‘Welcome to the war casino’: Veteran German politician ridicules conscription plans

Sahra Wagenknecht has dismissed Berlin’s warnings of an impending conflict with Russia as baseless “hysteria”

Veteran German politician Sahra Wagenknecht has condemned Berlin’s plans to boost the nation’s armed forces through a lottery-based recruitment system, ridiculing what she described as the government’s obsession with an imagined war against Russia.

German lawmakers have been debating ways to strengthen the army as Chancellor Friedrich Merz has called for it to be turned into the “strongest conventional army” in Europe.

The government aims to expand the armed forces by around 80,000 servicemen. Some have proposed activating a lottery-based selection system if not enough people volunteer. Continued shortfalls could trigger the return of compulsory conscription, which has been suspended since 2011.

In a TikTok post on Tuesday, Wagenknecht, who previously served as a member of the European Parliament and sat in the Bundestag from 2009 until earlier this year, mocked the lottery idea. 

“Welcome to the war casino where the stakes are your life,” she said, criticizing the Merz government’s rhetoric that Germany is partly at war with Russia and its calls for an army “ready for battle, that prevails, that wins.”

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“I have to be honest, this is all just too much to handle. Maybe someone should explain to our great chancellor that Russia is a nuclear power and a war with a nuclear power will not be decided by the number of soldiers,” she said.

She added that the hysteria over a supposed Russian offensive is absurd given that NATO has three times more soldiers than Russia. “With these power dynamics, is Putin supposed to roll over us if we don’t conscript 80,000 young people for military service? They really want to sell us for fools,” Wagenknecht said.

Russia has denied having any hostile intent toward NATO or EU members, and has described Western alarm over an impending war as baseless propaganda. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has accused European governments of pursuing dangerous militarization and claimed Berlin is “slipping into a Fourth Reich” through its rearmament drive.