German defence minister proposes ‘selective’ military service system

By Carsten Hoffmann and Bryn Stole, dpa

Berlin (dpa) – German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius on Wednesday proposed that the country require young men to register for potential military service, in a move that comes 13 years after Germany effectively abolished national conscription.

The step would not reinstate conscription. Pistorius instead stressed that he anticipates using the registration questionnaires to see who might have interest in voluntarily doing service with Germany’s military, known as the Bundeswehr.

Pistorius described the idea as “selective military service,” designed to allow the military to call up only “the fittest, most suitable and most motivated” for training.

Young men would be required to fill out the questionnaires, but young women would also be given copies and be asked to voluntarily submit the form as well, Pistorius said at a news conference on Wednesday afternoon.

Pistorius said that’s because the military service requirement, which remains in Germany’s constitution, applies only to men.

Around 40,000 expected to be mustered

Pistorius said that military planners estimate that 400,000 people will have to complete the planned questionnaire each year, and about a quarter of the men could express an interest in entering the military.

Some 40,000 candidates could then take part in the physical check-up. That call-up would be mandatory for those who receive it, but Pistorius stressed that he anticipates only summoning those who indicate a voluntary interest.

“We don’t want a boring, meaningless military service,” Pistorius said. “But rather a military service that is meaningful and makes sense.”

There is currently capacity to train between 5,000 to 7,000 recruits, but this is set to grow. The military service is expected to last six or 12 months.

The proposal represents a first step towards potentially reinstating some form of mandatory military service, a controversial issue in Germany, and would require a change to the military service law.

Pistorius stressed on Wednesday that no one would be forced to serve in the military against their will or beliefs: “Of course people will have the right to refuse military service. That remains unchanged.”

Military struggling to recruit

Germany effectively abolished conscription in 2011 after 55 years, with a system that also generally allowed men to opt out of the military and do civilian service instead.

Although many of the institutions and facilities for the conscription system have since been dismantled, the country’s law continues to allow for mandatory service in the event of war or other tensions.

The Bundeswehr has struggled to recruit enough volunteers to fill the ranks, and last year shrank to 181,500 soldiers despite new efforts to attract volunteers.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has put the military’s shortfalls into renewed focus, and Chancellor Olaf Scholz has pledged to rebuild the armed forces.

Adding more recruits is intended to help make the army “war-ready,” as Pistorius describes it.

Pistorius commissioned studies of various models of compulsory service ahead of Wednesday’s announcement.

According to earlier reporting by dpa, a top official for the army’s reservist affairs in Berlin had anticipated these measures.

“I am convinced that we must fully adapt the reserve to the current security policy challenges so that it can properly support the Bundeswehr in performing the task of national and alliance (NATO) defence,” Lieutenant General Andreas Hoppe, deputy inspector general and commissioner for reservist affairs, said.

Ukraine war has made Germany rethink its defence needs

“If you look at Ukraine, we are simply not capable of holding out and growing as we are at the moment. That’s why we need a reserve that is capable of completely replacing forces,” said Hoppe.

The goal is to equip and train reserve companies or reserve battalions in such a way that they can be seamlessly integrated into the operational command of a brigade.

Fourteen days of training per year are necessary to maintain skills, Hoppe said. He plans to do more to gain approval from companies, who would have to allow workers time off for reserve training.

“If people have a high level of training when they leave the Bundeswehr and they don’t get a single chance to practice during six years of basic orders, then the value they bring will naturally become limited over time,” he said.

Specialists are needed, but “simply also masses,” for example for homeland security tasks, like securing infrastructure, transport routes and military facilities in Germany.

For some time now, volunteers who were not previously in the Bundeswehr have also been trained for this.

“It won’t work without a reserve. We can see that in Ukraine,” said Hoppe. Everyone needs to realize this, he said.

Much expertise has been lost after the Cold War

“This all existed during the Cold War, but it has been neglected for 30 years and simply no longer exists. There are still very few who still know about it. We are currently tapping into them in order to map the capabilities,” Hoppe added.

The military expects some 10,000 temporary or professional soldiers to retire each year who could be recruited for this basic call-up. There are currently around 44,000 men and women on basic call-up.

The ministry is also examining the number of people who could potentially be called up to serve in the event of a defence situation.

This includes citizens who have previously served in the Bundeswehr but have not been recalled for duty. While this group is substantial, it has been diminishing since compulsory military service was suspended in 2011.

“There are different figures. We assume that there are around 800,000 who can still be called up for military service. In principle, this includes all those who have served in the Bundeswehr at some point and have retired and are within the age limits, including the last few years of conscripts,” said Hoppe.

Ageing population a problem for the Bundeswehr

“But if you look at the age problem, you realize that there are fewer and fewer of them every year … This means we have to take countermeasures and also find and recruit additional personnel for the reserve. And that’s what we’re doing,” Hoppe said.

“Keyword homeland defence regiments,” he said. “They are essentially made up of non-commissioned personnel who enlist and receive appropriate training.”

For NATO’s revised defence plans, however, the Bundeswehr, which shrank to 181,500 soldiers last year despite a so-called personnel offensive, must actually grow significantly.

NATO’s plans mean that the personnel target is likely to increase from 203,000 soldiers to “well over 272,000” men and women in the armed forces, Der Spiegel magazine reported earlier this month. The reserve can only be one component of this.

According to separate, prior reporting by dpa this month, the chair of the Defence Committee of the German Parliament had recommended the recruitment of 900,000 reservists.

Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann called for the recruitment of 900,000 German reservists in light of Russia’s belligerent stance under President Vladimir Putin.

“Putin is training his people for war and positioning them against the West. We must therefore become capable of defence as quickly as possible,” Strack-Zimmermann of the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), a junior partner in Germany’s governing coalition, told the Funke media group in remarks published at the beginning of June.

Russian industry is focused on manufacturing weapons, the defence expert said. “School books are printed that portray Germany as an aggressor state. Primary-school age children are trained to use weapons. All of this is frightening,” she added.

Strack-Zimmermann called on Germany’s Bundeswehr armed forces to “activate the roughly 900,000 reservists we have.”

For that to happen, the military should first register those eligible, she added, pointing out that the armed forces had stopped keeping track of those who left active service decades ago.

“If we could recruit just half of them as reservists with their relevant expertise, that would be an incredible asset,” Strack-Zimmermann said.

The chair of Germany’s reservists association Patrick Sensburg put forward a similar proposal a few weeks ago, suggesting the systematic recording of health status and availability of all former Bundeswehr members, in order to be able to deploy them in homeland security and gradually allow them to train again.

In Germany, reservists include all former military service members as well as soldiers who have served for an extend period of time.

However, former soldiers who served in the armed forces of former communist East Germany and never joined the Bundeswehr after German reunification in 1990 are not included.

In the wake of the Ukraine war, launched by Russia more than two years ago, Germany has begun to boost defence spending to meet what German leaders have acknowledged are major shortcomings in the country’s military capabilities.

Shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the German government pledged that it would invest 2% of its total economic output into the military for the first time in decades – a long-held NATO target – and announced a €100 billion ($108 billion) special defence fund for this purpose.

Includes reporting by Stefan Heinemeyer, dpa