Although I like using a written month abbreviation myself, when communicating overseas, should we use:
January, or Enero, Janvier (OK, that one works), Gennaio, Januar, or Styczeń.
The advantage of a numerical format (and I lean to YYYY/MM/DD) is it needs no translation.
There’s an “I’ll be in mah bunk” joke in there somewhere…
Forget the date format for a minute… I wish we (in the USA) would move to the 24-hour clock. It’s so much easier, it’s faster to write and faster to read, and allows no room for error (like when people leave the AM or PM off because they assume it was obvious). And it gets rid of the whole 12:00 PM / 12:00 AM conundrum when referring to noon / midnight.
Oh yeah… the metric system too. Don’t most Americans have a good enough grasp of what a kilogram, kilometer, and liter are that it wouldn’t be difficult to switch?
“Kraut dating” by comparison gives remarkable fewer Google hits.
But the ones you do get - hoo boy!
Use what’s appropriate for your audience. This isn’t some huge dilemma. I don’t believe there are many, if any, situations in which your all-numbers format would actually be useful.
Do you speak that way? “I’ll stop by on the Thursday after next… 2012 Oh-Nine Twenty.” Honestly?
I’ve been hammering into my students’ heads that if a headline doesn’t sound like something someone would say, in the most common idiom, it’ll sound false and no one’ll believe your article/advert.
Everyone I’ve ever heard would say “I’ll stop by on September Twentieth”. Are there people (some Brits?) who’d say “I’ll stop by on Twenty September.”? If they’re from the UK, they’d probably add “I’ll knock you up then!” just to add to the confusion…
There’s a political party in the U.S. that you might be interested in… you’d fit right in!
Strudelfuckers?
Poland botherers?
High-quality-of-life-enjoying-strong-industrial-output-cunts?
We respond to my dad’s pronouncements with “Ya, der Master Race has schprechened!” Often followed by some pretty funky goose-stepping.
I doubt anyone anywhere says 20 September.
I’m an Aussie so dates are said in various ways: September 20, September 20th, 20th of September. 20/09/2012 is the most common way of writing a date.
Oh yeah and we spell colour properly too.
I always hear “I’ll stop by on the twentieth” if the actual month is understood. If it’s in doubt, the construction is always “I’ll stop by on the twentieth of September”. Which supports DD/MM/YYYY format. Despite the MM/DD/YY format. YMMV.
Democrats???
That’s it! Everybody, we’re all switching to the metric system and to Esperanto!
And Stardates!
Seriously? The Fourth of July isn’t an American date?
Yes – it’s the day between July 3rd and July 5th.
"IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
"The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
“When in the Course of human events…”
(But then, the Constitution is dated “the Seventeenth Day of September”, so there’s that.)
Of course if she is sucking on the german taxpayer’s teet she should be obliged to present herself to the authorities wearing leiderhosen and promise to use said funds only to maintain a stockpile of sausage and sauerkraut!
This would avoid any future potential for misunderstanden und spitz und sparken!
Then you’ll have some people complain if someone writes down “0530” or “1700” instead of “5:30” and “17:00” because there’s no reason civilized civilians should do it that way 
And we could always tick people off on both sides of the aisle by referring to noon as “12:00M” … (hey, AM = ante meridiem, PM = post meridiem, so the midpoint should be plain meridiem… right?)
Absolutely right, but it’ll be Never Twelfth before we get everyone to understand.
Hoi, we’ve known to avoid that phrase since Darwin’s time.
Though I can see there’d be a problem with European dating if that were the case.
An important point that I don’t think has been addressed in later posts. 10.8.2012 would be unambigously the tenth of August (the misunderstanding to be laid at the OP’s door), and 10/8/2012 would be unambigously the eighth of October (the German consulate being at fault). In any case, dealing with intercultural ambiguities is the business of consulates, so obviously they should have spelled out the month.