What Makes The Germans Today's Most Effective Society In Europe?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2686828/The-awesome-chilling-genius-Germans-From-soccer-supermarkets-factory-floors-battlefields-European-cousins-force-reckoned-with.html

Yes I know they lost two World Wars, but one has to admit that almost everything they do or make is the 'tops'. Why?

[retrocop]

Well that proves why they are so effective does'nt it Khandro.The Germans put their country before any other country unlike us who are ignored by our government to the advantage of other countries.Germany is efficient and we are no longer Great!!!

[retrocop]

Whilst our government spend billions of taxpayers money fighting wars we have no business to be involved,Germany through treaty restraints,does not go piling into conflicts but acts as a peace keeping force only.They do,however manufacture some fine weapons i.e Heckler and Kosch,Leopard tanks etc for other countries to purchase and fight their conflicts with.They make the weaponry and profits but don't pull the triggers.Their government makes money.Our government wastes it.

[Farriercm]

Probably because they have no Eton College Schoolboys running their Country
.NO Cameron No Osborne and better still No Ian D-H -Smith,
Its as Simple as that.

[youngmafbog]

Yeah right jake.

The Germans are allowed to be proud and encouraged to get on. They are not held back by a load of libreal lefties with right on ideas either.

[ichkeria]

I'd say a lot of it boils down to the Germans' failure to believe in "quantity" above "quality" on a lot of things, from work hours to school hours. Added to a horror of debt, interestingly.
But all peoples and nations have their own traits to be proud of and I am not sure it does to get too het up about trying to be like them. Perhaps that is one reason why they are a success: they don't fret about their failings :-)

[DTCwordfan]

(i) Education - a value placed on maths, physics, chemistry and engineering
(ii) Scale of operation in manufacturing and ability to invest
(iii) National pride
(iv) Worker participation at board level in German companies
(v) A sense of respect of one's bosses and hierarchy in management. I remember a Danish colleague of mine who worked in Germany and, after 3 years, they were aploplectic when they discovered he had a PhD. They had been calling him Herr Jurgenssen or Herr Ing. and not Herr Docktor......

They do have downsides as well, not handling failure well - remember the launch of the Merc A class.....a rigidity to problem solving, little encouragement of the Arts in the commercial world. I could go on further.

[Khandro]

DTC; There is of course also the German 'sense of humour'. They do, unlike the Brits, tend to take everything said at face-value. In a book, written by an Englishman (name escapes) called 'How to be a German', he points out that, begin a story to any Englishman with "There was an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman on a plane, the engines cut out and there was only one parachute", and you will have his undivided attention. Say it to a German and he will interrupt with "But why was there only one parachute?".

[shaneystar2]

Lol..very true Khandro,my husband always says .." A German joke is not a laughing matter ".
He does have a good sense of humour though ,for a German :)

[anotheoldgit]

Sqad

/// I would like to have been an Oberstleutnant in the Luftwaffe. ///

And would you have chosen a particular area of the UK to bomb Sqad, or all of it?

[DrFilth]

we all know which part of manchester Uwe Rosler's grandad hit




> Framed on his wall at home, Rosler still has the T-shirt bearing the
words ‘Rosler’s granddad bombed Old Trafford’, <

[anotheoldgit]

DrFilth

What with one of our Lancasters? That is really adding insult to injury.

http://www.whoateallthepies.tv/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/rosler-bomb-old-trafford-650x435.png

[Sqad]

AOG.......LOL......no! no!......not on a time of war.........I would like to choice my era. It was just that I admired the German discipline and respect for rank in the military and of course the uniform.

I missed National Service by a year, so realistically I cannot compare the two, but we have friends who are German.

[DTCwordfan]

Shame they didn't flatten Old Trafford once and for all...

[DTCwordfan]

missing the cricket ground of course, that can stay....

[kvalidir]

My Mother married a German, and I lived there for a while shortly after we'd come back from the US and you won't find a warmer, nicer place to live in the world. Everything is very family orientated, very clean, very ordered. they are rule based though. We moved into a new house and my mother nearly died laughing because she went to light the fire and her husband said she couldn't because we didn't yet have the certificate from the State Chimney Sweep saying it was okay to do that. You also have to have a licence to play golf in Germany and lots of other really weird rules ( and they take them very seriously), but it's still lovely.

[DTCwordfan]

It's essentially a handicap card plus the knowledge of the rules and etiquette of golf - in German, naturlich.

[kvalidir]

Yes, still a mind blowing concept to a hazem-jazem Brit though DT.

[jomifl]

I think of the Germans as failed Swiss, which makes them all the nicer.

[zebo]

We lived in Germany for many years, daughter2 was born there so she's a happy WC bunny, especially as she has them in the work's sweep. A German friend of ours said the problem was that the national characteristics responsible for German post -war success, the acceptance of authority and national pride, were exactly the same characteristics that made Adolf such a success.

[BRIGHT SPARK]

Pride?