[1] Germany kicked off its campaign on 20 November 2010, when they played and lost to Poland in Frankfurt am Main, followed by a game against the Netherlands a week later in Amsterdam.
[4] Germany suffered a defeat in its opening game of the 2010–2012 European Nations Cup First Division, losing to Poland 17-22 after leading 17-9 at half time.
The defeat was seen as unnecessary by the president of the German Rugby Federation, Claus-Peter Bach, but he also considered Poland's victory as deserved.
[7] A loss in this game could have meant for Germany a drop as far as to position 37 in the ranking, instead, the country managed to cut down its deficit to 29th placed Ukraine.
[14] Germany started with an improved performance in its 2011 autumn campaign, defeating the New Zealand Ambassadors XV 19–17 despite fielding a number of uncapped players, a side it had lost to 19–43 eight month earlier.
[21] After the resignation of Rudolf Finsterer after the final game of the 2008-10 campaign, Bruno Stolorz, under the supervision of Peter Ianusevici, Germany's Director of Rugby, remained in charge of the German team.
Mustafa Güngör, who served as the captain of the German team since December 2009[24] was replaced by Alexander Widiker before the first match of the campaign.
[5] Four players made their debut in Germany's first game of the campaign, against Poland, those being Arthur Zeiler, Sven Wetzel, Tim Menzel and James Keinhorst.
After a number of failed attempts, Pieter Jordaan finally made his debut for Germany against Belgium, where he scored two tries but was unable to prevent another defeat.
[13] For its first game of the return round of the ENC in November 2011 against the Netherlands, Germany nominated eight uncapped players, those being Rob May, Sean Armstrong, Callum Sauer, Olivier Galli, Raynor Parkinson, Guillaume Kasdorf, Mika Tyumenev und Stéphane Kohler.
The two games against the New Zealand Ambassadors XV are not official international tests, no caps were awarded and matches were not counted in statistics[9]