The countries experiencing more of a U shape recover have a few things in common. The first is that their banking systems are stronger either because they didn’t crash as hard or received more help then the US system. The second is that they were both willing and able to increase spend the money required to stimulate their economies.
I presume Germany is one of the countries you mean?
Let's take a closer look and see if you are painting a complete picture.
These articles have a different view than you for the cause of their recovery …
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE67U19520100831
Aug 31, 2010
German unemployment fell in August to its lowest since November 2008
… snip ...
Exports have driven the rebound but consumer morale, long seen as Germany's weak point, is also increasingly upbeat.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-...-month-as-rising-exports-bolster-economy.html
German unemployment declined for a 14th month in August after surging exports and investment fuelled record economic growth in the second quarter.
… snip …
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet is tomorrow set to approve a second package of spending cuts and revenue-raising measures to tackle the budget gap
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...e-germanys-secret-to-recovery/article1659177/
Aug. 01, 2010
… snip …
While the rest of Europe is just beginning to crawl out of crisis and into the first tentative rays of growth and recovery, Germany is positively booming.
Export sales are up dramatically, spurred especially by Chinese sales
… snip …
Germany did something different.
While its neighbouring countries spent hundreds of billions bailing out banks, financing infrastructure and stimulating the economy (they just described Bush and Obama's approach, by the way 
), Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative-liberal coalition government also took a very large, unique gamble by spending huge sums of money bailing out its work force.
In a system known as kurzarbeit, or “short-time work,” the German government pays up to two-thirds of the salary of employees who would otherwise be laid off, as long as they remain employed. The employer is expected to cover any hours actually worked and to keep up their pension and benefit payments.
… snip …
For Germany, it has been a huge gamble, for if the economic downturn lasts beyond 2010, the cost of having millions of private-sector employees effectively on the state payroll will become unaffordable and counterproductive, triggering an even worse crisis.
Now before going on, I would point out that the US has also recovered from many, many recessions that were no more severe than what Germany experienced in just as fast a manner without kurzarbeit … simply by doing nothing, so it's not entirely provable that kurzarbeit did anything that wouldn't have happened anyway had Germany done nothing.
And here's one more article …
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2010/08/german-employmentposner.html
All these countries [including Germany] except Australia had before the economic crisis a higher personal savings rate than the United States. And all without exception derived a much higher fraction of their national income from exports than the United States. Because of our very low personal savings rate, and the (related) fact that most savings were in the form of home equity and (directly or indirectly) common stock, the crash of 2008 ushered in a protracted period of stagnant consumption spending as frightened American consumers increased their personal savings rate from 1.7 percent three years ago to 6.4 percent today. Producers and distributors in the third quarter of 2008 and in 2009 could foresee a sustained period of subpar demand, and so laid off many workers and have been slow to rehire them, anticipating that demand for goods and services will not increase substantially for some time.
In other advanced economies, higher personal savings and greater reliance on export earnings created expectations of more rapid economic recovery. Consumers would have less incentive to increase their savings further and thus reduce consumption; so businessmen could expect demand to revive sooner than in the United States. They could also expect their export markets to rebound soon, knowing that major importers of technologically advanced manufactured goods, such as China, India, and Brazil and other Latin American countries, had been hit less hard by the economic crisis. The quicker a solid economic recovery is expected to occur, the less prone employers are to lay off workers, because laying off and rehiring are costly, and the costs may well exceed a short period in which employees are not busy because demand for the employer’s product is weak.
Oh and by the way …
http://www.bt.com.bn/business-world/2010/10/01/german-unemployment-lowest-1992
October 1, 2010
GERMANY'S unemployment rate fell to its lowest level in more than 18 years in September … snip … The fall was the 15th drop in a row and took the adjusted jobless rate down to 7.5 per cent from 7.6 per cent in August. That was also the lowest level since April 1992, according to Bundesbank figures.
Imagine that. In Germany, the LOWEST the unemployment rate has been in the last
18 years is 7.5%. Between 2000 and 2006, it averaged OVER 10% unemployment. Here:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ate.svg/795px-GermanyUnemploymentRate.svg.png . Now looking at that chart, you might wonder what happened in the early 1970s when unemployment rates in Germany suddenly began to skyrocket. Well the answer is simple. Up until that time the Social Democratic Party (SPD) … i.e., socialists … did not control the country. From 1949 to 1966, the SPD was only an outsider … the opposition party. Then in 1966 it became part of a winning coalition led by the Christian Democratic Union Party. Then in 1969, the SPD won the majority of seats itself and dominated the government until 1982. That was time enough to establish Germany as a social welfare state with unemployment steadily climbing to over 8% and rising. And you can see from the chart, after the other parties took over, they managed to get the unemployment growth stopped and it started to drop ... back down to well under 8% by 1992. Then the SPD began to regain their strength. They took complete control in 1998, by which time unemployment was over 10% and held it until 2005 ... with unemployment still over 10% ... when their hold began to weaken. As their hold weakened, the unemployment rate has dropped. In the current government they are now the minor party of a three party coalition with their support now down to less than 25% in national polls. So maybe that's the real reason for Germany's current 18 year low in unemployment rate and economic recovery. Different thinking than the sort of thinking promoted by US democrats/progressives/socialists/communists.
Now just for contrast, in the US the highest the unemployment rate reached during the post war period was slightly over 10.8% for the briefest of times in late 1982. Here:
http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2008/10/30/saupload_unemployment.jpg . Most of the time it was well below Germany's 7.5% . In fact, during a republican controlled congress in the late 90s, it fell to 4%. Here:
http://perotcharts.com/images/indicators/indicators05-640.png . In fact, as you can see from that chart, then even with George Bush Jr, who you folks so despise, in the Whitehouse, the unemployment rate in the US barely climbed above 6% after a recession and the economic turmoil following 9/11. Then, during the time when Republicans controlled Congress, it fell steadily … below 5% for two years of Bush Jr's term. It only started going up when democrats took over both houses of Congress at the end of his term.
I think there's a lesson in all the above, but those who vote for democrats just seem completely deaf to it. Deaf to history in general.
