Starting as early as January 1991, citizens of the new federal states who were fulfilling their basic military service were predominantly sent to Western units for their three-month basic training, since the basic prerequisites for this did not yet exist in the Eastern units. Afterwards, they returned to deployment close to home. This also presented a challenge to the leadership capacity of all superior officers from East and West; for those former NVA members who were in training, it was also an incentive to continue their education. The joint tackling of difficulties had an integrative effect. Moreover, the coming-together of young people from both parts of Germany was influenced in a positive way. This experience has been built upon: since July 1992, the “Reciprocal Call-Up” directive has provided for draftees to be called to serve in units on the other side of the former “inner-German border.”
On the road to the “Army of Unity,” the Bundeswehr had taken on about 6,000 officers and around 11,200 non-commissioned officers from the former NVA as short-term soldiers for a two-year period after they had applied. At the end of the two years, the Bundeswehr, provided an application had been submitted, absorbed 3,000 officers and 7,600 non-commissioned officers from the former NVA as professional soldiers. They first had to undergo selection procedures for continuing employment in the public sector. In Leipzig on October 2, 1992, then-Minister of Defense Volker Rühe commissioned the first twenty former NVA soldiers as professional Bundeswehr soldiers.
Source: Armee der Einheit, 1990-2000 [Army of Unity, 1990-2000], published by the Federal Ministry of Defense. Bonn, 2000, pp. 14-15.
Translation: Thomas Dunlap