The day German Chancellor Gerhard Shroeder was enraged by his Italian counterpart Silvio Berlusconi after the latter had likened a left-wing German Member of the European Parliament to a Nazi commander, I happened to be in the Black Forest town of Freiburg.

There, a popular Italian restaurant had put up a huge menu board on which was written,

' Wir haben Berlusconi nicht gewaehlt ' (We did not vote for Berlusconi). I was pleasantly amused.

Owing to its Nazi past, Germany has been treading a very fine line when it comes to handling its relations with other European nations.

It is often said that the best way to shut a German person up during a quarrel is to say,

' Are you born with a Nazi streak? '

Sad to say, I once did such a tasteless thing

and feel enormous regret till this very day.

Burden of history

I do have strong sympathies for the Germans, for they clearly do not know when the seemingly unending apologies and reparations as acts of remorse for Nazi atrocities will come to a close.

Throughout the history of Germany, one is bound to come across world-renowned names such as Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Heinrich Heine, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx.

Still, out of all the great musicians, poets and scholars, much of the world chooses to associate modern Germany with Adolf Hitler, who hailed from the Austrian village of Braunau.

Well, there seems to be some selective amnesia among the Europeans, and the British in particular. Little surprise that some Germans cannot help sighing,

' A nation famed for its musical tradition, the biggest wonder of the Austrians is that they have successfully convinced the world that Hitler was a German, and Beethoven an Austrian. '

However, a new generation of Germans have begun to question how long they are expected to carry the sins of their forebears. Shroeder, who was born during World War II and has minimal memory about the hard times, represents this constituency to some extent.

If Helmut Kohl, Shroeder

' s predecessor, was still in power, he might have simply dismissed Berlusconi ' s tactless comparison as a gaffe unworthy of any official rebuke on the German side.

For, Kohl

' s lifelong aspiration was to create a prosperous and united Europe in which Germany could be firmly anchored, so that the country that had been responsible for the two World Wars in the first half of the last century shall never again deviate from the ' right path ' .

Restoring pride

This, however, is not to say that Shroeder is less conscious of Germany

' s historical mistakes. In fact, the contrary is true.

During his first visit to Shanghai a few years back, he publicly praised the Shanghainese who had shielded the small Jewish community in the then

' the Paris of the Far East ' from Nazi persecution.

When the authorities in Berlin were contemplating building a Holocaust Memorial, which would be the biggest in Europe, Shroeder threw his weight behind the idea without hesitation.

What marks him out from previous German Chancellors is that Shroeder does not give in to the view that, merely because of the Nazi catastrophe, Germany as a nation should continue to be an object of ridicule and innuendo.

It is perhaps out of this conviction that he demanded an apology from Berlusconi and later cancelled his planned summer vacation in Italy when yet another Italian minister made disparaging remarks about German tourists.

I was further impressed by the political maturity of the Germans in this minor spat between the two countries. Many expressed disappointment that, as European Union chair overseeing EU affairs for the next six months, Berlusconi had again behaved in a way that did not befit his position.

They, however, acknowledged that not all Italians shared their prime minister

' s opinion. There is an increasingly received view among Europeans that one should not make use of Nazi history as a bogeyman to haunt the Germans.

Political maturity

The only exception I found has, perhaps not surprisingly, come from the Daily Telegraph , a British newspaper that champions the Anglo-Saxon causes and laments (still) the loss of the British Empire.

The paper appears to think that it was Shroeder who had blown the issue out of proportion. This is easy to understand.

Britain, more often than not, identifies itself as a

' victor over the Nazis ' , and a normalised Germany - i.e independent, confident and no longer held ransom to its atrocious past - would make the position of Britain as a WWII victor less significant than it is today.

What I admire most is the political maturity of the German and Italian peoples. 'Admire' is hardly a word that can express my feelings over this issue. I am actually jealous of them.

They did not follow blindly the populist rhetoric of their leaders and become antagonistic to each other; neither did the media in both countries seek to play up the issue just to please their political masters.

No one has said a pamphlet should be published to explain the whole thing and clear the air, and not a single government official has threatened to release any exchange of letters just to prove innocence.

Put in this light, the politicians in both Malaysia and Singapore appear to be intolerant, kiasu and lacking in generosity.

Imagine if another political storm blew up again across the Tebrau Straits, would any restaurateur in Johor Bahru, whose business was gravely dependent on Singaporean patrons, dare put up a huge banner clarifying,

' We did not vote for Mahathir? '

JOSH HONG is trained in international politics. While distraught by all ongoing global conflicts, he nevertheless considers reconciling the many paradoxes and differences in human life to be a cause worthy of lifelong pursuit.