The current meme in particularly NATO-controlled German media this week is the idea that Putin is supposedly planning a direct attack on Germany (1 2 3)

Erkki Koort, the director of the Internal Security Institute at the Estonian Academy of Security Sciences, argued that Germany was a more logical and accessible target for Russia within NATO than the Baltic states.

He suggested that because Germany served as the logistical and strategic heart of Europe, anyone aiming to weaken the alliance had to strike its center first. The expert highlighted several factors that made the country vulnerable, including its role as a strategic hub and the presence of a large Russian-speaking population.

Ultimately, Koort concluded that neutralizing Germany would have yielded significant propaganda value for the Kremlin while effectively paralyzing NATO’s eastern flank.

They’re probably thinking “third time’s a charm”

What war is g*rmany even preparing for?

Mostly the war of line go up, but when you buy enough murderdrones from Rheinmetall and Thyssen-Krupp you obviously end up wanting to use them.

It could be civil uprising, due to cost of living crisis inevitably worsening under Capitalism.

It’s also quite likely there are some elements of Lumpenbourgeoise, which would be a Capitalist class so alienated, they are self-destructive. Leading their country through Arm-chair talk. Another thing to consider would be civil uprisings and economic crisis. You cannot prevent Capitalism from creating inequality, you can only control who the extracted wealth serves. The more poorly managed, the more there’s a reserve army of labor and you either have to send them to build a big project at home, like super railway f.ex or you have to send the people to like war f.ex (there’s other more/less twisted ways to deal with the developing underclasses.) but the point is have you noticed how in Western cultures going to war is this necessary evil, but Westerners can justify even conscription.

Meanwhile if I was to conscript my people to go to build a railway. I’m not saying it’s good idea, but for arguments sake, to demonstrate Western “Culture” and it’s wonders. See how easy it is to justify conscription for war compared to conscription to work. Now why is that? And ofc we wouldn’t even need to force people to do it, it’s not really effective or stable way to build shit anyways, but we could definitely have made culture around mass industrialization and not mass warfare, there was always a choice.

Of course the real answer is that European legacy, post-ww2, is extremely racist, alienated, entitled, furious, over-confident, thinks the so called '3rd world" is incapable of governing themselves. And it’s not like I hate the people, but I’m sorry to say I don’t see a way out of this. It’s easier to imagine Germany going to war with Spain and Ukraine going to war with Poland, than it is to imagine a socialist Europe.

No idea how much brain they really have and how face value they are: if they are as brainless as they appear, they are preparing for Ukraine. But if someone in the Bundeswehr have at last three neurons to rub together they would maybe realise they just have woken up in a colossal pile of shit with their big brother not necessary guaranteeing their stability, their alliance not necessary surviving, their army in shambles and their government unstable and population unstable politically. So they could probably think: first, pacifying their population and maybe second, potential war against Poland which first time in ages actually is stronger militarily than Germany but much of Polish army is actually irregular and so volkssturm could help equalise it.

(by assaulting a border guard on the way out)

But I’m a Reichsbürger bitte bitte, I don’t want to fight!

They always did say Ukraine was defending European values.

But this is actually the part I’m most interested in—how easy is it to get a deferral/exemption from conscription?

Advance warning, this is gonna get extremely German. CW for hair splitting, legalese, homophobia, transphobia, genital exams and SA. Yes, in a post about conscription.

At the moment, there is no conscription, as that has been on hiatus since 2011. This is the first step towards reactivating it. Right now, the situation is as follows: Young German citizens, and we’re talking really young here, 17-18 years old, are currently getting Musterungsbescheide. That’s the legal notice that you are summoned for a medical examination to test if you are fit for military service. Women and nonbinary people are free to ignore them, men however are legally obliged to answer. For the time being, they can just say “nope, not interested” and will not be drafted. If that does not yield enough recruits (it will not yield enough recruits, nobody wants to serve), this process is then rolled out to anybody below 45 years of age. If that still doesn’t get them enough cannon fodder (and again, there is no way it will), they plan to actually bring conscription back.

As this hasn’t been done yet, we can only guess how much of the old conscription laws will remain on the books. Most of it will likely remain in place, but they are already discussing minor changes, like not checking the testicles of recruits anymore (i am not making this up, back when i was military age and still had my balls, somebody from the mlitary actually grabbed them to check if i had cancer. Honestly, the Morgentau Plan didn’t go far enough). Historically, it was very tricky to completely dodge the draft. Outside of just being overlooked by the buerocracy, permanently leaving the country or being too criminal to be considered eligible, the most likely way was to be ruled medically unfit and that was very hit or miss for able-bodied people unless you knew a doctor who knew how to tailor just the right diagnosis to get you de-listed for sure. Historically, being gay or trans were grounds for exemption from service, but they moved to being rainbow imperialists and even before that, just telling your recruiter that you’re gay would lead to a ton of invasive questions and having to prove you’re actually too gay for the army (btw, the new self ID law for trans people has a clause about retroactively voiding your legal recognition as a woman if you make that change up to 3 months before the start of a war, i expect that to be made worse when they bring back the draft as the CDU is transphobic af).

In practice, almost everybody who did not want to serve in the military did Zivildienst aka Wehrersatzdienst (“replacement service”) instead. That usually meant working as an assistant nurse, helping with social work, delivering food to the elderly, doing disaster relief and so on. Originally, this required to go on trial and prove that your conscience prohibits you from taking up a gun on moral or religious grounds, and the trials were notorious for asking loaded questions like “what if you’re at the park and your spouse gets assaulted by Russian soldiers?” (yes, that’s an actual, real life example how these tribunals went). Later, i think in the 1980s or so, this got changed to only having to write a letter about why you are a complete pacifist - answers like “i do not mind self defense, but i will not go to the middle east to murder brown people” expressly did not count, you had to tell them you were an “i would never even touch a gun” peacenik.

As of now, the plan is to ditch this entire part and let conscripts choose between military and civil / social / medical service. But forced conscription for men will almost certainly come back. There will always be loopholes, nepo babies will have ways around this, but the normal pathway will be “you will work for the state for about a year”.

That’s a good point, the brain drain might be the biggest immediate concern.

Might be the best explanation short of they just don’t know what they are doing. But drain where?

They wouldn’t gender it if it were about brain drain though?