Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) welcomed around 4,000 US Army soldiers to the Upper Palatinate with a large Weißwurst breakfast. The men and women had arrived at Nuremberg Airport ten days ago, where Söder had promised them Bavarian delicacies. The soldiers are here to strengthen NATO’s eastern flank, said the Prime Minister on Friday at the Grafenwöhr military training area (Neustadt an der Waldnaab district). He thanked the US Army for their commitment and for their partnership. She defends peace, freedom and democracy in the world.
Every US soldier on Bavarian soil provides more security, said the CSU boss. In the coming days, the largest military maneuvers in decades should take place and show the determination and defensiveness of NATO and the West. “The unprovoked war of aggression in Ukraine, which is getting worse every day,” forces, among other things, determination – to protect NATO and help Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin underestimated the unity of the West.
“You “zuzel the sausage.”
The situation also shows that the Bundeswehr needs to be strengthened with a lot of money in order to guarantee security – even if politicians would prefer to spend large sums of money on civil and social purposes. Söder spoke of a paradigm shift. “We have to stand up for our values. Freedom and democracy are not on the rise everywhere,” said Söder.
The 55-year-old stood behind the kitchen counter in one of the tents on the military training area and handed the soldiers food trays – each with white sausage, sweet mustard, Obatzda and a pretzel. The soldiers would only have to do without wheat beer, said Söder – and joked that the generals would not have liked to see that. Two-page operating instructions were available for the correct handling of the white sausages: Under no circumstances should white sausages hear the twelve o’clock bell and their skin should never be eaten, they said. In Munich, the specialties are eaten without a knife – “you “zuzel the sausage”.
Söder then had a tank demonstrated and attended an otherwise top-secret artillery exercise by the armed forces. It was only in February that the US Army had relocated around 1,000 soldiers and military vehicles from their Vilseck site (Amberg-Sulzbach district), which is also located at the Grafenwöhr military training area, to Romania. The location in the Upper Palatinate is the largest of the US Army in Europe.