In June 1960, the Protestant Academy in Bad Boll and the Catholic Academy of the Diocese of Rottenburg organized a conference titled “Love and the Soldier: The Sexual Situation of Our Youth, Especially during Military Service.”Footnote 1 Sixty participants attended the three-day conference in Hohenheim, a district in Stuttgart, including representatives of the Protestant and Catholic churches, members of the Bundestag, youth welfare workers, and Bundeswehr officers. The conference report, which the two academies sent to participants two months later, proudly reported that “Love and the Soldier” had been one of the “rare cases” in which participants contributed a great deal to the discussions and eagerly collaborated in the production of the final report: “This speaks for the importance of the topic,” the report suggested.Footnote 2 Among the many issues the discussants considered were the relationship between young soldiers and their parents, as well as young men's recreational behavior and their attitudes toward the female sex.
Assessing the panel discussions, the report concluded that the Bundeswehr was not facing a “special sexual crisis situation.”Footnote 3 Yet, it also advised that the influence of military life on the sexual behavior of young men needed to be carefully observed and regulated. This article focuses on the ways that West German society as a whole negotiated the benefits and vices of military service, arguing that workshops such as “Love and the Soldier” were not only about defining proper soldierly conduct. As the subtitle of this particular one suggests—“The Sexual Situation of Our Youth, Especially during Military Service”—they were also part of a much broader issue: during the immediate postwar and Cold War periods, the interest in soldiers’ social and sexual situation was part of a larger discourse aimed at shaping a gender system and a “sexual-moral order” that would best “suit” West Germany.Footnote 4
Interest in the social and sexual conduct of young Bundeswehr recruits and volunteers began to flourish in the mid-1950s in response to West Germany's rearmament. In February 1955, the Bundestag ratified the Paris Treaty, which included the General Treaty that codified the Federal Republic's limited sovereignty and set forth the terms of its integration into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Unlike previous international negotiations, which had focused on the establishment of a (West) European Defense Community (EDC) to which the Federal Republic would contribute military units, the Paris Treaty stipulated the establishment of national armed forces that would consist of volunteers and conscripts. The Federal Republic of Germany gained its sovereignty on May 5, 1955 and officially joined NATO four days later. In the wake of the agreements, the first thousand volunteers entered the barracks in January 1956; the first cohort of draftees followed fifteen months later on April 1, 1957.Footnote 5
The establishment of the Bundeswehr and the implementation of compulsory military service for men caused many West Germans to ponder the political and social value of having armed forces. Shaped by the experience of total war and defeat, they immediately began deliberating the possible effects military service might have on men, especially young men. Historians working on West Germany's early postwar decades have stressed that a considerable number of war veterans who cherished their military experience, parents whose sons were of military age, business leaders, and government officials all held the view that the military could have positive educational (erzieherische) effects and hence become a “school of masculinity” that would inculcate young men with supposedly superior masculine traits.Footnote 6 By contrast, numerous youth associations, church groups, welfare workers, disillusioned war veterans, and citizens living near military bases expressed the concern that rearmament could lead to a revival of Prussian militarism, as well as to customs and habits that would morally corrupt young men.Footnote 7
The historiography has highlighted how the establishment of the Bundeswehr led to a resurgence of century-old disagreements about the educational value of military service. At the same time, it has also suggested that arguments over the social and sexual behavior of soldiers were far more complex.Footnote 8 Besides presenting a continuation of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century debates, these quarrels were part of contemporary efforts to come to terms with Germany's recent past and to push for a moral “new beginning.” In particular, the critical reevaluation of the military as a “school of the nation” and of masculinity was influenced by West Germans’ search for “normality” and—in the words of Dagmar Herzog—their “obsession with the niceties of proper manners.”Footnote 9 As Robert G. Moeller, Uta Poiger, and Frank Biess have stressed, West Germany's reconstruction also involved the creation of a particular gender order.Footnote 10 In an effort to create their ideal of what they thought the Federal Republic should be, members of the government of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, parliamentarians, welfare workers, church officials, and others propagated a social order that revolved around the monogamous Christian patriarchal family. For them, this “nuclear family” represented both a bulwark against the threat of communism and a way to overcome the social destructiveness of the Third Reich and World War II.Footnote 11
This ideal did not go uncontested. As recent studies by Elizabeth Heineman, Sybille Steinbacher, and others have stressed, the Adenauer era also saw the emergence of a pluralistic discourse about social mores, sex, and sexual morality. In a “battle” over “normality,” West Germans constantly negotiated acceptable forms of family life and redefined the parameters of appropriate sexual desires and behavior.Footnote 12 The resulting preoccupation with perceived vices, such as female prostitution, homosexuality, the distribution of “trash and smut” literature (Schmutz- und Schundliteratur), as well as the unruly behavior of juvenile delinquents, so-called Halbstarken (literally “half-strong”), also shaped discussions surrounding West Germany's rearmament.Footnote 13 As more and more young men entered the barracks, public interest in soldiers’ conduct (and perceived misconduct) increased. In turn, this heightened concern put representatives of the Adenauer administrations, members of the Bundestag, and officials working in the Ministry of Defense on alert. They were eager to calm public anxieties and make the establishment of the Bundeswehr a success story, and the issue consequently became an extensively debated subject. Representatives of Adenauer's governing coalitions, as well as the opposition—most notably the Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD)—discussed the problem with military representatives, church officials, and welfare workers during various committee meetings and workshops.
This parliamentary and ministerial zeal to deal with the issue of soldiers’ conduct in order to avoid a potential public outcry influenced the content of subsequent decrees, guidelines, and handbooks.Footnote 14 Over the course of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Ministry of Defense produced several publications that explicitly addressed the social and sexual lives of soldiers. At the same time, these publications offered contemporaries another important starting point for defining acceptable norms and values that could solidify the moral foundation of the young Federal Republic and distinguish it from both the Third Reich and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Besides addressing the behavior of young Bundeswehr recruits and professional soldiers, contemporaries also contemplated men's role in society, specifying the types of masculine trait that would be acceptable outside the barracks. The arguments over the social value of the Bundeswehr and over compulsory military service were thus simultaneously a debate about conflicting conceptions of masculinity and sexuality. They constituted an effort to align the social and sexual conduct of West German servicemen not only with military demands and political agendas but also with civilian norms and expectations.
An analysis that situates the argument over the behavior of Bundeswehr soldiers and officers within the larger context of West Germany's social and cultural reconstruction necessarily entails writing a new military history that incorporates approaches drawn from the history of discourse, culture, gender, and sexuality, and that focuses on discussions that resulted from the gendered nature of military service in West Germany. The Bundestag's decision to bar women from compulsory military service led to the establishment of the Bundeswehr as a “men's society” (Männergesellschaft), a barracked institution solely comprised of men. This construct reinforced the link between masculinity and the armed forces.Footnote 15 Definitions of socially acceptable and intolerable soldierly behavior derived from the soldiers’ gender. But the apparent congruence of “soldier” and “man” did not lead to the dreaded “discursive emptiness” or discursive invisibility of masculine concepts that make them—especially ones considered “normal”—difficult to detect in historical documents.Footnote 16 On the contrary, relying on Raewyn Connell's argument for the simultaneous existence of multiple masculinities that are related to each other in a hierarchy of power, this article asserts that the search for the ideal West German man in military uniform led to the formulation of a number of both positive role models and negative counterexamples.Footnote 17 This discursive plurality was produced by the variety of different individuals and groups participating in the discussion of masculine ideals. Military representatives, government officials, and parliamentarians were as concerned about the situation and behavior of young soldiers and officers as church officials, youth groups, welfare workers, war veterans, and others were.Footnote 18 The article unearths this multitude of voices in order to explore how West German society at large thought and talked about the social and sexual conduct of the men serving in the Bundeswehr–and thus of men (and women) more generally.
In order to get at this discursive interplay and its multiple meanings, the following discussion turns first to the parliamentary negotiations and legal frameworks that defined the Bundeswehr as a “men's society.” It then addresses the multitude of concerns raised by citizens living near military bases, parents whose sons were of military age, war veterans, welfare workers, and church groups. In a third and final section, the article discusses how representatives of Adenauer's governing coalitions, members of the Social Democratic opposition, and officials working in the Ministry of Defense reacted to these widespread concerns. Its findings are based on a variety of sources, including the minutes of the Bundestag and its various subcommittees, the records of the Ministry of Defense (especially internal memos, guidelines, and handbooks), newspaper articles, comments and reports produced by social organizations, as well as letters that concerned citizens wrote to their political and religious leaders.
The Establishment of the Bundeswehr as a “Men's Society”
Following the French parliament's vote against the establishment of the EDC in 1954, officials quickly reached a series of international agreements that enabled the Federal Republic to establish a national military force. Because it would be comprised of both volunteers and draftees, the decisions necessitated the adoption of a new legal framework. In the summer of 1955, the Bundestag and the responsible parliamentary committees began negotiations about amendments to the Basic Law, the West German constitution, as well as drafts of the Freiwilligengesetz (Law Governing the Legal Status of Volunteers), which was later replaced by the Soldatengesetz (Law Governing the Legal Status of Soldiers) and by the Wehrpflichtgesetz (Law Governing the Recruitment of Men for Compulsory Military Service). Negotiations about the Wehrpflichtgesetz were especially fierce, because opinions were not solely determined by party affiliation.Footnote 19
Despite the multitude of conflicting opinions, the opposing parties swiftly agreed and asserted that compulsory military service was a duty that rested solely with West Germany's male citizens.Footnote 20 Speaking for the Adenauer government, the chair of the parliamentary Committee for Defense, Richard Jaeger of the Christian Social Union (CSU), emphasized that military service was a “moral duty” that every West German man had to fulfill.Footnote 21 Moreover, it was the responsibility of the “German Volk,” he argued, to defend itself against a “Soviet-Russian attack.”Footnote 22 Hinting at the defensive character of the new armed forces, Jaeger conceded that a private male citizen (Privatmann) was not obliged to defend himself in case of an attack and could choose instead to be killed. He insisted, however, that this freedom did not apply to a paterfamilias responsible for defending his wife and children.Footnote 23 In the context of the Cold War, the Adenauer government closely linked military service to the obligations of men in their role as citizens and within their families. For men, in other words, defending the Federal Republic meant defending West German families. Portraying a social order in which women needed protection—and in which able-bodied men were obligated to provide this protection—Jaeger made it clear that a reversal of these gender relations was unacceptable. Recruiting women into the armed forces was, in his view, equally unacceptable. During a meeting of the Bundestag in June 1955, he maintained that the Nazi League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel, BDM), marching in lockstep, epitomized the “triumph of militarism and the perversion of true soldiering (Soldatentum).”Footnote 24 Echoing the common belief that the Nazis had corrupted the timeless tradition of impeccable German soldiering, Jaeger argued that organizing women in a military fashion represented a deviation from the ways in which non-militarized societies and ordinary militaries functioned.Footnote 25 States and societies that had not been consumed by fascism and militarism would clearly exempt women from military service. In presenting the government's vision of the new armed forces, the CSU politician was determined to distinguish West Germany's military policies and practices from those of the Third Reich.
Jaeger's stance met with no opposition. Elisabeth Lüders of the Free Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei, FDP) and Elisabeth Schwarzhaupt of the Christian Democratic Union (Christlich Demokratische Union, CDU) both agreed, claiming that service in the armed forces was contrary to women's “nature” as caregivers and creators of life.Footnote 26 The two parliamentarians further argued that women's constitutional rights could even be curtailed in order to prevent them from serving: even though the Basic Law allowed women “to choose their occupation, place of work, and place of education freely,” the two women maintained that this freedom had its limits when it came to armed military service. Lüders and Schwarzhaupt were both fighting for women's “equality within marriage and the family” during this period, but clearly did not advocate unlimited gender equality.Footnote 27 In order for the state to protect its female citizens, they maintained, some of the rights and duties stipulated by the Basic Law should apply only to men when it came to questions of national defense.
The Social Democrats did not challenge the eagerness of the conservative government to bar women from compulsory and armed military service. SDP politician Reinhold Rehs, who had commanded the Air Raid Warning Service of the German-occupied city of Danzig from 1944 to 1945, argued that if the Federal Republic decided to recruit women, it would eventually embark upon the same ideological path the GDR had already taken.Footnote 28 To be sure, the GDR did not introduce compulsory military service until 1962 and, when it did, its draft applied only to men. But the GDR's Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) had already laid the foundation for premilitary education in the state's Youth Law (Jugendgesetz) of 1950. Two years later, the SED founded the Society for Sport and Technology (Gesellschaft für Sport und Technik), which offered military sport exercises for both girls and boys to prepare them for later military service.Footnote 29 Most likely aware of these developments, Rehs and others agreed that the Federal Republic had the “moral” obligation to distinguish itself from the GDR and thus exempt women from military service.Footnote 30
As a result of these discussions, the amended Basic Law of 1956 stipulated that compulsory military service and, above all, armed military service applied to men only. The subclauses of the amended Art. 12 stated that women “shall not be required by law to render service in any unit of the Armed Forces. On no account shall they be employed in any service involving the use of arms.”Footnote 31 The parliamentarians’ conception of women's nature and their eagerness to distinguish the Federal Republic from both the Third Reich and the GDR led them to implement—compared with other European countries and the United States—the harshest legal restrictions in this area.Footnote 32 The utter exclusion of women from military service resulted from a traditional definition of gender relations–and thus in the creation of the Bundeswehr as a “men's society.”
Public Discussions about the Bundeswehr as a Breeding Ground for Immorality
Noting the gendered implementation of compulsory military service, the public engaged immediately in discussions about how military life and training would shape the men called up for service. To be sure, many West German citizens believed that military service was beneficial for young men because it would allow them to avoid unemployment and thus keep them off the streets. Many, moreover, saw the military as a space where young men would be inculcated with orderliness, discipline, and other traits that would enable them to succeed on the civilian job market.Footnote 33 Yet, a considerable number of individuals and social groups were also convinced that military service could have undesirable repercussions.
One of the first groups to address the possible negative consequences of military service was the League of the German Catholic Youth (Bund der Deutschen Katholischen Jugend, BDKJ), which functioned as an umbrella organization for Catholic youth groups throughout the Federal Republic.Footnote 34 Eager to contribute to the rearmament debate, the League developed a comprehensive action plan in 1955 that aimed at preparing a support network for young Catholic recruits.Footnote 35 As this document suggests, the group supported the establishment of the Bundeswehr, but, at the same time, it warned that military life “naturally” entailed many risks. In addition to cautioning against the reemergence of “soldierly virtues as the measure of all things, the glorification of war…, heroism, and heroic death,” young Catholics pictured the military as an institution in which men could fall victim to a life of “debauchery.”Footnote 36 Without being very explicit, the authors of this plan clearly worried that military life would foster male behavior that would endanger the value system of the Federal Republic.
The League did not discuss this matter explicitly, but another organization did: the Working Group for Youth Care and Welfare (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Jugendpflege und Jugendfürsorge). Convening in Cologne in April 1955, the Working Group tackled the issue of “Youth Protection and the Wehrmacht” (Jugendschutz und Wehrmacht).Footnote 37 The final report of the meeting detailed various perils that the discussants associated with military service. One of their main concerns was the excessive consumption of alcohol and tobacco. While acknowledging that smoking and drinking were typical “attributes of fraternal etiquette,” the Working Group nevertheless argued that these pursuits represented a threat to soldiers’ safety and to the effective functioning of the army as a whole.Footnote 38 In the context of the Cold War, welfare workers especially worried about the threat of espionage: after all, they argued, the “enemy” could leave alcohol (Beutealkohol) lying around somewhere in order to entrap and blackmail soldiers.Footnote 39 Accordingly, the Working Group maintained that alcohol consumption by soldiers had to be carefully regulated.
The Working Group believed, furthermore, that the problem of smoking and drinking was closely connected to “sexual perils” that threatened the physical and moral well-being of young men. Its final report from the Cologne conference cautioned first of all against homosexuality, which was still a criminal offense according to Paragraph 175 of the 1949 West German Criminal Code.Footnote 40 The final report did not give any detailed reasons, however, why homosexuality among the troops would represent a problem. The group discussed a second issue more extensively, namely prostitution, which it judged to be generally improper. That was why the Working Group cautioned against the return of army brothels: during World War II, the Nazi military leadership had set up several hundred brothels across Germany and occupied Europe in order to serve the sexual desires of German troops and ensure that they indulged in “safe” sexual practices.Footnote 41 According to welfare professionals, it was of the utmost importance that future West German troops distance themselves from the sexual practices of the Wehrmacht and thus abstain from using brothels.
These youth welfare workers discussed sexual deviance and excessive smoking and drinking in the armed forces, but their concerns were indicative of a larger trend. During the “economic miracle,” Robert P. Stephens has argued, “youth protection” advocates were preoccupied with “the two greatest types of endangerment”: various forms of addiction and “all forms of aberrant sexual development.”Footnote 42 They associated excessive drinking and smoking with “vices” such as “drive-satisfaction” (Triebbefriedigung) and “craving pleasure” (Genußsucht), and depicted the corruption of young men by the temptations of the modern “consumer society.”Footnote 43
This general concern about the dangers to which West German youths were exposed also influenced how contemporaries interpreted the situation and behavior of young men in military uniform. Drawing on contemporary interpretations of male sexuality, the welfare professionals warned, in fact, that young men in military uniform might be even more vulnerable to the defects of modern society than their civilian counterparts were.Footnote 44 Noting that young men would likely begin their basic military service at the age of twenty, the welfare professionals, who had firm ideas about male sexual development, concluded that conscripts would enter the army at their “most sexually active age.”Footnote 45 The military's homosocial living conditions, the organization believed, made this fact especially troubling. As the Working Group argued, young recruits—in contrast to members of other “men's societies” such as the police—would live in barracks, detached from other civilians, during much of their military service. Anticipating that most garrisons would be established in remote areas or on the peripheries of cities and towns, welfare workers, as well as church representatives, cautioned that recruits would have limited contact with the “normal population” even in their leisure time. As a result, they believed, the quartering of sexually active men in this way would soon lead to “improper behavior.”Footnote 46 As this suggests, those who subscribed to this interpretation apparently believed that the male heterosexual norm was a fragile construct naturally prone to deviance.Footnote 47 Like many others, welfare professionals consequently maintained that the government had to observe and regulate carefully young men's lives both inside and outside the barracks.
The surveillance of young men's actions and development during military service seemed particularly urgent to them because any deviation represented, in their eyes, a potential tear in the social fabric of the Federal Republic. An article published in November 1956 by the left-liberal magazine Der Spiegel, which repeatedly questioned the politics of Chancellor Adenauer and his administration, highlighted such concerns. In a piece about the Lower Saxon town of Fürstenau, which had a longstanding military history, the magazine reported that some leading and outspoken townspeople were not happy about the prospect of having roughly a thousand Bundeswehr soldiers—in addition to the town's four thousand regular residents.Footnote 48 “Anybody who has ever been a soldier,” Alderman Bernhard Haar told Der Spiegel, “knows that garrison towns attract shady business that isn't run by men and doesn't bring in any income taxes.”Footnote 49 Dreading the prospect of prostitution coming to Fürstenau, Haar and other residents worried, furthermore, that the young men who would be drafted into the Bundeswehr would not exhibit the type of “steadiness” associated with “desirable forms of soldierly behavior in public.”Footnote 50
The article on Fürstenau publicized a particular set of concerns that occupied the minds of many officials and citizens living in former and prospective garrison towns, as well as of war veterans and parents whose sons were of military age. When the Bundeswehr was first established, the Ministry of Defense, leading politicians, and church officials received numerous letters from concerned individuals who cautioned about the danger of “immoral behavior” in and around military bases. Discussions of homosexuality hardly surfaced in this correspondence, but many letters and inquiries did caution against the danger of female prostitution. As Wolfgang Schmidt has pointed out, residents of smaller towns and villages lamented that the establishment of military barracks would upset the numerical balance between men and women. Although some residents seemed to welcome the possibility of a “surplus” of men because of the way it would improve the local marriage market, the majority feared that a disproportionately high number of men would soon attract prostitutes.Footnote 51 Such concerns intensified in the late 1950s and early 1960s as the number of military bases and soldiers increased.Footnote 52 At a time when the violent death of Frankfurt's “high-class” call girl Rosemarie Nitribitt made national headlines in 1957—the year that the first recruits entered the barracks—many “proper” citizens found unnerving the prospect of “easy girls” settling in close proximity to Bundeswehr bases.Footnote 53 They saw female prostitution not only as detrimental to the health and readiness of Bundeswehr soldiers, but also as a threat to the socioeconomic and moral order of their own towns and villages. For some contemporary observers, West German rearmament had a possible moral side effect: it could potentially endanger even further the already problematic relations between the sexes.Footnote 54
The article in Der Spiegel suggested that such complaints were closely linked to the so-called Halbstarke (literally: half-strong) problem—a term used in the 1950s and early 1960s for groups of youngsters (especially young men) who “loitered” in the streets and imitated the “rowdy” behavior of American movie idols such as James Dean. As Uta Poiger and others have shown, this period saw the emergence more generally of widespread concerns about West German youth. Influenced by sociologists such as Helmut Schelsky, many contemporaries argued that postwar youth was not only more “skeptical” than previous generations, but that it was also suspicious of their parents’ generation, that it abhorred ideas of national grandeur, and that it did not believe in the military as a guarantor of security.Footnote 55 It was in this context that government officials, members of the Bundestag, church groups, socially conservative citizens, and the media all became especially concerned with the “unruly” behavior of the Halbstarke.Footnote 56 To deal with this “problem,” many “orderly” Germans looked to the Bundeswehr for help, hoping that military service would be a potential antidote to such mischief on the part of young men.Footnote 57 At the same time, however, skeptics and critics of West German rearmament cautioned that, instead of turning Halbstarke into upstanding citizens, military life would only reinforce the destructive habits of many young men.Footnote 58 The establishment of the Bundeswehr was thus accompanied by discussions—closely connected to broader concerns about West German youth—about the extent to which military service could inculcate young men with socially acceptable manners and thus function as a school of acceptable forms of masculinity. The focus on the potential misconduct of “Halbstarke in uniform” included warnings that portrayed soldiers as a potential menace for another reason: the way in which young servicemen might corrupt “proper,” young, West German women.Footnote 59 This concern was especially clear in an article titled “The Girl and the Soldiers,” published in late 1961 in the widely read women's magazine Brigitte.Footnote 60 According to the anonymous author, the behavior of young soldiers toward women was indeed problematic for a variety of reasons. With reference to the famous French psychologist Gustav Le Bon, who had worked on crowd psychology, the author argued that, when they entered the military, young men became “part of a crowd” (Teil einer Masse) that was exclusively male. Surrounded only by men, young recruits would “all of a sudden see themselves as men” and “develop a desire to be recognized as men” by other men—but especially by women.Footnote 61 Coupled with the leisure time that the military granted young recruits, such desires could lead to unrestrained behavior. Brigitte thus cautioned young women not to fall for the adventurous tales told by soldiers or for their romantic overtures.Footnote 62
In portraying West German servicemen as a threat to the innocence of “proper” young women, “The Girl and the Soldiers” represented a significant departure from the previously dominant narrative, which had focused on how female prostitution would corrupt the “innocent” young men who served in the Bundeswehr. The article still portrayed young men as dangerously impressionable and the military as a breeding ground for dissolute male behavior. Yet, it portrayed the soldiers less as victims of the temptations of prostitutes and more as active agents of corruption themselves. Brigitte's standpoint was likely written with its female readership—predominantly housewives and mothers—in mind. Church officials, mayors, and residents of garrison towns also advanced this kind of argument, thus adding a different perspective to the broader discourse about the social and moral implications of military service.
The Threat of “Licentiousness”: Parliamentary Debates about the Social and Sexual Behavior of Soldiers
Because portrayals of the military as a potential hotbed for immorality were not only prevalent but also widely publicized, they quickly preoccupied those officials of the Adenauer administration who were eager to counter any opposition to West German rearmament and ensure that it would become a success story.Footnote 63 Concerned about the situation of Bundeswehr soldiers and officers, parliamentarians seated on the Bundestag's Defense Committee addressed the issue as well during a number of their sessions. These deliberations, which began as soon as the first professional soldiers and recruits reported for duty in 1956–1957, not only underscored the significance of the issue, but also showed that parliamentarians were also highly concerned about and eager to address the possible social and moral side effects of West German rearmament.
One of the first parliamentarians to report such problems was Willy Reichstein, a military doctor by training and a member of the All-German Bloc/League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights (Gesamtdeutscher Block/Bund der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten, GB/BHE). In May 1957 on the floor of the Bundestag, the forty-two year old politician described his recent visit to the Munster Training Area (Munsterlager), located in the sparsely populated region of the Lüneburg Heath. According to Reichstein, the most widespread complaint made by commanding officers, military doctors, and married soldiers was the lack of housing for soldiers’ families.Footnote 64 As a result, servicemen had to travel long distances on the weekends to see their loved ones. The city of Hamburg's response to this malaise was only exacerbating the situation, Reichstein informed his colleagues: “special trains with ‘slightly easy girls’” arrived from the Hanseatic city every weekend, weakening the determination of even married soldiers and officers to visit their families.Footnote 65 Focusing on the situation of these men in particular, Reichstein concluded that the precarious living situation at Munsterlager was endangering the West German family, which the Adenauer government had vowed to protect.
Such living conditions and their seemingly destructive and immoral side effects were especially troubling for those Bundestag members who were reminded of military practices during the Third Reich. During a meeting of the Defense Committee in October 1959, CDU politicians Paul Bausch and Georg Kliesing complained that the Bundeswehr did not station men in their home states (Länder). Being taken away from their friends and families, the politicians argued, would only endanger their morale–and morals.Footnote 66 According to Bausch, who was sixty-four and had served in World War I, the military was doing little to rectify the situation. On the contrary, he maintained, many Bundeswehr soldiers—above all the officer corps—were acting on the assumption that a soldier “needs extramarital sex, he has to seek it, he has to have it.” As a result, he lamented, prostitution was seen as a welcome avocation. Both he and Kliesing considered this attitude particularly disturbing because, they maintained, the Nazis had artfully encouraged “controlled” licentious behavior to achieve their political goals.Footnote 67 According to Kliesing, a veteran of World War II, one way in which the regime had tried to control vice was by stationing young men away from their compatriots, friends, and family. Embracing the common belief that the Nazi regime had been defined by loose sexual morals from which the Federal Republic had to distance itself, Kliesing argued that the Bundeswehr and, by extension, the West German government could not follow the example of sexual permissiveness and deviance set by the National Socialists.Footnote 68
Such concerns were not just limited to members of the governing party; they also preoccupied the parliamentary opposition as well. Although the Social Democrats had vehemently opposed Adenauer's military policies, their party officially changed course in the late 1950s following the approval of the Godesberg Program in 1959, which committed the party to an “affirmation of national defense.” SPD politicians were now eager to shape West German military policies.Footnote 69 Members of the opposition party consequently participated enthusiastically in debates focusing on soldiers’ conduct and morals. For example, Hans Merten, who had worked as a Protestant pastor before being recruited into the Wehrmacht in 1939, agreed with Kliesing that the non-compatriot stationing of soldiers bore many risks. But he also contended that even if the military were to station soldiers in their home states, their moral substance was still in danger because many military bases lacked adequate canteens or pubs. Referring to a military base in the state of Hessen, Merten noted that soldiers had to walk a couple of miles to reach their canteen. This arrangement was highly problematic, he argued, because prostitutes had already set up shop along the route.Footnote 70 Because of this, his colleague Helmut Schmidt (the future West German chancellor) complained, many of these young men–who had entered the barracks as innocent virgins (unberührt)–would indulge in “promiscuous behavior” rather than strive to maintain a monogamous relationship.Footnote 71 Echoing the concerns expressed by welfare workers, church groups, and townsfolk, the SPD politicians similarly argued that military life could potentially corrupt “innocent” young men and hinder the development of socially acceptable relations between the sexes. Instead of fulfilling their role as faithful husbands and armed protectors of West Germany's female population, Bundeswehr officers and soldiers seemed to be in greater need of protection themselves from “immoral” women. As this suggests, parliamentarians were highly concerned during the late 1950s and early 1960s that the sexual and social misconduct of servicemen would endanger not only the effective functioning of the armed forces, but also the social fabric of the Federal Republic as a whole.
Preventing the “Misuse of Sexuality”: Governmental and Military Efforts to Influence the Social and Sexual Behavior of Soldiers
Given the immediate and alarming nature of these and similar concerns, parliamentarians, as well as civil and military officials working in the Ministry of Defense, actively sought to rectify the situation. In the ministry, the question of whether and how the Bundeswehr could address the potential (mis)conduct of its men became part of a broader discussion about military culture in general. In their analysis of West German rearmament in the 1950s, military historians have emphasized the need contemporaries felt to develop a novel concept of military leadership. To that end, and in an effort to distance the Bundeswehr from its historical predecessors and integrate it into the Federal Republic, officials such as Wolf Graf von Baudissin developed the highly controversial concept of Innere Führung (“internal guidance”), whose purpose was to promote a new type of soldier, the Bürger in Uniform (citizen in uniform),Footnote 72 who was supposed to be a valuable member of society and fulfill his military tasks “soberly” (ernsthaft) and “responsibly” (zuverlässig).Footnote 73 Seeking to flesh out this new guiding principle, ministry officials engaged with the question of whether the Bundeswehr should exert “educational” (erzieherische) influence on young soldiers and officers. It was also in this context that the Ministry of Defense tackled issues related to the social and sexual behavior of Bundeswehr officers and soldiers. Responding to public concerns, as well as to the grievances of military commanders, ministry officials discussed the issue during a series of internal meetings and workshops. Under the aegis of Franz Josef Strauß, who served as minister of defense from 1956 to 1962, the ministry produced a number of decrees, guidelines, and handbooks that focused on the moral education of West German servicemen. These publication not only show how the ministry sought to align military norms with civilian expectations and demands, but also reveal how closely ministerial employees linked the successful functioning of the Bundeswehr to the social and sexual conduct of its members.
One of the first publications to mirror public concerns about the immorality of soldiers and officers was a collection of “educational guidelines” (Richtlinien für Erziehung) that Adolf Heusinger, the chief of the Federal Armed Forces Staff, released in 1959. Devised for official use by commanders only, this collection included a small section regarding the sexual and social behavior of soldiers. Tackling military drinking habits, for instance, the document noted that some soldiers and officers mistakenly considered the excessive consumption of alcohol a manly act.Footnote 74 Its authors approved of occasional drinking in informal settings, but stated that excessive drinking was not a practice that brought honor to a man. Moreover, the guidelines criticized the use of what Heusinger perceived as overly sexualized and aggressive language. In particular, he criticized the telling of “dirty jokes.”Footnote 75 This way of conversing was unacceptable, the guidelines stated, because it revealed the verbal “immaturity and squalidness” (Unreife und Unsauberkeit) of the soldiers and officers who used such language.Footnote 76 The document emphasized that such behavior was particularly inappropriate for commanding officers, who should have instead set a good example for their subordinates. In addition to reflecting broader public concerns about immorality, the candid language suggested how seriously the military command took the issue. After all, this kind of inappropriate behavior did not suit the image of the morally upright Bürger in Uniform whom the Bundeswehr was trying to cultivate. The Richtlinien für Erziehung aimed, then, at codifying a set of manners that would fit the new soldierly ideal and enhance the prestige of Bundeswehr officers and soldiers beyond the barracks.
The collaboration of military commanders and the Adenauer administration with the Protestant and Catholic churches further suggested just how urgently the former considered the issue. Already in 1957, the two state churches had signed individual contracts with the Federal Republic that provided members of the armed forces with pastoral care and spiritual guidance (Militärseelsorge).Footnote 77 Government officials agreed that clergymen were best suited to deal with “delicate” issues such as “the relationship between man and woman and whatnot (dergleichen).”Footnote 78 One form of religious guidance offered by military chaplains was the teaching and discussion of “life skills” (lebenskundlicher Unterricht) in a semi-classroom setting. For members of Adenauer's governing coalitions, lebenskundlicher Unterricht was a vital way to protect young men against immorality and shield the Federal Republic against the threat of Bolshevism. CDU/CSU politicians Richard Jaeger and Georg Kliesing agreed that only soldiers who came from a “functioning” home in which they had been raised as faithful Catholics or Protestants would be able to withstand “the chaos of Bolshevism.”Footnote 79 Though focusing specifically on the Bundeswehr, the parliamentarians shared the widespread understanding at the time that “complete nuclear families” formed the backbone of free and stable democracies. In this view, the West German bulwark against Communism depended as much on the healthy unity of Christian families as it did on the strength of its troops.
This contribution by the churches thus became a welcome and central framework for addressing the sexual and social conduct of soldiers. In 1959, Military Vicar-General Georg Werthmann of the Catholic Church and Military Superintendent Friedrich Hofmann of the Protestant Church attended a meeting of the Defense Committee, where they informed the parliamentarians in attendance about the workings of Militärseelsorge. Werthmann affirmed their fear that young men in military uniform were overly interested in girls and sexual adventures.Footnote 80 Yet, he and his colleague were happy to report that the Ministry of Defense had already funded the adoption and distribution of special reading materials to educate the soldiers—such as the booklet Soldat und Liebe (“Soldiers and Love”) by the Swiss neurologist and marriage counselor, Theodor Bovet.Footnote 81 According to Werthmann and Hofmann, the ministry had ordered more than ten thousand special copies of the publication, which were distributed to as many soldiers as possible.Footnote 82
Soldat and Liebe was an illustrated guide designed to help young soldiers and officers lead heterosexual, monogamous lives as Christian family men. According to the booklet, living this kind of life was vital for West Germany's security and social stability. The final section of Soldat und Liebe—“Is Our Military Power Enough?”—stated, for example, that the Federal Republic was threatened not only by an external military enemy, but even more so by “broken families” and the “instability of the family home.” (Erschütterung des häuslichen Herdes).Footnote 83 Among the internal enemies threatening families were the girls and women who “besieged the barracks after hours.”Footnote 84 Warning that the “fruits” these women offered were “rotten and nauseating,” the booklet urged soldiers to search instead for “true love.”Footnote 85 This kind of love could only be found in matrimony, of course. Soldat und Liebe—with its cover illustration of a man smiling as he embraces a woman holding a toddler—emphasized that the soldier should seek a marriage in which the woman “was the heart and—regardless of legal equality—the man was the head.”Footnote 86 Propagating the monogamous male-breadwinner family, the booklet emphasized that soldiers and officers had to strive for this ideal just like all other men. After all, only this kind of love and family life would protect the Federal Republic against internal enemies (e.g., prostitutes) and external ones (Bolshevism). According to Soldat und Liebe, sexual morality was thus a matter of national security and social stability.
Although the booklet was a detailed guide that aimed at steering soldiers through the dangerous currents of the Cold War—and for guiding them into the safe haven of marriage—this was not enough for some parliamentarians and church representatives. Even though Helmut Schmidt had vehemently opposed the passing of a ministerial marriage decree in 1958 that had strongly advised Bundeswehr soldiers and officers to marry only women who had an “undisputed reputation” (unangefochtenen Ruf) and whose “respectable” (ehrbare) families had no contacts with “subversive circles” (staatsfeindliche Kreise), he eagerly advocated the planning and organization of the conference “Soldiers and Love.”Footnote 87 Like the booklet, the conference attested to the urgency with which West German parliamentarians, ministry officials, military commanders, and church leaders tackled the issue, and showed how eagerly they sought to guide the behavior of young Bundeswehr soldiers and officers.
The conference report concluded that the Bundeswehr was not facing a “special sexual crisis situation,” but its authors nonetheless maintained that the current state of affairs was far from ideal. Echoing common concerns at the time, they agreed that prostitution was one of the greatest problems still to be solved. While emphasizing that West German soldiers did not commonly frequent prostitutes, the authors still acknowledged the sheer number of prostitutes registered in various towns and cities. The report noted, for instance, that the town of Baumholder (Rhineland-Palatinate) alone played host to eight hundred prostitutes whose services were directed by a “pleasure syndicate.” The initial reason that the Bundeswehr had to deal with this kind of problem was not German in origin: it was tied to the presence of American and, to some extent, French occupation troops. At the end of World War II, the U.S. military had turned the former Wehrmacht barracks of Baumholder into one of its biggest military bases. The presence of thousands of U.S. troops spurred the town's economy, including its nightlife. The number of prostitutes working in the city not only led to numerous lurid press reports, but also prompted West German parliamentarians to label Baumholder and the rest of the Rhineland-Palatinate a “moral disaster area.”Footnote 88 This experience, and the common view that American culture in general had a corrupting influence on West Germany, also influenced the discourse surrounding the Bundeswehr. For those concerned about the mores of West German troops, the sexual side effects of the occupation—in particular, the behavior of U.S. troops—offered a negative example for the Bundeswehr to avoid.Footnote 89 For West German observers, any behavior that resembled the actions of the occupation forces was a potential threat to the moral foundations of the Federal Republic. Regardless of West Germany's alliance with the US and NATO, the country had to follow its own distinct path morally and sexually.
Understanding the effort to separate West German soldiers from prostitutes as a vital form of “counterintelligence,” conference participants made several recommendations. As in the booklet Soldat und Liebe, the final report repeated the general principle that soldiers should be encouraged to follow a Christian lifestyle and value family life. In order to achieve this goal, the participants specifically agreed that the Bundeswehr should pay more attention to the location and infrastructure of garrisons, as well as to the daily curfew soldiers had to obey. This would ensure that young soldiers were kept away from prostitutes and, instead, would increase contact with proper women, including their mothers, whom they could visit regularly on the weekends.Footnote 90 Another way to ensure the Bundeswehr's moral character would be a more careful recruitment of soldiers: above all, the report stipulated, recruitment should exclude men who had a record of sexual misdemeanors, including homosexuality and exhibitionism.Footnote 91 A final recommendation emphasized the utility of “tough and versatile” training: rigorous instruction would increase soldiers’ self-esteem and make them immune to sexual temptations. Such training could also be more punitive. The report noted, without much further explanation, that “sexual swanks” could be exposed through tough training.Footnote 92
Whereas the report listed these recommendations only briefly, it discussed the role of commanding and older officers at greater length, reflecting the belief of conference participants that officers played an essential role in turning young recruits into “responsible and happy citizens (Bürger)” able to deal properly with sexual issues.Footnote 93 One important tenet of the Bürger-in-Uniform philosophy was to replace the much older concept of the military commander acting as a “father figure” with the notion that recruits and superiors were “partners.” The hoary image of older officers displaying irreproachable manners and exemplary behavior in order to influence younger soldiers was, as this suggests, still influential.Footnote 94 Above all, the report suggested that officers needed to influence recruits by exemplifying appropriate behavior toward women. The manners of commanding officers had to be guided by chivalry and respect.Footnote 95 And if officers’ wives were “motherly women,” they should either live with their husbands on the military base or, together with their children, occasionally pick up their husbands after work. Such examples, the report concluded, would help young men realize that “only true marriage… as God intended it, could satisfy [their] need for security.”Footnote 96 Imbued with Christian values, the report praised the monogamous nuclear family—with children as the ultimate goal. Bundeswehr officers and soldiers were compelled to adhere to this family ideal because only it had the potential to ensure “proper” relations between the sexes and thereby guarantee the stability and security of the Federal Republic.
Conclusion
The conference and booklet Soldat und Liebe exemplified the extensive ways in which Konrad Adenauer's governing coalitions, members of the Social Democratic opposition, military officials, the Catholic and Protestant churches, as well as welfare experts worked together to address what they perceived as the potential misconduct of West German men in military uniform. Widespread public anxieties greatly influenced the eagerness of administrators and ministerial officials, in particular, to establish specific norms. The implementation of compulsory military service for men and the subsequent establishment of the Bundeswehr as a “men's society” prompted many to ponder the social side effects of West Germany's rearmament. To be sure, the belief in the military as a school for the cultivation of superior, socially accepted masculinity endured: a source of continuity from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet, imbued with the notion that young men's sexuality was prone to transgressions, contemporaries also cautioned that military life could lead to various forms of deviant male behavior that would endanger West German society by jeopardizing, above all, the development of proper relations between the sexes. Moreover, they regarded soldierly digressions as a threat to West Germany's “complete” male breadwinner families. In the context of the Cold War, they saw this family ideal as fundamental to West Germany's survival and well-being: if the Federal Republic was to withstand the threat lurking beyond the Iron Curtain, the family life of Bundeswehr soldiers and officers had to be impeccable. Given the widespread perception of Nazi policies as intentionally licentious and sexually permissive, any occurrence and toleration of sexual debauchery would, they feared, establish an unwanted impression of continuity between the Bundeswehr and the Wehrmacht.
These concerns and the ways that government officials and parliamentarians, as well as the Ministry of Defense and other institutions, sought to address them show that the Bundeswehr was part of the broader discursive struggle to define acceptable norms and values for the young Federal Republic. The unnerving image of Halbstarke in military uniform, the warnings that prostitutes would besiege military bases and seduce Bundeswehr recruits, the perceived threat of homosexuality, and the fear that West German soldiers would corrupt “proper” young girls all reflected efforts that sought to define a new and “normal” sexual-moral order. Given what was at stake, the Bundeswehr was not granted a special position or special rights within this order. The foregoing discussion does not explore how military commanders implemented these new standards or how soldiers on the ground perceived them, but its findings do point to a changing relationship between the military and the civilian sector. Military necessities were still vital for how contemporaries evaluated soldiers’ conduct, but civilian expectations and values were equally important. Excessive drinking and sexual escapades were not judged solely on how they affected soldiers’ readiness, but also on whether such behavior was suitable for the image of the newly founded Federal Republic. Indeed, West Germans in the 1950s and early 1960s did not have to ask—in the words of James Sheehan's eponymous study—“Where have all the soldiers gone?” Military occupation and mounting Cold War tensions made them a constant physical presence. Footnote 97 Yet, when it came to social mores, many contemporaries were eager to ensure that the social and sexual behavior of Bundeswehr officers and soldiers would not jeopardize West Germany's social—and therefore political and military—stability. For all intents and purposes, they were largely successful in their endeavor.
