German Army Video Shows Racist Bronx Jeer

The German Defense Ministry said Monday that an incident in which a soldier was told to imagine facing hostile blacks in the Bronx while firing a machine gun was "absolutely unacceptable."

"This behavior is absolutely unacceptable and contradicts the training standards of the German army," defense ministry spokesman Thomas Raabe said.

He said the army was investigating the incident, which was recorded in an Internet video, and would probably complete the probe in two to four weeks.

A video of the army instructor telling the soldier to shoot and yell obscenities while thinking of African-Americans in the Bronx aired on German national television Saturday and prompted calls for an apology by the New York City borough's president.

The video shows an instructor and a soldier in camouflage uniforms in a forest. The instructor tells the soldier, "You are in the Bronx. A black van is stopping in front of you. Three African-Americans are getting out and they are insulting your mother in the worst ways. ... Act."

The soldier fires his machine gun several times and yells an obscenity several times in English. The instructor then tells the soldier to curse even louder.

The German Defense Ministry said the video was shot in July 2006 at barracks in the northern town of Rendsburg and that the army has been aware of it since January.

In New York, Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion Jr. has called for whoever was responsible for the video to be disciplined.

"The German government obviously has work to do to correct something that is insidious. ... Clearly these folks don't know anything about African-Americans or the Bronx," he said Saturday.

The video comes after two other incidents that raised concerns about training the Germany army, which is made up largely of draftees but is increasingly called on to carry out sensitive overseas peacekeeping missions.

A group of instructors is currently on trial for allegedly abusing recruits, while newspaper photos of German soldiers posing with skulls in Afghanistan caused anger.

The video was taken down from the German myvideo.de Web site but reappeared on youtube.com.