Germany is reducing conscripts’ tour of duty from 9 to 6 months (it was 18 months with some kind of reserve duty during the Cold War).
So conscripts will now spend 5 months in training to prepare them for 1 month active duty? :dubious: How does that make any sense? I know more German men pick the “alternative” civilian service with social welfare agencies and emergency than go into the military, but the alternative service is also being shortened to 6 months. Social service providers aren’t too happy about that since there won’t be enough time to cost effectively train them for all but the most basis tasks like stocking shelves or custodial work.
I’m from the US and have no expertise with Germany, but the logical answer to me is that it would mean a large pool of already trained recruits should they need to institute a draft. I can’t think of any other reason that this could make any kind of sense to anyone.
I agree. Having people train for 6 months means you could call up large civilian reserves that are already familiar with the army ‘culture’ and will probably remember very basic military procedures. I was in 10 years ago and I guarantee I could field strip an M-16 right now just because I was drilled to do it so many times in basic.
While most Israelis serve 3 years in the military, new immigrants over a certain age only serve 6 months and then enter the Reserve system. My dad did that: he moved to Israel at 23, served six months, and then served in a reserve combat engineering unit for an additional 22 years.
Presumably its also a message of intent. They could have just dropped it, and had a lottery with longer service terms, but they have decided to keep it the same for everyone.
Partly a military gesture, partly a political one.
Six months is probably just long enough to let them know what they’ll be in for, and short enough that they wont be too well drilled if one group of recruits decides on an insurrection.
It’s a political fudge, basically - there are not enough slots in the armed forces which have undergone major restructuring since the Cold War to draft all 18 year old males who are neither conscientious objectors nor medically unfit. This has up to now been handled by raising the bar for the medical and lowering the bar for exemptions.
The military would prefer to convert to all-professional armed forces but political considerations militate against that - mainly the Weimar Republic-era armed forces held up as an example of a professional military disloyal to democracy. Advocates of conscription see it as a means of the people to keep control of the military, and armed forces containing conscripts as a counter to governments being tempted to military adventures.
Maybe it is a peace measure. Everybody is required to be in the army for 6 months so that they learn to hate it with a passion and spend the rest of their lives promoting peace so they don’t get called up.
In early 1864, when the Civil War had already dragged on for four years and volunteer recruiting in the North was at a low ebb, three-month enlistment terms were offered to get a lot of troops in the field in a hurry for U.S Grant’s spring offensive against Robert E. Lee’s army. Many of the “90-day regiments” served on garrison duty or in fortifications around Washington, D.C. to free up more experienced troops to take to the field.