Englanders and Huns: How Five Decades of Enmity Led to the First World War

by James Hawes

A completely fresh look at the enmity between Britain and Germany that all but destroyed Europe. Half a century before 1914, most Britons saw the Germans as poor and rather comical cousins - and most Germans looked up to the British as their natural mentors. Over the next five decades, each came to think that the other simply had to be confronted - in Europe, in Africa, in the Pacific and at last in the deadly race to cover the North Sea with dreadnoughts. But why? Why did so many Britons come to see in Germany everything that was fearful and abhorrent? Why did so many Germans come to see any German who called dobbel fohlt while playing Das Lawn Tennis as the dupe of a global conspiracy? Packed with long-forgotten stories such as the murder of Queen Victoria's cook in Bohn, the disaster to Germany's ironclads under the White Cliffs, bizarre early colonial clashes and the precise, dark moment when Anglophobia begat modern anti-Semitism, this is the fifty-year saga of the tragic, and often tragicomic, delusions and miscalculations that led to the defining cataclysm of our times - the breaking of empires and the womb of horrors, the Great War. Richly illustrated with the words and pictures that formed our ancestors' disastrous opinions, it will forever change the telling of this fateful tale.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, European History, Germany, British Literature

448 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2013

About the author

James Hawes grew up in Gloucestershire, Edinburgh and Shropshire. He took a First in German at Hertford College, Oxford, then did a postgrad theatre studies in Cardiff, Wales. Having failed as an actor, he worked as an English teacher in Spain. In 1985-6 he was in charge of CADW excavations at the now-UNESCO World Heritage site of Blaenavon Ironworks. He took a PhD on Nietzsche and German literature 1900-1914 at University College, London 1987-90, then lectured in German at Maynooth University (Ollscoil Mhá Nuad) in Ireland between 1989 and 1991 before doing so at Sheffield University and Swansea University.

James has published six novels, all with Jonathan Cape. He turned to creative non-fiction with a Kafka anti-biography, Excavating Kafka (2008) which became the subject of a BBC documentary. In 2015, Englanders and Huns was shortlisted for the Paddy Power Political Books of the Year 2015. The Shortest History of Germany, published in May 2017, reached #2 in the Sunday Times bestseller charts in April 2018, being pipped for #1 only by Noah Yuval Harari. The Shortest History of England appeared in October 2020 and reached #4 in the Times bestseller charts in July 2021.

James has reviewed and/or written for every UK broadsheet, on topics from DIY to Prince Philip. His journalistic high-points to date were the cover-story for The New Statesman in September 2017 and the long read The England Delusion in Prospect in August 2021; this was publicly described by Prof Ciaran Martin, CB, founding Chief Executive of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, as “a really brilliant essay on the historical origins of UK constitutional tensions”. He has appeared on Radio 4 Today, Channel 4 News, Sky News and GB News.

In 2022, he was “series story consultant” and key on-screen commentator in the eight-part BBC TV series “Art that Made Us”. He also wrote the accompanying book.

His next book will be The Shortest History of Ireland.

Reviews

[Emmanuel Gustin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an entertaining account of the mutual attitudes of the British and German people from 1864 to the outbreak of the first World War, with a focus on how mass opinion shaped politics, and politics and press shaped mass opinion.

The format is chronological but anecdotal, with leaps through history to discuss selected events, and public opinion documented through cartoons and newspaper clippings. This leaves a lot unsaid, and evidently it is also far too narrow to reduce the causes of the Great War to the relationship between the British and German Empires. But it is also a very illustrative and entertaining way of telling a focused story. Clearly James Hawes did not aim to create a complete historical framework, he just refers to other events that touch upon his account, and leaves them there, as if saying, if you want to know more about the Boer War, go read another book. I can imagine this being confusing to some readers.

The essential thesis of Hawes is that the Great War was not some unfortunate accident of history, but the logical consequence of ideological and nationalistic antagonism. He does not absolve the politicians and generals from blame, but does see the war as something created out of popular opinion too.

There are other books that cover the same period and roughly the same topic, of course. The use by Hawes of unusual sources, from travel guides to political cartoons, as source material gives this one a unique flavour. It is well worth reading. Maybe it needs to be complemented with half a dozen or so other books, if you want to try to understand this period, but "Englanders and Huns" deserves its place on the bookshelf.

The author ends with a warning that does not ring entirely true, but still true enough to be uncomfortable: May be the mutual prejudices and streotypes of the British and Germans did not change that much since the 1860s, and they are still coloring European politics today. It is a point that merits some reflection.

Technical note: For some reason the page numbers of references are off by 2 in this edition, i.e. a reference to page 371 should be one to page 369.

[Michael Samerdyke · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting, thought-provoking book.

There are some downsides. The practice of presenting 19th quotes in the original typeface just struck me as disruptive. Also while the book focuses on German-British relations, I would say that Russian and Austrian policy is too invisible here. Finally, the book feels a bit unbalanced, in that so much attention is given to the Bismarck era, while the familiar events of Wilhelm II's reign are zipped through very quickly.

However, this book made me think. Not so much about Anglo-German relations, but about American and Chinese relations. Hawes never mentions the "Thucydides Trap," and it is clear that he is writing for a British readership, but seeing how relations between a superior Britain and a rising Germany became so poisonous so quickly, in part because of economic rivalry, an American reader of Hawes has to think about American attitudes toward China and how things have become so poisonous even before the current pandemic and wonder where it will all end up.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

A vastly enjoyable read which is probably best in presentation of how before 1864 Britain and 'Germans' (because there wasn't a Germany state until 1870) viewed each other and how that changed over the course of Bismark's maneuverings to create a 'unified' Germany under the Prussian king. It isn't very good on more complex interplay with Austria or Russia and runs out of steam of steasm by the time he gets around to the ever more complicated shifts in opinion during the post-Bismark Wilhelmine era leading up to WWI.

[Nikolai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting analyse of the love-hate relationship between Germany and England. You can still see the influence of culture clash to this day. I hardly recommend this book to everyone who is interested in the cultural image between those two nations before the great war.

[Gesine · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an interesting book, but all the facsimiles from old newspapers (on every other page) etc make the Kindle version almost unusable. When some images or texts are shrunk to a size smaller than thumbnails I had to keep switching to my tablet to read it on there instead.

[Michael Haggard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little drawn out but informative for years proceeding WW1. You need to really want to know this history to make to the end.

[Philip Healey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Huge array of primary sources which were very interesting.

[Hugh Ashton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting facts, and the extensive use of reproductions of newspapers and cartoons adds a good touch to the overall book (not sure how well that would work with an ebook).

I was annoyed by the rather sneering tone in many places where the author took a swipe at many present-day beliefs, dismissing them with little evidence for regarding them as fatuous.

There was remarkably little about some of the better-known Anglo-German clashes. Perhaps it was felt that this book had to consist chiefly of undiscovered or contrarian subjects. I would have welcomed another view of the Agadir Crisis, for example.

Anyway, interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying.

[Karen Mcgrail · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating! A real insight into the public's attitudes towards Germany/England as seen through the press. Reading this along with the sleepwalkers and other books on World War One helped me get the picture on how the War started (which I've been finding difficult to understand).

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating book covering a little-written about subject. The text is illustrated by contemporary cartoons and excerpts from newspapers in the original fonts.