Germany raised its citizens to hate war. Now it wants us to enlist in the army – but we say no | Mithu Sanyal

When I was growing up, the most German sentence imaginable was: “We’ve lost two world wars and we’re proud of it.” We were so anti-military, we even gave our policemen green uniforms, to make them look more like foresters than soldiers. Now, the chancellor, Friedrich Merz, wants our army to become the strongest in Europe. I mean, what could go wrong?

After we lost the second world war – or, as we prefer to say, after we were liberated by the allies – we swore “never again”: never again to war, and never again to Auschwitz. Admittedly, Germany rearmed in 1955, but just as “citizens in uniform”, not as soldiers following orders. Mind you, that didn’t mean that you could say “no” to an order; it just meant that we had conscription for most young men until 2011.

If that sounds incredible, for us it was incredible that the British army, among others, fought wars all over the globe. For most of my life, the German army didn’t venture beyond our borders. Then came reunification in 1990, and during the first sitting of the all-German Bundestag, the then chancellor, Helmut Kohl, announced that we had to step up internationally: in 1994, the law was changed accordingly to allow the Bundeswehr to be deployed “out of area” again.

Nonetheless, Germans remained squeamish about the idea that our soldiers might actually do what they have been trained for. So we convinced ourselves they were “only digging wells”. I kid you not: that was the standard reply to the worried pacifists of Germany, which accounts for a large proportion of people who have experienced the German education system – and heard those “never again” messages over and over.

That all changed in 1999. I always try to convey to people outside Germany the seismic shift that occurred that year, when our then foreign minister Joschka Fischer declared we had to let go of “never again to war”, in order to honour “never again to Auschwitz” – because Serbia was planning what Fischer called a “new Auschwitz” in Kosovo. Invoking the Holocaust was the only way to get the German public to accept our participation in international wars again.

So now we’re bringing back conscription – only we call it voluntary conscription. What could be more “Newspeak” than that? How about awarding a major peace prize, the International Peace of Westphalia award, to Nato? As it happens, Germany has just done that. Even Germany’s Protestant church has been re-evaluating its stance on war and the atom bomb this month, publishing a 149-page report, with the following conclusion: in these troubled times, “Christian pacifism is ethically not justifiable”.

It is scary how fast this is moving – and some of the details are mind-boggling. In an imitation of The Hunger Games, our cabinet has proposed to let a lottery decide who will have to fight for Germany, if not enough young people join the army voluntarily. Presseclub, a popular TV current affairs programme, suggested conscription is good for you, because – wait for it – when you’re called up for national service an examiner inspects your genitals, so it’s like a free prostate cancer screening. This goes beyond merely cultivating support for remilitarisation – it’s telling the German people: we think you’re stupid, and we’ll treat you as such.

Maybe we are stupid. A few months ago a prominent German feminist pointed out it was against equal rights that our sons had to go into the army. You bet it is! But then she went on to ask for conscription for our daughters as well. Feminism does not mean this kind of equal injustice for all, but liberating our sons from having to die for their country as well.

And die they will, if we enter the Ukrainian war with manpower, as well as with arms exports. Patrick Sensburg, president of the Bundeswehr Reservists Association, warned that 1,000 soldiers would die or be seriously maimed every day. So is he warning against this sort of madness? No. One of his main concerns was how to replace 1,000 dead human beings each day. The solution: conscription. Now Sensburg is not only a reservist, he is also a former member of parliament with the governing CDU. So when he talks about replacing 1,000 dead boys – and maybe dead girls – daily, as if that were inevitable, he speaks from a position of proximity to power. Likewise, Chancellor Merz knows he is helping to reconstitute the national mood and set a new agenda when he says: “We are not at war. But we are no longer at peace.” So does nearly every politician and – I’m ashamed to admit – nearly every journalist in Germany. They are participating in what propaganda researchers call cognitive warfare.

Advocating for pacifism does not mean abandoning Ukraine. I agree the war in Ukraine is a crime – so why aren’t we doing everything in our power to end it? Why aren’t our politicians talking about detente, 24/7? This is precisely why I oppose the reintroduction of conscription: a country that isn’t doing everything to prevent wars has lost the right to ask its citizens to participate in them.

But ask we do, and the answer is overwhelming: “No”. Most Germans under 30 are against conscription – and it’s only Germans that are too old to go to war that are in favour. The German Peace Society reported a sharp uptick in interest in conscientious objection during the summer. Indeed, it has just updated its strategy: it is now advising that young people refuse conscription preventively, after the Federal Court of Justice ruled that conscientious objection is prohibited in times of war. You know what else is prohibited? Wars. Banned since 1928, when Germany signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, designed to prevent another world war. Ah.

• Mithu Sanyal is an author, academic and broadcaster based in Düsseldorf. Her most recent novel is Identitti