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Article: Loving your enemy to bits.(merger of West and East German armies)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- June 3, 1995
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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ON OCTOBER 3rd 1990, the day Germany was unified, 1,000 Bundeswehr officers from the west converged on military camps in the east and took charge of East Germany's People's Army. They met silent stares from the communist forces, but no resistance. Today, the Bundeswehr reckons it has completed the fusion of two mortal foes.
Germany's Army of Unity has blown away the militaristic flavour that infected the communist army with its goose-stepping and Wehrmacht-style uniforms. In Potsdam, home to Prussia's soldier- kings, later to the Wehrmacht (Hitler's armed forces), and then to a Soviet occupying army and to East Germany's Volksarmee, the age of the soldier-citizen is ...