One of us from Vital Signs took part in a protest rally against militarisation of the health sector in Berlin. Reason for the protest was a conference meeting of managers of the university clinic, who invited military leaders, health workers, firefighters and other ‘emergency workers’ to present their plans for emergency operations in a war scenario. We translated a general report, which you can find below. During the conference meeting, anti-militarist health workers and supporters distributed hundreds of leaflets denouncing the drive to wards militarisation to the participants. A video with short interviews (in German) can be found here.
We have written about the global tendency of the militarisation of the health sector and the wider reasons for the drive towards war before. Even at Southmead hospital, management recently invited the army to put up recruitment stalls inside the hospital and there are regular joint workshops of hospital staff and the technical department of the military. We will write more about this soon.
Gesundheit – Kriegsszenarien für die Krankenhäuser | nd-aktuell.de
“It would probably cause a state of shock if the warning app on your mobile phone indicated that NATO had invoked Article 5, says André Solarek, head of the ‘Resilience, Crisis Management and Disaster Control Unit’ at Charité University Hospital in Berlin. He wanted to talk about where this ‘uneasy feeling’ might come from, whether it was perhaps due to ‘too little information’ or ‘poor preparation’. He did that at the 24th Berlin Rescue Service Symposium in the auditorium of the Virchow Clinic, which belongs to Charité, on Thursday, 20th of November 2025.
A Bundeswehr colonel was supposed to speak there about the ‘Operation Plan Germany,’ but had to cancel due to scheduling conflicts (it is not unlikely that he was actually disinvited after the protest rally was announced!). The operation plan is actually secret. ‘We are being fobbed off with bits of information,’ criticised healthcare workers from Berlin during a protest outside the entrance.
However, the contents of the ‘Framework Plan for Civil Defence in Berlin Hospitals’ are known. It was drawn up by the Senate Health Administration in collaboration with the Bundeswehr, the Hospital Association and the operators of twelve selected clinics in the capital. The plan contains six scenarios – from an increased number of patients within a still functioning infrastructure to armed conflict in Berlin itself and the complete evacuation of the capital. The last two scenarios are classified as ‘unrealistic,’ but must be taken into account, it says.
The Association of Democratic Doctors criticises the plan above all for ‘considering so-called reverse triage,’ in which slightly injured military personnel who can quickly return to duty would be given priority over seriously injured persons and civilians. The latter is described as an ‘open and very complex issue,’ while the Geneva Conventions on the protection of civilians and the regulations of the World Medical Association rule out such a thing.
In the event of war, the German Armed Forces expects up to 1,000 casualties per day to be distributed among German hospitals. Although there are more than 1,800 clinics in Germany, there are only 170 beds for severe burns, as Angelika Wilmen emphasised in a speech at the protest action organised by the Berlin alliance ‘Gesundheit statt Profite’ (Health instead of profits).
Patients with severe burns usually have to be treated in hospital for several weeks or months – while more war casualties may be added every day. ‘We will not be able to help you’ is the title of a brochure published by the Association of Democratic Doctors Against the Militarisation of Health Care. The possibility of escalation and the use of nuclear weapons is largely ignored in almost all civil defence documents, said Wilmen, who has been involved with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) for many years. The Hiroshima bomb alone is estimated to have claimed around 60,000 burn victims.
Together with medical student Stella Ziegler, Wilmen also presented an IPPNW declaration on civil healthcare, which all healthcare professionals can publicly endorse. ‘The prevention of war, whether conventional or nuclear, is the best medicine,’ it states. Any training or further education in war medicine and its priority over civil medical care is rejected. ‘This does not change my obligation and willingness to provide my assistance in all medical emergencies and to continue to improve my knowledge of emergency medicine,’ Ziegler read from the declaration during the protest.
Concerns about the partly immature concepts of civil-military cooperation were also expressed in the Audimax. ‘If we are honest, we are not even properly prepared for normal situations,’ explained one participant from the audience, which included numerous rescue and nursing professionals, most of whom applauded. She wanted to know how the financing would work. ‘It all costs money.’
Adrian Flores from the Senate Administration could ‘at least sympathise’ and said, in the absence of those who make the financial decisions: ‘We are equally affected.’ Even 600 million euros from the special fund for infrastructure and climate neutrality are only ‘limited resources’ for hospitals in view of the current situation.
Before they spoke about ‘Civil Defence’, the symposium had already addressed the issues of overburdened emergency rooms and the lack of contact points for sick homeless people. ‘We all know that homeless people and the mentally ill are basically lost,’ said senior physician Götz Möhl from the emergency services of the Bundeswehr hospital in the panel discussion. ‘It’s a bit like Manila here.’
Jessica Frömmer, head of nursing at the Charité’s central emergency room, reported on severely disabled homeless people whose wheelchairs could not be taken with them when they were admitted. When they were discharged, some of her colleagues were already considering purchasing a wheelchair privately. There is therefore no humane standard solution.
In the event of war, according to Charité crisis manager Solarek, there will also be ‘patients who are colonised with germs that we don’t even know here in Europe and that are very difficult for us to deal with.’ At ‘peak times,’ it may be necessary to ‘adjust working hours’, which in turn would require the endorsement of work councils and trade unions.
‘The entire management mentality in hospitals will change if we slide into this situation,’ Solarek emphasised. He also mentioned the ‘establishment of resolute security services’ for the clinics. ‘We may also have to get used to the idea that there will be an increased police and military presence in public spaces,’ said Solarek. Employees who normally drive to work could consider stocking up on fuel, he suggested. However, Solarek did not want to directly recommend or even prescribe this. A firefighter who was present did not think the idea was very good either. A nurse raised the question of whether the numerous nursing staff with a migrant background would not prefer to return to their families abroad in the event of war.”
The current military plan contains a ‘forced requisition’ of medical staff and infrastructure for the war effort – the many migrant workers in the health sector would not be affected by this and might decide to leave the country. This would certainly lead to a collapse of the health and care system in Germany…
