German military's mission impossible, attracting recruits | Hacker News Reader

German military's mission impossible, attracting recruits

dw.com

14 pointsrntn5 comments

Another problem is the reputation of veterans. While many countries with a closer relationship between military and population (e.g. USA and UK) have managed to make a military career a great feature on your resume, in Germany it‘s almost assumed that you weren’t able to get a proper job and therefore ended up in the Bundeswehr. Enlisting for a couple of years is more or less career suicide so almost noone with a sought after degree would consider it.

> it's almost assumed that you weren't able to get a proper job

You write this like it isn't true. We're not talking about career officers here. We're talking about grunts. What is the fraction of grunt recruits in USA/UK that you think that could get a job with comparable pay, or (for the case of USA) could afford college, but they perferred to enlist instead?

Bad news for Bundeswehr, good news for German people I'd say.

Nah bad news all around. If Germany cannot keep up with basic NATO requirements, for example on spending, it imperils NATO readiness overall (since other partners have to pick up the slack). Hard to counter certain actors in Eastern Europe if your military operates on a stringshoe budget.

Lets also be real. If Germany puts in less in terms of funding and readiness, it opens itself up to exploitation by other NATO partners who in a pinch would be more then ready to excise certain concessions in exchange for running cover when it comes to NATO overall readines.

Every young man I know who enlisted in the US military had good job offers and college scholarships that he turned down.

A big part of their decision was based on wanting excitement, and a special operations infantry MOS was the way to get that.

For one young man, it was the job training. He never knew he was not born in the US until he was turned down for enlistment because he was an illegal alien. Then his parents confessed and he added getting his citizenship to the reasons for enlisting.

Good news for Germans - until the govt comes up with the idea of slavery, I mean obligatory conscription to fill it out:/

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