In October 1950, a peculiar meeting took place in the silence of a centuries-old Cistercian monastery in western Germany, The idea of Bundeswehr was conceived. The setting was serene: Himmerod Abbey, nestled in the wooded Eifel hills, far removed from the political storm clouds swirling over postwar Europe. But the men who had gathered there were not monks. They were generals, former high-ranking officers of Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht.
They had come not to repent, but to plan.
The task set before them was clear: West Germany needed an army again. And these men, veterans of a defeated war and discredited regime, were being asked to lay the groundwork for its return.
That moment—rarely acknowledged in the official narratives of postwar German democracy—was where the Bundeswehr was born.
What unfolded over the next five years would bring Germany back into the fold of Western military power. But it would do so by papering over a troubling truth: the architects of Germany’s post-Nazi army were, in many cases, the very men who had fought for the Nazi cause.
And more than 70 years later, Germany is still grappling with the consequences.
The Cold War Changes Everything
When Nazi Germany fell in 1945, its military fell with it. The Allies dissolved the Wehrmacht, banned all German military forces, and pledged that militarism would never again be allowed to take root in German soil. The early years of the occupation were dominated by denazification efforts, war crimes trials, and public education campaigns designed to expose the horrors of the Third Reich.
But by 1950, that resolve was weakening. The world had changed. The Soviet Union had solidified its grip over Eastern Europe, detonated its first nuclear weapon, and propped up a puppet regime in East Germany. The Cold War was no longer a theory—it was a threat.
When North Korean troops, backed by Stalin, crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea in June 1950, the United States panicked. Suddenly, rearming West Germany went from controversial to necessary. NATO couldn’t afford a gaping hole in the middle of Europe. West Germany had to be brought in as a military partner fast.
But how do you rearm a country that was only recently disarmed for the sake of global peace? And who, exactly, do you trust to build the new army?
The Himmerod Conference: Not Just Logistics
Enter Himmerod Abbey.
From October 5–9, 1950, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer convened a secret meeting with a dozen former generals of the Wehrmacht. Among them were men like Adolf Heusinger, Hans Speidel, and Hermann Foertsch—figures who had commanded divisions under the swastika and served in Hitler’s war of conquest.
But these weren’t fringe fanatics. These were technocrats of war—brilliant, well-connected, and respected in the eyes of both German conservatives and Western military planners.
They were tasked with drafting a plan for rearmament. But the document they produced, the Himmerod Memorandum, was more than a military blueprint. It was a political bargain.
The generals agreed to help construct a new German military under democratic command. But in return, they made demands:
- The rehabilitation of the German soldier’s honor, which they claimed had been unfairly smeared by postwar propaganda.
- The release of convicted war criminals, many of whom were their comrades or subordinates.
- The recognition of the Waffen-SS as legitimate soldiers, not criminals.
- And above all, an end to what they called the “defamation” of the Wehrmacht in the public eye.
They did not come to atone. They came to reclaim.
Adenauer, facing enormous pressure from the U.S. and eager to show West Germany as a reliable NATO partner, accepted nearly all their terms. Within months, U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower publicly stated that the German soldier had “not lost his honor.” War criminals began to be quietly released. And by 1955, the Bundeswehr was born.
The Same Faces in New Uniforms
The early leadership of the Bundeswehr reads like a who’s who of Hitler’s officer corps.
- Adolf Heusinger, who had sat at Hitler’s side in key military briefings and served as Chief of Operations at the OKW, was made the Bundeswehr’s first Inspector General, the highest military post in West Germany.
- Hans Speidel, implicated in the occupation of France, became Commander-in-Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe under NATO.
- Heinrich Trettner, a former Luftwaffe general, rose to the top of the Bundeswehr’s air command.
By 1957, all 44 generals and admirals in the Bundeswehr had served in the Wehrmacht. There were no exceptions.
To be clear, many of these men were not implicated in Holocaust planning or SS-style atrocities. Some had even expressed opposition to Hitler’s excesses privately. But they had all served in a military institution that enabled genocide, launched wars of aggression, and upheld a regime of terror.
And yet, they became the cornerstone of a new democratic army. It was an arrangement born out of political expedience and Cold War desperation. But it left deep scars.
Doctrine, Ritual, and Silence
The Bundeswehr may have sworn allegiance to the Basic Law rather than to a Führer, but much of its internal culture remained deeply conservative and backward-facing.
Doctrines developed for blitzkrieg were quietly rebranded as NATO strategy. Barracks were named after Wehrmacht heroes like Rommel and Mölders. Officer training emphasized “Kameradschaft” (comradeship) and “Pflicht” (duty), words that had carried darker meanings in recent memory.
The idea that the Wehrmacht had fought “clean wars” while the SS committed crimes took root. This narrative, carefully cultivated in postwar veterans’ associations like HIAG, shielded the Bundeswehr from serious reflection for decades.
It wasn’t until 1995, with the controversial Wehrmachtsausstellung (Wehrmacht Crimes Exhibition), that the German public was forced to confront the full extent of Wehrmacht atrocities. The exhibition showed, often graphically, how regular army units had participated in mass shootings, reprisal killings, and ethnic cleansing, especially on the Eastern Front.
For many Germans, the myth of the clean Wehrmacht began to crumble. But within the military, old habits died hard.
Flashpoints and Uncomfortable Questions
The Bundeswehr’s struggle with far-right sympathies didn’t end with the Cold War.
In 1976, the so-called Rudel Affair rocked the Defense Ministry. Hans-Ulrich Rudel, a decorated Luftwaffe ace and vocal Nazi sympathizer, was invited to a military reunion attended by high-ranking Bundeswehr officials. His presence sparked a national scandal. Defense Minister Georg Leber was forced to resign. But the fact that Rudel had even been welcomed spoke volumes.
More recently, the elite Kommando Spezialkräfte (KSK) unit came under investigation for harboring extremist elements. Nazi memorabilia was found at private parties. Soldiers gave Hitler salutes. Some had even stockpiled weapons.
These weren’t isolated incidents. They reflected a deeper problem: a military that had never fully uprooted its oldest roots.
A Nation at a Crossroads
In 2024, the Bundeswehr once again revised its Guidelines on Tradition. To the dismay of historians and watchdog groups, the updated rules included references to Wehrmacht officers deemed “exemplary” in their leadership or resistance to Nazism.
The line between honoring professionalism and excusing complicity remains dangerously thin.
Germany is a country rightly praised for its culture of remembrance. Monuments to victims, truth commissions, and rigorous Holocaust education set it apart from many other nations with bloodied pasts. But when it comes to the military, a curious reticence remains.
Part of this may be cultural. Postwar Germany developed a civilian ethos that viewed military pride with suspicion. But another part is structural: the Bundeswehr was born from compromise. And it has carried that weight ever since.
What Reckoning Really Means
Reconciling the Bundeswehr’s past with its present requires more than renaming barracks or banning swastikas. It requires honesty. The kind that doesn’t flinch.
That means:
- Teaching future officers about the crimes of the Wehrmacht, not as footnotes, but as central history;
- Ending public commemoration of military figures who served the Nazi cause, no matter how “brilliant” their tactics were;
- Creating a military culture rooted not in nostalgia, but in democratic ethics and civic responsibility.
These changes are already underway in parts of the Bundeswehr. But they need to go deeper, and faster. Because memory fades. And silence is not neutral, it always favors the comfortable myth over the painful truth.
Himmerod, Revisited
Today, there is no memorial at Himmerod Abbey commemorating the 1950 conference. No marker noting that the Bundeswehr was born there, not in Parliament, not in the constitution, but in a backroom deal with men who once served a genocidal regime. Maybe there should be.
Not to honor what happened, but to remember the cost of forgetting.
