army
Every sixth post in the Bundeswehr remains vacant – AfD is committed to conscription
The size of the Bundeswehr armed forces is currently slightly more than 183,000 soldiers
© Huettenhoelscher / Getty Images
Bundeswehr positions could not be filled en masse in 2022. Now the debate about conscription is picking up speed again – the AfD is also positioning itself on this.
Every sixth post in the Bundeswehr could not be filled last year. This is reported by the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” in its Saturday edition, citing a response from the Federal Ministry of Defense to a small inquiry from the AfD. According to this, almost 27,000 of the more than 164,000 jobs in the Bundeswehr remained vacant last year.
In percentage terms, this is still the best value since compulsory military service was suspended in 2011, it said. At the same time, the size of the armed forces stagnated at just over 183,000 soldiers. The federal government wants 203,000 soldiers by 2031.
Conscription could create a stronger connection to the Bundeswehr
The defense policy spokesman for the AfD, Rüdiger Lucassen, called these figures “disastrous”. His party is preparing an application to reactivate conscription.
The discussion about the reintroduction of conscription had recently picked up speed again. The latest debate was triggered by the new Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD). In an interview with the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” at the end of January, he described the suspension of compulsory military service in 2011 as a “mistake”. Pistorius argued that conscription was important, among other things, in order to have a stronger connection to the Bundeswehr in society.
Germans are divided on whether conscription, which has been suspended since 2011, will be reactivated in the next ten years, as the results of a representative survey by the opinion research institute YouGov on behalf of the German Press Agency (dpa) show. More people are convinced that this will happen than of the opposite. 42 percent of those surveyed assume that military service will become compulsory again. 37 percent of Germans don’t believe that. 21 percent of those surveyed did not dare to judge or did not want to say anything about it.