German army struggles to get Gen Z recruits ‘ready for war’

As a podcaster and freelance journalist, Ole Nymoen admits he enjoys freedom of expression and other democratic rights in his home country of Germany.

But he would not want to die for them.

In a book published this week, Why I Would Never Fight for My Country, the 27-year-old argues ordinary people should not be sent into battle on behalf of nation states and their rulers — even to fend off an invasion. Occupation by a foreign power might lead to a “shitty” life, he told the Financial Times. “But I’d rather be occupied than dead.”

Nymoen, a self-described Marxist, does not claim to be representative of Generation Z in Germany. But his stance — and his striking honesty about it — taps into a wider questions facing Europe as it re-arms on a scale not seen since the end of the cold war.

Berlin has poured close to €100bn into new equipment for the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz has announced plans to allow unlimited borrowing to fund defence spending as he promised to do “whatever it takes” to protect freedom and peace in Europe.

But, while those funds are helping to plug gaps in arms and equipment, one of the biggest remaining issues is manpower.

Germany’s armed forces commissioner, Eva Högl, this week warned the country was not closer to its goal of having 203,000 active troops by 2031, as the overall size of the armed forces slightly declined last year, partly because of a high number of dropouts. A quarter of the 18,810 men and women who signed up in 2023 left the armed forces within six months.

“This development must be stopped and reversed as a matter of urgency,” Högl said.

A Bundeswehr spokesperson told the FT the military had taken steps to try to stem the outflow of young recruits, including a notice period to avoid “last-minute, emotional” decisions.

But one senior army commander said members of Generation Z — renowned in the business world for their efforts to reshape corporate culture — were also going into the armed forces with different ideas and outlooks. “People are vulnerable, they cry easily,” he said. “They talk about work-life balance.”

“I understand that,” the commander added. “They grew up in a different time. It’s not a bad perspective. But it doesn’t match that well with a wartime situation.”

As Europe has again reckoned with the fear of an aggressive Russia, the continent’s political and military leaders have dramatically stepped up their language about what they expect from the public.

A senior UK general, Sir Patrick Sanders, last year told the British people they were part of a “prewar generation” that may have to prepare itself to enter combat. In Germany, whose 1949 constitution includes a commitment to promoting global peace, defence minister Boris Pistorius last year caused shock by declaring the nation had to be “ready for war”.

The warnings have escalated since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January and began pushing Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire as well as threatening to withdraw long-standing US security guarantees for Europe. Donald Tusk, prime minister of Poland, last week said his country was preparing “large-scale military training for every adult male”.

Germany has not gone that far. Top officials from the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, the two parties likely to form the next government, have ruled out a revival of traditional conscription. Merz favours a year of national service that would offer military and non-military options.

Still, the question remains to what extent populations in Europe are willing to accept the calls to join up for the armed forces in much larger numbers.

Sophia Besch, senior fellow at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International, said that although the threat perception among the European public was changing rapidly, “the next step [that governments are asking citizens to make] is a huge one — I want to fight for my country and I want my children to fight for my country.”

Besch said nations including Germany lacked that deep trust and the shared understanding of threat between citizens and government that had been forged in places such as Finland, which is famed for its decades-long focus on preparedness for an attack from Russia.

Moreover, she added, in the worst-case scenario, young Germans would most likely not be asked to fight for their own country but for Latvia or another frontline nation. “We have to ask ourselves what young Germans would be willing to fight for today. Is it Germany? Is it the European project?”

Since Russia’s full-scale Ukraine invasion, Germany has had a steep rise in the number of conscientious objectors (including both regular soldiers and part-time reservists). The figure reached 2,998 last year — up from 200 in 2021.

Klaus Pfisterer, of the German Peace Society — United War Resisters, a campaign group, said many of them did military service years ago, before conscription was abolished in 2011, and had then been assigned as reservists. In previous years that had not seemed like a difficult commitment. But today, against the current global backdrop, “they see this decision in a completely different light”, he said.

Christian Mölling, Europe director at the Bertelsmann Foundation, estimates that German troop numbers need to rise from 181,000 today to 270,000 in the years ahead in order to reach Nato targets — and fill gaps left if American forces stationed in Europe withdraw.

That excludes reserve forces, which currently stand at 60,000 but defence officials have said it must rise to 260,000.

Mölling said the Bundeswehr needed to drastically improve its recruitment campaigns to compete in a tight and competitive labour market, as well as doing more to modernise the military and make it an appealing employer.

“It can’t be mimicry, where you pretend you’re a modern army,” he said. “You have to do it.”

But many young Germans may simply be fundamentally opposed to the idea of signing up. Last month’s federal elections resulted in two parties that oppose arming Ukraine — the far-right Alternative for Germany and the far-left Die Linke — claimed almost half the votes of those aged 18 to 24.

While a recent survey by the pollster YouGov found 58 per cent of Germans would support a return to conscription, only a third of those aged between 18 and 29 felt the same way.

Nymoen, himself a Die Linke voter, is deeply suspicious of Europe’s race to re-arm. It was all very well for European leaders to sound belligerent, he said. “The thing is that, in the end, it’s going to be me in the trenches.”

Data visualisation by Keith Fray