display
The Special Forces Command (KSK) consumes around 1.7 million rounds on average over a year.
In the camps of the elite association, over two million ammunition items are therefore temporarily in stock.
A small part of it is kept in the barracks in Calw, Baden-Württemberg, most of it in a depot two hours away by car.
These quantities of ammunition require safe storage and meticulous management.
Every military service worker is taught the importance of using it accurately.
And basically the same rules apply to the KSK as to the rest of the force.
For example, regular inventories are carried out to check the inventory.
The results of the inventories in 2017 and 2018 were consistent on paper.
In fact, it wasn't accounting, but sloppy forgeries.
So it can be read in a confidential report of the "Task Force Munition", which has been investigating the ammunition management of the KSK since the summer of last year.
display
In order to be able to count the inventory in the external main warehouse alone, according to a calculation by the logistics experts in the Army Command, it would have taken ten working days just because of the travel times.
But the 16 soldiers in charge managed with two days - in fact impossible, according to the report.
"Black stocks" and "Ammunition destruction"
To make matters worse, the depot was not connected digitally.
The accounting values determined were first recorded on paper, later electronically entered in Calw - a "high-grade source of error", as the Army Command judges in the report, and a basically unsuitable procedure "to be able to process the large number of supply processes in compliance with regulations".
The result: Because the soldiers responsible for ammunition management were overloaded with issuing, taking back and accounting, their work equipment came from the Stone Age, but at the same time they were under the "high pressure" of having to supply the KSK with sufficient ammunition for operations, exercises and training , there was "a circumvention or non-compliance with the requirements for proper ammunition management".
display
It went like this for years.
There were "black stocks" and "ammunition destruction";
sometimes there were too many cartridges, mostly too few - and no commander of the KSK cared about it.
Not Dag Baehr, who led the elite association from March 2013 to June 2017.
Not Alexander Sollfrank, who worked there for almost a year until June 2018.
The superior commanders of the Rapid Forces Division did not notice anything either - or did not want to notice anything.
From 2011 to 2019, generals decorated with three or four stars, practically half the top management of the Bundeswehr, held office there from 2011 to 2019: Jörg Vollmer, now active in NATO, Eberhard Zorn, currently General Inspector, Andreas Marlow, today Commanding General of German-Dutch Corps, and since 2019 Andreas Hannemann.
"We have to wait to be requested"
The federal government wants to protect old people's and nursing homes better against the corona virus by deploying thousands of soldiers.
Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer calls on the federal states and municipalities to take advantage of offers of administrative assistance.
Source: WORLD
It wasn't until Brigadier General Markus Kreitmayer took over the KSK in June 2018 that things got started.
His predecessor Sollfrank, like Baehr before, reported when the command was handed over that everything was in perfect order with the ammunition stocks.
Today we know that that was not true.
display
There is a suspicion that the reports were "deliberately or at least negligently made untruthful", says the report of the Army Command.
New commanders of the KSK were "deceived or insufficiently informed about possible shortages".
In April, Kreitmayer changed the key logistical personnel, and at the end of 2019 ordered a real inventory, which revealed "processes of a never imaginable dimension", as Army Inspector Alfons Mais finds today: Almost 50,000 ammunition items from operations and basic operations were missing ("under stock") , plus 62 kilograms of explosives.
Brigadier General Kreitmayer went on a search, ordered his soldiers' rooms to be inspected, and set up a working group - all largely unsuccessful.
But he also made mistakes.
He should have reported the result of the inventory as a security incident, which, according to the report, he did not do.
And he started the "Fundmunition Campaign".
In March 2020, all soldiers of the KSK were given the opportunity for eight weeks to return ammunition anonymously and thus with impunity "that was not stored properly in the barracks area or was in the unauthorized possession of members of the KSK".
A lot came together: A total of 46,400 ammunition items were handed in - 90 percent maneuver and practice ammunition, around ten percent combat ammunition.
Kreitmayer wanted to contain the dangers of lost ammunition; he put the disciplinary prosecution on the back burner.
He only agreed the action with his advisors in the KSK, who explained to him that, according to the guidelines, so-called amnesty boxes are possible in the Bundeswehr's foreign missions in order to prevent black stocks of ammunition in the troops.
This could also be used analogously in domestic barracks.
You can't, Kreitmayer's superior Hannemann from the Rapid Forces division later decided and stopped the operation in May 2020. The Army Command also came to this conclusion in its report.
The anonymous delivery upon request is "unprecedented and does not meet the requirements for the proper and safe handling of ammunition" and the duties of service supervision.
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) also explained it to the relevant Bundestag committee.
"Completely unacceptable" is all of this, said the Defense Minister, and complained about a culture of sloppiness, indiscipline and systematic disregard for rules.
You are now examining the initiation of judicial disciplinary proceedings against Brigadier General Kreitmayer.
He is also working closely with the Tübingen public prosecutor's office, which has started preliminary investigations into a possible thwarting of punishment.
The current state of affairs of the ammunition affair in the KSK remains: The commander who tackled the grievances after years of looking the other way bears the main responsibility, together with some lower-ranking members of the special forces, who are also being investigated by discipline.
display
Kreitmayer's predecessors and their superiors are fine.
There is a suspicion that the grievances were "known and could have been covered up" in 2017 and earlier, the report says.
"Since the entire complex was years ago, it is difficult to provide evidence of the crime." To date, the whereabouts of at least 13,000 missing rounds and 62 kilograms of explosives has not been established.
The political leader from this time, Minister Ursula von der Leyen (CDU), who was in office from 2013 to 2019, has meanwhile been promoted from Berlin to Brussels.
This is an unsatisfactory situation for the Members of the Defense Committee.
You want to clarify responsibilities and are open to crucial questions.
For example, that of the Kramp-Karrenbauers role.
The minister claims that she only found out about the illegal collection campaign through a report by the "taz" on February 11th of this year.
Your employees support this version.
However, on June 29, 2020, Kramp-Karrenbauer received a 15-minute briefing from their highest generals on the subject of ammunition of the KSK during a visit to Calw, as explained in the committee.
The collection campaign had only ended a few weeks earlier - and the minister was not told that 46,000 rounds of ammunition had just turned up?
That would be sloppiness, at least.
The Army Command's first report on ammunition investigations was drawn up in September 2020, and was later regularly updated.
In this paper, the "Fundmunition Action" plays a prominent role, is mentioned several times on 24 pages and is seen as significant evidence of the "grossly negligent handling of ammunition at all levels of the KSK".
The report went to Inspector General Zorn.
The opposition MPs consider it implausible that Kramp-Karrenbauer and her management staff were not at least verbally informed about the content of the paper by the top soldier.
Documents that could reveal who has read or drawn the report in-house are kept under lock and key.
The role of the inspector general also appears questionable.
Because not only the minister, but also the parliament, the investigation status remained hidden.
In an interim report by Zorn from the beginning of November, the collection campaign is not mentioned: There it is only nebulous that there is an excess of around 50,000 items in the KSK “after further ammunition finds”.
Not a word about where the ammunition came from.
Zorn justified this in the committee by saying that he had summarized findings at the time as usual.
As far as we know today, he must apologize for not having submitted important information to the Bundestag.
But there was no bad intention behind it.
Kramp-Karrenbauer said she continues to trust her highest military.
As the?
"Either information was deliberately withheld from her, which then creates a massive loss of trust - or she knew more than she tells us," speculates the FDP defense politician Alexander Müller.
display
The role of Parliamentary State Secretary Peter Tauber is also worth questioning.
The CDU politician completed a military exercise in the Rapid Forces Division in July 2019, as adjutant to Commander Hannemann, who promoted the prominent reservist to captain.
Tauber always boasts of his good network in the troop.
Did he still not know anything?
No, he said in committee.
Hannemann, on the other hand, took a lot of time to ask Kreitmayer about his collection campaign.
If it had been up to him, the KSK commander would not have been heard to this day.
The ministry accelerated the process, but at the same time defended Hannemann's approach with a heavy workload.
On the other hand, neither the Army Command nor the Rapid Forces Division were supported by lawyers from the Ministry.
None of this is credible, says the defense policy spokeswoman for the FDP in the Bundestag, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann.
The report on “Aktion Fundmunition” “certainly reached the minister before the press reported about it.
Obviously the processes should be overlooked. "
Strack-Zimmermann also asked what Inspector General Zorn and other former commanders of the Rapid Forces Division “really knew” about the conditions at the KSK in the past.
She demanded that "be tidied up from top to bottom" - starting with the minister and the highly decorated generals.