God punish England & destroy Italy! A sailor drowns. The hand and sword of God blaze from the heavens as a ship begins to sinks, either struck by a torpedo or having struck a mine. In the distance a Zeppelin approaches the coast. A submarine may lurk.
Gott strafe England & vernichte Italien!God punish England & destroy Italy!Reverse:Postkarte . . . WienB.K. W. I. 259-123
". . . there is a very different feeling for each of the three allies. The Russians 'don't count,' so to speak. They are dangerous because of their numbers . . . Toward the French there is no bitterness either, rather a sort of pity and the wish to be thought well of. . . . Toward John Bull there is no mercy. He is shown naked, trying to hide himself with neutral flags; he is sprawled in his mill with a river of French blood flowing by from the battle-fields of France, while the cartoonist asks France if she cannot see that she is doing his grinding for him . . .. . . there is a cartoon of a young mother holding up her baby to his proud father with the announcement that he has spoken his first words. 'And what did he say?' 'Gott strafe England!'"
Excerpt from 'The Great Days' in Antwerp to Gallipoli by Arthur Ruhl, a journalist from the neutral United States. In February, 1915 Ruhl wrote from Berlin. Among the Germans who viewed Great Britain as the ultimate enemy were German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, who had mistakenly convinced himself that England would not go to war over Belgian neutrality in 1914, and German commander Erich von Falkenhayn, who became convinced that Britain was Germany's true enemy, and that defeating France or Russia was chiefly a means to isolate and defeat England.
Antwerp to Gallipoli by Arthur Ruhl, pp. 108, 109, copyright © 1916 by Charles Scribner's Sons, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1916
1915-02-13, February, 1915, Gott strafe England, God, God punish England
