(2)
German Unification & Industrialization:
As can be seen in (1), the unification of Germany could only deepen the negative stereotypes that already resulted from the indigenous development of Anglo-Saxon racialism. German unification, however, led to the desperate search for a German-free heritage. All eyes looked at Prussia.
Prussia's defeat of France in 1871 emphasized the rapid German development of the late 19th Century. These developments also erased all previous German stereotypes of thinker or dreamy fool (expressed as the German Michael). All Germans were now soldiers and dangerous. They became the "Hun".
a) Harrison: "scratch the Junker, and you will find the lanzknecht [sic]"..."the fact that every German is a soldier, is itself a proof of a lower type of civilization".
b) Edwin Earnest William: "Edwin Earnest William’ s Made in Germany in 1896, a troubling discourse on Britain’ s eroded industrial base, rekindled
advocacy for educational reform along German lines, but resistance to the "tyrannical" Prussian model continued to reflect hostility toward the alleged evils of state control, deleterious effects on character, and the basic incompatibility of national temperaments".
c) Ford Maddox Ford: "We [the English] are the people who will win terrific victories against enormous odds—in the game of tennis, or in the other game of tennis that used to be played with stone balls. But in the end, some Prussian, some Jew, or some Radical politician will sleeplessly get the best of us and take away the prizes of our game." 124
Factor (1) is in any case far more important than factor (2). The wars of German unification did place a degree of pressure on the utterly egocentric "Balance of Power" conception. That is, the mere existence of a unified Germany threatened the paradigmatic belief that Europe should remain under Britain's heel. But academics and the elite made a conscious decision to portray the new German Empire in an incredibly negative light. Did simple geopolitical realities cause this development? No. The articulate elite rewrote history and wiped away centuries of good relations because of elemental fear. They created the myth of the "Hun".
Unification & WWI and the "New" German Typology:
Peter Novick: "In 1914 American historians had often blamed their European colleagues for promoting nationalism which had led to war. With the entry of the United States into the conflict, the locus of guilt shifted: American historians' task was "repentance" and "expiation" for having insufficiently promoted American patriotism". The Americans hoped to compensate and now attacked Germans with a vengeance.
Several Anglo-Saxon ideas already existed:
a)
The German Danger: P.M. Kennedy: "The rise to imperial preeminence had put Britain in a less defensible position morally visa-vis Germany: was now Germany the new David and England the overgrown, decadent Goliath? This inversion of the imperial paradigm, which had formerly placed England as the heroic underdog, now cast England as the "weary Titan, staggering under the too-vast orb of his fate" or a "huge giant sprawling over the globe, with gouty fingers and toes stretched in every direction, which cannot be approached without eliciting a scream."
b)
German Militarism: "Charles Copland Perry, the same writer who called Germany the "touchstone of our conduct," described the attitude of most Englishmen: Germany is simply a country which, for reasons best known to itself, keeps a very large army, possesses a good many autocratic and boorish officials, which has once or twice, in the person of its Emperor, had the impertinence to interfere with our own affairs and which persists in flooding our labour-markets with cheap clerks".
c)
German Barbarism: William F. Bertolette (1904): "Appreciation of the splendors of ancient Greece and Rome in an age of imperialism often led to identification with those ancient models of empire, a vantage point which placed Germany historically in opposition to "civilization".
By WWI, Americans wrote and did the following:
a) William E. Dodd (1915): "...almost ashamed that I have my doctorate from such a people...the enemy of mankind". He had obviously once thought differently.
b) Don Tolzmann: "An obvious target of the hate campaign was the German language. By the war's end, twenty-six states had passed laws against the use of German. Some of these forbade the use of German on the street, in public meetings or on the telephone...By January 1921 the number arrests nationally for those who were guilty of using German in public had reached a total of 17,903...these laws were [then] declared unconstitutional."
c) Don Tolzmann: "After eliminating German from the schools, it was only a logical step to address the problem of German materials in libraries. Numerous libraries decided to burn, destroy, or remove German materials from their holdings".
d) Don Tolzmann: "Any individual of German descent became a target. Ethnic slurs were a daily matter in the public and in the press. Terms like "Hun" and "Hunskunk" were used daily on the front pages of the press...A common act of harassment was tarring and feathering. Another favorite was dunking German-Americans in syrup. Homes, churches and German houses were painted with yellow signs on the door or with skulls and crossbones. Sometimes they were burned to the ground...Indeed, the first German-American killed was the Rev. Edmund Kayser, who was shot near Chicago in 1915. Other ministers were stoned, shot at, or had their homes broken into. At Bishop, Texas, a German Luteran minister was publicly flogged.
e) Don Tolzmann: "...war propaganda depicted England, France, and Russia as heroic and godly nations, while Germany and Austria were presented as the forces of evil...[in movies, etc.] the Huns were depicted as brutal, barbaric, bestial savages bent on worldwide conquest"
Conclusion: I hope that people understand what I am getting at. France had typically been England's main enemy for hundreds of years. Why did England ultimately side with France and Russia against Germany? A typical answer would point to the German navy, German imperialist ambitions, or even the wars of unification. I argue that this is rubbish. These points only justified a new way of thinking that viewed the very existence of a new Germany as unacceptable. Why? Victorian thinking (ie. racialism and Social-Darwinism mixed with balance of power notions) created an image of the "Hun" that subsequently influenced how the elite viewed their world. Without this change, it is impossible to explain the fact that most Americans and British first viewed German unification as a good thing.
- Don Tolzmann, The German-American Experience (2000)
- P. M. Kennedy, Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860-1914 (1980)
- F. Harrison, National and Social Problems (1908 )
- Edwin Earnest William, Made in Germany (1896)
- William Manchester, The Arms of Krupp (1964)
- William F. Bertolette, German Stereotypes in british Magazines Prior to World War I (2004)
- Michael S. Bell, The Worldview of Franklin D. Roosevelt: France, Germany and United States involvement in World War II in Europe (PhD)(2004) [some of the people quoted]
- Russel Grenfell, Unconditional Hatred: German War Guilt and the Future of Europe (1953)
- Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "objectivity question" and the American historical profession. (1980 ) [some of the people quoted]