Coming soon to places near me: unusually public displays of German nationalism

As a whole, I would characterize the Germans as rather reserved in their enthusiasm for all things German. Since moving here last summer, I cannot recall even one instance of seeing a person wear a shirt that has a picture of the German flag. Actual flags are rare too.

I suppose that this attitude can be partly explained by historical events that led up to World War II. I only recently became aware of the etymology of the word Nazi. It comes from the German pronunciation of the name of Hitler's political party -- Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party). Nazi is an abbreviation of the German word National (which has a "tz" sound in the German pronunciation -- Nat-zi-o-nal). Wikipedia has a nice audio clip that lets you listen to it in German.

As its name implies, the Nazi Party was characterized by its strong nationalism.  Unfortunately, a key tenant of this nationalism was a belief in the racial purity of the German people.  Decades have passed since the end of the war but the Germans as a whole remain reluctant to put their nationalism on display.  Today, overly public displays of German nationalism are generally associated with the neo-Nazi tendencies of ultra-conservative young people.

The point of all of this is that the Germans don't usually make a big deal about Germany.  But next week, when the 2010 World Cup (Fußball-Weltmeisterschaft 2010) begins in South Africa, all of the normal standards for subdued nationalism will be temporarily discarded.  This photo is from last night's scrimmage between Germany and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The world's most important soccer tournament is played only every four years.  In 2006, Germany hosted the World Cup and finished third (the United States was one of the 32 teams that qualified for the tournament but failed to make it out of group stage of the tournament).  This year, the Germans once again have great expectations (the Germans have won the tournament three times; only Brazil (5) and Italy (4) have won the World Cup more often than Germany).

The games begin on June 11th.  People who expect to be watching on AFN will be disappointed unless something changes in the next week (AFN still does not have broadcast rights to show the games).  The satellite dish we have on our roof gets the German national channels and also some English-language channels from the UK.  So I will be watching the games on Das Erste and ZDF (German) and the BBC channels (English).