Former Chief Inspector of the Bundeswehr, Klaus Naumann, anticipates that the new military service model introduced by Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) will eventually be replaced by a general compulsory service duty. While acknowledging that Pistorius’s move to a voluntary service model is a “possibly right steps” amid the challenges, Naumann cautioned to T-Online that the military service cannot simply be reactivated “at the flick of a switch.” Given the weak public response to the new scheme, he believes the serious public debate about needing general conscription is inevitable.
Naumann highlighted the low engagement seen in recent surveys, noting that only a small portion of the 300,000 questionnaires distributed to young people since the beginning of the year were answered positively. According to the former chair of the NATO Military Committee, this lack of positive feedback is not necessarily an indicator of a willingness to serve in the Bundeswehr. He emphasized that the military urgently requires skilled personnel, stating, “It helps nothing if we get people who believe they cannot earn money elsewhere. We need young people who are ready to perform, are willing to sacrifice, and are qualified enough to handle complex technology.”
The former general also lauded the general conscription that was suspended in 2011, calling it a “fantastic instrument” for recruiting long-term servicemembers. He recalled that during that time, conscription helped generate roughly 20 percent of the officer corps and about 40 percent of the NCO corps-figures he said the current Defense Ministry could only dream of reaching. This historical success reinforces his belief that the question of general military service will surface sooner or later, suggesting the nation must consider a broader general service obligation, not just traditional military conscription.
On a broader level, Naumann expressed serious doubts about the readiness of German society for a new threat environment. “I am not sure if our population is ready to step up to defend freedom and democracy, and to bear sacrifices and take the final risk,” he stated. He argued that defense has never been solely the affair of the armed forces but always part of the overall society. He cited the massive dismantling of civic preparations-such as health system planning, food and water stockpiles, and population readiness spaces-done under the illusion of perpetual peace, calling this belief an “illusion.” He warned that “the nature of man will never allow us to stop seeing wars. War remains an unpleasant companion of humanity.”
Naumann defended Defense Minister Pistorius’s push to make the Bundeswehr “combat-ready.” He interpreted the term as not implying war is desired, but rather that “the armed forces must be able to conduct war, so that war never takes place on German soil again.”
The former Chief Inspector offered a critical assessment of the Bundeswehr’s development over the past decades. He argued that the balance between defending the nation and fulfilling NATO commitments, as well as conducting foreign deployments, “was not maintained as it should have been.” While he did not fault the focus on overseas operations per se, he strongly criticized the exclusive focus on these deployments. Specifically, he labeled the dissolution of the Army Air Defense Troops as a “catastrophic error,” arguing that an emerging drone warfare trend was already visible at that time.
