The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces, Eva Högl, is alarmed by the “sometimes desolate” condition in the barracks. In the military report for 2021, she also focuses on accommodation, medical facilities, military kitchens and sports fields – those places where the soldiers spend a large part of their time.
During her visits to the troops, she came across infrastructure that was “dilapidated” in parts. The Bundeswehr is pushing ahead with a high “investment and renovation backlog” that goes back to the 2000s. The soldiers find an infrastructure that not only “leads to frustration, but sometimes also to a loss of confidence in the ability to act politically”.
The Commissioner for the Armed Forces, elected by the Bundestag in a secret ballot, monitors the state of the Bundeswehr. At the same time, Högl is the contact person for the concerns of the soldiers and is therefore also regarded as their “lawyer”. Högl is a member of the SPD. As a military commissioner, she is supposed to act non-partisan.
Your military report shows the developments of the year 2021. After the start of the war in the Ukraine and the announcement by the federal government to invest an additional 100 billion euros in the Bundeswehr, he describes the initial situation at the start of a massive modernization program.
The Bundeswehr should be able to defend the country and the alliance again. In addition to the equipment, their infrastructure also comes into focus. In the past five years, 4.7 billion euros have flowed into infrastructure projects. In her report, the military commissioner paints a frightening picture of the conditions in the barracks.
Mold, turned off drinking water, too few toilets, forgotten military training areas
According to a staff sergeant who complained to Högl, there has been no hot water for showers and kitchenettes in two buildings in the air base barracks in Husum since 2017. Sanitary containers set up as an emergency solution are “partially infested with mold”. In one of the buildings, the drinking water was even turned off because of clogged pipes.
In the Klotzberg barracks in Idar-Oberstein, a communications train – when fully occupied, that’s more than 90 women and men – has to make do with two toilets. The rooms are sometimes occupied by more than four people. Sometimes there is only one socket to charge cell phones, for example. In the army non-commissioned officer school in Delitzsch, it took six years before WLAN was available in the accommodation. Construction projects sometimes take decades to complete. The plans for the swimming pool at the Saaleck barracks in Hammelburg date back to 2005, and the completion date is now 2024. Högl reports on military training areas that have apparently “fallen into oblivion” – there has not been any major investment there for 60 years.
According to Högl’s information, the Bundeswehr’s infrastructure requirements by 2034 will be almost 20 billion euros. However, the construction authorities in the respective countries are currently only able to implement projects with a volume of one billion per year with their limited staff due to complicated procedures and sometimes a reluctance to give priority to planning for the Bundeswehr. If nothing changes, the investment backlog will get even bigger.
As far as the equipment of the soldiers is concerned, the situation remains critical. This applies to the personal equipment as well as to the large weapon systems. No troop visit goes by without being told about deficiencies, Högl writes in the report. So far, it has always been said from the top of the Ministry of Defense that at least the soldiers on foreign missions get everything they need to carry out their tasks.
Readiness for use of large equipment is sometimes almost 50 percent
Högl disagrees: Reports about deficits in the material from the operational areas would have upset her very much. “In some cases, the readiness for use of large equipment was just under 50 percent.” Protective vests or winter jackets were sometimes only sent to the area of operation.
It happens that the soldiers are given newer equipment on deployment that they are not familiar with from day-to-day operations. In Lithuania, for example, where the Bundeswehr is leading a multinational combat unit that is strengthening NATO’s eastern flank, “there were no German soldiers who were familiar with the radio system to be used there or who had received the appropriate training,” report military officers returning from deployments . One would be “ridiculed” that in international exercises the Bundeswehr with the available equipment is regularly the “weakest link in the chain”.
In 2021, the Bundeswehr was challenged like never before, it was “the year of the Bundeswehr”. In the meantime, she had kept up to 25,000 men and women on standby for the fight against Corona alone. Soldiers were also sent during the flood disasters. Added to this was the evacuation operation for more than 5,000 people from Kabul after the hasty withdrawal of international troops from Afghanistan. “The squad has proven how efficient, professional and reliable they are,” explained Högl.
If the military commissioners have their way, the Bundeswehr must be able to concentrate fully on national and alliance defense again in the future. She criticized the federal, state and local governments for not having strengthened their own structures more in the past two years of the pandemic. The Corona administrative assistance must come to an end soon. The Bundeswehr now needs “every soldier”.