Sea Control - Sea Control 173 - German Civ-Mil Relations with Sascha Stoltenow and Heike Brüggeman

Episode Date: May 11, 2020

Links:1. Bendler Blog2. Augen geradeaus!3. No Parade for Hans - the NY Times4. Sicherheitshalber5. Explaining the Poverty of Germany's Strategic Debate6. No Military Has Done More for Corona-Stricken Allies than Germany's

Hey folks, it's Jared. Thanks for tuning in. Today we have German historian and communications specialist Sascha Stoltnau and local government official Heike Brueggemann joining the pod. We discussed Sascha's COVID-19 experience, and then we're going to talk about German civil-military relations to include how the relationship devolved post-World War II, social media engagement in the Bundeswehr, how the new policy promoting commuting in uniform has improved the relationship, how the COVID-19 response is shaping perceptions. I also want to take a minute to highlight CIMSEC's Project Trident. If you don't follow CIMSEC on Twitter, go do so now or visit the website at CIMSEC.org. If you're interested in shaping the future of international maritime security, this is your opportunity. Our first call for essays is out. We've partnered with Marine Corps University's Brut Krulak Center for Innovation and Creativity to address strategic choke points and littorals.

More information on questions and content can be found on our website at CIMSEC.org. So our missions are due by May 25th and can be emailed to content at simsec.org. With that, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. Aloha, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. Today our topic is German civil-military relations, and we have two Germans joining us to discuss the topic. Our first guest is Heike Brueggemann. Some of our listeners may be familiar with Heike from Twitter.

Heike, could you please give the listeners a little bit of your biography? Yes, I am 34 years old, and I had been on law school at the University of Münster, and now I'm working on our county government. And in 2018, I read a newspaper article about annual record of the Bundeswehr, and I was a little bit upset about how bad the situation had been. And I wanted to do something that the soldiers could work better. And I started to learn about military and all this stuff. And then I read the blog, Augen gerade auf,

and then I found Twitter, and that could help and support. Our second guest is Sascha Stoltnau. Sascha, could you tell us a little bit about yourself, please? Yeah, sure. My name is Sascha, and I'm living in Wiesbaden, which maybe some of the U.S. troops might well know as now being headquarters of the U.S. Army in Germany. I was an officer for 12 years, 10 years in the Airborne Infantry

and two years in the PSYOPs. I had the privilege to build up the first combat camera team of the German Army or the German Bundeswehr and led it into its first deployment in the Kosovo. and that's quite quite an experience and um i stuck to the media production side so i'm now running a communications agency with partners in frankfurt and we're doing a lot of internal communications and um i think in 2007 i started blogging on uh military and communication in germany and security policy and so you're kind of an influencer there i haven't haven't been

blogging much recently but still having a good relationship to the military maybe not to the to the top brass but at the working level for example we did the the first bar camp on on the german navy and communications last year because a friend of mine who was the commander of the sea battalion which is like sort of the the mini marine corps with only 900 people there so we invited some friends up to kiel in the north of germany and 60 people civilians as militarians came and we had that like the first bar camp with relation to naval forces and it was quite a success this is also my understanding of blogging you don't have to write things into the internet but you can be active with no official mandate so i'm not profiting from that financially it's a hobby

yeah i i can certainly understand that um i had a question for you about bar comp specifically where does that term come from and what are you doing when you're hosting the bar camp because this is something i've noticed in germany i haven't necessarily seen it in the u.s at least not using that term yeah the sort of the first the bar camp is an unconference because people found out that the best talks were within breaks so they said let's make a conference with only breaks and the first to come up with a similar idea was the the american publisher o'reilly and he did a foo camp of friends of o'reilly camp which was exclusive so all those people uh who said we don't want to have an exclusive event we want to have an open event

we do a bar camp because in in in uh developers you have like foo and bar as terms being put where code needs to be written so uh basically the bar camp movement was a kind of anti o'reilly movement and not making exclusive events but open events and this is the characteristics of these events you go you you know you look for a place you look for a time you invite people no agenda is set you can set a set a theme for the bar camp and sort of the schedule and the agenda is being developed together with all the people participating there and this gives those formats and conferences a completely different dynamics because whether you're the shipment or your admiral you're talking on eye level now thank you for all that background sasha i did want to break here before we get into

you anything else and ask you about COVID-19, because I think you've been very open about this on your German Twitter account. You've actually had COVID-19, correct? Right. So I got it thanks to the Bundeswehr. The thing is, this is like the karma circle. I hosted a bar camp at the General Staff College of the German Bundeswehr in Hamburg. And at the night of that, there was an international evening and obviously i met a person and shook hand with that person and talked to that person who didn't know that he was also infected so uh after the weekend i came back and i read on the blog uh that heike mentioned augengradaus from my friend thomas wiegald that the general staff college was closed down for covid19 so i got in touch with my contact

and he said matt yes it's covid19 and you shook his hand so i run through the test circle and was tested positively but sort of local authorities kind of lost my file so i was tested on the 10th of march but only got note on the 18th of march and in the meantime because you know i actively called them and said they you know we don't have any records on on you and the doctor you know i needed to force her to test me because i didn't have any strong symptoms so i was of the assumption that i might have it might have spared me but once i knew i was positively tested you know i got into the quarantine i i quarantined myself and the family before uh just as a precaution so and you know i was kind of curious how that you know that

that's why but it was modes i'm going i was going on the on the offensive saying okay let's find out how this works and i found out how the health system works and the health administration works and local authority works and i found out that they are not talking to each other i hope now they constantly start improving because from the patient perspective, you want to have solid information. So you approach this very proactively. What was your emotional response being told that you were positive? The thing is because it was eight days after I was tested and I didn't have any strong symptoms, I started to rationalize about what happened in the last eight days, what could have been symptoms. So did I have a headache? Did I have some higher temperature?

Did I have an ache here? Did I do that? So that's interesting because even if, you know, I was, as you said, I was very open about that and very active. But still, you know, somewhere in the back of your head, it's still working and you want to cope with that somehow. And even, you know, if I'm physically strong and also mentally strong, it is still, it occupies a lot of your brains, brain powers. So that was very interesting. And Heike, how has it been for you over there? You obviously didn't have this experience that Sasha has had, but what is your day-to-day life like?

Are you locked in your home in the way that most of us are doing here? I'm happy that I can put work in the home office, and that's the only difference in my life. Okay. Are you confined to your home? Do the local authorities stop you from going out? Yes, because I'm a local authority, because I work in the county government, So I have to make these decisions and I support it. So of course, it doesn't matter to me. Okay. Thank you all again and welcome.

We're really having this discussion day due to three ongoing initiatives in Germany. So before we discuss any new developments, I think it's important to discuss some of the history of German civil-military relations. And I'm going to lean on you, Sascha, as the historian in the group to discuss some of this. But post-World War II, the German armed forces were disbanded. The country was split in the East and West. The Bundeswehr in the West wasn't established until 1955.

That was only after a substantial debate inside and outside of Germany. Sascha, would you mind explaining the then West German relationship with its military? I think it came, you know, as you said, there were massive discussions about whether German soldiers should be rearmed again. And the rearmament was heavily discussed and was then Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who himself, you know, had been the mayor of Cologne and has been an opponent to the Nazi party and has been expelled from office by the Nazi party. And so that he took all his political weight in order to become one of the fathers of that rearmament. I think until today, there's some skepticism in the German population. And that's because of also the extensive, you know, we were really, really open, you know, with the Nuremberg trials. And so now the sort of the responsibility of Germans for the German World War and especially the atrocities and the Holocaust, no one can neglect that.

Even now with some political parties from right-wing parties want to sort of diminish that responsibility. But this is a very strong discussion and it was also associated with the German military. In comparison to other nations, we have a very sort of distance relation between the population and the military. And I think this can be traced back from the 50s until today. I've always found that relationship very interesting because you had universal conscription for males starting in 1956. So you actually had a large portion of the population serving in the military at all times with military experience. So that remained in force until 2011, and that period covers, obviously, the Cold War plus more than 20 years. What was the relationship like during the time of mass conscription?

Was that actually when you came into the military, Sasha? I came into the military at 1989, just six months before the Berlin Wall fell. So when I started my military career, the draft service was enhanced to 18 months because of the rising tensions due to the Russian policy then and because of the insecurity and instability that might have occurred. So I started out with a perspective with all my fellow conscripts. I was in for 12 years already, but they were they thought they would need to be there 18 months. But, you know, I started on the 1st of October, six weeks into service, the wall came down. And so kind of we won.

So but my fellow conscripts, they left the army after 12 months. And all of a sudden, the German army, because we were merging the German forces with a with a national people's army of the GDR. we had like almost 680 soldiers in germany so uh obviously we had no shortage of people on their arms but that was a was a one of so one of those victories where no shots been fired and the integration and sort of the armament to what now we do have like 180 000 people on their arms in germany that's uh that's kind of a victory where you don't have any battle narrative to that but that was a success that was a success so um that's i think it's interesting especially for for listeners who think of the military being you know proven in battle which the german army

would only start after afghanistan to be proven in that yeah you mentioned the quantity of people under arms in 1989. So 680,000 between the East German and the West German armed forces. And this is something that I always try to explain to fellow military officers who haven't been over Germany and driven around. Just Germany was a fundamentally in one gigantic military base on both sides when you looked at it, because you can drive through some of these little towns and see the remnants of old British bases and old Belgian bases and old French bases and just every flavor of NATO country having its own base scattered all through the countryside. Heike, do you remember those times at all and what the relationship was between the military and the

civilian population, given just how massive the military population was, not only from the West German side, but also all the NATO countries who were in place? I don't have family members in the Bundeswehr, but I think there was a good relationship because they are happy that the net was there, and every family had men who served in the Bundeswehr. The relationship was much stronger because many people saw the danger, and that was really good. And after the war came down, they think it's peace, and the country wouldn't need the Bundeswehr anymore. You mentioned the peace dividend. Sasha, you were discussing sort of the mood in the country, but how was it reacting with the citizenry in 1989?

Were you going out in your uniform? Was that a normal thing to do, or was that sort of the way it is today, with the exception of the new initiatives that we're going to talk about is, you know, my fellow German soldiers would never go anywhere in their uniform. Was that the case in 1989 as well, or was that a much more common occurrence? I hope my mind doesn't do any tricks on me. But, you know, I went out in uniform, especially, you know, I was an airborne infantry cadet in the country of the Saarland

and that town, Lebach, which is very open for the Bundeswehr because having barracks in your small town would mean you're having money there. And that's almost an economic factor. And you still, today, you have strong, and Heike knows that maybe better, the local authorities, where you have barracks and stuff, they connect with a commander of the battalion

or the units that are there. so at that local level you do have really like kind of a very good relationship and also when it comes to the navy so if you have a frigate called emden you would certainly have a relationship to the city of emden or to cologne and elsewhere and nevertheless you have kind of you do have a community of people close to the bundeswehr and you have a community that are detached from the bundeswehr and i think this is like the dividing line and you know now now being a civilian you And I've tried to cross those lines. And so I'm always saying this is kind of a complicated stuff.

I think the highest regard you can receive by the population in Germany as a soldier is that they neglect you. Because they feel so completely safe that they don't care about what you do. Heike is the local official on the podcast here. Can you offer your opinion on what Sascha has put forth here? We don't have a Bundeswehr base in our town, but I studied in Münster, and there are many bases, the German Ridge Corps, and many air force bases, and the army, and there was a close relationship. They work with others and support each other, and we also had soldiers and professors at our university. They work together, and they teach people together. There were events where both can connect, the soldiers and the students.

So there was no problem. But here where I live, we don't have any basis and we don't think about the Bundeswehr in our town hall. Nobody thinks about it. There are colleagues of mine who are red stars in Bundeswehr. Especially during the pandemic, they gave their knowledge, but people outside don't care about it. I will say I served on the frigate Lubeck, and exactly what you mentioned, Sasha, when we would pull into Lubeck, we were treated, the best possible treatment, anytime we pulled into the city of Lubeck, the mayor would come on board, there'd be a big party on the back of the flight deck with the local citizenry, the Schiffergesellschaft is up there, would always invite the officers in and host us for a wonderful dinner. And it was also the time when sailors on board would go out in uniform to the local pubs or Christmas market, if that was the case, as well as we would actually run our own stand at the Christmas market selling punch to benefit one of the local schools. so it was very heartening to see but I also noticed when we took the Lubeck over to the United States on my last deployment we pulled into Fort Lauderdale Florida and all my sailors are standing back there on the flight deck with me and they're all looking at me and I have them

gather around I was like okay you all need to put on your uniforms when you go out in town tonight like sir no we can't couldn't possibly wear a uniform out in town do you do that here I was like All right, one of you is going to believe me, and you're going to come back to the ship tomorrow, and you're going to tell all your friends about what happened when you wore your uniform out in town. And the next night, all of you will wear your uniform. That was exactly what happened, because they didn't buy any drinks for the rest of their time in Fort Lauderdale as they went out in their uniform. I'm agreed by the citizenry that way. But the two initiatives that we're going to talk about that are driving a lot of conversation about the civil-military relationships in Germany and online are much more recent. And the first is the German Navy's, and now really the entire Bundeswehr's, use of Twitter as a method to engage the public in their mission.

I limited it to Twitter, but it's really all sorts of social media because I see them on Facebook. I see them on Instagram. They're everywhere. Heike, you've been observing this from the outside. How would you describe that initiative? Yeah, I like it, but actually it's only in social media, only about social media. There are a few newspapers who wrote about it, but people who don't use social media know nothing about it. And that's the problem. I think it's good, and maybe young people especially, but YouTube, they like it, but people outside social media don't recognize it.

Yeah. Sasha, any commentary on sort of the Twitter offensive ongoing here? This really started as a Navy initiative. Now all the other armed forces have picked it up. And I mean, I've been interacting with the German military since 2006. I really feel like this is the first time that I've seen positive momentum for the German military. How has that been received from your perspective? Well, I didn't make friends with my fellow army comrades when I said that, obviously, I observe in a relationship with the openness towards modern communication platforms and the intellectual level that's required to operate the military equipment, which I see is higher in the Navy and the Air Force than in the Army to a certain extent. But, yes, I think that it depends and it still depends on people. So now the inspector of the Navy decided to do that. And, you know, he has some some folks behind that were, you know, trying to help out. And what I observed, which is a bit unregarded, one of the innovation labs for also for the German army was the deployment to Afghanistan. Because when German troops came to Afghanistan, they would observe how especially U.S.-led operations would employ social media. So this is my take on this, that also this encounter and those international deployments and joint combined operations do raise the level of expectations.

Plus, it was obviously then Minister of Defense Ursula von der Leyen who gave that a push because she started that old employer branding thing, rightfully saying, okay, now we do have degreasing numbers of people and young people being interested in the Bundeswehr. Let's go where the young people are. And what they did, you know, they started a bit haphazardly. I think now they're very professional. Problem with that is the image they create on social media doesn't reflect the sort of the customer experience

once you go to the recruiter bureau or once you get in contact with the tubes because then it's overly uh overly bureaucratic and obviously watching a video of people being being drilled on an absolute course is less less harder than being that person yourself so uh you know for some it's kind of an awakening when they say oh now that's kind of a reality chalk you know it looked funnier on the video than it is right now plus on social media the bundeswehr is much more modern than it's internally and this needs to be needs to be leveled out i think thank you i found it really interesting that you side the u.s as a model in this case

that i feel like your troops actually have a significant amount more freedom to tweet in an official capacity than you typically see the U.S. military engage there. So we'll have sort of carefully controlled public affairs accounts that we publish. And I could name names here, but I'm going to hold off on doing it. But I feel your commanding officers are very empowered as far as what they put on social media and the way they show the Bundeswehr. There's a tremendous amount of initiative on their own part that seems to me to be reflective of, we would call it mission command and of course germans would call it off track tactic where they've been sort of granted permission from the highest level to advertise and are doing so how do you

see that well i can understand the perception but that only applies to very very small group of officers um i've always admired you know how the lessons learned process in the u.s army worked I had the chance to be on deployment in 1997 in an exercise with the 82nd Airborne Division. And we went through the JRTC, the Joint Readiness Training Center in Fort Polk, Louisiana. You know, and being present because I was a liaison officer there, I was in the exercise myself, jumped into that exercise and been there 14 consecutive days. But in the lessons learned, you would have soldiers, privates, sergeants stand up and, you know, telling their perspective. and you also had very early on you had like the army captains exchanging themselves via social media you do have a higher presence of commanding officers within the public discourse those are

things that are missing so now the social media presence of the of the bundeswehr is much of the entertainment part but sort of the hardcore strategic stuff the military thinking lessons learned etc is not so much present in the in the german uh media be it on social or elsewhere so i think we should also apply what you said the mission command the auftrags tactic because we do have have that system of the inner referral which is kind of would translate into inner leadership uh which binds the soldier to the democratic state which preserves his that democratic size etc i wish for a lot of soldiers to speak up more about that because it would be In the modern media-driven society, it would be a very valuable perspective

because still today, Germans do speak a lot about soldiers, but less with soldiers. And I think this should change. I couldn't agree with you more. Heike, any final thoughts on sort of the social media engagement? No, I think the engagement is good, but it's more important to go outside social media too, I think the social media initiative, as Sascha pointed out, there is largely driven by the desire to engage the younger portion of the populace here that will hopefully become future Bundeswehr members.

Sascha, you brought up an interesting point, though, about, I guess we'll call them leadership blogs. There are no shortage of leadership blogs run by members of the US Armed Forces. And again, I can name names from the Green Notebook, Feel Great Leader, the list goes on and on and on. And you see these captured in, it's called a Prezi, and I forget what the Twitter handle was for the organization that has put it together. But it clumps these all together, where if you're a person in the national security field, you can go to this American cluster on the website and find all the resources to include SIMSEC. But I threw the question out to a couple of different people. It was like, hey, what is the German cluster?

What are the websites that if you were interested in engaging with the Bundeswehr and this strategic thought, national security, where would you engage this? And I did not get a tremendous response back, was my impression. So it's interesting that you point out the leadership blog piece is something that I tried to engage my students on when I was at the FUAC. It's like, hey, pick up your pens. like the people want to hear from you you just need to engage your populace i hope that's coming in the future and i'm going to push it for as long as i can we are going to have some german writers

for uh simsec here in the next couple weeks uh provide we get the necessary permissions but sort of the second major event or major initiative going on and it's a little bit over overcome by the events of covid19 because people aren't riding around so much but the second major event was decision to allow Bundeswehr members to ride Deutsche Bahn, and that's the German railway service, for free, so long as the service members did so in their uniform. Before we talk about the public response to that initiative, I do think it's important to discuss the way that Germans commute for our American audience. It's very different, particularly for the members of the Bundeswehr. I've described this before to Americans, and it's always a surprise. Sasha, could you

explain for a little bit the way most Germans when they're riding Deutsche Bahn and how they're commuting to and from work each day is very different from what Americans are doing. I've been studying in the U.S. in Connecticut in 1993 and I lived like 800 meters off campus and they were really bewildered because I walked to campus and I walked into town because it wasn't far away and yes i'm commuting because in the rhein-main area god you're better off with the railway than with with the autobahn and uh also long distance we we are do having the the long distance trains fast running trains so it will bring you to hamburg within four hours and i think like living in northland palatinate you even have a closer closer woven net of public transport

Is that so? Yes, because many people travel with a van, especially in the Wurundjeri region where I live. There are, I think, about 20,000 people who drive my train to work every day. And the other portion of the commute that I find so unique is that a lot of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, they don't live where they work. So during the week, they are living in a small apartment or room in the vicinity of where they work, and they commute long distances back to where their family lives because the family tends to live close to where the soldier or the spouse grew up, so they can be near their family.

So when the soldier is away, they have their family support network. Is that, you think, an accurate description of the commuting relationship for the German soldier, Heiko? Yes, I think so. When I was at university, I drove home every Friday to my parents, and I saw many soldiers in uniforms. And during the last day, I think only one in a month. And people were very skeptical of them. And I think it's good that they are allowed to drive uniform, because I'm sitting in the train, I saw people talking to them, but I think young people do it more than older people. People over 70 ignore them, and the others are talking to them, and that's what it's about.

So you bring up a good point of the engagement here. And the reason why I wanted to discuss the commuter pattern is, so every Monday and Friday, you'll have soldiers, sailors, airmen in uniform traveling these long distances where they may be on a train for nine hours if they're from down in Bavaria somewhere, with an opportunity to engage members of the populace all the way up and down. engage slash be engaged by because uh there's those folks may come over and want to talk with them sasha have you seen this dynamic play out in person here where you have uh soldiers in uniform on the train with you talking with uh civilians actually i talked to soldiers before you know when i was a soldier because the thing is when we have conscripts you know and we were allowed to commute freely as well but you know as as you are young men conscript you didn't like to go to the base you know you got drunk so that's still like the bad image from the past but nowadays it's it's easier and you know I'm talking to anyone anyways and I think

the idea to allow soldiers to commute once they wear the uniform is sort of the single best investment when it comes to talk with soldiers and not about soldiers that the German Ministry of defense uh had during the last years you know pack away your million euro media campaign you know let people travel and as heike said because in the 90s we had like a lot of soldiers we had a lot of bases after the cold war ended those bases were closed so if you're not out there they're not talking to you and now with that commuting idea i think uh this is very good and And I think there was an article, I think, in the New York Times called No Parade for Hunts. When I was studying at the University of the Armed Forces and I was studying in the U.S., I needed to go there in uniform.

And it was actually that way that, you know, when I hopped on a bus in Connecticut, that people would approach me saying, yeah, thank you for your service. And I thought of this as a cliche and said, yeah, you're exaggerating. but i had i experienced it myself and it's interesting and you know it's i think in new york city it's different but where you have some of that relationship it works fine and so uh i'm very positive about that and i have a friend who is traveling together with his son who's also a soldier all the way from bavaria to hamburg and he's twittering about that so this and they're engaging in discussions and they are broadcasting or social casting it uh through their twitter accounts and this this is fabulous and the interest is there and you know heike you refer to

the blog augen gerade aus and they have set up a podcast on security policy in german and they did a live recording of that podcast in berlin in january they were approached by by a cinema owner and he offered them a small cinema there but they had like 450 tickets sold so they needed to move to a to a larger room and what was interesting there were so many young people there and also you know judging by the way they dress and their style not like oh short hairs and yes yeah we're pro-bundeswehr all the way they were critical but they were engaged so i think that within berlin within the german community there isn't there's a keen interest on a qualitative exchange between soldiers and the populace

because I think they perceive somehow that times really are changing, that sort of this stability, and Heiko, you spoke about the peace dividend in the past, you know, with the globalization and climate change and all those things going on, people are aware that those things, they don't come for free any longer.

And there are some critics saying, you know, the young folks, they are lazy and they take everything for granted. I think there's some movement in the younger people, you know, call it Friday for Future, but also when it comes to security policy, you have really people with a keen interest and a profound knowledge of it.

And I think you could address that and not only having the, you know, like adventure-like Netflix-style soap operas on the Bundeswehr. Yeah, besides that, I think the Netflix-style soap operas would get into what you've expressed earlier is that it really captures sort of the the glamour if you will but not necessarily the day-to-day life which the day-to-day life is like any other

job you know there is bureaucracy there are administrative hoops that you have to jump through in the Bundeswehr as in every military is like look not every day is me doing really cool stuff with my ship there's a lot of day-to-day work that is work like anywhere else but I'm happy to see these discussions i think the podcast you're referring to is sicker heights halberd is that correct and then yeah that's right and then uh i think you're also referring to zonka mararan's commutes and uh tweets about some of the interactions that he has on the train there as he and his son uh pass from uh southern to northern germany as i got i enjoy following zonka and trying to work with him to uh bring some more german voices into simsec so german

voices will start appearing in the American, I guess English-speaking national security sphere as well, because I think it's an important conversation to have. Heike, any additional thoughts on the train initiative? I don't know what you see local to you, because you mentioned there's a little bit less of a military presence, but do you see any of these interactions happening? Are you having any of these interactions yourself? Yes, but only a few years ago when there were more soldiers um of course i i had more conversations with soldiers in train but

it's just because we don't have many bases in the front us it's also a reason okay and then sort of the last theme that i want to discuss too is that we were actually supposed to have a third guest on here who had to step away because he was dealing with covet 19 um from his perspective he wears a uniform, I'm not going to name him, but he feels like with what's going on with COVID-19 and the Bundeswehr's response to it, he thinks there's going to be some changes in the relationship as the Bundeswehr has to become a little even more present than it is already to help assist the federal government deal with COVID-19. Sascha, I'm going to ask you, what does that Bundeswehr assistance look like for COVID-19 thus far, and how is it being received?

Actually, Heike might have better insight into that. And the thing is, the German army has been very helpful, you know, during floods in the east of Germany because they could draw on a large amount of manpower. The thing is, now with 180,000 troops under arms and a lot of them on deployment, sort of sheer numbers won't do. and what we've just learned is that also the medical corps is already stretched when it comes to covid19 so i'd rather see i see a strong role for the bundeswehr there but as a set of an assistance and logistics and bringing manpower to places where it's needed and also having like a call to to arms for the reserve corps and i think and that's my hope that it is seen as a joint national task to battle with 19 and because i think a lot of people now learn

how finely structured our society is and how the flow of money and the economic exchanges are and what a tremendous tremendous work people in health care and home for the elderly so and i You know, my hope is that that stays on because Bundeswehr is, when it comes to a personal perspective, soldiers are paid well. You know, some might say, well, I deserve more. But in general, they are paid well. They've got a good pension, et cetera, pp. But when it comes to health and care workers now standing on the front lines, I think that's something else we need to invest into. And my impression is that not only the Bundeswehr had to pay a peace dividend, but also preparation on national disasters and catastrophes.

And, you know, all that structure that holds society together when the shit hits the fan, they have been sort of cut down to the sheer minimum. I think it would be interesting to learn from Heike now, from the local perspective, how she sees this, how this integration and this cooperation works. Heike, please. We don't need the help of the Bundeswehr in our county at the moment, but I think we have a lot of reserve officers in the town hall and therefore the relationship is very good. And I think, as Sascha said, people are happy when the Bundeswehr helps during disasters. But I think the main work of the Bundeswehr is to work with blackness. And I think when the pandemic is over people will still be thankful. But when you have another discussion about more money for the Bundeswehr

and therefore people will be skeptical again. Yeah, I think it will be interesting to see. So when we talk about Bundeswehr response here, we would call this in the U.S. a DISCA or Defense Supportive Civil Authorities. Sasha, you had mentioned the response to the flooding in the east, but it sounds callous for them as opportunities, but we'll call them opportunities for interaction with the populace so they see a different role for the Bundeswehr

than maybe what they see on television. Would you agree with that? Sasha or Heike? Yes, I do. Yeah, you know, it is a media opportunity, but as Heike pointed out, there are a lot of reserve officers that are working in joint commands. And also, for example, a friend of mine,

he's now the mayor of Karls in Baden-Württemberg. And he just got elected into office. He's a 32-year-old young man, but now he said, okay, I didn't know that my military training would do me well becoming a major or once, you know, after I became a major. But, you know, I set it up to things I learned. Another one, and this is so like, this is again karma. Now, a general staff of a naval officer I met in Hamburg in March, he joined, you know, he's on Twitter and he joined sort of the world largest hackathon initiated by the German government on fighting Corona and found himself in a DIY mask suing group. And he said, well, don't ask me how I came to that, but now I'm coordinating a lot of people suing masks. And obviously, I'm having laid out three lines of operations, how to sue masks, where to get the supply, and how to dispute it.

I didn't expect that my military training would help me to do that, but it's fun. And obviously, those people are very open to this expertise. And this, what I said, you know, maybe we do have some, you know, sometimes I'm a bit romantic saying, you know, you're having a national effort and coming closer together. And I think also that the work that Eike is doing on Twitter and other civilians, because Eike, you're doing it as a hobby as well, shows that there's an interest. And, you know, because soldiers are not living on base like in the U.S. Soldiers are living where they live, close to their families, close to their friends. That's why they commute again. And I think we do have a very strong integration.

And maybe some of to your U.S. listeners, you know, if you're if you draw a circle around Washington, D.C. of about 800 kilometers, you hardly hit Kansas. But if you draw a circle around Berlin of 800K, you cover the whole of Germany. We're a small country. We're living close together, and this is why we're not moving that much. We're not moving from East Coast to West Coast to get a job. And we're not having those bases, these strong bases where all the military brass is collected and having its own infrastructure. And I think this integration is a strength and we should foster that. So I muted my microphone, but I was laughing hysterically as you described the German Navy.

Clemens was one of my students when I was teaching at the Armed Forces Staff College, and he sent me the same note on Twitter about what he was working on to include the slide that went with it. I was like, yeah, this is this is just like Milan Vigo laid it out. out as far as uh space time and force um just apply to a different medium is very good to see uh heike any final thoughts before we close the podcast i have got hope that the last trip will be better because there are initiatives and organizations for example it's veteran kutu it's an organization we are um civilists and soldiers um work together and they support each other concerning culture and art projects, so I think there will be more such events in the next month.

Thank you for bringing that up too. That was another thing that I recognized from my time in Germany was the cultural engagement between local authorities in Hamburg and the Armed Forces Staff College. We were constantly receiving invites to go over to the Rathaus for different events or the Opera House or Elbphilharmonie to engage with local administration, they want us to feel welcome in Hamburg. I know some of that happens in the U.S. as well, though I think a lot of it is initiated by the U.S. military, but this was clearly coming from the civilian administration there. Sascha, any final thoughts before we close the podcast? I think a very strong point that Heike brought up, also the integration of veterans,

And because we only saw combat, really combat in Afghanistan, sort of the new generation of German veterans are very able to employ social media and they do have a strong presence in the debate, which is good. And I think we have applied for the Invictus Games in 2022 in Dusseldorf, which is in two years. And there are some saying, oh, this is a remilitarization of the discourse. And I think, no, it is important because if we as a people deploy troops and put them in harm's way, we need to be aware of that. And you can oppose it, yes, but you cannot just neglect it.

And this is very important also, the cultural levels and also giving a voice to the veterans and the veterans taking a voice because this is something we haven't learned in Germany. And we learn it, and I think we're on a good way there. Well, thank you both for joining us today. Heike Brueggemann can be found at Brueggemann Heike. Heike, any projects that you're working on? Hey folks, it's Jared. Thanks for tuning in. Today we have German historian and communications specialist Sascha Stoltnau and local government official Heike Brueggemann joining the pod. We discussed Sascha's COVID-19 experience, and then we're going to talk about German civil-military relations to include how the relationship devolved post-World War II, social media engagement in the Bundeswehr, how the new policy promoting commuting in uniform has improved the relationship, how the COVID-19 response is shaping perceptions.

I also want to take a minute to highlight SimSec's Project Trident. If you don't follow SimSec on Twitter, go do so now or visit the website at simsec.org. If you're interested in shaping the future of international maritime security, this is your opportunity. Our first call for essays is out. We've partnered with Marine Corps University's Brut Krulak Center for Innovation and Creativity to address strategic choke points and littorals. More information on questions and content can be found on our website at simsec.org.

Submissions are due by May 25th and can be emailed to content at simsec.org. With that, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. Working on that you'd like to discuss? No. Sasha can be found at Bendler Blogger on Twitter. And Sasha, anything that you're working on now? Well, after boarding 19, so the first maritime bar camp last year, this year we'll be working

on boarding 20 not being in presence bar camp but trying to do an online bar camp somewhere in May and I hope to maybe see you there and also see Heike there because you can do it from your home office no that would be tremendous

anything that gets me engaged with the outside world at this point I'm super excited about but thank you both again for joining us and for our listeners thank you for tuning in and we'll see you next week. We'll be right back.