Despite the bitterness of Cold War polemics, it was hard to persuade the young on either side to become soldiers, especially not when a future German–German war lay in prospect. In East Germany, the 950,000 members of the Communist youth movement responded to calls to join the new National People’s Army by resigning en masse: they were not willing to jettison their ideals of ‘democractic pacifism’. Although most West Germans still regarded military service in the Wehrmacht in positive terms, rearmament and the reintroduction of conscription in 1956 were opposed by a loose coalition of Social
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