Contemporary Europe
After the separation into two countries following the Second World War; West Germany generally had good relationships with its western neighboring states, while East Germany to some degree had similar relationships with its eastern neighbors. Many of these relationships continued after the end of the Cold War with the unified Germany. West Germany was a co-founder of the European Union and the reunified Germany continues as a leading member. During the process of European unification, Germany and France forged a strong relationship, ending the long-standing French-German enmity, which had peaked during and after the First World War.
In a poll carried out in 2008 for the BBC World Service, in which people in 34 countries were asked about the positive and negative influence of 13 countries including Germany, Germany was the most popular, ahead of Japan, France and Britain; only 18 percent thought Germany had a mainly negative influence. The most negative attitudes were in Turkey (47 percent) and Egypt (43 percent).
Germans sometimes complain of stereotypical associations of them with acts and a regime of more than sixty years ago, such as the use of anti-German sentiment in headlines by parts of the British press, which were often used in the build-up to football matches between England and Germany. A more recent example arose when German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI.
British public people, whether journalists or politicians, are more prepared to demonise the Germans than any other people I know are prepared to vilify any other nation I have heard of, with the possible exception of Arabs and Jews.
— Hugo Young, The Guardian
In fact, according to a recent poll, the British people have a rather positive image of Germany, with 62 percent believing that Germany has a mainly positive influence in the world and only 20 percent believing that Germany's influence is mainly negative, slightly better than Germans' views of Britain (60 percent and 27 percent, respectively).
Read more about this topic: Anti-German Sentiment
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