The decision to set aside compulsory military service for young men in Germany has been a long time coming (Germany to abolish military call-up by next summer, 26 November). Conscription cannot be abolished as such because it is enshrined in the German constitution and a change would be complex to achieve and, it is thought, politically unwise just now. But defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, riding on a white charger of personal popularity, is pushing through a measure that his recent predecessors have baulked at.
Many young men within my acquaintance regard their period in the military as being boring and a waste of time. Many others who knew this beforehand opted for civil Dienst, service in a civilian organisation within the voluntary or statutory welfare system, which was not difficult to do because the rules concerning pacifism and poor health have over the years been "flexibly" applied. They only received a small amount of pocket money for their work. And here is the rub: from the middle of 2011 at least 90,000 jobs will be open to people being paid the agreed rate for the job they fill.
The difference is enormous. So much so that I strongly suspect only now has the urgent need to modernise the German army finally outweighed the welfare organisations' call to retain military service and thereby retain civil Dienst.
These organisations are also asking the crucial question: are there people out there willing to do the jobs done now by the "civvies" even for the going rate of pay?
Michael Booth
Kassel, Germany
• Kate Connolly's article gives wrong information and therefore the wrong impression. Call-up in Germany is not going to be abolished; it is to be suspended. Young men will not be called up but the legislation will stay on the statute books so that call-up can be reintroduced, if the need arises.
Derek Murphy
Bad Pyrmont, Germany
• German military bureaucracy inefficient? Surely not. Then again, what your reporter slipped into her article as fact, that the Bundeswehr's bureaucracy is inefficient, seems more like an opinion – one that may not even be her own. It sounds more like the government's party line. Reporting such views as fact because they are "official" is a sloppy habit that I do not expect to find in the Guardian Weekly.
MC Warrior
Ladysmith, BC, Canada
The allure of Hitler
I have just read Timothy Garton Ash's reflections – as usual, stimulating and perceptive – on the Hitler exhibition in Berlin (German shoulder absent at the wheel, 12 November), in which he touches on, but does not answer, the question of "why Hitler fascinated and enthused so many Germans".
The answer seems to me obvious: it was the "feel-good factor". After the traumatic and humiliating disaster of the first world war (a trauma from which even the victors are still licking their wounds nearly a century on), and the further humiliation of the punitive Versailles settlement, Hitler's nationalist rhetoric and bellicose stance made many Germans feel good about being German again.
It was exactly the same as the way Ronald Reagan's aggressive nationalism made many Americans feel good about themselves again after the humiliation of the Vietnam war. It seems we really don't learn the lessons of history.
Geoffrey Allen
Pilzone, Italy
Loneliness and fear
The proneness of young men to become the recruits of terrorist groups that seek to eliminate those they refer to as infidels, like the gangs of young men that plot widespread graffiti assaults on our cities in an obvious attempt to degrade the environment and soil their nests, are living metaphors for a 21st-century anarchic, dystopian mindset. Similarly, the enormous growth in the appeal of increasingly violent pornography among young males (Pornography from a male perspective, 26 November) is one more glaring metaphor that reveals the loneliness and fear of love apparent in these men, and suggests their likely sense of abandonment by distant parents, or their feelings of helplessness in a world of oligarchic and patriarchal masters.
Allied to these feelings, as explained by gender expert Michael Kimmel, is their "anger at the loss of privilege", and what these men assume to be their heretofore "unchallenged authority", both of which are no doubt related to equally deep-seated feelings of being emasculated by the advances achieved by the feminist movement.
All the above grim, extended metaphors seem to hint at the fact that the biggest threat to civilisation and world peace is nature's too-generous gift of testosterone, the overabundance of which causes the male of the species to lose all restraint, in spite of their otherwise well-developed human brains. But instead of artificially reducing levels of this irksome hormone, perhaps we still have time to seriously reflect upon the wisdom gained over centuries, that we are not, in fact, animals rooting in the fields.
Richard Orlando
Montreal, Canada
Role of good governance
Jonathan Glennie's article emphasises the importance of encouraging governments in African countries to improve governance drawing on Ibrahim Index (Africa must heed good governance call, 5 November). I do think that the kind of index is significant to complement conventional, growth-oriented, indicators. Yet, I think the article (and the index) still emphasises too much the performance of African national governments.
The article says that "the key is accountability", but studies of Latin America, for example, have shown that improving accountability requires a wide range of institutional arrangements that create possibilities for civic participation to monitor public services from much lower levels of formal governance. Besides, governance needs to be defined clearly in the conjunction with informal organisations, including village councils, community-based organisations, influential religious organisations etc in the first place, because if we do not consider sociocultural aspects of governance, we will not be able to find the social basis to ensure the national governments' good performance.
In addition, as your paper often persuasively demonstrates, African countries have experienced too much of "bad" international aid and all sorts of external interventions, even after they decolonised themselves.
Instead of just insisting that the African people need to improve themselves, don't we need to show another type of index that visualises the performance of all the aid agencies acting in Africa, and indicate who could really be helpful to assist with establishing "good governance"?
Kei Otsuki
Tokyo, Japan
Names, Spanish-style
I was interested to read that the Spanish custom is to link a married couple's surnames with the husband's name first (Spanish surname shake-up, 12 November). Here in Portuguese-speaking Brazil, the custom is reversed. When I married my Brazilian wife, her name was already half a mile long – her first name a merger of her father's and mother's first names, her second name that of her saint, her third her mother's surname, preceded by de (meaning "belonging to") and her final surname the same as her father's surname. When she married me, in Wales, she could have dropped the mother's name, but opted to simply add my surname at the end of all that, which gave rise to a pub quiz question: "Whose name became even longer by becoming Short?"
Keith Short
Fortaleza-Ce, Brazil
Briefly
• Regarding Armageddon for trees (26 November): this occurred many centuries ago in Scotland, leaving the once forested Highlands almost totally bare, remaining so to this day apparently so that the extremely wealthy could continue to enjoy shooting animals and birds for sport. I imagine the reforestation of the Highlands would not be impossible, would be a significant step forward in carbon capture, and would affect only a few, who could well afford it.
Judith Wallace
Harkaway, Victoria, Australia
• It is entirely predictable that the US will be exerting pressure on its allies to make life as difficult as possible for WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. It is also ironic, because – already – the revelations reveal the superpower's diplomatic integrity is more dubious than WikiLeaks's journalistic integrity. I would counsel any country or body being tempted or coerced to join the "coalition", to wait and see a little bit more of what will be revealed before deciding this is a "just" war.
Ross Kelly
Monash ACT, Australia
• Sumbat Tonoyan must have been suffering from the unexpected side-effects of eating a banana split or from dissociative identity disorder, given his professional status of "businessmen" (18 November).
Frank Landsman
Bandung, Indonesia