Germany: return of military service?

In January 2023, shortly after taking office at the Ministry of Defense, Boris Pistorius, when asked by the media about the possibility of reinstating mandatory military service in Germany, said:

“If you ask me that question as a civilian, as a citizen, as a politician, I would say: it was a mistake to suspend conscription [in 2011]. And I’m not saying this because of the current situation. Our parliamentary army must be at the heart of society. In the past, there were conscripts at every second kitchen table. This is how there was always a connection to civilian society. But it cannot be reinstated as easily today. Now, we need to make the Bundeswehr attractive enough so that young talents are interested and engaged.”

This position of the Defense Minister is surprising due to his party’s stance, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), whose pacifist tradition remains strong, and from a government official’s point of view, due to the relative political consensus that accompanied the suspension of conscription in 2011.

In Germany, military service (‘Wehrpflicht’) has a long history marked by the rupture of 1945, the establishment of a ‘parliamentary army’ (‘Parlamentsarmee’) in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), the German reunification in 1990, and finally the suspension of conscription. The paradigm shift caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has led to intense debates about a ‘new’ military or defense service. These debates crystallize the ambivalent relationship of German society with its army. Germans have high confidence in the Bundeswehr but express strong reluctance to a generalized obligation, in a context of rapid rearmament and uncertainties about the future of the armed forces in the face of threats to Europe.

ARTICLE OUTLINE

• The conscription in West Germany: ‘citizen in uniform’ and ‘parliamentary army’
• German society and its army after the suspension of conscription
• Towards a reintroduction of military service?

Paul Maurice is the Secretary-General of the French-German Relations Study Committee (Cerfa) at Ifri.

Article published in ‘Foreign Policy’, vol. 91, no. 1, 2026.