The three security politicians who were politically lost by the SPD this year, Hans-Peter Bartels, Johannes Kahr and most recently Fritz Felgentreu, can be seen as collateral damage from the approaching federal election campaign.

The party chairman Norbert Walter-Borjans and parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich are trimming the SPD on a security policy course, which on the one hand should make the party programmatically compatible for an alliance with the left and the Greens.