The Imagined Disastrous: West German Civil Defence Between War Preparation and Emergency Management 1950–1990

Abstract

Histories of civil defence have tended to focus on large-scale endeavours during the early Cold War. In West Germany, however, civil defence became more successful after concepts of ‘total defence’ and accompanying shelter construction programmes were discontinued. From the mid-1960s, officials who had initially spoken of ‘disasters’ to avoid the unpopular term ‘war’ began focusing on less obtrusive, attainable all-hazards measures. Similarly, the majority of German physicians involved in disaster medicine pragmatically imagined scenarios up to, but not exceeding, nuclear reactor meltdowns or isolated nuclear strikes. In the wake of political détente and technical disasters during the 1980s, most critics came to agree that at least some specialised preparation for more extreme scenarios might be warranted and did not necessarily amount to militarisation.