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Only 17% of Germans ready to take up arms to defend country, poll finds

The survey was conducted on November 15 and 16, involving 1,005 people, and the margin of error was three percent

BERLIN, December 21. /TASS/. Only 17% of German citizens said they are ready to defend the country in case of a military attack, according to the results of a poll published by the sociological service Forsa for the Stern magazine.

Thus, 17% of respondents stated that they were "definitely" ready, 19% indicated that they were "probably" ready to defend the country. Furthermore, 61% of Germans stated that they were "probably" or "under no circumstances" ready. The share of the latter amounted to 40%, which, according to the magazine, is almost twice as much as in a similar poll in May 2022.

The poll was conducted on November 15 and 16. It involved 1,005 people. The margin of error was three percent.

Patrick Sensburg, the president of the German Reservists Association, called on German authorities to triple the number of active reservists in the Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces) in an interview with Stern on Thursday. According to him, in a few years the Bundeswehr should have at its disposal "about 100,000 reservists who are regularly trained." At the moment, the number of Bundeswehr reservists is about 930,000, the magazine notes.

On October 31, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told the Deutschlandfunk radio station that Germany "must be able to fight a defensive war so that in the end it does not have to do so." He said German society is "not mentally ready" for such a hypothetical development right now, but he believes it should be.

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