The German Millipede That Forgot How to Walk
Germany was once a nation of doers. Industrious, pragmatic, efficient. But somewhere along the way, it became something else—a place where thought replaced action, where complexity became an end in itself, where movement was paralyzed by overexplanation.
It is the millipede that, when asked how it walks, forgot how to take a step.
For nearly two decades, Angela Merkel presided over this transformation. She was no revolutionary, no strong leader, no ideologue. She was an administrator, and her greatest talent was turning inaction into an art form.
Merkel's signature phrase—alternativlos, “there is no alternative”—was the linguistic equivalent of a sleeping pill. It came wrapped in long, sterile justifications, delivered in a tone that suggested any debate was futile.
Big decisions were delayed. Problems were managed, not solved. Public debates were drowned in a sea of technical jargon.
And so Germany drifted into the coma of no alternatives, like a man carefully reading the instructions on how to swim while already sinking.
Alternativlos explained everything!
Alternativlos fixed nothing.
The German language has a gift: it can create a word for everything. But sometimes, a gift becomes a burden.
A simple speed limit becomes "Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung" (my daughter, who has to learn German as a second language, absolutely hates it for its complexity and was the one to point this out).
It’s not just that the German language is hard. It’s that it enjoys being hard. Everything has a rule. Every rule has an exception. And every exception has a 478 page explanation.
Bureaucracy follows the same rhythm.
No one says what they mean; they draft ten-page reports on the feasibility of potentially considering it.
No one takes direct responsibility; they form expert panels, working groups, and commissions.
No one questions the system, because the system is so dense that questioning it means drowning in procedural complexities.
This is not efficiency. This is mental quicksand.
Angela Merkel didn’t just govern Germany; she reshaped its psyche. Under her, complexity became a virtue. Every issue became a process, every process became a labyrinth, and every labyrinth had only one exit: Alternativlos - no alternative.
Decisive action was replaced by endless consensus-finding processes, strategies for skilled labor shortages, and transformation paths for sustainable future design. It all sounds intelligent, but it leads nowhere.
Germany can no longer act quickly because it’s too busy explaining why it can’t.
Crisis response is sluggish because solutions must be theoretically perfect before they are practically possible.
There is no room for instinct, improvisation, or bold action because everything is buried under layers of overcomplication.
No one embodies the German addiction to complexity better than the philosopher GWF Hegel. His sentences were labyrinths, vast constructions that seemed designed less to clarify than to ensnare.
A single thought could stretch over entire paragraphs, winding through contradictions and sub-clauses until it became something almost mystical, something that seemed profound simply because it was so hard to grasp.
In a way, Germany has become Hegelian in the worst possible sense—so trapped in its own theoretical framework that it forgets the world is not an abstract concept, but something that now and then requires decisive action.
Germany didn’t just lose its energy independence or its industrial edge—it lost its ability to move without first analyzing every possible footstep.
Bottom line:
The German millipede needs to forget how many legs it has and just start walking again. Because Germany doesn’t need more analysis—it needs action.