The funny thing is that some Americans also believe into a caricature when they talk about Germany. I remember two nice young girls who visited my business-partner (they were his grand nieces or something). They were totally surprised about the good German infrastructure and the high living standart of its people. Somehow they expected poor rural people just as if the Morgenthau plan would have been realized. Furthermore they were unsuspicious enough to tell it to my friend...
Silly and uninformed people will never die out. It doesn't matter on which side of the Atlantic they live.
But the question that Germans and other Euros should be asking themselves is where are they going? Everything changes, and the changes can be good or bad. In your opinion is Germany headed down the right road? I mean that it terms of retaining not only its sovereignty but its German character or essence.