Why the Germans Do It Better

Author: John Kampfner

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book primarily acts as a comparison between Germany and the United Kingdom, and its goal is to illustrate, as the title declares: Why the Germans Do it Better.

The wording of the title is important. It’s why and not how, and this makes the difference as the book leans very much towards historical context of why Germany developed into the kind of country it is (concentrating mostly on Germany post-WWII) and not as much on comparatively (using hard facts and statistics) how Germany is better than the UK in terms of its society, economy or quality of life.

I’m a bit of a policy geek, and I like learning about how the world could be a better place: what systems, innovations or ideas can we introduce to improve the quality of human life? I like those articles – somehow always about Scandinavia – that detail the social, political and economic context and choices that breed some of the world’s happiest people.

As I said though, this book is not about the how, it’s about the why. It obviously has to talk about the how, otherwise the title would have to be Why the Germans Do Things the Way they Do Them, and that probably wouldn’t sell as many copies. But the main point of this book is not to tell you about the reformed villain-character after they went through a redemption arch and detail the ways in which they came out ahead of the former hero-character who has been downward-spiralling since the final battle. The book is about the redemption arch itself and how it shaped modern Germany.

This gets to the crux of the matter: the reason they Germans do it better (according to the author) is their historical context.

“[…] the nation depends entirely for its identity, stability and self-worth on the liberal democratic post-war settlement, on the rule of law […] Unlike Russia and France, with their military symbols, the US with the story of its founding fathers, or the UK, with its Rule Britannia teaching of history and Dad’s Army war obsessions, Germany has nothing else to fall back on. […] Germany has few positive reference points from history. That is why it refuses to look back.”

(p. 7-8) Why the Germans Do It Better

This is the thesis of the book, and it’s an interesting point because all those other countries the author just named all have their own shameful episodes (or entire histories). Slavery, oppression, genocide, war. Pretty much every country on the planet has some history with these either within itself or with its neighbours; it’s how countries are formed. This is obviously not to discount the significance of the scale of the horrors of WWII and the Holocaust, which was unprecedented.

A difference with atrocities in Germany’s past, and part of the author’s argument, is that fortunately they’ve been able to learn from them. Post-WWII, the Allied Powers contributed a great deal of time and resources to not allowing a repeat of the post-WWI environment that had shaped the setting and players for the Second World War. Neither was anyone interested in a failed state in the middle of Europe. Both a great deal of introspection (to vastly oversimplify it) and the external pressure and support were necessary for the success of Germany as we see it today, but though both are acknowledged, the first is the main focus of the book.

I enjoyed this book, and it gives an interesting historical perspective and context as well as an insight into modern Germany. Given recent movements that aim to shine a light on those unacknowledged and deeply uncomfortable parts of history in other countries including the UK and the US, this book provides an important case study for confronting those demons and the benefits of doing so.