>>13618414You should have posted this in /his/ but whatever.
Go do some reading about the 30 years war.
Germany used to be a loose federation of largely independent states called the Holy Roman Empire.
The war started when there was a secession dispute between two of the states in the Empire.
Other, bigger powers such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, France, and Spain took advantage of the opportunity to settle things with each other and marched their armies back and forth across Germany and acted like animals. The largely provincial German people were helpless against the much more powerful forces crashing down on them and in some areas upwards of 60% of the entire population died. I'm talking about civilians btw. It was one of the most destructive wars in human history.
Frederick William was the duke of Prussia, just a minor regional territory at this time, and saw the devastation that was inflicted on his people and said to himself "never again."
He dedicated his life to created a standing, full-time, professional army to defend the people, which was a novel idea at the time. His son carried on this work and over time Prussia became one of the most formidable military forces in Europe. They developed a very militaristic culture, which is where the stereotypes of Germans being humorless, stern, and direct to the point come from.
Eventually Prussia would be the one to set about unifying Germany, so Prussia's culture basically became German culture in general.
