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Meeting the Enemy

When British soldiers and civilians entered the Allied-occupied Rhineland after the First World War, they were often surprised to discover that the individual Germans they encountered had little in common with the image of the enemy promulgated by British propaganda during the war. While face-to-fac...

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Dades bibliogràfiques
Publicat a:	URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles,
Autor principal:	Williams, Tom
Format:	Article ou chapitre numérique
Idioma:	Anglais
Publicat:	Angles 2020
Matèries:	ennemi stéréotypes occupation Rhénanie relations anglo-allemandes Première Guerre mondiale enemy stereotypes Rhineland Anglo-German relations World War I
Accés en línia:	Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM

id	openedition-oai:revues.org:angles_488
record_format	openedition
spelling	openedition-oai:revues.org:angles_488 https://doi.org/10.4000/angles.488 urn:doi:10.4000/angles.488 en https://journals.openedition.org/angles/488 2020-07-16T02:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess article info:eu-repo/semantics/article urn:handle:20.500.13089/9myi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Meeting the Enemy Angles Société des Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/2274-2042 URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles Williams, Tom ennemi stéréotypes occupation Rhénanie relations anglo-allemandes Première Guerre mondiale enemy stereotypes occupation Rhineland Anglo-German relations World War I When British soldiers and civilians entered the Allied-occupied Rhineland after the First World War, they were often surprised to discover that the individual Germans they encountered had little in common with the image of the enemy promulgated by British propaganda during the war. While face-to-face encounters with an often disconcertingly friendly civilian population inevitably forced the British to re-evaluate their wartime visions of the enemy, certain negative stereotypes of the German enemy nevertheless persisted in the context of the occupation. Several British commentators even found it necessary to fall back on these stereotypes when trying to explain the friendly attitude of the local population. To some, German friendliness only served to demonstrate the servile disposition of the Germans towards any form of authority; to others, it confirmed the existence of a supposed division in Germany between a liberal, peace-loving and civilized south and west and the “real” enemy, an autocratic, militarist and expansionist Prussia. Moreover, the British self-image in the Rhineland was frequently constructed in opposition to a real or imagined German enemy. The attitude and behaviour of the occupiers was regularly presented as characteristically “British” and measured not only against how the Germans had treated the populations of occupied regions of France and Belgium during the war, but also against how the stereotypical “Hun” would have behaved in the case of a German victory. Lorsque soldats et civils britanniques sont entrés en Rhénanie occupée après la Première Guerre mondiale, ils ont souvent été surpris de découvrir que les Allemands rencontrés avaient peu en commun avec l’image de l’ennemi véhiculée par la propagande britannique pendant la guerre. Si les rencontres individuelles avec la population civile, souvent surprenante par son comportement amical, ont poussé les Britanniques à réévaluer leurs visions de l'ennemi, certains stéréotypes négatifs de l'ennemi allemand ont néanmoins persisté pendant l'occupation. Ils permirent parfois, aux yeux de certains témoins britanniques d’expliquer l’attitude amicale de la population locale. Pour certains, la gentillesse de la population Rhénane ne servait qu'à démontrer la disposition servile des Allemands à l'égard de toute forme d’autorité ; pour d'autres, elle confirmait l'existence d'une prétendue division en Allemagne entre un sud-ouest libéral, pacifique et civilisé, et le « véritable » ennemi : la Prusse autocratique, militariste et expansionniste. De plus, l'image que l’occupant britannique en Rhénanie avait de lui-même fut fréquemment construite en opposition avec un ennemi allemand réel ou imaginé. L'attitude et le comportement des occupants furent régulièrement présentés comme « typiquement britanniques » et opposés non seulement au comportement des Allemands envers les civils français et belges pendant la guerre, mais aussi à la manière dont la figure stéréotypée du « Boche » (« Hun ») se serait comportée dans l’hypothèse d'une victoire allemande.
collection	OpenEdition Journal
language	Anglais
format	Article ou chapitre numérique
building	0/Bibliothèque numérique/ 1/Bibliothèque numérique/OpenEdition Journals/
topic	ennemi stéréotypes occupation Rhénanie relations anglo-allemandes Première Guerre mondiale enemy stereotypes occupation Rhineland Anglo-German relations World War I
spellingShingle	ennemi stéréotypes occupation Rhénanie relations anglo-allemandes Première Guerre mondiale enemy stereotypes occupation Rhineland Anglo-German relations World War I Williams, Tom Meeting the Enemy
description	When British soldiers and civilians entered the Allied-occupied Rhineland after the First World War, they were often surprised to discover that the individual Germans they encountered had little in common with the image of the enemy promulgated by British propaganda during the war. While face-to-face encounters with an often disconcertingly friendly civilian population inevitably forced the British to re-evaluate their wartime visions of the enemy, certain negative stereotypes of the German enemy nevertheless persisted in the context of the occupation. Several British commentators even found it necessary to fall back on these stereotypes when trying to explain the friendly attitude of the local population. To some, German friendliness only served to demonstrate the servile disposition of the Germans towards any form of authority; to others, it confirmed the existence of a supposed division in Germany between a liberal, peace-loving and civilized south and west and the “real” enemy, an autocratic, militarist and expansionist Prussia. Moreover, the British self-image in the Rhineland was frequently constructed in opposition to a real or imagined German enemy. The attitude and behaviour of the occupiers was regularly presented as characteristically “British” and measured not only against how the Germans had treated the populations of occupied regions of France and Belgium during the war, but also against how the stereotypical “Hun” would have behaved in the case of a German victory.
author	Williams, Tom
author_facet	Williams, Tom
author_sort	Williams, Tom
title	Meeting the Enemy
title_short	Meeting the Enemy
title_full	Meeting the Enemy
title_fullStr	Meeting the Enemy
title_full_unstemmed	Meeting the Enemy
title_sort	meeting the enemy
publisher	Angles
publishDate	2020
container_title	URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles
url	https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://doi.org/10.4000/angles.488 https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://journals.openedition.org/angles/488
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Meeting the Enemy

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