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Germany's parliament floats new plan for military conscriptionwww.euractiv.com/news/germanys-parliament-floats-new-plan-for-military-conscription/
160 sats \ 1 comment \ @BlokchainB 10h Politics_And_Law
Negotiators from the governing CDU and SPD have now agreed that all young adult males will have a mandatory physical examination to determine their suitability for military service, beginning in mid-2027. Military service of up to 11 months will remain voluntary as long as a sufficient number of people sign up. As the largest economy in Europe, Germany has committed to strengthening its military force to approximately 260,000 soldiers by 2035, in addition to 200,000 reservists who will primarily be drawn from a pool of volunteers. Currently, the German armed forces have only around 183,000 soldiers, including nearly 11,000 volunteers.
Conscription could become mandatory if the military cannot attract enough volunteers. The military aims to have 20,000 volunteers next year and 23,000 in 2027
Curious to know how Germans feel about this.
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700 sats \ 0 replies \ @unboiled 6h
We used to have mandatory service, up until 2011. Obviously, only mandatory for males.
I had to go through the drafting process in the mid to late 90s. You had a few outs back then, but if you were found physically capable of service, you had to kiss goodbye either to 11 months of your life for military service, or if you could successfully argue why you cannot serve in the army for moral or religious reasons, you were called up for (I called it "sentenced to") 13 months of civil service.
I don't know if they will need to return to that. No idea if they'd have enough volunteers to avoid it. But if they reintroduce mandatory service, I look forward to the politicians volunteering their own kids and grand kids first. Maybe that could dampen their bloodlust just enough.
From my experience those 13 months were mostly a waste of time. It put me even further behind other nations' students as in Germany we had 13 years of school ie. one more than most other countries, and then had to delay starting studying by yet another year. So by the time we entered university, able-bodied, male German students were already 2 years behind their foreign peers. And I didn't gain nearly enough in exchange for that sentence. Pay was abysmal and more a token than compensation. I don't have the stubs, but in the range of 2-3 happy meals per day. The only valuable experience was learning to live on my own for the first time. And I could have had that in a plethora of other ways without giving up 13 months.
The charity where I was placed to serve, the red cross, was hiring (mostly migrant) minimum wage workers to fill the spots they couldn't with cheap conscripts. My branch then even tricked some of the minimum wage workers into signing paperwork that put the burden of tax & other state levies onto the worker so the red cross wouldn't have to pay those, either. Obviously, I lost all respect for that organization and will never donate anything to them.
They also made me commute 4 hours each day on a 12-on, 2-off schedule, despite being legally required to provide accommodation closer to work. It took me 3 months of fighting until the red cross chapter was then forced to follow the laws on that.
They also pulled other immoral stunts to deceive the public about their service, or make conscripts do work they were not legally allowed to do. I saw zero follow up when I blew the whistle on my chapter's treatment of their workers and conscripts through the proper channels. Not even a single question.
So I completed my 13 months sentence, vowed to never support such a big charity again, and looked forward to freedom instead.
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