I lived among them and worked with the GI's stationed there in the '80s, a lot of GI's didn't really get to know the Germans well. These are a very conservative people, even have a formal and informal language.  It's a general  European way of looking at the world, "if things can go wrong, they will", that's a philosophy easy to interpret as sadness. But also easy to understand after two world wars fought over their villages and farms.