recruitment

József Bikkessy Hein Bucher : bagpipe players at the soldiers Advertising (Hungary, 1816)

In the military, recruiting (of recruits ) or drafting is understood to mean the calling up of soldiers , conscripts and militiamen who have previously been drafted into military service . This will bring military units back to their full number ( target strength ). However, recruiting is also ordered to set up new units.

etymology

The word recruit comes from the Latin recrescere (German for regrowth ) and describes the process of replenishing military units to their full number.

Forced recruitment

In times of war or crisis, forced recruiting is sometimes carried out in which recruits are forced into the service of the respective armed forces . The forced recruitment of nationals of the opposing party is prohibited by the international law of war .

Knabenlese was the name of the system ofdrafting or forced recruitment and Islamization practicedin the Ottoman Empire , in which Christian, predominantly male youths were kidnapped from their families and Islamized in order to then place them in prominent positions in the military and administrative service of the empire.

As shanghai in is Seemannssprache forcible recruitment of seamen for war and merchant ships called.

During the Second World War , men from Poland , Slovenia , Luxembourg (see Luxembourg Forced Recruits ), Belgium , Alsace and Lorraine ( Malgré-nous ) were forced to serve in the Wehrmacht or Waffen-SS in the areas occupied by the German Reich . Around 100,000 Alsatians and 30,000 Lorraine residents were affected. The Nazi regime regarded them as ethnic Germans because of their German descent . To avoid forcible confiscation, numerous men went underground or joined the armed resistance. Their families were often subjected to repression. Numerous drafted soldiers fell, were mutilated or died in captivity. After the war, they were often treated as collaborators in their homeland .