BERLIN: After years of feeling insulated from militant Islamist threats, Germans are worrying that they too could be subject to attacks like those suffered last week in Paris.
The Paris attackers’ attempts to suicide-bomb last Friday’s Germany-France soccer match in the French capital pricked Germans’ security bubble. The shock was compounded on Tuesday when authorities canceled a friendly match on home turf against the Netherlands, citing what they called a concrete security threat.
The twin threats struck at the heart of popular culture in Germany, soccer’s World Cup holders, unnerving a people who felt for years that their opposition to the Iraq war and their low-key involvement in Afghanistan meant they would not be targeted.
“After the cancellation of the international match, our Germany is no longer our Germany,” columnist Franz Josef Wagner wrote in mass-selling daily Bild’s Thursday edition. “I’m not a hero, I’m worried.”
Bild said several attackers planned to set off multiple explosives in the Hanover stadium on Tuesday.
