Germany, are we throwing her to the wolves?

[Elphaba]

Posted: 5/13/08 at 11:44am

Something has been bothering me lately, and I need to vent, question, whatever...

Some of you may, or may not know that I lived in Germany for 3 years in the then West Germany as a Military Policeman in the US Army. Being in Berlin few weeks ago brought this boiling back to the surface.

We partition Germany into 4 parts after WW2, then we take the French, British, and US part and come up with West Germany, while those delightful Russkies have East Germany.

We have many military bases there, and pump millions into West Germany, and basically because of us, they rise again, become our friend, and we protect them from the threat of the East.

Fast forward to now to 2000, the wall comes down......we are closing bases left and right, which upsets many of us who were there as we know the benefit of those bases to the country and its economy, and for protection of the region.

But.....we're not just closing them, we want to move some of them to Poland or the Czech Republic, which makes NO sense to me.

The Russians are pissed, so a slight threat rises.

Why close established bases (that have been there for over 50 years, and open new ones.....it costs much more to establish a new one.

My former base in Karlsruhe closed in 1995. And when they moved out, they just left all the books in the American Library there.
The local public library was just going to toss them, when American wives of German nationals SCREAMED bloody murder and said no, so the American Library was kept as a branch of the public library and has been a boon to the area.

If Germany as a whole was acclimating well to reunification I might feel differently, but there are still issues.....many of which are East-West issues and the influx of other cultures to the area.

Berlin, on the other hand is a success story, in my opinion.
They are building everywhere. Unter den Linden, the 5th Avenue in the days of the Kaiser (and absolutely nothing during Soviet occupation) as turned around and is once again THE place to walk.

In 1993 I stood in front of a boarded-up Reichstag with nothing around it. It was bleak and ugly.
Today, the Reichstag is redone, re-opened, and the seat of government. There all kinds of wonderful new buildings around it, and the somber memorial to Holocaust victims.
It is again a world capital


I noted no tension there between the Osters (former Easterners) and the former Westerners.....which was refreshing.

I'm upset we close base after base. We need them there (or some of them..there is even talk of closing down Heidelberg), and many Germans want them there (although many do not. I know how I'd feel with a German military base in my valley)

Anyway...I guess it's an end of an era, and one I do not like.
Thank you for letting me vent.

(I realize most of you could care less, and that's ok, I just needed to get this out)

[Jonny boy]

Posted: 5/13/08 at 12:25pm

Elphaba..... how was your trip?? Doi you have any pics?

[PalJoey]

Posted: 5/13/08 at 12:34pm

Elphaba--how exactly are we throwing them to the wolves? And are the wolves the Russians?

Not sure I'm following you here. What exactly is the threat?

[Elphaba]

Posted: 5/13/08 at 1:16pm

Jonny, I just downloaded them into my computer and are working on them.
What sucks is that somehow when I, in Barcelona, put those few up on BWW...apparently I lost 300 Edinburgh pix. I am SO pissed.
Thank God my partner brought his camera.

Joey...so many business have been affected when bases close. Darmstadt closing most recently affected many businesses which catered to GI's.
And yes.....Russia is still a threat, mile threat, but all the same threat.

To close working bases and open new ones is an expense that is not necessary.

I just don't have a good feeling about all of this.....

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 5/13/08 at 3:42pm

I know a base in Lüneburg (I'm not sure if it was American, though) was turned into a university for the town including housing for students. It was quite impressive.

[Elphaba]

Posted: 5/13/08 at 4:16pm

Joey, Luneberg was in the British Zone

[KrissySim]

Posted: 5/13/08 at 4:52pm

I lived in Eastern Europe for 2 years following the collapse of the USSR. (I spent most of my time in Russia, Lithuania and Belarus.) I found it impressive that the majority of the people I met would rather have been born in America, or at least Western Europe. Russia has a lot of issues to work out, but I don't think they are a serious military threat. (That's putting it simply. It's really a complex bag of issues.)

I know nothing of the details of the German bases, so I'll defer to your judgement on that. BTW, have you seen the film The Lives of Others? Having lived over there in the East shortly after the collapse, I thought the film depicted well the life of Eastern Europe. The Communist system was still largely in place, at least in the economic sense when I first arrived. They hadn't yet had the chance to adopt the free market system so were on a holding pattern until they could sort things out (which has proved to be difficult in many cases). The flats (apartments) workplaces, etc. were very accurately depicted in the film, as was the sense of despair in daily life. The attitude of surveillance over the people was of course gone by the time I landed, but some of my friends who had worked as interpreters and had to report daily to the KGB can concur with the film's presentation of the situation prior to the collapse.

[Elphaba]

Posted: 5/13/08 at 6:38pm

sounds like a great movie, I'll look for it.

Even today in Berlin you know which part you're in from the apartment houses.....it's rather funny. And the bullet holes in the Reichstag and many other buildings have not been filled in...I like that, a reminder of the past.

I would love to hear your stories sometimes of Lithuania and Belarus....my God they tell people now not to even go through Belarus to get to Russia now due to th problems those two countries have with each other.

I think Russia is a threat as things are so up in the air.....all it takes is one kook to start something, and I don't see the checks and balances there that we have here....but perhaps I am wrong.

[tazber]

Posted: 5/13/08 at 7:13pm

Elph, I'm sorry I can't contribute to this discussion, but I really don't know much about what's going on in Germany.
If we're moving bases to Poland though, I'll bet it has to do with that anti-missile shield we're putting there that has Putin so pissed off.

Anyway, here's something I can contribute:
check out this movie from West Germany. It's very funny. I know I missed some of the humor, but I'm sure you'll pick up on it.
It's about the re-unification and how not everybody was so happy about it.

Good Bye Lenin! (sic)

Updated On: 5/13/08 at 07:13 PM

[KrissySim]

Posted: 5/13/08 at 8:28pm

When I first arrived in Belarus the general feeling of people seemed to be split between dispair and a cautious optimism. The economy was in shambles, but it was the first time in modern history that Belarus was independent. There was even a window of time when they were printing books in the Belarussian language. I've held on to my books from that time because they are no doubt a curiosity now, if not collector's items.

I Spent about 8 months there, then left for a year and a half to explore other parts of Eastern Europe and return to the West for a bit. I returned to Belarus a year and a half later, to a different country. Lukashenko had taken control and his opponents were starting to disappear (literally). Whatever optimism had been there was now gone.

During the time of the USSR, Belarus was a popular place for Russians and people from other Soviet countries to visit. Belarus had the reputation for being friendly and open to people from other places. There was not the nationalistic tension that plagued many of the other Soviet republics and satellites. But when I returned to Belarus, it was like the window of opportunity had closed and people were very discouraged and upset. They were starting to resent outsiders. That didn't affect me personally, but I could see a change in the popular attitude. Many felt that they were being left out of the New Europe. People who before would never consider leaving Belarus, the center of their cultural heritage, now wished for a way out. The bitterness ran deep.

[Elphaba]

Posted: 5/13/08 at 8:47pm

thanks Taz, I just added it to my netflix queue

Krissy what an interesting story!