The Germans must be wondering what has hit them. After 70 years of gradually working their way back into their neighbors’ trust, they suddenly find themselves excoriated from one end of Europe to the other. And for what offense? What heinous crime have they committed? Only this: They have offered soft loans to other countries.

It started in Greece, whose cartoonists now regularly portray German Chancellor Angela Merkel with Nazi insignia, whose activists howl down their opponents as “German collaborators” and whose politicians, in all seriousness, blame their financial crisis on a forced loan exacted during the occupation in the 1940s. But it soon spread across the Mediterranean: Swastika-bearing Merkels have become a common sight at anti-austerity rallies in Spain, Italy and Portugal.