> "Since military service under current law is based exclusively on voluntary participation, such permissions must generally be granted,” the official added.

> When asked, the ministry spokesperson pointed out that "the regulation was already in place during the Cold War and had no practical relevance; in particular, there are no penalties for violating it.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_Service_System

Then a month or two before my 18th birthday, I got a postcard saying I had been auto-registered. It was a rather disappointing denouement.

If it hasn’t been used in 50 years, is there some other use for the registry or the organization or why hasn’t this been cut yet?

The Selective Service auto-registers people from various data sources.

But this puts me in a weird spot: I've never actually registered. I am registered. But I did not register - which is the requirement.

There are Kafka-esque parts of the US government where this distinction could matter.

Informally, it's put forward as one of the most successful government programs in history: it succeeds at all it's objective, comes in at or under budget, employs few people, and avoids the scope creep that kills other successful programs.

It's only shortcoming: it doesn't actually do anything.

https://www.ushmm.org/online/hsv/source_view.php?SourceId=42...

Of course, this is old times now, but here is the same, there is no benefit to register, and you increase your risk to die.

Don't do it.

The change this year was to make it applicable regardless of those conditions: “Outside the tension or defense case, §§ 3 [...]” shall apply.

This is a significant change from the previous Cold War policy. I have talked about the definition of these terms in another comment, with another news article as source.

- Universal Declaration of Human Rights

https://www.ohchr.org/en/human-rights/universal-declaration/...

I can’t be like “it was self defense” if I beat somebody up because they are getting too big at the gym and they could beat me up later if I don’t beat them up first.

That doesn’t mean such a thing is never ever justified, in international relations, it just ain’t “defense”.

I guess that dogemaster2026 wanted to express this in a little bit more indirect way. :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Armed_Forces_casualties...

Germany was also directly involved in the NATO campaign against (former) Yugoslavia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia

and finally, Germany hosts large contigents of US forces, including air forces likely involved in the current illegal war against Iran.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramstein_Air_Base

The UN acknowledges this conflict to some extent; https://www.ohchr.org/en/conscientious-objection

And as per usual because its harmful to men no one cares.

This is an explanation, not a justification.

The modern answer would be immigration, and that’s gender-agnostic.

war is shit on all sides and thinking one or the other suffers less because you dont like their colours is very short sighted.... i think we had enough time by now to realise it.

and dont call it cowardice if someone doesnt want to fight for a bunch of 'rich pricks' playin with their money while normal people get to die in the streets. It has never been good or normal and should never be.

To boot, many Russian men have been paid handsomely for their participation in the SMO and get to live nice lives abroad.

It was very unpopular, lead to people fleeing the country, and was pushed out of the public eye as soon as they figured out how to forcefully volunteer people instead.

It wasn't hard to dodge; you could just refuse to take the papers pretending it's not you or get sick the very day or something like that. The system had a number and once it was reached (very quickly) no further action was necessary. The only change so far us that the employers started to follow their military tracking procedure to the letter; before that it was required but not really enforced, but now all the paperwork gets done by the book.

Some people indeed left the country but those are the kind you don't want to have your back anyway.

Forceful volunteering is pure imagination. At most it's intensive persuasion or a new way to get out of jail, but if you don't want to go, nobody will force you.

Because the answer is obvious - Ukraine fights war.

But it is very easy to see from this all that some people are very vocal about equality when in reality they want privileges.

The feeling of defending territory is natural and is not words

Only what constitutes the territory to defend has been warped by words.

No it's not without purpose at all. The purpose is to know who could be drafted in a timely manner should the need arise. There's currently 2 major wars - sorry "special military operations" - happening, one of which in Europe.

A certain government involved in one of these simultaneously calls for allies to assist while at the same time openly questioning half a century of military alliances. So maybe this helps to understand why regulations like this make sense - even for people who never lived through a time when there was mandatory military service and take their own security for granted.

Same for conscription laws in the Netherlands, which are also still active. They just don't ask anyone to report for conscription. It was even expanded a couple of years before the Ukraine war to also include women.

The change this year was to make it applicable regardless of those conditions: “Outside the tension or defense case, §§ 3 [...]” shall apply.

"Tension" is defined by an imminent threat (e.g., invasion) and must be explicitly invoked by leadership. "Defense" is actual ongoing attack of territory, and must be explicitly invoked by the Bundestag.

I have used https://www.fr.de/politik/drastische-wehrpflicht-aenderung-m... to form my understanding. Can be read freely by prepending archive.is/newest/ to the URL.

New. Not cold war. This didn't exist before.

It was suspended for the last 15 years! Surely it was easier to leave it suspended and unsuspending it is a conscious choice.

The country is already in a slow burning crisis due to the political and economic results of its demography, and a war coming to its own soil will send the walls tumbling down.

> Russia was a long term ally with Ukraine, much like the USA and Canada and then out of nowhere they are in a "soft war"

First off the history between Ukraine and Russia is nothing like between USA and Canada. Russia killed millions of Ukrainians in 30's by starvation, known as "Holodomor".

Secondly Ukraine voted for independence immediately after Soviet Union collapsed.

Most egregious claim is the "soft war" one. Russia attacked to Ukraine in 2014 and started full scale war in 2022 that has led to close to two million casualties. What the f*ck is "hard war" if this is "soft war"?

Almost like by design.

Oh yeah and the obvious discrimination. If you change your gender on paper now you probably won't be affected, but you will be affected if you change it short-term.

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/sbgg/__9.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busification

Is there any unforced conscription? By definition conscription is compulsory.

Usually when your country is invaded you don't stay in your silicon valley privileged mindset and you go to conscription willingly

This still does not prove the very general statement GP made, which doesn't align with draft reality in historical wars

Most of our ancestors did join a draft, as it was universal, be it the Napoleon wars, WW1 or WW2. This interpretation of history is highly creative I will give you that

Are you implying that the fact there are no common soldiers famous for liberating concentration camps, means that saving further millions that would be killed by the eventual Nazi occupation of Europe, is in vain?

Most armies in Europe, especially in post-Communist part of it, are nepotist corrupted structures. People go there for tax and housing benefits and early retirement. They are not even particularly fit, skilled, or trained to fight with an invader. Especially in these countries men aged 18-45 have absolutely nothing to fight for.

As far as I see, women still birth and raise children and take care of most of the household; they just also work in the addition. Don't know what you're talking about.

I believe jaywalking (or crossing a red light as a pedestrian) is prohibited, but you would have to do it in front of a really motivated cop (or cause an accident) to actually get a ticket for it. It is common and no one really cares - but if you were to do it in front of children or a school you will probably get disapproving looks or a somewhat stern talking to from others around you.

I think the image of the "order-loving german" is a bit of a stereotype. Some people overdo it (Calling the police for noise harassment if you still mow your lawn at 20:01), but they are generally not popular with their neighbors (or the police...)

legal jaywalking is by definition not possible. what is however possible and legal is crossing the street away from a marked crossing. at least in europe and in most places in the world except the united states.

NATO doctrine is basically air superiority against any invading force, with the ability to wreak destruction far behind the front lines.

Conveniently the Iran war has depleted stockpiles of almost everything.

The reality is NATO is vulnerable on two fronts.

The first is that NATO has no defences against the kind of drone and missile waves Russia has been using against Ukraine. A surprise attack could easily take out a large part of NATO's air superiority and do significant damage to arms factories.

The second is more serious - capture of the independent nuclear deterrent. The US is clearly giving up on defending Europe, the UK's deterrent is barely functional, and only France has a truly independent deterrent.

Russia has spent a lot of time and money trying to get a puppet government elected on France, along the lines of the governments in Hungary, Slovakia, and the US.

If France stops being a deterrent Russia would be able to nuke Brussels - and perhaps a few other capitals to make the point - and likely force immediate surrender.

The question is really whether Russia can hold on until the French elections next year.

Ukraine isn’t under anyone’s nuclear umbrella, but Russia hasn’t done more than threaten to use nuclear weapons in that war. Probably because it’s not at all clear that it would actually force a surrender.

This is not to say that the government should get blind faith, but some notions that the collective good has any value is alien to many people here.

Libertarianism is a societal disease. "Fuck you got mine".

so are you surprised?

id rather be left alone as much as possible in my pursuit of happiness. On my own terms!

To put it another way this forum skews selfish.

At this moment, changing the constitution is not possible, there is no majority for this. So that pretty much took the option to change the broader parameters out of the discussion entirely.

However, the matter has been heard in the European Court of Justice in 2002, and the short version is "Community law does not preclude compulsory military service being reserved to men."

For more details, feel free to study the legal opinion behind the ruling: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

In practice, this draft is not a real draft yet. Nobody is actually drafted, so there are almost no practical consequences. If there was an actual draft, I'd expect to see a challenge to this.

COVID-19 has proven that if anything, the European Union tends to spread national initiatives among other countries (and Germany is often a leader in EU).

In this specific case, the EU is more likely to be the type of organization that would think about how to create a unified permit

-> as they did with the EU Digital COVID certificate; some sort of "I am in the register of mobilization" / "have a temporary travel authorization".

So, EU might be an enemy that pretends to be your friend there.

Yes, there is the common security and defence policy, and the Article 42 of Lisbon and all that, but it all still relies on national systems.

There is a new military Schengen project to make troops and unified military documentation across whole EU.

Obviously there will need to be a registry of personnel there, so these people can be prevented to leave.

On the side you have SIS Schengen, where you can (already) have an active arrest warrant for desertion.

Nothing indicates that European Union is going to fight against such registries. It's even the opposite.

> 18 April 1951 – European Coal and Steel Community

> Based on the Schuman plan, six countries sign a treaty to run their coal and steel industries under a common management. In this way, no single country can make the weapons of war to turn against others, as in the past. The six are Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. The European Coal and Steel Community comes into being in 1952.

https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-histor...

Why wouldn’t a unified permit to prove you registered for mobilization be relevant to what the EU is for?

Defence and the military is a sovereign matter that has nothing to do with the EU... except we are seeing that this is changing without democratic national mandates.

This is the EU describing its own history and beginnings.

I can only repeat that defence is a sovereign matter in which the EU has no power, but there is a trend of changing this by making it happen as "fait accompli", especially since the war in Ukraine, which is used as pretext.

It's always weird to me how surprised women are that every single man they know has had to specifically, actually physically ink paper to sign up for the draft. It definitely feels weird/spooky when you do it, given the implications and that despite being compulsory it's not automatically done for you.

I though it was weird that the United States had a requirement for people to physically sign a paper to do it. It looks like only this year they made it automated.

> Beginning on December 18, 2026, the Selective Service System will be required to identify, locate, and register all male (as assigned at birth) U.S. residents 18 to 26 years old on the basis of other existing federal databases. Men will no longer be required to register themselves or be subject to penalties for failing to do so. This was noted to be the most significant change to Selective Service since the self-registration system began in 1980.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_Service_System

To clarify: every young person regardless of gender is legally obliged to go through fitness testing for conscription and if deemed suitable must go through it if selected. I imagine it’s roughly similar in Denmark?

Up until the fall of the USSR ~all men did go through conscription/basic military training. After the fall only the ones that wanted to and were selected did. Now it’s ramping up massively.

https://youtu.be/jO1vWxUqpFI

Specially article 12a Paragraph 4: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.h...

Specifically it says:

If, during a state of defence, the need for civilian services in the civilian health system or in stationary military hospitals cannot be met on a voluntary basis, women between the age of eighteen and fifty-five may be called upon to render such services by or pursuant to a law. Under no circumstances may they be required to render service involving the use of arms.

Footnote: But not necessarily felt to be correctly labeled men, ever in life.

This is false, overwhelmingly MALES. For a time, males couldn't leave Ukraine, while females could. Those who go to die on the front in all wars are mostly males. Doesn't mean that females aren't casualties as well, they are.

Women in the civil service, law enforcement agencies, or those registered in the military and serving under contract may face restrictions on traveling abroad, particularly for non-official purposes.

I thought it was obvious with the second paragraph

The intersection of parties wanting to reinstate compulsory military service and parties supporting gender equality doesn't currently have the necessary supermajority to change the constitution. So we get a wishy-washy compromise, as is so often the case in democracies.

Look at $$4. https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_12a.html

You could of course require women to register, too. In case of war, they'll be drafted into hospitals. They just don't want to.

The registered gender is the one that counts.

And the answer is that women are equal to men in all things, except when things get serious, and then all of a sudden biology matters again

How so? Why isn't the question 'Why is anyone being forced at all?' Their question assumes that someone has to be forced, which I fundamentally disagree with, so they should justify that assumption first.

> And the answer is that women are equal to men in all things, except when things get serious, and then all of a sudden biology matters again

Correct. They are equal, so I don't think either men or women should be forced.

It probably makes more sense to ban birth control at the same time men are required to die for the war machine as both would then be playing out their slavery-induced biological role in ensuring survival of the nation. That is if you're down with the whole slavery for war thing.

When things get existential, the jobs favored by men multiply and the jobs favored by women decrease. And nowhere more than in countries and societies which are highly feminist and supportive of women, which seems counterintuitive but isn't.

I’m assuming non military casualties were evenly spread between male and female.

It wasn't until the scam of 'democracy' fooled people into thinking war was against the actual people of the other country that they not only scammed everyone into having such buy-in and stakes for the war but also to view the other countrymen themselves as the enemy. People started viewing the nation of themselves because their laughable miniscule influence of their vote somehow means the government is of them. (Note this was a resurface of course, there were times in history where war was seen as against a peoples rather than of the elite).

In addition to the legal point regarding the constitution: A lot less people in those roles you listed, die. The compulsion is necessary for the state to get enough people to go die - or at least, seriously risk their lives - for it on the battlefield.

The actual answer is because the constitutional instrument that allows conscription (Artikel 12a Grundgesetz) is explicitly limited to men. Therefore women are not subject to conscription in Germany, unless the constitution is changed.

Perhaps if the constitution were written today instead of in 1949 it would include women too.

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/sbgg/__9.html

EDIT: I'm rate-limited on comments, so if you come back here and read this, thank you for sharing from experience.

You will still have to deal with a ton of bureaucratic overhead and little moments where this is disclosed. For instance, your health insurance (and doctors) will usually know (the marker, not that you're trans, i get endometrial cancer screening recommended to me) and start to bicker about non-standard healthcare (i.e. I can get my estradiol tested at my GP, but for testosterone I need to see an endocrinologist) and your social security / employer will know (I also have at least 3 aliased social security numbers at this point).

Pure gender marker changes absent a name change are a lot less common, so it's not exactly well known territory.

I'm talking about conscription. The state grabbing women who want nothing to do with war and forcing them into the army. That's what happens to men. They say it's necessary, I guess they're probably right in various contrived scenarios, but historically it has very often not been necessary and a lot of good men were murdered by politicians for no good reason. I don't know how to fix this problem, but why would you ever advocate for deliberately dragging more women into it?

Why does the gap matter if the floor is adequate to complete assigned tasks?

There exist gaps between men as well; not everyone in a corp has to be a special forces operator! There's nothing physically grueling about pressing buttons, welding, driving, operating machinery or pushing on a joystick.

But why? Do drone controllers require massive amounts of grip? The keys for the transport coordinator keyboards require 20 pounds of pressure?

Few things in the military require brute strength. And those women who have that strength shouldn't be rejected simply because they are women.

Pragmatically, the main reason that has been true throughout all of history is that women are more valuable reproductively. A country can lose half its men in a war and still recover. The same is not true if it loses half its women.

Pragmatically, most of the military is far from the battlefield - or the battlefield is on home territory, in which case everyone is involved anyway, so train 'em all and let the Night Witches fly, as the Soviets did when they needed more fighting forces against the Germans. "Some 400,000 women fought for the Red Army on the front lines"[1], and were not saved for later potential reproductive use.

Pragmatically, women are much more more than a baby gestation machines.

Since you have no problems with sterile women (tubes tied, no uterus, etc.) in the military, there's really no need to jump into a thread about rejecting ALL women from the military based on hand group strength.

[1] https://hilo.hawaii.edu/campuscenter/hohonu/volumes/document... linked from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Raskova .

Grip strength is a proxy for general strength, and I think it’s safe to assume strength is important in combat.

Again, if strength is important, then use strength as the draft criteria, not gender.

And, you do realize that the vast majority of the military aren't combat troops, right? Drone operator duty doesn't require high grip strength. Logistics managers don't require high general strength.

Is your sexism blinding you to the female soldiers who served in the Gulf War, Iraq, and Afghanistan? What do you think they were doing if not being soldiers?

You have no idea what their grip strength was. You have no idea what their overall strength was. You have no idea if their duties required that strength, or if endurance, focus for long periods of time, ability to work in a group, were more imports.

Did you learn your grip strength factoid on some men's rights podcast?

I do have a good idea what their grips strength were, the US armed forces do such studies all of the time, sometimes they publish them. The statistics around this are well known. Grip strength is used as it's a good proxy and easy to do in an informal setting.

I'm very interested in health and resistance training is a part of that. I'm also interested in the social phenomena of certain ideological groupings of thought, such as 'healthy at any size' and 'women are exactly equal to men'.

The US failures in Iraq and Afghanistan are no more due to women than the US failure in Vietnam was due to men.

If grip strength is so important, then test for that. The military can easily do that at the recuitment center.

Otherwise it's the social phenomena known as sexism. That means rejecting a professional lumberjack simply because she's a woman, while accepting a less capable man because you've got a recuitment quota to meet.

1) Women can have children, and after a major war a large section of the population may be killed, and its better to have more women than men, since you can repopulate faster.

2) Women take over a large share of industrial labor during wartime. This was a mistake the Germans made in WW2, because they were so mystified by Nazism. But in the US, women basically took over all the manufacturing jobs that men left when they went to war, and it helped shore up the industrial base and, in the end, helped lead to an allied victory.

In a place like Israel, there are so few people that it doesn't make a massive difference. If half the men get taken out, its not like the 2-3 million remaining women are going to be able or even want to "repopulate" so rapidly (not to mention that Israel has an interesting setup where a small section of the women make up the majority of the births--the ultra-orthodox--and the majority probably aren't having kids anyway).

Factor #2 is no longer true, nowadays more and more stuff is being produced by machines. Moreover women can pick up guns. Drones can be piloted. Lethality is only going to go up.

No one sane would want to go fight in a war where lethality is high. Nor train for something that requires looming, recurring obligations for a good 10-20 years of their life. This is real sacrifce. If you want respect, at some point you have to put skin in the game.

If you all agree to refuse to fight, you win.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

The key here is to refuse fighting. Nobody becomes a hero by becoming a murderer whose goal is to defend the political power of Stalin, Napoleon, Bush, or whoever.

The ends don't justify the means. Conscription has no place in the free world. It's slavery, plain and simple. Going into the military should be an appealing career choice. Our soldiers are supposed to be highly skilled professionals, not cannon fodder in large quantities.

ps: There are 8 billion people on this planet, and I've never had any serious issues with any of them, much less a reason to start a war. Governments are always the cause of everyone's misery. Beware of yours!

And now the regime wants them to voluntarily sacrifice their lives for it.

It's not only moral and compatible with human rights in the free world, it's also far more effective.

A functioning "fourth estate" would have reported on this *before* the law was passed.

I was looking in Google news for other reports about this, but only found an article from Berliner Zeitung published 5 hours after this article from Frankfurter Rundschau.

I am worried about what other information which could be important to me, the news did not report on.

As far as I understood the law the article from FR is correct: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/wehrpflg/__3.html

Women have no incentive to change that, and the small fraction of men powerful enough to change it can already exempt themselves from the meat grinder. The remaining men's opinions don't matter.

However, if I think through what this process would look like under modern living arrangements, what would happen? Intensified serial polygamy with a massive increase in single motherhood? Full on polygamy?

Our social structures aren’t really set up to handle that. It seems like it would be so bad for society that I wouldn’t really say men are “disposable” under the current arrangement. More like they are the roof and women are the foundation, maybe.

It’s better to lose your roof than your foundation, sure, but losing your roof is still really bad. It does not really compare to, say, throwing out a paper coffee cup.

Women's lives are valuable, men's are not. This has been the case across basically all societies in human history. Losing a ton of men really doesn't matter too much - especially young, family-less men.

Losing a lot of women, though, is really really bad.

Isn't that reinforcing a gender stereotype? I was told we were against that kind of things around here.

This isn't sexist, it's reality. It's the rationale for male conscription and male disposability.

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/wehrpflg/__3.html

(3) Die Wehrpflicht endet mit Ablauf des Jahres, in dem der Wehrpflichtige das 45. Lebensjahr vollendet.

EDIT: I moved in 2000. I finally took a call from the military police the day I landed in London, to gleefully tell them I'd left - the practice was that draft notices would not be delivered abroad, so moving effectively put an end to the matter. Norwegian law also required notifying the military if you left for more than 6 months, and provide evidence. I sent them a letter; they sent me one back demanding evidence. I told them the fact I'd received the letter was evidence and to stop bothering me. They did.

Basically, for the Americans who find this weird: In the countries in Europe where this is still a thing, this is a cold war holdover most places. When I was growing up air raid sirens were being tested monthly, and my primary schools' basement was a bomb shelter. It took a lot of time before things were relaxed after the fall of the Soviet Union.

When I was in Asia two years ago, as an American, every time I met a young Russian man escaping conscription, drinks were on me as appreciation to their commitment to world peace. I'm in South America now and it is being inundated with young Israeli men running like the Russians were. Nonetheless, I'm on the fence about how I feel buying them drinks.

If any claim ever required "citation needed", this one is the biggest.

I've never seen feminists fight for duties, only for privileges.

Do you agree that women and men should serve equally in front line combat?

Not heard anyone fight for that once. The more pressing issues seem to he "mansplaining" and men being shirtless in the summer.

> Nonetheless, I'm on the fence about how I feel buying them drinks.

Why?

Why not? If the male side has "getting droned your legs off and people watching it in 4k", surely everything less than that has to be on the table for the female side. Not being able to vote physically yourself (you can still influence public opinion, eg through social media, imo a far more effective action than casting 1 vote)

You have a group of citizens who are expected to perform military service, and another group who aren't really invested in the country and don't have to serve.

It's not the case with 1 woman and 20 men.

Women need to pull their weight. And since they aren't doing that from the evolutional POV, neither in practice (birth crisis) nor in theory (not like giving birth is a legal duty, unlike a draft), then they can at least be useful for a society as a cannon fodder. The more women start pulling their weight and contribute, the less weight there will be for men to pull. What not to love about this equality!

No, it's equality.

Taken to its logical conclusion, you cannot have gender equality without either making the draft cover everyone or abolishing it entirely.

The fact that women losing their lives is so much larger a risk for the nation only serves to test the resolve of those people claiming to want gender equality, but this is not the only time you'll find a conflict between idealism and reality, even within the scope of gender equality.

But young men maybe dying after being forced to fight against their will? Completely fine.

It's honestly just very telling how in modern Western egalitarianism, gender essentialism is factually wrong and evil unless we're explaining why men need to die for their country.

I would rather both genders get drafted than be in a Ukraine situation where millions of women leave for richer countries while I am pulled off the street to go eat FPV drones. What's even the point? Why not surrender? What am I protecting or preserving?

> Why not surrender? Surrendering is not always practicable. You will get killed if you're a liability to your captors.

> What am I protecting or preserving? That's really only yours, and yours alone, to consider.

Any ruler wants active units of production (humans extracting money or gold or food), and for that it has to bring some sort of stable life environment and not be too greedy so people don't try to revolt.

Whether you get such through political negotiation before or after a war, or through a vote, or through a revolution, is the same as the end.

I would sooner die for my family and my country but I wouldn't lift a finger to save the lives of refugees/immigrants.

I'm more thinking about leaving asap.

The risk to feminism would be that this becomes so blatantly and obviously not true that no one can take it seriously. I don't think the continued draft of men would impact this because it's not a change to the status quo, and it isn't changing opinion in Ukraine.

The consequence is you violated the law, and they can have you at any time, even retroactively, for that.

That they don't is merely a detail. If it really has "no consequence" they should remove it.

I think it's clear that the interests of citizens and their state typically do not align. Unfortunately, most states have cultivated and propagated a different idea for decades, which is why so many people have a different perception of their state than the reality.

It distresses me a bit.

Article 20 Everyone is equal before the law.

Article 21 1. Any discrimination based on any ground such as sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation shall be prohibited.

The famed German rule-following in action. This kind of routine violation of regulation is what led to Dieselgate. Social norms in places like this rarely support rule of law. There's a reason the EPA was the one which blew this wide open. Local regulators follow these norms because that's what German cultural norms are.

So if german consitution sayed, starting in cold war era, what this law states, then the newer joining into EU made a new law, bringing freizügigkeit ("feedom of movement") to superseed even our Grundgesetz.

Here's a story from 2002 about how the supreme court there upheld the legality of a military draft:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-apr-11-mn-37321...

anyway, if you refused to be drafted and did not want to go to jail, you had to more-or-less stop using any government services, rent with roommates, avoid using a credit card etc. until you've reached some age, and then you could emerge again because the duty to serve expires at that certain (not very high) age. It was cuh-razy.

The cold war has been over for a very long time. The whole process was reformed in 1984 by removing the mandatory oral hearing. Sources say that acceptance rate was above 90% after 1995. That's not good enough (should be 100%), but not terrible either.

For example, I don't think it's in my interest to defend or die for the German state. However, I would use violence to protect my life if someone tried to kill me or threatened my life directly. The German state would interpret this as a political objection rather than a conscientious one, since I am willing to use violence in principle. If I could convince them that I would let someone kill me without defending myself because I categorically reject violence for any reason, they might consider that a conscientious objection.

> Sources say that acceptance rate was above 90% after 1995.

Yes, as I said, after the Cold War, Germany no longer wanted to maintain such a large army, so they started accepting any reasonably well-written argument. But in any war, you can see that nation states will start struggling to recruit new soldiers as it becomes obvious to the population that it's a rather pointless endeavour to die for their state. So, they start forcing people. We've seen that in Russia, Ukraine, Israel, USA, etc.

That is a complete fantasy of yours. Political convictions are explicitly stated as a valid type of justification for conscientious objection by the Act on Conscientious Objection to Military Service. It even states the reasons do not have to be logical or objectively comprehensible, which easily covers your "I'm not opposed to all violence in all theoretically cases, but I fundamentally reject service for the German state".

That's one way to put it. The other would be 1 year of paid community service (which the alternative services ALWAYS were).

Also at that time only some people had to go to the draft, because they had not the capacity to take everyone. That made it likely easy for them to let go of suboptimal candidates.

Cynically speaking: the people making those laws probably don't want to be impacted by it. And Germany is effectively a gerontocracy.

CDU are losing popularity if we are to believe press, so that is one of the populist ways to boost some numbers for elections.

Oh and they've added a very political clause: the government can activate conscription WITHOUT a parliament vote. So most political parties who have voted in favor of conscription want to be able to claim "it wasn't us, it was Merz" (ie. CDU). In reality CSU and SPD have voted to effectively conscript German men between 18 and 45.

In other words, Germany expects to be in open war in a matter of months to years. Like every country before them they've decided young men are cheaper than actually investing in military equipment (they're investing in military equipment, but they just won't have it in that time period)

This probably means that if you can get out, get out, because it's not like being 46 years old will protect you from the impact of that, and yes it's not clear what the timing is going to be, and they're not being very forward about what the reason is for conscription.

So that's why 45. Because the existing conscription law (1954 + 2025) allows for conscripting every German male between 18 and 45.

Also the main reason russia is still slowly gaining land in Ukraine is because there are not enough people to man the frontline.

But the US, for all its militarism, and all its military adventures, has not used the draft since Vietnam.

So I would say that Germany sees the need to be in a position where it can respond quickly if they need it. Well, given current events in their neighborhood, I can see their point. In fact, I would say that they are probably at least three years late in doing this.

Let's start with an easy one: Will Germany be ready (war is more than cheap bodies, after all, equipment, plans, ...)? No, they won't. They've never been ready before.

Will the US help? That was a given even just 1 year ago, but now is strongly in doubt.

What will Germany's reaction be to the European states that just don't help?

What will happen to world trade? The question is who will save it, because the historical answer was of course US.

>Will the US help? That was a given even just 1 year ago, but now is strongly in doubt. With the current commander in chief, the US will do nothing except talk a lot of nonsense contradicting itself daily.

>What will happen to world trade?. World trade as we know it is done. National security interests will force strategic industries to be on-shored. New trade deals will only be made with a short list of trustworthy allies.

If Russia does attack, the US will take 1+ years to ramp up and we will take a long time before we reach Europe in large numbers. The rapid reaction forces we have are not prepared for the new way of fighting we see in Ukraine.

> (3) Außerhalb des Spannungs- oder Verteidigungsfalls gelten die §§ 3, 8a bis 20b, 25, 32 bis 35, 44 und 45.

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/wehrpflg/__2.html

The quotes very much read to me like someone realizing what the change of Paragraph 2 means to Paragraph 3 means in real time and having to figure out what to answer to journalists.

I’m curious how that would work administratively though - would they require you to have that when trying to do Ausmeldung? And what about those who moved out before this law got changed?

Technically, do I need to go Bundeswehr office when I come back next time, to get the permission?

I _want_ to believe if this was a deliberate change that someone cared about; we wouldn’t be having this discussion right now because there would be clear answers to the very obvious questions here, but maybe my hope is misplaced.

The last time Germany had that much of a majority, it was under Bundeskanzler Kohl and Schroeder if I remember correctly. So like ~25 years ago.

Bundestag seats (from 2002 onwards):

2002 (15): https://www.nls.niedersachsen.de/html/pressemitteilungen1.ht...

2005 (16): https://www.nls.niedersachsen.de/html/presse_lwl_bw2005.html

2008 (17): https://www.bundestag.de/parlament/plenum/sitzverteilung17-2...

2013 (18): https://www.bundestag.de/webarchiv/textarchiv/2013/sitzvert_...

2017 (19): https://www.bundestag.de/278118-278118

2020 (20): https://web.archive.org/web/20211102103524/https://www.bunde... (couldn't find an article on the Bundestag website, got deleted. Web archive version is a little broken)

2025 (21): https://www.bundestag.de/parlament/plenum/sitzverteilung

This is not true. After the last election the old parliament made a deal to change the grundgesetz with 2/3rd majority to allow the new parliament to take more debt.

why only locals, but no migrants?

> (2) Männliche Personen haben nach Vollendung des 17. Lebensjahres eine Genehmigung des zuständigen Karrierecenters der Bundeswehr einzuholen, wenn sie die Bundesrepublik Deutschland länger als drei Monate verlassen wollen, ohne dass die Voraussetzungen des § 1 Absatz 2 bereits vorliegen. Das Gleiche gilt, wenn sie über einen genehmigten Zeitraum hinaus außerhalb der Bundesrepublik Deutschland verbleiben wollen oder einen nicht genehmigungspflichtigen Aufenthalt außerhalb der Bundesrepublik Deutschland über drei Monate ausdehnen wollen. Die Genehmigung ist für den Zeitraum zu erteilen, in dem die männliche Person für eine Einberufung zum Wehrdienst nicht heransteht. Über diesen Zeitraum hinaus ist sie zu erteilen, soweit die Versagung für die männliche Person eine besondere – im Bereitschafts-, Spannungs- oder Verteidigungsfall eine unzumutbare – Härte bedeuten würde; § 12 Absatz 6 ist entsprechend anzuwenden. Das Bundesministerium der Verteidigung kann Ausnahmen von der Genehmigungspflicht zulassen.

See: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/wehrpflg/__3.html

This was not changed.

The article 3 of the Wehrpflichtgesetzes was previously only active in a war or close to war situation (Spannungs- oder Verteidigungsfall). Article 2 said this before:

> § 2 Geltung der folgenden Vorschriften

> Die §§ 3 bis 53 gelten im Spannungs- oder Verteidigungsfall.

See: https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze/blob/master/w/wehrpflg/...

Now it says this:

> § 2 Anwendung dieses Gesetzes

> (1) Die nachfolgenden Vorschriften gelten nach Maßgabe der folgenden Absätze.

> (2) Die §§ 3 bis 52 gelten im Spannungs- oder Verteidigungsfall.

> (3) Außerhalb des Spannungs- oder Verteidigungsfalls gelten die §§ 3, 8a bis 20b, 25, 32 bis 35, 44 und 45.

> (4) Die §§ 15a und 16 sind nur auf Betroffene anzuwenden, die nach dem 31. Dezember 2007 geboren sind. Satz 1 gilt nicht im Spannungs- oder Verteidigungsfall.

See: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/wehrpflg/__2.html

This law changed it: https://www.recht.bund.de/bgbl/1/2025/370/VO

Is the a up to date git repository with all German law changes? The one I found was last updated 4 years ago.

Also: Our law only knowns in this regard only knows either peace and wartime, but no in-between state of state financed propaganda or partisan/guerilla warfare that could already be our current status quo.

Propaganda of course is very legitimate in peace times. Digital attacks might always be criminal action or plausibly deniable. Recruiting civilians happens by both e.g. Russian Federation for sabotage and Ukraine for printing missile, drone or mine parts, see drukarmy. But when one group of allies and another state behave the current way, "Spannungsfall" might be reached easily when policy makers declare that has now happened once again after the fall of the eastern block wall.

First of all, there is no process yet for exactly requesting permission, secondly, the army already said they will not enforce the rule unless the Parliament declares combat readiness is necessary, and lastly, there is no punishment for not asking permission at this point in time.

And to be completely honest, if more people made use of registering for the damn ELEFAND emergency contact list, this rule wouldn’t be necessary in the first place.

So, men are kind of responsible for this themselves by being lazy.

I had to help exfil Germans in Kabul when the US decided to pull out without telling all of their partners in time.

Everyone wanted to be rescued, but you have no idea how many German idiots travel to foreign countries, not even taking five minutes to let their own government know how to reach them and where they went in case of an emergency.

It’s super fun to drive around Kabul and pick up 55 years old complaining male Germans yelling at me because I told them I transport people, not their fucking luggage. Two even sued me afterwards for leaving their expensive camera equipment behind. A dozen complaints about my behavior.

Sometimes it’s really annoying to protect the average citizen. Luckily, I understand that it is an extreme situation for them. Just like some people sue nurses after they broke their ribs reviving their dead ass.

It’s a good thing all these idiots now have to ask for permission in the future and likely need to leave the data necessary so it’s known where they are, for how long and how to reach them.

A friend from the US sent the link to this thread to me, asking about it.

The source website has no ability to be switched to English language, so all information my friend got was from the headline, which without context was misleading for him. If it was clear people wouldn’t ask German-speaking friends to explain this to them, don’t you think?

And if we are really precise, right now German men don’t need to request permission, because there is neither a process nor any paperwork in place to request permission.

Without being able to see and understand the context, the headline on its own is misleading in my opinion.

Just do an experiment for yourself.

Take the original transcript from any trump speech during the Iran war and put it in a German translator. You will understand it’s about the Iran war but you will be surprised how insane those speeches sound if you are not able to understand English and rely on Google Translate to understand the context.

I trust humans. I don’t trust machines. You do you.

Thank you for the exchange and pointing out my inaccuracy. I will try to do better next time.

Have a good day and enjoy your Easter holidays if you’re Christian.

Previously this article 3 was only active in the "Spannungs- oder Verteidigungsfall" which the Parliament has to declare. The law was extended with: "Außerhalb des Spannungs- oder Verteidigungsfalls gelten die §§ 3, 8a bis 20b, 25, 32 bis 35, 44 und 45." so this article is always active now.

For decades they have alienated their own native population, especially men. And now they want to conscript them as their approval ratings are around 15℅.

Think about it, Trump approval rating fell sharply but is still at about 40%. Merz is at 15% and most of those 15% are probably boomers in a nursing home. He is probably closer to 0% within the demographic he is trying to conscript.

The only war you're gonna get in Europe is a civil war.

In particular concerning the military conscription (laws), there exists a cross-generational opposition to these.

I just post two famous songs concerning this topic (if you know German):

Franz Josef Degenhardt - Befragung eines Kriegsdienstverweigerers [40 Interrogation of a conscientious objector] (1972)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDTtMTcj8X0

--

Reinhard Mey - Nein, meine Söhne geb' ich nicht (1986)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0qPsYTBCtQ

Reinhard Mey & Freunde [Reinhard Mey & friends] - Nein, meine Söhne geb' ich nicht [No, I won't give my sons] (new recording; 2020)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q-Ga3myTP4

See also https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nein,_meine_S%C3%B6hne_geb%E2%...

To be fair going against the demographic where you have a 0% approval rate does not lose you much.

Some countries may conscript non-citizens or allow them to serve voluntarily. Often because they are more likely to use the military as an extension of foreign policy rather than for defense. Others may see it a waste of effort, as those people are probably not sufficiently committed to the continued existence of the country.

The thing is that when you have a huge non-citizen percentage of the population that is actively drawing taxpayer money out of the state to the point where the social welfare system is beginning to break down, and you have the working citizens of the country being taxed at 50% or more to support that during an escalating global cost of living crisis, you have effectively destroyed the social contract around citizenship that permits this system to function. For the massive aged population that's drawing retiree benefits, there's at least the justification that they paid into the system during their lifetime, even if the equation that makes the retirement system work increasingly doesn't work anymore.

Now the young people are being told to go die to keep that system alive. I wouldn't be surprised if most don't.

I grew up in the Middle East and I can tell that cultural differences and values were more smooth and compatible than what I saw in Germany. Conscription requires a degree of trust in the people you give guns to and expect to fight on your side in case it is needed, that is mostly not true with immigrants in all times and all countries.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47626116

Edit: actually, we'll merge them hither instead of thither since current article is in English.

(We have deep respect for other languages, but HN has always been an English-language site - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_and_sexism

It also turns out that men tend to be more in favor of war than women.

So whether codified in law or not, the power structure is already how you want it to be, and it's more likely to send men to their deaths.

There is absolutely nowhere in the West where this is true. Even the suggestion that a politician advocates for men's rights would be the end of their career, meanwhile they endlessly twerk for women's votes with all of the right campaign promises of cash and prizes. Some countries even now have ministers explicitly representing women.

But sure, continue to rail against equality and feminism for no reason.

He was about to drop truly groundbreaking theory, I assure you. No one has ever heard that bit before.

"We'll get around to it when some arbitrary measure is met, we promise"

This is the same thing you're criticising - using one injustice to justify another.

Everyone doesn't get drafted at once. It stands to reason that drafting women would mean fewer men were needed.

Otherwise everyone with good education will leave.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War