Yeah, the dependency graph for scheduling trouble to procreate is massive. Not comparable at all to a star topology as in France, or to a two coasts topology as in Japan. Closest thing might be Switzerland, but while that network is also very dense, it's also so small it might just as well be compared to some of the larger subway networks.

And then there's a pet hypothesis of mine, that a factor in the unreliability of German rail is the famous absence of a general speed limit on the Autobahn: that this might make DB strive for fast best case connection times more than it would if driving was slower, pushing them to schedule an unrealistic house of cards with not enough slack to recover from the unexpected.