Crossing the Line?

Britain and Germany since 1945

The histories of Britain and Germany could not be more different. England experienced its last invasion in 1,066 while Germany suffered centuries of war, invasion and destruction. As a consequence of the Second World War it was effectively occupied and divided. However, in some respects the histories of England and the Federal Republic (West Germany) in the post-war period from 1945 through to the early 1970s were similar. Both countries experienced austerity in the immediate aftermath of the war, though this was more intense in Germany given the extent to which its economic infrastructure had been damaged. However, both countries recovered during ‘the long boom’ which lasted from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, a period of sustained economic expansion for the world economy, which saw most developed industrial countries achieve high rates of growth and their peoples enjoy unprecedented levels of affluence.⁶ This was very much what happened in England where, in 1957, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was able to claim with some justification that ‘Most of our people have never had it so good.’⁷ At the same time, it was noticeable that British growth rates were slower than those of most of industrial countries, especially West Germany and Japan, over whom military victory had been achieved in 1945. Thus while the English grew more prosperous in this period, they did not experience the equivalent of the German ‘economic miracle’. As its people became more affluent, the British lost ground in relative terms when compared to its major competitors.

The problem of a comparatively weak economic performance, coupled with the dissolution of the British Empire and thus a shrinking global influence, eventually forced decline to the forefront of public debate. Tony Judt has pointed out that the discussion of decline in post-war Britain had an ambivalent character. The British had fought and won a war against Germany (the ‘mortal enemy’) within the living memory of most of its people, ‘yet cultural commentators were absorbed by intimations of failure and deterioration’.⁸ Other historians of post-war Britain have argued similarly. For economic historian Barry Supple, writing in 1997, there was ‘an assumption that things are going from bad to worse when things are actually getting better’.⁹ Later, reflecting on the prevalence of this state of mind in twentieth-century Britain, Peter Hennessy described ‘declinism’ as ‘almost a disease of the mind’.¹⁰ Perhaps the strength of its hold on public and academic opinion owed something to its long history. Jim Tomlinson observed that the idea that Britain was a nation in decline had been an issue since the 1870s when ‘the first industrial nation’ had achieved dominance of the world economy but found itself challenged by newly-industrializing nations, with Germany prominent among them. As relative economic decline inevitably set in the discussion was prolonged and intensified.¹¹ In particular, in the post-Second World War era the English tended to compare themselves unfavourably with the Germans. Britain was standing still, noted economist Donald Macrae in 1963, using a significant metaphor, ‘as the autobahnen of other societies thunder by’.¹²

West Germany’s economic performance was not entirely unproblematic. The mid-1960s saw a temporary pause and a jolt to confidence which led to the resignation of Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, the successor of Konrad Adenauer, and the person most closely associated with the economic miracle in West Germany. At about the same time Britain’s relatively weak economic performance began to impact on the value of its currency, leading to the devaluation of the pound sterling in 1967. When Prime Minister Harold Wilson appeared at Wembley to watch the England-West Germany final in 1966, he had just returned from talks with President Lyndon Johnson in Washington on ‘among other things, the growing economic crisis in Britain’.¹³ Despite some similarities in the experience of the two countries, however, two contrasting narratives came to dominate historical writing. West German historians are obsessed with the economic miracle just as British historians were with decline. The reality of the economic miracle was important for the young democratic Federal Republic in that it helped to popularize a new state with a form of government that aimed to prevent the excesses of the past. When the long boom ended with the oil crisis of 1973 there were consequences for both countries. In Germany, the protracted economic miracle had generated an expectation of ever-increasing levels of prosperity.¹⁴ In Britain, the new economic climate, as Hobsbawm has pointed out, made it ‘impossible any longer to overlook the seriousness of the British economy’s problems’.¹⁵ In the 1970s and 1980s it was Germany that appeared to adapt more successfully to the new conditions, while Britain entered a period of economic and social crisis that led some to label it ‘the sick man of Europe’. In this situation the complexities of Britain’s long-standing ‘love-hate’ relationship with Germany were intensified. Whereas there were aspects of the West German model that were admired, the success of its old rival also fuelled resentment.¹⁶

Anglo-German Relations: The Wider Context

Several works serve as a starting point for this research. Anglo-German relations for much of the twentieth century were at best uneasy and at times were characterized by outright hostility. The origins of this uneasy and often unhappy relationship may be traced to the antagonism generated by the growth of German economic power and political influence after 1870, to German militarism leading to the First World War, and to its continuing aggression in the 1930s. This put Germany on a collision path with Britain as the interests of the two states were so often opposed to each other. As a consequence, Germany and Germans have been viewed in England through the prism of two world wars and the Third Reich, which helped to underpin certain negative stereotypes. Thomas Matussek, the German ambassador to Britain (2002–2006), referred to the ‘nazification of history’, claiming that English media and public were imprisoned by Germany’s Nazi past¹⁷ thus reducing German history to the period of twelve disastrous years between 1933 and 1945 while remaining ignorant of Germany’s early and medieval as well as its history since 1945. Patrick Major argues that large sections of the British media are still in denial of the changes in Germany since 1945.¹⁸ In Germany, where there has been a corresponding emphasis on the ‘de-nazification’ of history, the English are not assigned the same burden of residual war guilt. Thus stereotypes of the English in Germany tend to be underpinned by the experience of war and occupation but to circle around English eccentricities – obsession with the weather, strange-tasting food and, of course, their peculiar sense of humour. Albert Einstein once remarked that it is much harder to crack a prejudice than an atom. These stereotypes have become firmly established over time and have provided a prism through which football between the national teams of England and Germany has been viewed, helping to shape the language in which they have been described.

However, it is important to view the Anglo-German relationship as dynamic rather than static and subject to change over time and as shaped by contingent circumstances. This is very evident from the work of John Ramsden who has taken the long view, surveying the relationship between England and Germany since the 1890s. His monograph provides an invaluable starting point for this discussion in that it includes an important chapter on football since the Second World War in which he makes it clear that there is little evidence to suggest that high-profile international matches between England and West Germany generated much in the way of antagonism in the 1950s and early 1960s, despite the war being very recent history and fresh in the memories of the English and German people. Ramsden uses the example of the British response to Bert Trautmann, captured while serving in the German armed forces and taken to England as a prisoner-of-war, to illustrate the relatively benign aspect of the Anglo-German relationship at this time. The story is complex but in the end City’s supporters were prepared to be persuaded by Trautmann’s exceptional ability and his heroics in the 1956 FA Cup final when he played part of the match after sustaining what turned out to be a broken neck.¹⁹ The warm glow surrounding Trautmann by the end of the 1950s was enhanced by the reception accorded by Manchester United fans to Professor Georg Maurer and the medical team that attended the victims of the Munich air crash in 1958. Invited to a match at Old Trafford ‘the doctors and nurses of the Munich hospital received a reception from over 63,000 people such as is unlikely to have been the lot of any medical staff before’, reported the Manchester Guardian. One of the few positive outcomes of the disaster, it was noted, was that it had promoted ‘Anglo-German friendship’.²⁰

Trautmann and Maurer supplied the English press with human interest stories which could be used to keep the underlying tensions of Anglo-German relations at a safe distance in the 1950s and 1960s. It was not unusual for politics to influence the way in which international matches were covered in this period.

It is important to contextualize sport within the broader context of international politics and Sabine Lee has set her analysis within the framework of the Cold War, the partition of Germany and the development of the European Union. Her starting point is VE Day, as it is known in Britain, or Stunde Null as it is known in Germany. In comparing the different paths taken by Britain and Germany from that point onwards she notes that whereas Germany was forced to reinvent itself as a peace-loving nation, the English had no pressing imperative to change its ways seeking instead to capitalize on Great Britain’s status as a country that had emerged victorious from the war and still had an empire to govern. Lee points out that whereas the Germans managed to reinvent themselves after the war, the British did not, preferring to cultivate their glorious past. ‘Whenever post-war Britain built a new museum, Germany built a new factory,’ she argues.²¹ Though this is something of a caricature and underestimates the extent to which Britain modernized its economy in the post-war era, there is an underlying insight which points to the importance of differing national historical contexts in framing English attitudes to Germany and German attitudes to England, whether expressed on the sports pages or elsewhere.

After 1945, as Germany struggled to shake off its Nazi past, outward expressions of nationalistic fervour were seen as problematic and sometimes actively discouraged. John Ardagh observed that the celebrations following West Germany’s World Cup win in 1990, ‘were probably less fervent than they would have been in many countries, such as Britain’.²² It is perhaps understandable, therefore, that Thomas Kielinger, writing from a German viewpoint, should have focused largely on the cultural restraints that have ensured that the Anglo-German relationship has survived intact, despite persistent difficulties. He emphasized what the English and the Germans have in common, concluding that:

[although] there is little likelihood of the German and British cousins becoming identical twins. They are extremely compatible, without being interchangeable and derive their particularly close relations from some classic contrasts.²³

Here the idea that a reinvented Germany was bound by a certain affinity towards Britain and voluntarily subjected itself to various constraints is an important factor in explaining how the Anglo-German relations remained intact throughout the post-war years. It helps to explain why the various crossroads and roundabouts encountered along the way were successfully negotiated. Chris Young has also argued that the English, at least as represented by their sporting press, were happy for many years to comment and report on Anglo-German football matches without resorting to the sensationalism that later characterized tabloid coverage in particular. Up to 1966 – and even in 1966 – as Chris Young notes, English newspapers ‘though letting through the odd war reference, remained largely free of military rhetoric’.²⁴ It was only to be expected that the representatives of the Federal Republic should be met with some distrust after two atrocious wars but, until the 1970s at least, there were good reasons to keep this in check. At the same time, there was an undercurrent of envy, growing stronger in the last two decades of the twentieth century, when the economic miracle left ‘declining’ Britain behind in relative terms.

Methods and Sources

The central sources for this book are newspapers from England and West Germany. By suggesting that newspapers help to shape our view of the world, Jeffrey Hill has argued that they are an essential source for historians seeking to understand modern sport; that in fact sports history has developed only thanks to the press. Yet, he also warns of an over reliance on newspapers alone and urges sports historians to use them with discrimination; too often they have been regarded as ‘an unblemished source of plain fact’.³⁵ These arguments were further developed by Douglas Booth. ‘It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that sport history rests on newspapers as historical sources’, he noted. He was, however, critical of sports historians who, in their efforts to ‘reconstruct’ the sporting past, used them in an uncritical way. Booth cites Leonard Koppett, a sports journalist, who pointed out that ‘every story starts with a perspective’. Thus, for example, when a team, representing England beats one representing Germany, an English reporter will write about England’s ‘victory’ while a German journalist will write about Germany’s ‘loss’. In these circumstances it becomes possible to argue that football, as played between England and Germany, is effectively a mediated text ‘given that most people experience sport indirectly via the media’.³⁶ The discussion that follows seeks to interrogate newspaper reports and comments with this in mind.

The newspapers relied on most heavily in this book have been chosen to represent each segment of the English and German markets. The English quality section is represented principally by The Times and Sunday Times. As a self-styled ‘newspaper of record’ with a high opinion of itself, it represents the upper market segment, drawing most of its readers from the well-off and the well-educated. For many years it was considered the voice of Britain’s ‘Establishment’. The Daily Express and Sunday Express were popular and successful papers during the 1950s and 1960s covering the middle of the market; during the period covered by this book the Mail eventually achieving victory in the battle for readers in this sector. The Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror represent the tabloid section throughout this book. These titles have drawn most of their readers from the skilled and unskilled working class.³⁷ The German newspapers focused on here are principally Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Die Welt and Bild-Zeitung. FAZ, one of Germany’s most respected and influential newspapers, represents the quality segment of the market; its Sunday edition is the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS). Not only is this paper one of the best in Germany, it is also one of the oldest, established in 1949. In its first issue the paper expressed aspirations to be ‘Germany’s foreign secretary’ as there was no such position within the German government at the time and the Federal Republic’s voice was not heard sufficiently.³⁸ Originally considered a competitor for the FAZ, Die Welt, published since 1946, was selected to represent the middle-market in Germany, while Bild represents the downmarket tabloid section. Here Bild operates alone, unlike its English counterparts. Both, Die Welt and Bild are published by Springer, Germany’s biggest newspaper publishing company, Axel Springer AG, an essentially – and sometimes controversially – Conservative influence in post-war German politics.³⁹

As Colin Seymour-Ure has pointed out, the ownership of English newspapers has often been highly significant in determining what appears on the page. The press ‘barons’, he notes, ‘were often supreme egotists: flamboyant, assertive, idiosyncratic, ostentatious, ruthless – yet inspiring great loyalty and affection’.⁴⁰ Roy Greenslade, in his insider’s history of the British press, suggests that Lord Thomson, was unusual in giving his editors ‘an entirely free hand as long as they didn’t come out against God or the monarchy’.⁴¹ In Germany, however, as Harry Pross has argued, the editorial content of newspapers was more likely to be subject to official intervention from the state and other agencies. After 1945, for example, newspapers were subject to a licensing system introduced by the occupying powers as part of the de-Nazification and re-education programmes, with the aim of ensuring that editors and journalists who had been closely connected to the NSDAP or any organization controlled by the national socialists were denied positions of influence in the press. It proved, however, difficult in practice to fulfil this policy completely and the principles underlying it were diluted from the start.⁴²

In addition to newspaper accounts of Anglo-German football, the principal primary sources used here are published books by sports journalists and other commentators who were close to the events described here or who have made their own contribution to the history of football, such as David Goldblatt, Jonathan Wilson and Uli Hesse, who has written what remains the only book on the history of German football in the English language.⁴³ Other published sources consulted include journalists’ memoirs which often provide usual reflective comment on journalism in general. For example, Brian Glanville’s memoirs are rather more than a rehearsal of matches reported and personalities encountered while working for quality newspapers, such as the Observer and the Sunday Times, as well as for the Sunday tabloid, The People. They also provide an opportunity to reflect on the nature of sports journalism and, in particular, on ‘British sports writing, with its quality-popular dichotomy’. In the quality press, Glanville argued, the journalist was free to write what he wanted about football and other popular sports, because he was addressing a minority audience; in the tabloids, however, ‘he was rigidly confined to a highly stylised, ultimately patronising form of journalism, which treated its readership with implicit contempt’.⁴⁴ The autobiographies, usually ‘ghosted’ of players and managers have been used carefully with reference to the period in which they were written as well as the recollections of events which they contain. Sometimes, as different editions of the same memoirs indicate, views change over time. The work of Joyce Woolridge, who has traced the evolution of ghosted football memoirs as a genre, has opened up ways of reading these texts which ‘present particular difficulties in […] use and interpretation’.⁴⁵

The methods applied to draw conclusions from this vast amount of newspaper reports are content analysis and discourse analysis. The former is applied to measure the number of football-related articles in the sports sections of English and German daily and Sunday newspapers selected to typify representations as they appeared in the quality, middle-market and downmarket press. Besides the frequency with which they appear the tendency that they display in terms of representation has been assessed, in particular whether the content is positive or negative towards either team. As Hill has pointed out a match report in a newspaper is not simply a source of evidence; it is itself a text, and thus a historical source in its own right.⁴⁶ Discourse analysis will be applied to decipher any meta-narratives and discourses that are transmitted through the banalities of match reports. Heinz Bonfadelli has argued that the aim of discourse analysis is to unveil ideologies embedded in the text which exist to maintain the status quo. While this indicates an intention to analyse texts from a Marxist position, it is not intended here to politicize the football coverage in English and German newspapers but rather to identify and explain the discourses used.⁴⁷

Chapter Summary

Set in the context of two brutal and destructive wars the state of relations between Britain and Germany, between the English and the Germans, appears relatively healthy, whatever differences exist regarding issues relating to the European Union. However, though leading politicians, such as Tony Blair, fifty years on from ‘VE Day’, could claim that Anglo-German relations had ‘never been better’, a perusal of the sports pages suggests that what has been called ‘a people to people’ problem has been a persistent undercurrent throughout the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.⁴⁸ This book surveys the course of Anglo-German football relations over a long period as represented indirectly on the sports pages of newspapers. Much of the research recently has been based on discourse analysis of coverage relating to particular tournaments from 1996 onwards. This tends to obscure the extent to which the characteristics of coverage have changed over time in response to specific historical circumstances. This book seeks to correct this imbalance and also to provide some kind of framework in which a comparative perspective might be developed.

Chapter One focuses largely on the first two international matches in the post-war sequence, played in 1954 and 1956, and on the way that they were reported. These matches represented an important step in normalizing relations between Britain and West Germany, especially as England had not played Germany since 1938, an occasion long associated in the minds of the English public with its players giving the Nazi salute before kick-off, a gesture that signified appeasement and the failures of foreign policy in the 1930s. With the Second World War fresh in people’s memories and Germany morally discredited after committing crimes against humanity, there was reason to anticipate some hostility in the British press. It was especially ironic, given the two defeats that had been inflicted on Germany in 1918 and 1945 that its national team came to Wembley in 1954 as world champions, even though the importance of FIFA’s premier competition did not resonate as powerfully then with the English public as it does now, such was the overwhelming interest in domestic, rather than international football. Yet, the response to these matches was generally characterized by restraint, despite the fact that only a few years had passed since the English and the Germans had been at war.

The World Cup Final of 1966 provides the main focus for Chapter Two. In football terms the match was a turning point. It occurred at a point when, in terms of the playing strength of the two national teams, a delicate balance had been reached. ‘What the statistics show is that the 1966 World Cup final was the fulcrum between two very different periods: England dominant until 1966 but Germany afterwards,’ as Ramsden pointed out.⁴⁹ Whereas the matches in the 1950s were largely overshadowed by the Second World War, the two encounters that preceded the Wembley final, ‘friendlies’ played in 1965 and 1966, and all the matches that followed, were overshadowed by the prospect and reality of what happened at Wembley on 30 July 1966. As it happened there were other important matches at club level, especially two finals of the Cup Winners Cup competition in 1965 and 1966 that underlined the theme of Anglo-German rivalry. Sports journalism was changing in this period so that it was not just the extent but the content of the coverage that differed from the 1950s. As coverage, especially in the middle-market and downmarket newspapers became more gossipy and personality-centred it was possible to underestimate the technical advances being made by the German team, especially in the light of what has been described as England’s ‘fatal victory’ of 1966, which reinforced, for a time, a sense of complacency in and around English football.