DDR’s Volksmarine og Danmark

Resumé

The East German People’s Navy and Denmark

The East German People’s Navy, which during the later stages of the Cold War was to play a significant role in a war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in the Baltic Sea, was created as a mere maritime police in 1950. Not until 1956 was it renamed and structured as a navy as part of the newly created National People’s Army. The build-up of the People’s Navy to an arm capable of performing a number of offensive and defensive tasks in a perceived war between East Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union and the Federal Republic of Germany and Denmark in the Baltic Sea took place over the coming years. Thanks to Soviet deliveries of in particular torpedo boats and missile boats the East German People’s Navy was a sizable factor in the Warsaw Pact plans for gaining control of the western part of the Baltic Sea and a breakthrough of the Danish straits in the 1970s and the 1980s. Due to its geographical position as the westernmost navy of the three Warsaw Pact navies in the Baltic Sea the People’s Navy addressed this role with much élan. The technological development in the last decades of the Cold War had, however, the consequence that NATO gained the upper hand vis-à-vis the three Warsaw Pact navies in the Baltic thanks to the introduction of new weapon systems like the HARPOON missiles. The German reunification in 1990 meant that that the People’s Navy was disbanded and most of its vessels sold to e.g. Indonesia. As for the officers, only a limited number was accepted in the Bundesmarine.