Editing Anti-German sentiment (section)

==== World War I ====
{{see also|British entry into World War I}}
In Great Britain, anti-German feeling led to infrequent rioting, assaults on suspected Germans and the looting of businesses owned by people with German-sounding names, occasionally even taking on an [[Antisemitism in the United Kingdom|antisemitic]] tone.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Panayi |first=P. |year=1989 |title=Anti-German Riots in London during the First World War |journal=German History |volume=7 |issue=2 |pages=184–203 |doi=10.1093/gh/7.2.184}}</ref>
Increasing anti-German hysteria even threw suspicion upon the [[British royal family]]. [[George V of the United Kingdom|King George V]] was persuaded to change his German name of [[Saxe-Coburg and Gotha]] to [[House of Windsor|Windsor]] and relinquish all German titles and styles on behalf of his relatives who were British subjects.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Baldick |first1=Chris |url=https://archive.org/details/oxfordenglishlit00bald |title=The Oxford English Literary History: 1910–1940 |last2=Bate |first2=Jonathan |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-19-818310-5 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/oxfordenglishlit00bald/page/n321 303]–304 |url-access=limited}}</ref> [[Prince Louis of Battenberg]] was not only forced to change his name to Mountbatten, he was forced to resign as First Sea Lord, the most senior position in the Royal Navy.<ref>{{cite book |author=Geordie Greig |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YCMrAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT73 |title=The King Maker: The Man Who Saved George VI |publisher=Open Road Media |year=2014 |isbn=9781497629011 |page=73}}</ref>[[File:British Empire Union WWI poster.jpg|thumb|Propaganda poster, {{Circa|1919}}, from the British Empire Union calling for boycott of German goods and depicting German businesspeople selling their products in Britain as "the other face" of German soldiers who committed atrocities during World War I]]
The [[German Shepherd]] breed of dog was renamed to the euphemistic "[[Alsace-Lorraine|Alsatian]]"; the [[The Kennel Club|English Kennel Club]] only re-authorised the use of 'German Shepherd' as an official name in 1977.{{citation needed|date = October 2018}} The German biscuit was renamed the [[Empire biscuit]].

Several streets in London which had been named after places in Germany or notable Germans had their names changed. For instance, ''Berlin Road'' in [[Catford]] was renamed ''Canadian Avenue'', and ''Bismarck Road'' in [[Islington]] was renamed ''Waterlow Road''.<ref>{{cite web |title=Street name changes 1857–1929 |url=https://www.maps.thehunthouse.com/Streets/1857-1929.htm |access-date=11 June 2020 |publisher=The Hunthouse}}</ref>

Attitudes to Germany were not entirely negative among British troops fighting on the Western Front; the British writer [[Nicholas Shakespeare]] quotes this statement from a letter written by his grandfather during the First World War in which he says he would rather fight the French and describes German bravery:

{{blockquote|Personally, my opinion is that our fellows get on much best [sic] with the Germans, and would very much rather be fighting the French!&nbsp;... It was a fine sight to see the Germans coming on in solid formation, in front of our machine guns&nbsp;... they were generally led by one officer in front who came along to certain death as cool as a cucumber, with his sword held straight up in front of him at the salute.| Nicholas Shakespeare, ''The first casualty of war''.<ref name="Shakespeare">{{cite news|url=http://books.guardian.co.uk/bookclub/story/0,,1656271,00.html|title=The first casualty of war|last=Shakespeare|first=Nicholas |newspaper=The Guardian |date=December 3, 2005|access-date=19 January 2011|location=London <!-- second of two date parameters; unable to check which is correct 2015-07-12 |date=2005-12-06 -->}}</ref>}}

[[Robert Graves]] who, like the King, also had German relatives, wrote shortly after the war during his time at [[Oxford University]] as an undergraduate that: 

{{blockquote|The eighteenth century owed its unpopularity largely to its Frenchness. Anti-French feeling among most ex-soldiers amounted almost to an obsession. Edmund, shaking with nerves, used to say at this time: "No more wars for me at any price! Except against the French. If ever there is a war against them, I'll go like a shot." Pro-German feeling had been increasing. With the war over and the German armies beaten, we could give the German soldier credit for being the most efficient fighting man in Europe&nbsp;... Some undergraduates even insisted that we had been fighting on the wrong side: our natural enemies were the French.|Robert Graves, ''[[Goodbye to All That]]''.<ref>{{Citation|first=Robert |last=Graves|author-link=Robert Graves |title=Goodbye to All That |series=Penguin twentieth-century classics |edition=illustrated, reprint |publisher=Penguin |location=UK |year=2000 |isbn=9780141184593 |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=Xi66fGN3FdkC&pg=PT360 240]}}</ref>
}}