Max Weber described politics as “slowly drilling through the thickest boards”, meaning it demands patience and perseverance to reach one’s goals.
Konrad Adenauer – West German chancellor form 1949 until 1963 – had the same thought in mind when in 1946 he said:
“Patience is the strongest of weapons, of a defeated people laid so low.” Germany after the Second World War lay in ruins. And due to the crimes committed by its Nazi-regime was an occupied pariah state.
Because Adenauer knew it would be many years before Germany would be reunited, he stressed patience and perseverance not only to the West Germans, but also to the Western Allies – the occupying forces.
Adenauer referred time and again to German history, to the two world wars and the centuries further back. His approach, his long-term perspective, his stamina, proved to be right. Twenty years after his Adenauer’s death the two Germanies were reunited and has become one of the great forces for stability in and for Europe.
Revanchism, from French revanche or revenge, is a term used since the 1870s to describe the desire to reverse territorial losses by a country after losing a war. Revanchist politics rely on the identification of a nation, of a people, with a nation-state. This mobilizes ethnic nationalism, claiming territories outside of the state where members of the ethnic group live.
See the strong desire during the French Third Republic to regain Alsace-Lorraine from Germany after defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. French Emperor Napoleon III had declared and lost the war. In the Treaty of Frankfurt, France lost Alsace-Lorraine, which France under King Louis XIV had previously annexed from Germany in the 17th century.
French revanchism was one of the forces behind the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I. Alsace-Lorraine went back to France. Blame for the outbreak of the the Great War was pinned solely on Germany. Huge reparations were extracted from the Germans.
The United States Congress rejected the Versailles Treaty, citing its harsh, unfair and one-sided punishment of Germany, and warning against the inevitable development of German revanchism.
Alsace-Lorraine. Just one piece of territory in dispute between two neighbors. One of many examples in European history. Their experience as a people, their historical consciousness, has taught the Germans to seek lasting resolutions to conflicts. Acceptance, freely chosen, is the foundation.
The experiences during, between and after the two world wars continue to exert great influence on German thinking. During both wars the economy was geared fully towards producing armaments. There was little material, money and manpower to supply everyday consumer goods.
The years between the wars were filled with civil war type unrest, weak governments, and several phases of inflation including a dramatic hyper-inflation. The years after the Second World War were marked by hunger, lack of housing, severe winters, high unemployment and a fear of what the future would bring.
The entire West German economy had to be rebuilt. This was achieved surprisingly fast due to the generous and far-sighted help of the Western allies and on the production of high-quality technical products. After nearly thirty years of instability, unpredictability and hardship, there was a strong demand among the German people for reliable, durable, high quality products. The Germans wanted security and predictability.
The German product philosophy has not changed, even though there are few alive who experienced the war years. The experiences were so dramatic that they have been passed on to the younger generations. German products which carry the name Bosch, Siemens or Volkswagen speak to the experiences of both earlier and current generations.
TÜV Technischer Überwachungsverein. The Institute for Technical Testing has locations across Germany (and in many countries), applies vigorous testing procedures to products of all kinds. A TÜV certificate is a sign of the highest quality.
Stiftung Warentest. The Foundation for Product Testing, similar to Consumer Reports in the U.S., is an independent, neutral organization which tests critically over 200 products each year. Its standards are among the highest internationally, including all requirements defined by law. The media covers many of the test results.
The quality of a product is its most important characteristic. The testing results produced by TÜV and Stiftung Warentest are considered by Germans to be 100% reliable. Each have been taken to court many times for the critical scores they have given products. Neither organization has lost a court case.
Much of what is Germany has its roots in the Prussian reforms of the early 19th Century. Napoleon‘s rapid defeat of Prussia in 1806/07 led to a deep-dive analysis of what went wrong, of what required reform. The Germans radically changed their agricultural system, their business laws, their military training, and most importantly their system of education.
Public eduction for all was introduced. The universities adopted the Humboldt education philosophy, which stressed free and independent inquiry and teaching. Knowledge quickly became the foundation of a modern Prussian economy and state, in many ways for contemporary Germany.
The Prussian Reforms also addressed state institutions. A system of professional civil servants and a bureaucracy was instituted. Bureaucracy then stood for efficiency and professionalism. The tax laws were simplified and made transparent. The state should function more efficiently and become a motor for positive change.
Germany today remains a rather bureaucratic country, with its scores of civil servants, rules and laws. It is a country where one simply cannot do as one pleases. From the perspective of other societies this is a limitation on freedom. Germans, though, view it as a sign of security and stability. Doing things the right way, punctuality, reliability, predictability, following the rules, bureaucracy. Germany has a 200 year history of these. They are who the Germans are as a people.
Unpuncturable – it can’t be punctured. No flat tire.
The Marathon Plus is the only bicycle tire in the world which is allowed to describe itself as unpuncturable. It is made by the German company Schwalbe with its patent on a Pannenschutzgürtel – literally flat tire protective belt. The belt is five millimeters thick and is made of highly elastic rubber. Neither thumbtacks nor glass can cut through it.
The Marathon Plus tire is not only unpuncturable, it has a so-called anti-aging exterior. Schwalbe’s goal was to create a truly durable product, a deep-seated German desire to make things which have Beständigkeit – resistance, stability, permanence, constancy.
Schwalbe was founded in 1992 by the Bohle family. It has remained a family-owned and -run company. It is the leading bicycle tire company in Europe, operates worldwide. They describe themselves as tire fanatics.
Those who write the rules of the game, have the best chance of winning the game. Processes – how the work is done – make up the rules of the game. Within companies. Where the product is critical to success. Where “a better mousetrap” really can, for the most part, sell itself.
Let’s march it backwards. Customer. Product. Manufacturing. Product development. Science and engineering. German. The core is science and engineering. In Germany scientists and engineers are king. They enjoy the prestige. Herr Dr. Soandso. Even better, Herr Professor Dr. Soandso.
Let’s march it backwards. Customer. Solution and profitability. Problem and pain. Relationship management. Sales. Marketing. American. The core is understanding the market, maintaining a constant close relationship with the customer, understanding and meeting needs. The customer is king. Those close to the royal court are king-too. They enjoy the prestige. The insider. The trusted.
Germans want to have the say about process, about how the work is done. For them it is make or break, success or failure. It’s the name of the game. Americans are happy to concede it, as long as the Germans concede to them the customer.
Mistaken thinking, or at most half-thinking. On both sides.
Deductive thinking is to make conclusions based on a law and a condition. Students in the social sciences at German universities learn deductive thinking early on.
Applying deductive thinking in the social sciences is not that simple, however. Statements (laws) can never be proven conclusively, because it is not possible to test every possible case.
The Germans in the social sciences, therefore, rely on the Falsifikationsprinzip or principle of falsification: to seek out cases which contradict the hypothesis, in order to refine that hypothesis.
The Falsifikationsprinzip was developed by the Austrian philosopher Karl Popper, and is foundational to social science thinking in Germany.
It is one of the key reasons why Germans are inclined to reject inductive thinking, which suggests the general based on the specific. German social scientists (and academics in general) believe that inductive thinking is fine for everyday life, but has no place in the sciences.
In his book A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon (2010) author Neil Sheehan describes the life and work of Bernard Schriever, who is considered to be the father of the American nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
Schriever and his military and civilian colleagues believed firmly that if both the United States and the Soviet Union possessed these weapons of mass destruction the probability of them being used actually would be decreased.
Schriever had to overcome strong institutional resistance within the U.S. Air Force whose leadership was convinced that manned aircraft﹣strategic long-range bombers﹣was the only way to maintain a credible deterrent against the Soviet Union.
Through telling the story of Bernard Schriever and the development of the American ballistic missile program from the end of Second World War up to the mid-1960s Sheehan tells the history of the Cold War, which would last up until the 1990s with the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the unification of West and East Germany, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, and the freedom of Eastern Europe from Russian domination.
In a 2010 television interview (Booknotes on C-SPAN) Sheehan contrasted Schriever with his American-born military colleagues, Generals Paul Harkins and William Westmoreland, both who had overall command of U.S. forces in the Vietnam War.
Schriever would tell his subordinates that he would never fire anyone for failing, but instead for failing to inform him immediately of problems. For Schriever, as stated by Sheehan, success would take care of itself if one focused on solving the problems at hand. Go to minutes 25:10 to 26:50.
Sheehan had been a young war correspondent in Vietnam for United Press International (UPI), later with the New York Times. As told in his book A Bright Shining Lie (1989), which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, the American generalship during the Vietnam War was unwilling to accept that America was losing that war.
General Schriever, according to Sheehan‘s research, made clear time and again to the members of this organization, whether military or civilian, that he wanted timely and accurate reports on the problems the program was experiencing, and was far less interested in the progress made.
So-called progress reports had become common within the U.S. military after the Second World War, and according to Sheehan, symptomatic for an institution unwilling to face what was not working.
Bernard Adolph Schriever was born in 1910 in the German port city of Bremen. His father was an engineer. They immigrated to the U.S. only months before the U.S. entered the First World War in 1917.
Schriever grew up in New Braunfels, Texas, an area mostly populated by German immigrants. Read about his fascinating life in Wikipedia
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Minderleinsmühle near Nuremberg, Germany. From their website:
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