It was everything we have come to expect from the Germans: a classic pincer attack, launched with characteristic efficiency and without warning. First came the country’s ambassador to London, Thomas Matussek, who took the opportunity of VE Day to condemn our obsession with the second world war. Then came a heavier bombardment from a completely unexpected source: Thomas’s brother, Matthias.

Writing in the magazine Der Spiegel, for which he is London correspondent, Matussek complained: “The Germans are for the British what a punchball is for boxers. They keep the British killer instinct alive and remind them of great moral and military victories.”

If you think that was harsh, there was worse to come. The British have absolutely no cause to be so snooty about the Germans, argued Matthias, because we are uncannily like them. “With their daily diet of car and homebuyer shows on the telly and the entire gamut of Better Cooking, Better Living, Better Shopping, the Brits — after long years of frugality — are now imitating the inane German Mercedes drivers and hung-over boozers of caricaturist infamy from the reconstruction years,” he said.

The Germans developed a reputation for obsessive consumerism during the Wirtschaftswunder, the economic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s. Now we have apparently gone the same way. That’s tough talk, but the more you peer into the personalities of our two nations the more you think Matthias might be on to something. Horror of horrors, are we all Germans now? Let’s examine the evidence. For years the British have haughtily dismissed our German neighbours as fat, rich and arrogant. In that order. But according to Matthias, those insults can now be flung just as easily in our direction. “When I first came to Britain in the early 1980s there was a vibrant and creative atmosphere and people were very nice,” he says. “I am generalising, but now it seems that people cannot empathise any more. They are absorbed in their own comfort.”

The economic reforms of the 1980s made us more prosperous, but less approachable and rather more comfortably upholstered. So much so that we’re now fatter than the Germans — just over 20% of us are obese compared with 11% of them.

Then there’s the related question of food. For years British food was the laughing stock of Europe. Luckily, our cuisine has now changed out of all recognition but there are still areas of the country where stodgy puddings and boiled cabbage put up a stout resistance. It would be unkind to dwell on the reputation of German food, but we might just mention sauerkraut, bratwurst, and black forest gateau.

Little wonder so many of us try to escape overseas. Both the Germans and the British are strangely reluctant to holiday at home. Our battles over sunbeds on the Costa del Sol are the stuff of legend — with the British, according to Matthias, now getting the upper hand — and it’s easy to see why. We share the same terrible weather. The British seaside is renowned for the bracing effects of the summer weather, but Skegness and Morecambe must seem virtually tropical compared with the Baltic coast. At the German resort of Sylt visitors can enjoy fine views of the sea by huddling behind glass screens to protect them from the wind.

Not that many British visitors go there: few of us are tempted even by less robust destinations such as Bavaria. Germany barely registers on the list of UK holiday hotspots. In 2002 more than 3.3m people flew to Spain — a mere 225,407 took holidays in Germany.

Perhaps this will change next year when Germany hosts the football World Cup and the young people of our two nations will be able to indulge in two of the most popular pastimes they have in common: excessive drinking and football hooliganism. The English are still renowned throughout the Continent for their hooliganism; rather unjustly these days because it’s the Italians who have been leading the field. In fact one of the worst atrocities of recent years occurred during the 1998 World Cup when a French police officer suffered brain damage after he was attacked by five German men.

Like us, the Germans enjoy a drink — think of the Munich beer festival. But once again, according to Matthias, we British are outstripping our European neighbours.

“There is no problem of binge drinking in Germany,” he says. “Perhaps in east Germany, where there is high unemployment, but not to the same extent as in Britain. I live in Richmond, a prosperous area of west London, and on Friday nights there are young people drunk on the streets, shouting outside our house and, basically, people lying in the gutter.”

The list goes on. We could mention our shared enjoyment of traditional costume. Bavaria is one of the few places in Europe where people still go shopping in lederhosen (while we have morris dancers and the yeomen of the guard). Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, just like Tony Blair, is an advocate of third way politics, moving his party from left to centre. And Germany, just like Britain, has a stark north-south divide on top of its east-west problem.

But there is one topic above all that keeps us yoked together — the war. It’s all very well for ambassador Matussek to lecture us about our newspapers, our feeble jokes and our royal fancy dress parties but his lot are just as bad.

The Downfall, a depiction of the last days of Hitler, was just one of a rash of recent films about the Nazis. They include The Goebbels Experiment and a docudrama about Albert Speer called The Devil’s Architect. A series of books has concentrated on the destruction caused by allied bombing raids.

“We do share a fascination with the war,” admits Matthias. “The difference is we don’t have an obsession with war but with guilt.”

So there we are. We will perhaps agree to disagree on this matter. Or better still, we could resolve our differences in the traditional manner between our two great countries: a penalty shootout. Which the Germans, of course, would win.