Letter from Berlin: Germany Confronts the Meaning of War

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Dude 15 told NATO investigators that, prior to the bombing, he had "an uneasy feeling about everything." He said "he could tell the ground commander was really pushing to go kinetic" -- anxious to drop bombs, in other words.

In the weeks after the bombing, many of the headlines dealt with the political aftermath in Berlin. Jung, who had moved over to head the Labor Ministry in Merkel's new government, was forced to resign from the cabinet in late November as a result of his initial refusal to admit civilian casualties despite being in possession of evidence which showed that innocents had died.

Unwieldy Understanding

Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg himself got into hot water for calling the Kunduz attack "militarily justified." He fired Germany's top soldier, Bundeswehr Inspector General Wolfgang Schneiderhan, and a top Defense Ministry official for allegedly having withheld information from him -- even though he had read the secret NATO report, which clearly outlined errors made by Klein when he ordered the attack, before going public with his assessment of the bombing. Guttenberg has since reversed himself, calling the attack "militarily unjustified" in early December.

The coming months will see Berlin take a much closer look at the events leading up to the attack and the response by leading German politicians in its aftermath. A parliamentary investigative committee, which in January began assembling a list of possible witnesses to be called to testify, intends to take a close look at the political response to the bombing. Both Chancellor Merkel and Defense Minister Guttenberg will likely provide testimony.

In particular, the committee will seek to find out exactly when Merkel learned of civilian casualties and why she didn't take a greater role in investigating the incident, despite having said on Sept. 8 that "a comprehensive analysis of the attack and its aftermath is extremely important to me, to the defense minister and to the entire government." The investigative committee will also look closely at the Defense Ministry to determine exactly how Jung could have remained uninformed about civilian casualties for so long.

'War-Like Conditions'

In addition, some parliamentarians are concerned that the Bundeswehr was secretly ordered to wage a more offensive war and that the Bundestag was not informed. There are some who suspect that Col. Klein may have thought he had political backing for a more aggressive stance. It is a question the investigative committee will also seek to resolve.

But beyond the finger-pointing in Berlin, the Kunduz bombing could, in the long term, mark the moment when an unwieldy understanding between German politicians and the German public fell apart. Even as 69 percent of Germans would like to see the Bundeswehr withdraw from Afghanistan -- according to a survey conducted for German public television in December -- there has been little pressure from below to stop the mission. Afghanistan has rarely been a central issue in election campaigns and the kinds of massive demonstrations the country saw prior to the US invasion of Afghanistan have been absent. Nationwide debates, following German battlefield casualties have tended to be short-lived.

And German politicians, for their part, have assuaged a largely pacifist public with assurances that the Afghanistan mission was more about building schools and training police than about doing battle with the Taliban. Indeed, it was something of a sensation in Germany when Guttenberg, shortly after taking over the Defense Ministry in October, referred to " war-like conditions" in Afghanistan. Prior to that, the German government had been loathe to use the word "war" in discussing NATO's engagement in the Hindu Kush. Guttenberg's predecessor Jung preferred the term "reconstruction mission" or, when pressed, "combat mission."

Significant Trepidation

"I call it fear of the electorate," said security expert Rieke. "There is no preparation in Germany to see war as an element of foreign policy. People tend to see war as the failure of politics."

With World War II still looming in Germany's not-so-distant past, it isn't difficult to see why. Indeed, Washington's clamouring for an ever greater number of German troops in Afghanistan can still seem odd to Germans. It was only 20 years ago, after all, that the world faced the prospect of post-Cold War German reunification with a significant degree of trepidation.

Germany too, however, was apprehensive of its own rebirth in 1990. Indeed, the shock of Kunduz is all the more intense as it reminds Germans of the disregard for human life its military once had. Mostly, though, the incident has laid bare a need for the country to take a hard look at its role in overseas missions and how best to identify and defend its national interests.

"There has been no honesty about what the mission in Afghanistan means for collective security," said Nachtwei. "The portrayal of the mission in public has been overwhelmingly euphemistic." He continued: "The chancellor has approached the issue with kid gloves. Yet it is the greatest German foreign policy challenge since 1949."

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• Part 1: Germany Confronts the Meaning of War
• Part 2: When Is a War a War?