WORLD : East German Army Falling Apart
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BRUSSELS — East Germany’s armed forces, until a few months ago the pride of the Warsaw Pact, are falling apart as men desert in the thousands and discipline collapses, NATO sources said today.
“The East German army has stopped functioning as a military machine,” said one senior NATO official with access to detailed intelligence reports. “It is amazing--unlike anything else in Eastern Europe.”
The Western alliance estimates that East Germany’s National People’s Army--173,000-strong and rigidly tied to communist ideology until the Berlin Wall came down in November--has shrunk to about 90,000.
“Soldiers are simply not turning up for work, some have emigrated to the West, others have gone to take jobs elsewhere in the country. A lot of them feel the army is useless. That famous German discipline has gone,” another source said.
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