alt Hacker NewsGermany votes to bring in voluntary military service programme for 18-year-olds
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> "We don't want to spend half a year of our lives locked up in barracks, being trained in drill and obedience and learning to kill," the organisers of the protests wrote in a statement posted on social media. "War offers no prospects for the future and destroys our livelihoods."
Is the idea that it’s better for your livelihood to just start learning how speak Russian now?
Leon Trotsky: "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."
Germanys problem is mainly not the number of recruits: The didnt invest for decades, so structures in the background to handle all those additional young recruits are no more existing. Even if they would draw just 25% of evey year, they would not be able to manage it.
Martin Sonneborn on this topic [3 mins]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJjaW4Bsleg
The article is using "voluntary" in a very questionable fashion.
> Germany's parliament, the Bundestag, has voted to introduce voluntary military service...
> The form will be mandatory for men and voluntary for women.
> The government says military service will be voluntary for as long as possible, but from July 2027, all 18-year-old men will have to take a medical exam to assess their fitness for possible military service.
> a form of compulsory military service could be considered by the Bundestag.
Well, that escalated quickly. There's nothing here that could be really described as "voluntary".
So many comments and sentiments in this thread are really not worthy of HN.
“The form will be mandatory for men and voluntary for women.”
This is highly misandrist. I can’t believe that we are in 2025 and a - so called - democratic government is still denying women the opportunity to potentially go and die miserably in the front lines on equal footing with men.
We can surely do better. Women and girls deserve more.
Just build nukes if you are afraid of Russia then nuke them if they try to invade. Ukraine is not as smart and gave up its nukes in the early 90s, and is now in the middle of a war for the last couple years.
WITH the option to make it mandatory by 5 different mechanisms, including options that do not involve lawmakers (but are not mentioned, essentially the executive (normally the chancellor) can also "activate" non-voluntary conscription under various conditions)
Also the Bundestag agreed in advance to activate conscription if not enough volunteers can be found (which, given the results in France, seems about as certain as the sun rising tomorrow)
In fact filling out the questionnaire at all seems risky.
France is doing something similar now.
This got to be the final scream of a dying regime.
Not so long ago we were told a serious army has now to be a professional and highly trained army. Everything else was useless.
But they seem to plan to just draft young people and fight some sort WWI a bit like the nightmare in Ukraine.
But today Western Europe countries are not Ukraine. If they would engage in a war they would collapse into total chaos very quickly. Those are old, very divided and absolutely not resilient societies.
Just cutting the electricity for a week would collapse the cities. Starting with people putting the buildings on fire because they do not know how dangerous candles are.
"Training" young people for 6 months wouldn't change that.
This is a bit like what happened in WWII when Germany attacked country like Belgium or France. They went right through it because there were a dissymmetry between the German who had it really tough for 20 years and the Belgian or Frenchman at the time.
But the current head of NATO is a former HR at Unilever, so I guess he knows better.
edit: nevermind, title changed?
“The change means that all 18-year-olds in Germany will be sent a questionnaire from January 2026 asking if they are interested and willing to join the armed forces. The form will be mandatory for men and voluntary for women.“ - all men have to fill out and return a form, I suppose this will work to increase recruitment. Doesn’t seem very controversial.
Give it a decade and a German Vance like figure...
Slowly you arrive at the 4th Reich.
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To offer a bit of context, the same government just voted to raise current pensions at the expense of steep taxation hikes for current workers, made massive cuts to social services, and is now discussing military service.
This generation is rightfully feeling like they're getting a sore deal.