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.