Soviet mass rapes during and after WW2

[Terxpahseyton]

the nationalistic tendency to want to look "civilized" overrules the nationalistic tendency to want to look "respectable".

causing their nationalistic respectability to dominate their nationalistic civilizedness.

Embarrassing. I mixed the two up.
What I meant by "civilized" was a notion of being a good nation while with "respectable" I meant the notion of being a strong nation.
So Germans are nationalistic as others but being a good nation is more important than than being a strong nation and the need to choose between the two is a unique German thing. Saying: Germans are not anti-nationalistic in general but recognize that they need to be good nationalists over respectable nationalists so they can be the former in the first placer (while France and the UK can be both at the same time because no Hitler and no Nazis and no holocaust).
To illustrate: The remarkable German anti-war-sentiment (remarkable among the big developed nations anyway) is not a symbol of anti-nationalism but of nationalism. Just the German modern variant of it as permitted by history.

 

[Dachs]

And yet, in Italy, the "liberation" is often seen as an Italian civil war coinciding with a foreign invasion, rather than as a foreign "liberation", a view also held by fringe elements in France.

As I said, the distinction is always ultimately ideological, and it's not immediately obvious why we should prefer one narrative to another.

This is one of the reasons that Mark Mazower's Dark Continent is so much fun.