Germany’s Defense Minister Pistorius gets serious about “war readiness.”
Claus Ludwig, SAV, Germany
Pressure is to be exerted on young people to increase the size of the German army (Bundeswehr). From 2025, 18-year-old males are to be obliged to complete a “questionnaire”. The “Ministry of Defense ‘’ writes in its FAQ: “Will there be sanctions for those who refuse to register? There will also have to be sanctions.” For female 18-year-olds, completing the questionnaire is voluntary.
In its advertising campaigns, the Bundeswehr sometimes presents itself as hip, sometimes as an attractive job and sometimes as necessary. But even the massive presence of recruiters at job fairs and schools has not led to the target of 203,000 troops being reached. The army’s actual strength is just under 183,000 and is actually falling.
The planned survey of willingness and ability to join the Bundeswehr is the first step towards the reintroduction of compulsory military service. Initially, there is to be a voluntary six-month basic military service, which can be extended to 23 months. Each year 400,000 are to be registered, initially 5,000 and later 20,000 are to be drafted.
Over the past 30 years, the Bundeswehr has been an army of specialists for limited interventions abroad. Politicians have drawn the conclusion from the war in Ukraine that a war must not only be waged with high-tech, but also with “human material”. If you want to wage war, you need at least some of the youth.
Imperialist competition
Pistorius’ thoughts about being able to wage war against Russia by 2033 at the latest are not about defending “us” or “democracy”. There is a global escalation of capitalist competition for influence, sales markets and raw materials, fueled by the low growth of the global market and exacerbated by the climate crisis. Blocs have formed — the US, EU, NATO and allies on one side, China, Russia and allies on the other. Working people and young people have nothing to gain from these conflicts. They are supposed to defend the profits and privileges of the domestic capitalists as soldiers and in the factories.
The bourgeois politicians know full well that it is not just the despot Putin who threatens peace, but that the entire economic system breeds violence — capitalism carries war within it “like a cloud carries rain”, as the French socialist Jean Jaurès put it before the First World War. Following his trip to China in mid-June, Federal Economics Minister Habeck (Greens) warned against an escalation of the trade conflict with China. At the “Industry Day” in Berlin, he used a dramatic formulation: “That would be against our interests, and not just economically (…) Then we wouldn’t be talking about trade wars or threatening trade wars, but we could also leave out the part about ‘trade’.”
Threats against Ukrainians
While young Germans are still being courted, politicians are increasingly turning to threats in their dealings with Ukrainians living here. The right-wing Spiegel writer Blome puts it in a nutshell: “Work or fight!” he demands in his column. Anyone who cannot find a job here should not receive unemployment benefits and should be forced to return to Ukraine. Military service is compulsory there, and there is no option to refuse. Young Ukrainians are supposed to fight the war of attrition against Russian troops in order to enforce Western economic interests.
Two birds with one stone: it is implied that the refugees from Ukraine are avoiding work and abusing social benefits. This distracts from the causes of the financial and economic problems and divides the population. At the same time, killing and dying is presented as the first civic duty.
Young people pay several times over
Rearmament costs hundreds of billions. The rich are not asked to pay for it, their taxes are not increased. As shareholders, they benefit from the boom in arms companies such as Rheinmetall. Militarization is financed by further cuts in social benefits and the continued destruction of infrastructure — education, health, public transport, housing — through the state’s refusal to invest.
Young people sit in decaying schools with too few teachers (if they make it to school despite dilapidated buses and trains). Housing is becoming unaffordable, good jobs are in short supply. As a reward, they are half lured, half pressured into signing up for war.
The workers’ movement and the left in Germany have so far been fiddling around. At best, trade unions have timidly spoken out against militarization, at worst they support armament — because jobs are created in the arms industry or because they support the propaganda that “we” are the good guys. There are open supporters of NATO and arms deliveries to Ukraine at leadership level in Die Linke, one of the reasons why the party is in an existential crisis. Left groups such as the IL (Interventionist Left) do not take a clear position and try to avoid the issue.
A change of course is urgently needed: consistent rejection of militarism and rearmament; neither NATO nor Russia/China, against all imperialist camps, for the unification of working people worldwide against the threat of war and rearmament.
Trade unions, left parties, groups and initiatives should launch a campaign against steps towards compulsory military service and demand that packages worth billions be put together for schools, clinics, housing, climate protection and well-paid, meaningful jobs. The arms industry must be nationalized and production converted.
Trade unions and the left should protect young people — a comprehensive mobilization at schools should create pockets of resistance against Bundeswehr advertising and the introduction of the “questionnaire”. During the Vietnam War at the end of the 1960s, US conscripts burned their draft cards.
Today, the questionnaire will initially seem harmless to many young people — after all, they are promised that military service is purely voluntary. The workers’ movement must make it clear to them that they too could later be affected by compulsory service, for example after training or studying.
The day of the vote on Pistorius’ military service law in the Bundestag and the entry into force of the law could be the occasion for the first protests.
We Say:
- No advertising for dying — get the Bundeswehr out of schools
- No to Pistorius’ questionnaire and steps towards compulsory military service
- Billions for education, climate, health and housing instead of armament
- For the full right to stay and to social benefits for Ukrainian refugees and all opponents of military service
- Tax the rich war profiteers
- Expropriate the arms industry and convert production
