BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

1990s Germany “had become a whipping boy for the nationalist British media,” receiving blame
for everything from the devaluation of the pound sterling in 1992 to the European ban on British
beef amidst the “mad cow” disease scare. He cited a Daily Express cartoon dated 10 May 1996
depicting Helmut Kohl wearing an EU armband in a war room with other helmeted and
Pikelhaubed Germans, plotting invasion and the extermination of peacefully grazing British
cattle. And despite the landslide victory of the Labour party in the 1997 elections, which
ostensibly implied public rejection of a highly Germanophobic and Europhobic Conservative
campaign, opinion polls of the 1990s have demonstrated some longer-term adverse effects of
anti-German political propaganda. This persistent British Germanophobia, even if in a
popularized tongue-in-cheek form, has prompted, for example, a reference to the new German
Reichstag as “the hub of a new European superstate-in-waiting,” and a frank admission appearing
in the 11 July 1999 edition of the Sunday Times Colour Magazine article entitled “Hunforgiven:”
“We all hate the Germans—come on, it’s all right, admit it, we’re all agreed, we hate them.” 27
While war imagery taken too seriously has backfired in the political arena, it has also
fallen flat in the world of sports as shown by the unsuccessful attempts of the Daily Mirror and
other tabloids to resuscitate German stereotypes and relate war-time scenarios to Anglo-German
rivalry during the Euro 96 soccer championship. 28 Ironically, soccer rivalry has actually
improved the image of Germans in British eyes in at least two ways: first, through respect for
players, in particular the good-humored and easy-going star player Jürgen Klinsmann, who
played out a one-year stint with a British professional team; and second, through British fans’
27 Nicholls, Fifty Years of Anglo-German Relations, 17-19.
28 Joe Brooker, “Stereotypes and National Identity in Euro 96,” chap. 5 in Emig,
Stereotypes in Contemporary Anglo-German Relations, 87-89.
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