It's always hard to tell what's really happening behind the GDP growth figures when comparing countries. The population of US and UK are currently increasing around 0.7% a year, while Germany is around 0%. That's a lot of additional GDP growth for both UK and US, even when excluding the fact that immigrants are at their prime working age and usually more beneficial for the GDP than an average citizen. This has a fairly big impact on what's seen on the news. Since depression is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth, it's much easier for countries like US and UK to avoid "official" depression, and much easier for news outlets to talk about the "stagnating old Europe" or such; and of course, at the same time the living standard of an average German might be increasing and that of a UK/US citizen decreasing.