What, do the Bundeswehr and the IDF issue ASB-repelling bracelets or something?
Universal Conscription in a major Country
- Thread starter DominusNovus
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RamscoopRaider
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No, if you have a continent sized arena, then unless the sides start next to each other, only the British and French have the logistical ability to get to the other guy. The IDF and Bundeswehr are not expeditionary forces, they don't have the logistical tail to operate long distances from their bases. The IDF has never launched a major operation more than 200km outside of Israel, and does not expect to, so they don't spend money on having enough trucks, bridging equipment, airlift, field facilities to do so. Same story with the Bundeswehr, except they never launched a major operation outside their borders, or arguably at all. Both can deploy troops abroad, but can't do large scale combat ops far away without someone else providing the logistics. The British and French do do that sort of thing, so pay for the logistics train to operate independently, even if they sometimes have to rely on US logistics for help with larger deployments
I don't know from which country you are and what is your age.
But during the Cold War, most European countries and the USSR and China who are both majors players had a compulsory conscription for all their male population. Also most Communists countries had also laws of also including women in paramilitary organisations.
So you should ask somebody older than you if you lived in a country who had compulsory draft or read a book about the armed forces and the potential mobilisation of the Industrial Military Complex toward full war mode of these nations during the Cold War.
For France compulsory conscription existed until 1995.
70%, or a little more, of the men of my generation, I'm born in 1974, served in the French Army between 10 months and 12 months, some volunteers longer, for 18 to 24 months.
When I served, every profesionnal soldiers and officers I met, knew that an all volunteers forces will be superior to the conscripted armies, and they knew the change happenend somewhere in the middle of the 70's. At one point, military autorities in most European countries knew that conscription was useless but they continue to keep it by tradition.
I served 10 months, 3 weeks and 6 days.
To these 70%, you must add a few % who served a civil national service, working in the Police, the Gendarmerie, the Firefighters, in Schools or various Administrations or NGO working for various "good causes", or working abroad for the French government or a French Corporation, most of them "served" more than 10 or 12 months, closer to 18 or 24 months.
For the generation born 10 years before me, the percentage of men serving in the French Army was closer to 80%. The French Army is the Land forces, the Air forces, and the Navy. The National Gendarmerie is part of the French Army didn't received draftee as the others branchs.
The percentage should be the same in all European countries who have a compulsory draft.
Cryhavoc101
Donor
Yeah!
What he said (and I could not have put it better myself)
I recall reading Sir Peters book (General Sir Peter Edgar de la Cour de la Billière KCB, KBE, DSO, MC & Bar - now that's a name) which I think was called 'Looking for trouble' where he was in charge of infantry training platoon at one of the major training centres for the British army
The first year he was there, it was the last year of British conscription (1960?) and the then basic training course took IIRC 12 weeks.
The 2nd year he was there they had all volunteers and found that due to the increase average quality of the recruits they were suddenly able to get through the course with weeks to spare and so ended up adding in extra curriculum that they had not dreamed of with conscript recruits.
It depends on how/what they are trained in. It'd be neat if you used military conscription as a way to force the entire population to learn certain skills and knowledge (vehicle maintenance, self defense, emergency first aid & basic medical knowledge, foreign languages, wilderness survival, search and rescue, cooking, physical fitness, etc.).
All of these things could have a very positive effect on future lives as civilians.
All of these things could have a very positive effect on future lives as civilians.
Germany in a CP victory TL might very well keep it for cultural reasons. More so if there's a resurgent Russia yet no WW2, meaning they are both roughly equally strong manpower wise if you count Germany's clients, sorta wearly keeping conscription as a justincase-reserve.
Extended to universal conscription as a "Equal Responsibilities" measure once the women's movement takes off.
Extended to universal conscription as a "Equal Responsibilities" measure once the women's movement takes off.
With all the complexities of modern warfare how long would a conscript have to serve to both complete his/her training and serve long enough to become a useful soldier? Anything less than 2 years was pointless in the 50's and the RN's conscripts served 3 years with the fleet.
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Was the time not 2 years due to GB actually wanting to deploy them for a year+ in the empire or send ships out for a couple of years without having to swap crew all the time and fly them around the world? So it would be less than a year training and a year deployed not 2 years training?
Ie in WWII 90 days training etc was fine for combat so if you actually only want to train them but not actually get any use until WWIII or a defence of the home country with full mobilization than 3-6 months should work fine for most roles?
Isn't another problem with conscription based around a small professional core, that your small professional core ends up spending a lot of i's time just training cohorts of conscripts and are unable to maintain their own level of training. Or even if it's not the small professional core doing the training the resources you might spend keeping the small professional core up to a high standard, (or developing in some other way) gets spent on the conscripts.
Technically the People's Republic of China does have Universal Conscription. It just gets enough volunteers that it hasn't had to actually use Mandatory Service since 1949.