Germany votes to bring in voluntary military service programme for 18-year-olds

This got to be the final scream of a dying regime.

Not so long ago we were told a serious army has now to be a professional and highly trained army. Everything else was useless.

But they seem to plan to just draft young people and fight some sort WWI a bit like the nightmare in Ukraine.

But today Western Europe countries are not Ukraine. If they would engage in a war they would collapse into total chaos very quickly. Those are old, very divided and absolutely not resilient societies.

Just cutting the electricity for a week would collapse the cities. Starting with people putting the buildings on fire because they do not know how dangerous candles are.

"Training" young people for 6 months wouldn't change that.

This is a bit like what happened in WWII when Germany attacked country like Belgium or France. They went right through it because there were a dissymmetry between the German who had it really tough for 20 years and the Belgian or Frenchman at the time.

But the current head of NATO is a former HR at Unilever, so I guess he knows better.

The alternative of doing nothing, pretending the world is the same as 15 years ago and praying for world peace doesn't seem like a better idea.

If anything military service should have been kept everywhere in europe. Not for war, but for national cohesion, for some people it was the only time they'd get out of their little social bubble and stereotypes.

The speedy success of Germany invading France in 1940 had more to do with their use of radios and giving commanders on the field some latitude on how to accomplish objectives than with the consequences of the Versailles treaty on the population. The French Army and the British Expeditionary Force were more stuck in a WWI style of command from the top that proved vulnerable to speed. But it wasn't clear cut as the "fast attack" plan was initially rejected by the German top brass, themselves still stuck in the past.