Celebrating 'A Peaceful and Tolerant Germany'

COLOGNE, Germany, July 10, 2006 — -- Last week, as German football fans grappled with their team's demoralizing loss to Italy on the verge of a dream World Cup finals berth, Mario Delold stowed away his national flag.

Recounting the decision after the German victory over Portugal in the third-place playoff, Delold, a builder's apprentice from Cologne, said he had removed the decorations out of respect for Italy's deserved moment of national pride.

By Sunday, the flag fluttered once more, covering a full two stories of Delold's apartment building. Shouting over the top of ongoing celebrations, Delold excitedly explained the new feeling engulfing the country.

"German nationalism has re-emerged with vitality," he said. "We are celebrating a peaceful and tolerant Germany."

Few before the tournament anticipated this overtly positive expression of national pride. The national team's past success always elicited celebration accompanied by an acute sense of embarrassment, and the Germans constantly found themselves having to justify their excitement as members of a nation that committed unspeakable horrors under Nazism.

Troubled by their own identity and scared of the impression left on international onlookers, subdued victory parties usually occurred in private. But with the World Cup to be staged at home, the opportunity emerged for Germans to demonstrate to themselves and the world that their national pride is deserved and benevolent.

Leading up to the tournament, the media cautiously tested the waters, with doomsday forecasters predicting an uncomfortable resurgence of nationalism and a descent into drunken hooliganism, a sight not uncommon in the world of European soccer.

German authorities prepared for the worst. Playing host chiefly meant controlling any guests who wanted to spoil the party. English fans, particularly prone to brutish displays of violent patriotism, received their warning from the German police in the press: no Nazi salutes, no goose-stepping, no Hitler impersonations.

The infamous British cry "two world wars and one World Cup" might prove the undoing of a potentially peaceful tournament, and authorities stressed that misbehavior would not be tolerated.