England Soccer Fans Get World Cup Warning
February 9, 2006
"England fans should be aware that the Nazi salute and provocative behavior like goose-stepping in public will be punished," Thursday's Sun tabloid, Britain's biggest-selling daily newspaper, quoted Gerhard Hauptmannl, the Nuremberg police chief, as saying.
England plays Trinidad and Tobago in Nuremberg in a first-round World Cup match on June 15. The city is particularly sensitive to any reference to World War II, having been the scene of some notorious Nazi party rallies in the 1930s.
After the end of World War II, the German city staged the war crimes trials of several senior Nazis including Rudolf Hess, at one time Hitler's deputy, and Hermann Goering, the head of the Luftwaffe, the German air force.
The cit's gleaming World Cup stadium also stands in the shadow of the parade ground used for Hitler's notorious Nazi rallies in the 1930s. The deputy head of the police in Nuremberg, Walter Ernstberger, says Nazi taunts are not funny and will not be tolerated.
"England football fans should be aware that the Nazi salute and provocative behavior like goose-stepping in public will be punished," Ernstberger said. "This simply is a criminal act in Germany. We will offer the warmest welcome to true football fans. But anyone glorifying extremism here risks arrest. I think the British are intelligent enough not to insult a nation, but enjoy this huge football event as friends among friends."
Nuremberg's police are beefing up CCTV surveillance with a 1.5 million Euro space-age computerized control centre. It has a bank of high-definition flat screen monitors linked to cameras that can zoom in on a single face. Close-up pictures can then be transmitted to snatch squads who will grab ringleaders in seconds. But one problem can't be solved: the British tendency for binge-drinking. Walter Ernstberger tries to remain optimistic.
"If they celebrate in peace the pubs will stay open as usual. It really depends on the fans’ behavior. Alcohol related aggression can always happen. But I don’t think we need any measures of precautions just because they are British."
But just in case a new cell block has been built at Nuremberg's police HQ, with space for nearly 300 prisoners. Even the stadium has its own lock-up block ready for hooligans and drunks.
No tolerance for intolerance
England's football support has long contained a strongly xenophobic element as evidenced by chants at games against Germany of "I'd rather be a Paki (Pakistani) than a Kraut (German)" and "Two World Wars and One World Cup," a reference to Germany's defeats in World War I and II and England's victory over the then West Germany in the 1966 World Cup final at London's Wembley Stadium.
However, Hauptmannl warned that officers would be on the alert for a variety of offenses. "We are cooperating with British police to look for any provocative behavior in the city which might lead to violence.
"Racist abuse of black people by England fans will also be taken very seriously... My officers will have the power to remove offensive fans from the situation. They can then be held for up to two weeks without charge or charged under a fast-track system and fined or jailed the next day. Either way, we have the power to deal with troublemakers and we will not hesistate to use it."
Fawlty premise
References to German behavior in World War II have been a staple of British humor for over 60 years and probably reached their comedic peak during an episode of the 1970s BBC program "Fawlty Towers." "The Germans," centered around the attempts of Basil Fawlty, a hen-pecked proprietor of an English seaside hotel played by John Cleese, who co-wrote the program, to deal with a group of German guests.
The running joke was that Fawlty, having repeatedly warned his staff "Don't mention the War!", flagrantly failed to heed his own advice to the pained embarrassment of his German guests. At one point Fawlty can even be seen parading around the hotel foyer performing an exaggerated Nazi military goose-step.
Such is the enduring impact of "The Germans," regularly repeated since it was first broadcast in 1975, on the British public consciousness the Sun illustrated its front-page story with a still from the show of Cleese goose-stepping alongside the headline "Don't mention the walk."