View from London: Germany’s grand plan to build Europe’s strongest army is unravelling

Chancellor Friedrich Merz is pushing for conscription by lottery – but his plans are looking shaky, ‘The Telegraph’ notes.

Last week, Mr Merz suffered a head-on collision with his coalition partners over a key pillar of his grand plan for a new German army: military service for young men.

A row has erupted in Mr Merz’s government over proposals to forcibly recruit men by lottery once they turn 18, with the goal of creating a 260,000-strong standing army by 2030.

The Chancellor’s centre-Right Christian Democrats (CDU) party claims conscription by lottery is a “fair and rational” failsafe, in case Germany’s volunteer-based military service scheme does not produce enough soldiers.

However, the Social Democrats (SPD), Mr Merz’s centre-Left coalition partner, have been accused of blocking the reform amid pressure from young voters, and a firm belief that military service should only be voluntary.

The rift is so deep that Boris Pistorius, the SPD defence minister, was forced to scrap a press conference where the full details of the military service scheme were supposed to be unveiled.

There is even a risk that Mr Merz will not be able to unite his coalition around the issue, let alone pass a bill through parliament – which would leave his dream of building Europe’s “strongest conventional army” in tatters.

Military service, or “Wehrdienst”, is a tense topic in Germany, which carries immense historical guilt and has for decades preferred to take a backseat on European security issues. It used to have conscription, but abandoned the practice in 2011 as it was deeply unpopular and no longer deemed necessary.

That is all changing under Chancellor Merz, who wishes to turn Germany into a major European security power on par with Britain or France.

But post-war German politics has no tolerance for strongmen: it is by design a system where multi-party coalitions have to work painstakingly towards compromises.

In Mr Merz’s case, that means conscription by lottery must have the approval of the SPD, his coalition partner. And that is proving to be difficult.

A former Marxist movement, the SPD has strong tendencies towards pacifism, as well as nostalgic attitudes towards Moscow among backbenchers and party grandees.

One notorious example is Gerhard Schröder, the Kremlin-friendly former SPD Chancellor who maintained a close friendship with Vladimir Putin.

In other words, the party is not traditionally one you would expect to see clamouring for conscription at 18 and war with Russia.

Mr Pistorius, who is one of the SPD’s more hawkish voices on Russia, has spent years trying to shift the party away from that mindset.

He has warned allies that Germany must become a “kriegstüchtig”, or war-ready, nation that views Russia as a threat, not an old friend from its Communist past.

But his decision to torpedo the military service bill this week suggests he has caved in to overwhelming pressure from more traditional voices in the SPD.

Carlo Masala, a German political scientist, said the SPD was resorting to “tactical opposition” to sink the military service scheme because the lottery element is hugely unpopular among its young voter base.

“The SPD youth wing is also opposed [to conscription]. This has already prevented Pistorius from passing a more ambitious law in the last government,” he added, referring to a failed attempt at bringing in the Swedish model, which conscripts a small proportion of young people.

In other words, young Germans should find comfort in knowing that they might not draw the proverbial short straw that commits them to six months of boot polishing and parade square-bashing.

A recent poll found that only 37 per cent of Germans aged 18-29 are in favour of conscription, figures that hint at future issues around draft-dodging. Experts have also warned that the Bundeswehr is not ready to take in a huge influx of new recruits.

“Currently, there is a lack of capacity to train, equip, and accommodate large numbers of conscripts,” Colonel Patrick Sensburg, the president of Germany’s Reservist Association, told The Telegraph.

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