Calling someone an asshole, or calling them a racist if they seem to discriminate you based on your race, saying a restaurant isn't good etc. can very easily get you sued in Germany.
They are in fact self censoring. I live there and many people are just Nazis. It's illegal to be a Nazi, but the law works on facts you can prove in court, and the only way you can prove that is if they, for example, yelled Heil Hitler, or did the salute, or waved a swastika flag. As long as they're not too obvious about it, it's de facto allowed. Some people are still stupid enough to do the obvious signs of course.
Freedom of expression index (higher is better)
Germany: 0.94
USA: 0.89