No shooting please, we’re German

NOT long ago wearing a uniform around an average town in Germany could get you beaten up; and even today it draws frowns, says Jan Ströhmer, a naval commander in Kiel. That is because many Germans, at least in the former West, have since the second world war been militantly pacifist. In America signs vowing that “We support our troops” adorn porches and cars. In Germany the most striking thing about the army is how invisible it is.

It has been 67 years since the war; 57 years since West Germany was allowed to rebuild a defensive army, the Bundeswehr, encouraged by the allied victors, because of the Cold War; and 22 years since reunification with East Germany and the collapse of the Soviet bloc. The end of the Cold War not only eliminated the ostensible enemy, and thus one of the raisons d’être for the old Bundeswehr, but also required absorbing the East German army. In the years since, Germans and their allies have occasionally talked about “normalisation”. And yet little about Germany’s army seems normal.