Military solidarity

 

The visit to Israel by the German Federal Minister of Defence is an expression of the two countries’ close military ties.

 

It was a cordial reception: When on the morning of 7 May 2015 German frigate “Karlsruhe” put into the Port of Haifa it was escorted by Israeli speed boats and welcomed with a display of fountains. The total of some 200 crew members then spent a week in Israel. German Federal Minister of Defence Ursula von der Leyen also visited Israel. Among others, on 11 May she met her Israeli counterpart Moshe Yaalon and on 12 May Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

That all seems par for the course, and yet it is not – given the fact that during the Holocaust German weapons meant death for millions of Jews. But despite, or precisely because of this painful past, today the links between the two countries’ armed forces are particularly intensive and vibrant. There is dialogue and partnership at all levels, between the Ministries of Defence, as well as the chiefs of staff and the heads of individual divisions. The collaboration embraces exchange programmes and training courses; joint exercises are held both in Germany and Israel.

For a long time now the young recruits to the two countries’ armed forces, the Bundeswehr and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), have been trained using the same weapon: the Israeli Uzi. This was the case from the outset, when soon after 1945 it was a case of paving the way for rapprochement and reconciliation between Germany and Israel.

 

Surrounded by Arab enemies, the young Jewish state lacked everything. In order to survive, it first and foremost had to be pragmatic in its actions. It was in this context that Prime Ministers David Ben Gurion and Shimon Peres, at the time Director-General in the Ministry of Defence, were even prepared to open discussions with West Germans. To this end, in 1956 Peres had the German Minister of Defence Franz Josef Strauss sent an audacious consignment: an Uzi submachine gun, with the request that the latter consider having it deployed for use in the Bundeswehr, which was being established at the time. The idea was that, should the Germans actually order the Uzi, there was a good chance of it becoming the standard NATO weapon, a step that would be a welcome and emphatic boost for Israel’s armaments industry.

Minister Strauss did not really think twice and simply ordered the purchase of the weapon by ministerial decree. And he didn’t keep the Israelis, who were looking for state-of-the-art equipment for the IDF, waiting long. It was clear to everyone that a lost war would be Israel’s last armed engagement. In strict secrecy Strauss sent the defence materiel Peres had requested, such as transport aircraft, helicopters, artillery, and tanks. It marked the beginning of the German-Israeli armaments cooperation.

 

That created trust. Germany proved to be a reliable partner, though not without having a degree of self-interest: In the Cold War Israel made its evaluations of captured Soviet weapons available, and nowadays the Bundeswehr benefits from the IDF’s experience in anti-terrorism missions.

Among Israelis, on the other hand, the arms deals with the land of the Nazis were controversial for a long time. For many, the picture of Jewish pistols in the hands of Germans in uniform was unacceptable. This was another reason to maintain strict secrecy. That was also the case with regard to the contacts between the Bundeswehr and the IDF. Although they only officially began cooperating in 1984, the first Israeli officers and non-commissioned officers actually arrived in Germany for training in the early 1960s – for example some attended the Air Defence Weapons School in Rendsburg. They spent six months in military barracks in the buildings that originated in the Nazi era.

Many years later, the Israeli soldiers who arrived at the Jägerkaserne barracks in Sonthofen in Bavaria in early 1991 during Gulf War II also had to ignore their emotions. Instructed by a German non-commissioned officer, the Jewish soldiers spent three weeks training on the Fuchs NBC reconnaissance vehicle. The Federal Government had provided Israel with eight of these tanks at very short notice. German arms manufacturers had helped Iraq extend the reach of the Scud rockets that were terrorising Tel Aviv and Haifa. And they were involved in the production of the poison gas that Iraq was now using to threaten Israel.

 

As unusual as the situations may have been, they reveal how Israeli and German soldiers learned, and indeed are still learning from, with, and about one another. The mutual trust is now so strong that German soldier are being trained on Israeli territory, for the first time even on an Israeli weapons system, the Heron 1 unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicle, which the Bundeswehr has been leasing from Israel for its Afghanistan mission ever since 2009.

As such it is also Israeli military expertise that is helping save the lives of German soldiers deployed abroad, while Germany is assisting the Jewish state to guarantee its military survival under its own steam – 70 years after Auschwitz, 60 years after the founding of the Bundeswehr, and 50 years after the initiation of diplomatic relations.