In March, Germany’s defense minister said openly that the military was helpless in the face of external threats, and this notion comes amid several reports showing the armed forces are in a particularly poor situation.
Germany’s Armed Forces Commissioner, left-leaning lawmaker Eva Högl, has proposed obligatory one-year conscription for all young people as a means to reinvigorate the country’s armed forces.
Högl has advocated for serious consideration of instituting a mandatory gender-neutral draft.
Der Spiegel reports that Högl thinks bringing back a mandatory one-year service for Germany may turn around the country’s fortunes, with an emphasis on how a forced, gender-neutral draft could help improve the dismal recruiting statistics in the German armed forces.
She said Germany might ask young people to be recruited into the Bundeswehr for a year, as they do in Sweden.
The commissioner emphasized that the necessary service time could be fulfilled in either the military or the civilian sector but that young people of both sexes would be more likely to enlist in the armed forces if they were obliged to undergo the military’s fitness exam.
She went on to say that this method could be used for people of “all genders” to determine whether or not they wished to participate in military duty if they were determined to be physically and mentally capable of doing so.
While the Social Democratic Party member’s proposal to revitalize Germany’s flagging military may have a progressive spirit, its efficacy is questionable.
Germany has another problem– the army is already experiencing weapons shortages.
As a result of choices made by the government to send guns, ammunition, and equipment to the Eastern front in support of the Zelensky administration’s war effort against Russia, one high-ranking official expressed concern that the nation’s armories had been depleted to the point of being worthless.
The head of Germany’s Bundeswehr stated in January that supporting Ukraine with armament is still the right thing to do for everyone’s security but then warned MPs that the country needs to preserve a baseline level of supplies for domestic defense.
He said there comes a point where you can’t do your job without weaponry.
