Yes, the billboard advertisement part is true. But billboards in Germany are fewer and smaller than in other parts of the world. And the Bundeswehr ad campaign is nothing that will convince anyone who would not be convinced otherwise already. If you notice the ads as a German citizen at all, you'll most likely shrug, or ask your self: Since. When. Is. It. Ok. To. Pretend. A. Single. Word. Forms. A. Sentence? (for context: the ad says "Wir. Dienen. Deutschland." which translates verbatim as "We. Serve. Germany." - which, if my English as a second language grammar knowledge does not fail me, would also make no grammatical sense in English.
As for the rest, of course you see quite a few people that do not look like the von Trapp family singers, or whatever shaped your stereotype of how ethnic Germans are supposed to look like. Apropos ethnic Germans, historically we happen to be a two digit number of distinct tribes anyhow, and it still is suprisingly easy to piss one of the natives off by confusing them for a member of the wrong tribe. But I am digressing.
What I can say, all ethnicity questions cast aside, the governments in the time that I am following the news (the very late Kohl era), which have been nine different now, are all quite the same in one way: kicking the can down the road and pulling up the ladder from above. The state/society/economy I grew up in had quite some substance of which it could coast off for some time.
But as with all things that go down south: Gradually, then suddenly.
