The Bundeswehr at Fifty
By Stephen Szabo

The Bundeswehr marked its 50th anniversary this month. Fifty years ago few observers would have predicted that this would be an event worth celebrating. In 1955 opposition to the very idea of a revived German military was anathema to large numbers of Germans and Europeans alike. Memories of German soldiers ravaging Europe were still fresh. The concern was more with a revival of German militarism and nationalism than of German weakness. The Bundeswehr was a compromise that came out of the ashes of the defeat of the European Defense Community by the French National Assembly in 1954 and was central to the consolidation of NATO.

During the Cold War, the Bundeswehr emerged as a respected military force within NATO. It was closely integrated into the NATO command structure and was configured as an entirely defensive force. It was consciously developed as a democratic, citizen based military and contributed the concept of Innere Führung to the lexicon of military concepts. Under this approach, the Bundeswehr was shaped as a conscript military with a strong emphasis on democratic control from both civilian political leaders and from the military itself. By the time Germany was suddenly reunified and the Cold War ended, most qualms about its military role had been buried.

However, with the end of the division of Germany and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Bundeswehr was faced with crucial new challenges regarding its roles and missions. Territorial defense against a disintegrating foe could no longer serve as a rationale for the new Bundeswehr. What is remarkable is how quickly the German military was restructured to adapt to the radically different conditions of the new Europe. In only a decade, which began with the important decision of the German Constitutional Court in 1994 to allow the Bundeswehr to be deployed outside of the NATO area, the German military has been deployed in Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Afghanistan and other trouble spots far from Germany. Currently around 8,000 members of the Bundeswehr are serving abroad on peace keeping missions. The Bundeswehr has undergone a radical restructuring from a large armored and infantry force of close to 500,000 men to a small rapidly deployable force of about 100,000 and an additional support force of about 150,000 personnel. Its current Social Democratic Defense Minister, Peter Struck, has declared that German defense begins at the Hindu Kush and a SPD/Green government has authorized these far ranging deployments. The Bundeswehr is now also at the heart of the emerging European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP), providing forces for a number of European Union led operations and participating in both European battle groups and the NATO Reaction Force.

The Bundeswehr today is regarded widely as a force for peacekeeping, European construction, and humanitarian operations. Few worry about it as a threat, while most see it as part of the solution to a series of problems. As the German military looks ahead it can look back with a great deal of pride over what it has accomplished. However, it must look ahead to the key challenges which already confront it, not to mention those it cannot anticipate. It will have to decide whether it must retain conscription to remain linked to its public or whether its new missions require a fully professional, all volunteer force. It will have to find ways to modernize its forces to cope with the new missions it now faces, as well as with the advances in technology it must incorporate within a severely constrained budgetary environment. It will be very difficult, if not impossible, to maintain professionalism and morale if the Bundeswehr remains consistently under-funded. It will have to find ways to avoid creating "two armies," one of professionally motivated and better equipped crisis reaction forces and a second poorly-equipped territorial defense force. Most importantly, it will have to adjust to the changing relationship between NATO and the EU's ESDP. With the major draw down of American forces in Germany, the Bundeswehr will need to find new ways to remain an effective partner with U.S. forces while learning how to operate in an EU force environment. It will also have to make wise choices on areas of specialization, or niches, which make sense from both a NATO and an EU context.

This is a full agenda that will require wise and dynamic leadership from the next generation of German political and military leaders. The Bundeswehr has been led by an impressive array of military and civilian leaders, including Graf Baudissin, Klaus Naumann, Franz Josef Strauss, Helmut Schmidt, Manfred Wörner, Volker Rühe and Peter Struck to name some of the more prominent. Based upon this record, Germans can look to the future with some confidence.

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Stephen F. Szabo is Professor of European Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C., and is a frequent contributor to AICGS.

This article appeared in the June 16, 2005 AICGS Advisor.