Lower House minority pushes for "removal of military traditions"

**Saruman** · 11-07-2011, 05:16 PM

http://www.jungefreiheit.de/Single-N...ae67c2b91c1a09

BERLIN. The Lower House's left minority made a formal motion to the Ministry of Defence demanding to get rid off the Bundeswehr's many traditions. Grand Tattoos and public oath-taking ceremonies would already have been practiced by the Wehrmacht and showed a lack of distance to National Socialism, it said. The representatives also criticized that the Bundeswehr would take part in remembrance events also attended by Wehrmacht veterans whose former units had committed war crimes in Greece.

The parliamentarians took particular offense at the naming of military facilities with names of former members of the Reichswehr and Wehrmacht. More than two dozen facilities were still named after Wehrmacht soldiers "who supported the heinous war of annihilation" such as Colonel General Baron of Fritsch or General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Even naming facilities after members of the Military Resistance against Hitler would not be acceptable, they said, as "all of them were responsible for military successes of the Wehrmacht" hence "co-responsible for the death of 40 million people".

The Leftists demanded that facilities should only be named after persons "ethically, constitutionally and democratically" worthy of remembrance in the future. The current approach to "contaminated facility names" only showed that the Ministry of Defence still had not renounced the "inglorious history of the Wehrmacht", the Left Party moaned. Which names to remember in the future should be determined by an "independent committee of historians". The Green Party had also demanded a renaming of facilities named after former Wehrmacht members in the past.

Disgusting.