Lieutenant 70

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A group of eight officers from Army Officer School II went down in the history of the Bundeswehr as “Leutnante 70” . On March 10, 1970, in Hamburg, they published nine theses in which they called for an officer type to be freed from traditionalist fetters. The group's theses on a liberal reform of the Bundeswehr found their way into the troops and the public.

background

After the then Inspector of the Army , Lieutenant General Albert Schnez , described in his study - the so-called "Schnez Study" - the concept of Innereführung as too theoretical and counterproductive to the effectiveness of an army, the eight members of the group took this as an opportunity for a corresponding backlash, which at the time was sometimes perceived as excessive. It was the second time that parts of the officer corps were critical of the Bundeswehr during the tenure of Defense Minister Helmut Schmidt .

In terms of content, the group primarily demanded a fundamental codetermination or participation, the open questioning of decisions and leadership behavior of superiors as well as the sharp separation of work and leisure.

The group was encouraged to write its theses by Wolf Graf von Baudissin , the father of the conception of Innereführung. He commented on the theses with the sentence: "What is still utopian today will hopefully be normal tomorrow and perhaps the day after tomorrow already tradition."

At the time, the group told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung :

“Because today the means of destruction are given in this way, our responsibility to the state is enormous. [...] Our responsibility is far greater than that of the manager in an industrial company. [...] Therefore we have to do more than just want to keep peace, in order to be able to give an answer to our own questioning, to live up to our own responsibility and to be able to overcome the absurdity of the soldier's profession. I have to want to work for peace. "

Specifically, the group was thinking of working for peace research institutes, such as the one established in 1971 by the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH) in Hamburg, whose first director was Count von Baudissin.

Reactions

Defense Minister Schmidt pointed out that it is not the Bundeswehr that has to shape society, but that it creates institutions like the Bundeswehr. Furthermore, in his opinion, experts in the use of physical violence should not deal simultaneously with the creation of peace. Specifically, he assessed the theses as "partly debatable, wrong in some points, provocative in others".

But Graf von Baudissin also assessed the group's demand for (co-) shaping society as overshooting the target. He stated: "For the first time active officers have overtaken me on the left."

The group and its demands were also discussed in the specialist conferences in connection with the preparation of the Bundeswehr White Book .

In response to the theses of the "Lieutenant 70", the " Captains von Unna " from the area of ​​the 7th Panzer Grenadier Division countered in 1971, whose content tended to agree with Schnez. Likewise, with the support and participation of the “ Working Group Democratic Soldiers ” (ADS), conscripts now spoke up . At a press conference on May 10, 1970, 13 soldiers - twelve of them in uniform - presented themselves to the public with their views and demands in the conscript study "Soldat 70" and handed them over to the public.

Among other things, the group's theses were discussed in the course of the seminar “In search of the officer's image” in 1984 at the Inner Guidance Center .

literature

  • Theses of the lieutenant 70th In: Winfried Vogel : Karl Wilhelm Berkhan. A pioneer of German security policy after 1945: Contributions to a political biography. Edition Temmen, 2003, p. 175. ISBN 3-861-08394-9
  • Inner leadership of the Bundeswehr: Material on the group "Leutnante 70" , vol. 29, section "Material collection Bundeswehr" in the Bernd C. Hesslein collection of the Institute for Contemporary History
  • Inner leadership of the Bundeswehr: material on the group "Leutnante 70" / "Soldat 70" , vol. 30, section "Material collection Bundeswehr" in the Bernd C. Hesslein collection of the Institute for Contemporary History
  • Materials in the estate of Ulrich de Maizière on the group “Leutnante 70” in the BArch , N 673/71.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b André Uzulis : The Bundeswehr. A political story from 1955 to the present day. ES Mittler & Sohn, 2015, p. 186. ISBN 3-813-21010-3 ( limited preview in Google book search)
  2. ↑ a b c Inner Leadership - Leadership Culture in Flecktarn. In: Ethics and the Military , Edition 2016/1 - Inner Leadership.
  3. ↑ Captains - One-time operation. Der Spiegel 14/1971, March 29, 1971, p. 22.
  4. ↑ a b c Simone Grün: Command Responsibility. LIT Verlag Münster, 2017, pp. 151–152. ISBN 3-643-13784-2 ( limited preview in Google Book Search)
  5. ↑ Lieutenants challenge tradition. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 29, 1970, p. 9.
  6. ↑ a b Original carbon copy of the reform theses of "Leutnante 70". In: IF: Inner Leadership. State education server Baden-Württemberg .
  7. ↑ Thorsten Loch : The face of the Bundeswehr. Communication strategies in the voluntary recruitment of the Bundeswehr 1956 to 1989. Walter de Gruyter, 2008, p. 250. ISBN 3-486-71221-7 . ( limited preview in Google Book search)
  8. ↑ see the article about the soldier newspaper stir up .
  9. ↑ Looking for the officer's picture. Seminar on the theses of "Lieutenant 70" and the record of the results of the "Captains of Unna". In: Texts and Studies by the Center for Inner Leadership. Series Educational Education , H. 1/1984, pp. 119–141.