Prepared for yesterday
What a fortress and internships have in common, if you do it wrong.
Alongside my work in HR, I once pursued a master’s in military history. Because? Because, apparently, I thought the best way to understand the future of work was by studying the historic failures of fortifications.
That’s not true of course, I am fascinated by politics and war is, in the words of famous Prussian general von Clausewitz, a “continuation of politics but with different means.”
However! Military strategy, with its long track record of preparing brilliantly for the wrong threats, offers fascinating parallels to how we train interns today.
So if you ask me: Can we learn something about internships from the Maginot Line?
Hold my beer.
Just before war breaks out, countries build their most magnificent fortresses or some awe inspiring weapon that makes the whole world go ‘oooooeeeehhh’ .
Not during the war. Not after. No, right before. Like a ritual of reassurance: "Look how prepared we are!" Consider Fort Eben-Emael; The Belgian crown jewel of 1935. Thick walls, thicker turrets, thickest plans. In 1940, it fell in twenty minutes. Not to tanks. Not to a siege. But to 78 Germans in wonky gliders. They landed quietly on the roof, drilled a few holes, and disrupted that whole thing we knew as ‘modern warfare’.
That was that.
This is the classic error: we prepare for the last war. The French built the Maginot Line, same thing: A vast wall of bunkers, loopholes, even air-conditioning. The Germans simply walked around it. Through Belgium. The tourist detour but with panzers.
Or the Amsterdam Defence Line (‘Stelling van Amsterdam). Forty-five forts with the clever trick of flooding the surrounding land. Lovely idea. Until the invention of the airplane made it irrelevant. In 1940, the Luftwaffe just flew over it.
Bone dry.
In Singapore, massive coastal guns stood ready to repel Japanese battleships. The Japanese, being annoyingly inventive, came through the jungle instead. The guns could swivel landward, sure, but they fired armor-piercing shells. Rather useless against infantry in shorts.
Even Israel got caught. The Bar Lev Line along the Suez Canal: allegedly impenetrable. Until Egypt arrived in 1973 with water cannons. Yes, water cannons. You now, with water.
They literally washed away the sand barrier. The world’s first hydraulic invasion.
So what do we learn? That fortresses, no matter how brilliant, age badly. And unfortunately, so do our methods of preparing young people (especially interns) for the world of work.
Yesterday’s Skills
We still teach interns how to write memos. How to answer phones with, "[Company name], good afternoon, this is Peter from accounting." And how to write formal letters as though applying for a position in 1983.
Meanwhile, employers expect them to navigate AI tools. To analyze data. To collaborate digitally, craft a Slack message that isn’t passive-aggressive, and reinvent themselves every time the tech landscape shifts. In other words: adaptability, creativity, digital fluency.
Yet many companies and schools still obsess over skills from a bygone era. As if we’re preparing interns for a career in fax maintenance. Or training them to apply for jobs with a quill.
The Maginot Curriculum
If fortresses are the military’s monument to misplaced certainty, curricula are the educational equivalent. Concrete proof that you’ve planned—just possibly for the wrong thing.
Optimizing for the past is seductive. After all, you’ve got data. You know what worked. But the world changes faster than Excel can pivot. Steve Ballmer was the perfect CEO; for Microsoft 1995. Not for the age of the smartphone. That baton went to others, Apple, Google Amazon, and all the others standing next to Donald Trump last inauguration.
If we want young people ready for what’s next, we have to invest in the unfamiliar. Teach skills that aren’t yet mainstream.
That might feel odd. Because the alternative is building a fortress that’s obsolete before it’s even opened.
Finally
The true lesson of Fort Eben-Emael isn’t one about military choices. It’s about imagination; about anticipating the unthinkable.
Not asking, “How do we improve this well know metric?” but: “What if everything works differently soon?”
Perhaps we shouldn’t teach interns how to knock on the front door of the corporate world and do the career thing we think is the ‘usual’ road.
We should teach them to build gliders, and land on the roof.