As a partially sovereign state, the Federal Republic of Germany initially had no armed forces of its own. With the establishment of the Federal Border Guard in 1951, a paramilitary federal police force was created, primarily to protect the inner-German border.
In fact, however, some politicians in both the United States and West Germany were already determined from 1947/1948 onward to include the new Federal Republic of Germany in the defence of Western Europe.
A few days before his election as Federal Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer issued a memorandum in which he pointed out the necessity of West German armed forces to John McCloy, the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany. The beginning of the Korean War in June 1950 accelerated this process. The communist North’s attack on the South, which was under Western influence, clearly demonstrated that the communist world was willing to use war as a means of expanding its sphere of influence.