A commander-in-chief or supreme commander is the person who exercises supreme command and control over an armed force or a military branch. As a technical term, it refers to military competencies that reside in a country's executive leadership, a head of state, head of government, or other designated government official.
The Bundeswehr is the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Bundeswehr is divided into a military part and a civil part, the military part consisting of the German Army, the German Navy, the German Air Force, the Joint Support Service, the Joint Medical Service, and the Cyber and Information Domain Service.
An inspector general is an investigative official in a civil or military organization. The plural of the term is "inspectors general".
The Federal Ministry of Defence, abbreviated BMVg, is a top-level federal agency, headed by the Federal Minister of Defence as a member of the Cabinet of Germany. The ministry is headquartered at the Hardthöhe district in Bonn and has a second office in the Bendlerblock building in Berlin, which is occasionally used as a metonym to denote the entire Ministry.
Adolf Bruno Heinrich Ernst Heusinger was a German military officer whose career spanned the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, West Germany and NATO. He joined the German Army as a volunteer in 1915 and later became a professional soldier. He served as the Operations Chief within the general staff of the High Command of the German Army in the Wehrmacht from 1938 to 1944. He was then appointed acting Chief of the General Staff for two weeks in 1944 following Kurt Zeitzler's resignation. That year, Heusinger was accused of involvement in the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, but was cleared by the People's Court. Heusinger was later appointed head of the military cartography office when the war ended. He later became a general for West Germany and served as head of the West German military from 1957 to 1961 as well as Chairman of the NATO Military Committee from 1961 to 1964.
The Joint Support and Enabling Service is a branch of the German Bundeswehr established in October 2000 as a result of major reforms of the Bundeswehr. It handles various logistic and organisational tasks of the Bundeswehr. The SKB is one of six components of the Bundeswehr, the other five being the Army, Navy, Air Force, the Joint Medical Service, and the Cyber and Information Domain Service. As of April 2020, the force is composed of 27,840 personnel. In May 2021 the minister of defense Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer together with inspector general Eberhard Zorn published a plan to dissolve the Joint Support and Enabling Service and to reintegrate its units into the army, navy, airforce and cyber command.
The Wachbataillon is the German Bundeswehr's honour guard. The Wachbataillon number about 1,000 soldiers stationed in Berlin. It consists of seven active companies and belongs to the Streitkräftebasis of the Bundeswehr. The soldiers of the Wachbataillon often refer to themselves as Protter or Protokollsoldaten, meaning protocol soldiers.
A chief of defence is the highest ranked commissioned officer of a nation's armed forces. The acronym CHOD is in common use within NATO and the European Union as a generic term for the highest national military position within the NATO and EU member states, rather than the actual term used for individual positions. Thus, irrespective of the formal national designation of that position is some variation on Commander-in-Chief, Chief of Staff, Supreme Commander, or something else, they can all be referred to unambiguously as CHODs in NATO and EU terminology, although other terms are sometimes also seen within NATO. Thus, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the CHOD of the United States, the Chief of the Defence Staff is the CHOD of the United Kingdom, the Inspector General of the Bundeswehr is the CHOD of Germany, and the Chief of Defence (Forsvarssjefen) is the CHOD of Norway.
Friedrich Albert Foertsch was a German general serving during World War II and from 1961 to 1963 the second Inspector General of the Bundeswehr.
The Bundeswehr Command and Staff College is the General Staff College of the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, established in 1957 as the successor of the Prussian Military Academy, founded in 1810. Since 1958 it has been located in Hamburg. Its motto, Mens agitat molem, translates to "Mind moves matter". The leading educational institution of the German armed forces, the academy is internationally renowned for its excellence. The academy educates the future élite of not only the German armed forces but also of other member-states of the European Union and NATO.
Volker Wieker is the former Chief of Staff of the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces, and a general of the German Army. Trained as an artillery officer, Wieker served in every major foreign Bundeswehr deployment since 1996, including Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
Wolfram Kühn is a retired German Navy Vizeadmiral. He served as Deputy Inspector General of the Bundeswehr and Inspector of the Joint Support Service from 2006 to his retirement in 2012.
The Army Staff, in the meaning of the Army general staff, of the German Army was a department of the Federal Ministry of Defence and one of the five staff headquarters in the military command of the Bundeswehr. The Army Staff was thus at the same time a ministerial division and the highest level of military command within the German Army. It was merged with the other high command authorities of the German Army to form the Army Command in 2012.
The Inspector of the Army is the title held by the commander and highest ranking officer of the German Army of the modern-day German Armed Forces or Bundeswehr. The Inspector is the most senior officer to serve in the German Army and is a military adviser to the Government of Germany as well as the Ministry of Defence.
Andreas Krause is a Vizeadmiral of the German Navy of the Bundeswehr, and he served as Inspector of the Navy. He previously served as a U-boat officer, as a staff officer in the Bundeswehr and NATO, as commander of the German Navy's 1st Flotilla and the Maritime Task Force for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, and as Deputy Inspector of the Navy.
Manfred Nielson is a retired admiral of the German Navy who last served as Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Transformation in Norfolk, Virginia.
The Armed Forces Staff, in the meaning of General staff, of the German Bundeswehr was the central department of the Federal Ministry of Defence (MOD) in direct subordination to the Inspector General of the Bundeswehr and one of the five staff headquarters in the military command of the German Bundeswehr.
Aarne Emil Kreuzinger-Janik is a German lieutenant general of the Bundeswehr. He was the commander of the Air Force Forces Command from 2006 to 2009, and, from 2009 to 2012, the 14th Inspector of the Air Force.
Carsten Breuer is a German Army general who serves as the incumbent Inspector General of the Bundeswehr. Prior to his appointment to the post, Breuer served as the first commander of the Bundeswehr Homeland Defence Command and is also known for his role as commander of the COVID-19 Task Force. Breuer also served as commander of the Bundeswehr Territorial Command, the 37 Armoured Infantry Brigade and the 12 Armoured Air Defence Gun Battalion.
