AfD begins campaign against the Greens on environmental policy

Thank you Carolyn.

Hi Baldur, Yes I'm aware of those things and they have certainly boosted the USA in a big way (satellites, rockets, putting men on the moon, jets for US aerospace industry) and much, much more.  I think Germany was also prohibited by the allies from developing things after the war, at least for some years.  But, I think Germany's competitiveness may have also been affected negatively by German policies.  I don't know.  
 
When I made my original comment I had in mind foremost that Germany led the world in Nobel Prizes (by far) thru 1945 and for a few years afterwards.  Germany was far ahead of USA and Great Britain too.  German science was hurt when Jews were encouraged to leave the country because a sizeable portion of Germany's Nobel Prize recipients were Jewish.  I don't know how many, but I once read someone cite an estimate of 1/3 of Germany's Nobel Prizes were received by Jews.  Besides being intelligent, they are also highly ethnocentric and just as America's Ivy League schools now have very high percentages of Jews attending that have been shown to get in over whites with superior scholastic records, I suspect that played a role in their success in Germany too.  But the majority of Germany's Nobel recipients were not Jewish (despite what many people think) and Jews only became a factor in German science in the late 18th century.  Prior to that they had no involvement in science, but Germany had been a leader in scince for centuries.  I'm going into such details about the Jews, because all the anti-German hatred has contributed to the belief by many people that Jews won most of Germany's Nobel Prizes and Germans played almost no role.  This is completely false.  It's also worth noting that Poland had 3 million Jews (to Germany's 500,000 Jews) and the USSR had far more Jews than Germany too and these countries had no Nobel Prizes before 1945, except for Poland's Madame Curie, a Christian.*  So, why can't Germany get back on track?  I don't know.  It's possible the US still does things to keep Germany down, but I don't know what they would be and how much affect they could have. 
 
AFD has said it wants to reestablish Germany's two tier educational ssytem which I think may have been largely done away with not too many years ago.  Germany's schools used to have a youth maka decision at around 12 years old if he would choose the school path towards a university degree or choose a path to become an expert technicizn, plumber, a trade, which is why Germany has so many experts in trades that don't require a university degree.  Doing away with this two track system hurts the high achieving students who would be able to learn more if they get a separate education than those learning a trade.  High achievers should be encouraged and AFD wants to reestablish this system.  But, I don't know how long ago Germany changed its educational system and I don't know how big an affect it had.  I have also read that as much as 20% of Germany's population is not ethnically German, thanks to post WW II policies (which Germany's enemies were behind).  I suspect this may also have an affect.  Certainly, that Merkel let in 2 million middle east illiterates in one year only a few years ago will affect Germany's competitiveness to a degree.  
 
And, I think there is a certain mindset that has come into vogue, I'm not sure exactly when.  I recall that about 15 years ago France and Germany announced they they were considering a joint project to develop a competitor to Google (like Airbus, which is a big success) and then all of a sudden it was dropped and I read a comment by some German saying, why develop a second system if the US has a system that already serves the world.  I think that is very poor reasoning.  I also recall that one of Germany's major book publishers or maybe it was a music producer was going to buy Youtube before Google purchased it.  Well, they obviously didn't buy it and when I watch as Google, Youtube and all the American social media sites are censoring and removing many users and items they oppose (including historical videos), I have to wonder if the Germans foresaw that and said they don't want to run something like Youtube and then perhaps be accused of being "NAZIS" for not removing videos Jews don't like.  I don't know.  But I think Germans themselves might be able to examine what has made them less competitive.  I believe AFD is correct that Merkel has been a disaster for Germany.

My German parents were from the war generation and just old enough to have an idea about the world in 1945.  I had many arguments with them when I was growing up which I would apologize to them for today if they were still around.  They knew what they were talking about much better than me.  I think I have an idea what they would say if they were still alive today.  My mother returned to Germany for the first time in 1975 after leaving Germany about 20 years earlier.  She loved it and had a wonderful time but she made an offhand comment about the large number of foreigners living in Germany in 1975.  In 1975!  As proud German patriots I think my parents would be in shock at how Germany is overrrun with foreigners today.  
I remember when my mother (and my brother and sister) came back, I think from that same trip, and I learned that my uncle (who I saw 2 years ago after not seeing him for over 50 years) got married and I had two cousins, and I was told his wife was Moroccan.  At that time that didn't mean anything to me and it has no affect today on how I feel about my cousins.  But what I've learned in the last few years regarding that has a big impact on me.  During WW II already a well known American Harvard anthropologist (Ernest Wooton, who I believe was Jewsh) wrote an artice advocating taking millions of young German men to foreign countries as slave laborerers (where they could mix with the local women) after the war and bringing millions of young foreign men into Germany where they could mix with the German women.  There is so much more too, that shows that the flooding of Germany and Europe with foreigners was well thought out before WW II already.  There were Europeans that advocated this before the war too, including the highly honored Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, who was half Japanese himself, which I think one can safely say had an impact on how he thought.