After a proposal on 22 November 2010 by Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the German Minister of Defence at the time, Germany put conscription into abeyance on 1 July 2011.
Male questionnaire recipients must provide information about their motivation for military service, and 40,000 men will then be compelled to attend a muster.
[8][9] The participation of women and other genders in equality to men,[a] as regulated by the Self-Determination Act from 1 November 2024,[10] will remain a subject of discussion from 2024 but requires a change to the constitution.
During his service, he received free health care, housing, food, and railway travel between his home and military base.
The German contributions to forces such as ISAF in Afghanistan and KFOR in Kosovo exclusively comprised professional soldiers and volunteers.
Conscripts that served in civil protection received no payment outside of compensations for clothing and transportation expenses, as they were performing an honorary service (ehrenamtlich).
The branch then sent this appendix to the Federal Office for Civilian Service (Bundesamt für den Zivildienst) for approval or denial.
These claims must have been directed against war and military service in general, without regard to the circumstances, and, if they were rejected (which was then a common outcome), the only legal recourse was to challenge the decision in administrative court.
Therefore some young men moved to West Berlin immediately upon their high school graduation in order to avoid conscription, and thus served neither in the military nor in an alternative service.
[14] In East Germany, conscripts who were not willing to bear arms were drafted into the National People's Army as construction soldiers (Bausoldaten).
They were deployed to public construction projects, and sometimes also to fill worker shortages in various parts of the East German economy, such as the mining industry.
Men who served as Bausoldaten were frequently subjected to discrimination by the East German state, even after they had finished their service.
'development helper'), which means that the person would be expected to work in a technical capacity in a recognized developing country for a period of not less than two years.
To qualify for this option, the candidate had to meet the requests of the chosen agency which included formal vocational training or an educational program that granted a recognized qualification in a marketable skill making him a useful asset in a developing host country.
Many men who chose this option became so engaged in the developmental needs of these countries that they stayed abroad many years longer than the legal requirement.
The disproportionately high percentage of German nationals found in many international aid, conservation, medical and technical assistance organizations active in developing countries may be directly attributable to this.
This included social security coverage for the term of service and might have given the young attendee a direction for their later career as well as a certain improvement in soft skills.
In practice, the most frequent punishment was three months imprisonment, as longer first-time sentences would be recorded in a Polizeiliches Führungszeugnis (certificate of conduct).
Experiences of countries who have abolished conscription, especially the United States and France, show that professional armed forces can be more expensive than a conscription-based military.
Professional armies need to pay their soldiers higher wages, and have large advertising expenses to attract sufficient numbers of able recruits.
Civilian detractors argued that conscription was simply anachronistic, instilling an undue sense of militarism in young men, and also delaying their entry into the workforce.
Conscription obliged at least the male portion of the population to pay society back through military and civilian service.
A purely civilian compulsory service would be incompatible with the German basic law, which permitted conscription only for the purpose of defense.