"The Germans Arrive" - 1918 war propaganda painting by American artist George Bellows portrays imaginary atrocity committed by German troops in Belgium - where he had not been. (click to enlarge) The story is below.
By Carolyn Yeager
From acute hatred in 1914 to smoldering prejudice today, where did anti-Germanism start and why does it persist?
I cannot find any documentation of this phenomenon prior to the lead-up to World War I in the nineteenth century, and centered in the British Foreign Office. The image presented was of an exaggerated authoritarianism in both the German personality and culture.
Germans had always, up to then, been seen as a nation of “Poets and Thinkers” who were “disinclined to war,” acccording to Dr. Michael F. Conners in his book Dealing in Hate: The Development of Anti-German Propaganda. I have just now found Dr. Conners book online, as I am preparing to post this article, and will read what he has to say with interest ex post facto, as it were.
