It's always some magical higher power preventing you from doing the sensible thing. One favourite excuse is insurance liability. We can't do the sensible thing, because the insurance wouldn't pay if something bad were to happen, even though the odds of something bad happening are virtually nil.
You can also observe this in German politics. "Oh, we absolutely cannot do <common sense thing> because the rules won't allow it." Well, you could change the rules, but then you would have to take some actual responsibility, and we can't have that.
Bad faith actors and cultural dysfunction can break pretty much anything no matter how well thought out it might be.
At first they assumed their recruitment process accidentally favoured stupid people so they made sure to only recruit smart pilots. But it kept happening. Then they put a little flap on the end of the flap lever and a small wheel on the end of the gear lever and the problem went away.
I simplify. Read the full story. It is cool!
Pilots fuck up all the time so blaming them doesn't excuse anything.
And I find myself butting heads with people over that all the time. Coworker (smug satisfied voice) well if the end user fucks up it's not our fault. Me (trying not to sound really annoyed) yeah it's still our problem.
People need to be given timely information, communication channels, and authority to straighten things out when they go awry. That's good for safety!
You need to make the people best positioned to notice something is stupid responsible enough to make them say no fuck you because otherwise every oversight and edge case will be substantially more likely to cause harm because they have less skin in the game.
See also: Cops getting "paid vacations" for bad stuff.
That kind of explains why they tried to pull it of at Nuremberg. And why some nazis that weren't sentenced internationally got good jobs in post-war Germany. For Germans they weren't really at fault if they were just following procedures.
Rheinhard gehlen and everyone around him is a something that could have been prevented.
And so many high class nazis where in such good positions because they where experts on anticommunism. For the americans and brits it was "safer" to give positions to exnsdap officiers then people from the SPD(socialists)
Gehlen kicked even the only high ranking spd member in secret service out
for god sake they even hired klaus barbie. that guy had entertainment partys where the guests could torture jews homosexualls etc... and he killed most of french opposition. Got hired from the bnd and cia as expert on anticommunism
Germany didnt change much..
fuck we even voted a full member of the nsdap as chancelor. Kurt kiesinger. Yes we had two Nazi chancellors!!
honestly the only reason the denazification was shit was because most people at power at that time where kind of nazis.
edit:// btw the DDR had somehow solved the problem and didnt had as much nazis in high position.
But what this episode also highlights is the opposite of this in the form of the American approach that is much more flexible and willing to bend the rules if necessary. Rightfully, the Allies could and probably should have brought everyone to justice, but they realised that a lot of the Nazi scientists were extremely valuable assets that they needed to get a leg up on the Soviets. So rather than execute them or put them in prison and throw away the key, they recruited them.
Supposedly while the French and British officers were frozen waiting for new orders to be telegraphed when something didn't go according to plan, Germans took the initiative based on what's happening on the ground. US and other countries adopted this doctrine after the war because of how unexpected successful the German army was (despite being outgunned by the French and the soviets who had better tanks and more trucks just couldn't figure out how to use them efficiently)
There's always an option. You could die. And if you didn't choose that option before committing atrocity as ordered you definitely deserve death afterwards.
At the end of WW2 a strong West Germany to oppose the USSR was more important than punishing some middle manager and the quickest way to get the West German state together was to use a lot of the existing bureaucracy.
And the fact that Germans did not really care about punishing nazis didn't matter at all?
My actual favorite part of German work culture is that meetings always have an agenda, that part is a delight when doing business with German customers.
(this is what happened to OP)
Big bits of equipment moving around fast and limited guard rails.
The culture of taking personal responsibility is vastly different to where I’m from.
Of course maybe that didn't apply to committing atrocities to the same degree.
... Yep.
It's for similar reasons why everyone is up at the crack of dawn frantically shovelling snow outside their homes.
Rather spoils the fun of towing the kids to school on a sled when every 5 meters there's a perfectly swept bit you have to drag it across.
Worse. You can't even take responsibility even if you want to, that's usually against the rules too.
