A Life for Germany: Günther von Maltzahn, the German Air Force, and the Reinvention of the German Military Ethos

The NATO alliance created during the Cold War currently faces increasing disunity and uncertainty among its partners.  It is worth looking back at the beginnings of the coalition, when a war-weary West Germany made common cause with its former occupiers and reconstituted the armed forces disbanded in the wake of defeat in World War II.  German leaders hoped the move would accelerate their efforts to recover national sovereignty as well as help protect Europe from possible Soviet aggression.  But Germans feared a return to the Nazi-era military adventurism that had plunged Europe into the firestorm of war; many had also become extremely suspicious of the old officer corps, which they viewed as one of Adolf Hitler’s chief enablers.  In response, those spearheading rearmament committed to a new philosophy designed to mirror as well as promote the democratic values of future recruits, to ensure civilian control of the armed forces and enforce respect for individual worth.  Christened Innere Führung, a nearly untranslatable phrase roughly rendered as inner direction, this principle continues to govern relations between the German military, the state, and society. 

While the expertise of surviving members of the officer corps was essential to the rearmament enterprise, those selected to participate necessarily had to demonstrate a private history compatible with the democratic imperatives of Innere Führung.  Wartime Luftwaffe commander Günther Freiherr von Maltzahn was one whose upright character embodied the most positive aspects of the German military tradition and whose command style harmonized with the concept of Innere Führung.  I explore Maltzahn’s background, his wartime experience—typical of the dilemmas faced by an appreciable number of officers—as well as his postwar confrontation with the past and engagement with the future, which contributed not a little to the emergence of a new, freer, and eventually reunited Germany.