The Wilson Center's Peter Gumbel looks at the social media reaction to Germany's 7-1 World Cup defeat of Brazil and concludes that, when it comes to Germany, 'the usual rules of political correctness don’t apply':
For example, Binyamin Applebaum, a Washington correspondent for The New York Times, tweeted, “The Germans have stormed into a foreign country and taken charge. How unexpected.” Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, tweeted “Flush with Confidence, Germany Launches Land War in Asia,” while New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones tweeted “The Germans will just deny the match ever happened.” On Facebook, a post by British comedian Ricky Gervais—“This won’t be the first time thousands of Germans will have to lie low in Brazil for a while for their own safety”—drew more than 100,000 likes.
Europe's leaders keep this picture of Germany alive too:
...the key rationale for the creation of what is now the EU was that there should never again be a European conflagration. For young generations today, the idea of a war between France and Germany seems preposterous, but that doesn’t stop the mantra being repeated endlessly by European leaders in an effort to promote pro-European sentiment. It doesn’t work: the record of recent European elections is that the younger the voter, the less likely they are to vote. At the very least, that suggests a more updated and relevant rationale for the EU needs to be developed.