History
Like other march steps, the "Stechschritt" originated in the 18th century as a method to keep troops lined up properly as they advanced towards enemy lines. It was introduced into German military tradition by Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, a Field Marshal whose close attention to training transformed the Prussian infantry into one of the most formidable armed forces in Europe. Other armies adopted different march steps which served the same purpose: in the British Army, soldiers were trained to swing their arms in a wide arc to allow officers to keep the advancing line in order.
By the mid-19th century, the widespread replacement of muskets with rifles, with their greater range and accuracy, made the practice of marching forward into battle in precise formation obsolete. However, armed forces continued to drill recruits in marching techniques that now had only a ceremonial function. This was true in Prussia and the later German Empire, where the goose step became emblematic of military discipline and efficiency.
Read more about this topic: Goose Step
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it.”
—Lytton Strachey (1880–1932)
“History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)