Anti-German sentiment

Anti-German sentiment should not be confused with Anti-Germans (communist current), also called Anti-German.

Anti-German sentiment (or Germanophobia) refers to the view of the German people or of Germany with suspicion or hostility. Rather than being a coherent ideology with an established literature, it has appeared as a response to the wars involving or started by Germany, and has lingered as a hangover from these conflicts. As with all anti-ethnic terms, important distinctions should be made between sentiments in opposition to the people and culture, versus those against the government or its policies. However, such distinctions are often neglected.

World War I

File:Guerre 14-18-Humour-L'ingordo, trop dur-1915.JPG

French Propaganda Postcard from World War I era showing a caricature of Kaiser Wilhelm II biting the world

During World War I many of Germany's opponents produced propaganda attempting to dehumanize Germans; they were often depicted as Huns capable of infinite cruelty and violence.

In the United Kingdom anti-German feeling at times led to rioting, assaults on suspected Germans and the looting of stores owned by people with German-sounding names, occasionally even taking on an anti-Semitic tone. Whether British attitudes to Germany were entirely negative can, however, be debated. The British writer and author Nicholas Shakespeare quotes this statement from a letter written by his grandfather during the First World War:

"Personally, my opinion is that our fellows get on much best [sic] with the Germans, and would very much rather be fighting the French!"

. The soldier praised the Germans for their discipline and bravery:

"It was a fine sight to see the Germans coming on in solid formation, in front of our machine guns....they were generally led by one officer in front who came along to certain death as cool as a cucumber, with his sword held straight up in front of him at the salute". [1]

When Australia, Canada, and the United States entered the war, some German immigrants, and sometimes even non-German immigrants who were perceived as German (Dutch, Scandinavian), were looked upon with suspicion and attacked regarding their loyalty. Some German immigrants in America were even tried, convicted and imprisoned, on charges of sedition, merely for refusing to swear allegiance to the American war effort. Anti-German tension culminated on April 4, 1918, in the brutal lynching of German immigrant Robert Prager, a coal miner living in Collinsville, Illinois. Anti-German sentiment may have been stoked by the 1916 bombing of Black Tom island, which had been directed and financed by German intelligence officers under diplomatic cover. The vast majority of German-Americans, however, were loyal to their adopted country and thousands of them would serve in the United States military.

In England, anti-German sentiment was so severe that the ruling House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha became the House of Windsor, Battenberg became Mountbatten and the German Shepherd was renamed the Alsatian. In New Orleans, Berlin St. was renamed for General Pershing (head of the Allied Expeditionary Force), and sauerkraut came to be called (by some) Liberty Cabbage. In Canada, the Ontario city of Berlin changed its name to become Kitchener, after the British military hero pictured on the famous "I want YOU!" recruiting poster. The English Kennel Club only re-authorised the term 'German Shepherd' to be used as an official name in 1977.

Anti-German sentiment due to World War II

Much current anti-German sentiment is related to World War II. Anti-German sentiment was particularly strong in East European countries occupied by Germany and those which were at war with Germany and its allies during WWII. As a result of the devastating consequences of the war, anti-German sentiment was widespread and strong after WWII. American General George S. Patton complained that the U.S. policy of denazification following Germany's surrender harmed American interests and was motivated simply by hatred of the defeated German people.

During WWII, the US Government interned, among others, at least 11,000 American citizens of German ancestry. The last person, a German American, remained imprisoned until 1948 at Ellis Island, three years after cessation of hostilities with Germany.

Although views fluctuate somewhat in response to geopolitical issues (such as the invasion of Iraq), Americans regard modern Germany as an ally and few hold anti-German sentiments. Occasionally, German people are stereotyped as Nazis (goose-stepping, shouting "Sieg Heil!", and sporting a "Hitler moustache") in some parts of American media, as well as in the UK and other countries. In Poland and some other East European countries wartime memories still revive tensions.

Richard Wagner's music wasn't performed in Israel until 1995 (radio) and 2001 (concert) and was during many years unpopular in Poland.

In Israel

Up to the rise of Hitler in 1933, Many European Jews tended to be pro-German. German Jews were deeply integrated in the country's culture, and many of them fought with distinction in the ranks of the WWI German Army. Jews in the Czech lands tended to adopt the German language and culture in preference to the Czech ones (Kafka is a conspicuous example), and similar phenomena were evident in other parts of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Throughout Eastern Europe, Jews spoke Yiddish, a language closely related to German, and Jewish intellectuals often took up German as "The Language of Culture". Theodore Herzl, the founding father of Zionism, himself spoke and wrote German and in his utopian book Altneuland actually depicted the future Jewish state as German-speaking.

Such attitudes suffered an extremely painful rupture and complete reversal with the Nazi persecutions and atrocities, culminating with the systematic genocide of the Holocaust. In the first decades of Israel's existence, anti-German feelings were understandably strong and dominant in Israeli society. There was a widespread cultural and commercial boycott of all things German (and often, Austrian as well) and a determaination "never to set foot on German soil". German Jews in Israel, themselves refugees from the Nazi persecutions, came under strong social pressure to cease using German - their mother tongue.

At the time, the words "German" and "Nazi" were used interchangeably. (Until the late 1990's the Sign Language of Israeli deaf communities used the Swastika as the sign for "German".) There was a widespread scepticism about the the possibility of "Another Germany" ever emerging, and specifically a suspicion of Konrad Adenauer's claim to be involved in the creation of a new, democratic Germany. Many Israelis took up the Soviet claims, made in the early years of the Cold War, that West Germany was "A Fascist State" in which ex-Nazis held key positions; however, Israelis also tended to regard Communist East Germany as being "just as bad".

The Reparations Agreement with Germany, signed by the Ben Gurion Government in 1952, was the focus of intensive political controversy, and the protest demonstrations led by then opposition leader Menachem Begin turned into pitched battles with the police. In the early 1960's, the Eichmann Trial brought the horrors and traumas of the Holocaust back to the center of public consciousness. The establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and West Germany in 1966 entailed a new wave of protests and demonstrations, though less violent than those of 1952.

However, since the late 1960's, there was a clear though gradual process of rapprochement between Israelis and Germans in all spheres: diplomatic, commercial and cultural. Most Israelis came to accept that Germany had indeed broken with its Nazi past and that democracy has become rooted in German society - though many of them expressed a preference for dealing with younger Germans who were born or grew up after 1945 and a repugnance for meeting those who were adults during WWII (except if they had a proven anti-Nazi record).

The 1967 Six Day War realigned Israeli politics, with the issue of Occupied Territories henceforth defining what is "Right Wing" and "Left Wing" - with, among other things, the result that militant Israeli nationalism tended to be anti-Arab rather than anti-German. When Begin became Israel's Prime Minister in 1977, he had little option but to take up the maintenance of already very extensive ties with Germany, to whose creation he had been fiercely opposed as an opposition leader.

A momentary flare-up of anti-German feeling came up during the 1991 Gulf War, when Israel was the subject of missile attack by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Some Israeli columnists and politicians demagogically combined the revelations of German corporations helping the Iraqi arms industry and the strong anti-war movement in Germany (though these two phenomena actually issued from completely different, and indeed mutually antagonistic, parts of German society) and tied both with the German Nazi past.

The German Government of the time managed, however, to assuage Israeli feelings by providing the Israeli Navy with several advanced submarines, which - according to repeated reports in the international press - were used to mount nuclear missiles and provide Israel with a Second strike capacity.

At present, anti-German feelings in Israel are at low ebb. The ongoing debate about whether or not the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra should play the works of Richard Wagner is mostly considered as a remnant of the past. However, Israeli soccer fans, following World Cup competitions, are still known to enthusiastically support whatever team is playing against Germany.

European continental relations regarding contemporary Europe

After the separation into two countries following World War II, West Germany generally had good relationships with its western neighboring states, as did East Germany with its eastern neighbors. Many of these relationships continued after the end of the Cold War with the unified Germany. West Germany was a co-founder of the European Union and the reunified Germany continues as a leading member. In the process of European Unification Germany and France forged a strong relationship, ending the long-standing French-German enmity which had peaked during and after the First World War.

Anti-German sentiment has endured in some countries, particularly Poland. Anti-Germanism is heavily rooted in Polish popularized perceptions of its western neighbors, dating back to the Teutonic Order. Tensions had only increased with the rise of nationalism and events such as the three partitions of Poland, germanization in the 19th and 20th centuries, and unfortunate pre-World War II situations. Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939, controversies such as Bloody Sunday and the Polish experience until 1945 have only contributed to sentiments, as has bitterness over finalized borders. Germano-Polish relations have also been damaged more recently: the Poles are suspicious of the campaign by Germans expelled by Poland following the Second World War to seek reparation for their lost property and to create the Centre Against Expulsions; in addition, the proposed Russo-German pipeline through the Baltic Sea, which would undermine Poland's ability to negotiate with Russia over energy supplies, was described as a new Molotov-Ribbentrop pact by members of the Polish government. Against this, German analysts have accused the Kaczyński twins of stoking up popular anti-German sentiment in order to secure the survival of their government. [2]

Germans sometimes complain of stereotypical associations of them with acts and a regime of more than sixty years ago, such as the use of anti-German sentiment in headlines by parts of the British press, recent examples arising when German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI.

"British public people, whether journalists or politicians, are more prepared to demonise the Germans than any other people I know are prepared to vilify any other nation I have heard of, with the possible exception of Arabs and Jews."

Hugo Young (The Guardian)

External links

• Article from Der Spiegel 31/10.2006 on Polish - German Relations
• Article from The Scotsman 11 July 2003: “Why do we still laugh at Germany?”
• [3] Newspaper Articles from 1918, describing the lynching of Robert Prager in Collinsville, Ill.