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Comment by ChuckNorris89 | Hacker News Reader

>German soldiers would cryingly admit to POWs already at the start of the war that they were absolutely not voluntarily there, they'd just be shot if they refused

No shit they weren't there voluntarily, no sane people want to go to their death, but those were the rules for mandatory conscription for them back then.

Even today some European countries still have mandatory conscription, and while they won't shoot you for refusal, if you don't show up for conscription, military police will come to your house and arrest you, and if you run away, an arrest warrant will be issues on your name.

So yeah, you have to do your mandatory service, even if you don't want to.

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Ironically given the comment you replied to, Norway is one of them. I had military police trying to reach me the last few weeks before I moved to the UK to try to hand deliver a conscription notice as a necessary step before charging me if I again failed to show up (I'd ignored several prior notices).

I didn't leave because of that, but I did delight I telling them I was beyond their reach. Finally picked up the phone the very day I left.

My dad and uncle both served 3-4 months in prison for refusing as a matter of principle, and my intent was to do so too until we decided to move our startup at the time to London.

Of course the main reason for that conscription was the Soviet Union/Russia. It's gotten very lenient since I left in 2000, as the size of the Norwegian military has been scaled back to the point they only need a small portion of potential recruits.

In Austria and Switzerland military service is also compulsory, but not really because of defense (Austrian military is a joke if push came to shove), but because it's an vast source of free labor for the state.

Unless you decide to go full career in the military, once you're done with the month long boot camp, if there's no war, national crisis or natural disaster that will get the grunts mobilized, the rest of the 5 months of service, are spent by the recruits dicking around on the taxpayers' money, doing useless busywork around the garrison.

And there's almost no way to avoid it unless you suffer from a severe physical or mental illness making you unsuitable for service, as even after you get out of prison for refusal, you'll be drafted back in.

PS: funny that you moved from Norway to London as many Brits I've met look up to Norway as a role model, so I'm really interest in your story

> PS: funny that you moved from Norway to London as many brits I've met look up to Norway as a role model

If you're a lower earner, quality of life in Norway is much better, but if you're a higher earner, London is great. And at the time funding in Norway was tricky. But, yeah, I look on British politics with great bemusement and a some sadness - so many lost opportunities.

My grandfather on my dads side refused military and got away with prison.

My grandfather on ny mothers side served and helped hold the nazis back for a few days in his home country and maybe helped some people get away. He later had to surrender and spent a short time in a POW camp before being released.

I respect both very much but I decided to do as my dad and serve.

It absolutely felt like the right thing to do for me.

I absolutely think there are situations where the right choice is to serve and I don't have an issue with people choosing to do so.

My main objection was not with the service in itself, but with it being compulsory under threat of prison. Of course today the "compulsory" nature of it is mostly a charade - if you want out it's trivial.

I'd sit in a jail cell before I got drafted into an unjust war. Doesn't seem like a hard decision to me. Now if you're repelling aggressive invaders, that's a different story.

FWIW going abroad has so far always been voluntary for drafted soldiers in most (all?) NATO countries as long as article 5 is not invoked.

I shyed away from education / officer training because I felt the risk of being sent on peace keeping to the middle east, but 20 years later I see I could safely have done it.

I'm in the US, we remember vietnam.

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