Mostly because the power dynamic is still in favour of the employee, because hiring new people is hard and expensive right now. But as soon as this balance tips the other way, managers will force misinformed and ill thought out policies surrounding workplace attendance upon their employees. Facts don't matter when it's about ideology.
Demographics - especially in Germany - don't support that balance tipping the other way.
Especially importing educated immigrants is less possible than it was say 20 years ago.
Even currently managers are doing exactly this. E.g. SAP is in the process of bringing employees back to office for at least 3 days a week. Reasons given were nonsensical. And probably it will just work out as they want because not enough people vote with their feet.
Well, it depends. In the companies I worked for, RTO didn't mean that everyone instantly quit, what happened is that people started looking for new jobs and usually those who got an offer and quit were one of the most valuable (in terms of knowledge, skill, and experience).
Meanwhile management is talking excitedly about how Google, Apple, etc. force their employees back into offices and how great that is for the 'culture', while not paying anywhere near as good as those companies or offering any employee benefits. If you want office presence like BMW, you need to pay like BMW.
Judging by recent design trends you also have to only hire blind people to be like BMW
Are we absolutely sure they're saying culture and are not actually saying "cudgel"?