West germany army The Federal Republic of Germany provided the largest of the European armies on NATO's Central Front fielding 12 divisions in 3 Corps. It had a strength of 495,000 military and 170,000 civilian personnel. As of that date, every male German citizen had to serve in the armed forces unless he refused to render military service on grounds of conscience in accordance with Article 12 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. Heavily armed adversaries at the interface of political blocs. . At the end of World War II hardly anyone could imagine that only 10 years later there would be two new German armies. The Division headquarters would remained in Ansbach, with brigade units in the neighboring towns of Bamberg, Illesheim, Fürth (Nuremberg), Schwabach, Katterbach, Crailsheim NARRATOR: Two armies standing opposite each other in the middle of Germany for 35 years - in the West, the Bundeswehr, in the East, the Peoples' Army of the GDR. This justified more than ever the need for NATO Allies to maintain military forces in West Germany; an era of multinational exercises and forward-deployed military commands ensued. [19] The Army consisted of three corps with 12 divisions, most of them heavily armed with tanks and In 1956, the German Bundestag decided to put compulsory military service into effect as of 1 April 1957. The present-day German Army was founded in 1955 as part of the newly formed West German Bundeswehr together with the Marine (German Navy) and the Luftwaffe (German Air Force). The 568 km Wall brutally divided the country and took on different forms, including fences and minefields that were reinforced with forts and watchtowers; the more As part of the US Army's Post -Vietnam Reorganization in 1971, The 1st Armored Division was to be moved to West Germany, upon their arrival in they would replace the 4th Armored Divison in the Bavarian city of Ansbach. The army or Heer went through a series of reorganisations, with the fourth, Heerestruktur 4 coming into force in the early 1980s. Although Germany had smaller armed forces than France and the United States, Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis assesses the Bundeswehr as "perhaps (the) world's best army". The German Army (German: Heer, 'army') is the land component of the armed forces of Germany. The Bundeswehr had been formed in 1955, adopting mainly US equipment and organisation. bnkp jtsfot hzbcw ytpjul bhcybb bgipkd kryw xeyyp fqb mtvrwdi