Bundeswehr

[John]

Why in this modern day, with it being such a rich country, does Germany have a conscript army? :blink:

[Craig]

Probaly in order to put a bit of discipline into there youth. Otherwise they wouls be running about getting pissed fighting taking drugs and sticking there fingers up at society. Remind you of anywhere?

[John]

Yup, 1930s Japan... cheeky

[Grant Broadhurst]

Hello ,

I,ve often wondered why they don't scrap it especially as the German Economy is currently going up the wall !

Mind you it keeps their unemployment figures from looking too bad !

Grant

[Tony]

Hello,

Those that do not wish to join the Bundeswehr have to do civilian service which amounts to looking after disabled people, working in hospitals, helping the aged etc.

I think if conscription was stopped, those who until now have done their civilian service (which is as far as I know, longer than the 5 minutes spent in the Bundeswehr) would also want it made voluntary. This would cost the German tax payer far too much money and so probably won?t happen in the near future.

I think German conscripts serve less than a year now (about 9 months) so, if you subtract their leave (6 weeks?), training and one exercise they are only in the barracks for a few weeks before returning to civilian life.

Tony

[Biscuit Brown]

The upside of Conscription is the fact that a country has a pool of trained soldiers to call upon when they are needed, the down side is that conscripts rarely want to fight......

[Rikster]

The Bundeswehr (That is Heer,Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine) is not a PURELY conscript army, it has a great many "regular" troops the conscripts make up a small low end contribution. On a personal note I think its a bloody good idea.

Cheers, Rikster

[JensF.]

A little correction, it is the Marine or Bundesmarine. No Kriegsmarine anymore, you sunk our proud Bismarck... The good side is that a conscript army produces much more reservists than a regular army and you have the so called "Staatsb?rger in Uniform" (= citizen in uniform), which means that the most male citizens have served in the army and so the army is much more spread around, especially in the mind, if you know what I mean. It is more accepted instead a regular army. It is also cheaper in my opinion. At the moment you have to serve for 9 months including 8 weeks of basic training (or are we down to 6 weeks?). Conscript soldiers can't be send to foreign missions, except they fill out a form and serve longer, for example 12 or 16 months. Otherwise the time is too short for the special mission training of minimum three weeks and the mission of 4 months. However since we are not an army "to fight", there is no "red threat" anymore, the biggest part of our work is to take part in foreign missions like KFOR, EUFOR and ISAF and to help during catastrophies. For example I served 9 months in the Luftwaffe from 1996 to 1997, became a reservist later and now I am a Sergeant First Class (Oberfeldwebel). Last year I was in Kosovo with KFOR for 6 months (now they changed to only 4 months) and there are thousands of former conscript soldiers who do it this way.

Edited October 26, 2005 by JensF.

[Chris Boonzaier]

I am a firm believer in a profi army, especially nowdays.

The Bundeswehr needs a total makover. Tonight on TV they showed the 50th Birthday of the Bundeswehr on the TV... even the military bands were playing very limp classical music instead of marches... not so long ago an officer refused to train his men "for war", he was disciplined... took the Bundeswehr to court... and WON !!! to require him to train his soldiers fr war is unconstitutional !!

I think it takes at least 3 full years to train a soldier, months is a waste of everyones time.

[Gordon Williamson]

One thing I remember from a couple of attachments our unit did with the Feldj?ger in Munster was the way that the guys doing their national service used to mouth off quite openly to the regular SNCOs. If a private had mouthed of to one of our NCOs the NCO would have punched his lights out. They were slovenly buggers too, I remember some guys with brown laces in one of his black boots. They just didn't care. Our RSM would have had an apoplexy if we'd turned up with brown laces in our black boots.

They were great guys to work with though, made the whole thing fun, great guys to get bladdered with too.

[JensF.]

I know what you mean, Gordon. Sometimes it is a little bit chaotic, but I wouldn't go into a mission with any other guys. It is a lot of fun and the craziest thing is, as I saw it many times in Kosovo, they do their job much better than many other nations.

Edited October 27, 2005 by JensF.

[PKeating]

I spent some time with 271. Fallschirmj?ger and they were a fine bunch of lads with real ?sprit de corps. The run-of-the-mill national service soldiers were rather like conscripts anywhere: the best of them were on a level with a TA battalion of The Queen's Last Resorts and the worst evoked visions of a depot full of sickies excused boots. I remember seeing one BW infantryman - I use that term loosely - in sneakers and a hairnet, with visible rust on his G3. But hey, he'd have done just fine jamming up the runners of T72s had Ivan ever rolled across the border. National Service is a good idea but ought to be for a minimum period of two years. It shan't happen in Europe anytime soon because our rulers fear the notion of citizen soldiers with the military training that might enable the people to overthrow governments by force of arms in the absence of any meaningful say in who is running the show. Politics aside, on a more mundane level, national service would certainly remove a lot of the little hoodies and cornerboys from our streets for a while, which would reduce the noise levels and generally improve everyone's quality of life. It might even help some of them towards evolving into members of the species homo sapiens.

PK

Edited October 27, 2005 by PKeating

[Gordon Williamson]

I know what you mean, Gordon. Sometimes it is a little bit chaotic, but I wouldn't go into a mission with any other guys. It is a lot of fun and the craziest thing is, as I saw it many times in Kosovo, they do their job much better than many other nations.

I agree. It was probably just that we had some sort of mental image of the Feldj?ger being ultra-smart, very disciplined etc. In reality although their attitude and dress was extremely casual, they were very efficient, got the job done without issue, and were great fun to work with. (We liked the idea of being issued with a Walther P.38 (is it the P1 they call it now ?) instead of having to lug a Sterling SMG around, but definitely preferred our Land Rovers to their VW Kubels !)