The three years since Russia invaded Ukraine have seen governments across the European Union ramp up defense spending, with politicians and talking heads routinely droning on about the need to make our societies “combat-ready.” In few EU member states has this turnaround been more pronounced than in Germany.

Given its own dark history, it had long sought diplomatic reconciliation with Russia, promoting “change through trade” with Moscow and opposing NATO expansion into former Soviet republics. Today the mood has shifted radically, with politicians across all parties voting through hundreds of billions of euros in additional defense spending. In the name of resisting the Russian threat, the political establishment has even dropped its once-sacred public-debt limits.

It would seem that the drive for rearmament is also having an effect on the population, with recent polls suggesting that two-thirds of Germans support reintroducing mandatory conscription, some fifteen years after it was abolished. Young people, for decades a bastion of antiwar and anti-militarist sentiment in German society, increasingly appear open to serving in the army and doing their bit to defend the country.