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East Germany The National Security System and the Citizen
Having successfully met challenges at home and abroad, East
Germany entered the decade of the 1970s with a stronger external
security image than it had had previously and with a fully active
state security apparatus in operation. Internal security had been
tightened, and the Berlin Wall had stemmed the emigration
problem. The regime was perceptibly closer to international
recognition. Matters involving the organization of the national
security system and political and social integration still had to
be addressed, however.
Civil Defense
As a member of the Warsaw Pact, East Germany is obliged to
ensure that its security organization corresponds to the norms
accepted for the other member states. In 1961 the Soviet Union
had created a comprehensive civil defense system that brought all
functions--military, police, economic, and medical--into a single
organized body. By 1969 the other non-Soviet Warsaw Pact states
had followed suit, and on September 16, 1970, East Germany came
into compliance when the People's Chamber passed a law creating a
comprehensive civil defense system. This law was replaced by the
Civil Defense Law of 1978, later modified by decree in 1981.
These laws regulated mobilization, set forth the obligations of
the population in the event of war, and determined the role of
the citizenry in peacetime civil defense work. Since 1981, for
example, all East German males between the ages of sixteen and
sixty-five and all females between the ages of eighteen and sixty
have been required to participate in civil defense training
exercises that frequently simulate nuclear warfare and involve
entire sections of a city.
Under the new law, the minister of defense, through the
director of civil defense, was made responsible for national
civil defense. Until 1978 civil defense had been the
responsibility of the minister of the interior; the change was
made throughout the Warsaw Pact in the 1970s in accordance with
Soviet doctrine, which began to define civil defense as an
element of warfare. The Central Civil Defense Staff had been
created to formulate plans, conduct day-to-day business, and
coordinate activities should an emergency arise. For local
operations, regional, urban, and district staffs were
established. People's Police officers and others specially
trained at national civil defense schools in the Soviet Union
occupied many staff positions.
The law also provided for the formation of civil defense
committees at local levels, down to the level of cooperatives;
directors of plants, offices, and schools would be responsible
for civil defense affairs in their organizations. Civil defense
training was mandatory for all citizens beginning at the age of
sixteen and extending through the age of sixty for women and
sixty-five for men. Training included formal schooling at the
district level and tournaments with competition in individual and
team civil defense skills. Also included in the law was a
provision for construction of civil defense shelters, giving
emphasis to the safety of the leaders of the SED and the
government. Possibly because of shortages of building materials,
shelters for the general public were few and of poor quality.
In 1987 the civil defense cadre numbered about 3,000, and
several hundred thousand civilians were subject to mobilization
as needed
(see Paramilitary Forces
, this ch.). Public safety
organizations, including police, fire, Red Cross, and
communications, could be mobilized under the direction of the
local Civil Defense Staff. Volunteer formations known since 1982
as Civil Defense Alert Units could also be activated in an
emergency. In addition, certain branches of the economy, such as
construction organizations and the public health system, created
their own civil defense sectors, having specific responsibilities
in their own areas of competence.
Another aspect of the civil defense structure was its mass
nature. Civil defense not only served its direct purpose of
protecting the state, the economy, and the public from the
effects of war and natural catastrophe, but it also represented a
socializing instrument, or a means of providing mass
participation in state affairs without sharing political
authority. Civil defense, as one of the methods used to educate
the population to think and act as citizens of East Germany, was
an important feature of the system of national security.
Data as of July 1987
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