Best of enemies

by Richard Milton

"In August 1914 Britain's first act of war was not to mobilise its army or the Grand Fleet. It was to cut cables, preventing German propaganda from reaching American newspapers. For the best part of a century, Britain and Germany had been closer than any other two countries. Germany was Britain's biggest export market, and vice versa. Germans adopted English dress, customs and manners. German thinking on race, national identity, eugenics, and racial supremacy also had its roots in British thinkers like Darwin, Huxley and Galton. Even as late as the Nazi era, Hess, Himmler, Goering and Hitler himself remained passionate Anglophiles." "During the First World War, however, Germany and Britain spent billions on clandestine propaganda to blacken each other's reputations. This gargantuan effort gave birth to the PR industry itself - later seized upon by Nazi propagandist Goebbels to devastating effect. Richard Milton's popular history gives a fresh perspective on this tumultuous, painful nat