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Comment by creshal | Hacker News Reader

> A country that was to be the conventional and possibly nuclear battleground between NATO and Warsaw Pact reunited in a moment of amazing timing.

On both sides, generations of German soldiers were trained to shoot nuclear missiles on each other to turn all of Central Europe into a glass desert. The reunification was one hell of a culture shock for both sides.

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On neither side, German soldiers had direct access to a nuclear arsenal, however. There were missile bases in West Germany alright, under control of American forces. And there were mobile soviet bases in the eastern part, under control of Russian forces. Only a small subset of german soldiers had training in the operation of nuclear weapons, mainly parts of the air force (plans were that nuclear bombs would have been given to them in the case of a conflict).

Western German rocket artillery units (150th-650th battalion) were equipped with nuclear-tipped Lance/Sergeant SRBMs. The American forces only had control over the warheads (and "control" usually meant "were responsible for patrolling the storage shed holding the warheads, while being surrounded by several German mechanized divisions").

The Prora museum on the island of Rügen (the Kraft durch Freude Hotels) is worth visiting in that regard. It illustrates war planning (tactical and strategic nuclear strikes) in the case of a soviet attack and the projected civilian losses.

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