Self‐annihilation, nuclear play and West Germany's compulsion to repeat

Journal article

This article investigates Fallex 66, the first of a string of NATO war games that the West German government played in its command bunker between 1966 and 1989. During this exercise, the Bonn Republic simulated nuclear strikes on its ‘own’ targets and the resupply of NATO forces after a nuclear war on German territory. While in line with West German deterrence at the time, Fallex was read in East Berlin as an excessive game of playful self‐annihilation in ways that invite a psychoanalytic interpretation. This article explores Fallex 66 not simply as an enactment of Cold War deterrence, but a Freudian ‘fort–da’ game, a traumatic re‐enactment that was tellingly set in the subterranean space of a German bunker. West Germany's compulsion to self‐abandon, I suggest, has important implications for how we understand the nature of geopolitical games.

Authors: Klinke, I

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Wiley
• Journal: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
• Volume: 41
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 109-120
• Publication date: 2016-01-22
• DOI: 10.1111/tran.12108
• EISSN: 1475-5661
• ISSN: 0020-2754
• Keywords: archival research; cold war; psychoanalysis; SBTMR; ludic geopolitics; Germany; bunkers