Andrew Bickford - Fallen Elites: The Military Other in Post–Unification Germany
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Fallen Elites: The Military Other in Post–Unification Germany: summary, description and annotation
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Military officers are often the first to be considered politically dangerous when a state loses its authority. Overnight, actions once considered courageous are deemed criminal, and men once praised as heroes are redefined as villains. In Fallen Elites, Andrew Bickford examines how states make soldiers and what happens to fallen military elites when they no longer fit into the political spectrum.
Gaining unprecedented entry into the lives of former East German officers in unified Germany, Bickford relates how these men and their families have come to terms with the shock of unification, capitalism, and citizenship since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Often caricatured as unrepentant, hard-line communists, former officers recount how they have struggled with their identities and much-diminished roles. Their disillusionment speaks to global questions about the contentious relationship between the military, citizenship, masculinity, and state formation today. Casting a critical eye on Western triumphalism, they provide a new perspective on our own deep-seated assumptions about soldier making, both at home and abroad.
Gaining unprecedented entry into the lives of former East German officers in unified Germany, Bickford relates how these men and their families have come to terms with the shock of unification, capitalism, and citizenship since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Often caricatured as unrepentant, hard-line communists, former officers recount how they have struggled with their identities and much-diminished roles. Their disillusionment speaks to global questions about the contentious relationship between the military, citizenship, masculinity, and state formation today. Casting a critical eye on Western triumphalism, they provide a new perspective on our own deep-seated assumptions about soldier making, both at home and abroad.
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FALLEN ELITES
FALLEN ELITES
THE MILITARY OTHER
IN POST-UNIFICATION GERMANY
IN POST-UNIFICATION GERMANY
Andrew Bickford
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
Stanford, California
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
Stanford, California
2011 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.
All rights reserved.
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
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
355.10943109049--dc22 2010043611
Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10/15 Sabon
E-book ISBN: 978-0-8047-7716-2
For
Gabrielle Fisher
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
The Waning of the Middle Ages
Men possess thoughts, but symbols possess men.
MAX LERNER
Acknowledgments
FIRST AND FOREMOST, I would like to thank the officers and their familiesfrom both the East and the Westwho 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. Id 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. Rdiger 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 Institutes Young Scholars 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.
Id 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 DDRthe 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 whohowever tenuouslyclinged 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 ones way up the chain meant observing the hierarchy, of paying deference at each stage of the ladder.
One afternoon, I received a call from Baumgartens adjutant, a former NVA VolksmarinePeoples Navycaptain. 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 Peoples 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, Im 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 Peoples 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 tomorrows edition of
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