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Ingrouping/outgrouping heuristics are a helluva drug.

A review of WWI literature and history will conclusively demonstrate that nationalist hatreds were a creation of the conflict and not its cause. Moral indignation in Germany at the unexpected intervention of Britain made them, rather than France, Enemy Number One in the eyes of Germans. Whereas very little anti-British sentiment existed in the German population in 1914, by the spring of 1915, formerly-pacifistic German poets were writing verses about their hatred of Britain. There's a hysterical Punch cartoon of a German family "having its morning hate." Then in May of that year, a u-boat sank the Lusitania, and the next day there were riots in British cities. Mind you, there were no German victims, but the mobs only attacked immigrants. Inchoate rage.

Your hypothesis has more than a little merit.

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