The post you are reporting:
I understand the feelings about Germany, but feel they're blinkered and outdated. The example given in Clegg's article written in 2002 of the boy in the back of the coach shouting "We won the war" etc can quite easily be mirrored by bigotry in adults too, sadly, and not just by Brits.
From a very early age I lived on a RAF base on the German/Dutch border with my parents and we were subjected to much abuse from the German people who identifed Royal Air Force personnel with the thousand bomber raids that had annihilated many German cities during 1943, 1944 and 1945 - especially Koln (Cologne) which was only a short distance from our base. Who's to say that their feelings were wrong? In exactly the same way, an elderly lady who lives in the neighbouring village to us is still extremely bitter towards Germans in general for one fighter plane strafing Dover seafront during the war - and her son now lives and works in Kiel, itself a victim of Sir Arthur Harris' policy of total destruction of German cities.
The truth is that anti-German feelings hold no place in modern day Britain. On the few occasions that I have been back to Germany since we left, I have encountered none of the anti-British sentiment I remember so clearly from the 1960s - quite the opposite, in fact; the Germans I have met are curious about why Britain is so reticent in embracing an all-conquering EU and cannot understand why it is looked upon with such suspicion here.
I have recommended this book to others before, but I would recommend a wonderful non-fiction book called Bomber Boys by Patrick Bishop to anyone; it gives a superb insight into the fears and lives of the RAF Bomber Command aircrew who carried out the thousand bomber raids on Germany in World War II. It is an exceptionally moving book, one that will drive home the futility of war and perhaps reinforce the belief that time is well past to forgive the atrocities of war of 60-odd years ago and move on. If, like me, you hold reservations about full membership of the EU, that need not mean looking upon Germany and her countrymen as the anti-Christ. It really is time to put all that in the history books.
As for Churchill, Andrew, it may also be time to take off the rose tinted spectacles with regard to England's greatest wartime statesman. In World War I he fully believed that an attack on the Dardanelles would shorten the war by destroying one of Germany's allies (Turkey) and thus condemned thousands of ANZACS to a futile and bloody death. Churchill was vilified for that and paid the price with his job, not to return until WWII. It's just an example to illustrate that not everything Churchill said or did was beyond question - his beliefs on Europe remain, to some of us at least, nothing more than ideals.