Germany to drop conscription by 2008

[Ex-RoNiN 0]

Unfortunately I don't have an English link for this, but if you are German there is a story about this on spiegel.de

Anyway, this morning I heard on the radio that Germany is to drop conscription by 2008. Everyone seems concerned about this, as Germany is heavily dependent on young people doing civil service (rather than military service) in things such as old people's homes, hospices, hospitals etc. The implications of dropping conscription are that there will be a massive dent into the service provided by these social services, however, the money freed up by making the Bundeswehr smaller and better could in theory flow into these social services and thus balance the loss of conscripts doing civil service

I am not sure why this debate is even being held, seems to me some politicians are just whinging for the sake of it. There are many countries that manage to have a very good social services system despite a professional army.

From the military view, however, this is definitely positive. Fewer troups with better equipment, more mobility, professional training, no being held back by unmotivated "I don't care" conscripts. Also less maintenance costs, according to Balschoiw

[Blake 0]

Probably a good thing for Germany overall. I'm not fully aware of the military issues in Germany but they're wartime reserves must be huge if they have something like 200,000 conscript servicemen trained each year. There can't be such need for a large force like that in Europe today.

BTW. did'n France just recently give up conscription too?

But god forbid such thing would ever happen in Finland

[Placebo 29]

In what way (if any) does conscription differ from national service?

I must confess, being the old fart that I now am, I'm definitely in favour of them bringing back national service in Britain, the "youth of today" (shudder) are on the whole scum and could do with something to sort them out, "kids these days" (shudder again) are not raised to respect anyone, they're not raised to know right from wrong or taught any kind of discipline. Being forced to serve at least 12 months in one of the branches of the armed forces can only help to do some good, give them some aims, some goals, teach them discipline, respect, teamwork, the type of things that were taught by parents "when I was a lad" (shudder x 3)

[theavonlady 2]

I must confess, being the old fart that I now am, I'm definitely in favour of them bringing back national service in Britain, the "youth of today" (shudder) are on the whole scum and could do with something to sort them out, "kids these days" (shudder again) are not raised to respect anyone, they're not raised to know right from wrong or taught any kind of discipline. Being forced to serve at least 12 months in one of the branches of the armed forces can only help to do some good, give them some aims, some goals, teach them discipline, respect, teamwork, the type of things that were taught by parents "when I was a lad" (shudder x 3)

Let me get this straight.............................

You wanna give these kids automatic weapons?

BTW, I disagree with you. The problem and the solution begins at home. We have many such kids here and much of the time it's just GIGO.

[stgn 39]

You wanna give these kids automatic weapons?

Well as the have no knife, bolt or live ammo they can't make that much harm.  

In Denmark there have been people sugesting that the conscrip period should only be 3 month insted of 9 month because the ung people won't "waste" 9 month of there "presios" life. Sugestions have also been that we should abbandon concripting.

My personal apionen is that my generation(just turned 18) is a bunch of winers me included(a litte bit) kids today have no respect for others and runs around saying "fuck" to every thing and taking drugs and drinking. Maby the army could teach them a thing or two, I don't know?

STGN

[Placebo 29]

BTW, I disagree with you. The problem and the solution begins at home. We have many such kids here and much of the time it's just GIGO.

Well I don't think they should all become gigolos no

But seriously though, I agree the problems begin at home, and I agree that the solutions should also begin at home, but it seems that for whatever reason that isn't happening, parent(s) either don't want to do it or are incapable of doing it, schools can't do it (lack of funding, motivation, legal means of enforcing discipline), police can't/won't/don't do it (commit a crime under 17 and nothing happens basically), so what's/who's left to fix the problems?

[toadlife 3]

I must confess, being the old fart that I now am, I'm definitely in favour of them bringing back national service in Britain, the "youth of today" (shudder) are on the whole scum and could do with something to sort them out, "kids these days" (shudder again) are not raised to respect anyone, they're not raised to know right from wrong or taught any kind of discipline. Being forced to serve at least 12 months in one of the branches of the armed forces can only help to do some good, give them some aims, some goals, teach them discipline, respect, teamwork, the type of things that were taught by parents "when I was a lad" (shudder x 3)

Every generation going back to the stone age has shared your opinion of the newest generation. I think it's a built in biological response of humans to think that the world is collapsing around them and it's "youth of today's" fault.

[vade_101 0]

I must confess, being the old fart that I now am, I'm definitely in favour of them bringing back national service in Britain, the "youth of today" (shudder) are on the whole scum and could do with something to sort them out,

Its a nice idea in theory, but in practise you seem to end up with a large number of people in the Armed forces who don't want to be there, and the Armed forces themselves don't know what to do with them 80% of the time. so the majority of get through the basic training and spent most of the time sitting around square-bashing and the like. rather than picking up more valuable skills, as the armed forces are unwilling to teach them as they will be gone in a year or so.

National service was only really useful given the unusual conditions and manpower needs of the Cold War, the need for expanded reserves in case it turned 'hot', the massivly expanded intellegence gathering operations etc. etc. these days its hard to see a a role for them.

[denoir 0]

In what way (if any) does conscription differ from national service?

I must confess, being the old fart that I now am, I'm definitely in favour of them bringing back national service in Britain, the "youth of today" (shudder) are on the whole scum and could do with something to sort them out, "kids these days" (shudder again) are not raised to respect anyone, they're not raised to know right from wrong or taught any kind of discipline. Being forced to serve at least 12 months in one of the branches of the armed forces can only help to do some good, give them some aims, some goals, teach them discipline, respect, teamwork, the type of things that were taught by parents "when I was a lad" (shudder x 3)

Quote[/b] ]The children of today are out of control. They talk back to their parents, slobber their food, and annoy their teachers.

It was said by Socrates, 425 BC

Anyway, on-topic. I think it's a good development to remove the conscripts and rely on a professional army.

[ran 0]

You wanna give these kids automatic weapons?

only after breaking their will (and some of their ribs) and getting them to repsect the sarge's authority and ANY authority

[Dauragon 0]

You wanna give these kids automatic weapons?

only after breaking their will (and some of their ribs) and getting them to repsect the sarge's authority and ANY authority

bah, i wouldnt like to spend 12 months in military service.

i would hate that

Thanks to my eyes i didnt have to do it

[Blake 0]

Naah, it's years now...but when your're there you want it to end, and when your over and done with you want to get back. Even for some refresher training or something, pretty plese...  

I want to feel long marches and useless boring night wathches in the starlight...

Oh denoir btw could you inform me how the Swedish conscription is today, 50% serve or what?

[ozanzac 0]

What percentage of the people in the German Armed forces are conscripts, and how large would the German Armed forces be after conscription is dropped?

200,000 people in a profesional defence force would probably be sufficient, wouldn't it,  considering Germany's population?

Perhaps dropping conscription would be benefitial to the German economy, seeing as training so many conscripts would be an extremly costly task, and it's highly unlikely that their training would be meaningfully utilized after discharge.

[WhoCares 0]

The Bundeswher has today a strength of ~280000 and in 2002 ther were ~114000 conscripts, serving 9 month => always ~90000 conscripts in service.

I think, a switch to a professional army is mostly benefical for the Bundeswehr.

However, it might indeed have a significant impact on the side of the civil services. Today many people choose civil services, as the payment is better (while still far lower than normal employees). It will be hard/expensive to substitude those...

[denoir 0]

Oh denoir btw could you inform me how the Swedish conscription is today, 50% serve or what?

Yeah, something like that. It was about 50% back in '96, '97 when I did my service. Now it's probably even less as some cuts have been made.

[TylerDurdan 0]

Just wanted to add some comments, so foreigners can understand the situation here in germany a bit better...

In Germany the conscription was the choice for the Bundeswehr for one important reason: the Reichswehr, the army of the german republic from 1919 till 1933 was, as it is called by historicans a "state in the state" (don't know if its correctly translated). The 100.000 men of the Reichswehr were somewhat separated from the rest of the population, for example they had no right to vote.

This made the Reichswehr a somewhat non-democratic institution and in 1921 for example they were ordered to quell a nationalist rebellion from "Freikorps", organisations of veterans from the first world war. And the didnt follow that order, claiming "Reichswehr won't shoot Reichswehr".

Above that they were somewhat happy, when Hitler came to power, because he in 1934 gave them more troops, more weapons etc.

Well, after that the Bundeswehr wanted to create the "citizen in uniform", they thougt, if every young man has to do service in the army, it was to become a democratic institution (as it really is today)

This is one of the main concerns regarding a professional army in germany, that it would again only attract nationalist or other individuals considered "problematic".

On the other hand, speaking for a professional army and against conscription and civil service are two main points:

Germany is cutting budget to the Bundeswehr, so in order to save money they don't call in all young men any more. This means inequality between those who have to go to the army or do their civil service (this is a rather high percentage of young men) and those who "save" this time and can continue with their career.

Then there is the fact that in the past only men could do service in the army. Women could only become medic oder musician. After a decision of the european court some years ago, germany opened the army to women, they now can do almost every task there (i think only submarines and combat divers are "men-only" now), so it is a situation where young men have to go to the army, while women can go if they want.

So, something had to be done about this situation. And if the politics would have done nothing about it, this would have been only a matter of time, before the german constitutional court in Karlsruhe or the european court put an end to that situation.

@placebo: nice thought, but it wouldn't help, the kids here in germany are somewhat the same i think

For my point, i think we should have a professional army, for we no longer need a large army of recruits, we need professionals to do a large amount of tasks all over the world.

The Bundeswehr is in many foreign countries to do UN-Missions, like Bosnia, Cosovo, Afghanistan etc, this has somewhat overstreched the possibilities of the german army.

[Balschoiw 0]

I am very happy with the developement although it was open secret the last years.

The conscripts I "enjoyed" are more or less not motivated, think they can have a funny time in BW and wrecken more vehicles than a trained and responsible soldier would do. They just don´t care because they bail out after 9 months anyway.

Of course there are/were exeptions to the norm but these are hard to find.

Youth today seems to be about whining , no sports and full throttle ego-tripping. I´m happy these people are thrown into working process earlier now  

Besides there are very much more benefits for the professional army members that will make the job

a) better paid

b) better equipped

c) more interesting (training whiners is no fun at all)

d) more secure

Of course it will be a challenge for the private - non governmental organisations like the Red Cross , Caritas...

But hey, they abused the manpower feature of conscripts that much and saved billions in doing so.

Public hospitals may be the losers but I don´t really care as they have budgets wich allow them to adapt to the situation.

All that screaming for cheap workers mostly comes from private organizations that make millions with donations , blood-trade, real estate and other "social business".

It was about time to end that.

Quote[/b] ]This is one of the main concerns regarding a professional army in germany, that it would again only attract nationalist or other individuals considered "problematic".

I guess there will always be guys with false national thinking who try to get into an army. The difference in german BW is that they are extremely aware of that. There was a time in the early 90´s were a lot of former "east" germany guys signed up for the BW because they thought they would be able to create a home for their nationalistic brainfarts. I´ve seen a lot of them barking out their "ideology" when we chased them onto the hills in Berchtesgaden a traditional camp. They were told by their grandpas that Hitler was near there and so the volunteered for Berchtesgaden  

Well they didnt take into account that there are dozends of hills around and they had to climb every single one of them  

Hehe that was a nice time. Sorry forgive me, but that was just to cool to see one after the other giving in and crying for mami.

All the guys with weird national ideas and foreign hatred inside were "erased" one after the other.

BW has a good status right now and we do internationally highly respected and sucessfull military missions around the globe.

Despite other nations armies we try it the soft way where possible and this works pretty well. We can be toughies also.

Additionally noone can be trained to be a soldier in a few weeks. Better leave that behind and do seriouse training with seriouse people.

Hurra die Gams !

[NurEinMensch 0]

I strongly believe conscription (or national service or whatever you want to call it) is a good thing, and seeing it dropped doesn't exactly make me happy.

There are many reasons why I think so, one being the history of the German military, as described by TylerDurdan in his post.

The Bundeswehr was created and evolved around the concept of the "Citizen in uniform" and "Innere Führung" and relies, yes relies on conscripts.

Unlike a professional-only military the Bundeswehr is very connected to the general public. It's not a "state within the state" nor an unknown factor acting beyond the life of the average german.

Since almost every family has or had some of its members serving there is a good flow of information to the public, whatever bad might happen within the Bundeswehr gets rapidly known to everyone. At the same time the general public more easily understands the needs of the military, as they often have access to first hand knowledge.

Maybe even more important is the flow of information from the people into the Bundeswehr, via the conscripts. Every new generation of conscripts heavily influence the Bundeswehr itself. So the "dust" gets often blown away and that makes the Bundeswehr open to new ideas. As concripts are doing their job on every level from the average grunt to working in the highest staffs they bring a "new wind" into every corner of the military and help prevent the Bundeswehr from getting stuck in old routines and being too self-centered.

The only argument from the "a professional army is better" side I buy is the "it steals people's lifetime" argument. Indeed they could probably use the few month to learn something, get a job or doing something else that is more productive.

But I rather think of that as an investment into security. I know, Europe or Germany haveing to face a major war that requires us to use our reserves is pretty unlikely, today.

But we're not just planning for today, but the future, and in case we suddenly need reserves the only way to have enough is to have had conscripts who now form that reserve.

In my opinion that weights enough to justify a few month of mandatory military service.

Many people assume getting rid off the conscripts automatically saves money. But many analysts disagree, as a good part of the reservists (them being relatively cheap because of low payment) would have to be replaced by professionals, who would get a "professional" payment.

Looking at the difficulties other professional armies have at getting people to sign up there would probably have to be some kind of boost in the payment in general, plus money spent for PR etc.

Also the costs of the reform itself have to be taken into account. That together nullifies the "cost" argument.

Also the military in general tends to attract a "certain" kind of people, who we don't really want to be flooding into it. Conscription helps ensure a broad field of political/etc. opinions is represented withing the Bundeswehr, makeing it a mirror of the opinions of the general public.

Another argument I often hear is the "conscripts are unmotivated", thus doing a bad job.

And indeed at first glance, taking into account all the anecdotes the conscripts must be a bunch of mostly drunk people who spend their day doing - nothing.

That, of course, is entirely not true. From my experience conscripts are about as motivated as the other soldiers, sometimes a bit less, sometimes a bit more.

It's simply that, there are good ones and bad ones.

Most of the conscripts are actually more or less voluntarily in the Bundeswehr. Because if they seriously wouldn't want to be there, they could just use one of the many well known ways to avoid service in the military, or service at all. The vast majority doesn't regret their choice afterwards.

Conscripts who volunteer for that are already at almost every spot worldwide, where the Bundeswehr has troops, and although I haven't been on a mission somewhere myself (yet?) from what I hear they do as good as the "professionals". Making the Bundeswehr smaller by getting rid off that conscripts will not really help the "Bundeswehr being overstretched" argument.

The transformation of the Bundeswehr from a military that was created to stop/slow down a massive Warpac invasion into central Europe, to a military that is acting world wide as peace keeper/enforcer is a really huge reform, but in fact has little to do with the soldiers being all professionals or mixed with conscripts.

The first and foremost mission of the Bundeswehr is the defense of Germany and its allies. An army that includes conscripts is best at that.

[ran 0]

a) better paid

b) better equipped

c) more interesting (training whiners is no fun at all)

d) more secure

*hugs Balschoiw*

I personnally didn't notice anydrastical change on my paycheck (but that's most certainly due to the path my career took).

The vehicles availability rate was upped when conscription was scraped and the vehicles are being taken care ONLY by real professionals (guess why ... hehehe), new ambitious weapon programs have been started(we're getting plenty of goodie , FELIN , VBCI, Vextra, Caesar, and so on and i'm just talking about army and weapon systems here, but we made a real jump in matter of comms. and battlefield intel) french army now receives correct equipment (we had still second line units with AMX13's in all versions back before 1990, all the obsolete equipment has been phased out in almost all our units).

Training professionnals is a real pleasure since they show a certain hunger in matter of knowledge, won't hesitate to ask questions and actually give a fuck about what they're doing (since it might actually save their lives).

And yes it's much more safe , you don't have wanabees or "i don't give a fuck" jelly portionswho have no fucking clue about what they're doing (in basic training, basic explosive devices course was extreme sport with new concscripts).

I remember back in 1985 when i did my conscript service, we had obsolete WW2 era equipment and when the FAMAS had been issued to most of army my mech infantry unit still used the MAS49/56 (with a small number of Sig rifles issued though), we had M65 olive drab fatigues, french made US M1944 webbings .... most of this shit was Algeria war remains, our AMX13's (which had been replaced in the middle of my time in our unit by a small batch of AMX10P's) we based on a design dating back from the 50's with no NBC protection whatsoever

all that money spent on shitty equipment was money in less for professionnal first line troops ..... it was awfull , i've had the occasion to see many things and really compared to what french army is now , i'm happy of what it became.

Army is not a social administration, formating young people to life is the role of their parents and of the ministery of education

[FallenPaladin 0]

From the military view, however, this is definitely positive. Fewer troups with better equipment, more mobility, professional training, no being held back by unmotivated "I don't care" conscripts. Also less maintenance costs, according to Balschoiw  

That`s true. Even while there are some good guys among them, their time of duty is almost wasted. When they have learned a little piece of their job (and it`s little, that`s for sure) they already have to leave the Bundeswehr...

[Tamme 0]

Would Finland be screwed without conscription or what?

Conscription doesn't bother me. I want to go to the military and I'm going to be there for the max. 12 months (in the airborne if I can make it). But I have friends who don't care about military service and they want it over with as easily and as fast as possible. To me it seems somehow lazy and I can't understand them. What is this "I don't give a fuck" additude? We're talking about our home country here!

Oh well.. I'll give 110% when it's my turn (less than four years)

[Gollum1 0]

Hey, I agree with you Tamme.

Only a year or two left for me, the first annual batch of conscripts left for their first day in the military today.

(the second leaves in June, IIRC.)

[ralphwiggum 6]

so, any surplus G36 coming ot market? although i won't be able to get one since i live in CA, it would be nice to give americans some taste of fine German engineering.

[EiZei 0]

Would Finland be screwed without conscription or what?

Conscription doesn't bother me. I want to go to the military and I'm going to be there for the max. 12 months (in the airborne if I can make it). But I have friends who don't care about military service and they want it over with as easily and as fast as possible. To me it seems somehow lazy and I can't understand them. What is this "I don't give a fuck" additude? We're talking about our home country here!

Oh well.. I'll give 110% when it's my turn (less than four years)

Being a forthcoming B-class driver/HQ courier (?)/or something other easy-as-possible im probably one of those people you mentioned.

[m21man 0]

Quote[/b] ]so, any surplus G36 coming ot market? although i won't be able to get one since i live in CA, it would be nice to give americans some taste of fine German engineering.

Just what I need, another fine German weapon.