Sense and nonsense of the German draft

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by Schroeder

Yep, as you said , a lot have no where else to go. From what I've heard even criminals are now taken in the US army because you can't fill your ranks with other volunteers (I'm not sure whether that is true, but I believe I've read something about that a couple of years back). Those are exactly not the people I want in the armed forces.

Well you have to read into it a little more than that. The standards in the US military are low so they can fill the ranks (not much of a problem, aside from a few occassions). If the standards, training, and pay were higher, they'd attract better volunteers. This is one of the reasons I so heavily favor private involvement in the military. I don't care which contractor you're talking about, they all have the best gear, training, pay, and people.

See above. In Germany you don't have to join the military if you don't want to. You can do an alternative civil service. So everyone who joins the armed forces could choose and chose the military.

Doesn't seem like much of a choice to me. How well does the civil service do? Do they have the same problems? Are they efficient? My guess would be no, but I'd like to find out.

Even with conscription the Bundeswehr is short on GOOD people who want to become professional soldiers. A lot of the professional ones decided to become professionals during their draft time. Remove the draft and you remove also those people who would otherwise not have gotten into contact with the armed forces. You can guess how many good people they will get then.

Or you can look at it from the opposite way and say that if Germany had a more professional fighting force they would attract more non-conscripts. Few things motivate people like money, even Germans. Throw in a dash of Prussian pride in military excellence and you're well on your way to having an elite fighting force.

That's something I forgot to mention. There's a little secret I will tell you Y'know what makes the US Marines so reknowned as a fighting force? It isn't gear or funding or the recruits we get, it's pride. Soldiers who are proud of their service will train, fight, and work many times harder than any otherwise equivalent conscript.

I hope you and Sky don't mind me mentioning it, but I think that this irrational sense of permanent guilt that Germany feels over WW2 has undermined what should be a very proud military tradition. The Wehrmacht was so formidable in WW2 that the US continues to use their tactics and even their gear to this day. Even the new marpat cammies and helmets make us look like Waffen-SS. We don't have a problem with it, why do you?

No, but it indicates that the author is not an insider and so one should take everything he writes with a grain of salt.

Well,I'm an insider and I can totally see this kind of ridiculous behavior going on.

Oh come on, even my grandfather told me about some stupid things they have done when he was a soldier during WWII. Soldiers do stupid things in their spare time.

Which is fine, until they start doing stupid things with important things. That's what I'm talking about. If discipline is lax enough that these kinds of silly games go on, what kind of maintenance is the gear getting? Is everything accounted for? Do we even know what gear we have and where it is?

Yes, they have their personal equipment. But your rifle has to last for roughly 35-40 years before it gets replaced.

And? My old unit still has radios that are fifty years old and they still work.
I've been issued M16's with handguards that fall off and loose magazine catches. My combat M249 had a loose sear pin that almost caused me to shoot my foot off! None of those problems were an excuse for failure. If your weapon is broken, you fix it. If you can't fix it, you figure out something else. It's a mess, but it can't stand in the way of mission accomplishment.

I'm afraid I don't know what a crack shot is

Elite shooter. Expert rifleman. Olympic-class marksman. "Crack" in that context in English means "elite of the elite"

is but you can forget about becoming a squad leader in 9 months in the Bundeswehr.

Stratification problem?

An expert in his speciality? How do you become an expert in aiming a mortar if you can't fire the damn thing a few times? How do you become an expert in driving an IFV if you don't get fuel for driving it frequently? Etc.

Good troops will find a way. You can become an expert rifleman by practicing with a weapon that has no bullets; tape a laser-pointer to the end of the muzzle and snap-in (dry-fire). No armored cars to drive? Drive a regular car with simulated vision slits. No hand grenades? Take turns using a spent flashbang grenade, or even a rock. No bullets for squad exercises? Yell "BANG" (the Corps loves doing that one)

Physical fitness is the only thing I can see them getting for free (even the Bundeswehr can afford new sport shoes).

They have sport shoes? Why don't they run in their boots!? Then they'll have some money for bullets.


You don't get what you pay for in the military, you get what you invest in. Give me a squad of Bundeswehr conscripts and I'll have them bleeding combat excellence in a month. There is no reason why any man eligible for service should be honing his skills in sleeping bag races unless we're training to assault and consolidate a position from a sleeping bag for some unfathomable reason.