Overview
- Patrick Sensburg, president of the Bundeswehr Reservists’ Association, predicts up to roughly 40,000 voluntary applicants from a cohort of about 600,000 but says that would still be insufficient to sustain the reserve.
- He cites Bundeswehr calculations that a high‑intensity war could see up to 1,000 soldiers per day killed or too severely wounded to fight, requiring large numbers of reservists as replacements.
- Sensburg is skeptical of a pure lottery for selection and argues for a mix of merit‑based selection and a lottery to choose entrants.
- A new Wehrdienstgesetz is slated to take effect on January 1 with initial service on a voluntary basis, while Defence Minister Boris Pistorius seeks to reinstate medical screening of young men and the coalition continues to negotiate fallback mechanisms.
- The German Red Cross urges that official outreach also highlight social‑service options, and policymakers are reviewing approaches in countries such as Sweden, Denmark, Lithuania and Poland.