Review of "Why the Germans Do it Better; Notes from a Grown-Up Country"

I grew up British and Jewish, so it was pretty much inevitable that I'd start out not liking Germans. My youthful comic reading was full of war stories...yes, that war, because none of the wars that the British state got involved in after WW2 were deemed fit for comic book depiction. Biggles, Dad's Army, Colditz, Manhunt... 

And as Jews my parents dutifully hated everything German. They particpated unevenly in the long-running and least successful economic boycott in history, the Jewish boycott of post-war Germany. They avoided buying anything German, except when they didn't. My dad bought a German Heinkel bubble car, and as kids we absolutely loved it...no seat belts, a sun roof that we looked out of (by standing on the bench seat) as he drove along. 

My dad was a consistent anti-racist, except that this didn't apply to Germans, who it was OK to hate, especially older ones. Of course this didn't apply to the nice German lesbian who joined his Jewish Judo club, because even in the early 1960s she was aware and ashamed of what her parents had done. And despite his Germanophobia my dad wanted me to learn German at school because it was useful, and I disappointed him by choosing Latin because the teacher was cooler (wrong choice).

And then, in Israel, I met young German volunteers, and they were great. By then I'd grown out of being anti-German, but I sort of knew about the extent to which West Germany was still run by hastily polished-up ex-Nazis. Of course my new German friends knew this too. And they were really nice to be with, straightforward and decent in a way that English people wanted to be, but often weren't.

And then later I worked for German clients, and alongside German professionals, and they were always great too; honest, straightforward, well-organised. Meetings with Germans started on time, finished on time, and had proper notes and minutes. People stuck to the agenda and didn't have side conversations. When German clients asked for something that I explained couldn't be done in the way that they wanted it, they entered into a discussion about what could be done instead - they didn't treat it as the first stage in a negotiation about price. 

So when John Kampfner subtitles his book 'notes from a grown-up country' I get it. Not all Germans are great or grown-up, but it seems to be the default. 

That said, the book was a bit of a disappointment. There's lots in it about contemporary Germany, but I felt it was more about how much better the Germans are than about why they are. There are little bits about the legacy of history, and the education system, and so on, but it never seems to add up to a sustained hypothesis. Not enough about a culture of trust, and solidarity, and an attitude to authority and rules that is pretty much the opposite of that in the UK...where we are at once supine in the face of posh-boy class superiority and distrustful of authority, particularly that of experts.