I don't think "kneejerk" reactions, simply becuase they are predictable, are irrational. Germany likes to feel superior about itself, and given its past, it cannot do so easily. I do not blame the current generation for the sins of previous ones, but there is an element of national guilt about things in the past that makes Germans touchy. I'm the grandson of a European who didn't think "correctly" in the 1930s and 1940s. He went to Dachau and the Gestapo's prison. So my reaction is not "kneejerk" -- my reaction is that I am proud to be an American (and not in prison). The flip side is, of course, that about one-third of Germans see Iran as the danger to peace. These must be the ones who actually listen to what Iran's leader says about Israel, Britain, and the United States and not what Der Speigel's leftist editors spoon up. I hope all remember that the leftist German icon Gunther Grass recently had to out himself as a former SS officer. His long-secret East German file was going to be made public. So a former NAZI was influential in German politics. Where are the Germans on that? Whose fault was that?
I think it is relatively easy for people who follow one totalitarian ideology to "convert" from one to the other. That former Nazis became communists is not remarkable at all, in spite of how self-righteous the left is. If you believe in power for its own sake, other differences are secondary. That is why former communists are gravitating towards Islamofascism. You would think there are too many differences but many leftists recognize and admire radical Islam's Will to Power. For a person to reject totalitarianism and accept liberalism (in the European sense of the word) requires a fundamental change in thinking. The self-styled "radicals" who constantly go from one form of totalitarianism to the next think that they are being original and clever, but they are the most conventional and predictable of fools.