This attitude is surprisingly common in Britain, but I think it arises largely from anger at the loss of the Empire, which the British subliminally blame on the Germans and the losses of the World Wars.

Ignorance of German history in the general audience; yes, I get that; Nazi Germany as nothing but horror that instantly descended in January 1933 and instantly lifted in early May 1945; I get the problems with that portrayal, too (not that Gladwell is doing that). But how is this quote related to your clusterfuck vs worthwhile position?

“In 1918, Henry Goldman, one of the senior partners of Goldman Sachs, quit the firm in a dispute over Liberty Bonds. Goldman was a Germanophile, who objected to aiding the Allied war effort. (This is the same Henry Goldman who later bought the twelve-year-old Yehudi Menuhin a Stradivarius and Albert Einstein a yacht.)”

That clarification is necessary for an audience runing the risk of equating the Nazis and Wilhelmine Germany, and would otherwise be entirely unnecessary. You get that sort of thing quite a bit, probably more in Commonwealth than in US sources, in my experience and opinion.