Until the 1990 Unification of East and West Germany, almost no German forces had been outside of Europe for five decades. Even then, constitutionally, outside of NATO, Germans have little civil right or military authority to engage in war anywhere on the planet.
Naturally, such pacifist tendencies, desires or ideals, have been confronted by encroaching global involvements by Germans and Germany since the 1990s.
On the one hand, the German government did its best to stay out of the U.S. war follies in the Persian Gulf and Iraq over the past decade. On the other hand, German military and governments have allowed the U.S. to make war from German territory since the end of WWII.
Moreover, Germany is one of the leading producers of military hardware in Europe. (To be fair, supposedly pacifistic Sweden competes well in arms production, too.)
In the meantime, Germans have been writing about military suicides since Cafrlyle Works' 1712 work on Frederick the Great.
http://www.archive.org/stream/carlylesworksvfr037663mbp/carlylesworksvfr037663mbp_djvu.txt
Erich Maria Remarque, a German pacifist, wrote one of the most famous of all novels on war, ALL’S QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (Im Westen nicht Neues), a work beloved of U.S. pacifists since the 1920s.
http://www.sdcoe.k12.ca.us/SCORE/all/alltg.html
Horst Schinzel has reviewed the new war film in Germany (first shown publically in late 2008) to be shown on ARD TV tomorrow night. In German the film’s title is “Willkommen Zuhause”. Shinzel’s subtitle for the film is “A German comes home from Afghanistan but is traumatized”. Shinzel emphasizes in his review that this is a unique film in German war film history.
Eric Leiman, another reviewer, explains that in post-WWII Germany, “Nazis and German soldiers in the Nazi-era and war-survivors in the years following WWII have long since become topics that are acceptable in German Cinema. Moreover, movies about the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of DDR are numerous. However, films that deal with modern Germans and modern war are a novelty.” This is why Leiman calls this is a “a brave film.”
Other reviewers of the film note that the main protagonist, Ben Winters (played by Ken Duken), has returned from Afghanistan to Germany physically uninjured, but his soul is completely out of sorts. The ex-soldier’s physically healthy appearance is contrasted throughout with the internal stress and turmoil the young man faces.
The more those Germans around him, including parents and family, try to pretend life is normal, the more disconcertingly young Ben Winters behaves.
Winters lost a close comrade in Afghanistan. It's an incident that haunts him. As has often been the the subject of films in America, Winters avoids the offers for help.
Just as other Europeans have noted after years of war in Iraq and in Afghanistan, Germany has no special plans to support its returning troops. Moreover, the vocal anti-war rhetoric amongst local populace make it hard for German soldiers (who often do not wish to leave the military) to speak up.
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