For King and country? Europe’s young may not be willing to fight

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe. 

When Ukrainians call for additional Western weapons, stricter economic sanctions or the seizure of Russian assets, they invariably throw in a warning — Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t stop at Ukraine.

Western leaders have been echoing this jeremiad, warning that because of an irredentist Russia, Europe is now in what Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has dubbed a “pre-war era.”

“I don’t want to scare anyone, but war is no longer a concept from the past. It is real, and it started over two years ago. The most worrying thing at the moment is that literally any scenario is possible … I know it sounds devastating, especially for the younger generation, but we have to get used to the fact that a new era has begun: the pre-war era,” the Polish premier said in March.

Similarly, U.S. President Joe Biden turned up for an interview last week and toted a copy of a speech the Russian leader gave in February 2022, saying it illustrated how Putin wants to reestablish the Soviet empire. He followed this up at D-Day commemorations, drawing parallels between Ukraine’s resistance and the fight against the Nazis in World War II. “The price of unchecked tyranny is the blood of the young and the brave,” Biden said.

But checking tyranny comes at a price and, alas, the West’s young seemingly aren’t prepared to pay.

Western leaders rightly praised the “greatest generation” last week, highlighting the extraordinary fortitude that drove mainly youngsters to wade ashore in the face of shot and shell — a day of blood and gore searingly portrayed in the opening scenes of Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan.” Britain’s King Charles talked of the “supreme test” of D-Day and feted a generation that “did not flinch when the moment came to face that test.”

More than 4,000 Allied troops were killed on D-Day, more than 5,000 were wounded — and that was just the beginning. Over the eight grinding weeks that followed, American, British and Canadian soldiers scrapped to break out of the Allied beachhead and, at an agonizingly slow pace, move forward through Normandy’s tall and tangled bocage (hedgerows).

According to military historian James Holland’s “Normandy ’44: D-Day and the Battle for France,” those two months saw a daily casualty rate that at times exceeded the World War I slaughters at Passchendaele, Verdun or the Somme. “Normandy was absolutely brutal,” he wrote.

But would the West’s young be as unflinching if tested today?

By all accounts, they aren’t in a self-sacrificing pre-war mood. As a survey of a dozen EU countries conducted for the European Council on Foreign Relations discovered last year, respondents in only three countries — Poland, Portugal and Sweden — expressed a clear preference to help Ukraine recover territory grabbed by Russia. Five others — Austria, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Romania — mostly favored Kyiv being pushed to accept a settlement, while in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, the public was more split.

More alarmingly, opinion polls conducted both in the U.S. and Europe over the last few years highlight the young’s reluctance to fight even for their own countries — let alone come to the defense of allied nations. A 2022 Quinnipiac University poll in the U.S. found only 55 percent of Americans would stay and fight in the face of an invasion; over a third said they wouldn’t. Drilling down into the numbers, two-thirds of those aged 50 to 64 said they’d remain, while those aged 18 to 34 were much more geared toward flight, with only 45 percent saying they’d stand and fight for their country.

More than 4,000 Allied troops were killed on D-Day. | Keystone/Getty Images

Meanwhile, an Unherd poll in the U.K. last week found that while 54 percent of Britons think the country will be at war within five years, and yet, there are no signs of much of a fighting spirit — no resounding “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead.”

Even as war drums grow louder, only 29 percent in the 18 to 24 age bracket said they’d defend Britain from an invasion. And, for all the tut-tutting over Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s odd decision to leave the D-Day remembrance early, the parents of the young are of the same mindset as their offspring, with just less than a quarter saying they’d want their children to fight to defend the country.

Continental Europeans aren’t much more warrior-minded or patriotic either. According to Gallup, in the event that their country was entangled in war, only 32 percent of Europeans would be willing to fight.

Various reasons can be hazarded for this lack of patriotism: growing distrust of dissembling governments; fatigue and disgust with misconceived “forever wars” that have ended in defeat — and when it comes to America, the long-tail impact of Vietnam; a general loss of confidence in Western values; a sense of entitlement the young now seem to have in abundance compared to their predecessors; and conservatives, no doubt, would add over-apologizing for past Western misdeeds and a failure to teach pride in what the West has, indeed, done right to the list.

But where does this leave the European countries that are now pondering reintroducing some form of military conscription to make up for a severe shortfall in active and reserve personnel?

Britain’s King Charles talked of the “supreme test” of D-Day and feted a generation that “did not flinch when the moment came to face that test.” | Loic Venance/AFP via Getty Images

Several NATO countries, including Latvia, have now reintroduced a national service draft or, in the case of Sweden and Estonia, extended it to reach more people. According to former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, conscription could bring society together and help bridge social and political divisions. And noticeably, in polling data, the young in the Baltic and Scandinavian states are far more ready to fight for their nations than their counterparts elsewhere in Europe.

This week, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius is due to unveil a formal partial enlistment proposal to bulk up the Bundeswehr’s active service ranks and beef up reserve forces too. But he faces opposition from within Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party governing coalition, as well as disapproval from the young — a recent Stern magazine poll found that 59 percent of young Germans are opposed to the concept in general.

And yet, maybe a warrior spirit will reemerge if push comes to shove. Maybe, if Putin really is thinking beyond Ukraine, he’ll be as surprised as Adolf Hitler was by the resilience and fighting spirit of his opponents.

Infamously, in 1933, Oxford University’s debating society passed the motion, “That this House will under no circumstances fight for its King and country” — which Winston Churchill later blamed for shaping Hitler’s conviction that his European foes were easy pickings. But when war did come, he was eventually disabused of that idea.

And how magnificently his opponents fought for what Ukrainians are now fighting for — the right to be. Maybe soon, we’ll find out if today’s young are made of the same mettle.