alt Hacker NewsSo it's a cold war law which is still in place but not being enforced.
Same for conscription laws in the Netherlands, which are also still active. They just don't ask anyone to report for conscription. It was even expanded a couple of years before the Ukraine war to also include women.
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Previously it was conditional, only in effect “in the event of tension or defense” (machine translation) which I will define below, but they are very exceptional circumstances -- AFAIK not ever invoked since unification.
The change this year was to make it applicable regardless of those conditions: “Outside the tension or defense case, §§ 3 [...]” shall apply.
"Tension" is defined by an imminent threat (e.g., invasion) and must be explicitly invoked by leadership. "Defense" is actual ongoing attack of territory, and must be explicitly invoked by the Bundestag.
I have used https://www.fr.de/politik/drastische-wehrpflicht-aenderung-m... to form my understanding. Can be read freely by prepending archive.is/newest/ to the URL.
> The new military service law requires all men under 45 to seek approval from the Bundeswehr to leave the country for longer than three months. It also obliges the military career center to issue it.
New. Not cold war. This didn't exist before.