anticipatory obedience

Semantic calque of German vorauseilender Gehorsam (literally “running ahead/in front of obediently”). Constructed from anticipatory +‎ obedience.

anticipatory obedience (uncountable)

1. A situation where one attempts to predict expectations others (particularly superiors) have, without explicit communication, and to fulfill (or exceed) those expectations.
   • 1993 February, Seweryn Bialer, “The mature Stalinist system” (chapter 4.4), in Ralph Young, Chris Binns, Martin Burch, Douglas Jaenicke, Michael Moran, editors, Introducing Government: A Reader, Manchester, UK, New York, N.Y.: Manchester University Press, →ISBN, Part Four The Soviet political system in perspective, page 283:

     [The members of the political bureaucracy] displayed what can be described as “preemptive obedience”, the anticipation of what they considered to be their bosses’ wishes and whims. It was an anticipatory obedience encouraged by their superiors and characterized favorably as “vigilance.” The rule of terror […]

   • 2002 January 1, Wendy Lower, “Anticipatory Obedience” and the Nazi Implementation of the Holocaust in the Ukraine: A Case Study of Central and Peripheral Forces in the Generalbezirk Zhytomyr, 1941–1944, in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, volume 16, number 1 (Spring 2002), Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, →DOI, →ISSN, retrieved 2024-10-26, page 14:

     Regional functionaries were also motivated to work “towards their superiors” and diligently carried out their duties with what Germans refer to as “anticipatory obedience.” Once Nazi leaders officially sanctioned the murder of Jews as a “solution,” their subordinates in the field planned and carried out mass murder without explicit orders […]

   • 2009 September 10, Donald Bloxham, The Final Solution: A Genocide, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 271:

     Nevertheless, all followed the practice, elucidated by Ian Kershaw, of ‘working towards the Führer’, in the sense of using their instincts and initiative, adapting to regime norms without explicit orders. ‘Anticipatory obedience’, vorauseilender Gehorsam, was another contemporary term for the same process, and the concept was employed in SS—Police killing units amongst other organizations.¶ Any notion that ‘anticipatory obedience’ of this sort is particularly Germanic or particularly Nazi-like results from a want of comparative study. It appears simply to be what humans do in political systems […]

   • 2006 September, Uwe Steinhoff, “Why there is no Barbarization but a Lot of Barbarity in Warfare” (chapter 6), in George Kassimeris, editor, Warrior's Dishonour: Barbarity, Morality and Torture in Modern Warfare, Routledge, →ISBN, Part II Barbarity as Strategy in Modern Warfare, unnumbered page:

     In fact, there need not be any real pressure at all, for in anticipatory obedience many people try to execute what they think the authority wants from them. In other words, the authority does not have to explicitly say 'Torture the prisoner' in order to get the prisoner tortured. There are other ways to convey one’s wishes.

   • Snyder, Timothy (2017) On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, New York: Crown, →ISBN, page 18:

     After the German elections of 1932 […] or the Czechoslovak elections of 1946, where communists were victorious, the next crucial step was anticipatory obedience. Because enough people in both cases voluntarily extended their services to the new leaders, […] [they] realized that they could move quickly toward a full regime change.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:anticipatory obedience.

• 忖度 (sontaku, literally “/ surmise, guess, conjecture”)