{"id":14357,"date":"2021-10-09T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-09T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/?p=14357"},"modified":"2021-10-13T13:36:19","modified_gmt":"2021-10-13T11:36:19","slug":"hartmut-spieker-poland-on-course-west-personal-encounters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/hartmut-spieker-polen-auf-kurs-west-persoenliche-begegnungen\/","title":{"rendered":"Hartmut Spieker: Poland on course west. Personal encounters"},"content":{"rendered":"

With this book, the author would like to take us on a historical and security policy journey into the 1990s. In it, he describes small and large events from his time as defence attach\u00e9 from 1994 to 1998 in Poland<\/strong>. At that time, the Federal Republic of Germany was already in its fourth year of reunification, the Soviet Union had imploded and many former Warsaw Pact states were on their way to a hopefully better future in a free Europe. At the time, no politician had a blueprint for this changing Europe. The defence alliance NATO had lost its major enemy and was looking for new, promising tasks for the future. The USA, in a coalition of the willing, had overrun Iraq, a country experienced in war, with modern technology and operations and was dreaming of a new, Western-influenced era. With the 1990 Charter of Paris, the CSCE had also enshrined the inviolability of national borders and the right to freely choose alliances.<\/p>\n

In 1993, the then German Defence Minister Volker R\u00fche began publicly campaigning for the admission of former Warsaw Pact countries to NATO. However, he met with clear resistance within NATO, especially from the USA. It was precisely at this time of upheaval that the author took up his post as a naval officer and defence attach\u00e9 in Warsaw. A lucky coincidence for him was the German ambassador in Poland<\/strong>Johannes Bauch, who greatly appreciated the hands-on nature of his top military officer at the embassy and repeatedly supported him in the years that followed. Another stroke of luck was the trio in the Federal Ministry of Defence in Bonn with Minister R\u00fche, State Secretary Sch\u00f6nbohm and Inspector General Naumann, who took on a new hinge function. Poland<\/strong> from the very beginning and drove it forward themselves.<\/p>\n

In over 80 short essays Spieker<\/strong> the rapidly growing trusting co-operation between German and Polish politicians, scientists, representatives of public life and the military. It would go too far to go into each of these small and large events. Perhaps this can be summarised:<\/p>\n