A subsequent larger scale operation, Operation Battleaxe in which the support Group also took part was also a failure and led to a reorganization of the commands in the Western Desert which included Gott’s promotion to command the 7 th Armoured Division. Following the arrival of German troops in North Africa the British Commonwealth forces were pushed back to the Libyan border with Egypt where Gott was placed in command of a mixed force to plan and conduct Operation Brevity which was unsuccessful. While under Gott’s command the Support Group performed well during the Italian invasion of Egypt, conducting a planned withdrawal, and the subsequent Operation Compass which saw the destruction of the Italian Tenth Army. Promoted to lieutenant-colonel in October 1938 to command the 1 st Battalion KRRC on its transfer from Burma to Egypt to become part of the Mobile Division, later to become 7 th Armoured Division, Gott enjoyed a remarkably rapid promotion path: he was successively chief staff officer of the division ranked lieutenant-colonel, commander of the Support Group as acting Brigadier, and General Officer Commanding, acting Major-General of the 7 th Armoured Division, the Desert Rats. His service between the World Wars included a posting as adjutant to a territorial battalion and a period of postings in India as a General Staff officer and Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General. He was promoted major in July 1934, having been made a brevet major earlier in January. He was promoted to the rank of captain in January 1921 and attended Staff College from January 1931. His nickname “Strafer” was a pun on the German WWI slogan “Gott strafe England”, “God punish England”. He was commissioned into the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, Gott served with distinction with the British Expedionary Forces in France during World War I. Gott, William, born 13-08-1897 in Harrow, London, the son of William Henry Gott, of Armley House, Leeds, co York and Anne Rosamond Gotte and educated at Harrow School.
" "A Few Bars of the Hymn of Hate": The Reception of Ernst Lissauer's "Haßgesang gegen England" in German and English". ^ Millington, Richard Smith, Roger (15 June 2017).^ "Hassgesang gegen England - Hymn of Hate, by Ernst Lissauer".In 1946, in Hamburg, "Ausgebombte" (bombed-out refugees) chanted the slogan. The list included, for example, journalists who criticized how the war was being run, but did not want to join the army themselves. In England in 1916, the music hall singer, Tom Clare wrote a comic song "My Hymn of Hate" in a comic vein giving a list of people and phenomena that he hated.
In at least 1916 browncoal bricks were embossed with the motto "Gott Strafe England" and sold in the Netherlands. Unofficial stamps with the motto were produced by organisations, such as the "Federation of the Germans in Lower Austria". The painter, photographer, and caricaturist Helmut Herzfeld went so far as to change his given name in protest to an English one and to anglicize his surname, henceforth to be known as John Heartfield. The publicist Benjamin Segel said that the poem did not contain "as much as a spark of Jewish sentiment." Lissauer's song and slogan proved to be similarly less popular within the wider German intelligentsia. With one or two exceptions it was not widely popular among Lissauer's fellow Jews, who had a tendency to identify with England's liberal tradition. The Frankfurter Zeitung was bold enough to denounce the "impotent hatred that spits at us everywhere". An informative account of Lissauer and the "Hymn of Hate" can be found in Stefan Zweig's The World of Yesterday.ĭespite the general atmosphere of condemnation against Britain for "causing the war", the Hassgesang was not without its critics. The Kaiser was pleased enough to confer upon the author the Order of the Red Eagle. Rupprecht of Bavaria, commander of the Sixth Army, ordered that copies be distributed among his troops. In the strained atmosphere brought on by World War I, Lissauer's Hassgesang became an instant success.
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