Germany hopes to recruit 100,000 new soldiers by the end of the decade as the country continues plans to rapidly strengthen its armed forces. War in Europe has seen Germany alter its approach to defence, with the government voting to change the law to allow it to invest heavily in defence earlier this year.
Since the end of the Second World War, the country has resisted heavy spending in defence, in part due to the legacy of the Nazis but also driven by economic prudence following the financial crisis of 2008. The country will now seek to pass a new law which will allow it to enhance its voluntary recruitment as it seeks to respond to war in Ukraine. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said as he presented the Military Service Modernisation Act: “A functioning Bundeswehr requires a functioning country.
“A strong army – in terms of personnel and equipment – is the most effective means of preventing wars.”
The minister stressed that any introduction of military service would initially be voluntary under the plans which aim to increase the size of the German military to 260,000 regular troops by 2035.
The German Ministry of Defence hopes that 200,000 reservists will raise the overall size to just short of half a million.
Under the plans, young men and women will be issued with a questionnaire to enquire about their circumstances, health and interest in serving.
Completion of the questionnaire will be mandatory for men and voluntary for women.
It is hoped that the bill will attract around 100,000 volunteers by 2030 but provisions will be contained within it that allow the Bundestag to make military service compulsory if not enough recruits enlist.
Of the provision, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Wednesday: “If we realise that we need to make adjustments, we will do so. This is also already laid out in the law.”
The move was welcomed as a “step in the right direction” by the president of the Reservists’ Association, Patrick Sensburg, who warned: “This voluntary military service will not be enough to ensure that we have enough reservists to cope with the security policy tasks of our time.
“Because only compulsory military service will ensure that we recruit enough reservists for the coming years to ensure the ability of our armed forces to grow and thus increase our country’s deterrent capability.”
However the new law was criticised by centre-left SPD’s youth group leader Philipp Türmer who stated his opposition to compulsory elements of the bill.
He said: “We are also against options in the law that can be activated to reintroduce compulsory service. We need a clear decision now, and this decision must be that we are in favour of voluntary service.”
