Arms conversion

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Arms conversion refers to the conversion of industrial companies or entire branches of armaments production to civilian manufacturing. The demand for socially useful products and socially acceptable arms conversion is an important concern of the peace movement , peace research and trade unions . The biblical expression swords into plowshares (based on the book Micha 4,2-4 EU ), one of the oldest symbols for armaments conversion, became a symbol of the peace movement in East and West in the 1980s .

The restriction of conversion to the arms industry corresponds to the status of the 1980s. In the 1990s, i.e. after the end of the Cold War , a second focus arose with the exploitation of military properties, in which considerable successes have been achieved so far. The reallocation of research funds, the dissolution of entire armies and the integration of former soldiers into the civilian labor market also came into the focus of conversion research. That is why the International Conversion Center Bonn (BICC) has expanded the definition of conversion as the reallocation of all resources previously used by the military for civil purposes.

Arms conversion projects in Germany

Arms Conversion and Local Politics

Former barracks of the Bundeswehr , the National People's Army of the GDR and the Allies were closed after 1989 and housing estates such as Vauban in Freiburg im Breisgau or the MLK Park in the Mainz district of Hartenberg-Münchfeld were built. The Palatinate city of Zweibrücken with the largest European factory outlet on the site of a former US military airfield and Hahn Airport are also success stories of the conversion of military use into civil use.

In Bremen, the former Vahr barracks became the new police headquarters, parts of the Roland barracks became a new housing estate, and the Bremen-Grohn barracks became the new International Jacobs University .

Objects from old gas mask cans
Steel helmet to punch
Dnepr , a civilian Russian-Ukrainian carrier rocket , on a military ICBM based

Military goods in transition to civil goods

Since there is often a shortage of raw materials after wars , trade and industry try to meet their raw material needs with decommissioned military goods. Military objects are then converted into civilian consumer goods. From mid-1945, for example, enamelled carbon copies were made from old steel helmets and enamelled milk cans from gas mask cans for household use - which was seen with great publicity in the cinema news . Next they produced candlesticks and ashtrays from grenade parts , coats of vice colored uniforms and many other objects of everyday use. They are still in use today and can now be found in many museums. A political demand for armaments conversion has been louder since the 1970s in the peace movement and on the left wing of the West German trade unions: they called for the German armaments industry to be converted to the production of civilian goods. This demand could not prevail.

Problems of changeover / conversion

In times of a secure supply of raw materials, the use of military articles and auxiliary materials for civil purposes is associated with considerable difficulties, since comparable civilian products can often be manufactured more cheaply. This became apparent in the dissolution of the National People's Army and the stockpiling for times of crisis after 1990. The use of military specifications also contributes to this . For example, the high asbestos content in tanks made it difficult to convert them to fire fighting tanks to fight forest fires. The use of cadmium to prevent corrosion does not make civil use easy either. It is therefore often cheaper to scrap the existing military products and implement new product ideas with the existing production facilities.

See also

literature

  • Bremen Foundation for Armaments Conversion and Peace Research : Opportunities for Armaments Conversion , Bremen 1990.
  • Fabrizio Battistelli, Ulrich Briefs, Ken Coates , György Szell: Armaments conversion and alternative production , Argument Verlag, Hamburg, ISBN 3886191184
  • Christoph Butterwegge , Eva Senghaas-Knobloch (Ed.): From the bloc confrontation to armaments conversion? The reorganization of international relations, disarmament and regional development after the Cold War. Lit Verlag, Münster 1992, 350 pp. (Paths to Peace Studies, Vol. 4)
  • Christoph Butterwegge, Martin Grundmann (ed.): Civil power Europe. Peace Policy and Arms Conversion in East and West. Bund Verlag, Cologne 1994, 300 pp.
  • Jan Hansen: Do missiles create jobs? The dispute over retrofitting and armament conversion in the trade unions (around 1979 to 1983) , in: Arbeit - Bewegungs - Geschichte , Issue II / 2016.
  • Lutz Köllner, Burkhardt J. Huck (ed.): Disarmament and conversion. Political requirements and economic consequences in the Federal Republic. Campus Verlag Frankfurt / M. 1990, 734 pp.
  • Christian Wellmann: Disarmament and Employment a Conflict of Goals? An empirical analysis of the financial and economic starting conditions for conversion in the Federal Republic of Germany. Frankfurt / New York 1989.
  • Military Policy Documentation, Issue 39/40, ISSN  0171-9033 , Secure jobs and useful products , examples from the USA, Sweden, Great Britain, Austria and the Federal Republic
  • Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe (Hrsg.): Signs of need. When the steel helmet became a cooking pot , Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe, Detmold 1989. ISBN 3-926160-06-3
  • Ingo Zander (Ed.): Conversion management: consequences of disarmament and coping strategies. Meetings of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation on September 1st, 1994 in Kaiserslautern and on April 6th, 1995 in Potsdam. Bonn 1995, ISBN 3-86077-412-3 ( Electronic edition: FES Library, Bonn 2000 )
  • Heinemann-Grüder, Andreas (Ed.), 2006. Conversion and Conflict Transformation. Distance University of Hagen
  • Küchle, Hartmut. 2006. "Defense companies between conversion and strategic industrial policy." In: A. Heinemann-Grüder (Ed.), Conversion and Conflict Transformation. Fernuniversität Hagen, pp. 89-106.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Jan Hansen: Do missiles create jobs? The dispute over retrofitting and armament conversion in the trade unions (around 1979 to 1983) , in: Arbeit - Bewegungs - Geschichte , Issue II / 2016.