I think the main reason for the difference is that probably different country don't measure the cause of death in the same way. For example in Italy right now

I think the main reason for the difference is that probably different country don't measure the cause of death in the same way. For example in Italy right now any person that dies that resulted positive to covid-19 test before or after death is considered a victim of covid-19, regardless if there were other preconditions. This may be different in other countries. If one excludes people with preconditions, the number of deaths in Italy becomes much smaller (don't remember the exact amount, but I think it was in the tens). Also, while Italy started late with testing, at the moment it has performed 80000+ tests for COVID-19, which is behind only to China and South Korea (see for example [1], altough a 3 days old). I couldn't find any official number about tests performed in Germany, though, but unless germany tested at S.K. level I don't think that the number of tests explains the difference [1] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-testing https://ourworldindata.org/covid-testing