Mobilizing the Past: Germany and the Second World War in Debates on Brexit

Abstract

In 2018 the outgoing German ambassador to the UK, Peter Ammon, suggested that a sense of national identity based on how Britain had “stood alone” during the Second World War, combined with a negative perception of Germany’s supposed domination of the EU, had fuelled Euroscepticism and contributed to the success of the Leave campaign in the 2016 Brexit referendum. While recognising that references to Britain’s wartime past and fears of German power in the present-day EU are by no means identical issues, this article traces the frequent convergence of these two themes in Eurosceptic rhetoric during the decade preceding Britain’s exit from the EU on 31 January 2020.It reveals that concerns about Germany’s “domination” of the European project, an important theme in British Euroscepticism since Thatcher, resurfaced in the early 2010s, particularly in the context of the Eurozone debt crisis. The Second World War was subsequently a frequent point of historical reference during debates on Brexit, primarily though not exclusively among Eurosceptics. While specifically anti-German uses of the Second World War were less common during the 2016 referendum campaign, they re-emerged with particular bitterness during the difficult post-referendum negotiations.