Soltau-Lüneburg Training Area

It was governed by the Soltau-Lüneburg Agreement (German: Soltau-Lüneburg-Abkommen, SLA) between the Federal Republic of Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada.

After the Second World War, Canadian forces and units of the British Army of the Rhine conducted military exercises on the Lüneburg Heath from 1945 as part of their occupation rights.

In the early years, the occupying forces continually extended their exercise area until they reached as far as the Wilseder Berg, but they pulled back again in the late 1940s.

Due to its protracted ratification, the law was not published in the statute book until 1961 and it went into force on 1 July 1963 as the Soltau-Lüneburg Agreement (Soltau-Lüneburg-Abkommen).

With over 1,600 hectares, the Nature Reserve Society was one of the landowners affected and they refused to accept the Soltau-Lüneburg Agreement from the outset, although their opposition came to nothing.

However, significant compensation for the damage caused was regularly paid by both the British and German governments in accordance with the SOFA.

In 1992, both movements, together with other environmental organisations, demanded that the minister president of Lower Saxony, Gerhard Schröder, put an end to the exercises and the agreement.

In 1989, at the end of the Cold War, the Soltau-Lüneburg Agreement was renegotiated by defence ministers, Gerhard Stoltenberg, and Tom King, in order to reduce the impact of exercises on the local population.

In 1990, a break in training of several weeks was agreed during the time when the heath was in bloom during the peak tourist period of August and September.

Villages were given a 400 metre wide buffer zone from armoured exercises and tanks were not permitted to drive through them at night.

After German reunification, the two defence ministers, Stoltenberg and King, reached an agreement on 17 October 1991 for the cessation of training in the heath.