Schadenfreude over Harry?

The Germans are enjoying themselves at the latest British royal embarrassment over Prince Harry's idiotic Nazi Afrika Korps fancy dress outing. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation notes a Handelsblatt editorial: "Germans, who have long thought the British should make less fun of the Nazi era, can register this story with a certain malicious glee". Schadenfreude, in fact! The ABC piece also notes that "German politicians have called for a Europe-wide ban on Nazi insignia." I doubt that will happen. The trouble is, lots of Brits still have too much fun taking the piss out of the Germans. It's a way of trying to show their superiority, and unfortunately it's not going to change soon. More to the point, the rabidly anti-European English press would start a rhetorical World War 3 if anyone in Europe seriously tried to remove from their arsenal one of their favorite Euro-bashing symbols.


English yobs - including morons like Prince Harry who act as their upper-crust representatives - make targets almost as easy as the Nazis themselves. But a piece by Matthias Matussek in Spiegel Online presses the issue too far when he claims that the "Brits lately have been doing a worse job of dealing with history than the Germans." Matussek makes the claim that "Apparently the British have been focusing too much on their own triumph [in World War II] and too little on the history of the victims. It now appears the British have a greater problem with the past than the Germans." Now steady on, old chap! I'm with Matussek up to a point - though he needs to get his spelling of "Ausschwitz" and "Hilter" right (especially "Hilter": "Mr Hilter" is a character from a famous Monty Python sketch, "The North Minehead By-election", where the former Fuehrer (John Cleese) is hanging out in England with "Ron Vibbentrop" (Graham Chapman), You see what I mean? This Nazi stuff is hard-wired into the English-Brit mentality).


But - at the risk of sounding like a yob apologist - I have to say to Matthias that "You're not on" with that last bit I quoted from him. Yes, of course the "Brits" celebrate their own triumph in WWII - it's one of the very few genuinely great humanitarian achievements in Great British history, a very rare moment when one can simply be proud of Britain's actions in the world, doing the world a real favor instead of sticking it to the natives in the colonies for the umpteenth time. And Britian's role in the victory against fascism is perhaps its greatest contribution to world civilization. Even the yobbo English chavs (Scottish neds are less hung up on the whole anti-German thing) who have no idea what "Auschwitz" really means, know that somewhere in their tiny brains. So I'm sorry, but you can't say that the British "have a greater problem with the past than the Germans." Nobody has a greater problem with their past than the Germans. Do the English have to get over themselves? You betcha. But you have to give them time. If you take away the "two world wars and one world cup, do-da-doo-da-day" mentality, what have they got left to celebrate? Not very much. And how will the Sun and the Daily Mail sell their papers then? (OK, probably just stick in more tits and bums, but you get the idea.)


But just to emphasize that the Brits still have their own very real (non-Nazi) problems dealing with the past, Matussek does make a telling point about the media coverage. "And few could be bothered to write more than a line in passing about the theme of the party held by these snobs, who otherwise while away their time vociferously fighting for the aristocratic right to fox hunting. The theme? 'Colonials and Natives.'"