In July, Mrs. Merkel awarded four German soldiers who served in Afghanistan the first medals for bravery the country had given since World War II. In September, President Horst Köhler opened a memorial here in Berlin to all those who have died while in military service since 1955.
Daniel Libeskind, the architect of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, is redesigning the former East German military museum in Dresden to be used as the main military history museum of Germany’s military, the Bundeswehr.
And last week, Germany’s new defense minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, traveled to Afghanistan, where he told the troops: “I believe that our common fatherland can be proud of you. I know that I am.”
But such official recognition of the changing circumstances is not the same as a broader acceptance in society.
“Support the troops” can start to sound like a hollow mantra until you live in a country that just doesn’t do it. In the United States, the little flags in store windows, the bumper stickers, the yellow ribbons around tree trunks and hanging on doors — not to mention the sense of national mourning that President Obama addressed last week after the mass shooting of soldiers at Fort Hood — weave together to form a kind of psychological safety net for soldiers.
To this American, the talk show hosts’ and football announcers’ greetings to the soldiers had begun to sound a bit obligatory until I returned from Afghanistan and started really paying attention to German television, hoping to catch just one similar gesture. So far I haven’t.
In the Vietnam era, the divisions within American society over the war meant that returning soldiers in uniform faced epithets from protesters. But a consensus has since emerged that decision makers should take the heat for war policies, and young men and women in uniform should be supported for the risks they undertake on behalf of the country.
Reinhold Robbe, the German Parliament’s military commissioner, said he remained impressed by the memory of seeing on trips to Tampa and Washington and El Paso that “complete strangers are buying soldiers beer.”
“There’s no real empathy in Germany toward the soldiers who risk life and limb every day,” said Mr. Robbe, 55.
Mr. Robbe’s own experiences track Germany’s complex mix of attitudes toward its postwar military. He refused to serve as a young man, saying he did not understand why he should shoot at relatives in East Germany. But as a member of Parliament in 1995 he became one of several dozen Social Democrats to cross party lines to support the Bosnia mission. As a result, his face ended up on posters with the words “the warmongers,” and Mr. Robbe found himself under police protection.
That was a time of open pacifism; what has taken its place is something different. “Compared to those days, we’re a bit farther along, a bit more used to it,” Mr. Robbe said. “But one basically leaves it in Parliament’s hands, and really wants nothing to do with it, and the soldier doesn’t get the moral support that he has earned.”
Source: Nicholas Kulish, “No Parade for Hans,” The New York Times, © November 15, 2009 The New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of the Material without express written permission is prohibited. www.nytimes.com.
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