The Swiss are getting fed up with Germans, it seems. Tens of thousands of the latter have moved to Switzerland (pop. 7.5 million) in recent years to escape high unemployment and sinking real wages at home (pop. 82.4 million). Almost 25,000 arrived last year alone, bringing the total to more than 170,000. Riding the rising wave of Teuton trashing in Switzerland, the Zürich-based tabloid Blick, the country's second-biggest newspaper, recently ran a series of reports titled "How Many Germans Can Switzerland Stand?"

The Swiss, and not only the Swiss, often fault Germans for being loud, impolite, arrogant and aggressive. Their not-so-nice names for natives of what they call the "big northern canton" include Sauschwab (Schwab, or Swabian, is a Swiss term for a German), Nazikopf, and even Gashahn (gas tap; the reference should be clear).

At the root of the Swiss fear and loathing of Germans is an old sense of inferiority. Two Swiss are in a restaurant, a typical joke goes. At the adjacent table are two Germans. The Swiss are served, and one finds that his food isn't salty enough. He reaches for the salt shaker, which happens to be plugged up. After watching the Swiss struggle with the shaker for a while, one of the Germans comes over and says, "May I?" then takes out a pocketknife and sharpens a matchstick, which he pokes into the holes of the shaker, unplugging it. After the German has returned to his table, the Swiss turns to his friend and says, "I can't stand Germans, you know, but you've got to hand it to them: Technologically they're superior."

The Swiss inferiority complex is largely linguistic. Schwyzerdütsch (Schweizerdeutsch, Swiss German), the Alemannic dialects spoken in the "German-speaking" part of Switzerland (about 65 percent of the country), are so far removed from standard -- or High -- German that they're dubbed or subtitled on German television. The official -- and written -- language (along with French and Italian) is standard German (with minor Swiss differences), which is used in certain formal settings and with outsiders. Most "German-speaking" Swiss don't speak standard German well and even regard it as foreign. "There are more and more Germans at my place of work," Blick quoted a young Swiss woman as saying. "I can hardly have a conversation in Swiss German with anyone anymore."

Speaking of durned German-speaking foreigners, what about Adolf Hitler? A politician in the German city of Braunschweig made news this month by proposing that the Austrian-born Führer be stripped of his German citizenship. Hitler was naturalized in Braunschweig in 1932, enabling him to hold political office in Germany. Revoking Hitler's citizenship -- a bit late, isn't it? -- would be a "symbolic step" meant to wash Braunschweig's hands of the odious fellow, who's been dead for almost 62 years.

Actually, Austrians are no less German than Bavarians, Berliners, Rhinelanders, Mecklenburgers, etc. Only the vagaries of history -- and the schemes of Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck -- kept Austrians outside of Germany (except from 1938 to 1945, thanks to Hitler).

Austria, with a population and gross domestic product 10 times smaller than those of Germany, also has an inferiority complex vis-a-vis its big northern neighbor. The complex goes back to the days when Austria's imperial armies regularly lost battles to the no-nonsense Prussians. Austrians often joke about how disorderly and happy-go-lucky they are compared with the Germans. In Berlin, things are often serious but never hopeless, Austrians say; in Vienna, though, things have often been hopeless but seldom serious.

The Swiss are boring in the eyes of Austrians (and not just Austrians). It's been said that Vienna's huge Central Cemetery, which holds the remains of some 3 million people (including those of composers Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Johann Strauss senior and junior, Franz Schubert, and Arnold Schönberg), is half as big as Zürich and twice as much fun.

But Austrians have strong historical ties to halcyon, humdrum "Heidiland." The Habsburgs, the dynasty that ruled Austria from 1282 until 1918, originated in what is now Switzerland, which, ironically enough, was formed in 1291 by an alliance of cantons against the Habsburg dynasty.

In short, the main German-speaking countries are a muddle. But then, so is Europe as a whole.