On 7 July 1974 in Munich, West Germany beat the Netherlands 2:1 in the World Cup final. Berti Vogts had been told to attack Johan Cruyff only 30 meters in front of his own goal. Vogts received a yellow card. Shortly afterwards he ran to the sideline and told the coach, Helmut Schön: Ich mach’ das jetzt auf meine Art. I will do it my way now. The German Football Association explains what that meant: konsequente Manndeckung, strict man-marking. Schön agreed, unwillingly. Under man-marking, each defender marks one opponent rather than a zone.
Obedience That Thinks Along
In April 2003, shortly after the start of the Iraq war, a major in the Bundeswehr refused two written orders. Among other things, they required him to continue work on a Bundeswehr software project. He gave reasons of conscience. A military service court demoted him to captain. On 21 June 2005 the Federal Administrative Court acquitted him. The Soldiers’ Act, the court said, does not demand unconditional obedience. It demands mitdenkenden obedience, obedience that thinks along and considers in particular the consequences of carrying out the order. A decision of conscience, the court added, must be visible from outside and must be possible to explain by reason.
Knowledge, Conscience and Responsibility
Ludwig Beck was chief of the general staff of the German army. In his memoranda of 1937 and 1938 he wrote a sentence about the army’s generals that is still quoted: Ihr soldatischer Gehorsam hat dort eine Grenze, wo ihr Wissen, ihr Gewissen und ihre Verantwortung die Ausführung eines Befehles verbietet. Their soldierly obedience has a limit where their knowledge, their conscience and their responsibility forbid carrying out an order. Sources differ on the exact memorandum and date. In the summer of 1938 Beck called on the generals to resign together. They did not. Shortly afterward he gave up his post for reasons of conscience. In 2014 General Klaus Naumann quoted the sentence in a speech published by the Bundeswehr.
What Moltke Actually Wrote
The line “No plan survives contact with the enemy” is usually credited to Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke. He did not write it in that form. In his essay Ueber Strategie of 1871, Moltke wrote: Kein Operationsplan reicht mit einiger Sicherheit über das erste Zusammentreffen mit der feindlichen Hauptmacht hinaus. (No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main force.) The next sentence reads: Nur der Laie glaubt in dem Verlauf eines Feldzuges die konsequente Durchführung eines im voraus gefaßten in allen Einzelheiten überlegten und bis ans Ende festgehaltenen, ursprünglichen Gedankens zu erblicken. (Only the layman believes that in the course of a campaign he sees the consistent execution of an original idea, thought out in advance in every detail and held to the end.) Moltke saw strategy as a system of expedients. He gave his subordinate commanders wide freedom of action in carrying out their mission. The familiar English wording, “no plan survives contact with the enemy”, is found in 1961, attributed to Moltke, in Correlli Barnett’s book The Desert Generals.
Working to rule
Dienst nach Vorschrift — service according to regulation. Doing precisely what the rules require and nothing beyond.
In Germany this is a recognised form of industrial action. Following instructions exactly is understood to damage the employer, because the organisation depends on people exercising judgment the rules do not describe.
It is also used as an insult about an individual. To say somebody does Dienst nach Vorschrift is to say they have stopped thinking.
Mission tactics
Auftragstaktik. Helmuth von Moltke the Elder set it out in his 1869 instructions for large-unit commanders and it was codified in the 1888 drill regulations: higher command defines what must be achieved, and subordinates decide how to achieve it when orders no longer match conditions on the ground.
Moltke defined it as the actions a subordinate takes in the absence of orders that support the senior commander’s intent. Officers were educated to think for themselves and to keep going when communication failed.
The doctrine passed into NATO practice and into US Army doctrine as mission command. Its origin is a German answer to a specific problem: the person on the ground can see something the person issuing the order cannot.
Deviation from mission
In the German military context, independent deviation from the Auftrag – mission – is permitted and expected, if the situation on the ground has changed, demands a rapid response, and the commanding officer cannot be reached.
The overall mission, however, may not be re-interpreted. The tactical approach is always subject to modification. This presupposes that the junior officers and their troops are fully informed of the overall strategy which the mission serves, allowing them to choose the best path to the goal.
Those considering deviation need to ask themselves: „How would I as the commanding officer react to the changes on the ground?“ Critical is acting in accordance to the spirit of the Auftrag, the mission.
Home is where the WIFI is
“I wonder if Germans think their WiFi-issues are a global thing”. That’s how one of my friends from the USA recently expressed his opinion towards the WIFI situation in Germany. They alluded to the impossibility to find free public WIFI in big German cities.
No wonder, since you can even find free mobile internet in the middle of the Israeli desert, in Estonian forests, on top of lonely Georgian mountains and along the highways in California. However, you won’t be able to find it in German pedestrian areas.
One reason for this lack of WiFi access is a legal situation. The provider of the free Wlan is legally responsible for the inevitable misbehavior of the users; the so-called “Stoererhaftung” (liability for disturbance).
But there is more behind it: The term “Neuland” (unknown territory) circulated a while ago, used by Angela Merkel at a meeting with President Obama, in context with the Internet. However, she did by no means mean the invention “Internet” itself, but rather figuratively the Internet as legal terrain.
The existing German legal status is just not sufficient to regulate the Internet, which is a contradiction in itself. Simultaneously, legislation works slowly and thus is even less able to keep up with such rapid changes.
Therefore, the basic dilemma becomes clear: Many Germans (The German institutions, for one) appreciate changes to be clear, regulated and with obvious roles and responsibilities. And in the event of doubt with distinct legal liability.
In general, changes are usually dealt with slowly but thoughtfully. Thus, if this attitude applies to an uncontrollable and rapidly spreading phenomena such as the Internet, conflict naturally develops.
German reservation does not solve such conflicts until an explicit and waterproof regulation has been found. But, this manner leads to satisfactory results of the changing process most of the time because „gut Ding will Weile haben“ (“Good things are worth waiting for“).
A “catastrofe”?
In 1996 the Germans decided to revise their rules for spelling (orthography). In 2004 and 2006 there were further revisions. In 2007 the changes became binding in all schools.
One of the goals was to modify (eindeutschen – germanize) those words rooted in a foreign language. Apoteke instead of Apotheke (pharmacy). Restorant instead of Restaurant. Katastrofe instead of Katastrophe.
The pushback from the Ministries of Education in several influential German states blocked it, however. But protests were also loud among the press, in important literary circles and among academia. The high point was when the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) rejected the modifications and returned to the former rules of spelling.
In 2007 the attempt was made to implement the changes in the school system. Consistency was the overall goal. Certain spelling modifications could be ignored, however, if they simply made no sense.
Long and difficult consensus-building. Conscious ignoring of decisions made. Resistance to any kind of change. All this was at play in the German attempt to modify their rules for spelling.
Sabine Krome, a Member of the Council for German Spelling Reform at the fifteenth anniversary of the reform:
“The original intention of the reform was good. To bring German rules for spelling up to date, which had not been modified over the previous one hundred years. Had we known, however, how difficult the path would be to reach the results we have, it may have been better to wait another hundred years before taking on the task.”
“Uncharted territory”
At a press conference held together with Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is quoted as having stated “the internet is uncharted territory for us all”, when asked about the internet surveillance program Prism.
While this statement was received with particular amusement in the web, it also demonstrates a certain German reservation in the face of innovation. One might even call this a resistance towards profound change when it comes to the internet.
That the German federal government is not acting to expand their communication of political content over web platforms is also apparent in their Facebook presence – their profile has only existed since late February, 2015. According to senior communications adviser Seibert: “We did not take [this step] too soon, but we did take it.”