The legislation, which went into effect on 1 January, aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription.
If the “modernised” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, the defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said as the legislation passed the lower house of the Bundestag in December.
The fine print, which went largely under the radar until a media report called attention to it this week, says men aged 17 to 45 would have to apply for authorisation to leave Germany for more than three months.
Given Schengen there are no checks on people leaving Germany for most of Europe. You know, by law there are no passport nor even ID card checks at the border.
Of course, this is Germans, but still, somewhat difficult to enforce, no?
“We will clarify through administrative regulations that authorisation is deemed to have been granted as long as military service is voluntary,”
As a former Aussie bureaucrat, I’m deeply hurt. The German bureaucratic bullshit sounds even worse than ours!!
Ah mate, bureaucratic German is the most impenetrable language on the planet.
We used to translate some of it and it was mind bending stuff.
Wottabout bio males identifying as females, and vice versa. Why only men, anyway?
Unsurprisingly there haven’t been howls of protest in the German press about women wanting to be treated equally when it comes to conscription.
Yeah, bigots.
For several years the British “Justice” system has trialled ankle tags for some criminals to check on their whereabouts: I suppose that it could be extended to all young Germans..
Germans have form when it comes to enforcement regardless of what the law says. Godwin’s Law forbids me to go into detail.
The Nazis made a big effort to stay within the law or to rewrite existing laws to suit their needs.
I’m getting invalid email address when I post links, look up Hans Globke especially the Times podcast about him.
The modern UK equivalent to Hans Globke would seem to be Richard Hermer.
Harsh; Globke was at least loyal to the German state.
In the excellent telly film Conspiracy Colin Firth does a fine turn as a Nazi lawyer fretting about the legality of various proposed atrocities. There are little bits of the film on youtube – well worth a look.
It’s on Amazon Prime too.
That’s the crux of sovereignty. Constitutions can be rewritten and previous laws can be rescinded or amended to suit. New rules are then written to permit pretty much anything. Once there is no effective opposition from other political parties and the bulk of the population everything else falls into place. Even getting acquiescence from the bulk of the population is not unsurmountable once you have control of the media and can tell people what to think.
Which law made it legal to beat up/ imprison without trial/ kill your political opponents?
The one saying “Might Makes Right” , as Mother Nature applies to everything…
“Your “Book of Law” makes a very poor shield against my arrows and swords” kind of thing.
See also the effectiveness of UN Resolutions… Mice voting for the cat to wear a bell….
I’m not convinced that bolstering the military with dusky new Germans will have the desired effect. On the other hand I’m unsure what that desired effect is.
It’s fortuitous that the German military is allegedly so under-stocked that training exercises have been carried out using wooden guns.
Reminds me of Spike Milligan’s writing of his training at the start of the war. There was no ammo for the big guns so they just shouted “bang” at the appropriate moment.
“The regulation already applied during the cold war and had no practical relevance; in particular, it is not subject to sanctions,” the spokesperson said.
So, why bother reporting in?
Mr Trump, if he’s still alive and still in office, could offer refugee visas to male Germans, much in the way he has for white South Africans.
Wouldn’t frei bier bring in more recruits?
Frei doesn’t mean “free” in the sense you want it to. Try kostenlos.
Thanks for the pendantry.
I’m sure this could be reported to the EU as it stops the free relocation of people in the EU.
Maybe someone should report it to them.
BTW: Your comment system is rejecting my perfectly valid email address.
How vexing. It accepts my entirely spurious one.
…It would surprise absolutely nobody that there’s already a glut of “suitable” answers to that questionnaire available to young german men…
I can’t see the information gathered being of any use. Why would anyone want to put themselves forward for conscription? If the info is to be checked in some way, then co0nscription is already in force; it’s just that there is no enforced training or deployment. Until there is….
Germany did have conscription until fairly recently I believe.. How effective was that?