West German Defence Cooperation and Secret Arms Exports to Pakistan in the 1960s

Abstract

Based almost entirely on declassified government documents, this article seeks to provide, for the first time, a comprehensive evaluation of the Federal Republic of Germany’s (FRG) defence cooperation and the transfer of small arms, ammunition and missiles under a 1962 secret defence agreement as well as the saga of the clandestine transfer of aircraft and (unsuccessful) export of tanks to Pakistan in the 1960s. West Germany was well aware that the real motivation behind the Pakistani acquisition of arms and ammunition was to use them in a fratricidal conflict with India. An ‘influential’ Pakistani lobby, working assiduously in the West German Federal Foreign Office and West German Federal Ministry of Defence, was responsible for the sale of the F-86s. The FRG’s refusal of large-scale deliveries to Pakistan was largely because of apprehensions that an Indian recognition of the German Democratic Republic’s actions would have a cascading effect on developing countries.