Next Step : Germany Inching Its Way Back Toward Battlefields : Bosnia would be its boldest overseas deployment since World War II. The proposal is prompting soul-searching.

Step by step, mission by mission, token force by token force, the German military is inching its way back toward the battlefield, 50 years after it lost Hitler’s war and bid a humiliating farewell to arms.

Germany’s creeping return to the arena of international conflict started in the 1970s, when Bonn began sending the occasional military instructor into the developing world, “to teach our understanding of the role of the armed forces in a democratic society,” as the justification went. Germany took a semi-plunge in 1991, sending air crews to eastern Turkey and warships to the Mediterranean during the Persian Gulf War.

In 1993, the first German soldier since May, 1945, was killed on active duty in a foreign country--a 26-year-old medic stationed in Cambodia--to the astonishment of his countrymen, few of whom had realized their government had sent 170 Germans to the Southeast Asian country’s infamous killing fields.

And last year, the German constitutional court upped the stakes once again with a landmark ruling that there was no legally compelling argument for keeping the army, the Bundeswehr, out of foreign combat for all time, provided the German Parliament approved each overseas mission in advance.

Now, with NATO defense ministries putting together a rapid-reaction force for Bosnia-Herzegovina, the postwar German army is on the verge of its most politically charged extra-territorial undertaking yet: 2,000 soldiers, 12 C-160 transport aircraft and about a dozen Tornado attack planes are being readied for possible action in the Balkan war.

“Bundeswehr soldiers might die in such an operation,” warns German Defense Minister Volker Ruehe, who has been trying to prepare the German public psychologically for the potential sight of young compatriots returning home in body bags.

Germany’s proposed contribution to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization rapid-reaction force is notable for its relatively low numbers--Britain, by contrast, already has a 1,500-troop commitment to Bosnia and is expected to send another 5,500 soldiers.

The German contingent is striking simply because it comes from Germany, a U.S. ally that has been struggling for the past half a century to atone for what its soldiers and leaders did in World War II.

Germany has a firmly rooted democratic government, an economy that dominates the European continent, the world’s second-largest volume of arms exports and more soldiers under arms than any other nation in the European Union--but it also remains shackled by the fear, inside and outside the country, that the minute those troops move beyond its borders some bad old German habits may come back.

“Don’t people . . . realize that you shouldn’t offer liqueur-filled chocolates to an alcoholic who has finally gone dry?” asks Oskar Lafontaine, the Social Democratic Party governor of the state of Saarland and a longstanding opponent of any renewed overseas role for the German army.

Sending the 2,000 soldiers to the former Yugoslavia is not the entire issue. Officials here say very few of the troops to be deployed would face potential combat; most would serve in non-combat roles, such as running mobile first-aid units and setting up a field hospital. In fact, Germany already has a small, low-profile force serving in the Balkans, helping to airlift food into besieged Sarajevo and trying to monitor weapons smuggling.

Even among the stoutly anti-military Greens Party, a few parliamentarians have come out in favor of foreign military deployments, as long as the troops remain in humanitarian roles.

The sticking point is the Tornados, attack aircraft that would be equipped with radar-sensing equipment and missiles. Although the formal objectives of the proposed German deployment have not been made clear, it is assumed that Germany would use the planes to take out Serb anti-aircraft batteries before they can bring down any more planes.

“The downing of the U.S. plane [piloted by Air Force Capt. Scott F. O’Grady] could possibly have been prevented with help from Tornados,” says Defense Minister Ruehe, who has not only been warning Germans of the risks of Bosnia duty, but has also been trying to persuade them of the benefits.

Comforting though the Tornado deployment may sound to Americans, sending the planes over Bosnia is seen in Germany as the first time since World War II that this country has ventured into a combat situation.

That puts the planes squarely at the center of an anguished debate, one that questions this country’s very spirit, and one that is expected to climax soon in a vote by the German Bundestag, or lower house of Parliament.

German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s coalition government has a slender 10-seat majority in the 672-seat Bundestag, and his Christian Democrats have been insisting that they have the votes to push the Tornado deployment through.

But the Social Democrats, Germany’s main opposition party and one with a long anti-militarist history, formally decided last week to fight the deployment and the new German role that it represents.

“German Tornados have no business being in Serb territory,” says Lafontaine, the Social Democratic governor. “Participation in combat outside the NATO area must not become a part of our foreign policy.”

Germany’s angst about the proper role for its army dates back years. The constitution, ratified in 1949, forbids putting troops in harm’s way except in concert with “collective security organizations.”

This wording is taken very seriously in Germany, where shame about the past runs so high that one survey found 12% of young Germans felt personally responsible for the Nazi mass murders--even though they had not yet been born.

For years, West German politicians interpreted their constitution very narrowly, saying it meant the army could fire its weapons only in self-defense, and only on the territory of NATO member states.

Within these guidelines, the reconstituted West German military, the Bundeswehr, became one of the most decorous military organizations on Earth, a well-trained and equipped army that never fired at anybody.

The army of the former German Democratic Republic, similarly, ventured out of East German borders only once, to participate in the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Everything began to change in 1991, after the East and West German armies merged, and when the international community went to war against Iraq.

Chancellor Kohl did not dare send troops to the Gulf that year; only three months had passed since East and West Germany had reunited, and the rest of Europe was still too nervous about the character of the reborn giant in the heart of the Continent.

All Kohl did was to dispatch 18 Alpha jets and their crews to eastern Turkey, and send various warships to the Mediterranean--and even these gestures drove battalions of dismayed German pacifists to protest.

“Clearly, Germany failed to see its proper role, and was criticized for all the right reasons,” says Walther Stuetzle, editor-in-chief of the Berlin Tagesspiegel and a foreign-policy specialist.

Pointing out that Kohl also devoted 17 billion marks, or about $12 billion, to the Gulf War effort, he calls the German role “checkbook diplomacy.”

The United States and Britain, meanwhile, accused Germany of hiding behind its constitution. It had about 370,000 battle-ready soldiers, they said: What was Germany saving them for?

This argument found receptive ears among German conservatives, who were embarrassed that, after enjoying the protection of U.S., British and French occupying forces throughout the Cold War, Germany had done so little in the Gulf.

And so, the stepped-up deployments. Since the Gulf War, German soldiers have found themselves far away from home--in Cambodia, Georgia, Somalia and elsewhere--in decidedly modest numbers and always in humanitarian and support roles, but serving well outside the NATO area nonetheless.

But Bosnia duty is something else again. Germany’s historic role in the Balkans is highly sensitive. The Nazis were allied with a fascist government in Croatia during World War II, and tens of thousands of left-wing Serbs--and Croatians, Jews and Gypsies--were slaughtered in the conflict.

“We reject any involvement by German . . . combat aircraft,” said the Social Democrats’ leadership in a statement last week. “This would increase the conflict, escalate the war and make any political solution more difficult, or impossible.”

Nevertheless, the German defense minister has already sent 30 air force officers to Italy to inspect military airports for Tornado duty, and at home the army has been staging Bosnia-inspired combat-readiness exercises.

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Military Doubts

Most Germans oppose sending their own troops into combat against the Serbs although a slim plurality think NATO should act, one poll found.

* Should NATO act militarily against the Serbs?

Yes: 47%

No: 42%

Don’t know: 11%

* How should Germany participate in such a NATO force?

Only humanitarian: 38%

Only technical, logistical: 22%

With combat forces: 17%

Not at all: 18%

Don’t know: 5%

* Should Germany participate in freeing U.N. hostages?

Yes: 51%

No: 40%

Don’t know: 9%

SOURCE: Forsa Institute / Die Woche. Survey of 1,005 Germans conducted June 1-2.

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Stepping It Up?

Germany provides only about 500 of the nearly 20,000 U.N. troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina. But it would send 2000, plus combat aircraft and other materiel, under one proposal.

CURRENT GERMAN DEPLOYMENT

TROOPS: 512

- 60 staffing humanitarian airdrops

- 160 on AWACS planes, enforcing “no fly” zones

- 24 rotating on naval reconnaissance aircraft in Adriatic Sea

- 268 on destroyer in Adriatic, enforcing arms embargo

MATERIEL

- Four transport aircraft

- One destroyer

PROPOSED GERMAN DEPLOYMENT

TROOPS: 2000

- 600 in medical corps

- 600 from navy

- 600 from air force

- 200 others, unspecified

MATERIEL

- 12 to 14 Tornado combat aircraft

- 16 Transall C-160 transport aircraft

- 2 naval reconnaissance aircraft

- 6 minesweepers with one tender

- 6 speedboats with one tender

- One field hospital and two mobile first-aid centers

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TORNADO ECR

Type: Electronic combat and reconnaissance plane

First produced: 1989

Dimensions: Length, 61 feet, 3 1/2 inches; wingspan, 45 feet 7 1/2 inches

Typical armament: Two HARM missiles (to attack anti-aircraft batteries), two AIM-9L Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, various defense systems against infrared and radar-guided missiles.

Maximum speed: 920 m.p.h.

Radius of action: 863 miles

Crew: 2

SOURCE: Jane’s All The World’s Aircraft 1994-95 (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

NATO TROOPS IN BOSNIA

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization provides 10,424 of the U.N. troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina, by one recent count.

France: 2,706

Britain: 1,483

Turkey: 1,468

Spain: 1,402

Nordic nations: 1,178

Canada: 801

Netherlands: 776

Germany: 512