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East Germany Socialist Military Education
Civil defense was but one vital element of East Germany's
comprehensive system of socialist military education. As a result
of extensive measures aimed at the political and ideological
education and military training of all citizens fit for military
service, more East Germans engaged in military activity in the
1980s than did citizens of any other Warsaw Pact country. Of
every 10,000 Germans, 433 were members of the armed forces or of
paramilitary units in 1983, in comparison with 210 Czechoslovaks,
185 Soviets and 115 Poles.
Military education had been stressed in East Germany since
the founding of the republic, and in 1978 it was made a formal
component of the school curriculum as an independent educational
subject for the ninth and tenth grades of the republic's schools.
In March 1982, the new Military Service Law expanded the
obligations of East German citizens yet again with five major new
provisions. Preparation for military service was required by law.
All state organs, factories, organizations, schools, and
universities were legally obligated to provide such preparation.
Every citizen was obliged to contribute toward defense. The term
of military service for reservists was lengthened. The state was
given the right to draft women between the ages of eighteen and
fifty for general military service; previously they could be
conscripted only into noncombat roles. Service in construction
troops was declared equivalent to fulfillment of the military
service obligation, and certain conditions for this service were
set forth. These measures were in part a response to declining
birthrates and an increasing need for conscripts who had enough
basic training behind them to spend their active duty learning to
master more sophisticated technology. They also could be viewed
as a response to growing indications of popular resistance. Signs
of resistance included an increasing number of young men who
chose to serve in construction troops or refused to serve at all,
protests from East Germany's Lutheran Church against the
militarization of the educational system and organized military
youth activities, and waning interest among young men in an NVA
career. The Military Service Law of 1982 gave a more precise and
binding legal basis to premilitary training, which had been
stressed in East Germany since 1951. In the early 1980s, even
before implementation of the new law began in 1983, as many as
eight of every ten draftees had had premilitary training.
Educational and career opportunities often were tied directly to
participation in premilitary activities and to military service.
Socialist military education began in kindergarten, where the
children played games with a military orientation and learned
songs and poems about soldiers. Older children, as members of the
Young Pioneers, took part in military games and the annual
Snowflake Maneuver directed by NVA officers. The school system,
reinforced by the family, was to lay the basis for forming--as
early as possible--what the SED called the image of the enemy and
instilling hatred for all foes of socialism, with emphasis on the
soldiers of the West German Bundeswehr.
The premilitary education curriculum stressed civil defense
and general military subjects. Instruction consisted of lessons
on such themes as national defense, the nature of a possible war,
the duties of soldiers and territorial defense forces, and the
weapons and equipment of the socialist armies. Classroom work was
supplemented by a self-contained course of approximately fifty
hours taught during the last two weeks of the ninth grade. At the
end of the tenth grade, the NVA conducted a closing exercise of
several days.
Data as of July 1987
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