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This chapter traces British policy towards POWs from the start of the war until the end of 1941, and highlights the steps taken to encourage German compliance with the POW regime. The development of a consistent policy towards its POWs was frequently compromised by Winston Churchill's refusal to place the prisoners' humanitarian interests before the country's strategic and military objectives. The problem was exacerbated by the lack of care and attention paid by those in power to Britain's own responsibilities as a detaining power. Notwithstanding these difficulties and the outbreak of Hitler's ideological war of annihilation against the Soviet Union in July 1941, substantial progress had been made towards forging an effective working relationship with the German regime over the treatment of POWs. The sense of stability that had developed by the autumn of 1941 was thrown into doubt by Adolf Hitler's last‐minute refusal to countenance the repatriation of British sick and wounded POWs in October 1941, an act which called into question Germany's long‐term commitment to cooperative relations with the British government.

This chapter charts the decline in Anglo‐German POW relations from late 1941 until December 1942. It shows how mutual confidence diminished under the pressure of events, on and off the battlefield, in Europe and the Far East, and how authorities on both sides came to adopt a more restrictive attitude towards their reciprocal relations. The chapter closes with a discussion of the ‘shackling crisis’ of late 1942 and demonstrates how, contrary to perceived wisdom, Churchill's determination to match German reprisals, while failing to bring the crisis to a satisfactory conclusion, had a salutary effect on German attitudes towards the POW regime. Though the level of cooperation declined, both sides remained conscious of the value of the POW regime and were prepared to coordinate their behaviour for mutual benefit when required.

This introductory chapter surveys the current literature on British prisoners of war in Germany during the Second World War and the state of the archival sources. It also highlights some of the core themes that will be developed in subsequent chapters: the domestic political context within which POW policy was made in London, notably the existence of an attentive lobby group in the form of the prisoners' next‐of‐kin, the Dominion governments' influence over UK policy‐making, the way in which POW issues fed into Britain's broader political relationship with the German government, and finally the particularities of inter‐belligerent ‘POW diplomacy’ and the key role played by neutral intermediaries.

This chapter establishes the historical background for the book. By drawing on previously little-used materials (from unpublished archival manuscripts to court records, book history, philosophy, belles lettres, and travelogues) it shows that, contrary to common belief, there was a wide-ranging, significant Anglo-German community in pre-1790s London in which German literature had a considerable presence. Drawing on archival and cross-disciplinary work, the chapter establishes the importance of German figures and communities, especially ecclesiastical, for London’s literary circles, most of which are either forgotten or never discussed and do not fit into generally accepted literary history. The recovery is important for literary-historical reasons, but also in order to lay the ground for a study of the exorbitant figures, such as Blake, Hamann, Fuseli, or Lavater, that emerge from it.

This chapter centres on German Ostpolitik in its three phases and the reaction to it by the British government. Britain was a firm advocate of moves designed to improve East-West relations, and encouraged Germany away from the Hallstein doctrine, towards a position that was based on an improved détente with the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries as the best means of achieving a settlement in Europe. The discussion includes detail of a seemingly little-known British Ostpolitik initiative launched in 1966, which proposed a ‘Declaration on Europe’. Like the British reaction to the Peace Note, the Germans were lukewarm about the Declaration, but it was an indication of the state of relations at the time that neither country was prepared to express outright opposition.

This chapter illustrates the attempts by the administration in London and on the ground in Germany to influence the BAOR and use it as a tool to tie the Federal Republic into the Western system of defense. These include the use of the BAOR to strengthen the Konrad Adenauer government, to promote British values, and to control Germany at a time of increasing independence of the young Federal Republic. To a larger extent, it also involves mitigating problems created by the presence of the BAOR. The chapter also explores the crucial period of the mid-1950s, when German sovereignty fundamentally changed both Anglo-German relations in general along with the position of the BAOR in Germany.

This chapter analyzes the BAOR's own attempts to adapt to the changing nature of Anglo-German relations between 1948 and 1957. This involves constraints caused by the organizational structure of the British armed services in Germany, the impact of service accommodation on levels of contacts, official attempts by military units to improve relations in local towns, and the experiences of individual officers and ranks. Secondary source material on the official relationship between the British army and the Germans is limited and so far covers only the period immediately following the German surrender in May 1945. Nonetheless, most of the recollections of servicemen in Germany during the 1940s and 1950s tend to focus on army life rather than on the contacts made with the local German population.

This chapter traces the development of the BAOR in Germany during the Cold War in terms of size and organization, before analyzing its role in British policy toward Germany. When considering British occupation policy and the German reaction to it, both British and German publications cover the period between 1945 and 1949 generally in far more detail than they do the first half of the 1950s. The chapter also examines the broader context of the Cold War, British military strategy, and the BAOR's role. Despite the obvious importance of Anglo-German relations in the context of the making of postwar Europe, the coverage of the bilateral political and cultural cooperation between 1948 and 1957 is relatively sketchy and has only recently begun to attract wider scholarly attention.

This chapter focuses on the German perspective of relations with the BAOR. It studies the changing expectations of and demands by the German civilian population, as well as federal and Land (state) administrations during a period of fundamental changes in Anglo-German relations. The chapter looks at attempts to use the BAOR in order to undermine German cooperation with the West, as well as German efforts to counter these threats, all within economic, political, and social contexts. When considering the occupation forces of the Western powers, the problems created by the presence of American troops have been highlighted by John Willoughby. His work focuses on the threat to US authority in Germany posed by the disorderly behavior of American troops and the resulting initiatives that prevented a deterioration of relations in the period between 1945 and 1948.

The Introduction to the book lays out the aims of the project, formulates its major contributions, and explains its structure. It introduces the category of the ‘exorbitant’ as an important new way of a multilingual way of studying the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries allows us to reconceptualize the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and modernity. It also discusses why the book chapters function as ‘constellations’, rather than sequentially, a methodological background that is inspired by Walter Benjamin. This chapter gives two concentrated examples of the main contributions of the book. It shows the need for our recovery of a rich yet unknown Anglo-German context in pre-1790 Britain by offering a new reading of Robinson Crusoe in this light (Crusoe’s original name is ‘Kreutznaer’; he is a second-generation German immigrant). Correspondingly, it introduces some of the main historical and theoretical affinities between William Blake and Johann Georg Hamann.

This chapter focuses on three key intellectuals of the Anglo-German exchange of ideas in the eighteenth century: Henry Fuseli, Georg Hamann, and Caspar Lavater. Henry Fuseli, the chapter shows, is not only the painter of English Gothic Romanticism but also one of the most important textual authors and translators in 1760s Enlightenment London. The second example, Hamann, appears as one of the main figures from the Anglo-German exchange of ideas who is relevant far beyond our current appreciation. The chapter closes by discussing Lavater’s role in the Anglo-German context. What it illustrates is how he not only connects Blake and Hamann in this historical way, but also through his neglected writings on language, which reveal a thinker whose ideas on the book of nature are remarkably close to Blake’s and Hamann’s. The multiple connections between Fuseli, Hamann, and Lavater, then, reveal the complexity and richness of the Anglo-German context in the eighteenth century.

This introductory chapter provides a review of the political and social impact of the British attempt to transform the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) from an occupation force of the defeated Nazi Germany to an alliance partner of the Federal Republic of Germany. The study begins in 1948, when it became increasingly evident that the western zones of Germany would merge into a semi-sovereign state; it ends in 1957, when the generally good political, economic, and cultural cooperation that had been established between Britain and Germany in the postwar decade began to deteriorate. The study seeks to establish the extent to which the BAOR provided an effective tool for the improvement of Anglo-German relations in a crucial period of the Cold War.

This concluding chapter examines the efforts made by the BAOR and the British administration to improve Anglo-German relations by utilizing the presence of the armed services. It also sheds light on whether German sovereignty did change the position of the BAOR in relation to the German population and administration in the period immediately after Federal German sovereignty was established. The remainder of the chapter answers the question of whether or not the BAOR was able to effectively adapt to serve its new policy purposes. Although the success of using the BAOR as a tool for Anglo-German rapprochement during the 1940s and 1950s varied, with some successes and some shortcomings, the idea of using the BAOR as a political tool clearly retained its merit.

This chapter discusses Anglo-German relations in the context of the negotiations leading to the agreement reached between the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain, and ultimately by Germany, on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The negotiations were complex, in that they spilled over into other issues of concern to members of the Atlantic Alliance. Principally, these included the MLF/ANF project and whether moves within the Alliance to create opportunities for greater nuclear weapons sharing would prove acceptable to the Soviet Union. Multilateral negotiations were influenced by the changes of government in Bonn in 1966 and 1969, and the Soviet-inspired invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. They also occurred at a time when the British government was anxious to strengthen relations with Germany in support for Britain's commitment to Europe.

This chapter turns the book’s attention from individuals to institutions, specifically the congregation of the Moravian Church in London. The Moravians came to London from Germany and were an idiosyncratic, exorbitant nonconformist group who had considerable influence, even though it never sought to be at the centre. They remain relatively unknown in literary studies, despite their central role in the formation of Methodism and beyond. As the chapter’s discussion of previously unpublished materials from the extensive Moravian Archive in London reveals, the Moravians were a unique hub for Anglo-German thinking, language acquisition, and bilingual book-printing in eighteenth-century London. In particular, their investment in an aesthetic of the quotidian makes their direct links to Blake and Hamann (Blake’s mother was a Moravian, Hamann visited the London congregation) deeply relevant for the account of the period.