Berlin ? Germans who visit the United States are often surprised by the unabashed way Americans display the flag on their front porches.

“If I am driving through someplace in Germany and I see someone who has planted a flag in his garden, I think to myself that this must be the home of a neo-Nazi,” said Wolfgang Kaschuba, an ethnologist at Berlin’s Humboldt University.

“In Germany we have to avoid certain practices that are normal in other countries,” he added.

German politicians do not wear the little flag lapel pins that are de rigueur for American politicians, nor do German officials use the black, red and gold German flag as a stage prop during television interviews. And Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder would never, ever, end a speech by asking God to bless the Fatherland.

But as the United States and its World War II allies prepared to mark today’s 60th anniversary of the Nazi surrender, Schroeder has suggested that perhaps the time had come for Germans to set aside their chronic guilt and feel a little patriotic.

As part of that effort, Schroeder has been repackaging this year’s V-E Day commemoration as something other than Germany’s defeat at the hands of the Allies. The chancellor has been calling it Germany’s “liberation from fascism.”

To Americans, that may sound like an attempt to jump on the winners’ bandwagon, but to Germans, whose country was destroyed by the war, it is an acknowledgment that Germany’s defeat was nothing to mourn.

New sense of pride

Six decades after the war, most Germans feel responsibility — but not guilt — for what happened during the Nazi years; they feel pride — but not quite patriotism — for the reunified democracy that Germany has become since.

This new sense of German pride began to gather momentum after reunification in 1990, but for many like Nhoah Hoena, 43, it did not solidify until the Iraq war.

“When the war started, the world was very aware that Germany was against it. I was in Argentina at the time, and people would clap me on the shoulders, saying, ‘You Germans, you stood against it and that’s great,'” Hoena said. “For a change it felt good to be German. I had only known the feeling of being rather ashamed of being German.”

International role

In politics, Germany already is the pivotal player in Europe and Schroeder is maneuvering for a larger role on the world stage. He wants Germany to have a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. He wants to “normalize” the nation’s relationship with its 20th-century history.

Last month’s election of a German pope was another milestone along that path. Although Germany is mostly secular, and the conservative Joseph Ratzinger is not widely beloved in his homeland, his investiture as Pope Benedict XVI was an occasion of rare national pride.

Patriotism vs. nationalism

Still, Germany remains a country where the president, Horst Koehler, can create a small scandal by declaring “I love our country.” Koehler spoke those words in his inaugural address, and some complained that it sounded “too patriotic.”

But a little more patriotism would be a healthy thing for Germany — “as long as you understand the difference between patriotism and nationalism,” said Volker Kronenberg, a 34-year-old historian who has written a book on the subject.

“Hitler and his men were nationalists. They used nationalism to pervert traditional values,” Kronenberg said.

“Patriotism is something very different. It’s a feeling that Germans belong together because of their language and culture, not because they are superior to other nations,” he said.

Some still uncomfortable

But other Germans, especially those born in the 1940s or 1950s, are still deeply uncomfortable with any notion of German patriotism.

“We don’t need patriotism in Germany. We had enough of it 60 years ago,” said Hans-Christian Stroebele, a parliamentarian from the Green Party who was born the year World War II started.

“Even if you exclude the Nazi times, German patriotism was always something aggressive and virulent,” he said. “Instead of trying to revive German patriotism, I think the future should be to grow into a kind of European patriotism.”