Texans enjoy their intense sports rivalries as much as anyone, but this clever Sarah Lyall/NY Times article notes that preparations for the upcoming World Cup soccer match between England and Germany indicate a rivalry on an entirely higher level:

They have been warned, as always, not to rampage through the streets, destroying things and attacking people. But as England’s soccer fans prepare to visit Germany for the World Cup this month, another item has been added to their long “verboten” list: Don’t mention the war.
“It’s not a joke,” Charles Clarke, then the home secretary, warned at a pre-World Cup briefing earlier this spring. “It is not a comic thing to do. It is totally insulting and wrong.”
That means, basically, no getting drunk and goose-stepping in a would-be humorous manner. No Nazi salutes. No shouting “Sieg Heil!” at the referees. No impromptu finger-under-the-nose Hitler mustaches.
“Doing mock Nazi salutes or fake impersonations of Hitler ó that’s actually against the law in Germany,” Andrin Cooper, a spokesman for the Football Association, which administers English soccer, said in an interview.

Even something as simple as wearing an ersatz German war helmet could violate German laws against inciting hatred and glorifying extremism, Mr. Clarke said at the briefing.
“The reason why the German Parliament passed these laws was because the era we are talking about was one of total horror and destruction in Germany,” he continued. “Anyone who thinks it’s entertaining to get involved in this sort of thing, I absolutely urge them not to do so.”
The authorities in both countries have developed elaborate programs to ensure that England’s fans behave themselves in Germany when the competition begins June 9. Some 3,200 people with histories of violence and hooliganism have been required to surrender their passports and are forbidden to leave Britain during the tournament.
Dozens of British officers are being dispatched to Germany to help keep order. Some English players have recorded advertisements exhorting the fans to respect their hosts, and fans’ groups have arranged various communal activities with their German counterparts. One group plans to visit Auschwitz.

Placing the British fans’ continued preoccupation with Germany and WWII in perspective, Lyall references one of the most brilliant episodes from the fine BBC comedy series from the 1970’s, Fawlty Towers, starring John Cleese as Basil Fawlry, the wonderfully irascible owner of a small-town English hotel:

Britain’s awkwardness on the subject was lampooned most famously in a television episode of “Fawlty Towers,” when Basil Fawlty, the hotelier played by John Cleese, tries to attend to a group of German guests after suffering a concussion.
“Don’t mention the war,” [Basil] tells his staff, even as he descends into a xenophobic frenzy, repeating the Germans’ lunch order of a prawn cocktail, pickled herring and four cold meat salads as “a prawn Goebbels, a Hermann Gˆring and four Colditz salads,” and then high-kicking his way around the dining room, ‡ la Hitler.
“So it’s all forgotten and let’s hear no more about it!” he says of Germany’s wartime past. But somehow, he keeps bringing it up. When the Germans ask him to stop, Basil says that they started it.

“We did not start it,” one [German guest replies].
“Yes, you did,” [Basil retorts]. “You invaded Poland.”