and were to be distributed near German boiler rooms where it was expected they would be disposed of by burning, with the subsequent explosion having a chance of causing a boiler explosion
Wouldn't it have been easier and more effective to just make them coal shaped?
The issue isn't just a simple oversight. Git includes the file name as part of the tree and commit hash. The hash has security implications. There's really no way to make the hash support case insensitivity without opening up a multitude of holes there. So there will always be a mismatch, and you can't just fix it without changing how git works from the ground up.