Analysis
German students strike against the military draft
“We cannot allow our fate to depend on our luck in the draft lottery. We want to decide our own future.”
“We don’t want to become cannon fodder.” With this slogan, German students prepared for a Schulstreik (school strike) against the return of military service sought by the Merz government.
On Friday, December 5 – at the same time that members of parliament gathered in the Bundestag to approve the new conscription law – young people unwilling to wear the uniforms that the CDU Chancellor and the SPD Defense Minister have already prepared for everyone born after 2008 took to the streets in Berlin, Potsdam, Cottbus and other German cities.
“No one talks to us. No one asks us what we want. No one wants to know what we think.” This is the primary complaint of the generation that the political class is forcing to “do its part to protect the country” in view of a “likely enemy attack in 2030.”
“This is about nothing else but our life. We are the ones who will be affected by this military conscription,” the students say. The draft will be formally voluntary, but it provides for mandatory selection by lottery if the minimum annual quota of soldiers set by the General Staff of the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) is not reached.
“We cannot allow our fate to depend on our luck in the draft lottery. We want to decide our own future.” This isn’t just a message directed at parliamentarians rendered deaf by the call of war, but the internal rallying cry among students conveyed by the web platform of the movement (schulstreikgegenwehrpflicht.com) to shore up support for the strike.
Thus, it is for the benefit of the only ones willing to listen to the demands of the Schulstreik against military service – demands which, moreover, rest on the solid legal foundations taught in all German schools since the end of the Third Reich. “What about our right to live in peace? What about Article 4, paragraph 3 of the Constitution, according to which no one can be forced to take up arms?” the students recall, showing themselves to be “model students” of social democracy. They have never been invited to be part of the self-absorbed circles where the public debate on the return of the draft is being conducted: “We are brought up in all the news bulletins, on talk shows; political leaders, experts and even the Bundeswehr are discussing us. Now we are forcing you to listen to our point of view: war is not a prospect for our future.”
The Ministry of Education responded with a note that those who strike will be considered absent without justification.
Beyond the students, activists from the “Disarm Rheinmetall” initiative are also resisting the plans for a return to militarism. On Monday, they gathered once again in Berlin for a demonstration denouncing the immensely profitable business deals of the national arms giant, fueled by the public contracts provided for in the rearmament plan. On the agenda was the dangerous mixing of roles between the civil and military spheres in terms of areas of responsibility, but also the crucial issue of how to connect the different pacifist and anti-imperialist struggles more and more.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/sciopero-degli-studenti-tedeschi-contro-la-leva on 2025-12-02