Why English Hate Germans

Why English Hate Germans

In writing and re-writing their pasts nations rarely tell truth about themselves and, therefore, in manner in which they present national stories history textbooks are intentional, maybe even tendentious, literature (Keith 2010). Selecting the national past for transmission through school textbooks is an intensely political and ideological process. In order to protect the sense of self-worth and identity the group stereotypes an out-group, in this case Germans, as being responsible for the wide variety of national disasters.

Constructed by real people with real interests school textbooks are products of ideological and political conflicts and compromises. As tools of socialisation and sites of ideological discussion history textbooks are designed to introduce young people to the particular, and historically located, cultural and socio-economic order with its relations of power and domination, textbooks represent focal element in process of cultural transmission'.

This article seeks to develop ideas discussed above by exploring how within the climate characterised by the national moral panic and an institutionalised imperialist xenophobia school history textbooks in early years of 20th Century came to present an intensely hostile discourse of Germans and Germany. approach is multi-disciplinary as the single discipline approach would not provide the full and coherent understanding of development of Germanophobia within school history textbooks. purpose is to provide the framework through which to link cultural depictions of Germans and Germany with how history was taught, what was to be learnt and how this was mediated through school history textbooks.

On outbreak of World War One there was universal agreement among British social commentators and politicians that blame for war rested solely with Germany who had deliberately brought on crisis that now hangs over Europe' (Keith 2010). Consequently, German society and culture became subject of the sustained and intoxicating attack and Germans became 'Hun.' Central in construction of the populist discourse that was to have such the powerful impact upon construction of school history textbook narratives was need to present Germany as an acute threat to British way of life, as the brutal, violent and sadistic enemy who systematically flouted traditional conventions of fighting an honourable' war.

In all forms of popular literature racism of Social Darwinian quickly emerged in depictions of Germans and Germany and 'it was the short step to envisage Germans through sheer racism, the nation of Huns. For example, 24 February 1917 edition of War Illustrated included an article titled Cultured Kameraden: Study in Hun Physiogonomy' containing photographs of German prisoners of war. Accounts of German atrocities coming from France and Belgium promoted twin ideas that British, instilled with notions of duty, discipline and moral fibre, would never resort to such behaviour and that German army, an abnormal, mystical and largely unseen enemy, deliberately abandoned moral and Christian principles and broke every rule of game. Atrocity propaganda exemplified both rightness of British cause and confirmed ideology of an unfettered brutal enemy.

Stories showed that Germans entered closed houses and shot or Committee on Alleged German Outrages report clearly fulfilled ...