Compulsory military service should be reintroduced this year in Germany, a leading official of the party that won recent federal elections said this week amid growing questions about the reliability of U.S. defense commitments. “The first conscripts will have to walk through the barracks gates in 2025,” Florian Hahn, a defense policy spokesman for the center-right Christian Democratic Union, told the German newspaper Bild on Tuesday. Germany suspended military conscription in 2011, but the CDU and its Bavarian counterpart, the Christian Social Union, say the current security situation makes the status quo no longer tenable. “We cannot stand by and watch as the world around us becomes more unsafe,” Hahn said. […]
Meanwhile, Andre Wüstner, the chairman of the German Armed Forces Association, which represents volunteer reservists, said some form of a draft should begin immediately. “Without some kind of new conscription, we will not be able to recruit and retain the personnel we need,” he said Tuesday on Welt-TV. Läs artikel