Germany suspends military approval for long stays abroad for men under 45
bbc.com
bbc.com
Because it seems that for being so obsessed to be prepared for war the only ones affected are the working class. The rich are just wasting resources away like if there was no tomorrow.
I just see austerity 2.0 to cut citizens rights, cut services to the working class and transfer as much wealth and power to the super-rich as possible.
I am all for Europe being prepared for war. That is a necessity. So, I am all for better health care, better education, less dependency on foreign gas and oil, better funding for goverment programs ... real measures to be prepare for the worst and less bending over to rich foreign interests.
Europe no longer needs its people, our governments have demonstrated clearly that the average person is irrelevant and replaceable. Our industries have been sold off and outsourced, we no longer make anything except spreadsheets to enable globalists and asset stripping private equity parasites. Our history and diversity has been deemed non-sacrosanct, if some other country in the world can provide infinite cheaper labour then they are invited to replace us.
In a decade there will be no jobs even for the Uber imported class - we will all just be a burden on the super-rich who want to enjoy the European land in peace without so many people. Do not let them have this. Refuse to fight.
I mean, fighting to protect the people of a country is also a thing, it doesn’t have to be for the politicians.
How would that change any of the stuff you lament?
Even the worst imaginable invasion would change little for the elites but a lot more for everybody else.
Which means business/scientific/... elites that see things coming far enough out are fine, or get out with a large loss. And yes, I'm sure there's the occasional one that's really smart that gets out with a small profit, but I'm sure a large loss is the more normal experience.
Political elites, which is the large majority: people who are rich because they have a role in government, directly or indirectly are fucked.
Why? Name one scenario where EU needs a bigger army and masses of barely-trained conscripts.
If you say "Ukraine loses", why not spend all effort on helping Ukraine instead?
> So, I am all for better health care, better education, less dependency on foreign gas and oil, better funding for goverment programs ...
You do realize that preparing for war is insanely expensive and can only be funded by cutting all those other nice things? Also, what do we need education for if we actually expect many people to die in World War style ground warfare?
How about: Let's build some nukes, spend the rest of the money on Ukraine support, and forget about ground war conscription lunacy?
It can't be allowed to cost any real amount of money. In case you're about to say that's a contradiction with Ukraine support: 96% of all EU support to Ukraine is a loan that has to be repaid (and the "90 billion" package will be that, as well). If Ukraine wins, the current tally is that 15% of all Ukrainian tax will go to, well, effectively Germany. Still better than living under Putin, I get it, but ...
As for Germany's own wars: the German state sees Germans as both expendable and cheap. As you point out, these wars are pretty much planned in at the moment.
Oh and making these weapons, whether that means nukes or the other weapon that has worked really well in Ukraine (killbots), is going to be massively unpopular. (What are these killbots? Think the terminator T-1-8, except with realistic tires that will actually work and only one gun [1], or in the air [2]) Especially once AI is built into them.
Why? Every soldier, every person, that sees those drones is going to realize exactly what the German state wants of them: the areal ones are suicide drones: the German military will use the Zap Brannigan technique. After all, 1 German corpse = 1 disabled drone. Or get shredded to pieces by an AI machine gun that never misses in hopes that your corpse ties up it's tires afterwards. Odds are not good, so there will need to be a lot of you doing that.
I'm sure they'll give you a gun and be very happy if you disable a drone with a shot instead of your corpse, but the only guns that kind of work are shotgun net-launchers, which we all know right now: the military will never approve.
Don't worry, I'm sure the higher ups will get medals. Not for actually going on the frontlines.
Oh and the news from the frontline: those drones themselves are pretty good against bullets. Even hitting them does not often disable them. And hitting them is very hard to begin with.
Oh and, of course, it's not "the state" demanding this, it's the current German population not wanting to give up, well anything, to improve the future. By the way: the only thing worth discussing to be (partially) given up, really, is social security (41% of expenditures). The next 4 biggest costs are healthcare (16%), government jobs (17%), transportation (12%) and (least important) education (9%).
So it boils down to the same thing it always boils down to: the population must work more. In the sense that a decent chunk of Germans who either don't work, or work in government, must get themselves private sector jobs.
Alternatives? Well ... I have someone here: Wait! Comrade! Just say No! We'll just eat the rich instead! As for your question which party put Putin in power ... we don't talk about that. How rich is Putin? We don't talk about that either. Aren't most of the German rich "clients" of the state even now? And won't state control make that worse? I said: We DO NOT talk about that! Eat the rich! And don't build defenses at all! That's the solution.
[1] https://gdb.rferl.org/01000000-0aff-0242-3688-08dc5fafb30c_w...
[2] https://www.twz.com/news-features/inside-ukraines-fiber-opti...
EU expects to use Russia's frozen assets as collateral/reparations for repayment when Russia gives up/Ukraine wins. Everybody knows that Ukraine cannot repay themselves.
> whether that means nukes or the other weapon that has worked really well in Ukraine (killbots), is going to be massively unpopular.
This thinking dominates the current discourse and it is shockingly stupid. Making nukes and drones is bad and unpopular, alright.
So instead we "prepare for war" and "get ready for hard times" because it sounds so brave, so heroic and abstract. Politicians are suddenly allowed to spend staggering amounts of money on defense companies - people love it - and nobody wants to ask what exactly is the scenario we are preparing for.
Most EU support is not repaid
> the German state sees Germans as both expendable and cheap
Germany hasn't lost a soldier in combat in over 10 years
> terminator
The rest is not even wrong
In the US it was very fascinating to see the reaction to the Iran conflict. A bunch of geriatric pedowood actors and actual Epstein associates were seething that young men in general across the political spectrum who do not want to die in a pointless war of nothing in some god forsaken desert again.
I'm opposed to conscription in general, but I live in Sweden with gender-neutral conscription laws, and I would do my best to defend my country if it became necessary. If I were a man in an alternate version of Sweden with male-only conscription, I would feel so disrespected and devalued by the state that I couldn't imagine myself defending it, so I would either join a non-state-affiliated resistance group or flee the country.
If I lived in Germany right now (even as a woman, but especially as a man), I would seriously consider emigrating to a more egalitarian country as soon as possible.
Having said that. The real problem with that law is not even the law itself but how it came to being, which unveils a completely messed up and incompetent legislative procedure in the German government and parliament.
Sure they can fight and kill.
But a country that loses its ability to make more people won't last longer than a generation.
Two things a country needs from which all other needs derive: people and a border that can be defended.
Men historically get sacrificed to protect the border. And women "sacrificed" to make more people.
Food, entertainment, religion, government, taxes, education, etc... it's all to serve those two fundamental requirements.
By and large, women stopped "sacrificing" a while ago, globally - or at least reduced it by large numbers.
Which is completely fine.
But it makes the original point moot.
Then another 100 years.
Men and women are essentially different in real biological ways, as well as emotional and socialization.
For millennia, women and children have been held innocent and protected. This is why Christian societies don't throw them on the frontlines as cannon fodder, but rather, the men go in front and the men fight, as expendables, while the woman and children can be protected far behind the front lines of any conflict.
Women can bear children, feed their infants, and care for families even while men are occupied or absent. Women are much more capable of restarting a civilization even when the men are decimated. It is a very logical and pragmatic decision to protect women and children from warfare and violence.
Conversely, armies of female warriors have enjoyed legendary status as especially fierce and undefeated. How many of us have enjoyed "Wonder Woman", "Calafia", Amazons, and the rest?
Furthermore, a soldier may be victimized by rape. SA of a male has different consequences than SA of a mature woman. You can imagine that a woman who becomes pregnant faces difficult decisions for the rest of her life. Again, the expendable nature of men makes us less susceptible to SA and ransom plots and other manipulation by the enemy.
So the trouble today, is that women are "empowered by equality" and demand every right and privilege that is due to men, and that extends to dirty horrible jobs, and fighting in combat. Women who are empowered by equality are also going to be subjected to responsibilities and duties that they didn't have before. Societies are simply coming up with no other choice but to put women in combat, because the women are doing every other job and it seems absurd to hold back.
Naturally, putting women in harm's way, and even conscripting them, eventually seems necessary if the adversary is doing it too. I am not sure that our Islamic or East Asian adversaries are doing this, but perhaps Westerners believe that we can thus gain the upper hand. I propose that it will disadvantage and disgrace us instead.
I fully agree, now, larger society doesn't and if all of my schooling is proof of it, feminism is the dominant discourse in Western Europe. So we can'be having women be fully equal in all spheres of society when it benefits women, but then remove them from every obligation those rights come with.
The full consequence of your ideas is that men and women are different people meaning it affects every sphere of life, and leads you to ask some unsavory questions, which doesn't mean curtailing women's rights necessarily but it does mean that the the way we model society and genders is opposite to reality, because when reality, like war, asks hard questions we default to the old order of men in the front and women in the factories.
Only around 10% of the US military is in combat roles.
This is a Victorian (or incel) look back at history.
We have been repeatedly told that "equality" is primordial to our values. That men had to forego their privileges in the name of it.
The hypocrisy of the defenders of those ideas suddenly being so complacent when we look at the other side of the coin is revolting.
Because as a man myself I honestly wouldn't be able to say which privileges I've lost that my forefathers enjoyed, besides sexism with impunity. In fact, I have it easier, for the time being at least. No military conscription for one. And with the recognition that the patriarchy hurts all I've been able to actualize myself in a way that is more authentic to myself than the constraints of past generations would have allowed.
None. The privileges that I was supposed to enjoy thanks to my gender were either vastly exaggerated or already revoked.
But I still get to "enjoy" the measures installed to counterbalance and compensate for them anyway.
> No military conscription for one
Lucky you. I don't. And the voters for "equality" massively voted to keep it that way for me a few months ago [0]
[0] https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/2025/article/double-non-aux-i...
Care to name a few?
Life is not fair, but you can learn to accept what is expected from you by the circumstances of your birth. I had to serve in the military, because I was born a man and a Finnish citizen. I accepted that, because it was my lot in life. My rights and duties would have been different, had I been a woman or a Swedish or US citizen.
On the other hand, I would have found it extremely unfair if conscription had been based on a random lot. Regardless of if it would have covered only men or women as well. It would be unfair to condemn someone to serve due to bad luck, when another person like them is allowed to walk free.
Universality is the fundamental justification for conscription. Conscripts should only have to fight in a war that is serious enough that the country is willing to send all its sons (and daughters, if you prefer that) to risk their lives. If the country does not believe in the war enough to justify that, it should send volunteers, not conscripts.
The vast majority of men in my grandparents' generation served in WW2. Most of them saw combat. That was always the expectation what conscription is supposed to be for. My parents' generation saw their peers in the US conscripted and sent to fight in Vietnam. But only some men were conscripted, and only some conscripts were sent to Vietnam. It's not inherently wrong to use conscripts in a foreign war, but it's wrong to use them in a war that's too unpopular and too irrelevant to justify mobilizing the entire generation.
I still don't understand this in my 40s and after serving in military (conscription) - why would you defend any country?
I can't imagine scenario when I am defending any country just because some other management wanna take over, I mean, what's the point risking your life for having different politicians maybe speaking different language.
If you fight people are gonna get killed, so unless it is some evil taking over who wanna do genocide, if it's just about gaining area/resources whar's the point in fighting?
I'd sure protect my own family if it would be in danger, but if I don't fight other soldiers why would they care about my family?
Btw. while I agree the conscription should be equal, you need much more women to repopulate the country than you need the men, since men don't give a birth.
You defend yourself, your family, your relatives and your friends.
You are not strong enough to defend these by yourself, so you can do this only by joining the army of the country in such cases.
It would be great if these kinds of actions would have become unnecessary in the modern society, but wars are still started by despicable humans like Putin, Trump and their associates, and there are even hundreds of millions of people who appear to approve such actions.
In the distant past there have existed a few "civilized" wars, where for much of the population it did not matter who won the war, because that just meant that they would pay the same taxes as before to a different authority, but they would just go on with their lives.
However, this has never happened again in modern wars.
In modern wars, the winners do not really have any use for the inhabitants of the occupied territory, so even when they avoid to kill them, they will just steal in one form or another most of what they own and they will discriminate them in various ways.
Especially the Russians have a long history of stealing everything they could from their neighbors after winning any war against them and making any conquered people 2nd class citizens, who had to give up their language, culture and history, and replace that with praising their Russian conquerors, rebranded as "liberators".
So when faced with something like a Russian invasion, which is a real risk for any neighbor of Russia, there is only one way of survival, which is "defending the country".
This is not some theory devoid of content, like the propaganda that American soldiers should invade for instance Cuba, because this "defends the interests of their country" (which is code for defending the interests of a few ultra-rich people).
When you are in Europe, there is a non-null risk that you might be forced in the future to "defend your country", as the only means for your own survival.
my family is not some dumb country, I have no allegiance to any country, heck I dont even live in country where I was born, but even if I was I cant imagine fighting whoever just to please local politicians
you are talking about some politicians wars, if people ignored politicians and everyone minded their own family there would be nobody to fight against
so once again, unless someone attacking plans to do genocide on us (like Israel vs Palestine), I dont see point in fighting (like Ukrainians should do with Russians, especially since they are basically brothers sharing same language, same recent past and it was really just about change of management)
Russia occupied my country for decades, people lived their lives, it was certainly better than if they died fighting them
Article 12a of the German constitution states:
"(1) Men may be called up for service in the armed forces, the Federal Border Guard, or a civil defence unit upon reaching the age of eighteen."
The current administration has a majority, I think three votes (excuse my inaccuracy), to change the constitution. Women can fight as well, and they do. But there is currently no legal, constitutional way to officially draft them.
Some of the toughest soldiers I trained were women. I got put on my back on international cqc training exchanges by Israeli women more often than by anyone else.
Also, most of the high-profile politicians only have daughters, take the German Chancellor (two daughters) or the Prime Minister of Bavaria (1 1/2 daughters). They don’t have any personal interest that their daughters might get drafted. That’s another dimension to the problem.
Women in general are a great military asset, as they provide a non-male perspective you won’t get only working with testosterone-dominated brains.
It’s not like women don’t want to protect their fellow citizens.
It’s that the German military has huge structural problems to include them into the force properly, and the people in charge also know that, for a lot of men serving, they are still not equal, and a lot of men in the service don’t want to fight alongside a woman and trust them to have their back.
It’s a mix of toxic masculinity bred inside the military and a lack of combat experience alongside women. If you ask any American or Israeli soldier who fought alongside women in actual combat, it will be tough to find anyone to critique their value as soldiers or questioning their equality in the service.
I also appreciate your female perspective on this very much. But Sweden, in terms of gender equality, is miles ahead of Germany in many places. And to be fair, Swedish women live a more independent and less male-reliant model of relationships and live than most people on this planet.
The German defence minister acknowledges this, btw, by often talking about how implementing the "Swedish model" would raise a next generation of soldiers with a more modern view of freedom and responsibility that is more balanced between the genders than the current conservative societal model in Germany that is the man goes to work, the woman stays at home and takes care of the kids and the man fights to protect them if necessary.
A lot of our modern human rights today come from the anti-war movement. This is a highly controversial topic, and I read a lot of interesting opinions in this thread. It’s hard to argue for combat readiness for both genders if most people right now witness the abuse of military superpower like in Ukraine by the Russians or in Iran, causing a lot of loss of life and hardship.
I have been through all this before. Young students shouting murderers at the airport, peace signs everywhere. Most of my colleagues were angry, I was happy so many people showed up and made their voice heard without fear or repression. That’s the kind of freedom you fight for. It’s not always pretty if you’re on the receiving end but I considered that part of the job.
https://www.bundeswehr.de/de/organisation/zahlen-daten-fakte...
Leaders like the POTUS, the Chancellor or the "Czar" exert immense influence over the global stuff. Let's press all of them to behave sanely and throw out of their bed the weapon companies. In the 60's the USA had 60000 nuclear warheads, now 5000. Let's make them 60000 again so to stop all conventional wars overnight.
I feel it’s more realistic than getting rid of lobbyists unfortunately. (Still no clue as to how to achieve it though)
Do you really believe it’s all a hoax and Russia is not invading/bombing/attacking the Ukraine?
If Russian troops attack, the options are “fight back” and “surrender”. Long term, there are other options in order to avoid being in the same position again (kill all arm lobbyists to start with =)
I'll be scrolling HN from the trenches long before any army reaches Berlin.
It doesn't look like they can break Ukraine anytime soon. And each month Ukraine bites back pushing the prospect of full-scale war with NATO (or what is left of it) even further.
I find that unlikely.
The rule isn't new, it existed for decades all the way back to the beginnings of the Cold War. Nobody cared back then (neither the people nor the army), nobody should care now (there are no sanctions). I guess some journalist was actually reading through the consciption law (as probably the only person on the planet), stumbled over that passage and turned it into an elephant.
"Die Regelung habe bereits in den Zeiten des Kalten Krieges gegolten "und hatte keine praktische Relevanz", teilte das Ministerium mit. Sie sei auch nicht sanktioniert. Im Gegensatz zur alten Fassung gilt die Genehmigungspflicht nun auch außerhalb des Spannungs- und Verteidigungsfalls."
The rule existed, but apparently they broadened the scope. In any case, even if the rule is ignored nothing happens - so the question is of course why that rule exists in the first place of course.
The most surprising thing is that the ministry didn't figure this out itself. You'd expect the people drafting laws to consider such things. Thus, it's an indicator of ministerial sloppiness. Not a nothingburger.
This I agree with. Might have to do with law changes requiring a two-thirds-majority in parliament though. They could have communicated earlier and better though.
In this case, there are none.