What are you talking about? Who are you calling "rabid right"? and since when is the rabid right holding a racist grudge against the "aryan" Germans of WWII anyway? If you read any primary and secondary historical documents of the time period, you'd know that "krauts" was the term frequently used by the survivors and witnesses of u-boat attacks at the time; hence the quoted use of the term. What's next? Calling MLKjr a racist for using the word "negro"? How ignorant can one get nowadays?
Kraut is absolutely not a racist term. It was used to refer to German troops. It is just a name. Jerry is another. Limey has long been used to refer to the British. These are not discriminatory or derogatory terms, just nicknames.