The Unexpected Winner: Who, What, And Why Is The World’s Best Country…

The results are in: U.S. News’ inaugural Best Countries report has declared that Germany is the world’s best country in which to live, a result coming as unexpected to citizens of marginally-outranked countries. The world-over winner among 60 contending countries was determined using a complex, multi-faceted methodology, whereby each nation was scored on 65 “country attributes” — grouped into nine sub-rankings such as cultural influence, heritage, entrepreneurship, and quality of life — based on the results from a survey of 16,000 people from around the globe. Germany was awarded the prestigious title of world’s best country for its booming economy, highly skilled workforce, immense cultural capital and contribution to many of the world’s major international organisations, including the United Nations, the European Union and NATO, as reported yesterday by The Inquisitr’s Julie Johnson.

The question of how a country whose reputation suffered unspeakable blows in the last century has recovered to now obtain the prestigious No. 1 ranking in 2016. Germany’s continuing commitment to socio-political recovery from, and restitution for, the fascist atrocities which decimated Europe’s ethnic diversity for decades, eventually leaving the country itself, in every way, defeated, is also mentioned in USN’s report.

“The country’s ‘culture of reticence,'” as Hamilton describes it, is born from its 20th century history, when it tore itself and the continent apart in two world wars,” explains the report. “The legacy of Nazism expresses itself today in the form of tough laws addressing hate speech and denial of the Holocaust.”

Many vestiges of Germanic heritage outside of the political realm also contend for the title of world’s best, their contributions to perceptions of the country having helped to buoy up Germany’s overall scores to competitive levels. The country is the birthplace of countless preeminent leaders in their discipline: in classical music, Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms; in fine arts, Richter, Dürer, and Ernst; in science and philosophy, Kant, Einstein, and Nietzsche. Oktoberfest, which takes place in Germany’s picturesque Bavarian capital of Munich annually at the end of spring, is considered one of the best festivals the world over. With world-class public education and health systems, high quality of living at affordable prices — particularly in Berlin, a hub of creative innovation and start-up entrepreneurship — and proximity to many of the world’s best travel destinations, the powerful country could not be outranked by its competition.

Behind the rise in the country’s reputation from depth-dwelling lows to best-in-show is Chancellor Angela Merkel — called the ‘steady, popular hand’ by U.S. News — whose response to the Syrian refugee crisis, currently overwhelming Europe’s immigration systems and eroding the EU’s geopolitical borders, was among many tokens of praise exchanged at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Efforts of recompense for national brand and image have also been made by neighboring country, Austria: the actual birthplace of Adolf Hitler, and the country in which Elisabeth Fritzl was imprisoned by her father, Josef, for 24 years, in one of the world’s most tragic violation of rights. Three of the six children — all conceived by her father’s routine rape — to which she gave birth were also imprisoned; the other three separated from mother and siblings, but raised by the same abusive father. The efforts have paid off, according to the report, which awarded Austria the title of World’s Twelfth-Best Country in which to live.

Second best in the overall list was the massive monarchical, multicultural country of Canada — world’s best country for the “Quality of Life” sub-ranking and significant exporter of food, minerals and energy — followed by the United Kingdom in third place, the United States of America in fourth, Sweden in fifth and Australia in sixth.

Whether dirndl-dressing, beer-drinking, reputably diligent Deutschland scored as best or much less on preceding frameworks of assessment, the country’s many social, political and cultural triumphs since reunification have earned its title as the world’s best country in 2016.

[Photo by Alex Grimm/Getty Images]