The inevitable end point of German Russophobia. We are slowly turning into Nazi Ukraine: first censorship of Russian media now travel restrictions for military age men. Next up, vans abducting men from the street and indefinitely cancelled elections?
It's bleak. This utterly cringe continent feels like it's dead set on suicide charging into Russia again. White Tiger was a documentary.
The fact that this change has been reported on very little, and if reported on then well after the change took effect, is very concerning.
Yeah, the lack of reporting was also mentioned in the original source that was cited in this article which is the Berliner Zeitung:
It is as if it is preparing the legal grounds for forced conscription.
At least the forced conscription bit hasn't been hidden. The government and military were very clear all last year in saying that if there aren't enough volunteers there will be compulsory service, and designing the law to automatically change when necessary. From there it's not a stretch to conscript older men as well, especially those over age approx. 35 who had to participate in compulsory service before it was abolished about 15 years ago.
If you talked about that on Reddit you were often branded a russian bot. Have seen this happen on many subs.
Then logically it stands to follow that German prosecutors, judges, and buerocrats are Russian bots whenever they cite German law.
What do they need all those soldiers for? Who the hell are they going to war with?
Who do you think? They desperately want to do Operation Barbarossa 3.0 (because 2.0 already happened, it was the NATO eastward expansion and Maidan coup).
The fascists turning up the heat another notch under the pot with the frog in it. Public reaction, or apparent lack of it, in Germany will be used as a test case across Europe.
Why can't they just hire mercenary contractors like Russian and the US do?
No money. Germany and actually the whole EU are in a severe budget crisis.
The US never lets a severe budget crisis get in the way of the military. Just cut all your social services, then borrow the rest.
The US controls the world reserve currency and doesn't have the same fiscal limitations that the EU or Germany do. Germany doesn't control its own currency, cannot print its own money and its government cannot even freely control its own budget without fiscal restrictions. At the EU level, the ECB cannot behave like the Fed in the US because of the way the Eurozone works.
That is what Germany is doing, up to the limitations cfgaussian outlined.
What a surprise
Germany is becoming more openly authoritative by the day.
What the helly? How did I miss news like that?
Do we have a more credible source?
Also a good source, because it explains the actual law. https://augengeradeaus.net/2026/04/noch-keine-wehrpflicht-aber-ausreise-fuer-theoretisch-wehrpflichtige-nur-mit-genehmigung/
The statement at the bottom from the war ministry says it all.
Da der Wehrdienst nach geltendem Recht ausschließlich auf Freiwilligkeit beruht, sind entsprechende Genehmigungen grundsätzlich zu erteilen. Wir werden aber durch Verwaltungsvorschriften klarstellen, dass die Genehmigung als erteilt gilt, solange der Wehrdienst freiwillig ist.
Rough translation:
Since military service is currently exclusively voluntary, permission [for longer stays abroad] will be granted. We will also create an internal policy to automatically approve all requests, as long as service is voluntary.