAand, of course, its political
officersto have even more influence over commanders and their
work by aggressively minimizing the commanders authority within
their units while also reporting their failures up the political chain.
Political officers were to:
regularly analyze the political consciousness and morale in the forma-
tions and troop units, to ruthlessly uncover faults and grievances and
their causes, and to lead an energetic fight towards their removal. Political
organs have the duty to report to commanders and higher political organs,
in accordance with the truth, the condition of the formations and troop
units [emphasis added].21
The political officer had to report problems to his commander, but if
the commander was part of the problem, there was no dilemma for the
subordinate: he skipped the military chain of command and proceeded
directly up the political chain. Relative position in the organization of
the NVA was never a problem. Even the PHV, the armys highest politi-
cal organ, had responsibility to report all basic questions of political
work in the NVA to the Central Committee of the SED and to the
Minister for National Defense.22 The problem here was that informa-
tion could reach the Minister of National Defense and the Politbro
faster than it could through the normal chain of command. Indeed,
there are many examples of reports directly to the Central Committee
through the PHV from political officers in low-level units.23 The practi-
cal effect was that the commander could be bypassed and often was,
if necessaryin order to report deficiencies in his leadership or the
20
Ibid., 44.
21
Protokoll Nr. 22/57 (note 8 above), 10. The Abteilung fr Sicherheitsfragen,
Office for Security Questions, was formed in 1953 to translate the political decisions of
the Central Committee for the armed organs of the state.
22
Ibid., 11.
23
Ibid., 3247.
266 daniel jordan
leadership of his officers. More important, the commander had no

control over this process, even as a sworn party member dedicated to
improving the health, morale, and welfare of his unit.
Clearly, the SED, with the full cooperation of the NVA, consistently
oriented their solutions to problems on ideological grounds. Rarely did
they aggressively attack the pragmatic root causes of their leadership
problems; rather, they consistently focused on the ideological solu-
tions to their practical problems. For example, an essential prerequi-
site for removal of these deficiencies is the strengthening of the leading
role of the party and its basic organizations as well as the improvement
of the political education and training in the NVA.24
These types of statements, or ones similar to it, were widespread in
both military and party reporting. They were almost always the sole
corrective action in a report, or listed first in a series of proposed
solutions. This created two conundrums that needed to be dealt with.
First, the integration of the SED/NVA could never recognize the
possibility that their own policies were actually causing training or
readiness problems in the units. The second conundrum was that
problems were not solved by a pragmatic application of logic and
rational thinking but, rather, by the increased application of ideology.
In particular, this meant that the partys leading role had to be reem-
phasized, which often meant quantitatively more political education
and training. These solutions often took bizarre turns. If there was an
accident on a flight line, the solution was more ideological training.
If gunnery scores were found wanting, the solution was not, as one
might expect, more practice on the gunnery range but, rather, more
ideological training and so forth. Even the basic welfare of the
common soldier was not exempt from this single-minded emphasis on
ideology. If there was a suicide, for example, the solution most often
listed as the number one corrective action was, sadly, more ideological
training.
Clearly, the party used a dual chain of command to exercise civil-
ian control of the army. However, despite their efforts they were con-
stantly disappointed and discouraged with the ideological progress of
their officers development: There still seems to be a series of deficien-
cies in the leadership and the socialist education of army members who
awkwardly stand in the way of further strengthening of the socialist
24
consciousness [emphasis added].25 It appears that no matter how hard

they tried, certain officers and commanders would notor, more likely,
could nottake advantage of their enhanced ideological training to
improve the units mastery of weapons and overall military effective-
ness.26 Put another way: was it possible that no matter how hard the
party tried, no amount of ideological training could solve problems of
poor morale, poor weapons proficiency, or poor leadership?
Eventually, even Walter Ulbricht became intimately involved in the
partys struggle for ideological purity in the army. In 1961, five years
after the creation of the NVA, Ulbricht noted that the raising of
the Berlin Wall had created big expectations by the party for the
NVA to raise its combat readiness. Unfortunately, he continued, the
efforts to do so had exposed a series of deficiencies and weaknesses.
Therefore, he directed that a series of measures be undertaken. The
reader should note, however, that while his goal was to raise combat
readiness, there was a surprising lack of specific military tasks in his
instruction:
Strengthened struggle for the unconditional execution of given
orders,
Education of members and candidates (of the party) towards a
model fulfillment of their duties and military tasks,
Creation of a critical and party-like atmosphere in the political
organizations and improvement of the collective educational work
[emphasis added].27
This particular policy declaration also claimed that there were appar-
ent deficiencies in the work of the party members themselves, a very
common theme. Political officers apparently had conducted their
25
Einschtzung des Standes des Sozialistischen Bewutseins der Angehrigen der
Nationalen Volksarmee in der Ersten Hlfte des Ausbildungsjahres 1959 (Strausberg:
Militrarchiv der Deutchen Demokratischen Republik; Ministerium fr Nationale
Verteidigung; PHV, Sekretariat, 1959), 5. The phrase series of deficiencies, or phrases
similar to it, were often found in political and military reporting. No matter how
positive the first part of the report was, the political operative could be assured that
the shoe was about to drop when these political code words in the GDR discourse
were used.
26
I am indebted to Dr. Don Connolly, PhD (U.S. Army Command and General
Staff College) for this insight.
27
Otto Hauptmann, Halbjahresanalyse ber den Politisch-Moralischen Zustand der
Partei [7.Pd], ed. Vizeadmiral Verner (Stellvertreter des Ministers und Chef der
Politischen Verwaltung) (Dresden: MfNV; MBIII; 7.PD, 1961), 2.
268 daniel jordan
business through administrative orders instead of through political-

ideological arguments and a steadfast naturalistic conviction for the
elevation of the socialistic consciousness of the members of the Army.28
In other words, to make up for their small presence in the units, party
members were relying too much on rank and privilege by ordering
their troops around. Even regular officers of the NVA (as opposed to
political officers) were accused of not paying enough attention to
the political training of the army and achieving very little political
work Regular officers were also accused of incorrect party-like
behavior towards their soldiers. In some party meetings, officers were
accused of behaving in an unfriendly and class-sensitive manner
towards their soldiers and NCOs.29 Clearly, the argument goes, they
should have been model socialist soldiers and proffered their guidance
and direction by convincing oral arguments.
The logic went as follows. Giving orders was not party-like. There-
fore, one must convince by the power of ones argument. If soldiers did
not buy into the idea, the problem was not with the strength of the idea
but, rather, with the functionary who could not communicate it to the
soldiers. To be accused of being un-party-like was a serious allega-
tion; no one was exempt. The key to the success of the party in army life
was beginning to take shape: officers and NCOs (who were expected to
be political and military role models as party members) were to be the
solution to the armys, and therefore societys, problems.
The NVA and Community
The tensions between the two conflicting policies, Leading Role and
Einzelleitung, manifested itself in another, more surprising way. It now
appears that the relationship of the party in the local districts and towns
to the army was almost as important as the role of the party within the
army itself. Ideologically, the NVA was viewed as the recipient of the
strength of the political-moral unity of the population. Erich
Honecker had viewed this relationship as symbiotic: members of the
NVA do not live in isolation from the population, from the large
radical changes which occur in our lives.30 Nonetheless, the role of
28
29
Ibid.
30
Honecker, 35. Diskussionsbeitrag, 197.
commanders in the socialist army had to be reconciled with the partys

scheme of political control outside the barracks gates. One directive for
a program called Generals, Admirals, and Officers as Soldiers empha-
sized this point:
A further expression of the growing socialist consciousness of army
members is the narrow connection of the army with the working popula-
tion of our republic. This is found especially in the partnerships of the
troop units with the socialist businesses where the political-moral unity
of the population and the army develops even stronger through the recipro-
cal help and support of the realization of the plans and tasks [emphasis
added].31
Clearly, the relationship between the army and the surrounding com-
munities was considered crucial. The civilian community was sup-
posed to provide the essential support and cooperation that we often
see today at local military bases in the western world. The relationship
the SED envisioned was much more invasive, though. In a letter dated
2 January 1958 to the district leaders of the party (Bezirkleitungen),
Ulbricht called for their complete cooperation to support the policy of
the leading role of the party in the NVA. Their goal was to raise the
influence of the local party organizations in the development of all
aspects of life in the army, as well as to improve the political and
worldly education of the army, the selection and judgment of the cadre,
and the judgment of the activities of the commander from all sides
[emphasis added].32 The unsurprising result was the comprehensive
influence of the local party on all matters military within the district,
including the decisions of the commanders themselves. Clearly, the
collective existence of the party was becoming more important than
the efficiency of the army.
The level of detail written into Ulbrichts guidance is most instruc-
tive. District Party First Secretaries were invited to military events and
staff meetings. He encouraged the leaders of the districts and towns
from time to time to occupy themselves with significant questions of
the units stationed in their areas. It would be appropriate, encour-
aged Ulbricht, that the party secretary, the political deputy of the com-
mander [aka the political officer], as well as the party members, be
invited to an office meeting.33 The 1. Bezirkssekretre were to become
31
Einschaetzung des Standes (note 25 above), 4.
32
Ibid.
33
Ibid., 214.
270 daniel jordan
full voting members of the military councils for the units in their dis-
tricts so that they could contribute and ensure that the decisions of the
party become stronger as well as reality in the life of the army.34 The
district leadership was to support the neighboring units of the NVA
while simultaneously maintaining the right to control the execution of
the decisions of the party. Indeed, to the military council would come
members of not only the offices of the Bezirks- und Kreis leadership but
also a limited number of members of the Office of Security Questions.35
Put into perspective, not only did the NVA have a dual chain of com-
mand on the Soviet model but local commanders also had to deal with
the whims and agendas of local politicians, all of whom had a more-
or-less direct line to the Politbro.
Ulbrichts delegation of authority had limits, though. The leaders of
the towns and districts did not have authority to oversee the work of
the party organizations within the units of the NVA themselves.36
Therefore, local party officials had the authority to oversee and partici-
pate in decisions of the local commanders but could not interfere with
the party organizations that were integral to party control of the army
itselfand which also had participative rights in military decisions
according to the principle of Einzelleitung. No matter how you slice it,
the leading role of the party also included the invasive party appara-
tus of the local districts. In every possible way, army commanders at all
levels had significant bureaucratic challenges to overcome.
Conclusion
Because of space limitations, I have only discussed the policies of the

Leading Role and Einzelleitung as causes of command problems
within the NVA. I have not discussed the problems of criticism and
self-criticism within the political discourse or the role of the various
enforcement arms of the SED within the National Defense apparatus.
Nor have I showed how the sum total of these policies affected the
combat readiness of the NVA during the Cold War. Reluctantly, read-
ers have been left to make their own conclusions about these policies
and their effects. However, I can make some observations from these
34
Ibid., 213.
35
Ibid., 214.
36
Ibid.
snapshots of political life within the NVA, observations that raise fur-
ther questions about the role of the party in the more pervasive civilian
structures of the GDR itself.
Bureaucratically, the party knew the extent of their problems in the
NVA and continued to try to solve them until the fall of the Berlin
Wall. I would argue that similar processes were going on in parallel in
every social and political structure in the GDR.
The constant use of ideological training to fix practical problems was
ubiquitous, not only in the NVA but also in other government minis-
tries. Ideological training was so pervasive a solution that one can not
help but wonder whether any social problem was ever solved in a prag-
matic way. If the solution to poor gunnery marksmanship is more ide-
ological training instead of more time on the artillery range, what can
we conclude about low production on the factory floor due to low
equipment maintenance?
Finally, the use of party organizations and political officers within
the units of the NVA, along with their exploitation through independ-
ent chains of command direct to the Politbro, had a significant con-
straining effect on the development of commanders, professional
officers, and NCOs, as well as on the effectiveness of their units. When
looking the other way becomes a solution to a unit problem, other
problems start to develop that are much more fundamental and meas-
ureable: increased safety problems with vehicle drivers involving seri-
ous injury or death, increased drunkenness and moral violations, high
accident rates with weapons, and even an extraordinary number of sui-
cides. I attribute the causes of these social problems within the NVA to
poor leadership, poor leadership caused by a lack of trust between a
government and its military officer corps as well as between its soldiers
and the Party.
REARMING GERMANY:
AN ESSAY ON BOOKS AND SOURCES
As this book is meant to be more of an introduction to the subject of

German rearmament than a comprehensive history, it is appropriate
for the editors to provide a brief essay on the best primary and second-
ary sources available to help any students who wish to pursue facets of
this subject in detail.
As a general starting point on the subject of West German rear-
mament, the editors recommend the work of the Military History
Research Institute of the Bundeswehr (Militrgeschichtliches Forsch-
ungsamt; hereafter MGFA). Between 1982 and 1997 the Military
History Research Institute published a superb four-volume history of
the early years of the Bundeswehr that was written by a group of excep-
tional historians that includes Roland Foerster, Christian Greiner, and
Georg Meyer as well as several of the authors in this volume. For stu-
dents seeking original documents concerning German rearmament, a
useful collection of documents is found in Karl Bauer, ed., Deutsche
Verteidigungspolitik 19481967: Dokumente und Kommentare (Boppard
am Rhein: Harald Boldt, 1968). This collection of documents is espe-
cially helpful in its coverage of the debates on rearmament in the
Bundestag in the early 1950s.
In Germany the main repository of original documents concerning
the Bundeswehr is the Bundesarchiv/Militrarchiv in Freiburg am
Breisgau. One of the best sources of documents concerning Adenauer
and his government is the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in Sankt Augustin
near Bonn. The Konrad Adenauer Stiftung has a large library and
archive of original documents that includes cabinet reports and corre-
spondence of Adenauer and other figures who are central to the study
of German rearmament. Some of the papers of Theodor Blank are also
located in Sankt Augustin. Both of the archives are exceptionally user
friendly for the researcher and have excellent websites and search
aids.
There is an extensive body of American documents that deals with
the rearmament of Germany. The major places to look are in the
Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, and the
Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas. These two very
274 rearming germany: an essay on books and sources
important Cold-War-era libraries and archives are located less than

three hours drive from each other. It should be noted that the American
presidential libraries contain not only the presidential papers but also
the papers of many key figures associated with the administration or
era. For example, 90 boxes of documents of General Lauris Norstad,
NATO commander from 195663, are located in the Eisenhower
Library and constitute an excellent source of documents about
American assistance to the West German rearmament effort.
The Beginning of Rearmament
In considering the major sources in Thomas Vogels chapter on the

beginnings of West German security policy, one must approach the
subject from several perspectives. For a detailed background of the
document one would do best to start with the seminal article by Hans-
Jrgen Rautenbert and Norbert Wiggershaus, Die Himmeroder
Denkschrift vom Oktober 1950. Politische und militrische
berlegungen fr einen Beitrag der Bundesrepublikzur westeur-
opischen Verteidigung, in Militrgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 21
(1977), 135206. Adenauers role in the Himmerod Conference is dis-
cussed in Henning Khlers Adenauer: Eine politische Biographie
(Frankfurt a.M.: Propylen, 1994). An important book that discusses
the contemporary Allied views of the Himmerod Conference is
Gerhard Wettigs chapter on Entmilitarisierung und Wiederbe-
waffnung, in Deutschland 19431955: Internationale Auseinan-
dersetzung um die Rolle der Deutschen in Europa (Munich: Oldenbourg,
1967).
It is important to begin a study of Amt Blank and the development
of the Federal Defense Ministry with some personal perspectives.
Konrad Adenauer provides some insights into his concept of allying
Germany with the Western Powers in his Memoirs 194553 (Chicago:
Henry Regnery, 1965). However, an even better personal memoir that
deals with the early thinking about West German security policy comes
from General Hans Speidel, one of the Bundeswehrs top soldiers. See
Hans Speidel, Aus Unsere Zeit: Errinerungen (Frankfurt a.M.: Propylen,
1977).
David Clay Large in Germans to the Front: West German Rearmament
in the Adenauer Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1996) does a good job in covering the major strategic and political
issues surrounding German rearmament. Another very useful recent
rearming germany: an essay on books and sources 275
book dealing with early German thinking on defense policy is Hans

Martin Ottmer, Die Entwicklung Deutscher Sicherheitspolitik und die
Geschichte der Bundeswehr (Berlin: E.S. Mittlerund Sohn, 1995).
The Debate Within West German Society
Recommended reading for Adam Seipps chapter: anyone seeking to

learn more about the political history of modern Germany will benefit
from Alexander Sagers excellent translation of Heinrich August
Winklers two-volume Germany: The Long Road West (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007). There are relatively few specialized studies of
the Social Democratic Party (SPD) during this period in English. These
include Susanne Miller and Heinrich Potthoff s A History of German
Social Democracy (Leamington Spa: Berg, 1986) and Gordon
Drummonds extremely useful and thorough The German Social
Democrats in Opposition, 19491960: The Case Against Rearmament
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982). Despite a number of
good German biographies, Kurt Schumacher lacks a monographic
treatment in English more recent than Lewis Erdingers Kurt
Schumacher: A Study in Personality and Political Behavior (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1965). The best book on the anti-nuclear
movement is Mark Ciocs Pax Atomica: Nuclear Defense Debate in West
Germany During the Adenauer Era (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1988). For perspective on the importance of this period in shap-
ing German history and the broader history of the political Left, see,
respectively, Konrad H. Jarauschs After Hitler: Recivilizing Germans,
19451995 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) and Geoff Eleys
Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 18502000 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2002). Those seeking primary sources
from this period might consult the Internet Modern History
Sourcebook: (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook.html)
and the German Historical Institutes German History in Documents
and Images project (http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/).
The Allied Powers and the Creation of a New German Armed Forces
In researching the role of the European Defense Community (EDC)

and the development of the Bundeswehr, Edward Fursdons The
European Defence Community: A History (London, 1980), remains the
best full account of this complex topic. Kevin Ruanes The Rise and Fall
of the European Defence Community: Anglo-American Relations and
the Crisis of European Defence, 195055 (London and New York:
St. Martins Press, 2000) is, as his title suggests, useful primarily for the
British and American role in the process. As always, the official Foreign
Relations of the United States provide a detailed contemporary descrip-
tion of the process, especially vol. 3 for 1950 (Washington: Department
of State, 1977).
Two older works still constitute the best description of the domestic
politics of the EDC: Daniel Lerner and Raymond Arons France Defeats
EDC (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1957) and a RAND study
by Nathan Leites and Christian de la Malene, Paris From EDC to WEU
(Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1956). Arnold Kanter pro-
vides a superb analysis of the political parties in The European Defense
Community in the French National Assembly: A Roll Call Analysis,
Comparative Politics 2.2 (January 1970), 20328. The recollections of
Jean Monnet (Memoirs, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978) and
Pierre Mendes-France (Choisir: Conversations avec Jean Bothorel
(Paris: ditions Stock, 1974) as the originator and terminator of the
EDC are also very useful. Ren Pleven, the titular author of the plan, is
the subject of an excellent scholarly biography by Christian Bougeard,
Ren Pleven: Un Francais libre et politique (Rennes: Presses Universitaires
de Rennes, 1994.)
In order to best understand the policy of the United States towards
the development of the Bundeswehr one ought to begin with Marc
Trachtenbergs study of the era in A Constrained Peace: The Making of
the European Settlement 19451963 (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1999). Trachtenberg provides a thorough and insightful analysis
of Eisenhowers thinking on European security.
On the specifics of the U.S. military assistance to West Germany the
best general work is Andrew Birtles Rearming the Phoenix, U.S. Military
Assistance for the Federal Republic of Germany, 19501960 (New York/
London: Garland, 1991). Another very useful book that covers the U.S.
Army thinking of the 1950s and describes the role the West Germans
played in developing U.S. Army doctrine is Ingo Trauschweitzers The
Cold War U.S. Army (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008).
The list of published works on the founding of the West German
Navy is pretty thin, but there are a few useful articles and books for
the serious student. One should begin with the memoirs of the
first commander of the Bundesmarine, Admiral Friedrich Ruge
(Friedrich Ruge, Lebenserrinerungen als Beitrag zur Zeitgeschichte,

Munich: Bernard und Graefe, 1979). There are a few accounts that
address the evolution of the West German Navy from the mine-sweeper
force sponsored by the U.S. and British navies between 1946 and 1955.
On this period, see Dieter Krger, Die Anfnge der Bundesmarine
19501955, in Marine Forum, 1.2 (1995), 3. On this subject also see
Fritz Poske, Der Seegrenzschutz 19511956. Errinerung, Bericht,
Dokumentation (Munich: Bernard & Graefe, 1981). The author of the
chapter on the German Navy in this book, Douglas Peifer, has been
one of the most prolific authors on this subject, and his works ought to
be consulted. See Douglas Peifer, The Three German Navies: Dissolution,
Transition and New Beginnings, 19451960 (Gainesville: University
Press of Florida, 2002) and From Enemy to Ally: Reconciliation Made
Real in the Post-War German Maritime Sphere, War in History 12.2
(2005).
Debates Within the Bundeswehr
In examining the internal policies of the Bundeswehr, the first place

to begin is with the author of Innere Fuehrung, Count Wolf von
Baudissin. His writings are collected in Nie Wieder Sieg! Programmatische
Schriften, 19511981 (Munich: Piper, 1981). A seminal work on Innere
Fuhrung by Baudissin was his article in English The New German
Army, which appeared in Foreign Affairs, 34 (October 1955). For fur-
ther reading about the people and debates on Innere Fuehrung, one
can go to Alaric Searles, Wehrmacht Generals, West German Society,
and the Debate on Rearmament, 19491959 (Praeger: Westport, 2003).
An interesting take on the discussion of the relationship between the
Wehrmacht and the Bundeswehr is found in Donald Abenheims
Reforging the Iron Cross: The Search for Tradition in the West German
Armed Forces (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).
On the Economics of Rearmament
Since the procurement of armaments has not been in the focus of mili-
tary historical research in Germany, one will find only a few books on
the procurement for the build-up of the Bundeswehr in the period
between 1953 and 1958. The most important books on this topic are
Werner Abelshauser, Wirtschaft und Rstung in den fnfziger Jahren,
in Anfnge westdeutscher Sicherheitspolitik 19451956. Vol. 4, issued by

MGFA (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1997), 1186, and Dieter H. Kollmer,
Rstungsgterbeschaffung in der Aufbauphase der Bundeswehr
dargestellt an der Beschaffung des Schtzenpanzer HS 30 (Stuttgart:
Steiner, 2002). Those publications describe the procurement of arma-
ments for the Bundeswehr from different angles. Abelshauser takes a
close look at the presuppositions of arming the Bundeswehr. Kollmer
shows the framework and the way it was realized. Abelshausers research
follows his well-known work Die Langen Fnfziger Jahre, Wirtschaft
und Gesellschaft der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 19491966 (Ds-
seldorf: Schwann 1987). He analyzes the way the procurement process
was integrated into the economy of West Germany. Whereas Kollmer
describes the way armaments had to be purchased for the Bundeswehr
and the adverse environment in which it had to be done. Kollmers
work reveals the structure of the procurement, the operating princi-
ples, and their conversion into a prominent example, the acquisition of
the personnel carrier Hispano Suiza HS-30 for the Bundeswehr.
Other important publications on the Bundeswehrs early procure-
ment include Hans-Gnter Bode, Rstung in der Bundesrepublik
Deutschland (Regensburg: Walhalla, 1978); Michael Geyer, Deutsche
Rstungspolitik 18601980 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 1984); Dieter
H. Kollmer, Klotzen, nicht kleckern! Die materielle Aufrstung des
Heeres von den Anfngen bis Ende der sechziger Jahre, in Helmut
R. Hammerich, Dieter H. Kollmer, Martin Rink, and Rudolf J. Schlaffer,
Das Heer 1950 bis 1970. Konzeption, Organisation und Aufstellung
(Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006), 485614.
Building the Armed Forces of the DDR
When conducting research on the development of the East German

Armed Forces, the Volksarmee, researchers face a significant but not
insurmountable challenge in working with primary sources, as they are
located in two different locations in the German archive system.
Political and national defense policy records, as well as the records of
the Socialist Union Partys (SED) First Secretaries, are stored in Berlin
at the Budesarchiv Lichterfelde facility in the Stiftung Archiv der Parteien
und Massenorganisationen der DDR. Military records of the Ministry
of National Defense and the Nationale Volksarmee (NVA), however,
are located in Freiburg, at the Federal Military Archives facility.
The indexes for both these facilities can be found at the following
site: http://www.bundesarchiv.de/bestaende_findmittel/.
Two major works that should be read by every student of the NVA
are Jorg Schonbohms Two Armies and One Fatherland: End of the
National Volksarmee, trans. Peter Johnson and Elfi Johnson (Oxford:
Berghahn Books, 1996) and Requiem for an Army: The Demise of the
East German Military, by Dale R. Herspring (Lanham: Rowman &
Littlefield, 1998). While focused on the final days of the NVA, these
authors give insights into problems that clearly started in the early days
of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The Bundeswehrs mili-
tary history office, the MGFA (http://www.mgfa-potsdam.de/) is the
leading source for analysis on the military, organizational, and political
aspects of the history of the NVA. Recent publications include:
Bundeswehr und Nationale Volksarmee in Staat und Gesellschaft.
Legitimation, Motivation und gesellschaftliche Integration, ed. Bernd
Prll (Frankfurt aM: Broschiert, 1983), and Parteiherrschaft in der
Nationalen Volksarmee: Zur Rolle der SED bei der inneren Entwicklung
der DDR-Streitkrfte (1956 bis 1971), by Frank Hagemann (Berlin:
Links, 2002). Staat und Gesellschaft provides insightful analysis on the
social interaction of the NVA with East German Society. Parteiherr-
schaft analyses the influence of the SED, the ruling partys influence
over the East German Army, and provides the reader insight into the
differences between this socialist army and those of the western
Europeans.
INDEX REARMING GERMANY
Abenheim, Donald 43, 149f Bonn Conventions 82

Acceptance Organization Brandt, Willy, 58, 66, 69
(Bundeswehr) 46 Bremerhaven Labor Service Unit
Acheson, Dean G. 10, 75, 80, 169 Bravo 118, 120125
Adenauer, Konrad 30, 3236, 3839, 42, Border Police (Grenzschutz,
4851, 5556, 5964, 66, 68, 70, 76, Bundesgrenzschutz,
77, 80, 86, 89, 9496, 101, 105, 111, Seegrenzschutz) 112, 118, 120,
114, 117, 125, 130, 133134, 139141, 125129, 134, 138139, 141
149, 166167, 170, 179, 190, 209, Bradley, General Omar 99
226227, 229, 232, 248, 273275 Bruce, David K.E. 86
Advisory Office for Innere Brussels Agreement (1950) 73, 89,
Fuehrung 216 228229
Alert Police 77 Brussels Treaty, 1948 32, 7374, 82
Alkett GmbH 146147, 157161, 166, Bundesmarine 118120, 123125,
173175 128129, 133141, 193f, 195, 237f,
Allied Control Council (ACC) 155156, 238, 246f, 276277
158, 159f, 160162, 164, 172, 208 Bundesrat 123
Allied High Commission 6, 7f, 10, Bundestag X, 3738, 4851, 64, 68,
24, 229 96, 117, 123, 126, 128, 133134, 137,
Alouette II, helicopter 188, 196 216, 273
Amt Blank 25, 26, 28, 3847, 49, 103,
105106, 108113, 118, 120, 124125, Campaign to Stop Atomic Death
129134, 140, 171, 187, 211212, (Kampf dem Atomtod), 689
214215, 235, 274 Center Party 39
Andernach 232 Central Office for Homeland Service
Armed Forces Staff (Fuehrungsstab der (Zentrale fr Heimatdienst) 8, 11,
Bundeswehr) 224, 240241 17, 26, 34
Christian Democratic Union (CDU) 25,
Bad Godesburg Program, 69 3637, 39, 5051, 56, 6061, 6364,
Baltic Sea 19, 22, 36, 95, 126, 133, 6970, 137, 146, 171
140141, 192193, 228, 246, 251 Christian Social Union (CSU) 63,
Baudissen, Count Wolf von 15, 17, 28, 69, 137
4041, 211215, 218, 220, 277 Churchill, Winston 9, 31, 85, 8990
Berlin x, 65, 146, 255, 157158, 160, 164, Citizen in Uniform 214215
173, 267, 271, 278 Clay, General Lucius D. 153, 158160
Berlin Crisis (Berlin Clayton, William L. 154
Blockade19481949) 46, 29, 31, 65, Conservative Party (UK) 31, 85
74, 93, 119, 163164 Council of Foreign Ministers 159
Bidault, Georges A. 88 Czechoslovakia X, 31
Blank, Theodor A. 2526, 3841,
4950, 52, 80. 96, 103, 105, 111, 113, Daimler Company 156
115, 117118, 120, 129, 134, 137140, De Gaulle, Charles 7374, 92
172173, 190, 209211, 226, 229231, Dlling, General Rudolf 258f, 259, 262
248, 274 Dornier Aircraft Company 198, 200
Blankenhorn, Herbert 13, 16, 17 Draper, William 164, 165f
Bohlen, Charles E. 76, 77f, 145 Dulles, John Foster 34, 7374, 79,
Bonin, Count Bosgislaw von 4143, 8688, 91, 234
47, 49 Dunkirk Treaty, 1947, 73
282 index
East Germany, (DDR) German German Air Force (Bundesluftwaffe,

Democratic Republic (GDR) XIXII, GAF) 15, 18, 4344, 49, 94, 103, 105,
7, 1920, 32, 35, 61, 118, 141, 110114, 188, 197200, 236, 251
255257, 259, 267, 271, 278279 German Communist Party (KPD), 59,
GDR, Ministry of National Defense 61
(Ministerium fr Nationale German Manifesto (1955), 678
Verteidigung (MfNV) 259, 264 Gladisch, Walter 1517
GDR, Politbro 257259, 262265, Globke, Hans 25
270271 Gttingen Manifesto (1957), 68
GDR, Security Commission Graubart, Captain Arthur H. 119
(Sicherheitskommission) 256, Great Britain (UK) x, 5, 79, 11, 14, 22,
257, 263f 3132, 35, 45, 58, 69, 74, 7779, 81,
Economic Working Group 162163 8586, 9091, 9596, 105, 108, 122,
Eden, (Robert) Anthony 8991 128, 130131, 134135, 150, 192193,
Eisenhower, Dwight 81, 86, 96101, 197198, 234, 245, 250, 276, 277
234, 273274 British military Staff 31, 45
Erhard, Ludwig 169 Gruenther, General Alfred 99, 101102
European Coal and Steel Guderian, General Heinz 238
Community (ECSC) 64, 75,
7980, 83, 8586 Halder, General Franz 100
European Command (EUCOM) 109, Hays, George P. 9, 229f
111 Heinemann, Gustav 6f, 25f, 60
European Council 9, 13 Heusinger, General Adolf 12, 1517, 25,
European Defense Community 28, 3436, 4042, 51, 9394, 103, 112,
(EDC) 33, 64, 67, 74, 75f, 8183, 120, 129132, 224, 227, 229, 242
8592, 110, 118, 123, 127, 129, Himmerod Conference 328, 3536,
131133, 140, 188, 210, 229, 231, 48f, 9396, 102, 109, 211, 222,
275276 225227, 274
European Economic Community Hispano Suiza HS-30, infantry fighting
(EEC) 85 vehicle 183, 189, 195
European Recovery Plan 147, 160 Hitler, Adolf 16, 137, 151, 179f, 183,
European Recovery Program 209, 211212
(ERP) 164 Honecker, Eric 263, 268
Howley, Frank L. 160
F-84 Thunderstreak 198 Huntington Samuel P. 147, 210, 212,
F-104 Starfighter 107108, 199, 236
Foertsch, Hermann 12, 1517 International Trade Organization 165
Foreign Economic Administration
(FEA) 153, 155156 Janowitz, Morris 209210
Fowler, Henry H. 153 Joint Chiefs of Staff (US) 10, 163f,
France 16, 32, 35, 59, 7375, 168, 170
7791, 97, 128, 131, 143, 172, JCS Directive 1067 150, 152
183, 189, 192, 198, 235, Joint Logistics Committee (JLC) 162
242, 276 Juin, Marshal Alphonse P. 84
Franois-Poncet, Andr 10
Frankfurter Rundschau, 42 Kammhuber, General Josef 45, 232, 236,
Free Democratic Party (FDP) 36, 244245, 249
63, 137 Karst, Heinz, General 214
Kaufmann, Erich 17
Galland, General Adolf 42 Kennedy, John F. 248
Gehlen, Reinhard, also Gehlen Kielmansegg, General Count Adolf Graf
Organization 8f, 25, 130, 134, 227 von 1417, 2526, 28, 3536
Geneva Accords, 1954, 88 Kirkpatrick, Sir Ivone 9, 10
German aircraft industry 107108, 198 Knauss, General Robert 1517, 95
index 283
Korean War 912, 32, 35, 6566, 4748, 5052, 66, 68, 74, 77, 8082,
7677, 96, 98, 101, 117, 120, 125, 8485, 87, 9095, 97103, 105, 110,
130, 125, 168 113114, 116118, 121, 125, 129135,
Kriegsmarine 117122, 124127, 129, 145, 164, 178180, 184, 190194,
131, 133, 135137, 139140 199201, 218, 221222, 225, 226, 228,
Krger, Horst 1517 231, 233235, 237238, 240245,
Krupp, Alfred also Krupp 248251, 257, 274
Company 145, 148, 182f NATO Council 11, 33, 103, 228
NATO Land Forces Commander
Labor Service/units 9, 17, 118, 120, 121, (LANDCENT) 114, 225,
123f, 125, 134, 193 240-241, 245
Laniel, Joseph 8788 Nazi regime 18, 33, 35, 37, 39, 40,
Lisbon Conference 48, 95, 111, 230, 235 4445, 5758, 60, 62, 145146,
London Conference (1954) 132133, 148f, 149, 158, 164, 175, 211
167, 231 Neues Deutschland 174
New York Times 10
MacArthur, Douglas II 87 Niemller, Martin, 5960
Main Political Administration (Politische Norstad, General Lauris 44, 101103,
Hauptverwaltung (PHV) 259, 109110, 112, 114, 116, 274
261262, 265, 267f North Rhine Westphalia 39
Manstein, Erich von, Field Marshal 206, North Sea 19f, 95, 130, 133, 140141,
238 192193, 228
Marshall, George C. 78, 159 Nostitz, Count Eberhard von 15, 17
Mauser GmbH 146
Mazire, General Ulrich de 222, 240 Oder-Neisse Line, 55, 612
McCloy, General John S. 910, 14, 32, Office of Military Government 152f,
145, 158f, 166, 170 158f, 160
Meisel Circle 118, 120, 129130, Ohne mich Movement 60, 65, 127
135136, 141 Ollenhauer, Eric, 58, 67, 69
Meister, General Rudolf 15, 17, 95 Oster, Achim 17, 26
Mendes-France, Pierre 86, 8891, 276
Military Command and Control Panitzki, General Werner 113, 116
Committee (Militrische Paris Accords 67, 82
Fhrungsrat) 224 Paris Conference //Paris Treaty
Molotov, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich 88 (1954) 132133, 180
Monnet, Jean O.M.G. 75, 7880, 276 Personnel Screening Committee 46,
Montgomery, Field Marshal 47, 51, 125, 135139
Bernard L. 234 Petersberg negotiations 55, 7980,
Morgenthau, Henry 151 131, 166, 229
Picht, Werner 211
Nash, Frank 104, 111, 188, 196197 Pleven Plan 11, 3233, 7880, 83, 84,
National Defense Council (GDR) 257f 88, 90, 172f, 228229
National Peoples Army Nationale Pleven, Ren 3233, 7881, 8384,
Volksarmee (NVA) 255271, 278279 88, 117, 276
National Peoples Police Force (Nationale Poland 19, 31, 55, 6162, 67, 162163
Volkspolizei (NVP)17, 61, 66, 257 Potsdam Conference/ Potsdam
National Security Resource Board Agreement 153, 156f, 163, 223
(NSRB) 162 Protocol on Forces of the Western
Naval Historical Team Bremerhaven European Union, 1954, 91
(NHT): 119122, 126, 128132, 134,
140141 Rau, Johannes, 69
North Atlantic Treaty Organization Reichswehr 35, 37, 206, 213, 245, 260
(NATO) XXI, 4, 6, 9, 11, 13, 16, 22, Reinhardt, General Hellmuth 17
26f, 27, 2931, 33, 3739, 4144, Reuter, Ernst, 65
284 index
Rhine-Ijssel Line 20, 99, 168, 242 Spofford Compromise 11

Rheinmetall-Borsig Company 107f, Stalin, Joseph, x, 6667, 73, 87, 163,
147, 158, 159f, 160f, 173 168, 259
Ridgeway, General Mathew 101 State-War-Navy Coordinating
Robertson, Sir Brian 8, 166 Committee 163
Roosevelt, Franklin D. 150151, Steel, Sir Christopher 8
153, 167 Strategic Air Command 241
Rttiger, Hans 1517, 28f, 239, Strauss, Franz Josef 5052, 114115,
242244, 249 190191, 226, 232236, 247248
Royal Air Force 102, 245 Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt
Royal Navy 102, 19293, 277 (Stuttgarter Schuldbekenntnis), 60
Ruge, Admiral Friedrich 15-17, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe
119121, 127, 130131, 135, (SACEUR) 82, 91, 99, 101102, 114,
138140, 246, 275, 277 234, 237, 241f
Ruhr Region 147, 163164, 166, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers
168169 Europe (SHAPE) 132134, 140,
237, 240, 241f
Schffer, Fritz, German Finance Minister Switzerland 189
19491957 181, 189
Schleswig-Holstein 125126, Taft, Robert A. 86
228, 243 Taylor, General Maxwell 115
Schmid, Carlo, 589, 67 Time Magazine 148
Schnez, Albert, General 217, 218f, 220 Truman, Harry S. (Truman
School of Innere Fuehrung (later: Center Administration) 11, 3233, 7677,
of Innere Fuehrung) 216 80, 86, 98, 159, 167, 169, 273
Schulze-Hinrichs, Alfred 15, 17 Tunner, General William 45
Schumacher, Kurt, 5556, 5864, Twining, General Nathan 45
6667, 70, 275
Schuman Plan 6364, 75, 78, 80 United Nations Command (UNC) 77
Schuman, Robert 11, 6364, 7475, Ulbricht, Walter 257, 267, 269
78, 80, 83 United States (USA) ix, x1, 4, 20, 31,
Schwerin, General Count Gerhard 36, 4547, 78, 82, 8687, 94, 117, 132,
von 89, 1116, 20, 25, 26, 27f, 140, 155, 161, 163, 167, 168f, 188, 192,
3436, 3840, 94, 170 196198, 201, 208209, 244, 276
Senger und Etterlin, General U.S. Air Force, 45, 9394, 97, 101102,
Friedo von 1517, 195f 105, 109110, 197
Social Democratic Party (SPD) X, U.S. Air Force Europe (USAFE) 4546,
3639, 50, 5570, 137, 146, 171, 275 9798, 108113
Socialist Unity Party (SED) 61, 256-266, U.S. Army 5, 27, m9394, 96101,
269270, 278279 105106, 109110, 115116, 118119,
Soviet Union (USSR) ix, x, 45, 7, 188, 209, 244, 275276
9, 1819, 31, 34, 55, 73, 7577, 117, U.S. Army Civil Affairs Division 160,
172, 206207 164, 165f, 166f
Soviet Army 22, 65, 99, 194195, 255, xU.S. Army Europe (USAREUR) 98,
257, 259 109, 111
Soviet Group of Forces, Germany 32, U.S. Defense Department 110, 162f
255 U.S. High Commissioner to
Spaak, Paul-Henri 89 Germany 32, 145
Speidel, General Hans 8, 1217, 25, 28, U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group
3335, 76, 94, 103, 114116, 130132, (MAAG) 49, 111, 209
221, 225, 227, 241, 274, U.S. National Security Council
Der Speigel 42, 247 Document 68 (NSC-68) 76, 77
Spofford, Charles M. 79 U.S. Navy: 118125, 130, 132, 137, 140
index 285
U.S. State Department 147, 151152, Warsaw Pact 192, 255

154f, 159, 160f, 163164, 165f, Wehrmacht x, xi, 8, 12, 1518, 22f,
169, 276 23, 3436, 40, 4245, 76, 93, 99100,
U.S. Treasury Department 151 111, 170, 179f, 206214, 217218,
U.S. War Department 151152, 154155 221223, 225, 227, 232, 260, 277
Weimar Republic 32, 37, 39, 57,
Verner, Admiral Waldemar 255, 69, 296
259, 267f Weinstein, Adalbert 212
Vietinghoff-Scheel, General Heinrich Wellershof, General Dieter 223f
von 12, 1416 Weser-Lech Line 242
Volkswagen 150, 156157 Western European Union (WEU) 73,
91, 133, 134f, 246
Waffen SS 18, 44, 209 White, Harry Dexter 151
Wagner, Admiral. Gerhard 119120, White, General Thomas 104f, 110
124, 129, 131133, 135136, 139140 Wildermuth, Eberhard 12

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rearming Germany / edited by James S. Corum.

Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated,

Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by

List of Abbreviations .................................................................................vii

THE BEGINNING OF REARMAMENT

The Himmerod Memorandum and the Beginning

Adenauer, Amt Blank, and the Founding of the

THE DEBATE WITHIN GERMAN SOCIETY

A Reasonable Yes: The Social Democrats and West

THE ALLIED POWERS AND THE CREATION OF

The European Defense Community

American Assistance to the New German Army

Establishing the Bundesmarine: The Convergence

THE ECONOMICS OF GERMAN REARMAMENT

German Industry, the Cold War, and the Bundeswehr

Reasons of State: A Military and Foreign Trade Necessity.

DEBATES WITHIN THE BUNDESWEHR ABOUT

The Battle Over Innere Fuehrung

The Service Staffs Struggle over Structure.

THE OTHER GERMANY. CREATING THE

Failure to Command: The Political Underpinnings

Rearming Germany: An Essay on Books and Sources .......................273

ACC Allied Control Council

NVP Nationale Volkspolizei

differing views as to the status of Germany in the post-war world.

Although the Bundeswehr was formally established in 1955 it would

The Himmerod Memorandum stands as the Magna Charta of the

Prehistory of HimmerodThe Political Situation

West German security policy back to the foundation of the Federal

seriously discussed starting in the Fall of 1949.5 The Western Powers

Adenauers Early Position on Security Policy and the Attitude

In West Germany there was another kind of resistance to be overcome.

Powerful opposition within and outside of Germany pushed

Police against the West Germans. If the Western Powers refused to

Count Schwerin and the Road to Himmerod

The Allies responded cautiously to Adenauers recommendations and

Policy Changes Following the Invasion of Korea

Of the three Western Powers, Britain remained the most friendly

experienced by the American forces in their early battles in South

of NATO. After President Truman approved the policy on 9 September

The Himmerod ConferencePreparation

It is important to note that even before the Korea conflict provoked an

In any case, Adenauer wanted to avoid giving the impression that

circle. Adenauer had taken Speidels security policy memorandum

Participants and the Events of the Conference

Lieutenant General (ret.) Speidel was one of 15 senior officers of the

After Blankenhorn, a legal expert, Dr. Erich Kaufmann, spoke on

Part 1. The Military-Political Principles and Assumptions

Provide reasonable support for former and future German sol-

Part 2. Basic Operational Considerations Facing the

Part 3. Organization of the German Contingent

important departments of the ministry, above all the personnel

overseas in Allied training facilities in the Fall of that year. As soon as

force, will have to be trained overseas in Allied bases. A further major

Part 5. The Internal Orientation of the Military

have a committee of ombudsmen within each military unit. This might

Part 6. Summary Comments by the Committee Chairman

Later History of the Conference and the Memorandum

The conference memorandum that was signed by all the conference

approval. At the urging of Count Kielmansegg, Count Schwerin on