Where have they gone?

After reunification in 1990, Germany's navy suddenly had hundreds of boats and ships at its disposal. Many of them were no longer needed for political purposes and were sold or utilised worldwide.

At the end of the Cold War in 1990, the Bundesmarine was a powerful and operationally ready navy capable of high-intensity combat. The Bundesmarine's mission was based on credible, conventional deterrence against the Warsaw Pact navies in the North Atlantic and in the North and Baltic Seas. At the time, the German Navy comprised around 175 boats and ships as well as 110 Tornado fighter-bombers. With the end of the bloc confrontation, politicians and society demanded a clear peace dividend and the Bundeswehr was reduced to its current 183,000 soldiers through numerous reform steps. The number of naval personnel shrank from over 36,000 to 16,000 soldiers. Above all, however, the number of ships and boats at the time, including the units of the People's Navy taken over, was reduced to less than a third. The Tornados were handed over to the air force. Today, the German Navy has 49 boats and ships. The units systematically decommissioned from 1990 onwards were mainly utilised by Vebeg GmbH, a federally owned trust company founded in 1951 to dispose of federal property, i.e. mostly either sold to foreign navies or handed over for scrapping.