Over the last few years, England has witnessed a boom in wartime nostalgia. “Keep calm and carry on”, that motivational message used to maintain public morale in 1939 as the a world war approached for the second time in a generation, has now warped into a twee greeting card slogan or hung on country kitchen walls, where “Keep calm and drink Prosecco” is now the sickly-sweet call to arms.
During Covid-19, the nation was urged to summon up its archaic “blitz spirit”, extolled by leaders in place of leadership to a public that struggled to cope with the horrors such propaganda was intended to smother. “Blitz spirit” is not a state of mind; nor is “stiff upper lip”. They are fake concepts that bely a lack of choice but to face the impending nightmare.
Between September 1940 and May 1941, 12,000 metric tons of bombs were dropped on London. People did not whistle while they worked; they lived in fear of terrible news of loved ones abroad who in turn were kept awake by the fear of whether they would get home and what version of England they would discover if they did. It was a tool of national control.
War, therefore, was something to be forgotten, pushed to the back of the mind because society had not constructed means of support nor the understanding of mental disturbance to offer solutions even if it had. An entire generation did carry on and they did do their best to keep calm, but only through necessity rather than choice. When war was used as a cultural cornerstone, it was usually done in gentle mocking tones: Fawlty Towers and Dad’s Army both famously chose to focus on the conflict for comedic effect, either as the basis of the script or for memorable scenes.
The same was true in the national sport. In the 1960s and early 1970s, despite England facing Germany in a World Cup final, World Cup quarter-final and a two-legged European Championship quarter-final, explicit references to the war were kept to a minimum. It seems unlikely that it was deliberate, purely natural: when most of those who fought in the conflict were still alive and many of them football supporters, who on earth would want the reminders? If those contests may have had added rivalry fuelled by modern history, England and Germany faced as purely sporting opponents. Sport was intended to be an escape, not a reminder.
But, beginning in the 1980s, a newfound anti-German rhetoric swelled and football became the easiest battleground – where else, at what else, did England and Germany meet each other head on? Wartime nostalgia was used not as misguided consolation or deliberate propaganda, but to rile simmering aggression. The two chants – “10 German bombers” and “Two World Wars and one World Cup” – both previously sung with an upbeat tone, now gained an unpleasant edge. Their use played into England’s football isolationism: we invented the game and gave it to the world. Without success, was it any surprise that some relied on heritage more than was healthy?
The links with the rise in hooliganism during the 1980s is inescapable, not least because it often pitched English and German supporters against one another. England fans were attacked at Euro 88 and responded in kind at Euro 2000, both leading to a high number of arrests. In between, some fans of both countries behaved appallingly at World Cup 98. After West Germany beat England on penalties at Italia 90, 500 people were arrested as foreign-registered cars were overturned. In Brighton, police locked 300 German students in a nightclub to protect them and English youths chased young German students through the streets.
If the media could have played a role in de-escalation, they often chose the opposite strategy. During the 1980s, the tabloid circulation war often resorted to hyperbolic jingoism on its front pages, particularly around the Falklands War. The back pages, hardly wanting to be left out, equated sport to conflict. For the fixtures against Germany, there was a natural avenue to explore.
When England met West Germany in 1982, The Sun’s back page read “Achtung Stations”, a clear reference to the two world wars. By the 1990 World Cup, the same paper urged England to “Help Our Boys Clout The Krauts”. At Euro 96, 30 years after the World Cup final and with jingoism exploding beyond all reason, the Daily Mirror’s infamous “ACHTUNG! SURRENDER!” was published ahead of the semi-final. But they were not alone: “Blitz Fritz” said The Sun; “Watch out, Krauts, England are gonna bomb you to bits at Wembley” roared the Daily Star. Lamentable slurs had become the norm. They stirred up resentment.
If those headlines were evidently unhelpful, they were also playing into a new form of ultra-nationalism and anti-EU feeling. Germany became the poster country of that sentiment, based on historic conflict and by now regular high-profile sporting contests.
England’s football matches became the natural home for that ultra-nationalism. This was a team that was, by its very definition, English and not British and who often faced continental opponents. England had long been the loser in recent contests, which only stirred ill-feeling. Germany became our football nemesis, jingoism inevitably spilled over and references to the war became a stick with which to laud English dominance, no matter how much one-eyed oversimplification that required.
As then German culture minister Michael Naumann said: “There is only one nation that has decided to make the Second World War a sort of spiritual core of its self-understanding and pride.” Nauman presumably shook his head at the pictures of England supporters dressed in RAF uniforms with inflatable fighter planes at the 2010 World Cup last-16 fixture in Bloemfontein.
England’s players, managers and Football Association have spent 15 years trying to make it stop. It started with Sven-Goran Eriksson asking England supporters to refrain at the 2006 World Cup – although newspaper columnist Tony Parsons still believed it should be encouraged; rhetoric lived on. In 2017, Gareth Southgate described “10 German bombers” as “completely unacceptable ahead of a friendly. By 2021, the FA and Uefa agreed that the chant should be banned, thus allowing punishments to be handed down to those found guilty of singing it – still it could be heard outside Wembley Stadium. In Munich in June, riot police were goaded with the same song and arrests were made for Nazi salutes.
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What reason is there for its continuation, despite polite and then more urgent requests to stop? For some the answer is simply the Law of Banter – to joke about global conflict is fair game because there is nothing that isn’t when you are trying to score points. For others, the song might reflect the continued rise of isolationism and turbo-nationalism displayed before, during and after the Brexit vote and the UK’s departure from the EU. To those, this is a song that marks their celebration. We are English and you are not – that makes us better.
For the rest, this is simply bad behaviour through performance. They sing “10 German bombers” with no thought of its context, neither through outright hatred nor selective nostalgia, but because it gets a reaction. And when that reaction comes, it only makes them more likely to persevere.
Thankfully, we are now discussing a small minority, at England games and in pubs. Thankfully too, the obsession with Germany does appear to be waning. If the greatest impact of the Euro 2020 victory was not taking England into a quarter-final but persuading those supporters that they need not treat this as the latest instalment of a historic grudge, it was a more magnificent win than we first thought.
But on Monday evening, at Wembley and around the country, the bizarre infatuation will continue in pockets. England are playing Germany, and thus the rules of engagement are set. They will reference a conflict that even their parents may not remember. They will warp support for their country’s football team into hostility to the opponent, to this opponent. And they will not listen to those who wish they would stop because why should they, they say. Keep calm and carry on offending.
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