German Conscription

For me it is something from the 1950s: the idea that young people should be forced to serve in the army.

Conscription ended in the USA in 1973 (they had Vietnam) and in Britain in 1960, but it has been kept on in Germany, alone amongst the major European countries.

Military commanders have always thought it was a waste of time training reluctant, unfit recruits and there were serious doubts about whether they would actually fight if the time came. And social liberals like me always believed it was merely a way of keeping the young under control. Now it is to be scrapped, the excellent Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg calling a halt to it by 1st July, 2011.

An intresting statistic is that more than 40% of draftees were turned away on health grounds.