Army of Unity

The War & Diplomacy Podcast: From the Centre for War and Diplomacy at Lancaster University

This podcast discusses the merger of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not only has Winfried extensively worked on this topic but it has also become a contentious historical issue in recent years as archival material has become available thirty years after the event. Heinemann and Wyss question whether the merger of the two Germanies and their armed forces after the end of the Cold War was in fact a merger, a hostile takeover or something in between with the transferral of East German personnel into the Bundeswehr.

Colonel Professor Winfried Heinemann has extensively researched the diplomatic history of NATO, post-World War II German military history (in both the East and West), and especially the military resistance against Hitler. His most recent book is Operation “Valkyrie”: A Military History of the 20 July 1944 Plot (De Gruyter Studies in Military History, 2021).