German angst impacts upon their officer selection?
From the paper Officer Selection in the federal Armed Forces of Germany - Wener Birke we learn:
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Military officer selection, for the most part, still takes place according to principles that were introduced 1955, which had the objective of preventing as much as possible, any misuse of the armed forces.
and
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Aptitude tests did not, therefore, initially focus abilities the candidates needed in order to meet certain performance requirements, but on personality traits, attitudes and motives that had been declared selection criteria for political and moral reasons.
and finally:
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By filling in questionnaires and talking to examiners in interviews, applicants had to prove that they were prepared, without any reservations, to uphold the values of the new democratic Constitution and to treat their subordinates as “citizens in uniform”.
One certainly hopes that the Germans have got over their angst over their past and once they do (if they have not done so already) it will probably take 30 years to cleanse its military from the people who were appointed on the basis of their political acceptability (and probably the absence of the warrior character so desperately needed in an army and once so adundantly available in Germany).