Band 84, Heft 2

This special issue offers an insight into a research project at the Bundeswehr Center for Military History and Social Sciences on the history of the German armed forces after 1990. The articles presented here approach this history of the Bundeswehr in the »era of foreign deployments« (» Ära der Auslandseinsätze «) from different perspectives. However, the starting point is no longer the foreign deployment itself. Instead, the project aims to shed light on the political conditions and determining factors of military missions abroad. Thus, the foreign mission no longer emerges as a quasi-objective and static ontological entity, but rather as a field of action characterized by dynamic change. This already applies to the perspective-bound and time-varying definition of deployment. At least at the beginning of the 1990s, however, the competence to plan and order foreign missions was also controversial. Although the German military was subject to the primacy of politics with regard to decisions on deployments, it nevertheless had room for maneuver that had an impact on the political sphere. The aim of this special issue is to shed light on German politics.

Contemporaries already described the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and German reunification in the following year as a turning point. While this was linked to expectations of a global peace order in the northern hemisphere, new conflicts emerged simultaneously in Africa, Asia, the Balkans, and the peripheral regions of the post-Soviet states, which soon became collectively known as new wars. At the same time, the Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces) was gearing itself toward foreign missions (»Einsatz«) as a contribution to international crisis management. Thus, since the beginning of the 1990 s, two terms had been on the political science and military agendas, the conceptual meaning of which remained unclear. While the term »new wars« remained broad and politically and academically controversial, the expression »mission« (Einsatz) became increasingly specified in political, legal, and military terms, without, however, losing its ambiguity. However, the events themselves, as well as the descriptive semantics, remained diverse, fluid, and perspective-dependent.

The German Armed Forces have been deployed abroad for humanitarian purposes since 1959. However, the first time they were involved in a United Nations mission was in Cambodia. Between 1991 and 1993, up to 150 members of the Bundeswehr’s medical service took part in two consecutive missions in this Southeast Asian country. For political and legal reasons, however, the federal ministries refused to label the deployment of the German soldiers as participation in a UN mission. Officially, it was only regarded as a »humanitarian operation« in support of a UN mission, supposedly in continuation of previous measures. In retrospect, this ambiguity not only makes it difficult to clearly periodise the German Armed Forces’ »era of major military deployments abroad«. The German troops in Cambodia also partly misunderstood their mission. Contrary to their actual assignment, they provided medical treatment to a large number of Cambodian civilians, prompting the United Nations briefly to consider withdrawing the German contingent from the mission.

The source presented here provides insights into concrete ideas and framework conditions of military operational planning under the conditions of the arms control negotiations between 1987 and 1989. The document thus opens a window into the prehistory of the transition period of 1989/90, touching on negotiations at NATO level and thus illustrating attempted conversion of German military technicality into political influence in order to safeguard German interests. It also shows the continuing mistrust of military planners towards the Soviet Union, as well as the party- and social-political dispute over the concepts of security and defence policy in the 1980s. This formative phase of the security and defence policy of the Federal Republic of Germany is of outstanding interest for a military historiography based on the interplay between the military and the politics of the united Germany.

Following the parliamentary evaluation of Germany’s involvement in Afghanistan, Philipp Münch’s thesis of Germany’s lack of strategy has been confirmed. The commission of inquiry even referred to a »strategic failure.« Previous academic studies were primarily based on open sources, memoirs, and eyewitness accounts. This makes it all the more important to conduct a historical study of this costly Bundeswehr deployment in the Hindu Kush more than 20 years later. Since the current classified information instruction makes it difficult to use official documents, the few already declassified documents offer a starting point. One such key document is the field report of the 1 st German ISAF Contingent from 2002. Approximately 20 pages of text address both positive and negative experiences from the early days and formulate recommendations for future contingents. In his introduction, the author asks for the extent to which this strategic failure is already reflected in the first field report. This edited version of the report provides initial answers, but also touches on further topics that can be explored in the future using this and other sources.

Taking present-day issues as a point of departure has inspired and promoted studies in military history. As this contribution demonstrates, however, straight analogies between current and past constellations and contexts are to be avoided. Moreover, terms and concepts such as »human rights« and »civil society« need reflection and explanation before they can be applied in military historiography. A case study of the internment of civilian »enemy aliens« during the First World War sheds light on the merits and limits of historical presentism.

»All that History teaches us is that we do not learn from History«. Hegel’s often-quoted maxim does not imply, however, that there is nothing to learn from History. On the contrary, studying History would be a fruitless hobby, comparable to computer games, if we did not try to question the past in ways relevant to the present.