Since the general conscription for males was suspended in 2011, Germany has been relying on volunteers. Recently the number of young males wishing to serve in the German armed forces has become insufficient. According to a report some 28% positions among the lower ranks, and 20% of commissioned officers remain unfulfilled. We can wonder why.
To serve in the military, a young man needs to be attracted to it by either good wages or a heightened feeling of patriotism. Obviously, neither of the two factors operates. Young men can look for a better career elsewhere while patriotism has too long been ridiculed and downplayed to remain relevant. Besides, as is officially stated, every fourth citizen of Germany has the immigration background. The new Germans are Germans in name only. Why, their parents or grandparents left their countries and relocated to Germany not to defend Germany or fight for it, but to earn money or to simply receive welfare from Germany’s extensive and magnanimous social system. There can be Germans-cum-Turks who feel German rather than Turks – to take one exemplary ethnicity – but that is rather the exception to the rule. If their parents or grandparents did not feel patriotic enough towards their countries of origin, why should we assume that their children or grandchildren should feel obligated to their adoptive country? That’s a matter of mentality that is passed down from generation to generation biologically and through upbringing. The point is that you don’t leave one country for another in order to fight for the adoptive “homeland”. You relocate purely because of materialistic incentives and you raise your children in this particular spirit.
How about genuine Germans? Young Germans have been groomed to feel ashamed of Germany’s recent past. Germans were evil during the First and the Second World Wars, Germans were evil also before, colonizing and exploiting parts of Africa and China. German militarism was at the core of this evilness. If so, then why join the armed forces in the first place? Young German boys and teenagers have soaked up thousand of American movies in which the German military was presented as repugnant and repulsive. Why should these boys strike upon the idea of continuing this dishonorable tradition?
Those few who might consider joining the German armed forces are looking around and they have second thoughts. In German cities, the majority of inhabitants happen not to be German. That is, many of them carry German passports but genuinely German they are not. Why should a young male join the armed forces, be sent to Afghanistan or Ukraine, lose a limb or an eye, get killed, and leave Germany to all those Germans whose Germanness is confined to carrying a German passport? Why should a genuine German defend a German in name only?
Only money can solve the problem of recruitment, big money. But then you become a soldier not because you love your country and your nation – there is none actually – but because you are paid for it. Thus, Western democracies have come to a point where they can only rely on… mercenaries. Mercenaries confronted with patriotic soldiers stand little chance.
There comes yet another factor: that of the alleged Russian threat. The German authorities are worried that they cannot field an army capable of defending the country, and they maintain that more troops are needed because – as is repeated again and again – Europe in general and Germany in particular are threatened by Russian aggression. Obviously, young German males do not feel like that statement is true or else they would flock to the military ranks. Obviously, the threat card does not work. Propaganda is effective only so much. Though exposed to the reports about Russian aggression, somehow people do not feel this aggression is real. Why? Maybe because some of the consumers of (mis)information can still use their brains. Using their brains they can figure out that Russia hasn’t been able to defeat Ukraine in three years, so how come is Russia going to defeat the whole of NATO?
Then comes this psychological factor. The complaints about the shortcomings in Germany’s military personnel have been voiced by one Eva Högl, defence commissioner(ess). You might say what you want, but an army is a masculine profession, a vocation for males. The long-standing policy of saturating the armed forces with women and homosexuals along with placing women at top military positions as practised in the Western world has beyond doubt discouraged many a young man from even considering joining the armed forces. However much reeducated young German boys might be, you cannot break the underlying biological reality in their psyche. To be given orders by a woman or a gay is certainly not one of those perspectives that a male teenager has been dreaming of all his life. Effeminate men are certainly not about to become soldiers anyway – manly men are not about to have their masculinity emasculated by taking orders from women officers and – for that matter – commissioners. That’s pure biology at play here, that’s nature. No one has ever been able to free himself from natural laws.
The push for women soldiers has played havoc with the willingness of men to commit themselves to a soldierly career. This policy is destructive. The biological differences cannot be ignored or played down. Recently a video has been doing rounds showing a resounding defeat of the all-women football Swiss national team playing against boys under 15. As can easily be observed, men lose interest in professions in which women are overrepresented. That’s what happened to the profession of teachers, and many others. So, if the military is going to continue accepting more and more women and homosexuals, they can as well not count on remaining attractive to male adolescents.
