> The reason Germany didn't prepare for it was because multiple leading politicians were bought and paid for by Russia. Be totally clear about that. Former German president was working for Gazprom on the project whose stated aim was to facilitate an invasion of Ukraine at some point (which Trump pointed out, and EU politicians literally laughed at him).
To add to your point, despite this the German population seems to strongly believe there is no corruption in their government. Local minima, everything is fine, there is no fire, I'm going to make some tea while the tables turns to ash under the pot.
As the other answer says, surely this would always be the case. People do not deal with government regularly and there is a strong disincentive to report upon this.
I think you see the same thing in every Western democracy where people believe there is no corruption or believe in rather comical forms of corruption, but the corruption is actually systemic and a function of some political configuration that can't really stand change. This is certainly the case in Germany where you have this odd alliance between unions and billionaires that has basically led to, despite the amazing talent of their people, amazingly poor policy delivery.
They also work 400 hours less per year than their US counterparts and 1000 less than their Chinese counterparts.
You might be comfortable in that life, but you won't be competitive.
And pray tell, what does the American or the Chinese worker in this case get out of their higher productivity and competitiveness? Because it really seems that it's not quality of life, that's for certain.
More money and material comforts? Well perhaps, but then again, I do wonder just how many would willingly take that rather than for example a proper work-life balance or clean environment. And we'll probably have to rethink the relationship of our societies with material consumption etc. in the coming decades anyway due to the climate emergency, and so maybe it'd actually be better for the US or China to adopt our "less competitive" stance rather than for us to try to agonise on trying to get ourselves competitive with them.
No one has yet figured out just what one's material possessions will do for them after they're dead. At best you can pass them to your next of kin, but that doesn't need the kind of hyper competitive, hyper capitalistic mindset espoused by the US or China.
>despite this the German population seems to strongly believe there is no corruption in their government
Because Germans only believe what their state speech controlled media is telling them. The prussian school is based on getting people to respect authority not about free critical thinking. Makes the population easily susceptible to government propaganda which has been used against them for 100 years already and they still haven't learned.
They also don't believe any foreigners pointing out their internal issue: "no, YOU are wrong, we make ze best cars in ze world(not anymore lol), so our country can't be doing anything wrong".