Submarine Plans Committee of Inquiry

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U-boat construction in the Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft

The submarine plans Investigation Committee of the German Bundestag examined from 1986 to 1990 the illegal supply of submarine plans by the Howaldtswerke- German shipyard (HDW) in South Africa .

1986 submarine affair

The submarine affair was triggered by an article in the Kieler Nachrichten on November 26, 1986. In it, the journalist Peter Höver reported that the engineering office Lübeck (IKL) and the HDW had delivered blueprints and possibly also submarine components to South Africa for 46 million German marks without the approval of the authorities . South Africa has been subject to an arms embargo by the UN since 1963 during apartheid . Alleged referral and confidentiality by the then federal government under Helmut Kohl led to the establishment of the submarine plans investigation committee by the 10th German Bundestag on December 10, 1986 , which was continued in the 11th German Bundestag . It was questionable whether the Federal Chancellor and government officials had been concerned with the intended delivery of submarine plans, how the unauthorized deliveries had come about and what the Federal Government had done or failed to do to prevent the delivery.

Controversial recommendation for a resolution

The final recommendation for a decision was inconsistent, with the opposition and governing parties differing significantly in their results and assessments on all important points. The central issues of the submarine affair thus remained unresolved. It is certain that IKL and HDW planned and partially carried out a delivery of the blueprints and submarine components to South Africa, circumventing the approval of the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control , whereby the transport from Kiel to South Africa was handled by couriers via diplomatic mail. A letter dated October 28, 1983 from the CEO Ernst Pieper of Salzgitter AG , which held a 75% stake in HDW, to the then Federal Minister of Finance Gerhard Stoltenberg indicated that the Federal Government had been informed about the planned deal at an early stage.

Speculation on the Barschel case

As a result, there were repeated suspicions in the media that the then Prime Minister of Schleswig-Holstein, Uwe Barschel , might have been involved in this trade, which was discussed in television documentaries and a book and was mentioned as a possible motive for murder. According to Joachim Frisch, the submarine affair is a particularly drastic example of the state's support for profit interests in the economy, with the supervisory body not being informed and concealed state cooperation being assumed. The State Secretary in the Schleswig-Holstein Ministry of Finance, Carl Hermann Schleifer , informed the companies concerned about the secret meetings of the submarine plans investigation committee, while the then State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance , Friedrich Voss , was still involved in the business than he had since one year against the HDW by the Oberfinanzdirektion Kiel had been determined.

literature

  • Joachim Frisch: Chapter 7: Case study: The Kiel submarine affair . In: Abuse of Power in Political Discourse: Construction and Reproduction of Power Relationships through Criticism of Bourgeois Power . Westdeutscher Verlag , Opladen 1997, ISBN 978-3-531-12806-1 , pp. 149-229

Individual evidence

  1. ^ German Bundestag : Overview of the holdings, documentation and collections of the parliamentary archive as of July 2007 . In: Publications from the parliamentary archive of the German Bundestag, p. 23
  2. ↑ a b Barschel's greatest secret: Did the federal government tolerate a disguised triangular deal between Kiel, Rostock and Pretoria? . DER SPIEGEL 34/1991, August 19, 1991, accessed on February 24, 2016
  3. ^ Claudius Wenzel: South Africa Policy of the Federal Republic of Germany 1982–1992: Policy against Apartheid? . Springer, Wiesbaden 1994, ISBN 978-3-8244-4159-4 , pp. 172-175
  4. ↑ Peter Sandmeyer: Uwe Barschel: Deal resulting in death , Stern No. 38/2007, September 17, 2007, accessed on February 24, 2016
  5. ^ Barschel, submarine deals, drugs and murderers . welt.de, September 17, 2007, accessed on February 24, 2016
  6. ↑ Chapter 7: Case Study: The Kiel Submarine Affair . In Joachim Frisch: Abuse of Power in Political Discourse: Construction and Reproduction of Power Relationships through Criticism of Bourgeois Power . Pp. 203, 204