# What made/makes the Germans so good at what they do? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 29, 2021, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-makes-the-germans-so-good-at-what-they-do/951560 "2021-09-29T01:43:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Bonum\_Legatum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bonum_legatum/32/6183_2.png) [@Bonum\_Legatum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bonum_Legatum)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2021, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-makes-the-germans-so-good-at-what-they-do/951560/61 "2021-10-03T20:38:00Z")
One thing: Americans are culturally “jacks of all trades – and masters of none”. From the early days, when the farm family was expected to construct implements from what could be found or grown on the farm (homespun, wooden shovels, even homes) right down to the “do it yourself” movement that blossomed with the suburban life-styles of the 1950’s. This creates a society where expertise is viewed as something that can be “picked up along the way”. The apprenticeship/craft system of Europe and Britain developed along different lines. Second thing: This is a great cultural divide was between the craftsperson working to make a “master-piece” and the large-scale production that is necessary to provide objects for the greatest number of consumers. From “Machines That Built America” by Roger Burlingame: Writing about the “Great Exhibition in London 1851”: "One of the officers looked at his catalog and read aloud a paragraph at the head of the American list. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is impressive.’ _The expenditure of months or years of labour [the statement read] upon a single article, not to increase its intrinsic value, but solely to augment its cost or its estimation as a object of virtu, is not common in the United States. On the contrary, both manual and mechanical labour are applied with direct reference to increasing the number or the quantity of articles suited to the wants of the whole people, and adapted to promote the enjoyment of that moderate competency which prevails among them_." …‘I assume,’ said a captain 'that it means they are trying to manufacture enough for everybody." ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2021, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-makes-the-germans-so-good-at-what-they-do/951560/62 "2021-10-03T20:41:58Z")
> [@carrps](#): > > Lord, spare me from “brilliant” coders. Brilliant coders are good. It’s the clever ones that cause all the trouble. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2021, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-makes-the-germans-so-good-at-what-they-do/951560/63 "2021-10-03T23:20:53Z")
Brilliant coders are good. “Brilliant” ones are not. 🙃 ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2021, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-makes-the-germans-so-good-at-what-they-do/951560/64 "2021-10-04T07:00:42Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > As long as I’ve been politically aware (since the mid-70s, which was the time of RAF terror), Germany has been in permanent crisis-mode, one crisis chasing the other, at least according to our own assessment. Well, that’s life, in any country (as one British PM put it, when asked what his greatest challenge was, “Events, dear boy, events”). Now that I’m a few chapters in, Kampfner stresses - to its credit - how Germany has weathered the storms, and the relative stability and consensus-finding in the system in modern times. Not that that answers the OP’s question directly - remains to be seen what’s in the rest of the book. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-made-makes-the-germans-so-good-at-what-they-do/951560.md?page=3)