Sorry, i should have been more precise myself and should have read your answer more clearly.
My point is, those numbers are a bad indicator for military strength.
Someone having gone through a few months of training decades ago doesn’t make them a soldier who is ready to fight on a short notice.
Likewise, a country at war with less personnel but a huge stockpile of resources and working structures will likely conscript a lot of citizens anyway.
Poland doesn’t have conscription at the moment (they stopped at a similar point in time as Germany), and their number seems to count only “proper” reservists. Germany counts everyone who at some point was part of the military as (legally) reservist, regardless of their current state, fitness, or motivation.
No worries, I thought you might have confused the statement as only applying to the first group. I see what you mean about how you count reservists and think it’s a totally valid point.
I literally said that.
EDIT: The source of this number was looking up Bundeswehr on Wikipedia which lists 860k reserve personnel and 184k active personnel.
Sorry, i should have been more precise myself and should have read your answer more clearly.
My point is, those numbers are a bad indicator for military strength.
Someone having gone through a few months of training decades ago doesn’t make them a soldier who is ready to fight on a short notice.
Likewise, a country at war with less personnel but a huge stockpile of resources and working structures will likely conscript a lot of citizens anyway.
Poland doesn’t have conscription at the moment (they stopped at a similar point in time as Germany), and their number seems to count only “proper” reservists. Germany counts everyone who at some point was part of the military as (legally) reservist, regardless of their current state, fitness, or motivation.
No worries, I thought you might have confused the statement as only applying to the first group. I see what you mean about how you count reservists and think it’s a totally valid point.
🤝