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How far have British views of Germany changed? Whenever I discuss this vexed question, I tend to use as my starting point the Daily Mirror’s front-page headline, ›Achtung. Surrender!‹, from more than a quarter of a century ago.
It was, supposedly, intended as a joke during the 1996 Euro football championships being held in England. The year was significant. It was on the eve of the electoral triumph of Tony Blair. This was supposed to mark a fresh start, the prime minister who saw as one his missions making the UK comfortable with its place in Europe. We know what would happen later ...
In September of this year, the German Embassy in London commissioned an opinion poll on British attitudes. It suggests that Brits have moved on from the tired clichés of the past, but not as much as Germanophiles such as I would have hoped.
According to the survey data, a majority of respondents agree with statements such as ›People living in Germany generally have a high quality of life‹, ›Germany, by its actions, is facing up to its responsibility for crimes committed during the Nazi era, including the Holocaust‹ and ›Generally speaking, Germany is a relatively equal society‹. The following statements also receive broad support: ›Germany is the strongest economic power in Europe‹; ›Germany is a leading power in the field of environmental protection‹ and ›Germany is the strongest political power in Europe‹.
Overall, nearly seven in ten (69%) respondents hold a positive view of Germany. Around one in six (16%) say their view of Germany is negative, while a similar proportion (15%) say they do not know. As for Brexit, a third of Britons think the relationship has worsened since the 2016 referendum decision to leave the European Union; a similar number think it has remained the same, while 14% say it has improved. (I would be fascinated to know their reasons, as I can’t think of any).
The issue of familiarity and empathy is perhaps the most revealing. In a country where cultural and media references are almost exclusively Anglophone (it is moot whether this is a cause or consequence of Brexit, or both), six in ten Brits name the United States as a partner. Next comes Australia (44%), then Canada (37%) and New Zealand (36%). Germany comes sixth, on 23%, below even the perfidious French, on 27%.
The polling also shows an alarming, but at the same time not surprising, ignorance and disengagement among many of those surveyed. The results prompted an interesting discussion on Linkedin, in which Germany’s Ambassador in the UK, Miguel Berger, who commissioned the work, noted: ›I imagine more people in Germany are interested in the UK than the other way around.‹
He is right, but that too perhaps is waning. I have noticed, in my half-and-half London and Berlin existence of recent years, how in official German circles, Britain is drifting off the mental map.
The ambassador’s interchange reminded me of an exhibition at the German House of History in Bonn that I visited in 2019 entitled ›Very British: A German Point of View‹. The show was funny, informative – and painful. It was also popular among visitors: the director of the museum admitted to me that Germans‹ fixation with Britain’s travails had boosted numbers.
The contents were amended to include a room focused on Brexit. But most of all, it focused on popular culture, what used to be known in the jargon as ›soft power‹. Germans have long devoured British pop music, TV shows (they too found Fawlty Towers funny in a self-deprecating way), the glamour of Emma Peel and the Avengers. Many can recount holidays to Cornwall, Scotland and the Lake District in their camper vans. They are glued to Premier League football. They obsess about the royal family – and, like many Europeans devoid of monarchies, were glued to their television sets for the Queen’s funeral and King Charles III’s coronation. They love English traditions, even when they make them up. Every New Year’s Eve, the entire country, young and old, watches »Dinner for One«. First aired in 1963, it is the most repeated TV programme in history, the 90th dinner of Miss Sophie, a bejewelled English aristocrat. Germans know every line. No Briton I have met has ever heard of it.
The key message from the exhibition was of an unrequited love. Germans, it suggested, had originally wanted Britain at the heart of Europe because they identified like-minded souls. Britain, on the other hand, never seems to know what it wants of Germany. When its economy struggles, as it did in the mid-eighties and mid-nineties – and now – it is criticised as over-regulated and hidebound. When Deutschland AG corners global markets, it is over-weaning and rapacious. In terms of foreign and security policy, the British don’t want Germany to throw its weight around the world, yet they do want it to pull its weight.
That is why I wrote ›Why the Germans Do It Better‹. I had become increasingly agitated when looking at the shelves in book shops to see almost all references to Germany relating to the two world wars. The immediate response to the book’s publication in September 2020 shocked me, as it hit the best-seller lists. Had the Brits, I wondered, finally got over their ›who-won-anyway‹ obsessions?
My optimism is holding, but only just. In the past year or two, some of the crude impulses seem to have returned. The issue is not whether Germany’s many problems shouldn’t be discussed, but in what context? The Brits, as I see at countless conferences, still have a tendency – nearly 80 years after the end of the war – to want to mark the Germans‹ ›democratic scorecard‹. ›Well done on this, should try hard harder on that‹...
The lack of self-awareness by British public figures, particularly politicians, is striking. I am no psychologist, but perhaps it is transference. The more ridiculous your own country looks to outsiders – not just Brexit but the chaos of the Theresa May parliamentary votes, the antics of Boris Johnson, and the brief madness of Liz Truss – the more you feel the need to pore over the weaknesses of others.
And so, the talk again is of Germany as the ›sick man of Europe‹. The case has a certain merit. Germany’s economy is languishing, over-exposed in its exports to China and failing to digitise and to modernise more broadly. It continues to struggle to fulfil the promises set out in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Zeitenwende speech of February 2022, in which he promised not just finally to meet the Nato requirement to devote 2% of GDP to military spending but also to vigorous in arming Ukraine. It still feels even now too wedded to Russia, and too dependent on China (for trade) and America (for its defence).
And then, of course, there is the spectre of the AfD looming over politics at a time when the three parties that form the Ampel governing coalition and the opposition Christian Democrats are struggling to communicate to voters.
All of this has led to a cacophony of criticism of Germany from Britain, and not just from the traditionalists on the Right of the spectrum. The media operates on several levels. On the one hand the Brits like to poke fun – hence popular video clips of England football captain Harry Kane in Lederhosen, with beer and bratwurst (his new club Bayern Munich sees it as good marketing). They also like it when the Germans play to the stereotype of wilful admirers, such as the new king’s successful visit earlier in the year.
But when it comes to politics and economics, it is zero sum. Germany is either ›up‹ (hence problematic) or ›down‹ (hence useless). In August, the Economist repeated its 1999 cover story, but on this occasion, it hedged its assessment of the ›sick man‹ with a question mark, suggesting it did not have the courage of its convictions. Other media used the mini-controversy that the piece produced to indulge in a new round of German bashing with a reinforced sense of impunity.
The rhetorical barbs come and go. The real danger is for the potential for both countries to drift further apart. On a person-to-person level, German-language teaching in the UK has almost dried up, while German school trips to ›the island‹ have almost ground to a halt thanks to new post-Brexit passport requirements. Cultural exchanges are being impaired by cumbersome new rules. Until recently one of Germany’s top five trading partners, the UK fell out of the top ten last year.
One small crumb of comfort is that at least Rishi Sunak is starting to talk again to the European Union, where most of the major decisions are taken, rather than insisting (hopelessly) that all business can be conducted bilaterally. The greatest scope for cooperation is in defence and security.
Opinion polls in the UK point consistently to a change of government in a year’s time. The open question is the extent to which a Labour administration under Keir Starmer will make closer ties with the European Union a key priority. He has so far been at pains to be as unradical as possible, for fear of giving ammunition to the beleaguered Conservatives, desperately looking for any lines of attack. Might a large majority imbue in Starmer greater courage? That remains unresolved.
Relations will, for sure, improve, even if slowly and a very low base. For something more radical to take place would require a societal and cultural change. That, as recent history has shown, remains a work in progress.