They will email you if you have a new inquiry or new account on your credit report(s). They will help you remove incorrect information and sometimes provide some financial assistance getting your documents replaced. Other than that they don't do much. They can't prevent someone from opening an account (only a credit freeze does that) and they can't tell you about non-credit identity theft.

In the US, most things are based on credit and not on actual money you have. If your credit is bad you can't do basic things like get a car, a house or a loan. If your identity is stolen someone else can do things in your name, and for example not pay back a loan. This causes your credit rating to sink, on top of the other problems (like people coming to your house because you didn't pay them).

If you check out http://money.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-money-an... you can see the derivatives and debt are a huge chunk of the not-actual-money part of the economy, which one way or the other is based on credit, credit ratings or ratings in general.

While this probably doesn't scale back to 1 person's identity, it does show that having someone mess with your credit is a whole lot worse than someone just stealing some money.

I get that credit scores are important. They are also in Germany. But what does credit protection do? Pay all the debts? Fix my score with all rating agencies?

It monitors your credit score for unusual lending to stop fraud. Normally, they also include insurance to cover any fraudulent activity associated with your identity.