Okay, Fritz! It’s safe to come out of the bunker now - I really like you!

I was surprised at a recent get-together when, after I’d recounted something witty a German had once said to me involving the war, a woman we knew said she simply couldn’t forgive them - in fact, couldn’t stand them.  (As far as I know, she isn’t Jewish – which would make her views perfectly understandable -  and she didn’t follow up with tales of family or friends suffering in the war.) 

My father fought in the war and my mother served in the WAAF: given that he was a Norwegian who emigrated to Canada in 1925 and she was Scottish, I’m only here because World War II brought them together. I spent the first six years of my life in a country that had been invaded by the Germans: a Norwegian uncle of mine spent time in a concentration camp.

When I came to Britain in 1960, childhood games revolved around cowboys and injuns and WWII (only no one wanted to be a German). Every other film on TV was a war movie. The first episode of national mourning I can recall was the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill: the first instance of national rejoicing I remember was England beating Germany in the World Cup final in 1966.

The Germans (or the Krauts as they were invariably referred to at the time) loomed large in my life.

The first time I was conscious of being in the company of Germans was when, as a 15-year old on a school trip to Paris, one of a group of inebriated German schoolkids in the same bar came weaving over to declare: “I am Cherman. Ve Chermans do not like ze British!” “That’s ‘cos we keep beating you, you c***!” quipped one of my companions, and the Cherman weaved off back to his mates. (Despite that incident, it was the French kids we didn’t much care for -  perhaps because they kept menacing us with flick-knives.)

I didn’t meet any German adults until I went to university. When I was introduced to the parents of a fellow philosophy student I heard myself, in the time-honoured fashion, explaining that the historical parts of Cambridge were better preserved than many in London because it hadn’t been bombed about so much in the war. (Yes - I mentioned the war!)

I made my first visit to Germany in 1979. Hamburg was clean and expensive and, despite having been comprehensively flattened by my dad and his chums, showed absolutely no sign of bomb-damage – unlike London. Respect! Some older Germans were overly oleaginous (the proprietor of the hotel I was staying at was apparently in the habit of eulogizing Winston Churchill to his British guests), and one or two oldsters looked a bit sniffy on hearing an English accent, but those in their twenties and thirties seemed pretty relaxed. 

There was only one incident which caused my hackles to rise: an extremely pleasant advertising executive referred to the British “terror flyers” – when I realized he meant people like my father, I bristled, until my brother explained that it was a translation of “terrorflieger”, the common German term for allied bomber pilots (naturally, they didn’t use the same word for the Luftwaffe). I seem to remember Dresden being mentioned at some point, but as we were all drinking a mixture of beer and saki (for some odd reason), it’s hard to be certain – I think the evening ended peacefully.  

Despite the lack of provocation, the war – in particular my parents’ experiences, the fact that my native country had been invaded, and the unimaginable horrors visited on the Jews - saturated my every waking moment until we crossed the border into Belgium (on our way to Paris). I just couldn’t help looking at older Germans and wondering just exactly what they’d been up to 35 years earlier. 

But that visit certainly helped lessen my ingrained resentment towards and suspicion of the Hun – which, in any case, was beginning to seem  slightly unreasonable, given that neither my father or mother, despite having much greater cause, seemed to harbour any  vengeful feelings.

I wasn’t particularly amused by the defeated enemy so exuberantly outperforming Britain economically, nor by the relentless humiliation of the England football team, nor by the reunification of Germany, nor by their psychopathically murderous left-wing revolutionaries – and hearing German Eurocrats lecturing Britain on its European responsibilities tended to cause a red mist to descend. 

I know it’s silly, but I suspect the greatest help in reconciling many people to the Boche was Harry Enfield’s German student, Jurgen, who was forever violently apologizing for his country’s conduct during the war. The fact that the Germans were so busy beating themselves up – and were at that point discovering that reunification was both expensive and painful – provided many opportunities for a sort of reconciling schadenfreude.

When I started visiting Germany regularly in the Noughties (mainly Berlin and Munich) the war had been over for more than half a century, Norway was the most prosperous country in Europe, Britain had enjoyed (and was busy squandering) its own economic miracle, and our football team was evidently such a perennial basket-case it seemed churlish to blame Germany for beating it so easily and regularly (okay, England won 5-1 – once!). 

The Germans I was working with were effortlessly friendly and charming – and far too young to have had anything whatsoever to do with the war: even their parents were too young! A German friend dutifully took me to visit the Holocaust memorial in Berlin – a fittingly somber reminder. Almost everyone I met spoke alarmingly good English, which helped one realise how similar we were. Once, in Munich, when my wife left her handbag in a busy fast-food restaurant, it was there behind the counter when we returned (imagine that happening in London). Hearteningly, much of the old culture remains – they drink foaming steins in beer-gardens, they eat pig in pig restaurants till it comes out their ears, they drink hot gluhwein at Christmas, they nosh sausages, they listen to oompah bands, and they grumble about the East Germans. 

Besides, my son is studying German, and he approves of both the country and its people. (His school and a school in Hamburg run an exchange scheme which began in 1946! What very nice people the English are!)

But the thing that most endeared me to the square-heads – the anecdote I told the disapproving lady at the party -  happened at a conference I was chairing in Oslo. During the lunch break I went for a stroll with a young German media consultant down by Oslo Harbour, fresh and glittering in clear May sunshine. 

“Gosh, isn’t it beautiful?” I said. 

“I have a painting of this exact scene on my living room wall,” he said.

I was surprised. “How come?”

“Oh, my grandfather spent some time here once, and he painted it then.”

“What was he doing here?”

“He worked for an organization trying to promote European integration.”

“Which one?”

“The Wehrmacht – he was here in 1942.”

At last – a sense of humour! That, more than anything else, probably means we’re genuinely safe.