German design organisations lacked a safe way to ask whether a requirement or project should continue. Under dictatorship, criticism could be treated as disloyalty rather than professional judgement. The problem extended beyond the ruler because officials farther down the hierarchy imitated coercive behaviour and protected their own authority. Soviet design experience offers a comparison, but the German climate was especially damaging to open challenge. Naval engineering still required tradeoffs, so silencing disagreement did not remove uncertainty; it removed one of the main ways an organisation detects mistakes.
Notable Point · 1:24:48-1:26:04
Why dangerous organisations stop asking whether a design is right
Fear of punishment discouraged officials from challenging naval requirements, allowing bad assumptions to survive as subordinates copied the dictator's behaviour down the hierarchy.