Dr Marco Wyss, Reader in International History and Security at Lancaster University and Deputy Director of the Centre for War and Diplomacy speaks to Colonel Professor Winfried Heinemann on the Army of Unity. This podcast discusses the merger of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not only has Winfried extensively worked on this topic but it has also become a contentious historical issue in recent years as archival material has become available thirty years after the event. Heinemann and Wyss question whether the merger of the two Germanies and their armed forces after the end of the Cold War was in fact a merger, a hostile takeover or something in between with the transferral of East German personnel into the Bundeswehr.

Colonel Professor Winfried Heinemann has extensively researched the diplomatic history of NATO, post-World War II German military history (in both the East and West), and especially the military resistance against Hitler. He is currently professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Cottbus University, as well as the associate and book reviews editor of the International Journal of Military History and Historiography. Heinemann is also an honorary researcher of the Centre for War and Diplomacy at Lancaster University. His most recent book is Operation “Valkyrie”: A Military History of the 20 July 1944 Plot (De Gruyter Studies in Military History, 2021).