Leadership Quote by Douglas Hurd

A British conservative vouching for German pride is less a compliment than a calculated act of political bridge-building. Douglas Hurd’s line works because it treats national pride not as chest-thumping identity politics, but as a claim tethered to output: engineering, process, exports, competence. He’s granting Germany moral permission to feel good about itself - a sensitive gift in postwar Europe, where German patriotism was routinely policed by history and by neighbors who benefited from Germany’s restraint.

The phrasing is doing careful diplomatic work. “Nothing false or arrogant” anticipates the standard objections: that pride shades into superiority, that efficiency becomes smugness, that “German” achievements carry an ominous echo. By preemptively rejecting those readings, Hurd separates pride in capability from pride in domination. It’s not Blut und Boden; it’s apprenticeships, machine tools, management systems, Mittelstand grit. Pride becomes civic, not ethnic.

The context is a Europe where German reunification and EU integration forced everyone to renegotiate what German power would look like. Hurd’s Britain had two recurring anxieties: an overmighty Germany and an underperforming UK. This quote flatters Germany while quietly holding up a mirror to Britain: here is a model of seriousness, of institutions that produce real things, of prestige earned by competence rather than nostalgia. In one sentence, Hurd normalizes Germany and needles his own country to modernize - a technocratic endorsement with a geopolitical edge.