Above photo: Laurențiu Dragota/DKP Berlin.
“You’re not a coward if you don’t want to die for Germany!”
Tens of thousands of high school students in Germany went on strike against compulsory military service, pushing back against the government’s militarization agenda.
Around 55,000 high school students skipped school on Friday, December 5, and went on strike in 90 cities across Germany, after a broad alliance of organizations, including local student councils, called for a school strike against compulsory military service.
The strike had been organized for weeks: students founded strike committees at their schools, painted posters, wrote speeches, mobilized their friends and resisted the repression by school administrations across the country. The strike was called for December 5 to coincide with the time when the federal cabinet passed the so-called Military Service Modernization Act.
Germany’s new modern armed forces
As part of the general armament campaign Germany is currently undergoing, Boris Pistorius, Federal Minister of Defense, set ambitious goals for the German army, the Bundeswehr: to meet NATO requirements, it will need to grow to 460,000 soldiers. But lately, the armed forces have not attracted many people to join their ranks on a voluntary basis; there are currently only about 180,000 men and women in active service – and they are aging.
Apparently, Germany’s new army will be built through a carrot and stick approach. As late as Thursday, Pistorius took to Instagram to convince German high schoolers that a strike was unnecessary because no one would be forced to join the Bundeswehr. But, even if they were forced to sign up, the argument seems to go, protesting would be unpatriotic at best – and surely undemocratic.
As Germany’s economic prospects remain stagnant and the costs of living are rising unabated, a young voluntary soldier with no professional experience will earn a monthly salary of €2,400 from the first day of service. Minimum service will be 6 months, but an extension past one year will see an increase. For comparison, an apprentice earns a monthly salary of less than €1,000 in their first year of work, and the average income for young people between 20 to 25 years old is about €2,000 per month for a full time position. In addition to that, the Bundeswehr offers other “perks,” such as a subsidy for drivers’ licenses (which currently cost 18-year-old applicants a prohibiting €4,000 fee per person), free public transportation, and child benefits.
This would make Germany’s new soldiers the best paid in all of Europe. Will young people be poor enough to join, or, as the mainstream press puts it: is this offer attractive enough for young people to join the army in numbers the government needs?
The new law will leave nothing to chance. All children born from 2008 onwards will receive a mandatory questionnaire on their 18th birthday. For the moment, women can choose to participate. In case these invitations are not followed by enough voluntary sign-ups for Bundeswehr service, the same dataset will be used to conscript young people, first by lottery, and later by other means.
Fit for service is fit for war
The striking high school students have no illusions about the purpose of this military service. It is neither for defense purposes, nor is it improving the livelihood of the majority of the population. They identified this ruse of a mandatory temporary military service as a direct pipeline into the trenches built by a warmongering government that cannot be trusted.
“We are impressed by how many students went on strike today. This shows that students are not only speaking out against conscription in surveys, but are also willing to take action against it. They have shown courage today, because they don’t want to spend six months learning how to kill. They don’t want to die in war,” explained Hannes Kramer, press spokesman for the initiative.
Why students chose to strike rather than attend school was evident in the anger expressed in many of the speeches, interventions, and flyers. Young people in Germany haven’t felt heard for a long time: schools are decrepit, housing is not affordable, their activism for Palestine or in the defense of democracy is repressed or instrumentalized, they inherit a broken planet. To add insult to injury, they are now asked to make new sacrifices, deferring their dreams and ultimately their lives for this state.
“If the government loves us so much, why do they tell us when we will be drafted but never ask us what we want to do with our lives,” shouted 16-year-old Clemens to the 3,000 people who attended the strike rally in Berlin.
The overall number of striking students may still have room to grow, but the participants already showed their creativity in their posters and bands, their determination by resisting pressures from opposing institutions, and their clarity of thought in speeches. They see themselves in the tradition of Fridays for Future, without any illusion of appealing to this government or the state. The students are now mobilizing for another strike on March 5, 2026. They are our biggest hope for peace.
