Association of German Soldiers

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Johannes Frießner , the first chairman of the VdS, 1943
Gottfried Hansen , Frießner's successor as chairman of the VdS; here (second from right) on the staff of Vice Admiral Hipper (center), 1916

The Association of German Soldiers e. V. (VdS) was an association of former professional soldiers founded in 1951 . It served to maintain tradition and comradeship , amnesty for members of the armed forces convicted of war crimes , their rehabilitation and other representation of interests of former professional soldiers, mainly their professional reintegration and obtaining full pension entitlements. After the Bundeswehr not only forbade any cooperation with the VdS in 2004, but also imposed a ban on contact with it, it gradually disappeared into insignificance and has been dissolved since 2016.

Founding and chairman

The association was founded in September 1951 with the support of the Adenauer federal government , specifically by Blank's office , which was preparing the establishment of the Bundeswehr. In the months before that, the agitation of various soldiers' associations had radicalized. Former Wehrmacht officers had increasingly joined forces in subversive groups and were concerned with models of thought for a possible war against the Soviet Union or independent political programs beyond the political parties. The federal government wanted to counteract this by promoting an umbrella association. The objective of the Blank office was to win a somewhat homogeneous association to influence public opinion in the direction of rearmament , which it could control. This new association was supposed to position itself on the East-West question, which became more acute during the Cold War , but otherwise stay out of politics.

The former Colonel General of the Wehrmacht Johannes Frießner became the first chairman in September 1951 . The Office Blank could not oppose, despite his efforts to moderating influence on former Wehrmacht generals, determining Frieß former chairman of this "umbrella organization of soldier associations", although it Frießner "evident in his exposed position of political tact was missing." He had to resign that same year after he justified the attack on Poland as a "legitimate act to protect ethnic Germans in Poland" and a declaration of honor for the - according to Frießner - "decently fighting Waffen-SS " with the disqualification of the Officers of the military resistance from July 20, 1944 . With the assassination attempt on Hitler , a method had to be rejected "from the military point of view", namely "political murder". Frießner's successor was Admiral a. D. Gottfried Hansen . He was followed as chairman by the former Wehrmacht generals General der Infanterie a. D. Kurt von Tippelskirch (from September 1956), retired general of the armored troops. D. Adolf-Friedrich Kuntzen (from October 1957), Colonel General ret. D. Hans von Salmuth (from September 1958), then the Bundeswehr Generals Lieutenant General of the Bundeswehr ret. D. Gerhard Matzky (from December 1962), retired major general D. Johannes Müller (from March 1979) and the doctorate lawyer and major general a. D. Jürgen Schreiber from 1987 to 2001.

Function as umbrella organization and program

The association as an umbrella organization included traditional associations of larger troops, including the Association of German Africa Corps , the traditional community of Greater Germany and the mutual aid community of members of the former Waffen SS (HIAG). Predecessor organizations that were absorbed by the VdS were the Federation of Eligible Former Wehrmacht Members and Their Survivors (BvW) and the Protection Association of Former German Soldiers (BDS). The journalistic organ of the VdS was the magazine Soldat im Volk .

The association held joint events for former war veterans for the purpose of cultivating comradeship as well as memorial events for fallen soldiers. In terms of interests, the VdS and its member organizations were committed to the rehabilitation of former Wehrmacht soldiers and the preservation of traditions of the Waffen-SS in the sense of a social and legal perception as supposedly normal soldiers with full pension claims. The soldiers of the Waffen-SS should also benefit from the provisions of the so-called 131 law , if they were, as in August 1953 the former general of the armored troops and state chairman of the VdS Lower Saxony, Traugott Herr , unencumbered, they would have been “front soldiers, exactly like every other soldier done her duty ”and would now be professionally disadvantaged just because she was“ promoted to higher ranks through bravery in front of the enemy ”.

The fundamental line in this question had already been given in April 1952 by the then VdS chairman Gottfried Hansen, when he wrote an open letter to the later President of the United States, General Dwight D. Eisenhower , at that time still Supreme Commander of the NATO forces in April 1952 Europe, demanded a general amnesty for all members of the armed forces convicted as war criminals and in May of the same year demanded from Chancellor Konrad Adenauer : "Fight for an amnesty that solves this question alone". The interests policy of the VdS achieved successes both in terms of the early dismissal of Wehrmacht officers convicted as war criminals as well as the acquisition of full pension claims from the former professional soldiers, which took away part of its past and socio-political agenda, so that the VdS now became a "victim of its own success" . According to the military historian Jörg Echternkamp , the VdS was rightly perceived in the 1950s as one of the main "pressure groups" which externally asserted the soldiers' social interests and internally promoted self-help by "reviving the old comradeship".

With the German Armed Forces Association founded in 1956 . V. (DBwV) , which, in contrast to the VdS, focused more on active soldiers as a target group, an agreement was made in October 1956 that both associations should form a working group “while maintaining their independence”. In the written agreement signed by the chairmen of Tippelskirch (VdS) and Molinari (DBwV) it was stated: "The VdS recommends its members in the Bundeswehr to join the Bundeswehr Association" and vice versa: "The Bundeswehr Association recommends its members to join the VdS after they left the armed forces. ”Both associations also cooperated in questions of care for veterans in need of care. So was z. B. a common "veterans home" set up. The cooperation resulted in a "partnership agreement" in 1972, which was supplemented in 1974 by an "accommodation agreement". The real increasing competition between the two soldiers' associations, however, had an impact on the younger soldiers who had just joined the Bundeswehr in favor of the Bundeswehrverband, whose leisure activities the VdS had little to oppose.

Political past accents from the 1980s onwards

Nevertheless, the association was able to organize even larger events until the 1980s and fought vehemently against the alleged defamation of Wehrmacht soldiers. According to their own statements, the increasing number of conscientious objectors in Germany was understood as a phenomenon that delegitimized the soldiery and which was associated with "attacks against soldiers per se" on the part of the association. The VdS fought against the alleged reorganization of memorial days such as the Battle of Stalingrad as a remembrance policy of the victors , the perspective of which would be adopted by the German media, and intervened with those responsible for the public television stations against the broadcast of the Soviet-American film The Unforgotten War , which brought the war of annihilation in the Barbarossa company 1941–1945 to a large audience. At least, according to the association's publication Soldat im Volk , it was still possible to get those responsible to “let war participants have their say” who “were able to straighten things out”.

Critical military historiography, as practiced by Manfred Messerschmidt , the former chief historian of the military history research office of the Bundeswehr , was viewed as particularly dangerous by the top of the association . For example, the fundamental study on the role of Wehrmacht justice in National Socialism , written by Messerschmidt together with Fritz Wüllner, was described by the then VdS chairman Jürgen Schreiber in 1987 as "one of those works" that should not be taken seriously in their hateful one-sidedness ". And in 1996 Schreiber, nine years later still chairman of the VdS, declared Messerschmidt a “lecture traveler in matters of defamation of the Wehrmacht”.

Loss of importance from 2004

A dwindling membership and importance of the association was followed by increasing tendencies towards radicalization. The most important sub-organization of the VdS, the HIAG , which represents the interests of the members of the former Waffen SS, decided to dissolve itself in 1992.

After the Bundeswehr not only distanced itself from the VdS in 2004, but also forbade any cooperation with the association, in order to show - according to the Federal Government in an answer to a parliamentary question in 2012 - that it met “extremist tendencies with determination”, it disappeared VdS is gradually becoming insignificant. VdS chairman at the time of the ban on contact imposed by the Bundeswehr was Lieutenant Colonel a. D. Max Klaar . Regional associations of the VdS disbanded.

The prohibition of contact with the VdS imposed by the Bundeswehr was preceded by a two-part article, Company Barbarossa - The Generals, which was published in 2003 in the VdS organ Soldier in the People , and the strategy of Richard Tedor, the former deputy chairman of the National Socialist Party of the USA, was thwarted . The key message of Tedor's article was the claim that Germany would have won the war against the Soviet Union if Hitler's strategy had prevailed against that of the generals. In 2014 the Federal Constitutional Court rejected a constitutional complaint against the decision of the Federal Minister of Defense of February 16, 2004 to ban contact with the VdS. The VdS remained without influence or real significance in its last few years. According to the entry of October 24, 2016 in the register of associations of the Bonn District Court , it has now been dissolved.

literature

  • Roland G. Foerster , Christian Greiner, Georg Meyer, Hans-Jürgen Rautenberg, Norbert Wiggershaus : Beginnings of West German Security Policy 1945–1956 . Edited by Military History Research Office . Volume 1. From Surrender to the Pleven Plan . R. Oldenbourg, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-486-50881-4 .
  • Hans Körber (Ed.): Soldier in the People. A chronicle of the Association of German Soldiers (= publication series Associations of the Federal Republic of Germany. Volume 16). Wirtschaftsverlag, Wiesbaden 1989, ISBN 3-922114-18-0 (the association's own publication).
  • Bert-Oliver Manig: The politics of honor. The rehabilitation of professional soldiers in the early Federal Republic . Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 978-3-89244-658-3 .
  • Karsten Wilke: The mutual aid community (HIAG) 1950–1990. Veterans of the Waffen SS in the Federal Republic . Schöningh, Paderborn / Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-506-77235-0 (also dissertation, Bielefeld University, 2010).

Web link

Remarks

  1. ↑ Karsten Wilke: The mutual aid community (HIAG) 1950–1990. Veterans of the Waffen SS in the Federal Republic . Schöningh, Paderborn 2011, pp. 42–46; Examples of radicalization tendencies of informal soldiers' associations before September 1951 with Georg Meyer: On the situation of the German military leadership in the run-up to the West German defense contribution 1945–1950 / 51 . In: Roland G. Foerster, Christian Greiner, Georg Meyer, Hans-Jürgen Rautenberg, Norbert Wiggershaus: Beginnings of West German Security Policy 1945–1956 . Edited by Military History Research Office. Volume 1. From Surrender to the Pleven Plan . R. Oldenbourg, Munich 1982, pp. 577-735, here pp. 707-725.
  2. ↑ Bert-Oliver Manig: The politics of honor. The rehabilitation of professional soldiers in the early Federal Republic . Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, pp. 358–400, in particular pp. 392 ff. On the objectives of the Blank Office and p. 399 f. establishing itself.
  3. ^ Hans-Jürgen Rautenberg: To determine the position for future German armed forces . In: Roland G. Foerster, Christian Greiner, Georg Meyer, Hans-Jürgen Rautenberg, Norbert Wiggershaus: Beginnings of West German Security Policy 1945–1956 . Edited by Military History Research Office. Volume 1. From Surrender to the Pleven Plan . R. Oldenbourg, Munich 1982, pp. 737-879, here p. 805.
  4. ↑ Bert-Oliver Manig: The politics of honor. The rehabilitation of professional soldiers in the early Federal Republic . Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, p. 412f.
  5. ↑ Hans Körber (Ed.): Soldier in the people. A chronicle of the Association of German Soldiers . Wirtschaftsverlag, Wiesbaden 1989, pp. 86-100 and appendix p. 153.
  6. ↑ According to the entry in the register of associations of the Bonn District Court under VR 2206, Schreiber was chairman until 2001. He was followed by Erich Hoppe (2001–2003) and then Max Klaar until the end of the VdS.
  7. ^ Thomas Kühne: Comradeship. The soldiers of the National Socialist War and the 20th century. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-525-35154-3 , p. 217.
  8. ↑ Bert-Oliver Manig: The politics of honor. The rehabilitation of professional soldiers in the early Federal Republic . Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, pp. 396-400.
  9. ↑ Hans Körber (Ed.): Soldier in the people. A chronicle of the Association of German Soldiers . Wirtschaftsverlag, Wiesbaden 1989, pp. 140–145.
  10. ↑ Karsten Wilke: The mutual aid community (HIAG) 1950–1990. Veterans of the Waffen SS in the Federal Republic . Schöningh, Paderborn 2011, pp. 42–46, there p. 43 quoted by Traugott Herr.
  11. ↑ Bert-Oliver Manig: The politics of honor. The rehabilitation of professional soldiers in the early Federal Republic . Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, p. 456 f.
  12. ↑ Bert-Oliver Manig: The politics of honor. The rehabilitation of professional soldiers in the early Federal Republic . Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, p. 598.
  13. ↑ Jörg Echternkamp: Soldiers in the post-war. Historical Conflicts of Interpretation and West German Democratization . De Gruyter / Oldenbourg, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-035093-7 , p. 197.
  14. ↑ Hans Körber (Ed.): Soldier in the people. A chronicle of the Association of German Soldiers . Wirtschaftsverlag, Wiesbaden 1989, p. 167 f.
  15. ↑ Hans Körber (Ed.): Soldier in the people. A chronicle of the Association of German Soldiers . Wirtschaftsverlag, Wiesbaden 1989, p. 130.
  16. ↑ Bert-Oliver Manig: The politics of honor. The rehabilitation of professional soldiers in the early Federal Republic . Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, p. 583.
  17. ↑ Hans Körber (Ed.): Soldier in the people. A chronicle of the Association of German Soldiers . Wirtschaftsverlag, Wiesbaden 1989, p. 125f.
  18. ↑ Fabian Virchow : Against civilism. International relations and the military in the political conceptions of the extreme right . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 978-3-531-15007-9 , p. 418.
  19. ↑ Fabian Virchow: Against civilism. International relations and the military in the political conceptions of the extreme right . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2006, p. 420.
  20. ↑ Karsten Wilke: The mutual aid community (HIAG) 1950–1990. Veterans of the Waffen SS in the Federal Republic. Schöningh, Paderborn 2011, p. 32.
  21. ↑ How the Bundeswehr deals with right-wing extremism. Answer of the federal government to the small question of the MPs Katja Keul, Omid Nouripour, Monika Lazar, other MPs and the parliamentary group BÜNDNIS 90 / DIE GRÜNEN. German Bundestag, BT-Drs. 17/8559 , February 23, 2012, p. 4.
  22. ↑ Ecclesiastical splendor for military glory . In: Die Tageszeitung , October 13, 2012.
  23. ↑ End of a traditional club. In: Südkurier , April 3, 2009.
  24. ↑ BVerfG, decision of the 3rd Chamber of the First Senate of March 10, 2014 - 1 BvR 377/13 - Rn. 1-27.
  25. ↑ In the Register of the Local Court of Bonn , the Association of German soldiers (VdS) e. V. registered under VR 2206. According to the entry there from October 24, 2016, the association has been dissolved. The liquidators are the last treasurer Jürgen Schubert and Wolfgang Beck. There is no reliable literature or press articles on its development in the last few years before 2016. According to the online newspaper Lotta : The last division. The "Association of German soldiers" and the magazine "soldier in the people" at the time of the August 4, 2014 there were still individual state associations and the appearance of the association's journal was a soldier in the People's adjusted end-2013.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on March 13, 2018 .