Over half of Germans would not fight for their country

Telegraph

a day ago

Nearly two-thirds of Germans would 'probably not' defend their homeland from invaders, a survey has found, in a blow to the government's rearmament plans.
In a survey carried out for RND, a German broadcaster, 59 per cent of respondents said they were 'probably' or 'definitely' unwilling to defend the country from an attack.
Only 16 per cent of Germans were 'definitely' willing to take up arms to defend Germany, while 22 per cent said they would 'probably' do it.
The new figures are a headache for Boris Pistorius, the German defence minister, as he leads efforts to rearm Germany and turn it into a serious European security power, following decades of under-investment in the army.
In July, Mr Pistorius unveiled plans to recruit 40,000 young adults per year into the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces, by 2031 as part of a new military service scheme.
The same scheme plans to send out compulsory questionnaires to young male Germans to fill in once they turn 18, and could be followed by compulsory health screenings of young men to check their suitability for the army.
Bundeswehr officials say that the overall size of the army needs to grow from 182,000 soldiers to at least 260,000 by 2035. The Bundeswehr reserve forces also need to be increased from 60,000 to 200,000 people.
The German military has struggled for decades with recruitment, partly due to Germans' wartime guilt and a widely held view that their country no longer needed an army. Conscription in Germany, which was deeply unpopular, ended in 2011.
But the Russian invasion of Ukraine has prompted a major rethink on security in Berlin, known as the 'Zeitenwende', or turning of the times.
Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, declared that 'Germany is back' after his election victory in February, as he vowed to stand up to Russian president Vladimir Putin.
The centre-Right Christian Democrats [CDU] party leader has introduced historic debt reforms, which allow potentially unlimited government defence spending on projects costing more than 1 per cent of GDP.
The Merz government has also created a 500bn euro (£435bn) special infrastructure fund, which will rebuild the country's crumbling road and rail networks.
The fund is a crucial part of Nato's wider security planning for a potential war with Russia, as Germany would serve as a transit zone for troops and tanks en route to the eastern front.
Germany is not the only country having difficulties drumming up recruits: in Italy, a similar survey also found that only 16 per cent of citizens were willing to defend their nation - despite defence spending increasing by 46 per cent over the past decade.
In Britain, the army and navy have missed nearly every annual recruitment target since 2010, according to government statistics. The shortfall has been blamed on stagnant pay, poor military housing, a wider downward trend in young people being interested in fighting for their country.