Fallen Elites: The Military Other in Post–Unification Germany

FALLEN ELITES

THE MILITARY OTHER

IN POST-UNIFICATION GERMANY

Andrew Bickford

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

©2011 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bickford, Andrew, 1966- author.

Fallen elites : the military other in post-unification Germany / Andrew

Bickford.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8047-7395-9 (cloth : alk. paper)--ISBN 978-0-8047-7396-6

(pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Germany (East). Nationale Volksarmee--Officers--Attitudes. 2. Germany (East). Nationale Volksarmee--Officers--Social conditions. 3. Retired military personnel--Germany--Attitudes. 4. Retired military personnel--Germany--Social conditions. 5. Germany--History--Unification,

1990. I. Title.

UB415.G3B53 2011

355.10943′109049--dc22                             2010043611

Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10/15 Sabon

E-book ISBN: 978-0-8047-7716-2

For

Gabrielle Fisher

Everyone imposes his own social system as far as his army can reach.

JOSEPH STALIN

Having once attributed a real existence to an idea, the mind wants to see it alive and can effect this only by personalizing it.

JOHAN HUIZINGA,

The Waning of the Middle Ages

Men possess thoughts, but symbols possess men.

MAX LERNER

Contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue:

The Anthropologist Who Came In from the Cold

Abbreviations and Terms

PART ONE BECOMING MILITARIZED

My Brother, My Enemy

1 The Military Imaginary:

Soldiers, Myths, and States

2 Emotions, Generations, and Death Cults:

Militarization and the Creation of Socialist Military Personalities

3 Coming of Age in the NVA:

The Master Narratives of Militarization

PART TWO BEING MILITARIZED

4 The Writing on the Wall:

The NVA Surrenders

5 A War of Signs, Images, and Memories:

German Militaries in the Cold War and Unification

6 Unification Has Ruined My Life:

The Political Economy of the Military Other

7 As Germans Among Germans:

Life in the Kameradschaft

8 We’re the Jews of the New Germany:

Heroic Victimhood, Fallen Elites, and the Slipperiness of History and Memory

9 Death and Allegiance:

Toward an Anthropology of Soldiering

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Acknowledgments

FIRST AND FOREMOST, I would like to thank the officers and their families—from both the East and the West—who opened up their homes and lives to me, and who shared their experiences of the Cold War and German unification. I am deeply grateful for their help and support.

A number of friends and colleagues have helped with this project over the years. I’d like to thank Uli Linke, Roger Lancaster, Dorothy Hodgson, Louisa Schein, Omer Bartov, Paige West, J. C. Salyer, Charles Smith, G. S. Quid, Robert Marlin, Stephanie Marlin-Curiel, Catherine Lutz, Ken Mayer, Jerry Mayer, Janine Wedel, Lesley Gill, Art Walters, Linda Green, Susan Terrio, David Vine, Melissa Fisher, Katherine McCaffrey, Angelique Haugerud, Hope Harrison, Erik Jensen, Elena Mancini, Sabine Kriebel, and Jiro Tanaka for their thoughtful suggestions and criticisms over the years. At George Mason, my friends, colleagues and students have been very helpful and supportive: thanks to Jeff Mantz, Bhavani Arabandi, Susan Trencher, Linda Seligmann, Hugh Gusterson, Ann Palkovich, Tom Williams, and James Snead. And a special thanks to my students Kristin English and Nate Crow for their help with the final versions of the manuscript. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers at Stanford University Press for their extremely helpful comments and criticisms during the review process.

In Germany, a number of people provided invaluable support, help, and friendship, and enriched my research and fieldwork: Herbert Becker of the Deutscher Bundeswehrverband, Professor Dr. Egbert Fischer, Dr. K. P. Hartmann, and the members of the Arbeitsgruppe Geschichte der NVA, Dr. Rüdiger Wenzke at the Military History Research Center in Potsdam, Karin Goihl at the SSRC Berlin Program, Ute Guenther, Ina Dietszsch, Helga and Ulli Ortmann, Marja Dempski, and Felix Seyfarth.

My research was made possible by generous grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Social Science Research Council Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies, Fulbright II, and a Woodrow Wilson Center Archival Research Grant. Early drafts and ideas were worked through at the Social Science Research Council Berlin Program for German and European Studies seminar, the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, the German Historical Institute’s Young Scholar’s Seminar, the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University, and the Culture, Power, Boundaries Seminar at Columbia University. I would also like to thank George Mason University for a semester writing sabbatical. All translations from the German are my own, as are any mistakes and/or omissions.

I’d like to extend a special thanks to my editor at Stanford University Press, Joa Suorez, for guiding me through the submission and review process, and for her great feedback and comments on my manuscript. I would also like to thank Mariana Raykov, my production editor at Stanford University Press, and Andrew Frisardi, my copy editor, for their help in making this a much stronger book.

Most of all, I want to thank Gabrielle Fisher for her love, support, encouragement, coffee, and patience.

Prologue

THE ANTHROPOLOGIST WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD

IT TOOK ME OVER A YEAR to finally sit down with Klaus-Dieter Baumgarten, the general in charge of the Grenztruppen der DDR—the East German Border Guards. I had slowly worked my way up the chain of command that still regulated much of my work, including whom I could talk to and whom I could meet. While it was generally not a problem meeting with lower-ranking officers and their families, gaining access to high-ranking former officers was a tricky process of vetting, knowing who to talk to, observing military courtesies and customs, of using the right words and phrases at the right time.

I often had the feeling that among a certain group of former NVA officers, a shadow government-in-waiting existed, a group of men who had held power, and who—however tenuously—clinged to a hope that they would one day have power again. They were a group of men who had had power, lost it, were still dazed by the loss, and had not quite recognized that power had slipped away from them forever. These men still used their ranks, observed the hierarchy of the NVA, and demanded a strict observance of the hierarchy. Working one’s way up the chain meant observing the hierarchy, of paying deference at each stage of the ladder.

One afternoon, I received a call from Baumgarten’s adjutant, a former NVA Volksmarine—People’s Navy—captain. My request for a meeting with General Klaus-Dieter Baumgarten had reached him, and he had decided, based on discussions with other officers who had met with me and who I had interviewed, that he would present my request to the general. If successful, I would receive a call from the general himself in the next few weeks.

A few weeks did indeed pass. As I was getting ready to go to the archive one morning, the phone rang. A slightly gravelly voice began, Are you Herr Bickford, the American student interested in the National People’s Army of the German Democratic Republic? I was somewhat taken aback by the abrupt question, but realized quickly that the person on the other end of the line was Baumgarten. Yes, I’m Herr Bickford, I answered, and waited for him to continue. Good, he said. "This is General Baumgarten. I have received your request to meet with me and discuss the experiences of the officers of the National People’s Army and Border Guards of the German Democratic Republic. I will meet with you tomorrow. You will do the following: Take the S-3 train to the Erkner station, arriving at eleven A.M. You will have a copy of tomorrow’s edition of Neues Deutschland with you. Proceed down the steps from the station, and stand under the third light post on your right. You will see a Trabant appear. I will flash the lights at you twice, whereupon you will transfer your copy of Neues Deutschland from your right arm to your left. I will flash the lights twice again. I will know it is you and pick you up. Click."

With that, our conversation was over, and our meeting had been arranged. I felt like Richard Burton in The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, although, unfortunately, I didn’t own a trenchcoat.

I arrived at Erkner shortly before eleven. It was—perhaps wonderfully—a typical winter day in Berlin: cold, gray, dreary, and wet. What better way, I thought, to meet the former head of the Border Guards, the man who had issued the shoot-to-kill orders for the Berlin Wall, and who was now serving time for murder for issuing those orders. The weather only enhanced my feeling that I was taking part in a Cold War thriller, heading out to some secret meeting from which I might never return. I didn’t really think I would never return, but it definitely added to the fantasy-performance of Cold War intrigue. Of course, ten or twenty years earlier, a call such as that from Baumgarten indeed would have carried the threat and menace of the possibility of not returning.

It was raining steadily when I found the third lightpost on the right. There were a few people around, but otherwise, it was a very quiet and subdued morning. I stood by the light post, but I really wasn’t sure how to stand. I put my copy of Neues Deutschland under my arm and leaned against the light post. But was that the right way to stand? I wanted to look nonchalant, but not disinterested. I didn’t want to stand completely upright, either, looking as if I were standing at attention for the general. These things meant a lot, I had learned; body posture among former officers could communicate indifference or disrespect, deference, and sincerity, and set the tone of the interview. I finally figured out a compromise: I would stand up straight and lean against the light post. I felt like a slanted matchstick.

I have no idea if Baumgarten saw me trying to figure out how to stand, or if he did, if he knew what I was doing. Shortly—mercifully—after figuring out my posture, an old Trabant approached me slowly. As it came closer, I squinted to see the driver, but because of the rain and mist, I couldn’t really see into the car. The car stopped. Twice, the lights flashed. I slowly shifted my copy of Neues Deutschland from my right arm to my left. The lights flashed again, this time a bit more quickly. The Trabant’s engined roared, as Baumgarten pulled up in front of me. Get in! he growled. I got in. I had entered a time machine.

Abbreviations and Terms

AR   Armee Rundschau (Army Panorama; East German military magazine published between 1956 and 1990)

BA-MA   Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg (German military archive in Freiburg)

Die Bundeswehr   Cold War West Germany military, and the name of the post-unification German military

DDR   Deutsche Demokratische Republic (German Democratic Republic)

Deutscher Bundeswehrverband   German Army Association

FDJ   Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth; East German youth organization)

FRG   Federal Republic of Germany (Cold War West Germany, also post-unification Germany)

GDR   German Democratic Republic (East Germany)

GST   Gesellschaft für Sport und Technik (Society for Sports and Technology; East German youth group)

GT   Grenztruppen der DDR (Border Guards of the German Democratic Republic; East German Border Guards)

ISOR   Initiativgemeinschaft zum Schutz der sozialen Rechte ehemaliger Angehöriger bewaffneter Organe und der Zöllverwaltung der DDR (Association for the Protection of the Social Rights of Former Members of the Armed Forces and Customs Agency of the German Democratic Republic)

JP   Junge Pioniere (Young Pioneers; East German youth group)

KPD   Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (pre–World War II German Communist Party)

KVP   Kasenierte Volkspolizei (Garrisoned People’s Police)

Landesverband Ost   Eastern State Association of the German Army Association

NVA   Nationale Volksarmee (National People’s Army of the German Democratic Republic)

SAPMO   Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv (Foundation Archives of the Parties and Mass Organizations of the GDR in the Federal Archives, Berlin)

SED   Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party of Germany; East German Communist Party)

SS   Waffen SS (Armed military wing of the German Nazi party)

VP   Volkspolizei (East German People’s Police)

Die Wehrmacht   World War II German military

FALLEN ELITES

PART ONE

Becoming Militarized

MY BROTHER, MY ENEMY

The man over there with a gun

could be my brother

but what is a brother?

Cain killed Abel

fairy tales tell of brothers who are enemies

but that doesn’t prove anything

The man over there who could be my brother

may be gentle and peaceful

but he has a gun

and obeys his superiors

who are my enemies

The man over there standing with a gun

could be my brother

but he believes in Home into the Reich

and is a cheap tool of conquerers

a heartless weapon of murders

human, perhaps my brother

but nonetheless useful for murder

and therefore my enemy!¹

CHAPTER 1

The Military Imaginary

SOLDIERS, MYTHS, AND STATES

I WANT TO OPEN THIS BOOK with a bold proposition: the soldier is the state. The soldier is the personification, the sign, the representation of the state; its arm, its agent of violence, the tip of the spear, the means by which the state comes into being, is maintained, and continues to be. Soldiers represent the imagined community of the state in living, active form; they are homogenized into a single identity of the state, and represent this imagined ideal of homogenization. States write the mythology of soldiers, turning soldiers into mythic creatures. This kind of myth-work elevates soldiers above mere civilians, removing them from the quotidian and placing them into the unquestionable. According to the state, the soldier is the ideal citizen, the best kind of person the state can produce. Soldiers in uniform are living memorials to the state and its history, walking monuments to memory—they just are not made of stone, like other war memorials, though they may appear as cold, hard, lifeless, and unfeeling. Soldiers are monuments to previous wars and the preformed memories of as-yet unfought wars to come. The soldier represents the congealed historical memory of the violence of the state, and is the state in its most concrete, literal, purest human form. This image is, of course, drilled into the soldier.

And into civilians.

. . .

At least, this is how states would like soldiers to be and be perceived. Because they would like this, states go to great lengths to insure that soldiers—and representations and imaginings of them—approach these ideals. States can be seen as vast experiments in social construction, and militarization plays a key role in this; states make soldiers both to be the state and to defend the state. But how are soldiers made into this ideal, and how are they unmade when the desired image changes? What happens when men, made into the soldierly ideal of one state, find themselves absorbed into another state, a state with a very different idea of what it means to be a soldier? What does it mean to live as a sign of the state, and what happens when meanings and signification shift? What are the material ramifications of shifts in the symbolics of militarized identities? These were the sorts of issues involved in the experiences of former East German army officers in the context of German unification in 1990; the sorts of problems and processes they faced resulted from these issues.

In Fallen Elites, I examine the cultural politics of what it means to be a soldier in Germany by focusing on the lives of a group of East German Army and Border Guard officers, both before and after unification, and on the ways in which memories and representations of the World War II German military and soldiers—the Wehrmacht and SS—continue to shape ideas of what it means to be a good and proper soldier and man in post-unification Germany. By focusing on East German army officers who had power and then lost it, this book studies up, and then down again, providing an ethnographic perspective on elites and power in the modern state. I examine the idea of soldiers in political life, the construction of citizenship and national identity, and the legitimation of the state and military. I look at how states use soldiers—who counts, how, why, and when—in the political life of the state, and how the deployment of ideas about soldiers affects the symbolic and material lives of men identified—positively and negatively—as soldiers. This is an examination of German unification as seen through what I call the military imaginary of the state: the ways in which the necessity, implementation, and desired outcomes of (compulsory) military service and training are imagined and envisioned by the state, and the ways in which these tropes are linked to normative ideas of the proper soldier and man, legitimate violence, morality, and military tradition.

There are multiple military imaginaries in a state: those of the state, of the military, of soldiers themselves, and of civilians. The military imaginary of a state is linked to the past, to memories and representations of soldiers and their actions, their heroism, deeds, and defense of the state. In a sense, these imaginings of the proper soldier function along the lines of myth, achieving a mythic status, and occurring in a mythologized time. They are also linked to the economic system of the state: soldiers are expected to fight and die for the state’s political and economic viability.

Fallen Elites is about the Cold War contest between the capitalist West and the communist East, and the lingering effects of competing military and economic blocks. As Germany works through complications brought about by unification, ideas, prejudices, and mindsets formed and lived during the Cold War continue to effect it. Lingering on in corners of the state are contentious notions of what it means to be a good and proper German soldier; these competing ideas of what it means to be a soldier act as a metadebate about the past forty years and the history and memory of German soldiers in World War II. East German officers (and their families) are products of their time and context, products—and producers—of a vast exercise in militarization, extensions of a history that shaped and continues to shape their lives and worlds. War and economics, history and memory coalesce in these men’s lives and experiences, making them the living exemplars of militarization policies. Within the shaping of national histories, personal histories and narratives of militarization take shape. I trace the life histories of men who became elites in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in a context of military-political power, specifically, the Cold War context of the post–World War II rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. These men lost their status and power when the Cold War ended. Officers of the East German Nationale Volksarmee (National People’s Army; NVA) held and wielded power, and symbolized and represented power and the state. After unification, they lost their power and status but continued to symbolize and represent militarism, oppression, and totalitarianism within a context in which they no longer are seen to fit and in which they no longer have power.

Examining German unification through the lives of NVA officers reveals the contentious and unfinished nature of unification, the cumbersome and contradictory attempts by the German government and military to come to terms with the military of a dictatorship, and the problematic and often disturbing use of Germany’s military past in state discourse and narratives. This book explores what happens to fallen elites—in this case, military officers—when they lose both the state they were sworn to defend and the status that goes with this duty and privilege. I follow the lives of men who held power and lost it overnight, who went from being official heroes to being official villains. I also examine the practices and actions of West German elites as they consolidated their power over both the military itself and representations of the German military and soldiers. Through the use of Cold War tropes of proper militarized masculinity, as well as the deployment of specific memories of World War II, West German elites have created an internal other and rehabilitated certain forms of German military history, tradition, and identity as a means of shoring up legitimacy for the newly unified state and appeasing the German military. Conversely, some NVA and Border Guard officers have used West German military policies of exclusion as a way of explaining away human rights abuses and military authoritarianism in the GDR, making themselves, in their own eyes, the victims of unification. As such, I examine the rational world of elite victims: the ways in which they see and process their experiences in light of the contexts from which they came and in which they find themselves. From the outside, what they say and do might seem irrational and offensive; for officers, their responses and understanding of their situation make perfect sense to them, and are ways to make sense of their lives after unification. Only by trying to understand their rationality—even if we find their comments and remarks offensive and off the mark—can we come close to understanding how former elites construct themselves as victims, see themselves as victims, and create victimhood narratives as a way to make sense of their fall.

States rarely leave militarization policies or the creation of soldiers to chance. Drawing from the German experience, I theorize the ways in which states use the military as a means of creating ideal men—and ideal citizens—through the inculcation of military values, worldviews, and hegemonic masculinity. In Fallen Elites, I ask two main questions: Do the political uses and representations of militarized masculinity change when states or governments change? In what ways does military identity intersect with political economy, memory, political processes, gender, semiotics, and citizenship? Through a consideration of the lives and experiences of East German NVA and Border Guards officers, I examine the fact that men must be made into soldiers by the state. Soldiers do not come ready-made; if they did, states would not need to expend effort, resources, or expense to make men into soldiers. Rather than relying on sociobiological or psychological models to explain why men become soldiers, we need to examine the role of states, governments, political economy, education policies, history, and the creation of gender roles as the formative factors in creating militarized masculinity and soldiers.

A VERY COLD FUSION

Despite official narratives of a relatively smooth transition, of the merging of those things which belong together, German unification and the formation of a new German state have been an uneven project filled with friction and animosity. While the West German government celebrated the victory of unification, and stated that all East Germans wanted unification, one group of East Germans did not look forward to the dissolution of the GDR and their absorption into the West German state: members of the East German military, the NVA. Disbanded immediately upon unification on October 3, 1990, the overwhelming majority of NVA officers were immediately unemployed, stripped of their status as officers and defenders of the state, portrayed by the West Germans as the perpetrators and losers of the Cold War. This was a group of people who, contrary to most East Germans, I would not characterize as happy about the demise of socialism. For these men, unification was not a joyous, desired event; rather, unification represented the end of their careers, security, status, identity, and the state they had pledged their lives to serve. The fall into democracy for these men was from the start fraught with uncertainty, disappointment, anomie, and a profound sense of loss. Unification in 1990 signaled a radical transformation in the political, economic, and symbolic lives of East Germans, despite the promises by the Kohl administration of a blooming landscape of economic prosperity. The collapse of the GDR and the merger of the two states meant instability, lost jobs, lost homes, and lost income for many East Germans, as well as the stress of adapting to capitalism and learning how to consume. With unification came widespread unemployment and disruptions in daily life and life courses; by 1991, out of a population of roughly 16 million, 4 million East Germans were out of work.¹ The experiences of NVA officers after unification are characteristic of East German experience in general, but they differ in a number of important ways. These differences illustrate the role and use of the military in the state; how state elites operate and perceive the state, the military, and violence; and how the banal practices of state elites impact the lived experience of the state.

On October 3, 1990, all NVA soldiers and officers over the age of fifty-five were immediately released from the military, and all officers above the rank of lieutenant-colonel (Oberstleutnant) were relieved of duty.² The Einigungsvertrag—the treaty unifying East and West Germany—stipulated that the Bundeswehr (the Cold War West Germany military, and the name of the post-unification German military) was to be reduced to 370,000 soldiers by 1994; 25 percent of the Bundeswehr was to be filled by former NVA soldiers and officers. The Bundeswehr initially accepted twenty thousand NVA soldiers and officers into its ranks; these were primarily specialists to train Bundeswehr personnel in the use of Soviet weapons and weapons systems taken into the Bundeswehr. The overwhelming majority of these soldiers and officers were released from the Bundeswehr within two years. By 2002, only 5 percent of the Bundeswehr was made up of former NVA soldiers and officers;³ as of 2006, there were approximately eight hundred former NVA officers left on active duty in the Bundeswehr.⁴

German unification was not simply the joining of two halves of a long-separated whole; it was about fusing together two diametrically opposed systems, two distinctly different ways of seeing the world, the state, economics, fairness, human beings, the military, and conflict. In this context, memories of World War II and the actions of German soldiers loomed large, playing a key role in the shaping of the new German state. Perhaps most important, unification was the fusing of two radically different ways of imagining Germany, what it should be and represent. It included the supposed merger of two different systems of defense and what it meant to be a defender and soldier of the state. It was the unequal merger of two militaries sworn to defend diametrically opposed political-economic systems, and soldiers trained and indoctrinated to believe each was the one true system. The GDR was ultimately a militarized dictatorship (though the debate is open as to what degree), and the NVA and Border Guards were integral parts of the system: they helped develop and maintain it, protect, and preserve it. In one of the great ironies of history, however, when it came time to actively save the GDR, the NVA and Border Guards decided that it was not worth saving in the state it was in, and did not fire a shot or intervene to keep it from collapsing. These are the soldiers who many see as the men who let socialism slip away. It is due to their actions (or inaction) that German unification was allowed to proceed peacefully—without a shot fired to stop it.

For Germans on both sides of the political divide, the Cold War was experienced as a cultural division, a splitting of the family of Germans that included an intense rivalry over legitimacy.⁵ Indeed, much of the political battle between the two Germanys revolved around representations of their respective armies, their actions, and their relation to the past. Just as the two Germanys constituted a mirror for the other, so too did the two German Cold War militaries.⁶

As Frykman and Lofgren have noted, identity formation often takes the form of a negative example; that is, by stating that another group acts in a certain manner, or has certain characteristics, the identity of one’s own group is defined in contrast, by what it is not.⁷ In regard to the former GDR and the NVA, I argue that such a process is occurring in the representation of former East German soldiers by West German state actors and by the new, formerly West German Bundeswehr. A former NVA general summed up the attitudes of many former NVA soldiers about portrayals of the NVA as an aggressive military, and the trials of former Border Guards and GDR government officials when he stated: Hey Germany, look here: we’ve found someone who is guilty. Now we can be satisfied.⁸ This feeling of being the victims of victor’s justice runs deep with former NVA officers, and frames the ways in which they view the post-unification German state and their experiences in the new state.

Representations of the officers and soldiers of the NVA as highly aggressive and concerned solely with preparations for the invasion of Western Europe or the suppression of internal dissent within the GDR elide the extremely complicated political, social, and economic dynamics within the NVA, and the role of the military in East German society. As Lesley Gill, Cynthia Enloe, and Ruth Seifert have noted, militaries serve to create hierarchies among men.⁹ I argue that a similar process is at work in post-unification Germany: the former NVA and its officers are coded as the bad Germans who served an illegal regime and lost the Cold War, while the West German army and its officers are the good Germans who served the legitimate Germany and won the Cold War. This is not to excuse the human rights abuses of the Border Guards, the Kadavergehörsamkeit (corpse-like obedience) of the NVA, or the brutality of overarching compulsory military service. Rather, it is to point out the inconsistencies, inequalities, and unevenness of the unification process and the ways in which history, memory, and gender came together in the German military after unification.

States emerging from periods of dictatorship must often come to terms with officials and soldiers who have committed war crimes or human rights abuses; Chile, Argentina, and post–World War II Germany come to mind.¹⁰ The German case is unusual, as the East German military never fought in a war, did not resist its own demise, and willingly participated in the dissolution of the state it was sworn to defend. Germany was also forced to come to terms with a dictatorship for the second time in the twentieth century, and confront the actions of soldiers in the service of an unjust regime. While Border Guard officers and soldiers could be brought to trial for easily identified human rights abuses committed on the Berlin Wall and intra-German border, NVA officers could not necessarily be held accountable for their actions during the existence of the GDR. Despite the harsh discipline and bellicose rhetoric of the NVA, it never actually did much that would have involved its officers in war crimes trials or other sorts of trials for crimes against humanity. Although the overwhelming majority of NVA officers could not be tried in court for clear-cut crimes or abuses, they could still be punished through extrajudicial means, such as cuts in pensions, symbolic marginalization, and their removal from the cult of German military honor. Given the Cold War rivalry between the Bundeswehr and the NVA, and the