Book excerpt: With the approach of the First World War, the German community in Britain began to be assailed by a combination of government measures and popular hostility which resulted in attacks against individuals with German connections and confiscation of their property. From May 1915, a policy of wholesale internment and repatriation was to reduce the German population by more than half of its pre-war figure. The author of this study charts the growth of the German community in Britain before detailing the story of its destruction under the chauvinistic intolerance which gripped the country during the Great War.