Why Germany Is a Nation in Conflict

[unhappycamper]

Into the fray A German patrol 50 km outside of Faizabad in September 2008. Germany's troops joined the NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan in 2002 as peacekeepers, but found themselves embroiled in combat, leading to calls for withdrawal from those on the home front


Why Germany Is a Nation in Conflict
By William Boston / Wilsdruff Monday, Aug. 23, 2010

Death came to Wilsdruff, a tiny hamlet in the hills outside Dresden in eastern Germany, on a warm April afternoon. Mario Gnannt was getting his soccer team ready for a match when suddenly the parents who had been watching their sons dart around the field began murmuring to each other on the sidelines. Soon after, the team's shouts fell silent, the word spreading quickly as only bad news can: far away in the Kunduz river valley in northern Afghanistan, a 25-year-old Wilsdruff native named Robert Hartert had been killed in a firefight with the Taliban on Good Friday. "All of a sudden the war wasn't just in the newspapers and on television," says Gnannt, who used to coach Hartert. "It was right here. Robert was the first person from Wilsdruff to die in battle since the Second World War."

Hartert was among seven German soldiers killed in April, making it the bloodiest month for the country's military since they deployed in 2002; in all, 43 have been killed since the Afghan mission began. That's less than 1% of the 4,350 German soldiers deployed in Afghanistan, but nonetheless a large number for a country that has for two generations studiously avoided military conflict. The deaths have forced Germans in the heimatfront (home front) to confront the fact that their soldiers are fighting and dying on foreign soil, a deeply unsettling prospect for a nation with an especially bitter legacy of war. Because of that history, Germany, uniquely among the nations that have soldiers in Afghanistan, is unsure how to mourn its fallen. In Wilsdruff, Hartert's death has evoked as much disquiet as it has sorrow. "I'm ashamed that after such a short period of time (since World War II) there are Germans who are willing to take up arms and go to war again," says Katrin Dässler, director of children's programs for the town's Lutheran church. See pictures of Afghanistan's dangerous Korengal Valley.

She speaks for many. Whatever the differences of opinion Germans had about their country in the decades after Hitler's defeat, there was solid consensus that German soldiers should never go to war again. It's the one lesson that every generation of Germans since 1945 has been force-fed in schools, by public television and through the nation's leaders: Germany's army, the Bundeswehr, was created in November 1955 solely for the purpose of defending the country's borders from foreign attack. But attitudes began to change in the 1990s, when German troops deployed to Kosovo as peacekeepers. Afghanistan, too, was initially seen as a humanitarian mission, to build roads and schools and help the locals.

Few Germans now cling to that illusion. For the first time since the end of World War II, soldiers are returning to Germany in flag-draped caskets. Also headed home are war's other ugly truths: soldiers kill and sometimes innocents die. In September 2009, German officers ordered a bombing raid in Kunduz province that left more than 140 people dead, including dozens of civilians. The incident caused a national outcry; to many, it underlined the wisdom of keeping the soldiers at home, where they could do no harm, and where none could be done to them. A recent poll by the Allensbach Institute research group showed that 65% of Germans are in favor of withdrawing the troops from Afghanistan. (See a brief history of World War II movies.)

For many Germans, the question is not whether the war can be won, but how that war fits into their sense of national identity. As their lives fill with the images, language and rituals of battle, Germans are finding it difficult to reconcile their sense of duty with old feelings of guilt.

[Ichingcarpenter]

1. The Danes have lost a lot of soldiers in proportion

to their country population. They don't think its worth it.

I think with the next election which is soon, the social democrats and left coalition will win and
the present govt. is gone they will leave.