Arms Exports and Holocaust Memory: Saudi Arabia, Leopard Tanks, and Bonn's Secret Israel Clause of 1982

Abstract

Abstract:When the Federal Security Council passed new Political Principles for Arms Exports under Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in spring 1982, a secret protocol note was adopted, which became known as the Israel Clause. It stated that decisions about arms exports should also take into account "the historical responsibility of the Germans toward the Jewish people." The background was that Saudi Arabia wished to purchase hundreds of Leopard 2 tanks, which had led to months of controversy in Bonn and a deep crisis in German-Israeli relations. Hubert Leber is the first to utilize both German and Israeli government files to investigate the 1981/82 tank dispute. It is a story that connects international relations with the politics of the past. The Israel Clause, which Schmidt's cabinet approved on the initiative of Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, marked a caesura in Bonn's Israel policy. While until then a sort of statute-of-limitations paradigm applied in relation to the Jewish state, the memory of the Holocaust was recognized in the early 1980s as a permanent factor in German governance.