Germany 2006 is the second World Cup I have worked on for Five Live. I was lucky enough to have been sent to South Korea and Japan four years ago, which was an entirely different experience. I might as well have been beamed down to another planet. The culture gap was fascinating, infuriating and unfathomable. But if what used to be called the Orient was a different planet, Germany was a parallel universe – well, at least the part we saw, which comprised most of the former West plus Berlin. Only Leipzig in the former East was awarded any World Cup action so, for whatever reason, we were well away from the wrong side of the German tracks. The places we did experience in that parallel universe – Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne, Berlin, Munster and Gelsenkirchen – were uncannily like here only different: cleaner, less troubled, more optimistic. And the people? They are like us only even more German.

Like many Brits, whether I like it or not, I am unavoidably burdened with the sometimes blatant, sometimes deeply-submerged cocktail of obsession, fascination, discomfort and guilt at all of the above which stem from a series of unfortunate events in the first half of the last century. I went with a pile of prejudice. You fully realise it only when you get there and start thinking thoughts. Blame the water torture of propaganda. Blame The Dambusters and Colditz, Hogan's Heroes and 'Allo 'Allo. Blame my parents' generation. Blame the Versailles Treaty. You could even blame the unprecedented descent of a civilised society into barbarism. “Don't mention the war”, though, and “Don't tell him, Pike”.

It all got off to a painfully awkward start. The Lufthansa check-in woman told me my suitcase was precisely one kilogram over the permitted weight and despite my indignant protestations I was required, to the annoyance of the queue, which seemed to be half of News 24, to open the case I had only two hours previously been wrestling with on the floor, like Crocodile Dundee. We were away for a month, remember. I didn't know what I might want to read so I'd given myself plenty of options for plenty of moods. I opened the Samsonite just enough to shove my arm into the anarchy, grabbed the first hardback that came to hand and testily slapped it down on the checkin desk. She looked at it. She looked at me. I looked at her. We looked at the book. Auschwitz: The Nazis & The Final Solution by Laurence Rees. “Oh my God,” I thought. I picked it up and shoved it into my plastic bag. I felt dreadful. Obsession, fascination, discomfort and guilt at all of the above.

Wartime rubble

There is no hiding. There is no denial. Young Germans talk of “our terrible history” in a way that is humbling. When the World Cup started there was barely a flag in sight, whereas for weeks England had been festooned like Portadown on the 12th of July. But as time went on, the excitement grew and their team progressed, the most joyous momentum took hold. There was a blossoming of benign inclusive pride – a kind of patriotism that they came to realise was okay. It's a million miles from that “terrible past”. It was an expression of national togetherness in this the first World Cup on German soil since unification and it was moving to witness. I was particularly struck by the large number of black and brown faces in the German support. Our fans aren't just hideously fat, they're hideously white.

Not long after arriving in Germany with a colleague I visited the original concentration camp, Dachau, a 30-minute train ride from Munich. It is a terrible place – now a memorial – that reduced us both to tears. You can't prepare yourself for what you see. During our deathly silent walk through the gas chamber something occurred to me, maybe in a moment of deep dark pessimism, or perhaps a rare burst of clarity. The phrase “crimes against humanity” is just wrong. None of us should be exculpated. These were crimes by humanity. There but for the grace of historical circumstances go any of us and the most challenging question of all is what would you have done?

My own prejudices may be blunted, but they'll never be banished. When a 20-something man sitting with his girlfriend viciously slapped my backside after I'd unwittingly obscured his view of the TV in a beer garden, and then started shouting “Ausländer, ausländer” (foreigner), preceded by an adjective I couldn't and wouldn't want to translate, I had dark thoughts, Father. I imagined him in knee-length boots and a leather trench-coat – and not in a nice way. The problem is that German, being such a magnificent language to shout in, can't but invite the spittle of stereotype. What's a boy with a sore bottom to do? On another occasion, a human brick-shithouse thought it would be a giggle to shoulder-barge everyone beside him at the fan fest and my beer ended up all over rather than inside of me. How I laughed and how quickly the casting department in my imagination offered him the job as first soldier guarding a grim, barbed-wire perimeter fence. But then you realise that an “arse” is an arse (even a well-slapped one) in any language. One thing rams that message home more than anything – seeing our lot.

There is a gargantuan caveat here – most of the English fans are great, absolutely normal, absolutely fine and absolutely embarrassed by the significant minority who bring shame on us all. Needless to say, empty vessels made the loudest and most offensive noise. Extravagantly decorated vessels most of them are too, which all goes to reinforce their collective tribal psychology. Some of them had so much sub-dermal ink, I thought they were wearing Hawaiian shirts that even Timmy Mallet would sniff at. “Location, location, location,” they say. Well, how about this? There they were on the British Journalism Review vol.17 no.3 september 2006 . Nuremberg parade ground ceding their brittle individualism to offensive chant after psychotic rant in a way that probably hasn't been seen on that spot for, oh, many a long year. Perhaps 65. The supreme irony of the racist doggerel and nationalist nonsense intermingled with ditties about winning the war is a great inescapable. They actually think they won. Those morons genuinely think they personally were in the winning side in the great victory over fascism.

There was no great escape from one bloody song wherever we went. Drifting down from far-off streets, deafening us in city squares, driving us out of heaving bars – “Ten German Bombers” includes the resolve “But the RAF from England shot them down.” It never seemed appropriate to make a measured point of pedantry on the multi-national composition of that airborne force. I let it lie. It is not the most offensive song there is, but I'll be honest, the sheer bovine repetition of it made me want to go back in time and join the Luftwaffe. I could lob some of Betjeman's friendly bombs not on Slough but Reading, a town which one of the top brass British coppers out there reliably informed me regularly suffers many of the appalling anti-social problems we exported to Germany for four weeks only. “It's not hooliganism. The hooligans stayed at home,” he said, celebrating the success of the banning orders. “It's just the stuff we routinely get in Britain on a Friday night.” Oh, that's all right then.

The spewing English

After looking over a balcony at the belly-cose hordes below, a Brazilian journalist in a curious but nevertheless thought-provoking aperçu, suggested that the people of “this social class” in Brazil cannot afford to travel, so they never leave the country. They remain in the barrios. We looked down – in so many ways – on the groups of quantity surveyors and IT specialists and I had my doubts. “You are a victim of your own economic success,” he said. “Too much gross domestic product.” I wasn't sure whether he meant our economy or our friends below. “What about the Germans and French?” I said. “They're hardly in penury.” “That is when cultural factors come into play.”

Whether he was right or wrong, the evidence that led him there is incontestable. Don't tell me there wasn't a far higher bar of arrest for English yobs. It was all part of the softly-softly approach that the British coppers, there in overt and covert numbers, were determined to take. Don't tell me elements of other support were just as bad. I prowled the night-time haunts. The Croatians, not exactly the hippies of central Europe, were, even at their worst, only as bad as an out-of-hand stag night. They got stupidly drunk but there was no ill-intent – no threat. The inner-core of our hardcore love to hate, and hundreds more hang around for the vindictive vibe and the edgy buzz from being looked at by foreigners. They think it's envy. They revel in wobbling their bloated bellies in distended pride at what they think we are. At what they reckon we were. They are in thrall to a history they've never studied.

For the majority of decent fans though, the World Cup was a watershed. I lost count of the England supporters who said they never expected the Germans and Germany to be so far removed from the traditional tabloid image. I bumped into Stuart Higgins, the former editor of The Sun, at the Trinidad game. Shortly after he got home he sent me an astute email: “I just wonder if there is a serious assessment to be made of new Anglo-German relations, everything brilliantly organised, friendly people, good value hotels, free Metro, etc. Interesting history lesson at Nuremberg – lots of fans looking at the relics of the Nazi regime and rallies, etc. Very interesting how a World Cup has proved to be a catalyst for a new relationship and understanding, etc.” A “new relationship and understanding, etc” will be the lasting achievement. Forget about the idiots. Specially the ones on the pitch.