Brigadier General (ret.) was a major general of the unified German armed forces.
In October 2008, he ended 42 years of Bundeswehr service that included troop command (rocket artillery battalion and armoured brigade); academic phases (university studies in history and political science at Hamburg University with a PhD, as well as a year at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London); political-military work in the German Ministry of Defence and at NATO Headquarters, and positions in higher military education (Director of the Faculty at the Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr in Hamburg and, in his last assignment, Director Academic Planning and Policy at the NATO Defense College, Rome).
In addition, he was closely involved in the creation of NATO’s 1991 and 1999 Strategic Concepts. In 2009 Dr Wittmann published “Towards a new Strategic Concept for NATO” (NATO Defence College, Forum Paper 10) and has published widely on strategic and security policy subjects. Klaus was a Senior Fellow with the Aspen Institute Germany until 2020 and continues to teach contemporary history and war and conflict studies at Potsdam University.
