WHEN England fans tumble out of Nuremberg’s trains and trams next summer they will be confronted by an extraordinary sight: 23 English language information stands telling them in detail about the city’s Nazi past.

As far as Ulrich Maly, Nuremberg’s innovative mayor, is concerned, there is no other choice — the city has to come clean. The World Cup stadium in which England play Trinidad and Tobago on June 15 is set in the middle of the huge complex where Hitler staged his torch-lit rallies. Fans will be walking down the 2km road, Grosse Strasse, where more than 100,000 Hitler Youth marched before shouting allegiance to their Führer.

The granite street is so broad that US planes were able to land there after the war. And the England-Trinidad match will be held in a stadium that was used by stormtroopers for grenade-throwing competitions and other paramilitary games to prepare for war.

Dr Maly, 41, said: “We really don’t have an alternative. It’s not that we are cultivating a Nazi image for ourselves. We already have one.”

While other German cities sweep their Third Reich history under the carpet, Nuremberg is rebranding itself as a place determined to face up to its past.

“We took a long hard look at the things for which Nuremberg is famous and it boils down to the medieval architecture, the Christmas market, the painter Albrecht Dürer and, well, the Nazis.”

So the England supporters will be treated, as they wander across Hitler’s parade ground, to a potted history of Julius Streicher, one of the leading ideologists of National Socialism and a native son of Nuremberg. They will read, too, of the Nuremberg laws that stripped Jews of their rights and paved the way for the Holocaust.

The irony is striking. The British Government wants to use the World Cup to revise hostile stereotypes of England fans and achieve a breakthrough in Anglo-German relations. About 100,000 English people are expected during the tournament, the biggest foreign contingent, and if they impress the Germans with their fairness and sobriety they will have accomplished more in a few weeks than the past decade of British public diplomacy.

But the Nurembergers, out of the best of motives, risk reinforcing the Germans-as- Nazis stereotype that both governments have been so anxious to discard. It does not take a big leap of imagination to see England fans mimicking the goose-step march or heading for the Zeppelin Tribune from where Hitler took the salute from the massed ranks of party faithful.

The potential for Anglo-German misunderstanding is even greater than usual. “If you get nervous about this sort of thing you shouldn’t be doing the job,” says Peter Murrmann, who is in charge of preparing the city for the England fans. “Every fan must know about Hitler before he enters the stadium.”

The football stadium is probably the building least stained by the Nazis. It was built in 1928 before the Nazis came to power. Even so, Hitler appeared there several times.

The Nazis intended to replace it with the largest sports stadium in the world, capable of holding 400,000 people. Albert Speer drew up the plans, but it never passed the excavation stage. The complex housed an SS barracks, a prisoner-of-war camp and a Nazi Strength-through-Joy leisure area. Mainly, though, it is remembered for Leni Riefenstahl’s film Triumph of the Will, as the place where Hitler communed with his fanatical followers. Today it is a scruffy parkland. The air of neglect is deliberate: Nuremberg never understood what to do with this tainted space.

By a strange twist, England may have helped to sort out the problem. City officials admit that they would never have collected the €500,000 (£342,000) needed for the stands that will be placed in the complex had it not been for the impending arrival of thousands of England supporters.

MAIN ATTRACTIONS

Christkindlmarkt Annual Christmas market attended by two million people. Traders sell Nativity scenes and carved nutcrackers, while customers drink mulled wine and eat stollen

National Museum Founded in 1852 to house a “well-ordered” collection of German literature, culture and art

Albrecht Dürer Renaissance painter and astronomer; buried in the Johanniskirchof Toy Museum Dockenmacher, or medieval dollmakers, have been associated with the city for 500 years

Lebkuchen Gingerbread first baked in Nuremberg in 1395. Made from honey, spices, almonds and fruit, and used to build gingerbread houses

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