Hun (pejorative)

There are many terms for the Germans. In English the demonym, or noun, is German. During the early Renaissance, "German" implied that the person spoke German as a native language. Until the German unification, people living in what is now Germany were named for the region in which they lived: examples are Bavarians and Brandenburgers.

Some terms are humorous or pejorative slang, and used mainly by people from other countries, although they can be used in a self-deprecating way by German people themselves. Other terms are serious or tongue-in-cheek attempts to coin words as alternatives to the ambiguous standard terms.

Many pejorative terms for Germans in various countries originated during the two World Wars.

English

Hun (pejorative)

''Hun'' (or ''The Hun'') is a term that originally refers to the nomadic Huns of the Migration Period. Beginning in World War I it became an often used pejorative seen on war posters by western Allied powers. The wartime association of the term with Germans is believed to have been inspired by an earlier address to Imperial German troops by Kaiser Wilhelm II. What is dubbed the " Hun speech" (') was delivered on 27 July 1900, when he bade farewell to the German expeditionary corps sailing from the port of Bremerhaven to take part in suppressing the Boxer Rebellion. The relevant part of the speech was:
The theme of Hunnic savagery was then developed in a speech of August Bebel in the Reichstag in which he recounted details of the cruelty of the German expedition which were taken from soldiers' letters home, styled the ' (letters from the Huns).
The Kaiser's speech was widely reported in the European press at that time.

At the start of the First World War, and following the brutal and ruthless actions of the German Army during their invasion of Belgium, the term was revived: It became the basis for the characterisation of the Germans during World War I as barbarians and savages with no respect for European civilisation and humanitarian values. The term "Hun" from this speech was later used for the Germans by British and other Allied propaganda during the war. The comparison was helped by the spiked '' Pickelhaube'' helmet worn by German forces until 1916, which would be reminiscent of images depicting ancient warrior helmets (not necessarily that of actual historical Huns). This usage, emphasising the idea that the Germans were barbarians, was reinforced by the propaganda utilized throughout the war. The French songwriter Théodore Botrel described the Kaiser as "an Attila, without remorse", launching "cannibal hordes".
By coincidence, Gott mit uns ("God is with us"), a motto first used in the Kingdom of Prussia and later the German Empire, may have contributed to the popularization of 'Huns' as British Army slang for Germans by misreading 'uns' for 'Huns'.

The usage of the term "Hun" to describe Germans resurfaced during World War II, although less frequently than in the previous war. For example in 1941, Winston Churchill said in a broadcast speech: "There are less than 70,000,000 malignant Huns, some of whom are curable and others killable, most of whom are already engaged in holding down Austrians, Czechs, Poles and the many other ancient races they now bully and pillage."
Later that year Churchill referred to the invasion of the Soviet Union as "the dull, drilled, docile brutish masses of the Hun soldiery, plodding on like a swarm of crawling locusts." During this time American President Franklin D. Roosevelt also referred to the German people in this way, saying that an Allied invasion into Southern France would surely "be successful and of great assistance to Eisenhower in driving the Huns from France."

Fritz

British soldiers employed a variety of epithets for the Germans. ''Fritz'', a German pet form of Friedrich, was popular in both World War I and World War II.

Heinie (pejorative)

The Americans and Canadians referred to Germans, especially German soldiers, as ''Heinies'', from a diminutive of the common German male proper name Heinrich. For example, in the film '' 1941'' the Slim Pickens character calls a German officer "''Mr Hynee Kraut!''"

Heinie is also a colloquial term for buttocks, in use since the 1920s. In German, ''Heini'' is a common colloquial term with a slightly pejorative meaning similar to "moron" or "idiot", but it could be of different origin.

Jerry

''Jerry'' was a nickname given to Germans mostly during the Second World War by soldiers and civilians of the Allied nations, in particular by the British. The nickname was originally created during World War I. The term is the basis for the name of the jerrycan.

The name may simply be an alteration of the word ''German''. Alternatively, Jerry may possibly be derived from the stahlhelm introduced in 1916, which was said by British soldiers to resemble a chamber pot or Jeroboam.

Kraut (pejorative)

Kraut is a German word recorded in English from 1918 onwards as a derogatory term for a German, particularly a German soldier during World War I and World War II. This is probably based on sauerkraut, which is popular in various South German cuisines but not traditionally prepared in North Germany. The stereotype of the sauerkraut-eating German pre-dates this, as it appears in Jules Verne's depiction of the evil German industrialist Schultze as an avid sauerkraut eater in '' The Begum's Fortune''. Schultze's antagonist is an Alsatian who hates sauerkraut but pretends to love it to win his enemy's confidence.

"Kraut" may refer to the practice of distributing sauerkraut on German ships to prevent scurvy just as the English were referred to as limey

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases