Usually HN is very wary of the consequences of the state collecting data about its citizens and restricting freedoms in small steps. Is it not the case now?
Hint:some of these events involved spheres of influence and control over resources in eastern europe!
But let's call it what it is: compulsed military service is slavery for the elite.
The guaranteed next step is to offer the volunteers a long term paid contract at the end of their term. This would probably be well above what they would be paid elsewhere (young men with no university degree, desperate enough to volunteer in the first place).
Run the scheme for a few years, and you will have a large number of, young, high-school-level educated people that are financially dependent on the army. Thus, a militarized society.
What could possibly go wrong?
EDIT: If you understand German, here is a song from 1972 about these brutal cross-examinations:
> Franz Josef Degenhardt - Befragung eines Kriegsdienstverweigerers
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDTtMTcj8X0
Additionally, the participation of Germany in the first aggressive wars in Yugoslavia in 1999 and then in Afghanistan from 2001 on (before citizens were told that the Bundeswehr is only a defense army, and would never participate in an aggressive war) lead to a radicalization of another generation against the Bundeswehr - and yes, this generation eagerly listened to the above-mentioned horror stories of the older generations. It is even rumored that this next generation's radicalization against the Bundeswehr indirectly lead to the suspension of the compulsory military service in Germany in 2011.
Finland, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Austria, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Thailand each have active conscription [1]. The slippery slop you describe is far from inevitable.
Also, if you have decades of mandatory conscription then there is no slope to slip. Germany on the other hand is now on a slope, since they regress from a fully professional army back to conscription. How much down they will slip, remains to be seen.
Active != mandatory.
> Mandatory conscription (which I have personally served) is for a fixed term, so your livelihood is not tied to the army paying your salary
You're seriously arguing that countries with mandatory conscription are less militarised than those with active (but not mandatory) conscription?
I don't know how the Selective Service requirement in the US works, so I can't answer this question.
> Or is it “easy” for the German government to establish a draft?
Such a (temporary) suspension can hypothetically terminated at any time by the government. The question is basically how the population will react. I guess if the suspension of the general conscription would be terminated by the government, there would be really furious public rallies (and I am rather certain that my boss would immediately attempt to approve a vacation request if I wanted to attend such a rally in Berlin if it happened during the work week - just as an "innocent" kind of support for this cause from behind the lines :-) ) because multiple generations got really radicalized against compulsory military service (I wrote about this topic at https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=46177817 ).
This is why the German government currently attempts to approach the whole topic of quitting the suspension of compulsory military service so indirectly.
But I think you should legally be able to answer if you can think of anything between 1914 and 1945 that is taught to Germans in schools that might cause younger Germans to feel some aversion towards preparing to fight a land war against russia in eastern ukraine? Anything that maybe resulted in the premature deaths of millions of young german men, initially volunteers who were solicited at the secondary school level?
Massive political differences and ultimate outcomes aside for each conflict, Germany becoming increasingly militarized has a poor track record when it comes to not getting extremely large numbers of teenage german boys killed in eastern Ukraine.
On top of that there is a large dislike in the society against military system. To break that you won't just need "a few years", but likely ~2 generations of compulsory military service for both men and women (e.g. how Isreal does it), that forces a personal connection with the military for everyone.
And even with the new voluntary service the armed forces will be much smaller than the army of just West-Germany alone during the cold war (which was about 0.5 million).
It's time to wake up to the fact that the Cold War actually never ended.
Tbf, at least in West Germany people had a choice. In East Germany you ended up as 'Bausoldat': https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bausoldat, and you could forget about any 'carreer opportunities' for the rest of your life.
And as former East German who then went the 'Kriegsdienstverweigerer' path in unified Germany during the 90's I cannot complain about any discrimination or incorrect behaviour, all communication was perfectly correct and respectful and I didn't even have to show up anywhere in person (in hindsight it was a silly decision - but in the 90s it really looked for a little while like the Cold War might be over and armies would no longer be needed in Europe).
In the 90s, the situation was already very different - doing alternative national service (Zivildienst) instead of compulsory military service got a lot easier (possible exception of which I heard: you were very athletic - it was rumored that then they still made it much more inconvenient to refuse to do military service).
For good reasons, my references were from older generations - the trauma that they had to endure if they wanted do alternative national service (Zivildienst) instead of compulsory military service exactly did lead to the situation that it got much easier in the 90s to do alternative national service instead.