Adding to a flurry of other announcements regarding British Prime Minister David Cameron’s major military budget cuts, the British military is said to be planning a withdrawal of its remaining 20,000 troops from Germany in 2020, some 75 years after they got there.
Britain occupied the northwestern portion of Germany in the wake of World War 2, up to the Danish border and including the cities of Hamburg and Lübeck. Much of the land had been a possession of the British monarchy as the Kingdom of Hanover, though the union of the two lands ended in 1837 when King William IV died with no male heir. Hanover, unlike Britain, operated under salic primogeniture, so the Hanoverian crown fell to his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, while the British crown went to Queen Victoria.
After the WW2 occupation, Britain folded its territory into West Germany (along with US and French possessions), but kept a major military presence in the region under the name British Army of the Rhine through the Cold War. When the Cold War ended and Germany reunified, the troop numbers were reduced and the force renamed to British Forces Germany.
But this too is on the chopping block, with Cameron saying that roughly half the 20,000-strong force should be out by 2015, with the rest coming by 2020, 75 years after the troops arrived.
75 years is a long time for the troops to be there, and truthfully there has been little logical reason for keeping them in Germany, beyond the history of having been there so long. A strategic review found “no operational requirement” for the troops to be there, and the onerous costs were no longer acceptable at a time when the British government is struggling to make ends meet on all fronts. So far the cuts will not effect British troops in Cyprus or the Falkland Islands.
So a mere thirty years after the collapse of the USSR (the only possible threat) the troops are coming home. Amazing! Note how the reason is due to money, not logic. The same thing and for the same reason will eventually happen to American troops there too. As the U.S. economy collapses something's gotta give…
About damn time! Now if only Uncle Sam would wake up and smell the coffee and do the same.
The really big question is: When is the U.S. going to pull its occupation troops out of Germany. Answer: NEVER!
It's not part of America's plan for the world to withdraw from any country. It wants army boots on the ground in every country in the world and is well advanced in this objective.
Americans feel safer if their soldiers are based everywhere. Makes it easier to get a drone launched or a fighter jet scrambled. I mean the world is filled with enemies who hate America, they tell us, so constant vigilance is required.
Of course, with only 300 million people, keeping the world under control is not an easy task.
A few nukes will keep them quiet!
http://www.dangerouscreation.com
Friendly occupation comes to an end, will tearful Germans throw flowers on departing troops and their implements used to occupy them?
This is almost funny. We seem to be stuck psychologically in WWII, Hollywood's all-time favorite war, the war that will never die. In fact I was watching some comedians ad-lib just recently and one guy was told that he was to act like a German and immediately he starts with the 'Seig heil' and thrusting his arm out in the Nazi salute. Man, that was 65 years ago. Can't we let that dog die ? It's really not funny anymore. There are more nazis in Israel and America than you will ever find anywhere in the world and they don't have German accents.
"There are more nazis in Israel and America than you will ever find anywhere in the world and they don't have German accents." So true! And, in America's case, you will find them in the banking, corporate, academic, political (both major parties) and military ruling elite.
What on earth are these soldiers doing there? Just spending taxpayers money, and party. And what on earth does it take to pull them home, so that it needs to be stretched till 2020? What an abject nonsense. But it is a proof that governmental dinosaurs never die, they just get renamed.
Germany must be several hundred thousand miles away from England, that is why it will take 10 years for them to get back from that far outpost. Yea, that's the ticket!
Thane Eichenauer
I bet British government will change it's mind under immense pressure from their masters in Washginton.
It's astonishing how these military missions persist. It's as if the Italians were still sending Roman Legions to man Hadrian's Wall.