Anti-German sentiment
Anti-German sentiment is fear or dislike of Germany, its people, and its culture. Its opposite is Germanophilia.
Traces of anti-German sentiment can be found in the High Middle Ages, with Ekkehard of Aura and Odo of Deuil writing about frictions between the Germans and the French. After Germany completed its unification in 1871, anti-Germanism grew among the other great powers, fueled largely by fears of Germany's rapid industrialisation. Germanophobia reached its height in the Allied countries during World War I and World War II. Anti-German and anti-Austrian sentiments were generally held together, as Austrians worked with and were involved in the German military, especially in Nazi Germany, with most Austrians considering themselves German until the end of World War II in Europe.
Following the collapse of Nazi Germany, anti-German sentiment generally decreased as Europe entered a period of peace. In modern times, anti-German sentiment usually comes about from the major power Germany has economically over Europe, and its importance in the European Union.
History
Late 19th and early 20th centuries
During the 1700s and 1800s, many states in the United States allowed non-citizens to vote. Anti-Irish and anti-German Catholic sentiment following the War of 1812 and intensifying again in the 1840s lead many states, particularly in the Northeast, to amend their constitutions to prohibit non-citizens from voting. States that banned non-citizen voting during this time included New Hampshire in 1814, Virginia in 1818, Connecticut in 1819, New Jersey in 1820, Massachusetts in 1822, Vermont in 1828, Pennsylvania in 1838, Delaware in 1831, Tennessee in 1834, Rhode Island in 1842, Illinois in 1848, Ohio and Maryland in 1851, and North Carolina in 1856.Negative comments in Britain about Germany were first made in the 1870s, following the Prussian victory in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870–71. British war planners believed that they needed to prevent a possible German invasion of Britain. German advances eventually led to the popularity of invasion novels, such as The Battle of Dorking, which first appeared in Blackwood's Magazine in the summer of 1871.
In the 1880s and 1890s, German immigrants in the UK were the targets of "some hostility"; interviewees for the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration believed that Germans were involved in prostitution and burglary, and many people also believed that Germans who were working in Britain were threatening the livelihoods of Britons by being willing to work for longer hours. Anti-German hostility began to intensify in early 1896 when Kaiser Wilhelm II sent the Kruger telegram to President Paul Kruger of the Transvaal congratulating him for repelling the British Jameson Raid. At that time, attacks on Germans in London were reported by the German press, but contrary to the reports, no attacks occurred. The Saturday Review suggested: "be ready to fight Germany, as Germania delenda est", an allusion to Cato the Elder's coda in the Second Punic War.
Rising political tensions
Following the signing of the Entente Cordiale alliance in 1904 between the United Kingdom and France, official relationships cooled, as did popular attitudes towards Germany and German residents in Britain. A fear of German militarism replaced a previous admiration for German culture and literature. At the same time, journalists produced a stream of articles on the threat posed by Germany. In the Daily Telegraph Affair of 1908–09, the Kaiser, in a badly misjudged attempt to show Germany's friendship towards England, said that he was among a minority of Germans friendly to Britain, that he had sent a military plan to Queen Victoria during the Boer War which the British Army had used successfully, and that Germany's fleet buildup was directed not against Britain but the "Yellow Peril" of the East.Articles in Harmsworth's Daily Mail regularly advocated anti-German sentiments throughout the 20th century, telling their readers to refuse service at restaurants by Austrian or German waiters on the claim that they were spies and that if a German-sounding waiter claimed to be Swiss that they should demand to see the waiter's passport. At the same time, conspiracy theories which combined Germanophobia with antisemitism were concocted, they focused on the supposed foreign control of Britain, some of these conspiracy theories blamed Britain's entry into the Second Boer War on international German and Jewish financiers. Most of these ideas about German-Jewish conspiracies originated from right-wing figures such as Arnold White, Hilaire Belloc, and Leo Maxse, who used his publication the National Review to spread them.
Economic discrimination
such as the sausage was deprecated by Germanophobes. In the late 19th century, the label Made in Germany was introduced in Britain by the Merchandise Marks Act 1887, to mark foreign produce more obviously, as foreign manufacturers had been falsely marking inferior goods with the marks of renowned British manufacturing companies and importing them into the United Kingdom. Most of these were found to be originating from Germany, whose government had introduced a protectionist policy to legally prohibit the import of goods in order to build up domestic industry.Anglicization in the West
In an attempt to further distance themselves from German culture, German street names in many cities were changed. German and Berlin streets in Cincinnati became English and Woodward; and Lubeck, Frankfort, and Hamburg Streets in Chicago were renamed Dickens, Charleston, and Shakespeare Streets. In New Orleans, Berlin Street was renamed in honor of General Pershing, head of the American Expeditionary Force. In Indianapolis, Bismarck Avenue and Germania Street were renamed Pershing Avenue and Belleview Street, respectively in 1917, and Brooklyn's Hamburg Avenue was renamed Wilson Avenue. In 1916, the city of Berlin in Canada was renamed to Kitchener, referring to Lord Kitchener, who was famously pictured on the "Lord Kitchener Wants You" recruiting posters. Several streets in Toronto that had previously been named for Liszt, Humboldt, Schiller, Bismarck, etc., were changed to names with strong British associations, such as Balmoral. Several streets in London which had been named after places in Germany or notable Germans also had their names changed; Berlin Road in Catford was renamed Canadian Avenue, and Bismarck Road in Islington was renamed Waterlow Road. In South Australia, Grunthal became Verdun and Krichauff became Beatty. In New South Wales, Germantown became Holbrook after the submarine commander Norman Douglas Holbrook.Many businesses changed their names. In Chicago, German Hospital became Grant Hospital; likewise, the German Dispensary and the German Hospital in New York City were renamed Lenox Hill Hospital and Wyckoff Heights Hospital, respectively. In New York, the giant Germania Life Insurance Company became Guardian. Some words of German origin were changed, at least temporarily. Sauerkraut came to be called "liberty cabbage", German measles became "liberty measles", hamburgers became "liberty sandwiches" and dachshunds became "liberty pups". In Great Britain, the German Shepherd breed of dog was renamed to the euphemistic "Alsatian"; the English Kennel Club only re-authorised the use of 'German Shepherd' as an official name in 1977. The German biscuit was renamed the Empire biscuit.
Many schools stopped teaching German-language classes. The City College of New York continued to teach German courses, but reduced the number of credits that students could receive for them. Books published in German were removed from libraries or even burned. In Cincinnati, the public library was asked to withdraw all German books from its shelves. In Iowa, in the 1918 Babel Proclamation, Governor William L. Harding prohibited the use of all foreign languages in schools and public places. Nebraska banned instruction in any language except English, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the ban was illegal in 1923. In parallel with these changes, many German Americans elected to anglicize their names. Many state governments also sought to coercively limit the use of the German language in the United States in public places and most especially inside churches.
World War I
In 1914, when Germany invaded neutral Belgium and northern France, Imperial German Army regularly court martialed Belgian and French civilians under German military law for offenses including espionage, perfidy, or being francs-tireurs, and executed 6,500 of them. These acts, referred to as the Rape of Belgium, were both exploited and exaggerated by the governments of the Allied Powers, who produced atrocity propaganda dehumanizing Germans as gorilla-like Huns who were all racially inclined to sadism and violence.A vocal source of criticism of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson's "anti-hyphen" ideology and particularly to their demands for "100% Americanism" came from America's enormous number of White ethnic immigrants and their descendants. Criticism from these circles occasionally argued that "100% Americanism" really meant Anglophilia and a Special Relationship with the British Empire, as particularly demonstrated by demands for tolerating only the English language in the United States. In a letter published on 16 July 1916 in the Minneapolis Journal, Edward Goldbeck, a member of Minnesota's traditionally large German-American community, sarcastically announced that his people would "abandon the hyphen", as soon as English-Americans did so. Meanwhile, he argued, "Let the exodus of Anglo-Americans start at once! Let all those people go who think that America is a new England!" A much smaller minority of German Americans came out openly for Germany. Similarly, Harvard psychology professor Hugo Münsterberg dropped his efforts to mediate between America and Germany, and threw his efforts behind the German war effort.
The Justice Department attempted to prepare a list of all German aliens, counting approximately 480,000 of them. The Committee of Internment of Alien Enemies recommended sending them to internment camps, though the idea was opposed by the War Department and the Attorney General. More than 4,000 German aliens were imprisoned in 1917–1918; the allegations included spying for Germany and endorsing the German war effort.
When the United States entered the war in 1917, some German Americans were looked upon with suspicion and attacked regarding their loyalty. Propaganda posters and newspaper commentary fed the growing fear. In Wisconsin, a Lutheran minister faced suspicion for hosting Germans in his home, while a language professor was tarred and feathered for having a German name and teaching the language. In Collinsville, Illinois, German-born Robert Prager was dragged from jail as a suspected spy and lynched. The Red Cross barred individuals with German last names from joining in fear of sabotage. Some aliens were convicted and imprisoned on charges of sedition for refusing to swear allegiance to the United States war effort. Thousands were forced to buy war bonds to show their loyalty.
In Nashville, Tennessee, Luke Lea, the publisher of The Tennessean, together with "political associates", attempted to declare German-born Edward Bushrod Stahlman an "alien enemy" during World War I. Stahlman was the publisher of a competing newspaper, the Nashville Banner. The offices of a pro-German socialist newspaper, the Philadelphia Tageblatt, were visited by federal agents after war broke out to investigate the citizenship status of its staff and would later be raided by federal agents under the powers of the Espionage Act of 1917, and six members of its organization would eventually be arrested for violations of the Espionage Act among other charges after publishing a number of pieces of pro-German propaganda.
In Great Britain, anti-German feeling led to infrequent rioting, assaults on suspected Germans and the looting of businesses owned by people with German-sounding names, which occasionally took an antisemitic tone. Increasing anti-German hysteria threw suspicion upon the British royal family; King George V was persuaded to change his German name of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor and relinquish all German titles and styles on behalf of his relatives who were British subjects. Prince Louis of Battenberg was not only forced to change his name to Mountbatten, he was forced to resign as First Sea Lord, the most senior position in the Royal Navy.
Attitudes to Germany were not entirely negative among British troops fighting on the Western Front; Robert Graves, who, like the King, also had German relatives, wrote shortly after the war during his time at Oxford University as an undergraduate that "Pro-German feeling had been increasing. With the war over and the German armies beaten, we could give the German soldier credit for being the most efficient fighting man in Europe ... Some undergraduates even insisted that we had been fighting on the wrong side: our natural enemies were the French." British writer Nicholas Shakespeare quoted a statement from a letter written by his grandfather during the First World War in which he says he would rather fight the French and describes German bravery.