Neo-Nazi Tape Brings Scrutiny of Germany’s Men in Uniform

In 1994, a group of soldiers from Germany’s 571st Alpine Battalion made an amateur video featuring far-right songs, the Nazis’ stiff-arm salute and denunciations of Jewish “imperialism.” Some in the cast also ridiculed a toy airplane as an emblem of American technology, then smashed it.

Pathetic stuff, perhaps, but since it is illegal in Germany to incite racial hatred or glorify Nazi symbols, some of the antics constitute criminal activity.

None of this would have come to light if not for the willingness of one soldier to eventually turn on his friends.

This fall, former soldier Mike Rueggeberg hired an agent and tried, anonymously, to bring the video to German television. The private channel Sat-1 acquired the tape and made a much-hyped TV documentary, alleging extreme-right tendencies in the Bundeswehr, or army.

Its broadcast last month followed a series of other troubling incidents in which German soldiers firebombed a residence for foreigners, wielded baseball bats against some Turkish immigrants and allowed themselves to be filmed staging mock rapes and executions while in training for NATO peacekeeping duty in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

In addition, there have been media reports that German ultra-rightists are putting out calls on the Internet, urging neo-Nazis to join the Bundeswehr.

Rueggeberg’s video has thus intensified questions about the general character of Germany’s men in uniform, and particularly over the effectiveness of the draft as a means of curbing the sort of militaristic impulses that led this country into world wars twice.

Rueggeberg, meanwhile, has cast himself in the role of a reformed neo-Nazi who now embraces democratic ideals and who wants to tell the public what the army is really like.

In anonymous interviews earlier this fall, he said neo-Nazism is so rampant in the barracks that German soldiers can easily get their hands on swastika paraphernalia, copies of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and other contraband. Superior officers either approve or look the other way, he said.

But German Defense Minister Volker Ruehe soon put an end to Rueggeberg’s anonymous whistle-blowing, identifying him publicly, calling him “a right-wing extremist dirty rat” and revealing that he was discharged in March for “lack of aptitude.”

The Defense Ministry also mounted an investigation of possible right-wing extremism in the army.

Police have searched Rueggeberg’s home and those of his fellow video-makers, and criminal complaints have been filed against some of the men, including Rueggeberg.

Ruehe also called for legal changes that would allow the army to review the criminal records of new recruits, the better to screen out “active neo-Nazis or potentially violent thugs.”

Worries that the army has not completely severed itself from its aggressive past come at a time when Bonn has been trying to raise Germany’s profile as a benign, “normal” power, sending troops to keep the peace in Bosnia and evacuate foreigners during an Albanian uprising.

They also coincide with a discussion here about ending universal conscription, following the recent lead of France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Maintaining big, drafted armies is expensive, and some modern strategists say it makes more sense to rely on smaller, highly mobile forces, armed with the sort of high-tech equipment best used by professional soldiers.

But the term “professional soldier” raises unique qualms in Germany. The requirement that every young man serve 10 months in uniform plays a special, calming role: It is believed that universal conscription keeps the army diverse and democratic--a cross-section of German society. Women serve in Germany’s army but are forbidden to carry out armed duties.

The video’s appearance prompted Ignatz Bubis, leader of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, to say he’d be “horrified” if the draft ended. If Germany switched to a volunteer army, he said, far-right extremists could be expected to flock to recruiters.