It is rare to find a career among high-ranking generals that was as closely linked to the troops as that of Hartmut Bagger, army soldier, tank grenadier and telecommunications officer. Anyone who has spent their life in the Bundeswehr since 1958 has been shaped by the Cold War. All the more satisfying if, like Bagger, you can plan the armed forces of the future shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall: the merger of two armies, a new army. As an army inspector, Bagger may have reached the emotional peak of his career. This was the biggest challenge, the restructuring of a branch of the armed forces of 258,000 men.
The political climax came in February 1996, when Defense Minister Volker Rühe Bagger awarded him the fourth star. Bagger followed as Inspector General Klaus Naumann, who had fought many a fight with his courage. Rühe now wanted an explicitly quieter GI and even publicly banned political interference. That wouldn’t have been Bagger’s thing – his desire for room brawls was limited, he gave political advice internally.
His disappointment: the reduction in conscription
The armed forces reform designed by Naumann (and himself) changed Bagger in one crucial point: conscripts were now supposed to serve in the rapid reaction forces, the spearhead of the new Bundeswehr. Bagger was all the more disappointed when Rühe pushed through the reduction of compulsory military service to ten months. The minister’s second disappointment came at the end of his career when he had to make way for the “hero of the Oder flood”, General Peter von Kirchbach.
Bagger would never have aired his dispute publicly. He was a quiet gentleman who painted and could play the piano at a high level. The glasses alone were reminiscent of his time as a Panzergrenadier: constructed with five tiny hinges, they could be folded to the size of a monocle and stored safely. Bagger died on Friday evening at the age of 85 in Meckenheim.