The Germans know that George Osborne and the British would never sign up to what he's expecting of them.
"I think the Germans know, and to some extent accept, that they have to pay the bill for saving the euro, " said Ursula Weidenfeld, an economist and author.
What the Germans really want to know is whether the Greeks and Italians can act like Germans.
The Germans wanted to know whether their missiles the forerunners of the space rockets were reaching the cities they were aimed at.
One explanation is that he seems to represent German voters' own divided sentiments: he is at once a member of Mr Kohl's reassuringly conservative party and an embodiment of Christian Democratic values, while having the decisiveness needed to carry out the reforms that Germans in their hearts know the country needs.
What the Greeks and Italians want to know is when the Germans are going to stop acting like Germans.
Yet Mr Obama will know that the Germans are unlikely to commit more soldiers before September's election.
You should know that the Germans felt their gold was safer in New York than in a place where it could be seized by the Soviet Union, if they had ever invaded.
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It reveals disturbing parallels between the cavalier attitude of many enterprises in West Germany and even the government in Bonn, itself, toward transfers of strategically sensitive technologies to the Soviet Union and the willingness of some Germans to permit dangerous equipment and know-how to fall into the hands of renegade nations like Iraq.
And Germans know this very well for the consensual style of both government and labour relations means that everyone discussed it, signed up to it and then did it.
The drug giant wanted to know why 56 West Germans had died while taking one of its diabetes pills.
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And, as its fascination fades, still more Germans will be clamouring to know what the government is really doing about jobs creating or destroying them?
"The Germans built the bunkers according to absolutely standard patterns, so we can walk into one and know straight away where everything will be - the hole for the radio mast, another for the periscope, the air vents, the sleeping area and so on, " said amateur archaeologist Jean-Francois Laquieze.
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