Germany Considers Reintroducing Military Conscription

Fast a year later, a familiar conversation has started in Germany. Russia began its war against UkraineQuestion: Should mandatory military service be reintroduced. Some countries, for example Latvia, have recently reintroduced it, and German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius fueled the debate when he said earlier this week: “It was a mistake to suspend compulsory military service.”

German Basic Law Article 12a states: “Men can be obliged to serve in the armed forces, in the Federal Border Guard or in a civil defense unit from the age of 18.”

The obligation to serve in the military of the nation was imposed on German citizens between the ages 18 and 27 until 2011. BundeswehrYou can either perform an alternative service, or you can do it for a short time in civilian areas like emergency management or medical treatment.

General conscription was abolished in 2011, with the aim of professionalizing the troops and reducing the size the Bundeswehr. Today, the German army is made up of long-term contract troops and career soldiers.

Patrick Sensburg, a lawmaker with the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU).He still believes that the abolition or compulsory military service was a miscalculation. On March 24, 2011, he was also the only member from his party who voted against the suspension.

Twelve years later, this is not the view of the reserve colonel.

“It’s not good enough if we can only defend one or two states with a Bundeswehr that is too small and too poorly equipped,” Sensburg suggests. “Of course, conscription costs money, national defense costs money. That’s a decision we have to make politically: Do we want to be able to defend our country at all?”

From conscription to an army made up of volunteers

The Bundeswehr has been reduced from 317,000 to just over 183,000 soldiers in the last 20 years. Sensburg feels that this, along with the roughly 100,000 reservists are not sufficient to meet an emergency. Voluntary military service isn’t attractive enough to significantly increase the number of Bundeswehr soldiers.

“We don’t only need the super-specialists. KSK special forcesSensburg, who heads the association for reservists, said that “we also need a certain amount of soldiers to be in able to provide National Defense.” “Germany needs a strong military that is well-trained but also has many reservists from all walks of life. But we can only ensure that if we have compulsory military service.”

No quick fix

Interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung national newspaper, the German defense minister admitted compulsory military service would not help Germany at all in the next two or three years. But Pistorius, who himself served in the army as a conscript in the 1980s, believes there must be an open discussion again about the benefits of mandatory military service.

In response to a DW inquiry, a spokeswoman from the German Defense Ministry stated:

“Currently the Defense Ministry has no plans to reintroduce conscription. The Bundeswehr is a very different force today from what it was ten years ago or even further back. We have different tasks that require well-trained and specialized personnel. We have different structures and a different operational reality. And we have opened our armed forces to women for the past 20 years.”

She adds: “The former format of compulsory military service would be impossible to implement in the current structures and would be an additional burden. Recruitment, training, and accommodation of conscripts alone would result in a considerable need for investment.”

According to the Federal Ministry of Defense in principle, “In the event of tension or defense, up to 60,000 reservists could be drafted. Thus, the Bundeswehr is able to fulfill its tasks in national and alliance defense together with the armed forces of our NATO partners.”

What is a mere ‘theoretical conversation?

For defense commissioner Eva Högl, the debate about compulsory military service is, therefore, a “theoretical debate,” and Finance Minister Christian Lindner — who heads the neoliberal FDP: Free of Charge, the smallest party in the three-way coalition government — has brushed it aside as a “discussion about ghosts.”

“This debate about compulsory military service comes up every now and then, but it doesn’t have much to do with current reality,” says lawmaker Wolfgang Hellmich. Just like Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, he is with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD).. “It would mean billions would have to be invested in the introduction or re-establishment of structures that are all gone,” Hellmich tells DW. 

Hellmich is a member the German Bundestag’s defence committee. He believes that the suspension of conscription, like Sensburg and Pistorius was a huge mistake.

But twelve years later, critics say there is no good reason to reintroduce it: There are no district offices for medical screening, no military equipment to train conscripts, and no instructors to do so. For the 700,000 young women and men who reach 18 each year, there is no plan on how to introduce military service. To restart the conscription process, it would require double-digit billions of dollars in contributions.

It is important to make voluntary service more appealing

Hellmich believes that Germany should instead waste time on the reintroduction compulsory military service. It should concentrate on recruiting experts with a broad range of knowledge. “We don’t have a problem in recruiting officers and officer candidates, we have a problem filling jobs in the technical services. So everywhere where it’s about logistical supply for the troops and data engineering and cyber security.”

The Bundeswehr has a huge diversity problem in 2023. Only one eighth of soldiers are female. Hellmich is part of NATO‘s Parliamentary Assembly, and during a recent visit to Norway he visited a special forces company that was made up entirely of women — which would currently be impossible in Germany, he said.

“We need to look more intensively at the issue of personnel recruitment,” The defense politician is done.”We need to think about how to get more people to serve in the Bundeswehr. We have to make voluntary service more attractive in order to reach people who will then stay in the Bundeswehr. But compulsory military service wouldn’t help one bit at this point in time.”

This article was originally written by German.

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