The two men are part of a military evolution spanning more than half a century, from rearmament in the divided Germany of the 1950s through the cold war, which placed hundreds of thousands of young German soldiers on either side of the Iron Curtain, and on to a reunification that was not just geographic and political but also created a single army bonded by conscription.
They are part, too, of a long-running German quest for antidotes to its Nazi past, ensuring that its military is subservient to the will of a democratic Parliament.
About 5,000 German soldiers are part of the NATO-led campaign in Afghanistan, and even though 52 German soldiers have died there in the past nine years, Mr. Stadler said, “It is an honor to serve your country and help people abroad.” Fear, he said as he prepared for a psychological aptitude test, would be the wrong word to describe his attitude to deployment in hostile terrain.
“Respect is better,” said Mr. Stadler, who is 20.
For his part, Mr. Beckert, 18, said that being a soldier would be a new and risky experience. “You have a lot of thoughts, but I think it’s worthwhile to do it,” he said while preparing for a physical.
The latest military changes have also raised broader questions that cut to the core of Germany’s enduring identity crisis: will Germany’s new force draw disproportionately on recruits from the former Communist east; will young Germans — men and women — be prepared to overcome postwar Germany’s deep aversion to militarism; and will the end of the draft create an army with fewer inhibitions about deployment alongside its NATO allies to the world’s trouble spots. West Germany introduced compulsory military service in 1957 for periods that varied between a maximum of 18 months and, toward the end, of only six months, said Lt. Col. Kai Schlolaut, a Defense Ministry spokesman. From the beginning, conscription was seen as a constitutional means of averting the militarism of the past by creating “citizens in uniform” to bind the armed forces to the rest of society. Everyone had to serve.
Indeed, Colonel Schlolaut said, some 8.4 million Germans served, either as conscripts in the Bundeswehr, as the armed forces are called, or in alternative civilian service, as helpers in old age-homes or charitable institutions.
Then last year, the former Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg unveiled plans to reform the military, cutting it from its current levels — 220,000, along with 76,000 civilian support officials — to a maximum of 185,000 in uniform supported by 55,000 civilians. “We want a more flexible, more professional armed forces,” Colonel Schlolaut said.
Germany is making the change years after its major allies have taken the same step, including the United States, which ended the draft in 1973. The draft was technically suspended as of July 1 — under German law, to abolish it would have required rewriting the Constitution. The last draftees began six months of compulsory service in January, and some left their barracks for good on Thursday.
The change to an all-volunteer army brought a shift of pace for Marion Krauskopf, the civilian director of Berlin’s recruitment center at the former military espionage base at Treptow-K?penick in the southeast of the city, which once processed up to 150 draftees a day.
Now, Ms. Krauskopf said in an interview, the figure is 20 or 30. In the past, women were excluded from conscription, although in recent years they have been able to volunteer for the military in other categories of service. So far, though, only a handful of the 171 soldiers recruited at Treptow-K?penick for induction in July as volunteers are women, she said.
But gender seems to be less of an issue in the German debate than the origin of those who do volunteer.
In a recent study, two experts said that while only 16 percent of the German population of 82 million lives in the former East Germany, easterners make up 30 percent of military personnel.
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