U.S. Bases in West Germany
The military base system in West Germany during the cold war was the linchpin of a system designed to defend Western Europe and the United States against a massive attack from the Soviet Union to the east.
Until the mid-1990s approximately 60 percent of all U.S. bases outside the United States were located in West Germany. United States Air Force bases in West Germany, known as “forward-deployed bases,” were designed to support air campaigns over central or Eastern Europe, while receiving logistical support from air bases in the United Kingdom, Spain, and, until 1966, France. United States Army installations in West Germany housed ground troops and equipment intended to defend against a ground attack by numerically superior Soviet forces advancing through the Fulda Gap, a flat plain on the inter-German border. While the U.S. base system was conceived in strategic terms, it also was limited by historical and political realities, which considerably complicated NATO planning.United States bases were established in Germany in the 1940s, as American forces occupied the U.S. Zone at the end of World War II. All installations of the German armed forces or Nazi security apparatus were immediately confiscated by the occupiers, and the network of confiscated property became the foundation for the system of U.S. bases during the cold war. Former Wehrmacht garrisons, Luftwaffe airfields, training grounds, and military hospitals were renovated and used by the U.S. forces, as were other smaller properties in a somewhat haphazard manner. In addition, many new installations were built, especially in the 1950s, including a large number of housing areas, recreation facilities, and storage depots. The renovation of existing installations or construction of new ones—in fact, all costs connected with the occupation— were paid for by the West German government until 1957.
Properties, however, were usually owned by federal, state, or local governments. The Convention on Relations between the Three Powers and the Federal Republic of Germany, put into force in May 1955, laid out the rationale and circumstances of the deployment of Allied troops in Germany. The document declared that the Allied powers had the right to station troops in Germany, and, although the Americans often stated that they would return a property if the Germans insisted, such events rarely occurred.In the immediate postwar years, the United States held bases in virtually every nation in Western Europe, but as demobilization progressed and bases were closed, their functions transferred to surviving bases, mostly in West Germany. In addition, the function of U.S. bases in Germany changed from that of centers of military government administering postwar Germany to a web of NATO defensive installations whose locations were determined by strategic necessity. Until the mid- 1960s, the U.S. base system was supported by a logistics and supply corridor from West Germany through the huge U.S. depot at Chateauroux in France and across the Atlantic to the United States. In 1966, however, when French president Charles de Gaulle withdrew from NATO and expelled foreign troops from French soil, this supply line was cut, and the functions of French bases were taken over by bases in Belgium, the Netherlands, and West Germany. The new supply line was more vulnerable to Soviet attack than the original one had been, so in the 1970s the United States established part of a new combat corps in northern Germany at Garlstedt. Another result of the withdrawal of France was the decision of the U.S. Air Force, Europe (USAFE) to move all major airfields to sites on the left bank of the Rhine. This decision resulted in a network of airfields in relatively rural areas, including Zweibrucken, Hahn, Bitburg, Ramstein, Sembach, and Spangdahlem. Rhine-Main, on the outskirts of Frankfurt, was the only air base located near a large urban center; it not only served as a central hub for travel to and from the United States, but also as the first stop for Americans evacuated or rescued from crisis areas.
Freed American hostages held captive in the Middle East flew to Rhine-Main, then were taken to the Wiesbaden Medical Center for care.In the 1970s, the number of U.S. personnel in West Germany decreased and U.S. installations suffered considerable neglect, a result of cuts in defense spending and upheaval in the wake of the Vietnam
War. By the 1980s, however, the U.S. forces and NATO had developed the “Airland Battle” concept, a plan to counter a Warsaw Pact attack coming through the Fulda Gap in central Germany with a massive armored defense on the ground and destruction of rearguard command-and- control functions from the air; the plan required upgrades and expansions. Major army bases (properly known as posts) tended to be grouped somewhat closer to the border than air bases, and the largest number of them were located in the state of Hesse. Army hubs included Heidelberg, Kaiserslautern, Darmstadt, Hanau, Wiesbaden, Frankfurt, Wurzburg, Fulda, Nuremberg, Ansbach, and Schwabisch- Gmund. The training area at Grafenwohr was familiar to virtually all army personnel in West Germany, who were deployed there for months of war games exercises and training. The army and air force bases in Germany received a needed infusion of money in the early 1980s, so that base facilities and housing were renovated and new structures were constructed. According to Department of Defense figures in the mid-1980s, U.S. facilities in West Germany were worth over $2 billion.
In the decade after the cold war ended in 1989, most U.S. bases closed and were returned to their German owners. Those remaining were reorganized into Area Support Groups (ASGs) for purposes of organization, and units were consolidated on them. As of 2004 a plan is underway to close almost all the U.S. bases in Germany and move the personnel to the United States, where they will be deployed for short periods of training to new ForwardOperating Bases (FOBs) in Poland, Romania, or Hungary.
Anni Baker
See also American Occupation Zone; Canadian Military Forces in West Germany; Foreign Policy (U.S. 1949-1955), Influence of West Germany on; World War II
References and Further Reading
Duke, Simon. U.S. Military Forces in Europe: The Early Years, 1945—1970. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993.
Harkavy, Robert E. Bases Abroad: The Global Foreign Military Presence. New York: Sirir Publications, 1989.