PARIS The recent cover of Der Spiegel showing German Chancellor Angela Merkel in front of the Acropolis surrounded by Nazi officers serves an important purpose it finally poses, in a way that cannot be evaded, the question of Germanophobia in Europe.

And, naturally, there was Greece, where the phenomenon reached its apogee during the near riots of October 2012, in which the world was treated to the spectacle of Nazi and German flags flown together and then burned together before the Acropolis in scenes that presaged the Der Spiegel cover.