Why the Germans Do it Better
John Kampfner
Atlantic Books
If you wanted to create a more provocative title, then it’s hard to see how you could better than that for this volume, which was published late last year.
It will inflame hardcore, Brexit-loving exceptionalists (never a bad thing), but it also won't be particularly popular with most Germans.
The latter group does not generally want to view its country in such terms: where the past lies so heavy, nationalistic bragging is out of the question for the majority.
Rather, there is continued reflection and concern – a situation not seen in the UK, where a loud minority feels free to howl some sort of superiority and, as Iain Duncan Smith did in January, at the end of the Brexit transition period, to hail the opportunity for Britain to “dominate” the world once more.
How Christ-like can you be? And I only ask the question, since IDS is supposedly a Christian.
So the history of the UK remains largely unfaced, to be seen only as one long, glorious victory. Raising the issues of statues to slavers is, for the right-wing elements of the press, 'woke’ and, of course 'cancel culture’.
But for author John Kampfner, it has, since the end of WWII, punched above its weight morally and ethically – and therefore, it’s not difficult to see why this is a legitimate suggestion.
It’s actually worth stepping back a bit to start with, noting that Kampfner is the son of a Jewish father who escaped eastwards from the Nazis, where he met the author’s English Protestant mother, who was a nurse in Singapore, where he himself was born.
Kampfner’s own CV is seriously impressive: he has worked as a journalist for Reuters, The Telegraph (initially in East Berlin), the FT, the BBC, and has been the editor of the New Statesman and current affairs editor of the British Society of Magazine Editors.
In other words, we can fairly approach this work without assuming an impinging and overriding personal/political ideology.
It is a fascinating book, combining elements of memoir, interview, data, history and lots more.
From a personal perspective and as a Germanophile myself, I am probably far better read on German history than the overwhelming majority of my compatriots. Indeed, I was whooping out loud when Kampfner described the lack of German history beyond 1933-1945 being represented in most British bookshops.
For a couple of decades now, that has been a way in which I judge a bookshop. I am not alone.
However, butting into this, I would take issue with Kampfner’s simplistic comparison of Prussia with Nazism. If you want to read more on that, then I can never recommend Christopher Clark’s superb Iron Kingdom highly enough. To be fair, I'd say read it anyway – it's the best history I've read.
I would suggest that he equally wrong on the green movement in Germany – in terms of timing. As Günter Grass’s 1986 novel The Rat illustrates, Germans were first spurred into action on the environment by realising that their forests were dying because of acid rain. And for Germans, forests are a massively important issue – as Kampfner does point out fleetingly.
He also stresses that, in Germany, free issues are not just the preserve of the political left. The environment has brought many together, including conservatives – hence the electoral success of the German greens.
However, for all my pickiness, this is a brilliant volume in so many ways. If you sit anywhere to the left of centre – and frankly, I think that many of those on the right of centre would feel the same – this is actually a clarion call for conservatism. Note the small ‘c’. And it's not a bad vision or, in Germany, reality.
There are many things I recognised – as well as many that were new to me – and also many that I found myself longing for.
Kampfner is very good on the social market and, while it’s briefer in terms of pages, he’s even better on Germany’s verein – the clubs. Apparently, Germany expects all citizens to be part of community organisations. Reading this section, I found myself longing for such a sense of community in the UK.
I recall a boat trip around Lübeck on a Sunday morning and seeing all the local boating clubs active. And other individuals out waking and running and running and more.
Nothing since has suggested to me that Germans have it, in essence, wrong – and this book provides the facts to back this up.
Kampfner is not simply rosy-tinted about his subject – he see its faults and sets them down clearly. But even while admitting to being “more of a child of Thatcher” than he would have imagined, in his impatience with the German way of doing things economically, he now points to how the country has largely stuck to its beliefs on the social market – even as many other countries now start to make at least noises about the importance of community etc.
It’s clear that Germany is aided in being more ‘grown up’ by having none of the distrust and dislike of intellectual activity that is particularly rife in English life. He describes how Angela Merkel loves to discuss high culture – and contrasts that to David Cameron, who was embarrassed to admit, at a dinner with the Kanzellor, that he just watched telly when off duty.
As Kampfner goes on, it’s a perfect was to illustrate how a liking for high culture is generally disparaged in the UK as elitist etc – where the situation in Germany is quite different (the number of small towns in Germany with opera houses is a succinct illustration of this).
But then again, German conservatism is ‘girly swot’ Merkel and here, it’s Boris Johnson and his rabble of an untalented Cabinet that happily trashes ‘experts’ at the first opportunity.
In the age of Brexit and Johnson, Kampfner’s book is an important read and corrective.
