Given their position at the end of WW2 how have they achieved such prosperity while other countries who did not suffer the same devastation have not exactly boomed . Yes UK I'm looking at you . Is it their work ethic , the quality of their products , good design or something else .
Short term of the UK stock market and ridiculous political dogmas.
Thanks to the RAF much of the German industry was flattened and was retooled with modern machinery after the war whilst back in Blighty we were still making cars etc with old machinery, plus the Germans are infinitely more efficient than us.
Creating the modern German state in 18whenever created a large country with lots of resources and lots of centres of learning and economic activity. So it was always going to be a powerful country (better together, obvs). Then they mobilised to fight two wars, and by the end of the WWII they had a huge manufacturing base created by their war effort. This was then effectively repurposed to produce civilian technology at the time a load of it had been invented and was read for large scale manufacture. See also Japan and USA.
The UK carried on making planes and weapons, which turned out to be not profitable; we were also shrinking in economic influence due to shutting down the Empire, that probably had something to do with it. I'm sure I've read actual historians* saying that countries that lost the war were forced to base their economies on manufacturing useful things, rather than weapons and planes which were ultimately fruitless areas of development. And these useful things turned out to be useful and people wanted to buy them and still do. My car was made in Germany by a company that was created out of weapon and plane manufacturers.
*I am not a historian.
Well it might have something to do with the fact that they bought or (more accurately) the US bought brand new factories and machine tools etc because most of their production facilities had been flattened. In parallel, they have developed and kept a proper apprentice scheme and have a culture where good engineers are happy to remain on the shop floor and not expect promotion 'upstairs' like we do. Engineers are valued in Germany. We only seem to value the money men who don't actually produce anything useful. We could and should learn a lot from the Germans.
There was a comedian that presented that German, France (+other European countries) and Japan have done better since the war as they lost/were occupied, this gave them a chance to ditch the old way of politics to bring in new ideas, where we won so were happy we were doing things right.
I'll have to see if I can dig out the video.
Engineers are valued in Germany
This is also my experience. In IT, in the UK, the nerds are at the bottom of the pile and have to do whatever the salespeople and managers want. In Germany, the nerds are the talent, and what they say carries far more weight.
There was a comedian that presented that German, France (+other European countries) and Japan have done better since the war as they lost/were occupied, this gave them a chance to ditch the old way of politics to bring in new ideas
Our politics massively changed as well post-war. But we changed it back.
A culture of co-operation between unions and management helps
Wasn’t it rebuilt by the USA to stop the soviets being welcomed in with open arms?
Marshall Plan, and the US persuading the French and UK to stop dismantling German Heavy Industry. Plus Germany has a long history of Industrialisation.
Wasn’t it rebuilt by the USA to stop the soviets being welcomed in with open arms?
edit: I could be wrong about this also, but I don’t think they had the them and us style of industrial relations that we had/have in the UK.
Is it because they don't have a Queen, or the same 'ruling class' public school therefore must become PM bullshit that we have to put up with?
As Henning Wehn says; German comedians don't have to swear because in Germany, things just work...
...and unlike the UK, they actually stopped fighting WW2.
It’s a good question, really reunification should have bankrupted them.
One aspect might have been that whilst most of the Western world spent 40-50 years fighting the Cold War they were largely barred from having a large scale military, at least in at first and it was only slowly introduced.
Also they’re not a Nuclear nation, whilst we spunked £20bn buying Trident, £3bn a year to maintain it and another £40bn to extend it to 2025, they didn’t.
Also, after visiting Germany and spending some time with a family there they tend to think long, when we think short. They think about doing their best when we think about how much we need to do to get it done. There’s a lot of pride in work in Germany and it doesn’t seem to matter what you do, if you take pride in it people will respect your efforts.
Is it because they don’t have a Queen, or the same ‘ruling class’ public school therefore must become PM bullshit that we have to put up with?
They had and I think still have plenty of aristocrats. There wasn't a King of Germany (although there was a Kaiser) but there have always been loads of Dukes and associated nobles.
define success - have they got blue passports ?
They look forward and not back. Had to explain to my German colleagues today why we have the 8th May off. I pointed out we still talk about 1966 World Cup as well.
Is their political system dependent on going to the right school to get into the right university to do the right degree to become a politician?
People often talk about the Marshall Plan... The UK was the biggest benificiary by far, receiving 24% of all the investment, compared to Germany's 11%. So it wasn't that.
I've not read the link posted by Kuco above so this might duplicate it. When the Reichsmark was ditched for the Deutschmark, industry got a 1:1 exchange rate but ordinary citizens got 4:1.
People had been unable to spend their salaries during the war so had large amounts of savings. Effectively the ordinary German punter paid for the economic miracle by handing all their cash over to industry.
It's like Britain's Got Talent - the runners up always end up more successful than the winners.
Given the recent success of AfD, I am not sure they are as forward looking as some would suggest, or alternatively, maybe they should actually spend a little more time looking back.
Also, as alluded to above ref the Marshall plan money my understanding was whilst we got more we spent it on the wrong stuff, namely soon to be obsolete planes, tanks, etc, while others spent it, well rebuilding their nations..!
Had to explain to my German colleagues today why we have the 8th May off. I pointed out we still talk about 1966 World Cup as well.
Only the knuckle draggers, and there are plenty of those all over the world.
I may get flamed for this but IT specialists how ever useful are not Engineers in my book. Engineers make things that people want to buy. IT helps Engineers make things that people want to buy.
The UK spent it's Marshall Aid on developing Nuclear Weapons so we could be on the top table at the UN. The Germans spent it on rebuilding industry.
Is it because they don’t have a Queen, or the same ‘ruling class’ public school therefore must become PM bullshit that we have to put up with?
Germany always had a strong social hierarchy, the posh types who went to Heidelberg, or whatever the University was called, the attitudes of Prussian aristocracy, and don’t forget, most of our Royal Family are German, or at least were very recently German.
I may get flamed for this but IT specialists how ever useful are not Engineers in my book. Engineers make things that people want to buy. IT helps Engineers make things that people want to buy.
The 1970s called. They want to hear more about this information age everybody keeps talking about...
Vorsprung durch technik.
I may get flamed for this but IT specialists how ever useful are not Engineers in my book.
Good job your book isn't the offical book then isn't it?
Engineers make things that people want to buy.
I'm an IT specialist, I work for a company that makes many billions of quid a year selling things that people want to buy. You've used our software probably a dozen times today, almost certainly code I've written on a system part of which I designed.
Some of it's developed in Germany too, and implemented by Germans.
or alternatively, maybe they should actually spend a little more time looking back.
The stuff they teach German schoolkids about WWII would give adults nightmares, it's not some bombastic commando comic version, but horrific detail with actual films of death camps. The average German is massively more aware of the failures of their nations past, I wish the british were even a fraction as aware of the horrors committed in the name of the british empire.
German isn't really that much more successful than the UK if you look at the relative GDP, but it seems more evenly split.
They never committed to the Regan/Thatcher trickle down con so the majority get a few more crumbs from the high table than in the UK and US. And their economy isn't based on housing always out inflating wages, which is the real big problem in the UK.
Whats this about the 8th of may?
Germany has invested in education; the UK hasn't. It's part of the long term thinking others have mentioned. We have tried to maintain the world profile that we did when we had the Empire to support it, so spent money on nuclear weapons instead of education. But hindsight is easy, if we hadn't had the nukes we might been invaded by the USSR, who knows.
there is a view that the german and japanese car industries were so successful after the war, due to the fact that the best engineers in those countries were unable to spend their expertise on making bombs, space ships and guns, unlike the rest of the western world.
I don't think that has much truth in it, in fact I think it is the 70s and 80s where German engineering started to overtake the UK. It is the way they solved the industrial relations problems that most western countries were facing at the time, that made the difference.
Having a German wife and having lived there for 6 years I think there are a whole range of reasons why they have been successful in Post War Europe. Several reasons have been touched on already so I will only add rather than repeat.
1. their political voting system almost guarantees that the country will be ruled by coalition, and hence the country has grown by long-term compromise, probably encompassing the best ideas from all sides of the political spectrum, rather than the push-me pull-me back and forth shenanigans and excesses of the UKs FPTP system.
2. The class system is far less stratified than in the UK with the bulk of the population belonging to the "Mittelstand" or middle classes.
3. There is a well established 2 tier secondary school system. If you are academic, you will go to a Realschule and get A levels and go on to higher ed/uni. If you are more practical/less academic you go to Technical high school and then on to an apprenticeship/ FE college to learn a trade. What my wife finds very odd with the UK system is how you can study one subject here and then work in a completely different field. In DE if you train/study to do something then that is what you will do for the rest of your life more or less.
4. my 4th point is one that I've not heard mentioned other than by me so bear with me on this idea. In the UK we kind of forget just how many of the male population of DE was killed off in WW2. UK military deaths were approx 380K (assume mostly male). In Germany that figure is in the region of 5.5 million. I reckon, this means that there was a massive demographic hole in post war DE with young men/boys (and "Gastarbiter/immigrant workers) doing all the work and paying into pension funds, while there were actually relatively few people reaching retirement age due to war time loses. Hence pension funds built up rapidly allowing the state to be very generous in pay out for the next 40 years or so to the relatively few people reaching retirement age. This represented a very real benefit to the economy in my view, but has come round to bite them in the last 20 years or so as the pot has run dry as the wave of a wartime baby generation have all reached retirement at the same time.
5. And finally, I reckon the German work ethic is strong, simply as a response to an ideal climate to work in. The weather over there was almost always pleasant for working out doors. Ideal for getting jobs done. In the UK I think we spent so much time sheltering under trees from bad weather that we got far less work done on any given season, but we did have to develop a great sense of humour to compensate 🙂
They have a 2 tier management of public companies which means they can take much longer term investment decisions and are less prone to selling out to the highest bidder.
Germany did have huge investment after the war. The fact that the U.K. got more from the Marshall Plan is a complete red herring, as there was a huge war debt to pay off, so the net effect was quite different.
Aside from all this, on what basis are people stating that Germany is more successful than the U.K.? Most measures show them as being fairly similar.
JP
[strong]jjprestidge[/strong] wrote:
Aside from all this, on what basis are people stating that Germany is more successful than the U.K.? Most measures show them as being fairly similar.
Having lived there and had a close association with the country for over half my lifetime, I can assure you that one of the 2 societies is far more successful in almost every measurable way. And that success almost always comes back to a more even/fair distribution of the wealth generated within the country.
German, France (+other European countries) and Japan have done better since the war as they lost/were occupied, this gave them a chance to ditch the old way of politics to bring in new ideas,
Jesus Christ, the French and Japanese political systems are horrendous - both countries are basically paralyzed by farming lobbies.
There wasn’t a King of Germany
There were many kings of Germany in 1918; each state had a King, or Elector, or Grand Duke. And there were many states... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_monarchs_in_1918
Just so happened that Prussia was the biggest state, and had taken over a few others. So the King of Prussia made himself Emperor. It wasn't like a proper empire though; more first among equals.
Germans approach problems very systematically.
From my experience they just have a different mind set.
The Germans have always or mostly run a positive fiscal balance whereas the UK loves to spend more than it 'earns'. Invest in technology, educate your people, manage your economy sensibly. Also being the only nation in the EU with a functioning economy they basically bankrolling the whole EU which is really a collection of countries with basket case economies (I include the UK in that when we were in the EU) gives them alot of power and influence in the EU.
Through the '50's the UK was obsessed with clinging onto some form of super power status and we were spending a frightening amount of our GDP on things like aircraft development and nuclear weapons development which politically has been a good move, but not industrially or economically.
Also German unions are pretty sensible and often work with big business and companies for the general good of the company and workers. Our unions have a very strange attitude towards work and companies that employ them and seem to always want to hijack or jeopardise companies chasing the socialist dream. As a result in the UK you need your head checking if you wanted to set up a manufacturing business in the UK with UK workers...much better to invent a brand and use a Far East manufacturing company to do all the 'dirty work'.
Lots of factors involved.
From my experience they just have a different mind set.
Not sure I agree with this. I've worked with alot of German/Spanish/French/US companies over the years and of all of those I think the Germans have a very similar mindset to us, but they are just better at execution. We're more similar than you think. UK employees I know that go the Germany and work for German engineering companies fit in very well similarly German employees that come over here. Living there might give you a different perspective maybe, but certainly from what I've seen in a professional context we're very similar. We're more innovative, but they simply do things better and execute things in a more effective and efficient way.
With regards to manufacturing, I think you need to go back before WW2.
Despite the UKs head start Germany was out manufacturing the UK well before WWI. There's some stat which says German manufacturing hadn't converted to full war production until about 1944 (which is a sort of WTF? stipe stat)
Germany has always been good at making stuff, but why?
Possibly because its a modern country. At the higher political levels at least they were always comparing themselves (and aspiring to) the older European empires ( all that "Germany deserves a place in the sun" stuff)
As a country they were trying to play catch up - perhaps that concentrates the collective mind.
EDIT: and when they did industrialise in the late 19th century, they used the UK as a model. The UK had industrialised by accident, in Germany there was more planning so they could avoid some/all of the crap aspects of the UK.