German soldiers taking part in a four-week Nato exercise in Norway earlier this year had to leave after just 12 days because they had gone over their overtime limits, it has emerged.

No, it is not The Onion reporting this; it is the U.K. Telegraph :

Troops have complained to a parliamentary watchdog that they are being forced to spend entire days doing nothing under the new rules. “It can’t be that we can’t fulfil our Nato obligations because of overtime,” Hans-Peter Bertels, the German parliamentary commissioner for the armed forces, told Bild am Sonntag newspaper….

You see, German soldiers are limited to 41 hours a week of work and cannot be paid overtime.

The American Interest notes:

The German military has been beset by embarrassing and widespread equipment problems in recent years. It also has a teeny-tiny ISIS problem, with over two dozen former soldiers having joined the jihadist group and more suspected of sympathizing. And now, despite loud pledges of reform in the face of a renewed Russian threat, comes this bit of tragi-comic news. It sounds like the Germans have some work to do to get their defense affairs in order, no? And yet the government at the same time chose to release a grandiose white paper calling for the accelerated formation of a pan-EU army.

By no means are the Germans alone in their devotion to social policy over defense effectiveness. Our feminized military, our transgender obsession, and other examples of using the military for social transformation are blatant examples of the same phenomenon.

In Moscow, Beijing, and Raqqa, they are laughing.

Hat tip: Ed Lasky