When I was young (70s-80s), we were all amazed by Deutsche Bahn's punctuality and quality of service (second only to the Chemins de fer fédéraux suisses). Now, French and Italian trains are a lot more reliable, which is rather strange.
The Swiss Federal Railways asked German trains to wait at the border and has even ban many German trains to enter Switzerland over excessive delays to prevent their train schedule from being affected.
The site is hilarious by the way. I hope it will have an effect on DB, even though I doubt it.
The way I see it, French trains are more reliable, but they mostly go from Paris to other places. Germany operates a mesh network, with more lines, more centers, and more trains.
I've been living in Germany for a very long time and the real decline started some ten years ago. At the beginning mostly because of poor maintenance. My first years with the DB 100 card (allowing to travel on all trains) were a pleasure then it deteriote to the point where you start yourself: where is this heading. As I said, the ban of SBB on German trains was a turning point for me.
But You're right about the networks being different (mostly because France suppressed many local lines in the last 20 years.
Switzerland also gets the benefit of being a smaller country. I agree DB is poorly managed, but it's not nearly as bad as it could be.
I think another part of their problem is trying to run at very high utilisation ratios, which slightly increases throughput but vastly amplifies the cascade effect of a disruption.
The Swiss Federal Railways asked German trains to wait at the border and has even ban many German trains to enter Switzerland over excessive delays to prevent their train schedule from being affected.
The site is hilarious by the way. I hope it will have an effect on DB, even though I doubt it.