THE TELEGRAPH: Britain has a more insidious “cross to bear” than Germany does over its Nazi history, according to Nick Clegg.
The Liberal Democrat leader said the British have “a misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur”.
In an article written in 2002, Mr Clegg, who was then MEP for the East Midlands, described the shame he felt over an incident on a school exchange trip to Germany.
“A boy called Adrian started it,” Mr Clegg wrote. “He shouted from the back of the coach, 'We own your country, we won the war’.”
The future Lib Dem leader said this was an example of what he described as a “warped” British obsession with Germans and the Second World War. “It is easy enough to explain the mixture of arrogance and insecurity that fuels this peculiar British obsession,” he wrote. “Watching Germany rise from its knees after the war and become a vastly more prosperous nation has not been easy on the febrile British psyche.” >>> Jon Swaine | Thursday, April 22, 2010
THE GUARDIAN: Britain is still stuck in a childish rut of anti-German prejudice, argues Nick Clegg MEP
I still cringe when I remember what happened on the school bus. The shame of it still lingers.
We were all travelling together - a class of 17-year-olds from my school and our German "exchange" partners - on an excursion to the Bavarian mountains. The German teenagers had already endured a month at our school in central London. Now it was our turn to spend a month in Munich, living with our "exchange" families and attending the local school.
A boy called Adrian started it. He shouted from the back of the coach, "we own your country, we won the war". Other boys tittered. One put a finger to his upper lip - the traditional British schoolyard designation for Hitler's moustache - threw his arm out in a Nazi salute, and goose-stepped down the bus aisle. Soon there was a cascade of sneering jokes, most delivered in 'Allo 'Allo German accents.
I remember two things vividly. First, none of the girls in my class joined in. It seemed to be a male thing. Second, the German schoolchildren did not appear angry, or even offended. That was what was so heart wrenching. They just looked confused, utterly bewildered. To a generation of young Germans, raised under the crushing, introspective guilt of postwar Germany, the sight of such facile antics was simply incomprehensible. >>> Nick Clegg MEP | Tuesday, November 19, 2002
