The structural transformation of the military public sphere: war, knowledge, and military elites in West Germany, 1940-1989

The history of the Federal Republic of Germany is generally told as one of liberalisation. Denazification and demilitarisation in the immediate post-war years were long regarded as having founded a new liberal-democratic state, worthy of “the West”. The armed forces, too, were said to have been cleansed of the old militaristic spirit and imbued with a new ethos. But repeated scandals suggest that military institutions were, and remain, resilient to civilian control. The thesis argues that this is the result of continued organising by networks of conservative soldiers. They dominated military and military-adjacent structures and organised various kinds of networks and associations to preserve their power over military decision-making and younger generations of officers. The thesis sketches the evolution of these networks over five decades and shows just how they organised for various political, social, and economic causes and thus preserved their influence. Military historical knowledge played a foundational role as old military elites initially organised for the purposes of distilling their war-time experiences, particularly that of the Eastern Front, which was to be mobilised for a coming war with the Soviet Union. Although they never mounted a fundamental challenge to the new political order, the networks endured for decades after this initial impetus, and the thesis follows them as they shift position and structure and compete for power and influence. The last two chapters in particular show how they pushed back against the emergence of more progressive voices from the 1970s onwards. The endurance of their power suggests that the story of strong liberal tendencies within the post-war West German armed forces is in urgent need of revision.