Bonn Braces for Absorption of East Germany’s Army : Unification: Quandary arises on a cache of weapons West Germany does not want.

West Germany is scrambling to prepare for an impending invasion from the East on a scale that North Atlantic Treaty Organization war games never dared to imagine.

On Wednesday, the entire 90,000-strong East German Volksarmee will join forces with the West German Bundeswehr in a military merger of former foes.

It is a consequence of reunification that has the Defense Ministry in the wooded hills above this Rhine River capital in a state of frenzy more suitable to anticipation of a rear attack than the arrival of friendly reinforcements.

The East German army will march in laden with complications, from a system-wide breakdown in discipline to an identity crisis triggered by joining what has long been the enemy camp.

There is the purely logistic challenge of immediately outfitting both sides alike. There is the arms control quandary of what to do with the East’s cache of weapons that West Germany doesn’t want.

“We will not be enjoying any ‘peace dividend’ as the result of combining the armed forces,” observed Navy Cmdr. Stefan Lang, a spokesman for the West German Defense Ministry. “Arms control and arms disposal is a very costly business.”

Bonn recently discovered that East Germany has more firepower than the entire Bundeswehr, although the West German force is four times larger than the Volksarmee. Fleets of tanks and heavy equipment will have to be destroyed to avoid violating European security accords. Much of the rest is simply obsolete or would require training and upkeep from the Soviet makers.

While the unwelcome weaponry presents a major physical and financial burden, the political hindrances may prove the more difficult to overcome.

Soldiers of the National Volksarmee were made to pledge allegiance to the doctrine of communism and were under the direction of a political party that preached distrust and fear of the West. Most of the officers were card-carrying Communists, key players in a system now discredited and held in contempt.

Across Europe’s most heavily fortified border, Germans of east and west trained guns on each other for 40 years. Now they will be expected to be comrades, jointly upholding the Western values that the Easterners were previously encouraged to loathe.

The Bundeswehr, as part of NATO, has been reared on Western military concepts that will be unfamiliar, and in some cases unfathomable, for those troops trained by the followers of Karl Marx.

Chief among the foreign philosophies is that of “inner guidance,” where personal responsibility is expected of West German troops. The East Germans have been taught only to follow orders.

Bonn’s military brass speak of a “period of transition,” but in fact East Germany’s forces will be immediately absorbed upon reunification Wednesday.

As soon as the fireworks fizzle and the band music fades, 1,300 Bundeswehr officers will fan out across the former East German territory to assume command of regional units while the Volksarmee leaders are scrutinized for their potential to serve in the new all-German force.

The once-feared Volksarmee that was the Kremlin’s front line against NATO has fallen with the fortunes of the crumbling Warsaw Pact.

The army that stood at 173,000 before last November’s popular revolt against hard-line Stalinists has dwindled to an unruly 90,000 due to a spree of discharge requests, rampant AWOLs and a breakdown in the order the East was known for under Communist rule.

Soldiers hawk their uniform jackets, parade caps and insignia in West Berlin, raking in considerable sums from tourists seeking souvenirs of the Cold War.

The East German Ministry for Disarmament and Defense, under the command of pacifist clergyman Rainer Eppelmann, warned recently that the current pace of unauthorized departures threatens to disband the army by the end of the year.

As much as 60% of the career officers and soldiers may have already fled the service in fear of eventual discharge, according to ministry spokesman Col. Uwe Hempel in East Berlin.

The self-dissolution could ease one perplexity of reunification, as the combined armed forces’ strength must be reduced to 370,000 soldiers by the end of 1994 under a condition set by the Soviet Union. West Germany currently has about 450,000 troops.

But Bonn wants the reduction to be controlled.

“If the present trend continues, there will be a breakdown of the existing structure and we have no interest in taking over shambles,” said Lang, the Defense Ministry spokesman. “Our aim is not to disintegrate the East German forces, but to integrate them.”

West German Defense Minister Gerhard Stoltenberg has appealed for patience among the eastern troops, noting that many of them will be needed at least until the end of next year.

A parliamentary committee was assembled in early September and charged with reassessing the entire defense structure of a united Germany to determine by December, 1991, where cuts and redeployments should be made.

The only East German servicemen sure to lose their jobs are the 19,000 members of the border guards and the elite political force that was named for KGB founder Felix Dzerzhinsky. Career soldiers over 55 are also being retired, in an effort to reduce the Old Guard’s influence.

The dilapidated state of the East German economy will complicate the paring down of the all-German force, as the Defense Ministry will be under pressure not to worsen unemployment in areas heavily dependent on military income.

While most of the cuts are expected on the East German side, defense officials concede that some Bundeswehr units may be eliminated as well.

During the transition, NATO is prohibited from moving its forces into the territory of East Germany, and no nuclear-capable equipment may be stationed there before the last Soviet soldier leaves by the end of 1994.

“As far as security clearances and other matters go, every soldier of the NVA that is taken into the Bundeswehr can in no way be discriminated against or differentiated,” said Army Lt. Col. Helmut Fisher at the Defense Ministry planning office. “They will have the same tests and preparations and opportunities.”

Many, however, will not have the same pay.

West German officers’ salaries are significantly higher, but Bonn does not want the eastern soldiers provided a living standard above that of other civil servants.

Uniting the pay scales will depend on full recovery for East Germany’s economy, which some expect to take up to 10 years. In the interim, Bonn surmises, East Germans will have to learn to live with numerous temporary inequities.

Stoltenberg has already dispatched a deputy defense minister, Guenter Ablass, to East German military headquarters in Strausberg to begin the process of determining who goes and who stays. There are also 360 officers of the East German air force retraining at a base in Upper Bavaria, the first of thousands who will be undergo a political metamorphosis.

“Only a year and a half ago, I had Bundeswehr personnel in my radar sights,” observed 30-year-old Capt. Matthias Schaaf, one of those training at the Fuerstenfeldbruck indoctrination facility. “Now they’re inviting us over.”