Erhard Bühler

Erhard Bühler (born January 20, 1956 in Aichach ) is a lieutenant general of the army out of service in the Bundeswehr . His last assignment was General (TR) from May 31, 2019 to April 22, 2020, Commander of the Allied Joint Forces Command of NATO in Brunssum ( Netherlands ).

Life

Bühler was born in Aichach , Bavaria , and grew up in Regensburg . He is married and has a son.

Military career

Training and first uses

On July 1, 1976, Bühler joined the German Armed Forces at Repair Battalion 4 in Hemau . He trained as an officer until 1982, where he studied mechanical engineering at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg from 1977 to 1981 and graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering.

After completing his studies, Bühler was employed in Neumünster from 1982 to 1984 as a technical officer with Telecommunications Battalion 6. In 1984 he was transferred to Wolfenbüttel , where he took over the post of company commander of the repair company 5/1 as a captain until 1987 . From 1987 to 1988 he was employed as a lecture hall leader in officer candidate training at the Technical School of the Army in Aachen .

Service as a staff officer

From 1988 to 1990 he completed the 31st general staff course at the command and control academy of the Bundeswehr in Hamburg . After being promoted to major , he was employed as a consultant in the command staff of the armed forces (FüS) from 1990 to 1992 and also served as a staff officer in the staff department head for military communications (FüS II) in the Federal Ministry of Defense in Bonn. From 1992 to 1993, Bühler completed his US general staff training at Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth , Kansas .

Back in Germany, Bühler was an operations staff officer ( G3 ) in the staff of the I. Corps in Münster from 1993 to 1995 under the command of Hansjörn Boes . Following these staff assignments, Bühler took over from 1995 to 1998 with the repair battalion 11 in Delmenhorst as a lieutenant colonel in a troop command. From 1998 to 1999 he served again in the Ministry of Defense in Bonn, this time as a consultant in the office of State Secretary Dr. Peter Wichert .

This was followed by a transfer to Potsdam , where Bühler served as Head of Operations and Training (G3) in the staff of the IV Corps from 1999 to 2000 under the command of Rainer Schuwirth . From 2000 to 2001 Colonel Bühler served as head of department for conception and army development in the command staff of the army (FüH III 2) in Bonn under the command of the chief of staff Rolf Bernd and the army inspector Helmut Willmann .

Bühler remained in the Ministry of Defense and served from April 1, 2001 to July 18, 2002 as an adjutant to the Federal Minister of Defense Rudolf Scharping ( SPD ). After Scharping's dismissal shortly before the federal election in 2002 , the then parliamentary group chairman, Dr. Peter Struck (SPD) assumed the post of Defense Minister on April 19, 2002. Bühler remained in his post as adjutant to the minister and served in this position until August 2003.

In this position, Bühler acted as part of the management team in the ministry together with the minister, civil servants and parliamentary state secretaries , the inspector general of the Bundeswehr , General Wolfgang Schneiderhan , and was thus involved in the development of the Bundeswehr's transformation process from the structures of the Cold War to one "Army in action" involved. Bühler's successor as the minister's adjutant was Lutz Niemann , with whom Bühler had completed general staff training.

Service in the rank of general

On August 22, 2003, Bühler took over command of Panzerbrigade 12 from Bruno Kasdorf in Amberg and was also appointed Brigadier General in this role . In addition, he was in this role from May to November 2004 on an international assignment as commander of the 9th German KFOR contingent in Prizren in Kosovo . He was also deputy commander of the Multinational Brigade Southwest under the command of the Italian Brigadier General Danilo Errico. On February 20, 2006, Bühler handed the brigade over to his successor, again Lutz Niemann, and was transferred back to the Ministry of Defense.

Here he was from 2006 to 2008, still under the then General Inspector Schneiderhan, as Head of Staff Department V, responsible for the deployment planning of the Bundeswehr. On June 1, 2008, the staff department was spun off and, as the new operations management staff, first in Bonn and then in Berlin, it was directly subordinate to the Inspector General, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, in order to bundle the tasks and competencies on issues relating to missions abroad. In the function of the head of this staff, Bühler was appointed major general and worked with his military deputy Dieter Warnecke . After one year, on August 27, 2009, he handed over the management of the operational command team to Andreas Krause .

Prior to that, on July 29, 2009, Bühler had already succeeded Markus Bentler and thus took over command of the 10th Panzer Division in Sigmaringen . Until the handover of his previous post he officially led both the 10th Panzer Division and the operational command staff.

In addition, on September 1, 2010, Bühler took over the management of KFOR in Pristina ( Kosovo ) - also from Bentler . Bühler's place in Sigmaringen will be replaced by his deputy, Manfred Hofmeyer , for a year , as Bühler will return to Sigmaringen. Due to the downsizing of the KFOR troops, the post of KFOR commander was downgraded from the post of lieutenant general to major general at the same time as the takeover by Bühler. On September 9, 2011, he handed over command of the KFOR task force in Kosovo to his successor Erhard Drews , until now the commander of the Airmobile Operations Division.

Until June 4, 2013 Erhard Bühler was commander of the 10th Panzer Division in Sigmaringen. He handed this post over to Johann Langenegger . Bühler himself moved to the Joint Warfare Center of NATO in Norway. On October 1, 2014, he became head of the planning department in the Federal Ministry of Defense . In this function he pushed the cooperation of the Bundeswehr with other European armies forward. As a representative of the Federal Ministry of Defense, he is also a member of the Presidium of the German Defense Association (DWT).

In 2017, Bühler was considered the most promising candidate to head the EU Military Committee as the successor to Greek General Mikhail Kostarakos . This was prevented by France, which surprisingly and contrary to previous agreements with General Denis Mercier, presented its own candidate. Since Germany and France blocked each other, the Italian chief of staff Claudio Graziano was elected on November 7, 2017.

Bühler was to become Commander of the Allied Joint Forces Command of NATO in Brunssum ( Netherlands ) on February 1, 2019 , but the handover of command was suspended until the conclusion of the German Bundestag's committee of inquiry into the advisory affair in the Ministry of Defense; the previous Italian commander remained in command for as long . He finally took up the post on May 31, 2019. This was accompanied by the temporary appointment as general for the duration of his activity in Brunssum.

On April 22, 2020, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), General Tod D. Wolters (US Air Force) handed over command to his successor General Jörg Vollmer in a video conference due to the current COVID-19 pandemic .

On May 26, 2020, Bühler retired after 44 years of service.

Contract award controversy

In December 2018 and January 2019 , the news magazine Der Spiegel published articles that dealt with the award of an order by the planning department headed by Bühler. From the end of 2017, contracts were negotiated with the consulting firm Accenture , with whose managing director Timo Noetzel Bühler is known. Noetzel denied a friendship with Bühler, but stated that he had a friendship with the then State Secretary Suder and her family.

In an internal report, the Federal Ministry of Defense found a violation of public procurement law, but denied that the contract had only come about because of the friendly relationship. A committee of inquiry of the defense committee into the so-called advisory affair sheds light on his role in the awarding of contracts and his personal relationships .

Achievements in Kosovo and aftermath

General Bühler at a meeting with the Serbian negotiator Borislav Stefanovic, summer 2011

After Bühler took command of the NATO troops in Kosovo, riots broke out in Kosovo in July 2011 .

Bühler was faced with the decision to intervene militarily and, if necessary, to clear the blockades by force of arms in order to guarantee the freedom of movement in the country required by the UN Security Council . General Bühler renounced this violent crackdown. Instead, he relied on negotiations on the ground, especially with the Serbian side.

The breakthrough came with an agreement negotiated by General Bühler on August 3, 2011 in the KFOR camp “Nothing Hill” with the Serbian minister responsible for Kosovo, Goran Bogdanovic, and the Serbian negotiator Borko Stefanović . The aim was to guarantee freedom of movement in accordance with UN Resolution 1244 .

The agreement, which is also known as the “Nothing Hill Agreement”, brought about a fundamental change and had immediate consequences for further political developments. For the first time, this agreement regulates the normalization of relations between the two countries.

Others

In 2011, Bühler was one of the first high-ranking representatives of the defense department to speak out publicly in a discussion on Web 2.0 .

literature

• Bernd Franke: A German general is preparing the way for peace and international reconciliation in Kosovo. In: Humanitarian International Law Information Papers , Volume 27, Issue 4/2014, page 188 ff.

Web links

• Official biography on the Joint Warfare Center website

• Stephan Löwenstein: The prudent general. Portrait: Erhard Bühler. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . August 2, 2011, accessed August 2, 2011 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Personnel changes in top military and civilian positions. (PDF) (No longer available online.) BMVg Press and Information Office, June 20, 2008, archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved April 4, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ BMVg press release - Personnel changes in top military positions - from August 27, 2009 ( Memento of the original from April 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ Personnel changes in top military positions ( Memento of the original from April 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (BMVg.de of July 21, 2009) 
4. ↑ Schwäbische Zeitung from July 30, 2009 ( Memento from September 11, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
5. ↑ Michael Heschler: General moves to Kosovo . In: Schwäbische Zeitung from August 3, 2010
6. ↑ Michael Heschler: Commander Kfor. General Bühler succeeds Bentler in Kosovo . In: Schwäbische Zeitung from August 3, 2010
7. ↑ Bundeswehr General Drews takes over KFOR command ( memento from September 5, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
8. ↑ "A long tradition comes to an end in Sigmaringen, that affects me". Retrieved May 26, 2015 . 
9. ↑ Communication from the BMVg
10. ↑ Konstantin von Hammerstein: Paris prevents German general from occupying top positions. In: Spiegel Online. December 1, 2017, accessed December 21, 2017 . 
11. ↑ Personnel changes in top positions of the Federal Ministry of Defense and the Bundeswehr. In: www.bmvg.de. Federal Ministry of Defense, March 16, 2018, accessed on March 16, 2018 . 
12. ↑ Dangerous witness for Leyen in the Bundeswehr adviser affair. In: Tagesspiegel. February 14, 2019, accessed on February 14, 2019 : “Since he now has to be available as a witness in Berlin, he cannot, as planned, take over the NATO command in Brunssum in the Netherlands from the Italian Riccardo Marchio. The "Bild" newspaper reported a corresponding internal NATO note. Accordingly, the transfer is suspended. And that "for an indefinite period". " 
13. ^ N-tv of April 10, 2019: Consultant affair. Minister promoted General - Temporary , accessed April 23, 2020
14. ↑ First time in history: Virtual change-of-command ceremony at JFC Brunssum , JFC Brunssum Public Affairs Office, April 22, 2020
15. ↑ General Bühler retired. BmVg press and information staff, May 27, 2020, accessed on May 27, 2020 . 
16. ^ Ministry of Defense: When wide-legged advisors meet persistent officials. Retrieved August 13, 2019 . 
17. ↑ SPIEGEL ONLINE: How Accenture got contracts worth millions from the Defense Ministry. Retrieved January 27, 2019 . 
18. ↑ Sven Becker, Matthias Gebauer: "Good relationship" . In: Der Spiegel . No. 50/2018 . Spiegel Verlag, Hamburg December 8, 2018.
19. ↑ Patrick Pehl: The accentuated preferred candidate. In: Consultant affair. Accessed June 10, 2019 (German). 
20. ↑ n-tv NEWS: "General B." worried about private company. Retrieved June 10, 2019 . 
21. ↑ See UN Resolution 1244 (Section 9 h).
22. ↑ Serbian blockade forces NATO soldiers to turn back , Tages-Anzeiger, July 30, 2011 (accessed July 1, 2014); Christian Wehrschütz: Interview with KFOR Commander: “We want to avoid the escalation” , Tagesspiegel, August 4, 2011 (accessed on July 1, 2014); Vivien-Marie Drews, Frerk Schenker: KFOR-General amazes bloggers in disbelief , in Hannoversche Allgemeine, August 10, 2011 (accessed July 1, 2014).
23. ↑ T. Wiegold, Kosovo: Agreement with the Serbs, programmed trouble with the Kosovars , August 4, 2011 (accessed July 2, 2014). See also: Kosovo crisis settled ( memento of May 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), Südwest Presse, August 6, 2011; Kosovo's Serbs give in on the border dispute , Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), August 8, 2011 (accessed July 2, 2014); German general solves border conflict in Kosovo , Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, August 5, 2011 (accessed July 2, 2014).
24. ↑ Bernd Franke: "A German general prepares the way for peace and international reconciliation in Kosovo. In: Humanitäres Völkerrecht-Informationsschriften". In: "Humanitarian international law information documents", Volume 27, Issue 4/2014, page 189.
25. ↑ ag: Kosovo: No end of the tension in sight: eyes straight ahead. In: augengeradeaus.net. Retrieved October 12, 2016 . 
26. ↑ Vivien-Marie Drews / Frerk Schenker: Kfor-Kommandeur Bühler writes in the blog about the Kosovo mission. Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, August 10, 2011, accessed on August 11, 2011 .