I hear ya Linus. As I grew up in Brussels (we moved there when I was 3) I knew every single WWII insult for Germans by the age of 10. Evenu from grown-up. I distinctly remember one day coming back from school, my neighboor was working in her front yard, I said "Bonjour madame" and got a "qu'est-ce que tu me veux sale bosch" in return. My mom had to explain to me what it meant.

But I've never got that impression since I moved to Canada or whenever I travelled to the US. Not like there's any point in denying my heritage with my name ;)

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Wilfried Heinle

Artificial Intelligence can never beat natural stupidity.

I think it is pretty sad you can't say you are proud to be German. It is interesting you have to exlpain you are not proud of your history from 1914-18 or 33-45 I would think that was understood. Just like when I say I am proud to be American I am not saying I am proud of our history in our treatment of Blacks or Native Americans but people here understand that. Interesting that you have to qualify it there. I guess some wounds are slow to heal?

Just curious, but what about WWI are you not proud of?

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Although I'm not Linus, I hope it's ok if I respond.

For starters our ancestors were the agressors invading other Eurpoean countries and they introduced the chemical warfare by using amongst others mustard gas. Nothing to be really proud of.

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Wilfried Heinle

Artificial Intelligence can never beat natural stupidity.

Well, if it will make Germans feel better, they were not the first to use chemical weapons. The Chinese were documented to have used them as early as 1000BC. As for aggresion, that was a time when countries on the continent traded alliances and territory with regularity. The continent was almost always at war, and this just happened to be Germany's turn. Not saying you should be proud of it, but i wouldn't lose any sleep over it if it were me.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Very good post, Linus, as that is absolutely true. As a german you can't really admit that there may be reasons to be proud of being German. The past, and only focussed on Nazi Germany is still quite present sometimes. But for our generation it is the past, we never lived in Nazi Germany. So when anyone points his finger at me saying something like "bad German, Heil Hitler" I just don't care and I ignore it. It's just too stupid to even react on it.

The more I feel pride towards the European idea. I am very proud to be European, I love our load of diversity and culture and it is amazing to see the development within Europe. How countries with so many different mentalities come together as one.

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You just forgot the invasion in France via Belgium, that was neutral.

(ATTENTION, joke alert: the same thing happened in WW2. Therefore, i sometimes repeat to my french collegues that next time, we will probably do the same ...)

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