Last week-May 21, 2025-the new Chancellor Merz announced that Germany
will have the "strongest army in Europe": military spending will rise to5% of GDP, as Trump has requested, but to achieve this, the workforce
will need to be doubled, and German society doesn't seem to appreciate
this, especially among young people. On May 15, presenting the new
German government's program to the Bundestag, Christian Democrat
Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that the German Bundeswehr will become
the "strongest army in Europe." Two days later, following talks with his
US counterpart Marco Rubio in Istanbul, Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul
(CDU) added that in the coming years, Germany aims to achieve a military
spending-to-GDP ratio of 5%, as advocated by Donald Trump. This goal was
confirmed by Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) on Tuesday. Huge
investments are planned in the Bundeswehr's armored units and military
infrastructure. In 2024, German military spending amounted to
approximately EUR70 billion-EUR50 billion from the regular budget, plus
EUR20 billion from the EUR100 billion extraordinary fund created to
respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Regular spending is expected
to rise to EUR60 billion in 2025, but reaching 5% of GDP would mean
exceeding the EUR200 billion annual threshold, approximately 40% of
Berlin's healthcare spending and the German state's annual expenditure
on education. Meanwhile, in March, the last act of the former
SPD-Green-Liberal legislature was to exempt defense from debt
containment rules.
300,000 Soldiers Wanted
Weapons alone, however, are not enough: it also takes the people who use
them. The new government's program, a coalition of the CDU-CSU and SPD,
includes the introduction of a new voluntary military service, aimed at
rebuilding the German armed forces, which are overstretched and subject
to inexorable erosion. The plan calls for, among other things, all
18-year-old male citizens-for women, the questionnaire is voluntary-to
complete a questionnaire declaring their willingness to "serve the
fatherland" and verifying their suitability. Those eligible will be
invited, but not required, to enlist. This is actually a measure already
introduced by the previous Defense Minister, the Social Democrat
Pistorius-confirmed by Merz.
"Würden Sie für Deutschland kämpfen?"-"Would you fight for Germany?"-was
the headline in the weekly magazine Stern a few weeks ago, featuring a
very young man on the cover, half in civilian clothes and half in
uniform. And that's the crux of the matter. In 2024, a Gallup
International poll (1) recorded that one in four Germans was willing to
fight for their country, and it is likely that the percentage among
young people will be even lower. According to Christian Richter,
lieutenant colonel in the reserve and expert at the German Institute for
Defense and Strategic Studies, a Bundeswehr think tank, "If basic
military service fails to significantly motivate a higher number of
young people to volunteer in the near future, the Bundeswehr will not
have the number of trained active soldiers and reservists it needs."
According to the government's annual report on the state of the
Bundeswehr (2), moreover, the German armed forces are already shrinking.
The number of personnel has stabilized at around 181,000, and the
average age has risen by almost a year from 2021 to 2024, from 33.1 to
34. Furthermore, last year, discharges outnumbered enlistees, and nearly
a third of new recruits dropped out of training before it was completed.
"We need 100,000 additional troops immediately or as quickly as
possible," General Carsten Breuer, Supreme Commander of the German Armed
Forces, told an event of the German Council on Foreign Relations.
The broader, long-term goal is much higher. According to Breuer,
"Germany has personnel needs on the table that amount to 460,000
soldiers," including active-duty personnel, reservists, and former
soldiers to be recalled in the event of a serious crisis, which may not
be far off. According to Politico.eu (3), NATO and German intelligence
expect that by 2029, Russia will have rebuilt its capacity to threaten
NATO countries, which had been eroded by the war in Ukraine. By then,
Germany must be ready for war. "We must become kriegstüchtig" - fit for
war - Pistorius often repeats, referring not only to the Bundeswehr, but
more generally to a society "fit for war".
Bavaria anticipated this trend: in July 2024, it approved the Gesetz zur
Förderung der Bundeswehr in Bayern (4) - Law for the Promotion of the
Bundeswehr in Bavaria - with the votes of the CSU, Freien Wählern, and
SPD. The law, among other things, will guarantee "smooth cooperation"
and "unhindered access by the Bundeswehr to research and development at
universities," as well as to scientific expertise and scientifically
qualified specialists, eliminating the so-called "civil clauses"
provided for by German law. This allows scientific research institutions
to conduct research exclusively for civilian and peaceful purposes. The
first such provision was at the University of Bremen in 1986, in the
twilight of the Cold War. Today, around 70 German universities and
colleges have introduced them, and in some cases, they have even entered
higher education. In Bavaria, on the other hand, civil clauses have
never been stipulated, but with the new law, they are categorically
prohibited. At the national level, the CDU and FDP are calling for the
abolition of all restrictions on military research and the repeal of
civil clauses from federal law and university statutes, as they are "no
longer in step with the times."
The law passed in Bavaria stipulates that "research results may also be
used for the military purposes of the Federal Republic of Germany or
NATO allies" and that a "research limitation" to the civilian sphere, as
regulated by the so-called civil clauses, is inadmissible and therefore
prohibited. As the drafters of the law wrote in their introductory
report, civil clauses are "unacceptable in light of the existing
security policy challenges."
The new law also applies to all state schools in Bavaria: in future,
they will be required to collaborate more closely with the Bundeswehr's
Jugendoffiziere (Youth Officers) and Karriereberater (Career Advisors)
"in the context of political education" of students and on "security and
defense policy issues," as well as for "vocational guidance regarding
career and employment opportunities" in the armed forces.
Military service? No, thank you
Germany's military shortage has its roots in policies that for decades,
especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall, marginalized the armed
forces from German society. Under Chancellor Helmut Kohl, numerous
military bases were closed, especially in cities, and the army
disappeared from public view. Conscription was abolished in 2011. The
armed forces responded with massive campaigns promoting voluntary
enlistment, including on social media, such as those seen on the TikTok
account Bundeswehrkarriere (5) - Working Group of Homosexual Members of
the German Armed Forces, which since 2020 has been called Queer BW. But
often these initiatives have had no effect or have even sparked a storm
of controversy.
Already in 2018, a Bundeswehr poster featuring the slogan "Multiplayer
at its best" at the Gamescom video game festival in Cologne was accused
of trivializing war in the eyes of adolescents. This January, the city
of Zwickau banned military advertisements from public spaces, calling
itself a "city of peace" (although the municipal supervisory authority
later ruled that this decision violated the law). In the months that
followed, there were protests by Munich tram drivers against Bundeswehr
advertisements on the exterior liveries of trams, and student
demonstrations in a Leipzig high school against the invasive presence of
Jugendoffiziere in classrooms. (6) Even the United Nations has in
the past censored proselytism in German schools. In a 2014 report (7),
the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) deplored
that "some advertising campaigns for the armed forces are specifically
aimed at minors and representatives of the armed forces are sometimes
present in school settings, speaking to pupils and organising
activities" and called on the German government to intervene with a law,
including raising the minimum age for recruitment to 18. Despite this,
in the last five years the Bundeswehr has recruited almost 8,000
underage boys and girls - since 2011 almost 20,000 seventeen-year-olds -
and trained them in the use of weapons (authorised by their parents). In
2023, there were almost 2,000 citizens, a record number, who, as the TAZ
journalist wrote on 26 July 2024 (8), quoting the figure, "cannot vote
for candidates for the Bundestag but they can learn to die". In Bavaria,
nearly 14% of recruits are "child soldiers." But as we've seen, a
significant portion drop out before completing their training,
confirming that the Bundeswehr's announcements truly trivialize the
barracks experience.
The main school union, Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft (GEW),
also strongly opposes the growing influence of the Bundeswehr in
schools. "In our opinion," they write on their website (9), "political
education - including security policy issues - should be the
responsibility of personnel with educational expertise, not of
Jugendoffiziere. Young people must be protected from advertisements that
publicize military service by hiding or trivializing its risks. Service
differs from most training and employment relationships." The GEW
invites its members to submit agendas in school bodies against the
presence of the Bundeswehr in classrooms and is part of the "Unter 18
nie" ("Never under 18") campaign, which calls for raising the military
conscription age to 18 and a ban on military proselytism among minors.
The Achilles' Heel of Imperialism
In short, Germany, a country that for decades attempted to exorcise the
crimes of Prussian and then German militarism, is rapidly positioning
itself at the forefront of a Europe that raises the threat of Putin and
"American betrayal" to try to escape the quagmire and relaunch the
project of a European imperialist hub capable of competing with other
global powers. Moreover, military proselytism in schools is one of the
measures included in the measure recently approved by the European
Parliament, which encourages rearming and support for Ukraine until
"victory over Russia."
However, German society, like European society more generally, has
changed profoundly over the last century. According to Destatis (10) the
average age is growing, 44.6 years in 2023, despite the contribution of
immigrants (non-Germans are 15%), but in the eastern Länder it even
exceeds 47. A figure to which the population growth rate contributes,
which in 2024 was negative - +100,000 new Germans against 340,000 the
previous year, while at the height of the Prussian power and on the eve
of the First World War Germany experienced an extraordinary demographic
growth - from 41 million in 1871 to 56 in 1900. The class composition
has also changed considerably. The peasant masses, who could be
mobilized by force, but also manipulated with a certain ease, to turn
them into cannon fodder for the Kaiser, have effectively disappeared: in
1907, agricultural workers in Germany numbered 10 million, by 2010 they
had become one million (11).
Finally, there is another aspect that should not be underestimated. The
German labor aristocracy, the core of the SPD's social base, which on
August 4, 1914, voted for war credits to finance the war adventure of
its ruling classes, was at least initially able to judge that it was
worth it, all things considered. German imperialism had long guaranteed
them the legacy of the welfare state desired by Bismarck to neutralize
the socialists, supplemented by the fruits of labor struggles. The
socialists also reaped significant benefits: parliamentarians, swarms of
party and union officials, newspapers, a thriving associationism
financed partly by the profits of German capitalism, 35,000 cooperatives
with over six million members. Today, Germany is one of the richest
economies in the world, but also a country where, according to Destatis
data (12), in 2022 21.1% of the population, equal to 17.3 million
people, was at risk of poverty or social exclusion and 15.5% at risk of
falling below the poverty line (but among young people this indicator
rises to 25%). Therefore, beyond the rejection of violence or fear, if
only 24% of Germans are ready to fight for their country, there are also
material reasons: fight to defend what? And the situation in the main
European countries, including Italy, is not dissimilar. This is the true
Achilles heel of European imperialism today.
Notes:
1)(https://assopuntocritico.voxmail.it/nl/pvdgpi/hx33mg/jpx1cpm/uf/3/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3
cuZ2FsbHVwLWludGVybmF0aW9uYWwuY29tL2ZpbGVhZG1pbi91c2VyX3VwbG9hZC9zdXJ2ZXlzX2FuZF9uZX
dzLzIwMjQvRmV3ZXJfcGVvcGxlX2FyZV93aWxsaW5nX3RvX2ZpZ2h0X2Zvcl90aGVpcl9jb3VudHJ5X2NvbXBh
cmVkX3RvX3Rlbl95ZWFyc19hZ28vRmlnaHRpbmdfZm9yX3RoZV9jb3VudHJ5LnBkZg?_d=A4M&_c=fd3abb61)
2)
(https://assopuntocritico.voxmail.it/nl/pvdgpi/hx33mg/jpx1cpm/uf/4/aHR0cHM6Ly9kc2VydmVyLmJ1bmRlc3RhZy5kZS9idGQvMjAvMTUwLzIwMTUwNjAucGRm?_d=A4M&_c=9d51e850)
3)
(https://assopuntocritico.voxmail.it/nl/pvdgpi/hx33mg/jpx1cpm/uf/5/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cu
cG9saXRpY28uZXUvYXJ0aWNsZS9nZXJtYW55LXZvbHVudGVlci1maXgtYXJteS8?_d=A4M&_c=5ef71d06)
4)(https://assopuntocritico.voxmail.it/nl/pvdgpi/hx33mg/jpx1cpm/uf/6/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudmVya3VlbmR1bmctYmF5ZXJuLmRlL2d2YmwvMjAyNC0yNTcv?_d=A4M&_c=f8e46893)
5)(https://assopuntocritico.voxmail.it/nl/pvdgpi/hx33mg/jpx1cpm/uf/7/aHR0cHM6Ly9
3d3cudGlrdG9rLmNvbS9AYnVuZGVzd2VocmthcnJpZXJlP2xhbmc9aXQtSVQ?_d=A4M&_c=f5a80f11)
(https://assopuntocritico.voxmail.it/nl/pvdgpi/hx33mg/jpx1cpm/uf/7/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudGlrdG9rLmNvbS9AYnVuZGVzd2VocmthcnJpZXJlP2xhbmc9aXQtSVQ?_d=A4M&_c=f5a80f11)
or learning about the LGBT movement, with participation in Pride and the
creation of a[Working Group of Homosexual Members of the
Bundeswehr](AHsAB)](https://assopuntocritico.voxmail.it/nl/pvdgpi/hx33mg/jpx1cpm/uf/8/aHR0cHM6Ly9
3d3cuYnVuZGVzd2Voci5kZS9kZS9xdWVlcmJ3LXdhcy1pc3QtZGFzLTUzNzkwMzYjLg?_d=A4M&_c=a239faf0)
6)
([PuntoCritico040225](https://assopuntocritico.voxmail.it/nl/pvdgpi/hx33mg/jpx1cpm/uf/9/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cu
cHVudG9jcml0aWNvLmluZm8vMjAyNS8wMi8wMy9pbnRlZ3JhbGVfZGVsX3F1YXR0cm9kdWVfdmVudGk1Lw?_d=A4M&_c=f89f8833)).
7)
8)(https://assopuntocritico.voxmail.it/nl/pvdgpi/hx33m
g/jpx1cpm/uf/11/aHR0cHM6Ly90YXouZGUvTWluZGVyamFlaHJpZ2UtYmVpLWRlci1CdW5kZXN3ZWhyLyE2MDIyNzk1Lw?_d=A4M&_c=beacf7f5)
9)(https://assopuntocritico.voxmail.it/nl/pvdgpi/hx33mg/jpx1cpm/uf/12/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ2V3L
mRlL21laW4tYXJiZWl0c3BsYXR6L3NjaHVsZS9idW5kZXN3ZWhyL2VpbmZsdXNzLWRlci
1idW5kZXN3ZWhyLWFuLXNjaHVsZW4tenVydWVja2RyYWVuZ2Vu?_d=A4M&_c=0795b302)
10)
(https://assopuntocritico.voxmail.it/nl/pvdgpi/hx33mg/jpx1cpm/
uf/13/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGVzdGF0aXMuZGUvRU4vVGhlbWVzL1NvY2lldHktRW52aXJvbm1lbnQvUG9wdWxhdGlvbi9DdXJyZW50LVBvcHVsYXRpb24vVGFibGVzL3BvcHVsYXRpb24tYnktdGVycml0b3J5LWFuZC1hdmVyYWdlLWFnZS5odG1s?_d=A4M&_c=6036c9f2)
(ISTAT German)
11)
(Statista,[Number of employed persons in agriculture in Germany* from
1882 to
2010](https://assopuntocritico.voxmail.it/nl/pvdgpi/hx33mg/jpx1cpm/uf/14/aHR0cHM6Ly9kZS5zdGF0aXN0YS5jb20vc3RhdGlzdGlrL2RhdGV
uL3N0dWRpZS8xMDU1NjUyL3VtZnJhZ2UvZXJ3ZXJic3RhZXRpZ2UtaW4tZGVyLWxhbmR3aXJ0c2NoYWZ0LWluLWRldXRzY2hsYW5kLw?_d=A4M&_c=1f19d008)).
12)(https://assopuntocritico.voxmail.it/nl/pvdgpi/hx33mg/jpx1cpm/uf/15/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGVzdGF0aXMuZGUvRU4vVGhlbWVzL1NvY2lldHktRW52aX
Jvbm1lbnQvSW5jb21lLUNvbnN1bXB0aW9uLUxpdmluZy1Db25kaXRpb25zL0xpdmluZ
y1Db25kaXRpb25zLVJpc2stUG92ZXJ0eS9fbm9kZS5odG1s?_d=A4M&_c=e099fb9f)
http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
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