{"id":59538,"date":"2026-01-27T01:00:50","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T06:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=59538"},"modified":"2026-01-26T10:15:38","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T15:15:38","slug":"qotd-two-world-wars-and-one-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/01\/27\/qotd-two-world-wars-and-one-world-cup\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: &#8220;Two world wars and one World Cup!&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 25px 10px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>As a child of postwar England, I found that there was no love lost for the Germans. So I set out to find that lost love. I don&#8217;t remember how many times I encountered unthinking hostility towards them, but it was often enough to make me think there must be something to be said for them. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t let&#8217;s be beastly to the Germans,&#8221; No\u00ebl Coward had jeered in 1943. &#8220;It was just those nasty Nazis who persuaded them to fight.&#8221; It hadn&#8217;t been true then, of course, and the wartime generation still hadn&#8217;t quite forgiven the Germans, not only for their crimes against humanity, but for bouncing back faster than the British in the 1950s. <\/p>\n<p>Erhard&#8217;s &#8220;economic miracle&#8221; had rubbed salt in the wounds of a nation that had sacrificed its status as a great power in order to save Europe. And now that same Europe had cold-shouldered the British, excluding us not once but twice from their new &#8220;economic community&#8221;. In the 1960s and 70s it was often the British, not the Germans, who felt despised and rejected. After 1966, Germanophobic football fans would chant &#8220;Two world wars and one World Cup&#8221;, but that was mere bravado. Everyone knew that the boot was now firmly on the other foot \u2014 and in many British eyes, it was a jackboot.<\/p>\n<p>Daniel Johnson, <a href=\"https:\/\/thecritic.co.uk\/how-i-discovered-germany\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;How I discovered Germany&#8221;, <em>The Critic<\/em><\/a>, 2020-08-02.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a child of postwar England, I found that there was no love lost for the Germans. So I set out to find that lost love. I don&#8217;t remember how many times I encountered unthinking hostility towards them, but it was often enough to make me think there must be something to be said for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1118,7,5,41,20],"tags":[432,337,457,269],"class_list":["post-59538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-germany","category-history","category-military","category-quotations","category-soccer","tag-diplomacy","tag-eu","tag-fascism","tag-propaganda"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-fui","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59538"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100548,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59538\/revisions\/100548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}