The Inverted Mirror: Mythologizing the Enemy in France and Germany, 1898-1914

This book examines recurrent themes in the public presentation in France and Germany of the image of the enemy from 1898 to 1914. During the decade-and-a-half before the First World War, each of these two nations projected certain assumptions about national character onto the other in creating its primary enemy. Most notably, the qualities each country ascribed to its chief adversary appeared to be exaggerated or negative versions of precisely those qualities that it perceived to be lacking or inadequate in itself. Banishing of “undesirable” traits and projecting them onto another people was also an essential step in the consolidation of national identity. The Franco-German relationship in these years represented a perfect symbiosis of antipathy, fear, and envy. As such, it established a pattern that has become all too familiar to students of nationalism and xenophobia in the late twentieth century. [Author]