Comment

The Fifth Estate Sports Page - World Cups, World Wars and the New Germany

John Theobald

This is the month when the world's media focus on Germany. Tens of thousands of extra imported prostitutes will (allegedly) sell their bodies to distract fans who are over the moon with victory or gutted by defeat; and in parallel, as many extra journalists and commentators will distract global audiences from the chasm between the winners and losers of the real world by selling their souls to media corporations. It is expected that no less than two billion people, a third of the world's population, will watch the final on July 9th, and that companies will pay the equivalent of about fifteen years of the minimum wage of the host country (one of the richest in the world) for a thirty second TV advertising slot on that day. To keep the masses amused and to deflect their attention from abuses of power, 'bread and circuses' translates into today's world as 'Big Macs and Big Matches'.

The media focus on Germany is, however, of interest, because atavistic stereotypes, particularly in the UK, are seemingly getting a makeover, with the full support of none other than the Murdoch press. This is a real change from the xenophobic tabloid rabble-rousing of the European Cup of ten years ago which ceaselessly 'mentioned the war' and automatically identified Germans with Nazis. We remember, for example the lapidary historiographical speculation contained in English supporters taunting French supporters with such gems as: 'If it wasn't for the English you'd be Krauts'.

It is remarkable that this time round, Murdoch's up-market UK agenda-setter, the Sunday Times, has taken a quite different approach. On May 28th, the cover story of the magazine section featured a blonde female model, sitting cross-legged, and naked apart from a pair of slippers, one with a Union Jack pattern and the other with the black, red and gold of the German flag. Surrounding her were a couple of dozen hearts with Union Jacks on one side, and another couple of dozen with the German colours and eagle on the other. The headline was: 'We have ways of making you love us'. Germany is here represented as a beautiful female seductress openly offering romance between the two nations. The headline transforms the threatening war-comic cliché 'Ve haf vays of making you talk' - the stereotyped catchphrase of Nazi torturers - into an alluring eroticised invitation to the British male. The mythical Germany of superhuman, warlike, Wagnerian Siegfrieds, goose-stepping in Prussian uniforms is here replaced by the Rhineland myth of the Loreley and the delicate, playful verses of Heine.

The main article is prefaced by a double page spread with the headline: 'We want to be loved by you'. The picture this time emphasises male camaraderie as a British Beefeater mug knocks against a traditional German Krug, each held by a male hand. The white froth of the beers rises above the rims of the two mugs, mingles and slithers suggestively down the side.

The dubious message of the graphics, intended to hook male consumers into reading the text, is that a new Anglo-German bonding can take place on the level of sex and alcohol, but the text of the article by Richard Johnson is more concerned with German bemusement or exasperation at British stereotyping, and suggestions that it is about time for British people collectively to accept the equal terms friendship offered by Germans; indeed, we should start to laugh more with them rather than mock them with prejudices that are already generations beyond their sell-by date. To reinforce this, the photos on the following page show: 'Ten things we love about Germany'. It is a weird top ten, ranging from the Autobahn to the Pope, taking in the Bauhaus, Beethoven and Birkenstock sandals, but it is the general point that counts - providing images of Germany which are friendly, good-humoured, welcoming, and without a Nazi in sight. The same point applies to the written text.

Germans have for years, indeed decades, been irritated by British tabloid provocations, only to have their irritation turned back on them as proof of the stereotypical lack of a sense of humour, and the British media have taken delight in such successful baiting. So why this apparent change of heart in the Murdoch stable?

An overarching, if speculative, explanation is that those directing US foreign policy and geopolitical strategy - the kind of people whom Murdoch frequents - want Germany normalised and on-side. As a major world economic power and economic leader of the EU (despite recent problems), Germany occupies a key position in the enlarged EU, and will be an essential player in an emerging EU foreign and security policy which the US will wish to function as a branch of US foreign policy, with or without the fig leaf of NATO. What it does not want in this context is an eternally guilt-ridden Germany, constantly reminded of its past and thus bound to oppose and not participate in the so-called acts of pre-emption (=wars of aggression) that the US sees fit to undertake, particularly under its present leadership. In the Cold War past, the best means of preventing an independent German foreign policy was to remind Germany and the world constantly about Nazism. Now, with Germany united and the Soviet threat disappeared, a new guilt-free Germany is required which will pull its weight in the 'war on terror' and not hold the EU back from fighting it. While Gerhard Schröder was Chancellor, this was not going to happen; indeed he showed dangerous signs (alongside Chirac) of awkwardness and non-conformity. But with the arrival of the right-wing Angela Merkel, the moment for Germany's full rehabilitation and integration into US geopolitics has come. The appointment of a German Pope and his recent refusal at Auschwitz to acknowledge collective German guilt propitiously fits the same pattern (he may have been right, but that is another debate). Certainly, Germany itself is trying very hard, by all known PR and marketing methods, to use its hosting of the Football World Cup to assert its normality and full integration into the values of the Western world, and to consign the Nazi past not to oblivion but to history.

It will be interesting to observe the extent to which the world's mass media - especially the UK down-market press - refrain from the old and promote the new German image in the World Cup month. This at least will be a semi-plausible excuse for tuning in to the football bonanza…