FDP General Secretary Buschmann: The term “D-Day” could have been used

Will “D-Day” keep the FDP busy longer than they would like? The new general secretary of the Liberals, Marco Buschmann, has now admitted that the controversial term for the planned end of the traffic light coalition may have been used in FDP meetings. “I can’t put my hand in the fire for the fact that someone hasn’t thrown such a term into the room at some point in the last few months,” he told the Funke media group.

Metaphors such as “D-Day”, which the Allies used to describe the invasion of German-occupied France in World War II, would also be used by other politicians, said Buschmann. “Think of Olaf Scholz’s bazooka, a rocket launcher. Or take a look at Angela Merkel’s biography: There she speaks of an open battle between the CDU/CSU and the Schröder government.”

“Human standards” must be applied “if an employee uses these terms in their personal notes,” demanded Buschmann.

But he himself saw the so-called “D-Day” paper “for the first time when the FDP itself published it,” said the Secretary General. Federal Managing Director Carsten Reymann, who has since resigned, assured him that he had prepared the paper “for himself as a list of tasks in case of emergency.” The former Justice Minister emphasized that it was not presented in any political decision-making round in which he took part. “We talked about scenarios, but none of them were called D-Day.”

Buschmann opposed speculation that FDP leader Christian Lindner had commissioned the paper to break the coalition. “It is true that there was a willingness in the FDP leadership to end the coalition if there was no better policy for our country.” The federal office has also prepared for this.

Lindner gives its managers a lot of freedom to make decisions, says Buschmann. As Federal Managing Director, he “would never have dared to present such a half-baked, half-finished product to a Federal Chairman as this internal working paper, which is now being talked about so much.” The party leader recently referred to the document as “internship papers”.

When asked whether there was no alternative to Lindner at the party leadership, Buschmann replied: “No person is irreplaceable, but: Christian Lindner is a very strong chairman with a high level of internal integration.”

At the end of November, the media published excerpts from the multi-page “D-Day” paper from the FDP headquarters, which contained precise plans for an exit from the traffic light coalition. The paper was labeled with military terms such as “D-Day” and “open field battle”. The FDP published the document under pressure from the research itself.

As a result, Federal Managing Director Reymann – who said he was the author of the paper – and Secretary General Bijan Djir-Sarai resigned. Djir-Sarai had previously denied the use of the term “D-Day”.