By Hans-Jörg Vehlewald, Karina Mössbauer and Nadja Aswad
It sounds like a bad joke to kick off the carnival. Thousands of Bundeswehr soldiers received service clothing in size SS! So, of all things, with the two letters that symbolize the worst war crimes committed by the Nazis in World War II.
Were the camouflage clothes ordered in size SS or wrongly delivered? Not clear. The fact is: the soldiers have to pay for the clothing mishap.
For example, a “decision” by the Ministry of Defense by Christine Lambrecht (57, SPD), which is available to BILD, states: The soldiers should remove labels from their uniforms themselves – because “the abbreviation ‘SS’ was used there for the size S-Short”.
Accordingly, “affected soldiers” should either “cut off completely” the labels or – if there is important information on the label – “only cut out the size designation”.
An SS man in uniform Photo: picture alliance / arkivi
The case is reminiscent of a Bundeswehr posse in the summer of 2017. At that time, the “traditional decree” of the Bundeswehr led to a photo of the namesake in Wehrmacht uniform being temporarily removed from the Hamburg Bundeswehr University (“Helmut Schmidt University”). Today’s SPD chancellor, Olaf Scholz (then mayor of the Hanseatic city) complained “despite all understanding for a critical review” that the troops had “overshot the target”.
Particularly embarrassing: Minister Lambrecht had only ordered the procurement of the affected jackets and trousers in huge quantities in the summer: 313,000 “combat clothing sets for the armed forces” (KBS SK) were ordered, as well as hundreds of thousands of helmets and sleeping bags. Total price: 2.3 billion euros!
A member of the defense committee told BILD: “You have to ask yourself why such coincidences only ever happen in the Bundeswehr. It’s good that the minister is ending this – but please don’t overdo it and finally get down to important tasks such as armaments and modernization.”