Goosey Goosey Gander, why do you march like that?

September 24, 2009 11:28 AM

When you see military parades of countries that we would consider to be either potential or old enemies (Iran, North Korea, China, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Soviet Union, etc.), the troops march using the “goose step”, but you never see that style of marching used by NATO or other friendly nation armies. I understand that western countries would probably not want to be seen goose-stepping due to the whole WW2 Germany connection, but why is it so popular with communist and other regimes? Just because it looks so bad-ass scary or because it gives an impression of complete discipline?
posted by 543DoublePlay to society & culture (8 comments total)

Wikipedia.
posted by Jaltcoh at 11:32 AM on September 24

Orwell said that goose-stepping very consciously contains the image of a boot smashing a face. The appeal to totalitarian regimes is obvious.
posted by fatbird at 11:35 AM on September 24

Well, if you ignore the nazi association, is it any more absurd than other types of marching and parading?

I mean, if you look at the grenadier guards marching outside buckingham palace, wearing huge fur hats and bright red tunics with custom-made buttons, and the parade leaders bearing swords and flags... My point being, there are plenty of military parades that are more motivated by tradition than on any particular contemporary military purpose.
posted by Mike1024 at 12:11 PM on September 24

No offense to any Greeks, but the oddest kind of marching (and the polar opposite to the Stechschritt) I know of was the one adopted by the Greek guards I once watched in Athens. I often wondered how the expression of military discipline could develop in such vastly different ways as to produce goose-stepping and... whatever that is called.
posted by PontifexPrimus at 12:36 PM on September 24 [1 favorite]

I think that in a lot of US military circles, goose stepping is seen, aside from being fascistic, as somewhat affectatious. Granted you can say this about a lot of drill-and-ceremonies stuff, but it's particularly impractical and requires a lot of training to very little end.

During the period that the goosestep came into vogue in Prussia (post-Waterloo) and might have migrated across the Atlantic, the US was fairly busy fighting the pre-Removal Era Indian Wars. (The Seminole War got started almost immediately after the end of the War of 1812.) The priorities of the US Army at the time would have been quite different from Prussia's. Plus, the US army at the time, which consisted mainly of volunteer militias, might have been less receptive to the idea of strenuous drills that had little applicability to actual combat. (Lots of what is basic ceremonial D&C today would actually have had some purpose in the early 19th century, but even back then the goosestep was pretty gratuitous.)

Here's another source with background on the goose-step, and its origins in Prussian militarism in the early 19th century.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:55 PM on September 24

Most armies outside of the European and U.S. Armies learned the basic drill from advisors from one of the western armies. These can be seen in the marching of the soldiers from particular countries. Take Iraq. Even at the height of Saddam's regieme, Iraqi soldiers can be seen using the pronounced arm swing common to commonwealth countries. It is said that the Japanese Imperial Army drill manual inadvertently contained a motion towards the nose becasue a German Imperial drill sergeant had a cold and wiped his nose during a particular drill.

Since the Germans and the Russians (the primary practicers of the goose-step) did not train many armies, you see that step only in the Chinese and N. Korean armies because Red Army drill instructors taught them modern drill.

Note that drill and close-order marching is obsolete. It originally was for battlefield marching in the pre-industrial era when reloading by row in unison was necessary to keep up a high rate of fire. Indeed, soldiers from that era could march forward, fire their weapons and have the next row move forward and take their place. This allowed them to advance and fire.

These drill steps are now just to train recruits to follow orders without thinking on the battlefield.
posted by Ironmouth at 1:59 PM on September 24

I wonder if the American Civil war, in which the early use of close-order drill tactics combined with the devastating power and range of the rifled muskets to turn many of the early battles into costly bloodbaths, and fundamentally changed tactics by the end of the war.

It is also worth noting that the United States didn't have a large military for much of its history, and when not fighting an actual conflict, the military was often underfunded and undertrained. For example, after the War of 1812 the United States built a chain of forts to protect key harbors, but staffed many of them with skeleton crews. Most of the conflicts on the American frontier involved a relatively small number professional soldiers and mercenaries, and popular U.S. sentiment was strongly isolationist prior to WWI and WWII. The German Army in 1940 had between 2.5 million and 3 million enlisted soldiers. France had slightly larger numbers. The U.S. Army in 1940 had 250,000, and the Navy another 240,000.

But the United States has its own parade step traditions which are used liberally in advertising and public relations. The point is to show that the military units are a highly-trained and professional force. Certainly WWII Germany and the Soviet Union made a point of large and elaborate military parades to intimidate their foes. (And lets face it, it worked for most of the Cold War.) Another thing to consider is that American propaganda has used images of goose stepping antagonists to good effect, and contrasted that with images of the American citizen soldier mugging for the camera.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 3:38 PM on September 24

FWIW, Polish soldiers march in goose-step as well.
posted by alona at 10:16 PM on September 24