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7 Police Stud.: Int'l Rev. Police Dev. 189 (1984)
Demilitarization of Police Forces: The Case of the Federal Republic of Germany

handle is hein.journals/polic7 and id is 195 raw text is: Demilitarization of Police Forces: The Case of The Federal Republic of Germany Erika S. Fairchild, North Carolina State University, U.S.A. Abstract The historical and social correlates of demilitarization in the police of the Federal Republic of Germany are described and discussed in light of the continuing debate about the effectiveness of the military model in policing. A distinction is made between strategic demilitarization and organizational demilitarization. The effort to create a demilitarized police in the Federal Republic in the early post-war years was complicated by strategic considerations of the Allied powers, who proposed to use the police as a substitute for a military force. In more recent years, organizational demilitarization has been hampered by the problem of social unrest. It is argued that, while the organizational ar- rangements for policing which exist in the Federal Republic are more amenable to organizational demilitarization than are those of American police departments, the efforts to create a police organization which would be thoroughly non-military in character have been frustrated by cultural, organizational, and historical realities. Demilitarization of Police Forces: The Case of The Federal Republic of Germany* Police organization has traditionally been para-military in character. Nevertheless, the degree and kind of military emphasis which are found in police vary widely from country to country and from time to time within par- ticular countries. In this article the historical and social correlates of demilitarization in the police of the Federal Republic of Germany are described and discussed in the light of the con- tining debate about the effectiveness of the military model in policing. The case of the Federal Republic is particularly interesting in this context because of the post-war efforts to create a police force which was thoroughly non- military in character. The paper makes a distinction between strategic and organiza- tional demilitarization. It is argued that the organizational arrangements for policing which exist in the Federal Republic are more amenable to organizational demilitarization than are American police departments, but that police culture itself has inhibited this development. The paper starts with a com- parison of the ideals of strategic and organiza- tional de-militarization as they have existed in the United States and the Federal Republic. It continues with a history of demilitarization ef- forts in the Federal Republic in the post-war period. It concludes with a discussion of the organizational and cultural realities which im- pinge on this question of demilitarization in the Federal Republic. The military model and its critics The on-going debate over the advantages and disadvantages of para-militarism in police organization and operation has assumed dif- ferent dimensions in Germany and the United States. In Germany, this debate has been dominated by strategic considerations. The recurring question which' followed the major upheavals of 1848, 1918, and 1945 was the degree to which the police was actually an ad- junct military force which could be used against foreign enemies. Efforts to civilianize police were tied to efforts to decrease the general military potential of the Germans. These supra-national considerations have

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