Thread: Germany: World Arms Merchant In First Post-WW II Combat

Germany: World Arms Merchant In First Post-WW II Combat


by Rick Rozoff
Global Research, July 25, 2009
Stop NATO


Earlier this week German soldiers under NATO command shot to death two Afghan civilians and seriously injured two more in the north of the nation.

During the past ten days German troops in NATO's Rapid Reaction Force have been conducting a major combat operation in Afghanistan's Kunduz Province.

300 German soldiers in charge of an estimated 1,200 Afghan government troops launched an offensive with the use of armor and artillery, including Marder infantry tanks and mortars.

A Bundeswehr soldier was quoted as saying that orders were issued to employ "the full reaction force spectrum" and as a result "We are using everything we have." [1]

A German news source revealed that "It is believed to be the first time that the Bundeswehr...has deployed heavy artillery." [2]

Berlin's Defense Ministry additionally acknowledged that the "German air force had also provided close air support for the ground troops for the first time in Afghanistan." [3] And it also divulged that "on July 15 and July 19, for the first time, bombs were dropped in the North by combat aircraft after they had been requested by ground forces." [4]

On July 22 Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Chief of Staff of the Bundeswehr, placed emphasis on the precedents established by the current offensive, describing it as "probably the biggest" operation by German forces in Afghanistan, one which includes "house-by-house searches and looking for the enemy." [5]

As the German news weekly Der Spiegel characterized the development, "For Germans, having their military on the offensive for the first time since World War II involves passing over a major psychological threshold." [6]

Indeed several precedents have been created and several thresholds have been crossed. Not only has Germany now used heavy artillery and warplanes for close air support in combat operations, it has launched a military offensive almost 5,000 kilometers from its borders, the furthest afield that any German army has ever fought.

Moreover, although reunified Germany provided warplanes for NATO's air offensive against Yugoslavia in 1999, Afghanistan is the first time that the armed forces of that nation have conducted - and now commanded - infantry and artillery combat assaults since the defeat of Hitler's Nazi regime in 1945.

The significance of these developments, both in their own right and symbolically, has been completely ignored by the world news media; the quotes used above are with one exception exclusively from German sources.

Never slow to and never scrupulous in using strained comparisons to World War II Germany when it suits their respective governments' purpose at the time, the Western media can be depended upon to pass over the genuine article in favor of false analogies: Any number of "new Hitlers" with black, brown, white and yellow faces have been conjured up during the past fifteen years, but the revival of German militarism and the rehabilitation of Waffen SS soldiers and other Nazi collaborators in several Eastern European nations are either not deemed worthy of attention or excused as a justified response to past or current Russian actions.

The German army is back in action in Afghanistan, the Balkans, the Middle East and Africa and its role in past wars is being viewed with an increasingly indulgent eye among the Western nations that along with it compose NATO.

Yet other prohibitions are being rudely violated, again to an oblivious press corps.

This week the mayor of the Romanian city of Constanta was obliging enough to provide an illustrative lesson. Constanta is home to an air base that is one of four new Romanian military sites acquired by the Pentagon and NATO four years ago with three more in neighboring Bulgaria. The US troops stationed at the seven bases are the first foreign military forces in Romania since 1958 and the first in Bulgaria since World War II.

Constanta's mayor, Radu Mazare, wore a Nazi military uniform at a fashion show in the city he governs and when questioned about it responded, "I wanted to dress like a general from the Wehrmacht because I have always liked this uniform, and have admired the strict organization of the German army." [7]

After coming under pressure for his action he claimed "that the uniform had no swastikas, and that it was just the uniform of a German infantry general, which had nothing to do with SS troops." [8]

To extrapolate from his comments, there would have been no fault to find with Hitler's legions in overrunning Poland, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Yugoslavia, Greece and the Soviet Union - leaving tens of millions dead in their wake - if they had first divested themselves of swastika armbands and other party insignia.

It is a lesson that has been learned by the contemporary proponents and practitioners of a Europe united under a common military structure deploying expeditionary forces for wars, occupations and blockades around the world. Collectively, NATO.

Bombers sent to wreak death and destruction the length and breadth of Yugoslavia were named angels of mercy. Multinational military occupation forces firing artillery barrages and dropping 1,000-pound bombs in Afghanistan are an international security assistance force engaged in peacekeeping and provincial reconstruction.

What could be more simple? No swastikas, no war crimes.

In 2006 the German Defense Ministry released a White Paper calling for a transformation of its nation's army into one prepared for international intervention; not ad hoc, as needed or occasionally, but on a permanent basis.

The nation's defense chief, Franz-Josef Jung, in commenting on the White Paper, "which highlighted the transformation of the Bundeswehr into an international intervention force," [9] demanded that "the government needs the ability to use the Bundeswehr inside of Germany...." [10]

More thresholds were crossed and more decades-long proscriptions transgressed.

Two years ago this December German Chancellor Angela Merkel "said that Germany's growth and prosperity depended on its readiness to be engaged
internationally, in cooperation with the EU and NATO, and in the face of challenges such as Kosovo and Iran" and wrote in the Handelsblatt daily that "The classical division between inner and foreign policy is outdated," [11] thereby echoing her defense minister's comments of a year before in both vital regards.

The following May a spokesman for Merkel said that the chancellor endorsed a security paper written by her party, the Christian Democratic Union, which in the words of its author, Bundestag deputy Andreas Schockenhoff, "says it is time that Germany moved on from its postwar inhibitions about force." [12]

A news account at the time wrote that the objective of Merkel and her party was "to drop some of [Germany's] post-World War II inhibitions about robust security measures, including the use of military force abroad and at home."

Among measures advocated in the above-mentioned paper and supported by the chancellor are that "Germany's parliament should cede greater discretion over troop deployments to the executive branch" and that "a new 'national security council,' based in the chancellor's office, should coordinate security ministries." [13]

An important component of endowing Germany with a new international military role made possible by reunification and promoted by NATO is its expansion into the global arms market. Arms manufacturers have no less influence in Berlin than they do in other "free market economies," but the profit motive alone doesn't account for the unparalleled growth of German weapons exports around the world.

Providing arms and capturing the arms market in other countries ensures weapons interoperability and entails training and exercises for future joint actions against third parties. Instruction and drills include mock combat against the planes, ships, submarines, air defenses, ground forces and surveillance systems of potential and prospective adversaries.

The sort of arms Germany is selling in most every part of the world - tanks, submarines, warplanes - aren't used for escort or peacekeeping missions.

Anyone not watching the developments of the past fifteen years may have been shocked to learn this past month in the annual report issued by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) that while global military spending reached $1.5 trillion in 2008, with the US accounting for almost half of the total, Germany had superseded Britain and France and become the world's third largest weapons exporter.

German arms shipments abroad rose by 20% between 2005 and 2006 and increased by 70% in a five year period. In 2007 Berlin delivered weapons to 126 nations, almost two-thirds of those in the world. The main purchasers were Greece, Turkey and South Africa and the main export items were Leopard II tanks and 124 submarines. Small arms are not Germany's main commodity for export.

In the words of a German think tank expert, "That makes Germany the European Union's biggest military goods exporter, and worldwide it's behind only the US and Russia." [14]

Just as the bulk of Germany's military exports are advanced weapons designed for war, so its clients include several nations currently and recently involved in armed conflicts and that may soon be engaged in others, some of a catastrophic nature.

In 2005 Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, "as something as a good-bye gift," sold Israel two more Dolphin-class submarines, reported to be capable of accommodating missiles with nuclear warheads, at a nominal price. "Outgoing Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, a member of the once-pacifist Green Party, agreed to the sale." [15]

This followed the delivery of three Dolphins to Tel Aviv in the 1990s - "the most expensive weapon platforms in Israel’s arsenal" [16] - by the Helmut Kohl government when "Germany had built two of these in accordance with Israel’s demands and donated them free of charge."

Regarding the first installment, "Israel might have given the other three Dolphins it already has nuclear capability, or has increased the range of the nuclear warheads or is planning to increase the range in the new ones." [17]

In reference to the newer acquisitions, "The latest submarines...would be able to carry out a first strike" and "military experts say Israel is sending a clear message to Iran...." [18]

Earlier this month Israel sent one of its Dolphin submarines through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean Sea for the first time in what the Reuters news agency referred to as "signal to Iran."

In late 2005 it was reported that Germany would add to its Luftwaffe-Israel Air Force and naval, including submarine, collaboration with Israel by forging ties between the two nations' armies.

The head of the European Branch of the Israeli military’s Foreign Relations Branch Yigal Hakon was quoted as saying, “After 40 years of unique and very special relations between our two countries, we’ve been able to develop military-to-military cooperation in almost every area.

"Now it’s time to encourage development of operational cooperation among the ground forces.â€

Nationalism is on the rise worldwide, including here. They feel that their country is being pillaged and looted by international corporations and global elitists just as much as we do...

Take a look at history. This has happened before.