"Your Year For Germany"

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Young volunteers in Germany are being offered seven months military training as part of a new scheme. In return, they must complete five months service over a six-year period.

Spend a year serving your country. Twenty years ago the idea sounded old-fashioned—so old-fashioned that most of the countries that had national service did away with it. But threats to democracies are growing, and, what’s more, Western societies are fragmenting. The concept of serving one’s country—whether in the armed forces or a care home—is making a return.

Germany’s Minister of Defence, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, officially launched the Freiwilliger Wehrdienst im Heimatschutz or “voluntary military service in homeland security” programme in Berlin on Tuesday last week. The programme aims to encourage volunteers to take a year off to serve with the armed forces, before starting a career or studies.

Volunteers who are accepted will enter three months of basic military training, which will take place across 13 locations in Germany. They will then take part in specialist training, in which they will learn how to defend different structures, like depots, apartments and bridges.

Following seven months of training, recruits will then serve five months in reserve exercises or assignments within the following six years. Recruits will be deployed as close as possible to where they live and have the opportunity to learn based on their personal interests.

[Predictably] Several criticisms of the new programme have been raised, ranging from concerns around giving recruits as young as 17 the opportunity to use a rifle, to the name of the programme itself. The German word Heimatschutz (or “homeland security”) has far-right far-wrong connotations, which has drawn unfavourable comparisons to reports of far-right far-wrong extremism in the Bundeswehr.

Kramp-Karrenbauer has defended the use of the controversial word, saying that the problem was that far-right far-wrong extremists had been allowed to appropriate it. Lieutenant General Markus Laubenthal has since said that recruits would be screened to prevent anyone with far-right far-wrong ideals from joining the programme.

Since 2011, the German army has become a specialist army and is less than ever in need of conscripted recruits. However, two issues have fueled a renewed debate about whether a voluntary form of military or civilian service should be introduced in Germany. These issues are the growing polarization of society and the rise of far-right far-wrong extremism in the military, as exemplified recently by the discovery of such extremists in the ranks of the elite KSK commando force.

"Your year for Germany" is the title given to Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer's idea. It would complement the voluntary military service that already exists; this service is paid and can last up to 23 months. Some 9,000 young people — more men than women — have taken up the offer in recent times.

https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-a-year-in-the-service-of-germany-cant-do-any-harm/a-54070693 .

https://wri-irg.org/en/story/2020/your-year-germany-new-voluntary-service-and-debate-reintroduction-conscription-challenge .

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/04/national-service-germany-usa-ask-what-you-can-do-for-your-country/ .

History of concept:

A One-year volunteer, short EF (de: Einjährig-Freiwilliger), was, in a number of national armed forces, a conscript who agreed to pay his own costs for the procurement of equipment, food and clothing, in return for spending a shorter-than-usual term on active military service and the opportunity for promotion to Reserve Officers.

The Austrian Bundesheer still recruits their reserve officers from one-year volunteers. It also uses this means to assess the suitability of aspirant officers to begin specialized studies in "military command and control" (C2) at the Theresian Military Academy in the Wiener Neustadt.

The "one-year volunteer service" (Einjährig-Freiwilligen-Dienst) was first introduced 1814 in Prussia and was inherited by the German Empire from 1871 until 1918. It was also used by the Austro-Hungarian Army, from 1868 until 1918, and the Austro-Hungarian Navy. One-year volunteers also existed in the national armies of Bavaria, France and Russia.

Hiwi, the German abbreviation of the word Hilfswilliger or, in English, auxiliary volunteer, designated, during WW2, the member of different kinds of voluntary auxiliary forces made up of recruits indigenous to the territories of Eastern Europe occupied by Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler reluctantly agreed to allow recruitment of Soviet citizens in the Rear Areas during Operation Barbarossa. In a short period of time, many of them were moved to combat units.

Volunteer Reserves (United Kingdom) .

Royal Naval Canadian Volunteer Reserve .